[ SECRET POST #6889 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #6889 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.


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[Radiolight]



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Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 02 pages, 34 secrets from Secret Submission Post #984.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Comments

[fscom]

03. https://cdn.imgchest.com/files/06eef8ee33a3.png

Transcript by OP

[fscom]

I can't read gender-swapped fics. Most of my favorite characters are male and I want to believe that's because the female characters in those fandoms tend not to be written as well (or to my taste). But then why do I hate the gender-swapped versions so much?

They feel like OCs, not like the characters I know and love. So... is it bad writing? Internalized misogyny? Or something else?

I'm uncomfortable with the idea that gender is so essential to personality that a gender switch makes for an entirely different character... but maybe I need to accept that's just how I really feel.

[(Anonymous)]

Larry Croft, Roy Skywalker, Wonder Man, Bobby the Vampire Slayer, Xeno the Warrior Prince...

If someone told me that if I'm a fan of the original I should be a fan of these AUs because gender 'isn't essential' and 'they're the same character' I'd lol

And if they said that gender is essential when female but not when male, I'd look at them funny

[(Anonymous)]

... I'm down for a Bobby the Vampire Slayer or Xeno the Warrior Prince AU.

[(Anonymous)]

Xeno came first. They just called him Hercules.

(Shh, don't tell Sorbo.)

[(Anonymous)]

Xeno the Warrior Prince and his BF Gabriel

They certainly wouldn't be 'the same characters' though

[(Anonymous)]

I'd watch a Bobby the Vampire Slayer remake of the original movie. Vampire-slaying himbo, yes please.

[(Anonymous)]

I'm guessing 'internalized misogyny', at least to some extent.

The 'female characters are poorly written and male characters are well written in every single one of my fandoms' argument is, nine times out of ten, nonsense.

People find male characters more interesting because they're naturally more interested in them in the first place, and thus either A) happily ignore or fill in the gaps of the same poor writing they dismiss in female characters, or B) ignore or fail to notice the same great writing when it applies to female characters because they're more interested in (and thus more focused on) the male characters they're sharing a scene with.

That said, gender-swap fic (in either direction) tends to be poorly characterized at best and utterly dreadful at worst, so that could also have something to do with it.

[(Anonymous)]

No one owes any imaginary character their interest.

[(Anonymous)]

Who, exactly, said they did?

The above comment is made up entirely of objective statements -- if you find male characters more interesting, you're going to find male characters more interesting, and there is usually an element of misogyny in consistently finding female characters with the same writing quality "badly written".

That's a simple fact, not a judgement call. Like whoever the fuck you want, IDGAF. But OP was wondering why they felt that way, and that's part of the likely answer.

[(Anonymous)]

well, "they feel like OCs" means bad writing. I have yet to see an attempted rule63 where the author managed to keep the character's background the same while introducing nuance of whatever a gender experience might have added to it, so that the end result is still recognizably the character. flanderizing is rampant, no surprise.

[(Anonymous)]

It's bad writing.

[(Anonymous)]

I've read a couple that were really well done, I do think sometimes it's a difference of opinion between the writer and the reader about what the essential traits of that character actually are, but in general? I agree.

[(Anonymous)]

I like gender-swapping characters but I don't think it's the same character. It's an AU, and people's interest in an AU is going to be highly variable for a number of good reasons. Even if the character is exactly the same internally, external perception of gender does make a difference to how you move through the world. There are very few fictional worlds where gender makes absolutely no difference, and even in those cases we are viewing it through the lens of a heavily gender-inflected world ourselves.

[(Anonymous)]

+100

[(Anonymous)]

Honestly, most of the time I get into a fandom because I want to slash two hot guys whose character personalities are something I vibe with. The appearance of the actors is a big deal to me.

I don't mind magical or scientific accident temporary genderswap in a story, but my thirst is, for example, for the character who looks like Alexander Skarsgård and if they look like his sister, my vagina isn't into it, sorry.

[(Anonymous)]

You have preferences, and that's OK. There is no one correct way to do fandom, as long as you are treating other real people like people.

I feel like the whole "you must like and focus on female characters because you are a woman, and if you don't, you are misogynist" is just another way for bullies to shame other female fans for what they like. They're awful to real women in defense of imaginary ones. They can fuck right off with their bullying nonsense.

I hate how everything girls and women do must either be "improving" for them in some way or for someone else's benefit, even when we're doing something on our own time for ourselves, like shipping hot guys in fandom. That Victorian morality bullshit is something that has been getting steadily worse in fandom (and in RL) over the past ten years or so.

[(Anonymous)]

I agree. Some people do this weird policing just because they want to have a "valid" reason to bully someone.

[(Anonymous)]

Gender does change things, and it should change things because the characters do not live in a society where different genders are treated exactly the same (for a lot of canons, anyway), but also, we, the audience, do not live in a society where different genders are treated exactly the same. So not only should the gender-changed character have differences due to how they have been treated, but the audience will view that character with a different perspective than the original.

Anyway, if the gender of a character is changed, the writer should put in some work for the character background because not all of their experiences will have been the same - for Antonia Stark (or Natasha Stark for Earth 3490), I would expect something about resentment from men competing with her academically, I think there would be more hesitation bringing her to an active war zone, I would expect there to be different expectations of might have happened in the cave, etc. Not everything needs to be covered, but enough to give the reader some foundation for their personality.

[(Anonymous)]

I absolutely agree with gender changing things. And it changes our perspective. For example my favourite male and female characters are usually quite different.

[(Anonymous)]

I don't like genderswaps because so many of the ones I've found are just using the genderswap as an excuse to turn a canon character into their personal Mary Sue. Or they want to make the previously-male character suddenly even more emotional and weepy and damsel-in-distress-y, or because they want to write two guys together but yaoi is icky so what if we made the uke a girl. I think male-to-female genderbends *could* be interesting but most authors aren't writing genderbend so much as they're writing a whole new character with a canon character's name.

[(Anonymous)]

Gender totally changes things when it's about characters. There are so many types of characters that nobody wants to write as female, so making them female with no other changes actually can make a stale character type feel fresh and interesting again. But a lot of gender swaps change other things about the characters to make them more in line with the way female characters are typically written, or (this is the more common approach in my fandoms) overcompensated to give them none of the flaws that make their canon male counterparts more interesting because a lot of fandoms people on FS go to think women are perfect goddesses and don't have flaws. That may be part of your problem.

Or if you're just interested in male characters because you're straight and characters need to be attractive to interest you that's actually fine too. Fandom knows we don't treat fictional characters the way we treat real people and will use this argument over and over to argue with antis, but when it comes to female characters they cannot imagine how a woman can be disinterested in well-written fictional women and still have amazing friendships with real ones.

[(Anonymous)]

I don't like them because that's not the character I care about anymore. Sex and gender so influence how you grow up, how you live your life and espeially how society perceives you. Like, a female Tony Stark couldn't possibly be the exact same person as a male Tony Stark, and since the latter is the one I like in canon, I have no interest in reading a fic where he isn't.

[(Anonymous)]

Yeah, I feel the same way. I don't see a gender-swapped character as totally different, but they're different enough that it breaks my belief that I fundamentally know who they are. Which in turn breaks my sense of connection with the story.

I don't think it's gender essentialism, because I don't view a character who gets magically genderswapped by a spell or whatever as fundamentally different from who I know them to be. I mean, I don't tend to favor magical genderswap fics either, because I simply prefer smut that involves two male bodies over smut that involves a male and a female body - but that's not the main reason I don't usually jive with from-birth genderswap AUs.

I've read a handful of from-birth genderswap AUs that were good enough to get me to invest in the gender-swapped version of the character and their dynamic with other characters, but most of the time it's not something I'm interested in.

[(Anonymous)]

To me it depends: sometimes, where the setting itself is highly unrealistic and gender hasn't had a measureable effect on the characters' lives and you can do a straight 1-for-1, I'm cool with it, I can even enjoy it provided both characters in a ship have been swapped and what was once Excellent Yaoi is now Excellent Yuri (I'm thinking things like Dante/Vergil, where the fact that they're half-demons matters 1000% more than their gender re: characterization, as does how they each relate to their family tragedy, neither of which would change if they were women, as this was situational, and personality-wise: older sisters are likewise expected to be more mature/responsible than their younger sisters, there's nothing that stigmatizes girls who like books or poetry or violins or Japanese culture any more than there is for boys, so there's your Vergil, younger sisters get away with pestering their older sisters to death and their parents do nothing too, lots of young women love to drink and party, and yes, part of Dante's canon past is being a approached by older, predatory strangers at a young age because of his lifestyle, who do take advantage of him, which would be the standard objection to "but girls and partying are different!" so there's your Dante, wholly intact).

In a highly realistic setting where gender profoundly affects the character's life and story, though, I can see it being a put-off if it was done poorly for sure. You'd have to have a strong grasp of how that works and what you're doing with it. E.g., in the case where part of character's personality or development is - implicitly or explicitly - a commentary on or struggle with hegemonic masculinity, you'd have to have a very butch woman to achieve the same arc. One who very much also buys into said masculine ideals. You can't just substitute in your standard "woman" archetype. And that kinda defeats the purpose of the id-stroking wish fulfillment that is the purpose of a lot of these genderswaps - you have to acknowledge that the character isn't "you" and making them your gender doesn't make them more "you" or even necessarily more "woman" (as archetype) than it did before. And worse, if you plan on changing nothing, in a scenario/character where that would change quite a lot, that's just plain bad writing.

(As an example for the above it is hugely important that Gon and Killua are boys in their own setting; even though there's no sign hanging above them or line of text stating "these characters are written to interrogate shounen tropes for boy heroes that would be meaningless if they were girls", that is indeed that the author is doing with them, on top of the fact that Killua's complex relationship with his mother/sister/brothers and externalized misogyny take on a completely different character if Killua's a girl as well, and Gon's character arc is razor sharp deconstruction of the "heroic" masculine norms regarding the use of violence and domination vs "villainous" kind. You could do it. You could even do it well, but you'd have to have a very strong and nuanced grasp of what internalized misogyny looks like and how it functions in she!Killua's case (nlog-on-steroids), as well as butch culture and how it intersects with hegemonic masculinity in she!Gon's case, because that's the only way you could possibly wrangle out the same characterization for Gon, an extreme tomboy who grew up in the woods and doesn't change her clothes and sees no issues with the use of violence to solve problems so long as it is "just". But if given the LOL TITS AND DRESSES NOW treatment it's a disaster.)

But other times it can be extremely intriguing, and make a character even more interesting, like the Bobby the Vampire Slayer above, although that would certainly be a different character. A petite blond dude cheerleader is not going to have lived the same life with the same glowing social approval as a petite blonde girl cheerleader, that's just a fact. But that might be what makes it interesting! There's nothing saying that, although they'd certainly be different, you like both Buffy and Bobby.