Hurting myself with this but oh well.
The Dance of the Dragons ending with most of the Targaryens dead. Aemond is King and he marries Lucerys to keep House Targaryen going. However, by this point Aemond already has a bastard child with Alys. Lucerys gives him children but none of them could rival their older half sibling that their father dotes on so much. Nevermind that the child was a bastard, Aemond treats them like how Viserys treats Rhaenyra. Lucerys and Aemond’s children grow up neglected by their own father, with only Lucerys loving and protecting them.
Since the Greens do win in this, most of the Lords support Aemond’s favouritism since they don’t like Lucerys. Although they can’t do anything about the marriage, they can influence Aemond’s bastard into going against Lucerys and his brood.
Aemond’s bastard grows up hating Lucerys and his children, believing he should be the heir and not some weaklings born from a Black. His hatred grows even more when all of his half-siblings’ dragon eggs hatched and his doesn’t.
Don’t get me wrong, Aemond does love Lucerys and their children in his own emotionally constipated way but his grudge over his entire family dying in the war stops him from seeing the divide he’s created by choosing to recognise and favour his bastard child. (Viserys-coded)
Aemond only realises the mess he’s created once he’s sitting on the ground watching a wailing Lucerys cradling their dead children to his chest.
The bastard child is killed and Lords are burnt but it’s too late. Lucerys is inconsolable and House Targaryen is once again left in tatters by the same man who vowed to never be like his father.
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Hi! I apologize if you've spoken abt this already, bur how come ruts aren't really a thing in the UtR verse? Anton mentioned he's never had one, and they're very rare - is there a biological reason for it? Did Gary ever have one? (Starting to see what he is like during regular sex, I feel like he'd commit actual murder-by-cock during ruts fjfnfjnfjf) Anyway, love your writing to bits!!
Hi anon!
So I'm gonna write an essay, buckle up (I always write an essay on this stuff, I can't help it, I signed a contract at birth that said I would)
Firstly, ruts are sort of a 'new invention' in the omegaverse landscape. And by new I mean I'm really old and some people don't remember omegaverse without it. But I sure do! Only omegas went into heat, because heat indicated hyperfertility, and alphas were already hyperfertile without a rut. That was the whole point. You know, that's why they make such a perfect match. Hyperfertile mate meet hyperfertile mate.
They didn't need a rut.
Ruts came along later, and honestly in most of the fiction I've read that have them, ruts are very rarely written, and are often more like a threat hanging in the background. A sort of 'lol make sure you have food and water because like people go to hospital if they're in rut / heat at the same time.' Literal just about fuck-or-die situation. Or fuck-and-die. Probably more like fuck-and-who-cares-about-anything-else.
Anyone who has ever fucked a lot in a marathon session knows that eventually you just need carbs. *coughs*
Ruts are conceptually a TON of fun to think about. It's like authors went 'you know what hyperfertile alphas need? Something like a heat, that also makes them completely out of control.'
The thing is... alphas could already go completely out of control around an omega for a lot of reasons. It happened in fated mates stories. It happened in 'an omega is in heat and I just can't help it' (oh bless all those noncon omegaverse stories we have which are literally 'you just smelled so good you had to be mine'). A lot of the things ruts are supposed to achieve, already can easily be achieved in omegaverse.
Conceptually, ruts can be interesting as 'the alpha is also super vulnerable and helpless and needy during this time' but it's almost never written that way and it's not how I like to think about it. And in terms of worldbuilding, the places where it's made the most sense has almost always been as a dystopian thing that's almost dreaded by both the alphas and omegas (and everyone else) alike, and is just as much likely to be controlled by suppressants as heats, because no one likes to turn into an Automatic robot rapist. (Even though that's basically what many alphas become if they smell an omega in heat, I'm not saying ruts are the Department of Redundancy Deparment or anything, but they're a little bit like City of Redundancy in the shire of Redundancy population Already Covered In General Omegaverse tropes in the country of But It's Fun Anyway continent of Redundant.)
I love reading stories with rut worldbuilding but I have to suspend my disbelief so hard. And I know, I know, you kind of have to do that with omegaverse anyway, but there just comes a point where it's like 'but...the heat...triggers a response in alphas...thats mean a rut...is not needed...because that's what the heat does.' In some ways it takes some power and strength away from the symbolism of the omega's heat (romantically it's very interesting as the trope that renders the often hypermasculine character as so helpless to the omega that they basically have to have sex with them (guess what a rut is? Same same not different! Okay it can be different. It's often not though.))
As a result, I personally like worldbuilding that differentiates a general alpha response to an omega's heat, to a rut. And therefore if a rut is the more extreme version of a general 'must fuck' alpha response, it's likely to go pretty not...great. Much like unfulfilled heats are often characterised as agonising, I like to think of ruts are potentially very fatal. (Warning! Warning! The hypermasculinity levels are critical, boss! He's gonna blow! This time his heart! Not his cock!)
The worldbuilding mentioned in the chapter you're referring to - in the Underline the Rainbow universe - states that ruts are vestigial. It's killed too many alphas who have experienced it.
It basically knocked itself out of the genetic line, in the same way that peak alphas are going the same way because people just don't do great living like that in a functional society.
Also consider the...setting of the story if you will. This is a place where we're rehabilitating omegas and helping them recover from extreme trauma. The professional response to 'I go into rut all the time' alpha companion candidates is 'see a health professional, you can never ever ever ever ever be a companion here, because we...care about our omegas, and don't think your rut takes precedent over their health during a heat. Go away.'
None of these alphas go into rut! None of them should! It would be terrible from a story perspective (I mean, for me. I'm writing trauma recovery).
The only alpha on the grounds who potentially could go into rut is Caleb, I think he has the disposition for it. And I think it would be speedily suppressed with heavy doses of medication for the safety of any omega near him.
The thing that really frustrates me from a worldbuilding perspective is that in some ways, heats make sense. It's a fertile period for an animal that cannot afford the physiological cost of being that fertile all the time. That's it. In humans who already have menstrual cycles (which create fertility windows so the woman or person with the uterus doesn't have to be consistently fertile the same amount all the time), this makes actual biological sense.
Ruts in omegaverse don't even mean what they mean in nature, it's so frustrating. In nature, ruts are sort of connected to mates, but not about fucking them endlessly most of the time. It's about competing with rivals. Going into rut is marking your territory, attacking fellow stags (sometimes to the death), and keeping hold of your herd or flock. This makes...much less biological sense. It's not how it's written in fiction most of the time, and it's really just 'what if heat but alpha.' I'd love if ruts were 'HHH I have to FIGHT every ALPHA I SEE to the DEATH or at least MEASURE MY HEIGHT against HIS or SHOUT to see whose VOICE is LOUDER we are DICK MEASURING NOW my dick is BIGGER I am going to FUCK AN OMEGA IN TRIUMPH. YOU! THERE! COME HERE! No wait where are you going? Stop running!' That's... that's the world I want to live in sdalkfjsaflksaj
I have no problems with that, most omegaverse is just pure mindless pornography for fun, or very thin worldbuilding for fun, and orgasms are had by many and it achieves it's purpose.
But I can't justify something like that making sense in the Underline the Rainbow as a thing these characters experience. I like it as a 'oh this used to happen but we couldn't just go around killing each other and also we died so...' I'm pretty sure it's taught about in schools, lol. In the same way that alphas dueling each other to the death is now pretty much illegal in most places, some things you either just culturally change for the betterment of society (which is...literally the purpose of Hillview), and some things you X out of your own genetic lineages because the thing itself kills you.
Since ruts are in most serious omegaverses presented as extreme events, and alphas are already hyperfertile (in worlds where betas exist), they're just redundant.
Fun in PWPs, and fun for angst, but not the kind of angst I'm personally going for.
Thanks for coming to my really-not-a-TED Talk! :D
(Er so no, Gary has never gone into rut).
(In webtoon Define the Relationship one of the alphas goes into rut but because he's like a submissive alpha he basically needs to be fucked like he's in heat by another alpha and I just actually do kind of love the subversion of 'what if heat but alpha' where it's like 'no literally what if they have to be knotted and they have a whole bunch of shame about that.' But almost no one is writing it that way so aslkfjdsa)
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