#chokechain

You don't have to have read all these stories to have an opinion on this and take part in the poll, you just have to have a favorite AJW short story, aka have read more than one and like one more than the other or even just have read a single story and really, really liked it. This is all just for fun.

I'll put info on which short story is which, where you can find them, and their CWs under the poll. If they're in an anthology, I'll provide the goodreads page for it so you have the info you need to find an acquire the anthology. This poll will run for a full week, so if you want to check a few (more) of these stories out before voting, you most likely have time for that.

Chokechain (2018):

This is the story about the trans guy coming home from university to find that his parents have commissioned a pre-transition android of him.

CWs for Chokechain are: Transphobia, including misgendering and deadnaming (kinda), self-harm as a motif, family conflict involving trans identity, metaphorical mild animal harm, murder fantasies, references to stalking and SA.

It is available for free on Medium here:

Chokechain was also published in the anthology Transcendent 4: The Year's Best Transgender Speculative Fiction.

Dead Air (2019):

This is an autobiographical piece about AJW's journey to realizing and coming to terms with being trans, how being trans feels to him, and what his relationship with his wife Alice Scott feels like.

CWs: Transphobia, including internalized, gender/body dysphoria, depression (I think), vomiting/emetophobia.

It is available for free on Medium here:

The Foal With Two Heads (2021):

This is the short story about the young trans guy living on a ranch in a quarantine zone where everything is born with mutations and monsters roam the night. He has to deal with an unaccepting family member and ex-girlfriend, as well as with a severly deformed newborn foal that forces him to confront inner conflicts.

CWs: Transphobia including misgendering and TERF-y rethoric, body horror, toxic relationships, government neglect, surgery/medical gore, self-harm as a motif, and graphic animal harm.

The Foal With Two Heads was pulished in the body horror anthology Twisted Anatomy.

I also posted the story here, for those who can't or don't want to buy the anthology:

The Follower, or: Psalm 127:3 (2021):

This short story is definitely to an adult audience, so if you haven't read it yet and want to check it out, keep that in mind. It's about a young trans man who has escaped his horrible, Christian fundamentalist parents and now travels with his partner, a Christian extremist serial killer who sees him as his connection to God, only for everything to get even worse when he becomes pregnant against his will.

CWs: toxic relationships, SA by an intimate partner and a family member, heavy transphobia including corrective SA and misgendering, graphic gore and murder including of children and infants, religiously motivated violence and religious extremism, forced pregnancy as violence and body horror, self-harm and suicidal ideation, actual acid, alcoholism, PTSD-flashbacks, incest, intimate partner violence, botched DIY-abortion, vomiting/emetophobia and ambiguous ending.

The Follower was published in the anthology Dark Hearts: Tales of Twisted Love, which is all about toxic and abusive relationships.

I also posted it here for everyone who can't or doesn't want to buy the anthology:

The Constellations Are Unrecognizable Here (2021):

This story is about two heavily traumatised trans boys on a medical ship trying to reclaim their bodily autonomy after surviving a horrific intergalactic war and navigating their relationship.

CWs: abuse, forced marriage and SA, disregard for bodily autonomy, medical gore/horror, medical neglect and malpractice, transphobia, including misgendering and gatekeeping of gender-affirming care, body transformation, gender dysphoria, violence and war, mental health issues, including trauma, suicidal ideation, suicide attempt and self-harm.

This story is available for free on Strange Horizons here:

Who Were You, What Are You (2023):

This story is about an autistic trans boy who was almost killed by his ex-boyfriend for cheating on him (and also being trans), and now spends a weekend dogsitting with the boy he cheated with. There, he meets a strange, seemingly cis male doppelganger of himself, who offers him a way to never be afraid again.

CWs: toxic relationships, cheating, graphic intimate partner violence and attempted murder, transphobia, including misgendering and deadnaming, tumors on a dog, spooky woods and isolation, anti-autistic ableism including by parents and intimate partners and slurs, references to hate crimes, dysphoria and general fear and unease.

Who Were You, What Are You was pulished in Changelings: An Autistic Trans Anthology.

I also posted this story here, for all who can't or don't want to buy the anthology:

Oathbreaker (2025):

This story is about an autistic trans boy who bonds with his very awkward dad through their ttrpg characters after his coming out went badly and his dad iced him out.

CWs: transphobia, including on a societal level as well as deadnaming and misgendering, very bad communication, unaccepting family (it ends well, don't worry), brief allusions to sexist tropes, murder, violence and gore, as well as depression and self-injurous ideation. (Most of the CWs only or mostly apply to the ttrpg world and characters.)

Oathbreaker was published in the This Is How We Roll anthology, which is all about queer kids' relationships to ttrpgs.

I also posted it here for anyone who can't or doesn't want to buy the anthology:

If you wanna talk more about why any given short story is or isn't your favorite or discuss the stories with fellow AJW fans, feel free to do so in the comments!

(My personal favorite switches between Oathbreaker and The Follower, right now it's the latter.)

As before, you don't have to have read all these stories you just have to have an opinion lol

A deuteragonist is basically the second most important character in a story besides the MC. They can be a love interest, a major supporting character, an antagonist or multiple of these at once. I tried to keep the crossover of the characters here & major villains as small as possible because I'll do a poll about villains next, but there's still a bit of overlap, especially with the short stories.

So:

I chose to ask about which SC you think is most interesting as a character as opposed to which you like most, because I am fully convinced that Daphne would win in a landslide in that case, and I wanted it to be a bit more interesting. This way, I'm genuinely not sure who would win, which I think is good.

I personally will most likely have a bit of an unpopular opinion here: Jenea from The Constellations Are Unrecognizable Here is the most interesting deuteragonist to me. I LOVE how he's kinda a blacl box and we only have the MC's assumptions of him, which are implied to to be very unreliable. The way the MC Amavon idolises him, turns him into a perfect, unfailingly brave human without regrets in his mind and tries to emulate him, only to run headfirst into the reality that Jenea is also a scared kid suffering under his own trauma and wants to be seen as a person and not an idol, it's so good. I love that even at the end, Amavon and the readers don't really understand Jenea, we know more what he isn't than who he is. I'm genuinely not sure if he will forgive Amavon or how he feels about him, and I like that a lot. He feels so very real in his ambiguity, and the person behind the expectations constantly shining through but never being quite visible. Ughhhhh he means so much to me

Which major SC character do you think is most interesting? And why? Please tell me!

You obviously don't have to have read all these works to vote, you just have to have an opinion, so don't stress about that

For me it's probably Silas, which I know will probably be a pretty common answer. It's mostly because of his experience with anxiety and dysphoria, and also his general personality and love for Daphne.