anyway been writing omegaverse this week for the first time in uhh *checks notes* 11 years and have to say something i find interesting about it is that it's this like. frankly very normal fetish thing that's just breached containtment to a bizarre degree?
on 2 separate occasions i've had conversations with people where they've mentioned something they don't Get about omegaverse and I've been like 'well it's like that bcos it's a fetish thing' and they've been like 'it's a what??'
it gets treated as this like stock fandom AU and i'll see people like 'i don't understand why anyone wants to read this' and i'm like yes that's bcos it's pretty intense* fetish content & you don't have the right assortment of fetishes for it? there's a bunch of other similar Stock Settings that just haven't breached containment.
*intense as in like, Density of fetish content involved rather than intensity of fetish if that makes sense?
im alright with fetish ideas 'breaching containment' because then its less stigmatized but like its still fetish content and its a little perplexing how people could read omegaverse stuff and not realize its fetish content?
SO i think i've observed 2 separate but related things going on:
firstly the aforementioned demographic of people who have somehow genuinely failed to clock that it's a kink thing
but also a second demographic of people who seem to have taken its like. prominence in fandom spaces as a sign that they're somehow 'expected' to like it? i've not really seen this attitude with any other kink.
ppl will talk about it the way they might talk about say high school/college AUs or coffee shop AUs which are very common and i guess are sometimes presented as things that everyone finds fluffy & relatable? when in reality it's more like idk. piss kink. it'd be pretty weird to read a piss kink fic and go 'ewww why does the author expect me to find piss sexy??' well they don't. they expect people who already think piss is sexy to read the fic.
In the name of historical accuracy here is the actual origin point on omegaverse:
Obviously there was a process of development leading up to it but this kink meme prompt led to whats generally accepted as the OG. Ultimately the brain child of this anonymous poster. Have they ever identified themselves??
An important thing to remember here is that while I appreciate why some people find world building heavy omegaverse puzzling or irritating, the fact that someone is writing primarily or exclusively SFW social commentary w world building omegaverse does NOT mean it's not a kink thing for them. Maybe world building is their kink. You don't know.
this post is going around again so have an additional Thought:
the omegaverse belongs to an genre i have mentally dubbed 'speculative kink'. there are various other types of speculative kink; a well known example in fanfiction spaces is the dom/sub AU, a kind of precursor to omegaverse where the premise is 'what if everyone was biologically a dom or a sub'.
however: there various other shared speculative kink settings out there. unfortunately I cannot get into this too much without discussing some uhhh Devils Sacraments I have attended so you will have to trust me. but I'm aware of several other demographics out there doing speculative kink worldbuilding.
a major difference between omegaverse and the other speculative kink settings I'm aware of is that omegaverse takes itself much more seriously. omegaverse works are often aiming to be understood as serious commentary on gender roles with legitimate worldbuilding. in contrast other speculative kink is typically very open about the fact that the worldbuilding is complete nonsense that exists in service of getting to the kink as soon as possible.
this is something that I think really adds to the Confusion around it! to be clear I do not think it's a bad thing and the fact is, yes you can use kink to explore social themes. but there is sometimes an apparent contradiction between the implied aims of an omegaverse work (to comment on gender roles) and the basics of the setting (Turbo Gender Roles).
Something I’ve noticed in some omegaverse fics is that while it is still weird fetish content, it’s not omegaverse fetish content but Mpreg fetish content. Like, if you wanted to write a fic about two characters having a kid together or one character getting pregnant, pre omegaverse you had to jump through hoops to get there. Someone had to get hit by a magic spell or you had to create your own unique world where it was normal, it was more effort but now, you just drop them in omegaverse. You don’t have to explain anything, everyone knows what’s up, you call someone an omega and they can be pregnant, no explanations needed.
To be clear, this is not counter to the “it’s fetish content” statement, I just think it’s interesting how it’s eaten some other areas of fetish content and grown as a result. I find it really interesting when I read some omegaverse stuff and I can tell, oh, they just wanted that man pregnant.
