avengers story

[schmevil]

So I'm working on an Avengers story, the first draft of which is, GET THIS, almost done. inorite? It's going to be a short, bare bones thing that I'll have to attack with a bucket of characterization spackle and a trowel, but it's ALMOST DONE. It's got alternating Tony and Steve pov, with Natasha and Maria Hill playing supporting roles, and some Maddy Pryor thrown in for kicks (honestly, anything to keep her away from Scott). Basically, Tony tries to catch a plane.

Anyone down for beta/pre-read duties?



Unrelated-- so this alpha/omega self-lubricating ass trend. Has anyone tried to science this up and actually explain how this works and why, from an evolutionary perspective, it's an advantage?

Comments

[melannen]

I've done the sciencing up on the assbabies part of it, and if you want medical journal links of the half-dozen documented historical cases of assbabies I can probably still find them for you. And if you're going to have assbabies, self-lubing only makes sense (there is already a certain amount of natural anal lubrication, so it's not unreasonable to assume it could be increased enough for sexual purposes.)

Evolutionarily speaking, though, it doesn't really make sense to have universal bifertility + two distinct sexes - I mean I could postulate a species where it *did* make sense, but it wouldn't look much like the AU in most of the stories; frankly I tend to pretend there's a backstory where genetic engineering was involved. And the strict dominance hierarchy and the stuff that goes with it, I got nothin' for. If I was writing one, I think I'd make the dominance hierarchy a purely social artifact that the people only think is biologically mandated*... but neither cultural subversion nor gender theory seem to be what most of the Α/β/ω authors are going for, from the limited amount I've read.


*in fact come to think of it I am playing with an original species at the moment with four genders, only three of which are biologically distinct, the fourth being a social construct based around who chooses to be a bearer of children.

[schmevil]

Sure! I'll take the links. :)

As I'm reading alpha/omega I'm mentally rewriting it so that omega's have their vagina's tucked behind their balls, and ordinary bums--it's not even something I consciously started doing. Apparently my subconscious isn't into assbabies. I've also adopted the head canon that there's quite a variety of sex organ arrangements in this species: male genitals only, female genitals only, both, both with one dominant, both with one non-functional. Maybe everyone's got both sets, but in some folks one set is vestigial? And like you, my personal take on alpha/omega would have a four genders.

I also agree with you regarding the socially constructed sexual hierarchy, if only because it makes more sense to me that 'omegas' should be lower fertility, jack of all trades 'betas'. Simply to justify their not outbreeding everyone else, what with the extra options.

Obviously none of this is the point of alpha/omega stories.

[schmevil]

*I should clarify that of course we, the real human species, have a variety of sex organ combinations, but in this fictional alpha/omega species, the variety would be wider and there would be more, er, canonical sexes.

[valtyr]

I've actually read a novel like that. Well, no assbabies and they didn't talk lube, but Alphas and Betas, basically. The book's called Homo/Hetero. All relationships are between an alpha and a beta of the same gender. Alpha males and females hang out all the time, but an alpha male hanging with a beta female is dangerous. The plot's a Hetero couple who start a relationship and get arrested and then I think the guy suffers 'corrective rape'. Uh, I guess there they were using the alpha/beta thing to comment on queer issues, obviously.

[outlawpoet]

thanks for introducing me to this heretofore unknown fandom subsection. Very interesting.

Yet another arena in which I have to consciously restrain myself from attempting to divine the sexual politics and psychology of those who generated/participate in it.

In terms of sciencing multi-genders like this, probably the most fruitful metaphor (haha) would be to look to polyploid flowering/mediated reproduction species, like trees or corals. You can have any number of individuals (in real life, usually via lured species with higher mobility, but you can handwave same-species bearing via pervasive reproductive control, or genetic incompatibilities) involved in a single reproductive act, with some wildly divergent sex organs, and multiple gender roles played by the same organism.

mapping all this onto human dynamics probably results in something even kink authors would find alien and possibly repugnant, so maybe we just handwave shapeshifters? Mystique is sexier than a sexual arms race between pollen wasp and cuttlefish-level insane multipartner obfuscating gamete source deception given human faces.

*makes zoolander face*

[jazzypom]

Unrelated-- so this alpha/omega self-lubricating ass trend.

Say what? I... haven't been reading much lately. I'm still in shipper's mourning over a key point in Young Avengers.

I don't have a single icon that doesn't add weird undertones to this comment

[skalja]

It's sort of like werewolf D/s fic, except they're not actually werewolves (necessarily).