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kraitMy prompt for December 8th was from sylvaine: xeno!
What can I possibly say about xeno... while hoping to keep the post under 10,000 words? :D
I shall start with my greatest pet peeve in AO3 tagging: "xeno" as a tag is used for two very distinctly different things.
Xenophilia: Xeno-kink. I (or a character in the story) get my kinky groove on when aliens demonstrate their nonhumanness. Forget Spock's double-ridged cock; bring me autonomous tentacles, extra limbs or eyes, claws or fangs, or ovipositors! Even more important, give me thought processes no human would follow, urges or instincts that don't map to ours, senses that don't quite translate, and inhuman priorities!
Xenobiology: I put on my science hat and begin to squee when the details of alien biology are explained. Vulcans have no tear ducts? Tell me how they keep their eyes from drying to crust in that furnace of a planet! That character has gills but can also walk around on land? Explain how a humanoid torso can have room for two separate respiratory systems -- preferably with diagrams. Your aliens can bioluminesce? What environment did they develop in that made that necessary?
There ought to be a third category -- Xenoculture or Xenopsychology -- but it's so uncommon as a primary focus that I don't think I've ever seen it used as a story tag, and it can arise out of either a xenophilia or xenobiology focus: What are the societal ramifications of glowing aliens? How does a species that is amphibious regard creatures limited to either land or water? If your instincts don't match a human's, does that make humans come across as ridiculous, or as frightening? I think it tends to get lumped under xenokink, given it's a little easier to do narratively when there's a human in the frame to react and give contrast; if it's coming from a xenobio perspective, I see it more often in meta than in story form.
As you can tell, I'm a huge fan of all of these things, but it's really irritating to be looking for one and find the other; sometimes you want sex, and sometimes you want science. Moreover, if you're writing one of these, you'd probably rather not get scores of dissatisfied readers who stumbled in looking for [porn|geekery] and instead found [biology lectures|implausible porn].
Rarest of all are the stories that unite them all. Just as canon often uses "alien biology!" as a catch-all 'solution' to plot problems without any regard for how feasible it is (shapeshifters that violate laws of mass!), porn likewise tends to prioritise sexiness over biological possibility (egg-laying tentacle "plants"! ten-inch fangs that mysteriously don't interfere with kissing!) or psychosocial influence (if her species can fly, why was she afraid of climbing the tower in an earlier episode?). Bio geeks, on the other hand, are concerned with building a coherent system out of scattered (often contradictory) points; it's hard to balance "this is how a complex organism's system might work" with "it needs to make three gallons of jizz every five minutes, because HAWT" or "wouldn't a circulatory system with two fully-redundant pump organs make for very different connotations of certain English phrases?"
Fun fact: the stories that combine them are the stories I aspire to write. :D
Much Later Edit: There is also xenofiction, which is a story told from a nonhuman perspective! Unsurprisingly, it's another favourite trope of mine. :D
sylvaine: xeno!What can I possibly say about xeno... while hoping to keep the post under 10,000 words? :D
I shall start with my greatest pet peeve in AO3 tagging: "xeno" as a tag is used for two very distinctly different things.
Xenophilia: Xeno-kink. I (or a character in the story) get my kinky groove on when aliens demonstrate their nonhumanness. Forget Spock's double-ridged cock; bring me autonomous tentacles, extra limbs or eyes, claws or fangs, or ovipositors! Even more important, give me thought processes no human would follow, urges or instincts that don't map to ours, senses that don't quite translate, and inhuman priorities!
Xenobiology: I put on my science hat and begin to squee when the details of alien biology are explained. Vulcans have no tear ducts? Tell me how they keep their eyes from drying to crust in that furnace of a planet! That character has gills but can also walk around on land? Explain how a humanoid torso can have room for two separate respiratory systems -- preferably with diagrams. Your aliens can bioluminesce? What environment did they develop in that made that necessary?
There ought to be a third category -- Xenoculture or Xenopsychology -- but it's so uncommon as a primary focus that I don't think I've ever seen it used as a story tag, and it can arise out of either a xenophilia or xenobiology focus: What are the societal ramifications of glowing aliens? How does a species that is amphibious regard creatures limited to either land or water? If your instincts don't match a human's, does that make humans come across as ridiculous, or as frightening? I think it tends to get lumped under xenokink, given it's a little easier to do narratively when there's a human in the frame to react and give contrast; if it's coming from a xenobio perspective, I see it more often in meta than in story form.
As you can tell, I'm a huge fan of all of these things, but it's really irritating to be looking for one and find the other; sometimes you want sex, and sometimes you want science. Moreover, if you're writing one of these, you'd probably rather not get scores of dissatisfied readers who stumbled in looking for [porn|geekery] and instead found [biology lectures|implausible porn].
Rarest of all are the stories that unite them all. Just as canon often uses "alien biology!" as a catch-all 'solution' to plot problems without any regard for how feasible it is (shapeshifters that violate laws of mass!), porn likewise tends to prioritise sexiness over biological possibility (egg-laying tentacle "plants"! ten-inch fangs that mysteriously don't interfere with kissing!) or psychosocial influence (if her species can fly, why was she afraid of climbing the tower in an earlier episode?). Bio geeks, on the other hand, are concerned with building a coherent system out of scattered (often contradictory) points; it's hard to balance "this is how a complex organism's system might work" with "it needs to make three gallons of jizz every five minutes, because HAWT" or "wouldn't a circulatory system with two fully-redundant pump organs make for very different connotations of certain English phrases?"
Fun fact: the stories that combine them are the stories I aspire to write. :D
Much Later Edit: There is also xenofiction, which is a story told from a nonhuman perspective! Unsurprisingly, it's another favourite trope of mine. :D
no subject
Date: 2013-12-12 03:26 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-12-12 03:46 am (UTC)there's a lot of the alien sexing going on behind the scenes - all these half-alien kids running around
See, this is where being equally into the xenobiology gets me -- I can't buy half-aliens, it shatters my suspension of disbelief and throws me right out of the story. :/
The whole xeno thing is definitely why I adore C.J. Cherryh's sci-fi, though; she is one author who does manage to incorporate all three xeno-things into her work!
no subject
Date: 2013-12-12 04:11 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-12-13 01:04 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-12-12 11:25 am (UTC)"wouldn't a circulatory system with two fully-redundant pump organs make for very different connotations of certain English phrases?"
Ooooh, I never thought of that! That would make suuuuch interesting stories/meta *__________*
I can never decide whether I like xenobiology or xenophilia more. Suffice to say I like both a lot *________* (and I had no idea AO3 had such inaccurate tagging on the subject. Hmpf. Clearly whoever did that tagging is not into xeno! :P)
no subject
Date: 2013-12-13 01:06 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-12-12 07:37 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-12-13 01:09 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-12-12 08:44 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-12-13 01:08 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-12-13 09:25 pm (UTC)Of course the real reason is because none of this ever occured to the design team.