Background to "I'm the Mother and the Father"

Background to “I’m the Mother and the Father?”
By Michael A. Ivins

My first effort at writing a Fanfic was the story “A Big Help.” I haven’t finished posting that one because I get too easily sidetracked into new stories. I’m not going to give the whole story here, but I do suggest you read what I do have posted on www.mediaminer.org .

In that story there is a scene where Ranma is talking to Dr. Tofu. Our favorite sex-changing martial artist has gotten numerous medical tests to see how complete the change to female is (or just how “female” his girl side is.) He also wants to know if the curse has changed his male side.

Ranma was told that his male side is a normal teenage boy and able to do anything that any other teenaged boy can do. That would include having sex with a girl and get her pregnant. The girl side is completely female all the down to the genetic level. In that form the only thing still male about Ranma would be her mind. The body would even be able to have sex with a boy and become pregnant.

While our aquatransexual was uncomfortable with the idea of sex with a boy, the doctor brought up another possibility. Obviously the only way Ranma’s boy and girl sides could have sex with each other was if they were split, but the doctor who evaluated the test results had another thought. If girl Ranma was artificially inseminated with sperm from boy Ranma then a pregnancy could result.

I didn’t pursue the idea further in that story, but I couldn’t let go of the idea. From the concept of Ranma getting herself pregnant deliberately through artificial insemination I move on to wonder if was a way for her to get pregnant accidentally.

It was that speculation that led to writing of the story “I’m the Mother and the Father.” It was originally was just going to be a one-shot. The concept was that Ranma was alone in the bath. He was thinking about a naked Akane, became aroused and started to masturbate. As Ranma was nearing orgasm Nabiki ignored the sign that said the bath was occupied and stepped to find the boy so busy that he didn’t notice a naked Nabiki. The middle Tendo thought it would be good for a laugh if she splashed Ranma while he was jerking off.

The whole point of the story was that Ranma was right in the middle of an orgasm with sperm ready to shoot. When Ranma became female that sperm didn’t transform and was taken inside to her uterus where it fertilized an egg that was ready. I was deliberately vague on the subject of why there was an egg there and whether girl Ranma had experienced a period.

The choice of Nabiki was not a reasoned out one, but in retrospect she is the only one who would serve. If Akane walked into the bath to find Ranma masturbating, she’d either flatten him with Mallet-Sama or she’d run from the room. To do otherwise would be OOC for her. If Kasumi were the one to walk in on Ranma she would probably just say “Oh my” and leave him to his privacy. Depending on how I was writing her, She might linger a while to watch or else leave immediately as soon as she realized what Ranma was doing. Again, for her to do otherwise would be OOC.

However, I can easily imagine the Nabiki created by Takahashi Rumiko being mischievous enough to splash Ranma in the middle of masturbation. It would appeal to her sense of humor. From there I was taking liberties with the character by having her engage in lesbian sex with girl Ranma at that point.

It was mainly needed for two reasons. The first was to keep Ranma in girl form long enough for the sperm to fertilize the egg in her womb. The second was to give Nabiki an additional reason to feel guilty over Ranma’s “condition.”

When I posted the first chapter of the story that was all I had intended to write. You could say the writing and posting of that chapter was a sort of catharsis for me. It got the idea out of my head and into a form that I and other people could read.

But then a curious thing happened. I started getting reviews from people liked the idea and wanted to know what happened next. So I wrote more chapters to explain how Ranma and the rest of the NWC dealt with Ranma’s pregnancy. I even surprised myself by putting in a running joke. Most people, when they first heard that Ranma was pregnant, assumed Ryoga was the father. Then when Ryoga hears about it he asks Ranma, “Are you trying to seduce me?”

The story as it will appear in this blog is slightly revised from what is posted on mediaminer.org. Occasionally I need a break from the story I’m currently working on and in those occasions I may re-read some of my older works. When I do that I can’t help fixing spelling and grammar mistakes.

When I first started writing I also had the tendency to write long stretches of dialog with many quotes but not properly identifying who was speaking. When even the author of a piece can read over his own work and get confused as to who is talking, you know there is a problem.

It is my hope that by posting my stories on this blog I can get more detailed feedback that the reviews on the story site. Most people seem to feel compelled to keep their comments brief. I am inviting any and all people who read this story and others on this blog to make detailed comments. What do you like, what do you hate? Where do you see holes in the story and how to you think those holes could be fixed?

Hopefully after I’ve had a few opinions on my stories I can post revised and improved versions on the story site.