Omegaverse - doing it my way
Jul. 12th, 2012 09:03 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
bradspyjamasIt occurred to me that, since I decided to share my decidedly non-standard version of Omegaverse that I should explain exactly how I envisage my world working and mention what my views are on the basic – well that’s the wrong word but you know what I mean – version.
Firstly though, I should say that I’m only talking about this in relation to the Sherlock fandom, simply because the only Omegaverse fics I read are Sherlock fics. I know that it didn’t originate there (although I’m not sure where it did come from if I’m honest) but Sherlock is where I first encountered it and for some reason it’s the only fandom it feels right in to me. I have purposely not read any Merlin omegaverse fics for that reason.
I know. I’m odd. I’ve come to terms with that.
I should also mention that my understanding of the ‘basic’ Omegaverse comes from norabombay’s wonderful primer which can be found here – it’s well worth a look if you reading this because it popped up on your flist and have no idea what I’m talking about.
The rest is under the cut because I don’t want to bore those of you who couldn’t give a monkey’s about the whole thing!
So, omegaverse in general then:
Well, I’ll start by saying that most standard Omegaverse fics are fabulous and I love them.
Whether they are simply PWP - try The Conscientious Omega by berlynn_wohl, Self-control by light and The Full Package by Kalimyre. I promise you won’t regret it - or if they do actually have some plot - Expectations by Rosenritter for example - they have something about them that makes me very happy.
NB; most of my favourites are included in my bookmarks at AO3
I also don’t have a problem with the dubious/non consent issues in the Omegaverse I read - although I must admit that I do prefer the ones where it isn’t so obvious - because it is simply part of the verse. Omegas kick out pheromones when they go into heat that short-circuits the Alphas brain to the point where, unless they are physically kept apart, the Alpha will take the Omega by force and the Omega, because of their hormones, will want it – regardless of whether they would want it in their normal, rational state of mind. It is what it is and it’s not for everyone but the sex is usually so bloody hot that I can smother my conscience quite effectively most of the time. And if not, well that’s what the back button is for, isn’t it!
What I have discovered I’m not capable of doing is actually writing standard Omegaverse. I simply cannot get the dubious/non-consensual parts down on the page. A fact which is confirmed by the five abandoned WIP’s on my hard drive -poor unfortunate things that they are, they’ll never now see the light of day. But I don’t mind – I always knew I had limits and now I’ve discovered that this is a hard one.
However, the whole mpreg aspect of Omegaverse wouldn’t let go of me. Mpreg really works in Omegaverse, in the sense that it is an integral aspect of the whole thing and so, if you want pregnant!John or pregnant!Sherlock you don’t have to come up with some weird and wonderful method by which either Sherlock or John could get in that state. A bigger plus as far as I am concerned is that you don’t have to deal with the “OMG a pregnant man” reactions that would have to accompany something set in our reality because it’s normal; Omega’s are born to breed, their gender is secondary and that’s that.
Since visions of John with a baby bump have been dancing in my head for months now, I decided to give Omegaverse one last try. But this time I sat down first and set about altering the parameters of the verse so that the dub/non con issues weren’t there.
Thus I proudly present :
Bryony’s Omegaverse – the world I’ve built for “Little things”:
Alphas …
… are exclusively male.
I don’t care if it sounds sexist but I can’t imagine women with cocks and I have no idea how else you’d be built purely for the purposes of impregnating people if you didn’t have one (and nope, I can't write about tentacles either). So that’s how it goes. They can have sex at any time but will only knot if they are getting it on with their bonded omega during their heat.
Betas …
… are “normal humans” - nothing more, nothing less.
The males cannot carry children, the females can but their fertility is not assured. They make up about 70% of the population. Alphas do occasionally marry Betas but it still isn’t a common occurrence. It used to be taboo - in the same way homosexuality was (and unfortunately still is to a degree) in our world – but, partly due to a more progressive society and partly down to something I’ll explain in a minute, it has become more socially acceptable in the last five decades.
Omegas …
… can be male or female.
Internally they have what we would call female reproductive organs. They are built to bear children and are incredibly fertile. Their heats are on three month cycles, they don’t have periods and if they mate with their bonded alpha without using birth control they will be pregnant at the end of the heat. Omegas can have sex at any time but omega males only self lubricate whilst in heat. The build up to a heat takes around three days, the heat itself lasts three days and the reversion to normal once the heat is done is also around three days
NB; Three is very powerful number and, to me, represents family - in case you’re wondering why I’m quite so obsessed with it.
The only difference between male and female omegas used to be their plumbing. Omega females were built exactly like Beta females but Omega males were impregnated anally and thus were slightly different:
The womb and ovaries of a male omega are an enclosed system outside of heat and pregnancy. The womb is linked to the rest of the Omega’s body via the anus, just above the prostate gland. Known as the fertilization canal this is kept shut by a plug of mucus at all times other than when the omega is in heat. There is also a birth canal which runs from the womb to the perineum, where there is a skin like membrane across the canal exit.
When an Omega male goes into heat the plug dissolved and the knot of the alpha fits into the unplugged hole - in my version of knotting the knot is created by the swelling of the glans of the alpha’s penis, not at the base. The hormones of the heat also switch on two glands at the bottom of the small intestine which provide the lubrication for the mating and - by some weird biological process that I have no means to describe - also ensures that omega males are ‘flushed out’ before their heat proper and do not need to either eat or defecate while in heat.
Once heat has ended the mucus plug reforms swiftly and then, if the omega male is pregnant, the widening of the birth canal is triggered. This happens very slowly over the first and second trimester of pregnancy and then, in the third trimester, it speeds up and the membrane at the perineum thins. Finally, when labour commences, the membrane ruptures - in a similar way to how female omegas and betas have their waters break - and then the baby is born in exactly the same way that omega and beta females give birth.
Heats & Bonding.
Omegas do not go into heat until they bond with an alpha.
Omegas and Alphas find each other by their scent and while all unbonded Omegas smell enticing to all unbonded Alphas and visa-versa it isn’t something debilitating, nor does it turn them in to sex crazed maniacs.
They find their mates through trial and error relationships in the same way we do, the only difference is that, as they get to know each other, their scents starts to change. If they do fall in love their scents change significantly enough to make it clear to other Alphas/Omegas that they are off the market and eventually – timing dependant on how swiftly the falling in love occurs - their scents align and this triggers the omegas first heat.
That first heat and coupling bond them as a pair and their scents are set, their bodies producing a unique mix of pheromones that only they can detect. From then on they can only be smelt by their bond-mate; to other Alphas and Omegas their scent is as sexually attractive as a plank of wood and about as informative. Likewise, the scents of other Alphas and Omegas no longer have any effect on the bonded pair.
I have not given any thought to what would happen if they fell out of love or how they would get unbonded. If I ever get to that point - and I really hope not because I will go down with the Johnlock ship - I will think about it then.
And now for the really odd bit …
I wanted John’s pregnancy to be a surprise to him. Clearly if he were a normal Omega he would be capable of bearing children and going into heat so how on earth could he be surprised?
Infertility seemed like an answer but I didn’t want it to be just John. I wanted it to be something that affect all Omega males. Something that could be overcome if the couple did want children but meant that the heat of an Omega male would not result in children unless something out of the ordinary happened i.e. something that Sherlock wouldn’t immediately think of either.
So … I borrowed Hitler’s obsession with creating an Arian race and well ... got a bit creative.
Hitler (a beta) was convinced that children born to Omega males were the best specimens of the human race - stronger, faster, more intelligent, more beautiful … you know the drill - and he wanted to completely control the process so that he could ensure only his empire benefitted.
Thus he tasked his scientists with developing a chemical that ‘switched off’ an Omega males ovaries by altering their DNA and, in parallel, create something (which ended up being a hormone injection) that would restore them when required.
NB: I’m aware that this was probably impossible back then but, hey, it’s an alternate reality, they were more scientifically advanced than we were at that point in time :)
When World War II broke out Hitler’s scientists implanted the DNA altering chemical into a highly contagious cold virus and released it - across battlefields in clouds of colour-less, odour-less gas and attached to doodle bugs during the blitz – by the end of the war the virus had run riot across the world, infecting 99% of the population as a whole and by 1947 less than 0.01% of Omega males world-wide were able to fall pregnant.
Thankfully the existence of the hormone treatment was discovered and the resultant trials showed that it was successful in reversing the problem in all cases. However, there were still, very occasionally, Omega males who fell pregnant without requiring the treatment.
The studies that were done on these “Self-triggering” Omegas came up with a tentative link between the self-triggering and the Omega experiencing either emotional trauma or prolonged separation from their bonded Alpha. However wider studies ruled these out as genuine causes of “Self-triggering” because there were far more Omega males who experienced those things and didn’t self-trigger.
The point I’m trying to make - quite badly really, I do apologise - is that no Omega male or their Alpha would assume that they were capable of getting pregnant even if they’d been subjected to one of those situations - the chances of “Self-triggering” are just too slim.
The loss of natural fertility in Omega males also explains why Alpha/Beta relationships have ‘come out of the closet’. Now that Omega males have to have what boils down to fertility treatment to conceive then an Alpha mating with a Beta has a higher chance of “normal” conception and that, to the sort of people who care about such things - and thus frowned on Alpha/Beta marriage before because it “wasn’t natural” - is what matters.
So, in conclusion ...
... yeah, these are definitely not the average A/B/O dynamics but they are mine and I’m quite fond of them. If you can see holes in this - other than the fact that my grasp of chemistry and biology is seriously lacking - then feel free to point them out. I subscribe firmly to the belief that you don’t know what you really think until you try and explain it, so I’d love the chance to get to grips with my own mind a bit further.
Oh and if you’ve read any Omegaverse you think I’d like, please point me in the right direction!
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Date: 2012-07-13 04:26 am (UTC)So I just read this and understood it fairly well and I for one really appreciate the effort put into the explanation. I really liked the whole hitler connections makes it more reasonable. I like your omega verse I mean I've read a few merlin omega verses and like them but some really too much on dubcon too much for my liking. I also wonder where this omega verse got started I feel like it may have started slightly or had been inspired by the twilght fandom
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Date: 2012-07-14 05:24 pm (UTC)I'm glad this made sense to you - I always worry that I'm just talking rubbish and everyone is reading and thinking "Ah poor delusional thing" - thanks for saying so!
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Date: 2012-07-18 04:50 am (UTC)tell me about it merlin and sherlock right now are my fandoms though sherlock is somewhat on the top right now :D
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Date: 2012-07-24 04:03 am (UTC)Your explanation of how male pregnancy works actually sounds similar to what I've come up with for ideas in some of my other fandoms - of course there's no heat or anything like that in those (I'm glad for the A/B/O stuff in Sherlock fandom, because as a rule I can't read mpreg in anything non sci-fi/fantasy related, but I have to admit the whole self-lubing thing still tends to put me off a bit).
As for what would or wouldn't have been possible for Hitler and co., just remember if it weren't for the Dark Ages, we'd be colonizing space by now. It's entirely possible that because of the A/B/O thing events may have gone different and maybe Science prevailed a bit earlier.
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Date: 2012-07-24 05:38 pm (UTC)And thank you for the point about the Dark Ages and what is and isn't possible - is shall definitely be going with that when 'sciencey' niggles raise their irritating little heads in future :)
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Date: 2012-08-06 10:05 pm (UTC)Just an idea cause I think I like your A/B/O verse a little better than the usual one, mostly cause of the Dub/noncon elements.
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Date: 2012-08-07 05:36 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-08-11 12:59 am (UTC)This is all really interesting, though, and I can maybe wrap my head around one series where John can be pregnant (especially when Benedict is [even just for a second] on the table as a baby name *snerk*).
So now I'm making a note to read chapters other than those entitled Benedict...
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Date: 2012-08-11 06:26 am (UTC)I'm thrilled you're going to have a look at the rest - mpreg is such an acquired taste (not quite sure how I acquired it tbh, it just sort of snuck up on me *gives the plot bunnies a LOOK* and then I was lost) so I feel honoured that you enjoyed this enough to try. Thank you!
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Date: 2012-08-11 03:07 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-08-11 05:10 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-08-11 06:10 pm (UTC)Sherlock Fic Recs
Date: 2012-08-12 01:29 am (UTC)