Okay, stupid question alert...

[denorios]

You know how there are always tropes and things in fandom that you hear about constantly and you're not entirely sure exactly what they are or what they mean, and you're not really that interested enough to investigate

Comments

[gehirnstuerm]

Haha, I was wondering about that myself. Anyway, this article should answer your question better than I could: http://fanlore.org/wiki/Alpha/Beta/Omega

[sallymn]

I was just about to link to that :) I've read a couple, they do little for me...

[gehirnstuerm]

I have read none - the whole concept just isn't my cup of tea at all. (ETA: Weirdly enough, I haven't come across *that* many A/B/O fics in Teen Wolf fandom. You would think, a werewolf show would spawn more of them! Or I just hang out in a completely different corner of fandom.)

[denorios]

I got about three paragraphs into that article and was just like, 'Nope, this isn't for me!' Anything that even remotely touches on Mpreg is enough to throw me completely out of a story, let alone all the rest of that nonsense.

People like that stuff? Oy.

[rachel2205]

wtf is with SELF-LUBRICATING omegas??? Omg.

[denorios]

Haha, I...don't even want to think about that, to be honest. There are times when I delight in the infinite variety and inventiveness of fandom, and times when I shudder in pure horror. This is definitely one of those times.

[taraljc]

I first discovered it in, of all things, NCIS fiction where Gibbs and co are werewolves in a pack. Then Teen Wolf happened, and its become much more common since.

[denorios]

I can see it working in fandoms where you have a (most likely male) authority figure who is very dominant - like Gibbs. I guess I've never really been interested in werewolves in any shape or form, which is probably why I've never dipped any further into A/O/B fic and why Teen Wolf just passed me by completely.

[stageira]

*slowly peeks over wall* I sort of like it? In some fandoms? And with specific pairings?

Anyway for a more in depth (and quite honestly) and interesting reading there's a primer on A/B/O on AO3: http://archiveofourown.org/works/403644

[denorios]

Hey, to each his own! But it just squicks me out completely, but then as I said in an earlier comment, I'm pretty vanilla really, not much of a one for kink at all.

[bymagajones]

Wow. I think I've been misunderstanding this whole thing for eons - and now I realize that I might have been confusing a lot of people with things I've posted!

In my world, a beta is someone who reads your fanfiction for errors, and an alpha is someone who's so knowledgeable about the fandom that they read your story for canon errors.

Thanks for those links, everyone. I'm definitely going to read them! And thanks, denorios, for bringing up a question that I guess I definitely needed to have answered (you know what they say: you don't know what you don't know...).

[denorios]

A beta definitely also means that - although I've never heard that usage of alpha before. I'm curious about where the terminology for this A/O/B stuff comes from, although I suspect the obvious given that it's all about hierarchy and dominance apparently, which explains why it fits so well with werewolves!