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lightreadsThe Core of the Sun
3/5. Translation from the Finish. A weird (that's a genre designation, to be clear) specfic alternate history where women have been "domesticated" – i.e. genetically and socially altered to be stupid, docile, and of a specific blonde stacked phenotype. I assume it serves as sufficient content notes to say that this is a society where depriving a man of heterosexual sex is considered a violation of his human rights. Our protagonist was born with the right look, but the wrong mind. She can pass as an "eloi," but she's actually a morlock, or one of the women too smart to be allowed to reproduce (yes, that's an HG Wells reference). Anyway, all of that is backdrop to an exceedingly strange story about her addiction to capsaicin and the synesthetic, transcendental high she can get from it.
So let's talk about the omegaverse, since I spent most of this book thinking about it. The thing is. The thing is. I have always been dubious of the omegaverse, occasionally entertained by it, occasionally impressed by it. And this book made me think about it a lot because it's another universe where a gender's sociopolitical inferiority – and its status as sexual and reproductive slaves in all but name – is specifically rooted in biology. In actual biology, I mean, not in the largely illusory things that are supposed to define the difference between men and women in our world. Women in this book are genuinely unintelligent and genuinely unable to care for themselves; it's lack of schooling, yes, but it's also physiological. Omegas in a lot of "traditional" omegaverse are physiologically programmed for social and sexual submissiveness and passivity to the point where consent and autonomy no longer have any meaning.
And I just. I have come to be pretty certain that a universe in which rape culture is coded into biology isn't going to be telling me anything particularly new or interesting or insightful about our universe, in which rape culture is encoded into . . . culture.
This book didn't (though it was doing a number of other interesting things . . . did I mention the capsaicin addiction? And our protagonist's missing sister, and a last-minute turn to the . . . weirdly fantastical?). And very, very, very few omegaverse stories ever have, either, though many of them explicitly claim to be doing so. Which is not a huge surprise, but it was nice that this book worked me through my thought process on it.
3/5. Translation from the Finish. A weird (that's a genre designation, to be clear) specfic alternate history where women have been "domesticated" – i.e. genetically and socially altered to be stupid, docile, and of a specific blonde stacked phenotype. I assume it serves as sufficient content notes to say that this is a society where depriving a man of heterosexual sex is considered a violation of his human rights. Our protagonist was born with the right look, but the wrong mind. She can pass as an "eloi," but she's actually a morlock, or one of the women too smart to be allowed to reproduce (yes, that's an HG Wells reference). Anyway, all of that is backdrop to an exceedingly strange story about her addiction to capsaicin and the synesthetic, transcendental high she can get from it.
So let's talk about the omegaverse, since I spent most of this book thinking about it. The thing is. The thing is. I have always been dubious of the omegaverse, occasionally entertained by it, occasionally impressed by it. And this book made me think about it a lot because it's another universe where a gender's sociopolitical inferiority – and its status as sexual and reproductive slaves in all but name – is specifically rooted in biology. In actual biology, I mean, not in the largely illusory things that are supposed to define the difference between men and women in our world. Women in this book are genuinely unintelligent and genuinely unable to care for themselves; it's lack of schooling, yes, but it's also physiological. Omegas in a lot of "traditional" omegaverse are physiologically programmed for social and sexual submissiveness and passivity to the point where consent and autonomy no longer have any meaning.
And I just. I have come to be pretty certain that a universe in which rape culture is coded into biology isn't going to be telling me anything particularly new or interesting or insightful about our universe, in which rape culture is encoded into . . . culture.
This book didn't (though it was doing a number of other interesting things . . . did I mention the capsaicin addiction? And our protagonist's missing sister, and a last-minute turn to the . . . weirdly fantastical?). And very, very, very few omegaverse stories ever have, either, though many of them explicitly claim to be doing so. Which is not a huge surprise, but it was nice that this book worked me through my thought process on it.
no subject
Date: 2017-08-07 01:44 am (UTC)Any omegaverse stories you know that fit the exception?
no subject
Date: 2017-08-07 02:30 am (UTC)Yes, lots! But the one that immediately pops to mind is this long MCU wip which is throwing a lot of spaghetti at the wall, not all of which sticks, but it did make me go "huh!" a lot. Content notes for...a lot of stuff, which I can be more specific about if you like. This story strikes me as doing some of the things fanfic is really good for: being meandery and indulgent and exploratory in ways published work often can't.
Contrast this Yuri on Ice wip, which is the last one I bounced hard off of. It's not a fair comparison as the yoi author by no means has the skill toolbox of the MCU author. But the yoi story is far more traditional and very interested in this idea of omega oppression, i.e. gender-based oppression against a very very rape culturey backdrop, but in a way that comes across as 'ah, so rape culture is your narrative kink and you like lovingly describing it in ways that are actually verging on creepy even as you keep insisting how horrible it is, I see.'
no subject
Date: 2017-08-07 09:53 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2017-08-10 03:03 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2017-08-07 04:45 pm (UTC)And I just. I have come to be pretty certain that a universe in which rape culture is coded into biology isn't going to be telling me anything particularly new or interesting or insightful about our universe, in which rape culture is encoded into . . . culture.
This is where I grew bored of omegaverse, but coming from the other end of the spectrum. I was completely down with a convenient trope enabling kinky funtimes featuring giant knots and rape play, but then authors kept trying to make it meaningful and being terrible at it.
no subject
Date: 2017-08-08 01:52 am (UTC)Yeah, I mean, everything is better when the author knows what kink they're writing about and doesn't feel compelled to shame themselves and their readers by pretending it's something it's not.
no subject
Date: 2017-08-08 02:04 am (UTC)Iow, if you genetically engineer all your women to be stupid, docile, and blonde, your men are going to be that too, in two generations or less.
no subject
Date: 2017-08-08 03:07 am (UTC)Yeah, I kept muttering about that, too. TBF, a lot of the men in this book are preeeeeetty stupid.