my take on magical pregnancy in a setting

0 down vote favorite I located a website that talks about certain tropes and how they are used. One of these topics specifically talks about magical pregnancy and it's examples in media. They seem to turn the woman in question into a passive object during the process. They are acted upon by a supernatural force of nature, usually against their will, and ends up coming off as creepy. This has mostly killed the trope as a concept. I think it is more a question of agency and could actually work if done in a right way, so I wanted to introduce it into this setting by adding a twist to it.

In this world, magic is gender specific to females, who access it through a metaphysical organ that pulls energies from an alternate dimension. All women are born with this, and can be accessed by concentrating. Magic is a powerful force in the world. In this case, pregnancy would simply be viewed as a longer type of spell, taking the course of months. It would be more of an active process, in which magical energies would be used to grow the fetus. Gestation would be easy on the body, with none of the negative drawbacks being associated with it (morning sickness, cramps, etc). Birth would also be painless. The only drawback would be that the individual would be cut off from other forms of magic during the process. I got the idea from a game of thrones episode in which a priestess used magic to concieve a "child"with a king. Would this be a good way of handling the concept? Is this more of a world building question than a writing one, or does it depend on how it is written?

Since it's about how you want to set up your magic system, it's definitely a World Building topic (though if you want additional advice later on how to write a good pregnancy, Writer's Block will probably get you better feedback then).

As for the concept itself, I wonder: Would all pregnancies in this system be magical or would that be a choice the prospective mother has to make?

Also, though I obviously have no personal experience on the matter of being pregnant, something to keep in mind regardless of the answer is that many of the real discomforts that come with pregnancy are the result of the simple physical realities of carrying a child in one's body. Morning sickness and cramps are often used in fiction because they're relatively harmless and low-impact (though I'm sure women experiencing them would beg to differ). They're also not as universal as fiction would like us to believe. (Morning sickness, for instance, only affects about half of all pregnant women, not all of them like on TV)

More common discomforts from pregnancy are things like (and yes, I know some of these are a bit explicit, but that's kind of the point) are things like back pains, internal vaginal bleeding and bloody discharge, leakage of urine, constipation, bleeding in many other places that you seriously wouldn't expect to be related to pregnancy and indigestion.

And the simple fact is that a lot of these are the result of changes that absolutely need to happen for a safe pregnancy (all the various types of bleeding, for instance, are the result of all a woman's blood vessels expanding and so that a lot of blood can be supplied to the placenta and her blood pressure rising somewhat as a result of all the extra blood it's making, leading to an increase chance of capillaries in soft tissue exposed to the air, like in the nose, not being able to take the strain.)

Which doesn't mean that your world's magic can't alleviate that, but it would be weird if, say, the kind magic the women in your world are born with explicitly is the 'throwing fireballs' kind that doesn't allow for healing when the pregnancy spell would be doing exactly that. So basically I'd advise you to investigate the common discomforts that occur during pregnancy and then make sure your magic system includes spells that allow the people who use it to do the same thing outside of pregnancy. (Or else to take the time to explain why it doesn't work like that, even if only to yourself).

Also with the kind of system that just blanket has biological manipulation to the level of getting rid of all those possible pregnancy pains and discomfort wouldn't that possibly lead to genetic manipulation of the unborn child to either a.)make it a girl or b.) someone trying to have the gland produced in all children regardless of sex.I mean let's face it these are the same humans that could've developed into us there have to be people who are testing these theories.Like that is the type of crap that if botched even slightly sounds like it would lead to very disturbing results.

edited 3rd Jul '17 5:38:28 PM by MovieReference

The discomforts of pregnancy have little to do with genetics (well, beyond the genetics that all humans share) and everything to do with the simple facts of anatomy. Alleviating these discomforts with magic wouldn't necessarily mean any genetic manipulation at all, just general 'healing' magic.

Although how much control the expecting mother has over the 'pregnancy spell' is an interesting question.

edited 3rd Jul '17 3:25:31 PM by Robrecht

So is this an idea worth exploring? Does it just need to be fleshed out? Or should it be scrapped?

Almost any idea is worth exploring and this one is good. You should definitely flesh it out.

(And the only time when you should ever scrap any idea is when you, yourself, are dissatisfied with it.)

edited 3rd Jul '17 4:29:44 PM by Robrecht

I changed it to biological which is a better blanket term for what I wanted to get across.I was having a brain fart but knew it was wrong.

edited 3rd Jul '17 9:16:46 PM by MovieReference