hollycantkeeptrackofthedaze

[hollycantkeeptrackofthedaze]

In the wild green of my youth,

before the world had a name for me,

a strange rightness surged in my blood.

My hands, rough with the earth,

craved not to hold petals, but to seize the coming storm.

I watched the world's great balance,

the men's voices a rumbling mountain,

their pride an endless horizon.

And the women, a gentler rain,

circling them in quiet obeisance.

At the sight, my gut would tighten,

a deep unease I could not name.

My body ached not to be the mountain's shelter,

but the sea that pulls the tide,

the force that lifts the stone from the riverbed.

A secret truth bloomed behind my eyes,

a landscape where the lilies stood taller than the oaks.

Here, women walked with the sure stride of queens,

and the very air bowed to their presence.

And the men, in their perfect, gentle yielding,

found a perfect peace in their place beneath the stars.

This was a comfort I knew in my bones.

And in the silent fever of my core,

I knew this was the only way my own love could grow.

My hands, so rough with the earth,

longed to offer their strength as a quiet throne.

[hollycantkeeptrackofthedaze]

Women tricking on boys is the only way for me, darling.

She buys me clothes, pays for my shit, Dates, food, you name it.

Every boy needs his own provider 🩷

[hollycantkeeptrackofthedaze]

mollis vampire boyfriend who drinks ur blood.

[hollycantkeeptrackofthedaze]

In another world, I am a 12ft death Knight summoned by a desperate, weak, down-on-his-luck fallen noble using necromancy and a divine artifact he stumbled on by chance. In the years to come, he sits gracefully on my left hand and I, using the immortal greatsword bestowed on me by the ancient emperor, vanquish his enemies with my right.

[hollycantkeeptrackofthedaze]

[hollycantkeeptrackofthedaze]

I like mollis since I can call myself a Molly boy.

It sounds soo chic.

Femboy has...it has some grease attached to it.

[hollycantkeeptrackofthedaze]

Being a whore is such a gender euphoria in itself.

[hollycantkeeptrackofthedaze]

/puts my stunt helmet on

i've been scouring for hetgnc books up to and including asking every bookseller if they know of any. unfortunately, like anthony says, there's not a lot! but i can add a little more! unfortunately i haven't really read much gender role reversal at all that isn't romance, though i can say as someone who gets deeply frustrated with "regular" gc/heternormative straight romance, these romances do feel different or gnc in at least some way.

first off @genrerolereversal has a whole rec list of multiple kinds of media with gender role reversal. there's also the gender role reversal ao3 tag, but, you know, mixed bag. there's a lot of 'fic on there by presumably cishet dudes who don't know about gender roles to actually reverse them. the gender role reversal reddit also has a media rec masterpost, i think.

gender-swapped fairytales & gender-swapped myths: exactly what it says on the tin. both take public domain (?) texts of popular fairytales and greco-roman myths and switch around the genders/pronouns/sex, effectively being a sort of hypothetical regular fairytale/mythology book straight out of an alternate universe matriarchy.

life and death: yeah i'm probably the big life and death advocate here. the way i describe the gender role reversal themes is that while the characters are still definitely gender conforming, but because the book is still fundamentally just twilight, but with the genders swapped, it means male bella is still functionally a heroine and female edward is still functionally a romantic hero.

veil of sighs: is a romance but also a historical (?) fantasy deal. maybe? i consider it fantasy more than romance. part of a trilogy but the first book (the only book i've read) focuses much more on the court system and the gender politics of being a courtesan boy than the relationship between the main character and his working woman. and has interesting enough court politics for that to work. you can see that in how the side characters are actual people with different positions, opinions, and beliefs on the courtesan system. that sounds like faint praise but in my experience a romance with a fantasy setting it actually is interested in and isn't some mostly aesthetic not-tolkien high fantasy setting is kind of rare. for a book about sex workers, the sex scenes are deeply euphemistic, if you did or didn't want explicit sex scenes.

the flower of hades: a fairly standard hades/persephone romance except hades is a woman and persephone is a man. not great but we don't got a lot of options here. spelling/grammar errors and such are definitely there but that's just something you deal with in terms of ebook self-published romance. fairly gender conforming, mostly role reversal where persephone has an overprotective father and hades stealing him away to save him and it ends with him triumphing over a scheming, catty ex of hades'. frequent sex scenes.

an exile among humanity: translation of a chinese webnovel. omegaverse. much more gender role reversal than gender nonconforming, dealing with a female alpha and male omega. also noteworthy in that there's a world with history the work actually cares about. the main relationship is at the heart but i can't call it a romance because it's not really in conversation with the genre. bountiful explicit sex scenes. tagged as 'fucked up' and that's pretty much true, a real dead dove: do not eat with all four ao3 warnings. none of them are tagged just because they get mentioned once, they all (at various different times) play a frontal part of the narrative.

Hullo!

This is kind of random, but I was wondering if you had any gnc book recommendations? You might not even be much of a reader, so this ask may be pointless, but I love to read and just-- I don't like... romance. At least normal romance. I'm just not a big fan of the dynamic between the guy and girl in most stories

If you could think of anything that'd be greatly appreciated :>

But if not that's fine too, no pressure always

I've been thinking about it but I really don't think I know of any, at least not any that are exactly what you're looking for. It's possible there are some out there that I'm unaware of though for sure!

Honestly the lack of diversity in the book (specifically fantasy) industry is frustrating. Not even solely from a social progress standpoint but also just... as a reader, I feel like lately all the books on the shelf are just the exact same story recycled over and over with slightly different names :/

I feel you with not finding straight romance appealing at all, I can't relate to the dynamics at all either 😂😂 For a while I was reading some mlm romance because it satisfied the dynamic I was looking for, but I would really love to see a hetGNC romance in a book someday.

I'll list all of the stories that I know of that you might want to check out, but all of them fit what you're looking for only partially. Also, they're all romances, which might disqualify them in your book?

Traditional Books

Life and Death by Stephenie Meyer (a genderbend rewrite of Twilight). I have not read this one but have heard it was a refreshing read for others in the community. Apparently the characters themselves aren't all that GNC, but the narrative frames them in a GNC way, if that makes sense? I'd imagine that means it's something like a gender-conforming Role Reversal romance.

The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller. One of the mlm romances I read and really liked. Obviously, this one isn't "het" but it is a bit "gnc." Keyword is "a bit" here though haha. The book is told from Patroculs' perspective and the way he describes Achilles is interestingly quite feminine. There's even an instance where Achilles is wearing women's clothing and the characters describe him as something along the lines of "he's so naturally feminine that for a second I didn't even realize he wasn't a woman." It also includes the "touch him and die" trope.

Fanfiction

A fanfiction I loved as a kid, which I talked about here.

@cadybear420's GNC fanfiction for the Choices SYP fandom.

Comics/Manga

The Rose of Versailles, which is a manga. This is one I also haven't read, but have heard others in the community refer to it as hetGNC androgynous x androgynous "straight yaoi" lol so I'm assuming it belongs on this list. I had someone tell me about it a while ago.

Yeonwoo's Innocence, which is a webcomic that a lot of people on the subreddits seem to LOVE. I haven't personally read it yet, but from what I've seen it looks pretty good!

[hollycantkeeptrackofthedaze]

tmascs that reclaim their femininity and their girlhood and their womanhood. that rip it from the jaws of their past and make it their own. that find joy in being feminine in a way that isnt forced on them. i love you

[hollycantkeeptrackofthedaze]

Atlanta Xplosion Boat Ride in 2010 hosted by Ikons Magazine, a publication for the LGBTQ community of color

[hollycantkeeptrackofthedaze]

oh shit, yeonwoo's innocence ended?

[hollycantkeeptrackofthedaze]

I don't know why women are so jealous of men having feminine body frames and act so ugly to women who have "masculine" ones.

Being mean is not pretty.

[hollycantkeeptrackofthedaze]

im working on a thought about penises right now, which is that we as a culture should be a lot more frank about how delicate and vulnerable they are. with a level playing field, almost anyone's hand can do serious damage to a penis. even the tough, violent words for the length of a penis disguise the fact that it's soft tissue. shaft. like an arrow, not a sausage. but it's not a sword, not a spear, it's an organ dangling softly outside the body, and your hand is full of bones and muscles. you can snap sticks, you can tear fruit. your hand is an incredibly powerful tool with so much more violence in it than a penis.

what makes a penis into a weapon isn't inherent in the structure of the object but in the status of the object. what makes it the site of power and danger is that it is emblematic of male social power and male sexual dominance.

im not sure what my conclusion is. i don't think increased violence against men is a solution to much of anything. and a lot of men, like me, don't have a penis, while a lot of women who do have penises experience quite enough violence already.

i think i'd just like to conclude that we think over the fact that the penis in and of itself is just a delicate, vulnerable organ, a tool that has to be protected very carefully, and that all its dreadful and menacing power is assigned to it by society. and we are part of society and ought to get to redefine which things have which meanings.

[hollycantkeeptrackofthedaze]

I feel like im "masculine" but I have fluid presentation. I also don't really like having short hair or a strong jawline. I like being a sort of boyish rather than like a "man". Am I still valid?

Absolutely! "Masculinity" is a spectrum, and it's also personally subjective and culturally relative. My posts tend to focus on the kinds of masculinity I personally relate to, but that doesn't mean anything outside of that is bad!

Also, having short hair and a strong jawline isn't inherently masculine. Apart from the fact that masculinity can be defined wildly differently from person to person-- even more typical understandings of masculinity still allow those things to be "done femininely." Think runway models, pixie cuts, etc. (And vice versa, for having long hair and a softer jaw.)

I've mentioned before that I myself don't totally hate having long hair. While I'm ready to try out having short hair and have a hunch I might like that better, my long hair doesn't always feel particularly feminine to me. It feels more like a mane or something.

Also, your presentation doesn't have to be masculine in order for you to be intramasculine, if that's what you're wondering about. Same way that you could take a typical intramasc mainstraight guy and put him in a dress and give him a pixie cut and he'd still be intramasculine.

[hollycantkeeptrackofthedaze]

yeah i just got the image in my head and started sketching! thank you!

@viscasi mentioned wishing that there were hetgnc teen romances and i got inspired...though i'm not sure how much i matched the specific mood she was talking about. i haven't watched that many teen romances in my life.

[hollycantkeeptrackofthedaze]

Superheroine Comics 2

In a world of reversed gender norms…

A follow-up to this post. Featuring:

THE INCREDIBLE HULK #1 (1962) Dr. Brenda Banner, an ingenious nuclear physicist, is exposed to gamma radiation while protecting a young woman from an explosion, mutating her into the Incredible Hulk. Now Brenda must deal with her monstrous alter ego, in addition to powerful enemies and a government that would weaponize the Hulk for its own gain. Aiding Banner are Rachel Joans—the young woman Banner saved—and Bertie Ross, son of General Thaddea “Thunderbolt” Ross.

THE FLASH #1 (1987) This series follows Wilma West, the third heroine to take up the mantle of the Flash, the fastest woman on earth. Like her predecessors, Jaye Garrick and Barbara Allen, Wilma's powers come from a mysterious source known as the Speed Force. This power has allowed Wilma to travel faster than the speed of light, manipulate air and electricity, and even travel through time.

CRISIS ON INFINITE EARTHS #7 (1985) After 50 years of publishing comics, the DC universe's continuity had become confusing and convoluted. In 1985, DC comics decided to reboot their continuity, with a massive crossover serving as a sendoff to decades of previous comics. The result is Crisis on Infinite Earths, an epic tale bringing together heroines and villainesses from across DC's Golden and Silver ages to save the multiverse from the Anti-Monitor. Issue 7, entitled "Beyond the Silent Night", features the infamous death of Superboy at the hands of the Anti-Monitor--the result of a mandate that would restore Superwoman’s role as the Last Daughter of Krypton.

MR. MARVEL #1 (2006) Carl Danvers originated in 1968 as a love interest to the heroine Captain Marvel, an alien known as Mar-Vell. After being exposed to radiation from an alien device, Carl disappeared from comics for several years. In 1976, Carl was reintroduced in his own line of comics. Having gained superpowers from the radiation, Carl becomes the superhero Mr. Marvel. The line was a huge hit, and would eventually lead to Carl taking up the title of Captain Marvel himself.

IRON WOMAN #126 (1979) Tonia Stark is the adoptive daughter of weapons manufacturer Hillary Stark. After being kidnapped by terrorists in a foreign country, the genius Tonia created a suit of power armor she used to escape. Now having experienced firsthand the horrors of war, Tonia gave up weapons manufacturing in favor of improving her power armor. Now she fights crime as the Invincible Iron Woman.

[hollycantkeeptrackofthedaze]

@viscasi mentioned wishing that there were hetgnc teen romances and i got inspired...though i'm not sure how much i matched the specific mood she was talking about. i haven't watched that many teen romances in my life.