LiliaFord

For reasons that my therapist and I have failed to adequately elucidate, back in November I was suddenly gripped by an overpowering compulsion to write my own Teen Wolf fan-fiction. In fact I wrote two. The first is a short PWP (porn without plot) Steterek (Stiles, Derek and Peter). Not too much to say about it except that it’s completely filthy, set in the omegaverse (see below), and bears the title, “In Which Stiles Channels Linda Blair.” It should take less than fifteen minutes to read. Here's my (homemade) cover for it:

The second story, entitled Mating Bite, was much more ambitious, with a final word count of 24,200, making it the third longest piece I’ve published. Though I immensely enjoyed writing it, the experience did convince me that my own personal muse is in fact an incarnation of Teen Wolf’s sex-bomb, Erica Reyes, who most likely suffers from a (mild?) case of oppositional/defiant disorder.

This less-than-sympathetic personage refused to inspire anything as straightforward as a Sterek or Steter but rather mocked me with a story featuring the "rare pairing" of “Jisaac,” aka “Jackson Whittemore /Isaac Lahey.” Luckily for me, she was generous enough to set that story in the “omegaverse,” which I’d been dying to write about since I first discovered it in a Supernatural fanfic.

For those who are new to fanfiction, the ‘omegaverse’ is the term for a world where all humans are born into one of three “classifications,” Alpha, Beta, or Omega, and generally possess traits more or less ascribed to (were)wolves. I’m going to squelch my instinct to say something mocking about it because the solemn truth is that omegaverse fanfics are among my favorites.

Now many omegaverse stories represent the ne plus ultra of porntastic filth, complete with heats and especially knotting, which (needless to say) I’m all for. But as Foz Meadows' brilliant essay, Thoughts on Fanfiction, recently argued, the omegaverse is a large one, offering writers across diverse fandoms a framework to explore issues related to fantasy, identity and politics. My favorite stories in the genre deal with a lot of the issues closest to my heart, including the tension between fantasies of sexual submission and the fight for real-world autonomy and rights for women and other historically disempowered people. Meadows puts it far better than I can:

Given the steady popularity of historical romance novels, whose female characters struggle to autonomously navigate love and marriage despite their lack of legal, social and sexual protection, it shouldn’t be so surprising that omegaverse stories reflect a similar tension/dialogue between submission and activism in a context where the one is simplistically taken to negate the other. Nonetheless, there’s a compelling paradox in the idea that omegaverse fics are just as likely to condemn such violent oppressions as to explore them in the context of kink or sexual fantasy, while the fact that both elements might be simultaneously – and deliberately – present within the same narrative is a testament to fanfiction’s versatility.

I wish I could quote more, but I'll just have to urge people to carve out the (not insignificant amount of) time to read the whole essay, which I especially recommend to anyone interested in fanfiction, which should be anyone interested in the changes in contemporary publishing. (And while I'm here, I'll also recommend her equally insightful essay, Teen Wolf: Subversion, Masculinity, and Gender.)

I can’t make grandiose claims for the politics in my own story, but it does deal with five high school omegas who have formed an activist group, Omega Rights Today, and are trying to balance their own dreams for college and careers with the intense social pressure to find Alpha mates as well as their own longings for sex and love.

So without further ado, I present Mating Bite, a Jisaac fanfiction, currently available on Archive of Our Own.

Here is the blurb:

Seven years ago, Jackson Whittemore forced an Alpha mating bite on eleven-year-old omega Isaac Lahey. As punishment, he was banished from Beacon Hills until they both came of age. In the meantime, Isaac has become best friends with Stiles Stilinski and helped him found the high school activist group, Omega Rights Today. But having finally turned eighteen, Isaac knows that Jackson will be coming for him.

Those accustomed to my lengthy, detailed content warnings may be surprised to learn that this story requires less in that department than anything else I’ve ever published. Here it is: it’s M/M and it’s explicit, but otherwise there’s only one sex scene, not much in the way of kink, and no consent issues.

And in case you were wondering why you should hire professionals to make your book covers, here is the one I manage to make on Powerpoint:

Finally, as part of my Teen Wolf craze I've been spending a tiny bit of time (all right, hours and hours!) pinning and posting images on Pinterest and Tumblr, and came up with the brilliant idea of creating an "illustrated" version of each chapter of Mating Bite.  Here's a small sample of the pictures you'll find there:

Need I say more?