Shay had simply been going to work one day when he suddenly lost consciousness. When he awoke, he found himself in another world, in a body not his own.
There was no particular reason for him being in this world; he had simply been in the wrong place at the wrong time.
There’s no main quest or any specific place he needs to go to, and there isn’t anyone asking anything of him. He’s just there.
He’s got magic now, and needs to use it to get back to Earth and rescue his sister. And he wants to fight something.
Also on Royal Road.
When I first stumbled across the vast array of isekai style fiction online, and saw that SO much of it was "gender bender" I was thrilled, since, being trans, I love trans-themed stories.
Of course, I quickly realized that most of the GB isekai fiction out there wasn't written with trans issues or gender in mind at all, which confused me. Honestly, it still confuses me - why have a gender-bending theme if you're not going to explore gender at all, mention dysphoria is a thing, etc? I still don't get it... what's the point of the gender-bending theme?
Anyway, THIS story is an exception to that trend. It takes that same format, but addresses it realistically (including coming up with a good reason for the GB event to occur in the first place) and not leaving out topics like dysphoria that many men would actually feel if their s*x was suddenly flipped. This gets resolved in a unique way that still doesn't make the main character trans in this case, but I'm just happy to see the topic finally addressed properly and not glossed over.
Gender stuff aside (because that's not the majority of the story or anything), it's also got a very fun skill/evolution system that I greatly enjoyed reading about. I think most people who enjoy the occasional isekai/litrpg story will enjoy this one.
The only negative I can really name is that it's shorter than I'd like. Sure, it's ~50k words long, but by isekai writing standards that's on the short side. I guess due to these sorts of stories needing to invent a new world, they tend to run much longer than fanfiction of existing well-defined fictional realms, or non-fantasy romance/etc sorts of stories that don't have to re-explain our own modern world. As a result of the short run of the story, many parts seem very rushed - there's a lot of time skipping that takes place, and some character interactions seem rushed/abbreviated, etc.
On the other hand, though I wish it was longer, what *is* there is well-done. The story wraps up nicely with a satisfying conclusion, and each segment that is written out is well-done. If the author had time for 50k words of writing, then they did a great job making that call, and maintaining the discipline to distribute it all well enough to get to a nice ending in that time frame. If sequels get written someday though, that would be great!
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Like the other stories by givemeyourbones, inside-outside-in is a cute story about found family and building a new life for yourself!
The character writing is cute, and it leaves a lot of potential room to grow in the future and the story develops. All in all, an adorable story that you should read!
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Good story, looking forward to reading more!
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