84/? - Underline the Black (omegaverse) - Efnisien/Gary
Title: Underline the Black
Rating: Explicit
Pairing: Efnisien ap Wledig/Dr Gary Konowalous
Tags: Hurt/Comfort, Angst, Darkfic, Disturbing themes, Age Gap, Omegaverse, Alpha/Alpha, no Mpreg, Medical experimentation, Medical trauma, Dominance/Submission, Dystopian universe, Forced bonding, Forced relationship, Imprisonment, Nonconsensual medical procedures, PTSD, Flashbacks, Nightmares, Chronic illness, Mating cycles/Heats, Knotting, Miscommunication, Trauma recovery, Mind control, Child Abuse, Hope, Hopeful ending.
Summary: Efnisien ap Wledig is an omega born into an all-alpha family. Abandoned by his birth mother and raised by his aunt, he is subjected to a lifetime of medical experimentation and brainwashing and believes himself to be an alpha. But the experiments begin to fail, and he is abandoned yet again to an Omega Rehabilitation Facility, where the family expects he will be retrained into the ‘perfect omega’ and placed in an arranged marriage, or be eliminated if this is no longer possible.
The Facility don’t know about the experiments, and Efnisien doesn’t even know why he’s in there in the first place, since he’s an alpha…isn’t he? One thing’s for certain, he definitely doesn’t need an alpha companion, no matter what the staff at the facility seem to think.
Underline the Black - Chapter 84 - Don't Shoot the Messenger @ AO3
In which the media finds out that Gary's in a relationship with an 'omega,' which means James' family finds out too.
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Thanks to all the Patreon and Ream supporters for making this story possible!
The following early access extras are also currently available on the Augus & Gwyn, and Efnisien & Gary tiers at Patreon and Ream:
Underline the Red - 05 - Caleb/Faber
Underline the Red - 06 - Caleb/Faber
Underline the Gold - 07 - Flitmouse/Anton
The Nascent Diplomat - 43 - Augus/Gwyn
Constellations - 05 - Efnisien + Gwyn (post Falling Falling Stars)
Constellations - 06 - Efnisien + Gwyn (post Falling Falling Stars)
Constellations - 07 - Efnisien + Gwyn (post Falling Falling Stars)
Underline the Blue - 14 - Nate/Janusz
Underline the Blue - 15 - Nate/Janusz
Want another way to support my writing? // I have a Patreon account! // Come check out REAM! (Patreon mirror) // Buy a Ko-Fi!
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Bah.
This is a Goatlings rant I wrote in response to a thread that's been bugging me lately. After finishing it, I realized that it would accomplish nothing for anybody, but I still want the catharsis of making it public, so I'm posting it here. Please pay it no mind if you don't play that game.
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Okay, this thread has bothered me since it was first posted, but I'm saying something now because it's bothering me even more with the kind of support it's getting.
Everyone on this thread… you do realize that just "banning" this behavior wouldn't stop it from happening? Like, I think most of y'all know that and just want to voice your grievances for the behavior, but you're not offering a real solution to the problem and are just looking to punish people that don't share your playstyle.
I don't like it either, but someone saying that their goat is for "storage" is just giving the courtesy of telling you not to waste your time offering on their listing. If storing goats was "banned," people would just stop adding "storage" to their listing and continue to ignore/reject offers for their goat, which wastes everyone's time.
It's not like you can moderate this kind of behavior to "make" the person trade their goat away if they list them. Sometimes people just don't make offers that the trader wants or thinks is fair. How could you realistically tell the difference between that and people that don't intend to accept any offer for their goat?
Goats that are in the Trade Center for over 2 weeks are already hidden from view, so eventually all storage goats get hidden, while people actually trying to trade their goats tend to relist them. So it's annoying in the moment, but storage goats don't clog up the Trade Center any more than goats that just never get traded "clog" it up.
But let's explore possible solutions:
Let's suppose that instead of being "hidden", goats that are listed for more than 2 weeks are returned to the user's profile. This could discourage users to stop storing goats because the process has been made much more annoying, but what is actually being gained for everyone else?
Nothing changes for people making "legit" trades, because ALL goats that are listed for more than 2 weeks are now being returned, so traders still have to remake their listings, which they were likely going to do anyway, and determined users who REALLY don't want their goats on their profile will now keep relisting their storage goat, clogging up the Trade Center again.
Any kind of "fix" for the Traders, like an "easy relist button," would also be available to "Storers", so we just wind up at the same problem: having to separate legit trades from storage trades, except it's worse for literally everyone.
A real solution to this problem is to offer a feature that would appease this behavior, which for the most part is the inability to "hide" goats on your user profile.
Like, people who think this is a way to "show-off," have you considered the reason why storage goats are usually high value or otherwise unique? If it was to "show-off," then these expensive storage goats would keep getting relisted to maximize the number of people looking at them, but you generally don't see that happening. Storage goats tend to be listed once and then disappear into the void forever.
But, if the problem is that they can't hide goats on their profile, then this is probably a case of the user not actually resonating with goat's design, but it being too valuable to want to trade at this time.
Most people just aren't so generous as to abandon goats they don't like if they know they're worth millions of SS. At the same time, trading for that much money may seem daunting when they're still on the fence about wanting to keep the goat or not.
I know I've been in that position where I have a very valuable goat that just doesn't quite resonate with me: I've owned probably 3 different Candy Bones goats over the years because I keep going back-and-forth on whether I like it enough to keep when I couldn't think of a good treasure theme for it.
Instead of wasting millions of SS rebuying something that I already had because I was lacking inspiration, I could have just "stored" the goat until I finally came up with a good treasure + name idea for it.
Sometimes the situation isn't money driven: there are a lot of Basic Grays in "storage" too, usually because they have a name that the user wants to keep, but may not have a "suitable" AD for.
This kind of storing is directly the result of duplicate names being impossible, but that is a whole other conversation.
However, I do sympathize with this form of storage even more than the first example:
I have had goats with names I wanted to keep, but traded away because I was running out of slots and I would rather keep goats that I had a good AD + name + treasure combo rather than just one or two of those.
Usually when this happens, I will change the goat's name before abandoning/trading them so that in the future if I have enough slots to get it back, it'll still be there. After all, if it was free when I first thought of it, then it'll probably be free later. Nonetheless, there have been occasions where it turns out that someone swiped the name from underneath me because I freed it up. So even though I might have thought of the name first, someone else got it because I was careless enough to "free it up" when I didn't have a good AD for it.
I know, I'm clearly the one at fault in that story: if I really liked the name that much to be sad when someone else grabbed it, then I should have just kept them and accepted that they would be "incomplete" instead of "freeing" them. But, if I had "stored" the goat, then I wouldn't have had that problem, I could have just kept the name until I figured something out for it instead of losing what was arguably rightfully mine.
But, I learned that lesson, and right now I do have a couple of goats that are using "placeholder" ADs (BurgerTime and Sumairu) while I hold out hope that an AD that really resonates with me and suits them gets released.
Now, maybe some people would consider this ideal behavior: just "sucking it up" and keeping these goats that I really don't want to show off on my profile instead of "storing" them, but it's frustrating for me too: I don't like having "incomplete" goats on my profile. If I had a place to put these goats without clogging up the Trade Center, then I would. The only reason I don't personally store goats is that despite my defenses so far, I still find goat storing incredibly annoying to deal with. I check the Trade Center daily, so I know how annoying sorting through storage goats can really be, and I don't blame anyone for being upset about it.
BUT, I know this is just the result of the site not having an alternative feature.
I told all these anecdotes to help illustrate why some users may participate in this behavior, and why it is rarely to be malicious.
Goat storing is the result of the failure/lack of other features.
Trying to "ban" users from this behavior is just going to make this all more annoying for everyone. Yes, it sucks having to sort though storage goats, I'm not saying it isn't, but the solution isn't to ban the behavior without an alternative.
Instead, the site should be offering new features to curb the behavior, and wouldn't you know, "Goat Daycare" is something that staff is considering. While it could honestly be years before it's actually implemented, the fact that such a feature is being considered at all implies that staff is at least somewhat aware that this is a feature that people want.
TLDR: You're not wrong for thinking this behavior is annoying, but banning the behavior outright isn't the solution.
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