I've seen the Mron tag many times, but what does it all mean?
[In response to this post (I assume!)]
Mron is the name of a sci-fi fantasy world/story I’ve been playing around with for something like 15 years now. The story started as a collaborative thing between a few friends, and at this point it’s mostly just... me circling back to it like a disoriented moth to a porch lamp every few months, and holding up whatever I come up with for Daetur and Tejoxys to ooh and aah at.
A bit of context and a snippet of my writing below the cut!
Theoretically I’m going to eventually turn it into a webcomic or graphic novel, but it, uh. It probably needs a plot first! It has a main cast, and a LOT of worldbuilding, but no real coherent plot.
When I tag posts with “Mron” it’s as inspiration for the story, or because the post reminds me of the world/characters. Posts that end up in the tag are usually:
androids and AI
weird fashion
gender politics and gnc people
aquatic and mermaid aesthetic
And all combined, that’s a pretty good picture of the setting. It’s an aquatic world, wherein humans evolved from (basically) mermaids, and built a society on top of the water. At the time the story takes place, that society is structured vertically in a massive city of skyscrapers. The setting has illegal magic, androids (called bioids in the story) who’ve accidentally been given souls, soul manipulation and transferal, mermaids in aquariums, and a deeply classist society that has 3 recognized genders.
The 3 main characters are:
Kade: an ex idol, currently a freelance engineer and bioid mechanic; also the guy who accidentally gave bioids souls, and now can’t take it back OR convince anyone it’s even happened. Had a nervous breakdown and now he mostly stays in his apartment.
Jezz (J377): a bioid who appears to be on the run, and needs a place to lay low for reasons he is not willing to divulge (Kade lets him stay at his place, they might fall in love, so far 90% of the “plot” is just them talking)
Modeus: Kade’s younger sibling, an idol their parents had when they weren’t satisfied with how Kade turned out. Cracks under the pressure their parents put on them, and also ends up staying at Kade’s place.
After combing through my Mron docs, most of the scenes I have are very choppy and written as scripts for comics, rather than actual prose. I did like this little snippet, though:
Context:
1) All buildings in the setting are structured vertically in segregated tiers called “blades”. The higher up you go, the wealthier the people who live and work there. A person needs to be authorized in order to pass from a lower blade to a higher blade, and one way of doing that is to purchase a day pass. You might do this to go to a job interview, or to visit a person or an attraction (a zoo, a concert, etc.), or to shop in a nicer shop than you have on your blade.
2) This is part of the conversation when Kade and Jezz first meet. Kade went to a restaurant, and Jezz accidentally sat down at his table while trying to lay low. Kade, curious about why a bioid would possibly be acting this sus, encourages him to stay and make conversation. In this bit, Jezz has asked how Kade knows he’s hiding something, and Kade (rude self sabotaging idiot that he is) has bluntly dissected pretty much everything about Jezz’s appearance, ending with:
He doesn’t need to go on, but he’s never been one for half-assing blunt criticism. “Plus,” he says, gesturing at the bioid’s attire, “You’re on the wrong blade for those clothes. Only hipsters, day passes, and eccentric celebrities wear cheap, boring outfits up here.”
He expects defensive annoyance or self conscious fidgeting, but Jezz simply observes him in return and takes a sip of water, ice clinking against the glass. Kade can see his lips tense ever so slightly in what might-- might-- be a barely suppressed grin.
“Which are you, then?”
It startles a laugh out of him. “Solid comeback!” he says, raising his own glass. Oh, he wants more of whatever that is. “I’m an eccentric ex celebrity, thanks for not noticing.” Jezz blinks, and before the man can panic, Kade rushes to add, “Genuinely. I appreciate it.”
There's a very important distinction that lots of people miss the mark on between:
"Conventional beauty standards are subjective, bigoted, and can go fuck themselves”
versus
“Everyone who doesn't meet conventional beauty standards should just celebrate being UGLY”
Like...
If “celebrating ugliness” is the most liberating way you've found to reject beauty standards, power to you, but you’re still functioning within that same bigoted spectrum of accepted beauty. You’re still saying that some people are beautiful and others ARE UGLY, and even if you try to remove the inherently implied “beautiful people are worth more” from the equation, you’re still accepting the beauty standards as handed to you.
The objective really needs to be to deliberately and thoughtfully evaluate why we think of beauty vs ugliness the way we do, and why it matters, and IF it matters, and WHEN it matters, and then put in the work to undo what’s been done to us.
Undo the messages you’ve internalized.
Reveling in feeling like a gremlin or whatever can definitely feel powerful, and it feels active and fun, but it also takes work and doesn’t undo that you do, still, feel ugly. And society is still telling you (and everyone else) that ugliness is bad. And it will continue to do so FOREVER. And if you say out loud in a public space (like, hey, on social media), even in celebration, that you’re ugly-- then everyone who looks like you but hasn’t decided to “celebrate their ugliness” gets stabbed in the back by your celebration.
The much more lasting, and peaceful, and harmless route toward rejecting beauty standards is to actually truly reject them. And if you’re not there yet? Consider keeping your celebration of ugliness to yourself-- or keep it mindful, at the very least.
Be careful of who’s actually feeling your growing pains.
you post is tagged 'mron' and i was wondering if you could tell me what that was? i've never heard it before :)
[x]
It’s one of the stories I’ve been working on on and off for many years. It’s a sci-fi fantasy type story set in a world with lots of robots and AI, and one of the big social issues the main characters have to deal with is the concept of beauty and how important it is.
The main character is a person who was created by his parents specifically to be beautiful (through selective genetic modification and some other things) and has rejected that in a lot of different ways over the course of his life. Other characters include some AI who also have issues with having been deliberately designed with a certain aesthetic in mind, a model/idol who was designed the same way the main character was but hasn’t been able to rebel in the same ways, and other queer characters who have embraced various forms of gender nonconforming presentation (for their world as well as ours). Beauty, and what it means to different people, is a big theme for the story.
When I tag anything with that tag (or my other tags for my other stories) it just means “this reminds me of this story, and might be a good prompt for me at some point, so I can scroll through my tag for the story looking for prompts at a later date, and will encounter this post.”
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