Track 3: Omegaverse
Welcome to episode three of the Mixtape Bookclub Podcast!
Do you love Supernatural? Are you a fan of Dean and Castiel, and their relationship? Do you enjoy reading Destiel fanfiction? This is the podcast for you!
In this episode, we welcome two special guests—CBFirestarter and Trenchcoatbaby—and also discuss the joy of co-writing. We review three fics: White Collar Contract by CBFirestarter and TrenchcoatBaby, No Words by ltleflrt, and Unwritten by PorcupineGirl.
A warning: Adult themes are discussed in this podcast.
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Our guests:
CBFirestarter
You can find CBFirestarter’s fanfiction on ao3 here, where she shares a range of stories, but her a/b/o story mentioned during the podcast (apart from White Collar Contract):
TrenchcoatBaby
Find TrenchcoatBaby’s fanfiction on ao3 here, where she shares a range of stories. Her a/b/o stories include:
White Collar Contract by CBFirestarter and TrenchcoatBaby
Published 2020, 165k words, rated E.
Caught between the lesser of two evils, omega Dean Winchester is thrown into the orbit of Castiel Novak—a gorgeous, older, and incredibly wealthy businessman…and perhaps the only alpha who wants him for his brains, not his body. Castiel has no interest in bending Dean over the nearest surface and fucking his brains out, which is a first. Not that Dean cares about the alpha’s lack of interest. Nope. Uh-uh. He couldn’t care less.
No Words by ltleflrt
Published 2016, 112k words, rated E.
On the run from his very powerful family, Castiel does his best to get lost. Because if he doesn’t know where he is, his brothers won’t be able to find him very easily either. He ends up in Silverton, a small mountain town nestled deep within the Rocky Mountains where he meets Dean Winchester, a very beautiful and very grumpy omega.
Unwritten by PorcupineGirl
Published 2015, 75k words, rated E
A spontaneous scent bond is the stuff of romance novels: an alpha and an omega meet by chance, and they happen to be so compatible that their pheromones are perfectly aligned, drawing them irresistibly together to mate and bond for life.
Neither bookstore owner Dean Winchester nor science fiction novelist Castiel Novak have ever thought it sounded romantic. Your hormones going nuts and tricking you into tying yourself to a complete stranger for the rest of your life? No thanks.
But when Castiel comes to Dean’s store for a signing, they feel an inexplicable pull toward each other, and into a powerful bond that neither of them wants. A bond that shouldn’t even be possible for two alphas.
At least they agree on one thing: they will not let biology determine their fate.
A/B/O information
- Into the Omegaverse – Lindsay Ellis’ video about the Omegaverse Federal Court case
- Alpha/Beta/Omega on Fanlore.org.
Other Omegaverse stories we recommend:
- Get A Whiff Of This by bendingsignpost (27,838, E) – Omega Dean does community service in an animal shelter, where Alpha Vet Cas works.
- Tor Valen by savaial (228,130, E) – Omega Dean is bought by Alpha Castiel, owner of a large estate. Historical.
- A Hole in the World by AnnelieseMichel (302,280, E) – Court case drama and omega rights. Alpha Cas, Omega Dean.
- Running with the Wolves by DancingDog (381,667, E) – Alpha Dean, Omega Cas, Cas is on the run from his family with a child, full shift werewolves
- The Smell Before the Rain by jscribbles (73,212, E) – Alpha Dean, Omega Cas, canon verse, mpreg, angst with a happy ending
- Grey by Valinde (65,218, E) – Dark canon-divergent fic with Alpha Cas and Omega Dean
- Dog Tags by Lanaserra (70,952, E) – Alpha Cas and Omega Dean, full shift weres, military au where Lucifer’s pack is taking over. Dog pile cuddles
- Real Slick Dean by trilliath (28,541, E) – Fuck or die with detective alpha Cas and omega Dean
- Carribean Wonderland by LittleAngelCassie (126,546, E) – Omega Dean moves to an island paradise to teach the niece of hot millionaire Alpha Castiel
- Expectations by Everandanon (418,319, E) – Alpha Prince Dean and Omega Cas, medieval au
- Into Your Hideaway by pinupchemist (176,557, E) – Pregnant Omega Dean is discovered by the side of the road by Alpha Cas
- Perfect Day by NavajoLovesDestiel and Winchestifer (71,117, E) – Alpha Cop Castiel discovers Omega druggie Dean. Dean transitions and Cas sticks with him.
- Oddly Shaped Empty by jemariel (65,725, E) – Alpha Cas, Beta Dean, queer themes, gender dysphoria
Stories mentioned during the co-writing discussion:
- Season Z by Castielslostwings, CR Noble, cutelittlekitty, EllenOfOz, fangirlingtodeath513, heylittleangel, jscribbles, MalMuses and sobsicles
- Waiting on a Signal by CBFirestarter and TrenchcoatBaby
- The Closest Thing We Have To Magic by EllenofOz and TrenchcoatBaby
- The Curious Case of Cuthbert Sinclair by EllenofOz and MalMuses
Is your favourite not in this list? Please let us know, we’d love to hear from you!
The Giveaway
Thanks to everyone who followed, tweeted or reblogged to enter the giveaway for episode two! We’re very pleased to congratulate @violetmatter and @cutiepieks who have selected prints from LizLee’s etsy shop for their prizes.
Our intro music is “Angel with a Shotgun” by The Cab, arranged by Ellen 🙂
Great episode ladies!! 😀
You brought up the subject of seeing a/b/o in other fandoms, and it made me laugh a little. The first time I ever saw the trope/au was when I was eyeball deep in the Mass Effect fandom, and when I saw the description of the fic I went “wtf is this? grooooss” and never read it. But then my friend Trilliath, whose ME fic I L O V E D, wrote Real Slick Dean, and I was like oh my gods, I’m going to read an a/b/o fic, aren’t I? It was my first a/b/o AND destiel fic, and as soon as I was done with it, I messaged her for fic recs. The first one she gave me was Hole In The World, which was WIP at the time. It was my Event Horizon for a new OTP and a new trope/au… and once you’re into it, it really does suck you in like a black hole, doesn’t it? lol
I knew that I wanted to write an a/b/o fic right from the start of dipping my toes into Destiel fandom, but it took me yeeeears to come up with a concept and plot. No Words was a very long time coming! Thank you for reviewing it and recommending it! And yes, it was just as difficult as it seems like it should be to write a version of Dean that doesn’t get to use his voice. I’m glad he still came across as in character, although I was surprised that was a fear going into the story for some readers. I’m always afraid I’ll write him ooc no matter what fic I’m writing, so the mute thing didn’t even register that it might change him all that much lol
Heeey thank you! I’m so glad all that discovering let you to write No Words! It’s such a great story 🙂
I guess what I’m curious about with a/b/o in other fandoms is whether the elements are all there…like the rut/heats, scenting, etc. Or whether others have changed it to fit their fandom better, like Teen Wolf for instance. I’m honestly fascinated by the way we’ve created this new subgenre xD
Anyway I’m glad you enjoyed the episode! ❤️
God I love this podcast.
It was wonderful to hear you guys discuss A/B/O and the dynamics and the gender roles that tend to take place in them
I’m so excited to hear you guys on the next episode!
Aw, thank you Ana! We’ve been so delighted by people’s response to it. And we love doing it, it’s really great to get to sit and talk out loud about fic and Destiel and such for a couple of hours at a time! (Or much longer, as we go off on tangents, lol.)
Very excited to share more with you!
This was a fun and enlightening episode. My feelings about Omegaverse has always been conflicted and by listening to this i realized i was basically just unlucky and i chose fics that weren’t right for me and i gave up on reading this trope for a while but now i’m actually really excited about all these recs they seem great.
Thanks again for an amazing ep and can’t wait to see more of this podcast💕
Hey, thanks for giving it a go! There’s such a huge range of fics that use this trope – I hope one of our recs fits your preferences 🙂
I finally got to consume this content. I loved it, as usual. I have always thought of A/o writing as a means of moving the m/m couple to a traditional concept of the HEA in which the characters can fulfill the het biological imperative of producing genuine genetic offspring. I appreciated that your guest dug into the gender role problems and social constructs where a segment of the male population has to deal with marginality in a way we readers (99% women) are accustomed to, especially as it is applicable as a metaphor for sexuality or other type of marginality.
Thanks jenny! There’s some fabulous a/b/o out there with complex social commentary – I hope we’ve managed to recommend something new and enjoyable to you. Thanks for listening <3
I’m one of those people who never reads Omegaverse as the limited info I have about it makes me very uncomfortable, but I’ve also always wanted to not judge this universe without knowing more about it so if anything I say here is ignorant please don’t hesitate to tell me. I enjoyed this episode and listening to you guys talk about fics you have actually read because it gave me some insight about the universe that I was lacking. It makes me really want to try reading an omegaverse fic now to get over my issues with it and I can only thank you for making me want to!
However, I was hoping the three spotlighted fics would actually show a diverse dynamics but there seems to be a very clear bias towards alpha Cas and even the further recommended ones mostly seem to feature an Alpha Cas. Maybe that is just how the fandom rolls but it’s already making me uncomfortable as I’m seeing this as Dean mostly being forced into a feminized role (physically) and I don’t want to read only about Dean always getting whumped (which I assume happens in abo because of the society? Idk) because it just ends up depressing me.
I’m afraid my real issue is that it would end up being similar to those things where the fandom starts assigning clear top/bottom roles to characters and rarely sway from it. I have always been a big advocate for switch relationships (ok in my adult life as I’ve grown to accept my own sexuality; I admit to having very clear bias myself as a teen, probably perpetuated by the yaoi fandoms and I just didn’t know better how those stereotypes could potentially be harmful and fetishizing in nature) and especially in the Dean/Cas pairing where I genuinely do think they would share the roles. It’s one of the things I love about Destiel because the split is mostly even compared to some of the other pairings I’ve been into in the past. To be clear, I mean fandom popular roles and not a role that a writer personally assigns to a character in one fic; like, I’m happy reading bottom Dean or bottom Cas only in a specific fic as long as the fandom as a whole doesn’t push one too much over the other (and I don’t see that in Destiel, it’s 60/40 split at best).
Now I don’t think there is anything wrong in having a preference or the characters themselves having a preferred role obviously, but when a whole fandom sways to one side it starts to feel like there is some sort of fetishization that is causing it and I don’t want to fall down that rabbit hole again. So how much of this is true for the abo roles that the average fandom writer assigns to Dean and Cas? Was this sampling just happened to sway one way or is it genuinely hard to find fics in which Cas is an omega and either of them being in beta roles?
Sorry if I’m rambling a lot and of course you don’t have to respond to me but I just want to learn more about it. And I’m also sorry if anything I said comes across as ignorant or offensive so please do smack me on the head about it if that is so. I will learn to do better then!
Hi there! Thanks so much for your detailed comment, and sorry it’s taken a while to reply. Firstly, thanks for being so honest about your reasons the omegaverse makes you uncomfortable. Please don’t feel you need to read anything to help you get over anything, because if it’s not for you, that’s fine! But I appreciate you’re willing to give it a try 🙂
One of the things we discussed in this episode was how the alpha/omega roles play into certain traits for each of the characters, and how they might be explored in different societal models. So I guess having Dean or Cas be alpha brings out their loyal, protective, aggressive sides, and as omegas often brings out their nuturing, caring, potentially (though not always) submissive sides– traits which are not at all ‘feminisation’ when combined with either of their characters overall. Omegaverse stories tend to (although again, not always) highlight the inequality between alphas and omegas, while showing that there’s often no concrete reason why this should be the case.
Without taking a survey of the entire tag, I can’t say whether Alpha Cas/Omega Dean is actually the majority share, but in the case of the fics we’ve listed here, that seems to be the case. It really is up to the preference of the authors and the readers. In the list in this post, I didn’t even realise it was mostly Alpha Cas/Omega Dean until your comment. The lists are compiled from fics Mal and I have read and some recommended to us by others, and sometimes we add more by searching ao3 itself. So it’s really just a selection of those fics that come recommended. I encourage you to read tags of any fic that you try out, and I hope you find something to try that you enjoy! Do come back and let us know if you do 🙂
Ok so I have to say screw you guys 😂
I just lost a whole day because I had to start ‘white collar contract’ and now I’ve been up till 4am finishing it because it broke my heart and it’s perfection I can’t even really complain about my loss of time because this fic is lovely and perfect and made me fall in love and SCRew yOUU!
Break my heart again plz girls 💘💘
With love,
Someone great xx
Oops, sorry! xD I’m so glad you loved it, it’s one of my favs <3