Fannish 5: Five Unfortunate Uses of Pregnancy

[gehayi]

From fannish5: Five unfortunate uses of pregnancy as a plot device.

CAUTION: HERE BE SPOILERS. A lot of them, really.

In no particular order:

1) Phoebe Halliwell's pregnancies on Charmed.

Comments

[shiplizard]

Re: 5, I'll say that the pregnancy horror in Silent Hill 3 is entirely intentional. It recurs from Silent Hill I, when Alessa (Heather's... um... first? Incarnation?) was catatonic and pregnant with the god Samael the first time. (Courtesy her mother, Claudia's sister.) She was prepubescent when Samael was placed into her (via the ritual that burned her) and Silent Hill took its initial shape from the nightmares she had while sleeping. A part of her escaped her trauma and had a happy life as Cheryl Mason, Harry's first adopted daughter

[gehayi]

I remember Cybil and the pregnancy scare--though I wasn't conversant with the background of Silent Hill at the time, so I didn't understand the reason behind it.

Body horror is a big big thing in Silent Hill-- you're absolutely supposed to be disgusted and horrified at it.

Really? I tend to watch a lot of Let's Plays and people always seem to react to scenes in survival horror that make me cringe with "THAT'S not scary." So I got the impression that I was supposed to be creeped out a bit, but not revolted.

It's kind of reassuring that the creators WANT you to be freaked out. Makes me feel less like a wimp.

[shiplizard]

Lots of LPers try to pass themselves off as above it all. Why yes, they say, narratively and visually this is supposed to be horrifying, but I'm just too tough. I prefer LPers who play along with the emotions onscreen and don't ruin creepy/emotional/happy/sad moments. No, the whole SH series up to 4 (before an American company bought it out) was about psychological and transformative horror. Nightmare imagery.

The pregnancy scare wasn't JUST because of Silent Hill-- it was something both Heather and I wanted to try, and Johns and Cybil-- though a loving, supportive couple-- were both the least fit to be parents of any of our characters bar none. And they knew it. Even if Cybil had never been to Silent Hill she would still be a bad mother-- Silent Hill just meant that her reaction was much more vehement.

[erikalyndis]

Don't worry, you're not a wimp. Silent Hill is one of the most visually disturbing series of games out there. Even the first game, with its primitive graphics, has some real moments of 'oh god, that's JUST NOT RIGHT!' (even if it does, as Yahtzee points out, look like an arse made out of lego). If something in a Silent Hill game makes you want to curl up in a corner and cry, it just means that the creators are doing their job right.

[ravenclaw_eric]

Merope Gaunt is described as being, frankly, ill-favored, and Tom Riddle, Sr. already _had_ a nice girlfriend. TR dumping his GF to take up with someone who was apparently considered lower than dirt by everybody in the area, and with whom he only had a species in common, is explicable only when you remember that Merope G. was a witch.

I'm a guy myself, and I've watched guy behavior for decades, and I can't think of a single case of anybody doing anything like that.

That said, it is unlikely that Merope could have brewed a love potion...could she have used the Imperius Curse? With her charming relatives gone, she might have been able to lay hands on one of their wands, if she didn't have one herself. And she wouldn't give one toss about the rights of any mere Muggle...she was a Gaunt, and a pureblood, and that alone made her far better than any Muggle.

I tend to equate Merope with the equally-tragic Mayella Ewell, in To Kill a Mockingbird...while I feel terribly sorry for both of them, their actions caused irreparable harm

Part 1

[gehayi]

Merope may have been a witch. However

Re: Part 1

[ravenclaw_eric]

As far as Merope's relationship with her father and brother goes, I don't think you understand psychological dominance...what Modesty Blaise's right-hand man Willie Garvin called "the old P.D." in A Taste for Death.

If Marvolo and Morfin had bullied and dominated Merope from her earliest memories, it wouldn't matter how powerful a witch she might potentially be...she'd have it burned into her brain that they were stronger and there was nothing she could do. This is also called "learned helplessness." When my Mom was going for her Master's in child psychology, I read a lot of her texts, and I read about tests on dogs, using electric shocks. Once the dogs got it into their heads that there was nothing they could do, they would just endure the shocks, even if escape was perfectly possible

Part 2

[gehayi]

Could she have cast Imperio? She probably knew it; I can't picture her father and brother not casting it on her. But magic in the Potterverse takes confidence, strength of will and training. It's doubtful if Merope had had the training, and when we saw her in the Pensieve, she hid her face, spoke indistinctly, scuttled away from her father and only admired Tom, Sr. from a distance. Such behavior doesn't scream willful self-confidence to me

[becky_black]

Re Twilight -GOOD GOD! I thought that series was YA. It sounds like some kind of David Cronenberg body horror movie.

I think I'll go watch something less gruesome to forget about it. Where's my copy of The Fly?

[gehayi]

It IS billed as YA--YA paranormal romance, in fact. Unfortunately, Meyer is a natural writer of body horror and psychological horror...and SHE DOESN'T REALIZE IT.

[becky_black]

LOL, it's a case of what she really wants to say is showing through?

Oh and I don't actually have a copy of The Fly, because last time I watched it I was traumatised! I'd seen it before, but must have repressed how horrific it was and just remembered it had lots of Jeff Goldblum with his shirt off.

[ravenclaw_eric]

Meyer is LDS, and that would probably keep her from even considering body/psychological horror. A lot of the weirder stuff in the Twilight series becomes explicable when you see it through that lens.

I haven't really read these books myself, but from what I've heard, they make the later "Anita Blake" books---post-Obsidian Butterfly, IOW---look like literary masterpieces.

[zelda_queen]

Regarding Bella's pregnancy - what about the fact that Renesmee pops out of the womb pretty much able to take care of herself? Mommy and Daddy dearest don't have to do a thing. Little Nessie can feed herself, sleeps through the night, and presumably is toilet-trained pretty quickly. Yeah, it's really easy to go on about how your child's such a blessing when you aren't given any reason to think otherwise!

[gehayi]

I missed that! Yeah, every parent would just love a baby like that--it requires no effort at all!