Well, this chapter goes a long way towards explaining the overprotectiveness towards bicorns. A mix of guilt and necessity. Also a very real possibility of accidentally breeding them out of existence, if they are completely integrated into normal society.
5431112 Twilight's doubts are reasonable. Yes, that's a big point here. After all, for her to believe them on the spot would be stretching credibility, right? Of course, it remains to be seen how badly she wants to defend those beliefs of hers. She speculates that their past probably includes a traumatic event. It might not have caused them to create new memories, it's rather unlikely, but they can pretend it never happened. They can imagine much more interesting, less damaging alternatives to what happened, to what they are. And that's a rather scary train of thoughts, isn't it? She HAS to keep things in order, since they are much too traumatize to act rational. It's all up to her.
And Twilight's so dutiful.
But hey, I digress, they probably don't kill bicorns, suck up the magic in their horns and drink Felix Felicis. They do however make sure that there are enough foals born to keep the species alive.
5533265 Yup, this was one of the more expositon heavy, a revealer chapter of sort. Now then, question, are the ponies in the wrong here?
5534063 Just going to mention they will be making that face many times more.
5534853 I think there's a few practical steps missing from that train of thoughts. Namely, how they get there, how they enter the palace, how they get a private audience with Celestia, how they convince the one responsible for the bicorns' status and the laws for their protections, how they escape custody again, what funds to use for any of those steps, and how escaping again is going to help them get back to Earth.
Now, if we skip all those steps just for the 'run' option, well, they do have to hope the other species will treat them better and NOT try to use them.
5536642 Nope, I would not. Train, make a petition, tell Her the truth(ask for a truth crystal, pill, mind reading spell; I'm sure something like that exists), hope, I'm sure they won't have any big problems because of that innate bad thing prevention luck, getting arrested or found out that they don't have any money is bad luck, which they don't seem to have.
Its a quick way to end the story tho, which I know isn't what you want right now, but, just saying.
Heck, if the protagonists had even a cursory examination of Lamarckian Genetics, they might be able to lift some of the restrictions by explaining the punnett squares for producing recessive traits... unless the bicorn trait is a recessive polyploid like RL Equine coat colors....
Single gene set up: "B" is normal unicorn, "b" is bicorn (presuming that there's a separate genetic set up for Unicorn or Pegasus or Earth Pony, taking Carrot Cake at his word and not making Mrs. Cake a swinger)
BB = Normal Unicorn (Pure) Bb or bB = Normal Unicorn (Carrier) bb = bicorn. Meaning that in a Pure Unicorn/Bicorn pairing all the foals will be Carrier Unicorns, unless the Unicorn is carrying a mixed lineage and the Unicorn trait itself is recessive. A Bicorn and a Carrier will produce 50% Bicorns and 50% Carriers, at the very least letting a few bicorns a generation to breed in new traits from the outside population, and giving a chance for new Bicorns to appear "in the wild." Additionally, two Carriers produce 50% carriers, 25% Pure and 25% bicorn.
I personally think Pinkie Pie would have some Bicorn ancestry somewhere in her tree, and may have even been a bicorn herself if she'd had the necessary traits to be a surprise unicorn in an Earth Pony family. (That is, she may well be "bb" in the above scenario, but is at best a carrier earth pony for the pegasus and/or unicorn traits.)
5538477 You fail to realize that the Luck magic is passive, not constant. And because they believe what they are saying a truth spell wouldn't do a thing. If one believes hard enough in a lie, they may see it as true when it is not. For all you know the other species would harvest their power for their own use. Luck is not omnipotent, and luck always runs out.
5539850 Just gonna put this out there cause most people seem to ignore it. You also have to take account the fact that the ratio of males to females is severely skewed. Simply being able to produce Bicorns does not mean the likelihood for male to female ratio is reasonable. The fact that Bicorns are a severe minority also means there is not a lot of males to go for each female. As herding would mean more families are directly linked, thus inbreeding would distort and cripple child production. you also bring up diversity within family linage, so the square would not only include the direct association with the parents but the family history as well, thereby making the chance for Bicornxother species to produce Bicorn's even lower as the species have the ability to give birth to any tribe.
5543359 I'm not guessing about anything, I know this to be a fact. Luck is not luck if it's constant, luck is an indication of good things happening when you least expect them. And just like any other form of magic, it has limits.
5539850 Well, disregarding the fact that neither have a background in genetics, it is indeed not a model of diploid structure. The square doesn't work all that well for this situation. Now, we didn't get into all the specifics of the mechanics behind it, but if I were to try to explain it roughly, well... the sub-species of ponies would be something that is on the same place in the genetic material and differs from one race to another.
If we were to try to use the Cakes as a model, we have two earth ponies parents and two foals of different races. So the parents have to carry both the earth pony genes and, in a model like the one you mentioned, one with pegasus recessive and one with unicorn recessive. Earth pony would be the dominant type here, since the parents are obviously earth ponies despite carrying the other gene.
So, something like earth pony with A, pegasus with b and unicorn with c.
Let's also imagine that pegasus is dominant over unicorn, for the sake of this exercise.
So, in the event Mr. Cake (Ab) gave his recessive gene and Mrs. Cake (Ac) gave hers, we have one child with (bc). That foal will be a pegasus, because b > c. Okay, so following this model, it works so far. The problem comes with the second twin. Since both A and b are dominant over c, the foal would have to get (cc) to be a unicorn, but only one of their parents can give them that. So, unless we get into the partially expressed genes allowing a unicorn to be born of earth pony parents, it's not likely. Considering how far the Cakes go into their family to get the justification, it's also a bit more unlikely.
So, as only one of two co-author to the story, with my slightly rusty knowledge of genetics, I say "screw it, it's a complex polyploid thing, magic has a role somewhere, and we're not getting into it deeper than that". The important thing is what was said in the chapter: the bicorns are the least dominant trait, rarely have non-bicorn sires and it's hurting the species ability to survive without strict monitoring and regulations.
This being said, you do make a point with the part of bicorns being produced outside the reserves by non-bicorn couples. It is part of the reason why bicorns are allowed to make 'donations'. They do have a choice between a family life, or simply contributing to the genetic pool amongst the rest of the population. And if you consider the dangers of inbreeding with a closed community of individuals, it is indeed crucial that there are new bicorns born with a more distant relation to the rest of the population.
Oh, and Pinkie actually does have a bicorn somewhere up in her family tree. She mentioned it herself in one of her speeches in the early chapters.
5540802 Nope, as I said to Hilltopper2, she's only carrying part of the gene because of a bicorn ancestor of hers and has some bicorn magic mixed in with her earth pony one. It is just strongly expressed in her 'Pinkie Sense'. It's just extremely unusual, almost impossible, and Twilight bit off her own hoove soff when she realized that (though it did little to explain the rest of Pinkie Pie).
5543359 Anemptyshell's right though. Truth spells and the likes would only reflect beliefs, so that's out. Luck isn't an omnipotent thing either. The text in the chapter itself implies that it works on different levels depending on each individuals, and that it might manifests as visions. However, if Luck was an omnipotent force, then clearly, the bicorns wouldn't be in the state they are in the first place, would they? Without spoiling anything, I can easily say Celestia is not malevolent, that she is trying, and that the laws were not passed without her consent.
5544182 You know this to be a fact? Well, I don't, never will, because I refuse to think of luck like that - why? Because everyone has they're own understanding of luck, oh sure, some groups of people might agree to believe in the same kind of luck, however, I am not one of them.
The thing with recessive genes is, they're even harder to get rid of than dominant ones!
With Earth biology at least recessive traits are generally broken genes. Brown hair / brown eyes versus not-brown hair / not-brown eyes. But we have two copies of every gene, one on each side of the double helix. Having two copies doesn't make the gene twice as strong, as the machinery to turn genes into proteins isn't doubled. The second copy only sticks around for error correction and redundancy. So you can't tell whether someone has one, or two copies of a working gene, because one is enough for the full effect.
So if you have a population of blonde people, and a population of brown haired people, and the blondes only mate with brunettes, then the entire next generation will be brown haired. This gives the illusion that recessive genes quickly breed out of a population. But in fact, recessive genes are harder to breed out of a population than dominant ones, and there is nothing that would make the recessive gene less likely to be around, just because it's recessive. Of course broken genes that disadvantage you are selected against, but just the fact that they're recessive does nothing to the odds.
Let's say your blondes disappear into a brown haired population this way. The third generation, suddenly random people are having blonde kids. About 25% of them. Every time a gamete is created one of the genes is randomly selected, so someone with one recessive and one dominant will only half the time unpredictably provide a dominant or recessive gene to their kid. No matter how many generations you go, about 25% of them will be blonde. The only way to get rid of the blonde is to kill off all the blonde babies, and just hope the leftover 50% of the brown haired population with a blonde gene don't pull it out for the next generation, and then keep doing that forever, and eventually you can be sort of almost positively maybe sure that nobody will ever be born blonde. Maybe. Then someone comes out blonde.
Contrarily, to get rid of brown hair, you kill off every baby who has brown hair once, and the next generation is blonde forever, with no more brown hair showing up ever.
Even a disadvantageous recessive gene can stick around frustratingly long, just because nobody can tell who's carrying it. Natural selection won't select out people carrying it, so it can stay hidden in the gene pool. Comparatively, a disadvantageous dominant gene vanishes almost immediately, since anyone who doesn't have the disadvantage will breed true. It's laughably easy to breed animals for a recessive trait, but a long, difficult and uncertain process to breed for a dominant trait.
Considering they have knowledge of a good chunk of season four, the moment they mention shit related to the show, is when the priority of containing and breeding them takes top seat. They'd be seen as the very pinnacle, of what an Oracle should be
Well, this chapter goes a long way towards explaining the overprotectiveness towards bicorns. A mix of guilt and necessity. Also a very real possibility of accidentally breeding them out of existence, if they are completely integrated into normal society.
5533265
I'm actually more interested in why they don't go to Celestia, ask for her for help, then escape if she doesn't.
5534853 Escape, escape to where? They are a race that is pretty much under lock and key. Alone they'de be trapped and on the run.
5534964
Anywhere that isn't near ponies?
5431112 Twilight's doubts are reasonable. Yes, that's a big point here. After all, for her to believe them on the spot would be stretching credibility, right? Of course, it remains to be seen how badly she wants to defend those beliefs of hers. She speculates that their past probably includes a traumatic event. It might not have caused them to create new memories, it's rather unlikely, but they can pretend it never happened. They can imagine much more interesting, less damaging alternatives to what happened, to what they are. And that's a rather scary train of thoughts, isn't it? She HAS to keep things in order, since they are much too traumatize to act rational. It's all up to her.
And Twilight's so dutiful.
But hey, I digress, they probably don't kill bicorns, suck up the magic in their horns and drink Felix Felicis. They do however make sure that there are enough foals born to keep the species alive.
5533265 Yup, this was one of the more expositon heavy, a revealer chapter of sort. Now then, question, are the ponies in the wrong here?
5534063 Just going to mention they will be making that face many times more.
5534853 I think there's a few practical steps missing from that train of thoughts. Namely, how they get there, how they enter the palace, how they get a private audience with Celestia, how they convince the one responsible for the bicorns' status and the laws for their protections, how they escape custody again, what funds to use for any of those steps, and how escaping again is going to help them get back to Earth.
Now, if we skip all those steps just for the 'run' option, well, they do have to hope the other species will treat them better and NOT try to use them.
It's a bit of a stretch, wouldn't you say?
5536642
Nope, I would not.
Train, make a petition, tell Her the truth(ask for a truth crystal, pill, mind reading spell; I'm sure something like that exists), hope, I'm sure they won't have any big problems because of that innate bad thing prevention luck, getting arrested or found out that they don't have any money is bad luck, which they don't seem to have.
Its a quick way to end the story tho, which I know isn't what you want right now, but, just saying.
Heck, if the protagonists had even a cursory examination of Lamarckian Genetics, they might be able to lift some of the restrictions by explaining the punnett squares for producing recessive traits... unless the bicorn trait is a recessive polyploid like RL Equine coat colors....
Single gene set up: "B" is normal unicorn, "b" is bicorn (presuming that there's a separate genetic set up for Unicorn or Pegasus or Earth Pony, taking Carrot Cake at his word and not making Mrs. Cake a swinger)
BB = Normal Unicorn (Pure) Bb or bB = Normal Unicorn (Carrier) bb = bicorn. Meaning that in a Pure Unicorn/Bicorn pairing all the foals will be Carrier Unicorns, unless the Unicorn is carrying a mixed lineage and the Unicorn trait itself is recessive. A Bicorn and a Carrier will produce 50% Bicorns and 50% Carriers, at the very least letting a few bicorns a generation to breed in new traits from the outside population, and giving a chance for new Bicorns to appear "in the wild." Additionally, two Carriers produce 50% carriers, 25% Pure and 25% bicorn.
I personally think Pinkie Pie would have some Bicorn ancestry somewhere in her tree, and may have even been a bicorn herself if she'd had the necessary traits to be a surprise unicorn in an Earth Pony family. (That is, she may well be "bb" in the above scenario, but is at best a carrier earth pony for the pegasus and/or unicorn traits.)
5538477 You fail to realize that the Luck magic is passive, not constant. And because they believe what they are saying a truth spell wouldn't do a thing. If one believes hard enough in a lie, they may see it as true when it is not. For all you know the other species would harvest their power for their own use. Luck is not omnipotent, and luck always runs out.
5539850 Just gonna put this out there cause most people seem to ignore it. You also have to take account the fact that the ratio of males to females is severely skewed. Simply being able to produce Bicorns does not mean the likelihood for male to female ratio is reasonable. The fact that Bicorns are a severe minority also means there is not a lot of males to go for each female. As herding would mean more families are directly linked, thus inbreeding would distort and cripple child production. you also bring up diversity within family linage, so the square would not only include the direct association with the parents but the family history as well, thereby making the chance for Bicornxother species to produce Bicorn's even lower as the species have the ability to give birth to any tribe.
So, is Pinkie Pie actually a bicorn with the horns hidden under her fuzzy mane (or possibly removed by her parents)?
5540634
Now you are just guessing things.
How does one quantify luck?
5543359 I'm not guessing about anything, I know this to be a fact. Luck is not luck if it's constant, luck is an indication of good things happening when you least expect them. And just like any other form of magic, it has limits.
5539850 Well, disregarding the fact that neither have a background in genetics, it is indeed not a model of diploid structure. The square doesn't work all that well for this situation. Now, we didn't get into all the specifics of the mechanics behind it, but if I were to try to explain it roughly, well... the sub-species of ponies would be something that is on the same place in the genetic material and differs from one race to another.
If we were to try to use the Cakes as a model, we have two earth ponies parents and two foals of different races. So the parents have to carry both the earth pony genes and, in a model like the one you mentioned, one with pegasus recessive and one with unicorn recessive. Earth pony would be the dominant type here, since the parents are obviously earth ponies despite carrying the other gene.
So, something like earth pony with A, pegasus with b and unicorn with c.
Let's also imagine that pegasus is dominant over unicorn, for the sake of this exercise.
So, in the event Mr. Cake (Ab) gave his recessive gene and Mrs. Cake (Ac) gave hers, we have one child with (bc). That foal will be a pegasus, because b > c. Okay, so following this model, it works so far. The problem comes with the second twin. Since both A and b are dominant over c, the foal would have to get (cc) to be a unicorn, but only one of their parents can give them that. So, unless we get into the partially expressed genes allowing a unicorn to be born of earth pony parents, it's not likely. Considering how far the Cakes go into their family to get the justification, it's also a bit more unlikely.
So, as only one of two co-author to the story, with my slightly rusty knowledge of genetics, I say "screw it, it's a complex polyploid thing, magic has a role somewhere, and we're not getting into it deeper than that". The important thing is what was said in the chapter: the bicorns are the least dominant trait, rarely have non-bicorn sires and it's hurting the species ability to survive without strict monitoring and regulations.
This being said, you do make a point with the part of bicorns being produced outside the reserves by non-bicorn couples. It is part of the reason why bicorns are allowed to make 'donations'. They do have a choice between a family life, or simply contributing to the genetic pool amongst the rest of the population. And if you consider the dangers of inbreeding with a closed community of individuals, it is indeed crucial that there are new bicorns born with a more distant relation to the rest of the population.
Oh, and Pinkie actually does have a bicorn somewhere up in her family tree. She mentioned it herself in one of her speeches in the early chapters.
5540802 Nope, as I said to Hilltopper2, she's only carrying part of the gene because of a bicorn ancestor of hers and has some bicorn magic mixed in with her earth pony one. It is just strongly expressed in her 'Pinkie Sense'. It's just extremely unusual, almost impossible, and Twilight bit off her own hoove soff when she realized that (though it did little to explain the rest of Pinkie Pie).
5543359 Anemptyshell's right though. Truth spells and the likes would only reflect beliefs, so that's out. Luck isn't an omnipotent thing either. The text in the chapter itself implies that it works on different levels depending on each individuals, and that it might manifests as visions. However, if Luck was an omnipotent force, then clearly, the bicorns wouldn't be in the state they are in the first place, would they? Without spoiling anything, I can easily say Celestia is not malevolent, that she is trying, and that the laws were not passed without her consent.
5544182
You know this to be a fact?
Well, I don't, never will, because I refuse to think of luck like that - why?
Because everyone has they're own understanding of luck, oh sure, some groups of people might agree to believe in the same kind of luck, however, I am not one of them.
5546002
Well, if you agree with him/her, then I have nothing more to do here.
Good talking to you, bye.
The thing with recessive genes is, they're even harder to get rid of than dominant ones!
With Earth biology at least recessive traits are generally broken genes. Brown hair / brown eyes versus not-brown hair / not-brown eyes. But we have two copies of every gene, one on each side of the double helix. Having two copies doesn't make the gene twice as strong, as the machinery to turn genes into proteins isn't doubled. The second copy only sticks around for error correction and redundancy. So you can't tell whether someone has one, or two copies of a working gene, because one is enough for the full effect.
So if you have a population of blonde people, and a population of brown haired people, and the blondes only mate with brunettes, then the entire next generation will be brown haired. This gives the illusion that recessive genes quickly breed out of a population. But in fact, recessive genes are harder to breed out of a population than dominant ones, and there is nothing that would make the recessive gene less likely to be around, just because it's recessive. Of course broken genes that disadvantage you are selected against, but just the fact that they're recessive does nothing to the odds.
Let's say your blondes disappear into a brown haired population this way. The third generation, suddenly random people are having blonde kids. About 25% of them. Every time a gamete is created one of the genes is randomly selected, so someone with one recessive and one dominant will only half the time unpredictably provide a dominant or recessive gene to their kid. No matter how many generations you go, about 25% of them will be blonde. The only way to get rid of the blonde is to kill off all the blonde babies, and just hope the leftover 50% of the brown haired population with a blonde gene don't pull it out for the next generation, and then keep doing that forever, and eventually you can be sort of almost positively maybe sure that nobody will ever be born blonde. Maybe. Then someone comes out blonde.
Contrarily, to get rid of brown hair, you kill off every baby who has brown hair once, and the next generation is blonde forever, with no more brown hair showing up ever.
Even a disadvantageous recessive gene can stick around frustratingly long, just because nobody can tell who's carrying it. Natural selection won't select out people carrying it, so it can stay hidden in the gene pool. Comparatively, a disadvantageous dominant gene vanishes almost immediately, since anyone who doesn't have the disadvantage will breed true. It's laughably easy to breed animals for a recessive trait, but a long, difficult and uncertain process to breed for a dominant trait.
I find it amusing that this fic has become nothing but a genetics lesson.
5595337
Especially the comments section xD
Considering they have knowledge of a good chunk of season four, the moment they mention shit related to the show, is when the priority of containing and breeding them takes top seat. They'd be seen as the very pinnacle, of what an Oracle should be