Kolo I AM HONORED.... thank you.... 🥺
good question though!! a lot of stuff about cusps is pretty outdated but the stuff at the top of the zodiac overview page is what's most accurate! there is not exactly a lot there though SO to break things down:
- This wasn't the case at the start (OOC-wise not in-universe), but now all zodiacs are capable of breeding with one another! However, only "adjacent" zodiacs are capable of making cusps.
- Cusps are capable of breeding - including with each other - and their children can be any valid combination of the zodiacs involved. So, for example, say an Aurus and a Gemcer get down and dirty. Their resulting child could be an Aries, Aurus, Taurus, Taumini, Gemini, Gemcer, or Cancer. This means that, theoretically, a Pisces could have a Leo in their ancestry. Chaos!!
- That being said, things are genetically weighted toward producing an offspring in the "middle". In the example above, it's most likely that the child would end up being a Taumini, with the odds of being one of the other listed zodiacs decreasing as you move outward. There's an additional "weight" involved in that things are biased toward the species carrying the child, as well.
- This isn't rly exact or strict and I'm just making up these numbers now, but let's say that the Aurus is the one who'll be having a wombmate (exciting new term scientists call me) for a while. The odds of what the child will end up being are roughly (Roughly):
- Aries: 2%
- Aurus: 7%
- Taurus: 15%
- Taumini: 70%
- Gemini: 5%
- Gemcer: 1%
- Cancer: Less than 1%
Something along those lines! In a more simple example like just Aries x Taurus with the Aries carrying, the numbers are pretty similar. Probably about 75% chance for an Aurus, like a 15% for an Aries, and 10% chance for a Taurus. Or 20% and 5%? 80/15/5? Well, you get the idea! Biased toward the "middle" and then leaning toward the mother's* parentage.
* (Fun fact of the day that I'll put in whenever I redo the sex/gender/sexuality page someday (pronoun radar still canon dw, pronoun radar forever) is that the terms "mother" and "father" aren't connotated with gender on Siderea and just refer to the negative/carrying parent and the positive/contributing parent(s), respectively. Parent is still a neutral term, mostly just used collectively/when you don't know who did what/for adoptive parents.)
- Something of note is that while non-adjacent zodiacs can't create cusps, their children might still take after the parent of the zodiac they didn't end up being in small, and subtle ways. A Leo child of an Aries and Leo won't have horns or anything, but their hair/mane/fur might be fluffier than normal. A Taurus with a Taurus and Pisces parent won't be able to breathe underwater, but will likely be a good swimmer capable for holding their breath longer than the average Taurus.
- Population percentages are something I've wanted to get down for a long time but when juggling 15 zodiacs + all the cusps on top of it my brain starts getting scrambled at the thought of math. What I crave most on this earth is some kind of website where you have some kind of pie or bar chart where you can adjust things visually to see what proportions vibe right, then have it spit out what the resulting percentages are at you. Unfortunately I haven't found such a thing yet, so I don't really have a great idea of the proportions of any of the population aside from the Special Guest Zodiacs (Ophiuchi, Cetans, and Araneans) being a bit rarer than the others and the various ungulates probably being more common, with all of the associated cusps of the aforementioned groups following suit!
That being said I feel like I can probably answer this one anyway, even if the answer isn't super precise or set in stone! I figure looking at the existing OCs I've made is probably a decent enough way to get an idea of how many Sidereans are cusps. I just kinda eyeballed it, but I feel like it's about 1/3 of them, which is a proportion that feels kind of right to me. Something in the 25-35% range is what I'm feeling, probably? They're not the majority of the population, but they're still pretty common!
fake edit: refreshed before posting but i am posting all of that anyhow bc why not??