#just accelerating them to NYOOM speeds

[daswarschonkaputt]

so im pretty excited abt ur abo kp fic which is new to me bc i normally dont care abt abo? this isnt shade or bullshit btw i hope i just wanted to ask how u conceptualize gender and sex in abo? tags on the notfic r 100% right btw more trans abo. im always put off by most abo for the idea that cis male omegas basically?? have a cloacae for an anus but also a dick? it feels too alien for a non paranormal genre. do u think anatomy ought to be addressed more or left to suspension of disbelief?

right straight off the bat we're putting this one behind a readmore, because i don't want to wig anyone out. a/b/o be weird.

essentially, the way i conceptualise a/b/o and how gender and sex work is:

male/female - usually identifiable at birth, with obviously some grey area in there for intersex people.

alpha/beta/omega - surfaces during puberty, at which point the body changes in whichever way the subgender inclines.

i usually write it that it's not really possible to tell how someone's subgender will present until it does, because i think the inherent tension between "this is how i was treated growing up" vs. "this is how people treat me now" gives the most room for social commentary, and character growth, which is one of my favourite parts of a/b/o. so everyone's body has the base potential to go any subgender way.

relatedly, one of my least favourite tropes in a/b/o is the trope where a character unexpectedly discovers they're an omega and they hate it and take drugs to make themselves a beta, and they wish they were a beta/alpha and as a reader i just have to sit there like, and the logical ending to this story ISN'T that they're trans????

in fact, this trope irritated me so much that i fully outlined and started writing an original fic where the main character gets the whoops! all omega! reveal and instead of hating it and hiding it, feels fulfilled and more comfortable in himself, because it enables him to put into words and be accepted for aspects of his gender identity that have existed his entire life.

ahem. omega biology. back on track.

male omegas are one of those fandom tropes that i just... choose not to look at too closely. science brain well and truly turned off. because of how the kinnporsche mpreg fic is structured (porsche not knowing he's pregnant, and not knowing he could become pregnant) -- we're probably looking at assbabies for that one, though i usually prefer to go the male omegas are intersex (and female alphas are, as well) route, just because it makes most sense to me. but -- this is fanfic. things only make sparing amounts of sense 20% of the time.

truthfully, i think the question of anatomy depends on the fic. i do think there is a level of suspension of disbelief that is needed to read a/b/o, but to me that's true of all sci-fi. a lot of genre studies essays on sci-fi talk about this idea of a novum, a point of divergence that makes the sci-fi story different from our world. it can be a thing, an idea, a hypothetical. for example, in mass effect, the novum is the mass drivers. in star trek it's the warp core. in the martian, it's leaving a man behind on mars. and with sci-fi, you're not meant to question the novum. it's the foundational part of the universe. sci-fi is the question, "what if [x] was different?"

so with a/b/o, the novum is, well, it's the a/b/o dynamics. "what if human reproductive biology was on crack?" the bits i'm interested in are the answers that spiral out from that question -- i'm not really focused all that much on the question itself.

but, like i said, it depends on the fic. if the fic's question is, "so, if we do have these a/b/o dynamics, how does the biology actually work?" then obviously it's a bit more relevant. but i've only seen one or two a/b/o fic that approach the matter like that.

hope that makes sense!

#fic: kp mpreg au #guys pls don't get me started on the a/b/o as sci-fi again #kaputt writes stuff #asked and answered #a/b/o cw #omegaverse cw #totally respect not being able to turn off science brain tho #there are some sci fi movies i have to turn off bc i Cannot #things spiralling out from the novum is one of the best parts of sci fi tho #like in mass effect there's no ammo bc the mass driver means they can use grains of sand as ammo #just accelerating them to NYOOM speeds #so they're functionally bullets #genuinely one of my favourite parts of worldbuiling #i rave about it all the time to people who know me

[marithlizard]

First Impressions: RWBY v8c9, “Witch”

"Witch", huh?  Presumably Salem.  Are we going to get more backstory lore? Because YES PLEASE.

The Atlas army vs. the whale whose teeth loom like mountains on the horizon.  They look like toys. I can't help thinking these soldier mooks equal any Huntsman in courage, if not in skill.  And this is the first real large-scale action any of them have seen - that anyone in the world has seen in their lifetimes.

eyy Ren has gotten over the snappishness as well as the despairing angst.    Suddenly gaining control of his evolving Semblance must help a lot with the feelings of powerlessness.  (And though we haven't seen him use it on Jaune or Yang, I'm thinking being able to know for certain how much your friends care about you and have your back  is a source of power in itself.)

They're discussing fairy tales MY HEART

Ozpin continuing to confirm he has handed over the reins completely to Oscar.   I don't like this about the accelerating merge, though. It feels like we're going to lose Oz  very soon. And yet,  Jinn's vision definitely showed us Oz and host coexisting in middle age.  Did they not use magic in that lifetime?  Or is the merge somehow not about "losing" either one of them?

Team FNKI in a line of regular soldiers!  They've got to have mobilized all the students, but I wonder if we'll see any others besi-  Neon. Neon you are wearing rollerskates to the apocalypse.  

...well, why not?  

Marrow,  YOU'RE just a kid.  You can't be more than a few years older, and you're not that much more seasoned. Though I understand the feeling.

So, Hazel, you're ready to rejoin fact-based reality?  Or at least listen to someone who pretty much definitionally can't be lying?  

(Actually...the only information we have about Jinn comes from her, and it'd be a hell of an interesting twist if she was editing facts to fit her own agenda.  I don't think it's very likely for meta reasons, but it'd make a great fic premise, wouldn't it?)

Huh.  He sounds much much calmer, and like he's been thinking through everything for the last few hours.  

....what? He's not even going to ask???  THAT is a surprise.  The existence of Jinn and knowing Oscar  gave him the password in good faith  were enough to deradicalize a violent extremist. (Wish it was that easy in RL.)

Oscar's little wave

(You know, now that I think of it,  Ozpin has never interacted with Jinn himself.  She's greeted him twice and he hasn't answered.  Does he resent her for not answering his predecessor's questions more helpfully?  Mistrust her?  )

yes rescue Emerald good

"Just to be  clear" - oh god I thought that was Salem's voice and nearly jumped out of my seat.

"I'll come back for it"  crap crap crap  Hazel's redemption arc is going to be short, painful, and fatal.   And Salem will keep the lamp, if not have the password.

And we'll just all turn our backs on the divine artifact-entity and walk away.  I guess they don't think she's enough of a person to say goodbye to?  

And our eavesdropper is...the one person who CAN'T summon Jinn or ask her a question.  

Oh no. No.  Please don't have the fandom descend into "Jinn is ablist" discourse. (ETA: upon thinking further I take it back,  the gods suck and providing a Relic that not everyone can use is in its way a tiny symbol of their callous attitude to people. ) 

RJY working smoothly together, nice. 

Robyn said people are always suspicious of her, and her truthsense ability has a clearly visible limiting condition.    But Ren can apparently read the emotions of everyone around him all the time without them knowing.  Surely that would make a lot of people uncomfortable.  (Although I expect  the writers to ignore this, and will be pleasantly surprised if they explore it at all.)

That's always the way isn't it, you roll a 4 on your concentration check right when a demonic jellyfish is floating by.

Huh, they separated from Oscar?  And Hazel is worried about him? I'm still dizzy from the speed of this 180.  

uh...hi, Salem.  Nice...weather outside the whale today?  Seen any good dismemberments lately?

Hazel,  you are a terrible liar and you can't bluff.   Admittedly the stakes are a lot  higher here than in the weekly WTCH poker game.

Salem NYOOM

No one can accuse Yang of not understanding the core competencies.

"Juan"???  I did hear that correctly, yes?  Marrow not remembering Jaune's name is hilarious.  And I was about to say understandable, but no, they worked with the Ace Ops for weeks!  Did you just have him mentally filed as "the blond himbo tank"?

O-kayyyyyy.    I can't blame Emerald,  but this could go so horribly wrong so fast. 

Isn't Hazel-disguised-as-Oscar  way too heavy to pick up like tha-  OHHHHHHHHH.  Now things make much more sense.  Oscar was the one worried about Hazel earlier,  and failing utterly to bluff.  Infinitely more in character.

Awkward Semblance is also extremely convenient in short-cutting negotiations. Nice.

I do not, in fact, have any doubt that Winter would blow up her sister.   And in this situation  I can't say it's the wrong thing to do.  As far as they know their bomb is the only hope.

Wow. I really did not think we’d go to toe to toe with Salem herself at this point in the plot.  It's so traditional to save the final boss fight for, well, the final boss.  She's terrifying and unstoppable, but not actually more terrifying than the giant whale.    

Her regen is just like  the Hound's body morphing, but far smoother and faster with a thousand "deaths" of practice.

She sounds more normal right now, oddly.   Her voice is lacking both the measured slowness and the resonance it has when she's making speeches.  I like the idea of that falling away when she's surprised and exasperated.  

Our heroes are very very lucky that RWBY is not a darker show, or those Grimmhand  restraints would be doing a lot of gross agonizing damage with their nails.   There's no reason she'd want to be gentle at this point.

Yeah, there's the sonorous voice again. Although it wavers again with that "Why do you Keep. Coming. Back?"   Does she not know? How can she not know, Jinn's vision said Ozma told her everything.  Perhaps she means: why do you keep fighting  me instead of hiding like the hermit.

Yang, don't give her information,  gah!   "Her again."  She sounds pleased.  I think we are going to find out Summer's fate this volume after all.  Salem will reveal it to break Ruby’s spirit.  Prediction: it will work. 

(EDIT: I completely missed the significance of Yang calling Summer “my mom”.  Wow.)

She definitely intends to turn Emerald into something like the Hound.

"No more Gretchens."   Oh, of course that's what Oscar said he needed before they could leave, the cane.

Hazel's life expectancy is minutes long but at least it included a satisfying KAPOW.   And every single sparkly crystal he owns.  Somehow he seems smaller here, less bulky than he did at Haven.  Less a titan and more a man.

yigh he's pounding her into mush.  Which he has several times before, apparently.  This is all to buy you time, Emerald, why are you not running.   (I know, I know.   She's never had someone actually help her and care about her, only scraps of affection to establish control.    At this moment Cinder's hold on her is breaking forever.)

(Neo, on the other hand.  Will she bring the lamp to Cinder, who frankly has been a totally crap partner and deserves no loyalty?    Is she still after revenge?   My bet is still firmly on her planning to backstab Cinder as soon as Ruby is gone.  But beyond that, we don't know her thoughts at all.  She might join the heroes, or disappear like Raven to hide while the apocalypse works itself out.)

That's true, Oscar, but what can you do to stop her?  

Hah!  Clever,  Hazel.  And she's actually screaming in pain from the fire, whereas she didn't make a sound when being pulverized.

What does the cane DO?  It's impressive as heck, but I can't tell.  Channeling his magic, certainly.  Are we going to lose Oz  right now?  With no chance to talk to Ruby or Qrow or anyone, to reconcile?  It seems all too likely, and such a waste.

Which makes me think, in turn, that perhaps we will lose Oscar too in a way.  Unexpected - I have always thought the merge would end with Oscar holding all the memories.  But maybe he won't be quite either of them anymore, even if he remembers both and the others still call him Oscar.  And that thought also makes me sad.

Anyway,  good episode, though now the title doesn’t seem particularly relevant. Hazel was much more the focus. 

#rwby #rwby spoilers #rwby v8 spoilers #rwby volume 8 spoilers

[blackestnight]

for my own amusement, have even further worldbuilding details for that last fic, comprised of a horrifying amalgamation of sf game canon, shameless self-indulgent rule-breaking, and my complete unwillingness to care about how science actually works, because this is science fiction blended with fantasy and i do what i want.

the bar they’re in is a location from starfinder canon; it’s called the click-clack club, sometimes “c3″ for short, and caters almost exclusively to mechanical clients (androids, a mechanical race called anacites, and folks with cybernetic enhancements), hence the name. (hanami has enough cybernetic augmentations to put her squarely in the last category; aymeric does too, to a lesser degree--most ‘player characters’ have augmentations of some kind--but his are more biomechanical in nature, and much less obvious to the casual observer.) i didn’t get a chance to work it in this time, but i like to imagine hanami has sort of a big brother-little sister vibe with the owners, who are a bonded dragonkin/ryphorian pair; hanami is also (mostly*) a dragonkin; if memory serves, the owners are also retired skyfire centurions, which is the mercenary company that hanami (and aymeric) currently serves with.

the augmentations hanami is “recharging” are entirely voluntary, and probably fifty years old at this point--which is why she has to juice them up once a year, unlike “modern” (to this setting) augmentations that don’t require an additional power source. this is not at all based in canon, i just wanted an excuse for her to have little charging lights implanted in her spine and i thought too hard about it. the actual augmentations are a cardiac accelerator (think a reverse pacemaker, which she can activate to overclock her circulatory system and do some supremely stupid shit), and a series of sensors in her spine which work for both her mechanized spinal struts (allowing her to lift something like four times her own bodyweight without breaking a sweat) and the speed suspension in her legs (lizard go nyoom). she has other augmentations both in her neurological system and in her skin, but they’re newer and (in the case of the dermal augmentation) not powered, so they don’t require recharging.

yes, she could get the old augmentations upgraded or replaced, and it wouldn’t even be that costly or invasive. she’s just dumb sometimes.

brutaris, the sport hanami mentioned, has been compared to rugby, but instead of tackling you hit people with chainsaw swords. the brutaris team that hanami mentioned, the absalom station buzzblades, did actually get turned into techno-zombies. and then murdered violently. after they violently zombie-murdered a bunch of other people. really put a damper on the season. (and they were aymeric’s home team, too! poor guy.)

the show that’s airing instead of the brutaris match is called pact world warriors, which is an extreme sports show modeled vaguely on american ninja warrior, except much more deadly. the version players can enter in an official adventure path begins with an obstacle course over a pit of alternating lava, quicksand, and corrosive acid, and ends with the zero-gravity capture-the-flag but-with-guns-and-also-grenades game seen in the fic. it (and several other, similarly lethal shows) is hosted by an undead man named zo! and yes, the exclamation point is part of his name. he’s a much-beloved npc, despite the fact that 99% of the time he just wants you to die in a spectacular manner to bump his ratings.

yes, this is all perfectly legal in the pact worlds. no, i don’t know why either.

a “cosmonastery” is a knockoff jedi temple, basically. it’s a center where solarians can train and study and master their powers; solarians are a special type of mystic soldier who harness the raw energies of creation and destruction present in the universe to do funky things like create black holes, or turn off gravity, or create supernovas. estinien is a solarian, as well as one of aymeric’s oldest friends; hanami is also a solarian, although she studied at a different (rival) cosmonastery, and met estinien by virtue of getting into a very intense theological debate with him at a tournament that ended in at least three explosions. this is not an uncommon occurrence at such events.

“coin” is anachronistic in this setting almost to the point that aymeric probably shouldn’t use it, either (everything is done in credits now), but i needed something for her to tease him about so he would be suitably distracted for the drink theft. i handwaved it with the excuse that he did spend the last several decades working at what is essentially a giant bank, so he’s probably at least familiar with older terminology for currency.

hanami’s joke about breaking into the cosmonastery of the empty orbit is just a joke; it’s not the one she studied at, but as a solarian herself she’s welcome to avail herself of its services and equipment whenever she likes, and as her bonded partner aymeric gets a free pass too. he and estinien probably weren’t “sneaking in” as such when they were kids, either; more likely, since estinien would have still been in training at the time, they were just breaking curfew like a couple of teenagers are wont to do.

i spent probably too long waffling over whether to identify things like ground beef and salsa and guacamole by name. starfinder is generic in its item naming conventions almost to the point of comedy, and i don’t actually know if absalom station restaurants could affordably source beef (or an equivalent) given that it’s a space station, and they will most certainly not be raising their own cattle. then again, food synthesizers exist and can convert “universal polymer bases” (the all-purpose crafting currency) into just about any food you can imagine, but that seems like a depressing way to make game night nachos. hence: unidentified seared meat and vegetable paste on chips.

*i homebrewed a hybrid race because i wanted her to at least vaguely resemble an au ra, rather than just a miniature dragon, and because i can.

#journal #starfinder au #will anyone find this interesting? eh. #but i had FUN and that's what matters #work notes