You may disagree with me, or even be upset me for saying this, but what I am hearing from this meta is "women are not awesome, therefore I prefer to write or read about men-as-women in order to have actual awesome characters."
Why not swap the roles of the characters? For example, why not write Beckett as the genius writer who comes in and shows up Castle at his job? (Which is, admittedly, only the plot of every single Murder, She Wrote episode ever.) Or take Thomas Jane and write him as the uptight officer, and-- Um, I don't watch this show, but whoever Robin Tunney plays, take her and make her be the brilliant maverick instead?
Uhura's not cool enough as a women, so let's make Spock into a girl instead of developing Uhura's character in fic, because Spock is cool already. Or Elizabeth and Teyla aren't nearly awesome enough as women, so we have to write John and Rodney as women, to make up for that. Or people want to write Sam and Dean as women, because taking one of the women on the show and developing her character or expanding her role isn't considered worthwhile.
Honestly? I don't care about the popularity of genderswap. There are times an author can use it to explore notions of gender and gender roles (and there have been genderswap stories I have read and liked, as well as having written a couple), but the massive prevalence that I see these days is, most of the time (though not all of the time), just another way to erase canon women from the narrative.
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Why not swap the roles of the characters? For example, why not write Beckett as the genius writer who comes in and shows up Castle at his job? (Which is, admittedly, only the plot of every single Murder, She Wrote episode ever.) Or take Thomas Jane and write him as the uptight officer, and-- Um, I don't watch this show, but whoever Robin Tunney plays, take her and make her be the brilliant maverick instead?
Uhura's not cool enough as a women, so let's make Spock into a girl instead of developing Uhura's character in fic, because Spock is cool already. Or Elizabeth and Teyla aren't nearly awesome enough as women, so we have to write John and Rodney as women, to make up for that. Or people want to write Sam and Dean as women, because taking one of the women on the show and developing her character or expanding her role isn't considered worthwhile.
Honestly? I don't care about the popularity of genderswap. There are times an author can use it to explore notions of gender and gender roles (and there have been genderswap stories I have read and liked, as well as having written a couple), but the massive prevalence that I see these days is, most of the time (though not all of the time), just another way to erase canon women from the narrative.