Yay inspiration! I am always good for more chapters to this. You weren't really planning on leaving this story here were you?

Anyway, this is the first chapter we managed to see actual human emotions from jenna, despite what her defenders say. Still I don't think i understand her character concept. So she's supposed to be a self loathing sadist? Like she would have gotten off on torturing Ashely, shes aware of this and hates herself for it? Well its good to know she does have a consciense but it doesn't make her my favorite character. (still not sure who that is though).

Anyway, I wanted to comment on something you said in an earlier post. You mentioned that people were getting too worked up about what happened to Ashley in this story when it really amounts to a minor hazing and being mean for 30 minutes. While i admit this wasn't as torturous as I had expected and 2/3s of it was just talking, Isnt this basically what Claire did to the girls in Consequences? So which is it, a minor hazing or a punishment fit for felons, it can't be both.

Finally, i take back what i said about Ashley hating the girls for this, since it was her fault and she probably needed something like this to make her realize it (I like the way her character concept is sweet but dumb). Still I doubt she can ever be totally at ease around Omegas again. with awareness of her own power she's become aware of theirs too, no matter how much they love her its going to be ackward.

Hey Are we going to see that Beta boy in the epilogue? maybe get a glimpse of what Ashleys going to do to apologize?

I just wanted to say how much I have been enjoying reading your stories.   I really appreciate the way you have created a society with multi sized interaction without relagating part of it to some subhuman caste where it is all right to do anything you want to the small people.  

The writting itself well done, from my perspective it flows really well.  I find your character interactions to be believable, and if your Omegas tend to come off as really good people, perhaps a little too nice for people with that much power over others, you do provide reasonable grounds for that in your story.   The description of the interactions are handled really well, and even though it has never really ventured into some of my prefered areas (I am a butt man), I have keep finding myself caught up in them.

Thank you so much for sharing. 

@Xkcd0088

I don't think we can assume that Jenna divides people into two groups naively as you suggest. The fact that this universe has different offence classifications (Class A, B, C, etc.) implies more than two 'groups'. It seems you are not a fan of such things as capital punishment here in the US. While I am not by any means saying that the Omega system of 'justice' is ideal, I'm curious as to what the ideal justice system would be in your opinion. If you wrote a story about it, I'd read it. You've mentioned on the lines of 'just read the mind of the criminal' and rehabilitate, etc. Clearly any justice system devised and run by humans will be flawed as we are flawed individuals, but I'd like to see what you consider closer to perfect.

As for this chapter, I don't care that Jenna seemed a little bit out of character. In fact I don't think she was out of character. She's known Ashley for all of her life and they are friends. Jenna is not evil incarnate. She has a heart and that showed in this chapter and the previous one. It is entirely possible for someone to enjoy torturing those who 'deserve' it (note, I personally do not like that quality in her), and still show love to a friend -- Jenna even sees the side of herself that she despises, she knows that it exists.

Ultimately, as a fan of gentle gts, this would probably have to be my favorite chapter too. Although I think the next chapter, the epilogue, will surpass that since I have an idea of what is coming (and am greatly looking forward to reading it).

I don't know if she can love them the way they say still love her, it will be tough. At least I hate Jenna less now. Things will never be the same , no matter what they do or say after this.

And which one of those three stooges decided that Jenna would be the one to 'gently' impart life lessons while Melody is the one to abuse her sister and burn those associated bridges? Did it never come up in conversation that it might be best to cast the already-feared Jenna in the role of the scapegoat?  Why on Earth would they go out of their easy to crucify a familial relationship? Did these children somehow think that destroying it would help drive their message home,  a la "if you in any way break our rules we will break your life"?  If so this speaks of a pretty vicious undertone of malice...you'd almost think that Omegas were selected on the basis of how cruel they could be when they believed themselves 'justified'. 

This is what comes of a control structure where average people are afforded absolute power: eventually an average person gets their hands on the controls, at which point innocent people will inevitably be casualties.  

Notice how Jenna's naive demarcation of people (specifically, weaker people she has power over) into groups either deserving of her psychotic tendencies ("criminals", "monsters", "evil") or not (those arbitrarily classified as "good") perfectly justifies any sort of torture she decides to engage in....because of course, no *true* Scotsman would ever behave badly enough to warrant her attention.

How unsurprising that the same underevolved thought processes that Alphas use to victimize Betas ("my victim isn't actually a person") are the ones employed by the terribly flawed 'peacekeepers' in this broken little world. I guess all that can really be said here is that it's good that these kinds of infantile arguments are so vapid, else they might become commonly accepted. 

OH WAIT LOL

I think that if I lived in this universe and was an Alpha, I'd stay the fuck away from Betas. I've had people piss me off before to where I could snap and smack them or something; what if that was a Beta? Yeah, no thank you. I think I'd steer clear of them as much as I could!

I don’t hate Jenna or anything but it’s kind of hard to sympathise with a character who enjoys inflicting pain on others, whether it’s an unavoidable facet of her nature or not. Yeah she tries to impart lessons while she does so but neither of the lessons we’ve seen really needed physical pain to make them sink in, especially since in both cases she was dealing with a character for whom the ramifications of their actions were already beginning to sink in. She could have just as easily demonstrated this particular lesson with a pencil. Physical abuse seems to be the only way that Jenna can think of to teach things which doesn’t say a lot for her character.

It doesn’t help that the redeeming qualities of Jenna’s character seem to relate primarily to her being an Omega, such as Omegas' inherent protectiveness and kindness towards Betas and the extensive education Omegas apparently get on handling Betas/Alphas and teaching equality. Would she have these same qualities if she were raised as an Alpha like her victims are?

Also what sets this apart from a hazing is that Ashley knows, as Jenna is happy to point out, that they could easily kill her. This introduces a significant element of psychological and emotional trauma on top of the physical abuse. Also the fact that you don’t usually get hazed by family or childhood friends.

The above side this is still very well written and Jenna's not mean enough to specifically dislike, she's just hard to sympathise with.

I've hesitated to comment on your stories because quite frankly anything I would have to say has been covered better by other people, but I can say this for good or bad you have people thinking.

Anyway I guess I'll try to say something constructive. I like how you adress the thought process of your characters it makes you really feel bad for Ashley and really hate Jenna not because Jenna's inherently bad ( even though she's s little harsh..or alot harsh) but because Ashley is so frightened of her. At least that's how I see it.

As far as reprocussions I see this as being an act that shames all parties invovled and looms over every interaction these four have in the future. Say whatever you want but they ALL need to regret this day.

There needs to be a cost. 

And I don't mean Ashley.  Ashley was wrong, she's suffered and learned an important lesson.  I think she'll be a better person from here on out.

But the more I think about, the harder it is for me to believe that Ashley would be so carless in the first place given her background.  In her shoe?  Who realistically thinks that's a good idea? 

The Omegas haven't done a good job raising her.  The difference between her and them isn't just super senses, it's training.  These lessons should have been drilled into her at a young age, when it was easy to shape her properly.  She should not have even been allowed into a mix-sizes zone, as an immature teen no less, without extensive training and a solid understanding of the physical gap between her and a beta.

Instead they sheltered her from the horrors of beta abuse.  (If the Omegas can take learning it at a young age, there's no excuse in protecting Ashley from the truth.)  They've causally carried out punishments in her presence, giving her the illusion that she was above that treatment.  And they filled her head with stupid ideas of what she could do with a smaller person.  The consent issue is irrelevant at this point.  Even if she had asked first, she hasn't got a clue as to the physical limitations of a beta.

So this whole episode has been the Omegas fixing a mess, a failure of their system, the hard way.  One they could have easily prevented rather than go "whoops, we better correct that behavior," all high and mighty like.  No "well you learned your lesson, go say you're sorry to him, and then we can go back to being best sister/friends."  It can't be that easy on them.  That's what I mean by there needing to be cost.

I don't know what you have planned later, but I need to know what the cost is in this story.  There needs to be an idea of the ramifications.  Leaving it vague with a promise of picking it up in another story just won't do.  (You can address the costs in other stories after we know what they might be.)