(again, I know the title is lame and i’m very uneducated about lgbtqia+ back then, but still learning stuff as i go along)
/confused? check out my master post about this self project here/
Age that I made this: 12
Genre: Comedy, Genderbender, (a bit of) Drama, Slice of Life
Series/ Anime I drawn inspiration from: School Rumble, The Wallflower, Kaichou-wa Maid Sama, some genderbender anime i was into i guess, and i vaguely remember that our teacher in elementary discussed about something about parents being very selective about their future child’s gender
so what i thought back then was, what if i create two characters who suffer from parents who manipulate the gender of their children because they didn’t like how they turned out the moment they’re born?
Story under the cut!
Story
This story idea of mine focuses on two childhood friends, Jaley and Gen, whose parents (mostly their moms) who didn't like that their child’s biological gender turned out when they’re born Jaley, (female) and Gen (male)
Coincidentally, Jaley and Gen's mothers knew each other as they gave birth in the same day, in the same hospital, and the two mothers shared the same room/ ward.
Their mothers (now that i'm telling this, i made them too crazy and discriminating lol) got to know each other by then and realized this weird sentiment; so the two decided to swap their kids.
Their moms’ crazy plan of swapping their babies didn't work the moment their husbands knew about it. The baby swap didn’t happen thus the two moms decided to make Gen and Jaley's cross dress and mis-educate them about their genders. (Jaley's mom eventually got divorced, and Gen's dad just went whatever his wife wants to with their son- as long as she won't give away their child)
The kids did what their moms told them to do because they want to avoid conflict and thinks that it seems this act is making them happy... despite getting bullied.
Of the two, Gen is the more outgoing and capable of comforting Jaley when they are bullied. As much as they share the same feeling of hating their moms' ways of raising their child-- the two are very understanding... to the best that they can.
From that sad and odd backstory, our two main characters were able to finish grade school out soon and deliberately moved out to start their highschool life somewhere else (the next panels are self explanatory)
In short, the story revolves on Jaley and Gen's journey in living the life and gender they ought to be and at the same time finding a way how to bring themselves to hide or to confront their moms’ ideal (and distorted) versions of themselves.
In the end: the two became the strengths of each other, they managed to find their way to be and express themselves confidently. The romance part is that they got together too in the end- you know, the best friends to lovers kind of thing.
--
Bonus:
Jaley and Gen’s school status is a kin to anime tropes where the transfer students are popular af/ everyone’s crush.
One of my favorite episodes are the nerve-wrecking moment every time they panic to crossdress when their moms pay them an unannounced visit and at the same time for Gen and Jaley to hope that this act of theirs wouldn’t be find out by their school friends.
This comic is finished (but i can’t find any old art of mine for this ánymore because our house was flooded by a typhoon 9 yrs ago and the comics in those spiral notebooks died but) I remembered most of the episodes were Jaley and Gen’s daily lives at school, occasional plot relevant episodes, side character and filler stories.
/end, for now/
(Part 1 out of 3) - Side Characters & Fun Facts on the next part!
As you guys can tell, I had to upload to 2 different sources which sucks.
Explanation after the break.
The 2016 panel is up on DailyMotion (It’s a private video in hopes it’ll last longer on the site, not sure how strict DailyMotion is about these things).
To download it, go to http://www.dailymotiontomp3.com, select “Download MP4 HD” and follow the instructions.
This panel was screen recorded, so the audio isn’t great and sometimes some icons pop up but it’s better than nothing and I’m eternally grateful to the kind soul who uploaded it to YouTube.
The 2013 panel presented some issues. DailyMotion won’t let me upload it cause it’s over an hour long, however, when I try to split it into 2 parts, my converters can’t clip it properly. After conversion the audio is out of sync. When I try to import it into a video editor, it gives me an error. I’m not really sure what codecs/formats are at play with this vid, I downloaded it straight off of Hulu a few years ago so I’m not sure. Anyway, this left me no choice but to upload the raw file to a torrent site. Hopefully you guys won’t mind. For a tutorial on downloading torrent files: http://tbbt-faves.tumblr.com/post/157709476142/please-where-do-you-download-the-tbbt-episodes (PATIENT WAY is the tutorial)
Enjoy and please seed the torrent file for everyone else. And if you guys have any questions or run into any issues, hit up my ask box ❤️