GLR July-August 2023

A/B/O (for “alpha, beta, omega”) has resulted in this collection of tropes that impose cisgender heteronormativity onto queer ness. We’ve collectively constructed a world that allows for the wholesale invention of physical sex characteristics, and the most interesting thing the majority of stories can think of is to recre ate the biological imperative? Alpha breeds omega, whose whole purpose in life and in sex is to get pregnant and love it. It elevates the concepts of marriage (mating) and children from social norms to natural instinct, and posits that even in a world where same-gender relationships are normalized, we are only supposed to yearn for some approximation of straightness. In describing this recursive trend in the fic space, I don’t mean to imply that it’s the only thing being written about—just that it’s really, really popular. Some of the queerest, sexiest, most identity-affirming writing is being done in this space. Writers pick up the concepts outlined by what I guess we’re calling the Traditional Omegaverse, and start subverting expectations. Non Traditional A/B/O understands that sex, sexuality, and gender exist as connected but distinct concepts, and that they can be mixed and matched at will. Rather than insisting on a strictly bi nary view of all three, it’s a space that hands writer and reader the pieces to create and interpret as they please. An example: a lesbian alpha explores gender identity through BD/SM. So much of our language regarding sex and sex roles is already gendered. Trying to play with those roles as a queer per traits of power and dominance become associated not with male ness, but with alpha-ness, suggesting that those alpha-associated traits are entirely disconnected from our standard understanding of gender. The A/B/O framework allows the fic to treat as com fortable, even typical, a lot of things that are considered taboo in reality, such as lesbians with dicks, lesbians engaging in pene trative sex, and women having sex for themselves rather than cismen. Another thing this Non-Traditional space allows for is the fact that queerness is different for everyone using the term. An other example: a sexual romance between two men, both omegas. In this version, gay relationships are considered par for the course, but only if they’re between an alpha and an omega. Neither omega character is depicted as the aforementioned Large or Small type of man—after all, most people don’t fall into one extreme or the other, and the goal in writing most characters in fiction (fan or otherwise) is for them to be real people. But both characters have to work through their own experiences and as sumptions about being an omega attracted to other omegas, something that looks different for both of them, and mirrors pretty closely the experience of being gay in real life. This, of course, forces the question: if we’re just writing gay erotica, why bother with all the bonus features that computer generated settings enable? Sometimes it’s just that people find the æsthetics of A/B/O appealing, sexually or otherwise. Some son can often involve a lot of wincing and excuse-making. In this particular A/B/O verse, female alphas have dicks. (They re tract! Non-Traditional A/B/O understands that if we’re making up genitalia anyway, we might as well get creative with it.) A lesbian alpha engaging in vaginal penetration with a lesbian omega is considered pretty standard sexual behavior in the world of this fic. The

times it’s the fun of playing around with what a society looks like when you start turning those features on or off in different combinations. And sometimes, a made-up sex/gender framework that’s malleable to the writer’s choices and the reader’s inter pretations allows it to serve as a useful analog for things that are difficult or painful to handle directly. At this point, it would be remiss of me not to point out that a lot of that queer, sexy, identity-affirming work mentioned above is being written by trans writers who have seized the world-build ing mechanics for their own, whether digging into the social is sues of gender and transition or just being horny. A lot of queer writing in fanfiction spaces is often spoken about in terms of non queer writers fetishizing communities they aren’t a part of. I have no data to prove this, but my personal fandom experience has overwhelmingly been of people who identify as queer, or who will identify as being queer in about three to five years. Non-Tra ditional Omegaverse fic is this phenomenon distilled, a space where you can really explore what sex and gender mean to you. This is genre fiction at its best; when people take the established boundaries of a known concept and run them completely off the map into something vibrant and new. The existence of the Non-Traditional Omegaverse also ends up being the exception that proves the rule. What we’ve done is to create two types of queerness: Traditional Queers, which fit into that Big/Small framework I outlined above; and Non-Tradi community-created tropes. Who put these gates here? The Omegaverse might be the most popular iteration right now, but it’s just a new take on the same thing we’ve been doing for years. We’ve created this hierarchy where the most popular re lationships and dynamics, the stories that are most seen and most told, are the ones that adhere the closest to this model of a monog amous, active/passive pairing whose life goals add up to mar riage and babies. Even in this space that we’ve crafted for ourselves, our fantasies lean overwhelmingly straight. The Non Traditional A/B/O space is doing some really interesting work, but comparatively, it’s so small. It’s not that fic outside the bi nary isn’t being written; it’s that you have to scrounge to find it. This isn’t a call for writers of queer erotic to stop what they’re doing and write at least one story about a masc bottom or a femme top. When it comes to fanfiction, prescriptive criticism is less than useless. Nothing has driven me to write about a topic more than someone insisting that it should not be written about. The joy of fic is in being able to throw it online with as much or as little connection to who you are as you want. But I think it serves us well as writers to take a look at our communities and talk about the work we’re producing, and what possibilities our stories are spinning for us. It’s not surprising that, in a media land scape so starved of diverse queer content, even the stories we write for free can end up replicating the same patterns that have been pushed on us for decades. tional Queers (everyone else). Frankly, the word “traditional” is enough to send me run ning, and that’s when I hear it from straight people. When it’s coming from queer spaces, it starts to acquire the grim aura of gatekeep ing—which is a wild thing to begin with when we’re talking about a sub-niche of a niche cor ner of fandom, and even more infuriating when you consider that we’re talking about

Theoretically, fanfiction is a transformative medium. You take a story that already exists and make a new work out of it, or in spite of it. And yet...

TheG & LR

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