#I literally started drawing a diagram of this but i decided thats too much LMAOO

[starrynyxa]

this might be kind of an insane question but i’m re-reading the fobmegaverse (again lol) and kinda wonderd if there’s like, hrt but make it a/b/o (???) in your universe/version? like, would it be possible to change your natural scent with hormones or some shit?? and would it get rid of an alpha’s (transomega’s????) knot?

i have so many thoughts about this and it’s all whirring around up in here lmao

Not an insane question! My answer, however, will be extremely insane. So the short answer is that yes, medical transition is possible in the omegaverse!

Long answer (now bear with me here, and also take what im saying with a grain of salt because im not an expert and barely have any idea what im talking about)

The thing that the omegaverse usually ignores/overlooks is that (irl) the hormones driving "secondary sex" (A/B/O) things like ruts/heats are the same hormones involved in "primary sex" (those being progesterone/estrogen + testosterone). And estrous (heat) cycles in mammals don't co-exist with menstrual cycles. So this throws a wrench in verses where you have both primary/secondary sex characteristics. It complicates things like male omegas / female alphas and HRT isn't as simple as giving someone the hormone they're lacking in.

Anyways this is my insanely unresearched fix that has zero basis in any actual study but what I've come up with is that secondary sex characteristics are instead driven by regulatory proteins that activate/inhibit DNA transcription. For the purposes of this I've just called them TF(A), TF(B), and TF(O) [TF standing for transcription factor] - and they begin to be produced when a person presents as alpha/beta/omega.

In the case of scent: The TFs act as activators for the expression of genes that [1] increase the number of olfactory receptors (allowing for people to be able to smell Scent) and [2] activate the secretion of pheromones by scent glands. I'm imagining this happens through some sort of signal cascade that's affected by other factors like the integration of neural signalling or whatever idk. TF(A) and TF(O) will be stronger activators than TF(B) in [2], but the reverse is true for [1] (Alphas + Omegas produce more scent than Betas, while Betas are better at detecting scent).

In the case of heats/ruts/genitalia: I started going into the specifics of this but ive actually decided that if i try to work it all out it would make me go crazy. So please just use your imagination, possibly involving such things like co-activators/repressors + allosteric regulation + the levels of primary sex hormones affecting how the regulatory A/B/O proteins bind/result in different changes in the body 😭 This interaction btwn the A/B/O proteins + testosterone/estrogen/progesterone is what causes in the differences we see btwn male omegas/alphas/betas + female omegas/alphas/betas.

ANYWAYS. As far as medical transition goes. The speculative grasp i have on this right now I guess just says that, as of right now in fobmegaverse canon, the field of secondary gender affirming care is still being researched LMAO. But these are my proposals for possible routes of study based on whatever the fuck I said above.

Scent Blockers/Suppressants: these probably intercept the scent gland signalling cascade at some point which prevents the secretion of pheromones, but still allows for the person to smell scent + this wouldn't affect heats/ruts. (In Patrick's case, the very flimsy reason I have as to why he never rutted is possibly due to an initial feedback loop, where scent is some sort of stimulus that "kickstarts" rut + since he started taking them prior to his first rut, he just never did. IDK i never put that much thought into it. Use your imagination here too).

Rut/Heat Suppressants: This would be the same as the scent blockers where you have to fuck around with protein binding and maybe hormone levels. I think possibilities for this include: allosteric inhibition so that TFs arent binding to whatever, or a molecule that binds to the receptor site on DNA + inhibits the binding of TFs that way. <- this way would potentially affect scent, with scent also being activated by the binding of TFs. Or otherwise, you could possibly target other molecules in the pathway.

Changing natural scent: Honestly I'm not too sure about this one. Logically I think that this is possible because scent glands essentially just work by secreting chemical signals. (Sidebar: i've nearly failed every single chemistry class I've ever taken). So hypothetically, to change a scent, we'd have to change the chemical compound that gets secreted and I'm not too sure how to do that LOL. I think there is potential for HRT as in like increasing your levels of the A/B/O proteins, in the case that these proteins are inhibitory towards each other (which would consequently affect rut/heats/etc) but I don't know how this would specifically affect scent. I would prob need to think more about how a person's specific scent is produced (in regards to: personal scent, hereditary scent, environmental factors, how we specifically ID someone as an alpha/beta/omega, etc). I also think the transplant of scent glands may also be something that could be looked into.

Knots: Tbh you probably just have surgery to remove the excess tissue that forms the knot. Tissues can probably similarly be transplanted on or something (and, similarly, you could maybe transplant epithelial tissues [or maybe epithelial stem cells?] that would produce slick.)

^ Literally do not trust me on anything that I just said here. I never know what I am saying ever, and science is not real to me.