Thread by @AlexandraErin

No, YOU spent an hour yesterday researching heraldic tinctures and attitudes to make a "blazon code" (cf. handkerchief code) for a sci-fi Omegaverse setting.

It's like... okay, the gender-equivalent dynamics of this world require people to be able to signal multiple statuses to each other, along with what they're looking for, in a way that's distinct and visible at a distance outside of pheromone range, and it has to be standard.

And then it's like, oh. There is an already existing visual language with standardized vocabulary that incorporates animals of different orders/ranks, postures, directional movement, with a limited but expressive color palette and room for additional notations.

And while I'm specifying "visual language" because it needs to be something that transmits continually at a comfortable distance, heraldry also has a standardized conversion to verbal description (the blazon), allowing for accessibility features in a high-tech setting.

This creates room for negotiating and navigating consent in a genre-setting (milieu, I guess?) where proximity + biology = enthusiastic banging and possibly deep, life-long psychological/spiritual bonds.

Which, you know, I didn't dip my toe into this pond because I was interested in stories where the animalistic fucking is always moderated by rigorous consent. But I need to imagine the kinky smut trash that fires my imagination is happening within a functional society.

The heraldry thing began when I decided to try sitting down and just banging out a short story about a Beta going to an Omega club looking for the proverbial unicorn to join her pairing with her Alpha, and I got to the part of how she would know who to approach.

And I tried some variations on a handkerchief code, then thought, "What if people looking to be someone's unicorn just wear unicorn accessories?" and then I thought "The unicorn's posture could convey what situation they des... oh, this is just heraldry."

And this is a sci-fi setting where consumer electronics are roughly at par with the best contemporary-to-real-life earth tech, and right now you can get a body-wearable device that shows an image or animation or whatever.