The Magical Pregnancy: A Narrative and Biological View · 8:47am Jun 16th, 2013
The Magical Pregnancy
A Narrative and Biological View
In many shipping stories, there is a tendency for the "babies ever after" ending, or for the subject of children to come up and be important. Given the prominence of same-sex pairings in fanfiction, particularly in My Little Pony fanfiction, this often gives rise to the idea of the magical pregnancy, where two people of the same sex magically have a child which is biologically both of their own.
Unfortunately, very often, this is completely handwaved and arbitrary, simply a means of accomplishing an end, and this is a bad thing; "A wizard did it" tends to be bad writing. Resolving problems with magic tends to be awkward because it is arbitrary; there's no real problem solving to be had there, at least none that the audience will readily accept.
As such, it tends to be an uninteresting option unless there is something about the wizard doing it which is interesting, or if the focus isn't on that. "Twilight/Luna/Celestia magically makes them pregnant" is just a hand wave and it can pull people out of the story easily unless there is a good reason for it.
So how should this be addressed?
BIOLOGICAL ISSUES
Living organisms are hideously complicated compared to inanimate objects; even computers are orders of magitude simpler than human beings. As such, creating life is actually a pretty difficult task - moving the sun and moon is only a matter of power, whereas creating life is a matter of extreme complexity. As such, "Celestia can move the Sun" isn't actually much of an argument for the ability to create life via magic - indeed, it is far simpler, and given the limits of power that Celestia appears to have, moving the Sun probably doesn't use THAT much magic. Is she powerful? Sure, but she is far from omnipotent, and it isn't even clear if she is more magically powerful than Twilight is. Knowledgeable, perhaps, but Twilight has pulled off magic on a scale exceeding anything we've seen Celestia do save raising the Sun, which has unclear power requirements.
Now to be fair, working with existing things is much easier, which is why this is how we have created all life that we have made in the real world. If you do this, then you are mostly just cheating nature in some way, rather than doing anything nearly as impressive.
There are, however, some very large barriers here.
The first major barrier is the fact that one of the rules of magic is that it seems to be temporary in nature, especially as relates to transformative magic. Set something on fire and it is gone, but if you try to change something's form, it appears to be inherently temporary - in the case of Twilight turning her parents into potted plants, the transformation went away when Twilight ceased to feed it with her magic. Trixie and Twilight's transformations in Magic Duel were both highly temporary in nature, lasting for only a very short period of time before they were reversed. Even the Elements of Harmony appear to be so bound - both Discord and Nightmare Moon recovered in a thousand years (roughly) from being banished to the moon and turned to stone by the most powerful magic in Equestria.
This is -very bad- if you're trying to create a life form, because if the magic reverses itself, then the creature will almost certainly die (possibly horrifically). If the magic needs to be sustained for it to remain up, then that makes it even less likely - there's no point in turning someone into a stallion in this way.
A second major barrier is that it is unclear that you can change the underlying nature of things. Transforming someone into a stallion may not actually transform them, genetically speaking, into a stallion - while you can make any female cell out of a male, females lack Y-chromosomes, and as such, the reverse is not guaranteed - so even if you did turn a mare into a stallion, they might not be fertile. It may not even change their underlying structure all that much, merely their outward form, which would make it even less useful.
A third barrier is the lack of precision. Manipulating something as small as a cell would be an incredibly precise task, much less the even more precise task of manipulating DNA. We have never seen them do anything nearly so precise in the show. This level of control may be outright impossible for them to achieve; they may not be able to do things on this level.
A fourth barrier is power. It is heavily implied that transformation magic requires an enormous amount of magical power; only the highest level unicorns are capable of doing it, and Trixie could only do it with the aid of the Alicorn Amulet, which bolstered her power level to Twilight-like levels. Even still, none of the transformations on living creatures persisted for very long - they were all dispelled shortly thereafter, or in the case of Twilight's magical accident, the transformation was reversed when Twilight's magic was calmed. Even if it is technically possible, only a handful of magic users in Equestria are likely capable of the power necessary to do so - though the fact that Luna, Celestia, and Twilight ALL know (or are members of) the main cast does help.
A final barrier is simple lack of knowledge. There's no clear evidence that anyone has ever done this before, nor is it clear what level of scientific knowledge is present in Equestria (though given the presence of various technologies, it seems not unreasonable to suggest that they have knowledge comparable to early 20th century humans). This is, however, pretty sharply limited knowledge of biology, and knowledge of the necessary magic may not exist at all, requiring a great deal of experimentation and research... though on the other hand, it is possible that others have played god in the past, and such a spell already exists.
MAGICAL NON-TRANSFORMATIVE APPROACHES
Given the limitations on the longevity of magical transformations, it seems a non-transformative approach is likely to be optimal.
Perhaps the simplest approach is a barely magical one at all - the use of in-vitro fertilization. While in the real world it was not achieved until 1978, in principle it isn't anything that is terribly difficult to do. While it would not allow two stallions or two mares to have a biological child, it would be possible to extract sperm and egg cells magically, use magic to put them together, then implant them into a mare using magic. While in the real world it is more complicated than this, it isn't unreasonable that with the ability to manipulate such objects that it could be done, and given that the sperm could be handled in bulk, this would only require the precision for the egg cell extraction - difficult, certainly, but not totally insane, especially given that it merely needs to be moved around. Another bonus here is that transformation magic is unnecessary - mere telekinesis suffices, and it also means that the mares don't have to have sex with the stallion - or even know who the donor was, if it makes them uncomfortable.
In terms of biological children of one or more partners, things get more complicated from here on out. The odds of success also go down dramatically - even with modern technology, IVF has a fairly high failure rate, and other forms of cloning have extremely high failure rates (99%+ in many cases - especially on first attempts in a given organism).
The second approach would be cloning - basically making someone give birth to a clone of themselves (or possibly their partner). This is a more advanced technique, not done on mammals until the late 1990s, and still not perfected as of today. In the real world, the process is actually very difficult because we basically have to pull DNA out of an egg cell, get DNA from some other source for implantation, then implant said DNA, then make the cell think that it has been fertilized by a sperm cell and start developing into an embryo properly. This is a pretty difficult thing to do, requires a lot of knowledge, and needs a significant level of finesse - among other issues, the entry of the sperm cell is actually important as far as development goes, so simulating this is pretty important. It also doesn't help that DNA implanted in this way is "old" DNA, not produced by meiosis.
The third approach, and the only one that would generate actual biological children from both parents, is the use of magic to merge two egg cells, or at least the genetic material from two egg cells. One possibility here would be to fertilize an egg cell, then extract the extant DNA and insert the DNA of the parents. Alternatively, DNA could be removed from one egg cell and put into another one, completing the "whole" without requiring magical meiosis, which would be incredibly complicated. The resultant fertilized egg would then be jolted with directional current to simulate fertilization (again a precise thing to do), and then implanted into a mare as before. Merging egg cells would be similar, but might have unanticipated (probably fatal for the embryo) side effects, though you might get lucky, but this is yet another possibility.
Note that as long as the only parents are females, any child that results would be female 100% of the time.
TRANSFORMATIVE APPROACHES
Transformation is practically cheating, as it is so simple to do things this way. Moreover, given the apparent temporal limitations on transformation magic in Equestria, this may not work at all. Still, there are some possibilities here.
Cloning may be easier in Equestria than in the real world. Rather than going through all that trouble, a cell could instead be youthened back to an embryonic state and implanted, thus developing into a foal. While this would still have some of the issues with using "old" DNA (which are largely unknown), this could potentially avoid some of the fiddliness, and we DO know that age spells exist - though they are not, it would seem, permanent. Still, there may be some potential here either way.
Another approach transforming one of the mares into a stallion. Beyond being unsatsifying and far too obvious, it seems unlikely to actually work given the limitations of magic in Equestria - and it seems like it would have been done a great deal previously, something we have no evidence for.
A third approach is a smaller scale approach, transforming an egg cell into a sperm cell. This is a smaller scale approach and may be easier to make function properly than a whole body transformation, which is likely not designed for such shenanigans.
CREATION MAGIC
Creation magic is one of those fields where it goes from playing god to BEING god. Again, because of the directness of this approach, like transformation magic, it is "too easy" and it also can lead to various issues of fridge logic (if they can do this, why can't they do X?).
More or less, this is creating a child from scratch (or possibly by drawing on some sort of "essence" from the parents) and implanting the result into one of the parents (or possibly creating them outright, though that treads rather heavily on the line of extreme power).
NARRATIVE ISSUES
So given all of the above, what is the best approach?
The answer is "What suits the story."
If the focus is well after the conception, then it is more acceptable to gloss over or even never really address HOW it was done, because the focus is on the now. Note that even still, any sort of magical backstory is likely to pull attention to itself, but in such cases simply glossing over it entirely (or making it a noodle incident, possibly an embarrassing one) can help to avoid breaking suspension of disbelief.
If a story is dealing with being gay and not being able to have shared biological children, magic is an "easy out", and as such tends to remove conflict unless the magic is somehow imperfect itself. Maybe it is highly experimental and there is no guarantee of success or safety. Maybe there is a high possibility of miscarriage (which may itself require the implantation of multiple embryos to reduce the likelihood of a completely failed pregnancy, which itself raises the possibility of getting "lucky" and ending up with twins, triplets, or even quadruplets - when you only wanted one). Maybe the worry is that the magic will "wear off" somewhere down the line and kill their little one, possibly after it is born. In any case, if magic is an option, it needs to be a real "option", with advantages and disadvantages of its own - it may not even be guaranteed to work, and require years of study, potentially meaning that the choice is that even if it does work, it may not be available for a decade, if ever, meaning that the other choices are much more immediate. Most of the time, mundane alternatives are more interesting here unless there is some reason to delve into magic - they both really want a biological child for familial or other reasons, or they otherwise feel that the other solutions bother them (maybe they would feel awkward about having a stallion involved, maybe adoption isn't a possibility due to societal prejudice, maybe they need to carry on the family business and magic runs in lines, maybe they're just worried that they wouldn't love a non-biological child enough).
Obviously if it is a clop story, it is going to involve whatever particular fetish the author wants to explore.
If it is a philosophical story, it may examine the ethics of "playing god" in this manner. It may be that this was done long ago, and is no longer done because it is considered unethical, or because there are horrible side effects which may (but do not always) occur. Maybe Luna and Celestia have hidden such knowledge. Maybe only magically conceived children can become alicorns... or maybe it is possible for such children to have no magic at all, or the wrong type of magic (a unicorn without a horn, an earth pony with pegasus magic, or a pegasus who can't fly because they have unicorn or earth pony magic), or some odd mixture of magic which causes them problems. Maybe there are other issues involved, such as infertility of the offspring. Perhaps the very unnatural nature of such offspring disturbs society, or the idea that life should not be tampered with in this way is deeply culturally ingrained.
Another possibility for discomfort is the very involvement of a third party. Twilight, Celestia, and Luna are likely the only characters in the series capable of magic of this level, and it would most likely fall to Twilight with her love for original research. If Twilight is not one of the characters involved, however, it may be awkward in some ways for those involved - what role does Twilight play in all this? Is the person performing the magic a parent as well, in a sense (or possibly even a literal sense?). It might even require that TWILIGHT has to be the one to carry the foal, so that she can maintain magic on it constantly, leading to even more issues if Twilight is not a member of the couple - or alternatively, they might use another unicorn mare (Rarity) as a surrogate as well for similar reasons, even if she could not do the magic herself.
Whatever is done, it should be done with the idea that the narrative is what is most important in mind. Simply having them have magical babies because you want them to is weak, glurgy writing, and should be avoided. Remember the lesson of Chekov's gun - if something is in the story, it should have a purpose.
RELATED STORY HOOK
One potential unrelated-to-shipping hook this allows for is the idea that, long ago, someone in Equestria did exactly this - they cheated reality and made two mares give birth to a child. That child is now the ancestor of many in Equestria, but either ponies are literally falling apart, or Twilight discovers that the collapse of the magical transformation which gave rise to many modern Equestrians is approaching, and now they need to find some way to fix things before many ponies fall apart on the most fundamental of levels or have their existences negated entirely due to their impossibility.
Wow, this was a very well-thought-out and enlightening approach to a rather true and overdone theme in shipping fics. It also provides the seeds for many an interesting plot twist/hook, which all conflict should do. Excellent work! Well done!
There are soooooo many possibilities with this line of thinking...
1154023
) so these sorts of things are the sort of thing I think about because I am a GIANT NERD. 
But also because they are interesting and, I think, frequently overlooked but have some actual potential as story hooks.
I'm glad you found it interesting. I'm actually a biomedical engineer IRL (well, that's what I majored in in college - I am actually a game designer by profession
Though I'm not sure how many people here want to write stories where these sorts of things happen, or are brought up as possibilities, even though the possibility for drama is endless.
Then again, given how many stories seem to enjoy taking poor Rainbow Dash's wings, maybe I am giving people here too much credit.
1154027
I can definitely tell you have a good background for the type of information you provided. I mean, the kind of extrapolations and facts you're spitting out wouldn't be the layperson's obvious jump to conclusions or within an easy-read Google search. But you were still able to provide a succinct and informative article which addresses some very real problems in shipping fiction in particular and fanfiction in general (and even to a lot of published fiction). It's funny, I majored in Game Design (programming primarily) and ended up as a server admin--funny where life leads ya'. I couldn't take the math which Game Design required and went the (in my mind) way easier path--I don't regret it, but I can't help but feel a little stab of envy when I hear about people designing games. I guess I get a little of that thrill of creation when writing campaign information for tabletop RPGs.
Since you're obviously good at expressing yourself (as evidenced in the comments we've exchanged and your blog post, etc.), I'm wondering why you haven't 'dipped your quill' so to speak? You have some great ideas and I'd definitely read any work you posted. Any particular reason you haven't written your own story yet?
1154048
I have some ideas. I think my favorite idea is a certain Rarity story which was semi-suggested to me by a friend... but the problem is that any time I spend writing fanfiction is time that I don't spend doing my real work... which is also writing.
So I really have no excuse to write fanfiction.
I suspect that I will give in within a month and end up writing something anyway. I have a document with a bunch of story ideas. I have a fake set of several season 4 episodes, I have a Rarity story that a friend sort of half-suggested during a conversation, I have a MMC story (basically "what happened to the main cast to lead them to their roles in that episode") but I'm not sure if I want to write it (even though I find it an interesting subject area), I have a story that giving away the premise of would spoil, I have a terrible idea for a story involving Luna having to babysit for the foals of the Mane Six while they go off to save Equestria, I have a story idea about pony souls, I have a bunch of ideas about the nature of pegasus and earth pony magic that I am sure would be interesting stories (as well as sort of going into the fact that Unicorns aren't the only ponies who have magic, and how the other ponies mostly don't properly explore what they CAN do) but I have to actually make some sort of reasonable plot out of them... I have some thoughts relating to THIS post but I don't know how I would incorporate them into a story that people would want to read, and I'm not THAT interested in writing an actual shipfic (amusingly).
Really the problem is that some of them just seem like the sort of thing which will take a lot of work to complete to my personal satisfaction, and realistically speaking I should instead be working on stuff that I actually can make money on.
The most likely story is actually the one about Rarity's "perfect date" - a real one, this time, with Sterling Silver, a young gentlecolt from Canterlot who takes her out on her dream date. And Rarity NOT falling in love with him, and trying to figure out why.
Of course, writing stories like this is probably a more fruitful use of my time than half the stuff I do.
But only once I've actually gotten a bunch of stuff done that I need to do, so that I can legitimately label it as entertainment, rather than me putting off getting stuff done.
Wow. That was really informative and insightful. I have family who've dealt with in vitro (and had twins with complications) so I knew some of this but... wow.
If I were to critique the article I would say: You forgot Cadance, fanonically the Alicorn of Love. If any of the Princesses knows a fertility spell, it would be her. (which does not fundamentally change the availability of such magics, if we only add her to the list)
The other thing I would suggest is this: Sanderson's First Law, from Brandon Sanderson's webpage. He's a well-known fantasy author, (the guy who finished The Wheel of Time) as well as a professor of English. If you (or anyone reading this) were unaware of it, you should check it out real quick. It's short.
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Honestly, I think that if I was going to actually go into the mechanics of magic of the MLPverse (and I might write an article on this subject, as well as various musings), I would actually suggest that fertility magic would be Earth pony magic if anything. They already are the folk who bring life from the good earth. Though obviously doing something as unnatural as making two mares bear a foal would go beyond the bounds of what earth pony magic alone could do.
From a more thematic stance, you could have it be all three types of magic - the unicorn magic allows you to take their essences and combine it, pegasus magic grants the spark of life (literally), while earth magic takes that seed of life, nurtures it, and allows it to grow.
It being alicorn magic (in the sense that it is all types of magic) would certainly make some sense, at least. Though goodness knows that alicorns need to be even more godlike. They already raise the sun and the moon and live forever, once you start creating life there's no turning back.
And while I have never heard Sanderson's Law be called that, and the idea indeed predates him, it is entirely true - this is part of why rules magic is so popular in fiction. It is a part of the general rule of avoiding deus ex machinas.
I will note that in my own (personal) settings, magic very often has pretty strict rules because I am a scientist at heart. I greatly enjoy things like FMA for similar reasons. But I'm a terrible person like that.
1155465 I've noticed that the show tends to avoid using magic to solve problems, except for the magic of friendship. Usually individual spells either create problems, or simply undo problems created by other magic, without addressing the core problem.
Lesson Zero is the best example: While Celestia does use magic to clean up Twi's mess, the entire mess only existed because of Twi's Want It Need It spell. So the core problems, Twi's obsessiveness and her friends' dismissal of her feelings, were not solved by magic at all but by friendship.
1155500
This is very true. The show itself uses soft magic, and very much so. Which is why if you're trying to be true to the spirit of the show, you wouldn't actually use magic for conception most likely (or you'd be telling a story about something else and handwave it, as they do with the cloudwalking spell in Sonic Rainboom; the magic there doesn't solve any problems, and actually helps cause it in the form of Rarity being vain).
This is why magic is very often a MacGuffin when it is used to solve a problem in shows like this; in three of the four adventure episodes, the central conflict is getting to the magical MacGuffin that saves the day. The fact that the MacGuffin's magic is soft is really irrelevant, as the story is about actually getting to it (or accessing it, in the case of the Return of Harmony) rather than the magic itself.
Interestingly, Boast Busters worked okay despite the softness of magic simply because it was accepted that Twilight was really good at magic, so it wasn't like it wasn't foreshadowed. Likewise with Lesson Zero, where a deus ex machina happened but wasn't really the focus of the story (though it is true that narratively the only reason that the story worked was because it was about Twilight's breakdown with established characters; as a stand-alone, that episode would suck).
The one problem is that it DOES lead to various logical inconsistencies from time to time. Twilight seems to forget she can teleport sometimes, for instance, but remember at others - this is particularly noticeable in Feeling Pinkie Keen, where she could have teleported across the gap but apparently forget that she could. Thus while the story itself is internally consistent, it isn't really consistent across the series, which is a problem Harry Potter had as well, particularly in the latter books - the seventh book in particular being particularly terrible about it, introducing the concept of wand mastery out of nowhere. Fortunately MLP mostly avoids the sort of problems that you -can- solve with magic alone (really they probably happen, but entirely offscreen; there isn't much of an episode when Twilight says "Aha!" and casts a spell that solves the problem, or Celestia just appears and wins).
This is why the real best solution is the mundane one in these cases, unless you actually want to focus on the ethics of such things or have some other good reason for it.
1155670 I've only read one fic that even addressed magical pregnancy, and I would describe the treatment of the topic as 'sloppy,' in an otherwise excellent series. Not much to go on.
Outside of shipping stories, however, I tend to assume that all the ponies are straight, so it doesn't come up there, and most shipping stories never get that far.
and Dash and 'Shy would adopt, IMHO.
1155680
Poor Scootaloo. Your parents never show up so everyone assumes you are an adorable orphan.
1155709 It a cliche over in the Flutterdash group.
So... I can't use magic without a reason for it?
Or can I use it as a calculate risk know for both parents?
I read once about the magic of love and how it does mix the essence of both and give it to one of them. Is it valid acording to this article?
1160107
The question is:
Will this make the story more interesting?
Every divergence you make from reality makes suspension of disbelief that much harder to hold to, more or less.
Thus it is a cost benefit analysis: does the presence of a divergence from reality improve the story more than the damage it does to suspension of disbelief? WILL it disrupt suspension of disbelief, or will it feel natural as a part of the story?
In the end, that's the real question you have to answer. Anything else is secondary.
1160169 I'm going to analize yours words, because My english level is the one of a high school student (I must supouse that because I didn't get most of the words you say).
But thanks for give me something to think about!