Otter's Rock

I don't know how I started reading Hockey RPF.  I don't like RPF and know nothing of hockey.  But I did.  And found this: lives to live through seasons by oflights, where babies don't come from sex and growing inside a human, but by being wished for.  If you and your partner wish for a baby, one appears floating down out of the sky in a little basket with the parents' names on it.  (This is apparently not related at all to gender, sex, or sexuality.)  And, if you wish for a baby but have no partner, sometimes (rarely) you get a baby that comes down out of the sky that's just yours!  (No telling whether it's a clone, the story doesn't say.)  Oh, and there are drugs you can take to suppress the wishing, so that wanting a kid doesn't mean one will come out of the sky.

I think this should be A Thing.  The implications and plot possibilities fascinate me; as in ABO universes, I wonder why there is a male/female sex/gender divide.  But in this case, I also wonder why sex exists, because it has no connection to reproduction.  Is it just a fun way to build intimacy?  And if you don't need a sperm and an egg and one person to provide a womb, why is there a sex binary?  And how do wishbabies affect marriage and perceptions on sexuality?  Because while we think marriage is about love, for the vast majority of human history it's been about family continuity and making sure you know whose kid you're raising.  (That is historically one of the big reasons why adultery is a huge deal for women but not for men.)  But with wishbabies, you know who the parents are; they're written down for everyone to see.  How does that affect marriage and gender roles and social perceptions of acceptable sexual behavior?  Promiscuity will not result in unwanted/unplanned babies; celibacy and monogamy are completely divorced from whether or not you have a kid.  Furthermore, there are no unwanted babies.  Babies can only come when they are wanted.  What effect would this have on the amount of child abuse?  There would still be some; just because people want a baby doesn't mean they are mentally fit to take care of one.  But as you can see, there are a whole lot of basic social and cultural assumptions that go right out the window (or get tweaked in odd ways) when you have wishbabies instead of biological reproduction.

If wishbabies were real, would the Shakers (a Christian sect that practiced strict celibacy and so relied solely on converts) have died out?  Would Christianity be so fixated on sex if it wasn't connected to reproduction?

And then I started thinking about fic ideas.  How would this play out in various fandoms?

What about Star Wars?  Obviously, Jedi in the Old Republic meditate about it, and when the child appears they take it to the creche, and that's where most Jedi babies come from.  Anakin was happy to find out Padme was pregnant, but Padme had reservations.  What if the twins aren't Padme's, but only Anakin's?  And he doesn't want them raised in the Jedi Temple, so he wants her to keep them safe for him and when the war's over he's going to retire and take care of them, and then he falls to the Dark Side and when he sees Obi-Wan appear out of Padme's ship what sets him off is that he thinks she gave the babies to Obi-Wan.  And she doesn't die in childbirth, he really does kill her, but in some way he thinks that the kids are gone too.

Agents of SHIELD, what about Ward?  This is cracky, I know, but Ward seemed to really like taking care of Garret.  He liked to be needed.  He depended on him for human connection and the twisted attention Garrett gave him.  Now he's in supermax prison somewhere alone, lots of time to think, and solitary confinement will exactly bring out his abandonment/attachment/affection issues.  HE NEEDS SOMEONE TO TAKE CARE OF!  HE NEEDS SOMEONE TO LOVE HIM!  SOMEONE WHO WILL NOT BETRAY HIM OR ABANDON HIM OR MOCK HIM AS GARRETT DID!  A baby was not what he was expecting, but whatever.  The prison (some top-secret military hole somewhere) lets him keep it because he is a dangerous guy, and having a baby to take care of will reduce the likelihood of him killing a guard and/or escaping.  Dealing with a baby is hard, and it's not like anything he's ever done, and taking care of the baby while he has so much time to think and he's still reeling for Garrett's death and, more importantly, how Garrett dismissed him and mocked him at the end.  So gradually, his thoughts turn from old well-worn paths trained into him by Garrett.  (Maybe the baby is Ward's alone.  Or maybe it was Fitz's, as Fitz kept going over and over Ward's lies in his mind and wondering what caused him to be the way he is and was he always that way and what was he like as a child and wishing he could start over with a mini-Ward, etc., etc.)

What about Star Trek (any version), where Our Heroes come across some weird alien culture where sex and reproduction are linked and babies are grown inside someone's body and not wished out of the sky and they're all weirded out and totally don't get it.

Or reboot Spock, there's a lot of possibilities there.  What if he thinks its his duty to have a child for Vulcan but he doesn't want to (and especially not one with Uhura) because he doesn't want the kid to go through problems like he did?  And he doesn't want to talk about it with Uhura, who wouldn't mind a kid, and there is Angst.  (Maybe there are Vulcan Mind Healers who can go into your mind and make you want a baby, and he goes to one to force the issue because it's his Duty.)

Battlestar Galactica.  What does this do to the Cylon drive to procreate (and their insistence that love has to be part of it)?  What does it do to the Fleet--who would choose to have a baby while being chased by Cylons?  Survival of the human race or not.

Once Upon a Time.  What if Henry is really Emma's and Regina's, biologically?  Regina wished for a baby, and she wanted the other parent to be strong, and cunning, and have some magic, and not be in Storybrooke so the child will be all hers, and so the baby comes and she goes, "great, Emma Swan, not a name I know from either world, this'll be perfect!"  Emma, meanwhile, didn't know about Henry at all.  When Neal abandoned her in prison her longing for family took the form of a longing for someone who couldn't betray her like that, she wanted a child ... but she wanted the child to get everything she never had.  Since no child appears, she figures nothing was going to happen, and once she's out of prison she gets busy doing other things and doesn't even really remember it any more, and then Henry finds her.

Captain America.  I was torn between whether Steve should have a baby with Peggy (after all, menopause is irrelevant to wishbabies, and Steve coming and visiting and talking about the past may stir up old dreams in her) or with Bucky, and coming up with lots of good possibilities for angst and humor either way.  What if he has a wishbaby with both, and is fretting about it because in his day it adultery wasn't having sex with someone other than your partner, it was having wishbabies with more than one person.  He's such a slut!  (This is regardless of the state of his virginity, by the way.)  Then I hit the mother-lode: Steve and Bucky's wishbaby is how they realize Bucky is alive.  Because you can't have a wishbaby with a dead person.  So Steve gets a baby out of the sky and looks at the nameplate and THERE IS JAMES BUCHANNAN "BUCKY" BARNES ON THE NAMEPLATE.  Bucky is alive!  Cue adventures to find him and free him!

Then I realized that you could get a lot of mileage out of "finding out X is alive because a baby shows up."
Howard Stark!  That's why he knew Steve was alive, Tony is actually his and Steve's.  When Tony showed up, Howard realized Steve was alive and rekindled his searches of the arctic.  (Steve was sort of dreaming and hoping for a kid.  Tony is his and Howard's and not his and Peggy's because Peggy moved on with her life and has regrets but isn't spending her time pining, thankyouverymuch.)  Howard doesn't want Tony to become a lab experiment to see if the supersoldier serum breeds true, so he finds a woman who wants his money and position and will swear Tony is hers (without even knowing who the other parent is) and marries her.  Tony doesn't find out the truth until he's a teen (or maybe later?  maybe he finds out after Steve is found and he goes through his Dad's old attic full of all of Steve's stuff that he saved AND THERE IS THE BASKET TONY CAME IN).  Tony's daddy issues then become really different (and so do his interactions with Steve).

Once Upon A Time again.  Gold finds out Belle is alive and in Storybrooke when A WISHBABY ARRIVES THAT IS HIS AND HERS.  He promptly goes nuclear to find her.

Star Wars again.  Obi-Wan sets up shop on Tattooine.  And a couple of years in, he has a wishbaby!  With a Jedi he didn't know was alive!  And he realized, this is how to find out who survived.  He sets out meditating on every Jedi he knows or has ever heard of, and some just generic "wishing for a baby with another Jedi!" thrown in, and finds more than he bargained for.  The kids who are fully Human, he can take care of; but the Empire Does Not Like mixed-species babies (and besides, it would make him conspicuous).  So off they go to Dagobah to Yoda's care because Yoda likes babies, with a couple of dedicated nannies sent by Bail to help take care of them.  And when Luke arrives on Dagobah, he finds a whole Jedi creche there.  How this affects the rest of the movies I don't know; it's easiest if Obi-Wan simply doesn't start wishing for babies until, I dunno, ten years before A New Hope so that they're still kids and thus can't be taking on the Empire yet, and so Yoda knows that when he and Obi-Wan are both gone, they'll need an adult Jedi, and since they've never actually managed to make contact with the other Jedi parents of these babies, Luke is it and thus NEEDS TO BE A JEDI.