[ SECRET POST #4543 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #4543 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

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03. [SPOILERS for Avengers Endgame]



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04. [too big]


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05. [SPOILERS for Godzilla: King of the Monsters]



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06. [WARNING for discussion of child sexual abuse]



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07. [WARNING for discussion of rape]

[Vorkosigan series]










Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 00 pages, 00 secrets from Secret Submission Post #650.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 1 (spoilers) - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Comments

[fscom]

07. [WARNING for discussion of rape]
https://i.imgur.com/sJ2Bkg0.png
[Vorkosigan series]

[(Anonymous)]

Thanks for this secret -- I've had these books on my "Read Someday"list, and now... they're not.

(Not being sarcastic, I'm genuinely glad to learn this.)

[(Anonymous)]

To be clear - I think this is more of an undertone that runs through the books, rather than anything that's up-front or didactic or pushy.

that's still enough reason not to read them if you don't want to, OFC, but I think OP's description makes it sound a little more forceful than it is in the books

[(Anonymous)]

OP of the comment but not the secret, here. The books don’t go so far as to say that everyone should have children, and characters who don’t want kids aren’t demonized. There’s at least one couple that, as of the latest book, has no kids and it’s not a big deal.

The characters liking/wanting children aren’t even unintentionally creepy as far as the writing goes, and bodily autonomy and consent are dealt with really well, which isn’t often the case in series where having/caring for kids is part of the plot. I just get creeped out because I’m so ambivalent about having kids.

[(Anonymous)]

Yes, Cordelia (in the illustration) chooses to delay having additional children until Miles is no longer expendable, and then chooses to raise daughters under her own name to protect them from politics. Some of the POW rape survivors choose to force their rapists to deal with the problem as a way of turning the tables. There's multiple mentions of highly effective contraception. And complete technological control of reproduction across the human galaxy enables a whole mess alternate family structures (clone clans, same-sex couples, elective gender, and controlled eugenics among the options.)

[(Anonymous)]

I agree with the OP that this detail is squicky, but it's not the main point of the books and I personally think the series is still very much worth reading.

[litalex]

They genuinely aren't bad books and deal with many reproductive related issues okay.

And I'm sorry if I sound like the anti-abortion people, but why would you abort the innocent baby in the first place when there is technology to ensure that the victim won't have to carry it at all? Possible bad genes? There is gene cleaning...

[(Anonymous)]

Because that's still something you didn't want, a child with your DNA, a product of a traumatic experience?
Because no-one has the right to be born.
Because you do sound anti-abortion when you talk about "innocent baby" instead of "unwanted fetus"

[(Anonymous)]

I agree with you.

[(Anonymous)]

Same. I can't stand baby rabid characters nor can I understand the obsession with preserving embryos/fetuses at any cost.

[(Anonymous)]

Thanks for making my comment into a secret, OP!

[(Anonymous)]

I’m not familiar with the books or the author but I’m in anime and manga fandom and seeing fans go “Can’t wait for my otp to get married and have lots of babies!” and “If this queen monarch has taken so many male lovers why isn’t she popping out babies like mad?” annoy me like nothing else, so I sympathize with you OP.

[(Anonymous)]

Isn't that kind of the point of Barrayar (sp), that it's barbarian and backward? They want lots of kids because they're not that far off from needing lots of children to survive - either to work or because children had a high death rate. You don't see that on Cordelia's home planet.

Plus ... artificial wombs are frankly a way to end the abortion debate permanently, and I can't wait to see them actually exist.

[(Anonymous)]

OP of the comment but not the secret, here—yeah, Cordelia’s home planet is only marginally habitable with the help of oodles of tech, there’s no surface water to speak of, so food is probably a limiting factor on population. The default is everybody’s on birth control and have to pass exams to have their first kid, and pay through the nose for a special license if they want a second.

But part of the reason Cordelia was initially happy (well, willing, anyway) to stay on Barrayar, was that she always secretly wanted lots of kids, and for all her doubts about their society as a whole, Cordelia was excited that on Barrayar she would be expected and encouraged to have lots of children.

[(Anonymous)]

Comment but not secret OP again—honestly, in some cases I’d still be in favor of abortion over implanting fetuses into artificial wombs, if they existed as more than experimental models (some group of scientists rigged one for a lamb, I think? No where near as advanced as in the books, obviously.) If I were raped, I would much rather abort the fetus than have it raised to viability in an artificial uterus.

And until there aren’t any children in foster care waiting to be adopted (which would require something like the book’s Betan-style mandatory contraception for everyone at puberty, parenting classes, exams, and permits, not to mention compulsory, comprehensive sex ed), bringing unwanted fetuses to full term begs the question—where the fuck would the flood of newborn babies go? Into an already underfunded, understaffed, piecemeal, and abuse-ridden foster system? No thanks.

[(Anonymous)]

Most of the children in foster care are not available for adoption. The goal is family reunification.
The "flood of newborn babies" would get adopted. There are many people waiting to adopt babies. Why do you think there are so many international adoptions?

[(Anonymous)]

Okay, I just looked this up; apparently the US government publishes yearly summaries of the total number of kids in foster care, how old they are, how many are adopted per year, etc.

https://www.acf.hhs.gov/cb/research-data-technology/statistics-research/afcars

According to the latest available report, from 2017...

https://www.acf.hhs.gov/sites/default/files/cb/afcarsreport25.pdf

There were 442,995 kids in foster care. 27% of them were reunited with their parents, 4% were living with other relatives, and 13% were adopted. 4.5% were emancipated, which sounds like “aged out of the system” to me.

Yes, people want to adopt (healthy, preferably white) babies. I think it would be cruel and irresponsible to add more children to the foster system without also ensuring safe, permanent, loving homes for all the children already there, and stupid to do so without also making it virtually impossible, via comprehensive sex ed and mandatory birth control use for both sexes starting at puberty, for unwanted babies to be a thing in the first place. Using uneducated, abused, or simply unlucky mothers as, basically, brood mares to get more adoptable babies is disgusting.

[(Anonymous)]

There are many people waiting to adopt, yes. Many of them, however, are ineligible to adopt in our current broken system (the queers, the infertile who can't afford IVF, people with certain disabilities, single people, certain religious minorities who just find themselves turned away from agency after agency or bumped down the list for no given reason...)

[(Anonymous)]

So don't get an abortion, have an embryo sucked out of you and grown in a womb - and who pays for all this? - and there'll be this person with your DNA that only exists because of a traumatic experience who might track you down years later and scream at you for abandoned...basically why some people would rather abort than carry a fetus and plan an adoption. You're taking away the stress on the body but you're still insisting that rape's not so bad, don't harm the precious baby!!
It's just another form of "don't abort, adopt" except you want to salvage embryos and fetuses for some reason.