Certain tropes are irreconcilable with the ethical parameters of fiction: the omegaverse edition
It is, alas, a most grievous and lamentable truth of our age that omegaverse, this fantastical contagion of pseudoscientific absurdity and regressive social constructs, has insinuated itself into the heart of modern storytelling. It spreads unseen, infecting the printed pages of books, the fevered scribblings of fanfiction, the illustrated panels of comics, and the staged passions of dramas with its delusions of dominance and submission or morbid obsessions with pregnancy. Vast sums of money and countless hours of human endeavor are lavished upon its propagation, whilst BL/gay works of true merit are suppressed by censorious hands and condemned to wither in the dim corners of public consciousness
Though my heart swears fealty to BL/gay narratives, it rises in rebellion at the mere invocation of "futanari" and its progeny, gender bender and omegaverse chief among them. These, I maintain, are inimical to the values I hold sacred, and provoke in me a persistent discontent for four irrefragable reasons:
1. Their homophobia,
2. Their exploitative mimicry of opposite-sex characteristics,
3. Their dogged adherence to a pro-birth ideology, and
4. Their blasphemous misbranding as BL or gay content
I will give a quick rundown of my reasoning
*The homophobia*
-2 points
Society has deified procreation. It kneels before the cradle as before an altar, not to adore the life within, but to venerate the future cogs and pistons that life will supply to the great engine of commerce and control. A child is a promise of continuity; of goods consumed, of taxes paid, of orders obeyed. Therefore are the chaste, unfruitful same-sex unions held in contempt or branded with infamy. By the sovereign decree of nature, and save that the body be preserved from the hubristic touch of technology, gay relationships feed not the insatiable maw/ravenous belly of the state, nor replenish its dominions with fresh subjects to be bound in servitude
Trembling before the specter of non-procreative love, the orthodox mind succumbs to a desire both perverse and unseemly, in the form of a fantasy bent on transgressing the boundary that nature has fortified between the two sexes. Where reality forbids, imagination conspires to feminize the male body, burdening it with female anatomy (e.g., vulva, vagina, uterus) or the curse of child-bearing; and masculinize the female body, burdening it with male anatomy (e.g., penis, testes) or the curse of begetting. To speak in terms befitting the subject, the male character is stripped of the dignity of his sex and made into a female vehicle of propagation to endure the profanation of a womb swollen with unwilling life. The female character is likewise stripped of the dignity of her sex and made into a male vehicle of propagation, thereby impregnating others and binding the next generation to the selfsame inherited violation
Characters are wrenched from their natural state and recast into a chimeric duality of neither transcending "gender" nor representing it. They achieve, at their highest, no more than a strained hermaphroditism, and descend, at their lowest, into a grotesque impersonation of the opposite sex. They are captives of a creed that exalts birth above all else, and in its service, they are denied the full estate of personhood. Their worth measured in the barren metric of fertility, they are degraded to the rank of breeding stock or chattel, factory-grade, mass-produced, and expendable once the quota of offspring is met
The omegaverse forces of pheromones, cyclical heats, and feral ruts further dissolve the sovereignty of self. No longer may one choose whom to love or how to love. All are condemned to perform the rites of heteronormativity/heterosexism, their every exchange preordained by the body's involuntary impulses and betrayals
These dystopian perversions of the human body are confessions of a society that, in its slavish devotion to the cult of procreation, cannot conceive of love beyond the machinery of lineage, and that would rather overcompensate for its incomprehension through the most monstrous of fantasies or metamorphoses than expand its horizons
*The exploitative mimicry of opposite-sex characteristics*
-2 points
It is a recurring folly of humanity to covet the unattainable or pine for that which is denied unto it. Men cast covetous eyes on the generative power of the womb to sustain life within (womb envy), and women, in turn, cast covetous eyes on the phallic emblem of patriarchal authority and privilege (penis envy). Possessed by envy, they attire themselves in the guise of the opposite sex. Their minds conceive of a singular form wherein both sexes are mercilessly conjoined, whether named futa, omega, or a Frankenstein's monster of sorts. They reject the ancient wisdom that the differences dividing men and women are not blemishes or flaws to be excised or mended. The male body is complete in its own right, and the female body no less so
*The pro-birth ideology*
-2 points
The contention that omegaverse is but an airy nothing, a flight of fancy, or a fantastical delusion born of unbridled imagination, does little to abate the depth of my disapprobation toward its propagation, or the alarming eagerness with which it is consumed. The trope conceals beneath its non-human/brutish exterior and hierarchical savagery the fetishization of the pregnant form, preaching a gospel of fertility with such fervour as to border on the tyrannical
I dissent from the common praise of birth/pregnancy. I am persuaded in my own judgment that to procreate is to commit an act of cosmic violence. Violence, by any honest measure. Out of the void, where no tear is shed, is torn a creature frail and defenseless, thrust into a world beset with fears unspoken and desires unslaked. Not for sustenance alone does it hunger, but for comfort, for delight, for purpose or reason to endure. And each of these must be tended with vigilance. Were neglect to corrode the chain of deprivations, the self that bears it will suffer and wither in kind
With the selfsame hands that condemn the innocent to gnawing want, suffering, and decay, do natalists feign compassion, bestowing crumbs of comfort and claiming for themselves the title of saints or benefactors
The unborn is yet a stranger to hunger and to craving for the vanities of the world. Why disturb their peace? I shudder at the manner in which the hypocrisy of procreation is sanctified in every cradle, every nursery rhyme, every fantasy. And I implore, with due humility, that the domain of fiction be spared this horror. The image of anyone giving birth is too grievous a cruelty to be entertained in reality or fiction
"Not to be born at all
Is best, far best that can befall, ...
... For when youth passes with its giddy train,
Troubles on troubles follow, toils on toils,
Pain, pain for ever pain;
And none escapes life’s coils
Envy, sedition, strife,
Carnage and war, make up the tale of life" (Sophocles, Oedipus at Colonus)
Where one is seized by the longing to rear a child, the honourable path would be to adopt, to extend a hand to an existing child who has known the coldness of neglect, and to warm them with the hearth of a true and loving family
*The misbranding*
-2 points
The capacity for gestation, in my estimation, is an exclusive attribute of the female sex, contingent on the hormone-mediated activation of the ovaries to release the ovum, and the uterine lining to receive and sustain the fertilized ovum. A "man" who conceives has already ceased to be such, having taken on the inner constitution of a woman, even as her outward appearance resembles that of a man. "Heat" itself pertains to cyclic fertility patterns in monestrous (single-cycle) and polyestrous (multi-cycle) species, and falling into its frenzy implies a departure from humanity. It is, all things considered, a misnomer to ascribe the terms "gay" or "BL" to the straight-with-extra-steps, bestial fictional pairings wherein characters possess the womb or the power of conception by the crude mechanics of heats and ruts
TL;DR 2 points are granted for effort, and 8 are deducted on account of the omegaverse themes and the reluctance to commit to a gay narrative
Though my heart swears fealty to BL/gay narratives, it rises in rebellion at the mere invocation of "futanari" and its progeny, gender bender and omegaverse chief among them. These, I maintain, are inimical to the values I hold sacred, and provoke in me a persistent discontent for four irrefragable reasons:
1. Their homophobia,
2. Their exploitative mimicry of opposite-sex characteristics,
3. Their dogged adherence to a pro-birth ideology, and
4. Their blasphemous misbranding as BL or gay content
I will give a quick rundown of my reasoning
*The homophobia*
-2 points
Society has deified procreation. It kneels before the cradle as before an altar, not to adore the life within, but to venerate the future cogs and pistons that life will supply to the great engine of commerce and control. A child is a promise of continuity; of goods consumed, of taxes paid, of orders obeyed. Therefore are the chaste, unfruitful same-sex unions held in contempt or branded with infamy. By the sovereign decree of nature, and save that the body be preserved from the hubristic touch of technology, gay relationships feed not the insatiable maw/ravenous belly of the state, nor replenish its dominions with fresh subjects to be bound in servitude
Trembling before the specter of non-procreative love, the orthodox mind succumbs to a desire both perverse and unseemly, in the form of a fantasy bent on transgressing the boundary that nature has fortified between the two sexes. Where reality forbids, imagination conspires to feminize the male body, burdening it with female anatomy (e.g., vulva, vagina, uterus) or the curse of child-bearing; and masculinize the female body, burdening it with male anatomy (e.g., penis, testes) or the curse of begetting. To speak in terms befitting the subject, the male character is stripped of the dignity of his sex and made into a female vehicle of propagation to endure the profanation of a womb swollen with unwilling life. The female character is likewise stripped of the dignity of her sex and made into a male vehicle of propagation, thereby impregnating others and binding the next generation to the selfsame inherited violation
Characters are wrenched from their natural state and recast into a chimeric duality of neither transcending "gender" nor representing it. They achieve, at their highest, no more than a strained hermaphroditism, and descend, at their lowest, into a grotesque impersonation of the opposite sex. They are captives of a creed that exalts birth above all else, and in its service, they are denied the full estate of personhood. Their worth measured in the barren metric of fertility, they are degraded to the rank of breeding stock or chattel, factory-grade, mass-produced, and expendable once the quota of offspring is met
The omegaverse forces of pheromones, cyclical heats, and feral ruts further dissolve the sovereignty of self. No longer may one choose whom to love or how to love. All are condemned to perform the rites of heteronormativity/heterosexism, their every exchange preordained by the body's involuntary impulses and betrayals
These dystopian perversions of the human body are confessions of a society that, in its slavish devotion to the cult of procreation, cannot conceive of love beyond the machinery of lineage, and that would rather overcompensate for its incomprehension through the most monstrous of fantasies or metamorphoses than expand its horizons
*The exploitative mimicry of opposite-sex characteristics*
-2 points
It is a recurring folly of humanity to covet the unattainable or pine for that which is denied unto it. Men cast covetous eyes on the generative power of the womb to sustain life within (womb envy), and women, in turn, cast covetous eyes on the phallic emblem of patriarchal authority and privilege (penis envy). Possessed by envy, they attire themselves in the guise of the opposite sex. Their minds conceive of a singular form wherein both sexes are mercilessly conjoined, whether named futa, omega, or a Frankenstein's monster of sorts. They reject the ancient wisdom that the differences dividing men and women are not blemishes or flaws to be excised or mended. The male body is complete in its own right, and the female body no less so
*The pro-birth ideology*
-2 points
The contention that omegaverse is but an airy nothing, a flight of fancy, or a fantastical delusion born of unbridled imagination, does little to abate the depth of my disapprobation toward its propagation, or the alarming eagerness with which it is consumed. The trope conceals beneath its non-human/brutish exterior and hierarchical savagery the fetishization of the pregnant form, preaching a gospel of fertility with such fervour as to border on the tyrannical
I dissent from the common praise of birth/pregnancy. I am persuaded in my own judgment that to procreate is to commit an act of cosmic violence. Violence, by any honest measure. Out of the void, where no tear is shed, is torn a creature frail and defenseless, thrust into a world beset with fears unspoken and desires unslaked. Not for sustenance alone does it hunger, but for comfort, for delight, for purpose or reason to endure. And each of these must be tended with vigilance. Were neglect to corrode the chain of deprivations, the self that bears it will suffer and wither in kind
With the selfsame hands that condemn the innocent to gnawing want, suffering, and decay, do natalists feign compassion, bestowing crumbs of comfort and claiming for themselves the title of saints or benefactors
The unborn is yet a stranger to hunger and to craving for the vanities of the world. Why disturb their peace? I shudder at the manner in which the hypocrisy of procreation is sanctified in every cradle, every nursery rhyme, every fantasy. And I implore, with due humility, that the domain of fiction be spared this horror. The image of anyone giving birth is too grievous a cruelty to be entertained in reality or fiction
"Not to be born at all
Is best, far best that can befall, ...
... For when youth passes with its giddy train,
Troubles on troubles follow, toils on toils,
Pain, pain for ever pain;
And none escapes life’s coils
Envy, sedition, strife,
Carnage and war, make up the tale of life" (Sophocles, Oedipus at Colonus)
Where one is seized by the longing to rear a child, the honourable path would be to adopt, to extend a hand to an existing child who has known the coldness of neglect, and to warm them with the hearth of a true and loving family
*The misbranding*
-2 points
The capacity for gestation, in my estimation, is an exclusive attribute of the female sex, contingent on the hormone-mediated activation of the ovaries to release the ovum, and the uterine lining to receive and sustain the fertilized ovum. A "man" who conceives has already ceased to be such, having taken on the inner constitution of a woman, even as her outward appearance resembles that of a man. "Heat" itself pertains to cyclic fertility patterns in monestrous (single-cycle) and polyestrous (multi-cycle) species, and falling into its frenzy implies a departure from humanity. It is, all things considered, a misnomer to ascribe the terms "gay" or "BL" to the straight-with-extra-steps, bestial fictional pairings wherein characters possess the womb or the power of conception by the crude mechanics of heats and ruts
TL;DR 2 points are granted for effort, and 8 are deducted on account of the omegaverse themes and the reluctance to commit to a gay narrative
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