Why I chose to write Omegaverse: or the Politics of being a Woman

RIP Jane Austen you would have loved smutty little romance novels.

Author’s note: This essay discusses metrics surrounding assault, including sexual assault. Please be aware that this isn’t as lighthearted as some of my other essays.

Omegaverse.

A subgenre of Romance, focusing on a science-fiction/fantasy twist to our world where every human has a designation: alpha, beta, or omega. It’s a commentary on our social expectations we place on gender, as much as it’s a commentary on the way our society currently treats bodily autonomy and assault.

I think the first OV (shorthand for omegaverse) I read was a Captain America fanfiction — of all things. Fitting, since the genre’s origins are from fanwork sites from decades ago. Now it’s a thriving subset of indie romance.

And I wrote two books in it.

A selection of some of the wonderful omegaverse books I have on my own shelf! I’m a huge fan of Kathryn Moon’s Sweetverse books.

Before I get into my own reasons for writing OV, I’m going to do a brief overview of the genre, itself. There are a lot of variations of OV — such is the nature of a subgenre emerging that has loosely set rules but can be manipulated for the author’s taste. (I even manipulated it for my books!)

The summary is this: Omegaverse began in the Supernatural fandom as a way to explain pairing two male characters (Dean and Castiel) in a way that related very loosely to wolf characteristics.¹ Splitting humans into three designations (alpha, beta, and omega) forces further societal expectations on each designation. Alphas are strong leaders, betas are normal humans, and omegas are weak. Dreamscape Publishing actually put together a wonderful summary of OV for the release of Lana Ferguson’s The Fake Mate! I’d highly recommend reading the article.

Got it? Okay, good. Let’s get on with the actual point of this essay.

This is where the essay’s tone shifts mildly. Omegaverse as a genre has a lot of opportunity to unpack violence against women and already disadvantaged individuals. Because of the characteristics associated with omegas, many OV stories focus on the way being an omega in society feels oppressive and downright apocalyptic.

OV has a lot of opportunity to subvert these established tropes as well. There are plenty of books that show male omegas, female alphas, meek alphas, and fierce omegas. I think what drew me to the genre at first was the idea of societal expectations being twisted. Rarely does an omegaverse work stick to an almost Stepford Wives depiction of the perfect nuclear family. It often has the space to include commentary on gender, sexuality, and roles in society.

One of my favorite moments is in Kathryn Moon’s Bad Alpha, where a female alpha is allowed to recover from being hurt and ill by staying in a pack’s nest (normally only used by an omega). It leaves room for this strong female character to be vulnerable and heal in a safe place, showing that — not only does the pack care about her — but that she’s allowed to be unguarded and doesn’t have to adhere to designation expectations that she be tough all day, every day.

Already, from that one scene description, you have a myriad of subversions to tropes — from the alpha being female, to her letting walls down, to the idea that the pack she finds herself with wants to be a safe place for her to land. OV is a masterclass in setting up expectations and then running them down with a monster truck.

RAINN, the national network for rape, assault, and incest, has a sobering statistics page that encompasses the rates of assaults on individuals. Every sixty-eight seconds an American is sexually assaulted. If you got a group of six women together — one of them would have a story about being a victim of rape. If you got a group of thirty-three men together — one of them would have a story about being a victim of rape. 63,000 American children per year are victims of sexual abuse. Out of those numbers, 90% of sexual assaults happen against women.

I want you to sit with those numbers for a moment. Abuse is not an uncommon thing in the world, though not spoken about often. The Me Too movement helped highlight the tangled underworld of victims and survivors. We have always been here and we will always remain.

Often OV stories choose to highlight the way that consent comes into play with characters. Omegas tend to ‘lose’ the ability to consent, as a nature of their designation and a by-product of their heats (a biological need to mate). I cannot tell you how many stories I have read in this specific genre that take care and effort to ensure that the characters in the story have clear and explicit establishing moments of consent.

Maybe that explains why I love it so much.

Omegaverse stories have every excuse in the book to not include clear consent lines in romantic encounters. There are literal genre conventions that you expect going in — you know that there will be an omega, and they will likely go into heat, needing an alpha to tend to them — but rarely is assault an approved plot point.

In a world that so often doesn’t ask before doing, OV provides a space where self-healing from past sexual abuse is safe. These stories are built upon ideas about society and opportunities for others to take advantage, but instead of embracing it, they fight against the idea that anyone is owed access to your body, regardless if the world expects them to have that very feeling.

When I sat down to write my debut duology (Gold Rush & Gold Mine) I knew that I wanted to explore the idea of suddenly having your rights stripped away. In this political climate, it’s not an unlikely future. My main character, Juniper, discovers after almost thirty years of being alive, that her designation is not that of a beta — she’s an omega and she has no right to travel home from a foreign country, no chance to stay at a hotel, and the government insists she be placed under the dutiful care of an alpha who can ‘tend to her.’

In short, she has no free will.

I think many people find themselves reeling after being faced with an unexpected life change. Assault is definitely one of those factors that will impact a person’s life for the rest of their days. In the aftermath, they might be plagued with questions of “why did this happen?” or thoughts of “if I just hadn’t been there at that time.” Of course, therapy exists, and there are many individuals that are qualified to help survivors recover, but at the end of the day, in the dead of the night, all a survivor has is themselves.

Omegaverse is a balm.

There are a lot of readers that seek comfort in a variety of genres. I talked about this briefly in my Monster Romance essay, but there’s almost always a personal reason that a reader associates with their favorite books or genres. For some it might be escapism, for others it might be a way to relive experiences in a safer frame of mind.

You might not have experiences that you feel could relate to OV, but you might have traumatic or stressful moments in your life that you relate to other genres. Maybe you read thrillers because you have anxiety and like a way to live through that feeling and give it a reason to exist. Maybe you read crime because you like to see the bad guy get his dues. Maybe you exclusively read self-help because you enjoy learning about the root of your humanity.

At the end of the day the reasoning doesn’t fully matter. I think what does matter is that OV exists as a way for some readers to face the darkness they’ve already lived through and come out the other side feeling loved and safe.²

In a world where being a woman automatically puts you at a disadvantage, wouldn’t it be nice to read about a place where we’re coveted and wanted?

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There are a lot of other topics I could fit into my reasons for writing omegaverse and a lot of topics that I can’t cover in my limited word count (like the disadvantages and abuse that Black women face in much much higher numbers than white women, or how OV provides a space where LGBT pairings can exist often without backlash).

I do hope, however, that this essay clued you all into some of the reasons the genre became a quick favorite of mine and something I wanted to write in.

You can check out my debut duology here!

Gold Rush is out now, while it’s sequel, Gold Mine, will release in ebook and paperback on March 31, 2025.

1. And I mean very loose. It basically amounts to more animalistic character traits associated with designations and knots. We can’t forget the knots. Feel free to read the whole Wikipedia article on omegaverse, but just know that many modern books make changes to the original genre. It more functions as a jumping off point for the standard conventions of OV, rather than a hard and fast set of rules.

2. And other microtropes also play around with omegaverse, including concepts like fated mates (having someone who is destined to love you) or the idea that alphas have an innate urge to caretake. Honestly, there’s a lot to love in this little subgenre.