2 Years Earlier

It was yet another shitty day for Devin. It wasn’t as if this was out of the ordinary for him; all of his days were dull and grey. Surrounded by some kind of emptiness that could never be filled. Devin almost considered himself selfish. His life was, by most respects, pretty good. He was a middle class white kid living in a first world country who didn’t have any disabilities or debilitating health conditions of any kind. Sure, it’d be nice if his family was richer, and was able to exploit the working class like the rest of the billionaires, but all things considered, he was fine.

And yet he wasn’t fine. Still in high school, it wasn’t like he could do much with his life anyway, so why didn’t he feel content? What was keeping him from enjoying anything?

“Probably an issue a lot of kids run into these days”, he thought, “especially with global warming and all”.

There was always one thing that could make him feel better. Going on youtube, he found “this video will turn you into a girl”. The video itself wasn’t really good, consisting of a constant beeping noise over a bunch of TG TF art and videos stolen from other sources. But that didn’t matter to him. Because he was just so enraptured by what was in that video.

TG content always made him feel better, at least temporarily. The part of his mind that really loved this stuff was never quite satisfied, no matter how many times he consumed it and masterbated to it. It was never enough.

He felt gross a lot of the time being into this kind of stuff, but that never really mattered while he was consuming it. He always pictured himself as being the main character of some TG story. The guy who caught some special disease, the guy who was kidnapped by a bunch of insane scientists, the guy who was caught wearing panties and blackmailed, the guy who fell into some kind of secret room. That’d be him, and then he would live life as a girl. It seemed like a pretty good deal for some reason.

As the video started, Devin laid on his bed, once again fulfilling his insatiable fetish.

***

“Do girls really want bigger breasts? I thought that was a myth.” Devin asked Elise.

“I don’t know any that do but I guess they’re out there, somewhere.” Elise answered.

It wasn’t exactly a shock that Devin would find himself reading “For a Girl” with Elise again. It wasn’t the first thing they did when she got to his house, but it was something they did eventually. They had already put quite a bit of time into the story, reading the first three chapters, so it only made sense to finish it.

As of now they were on the fourth chapter, the one where Stephanie gets back from GRS and goes shopping with her mother. Going to the mall to buy women’s clothing was a staple of TG content, and as such, “For a Girl”, which was basically the quintessential online TG story, just needed to have that part.

***

Reading through the fourth chapter, Devin realized that “For a Girl” was rather unique compared to most other online gender benders, at least of the ones he’s read. Not only was it at least a decade older than most of the stuff on TG Storytime, BigCloset, Scribblehub, and the such, but it also featured sexism as a major plot point.

Most TG stories didn’t feature sexism as a big driving force of the plot, as most of the time it was something that was only referenced to. But “For a Girl” was different, making sexism a constant and relevant part of the plot. Not many others were like that. It might be part of why it’s such a popular story in this niche community.

***

The scene in the fourth chapter where Stephanie and her mother talk about sexual assault in such an upfront manner is pretty surprising, particularly the part where the mother explains that most sexual assaults occur from people the victim knows.

For a story on Fictionmania, written in 2003 to make an observation like that is actually kind of impressive, considering the site’s usual content. Throughout the 90s and most of the 2000s, the vast majority of TG stories were short fetish romps that never had anything of value to say. This story, on the other hand, was almost like a real novel, with a fully developed plot, character development, and themes. In a way, Devin had more respect for the story now than he did earlier.

***

Elise gave out a chuckle.

“What is it? What’s funny?” Devin asked her.

“This part here. ‘My boyfriend is now hotter and has bigger tits than me!’”

Devin gave out a chuckle of his own. “Yeah, now that I think about it, it is pretty funny. Honestly this whole story is kind of ridiculous but it is pretty consistent in tone. Nothing in this story feels out of place, if you accept it as being in its own weird world.”

“I just thought it was a funny scene.”

“Oh, right.” Devin said, his cheeks reddening slightly.

***

At the start of the fifth chapter, when Stephanie gets on the bus for the first time as a girl, Elise let out another chuckle. The ‘whispers’ of the other students weren’t really whispers at all, and their reactions were way too over the top.

Still, just as Devin said, they were believable in the bizarre world the story takes place in.

***

“You know, there’s actually a theory out there about the principal. I saw it in a couple reviews. It’s that he’s the one who infected Stephanie in the first place.” Devin said.

“Makes sense.” Elise replied. “Believe me, there are way too many creepy men out there. Too many for us to handle. If you ever stop covering your body in three thousand layers of sweatshirts, you’ll understand.”

***

“Okay this is too much. I could accept all the ridiculousness before but this is going too far. This does not happen. Ever.”

“Yeah, this part was always weird to me as well.” Devin responded. “Flashing the locker room while every other girl gets jealous of how… good your breasts look? It’s so over the top it’s almost like a parody.”

***

And now it was time for them to brace themselves. Forced het. In a TG sense, that was. A straight male character who transforms into a straight female character. Going from attracted to women to attracted to men. All because the story demands it to happen.

It seemed to Devin that this was one of the more controversial aspects of the story, and in a lot of older gender bending content in general. It was a trope most younger writers were not exactly fans of, and one that they largely steered clear of. It seemed to be generally frowned upon to do this nowadays, but in the 2000s it was the norm.

It made sense why it was a bit of a reviled trope. After all, it implied that loving a man was something inherent to being a woman, which was a bit homophobic. And it also implied that a man could gender bend and transform into a woman all they want, but one thing they were never allowed to be was gay.

It just begged the question: why did authors back then do it? What motivated them? Devin guessed it was because it made sense to them. “This character is a woman now”, they probably thought, “what better way to show they’re a woman than to have them fall in love with a man”. They probably didn’t really think through the implications of what they were writing. Or about reinforcing heteronormativity. And it wasn’t as if anyone at the time was raising any objections to it.

Devin doubted the authors had any malicious intentions, but in the world, many uninformed people can do a lot of harm.

Well, at least as much harm as you could do in a TG story on a site that most people have never heard of, which wasn’t a lot.

***

After they finished the fifth chapter, Devin said, “believe it or not, we’re already almost halfway through the story.”

“Really?” Elise said back. “We still have nine chapters left.”

“I said the third chapter was really long… so… I take it that what happened in that chapter wasn’t a ‘normal day for a girl’?”

“Eh, no.” Elise responded. “Not really.”