Okay let’s weigh in on this one. It seems in fanfiction and slash, making a male character get pregnant is a common occurance (if not, then why is there a category for it and whole communities devoted to it, hmmm?). It’s so prevalent, I’ve even seen an episode of Grey’s Anatomy where a guy came into the hospital because he was “pregnant”. I have to admit, it was hilarious. But did you know that there is actually a procedure for making a man pregnant with In Vitro Fertilization and a man named Lee Mingwei did become pregnant? There’s even a website for it: www.malepregnancy.com. Unfortunately for Lee, the chances of him surviving birth with all his abdominal organs intact are pretty low (if he doesn’t hemorrhage to death).
Enough with the gory details of reality and on to why in the world we want to make our male characters pregnant. Is it because we have some revenge vendetta against men and want to make them experience the pains of pregnancy? I have been pregnant and have kids, so I know all about the poking, prodding, testing and pains that go along with pregnancy. Okay, and the wonderful little moments like the first ultra sound where you get to see your baby inside you and the first time you actually feel them move. It’s pretty cool, all in all. But men…pregnant? The concept lends itself to a host of hilarious situations. So do we enjoy this facet of the M/M genre because of its comedic value? Or how about this, maybe we have a need for our male heroes to have all that hetero couples have – marriage and children. So we let one of them somehow get pregnant and off they go into the world of raising kids and living a “normal” life.
Now I’ve read a few of these mpreg fanfictions and I must say, overall I’m not impressed. And now I’ll admit that I find the concept ridiculous and somewhat retarded, but that’s just me. So in my quest to find out what this is all about, I did do some more reading and I actually found a story that I must say, was believable, had a good plot, was handled very well and had some hilarious moments in it. It was an FMA story on www.fanfiction.net and Roy Mustang, as a result of an alchemy experiment gone awry, ended up pregnant. I wish I could find it again so I could share, but alas, I can’t >.< What was so great about this story, is the situation of a man being pregnant and also being an officer in the military was handled realistically. And when Roy had to tell Edward his predicament, comedy ensues;)
So I couldn’t find much with Roy getting pregnant, but OMG, Naraku and Sesshoumoru with Sesshy getting pregnant? Priceless:) And it looks like they already have one baby.
So maybe the bottom line here is, it’s all of the above. We like to see men “tortured” in the way women have over the eons of time, we like to read about funny situations and let’s face it, men dealing with pregnancy is funny and some of these stories, when handled properly, are really good fiction. It’s a difficult thing to write properly, which is why I think there are so many stinkers out there story-wise and why it sometimes gets a bad rap. What do you think?
