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Oh give me a clone, just a clone of my own
With its Y chromosome changed to an X
And when we're alone, just me and my clone
We'll both think 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 either come from another subject, and thus one would not have a pure clone, or be formed from one of the X-chromosomes.
See Cloning Blues. Compare Distaff Counterpart, and Screw Yourself.
Examples:
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Anime & Manga
- In Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha StrikerS, Uno of the Numbers Cyborgs was revealed in the Sound Stages to have been created by Jail through cloning, using his own genetic material.
- 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.
- 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.
- Through the power of cyborg bodies, Sechs in Gunnm Last Order becomes the male (or rather female-to-male transsexual) clone of Gally/Alita.
- The female Nemu is the clone of the male Mayuri Kurotsuchi in Bleach.
- 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.
- Getter Robo Armaggedon has Go, the OSC of Michiru, who is dead.
Comic Books
Literature
- 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.
- Eve was created from one of Adams ribs, making this Older Than Written Word.
- 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.
- 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.
- Diana Pryde, the daughter of the Pryde Siblings is close enough to be considered a gender-swapped clone of Aidan Pryde
- Maeve Wolf, of the Wolf's Dragoons, is secretly a gender-swapped clone of Jaime Wolf
- The StarDoc series has for a main character Cherijo Grey Veil, who is introduced as the daughter of renowned geneticist 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. Basically, he was such an egomaniac that he felt only his Distaff Counterpart would be a worthy mate. And he was willing to get laws passed declaring her a non-person in order to make sure she had no say in the matter.
- In House Of Suns, by Alastair Reynolds, the various posthuman clone houses, such as Gentian Line, consist of male and female clones of a single individual.
- In James Patrick Kelly's story "Stonehenge," one of the main characters does this. Later he turns it into Screw Yourself. At least he eventually has a moral epiphany and is filled with guilt, both about the incest and his selfishness in cloning himself.
- Warrior Cats: Does Rowanclaw somehow becoming a she-cat for a few books and then turning back to a tom count? I mean, some people apparantly pair them together (RowanclawxFem!Rowanclaw. No, really.).
Live Action TV
- 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...
- We haven't mentioned the opposite sex versions of the crew in another episode, where Rimmer's female double (Alternate Universe rather than cloned) comes on to him in a spectacularly unsubtle way, and where Lister proceeds to sleep with and get pregnant by his female counterpart. Although to be fair to Lister, he is marooned 3 million years into deep space with only a male hologram and a super evolved Cat-Man for company, so his options are quite limited, plus he was very drunk. This episode also featured an obvious joke:
- 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.
- And, incidentally, SHE'S HOT!!!
Video Games
- 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.
- Kazuma Ardygun gets the short end of both the romantic stick (stuck in an crossover with a lot of Ho Yay Mecha Animes) as his only valid options is his underage sister and his data clone Aria Advance in SRW W
- 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 Mega Man 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.
- 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.
- Only because there are no other :sane, uninfected characters in his tower to comment on it. The general populace of Morrowind regards all Telvanni magisters as mad scientists (and not without reason), and it's stated in several places that local religious authorities take issue with their mile-long grocery lists of blasphemies and abominations.
- Probably because most wizards in Morrowind are asexual, or in one case probably lesbian.
- Caulder/Stolos from Advance Wars: Days of Ruin has his 'daughters', Opposite Sex Clones of himself. (No explanation is forthcoming as to why their eyes are of different colours, however.)
- In The Sims 2, a cheat can be used to impregnate a Sim by him/herself. Doing this will produce offspring that is a clone of the parent, but it will always be of the opposite gender.
- Xion in Kingdom Hearts 358/2 Days is actually :a clone of Sora .
- Xion's case is a bit iffy. It's not clear what her real gender is, as her appearance is dependent on whoever looks at her. So to Roxas she looks like Kairi with black hair, while to Xigbar she looks like one of the (male) keyblade knights from Birth By Sleep. She only starts to look like Sora right before her boss fight with Roxas, and for that moment she looks exactly like him, gender and all. Then she reverts to her Kairi-like form after the fight to give a Final Speech. Make of that what you will.
Web Comics
- 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 by the Dewitchery Diamond, Elliot can be considered Ellen's father and (since this is El Goonish Shive and a Gender Bender was inevitably involved) her mother as well. Unfortunately, all of this (plus Elliot's Chronic Hero Syndrome) causes him to treat her like a ''little'' sister which tends to annoy her no end.
- 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).
- 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.
Web Original
- Mixed with Evil Counterpart in AH Dot Com The Series: the crew's Mirror Universe doubles (who previously appeared having the same genders as the primary crew) inadvertently invent a Gender Bender virus and then have to kidnap the primary crew to extract original DNA samples. By the end of the episode in question, they're all cured except Doctor What, who ends up remaining female in subsequent episodes. Given that the counterpart is likely just as big a perv as the original, s/he probably adapted quickly enough. Includes examples of Man I Feel Like A Woman and lots of Squick.
Western Animation
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