Failsafe? What is that? And what the hell is Unity Station?
Glad you asked! Failsafe is book 1 of my Unity series, books I am currently writing and posting on AO3 because I want to get my writing out there before my brain explodes and/or I annoy my friends to death yammering on and on about these characters and this world.
Unity Station is the location for books 1 and 2, set a few centuries in the future. Originally sent up as a scientific experiment - a civilization among the stars - Unity Station hasn't heard from Earth in over two hundred years. Why isn't Earth talking to them anymore? Why, that would be a spoiler.
Failsafe is about Corvin and Nicky, two members of a Crime Family that have accidentally found a small orphan child, Robin, and decided that hey, the station is a dangerous place for kids. Let's adopt this one. Unfortunately, keeping a small orphan child safe is difficult when said child is being hunted by a cult obsessed with returning to Earth, who believe that he's the secret to bringing back their messiah figure.
It doesn't help that Corvin’s own past is full of shady characters that would happily sell out his found family if it means getting him back under their control. And if that means making Nicky and Robin collateral damage...well, eggs and omelets.
It's t4t slowburnish romance, with poly shenanigans and Space Vampires. The space vampires are integral to the plot. Nicky gets consensually nommed on!
Book 2, KillSwitch, takes place seven years later. A masked killer calling himself The Plague is taking down members of various Crime Families, motives unclear. Corvin and Nicky are in charge of figuring out who and why. Meanwhile, Robin is trying so hard to keep his ex-cultist friend(?) from completely losing himself to addiction and loneliness, and also deal with this really annoying guy that keeps sabotaging his science fair exhibits. Motives unclear.
Book 3, Fae Bane, is a novel-length AU of "What if the crime Families were fae courts." Main character is Robin, who is struggling to understand why the hell his knight is acting like an absolute weirdo around him, while trying not to get kidnapped by a rival court. Anything more spoils huge parts of books 1 and 2, because they're all still interconnected.
Anyway, Failsafe has been completely posted to AO3 as of yesterday, you can read it here:
https://archiveofourown.org/works/56871517
If you're into the spicy side of things, I also have "Unity Station Extras," where it’s...it's basically all smut. That's where the smut is. It also is where I post bonus content that doesn't fit in the main story, or that was too dark for it. Most recent upload is the latter of these, and is basically just one character's traumatic experiences with drugs and SA. The chapter immediately proceeding it is fluff and kink experimentation, so. Tonal whiplash. Find it here:
Some more Omegaverse au stuff, because I am having way too much fun with it. It's called 'From Eden', because I will put a Hosier reference as many places as I please.
So, I finally posted all three parts of the Omegaverse au up on AO3. If you haven't read it, this contains spoilers.
So. Baby Cam, Corvin and Nicky’s youngest. I described him at birth as having Nicky’s hair color and blue-green eyes, which do eventually change to be the same green as Corvin’s eyes. That happens with babies. I almost had him be born blonde and have his hair also change over time, but that would have given Corvin a heart attack, so I decided against it. (Remember, there's trauma behind why he dyes his hair black.)
Personality wise, Cam at first appears to be a carbon copy of Corvin. His emotional expression is all in his eyes, and he ends up talking like he swallowed a thesaurus. Which he sort of has, because this boy takes after both parents in that he's incredibly smart and loves to read the second he learns how. However, hidden beneath a seemingly calm exterior is a deep need to go off and have his own adventures. Which he does, much to Corvin’s overprotective chagrin. He does not listen to his parents nearly as well as Robin does. He also develops a sort of fascination with Jaden, which nobody is a fan of. Least of all Jaden, who does not appreciate being followed around by Robin and Cam basically constantly. Though this does actually help his later efforts to get clean and off drugs. Jaden may not be a fan of the boys, but he doesn't want to be that horrible of an influence on them.
The real reason I can't have Cam in the canon universe, aside from the fact that Nicky can't actually get Corvin pregnant in canon, is because he and Honey’s eventual daughter would get along too well and leave the entire station in chaos. I haven't really posted about Norah anywhere, but she is intended to be part of the canon universe at some point. Norah and Cam would cause problems on purpose and be general delinquents. He'd be about four years older than her, so old enough to have a sort of older-brother fondness, but not old enough to not enable her.
Cam also really loves his older brother Robin, because he thinks Robin's cheerfriendly sunshine persona is fun, and he sort of wishes he could be like that, but not enough to not be true to himself. Also that Robin is his most frequent babysitter, so they have a close bond. Robin is almost fourteen years older than him, so Cam thinks he's Super Cool And Mature until Cam becomes an adult himself and is like 'oh, you were goofball, actually.'
Gonna add that Robin is Not parentified in this arrangement, he just likes spending time with his baby brother. Robin brings Cam along whenever he's meeting up with friends, and is super proud to show him off.
Since this is still Omegaverse, I have to also give Cam a designation. He's probably omega like Corvin, but similarly does not fit the stereotype of being a submissive housewife (Okay, Corvin is a Sub in bed most of the time, but he's a switch, okay! And if anyone tried to claim that Nicky had real actual power over him, he would beat their face in). He's a little chaos gremlin, and he thinks similarly to Corvin that society is full of bioessentialist idiots who wouldn’t know what to do with themselves if they weren't treating the secondary sexes like fuckin' zodiac signs.
He steals Nicky’s fashion choices wholesale. He likes the flannel button-ups and work boots, they’re comforting and make him feel tough. He does keep his hair pretty short though, because he has sensory issues and hates having anything touch his chin or shoulders. He likes guns and knives well enough, but doesn't really specialize in their use like Nicky and Corvin did. He'd rather throw a punch.
I keep making au's instead of finishing the book. Why am I like this.
Modern au stuff under the cut, mostly the backstory I don't have time to go in depth about in the story itself.
In a modern au, Corvin would not have been able to run away successfully. His family lived in a semi-rural area, the cops were friends with his dad, and he got found and dragged back home. Meaning he was actually home for the death of Oliver. He didn't see it, because he was locked in the shed as punishment for whatever his latest escape attempt was. All he knows is that he heard screaming, and an hour later, paramedics and a firefighter snipped the bolt off the shed door and got him out, then he got dragged to the hospital.
Since he's the youngest sibling, the others are super protective of him, especially Kate and Jack. Corvin was mostly nonverbal as a child, but Kate understood him and often helped translate what he wanted to say, which is part of why she's his favorite sibling. Jack is more physically protective, willing to try and fight anyone to keep them all safe. Tbh Jack is probably the most broken up about Oliver. When Corvin gets the recap of what happened that night, he learns that Jack tried to get in between their father and Oliver, to try and protect him, but he just got beaten and his arm broken, before their dad went after Oliver anyway.
The sibling squad goes to live with their Uncle Russel for a while- about a year- but Russel got very sick and they got put into foster care. Russel had lung cancer that was in remission at the time he took them in, but then it came back with a vengeance and the doctors didn't catch it in time to do anything. Russell's long-term partner Adrian was unable to keep them, because he was an unrelated male. (Corvin’s childhood is set in the early 2000s, back before gay marriage was legalized in the US.)
Corvin ends up separated from his siblings because he's determined as a special case due to his autism and some behavioral issues he has, you know, because he's a traumatized nine-year-old with poor emotional regulation. Almost immediately, these get worse because his siblings' presence at least helped him get a grip on himself most of the time. He does a lot of petty crime over the next few years, and has a criminal record and a mugshot by the time he's thirteen. At thirteen, he gets sent to his new foster family! It's Stone Kaye, who immediately begins the grooming shit he does in the main canon. Corvin doesn't immediately clock it because he's just absolutely starving for positive attention and is surprisingly ignorant about what constitutes as 'sexual behavior'. Stone takes advantage of this. A lot. Corvin eventually catches on, but then Stone threatens him into silence because the Kaye family owns a very successful company and has plenty of money to pay off whoever they want. It is made clear that this is NOT the first teenager Stone has done this to, and the fates of these teens are never specified to Corvin, who has no choice but to assume the worst.
Corvin ages out of foster care, and is manipulated into marrying Stone very shortly afterwards. Corvin does it, but makes Stone sign a prenup that sets very specific rules for them both. One of them being that Stone can have whatever affairs he wants, but no one under eighteen. Corvin will have sex whenever Stone wants, but only if he's unconscious the whole time. Corvin will be allowed to work and leave the home, but only as a media manager for the Kayes' company. Lots more, but those are the big ones.
Nicky is Tony Loch’s adopted (sort of, it's complicated) son. He lived in Mexico for the first five years of his life before his bio dad brought him back to the States. Nicky has dual citizenship and is something of a polyglot. Said biodad died shortly after they moved back. It was obviously murder, but the police never really investigated it because, if I haven't made this clear enough, COPS FUCKING SUCK AND RARELY DO ANYTHING TO HELP. Anyway. Nicky also got shifted into the foster system, but doesn't remember most of his childhood until he got adopted by Tony. Tony fuckface Loch makes him back up this elaborate story about how his other parent was a surrogate that got cold feet and ran away, tragedy struck, and it took Tony sooooo long to find Nicky again. He knows he was abused pretty badly while in foster care- he has the scars to prove it- but he has long since decided not to go spelunking into those particular memories.
Nicky is an only child in this and in all universes, and he has this sort of miasma of loneliness due to it? Like, as far as he knows, his entire family is dead. His bio dad, some grandparents he vaguely remembers when he was itsy tiny, whoever his mom was. He has absolutely no memory of a mom, but he assumes he must have had one at some point. He surrounds himself with hedonistic assholes, and becomes something of one himself, though it's mostly an act/ self medicating for his cptsd, adhd, and possibly some other stuff but we're not getting into that here. He drinks, does drugs, spends Tony’s money every fucking way he can, and is all around just kind of trying to scrape together a bit of enjoyment out of a pretty fucked up life. He has a favorite prostitute. (It’s Mozzie. It's always gonna be Mozzie.)
I'm going to bring it up a bit in the work itself, but also want to emphasize that one of Nicky’s problems is that he's a visibly Latino guy surrounded by rich white assholes, and Tony doesn't understand why this matters. In fact, Tony never bothered to learn Spanish, even though it was Nicky’s first language. (Corvin genuinely tries to learn, but also he's got a tongue tie that makes it difficult lol. He can understand it well enough though, he's just bad at speaking it.)
Nicky is a soft boy in a very complicated world, and all he really wants to do is chase his passions and maybe have a family someday. One that isn't full of douchebags. He wants to enjoy life, not be constantly bogged down by lies and illness. He is trying to get Corvin to have an affair the entire time, though, but he thinks it doesn't count as wrong if Corvin is so clearly unhappy in his marriage.
Hopefully this doesn’t burst anybody’s bubbles, but the video’s fake (https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/did-man-save-friend-from-reptilian-attack/)
Now, by fake I mean: the alligator wasn’t real, it was put there as a prank by some Youtubers, to record people’s reactions. So the guy a) survived, and b) reacted as he would (AKA: fought a fucking alligator to save his friend) had it been real, because neither of them knew it wasn’t.
To quote Snopes: It appears that the “elbow drop” move was actually a real, good-faith, and quite courageous response to an uncomfortably realistic and relatively low-effort prank
Ok but like…. that still doesn’t change the fact that this absolute legend genuinely thought an alligator was about to eat his friend and he ELBOW DROPPED the fucking thing to save him!!!! That’s some true ass friendship right there
No people or animals got hurt, guy got to try and elbow drop an alligator, and his friend got to find out just how ride or die his friend is. As far as I’m concerned this makes the whole thing better.
YALL. Holly Black has a list of resources she's used for writing her books on the fair folk. I'm OBSESSED. I love her work and world building. it's so true to the heart of faeries
Some other resources that might be worth checking out (not strictly about faeries but related):
The Corpus of Electronic Texts, or CELT, a collection of Irish cultural materials. This includes English translations of Irish myths.
Mary Jones - similar to CELT, and a resource we used for translations in the Irish mythology class I took in undergrad.
An Encyclopedia of Fairies by Katherine Mary Briggs, a British folklorist.
The Folklore of Cornwall by Ronald M. James. Unfortunately this book is harder to access and is often only in university libraries, but if you're interested in piskies it's a potentially very helpful read.
Traditions and Hearthside Stories of West Cornwall by William Bottrell.
my favorite genre of fictional character is like "i am terrifying to almost everyone, i'm very good at killing, i can endure anything, i've become exceptionally good at playing into my reputation, and if you try to give me positive social interaction i will react with confusion and cower in a corner like an abused animal. and i may try to shoot you. but there is also a chance i may imprint on you like a feral dog receiving its first loving touch! good luck."
It's so, SO important to share success stories like this. I know an actual JPL engineer who doesn't believe in climate change because, "you never hear about acid rain anymore."
He thinks climate change can be lumped in with acid rain and the ozone layer of "things that were overblown and not really important because no one talks about it anymore."
It didn't even occur to him that we actively fixed the problem. Here's the EPA page on acid rainfall.
From the page:
It's also important to talk about success stories tonfuel hope that we can overcome current and future conservation and environmental issues.
I can’t speak for other social media webbed sites but I really enjoy how tumblr seems to just completely spin a wheel on whatever media is hot right now. Like yeah sometimes it’s a new show that’s big and actively coming out but also sometimes there will be a solid month where half my dash is Columbo memes. Defy authority. Get really into an book from the 1800s. Watch shows that haven’t aired in 40 years. Celebrate the anniversary of the Boston Molasses Flood. Become unmarketable
people will really have the gall to look me (Femme with a capital F, protector of butches) in the eye and say “well at least you’re not one of THOOOSEEE bull dyke lesbians”
n that’s when I pull the hammer out of my tote bag
This is stupid, and probably not interesting to anyone but me. However.
Unity Station Omegaverse Au headcanons under the cut. ("Headcanons," say I, the actual author.) Huge spoilers for book 1.
First of all, Corvin is Omega, and extremely bitter about it. He's not gender about it, he doesn't feel like he isn't *really* omega, like he realized he wasn't *really* a girl, but he's pissed off that he is because it's way fucking harder. His relationship with Stone is even more fraught in this context. In original flavor canon, Stone is staunchly childfree and almost immediately got Corvin onto birth control when he was. Uh. Old enough to have periods and such. (Stone is a fucking pedophile, we all know this, it’s why he gets brutally murdered.) In an abo au, Stone waffles back and forth about it, meaning Corvin is constantly being yanked around and forced on and off of suppressants. Thankfully he gets out of there before Stone can make up his mind in a direction Corvin doesn't want. His dysphoria is different, in that pregnancy being associated with both men and women in this universe means he doesn't hate the idea as much, but he's a teenager when he's in that relationship, so is way too fucking young to be having kids. Stone also hadn't bound him officially, because he wanted plausible deniability if someone asked why Stone has this teenager around him.
Nicky is only technically Alpha. He's not got a lot of hormones or whatever, he's not being obnoxious and aggressive. He's a more calming presence in this au. His and Corvin’s relationship is not casually sexual in this au, because if Nicky could actually knock him up, Corvin would have never agreed to it. Corvin needs commitment before he's willing to take that kind of risk with his body, and he's the one unwilling to commit until he goes through his canon character arc. Once they get together, then they can fuck about it. Nicky is more of a leader type in this au, in a Team Dad sort of way. He's still a silly softboy, obvs. In my head, I'm using a lot of cat characteristics instead of just wolf/dog ones. The scent marking present in a lot of abo reminds me of cats more than dogs, and it's the same with the way nesting is described. Nicky is like a big orange tabby.
Honey is, of course, an Alpha. The reason for the cloning tech in this au is that the Marsters line has troubles with infertility. Her personality is basically unchanged, because she's already the leader of the pack in regular canon. She's perhaps a little more aggressive about her love life, but she's definitely been taught to be careful and kind, because she could be an absolute terror if she didn't have a strong guiding hand from her mother and grandmother. Her and her book 2 love interest are an Alpha x Alpha relationship, and they have fun taking their pent up aggression on each other. (It’s fine, they're being Safe Sane Consensual about it) She's considered to be the ideal Alpha in her society. Dominant but compassionate, strong-willed, intuitive. She cares about the people under her protection deeply and with fervor. Her and Nicky get along better in this au.
Mozzie is beta, but tells nobody. He's semi famous (in this au and in normal canon) because he used to do porn. He still does on occasion, and he has his own tag on some websites. There is fierce debate as to his secondary sex, which is exactly why he keeps it hidden. He thinks it's hilarious. The side that thinks he's Omega thinks so because he's a tiny little guy, and he enjoys being the receiver more than the giver. The side that thinks Alpha thinks so because he's a forceful personality and likes to dom most men. He has a preference for Alpha women, which maybe tips the scales towards the Omega truthers.
The original Project Unity crew are mostly betas, aside from Bela and Clark, who were both Alpha. (Okay, Clark was technically not a part of Project Unity, but he was JD’s husband, so he's been grandfathered in. He trained service dogs in original canon, and probably does the same in this one too.)
Vampirism can screw with your hormones, and while Mozzie is fine, JD is maybe a little inter-dynamic. He produces a small amount of Omega hormones, but it's not enough to make him present that way, or to induce heats. It's just enough to confuse people with especially sharp senses. He's mostly beta though.
Jaden is beta, and very thankful for it. Kid does not need this bullshit making his life worse. Robin is a late bloomer and, in a hypothetical abo retelling, would probably figure out what he is towards the end of book 2, or just before book 3. I can't decide what he'd be though; he's a natural leader, very charismatic, and people like to listen to him, but he is also a sweet ball of sunshine that doesn't *want* to be in an actual leadership position. His love interest would be an Alpha though. Again, this is all book 2 and 3 stuff, because in book 1 Robin is a small child. In book 2 he's 17, and in book 3 he's 18/19. Prime 'figuring out your sexuality' time. Also prime 'accidentally falling for the worst person possible' time. Listen, falling for your childhood bully is one of the great blunders of young adulthood. Thankfully for Robin, said bully gets the fuck over himself and improves as a person. (The relationship is a little toxic at first, but it gets worked out. They're fine.)
Throwing a wrench in the works to declare that Angel, six-foot-tall, fat and muscular, famous model? Omega. On suppressants because of his heart condition. A heat could possibly kill this poor man. Jaden is super protective of him, even before they officially get together.
As for the overall societal stuff; more people are Beta than Alpha or Omega, but it's not like it's rare at all. Society is much more sex positive than our world is, or the original Unity universe. The tradeoff is that poly is a bit more disliked due to the nature of matebonds and stuff. Corvin still approves of Nicky and Mozzie having a side thing, and Bela, Elaine, and DJ still had their polycule. Insurance covers suppressants, thankfully, but if you don't have that, they can be annoyingly expensive. They're mostly safe for long-term use, but some kinds have more risks. This is the same for our normal birth control, so I figured that would be the most realistic.
Body differences; male omegas are pretty much dual-sex, and have a separate pseudo-vagina that opens during puberty. Because I like the idea more than turning the ass into a cloaca. Similarly, female Alphas have a pseudo-penis that grows when they hit puberty. (Please think spotted hyenas, though a female alpha would not give birth *through it* like the poor lady hyenas do) Dick size isn't really that different, though the societal stereotype is that Alphas have big dicks, and Omegas have small. It's just a belief some have, not actually based on reality. Porn doesn't help.
Back when I was dealing with really serious chronic suicidality, those "if you're looking for a sign not to kill yourself, this is it" posts would really annoy me. Sometimes I would reblog them anyway, because my suicidality came with a large side of scrupulosity and I would be terrified that my failure to reblog such a post would be reason for someone else's death.
But what I needed to hear back then, and what someone out there may need to hear right now is this:
I don't know when America will elect her first (openly) furry President, but the longer you stay alive, the more chance you have of finding out.
