Entry tags:

recs, recs:discworld, reviews, reviews:discword, reviews:dr horrible, reviews:stargate atlantis, reviews:supernatural

First batch of lgbtfest fics for this year! So far only one that I really, really loved, but I (obviously) haven't read much yet, either.

What a Man's Gotta Do by sto_helit_lace 2/5
Dr. Horrible. 4600 words. Everyone's got villains they must face. Captain Hammer has never thought this particular villain was very cool at all.

This reads more like a summary than a story, but the worst part was that I can't connect this person to the Captain Hammer we see onscreen at all. Too bad, because he ends up with a trans guy, which is awesome. But the rest of the fic, eh. I really love the characters in Dr. Horrible, so I kind of want to read about them, not about some random people with their names pasted on.

Modern Love by penknife 5/5 Recommended
Discworld. 2900 words. It's amazing how the world rarely gets less complicated.

This is four vignettes (not really related, though the last one kind of comes around to the first) about Ankh-Morpork dwarves and the changing views of gender and sexuality in the city. This makes so much sense from what we know of dwarves in canon.

Sacrifices by elementalv 3/5
Stargate: Atlantis. 2600 words. John has always been willing to pay the price for his career and to keep his people safe, but he's just found the one price he's not sure he can afford.

I was almost afraid to read this because of the prompt: The one good thing his father had ever done for him was cover up his original gender and the surgery. With the Air Force's policy against transgenders, he never would have gotten to fly without his help. I mean, urgh. The cluelessness. And transgenders? Really?

But the author did a pretty good job. Here John is intersex and was assigned male at birth, so that removed some of my disbelief (I still don't fully buy the premise, because John would still have to be on T, and I'm not sure how that would work without Carson or any previous military doctors knowing).

I liked the element of the Ancient healing machine. Some of you may remember how upset I was several years ago when I saw a fic where a similar plot device was used in order to make Rodney, who was ftm, the butt of the joke, because haha, it reversed his sex change operation! So funny! All the commenters seemed to think so. Anyway, I have always thought that was an interesting element and wished someone would use it in a story that wasn't offensive. Here John is injured and the only way to heal him would be to use the machine, but the machine would also undo various surgeries and the effects of hormones over the years. I really liked how Carson was written, too. He was a total asshat, but it's a very realistic portrayal of most doctors when it comes to trans and intersex patients.

Turn the Page by messageredacted 3/5
Supernatural. 9000 words. Sam hasn't seen his sister in four years. A lot more has changed than he ever imagined.

This was my prompt from last year, which was ignored then, but surprisingly got picked up by two people this time around. I'll be honest, I was really disappointed when I saw this posted and saw that it was wincest, and after reading it...nothing changed my mind. I liked the way the author rewrote the pilot with Dean being trans, and Sam's coming to terms with that, but the wincest felt really out of place. The writing was otherwise quite good, though, and there were several moments I really loved (the flashback to Dean cutting his hair short for the first time really resonated). Though there were also a couple moments that felt off, like Dean has no chest scars, really?

Now You're a Man by cho_malfoy 3/5
Supernatural. 5300 words. Dean completed a journey in the body he was born with, but just because he's started a new journey doesn't mean he's likely to forget the last one.

This was also written for my prompt, though a different prompt than above. I liked the flashback scenes quite a bit (especially teen!Dean using his forgery skills to get T, and the scene with wee!Dean in his new class), but the present day scenes didn't really work that well for me, especially the final scene with Castiel. He says, "You were born in a female body. You had a journey to make in it, and you completed it. Now you have a journey in this one," and I'm just left trying to figure out what Dean needs to do that he couldn't do in his old body. My original thinking when I wrote the prompt was more just that if Dean is healed of all old wounds, is whole, etc. in canon, then how about this Dean is whole as in being in possession of the body he was trying to get himself. I hadn't been thinking of it as part of the grand purpose or whatever, so when presented with that answer, I find it just leads to more questions and doesn't really make sense to me, idk.