How will you deal with Rule 34

I'll laugh if someone makes my Catholic priest into an atheist.

How wouldja guys feel about gender bender or OCs?

I've almost certainly already considered other gender choices already with my characters. OCs? All the responsibility of the fanfic writer; bad OCs don't make my fiction look bad. I don't think bad fanfic makes my fiction look bad anyway, of course.

TBH, I'm not going to get pissed off until they invoke Draco in Leather Pants, Ron the Death Eater, or break my Magic A Is Magic A.

if someone converted all my chars into christians, id flip. been one once, and i know how their 'convert a friend' stories are. it's a bunch of strawmen who are easily defeated and made to look like they missed the obvious. I swear I would comepletely flip, given that religion is part of the driving force of many sub=plots and later the entire main arc of the third book if i ever get that far.

only one character is christian, naother is catholic, one agnostic, a fictional 'cult' religon, and a muslim. added my real life religon i am part of... and the high umprobability that in character anyone would convert, i'd be royally pissed.

The father of my MC is eight years older than his mother, and I would be amused if anyone wrote a lolicon fic about them.

I'd want to do a gender flip myself, actually, but OCs...

The concept fascinates me.

Because I have no way to know what crazy ways people would find to insert them into the story.

I really hate the term "OC." Original Character could mean anything. It could mean a character created for an original story and universe as much as it could a fan character, is used for both, and calling them "fan characters" is far more evocative on what they actually are.

...Ahem.

My Wordkeepers universe is ripe for Sailor Earth potential, but I suspect a fair portion of Suenyaverse fancharacters will be either Relationship Sue for Jasper or children of the various canon characters. I actually have an Alternate Universe character of that sort myself, actually. I wondered what it would be like if one character actually had the child he'd wanted for so long... So I invented her, for the alternate universe where he actually gets his longtime wish of being a real father.

I don't know; I can't see the point of flipping genders for a lot of my works because they are written for worlds where it really wouldn't change anything.

It's fun to draw people with boobs, or without them.

Okay, maybe that, but on the other hand I'd probably scratch my head at genderflipped writing (at best).

Heheheh. It's a common point of interest. Plus, while the characters might be the same, the way readers see them prolly won't.

@Night: I suspect you are writing either aliens, or far-future humans, where gender is pretty much removed as an important thing?

Still could be interesting to explore how present-day gender assumptions could change the story, but I can see your point.

Little from column A, little from column B in one case (they are human but their society evolved under radically different social and physical pressures).

In another case, it's rapid social evolution due to catastrophe wiping out the prearranged order.

In those cases, introducing meaningful gender variation itself is probably a case of not getting your setting.

I'm currently working through the implications of the Princess / whipping-girl relationship if the two so connected are sadist and masochist, respectively, so I do doubt if many people will be able to Rule 34 anything worse. My mind goes where it wants, I guess.

You know, I read a book called The Whipping Boy when I was younger.

That whole concept is fascinating.

We don't appear to have a trope for it, either, though I'm not sure there are more than half-a-dozen fictional examples.

Very amenable to a hurt/comfort dynamic, as well.

edited 13th Sep '11 2:41:36 PM by Morven

gender flipping is weird. it' understandable to flip your gender in real life if your born with the opposite sex's brain (the actual scientific reason for 'being a man/woman born in a woman's/man's body), but when you do it to fictional characters as part of a fanfic, it either means one of, or possibly all, of three things (imho).

1. You are trolling.

2. You have a sexual crush on a character that falls out of your sexuality, and so to not feel guilty about having a man crush on Luke Skywalker (just an example), you make him a woman so you can bask in female Luke's sexyness without feeling gay.

3. You have some kind of bizarre fetish and possibly a pornography collection of questionably looking hermaphrodites.

Rule 34 came up early. My best friend had a wet dream last night about the (male) protagonist of one of my novels. Glory.

that... is just lovely, we all needed to hear that.

I'd have to disagree. While gender bender's not my favorite thing, there's 2 things I find interesting in a good way about it. The simpler one: it's a "what-if" scenario that can be played for lulz.

The other is it changes the psychology and character dynamics, especially if it's one character whose sex is changed and the others are kept the same. Like say, if Adam is a raging misogynist and you apply gender bender, what does his relationship with girlfriend Betty turn into?

Eh I dunno, Night said above that his/her stuff isn't influenced heavily by gender roles, but I don't think that's true for most works. I don't know if that applies to tropers' works.

#3 is right out. Well-done gender bender isn't just sticking boobs/dick on to the character's original body, you have to change their face as well. So the result should look unquestionably like a man or a woman, not intersex.

And why "trolling"?

... maybe I'm just overthinking all this stuff. Most of the Rule 34 I've encountered has had some sort of plot/interesting character dynamic to it, not just "lol sex + weird fetish".

edited 13th Sep '11 5:41:03 PM by Merlo

Welcome to the internet. Remember: you cannot unsee.

Also in regards to if you'd paid attention to Morven and my postings on the subject (just for starters, I'm pretty sure there were others) it'd be obvious there's more to do with a gender flip then that since sexual equality is still not perfect in the modern world and probably won't be for (being very very generous) another hundred years, and may be considerably less than perfect in previous periods of history or worlds of different design.

People will have different challenges to face based on gender, some more, some less.

edited 13th Sep '11 5:50:02 PM by Night

I hope Hope HOPE nobody writes a story where everyone in New Dawn converts to Christianity. Because it would be exactly like the early draft I wrote when I was younger. And that is Old Shame.

That said, I have had one of those two fangirls ask me to write an X-Rated Fanfic featuring Matthew, Andrew and Samantha. It would be called Sex Education.

...Yeah, not doing that. I'd probably get in trouble for it.

edited 14th Sep '11 11:57:35 AM by NickTheSwing

well, when you change someone's gender you WILL change their personality.

It is fairly well established that men and women have different brain chemistry, and that the wiring of said brain is connected in different ways. If you change Bob into Alice, you WILL have a different person, if it is a actual gender flip was in their life, as opposed to doing a retcon.

Men and women are different on more than just a physical level, just as there is a difference between more than just skin color in races. Some races are taller, have muscle structures better suited for jumping and running (argubly), and such.

Since gender flipping actually changes the gender, it also radically changes the genetic structure since a chromosome is swapped. As such, this will effect more than just the physical sex, it will ALSO change the chemical balance in the brain.

Arguably though one might say that they would still have their original sex's brain through some plot device, but realistically that would be more troublesome on the body; it makes more sense that all of it is changed and not just the body, at least to me. Though either way, the hormones will be messed with, so there will be an altercation of temperament.

In the long-run, one's own nature (and genetics) plays a bigger role in one's personality than environment or upbringing (this is actually becoming more established recently). So it seems a fair corollary to say that while the archetype will be the same, more minor yet impacting changes will take place in their personality.

I would be honored if people wrote slashfics of Aion Teleios. It is a Boys' Love story after all, just hidden beneath a ton of Worldbuilding and political plotting.

As long as they don't leather pants anyone, play Ron the Death Eater, or screw the magic system up. But I wouldn't dream of coming down on the fans (assuming there'll be fans) even if they do so.

edited 15th Sep '11 6:47:02 AM by Icarael

I do aim to be an independent game developer and try my hand at writing novels. If my work is recognized enough for people to create Rule 34 works of it then I'd actually be created pleased. I don't think I'd want to look at any of it myself as if I spend time writing and creating these characters I don't want to see them in any explicit sexual acts, but if other people like that then I see no problem with it and think it's quite natural actually.