Heated Rivalry star Hudson Williams dared fans to get freakier, and those fans said, “bet.”
After throwing down the gauntlet, it took exactly one day for Williams to get told that his character, Shane Hollander, is pregnant on the popular fan fiction website AO3.
This might be the first time Williams heard this information, but people have been commenting on Shane being in Mpreg stories and being an Omega since the first episode dropped, and it only got worse after episode 4, when Shane was shown holding a baby.
But what is Mpreg, and why are people calling Shane an Omega?
Fan fiction gives fans an outlet to not only get creative with the worlds and characters from their favorite books, TV shows, and movies, but also tackle taboo and transgressive topics. And sometimes that means things get a little weird.
If you’ve never fallen down a fan fiction rabbit hole before, you might be completely unaware of the Omegaverse (as this fan fiction subgenre is often called), but there are tons of stories where Shane Hollander and Ilya Rozanov have been written as an omega and his alpha who are having a baby together.
So what do all of these terms mean, and what’s going on with the memes taking over social media?
What is AO3?
AO3, which stands for Archive of Our Own, is one of the most popular and largest fan-fiction websites on the internet, where anyone can post fanfic they’ve written for the audience to read.
There are fan-created stories about Draco Malfoy and Harry Potter falling in love, ones shipping Marvel characters — in fact, Heated Rivalry author Rachel Reid posted her story to the site as a Captain America/Bucky ship before publishing it — and others that cast new characters in familiar worlds from books, TV shows, or movies.
And the fans work quickly. Heated Rivalry has become such a popular topic for Omegaverse stories that there have already been 145 written since the show started airing.
What is an omega?
The Omegaverse is a subgenre of erotic fan fiction that focuses on humans being divided into a hierarchy based on the myth that wolves fall into the dominant and submissive types of Alphas, Betas, and Omegas. This is why the subgenre is also sometimes referred to as A/B/O.
In Heated Rivalry, Ilya comes across as a soft dom to the more submissive Shane, but in Omegaverse fan fiction, he’s written as an Alpha and Shane is cast as an Omega. But what do these terms really mean?
Alpha: Tops, socially and physically dominant.
Beta: Neutral or has a mix of Alpha and Omega traits.
Omega: Bottoms, submissive, gentle, nurturing, and can get pregnant.
People are often drawn to the Omegaverse because of the way the subgenre plays with power dynamics, upends traditional gender roles, and leans into primal instincts.
The Omegaverse has been around on fanfic websites since the early 2010’s when the Supernatural fandom created the tropes that are still going strong today. Actor Jensen Ackles, who played Dean in the show, is widely considered the first Omega, with fans casting Jared Padalecki (who played his brother, Sam) as his Alpha.
While it originated in the gay fanfic community, there are heterosexual versions of these tropes as well. Now, it’s become so popular that it’s broken out of fanfic websites, and erotic Omegaverse books can even be found on Amazon.
Knotting, heats, and pheromones explained
Ok, so this is where things start getting weird. This subgenre has a whole set of tropes that are common and loosely based on wolf traits again, and they tend to be pretty horny and play with dom/sub dynamics.
Knotting: Inspired by wolf anatomy, the base of the penis inflates to lock the Alpha inside the Omega during sex.
Heats: Omegas have regular heats where they are usually extremely horny and driven to have sex and get pregnant. Omegas often have to take prescription “heat suppressants,” so they don’t go into heat at inopportune times.
Pheromones: Alphas have pheromones which they can release to assert dominance, or to scent mark a mate, and the smell can trigger an Omega’s heat. Omegas also put out powerful pheromones during their heat that attract Alphas.
What is Mpreg?
If you’ve never heard of this before, you may be baffled by the concept, but there is a whole subsection of the fanfic world devoted to Mpreg, short for male pregnancy.
This popular trope usually involves the man having a uterus and the ability to get pregnant and give birth. The Omegaverse falls under this umbrella, but there are other fanfic subgenres that also play with Mpreg.
Now that you've had a crash course on the Omegaverse and Mpreg, you'll be one step ahead of Hudson Williams, who was clearly confused when a fan brought up the popular memes.
