So from then on whenever one of us called something problematic, he would make us talk it out until we could name the “bad” thing we were hinting at. In this particular class, 7/10 it was some type of oppression, and the remainder was like, “I’m uncomfortable because this is very new/confusing/pushing boundaries that made me feel safe.”

Once we stopped calling things “problematic” and stopping at that, class got way more interesting and... we all had to say, like, “that’s racist” or “that’s misogynistic” or “ew capitalism gross” out loud, which a lot of us had never done in a classroom before. Or we had to be like, “Uhhh... I’m not sure what’s so bad?” and confront our own beliefs and that was maybe even more useful.

The mirror replied "To whom?"

"The miller who made the flour for my bread," the queen would say, or "Whoever spun the thread my shawl was made of".

it gets treated as this like stock fandom AU and i'll see people like 'i don't understand why anyone wants to read this' and i'm like yes that's bcos it's pretty intense* fetish content & you don't have the right assortment of fetishes for it? there's a bunch of other similar Stock Settings that just haven't breached containment.

firstly the aforementioned demographic of people who have somehow genuinely failed to clock that it's a kink thing

but also a second demographic of people who seem to have taken its like. prominence in fandom spaces as a sign that they're somehow 'expected' to like it? i've not really seen this attitude with any other kink.

the omegaverse belongs to an genre i have mentally dubbed 'speculative kink'. there are various other types of speculative kink; a well known example in fanfiction spaces is the dom/sub AU, a kind of precursor to omegaverse where the premise is 'what if everyone was biologically a dom or a sub'.

however: there various other shared speculative kink settings out there. unfortunately I cannot get into this too much without discussing some uhhh Devils Sacraments I have attended so you will have to trust me. but I'm aware of several other demographics out there doing speculative kink worldbuilding.

a major difference between omegaverse and the other speculative kink settings I'm aware of is that omegaverse takes itself much more seriously. omegaverse works are often aiming to be understood as serious commentary on gender roles with legitimate worldbuilding. in contrast other speculative kink is typically very open about the fact that the worldbuilding is complete nonsense that exists in service of getting to the kink as soon as possible.

around again so have an

additional Thought:

It FEELS so much like a real ad I expect to be sold some sort of car tyre or something but it’s just about biting

This homeless person is making me uncomfortable. Should I call [a man with a gun]?

My neighbor is having a loud party. Should I get [a man with a gun] involved?

There are some teenagers skateboarding. Do you think [a man with a gun] would get rid of them for me?

Roses come in almost every color except blue (and black). We've worked very hard to breed all sorts of roses: climbers, shrubs, long-stem, tea roses, scented, and on and on. But in true human fashion, we want the one we don't have, and that's a blue rose. A true blue rose. We can't get them naturally, roses don't carry the gene(s) necessary to be bred blue on their own.

So of course, when genetic modification became real, one of the first projects started, and in fact still ongoing, is to create a blue rose. Efforts have been ongoing for about forty-something years now, and not from small labs. The first one to the finish line will have the patent on the color [yes, rose colors are patented] and the process. They will make money hand over fist. Not to mention the progress it will represent in the entire field.

40+ years.

[IMAGE DESCRIPTION: A photo depicting a smiling Japanese woman with two large bouquets of Suntory's "Applause" roses, which are a lavender-grey color]

Closest we've gotten. And these make money, don't get me wrong. They're beautiful. But they're purple. Lavender. Technically blue, in the sense that "purple" doesn't exist in horticulture. (Thus why in the rhyme, "violets are blue")

"But when I put 'blue roses' in a search engine -"

Those are either photoshopped, or they're white roses that have been dyed blue. It's a really easy process. Florists do it all the time for specialty requests. It's so commonly done it even comes in spray paint form. They don't grow that color. They cannot grow that color.

(Yes, whatever one you think is real is photoshopped or dyed. Yes, I'm sure.)

All that work, from some of the best labs in the world. Decades of work. Absolute dedication to the task, the science needed being created just to do this, this one thing, make a rose blue. And we still can't do it.