So the thing that baffles me about ABO

[cashew]

Let's get one thing clear before I start complaining:

I do not care if you like or hate or are neutral toward or never heard of ABO. Fanfic preference does not reflect on your quality as a person. Ok? We good?

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So, I'm not a fan of ABO set up, but since this is the hot thing that has taken over every fandom to ever exist and makes up some 90% of fic that I consume, there's no getting away from it. I get that ABO is basically repackaging some very classic kinks: self-lubercating asshole, sobbing uke, mpreg, D/s, hyper competence, size difference, sex pollen, mind control, dubcon, etc. So, so many kinks in three letters.

But I am genuinely confused by cishet ABO. Like...what does ABO offer for cishet sex that D/s universe doesn't? (To clarify, I'm not talking about BDSM; D/s universe is a kink where people are biologically born either Dom or sub, and subs are biologically driven to get sexed up by Doms because...kink.) ABO's popularity in queer space I understand, but how did it sweep the cishet stuff, too?

I feel like you don't need ABO in cishet sex to get the pregnancy, self-lubrication, blah blah things associated with the female genitalia's biological functions that facilitates sex. So all you'll be getting is the "irresistable biological urge to sex" aspect of the kink, which is kind of already covered by the D/s variant. And as for the size difference...cishet is already all over that without needing ABO getting involved.

The only other variable I can think of is the pheromones vector. Is body odor a widely spread kink I didn't know about?

Comments

[tanithryudo]

I've always thought of ABO as a way to shortcut to PWP sex scenes without having to do a lot of setup on actually getting the two people together. And yeah, also an excuse for m/m to skip all the prep parts of sex. I don't see the point of ABO het...unless they're trying to do something like female A x male O, maybe?

The thing that baffles me is the Sentinel/Guide trope that have been seeing a lot of in CN fanfics. I mean... that TV show wasn't even all that popular in the US, nor did it have that big of a fanbase. How did the setup get popular in CN fics decades afterwards is a bit baffling.

[cashew]

ABO as a way to shortcut to PWP sex

In CN fics, I'd say about 99% is PWP with the very rare instance where the focus is on power dynamics. For example, one fic I read focused on A using pheromones to force O to into accepting self care with no sex involved. It shortcuts the need for therapy in those "and then A saves O from his self-destructive tendencies" types of stories.

In EN fic, the preponderance of G and T rated ABO fic on AO3 makes the case that it's not all about the PWP.

female A x male O, maybe

I've only seen that happen in Peggy x Steve fic. Most of the time it's Male A x Female O, so like...baffling.

Sentinel/Guide trope that have been seeing a lot of in CN fanfics.

The crazy part is I'm pretty sure most (all?) of them haven't even seen the original show (given the time of the show airing). The trope has taken on an entire life of it's own. Although I do have to say that once ABO started sweeping the fic sphere, Sentinel/Guide have fallen out of favor as far as I can tell. Like it's there, obviously, but it's not ubiquitous the way ABO has become.

[tanithryudo]

A lot of EN non-PWP ABO fics I recall seeing tend to be related to mpreg/childrearing. So ABO is a easy shortcut excuse for that too.

Sentinel/Guide trope is weird to me because I used to be briefly in the TS fandom while it was "active", and I can say for sure that the fandom was tiny, niche, and short lived (faded out before the 2000s). It doesn't show up anywhere in the EN fandom nowadays as a trope either. So how it became popular in CN fandom (and when it made the crossover) is curious to me. It's usual crossover fandoms include other shows of the same era: Highlander, Forever Knight, X-Files...but I didn't think these fandoms would be popular in CN to have done any cross pollination, so to speak.

[cashew]

Re: Sentinel/Guide

It's still got enough writers even now in EN fandom; there's 47 fics listed on Ao3 in the Avengers fandom alone with the tag. I mean yeah, that's piddley numbers compared to ABO, but it's still kicking.

Meanwhile, I'm pretty sure the cross-pollination happened because the trope is simple enough. Far as I can tell, no one in CN fandom knows what Sentinel (the show) is or what a sentinel encompasses based on the powers, and guide is already a fanon creation. They just like the idea of one person in the cp being dependent on another person based on completely arbitrary set of rules and effectively getting "assigned" a partner. In terms of popularity, at least in the stuff I've been reading, I've only come across the trope once so far in CN fic...

[tanithryudo]

Huh, didn't realized EN has made a resurgence too. Back when I was actually in the Sentinel fandom, it was always a pain and a half to find any fics, and then less and less as time went on til I gave up on it.

[cashew]

I wouldn't say Sentinel fics have made a resurgence, though there is a steady trickle. The trope of Sentinel/Guide is what keeps showing up.

Although I'd say the main reason it seems to be making a comeback is because Ao3 has managed to make searching for fic significantly easier. Cast a net wide enough an you are bound to find something.