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From its humble beginnings as Supernatural fanfiction, the Omegaverse has boomed in popularity. Now featured in mainstream publishing and casual conversations — both online and offline — the trope has had a massive impact on today’s pop culture. Despite its widespread presence in today’s culture, the deeper, often unexplored rhetoric echoes troubling pro-life narratives.1
Its bioessentialist theming introduces harm to viewers, disguised as smutty fun with our favorite male characters. Given the ongoing attacks on reproductive rights in U.S. politics, examining the Omegaverse can provide insight into combating this pervasive rhetoric.
Defining The Omegaverse — Structure & Core Elements
Omegaverse2 is a trope defined by a world where individuals have set biological differences and hierarchy-based roles. The Omegaverse originated from the Supernatural fandom, emerging from the creation and combination of several specific AU kink meme prompts for the J2 RPF ship — a slash romance pairing featuring Supernatural actors Jared Padalecki and Jensen Ackles — with a response posted in May 2010.3
Some speculate that it may have contributed to the boom in knotting within the SPN fandom. While it is uncertain how quickly the trope spread, it has now permeated multiple fandoms and even entered the mainstream literary world, particularly within the romance genre.
Historical Context & Popularity In Male Pregnancy Stories
Since its inception, male pregnancy (often called “mpreg”) has become one of the central draws of Omegaverse narratives. While the Supernatural fandom popularized the trope, mpreg has since flourished across multiple platforms and fandoms, such as Marvel’s Steve/Bucky, Harry Potter, anime pairings like My Hero Academia’s Deku/Bakugo, and even in original works published professionally.
The extensive presence of this trope reflects a fascinating cultural fascination with disrupting traditional gender norms; however, its depiction raises concerns, as it often unknowingly reproduces regressive ideas around reproduction and gender. For instance, fanfiction archives on sites like Archive of Our Own (AO3) house thousands of mpreg stories within the Omegaverse framework, frequently featuring beloved male characters unexpectedly navigating pregnancies.
The Alpha, Beta, Omega (A/B/O) Dynamic — Power, Gender, & Identity
How the Omegaverse and its complexities are portrayed varies from writer to writer, but several core aspects remain integral and unchanged — specifically, the sexes and their dynamics.4 The three sexes5 are often treated as a secondary gender that is revealed during puberty:
- Alpha: Alphas are considered socially dominant, often hold high positions in society, and/or are considered providers to their pack. When it comes to their physical descriptions, they are often written as being physically built, short-tempered, and possessing leadership qualities.
- Beta: Positioned between Alphas and Omegas, Betas are typically depicted as average humans without distinct Alpha or Omega traits.
- Omega: Omegas are portrayed as socially submissive and occupy the lowest rank in the social hierarchy. They can become pregnant by Alphas via heat cycles, regardless of sex. Physically, they are often described as soft, frail, and gentle — even when the character is not — while also serving as caretakers.
The Omegaverse terminology originates from outdated behavioral research on captive wolves, misinterpreted by popular culture at the time (Fanlore).6
The Myth Of Instinct — Bioessentialism & Gender In The Omegaverse
While these dynamics serve as the foundation for the Omegaverse, they also reinforce certain societal gender norms, raising questions about bioessentialism.7
Reinforcing Traditional Gender Roles Through Fiction
If Omegaverse serves as another justification for male pregnancy, where exactly does bioessentialism rhetoric seep into the trope? Consider the way that male Omegas are written in various incarnations of the trope.
In many Omegaverse iterations, male Omegas are portrayed as rare, with their identity often treated as shameful and derisive, reinforcing the idea that their existence is inherently burdensome. Bodily descriptions also contribute to this shame, as male Omegas’ penises are often described as ‘vestigial,’ ‘tiny,’ or a ‘cocklet,’ accompanied by language that feminizes them and sexualizes body parts traditionally associated with femininity, such as the chest and hips.
According to the Cambridge Dictionary,8 bioessentialism is the belief that people’s most important characteristics are controlled by biology and cannot change, regardless of circumstance. This bioessentialism can be seen in pregnancies and male omegas, who are typically written as docile and submissive, yearning for the opportunity to have children, even if it is uncharacteristic for the male character to embody any of these traits.
Similarly, Omegas are depicted as having an innate, biologically driven love for their children, mirroring societal portrayals of women as instinctively nurturing caregivers. The same can be said for an Omega’s heat cycle. The lack of agency and being driven solely by biology reduces a person’s complexities to simple, biological instincts, stripping them of their agency and leaving them with limited control of their lives due to biological determinates.
The Limitations Of Identity & Agency In The Omegaverse & Bioessentialism
The rigid roles within the Omegaverse also suggest that an individual’s identity is fixed at birth and unable to be changed. Within the context of bioessentialism, the same idea applies, where people are often expected to adhere to rigid categories without consideration for flexibility in the expression of gender. Both have the troubling nature of overlooking the complexity of expression many people experience in real life.
In addition, as seen in many interpretations of the Omegaverse, the interactions between Alphas and Omegas are founded on a power imbalance where Alphas are dominant and Omegas are subordinate. This reflects a framework where the roles of dominance and submission are biologically determined states that ignore the use of agency.
If one is to deviate from their predetermined biological roles, i.e., an Omega who is too dominant or an Alpha who is more inclined towards caretaking, risk being labeled as ‘deviant’ and in need of correction, mirroring bioessentialism’s tendency to pathologize individual’s who do not fit biological or gender norms.
In both cases, moving away from what is considered the ‘natural order’ is undesirable, which can be used to stigmatize behaviors or identities that are seen as non-conforming.
Pro-Life Messaging In The Omegaverse
When it comes to the Omegaverse, it would be hard to believe that the trope somehow has pro-life messaging; while it’s not overt, it can be picked up in the way that pregnancy itself is often written. One conceit of the Omegaverse trope is accidental pregnancy coming from male Omegas not realizing they’re pregnant until the pregnancy comes to fruition.
In many Omegaverse settings, reproduction is a major aspect of the storylines, especially with Omegas being able to go into “heat” and needing to mate with Alphas, echoing pro-life sentiments as reproduction being a fundamental, almost sacred part of human life. With the biological instinct to reproduce, Omegas can be observed as a role one is born into, much like how pro-life rhetoric centers reproduction as a central, non-negotiable part of human existence. In both scenarios, biology and identity hinge on reproductive capacity.
A recurring issue is that male Omegas nearly always keep the baby, regardless of the circumstances surrounding the pregnancy, and once again, irrespective of whether it aligns with the character’s established identity to carry to term and raise a baby. Much focus is given to the unborn and the desire for sanctity to life — paralleling pro-life narratives that center developing fetuses as people entitled to the right to live — placing the weight of life over the pregnant person’s autonomy.
The Omegaverse & The Erasure Of Reproductive Choice
Although heat suppressants and birth control exist in the Omegaverse, abortion is rarely acknowledged as an option, even when it would logically align with the character’s circumstances. More often than not, abortion isn’t mentioned at all within the Omegaverse, and in pretty much every instance, the men keep their pregnancies and carry them to term.
Similar to how crisis pregnancy centers veer women away from abortion by not giving them the option and how Project 20259 has plans to strip away comprehensive sex education and replace it with an abstinence-only curriculum, the Omegaverse denies the option of abortion with the implication that the pregnant person will eventually come around to accept the pregnancy as their ‘natural’ role of caregiver and parent (Guttmacher Institute).
Consider the parallel between the trope’s avoidance of abortion narratives and current legislative and cultural restrictions in the U.S. By persistently depicting male characters as instinctively embracing unintended pregnancy, Omegaverse narratives inadvertently echo real-world rhetoric surrounding reproductive autonomy, reinforcing subtle anti-abortion ideologies prevalent in contemporary political debates.
Such portrayals unintentionally validate the societal pressure women (and pregnant people generally) often experience to conform to traditional motherhood roles, even under non-ideal circumstances — mirroring conservative rhetoric that pregnancy is an inherent and defining element of one’s identity and societal worth.
Given these implicit messages about reproductive rights, critically examining how the Omegaverse shapes discourse in fandom spaces is essential.
The Omegaverse — Deconstructing Harmful Narratives In Fandom
The presence of underlying issues in the Omegaverse doesn’t mean it must be abandoned entirely. Instead, readers can learn to critically engage with the trope; one key step to doing so is undergoing the work needed to learn how to recognize and deconstruct bioessentialism in the content we consume and create.
Actively and purposefully removing bioessentialist and anti-reproductive themes from both the Omegaverse and real-life discourse is essential for dismantling these harmful narratives. Instead of passively accepting established tropes, fans and creators can actively deconstruct and subvert Omegaverse narratives by consciously writing stories where male Omegas consider all reproductive choices explicitly, including abortion, adoption, or other alternatives.
Empowering characters with genuine agency — by openly presenting options, deliberation processes, and diverse reactions — can promote more realistic and empowering narratives. Additionally, fandom platforms and community moderators can encourage critical discourse and reflective conversations among readers and creators, fostering spaces where problematic tropes are actively interrogated and deconstructed. This conscious rewriting process empowers fans to reclaim narratives and resist problematic rhetoric, contributing positively to broader conversations around gender identity, sexuality, and reproductive autonomy.
Footnotes
- Stitch’s Media Mix. “Reimagining (Aspects Of) the Omegaverse: Reproductive Healthcare,” April 29, 2023. ↩︎
- “Alpha/Beta/Omega.” Fanlore. 13 Dec 2024. 20:14 UTC. 16 Feb 2025. ↩︎
- Fanlore.org. “Omegaverse Litigation – Fanlore,” 2024. ↩︎
- Fanlore. “Alpha/Beta/Omega – Fanlore,” 2017. ↩︎
- Houck, Claire. “Fandom 101: Everything about Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics You Wanted to Know (but Were Afraid to Ask) — Duck Prints Press.” November 6, 2022. ↩︎
- Fanlore. “Alpha/Beta/Omega – Fanlore,” 2017. ↩︎
- Cherry. “Bioessentialism in Omegaverse.” Ficsation. March 21, 2023. ↩︎
- Bioessentialism. 12 Feb. 2025. ↩︎
- “How Project 2025 Seeks to Obliterate Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights.” Guttmacher Institute, 16 Dec. 2024. ↩︎