December Daily: genderswap stories

[resonant]

mific - "the genderswap trope where a character's gender is changed. Yes? No? Maybe?"

I'm told that it can be unpleasant to read for people who are trans and/or nonbinary, which I get. Me myself, I generally enjoy it as a crackish romance trope. It offers some of the tropey things I really like (gotta figure out how to have sex in this body; you're straight so naturally this is a romance with a defined end date and that is FINE FINE how could it be anything but FINE; Pining While Fucking) and opportunities for insights and/or humor on sexism and/or homophobia.

Also, as I've mentioned before, I love m/m romance but from time to time it's a pleasure to read a sex scene involving a non-dick-based sexual response.

Authors tend to conveniently elide things like menstruation and pregnancy, not to mention that characteristic womanly experience of having random male mediocrities interrupt you and patronize you. Those could be funny. (Like, in the real world I love to read the experiences of transwomen in the tech industry, because it's always cool to read about a smart person making egotists shut up.)

Also, because I've generally read this plot as part of a m/m romance, I've never seen any character have this experience and use it to get better at having sex with women, which would be cool.

I'd like to read a story where a guy got genderswapped for a bit, had an experience of women's friendships, and had a sad and funny struggle to create something similar with his guy friends.








Specify a date if you want; otherwise I'll just answer them whenever.

This year, in addition to the usual kinds of questions, I'd also love to get storyish prompts. Storyish meaning you never know what you might get: two sentences of a story, or a description of a story that will never exist, or a love song about how much I like that trope, or a rant about my pet peeve about that trope, or I know nothing about that canon except what I see on social media and here's what I think it might be about, or Ten Reasons Why I Love/Hate/Am Indifferent To that character, canon, or trope, or ...

As always, I'd love to hear about it if you're doing the meme too.


19. What Frances (of Hoban & Hoban's Bread and Jam for Frances) would eat for Christmas dinner, if she celebrated Christmas and for whatever totally not topical reason she found herself eating Christmas dinner alone.
20. runpunkrun - "fake dating: yes or no"
21. minoanmiss - "One of my favorite tropes is Then Let Me Be Evil. What do you think of it/have you explored it/so on and so forth?"
22. hypertwink - "21. Now that you've come back, is there a fandom that you want to dip your toe into? (Follow up: Are you apprehensive/excited about it?)"
23.
24. runpunkrun - "John and Rodney in 2020"
25.
26. ride4ever - "for any dS or C6D pairing that you ship, how that ship is doing in 2020."
27. reginagiraffe - "Hermione/Harry/Ron from Bed and Board in 2020"
28.
29.
30.
31.









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Comments

[ride_4ever]

...a story where a guy got genderswapped for a bit, had an experience of women's friendships, and had a sad and funny struggle to create something similar with his guy friends. I would so be there for that...and bonus points if it's in Hard Core Logo.

[resonant]

I'd read it in just about any fandom. I think it must be very lonely to have to live like a guy.

[slvrbld47]

Heh,

MCU, Tony lives through Endgame: Miraculously. As a Consequence, versions of Tony Stark are flung through the Multiverse, ending up in every Fandom. Including Your Favorites. Tony Stark is the new little black dress. I would love to see Tony Stark a werewolf in TeenWolf... Snickers.

[pauraque]

I'd like to read a story where a guy got genderswapped for a bit, had an experience of women's friendships, and had a sad and funny struggle to create something similar with his guy friends.

This made me chuckle because as a trans guy, I've actually experienced that. It's not an uncommon issue for transmasculine people--how do you relate to cis guys, especially straight ones? Their typical friendship style seems very weird if you weren't socialized with it, and they don't respond to the ways that women and girls are taught to initiate and deepen friendships. (I've tried!) I've never really gotten the hang of it, myself. I'm on friendly terms with some cis guys, but there's only one I'd call a real friend, and he's gay, so there's some different socialization at play. Other than him, my friends are all women and transmasc folk.

I've read some genderswap fics that I enjoyed. However... while I don't think the trope is inherently transphobic, I do think it presents so many opportunities to fall into transphobia or trans erasure that it's not something I'm in a hurry to read unless I really trust the author to handle it well.

[resonant]

Yeah, understandable. I'm sure there are implications that a cis person can't even see.

[mific]

Oh yes, THIS
"you're straight so naturally this is a romance with a defined end date and that is FINE FINE how could it be anything but FINE; Pining While Fucking"

And how it lends itself to interestingly layered sex scenes.

"I've never seen any character have this experience and use it to get better at having sex with women" - there's a fic where John gets swapped, then later Rodney is, and they had an agreement that they get to fuck each other when swapped, but Rodney gets shy. Anyway, it ends with John saying 'let me show you this thing a certain guy taught me'. Damned if I can recall the fic's name now.

[grammarwoman]

Ooo! It's Take It like a Man by devildoll - it was just recced on stargateficrec. :D

[resonant]

Oh, thanks! I missed that one the first time around, and it was fun.

[mific]

Yes yes, that's it!

[laurenthemself]

As the 23rd is still open, I'll ask: what grammatical (or punctuation, spelling) hill would you die on?