Fandom First Friday: Genderswap

[otw_staff]

Welcome to Fandom First Friday! The first Friday of each month, the OTW celebrates an aspect of fandom on its OTW News outlets. This month’s theme is genderswap.


Explorations of gender and sexual identity have long been a part of fanfiction and fan art. Whether genderswap, sexswap, bodyswap, rule 63, always-been-a-girl/boy, or trans* fanworks, these works explore how changing a variable affects an individual, their perspectives, feelings, relationships, and even canonverse.

For our Fandom First Friday celebrations on Livejournal/Dreamwidth, we want to take advantage of the fact that the site is a great platform for discussion and meta. We've gathered articles that look at genderswap from various points of view and offer interesting insights into how fans have learned about themselves and their work through genderswap fanworks.

We hope you'll have a read and comment: What are your favorite elements of this practice? What elements are you uncertain about? Give us all your thinky thoughts, and feel free to engage with each other's ideas! And if you have thoughts or links of your own to share, please do!

1) Redefining genderswap fan fiction: A Sherlock case study by Ann McClellan.

2) Thoughts on genderswap fanfic by stormwreath.

3) Connotations When Genderswapping Characters by SL Huang

4) Fanart meta: genderswap, crossdressing, and trans-ness by sqbr

5) so the problem with GENDERBEND and GENDERSWAP by real-life-dipper-pines.