Genres
Omegaverse
A subgenre of speculative erotic fiction, also called A/B/O, that supposes a human dominance hierarchy of alphas, betas and omegas.
The Omegaverse (also known as A/B/O, for alpha/beta/omega) is a subgenre of speculative erotic fiction. It supposes a dominance hierarchy among humans resembling the one popularly attributed to wolves and other canids, made up of dominant alphas, neutral betas and submissive omegas: characters have a primary sex and a secondary one that manifests during puberty, and that secondary status drives the story's pairings and power dynamics. Because the genre grew as a communal folksonomy rather than from any single work, its elements are optional and recombined from story to story.
It originated in the early 2010s as a subgenre of erotic slash fan fiction, typically attributed to the Supernatural fandom, and it functions as a stock alternate universe premise that fandoms apply to any cast. By 2020 it had become its own shelf of original commercial fiction, with roughly 200 novels published on Amazon in the first half of that year, and a plagiarism lawsuit between Omegaverse authors drew wide news coverage the same year. Kanonara does not host sexually explicit content at launch, so the genre's erotic core is out of scope to publish here; this entry is a reference definition only.