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TComing Out Of My Cage

• MLP: FiM
• Drama
• Slice of Life

Mark always knew he was... well, you know. But that didn't matter, at least until a portal to Equestria appeared.

• Profanity
• Human
• Twilight
• Rarity
• Spike
• OC

Boopy Doopy · 74k words  ·  415  74 · 6.5k views

Mark always knew he was... well, you know.

Actually, no, I don't. Am I missing something? Let's see what else Boopy Doopy wrote...

Yeah, I'm the one who writes those trans stories.

Oh. Okay then.

Mark always knew he was... well, you know. But what was he supposed to do about it? Nothing, really. It didn't matter anyway. Nothing was ever going to change.

Right out the gate, I don't think the "poor me" angle is attractive to prospective readers.

Or so he thought, until a portal to Equestria appeared in his house. But with that portal, he'll be forced to acknowledge and confront what he is head on.

Here we go...

This story has three interpretations:

TL;DR 1
Katrina is the closed beta tester for a portal to Equestria before one is made available for the rest of the Earth public.

...

That's it. Seventy four thousand words. As far as the pony part of this "MLP fanfic" is concerned, that's it. Sure, there are all the usual non-brony-human-turned-pony in Equestria tropes. "OMG I have hooves now!" But other than that, the whole arc is testing a single portal and studying human(s) before a public one is made. And even that world-changing part happens in the background as a passing mention. So lets look a bit closer...

TL;DR 2
Katrina finds and goes through a portal to Equestria that turns her into a mare. She meets Spike and Twilight who were expecting her. Twilight sprains her ankle and Katrina brings her to the Ponyville hospital and meets the rest of the mane six. Rarity makes her a dress and does her makeup. Back home, her brother, Jason, gets kicked out of his father's home, moves in with her, and gets a job. She goes to Equestria again, and comes home with Twilight. She shows her around her house, and her computer. Then her brother comes home from work. The three of them go to Equestria. For the next several weeks she heads to Equestria in the afternoons, often accompanied by her little brother. Then Katrina's other brother, Trent, and father come over for her birthday. Then the four of them go to Equestria. Then they go home. The story time-lapses to 10 years in the future. There is now a public portal to Equestria, and Katrina has kids/foals that she had as a mare in Equestria that were fathered by a stallion.

That is what physically happens. Now if you're still wondering how this is a seventy-four-thousand word story, we need to add one last element.

TL;DR 3
Katrina is a woman trapped in a man's body that feels bad about herself. She goes through a portal to Equestria that turns her man body into a mare. She meets Spike and Twilight who were expecting her. Then she goes back home through the portal. She goes to visit her father and brother. The father is antagonistic (what a surprise). She goes home, and feels bad about herself some more. Then Twilight comes through the portal to bring her back to Equestria. Twilight sprains her ankle and Katrina brings her to the Ponyville hospital. She meets the rest of the mane six. Then she goes back home through the portal. She has a conversation online with her friend, Sylvia about being trans and transitioning.
Then she goes back through the portal to Equestria. Rarity makes her a dress. Then she goes back home through the portal again and felt bad about herself some more. She talks with Sylvia, they exchange photos and they compliment each other and talk about transitioning some more. Then she goes back to Equestria. She uses the mare's restroom and Rarity does her makeup. She talks to Twilight about transitioning. She goes back home and her brother got kicked out of his father's home, moves in with her, and gets a job. Then she goes to Equestria to talk to Twilight. Then she goes home again with Twilight coming along. She shows her around her house, and her computer. Then her brother comes home and finds out that she's trans. The three of them go to Equestria. Twilight interviews Jason. Then Jason talks to Katrina about transitioning. For the next several weeks she heads into Equestria in the afternoons, often accompanied by her little brother. Katrina's other brother, Trent, and father come over for her birthday, and she admits that she's trans. Her father is antagonistic again. She calls her mom to tell her, who already suspected, and accepted. She texts her sister who is not accepting of her. Then the four of them go to Equestria. Her father is antagonistic again and leaves. So does her older brother, who messages her later to apologize. Later she talks to Twilight about transitioning. Then she decides to actually transition. The story time-lapses to 10 years in the future. There is now a public portal to Equestria, and Katrina has kids/foals that she had as a mare. Her father is slightly less antagonistic again. And she finally starts to patch up her relationship with her sister.

This is a trans story about a trans person being trans. (Also there is pony.)
And before you accuse me of being hyperbolic, I invite you to compare apples to ponies. In this story there is the following number of occurrences of these words:

Trans = 146
Dysphoria = 92
Pony = 124

And just to try to be fair, I even included words that just had Pony in it, like Anypony, Everypony, Nopony, Ponyville and even Ponytail! I understand theme is important, but come on. This isn't AO3. This is FimFiction. I'm not saying that a story needs to be exclusively about ponies, but it should at least mostly be.

And before you cry foul and break out the 'Shakes is transphobic' banners, I want to say in no uncertain terms:

Coming Out Of My Cage is a GOOD trans story!

It's just not really a pony story. I mean yeah, it's there. But it never felt like the main part of the story. It's a story about the trials and struggles of a person coming to terms with being trans, and all the realistic life hurdles and obstacles and pain they have to deal with. And this story tells that tale very well! It's a tale that should and needs to be told! I can feel how personal the writing is and it is clearly coming from the heart. So don't take this as me trying to discount its merit.

The part that irks me is that it just feels like the pony veneer was just an afterthought. (Aside from Katrina being able to magically have foals as a fertile mare, which could have been it's own story outright, but even that felt tacked on at the end.) Equestria could just as easily be replaced with a furry convention, or the online forum from the first chapter, where one can 'roleplay' and be their true selves in an accepting community. But the pony can be easily stripped away from the central trans narrative like a thin coat of colorful pastel paint. Functionally, the conversations that Katrina has online with Sylvia accomplish the same thing as her time in Equestria, in getting her to come to terms with being trans and eventually finding the courage to come out and transition.

On that note, however, this story fails whatever the trans equivalent of the Bechdel Test is. I was hard-pressed to go back and find a scene where the character wasn't talking about being trans, thinking about some aspect it, or prose wasn't about it. It felt like every scene had it in it in some capacity. And lack of pony aside, I get that this is what the story is about. But it cheapens Katrina into this one-dimensional trans caricature with no other defining qualities. I get that it's a big part of her personality, but it shouldn't be the only thing. She's trans and... she likes football?

The omnipresence of the theme also hurts the story itself. I went into this expecting pony fanfiction. But it was distracting, like trying to watch an episode of My Little Pony while there's a Pontiac Firebird parked outside with the car alarm going off the whole time. And the reverse is also true. It's a good story about being trans, but the pony being sprinkled in just makes it feel... I don't know, more shallow.

But that said, it has enough pony to be on this platform. And it did well by all objective metrics going by the Like ratio. Just reading the comments shows what a force for good this story is for the readers in this community which does have a decent percentage trans population.

Author's Note:
This story is dedicated to several people I know who are like me, but must remain nameless for personal reasons. You deserve nothing less than every good thing in life. For all of you who personally know the struggle Mark faces, this story is for you, or for someone like you.

I'm not trans, by the way. I honestly have no idea how that rumor got started. So naturally, me reading this is a bit of being the outsider looking in. And that's important too. This isn't just for the trans community to read and all pat each other on the back and say, "I know how you feel." This is a story that everyone should know, because the struggles of the human condition is universal, and we are all citizens of humanity.

Technical Writing: 10/10
The technical writing is damn near flawless. Shout out to Starscribe's excellent work pre-reading. The formatting was clean and easy to read. Online chatting, texting, and internal monologues were all consistently formatted. Paragraphs that were in a written as correspondence letters were indented and easy to separate. Excellent work all around.

Dialogue: 6/10
I'm not sure if I should lump internal monologues in here or prose. Nervous characters, and characters with low self esteem, are believable and realistic. But you can accomplish this with the opening establishment of the setting. But having so much of Katrina's dialogue read like Fluttershy with the nervousness, stuttering and enough ellipses to double Tampax's business, it gets frustrating to read, even when the technical formatting is all correct. Aside from the initial "OMG I'm a pony" shtick, it didn't help that it felt like more dialogue than not was about trans stuff. It feels like the token conversations about the Kansas City Chiefs was just added in as a meta joke to offset that, but it just makes the problem more glaring.

Prose: 6/10
Harping on the theme saturation again, it was rare to have a full paragraph, let alone a full scene, that didn't have trans overtones coming through a megaphone. That aside, it did a good job of describing the characters, places, things, physical action, and showing how characters were feeling without telling.

Characterization: 2/10
Q: How much angst would you like?
A: Yes to all.
This story could have had a third of the bulk cut out by eliminating the excessive character angst. The word Dysphoria did not need to be in here 92 times. We get it. We understand this is how she was feeling. But you don't need to beat us over the head with it. We're not going to forget just because the last instance of Dysphoria scrolled of the screen. It would be like if the entire run of Bojack Horseman was like the Stupid Piece of Sh*t episode. You just need a little angst to make a point.
And more than that, there wasn't a whole lot of other character development for Katrina at all beyond "I'm a trans person with trans problems. Also I like football." To be fair, that character's arc was done to a mirror finish, but the same could be said of Cookie Monster's arc to fulfill his love of cookies.

Story Overall: 5/10
At the risk of beating a dead non-horse, Coming Out Of My Cage is still a good trans story.

Just not a good pony story.

For review purposes: 6.5/10

Thank you for the review. It's greatly appreciated, and will help me become better and writing/structuring stories in the future. The only thing I can say on the plot being entirely one thing is that I wanted to see a story that was specifically this one thing and nothing else. But thank you, I greatly appreciate the review.

A tip for writers doing anything longform is to use CTRL-F to count the number of times certain words are used and replace with synonyms or rewrite the offending paragraph such that information is shown and not told. It's also a good rule of thumb to exercise economy of verbiage using only as many words as necessary to convey what you mean. Try not to reiterate a point unless it pushes the plot forward or develops the character further.

This will eliminate a lot of the major issues mentioned in this review.

As far as the general lack of pony in this review, I'm going to be very interested to see what you think about Equestria Mystery Dungeon when it's done, Shakespearacles. That story leans a lot harder on Pokémon than pony and even follows four Eeveelution main characters and as such seems to trip the "not mostly pony" alarm. Regardless, I fully intend to post the final version of that story for review once it's complete. Good a reason as any for me not to die until that happens.