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beccastareyesSo, I've blogged about this before: I get ideas from seeing things that either are ideas executed badly, or are ideas that the author just takes in a different direction than I would. When I read Matched, I noted that I was a bit disappointed that the cover copy was basically 'Girl grows up in society where people are paired via computer. Girl gets paired with Boy1 as her ideal match. Girl starts falling for Boy2, who may also be her ideal match.' The overall plot is pretty much 'utopic city with seedy underbelly covered up' + romance, when I discovered I'd rather read about the ramifications of the Match system. For that matter, when I read Mercedes Lackey's Five Hundred Kingdoms series at first I wanted to read about Elena and Co. dismantling the Tradition, a sort of Law of Nature that pushes things into story patterns and lends magical power when these patterns are followed, rather than the romance plots + using the Tradition to ensure happy endings without any of the awful stories coming true.
Now, both were not bad books, but not what I wanted. It's different from the time I decided to do my own take on 'Original Character Female Dragonslayer' in Escaflowne fanfic and ended up with In the Shadows of the Flames -- there I was inspired by the fact most of these fics were done as wish-fulfillment characters, and I was more interested in 'where Dragonslayers come from' and 'why wouldn't we have seen a character like this in-series'.
I mention these both because I like reminding myself of ideas I should write, even if the list is growing longer as we speak, but also because it came up again, and because of a recent report I read on Journalfen where the mods of a Livejournal RPG got put rather out of sorts by people pointing out that "'game where everyone is sexswapped by the force that brings them inside the jamjar*' + 'Amazon culture that forces everyone into their new body's gender roles' = 'Unfortunate implications when you reckon that female characters essentially end up as male slaves'".
And I got to thinking... wouldn't the sudden influx of a lot of people who no longer fit a simple binary where male sex = male gender = male gender role (and female sex = female gender = female gender role), never mind that most of them had alien gender roles to the existing culture, be a good way to create a lot of interesting plotty chaos? I mean, you'd probably have the 'biology is destiny' crowd, those that argue you should go by birth sex because, I don't know, belief in a male/female soul that transcends the body, people who think that these newcomers should be considered new genders of their own, people who realize that the 'weaker sex' might get ideas by talking to these new deviants, or people who just consider the whole thing an abomination, and people who see this as wonderful fuel for their gender-equality movement. And probably people I'm missing, all of whom are arguing with each other and trying to find allies who aren't too abhorrent, while the newcomers, in addition to adjusting to 'new culture' + 'sex swap', have to decide what they want to do about it. Writing the existing culture as a monolith that takes one opinion is boring. That's a lot more interesting (IMO) than this Venus versus Mars plot the original idea had going on.
(And it would seem more interesting to me to keep a male-dominated system, since most series that have sexism as an issue have it as men limiting women, so reversing the power dynamic via sexswap strikes me as more interesting than 'sexswap' + 'culture with switched gender roles'.)
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* Jamjar: LJ RPG slang for any game where characters are essentially put into a closed system for shits and giggles. The standard 'you were bamphed here and can't go home'.
Now, both were not bad books, but not what I wanted. It's different from the time I decided to do my own take on 'Original Character Female Dragonslayer' in Escaflowne fanfic and ended up with In the Shadows of the Flames -- there I was inspired by the fact most of these fics were done as wish-fulfillment characters, and I was more interested in 'where Dragonslayers come from' and 'why wouldn't we have seen a character like this in-series'.
I mention these both because I like reminding myself of ideas I should write, even if the list is growing longer as we speak, but also because it came up again, and because of a recent report I read on Journalfen where the mods of a Livejournal RPG got put rather out of sorts by people pointing out that "'game where everyone is sexswapped by the force that brings them inside the jamjar*' + 'Amazon culture that forces everyone into their new body's gender roles' = 'Unfortunate implications when you reckon that female characters essentially end up as male slaves'".
And I got to thinking... wouldn't the sudden influx of a lot of people who no longer fit a simple binary where male sex = male gender = male gender role (and female sex = female gender = female gender role), never mind that most of them had alien gender roles to the existing culture, be a good way to create a lot of interesting plotty chaos? I mean, you'd probably have the 'biology is destiny' crowd, those that argue you should go by birth sex because, I don't know, belief in a male/female soul that transcends the body, people who think that these newcomers should be considered new genders of their own, people who realize that the 'weaker sex' might get ideas by talking to these new deviants, or people who just consider the whole thing an abomination, and people who see this as wonderful fuel for their gender-equality movement. And probably people I'm missing, all of whom are arguing with each other and trying to find allies who aren't too abhorrent, while the newcomers, in addition to adjusting to 'new culture' + 'sex swap', have to decide what they want to do about it. Writing the existing culture as a monolith that takes one opinion is boring. That's a lot more interesting (IMO) than this Venus versus Mars plot the original idea had going on.
(And it would seem more interesting to me to keep a male-dominated system, since most series that have sexism as an issue have it as men limiting women, so reversing the power dynamic via sexswap strikes me as more interesting than 'sexswap' + 'culture with switched gender roles'.)
--
* Jamjar: LJ RPG slang for any game where characters are essentially put into a closed system for shits and giggles. The standard 'you were bamphed here and can't go home'.
