Make a Man Out of You
is a five-chapter fanfic by kkei2. It's a rewrite of Disney's Mulan with Mulan as a transgender man.
The story begins with Hua Mulan's ailing father being enlisted in the war. Unwilling to let him die in the war, Mulan decides to pass as a man and enlist as his eldest son. Drama occurs when Mulan feels mixed about living as a man.
Make a Man Out of You provides examples of:
- Adaptational Gender Identity: Mulan is reinterpreted as a transgender man, Ping, rather than just a cis woman crossdressing.
- Adaptational Sexuality:
- Shang is explicitly bisexual instead of Ambiguously Bi.
- Instead of being a straight woman, Ping is a queer man.
- Adaptation Name Change: Mulan's surname is written as its traditional "Hua", instead of the Cantonese "Fa" that Disney went with.
- Bittersweet Ending: Ping has a bad reunion with his mother, but decides to move on with his life, with Shang by his side.
- Canon Foreigner:
- Ping has an adult sister and an infant brother. This is taken from various versions of the story where Mulan has siblings.
- Zhang Wei takes the place of Mushu. Later subverted when Mushu does appear.
- Earn Your Happy Ending: Ping loses a lot of friends in the war along with his right eye and most of the use in his left arm and struggles with his gender identity. But, even though there are those like his mother who'll never accept him, he has a promising future with Shang and confidence in who he's become.
- I Have No Son!: Ping's mother, after losing her husband, refuses to consider Ping her son, remembering him only as Mulan and stating that Mulan died the day that Ping went off to war. As hurt as he is, Ping takes comfort in the fact that his little brother knows him only as a man.
- Patchwork Fic: Though primarily based off of Disney's interpretation of Mulan, the story takes elements from various incarnations of The Ballad of Mulan.
- Practically Different Generations: There's an over thirteen year age gap between Ping and Yao Er (and an even larger one between Yao Er and his older sister). This gap means that Yao Er doesn't remember Ping after Ping's been gone in the army for ten years. He doesn't remember that Ping was still living as "Mulan" before he left.
- Shoo Out the Clowns: Mushu is largely absent in the fic, with Zhang Wei largely taking his role as Ping's friend through their early years in the war. He only appears twice, once in the middle of the fic as confirmation to Ping that his ancestors aren't mad at him for being who he is, and the second time to lead Ping to his little brother (who was a baby when Ping left).
- Slash Fic: Ping being a trans man turns Shang's relationship with him into a Queer Romance.
- What If?: What if Mulan was a trans man instead of a Sweet Polly Oliver?
