#18 – If you owned a bar, how cheap would your shots be?

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This is the eighteenth post of Deke Dangle RPF Anon, a community for all your ice hockey anon meme needs.

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Comments

Re: Fic Discussion- blood pressure

[(Anonymous)]

ayrt

Yeah, IA that "this is all because Ovi and Nicky are Weird" is not a terribly satisfying conclusion. You would think that, no matter how Weird they are about sharing each other, they'd be happier spending more than a few hours together every few months, or whatever the exact arrangement is.

I think TJ said that vampires usually choose one or two people to feed from? So we have an opening for one vampire-two humans poly, at least, with a few possible arrangements, there. And, hey, if you get turned into a vampire in this universe, you don't necessarily have to watch all your loved ones die! You have the option of pairing with your sibling, etc.!

(Another question: wth happened to Alex's ancestor?)

I do think the relationship between vampires and humans seems largely symbiotic, at least at this point in history. But it seems like there's some wariness of humans toward vampires that doesn't happen without humans dying sometimes. So it can't be all "your adoring partner will take care of your every need while making you young forever!!!"

Re: Fic Discussion- blood pressure

[(Anonymous)]

AYRT

Unfortunately, with the information we have now, it feels like "this is all because Ovi and Nicky are Weird" seems to be where we're headed. Maybe the next chapter will give us more context, as hopefully Mike will meet Ovi. But reading back to the interlude chapter, Ovi suggests finding someone who wants to feed a vampire for Tom and Nicky refuses because it would be abandoning him. So that was clearly a possible solution, and Nicky shot it down because...I don't know, reasons? Maybe Andre's right and he's just crazy stupid with love, but that's not satisfying to me as the cause of all this misery.

You're right, TJ did say that. So maybe multi-human pairs are possible. And, assuming ancestors usually do stick around, you could probably get some pretty complicated "family" chaining going on. Ancestors and descendants seem to be supposed to care each other usually, but what about ancestors and their descendants' descendants? Or descendants with their ancestors' other descendants?

I also want to know what happened to Alex's ancestor. Also how having kids works for vampires. TJ mentions he has a daughter early on, and Alex and Nicky discuss having kids. How would that work? I'm assuming they're all by adoption, but it must be weird having your kid get older than you. Would you turn them eventually? But then you have all the messiness of whether they have a pair human or not again.

Re: Fic Discussion- blood pressure

[(Anonymous)]

NA

I would assume their sperm is still viable? Especially when they're younger? These don't seem to be the typical undead vampires so much as vampirism as a biological change (maybe by a virus or something?).

Re: Fic Discussion- blood pressure

[(Anonymous)]

da

Yeah, but then are the kids humans or vampires? It seems like you make baby vampires by biting people, and you'd think someone would have mentioned human-vampire hybrids if they existed by now. The human half of a vampire-human pair could obviously contribute genetic material somewhere, though.

Re: Fic Discussion- blood pressure

[(Anonymous)]

Human makes sense to me.

Re: Fic Discussion- blood pressure

[(Anonymous)]

ayrt

I don't see why, though. Like a female vampire can just carry a kid to term? Maybe that's the case, but I don't see any particular reason to think it's an obvious extension of the worldbuilding we've seen so far.

Re: Fic Discussion- blood pressure

[(Anonymous)]

na has not even read this fic, but you remind me how annoyed I was by Darla being able to be pregnant with Connor in Angel. I don't care if it's miraculous, that makes no sense.

/still salty, clearly

Re: Fic Discussion- blood pressure

[(Anonymous)]

Magic isn't enough of an explanation for you?

Re: Fic Discussion- blood pressure

[(Anonymous)]

ayrt

When it involves a dead person keeping a living embryo/fetus alive for nine months? No, not really. I at least need some more handwaving. How is the fetus getting anything to eat, when all she ingests is blood? What about body heat? Is the mommy vampire functionally alive during the entire pregnancy?

Re: Fic Discussion- blood pressure

[(Anonymous)]

Do I vaguely recall Darla eating other stuff during pregnancy?

Re: Fic Discussion- blood pressure

[(Anonymous)]

ayrt

LOL, I could not say what you recall, nonnie! It's been a long time since I watched those episodes, though, so it's possible she did. It's more just the whole thing that annoyed me, though, not just the food thing specifically.

Re: Fic Discussion- blood pressure

[(Anonymous)]

NA

IIRC there was some mystical protection around her womb in general, like she tried to abort him and couldn't. Being a magical prophecy baby was enough of a handwave for me.

Re: Fic Discussion- blood pressure

[(Anonymous)]

In retrospect I am deeply squicked by the whole forced pregnancy thing.

Re: Fic Discussion- blood pressure

[(Anonymous)]

That show had some great female characters, but it treated them like such crap. Darla, Cordelia, Fred...

Re: Fic Discussion- blood pressure

[(Anonymous)]

na

Forced pregnancy is the only way I ever do pregnancy fic! But I tend not to have the forced pregnancy ~~give the baby momma a (temporary) soul~~.

Re: Fic Discussion- blood pressure

[(Anonymous)]

Forced pregnancy is such a bizarrely common trope in sf/f. And when it's not forced, pregnant lady is experimented on, or very weird measures must be taken to save the baby. Nobody ever has a wanted pregnancy with no torture in a sci-fi show.

It's a bit disturbing.

Re: Fic Discussion- blood pressure

[(Anonymous)]

I wrote a whole paper once about pregnancy and body horror in SF&F. My thesis was that because a) the body and b) protagonists are assumed to be men, when the body is female and protagonists are women male writers don't know how to handle what is ultimately a normal and natural thing that many, many, many women experience, and so they make it horrific. Like, over a cumulative 15 years filming Stargate SG-1 and SGA, of the three women who had consistent roles on those shows you would kind of expect at least one, if it was the real world, to go through a wanted pregnancy - as all three of the actors did. Instead they wrote out Amanda Tapping's RL pregnancies entirely, made Claudia Black's pregnancy an immaculate conception of the Big Bad, and although Teyla's pregnancy comes close she still gets experimented on etc. Meanwhile, on Angel Joss gets Cordelia pregnant with demonspawn like five times, but when the actor is actually pregnant he a) makes the baby demonspawn AGAIN and b) writes it out of the show entirely.

*fistshake at male showrunners*

Re: Fic Discussion- blood pressure

[(Anonymous)]

The anon who said they only write forced pregnancy

In pro writing by men, that's likely true. (Though, apparently, Joss Whedon was kinda pissed about Charisma Carpenter's RL pregnancy, which accounted for some of that shittiness. And I'm not 100% sure why SFF-inclined men might be more inclined toward bizarro forced pregnancies than men writing in other genres. Maybe the world just gives them more options?)

But, as a woman, if I'm writing mpreg, it's forced because ... well, I'm likely writing in a world where that's not normal, and why would a dude want to go through with a magical pregnancy, something his body is plainly not equipped to deal with? He'd likely get an abortion if he could, so if I want to write an mpreg fic and not an abortion fic, I have to force the issue. Especially if I want to avoid stupid nonsense like "abortions are 100% fatal to men but they can safely birth kids," which makes absolutely no sense. And in mpreg or normal preg, I think I'm especially sensitive to the body horror aspect of being forced to carry an unwanted pregnancy to term, especially in light of the ongoing attack on reproductive rights in my country (the U.S.). I also tend to avoid tropes like "immediately falls in love with the baby as soon as it's born," etc.

This isn't how I would approach pregnancy in every possible fictional world, but it's how it's gone so far. ** shrugs **

Re: Fic Discussion- blood pressure

[(Anonymous)]

I think Deep Space Nine handled it quite well - Nana Visitor got pregnant IRL, and her character Kira wasn't really in a pregnancy place, so there was an accident with pregnant Keiko O'Brien, and the doctor ended up operating to transfer the foetus to the only available foetus-friendly place, which was Kira's womb. It was all done consensually, and it was rather sweet in terms of characters being kind and supportive to each other.

(I wasn't a huge fan of the following sexual tension between Kira and O'Brien, but I liked they decided they could never act on it because they both cared about Keiko and were happy as they were.)

Re: Fic Discussion- blood pressure

[(Anonymous)]

da

I've never seen DS9, but that honestly sounds kind of great. I'm a sucker for people carrying babies for good reasons other than wanting the baby themselves. I will look forward to it, if I ever get around to watching the show.

Re: Fic Discussion- blood pressure

[(Anonymous)]

DA

Maybe TJ's a hybrid? I don't know, a lot of the mystery in this fic just seems like plot holes than, like, added mystique.

Re: Fic Discussion- blood pressure

[(Anonymous)]

Plot holes kind of imply that it's something that we need to know, but I don't think it really matters?

Re: Fic Discussion- blood pressure

[(Anonymous)]

da

"Worldbuilding that doesn't quite add up," then. "World holes."

Re: Fic Discussion- blood pressure

[(Anonymous)]

ayrt

IA that a lot of the mystery seems more plot-holish than worldbuild-y. But with kids specifically, "they just adopt" would about cover it.

Like I said ... somewhere ... the worldbuilding is pretty obviously designed around iddy things like caretaking.

Re: Fic Discussion- blood pressure

[(Anonymous)]

ayrt

Well, Alex specifically talked about sending Tom away to people who could feed him. I don't think the possibility of an Andre-like person was brought up before he was introduced.

The kid issue is confusing to me, too! They have to be adopted, right? If platonic feeding is possible, would you just feed on your kid to keep them alive until they become a vampire/bond with vampire? That seems a bit uncomfortable ...