on aus; a/b/o

anyway, back to trope talk: today's subject is omegaverse. i won't touch on the history so much since that's an entirely different can of worms (equally as interesting, though). i also won't touch on what things usually tend to be with a/b/o (which if you have read fanfic you would pretty much know, in fairness), and instead talk about things that i like or find interesting about the setting.

omegaverse is a lot easier than other common fanfic au settings to talk about. compared to things like magic aus or soulmate aus, omegaverse has a set of core tenets that echo throughout the whole sphere regardless of fandom. three designations of varying rarity, some sort of permanent mating bond, and the concept of heats/ruts. because this isn't a nsfw blog-thing, i'll stray away from saying too much in depth about the latter, but i'll start briefly with it. a lot of my approaches to aus are informed by world building, and in this regard, a/b/o is super fun to toy with.

on a biological level, it's difficult to really say. humans don't have actively controlled pheromones (and the concept in fic is interesting to me; are there laws regulating it? what's the extent of what pheromones are able to do?) or anything like that, and we don't have any sort of permanent physiological thing binding us to another person. if we're trying for remote realism, it's also hard to fathom a world in which evolving that way gives the population an advantage, but i digress. the concept of heats/ruts is really funny to me, because given the rating of a lot of a/b/o fanfics, the nature of those two get augmented a lot, to the point of absurdity. if you have, say, a good 25-50% of the population being incapacitated for a week every month, there's going to be an uprising from disgruntled betas forced to saddle all the work. this also has interplay with the traditional view of alphas being in high company positions (which i have personally always laughed at, because seriously? if they're out of commission for so long on a monthly basis, they're not putting in the overtime corporate ruthlessness necessitates. that's aside from the point, though, so moving on); it's always interesting to see how exactly people write the societal reception of alphas given these sorts of barriers. most of the time, fanfic is wish fulfillment, so this sort of question doesn't go answered. which bums me personally, but to each their own, really.

relatedly, i'd love more elaboration on the interplay with misogyny that omegaverse has. it's traditionally a given that alphas are regarded as societally prized, omegas are the "weaker" kind, and betas are just there. but it gets super confusing when you add gender roles into the mix. if alphas are traditionally domineering, then are female alphas placed above male omegas? is it based off of a genital situation, then? and relatedly: lots of fics out there write presenting as some sort of thing that happens to you at a random time with no warning, like puberty, but it's really quite predictable if you just check your organs, right? in-universe misogyny is a fun thing to consider, but i like to think of tropes as founded on these sorts of prejudices (sometimes). similarly to how i would argue that magic aus are tied into classism, i think that the underlying mirrored issue in omegaverse is misogyny. this gets into specifics that most fics don't deal with, but i love reading takes on how people present and how they manage the symptoms of that.

relating to how people present: i think it'd be interesting if there were presentation-specific stereotypes in universe. naturally there's a preset one of alphas being on top, etc., but i think it would be interesting to look at how family dynamics are skewed because of this. i don't think it would be unreasonable to assume that myths of certain experiences influencing presentation (this goes into the biology of it all, which i do love to entertain as well, honestly), so i don't doubt that certain characters might have worsened backstories in pursuit of a specific presentation. if we work by simple punnett squares, i'm assuming it's an epistatic thing where one set determines if you present at all and the other set could determine what type (which comes with its own complications; do betas have children? what are the societal feelings about that?)

relating to symptoms management: similar to birth control, i know lots of fics and other fanworks toy with ideas of heat suppressants and things like that. this is where my belief in omegaverse being founded as a (i guess) companion to misogyny is founded. although it's not a universal thing, i know that lots of fanworks tend to have heat suppressants as otherwise damaging to your health, and that reminded me a lot about the long side effect lists of birth control. this is a bit of a long-winded rant of omegaverse as is, but whenever i scroll past something tagged as omegaverse, some questions come to mind.

firstly, what's the ratio of alphas to omegas to betas? how frequent are heats/ruts? how do the pheromones actually work? how did the societal inequality omegaverse tends to rest on start? relatedly, how has that influenced the history of whatever setting you're in? what is presentation influenced by, and what is the societal stance on it? and other assorted questions. i think that it's a fun thing to play with, and i really do get that most writers tend not to focus much on this sort of thing and focus on like, 5k long e rated oneshots, but i do get filled with curiosity whenever i scroll by.