Some genderswitch fic recs

Of the boy --> girl variety, if only because no one ever writes it the other way around. XD I love genderswitch. Ranma ½ was my first fandom. These two things are not unrelated.[1]

1. Naruto, Oh Baby, Oh Baby by The Badifc Fairy.

Parody, but the sort of parody that’s still good if you’re completely serious about it (where by “completely serious” I mean “willing to read mpreg”). This story wins on three levels:
a. There are canonical, sensible, plot-related reasons for turning Naruto into an OOC pregnant girl!
b. The story is fun enough to hold the reader’s interest until those reasons are revealed.
c. The author enjoys making fun of Sasuke’s pain. (Who doesn’t?)

2. Full Metal Alchemist, Eliza AU, nekokoban and harukami.
I like this one because if you make Ed a girl in disguise and then move her in with Roy, you are well on your way to But She’s my Ward! I’d be Taking Advantage! awkwardness. Which line is crossed by the third fic in series XD. It’s also a mostly serious -- but also very funny -- look at exactly which things would change if Ed were a girl. If you like FMA and like genderswitch you’ll probably have already heard of this one, but the series is disconnected and not archived anywhere that I’ve found so here is an (incomplete) index: ( cut for length )

3. Yami no Matsuei, bookverse story by mistressrenet

Not technically genderswitch, or even focusing on gendeswitched characters. But I thought I’d include this one because 1) I like it and 2) Yami no Matsuei does canon genderswitch AU, how cool is that? Also, because the mangaka had the good sense to make Tsuzuki the girl and not Hisoka. (The problem with making Hisoka the girl – what most people writing Yami genderswitch do -- is that it’s a fundamental part of his character that he looks like a girl, is treated like a girl, and has a girl’s name, but IS NOT A GIRL. That and YnM reverses traditional top/bottom roles but anyway moving on.)

4. Sayuki, Ranma ½ fusion by emungere

Aaaaand finally a Ranma-esque fic. Uses the premise and not the characters, so you do not need to know anything about Ranma ½ to read it. Hakkai/Gojyo, smutty. Very, very smutty.

This completes the genderswitch AU cycle, gagfic --> serious exploration of gender boundaries --> he is practically a girl anyway --> pr0n. Because pr0n is the fanfic equilivent of Rome, all roads lead to it.

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[1]Yes, let's talk about fandom origins! Ranma 1/2 was gignatic, but I don't think that's the biggest reason I was in it. GWing and Sailor Moon and DBZ and CCS and Rurouni Kenshin were equally huge, at the time. Access to sources -- ie CCS and Ruroken not having domestic releases -- wasn't the issue either, because ahaha I never did read Ranma or watch the anime. I think it really was the genderswitch. (That, and the crossovers and AUs and fusions. XD)

Claiming Ranma 1/2 as first fandom dates me older than I actually am. That's because what I mean by "fandom" is really more like "read lots of fanfic on nearly-defunct personal websites". There weren't many people still writing at the time that I was reading. I did join two Yahoo!groups -- one for an author who rarely updated (beckytailweaver) and one for an author who'd stopped posting publically (team7) -- but I never replied to or posted anything and that was the extent of my participation. XD So there was no interaction, either online or off, for maybe three years.

Which really explains a lot.

P.S. I have this bizzare desire to finish an impossibly long RPG over break. It's bizzare because I haven't played videogames for two and a half years (since starting college), and because I was never a big RPG fan in the first place. I mostly played platformers and racing games. I wasn't into anime when I was into video games, right, and I've always seen RPGs as an extention of anime fandom.

( Here're my RPG stats )

Some war AU fic recs

In a minute I'll forward-date the sparkly text placeholder entry I posted a few hours ago, so that will still be the top-of-journal entry while I'm away on vacation.

Prompted by lusciniaecantus' homage to chrissy's prince of tennis war au, it was suddenly more important that I post this than that I finish packing. XD themed recs posts are surprisingly fun to write. This and the explosion of monthly themed communities makes me think Tin's long-defunct themed panfandom fic project, fanthology, might have worked better as a less formal, less centrally organized weekly themed recs comm. So you'd get Genderswitch Week, War AU Week, Ghost Story Week, etc, and posters could tag by theme. Then the tag page would become the index and the comm would become a giant fanfic linkchive categorized by topic instead of by fandom. Fun! And each time a new poster posts they could write a short paragraph about whatever this week's theme means to them, like so:

The War AU satisfies several urges: for character torture, for deathfic, for blood, angst and violence. Most war AUs are dreamlike. That's because the inspiration for most authors to write them comes from dreams -- more specifically, from nightmares. Either that, or watching Band of Brothers one too many times XD.

Okay okay, on to the recs:

1. Prince of Tennis, After the War by sesame_seed
The aforementioned POT War AU. All of Chrissy's fics are at least a little dreamlike and violent, really, even though they (mostly) have happy endings. This one reminds me of a strategy RPG since it is all about assigning the characters to the right job classes ahaha. (Go! Read! And then read the sequel by two_if_by_sea)

2. Naruto, NejiHina angst by solis_pierrot
Dark, dark, disturbing and dark and noncon. It's hard to classify a Naruto fic as war AU, since there are plenty of canon wars to choose from. This one meets requirements by putting the war in Neji's dreams, thus creating an AU within an AU. There are three (short) chapters on hyugacest:
One
Two
Three

3. Ranma 1/2, Ranma Goes to War and Once More Into the Breach by Jamie Wilde
More Ranma 1/2 sl0rage. The website is gone, but the fanfic lives on in our hearts! And more importantly, in the wayback machine. This fic deserves speical mention for being written by someone who has actually served in a war -- specifically, as an engineer on the U.S. Kamehameha during the Korean War. There are many technical details. There is also much angst and man-to-man bonding. It is very, very good.

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So about this hypothetical themed recs comm. I don't know whether it would be better to require every post to contain at least two recs in at least two fandoms for variety, or to require that each rec be given it's own post for completeness like in try_this_fic. XD it would also be cool to make a certain week -- say the last week of odd-numbered months -- into "what has come before week", where members are free to post recs for any of the comm's prior topics.

Thoughts?

ETA
Speaking of LJ fic communities, only two fics have been posted to chain_of_fics in all of December and that is just sad. Also I'm saving this month's BBSS to read while on vacation~! Trim, the cover looks great.

v_voltaire, I got your package! "Used books," yeah right! You rock for so many reasons, but right now that biggest one is that you sent the volume of Runaways that comes right after the last volume I had. It was just, wow. Thank you!