lizardywizard:

possumsinpeoplesuits:

So, every once in a while, I have to rant about something online before I just start blabbing to some poor unfortunate Wendy’s employee about niche internet pornography. Sometimes in the middle of that rant I realize I might be onto something, and have to share it with others who might benefit.

Today, that subject is the Omegaverse, and the squandered potential for worldbuilding therein.

Now, this post is gonna have some very broad generalizations about the genre, because while I’m certain there’s plenty of authors who do put a lot of thought into the pedantic details I’m about to have a Category 5 Autism Event about, it’s been difficult to find them amongst a sea of painfully mediocre fics.

For every stellar Locked Tomb Omegaverse fic set in a modern day Taco Bell (Seriously, I want to engrave Double the Meat onto a satellite and launch it into space so that extraterrestrials can see the peak of human civilization) there’s like… a million and one Alpha Male/Omega Female pairings written by Conservative Mormon housewives that dare to ask such questions as “What if a man and a woman could have a baby?” and “What the hell is consent?”

But I’m not here to be mentally ill about yet another space being drowned in heteronormativity. Nor am I gonna be a dick about the first fics written by teenagers who’re just dipping into fan communities, because my terminally online since the age of 11 ass would be a huge hypocrite for that.

No, instead I’m here to talk about genitals, and deliver just enough sciencey technobabble to justify my passionate opinions about the potential of what is, ostensibly, werewolf porn.

So, for those who’ve somehow gotten through all these paragraphs but have zero idea what the Omegaverse is, the basic gist is that there are three sex categories that’re separate and occur within the usual sexes that humans already have. Effectively, this means that male, female, and intersex individuals can also be Alphas, Betas, or Omegas.

So, to understand these categories, there’s a pretty simple rule. Alphas can get Omegas pregnant, regardless of physical sex. Sometimes Alphas are bigger than normal, and Omegas are more petite, but that’s not quite as much of a core “rule” to follow, and more just dependent on people’s tastes. Betas usually follow standard human dimorphism, though I have seen some people headcanon them as a sort of halfway point between Alpha and Omega.

There’s some more details, too, like the presence of knotting (where the base of the penis swells and prevents pulling out during orgasm), heat cycles and rut (where the mating instinct goes into fucking overdrive in the most literal sense), pheromones, bite marking, and sometimes that whole… imprinting thing from Twilight.

So, taking this all into account… Omegaverse fiction has the potential for a BARE MINIMUM of 6-9 SEXES before even taking the vast spectrum of gender identities and presentations into account.

Do you see what I’m on about now? When our society is still struggling with the concept of being nonbinary, and barely ever even acknowledges intersexuality as existing, any Omegaverse setting would be radically different on a biological, psychological, and sociological level.

Can ya see now why I get frustrated when it gets stripped down to compulsive heterosexuality with wolf dicks?

Now, with all the standard tropes laid out like this, we get back to the question that started this all, the question that should be a no brainer when it comes to smut… What them genitals look like? What does a female Alpha, or a male Omega have down there? I have three concepts in mind, and explanations on how they could work from a scientific perspective that’s just barely not bullshit enough to overcome suspension of disbelief!

So, the first thought, and the one that initially appeals to me as a nonbinary person… they just look trans. This concept is really simple to work with, because we can just look at real life trans people and just tweak things a little bit. Maybe primary and secondary sexual characteristics operate independently naturally, or maybe there’s HRT for it. It’s a pretty common method, too, and I enjoy seeing it… but it feels like it needs something more?

Don’t get me wrong, this one’s basically my personal gold standard for shorter Omegaverse stories, especially fanfiction, but it’s also just… swapping parts around. Great for ease of access, but hard to differentiate from the trans experience. Definitely a go-to if you want to play with transition in an alternate society, though.

For the other two, I have to explain a bit about fetal development and reproductive organ equivalents. Also a bit of genetics, too, because it’s where we’re gonna fuck around and build a lot of theoretical bullshit around a little bit of real knowledge.

So! Some of you may have heard that every fetus starts as female, but might not know some of the mechanisms at work when that changes, and how finicky they can be. This is also fun to throw at TERFs, because ambiguity throws a wrench in the simplistic arguments of reactionary bigots. :)

So, the usual arrangement of sex determining genes is often simplified to XX=female and XY=male. This leaves out other variations like Klinefelter syndrome (XXY) which affects 1 in 500 people under the AMAB umbrella, causing some degree of infertility, autism symptoms, and a somewhat androgynous body shape. (I’ve been checked for this one! It came up negative, but reading about it was enlightening.)

Now, the presence of a Y chromosome (usually) causes the proto-organs to change function, and develop into the male-aligned reproductive systems at roughly, say… 6-8 weeks? (Unless, of course, there a deficiency in the 5α-Reductase enzyme, which causes a delay in some of this process, resulting in a child that appears female, then just… grows a dick during puberty when the higher levels of testosterone overcome the deficiency and finish off the primary sexual trait development.)

Hey, wanna know the fun thing? Even that is an oversimplification. The whole Y chromosome doesn’t mean shit unless the sex-determining region Y gene is in the right place. It can just… fuck off and attach to the X chromosome. If this mutation occurs in XY individuals, it causes Swyer’s syndrome, resulting in a female aligned reproductive system that just doesn’t include functioning ovaries, just purposeless ambiguous gonads. Pair that fucky X chromosome with another X chromosome, and you get a male with XX chromosomes.

Plus, if someone has a faulty androgen receptor? Well, partial androgen insensitivity can leave things ambiguous, but if it just doesn’t work at all? Yeah, everything will develop along the female blueprint, despite the fact that the gonads are testes.

I swear this is still about the porn.

So, with the information we have about these real, existent conditions, we have a good idea of reproductive development, and the mechanisms at play. Now, there’s still some theory that’s not been definitively proven yet, but the current consensus on the primary sexual equivalents are as follows:

The clitoris forms into the penis, while the vaginal canal doesn’t form.

The ovaries become testes, or stay as undefined gonads.

The salpinx become the vas deferens (these are the tubes that transfer eggs or seminal fluids, respectively. More on this later.)

And finally, and the most theoretical, the uterus is believed to become the prostate. (There’s sometimes a little pocket, or divot in the prostate, and the arrangement makes sense, but it’s still up for debate.)

But how do we use this for our fuck fics, you ask? How do we take your failed medical career, and translate it into Destiel’s babies ever after? Well, it’s quite simple! We just have to add the bullshit!

So, most alterations to the SRY gene or the androgen receptor tends to just wholesale alter the whole array, and the midway point usually results in infertility and difficulty with sexual function, but what if we could change this? What if, for the purpose of our fiction, we can mix and match everything, and somehow make it all functional and neat? Well, fasten your fuckin’ seatbelts, because we’re finally at the theories I made while delirious due to a combination of sleep deprivation and the after effects of eating an entire ice cream cake to myself over the weekend.

So, the firmest idea, and the idea I’ll be using because I am WAY too deep into this to not write Omegaverse unironically, is what I’ve dubbed the Primary/vestigal system for f!A and m!O characters.

So, this theory would require that we shove two things into suspension of disbelief. One, we have to completely fuck with androgen and estrogen receptors to mix and match the development of primary and secondary sexual characteristics. Two, I have absolutely no idea how you’d be able to tell when this is going to occur. Maybe genetic testing, or maybe it’s just a surprise? Depends on your style of story.

Effectively, we’d base this off the delayed primary sexual characteristic development mentioned above. Alpha Females would operate similar to the real thing, being born looking typically female, before puberty hits and the Alpha genes take over for the genital development, while secondary characteristics still follow a feminine shape. Maybe the gonads stay inside, but function as testes? Sure, sperm production is more effective around 1-2 degrees lower than normal body temperature, but it doesn’t stop entirely.

For Omega Males, the process would occur in reverse. Maybe the testes just change course and go back into the abdomen to become ovaries, or maybe they don’t descend at all and the first clue this is happening would just be finding a vaginal canal forming?

I like this one primarily because it feels like a less 1 to 1 allegory for being queer, but still feels kind of relatable? You can, of course, still have the end result resemble the first method mentioned waaaaay up past the sciencey bits, but I kind of like the idea of there being a vestigial remnant of the birth parts left behind. I like the ambiguity, and the chance to explore how this would affect someone appeals to me.

Now, my last theory is mostly for the lulz, but this must be DOCUMENTED for POSTERITY’S SAKE.

So, Omegaverse started with m/m shipping with mpreg, right? Well, a lot of the earlier fiction just… describes typical cis male anatomy, with zero explanation for exactly how this is all occurring. There’s just… anal sex, and then that somehow forms babby.

Well, what if I told you that I’ve figured it out? See, remember how I mentioned that the prostate is theoretically what became of the fetal uterine tissue? Guess where the prostate is? Guess. GUESS.

THE ASS IS WHERE!

So, we just have to bullshit the prostate back into a functioning uterus, but leave the placement in close proximity to the anus. Now, the other problem is that that would mean that there’s an opening leading to the colon, which… look, I have no idea how birds and lizards keep their cloaca from getting infected, but connecting other tracts to the asshole doesn’t usually end well.

So, we have to find a way to seal it up when not in use. Now, the cervix serves this purpose in the real world, opening to let in fluids, or let out discharge or, y’know… a baby, but that’s really expensive so most of us settle for having a breeding kink that we never act on, and instead impose on our favorite blorbos who don’t have to pay for health insurance.

But still, even with a butt-cervix, bacteria’s still likely to get in, so we need a firmer block. I’ve suggested a little flap like the epiglottis in the throat as a second line of defense. If it can protect your trachea from wayward chicken nuggets, then hey! It might not be terrible for keeping sepsis at bay!

Unfortunately, layering extra protection over the bussy business zone ain’t gonna cut it. Hell, as self cleaning as the vagina is, infections happen all the damn time, even if your hygiene is good. So, we need to take that self cleaning nature, apply it to the bussy business zone, and crank it up to eleven. Just constant mucousal discharge, pushing all the bad back out.

So, yeah. Your favorite Omega Man’ll have a rectal womb covered with a secondary internal assflap that’s constantly discharging a steady stream of slime (just consider it free lube!), but if you can make it past that, you can live your dreams of gettin’ that bussy mpregged by cumming in they gay ass. Then they’d just kinda… poop out the baby, presumably.

So there you have it! Three in-depth explorations of how Omegaverse genitals can work! I’m gonna go take my psych meds and fucking SLEEP.

First: omg this is beautiful. good shit op.

But also, I actually have prostate-related knowledge™ to add to this post that makes it even more fun!

See, the cells that compose the prostate also have an equivalent in the Skene’s gland! Which lubricates the vagina and is responsible for squirting.

Thus, the Self-Lubricating Anus of your fevered fanfictional dreams is *right there*, and ready to serve both pleasurable and self-cleaning purposes!


Tags:

#anything that makes me laugh this much deserves a reblog #biology #meta #story ideas I will never write #nsfw text #unsanitary cw #this probably deserves some other warning tag but I am not sure what #cissexism cw? #this post was queued because my to-reblog list is too long and I didn’t want to dump it on you all at once

{{woozymitts asked:}}

I’m so sorry if you’ve talked about this already but I just saw it and you were the first person I thought of

Anyways have you seen this absolutely INSANE rove beetle

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bogleech:

I HAVE HOPED TO SEE ACTUAL CLEAR PHOTOGRAPHS OF THIS FOR YEARS. I have seen nothing but scientific drawings and some microscopy slides!!! Oh my god it looks even sillier and more far-fetched than I thought it would. I want everyone to know before they carelessly continue scrolling that this is how the beetle pretends to be a termite and freeloads in termite society and the entire fake termite is just the beetle’s abdomen. If you look closely you can see that’s what it is, that it just has a massive weird butt so big it can hide entirely under its own butt and that it (the butt) is shaped like a different, inflatable decoy bug with fake antennas and fake legs.

Just four fake legs because it did not study entomology but luckily neither have the termites.


Tags:

#bugs #biology #the more you know #I’m so curious what the intermediate steps in evolving this shape looked like #this post was queued because my to-reblog list is too long and I didn’t want to dump it on you all at once

Anonymous asked: This might be the strangest question you’ve received, but I’m not sure who to ask, so… What do scars look like on reptiles, especially large reptiles? I need drawing references but I can only find images of injured humans

is-the-snake-video-cute:

Not a strange question at all!

On snakes, scars tend to heal over with attempted regrowth of scales. Scars often have a weird scale pattern as a result – the scales over the scar might have a weird texture or color. Look at this ball python with a burn scar over their entire spine – the scar is noticeably a different color and texture.

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In my experience, a lot of scars on snakes will retain scale growth, but that’s not always true, especially for scars on the head:

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Deep wounds tend to heal over white. In wildlife rehab, we mostly see these in snakes who were involved in car accidents or had run-ins with lawnmowers.

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But that can happen with any deep wound, like these on a ball python from rat bites.

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Deep wounds on wild snakes that don’t heal without veterinary help may look puckered and a bit gruesome:

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Lizards are more prone to have scars that are missing scales.

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Scars on crocodilians look a little different. Instead of scales like snakes and lizards, crocodilians have what we call “scutes.” On a crocodilian, scutes are large, hardened plates, and instead of shedding at once they’re constantly shedding in teeny-tiny flakes (like us!). On crocodilians, scars look like divots in the scutes, and they will fade somewhat with time (again, like people).

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Tags:

#snakes #lizards #crocodiles #biology #the more you know #injury cw #this post was queued because my to-reblog list is too long and I didn’t want to dump it on you all at once

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dailyunsolvedmysteries:

This is a metal snail (Volcano Snail) that lives on underwater volcano vents in the Indian Ocean. Its shell and scaly feet both are armoured with layers of iron, making it the only animal to incorporate iron sulfide into its skeleton.

todaysbird:

damn right. that snail is metal as hell

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/aug/03/discovered-in-the-deep-the-snail-with-iron-armour:

In 2019, scientists worked out that the scales on the snails’ foot are not to protect against predatory attack but to avert a toxic threat that comes from within. The bacteria stashed in a scaly-foot snail’s throat release sulphur as a waste product, which is deadly to snails (it’s a common active ingredient in slug and snail-killing pellets).

The internal structure of their scales acts as tiny exhaust pipes, drawing the dangerous sulphur away from the snails’ soft tissues and depositing it as a harmless iron-based compound on the outside.


Tags:

#snails #biology #the more you know #poison cw? #body horror? #this post was queued because my to-reblog list is too long and I didn’t want to dump it on you all at once

etirabys:

A deep cut I incurred on my finger two weeks ago finally closed over, leaving some pink, and I keep looking at it and feeling perplexed over the capability of the human body to… just do that


Tags:

#biology #yes this #injury cw #this post was queued because my to-reblog list is too long and I didn’t want to dump it on you all at once

derinthescarletpescatarian:

“X bodily fluid is just filtered blood!” buddy I hate to break it to you but ALL of the fluids in your body are filtered blood. Your circulatory system is how water gets around your body. It all comes out of the blood (or lymph, which is just filtered blood).

derinthescarletpescatarian:

“Okay but why is it always so chemically roundabout and unnecessarily complicated” well buddy, that’s because your blood is imitation seawater. See? It’s very simple.

badwificonnection:

Blood is what now?

derinthescarletpescatarian:

It’s imitation seawater what part is confusing

badwificonnection:

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derinthescarletpescatarian:

#are you telling me#humans are just sentient aquariums?

Buddy if anything is living in your blood (except for more parts of you) in detectable amounts then you have a serious microbial infection and need to go to the hospital.

Humans are seawater wastelands kept sterile of all but human cells, with microbial mats coating their surfaces.

badwificonnection:

4614df65c84bd09ccffc7f765ecae6034b2d298d

Thank you that’s…very disturbing

derinthescarletpescatarian:

It’s not my fault you’re human.

apatheticshipwreck:

Ok but “It’s not my fault you’re human.” Is the best comeback ever.

derinthescarletpescatarian:

You can use it against anyone except children that you biologically helped to create.

derinthescarletpescatarian:

#/blood is imitation seawater/ is the part that’s confusing

Picture this: you are a Thing That Lives In The Ocean. Some kind of small multicellular animal a long time ago, before proper circulatory systems existed. “Wow,” you think, metaphorically, “it sure is difficult to diffuse chemicals across my whole body. Kinda puts a hard limit on the size and distance of what specialised organs I can have. Good thing I have all this water around me that’s the same salinity as my cells (they have to be that way so I don’t explode or shrivel up) so I can diffuse and filter chemicals with that.”

“Wait a minute,” you say a couple of generations later, because you’re not actually a small animal but an evolutionary process personified and simplified to the point of dangerous inaccuracy for the purposes of a Tumblr post, “instead of losing all these important chemicals to the water around me, how about I put it in tubes? I can keep MY water separate from the rest of the world’s water! Anything I want to keep goes in my water! Anything I don’t, I dump back into the outside water! I’m a genius! An unthinking natural trial-and-error process that’s a GENIUS!”

“Wow,” you think a great many generations later, “being able to have such control over such high concentrations of important chemicals is so great. Look how big I’m getting. I even have a special pump to move my seawater around, and these cool filter systems to keep the chemicals in it right, and that control and chemical concentration has let me grow so many energy-intensive, highly specialised organs! Being big is so hard. I need special cells just to carry my oxygen around now, to make sure my enormous, constantly-operating body has enough of it.”

At this point you are embodying a fish, and eventually, fish start straying into water with different pressures and salinity levels. (I mean, they do that since befor ehty’er fish, but… look, I’m trying to keep things simple here.) “What the FUCK,” you think. “My inside water is at a different salinity and pressure to the outside water?? How am I supposed to deal with that? I can’t have freshwater inside my seawater tubes! My cells have a set salinity and they would explode! I need to start beefing up my regulatory and filter systems so that my inside seawater STAYS SEAWATER OF THE CORRECT SALINITY even if the outside water is different! Fortunately, adding salt to my seawater is a lot easier than removing it, and I want to be saltier than this weird outside water.” At this point you beef up your liver and urinary systems to compensate for different salinities. (Note: the majority of fish, freshwater and saltwater, have a fairly narrow band of salinities they can live in. Every fish doesn’t get to deal with every level of salinity; they are evolved to regulate within specific bands.)

You also, at some point, go out on land. This is new and weird because you have to carry all of your water inside. “It’s a good thing I turned myself into a giant bag of seawater,” you think. “If I wasn’t carrying my seawater inside, how would I transport all these important chemicals between my organs and the environment?” As you specialise to live entirely outside of the water, you realise (once again) that it’s a lot easier to add salt to water than to remove it in great quantities. Drinking seawater in large amounts becomes toxic; your body isn’t specialised for removing that amount of salt. Instead, you drink freshwater, and add salts to that. The majority of your organs are, at this point, specialised for moving your seawater around, protecting it, adding stuff to it, or taking stuff out. You have turned yourself into an intelligent bag for carrying and regulating a small amount of imitation seawater, and its salinity (and your commitment to maintaining that salinity) is based entirely on the seawater that some early animals started to build tubes around a long time ago.

And that’s what a human is!

elodieunderglass:

Well, there’s another few steps, of course.

Because at some point, operating along lines of logic that worked out perfectly so far, you did decide to be a mammal.

A mammal is a machine for adapting to Circumstances. A mammal is a tremendously resilient all-terrain life-support system, with built-in heating, cooling, respiration, and incubators for reproduction. Mammals internalise everything (grudges, eggs) and furthermore are excessively, flamboyantly wet internally. Sure, everyone’s a bag of chemicals; but mammals slosh. Mammals took the concept of an internal ocean and took it in an unnecessarily splashy direction, added aftermarket mods and a climate-control system,

and just to show off, you leaned across the metaphorical gambling table and said: “my internal ocean is so good-“

“Bullshit,” said the shark, keeping it salty (ha)

“My internal ocean is so brilliantly resilient, more so than any of YOURS,” you said, holding their attention with a digit held aloft, “that for my next trick, I shall artistically recreate the ballad of evolution as a performance. I shall craft a complex chemical ballet depicting the origin of multicellular life – using some of my own material, of course-”

“Oh, ANYONE can lay an egg,” yodel the fish, and the ray adds: “ontogeny does NOT recapitulate phylogeny!!”

And you’re like, “yeah no, it’s an artistic rendition, not a literal thing. Basically I’m going to take some cells and brew them up-“

“Like an egg.”

“Like an egg. An egg but internally.”

“Yeah,” said the viviparous reptile, “yeah, like, that can work really well. I’ve always said it’s the highest test of one’s chemical know-how. It’s a lot of work. And forget about support from your family – forget about support from your PHYLUM – all you get is criticism.”

“I’m gonna do it on purpose forever,” you said. “The highest chemical, thermoregulatory, immunological, everything-logical challenge. It’s gonna be my thing.”

“I’m with you,” said a viviparous fish, stoutly. “Representation.”

You kindly don’t point out, once again, that you’re planning to do this outside the ocean, in a range of temperatures; carrying the dividing cells in a perfect 37.5• solution of saline broth in all terrains, breathing oxygen in a complicated matter, you know, bit more difficult; but you need your allies.

“It’s solid,” says the coelacanth.

“But is it metal?” says the deep-vent organism.

“Oh, it’s metal. I will feed the young,” you say, magnificently, “on an echo of the mother ocean. The first rich feast of cellular matter, the first hunt for sustenance, the first bite they sip of our liquid planet-”

Everyone waits.

“Will be a blood byproduct. My own blood byproduct.”

Everyone looks uncomfortable.

“But,” a hagfish says carefully, “don’t you outdoorsy guys still need your blood?”

You cough and explain that if you stay wet enough internally and hydrate frequently, you should be able to produce enough blood byproduct to sustain your hellish new invention until they can eat your peers.

The outrage that follows includes questions like “is this some furry shit?” And: “milk has WATER in it?”

And you won the bet. “My inner ocean is such a perfect homage to the primordial soup that I can personally cook up an entire live hairy mammal in it. And then generate excess blood byproduct from my body and give it to the small mammal until it gets big.”

That is an absolutely bonkers pitch, by the way, and everyone thought you were a showoff, even before the opposable thumbs. When the winter came, and the winter of winters, and the rain was acid and the air was poison on the tender shells of their eggs and choked the children in the shells; when the plants turned to poison, and the ocean turned against you all; when the climate changed, and the world’s children fell to shadow; your internal ocean was it that held true. A bet laid against the changing fates, a bet laid by a small beast against climate and geography and the forces of outer space, that you won. The dinosaurs fell and the pterosaurs fell and the marine reptiles dwindled, and you, furthest-child, least-looked-for, long-range-spaceship, held hope internally at 37.5 degrees. Which is another thing that humans do, sometimes.


Tags:

#I have been wavering on whether to reblog this for several months #I am not altogether comfortable reblogging something that self-describes as‚ quote‚ ”dangerous inaccuracy” #but think of it as something more like a creation myth #storytime #biology #that one post with the thing #(…I think the 37.5 degrees bit is *trying* to evoke a post-luteal body temperature) #(but I run cold and 37.5 is *definitely* a fever) #(anyway) #this probably deserves some warning tag but I am not sure what #discourse cw? #unreality cw? #body horror? #unsanitary cw?

spideymoth:

doomy:

69143538f7386bc9621c2f0070ac3d39cd1937ed
fd099395ee9d6f8942f12bad7ace2f91dfc9556c

see we need to get back to our roots of shooting something so hard you change its genetics

We literally just learned this in my class about phytoremediation yesterday and it made me laugh so hard because the professor was like “downfalls include tissue damage and sometimes killing the organism”


Tags:

#genetics #biology #the power of science #I didn’t actually laugh aloud but it still amused me enough to reblog #death tw?