Oh my goddd you have to post pictures!! My mate and I ended up getting a full floor bed for my nest, and I like the size but I’d love for it to be more enclosed on the sides. That sounds lovely
Yeah my fetish is actually Anything that forces my brain to shut off or run on some kind of primal setting and this says nothing about me as an individual just so we're clear
There are so many smells and you guys still decide that the alpha in Fanfic should smell like sandal wood, what the fuck is a Sandal 👡 wood to begin with??
I was GOING to say. That when you read a wine menu and see something like "notes of leather and wet stone" you think "did an insane person write this its grapes" but after youve read about wine and growing regions and the effect of oak barrels on aging and tasted a bunch of stuff and given it some thought you find yourself taking a sip of french syrah and thinking "mmm little bit of leather on the finish there" and all of a sudden that shits not crazy anymore. Youve been cooked in the soup. Youve been living in the monkey house.
I know scenting is usually portrayed as something done with people, with packmates and family, but do you think people in the omegaverse are ever at work at the office and go like...
I didn't realize this referred to a ship and was super confused at why omegaverse cardiopulmonary resuscitation would different from non-omegaverse, like oh no what does the knot do now
When someone in omegaverse says shit like "they called to my inner alpha" or "it pleased my omega instincts," it's just the equivalent of someone saying "activated my lizard brain" or "it's the Capricorn in me."
Like it's not uncommon, but if you ask like 70% of people it's kinda cringy (especially when said seriously and not as a joke)
"Sorry, my omega instincts are not having it" is just two steps from "sorry, my adhd says no, the executives are dysfunctioning."
Or as @the-lunar-system put it:
someone starts talking about their omega nesting instincts and their friends start mercilessly blasting them for acting like a tradwife
Do omegas get periods? AKA an attempt at a biologically feasible omegaverse
I have a lot of thoughts about omegaverse and i'm not ashamed of it. The concept is fascinating! Plus, @twenty-orange-balloons in this post raised some interesting questions.
I love biology and my goal here is to keep everything as realistic as possible. I went too deep, and this is only about reproductive cycles, so this is a long post warning. I might address anatomy later, maybe.
Simplest, most realistic answer: omegaverse is inspired by (now disproven) ideas about how wolfs' packs operate. Heats and ruts are both phenomena borrowed from their reproduction cycle - called estrus. Estrus differs from menstrual cycle in the way the body gets rid of the endometrium (lining of the uterus): mammals with estrus reabsorb the endometrium (no bleeding :) ), mammals with menstrual cycles shed it out (so much bleeding :( bc human endometrium has quite a lot of small blood vessels, that are ruptured during menses).
If we strictly model omegaverse human biology by the irl wolves' biology, menstruation wouldn't exist, everyone would have estrous cycles.
But let's say you don't like (or know about) estrous cycles - this is fanfic, we can do anything. Combining menstruation cycles with heats would be interesting - heats don't mirror menstruation, but ovulation, i.e the part of the cycle when one is most fertile (in humans, day 14 of textbook cycle, so right in the middle).
In this case, omegas would have both heats and menstruations. Talk about exhausting, huh? Well, not so fast. Combining estrous cycles with menstruation leaves us with a big choice: what length of cycle do we keep? Because while human cycles are 28 days all year long, many animals have seasonal cycles where they are in heat only in spring and/or summer and their cycles are sometimes months long. So fanfic author that wants to cause a lot of suffering to their blorbos could give them human monthly cycles (dear god), or the author could be merciful and give their omegas heats only 2-3 times a year (what a dream, huh?... tho with the low fertility rate of humans, irl this wouldn't work out well for us). Taking nature for inspiration, authors can basically pick any length and frequency of a cycle.
(side note: if you as an author really want to get it biologically/evolutionary realistic, then please consider that there must be some balance between cycle frequency, fertility rate, pregnancy duration, offspring mortality rate corresponding with the species survival strategy)
Another cool thing to consider is how many children can the omega carry in one pregnancy. In humans, it's usually just one. Wolves have about 4-5, with around >50% post-birth mortality. Any fanfic author might change this, play around with this, especially if they like hardcore angst.
The most interesting scenario I can think of is giving some individuals estrus and some individuals menses. Both types of cycle are actually caused by the same hormones, following the same signaling pathways. The difference is in how the cells in the uterus react to those hormones. This means that from the genetics POV, it would actually be quite feasible for some people to have estrus, and some to have menses, and this could now all be tied to their, you guessed it, a/b/o dynamic.* Who should get which? I'll get to that later.
Now, in evolutionary biology, we often think what advantage would something offer so that the trait didn't get lost in the history, but would persevere in the species' genome. Why even have different dynamics?
Omegaverse offers us 6 types of individuals: alpha male, alpha female, beta male, beta female, omega male, omega female. Out of these, up to four could have female genitalia and the ability to conceive. This depends on the author, though I'd argue that making betas infertile, or giving alpha females and omega males only one set of genitalia, kind of defeats the purpose of omegaverse. Why get rid of the diversity in this universe?
Presuming that omega males and alpha females have both types of genitalia (making them functionally hermaphrodites) and that betas are fertile, what advantages could this system have to make it worth keeping, in the eyes of evolution?**
The advantages of female omegas and male alphas are pretty clear - high compatibility, good fertility, regular cycles. Male omegas and female alphas, being hermaphroditic, are useful in balancing out the genders (here dynamics) of population and ensuring that no matter the others around them, they could always make offspring with them.
But what use are betas? If they are infertile, they are evolutionarily useless, since they don't have any specific role in society that other dynamics/sexes can't fulfill without them. I can think of two ways to have betas make sense (besides being an evolutionary relict that will vanish in several millenia):
Make them like bee drones, or give them menses.
Bees have very interesting biology: only the queen lays eggs. If the eggs have been fertilized by a drone, it results in a worker bee. If a fertilized egg has been pampered by the worker bees, it will be a new queen. If the egg isn't fertilized, it results in a drone. (Yes, that means drones have just one set of chromosomes, instead of having a pair of each. Cool, right?). If the queen only laid fertilized eggs, there would soon be no drones to fertilize them. If she laid only unfertilized eggs, there would be no workers to take care of them. All three 'sexes' are needed.
If betas in omegaverse were always the child of alpha/omega pairing, and only beta/omega and alpha/beta pairings could give you omega/alpha offspring respectively, having betas around would make a lot of sense. (Plus, imagine how this would change the society! The arranged marriages and forbidden romances!)
The other option with betas is to give them menses, and give omegas estrus. 99% of mammals have estrus. Only primates, some bats, elephant shrews and spiny mice have menstruation cycles. Why? We're not really sure. It costs us a lot of blood, and losing blood means losing iron, which is sometimes hard to come by in the nature. A good argument for menstruation is the fact that regularly letting blood through might be another defence mechanism against infections there, which is crucial for humans that depend on only birthing one child at the time + 9 months long pregnancy. Another somewhat acceptable advantage is that only a somewhat healthy egg can properly settle into the thickened lining of the uterus, so this way, many unhealthy fertilized eggs will be miscarried in a matter of days after fertilization. (I myself am not fully convinced by the second argument, i'd need to read up on it more, but whatever).
By having beta females with periods (and even alpha females, why not), and omegas with estrus, we could argue that maybe the betas are prone to having healthier children, or being more fertile, or having better chances of successfully delivering. We really have no irl data to support this, all of this really, since no species ever has both cycles, so we can't compare their efficiency, but for the fanfic purposes this would work nicely.
Omegaverse has always been a great tool to play around with interesting new gender dynamics and fictional societies with different values. It is a way for your favourite male blorbo to experience oppresion normally directed at irl women, without any genderbending. It could be used for your favourite female blorbo to enjoy some male priviledge, but i am yet to see such fanfic.
Here I tried to play around with the biology of it, keeping it as realistic as possible. In biology, we learn that the shape determines the function - it's true for everything from proteins/enzymes, to cells, to tissues, to organs. And it's to a degree true for us, in society. What our bodies can and cannot do may greatly affect our function in a society. It's not completely determining our fate, but it's giving us options. Guiding us. I tried to describe the biologic 'shapes' of alphas/betas/omegas, so that maybe someone here could think what that means for their role in a society and maybe use it in a fic.
Go forth, armed with this knowledge, and make your OTP fuck nasty with no regrets.
*: this would also mean that your dynamic could be determined by genetic testing. I'd imagine, with a good healthcare, this could easily be done in the hospital immediately after the delivery, just like they check their bilirubin and other stuff.
**: yes, i know, this type of thinking is very simplistic in terms of evolution. Not all 'useless' traits are lost, not all 'useful' ones are kept. I'm not going more in depth here, i'm keeping this simple.
My toxic trait is that I am far more interested in the socio-economic and geopolitical implications of ABO settings than the smut.
For example: I can't read any ABO AUs set in England or France because while I can suspend my disbelief far enough for a gender trinary set up, I can't suspend it enough to believe those two countries would still be distinct entities in a alternate history where Richard the Lionheart could have impregnated Philip II.
If there was a viable dynastic future with Richard, Philip would have climbed him like an oak and dragged him to the altar if he had to. It's a match that makes perfect sense from both their points of view: Philip gets Aquitaine back under French rule, the best general in Europe on his council, and a powerful check on the Angevins... then unexpectedly (after Henry the Young bites it) the entire Kingdom of England for his Capetian dynasty. Richard meanwhile gets to stick it to his father, secure Aquitaine's prosperity, and gets the leverage to start pushing for his mother's release. Then when Henry kicks the bucket Richard doesn't actually have to be King of England in anything but name: Philip can run the countries and unify the Crowns and what not while Richard runs off to go Crusading.
Plus they also like, loved each other and stuff and being able to get to be together long term instead of being torn apart by politics would have been cool. But I'm mainly obsessed with the historical and dynastic implications.
All this to say any ABO au set in England or France that doesn't have them united as a singular Anglo-Frank empire is doing it wrong.
A good Alpha rut meal is steak ragu with a pasta of your choice, rich in protein - which we all know alphas need, and carbs to help maintain their energy
This is such a great suggestion! It’s filling and flavourful, while also efficiently providing a lot of necessary nutrients. It would keep well, and it seems like it would still be great reheated after being frozen—a perfect choice when you don’t have much time to actually prepare a meal. In the same vein, it also shouldn’t require more than a fork, since no larger chunks of meat need to be cut up while eating.
My mate’s rut is coming up soon, and I may have to give this a try!
Sometimes Alphas like me just jerk off because we're bored - and Omegas like you can't stop staring at my thick, heavy cock as I play with it. I bet you want to know how it tastes. I bet you want to know how it feels brutalising your cervix and flooding your womb. I know you'll be rubbing your Omega cocklet thinking how it would feel for my knot to swell inside of you