I'm honestly obsessed with omegaverse and sentinel-guide verse right now. Unlike the western take on it, which often revolves and devolves into coercive *claiming bite* (sexual assault), the ones I've seen on jjwxc (bc of heavy censorship lmao) often chooses to approach from a different aspect. There's obviously a heavy romance plot, but there's also an element of social commentary that is more than aware of the exploitative nature of the patriarchy.
As in, ultimately, they recognize that omegas, guides, and those who have the ability to give birth are exploited resources regardless of what identifiers they use. No matter if they're scarce, no matter if the narrative itself waxes poetic about how everyone has been conditioned and propagandized to consider them to be most important and valuable above all, there's always a stone cold consensus that omegas and guides, birth givers regardless of gender, only have rights should they have the power to enforce it. Otherwise, they're living on someone else's good graces.
It's been a long time since I gave up on Western media and literature, so I could just be soap boxing from a place of ignorance, but the main reason why I couldn't just *turn my brain off* and keep reading f/m/m/m, reverse harem shenanigans, or the whole, man from space has no more women so fmc is special and valuable wow(!) trope, is that in the pursuit of easily marketable smut, they leave out any meaningful commentary and self awareness at all from an ostensibly *smart! Empowered! Takes initiative* fmc pov.
What turns me off from going back into and investigating the newest novels and mediums, though, is the consistent disdain abo connoisseur's have against straight het abo. I always thought omegaverse was about exploring gender norms and biases. It's sexist, in my opinion, if people can only appreciate the flipped gender dynamic if the feminine qualities being presented is from a character that is still considered male within the context.
If anything, the pairing that I consider to be most suitable to examine and explore abo-cerse, sentinal guide verse from, is from someone who is *gender neutral*. Not in the sense of gender nonconforming presenting masculine, or just in petulant fashion rebellion, but just as a regular person isekaid from a non guide/non-abo world masquerading as a beta/null*, but still being able to make an impact.
The message being that gender norms are restrictive and unproductive as a whole, and they should move together forward as a society- but with that said, i do prefer if this gnc character is only considered gnc in the verse, but they themselves are women, so I do recognize my own hypocrisy in this lol.
Anyways, my point is that omegaverse, although it's supposed to be a queer space/fertile garden for exploring queer identities and escaping from heteronormative ideals and biases, still fall into those same gendered biases. Still fall into the same toxic trope of straight het romances. Still roll around in the mire of internalized hatred and prejudices, and yet they consider their pairings superior just as long as the omega isn't a woman?
Maybe it's just that Western literature hasn't progressed beyond the boring abo tropes, so i can understand the disdain, but as someone who HAS always found value in female lead female centric stories, it just smacks of unaddressed misogyny.