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Thing is: I don't like the alpha/beta/omega thing in fanfic. I prefer not to read it, I don't write it (and doubt I would even if you'd pay me), I find the whole exaggerated/distorted traditional gender dynamics pressed down over the slash sort of creepy and squicky and far too full of non-con for my tastes.
Apparently, this doesn't stop my brain from going: so, if omegas go into heat, does that mean that alphas can go into musth?
Apparently, this doesn't stop my brain from going: so, if omegas go into heat, does that mean that alphas can go into musth?
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feminizedOmega and be bossy and agressive all the time, thus legalizing rape? I mean, I suppose that sort of put them into musth 24/7?*is about to attack trope with machine gun and Crowley, but without musth*
I like the thought, though. Strange that no one has thought of it before; it makes very much sense in the context.
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Though from what I've been reading, musth is more about unbridled aggresiveness and loss of control than general bossiness - I dunno. Stray thoughts doesn't really lend themselves to trying to subvert/deconstruct/whatever squicky tropes. Surely musth would involve an alpha loosing control of himself just as surely as an omega in heat. And since that loss of selfcontrol and ability to give anything even remotely resembling meaningful consent (and the fetishizing thereof) is part of what triggers my squick, well, I think I'll just stop right here.
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As a firm believer in informed, adult and hence meaningful consent, I agree with you, although it doesn't squick me, it makes me angry.
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I suspect the reason I am more squicked than angry is because in the A/B/O verse, what ultimately steals away your consent is not any outside force or person, but your own body, your own biology trumping any kind of free will or choice. Straight-up non-con is bad enough, but for your own biology to conspire against you like that? Trust me, that is nightmare worthy squick if anything is.
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This is exactly the sort of questioning that lead me to write an A/B/O story, so be careful.
And I think a story about alpha going into musth might be interesting, if the writer was good enough at thinking it through.
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Well...
Biology shapes a lot of what we do -- not just human biology, but all our companion and livestock and predator and prey animals. The facts that horses will work an hour later than oxen, but require more foot protection, changed human history.
So yes, if I've got one sex that undergoes a hypersexual episode, usually the other has an equivalent, or has some other quirk of similar scope. That will influence the culture, and then individual characters choose how they react to the standard setting. If they're my characters, they usually drop a monkey wrench down it.
Any motif in literature can be done well or poorly. Some are easy to flub and challenging to render gracefully. Some seem to attract clumsy or obnoxious writers. Alpha/Omega is easy to write as bad porn. But it's also terrific for hardcore sociology. That's probably where it came from -- some of us who've been into genderfic for decades, and who also read things about wolf biology and bonobos solving problems with sex, and far-out things. It's not just in fanfic, it's in original fiction too, including some of the best damn sociological SF ever written.
Of course, you're entitled to conclude that the signal-to-noise ratio is too low to be worth your time. *chuckle* Me, I'm an editor, I've read slushpiles. I can tell in a paragraph or few if a story's worth reading, so I go through a list very quickly and it's not hard for me to find the good stuff. If I'm reading A/O fiction, I'm looking for characters bucking the system, or finding ways around a biological handicap, or writers using obscure bits of science in clever ways, etc. Wall-to-wall pr0n, meh, clicky-next.