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“What would you rather be? A girl dealing with her first period or a guy dealing with the same thing? This whole thing is a lot easier if you just let yourself BE who you look like. We’re worse off than born transsexuals, because we’re stuck like this. They can get operations and stuff but WE can’t do anything except accept this and hope like hell that we don’t get LYNCHED for having robots cut off our balls,” said Allison. “I liked being Alex. He was a happy kid. These nanobots come and change me into THIS. Allison is a new girl, and she’s learning. She’s not happy about that but at least Alex has the dignity to SHUT THE FUCK UP and try to let Allison live her life! If you’re going to let Sam keep running Sammy’s body, then you may as well jump out of a window now. ”
Author's Note:Woh... dialog heavy much. I've sriously got to find a good balance between internal monologues, exposition and dialogs. Uhhh... yeah, I'm still learning. Sorry about how short this one was, I tried going on a little further but it just felt kinda forced. Also, please to be commentifying. Bad grammars always work.
Ah, the bus. My old nemesis.
The half-hour waits at my bus stop into the city had honed my hatred to a finely-edged menace. It was boring, and cold, and it hadn’t helped my temper after a bad day of school. Being there - for what I worked out as about 17 days in total - had been really stressful, what with the lack of any shelter - I cursed the 546 bus route. The goddamn bus wasted so much of my life - that’s, like, 400 hours I could have spent on Netherworlds! That’s easily enough to get a character from level 1-120 (the record was 42 hours played time), and probably enough time to get a full set of 30 man gear.
No, not gear made of people (or gear FOR 30 people), gear only available from 30 man dungeons. Liara had a full set of that, as well as a full set of DPS (damage per second, just means a damager when you’re talking about gear or people) gear - only 12 man gear, though. Bwahahahahaa! Multi-function class for the WIN! Fear my holy wrath! PEWPEWPEW! BURN IN RIGHTEOUS FIRE!
Where was I? Oh, right, the bus. Yeah.
It was one of those bigger than normal, white ones, with the “extra low floor” that the 401 bus route always seems so stuck-up about - those stupid, 5 times a minute buses.
/glare
I’m guessing that was there because pretty much everyone and anyone could be infected, and - well, if a worm or something got GDDificated, you’d think they’d have trouble walking. So it was a bus for the disabled, I guess, even if it was about 20 years too old. It looked like a hybrid between a school bus and a monster truck. It was freaking HUGE…
So me, Mike, Tom(i), Sam(my), Brittany, Stephanie/Steven, Lisa and Rachel/Richard were shooed onto the bus (can you be shooed somewhere or just FROM somewhere?) and we were surprised.
There were a lot of people there. Like, a lot lot. Around 30 or so people - there were still around 20 seats spare, this bus was pretty big. They all looked normal… well, that is, they had the right anatomy and no disfigurements - a few girls there were chatting about normal stuff… well, relatively normal… I hadn’t met many girls into Magic: The Gathering. I’m kinda ashamed to know what it’s called, I’m seriously not into that stuff.
Then I remembered this was a GDD sanctum, and it made slightly more sense. I guess they stayed interested in the same things, if not the same people. Of course, I could’ve been majorly wrong - they might’ve been jocks before GDD hit and had randomly taken it up. I chose to believe the first - I wanna stick with Netherworlds. Urgh, gotta stop using the word jock. So American-sounding.
What surprised me, though, was when five girls near the back beckoned us over. I glanced at Lisa and Mike before we walked over to them.
“Nuh-uh. Girls only zone here,” said one of them, holding up a hand to block Mike’s passage.
Rachard/Richel nodded sadly, and turned away. Mike shot the girl a slightly annoyed look and followed after R*ch**(d) - they both got a few seats near the front of the bus.
The five girls were having a lively conversation, despite being split between three different rows. One was the girl who waved us over - an Asian girl who looked quite a lot like how Sarah used to look, although this girl was a little taller and… more well-endowed. A goth-looking girl who had waaaay too much eyeshadow and a fringe that pretty much covered it up anyway, a short (like, really short, maybe 130 cm tops?) brunette who gave off an anime feel because of her (relatively) huge brown eyes, and a curly-haired redhead with emerald eyes giggled as a blonde girl with blue eyes came to the punch line of…
“And he said, that wasn’t a walrus. That was my WIFE! ”
I blinked. Thaaaat didn’t seem like a typical girl’s conversation.
“Uh, what?”
Oh, right. GDD. I knew that.
The blonde sighed. “New girls?”
“Uh, yeah,” I said.
“In every sense of the phrase,” Lisa added.
She scanned us over, and…
“Well, you two came out well,” she said, “What’re your names?”
No-one answered.
“Yo, blondie. Asked you a question.”
“Uh… Sammy,” she stammered, staring at her feet.
“And your cheerleader friend?”
More silence. Then it dawned.
“Wait, me?” I said.
“You’re two pompoms short of showing up at an NFL match. Who do you think I’m talking to?”
“I…uh…my name’s Lara.”
“Used to be Larry, I s’pose,” she said.
“Um, no. Aaron.”
She looked at me and raised an eyebrow - a little heckler inside my head went “How long did you train for that?” which was followed by a bizarre train of thought leading up to the Olympic eyebrow raising event.
“So why’d you choose Lara?”
“Oh, um, I play a character in a game called Liara, and I didn’t want to pretend I was still, you know, a guy, so I kinda went with that so I could distance myself as far as possible from who I used to be because I used to be teased and stuff all the time and pretty much the only thing I liked was my game and-”
“Woh, slow down,” said the Asian girl. Even her voice sounded a lot like Sarah had. “There’s no hurry.”
“Well, what ‘bout the rest of yas?” said the redhead. She… well, I think the accent is from Texas. I dunno, it was kinda like how you’d imagine a cowgirl or whatever going “howdy, pardner” type thing. The American accents were really thrown on strong… sounded more like an parody than a real accent, I think…
“I’m Brittany. This is kinda the best thing that’s happened to me,” she said as the bus began.
“Oh, thank god, finally someone agrees with me!” said the little brunette, doing the classic Leyton Hewitt air-fist-pump-thing. Whatever you call it.
The goth girl glared at her. “Yeah, that’s right. Because losing my fucking penis is the best thing that’s ever happened to me, amirite?” Yeah, it was ‘am I right’ but where I come from, it’s amirite.
No, not Melbourne, the INTERNET.
“Still got your regular one, though, right?” said Brittany.
“What?”
“You lost your fucking penis, I’m assuming your other penis is… oh, screw it.”
“What else could ya do with it?” said the redhead.
Girly giggle outbreak. Holy shit, I’m part of it.
Me, Brittany, Lisa and Sammy had been accepted into the group pretty much flawlessly - Tomi and Steph had gone back over to sit with Mike and Rachel/Richard.
The blonde girl - the unofficial leader of the girls we were sitting with - was called Allison, goth-girl was called Yvonne, Asian girl turned out to be Sarah (doubleyou tee eff!), Texas redhead Leanne, and the little brunette was Tina. Formerly Alex, Ivan, Simon, Liam, and Tim - but all of them, they explained, either had GDDAS, GDDG or GDDSG.
“Wait,” Sammy said as Allison explained this, “I thought, like,” she shuddered at the unintentional use of the word, “only, like, 11% of people got happy.”
“Oh, sure, at the START,” Tina said - effing hell, she was cute, “but that’s the whole point of the GCS.”
“GCS?”
“Gender Conformity School. It’s not what the name sounds like, it’s basically a combination of teaching you to blend in and dealing with the changes. It’s pretty cool, actually, there’s no homework or any real work. It’s only for about 4 hours a day and then they let us go back to our rooms or go shopping or whatever. Yvonne’s been here the longest of any of us,” said Tina, giggling slightly as she mentioned Yvonne.
“Look, it’s not my fault, okay? I’m not a girl, I can’t bring myself to CARE about the crap they exam us on!” she whined.
“Exams?” I asked.
“Yeah, basically to see if you’re ready for the real world. You’ve gotta be pretty much perfect, otherwise they fail you and keep you there for another 2 weeks. Pretty much no-one passes their first exam…” Allison explained.
“Why wouldn’t we be ready for ‘the real world’?” I asked.
“Um. Well, they can’t really let anyone know that we’ve been let out. As far as everyone knows, we’re stuck in QQ forever…” said Tina.
“People… don’t react well to letting us out…” said Leanne.
“Rape and murder pretty much sums most of it up. Also vandalism and stuff like that. Because we got nanobots shoved up our ass. We’re freaks now,” Yvonne muttered.
“How are we freaks? We changed, yeah, but we’re just normal…” Leanne struggled to say the word, “g-girls. I mean… we’re girls in every way.”
“But we weren’t born that way!” blurted Sammy.
“And why does that matter?” Tina asked.
“Because this… this is WRONG! I’m not a girl!” she said.
“Your crotch says different,” replied Yvonne, “and so does mine. Look, as soon as you get out of here, you can be whatever kind of girl you want.”
“Yes. Whatever kind of GIRL,” Sammy spat the last word. “Fuck that. My life has been completely fucked up - as if being fucking pulled out of school, and away from my family, and having random spasms where my arms break for no apparent reason, wasn’t enough, I’ve got to learn to be a fucking GIRL? I’m going to have my first fucking period in a few weeks or maybe tomorrow and you…” (Yeeaaah, her “like” habit goes away when she’s angry. Maybe it’s conscious? Duh duh dunnnnn…)
“What would you rather be? A girl dealing with her first period or a guy dealing with the same thing? This whole thing is a lot easier if you just let yourself BE who you look like. We’re worse off than born transsexuals, because we’re stuck like this. They can get operations and stuff but WE can’t do anything except accept this and hope like hell that we don’t get LYNCHED for having robots cut off our balls,” said Allison. “I liked being Alex. He was a happy kid. These nanobots come and change me into THIS. Allison is a new girl, and she’s learning. She’s not happy about that but at least Alex has the dignity to SHUT THE FUCK UP and try to let Allison live her life! If you’re going to let Sam keep running Sammy’s body, then you may as well jump out of a window now. ”
Awkward silence.
Followed by awkward Sammy bursting into tears.
“Hooboy,” I said. I’d wound up sitting next to her, aaaand… well, is this counted as maternal instincts or something? But, I… uh, kinda hugged her, like I’d done with Lisa.
But she just glared at me, and… the isolation I felt lead me to sit down next to Brittany instead. Sammy kept crying, but with awkward sobs instead of the river of tears there had been a moment ago.
Tina sighed. “She’ll probably turn out like Yvonne. You, though…” she gestured at me, “I’m pretty sure GCS should be able to bring you at least up to GDDSG, if not full-on GDDG.
“What?” I said, startled. “Hell no, I’m not like that!”
The… other Sarah… smirked. “How long did you spend crying because you were going to turn into a girl?”
“Well, I didn’t, but-”
“Were you ever particularly… macho?”
“No, but that’s because I’m a-”
“What is it about GDD that’s so bad for you?”
I had to stop and think there.
“Well… because I’m a guy.”
“Your chest says different.”
“Fine, because I’m used to being a guy!”
“Well, then once GCS is finished for ya you should be completely happy then, right?”
“Hell no, I just got yanked out of my life and away from my family!”
“So if you got to go back and live with your family, you’d be fine.”
“No!”
“Why not?”
“BECAUSE I’M A GIRL NOW!”
“Exactly,” said Sarah, “and you should try to remember that.”
What just happened…?
“No, I mean, I’m a guy stuck as a-”
“Lara. You’re a girl,” said Tina. “Welcome to the winning side.”
“There’s no point in holding it off. Your subconscious has accepted your gender change… you really should too,” said Allison.
I blinked.
“Why fight it? If you do, you’ll just get depressed. No-one here is gonna be testing your masculinity. Just…go with it,” Yvonne advised.
“I… I’m not a…”
“You’re a girl, Lara. You’re probably one of the girliest in your group. You’re just not accepting it,” said Allison.
The fact I broke down crying then didn’t really secure my image. I’m REALLY surprised I held on this long.
____________________________________________________________________________
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Comments
That was... short.
But other than that, not bad. She needed to break down a bit at some point, and now is as good as ever. I don't know if I like their outlook on things, even if it is practical, denying the emotional aspect of the change seems to me to be a pretty cruel reaction- perhaps even those who claim to be happy haven't adapted as well as they think if they can't find a kinder way to treat those still dealing with the change.
Melanie E.
I Can See Why
These transformers are quarentined. But is there a plot to use them by an agency?
May Your Light Forever Shine
May Your Light Forever Shine
Good Authentic Dialogue
Yes, it's short, but it was actually the right size, plot-wise. The dialogue fits the characters: these girls are teenage boys, not trans girls/women. In many respects, they're closer to trans men, except for the growing up unprivileged in a patriarchy part. It would be incongruous if they were kind to each other; shared burdens do NOT necessarily lead to sympathy, especially for those who successfully cope.
Setting-wise, I can't see why the gov't would let them out and risk exposure. I also couldn't see how the gov't could use them; they're not super-human, after all.
What's wrong with MtG? As if working second-shift parked in front of a glorified spreadsheet with a GUI is any better... ;)
Some friendly suggestions
Some friendly suggestions based on your concerns at the beginning of the story...
Dialogue-heavy is fine. I mean, if you are relaying a conversation, then what you are writing is going to HAVE to be dialogue-heavy. As a suggestion, though, you will want to try to avoid the kind of thing that you did at the very end there, where it was all dialogue with hardly a break for even an "Allison said." (or something of the kind). The way you did the first part on the conversation is much easier to read. Every sentence or three, stick in a little reflection. Tell us how other people are reacting to what was just said ("all the other girls nodded eagerly at what Allison was saying, except for Yvonne, who..."), give us a snippet of what your character is thinking ("I was taken aback - I'd never really thought about it that way..."), or describe what the other person is doing as she's speaking ("She pointed directly at my chest as she said that, and I found myself blushing in sudden embarrassment...") Or, you know, do whatever you want. If you want to have quick, snappy dialogue, then these brief interludes should be short and somewhat less frequent. If you are relaying a more normal-paced conversation, take as long as you need to with the extra description to help put the reader at ease. Again, being dialogue-heavy is just fine, but putting quotation after quotation can make a reader's head start to spin after a few lines.
On a more general note, I really like the story so far. This is exactly the kind of story I like to read, and I appreciate the MMO theme. I'm a gamer myself, and all too used to the world of PUG'd raids. Keep up the good work! =)
This one was short.
But adequate for what it was meant to do, I think. I've been following this one from the start, and keep coming back, so that should tell you something, right? Okay, I like the story.
As someone mentioned previously, dialogue is good, and does really tend to define characters. I also agree that sometimes a bit less is actually more. A bit of description, even just something like 'She raised an eyebrow -- yup, definitely olympic caliber there -- and shrugged/grinned/frowned.' would help delineate the conversation and who was saying what.
I'm not an online gamer, but have played more than a few of those for short times and liked them. My problem is that they are way too addictive and I don't have the time to devote to playing them as I would like to do. So, I don't play them.
That really makes no difference, though, for the intents of this story. It's well written, and you make it clear that not many victims of the nanos are truly happy with how they turned out.
Anyway, I do like the story, as I said, and will keep looking for more of it.
Maggie
Very good chapter
But then as I said, I like dialog. :)
I was trying to remember what the GDDwhatever acronyms were, but other than that, I was in the story. The new characters were easier to distinguish, you made their differences stand out. The old bunch are all a blur to me. It's good to have at least one key feature that lets each character be recognizable. A stutter, glasses, hair color, accent, etc. that you can keep referring to so we readers remember who's who. That feature is like a coat rack... it lets readers mentally "hang" new information onto the character so their personality and history is remembered with them.
Good work. :)
I'm glad...
I'm glad to see that you are continuing with the same narrative style. I enjoy the glib, wisecracky style. Hey, Steven Brust made lots of money with his Vladimir Taltos series, it doesn't hurt to follow suit. :-)
As a rule of thumb, science fiction does well with lots of exposition because the readers generally appreciate the information, and because it is necessary. After all, a mainstream writer can say "1940s Chicago," and most of his target audience is going to get it. If you're talking about the year 2422 on Tau Ceti IV, more explanation is going to be required.
In general, heavy dialog works well with stories that are designed to hit you emotionally - which is to say, most good fiction. It's hard to overdo dialog. It can also be hard to keep it smooth and interesting, but the guest reader had some good suggestions. I think you did pretty well, by the way.
I'm still reading the series, and I look forward to the next installation.
Ray