Playing With / Literal-Minded Horror

Basic Trope: A character takes a joke, metaphor, or figure of speech literally, with horrifying results.

• Straight: When Alice proposed to Bob, he said, “We’ll have a football team of kids!” and Alice laughed. But Bob actually meant it, and now they have 11 kids.
• Exaggerated: And they actually formed a football team. Seriously, despite the 10-year age difference, they are all playing in the same team.
• Downplayed: Bob did mean it at the time, but eventually, he knew it was impossible, and they stopped at 3 kids.
• Justified:
  • Alice and Bob adopted 11 kids who were abandoned for various reasons. And they take care of them as if they were their own children.
  • Bob is a football coach, and he wants to have a team of his own.
  • Bob has familial, cultural, or religious reasons to have a big family. No idea why it is exactly 11, though.
• Inverted: Bob was joking, but Alice took it seriously, and now they have 11 kids.
• Subverted: It turns out they are volunteering to take care of 11 kids at a neighbourhood orphanage.
• Double Subverted: … which turned out all to be the biological children of another couple who died in a car crash. Alice and Bob are the legal guardians from that day on.
• Parodied: They had 11 consoles and PCs at home. They play football games all day long.
• Zig Zagged: They had 11 kids, but 3 of them died in a car crash. And then they adopted 3 more kids. Everything seems to be back to normal until they find out 1 of the 3 kids is actually an abandoned hetereopaternal superfecundation (twins with same mother, but different fathers) twin of one of their own kids, who was thought to be dead at birth. However, the DNA from “another father” actually sourced from Bob’s chimera cells (cells of Bob’s twin brother, who died in the womb, were absorbed by Bob). (Truth in TV: Chimeric Heteropaternal Superfecundation is a real thing, or, it is possible for a twin to have genetically different but biologically same father. And it is still not one of the worst jokes that the human genetics can play on us. Anyway, it is way better than a Chimera Heteropaternal Superfecundation twin with a Parasitic Twin and also Fetus in Fetu, who, if survived, would be a thorough chimera with 3 different sets of DNA, 50% shared with the Vanishing Twin. I mean, right?)
• Averted: Alice and Bob are trying to have a baby, but they are not successful. And never will be. Nor do they want to adopt.
• Enforced:
  • The writer has 11 kids at home, and he wants to show how hard it is to raise them.
  • A condom company is sponsoring the show. Or a football team.
  • 12 seasons were ordered even before the plot was written.
• Lampshaded: “A football team” is a universally acknowledged unit of measurement, just like Avogadro’s number.
• Invoked: Charlie, a football fan, is trying to convince his wife to have more kids, by explaining his love for the team “Alice United”.
• Exploited: “Alice United” was accused of child labor and then expelled from the league.
• Defied: Alice used 11 times the recommended dose of contraceptives.
• Discussed: “Alice United is going to fail halfway through the season. They do not even have a substitute!”
• Conversed: “Mom, could we have a basketball team at home?”
• Deconstructed:
  • The writer intended to criticize the joke of “having a football team of kids” by documenting the breakdown of a large family.
  • The kids are seriously neglected and abused. The football team is actually a disguise for child labor.
  • The kids are conceptually created to be a football team. They are not raised as individuals but as a team. They are only assigned a number, not a name.
• Reconstructed:
  • … he said so in an interview. And the show did achieve the latter.
  • … who were criminal minors. They are required to play football as a part of their rehabilitation. But they are also receiving proper education and care. (They were seriously neglected and abused, before they were taken in by Alice and Bob.)
  • … the parents are acting Cruel to Be Kind. They complained that the league abused the football players to play many more games than they should have compared to 20 years ago, but in the end, they are threatened to be expelled from the league. They have to act as if they are happy with the situation, but they are actually supporting the kids in every way they can.
• Played For Laughs: All 11 kids are named after famous football players. And the show is nothing more than a family sitcom decorated with football references. The audience often complains that it is virtually impossible to identify the kids, but after 12 seasons, they are still watching it.
• Played For Drama: The show is literally about raising 11 kids to be a football team. Not everyone is talented. Uncountable defeats and injuries. The parents are struggling to deal with internal pressure and external prejudice, but eventually making it a good story of family and sportsmanship.
• Played For Horror: The kids are actually clones of famous football players (younger, of course), and they are all raised to be the perfect football team. Everyone is happy …
  • Except that, they are not the only ones. England Clone Premier League is a thing now.
  • Except that, the clones are not perfect. They are actually the result of a failed experiment, and they are not aging properly.

Back to Literal-Minded Horror. Everything is perfect. Except that, this page literally does not exist. To figure out what the hell is going on, we will transfer you back to Literal-Minded.

Inspired by a TikTok video, where a couple had 10 kids, among which 9 were girls and only the youngest was a boy. No Real Life Examples, Please!

• 双胞胎 (Twins)：一次妊娠产生的两个婴儿。
  • 同卵双胞胎 (Monozygotic/Identical Twins)：由一个受精卵受精后分裂形成的双胞胎。
    • 过程：精子A + 卵子B → 受精卵AB → 分裂 → 同卵双胞胎AB + AB。其 DNA 共享程度为 100%。
  • 异卵双胞胎 (Dizygotic/Fraternal Twins)：由两个卵子分别受精形成的双胞胎。
    • 过程：精子A1 + 卵子B1 → 受精卵A1B1；精子A2 + 卵子B2 → 受精卵A2B2。其 DNA 共享程度为 50%。（A1 和 A2，B1 和 B2 各有 50% 的概率相同）
  • 半同卵双胞胎 (Semi-Identical Twins)：由一个卵子分裂后分别受精形成的双胞胎。
    • 过程：卵子B → 分裂 → 卵子B + B；精子A1 + 卵子B → 受精卵A1B；精子A2 + 卵子B → 受精卵A2B。其 DNA 共享程度为 75%。
    • 少有存活的案例。
• 超受精 (Superfecundation)：一次受孕期间，母体多个卵子分别受来自不同精子的受精。
  • 同父超受精 (Homopaternal Superfecundation)：由同一父亲的精子受精。是一种特殊的异卵双胞胎。
  • 异父超受精 (Heteropaternal Superfecundation)：由不同父亲的精子受精。
    • 超受精通常都指异父超受精。
    • 过程：精子A1 + 卵子B1 → 受精卵A1B1；精子C1 + 卵子B2 → 受精卵C1B2。其 DNA 共享程度为 25%。（仅 B1 和 B2 有 50% 的概率相同）
• 消失双胞胎 (Vanishing Twin)：一对双胞胎中的一个胚胎在发育过程中停止发育并被吸收。
  • 最终只有一个胚胎存活。
• 寄生双胞胎 (Parasitic Twins)：一对双胞胎中的一个胚胎在发育过程中停止发育，但未被吸收，而是继续以某种方式依附在另一个胚胎上。
  • 最终只有一个胚胎存活。
• 嵌合体 (Chimerism)：一个个体中的细胞具有不同的 DNA。
  • 四配子嵌合体 (Tetragametic Chimerism)：两个胚胎（两个受精卵）在发育过程中合并，形成具有不同 DNA 的细胞的个体。
    • 嵌合体通常都指四配子嵌合体。
  • 微嵌合体 (Microchimerism)：由于少量异种细胞的输入，个体中的细胞具有不同的 DNA。
    • 如母体中的胎儿细胞、移植物（骨髓、器官）细胞。也有因为吸收消失双胞胎的细胞而形成的微嵌合体案例。
• 镶嵌现象 (Mosaicism)：一个受精卵中的细胞在发育过程中发生突变，形成具有不同 DNA 的细胞的个体。
  • 注意区分 Chimerism 和 Mosaicism。后者明显更常见。

上述的 DNA 共享程度是一种粗略的概念。实际上由于基因重组等原因，携带同一组基因的生殖细胞 DNA 并非完全相同，携带不同组基因的生殖细胞 DNA 也并非完全不同。此外，由于基因表达的差异，即使两个人的 DNA 完全相同，也可能表现出不同的特征。

合子性（zygosity）是 DNA 共享程度的正式术语，通过 DNA 测序可以精确地确定。

上文讨论的案例为嵌合体异父超受精（Chimeric Heteropaternal Superfecundation），即嵌合体父亲两种不同的精子分别受精了母亲的两个卵子。

因为父亲是嵌合体（四配子嵌合体），必定是异卵双胞胎形成的嵌合体。记其父亲 DNA 为 A1A2，母亲 DNA 为 B1B2。则其体细胞 DNA 为 A1B1 或 A2B2。

由于 A1 和 A2，B1 和 B2 各有 50% 的概率相同，所有可能的组合如下：

• A1B1 + A1B1 及其等价组合：25%（不属于嵌合体）
• A1B1 + A1B2 及其等价组合：50%
• A1B1 + A2B2 及其等价组合：25%

记孩子母亲的 DNA 为 C1C2。

现在考虑以上每种组合的情况：

• A1B1 + A1B2：双胞胎的 DNA 必须为 B1Cx 和 B2Cy 才表现为异父超受精。
  • 由两种不同的精子受精的概率为 50%。
  • A1B1 → B1 和 A1B2 → B2 这一分离组合的概率为 25%。
  • B1Cx 和 B2Cy 的合子性为 37.5%（B1 和 B2 贡献 12.5%；Cx 和 Cy 贡献 25%）。
• A1B1 + A2B2：任意分离组合都表现为异父超受精。
  • 由两种不同的精子受精的概率为 50%。
  • ZzCx 和 WwCy 的合子性为 31.25%（A1 和 A2、B1 和 B2 贡献 6.25%；Az 和 Bw 贡献 0%；Cx 和 Cy 贡献 25%）。

加权平均可以得到，嵌合体异父超受精的双胞胎合子性为 33.33%。