3562 Check Her Out
on May 20, 2024
Chapter: 087-The Woman
Characters: Charles Hunter, Katherine Louise Steward
Location: Costal port city of Elegrost
Late again!
But I got one up! (I had to draw it last night!)
For Chell (and others): Louis’ introductory story starts in the chapter titled: “The Boy”, found here: https://www.yafgc.net/comic/3309-the-boy/
Apologies for the trainwreck of an archive. My WP theme crapped the bed at some point and no longer understands chapter numbers. So I’ve got to take some time (I don’t have) to go through and rename them all with the chapter numbers in the titles so they’re get back into chronological order. Fortunately the strips within the chapters are always published that way, so they’re correctly in order WITHIN their chapter titles. Ugh. I’ve tried looking into it but I couldn’t get it to work properly the old way.
-Rich “BK” Morris
Well, there wasn’t really much of a chance he wouldn’t notice the changes…
On a side note, it feels really great to be able to read this comic from the phone! Yeah, the issue’s been fixed for months, but I just can’t stop appreciating it.
Been playing with those magic belts again, Louise?
At least in a D&D world, if you're truly suffering from GD, you have that option.
"One Cursed Belt of Femininity/Masculinity please."
Roy has boobies!
Seriously though, the casual acceptance of his friend's new reality, the accidental dead-naming and the gentle correction without taking offence. Very well done, a lot of the world could learn from Charles and Katherine.
I want to present a respectful scenario. Thanks!
That’s a thing in D&D? I had assumed it was just a joke item in OotS…
At this point everything is a thing in D&D somewhere. But that particular item goes back to the beginning.
Nope, it's really real. Umm, you know what i mean lol. One of our parties ran across one in the late 80s. I don't recall what happened or even who to.
It'd be marvelous if it were that easy to change…
I had a player quit my campaign…. not like a flouce, but something came up where we needed to take a break, and he wouldn't come back because in the last few sessions his ranger had been given a choice between two belts (the Dryad couldn't remember which was which) and he chose the cursed "Belt of f/m", and he slowly turned into a woman over the course of a couple of days. He felt it changed the character too much and he didn't want to deal with it. And, fair enough, there's some things that just take you out of the headspace. That was his.
From how you wrote that, I take it that was from an edition before countering the belt just required a simple Remove Curse?
It was 2e. But there's nothing 'simple' about using a spell nobody in the party has access to and you can't afford in a big city.
Sounds like the party was a little disbalanced.
IIRC the "Belt of f/m" in 2e did not register as cursed (to the usual detection spells). Attentive moment in DnD History, or did Gary just try to prank his players?
The OotS strip where the M/F Belt was found mirrors an early quest in the Baldur's Gate computer game, which in turn was based on AD&D 2e. Most, if not all, of the items in the game appear in PnP.
It's actually a great subversion of that old gag, that something treated as a mean practical joke in early D&D/AD&D is revealed to be originally a humane way to let a person's physical body match their spiritual gender. Only the crude louts who looted it never bothered to learn about what it did, instead selling it to even less scrupulous adventurers.
Much better that story than to blame some sorcerer and suppose it was his idea of a punishment for those who try to steal magic items.
My character in an old campaign got flipped by one of those belts, and the GM threw in an NPC who became infatuated with the feminized version. After considerable effort and side quests, I was able to reverse the effect… and the blankety-blank NPC "rescued" my character by wishing him back to female form. I managed not to kill him on the spot, and was able to undo the transformation a second time.
Is "him" the person you managed not to kill the NPC or the DM?
The NPC; the DM was good at keeping things interesting.
Would have been kind of amusing if the NPC changed gender just to keep pursuing yours.
So who is Louis again?
Kinda running for a long time, so not sure where he/she/they came from?
She was the kid Cadugan and Charles' mother save with the mistress who Charles defend at the start of this story and another one from the Rannites who go to kill father, mother and him in their voyage to found the past husbands of Charles' mother.
The father was a giant bag full of shit who hate the idea Lucas and Cadugan were married.
The mother was a better person (not so difficult) and Louis was the best friend of Charles for a long time… until his father go to better positions and separate them.
It’s a short story starting here:
https://www.yafgc.net/comic/3309-the-boy/
That's too 👍
Charles is fast.
Wise boy, living more (and more happy)
I gotta say, I'm pleasantly surprised. I'm trans myself and I admit I was… a bit nervous when I realized where this was going. Way too often the reaction to people like me tends to be… not great these days. It's a nice change of pace to see this both being handled respectfully by Rich and have the comments respond to it without vitriol and hatred. Y'all are good people.
If it helps at all, I came up with the idea for this storyline years ago and had long talks with a trans friend about how it should go. So she didn't exactly co-write it, but she told me how it should go down. Her name is Katherine and I [re]named the character after her. There were some things that I asked how to cover and she nixed right off the bat. I wanted to handle this the same way I handled Lucas and Cadugan's relationship. Respectful and with the insights of someone who lives it.
Seems like a good way to handle it, yeah. I'll be following along with great interest – not that I wouldn't have done that anyway, but, y'know, with *more* great interest :p
I hope you're not disappointed that I don't make a bigger deal out of it. Like Lucas and Cadugan's romance, I didn't write a story ABOUT Louise' transition, I wrote a story in which it is revealed that Louise is a woman, incidental to the plot.
No, not at all. That's how it should be done, the trans community – or at least my bubble of it – tends to overwhelmingly be of the opinion that we need more characters who just happen to be trans, instead of making a big deal out of the transition. Particularly (and I mean no offense) if it's a cis writer. Transition stories do have their place, but it's probably something best left to someone who has experience with what they're writing about, otherwise the risk to end up with… unfortunate stereotypes is rather high.
Overwhelmingly agreed with. And I am (no offense taken at all) indeed a CIS male. White and Christian even. I married a bisexual Jewish woman who taught me a lot about the world I perceived incorrectly. YAFGC has partially served as a way for me to 'see it done right' to the best of my ability. And I've tripped over the years. My modern vision of 'inclusiveness' therefore isn't to write a story around a particular thing, but to just put it in chemistry of the story. So when I get comments like yours, it makes me feel good to keep going. I wasn't always like this, sad to say. But I am now and going forward.
Honestly, to err is human. As long as we learn from our mistakes there's no shame in getting stuff wrong from time to time. I'm certainly glad my comments provided some motivation, been reading along here for about a decade so far and really enjoyed the ways in which the comic evolved. Although I may have commented under a different name in the past, before I came out, honestly don't even remember.
Oh, because it's a mistake that I see made somewhat often – it's just "cis", no capitalization. 😀 It's not an acronym, it's latin for "on this side of" and the opposite of trans, which is latin for "on the other side of". A cisgender persons gender identity is "on the same side" as the gender they were assigned at birth, a transgender persons gender identity is "on the other side" of the gender they were assigned at birth!
Oh man! Thanks for correcting that.
The easy, familiar camaraderie here absolutely rocks.
t!
It was the amulet her asshat of a father had welded around her neck as a kid, wasn't it? He was dead set on having a firstborn male heir, and when Louise was born, he got someone to "fix" the "problem."
Ooh, that seems very probable. Nice catch if so.
Wait. I want to see Louis, but this character's previous appearances aren't linked with the character's tag. Long time reader and fan. Long enough to forget large amounts of the stuff in the middle.
Try this:
https://www.yafgc.net/character/louis-steward-the-younger/
Hooray for undramatic depictions of acceptance and support!
By the way, not a native English speaker here: what's the phonetic difference between "Louis" and "Louise"?
Louis is either Loo-ee or occasionally (at least in the UK) Loo-iss.
Louise is Loo-eez.
The hyphen is just to separate the syllables, there is no pause…
As Flibbert says, but as I am a Canadian, raised in French speaking Quebec, I pronounced this character's name as "LOO-wee." and the feminized version is "loo-WEEZ"
I see! Thank you both ))
"LOO-wee"
"loo-WEEZ"
Me gotta go now.
t!
Some time around 1993 I was involved in a real life incident that went a lot less well. One of my colleagues started working from home (very unusual in those days) and then we were told a few weeks later in one on one meetings by management that this colleague was transitioning from male to female. OK I had no problem with that. But they didn't tell us her new name. I happened to bump into her outside work, and she was presenting as half way between male and female at the time. I didn't know her new name, but she was clearly deliberately refusing to speak to me until I addressed her with it. It was very frustrating and embarrassing, and I feel both of us handled it badly. She should just have told me, and equally I should just have said "Either you tell me your new name or this will continue to be very awkward, because I'm not psychic" or something like that. Our work relationship as colleagues never really recovered even once we were on speaking terms after someone finally told me her new name. Louise in this strip handled this a lot better.
Louise's former personage:
https://www.yafgc.net/character/louis-steward-the-younger/
I would recommend renaming the earlier links to her present name. otherwise people are going to be looking up:
https://www.yafgc.net/character/louis-steward/
Just be glad I'm posting it again. When I'm unemployed I'll start fixing links. But thanks.
Hey Rich, if your kids are free from school for the nonce maybe see if they want to help with the site issues. If they're as tech savvy as mine they'll have it done in time to demand dessert before dinner.
Or 25 bucks an hour.
t!