I never ever thought I’d say this, but…
I’ve found a perversion that I cannot abide, cannot understand, and cannot empathise with the lovers thereof.
That particular kink is mpreg. This is a serious WTF moment for me. I can’t think of any way to marshal my thoughts here; I plain and simple don’t get it. I can’t figure out what anyone gets from it. It doesn’t turn me on, it doesn’t feel like romance, it doesn’t mean a thing to me. Nothing. I’m drawing a blank intellectually, and trying to settle a slight greasy quiver in my emotional belly.
If anyone can direct me to a meta on the subject that actually makes sense, by all means do so, because this is no good for my reputation!
On the other hand– nevermind. I will stand here and declare that I now know what it is to be entirely squicked out. Like the boy who did not know what fear felt like until his mother dumped a pail of eels down his back.
I never thought it was a kink, but a plot device. An icky, stupid, ridiculous, physically impossible plot device. But I never imagined anyone got off on it.
BWAAHAAA! There IS no meta that could possibly make mpreg make sense. It’s a completely nonsensical genre.
Urk. Yeah, I’m with you – it’s a bullet-proof squick.
I read something, years ago, that attempted to parse out the psychological basis for it, but the argument made no more sense to me than does the kink itself. *SHUDDER*
The best thing I can think of is it being a revenge fantasy. Women, for the most part, either will experience pregnancy or be chastised for not experiencing it– even the most determined childfree woman or the happiest mother will have some upset moments about pregnancy and what is does/could do to her.
So… there’s an underlying resentment of the male, for being completely free of the worry, the body distortions, the physical dangers, etc of pregnancy.
Then comes fic time. And they let out their bottled up anxiety and resentment and other stressful emotions by Making Some Fucking GUY pregnant. She can knock him up as the writer of the story, and put HIM through all the highs and lows of pregnancy.
At least, that’s the best reason I can think of. And I’ve never written Mpreg fic.
It works if written well and/or crack.
I read two mpreg fics in my time, one was a series in the H2G2 fandom, it was a serious fic, but only as serious as H2G2 can get because its universe consisted of crack from the start on. Mpreg is the sort of thing that would happen only to Arthur Dent, and he’d be very panicky and English about it, which is cute and funny.
And then, there was the pure POTC – DMC crackfic I read. That one wasn’t serious at all, and the mpreg was included just to pick Jack Sparrow off with morning sickness. ;P
Did you ever see the YouTube vid “The Legacy of Captain Jack Sparrow”? It’s pure crack again, and it has a pregnant Norrington. I think you should watch it sometimes, it’s really funny, as the pregnancy thing is not the only joke in there by far.
All in all, don’t take it too seriously. And for someone who’s mind goes blank at this certain topic, you surely wrote quite a medium sized entry about it.
I’m sure it must be possible to write good, serious mpreg fic. But I ain’t gonna be the one to do it.
I don’t view it as a revenge fantasy, men go through just as many highs and lows of pregnancy, but here more psychological than physical. They too experience worry and physical dangers, one of my friends dads was so worried about his wife and how he’d hold up with being a good father he went into depression for most of her pregnancy, gained weight as well.
I have spoken to some mpreg writers, male as well as female, and I don’t detect any hint of male resentment with them. Their attitude is more of what I believe is that of a good writer. They want a challenge, something that tests their abilities as a writer. Theres alot of difficulty that goes into mpreg if you want to pull it off, far from stupid. Fantasy and sci-fi stories are filled with such a multitude of physically impossible ideas that I don’t see mpreg as being ridiculous at all.
I myself have never been pregnant but I don’t resent the fact that men can’t be pregnant. As I stated before there are many things that men go through during pregnancy that some women hardly realize or appreciate. I don’t see it as a kink, but thats my personal opinion. You get to explore such a wide range of feelings and emotions with it. Thats my view.
Thank you, nymph! I really appreciate a serious answer.
I guess it’s my dirty mind that leads me in “kink” directions! and the fact that the two stories I’ve read were kinda horribly written doesn’t help. I plan on taking a squint at yours, just to test the waters again.
I’ve never thought that it might be “revenge”– I was thinking, however, that in some cases it might be a “playing house” kind of thing, an approach closely aligned with “Mary Sueing.”
I got the feeling, from the ones I’ve read (mostly by accident) that in a lot of cases it’s that the straight, female (not very good) writers cannot imagine a relationship, even between two males, not conforming to the heterosexual perfect fantasy of mommy, daddy, and a passel of crotchspawn. It’s a variation of the same writerly narrowmindedness that forces two gay males into being “the woman” (weak, clingy, emotional, bottom) and “the man” (strong, silent, violent, top).
That having been said, I’m confused by the kink but more outraged by the biological innaccuracy. If I still wrote, I’d try to write one just to see if I could make it work with a credible biology.
cannot imagine a relationship, even between two males, not conforming to the heterosexual perfect fantasy of mommy, daddy, and a passel of crotchspawn.
I hate to think that might be so, in this day and age when so very many straight women are bucking that very stereotype themselves… Likewise the gender roles routine. I have to say that I don’t see much of that anymore– the internet is a helluva learning environment, and female slash writers are hard on each other!
The biological goofiness is pretty irritating.
I wish you still wrote.
I’ve read one published SF story — by Elizabeth Lynn in her anthology “The Woman Who Loved the Moon” — that used this plot device. It wasn’t the greatest story, but it was interesting, and concentrated mostly on the way the man experienced his pregnancy. As a short story, it didn’t have room to dive deeply into the whole thing. It’s been several years since I read it, and it wasn’t presented as anything really erotic.
As a kink, it just passes me by. As a fiction device, um…well…do we have to? Can the author really develop sufficient justification for it? I mean, I wasn’t that wild about Nicola Griffith’s all female ‘utopia’ in Ammonite because of the spiritual/psychic impregnation sequence she developed for that. The only alternate situation for a reproduction not based on models we have now was Octavia Butler’s Xeogenesis trilogy, which required a male, a female and a third gender called the Oonkali.
I think I’d pass by any story trying to use male pregnancy as an erotic device, even if it was exquisitely written, just because my brain would balk. Having Zeus use his calf and his head for the purpose is about as far as I really want to go.