Fanfic genre based on the idea of giving one or more characters a child to raise. This is a common device for promoting a favored
shipping (often
slash), by showing how well the favored pair act as parents together. Sometimes the resident
badass will be given a child to
soften them (can be seen as somewhat related to
Morality Pet) before pairing them with
the hero.
In some cases the child may be another canon character,
de-aged in some manner. In other cases, it can be the instantiation of an
Intercontinuity Crossover, with a child imported from another story or series.
When one or more males are involved in the process,
mpreg is always a possibility.
If the author is particularly unoriginal,
Patchwork Kids or
Gender Equals Breed may ensue.
If this is canonical, it may be a
Parents for a Day situation.
Add a few years, and you get
Next Gen Fic.
Examples
open/close all folders
Anime & Manga
- The Lucky Ones, an Inuyasha fanfiction by Terri Bota, is one of the most well-known.
- In WAFF Death Note fics L and Light often end up raising Mello, Matt, and Near.
- Anime in general tend to be susceptible to 'chibification', where one or more characters are somehow turned into chibis and/or children and must be attended to by another character before the chibification wears off.
Comics
Film
Literature
- Laume (on fanfiction.net) has written several kidfics for Harry Potter, including:
- Last Chance, in which a slightly more sensitive Dumbledore ends up raising the young Tom Riddle, and
- Four and Counting, in which a potions mishap reduces Severus Snape to age four, several years after Voldemort's defeat.
- A very well-written example would be Stealing Harry by Sam The Story Teller (link), which starts with Harry being raised by first the Dursleys and then Remus and Sirius (who open a bookshop near the Dursleys' house to keep a watch on him, then kidnap him after discovering he was being abused).
- This Harry Potter fanfiction, called Baby Project, is a perfect example.
- Also this classic Dramione fic, Future Parents Program.
- Malfoy Child, is a classic Drarry fic in which Draco is de-aged and put into Harry's care. It is actually really good.
- This one. Takes quit long until the parents are revealed.
Live Action TV
- In the Leverage fandom on livejournal there's a somewhat common trend of de-aging the team's badass bruiser Eliot to be a small child and then sticking him under Nate's care.
- Considering the Badass Spencer is? If someone competent works with it, it sounds like it could be Crowning Moment of Funny. Bonus points if they manage to de-age Asberger's case Parker along with...
- Blessed Is His Child, a Supernatural kidfic, of all things that manages to be hilarious and heartbreaking within the space of a chapter! (pairings Dean/Cas, Sam/Gabriel and Crowley/Anna, as well as various OC pairings)
- Links. Now. Needed.
- Here's part one, which links to the rest. Be warned, it's unfinished and may well be abandoned.
- And here's the prologue. If you read it, you'll be on the same page as the angels; if you don't, you'll be on the same page as the Winchesters.
- Another Supernatural Kidfic series: The Adventures of John Gabriel Winchester, The Messiah. about Dean and Castiel's son. The pairings are Dean/Cas and Sam/Ruby.
- There are a LOT of House finding out he has a daughter to the point of the fans getting annoyed at them.
- The Lizzyverse, a Sherlock series, is about Sherlock and John's adopted daughter Elizabeth. It starts out with how they go about scaring off her boyfriends, and skips all over the age range after that.
- Getting Better is an AU in which both Sherlock and John are single parents, centred around the growing friendship between their children, Emily and Tristram.
- In this drabble, Sherlock's abused son shows up on their doorstep. No pairings.
- Another novel-length Sherlock kidfic is the Cinnamon 'verse, in which Sherlock has been raising his adopted daughter Imogen since before John moved in.
- The Nursery Files is an entire website dedicated to The X-Files kidfics from various couples in various categories.
- A few writers in the iCarly fandom write nothing but this.
- White Collar gets two with a de-aged Neal for Peter and Elizabeth to raise: One with him as a teenager and another with him as a toddler.
- There is a whole website dedicated to Stargate SG-1 and Stargate Atlantis kidfic, mostly of the deaged!character type: The Littleverse.
- Many Buffy the Vampire Slayer fanfics feature a character, usually Faith or Dawn, being de-aged and cared for by the other Scoobies.
Web Comics
- There are a few Homestuck fanfics based on this, such as "Cold Grublings". Made very convenient by the setting's local Applied Phlebotinum - "ectobiology", which allows an instant creation of a child which is a genetic mix of any two persons from anywhere and anytime (regardless of gender or age), without the need for actual physical contact.
- The universe introduced in Act 6 created a lot of these, as it had the four human heroes switching places with their ectobiological parents. Unfortunately, this never gets a chance to happen in canon.
Western Animation
Other
