Something I’ve experienced reading fanfic in the last couple years is that almost every pairing you can think of, no matter how niche, has at least one 40k plus word Omegaverse fic that’s always surprisingly well written.
@@LockandKeyHyena I mean I don’t know, but if I had to guess. Making something Omegaverse basically changes everything about the work, so in effect, it’s no longer an MCU, Game of Thrones, whatever ect. fic. It’s now an Omegaverse one. There’s probably a lot of readers who’ll read anything if it’s Omegaverse. So that gives authors more freedom to explore more niche pairings without worrying about not getting eyes on their story.
Something that I didn't see brought up in the video about the potential of Omegaverse is the affirmation of Found Family - most a/b/o stories I read are about characters having "pack mates", or having "bonds", which are essentially psychic and emotional links to other people that you *choose*; usually, claim bites are used to create these "bonds", but can also be established through strong emotional connections! That, or the usage of pheromones bringing comfort to characters rather than just a source of arousal is also comforting when put into a family perspective, at least to me, because in these fics anyone that the character trusts can be utilized as a source of calmness, peace, and serenity. The lack of enforcement of biological family and having the ability to choose your "pack" is something that I crave in my a/b/o fics! And we all know about the connection between queer youths/young adult's and the trope of Found Family.
Oh totally I know there are so much of found families in my fandom and they are incredibly cute and wholesome ah ;; Also, I read once about an omega that was like disphoric(? of his own essence and the alpha covered it with his own giving him confort and both were aroace and in a queerplatonic relationship!!
I agree on the found family element of many Omegaverse stories, at least, within published works (as that's where I spend most of my time). It's part of why I love reading it but also part of why I love writing it. No matter if your own family is kind or horrible, finding a place with someone (or someones when you talk about packs) where you 'belong' always gives me such comforting feelings. That there isn't really a 'place' to be home, but there are people who you're home with (if that makes sense) and that you'll always be safe with those people. It's also why I write a lot of interconnected series in my world so that the group that a new character is pulled into becomes bigger each story, you get a bigger group of 'safe' and comforting connections. As someone who often has a hard time fitting in in social situations, that feeling of being unconditionally accepted by a group of people who are all living their best lives and only want the best for you is a massive draw to the genre.
this is one of my favorite ways the trope is used as well :33 it’s nice that (in most versions of the -verse) found families are normalized and people don’t need to be related to be pack
It's practically all I read because I feel that gender, sex, biology, society, politics, subversions - everything is so customizable and ... free? I've read pure smut to social commentaries on societal hierarchy and consent. You can find anything!
I've been meaning to get more into Omegaverse, do you have any recommendations? Especially if any of the characters are trans and it's more on the SFW side
@@PKMNResearcherSkyler I read mostly fanfiction with real people (not anime characters, etc), but my go to place is AO3 and using the tags. There's a.b.o in virtually every fandom.
That's a weird point to me because Omegaverse is so restrictive as a framework on how power and couple dynamics work, and how most of Omegaverse works try to replicate toxic heteronormative roles and expectations, but in a EXTREME way.
@@MiloKuroshiro I guess it depends on what side of it you are. And also filtering out the things using tags and such helps me find stuff that doesn't fall into those issues and representations. People get real creative!
I've seen people queer it even further by having relationships that are in-universe considered to be forbidden or wrong. I saw an entire fic dedicated to exploring a relationship between two alphas in a world that sees romance between them as something destructive and doomed to fail. And one where an alpha has to fight to be able to court a beta. Fertility also often comes up as a theme. While male omegas can generally get pregnant, there are some fics where they're specifically devalued because it's either much harder for them or outright impossible. In a world that sees the ability to have children as an Omega's main value, what does it mean for those who don't have that ability. For female alphas, there's often a perception of one trait diluting the other. EIther they aren't a real alpha because they're a woman (and therefore supposedly lacking in dominance, aggression, and all other things alphas might be expected to have) or they aren't a real woman because they're an alpha (and therefore would have a penis and be expected to top during sex). I'll also reiterate what I think a lot of people have already said. People who approach ABO as a porn genre and nothing else often miss half the world. Alternative family dynamics, the effect ABO has on child development, the effect that it might have on friend groups or workplace culture. Life for us exists outside of romance, and that's absolutely the case in an ABO world as well!
@@LiNestHetalia There're whole sets of (so far non-canonized) tags for "let female alphas have big dicks" that are really popular in The Untamed fandom, for example.
i really like that in the omegaverse world, same primary sex relationships could be not considered gay, but same secondary sex relationships could be. it's so interesting to see no one batting an eye at a male/male pairing if they're alpha/omega, but if you're an alpha into alphas you're considered abnormal. i haven't read much omegaverse but i've always enjoyed those possibilities for examination of our cultural norms from slightly different angles.
@@vicki5322 Yes! I love when fics go into these kind of contradictions. There's a PhilosophyTube video about Social Consturcts, where she goes into a philosophical Metaphysical Thought Experiment about Earth B where they have an arbitrary division of people based on height, and how yes, it's a factual division, short or tall, but we don't have any cultural connotation like those things, and how there's a hypothetical Earth C that views our gender divisions as being as arbitrary as we would view the height divisions. And it immediately made me think of ABO fic. That's basically the whole thing. What if Gender and reproductive capabilities were separated? And there are soooo many interesting ways such a society could develop.
thank you so much for this video rowan. seeing real, good faith analysis of omegaverse means a lot to me as an intersex trans man who creates omegaverse fanworks + watches/makes analysis vidz. personally, i am definitely a person who sees the ways omegaverse plays with gender, sex, and sexuality as validating and gender/sex euphoric. the way it normalizes "wrong" genitalia + characteristics and men with "female" organs + characteristics is very comforting to me - both in general, and within a sexual context. a world where a man can be pregnant and no one bats an eye or questions their gender for a second! a world where men with breasts and/or vaginas are generally seen as attractive and desirable. the way people speak about it as if it can be nothing but transphobic is very reductive as you mentioned. it ignores basic tenants of the genre/theme and the wealth of omegaverse fanfiction that explores the very issues people have with it. however i do understand why some trans people + transmascs in particular dislike it (which i'll touch on further down this novel of a comment) in my personal interpretation of omegaverse (shoutout to ppl reading who r interested twitter is darknesmith wink wonk) the universe is...honestly a lot better than the world we live in. sex (m/f/x and a/b/o) and gender is generally understood to be fluid. related to that - i really connected with your mention of menstrual periods and menstrual leave. in developing my interpretation, i considered the effects of heat/rut/etc on character's careers, and realized that in order for it to exist in a way that didn't fundamentally break society, the world as a whole would have to be one that did not prioritize (the exploitation of) labor. it would have to be a much more ethical world that centered personal, familial, and community needs. i get why people have issues with it - what makes one person euphoric makes the other dysphoric! i can understand where the "why not write trans people" thing is coming from, though its a non-sequiter imo. omegaverse includes a *lot* of things that are not analogous to real trans experiences (knots, for one). and its also just, materially different. for instance if i am drawing m/m smut and have decided to depict transmasculinity, i prefer them to both be transmasc. but in omegaverse i prefer m/m alpha/omega, in part because it's simply a completely different gender + sex framework. you can't cleanly map one thing onto the other. a lot of critique of omegavese shows a clear lack of actual engagement with the texts. people just heard a basic premise and come up with their own conclusions. and because theyre disgusted by it (which is fine btw!), they don't want come to the source to figure out if their pre-conceived notions are true. again, it's fine to do that, but maybe don't make serious, grand sweeping statements about something you know little about! but on the critical side - recently i have seen an influx of people interpreting omegas as having vaginas rather than. bussy i guess 😭 which im very glad about because thats more aligned with my way of interpreting it!! however a term that has come up a lot is (struggling not to get this comment banned) boykitty. it can be a synonym for bussy (butt variety) but that it as well as...mean-name-for-kitty boy can be a sometimes derogatory but usually pornographic term for transmascs/our genitalia. a lot of transmascs reclaim it, including myself, and some of them are the ones using those tags! but one can't be sure, and it can be a problem when something like that term is being used as an ao3 tag devoid of context, especially outside its specifically trans context. in every part of fandom there is a struggle with proper representation and respect of marginalized groups - nothing is perfect. i always make my work unapologetically trans + queer + intersex because i want transmasc + intersex people to feel centered, and for malicious people to recognize that my work is not for them. (and in that same breath, the conflation of fanfiction with fetishistic cis women is a legit slippery slope. lots of men, particularly mlm transmascs, came to terms with their identity through slash fanfiction. pathologizing that potentially pushes people into the closet or even *back* into the closet. you often don't actually know the identity (or future identity!) of writers.) sorry for this NOVEL of a comment just. really really really good video
Great comment. I wanted to hear another perspective from a trans person bc I do feel the genre has a lot of merits and creative potential that get overshadowed by kink. Personally, I read fanfic and other pieces of media to ESCAPE from my reality so worldbuilding is important to me, but omegaverse is too close to real life gender hierarchies and as a trans masc, reading about men with vaginas born into a submissive omega role makes me feel some type of way. It's not a fault of the writing, I just don't want to be reminded of my assumed role in society. My dysphoria is why I only read bl, otherwise I can't really enjoy the story.
thank you for this! i am a fellow a/b/o loving transmasc and i find this comment to be very helpful for explaining some of the reasons why i like it so much!
the way you described how a/b/o community would opperate is so interesting. do you post your worldbuilding to places like ao3? or maybe on a public part of patreon? I really wanna know more about your interpritation cause I've legit never seen it before and it sounds so interesting!!! I love the family dynamic of a/b/o so muchhhh
I saw your avatar and was wondering if it was you cos I follow you on twitter! I didn’t even realize you did abo art because I follow your sfw art but the way you described why you like makes a lot of sense, as I’m also a non-binary trans guy who likes the twisting ad queering of gender and sex in fiction.
I haven't read any omegaverse, but as a trans man I found a lot of resonance with your descriptions of having a "gender" and then a secondary "sex" attached to that. I present as male and am often read as male (which is how I like it) but simply having the genitalia that I have attaches a caveat to my social and internal "maleness," especially in the weird hierarchy of sexuality that exists in our world. I still have the hormonal cycles. I still fear rape and objectification in a way that many cis men will never experience even when I am completely "passing." it's an extremely dissonant experience that I never thought I would see explored in fiction. I'm glad to know it's somewhere, even if it's just in fanfic erotica 😅
it's really affirming to hear somebody else say this honestly, as that's a big part of the appeal of the genre to me as well. this is an aspect of trans masculinity that can often get ignored or forgotten even in lgbt+ spaces, so abo as a genre represents one of the only spaces that I've seen where it's represented not just consistently but with Depth and sincerity.
Tbh abo fics helped me fight my disphoria. Why beating myself up for "not being a real man" if I can think of myself as an omega? It's of course a very simplified thought and doesn't mean confusing fanfiction with reality.
As an open minded person, I really appreciate hearing earnest rebuttals to the "so cringe" cultures the whole interent knows and hates. I appreciate the work you put into this. I'm Ace Aro so I seriously love hearing it explained for me why I'm into fanfics. It's just safe and often times very emotionally charged, which is what I like. I can't say I'm really interested in anything ABO, but I ever had anything particularally against it. It's nice to hear more about the reasons this stuff is so beloved.
im ace and ive read a couple of ace abo fics before. like there was one where the omega was ace and it showed how he experienced heats differently (no s/x stuff just non-s/x pampering)
@@rebekahmikaelson1198 oh dang wait I actually super like that. I didn't realize there were non sexual fics that still talk about sexuality. Then again, I haven't really read this stuff for many years. Writing has probably become even more inclusive since then.
@@BlitzedPort there actually has an enough amount, I had read 3 omegaverse where characters are ace, it's also all omegas what's super interesting because omegas are generally hipersexual in the genre because of the "heat" aspect, so ace omegas is so comforting for me
Got back into Merlin recently. The last time I was into Merlin, I was like 13 and didn't even pick up on the horrible treatment of Gwen as a character. Now I'm 22, and I'm very glad to see that the fandom seems to have grown up and moved away from that as a collective, because fuuuuuck, people had some bad takes about her just cause she got in the way of their ship (when really, the best way to deal with any love triangle is polyamory anyway lol)
"the best way to deal with any love triangle is polyamory" - freaking YES, THAT, that right there. (Also, if you're interested in Arthurian legends in a Western space opera setting, check out the Mechanisms' album High Noon Over Camelot - Lancelot, Gwen and Arthur are in a loving triad and it is amazing [though still a tragedy ;_;] )
These days, it's usually Double Gay, isn't it? Gwen/Morgana and Merlin/Arthur. I totally agree about polyamory being the best answer. Why should everyone be suffering when they could all be thriving?
I generally stay far away from omegaverse because the gender roles in it make me feel quite hopeless.. as a nonbinary person, a world where it is unquestioned that regardless of gender one can have either role in conceiving a child should seem great, but it is often still so rooted in sexism about how society at large sees omegas as less than, and any subversion and criticism of gender roles mostly come from the protagonists. That said, I also have quite a bit of disphoria about my menstrual cycle and how my endometriosis makes my physical PMS and period pain worse, and I found a select few a/b/o stories with suppressants giving characters freedom from all reproductive symptoms, which are sometimes comforting to read
Wow! That's so interesting, because I'm in a very similar position: non-binary with severe dysphoria about my cycle (and with endo), but to me exactly that concept of those rigid reproductive systems has always been a bit of a comfort. In the sense of "it's just like this, and it doesn't make you less than". I usually don't actually like the ones where the suppressants work too well, haha :D Funny how the perspectives can be so jarringly different even if coming from a similar basis!
As for me that's usually my favourite part of omegaverses the oppression that omegas go through although unfortunately stories usually have the omega protagonist be in a nice position at the end and not actually solve or really mention or touch upon the blatant sexism and social hierarchy anymore than just informing viewers that it exist
Yep I totally get you, I'm NB as well and ALWAYS had feel uncomfortable with omegaverse, but I have been more open about omegaverse in the last 3 years because A LOT has changed, specifically about the said roles, like nowadays it's less rare to found non-cliche alpha/omega only fanfics, we have a rise of alpha/alpha popularity and even asexuality inclusion, so even if ABO still pretty much not my cup of tea, I can enjoy some good ones
I have similar feelings! I just find the very niche a/b/o writers who don't automatically make omegas worse off. I know there /would/ be gender discrimination in a world like that, but it's my imagination, so I get to choose if that's there lmao
It's not good, it's not bad, it's just hot. The idea of bonds, and heat and rut just makes for good PWP. taken seriously, they also force an examination of gender roles, sexual politics, biology.
I really like the gender of a/b/o works. As someone nonbinary with a complex relationship to my body, the framing of a/b/o fics is so affirming and validating
I love ABO and Fanfics in general as a whole, but an interesting ( and highly ironic) point that i have noticed is that, in the rare occasions where a story feature a Alpha/Alpha or Omega/Omega pairing (really they are rarer than a double rainbow), such couples are often viewed in-universe exactly how Gay couples are viewed in real life, with arguments such as "it's unnatural" and "that way you can't procreate!". It made ne kinda realize that many "classic" ABO fanfics have kinda derailed to become what trashy Het porn stories have been for a long time. BTw the "Non traditional Alpha/Beta/Omega's dynamics" tag on AO3 has kinda everything i could ask for in a story set in the ABO universes, without the most unsavory parts of Omegaverse, i highly recommend it.
Oh yessss, I recently found that tag! It made me really happy. I'm utterly turned off by certain aspects of common tropes of a/b/o in my favorite fandom. Just bleeeh, no thanks. So I normally steer clear. But now! I'm so happy!
I've seen an argument that abo is basically gay romance or smut without the social opposition. And then you can add that back in of course by having alpha/alpha or omega/omega couples, but it made sense to have romance between two men, one alpha and one omega, as the default normal thing as a sort of escapism. :)
And to add, I've read a few fics where one of the OTP is alpha or omega and the other beta, often also seen as unnatural in the world of the fic, because the beta physically cannot cope with a heat/rut or doesn't have the pheromones to interact with their partner etc. I've read a great Hannibal fic where Hannibal the alpha essentially manipulates beta Will, except this time it's not into prison or murder or whatever like in the show, but into his bed. He basically manipulates Will into acting the omega he isn't, under the pretense that Hannibal has less control than he actually does during a rut.
I find this framing of Omegaverse is really fascinating-the way it examines gender, sex, and the way those interact with sociopolitical ideas. It reminds me of a book I read recently, The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. Le Guin (1969), which also creates a unique world with a group of people who have a distinctly different sexual anatomy and gender presentation than the reader. (It has its own version of mpreg and mating cycles, but diverges from Omegaverse in other ways.) It's a science fiction book with no romance plots, but it's really interesting to think about that book now after this video. Love your content as always!!!
I thought of it too especially as Le Guin is considered quite high brow compared to like. omegaverse fanfiction. The book is wonderful everyone read it
personally, as a trans man, i really enjoy mpreg abo fics. i hate fics about trans men getting pregnant, they almost always fall into a category that feels fetishistic. i have read ones i enjoy, but it usually takes a disclaimer that the author is themselves trans for me to even consider reading them. but with abo fics, i almost feel comforted
To start with I just wanted to say I really wish we could destigmatize women enjoying things just because it turns them on. I'm a bi woman and I've used fanfic (and text based rp) all my life to deconstruct my relationship with my queerness and my gender, but also as an enjoyer of pure PWP. There is absolutely nothing wrong with that so long as it's not actively hurting other people, at least imo. I think that's why so many people find 'we forced this actor to read dirty fanfiction of their character' shit so very offensive and uncomfortable, because it breaks that barrier of consent for us and for them and pushes a harmless hobby into being something potentially harmful, all because some outsider decided to use it as a weapon for clicks. I also wanted to note that so far as our world mapped onto another world goes, and how A/B/O worlds are just a hellscape version of our own patriarchal hellscape and why would that be sexy or interesting or subversive? If someone took an Omegaverse fic and directly mapped it onto heterosexual patriarchy the characters would be so completely unbelievable and pandering and annoying as fuck that it would just be unreadable, eyerollworthy and therefore lose the reader before any soul searching or subversion could even happen. Take that example about Jared being an Omega rights advocate and make him an ~outspoken male feminist~ instead, telling lady Jensen what a fine catch he is because he's standing up for women. It'd be red flags all the way. The way our patriarchy is structured and our built in prejudices just makes that kind of examination of gender roles so much more difficult in heterosexual fic. This was a great video. Obviously I'm a fan myself, but I appreciate you shining a kinder light on this genre of fic (and fanfiction and slashfiction in general) than it usually gets. For those who are considering dipping a toe in, a reminder to pay attention to tags, and the old adage 'don't like, don't read, and definitely don't flame the author when they warned you ahead of time'. Also do yourself a favor, narrow down the search terms thoroughly and also sort by kudos. Thank you for the work you put in, Rowan, it was well researched and thorough.
@@NotSpillingTheTea For sure. Every time I go to AO3 and choose my search terms and click on a fic I consent to reading it. Why should actors not get the same choice? I mean maybe they do and they're offered the choice to turn down that line of inquiry ahead of time? but it still doesn't make it less uncomfortable, and it feels like the fanfiction author, too, loses an element of consent there as well. Gross all around, basically.
@@Lucifer-Riding My opinion is that when writing about fictional characters you’re not hurting anyone. So writing them with whatever ship you like and with whatever kinks you want. They’re not real so no consent needed. But actors lend their faces and voices to those fictional characters, they probably see themselves when they think of that character. Especially when writers describe the actors physical features. Maybe they don’t want to read about their work colleague knotting them. Or get sent in the post sexual fanart
I enjoy looking at the relationship potential and conflict created by the omegaverse system. I can definitely relate to that acespec bit about feeling of 'having to get this over with'. I remember there was this alpha/alpha fic that I found the premise so funny how their 'instinct' is to show off to the other that led to some amazing flirting and wagers and other shenanigans and it's amazing the humor the genre brings to the stories and not only just as a serious exploration, it's just fun as well
I have to say, you've completely opened my eyes about this as a genre. It's still not something that appeals to me as a reader, either of fanfiction or published original fiction, but I was unfairly prejudiced towards it. As someone who prides themselves on thinking about things with nuance and not tarring all works of an artform with one brush, I can now see how misguided I was!
While Omegaverse itself may only be a decade old these things were also already common tropes in certain types of furry erotica, mature slice-of-life and RPs way longer than that. Omagaverse only really applied these tropes to humans, brought it all into the more mainstream fanfic space and standardized it more.
High five from an ace person who reads omegaverse! It's not my favorite genre, i usually exclude it from AO3 searches, but once in a while i find myself fascinated by a fic or series recced or from a favorite author, especially those who explore the social aspects of it (really which that YOI one that's written as a metaphor of being agender had been completed u_u Alas, canon rewrites rarely are.) I'm especially tickled about omegaverse stories with ace main characters, though i have to navigate them with caution since they can be triggering for me, same as forced marriage trope. I once found a rec for an omegaverse forced marriage ace pov, no noncon, and by chapter 5 i was full on dissociating...
This was truly fantastic. I can't tell you how much I appreciate hearing comprehensive and objective discussions about fandom culture, and it's tragically all too rare. Omegaverse is honestly one of the most remarkable creations of fandom. It's even started to spread to the world of doujinshi! And I think its popularity really speaks to what an excellent tool it is for the exploration not just of gender and sex and how society is built around them (and how they can in turn be warped, confined, and manipulated by society) but also of human sexuality as an animalistic thing, treating hormones and instincts as much more explicitly tangible things than we do in the real world. It's that aspect of the genre that particularly draws me in. Humans are so unconsciously trained to consider ourselves separate from the animal kingdom to the degree that we pathologize the most basic things rather than accept them as instinctual, like our own cycles of feeling particularly horny when we're also the most likely to get pregnant with a certain kind of sex, or why we find some features more sexually attractive. I'm a bit of an anthropology nerd, I guess you could say, and I'm not nearly enough of a furry to have ever found satisfaction going QUITE that far into animalistic territory, so Omegaverse is a perfect compromise imho. I do understand the discomfort a lot of trans ppl feel towards the genre, just as I understand why many trans ppl can also really love it. The thing I disagree with is that it's "cisheteronormative" when… it's just not. Not unless we consider the desire to raise children with the person you love to be "cisheteronormative" which sadly I know many do, but I think that's terribly reductive. The animal world is full of examples of this, from fathers who play what we would consider "maternal" roles like seahorses and certain frogs, to same-sex couples that will adopt or even downright magically conceive their own children via parthenogenesis, like penguins and condors. Cuttlefish have two distinct kinds of "male" that both serve important roles for the survival of their species, and hyenas… well, they're practically a blueprint for female alphas, I suppose! And this is exactly why I think Omegaverse is important for more than just indulgent erotica. It's a sandbox with which we can build a society as similar or dissimilar to our own as we want, and then from there explore and deconstruct what the concept of "cisheteronormative" even IS, all without being clouded by our own reality. We can be more objective, an outside viewer, as you demonstrated yourself in the video. It gives us degrees of separation that help to not only protect ourselves from our personal traumas and biases, but to really dig deep and work out our own truths about gender and sexuality. What is a cis man when raised with the gender roles and societal expectations that AFABs are raised with in our world? Or put another way, what is a cis man when raised withOUT the entitlement and sense of sexual dominance that AMABs in our world are? Would they be more inclined to have a demure manner? Would they chafe against the expectation to be submissive in any way? What traits do we associate with masculinity that actually have nothing to do with sex or gender, and instead are purely nurture vs nature? From those points, we can further dissect what femininity is, where it connects to sex and gender and where it doesn't, and vice versa. It's so incredibly rich and interesting!! And it's not just these concepts, either. I've read incredible fics that work through societies of extreme sexism, where the omegas of each clan or village are kept locked up and isolated together in a house with boarded up windows from the time they present as omegas to the day they are married off, never allowed to even step outside, "for their own good." The cruelty of a normal childhood followed by such a fate, to suddenly be asigned this role that's little more than furniture, and the main character who was kept from that fate with the help of drugs to hide his status as an omega, and who was even further kept from the knowledge of how his kind is treated by the rest of the world. Was it that blissful upbringing of relative equality that gave him the willpower to lead a revolution against society? Was it inevitable that he would be the one to do it? Of course (and again I understand why many ppl are turned off by this aspect) like many Omegaverse stories, this one also dealt with the trauma of SA and forced pregnancy, and of the further distress caused by having so much trauma related to the very sex/gender you are also exclusively attracted to. These are very personal, sensitive subjects that can be made easier to work through objectively when you're not writing about characters you can relate to too intimately. It's unfortunate that ppl feel like this is "fetishizing," but I don't think it's especially healthy to conflate oneself with the entirety of your marginalized community to the point that you feel personally victimized by such distant representations as fictional characters in fanfiction. As a cis woman and a lesbian, I've seen my fair share of cishet male fetishization of my identity, …but I've also seen a lot of art involving women and/or lesbians made by cishet men that's nuanced, respectful, and part of their own effort to work through their own feelings and issues. Nabokov wrote Lolita to deal with his history as a survivor of CSA, and it's not hard to understand how much harder it would have been for him to write Dolores as a little boy instead. It's too close to the wound. And the mangaka who makes my favorite wlw manga has an ambiguous gender in their representations of themself on social media and in the author's notes. I make no assumptions about their AGAB, but I know a lesbian's writings about lesbians when I see it, and for these reasons, I take a firm stance againsy judging art based solely on the author's perceived gender. You never know when someone is still unaware of themself, or has to stay in the closet. Policing and gatekeeping art by something as complex as gender and/or sexuality is a wildly different ballgame than something like race or disability, and to me it veers too close to bioessentialism for comfort. Not to go off on a tangent, but just to illustrate this point, a while back I encountered a cis gay man who was going off on the "cishet women writing mlm is fetishization" schtick, and in the process misgendered or erased the sexuality of every author he used as an example. It was pure misogyny that, as it always does, ended up as unintentional bigotry against trans men, nonbinary ppl, and queer women. "Trans men are always men, even before they've come out" he said, as if trans men always KNOW they're trans, as if they don't gravitate towards mlm stories as part of their awakening, as if hearing gay men proclaim all this about fetishization isn't the last thing they need to hear. Half a year later, I check back on this guy out of somewhat petty curiosity. I'd had a gut feeling when we first butted heads. Something familiar, as he talked about finding it more comfortable to write idealized smut about straight women than gay men. Aaaand yep. Said author had since come out as a trans woman. And I'm happy for her, truly I am. She hasn't walked back a single word she said, but that's no business of mine. She's made the first step towards understanding why her words hurt so many ppl. I'd had that gut feeling bc the way she spoke about how she felt wrt personal comfort writing smut about cis women rather than cis men is a maaaajor first clue in the "Identity Awakening" journey, and one queer women especially (in my experience, just bc we're not as discouraged from engaging with queer romance as those who are raised as males.) can relate to. I didn't realize I was even slightly gay until I was 20, but I had been crazy about mlm stories for years. I just felt more comfortable reading and writing about queer romance that wasn't TOO relatable. I'd get weirdly nervous whenever I tried to read about wlw. And the times when I stumbled upon a good lesbian romance WRECKED me in ways that I still, at 31, have to mentally and emotionally prepare myself for even when I knowingly engage with that kind of story! I /get/ it. In a better, more equal world, maybe we wouldn't have to hide from the intensity of our own feelings, the traumas, the vulnerabilities, the compulsions, by projecting onto characters of the opposite gender. But we're not in that world. And we need to be aware of these reasons for the things that we do so we don't hurt each other. I… don't remember if I was going anywhere before I got off track, and I'm scared to scroll back up and see how much I've rambled like a loon. I spend entirely too much time trying to educate queer youths about these things only to be met with "don't you have kids to feed? Go pay your taxes. Weird old hag." 99% of the time, so I'm prone to Going Off every time I get the chance 🙃
Not to discredit anything you said here, I just believe a lot of the things you talk about being positive in omegaverse are just positives of fiction in general.
I just want to thank you for basically writing an insightful mini-essay on the topic on a TH-cam comment section, which is usually one most Cursed Place to peruse in the search for delightful commentary pieces 💖
@@bluester7177 that's very true, but Omegaverse is particularly helpful bc it provides a framework to build off of, which from the start encourages the writer to really dig into the details between gender, sex, and society that only vaguely resemble our own.
@★ Lucca ★ There are many answers to this question. Sometimes there are a/b/o fics where your role ISN'T decided at birth. Much more often, there are a/b/o fics that explore WHY bioessentialism/getting your role decided for you by anatomy is so bad in a profound, educated way. Sometimes there's even no such thing as "men". I am neither cis nor het nor a woman and I find this a really reductive and closed-minded way of looking at the genre as a whole.
Your comment was so good that normally I don't reply to people but I just had to say something! A lot of what you said about Omegaverse in regard to re-animalizing ourselves, "cisheteronormativity" and the sandbox society have all resonated really deeply with me. People say it's a positive of fiction in general, but I'm gonna be real I have yet to see any other subgenres (aside from sci-fi which tends to play with the xeno-biology of aliens in a very similar way thank you star trek), engage with the entanglement of primal urges, sex (both the action and the assignment), gender, and society on such a level. :/ And I know its not for everyone, but in the case of people who say that the genre is too "full of bioessentialist bullshit" I genuinely believe that these people just don't know where to look or how to find a story that appeals to them. A "space opera" is just a story that's set in space. Whether or not it delves into themes of existentialism or revolution is entirely dependent on a case by case basis and it's up to the reader to go out and find or MAKE those stories if that's what they want to read. Honestly, I prefer to read from sources that have large ensemble casts, and I find that those stories specifically tend to deal with larger socio-hierarchical questions that a lot of people seem to take issue with. This is in part thanks to the inherent varied experiences that come from having an ensemble cast with a variety of second genders; A story with 5 protagonists instead of just 1 will allow for a much more nuanced discussion of gender experiences and expectations. I recommend people try looking for those sorts of stories instead if that's what you're missing.
I listen to an omegaverse original story that had the running plot of the omegas being affected by a disease that no one really knew much about and there was a major lack of medical research on omegas themselves and the disease. It’s such a good series imo
I used to read ABO stuff, but recently started to actively avoid it because I've noticed that especially the recent stuff really has a lot of complete disregard of consent, and honestly giving me like super traditional het couple vibes. "You will submit and have my babies and be happy about it" kind of vibes. Well, it's not uncommon for a genre to gain popularity and at the same time have the genre be dumbed down to its worst aspects. Or maybe I've just been exposed to the worst version of ABO stories recently, that's also possible.
For me I would say it's the opposite with ABO, I hated it at first. What I didn't like before, I still don't like today, but now I feel like I have a lot more options to find what I like.
I hated omegaverse because every time I read something related (knowing what it was or not), had this consent issue, it was non-con or dub-con. And with a certain heteromactivity, the alpha woman had to act in a masculine way, because she is an alpha woman and has a penis (or a long clitoris that allows penetration), even if she is OOC of the persona of fanfic to be acting like that (I understand that it could be a fantasy not linked to genitalia her dominance attitude and kinda "masculine" attitud, instead of this being by "her role in the couple's dynamic" of representing a norm of our society heteromative, but it was something that happened often for these things.) Like, it's not because she has a penis that she can't necessarily be the most feminine in the couple, for example. The same for omegas for having a uterus, in being treated in the feminine when being identified as a man, you have to wear a wedding dress, you have to be the housewife of the couple of two men. But for the alpha male to wear dress is inadmissible, or omega woman can't be butch, and usually nor binary doesn't appears in these fanfics. The alpha has to be the most masculine, and in a perspective that values the toxic masculinity of alphas, not a representation of healthy masculinity. And the romanticization of alphas being an assholes. On the site I read (because my first language is Portuguese, not English, so getting in touch with AO3 took years) had no non-con or dub warnings, 'cause technically it wasn't allowed obe posted on site in the first place, the administration had little control, besides that ficwrites sometimes didn't even realize that they were writing non/dub, a situation similar to wattpad. But nowadays I've come across more and more stories that run away from that, including in mangas and novels. I'm reading a chinese novel called "Accidental Mark" which is kind of a criticism of that aspect. In addition to the "non traditional alpha/omega/beta dynamic" tag, it opens the door to a lot of things. Like alpha/alpha, omega/omega, beta/alpha, beta/omega and polyamorous relationships. And I, who love stories with youkai, like InuYasha, was interested in ABO too for the ways of dealing with these people with some animal characteristics, like being able to purr, having a pack (a family that one chooses, without blood relations), comparisons with aspects in our society, I like the varied world constructions that ABO allows. Besides the genres are so different, that I saw more possibilities of dealing with them, it can be escapism with two women or men being together without much drama, being attracted to more than one gender and don't have to deal with any drama about it, the character's family ok and he is not marginalized by his sexuality, cause one is omega and the other alpha, same thing for nbs. But it can also have, if it is alpha/alpha, society no longer sees with the eyes of normalizing. The same thing as a trans man who omega and being integrated into the normalization of society, an escapism, but are too fics in which a trans man is not socially included, cause the trans man is an alpha. Or instead of the transition being genders of our world, could be the genres of this other world: being alpha, beta and omega, which might not be accepted, if the story universe is fixed as it usually is. Not only in fanfics, even on Tumblr I saw more and more interesting headcanons, like instead of being something about wolves, being about dragons. Instead of people having a defined gender by birth by genitalia, they don't. These aspects brought me back to ABO.
Oh you for sure have been reading awful fanfics because like I had found some that are amazing and I'm the opposite, maybe searching for "not typical omegaverse" will help? Exist a specific tag on AO3 for this, but I forget
What fandom are you reading for? I'm certainly not having those sort of issues with the omegaverse I read, but lately I only read one pairing and that's all.
Yeah that has been my experience when looking into omegaverse fics, too. I'm sure there's good content of it out there, but I don't like the gender essentialist stuff baked into the fandom culture, and the way they handle consent either. I'm not sure I'd say it's a "new" thing in the genre, either, at least not in my experience dipping into omegaverse fic.
It’s also very interesting to me how different cultures write abo dynamics. The trope is also really popular among (East)Asian writers but it’s used very differently. It feels to me personally that abo is much more graphic and violent in Western works while Asian works focus more on the more tame settings (such as attraction by pheromones etc.). This kinda also reflects how Western LGBT works are also more realism-based while the uniquely Asian “BL” trope is a fantastical genre not found in Western media.
To me the best part of a/b/o is its fluidity. The rules and roles are never the same twice. I'm still questioning my gender daily, so it's nice to be able to read fics where the genders, body parts, social norms etc. involved are reshuffled constantly with every new work. Since I'm also somewhere along the ace spectrum I find the level of distance (and oftentimes humor) of most a/b/o fics not only relatable but also comforting.
i definitely have mixed feelings about omegaverse fic. as a transfemme person, i remember discovering a/b/o before coming out to myself, and deeply relating to feelings of shame and powerlessness when it comes to bodies and sex. and yet one of the main reasons i haven’t come back to the genre since like, 2015 is the gender essentialism of it all. most stories i had come across had no fluidity of gender or really any room for transness within this gender system, despite the inherent queerness of it all. and that’s just not something i want to read. i hope things have changed, to be fair i haven’t read any of this content in a *while*, and societal awareness of trans people has changed drastically. anyway, really cool video!
Yeah. I know a lot of people use abo as a tool to pick apart ideas of gender and sex, but all the abo I've ever tried has been very static in those terms. I really do enjoy exploring those themes in fic, but that's usually through like... fics with actual trans characters. (which sadly means writing my own most of the time :P ESPECIALLY if I want to see someone more like myself -- transfemme or nonbinary or god forbid both)
ABO with fluid gender roles exists, but it's very rare. Many that I've read go for a sort of intersex omega idea, so physically they're intersex, but they can present more masculine or feminine as they prefer, and that can change throughout their lives. One fic I read goes into how one omega child was raised as a boy because their father wanted a male heir, but in the end they were married to an alpha (due to shenanigans) while dressed as a woman, their spouse rejects them on the basis of being omega, because they wanted a beta wife, spurring them to become even more masculine than before etc etc. Of course, being a romance story, their spouse sees the error of their ways (which originated due to trauma at the hands of their alpha father and his omega mistress, what is the neutral word for that anyway?) and the omega can explore their feminine side if they wish, they end up sort of fluid between feminine and masculine sometimes going one way or the other, but most often somewhere in the middle, and throughout the story there are more omegas who do so (so the main character is not a "not like other girls" type) one named Freddie/Frederika who presented more feminine as a child for a while, then more masculine, and prefers mostly feminine during the main plot. I also remember a fic where there is a beta/alpha couple (Hannibal fandom, with all the mind-fuckery and manipulation etc that show contains) where alpha Hannibal pretends to be a lot less lucid during ruts than he actually is so he can manipulate beta Will into sharing his bed, it goes a lot into how a beta simply cannot physically cope with the rut of his partner, that a beta cannot produce the pheromones needed to appease an alpha in rut, etc etc. So it exists, you just have to wade through a lot of other stuff to find it. I don't know if there's a specific tag for it, but I do believe [omegas are intersex] is an existing tag. But yeah, a lot of it is very "A/O couples only, because babies."
Yeah,, that's pretty much my relationship with it as well... I can totally acknowledge that gender essentialism isn't inherent to the genre, I just always found an overwhelming majority of fics dealt with a/b/o in a way that felt like it denied the existence of trans people. As a transmasc nb, they often made me feel very alienated. Though, once in while, I'd find myself feeling affirmed of who I was/am, so that's neat.
I've read one fic where the status of an alpha/omega was 100% cultural one. Which basically meant that humans were like fish, they would change their sex and gender depending on outside factors. Honestly in a world of butt babies gender fluidity expressed by sex characteristics should be more common
As a sex repulsed ace, the main thing that’s made me avoid omegaverse content is the concepts behind heats and ruts as the were traditionally conceived. The idea that biologically you’re *forced* to have sex, and have absolutely no control over those urges is utterly terrifying to me
I’m asexual but NSFW fanfiction is one of the few things that “works” for me. Funny enough though, omegaverse stuff never interests me even though other weird stuff I’m into should point to it being right up my alley. It’s all very strange. I do LOVE reading and learning about the omegaverse though, and especially the drama that’s been going on with it in recent years lol
IKR? Like I just enjoy omegaverse if it's about more than the sex lmao I had read good ones that discuss gender, political views and even some with asexual omegas, like I just can't enjoy omegaverse if it's not y'know about something substantially more informative, but so I can read a 5k pwp with religious blasphemy 😭
The variety is fascinating! As an outsider, I've always filtered the trope out since certain (seemingly) core qualities make me highly uncomfortable, but now I see that there's room to play up/down any aspect of it!
It really depends very strongly on how the author builds their world, and even how they see the biology working. Like, there are worlds that have only alphas and omegas and all are male, there are worlds with 6 genders, as in, all the combinations of alpha/beta/omega and male/female. There are worlds where there are only male alphas, intersex omegas, and male and female betas etc etc etc. Add to that the infinite variety of genres that you can make abo, from romance, fluffy and cute pregnancy/kid fics to dystopian scifi, or historical detective, there's just so many options. It is true however, that a large group of them are very same-y and you have to look for the ones that are more interesting. Or at least, I find them more interesting. But that's why tags like [non-traditional ABO dynamics] exist. :)
I honestly only ever loved Omegaverse since it usually dealt with werewolves/wolves and I love them. But the more I've read them, the more they helped me dive into interesting topics like politics, societal expectations, biology and way more than I was expected from this genre
I've always avoided omegaverse fic, not even because of the more sexual aspects, but because I hate the "worldbuilding" with a passion (it's always come off as kinda sexist in a variety of ways to me), so I'm very excited to see your perspective on its potential/positives/etc.
i dont really enjoy most abo fic bc yeah, sexism. i usually read the ones that examine the sexist tropes and go all "omega rights!!". but i agree that the worldbuilding is inherently sexist in a lot of ways, and even the "omega rights!!" fics cant really escape it bc its built into the very fabric of that universe. i do remember this one fic tho, where it started off as a typical (if regressive) abo plot, but ended with the omega mc in a new pack that actually respected him, and falling for the pack's buff omega hunter. there was a lot of 'you've been lied to abt your worth and your place in the pack and your abilities - not intentionally, maybe the people who taught you this actually did believe what they said, but it was wrong nonetheless. you're equal to the alphas and betas of the pack and we'll respect you as such here'. it wasnt a perfect fic, there were a lot of issues but i feel like it did a better job of not being sexist than any other abo fic ive read.
I also have a big problem with this types of stories, because so many of the ones I've read had the same tropes and are often kinda toxic, and they you tell the writter something is unconfortable to read and they are like "but is part of the genre". Like, c'mon, there is no rule book, you can tottaly make a good story if you want,
I love omegaverse and every time I bring it up nobody seems to actually like it in my real life so I love seeing people talking about in a positive side of it!
@@naa4883 it's a universe where omegas are the pseudo bottoms and alphas are the pseudo tops (not always pseudo) there are alphas, betas and omegas and betas are just the normal people. Tbh this is a deep subject and there's plenty of resources online that you can look up.
Honestly my favourite thing about a/b/o and the thing that keeps me coming back for more is that there’s endless possibilities for what you can do with it! You can have pure smut or an in depth examination of systematic oppression OR both that the same time!! I’ve read plenty of fics with a 'standard' omega verse set up (literally every author has a different take on it down to what characteristics differed sub-genders have) but I’ve also read explorations of what it would mean to be an alpha attracted to other alphas, hell I’ve read a couple fics where the typical hierarchy was flipped and omegas had more social power. No author will write it exactly the same and you can get really creative with it and that’s why it’s so fun.
Breeding and pregnancy happen to be my biggest squicks, so I've avoided a/b/o since I first discovered it. Still, I find fandom and fanfiction super interesting so I've been curious for years. This video was a really excellent way for me to learn about this tag & genre without diving into fics that make my tummy hurt due to my own hang ups, and I really really appreciate that!
Knowing how to search for great fanworks is HUGE. There's no editor to goalie or sort for you, so you've got to do it yourself. Personally, I've found sorting an AO3 tag/fandom from 'publish' or 'updated' - showing newest or most recently updated first - to 'bookmark' or 'hits' - showing those most bookmarked or with the most hits first - to be extremely helpful in finding well written works.
Gosh, min 10 onwards is the best defence of ff I have ever heard out loud. As a whump-fiction writer and reader, I always get really bothered trying to explain anything, because people think it's a weird kink/feti* thing and lack category or nuance to actually understand or even try. Thank you so so much.
Also: as an update to your video, the Omegaverse has officially reached main stream with the first Thai BL (Pit Babe based on a novel with the same title) series set with various pairings, and complete with abusive Alpha-special -abilities-trafficking ring.
I always think omegaverse as a trope histories are super interesting but the fact that the trope was around in fic long before supernatural popularized it is normally over looked. There was omegaverse fic in the tennis fandom at least a few years before supernatural aired and I remember being really young in the early internet days reading a sailor moon AU that was basically omegaverse. Supernatural gets full credit for making it mainstream though.
I haven't figured out how to do this yet but I've always wanted do some writing exploring how transness might look in omegaverse. Because A/B/O dynamics are physiologically and socially treated like secondary sexes there's so many more way a character could be trans. How is being transgender treated versus being transdynamic? What do transitions and trans healthcare look like? How does your dynamic not being known until puberty affect it? Can you go on hormones to influence your presentation one way or another? Would the abuses and discrimination be unique in omegaverse or would it be similar to our own? What would it look like without transphobia? How might these characters find happiness and affirm their true gender and/or dynamic? I have lots of questions and few answers and absolutely no idea what to do with any of it lmao its been many year since I've written any fanfiction and even longer since I've written an original work. 😅
omg, same here, im just fascinated by the idea that with 2 genders people will have to deconstruct or go through different types of stereotypes/discrimination if they're trans. I have had an idea of a fic for like 2 years now but its too close to my trans experience to ever release but yes !! trans people existing in a/b/o is such an interesting topic! And tbh if you have lots of questions and few answers, you can always looks for fics that cover these topics or even not-traditional a/b/o worldbuilding to help you out creating the base for your own world. Sorry for the rambling but ^^ glad to know im not alone in this view of a/b/o!!
I read a fic with a transdynamic character once. Didn't like the writing style so I stopped reading halfway through, and the transdynamic aspect of it was just background, but I found it interesting to read as a trans guy. It did indeed mention the character taking hormones as part of his transition to omega. If I remember correctly, the hormones were to alter his scent. I've heard a few mentions of the idea of transdynamic characters from people talking about the genre, but not seen any other fics, sadly. I've also seen a couple omegaverse fics with actual transgender characters, which mostly seemed to portray traditional gender/sex/gender roles as less important than dynamic. So the character being transgender was less of a big deal in their society because people/society care more about their secondary gender in how they are treated. But yeah seeing more exploration of this kind of thing would be super interesting.
I wasn't quite able to finish what I was saying in chat cuz I was behind lol so: As someone who's currently involved in a survey/poll about people's omegaverse worldbuilding, I'm looking forward to watching this when I get the time Also (tho I've just showed up so it's probably addressed elsewhere), historically, omegaverse was a way for two male characters to have a "normative" relationship, but recently I've seen many people (both from that poll and not) across several fandoms writing fics that involve omega/omega, alpha/beta, etc. relationships (so they're actually looking into how things would change) and/or have non-canonically trans characters (so they're trans in the fic but not in canon I mean) I've also seen a couple people (at least) talking about how they would implement queerness in their worldbuilding. Like, how asexuality would be addressed with heats/ruts, or how intersexuality would intersect with "secondary designations". Stuff like that. I also know that there're fics that significantly lessen the impact of heats/ruts (to the point where you can just go about your everyday business without worrying all that much). Hell, there was one fic I came across that had subverted traditional roles by justifying omegas as stronger and alphas as prettier Anyway, there's definitely more than that (like, I haven't even touched on trans-designation people or normative polyamory), but trust me when I say it's there.
I love the final say in being that “a depiction of a horrible world/unjust situation is not an endorsement of that sentiment”. Like, it’s possible that people simply wish to explore more fucked up narratives in a way that doesn’t bring real world harm. And I still think there is nothing inherently wrong with being essentially horny for certain tropes.
Is like coming up with fantasy races and like, either making them extremely fucked up in an animal sort of way or makes them be fucked up in a human way, I've seen people have always taken a lot of (understandable) offense to fantasy races that are indeed pretty essentialist or racist and tend to condemn authors that include those details of being somehow an endorser or apologists of one of the worst aspects of humanity, but like, doesn't that just open the possibility for more stories to be told? Like, now I can write a character that is indeed NOT racist in a world where, maybe they're expected to be by default, I can show how being raised like that can affect their relationship with the environment and also the person as they grow up, I can subvert my own writing by slowly teaching the racist character their biases are wrong and inspire change for a messed up society, like, the possibilities are endless, really, and sometimes it adds texture to the overall world and story you want to tell even if irl is still messed up and to some it might read as wishfully thinking and simplification. Sometimes you really just wanna read stories about awful stuff happening on an enclosed niche setting you got control over just to process how real life works and how it makes you feel and how you wish you could fix it if you were in charge, you know?
I don't really feel one way or another about abo as a genre, it doesn't tick any boxes for me in particular but I definitely don't avoid it. I will say there is one uber-specific sub-genre that I do really like: when authors (intentionally or not) write about love/dating/sex as a neurodivergent. Give me a character using a heat/rut service because they can't find a partner to treat them how they want/need not in a gender-y way but in a sensory issues/social conventions/etc way. Give me the wish fulfillment of a 'True Mate' who is going to 'get' me even when almost no one else in my life does, who will be able to 'sense' my meaning/feelings when everyone else in my life reads me wrong. And even the fics where the whole 'gender/status thing is super individual and you can be not only an omega that's hardcore, but you can be an alpha who has anger issues and is super nurturing and is super protective but hates being in charge' thing is clearly a gender discussion, can still really fill up my 'it's great to be weird/contradictory/doesn't fit into any categories even when there are plenty of categories' cup.
@@victai163 dude, does context exist to you?? Like, are you 14? Is obvious that in THIS context people are not using that damn word as an slur and that it should be read as A-B-O regardless, I've seen you on like 5 different comment sections already bringing up that you SHOULD add the slashes and is so damn annoying, give it a rest will you? Stop policing over his to type stuff that doesn't even fucking apply in context, you're treating it as if they were saying a slur on purpose when all they're discussing is about shipping shit... GOD
I think a lot of fanfiction is mentally playing house for adults, trying out relationship dynamics without any impact on their lives, figuring out how personalities would coexist in a household. Theres a lot that reminds me of when I was a small kid playing house at afterschool club, kids of all different ages, genders, families were in this group. I remember how sometimes people would change rolls, boys playing mum, respectively, girls playing dad, not because they were experimenting with their gender but because they were exploring different aspects of their personality under these archetypes. It was more the character than a reflection of the roll, and the "kids" would respond to the roll as well rather than the person playing the character, for example if you need something most go to mum, although I recall a few stay at home dads in games, in which case dad was the go to. I actually vividly remember a boy playing a working pregnant mum with a stay at home dad played by another boy once. If that doesn't sound like omegaverse I don't know what does
I really like the section where you talk about why women write fiction about and from the perspective of men because society doesn’t condition women to see themselves as having equal worth in a narrative, if you’re ever interested I’d love to hear you talk about that more specifically/in depth! As always, an amazing video 💕
I once read an omegaverse comic set in a kindergarten that was honestly very sweet and pg which I'm quite upset to have lost the name of honestly, I hadn't been aware there were that kind of stories in the genre before reading it
Yes, cross stitch is a subgenre of embroidery. Technically every time needle and thread are used to decorate a surface, mostly fabric, it counts as embroidery. Answering the most burning and relevant questions, I know.
Really interesting video! Omegaverse has always been a genre I instinctively disliked- for me, the secondary gender roles offered restrictions and rigidity, and I’ve been deeply uncomfortable with how it can “force” gay pairings into a hetero dynamic (although I think that’s a problem that comes up across all fanfic). Definitely realized there’s an element of dysphoria in it for me which I hadn’t clocked before lol, the omega role is an issue for me probably because of that,,, That being said, omegaverse may only produce a visceral dysphoria in me, but I think it’s fascinating and super cool that it can be a source of euphoria for other trans people!! This is never going to be something for me, that’s ok I can filter tags for a reason, but as long as it is bringing joy to others pls go ahead and do ur thing!
I decided to spend time doing this useless thing but here are some statistics. Since this video came out there are now 165,905 fics in the a/b/o dynamics tag. *With the relationships:* 138,973 are m/m 24,244 are f/m 15,947 are multi 11,961 are f/f 6,926 are Gen 4,538 are tagged with other *With the ratings:* 79,175 are explicit 36,758 are mature 24,811 are teen and up 13,249 are not rated 11,912 are general audiences *With the warnings:* 72,167 use No Archive Warnings Apply 65,999 use Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings 18,064 use Graphic Depictions of Violence 16,417 use Non/Con 2,376 use Underage 49,77 use Major Character Death. *The top 5 fandoms with the most a/b/o fics are:* BTS with 13,568 fics Teen Wolf with 12,712 fics My Hero Academia with 10,439 fics Supernatural with 7,578 fics, MCU with 5,868 fics. *The top 5 characters with the most a/b/o fics are:* Stiles Stilinski of Teen Wolf with 10,936 fics Jeon Jungkook of BTS with 9,982 fics Derek Hale of Teen Wolf with 9,736 fics Park Jimin of BTS with 9,399 Kim Taehyung of BTS with 8,699 fics. *The top 5 ships with the most a/b/o fics are:* Stiles Stilinski/Derek Hale with 8,091 fics Castiel/Dean Winchester with 4,385 fics Bakugou Katsuki/Midoriya Izuku with 3,935 fics Jeon Jungkook/Park Jimin with 3,218 fics Jeon Jungkook/Kim Taehyung with 2,872 fics.
I'm reminded of a fic I once read that used the trope of like, alphas being insatiably horny, cranked it up to eleven, and then looked at it through the lens of like, chronic pain and disability. It was amazing, and also, I could not help but wonder at the end if the author was alright bc it really did seem like they were trying to exorcise some things writing it.
Omegaverse is what you make it. I‘m honestly quite annoyed by the examples of criticism you showed (not of you, but of the people who originally wrote it) because you can never really criticize a genre this way. Especially the last comment you showed about omegaverse being just about porn and ignoring the horrific undertones grinds my gears because it very clearly shows that the author hasn‘t delved deeply into the genre. I sometimes feel this way about specific fics (although I believe they still have a place in fanfiction as simple indulgence/fantasy) but the genre as a whole has so much diversity. As a queer trans man, I can say I’ve come across fics that made me uncomfortable but I love the genre for its potential to be a critique of real transphobia, misogyny and other types of bigotry. And the potential for challenging those norms and having characters learn to be themselves despite being put into those boxes by their biology.
an asexual here! I read ABO fanfics mawhas and mangas, it is very interesting for me to read them, although here is the twist I only read them because normally in this kind of stories there's a huge amount of fluff and consensual paradigms in which we can find similarities with those of our current society, it is very necessary for me to find this kind of stories without content explicitly related to sex which is somewhat difficult, in general it is very difficult for me to read sexual content if a story has it I normally avoid them, but if I am already in the middle of one and it is something that happens in part of the development I usually avoid it
"So where does that leave us toward the end of this video?" Me listening to this in the background: It leaves me with 20 more minutes of cooking! Keep talking, damnit!
a really interesting deep dive! i honestly have avoided most videos and ~explainers~ on the topic simply bc i don't really...trust ppl who are, or whose audiences are, so far removed from fandom to do it justice or speak abt it fairly and clearly. so this was really nice to see! i didn't actually expect to watch the whole hour but i got invested. lol anyway, i don't have much to add to the analysis of the genre itself (nicely done, great sources--if i ever have time/further interest, i'll be taking a look see). but you mentioned one part of it early on, and it's my thought throughout most of this: in terms of the experience of reading omegaverse, it's entirely about how you engage w fandom and how you sort through and find fic. it's sort of a self-selecting bias, how people feel about it. like i've been reading fic since the mid 00s (relatively young as many "fandom olds" would point out). but in that time, you just develop a keener sense of how to pick out the fics you'll actually enjoy, which ones are really good, and then you also accept that there are times where you simply lower your standards to read something in particular (much like going back to the fridge repeatedly and lowering your standards each time lol). so it's just odd to me when people read fics they don't like or assume that a whole genre/universe is across the board [bad/good] based upon their poor or limited choices in fanfic. lol in addition how you engage in fandom and not just searching through sites has a lot to do w it, and i'd wager a guess that particular fandoms have more or less of certain problems in their omegaverse fics, as well (though statistically it probably evens out over a lot of fandoms...). but finding key fandom participants and writers that you like is crucial, bc if you've found *one* good writer, chances are you've just found a group of like, 5 of them, bc they all beta read for each other, too, and have like all these private group chats to plan and write fic. lol simply find ppl who you agree w abt the piece of media, wait for them to post fics or fic recs, take a gander, evaluate from there. then go through their favs/bookmarks on AO3 if you want to branch out beyond their groupchat of authors...lol oh and god bless those moments when you all collectively traverse to a new fandom together at the same time, or when you get into a new fandom bc a writer you love has started writing for it! ah man. being a casual (but astute/picky) lurker/reader in fandom is great, honestly. lol anyway, i almost never read a/b/o. i've read a handful, &why? bc it was done by fic authors i already knew, liked, and trusted. so p much exclusively the a/b/o fic i've read has engaged critically with race, gender, sexuality, politics, etc. often i end up (by chance) reading more utopic ones, where things have shifted naturally around this ~situation. there's also plenty of cisswap involved when ppl get tired of writing abt two cis men but love the characters so they just simply make them cis women instead (or other variations of gender exploration while keeping the same characters). and that in itself is a whole thing where the name of the trope even changed to acknowledge the lack of trans rep and inclusion! ANYWAY on the surface, there's p much nothing in the basic definition of a/b/o that's appealing to me, and yet there have been fics that have worked for me. //shrug. such is life, such is fic. you're absolutely right that painting it w one brush is oversimplifying it and doing it a disservice. like honestly if someone's gonna write shitty fanfic that upholds systemic bigotry, they don't need a/b/o to do it, and it doesn't even necessarily make it easier to do bc of all the worldbuilding that might need to be established. but in a metacognitive/metafictional way, the use of omegaverse for upholding bigotry is also kind of an interesting commentary on our world and omegaverse, as well. lol it's p much inescapable w the whole thing.
As someone who also started reading in the early-mid '00s, I just wanted to say hiiii and also I have had very similar experiences with following favorite authors across fandoms and reading tropes, pairings, and just general fic that I wouldn't have on my own, had I not seen that an author I greatly enjoyed read it and bookmarked it. Actually, the more I think about it, the more I realize that almost all of the fandoms I've wound up in, I got into them because I followed an author or a fandom friend recommended them.
I remember reading an a/b/o fic that leaned very hard into sociopolitical commentary. It actually included photoshopped gifs of news channels, modified to fit the fic. Such world building!
As a embroidery beginner I can only speak from the knowledge I've recently gathered. And Cross-stitch Is a stitch used in embroidery. It is it's own genre from what I've seen, people either use it on a whole piece or use other stitches, I have yet to see a piece mixing it with other stitches (I'm looking forward to stumbling on a full contradictory statement)
to extend upon the gender subversion thing, ive frequently read a couple of fics where there are people who are “secondary transgender” as in, people who were born omega, beta or alpha but identify differently than the sex characteristics they were born with. i find this interesting because it sort of gives transgender, enby and gender non-conforming people the opportunity to basically decide whether they want discrimination in their fic. it’s outside of the realm of actual sex characteristics and components so when they decide people can be “secondary transgender” and not discriminated for it or (or vice versa) they aren’t deciding to ignore trans discrimination. they’re simply indulging in a fantasy universe without having to think about the irl consequences this would have because this is all fiction and maybe they wouldn’t be discriminated, and they can’t be judged for that! it really gives fandom loving trans people a safe space i think :) sorry if this doesn’t come out right im kinda drunk rn…
a/b/o in general is not my thing but i respect that a lot of fellow trans ppl do enjoy it. its like how i feel about genderbends - i only ever feel actual distrust in it when it’s a cis person creating it
@@corvuscallosum5079 don't want to speak for Funkira, so I'll tell you my issues with it (I am trans, for reference). Cis people have historically been the same people to marginalise and harm trans people for their gender expression and identity. It can feel terrible seeing fetishistic porn of issues we deal with constantly, seeing people get off to the same thing we get killed for is a bit triggering. The "you'll fuck us but won't protect us" issue. Trans/queer creators are often not given the same accolades, or treated the same, for creating the same content. It often can be cis/het men not wanting to healthily deal with their own sexuality or gender. The classic "not gay" stuff, or trap discourse. This isn't to say that I think cis people should be barred from making said content or enjoying genderbending. Gender is a social concept and should be deconstructed, bent, fucked, crossed, and transed by everyone. It can provide an avenue for cis people to explore a nuanced view of gender and expression, or different queerer parts of themselves. But compassion and openness needs to extend to trans people, the subjects of this content, too. Like you can get off to me, thats fine, but also, support trans rights too.
@@aragoonn Hoo thank you that makes a lot more sense to me now. I appreciate you spending the time to write about your thoughts in some detail. Best wishes.
@@corvuscallosum5079 particularly I see a tendency of gender norms reinforcement and heteronormativity in cis people works when it's about omegaverse, not all of them, but a majority will make omegas too much feminine, fragile while alphas are super manly and strong etc, you'll not see too much discussion about gender in these works, or an interesting twist of typical omegaverse tropes But again it's not exclusive of cis authors
Great video, but I wish we could make a touch of room in this conversation to acknowledge the role that many transfeminine/ AMAB nonbinary folks have as creators/consumers of this genre of fiction. There seems to be this idea that the ONLY reason why a person might want to write, say, a male character with some normatively female traits (read: a male omega) is if the writer is a woman/someone who was "socialized" as a woman, etc. When to me, it seems obvious that one of the primary reasons why a person might be drawn to omegaverse fiction is as a "safe" way to explore a desire to have a more feminine physical body, etc without having to explicitly identify as "trans" or as "female" to do so. That and a super common experience for trans and nonbinary folks across-the-board is a powerful fear and/or frustration with being "stuck" in a body which doesn't behave how we'd like it to behave on a hormonal level, a physical level, etc. A genre like the omegaverse gives such people a place to eroticize that type of fear and frustration as a means of gaining control over it. Hence the prevalence of mating/heat cycles, dubious/complex consent scenarios in such fics. TL;DR: Trans, intersex and nonbinary people of all stripes are out here processing some bone-deep anxieties about their non-normatively gendered experiences of s#x, intimate relationships, and their bodies, and it kinda sucks that as soon as the "normies" found out, they started treating the whole affair as a mere circus act for their entertainment.
I’m guilty of liking omegaverse and I think me being trans makes me see it in a different light. There’s so many ways omegaverse can be extremely sexist- my favorite thing is when omegas don’t act like “omegas” cuz that box is so misogynistic like the whole more fem and they cook, clean, supposed to have children and take care of them, meant to be submissive and pretty. I love when things break the mold of that. Give me badass omegas who don’t take shit. I have a character who is an omega but acts like an alpha, he is very self insert due to the fact I don’t want to be seen as some weak mess and having that power while still being able to be fem and have those parts is somewhat refreshing. Omegaverse is ridiculous at its core, have fun with it, make it how you want it but be able to point out and recognize the bad parts of it since there is Edit - that being said there isn’t anything wrong with wanting to be fem and cook and clean and what not - should not be forced or expected though from society
everything you said is why i like (the subversion, the social commentary etc) and dislike (the transphobia, the racism etc) in abo fanfics... one thing that always strikes me particularly is the subversion of masculinity with respect to parenthood and caregiving. In a lot of the stories i've read and enjoyed even alpha males (supposedly the embodiement of toxic masc in a lot of aspects) are shown are caring to their partners and children, emotionally open (crying is an accepted form of emotional expression) and actively involved in their children's lives. Everytime it surprises me because it is such an unusual portrayal of masculinity. anyway... thank you for this video, i thoroughly enjoyed it :D
The first a/b/o i read was completely by accident in one of those Korean webcomics. I was like wow this author put loads of unnecessary effort into world building. Having no idea it was an existing genre.
Thank you for making this. I'm not someone who's very into Omegaverse (I don't look for it, but I occasionally read it just fine), but the discourse online that surrounds it is often... truly vile. Seeing someone with knowledge from the "inside" approaching the topic with nuance and understanding is really nice. I loved Lindsay Ellis' video, but sometimes I wish it didn't teach about the existence of Omegaverse to a whole bunch of people who only see it as a joke or an actual offensive genre.
Tbf, Lindsay did apologise for her dismissal of the genre in the second video, and her videos dealt more with the dmca issues and Addison Cain's batshit misuse of them, and not the omegaverse in general. Ofc there was a lot of emphasis on the sexual aspects, but that was because Cain basically writes pure smut. And is also not a particularly good writer.
@@SuperEkkorn Oh yeah, I know! To be clear, I don't blame Lindsay for how people took her video. That some people started to talk shit about the omegaverse after learning about it on her video is really not her fault.
I loved the nuanced take you had on this topic! As a big fan and frequent writer of a/b/o fics (both fan works and originals), I’m so used to the “eww look at these freaks!” take on the genre (particularly my favorite part of it, mpreg!) I wanted to comment on the criticism I’ve seen levied repeatedly against a/b/o that you brought up, that mpreg is transphobic against trans men. I strongly disagree with this sentiment. While I can see that making the idea of male pregnancy seem salacious or otherworldly would be erasing the experiences of trans men, choosing to write cis men or otherwise amab masculine-ish characters as being able to give birth to a child is incredibly affirming and important to an amab enby like me with severe genital dysphoria who wishes for a “female” reproductive system more than anything else. If I could press a button and grow a vagina and womb I would do so in a heartbeat! Just because trans men can get pregnant in the real world does not mean that they should be the only males/men/masculine-ish people to get to do so in my damn fantasies (or hopefully in the near future if technology keeps advancing as it currently is!)
From the beginning I've ruled out ABO fics as that weird internet kink that bothered me because of the gender norm rigidity, but I've been getting curious lately. I think listening to you talk about this in such a nuanced and scholarly manner has sealed my fate x)
The only good omegaverse story I have personally read was more about the oppression towards omegas and how traumatic it is. All the rest I've seen on the site I frequent are noncon or dubcon smut which is an instant no for me. There's also the fluffy baby bait stories (the couple has a cute baby) which are relatively harmless but also not my thing.
And no hate on people who like these kinds of stories. I'm just sick of reading non/dubcon where the bottom has the personality of a wet rag or baby rabbit and the top is an obvious narcissist.
@@NoiseDay I'm relatively new to a/b/o and fanfic, but I do think the particular fandom can have an impact on how the omegaverse plays out? I'm mostly in OFMD and much of the a/b/o I see there has been loving, and often has some aspect of the characters feeling frustrated by/rebelling against the secondary gender norms, or even subverting it with a/a or o/o pairings, etc. I have to wonder if the fandom being so queer makes a difference.
Your argument that ‘trope subversion’ in this instance, is, in fact, one of the primary purposes of the genre rang so true to me. I know there are some fics out there that “play it straight” with ABO with power dynamics, nesting, gender roles, whatever. But, that subsection has always rubbed me the wrong way (the same way it feels to see a trad-wife TH-camr woman claim that they live to obey their husband, or similar). The extreme of that vibe is definitely a squick for me. When I encountered that ridiculous author trying to copyright ABO in Lindsay’s video, my immediate reaction to her violent, un-critical take on it was: “ugh, she’s doing it wrong! How dare she claim what she doesn’t even understand!” Obviously, uncritical porn in a genre isn’t actually *wrong*, even if I find an example squicky. But, for me it misses the whole point of the genre. It’s good to see an analysis that centers the parts of this trope that appeal to me, when well-handled.
"Has this changed anything about your view of the genre?" - Yes, it's changed just about everything. I've never got into any kind of fanfiction (although I'd probably enjoy it and the community immensely ... I think I was probably too elitist for a long time, and later on it just hasn't happened) and most of what I know about the Omegaverse comes from Lindsay Ellis's amazing and hilarious videos, which means that my view of A/B/O pre this video was essentially "weird alternate reality wolf? porn/pseudoporn but to each their own I guess". Let's just say I did NOT expect myself to come out of it viewing Omegaverse as a 'legitimate' (what does that even mean anyway) literary genre with great potential and interesting problems and rules/tropes that can be used for insightful philosophising or social commentary. Yet here we are. Why is it so bloody easy to dismiss everything that's even vaguely counterculture and the slightest bit associated with teenage girls as shallow and unworthy of respect or consideration? (Yes, yes, I know, the answer is cishet patriarchy with a dash of ageism, but argh.) That's all to say, thank you Rowan for making a video essay that almost completely changed my mind. Well videoed, and thank you.
I really enjoyed this essay. It was very informative. I'd seen the Omegaverse mentioned online, but had no idea what it was. I'm an older millennial who tends to be clueless about much of internet culture.
I just realised that in A Closed and Common Orbit by Becky Chambers (one of my favourite books), the Aeluon species and society is very similar to the omegaverse. They have four genders/sexes, one that produces eggs, one that can fertilise them, one that switches between the two and one that is infertile. It’s very much like a desexualised version of ABO and it’s my favourite culture in the Wayfarers series.
The race aspect of this conversation though short was quite interesting. I didn't think about race beyond the fact that fic in general is very white and cis man, because that's mostly what we get on screen.
I love reading (and writing under a pen name) omegaverse stories but I'm extremely picky when it comes to the world building. I haven't read it within fanfic for a while because I'm mostly working through books on KU and the variety is just staggering. Loved the video :) thanks for spreading the word about the genre.
Thank you for engaging with this genre in such a nuanced way. I often find that many people who dip their toes into the genre tend to get overly bogged down by the "kink" aspects of the whole setting, where you have them looking at things like the concept of mpreg and act like "oh my god, you find this sexy?!" as if that were ever how that worked. They perceive the genre as a kink, rather than a set of tropes, like a filter through which anything is made "sexy" in the eyes of hypothetical readers. (No kinkshaming if anyone does find it sexy of course. I mean the majority of people who don't tend to see a man giving birth as the height of eroticism) While yes of course the kink is a definite part of it, it is only a PART and not the whole or the entire essence of it all. I wrote an ABO fic, constructed out of perfect kink-trope setups and made it asexual, in part to prove a point and in part just because that's what appeals to me. Like, I don't need weird gender biology to write smut. But the weird gender biology can give a framework where a masculine, strong, self-assured man can crumble into tears and be held, because the people around him intrinsically understand that this is an experience he cannot escape from. If I were to set this kind of scenario in our world, I'd probably have to write circles around the scene to make it feel realistic, given our sad, current gender stereotypes. But if this is set in an ABO setting, suddenly it clicks and feels natural. (Not that these kinds of scenes shouldn't exist in our real world setting! Please, give me weeping men, give me supportive groups of all kinds of people coming together to acknowledge each other's needs and fighting to ensure that everyone gets the care and help they need!) Furthermore, as someone who is perceived as a woman in society, I have my fair share of things I'd rather not remember or think about, that still continue to haunt me despite that. Projecting these experiences onto a gendered "other" that isn't "like me" but still emotes and reacts similarly to me, can give me a kind of catharsis by proxy. Beyond the typical ABO tropes of romantic or sexual pairings, I actually find a great depth of complexity in things like parental or sibling relationships. How does a single male omega parent raise their female alpha daughter? How do siblings of opposing secondary genders grow up? How does this impact their sibling rivalry, how do they cope with societies view on them and so forth? ABO adds a filter of complexity to our already complex world, while simplifying other aspects, which allows me as a writer to focus on the things I actually want to explore in my stories. Since the genre itself is so varied also, I can theoretically re-write any story into something completely new and different just by changing a few details of the given ABO setting! Anyway, sorry for this wall of text nobody asked for. I just want to praise and elaborate where I can.
Thanks for such a thoughtful and in-depth look into this trope. I've written my fair share of the omegaverse fics on AO3 (most of them falling into the "E" category, although I have some "M" and "T" ones). This past February I published my 5th book on Amazon and it's an omegaverse story. So far, it's been my most popular book yet.
I read a lot of omega verse stories. For me, it was a way to explore the complex social stigma around gender and sex, without feeling like my personal nonbinary gender would be so outside of the conversation. It also was a way to conceptualize, a more intersex inclusive setup, and talk about complex sex and gender topics. And that it could be helpful, for people who have no idea about intersex people, if they are told that this is not what intersex is. But it could be a way to introduce the idea of nontypical combinations of sex characteristic, without potentially causing harm or distress to intersex people.
As a woman who vehemently resents being born with the ability to become pregnant, I enjoy seeing a male character suffer through the same crisis inducing reality I experienced as a young preteen. And the ensuing struggles of trying to assert yourself as more than your biologically determined destiny of bearing children in a world that laughs when you declare you will not be having children. Is it in a strange way revenge fiction? Possibly. Has it also helped me explore this rift between my identity of self and my biology? Possibly.
The trope of omegaverse is based in the idea that your biology defines you. It has a very strict set of pre-determined rules for relationships and sexual intercourse that authors very rarely diverge far from. There are exceedingly few stories that challenge those tropes in a meaningful way. Because most of it, to be candid, is fetish porn. It is not meant to challenge or explore, it's meant to satisfy a sexual fantasy. Which is FINE and OKAY! However, I take issue when the argument is put forward that this is somehow liberating for queer people or women. It is fundamentally not. To explore and question and to liberate, you need to actually grapple with questions of gender, power or social status, and have the characters make meaningful choices in reaction to these themes. Otherwise, you are just recreating existing ideas of power and domination. There's a difference between "exploring themes" and just writing about them and perpetuating stereotypes. Because the vast, vast majority of a/b/o fic does not imagine a better world. Instead, it portrays inequality, domination and strict gender roles as fine and normal, or (often) as sexy and fun. A/b/o doesn't just have harmful elements, the entire universe is based on a fundamentally harmful premise: that biology is destiny. People generally don't like to be told that what they like could have harmful elements. But it's okay to like something even if it does not align perfectly with our politics. CAN this trope be used to explore and question themes mentioned? Probably. But any trope can. All authors are free to use their skills to imagine a different world. That's just writing.
One specific storyline that I commonly see and really connect with, as a trans-masc, is the Sudden Gender Change element. It starts with a character receiving a false test and believing themselves to be one gender (typically alpha/beta), only to find suddenly it was wrong (and they are actually an omega). The bodily betrayal really resonated with my experience of puberty and gender dysphoria. Then, there are often complex feelings about the social repercussions of truly being an omega. They are opening themselves to dehumanization and violence, closing off their job opportunities, and sometimes losing their social supports. The resolution will usually include found family and self-acceptance through integrating the previous understanding of themselves with the newest one. Unfortunately, this is one of the only times I have felt myself really represented in the media I consume, and I am not really sure the answer currently is for more cis writers to be creating trans storylines. The consequences of inaccurate depictions of social oppression or dysphoria in a fictional universe seem much less severe than one that takes place in our own universe, no matter how much we like to pretend that fiction does not affect our real world beliefs.
I'm queer (non-binary) with my spouse that is Trans F to NB, one who is literally going through their hormone treatments and did a top surgery, but has no intentions for a bottom. Despite all of this, I also still desire to have a child myself for our family. Since I'm in that place of being in a relationship with someone that biologically shares the same sexual organs as I do, there actually is a great deal of emotional trauma and pain I feel when trying to get into things like the ABO. But I'm actively working in our world's system with my spouse on our mental wellness and to raise a family. It is a small slap in the face to read about a world where it both their 'genders' cause have biological capabilities of childbirth, and I can't. It's a frustration to me. This doesn't mean I don't see the value for others to inspire hope for them. That is the beauty in literature as it is. Everyone will take out of it what they want. It's just for me personally, I can't read a world that is more male dominated in characters, that are expressed as men and not in a true nonbinary manner having the potential to procreate. Here I am struggling every month to save up the money to attempt one chance on my own. That's the representation I want to read on the matter. Those like me that struggle and despite that persevere to attain the family they've wanted. But again, that is a personal want. I don't think that makes the genre bad in the slightest. I find it refreshing so many can be inspired and strengthened within it. It merely is not the genre for me, and that's ok.
The straight faced way you present the absolutely wild concepts in this for some reason made me burst out laughing the more I watched. Pretty good but I physically cannot make it through this
To be honest, I always hated omegaverse. I hate how it feels like patriarchy 2.0, almost like the extension of seme/uke that derived from yaoi. But nonetheless it's pretty interesting, just gonna keep it in my blocked tags
Yeah, same. I've read some abo stuff, years ago, but I've never really liked it. I think we have enough problems in our society as it is and I don't want to read stories that have even more societal/gender/misoogyny issues on top of those. The more aware I become of real life issues the more turned off I get by abo. It's just too much and I don't need it.
me too. i know (also before watching this video) that there are good and interesting fics out there that subvert the tropes associated with it, but i kinda wish those tropes didn't exist to begin with
I used to really, really hate ABO. Many stories were set in a world with opressive, violent societies based on gender essentialism. It was a horny handmaid's tale for furries. Since then I've read what I call ABO light and enjoyed it. It is basicly ABO without all the icky dub con and opression. Abo in these fics are basicly just normal people who are more horny and stinky (pheromones). And I think that' s beautiful.
not only has this helped me know what those odd short stories I was reading are about, this surprisingly helped me realize stuff to avoid in my own books and universe that I am creating. Thank you, I like it.
I remember A/B/O being really popular on the Sherlock Kinkmeme, and then popular in the Teen Wolf fandom. And I’m pretty sure it’s what’s inspired those really bad (but kinda addictive) werewolf e-books that advertise on Facebook. It’s not my thing… but it does lend itself to kinks I’m into. And I’ve somehow ended up reading a lot of it over the years as it’s grown in prevalence. Some of the writers who write A/B/O are pretty talented. So I find all of these videos going into what Omegaverse is to be really fascinating.
I ran across the Omegaverse around 2012, initially in the Sherlock fandom. I was pregnant and I ended up reading a lot of pregnancy-focused ABO fics because I was going through the experience of a wanted but difficult pregnancy and I connected emotionally with a lot of them. I don't read Sherlock fics much anymore, but I do still read ABO fics, for a lot of the reasons you discussed in the video.
My favourite part of omegaverse is the social structure,highracy, oppression and discrimination but very uncommonly do they really touch on it or focus on it more than just having characters remind readers of these problems existence
Algorithm brought me here! As a person who read the warriors (cat) series as a kid and now rereading them, I have found the huge benefit of telling stories through being an animal is the ability to separate the physical aspects of gender so that storylines can focus on the more spiritual implications of a story… universal themes like betrayal and being outcast as well as love itself aren’t colored and possibly tainted through the lens of what we think ‘should’ be possible based on physical characteristics. Omegaverse seems to take this concept further and make a person’s gender be more about things within their spirit that make them a certain way (the usual binaries, dominant / submissive, running / chasing, etc) juxtaposing this upon our existing ideas of gender as being male and female. Rather than avoiding the topic altogether it forces us to confront our biases, regardless of how attached or detached we are to gender issues and the power dynamics that are so intimately connected to gender identity. My mind is officially blown right now and I feel such a level of hope for the future, that there is an outlet for people to see themselves more clearly than traditional archetypes could ever truly allow. And yes, I mention the warriors series because the tie between our non physical self and our physical, animalistic instincts as being intrinsically separate invites very interesting dialogue as well. Interest piqued!
a truly amazing watch, love how you put everything i'd want to be conveyed into cohesive sentences because I for sure can't. thank you for explaining why we love and are intrigued by omegaverse to people who might be judgemental towards it. or simply to people like me who enjoyed the deep dive of why we like it.
I really liked this video. While the genre itself is not my cup of tea, I love how you did your research on the topic, its positives and negatives, and the implications. I also adore how you keep defending fan fiction as the literary work it can be, while so many people still see it as a trashy hobby of straight women. You're amazing.
Omg I'm dyslexic and I've never heard of dipsy! I've been relying on the kindness of strangers (podfic readers on TH-cam) this sounds awesome thanks so much!
As a lesbian fanfic writer who consistently reads and writes omegaverse, I really appreciate how you unpacked the layers of complexity in the genre and spoke equally about merits and criticism. The way omegaverse enables writing political criticism and gender subversion are big draws for me. As always, your video essays are brilliant.
This vid felt like a love letter to omegaverse fic and really articulated the nuances of the genre that are often left out of the conversation. You're the best in the game Rowan
as someone that reads a lot of asian, mostly south korean, webcomics and has contact to the omegaverse genre via those, the section about racism of the video as a critisism of the omegaverse was really interesting to me, because I had not been able to put my finger on it, I wasnt able to contexualise it that way, but it very much makes sense and has finally clicked in my brain
Something I’ve experienced reading fanfic in the last couple years is that almost every pairing you can think of, no matter how niche, has at least one 40k plus word Omegaverse fic that’s always surprisingly well written.
oh my god literally,,, why is that??
@@LockandKeyHyena those omegaverse writers know what's up lol
Not welcome to hell oof.
@@LockandKeyHyena I mean I don’t know, but if I had to guess. Making something Omegaverse basically changes everything about the work, so in effect, it’s no longer an MCU, Game of Thrones, whatever ect. fic. It’s now an Omegaverse one. There’s probably a lot of readers who’ll read anything if it’s Omegaverse. So that gives authors more freedom to explore more niche pairings without worrying about not getting eyes on their story.
unless theyre f/f / wlw 🤪 doesnt matter if theyre main characters theyll be a rare pair on ao3
Something that I didn't see brought up in the video about the potential of Omegaverse is the affirmation of Found Family - most a/b/o stories I read are about characters having "pack mates", or having "bonds", which are essentially psychic and emotional links to other people that you *choose*; usually, claim bites are used to create these "bonds", but can also be established through strong emotional connections! That, or the usage of pheromones bringing comfort to characters rather than just a source of arousal is also comforting when put into a family perspective, at least to me, because in these fics anyone that the character trusts can be utilized as a source of calmness, peace, and serenity. The lack of enforcement of biological family and having the ability to choose your "pack" is something that I crave in my a/b/o fics! And we all know about the connection between queer youths/young adult's and the trope of Found Family.
Oh totally I know there are so much of found families in my fandom and they are incredibly cute and wholesome ah ;;
Also, I read once about an omega that was like disphoric(? of his own essence and the alpha covered it with his own giving him confort and both were aroace and in a queerplatonic relationship!!
I agree on the found family element of many Omegaverse stories, at least, within published works (as that's where I spend most of my time). It's part of why I love reading it but also part of why I love writing it. No matter if your own family is kind or horrible, finding a place with someone (or someones when you talk about packs) where you 'belong' always gives me such comforting feelings. That there isn't really a 'place' to be home, but there are people who you're home with (if that makes sense) and that you'll always be safe with those people. It's also why I write a lot of interconnected series in my world so that the group that a new character is pulled into becomes bigger each story, you get a bigger group of 'safe' and comforting connections. As someone who often has a hard time fitting in in social situations, that feeling of being unconditionally accepted by a group of people who are all living their best lives and only want the best for you is a massive draw to the genre.
@@vanessarl8 ooo what fandom? those sound so good!
@@raspberrytaegi The found family ones from Ateez and the rest of examples from Detective Conan, Kaito Kid x Shinichi! ;)
this is one of my favorite ways the trope is used as well :33 it’s nice that (in most versions of the -verse) found families are normalized and people don’t need to be related to be pack
It's practically all I read because I feel that gender, sex, biology, society, politics, subversions - everything is so customizable and ... free? I've read pure smut to social commentaries on societal hierarchy and consent. You can find anything!
I've been meaning to get more into Omegaverse, do you have any recommendations? Especially if any of the characters are trans and it's more on the SFW side
@@PKMNResearcherSkyler I read mostly fanfiction with real people (not anime characters, etc), but my go to place is AO3 and using the tags. There's a.b.o in virtually every fandom.
YES! Glad I'm not the only person who likes the way it's often used to really subtly explore gender roles and purity cutllture and things like that!
That's a weird point to me because Omegaverse is so restrictive as a framework on how power and couple dynamics work, and how most of Omegaverse works try to replicate toxic heteronormative roles and expectations, but in a EXTREME way.
@@MiloKuroshiro I guess it depends on what side of it you are. And also filtering out the things using tags and such helps me find stuff that doesn't fall into those issues and representations. People get real creative!
I've seen people queer it even further by having relationships that are in-universe considered to be forbidden or wrong. I saw an entire fic dedicated to exploring a relationship between two alphas in a world that sees romance between them as something destructive and doomed to fail. And one where an alpha has to fight to be able to court a beta.
Fertility also often comes up as a theme. While male omegas can generally get pregnant, there are some fics where they're specifically devalued because it's either much harder for them or outright impossible. In a world that sees the ability to have children as an Omega's main value, what does it mean for those who don't have that ability.
For female alphas, there's often a perception of one trait diluting the other. EIther they aren't a real alpha because they're a woman (and therefore supposedly lacking in dominance, aggression, and all other things alphas might be expected to have) or they aren't a real woman because they're an alpha (and therefore would have a penis and be expected to top during sex).
I'll also reiterate what I think a lot of people have already said. People who approach ABO as a porn genre and nothing else often miss half the world. Alternative family dynamics, the effect ABO has on child development, the effect that it might have on friend groups or workplace culture. Life for us exists outside of romance, and that's absolutely the case in an ABO world as well!
I love the type of stories that aren’t alpha/omega, cuz it makes it so much more interesting.
Oh can you recommend these ones that explore such themes? Also we need more Alpha women srsly
@@LiNestHetalia There're whole sets of (so far non-canonized) tags for "let female alphas have big dicks" that are really popular in The Untamed fandom, for example.
i really like that in the omegaverse world, same primary sex relationships could be not considered gay, but same secondary sex relationships could be. it's so interesting to see no one batting an eye at a male/male pairing if they're alpha/omega, but if you're an alpha into alphas you're considered abnormal. i haven't read much omegaverse but i've always enjoyed those possibilities for examination of our cultural norms from slightly different angles.
@@vicki5322 Yes! I love when fics go into these kind of contradictions.
There's a PhilosophyTube video about Social Consturcts, where she goes into a philosophical Metaphysical Thought Experiment about Earth B where they have an arbitrary division of people based on height, and how yes, it's a factual division, short or tall, but we don't have any cultural connotation like those things, and how there's a hypothetical Earth C that views our gender divisions as being as arbitrary as we would view the height divisions. And it immediately made me think of ABO fic. That's basically the whole thing. What if Gender and reproductive capabilities were separated? And there are soooo many interesting ways such a society could develop.
I don’t think I’ve ever heard someone discussing ABO without relentlessly making fun of it. Bravo!
As a head's up abo is a racial slur against Australian Aboriginals, so it's written as a/b/o.
@@crystalgeek78 don't be ridiculous. Context clues make it clear they weren't talking about Australians.
Dominic Noble has also reviewed a/b/o without mocking it.
How not to make fun of something so ridiculous as omegaverse?
@@piu4595lmfaaaooo we still gonna keep reading tho
thank you so much for this video rowan. seeing real, good faith analysis of omegaverse means a lot to me as an intersex trans man who creates omegaverse fanworks + watches/makes analysis vidz. personally, i am definitely a person who sees the ways omegaverse plays with gender, sex, and sexuality as validating and gender/sex euphoric. the way it normalizes "wrong" genitalia + characteristics and men with "female" organs + characteristics is very comforting to me - both in general, and within a sexual context. a world where a man can be pregnant and no one bats an eye or questions their gender for a second! a world where men with breasts and/or vaginas are generally seen as attractive and desirable.
the way people speak about it as if it can be nothing but transphobic is very reductive as you mentioned. it ignores basic tenants of the genre/theme and the wealth of omegaverse fanfiction that explores the very issues people have with it. however i do understand why some trans people + transmascs in particular dislike it (which i'll touch on further down this novel of a comment)
in my personal interpretation of omegaverse (shoutout to ppl reading who r interested twitter is darknesmith wink wonk) the universe is...honestly a lot better than the world we live in. sex (m/f/x and a/b/o) and gender is generally understood to be fluid. related to that - i really connected with your mention of menstrual periods and menstrual leave. in developing my interpretation, i considered the effects of heat/rut/etc on character's careers, and realized that in order for it to exist in a way that didn't fundamentally break society, the world as a whole would have to be one that did not prioritize (the exploitation of) labor. it would have to be a much more ethical world that centered personal, familial, and community needs.
i get why people have issues with it - what makes one person euphoric makes the other dysphoric! i can understand where the "why not write trans people" thing is coming from, though its a non-sequiter imo. omegaverse includes a *lot* of things that are not analogous to real trans experiences (knots, for one). and its also just, materially different. for instance if i am drawing m/m smut and have decided to depict transmasculinity, i prefer them to both be transmasc. but in omegaverse i prefer m/m alpha/omega, in part because it's simply a completely different gender + sex framework. you can't cleanly map one thing onto the other.
a lot of critique of omegavese shows a clear lack of actual engagement with the texts. people just heard a basic premise and come up with their own conclusions. and because theyre disgusted by it (which is fine btw!), they don't want come to the source to figure out if their pre-conceived notions are true. again, it's fine to do that, but maybe don't make serious, grand sweeping statements about something you know little about!
but on the critical side - recently i have seen an influx of people interpreting omegas as having vaginas rather than. bussy i guess 😭 which im very glad about because thats more aligned with my way of interpreting it!! however a term that has come up a lot is (struggling not to get this comment banned) boykitty. it can be a synonym for bussy (butt variety) but that it as well as...mean-name-for-kitty boy can be a sometimes derogatory but usually pornographic term for transmascs/our genitalia.
a lot of transmascs reclaim it, including myself, and some of them are the ones using those tags! but one can't be sure, and it can be a problem when something like that term is being used as an ao3 tag devoid of context, especially outside its specifically trans context. in every part of fandom there is a struggle with proper representation and respect of marginalized groups - nothing is perfect. i always make my work unapologetically trans + queer + intersex because i want transmasc + intersex people to feel centered, and for malicious people to recognize that my work is not for them.
(and in that same breath, the conflation of fanfiction with fetishistic cis women is a legit slippery slope. lots of men, particularly mlm transmascs, came to terms with their identity through slash fanfiction. pathologizing that potentially pushes people into the closet or even *back* into the closet. you often don't actually know the identity (or future identity!) of writers.)
sorry for this NOVEL of a comment just. really really really good video
Great comment. I wanted to hear another perspective from a trans person bc I do feel the genre has a lot of merits and creative potential that get overshadowed by kink. Personally, I read fanfic and other pieces of media to ESCAPE from my reality so worldbuilding is important to me, but omegaverse is too close to real life gender hierarchies and as a trans masc, reading about men with vaginas born into a submissive omega role makes me feel some type of way. It's not a fault of the writing, I just don't want to be reminded of my assumed role in society. My dysphoria is why I only read bl, otherwise I can't really enjoy the story.
thank you for this! i am a fellow a/b/o loving transmasc and i find this comment to be very helpful for explaining some of the reasons why i like it so much!
the way you described how a/b/o community would opperate is so interesting. do you post your worldbuilding to places like ao3? or maybe on a public part of patreon? I really wanna know more about your interpritation cause I've legit never seen it before and it sounds so interesting!!! I love the family dynamic of a/b/o so muchhhh
I saw your avatar and was wondering if it was you cos I follow you on twitter! I didn’t even realize you did abo art because I follow your sfw art but the way you described why you like makes a lot of sense, as I’m also a non-binary trans guy who likes the twisting ad queering of gender and sex in fiction.
Omg I love this comment so much 😭😭😭😭
It's (k)not my favorite genre and I was always amazed by the alpha status in fanficlandia, so I can't wait for your discussion. It's gonna be s(l)ick!
haha I see what u did there ;)
😂😂
I'm not an omega verse person but I'm still somehow scared of the knot:'(
I-
NOOOOooooooooooo
I haven't read any omegaverse, but as a trans man I found a lot of resonance with your descriptions of having a "gender" and then a secondary "sex" attached to that. I present as male and am often read as male (which is how I like it) but simply having the genitalia that I have attaches a caveat to my social and internal "maleness," especially in the weird hierarchy of sexuality that exists in our world. I still have the hormonal cycles. I still fear rape and objectification in a way that many cis men will never experience even when I am completely "passing." it's an extremely dissonant experience that I never thought I would see explored in fiction. I'm glad to know it's somewhere, even if it's just in fanfic erotica 😅
it's really affirming to hear somebody else say this honestly, as that's a big part of the appeal of the genre to me as well. this is an aspect of trans masculinity that can often get ignored or forgotten even in lgbt+ spaces, so abo as a genre represents one of the only spaces that I've seen where it's represented not just consistently but with Depth and sincerity.
Tbh abo fics helped me fight my disphoria. Why beating myself up for "not being a real man" if I can think of myself as an omega? It's of course a very simplified thought and doesn't mean confusing fanfiction with reality.
As an open minded person, I really appreciate hearing earnest rebuttals to the "so cringe" cultures the whole interent knows and hates. I appreciate the work you put into this.
I'm Ace Aro so I seriously love hearing it explained for me why I'm into fanfics. It's just safe and often times very emotionally charged, which is what I like. I can't say I'm really interested in anything ABO, but I ever had anything particularally against it. It's nice to hear more about the reasons this stuff is so beloved.
im ace and ive read a couple of ace abo fics before. like there was one where the omega was ace and it showed how he experienced heats differently (no s/x stuff just non-s/x pampering)
@@rebekahmikaelson1198 oh dang wait I actually super like that. I didn't realize there were non sexual fics that still talk about sexuality. Then again, I haven't really read this stuff for many years. Writing has probably become even more inclusive since then.
@@BlitzedPort there actually has an enough amount, I had read 3 omegaverse where characters are ace, it's also all omegas what's super interesting because omegas are generally hipersexual in the genre because of the "heat" aspect, so ace omegas is so comforting for me
@@BlitzedPort yep, there's a lot, just gotta know how to search for them
edit: btw i don't even read abo but it comes up sometimes
Got back into Merlin recently. The last time I was into Merlin, I was like 13 and didn't even pick up on the horrible treatment of Gwen as a character. Now I'm 22, and I'm very glad to see that the fandom seems to have grown up and moved away from that as a collective, because fuuuuuck, people had some bad takes about her just cause she got in the way of their ship (when really, the best way to deal with any love triangle is polyamory anyway lol)
"the best way to deal with any love triangle is polyamory" - freaking YES, THAT, that right there. (Also, if you're interested in Arthurian legends in a Western space opera setting, check out the Mechanisms' album High Noon Over Camelot - Lancelot, Gwen and Arthur are in a loving triad and it is amazing [though still a tragedy ;_;] )
Do I need to start reading yet another fandom that I haven't watched/read but looked up on wikipedia? Polyamory is the best answer to love triangles.
These days, it's usually Double Gay, isn't it? Gwen/Morgana and Merlin/Arthur. I totally agree about polyamory being the best answer. Why should everyone be suffering when they could all be thriving?
@@kaylenpeterson1773 Omg same tho. I read two in two fandoms I've never even read/watched. The summary was just too good to resist, you know??
@@jrj5893 I adore the Mechanisms so hell yeah!
I generally stay far away from omegaverse because the gender roles in it make me feel quite hopeless.. as a nonbinary person, a world where it is unquestioned that regardless of gender one can have either role in conceiving a child should seem great, but it is often still so rooted in sexism about how society at large sees omegas as less than, and any subversion and criticism of gender roles mostly come from the protagonists. That said, I also have quite a bit of disphoria about my menstrual cycle and how my endometriosis makes my physical PMS and period pain worse, and I found a select few a/b/o stories with suppressants giving characters freedom from all reproductive symptoms, which are sometimes comforting to read
Wow! That's so interesting, because I'm in a very similar position: non-binary with severe dysphoria about my cycle (and with endo), but to me exactly that concept of those rigid reproductive systems has always been a bit of a comfort. In the sense of "it's just like this, and it doesn't make you less than". I usually don't actually like the ones where the suppressants work too well, haha :D Funny how the perspectives can be so jarringly different even if coming from a similar basis!
As for me that's usually my favourite part of omegaverses the oppression that omegas go through although unfortunately stories usually have the omega protagonist be in a nice position at the end and not actually solve or really mention or touch upon the blatant sexism and social hierarchy anymore than just informing viewers that it exist
Yep I totally get you, I'm NB as well and ALWAYS had feel uncomfortable with omegaverse, but I have been more open about omegaverse in the last 3 years because A LOT has changed, specifically about the said roles, like nowadays it's less rare to found non-cliche alpha/omega only fanfics, we have a rise of alpha/alpha popularity and even asexuality inclusion, so even if ABO still pretty much not my cup of tea, I can enjoy some good ones
Same
I have similar feelings! I just find the very niche a/b/o writers who don't automatically make omegas worse off. I know there /would/ be gender discrimination in a world like that, but it's my imagination, so I get to choose if that's there lmao
It's not good, it's not bad, it's just hot. The idea of bonds, and heat and rut just makes for good PWP. taken seriously, they also force an examination of gender roles, sexual politics, biology.
I really like the gender of a/b/o works. As someone nonbinary with a complex relationship to my body, the framing of a/b/o fics is so affirming and validating
So much this
I love ABO and Fanfics in general as a whole, but an interesting ( and highly ironic) point that i have noticed is that, in the rare occasions where a story feature a Alpha/Alpha or Omega/Omega pairing (really they are rarer than a double rainbow), such couples are often viewed in-universe exactly how Gay couples are viewed in real life, with arguments such as "it's unnatural" and "that way you can't procreate!".
It made ne kinda realize that many "classic" ABO fanfics have kinda derailed to become what trashy Het porn stories have been for a long time.
BTw the "Non traditional Alpha/Beta/Omega's dynamics" tag on AO3 has kinda everything i could ask for in a story set in the ABO universes, without the most unsavory parts of Omegaverse, i highly recommend it.
Lol okay i made the comment at the beginning of the video and i'm pleasantly surprised to see you make the same point! kudos!
Oh yessss, I recently found that tag! It made me really happy. I'm utterly turned off by certain aspects of common tropes of a/b/o in my favorite fandom. Just bleeeh, no thanks. So I normally steer clear. But now! I'm so happy!
I've seen an argument that abo is basically gay romance or smut without the social opposition. And then you can add that back in of course by having alpha/alpha or omega/omega couples, but it made sense to have romance between two men, one alpha and one omega, as the default normal thing as a sort of escapism. :)
And to add, I've read a few fics where one of the OTP is alpha or omega and the other beta, often also seen as unnatural in the world of the fic, because the beta physically cannot cope with a heat/rut or doesn't have the pheromones to interact with their partner etc.
I've read a great Hannibal fic where Hannibal the alpha essentially manipulates beta Will, except this time it's not into prison or murder or whatever like in the show, but into his bed. He basically manipulates Will into acting the omega he isn't, under the pretense that Hannibal has less control than he actually does during a rut.
@@AnnekeOosterink hey just fyi, a/b/o without the slashes is a slur for australian aboriginal people
Why am I not surprised that it was a Supernatural fanfic, that started it all? SPN is truly the king of fanfiction
@@CroweCollects It is still quite strange but technically it was the actors not the characters.
First erotic fan fic is from star trek.
Written by a woman named mary sue.
I find this framing of Omegaverse is really fascinating-the way it examines gender, sex, and the way those interact with sociopolitical ideas. It reminds me of a book I read recently, The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. Le Guin (1969), which also creates a unique world with a group of people who have a distinctly different sexual anatomy and gender presentation than the reader. (It has its own version of mpreg and mating cycles, but diverges from Omegaverse in other ways.) It's a science fiction book with no romance plots, but it's really interesting to think about that book now after this video. Love your content as always!!!
The left hand of darkness is a masterpiece
I thought of it too especially as Le Guin is considered quite high brow compared to like. omegaverse fanfiction. The book is wonderful everyone read it
personally, as a trans man, i really enjoy mpreg abo fics. i hate fics about trans men getting pregnant, they almost always fall into a category that feels fetishistic. i have read ones i enjoy, but it usually takes a disclaimer that the author is themselves trans for me to even consider reading them. but with abo fics, i almost feel comforted
To start with I just wanted to say I really wish we could destigmatize women enjoying things just because it turns them on. I'm a bi woman and I've used fanfic (and text based rp) all my life to deconstruct my relationship with my queerness and my gender, but also as an enjoyer of pure PWP. There is absolutely nothing wrong with that so long as it's not actively hurting other people, at least imo. I think that's why so many people find 'we forced this actor to read dirty fanfiction of their character' shit so very offensive and uncomfortable, because it breaks that barrier of consent for us and for them and pushes a harmless hobby into being something potentially harmful, all because some outsider decided to use it as a weapon for clicks.
I also wanted to note that so far as our world mapped onto another world goes, and how A/B/O worlds are just a hellscape version of our own patriarchal hellscape and why would that be sexy or interesting or subversive? If someone took an Omegaverse fic and directly mapped it onto heterosexual patriarchy the characters would be so completely unbelievable and pandering and annoying as fuck that it would just be unreadable, eyerollworthy and therefore lose the reader before any soul searching or subversion could even happen. Take that example about Jared being an Omega rights advocate and make him an ~outspoken male feminist~ instead, telling lady Jensen what a fine catch he is because he's standing up for women. It'd be red flags all the way. The way our patriarchy is structured and our built in prejudices just makes that kind of examination of gender roles so much more difficult in heterosexual fic.
This was a great video. Obviously I'm a fan myself, but I appreciate you shining a kinder light on this genre of fic (and fanfiction and slashfiction in general) than it usually gets. For those who are considering dipping a toe in, a reminder to pay attention to tags, and the old adage 'don't like, don't read, and definitely don't flame the author when they warned you ahead of time'. Also do yourself a favor, narrow down the search terms thoroughly and also sort by kudos. Thank you for the work you put in, Rowan, it was well researched and thorough.
@luciferRiding
Thank you!
I also love fanfic, but I hate on chat shows when actors are shown smutty fan art or made to read pwp fics.
@@NotSpillingTheTea For sure. Every time I go to AO3 and choose my search terms and click on a fic I consent to reading it. Why should actors not get the same choice? I mean maybe they do and they're offered the choice to turn down that line of inquiry ahead of time? but it still doesn't make it less uncomfortable, and it feels like the fanfiction author, too, loses an element of consent there as well. Gross all around, basically.
@@Lucifer-Riding
My opinion is that when writing about fictional characters you’re not hurting anyone. So writing them with whatever ship you like and with whatever kinks you want. They’re not real so no consent needed.
But actors lend their faces and voices to those fictional characters, they probably see themselves when they think of that character. Especially when writers describe the actors physical features.
Maybe they don’t want to read about their work colleague knotting them. Or get sent in the post sexual fanart
I enjoy looking at the relationship potential and conflict created by the omegaverse system. I can definitely relate to that acespec bit about feeling of 'having to get this over with'. I remember there was this alpha/alpha fic that I found the premise so funny how their 'instinct' is to show off to the other that led to some amazing flirting and wagers and other shenanigans and it's amazing the humor the genre brings to the stories and not only just as a serious exploration, it's just fun as well
I have to say, you've completely opened my eyes about this as a genre. It's still not something that appeals to me as a reader, either of fanfiction or published original fiction, but I was unfairly prejudiced towards it. As someone who prides themselves on thinking about things with nuance and not tarring all works of an artform with one brush, I can now see how misguided I was!
While Omegaverse itself may only be a decade old these things were also already common tropes in certain types of furry erotica, mature slice-of-life and RPs way longer than that. Omagaverse only really applied these tropes to humans, brought it all into the more mainstream fanfic space and standardized it more.
High five from an ace person who reads omegaverse!
It's not my favorite genre, i usually exclude it from AO3 searches, but once in a while i find myself fascinated by a fic or series recced or from a favorite author, especially those who explore the social aspects of it (really which that YOI one that's written as a metaphor of being agender had been completed u_u Alas, canon rewrites rarely are.)
I'm especially tickled about omegaverse stories with ace main characters, though i have to navigate them with caution since they can be triggering for me, same as forced marriage trope. I once found a rec for an omegaverse forced marriage ace pov, no noncon, and by chapter 5 i was full on dissociating...
This was truly fantastic. I can't tell you how much I appreciate hearing comprehensive and objective discussions about fandom culture, and it's tragically all too rare.
Omegaverse is honestly one of the most remarkable creations of fandom. It's even started to spread to the world of doujinshi! And I think its popularity really speaks to what an excellent tool it is for the exploration not just of gender and sex and how society is built around them (and how they can in turn be warped, confined, and manipulated by society) but also of human sexuality as an animalistic thing, treating hormones and instincts as much more explicitly tangible things than we do in the real world. It's that aspect of the genre that particularly draws me in. Humans are so unconsciously trained to consider ourselves separate from the animal kingdom to the degree that we pathologize the most basic things rather than accept them as instinctual, like our own cycles of feeling particularly horny when we're also the most likely to get pregnant with a certain kind of sex, or why we find some features more sexually attractive. I'm a bit of an anthropology nerd, I guess you could say, and I'm not nearly enough of a furry to have ever found satisfaction going QUITE that far into animalistic territory, so Omegaverse is a perfect compromise imho.
I do understand the discomfort a lot of trans ppl feel towards the genre, just as I understand why many trans ppl can also really love it. The thing I disagree with is that it's "cisheteronormative" when… it's just not. Not unless we consider the desire to raise children with the person you love to be "cisheteronormative" which sadly I know many do, but I think that's terribly reductive. The animal world is full of examples of this, from fathers who play what we would consider "maternal" roles like seahorses and certain frogs, to same-sex couples that will adopt or even downright magically conceive their own children via parthenogenesis, like penguins and condors. Cuttlefish have two distinct kinds of "male" that both serve important roles for the survival of their species, and hyenas… well, they're practically a blueprint for female alphas, I suppose!
And this is exactly why I think Omegaverse is important for more than just indulgent erotica. It's a sandbox with which we can build a society as similar or dissimilar to our own as we want, and then from there explore and deconstruct what the concept of "cisheteronormative" even IS, all without being clouded by our own reality. We can be more objective, an outside viewer, as you demonstrated yourself in the video. It gives us degrees of separation that help to not only protect ourselves from our personal traumas and biases, but to really dig deep and work out our own truths about gender and sexuality. What is a cis man when raised with the gender roles and societal expectations that AFABs are raised with in our world? Or put another way, what is a cis man when raised withOUT the entitlement and sense of sexual dominance that AMABs in our world are? Would they be more inclined to have a demure manner? Would they chafe against the expectation to be submissive in any way? What traits do we associate with masculinity that actually have nothing to do with sex or gender, and instead are purely nurture vs nature? From those points, we can further dissect what femininity is, where it connects to sex and gender and where it doesn't, and vice versa. It's so incredibly rich and interesting!!
And it's not just these concepts, either. I've read incredible fics that work through societies of extreme sexism, where the omegas of each clan or village are kept locked up and isolated together in a house with boarded up windows from the time they present as omegas to the day they are married off, never allowed to even step outside, "for their own good." The cruelty of a normal childhood followed by such a fate, to suddenly be asigned this role that's little more than furniture, and the main character who was kept from that fate with the help of drugs to hide his status as an omega, and who was even further kept from the knowledge of how his kind is treated by the rest of the world. Was it that blissful upbringing of relative equality that gave him the willpower to lead a revolution against society? Was it inevitable that he would be the one to do it? Of course (and again I understand why many ppl are turned off by this aspect) like many Omegaverse stories, this one also dealt with the trauma of SA and forced pregnancy, and of the further distress caused by having so much trauma related to the very sex/gender you are also exclusively attracted to. These are very personal, sensitive subjects that can be made easier to work through objectively when you're not writing about characters you can relate to too intimately. It's unfortunate that ppl feel like this is "fetishizing," but I don't think it's especially healthy to conflate oneself with the entirety of your marginalized community to the point that you feel personally victimized by such distant representations as fictional characters in fanfiction. As a cis woman and a lesbian, I've seen my fair share of cishet male fetishization of my identity, …but I've also seen a lot of art involving women and/or lesbians made by cishet men that's nuanced, respectful, and part of their own effort to work through their own feelings and issues. Nabokov wrote Lolita to deal with his history as a survivor of CSA, and it's not hard to understand how much harder it would have been for him to write Dolores as a little boy instead. It's too close to the wound. And the mangaka who makes my favorite wlw manga has an ambiguous gender in their representations of themself on social media and in the author's notes. I make no assumptions about their AGAB, but I know a lesbian's writings about lesbians when I see it, and for these reasons, I take a firm stance againsy judging art based solely on the author's perceived gender. You never know when someone is still unaware of themself, or has to stay in the closet. Policing and gatekeeping art by something as complex as gender and/or sexuality is a wildly different ballgame than something like race or disability, and to me it veers too close to bioessentialism for comfort.
Not to go off on a tangent, but just to illustrate this point, a while back I encountered a cis gay man who was going off on the "cishet women writing mlm is fetishization" schtick, and in the process misgendered or erased the sexuality of every author he used as an example. It was pure misogyny that, as it always does, ended up as unintentional bigotry against trans men, nonbinary ppl, and queer women. "Trans men are always men, even before they've come out" he said, as if trans men always KNOW they're trans, as if they don't gravitate towards mlm stories as part of their awakening, as if hearing gay men proclaim all this about fetishization isn't the last thing they need to hear. Half a year later, I check back on this guy out of somewhat petty curiosity. I'd had a gut feeling when we first butted heads. Something familiar, as he talked about finding it more comfortable to write idealized smut about straight women than gay men. Aaaand yep. Said author had since come out as a trans woman. And I'm happy for her, truly I am. She hasn't walked back a single word she said, but that's no business of mine. She's made the first step towards understanding why her words hurt so many ppl. I'd had that gut feeling bc the way she spoke about how she felt wrt personal comfort writing smut about cis women rather than cis men is a maaaajor first clue in the "Identity Awakening" journey, and one queer women especially (in my experience, just bc we're not as discouraged from engaging with queer romance as those who are raised as males.) can relate to. I didn't realize I was even slightly gay until I was 20, but I had been crazy about mlm stories for years. I just felt more comfortable reading and writing about queer romance that wasn't TOO relatable. I'd get weirdly nervous whenever I tried to read about wlw. And the times when I stumbled upon a good lesbian romance WRECKED me in ways that I still, at 31, have to mentally and emotionally prepare myself for even when I knowingly engage with that kind of story! I /get/ it. In a better, more equal world, maybe we wouldn't have to hide from the intensity of our own feelings, the traumas, the vulnerabilities, the compulsions, by projecting onto characters of the opposite gender. But we're not in that world. And we need to be aware of these reasons for the things that we do so we don't hurt each other.
I… don't remember if I was going anywhere before I got off track, and I'm scared to scroll back up and see how much I've rambled like a loon. I spend entirely too much time trying to educate queer youths about these things only to be met with "don't you have kids to feed? Go pay your taxes. Weird old hag." 99% of the time, so I'm prone to Going Off every time I get the chance 🙃
Not to discredit anything you said here, I just believe a lot of the things you talk about being positive in omegaverse are just positives of fiction in general.
I just want to thank you for basically writing an insightful mini-essay on the topic on a TH-cam comment section, which is usually one most Cursed Place to peruse in the search for delightful commentary pieces 💖
@@bluester7177 that's very true, but Omegaverse is particularly helpful bc it provides a framework to build off of, which from the start encourages the writer to really dig into the details between gender, sex, and society that only vaguely resemble our own.
@★ Lucca ★ There are many answers to this question. Sometimes there are a/b/o fics where your role ISN'T decided at birth. Much more often, there are a/b/o fics that explore WHY bioessentialism/getting your role decided for you by anatomy is so bad in a profound, educated way. Sometimes there's even no such thing as "men". I am neither cis nor het nor a woman and I find this a really reductive and closed-minded way of looking at the genre as a whole.
Your comment was so good that normally I don't reply to people but I just had to say something! A lot of what you said about Omegaverse in regard to re-animalizing ourselves, "cisheteronormativity" and the sandbox society have all resonated really deeply with me. People say it's a positive of fiction in general, but I'm gonna be real I have yet to see any other subgenres (aside from sci-fi which tends to play with the xeno-biology of aliens in a very similar way thank you star trek), engage with the entanglement of primal urges, sex (both the action and the assignment), gender, and society on such a level. :/
And I know its not for everyone, but in the case of people who say that the genre is too "full of bioessentialist bullshit" I genuinely believe that these people just don't know where to look or how to find a story that appeals to them. A "space opera" is just a story that's set in space. Whether or not it delves into themes of existentialism or revolution is entirely dependent on a case by case basis and it's up to the reader to go out and find or MAKE those stories if that's what they want to read.
Honestly, I prefer to read from sources that have large ensemble casts, and I find that those stories specifically tend to deal with larger socio-hierarchical questions that a lot of people seem to take issue with. This is in part thanks to the inherent varied experiences that come from having an ensemble cast with a variety of second genders; A story with 5 protagonists instead of just 1 will allow for a much more nuanced discussion of gender experiences and expectations. I recommend people try looking for those sorts of stories instead if that's what you're missing.
I listen to an omegaverse original story that had the running plot of the omegas being affected by a disease that no one really knew much about and there was a major lack of medical research on omegas themselves and the disease. It’s such a good series imo
I used to read ABO stuff, but recently started to actively avoid it because I've noticed that especially the recent stuff really has a lot of complete disregard of consent, and honestly giving me like super traditional het couple vibes. "You will submit and have my babies and be happy about it" kind of vibes.
Well, it's not uncommon for a genre to gain popularity and at the same time have the genre be dumbed down to its worst aspects.
Or maybe I've just been exposed to the worst version of ABO stories recently, that's also possible.
For me I would say it's the opposite with ABO, I hated it at first. What I didn't like before, I still don't like today, but now I feel like I have a lot more options to find what I like.
I hated omegaverse because every time I read something related (knowing what it was or not), had this consent issue, it was non-con or dub-con.
And with a certain heteromactivity, the alpha woman had to act in a masculine way, because she is an alpha woman and has a penis (or a long clitoris that allows penetration), even if she is OOC of the persona of fanfic to be acting like that (I understand that it could be a fantasy not linked to genitalia her dominance attitude and kinda "masculine" attitud, instead of this being by "her role in the couple's dynamic" of representing a norm of our society heteromative, but it was something that happened often for these things.) Like, it's not because she has a penis that she can't necessarily be the most feminine in the couple, for example.
The same for omegas for having a uterus, in being treated in the feminine when being identified as a man, you have to wear a wedding dress, you have to be the housewife of the couple of two men. But for the alpha male to wear dress is inadmissible, or omega woman can't be butch, and usually nor binary doesn't appears in these fanfics. The alpha has to be the most masculine, and in a perspective that values the toxic masculinity of alphas, not a representation of healthy masculinity. And the romanticization of alphas being an assholes.
On the site I read (because my first language is Portuguese, not English, so getting in touch with AO3 took years) had no non-con or dub warnings, 'cause technically it wasn't allowed obe posted on site in the first place, the administration had little control, besides that ficwrites sometimes didn't even realize that they were writing non/dub, a situation similar to wattpad.
But nowadays I've come across more and more stories that run away from that, including in mangas and novels. I'm reading a chinese novel called "Accidental Mark" which is kind of a criticism of that aspect. In addition to the "non traditional alpha/omega/beta dynamic" tag, it opens the door to a lot of things. Like alpha/alpha, omega/omega, beta/alpha, beta/omega and polyamorous relationships.
And I, who love stories with youkai, like InuYasha, was interested in ABO too for the ways of dealing with these people with some animal characteristics, like being able to purr, having a pack (a family that one chooses, without blood relations), comparisons with aspects in our society, I like the varied world constructions that ABO allows.
Besides the genres are so different, that I saw more possibilities of dealing with them, it can be escapism with two women or men being together without much drama, being attracted to more than one gender and don't have to deal with any drama about it, the character's family ok and he is not marginalized by his sexuality, cause one is omega and the other alpha, same thing for nbs. But it can also have, if it is alpha/alpha, society no longer sees with the eyes of normalizing.
The same thing as a trans man who omega and being integrated into the normalization of society, an escapism, but are too fics in which a trans man is not socially included, cause the trans man is an alpha. Or instead of the transition being genders of our world, could be the genres of this other world: being alpha, beta and omega, which might not be accepted, if the story universe is fixed as it usually is. Not only in fanfics, even on Tumblr I saw more and more interesting headcanons, like instead of being something about wolves, being about dragons. Instead of people having a defined gender by birth by genitalia, they don't.
These aspects brought me back to ABO.
Oh you for sure have been reading awful fanfics because like I had found some that are amazing and I'm the opposite, maybe searching for "not typical omegaverse" will help? Exist a specific tag on AO3 for this, but I forget
What fandom are you reading for? I'm certainly not having those sort of issues with the omegaverse I read, but lately I only read one pairing and that's all.
Yeah that has been my experience when looking into omegaverse fics, too. I'm sure there's good content of it out there, but I don't like the gender essentialist stuff baked into the fandom culture, and the way they handle consent either. I'm not sure I'd say it's a "new" thing in the genre, either, at least not in my experience dipping into omegaverse fic.
The respect I have from her for being able to so calmly talk about a universe whose stories I read as a guilty pleasure is immeasurable.
It’s also very interesting to me how different cultures write abo dynamics. The trope is also really popular among (East)Asian writers but it’s used very differently.
It feels to me personally that abo is much more graphic and violent in Western works while Asian works focus more on the more tame settings (such as attraction by pheromones etc.). This kinda also reflects how Western LGBT works are also more realism-based while the uniquely Asian “BL” trope is a fantastical genre not found in Western media.
To me the best part of a/b/o is its fluidity. The rules and roles are never the same twice. I'm still questioning my gender daily, so it's nice to be able to read fics where the genders, body parts, social norms etc. involved are reshuffled constantly with every new work. Since I'm also somewhere along the ace spectrum I find the level of distance (and oftentimes humor) of most a/b/o fics not only relatable but also comforting.
i definitely have mixed feelings about omegaverse fic. as a transfemme person, i remember discovering a/b/o before coming out to myself, and deeply relating to feelings of shame and powerlessness when it comes to bodies and sex. and yet one of the main reasons i haven’t come back to the genre since like, 2015 is the gender essentialism of it all. most stories i had come across had no fluidity of gender or really any room for transness within this gender system, despite the inherent queerness of it all. and that’s just not something i want to read. i hope things have changed, to be fair i haven’t read any of this content in a *while*, and societal awareness of trans people has changed drastically. anyway, really cool video!
Yeah. I know a lot of people use abo as a tool to pick apart ideas of gender and sex, but all the abo I've ever tried has been very static in those terms.
I really do enjoy exploring those themes in fic, but that's usually through like... fics with actual trans characters. (which sadly means writing my own most of the time :P ESPECIALLY if I want to see someone more like myself -- transfemme or nonbinary or god forbid both)
ABO with fluid gender roles exists, but it's very rare. Many that I've read go for a sort of intersex omega idea, so physically they're intersex, but they can present more masculine or feminine as they prefer, and that can change throughout their lives.
One fic I read goes into how one omega child was raised as a boy because their father wanted a male heir, but in the end they were married to an alpha (due to shenanigans) while dressed as a woman, their spouse rejects them on the basis of being omega, because they wanted a beta wife, spurring them to become even more masculine than before etc etc.
Of course, being a romance story, their spouse sees the error of their ways (which originated due to trauma at the hands of their alpha father and his omega mistress, what is the neutral word for that anyway?) and the omega can explore their feminine side if they wish, they end up sort of fluid between feminine and masculine sometimes going one way or the other, but most often somewhere in the middle, and throughout the story there are more omegas who do so (so the main character is not a "not like other girls" type) one named Freddie/Frederika who presented more feminine as a child for a while, then more masculine, and prefers mostly feminine during the main plot.
I also remember a fic where there is a beta/alpha couple (Hannibal fandom, with all the mind-fuckery and manipulation etc that show contains) where alpha Hannibal pretends to be a lot less lucid during ruts than he actually is so he can manipulate beta Will into sharing his bed, it goes a lot into how a beta simply cannot physically cope with the rut of his partner, that a beta cannot produce the pheromones needed to appease an alpha in rut, etc etc.
So it exists, you just have to wade through a lot of other stuff to find it. I don't know if there's a specific tag for it, but I do believe [omegas are intersex] is an existing tag.
But yeah, a lot of it is very "A/O couples only, because babies."
Yeah,, that's pretty much my relationship with it as well... I can totally acknowledge that gender essentialism isn't inherent to the genre, I just always found an overwhelming majority of fics dealt with a/b/o in a way that felt like it denied the existence of trans people. As a transmasc nb, they often made me feel very alienated. Though, once in while, I'd find myself feeling affirmed of who I was/am, so that's neat.
It really hasn't changed - I run across more trans fics now than I used to - but I've yet to run across a trans abo fic.
I've read one fic where the status of an alpha/omega was 100% cultural one. Which basically meant that humans were like fish, they would change their sex and gender depending on outside factors. Honestly in a world of butt babies gender fluidity expressed by sex characteristics should be more common
As a sex repulsed ace, the main thing that’s made me avoid omegaverse content is the concepts behind heats and ruts as the were traditionally conceived.
The idea that biologically you’re *forced* to have sex, and have absolutely no control over those urges is utterly terrifying to me
I’m asexual but NSFW fanfiction is one of the few things that “works” for me. Funny enough though, omegaverse stuff never interests me even though other weird stuff I’m into should point to it being right up my alley. It’s all very strange.
I do LOVE reading and learning about the omegaverse though, and especially the drama that’s been going on with it in recent years lol
IKR, it's weirdly fascinating even though it's totally not my thing
IKR? Like I just enjoy omegaverse if it's about more than the sex lmao I had read good ones that discuss gender, political views and even some with asexual omegas, like I just can't enjoy omegaverse if it's not y'know about something substantially more informative, but so I can read a 5k pwp with religious blasphemy 😭
The variety is fascinating! As an outsider, I've always filtered the trope out since certain (seemingly) core qualities make me highly uncomfortable, but now I see that there's room to play up/down any aspect of it!
It really depends very strongly on how the author builds their world, and even how they see the biology working. Like, there are worlds that have only alphas and omegas and all are male, there are worlds with 6 genders, as in, all the combinations of alpha/beta/omega and male/female. There are worlds where there are only male alphas, intersex omegas, and male and female betas etc etc etc.
Add to that the infinite variety of genres that you can make abo, from romance, fluffy and cute pregnancy/kid fics to dystopian scifi, or historical detective, there's just so many options.
It is true however, that a large group of them are very same-y and you have to look for the ones that are more interesting. Or at least, I find them more interesting. But that's why tags like [non-traditional ABO dynamics] exist. :)
I honestly only ever loved Omegaverse since it usually dealt with werewolves/wolves and I love them. But the more I've read them, the more they helped me dive into interesting topics like politics, societal expectations, biology and way more than I was expected from this genre
I've always avoided omegaverse fic, not even because of the more sexual aspects, but because I hate the "worldbuilding" with a passion (it's always come off as kinda sexist in a variety of ways to me), so I'm very excited to see your perspective on its potential/positives/etc.
i dont really enjoy most abo fic bc yeah, sexism. i usually read the ones that examine the sexist tropes and go all "omega rights!!". but i agree that the worldbuilding is inherently sexist in a lot of ways, and even the "omega rights!!" fics cant really escape it bc its built into the very fabric of that universe.
i do remember this one fic tho, where it started off as a typical (if regressive) abo plot, but ended with the omega mc in a new pack that actually respected him, and falling for the pack's buff omega hunter. there was a lot of 'you've been lied to abt your worth and your place in the pack and your abilities - not intentionally, maybe the people who taught you this actually did believe what they said, but it was wrong nonetheless. you're equal to the alphas and betas of the pack and we'll respect you as such here'. it wasnt a perfect fic, there were a lot of issues but i feel like it did a better job of not being sexist than any other abo fic ive read.
Yeah I feel like not a lot of stories actually adress the sexism they only really make things go well for the main omega
Same! The slavery and extreme sexism pisses me off tbh I just can’t enjoy 95% of those fanfictions.
I also have a big problem with this types of stories, because so many of the ones I've read had the same tropes and are often kinda toxic, and they you tell the writter something is unconfortable to read and they are like "but is part of the genre". Like, c'mon, there is no rule book, you can tottaly make a good story if you want,
I love omegaverse and every time I bring it up nobody seems to actually like it in my real life so I love seeing people talking about in a positive side of it!
Is sigma , delta .. are part of Omegaverse ? Like in socio sexual hierarchy? Plz answer me
@@naa4883 it's a universe where omegas are the pseudo bottoms and alphas are the pseudo tops (not always pseudo) there are alphas, betas and omegas and betas are just the normal people. Tbh this is a deep subject and there's plenty of resources online that you can look up.
Honestly my favourite thing about a/b/o and the thing that keeps me coming back for more is that there’s endless possibilities for what you can do with it! You can have pure smut or an in depth examination of systematic oppression OR both that the same time!! I’ve read plenty of fics with a 'standard' omega verse set up (literally every author has a different take on it down to what characteristics differed sub-genders have) but I’ve also read explorations of what it would mean to be an alpha attracted to other alphas, hell I’ve read a couple fics where the typical hierarchy was flipped and omegas had more social power. No author will write it exactly the same and you can get really creative with it and that’s why it’s so fun.
Breeding and pregnancy happen to be my biggest squicks, so I've avoided a/b/o since I first discovered it. Still, I find fandom and fanfiction super interesting so I've been curious for years. This video was a really excellent way for me to learn about this tag & genre without diving into fics that make my tummy hurt due to my own hang ups, and I really really appreciate that!
Knowing how to search for great fanworks is HUGE. There's no editor to goalie or sort for you, so you've got to do it yourself. Personally, I've found sorting an AO3 tag/fandom from 'publish' or 'updated' - showing newest or most recently updated first - to 'bookmark' or 'hits' - showing those most bookmarked or with the most hits first - to be extremely helpful in finding well written works.
Gosh, min 10 onwards is the best defence of ff I have ever heard out loud. As a whump-fiction writer and reader, I always get really bothered trying to explain anything, because people think it's a weird kink/feti* thing and lack category or nuance to actually understand or even try. Thank you so so much.
Also: as an update to your video, the Omegaverse has officially reached main stream with the first Thai BL (Pit Babe based on a novel with the same title) series set with various pairings, and complete with abusive Alpha-special -abilities-trafficking ring.
I always think omegaverse as a trope histories are super interesting but the fact that the trope was around in fic long before supernatural popularized it is normally over looked. There was omegaverse fic in the tennis fandom at least a few years before supernatural aired and I remember being really young in the early internet days reading a sailor moon AU that was basically omegaverse.
Supernatural gets full credit for making it mainstream though.
I haven't figured out how to do this yet but I've always wanted do some writing exploring how transness might look in omegaverse. Because A/B/O dynamics are physiologically and socially treated like secondary sexes there's so many more way a character could be trans. How is being transgender treated versus being transdynamic? What do transitions and trans healthcare look like? How does your dynamic not being known until puberty affect it? Can you go on hormones to influence your presentation one way or another? Would the abuses and discrimination be unique in omegaverse or would it be similar to our own? What would it look like without transphobia? How might these characters find happiness and affirm their true gender and/or dynamic? I have lots of questions and few answers and absolutely no idea what to do with any of it lmao its been many year since I've written any fanfiction and even longer since I've written an original work. 😅
omg, same here, im just fascinated by the idea that with 2 genders people will have to deconstruct or go through different types of stereotypes/discrimination if they're trans. I have had an idea of a fic for like 2 years now but its too close to my trans experience to ever release but yes !! trans people existing in a/b/o is such an interesting topic! And tbh if you have lots of questions and few answers, you can always looks for fics that cover these topics or even not-traditional a/b/o worldbuilding to help you out creating the base for your own world. Sorry for the rambling but ^^ glad to know im not alone in this view of a/b/o!!
same here!!
I read a fic with a transdynamic character once. Didn't like the writing style so I stopped reading halfway through, and the transdynamic aspect of it was just background, but I found it interesting to read as a trans guy. It did indeed mention the character taking hormones as part of his transition to omega. If I remember correctly, the hormones were to alter his scent. I've heard a few mentions of the idea of transdynamic characters from people talking about the genre, but not seen any other fics, sadly. I've also seen a couple omegaverse fics with actual transgender characters, which mostly seemed to portray traditional gender/sex/gender roles as less important than dynamic. So the character being transgender was less of a big deal in their society because people/society care more about their secondary gender in how they are treated. But yeah seeing more exploration of this kind of thing would be super interesting.
I wasn't quite able to finish what I was saying in chat cuz I was behind lol so:
As someone who's currently involved in a survey/poll about people's omegaverse worldbuilding, I'm looking forward to watching this when I get the time
Also (tho I've just showed up so it's probably addressed elsewhere), historically, omegaverse was a way for two male characters to have a "normative" relationship, but recently I've seen many people (both from that poll and not) across several fandoms writing fics that involve omega/omega, alpha/beta, etc. relationships (so they're actually looking into how things would change) and/or have non-canonically trans characters (so they're trans in the fic but not in canon I mean)
I've also seen a couple people (at least) talking about how they would implement queerness in their worldbuilding. Like, how asexuality would be addressed with heats/ruts, or how intersexuality would intersect with "secondary designations". Stuff like that. I also know that there're fics that significantly lessen the impact of heats/ruts (to the point where you can just go about your everyday business without worrying all that much). Hell, there was one fic I came across that had subverted traditional roles by justifying omegas as stronger and alphas as prettier
Anyway, there's definitely more than that (like, I haven't even touched on trans-designation people or normative polyamory), but trust me when I say it's there.
I love the final say in being that “a depiction of a horrible world/unjust situation is not an endorsement of that sentiment”. Like, it’s possible that people simply wish to explore more fucked up narratives in a way that doesn’t bring real world harm. And I still think there is nothing inherently wrong with being essentially horny for certain tropes.
Is like coming up with fantasy races and like, either making them extremely fucked up in an animal sort of way or makes them be fucked up in a human way, I've seen people have always taken a lot of (understandable) offense to fantasy races that are indeed pretty essentialist or racist and tend to condemn authors that include those details of being somehow an endorser or apologists of one of the worst aspects of humanity, but like, doesn't that just open the possibility for more stories to be told? Like, now I can write a character that is indeed NOT racist in a world where, maybe they're expected to be by default, I can show how being raised like that can affect their relationship with the environment and also the person as they grow up, I can subvert my own writing by slowly teaching the racist character their biases are wrong and inspire change for a messed up society, like, the possibilities are endless, really, and sometimes it adds texture to the overall world and story you want to tell even if irl is still messed up and to some it might read as wishfully thinking and simplification. Sometimes you really just wanna read stories about awful stuff happening on an enclosed niche setting you got control over just to process how real life works and how it makes you feel and how you wish you could fix it if you were in charge, you know?
I don't really feel one way or another about abo as a genre, it doesn't tick any boxes for me in particular but I definitely don't avoid it. I will say there is one uber-specific sub-genre that I do really like: when authors (intentionally or not) write about love/dating/sex as a neurodivergent. Give me a character using a heat/rut service because they can't find a partner to treat them how they want/need not in a gender-y way but in a sensory issues/social conventions/etc way. Give me the wish fulfillment of a 'True Mate' who is going to 'get' me even when almost no one else in my life does, who will be able to 'sense' my meaning/feelings when everyone else in my life reads me wrong. And even the fics where the whole 'gender/status thing is super individual and you can be not only an omega that's hardcore, but you can be an alpha who has anger issues and is super nurturing and is super protective but hates being in charge' thing is clearly a gender discussion, can still really fill up my 'it's great to be weird/contradictory/doesn't fit into any categories even when there are plenty of categories' cup.
(hey just fyi, a/b/o without the slashes is a slur for aboriginal australians)
@@victai163 dude, does context exist to you??
Like, are you 14? Is obvious that in THIS context people are not using that damn word as an slur and that it should be read as A-B-O regardless, I've seen you on like 5 different comment sections already bringing up that you SHOULD add the slashes and is so damn annoying, give it a rest will you? Stop policing over his to type stuff that doesn't even fucking apply in context, you're treating it as if they were saying a slur on purpose when all they're discussing is about shipping shit... GOD
I think a lot of fanfiction is mentally playing house for adults, trying out relationship dynamics without any impact on their lives, figuring out how personalities would coexist in a household. Theres a lot that reminds me of when I was a small kid playing house at afterschool club, kids of all different ages, genders, families were in this group. I remember how sometimes people would change rolls, boys playing mum, respectively, girls playing dad, not because they were experimenting with their gender but because they were exploring different aspects of their personality under these archetypes. It was more the character than a reflection of the roll, and the "kids" would respond to the roll as well rather than the person playing the character, for example if you need something most go to mum, although I recall a few stay at home dads in games, in which case dad was the go to. I actually vividly remember a boy playing a working pregnant mum with a stay at home dad played by another boy once. If that doesn't sound like omegaverse I don't know what does
I really like this description!
I really like the section where you talk about why women write fiction about and from the perspective of men because society doesn’t condition women to see themselves as having equal worth in a narrative, if you’re ever interested I’d love to hear you talk about that more specifically/in depth! As always, an amazing video 💕
Seconded!
I once read an omegaverse comic set in a kindergarten that was honestly very sweet and pg which I'm quite upset to have lost the name of honestly, I hadn't been aware there were that kind of stories in the genre before reading it
That sounds so cool! If you do manage to find it again drop the link
Yes, cross stitch is a subgenre of embroidery. Technically every time needle and thread are used to decorate a surface, mostly fabric, it counts as embroidery.
Answering the most burning and relevant questions, I know.
Really interesting video! Omegaverse has always been a genre I instinctively disliked- for me, the secondary gender roles offered restrictions and rigidity, and I’ve been deeply uncomfortable with how it can “force” gay pairings into a hetero dynamic (although I think that’s a problem that comes up across all fanfic). Definitely realized there’s an element of dysphoria in it for me which I hadn’t clocked before lol, the omega role is an issue for me probably because of that,,, That being said, omegaverse may only produce a visceral dysphoria in me, but I think it’s fascinating and super cool that it can be a source of euphoria for other trans people!!
This is never going to be something for me, that’s ok I can filter tags for a reason, but as long as it is bringing joy to others pls go ahead and do ur thing!
Yeah, I definitely get dysphoric around omegaverse stuff.
I decided to spend time doing this useless thing but here are some statistics. Since this video came out there are now 165,905 fics in the a/b/o dynamics tag.
*With the relationships:*
138,973 are m/m
24,244 are f/m
15,947 are multi
11,961 are f/f
6,926 are Gen
4,538 are tagged with other
*With the ratings:*
79,175 are explicit
36,758 are mature
24,811 are teen and up
13,249 are not rated
11,912 are general audiences
*With the warnings:*
72,167 use No Archive Warnings Apply
65,999 use Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
18,064 use Graphic Depictions of Violence
16,417 use Non/Con
2,376 use Underage
49,77 use Major Character Death.
*The top 5 fandoms with the most a/b/o fics are:*
BTS with 13,568 fics
Teen Wolf with 12,712 fics
My Hero Academia with 10,439 fics
Supernatural with 7,578 fics,
MCU with 5,868 fics.
*The top 5 characters with the most a/b/o fics are:*
Stiles Stilinski of Teen Wolf with 10,936 fics
Jeon Jungkook of BTS with 9,982 fics
Derek Hale of Teen Wolf with 9,736 fics
Park Jimin of BTS with 9,399
Kim Taehyung of BTS with 8,699 fics.
*The top 5 ships with the most a/b/o fics are:*
Stiles Stilinski/Derek Hale with 8,091 fics
Castiel/Dean Winchester with 4,385 fics
Bakugou Katsuki/Midoriya Izuku with 3,935 fics
Jeon Jungkook/Park Jimin with 3,218 fics
Jeon Jungkook/Kim Taehyung with 2,872 fics.
Those poor bts boys!
OMGs, this is so much better than I expected. I should know better than to underestimate you by now.
I'm reminded of a fic I once read that used the trope of like, alphas being insatiably horny, cranked it up to eleven, and then looked at it through the lens of like, chronic pain and disability. It was amazing, and also, I could not help but wonder at the end if the author was alright bc it really did seem like they were trying to exorcise some things writing it.
Omegaverse is what you make it. I‘m honestly quite annoyed by the examples of criticism you showed (not of you, but of the people who originally wrote it) because you can never really criticize a genre this way. Especially the last comment you showed about omegaverse being just about porn and ignoring the horrific undertones grinds my gears because it very clearly shows that the author hasn‘t delved deeply into the genre.
I sometimes feel this way about specific fics (although I believe they still have a place in fanfiction as simple indulgence/fantasy) but the genre as a whole has so much diversity.
As a queer trans man, I can say I’ve come across fics that made me uncomfortable but I love the genre for its potential to be a critique of real transphobia, misogyny and other types of bigotry. And the potential for challenging those norms and having characters learn to be themselves despite being put into those boxes by their biology.
an asexual here! I read ABO fanfics mawhas and mangas, it is very interesting for me to read them, although here is the twist I only read them because normally in this kind of stories there's a huge amount of fluff and consensual paradigms in which we can find similarities with those of our current society, it is very necessary for me to find this kind of stories without content explicitly related to sex which is somewhat difficult, in general it is very difficult for me to read sexual content if a story has it I normally avoid them, but if I am already in the middle of one and it is something that happens in part of the development I usually avoid it
"So where does that leave us toward the end of this video?"
Me listening to this in the background: It leaves me with 20 more minutes of cooking! Keep talking, damnit!
a really interesting deep dive! i honestly have avoided most videos and ~explainers~ on the topic simply bc i don't really...trust ppl who are, or whose audiences are, so far removed from fandom to do it justice or speak abt it fairly and clearly. so this was really nice to see! i didn't actually expect to watch the whole hour but i got invested. lol
anyway, i don't have much to add to the analysis of the genre itself (nicely done, great sources--if i ever have time/further interest, i'll be taking a look see). but you mentioned one part of it early on, and it's my thought throughout most of this: in terms of the experience of reading omegaverse, it's entirely about how you engage w fandom and how you sort through and find fic. it's sort of a self-selecting bias, how people feel about it.
like i've been reading fic since the mid 00s (relatively young as many "fandom olds" would point out). but in that time, you just develop a keener sense of how to pick out the fics you'll actually enjoy, which ones are really good, and then you also accept that there are times where you simply lower your standards to read something in particular (much like going back to the fridge repeatedly and lowering your standards each time lol). so it's just odd to me when people read fics they don't like or assume that a whole genre/universe is across the board [bad/good] based upon their poor or limited choices in fanfic. lol
in addition how you engage in fandom and not just searching through sites has a lot to do w it, and i'd wager a guess that particular fandoms have more or less of certain problems in their omegaverse fics, as well (though statistically it probably evens out over a lot of fandoms...). but finding key fandom participants and writers that you like is crucial, bc if you've found *one* good writer, chances are you've just found a group of like, 5 of them, bc they all beta read for each other, too, and have like all these private group chats to plan and write fic. lol
simply find ppl who you agree w abt the piece of media, wait for them to post fics or fic recs, take a gander, evaluate from there. then go through their favs/bookmarks on AO3 if you want to branch out beyond their groupchat of authors...lol
oh and god bless those moments when you all collectively traverse to a new fandom together at the same time, or when you get into a new fandom bc a writer you love has started writing for it! ah man. being a casual (but astute/picky) lurker/reader in fandom is great, honestly. lol
anyway, i almost never read a/b/o. i've read a handful, &why? bc it was done by fic authors i already knew, liked, and trusted. so p much exclusively the a/b/o fic i've read has engaged critically with race, gender, sexuality, politics, etc. often i end up (by chance) reading more utopic ones, where things have shifted naturally around this ~situation.
there's also plenty of cisswap involved when ppl get tired of writing abt two cis men but love the characters so they just simply make them cis women instead (or other variations of gender exploration while keeping the same characters). and that in itself is a whole thing where the name of the trope even changed to acknowledge the lack of trans rep and inclusion!
ANYWAY on the surface, there's p much nothing in the basic definition of a/b/o that's appealing to me, and yet there have been fics that have worked for me. //shrug. such is life, such is fic.
you're absolutely right that painting it w one brush is oversimplifying it and doing it a disservice. like honestly if someone's gonna write shitty fanfic that upholds systemic bigotry, they don't need a/b/o to do it, and it doesn't even necessarily make it easier to do bc of all the worldbuilding that might need to be established. but in a metacognitive/metafictional way, the use of omegaverse for upholding bigotry is also kind of an interesting commentary on our world and omegaverse, as well. lol it's p much inescapable w the whole thing.
As someone who also started reading in the early-mid '00s, I just wanted to say hiiii and also I have had very similar experiences with following favorite authors across fandoms and reading tropes, pairings, and just general fic that I wouldn't have on my own, had I not seen that an author I greatly enjoyed read it and bookmarked it.
Actually, the more I think about it, the more I realize that almost all of the fandoms I've wound up in, I got into them because I followed an author or a fandom friend recommended them.
I remember reading an a/b/o fic that leaned very hard into sociopolitical commentary. It actually included photoshopped gifs of news channels, modified to fit the fic. Such world building!
24:11 'oh the essay title can't be THAT bad'
*looks up the essay title*
'ok so it IS that bad'
I'm googling and I can't find the essay title can you share it
I.. I found it
Is this the new Lovecraft’s cat?
@@minastone155oh no. Not at all. Just really really err lewd
As a embroidery beginner I can only speak from the knowledge I've recently gathered. And Cross-stitch Is a stitch used in embroidery. It is it's own genre from what I've seen, people either use it on a whole piece or use other stitches, I have yet to see a piece mixing it with other stitches (I'm looking forward to stumbling on a full contradictory statement)
to extend upon the gender subversion thing, ive frequently read a couple of fics where there are people who are “secondary transgender” as in, people who were born omega, beta or alpha but identify differently than the sex characteristics they were born with. i find this interesting because it sort of gives transgender, enby and gender non-conforming people the opportunity to basically decide whether they want discrimination in their fic. it’s outside of the realm of actual sex characteristics and components so when they decide people can be “secondary transgender” and not discriminated for it or (or vice versa) they aren’t deciding to ignore trans discrimination. they’re simply indulging in a fantasy universe without having to think about the irl consequences this would have because this is all fiction and maybe they wouldn’t be discriminated, and they can’t be judged for that! it really gives fandom loving trans people a safe space i think :)
sorry if this doesn’t come out right im kinda drunk rn…
a/b/o in general is not my thing but i respect that a lot of fellow trans ppl do enjoy it. its like how i feel about genderbends - i only ever feel actual distrust in it when it’s a cis person creating it
What's bad about cis people doing genderbends? Genuine question
@@corvuscallosum5079 don't want to speak for Funkira, so I'll tell you my issues with it (I am trans, for reference).
Cis people have historically been the same people to marginalise and harm trans people for their gender expression and identity. It can feel terrible seeing fetishistic porn of issues we deal with constantly, seeing people get off to the same thing we get killed for is a bit triggering. The "you'll fuck us but won't protect us" issue.
Trans/queer creators are often not given the same accolades, or treated the same, for creating the same content.
It often can be cis/het men not wanting to healthily deal with their own sexuality or gender. The classic "not gay" stuff, or trap discourse.
This isn't to say that I think cis people should be barred from making said content or enjoying genderbending.
Gender is a social concept and should be deconstructed, bent, fucked, crossed, and transed by everyone. It can provide an avenue for cis people to explore a nuanced view of gender and expression, or different queerer parts of themselves. But compassion and openness needs to extend to trans people, the subjects of this content, too. Like you can get off to me, thats fine, but also, support trans rights too.
@@aragoonn Hoo thank you that makes a lot more sense to me now. I appreciate you spending the time to write about your thoughts in some detail. Best wishes.
@@corvuscallosum5079 particularly I see a tendency of gender norms reinforcement and heteronormativity in cis people works when it's about omegaverse, not all of them, but a majority will make omegas too much feminine, fragile while alphas are super manly and strong etc, you'll not see too much discussion about gender in these works, or an interesting twist of typical omegaverse tropes
But again it's not exclusive of cis authors
Great video, but I wish we could make a touch of room in this conversation to acknowledge the role that many transfeminine/ AMAB nonbinary folks have as creators/consumers of this genre of fiction. There seems to be this idea that the ONLY reason why a person might want to write, say, a male character with some normatively female traits (read: a male omega) is if the writer is a woman/someone who was "socialized" as a woman, etc. When to me, it seems obvious that one of the primary reasons why a person might be drawn to omegaverse fiction is as a "safe" way to explore a desire to have a more feminine physical body, etc without having to explicitly identify as "trans" or as "female" to do so.
That and a super common experience for trans and nonbinary folks across-the-board is a powerful fear and/or frustration with being "stuck" in a body which doesn't behave how we'd like it to behave on a hormonal level, a physical level, etc. A genre like the omegaverse gives such people a place to eroticize that type of fear and frustration as a means of gaining control over it. Hence the prevalence of mating/heat cycles, dubious/complex consent scenarios in such fics.
TL;DR: Trans, intersex and nonbinary people of all stripes are out here processing some bone-deep anxieties about their non-normatively gendered experiences of s#x, intimate relationships, and their bodies, and it kinda sucks that as soon as the "normies" found out, they started treating the whole affair as a mere circus act for their entertainment.
I’m guilty of liking omegaverse and I think me being trans makes me see it in a different light. There’s so many ways omegaverse can be extremely sexist- my favorite thing is when omegas don’t act like “omegas” cuz that box is so misogynistic like the whole more fem and they cook, clean, supposed to have children and take care of them, meant to be submissive and pretty. I love when things break the mold of that. Give me badass omegas who don’t take shit. I have a character who is an omega but acts like an alpha, he is very self insert due to the fact I don’t want to be seen as some weak mess and having that power while still being able to be fem and have those parts is somewhat refreshing. Omegaverse is ridiculous at its core, have fun with it, make it how you want it but be able to point out and recognize the bad parts of it since there is
Edit - that being said there isn’t anything wrong with wanting to be fem and cook and clean and what not - should not be forced or expected though from society
everything you said is why i like (the subversion, the social commentary etc) and dislike (the transphobia, the racism etc) in abo fanfics... one thing that always strikes me particularly is the subversion of masculinity with respect to parenthood and caregiving. In a lot of the stories i've read and enjoyed even alpha males (supposedly the embodiement of toxic masc in a lot of aspects) are shown are caring to their partners and children, emotionally open (crying is an accepted form of emotional expression) and actively involved in their children's lives. Everytime it surprises me because it is such an unusual portrayal of masculinity. anyway... thank you for this video, i thoroughly enjoyed it :D
The first a/b/o i read was completely by accident in one of those Korean webcomics. I was like wow this author put loads of unnecessary effort into world building. Having no idea it was an existing genre.
(hey just fyi, a/b/o without the slashes is a slur for aboriginal australians)
@Ville lol did you even watch the video (it's ok to think omegaverse is gross but this isn't really a..helpful or interesting comment at all)
@Ville im 20 💀 and alright i get it then
@@victai163 they're a troll, they've commented the exact same thing many times. Just ignore them. 😊
@@victai163 oh my god I didn't know! Thank you so much for letting me know ❤
Thank you for making this. I'm not someone who's very into Omegaverse (I don't look for it, but I occasionally read it just fine), but the discourse online that surrounds it is often... truly vile. Seeing someone with knowledge from the "inside" approaching the topic with nuance and understanding is really nice. I loved Lindsay Ellis' video, but sometimes I wish it didn't teach about the existence of Omegaverse to a whole bunch of people who only see it as a joke or an actual offensive genre.
Tbf, Lindsay did apologise for her dismissal of the genre in the second video, and her videos dealt more with the dmca issues and Addison Cain's batshit misuse of them, and not the omegaverse in general. Ofc there was a lot of emphasis on the sexual aspects, but that was because Cain basically writes pure smut. And is also not a particularly good writer.
@@SuperEkkorn Oh yeah, I know! To be clear, I don't blame Lindsay for how people took her video. That some people started to talk shit about the omegaverse after learning about it on her video is really not her fault.
I loved the nuanced take you had on this topic! As a big fan and frequent writer of a/b/o fics (both fan works and originals), I’m so used to the “eww look at these freaks!” take on the genre (particularly my favorite part of it, mpreg!)
I wanted to comment on the criticism I’ve seen levied repeatedly against a/b/o that you brought up, that mpreg is transphobic against trans men. I strongly disagree with this sentiment. While I can see that making the idea of male pregnancy seem salacious or otherworldly would be erasing the experiences of trans men, choosing to write cis men or otherwise amab masculine-ish characters as being able to give birth to a child is incredibly affirming and important to an amab enby like me with severe genital dysphoria who wishes for a “female” reproductive system more than anything else. If I could press a button and grow a vagina and womb I would do so in a heartbeat! Just because trans men can get pregnant in the real world does not mean that they should be the only males/men/masculine-ish people to get to do so in my damn fantasies (or hopefully in the near future if technology keeps advancing as it currently is!)
From the beginning I've ruled out ABO fics as that weird internet kink that bothered me because of the gender norm rigidity, but I've been getting curious lately. I think listening to you talk about this in such a nuanced and scholarly manner has sealed my fate x)
The only good omegaverse story I have personally read was more about the oppression towards omegas and how traumatic it is. All the rest I've seen on the site I frequent are noncon or dubcon smut which is an instant no for me. There's also the fluffy baby bait stories (the couple has a cute baby) which are relatively harmless but also not my thing.
And no hate on people who like these kinds of stories. I'm just sick of reading non/dubcon where the bottom has the personality of a wet rag or baby rabbit and the top is an obvious narcissist.
@@NoiseDay +1
@@NoiseDay I'm relatively new to a/b/o and fanfic, but I do think the particular fandom can have an impact on how the omegaverse plays out? I'm mostly in OFMD and much of the a/b/o I see there has been loving, and often has some aspect of the characters feeling frustrated by/rebelling against the secondary gender norms, or even subverting it with a/a or o/o pairings, etc. I have to wonder if the fandom being so queer makes a difference.
Your argument that ‘trope subversion’ in this instance, is, in fact, one of the primary purposes of the genre rang so true to me.
I know there are some fics out there that “play it straight” with ABO with power dynamics, nesting, gender roles, whatever. But, that subsection has always rubbed me the wrong way (the same way it feels to see a trad-wife TH-camr woman claim that they live to obey their husband, or similar). The extreme of that vibe is definitely a squick for me.
When I encountered that ridiculous author trying to copyright ABO in Lindsay’s video, my immediate reaction to her violent, un-critical take on it was: “ugh, she’s doing it wrong! How dare she claim what she doesn’t even understand!”
Obviously, uncritical porn in a genre isn’t actually *wrong*, even if I find an example squicky. But, for me it misses the whole point of the genre. It’s good to see an analysis that centers the parts of this trope that appeal to me, when well-handled.
"Has this changed anything about your view of the genre?" - Yes, it's changed just about everything.
I've never got into any kind of fanfiction (although I'd probably enjoy it and the community immensely ... I think I was probably too elitist for a long time, and later on it just hasn't happened) and most of what I know about the Omegaverse comes from Lindsay Ellis's amazing and hilarious videos, which means that my view of A/B/O pre this video was essentially "weird alternate reality wolf? porn/pseudoporn but to each their own I guess". Let's just say I did NOT expect myself to come out of it viewing Omegaverse as a 'legitimate' (what does that even mean anyway) literary genre with great potential and interesting problems and rules/tropes that can be used for insightful philosophising or social commentary. Yet here we are.
Why is it so bloody easy to dismiss everything that's even vaguely counterculture and the slightest bit associated with teenage girls as shallow and unworthy of respect or consideration? (Yes, yes, I know, the answer is cishet patriarchy with a dash of ageism, but argh.)
That's all to say, thank you Rowan for making a video essay that almost completely changed my mind. Well videoed, and thank you.
Damn. I walk out of this one with some newfound respect for ABO... and I did NOT expect this to happen. Excellent job.
I really enjoyed this essay. It was very informative. I'd seen the Omegaverse mentioned online, but had no idea what it was. I'm an older millennial who tends to be clueless about much of internet culture.
Yes! I thought it was some kind of popular wolf fanfiction and was so confused when that got popular,. I get it more now haha
@@thenopedetective That's exactly what I thought too! It's fortunate we came across this video so we could figure out what it actually was
I just realised that in A Closed and Common Orbit by Becky Chambers (one of my favourite books), the Aeluon species and society is very similar to the omegaverse. They have four genders/sexes, one that produces eggs, one that can fertilise them, one that switches between the two and one that is infertile. It’s very much like a desexualised version of ABO and it’s my favourite culture in the Wayfarers series.
Listening to a fellow ace talk about ABO is an utter treat. Whoda thunk.
The race aspect of this conversation though short was quite interesting. I didn't think about race beyond the fact that fic in general is very white and cis man, because that's mostly what we get on screen.
I love reading (and writing under a pen name) omegaverse stories but I'm extremely picky when it comes to the world building. I haven't read it within fanfic for a while because I'm mostly working through books on KU and the variety is just staggering. Loved the video :) thanks for spreading the word about the genre.
Thank you for engaging with this genre in such a nuanced way. I often find that many people who dip their toes into the genre tend to get overly bogged down by the "kink" aspects of the whole setting, where you have them looking at things like the concept of mpreg and act like "oh my god, you find this sexy?!" as if that were ever how that worked.
They perceive the genre as a kink, rather than a set of tropes, like a filter through which anything is made "sexy" in the eyes of hypothetical readers. (No kinkshaming if anyone does find it sexy of course. I mean the majority of people who don't tend to see a man giving birth as the height of eroticism)
While yes of course the kink is a definite part of it, it is only a PART and not the whole or the entire essence of it all.
I wrote an ABO fic, constructed out of perfect kink-trope setups and made it asexual, in part to prove a point and in part just because that's what appeals to me.
Like, I don't need weird gender biology to write smut. But the weird gender biology can give a framework where a masculine, strong, self-assured man can crumble into tears and be held, because the people around him intrinsically understand that this is an experience he cannot escape from. If I were to set this kind of scenario in our world, I'd probably have to write circles around the scene to make it feel realistic, given our sad, current gender stereotypes. But if this is set in an ABO setting, suddenly it clicks and feels natural.
(Not that these kinds of scenes shouldn't exist in our real world setting! Please, give me weeping men, give me supportive groups of all kinds of people coming together to acknowledge each other's needs and fighting to ensure that everyone gets the care and help they need!)
Furthermore, as someone who is perceived as a woman in society, I have my fair share of things I'd rather not remember or think about, that still continue to haunt me despite that. Projecting these experiences onto a gendered "other" that isn't "like me" but still emotes and reacts similarly to me, can give me a kind of catharsis by proxy.
Beyond the typical ABO tropes of romantic or sexual pairings, I actually find a great depth of complexity in things like parental or sibling relationships. How does a single male omega parent raise their female alpha daughter? How do siblings of opposing secondary genders grow up? How does this impact their sibling rivalry, how do they cope with societies view on them and so forth?
ABO adds a filter of complexity to our already complex world, while simplifying other aspects, which allows me as a writer to focus on the things I actually want to explore in my stories. Since the genre itself is so varied also, I can theoretically re-write any story into something completely new and different just by changing a few details of the given ABO setting!
Anyway, sorry for this wall of text nobody asked for. I just want to praise and elaborate where I can.
Thanks for such a thoughtful and in-depth look into this trope. I've written my fair share of the omegaverse fics on AO3 (most of them falling into the "E" category, although I have some "M" and "T" ones). This past February I published my 5th book on Amazon and it's an omegaverse story. So far, it's been my most popular book yet.
I read a lot of omega verse stories. For me, it was a way to explore the complex social stigma around gender and sex, without feeling like my personal nonbinary gender would be so outside of the conversation.
It also was a way to conceptualize, a more intersex inclusive setup, and talk about complex sex and gender topics.
And that it could be helpful, for people who have no idea about intersex people, if they are told that this is not what intersex is. But it could be a way to introduce the idea of nontypical combinations of sex characteristic, without potentially causing harm or distress to intersex people.
As a woman who vehemently resents being born with the ability to become pregnant, I enjoy seeing a male character suffer through the same crisis inducing reality I experienced as a young preteen. And the ensuing struggles of trying to assert yourself as more than your biologically determined destiny of bearing children in a world that laughs when you declare you will not be having children.
Is it in a strange way revenge fiction? Possibly. Has it also helped me explore this rift between my identity of self and my biology? Possibly.
The trope of omegaverse is based in the idea that your biology defines you. It has a very strict set of pre-determined rules for relationships and sexual intercourse that authors very rarely diverge far from. There are exceedingly few stories that challenge those tropes in a meaningful way. Because most of it, to be candid, is fetish porn. It is not meant to challenge or explore, it's meant to satisfy a sexual fantasy. Which is FINE and OKAY! However, I take issue when the argument is put forward that this is somehow liberating for queer people or women.
It is fundamentally not. To explore and question and to liberate, you need to actually grapple with questions of gender, power or social status, and have the characters make meaningful choices in reaction to these themes. Otherwise, you are just recreating existing ideas of power and domination. There's a difference between "exploring themes" and just writing about them and perpetuating stereotypes.
Because the vast, vast majority of a/b/o fic does not imagine a better world. Instead, it portrays inequality, domination and strict gender roles as fine and normal, or (often) as sexy and fun.
A/b/o doesn't just have harmful elements, the entire universe is based on a fundamentally harmful premise: that biology is destiny.
People generally don't like to be told that what they like could have harmful elements. But it's okay to like something even if it does not align perfectly with our politics.
CAN this trope be used to explore and question themes mentioned? Probably. But any trope can. All authors are free to use their skills to imagine a different world. That's just writing.
One specific storyline that I commonly see and really connect with, as a trans-masc, is the Sudden Gender Change element. It starts with a character receiving a false test and believing themselves to be one gender (typically alpha/beta), only to find suddenly it was wrong (and they are actually an omega). The bodily betrayal really resonated with my experience of puberty and gender dysphoria. Then, there are often complex feelings about the social repercussions of truly being an omega. They are opening themselves to dehumanization and violence, closing off their job opportunities, and sometimes losing their social supports. The resolution will usually include found family and self-acceptance through integrating the previous understanding of themselves with the newest one. Unfortunately, this is one of the only times I have felt myself really represented in the media I consume, and I am not really sure the answer currently is for more cis writers to be creating trans storylines. The consequences of inaccurate depictions of social oppression or dysphoria in a fictional universe seem much less severe than one that takes place in our own universe, no matter how much we like to pretend that fiction does not affect our real world beliefs.
I'm queer (non-binary) with my spouse that is Trans F to NB, one who is literally going through their hormone treatments and did a top surgery, but has no intentions for a bottom. Despite all of this, I also still desire to have a child myself for our family. Since I'm in that place of being in a relationship with someone that biologically shares the same sexual organs as I do, there actually is a great deal of emotional trauma and pain I feel when trying to get into things like the ABO. But I'm actively working in our world's system with my spouse on our mental wellness and to raise a family. It is a small slap in the face to read about a world where it both their 'genders' cause have biological capabilities of childbirth, and I can't. It's a frustration to me.
This doesn't mean I don't see the value for others to inspire hope for them. That is the beauty in literature as it is. Everyone will take out of it what they want. It's just for me personally, I can't read a world that is more male dominated in characters, that are expressed as men and not in a true nonbinary manner having the potential to procreate. Here I am struggling every month to save up the money to attempt one chance on my own. That's the representation I want to read on the matter. Those like me that struggle and despite that persevere to attain the family they've wanted. But again, that is a personal want. I don't think that makes the genre bad in the slightest. I find it refreshing so many can be inspired and strengthened within it. It merely is not the genre for me, and that's ok.
I constantly have to relearn about the omegaverse because every time I learn about it I completely forget what it is.
I don't know how you could forget about something as outlandish as omegaverse, but you are living my dream
~30:50 Is such a perfectly worded explanation for why I read slash!
The straight faced way you present the absolutely wild concepts in this for some reason made me burst out laughing the more I watched. Pretty good but I physically cannot make it through this
To be honest, I always hated omegaverse. I hate how it feels like patriarchy 2.0, almost like the extension of seme/uke that derived from yaoi. But nonetheless it's pretty interesting, just gonna keep it in my blocked tags
Yeah, same. I've read some abo stuff, years ago, but I've never really liked it. I think we have enough problems in our society as it is and I don't want to read stories that have even more societal/gender/misoogyny issues on top of those. The more aware I become of real life issues the more turned off I get by abo. It's just too much and I don't need it.
me too. i know (also before watching this video) that there are good and interesting fics out there that subvert the tropes associated with it, but i kinda wish those tropes didn't exist to begin with
Tbh if I do read it it's usually alpha/alpha or alpha/beta and I pretend it's just normal patriarchy/homophobia that gets in their way lol
I used to really, really hate ABO. Many stories were set in a world with opressive, violent societies based on gender essentialism.
It was a horny handmaid's tale for furries.
Since then I've read what I call ABO light and enjoyed it.
It is basicly ABO without all the icky dub con and opression.
Abo in these fics are basicly just normal people who are more horny and stinky (pheromones).
And I think that' s beautiful.
not only has this helped me know what those odd short stories I was reading are about, this surprisingly helped me realize stuff to avoid in my own books and universe that I am creating. Thank you, I like it.
I remember A/B/O being really popular on the Sherlock Kinkmeme, and then popular in the Teen Wolf fandom. And I’m pretty sure it’s what’s inspired those really bad (but kinda addictive) werewolf e-books that advertise on Facebook. It’s not my thing… but it does lend itself to kinks I’m into. And I’ve somehow ended up reading a lot of it over the years as it’s grown in prevalence. Some of the writers who write A/B/O are pretty talented. So I find all of these videos going into what Omegaverse is to be really fascinating.
I ran across the Omegaverse around 2012, initially in the Sherlock fandom. I was pregnant and I ended up reading a lot of pregnancy-focused ABO fics because I was going through the experience of a wanted but difficult pregnancy and I connected emotionally with a lot of them. I don't read Sherlock fics much anymore, but I do still read ABO fics, for a lot of the reasons you discussed in the video.
My favourite part of omegaverse is the social structure,highracy, oppression and discrimination but very uncommonly do they really touch on it or focus on it more than just having characters remind readers of these problems existence
Algorithm brought me here!
As a person who read the warriors (cat) series as a kid and now rereading them, I have found the huge benefit of telling stories through being an animal is the ability to separate the physical aspects of gender so that storylines can focus on the more spiritual implications of a story…
universal themes like betrayal and being outcast as well as love itself aren’t colored and possibly tainted through the lens of what we think ‘should’ be possible based on physical characteristics.
Omegaverse seems to take this concept further and make a person’s gender be more about things within their spirit that make them a certain way (the usual binaries, dominant / submissive, running / chasing, etc) juxtaposing this upon our existing ideas of gender as being male and female. Rather than avoiding the topic altogether it forces us to confront our biases, regardless of how attached or detached we are to gender issues and the power dynamics that are so intimately connected to gender identity.
My mind is officially blown right now and I feel such a level of hope for the future, that there is an outlet for people to see themselves more clearly than traditional archetypes could ever truly allow.
And yes, I mention the warriors series because the tie between our non physical self and our physical, animalistic instincts as being intrinsically separate invites very interesting dialogue as well.
Interest piqued!
a truly amazing watch, love how you put everything i'd want to be conveyed into cohesive sentences because I for sure can't. thank you for explaining why we love and are intrigued by omegaverse to people who might be judgemental towards it. or simply to people like me who enjoyed the deep dive of why we like it.
@Ville ok
@Ville ok
@Ville ok
I really liked this video. While the genre itself is not my cup of tea, I love how you did your research on the topic, its positives and negatives, and the implications. I also adore how you keep defending fan fiction as the literary work it can be, while so many people still see it as a trashy hobby of straight women.
You're amazing.
that thumbnail murdered me dead 50/10
Omg I'm dyslexic and I've never heard of dipsy! I've been relying on the kindness of strangers (podfic readers on TH-cam) this sounds awesome thanks so much!
As a lesbian fanfic writer who consistently reads and writes omegaverse, I really appreciate how you unpacked the layers of complexity in the genre and spoke equally about merits and criticism. The way omegaverse enables writing political criticism and gender subversion are big draws for me. As always, your video essays are brilliant.
This vid felt like a love letter to omegaverse fic and really articulated the nuances of the genre that are often left out of the conversation. You're the best in the game Rowan
as someone that reads a lot of asian, mostly south korean, webcomics and has contact to the omegaverse genre via those, the section about racism of the video as a critisism of the omegaverse was really interesting to me, because I had not been able to put my finger on it, I wasnt able to contexualise it that way, but it very much makes sense and has finally clicked in my brain