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My adventures in FanFiction started a few years ago. I ran into a lot of terms and abbreviations that I had never seen before. Thankfully, there were some posts and internet sites available to start to explain them to me. The problem for someone starting to read FanFiction today is that those sites and posts have mostly been unable to keep up with the evolution of the stories. I recently tried to start writing an ABO story. I realized that the first thing I had to do was make major decisions about the world the characters and story line would exist within. I ended up creating a document with an outline of the questions I would need to answer and the potential answers to that question, trying to explore all the options I have seen used in other stories. I realized that this outline would give others a good starting point for a story, and with some explaining, would give new readers a way to understand the worlds.
I am starting by including the outline I created, then I am going to break this post into chapters on the individual questions I found. Some of the explanations are going to include references to things from reality. I hoping to find comparisons and phrasing that will be accurate while respectful to the populations I describe. Please let me know if they do not come off that way so that I can make appropriate changes. Also, if you think of a category or question that I have not addressed, please comment or email me with that. I would like this to be as inclusive as I can be for the ABO worlds.
What is ABO?
There are ways authors indicate this type of world. ABO or A/B/O refers to Alpha-Beta-Omega. This is sometimes written as AO or A/O, particularly in worlds that do not include a Beta designation.
What is do you mean, Alpha-Beta-Omega???
Let’s start with the basics of reality. We have two sexes, male and female. Our bodies have the reproductive organs assigned by the sex. For humans to have children, the male impregnates the female. I know there are unusual genetics, medical circumstances, and choices that make that a very generalized statement, but go with it.
In ABO worlds, there are still two sexes (male and female, may be called “primary gender”), but there is also what is usually referred to as a “secondary gender”. The secondary gender, much like the sex, comes with a set of reproductive and biological capabilities. There are usually 3 secondary genders in the world, Alpha, Beta, and Omega. Sometimes, the author uses only two (Alpha and Omega), and sometimes an author will add a fourth gender with characteristics of more than one secondary gender and give that another name (I’ve mostly seen “Delta” or “Sigma”).
Now we start getting into the questions I had to ask myself because the next question a new person would want to know is “What is an Alpha, or Beta, or Omega?” and those are complex answers. Realistically, each author crafts their secondary genders to fit the world they imagine and there are way too many possibilities to make a specific description here. These are the generally accepted roles for each:
Alpha – aggressor, protector, in charge, usually male, person who impregnates
Beta – neutral, calm, hard-working, male or female, can usually best be described as “regular humans”
Omega – protected, easily upset, not given difficult roles in society, person is capable of carrying a child
Each of the secondary genders can be combined with either primary gender, creating 6 different character types – alpha male (AM), alpha female (AF), beta male (BM), beta female (BF), omega male (OM), and omega female (OF). What exactly each of these mean depends on how the author defines the world. The next chapter is my outline of questions for defining my world then I will start breaking down those questions to explain them.