I seem to have put my self -- or my characters -- in a dilemma in a couple of the stories posted here.
A lead character is transformed into a female by a woman with vast magical powers. She has rather slutty sex. Then she's told by the woman who transformed her that she can try to act in a less slutty manner, but that such behavior has become part of her nature, and that she can never become a male again.
That more or less summarizes what happens to Russ/Rose in "Slow Justice" and to Stan/Stella in "The Ticket", and in both cases, readers have called me on it. They want the new woman to have a chance for a successful life.
Someone suggested Identity Death. That the women would be happiest if they forgot their male pasts. I've used Identity Death in some of my stories when I felt that it was appropriate. But it isn't always appropriate, and I don't think that it is appropriate for the characters in either of these stories.
There's a lesser sort of resolution that, in a way, is sort of like Identity Death, call it Identity Separation. It usually includes a sentence like this. "She knew who she had been, but it didn't seem to matter any more." The transformee has developed a strong, new feminine personality. She remembers who she was and what she was like, but she also knows that she doesn't act like that any more.
A lot of writers use Identity Separation. I used it in such stories as "Habeous Corpus." The Professor used it in all the Ovid stories, and the list goes on.
I don't think that Identity Separation fits for Rose or Stella, either.
They been shown -- they've become -- just the sort of objectivized slut that they thought all women are. Now they feel trapped into being that sort of woman.
I think what's needed for both women is to recognize what they were and to build a real person out of that. Let it be perhaps with the aid of the one who performed the transformation. Let them see how wrong they were, how much they deserved the transformation, and how they can prove that they can rise above it to become the sort of woman they now want to be.
And, if I do a sequel to either story, that's what I would want to write.
Comments
It seems to me
It seems to me that however you write your story someone won't like it. I haven't read these stories yet but the old axiom "you can please some of the people all of the time etc." applies to any field of the arts, as in appreciation is subjective to whatever the recipient likes.
In the end you are gifting us your time and your muse and we should be grateful, after all we are not paying you. Write what you want, what your muse leads you to, what you enjoy writing. Thank you for giving us your stories even if our individual likes and dislikes mean they aren't always to our tast.
What she said! And we are
What she said! And we are grateful, Ellie, thanks!!
Have you considered.
Sex is not about submission. And being extremely horny does not automatically make someone a slave to their feelings. She can channel that horniness into aggressiveness towards other aspects in her life and become much more dangerous.
Accepting one's lot
I don't think you'd get a lot of agreement here if the moral of your story turns out to be "If you find yourself feeling trapped in a body that doesn't match the gender you feel you are on the inside, there's nothing you can do about it so you should put your real self out of your mind and just conform to how people expect your outer shape to act."
I don't know if this helps or
I don't know if this helps or not, but I find it very curious that a lot of witches/sorceresses/insert female magic user here, tend to punish their male foes by making them into sluts, claiming that 'this is how you thought we acted, so now this is how you will act' as if it's some kind of righteous, deserved punishment.
But to me, that's completely absurd because you're proving them right.
By making someone into a slut, forced to be that way, it seems to me that these former males are being shown that they were entirely right all along, or maybe our spellcaster shares that view somewhere in her head herself.
To change someone's view, I feel that you need to prove them wrong, maybe put them in a position where they are forced to be strong, to be the exact opposite of their views, otherwise you're just supporting those views. Encouraging them even.
Maybe I'm just a weird minority though.
EDIT: Thought about this a bit more.
I feel like turning a male jerk into a slut and then sort of dumping them afterwords is a very poor way to send a message. This is what I came up with.
By making them a slut, have slutty sex then leaving them like that with the impulses doesn't show them that they can be strong, it shows them that they are weak, that women are extremely sexual creatures with no inhibitions. This is a person who has no experience or understanding what it's like being female, and with their first experience becoming a sex object of some kind it's goign to form who they are as a person.
Being forced to remain in this body afterwords with the inclinations attached keeps them in a place where they believe that there is only way for a woman to act, they haven't had anyone guide them, teach them or explain to them. They've just been transformed into a stereotype of sex, and it's one that's going to support the very thing the spellcaster was trying to punish: showing other men and women that women are just bimbo's/sluts/idiots/what have you.
it also proves to the one being punished that they are just objects to be lusted after and used, so what has been accomplished here? The new girl has been shown that A: Being a woman is a bad thing, B: women are sluts/whores/bimbos and C: They were right all along.
This hardly seems like the correct way to teach a lesson. If you're going strictly for revenge with no thought to rehabilitation or the future than this is the path you take.
But, if you want to teach them that women are more than how they perceive them, maybe they should be put in a position to learn that. Being forced to claw their way up a career ladder, forced to become strong, to become an 'ice bitch', forced to learn how to be strong with others looking down upon them. THat way when they're left like this, they A: have a job that is sustainable, B: have learned that women are more than what they thought because they have experienced it C: Are creating a positive role model for others and D: have a chance to become a better and happier person.
Maybe I'm overthinking this, maybe I'm dead wrong, but that's just how I see it.