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colorcoded) wrote2025-04-28 12:01 am
colorcoded) wrote2025-04-28 12:01 am
April update: thoughts on omegaverse
A bit random, but I wanted to talk a bit about a WIP that I've had on the backburner but which I got a bit of inspiration on recently due to a thread on ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
fail_fandomanon. Basically, a while back (in February), there was a thread on what makes for a bad [insert genre] fic, including a thread asking what people think makes for a bad omegaverse fic.
Trying to think about this question was interesting and made me think a little bit about what makes omegaverse appeal to me. I think the original question is a bit difficult to answer because omegaverse is a very flexible trope - like, fifty tropes in a trenchcoat that you can freely pick and choose as you like, and I think it has also changed quite a bit over time, changing from something that had a bundle of relatively niche kinks in it into something a bit more mainstream. I guess the central/non-negotiable aspects of the AU is that characters have a secondary sex/designation as alpha and omega (and possibly beta as well), and these come with specialized/dimorphic biology/biological urges of some kind. Aside from that, there's quite a lot of flexibility in the mechanics, worldbuilding, and type of stories you can tell.
As a result, omegaverse can be something different for a lot of people. Is it a way to make the mechanics of same-sex porn and romance as easy to write as the mechanics of het porn/romance (lubrication, G!P, mpreg and fpreg, etc.)? Is the appeal the animalistic anatomy and instincts (knotting, marking/scenting, nesting, etc.)? Is the worldbuilding the interesting part (e.g. rational fic trying to understand how heats would affect the way society is organized)? Ways to explore gender and gender oppression with a bit of distance that sci-fi/speculative fiction can get you? The list of functions goes on and on.
For me, personally, though, I think the appeal of omegaverse lies in two tropes that are commonly utilized in omegaverse: (1) D/s dynamics and (2) dubcon scenarios facilitated by biological heats. These are kinks, but I would say relative to the wider space of kinks, they are fairly common or basic ones, and ones that you'll find in a lot of non-omegaverse smut as well. So my omegaverse tastes lean fairly basic! Also, for me, omegaverse is primarily a porn/romance trope, and therefore has a lot of unrealism/porn logic/wish fulfillment aspects to it. So to answer the question at the start of my post, I think what personally makes for a bad omegaverse fic is one that punctures that fantasy or wish fulfillment aspect.
Of course, the line where something crosses from iddy fantasy into unsexy territory differs for everyone, but for me, I think there's a limit to how dystopian the world can be before I start to go, "oh, this is depressing not fun," even though - at the same time - I also think a good omegaverse fic has at least *some* darkness or fucked-up-ness to it. So that line has to be carefully balanced (and is obviously different from person to person).
I think I only have one WIP that involves omegaverse, and thinking about what I like/don't like about omegaverse is kind of illustrated by the setup of this fic, so I'll discuss it:
The one omegaverse fic I have currently is for Bravely Default - it's an Alternis Dim/Braev Lee fic where Alternis is an omega hiding his status and Braev is an alpha.
(I *have* thought about doing a Quodo omegaverse fic, but I don't want to think about it too much because that's how I get more WIPs and I don't want more WIPs! But how to do omegaverse in a multi-species universe is itself an interesting question that I could probably dedicate a full post to...)
Anyway, in this fic, I have Alternis hiding his omega status, which is a fun but cliche omegaverse setup. But in order to have this trope, (1) there has to be a reason why someone would want to hide their secondary sex, which usually suggests some form of discrimination, and (2) there has to be a mechanism to mask one's status.
Regarding the first thing, there are a lot of worldbuilding possibilities here, but I didn't want to go too dark with my fic as I wanted there to still be a bit of mundaneness to the world rather than have a dystopian caste system taking up a lot of attention and space. So I decided to have it so that Braev only allows alphas or betas to work in Eternian Central Command, not out of any animus or prejudice but simply for the practical reason that he and others in his regime are alphas and so having omegas there who might go into heat is not practical. Alternis wants to work as an official there, though, so this is why he decides to conceal his status. Everyone thinks he is a beta. (By the way, Edea in my fic is also an alpha, which I think coheres with her personality and also makes it so that Alternis can secretly have Hopes of being a potential partner for her, once he reveals his omega status.)
Regarding the second thing, one mechanism that is commonly used in omegaverse fics is a heat blocker or suppressant of some kind, which not only could be used to hide status but also is a mechanism that changes a "people casually have rut/heats all the time" type society that is highly sexual (possibly publicly sexual) to something more resembling a mundane non-omegaverse world where people just go about their lives as normal, but there is always a possibility of an "accident" that results in heatsex. So having suppressants makes omegaverse resemble a bit more a sex pollen type fic in that the heatsex is one-off and rare, but the world nevertheless contains a built-in reason for heats that doesn't require introducing magic or scientific curiosities or other contrived plot devices, and the characters are generally knowledgeable about what rut/heat is (i.e. the mechanics are common knowledge). This tends to grease the wheels of heatfic writing because you have a world where it's easy/normal to have a heat (without needing to set up a contrived scenario), and when the heat happens, the characters immediately recognize it for what it is without needing to go through a confused phase (although I suppose in some heatfics, the lack of knowledge about what happened/presumed non-heat motivation can itself be something fun to play with...).
I'm still working out the details of this, but given what I said about the reason for hiding status, in my fic, I am strongly considering having it so that blockers *aren't* normal in this world, hence the need for Braev to arrange social structures in light of this fact. So I'm probably going to have it so that Alternis has access to an experimental medication that suppresses heats/other omega tells via Victor or something.
Anyway, going back to what I personally find sexy about omegaverse setups - I listed two things: (1) D/s dynamics and (2) dubcon scenarios via heats. I don't think I have time to fully go into the appeal of these kinks, but I'll try to give a brief overview of how omegaverse works well with these tropes and for the pairing in my fic.
First, D/s dynamics: One of the strengths of omegaverse is that it is kind of a revamped or retooled version of an older porn trope, which is the BDSM AU. Namely, I think the alpha/omega roles featured in omegaverse line up fairly well with dom/sub roles, which makes omegaverse a kind of BDSM AU that's more narrowly focused on the D/s part of that acronym i.e. allowing the jettisoning of S/M elements, among others. Not only that, but it also allows fics to be divorced generally from modern BDSM subculture and its aesthetic. This means that omegaverse AUs allow (a subset of) BDSM elements to be deployed in a variety of settings including historical, fantasy, and sci-fi while allowing its aesthetic to be modulated to blend in better with the setting rather than overlaying a pre-existing aesthetic that will feel jarringly modern in many settings. In other words, omegaverse is a more flexible BDSM AU.
Tying into the topic above on discrimination, a world with D/s dynamics can get pretty dystopian depending on how you play it, because D/s is strongly tied to power differentials, which of course map onto many forms of exploitation. And while one of the benefits of BDSM or omegaverse AU is that it can kind of soften the real world analogies through fictional/made-up biologies and by embedding these power dynamics in an arrangement that bears resemblance to "everyone benefits" play, sometimes the analogies aren't entirely avoidable and sometimes the biologically-dictated roles (even when fantastical) can exacerbate the dystopian elements.
In any case, in my story, Alternis being an omega and Braev and Edea being alphas is meant to reflect the canonical class issues in Alternis's storyline. So here the power/status differential between Alternis and the Lee family in the game is given sexual form (and sexual tension) in this omegaverse story.
(Warning for discussions of rape / dubious consent)
Second, heats and dubcon: I love heats - I think there is an eroticism in being out of control, and heats and dubcon more generally are capable of capturing that in multiple ways. With heats, for example, there is the mental out-of-control-ness that comes from having strong urges - lust. There is also the physical out-of-control-ness of your body not being under your conscious control but rather acting on its own set of instincts. And then there is another physical out-of-control-ness involved in interactions with others where the other person may also be manipulating your body in ways out of your control. So three different ways of being out of control that heats facilitate.
More generally, I think dubious consent scenarios are great for complicated feelings. Two characters can be clearly attracted to each other, for example, but have misgivings about having sex like *this* or under *these* conditions. In particular (relevant to my fic), I think dubcon is something that pairs well with incest scenarios. At least for me, one of the appeals of incest pairings is the taboo desire associated with them, and dubcon situations allow people who are related to act on those feelings or to be confronted with the sight of their family member in a sexual context, and to have feelings about that. And things like heats allow these situations to arise even when the characters had no intention of committing incest, which also has the benefit of keeping the characters a bit more morally clean and/or in-character because the sex was not something they chose but rather something that happened to them. That mix of repression + out-of-control abandon is pretty clutch in erotic fiction, in my opinion.
Anyway, this "dubcon incest scenario" comes into play in my fic because Alternis and Braev have a semi-familial relationship. Here, the heat forces two characters who don't normally think of each other as a love interest to have sex out of convenience. But in particular, this form of sex is particularly painful for Alternis who thinks of Braev as his dad a little more than Braev thinks of Alternis as his son, and the casual way Braev brushes off the heatsex as not a big deal and not particularly upsetting is itself quite painful to Alternis in ways he can't really articulate. So yeah, dubcon plus an asymmetric investment in a pseudofamilial relationship allows for some quite complicated emotions, and unintentional sex situations often have the effect of revealing the nature of characters' feelings for each other, for better or for worse.
Anyway, in conclusion, that FFA thread really helped me revisit and make progress on this fic because it reminded me of what I intended to do with the worldbuilding of this fic - to include some disadvantage or role segregation in the world, but where there is still general respect and civility to play down some of the potentially more dystopian aspects - and what were the core aspects of this fic that made the omegaverse AU elements work so well with preexisting dynamics in canon - Alternis as an ambitious omega, which matches the class/status differential in canon, and Alternis in a nebulous space between Braev's underling and his family, which is laid bare by unintended sex.
I don't have time this month, but I probably could write a whole post about how I also think Star Trek's Mirrorverse setting is good for telling kink porn stories, same as omegaverse and BDSM AUs (we have Star Trek to thank for SO many fannish tropes!), but it contains its own set of rules that facilitate telling different kinds of stories, so I could do a whole compare and contrast thing. I could also probably write a whole post just on the sliding scale of porn logic vs. realism, and how to manage it in smut stories, especially these kinds of "porn setting" AUs, where the mechanics of the world are designed to facilitate sex/kink. But I don't have time. Maybe next month!
fail_fandomanon. Basically, a while back (in February), there was a thread on what makes for a bad [insert genre] fic, including a thread asking what people think makes for a bad omegaverse fic.Trying to think about this question was interesting and made me think a little bit about what makes omegaverse appeal to me. I think the original question is a bit difficult to answer because omegaverse is a very flexible trope - like, fifty tropes in a trenchcoat that you can freely pick and choose as you like, and I think it has also changed quite a bit over time, changing from something that had a bundle of relatively niche kinks in it into something a bit more mainstream. I guess the central/non-negotiable aspects of the AU is that characters have a secondary sex/designation as alpha and omega (and possibly beta as well), and these come with specialized/dimorphic biology/biological urges of some kind. Aside from that, there's quite a lot of flexibility in the mechanics, worldbuilding, and type of stories you can tell.
As a result, omegaverse can be something different for a lot of people. Is it a way to make the mechanics of same-sex porn and romance as easy to write as the mechanics of het porn/romance (lubrication, G!P, mpreg and fpreg, etc.)? Is the appeal the animalistic anatomy and instincts (knotting, marking/scenting, nesting, etc.)? Is the worldbuilding the interesting part (e.g. rational fic trying to understand how heats would affect the way society is organized)? Ways to explore gender and gender oppression with a bit of distance that sci-fi/speculative fiction can get you? The list of functions goes on and on.
For me, personally, though, I think the appeal of omegaverse lies in two tropes that are commonly utilized in omegaverse: (1) D/s dynamics and (2) dubcon scenarios facilitated by biological heats. These are kinks, but I would say relative to the wider space of kinks, they are fairly common or basic ones, and ones that you'll find in a lot of non-omegaverse smut as well. So my omegaverse tastes lean fairly basic! Also, for me, omegaverse is primarily a porn/romance trope, and therefore has a lot of unrealism/porn logic/wish fulfillment aspects to it. So to answer the question at the start of my post, I think what personally makes for a bad omegaverse fic is one that punctures that fantasy or wish fulfillment aspect.
Of course, the line where something crosses from iddy fantasy into unsexy territory differs for everyone, but for me, I think there's a limit to how dystopian the world can be before I start to go, "oh, this is depressing not fun," even though - at the same time - I also think a good omegaverse fic has at least *some* darkness or fucked-up-ness to it. So that line has to be carefully balanced (and is obviously different from person to person).
I think I only have one WIP that involves omegaverse, and thinking about what I like/don't like about omegaverse is kind of illustrated by the setup of this fic, so I'll discuss it:
The one omegaverse fic I have currently is for Bravely Default - it's an Alternis Dim/Braev Lee fic where Alternis is an omega hiding his status and Braev is an alpha.
(I *have* thought about doing a Quodo omegaverse fic, but I don't want to think about it too much because that's how I get more WIPs and I don't want more WIPs! But how to do omegaverse in a multi-species universe is itself an interesting question that I could probably dedicate a full post to...)
Anyway, in this fic, I have Alternis hiding his omega status, which is a fun but cliche omegaverse setup. But in order to have this trope, (1) there has to be a reason why someone would want to hide their secondary sex, which usually suggests some form of discrimination, and (2) there has to be a mechanism to mask one's status.
Regarding the first thing, there are a lot of worldbuilding possibilities here, but I didn't want to go too dark with my fic as I wanted there to still be a bit of mundaneness to the world rather than have a dystopian caste system taking up a lot of attention and space. So I decided to have it so that Braev only allows alphas or betas to work in Eternian Central Command, not out of any animus or prejudice but simply for the practical reason that he and others in his regime are alphas and so having omegas there who might go into heat is not practical. Alternis wants to work as an official there, though, so this is why he decides to conceal his status. Everyone thinks he is a beta. (By the way, Edea in my fic is also an alpha, which I think coheres with her personality and also makes it so that Alternis can secretly have Hopes of being a potential partner for her, once he reveals his omega status.)
Regarding the second thing, one mechanism that is commonly used in omegaverse fics is a heat blocker or suppressant of some kind, which not only could be used to hide status but also is a mechanism that changes a "people casually have rut/heats all the time" type society that is highly sexual (possibly publicly sexual) to something more resembling a mundane non-omegaverse world where people just go about their lives as normal, but there is always a possibility of an "accident" that results in heatsex. So having suppressants makes omegaverse resemble a bit more a sex pollen type fic in that the heatsex is one-off and rare, but the world nevertheless contains a built-in reason for heats that doesn't require introducing magic or scientific curiosities or other contrived plot devices, and the characters are generally knowledgeable about what rut/heat is (i.e. the mechanics are common knowledge). This tends to grease the wheels of heatfic writing because you have a world where it's easy/normal to have a heat (without needing to set up a contrived scenario), and when the heat happens, the characters immediately recognize it for what it is without needing to go through a confused phase (although I suppose in some heatfics, the lack of knowledge about what happened/presumed non-heat motivation can itself be something fun to play with...).
I'm still working out the details of this, but given what I said about the reason for hiding status, in my fic, I am strongly considering having it so that blockers *aren't* normal in this world, hence the need for Braev to arrange social structures in light of this fact. So I'm probably going to have it so that Alternis has access to an experimental medication that suppresses heats/other omega tells via Victor or something.
Anyway, going back to what I personally find sexy about omegaverse setups - I listed two things: (1) D/s dynamics and (2) dubcon scenarios via heats. I don't think I have time to fully go into the appeal of these kinks, but I'll try to give a brief overview of how omegaverse works well with these tropes and for the pairing in my fic.
First, D/s dynamics: One of the strengths of omegaverse is that it is kind of a revamped or retooled version of an older porn trope, which is the BDSM AU. Namely, I think the alpha/omega roles featured in omegaverse line up fairly well with dom/sub roles, which makes omegaverse a kind of BDSM AU that's more narrowly focused on the D/s part of that acronym i.e. allowing the jettisoning of S/M elements, among others. Not only that, but it also allows fics to be divorced generally from modern BDSM subculture and its aesthetic. This means that omegaverse AUs allow (a subset of) BDSM elements to be deployed in a variety of settings including historical, fantasy, and sci-fi while allowing its aesthetic to be modulated to blend in better with the setting rather than overlaying a pre-existing aesthetic that will feel jarringly modern in many settings. In other words, omegaverse is a more flexible BDSM AU.
Tying into the topic above on discrimination, a world with D/s dynamics can get pretty dystopian depending on how you play it, because D/s is strongly tied to power differentials, which of course map onto many forms of exploitation. And while one of the benefits of BDSM or omegaverse AU is that it can kind of soften the real world analogies through fictional/made-up biologies and by embedding these power dynamics in an arrangement that bears resemblance to "everyone benefits" play, sometimes the analogies aren't entirely avoidable and sometimes the biologically-dictated roles (even when fantastical) can exacerbate the dystopian elements.
In any case, in my story, Alternis being an omega and Braev and Edea being alphas is meant to reflect the canonical class issues in Alternis's storyline. So here the power/status differential between Alternis and the Lee family in the game is given sexual form (and sexual tension) in this omegaverse story.
(Warning for discussions of rape / dubious consent)
Second, heats and dubcon: I love heats - I think there is an eroticism in being out of control, and heats and dubcon more generally are capable of capturing that in multiple ways. With heats, for example, there is the mental out-of-control-ness that comes from having strong urges - lust. There is also the physical out-of-control-ness of your body not being under your conscious control but rather acting on its own set of instincts. And then there is another physical out-of-control-ness involved in interactions with others where the other person may also be manipulating your body in ways out of your control. So three different ways of being out of control that heats facilitate.
More generally, I think dubious consent scenarios are great for complicated feelings. Two characters can be clearly attracted to each other, for example, but have misgivings about having sex like *this* or under *these* conditions. In particular (relevant to my fic), I think dubcon is something that pairs well with incest scenarios. At least for me, one of the appeals of incest pairings is the taboo desire associated with them, and dubcon situations allow people who are related to act on those feelings or to be confronted with the sight of their family member in a sexual context, and to have feelings about that. And things like heats allow these situations to arise even when the characters had no intention of committing incest, which also has the benefit of keeping the characters a bit more morally clean and/or in-character because the sex was not something they chose but rather something that happened to them. That mix of repression + out-of-control abandon is pretty clutch in erotic fiction, in my opinion.
Anyway, this "dubcon incest scenario" comes into play in my fic because Alternis and Braev have a semi-familial relationship. Here, the heat forces two characters who don't normally think of each other as a love interest to have sex out of convenience. But in particular, this form of sex is particularly painful for Alternis who thinks of Braev as his dad a little more than Braev thinks of Alternis as his son, and the casual way Braev brushes off the heatsex as not a big deal and not particularly upsetting is itself quite painful to Alternis in ways he can't really articulate. So yeah, dubcon plus an asymmetric investment in a pseudofamilial relationship allows for some quite complicated emotions, and unintentional sex situations often have the effect of revealing the nature of characters' feelings for each other, for better or for worse.
Anyway, in conclusion, that FFA thread really helped me revisit and make progress on this fic because it reminded me of what I intended to do with the worldbuilding of this fic - to include some disadvantage or role segregation in the world, but where there is still general respect and civility to play down some of the potentially more dystopian aspects - and what were the core aspects of this fic that made the omegaverse AU elements work so well with preexisting dynamics in canon - Alternis as an ambitious omega, which matches the class/status differential in canon, and Alternis in a nebulous space between Braev's underling and his family, which is laid bare by unintended sex.
I don't have time this month, but I probably could write a whole post about how I also think Star Trek's Mirrorverse setting is good for telling kink porn stories, same as omegaverse and BDSM AUs (we have Star Trek to thank for SO many fannish tropes!), but it contains its own set of rules that facilitate telling different kinds of stories, so I could do a whole compare and contrast thing. I could also probably write a whole post just on the sliding scale of porn logic vs. realism, and how to manage it in smut stories, especially these kinds of "porn setting" AUs, where the mechanics of the world are designed to facilitate sex/kink. But I don't have time. Maybe next month!
Thoughts
Among the key aspects in my observation are making gender an explicit thing to talk about, how much is biology and how much is psychology. Very often, consent is a main feature too. Those are overlooked in most genres, but omegaverse is just one of the best frameworks if you want to discuss sex/gender and challenge expectations about it. The details vary from one version to another, but it's always fundamentally about those things. The reason the details differ is because writers like to challenge different things. So sometimes heat is a biological imperative that's lethal if not completed, other times it's just a strong urge that people can overcome with willpower. Sometimes alpha females have a penis (or in several memorable examples, an enlarged hollow clitoris like a hyena) and other times not. It's very interesting to explore.
>> For me, personally, though, I think the appeal of omegaverse lies in two tropes that are commonly utilized in omegaverse: (1) D/s dynamics and (2) dubcon scenarios facilitated by biological heats. <<
I like those parts. For me, I love best the ones that aim to include some worldbuilding and logic, especially if the author actually understands how biology works in nature, because animal sex can get really weird. But kinky omegaverse pr0on can be fun too.
>> I don't have time this month, but I probably could write a whole post about how I also think Star Trek's Mirrorverse setting is good for telling kink porn stories, <<
It's one of the older kink settings in wide use.
Re: Thoughts
Among the key aspects in my observation are making gender an explicit thing to talk about
Do you mean primary/real-world gender (e.g. male, female) or secondary(-world) gender (e.g. alpha, beta, omega) here? Because while I think gender as a whole plays a large part in omegaverse fics, I think sometimes omegaverse can be purposely used in order to render primary gender largely irrelevant or invisible. While primary sex/gender can still be important, omegaverse can also be used as a kind of escapist fantasy where real-world gender is just not considered very important or relevant for determining things like acceptable relationships, sexual roles, stereotypes, or societal expectations, which aside from being political commentary or a kind of utopian depiction, can also just grease the wheels for sexual fantasy, where having too much real-world sexism or gender roles can throw people out of a fantasy.
But yes, it's true that all those things (heteronormativity, gender roles, etc.) can and regularly do get explored via secondary gender instead. But yeah, while I think you can definitely use omegaverse to explore, discuss, and subvert gender relations (both primary and secondary gender), I think just as often it can just as well be used to ignore or erase (real world) gender differences (which can be very desirable for people) or to have a sort of "have your cake and eat it too" porn setup that gets all the sexiness of sharply-divided gender roles without all the baggage of realistic, actually-existing gender roles. And while there are plenty of omegaverse fics that subvert the primary or secondary gender roles, there are just as many that play the secondary gender roles completely straight.
For me, I love best the ones that aim to include some worldbuilding and logic, especially if the author actually understands how biology works in nature
This is definitely a big appeal. I didn't have time to go into it, but going ham on the worldbuilding and taking inspiration from a variety of gender and reproductive systems found in nature is definitely an appeal of omegaverse and why so many different omegaverse systems and variations have been created!
Thanks for the thoughts!