Board Thread:Fanon Discussion/@comment-10860529-20141107042854/@comment-10860529-20141222071157

@Zena: The third booth won my over on the Cedar/Lizzie department myself, ehe. I don't feel too strongly otherwise, but I'm pretty into Raven/Cerise. I just loved their development in The Unfairest of Them All, but I won't spoil it for the others. Also: trans Hopper = yes.

@Zashley: On the topic of your Ugly Duckling girl, I wish I knew how to concretely help you there. Perhaps, though, there's a way to go about pronouns for her depending on the context? For example, if introducing her in a fic that starts off with another character/group, perhaps introduced her in a third person limited perspective (where it's narrated that the other character assumes she's a guy, thus male pronouns are used)? Not sure now to explain it, but I can try to give an example:

''As the boys kept on playing, Mark notice a figure around the corner: cropped hair, broad-shouldered, likely a boy around his own age it seemed. He waved at the newcomer with a smile, hoping maybe another another guy could join their No Girls Allowed club.''

...I don't know if I really got the message accross though (and the description was just at a whim, not trying to assume how Feathers looks like). Since she's passing as a cis guy you can't really avoid masculine pronouns in-character, but perhaps try to lessen them as much as you can: "the cygnet said" instead of "he/she said", "the next ugly duckling scanned the room" instead of "he/she scanned the room", making a little more use of using Feathers' name, etc. Not sure if this will help, but maybe it will? The not-let-the-reader-know-your-OC's-true-gender-until-it's-revealed thing seems kind of iffy, though. Why exactly is hiding her gender nessecary? Is it meant to be a plot point for a fic of sorts?

Either way though, good luck on her and your other OCs! I really like the direction you're going with Jolene and Leona, especially. More often than not, there's a tendancy to have future romance-related destinies revolve around the opposite sex. It's sadly not surprising (I kinda doubt that Mattel would otherwise, sigh), and it's a nice change from seeing gay and lesbian royalty (regardless of alignment) being forced into a destiny with a love interest that's of the opposite sex. Not that it's a bad trope or something people should avoid (I'm technically-but-not-quite guilty of this, but I'll explain that in another post), it's just that it's rather refreshing to see.

On another note, and one that isn't a responce to anyone in particular: I've been replying here all this time and I've yet to bring up my own characters. :P

Since there's been talk of trans characters, I may as well bring up Akito Takenaka. I'd been working on him for a while actually, but at first I hadn't intended on him being anything other than cis. I don't remember what exactly prompted the change, but when I first considered it I was kinda underconfident in my ability to pull it off. And at the time I thought at the time that it'd make his situation more complicated than it needed to be, since I intended him to be fine with his story and only being worried about losing his earthly memories (I worried that making him AFAB, female-assigned at birth, would rule him out as more of a rebel).

But no matter how hard I'd try, the thought just wouldn't go away. So eventually I gave in, and as refresh I looked back on some bookmarked articles on social/physical transitioning. Not every trans person does this of course, but I figured that Akito would come out as a child/he'd be someone who'd want to go forth with it, and with his parents being both wealthy and open-minded, they'd be the ones who'd support him in that area. As for school, his parents basically stretched their money-pouches so he could take required princess classes in private, acquire proper rooming in the boys dorms, and basically to get permission for Akito pass as a cis male. It didn't come easily of course, and Milton isn't too happy that the "daughter" of a princess identifies as a prince, but he tollerated the hush-money at least.

In the end though, I'm glad that I went with Akito being transgender. It really helped to develop him further, not to mention that it works really well (and definitely fleshes out) his Royal-in-conflict alignment. And on one last tiny note, because I've been typing a lot and I should have this reply end soon, may as well put it out there that he's also bi.