Comments on: The Twins of Winath

By: John Nowak

John Nowak — Wed, 26 Sep 2007 23:29:48 +0000

Maybe it’s genetic, and Saturn Girl’s twins were merely coincidental.

By: bad wolf

bad wolf — Mon, 24 Sep 2007 14:06:00 +0000

I know, this took me all week to think up, but i definitely favor the (#1) explanation (eg Founder effect) for LSH powers in general, including Winathian twins. How does this match up with Saturn Girl’s twins? Answer: Winathian fertility drugs. Her obstetrician, concerned that she was only having single-egg ovulation cycles, tilts the outcome with some sort of traditional Winathian treatment for such women. After all, on a planet where single births are considered to be birth defects, it would be improper medical practice not to ensure twin-based conception.

By: Greg Morrow

Greg Morrow — Mon, 24 Sep 2007 04:20:52 +0000

Scott, can you give a cite for Winath being mostly fraternal twins? Other than the Ranzzes, the few glimpses we saw of Winath pre-Crisis featured mostly apparently identical twins. I was under the impression that Garth and Ayla were somewhat unusual as fraternals, consistent with brother Mekt being very unusual as a singleton.

Given when and by who Winath was invented, a planet of identicals is more likely to be the design goal than a planet of fraternals, I’d think.

By: Ledasmom

Ledasmom — Fri, 21 Sep 2007 22:42:17 +0000

That rule certainly does not hold for guinea pigs, who have two nipples and a typical litter size of two to five. However, guinea pig young are exceedingly precocious and don’t need their mother’s milk for very long.
In any case, breasts take very little time to produce milk; letdown is fairly abrupt – baby cries, boom, milk, and milk keeps being produced as long as the baby nurses, although the composition changes. I suspect most nursing mothers with one baby never approach capacity production. What would, however, be tremendously useful to the mother of multiple nurslings is extra arms.
I suspect the limiting factor would more likely be the ability of the mother to take in sufficient calories and necessary nutrients to support two nursing babies. Do we know anything about the usual Winathian age of weaning?

By: Dave

Dave — Wed, 19 Sep 2007 06:38:25 +0000

Correct me if I’m wrong here. I recall reading/hearing somewhere that female mammals have one more breast/nipple than the usual number of offspring in a litter. (On the theory that the unused outlets could recharge while the other(s) was/were in use.) If that’s true, would Winathian females have three breasts?

By: Shawn Levasseur

Shawn Levasseur — Wed, 19 Sep 2007 00:56:04 +0000

Both of your theories, Scott, presume that the simultaneous ovulation of two eggs is the reason for nearly all of pregnancies on Winath being of fraternal twins.

That would still beg the question of fertilization. To have one egg get fertilized does not guarantee that both will be fertilized. Yet Mekt Ranzz being a single birth was shown as an anomaly in Winathian society. So there must be a reason for there being two and (usually) ONLY two children per pregnancy.

Maybe there’s something about Winathian pregnancies that make it impossible for a single fertilized egg to survive without its fraternal twin also being fertilized.

Maybe it’s not the egg, but the sperm of the Winathian male which is the key to this mystery. This would explain why Saturn Girl would birth to twins, as it would be Lightning Lad’s Winathian biology at work.

It could be the sperm carries two separate sets of DNA to contribute and at the moment of conception the cell splits into two as if identical twins were forming, but each sibling carries a different DNA contribution from their father.

By: Nala

Nala — Tue, 18 Sep 2007 12:15:44 +0000

Funny. Back in grad school I wanted to do a complete fictional research project completely grounded in theory as to how the various LSH worlds could have even possibly come into existence based on a diaspora of humans 1000 years in the past. This actually was a year or two before DC did their whole Alien Invasion thing which was their attempt to explain the human seed populations.

You bring up two of the major issues I had with Winath humans versus traditional humans: ovulation patterns in the females and then Saturn Girl having twins.

If I recall, I tried to chart the number of likely generations of mutation necessary to make a multiple ovum menstrual cycle commonplace within the established 1000 year future of the LSH. I can’t recall the outcome though since this was all done in fun and those files were lost on 15 year old floppy disks.

Imra not being from Winath yet having twins does throw a wrench into likely mutation explanations. I couldn’t find a reason that I felt comfortable with on having the the multiple births and having it reside on a Winath Y chromosome just doesn’t really work for me.

I think in the end we went with a reason along the lines of environment as well, but focused on some form of long term exposure to something that caused female hormone changes. There is a lot of evidence in non-human primates to support this so it was the likely candidate.

Then again, we used to all sit around drinking laughing at ourselves that were were even trying to explain how fictional worlds could come into existence in 1000 years.

By: Nenena

Nenena — Tue, 18 Sep 2007 11:31:29 +0000

Hmmm, reminds me of that Stephen King book, Wolves of the Calla, in which there was an isolated society where everybody always gave birth to fraternal twins. And furthermore, the twins were always boy-girl pairs. There was never an explanation given for this, save for the fact that we were led to believe that a sinister megatech corporation (I totally forget the name) engineered this society sometime in the distant past.