Middle school was an odd and distressing time for me, to say the least. I have plenty of stories to share from those years, but I’ll start with this one since I recently remembered it. And as you can probably tell from the title, it’s wild, so buckle up.
This happened halfway through eighth grade and was a couple months after I had ended things with my first (and only) boyfriend. Things were awkward between us, especially since we were in the same friend group. I wanted things to go back to normal, but I struggled to talk to him one-on-one about our lives without things getting awkward. I don’t remember the exact conversation, but at some point, he asked if we could roleplay ‘Voltron’ characters on Discord.
For those who haven’t seen ‘Voltron’, you don’t need to know much — I only saw one episode and was able to play along. My ex —who we will call P — was obsessed with this show, and he was among the crowd who shipped two of the lead characters, Keith and Lance. They were rivals in the group and had a lot of banter together, so I understood the appeal of the dynamic.
Anyway, P wanted us to roleplay as them, and at first, I was weirded out. I mean, he wanted them to get together in the roleplay, and you know, we broke up very recently. But I figured maybe he wanted to connect again and wanted something to talk about without acknowledging the elephant in the room. Also, eighth graders don’t exactly have the best judgment. So, I shrugged my shoulders. How weird could it get?
Well, it didn’t take long for it to get weird. I played Keith, and he played Lance, and the two got together rather quickly. (Eighth graders are masters of well-paced storytelling and character development, after all.) Internally, I was like, great! Now what? Well, they fucked. I wasn’t surprised at that, we kept it relatively tame and implied (at my request). What did surprise me was when Lance started throwing up and experiencing pregnancy symptoms soon after.
I had heard of Mpreg before (a fanfiction trope where a cisgender man gets pregnant), but this was the first time I had seen it with my own eyes. I truly didn’t know what to say, I mean, what do you do when a surprise Mpreg plotline comes at you? I didn’t know much about Keith and Lance, but I knew they weren’t ready to be fathers. Luckily for me, the roleplay ended before Lance gave birth.
This happened around Valentine’s Day, during which P passed me a note that essentially begged me to take him back. Shockingly, I had a rare moment of good judgment and told him off. I told him that I just wanted to stay friends and that if he tried to get with me again, I would cut him off (this was also before I realized I was a lesbian, so I dodged a bullet on that one). I also told him no more Mpreg roleplay, and he respected both requests. We remained friends for a few more years before COVID-19 drifted us apart.
Is there a moral to this story? The only thing that comes to mind is this: Don’t judge one for roleplaying, but also don’t surprise your friends with an Mpreg plotline.
