Chapter 39: Chapter 39

At just over a thousand words, there wasn’t really all that much to the epilogue. In fact, if they wanted to, the reader could just stop at Chapter 13 and they wouldn’t miss much. Like most epilogues, it served mainly to round out the story rather than continue it.

The epilogue itself started with a flash forward to the 2008 Olympics in Beijing, China. As she prepares for the widely anticipated women’s 1500m race, Stephanie reflects on her long journey the few years before. After graduation, she took a scholarship to Stanford University and partook in one of the best track programs in the United States. As time went on and she pushed her body further and further, she moved up the ranks. She placed second in the US Championships and sixth in the World Cup. She then won the US Olympic trials, and after all that effort and running, she finally landed a spot in the Olympics.

The announcer introduces Stephanie to the crowd, and as she walks out into the field she sees her mother in the stands. She recounts how her mother was finally able to get back into college and finish her degree. In her forties, she was finally finding her own path in life.

The rest of the epilogue continued in a similar direction, with Stephanie recounting what each of her close friends had been doing the past few years. It was the classic “where are they now” trope. Cheesy, but also endearing.

Hal had remained a friend to Stephanie, but since he was going to college on another side of the country, the two ended their romantic relationship. It was a bit of a subversion of the whole “falling in love with your best friend” trope that TG stories used a lot, and Sierra really liked it. It felt like the more realistic and mature ending rather than having them stay together, and it got the point across that once a person graduates high school, a lot of what happens in that time of their lives gets left behind.

Sierra had thought a lot about the future of her relationship with Elise, and reading this made her think about it again. Would she have to break up with Elise after graduation next year? That question never got comfortable to ask no matter how many times it popped into her head.

Putting that aside, Stephanie then talks about how Sue, her former girlfriend, went to Ivy League and graduated from Yale Law School. She currently lived in Washington, and was preparing for a career in politics (hopefully on the side of the left, and not on the side of the capitalist, imperialist U.S. establishment, Sierra thought).

As for the rest of the characters, Becky and BMW were married and expecting a child, Arleen had found a girlfriend in San Francisco and was finally free to be herself, Tamara had married and become a mother, and Jeri joined the military, all the while still struggling with being a woman. Sierra still wondered if Jeri was supposed to be a trans man. The story was very unclear in that area.

For some of the characters, it’s never revealed what happened to them. Stephanie’s old coach, “Coach Bradford”, is mentioned but it’s never said what became of him. Beth, the third character from the Girl School plotline, had seemingly disappeared from the story altogether. The reader also never learns what happened to Stephanie’s old male rival, Kevin Tilden, but for him it made sense why Stephanie wouldn’t keep in touch.

It was the same deal for the “bad” characters. The reader never learns what happened to Melody McCarthy. Maybe she began a successful career in Track as well, or maybe she didn’t. The principal is mentioned, and Stephanie says how her experience with him made her realize how much she loved submitting to a man (which Sierra thought was a pretty gross way to use a scene depicting sexual assault), but what happened to him is a mystery. And Andy Marks was, again, not mentioned at all.

The reader is left to assume that the Principal and Andy Marks received no real consequences for their crimes. And, in a bit of fridge horror, they are also left to assume that the Principal is still employed at the school district, left to sexually harass and assault more vulnerable young girls.

At the end, it’s said that GB was still a mystery. Even after all those years no one was able to find out where it came from. In fact, a new variant of GB had apparently begun making the rounds; one that turned girls into boys. There was a lot of potential for a universe here, one that centered around GB and its consequences on society, but sadly that never happened.

In one of the last paragraphs, Stephanie is called to the starting line along with all the other women. The gun goes off, and then the story ends.

So… what now? Sierra had been thinking about this story, on and off again in her head a lot this past week, but to what end? What was the significance? What did it all mean?

Maybe Sierra wouldn’t find a specific answer, but she could try. The story certainly gave a lot to ponder over.

“For a Girl”, despite being arguably the most popular and well known online TG story, was in many ways, quite controversial, and after reading it again Sierra had to concede that some of the things she’d seen people say against it were understandable.

The forced het would always be a little off-putting. No matter how many times Sierra thought about it she could never accept it. Why did TG stories at the time do it? And why did it always have to be a straight man turning into a straight woman? Why couldn’t it be a gay man turning into a straight woman? Or a straight man turning into a lesbian? Or why not just have the main character be bi? TG stories nowadays were generally a lot better when dealing with the complexities of human sexuality, but back in the 2000s, it just seemed to be the case that at no point was the main character allowed to be gay.

To give “For a Girl” some credit, it did have a lesbian character, and it did feature some “girl-on-girl action”, but its usage of the forced het trope could never be fully overlooked.

There was another common trope that “For a Girl” used, that some had brought up against old TG stories, and that was brainwashing. Essentially, brainwashing was the process of forcibly altering the main character’s mind to make them like being a girl, even if they wouldn’t have otherwise.

In general, the ways that TG stories handled the process of mental acceptance could be divided into four directions. The first was to make the main character trans, something that had become a lot more popular in recent times. The second was to leave things ambiguous or make the main character “flexible”. With this, it is never officially confirmed whether the main character is trans (though it may be implied), but it is shown that they are able to accept their new body, without outside interference.

Another direction, one that was rarely used, was having an explicitly cis character transform and then experience dysphoria. Sierra could recall a few stories that did this and she always found them interesting. It was a neat subversion of the standard TG formula.

And then there was brainwashing, the most controversial of all. Making the main character like being a girl, outside of their own volition. Sometimes it was left ambiguous as to whether or not brainwashing had actually happened. Sometimes there was a bit of overlap between making the main character “flexible” and brainwashing them. And sometimes, like in “For a Girl”, it was directly confirmed that brainwashing was taking place.

But how exactly does the author show that the main character is being brainwashed? Well, there were a few ways. One of the most common was to force feminine thoughts and feelings into their head. This could range from anything from wanting to look pretty to wanting to wear female clothing to wanting to wear makeup and stuff like that. Sometimes these thoughts would be framed as distressing and intrusive. Sierra had even coined the term “intrusive feminine thoughts” to describe them.

Was it sexist? Absolutely, but it got the job done.

In the case of “For a Girl”, Sierra thought the story kind of shot itself in the foot by using this trope. Stephanie’s character arc largely revolved around learning to accept and love being a girl. To become the best girl she could be. So, when the story says that GB victims are brainwashed to like being female, doesn’t that sort of cheapen that entire arc? Doesn’t it make it feel less satisfying? Less earned? Wouldn’t the arc be more impactful and powerful if Stephanie wasn’t brainwashed?

It seemed “For a Girl” had more missed opportunities than Sierra first thought. It was almost as if its frequent use of problematic TG tropes was detrimental to its overall story.

This was a more minor point but “For a Girl” also played directly into the stereotype that women are more emotional than men. And by “directly”, Sierra meant that it just flat out said women are more emotional. The story took a harmful, older than dirt stereotype about women and accepted it at face value as the truth without any further consideration.

There were quite a few TG stories that did this, and they always rubbed Sierra the wrong way. No, women were not more emotional than men, and it was sexist to suggest otherwise. Sierra suspected that some might defend “For a Girl” by saying that in the story, the stereotype was treated as a positive, desirable trait rather than a negative one. This is true, but defending the story in this way would be missing the point. When it comes to stereotypes, it doesn’t matter if they are portrayed as positive or not, if they are portrayed at all, it furthers any harm they cause in the real world.

But all of these tropes paled in comparison to how the story treated sexual assault.

The principal spanking scene was the most egregious example of this, but it actually extended further beyond that. The whole story seemed to have a weird attitude toward sex abuse, where it almost seemed to suggest that if the woman secretly wants it, then it’s okay.

Now, perhaps that was going too far, and looking too deeply into things, but when the story frames a middle aged man touching a teenage girl’s butt as “playful” and shows Stephanie laughing the incident off, could you really blame someone for coming away with that impression?

The way some TG stories treated sexual assault was in Sierra’s mind, the worst TG trope of all. It was one she was more than happy with to leave in the past.

So yeah, “For a Girl” was, in some ways, really messed up. In fact, a lot of old Fictionmania stories were really messed up. And for Sierra, she often found herself asking if she should be ashamed for liking these stories.

Should she? Well, after years of reading them, she believed she had finally found the answer. But it would take a long time to explain.

For starters, she could not possibly overstate how “For a Girl”, and Fictionmania stories in general for that matter, were products of their time. Some of these stories were over twenty years old, and while the late 1990s and early 2000s weren’t technically that long ago, they were still pretty different from the 2020s. Especially for LGBT representation and visibility.

They had gotten past the point where gay people were seen as pedophiles, at least for the most part, but not to the point of open acceptance being a common find. “Don’t ask, don’t tell” was still the main philosophy in a lot of places. Hell, this was a time when supporting gay marriage could still be considered “career suicide” for a U.S. poltician. And it wasn’t like there was much representation in the mainstream media, either.

For trans representation, it was even worse. As Sierra had stated before, there was a history of trans people, mainly trans women, being portrayed badly in the media. A lot of old movies and TV shows had them shown as violent criminals. And it was a distinct possibility that this kind of messaging influenced “For a Girl”, as in that story the only trans character was a rapist.

But it was more than just bad portrayals. It was also the fact that there was virtually no positive representation of trans people. Beyond that, a good number of people in society didn’t even fully know what being transgender was. Some even saw being transgender and being a crossdresser as sort of the same thing. And how many people personally knew a transgender person? It couldn’t be that many.

Just like most novels, the way TG stories were written were influenced by the circumstances of their time. Why did old TG stories have so many problematic tropes? Because of the culture of when they were released. It was important to keep that in mind.

TG stories had evolved quite a bit since the Fictionmania era. The older, more problematic tropes were becoming less common, trans characters were becoming more common, and the sexualization was generally being toned down a bit.

And that wasn’t even all, as fully published novels starring trans characters had begun to appear. With novels like “Dreadnought” and “Detransition, Baby”, a lot of Fictionmania stories could feel a bit archaic in comparison. Did that mean they had no value? Obviously not. There were a lot of talented writers on Fictionmania that deserved to be recognized. And these stories were surely a lot more than just a collection of problematic tropes. It was just that sometimes, it was important to take a step back and admit their shortcomings.

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They were, just like all media, products of a flawed society.

And even then, how much harm did these stories actually do? They were free online stories on the internet. No one was receiving any profit from their existence. The sites they were posted on were hardly known by the vast majority of the population. You could go and ask any random person on the street what they think of “For a Girl” by O2bxx, or Fictionmania, or TG Storytime, and they’d probably just look at you funny. You’d be hard pressed to find anyone who actually knows what you’re talking about.

So no, Sierra shouldn’t feel bad for liking TG stories, or any kind of story for that matter. No matter how messed up they could get, she should never feel like she’s doing something wrong by reading them. Instead, why doesn’t she just sit back and enjoy the damn story. Give the author some appreciation for all the hard work they put in.

Besides, why would “being problematic” only be limited to TG fiction, anyway? There was a ton of literature posted online that was messed up. For instance, fanfiction. Was there anyone out there who would really try to argue that fanfiction was entirely pure? That there weren’t any problematic or sometimes completely messed up examples of it? What about literotica? There were a ton of stories on that site specifically about rape.

Online literature in general could be messed up, it wasn’t just TG stories.

And if Sierra was being honest, it wasn’t like all those tropes in TG stories were messed up. She still found the “falling in love with your best friend” trope pretty sweet.

Speaking of which, the romance between Stephanie and Hal in “For a Girl” put a lot of emphasis on the man being the dominant partner and the woman being the submissive partner in the relationship. A lot of het TG stories did this, and Sierra suspected it was because the author really wanted to get across how the main character is being treated as a woman now.

While Sierra thought about this she had to ask, is this how Elise perceived their relationship? Did she see “Devin” as someone to dominate and protect her? Possibly. She wanted to ask Elise about it but she couldn’t muster up the courage.

Getting back to “For a Girl”, there was a rather interesting line about Stephanie being submissive in the epilogue: “I suspect my desire to be sexually dominated has less to do with my femininity and more to do with my own needs, innate from birth.” So, does this line mean that Stephanie liked being dominated before becoming a woman, and just never knew? If Stephanie never got GB, then would she, as Jack, have sexually submitted to a dominant woman? It left a lot to speculate on.

There was a lot one could speculate on regarding TG stories. For instance, how, in Sierra’s experience, quite a few of them seemed to resemble the writing style of noted sex abuser, Joss Whedon. Funnily enough, in “For a Girl” it’s actually said that Stephanie resembles Michelle Tractenberg, the actress for Dawn in “Buffy the Vampire Slayer”, so clearly Whedon had some level of definite influence on O2bxx.

Really, Sierra could speculate all day.

But at this point it seemed like she’d be wasting her time.

Now, she had something more pressing stuck in her mind, waiting to be pondered on. Something very deep and personal.

The reasons why she read these stories so much.

There was a belief Sierra held, that in most cases, she believed to be a fact. She had no real way of proving it, she just had an inkling it was true.

“Everyone is hyper-fixated on at least one piece of media”.

Yes, that one piece of media could change overtime, but it still remained true that most people would hyper-fixated on one piece of media at any given time. And for Sierra, that piece of media was TG stories. At all times.

Escapism. Wish fulfillment. Obsession. She always kept coming back to sites like Fictionmania and TG Storytime, and those were the reasons why. She’d always known it, even when she didn’t want to admit it herself.

Sierra had to deal with a lot of hate in her life. Hatred of herself, hatred of her body, hatred of who she was in the world, and that wasn’t even mentioning the hatred from other people, and the hatred from the world.

Every day she went to school, she was hanging around people who would hate her guts if she revealed who she truly was. People who were nice to her, and would befriend her, going on and on about why transgender people were delusional, and deserved to be made fun of. Deserved to be insulted. Deserved to be ostracized.

And what would she do when she heard people say these things? She’d smile and laugh along with them. Oh, how she was good at hiding what she felt. You wouldn’t suspect a thing by looking at her. On the outside, nothing but joy. But on the inside, pain. Lots and lots of pain.

She’d then go online and read a news article about how “transgenderism” was dangerous to society, and needed to be abolished. She’d read all the comments agreeing with the article, and then do the whole process over again. It was a way to keep the fire of self hate burning within her. As much as she hated it, she had to admit that it felt good, in the same way that cutting yourself felt good. It’s wrong, and you know it’s wrong, but it gave off stimuli that were too thrilling to resist.

Sierra had learned long ago to lock the “bad” part of her away. Put it in a cage in the back of her mind. Live as though the cage wasn’t even there. It was an easy way to live, but so, so unbearable. Dull, and devoid of any color. It was as if there was something in her mind preventing her from ever truly being happy.

So, when the hatred of the world came to be too much, she would relieve herself by laying down and going to her secret website. The cage in her mind would, for a brief moment, be allowed to open up. Even if it was temporary, she would be free.

She’d find a story about a man turning into a woman, read it, obsess over it, imagine herself as the main character, then find another story and do it again. She’d have a few moments where she could escape from the cruel world and read about a fictional character getting exactly what she wanted for herself.

“Wouldn’t it be neat”, she thought, if she turned into a girl. She could make such a great girl. And the transformation would be against her will, so it wasn’t as if she wanted it, it just happened to her. She’d be happy as a girl and justify it by saying “I’m just making the best of an unfortunate situation”.

What a great thing to fantasize about. Being a girl. All the opportunities she’d have. She got excited just thinking about it.

But all good things must come to an end.

Soon after she stopped reading, she’d go back to the world, and then walk around as if nothing happened.

For a long time, everything in the world looked hopeless to her.

But now, things were looking like they were changing for the better. Sierra actually had some hope for the future, for once in her life. Her body was much more feminine, and much easier to exist in. And also, she had Elise, a person who’d always be by her side, no matter what.

It’d been a long time, but Sierra could actually feel the color in her life, for the first time in years.

“For a Girl” would likely remain the most favorite story on TG Storytime for decades to come. It was the quintessential 2000s TG story, filled with all the best and worst parts of that genre of literature.

It gave a lot of focus to topics such as misogyny and strength loss, which in most TG stories were usually in the background. Strength loss especially could be inconsistent, as some TG stories had the main character turn into some kind of mythical creature like a vampire or a succubus, with like ten times the strength of a normal human. It was basically as inconsistent as “For a Girl” itself, as sometimes Sierra found herself loving the story and sometimes found herself scratching her head at the bizarre choices made in it.

It was a polarizing story. Some loved it, some hated it. Either way, it would continue to be read and remembered for generations.

After releasing “For a Girl”, O2bxx basically vanished from the internet, and their whereabouts are unknown to this day. Sierra guessed that made sense, since writing stories on the internet for free was a hobby, not a job. The authors owed nothing to any random person online. But still, Sierra wondered where O2bxx was now. It had been nearly twenty years since they had an active online presence, and she hoped they were in a good place, wherever they were.

Reading “For a Girl” again after all these years had brought Sierra a more refined perspective on the story, and to her surprise, she was a bit sad that it was all over. But at the same time, it felt right. She enjoyed picking the story apart to death, but now it was over, and she could move on.

As she finished the story, she made a choice. It was a choice she had pondered for a while, but now, she knew she had to make it a reality.

After years of reading TG stories, she decided that it was time for her to start writing her own.

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