Spike and the Unwanted Pregnancy; or, Why Mpreg?

[snick_backup]

Okay, I’m outing myself: I like mpreg. I didn’t write Seraph as an experiment. I didn’t write it to try and prove that, “Anything, even mpreg, can be good if it’s written well enough” (although I do generally hold to that notion). I wrote it partly because I think the trope has all sorts of fic potential, but mostly I wrote it because I like the stuff.

And here’s why:

I’m fascinated by the exploration of the divide between body and identity and by the vulnerability that comes of feeling that one’s body is out of one’s control. Pregnancy is a special case: it’s one of the few situations where having your body doing all sorts of abnormal, uncomfortable things is considered, well, normal. However, it’s hard to get a really good look at this because it is normal, it’s everyday; of course that’s how we get new people.

Mpreg, on the other hand, throws all the extremes into sharp relief. Assuming you’re in a ficverse where male pregnancy isn’t usual, you suddenly have a character that’s dealing not only with a whole set of radical, possibly unexpected physical changes, but also on one hand a huge number of potentially contradictory social expections about pregnancy and on the other hand the vacuum of a situation for which there are no expectations. Plus your poor pregnant guy is physically vulnerable in different ways than he’s ever been before; he’s more directly responsible for someone else’s welfare than he’s ever been; he has new physical and maybe emotional needs that he may not be able to meet on his own. And when it’s all over, well, he has a baby to deal with.

All that aside, it's also one of those extreme circumstances we fic writers get so much mileage out of. Need a catalyst for your ship of choice? Try mpreg. Want a cannonball into your fandom's pool of platonic relationships? Try mpreg. Want to explore your guy's feelings towards his body image, his masculinity, his parents, his ego, his life priorities? Mpreg has major character-study potential.

Of course, there’s also a political angle to this: in the real world, unexpected and potentially unwanted pregnancy is a uniquely feminine concern. Aside from the sneaking satisfaction of watching a guy struggle through weight gain, swollen ankles, and the abortion question, there’s plenty of room for more serious commentary on the gender politics.

Finally, I gotta be honest: boys + babies = awwwww. As far as I’m concerned there are few things more aww-inspiring than a daddy holding his newborn. Mpreg has that, but dialed up to eleven.

Not always, of course – there’s also mpreg-as-horror-trope; mpreg-as-social-commentary, as mentioned above; mpreg-as-angst-device (and I am always up for a little well-placed angst); mpreg-as-‘ship-catalyst; mpreg-as-character-exploration; mpreg-as-humor (always a classic, although I should point out that a guy fainting when he’s told he’s pregnant isn’t actually funny); and a couple dozen other variants. Turns out it’s quite the versatile trope.

All of which isn't to say that most of the mpreg out there does all or even any of these things. The vast majority is spork-your-eyeballs-out horrific. I'd rather not admit to the atrocities I've read or attempted to read for the sake of mpreg. Characterization run amok (or completely disappeared), squicky relationship politics, logicfail in new and exotic flavors, and just plain bad pregnancy science. (And yes, despite the basic unlikelihood of male pregnancy, I'm pretty picky about its portrayal. Guy or gal, your baby still doesn't have a heartbeat before six weeks, you won't start showing or feeling any movement until at least four months, and yes there are symptoms besides morning sickness.)

Honestly, that was part of my reason for Seraph: I hoped to show not that "anything" could be good, but that mpreg could be good. Because it can! It’s a trope that offers huge potential to do any number of different things.

So there you have it: a scenario that’s ripe for all sorts of interesting character conflict, development, and growth. It’s like a highly specialized form of hurt/comfort with gleefully smashed gender roles and optional sides of fluff/schmoop, horror, angst, or social critique.

And there should be more of it, darn it!

Comments

[brutti-ma-buoni.livejournal.com]

The vast majority is spork-your-eyeballs-out horrific - now, see, this is what puts me off reading it... Do you have any recs which weed out the pain?

I'm not, honestly, thinking of writing mpreg, despite ponderings in this direction lately. But it does have potential, speaking as a reader.

[snickfic]

Actually, I suspect I'm going to need a follow-up post with recs to the good stuff. But for now, my first-foremost-and-always Buffyverse mpreg rec is Corpus et Sanguis, by 47_trekker_47. It's S5 Giles/Willow, with Giles/Ethan backstory, some great character dynamics, and really fabulous voices.

You might also like Expecting, by entrenous88 - it's Spike/Xander in vague AU S4, very much on the silly end of the genre but for the most part amusingly so, and again, good character voices.

There are also a few shorter things over a range of genres - horror and humor and darkfic and so on - but honestly, the Buffyverse pickings are pretty thin. Are there any other fandoms you read in?

I'm not, honestly, thinking of writing mpreg, despite ponderings in this direction lately.

You keep saying this... :)

[bobthemole.livejournal.com]

There are also a few shorter things over a range of genres - horror and humor and darkfic and so on - but honestly, the Buffyverse pickings are pretty thin. Are there any other fandoms you read in?

I'd love to see a full list. If a fic is recommended highly enough, I sometimes do a google reading to learn the basics of an unfamiliar fandom so I can understand the fic.

[deird1]

There's Feed Me To The Tabloid Monster, which is what got me into fanfic in the first place.

(It's quite silly, set in the X-men movieverse, and very worth reading.)

[cindergal.livejournal.com]

Very interesting post - though I can't say you've convinced me. :-) I guess I like my men manly, and the idea of them with swollen ankles doesn't do much for me. *g*

And as a couple of my OTPs are slash couples, any of it that I've even peeked at has had squicky relationship issues all over it (i.e., completely feminizing one half of the couple).

I've still got Seraph on my 'to read' list, though, because from all the recs of it I've seen, you have most definitely succeeded in writing good mpreg.

[snickfic]

Fair enough. At the end of the day, there's a whole lot of personal taste involved here. :)

any of it that I've even peeked at has had squicky relationship issues all over it (i.e., completely feminizing one half of the couple).

Yes. Not that the same thing doesn't happen in a lot of het babyfic, but the characterization issues are maybe even starker when it's a guy going the "helpless female" route.

[slaymesoftly.livejournal.com]

She has. It's worth it. I promise. :)

[next_to_normal]

See, when you put it like that, mpreg sounds really interesting. Except... The vast majority is spork-your-eyeballs-out horrific. Yeah. Which is why yours is the only one I've read, lol.

[snickfic]

It is just possible that this is less of a "You should read mpreg!" post and more of a "You should write mpreg!" post. Because there is so much possible good, and so much actual bad.

But as I told brutti_ma_buoni above, I'm going to put up a list of recs, as well. There is good stuff out there, even though it's scattered all across greater fandom.

[next_to_normal]

It is just possible that this is less of a "You should read mpreg!" post and more of a "You should write mpreg!" post.

Heh. Then I am not the proper audience, but maybe you'll inspire someone.

I'm curious what other fandoms you've found good mpreg in, and whether there's something about those fandoms that makes for better stories. Or is it just mostly crap all over, and you have to dig to find the good stuff in any fandom?

[dipenates.livejournal.com]

It’s like a highly specialized form of hurt/comfort with gleefully smashed gender roles and optional sides of fluff/schmoop, horror, angst, or social critique.

I do see your point, completely, but I think I've mostly come across the spork-in-the-eyeball stuff. I loved, loved, loved Seraph, so it obviously can be done. Without wishing to grossly generalise/bash other writers, though, a lot of writers of mpreg seem caught up in the lulz/man+baby!squee and forget to write anything remotely engaging or clever.

I'll read the recs, though, and have an open mind.

[snickfic]

A lot of writers of mpreg seem caught up in the lulz/man+baby!squee and forget to write anything remotely engaging or clever.

True. Although the "nothing remotely engaging or clever" is a hazard of fanfic in general, I think - one difference between bad writing and good writing.

Clearly, I need to write up that recs post sooner rather than later. Hmm.

[slaymesoftly.livejournal.com]

LOL It's fun and interesting to hear your reasons behind Seraph - although I would say it only proves something I always say: "Anything can be made good and believable if written well". *g*

I do get what you're saying about all the issues that can be explored through mpreg. And you're quite right. However, it probably wouldn't be my first choice of something to read to explore those issues.

The vast majority is spork-your-eyeballs-out horrific. I'd rather not admit to the atrocities I've read or attempted to read for the sake of mpreg. Characterization run amok (or completely disappeared), squicky relationship politics, logicfail in new and exotic flavors, and just plain bad pregnancy science. (And yes, despite the basic unlikelihood of male pregnancy, I'm pretty picky about its portrayal. Guy or gal, your baby still doesn't have a heartbeat before six weeks, you won't start showing or feeling any movement until at least four months, and yes there are symptoms besides morning sickness.) is a pretty good description of (IMHO) much of pregnancy fanfic, not just mpreg.

But then, as you know, I was reading Seraph in spite of what it was, not because. And I'm very glad I did. :)

[snickfic]

I do get what you're saying about all the issues that can be explored through mpreg. And you're quite right. However, it probably wouldn't be my first choice of something to read to explore those issues.

Heh. As I said elsewhere, there's a whole lot of personal taste to this, too. :)

[deird1]

Yay for mpreg!

*loves it*

[snickfic]

*loves it with you*

[zanthinegirl.livejournal.com]

You know honestly with the exception of yours, the only other mpreg I've liked was also in the Buffyverse, and was very much a crackfic. And I can't find it anymore, which bums me out. Any suggestions?

The vast majority is spork-your-eyeballs-out horrific.

I think that's true of baby-fic in general. Frankly it's often an excuse to turn the pregnant character into someone I don't recognize whether that person is Spike or Buffy or Giles or whoever! Especially if it's something mystical and destinies are involved...

[snickfic]

Hmm. There's a good chance I included it in my mpreg recs post, which I posted just now. Can you give me specifics? Even if it's not on the list, I might have run across it...

Especially if it's something mystical and destinies are involved...

Destinies! Eep! *covers head*

Yeah, mpreg has all the potential pitfalls of regular babyfic, and then a few extra for good measure.

[zanthinegirl.livejournal.com]

OOoh! I just checked your rec list. I can see several I'll have to read, and the Giles one I'll have to re-read. I remember really liking that one!

I don't see the one I remember liking. It was Spike/ Xander or possibly Spike & Xander, and short. I remember that it was by someone who was known for funny stories, (though I can't remember who!) and that it was an older fic. It's starting to bug me! I didn't find it on All About Spike just now when I searched though the S/X crack/parody/fluff stories...

[mabus101.livejournal.com]

I read and enjoy things that some people--nay, most people--would think of as body horror. (I'm what TV Tropes calls a "Nightmare Fetishist".) Physical transformations of all kinds just kinda work for me--and sometimes mental ones too, despite my aberrant response to Dollhouse (which is to hide my eyes any time I see the title--even right now). I've rarely written any such fic, though--it has to be low-key to fit into the Buffyverse comfortably, unless I'm simply writing crack, and I don't write for any other fandoms much (yet). Also, I could be mistaken for a furry if I'm incautious. ;)

But my interest in such stories is largely opposite to what you describe interesting you regarding mpreg. For the most part, what I like about mutable bodies is the idea of someone being in greater, not lesser, control, although sometimes one character being in control of the other party's body will work too. It's a mind-over-matter thing. And mpreg doesn't really lend itself to that.

'Course, I did write that one on deird's request. But it was inverted. (Darla becomes a man while pregnant, rather than a man becoming pregnant while a man.)

[snickfic]

FWIW, the sort of body transformations you describe might actually work more comfortably as original fic. As you say, the Buffyverse has a specific tone, and it's hard to stray too hard outside that, especially in terms of worldbuilding. But the sort of thing you're describing sounds like something that could carry an original fiction novel instead, if you ever felt like heading in that direction...

You're right, though; it sounds like the appeal of body transformations for you is just about exactly opposite the appeal of mpreg for me.

And, yes, I'd read your Darla fic. It even made it onto my recs list, which I just posted...

[rahirah]

I've actually read a fairish bit of mpreg or mpreggish stuff - but it was all in mainstream science fiction, not fanfic. John Varley, Lois McMaster Bujold, Joanna Russ, Melissa Scott, Ursula K, LeGuin, and plenty of others have explored either ambiguously-gendered individuals or single-sex societies in many variations. So I've never doubted that it can be written well, or that it can explore important character and thematic issues. (There's very little of the yay!kinky, squee-aspect in those stories, however. For that you have to go to fanfic.)

The themes it's best suited to explore, however, just aren't the themes that ping for me. I'm much more interested in (for example) the conflict between personal fulfillment and social responsibility than in what it means to be physically/emotionally vulnerable in a society in which males are expected to be neither. (And in some cases, as in the loss of mental/physical/emotional control, they verge upon some of my squicks.) So no matter how well-written an mpreg story is, it's very unlikely that I'd ever seek one out because it was mpreg.

(And one of the frustrations of mpreg for me is the same frustration I've got with a lot of het pregnancy or baby fic - it's only one small part of the story. My kink is for characters building families, dealing with being parents and grownups over the long run. So I want to see the whole thing: pregnancy fic, babyfic, kidfic, teenagerfic, grandkidfic... *g* And in the case of a lot of fanfic, there's a fetishistic focus on pregnancy to the exclusion of all else. That's fine as far as it goes, but I want mooooooooore!)

[snickfic]

I'm still working on that list of SF I Ought to Have Read Already (a lifelong project, I suspect). In particular, I have a Joanna Russ collection sitting around waiting to be read, and Le Guin's The Left Hand of Darkness (which I'm guessing is what you're referring to) has been high on the list for a while now. But I didn't know Varley had ever written anything mpreggish - although considering his penchant for pushing the envelope every which way, I'm not surprised - and I've never heard of Scott. Was she another of the 70's feminist authors, a la Russ? With Bujold, were you thinking of Ethan of Athos, or something else? I haven't read any of her fantasy stuff, just the Miles books (which I like very much indeed).

The themes it's best suited to explore, however, just aren't the themes that ping for me.

Yep. There's definitely a large degree of personal taste involved here. :)

My kink is for characters building families, dealing with being parents and grownups over the long run. So I want to see the whole thing: pregnancy fic, babyfic, kidfic, teenagerfic, grandkidfic...

Grandkidfic - it's the new trope! Hee. I definitely hear what you're saying, though. Because the pregnancy is, literally, only the beginning...

[penny-lane-42.livejournal.com]

I'm here!

Pregnancy is a special case: it’s one of the few situations where having your body doing all sorts of abnormal, uncomfortable things is considered, well, normal. However, it’s hard to get a really good look at this because it is normal, it’s everyday; of course that’s how we get new people.
I agree--I think one of the reasons I'm fascinated by pregnancy is because of that tension between how earthy-mundane-rooted it is (it's the very essence of human life) and how transcendant-miraculous-weird it must feel to whoever's experiencing it. It's both the most natural thing in the world and the strangest of human experiences.

Assuming you’re in a ficverse where male pregnancy isn’t usual, you suddenly have a character that’s dealing not only with a whole set of radical, possibly unexpected physical changes, but also on one hand a huge number of potentially contradictory social expections about pregnancy and on the other hand the vacuum of a situation for which there are no expectations.
I looove the way you've phrased it. And I love all of those ideas in theory.

Finally, I gotta be honest: boys + babies = awwwww. As far as I’m concerned there are few things more aww-inspiring than a daddy holding his newborn. Oh, amen!

I'll admit, it is a bit of a squck for me. But Seraph completely worked for me, and I think half of that is your amazing writing and the other half is that it's Spike. He's already all about breaking down gender expectations, subverting the lines between life and death, experiencing a different relationship with his body (through his vampirism, the chip, the demon/soul dichotomy) than other characters are. Really, Spike-the-character was made for mpreg, and I didn't feel the slightest bit squicked by it.

Plus, I've never found any other that I actually wanted to read. Most mpreg is slash, and since we both know that isn't really my thing, I don't really want to go there. If there was more genish stuff, I might read more of it, as long as it was well done.

All this is very interesting to me because about a week ago, there was an mpreg secreton fandom_secrets and it inspired the general chorus of, "Any pregnancy is disgusting!" Which I hate. I can totally understand someone not wanting to have children, and I think our society is wrong in the way it pressures people (especially women) to have them, like you're not a complete person if you don't have children.

But disgusting? It's how human beings reproduce! That, to me, is exactly like a thirteen-year-old boy being grossed out over period-talk.

Also, this post (and a recent one by rahirah) makes me want to write my Spike-shanshus-he-and-Buffy-forget-protection-they-have-to-not-so-gracefully-deal-with-her-pregnancy fic. *sigh* Which is the last thing I need to be doing right now.

Anyway! I love your thoughtful post! Thanks for sharing it with us!

[snickfic]

Here you are, indeed. *g*

It's both the most natural thing in the world and the strangest of human experiences.

I'd hesitate to say it's the strangest without a lot more data, but yeah. To quote myself from somehwere else, "It's one of the times in a person's life when their body is going crazy on them, and they're told it's normal. Which it is, if you want to go by statistics, but if you want to go by the prior life experience of a woman who's pregnant for the first time, then it's not normal at all."

I confess, although I'm intellectually aware of the huge genderbending angle of mpreg, it's not something I've given a lot of thought to, personally. While I get all that you're saying about Spike being uniquely suited for this scenario, I didn't really think about him in those terms while I was writing the fic. Most of the characterization came from, for lack of a better term, role-playing - I just spent a whole lot of time inside his head. So anything in the fic that worked in terms of breaking gender expectations came directly out of the character, because I certainly wasn't doing a lot of external analysis.

Most mpreg is slash, and since we both know that isn't really my thing, I don't really want to go there.

There is that. Actually, about 97% of the slash I've read has been part of this pan-fandom mpreg exploration I've been doing. Alas, even rarer than good mpreg is good gen or het mpreg.

Plus, frankly, pretty much nothing I read did just exactly what I wanted it to do. Like with regular babyfic, much of it focused on aspects that I wasn't interested in.