#identical twins already share their dna are are fundamentally not the same person

[leianaberrie]

What is your thoughts on the whole legacies kai issue and about plec bothering people about it

It’s horrifically predictable. We all knew that Kai Parker was the best thing that happened to the show since Season 3. Unfortunately, part of his character’s DNA hinged enormously on his feelings for Bonnie Bennett. If Bonnie had been a white girl, Bonkai would have been explored and ultimately been end game. Everyone knew this - even the people who hated Bonkai, especially the people who hated Bonkai, chief of whom was Julie Plec. The best defence that Julie had for not making BK canon was that Bonnie was “too good, and pure” for Kai —– only for her to make BE canon in the next season.  

It says a lot about how Kai was conceived that even though Plec would clearly have preferred him and Bonnie to never share any scenes together in season 8, his feelings for Bonnie were still an established part of his characterisation. In Plec’s own words, Kai was a psychopath Bonnie-lover*.  To paraphrase @candyumbrella​ in her awesome deconstruction of this:

Whereas even though TVD tried to shut down Bonkai, when they brought Kai back in S8, he was still obsessed with Bonnie. He still reacted the same way to Bonnie, wanting her attention, her favor. They had to respect that aspect of Kai’s construction and characterization as a fundamental part of his identity.

So I am not surprised that with Bonnie out of the picture, Plec is basically biting at the bit, doing everything short of begging Chris Wood to come back to revive the character. She always knew that writing off Kai was a mistake —- but her racism and deep-seated misogynoir could not stand the fact that the best thing about her show was so entwined with Bonnie. It’s not a coincidence that she’s been dismantling the coreness of the Bennett family to the TVD-verse (propping the Mikaelsons left and right —- suddenly Esther went from a semi-competent witch who had to piggy-bank on the Bennett spirits to draw power, to a Super-Witch Of Supreme Power, the wolves were created by some random witch Inadu who has all the significance of Markov (sp?) of the Travellers) and has erased Bonnie from Legacies. The twins had a relationship with Bonnie. She was their godmother, their ‘aunt’ and she taught them magic… Now while every other legacy character’s name has got randomly name-dropped, only Bonnie’s has never been mentioned.

tl dr… I would be glad if CW never showed up on the show, but this is real life. Kai would probably be resurrected, fall in love with Hope or some other appropriate white girl, and get magically redeemed in a way that Bonnie was never special enough to do. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ It is what it is. 

When she says “psychopath Bonnie lover”, everything in that phrase sounds insulting - it sounds like she’s listing out all of Kai’s crimes. More than that, actually. It sounds like if she’s saying that it was bad enough that he was a psychopath but being a “Bonnie lover” (and wow, does that not sound like some other creepy racist ***lover slur) was the last straw that pushed him beyond redemption?

Like she could have said, Kai the psychopath and left it there. (She is the one who liked downplaying his feelings for Bonnie as a “little crush”. Why acknowledge them now?). She could have said “Bonnie Stalker” and that would have made sense as something creepy and scary and definitely an insult. But she says “Bonnie LOVER” like if that by itself is already a sign that there’s something wrong/off/bad about Kai.

Because no sane/good/worthwhile person could “naturally” love Bonnie.

[philosophicalparadox]

The Twins and Paternity

Ok, this is going to be a LONG post, because there is just SO MUCH to debunk about this whole “the twins have different fathers” thing. 

Because it may not be as true as you think. In fact, it’s more likely given what we know that they really are identical twins. 

Huh? But they look different!

Aaaaaand that is why this post is so long: that’s right folks, buckle up and let’s take a field trip down the road called Epigenetics and Gene expression. (in other words, this is going to get really sciencey)

TLDR: Twins can be identical genetically, but have different phenotypes and even completely different body structure due to gene mutation that occurs during gestation. This gene mutation modifies how genes are expressed, but does NOT modify the genes themselves. The fact that the twins are BOTH half demons, well...we’re going to get into some rather strange examples I have from personal experience about animal hybridization and gene expression, simplified as much as I dare. Also, prepare for wikipedia references, because they may not be superb but they offer a good summary of everything I looked up, via Wiki’s citation page. (Yep, I went there.) You’re welcome. 

More below the cut: 

First, let’s look at what we know:

The twins are Monoamniotic, meaning that they share the same amniotic sac in utero. This is something ONLY achievable in identical twins. 

With me? Good, because here’s where that get’s messy:

Monoamniotism and Size/parasitism

Monoamniotic twins are also monochorionic, meaning that they share a placenta. This, unfortunately, can lead to embryonic parasitism, since the twins in a monoamniotic/monochorionic relationship (called, affectionately, “MoMo twins”) share blood between not just the mother and each of them, but between one another also. As a result, it is not uncommon in “MoMo” twins for one twin to be larger or stronger than the other. 

Also, blood is not sometimes distributed evenly over a placenta, especially in the case of MoMo twins, which have a very large placenta to share between the two. Consequently, it is not unusual for one twin to be short of an adequate blood supply, and therefore become thinner and smaller. While it’s rare, sometimes one twin may die in utero for this reason. 

I say this as a matter of interpretation, not fact, but it appears to me that MoMo twins seem to be one step shy of conjoined, since they share everything from blood and nutrients to hormones, not only with mom, but with one another also. 

The Process

The diagram above shows at what stage during the development of a (single) foetus it can split into twins, and the results thereof. 

Most people have an erroneous assumption that identical twins are always produced during the initial phases of gestation, when the egg is first dividing. (Morula stage). However, this is not remotely true of all identical twins, which is why you get things like the Conjoined twins above, which do not split into separate organisms until the, putting it in layman’s terms, “DNA blueprint” of their entire basic structure is already determined. (Basically, as the Embryonic Disc stage, every cell is primed to divide in a specific way, to become a specific, basic thing -- heart, spine, brain, etc. Before this stage, however, there are still “gaps” in the blueprint -- All of the chromosomes and genes are there, but they haven’t  quite “ordered” the cells to become those fundamental things like organs yet. Now, as the foetus grows, more cells will be “directed” by the DNA they contain to serve a function, but at the Embryonic Disk stage, most of the vital organs “blueprints” are complete.)

DNA replication and Mutation:

Recap, because for some people, high school was a long time ago. 

DNA divides using RNA as a transcriptor, in order to “copy” the DNA -- the RNA can modify the DNA depending on what it’s specific structure is and how it transcribes the DNA during replication. This is how viruses do their business, by transcribing thier RNA into your DNA, and changing what a cell does or how well it functions by screwing up the DNA pattern. (which is why there really IS no limit on what a virus can do or what symptoms it can cause.)

However, errors do happen in transcription naturally, which is also how things like cancer form. When the RNA fails to “copy” the DNA correctly, it can mess with the senescence of the cell, causing it to divide indefinitely. On a less severe note, this is also how gene expression can be modified, even in identical individuals. Once RNA mis-transcribes something, future cells containing the ‘error’ are produced, and produced, and produced unless another RNA ‘failing’ changes the gene expression again. 

Gene expression in twins:

Because identical twins have identical Chromosomes, they usually have identical gene expression, which is basically how a visible a gene is. Now, they don’t ever have 100% identical DNA, due to those naturally occurring transcription errors, but their chromosomes are identical, and so are most of their genes. 

That means, however, that both twins also share not only every dominant trait, but every codominant and recessive trait. And, due to DNA replication errors, identical twins DO sometimes come out looking nothing at all alike, exactly because sometimes, rather than a cell’s DNA replicating to produce the “dominant” trait, it will instead transcribe for the recessive, and continue to do this until the gene becomes expressed as recessive. 

It is not clear, by my findings, if MoMo twins are more or less suceptible to this, so I can not answer from that angle. 

Gene expression and interspecies hybridization:

Ok, trip down memory lane time for me -- I used to work for a snake breeder, who knew a snake breeder, that knew a snake breeder...

Ahem, anyway, did you know that most “corn snakes” in the pet trade aren’t “corn snakes” at all? They’re almost always hybrids of the Texas Rat snake, Fox snake, Milk snake, or other Colubrid species. I once owned one that was Corn x Fox x Gopher snake -- he is currently a whopping Seven feet long, and has a very impressive girth. 

However, when I purchased him, he looked just like a normal corn snake. He had a bit of a different patten, and had very vibrant oranges and yellows and reds, with some seriously high contrast -- he was gorgeous. 

I met his parents at the store I got him from -- Mom was HUGE. I’m talking six feet at least, and with a “fire and ice” colour mutation. She was pretty, but damn was she big. I assumed it was just a fluke, and bought the boy anyway. 

I called her, the breeder, later on, when he got to be five feet long and had a seriously bad attitude, puffing up and hissing at just about anything. I wanted to know if it was a genetic thing, or a husbandry thing. 

She kindly told me he was F3 (third gen) Gopher hybrid, and that gopher snakes tended to be more defensive, claiming that he had “inherited those genes from mom”. 

Point of my story is : He looked just like a corn snake. 

But he was not, nor is any “corn snake” you find in the pet trade anymore, unless it is wild caught. 

using the same example, let’s talk about “high show” and “low show”: 

My corn snake was “High show” for typical corn-snake traits; orange body colour, markings (mostly - he had some barring that wasn’t typical, but that is owed to the barring in gopher snakes being dominant, I think.) and slender, active body. 

Now, that doesn’t make much of a case for twins - but it does offer insight into hybrids not necessarily looking hybrid-ey.

Demon Genes and Human Genes -- where to draw the line?

The following is fan speculation, not anything confirmed in canon:

Eminescu says, sometime in the middle chapters somewhere, that demon genes and human genes can combine in “interesting ways”. 

The question here becomes -- why did Rin get the “demon genes” and not Yukio? 

By sheer fluking chance, I wager. 

From what I can conjecture about, it appears that, at it’s most basic tennet, demon “parasites” being introduced into human hosts causes a kind of genetic splicing, but with the addition of “turning on” genes that, in humans, have been dormant for millions of years.

Demons who inhabit  (at least human) bodies produce atavisms, or throwbacks to ancestral traits. Tails, long canines, thickened fingernails, etc. are all traits humans once had, before they were homo sapiens. Long before. 

It could just be a splice thing, (which I will come back to in another post) whereupon the demon’s genes influence the addition of the tail and whatnot, but I’m of the mind that thier genes couldn’t splice effectively unless there was a genetic weakness to exploit -- the existence, perhaps, of dormant atavistic traits. Which could be why so few of the “host bodies” for Lucifer and crew could not be used. It takes a certain human, of a certain bloodline, to possess these traits, particularly in abundance. 

Now, that leads to some interesting speculations about Yuri, which I shall delve into thusly: 

Yuri and Demon genes

It is possible that Yuri is part demon herself, which would logically increase the odds of demon genes being passed on via copulation with a demon. After all, Satan is going to be dominant for some of the same genes, as the all-father, so it would make sense for those genes to come out when they breed. 

We don’t see any of those genes in anyone but Rin though. Why? Well, that could be the infintessimally small percentage of a chance that Yukio, while he inherited those same demon genes, simply doesn’t “show” them. He has them, but due to the infinitely complicated rules of hybridization, may not show them through. 

Now, a disclaimer: It could be, and is an equally valid point, assuming Katou doesn’t have a biology degree, that they DO have different fathers. However, until we have the answers in canon, it is equally as likely that they don’t. I merely hadn’t seen ANY post claiming the offensive -- that Satan sired them both. 

Feel free to reply with opinions, fact checks, etc! Unfortunately, I can not apparently link anything to add credibility (stupid Tumblr and their anti-linking bullcrap I guess - because Wikipedia apparently isn’t a source, and neither are any of it’s sources) and if I’ve misunderstood anything, please inform me! I spent five hours researching this stuff, but one day’s worth of study does not make me an expert!