I mentioned in a prior entry that some other authors told me that as far as transgender fiction goes, gender swaps are not as popular as plain old cross-dressing, aka "feminization." And obviously a lot of people think it's "weird" or "creepy" even though a lot of mainstream properties like Star Trek, Quantum Leap, various comic books, and so on have done it.
Anyway, I got thinking of how I could redo some of my stories without the gender swap and maybe they'd be better. Or worse. Here are some ideas:
Gender Swap Warriors: This would be one of the easiest because the gender swap aspect is what actually made it hard to do anything in the first place. Take that out and it's about four college students who find an alien ship and get the memories of the alien crew implanted. Then they take up the struggle against the evil space empire with four ships that merge into a giant robot with a cool sword and stuff.
If I don't have the college students turn into girls the story works as just a Voltron/Power Rangers/Star Wars-type mishmash. I'd probably want to have one or two of the students be women just so it'd be easier to have some romantic elements. It would be easier then to do sequels to "continue the story" than it was trying to incorporate a gender swap, though the idea of a double agent trying to infiltrate a second team still seems pretty cool. The third one about a girl with magic who came before the original team would be less important.
The good thing about the gender swap in this story was it explored issues about Clare's sexuality that became important to the story. If the guy stays a guy we'd kind of lose some of that. Or instead of Clare making love to him, the guy would just have to see her fucking some other girl, making it more passive. It might be better to just make the guy a girl from the start. She would not have a real crush on Clare at first but as she learns about Clare exploring her sexuality, she ends up exploring her sexuality as well. So it would be like a lesbian or even maybe a bisexual romance thing.
At the same time there'd still be the mystery aspect of learning why Clare killed herself--or if she even did. If I set it during the holidays I could still use the "12 Days of Christmas" theme of each ornament representing a different verse of the song. Or maybe I could find something else to use to set it at a different time of the year.
Swapping Mall 3: This is largely the same as The 12 Swaps of Christmas in that it was a time travel mystery thing. Only in this a thief is sent back in time in this old mall as different people and discovers the connections between them--including his parents. It's less important I think whether he's a guy or a girl and there aren't the ornaments relating to the song, just stores in a mall, so it'd probably be easier to redo this one.
The Comeback, aka The Last Encore: This is a story I really hate that Amazon banned for no reason except they declared war against age regression stories written by me--and pretty much ONLY by me. It's a story I really like, to the point that I edited and re-released it under my PT Dilloway name. It'd be pretty easy to take the gender swap out. Instead of becoming a girl, the washed-up guy could be a dude. Or it could just be a washed-up woman who becomes a girl. Amazon might still get pissy about the age regression thing, though I like to point out they literally have a TV show in Invincible that pretty much does worse with age regression than I ever did. I could make the guy/girl become 18, though I think that waters down the premise a little in that he/she is supposed to go from a hard rocker to a teen idol. If he/she is still an adult it kind of dilutes that premise and I hate diluting my premise just because of some irrational "rule" that even the company making it doesn't follow.
Only Human: This Transformers-themed story would be super easy to redo. Basically just have the robots become males instead of females. Bingo, bango, problem solved. Or of course the robots could be female to start with. Not that it really matters.
I've Become My Asian Girl Fantasy Too: This was sort of a high concept thing: a writer becomes the character he's trying to write and experiences her final adventure first-hand. A male author wrote a series of books about a teenage girl who at night became a succubus who killed evil doers by having sex with them and sucking out their life force. After 24 books, the series is being cancelled and the author stuck on the last book when he's hit on the head during a robbery and wakes up as the girl. In her final adventure, Satan himself shows up with a legion of demons to take over the world and somehow the rogue succubus has to stop him.
So either the author could be female or the character could be male and not a succubus. Some other kind of paranormal thing could easily work and then it could be less R-rated with sex stuff too. Or just get rid of the high concept part with the author and just do a regular story about a girl who makes a deal with the devil to save her father and becomes a succubus at night.
Gender Swap Detective: This was a noir-ish detective series, or at least it was supposed to be and the swap angle actually messed that up a little. The idea was a detective is following a case and gets blown up but comes back to life as a beautiful woman. It'd be easy to redo this as a paranormal story. The detective could become a vampire or zombie or werewolf or angel or whatever and then go on solving mysteries. And it'd be easier to just focus on mysteries instead of worrying about throwing in a gender swap.
Swapoween: I really liked my pastiche of John Carpenter's Halloween. Instead of Michael just escaping from a mental hospital, he was supposed to be put to death, only he was given an experimental drug that caused him to turn into a young woman who then meets a teenage girl named Lori. The twist was they fall in love, but the Michael character doesn't really understand actual love and winds up stabbing Lori and then murdering her best friend and some guy she was crushing on. The Michael character figured that way he could have Lori to himself.
It could probably work if the serum they give him just gives him healing powers like Wolverine or something. He escapes, goes back home, falls for Lori, and then kills a bunch of people when she rejects him or whatever.
Hitchswapper: The premise of this was a guy is traveling Route 66 after retiring. In Oklahoma he picks up a hot woman who turns out to be a witch. She turns him into a woman to blackmail him into taking her to Los Angeles. But of course we could do this without turning him into a woman. She could just use her witch power in some other way. And like before, as he comes to understand her and what she's doing, they fall in love and he helps her to complete her mission to save a young girl with budding magic powers.
Rich Man, Poor Girl: This was kind of a Trading Places-type thing where a rich guy agrees to a bet with some other rich guys to become a poor girl for a day. So obviously he could just become a poor guy instead of a girl and most of the rest falls into place.
Gender Swap Resort: It'd be pretty easy to take out the gender swap part and make those three stories more of a Fantasy Island thing or something. In the first one it could just be a girl breaks down at work and goes to the island and finds love. The next one a girl enters a poker tournament and is blackmailed into cheating until she finds a way to get out of it. And the last one, a former Olympic skier goes to teach at the resort and has to win a race and finds love. Easy peasy.
I'm sure there are a lot more I could do if I put my mind to it. But some I think just work too well as gender swap stories to do them another way. I mean, what would be the point of redoing Swapnado, which in itself was a pastiche of Sharknado?
Swap, Swap, & Away was a fun superhero story where I basically had Superman and Lois Lane swap bodies. What I would change is so I could have some sex scenes, the imp that swaps their bodies then turns Superman-as-Lois into a slutty bimbo. To make it more mainstream I'd take that out and just let him be the normal Lois and try to live her life as she tries to live his.
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