What if Native Americans but werewol... no, shifters, is the theme of the omegaverse erotica series by "Ann Katrin-Byrde", pen name for the author duo Ana J. Phoenix and Kate Lowell.
Tropes:
- Artistic License – Anatomy: A few alphas early in the series are described as having knotted genitals like canines, following a controversial convention in omegaverse fiction. There's no more mention of this after the second book, though.
- Artistic License – Biology: Wolves don't work that way
, but omegaverse is frequently used as a framework to examine issues such as sexism, homophobia, and other problems rooted in social hierarchies. And that is certainly the case in this series. - All of the Other Reindeer: Or wolves. The two central conflicts in the series are the oppression of the omegas by the shifter packs, and of the packs by the humans.
- Babies Ever After: Lots of happy baby endings. Lots.
- Also subverted, as many omegas are very unhappily forced to bear children.
- Bizarre Human Biology: The authors present a unique solution to how human(ish) males could give birth. Omegas give birth through a gap that opens in their lower abdomen, a kind of natural C-section.
- Breeding Slave: How omegas are viewed and treated by most shifters.
- Bullying a Dragon: Omegas used to be revered for their supernatural powers to invoke calm and deflect aggression, though it's a subtle, intuitive power for most. But among them, there exist so-called "True Omegas" who seem to be capable of forcing others' emotions into whatever shape the True Omega wants, although they're only shown using that power to make peace. Still, the outpouring of power and prosperity that results from even a single True Omega being ensured of his safety and agency is said to have been the catalyst for a massive trend of change and good fortune for all packs and all omegas, implying that much of the packs' poverty and oppression at the hands of the humans is caused by their own internal systems of oppression.
- Cast Full of Gay / Cast Full of Pretty Boys: It is an epic of m/m romance targeted at women, after all.
- Clean, Pretty Childbirth: Intensely averted and Bizarre Human Biology is in play. Squeamish readers beware.
- Commie Land: The series is all over the place with this trope. The packs are roughly communistic in internal structure, sharing most resources by necessity, and this is lampshaded at one point. There are also bleak concrete walls, barren landscapes, constant social conflict, and other markers of stereotypical oppressive communist regimes, but all of these and even the internal oppressive systems in the pack are a product of the broader oppression of the packs by humans.
- Early-Installment Weirdness: Some conventions established in the first half of the series disappear later in response to reader feedback and firming up of the overall plot and setting.
- Everyone Has Standards: Fitting the series' White-and-Grey Morality, even the worst characters usually get to have a moment of rationality to demonstrate their... humanity.
- Everybody Wants the Hermaphrodite: Shifters are described as not caring nearly as much as humans do about the sex or gender of their partners, and yet omegas still stand out as the most desired.
- Express Delivery: Shifter pregnancies last six months.
- Fantastic Caste System: A shifter's secondary gender has a lot to do with what they're allowed to do, and to whom they owe respect or obedience.
- Fantastic Underclass: Omegas to the rest of shifter society, and shifters themselves to humans.
- Fantasy Counterpart Culture: The shifters appear to be a whole replacement for Native Americans.
- Fascists' Bed Time: A curfew is enforced on the packs to protect delicate humans from the scary shapeshifters.
- Feeling the Baby Kick: Every book that involves any pregnancy in the series has at least one of these moments.
- Feminist Fantasy: Thinly veiled behind a looking glass, and fraught by certain stereotypes and power dynamics that persist even in the omegas' happy endings,
but a reader would have to work incredibly hard to miss the gender equality message. - Freedom from Choice: The near-total denial of agency omegas live with is seen as a good thing by most shifters. They consider the life expected of omegas to be carefree and luxurious, ignorant of or justifying the abuse and uncompensated labor.
- Gender Incompetence: Most packs openly consider omegas profoundly incapable of much more than cooking and having babies. On the other hand, "an omega's labor is just... expected", and it isn't uncommon for an omega to be doing all the actual work of running a pack while an Alpha gets all the credit for it.
- Gender Reveal: A few instances of omegas who tried to hide their status, or whose parents did, and were found out.
- Gender-Inverted: Omegaverse flips a lot of gender stereotypes about women onto men to highlight the absurd double-standards. That is particularly played up hard in this series, and the results vary wildly from unsettling to completely scrambling some of the intended messages.
- Gendered Insult: Omegas get a lot of insults that mirror real world casual sexism.
- Heir Club for Men: Most Alphas (leaders of the packs, all male) and alphas are insistent on their mates giving them alpha sons. Given that alpha status is otherwise so immensely favored by the packs and primary gender otherwise almost ignored (since the secondary genders of alpha, omega, and others provide the lens through which to view gender and sexual dynamics instead), it's unclear why female alphas aren't equally prized.
- Homosexual Reproduction: The omega gender includes males capable of bearing children, and the omegaverse genre is generally focused on male/male relationships.
- I'm a Man; I Can't Help It: One of the defining tropes of omegaverse is alphas being unable to control themselves around an omega in heat, and is frequently romanticized. Here, that behavior is explicitly stated to be a product of inequality, something only committed by alphas who were never expected to do better and never had anyone to teach them how.
- Imperiled in Pregnancy: The authors are not afraid to put their characters' lives on the line.
- The Jailbait Wait: Inverted. There exists a veneer of social expectation that omegas will be allowed to mature before being "mated", but in practice, packs mostly overlook violations of that rule.
- Mandatory Motherhood: Procreation is demanded of omegas, and they can be punished for any reason that they might not live up to the expectation.
- Men Are Tough: Alphas are categorically huge, strong, and able to take a hard hit.
- Mind Rape: Each secondary gender caste has its own supernatural power to influence others. As the term implies, alphas generally have it the strongest. And abusive alphas are seen using that power to manipulate everyone, but especially the omegas who are sexually subjugated to them.
- Mister Seahorse: See Homosexual Reproduction above.
- Mystical Pregnancy: Implied to be how female alphas are able to impregnate male omegas.
- No Bisexuals: Zigzagged. The shifters think a lot about how they supposedly aren't as concerned with the primary sex or gender of their partners nearly as much as humans are, but no one is confirmed to have a history with multiple genders until almost half a dozen books in. And contradictorily, the first character in the series confirmed to have history with multiple genders is human, and the words "bi" or "bisexual" are never applied to him.
- No Periods, Period: Averted. Much detail is given to omega fertility cycles.
- Oppressive States of America: It's mentioned a couple times, and explored in one side story, that no other country treats the shifters the way the US does.
- Oppressed Minority Veteran: Shifters commonly enter the military because it's one of very few ways for them to bring in desperately needed human money.
- Out-of-Character Moment: It's explicitly stated several times that it takes something enormous to make an omega take direct action.
- Pacifist: Omegas categorically face conflict with as little commotion as they can manage.
- Perpetual Poverty: Averted. Almost all the omegas reflect on ways that their previous packs went without, and observe that resources are distributed more freely in Mercy Hills.
- Personality Powers: For various reasons, omegas typically have calm, self-effacing personalities with an aptitude for social subtlety. Likewise, the powers some omegas possess are built for deflecting aggression and smoothing over conflict.
- Population Control: Invoked as a grim possible necessity for packs that continue to grow without somehow expanding the enclosures they're forced to live in.
- Pregnancy Makes You Crazy: Zigzagged. Mood swings and intense cravings happen, but the former are mostly downplayed and the latter are as likely to be subverted as played straight.
- Quiet Cry for Help: Omegas in unhappy or abusive situations have to resort to this to get any help at all.
- Single-Target Sexuality: Once an omega has mated, they can't feel desire for anyone but their mate. There are, however, some ways to break that bond.
- Slut-Shaming: Omegas get a lot of this due to the perception of them being useless for anything but sex and procreation.
- Super Registration Act: "Bureau of Preternatural Beings". Being supernaturally stronger to begin with, and able to transform into powerful animals, is among humans' excuses for keeping the shifters behind walls.
- Traumatic C-Section: A sort of natural C-section is just how omegas give birth and there are several which are traumatic or outright tragic.
- Walls of Tyranny: Shifters are forced to live behind concrete walls topped with silver wire to prevent them from getting out.
- What If the Baby Is Like Me: Omegas dread their babies turning out to be omegas themselves, due to the harassment and enslavement of the caste.
- White-and-Grey Morality: Systems are portrayed as more evil than any individual people, since certain systems are what enable people to do evil, but there are some clear good-guys.
- Womanliness as Pathos: Frequently invoked by authorities within the packs as an excuse for why omegas can't be allowed any agency.
- Women Are Wiser: Lost traditions in the packs held that omegas possess a greater sense of justice, and powers to see it done that exceed even the power of alphas.
