Goodbye Themyscira

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What happens when a transgender boy grows up in a world where there ARE no males?
From girl to boy, from Amazon to American, from Themyscira to Gotham City...
Kip Trevor's life has been one incredible journey!

GOODBYE THEMYSCIRA
(A sort of Wonder Woman/Justice League fanfic)
Laika Pupkino 2016

NOTE: All I know about the DC comics universe comes from a handful of feature films, tv shows like Supergirl and The Flash, and a half dozen cartoon series; so this probably isn't even remotely canon. Let's just say all the discrepancies + inaccuracies you'll find here are because this takes place on Earth #27, where whatever I got right is the same as our world and whatever I didn't isn't...

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My name is Kip Trevor, and at 16 years of age I've had a very unusual life so far. I live in Gotham Heights---the most opulent neighborhood in this grim and dirty city---in a gigantic house, but that's not the unusual part...

I know several of these “superheroes” that you read about and see on the news by their real first names. And this might be a pretty rare thing to be privy to, but knowing this group of people with weird powers is not that strange to me. Not compared to my early life and the changes I've been through since then...

Also, I haven't always been a boy. I was born a girl and spent most of my life trying to live as one. But that too is hardly anything unusual these days; There have been a lot of transgender people telling their stories in the past few years, and my story is the same as most of them in many ways. But there's some huge differences too...

What makes my life until recently so unusual is that on the island where I grew up and had to discover and come to terms with my transgender nature there were no males. None. Since ancient times the whole population of our island has been female, and for centuries the location and even the existence of our all-girl island has been a secret that we jealously guarded from the rest of the world, to the point that we used to simply kill any male who set foot on Themyscira's perfect beaches right there on the spot. We have since found other means---like amnesia drugs---but we still live in fear of outsiders. Of men for the most part; but even Amelia Earhardt had her plane destroyed and was forced to live out her days among us when she set down on our isle, lest she tell anyone about us.

From the day the Amazons of Themyscira are first able to pick up a shield and wield a sword or a spear we are taught every form of combat that doesn't require modern weapons such as guns. Generations of warrior women have trained and prepared for the day when somebody might invade us. Our island is without a doubt the single most closed off, insular society on Earth.

And yet the women there enjoy peace and security and healthy long lives full of culture and learning in a warm loving community where everyone helps everyone and no one is exploited. And with a deep spirituality centered around the worship of Aphrodite and Artemis but most of all the great goddess Hera. Nicknamed “Paradise Island”, it really is the closest thing to paradise us mortals have ever seen!

I was miserable there.

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For as long as I can remember I had deep sense that I was different than other girls, and that I somehow didn't belong in this paradise of women. I felt a terrible wrongness that I couldn't explain or define; but I never once associated it with me being a boy, because all I had been told about boys and men was what brutish, cruel violent creatures they were; and how they loved to rape and enslave women, and to go to war over the most trivial matters, and hurt children and small helpless animals for fun!

And I sure didn't feel brutish or cruel or want to do any of that awful stuff; so I could not give a name to my sense of being different and disconnected, or even describe it clearly. It tormented me day and night, and eventually I decided that I must just be crazy.

Other people were coming to think I was too. Not knowing how to help me, my mother took me to a high priestess, who after consulting her portents told her I was a devil child- a maenad whose heart held not the wisdom of Hera but the madness of Dionysus.

And after I cut off my beautiful long golden hair because this just felt right to me, I was taken to a soul healer---what here in your world would be called a counselor or therapist---who was kinder than that crone of a priestess had been, but she couldn't help me either. Although in time I came to pretend she did...

“What's troubling you child?” she asked on my first visit, “Whatever it is you can tell me.”

“I don't know!” I wailed, and began crying.

“Why would a pretty girl like you want to cut off all her pretty, pretty hair?”

“I'm not a pretty girl,” I snuffled.

“But you're beautiful, Phyllissa! How can you say you're not?”

“BECAUSE I'M NOT A GIRL!!” I screamed, which was as shocking and baffling for me to hear coming out of my mouth as it was for her.

“If you're not a girl then what are you?” she asked, with that gentle forbearance that had felt so nice at first but now was making me angry.

“I don't KNOW!! All right?!” I shouted. And suddenly my frustration and confusion boiled over and I started tearing up her office, knocking things off the walls and shrieking, “I'M A DEVIL CHILD! I'M A MAEANAD! A HYDRA! A SATYR! A CENTAUR! I'M A MANTICORE! I'M A DRAGON!!!”

I really and truly didn't know what I was...
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It was about this time that the rumors began to spread that I was possessed and had the “evil eye”. I could wither crops, make goats dry up of milk or even cause someone to drop dead. As the rest of the world rolled into the twenty-first century Themyscira still believed that things like this were real.

But what's weird was that unlike a lot of primitive island communities, this sort of shunning wasn't a common occurrence on Themyscira. People were generally a lot nicer to each other than this. My mother did remember one instance from her childhood where a lady was accused of witchcraft and banished to a shack halfway up Lookout Mountain, but old Nyrrisa actually had been practicing some dark hateful magic, and was also a thief, and just plain nasty. It was as if the women of our island had known before I did that I was this thing they had been taught to hate and mistrust all their lives: a male.

Mothers started forbidding their daughters to play with me, and in response to being shunned and suspected of something so absurd my attitude toward people and life in general went into a serious nosedive.
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The one place where all this misery helped me was in my combat training. My anger drove me to excel in hand to hand combat, and my sense that I had nothing left to lose and couldn't sink any lower made me absolutely fearless. Ironically, the one place I felt at peace was in the middle of a fight. But many times I didn't know when to quit, and had to be pulled off of my instructors (I had long since been deemed an unsuitable sparring partner for the other girls) before I killed them.

I was still seeing my counselor, who to her credit had never abandoned me no matter how hard I'd tried to push her away. I learned what to say in order to sound like I was coming to terms with and embracing my life as a female; and I was happy that this was pleasing my mother and easing her worries for me. But inside I was as tormented as ever.
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Until I was about nine I had known a woman who never failed to brighten my day. She always seemed to know what to say.

Believe in yourself she had told me, And believe that Hera has a special destiny for you. It may not be what you expected, it may not be what other people want for you, but it's yours. And when you find it---or it finds you---you'll know it's right, and that all your trials until then were teaching you how to be strong, and were leading you to become the person you were always meant to be.

Lots of other women were giving me advice, but somehow when Diana told me stuff like this I could believe her. Our friendship might have seemed unlikely, not just because she was so much older than me---an adult of twenty-six---but because she was the princess, the daughter of Queen Hippolyta herself. Yet she always seemed to have time for me and my mom, these two nobodies who lived in a modest house down by the fishing docks- the closest thing our island had to a poor neighborhood. I looked up to and loved the Princess like some wise big sister who seemed to know about things that neither my mom nor my soul healer had much of a handle on...

And then she left.

Nobody left Themyscira, ever! But Diana had left to go live in that wider world where both men and women lived; convinced that this was her own special destiny.

The rumors about her fate out there started circulating immediately, and each was crazier than the last- She'd been enslaved by men, she'd fallen into a volcano and died, she'd left the Earth entirely to go live in space with some man with a magic green ring.

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A few years had gone by when one day out of the blue our peaceful island was rocked by a war. The Queen's sister Upstarsia attempted to take over Themyscira, aided by several divisions of very powerful...

I never learned what they were, but they sure weren't from around here and they could fly, and were absolutely ruthless. They didn't fight fair with swords or longbows but blasted everything and everyone they saw with some kind of lightning shooting guns that looked like evil magic to me!

After laying waste to much of Themyscira they were coming toward our neighborhood---mom was holding me, we were both crying and choking on the smoke from all the fires---when our missing princess showed up and turned the tide of the war.

She called herself Wonder Woman now and was wearing an amazing red, white and blue outfit unlike anything us Amazons wore. And had some very interesting friends with her who looked as strange and exotic as she did now. And somehow she was flying around like a bird, and most of her friends were too. The one who couldn't fly himself piloted a very fast airplane shaped like a bat, and all of them were either incredibly strong or had weapons that were equal to what the invaders had. There was a woman with a big mace who could have been one of our Amazons except she had wings like a hawk. And the one with the green ring was here- you wouldn't believe the things that ring could do!

After a fierce battle the invaders that hadn't been killed all fled, and Uppstartia was imprisoned. We all gathered at the arena to see Hippolyta thank her daughter Diana and Diana's friends for saving us all. My mother was being attended to at the infirmary (but it wasn't life threatening and I knew she'd be all right) so it was just me there watching; sort of sitting way off by myself, which had become my habit.

Everyone was amazed by these strangers who had popped in out of nowhere to help us, just because they were our princess's friends and she had needed their help. She and they together called themselves The Justice League; and one could tell they were all brave, and loyal to each other, and stood for doing good and defeating evil- all those things we Amazons had been taught were the important to do.

But the weirdest thing was... MOST OF THEM WERE MEN!! (Well one of them was green and looked like some kind of Martian, but he was definitely a male...)

All my life I had been taught how horrible men were, and here were these amazing creatures with incredible powers (the one from the airplane only had a belt, but it was a pretty clever belt!), and who were wise enough to use these powers for selfless ends. They didn't seek to hurt or kill or oppress anyone but to make the world a better place for everyone.

And I knew right then that so much of what I had learned about males was untrue. It was quite a stunning revelation...

I think it was the largest member of this group---the man in the red cape who had lifted a whole temple out of the path of destruction, and who seemed to be everything I'd always dreamed of being---who triggered the even more colossal realization I had next:

That's what I was! The name for this difference I had been feeling all my life, and why I'd always had trouble fitting in as a girl. Somehow, despite what everyone had been telling me and despite what would seem like an anatomical fact, I was one of them!

“I'm a man,” I muttered, sitting there at the back of the arena rows away from everyone else. Then I said it louder. It seemed right to say it, and it felt like the truth about the baffling mystery that was my life had come to me at last. Great Hera, I was a man!

Or actually the younger type of male, which I now remembered was called a boy.

That didn't seem wrong for me either, boys became men; And this was essentially the moment my real life started...
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After she graciously thanked them all Hippolyta ordered these males to depart, because grateful as we were to them, they had no place in our world; and then she shocked me by banishing her own daughter from ever coming back. I could see this saddened the Queen but rules were rules, and it wouldn't be fair to make exceptions for her own family.

Diana accepted the judgment against her with dignity and quiet grace, but the red one who could run as fast as Hermes himself---and who I'll admit I'd thought of as just a loudmouth clown until now---spoke out of turn, and gave a pretty fine speech about why his friend Wonder Woman shouldn't be made to suffer just because they rest of them trespassed on our land. Which moved Hippolyta but didn't change her mind, and Diana left with the others.

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As profound as my realization about my true sex was, I didn't share it with anyone, not even my mother. She truly believed all the stories about what monsters males were, and I was afraid of losing her love if she knew what I was.

But she and everyone else said how remarkable my sudden change in attitude was. I was cheerful, I was helpful toward others, and I no longer seemed to be in a perpetual gloom as I secretly made plans to get the hell off this island where my kind wasn't welcome.

One day in the deer park I found a book that clearly wasn't from Themyscaria. To this day I have no idea where it came from. The first page with printing on it said it was made in New York City back in 1922. It was called The Further Adventures of Kip Carpenter and I would figure out later it was written for male children. I was captivated from the very first page, as this boy named Kip careened from one unlikely adventure to the next, fighting pirates and bootleggers, saving nuns from a huge forest fire by quickly building a raft that carried them all to safety, and joining a traveling circus that traveled by airship. I read that book until I nearly wore it out, and of course I was imagining that I was Kip, that “daring and resourceful lad” who was “all boy” and “all-American”...

This next part is a bit embarrassing to admit.... But you have to understand that all the males I had ever seen had various incredible powers. Bat-Ears must have had his gifts taken away somehow; but Kip Carpenter must have had something (perhaps it was his “luck and pluck”) that allowed him to survive his life of constant peril. I became convinced that all males had super powers, and if I was a boy then I must have them too. I only needed to discover what my powers were---and like Diana had told me---to believe in myself!

I caused a lot of excitement and barely escaped serious injury or death when I climbed up onto the peak of the Great Temple and attempted to fly.

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I got into a bit of trouble when I stole a small fishing boat and tried to escape to the mainland in it. I was intercepted far out at sea by our two fastest longboats rowed by big shouldered oarswomen. But I got in less trouble than I would have if I hadn't played dumb and told them I must have got turned around somehow because I thought I was headed home. But the docks were watched closely after that.

Another year passed. My breasts had begun to swell and I knew they were only going to get bigger. And once a month I was starting to find a little blood coming from me below, from that place I didn't like to look at too closely or even think about. I didn't know what could be done about these changes but I knew I didn't like them. I tried to hide them both from Mother because I wouldn't have been able to stand hearing the words: “You're becoming a woman!”, and having her expect me to be happy about it.

But maybe in the world outside of Paradise Island they had cures for these things.

I had drawn plans for a small sailing vessel and was attempting to build it out behind a grove of cypress trees---which was a lot harder than it was for that boy in the book---when an amazing thing happened.

Diana returned. Her mother welcomed her home, but it was only going to be a short stay, since she was still more or less exiled but would be allowed to visit from now on. She had arrived in an amazing airplane that she had flown herself, and that believe it or not was invisible! The only part of it I saw was a bit of interior when she opened a hatch and climbed out.

I abandoned my plans to build a boat, and nearly everything I owned except a knife, some gold coins and my favorite book, then sadly wrote my mother a quick goodbye note and found my way back to Diana's airplane. And after a lot of feeling around on its invisible hull I found my way into it, glad to see that it wasn't invisible at all from the inside.

It had a cockpit where the pilot and somebody else could sit, with a small storage area behind it that luckily had room for me. I waited all day and half the night in that little space until Diana returned. She started the engines and we shot straight up into the air. I was really doing this! I was going to live in that other world, and somehow or other I would do it as a boy, and then as a man!

We were leaving Themysciran airspace---that point where our watchers on Lookout Mountain became alarmed if an airplane flew in past it---when Diana said loudly: “You can come out now.:”

She'd known I was back there the whole time. I climbed out through the little door, feeling like my plans had been defeated once again.

But then again this was Diana. The woman who was almost a sister. The one who listened to me and really seemed to hear me. So when she asked me, “Why are you trying to leave Themyscira?” I told her. I told her everything, from my first feelings that something was wrong, I told her things I had told my counselor and things I had never dared say aloud. I told her things about me and how I felt that even I didn't know until they came rushing out here in this magical airplane.

Somewhere in the middle of this I started crying. I didn't stop until she had put the plane on “autopilot” then came over to me and held me for a long, long time.

Then she whispered something to me that I had never even dreamed I might hear some day, but it was the most precious thing anyone had ever said to me: “It's going to be alright, Little Brother.”

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On our flight to America I learned a lot. She said that there were other boys like me. And there were girls who had been born boys and had been just as unhappy about it as I was about being a girl. This was almost inconceivable to me, that anyone would want to give up being a boy! But she laughed and told me: “They say the same thing about being a girl!”

And I found out these boys and girls in the wrong bodies actually could do something about their unhappy lives, and start living lives that fit the person they were inside. Then I started crying again, but out of happiness this time.

I said, “I guess I'm not a very good boy...”

“Why do you say that?” she asked.

“Because boys are never supposed to cry.”

“Who told you that?” she wanted to know, and so I brought out my book.

The Further Adventures of Kip Carpenter is now somewhere on the bottom of the Pacific Ocean.

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She was flying the plane again now, and I was in the seat beside her. We were flying over America. It's a lot bigger than Themyscira!

She asked me how I expected to live in a world that that I knew nothing about, where I would have no money and no friends. I showed her my gold coins, which she said would last about a week. I told her I was going to figure out something. I had to. I couldn't live in a place that hated who I was inside. Or who they thought I was, because their ideas about males didn't describe me at all. But either way I couldn't stay there.

She said, “It's not like Themyscira here. It's a rough world, with a lot of horrible violent people who like to take what isn't theirs.”

“I know how to fight,” I said.

She nodded, “I was talking to my old swords instructor, asking her if there were any exceptional students. She mentioned you. She said you had a lot of potential but your anger makes you tend to fight blindly sometimes. But anyway, you were seriously expecting to just land someplace and go sleep on the streets?”

I said, “I think I would do all right.”

“You might not have to. I have a friend that you might be able to stay with. I'm sure he would put you up for a short while, but it could turn out to be much longer.”

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This friend of hers lived in a gigantic mansion outside of a large American city called Gotham. It had a place on the roof for Diana to park her invisible jet. An old man led us down some winding steps to meet her friend. It took me a while, but I recognized him as one of the people who came to fight for us during the coup. The one without special powers.

We went inside, and Diana told him all about me. She even told him that I wasn't quite a boy quite yet, which made me feel embarrassed and afraid of what he would think of me, but I guess she had to tell him. If I was really going to stay here he would have found out sooner or later.

“Well I am sort of between sidekicks at the time. Dick's doing quite well as Nightwing, and the new kid, he wasn't really working out, and ran off. Probably back with the League of Assassins by now. Can she- Please excuse me, Son! I mean can HE fight?”

“I think you'll be pleased,” she grinned.

The mansion had several types of gyms and dojos and fencing rooms, and he tested me in each one. And he really was pleased. But so was I. I could tell that this man was exceptional, even without Clark's strength or Barry's speed---and he could teach me a lot. Not just about fighting, but about being a man in the very best sense of the word.

So I became a ward of Mr. Wayne. A student by day, a costumed crime fighter by night, and a boy all the time. We made an appointment with the best gender specialists in Gotham City, but there were other matters to take care of first...

I had no birth certificate, or anything that said who I was, but Mr. Wayne took care of that. I didn't even have a name except Phyllissa. I had never even picked one that I could think of myself by. But now I picked Kip after the Kip Carpenter, whose adventures cheered me up during some of the lowest days of my life, and Trevor after Steve Trevor, a male friend of Diana's that she'd often spoke about.

It's my other name I'm not crazy about. The one I wasn't allowed to pick myself. I really wish he hadn't stuck me with a dumb, girly name like Robin!

;

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THANK YOU FOR READING MY LITTLE ONE-DRAFT SCRIBBLE
PLEASE COMMENT

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And no I don't know where babies come from on Themyscira
No one else ever explained it so I just left it...

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Comments

Now that was funny!

It was worth reading this story for the last line! Great punch Line! I didn't see that coming (even though it should have been obvious).

Bravo! True to the characters

Bravo! True to the characters and their personalities!

Finally someone had the fall to say what we were all thinking regarding the Dark Knight's sidekick!

I'm told STFU more times in a day than most people get told in a lifetime

Even better

erin's picture

Even better than the little plot outline that so intrigued me. Telegraphic like a comic book script from the Silver Age.

Thanks and hugs,
Erin

= Give everyone the benefit of the doubt because certainty is a fragile thing that can be shattered by one overlooked fact.

i was very lucky

laika's picture

With the 4 paragraphs of notes in hand, I just thought "FIRST PERSON" and the narrator started talking and the thing wrote itself. But he sounded so much like my MtF mermaid narrator, who's about the same age and whose voice I've been writing in for months that I had to go back and tweak the grammar, changing "gonna" to "I'm inclined to"; making it more formal and a bit more like the lofty bogus-medieval renaissance faire kind of way that Themyscirans talk in the Warner/DC animated features :)

OACH!

wolfjess7's picture

I must say that punch line at the end was a total FACE PALM moment. Even I should have seen that one coming. Now that is out of the way, this was a cute and nicely twisted take on the DCU.

May the peace and happiness of the Goddess keep and protect you
as always your humble outlaw
Jessie Wolf

OMG!!!

That was a wonderful tale!!! I'm still giggling!!!

Out Of Control...

Kelly

PKB_003b.jpg

Dont worry about sticking to

Dont worry about sticking to canon too much. The newer comics (Heres looking at you, New 52.....) dont either.

The writers of the comics have pretty much decided that THE most important aspect of a comics story is to pander to the moaning ninnies of society who dont even read comics.

Over 'less important' aspects of a story. Like, you know, an actually good story, character development and generally good storytelling.

Either way, good story, lets see more!

The New 52

Enemyoffun's picture

The New 52 is gone. They got rid of it in favor of bringing back elements from the old pre-Flashpoint DC Universe, they're calling it Rebirth :)

Half-Life

erin's picture

The half-life of the comic book audience used to be about 8 years. That is, in about 8 years, half of the audience had been replaced. This is probably no longer true, audiences are more stable because they skew older and not as many new readers come in as kids.

Oddly, stability in the audience has seemingly caused instability in the content. The half-life of a comic book idea, theme or setting now seems to be about two to three years. I don't read the mainstream comics much anymore because of this.

Half-Life, btw, strikes me as a pretty good name for a radioactive ghost character. :)

Hugs,
Erin

= Give everyone the benefit of the doubt because certainty is a fragile thing that can be shattered by one overlooked fact.

Ohhhh, Miss Ronnie

Andrea Lena's picture

I don't know nuthin' 'bout birthin' Amazon babies, either, but I just know I love this story!
Prissy McDitko

  

To be alive is to be vulnerable. Madeleine L'Engle
Love, Andrea Lena

It's Not Girly!

joannebarbarella's picture

I'll bet you wouldn't tell that to Robin Hood's face. You'd have an arrow through your whatsit in no time flat. Funny though, it's a perfectly acceptable male name in Britain but seems to be regarded as a girl's name in the US.

It's a great giggle and I admit I didn't see the punchline coming. What are your pictorial powers like, Ronni? Or maybe you could sell it to Marvel for a forthcoming movie.

The only things missing were the mermaids.

Well you see Joanne, our hero was corrupted

laika's picture

into believing in a very narrow and particularly American view of gender roles by reading THE FURTHER ADVENTURES OF KIP CARPENTER. It lead him to believe males should have strongly masculine-associated names, like Bruce. (And as a bit of nitpicking... I don't think MARVEL would touch a screenplay with these characters)
love, Ronni

Robin as a male name had

Robin as a male name had nothing to do with it, Robin as a superhero name did. It's one of if not the worst names out there but Laika unintentionally hit on why it was used in comics in the first place: you underestimate someone with that name!

76 years later and except for one guy in the 80s those who took up the name are and were badass characters.

I'm told STFU more times in a day than most people get told in a lifetime

excellent !

a side of things we dont usually look at, well done!

DogSig.png

Writing FtM characters

laika's picture

Thank you! I almost wasn't going to write this one
because FtM stories require a bit of psychological contortionism-
taking all my own transgender feelings and turning them inside out
(it also requires gulping down a handful of girlie germ suppression pills).
But the plight of a trans boy in an an all-women Female Supremist society...
The poor kid really needed to have his story told!
~hugs, Veronica

Thanks for the read

AuPreviner's picture

Très amusant ! Enjoyed the read.

Interesting twist on the ward! Wonder what you would do with aunt Harriet.

Je te fais de la bise,

AuP


"Love is like linens; after changed the sweeter." – John Fletcher (1579–1625)

What a great story! I love

leeanna19's picture

What a great story! I love the twist at the end. DC have a few comic TG characters, only Dreamer is on screen currently though. They could use this plot in a one off comic. There are DC LGBT comics now.

cs7.jpg
Leeanna