1 Year Earlier

This user “liuzixuan”, seems to be posting a lot.

Their stories are unintelligible.

They kept posting each chapter of their first story, “changeday 中國”, as its own story, which is against the site's rules.

It didn’t help that the story was written in Chinese.

Fortunately this was handled by the moderator and the front page isn’t spammed with their stuff anymore.

But they’re still posting a bunch of stories on the site. This time in english, albeit very broken english.

They’re all really bad, and they all get bad reviews, but “liuzixuan” seems to be giving their own stories 5 star reviews.

Isn’t the moderator going to deal with this?

***

Devin couldn’t believe what was going on. He couldn’t even bring himself to speak. Elise was actually reading one of these stories.

Devin had been sitting on his bed while Elise continued to scroll through the first chapter of “For a Girl”. He had no idea what Elise was thinking at the moment, but the dark part of his mind insisted that she was grossed out or disgusted. He expected Sierra to be happy about this, but she was just as confused as him. He guessed that made sense since after all, Sierra was more negative on the site after the controversy the previous year, and the story Elise was reading in particular had some fairly problematic moments.

Elise, meanwhile, was more so just perplexed. Reading the story seemed to give her a glimpse of a perspective not really seen in mainstream literature, and for that she was fairly intrigued. It was also clear that the author knew quite a bit about track and field as a sport, which definitely helped make it more engaging. But only being so early in, she was still wary of the apparent sexism that Devin had mentioned, even if she had brushed it off at the time.

It also didn’t help that Devin wasn’t even trying to engage or converse. It had been a theme for the day. Usually in the past, Devin would at least try to talk with others when he could. But today he or she didn’t even seem to be trying.

“Come on, why don’t you talk with me some more?” Elise said. “I’m sure you’ve read this one, right?”

Devin snapped out of his daze. “Umm… yeah. I’ve read it. It’s uh, been a few years though.”

“Okay, well then why don’t you talk to me about it. Surely you must know a lot about these kinds of stories. I’m new to them. Maybe you could fill me in.”

“Umm, okay.” Devin said back. “I guess I can do that.”

***

It started off slow, but as time went on Devin became more and more engaged. It turned out he really was the “real deal” when it came to TG content, and he wasn’t afraid to share information. Eventually he kind of forgot about how he thought his feelings were shameful as well as the need for him to pretend “Sierra” is turning him into a girl against his will.

Elise was really enjoying herself too. She was less focused on the story itself and more on Devin simply being happy. They (Elise decided she’d stick with ‘they’ for now) were clearly very passionate about this kind of stuff and it was really nice to hear.

“Wow they’re really getting into this fast.” Elise said. “We’re not even halfway done with the first chapter.”

Devin smiled again. “Yeah, I guess they don’t want to keep people waiting. The story has a lot of plotlines to get through.”

“How long is this story again?”

“Ninety six thousand words or so.”

“Wow, longer than a lot of books I’ve read. Well okay, I haven't read many books.”

Devin chuckled. “You should start sometime.”

***

“When was this story written?” Elise asked.

“Oh, it was written in 2003. The whole thing was posted on another site before being reposted here around when this site first opened.”

“Really? So this story is as old as us?”

“Yep, basically.”

“That’s weird.”

***

Devin and Elise were having a good time reading the story. They were making critiques, cracking jokes, and even making fun of the weird and stupid dialogue. Unfortunately as they got deeper and deeper into the second chapter, Devin was reminded again of the story’s more problematic content.

After Jack gets diagnosed with GB, he goes on and treats becoming a girl like death, thinking his life is over. Now, in the real world there is a definite possibility of depression and dysphoria arising from such an occurrence, but this story doesn’t take place in the real world. So really the only interpretation here is that the story is being wildly sexist.

“I’m sorry, Elise. This was a bad idea.” Devin said.

“Why?” She asked. “You’re talking to me and you’re engaged. I don’t really see that anymore. How is that bad?”

“It’s not that it’s just, you know, the story. It’s sexist. It was a bad idea to read it.”

“How is it sexist?”

“Well… I mean look at it, the main character can’t stop talking about how being a girl is miserable.”

Elise sighed. “Devin, acknowledging that sexism exists isn’t sexist.”

“What?”

“You really do have a lot to learn.” She smiled. “Look, it does sound pretty bad, but… sexism exists. And right now all this story is doing is showing it exists. You say Jack can’t stop talking about how being a girl will be miserable, but haven’t you thought that may just be what society has told him?”

“Well.” Devin replied. “He doesn’t even want to run anymore. That’s really bad isn’t it?”

Elise raised an eyebrow. “You’ve read this one before, right? Isn’t that like a character arc or something? Isn’t this whole thing supposed to be a character arc? Besides, I can kind of see why Jack would be a little hesitant to keep running, with him being turned into a girl and all.”

Devin stood there for a while, not really being able to say anything. He hadn’t quite considered that perspective before. He probably should have, since it’s basically Stephanie’s entire character arc to learn that being a woman isn’t a downgrade.

Really thinking about it, Elise did raise a pretty good point. Sure, the story may still be problematic in a lot of areas, and it’s definitely not the crowning achievement of feminism in fiction, but it has a purpose and it goes through with it. It acknowledges some of the less nice aspects of society, and that isn’t inherently bad. Hell, the author didn’t even need to include any feminist angle at all, and the fact that they did, in a fictionmania story no less, was pretty impressive.

Perhaps the story wasn’t quite as problematic as Devin remembered it.

Though to be fair, they had only just finished the second chapter.