Sunset came back to Equestria during the summer for some artistic inspiration, so Twilight sent her to Mount Aris. Guided by Silverstream and Terramar, they come across an unusual fruit and learn a bit about each other's cultures and their views of gender.
Expanded version of my Iron Author fic for PonyFest Online 3.0, which can be seen here.
Preread by the wonderful Fillyfoolish.
Cover art uses trans pride flag from Wikipedia.
Sunset vector
Silverstream vector
Terramar vector
Written for the Pride and Positivity event. You can help out too by donating to a charity at one of these links.
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Chapters (1)
lol got a downvote literally as soon as this went up
10286395
Why?
10286396
Pretty sure it's someone salty about the cover art.
10286399
Oh
10286399
After I added the Pride and BLM links to the story I put up yesterday, someone mass-downvoted all of my stories at once lol, this site has some real fragile assholes on it
Edit: and people literally downvoted this comment too lmao.
Black lives matter and trans rights are human rights. Die mad about it, you sad little things.
10286477
F'naaaaaaa
I really love this concept!
10286477
It's such a shame that a fandom with so many wonderful queer fans also has so many homophobic/transphobic bigots.
10287864
I meant that one person went downvoted every single one of my stories at once
10287869 one time I was impolite to a nazi’s sockpuppet account and all my stories unaccountably acquired a downvote all at once
So... Are all hippogriffs “trans” as we would understand it in this fanfic?
10305039
Sunset herself isn't quite sure, hence her "Maybe?" afterward. Being trans isn't significant to hippogriff culture, so up until the point where it becomes significant (once the hippogriff diaspora swings into full gear), they wouldn't use that label on themselves. I would hesitate to say they're trans until they themselves consider themselves trans. Plus, Silverstream referenced Terramar's most recent transformation ceremony, meaning he may be the gender he'd have been assigned at birth by a pony doctor.
10305039
Same question applies to changelings, of course :)
Hey, when species is up for grabs, of course something as relatively minor as physical sex would be. And with every hippogriff having a personal shard of the Pearl, they redefine the term "genderfluid." Lovely bit of world-building.
Also, Sunset may have just realized that music festival wasn't her only temporal anomaly. Cue Sci-Twi shattering the timestream just in time for college finals.
10287060
Mental illnesses aren't something to joke about man
This is my jam. :3
But then again, so is headcanon that makes hippogriffs interesting. :D
Oh I love these hippogriff headcanons! And trans Sunset is always the best <3
10670321
Thanks!
Well, I'm definitely giving this an upvote to counter all those downvotes. I'm always on the hunt for my trans fictions and more ideas about what it is like to be trans in Equestria. I really enjoyed the relaxed pacing and the way Sunset got to be a knowledgeable teacher, but one that was put in a more informal light that suits her (in contrast with a character like Celestia). The way that the setting was described was also fun. That being said... this wasn't free from flaws. It reminded me of another story, A Changeling and a Kirin Walk Into a Bar, that was entered into a contest. The communication of the characters as trans/not trans/another LGBT status felt shaky, and the terms used to describe the characters could have probably gone through another check.
The other issue was that some lines of dialogue stood out as feeling confusing (even as a trans reader) or forced. Not that you made trans acceptance out to be forced, just that the dialogue came across as a little more removed from what being trans is/isn't and that it better fit a vague PSA than Sunset Shimmer, who is depicted as a trans mare talking to two (possibly?) trans youth. She spoke with an odd outsider's perspective in a way that... felt especially odd when you showed that she was trans. If you were to revisit the subject again, I'd say that this could be improved by giving more emotional foreshadowing/internal dialogue to show that she is a trans and there is a reason she's speaking in this way (so she doesn't feel removed from her transness) or by revising your dialogue. What you have are good sums and ideas here, they just don't feel like they're conveyed organically. The only character I could see speaking like this is a cis character, or one who is hesitant and kind of... Maud-like? Not exactly clinical per se, you don't use a lot of clinical language or trans-specific vocabulary, and the result is a kind of non-specific technical feel.
Here it feels like you're confusing gender or sex, unless you're implying the Pearl is able to rewire/alter the brains of the hippogriffs (gender) or that it just remolds their bodies (sex) which would have been able to be remolded with medicine/magic/magic medicine(?) anyway.
This feels like a needlessly confusing way to explain 'the condition preceded the intervention/was underlying before it was discovered' in a non-clinical way to two kids.
This part of the dialogue was the hardest for me to parse. It doesn't do a very good job at explaining what the difference between transgender and cisgender is in a way that isn't very misleading. Terramar and Silverstream may not be in a society that has the same treatments and biology as Sunset's, but they at least come across as being teenaged. I think that they would be able to understand a real explanation, since just giving this sort of lengthy verbal shrug and using 'different experiences' as the reason is really inaccurate at worst of a misleading hand wave of the actual differences involved at best.
I'm going to have to assume you're equating spells that Sunset went through with surgery here? If that's the case, then she'd be right. Unless a doctor or doctors say otherwise, no trans person needs surgery. The benefits and success of it can be heavily dependent on the individual, and the effects of HRT (or here, its equivalent) can often give what surgery could if an intervention into therapy/medical stuff is started (reasonably) early. But if 'transforming' is used to mean blockers or HRT... there's a huge issue there. Unless there is an issue of age or a medical reason (and also that some folks don't have access to trans care and can only do social passing), taking hormones is kind of important. Those have definite medical benefits and have always been the best at kicking dysphoria in the dick. All the friendship and acceptance in the world can't come close to what HRT brings and what it does to someone. Without the distinction of exactly what Sunset means by 'transforming' it comes across a lot like Sunset is telling kids not to take their meds, which is not a good impression to give to young readers (this story is rated E, so it made sense to bring that up) or very tone-appropriate for discovery fluff.
While everything else just feels like a first foray into writing trans fiction, these latter two examples are ones I'd consider revisiting, if you choose to come back to anything in this story.
10743002
Thanks for the reply!
Sunset is explaining all this to characters that don't conceive of gender in the same way as ponies, I'm don't know how you'd do that in a non-technical way.
The idea is that hippogriffs aren't told they're any particular gender, then they tell people what gender they are and get transformed if needed.
You're misunderstanding that passage, I think. It's:
The unique life experiences aren't the reason why they're trans, it's saying that because they have unique life experiences, there's a need to have a particular term for them, rather than it just being "normal".
The feedback I got from people I asked when writing this was that some trans people can be fine without needing any surgery or treatments, and it was worth pointing this out. It's possible that they just didn't consider HRTs as part of this. Would you say what you said applies to all trans people?
10743464
This makes it sound more like they're raised gender neutrally, with multiple elements of the story suggesting that they have no androgynous sex but definite male and female ones (as evidenced by Terramar and Silverstream). Even if they don't conceive of what gender is, they'd still have to have it. Otherwise, they would all be androgyne-type beings without any diversity in that regard. So, to get them to understand gender, Sunset would probably have to give a hilariously de-technicalized version of the 'birds and the bees' except more along the lines of 'the boys and the girls' seeing how hippogriffs have different/fluid/no gender roles which has lead to them barely addressing gender in their society.
I guess the issue with that is that it explains effect upon effect upon effect. Being dysphoric about sex (effect) leads to unique life experiences (another effect) and correcting it through transitioning (another effect) leads to even more unique experiences (continuing effect) instead of the cause. Sunset is in a unique position where she feels comfortable explaining to Terramar and Silverstream not just that she is trans, but what being trans means to two youth who may have already transitioned and just never had the word for what that part of themselves is. Since it isn't a socially inappropriate situation where anyone is uncomfortable or feels like they have to justify themselves, and so on, I figured that two curious kids would eventually ask Sunset that big old question: the why. After all, she's been giving them a very general idea about what being trans can involve in a creature's life, just not what it is.
When Sunset concludes that the duo may be trans, I got the impression that they would be comfortable disclosing that status, but that because they weren't informed on exactly what being transgender is and what would make someone transgender, they had no means to be able to say 'Yes this is me because I went through X to fix Y' or deny that was the case. It comes across more as Sunset using the effect (unique life experiences) as making the cause (being trans) instead of answering the other way around. Does that explain things a bit better?
The only trans people I've known of or have known personally that didn't go on HRT just went with social passing and legally getting their name/gender marker done. That sort of thing. It was either because of health issues (having an allergy to HRT is possible) or because they were non-binary. There are medical options for non-binary people, but those tend towards being best for transmasc or transfemme enbies. I've heard of some agender/androgynous enbies who took both E and T at the same time, but that doesn't have as predictable as a transition path as transfemme/masc or trans women/men transitioning. Sexual ambiguity exists in humans, but we don't have one particular, clear third sex that can be transitioned into, and that is a huge source of dysphoria for a lot of enbies. I was talking about this kind of thing with an enby friend of mine and I didn't realize that I was really lucky compared to them, because they pointed out that they feel stuck/caged without a realistic transition goal that comes from this gap in humans.
So, I'd say it's the closest to applying to all trans people, at least more than most things. Bodies and brains need the right hormones to go with them. I'd say that living without them is comparable to someone living without antidepressants because they've never been able to get a medication that worked just right for their body chemistry. It's not going to be a pleasant existence, going without any kind of treatment, but it might be more bearable than being on a bad medication.
Before you mention them: I'd consider uncertainty about HRT/exact gender and not being able to access them entirely different issues, hence not mentioning them.
10743504
I suppose my issue is that I'm not sure how to explain it any more clearly than I did in the fic, given the situation in the story. Like I'm not sure what you're asking of me here.
10743542
I'm not trying to specifically ask anything of you, just explain why the dialogue came across as confusing and maybe somewhere to improve.