Reasons I write genderswap

[anghraine]

I write a lot of always-a-girl genderswap. Most people don’t like it, fine, but some responses to it are starting to really annoy me, especially the “it’s all X” or “they only write it because Y.” So here are my actual reasons for doing it - which may not be others genderswappers’ reasons, but should at least give a better idea of “but whyyyy” than people who don’t even write it.

• The character was once intended to be a girl, and I’m still sadfacing over the fact that they’re not.
• I love, love, love the original characters. But all other things being equal, I prefer female characters to male ones, and so I love them MORE as women. Genderswapping them just makes me happy.
• I want femslash, but I ship the canon pairing like burning. Genderswap to the rescue!
• The canon only has one major female character. Genderswapping a major male character = different representations of women, a relationship between two women, and the usual male-relationships-as-most-important become male-female ones. I’m into that!
• I find women more attractive than men, so switching hot men to hot women is more personally appealing.
• I strongly identify with the original character, but the type is rarely written as female, and the fandom insists on reading him as a commanding, debonair, ultra alpha male manly man who oozes testosterone from every pore. It’s part giving myself a character I really want to read, part thumbing my nose at fandom.
• It’s just really easy to imagine the character as a woman, but would still probably change things, and I’m interested in exploring where the story and relationships would shift, and where they’d stay the same.
• It’s really difficult to imagine the character as a woman, because it would change so much. The challenge intrigues me!

Those aren’t all my reasons, or all the genderswaps I’ve written. Just the ones that spring immediately to mind. And I’d like to point out that “why don’t you just write canonical female characters” or “they’re just OCs” or “you’re just homophobic” or even “issuefic, ew” are … not really applicable to most of these.
And yeah, one more thing. I get a lot of comments like this:

I hate genderswap because it changes the character so much more than making them a space pirate zombie hunter with wings and it’s all just an excuse for self-insert fantasies and badwrong pairings and written terribly … but you’re not like the other girls yours is different, I liked it for some reason!

I think they’re meant to be compliments, of the “your writing is good enough to make me overlook things I normally dislike” ilk. Honestly, though, it just annoys me. Because at this point, it sounds more like “you have shitty taste in genres, but your writing is okay.” Wow, thanks so much. Don’t worry, I’m not going to send the flying monkeys of ideological purity after you if you manage to comment without quasi-insulting disclaimers.

Comments

[kaz]

Ooh, thanks, this is interesting!

I like genderswap fics (of the always-a-girl variety), and in fact it's one of the only "change fundamental thing about the canon" AUs I *do* like. I can get behind a lot of your reasons - I generally like reading about female characters more than male, but I also have a weakness for particular archetypes that are only very rarely seen in women, and I really really like seeing people's interpretations of what would change and what wouldn't. Of course, there's horribly sexist and homophobic crap out there and fic that's effectively inserting an OC into the canon character's position, but if we judged a genre by its worst examples nobody should ever write anything. And ugh, talk about a back-handed compliment in that comment...

(I'm also writing a genderswap fic at the moment, although that's a case of "take cis guy, turn into FAAB genderqueer person" which is... probably pretty unusual, but in any case GENDERSWAP HIGH FIVE.)

[anghraine]

Thanks! The archetypes are reallllly big for me, and the thought experiment angle. And yeah, I'm sure some are terrible, but right, that's true of everything - and really, OCs and issuefic are not the end of the world, which is what most people complain about.

Heeeh, kudos and good luck on yours!