I was working on my game and looking through the Hosted Games page when I noticed that games with racist attitudes aren’t allowed. Now here’s the thing:
My game, known as Omegaverse, includes something of a hierarchy ladder. Alpha, Beta and Omega. Alphas are the powerhouse and Betas are the norm, so to speak, while Omegas are pretty much the submissive part of the population. These three are regarded as a biological trait, a secondary gender if you will.
My problem here is…is it considered racism if there are scenes including Alphas and Betas looking down on the Omega? Or is this allowed and only race-related (like hate against black people, white people, elves, dragons, etc) topics are not allowed? I’m worried this might be counted as racism.
I’m sorry if this is a stupid question! >.< Thank you for those who answer! ;~;
The precise rule is " * Games must not contain deeply offensive material, such as scenes that glorify sexual violence or racist attitudes."
So that implies you can have them as long as they aren’t glorified. If you’re not sure about a particular scene, talk to the staff about it specifically.
I’d tend to advise caution about including it because it can veer into being uncomfortable, but exploring the question of how people should treat each other given objective differences that do not exist in reality can be interesting. There’s a neat Isekai light novel called Magus Of Genesis where the main character is reincarnated as an immortal dragon, and he sets out to help the humans invent grammar and agriculture and magic, and his dragon-mom is completely unconcerned because she’s sure he’ll grow out of interacting with their tiny flickering lives by the time he turns one (aka 2000 to us tiny flicker-lives). He disagrees, and yet the lives of humans are a tiny span to him now; there’s frequently 10-20 year timeskips between chapters.
If your game have alphas and betas raping and glorified howw wonderful is beat the heads of omegas. Or how wonderful is treating them like puppets If the game portrait pc abusing others or Npcs and put them like How cool they are they killed five omegas today. .
Your game shouldn’t be okay . As any form of GLORIFIED violence rape or abuse shouldn’t be permitted in my opinion.
If you however present how terrible racism is and present the character as opposed to it and trying fight it or at least helping some omegas
The barrier between glorifying or stereotyped racism or sexism and denounce it could be very thin. If you only included it because you want glory violence and abuse this is not the place for it. However if you want made a serious denounce of how racism and violence is used in a political setting I think people will love it.
I think if it’s not overly violent/graphic it’s allowed? Moreytown would be a good example to compare to this situation. There’s a conflict in it that is similar to a race issue but instead it’s between different species, the moreys and human, with the moreys being discriminated.
To be honest I really like ABO dynamics in fictions and I think the power balance (or imbalance) is one of the things that make it interesting. ^^
As several others have said–the rule is against glorifying real world racism and in every case of it that I’ve seen, fictional bigotry has been allowed to be portrayed. Honestly it’s hard to judge how acceptable the portrayal in your game would be without having seen it–generally, as long as it’s clear within the text that it’s unfair, it should be fine.
My main concern with your concept specifically is that in a lot of spaces online, people are mostly going to recognize “Alpha, Beta, and Omega hierarchy” and the term “Omegaverse” as being a porn trope. If that’s not an association you want, you’ll probably want to consider using different terminology. If you’re aware of that and it’s what you’re going for, you should be aware that CoG/HG (or, the platforms it publishes on at least) has guidelines and rules about how explicit of content writers can include
Well, the alpha, beta, omega pattern wasn’t originally about that, though at this point I’d recommend switching it to Alpha, Beta, Gamma to eliminate the association while still tapping into the original source in a way people will easily recognize and only doing Omega if you’ve got at least Delta and Epsilon as well.
Well, it’s apparently a Master’s Thesis by Marianne Gunderson, “submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Degree of Master of Philosophy in Gender Studies” at: Centre for Gender Studies, University of Oslo, Blindern, Norway.
The Abstract says:
This thesis examines the reinterpretation of sex and gender in omegaverse fanfiction. In omegaverse fanfiction, characters from popular culture are written into a parallel gender structure, as alphas, betas, or omegas. Using concepts from fan studies and feminist theory, this thesis analyzes three omegaverse fanfiction stories, asking how they intervene in discourses about sex and gender. It shows how omegaverse fanfiction treats discourses about sex and gender in the same way as it treats the original media texts, mining them for meaning in order to imaginatively transform them. As a result, omegaverse fanfiction can be read as critical commentary of sex and gender. This thesis argues that the speculative mode that is characteristic of the omegaverse genre, makes it possible to explore the premises that underlie understandings of sex and gender without being bound by the strictures of reality. Through this speculative mode, omegaverse fanfiction creates a space where the discourses associated with sex and gender can be treated as a set of building blocks, with which individual authors can examine the inner logic of fictional gender systems on societies, relationships, and situations, examine their consequences, and imagine their downfall. Furthermore, by rewriting these discourses through a narrative, and onto familiar characters, the alpha/beta/omega system works as a node through which to imagine how specific reconfigurations of discourses about sex and gender would play out as lived, situated, meaningful experience. In the stories analysed in this project, the figure of the omega is made to signify female-coded otherness, a personification of the multiple discourses by which women have been (and still are) constructed as other. By writing a male character as an omega, experiences of being treated as other in female-coded ways are imagined to be experienced by a character who represents the male norm. As a result of this double gendering, experienced of female-coded otherness are imported into the universal. Finally, it suggests that omegaverse fanfiction can be read as a kind of ‘low theory’, theory that exists at the margin of formal knowledge formations, creating alternative ways of talking and thinking about sex and gender.
That’s great. The problem is most fandom is more about abuse and glorify violence against minorities that explore the political significance of gender sexuality slavery and freedom. I mean I would love a serious working in that regard like a Fahrenheit or a 1984.
In Ao3 fanfictions defense, there are a lot of good omegaverse fics that focus on worldbuilding/plot/character development
At least it’s more varied than omegaverse doujinshi I’ve seen u__u
I think it depends on intention. In the short novel “the women men don’t see” by James Tiptree, the protagonist is straight up sexist BUT it doesn’t mean the story is sexist. In fact, it’s the opposite - it is critiquing sexism but it’s not clear to some.
I think as long as you address the topic with thoughtfulness, respect, and you’re not explicitly condoning it, you should be fine.
Mostly Alphas and Betas thinking Omegas shouldn’t have high position in jobs or doesn’t provide much change to society or have any redeeming qualities, which is untrue. It’s kinda a show of inferiority, if anything.
Well, I’d hate to add glorified sexual scenes (sex scenes would generally be skipped) or make abuse look like a good thing. Plus, I plan to have Omegas fight for rights and the like against Alpha and Betas, much like minorities are fighting for things they should have today.
