The Twychild Concept

[sillyblob]

[ _ deleted _ ]

[Lazy Leopard]

Originally posted by sillyblob:
so either the twychyld concept mirrors physics and there are major mistakes in the books, or the 'twychyld law' is opposite to what one expects in physics

We're talking about a fictional world a bit like ours, but where Magic also exists. In a fiction, the author is god. In this fiction the author has seen fit to make some aspects of Magic draw on the Laws of Physics(tm), while other aspects are completely contrary to those same laws. If you try to apply the laws to some part that's contrary to them...

Then again, take a look (say) at a three-phase electric supply. (Do NOT try this at home! Seriously!) Four wires, three carrying a sine-wave signal, mutually 120 degrees out-of-phase, and the fourth being a nominal zero. Take any one phase and the zero, and you get your nominal supply, but take another of the signals in place of the zero and you get a supply at twice the nominal level, because the result is the difference between them. If you were to take two lines that are exactly in phase then you'd get zero.

[alla]

I don't think that's quite right, Rick. If you take two of those signals that are in phase, they will add their signal and get a signal with twice the amplitude (sound and electrical signals work the same way). This is known as constructive interference. Destructive interference (cancellation of the signal) will occur when the signals are 180degrees out of phase (think of it as if they are completely opposite to each other if you're not familiar with wave physics). That is assuming that wizardry works in the same manner as wave physics.

Sillyblob, waves don't have to be in or out of phase completely. Do you play an instrument? If so, consider when you are trying to tune in a band. If everyone is completely "in phase", the note will be pure, and everyone will be playing the same thing (give or take an octave or two). If there is, say, a flute out of tune (just because they are nice and noticeable when they are out ), a "beat" will begin to form. This beat will not cancel out the other note, but it will interfere constructively and when it occurs, will make the band seem louder.

So, homozygous twins are 180degrees out of phase (so complete cancellation can occur), and heterozygous twins are, I'm assuming, anything other than 180degrees out of phase.

Does that make sense, or did I waffle too much?

[Lazy Leopard]

Voltage is a measure of the difference in potential between two points, and the reason you get roughly double the voltage from two phases that are 120 degrees apart is because the output is the difference between the two. There's a whole page of equations on Wikipedia about three-phase supplies, but all you really need to do is to follow the red and blue lines in the graph below and see how far apart they are at any particular instant...

[Alonzo S.]

when we meet the twychyld in WaW, we are given an explanation of how they work. Homozygous twins cannot be twychild (whats the plural- twychildren? twychylds?) as their magic cancels out- using the example of a wave, one would say their magic is entirely out of phase- resulting in peaks and troughs interfering and complete cancellation occurring.

I don't remember the explanation given in WaW...

This is about all it says:

if identicals try to bounce a spell back and forth between them, it just fails, gets canceled out. Only two-egg twins are far enough out of phase to keep the spell from canceling and close enough to make it augment.

It doesn't say much about exactly why it's like this. Maybe identicals can't bounce spells back and forth because it's too much like the same person doing two spells at the same time or something?

[Wiccangixie]

Being a twychild basically means that there's a dual existence created. I loved how the power could be Augmented, but the concept of the twychild as a whole is debatable. Its never mentioned as plural, but rather singular, and honestly, I keep wondering about the dual existence. I think DD just means that the same entity exist but by occupying two different spaces, but somehow that one entity is different in both existences. Like how Nguyet and Tuyet have somewhat different personalities. Hope that helps explain my point of view.

[SpacePen]

bouncing

but what does it mean to "bounce" a spell back and forth?

[Dragon Writer]

I might be wrong, but perhaps the problem is simply that everyone is trying to makethings too complex.

Unless im mistaken, Identical twins can't do it - that may be nothing morethan the fact that, being identical, they simply absorb the other twin's magic. Having taken it into themselves, the spell no longer exists, making it impossible to use.
Fraternal twins are enough alike that they can access each other's magic, but they are also different enough from eachother that they don't absorb it, but can instead bounce it back with a bit more momentum added to the spe from it.

And to answer your question, bouncing it back just means that they send the spell back, making it more powerful in the process. (I believe so anyway - I for have access to the books.)

[SpacePen]

bouncing again

I suppose what I'm asking is what are they doing? do they say the spell "at" each other? do they draw it in the air and make a physical "ball" out of it and throw it back and forth with their hands (like Nita holding a kernal of speech or making a bracelet of it or kit picking up nita's "old" name and stowing it for later use or dairine's necklace (probably a thread of speech hung there by roshaun)? or is it more like one begins to say the spell and the other takes it up and they take turns saying it as you would "bounce" a musical theme among musicians?

We already know that when nita or kit joins in saying a spell with other wizards, the saying of it together is a sort of rushing, unison, building up to the finish which ends in being more powerful than just one person reciting alone. Do the twychild merely do this with a special "kick"?

Or is it all in their minds - some kind of mindspeaking that no one else sees or hears?

[Daylily]

[Dragon Writer]

I think it's just that they take a spell, any spell, and pass the magic on. It's not fully explained, so it's open to interpretation I suppose.

[Wiccangixie]

I think there's a reason why the 'bouncing' isn't fully explained. DD left it up to the reader to create their own vision of how to see it. I personally see it as an energetic ball bouncing back and forth. I have fun coming up with my own ideas, and like Dragon Writer said, maybe it's just suppose to be left to our interpretation.

[SpacePen]

feline equivalent?

Having just read both "The Book of Night with Moon" and "To Visit the Queen", I now wonder if Duane has given us a feline equivalent (or cognate) of the human twychild concept.