#scifi is people going 'wouldnt this be neat?'

[raid3r-r4bbit]

Did you know that the first flip phones were invented because someone was inspired by star trek?

the writers of star trek saw cell phones and wondered how in an alternate universe way in the future, in a world with creatures and events we 'literally could not conveive of how [they] function.' and came up with the idea pocket sized, foldable devices that could instantly communicate with another, or multiple indiviuals instantly.

and then someone else saw that and thought. "that's so cool, but how does that work? could we make that in real life, and how would we make it with the technology we have now!"

i remeber the first time i saw a touch screen phone, I was baffled and awestruck, it was something i'd only seen in scifi movies.

thats how sciecne works, it's how scifi works. the two work together. art imitates life, imitates art.

imagine the advancements in medical care we could have if we had a portable device that was non intrusive and could immeditaly tell you that you're sick, tired, injured and how injured you are.

the cell phone we have now are genuinly more technologically advanced then the scifi they were based off of, something, previously inconveiable.

also, my love of scifi and things like fallout and star trek inspired me a lot as a kid. I was in science programs and was in AP science classes all throughout highschool, and was even part of a medical and technological sciences scholarship program, and was very active in the robotics and coding club. (never an offical member, because i had wrestling and also yknow, lived on a farm.) I was also in coding classes all the way through middle school and part of the way through highschool.

I had a pretty substancial scholarship and enough credits to get into pretty much any college i wanted to, and my senior year of highschool there wasnt anymore classes that either were open or that i hadnt already taken (biology chemestry all of it. I took forensics because it was the only open class). I've been apart of a whole bunch of college research groups looking into things like improving transportation, architecture and medical care. I've won so many science fairs that i forgot about until the night before.

( I was also in ap english thorught all of highschool and despite being dyslexic am extremely literate, and ironically very bad at math. I can list off a bunch of random scientific garble, memorize historic events like nobody's buisness and write the most persuasive and detailed essays you'll never read, but i can't multiply. Thank you autism, for not doing the one thing you are sterotypically *good* for. (sarcasm))

the only reason i didnt go to college is because the second i graduated i was kicked out and was forced to get a job and a home and didnt have time. And because i fundementally believe that education should be free and refuse to even partially pay for something i have access to educate myself on with most of these textbooks and college courses being available from other sources.

I act really stupid online, and my dyslexia makes me look like an idiot who cant spell anything right, but i actually am fully capable of coming up with concepts and ideas of how this technology works, understand the tehcnology it's based off of, and figuring out and understanding ways to improve apon it.

TLDR; science is based of the question 'how does this work?' and fiction is based off of the real world.

I am capable of understanding both. (more than capable.)

I just KNOW that anyone with a Pip-Boy in the Fallout universe are out here comparing each other's SPECIAL stats like how people compare their IQ's.

Chad: Yeah, so I have 8 Strength, which equates to a "Circus Strongman". 7 Endurance, which is "Tough as Nails", and 9 Agility, which makes me an "Aerobatic Marvel". I'm CLEARLY the superior vault dweller. Kenneth: Ok then Chad, if you're so much better than me, what's your Intelligence stat? Mine is 7. Chad: Obviously I've got uh... 9? Yeah! Making me "Omniscient". Oooohh!! Take that! Kenneth: Ummm, actually, "Omniscient" is 10, not 9. And everyone already knows you have only level 4 Intelligence, Chad. You're not fooling anyone. Chad: Yeah, well at least I don't have level 3 Charisma: "Creepy Undertaker".

[chaoxfix]

whats your favorite trope to READ?

OUGH... thats a good one. damn...

i think i read a lot of the same things i like to write -- a lot of what i write is meant to fill a need i had to read about something but didn't see any fics about. and most of what i want more of is, in this order:

deep nameless bonds that don't fit neatly into a specific box. like sonic and tails, are they friends or siblings or guardian and ward or mentor and student ... or for sonally, are they divorced or are they rivals or are they soulmates or are they in love at all. or for catradora are they childhood friends or lovers or enemies or rivals. (all of the above <3333 otp of all time. i cant even write anything about them because their story is already perfect.) or for timkon, are they best friends or are they in love or are they rivals or are they codependent. anyways you get what i mean. i want to have to grapple with the very idea of how characters feel about the other. i want them to not know either. (other all time ships i will out myself by saying: makoharu, zelink, dickkory, and many of my own lesbian otp creations)

worldbuilding/theories. i LOVE seeing explanations, even little ones, in fics. i just like seeing extrapolation from canon elements and saying 'hey wouldnt it be neat if X was because of Y' or 'i think that there should be a history of why X is like this' and just trying to make sense of something. part of why the sonic series is like catnip to me is because theres SO MUCH LORE but so little explanation. almost none of it was probably meant to be anything but thats why its soooo satisfying to try and piece together a story despite that. i was like this with zelda back in the day too. the timeline was my bread and butter and i wanted sooo badly for it to make sense so i loved seeing people try to make it work. also... as an occasional treat, 'wouldn't it be fucked up if-?' type stuff. but only if there's some canon grounding or worldbuilding to set it up. (i.e., in my fics, 'wouldnt it be fucked up if the reason eggman only took 6 months after capturing sonic to take over the world, was because sonic powered his weapons? he certainly has the energy for it')

existential horror but in a character development way. i go NUTS for time loops or reality shifting. i have such strong feelings about reboots and rewrites that acknowledge theyre rewriting something; theres just something about the existential horror of having the world shift and only you remember it and it's your responsibility to let it live on through you, or your responsibility to fix time itself. the archie genesis wave fucks me up every time, same with dc rebooting and having superboy be one of the lone survivors of the spacetime rewrite. ......but in more smallscale ways, time loops, characters who haunt the narrative, 'you came back wrong', that kind of thing. i dont believe in ghosts but i believe in hauntings, if that makes sense. i believe anything can be haunted if there's something that shouldn't have been lost, and someone who refuses to let it go -- and that can have a powerful impact on scifi stories where reality itself functions a bit like magic.

i think i got a bit off the rails... this was fun! thank you for asking!!

EDIT: hi i realize upon re-reading your ask. ... that you said tropes and not, uh. just what do i like to read. in that case.....,,,,,,, fake dating, emotional hurt/comfort, and younger sibling complexes. ^^;;;;; jakdjkfsdjk i cant delete the previous answer though its too much to let go of

[jojotier]

I was looking at your post on ABO stuff and it made me think of stuff like soulmate AUs and that weird Hanahaki Disease thing... I always thought those were kinda dumb, too :/

Honestly, I think the Hanahaki Disease and Soulmate aus are at least passable- sure they can be generic as hell and its silly and dumb, and mostly wishful romantic fairytale thinking, but you can still do something with them relatively easily, and I do enjoy a good bit of silly fairytale nonsense from time to time

A/B/O on the other hand is fucking detestable, and the mere sight of it makes me recoil.

However, I’m a firm believer that almost anything can be done well if enough thought and planning is put into it. And I mean anything. 

So tl;dr of the masterpost I’m leaving below the read more: I personally find hanahaki disease and soulmate aus to be extremely promising and will leave some ways you can twist them into something more interesting.

A/B/O on the other hand, I hate with a fucking passion because it has some of the worst parts of humanity etched into it, and is generally used for all the wrong reasons- though I can see it working, if you’re really fucking careful and put a lot of thought and effort into developing it, and if you have good reason for it. I’ll leave some ideas below for tips on how you might be able to pull off an a/b/o au, even if i probably wouldnt touch it with a five foot pole

So before anything, there’s a couple ways to personalize a soulmate or hanahaki disease au:

- tailor it specifically to the fandom you’re writing for (for example, a stand that causes hanahaki disease so the user tries to gain control of the person’s heart by trying to convince them that he can ‘save them’ by taking the disease ridden heart away for jojo’s) - take the idea and giving it a twist (soulmates doesn’t necessarily mean romantic partner and your soulmate can be the person you beat the shit out of, a platonic friend, a government scheme trying to keep the masses compliant, etc)

- try to base ideas in reality- exploring the cultural and societal norms, including alternate histories and alternate social movements centered around the existence of something like soulmates being common for instance. how would soulmates, particularly if you find an enemy soldier is yours, play into how a war is conducted? are soulmates to be trusted in battle? how does the political and social climate change during things such as the suffrage movement or during industrialization? or you can come up with the science behind hanahaki disease and come up with an entire slew of research and studies for it. what medications are available to lessen the symptoms? are there alternate strains? people who are immune? where does hanahaki disease come from, and has it been part of human history for long?

With these ideas, they seem shallow and silly on the surface (and there’s nothing wrong with silly and shallow, if it’s done well and is inoffensive; sometimes i just need a good fairytale bullshit fix of flower tattoos appearing on your skin when your gf is near) but there’s still an underlying potential that makes them worthwhile to explore and keep around, especially if you mix and match with different genres like fantasy, modern magic, solarpunk, scifi, horror, thriller, etc!! 

But the thing that pisses me off about A/B/O is that 1) that’s not how humans fucking work, nor do a lot of animal species, and it simplifies the complex social and societal structures associated with people, 

2) 9/10 it’s an excuse to write men into the societal roles of nuclear parents with things like mpreg and assbabies and heat without female characters ‘getting in the way’, 

3) if you even decide to explore the social and political aspects of the population being separated into 3 races positions in power society with rigid norms of ‘this person has to be Aggressive and Dominant because its In Their Nature and everyone Will Submit’ and whatever the fuck, thats just… wrong on so many levels. trying to explore A/B/O while romanticizing it in the same breath is the absolute worst crime you can commit, especially if your A/B/O has extremely rigid class structure and ‘behaviors’ associated with all the classes’ biology that are enforced and seen as good things. 

At it’s worst, A/B/O can become an allegory in favor of racism, sexism, classism, and the fetishization of gay men.

 Do the writers of these aus want it to come off that way? I doubt that many of them do, and I doubt it’s intentional- but when you read a summary that says that ‘oh this character is an OMEGA who SNEAKS INTO an ALPHAS ONLY parlor, can this sheep in wolf’s clothing hide their secret??’ it’s impossible not to draw parallels to Jim Crow. When there’s a summary about how Character A needs to find an alpha so their heat can be taken care of, it’s impossible not to think of the seme/uke dynamic that its upholding. when you see a story thats full of male characters where their dynamics are ‘explored’ while the female characters get brushed to the side with no mention of their apparent status in this society, it just highlights how much the author wants the female characters out of the way

Do I think that A/B/O can be done well? Yes. When I say I believe almost anything can work, I mean anything. 

Here’s my tips for attempting to write a successful A/B/O:

- Do some fucking research before anything. Research is key to both improving your writing skills and finding new ideas that people might not have looked at before. If you want a lighter slice of life au, I suggest researching how best to build a culture and how historical influences weave their way into present customs. If you want something a little heavier, start researching different social movements and learn about how social reform is undertaken. How does a social movement form? Are there any technological advances you think might be inspired in an A/B/O world?

- Unless the people in the A/B/O aren’t human, for the love of fuck don’t make anything specific to their biology. If you have A/B/O in your au because there are things like werewolves or vampires or some other mythical creature, then there is a little more leniency, since then you can make an actual case that you’re making a couple behaviors actually part of their biology. Even then though, you’re thin ice, which brings me to the next important point…

- SUBTLETY. Just make it another part of society, like you would with a gay or PoC character. Don’t hammer the entire dynamic into your readers’ faces unless you’re prepared to do actual research and definitely not unless you are 100% dismantling why harmful societal structures are bullshit. This can be done in a few ways, such as developing a sort of culture around each of the roles (for example, maybe Alphas traditionally favor spicy foods as a test of strength or tend to steal bites of their partner’s food, or maybe Omegas tend to prefer sweet foods and wear patterns). You can make people of all castes equal across all fields (an equal amount of alpha and omega politicians and ceos for instance), and you can show characters with diverse tastes that don’t fit what might be stereotypical of them (alphas cuddling stuffed animals, omegas with a love of going to a fight club and beating the shit out of each other, etc). Don’t be afraid to let identities intersect- trans omegas, aro/ace alphas, etc. 

- The final and most important point- Have A Fucking Reason For Including A/B/O or Making An A/B/O au. 

Do you want a/b/o in your au because you feel it will give an extra dimension that sets apart a supernatural creatures’ social dynamics from human social dynamics? Cool! That’s some chill worldbuilding you can pull off! Do you want to explore how a social movement forms and how to challenge an oppressive society? Neat! Just be careful not to go too far and do your research! Want to see how x character would react and navigate the world with the cultures associated with A/B/O? Want to do an entire genre swap where A/B/O is the norm of a dystopia, or horror based, or a sci-fi where AIs are programmed with it and have to overcome the structure to develop a social structure of their own, or anything of the like? Go for it! 

Do you want to have a character be seen as suuuuuuper weak and feminine but!!! They aren’t actually because girl power they’re just the same as anyone else and can run with big strong ones like the alphas so they’re not like other omegas? Want to get rid of those pesky girls so they don’t get in the way of your ships? Want your two gay characters to have a super imbalanced relationship with one character being aggressive because it’s just their nature? Want your ~sinful gay babies~ to still be a nuclear family and have 2.5 biological children? Want to explore things like racism without that pesky need to research anything ever? NO. NO NO NO. STOP WHAT YOU’RE DOING RIGHT NOW. You better fucking not. 

So yea wow this post ended up longer than intended but here you go!