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fandom question I'll probably regret
Would someone please explain the appeal of MPREG to me? Seriously, I'm not trying to be snarky. I don't get it, I probably never will get it, I don't really want to get it, but intellectually I'd like to know what's up with that.
Do you think it's sexy? If so, why? I mean, there is a sort of posession/dominant/territory thing that can be hot about normal pregnancy, so... okay.
Or is it... "wow I _hate_ this character and want to make them as miserable as popssible -- with puking!"
Seriously, help me out here.
I'm going to bed and am on set tomorrow, but really hope to wake up to oodles are horrifying responses.
Do you think it's sexy? If so, why? I mean, there is a sort of posession/dominant/territory thing that can be hot about normal pregnancy, so... okay.
Or is it... "wow I _hate_ this character and want to make them as miserable as popssible -- with puking!"
Seriously, help me out here.
I'm going to bed and am on set tomorrow, but really hope to wake up to oodles are horrifying responses.
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on it a while back. While it's mostly about what I'm looking for when I start reading an MPREG fic, I also mention why I like some of them and don't like most of them.
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Some random guesses:
That stuff you said a while back about feminizing villains? This is feminizing as heck.
What few MPREGs I've run across have usually involved: pregnancy as the Reason an Emotional Bonding is necessary (or sex, too), in which case it's just an Excuse for that plot (which used to happen all the time in het romances too).
Also, they're always particularly weakening and feminizing pregnancies. MPREG never involves a guy getting pregnant and being fucking macho about it, no nausea, no problems, make any girly comments about it and I'll fucking kill you. No, it's always a weakening thing. Weakness = vulnerability. Which, you know, is hot or something, or equals emotional accessibility.
Althugh I now find the idea of a really butch and hearty MPREG vaguely amusing.
Conan glares: "Yes. I'm due in three months and it's a girl, and I still work out every goddamned day, so if you've got a fucking problem with it, I'll rip you into bits and barbecue them. I'm eating for two, and this baby likes her meat fresh and bloody."
Alternatively, there may be some element of revenge involved: "Ha. Conan thinks he's so tough; let's see him cope with morning sickness and mommy hormones! Bwahaha! I have made this male character face a problem he has no idea how to cope with! Oh, and I've made a Secret Magical Prophecy so he can't just give himself a Heimlich maneuvar and get rid of it."
Persoally, I don't want pregnancy in my smut, and pregnancy as plotline is pretty lame. Mpreg is waaaaaaaay up there with Overly Contrived Plot Designed to Force Characters Together.
It's weird that people who'd shriek in horror about a plot in which a girl gets forced into sexual relations and then forced to carry a baby resulting from said sex AND to keep having a relationship with the rapist, whom the shen falls for - wtf? - think this plot is Just Dandy when it's two guys. I mean, sure, we all had one or two rape fantasies, but yuck.
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It may just be because of the fandoms I'm in, but I've never actually read any MPREG where the pregnancy was the result of rape--is that really very common?
I'd agree that there's a lot of MPREG that's feminizing, but I'm not sure that the mere fact that a pregnancy involves some uncomfortable parts is inherently feminizing or weakening. Personally, I prefer the fics that include both the good and the less-fun aspects of being pregnant.
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It's not necessarily discomfort that's feminizing, it's that the discomfort is in some way weakening the male character, which is (grr) often translated as feminizing. I've known women who somehow butched their way though a whole pregnancy without flinching (which amazes me), despite bitching about how they had to quit drinking booze, and bragging about how hard their kid kicks. I haven't seen pregnancy as 'a challenge by which to show new strengths" done in mpreg; it's always a weakness thing.
Of course, I may simply not care for pregnancy fiction regardless of gender. I'm sure that's a big part of it.
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I've read one of these, kind of! It's actually excellent and is actually, technically, not MPREG. OK, go with me here: it's a Master and Commander fic that goes to a sci-fi place and posits a virus that causes a third of the population to spontaneously switch genders. Jack turns into a woman, Stephen accidentally gets him pregnant and Jack has a tremendously hearty pregnancy and birth on board his ship. And did I mention it's excellent? A bit angsty (as the premise presupposes), but really good. It's by
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I often use Lois McMaster Bujold's explanation of how Miles Vorkosigan came to be: figure out what the worst possible thing to happen to a character would be, and then do it to him. I like throwing curve balls at my characters, and then seeing how they hit them.
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In case I had any doubt that there would still be things in the world I would not concieve of (heh) as trends.
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And I'm like, DEAR GOD. HE'S AN ALIEN. FOR ALL WE KNOW, HE COULD BE LAYING EGGS IN THE BACK OF THE TARDIS.
But I can't write it, because my brainexplody when I try. Someone more shameless is going to have to do it. I simultaneously beg and facepalm.
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And on the matter at hand. I just don't get the appeal of MPREG unless it's being written as a bit of fairly "hard" sci-fi/specfic. I don't see the appeal and I don't see the point of it as a narrative device - I agree with the general sentiment that it usually comes across as a way of not-so-subtly undermining male characters *sigh*
But I'd love to read the macho Conan MPREG story someone hypothesized elsewhere in the comments, just out of sheer curiosity. ;)
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So, my thoughts, in no particular order, on MPREG:
1. Babies = Major part of the Happy Ever After archetype, at least for some people, and so if Character X and Character Y are *really* going to live happily ever after, babies *have* to be included somehow. And since throwing in babymamas can be complicated, plot wise (i.e., how do you bring them in and then get rid of them and not ruin your schmoop?) voila! MPREG!
1a. Also, MPREG provides useful plot device/excuse of "it's the hormones" for a variety of OOC behavior, such as excessive crying, or the sudden development of "softer feeling" in people not previously known to have any.
2. I don't read outside of the HP-verse, but I've seen many variations on the MPREG theme, as noted below -- Baby needed to save the world, Baby needed because Family MUST Go On!, baby the result of "magical accident" and/or Tru Wuv, author wants to make character miserable, etc. Some people get into the possisive/dominant/territory thing, others don't.
3. I'm not sure sexy is the term I would use. It *can* be interesting, from a skilled author,
4. Ultimately I think it may owe something to fact that fanfiction is a female dominated arena, in terms of both writers and readers, and that a significant chunk of the participants in the reading/writing exercise want (or have) babies themselves, and either want to be pregnant or have been pregnant and are determined to Use the Experience Somehow. It's all about our fantasies, after all, and some people fantasize (and romanticize) pregnancy.
4a. And hence, from what I can tell, the best MPREG is written by authors who *don't* mythologize pregnancy.
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Those would be people who haven't been woken up every three hours by a crying infant? And who haven't spent an hour or longer trying to convince the little darling to go back to sleep?
Happy, yes. Ever, not so much. :-/
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