Radioactive RCBG server terminology

When you're writing a story like this, there are going to be some bits and pieces you think of early on which end up not making it into the full thing. You're in the early stages, and haven't entirely figured out which parts will be important to the plot yet, and so you overestimate the need for some elements.

In this case, those elements were weird niche internet community jargon.

So let's have a look at some of the notes on absurd slang that the Ranked Competitive Breast Growth server was going to make use of!

“Competitive mammogenesis”, “Mammocomp”, “mcomp”: The “sport” being done in Ranked Competitive Breast Growth. Distinct from the Accord server, which just hosts a specific leaderboard. It's the only known leaderboard but it's important to distinguish between the sport and the organization!

One of these made it into an early PoV section, while the shortenings have not been used. This is a running trend here; a (thankfully) cut idea was for the RCBG server to take more heavy inspiration from incel and manosphere-adjacent spaces, with associated inaccessible vocabulary.

“Flatpecs”, “fpecs”: Cis men who are not growing breasts. An out-group viewed derisively, often as the punchline to memes

"Flatpecs" again has seen some use, but "fpecs" has not. The idea of making fun of flatpecs outside the server also hasn't come up much, as it hasn't been necessary for showing the issues with the ways the server community operates.

“uqs”: Women. “Unqualifieds”.

“Casuals”: Trans women

“Volfpec”: Voluntary flatpecs. Trans men.

More outgroups. The idea of referring to trans women as "casuals" in particular is a bit dissonant here, since the server as written is paranoid about distinctly-not-casual trans women in the competition. In practice, it just worked better to have the server adopt normal cis/trans men/women terminology.

“Progcourse”: The server’s noted habit of spiraling into heated arguments about progesterone dosage methods

This is just a joke about prog dosage.

“Rlc”, “real life cover”: Elaborate excuses concocted to avoid telling everyone about RCBG.

“TRLC”: Trans RLC, the strategy of “”””faking”””” transition as a “cover”

“GLC”: Gaslighting cover. Simply try to make everyone who sees that you're growing boobs question their sanity. Few adherents, no successful ones. 

More variety in strategies could have been relevant if we were writing a completely different story. "Gaslighting cover" in particular speaks to a story structure that would briefly visit individual but less important competitors. Might have worked in a comic or show, but not here.

“PAD”: Common response to complaints about the length of the competition. Means “Prize after death”. Half the server think it's an ironic suggestion to pad their bras.

This one... Would have demanded so much lingering to explain, which would have gotten in the way of the plot going on at whichever moment we chose to put it in the story. The idea here was that this acronym would be the go-to response when someone rightly points out that puberty is longer than three years, and the time cutoff of the competition is thus really arbitrary.

Then, new members not familiar with PAD discourse would misinterpret what it meant and get incredulous at the suggestion of padding their bras to win at a breast growth competition, parodying the drift in how online slang gets removed from its original context and ends up misinterpreted.

The issues with PAD are essentially the issues with relying on made-up slang more broadly. Either it's blatant enough that context clues are all that's needed, in which case it won't need explaining, or the required explanation drags down the story. And that leads into the final point on the list:

“Respecc groin”: Get bottom surgery. Meme advice for competitors perceived to be “tryharding” too much, based on “reasoning” that the penis is taking away resources that could be used for further breast growth. Several competitors have actually done it.

Instead of making this a server meme, we made it Laura's story arc, because it's so much better that way. Laura single-handedly made many of the implied oddities of the server culture unnecessary by living them, and this is in fact a big part of why much of this never became relevant: There was a more effective, more memorable way to show that this terminology was trying to convey.