TG PIN-UP: CHEER! TG - SAM, THE PALADIN (passionate rant about cheerleader TGs in the description)

This character belongs to the TG Webcomic CHEER! a Spin-Off of The Wotch.

Personally Cheer! was always my favorite, it follows the story of some jocks turned cheerleaders where only one of them is aware that they used to be guys. It's more dramatic than The Wotch, and the author Tselsebar is still around on Deviantart. It was cut short in the MMO arc, hence the paladin outfit!

One thing I like about this comic is that it recontextualizes the characters from the Wotch. There the jocks are just one dimensional assholes and exist to be turned into equaly one dimensional nice cheerleaders, and nobody misses their old selves, and they are totally oblivious to the transformation and their lives get better and etc.

But then you look at the spin off, and the cheerleaders are super fleshed out with their own quirks, dramas and interests. Their lives are not perfect, they are fighting abandonament issues, or the loss of loved ones, their own ego and etc, so being turned into girls didn't make their lives perfect. It also ends up fleshing their male selves by proxy, because things like Alex being ignored by her parents or Sam's dead mother are things that would plague them either as guys or girls.

From the point of view of story I think it's very interesting. At first you get the feeling that the transformation - that most of them are oblivious to, as they got identity deathed - solves their issues, but you look deeper and notices that no... it didn't. The struggles they face are probably very similar. The genderswaping acts like a butterfly effect, but they don't stop being the same person with the same base personality going throuth similar hardships.

"Despite everything its still you", is a super cool angle to go with reality alteration in stories, we don't see that often in our area.

If you want to read Cheer! check the link above, or check these storytimes on /co/ (it will be up for a 2 or 3 days)
This is the first: https://boards.4chan.org/co/thread/149545098#p149545098

and this is the final thread: https://boards.4chan.org/co/thread/149569615#p149569615

Where I managed to get Tselsebar himself to do a Q&A with the anons.

The colors in this were done by the great Gearfae, and artist that I wish to collab much more.

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Now let me RANT about dramatic cheerleader TGs, and why I think they are peak TG!

Okay, first there is the pure TG aspect. Cheerleaders are hot, but not only that. Jocks are stereotyped as peak high status masculinity, while cheerleaders are essentially seem as the peak high status femininity. They are seem as counterparts to each other and often paired together, so there is the appeal of turning someone into the opposite of themselves, but there is also a line connecting them. A jock that turns into a cheerleader has to face the fact that he is not the one in the fields anymore, he is the cute girl cheering on the player.

Which brings the other aspect that is amusing to me in a deeper level. The jock now has to face his own loss of power, his body betrays him, he has the memories and know how things work, but he is just unable to perform like he used to. In a way it is like being crippled, with the extra fact that he is cheering on the ones that can still do it because it's what he can do now (or is made to like now). So there is this overwhelming longing for what was lost.

Also with this change, the expectations and how people treat you radically shift. With relatives usually the character who was a jock was seem as the pride of the family - even if that remain as a cheerleader this will be show very differently. This totally shift the dynamics that he would have with his jock friends in the team too, as well as his rivals. For the guys he is an object of desire, for his fellow cheerleaders he is a peer (which can be ironic if the character ever dated members of the team). There is a new world of possibilities and interactions that the character never experienced, but also the fear of losing yourself, of forgetting or been forgotten for who you were. Tied to it there are the general themes of loss of identity, of who is their actual "self" independent if they are a girl or a guy. And ironically, among all this drama and existential musings, you are supposed to cheer, you are the embodiment of cheering people and pushing them forward, like some sort of TG version of Pagliacci.

This also ties well with a character archetype that I like, that is the tough cheerleader, the one that has genuine interest for the sport and is usually a daddy's girl, she would be considered a tomboy if she didn't had a preference for feminine aestethics.

I think the archetype is very versatile and fun. One story that I think did it really well was this one: https://www.tgstorytime.com/viewstory.php?sid=7976

You might like it, it has very much the vibes of Jo's early arc on Cheer! (tho across the entire story, so its a much downer one). The character is slowly TGed and has his memmories changed across several days and knows that its happening. On my review the author went more about how he sees this sort of thing, and I found his reply very insightful.

Tselsebar said that on Cheer! he wouldn't delve more into that sort of thing after Jo's lil arc (rather, Hayley would focus on that), maybe its for the better to keep things more light among the main cast.

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ALSO THIS MONTH'S SKETCH REQUEST HAS A BACK TO SCHOOL THEME! GIVE ME REQUESTS THERE! IF YOU ARE ON THE 10$ TIER YOU HAVE UNLIMITED REQUESTS!