HD MPreg Fest 2012 - Week 02 Recs
HD MPreg Fest 2012 - WEEK 02
Recs of Fic and Art for the second week of the HD MPreg Fest. Sometimes a post doesn't have an opinion piece yet, that just means I haven't gotten round to writting one.
Post 20 - 27-05-2012 - Fic: Baby, Baby - Preg!Draco + Preg!Harry
Sum.: Draco and Harry manage to get pregnant at the same time. This is their story, from discovery to delivery, in a series of vignettes.
MY OPINION:
This was quite a good fill and a nice read. The author managed a good balance between funny, mellow and tension. The fic shows the standard differences between a Preg!Harry and Preg!Draco, and does this in a humourous way. I feel as if the author didn’t really want to write a very plotty story, but rather wanted to focus on the different ways both characters experience and deal with their pregnancy (so expect all the cliché's, but in a slightly newer jacket). And she definitely managed that, I was even glad that she didn't try to put in a complicated backstory or something. So this is more a character and the character's interaction based fic, rather than a plotty one. And like I already said I’m happy she choose to go the humour route and not the angsty or over the top fluffy one. I enjoyed reading it.
Post 18 - 25-05-2012 - Art: The Hero Never Came Back - Preg!Draco
Sum.: There was no one to ask for help. The baby kept wailing. The tears started to drop.
MY OPINION:
This is a gorgeous piece of art. I’m a real sucker for water colours and the artist really knows how to use them. Emotionally a really good fill of the prompt. It really shows the emotion of the loss of a loved one and the helplessness one feels in such situations. SPOILER: ***But considering the way the artists presented her artwork, it would have made more sense if she had chosen the Preg!Harry Tag and had Harry die in childbirth. This would have made more sense considering the prompt to and it would have made the MPreg part more obvious. Because there is no baby in the picture nor a pregnant stomach, so a died-in-child-birth-Harry would have fit better - in my opinion of course. So no idea why the artist insist on it being preg!Draco*** But that doesn't negate the beauty of this artpiece.
Post 17 - 25-05-2012 - Fic: To Get a Happy Ending - Preg!Harry
Sum.: Astoria straightens Draco out, well, figuratively.
MY OPINION:
This was a nice prompt and I liked the author’s route of doing it all from Astoria’s POV - and I liked her Astoria - so doing it that way was a good choice. While I like how she wrote it, I do feel - in my opinion of course - that this fill is just too short for such a prompt. It felt it needed a lot of fleshing out. So while I liked her style and her character description, this just felt too short.
Post 15 - 24-05-2012 - Fic: And Malfoy Makes ... Three? - Preg!Harry
Sum.: prompt 106 - Draco is forced to move in with Harry. At first, Harry is not the most gracious of hosts. They do the dirty and one of them, doesn't matter which, gets pregnant.
MY OPINION:
This was a nice read. I liked the way the author depicted both characters and I liked the way she portrayed their relationship and how it evolved. It was realistic enough for a fic. I have this weird thing where I want it to be as realistic as possible, but not too realistic because that often leads to boring story telling where you are just waiting for something - anything really - to just happen. So think great soap vs “just meh” soap, both soaps have bizarre plotlines and everything evolves way too quickly or drags on forever. But in a great soap you are just sucked in and everything just works, in a “just meh” soap the faults are so glaringly obvious that they start to annoy. Here the author found the perfect balance between tension and realistic development and if this was a soap it would fall in the great category.
I liked the characters and thought they were very IC, both had grown up a bit but both were still very recognisable. And I also liked how she portrayed the other characters, this fic was very much H/D centric but others were not mere window dressing. They played their part and they played it well. The scene somewhere in the middle with Molly, Ron, Hermione and Victoire was just great. So even the side characters were great and also very much IC, which I always find a bonus and a feature that makes a good fic a great fic.
While the author warns for angst, I thought this fic was quite a mellow fic - ie it was angsty but not OTT. I thought the feel of the fic was just right. My only comment would be that at certain points it is a bit cliché - character’s reactions, plot, the way she wrote things etc - but one doesn’t need to re-invent the wheel each time. So while I definitely did notice it, it did not really annoy me. Plus the author said she is just coming back after a 9 year dry spell.
Two things did slightly bug me - So spoilerish:
- Apparently Lucius is safely at the manor and I just don’t understand why Lucius often goes unpunished -
or only gets a slap on the wrists - in fandom. But Lucius isn’t really a presence in this fic and when he is
mentioned his re-actions are very IC, just as all the other characters. The whole unpunished!Lucius is just a
pet peeve of mine, since I saw him as the main corporate evil!Dude in all the books up until book 6.
- Harry is totally shocked that men can get pregnant, understandable when they do not get Sex Ed in
Hogwarts and he does not really have a permanent father figure to tell him about the birds & the bees. But then when the author describes Hermione’s reaction to his news; “Hermione jumped up and squealed in
excitement. She clearly knew everything there was to know about male pregnancy”. If a muggleborn
discovers something like this, wouldn’t they tell their friends? Because magic is amazing, but men caring
babies is just mind- boggling. And especially if that other muggleborn tells her that he is gay. I just find it bewildering that authors can have Hermione know about male pregnancy and not tell Harry, esp. if she knew he was gay.
Post 14 - 23-05-2010 - Fic: When the sun shines once more - Preg!Harry (miscarriage) / Preg!Draco
Sum.: When Harry discovers he’s pregnant, they are thrilled. Sadly, things do not go as planned. How will the overcome the death of their first child?
MY OPINION:
This is quite a painful topic to write about and I think the author did it justice. She really showed the pain of the miscarriage and also the uncertainties of a second pregnancy. But the fic itself never descended into a full-on angst fest which I appreciated.
Harry has the miscarriage and the second time it is Draco who gets pregnant. He has a near-perfect pregnancy and Harry is super supportive. But at the same time the author has the characters deal with the two different pregnancies and how Harry feels, she doesn’t go in depth about it but she doesn’t shy away from the topic either. So I have no complaints how the author handled both the miscarriage and the second pregnancy.
But deep down I’m a bottom and Preg!Harry person and while I could handle the miscarriage, the fact that the second pregnancy was Draco left me feeling unsettled after finishing the fic. I would have preferred if Harry was also pregnant the second time. Because having a miscarriage leaves the pregnant person feeling like a failure, even if he/she did nothing wrong. It is not a rational feeling, but it is a feeling that only the pregnant person can feel and understand and not their partner. So to then have Draco have a near-perfect pregnancy, just broke my Preg!Harry heart. So if Harry had been the pregnant the second time, me - as reader - just had to deal with the miscarriage and the second pregnancy and how both characters felt, and I wouldn't have focussed on Harry so much (this was totally my own feelings and not really what the fic was trying to make you feel).
So as I said it was a really well executed fic, but personally broke my Pregger!Harry Heart. .
Post 13 - 23-05-2012 - Art: A Special Kind of Hell - Preg!Draco
Sum.: Harry struggles to keep it up.
MY OPINION:
I can’t say much about this, besides that it is BRILLIANT. This is such a fun fill of a great and funny prompt. I’m glad this artist choose it, because I believe that a "comic" was the best medium to fill this prompt. It would either have become too smutty in fic form or the opposite where the author only mentions the numerous smutty scenes. And just one art piece wouldn’t have done it justice either.
I also like this artist style, it is very unique - anyone a bit familiar with this fandom knows immediately who this is - but her style really works. I’m usually more a fan of the more realistic and “clean” art styles, but this artist just makes messy and psychedelic colouring awesome, although the colouring was quite muted here. I really liked how it had more "splashes of water colours" in the pic itself and then that was contrasted with full colour blocks on the outside. Also I it was thought really extra nice when the artist broke the panelling on occasions.
And as if the art wasn’t brilliant on its own, she has to go and add brilliant rhyming lines :)!! They really added something to the pictures.
Post 12 - 22-05-2012 - Fic: Canary’s Cries - Preg!Draco
Sum.: Taking care of a baby is hard. Especially if your baby just won’t shut up.
MY OPINION
This was a really good depiction of Post-natal depression. The author handled the topic with respect and never made it into caricature. I also liked that she actually told it from Draco’s POV - the post-natal depressive. The author really did the prompt justice. It showed the hopelessness one feels in these situations and how people who are not you, just do not understand what you are going through. The author also really managed to convey how post-natal depression is still a bit of a taboe subject and that those suffering from it do not find it easy to come out and ask for help. It kind of becomes a downward spiral, where Draco needs help but he doesn’t really understand what is going on with him and doesn’t know how to ask for help and his near and dear don’t know what to do either.
Even if you take away the post natal depression, this was also a very realistic portrayal of how a house-parent must at times feel and how those who are not house-parents do not understand the pressure that lifestyle brings. Having a baby isn’t just moonshine and roses, it is also endless sleepless nights, constant cleaning up etc and a person who also goes to work and does not spend 24/7 with the baby, just doesn’t understand the hardships that come with it. They have other hardships that houseparents don't understand. So it is sometimes nice to have fics that do not only show the fluffy and wonderful side of having babies and kids, but also the more harder side of it.
So I really think the author did the prompt justice and I really liked her Draco. He took on “the house-parent / caregiver” role in this fic and I thought the author did a brilliant job in his depiction. Draco could easily have descended into a super feminine characterisation - not only had he been the pregnant one, but he also took on the more traditionally female role - but never did I find him “girly”. Throughout the fic he remained a man and also very IC, despite his more nurturing role. He had off course changed, because otherwise he wouldn’t have carried the child or even be with Harry, but I still found him very recognisable.
I did have a problem with Harry’s depiction. It wasn’t that he was completely OOC, but he just wasn’t my “head-Harry”. (This rambling bit could be seen as a bit spoilerish) *** I thought Harry a bit too clueless and couldn’t understand why he wasn’t more at home anyway, since it is not as if he needs to work for the money nor was there any obvious indication that Draco had to be the one to remain at home because of breastfeeding or something (but I could have read over that). So while I thought the author did a splendid job with Draco’s portrayal, I found this Harry was too “male”. And not in a good way, I read him as a typical 1940s-50s husband and father, these men where nice and did care for their families, but everyone had their fixed roles. The mother stayed at home and the father was mostly absent and worked. This was ok in the fifties, because that was how things were, but it definitely isn’t ok in late 20th - early 21th century. So ok, the Harry in this fic wasn’t uncaring or evil, but he was always at work during this fic, without any real reason really and then at the end he takes of one week to help Draco and organises a nanny. It is just a too chauvinistic male solution and not at all how I see Harry. I see him as the a hands on dad and if I had to choose between HD I would have said Draco seems more the distant father type.****
So while I do encourage you to read this fic, because it is good. I have to admit that this Harry ruined it slightly for me.
Post 11 - 21-05-2012 - Fic: Love is Whole, No Matter How Many Times Divided - Preg!Harry
Sum.: Harry does want this baby, but this is nothing like he expected.
MY OPINION:
This is a nice mellow fic and a fic where I thought the mellow worked. The fic also depicted one of my favourite kind of Harry and Draco dynamic - where Harry is the more softer person, but still strong and Draco is still snarky and a bit selfish, but would do anything for Harry. This is my favourite relationship depiction for fluffier fics, where they are still recognisable as themselves, but they have adapted to make HD possible.
The author really did a good job with the prompt. She really manages to capture a good balance between Harry rationally knowing this is a good life, but at the same time he feels baby blues (pre and post - not post-natal depression!). I think this might be something the more romantic under us suffer from, where you rationally know everything is good but still it isn’t exactly how you imagined it - mainly because your imagination is just too rose-tinted! I think having Harry as such a character is IC too, because there are such situations in canon as well. And the ending was perfect for this fic, just perfect.
Plus I loved the name and nickname they choose for their baby, it is also the first name and nickname of one of my parents (I won’t say which one, in case you like the gender to be a surprise when reading).
This was more a character sketch than a plot-story and the author did a good job and I liked the more mellowy rather angsty feel the author chose.
That's all for Week 02, onto Week 03