(no subject)

recurring problem in fic with psychic animal bonds: who gets turned into psychic animals

if it is disproportionately women and people of color, author needs to apply conscious brain.


it would be mildly less of a problem if they, as psychic animals, were driving the plot, but no, they are now there to provide commentary. not awesome.



other problem: how often turning people into dragons is a way to get them out of the way of the non canon central pairings
instead of just having at least half such a pairing be a dragon.

I mean treat rider+companion marriages as attempted sedoretus where nobody shags someone else's psychic bondmate but everyone shags within species pairings and has at least psychic funtimes with their own bondmate. everything dragony fits a sedoretu easy. and then it's all delicate negotiations to fill out a set, rather than more commonly tropetastic bondmate chosen dubcon, but it's all negotiating competing desires with a distinct set of urgencies, so.

i realise there's not much sedoretu fic in the first place, let alone with dragons, but really...



I mean consider
Bucky and Nat the dragons
Steve and Peggy the riders

dragons can live as long as the plot requires
and being bonded can keep their riders alive

Steve only thought he felt Bucky die, and they were both frozen a real long time

... I must admit the Black Widow skills of infiltration gave me pause
but in a truly widely bonded society
they simply infiltrate the dragons.

Peggy can be as young or mature as suits the reader, by the time Steve wakes up.

And all it needs is a plot.




One with Starks being ridiculous and unbonded
but I can't decide if they're dragons or not.

... Pepper dragon. Pepper dragon CEO.
... or Tony dragon building himself new wings.
well I did just complain about it never being the white boys in scales, so naturally armoured Tony it is, on an endless quest to upgrade himself. Makes it simpler to be one generation out from WWII too.

Rhodey would be a good match for Tony but Rhodey went military and Tony would not, so they never bonded.
What kind of dragons could Rhodey meet in the Air Force?
What kind of riders?

There's just fun possibilities.



If you like dragons.

(no subject)

Also: even in a fantasy AU, Tony Stark is not King. His father had some dark secret that would have stopped him being admitted to polite society, and he's fabulously wealthy by his own efforts, not taxes or rent. Every era has its weapons and power sources, and the Starks master them. That doesn't translate to king.

Steve has a bit of a Sword in the Stone thing going on with growing up poor and scrawny and getting chosen, but he's no real fit for inherited power either, given the immigrant background.

And a fantasy au, even a medieval ish one, does not actually require hereditary kings. I mean, elections have been a thing for a really long time, even if the details vary a lot. And sometimes king wasnt even the title.

Sins

Today I started poking at the idea of deadly sins, and how different lists have come up in different cultures, and why aliens might have lists really really different.

The seven deadlies are easy, they've turned up in so much literature, there's a vague idea of them around. But if you want to talk three poisons there's less english lit, and people start arguing attachment as a virtue, sometimes because of not clear on meaning of source. Hell, you get that in plain english about lust and pride, because they've been used for sex and self confidence so much the actual badness of them has got a bit diluted. And then there's other lists entirely unfamiliar to me.

But I was thinking of virtue and biology, because goa'uld. Humans make one child at a time (ish) and nurture them for ages and consider nurturing love to be the best thing. But goa'uld make thousands of squirmies at once, and there's literally not enough minutes in the day to pay attention to all of them. Different strategy, different virtues. Arguably they try and optimise the environment, breeding for better hosts, using jaffa as intermediate hosts, making bigger better empires so there's somewhere for all those wrigglers to actually go. Choosing one individual to care about would necessarily mean putting less care towards thousands of equally connected individuals. Doesn't have the same good feel. But change the world to suit them and ou look after them all without individual contact.

So... other sorts of alien.

Say there's beings of pure thought where being of two minds just means there's now two beings. But new ideas means there's now new people.

What would virtue even look like from there?

Personal survival means having a strong core of continuing focus or belief, a singular self. But creation is coming up with ideas that are not self and you cant integrate as self. By definition you violently disagree with your offspring.

What would you even do?

Say personal immortality is possible if you keep your focus. Would you just... try not to think?

Or is violent disagreement too narrow a perspective? If you can't fit all the headcanons into one head you'd just have new of you to explore all the implications...

... but then would you get back together if the results turned out agreeable?

What even would it be like?



... it's kind of coming up nonsense, but, nonsense full of ideas...


it would depend a lot on what resources were limited. If you've got all the energy and none the time then you make many thoughts fast. If very little energy then got to stay singular or compete.

so what's an interesting set and what virtues and vices are in it?




ideas...

(no subject)

You know when you watch an episode and the plot is absolutely idiotic but whatever it's not like you care about this show anyway?
no, nope, this is still bugging me:

three women break out of prison transport to go find a really giant stash of money left behind by a dead criminal.
they find it by hitting people until one tells them who to ask who actually knows. and killing them. mostly killing, which makes you wonder how they know ehich one to ask. but whatev.
they get the last guy to lead them to the money, and there it is, sitting in boxes, utterly unguarded.

so.

problem.

why the fuck had nobody else picked up the money?

why would that one guy know exactly where it is and not just go make himself stupendously rich?

if there is a really large amount of money to be had, somebody shall have it, unless nobody knows how. that's just facts.

so.

plot so very stupid.