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[Isn't a 'gender swap', essentially making a new character?]

On 1/15/2024 at 12:40 PM, BronxWench said:

Either way, as long as there’s a proper tag, readers are forewarned (if they stop to read the tags).

Readers reading the tags?  How quaint.

[Isn't a 'gender swap', essentially making a new character?]

19 minutes ago, Deadman said:

I wasn’t necessarily thinking of the gender bending as a plot point where a character was one gender and become another as part of the story. Mainly introducing a character from canon as a different gender.

That’s me adding an extra layer of complexity to a story

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[Isn't a 'gender swap', essentially making a new character?]

5 hours ago, Deadman said:

I would say so personally. I mean, most characters are the gender they are for a reason. Particularly if the character has appeared on screen, like most of mine have.

So I prefer to create an OC rather than gender bend a character. Or I just shift the sexuality of the character. More than a few of the female characters I write about have intense relationships with other women. Though most of them aren’t explicitly lesbians. So occasionally I just give them a broader sexuality, usually bisexual.

Some people want to do the thought experiment, the “what if” the original author penned the character differently.  We all do this to some degree, there’s an innate amount that’s subconscious as we write a fanfiction.  It’s most definitely out-of-canon, however, I certainly won’t berate anybody for doing it.  Heck, even in canon, might be a genderless name that can go either direction (Zabini Blaise comes to mind from the potter universe).  And a “gender bender” could add in some serious considerations…like what if the Dursleys abused Harry bad enough (some accident) that they forcibly “transitioned” Harry to hide it?  Or, maybe after Cedric Diggory’s death (or Sirius’), Harry shows up to Hogwarts demanding to use the girls bathroom while wearing dresses (to cope)?

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[Isn't a 'gender swap', essentially making a new character?]

To me, gender bending would be a step toward the characterization skills needed for original characters.  I’d suspect that an older abbreviation “OOC” (out-of-character or out-of-canon) would definitely fit this scenario, as gender bending is a specific modification of that canon character, but it’s still based on a canon character.  Some canon characters are...like a name only, so lots of fanfic writers take one of those and fill in the details.  Obviously, if I hit the random name generator, create all new details, and insert that, it’s an original character (and I’ve done that repeatedly with my fanfic where I need characters).

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[Major Character Death Tag?]

18 minutes ago, Deadman said:

Okay, I guess the thing is that there’s a supernatural situation and the character is motionless for a while, then something magical happened, and they get up.
I can see people thinking that would be interpreted as dying, but that’s not how I wrote it. Maybe I should rewrite it so it’s more clear?

My potter fanfic is on AO3, but similar debate.  Voldemort...dies in canon, pretty typical for villains, so I didn’t worry about it there (Ditto for Dumbledore).  However, my main characters do seemingly die for an extended period of time, and that’s what prompted me to simply add in MCD and be done with it.  (And now that I’ve got Harry jumping into alternate realities where those alternates do die, it’s kinda warranted.)  I’d rather err on the side of tagging things, than not.