#omegaversetheory

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Calorie dense food, nesting supplies, ice packs, toys, waterproof blankets, all that jazz.

Maybe it’s kinda taboo, like the full store equivalent of the period product aisle. Like, some people won’t get you shit from there.

how perfectly relevant for this week.

here are some bonding hcs for you -

the act of bonding occurs through the mating bite in which there is a fluid transfer, either through saliva in the mouth or "venom" via the teeth, where chemicals from the biters body enter the bitten.

these chemicals change the individual in a similar way that breast-milk is beneficial to babies systems beyond filling their hunger bars, and also similarly affecting the biter with a rush of pleasurable/bond forming hormones in the mind.

in order for the bond to be strong, the couple needs to exchange mating bites and renew them semi-periodically (once a year).

mystically, the scar left by the bite is nearly impenetrable (can't be bitten over by another person), however the same person can bite the same place as much as they want.

when the bite mark isn't refreshed, it will slowly begin to fade. It's a long process that takes 3-6 years on average based on the potency of the chemicals in the fluid transfer which are said to be regulated based on the emotional/mental connection of the individuals.

a soulmate is someone with whom you are said to share a soul bond - a person out there who it is as if you have already bonded with. This includes being able to sense their heightened emotions, sometimes types of precognition about their situations, better relational compatibility/connection, etc..

if you bond with a soulmate the strength is said to be unparallelled. offering such benefits as being able to physical sense them - feel their touch on your skin miles apart, hear their voice clearly, see visions through their eyes.

many religions capitalize on this situation

all bonding is an adjustment to get used to, even with normal mating bites as the sensations of another person can be uncomfortable to percieve at first.

those with soulbonds experience a much longer phase of adjustment as it can cause serious disorientation, decrease in spatial awareness, hallucinations, and even psychosis.

mating bites often have several other health benefits - such as sharing an immune system. Studies show that if one partner is sick and the other one has had the illness and recovered, regular mating bites quickly aid recovery. This has also been proven for non disease ailments like pain management, wound healing, and mental health distress.

it is difficult when an individual in any kind of bond passes away, however an unexpected death of an individual in a soulbond can be fatal to their partner.

(cw: i do not use the terms "afab anatomy" or "amab anatomy" because i think it muddies the point i'm trying to make. i use the anatomically correct terms for the specific body parts in question).

this is something i have also thought about a lot. the central issue is that there are 6 sex (2 primary, 3 secondary) but only 2 reproductive roles in human biology: the normalized male role (providing sperm) and the normalized female role (providing eggs, carrying pregnancy, giving birth, providing milk). worldbuilding for omegaverse requires figuring out how those roles should be divided between 6 sexes. at least, if you're trying to create a world that holds up to scrutiny, which i know not everyone cares about.

most people have clear ideas about what divides alphas from omega. they have less clear ideas about divides betas from either because most societies (especially not western ones) don't have a normalized third gender to drawn inspiration from, which is why betas as a concept as often neglected or relegated to being "normal". seriously, people seem really averse to the idea of betas having scents or instincts and i think it stems from beta "normalness" or "neutrality" being their defining trait distinct from alphas and omegas.

but accepting this creates the problem that there's no gender or reproductive trait actually shared between beta men (who are just regular men) and beta women (who are just regular women), so why are they grouped together? under the common framework, i often wonder why beta men aren't just considered lackluster alphas and beta women considered lackluster omegas. they're often treated like that ("oh no, omegas are rare so i guess we have to settle for [shudders] beta women"), but not categorized like that.

and least clear is what divides men from women in omegaverse. which partly seems intentional since omegaverse is often used a metaphor for irl gender issues or to put distance between the author/readers and irl gender issues. the concepts of maleness and femaleness still exist in omegaverse, but its often not explained what they mean or why they matter in that society. like concept of betas, the concepts of omegaverse men and omegaverse women are just the elephant in the room that the majority of people are incapable or unwilling to address. as i alluded to earlier, i think its because people aren't sure to divide 2 irl reproductive/gender roles 3-6 different ways.

alphas are assigned the normalized male role, which feel intuitive for male alphas but contradictory for female alphas. omegas are assigned the normalized female role, which feels intuitive for female omegas but contradictory for male omegas. to me (to me!) the dual-sex female alphas and dual-sex male omegas feel like a way to reconcile this contradiction. female alphas have penises because they are alphas and vaginas because they are women. male omegas have vaginas because they are omegas and penises because they are men.

this is a theory, not a judgement. i do not think most omegaverse writers believe that all women must have vaginas and that all men must have penises (as many of them are trans or trans allies). i make a clear distinction in my head between irl men and omegaverse men / irl women and omegaverse women, and i believe most people do as well. i do think that when faced with the question "what distinguishes people who are assigned female and people who are assigned male in this fictional setting?" people tend to default to "genitals" as the answer regardless of the other traits involved.

i think there are alternatives, like distinguishing omegaverse assigned-men and omegaverse assigned-women with different body parts. in my omegaverse setting, assigned-female people develop breasts during puberty which remain the same size once they are finished growing and respond to the prolonged presence of any child under the age of two by lactating. if there is a baby around, they can feed it, regardless of whether they gave birth to that baby. assigned-male people develop small breasts only after giving birth which shrink back to being flat once the child has been weaned.

the social consequence of this is that woman are expected to be pseudo-parents to any random kid in their vicinity and held to the same standard as an actual parent, even if that kid is a stranger. men do not face the same expectation and its socially acceptable for them to only care about their biological offspring (which makes non-biological family dynamics particularly thorny). plus there are the health consequences of persistent lactation (mastitis, clogged ducts, nutritional concerns) that women have to deal with. i once read a fic where a male omega has stretch marks on his chest from feeding his child and thought "that's definitely going in the pile".

as for genitals, i use two different frameworks. 1) alphas have penises and are expected to be tops, omegas have vaginas and are expected to be bottoms, and betas have both and are expected to switch depending on their partner. 2) alphas and betas have penises, with alphas providing the sperm and betas providing the eggs, while omegas have vaginas/wombs and give birth. i've spent ages constructing alternative gender roles for each framework based on the material realities caused by these reproductive roles.

i think that's what it really comes down: how do sex, reproduction, pregnancy, childbirth, and child-rearing function in the setting? what types of normative body structures would lead to those outcomes? before modern science, people had weird ideas about all that stuff, so maybe look to history as inspiration. my second framework was inspired by the concept of paritable paternity, which is the belief that children could have more than one biological father (any man the mother slept with during or shortly before her pregnancy).

another thing: a very popular (if not defining) trope in omegaverse is that character don't know their secondary sex until they present during or after puberty. how does that work? in my setting, for both frameworks, people are born with undifferentiated genitals which then become differentiated during presentation. an alternative i came up with but didn't flesh out: everyone is born dual-sex and secondary sex is determined by which reproductive system becomes active (alpha -> impregnate others, omega -> become pregnant, beta -> both).

in setting where (only) female alphas and male omegas are dual-sex, i often wonder why they aren't grouped together. especially if both are capable of filling both reproductive role? and if genitals are known from birth, how do you tell if a child is a female alpha or a male omega? a male alpha or a male beta? a female omega or a female beta? i read a fic where a couple was told their unborn child was female via ultrasound and though "based on what?"

then there's the other popular trope which is that after presentation characters wake up with a different set of genitals than they were born with, or in additional to their original genitals which are now defunct. so what was the point of their original genitals? why would their body waste resources like that? it makes sense in bitching/studding fics, but not when its their presentation.

actually, as i'm writing this, i just came up with a solution. if someone doesn't have kids by say, age 25-35, their body switches things up because "obviously you suck at reproducing using this method so let's try something else". oh, imagine the ramifications this would have on a society where people are delaying having kids en mass for whatever reason (economic depression, resource scarcity, social/political conflict, changing values).

let's not forget that for most people, omegaverse is kink trope. i think most people write based on vibes or their personal preferences and if they care to, work backwards to explain why things are like that. another thing is that omegaverse is often used to let m/m or f/f couples occupy the same plots and tropes that are typically reserved for m/f couples, so they're not trying to construct alternative gender roles, just play around with existing ones (again, observation not judgement).

if one really wants to think deeply about what makes someone an (assigned) alpha or beta or omega, or a (assigned) man or woman, then there has to be a reason why that distinction is acknowledged, why people care about it, and how it effects their experiences in society. not necessarily a good, justified, or important reason, but a reason.

Anon! this is the best message I've ever received. thank you so much for giving me so much food for thought that I literally had to compose my thoughts in a google doc. I wish you weren't anonymous lol, let's be buds.

Lot of material here, let's start from the top. TLDR: I basically just "yes and" your thoughts. PSA: this response is only about omegaverse, not about the experiences of our friends in the misce community. 

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Omegaverse dynamics are both too strict and too fluid. Too strict because the overwhelming power of traditional views of masculinity/femininity driving the boat. Too fluid because the dynamics lack has solid meaning or distinction, and therefore are meaningless. Let the dynamics have true purpose, not social purpose but each a unique effective/efficient reason that they helped contribute to the continuation of the species.

First of all, omegaverse as a genre was created with a western frame of mind - a mind that is completely infatuated with binary systems while constantly attempting to disavow them at every possible turn. That created the very pleasant big picture omegaverse, in which there are three dynamics, however really none of that makes a lick of sense - not because it's fantasy, but because to your point, there are so few differences between some of the six 'genders' that it becomes very clear that six is just a fancy way of saying 'two'. I agree that to solve the case it all goes back to reproduction (which encompasses copulation, pregnancy, and childbirth). Child-rearing not so much because that can be more socially situated apart from breast-feeding.

There are two ways I think the genre could address this muddiness and become a lot more interesting - tripartite reproduction (in which you need three people to make a baby), or concretizing what is it that makes the dynamics different in a way that cannot be changed. Both of these will never happen because they're horribly unpopular with the people who love the omegaverse the most.

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Tripartite reproduction is a real turn of to those that love the omegaverse for it's heightened portrayals of masculinity and femininity, thus the kink of it all. This sort of system would destroy that, because it would require the invention of a true third thing that is not both of the other options, which would likely require the two other options to be completely reworked as well. tbh this actually makes the most sense, as it addresses what the point of having three options is anyway and why one didn't get bred out (especially if alphas/omegas are hypersexual, therefore more likely to pass on their genes, compared to betas).

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The second thing, the needing to really separate the dynamics, by boiling each one down to an immovable core, is likely the more damning issue. Let me paint you a picture. Let's say alphas have orange skin, betas have purple skin, and omegas have green skin. There are male and female varieties of each, however the only thing that suggests what your dynamic is in this case is skin color. This then wrecks what many writers appreciate the genre for - the ability to examine, understand, and "play" (in quotes because it's not really play, rather good investigation grounded in the freedom of the pen) with gender, because if you were born orange you can't become green.

Sure, of course this image does nothing to speak of the socially constructed elements of what gender is and does, instead it's only reproductive sex type - eliminating questions such as how does an green act in a way that's different than a purple? It's a bio-reductionist frame of mind (if bio-reductionist is even a phrase) which completely goes against what the genre is for a majority of it's audience. It also then begs the question that if a dynamic is something that you could not alter about yourself, can it even be mentioned in the same breath as the word "gender" at all? In an age where, as I type out these words I can look at my body and think, "there is technology available which would allow me to change nearly 100% of my outward physical appearance", what then! What if this was taken to the next extreme, not only green/orange/purple skin but the bones too. What then?! There could be no fluidity [pending skeleton removal technology].

I've just done a really messy job with a terrible illustration to say that if you live in the west today, you are likely familiar with a more wholistic post-modern understanding of both gender and sexuality that embraces grayness and fluidity. I'm gripped by your question "what distinguishes people who are assigned female and male in this fictional setting" and I raise you "what distinguishes people who are assigned alpha, beta, or omega?!".

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Heaven help me something really subversive comes along - a wave of popularity for male omega x male omega, or male beta x female alpha, or maybe everybody says alphas are actually infertile, give me something really interesting to chew on! Get out of here with that double male alpha romance, or the double female omega romance, or the male alpha x female omega, female alpha x male omega.

it's an alpha + beta x beta + omega relationship! from a currently untitled world [World X]

how does it work?

the betas are the core (anchors) and they are the primary coupling. In this world, betas are on the top of the food chain and have all the power. they've graduated from such inconveniences as giving birth or siring their own children.

which is why you've got the + relationship. Ties - a beta who is "tied" to an alpha/beta of their same gender (male, female, other) who acts on their behalf as their breeder. Every beta who is anchored, is also tied.

which leads me to echos - the relationship between an alpha and omega brought together by the anchoring of their ties. They reproduce with one another, and those children then belong to the family/foursome but legally the beta anchors.

everyone is put together via assessments and exams. Tied pairs are established first, and then the betas are matched into anchorpairs.

there is no such thing as an alpha x omega relationship outside the context of a beta x beta relationship.

alphas and omegas work inside the home, while the primary beta works outside the home. The secondary beta may do either. It is possible for all four to work outside the home, but they'd have to be very wealthy to support that much hired help.

to children - the names such as "mother" or "father" would be reserved for their beta parents. alpha and omega parents would be addressed differently depending on the culture and depending on the family.

only betas have voting rights, but they are supposed to vote in agreement with their ties as well. both primary and secondary betas in a family can vote.

a beta can be tied with either an alpha or omega, as long as they share the same gender. That tiepair can now only be anchored with a pair with a tie with the opposite dynamic. ex: beta + alpha can't anchor with beta + omega (priority is reproduction).

after a mating bite, two really do become one. your thoughts and feelings are completely and totally shared with an individual. There is no such thing as polyamorous mates, elders warn against bonding with someone with whom you don't completely trust and know.

you don't care. you love him. you exchange the bites. it's not just him in your head now, no it's him and dozens of others.

you can't breathe, you can't think, you can't move. it's madness.

you ask him how he could betray you like this.

betray? he laughs. welcome home.

it's a curse. it must be, you think standing over his body covered with blood. his heart no longer beats, but through the bond his voice - all of the voices remain. and you know, one day you'll be immortal in this way too.

the true answer is I don't really think about it that often, but also sort of.

however if all omegas had soley AFAB genitalia, what's the major difference between male and female omegas? Nature doesn't like redundancy, so having two urethras for example just seems pointless to me. However, in my au both male omegas and female alphas can give birth/inseminate others - with different levels of probability/risks.

When I think about biology in any worldbuilding setting it can often just make me go down months long rabbit holes of trying to make something work that I could just leave unexplained for myself! This is one of those things for me, or else I'd have to figure out how zygote growth processes work and I literally cannot let myself go there. I don't have the time lol!

I definitely don't write male omega births being "butt-births" however, because that would seriously harm both the parent and the child's life, because the bones aren't elastic back there! Also it's just too bananas for me (ironic right, a fictional premise that's just too much).

regardless, if the body can have a baby it needs a uterus - the baby can't just be floating around in the abdominal cavity (although this can happen irl as an ectopic pregnancy and they're nightmares - they're non-viable for the zygote and can absolutely fatal for the carrier.) also, when adding more holes, I just think about how it's more places you can get an infection lol.

So, usually in omegaverse there's the idea that only alphas and omegas have ruts or heats (hereon referred to as "cycles") while betas have nothing. Sometimes, in situations of high, prolonged stress, those cycles will either activate prematurely/unnaturally, or cease for as long as the stressful situation lasts (and a bit after that)

My idea was that betas could have something similar!

Betas in packs (that part is very important! It doesn't happen to packless betas) that have been neglecting or ignoring them will suddenly go through a faux-heat/rut. Their scent will change, they will display physical as well as emotional symptoms, and after long enough they may just go into a dissociative or near catatonic state.

It basically acts as the brain/body calling out for the packs "hey! Pay attention to me! I'm unwell and I want love and care :((( !!" It's meant to make the pack come to the beta's aid in order to diminish that feeling of neglect. If the pack doesn't come, there are two possibilities- one, the beta dies- the catatonic state is never undone and the fatal consequences come calling. Two, the beta survives, but they become emotionally/psychologically affected by the experience (as in, it literally changes the way their brain would work and affect areas of the brain) and usually for the worse.

There's also the possibility that a non-pack member may help the beta, in which case the brain will inmediatly develop an intense and nearly codependent bond with that person as a sort of "no one else cares about me except you, therefore making you happy is the best way for me to survive". This can be used for good or for ill

As a last detail, this condition isn't very well known- most healthy packs aren't going to neglect their betas like that, and unhealthy packs are unlikely to notice or may dismiss it as someone else- it's not a formal diagnosis and you have to either be really lucky or know what you're looking for to find information on it. There's also a lot of neglect and dismissal regarding betas because they're considered "not as strong as alphas, not as nurturing as omegas" and generally thought not to have anything to distinguish them which leads to a sort of dismissal of betas as being important- they are, quote literally, the middle child if the trinary, forever ignored.

Writing out all this bc I'm gonna be writing a fic with this concept and I need to talk to someone about it

howdy! love it when I get to hear more about other people's aus! You can talk to me about it anytime :)

Here are some thoughts I had while reading this, op you can disregard these entirely if you want, it's just literally things I would think about if I were considering something like this in one of my aus. But if it helps someone in the peanut gallery rock on!

The purpose of a heat/rut is reproduction first and i guess bonding second. When I read fics that have sudden onset/traumatic situation heat/ruts it normally makes me roll my eyes, because no way! Of course, this is by it's very nature a fantasy world so do whatever yall want, BUT irl people would observe decreased reproductive capability, not increased.

Instead of a faux heat/rut, could it be a unique third thing? This would make betas seem more like their own entity and not a non-option/between option.

In the faux heat/rut situation, who gets which one? Which betas gets heats and which get ruts? Is it based on reproductive capability? If so, in that case how are they fundamentally different from alphas/omegas?

How long does a beta have in this faux-stage before they go catatonic? If they do go catatonic and fall into a coma, how can they ever wake up?

^wouldn't this potentially make the death rate for betas in packs extremely high? At that point, is it worth the risk for betas to join packs at all if they are living happily without one because there would be no risk of this happening?

Are there ways for the individual to "go back to normal" that don't involve sex? Can a person in a coma even consent? What if the individual was underage?

Are there multiple types of packs in your au @not-someone-who-matters? What if the beta was in a non-romantic/non-sexual pack? Would this still happen?

Say a beta finds themselves in an unhealthy pack and knows the risks, can they leave/sever ties so that this condition doesn't happen to them? How does that work?

If the beta doesn't die following the event and finds themself in the second group - living with chronic illness/brain damage/mental illness/etc... who is responsible for this? Could the beta's parents take the entire pack to trial for abusing their child? Is this considered abuse?

If being a beta sucks in this au, and they live as second class citizens, what's the point at all? Are they the minority or the majority? If they are the minority and nobody really cares about them, why don't people just let them die off?

I like the parallel between real life when @not-someone-who-matters mentions that betas may run into the open arms of someone who doesn't have their best interest at heart. May people who have suffered any number of different kinds of abuses do the same thing, and that would be an interesting plot to explore.

Why does this only happen to betas? What happens to alphas/omegas if their heats/ruts aren't satisfied?

Why have betas in packs at all if this isn't something that befalls alphas/omegas?

Can a beta "save" another beta? Is this something that could happen in an all beta pack?

Is there some sort of detriment to the whole pack if a beta came down with this condition, other than the risk of loosing them? Would they feel pain through their pack bonds, all become sick, etc? That might make it more frightful for someone amongst them to contract this.