thoughts on the genderflip challenge for LAS #7
The Seeker Last Author Standing Round #7 prompt was to genderflip one canon character. I wrote the following thoughts after I finished the ficlet. It will make more sense for having read the fic first, which I will be posting shortly.
I was really excited by the genderbend challenge. It's something I've always wanted to do, but never really committed to actually doing, so this was a good way of dipping my toes in. But the vastness of the challenge was daunting. Changing someone's sex/gender has major ramifications. How do I compress that into 500 words or less?
I was super reluctant to change any of the female characters into male. One of the things I love about the show is that it's got really great female characters. I didn't want to flip any of them into a dude. It was pretty obvious to me that if I were going to flip anybody, I was gonna flip Richard into a girl. Then I got caught up on how to feminize Richard's name, and it was suggested to me to use Ricki (I chitchatted with someone completely outside of fandom with the question posed as a context-less hypothetical; no rule-breaking, I swear!). But Ricki makes me think of Ricki Lake, and I LOL, which isn't conducive to writing. Not to mention I never wrote well with generalities, which is all I had in the concept of girl!Richard, and narrow focus is especially vital for the word limit.
Then it just BOOMED in my head, this line: "A boy, just as he'd hoped." And suddenly, I knew exactly what I wanted to do: what if Jennsen were born male instead? I think it must've come from a lot of brewing thoughts I've had about "Vengeance" and Panis Rahl and the deleted scene from "Marked" where Trimack explained how Jennsen came to be. I love "Vengeance" but it's a really problematic episode on a lot of different levels. One thing that always bugged me is how the storytelling treated Jennsen, not just in that ep, but in general. Like, Panis Rahl is super shady, and I hate that nobody -- even Zedd himself -- criticizes the fact that Panis got with Tarralyn in majorly dubious fashion. 'Seduce' is the nice word, but I'm honestly pretty inclined to say that he raped her since he got her consent by way of deception.
Panis got with Tarralyn only so he could conceive Richard. That didn't work, so he did it again, which is so egregious. Jennsen resulted instead, and from the way Trimack told it, the issue was more to do with the fact that she's a girl than that she's pristinely ungifted. After all, the prophecy foretold a boy. I got the impression that Panis didn't stick around for long since all that didn't work out, especially when he didn't stick around for Richard either if he was back in the People's Palace to brag to Darken Rahl about it.
So Jennsen got a lot of the short end of the stick. It's shitty that nobody ever told her that she's pristinely ungifted. It's shitty that her bio dad ditched her because she's not super speshul boychild of destiny. When Panis showed up in "Vengeance," he was all about Richard. When Richard asked him if he had any children -- before Panis' true identity was revealed -- he said that he has two sons. WHAT ABOUT YOUR DAUGHTER JEEZ.
I'm okay with Panis being gender fail, because I can construe that as a character thing and it's clear that D'Hara is conceptualized as a patriarchal society. But it was writing fail on how they had Richard and everybody else deal with Panis.
So I wanted to do my thing vis-a-vis all those brewing thoughts. I meant the piece as a criticism, not an endorsement, that Panis could totally justify the whole pristinely ungifted aspect away if Jennsen were a boy, which is all kinds of wrong. I also wanted to poke at his narcissism and ego. I hope that came through. If anything, the title is a marker as to what I meant. Even though I originally hadn't wanted to flip a female character into male, because I didn't want to make it all about the penis like it always is, I felt like I did something that skewered that trope. I hope.
BTW, these thinky thoughts are way longer than the fic itself, which, I guess, sounds about right for me. :D
I was really excited by the genderbend challenge. It's something I've always wanted to do, but never really committed to actually doing, so this was a good way of dipping my toes in. But the vastness of the challenge was daunting. Changing someone's sex/gender has major ramifications. How do I compress that into 500 words or less?
I was super reluctant to change any of the female characters into male. One of the things I love about the show is that it's got really great female characters. I didn't want to flip any of them into a dude. It was pretty obvious to me that if I were going to flip anybody, I was gonna flip Richard into a girl. Then I got caught up on how to feminize Richard's name, and it was suggested to me to use Ricki (I chitchatted with someone completely outside of fandom with the question posed as a context-less hypothetical; no rule-breaking, I swear!). But Ricki makes me think of Ricki Lake, and I LOL, which isn't conducive to writing. Not to mention I never wrote well with generalities, which is all I had in the concept of girl!Richard, and narrow focus is especially vital for the word limit.
Then it just BOOMED in my head, this line: "A boy, just as he'd hoped." And suddenly, I knew exactly what I wanted to do: what if Jennsen were born male instead? I think it must've come from a lot of brewing thoughts I've had about "Vengeance" and Panis Rahl and the deleted scene from "Marked" where Trimack explained how Jennsen came to be. I love "Vengeance" but it's a really problematic episode on a lot of different levels. One thing that always bugged me is how the storytelling treated Jennsen, not just in that ep, but in general. Like, Panis Rahl is super shady, and I hate that nobody -- even Zedd himself -- criticizes the fact that Panis got with Tarralyn in majorly dubious fashion. 'Seduce' is the nice word, but I'm honestly pretty inclined to say that he raped her since he got her consent by way of deception.
Panis got with Tarralyn only so he could conceive Richard. That didn't work, so he did it again, which is so egregious. Jennsen resulted instead, and from the way Trimack told it, the issue was more to do with the fact that she's a girl than that she's pristinely ungifted. After all, the prophecy foretold a boy. I got the impression that Panis didn't stick around for long since all that didn't work out, especially when he didn't stick around for Richard either if he was back in the People's Palace to brag to Darken Rahl about it.
So Jennsen got a lot of the short end of the stick. It's shitty that nobody ever told her that she's pristinely ungifted. It's shitty that her bio dad ditched her because she's not super speshul boychild of destiny. When Panis showed up in "Vengeance," he was all about Richard. When Richard asked him if he had any children -- before Panis' true identity was revealed -- he said that he has two sons. WHAT ABOUT YOUR DAUGHTER JEEZ.
I'm okay with Panis being gender fail, because I can construe that as a character thing and it's clear that D'Hara is conceptualized as a patriarchal society. But it was writing fail on how they had Richard and everybody else deal with Panis.
So I wanted to do my thing vis-a-vis all those brewing thoughts. I meant the piece as a criticism, not an endorsement, that Panis could totally justify the whole pristinely ungifted aspect away if Jennsen were a boy, which is all kinds of wrong. I also wanted to poke at his narcissism and ego. I hope that came through. If anything, the title is a marker as to what I meant. Even though I originally hadn't wanted to flip a female character into male, because I didn't want to make it all about the penis like it always is, I felt like I did something that skewered that trope. I hope.
BTW, these thinky thoughts are way longer than the fic itself, which, I guess, sounds about right for me. :D