You mentioned the attractiveness issue -- and many females in this country are not particularly healthy or young which tends to make them not incredibly attractive and even often overlooked in social settings. Meanwhile, most magical tg stories seem to have new females being better looking than most existing females. Some tend to have the newly transformed females being outstandingly ugly, though some stories make them "relatively ordinary looking but with some character". But what if the magic originated in a mechanism aimed at making existing females healthy and/or beautiful and/or young? [So it's just you and the dozens of 90 year old ladies that had gone through the same transition?]

You also mentioned internal identity issues, and you mentioned social identity issues, which can both be majorly important. But, also, your family role might also take a hit even if you were personally happy with the change, and even if you somehow managed to deal with your government paperwork. And something similar could happen with your job. Also, depending on the nature of your job and your transformation you might lose (or gain) in your ability to perform your job functions. If the job involves heavy lifting and physical endurance that can lead off in one direction. If the job involves language skills and social interaction that can lead off in a different direction. If the job involves fame of any sort that exposes you to yet another batch of issues.

But that's just for starters. Another issue to ponder is what if the "magic" was something other than a literal wish? Or what if the twist on the wish had nothing to do with english grammar? Or what if the magic had to follow some rules of biology, or of magic, or of philosophy or of justice or of whatever else? These kinds of implications can both restrict the story and give it life. For example, if the magic centers is based on a contagion carried by haploid cells I would expect a completely different kind of story than if the magic was based on a mis-stated wish. Or, for example, let us imagine someone used magic to increase their body's health and levels of testosterone -- and the magic accomplishes this in part by blocking androgen factors, such as conversion to DHT while doing nothing about other factors such as the conversion to estradiol... and how do you measure health? Does health have anything to do with life expectancy? Anyways, things could get complicated, even in a magical scenario.

And another aspect that might be included in a magical transform story could be the reactions of other people that might be wanting something like that transformation for themselves. Let's say that you were transformed, unwillingly -- how do you think that that would make someone else feel -- if they had not been transformed and if they had been yearning and seeking such a thing? Of course, part of that answer depends on their character and personality (and people are not all the same, even when we draw on stereotypes). And another part of that answer depends on the availability of the magic (stories can vary anywhere from "only one transformation which touched only one person" to "everyone transforms" but maybe instead the transformation was repeatable but expensive, difficult, risky or, or... ).

And then there's the "what is gender" issue touched on in some other comments. What if, for example, both your external gender and your internal gender changed? That could be tragic if they had started out in conflict but could be relatively prosaic if they had started out in agreement. But I think other variations on this theme are also possible, because sexual identity has so many facets.

And, also, I do not know about you all, but I am not particularly stable in my feelings. I can feel strongly one way at one point in time and feel quite a bit different at another point in time. And I can easily imagine that someone that went through a magical transition could experience additional wild shifts in feeling, because of the transition itself and because of the issues it calls into question. And I do not just mean crying jags (though yes, those can happen) but apathy and acceptance alternating with manic acceptance and overwhelmed stress, joy, exhaustion, an insane desire to argue with people that just do not get it, or anything described in DSM-IV (but hopefully not too horrid), or whatever else... ("It's just skin and stuff, no big deal..." one minute and "OMG! WTF!!!" another... or whatever other examples...)

And then there's the various facets of losing privilege and/or the ability to reach the top shelf. Males are expected to be blunt. Females are expected to be way better than that and often enough get borderline abuse or scorn for their efforts. And opening pickle jars can be difficult.

So.. I think I agree with you all? This stuff can get messy...

Yeah I totally agree. There are a lot of variables people take as a given in this genre.

Take for instance the 'instant longer hair' routine. If your gender suddenly switched over there are some things that just would not change. Hair growth factor being one of them... WHY are so many people magically transformed (or via sci-fi for that matter) ALWAYS get the long hair included? Why not a realistic shift to a female format but with the same weight and hair factors?)

I don't know many girls in real life that have a lot of hair these days (probably a fad), and gender switch does not shift any of that growth to faster or slower.

>> Foxxe Wilder >>