Omegaverse fiction typically focuses on wolf or other canid-like behavior in humans, especially as it pertains to sex. This includes rutting and heat cycles, pheromonal attraction between alphas and omegas, penises with knots, scent marking, breeding, and pack structures. Male omegas are also often conceived of as being able to become pregnant. The genre often features other fantasyelements, such as the presence of werewolves or other fantastical creatures. Omegaverse works are most frequently focused on male-male couples, a subgenre of fanfiction known as slash fiction, though heterosexual Omegaverse works have been produced.
History
Genre tropes associated with Omegaverse emerged in fan communities focused on the American television seriesSupernatural, originating as an offshoot of the male pregnancy subgenre of erotic fan fiction. The genre subseqently expanded in popularity to other fan communities, particularly those focused around the 2013 television seriesHannibal and the 2011 television series Teen Wolf.
Impact
, over 70,000 Omegaverse fan works have been published on the fan fiction website Archive of Our Own. In addition to these derivative works, Omegaverse has emerged as its own genre of original commercial erotic fiction: the 2007 novelWith Caution by J.L. Langley is noted as the first commercially-published novel with Omegaverse tropes, and roughly 200 Omegaverse novels were published on Amazon from January to June 2020. Omegaverse has also emerged as a subgenre of both commercial and non-commercialyaoi.
Copyright lawsuit
In 2016, author Addison Cain released Born to be Bound, a novel that features Omegaverse genre tropes. In April 2018, Cain and her publisher Blushing Books filed a Digital Millennium Copyright Act notice against author Zoey Ellis, whose 2018 novel Crave to Conquer similarly features Omegaverse genre tropes, for plagiarism and copyright infringement. Ellis subsequently brought a lawsuit against Cain and Blushing Books for damages due to lost revenue and reputational harm; as of May 2020, the lawsuit is ongoing. The lawsuit was covered by The New York Times, which noted that the case could set a significant legal precedent for commercial works based on fan-generated material; the Times further noted the case as an example of "how easily intellectual property law can be weaponized by authors seeking to take down their rivals."
