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!
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!