skygiants

So I was trying to explain to

shati one of the most recent plot developments in 7 Seeds, in which one character protects himself from deadly ants by disguising himself AS AN ANT.

Then things ... took a turn ...

BECCA: my favorite is the dude who protects himself from the ants by disguising himself as another ant

SHATI: oh my god seriously?

BECCA: YES

SHATI: how
but
does it WORK?

BECCA: he sees there is, like, an intruder ant from a different species hanging out with the main set of ants
and is like 'oh this intruder ant must have regular-ant-mimicking pheromenes in order be a parasitical intruder species!'

SHATI: omg

BECCA: 'so ... if I rub the intruder ant all over my face .... I TOO will have ant-mimicking pheromenes and be a successful parasitical intruder species ....'

SHATI: omggg becca i know this is completely the wrong genre
but i want this to be basically she's the man
except with the ant colony as the boy's school

BECCA: skfdj;saldkjf;lskjfdd I KNEW YOU WERE GOING THERE

SHATI: and him as antmanda bynes
amanta bynes?
AM I THAT PREDICTABLE

BECCA: I MEAN TECHNICALLY I GUESS IT'S AN EXCITING NEW TWIST .... on the insect thing ....
actually I feel like Octavia Butler would write this short story
ant pheromene rom-com

SHATI: she's the ant
i want this so much now
learning all the quirky ant customs!
frantically imitating other ants
accidentally pheromene flirting with love interest ant
pheromone i mean

BECCA: and love interest ant is totally weirded out because, like, these are DRONE ANT PHEROMENES
and yet ... strangely attractive ....
everything love interest ant knows about ant sexuality is now in question
then, later .... after the big reveal .... even more in question ........

SHATI: so very much question
like...how...

BECCA: LOVE WILL FIND A WAY
....or not

SHATI: if it was a disney movie, love would find a way
disney gets some weird ideas sometimes

BECCA: it's true
and a sequel ten years down the line
in which their daughter has an identity crisis about her ant world and her human world

SHATI: betcha above ground...they run around...bet they don't reprimant their daughters

BECCA: strict ant parents don't let their ant kids have any FREEDOM
they want them all to be just like drones :-(

SHATI: and they never let them see boys!
wait no that's bees
...right?
omg if this really is amanta bynes and she falls in love with a lady ant
LESBIANTS

BECCA: *______*
except if it's She's the Mant then it would have to be a love triangle right
she falls in love with a worker ant and the queen falls in love with her
sadly it turns out Amanta Bynes cannot impregnate the queen due to being the wrong species

SHATI: that's true
but maybe in she's the mant amanta bynes decides she likes the queen better at the end
because otherwise we don't get to say lesbiant

BECCA: maybe it turns out the worker ant is also female
most female worker ants are I think
yahoo answers confirms

SHATI: becca?
you just said you think most female worker ants are female

BECCA: ............
YOU KNOW WHAT I MEAN
HERE HAVE A CHART OF ANT GENDERS if you're so picky >:(
http://ants.pbworks.com/w/page/13360329/Are%20all%20ants%20female

SHATI: some male worker ants are also female!
-- oh, disappointing

BECCA: so basically all the options are lesbiants

SHATI: i thought there were going to be a bunch of different ant genders i had never conceived of
"prince" wtf ants
WAIT SOLDIER ANTS ARE FEMALE??
this changes everything
antspiration

BECCA: so many options now for amantna bynes' love interest

SHATI: is amanta bynes in disguise as a revolutionary ant prince?

BECCA: yes
so everyone thinks it's het
instead it's both lesbian and the wrong species

SHATI: okay so prince amanta falls in love with a soldier ant who is confused by these strange pheromones because she is only supposed to be interested in killing enemies with her mandibles
meanwhile the ant princess falls in love with prince amanta
because this is disney or something

BECCA: and prince amanta keeps politely trying to explain that ... no ...
because if the ant princess marries prince amanta then no baby ants!
DEATH OF THE HIVE
... hill?
...colony?

SHATI: but meanwhile meanwhile, the ant queen is just busy getting shit done and raising her useless daughters and her murder daughters
and eventually she finds the daughter she left lying on the floor years ago
so it's okay that the ant princess loves amanta bynes
because they have a replacement princess now

BECCA: everything's coming up ant queen mishil
but what about soldier ant
ant threesome?
lesbiant threesome?

SHATI: yes
the path before them is prepared
wait
if instead of a disney movie this was a loose collection of short stories by multiple authors
it would be an ant-hology
this is all even weirder when i think about playing sim ant as a kid
because i used to just go camp out in the red ants' nest and eat their larvae
like that was my only strategy

Fund . . . it . . .?

ETA:

BECCA: I was going to edit out irrelevant bits but basically it's all highly relevant

SHATI: ...was that one on purpose

BECCA: ....NO IT WASN'T AAAAAH

Crossposts: http://bookelfe.livejournal.com/361368.html

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

From:

luzula

*blinks*

This was not what I expected to read for breakfast. Also, now I want to tell you about the genetics of social insects? Whatever, I'll do that. It's not like I have anything better to do, like work on my Yuletide story.

So ants and most other social insects are haplodiploid, meaning that females have two copies of the genetic code (one from each parent, like we do) but males have only one, because they come from unfertilized eggs. This means that all the sperm from one male is identical (because he doesn't need to halve his chromosome number before making sperm, like humans do). This further means that all worker ants (assuming they have the same father, which they often do because queens store up sperm for later use) have 75% of their genes in common (compared to ordinary offspring or siblings which have 50% of their genes in common). They are sometimes called SUPERSISTERS (yes, this is a legit biological term), and they actually spread their own genes more effectively by helping their queen mother to make more offspring than they would by having offspring of their own. (Disclaimer: apparently there are social insects who are not haplodiploid, so there must also be other reasons behind the evolution of the social structure. I do not know enough about this.)

But coming back your human/ant romance, worker ant/soldier ant would have even more sexual confusion than just the lesbian and wrong species thing, because they're actually asexual and sterile. : )

From:

nextian

This is AWESOME AND FASCINATING.

From:

jinian

Yeah, termites are eusocial without haplodiploidy, and the hypothesis I've seen is that either they are terribly incestuous or all their genes are sex-linked, so the genetic effect is approximated that way. (No one seems to have checked this so far, though.) Naked mole-rats are also largely unexplained. People have said why they want to hang out together -- their babies need lots of care, and all their food grows in one place -- but not why they go so far beyond the prairie-dog level of cooperation. Maybe being a badass is a factor? We've got nasty stings/bites, chews through wood, and chews through effing concrete.

Also on sociality, please note that one should not listen to anything E.O. Wilson says about humans being "eusocial" as he has decided in his dotage to redefine all the meaning out of the term. Read him on ants! He is great on ants.

From:

luzula

From:

skygiants

I just have to say that I love so much that you guys came in here and provided intelligent, thoughtful discourse on ant biology and social structures to go along with our EXCEEDINGLY LEARNED 3 AM plot discussions. IT'S AMAZING.

From:

genarti

I'm just sitting here making fascinated chinhands at both of you for this entire discussion.

From:

jinian

OMG I cannot even. I was trying to read and then go to SLEEP, but now I am HIGHLY OXYGENATED because of LAUGHING LIKE A LOON.

LESBIANTS.

Also "everything love interest ant knows about ant sexuality is now in question" is the "oh noes I am gay" trope, HOW DID YOU DO THAT.

In conclusion, DEAD ANT.

From:

skygiants

WELL THIS WAS ALSO MY PROBLEM LAST NIGHT SO I'M GLAD ... I'M NOT ... ALONE? UM.

From:

sophia_sol

I feel like les amies des fourmis is relevant to your interests. There's more on tumblr somewhere too, eg the one about Antine and her daughter Cosantte, but that's a little harder to just find offhand.

From:

skygiants

. . . OF COURSE THIS IS A THING

From:

sophia_sol

OF COURSE! (I found the Antine & Cosantte, btw)

From:

skygiants

There are more things in Les Mis fandom, apparently, than are dreamt of in my philosophy. (*___* Thank you!)

From:

sophia_sol

:D This sort of thing is nostalgia-bait for me. My first major media fandom was SGA, and SGA was really really good at giving the weirdest possible AUs.

From:

skygiants

Hee, it's still all new to me -- I've never really been in a large fandom, not properly! I mean, I'm not really properly in Les Mis fandom either, because I don't really know how to handle big fandoms. (And especially not on tumblr, which I can't keep up with at the best of times.) But it's always fun to stumble over the amazingly bizarre stuff!

From:

sophia_sol

Oh, I don't wander the depths of Les Mis fandom either! In part because I care about the source material in a way I didn't in fandoms like SGA, so if I go to places like the kinkmeme or even just the main AO3 tag, I'd come across too many things that would make me go all "STOP BEING SO WRONG." So I just follow a few trusted people on tumblr/dw and go from there.

(Frankly I've been in more large fandoms than small fandoms, since I tend to be there for the fic, not the source, and large fandoms have more fic to keep my love alive. I'm still learning how to small-fandom!)