There are so many things I would like to say about my scenario but well I don't want to sound self-centered, even then, I said I would like to review as many scenarios as possible, people have been rechecking the old v2 scenarios posted here and some new ones have gotten certain spotlight, so I thought it was fair to me to give me certain space to post about In Praise of Being as well so it can be included to the database with the proper tags, it is just another scenario along with the others at the very end.
And yes, the title is kinda stupid, after I went through so many titles I picked up a seemingly decent reference to an album, I just pick names that reference music due to some sort of reason I can't explain, I know that most people won't get the reference and has nothing to do with the scenario itself, but I like references, what can I say? First I went through Gynephilliany which was some sort of satirical title but even if it sounded cool in my head it was a very bad choice in retrospective, Apple said that picking a title that couldn't be pronounced like Gynephilliany could bring a lot of meme potential and I agreed, memes rule the world, so I picked another album reference name saying Metamorphogenesis, long, silly, and unique (kind of), people complained and I tried to settle for a normal name instead, the original album title is "In Praise of Learning", an album by Henry Cow, I changed Learning to "Being" becuase it sounded fitting, "In Praise of Being" means "How great is being yourself" or "Thank you for being yourself", you know, I'm not sure really because the title comes from a reference. I, to be honest, don't know why I have this mania of referencing random stuff and now I just feel it sounds silly every time somebody says it, but eh, people will laugh at me if I change it one more time so let's just call it a day.
I decided to make In Praise of Being because of a huge, insatiable need I have been experiencing the last few years with TG fiction, something that has been eating me inside for so long, and it is the fact that in MtF stories the characters always reject their transformation! And it bothers me so much, so much! To be granted the thing I want the most and not accept it! In every single story, it has been like that! It is just corroding my soul, and I can't stand it any longer.
Now, when I proposed the idea of having a character that accepts her transition right away people have told me that there it would make no sense since if the character accepts their transformation instantly it would be the same as having a female character from the start, there would be no character growth or psychological battle, which I consider not true, some trans people themselves have told me this and that has surprised me and worried me.
Now, if I am talking about immediate self-acceptance I am talking about accepting that the morph, the sex change, is a good thing while allowing the character to explore all the psychological issues that come even when the morph is presented to you magically: the impostor syndrome, the guilt, trauma, association with the previous identity that you believed it was you and the dissociation with your own face which is something that nobody has ever talked about that much while talking about a sex change.
True, with body swap dissociation is present, people do not see the bodies they are in as themselves since they belong to someone else. People say that they start recognizing themselves with the hormones, but in my case, I still do not see it and not because I do not like it but because I have spent all my life dissociated of a face and the concept is just really alien to me, I just feel like a blob of the brain and it bothers me how people do not seem to notice that. People say that dissociation with an MTF story is going to work a lot less than in a body swap story since that body that changed is still yours, other people find it weird that Andrea even while wanting to be a girl she doesn't accept herself as one, at the moment. That the protagonist considers the girl in the mirror a different person sounds like a huge stretch on paper but it does happen in real life and makes a lot of sense for people like me, think about it, from my perspective the idea of associate yourself with a face is really artificial. Depicting dissociation properly so people can understand me is my biggest challenge with this project and the one I am afraid can fail more than any other.
As I have said, changing your identity is a very slow, sticky, and ugly process, even if you want to change, it is going to take a while, accepting a change is not going to erase all the trauma you had and those preconceived perceptions that you have of yourself, it is not going to be an immediate happy ending and it is going to take so time.
Some people suggest adding transgender characters in the ST universe but without allowing them to transition with magic or a remote, which I find a bit cruel, or actually, really cruel! In a universe where other people can change sexes a lot more easily, that should not really happen. Some might say that they want to show the whole experience of being trans and not just create a happy wish-fulfillment thing without the dark aspects of it. I disagree with saying that Student Transfer and TF, in general, are based on the concept of sudden identity and body changes, and a story with a sudden body change in the perspective of a trans character, we are experiencing mental changes all through our lives but TF fiction is focused on depicting those things faster.
Anyhow, I had the introspection thing ready, but people told me that seeing Andrea talk to herself all the time could become pretty boring, I had some romance planned at first but simple hesitation based on introspection is lame, I kinda panicked thinking that people would not find enough conflict in the story so I added three more conflicts aside from the whole introspection theme, which is now going to develop along with these arcs; I do not want to say which they are now because I do not want to spoil it yet, but well you can see now that one is... well, trying to make your friends believe you are actually you? Well, I accept it, that is just anagnorisis fan service for me, I am just fascinated by the idea of identity reveals and change so much to the point I can't explain, it produces me a sense of euphoria: still, consider the whole identity reveal an interesting thing to show in a story and trying to imagine how people in the real world would actually take such a change caused magic is interesting to experience, at the moment I have three characters assimilating Andrea is Andrew at three different speeds, Genny, Miranda, and Benjamin, fast, medium and slow, in this way I can experience their assimilation in various ways and keep the whole acceptance of such an incredible thing like a magic change present in most of the story.
The main reason why IPOB is a comedy is that with my first scenario I realized I simply can't bear a story of drama alone, as I added more and more conflict, things became too dire, and looking back I simply can't play that scenario again, read it, or work on it, it has just too many sad parts and since I feel already sad most of the time I look for stuff that makes me laugh, I just want to laugh, really, please make me laugh. I have never done Comedy before and even then this is my second public project ever so I am not really confident on my jokes, I feel that they are either too predictable or sometimes I feel they could get too weird like with the brain room gag, but well, I am always getting feedback from Gary and others and as long they can ease up the tension and present the whole stuff in a more cheerful way I think they are good enough, I also can't think of myself really that seriously so the comedy is essential from either side you look at it. I am always doing my best to make things funny, but I know that it will take me some time to get actually consistent and even more until I can actually develop my own distinctive sense of humor in writing.
I think adding comedy and making Andrea is such a quirky character made the scenario way too niche, even more when the scenario is already too niche since it is immediate self-acceptance and is something that doesn't happen often in GB. IPOB is going to end up with a really small demographic to satisfy, but well, what can I say? I have been accepting that fact slowly. While writing you might find yourself in thinking about how much you should give up on your own preferences to satisfy other people rather than just you, it is all about balance. I suppose this time I focused a bit more on what I liked rather than thinking in what other people would like because there are just too many MTF stories without immediate self-acceptance and I want to have at least one example that satisfies me completely, I want to do my version, this story is for me and ultimately to make ME happy, so that's why finding comments about people who like my story makes me so excited, that lets me know that I am not so alone.
Now, people say that the whole dissociation and mental conflicts are too strong for a comedy, but I believe that a comedy can be done this way, I really believe so. One of my tricks is most of the times make jokes that do not necessarily have to do with the story itself, unrelated stuff that could be presented in a normal way but it's written in a more absurd way instead; the comedy centered in the story is focused on Andrea's social awkwardness, as well as her dad's, something I think I can do safely since social awkwardness comedy has been done before and is understandable and relatable, right now I am just afraid of overdoing it.
Unlike with the first scenario I did where I just wrote the story as it came out to my mind I decided to plan all the story from the beginning here, and so I did, what I need is to figure out the order of everything and keep good pacing because honestly even when I have all plot points planned I still haven't connected the dots, I try, but I feel I don't want to spoil the story for myself more than that, I just get nervous, anxious, I try to organize the sequences for when I am going to start to write for an update and I say then I'm going to take care of the rest later.
Now, in summary, what I am trying to offer here with this scenario is like a pact between wish fulfillment and psychological growth and conflict stories and scenarios in general, the character is not going to simply accept the change or being mind-controlled or being forced to the change, it is going to be a good change from the start.
I would call this my trojan horse for TF fiction, I know how most of the audience of TF looks either lewds or a psychological conflict, and overall I had accepted that most of the times I just wanted wish fulfillment, so this is my wish-fulfillment story about that perfection MTF transformation filled with a bunch of mind conflicts and doubt to give to the people that like the conflict, for each one their own. I have a lot to say about my own experience anyway so I can add as much mental conflict as I want, Gary said he didn't care if it was a wish-fulfillment story anyway since the conflict is interesting, people in the thread have pointed out a lot of the things I wanted to mention, so I find myself happy by now with the results in my purpose of satisfying the main TF demographic. I won't really recommend it per se, since it some sort of "experiment", but if you play it I would really like to know your reactions, I really want to know what you think. I can't make up the idea of what you might think about what Andrea is going through to the point it becomes to me a shameful necessity to ask what you really think, I just get so weirded out by own myself and I want to know how right I am to feel that way.
I can't really recommend it to any lewd TF fans since it is not what I have planned for this story, I wrote like one single sex scene for the first scenario I did and it was still pretty fucking hard, it turned out to pretty cringe as Erin (one of the people that used to help me) said so in the first drafts, Erin gave me a few lines and added some comedic ones too, it lasts like 2 minutes, and trust me I can't give you more than that, not while I haven't done it. :p
I think I ended up adding too many ideas for me to handle but that was mostly because I was afraid of not having enough conflict, still, I'm happy with what I have been learning not just about writing but also about myself while making this scenario, so even if it takes me effort to write it is my ambition to continue it because as I said before, I feel relatively happy with the results. While I have a big task now to continue with this scenario I really want to see it finished, and even if it will take me the time I want to continue with it no matter how much it costs me, I hope that my strength lasts me long enough, that my attention span doesn't fail me, and that the story doesn't fall apart in the next updates.
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