#den thoughts

firstly. we start with me establishing my analytical perspective and definitions.

at its core, omegaverse functions as a vehicle for discussing/examining gendered opression—and also for eroticizing it. & in my opinion, omegaverse works equally well as a setting for horror as it does for porn, especially body horror.

(i personally enjoy both well and poorly executed omegaverse; badly done, it often tells on an author's uninterrogated prejudices in deeply fascinating ways).

by gendered oppression in this context i mean misogyny, transphobia in all its forms, and homophobia. i'm not going to explain in detail that misogyny exists and effects all women or that transphobia exists and effects all trans people and that everyone has intersecting identities so experiences these things in different ways.

i will say outright why those two and homophobia are all in one category to me though: the expectation of heterosexuality is so heavily baked into patriarchal gender norms that all LGBQA+ orientations are their own form of gender "failure". i've talked about this at some length before so i'm not going to dive into it further today.

ANYWAYS. omegaverse.

in an omegaverse setting, all people have two sexes/genders. primary sexes are still male, female, & intersex; primary genders are any gender humans of our world can have. secondary sexes are, rather than a binary, a trinary: alpha, beta, and omega.

it's much more rare to see explored in omegavese, but secondary gender can also be trans/nonbinary, separately from or connected to primary gender identity.

some people even get into secondary gender intersex variations, but like. the VAST majority of omegaverse is fetishistic of intersex identities while also being actively intersexist, especially in recent years. so. we're not getting into that.

worldbuilding varies wildly across varying executions of omegaverse, but i can speak in generalizations here. in general, there's two ways in which omegaverse societies are structured. in the first, the most widely accepted primary+secondary gender pairings are:

alpha/omega of any primary gender and beta man/beta woman

alpha man/beta woman and beta man/omega woman, which might be mildly less conventional but still acceptable because they're pairings that can lead to children

omega/omega or alpha/alpha pairings

in the second common structure with more in-universe prejudice and conservative attitudes, the accepted relationship pairings are typically ranked:

alpha man/omega woman or alpha woman/omega man

alpha man/omega man or alpha woman/omega woman

beta man/beta woman (as much as homophobia has put primary-gender queer/secondary gender straight pairings on a lower level than primary straight/secondary straight pairings, alphas and omegas are typically more highly valued in society than betas are. or at the very least alphas are more highly valued but this is also not an essay on how omegas are oppressed)

alpha man/beta woman or beta man/omega woman

beta man/beta man or beta woman/beta woman

alpha man/alpha woman or omega man/omega woman

alpha man/alpha man, alpha woman/alpha woman, omega man/omega man, or omega woman/omega woman

and sometimes there is no homophobia at all for primary genders and it only exists for secondary genders.

in fanfiction when a queer pairing is written in an omegaverse setting, the author either:

wants to execute a happily ever after for them without decoupling their idea of what that can look like from cishetero patriarchal relationship patterns (read: a queer pairing has to have different anatomy so they can have something like straight sex, become bonded for life in a way that only the two of them will ever share, and have biological children. regardless of whether or not this is at all true to character. this is more common in badly written omegaverse, but sometimes people do this in a horror way and it rules).

enjoys the kinks embedded in omegaverse's foundations (does not need explanation).

is examining the characters' relationships to their gender/their bodies/the social contexts and expectations they exist within in very interesting ways (i can ramble about this option for hours, it's my favorite).

or some combination of the three.

ON TO THE DAN AND PHIL OF IT ALL.

dan and phil would be omega 4 omega for like. one Million reasons. so now i am going to get into the main few.

firstly. in omegaverse settings, omega is the oppressed secondary gender—and omega men in many settings are considered to be lesser/fundimentally wrong/a mistake in biology by conservative attitudes. this is most commonly analogous with the way queer men who are visibly, outwardly queer from early childhood onward are treated by homophobes in our universe.

remember how dan has talked about like, being a young child and being homophobically bullied before ever having the chance to figure out who he was as a person?

speaking as a gender failure: dan's failure to perform the straight man gender from childhood onward is reason one for dan being an omega.

phil is in a similar boat here, where alienation from and deviation from our universe's expectations for typical cishet man gender exempt phil from being an alpha. i think from what he's shared about his life (when looking from this specific angle) phil could've been either an omega or a beta.

(which isn't to say a person defying secondary gender stereotypes and expectations in an omegaverse setting can't be written. it can. we're just talking about what omegaverse secondary gender assignment is most in alignment with phil's experience of gendered oppression in this life).

secondly, the mpreg thing. i get it. i get that when dan and phil joke about mpreg it is a bit. but also it's the kind of bit that very clearly has some kernel of truth to it. if i'm remembering correctly phil has talked about being a young kid learning that he wouldn't be able to have a baby someday and how he was genuinely upset about it. so like. that womb envy? king i'm diagnosing you with omega.

i'm not even going to get into how the mpreg mentions throughout dan and phil's tenure online have changed over time and my thoughts on dan specifically. they're too complex for this post.

well, aspects of my opinion can be found in my mpreg tag but the shortest version is yes dan's also an omega but he would be aborting that thang if it was him pregnant at any point after like, 2/3rds of the way into 2011. or possibly the entire time. #prochoice

thirdly. beyond thinking about the two of them as individuals. dan and phil's relationship is so inextricably queer that to thoughtlessly write them as anything but a both primary gender and secondary gender queer couple in an omegaverse setting minimizes what they've faced and is, quite frankly, insulting. in my opinion.

(please please note the thoughtlessly there. i can think of at least three fics where they're an alpha/omega secondary pairing that are doing brilliant stuff of of the top of my head).

but like. in an omegaverse setting where alpha/omega pairings of any primary gender are fully acceptable, which is fairly common in works using this setting? their lives stop making sense.

congratulations, you've exempted them from homophobia through the power of omegaverse and now they're completely different people. come the fuck on yall that's so #nothinggirl. do something compelling! be thoughtful! this is a very rich fanfiction premise! i'm both mad and disappointed i won't lie! (i am, however, having fun with my outrage).

fourthly. has anybody considered that when approaching literally all of this from the understanding that omega as a gender is reflective of a heightened and intensified variation on our shitty patriarchal world's gender expectations for women.

that makes omega/omega pairings the secondary gender lesbianism of omegaverse. this really, truly, genuinely explains how dan and phil manage to be lesbians while also being gay men. it explains the. well. everything about the relationship between the fandom and the two of them.

(i said almost up there because i think the volume of non-video posts/likes/etc is significant and might not be fully includable in even a series of videos).

i want to break this down. bc the format would be different, but the function would be the same: centralizing all known instances of dangender to make information more accessable. and a different format seems like a small thing, but imo it changes the emotional impact completely—and emotional impact outweighs everything else in this context?

i do my best to post from the most respectful and compassionate perspective possible with dangender.

usually that means that before anything else i view dangender is a celebration of dan's gender nonconformity and our connection to it, and whether or not he's trans is not the focus because the joy we take in this would be the same no matter what. that centers dan's autonomy and sovereignty over his identity.

but personally, i feel the most respectful and compassionate approach has to be different when it comes to a possible dan gender spreadsheet. because regardless of factual difference from early phandom outing/archeology, the emotional reality is that a spreadsheet like that could be recieved in a painfully similar way. especially if dan is in some way trans and sees what i post.

yknow? like. if dan is trans but hasn't even put it into words yet internally—or has, but it's new and something very personal and vulnerable?

a written out list could very likely feel like a massive violation, could shut dan down from being able to look at and name his experience/from being willing to be open and share that aspect of herself with us the way she has been/from being even more open someday.

that's kind of a worst case scenario, and i think the odds of dan seeing any spreadsheet i made would be astronomically slim. but any risk of it at all is one i'm unwilling to take.

but if dan is trans—whether that looks like knowing it comfortably, being new to it and feeling it's very personal and vulnerable, or not being able to name it internally yet—and sees a video comp about any of the specific subjects listed or any others that could be picked out?

the emotional impact of that would be so different. almost completely the opposite.

compilation videos of dan choosing fem gender expression with increasing comfort and joy? of dan saying relatable things about gender? a collection of dan's girl characters? a sister daniel timeline? that comes across as being seen by someone who's like i see something you've done and means something to me and i'm celebrating both it and you!

you see how that's not the same? being seen and loved for specific behaviors and trends. no risk of going big enough picture with it or using a format that it comes across as claiming to know an answer about dan that hasn't been shared.

i think "what if dan is trans and sees what i've posted" is a necessary perspective for dangender posters, when it comes to creating and sharing more weighty/substantial things.

i'm not saying to like, obsess about that with every lighthearted or even earnest post/ask/reply. dan and phil leave us alone on purpose so we can play however we want to in our space.

but like. as much as it can't be the main modality with which we engage with dangender posting because of the transphobes. as much as our actions must be careful because of how they might respond. (which shouldn't be the case! anon you're right that we shouldn't have to)!

we can't forget that the other side of the tightrope is being cautious of how we act with an awareness of how dan might be impacted.

i don't think anyone else probably thinks so deeply about all these things with this much detail nor do i think people should. this is just how my brain works and i'm enjoying myself.

but i am sharing both my thought process and conclusions because like. as much as i'm not and don't want to be a leader of dan gender, i do know people take their cues from me sometimes. & i think most of us are on the same page about my 1st modality, of primarily celebrating nonconformity and connection! but i'm not sure how much people think about my 2nd core approach?