sporangia

Responding to your second part first, because I'm totally fascinated (I really wasn't aware of the meta-implications of this trope): your pairing of their "isolation" with "sadness" betrays an assumption that is actually disproved by the study I linked to at the bottom of my story. In actuality, couples who don't have children are shown to be happier and more content in their lives than those who do. The "loneliness of the barren couple" is a myth. And certainly John and Rodney are not isolated if they have their team, their very full lives in Atlantis and the associations they have there.

And is there not room in "civilization, order, family and responsibility" for those that protect them?

(I reject, personally, the assumption that in order to be a part of civilization and order, every individual must contribute procreatively.)

But it's not the threat to the slash ideal of buddies-eternal-solo I was reacting against in my story so much as the threat to John's basic gender identification as a male. That's the reality I don't see addressed in most Mpreg, or is at the most glossed over before the writer can get to the good stuff, and I find it very dismaying because unless the writer is very, very good, I can't suspend my disbelief so easily. I believe it really would be as repugnant to him as being possessed by an alien entity to be impregnated.

Thank you so much for this comment, because now I am seeing Mpreg with totally fresh eyes. I am just *amazed* I didn't understand it before.