Oh, I've seen that! Heh.

Is it too early to start a countdown?

DCBB likes so far: "Angle of Repose" 1920's mining AU! Great sense of place and time with the perfect dash of D/C and supernatural dread.

"C-S-T-L" scifi future with robots. I'm not yet finished, but I'm adoring how natural and subtle the magnetism between them is.

The first few days entries I don't even want to attempt, either because the summaries seem rather dark, or because they're over 100,000 words.

I have not watched the sneak peek yet: [link]

I haven't been to LJ in forever. However I have seen at least C-S-T-L on AO3, and a current story (Eventing AU) mentioned the DCBB so I was meaning to go look. Must get off ass.

The author whose disappearance I had been bemoaning who reappeared hadn't saved one of the stories she'd deleted, so she rewrote the first seven chapters. It's an interesting exercise to re-read. Someone ended up offering her what they'd saved, but she turned it down so she could go with her new angle. Alpha/beta/omega seems like it's everywhere in D/C right now, but I like her take on the mythos and her inclusions of what the wolf makes you do. Still wish omega didn't mean passive, but that's me and the genre, not me and the story.

eta: And apparently there are people messaging her for the original version telling her they don't like the new one as much. How classy!

I see alpha/beta/omega in the descriptions of stories everywhere too, and generally just back away. I'm not entirely sure I understand what it means, other than in the Teen Wolf way of the alpha being the person in control -- what is the difference between a beta and an omega?

I'm only familiar with omegas from Patricia Briggs books and Criminal Minds fanfic.

In Patricia Briggs world omegas are outside pack heirarchy and really rare. They aren't really passive, but they have a calming effect on wolves and also make wolves more protective of them.

In the Criminal Minds fanfic it just seems like another way to introduce mpreg. I don't think I've read any of the stories, but there's one that has omegaverse as a tag and the summary is the team is in a plane crash and Omega Reid is going into heat for the first time (Reid is almost always the omega) and another where the summary made it sound like he was omega and kind of genderless and also asexual until he bonded with an alpha.

In general, alphas are bigger and badder than normal and may go into rutting heat, betas are normal and get to make choices, omegas are smaller and weaker and more pliant and go into fertile self-slicking heats. Alphas and omegas bond with each other, but betas can choose to have sex with who they want.

Alpha-alpha or omega-omega sex is where the usual taboos live, more than homosexuality, since mpreg is usually possible. But male omegas may be rare depending on the universe.

But I've read A/B/O stories where the alphas and omegas switch, or where the omegas are the ones who get pregnant but aren't in any way subordinate, so there's no hard and fast--the key part seems to be heat--the omegas go into heat and alphas can't resist it. Also, there's a lot of room for "true bonding".

The Alpha Omega (story title, can't google that bitch) I'm reading now is a boarding school AU in a world where there's a wolf-heart where an alpha can go beserk for an omega and they can't even entertain the idea of harm coming to them and it's something that happens to their wolf and not their human. I like when they play with possibility like that, as opposed to using it as a way to lock in the top/bottom into their pairing.

Is this based on something in the natural world, or is this something fanfic authors created? Because I'm not seeing the purpose of having both a beta and an omega, unless you're creating a three-way relationship and want three distinct roles.

God, I hope there's not a self-lubing male animal capable of bearing ass babies in the natural world...

That's not fair, making me choke on my tea....