So, it's not Omegaverse
Added 2020-10-22 18:32:15 +0000 UTCMore than one time I've described my play-comic, SkyHorn Adventures, as an "omegaverse without the alpha-omega hierarchy," just because it's a world where the female gender doesn't exist and males can get give birth.
Sadly, I didn't do my homeworks: I believed that male pregnancy was the defining characteristic of omegaverse, because, hell, men with the baby bump, pretty graphical.
But then I got deeper and I realized that male pregnancy is the less necessary of these characteristics, because it's pretty graphical, and not every writer and reader can be at ease with that.
(I'm not at ease with male pregnancy. It's just an inevitable implication of a mono-gender world, and I don't want to show that unless it's strictly plot-necessary.)
The defining characteristics are instead the 1) alpha-omega hierarchy, 2) the pheromone response, and 3) the knotting.
Everything that my story will never have. Limiting the mating potential of my guys with super-imposed hierarchies? Having them go jealous-bitch-mode all the time because their partner has sniffed another alpha? Making the story ridiculous because the plot needs to go on even during the hour they're stuck together because of knotting? Please no.
(And I wonder if anyone who considers knotting sexy has ever seen two dogs mate. I've seen it. It's not sexy. It's sad and hilarious at the same time.)
Sadly, I didn't do my homeworks: I believed that male pregnancy was the defining characteristic of omegaverse, because, hell, men with the baby bump, pretty graphical.
But then I got deeper and I realized that male pregnancy is the less necessary of these characteristics, because it's pretty graphical, and not every writer and reader can be at ease with that.
(I'm not at ease with male pregnancy. It's just an inevitable implication of a mono-gender world, and I don't want to show that unless it's strictly plot-necessary.)
The defining characteristics are instead the 1) alpha-omega hierarchy, 2) the pheromone response, and 3) the knotting.
Everything that my story will never have. Limiting the mating potential of my guys with super-imposed hierarchies? Having them go jealous-bitch-mode all the time because their partner has sniffed another alpha? Making the story ridiculous because the plot needs to go on even during the hour they're stuck together because of knotting? Please no.
(And I wonder if anyone who considers knotting sexy has ever seen two dogs mate. I've seen it. It's not sexy. It's sad and hilarious at the same time.)
Then I wonder, why in a world where mainstream culture is still strictly heteronormative and every attempt to representation is considered a political act, the counter-culture of fanfiction platforms is about gay males that not just repurpose the heteronormative binary, but are forced by nature to be submissive or dominant?
Well, for the same reason that the chosen one trope exists, in my opinion.
Teenagers are scared and insecure, more often than not they never get over that insecurity for the rest of their lives (ouch.) The fantasy of having something out of your control that gives you a role in society, the hero, or the mate of an alpha, is comforting.
No performance or judgment anxiety if your role is written in your genes.
Well, for the same reason that the chosen one trope exists, in my opinion.
Teenagers are scared and insecure, more often than not they never get over that insecurity for the rest of their lives (ouch.) The fantasy of having something out of your control that gives you a role in society, the hero, or the mate of an alpha, is comforting.
No performance or judgment anxiety if your role is written in your genes.
(Thinking about that, Sailor Moon is a very interesting example. Her past life gives her both a heroine role and a fiancè. And we have to wait for just the second arc to have a time travel plot to reassure her that she will become the queen of the world and have a child with her current fiancè. The writing of Sailor Moon is very fanfiction-y.)
And applying omegaverse dynamics to male-male couples makes them less relatable to real-world dynamics, in a good way.
Omegaverse is mostly written by women, like yaoi and m/m, and the major reason why they entertain themselves with fictional gay men is that hetero couples would often fall in very real, frustrating, and disturbing dynamics designed by our patriarchal society.
(There's also a segment of hetero omegaverse, and it's a complete shitshow.)
Omegaverse is mostly written by women, like yaoi and m/m, and the major reason why they entertain themselves with fictional gay men is that hetero couples would often fall in very real, frustrating, and disturbing dynamics designed by our patriarchal society.
(There's also a segment of hetero omegaverse, and it's a complete shitshow.)
It's also the reason why the world of SkyHorn doesn't know the feminine gender. Because they wouldn't be good characters.
Plenty of homoerotic comics and novels have female characters, but they all fall under three categories.
Plenty of homoerotic comics and novels have female characters, but they all fall under three categories.
- Supportive characters that take very well the fact of being surrounded by horny men and nobody looks at them.
- Shrews that don't take very well that fact and become temptress villains with huge tits and black clothes.
- Moms that, despite the fact that gays make up the 90% of the male population of that world (the rest is bullies) still make a big deal about accepting or not the queerness of their sons.
That is another derivation of the Virgin-Lover-Mother triad, a way to conceive women based on their relationship with men that's strongly rooted in our society and writers keep applying it even unconsciously.
So I decided, instead of populating my world of characters that would have bored with, and maybe unintentionally transformed in sexist stereotypes, I opted for the sausage party.
There are a lot of action shonen, like Saint Seiya and Saiyuki, and even the TV SHow Supernatural, that managed to be so uninterested in their female characters to have only the male characters onscreen all the time and give space to homoerotic fantasies and become the pillars of homoerotic fanfiction written by women.
God, Omegaverse was born from a Supernatural fanfiction!
And I strongly believe that I will do a better service to women by not showing them in my comic.
There are a lot of action shonen, like Saint Seiya and Saiyuki, and even the TV SHow Supernatural, that managed to be so uninterested in their female characters to have only the male characters onscreen all the time and give space to homoerotic fantasies and become the pillars of homoerotic fanfiction written by women.
God, Omegaverse was born from a Supernatural fanfiction!
And I strongly believe that I will do a better service to women by not showing them in my comic.
I might also make a series of post about the implications of a mono-gender world where everybody can be both a seeder and a carrier. Would it be sexual positivity in every culture? Would brothels exist? And arranged marriages?
