![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Entry tags:
(no subject)
The kind of genderswap I usually look for is a complete AU where the canon character is cis gender but was born and raised as a different gender than they are in regular canon. I like to see if their life would be different.
Genderswap fic tends to show up most in fandoms where the majority of source work characters are male or where the characters display significant gender issues.
I think people like the idea of a girl!Captain America. When Emily Van Camp was announced as a cast member for the sequel to the recent movie, many newspapers had a misleading headline that implied she would be the titular lead and I couldn't help thinking “that makes a ton of sense”. Then they crushed people's dreams by explaining that's not what they meant. Alison Brie (Community) got dressed in an entire Captain America getup and posed and this got a ton of positive feedback. It's not a role I'd cast her in but it shows people enjoy the concept. And why can't we have a female Captain America? “Captain” is a gender neutral word in the modern military, especially so now that female US soldiers are serving in combat. They always have, but now it's being done on purpose. And don't you dare say a woman can't be Captain America because of Steve Roger's WW2 origins. Do you realize how many women fought and died in that war without any assurance that they'd be paid, promoted, or even acknowledged? Frankly, I suspect that if the US had an anthropomorphic personification, it'd be female.
The A Team is another great opportunity. Some of the original actors (mostlyGeorge and Dirk) didn't want a regular female character at all. One of their claims was that a female character couldn't fit into the Vietnam backstory. Which is total hogwash- American women were certainly present during the US engagement in Vietnam. She would not have been part of their unit, but they could've known her. On “Simon and Simon”, Rick, who is a Vietnam vet, has a breakdown and attends a support group where, surprise surprise, there are nurses who served in the same theater. On The A Team, Hannibal has UST with recurring female character who served in Korea. No, they really just didn't want a girl on the show at all. Of course this makes the situation ripe for explorations of what it would mean if one or all of the team members were female.
The rebooted movie did make a nod towards this by replacing an important supporting character with an equivalent female army officer. This was also explored on tv in Leverage, basically an updated A Team with the military angle removed. Sophie and Parker were without a doubt, a female Face and Murdock (with different coloring and if one was British). Another Dirk Bennedict character was successfully genderswapped in the reboot of Battlestar Galactica. He didn't take it well but the female versions of the characters they salted the show with fit in seamlessly. Grace Park, who played rebooted!genderswap!Boomer is now playing another character who was originally male on Hawaii Five O.
How would John Winchester react to having at least one daughter? Supernatural, with its occasional testosterone fueled sexism and reluctance to keep recurring female characters around, is also ripe for exploring girl!Sam or girl!Dean.
And Sherlock Holmes. Most of the fics I'm seeing have girl!Watson, which is actually a thing that's really happening on the show Elementary. But girl!Sherlock sounds as good or better.
Lots of lovely genderswap Narnia fic, not just girl!Ed and girl! Peter but also boy!Susan and boy!Lucy. The Narnia stories, except for Dawntreader, have a perfectly acceptable mix of genders but you gotta admit the author has a reputation as someone with serious gender issues of his own.
There are a lot of genderswap Hobbit fics on Ao3 right now. I suspect a lot more Hobbit fics than LotR. The Lord of the Rings has three major female characters, in the movie they're even more active in the plot. The Hobbit, on the other hand, only has one and she's more of a limited guest star. Then you factor in the loophole where it can be difficult to tell Dwarf genders apart and how does anyone really know one of those dwarfs isn't a girl?
And, I kid you not, genderswapped The Social Network fic. Which absolutely made my day, because that is a hilarious idea. One of the fics involves pegging, with girl!Mark on top, because there really isn't any universe where Eduardo isn't going to be the one getting screwed in that relationship.
Genderswap fic tends to show up most in fandoms where the majority of source work characters are male or where the characters display significant gender issues.
I think people like the idea of a girl!Captain America. When Emily Van Camp was announced as a cast member for the sequel to the recent movie, many newspapers had a misleading headline that implied she would be the titular lead and I couldn't help thinking “that makes a ton of sense”. Then they crushed people's dreams by explaining that's not what they meant. Alison Brie (Community) got dressed in an entire Captain America getup and posed and this got a ton of positive feedback. It's not a role I'd cast her in but it shows people enjoy the concept. And why can't we have a female Captain America? “Captain” is a gender neutral word in the modern military, especially so now that female US soldiers are serving in combat. They always have, but now it's being done on purpose. And don't you dare say a woman can't be Captain America because of Steve Roger's WW2 origins. Do you realize how many women fought and died in that war without any assurance that they'd be paid, promoted, or even acknowledged? Frankly, I suspect that if the US had an anthropomorphic personification, it'd be female.
The A Team is another great opportunity. Some of the original actors (mostlyGeorge and Dirk) didn't want a regular female character at all. One of their claims was that a female character couldn't fit into the Vietnam backstory. Which is total hogwash- American women were certainly present during the US engagement in Vietnam. She would not have been part of their unit, but they could've known her. On “Simon and Simon”, Rick, who is a Vietnam vet, has a breakdown and attends a support group where, surprise surprise, there are nurses who served in the same theater. On The A Team, Hannibal has UST with recurring female character who served in Korea. No, they really just didn't want a girl on the show at all. Of course this makes the situation ripe for explorations of what it would mean if one or all of the team members were female.
The rebooted movie did make a nod towards this by replacing an important supporting character with an equivalent female army officer. This was also explored on tv in Leverage, basically an updated A Team with the military angle removed. Sophie and Parker were without a doubt, a female Face and Murdock (with different coloring and if one was British). Another Dirk Bennedict character was successfully genderswapped in the reboot of Battlestar Galactica. He didn't take it well but the female versions of the characters they salted the show with fit in seamlessly. Grace Park, who played rebooted!genderswap!Boomer is now playing another character who was originally male on Hawaii Five O.
How would John Winchester react to having at least one daughter? Supernatural, with its occasional testosterone fueled sexism and reluctance to keep recurring female characters around, is also ripe for exploring girl!Sam or girl!Dean.
And Sherlock Holmes. Most of the fics I'm seeing have girl!Watson, which is actually a thing that's really happening on the show Elementary. But girl!Sherlock sounds as good or better.
Lots of lovely genderswap Narnia fic, not just girl!Ed and girl! Peter but also boy!Susan and boy!Lucy. The Narnia stories, except for Dawntreader, have a perfectly acceptable mix of genders but you gotta admit the author has a reputation as someone with serious gender issues of his own.
There are a lot of genderswap Hobbit fics on Ao3 right now. I suspect a lot more Hobbit fics than LotR. The Lord of the Rings has three major female characters, in the movie they're even more active in the plot. The Hobbit, on the other hand, only has one and she's more of a limited guest star. Then you factor in the loophole where it can be difficult to tell Dwarf genders apart and how does anyone really know one of those dwarfs isn't a girl?
And, I kid you not, genderswapped The Social Network fic. Which absolutely made my day, because that is a hilarious idea. One of the fics involves pegging, with girl!Mark on top, because there really isn't any universe where Eduardo isn't going to be the one getting screwed in that relationship.