El Goonish Shive

I keep trying to quit this thread, but I always come back. Why can't I quit you?!

I really don't know how to feel about this revelation. Tedd needs access to his male form for school - what if he needs to enchant himself with the TF gun to be a guy now? It's actually an interesting as hell premise if Tedd is stuck like this - he's had the best of one world, and now he might be forced to live on the opposite side of the coin - transforming as a necessity rather than as a bit of fun, having to deal with periods possibly etc.

But at the same time, it feels like a misstep on Dan's part. Tedd accepts being genderfluid, so now he gets to spend time as a woman against his will? Feels kind of off to me. Hopefully it's just the cliffhanger giving me bothers, and/or I'm just overreacting.

As you can probably see, I've fallen off the wagon regarding Tedd's pronouns. This storyline has taken ages - I'd like it if Tedd could specify in-story how they'd like to be addressed, but for now Dan's decision is where it's at. Which I have forgotten. Maybe I'll just start calling Tedd "she", given her recent, possibly permanent gender swap.

You could use xir. I hear it's very popular in certain webcomic circles.

edited 29th Aug '14 11:22:37 AM by TotemicHero

If Tedd is fluid as she suspects she's now in more or less the same situation as before, just on the other side.

So it's not really much help at all.

Of course, Tedd's disenchantment power is tied to her desires, so it might be that she'll only revert when she actually wants to.

The Sam character will play more of a roll and help Tedd adjust to his new form. And then join Noah in the Trailer of Forgotten characters.

Tedd really doesn't need his male form for school. That's part of the reason I expect him to encounter minimal Actual Complications that this would bring into his life: there's already a precedent set for this as far as school is concerned.

During Sister, Elliot told the teachers what had happened to him and they were all okay with it. He totally got away with going to school as a woman with minimal hurdles, and he wasn't half as naturally androgynous as Tedd is.

While this could absolutely be an opportunity to explore Tedd's character and history through the lens of actually experiencing what it means to live as a woman, and not just become one every now and then for temporary pervy fun, I don't expect that is the kind of story Shive would be willing to tell, or that Shive would have any degree of competency at telling it if he did.

edited 29th Aug '14 11:52:03 AM by TobiasDrake

Surely we shouldn't hold the story now to the standard of what went down in Sister.

Yeah, but that was a less serious time. The comic has become slightly more uh... Real(?) nowadays. Not sure that plot point will fly anymore.

Not the point, which is that it happened and exists in continuity, thus establishing a precedent for Tedd to just go, "Hey, I'm a girl now, it's kind of like what happened to Elliot," and then he's covered as far as the staff is concerned. If Sister were written today, it would probably go differently, but that doesn't change the fact that it is a ship that has already sailed; having Tedd encounter more difficulty doing the exact same thing Elliot did would be inconsistent.

Meanwhile, his incredibly androgynous features means he might not even have to do that much; it's been a running gag that nobody can tell when Tedd's a girl anyway, and that gag has kept running up until this very storyline.

All the pieces are in place for Tedd to just shrug and go, "Welp, this is the new status quo!" and then everything works out fine for him with minimal consequences or difficulties.

edited 29th Aug '14 11:56:54 AM by TobiasDrake

I wouldn't be so confident that Tedd wouldn't need a male form for school. To present the most obvious scenario where he'd need it to prevent compromising his situation, gym class. I know that, depending on where they are, Tedd might not have gym class anymore (when I lived in New Jersey, it was mandatory for all four years of high school; where I moved to in Florida, it was only mandatory for one). But still, if Tedd does have to deal with gym class, he either needs a great explanation as to why he suddenly needs to use the ladies' locker room, figure out the perfect way to hide when it comes time to change, or he needs a male form to use.

Beyond that, though, you never can predict for sure just when someone's going to bump into you the wrong way and find what's going on under your shirt. Or going to a stall in the restroom and someone bursts in (not always intentionally, either - I had complete strangers just not pay attention to where they were going). There's probably some other scenarios as well (at least one involving Tony, but that starts getting creepy fast), but the fact remains, Tedd should want to have a male form at school.

A key question that needs to be asked here is purpose. Did Tedd become a woman because Shive wants to explore his relationship with the female gender through this new lens, or did Tedd become female because Shive just discovered that genderfluid is a thing and wants his Author Avatar to be female now?

Depending on how this transformation works, isn't Tedd going to have to deal with menstruation? I have a sister and a girlfriend and I understand and am sympathetic that that whole process is far from tolerable. How is that minimal difficulty?

Hell, I'm surprised Ellen's adjusted so well.

This has been building for a while.

I'm thinking Shive just discovered the genderqueer thing recently. He's had like, a decade to cover this subject.

edited 29th Aug '14 12:14:14 PM by GethKnight

Tedd became a girl because Pandora put a mark on him, as far as I'm concerned.

Relevent quotes from Shive's tumblr:

Reading in-between the lines, I think that although Shive only discovered the term recently, referring to Tedd as an Author Avatar in this context is appropriate, so.

Also, in response to people asking about pronouns for Tedd:

And this last one isn't strictly relevant the current discussion, but it relevant to an ongoing discussion we've been having 'round these parts:

I mean, given how Death of the Author Tobias is about this series, all this author-quoted probably hurts him, but it still strikes me as useful.

edited 29th Aug '14 12:33:59 PM by Gilphon

@16861 Well, let's put it this way - there's a reason that No Periods, Period tends to list aversions more often than straight uses. I'm not exactly expecting Tedd to suddenly discovering just what the menstrual cycle is like, even if the female form is permanent. Or, to be more specific, I wouldn't expect there to be any comics about it.

@16865 Wait... if Tedd's early appearances are described as him being "more of a jerk," is that Word of God admitting that Tedd's still a bit of a jerk?

Ellen's easy adjustment is more reason to believe that Tedd becoming permanently female isn't going to be an analysis of the consequences of such a thing and how they relate to Tedd's identity, and is instead just going to be, "And then Tedd adjusted easily and enjoyed the rest of his life!"

Any hurdles Tedd can be reasonably expected to face will likely either never come up at all, or be overcome offscreen and briefly mentioned in an offhand remark down the road.

edited 29th Aug '14 1:18:53 PM by TobiasDrake

I'm just too sympathetic and aware of the issue to ignore it, I guess. I mean, I normally would chalk up no periods as simply a convention of fiction like no bathroom breaks, but this is a comic where transsexual transformation is a common enough thing for me to consider that an issue that needs to be or should be considered.

If our bodies tore themselves apart as punishment for not having a kid I'm sure it would be considered important.

I wrote this whole jumbled thing about how Tedd doing a Sister would just collapse before getting off the ground, but I'm tired and still kinda drunk from last night so I'll condense it into a small personal opinion rather than an analysis.

IMO, Tedd's hair and face would give him away, though the face seems to run in the family as seen with Nanase. If nothing else, Tony would pick up on it and cause trouble - Tedd's that weird, crossdressing perv to him, so if Tedd was absent and replaced by a similar-looking female family member I think he'd smell a rat from a mile away. Maybe Tedd could dye his hair, I guess - but I still think Tony would pick up on it.

edited 29th Aug '14 2:08:17 PM by MrMallard

Shive could also make the actual difficulty of the new situation that Tedd's mother comes back into the picture now that hesh is able to use magic directly, and she isn't taking "no, Mom" for an answer. And no, her plans don't include anything as innocuous as lingerie shopping.

edited 29th Aug '14 1:58:05 PM by SKJAM

Tedd's mark resembles the transgender icon, and that's being used to represent a genderfluid identity. We know that Tedd is definitely genderfluid, not M-to-F transgender, based on how he feels about being mistaken for a girl while male. The mark's appearance doesn't suggest that his/her power is to simply become female in a variety of ways, it would be suggestive of the ability to switch between male and female.

I'd be very surprised if Tedd does not have a "permanently become male" spell to compliment the permanent female form. Nuts as she is, I doubt that Pandora would have given only a one-way transformation spell to someone she cares about like that.

Having the female form be permanent is simply saying "Tedd being female is not Tedd under a spell. Tedd is genuinely female to the same extent as he is male, and the magic is simply the part that allows Tedd to switch between the two."

I don't think Pandora has any control over what spells come with the mark; pretty sure they're just whatever spells the person would've gotten if they'd been awakened.

But immortals can perceive aspects of a person's personality and know which spells they would get based on that, then make the decision whether or not to do it.

There may even be more than one aspect of someone's personality that has the potential for magic. Whether or not all aspects can be triggered with one mark or whether multiple ones are required remains to be seen.

Pandora also said that she didn't think the possible consequences of giving Tedd a mark through.

edited 29th Aug '14 6:58:28 PM by Gilphon

My guess is that Tedd is going to have power incontinence from this where s/he will always be cis gender. When he feels like he's male he is male, when she feels like she's female she's female.