Some genderswitch fic recs

[sub_divided]

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:

nekokoban
One (premise)
Two (Eliza moves in)
harukami
One (awkwardness, awkwardness is resolved (MY AREN’T WE EUPHEMISTIC TODAY))
Two (dance lessons)
Three (Winry shows up)
Four (prequel 1, birth)
Five (prequel 2, childhood)
Six (girly clothes)
Seven (sex)
Eight (disguise difficulties)
Nine (prequel, Izumi)
Ten (Al forgetfulness)
Eleven (relationship introspection)
Twelve (hot springs)
Thirteen (Valentine’s Day)


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:

First RPG: Legend of Dragoon. I hear this was bad? But I loved it. I didn't know the clichés were cliché. Getting the reflex button-pressing down was my raison d'etre. (No, wait! My first RPG was Final Fantasy Mystic Quest. This is a supressed memory.)
Finished RPGs, in order: Legend of Dragoon, Brave Fencer Musashi, Legend of Zelda: Ocharina of Time, FFX, Golden Sun, Suikoden III (twice), Dark Cloud 2.
RPGS I liked okay, but not enough to finish: SNES Legend of Zelda (I did go back and beat this later), Dark Cloud, Chrono Cross, FFX-II, Threads of Fate, Kingdom Hearts. My brother eventually beat the last two. The usual modus operendi was one of would play, the other would use a playthorugh guide to direct. For the minigames, we'd take turns.