Cepl’s Introduction to fem!Harrys

Po 16 března 2020

(my comments on “LF Fics to introduce me to fem!Harry by u/frostking104” Reddit thread)

There are two types of fem!Harry stories:

  1. Where Harry (with a different name, of course) is naturally a girl, always was and always will be. Usually, I guess, the motivation is that the author is a woman, and she feels uncomfortable writing from the male point of view (I know something about that, somehow, without me wanting it, most of my stories have a female protagonist, and it is really hard). For some of them the difference in result is minimal (I like The Videus Charm by OfPensandSwords as an example), for some of them it leads to completely different stories. I like Victoria Potter by Taure and I really liked the very good setup of The odds were never in my favour by Antony444, but it turns kind of weird in the second year and later with the hidden cabala running the world and similar crap. Also, for very different story Tea Cures All Ills by delizabethl22.

  2. Gender-bender stories, where Harry was originally our Harry from the books, but then something weird happened and he turned to a girl (or he was born as a girl and then his sex was magically hidden and now he/she turns back into his natural state). There are many wrong reasons why somebody could write such a story. First, and I am afraid it applies to most of them, the author wanted to write a lemon and femslash was juicier for (I guess, usually) him. One unashamedly so is IMHO 11396276 and I will leave it at that (other is 21206021). Or there is non-smutty, just fun, variant in Pranking The Tournament by Gardevoir687.

    The second is that they are Snape/Draco fans and they didn’t want to write a slash story, so they turned Harry into a girl to suit them better to their planned pairing. One classical example would be Snape's Daughter by Tribi with the unbelievably horrible choice of name for the main protagonist (I won’t even write it here). I am not a big fan of either Snape or Draco, so when the story turned to be Drarry, I quit, and I remember just the overall feeling about it now. A reasonably good variant on this theme is Becoming Harriet by Teao, where the pairing is with the Snape’s AU son, and it suffers from the deluge of smut (including some of the most obnoxious tropes like magical-hormone-makes-you-horny), but if you skip that, there is a rather good story hidden beneath it.

    An alternative to that “something weird happened” is A Fair Life by Rtnwriter, where it is Harry (the canonical male one)’s death in the Forbidden Forest at the end of DH and returning as a girl on the eve of the announcement of champions for the Triwizard tournament and it is so far rather decently written Hermione/Harry femslash (not even too smutty). Similar idea with different execution is A Different Perspective by StellaStarMagic, where the canonical Harry jumps after Sirius into the Veil in the Death Chamber of the Department of Mysteries, but he is kicked back by rather Pratchettish Death into being a twin-sister of more or less canonical Harry Potter just before the letters from Hogwarts are delivered to them. She is sorted as a Hufflepuff, and it develops into so-far interesting timeline repair story.

    Usually, the sticky part of gender bender stories is the treatment of unease of the former Harry with him being a female suddenly with all bits in wrong places. One example of rather anxious treatment of the situation is To Reach Without by inwardtransience which turns into the rather interesting pairing of Harry/Susan Bones, but again further the development, weirder it becomes.

{update 2023-09-06}

(as the response to the inquiry on Reddit)

It is strange, I really dislike Indian!Harry and I have never found black!Hermione, where the difference would make any meaningful difference, but I can accept fem!Harry quite easily.

I have written a bit about why I think this happens here, and I have meanwhile found even some (few) stories which I actually enjoyed:

  • I really liked “The Three Sisters” by mumuinc for a great building of characters of all three sisters, and
  • I have actually enjoyed “High Heels and Hippogriffs” by NinjaPandaScholar, which is a boy-turned-girl story, but written well.

Two things I really deeply dislike, no, the things I hate, in fem!Harry stories are:

  • any Harry/Voldemort pairing, especially when fem!Harry because of getting it from Voldemort turns into complete pureblood supremacist killing Muggles; ugh! (I would add very tentative thumb up to “This Body is My Prison” by JBankai89, although BEWARE, it is a story about multiple instances of rape, degradation, multiple infanticides, and other unmentionable horrors, followed by attempts of recovery, so if you have ANY triggers, you should really stand away),
  • why oh why, almost all fem!Harry stories turn into femslash? If you want Harry/Paravati pairing (I look at you “With A Little Help From My Friends” by Asami_T), there is much easier way than turning Harry into a girl and make them both lesbians. I have absolutely nothing against homosexuality IRL, but I don’t enjoy reading about it (being a straight guy, I just don’t get it, aside from possible sexual titillation), and I would very much prefer if fem!Harry finds some bloke (I could suffer even Drarry, although I don’t like it generally).

There are some more stories with fem!Harry which deserve recognition. Let me get through the list at least briefly:

Category: literature Tagged: review harryPotter blogComment fromReddit