I've been chatting with ![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
hannah about a possible SPN au idea with angels as physical beings -- mainly because it sounds like a great excuse to do a lot of world-building.
Some preliminary sketchs of angel-human relations, including
First things first -- angels are physical beings, but rare -- they've gone extinct in Europe (circa 17th century) and Africa, held on in the Americas and Asia in mountain regions, and either never managed to establish in Australasia or were wiped out by competition with humans early. There are European-subspecies angels that were brought over and released/escaped that have established in much of North America, because the endemic subspecies was just as suspectible to imported diseases as the native humans, so the NA populations are a genetically mixed bag -- which means they're more genetically healthy and hanging on, even through a lot of envirnomental degradation.
Angels mate and claim territory in foursomes -- and while they can and do gather in fairly large groups during certain periods of bountiful years, they mostly stay in their home territories once they mature and establish themselves. However, angel song seems to extend into infrasound and they may be communicating over extremely large distances. A lot of their communications seem to be about territory (which ones are open, marginal, bountiful, recently claimed or transfered) and about the status of offspring (finding an appropriate match for your chick sometimes means squares are set up by parents before fledging -- and in some low density populations, before hatching.)
Angels are either red or blue moiety -- this is determined strictly by maternal line, may actually be encoded by mitochondria, and shows up as speculum feathers that are colored one way or the other. It's hard coded into their genetics and their brains, and they will not mate with a member of the same moiety. Angels who have color mutations, feather loss, or wing amputation are not recognized as breeding partners by other angels -- though angels can be fooled by paint, protheses, and feather grafts (literally fooled, it's a cognitive bias akin to humans filling in things in the blind spot of their eye. An angel could watch you apply paint to themselves or another angel, and they'd still think that angel was now of the opposite moeity). An angel will have a husband, wife, and sibspouse -- the husband and wife will be from the opposite moiety, the sibspouse from the same.
For example: in this diagram the black lines are acceptable sexual relationships, the brown lines are sibling-spouse relationships which would be considered incestuous if they were sexual.
Angels hatch from large, leathery eggs in a helpless state -- largely blind, covered in down, with only the instinct to cling (with wings, which have vestigal claws) and whine for food; a baby angel will be carried on their parents' back for several years until they're big enough to walk effectively, and then they're ground foragers under the watch of their parents (and older siblings, if they have them). They're genderless until fledging -- no genetalia at all, just a urethra and anus. The pronouns used for an angel chick are id, ids, idre (stolen from Laurie J Mark's Delan the Mislaid and sequels). Eggs are usually laid in pairs in a nest site -- one by the red-mother, one by the blue-mother -- and raised by all four parents; occasionally one of the females will lay an extra egg, or one of the subadult females still living in the territory will very rarely become gravid and lay an egg in her mothers' nest.
Angels remain as subadults -- sexual active, but without the breeding plummage or full fertility -- until they find a three other angels to square (instead of pair) with and move into an empty territory. This had lead to real problems in recent decades, since there are very few open spaces for a young foursome to move into. Angels can remain in their parents home territories all their lives and remain non-breeding adults if there is nowhere for them to move to; it's kind of a terrible fate, like being a spinister used to be for humans, though such angels usually have lovers and friends generally on the level of betrotheds that they would marry, if any of the four of them could find a territory for them to move to. Angel territories are usually inherited by the youngest offspring left in the nest that are sub-adults, if half the parents have died; the angels will mature into full adults, and solidify whatever tentative relationships they have into a firm square. Any unfledged hatchlings are then raised by their newly married siblings and spouses, and their widowed parents slide back into a status similiar to sub-adult offspring, expected to help raise the children, but not to produce them. This, and egg adoption, are the only times angels will raise youngers that are not their own offspring.
Since the 1950s, there has been an Angel Sanctuary and Research Center funded by the federal government in the US with two campuses -- one in Californina (possibly in Palo Alto?) and one in the east in the Appalachias (maybe in Cumberland MD, or somewhere in West Virginia?), funded research, rehabilitation, and rebreeding efforts. There were very few successes in the first few decades, but recently, with advances in biology, angel behavior and psychology, and better relations with the angelic kinship network, the future is looking more hopeful.
Basically, I'm having fun world-building an SPN au which gives me an excuse to have sedoretu marriages, angels are physical beings, and a non-Apocalypse. We'll see if any story actually gets written.
hannah about a possible SPN au idea with angels as physical beings -- mainly because it sounds like a great excuse to do a lot of world-building.Some preliminary sketchs of angel-human relations, including
First things first -- angels are physical beings, but rare -- they've gone extinct in Europe (circa 17th century) and Africa, held on in the Americas and Asia in mountain regions, and either never managed to establish in Australasia or were wiped out by competition with humans early. There are European-subspecies angels that were brought over and released/escaped that have established in much of North America, because the endemic subspecies was just as suspectible to imported diseases as the native humans, so the NA populations are a genetically mixed bag -- which means they're more genetically healthy and hanging on, even through a lot of envirnomental degradation.
Angels mate and claim territory in foursomes -- and while they can and do gather in fairly large groups during certain periods of bountiful years, they mostly stay in their home territories once they mature and establish themselves. However, angel song seems to extend into infrasound and they may be communicating over extremely large distances. A lot of their communications seem to be about territory (which ones are open, marginal, bountiful, recently claimed or transfered) and about the status of offspring (finding an appropriate match for your chick sometimes means squares are set up by parents before fledging -- and in some low density populations, before hatching.)
Angels are either red or blue moiety -- this is determined strictly by maternal line, may actually be encoded by mitochondria, and shows up as speculum feathers that are colored one way or the other. It's hard coded into their genetics and their brains, and they will not mate with a member of the same moiety. Angels who have color mutations, feather loss, or wing amputation are not recognized as breeding partners by other angels -- though angels can be fooled by paint, protheses, and feather grafts (literally fooled, it's a cognitive bias akin to humans filling in things in the blind spot of their eye. An angel could watch you apply paint to themselves or another angel, and they'd still think that angel was now of the opposite moeity). An angel will have a husband, wife, and sibspouse -- the husband and wife will be from the opposite moiety, the sibspouse from the same.
For example: in this diagram the black lines are acceptable sexual relationships, the brown lines are sibling-spouse relationships which would be considered incestuous if they were sexual.
Angels hatch from large, leathery eggs in a helpless state -- largely blind, covered in down, with only the instinct to cling (with wings, which have vestigal claws) and whine for food; a baby angel will be carried on their parents' back for several years until they're big enough to walk effectively, and then they're ground foragers under the watch of their parents (and older siblings, if they have them). They're genderless until fledging -- no genetalia at all, just a urethra and anus. The pronouns used for an angel chick are id, ids, idre (stolen from Laurie J Mark's Delan the Mislaid and sequels). Eggs are usually laid in pairs in a nest site -- one by the red-mother, one by the blue-mother -- and raised by all four parents; occasionally one of the females will lay an extra egg, or one of the subadult females still living in the territory will very rarely become gravid and lay an egg in her mothers' nest.
Angels remain as subadults -- sexual active, but without the breeding plummage or full fertility -- until they find a three other angels to square (instead of pair) with and move into an empty territory. This had lead to real problems in recent decades, since there are very few open spaces for a young foursome to move into. Angels can remain in their parents home territories all their lives and remain non-breeding adults if there is nowhere for them to move to; it's kind of a terrible fate, like being a spinister used to be for humans, though such angels usually have lovers and friends generally on the level of betrotheds that they would marry, if any of the four of them could find a territory for them to move to. Angel territories are usually inherited by the youngest offspring left in the nest that are sub-adults, if half the parents have died; the angels will mature into full adults, and solidify whatever tentative relationships they have into a firm square. Any unfledged hatchlings are then raised by their newly married siblings and spouses, and their widowed parents slide back into a status similiar to sub-adult offspring, expected to help raise the children, but not to produce them. This, and egg adoption, are the only times angels will raise youngers that are not their own offspring.
Since the 1950s, there has been an Angel Sanctuary and Research Center funded by the federal government in the US with two campuses -- one in Californina (possibly in Palo Alto?) and one in the east in the Appalachias (maybe in Cumberland MD, or somewhere in West Virginia?), funded research, rehabilitation, and rebreeding efforts. There were very few successes in the first few decades, but recently, with advances in biology, angel behavior and psychology, and better relations with the angelic kinship network, the future is looking more hopeful.
Basically, I'm having fun world-building an SPN au which gives me an excuse to have sedoretu marriages, angels are physical beings, and a non-Apocalypse. We'll see if any story actually gets written.
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BTW, did the diagram show up at all? It did when I previewed, but not now. If I need to change the image-host, I should that now.
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It should be working now, though it's an extremely simple diagram...
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I keep meaning to reread the actual Le Guin stories--I've had those books out from the library for, uh, about two months--and plot out a Harry Potter sedoretu story, but I really think I'd want to start with James, Lily, Sirius, and I haven't decided whether the fourth would be Remus or a female Order member about whom we know nothing except that she's dead (or Alice Longbottom) or an OFC.
And if it's an OFC, my OFC or whydoyouneedtoknow's OFC? And if the latter, she's a friend of mine, how would I post this without invoking her heterosexist wrath? Because she and I have already had that argument and neither of us cares to have it again. Also she's already writing a Harry Potter sedoretu if we ignore the bit where a sedoretu is supposed to have gay sex too, and I don't know what I could add but if the concept exists among wizards before her characters think up their variant then I'd be taking away an important bit from her circa-Goblet plotline.
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You and the other people are writing different characters, right? Nothing to stop you from writing your own sedoretu fic -- it's an intriguing thought-experiment. Otoh, if she's not writing a sedoretu with gay sex, than she's really missed the point of LeGuin's writing, which is all about anthropology and social engineering...
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Not sure she's ever read Le Guin, actually. I think her whole thought process at the beginning was 'let's get Sirius out of Azkaban and have him and Remus be happy with their wives, who are of course best friends, and the four of them raise Harry, and if Remus's wife is Hermione's much older sister then they can also raise Hermione, and hey what would happen if they also raised Draco, and just for symmetry let's give Sirius and his wife a daughter...' and then it snowballed. I'm pretty sure neither anthropology nor social engineering ever crossed her mind.
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... but why does she want it to be a sedoretu?! That idea doesn't need a sedoretu -- you can have two couples who are close friends in fiction without dragging in an anthropological SF idea into it!
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Sorry, I haven't been clear--I think she's writing a sedoretu variant and I'm not at all sure she'd agree.
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I don't think she is, since it doesn't seem to be a four-person marriage. Admittedly, you're describing a situation that sounds emotionally incestuous to the point where a sedoretu would be a safer alternative just because it would clarify boundaries, but people are allowed to write badly or disturbingly if they want to.
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*shrugs* Four adults all playing parental roles to four children held in common, is one of the key points that's got me thinking she would be writing a sedoretu if she were not heterosexist and if she knows what a sedoretu is.