The Dresden Files > DF Spoilers
Exposure to Magic?
nadia.skylark:
--- Quote ---Though I'd argue that it's not necessarily required for womb exposure, just that it produces a powered kid more consistently. See Luccio's remarks about checking in on her descendants to see if any of them have talents—it's possible, just not as likely. I'm also reasonably sure that the Council would be able to track new talents much more efficiently if this was the case.
--- End quote ---
There might also be other kinds of exposure that work less reliably--living on a Ley line, having lots of faeries around, stuff like that.
Bacchus:
Ive just looked into the bare basics on how genetics work for skin and hair color because of interesting things on how my daughter and nephew turned out and learned that how we understand genetics is so oversimplified as to be functionally incorrect.
It is all way more complex than simple dominant and recessive stuff for most traits is my understanding
Magic would be an order of magnitude more complex than hair color i would think.
small examples would be the weird traits that wizards have (healing, mage sight, more random powers) would likely be hard-coded somewhere in all that junk DNA that we don't know what it does yet. i would think this would all take a rather large chunk of DNA for all the different things.
maybe everyone has that stuff but the right genetic match makes it all become dominant to various degrees.
could be exceptionally powerful magic during first trimester cause birth defects that have a small chance at triggering this dna, remember the level of mages is in single digits per country
or arn't all humans really females at first anyway and males are made by the Y chromosome modifying bits as we develop,
and all the weird stuff about Maternal DNA lines, maybe that dudes female line ancestor from thousands of years ago had power and the dna has silently been passed along.
I'm sorry if parts of this are wrong.
I'm not an expert
morriswalters:
How magic is conveyed to progeny is fairly well explained by the text of the books. Exposure to magic or a wizards aura isn't a required condition if you wish to account for the existence of warlocks. Jim is giving a very brief look at the war between nature and nurture. How much of what you are is because of your genes or your upbringing.
In terms of why magic would atrophy if not used, Jim based this on fairly well understood science. Your muscles maintain their tone because you use them. It's why astronauts exercise on the ISS.
nadia.skylark:
--- Quote ---How magic is conveyed to progeny is fairly well explained by the text of the books.
--- End quote ---
It isn't, really. The books say that magic is passed on through the maternal line, and then goes and has Harry's mom get her magic from her father. Jim has also said that none of Charity's children besides Molly inherited magic because she had given it up, but choosing not to use magic should not alter your genetic structure!
morriswalters:
--- Quote from: nadia.skylark on April 03, 2019, 10:56:56 PM ---It isn't, really. The books say that magic is passed on through the maternal line, and then goes and has Harry's mom get her magic from her father. Jim has also said that none of Charity's children besides Molly inherited magic because she had given it up, but choosing not to use magic should not alter your genetic structure!
--- End quote ---
Certainly there is plenty of science that says external forces can change or damage genetic expression. Fetal Alcohol Syndrome for one. It isn't unreasonable in this fictional context to suppose the aura that a mother extrudes as a magic user could cause changes in genetic expression for an unborn child. If you want some fact based type of thing you could posit that a wizards aura may turn on some type of chemistry that turns a gene on or off. How deep a level of detail do you require?
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