A/B/O en · NOUN
Etymology
Initialism of alpha, beta, and omega.
Meanings
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(slang, uncountable) Synonym of omegaverse (“subgenre of erotic speculative fiction”).
Many A/B/O stories posit societies where biological imperatives divide people based on wolf pack hierarchies into sexual dominants (alphas), sexual submissives (omegas), and everyone else (betas).
2013, Kristina Busse, “Pon Farr, Mpreg, Bonds, and the Rise of the Omegaverse”, in Anne Jamison, editor, Fic: Why Fanfiction Is Taking Over the World, page 317:What is interesting is how A/B/O stories explore these sexual scripts, and how the characters in them negotiate the disjunctures between the dominant scripts and their desires in their own lives and interpersonal relationships, […]
2018, Milena Popova, "‘Dogfuck rapeworld’: Omegaverse fanfiction as a critical tool in analyzing the impact of social power structures on intimate relationships and sexual consent", Porn StudiesIt also harnesses the a/b/o trope to increase the stakes of intimacy and trust in the context of sexual encounters, and to intensify descriptions of desire and sexual pleasure.
2017, Marianne Gunderson, "What is an omega? Rewriting sex and gender in omegaverse fanfiction", thesis submitted to the University of Oslo, page 103