The Rebirthing Woman

Summary:

A barren, troubled housewife suddenly becomes pregnant and locked in an endless cycle of giving birth to herself.

The Rebirthing Woman

Artemiev 09 Sep 2020 14:26

Seeking Greenlights: Yes.

Page Type: SCP Article.

Genre: Body horror, Drama.

Page Layout: Brief containment procedures, description and background, with several testing logs and two interviews.

Elevator Pitch: A middle aged, barren woman anomalously becomes pregnant without coitus. The pregnancy progresses at an abnormal rate, and as she enters labour, her fetus' development accelerates further, inadvertedly killing her as her now maturing child bursts out of her womb. The "child" grows in minutes to become a genetically identical copy of her "mother", retaining her memories and mental faculties up to the "birth event". The "child" is also pregnant, already in the first trimester.

Central Narrative: The overarching theme would be humanity's fear of death, and how we subconciously try to overcome it. So far, there are two methods of overcoming our own death: leaving a lasting mark on our planet and in our culture, or passing down our genes through our offpsring.

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The subject of the SCP has an unremarkable life without any major accomplishments, a cold relationship with her husband, and as she finds out she's medically barren, she comes to the dreaded realization that she will likely vanish out of existence as soon as she's dead. Soon after she has seen the test results, her anomalous condition manifests. After the first few "birth events", her husband desparately tries to cover up by disposing the cadavers of his previous "wives" in the cellar, and once full, burying them in the garden during night. He was cought on the act by a neighbour, and as police arrives and investigates, the anomalous details soon reach the Foundation through agents embedded in the local police raiding their house. The Foundation sweeps in and contains the situation, discovering the woman's condition.

Hook/Attention-Grabber: How the woman's fear of death could turn to the dread of life with such an unlivable condition and mental scarring of violent births and deaths, while the Foundation is trying to break the cycle of birth, or at least reverse-engineer her anomalous pregnancy for the benefit of mankind, also raising questions about euthanasia and the medical ethics of foundation doctors.

Additional Notes: As I want to do this right, I will probably need help on the correct gynecologist terminology to describe the pregnancy (I'm not a native english speaker, so yeah…).

As a courtesy to our readers on mobile devices, please collapse long posts. ~Zyn

Last edited on 10 Sep 2020 07:17 by Artemiev Show more

Re: The Rebirthing Woman

jack_00 09 Sep 2020 15:35

I love this idea, but continuity error:

You say in the elevator pitch the woman dies during child birth. Later on you say "after her first few birth events," which implies she survived.

Second, can you give the woman herself some more agency? Maybe make her being the one who kills her own children?

Re: The Rebirthing Woman

Artemiev 09 Sep 2020 16:27

I may have phrased it poorly, but the point is that the "original" woman died giving birth to what is basically her identical clone. That clone was also already pregnant with "herself", another identical clone, so by the time she enters Foundation custody, they are dealing with her 20-30th (or whatever number I'd eventiually come up with) iteration of the same woman. I guess this also raises the question of one's self: to the outside world, the current iteration of the woman is practically the same person, as she's genetically identical, and she retains the memories of her predecessors.

I'd also thought about pinching in that she tried medicine and even abortion, but the fetus just grows back, and one iteration even committed suicide to break the cycle, but the fetus just uderwent a "birth event" once she was dead, developing even faster and just bursting out of her. Point is, there seems to be no escape from the cycle, aside maybe from complete disintegration, but the Foundation is reluctant to test that, since, well, they're the Foundation, and not the GOC :P.
So yea I should have mentioned that initially, but the 400 words takes you so far. In any case, thank you for the input!

Re: The Rebirthing Woman

jack_00 09 Sep 2020 16:35

I see. I'd advise to at least spell out the part about the fetus being born even if the mother is killed. Best of luck

Re: The Rebirthing Woman

Artemiev 09 Sep 2020 16:58

Def. will do, thanks!

Re: The Rebirthing Woman

Naveil 09 Sep 2020 14:39

I absolutely adore the base concept for this. The body horror that could be derived from this, as well as the subtle metaphor, is fantastic.

The rest… less so. It's fine, it works, but I find it to be a bit bloated. Elements like the husband could stand to be passing mentions rather than full blown plot points, and the reverse-engineering just feels unnecessary. I feel like the important thing here will be to strike a correct balance between the narrative and the horror, and I feel adding too much will end up weighing down the parts that have the most potential. Keeping it short and sweet is the way to go, in my opinion.

Otherwise, I really like this. Tentative it may be, but I'll greenlight this. Good luck!

Re: The Rebirthing Woman

Artemiev 09 Sep 2020 14:50

Thank you for the input and the greenlight! Gotta agree, I'm definietly gonna "cut down some meat" from the overall plot, though not exactly sure what and how. I'm aware it's gonna be a long shot to develop this idea into a valid SCP, but I guess that's what greenlight is for, right :D?