What if your main characters were the opposite gender?

More generally, avoiding tokenism of any sort is easily the best way to avoid Unfortunate Implications in your work.

Thing is, my story takes place in a mostly military setting. For a variety of reasons legit or otherwise, there is no way there is going to be as many female characters as there are male.

That said, in my cast there are already two female character who fits the bill of modern feminists. The others... not quite.

Bones would turn into some kind of hackneyed "angry girl with a troubled past", I think.

Roc would...be a sexy black girl who likes dancing and has lots of sex.

This seems troubling.

The thread about the Bechdel test got revived kind of recently and linked to this thread so I figured I'd revive it so we could discuss it again?

I've thought about this a lot with my roleplaying characters but for my original story;

Michmethah becomes Michael. He's still apparently emotionless, as their backstory and personality isn't gender dependent. Instead of being pranked on by a few cheerleaders at the beginning, it's a few football players. I'm not sure if Michael would be seen of as strange like Michmethah. Generalizing; but aren't quiet and apparently stoic men generally more accepted than quiet and apparently stoic women?

Nick become Nicole (or Nicky?). I don't think anything would change.

Victor becomes Victoria, who would probably go by Tori. Instead of being a popular football player they're probably a really popular ... athlete of some sort I have no idea what sport she'd do instead. She'd still pursue relationships with people out of a desire to protect them. So I guess she ends up being similar to Utena Tenjou?

Shrug shrug.

Jillian would probably become a Jerk Jock and a stereotypical "tough guy". Probably upgrade from cigarettes to cigars, take pride in all things manly, have a serious case of Gag Penis…

June would be interesting. In her current form, she's a Cloud Cuckoolander Genki Girl type… and a lesbian. I feel that in male form, her super-high energy level and overall personality would somehow morph into Camp Gay.

Huh.

I don't think they'd change much. Other than slight annoyance at no longer being able to take advantage of the chivalrous.

I actually think at this point that absolutely nothing would change except for names. Oh, and Nina wouldn't paint her nails before going out to fight.

After thinking about it some, I've come to the conclusion that my characters, individually, would either not be affected at all by this, or rendered almost unrecognizable, with very little middle ground in between.

It would affect most of them on the metatextual purpose level, though.

The only things that will happen to my current unfinished work is just changing names and pronouns.

A straight gender swap (Lucy and Gabriel swap roles etc) makes it odd, because its a Romance that starts in the mid 80s. This passage highlights the difficulties.

A straight gender reversal would have Swap!Lucy carrying a torch for Swap!Gabe after he leaves her at 18 for another Girl. She becomes successful, while he has a clerks job, and she insists on covering up her shyness by being James (?Janet) Bond.

Plus Men Are the Expendable Gender would put a whole new slant on the Killed Offscreen

edited 2nd Mar '13 9:53:21 AM by LastHussar

It would make Linna far more family-unfriendly than she already is, and the story about her is already kind of alienating if only for the newness of it: give up your secret identity to be the superhero full time.

It'd come across with painfully heavy overtones of real men are killers and some other stuff, if the gender was switched. Which probably wouldn't stop me.

Life After Hayate wouldn't have nearly as much humor if Chrono were a girl, because of less opportunity.

In The Service probably wouldn't change very much. Perhaps a little more fanservice-y in the eyes of the beholder, but not written differently.

edited 2nd Mar '13 5:06:04 AM by Night

Hmm. Let's go through the list of major players...

Tessa: Male!Tessa would have the same embarrassing name in his native language (T'esz'zsah, "Rainbow Seeker", which can also be read as "Daydreamer") but without the option of adopting a similar-sounding human name. Otherwise, very little would change. He'd have a little more trouble being accepted by the gruuvokh who think magic is best left to women, that's it.

Daeron Marentis: Daeriya Marentis would likely be even more bitter than her male counterpart. Smart, ambitious, politically talented...and a woman in a highly patriarchal medieval culture. Chances are she would have started murdering her brothers (and father) far sooner. She'd also likely have gone further in developing her magical talents, actually becoming the kind of witch the resident Church Militant warns the peasants about.

The Prestons: Archmage Jane (originally Matthew) Preston would still be a former nerd and slacker forced to shape up and take responsibility for an entire world, and his spouse Teevin (Teeva) would still be a rather badass swordmaster. If anything, it'd shift them to more traditional gender roles and stop the second-grader jokes about the archmage wearing the dress (robe) in their relationship.

Calidarion: Still a very fucked-up antihero with a tendency to horribly murder slavers. Probably even more so, since Calideira's experiences as a slave would likely have been even worse than the male version's.

I don't think Aseyu could get away with being as blatantly and nonchalantly sexual as she is if she were male. Although I've recently been using this question, more or less, to smooth down her rough edges: "would a man acting like this come off as creepy or scary?" Overall, a gender switch would create a Jack Harkness-esque rogue. Ironically, for cultural reasons, a male Aseyu would also be somewhat more "effeminate", by Western cultural measures: Uelane men are typically tough SOBs thanks to surviving Uel, but the Uelane male sexual ideal tends towards something akin to Agent Peacock.

I suspect that a male Rachel would be quite popular with the fangirls: adorkable, caring, and extremely intelligent, but when push comes to shove, strong enough to stand up for what's right. I don't really think a gender swap would change Rachel all that much: a lot of male nerds will ironically or half-ironically embrace Testosterone Poisoning (e.g. yours truly), but a male version of Rachel would have enough confidence to remain In Touch with His Feminine Side, opinions of the world be damned.

edited 2nd Mar '13 6:35:05 AM by KillerClowns

They wouldn't change at all in the slightest.

Then I'd pretty much be plagiarizing The Seven Samurai

Honestly, not much would happen with their core personalities, as those are pretty much set regardless. The detective MC would still be a socially awkward weirdo, his (now "her") assistant would still be a raging narcissist, etc.

The character dynamics would get interesting, though. The aristocratic benefactor's ambitions and desire to remake the system on her (now his) terms would come off as somewhat less sympathetic, and the waitress (now waiter) friend who constantly teases the MC would come off as more creepy than flirty. The young distant cousin of the MC who has a badly-concealed crush on him (now her) might still come across as endearing, even if the character herself (now himself) suddenly gets turned into an effeminate and awkward teenaged guy instead of an effeminate and awkward teenage girl.

edited 2nd Mar '13 9:20:18 AM by Specialist290

Now I feel like I should have gone into more detail.

Doesn't that mean that you're already just doing a gender-flipped Seven Samurai, then?

I would just like to note that this has actually occurred to me while reading Character Mansion.

Same here.

Wow, I revived this less than a day ago and so many responses already.

So one thing I realized is that while my main characters wouldn't change, a gender flip would affect two of the minor characters and their sub plot.

Normally Gwen is an alpha bitch cheerleader that gets a dose of break the haunty partly due to a teenage pregnancy. Phil meanwhile is the father of the kid and a well meaning idiot so he ends up doing some bad things in order to try and help Gwen out.

Male Gwen and Female Phil (I have no idea what their names would be; would I go for a names that fit with the [1] trope reference or names that are similar sounding?), hm. Male Gwen is a jerk jock that gets female Phil pregnant and won't help out, so female Phil ends up doing some bad things to try and deal with the situation and Male Gwen gets hit with laser guided karma?

A fun one I realized with my roleplaying characters though. Normally Frida's a ghost otaku who's a stalker with a crush on Carl. The people I roleplay with seem to think Frida's cute or that it's funny. I'm not so sure if that would still apply if it were Fred and Carla.

Most of the characters in my series would remain relatively the same. A few exceptions:

• Original: A relatively masculine, Violent Glaswegian, Straight Gay> becomes a Butch Lesbian
• The main villian, a dark, troubled, extremely messed up mentally young man> becomes a significantly weaker female character
• Another major villian, a vain Magificent Bitch who happens to be a mother figure, yet flirt with the major villian periodically> becomes a male character that would probably be interpreted as a Complete Monster

Yep, pretty much, but with ghosts, empty suits of armor, little girls and gods, and some faux-alchemy thrown in. 'Jack Harkness-esque rogue'?

Doesn't really change who they are, though I do find it pretty amusing.

hmmm... Nothing too amusing with mine, except one wouldn't look any physically different, and another would start wearing wigs to cover up his/her bald skull.

My characters as they are can be pretty formless at times, so I have already switched the genders of a few.

Hmm...

• Philip: Being a well-intentioned, spacey naïf wears the same on both sexes, although the nastiness of how others may seek to exploit this may increase with the flip.
• Emil: A slick, sardonic, bloody-minded lesbian confidence woman. Interesting. Perhaps more difficult to pull off, given the period, but given Emil's intelligence, I don't think that would be a problem. But given that many of his parental issues stem from being the designated male heir to a very screwed up family, things might have turned out very differently...
• Ariadne: Still precocious, obnoxious, and utterly fixated her (now his) future calling. That said, becoming a male surgeon in the early 20th century is a far easier pursuit than becoming a female one, so I can imagine a slightly greater degree of either timidity or smugness.
• Perry: Basically the same either way, although the dynamics of his relationship with his fiancée might change.
• Ianto: Well, he already possesses more "feminine" qualities than Ariadne—a fact that Emil frequently makes jokes about—so it's not much of a stretch. I can imagine that s/he might find the prospect of suitors a tad irksome, though.
• Börte: Same deal, opposite reasons.
• Shamash: The only difference is how others might react to his (now her) behaviour. Which, to his/her mind, would be functionally irrelevant. Shamash will always be Shamash. Always.
• Timon: Another situation in which gender is functionally irrelevant. Furthermore, no-one could tell anyway, and I doubt that s/he would find it worth of mention.

edited 3rd Mar '13 6:14:22 AM by JHM

Er Muse? I'm probably reading too much into it but why does your villain becoming female make them "significantly weaker"?