Twins - cliched?

[Ursa major]

One of the more celebrated recent fantasy series has twins...


...but enough about Shula and Kenton in The Archers.

Then there are the "fraternal" twins (one male, one female) in an even more celebrated Fantasy series. They seem to have a very special bond. *cough*

His twin didn't, obviously, cos he was dead.

Not even in the afterlife? Perhaps that's where the living twin's power comes from....

 

[Teresa Edgerton]

Well, as to that special bond ... incestuous feelings between male/female twins are a bit of a cliché, as I can remember coming across them several times (in books) before the most famous example. So if anyone wanted to write about that, they should probably consider whether they had anything new to bring to the idea. If so, then not to worry.

 

[AnyaKimlin]

My primary school class of nineteen had three sets of twins. One identical (girls), and two fraternal (one boy/girl and one boy/boy). So to me having several in a story is not cliche or abnormal it is part of life.

They do tend to feature heavily in my stories especially as I use the girl in the boy/girl set as the template for a couple of my villains.

 

[Lilmizflashythang]

I wouldn't mind at all. The Wolfwalker series is based on 1/2 of a set of fraternal twins. She tends to pass on her pain to her brother most of the time. But it adds to the worry, and tension between the two.

 

[Boneman]

What would be really unsettling is if they got married to twins - they'd both have the same husband/wife too.

So would the children be brothers/sisters, rather than 1st cousins, genetically? Could they commit a crime and then the cousin be blamed because of DNA???

 

[Warren_Paul]

So would the children be brothers/sisters, rather than 1st cousins, genetically? Could they commit a crime and then the cousin be blamed because of DNA???

You pose an interesting question. And one I really don't know the answer to. But isn't it the case that twins are only identical physically, not genetically? So I suspect it wouldn't be any different to any other situation. But I'd say they would never feel any sort of attraction to each other because they would act like they really are brothers and sisters. I imagine that doing everything together wouldn't stop once the twins married; their families would likely do everything together until the kids grew up and moved apart.

 

[HareBrain]

So would the children be brothers/sisters, rather than 1st cousins, genetically? Could they commit a crime and then the cousin be blamed because of DNA???

No, if that were the case then all children of any two parents would be identical.

 

[The Ace]

I'm surprised that nobody's mentioned Belkira and Beltira, Belgarath's brothers from, 'The Belgariad/Malloreon. Virtually a single mind in two bodies, the running gag is that only they can tell themselves apart, and their habit of finishing one another's sentences casts doubt on even that;

"Polgara kissed one of the old men, 'This is Belkira,' then the other, 'And this is Beltira,' I've been able to tell them apart since I was a little girl.'

'Polgara knows...'

'...All our secrets.'"

 

[monsterchic]

I think it's fine. Side note about recurring twin pregnancies, I have two sets of identical twins in my school who are brothers and sisters. They were born 10 or 11 months apart, which is very strange that 2 sets of twins came that fast...

They do tend to know each others' minds and all that stuff too