This is discussion archived from a time before the current discussion method was installed.
Duckluck: This page seems a tad ill-conceived. Are we sure we want to define this trope this narrowly? We don't have a general form of this trope (what the page called a "sperm stealing bitch"), so should we really be making a page for just the asian examples? Also, if I never hear the term "babymama" again, I will die a happy man.
Hi Duckluck. Asian Babymamas mostly appear in comics fandom (although this trope is by no means limited to that genre) and is a combination of two very old tropes — Sperm-Stealing Bitch and Exotic Dragon Lady. I didn't want to make this trope a catch-all for every single Asian female character in media, as that's a bit unfair to the genuine interracial relationships, or well-developed Asian characters. You know an Asian Babymama when you see one. I encourage anyone who's interested to create tropes for Sperm-Stealing Bitch and Exotic Dragon Lady (EDL is quite old, sort of the terrestrial version of Green-Skinned Space Babe). I felt that using those two self-explanatory hypothetical tropes would get across what an Asian Babymama is. ~~~~ Mipp.
Duckluck: Right, OK, there's nothing wrong with starting new tropes, but it's still a terrible name. Next time, I'd suggest bouncing it by YKTTW first. So, uh, any ideas for a rename?
I already DID bounce it off YKKTW and got nuthin'. Personally, I love the name. It's short, it's to the point, and it's a little bit funny (at least to me). ~~~~Mipp
People, let's restrain ourselves from Justifying Edits. Lillian Worth is an Asian Babymama. She's Asian, she's a retconned love interest, she's got a Eurasian kid she kept secret, she dies primarily to provide angst. Just because you like a character does not exclude her from Asian Babymamahood. ~~~~ Mipp
The only reason for that edit is that the description for AB-ness is very specific, and the circumstances surrounding LW's AB-ness do not always apply. If one wants to keep her in the article, they need to either note that or change the description. My deal with LW is that I know more about her than the others. I'm sure most of the others don't fit either- note Lady Shiva's edit. -Kate
I edited the article to more fully express the criteria for Asian Babymamahood. ~~~ Mipp
T Matt: This Trope is basically an insanely specific version of {Luke You Are My Father}: a previously unknown child of an established character appears out of the blue. Unless someone can show conclusively that it occurs substantially more frequently than any other kind unexpected child, I suggest we merge them.
It's not a Luke You Are My Father because the subject of this trope is the parent the child knows about. An Asian Babymama doesn't usually show up and dramatically reveal herself to her child; she raised the child to have a vendetta against its Caucasian father. (Well, in the extreme cases.) The trope is more about how Asian women are presented in media — as exotic wombs retconned in as bedmates for the heroes. She basically provides an Eurasian child with l33t martial arts skills so that the hero can angst. ~~~ Mipp
- T Matt: All women in comics are depicted as sex objects, not just Asians, so no points there. Retconned relationships are par for the course, and quite a few of the relationships in the examples were observed to occur on-panel, further negating that point. As for the child being retconned in, that kind of goes hand in hand with the "hitherto unknown." And family, particularly unexpected family, is always a source of angst. There may be a more general trope for "Having kids the father doesn't know about" but this is like having a separate entry for Chaste Hero and Asian Chaste Hero. Everything else here is the result of the standard way comics treat characters.
- Ozymandias: "What separates this trope from a normal interracial relationship is that the Asian Babymama exists primarily only for angst and to give birth to an Eurasian child with l33t martial arts skills." So how does the child of Helo and Nuumber 8 fit that, exactly?
