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Ellen doesn't like Asimov's idea. (see song across the page)
To the tune of "Home on the Range":
Oh give me a clone, of my own flesh and bone With its Y chromosome turned to X And then when it's grown My own little clone Will be of the opposite sex
Clone, clone of my own, With the Y chromosome changed to X. And when we're alone, Since her mind is my own, She'll be thinking of nothing but sex
-Isaac Asimov
While clones and most other sorts of sci-fi duplicates are identical to the original character and, by definition, the same sex, exceptions do exist. The idea dates at least from Time Enough for Love by Robert Heinlein, where the opposite sex clones become sexual partners of the original; nowadays the trope is more used as a quick way of producing a Distaff Counterpart rather than for titillation. Merely being of the opposite sex of his or her original greatly increases the chance of the clone surviving the denouement and showing up in a future story.
Biologically, this is somewhat plausible for male-to-female cloning, because a male has an X-chromosome that can be doubled to produce a female clone (as in Asimov's poem and Heinlein's novel). For female-to-male cloning, the Y chromosome would have to come from another subject, and thus one would not have a pure clone.
See Cloning Blues. Compare Distaff Counterpart, and Screw Yourself.
Examples:
- X-23 , an eventual Canon Immigrant from X Men Evolution to the comics.
- Dani(elle) Phantom in Danny Phantom, a painfully, painfully obvious Expy of X-23.
- Ellen in El Goonish Shive. More than a few scenes make it clear that the classic sex partner idea seriously squicks both of them. In fact, they keep up a masquerade of either siblings (which they certainly act the part of) or cousins, depending whom you ask. Furthermore, since Ellen was split off him by the Dewitchery Diamond, Elliot has also been described as being Ellen's father, and (since this is El Goonish Shive and a Gender Bender was inevitably involved) her mother.
- The community-driven interactive fiction MS Paint Adventures
introduces a trio of detectives: Problem Sleuth, Ace Dick, and Pickle Inspector ("pickle" in this context is meant to connote "problem"), who, through spirit quests, are psychically linked with female counterparts of themselves, whom they eventually meet in person and are instantly attracted to. Problem Sleuth gets Hysterical Dame, Pickle Inspector gets Nervous Broad, and Ace Dick, lacking the imagination to think of a female counterpart, simply becomes linked to another male version of himself (albeit one who owns a blonde wig).
- Spider-Woman, in Ultimate Spider-Man. Ultimate Spider-Woman has all of Peter Parker's memories and personality traits. So from her perspective, she was a guy who just happened to wake up with boobs and some body parts missing one day. God, it sucks to be Peter Parker.
- Rimmer in Red Dwarf tried to go the pervy route with this when he wound up stranded on an unoccupied planet. He screwed up the cloning, though... several times. Even when he got it right, the clone still had his (male) face, but by that time he was a prisoner of his own male clones and thus had bigger problems...
- In the Street Fighter series, Cammy is a female clone of M. Bison (Vega in Japan). Even though Bison's hair is brown...
- Viletta in Super Robot Wars Alpha/Original Generation is a clone of Ingram Plisken.
- A variation: Raul and Fiona Gureden in Super Robot Wars Reversal, who were essentially male and female versions of the same person in Reversal. In Original Generations, they were both brought in as Half Identical Twins.
- Incidentally, in Viletta and Ingram's debut story, Super Hero Sakusen, they had the exact same issue as Raul and Fiona.
- Similarly, Vent and Aile in Megaman ZX are treated as the same person, only male/female in the game, but the background information treats them as separate characters.
- As of ZX Advent, Vent and Aile exist as separate timelines, since Ashe and Grey are most certainly not as interchangeable as Vent and Aile were in ZX. Generally, the Aile/Grey storyline is accepted as canon, since it ties into Albert's story much more closely for both, and Vent and Ashe are basically incidental to the deeper plot.
- The King Of Fighters series has Kula Diamond, one of the many clones of Kyo Kusanagi. In addition to the gender flip, Kyo's powers over fire became Kula's powers over ice.
- The series can be inconsistent about "clones", sometimes using the term to describe unrelated people who have just been altered to be like someone else, and not clones in the normal sense. This makes Kula's status as a clone unclear.
- The character of Lazarus Long in Robert A Heinlein's book Time Enough For Love is the world's oldest living human. At the beginning of the book, he is trying to kill himself by avoiding "rejuvenation therapy", and a squad of his descendants rescue him. He makes a deal with them: he will go through rejuvenation therapy if they can unearth one experience he could do that he hadn't done already. Two of his female descendants arrange for Opposite Sex Clones of him to be implanted in them; both are born, and he finds himself raising twin female versions of himself. They end up sleeping with him by the end of the story. Every female character in the story sleeps with him. Even the computer (long story) and his own mother, after he travels back in time. He's a sexual Marty Stu.
- Powerpuff Girls: The Rowdyruff Boys, in a twisted-Evil Counterpart way. (They aren't so much clones as bargain-basement knockoffs)
- In Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha Strikers, considering how Vivio is a clone of the Saint King, she very likely counts.
- After accidentally looking into an enchanted mirror, Ranma creates a copy of his female self. She, of course is infatuated with him. In the end he accidentally copies his male self and the two copies fall for each other.
- A surprisingly large amount of Ranma 1/2 Fan Fic is based on the idea of separating Ranma's male and female halves into distinct individuals, often turning them into very masculine and ultra-feminine shades of the original personality. For the most part, they refrain from making them paramours.
- They do? This troper is trying to remember a split-Ranma's-halves fic where the Ranmas didn't wind up doing a little indiscriminate grappling.
- In The Elder Scrolls: Morrowind, Divayth Fyr (a very powerful wizard), made four female clones of himself: Alfe, Beyte, Delte, and Uupse. They're variously described as wives or daughters. Surprisingly this isn't particularly played for Squick.
- Probably because most wizards in Morrowind are asexual, or in one case probably lesbian.
- Eve was created from one of Adams ribs, making this Older Than Dirt.
- The civilization in Saber Marionette J, which consists entirely of men who reproduce via genetic manipulation and artificial wombs, should have the technology and know-how to do this, but it simply never occurs to them to remove the Y chromosome from an embryo and replace it with an X chromosome.
- Actually, as this Troper remembers, it was implied that they tried it but couldn't produce a viable clone and that they were as confused about it as the viewers.
- In Doctor Who, in the episode "The Doctor's Daughter", a female clone (sorta) is made of the Doctor. The relationship between them is presented as father/daughter throughout. The Doctor calls her a "generated anomaly". Donna calls her Jenny and the clone takes it as her own.
- And, incidentally, played by the daughter of the Fifth Doctor, Peter Davison.
- Each of Starscream's clones in Transformers Animated represents some facet of his personality, which includes a female one (who refuses to explain what part of his personality she represents).
- Oh, the fun to be had with a femme. To have canon make a femme version is like permission to write books of Foe Yay.
- Like the lack of one stopped it before.
- In Dragon Tails, when Norman the squirrel orders a clone of himself, he marked the gender box with an F (for "Fine the way it is") and got a female clone. The clone is also a child, since this was done with genetics.
- Through the power of cyborg bodies, Sechs in Gunnm Last Order becomes the male (or rather female-to-male transsexual) clone of Gally/Alita.
- In Tad Williams' Otherland series, one of Corrupt Corporate Executive Felix Jongleur's early attempts to make himself immortal involved cloning. The idea was to have a clone of himself implanted in a surrogate mother. Of course, the clone would only be a genetic copy; the child would need a similar upbringing to his own to produce an effective copy. To this end, Jongleur wanted the surrogate mother to be like his own mother. Unfortunately, he couldn't bring himself to unearth her body ... so instead, he made an Opposite Sex Clone of himself. That's right: he intended to impregnate an opposite sex version of himself ... with himself. Very Squick. Fortunately, the project never went beyond the initial stages because a far more appealing (yet no less unethical) option presented itself, so Jongleur adopted the Opposite Sex Clone for his daughter.
- Not quite the same, but it's stated in various novels in {{Lois McMaster Bujold}}'s Vorkosigan series that opposite-sex clones are possible, and that the corrupt rich people who choose to have their brains transferred into a younger clone sometimes pick this option (with optional plastic surgery beforehand, to make sure it's a pretty clone). It's also implied in Mirror Dance that some people order clones of themselves chiefly for the purposes of sexual experimentation, although the opposite-sex option isn't brought up at that point.
- The female Nemu is the clone of the male Mayuri Kurotsuchi in Bleach
- Obviously there's no real-life Troper Tales section for this one but this troper certainly did a major double-take when he saw tennis player Jarmila Gajdosova
◊ on the TV: "Jeez that's me in dress!" Confusing thoughts ensue.
- In the Starship Girl Yamamoto Yohko TV series, Yohko's male clone, Yousuke appears. He turns out to be female and in disguise, but then actually becomes male later.
- Dr. Finklestein from The Nightmare Before Christmas builds a female version of himself out of body parts around his lab. While not a genetic clone, he does give her a half of his brain, so that counts.
- In the Battletech and Mechwarrior series of books The Clans are a race of supermen and women that are mass produced in batches from the DNA of their greatest warriors. During their childhood all the clones engage in casual sex with each other to build bonds. This sometimes continues into adulthood; notable examples include the Pryde siblings from the novel Legend of the Jade Phoenix and the Hazen siblings from the Mechwarrior: The Dark Age novels; both from Clan Jade Falcon.
- The Stardoc series has for a main character Cherijo Grey Veil, who is introduced as the daughter of a genetic scientist, Dr. Joseph Grey Veil. Later in the series, we discover not only is she a female clone of the good doctor, she was created as a wife for him.
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