Archvied fic rec - Opposite

[sakura_no_miko]

Title: Opposite

Author: InitialA

Fandom: Welcome to Night Vale

Rating: NC-17

Pairing: Cecil/Carlos

Warnings: genderswap, explicit sex (lesbian)-ish?)), tentacles, double penetration

Other notes: PWP

Length: 2k

Summary: It’s the bi-annual body celebration, where everyone switches genders for a week! Carlos realizes he’s actually a citizen of Night Vale when he’s included in the celebrations.

 

I know I’m terrible about rec'cing femslash on this blog. I need to just sit down and go on a purposeful hunt for femslash. I do that for slash ships. It’s how I started reading Due South and The Sentinel–I went looking for places where I’d heard there was good slash fic and threw myself in. If anyone wants to throw any fandoms out there, feel free. I keep hearing Warehouse 13 and Orphan Black have some good pairings. And I’ve seen some great Teen Wolf art, so I assume there should be fic too. I suppose Xena would be the really obvious choice, now that I think of it.

That said, I’m not sure this entirely counts. it’s genderswap, but conscious genderswap–these are still male voices and male thoughts in female bodies.

Oh, that gives me terrible flashbacks. You see, this one time at the Fanime porn rooms–yes, I said porn rooms–I mean the after-hours 18+ viewings of horrible hentai everyone laughs at–they tried to do a yuri/femslash themed night, and, as far as I can tell, they didn’t even have enough material to run. I’ve only seen hentai and yaoi/slash since. They ended up putting on a hentai where there was a genderswapped guy and–it was pretty frightening. It’s like how you can tell when “lesbian” porn is being produced by and for straight men–there are certain visual and dialogue cues that are comically incorrect. Trust me, this kind of genderswap can be done very, very badly.

Anyway. Always-the-opposite-gender genderswap is very different from sudden-genderswap fic, and I’m not sure I’d count this as true femslash. It’s female bodies, but not female characters.

On the other hand–it’s got a nice mix of exploring the dysphoria you’d suffer if you actually were genderswapped, really hot sex, and tentacles. I don’t see much femslash with tentacles. I mean, if you take tentacles as a generalized form of masculine power–that is, a ton of phalluses, all obsessed with penetration–and then you give them to women instead, to be used as instruments for their pleasure–I’m not sure where I was going, but it’s kind of interesting, isn’t it?

I like the dysphoria aspect, too. I was the type of person who read Ranma ½ and thought, dude, that is not a curse, that is awesome. I remember reading a chapter on the show in Anime From Akira to Princess Mononoke that talked more about the dysphoria aspects and also the social power–for a guy to turn into a girl is seen as a negative, but for a woman to turn into a man is empowering. This fic is pretty much how I’d see myself reacting if I were to wake up as the opposite sex. Be confused, then sex. Of course, the characters here at least know why they’ve changed, and how long it’s going to last, so taking the easier, “well, let’s celebrate” route fits. This isn’t a fic really concerned with the deeper issues of suddenly waking up in a new body, and that’s alright.

 

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Originally posted on tumblr on 10/04/13