History Headscratchers / WhateleyUniverse

* Toni. Everything about her personality bugs me. Everything.

****** Chaka was an MTF all along, who suddenly got "hellz yeah right body! woo!". Lancer was the one who 'just felt right'. Possibly suppressed FTM, with no heavy stress thanks to the hypermasculine environment of the army and no gender stereotypes being enforced. Anyway, Fey and Tennyo both have ANCIENT SUPERPOWERFUL BEINGS lodged in their heads that screwed with their gender identity. Zenith, Diamondback, and Razorback are all examples of the Exemplar trait changing gender identity. Phase is the odd one out, because he shouldn't have manifested in the first place (Not just no active metagene complex, but no metagene complex at ALL). Somehow, he has 8 BITs all spliced on top of each other, and most of them are female, hence both Destiny's Wave and Chaka finding it easier to go in the 'fully female' direction. As it is, his brain is completely unaltered by the change. It's kinda odd, though. Exemplars are - essentially - incapable of being transsexuals. Most of the time it gives an 'idealised body', as was the case with Chaka, Imperious, and so on, but occasionally it alters the body the wrong way (Slab, Zenith), and alters the mind to match. Phase - as mentioned - is unique in that his mind wasn't changed.

*** Actually, it makes as much sense as most supervillainry, if you think about it. If you carry a Villain's card, it's not exactly hard to hide untill you get caught, at which point you can whip it out and say 'Look, I surrender. I'm a member of the Guild Of Super-Heroes & Supervillains!' Then they have to treat you nicer than a common criminal and all you need to do in return is obey a few rules. The benefit for the public? Well, those rules are: avoiding property damage, not taking hostages, not harming civilians intentionally (including other superheroes or supervillains in their secret IDs), etc. So the heroes get a clean battle that makes them look good, the public are safe from guys who shoot plasma out of their face, and the villains get a cushier sentence.

*** "Fetish" might be pushing it. While it's true that it started on Sapphire's Place, it was never put forth as being sexualized. Compare it to TheWotch or ElGoonishShive, for example -- both are GenderBender/TransformationComic comics but aren't "Fetishy".

*** Explained, sorta. As a rule in the setting, Male to Female Transgendered mutations are ''not'' curable. Granted, the explanation is kinda a AssPull/HandWave, but it almost, not quite justifies it: The Newly Ka-Girled have no choice but to get used to it, because they ''won't'' be changing back, ''ever''. Jade's situation is different, she's not {{ModeLock}}ed like the other ones, she's an honest to god Transgender hoping for an AppliedPhlebotinum solution to gender bending. ~~ [[{{Tropers/KiTA}} KiTA]]
**** Just more evidence of the thick glaze of [[AuthorAppeal Author Appeal]] that sinks its ugly teeth into every story. Also, just because they are unchangeable from girls physically doesn't mean they have to act like stereotypes. If the authors had [[DidNotDoTheResearch done the research]], they would know that many FtM transgender individuals never undergo anything physical. But instead, every "Sensible" character, as well as the will of the universe itself, seems to constantly steer them from keeping boyish traits. Either the authors are sexist, or it's all just [[FetishFuel fetish fuel.]]

*** As I understand it, ScramblerJ had planned out the story and all the others had finished the part in the group story where they all give their manifestation stories, and Phase distinctly mentioned "She-Males" and such. Since then, as far as I'm aware, she has NEVER used the word she-male or referred to Ayla's underwear fetish (which was unfortunately necessary to explain where Nikki got her silk underwear from).

**** Maggie Finson actually said that she'd screwed over Fey and was planning to nerf her badly... but then she quit writing.

* You know what really bugs me? The obscene amount of [[EntryPimp Entry Pimping]].

* Every story where they mention menstruation. Or hormones. It's like distilled {{Narm}}. Rather than have meaningful conversations about this new and strange experience, Toni runs around telling everyone that Nikki has PMS despite having absolutely no experience with menstruating. She just assumes Nikki has PMS because Nikki is in a bad mood, [[SarcasmMode and she's ''right'' because everyone knows that if girls are in bad moods, they have PMS.]] [[YouFailBiologyForever Never mind the fact that Nikki only had a fully-formed uterus for about a day and wouldn't have PMS yet.]] Oh, and every time any of the main girls gets emotional, it's hormones. [[SarcasmMode It's not that they're young children going through a lot of crazy shit that's really stressful. Nope. It's hormones, and we know it's hormones because women are completely ruled by their hormones.]] Every time the authors mention anything related to female physiology, I become more convinced that they're all twelve year-old boys.

* I find that there is a huge percentage of stories that follow an EXTREMELY tedious formula. This is frustrating since I actually enjoy the subject matter and (for the most part) the characterizations, but reading through every single five paragraph description of what Ayla is eating and how it's superior (followed by almost rote comments from the Kimba group) gets a little tiring. This is particularly bad in Diane Castle stories.
The dialogue between the Kimbas also tends to follow a pretty tedious formula: Subject is brought up; everyone comments on it as though they all took a number and have to reply in sequence; new subject is brought up; repeat. This is especially frustrating when these conversations are taking place as asides while some other character speaks, a la MST3K but ignoring the fact that clever asides actually do not happen instantaneously. This makes the dialogue feel forced and "clever" and formulaic.

** Yeah, so they're just going to pigeonhole everyone into good or evil. This is going to cause a lot of [[Wangst mental anguish]], especially since they're doing this to ''kids''.

*** Well, it certainly doesn't help that Ayla is from the local rich bigoted family on a crusade against mutantkind. Not excusing the plot hole, just pointing out that there are probably a good number of students and not a small number of teachers and administration staff that wouldn't be upset to see Ayla disappear one day and not come back. ~~ [[KiTA KiTA]]

** TheMindIsAPlaythingOfTheBody. One of the things that's not mentioned very much (I think it's only spelled flat out in Fey1) is that most of Team Kimba are Exemplars, and as a setting rule, the Exemplar power enforces some form of acceptance with their new form. That is to say, if your BIT (mental picture of a perfect body) is female, after a short period of Angst your powers are going to warp your mind enough so that you'll identify with your new gender, no matter what. That's the explanation as to why there's less angst than to be expected about all this -- either 1, the character was already TG and knew it; 2, the character was TG and unaware; or 3, the character's Exemplar-power forced a bit of Gender ID Disorder onto them. ~~ [[KiTA KiTA]]

*** Explained, sorta. As a rule in the setting, Male to Female Transgendered mutations are ''not'' curable. Granted, the explanation is kinda a AssPull/HandWave, but it almost, not quite justifies it: The Newly Ka-Girled have no choice but to get used to it, because they ''won't'' be changing back, ''ever''. Jade's situation is different, she's not {{ModeLock}}ed like the other ones, she's an honest to god Transgender hoping for an AppliedPhlebotinum solution to gender bending. ~~ [[KiTA KiTA]]

***** Can't argue with that -- the {{Transgender}} AuthorAppeal is one of the major criticisms of the series. Some of the characters have excuses, though, of varying believability. Jade, for example, is a fairly normal TG that realized it due to her powers. Ditto Chaka, who mentions in her intro story that her Exemplar change made her realize she was TG (it "just felt right" or somesuch wording). Sara's the "daughter" of a demon and a half demon, so she has her own issues to deal with. The ones that handle it a bit better than I'd expect are Tennyo and Fey -- Fey going right into realm of disbelief once it turns out she gets a gig as a '' fashion model''. ~~ [[KiTA KiTA]]

** I had the same issue, I finally asked on the forums and was told the same thing, with one of the Canon authors saying that was a horrible idea cause Alya1 or Merry1 was never meant to be read with the other origin stories. Or something. There's an alternate reading order on the Wiki, as well. ~~ [[KiTA KiTA]]

** [[KiTA I]] actually specifically asked this question [[http://crystalhall.org/chboards3/index.php?t=msg&goto=22764&#msg_22764 on the forums earlier this year.]] Basically, Whateley is staffed by some of the most powerful psychics, mages, empaths et all in the world, and they're helping cover for Poe. Poe is covered in a psychic and magical shield effect that extends, to a certain degree, to it's residents -- and has a cover story about being the school's psych ward. No psychic or mage wants to go near them for fear of catching some psychic disease, breaking their brain against a helping dose of madness, or pissing off some demon that's possessed someone.

**** Not Psychic AIDS, but rather, "They're all nuts." The cover story is that Poe the school loony bin, which works great cause they can explain away any oddities such as people with gender stereotype problems, and why Poe has such a high percentage of people visiting the school shrinks. The rest is all word of mouth fearmongering by the kids, but it's useful fearmongering. ~~ [[KiTA KiTA]]
**** As for if it's better or worse, well, from what I understand an important event in the backstory at Whateley was during one fight, a transgirl's powers failed her, leaving her looking like a weedy looking guy in front of everyone -- including her somewhat shocked boyfriend, who violently murdered her in a rage (while everyone else looked on too shocked to respond). While being "nuts" might get you picked on at Whateley, being "gay" [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gay_panic might get you killed.]] ~~ [[KiTA KiTA]]

** In The Braeburn Report, the scientists do make a passing comment to the effect that mutants are much more sexually active than humans.
** Their findings are canonically questionable and their methods are suspect.

** Exceptions to the above: Ayla Goodkind & Jobe Wilkins . While Ayla IS transitioning into a girl (and resisting every single step of the way), Ayla is definitely not into guys. Jobe Wilkins has been turned into a girl thanks to a self-inflicted lab accident and not his mutation (He's a Mad Scientist of the biological kind). I'll admit that he is trying to bag the Nice Guy Thunderbird, but that is becuase of the nature of the lab accident. It was a serum that would turn a person into his ideal girl. One of the things that he included was that the first guy they have sex with, they will be dedicated to them body and soul. Since there are some very unsavory guys at the school, Jobe decides to pursue one of the few people that wouldn't take advantage of him. Ayla is not into guys. He has a girlfriend and visibly ogles the girls in the morning in the bathroom. The female name thing was forced upon him and it is a common plot for him to somehow be forced into wearing female clothing.