Unusual Bearings 2020 Letter

[seinmit]

COMPLETE, just as Starbucks is closing. I might fuss with formatting a bit or add sentences here or there, but mostly: it's done.

Also, if you looked at this before you saw this note, even though I said I had already completed the Folly of the World request: I lied, I added more.

One note about this letter! I did my best to balance not repeating myself overmuch between requests if you want to read the whole thing and hopefully letting you read just the one you want to write, if that's what you want. Bucky is the pregnant character in 5/8, so there's a lot of overlapping thoughts, so this will necessarily be imperfect. Sorry about that.

General Likes

• Dramatic, action-heavy plots full of badasses
• Angst and heightened drama
• H/C and whump


• Emotional growth and self-actualization


• Recovery from trauma
  
• Revealing dark secrets


• Struggling with duty and Terrible Purpose


• Philosophical complexity and big ideas; fic with a strong conceptual theme
  
• A deep sense of place, whether that be from world-building or historical research


• Grappling with political quandaries without a conclusion and full of complexity; coming away from a fic with the sense there are no perfect answers.


• Formal experiments: different tenses, documentation styles, nonlinear storytelling, drabble series.


• Fannish "magical realism" tropes/universes, especially when played straight, with world building: A/B/O, D/s verses, soul bonds, soul-marks, body swap, time loops, etc

Shippy Likes

• Us-against-the-world dynamics and co-dependency; Characters being the most important people in each other’s emotional life, whether from love or hate; Characters tearing the world apart for the sake of their lover; unhealthy levels of possessiveness


• Mpreg and pregnancy, done either for angst or fluff; mpreg in a universe without normal mpreg; mpreg played as body horror; surprise pregnancies greeted with joy; awe at pregnant partner; Male omega parents being referred to as mothers and female alpha parents being referred to as fathers.


• Coming out with a socially unacceptable relationship, facing social consequences and stigma; the ostracization is worth it because of love


• Outsider POV; the slow realization that couple is a couple and what that changes about the perceived dynamic.


• Rescuing one’s lover from danger.


• Quiet intimacy—knowing one’s lover better than anyone else in the world does; domestic comfort and creating a life for each other; close-contact revealing conflicts that previously hadn’t come up; discovering new things about the person you know best


• lovers solving problems together; badasses doing badass things together; comrades in arms and comrades in bed


• hate-ships and enemy-mine; Sex not solving problems; sex creating problems; unsolvable personality and politics conflicts; bad behavior as a form of flirting

Smut Likes

• porn with feelings; praise kink; kink discovery


• rough sex; hair pulling; insufficient lube/prep; quickies; marathon sex until it hurts


• dirty talk


• D/s; restraints; characters getting off on their own submission; humiliation, loving or otherwise; objectification; feminization


• breeding and impregnation kink (with or without possible actual pregnancy)


• comeplay; felching and playing with a comed-in hole; letting come dry on the body; rubbing it in; animalistic scent marking


• penetration; being so full it hurts but loving it; DP; object insertion; gaping


• knotting, heat sex, overwhelming desperation


• xeno/non-human sex; tentacles; being chemically aroused by an alien


• mental manipulation; arousal that cannot be controlled or contained; sex-addiction


• ritualistic sex; religious ritual sex; sex-magic


• public sex; semi-public sex

Darkfic/Horror-y Likes

• kidnapping, torture, one’s fate being outside of your control
  
• unspeakable power, eldritch or godly or similar
  
• self-sacrifice for partner; watching your partner sacrificing themselves for you.
  
• existential horror; mindbreak; being totally broken down and accepting one’s status as an object; grooming, manipulation, gaslighting
  
• sinister authority figures taking advantage of power
  
• bad ends, bittersweet ends, hopeful ends, as long as there is some sort of arc to the fic.
  
• horror that occurs after some sort of reveal--someone wasn't who they seemed or something was radically distorted.


• ghost stories and urban legends; spooky forests and abandoned ruins; murderous creatures and haunted houses. Creepy rural locations and places a little "outside" the normal sphere. Smelling something wrong in the psychosphere.
  
• the dangers of ambition, finding out that there are things more important than knowledge and power


• madness, self-mutiliation, orgiastic rituals, canibalism.

Pregnancy Likes

• Male characters being secure in their gender identity but finding joy and comfort in specifically being “mom”/being in the “feminine” role.


• Complicated feelings about unplanned pregnancy, including discussion of abortion. Self-destructive behavior specifically because of the pregnancy. Punishing self/fetus for whatever fucked-up internal reasons apply


• Fertility issues, miscarriages, angst about wanting to be pregnant. This is particularly good when the character is in some sense ambivalent about their ability to get pregnant (e.g, if they got the requisite parts through noncon medical experimentation.)


• Mpreg as abnormal, only possible because of non-con medical experimentation, magic, etc. In an A/B/O universe, I especially like when there has been some sort of forced designation change in for the purposes of pregnancy.


• Being “bred” for one’s genes/superpowers. Coopting that ability for self-determination, even if the bad guys were the reason.


• Bodies changing, softening, spreading, getting sensitive, tingling, hurting—basically any specific body changes. I love unpleasant pregnancy symptoms, too.


• Over-investing in pregnancy/baby as the hope for the future...and that going badly, because even if you’re pregnant, you’re still you.


• Body worship by partner that is framed in terms of seeing what is happening to the partner because of the baby, regardless of whether or not the baby was their’s. Fetishizing the ability to get pregnant and impregnating them. Getting off on fertility/virility.


• This is a weird one to phrase, but bodily fluids as Powerful—this applies to both lactation and come, both of them are liquids that Do Things (feed baby and make baby respectively) and leaning into that is hot.


• Painful or drawn out births. Medical emergencies. Really, really badly timed births. Getting hurt while pregnant. Anal births.

DNW

• scat


• formalized ageplay, especially non-sexual—"littles."
  
• all the way through
  
• children being called "pups"
  
• the phrase "big black cock" and pornified race-play
  
• first-person POV, unless in epistolary, journals, or other written document.
  
• asexual characters in relationships with sexual characters, past or present or even mentioned.


• things going into urethras


• setting-change AUs, unless otherwise specified. I’ll talk about what I think of as a "setting change AU" for each of my requested fandoms.
  

Opt-Ins

Basically anything that is not a DNW I am willing and happy to read, but I wanted to make a specific point to opt-in to the following things. This list should not, in any way, be taken as a "please write me this" list, but if you find yourself writing a fic that includes elements of any of the following, you can soothe your mind with this. The only thing I ask is that you warn/tag liberally.

• In-narrative racism/homophobia/sexism/biphobia/classism/ableism etc. You shouldn't feel the need to go out of your way to put it in, but if it makes sense for the story or the character, feel free to include it. That includes slurs, upsetting imagery, and anything of that nature.


• Gore, non-con, generally upsetting things about consent and agency, and torture.
  
• Incest and underage, as appropriate for the request


• Cannibalism, necrophilia, bestiality as appropriate for the fic, character, and request
  
• Character death, physical and mental illnesses, and permanent disability.
  
• Any and all "magical realism" tropes, whether or not they fit the canon: time travel, soul bonds, soul mates.
  
• Past relationships and unrequested canon and non-canon ships.
  
• Infidelity, breakup fic, poly among requested characters (unless otherwise specified.

Black Panther

Setting Change AU Clarification: I don’t count things like A/B/O etc as setting changes.Please keep the fic roughly canon compliant with the basic arc of Erik backstory. Specific DNW of him being raised in Wakanda. It can go AU in the specifics of timeline and when he and T’Challa first interact, but I’d like for him to keep his general plan to conquer Wakanda.

Erik/T’Challa

Erik impregnates T’Challa

Erik is one of my favorite characters in the MCU. I am fascinated by all parts of his life story. What was his time at MIT and Annapolis like? How the fuck did an orphaned kid from Oakland end up graduating from MIT at age 19? I’m fascinated by the intersection of his rage and the love he has for Black people, his father, and himself. I’m interested in the question of his many names and what they mean to him, how he code-switches and what that looks like. Feel free to lean into the political themes of his story.

I’m also fascinated by T’Challa. He is a good, generous man who is fundamentally sheltered about what it means to be Black in the rest of the world. Nonetheless, he makes hard choices and wants to help. He’s also one of the few characters in the MCU who I think shows generalized good judgment when faced with conflicting worldviews and in the face of wildly new information. I’m still so impressed with how he responds in Civil War with Bucky and that’s absolutely true with how he responds to Erik. It’s so clear he ends the movie very sympathetic to Erik and wanting to know him better.

I love the two of them because their structural positions put them at odds and they have all these intersections of sympathy and anger. I see them as a complicated, somewhat angry ship, where they’re pushing on each other and challenging each other to be better people and sometimes accidentally making each other worse. They’re both drawn to each other and fascinated by each other and yet, I think Erik genuinely kinda hates T’Challa. I love Erik’s rage, it’s my favorite part about him, and adding a baby to the mix is delicious.

A lot of my tags here are plotty, because I find their structural positions fascinating and I’d love to see how pregnancy changes that. So much of their story is about complicated relationships of family and blood, and what blood means, and what Erik’s blood means specifically and I’d love to see what you do with this.

This is a small specific thing, but one thing I was thinking about here is Erik’s relationship with his mother as a (presumably) American Black woman and how different that is than being Wakandan. How does he feel about carrying her legacy into the Wakandan royal family through getting T’Challa pregnant? A lot of Erik’s story is about his relationship with his Wakandan roots and I definitely love that—and it seems somewhat unavoidable with the ship with T’Challa—but I’d love for him to have Feelings about his American roots too.

I’m fine with these tags being taken up at any point in the timeline you can make work—feel free to go AU before the beginning of Black Panther, having Erik and T’Challa meet some other way. My DNW is mostly about him not being raised in Wakanda and I want him to have some sort of grand plan, but it can get messed up in some way. Basically, Erik’s rage is my favorite thing about him and it can get softened, but I’d like for it to be part of the concern of the fic.

I have some tags that are A/B/O and some tags that aren’t—I’m fine with either. Those that are unspecified, you can go whatever way you want.

Abortion Forbidden Because of Royal Bloodline This tag seems to work best for me under a premise where Erik gets T’Challa pregnant prior to canon and probably accidentally. Maybe nobody ever clued T’Challa into the idea that the Heart Shaped Herb means he could carry a baby—maybe it is something specific to the fact that Erik shares royal blood. Maybe they hook up while Erik is a bodyguard to an American official and oh shit, T’Challa’s pregnant and he has to keep it.

”Alpha” turns out to be secret Omega
Maybe T’Challa has been hiding his omega status his whole life, from everyone—only, when Erik beats him in ritual conflict, he promptly goes into heat to ~biologically secure his place in the new regime.

Impregnated to Avoid Having to Execute Villain
This one is really intriguing to me. One thing about Erik’s ending is that I got the definite sense that it was possible that T’Challa wants to save Erik and he could very easily end up deciding that he doesn’t actually care that Erik wants to be saved. Maybe he saves him and then marries him and then gets himself pregnant so that he’s protected by T’Challa’s status. This can be more on the noncon end—though I really would like T’Challa to be painted sympathetically—but it could also be artificial insemination (though still a horrible violation, not sexually assaulting Erik.) Maybe T’Challa even talks him into the plan!

Other parent leaves before pregnancy is discovered; comes back after
This one can happen pre or post canon. Maybe a scenario like the one I described for the abortion fic happens, and Erik fucks off before he even knows T’Challa is pregnant. Maybe Erik and T’Challa fall into bed while Erik resentfully loafs around Wakanda recovering and then promptly leaves once he gets medical clearance, because he doesn’t want chains—and oh yeah, T’Challa’s pregnant.

politically loaded pregnancy
This is basically the thesis statement of what I want in this prompt. I’d be happy with all sorts of things, but the political dynamic is really what draws me to them.

pregnancy revealed/discovered after death of impregnator
With this one, I’d be happy with Erik being permanently dead or not. I’d absolutely love a fic that focuses on T’Challa’s complicated feelings about Erik and Erik’s death, with Erik being this huge presence in who T’Challa is going to be, the type of father he’s going to be, the type of king he’s going to be, but dead the whole time.

A cool specific premise would be T'Challa trying to track down Erik’s family in the States after his death, because of the baby, and having to have all these awkward and loaded interactions with relatives of his mom.

Pregnancy to Secure Other Parent’s Claims/Birthright/Bloodline for Own Family
This one I imagine would be pretty AU, but maybe Erik decides to get control of Wakanda by impregnating T’Challa instead of fighting him. Maybe this is a way to get access to the throne in Wakanda! Like the one with T’Challa choosing the pregnancy, I’m fine with many different points on the scale of noncon here, but I really want it to be somewhat sympathetic to Erik.

Additional Tags I Like:
pregnancy requires the parents to be intimate regularly, Alpha impregnates Omega, Angst About Pregnancy, character is excited to have their own family after rough childhood, complicated feelings about pregnant body, Customs and Culture Related to Pregnancy/Childbirth, Difficult Pregnancy, Dysfunctional Relationships, Got Pregnant for Diplomacy, Heat, Labor/Childbirth at Awkward/Unexpected Time, Magical Pregnancy, Man discovers pregnancy late because he had no reason to suspect he could get pregnant, Marriage to Avert Illegitimacy, Mating Cycles, omega verse - pregnant omegas have to get married to whoever impregnated them, Planned but Unwanted Pregnancy, Pregnancy as a side effect of a Healing/Resurrection Spell (Spellcaster Pregnant),
Punitive or Revenge Rape Leads to Pregnancy, Unplanned and Unwanted Pregnancy, Weird Plot Shit

Bucky/Erik

Erik Killmonger/James "Bucky" Barnes who is pregnant with somebody else’s child
love the idea of them as a ship. I love their parallels—shared history of dehumanization, assassin background—and I love the very strong divergences, in that there’s a really important difference between being dehumanized by 400 years of Western civilization and being dehumanized by a magic chair. The only person Erik ever was is this, rage and humor grown up together like intertwined vines. I love that difference between the two of them, what it means for recovery—what does recovery even look like, if you’re Erik? What does it mean to heal trauma, when the trauma is (in part) the last 400 years of civilization?

I love how they’d inevitably butt heads. Bucky, as we see him in Wakanda, has worked really hard to find peace for himself and in his own life. He knows there’ll be a fight, but he seems to be looking for a way to avoid fights, generally. That’s very different than Erik and it is not something that Erik would easily understand. The thing I love about it is that Bucky and Erik can help each other see something true on the other’s experiences and help each other move to a place where they can see past their trauma to a future.

I’d be delighted with A/B/O or anything else here! I’m imagining two basic moments where the fic happens in the timeline, but I’m absolutely open to other ideas. One, is that Bucky is pregnant when he comes to Wakanda. Maybe he didn’t know he could get pregnant and was relearning how to be a person by fucking around a little bit in Bucharest.

Two, is that Bucky is pregnant as the Winter Soldier and somehow he and Erik cross paths while Erik is at the CIA. I bet Erik would be fascinated by this white guy who is treated so thoroughly as an object by his handlers, to the point of being bred like an animal. I bet he would generally be entirely and completely unsurprised that HYDRA is at the core of the US government, but the type of sci-fi dehumanization that Bucky has been subjected to is very different than what he deals with.

Honestly, I could see him finding it grotesque in a way that is interestingly different than most fics that deal with Bucky recovering. From the perspective of someone who had to gruelingly maintain what he could of his humanity in the context of his own dehumanization, Bucky’s childlike obedience could be seen as horrifying.

I love the idea of him seeing Bucky and having this moment of irrationality (from the perspective of his grand plan to take over Wakanda) and going rogue to break Bucky out—and then maybe kinda hating Bucky for that, a little. Because Bucky ruined everything by being so docile and easy to hurt. And being confused at himself, because the utilitarian calculus doesn’t make sense.

A big theme I like for this ship is the car-crash interaction between structural considerations of dehumanization and personal, individual considerations of dehumanization and the visceral features of a totally innocent baby being in the middle of that I think throws everything into sharp relief.

Anyway, I will stop ranting, haha--basically, I’m thirsty, I’d love anything playing with them.

Dehumanized Character Learns to Be Human for the Baby I have this great mental image of Bucky having to work really hard to develop self-care and agency because he’s going to be a mom, and I’d love to see how Erik intersects with that. If Erik breaks him out as the Winter Soldier, does he have to deal with a deeply helpless Bucky, who occasionally lashes out in violent anger? If it is in Wakanda, does Erik throw a wrench in all Bucky’s carefully designed coping strategies?

Pregnant through medical experimentation and super protective of the baby. I love the idea of Bucky as the Winter Soldier, not really understanding the whole context of what is happening to him, but really focused on the baby and almost feral in protecting it. When Bucky is the Winter Soldier, I imagine him as mostly compliant but with occasional bursts of ferocity and I could see it being really interesting if he lashed out at Erik out of protectiveness and not really parsing what’s going on. I can’t imagine that Erik really helps, because I suspect his bedside manner is terrible.

Rescuing Character from Captivity Because of Pregnancy
I already talked about this a little above, but I love the idea that seeing Bucky used as a breeder or seeing him abused while pregnant is the reason why Erik abandons his plan and breaks him out. I think there are a bunch of different motivations why he might do this and I’m interested in all the takes—I especially love if he is conflicted with his behavior.

Rescued from Captivity Already Pregnant
I think I covered this above!

Other Tags I liked for the ship:
Touch-Starved, Mpreg that isn't Omega Verse,, Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Preparing For Baby By Removing Threats, Weird Plot Shit, Difficult Pregnancy, Dysfunctional Relationships, Pregnancy Experienced As Body Horror But Endured Because The Baby Is Loved

Bucky/T’Challa; Bucky/Shuri

For both ships: I love Bucky in Wakanda. I love the idea of him coming to Wakanda after the events of CW pregnant and then falling in love and slowly learning about what pregnancy means for someone in Wakanda and for his relationship with either T’Challa or Shuri. Also: feel free to combine these ships into one fic. He could be dating both of them! If that’s a thing they’d be into! I’d love worldbuilding about Wakandan understandings of pregnancy and to see Bucky’s POV as he builds a life for himself there, for his baby.

He could be pregnant because HYDRA recaptured him and continued experimentation or because he was sleeping with people in Bucharest. It could be A/B/O or an AU where noncon medical experimentation gave him the requisite bits. I like if it is something he has initial shame and apprehension about.

With Shuri, I really love the dynamic that plays out with Bucky. Bucky is much older than her, but she is much more secure and established and confident. She knows her place in the world in a way he really doesn’t. I also love her scientific fascination and desire to fix things—I could really see her want to figure Bucky out, especially when he mysteriously gets pregnant. It would be really interesting to play with the idea of Shuri trying to "fix" Bucky and Bucky playing along with it before eventually having to draw boundaries about while he wants help, he doesn’t really want to be "fixed."

With T’Challa, I’m so fascinated by the moment in Civil War when he decides that he’s going to take Bucky in. T’Challa realizes fairly quickly that Bucky is not personally to blame for the things that he was forced to do. He’s so immediately open and generous with Bucky. I imagine that’s pretty hard for Bucky to take, early on, when he’s still feeling fucked up and guilty about things. He’s also very self-possessed and generally dealing with Big Important things. I could see Bucky being intimidated by that, especially if he’s pregnant and struggling to hide it. Alternately, I could see T’Challa very much situating himself as the unflappable care-taker, especially with Bucky being pregnant, and then there having to be moments where he learns to open up and let Bucky protect him. It would be amazing if there was a moment where Bucky had to be a badass in defense of Wakanda while heavily pregnant.

Character undecided about staying pregnant has miscarriage scare and just wants baby to be okay
This is one of my favorite hurt-comfort tropes and I'd like it with any surrounding narrative. The thing I like so much is that it is a great "you don't know what you want until its gone," and depending on how the miscarriage is suspected, can be this slow mounting horror. Or, it could be that something violent happened to Bucky and he worries he's going to lose the baby. If you like, feel free to make this a long drawn out medical nightmare.

Consensual Loving Feminization of Male Pregnant Character
I love this. I really like when characters who are comfortable in one gender identity are also comfortable being complimented as another gender identity. That is to say, I don't really mean this to be request for Bucky to be trans (though if you're interested in writing about his complicated feelings about his own gender, go for it). It is more about him finding away to think of feminity as positive for himself and a way he can see himself as sexual/powerful. This could be super dirty or very sweet and domestic, I like it all ways.

Courting Pregnant Love Interest
Shuri and/or T'Challa gently pursue Bucky's affections while he's going through his pregnancy! This can obviously go a number of ways and I like all of them.

Customs and Culture Related to Pregnancy/Childbirth
I would love some Wakandan worldbuilding here. Wakanda is a pan-African mishmash of cultures--and that's what I love about it. To my knowledge, Wakanda has been located in a very many number of places: on Niger's South-East Border (Marvel Atlas), on Kenya's North-West border (in a map seen inCA:CW), on the SW border of Uganda (some of the BP art books and in the movie), and probably in a number of other places. They speak a language that's way south of any of those places. The climate isn't right either. But honestly, I love it--Wakanda is part of a pan-Africanist, futurist tradition that's heavily influenced by Africa and Africans, but is really more about what it means to be Black in the context of the Middle Passage. You can use anything you want, basically, and I would happily read it. I love the idea of Bucky carefully learning what childbirth means in this very new place and feeling soothed by both the strangeness of the customs and how they are part of a very similar human experience to watching his mom carry his little sisters.

Love Interest (s) Help Through the Pregnancy Angst
There are so many things for Bucky to angst about! Will he be a good dad? (or mom, if you want to go with that weird like of mine.) How will he recover? Will the baby be evil because HYDRA? is HYDRA coming for him? I love if the way Shuri and/or T'Challa help him is not always actually helpful--I like when the comfort the comforter offers in H/C is limited by their experience and also revelatory about where they are in their own journeys. I love when the relationship evolves and both characters change, through comforting one of the characters.

Dehumanized Character Learns to Be Human for the Baby
I have this great mental image of Bucky having to work really hard to develop self-care and agency because he’s going to be a mom/dad (and that's why this is in just about every section and you might read this sentence a bunch if you go through the whole letter.) Shuri especially seems good for this--she's so enthusiastic about fixing things and fixing people, I'm sure she'd be very up for helping Bucky--maybe too up for it.

Fetishizing Pregnancy Because it Demonstrates Character is Good For Something Other than Killing
I love the idea of Bucky reclaiming his body as something that creates life instead of takes it, does good in the world instead of bad. I think this is especially cool in the context of Wakanda, because he's also learning how to be a person in a very very different place. He is learning new values and he can incorporate what it means to be a Wakandan mother into his new sense of himself.

Other Tags That Appealed:
Mpreg that isn’t Omega Verse, Supportive Friends and Family, Touch-Starved, Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Baby Bump Fluff, Barebacking, Belly Kink, Belly worship, Breastfeeding, complicated feelings about pregnant body, Domesticity, Eloping due to pregnancy, fluffy domestic mpreg, Pregnancy Kink, Pregnancy Experienced As Body Horror But Endured Because The Baby Is Loved, pregnancy-induced horniness, Unplanned Pregnancy, Difficult Pregnancy, Labor/Childbirth at Awkward/Unexpected Time

Captain America

Steve/Bucky

Steve Rogers/pregnant James “Bucky” Barnes, Steve Rogers/James “Bucky” Barnes who is pregnant with someone else’s child, Steve Rogers impregnates James “Bucky” Barnes

For this one, I have a couple different types of tag and thing I would adore! I love some fluffy/porny ideas, about feminization, or comeplay. I love romance ideas, where Steve is being a Good and supporting Bucky through his (ideally) nonconsensually created HYDRA-related pregnancy. I also love the idea of Bucky reclaiming his womb-that-HYDRA-gave-him and deciding to get pregnant.

I’d like a lot of different tones here, from sweet to porny to angsty to meditative.

Also: it would be cool if Steve was the one who was weird, too. Maybe they put something in the serum and Bucky gets pregnant! Maybe this even happens in the forties and then you got the super angst of Bucky in captivity of HYDRA, pregnant with a baby Steve will never meet. Or it can be in the 2010s and be much more lighthearted. Or, and hear me out, what if Steve gets turned into a werewolf and nobody realized that werewolves can get dudes pregnant. I like knots and werewolves and characters struggling with brutality in their own souls.

Bad Guys Capture Ship to Breed Them Because of Super Genes
They are the products of the finest wartime engenieering, now they should make babies for HYDRA. This could happen late in canon, when they're together and trying to rebuild a life post-EG. Or it could happen between CW and IW. Or even, something that would be cool, is if Steve was captured pre TWS because they wanted to breed Bucky and all non-super sperm wasn't working/the babies were miscarrying because of the incompatibility.

Bad Guys Want the Baby
I love the idea of Bucky and Steve chosing to start a family--perhaps possible because it is an A/B/O verse or because HYDRA tried to breed Bucky back in the day--and when gossip starts about it or people find out, suddenly bad guys want the child or try to kidnap Bucky. I love the idea of Bucky doing badass violent things while heavily pregnant. I also love the idea of him getting kidnapped and Steve having to rescue him while terrified for his little family--Bucky makes a great damsel in distress.

This could also be that Bucky is pregnant at the end of TWS and he goes to Steve to help him fend off HYDRA that are trying to retrieve him and his baby. A really interesting dynamic would be one where Bucky is standoffish and cold at first, only having come to Steve for the sake of the baby, and Steve is hurt by this. But then he slowly lets himself acknowledge his love for Steve and it gets sweet.

Character(s) find out about their same-sex-partner-impregnation powers only after the fact
This could be with the werewolf idea above, or with the idea that the super serum makes Steve able to impregnate men, or whatever you want. I love the idea of Bucky getting pregnant during WW2 and them having to deal with that. Maybe they find out before the train and everything goes way AU--I bet the homophobia they'd comfront would be fun and that Bucky would not have a good time trying to carry a baby as a man at that time. If you wanted, even, maybe Bucky gets pregnant in WW2 and then has to figure out a way to abort it because it is impossible. Maybe Bucky gets pregnant then and in their effort to figure out a way to help him, they actually find Wakanda first and T'Chaka's father helps them out.

Or, maybe Bucky gets pregnant in WW2 and does fall off the train. Maybe he keeps the baby and then the baby is born to HYDRA custody, the kid of two supersoldiers. Maybe Bucky doesn't know about him/her and they only find about his/her life and death in files well past Endgame. Maybe they discover him/her sometime in the course of canon after The Winter Soldier. Maybe they discover s/he is another character in canon. Maybe s/he escapes before Bucky does and finds Steve and they rescue Bucky together! There are so many ways you can go with this.

Or, if you want to get Bucky pregnant after TWS/after he comes back to Steve, maybe they didn't get together before the war so they wouldn't know Steve could knock him up anally. This could be a sweet story set in Wakanda or while they are rebuilding their life together post-EG. It could be angsty, where they fuck before Steve left to go back to Peggy--and wouldn't that be a kick in the nuts. It could be angsty because Steve dies in EG! (In those last couple scenarios, feel free to make the fic endgame Bucky/another pairing I request here.)

Or, another idea, is that Steve and Bucky fuck once during the time between TWS and CW. Bucky runs away after and then there's a baby, so when Steve comes to find him in that little apartment in Bucharest, he has a young child with him.

Choosing to Get Pregnant in a way Only Possible Because of Noncon Body Modification
I love this idea, because it has this implicit tragic backstory. HYDRA did something to Bucky to allow him to carry children. Maybe there are babies out there--what happened to them? Or maybe none of the children were viable, because after they did the procedure they found out Bucky's ova would need supersperm to develop. This latter idea means you don't have to deal with sad abandoned/dead children, but it does mean that whatever new pregnancy Bucky comes into might be in the context of repeated miscarriages and harsh punishment for those miscarriages, which is tragic in its own way.

I love Bucky choosing to reclaim what was done to his body and finding meaning in it. Not meaning in the sense that "it was for the best," but meaning that is future-oriented, about what he's going to choose now and what he can create. That's so good for me.

On specific way you could take this is in the context of an A/B/O verse, where Bucky was an Alpha going into HYDRA and he was forcibly turned into an omega there (either through rape if you're going to go with that kink or through medical means). He has to deal with his new designation and everything that might entail socially; he and Steve have to figure out who they are to one another and how their relationship has changed because of this massive event. Bucky has to relearn omega instincts and behaviors he had literally only had in the worst sort of captivity. There's so much potential for drama here!

Consensual Loving Feminization of Male Pregnant Character
I love this. I really like when characters who are comfortable in one gender identity are also comfortable being complimented as another gender identity. That is to say, I don't really mean this to be request for Bucky to be trans (though if you're interested in writing about his complicated feelings about his own gender, go for it). It is more about him finding away to think of feminity as positive for himself and a way he can see himself as sexual/powerful. This could be super dirty or very sweet and domestic, I like it all ways.

Courting Pregnant Love Interest
This seems straightfoward! First time fic! I love this. I especially love thinking about the "why now" question for Steve and Bucky (presuming it is post-TWS). I like fic where they've both been pining and never knew it, but I like a lot of other variations too. Maybe they both kinda knew that they had this possibility between them, but decided not to act on it because it seemed too risky and their friendship was enormously satisfying. Maybe one of them hadn't fully realized he was into dudes yet. Maybe Bucky's experiences with HYDRA introduced him to new ways of thinking about his own sexuality. I'm interested in it all.

Fetishizing Pregnancy Because it Demonstrates Character is Good For Something Other Than Killing
I love the idea of Bucky reclaiming his body as something that creates life instead of takes it, does good in the world instead of bad. I like the idea of building something for himself, creating a new life, and figuring out how Steve is part of it.

A finds out about B's pregnancy and asks B to marry them and be a family
A finds out about B's pregnancy and asks B to marry them and be a family (baby not theirs)
I'm basic: I love marriage. I love commitment. I love the idea that Steve wants to declare to the world that they're a family and they'll stay together and make it work. Feel free to make some angst here with it seeming at first that he's doing it For The Baby and not for Bucky, but I also like just straight up marriage and proposal fic. I would also like if Bucky said no for some reason--maybe he doesn't think it makes sense to make that step, maybe he doesn't fully love Steve like Steve loves him yet. This would be particularly good if they had a past relationship before the war that Bucky remembers, but does not really feel is his quite yet. He has the memory of love, but not the feeling of it, and Bucky thinks marriage is moving way too fast.

Lingerie on a Pregnant Male Body
This is hot, I'm into it--I like the contrast between Bucky's tough, battlescarred skin and delicate lace.

Mpreg as body horror but endured because baby is loved and wanted
I love characters choosing to do hard things for the sake of someone they love. Maybe the pregnancy feels like ongoing violation for him--either because it is because of HYDRA, or because it reminds him of HYDRA, or just because pregnancy is fucking weird. I love the idea that Bucky is an omega and they get pregnant as a part of a socially normative process and it actually is AWFUL and he HATES it in a lot of ways. He feels so aware that there's a person inside of him stealing his resources and it just feels like he's being retraumatized. I bet that would suck. I love the idea of him working through those feelings and enduring (i love that word in the tag, that is my favorite word) because this is something he's choosing, this is a family he is choosing to make for himself.

Non-Consensual Body Modification Lead to Mpreg
Basic premise!

Supporting Their Pregnant Partner (Baby Not Theirs)
I love Steve being solid and supportive, even when Bucky doesn't expect him to be. This could be via HYDRA, but it could also be because Bucky got pregnant in Bucharest or in Wakanda, before he and Bucky got together. I like Steve doing his absolute best, even if it is hard for him in some ways. I like if he doesn't struggle with jealous and I like if he does. One of my favorite things is characters deciding to be better and then doing the work to make it happen, fucking up along the way. I also love if he's sometimes wrong about what support Bucky needs and Bucky has to figure out a way to push back. I like when H/C involves personal growth for both the person hurting and the person comforting.

unaware of pregnancy until first kicks
surprise pregnancy reveals true extent of past noncon body modification
What if Bucky had no idea he could get pregnant! And then, surprise: Steve knocked him up. I love this in part because it is slowly horrifying. Like, omg I'm pregnant? I can get pregnant?.... have I already been pregnant? And then maybe he has and he has to deal with that! Maybe they go try to figure out what happened to Bucky and they have to do a bunch of action-y things while he's heavily pregnant, ignoring Steve thinking he should sit out. Maybe they find traces of a past kid or past sexual assault that Bucky doesn't remember. Maybe he starts to remember or maybe it is like a black hole. I love all of it.

Tags that also appealed:: Baby Bump Fluff, Heightened Sex Drive, Lactation Kink, Difficult Pregnancy, Baby Bump Fluff, Barebacking, Belly Kink, Belly worship, Breastfeeding, complicated feelings about pregnant body, Domesticity, Eloping due to pregnancy, fluffy domestic mpreg, Pregnancy Kink, pregnancy-induced horniness, Unplanned Pregnancy, Pregnant after past abortion, Pregnant at the worst possible time, Tough badass didn’t expect pregnancy to be this hard, Weird Plot Shit, fisting to make the birth easier

Alexander Pierce impregnates James “Bucky” Barnes; HYDRA Agents impregnate James “Bucky” Barnes

Hello, horrible things happening to Bucky! These are some heavy tags, feel free to lean in. I added the "rescued from captivity" tag to also signal that it’s okay if it isn’t just unrelenting torture. Also, generally, what I like about these torture/porny tags is what it means about Bucky’s sense of self/agency and how he copes with the horrible things happening to him. These are definitely things that could be combined with any of my other requests, honestly—I’d be happy to see other ships here, if you want to give Bucky a happy ending after you make his life miserable. I really like the idea of Bucky getting pregnant and then finding ways to protect himself, the baby, and scrape out a little comfort. I really do like the porn, but it is worth saying that I’m also really in this for the feels.

This could end badly! Maybe it is an alternate universe where Bucky gets used as a breeder for the rest of his life. Or, it could end more hopefully--with Bucky escaping and finding a new life for himself. It is in sort of a strange structural position in this letter, because you could very well have these tags and this request be backstory for any of the other pairings: if you want to go with that, knock yourself out, I'd love that. If you want to go with a happy ending type root, I'd prefer you stick to pairings for Bucky I've requested here. I'd also love lingering focus on the actual trauma and what happened to Bucky while he was in HYDRA's hands.

I like Pierce best when he isn't a cackling Bond villain, but instead a guy who is deeply fucked up and misguided but thinks he is doing the best thing for the world. He is ruthless and committed to his ideology, which is that of a Nazi death cult. I ship him with Bucky, in the sense that I think it makes sense to me that Pierce focused on manipulating Bucky in particular as a way of gaining power within HYDRA. I don't really see this as a ship that has a possibility of being healthy or good for Bucky. I like the idea that one of the ways Pierce manipulated Bucky was by occasionally humanizing him and speaking to him like a person--I'm always struck by the dichotomies in their scenes together in the Winter Soldier. Pierce makes an effort to explain his plan and praise Bucky, like you might to a normal superior--but when it doesn't immediately work, he slaps him and sends him to the chair.

There is something really intoxicating about that mixture, about how Pierce has this artifice of respect that underlies a deepcore of dehumanization and objectification. I would love if you explored that and I think using Bucky as a breeder really brings that out. We breed animals and using a person like that is very dehumanizing, but it is also a possible moment where Bucky could find some type of meaning in his life. I love the idea of Bucky finding tiny moments of agency even in the worst circumstances, even when he is barely able to understand what he's doing as agency or himself as a person. Maybe he steals some supplies in the futile hope he'd be able to get the baby. Maybe he doesn't tell the guards he's having contractions. Maybe he tries to kill the baby, so it won't be born to HYDRA. Just anything that has him figuring out he is in a vague, distorted way. One possibility that immediately comes to mind is that they cannot use the chair or put him in cryo when he's pregnant, so he has more time awake and in the same mental timeline than he has in a long time--that might be space for some more personhood developing.

A/B/O Alpha Possessively Impregnates Omega and Then Lets Other Alphas Fuck Them
This is both hot to me and dehumanizing. It also leans on the dynamic I was talking about with Piere and Bucky. Maybe Pierce almost romances Bucky--flatters him, keeps him in his home, keeps him close, until he knows Bucky's pregnant and that no other semen has gotten in there--and then he turns him over completely and no longer gives a shit other than vaguely keeping up with the status of the baby. Maybe he wants to take the baby because his wife is infertile and that's the only reason why he cares that it is his.

Alpha Turned into An Omega Through Rape for Breeding Purposes
Man, I love this kink, whatever it is called (omegatization? forced transformation?). I love the idea that a very basic part of his identity is torn from him. I love, in the context of omegas being on the social hierarchy, him literally being made into a "lesser" type of person whose purpose is to get fucked and bred. I'd love both lingering on the process of this and the aftermath. To what extent does Bucky-as-the-Winter-Soldier understand what happened? How does he learn omega behaviors while in a prison cell? Feel free to add things like nesting/scenting/all that, I like the vast majority of it and don't hate anything (except pups, which is in my DNWs).

Breeding experiment - non-consensual
Tortured While Pregnant
These are sort of built into the previous prompts, but I would like other takes on it too. Purely medical breeding experiments would be interesting, where Bucky isn't even raped--he is just inseminated and left alone to gestate. There is a type of "care" that you give to a labrat that is much more careful than a human prisoner, but also way worse. What is the purpose of the experiments? Why does HYDRA want to breed him? More pliable supersoldiers they can raise from birth, perhaps?

Rescued from Captivity Already Pregnant
Your recovery tag! Feel free to have anyone else I talk about in this sign-up rescue him. And if you want to have specific scenarios for how he might be rescued, I'd suggest looking at the other prompts.

Tags that also Appealed:
Breeding Bench, Everyone But Pregnant Character Reacts to Pregnancy with Joy, Extremely Painful Birth, Gangbang, Forced Pregnancy, Body Horror - nonconsensually modified to allow for pregnancy, Difficult Pregnancy, Dysfunctional Relationships, Restrained While Giving Birth, Weird Plot Shit, Mating Cycles

Marvel Cinematic Universe

Sam/Bucky

Sam Wilson/James "Bucky" Barnes who is pregnant with somebody else's child, Sam Wilson impregnates James "Bucky" Barnes, Sam Wilson/pregnant James "Bucky" Barnes

My love of Sam/Bucky is rooted in them supporting each other past the events of Endgame, so I really would like this fic to be Endgame compliant. Shit went down, the world is radically different, Steve abandoned them both, and they slowly grow to love and support each other. A lot of these prompts are thinking a bunch about Bucky choosing to live a normal life because of/through the pregnancy, and that being hard for him. I imagine that's something that Sam struggles with as well--sure, he was retired, but this dude overthrew the government for a near stranger. These tags are often fluffy/romantic, but feel free to have the tone be angsty/wistful. (I don’t know why I asserted in the optional details that they were definitely fluffy/romantic, I assure you: I do not think noncon medical experimentation is romantic.)

I've said a lot about what I love about Bucky already in this letter, but the short version is that I think that Bucky is an amazing character through which to explore questions of agency and self-creation. He deals with horrible things and enormous trauma, picks himself up, and rebuilds. He's enormously resilient and he has a peacefulness to his soul that really appeals to me--I love that we see him trying to avoid the fight, but knowing it is coming for him.

For Sam, I love the contradictions in his character. He very much presents himself as on top of his shit. He's a caretaker, he supports people, he tells it like it is. He has been through the mud and now he's well-adjusted... or so he presents to the world. At the same time, we have flashes of both his past trauma with Riley (feel free to make him a romantic ex or not, up to you) and the general lunacy that has him running off with Steve at the literal drop of a hat. He's also a guy who signed up to fly experimental gear, and test pilots are adrenaline junkies. But he was the medic who did it! I just find all of this so fascinating and I love the way he's clearly building a person and putting it toward the world.

And Sam and Bucky I like together, because I feel like Bucky brings out the immaturity and playfulness in Sam in a way few other people in canon do--and same with with Bucky, Bucky cracks wise with Sam. They bicker, but in a way that (imo) can be read to show a comfort with each other, or at least, in Civil War, a compatibility. I like that Sam has experience dealing with people with trauma, but I would love especially that Bucky brings out the less professional side of him, the side with feelings, who is over-committed, who can't keep his clinical cool. Or Sam tries to keep his clinical distance, to the detriment of their relationship, and Bucky refuses to have it and forces him to admit that he has feelings too. A pregnancy would be especially huge for that, because I could see Sam really leaning into the "supportive" role and not owning his own feelings about fatherhood, expected or no.

I also love both of them in their position as being left behind by Steve. I have... a lot of feelings about Steve's choice to go back in time in Endgame and I imagine Bucky and Sam both do too. Maybe they both were in love with him, maybe only one of them, maybe neither--either way, they were his friends, and now he's gone. Maybe even they had a poly-ish threesome thing going along. (Any permutation of Steve-feelings is welcome!). But they both chose the future and now they have to build it--a baby could be a terrifying realization that the future is coming like a bullet train and they have to deal with it. It could also be their attempt to really settle in, dig in roots in the present.

(One note about these prompts and Steve is that if there's a bunch of angsting about Steve leaving them, there's a risk it turns into incredibly anti-Steve/cartoonishly asshole Steve (particularly for the prompt where Steve gets Bucky pregnant and then goes to the past, jeez, that is a dick move). And like, it would be perfectly emotionally realistic and healthy for the two of them to end up resenting him quite a bit. I just want to say that I'd prefer for the narrative to make Steve reasonably sympathetic and to put a little thought into why he'd make the choice to leave. I'm fine with the reason being something like homophobia, internalized or otherwise, though, as long as he isn't treated like a horrible villain.)

All of that is compounded by the fact that Bucky and Sam spent that five years together in the Soul Stone. Maybe, at least--canon gave us basically nothing on what being blipped was like. Go without however you will. Were they metaphysically aware of each other somehow? Was it like The Good Place, where they were in a weird town? Maybe they didn't have any consciousness, but now they wake up in a totally fucked up world. What does it mean to choose to have children, post-blip?

Character Finds Out that Recent Captivity and Experimentation Resulted in Their Impossible Pregnancy
I love this tag because it implies that Bucky was recaptured, and that's such a body blow. He had been through so much and then something bad happened to him again? For fuck's sake. I love fatalism and playing with fatalism--and I think that's especially fruitful in the context of a pregnancy. Bucky could easily feel like his life is a hopeless merry-go-round of being tortured, but now there's a baby and there's a future he needs to figure out. And Sam--if they're together before the recapture, man, that's so scary too. He must feel helpless as well, and for a guy that really seems to pride himself on being someone who puts people back together, who helps people, helplessness seems like a nightmare.

Character undecided about staying pregnant has miscarriage scare and just wants baby to be okay
This is one of my favorite hurt-comfort tropes and I'd like it with any surrounding narrative. The thing I like so much is that it is a great "you don't know what you want until its gone," and depending on how the miscarriage is suspected, can be this slow mounting horror. Or, it could be that something violent happened to Bucky and he worries he's going to lose the baby. If you like, feel free to make this a long drawn out medical nightmare.

Choosing To Get Pregnant In a Way Only Possible Because of Noncon Body Modification
(I have other thoughts related to this in the Steve/Bucky request, feel free to look at that--most of this is going to focus on the stuff that's very specific to Sam/Bucky, but a lot of the same stuff can be used here.)
This prompt is so good for me in a Sam/Bucky context, because it is so explicitly them taking the history that Bucky has been subjected to, a history that Sam wasn't part of, and making it something they share together and a life that they are building for each other. I think I'm more drawn to planned pregnancies for this ship than a lot of the others because I just love the way we see both Sam and Bucky work to be well in canon and I want them to do it together, to build something out of wreckage.

Courting Pregnant Love Interest
Dating, I love dating. I love the idea of Sam making a decision like, okay, I like him, I think he likes me, and asking Bucky out. I love them doing this in the context of a past relationship with Steve and however the fuck Bucky got pregnant. If you really want to load up the angst, what if Bucky is pregnant with Steve's baby? I have a prompt up in that request about Steve not knowing he could impregnate people anally: what if he and Bucky have an angsty one time hook up just before Steve fucks off to the past for reasons of trauma, and it leaves Bucky pregnant, and then they have to deal with that? That is a heartbreaking fucking premise and I love the idea of Bucky and Sam slowly figuring out Bucky is pregnant, and who the dad must be, and then building a life for each other anyway, making this baby THEIR baby, even if he's a little bit of Steve they carry with them.

Finally successful after a long time trying to conceive
I mentioned this above, but I love planned pregnancies for this ship because I like them choosing to build something. This is particularly angsty, because I imagine that in most cases, how Bucky can get pregnant is related to HYDRA--so there's this weird conflict, where Bucky wants to get pregnant, can only do it because of torture, and it isn't working so even his torture-womb is defective.

A finds out about B's pregnancy and asks B to marry them and be a family
A finds out about B's pregnancy and asks B to marry them and be a family (baby not theirs)
(I have other thoughts related to this in the Steve/Bucky request, feel free to look at that.)
I don't want to repeat myself too much, but: choosing each other, choosing a future, choosing marriage, making a family. Yes, please, thank you.

Labor/Childbirth at Awkward/Unexpected Time
Pregnant at the worst possible time
I love the idea of them coping with annoyance and difficulty. Maybe they're on the run or on a mission, and whoops pregnant/baby. Maybe they're still trying to deal with the threats to Sam's status of Captain America, they're buddy-fucking and, whoops pregnant while on the run. The birth at an awkward time is great too, because I love the image of Bucky kicking ass while having contractions and/or giving birth stoicly silently while hiding/or any variation of this that inspires you.

Pregnant Character Continues Canonical Perilous Activity Despite Pregnancy
Pregnant Character Decides to Stop Canon-Typical Perilous Activity Permanently Because of Baby
Pregnant Character Uses Pregnancy As Excuse To Avoid Canonical Violence They Never Liked Anyways
I put all three of these, because I like all these variants and all of the things they say about Bucky. I don't know what choice he'd make, but I'm interested in all of them. What cause is important enough that he keeps up the fight? Is he secretly hoping to lose the baby/is it self-harm? Is he in a somewhat desperate situation where he has to fight? Is he horribly worried about the baby, but he needs to do the fighting for really important reasons? Does he have to rescue Sam?

In terms of the ones where he stops, I love the idea of Bucky finally deciding that like, no. The fight is over. I'm going to do everything I can to ensure the fight is over. And then making that happen. It will always be in the context of knowing that things could end in a fight, but he works hard to do it. And maybe slowly starts to believe that he can have peace when things stay okay for a long time.

And for Sam! Maybe Sam is totally okay with Bucky retiring, but then he misses him out there. Maybe, even, he tries to retire and he thinks he can go back to counseling--but he finds he misses it/struggles with it way more than he thought he would, and what kind of adrenaline junky asshole wouldn't do everything he can to stay alive for his baby?

Supporting Their Pregnant Partner (Baby Not Theirs)
I have thoughts about Sam as a supportive character above!

Mpreg that isn't Omega Verse
I didn't put this tag because I DNW omega-verse or anything, but I really do like the noncon body modification stuff. If you want to go for a different angle, maybe there's some way in which Bucky is pregnant via soul stone?

surprise pregnancy reveals true extent of past noncon body modification
unaware of pregnancy until first kicks
Go look at the Steve/Bucky request above--I have very similar thoughts about Bucky's emotional journey here about a surprise pregnancy. For Sam, I'd love if this was complicated by maybe he never wanted kids or in some way is also ambivalent about kids, and he has to figure it out very suddenly with Bucky. He could also be happy with it, but that's a journey that appeals to me!

Additional Tags that Appeal
Baby Bump Fluff, Barebacking, Belly Kink, Belly worship, Breastfeeding, complicated feelings about pregnant body, Domesticity, Eloping due to pregnancy, fluffy domestic mpreg, Pregnancy Kink, Pregnancy Experienced As Body Horror But Endured Because The Baby Is Loved, pregnancy-induced horniness, Unplanned Pregnancy, Pregnant after past abortion, Secret abduction and noncon medical experimentation revealed when the pregnancy becomes evident

Tony/Bucky

Tony Stark/James "Bucky" Barnes who is pregnant with somebody else’s child

I really like this ship because of all their loaded history and terrible backstory. I don’t really see it as a fluffy ship, but that’s what I like about it. I get the sense that especially during Civil War, Tony uses Bucky as a way to focus all his more generalized rage and anger about the death of his parents. He’s also really loaded emotionally for Tony because he’s a source of pain about how quickly Steve turned on him and prioritized Bucky. That has got to really sting. And from Bucky’s perspective, he must feel enormous guilt about Tony—but at the same time, be kinda pissed off at him. I think it would be justifiable and even healthy for Bucky to get to a point where while he understands why Tony might hate him, he resents being fully blamed for something that he had undergone through torture.

My basic tags here are Bucky going to Tony out of desperation. This could happen anywhere on the timeline, really. Tony has a lot of resources—maybe Bucky comes to turn himself in after CW, because this is an AU where T’Challa doesn’t offer Wakanda as a safe haven. Something might happen before and Bucky ends up thinking that Tony is the only one that can help. Maybe he’s trying to do the pregnancy on his own and there’s a massive medical complication and he needs advanced scientific expertise (and for some reason Shuri isn’t an option.) I could see a lot of plot devices to get Bucky to need Tony and I love the idea of that dynamic, with Bucky being in the less powerful position but much more cagey and guarded and hard to figure out than Tony. There both such complicated figures and I love it

Begging for Help From an Unlikely Source Because of the Baby See above!

Bad Guys Want The Baby
Bucky escaped as the Winter Soldier to the most advanced scientific person he knows of, because he knows it is very difficult to get the baby to term! Maybe even the Stark name rings a little bell, but neither of them know at first that Bucky killed Tony’s parents.

Dehumanized Character Learns to Be Human for the Baby
I have this great mental image of Bucky having to work really hard to develop self-care and agency because he’s going to be a mom/dad and I would love to see how Tony interacts with that, especially since Tony has so many complicated feelings about his own parents and (obviously) Bucky is an extremely loaded figure in terms of Tony’s parents.

Hiding Pregnancy From Others
Maybe Bucky goes to Tony because he needs help and for some reason he needs to hide it from Wakandans and/or Steve! Maybe he’s concerned Steve would react badly for some reason or just is ashamed—whereas Tony has no respect for him, so who cares if Tony thinks he’s disgusting? I love the idea that Bucky goes to Tony precisely because Tony thinks he’s barely a person and that’s what Bucky is looking for.

Male pregnancy dangerous; pregnant man determined to see it through anyway
Pregnant through medical experimentation and super protective of the baby
Both of these tags have a similar framing of "bad things happened to 'Bucky, but Bucky is focused on the baby. I like the idea of him extremely protective and filtering all his decisions through what is best for his child, to the point where he doesn’t consider himself. I’d love that backfiring somehow and becoming a problem—even if it is possibly the only reason why Tony considers helping him at first. I could see Tony finding something very enthralling about a guy so clearly prioritizing his kid, when Tony’s dad definitely didn’t do that — I’m not saying Tony’s dad was abusive, though you can write him that way if you want, but he didn’t prioritize Tony as first in all things and Tony might be attracted to the fact that Bucky does. But of course, you don’t need to do that to be a good parent and maybe Bucky learns that he has to respect himself too.

Pregnant while on the run/a fugitive
Pregnant In Times of War/Conflict/Danger
I like the idea of Bucky in physical danger while pregnant!

pretending to be the father to help pregnant person
This is a specific trope I like! I like the idea of Tony lying and telling people that Bucky is having his baby as a way to give him cover—maybe this is in an A/B/O verse where alphas can take omegas totally under their protection and then the law can’t touch them.

Additional Tags that Appeal
Fear of Being a Bad Parent, Difficult Pregnancy, Pregnant at the worst possible time, Dysfunctional Relationship.

The Folly of the World

Jan Tieselen impregnates Sander Himbrecht

The thing I love about this fandom is how fucking weird an twisted it is. The setting is just phenomenal, with the most glorious creepy set-piece of the aftermath of a flood which is said to have killed 10,000 people. The characters are compelling, deeply fucked up, and with totally dysfunctional relationships. There’s reasons to find each of them completely fascinating for me. Sander has a canonical breathplay kink and we meet him as he is about to be executed, but he’s getting off on the idea of being hanged from the neck. His canonical lover, Jan, always thinks he knows exactly what he’s doing and that he is in control of everything around him.

Sander, especially on first impression, seems like someone Jan would chew up and spit out, but the very strong impression I got from the first part of the novel is that Jan sincerely (in his fucked up way) cares about Sander. Jan thinks of him as a partner. But at the same time, Jan is 100% a monster by the end of the novel. How does that all go when there's a very scary baby involved? Does Jan really creepily take of care Sander, mostly focused on the scary monster baby?

My tags here are a wee bit spoilery, but the basic thought is that lean into the horror and the weird giant themes here. I love post-canon ideas of all kinds, but you could also go AU somewhere during the time Sander is at Dordrecht! In general, I’d really love to know more about the evil that’s haunting the edges of the novel. What is this power that is controlling Dordrecht? What does it mean? As I was daydreaming about it, I was having all sorts of crazy ideas about how maybe it is the beginnings of modern capitalism/climate changes, but idk, maybe it is just an Elder God. And, perhaps this is really weird, but I think a good way to know it is for that power to get Sander pregnant.


Pregnancy has so many meanings, culturally and personally, and I think it would be a great way to explore how Sander has changed, what the change has done to him, how Jan is both still the guy who was Sander's lover and the guy who is somehow an avatar of whatever dark power is lurking around.

Feel free to keep the tone of the fic the nearly surrealistic weirdness of the book, or add more SF/F style worldbuilding where you do more explaining. I like both!

With this fandom, there’s so little fic that honestly anything goes. Write anything that inspires you with the following tags. Follow your weird horror bliss.

Pregnant with an Eldritch Being to Birth the New World Order
I love the idea that Sander gets pregnant with literally (?) the New World Order, with the beginnings of modern capitalism, with the growth of colonialism. It's weird, but feel free to pick some historically significant metaphor and have Sander pregnant with that. It doesn't in any way be a tidy allegory and some conceptual messiness is a plus, actually.

Alternately: it could be a more horror style Eldritch God new world order. That would be awesome--he'd be giving birth to a literal monster. Does he have tender feelings for it? Does he know he's giving birth to a monster?

Impregnated by Eels
Like tentacles but with teeth and wow, that's horrifying in a way I want to read more of! I love extreme penetration, fuck him up and put a scary baby in him.

Body Horror
Very good.

Powerful Fetus Exerts Mind-Control on Pregnant Character from the Womb
One of my favorite things about the novel was the way that Sander's mental health was played with. Is he hallucinating or is he being gaslit by the people around him or is some seriously supernatural shit happening? I'd love the fetus to get on that game of fucking with Sander.

Mpreg that isn't Omega Verse
I don't outright DNW omegaverse here, and I'd love to see how you imagine that working in the setting of the novel, but I am very interest in the eldrich horror element.

Additional Tags
Probably a lot of horror/kink tags go here, but the one I'm kicking myself for not actually requesting is: Horror and Fluff, because that would be very fun to play with here. Sander and Jan are playacting normal couple with a pregnancy, Sander gets fucked with in terms of gender feelings (how is he the wife? he is the wife?) and also the fact that it is a MONSTER BABY POSSIBLY MADE OF EELS.