Month: February 2017

The Best TG on TV (Spoilers)

 

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(Tip in Boy Form)

For fans of TG fiction, the best place to find it right now is on Emerald City embody in the character of Tip and watchable on Hulu and NBC.   Now, everything that follows is a spoiler, so you may want to just go and watch!  But, if you read on, just know I will be revealing a lot of Tip’s journey.

Thematically, one of the reasons I love this character is that he discovers he can only gain power by embracing his female self.  It is a nice twist on traditional gender roles, and when I say embrace his female self it comes down to him accepting that he is a princess and magically dressing himself in a fairy tale dress, earrings, a fancy dress and an elaborate updo in order to command the loyalty of a group of witches.

Now, to back up, when we first meet Tip he is being held captive by a witch, who feeds him special medicine everyday and tells him she is protecting him from the dangers of the outside world.  Right off, the situation is deliciously twisted, as Tip is being held in a tower sealed by brambles, and he is hoping that a male friend named Peter will rescue him from his captivity.  Sounds like a traditional damsel in distress, right?

Well, Dorothy comes along– this is an Oz-based TV show– and she frees Tip, who runs off with his friend Peter to be free and explore the world.  There’s only one problem: the next, Tip wakes up to discover he has turned into a girl.  He hides from his friend and is appalled and embarrassed to have a girl’s shape, so he and Peter set out to find someone to make more of the medicine the witch had been feeding him.

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(Tip in girl form)

All along, we get nice little crumbs of Tip’s struggle with his identity.  At one point he is in a restaurant, his boobs exposed in his too small shirt, and a waitress tells him that unless he’s planning on making some money off his boobs he should probably cover them up.  He is shocked and humiliated to realize men have been ogling him.  He freaks out when he needs to use a restroom and can’t decide which one to use (very timely), and then he gets the greatest shock of all when he and Peter find a chemist to analyze and make more medicine.

The chemist returns and tells Tip he can’t make him the medicine because it is black magic and will turn him into a boy.   “I am a boy,” Tip says, and the man says, “No.  You aren’t.  You were born a girl.”

This knowledge unnerves Tip, who is totally disoriented by the idea that he was born female.   He refuses to believe it.   This situation gets worse when his equally confused friend, Peter, tries to kiss him.

The journey continues on with Tip trying to join the army, but instead ends up at an all-girl orphanage run by Glinda, who wants him to be a nun.   Then, the Witch of the West arrives and offers to let him join her and learn to be a slut, which causes him to say, “So, as a girl my choices are to be a virgin or a slut?”

He chooses to go with West, but only find himself forced to wear dresses and work as her serving girl, making her tea and performing other menial tasks.

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(Tip as serving girl)

Now, this is all doled out very slowly over several episodes.   Finally, he discovers that not only was he born a girl, but a princess, which is just the worst form of girl in his mind, but then Witch of the West asks him a question.  “Do you want to be a boy who has nothing and no one, or a girl who is destined to rule Oz?”

This, to me, is where it starts to kick into high gear because he begins to understand his path to power only comes if he embraces his girlhood.  It takes a couple of episodes, and he briefly even manages to regain male form, but then he is once again powerless, and it is only by going full on princess that he can advance and have any power and future.

The actress who plays Tip, Jordan Loughran, is extremely talented and does a almost too good job portraying his confusion and alienation as he struggles to figure out who he is and what he can be in the world.

I am looking forward to see what happens, and eagerly watching the ratings to see if there will be a second season.  This is very cool stuff for a network TV show to explore.

Check it out!

 

 

 

 

Legion: (Spoilers)

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So, I know a lot of us heard about the body swap element in the new FX show, Legion.  In fact, it served as a central element in one of the promos for the show. I haven’t been so excited for a show’s premiere in a long, long time and even raced home from a social engagement to make sure I got to watch it live.

The TG element of the first was promising, but not awesome.  I love the girl that he gets placed inside, and the whole thing was set up nicely because he is in love with her, and they have a relationship, and then he suddenly becomes her, and he is just kind of freaked out and wanders off into the city.

We get to see him check himself out in a mirror, touch his new boobs, but not much else. There is a trippy scene where he has all these flashbacks to being a boy, and his mom calling him her little boy, and it contrasts nicely with him now this pretty blonde woman, and sugggests ways in which the switch may be impacting his sense of self. However, before really having to deal with his new body and gender at all, her just suddenly pops back into his own body and goes on with his life.

As for the series, the body swapping character, Syd Barret, remains in the show, and the two of them continue to have a relationship.  It seems very likely there could be further explorations between the two, and that as she learns to control her power she may do swaps with other people.  As it is, she projects into his mind and influences his thoughts and memory, and we get a nice role-reversal where she comes and rescues him after he has been captured.

In addition, Aubrey Plaza plays a very butch character named Lenny who seems like she may have some gender issues of her own.

So, I think this show is going to have lots more to say about gender fluidity, and will have additional body swaps as well.  Best of all, it is a really interesting show in its own right, and is great to watch, so it isn’t like one of these TV shows or movies where you have to suffer between the TG moments.

It should be interesting, and I can’t wait for the fanfic to get going!

 

 

 

 

Changers Report: Spoilers

Changers Book One: Drew by [Cooper, T, Glock-Cooper, Allison]

 

I love the genius premise of Changers: each year of high-school, the main character turns into a completely different person.  In the case of the main character in Changers: Book One, 13 year old skater dude Ethan Wakes up to discover he has become a blonde girl!

Now, I am always most interested in gender changes, and especially of the unwilling variety, and for Ethan it is most certainly an unwilling change.  He actually had been shy around girls and uncomfortable with them, but had set down as one of his goals for his freshman year to get a girlfriend.  Now, he suddenly finds he is a girl, and he has no idea how to be HER.

Now, I call it a genius premise because many young people do go through different identities during their high-school years, sometimes willfully and sometimes, like Ethan, now called Drew, in a way that feels unwilling and haphazard.  So, I feel that Ethan’s seemingly supernatural experience neatly parallels and explores the real life experiences of young people, especially now that they are more free to explore their gender identity.

In the first part of the book, we get to see Drew as she adjusts to the expectations of girl teen culture, becomes a junior varsity cheerleader and explores relationships with other girls and boys.  It’s fun and contains many of the beats we expect, while at the same time offering grounded characters who seem psychologically real.

In addition to her learning how to be a high-school girl, she also has to deal with the fact that she is part of a secret society of kids who are all changing identities just like her, and that this society has a LOT of rules, along with a lot of ominous threats about what will happen if she breaks them.

Which brings me to one thing I didn’t love: I felt the rules of the Changers world were too complicated and limiting, and that too much time was spent dwelling on them.  I didn’t find the Changers’ culture believable.  For example, all of the changers are sworn to keep their nature a secret, and yet they are then given a tattoo on their butt which makes it easy to identify them.  It makes little sense.  The character also has to attend an incredibly dull and boring seminar which I found agonizing to read about, and which ended with a huge party for all the changers where they were encouraged to mingle even though they were forbidden from having relationships with each other.  So, those section did not shine, especially compared to the other stuff, which was all really great.

I like the book and recommend it.  There is even talk of a series, so this could be a really fun TV show one day!  Check it out!!!!

Changers Book One

New York Times Feature on the Authors

T Cooper’s Website