norwich36 | SV genderswap fic: a plot in search of an author

There was one that someone was working on years ago. Lex was Alexis Luthor with long red hair. I'm pretty sure it was a WIP. It was on LJ, but for the life of me I can't remember the author.

Yeah, but is that the one where Lex turned into a woman, or the one where he always was female? Because I do remember one where he always was female, and then during the meteor shower his hair turned white.

I don't remember! It was so long ago. I think there was a manip of girl!Lex though--maybe? Does that help?

I don't really remember it, either, alas. But thanks!

I actually have a story just like that I've been writing for years, lol, where Lex has always been a girl and her hair turned white. I also remember a lot of people wanted me to make her bald, but I liked her hair white as opposed to Clark's black. I've never posted it, but I have a little over 4,000 words written so far, lol!

You've never posted any of it? Hmm. I wonder who had the girl!Lex with white hair story, then. I'm sure I read at least a snippet of that, once upon a time.

No, but I remember discussing it with a number of people... hmmm

Um, not that one, but I have one in the works within continuity (maybe AU after S4 or S5ish) where a lab experiment changes Lex into a girl... and he goes back and forth between sexes throughout the story. I just haven't started posting because I have THREE WiP going and I have another that picks up right after S6 that I want to get started posting before we have our season opener and it all turns out completely different.

Lex as a girl since the meteor shower would be interesting... especially since I doubt that Lionel would ever start dressing him as a girl, and we'd be deeply into genderconfusion territory as soon as he hit puberty (and *I* started at nine) and had to either come out to the world as a girl or start binding his new jubblies (which is PAINFUL if you're well endowed, trust me. i've done drag for a party and i'm only a C cup). Bonus points if he's still bald, so he'd feel completely trapped between genders.

I could put some thought into it. I wouldn't write Lexena or mpreg if I didn't like genderbending.

Well, finish the stories you have going first, definitely--but that sounds like a fantastic premise for a story.

especially since I doubt that Lionel would ever start dressing him as a girl, and we'd be deeply into genderconfusion territory as soon as he hit puberty (and *I* started at nine) and had to either come out to the world as a girl or start binding his new jubblies (which is PAINFUL if you're well endowed, trust me.

You know, I can definitely see Lionel denying the gender change altogether, but if that was the case, I would imagine he would just have Lex surgically altered, wouldn't he? Which kind of cuts down on the story potential, but I do think that's certainly a likely possibility if he suddenly lost his male heir.

No one is going to give a nine-year-old a sex change operation, though. I don't care how powerful Lionel is. It's beyond the realm of belief in terms of ethics and Lex's recovery from the operation, especially as a FtM. He could possibly give Lex drugs to suppress puberty and then have him have SRS when he got older, but it's more complicated than just going in and having it 'fixed.' Not to mention, Lex can't have CHILDREN if Lionel forces him to have an early surgery so there will BE no more male heirs. In order to even have a woman carry Lex's child, he would have to wait until after puberty, then have them do an egg harvest and freeze them for whoever ends up married to Lex. After that point, then Lex could safely get a sex change and still be able to ensure the Luthor line, no matter whose sperm they used.

Additionally, getting Lex to go along with it ensures that Lionel has a lot of control over him and his self-image. Lionel can sit back and see if his 'son' can still prove himself as a worthy heir, and I think that will factor into however the Julian thing plays out, but I still haven't decided what will happen. If Lillian really has post-partum psychosis, I don't know that it would have mattered much. If not, she would either realize that having a REAL son would result in Lex becoming obsolete (and put the boy in danger) or perhaps cast aside or that this would be a good thing and she would regain control over her daughter.

I'm just rambling now. I think I may memory this post.

Actually, I think a man who can get scientists to participate in human cloning experiments and resurrecting the dead could probably get a 9 year old a sex-change operation--especially if he could demonstrate that the child was in fact raised as male and had been traumatized by a "mutation" caused by meteor exposure. The question to me is, how important is it for Lionel to have a male heir.

The fact that a sex-reassigned (or recovered) Lex would be infertile is compelling argument, though I'm not actually sure it would be decisive. Not only does Lionel have the option of having another kid with Lillian (assuming he's making the decision when Lex is 9), but Lucas must also have already have been born, for the timeline to work--so he has a spare heir floating around already. So to me the real question would be how humiliating it would be for Lionel to suddenly have a daughter when he had already had a son. I think he might actually fake Lex's death and send "Alexandra" off to boarding school, maybe letting people assume she was an illegitimate daughter or something.

Which is not to say, by the way, that I don't want to read the Lex breast-binding fics, because I think they would be really interesting. Actually, either way is interesting to me: Clark having to find out that Lex is "really" a woman, or Clark meeting Alexa but realizing that Lex really considers himself a man in a woman's body.

I think a man who can get scientists to participate in human cloning experiments and resurrecting the dead could probably get a 9 year old a sex-change operation
Even if Lionel were as powerful in 1989 as he is in 2001, which I doubt, I still don't find it realistic that they could come up with a feasable sex reassignment surgery that worked properly for a nine year old female to male. If Lex were becoming a girl, it would be significantly easier. Easier to dig a hole than build a pole, as they say (or did in my freshman psych class), and for FtM, they have to do a skin graft and build a penis, which is difficult enough on an adult. That's just beyond feasability in present day, let alone twelve years prior.

Lucas is illegitimate. Would Lionel really use his 'spare' when he's trying to be a 'leader for the community' and Lillian is still around? That doesn't seem like a viable option to me. Lionel strikes me as the kind of man who cares what other people think about the Luthor persona. He hid Lucas to begin with and lied to people about his family being Scottish royalty. Sure, he could claim Lucas, but then he would have to deal with the PR fallout of having had an affair, his son become a daughter (or having two affairs if he counts Lex as his bastard daughter), and Lillian potentially trying to leave him for the real affairs. I guess this goes hand in hand with the 'humiliation' of having his son be acknowledged as a daughter, the assumptions of the public about the scandal, etc. I can see him hiding it more than I can see him pull a fake death to claim his legitimate child as illegitimate.

I CAN however see him maybe 'find' Lex's lost twin sister Alexis or Cassandra several months after Lex's 'death.' I think Lionel has more control over Lex if he just tells him to hide it. Though, it would be nice if several people took the prompt and did something with it. I don't suppose after the big challenges are cleared, there might be a genderbender Lex challenge?

I think he'd find someone who would do it. People cut off girls' clitoris in Africa, after all, to this day. "Doctors" they call themselves.

What I do think is that Lionel would use this secret to control Lex, telling her no one can ever find out she's a girl or she'll be disowned, he will say the real Lex died, etc. He'd have more power over her that way, and we know Lionel is all about having power over Lex. He gets off on it.

Oh, well, if we have to bring the actual state of medical *science* into things, of course, you're right. Though I didn't think Lionel would go the surgery route in the first place, just that if he was trying to conceal Lex's gender change that that's an option he wouldn't be reluctant to use.

I wasn't thinking about Lionel legitimizing Lucas right away--he's plan B. Plan A would be getting Lillian pregnant again, and getting Lex somewhere out of the limelight. (I like your lost twin sister after Lex dies scenario--that definitely seems like a Lionel plan). Lucas would only be legitimized after Lillian died, assuming she still killed Julian. And he would maybe be a "cousin" or something. (So many family members appearing so suddenly!) That would allow Lionel to play his two substandard children (substandard in his eyes, of course) against each other.

What big challenges are going on right now, anyway, that a genderbender challenge would interfere with?

Lol! Me bringing REALISM into a fic where outer space radiation turns a boy into a girl. *snort*

That would allow Lionel to play his two substandard children (substandard in his eyes, of course) against each other.
... that I like. Lionel so gets off on stuff like that.

I don't know that they're huge, but it seems like there are a bunch of comms doing challenges right now. The ab_chloe will be up next week, but the ab_lex one just started. I have NO idea when the old_school_clex one starts. And isn't there an Anyone But Clark slash challenge going on? And a crossing_chloe challenge. I dunno. Maybe I could... uh... ask someone. :P

Wow. With the newsletter on hiatus, I am apparently out of the loop on challenges! (And I was in a very Harry Potterish mood before Potterdammerung turned out to be LJchandammerung, so I've been reading HP comms rather than SV comms until recently).

My wording was a little unclear. What I meant by "how humiliating Lionel would find it to have a daughter when he already had a son" was "how humiliating would Lionel find it to have his former son be publically acknowledged as his daughter." And I think probably pretty humiliating, which is a good argument for your "concealing Lex's new gender" scenario, actually.

We are definitely lacking fic in which Lex turns into a girl - though he does seem to dress like one an awful lot. *g* It's funny that when I got prompted a while back with Lex as a girl, it didn't even occur to me to use the meteor shower as an impetus. I used magic instead, and made it something Lex chose. Having it forced on him though would definitely make it an entirely different scenario.

I am at once wondering if Lionel would have made Lex's life harder or if he would have made it easier. I think a lot of Lex's problems stem from Lionel wanting to groom Lex into taking over LuthorCorp, but would Lionel really expect that from his daughter? Though even if he didn't expect that, he would most certainly expect her to marry well, but Lex has those problems as well, I'm sure.

Would Lillian have been able to protect him more because he would've been suddenly been in her realm to teach? Would Lionel have been repulsed and subsequently had nothing to do with her or would he have taken it as a challenge and been obsessive over him? Would the cliche of the daughter taking the mother's place in the father's bed have happened after Lillian died? None of these are out of the realm of possibility, though I have to wonder in any of them if the exile to Smallville would have happened. True he was doing it to punish Lex - most especially with the place that had been straight out of his nightmares - but would he have given a daughter that much power?

And hey, another thought just occurred to me...would Lex even admit to being a girl (would Lionel let him), or would he be binding his breasts and getting doctor's notes to get out of gym? Lex admitting to being a girl to Clark - taking off his shirt and unbinding his breasts - could be an absolutely breathtaking scene if done right. Scary and vulnerable and intimate all at once.

And hey, another thought just occurred to me...would Lex even admit to being a girl (would Lionel let him), or would he be binding his breasts and getting doctor's notes to get out of gym? Lex admitting to being a girl to Clark - taking off his shirt and unbinding his breasts - could be an absolutely breathtaking scene if done right. Scary and vulnerable and intimate all at once.
Definitely the direction I would take it.

Lex and Clark's relationship would be Shakespearean in the strictest sense, in that they both have big secrets about their true idenity, with the added confusion both of them must feel. Depending on Lex's experiences in relationships, he's likely to be even MORE closed emotionally, even if he is quite attracted to Clark, because letting someone in will mean letting them know something he isn't supposed to share and maybe doesn't want to admit.

It would be even more interesting, I think, because while, Clark would be dealing with being an alien and being gay, Lex would be dealing with being a woman who used to be a man, and, because he still identifies as such, would still have to deal with being gay.

While our Lex is pretty comfortable with his sexuality and is able to use it, this Lex wouldn't be able to use it and would be incredibly skilled at getting out of intimate moments not getting into them.

Though I have a feeling if Lex revealed his secrets first, Clark would feel much more comfortable revealing his secrets because he would, mistakenly, think that this would mean he wasn't actually gay and would feel relieved. If they went any further though, he would still have to deal with the fallout from society because they would still perceive Lex as a man, and he'd still have to deal with his sexual identity because Lex would still see himself as a man.

Lex, on the other hand, would be even more confused at that point because he's being treated as gay by society, he's feeling gay because he's still thinking of himself as a man, but he's finally exploring his femininity at the same time in ways he didn't allow himself to before. It would just be layers upon layers of complexity.

And, honestly, damn hard to write.

Wow, this does have some fascinating possibilities for how Lex and Clark would relate to each other. When

norwich36 and I were talking earlier we were picturing an overtly female Lex, and tying it in with Greek myths of Tiresias (who was male, then became female and lived that way for many years, even having children, and in old age became male again -- those Luthors do love their classical references, after all), so the whole concept revolved more around gender identity and mythology and responsibility. But this would also be a really compelling way to go -- make the whole thing a story about secrets.

I can see all sorts of potential, too, with this version, for how the relationship between Lex and Clark's parents might play out. Jonathan's immediate assumption was that Lex's interest in Clark is predatory; here, Clark would think he had solid proof that it wasn't like that, but he'd be unable to share that proof. And meanwhile, what would Martha sense about the situation? And I can imagine Lex, having lost his/her mother and hiding his/her sex from everyone else, would be desperate for an older female presence in his/her life (Nora's right, the pronouns get really complicated here), someone feminine and nurturing, although s/he would also deeply mistrust his/her own desire there.

This is just all kinds of interesting. I can't imagine writing it, but I'd really like to read it.

It would be even more interesting, I think, because while, Clark would be dealing with being an alien and being gay, Lex would be dealing with being a woman who used to be a man, and, because he still identifies as such, would still have to deal with being gay.

That's fascinating, isn't it?

Well, my conversation with

slinkling basically ended with both of us agreeing that (a)s/he'd be really fucked up and (b) Lionel would play a big role in this. It's possible that Lionel would pressure Lex less if he were a girl--but on the other hand, wouldn't that make Lex want to prove himself even more? I do wonder if Lillian would have killed Julian if Lex were a girl--would she see Julian as more or less of a threat?

We both also thought it would seriously complicate Lex and Clark's relationship, because there is no WAY female Lex would put up with Clark's hero complex, especially if s/he had spent her whole life trying to prove to her dad that she was still strong as a girl.

Would s/he be passing, though--that was something we hadn't talked about. Hmm, what an interesting possibility. We thought that Clark was sure to feel a HELL of a lot more guilty at having changed Lex's gender than just depriving him of hair.

Argh. The pronouns are killing me here!!!

You're now making me think, what would Lionel have been like if he'd had daughters instead of sons? Certainly he'd raise them to be exquisite, cultured, and powerful in a very feminine way; I imagine he'd groom them like thoroughbreds. If he'd had a son as well as a daughter, probably he'd have raised the son to be his heir and the daughter to be an expensive trophy wife. But if he'd only had a daughter? I think he'd have wanted that girl to take over the world, just as he did with Lex. He'd have told her again and again, not only that she had a destiny and he expected great things of her, but that she'd have to work twice as hard for it, be twice as smart and aggressive and calculating as a boy would have to be. That she'd be underestimated by the entire world, and therein lies her secret advantage. I'm sure Lionel would have been disappointed not to have a son, but in time, I can see him totally getting behind this idea: he's not just raising the next Alexander the Great, but the next Cleopatra, the next Amazon queen.

(None of this precludes the very serious ways I imagine he'd damage her -- incest being just one of those ways. Think of the trouble our Lex got into before he came to Smallville; now imagine how much greater and more dangerous that same trouble might have been, if he'd been a girl. The exile to Smallville, I agree, would be less likely, but I can imagine Alexandra Luthor trying to re-establish control of her life after a wildly out-of-control few years, and deliberately returning to the place where everything changed (probably just for a visit, initially -- until she meets Clark), to attempt to finally come to terms with what happened to her, so that she might move on.)

Oh, yeah, Lionel with just one child who was a daughter--I think your predictions are very accurate, especially this: He'd have told her again and again, not only that she had a destiny and he expected great things of her, but that she'd have to work twice as hard for it, be twice as smart and aggressive and calculating as a boy would have to be. That she'd be underestimated by the entire world, and therein lies her secret advantage.

And damn, Lillian would definitely have to kill Julian, lest he steal everything from Alexa. But would she kill a Julia? *ponders*

Damn, I wish someone would write this.

We definitely need more 'Lex turns into a girl' fic.

I did make an effort, though I abandoned it as a doomed to never be finished story. Remember this? (http://mahaliem.livejournal.com/197393.html#cutid1)

Thanks for that link!

slinkling mentioned you had written girl!Lex, but I couldn't remember the story.

There's also the Lex turns into Lana story that was absolutely wonderful by

joyfulgirl41 - Something is Wrong With the Sum of Us - which has a delightfully confused Clark.

Unfortunately, this story was never finished, but what there is of it is simply the best. You can find what she wrote here (http://www.livejournal.com/tools/memories.bml?user=joyfulgirl41&keyword=Something+is+Wrong+With+the+Sum+of+Us&filter=all).

Thank you! I knew I'd seen some wonderfully funny girl!Lex by you, but I spent a while digging through your journal for it this morning and I just couldn't find it. I must have forgotten it wasn't a finished story, so I skipped over the link for a WIP. *facepalm*

Eee! Read it, loved it, commented!

I'd read it. Does that help? Nah, I guess not...

I have to say my first reaction to this: 'There are a few stories where Clark turns into a girl, but I couldn't think of one where Lex turns into a girl' was to think 'They don't need to--they already ARE girls.' :D

Hee hee! This is all part of my secret campaign for more het and femmeslash in SV fandom, though. Don't tell anyone!

I read this post before work and actually brainstormed a fic on my way to work.

I would only be interested in seeing Lex turn into a woman now (you know me and my relationship with canon) and how he would use that to A) find out Clark's secrets and B) take him to bed like he's always wanted to. Oh the smutty possibilities... (If I can bring myself to stop hating everything about fandom right now, I shall absolutely write it for you.

)

Yeah, I know. I'm actually happy that I'm about to go on a work retreat where there is no possibility of internet for 4 days, because I think it's going to do wonders for my psychological health.

But it would be AWESOME to read a post-s6 genderswap story. I hope you write it at some point.

[OMG OMG OMG. I just had an idea for a post-s6 genderswap Lex story, but it involves the casting spoiler. Do you know about the female casting spoiler?]

(I know who the character is but not the actress.)

Anyway, I've already started writing! I have no idea how long the story will have to be, but I'm on my way!

Yay!!

lexophila was working on one I know and I had one that's been in my mind forEVER that once I get back to school and away from my sewing machine will worked on [i hope] since there seems to be such a lack.

Clearly we need a Smallville genderswap challenge, to encourage people with plot ideas to write them.

SV genderswap fic: a plot in search of an author

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