A Decent Mister Seahorse fic

Is it doable? I feel like an entire theme, a possible exploration of heady topics like gender roles and transhumanism, has been cut out of a lot of sites because it's persistently dismissed as a 'gross fetish' or a 'stupid kink.' The phrase 'mpreg' is more or less ubiquitous with the dark underbelly of the internet (no pun intended.) I'm not plotting a "revolution" or anything; all I'm saying is that I think this concept has more potential than we give it credit for.

So I've come to the good people of T Vtropes for advice. It's been my ambition for months now to write a solid, respectable Homestuck fanfiction. One that happens to involve the Mister Seahorse trope. The possibility for expansion and exploration of both the original story and hypothetical scenarios is just too much to stand. (Smallish Homestuck spoilers from here on, fair warning.)

Why were the Highbloods so bent on destroying the Signless? Why are mutant bloods considered abominations in their culture? Of course they don't fit into the hemospectrum, but what if there were more than that? The mother grubs are a major fixture of troll society; the priceless root every single egg comes from. Their institution seems to be a factor in the Alternian empire's power, but if there were a way to bypass them, it could spell chaos across the spectrum. Perhaps mutant bloods are a biological resource, a key to unlocking abilities long lost to most of their kind by evolution. One such thing would be the ability to reproduce naturally (or even parthenogenically) without the mother grubs. Because the very idea of this could present problems for the hierarchy, Highbloods have been deliberately suppressing the mutant strain, culling any potential carriers on sight. But eventually, there was one who slipped through the cracks, and it's his story that we're going to detail.

There's much more I've been sketching out, but I didn't want to dump it all in one post. Right now this fic is only a hazy concept, but if I could get any sort of feedback on it I would be deeply appreciative.

I think it is doable. Just as long as the pregnancy is explained (he'd need to have some parts and hormones added for this to happen—explain how they get added/changed), and is fairly realistic (they can't just act like having a baby is the best thing ever, because if it's a male having it, it might not be). Also, there can't be any "aren't they a cute couple" type comments that are written so often in these fics (or maybe that's only done in Yu-Gi-Oh fics?), or overemphasizing the yaoi (if it's a two-male couple). If it's about a transsexual (who chose to get a sex-change, rather than having it thrust upon him/her by aliens or something), you have to make sure that aspect isn't just brushed aside.

A possible way to explain it could be to involve aliens, or magic (that would change the man's anatomy and hormones significantly).

There also should probably be more than just the pregnancy going on in the plot, to keep things interesting.

I'm actually planning one out (don't know when I'll write it, I have to finish some stuff first) where the male who gets pregnant wants an abortion. I plan to make it deal with the right-to-choose issues.

On the other hand, I've written male pregnancy stories where the pregnancy wasn't a big deal because the guy was a Sim, and (with cheats), both sexes of Sims can have babies. I just explained it by saying that male Sims had the necessary anatomy to have children in case all the females died off. (I made it so the species of Sims are sort of like modified humans.)

Basically, you have to know about human anatomy (and how it could be altered), and you have to know how your character would react to something like this.

edited 26th Jan '12 5:44:23 PM by BlackElephant

"Is it doable?"

Yes. I've seen a few examples from the recommended fanfictions pages here. I've heard of one for the Invader Zim fandom called "In Short Supply" involving Zim and Purple that includes recommendations from people who normally don't read/like the genre. I can't add any personal recommendations to this one as I haven't read it.

I can, however, recommend a Danny Phantom fanfiction series called The Crack that explores both the pregnancy and the pairing resulting from it quite nicely.

Both of these fanfictions have characters that aren't human become impregnated, so they might be a good place to start? Granted both also heavily explore slash pairings and your summary doesn't mention that...

(Then again, it's Homestuck so slash pairings as a result seem a bit obvious?

Since it is an alien race and their alien biology is established in canon, male pregnancy is theoretically possible. Be warned that you will probably have people crying about how it can't be canon because it seems that everyone and their mother has headcanons about how exactly troll reproduction works.

From what I can tell of your summary, trolls have an organ that can function as a womb, but only those with mutant blood have a fully functioning one? This could be explained as the mutation causing a difference in hormones or something along those lines, I'm sure. I may be jumping to conclusions though and I'd personally rather not get into the finer details of troll biology at the moment. As long as you seriously consider everything and explain it somewhere, be it in your story or in supplemental materials, you should be fine.

I'm going to second what Black Elephant said about the feelings of the impregnated male character being of extreme importance.

Consider the fact that a lot of women are flat out frightened by the idea of pregnancy. This despite the fact that it is something we, as women, are naturally supposed to do. This despite the fact that we humans have been reproducing for thousands of years and have been doing so without too many hitches.

A male troll is not going to have those comforts. A male character should freak out about a pregnancy ordinarily as males generally cannot become pregnant, and it is illogical for them to take the matter completely calmly. For a troll with no idea how the basics of pregnancy work? They should be flipping the fuck out.

I think the idea has a lot of potential, personally. Best of luck.

edited 26th Jan '12 10:41:31 PM by Hermiethefrog

Thank you both for your advice. To respond to some of your points:

• Firstly and most importantly, I plan to do my best to ensure the actual mechanics of the pregnancy are founded and believable. In Homestuck, the character Kanaya has a lusus (guardian animal) that's explicitly referred to as a Virgin Mother Grub. When she dies, Kanaya fulfills a promise to her by cutting out her matriorb (an egg that will hatch a new Mother Grub) and saving it. This illustrates that the Mother Grubs at least are capable of asexual reproduction, probably parthenogenesis. Now, the author himself has specified that trolls and Mother Grubs are not the same species, but symbiotes. The Mother Grubs are raised and cared for by trolls, and the trolls are functionally sterile without them. Basically, their relationship is equatable with that of queen ants and their colonies. But the thing about worker ants is that they're not truly asexual: rather, they're hormonally stunted females.
  • This has lead me (and many others) to speculate that the trolls probably were capable of breeding once in their species' timeline (they still have two distinct sexes, despite being sterile.) If the Mother Grubs can reproduce parthenogenically, perhaps the trolls could too at some point in their history. The Mother Grubs have just replaced whatever mode of reproduction their ancestors used, and this factor has been a major influence in their cultural and behavioral evolution. Sometimes, however, an individual is born with traits of an ancient relative as the result of a mutation. This is a real biological phenomenon called atavism: for example, a chicken with teeth or a human with a vestigial tail. Likewise, my fanfic will go on to show that, once on a very rare occasion, a troll is born who's capable of breeding 'naturally'. Such trolls are of course mutants and abominations who should be dispatched as quickly and effectively as possible. But in the extremely rare cases of a mutant troll who lives to maturity, such individuals may express the recessive and time-lost ability to give birth to offspring who are essentially clones of themselves.
    • (TL;DR) = Mother Grubs can have genetically identical babies without mating; this fanfic works on the assumption that trolls could too at one point.

• In relation to the above, slash pairings and all the thorniness they provoke could be bypassed. This is a story about alien biology and culture, not shipping.

• I have read "In Short Supply" and think of it as a great example of what I'm trying to accomplish here, especially the parts about Irken faith and philosophy. The other series, "The Crack", is news to me, however. Hermie, might I ask where to find this story?

• Last but not least, the psychological implications are staggering and important. Again, I am going to try my damnedest to keep everyone in character and to build onto canon delicately and naturally. Particularly I want to emphasize Karkat's fears and instabilities that stem from his abnormal blood color, as well his relationships with others of his kind and how the reveal of his mutation affects them. I'd like to pull a little symbolism and mythology into this story too: Cancer is the sign the Western zodiac traditionally associates with motherhood, and I'm sure a big part of the deleted records of Karkat's ancestor, the Signless, deal with this ability and its ramifications.

Thanks again for hearing me out, and for taking such a constructive, professional tone with your ideas. I was very unsure about whether or not I'd be able to find any input on this subject other than flames and trolling, so this is a big step forward to me. Please, let me know of any other comments or questions you might have.

I apologize for bumping, but this website is the only reliable source for writing advice I know of on the internet. So, now that I've got the premise and its mechanics more or less pinned down, my question is... Where do I start?

This fic is going to be the first serious fanfiction attempt I've shown to the world since I was a middleschooler, so it holds a lot of weight to me. All I have so far is that this fic will probably take place in the Veil, mid-Sgrub. That way I can utilize the transportalizer and other game mechanics, as well as including the human characters. The problem is that I am unsure exactly how to get it off the ground in a way that will hook readers and keep them from bailing the minute they read the word 'pregnancy.' It feels like there are too many possible beginnings that fall into the cliche of Mister Seahorse stories, so I'm searching for an unconventional way to start off. Does anyone have any suggestions or recommendations? Again, I'm sorry for being redundant, but your advice has been so in-depth and reasonable that I can't help consulting it at every sizable hurdle.

The Crack was never exactly posted on fanfiction.net and was originally a series of Livejournal posts. Thankfully the author has them compiled in a download here. http://tavalyara.deviantart.com/gallery/8977070#/d2euw71

Your explanation of how the pregnancy would be possible, it makes sense to me from a biological point and a canon standpoint. The troll's current set up of four romances and mating based partially on hatred doesn't seem to jive very well with Doc Scratch's description of Pre-scratch Alternia and how it was peaceful, so it makes sense that there were some details changed in that aspect from the scratch.

As for how to start, time shenanigans? In Media Res?

More seriously though, a lot of Homestuck is built around the readers seeing the result of something and then later figuring out how that something happened and why the results were so significant.

So, for example, you could show someone interacting with a grub. The readers would think it's just the usual ectobiology shenanigans. Then this idea of some trolls being able to reproduce naturally gets brought in and the readers would start wondering if the grub was reproduced through ectobiology after all. Then the pregnancy shows up and then the readers get what's going on and what happened.

Don't do this with characters that are essentially 13?

Wait, the characters are thirteen? (I don't know the Homestuck fandom at all, so I didn't know).

Then make the characters older. Have a time-skip, set it in the future, just make them eighteen, or older somehow.

edited 7th Feb '12 11:04:24 AM by BlackElephant

Oh, yes. That is a big hurdle I've neglected to mention, and thank you for bringing it up. I planned from the beginning to age up the characters a bit, so as not to cross a line. The setting will be some sort of AU, most likely one in which the trolls never left Alternia and go on to fulfill their roles in society as (equivalent to) 18-ish youngsters. Right now I even have a fairly solid concept for the opening scene, with In Medias Res in full force. This backdrop would allow for a more in-depth exploration of the alien world (look to Miracle Child for a great example,) but also comes at the price of severely limiting which characters can be actively used.

Canon shows that adult trolls are all scattered to different corners of the Empire, many far from the home planet. Therefore, a lot of communication would have to take the form of chatlogs. I imagine that a stubborn punk like Karkat could slip through the cracks and hide out on the neglected home planet; but most of the other trolls we all know and love would either be culled or shipped away to some distant star system. Human characters and their input would probably not be an option, because including them in a "what if Sgrub never happened" AU without completely bastardizing the original comic is nigh impossible. It's a shame since it would be very useful to have a human perspective on ideas that are foreign to trolls, such as 'pregnancy' and 'parenthood.' But a setting in the Veil or other Sgrub-related shenanigans would be too prickly, despite its wonderful potential for patching over logistic rough patches in the story. (Technically, a first child at 13 is not wholly impossible, if the trolls' maturation is anything analogous to that of humans, but that little bit of biology is too culturally sensitive to be worth its dramatic weight.)

edited 7th Feb '12 10:30:37 PM by ItLives

You are writing a story where a 13 year old gets pregnant, from another 13 year old. A 13 year old kid. That's horrifying and disgusting, so I think you should try and write a horror fic! That'd be pretty interesting!

Edit: Wait a minute, trolls don't even get pregnant. That's why it was so terrible when eridan destroyed the matriorb.

edited 9th Feb '12 12:36:45 PM by poshiyoshi

You did read his later posts on the subject, right? About he was making the characters older in order to avoid the pregnant thirteen year old thing? And how he was planning on addressing the pregnancy in spite of the race's method of procreation involving the matriorb?

Yeah, I'm afraid you didn't get the whole story, poshi. However, although the characters aren't 13 in this story, I would like to add a note of horror to its mood. After all, trolls don't get pregnant. The whole concept is pretty foreign and gross to them, and it would be a terrifying and uncertain thing to face in their world.

edited 17th Feb '12 10:31:04 PM by ItLives

EDIT: Here's a link to the first chapter, brand-spanking new on Ao3. Please, take a look if you get the chance and tell me what you think.

http://archiveofourown.org/works/342302

...Is this thread dead?

...I hope it isn't, because I want to talk about this topic...

...Phoo. It's dead...

edited 17th Oct '14 1:19:52 PM by Underwood