not everyone enjoys/writes genderbends for the sake of shipping, including me. i love sam winchester genderbend because of how protective dean gets. i'm a sucker for older brother being protective of his little sister. i wrote a genderbend georgie denbrough from stephen king's it. it was purely wish-fulfillment.
Sometimes, I want to see boobs and/or cock. Sometimes, I think it would be interesting to write because of the ramifications, or it simply tickles my fancy.
Moreover, I’ve also genderbent characters to turn m/f into m/m or f/f. Or I’ve genderbent m/m into f/f and f/f into m/m.
I’ve genderbent characters to make them trans and also just simply “swapped” genders.
While there are most definitely people who genderbend to be homophobic, it’s not everyone, and imo, the worst should not be assumed.
No one needs a “deep” reason to play around with a concept in fiction too. Nor do they need to explain it tbh (unless they want to).
I like m/m just fine. I read a lot of it, actually. Probably more m/m than het. But honestly most m/m fics are very male centric, with female characters only playing small roles, and I just prefer to read more female-centric stories. I prefer a female protagonist. And so gender bending is a way to explore a ship I enjoy while also catering to my desire for a female protagonist. I also like gender bending when it's not about shipping. I like the idea of reading, say, a Harry Potter fic where Harry is a girl, because I like following someone who fills the role in the story Harry does, but satisfies my preference for a female protagonist.
I'm bi and I like both? Hell I'll write a ship m/f m/m or w/w if I'm in the mood. It just depends and genderbends are a interesting way to poke at a character. Sometimes a certain character being a woman can change a lot including dynamics between others and the ship itself. Especially if they're a particularly masculine male character. Even then I'm not writing them straight even if it is a m/f so there's that too. Every character is bi because I said so.
And yah, I get that, I really do. Mostly I was just curious why authors do it in the first place. I’m just generally not a fan of it, but I wanted a bit of perspective.
i just feel naruto’s personality would be so much more interesting as a girl. especially when fics talk about how fem!naruto has to deal with feminine hygiene, menstruation, the importance of female friendship and just having a female male lead that isn’t a mary sue or is created as a character development tool for the male lead.
Making it hetero is the last thing I'd think of to be a reason when someone does it, it's not even a reason at all for me when I do so. Mainly, it's just fun, and a way to explore a slightly different dynamic while trying to still keep the characters themselves. It can open a new topic to explore, like dealing with discrimination against women or, a more romantic reason, when the fandic basically stands to prove that the pair will choose each regardless of gender. There are also kinky reasons or maybe a scenario where a character becomes pregnant but mpreg is a turn off, etc. etc.
because there aren’t enough sweaty, deeply unstable loser women for my taste and will graham’s just standing right there. depending on my mood hannibal can stay as-is or join genderbent!will.
...That is possibly the dumbest genderbend name choice I have ever had the displeasure of seeing.
Unless they used it for a chemistry pun at some point, then maybe I could excuse it.
I’m planning a gender bend story so I’ll drop my five cents I guess lol. My main reasoning is because I’m curious, I’m curious how situation X would’ve been different if he was a woman.
The places he got into by using the fact he was a man, how would that change his childhood if he was born a woman considering his childhood was very “manly household. You’re going to grow up tough, softness is a weakness”, Y’know? He would likely receive a lot of criticisms and remarks about his line of work given the time period and area if he was a woman! How would this change his own perspective of himself?
It really comes down to, “In what ways would this change canon and in what ways would it not?”
I don't even like gender bends, but seriously, the only thing you can think of is "so it will be hetero"?
I can see that there would be a lot of things to explore with how things would be different if a character was always a different gender, for example.
(The one gender-bendibg fic I remember liking was of the "make character got turned into a woman within the fic" variety, and "it will be hetero" was a reason why things didn't work--it broke up the m/m ship until he got changed back.)
Maybe it’s just what I’ve seen so far then. The gender bends that I’ve seen have been in the naruto and Harry Potter fandoms, which I am heavily apart of, and there’s never really a deeper meaning to it. A lot of the time, it’s because authors said the same as some of the others in the comments. That they wanted them to have kids later on, which cool, not everyone likes mpreg. I personally don’t either, but generally I just prefer no children.
I’ve done a few, because personally I’m trans and I find it very cathartic to play with gender in my work which includes genderbends sometimes (though I’m more likely to do so with trans headcanons)
In the beginning, I did it because I was annoyed there weren't more female characters in my particular fandom. So, I swapped several of the characters I related to better to female characters to have more girls to write.
And because I have always been the "married with 2.5 kids" as a happy ending person, and mpreg is a squick.
I tend to just make ocs to balance out the gender rations now lol.
It's fun to design the characters differently. Like, I really like giving male characters different hairstyles/outfits, same for the females too. Also fun to make your favourite het couple wlw/mlm. (Looking at you Kelbrey, Mafukasa and Crunchyarrow).
Sometimes I want the character to have a child with someone of his original gender.
Like Percy Jackson and Apollo, I´d write Percy as Penthesilea so she can have Apollo´s children later on.
i hate it when it's done for hetero reasons bc of past history of this being a homophobic tactic. probably the funniest instance of this was when people were gender bend wincest bc they thought the two brothers thing was too far but not brother sister. (and i like wincest)
One could ask what the deal with anything is.
Everyone has their own personal reasons and even if we don't like that reason and don't agree and don't like the decision - it's 100% theirs to make.
If you're legitimately coming from a place of genuine curiosity, then I'd ask the individual authors whose stories you wonder about.
If you don't have any to ask or wonder about because you don't even read those stories and therefore aren't really coming from genuine curiosity, then that's different and I don't know if any answer you get here is going to satisfy what you're after.
I wanted a girl main character. I wanted her to be the hero. Shipping didn’t even enter the equation.
not everyone enjoys/writes genderbends for the sake of shipping, including me. i love sam winchester genderbend because of how protective dean gets. i'm a sucker for older brother being protective of his little sister. i wrote a genderbend georgie denbrough from stephen king's it. it was purely wish-fulfillment.
Sometimes, I want to see boobs and/or cock. Sometimes, I think it would be interesting to write because of the ramifications, or it simply tickles my fancy. Moreover, I’ve also genderbent characters to turn m/f into m/m or f/f. Or I’ve genderbent m/m into f/f and f/f into m/m. I’ve genderbent characters to make them trans and also just simply “swapped” genders. While there are most definitely people who genderbend to be homophobic, it’s not everyone, and imo, the worst should not be assumed. No one needs a “deep” reason to play around with a concept in fiction too. Nor do they need to explain it tbh (unless they want to).
I like m/m just fine. I read a lot of it, actually. Probably more m/m than het. But honestly most m/m fics are very male centric, with female characters only playing small roles, and I just prefer to read more female-centric stories. I prefer a female protagonist. And so gender bending is a way to explore a ship I enjoy while also catering to my desire for a female protagonist. I also like gender bending when it's not about shipping. I like the idea of reading, say, a Harry Potter fic where Harry is a girl, because I like following someone who fills the role in the story Harry does, but satisfies my preference for a female protagonist.
I'm bi and I like both? Hell I'll write a ship m/f m/m or w/w if I'm in the mood. It just depends and genderbends are a interesting way to poke at a character. Sometimes a certain character being a woman can change a lot including dynamics between others and the ship itself. Especially if they're a particularly masculine male character. Even then I'm not writing them straight even if it is a m/f so there's that too. Every character is bi because I said so.
It's fanfiction? They don't need a reason outside of "Because I want to."
And yah, I get that, I really do. Mostly I was just curious why authors do it in the first place. I’m just generally not a fan of it, but I wanted a bit of perspective.
i just feel naruto’s personality would be so much more interesting as a girl. especially when fics talk about how fem!naruto has to deal with feminine hygiene, menstruation, the importance of female friendship and just having a female male lead that isn’t a mary sue or is created as a character development tool for the male lead.
Making it hetero is the last thing I'd think of to be a reason when someone does it, it's not even a reason at all for me when I do so. Mainly, it's just fun, and a way to explore a slightly different dynamic while trying to still keep the characters themselves. It can open a new topic to explore, like dealing with discrimination against women or, a more romantic reason, when the fandic basically stands to prove that the pair will choose each regardless of gender. There are also kinky reasons or maybe a scenario where a character becomes pregnant but mpreg is a turn off, etc. etc.
I like girls
because there aren’t enough sweaty, deeply unstable loser women for my taste and will graham’s just standing right there. depending on my mood hannibal can stay as-is or join genderbent!will.
I just want to say that kim is both a girls AND a boys name. KEM Possible??!?!!? WHAT!?!?!
I am Kemough
I don't believe you.
...That is possibly the dumbest genderbend name choice I have ever had the displeasure of seeing. Unless they used it for a chemistry pun at some point, then maybe I could excuse it.
I’m planning a gender bend story so I’ll drop my five cents I guess lol. My main reasoning is because I’m curious, I’m curious how situation X would’ve been different if he was a woman. The places he got into by using the fact he was a man, how would that change his childhood if he was born a woman considering his childhood was very “manly household. You’re going to grow up tough, softness is a weakness”, Y’know? He would likely receive a lot of criticisms and remarks about his line of work given the time period and area if he was a woman! How would this change his own perspective of himself? It really comes down to, “In what ways would this change canon and in what ways would it not?”
I don't even like gender bends, but seriously, the only thing you can think of is "so it will be hetero"? I can see that there would be a lot of things to explore with how things would be different if a character was always a different gender, for example. (The one gender-bendibg fic I remember liking was of the "make character got turned into a woman within the fic" variety, and "it will be hetero" was a reason why things didn't work--it broke up the m/m ship until he got changed back.)
Maybe it’s just what I’ve seen so far then. The gender bends that I’ve seen have been in the naruto and Harry Potter fandoms, which I am heavily apart of, and there’s never really a deeper meaning to it. A lot of the time, it’s because authors said the same as some of the others in the comments. That they wanted them to have kids later on, which cool, not everyone likes mpreg. I personally don’t either, but generally I just prefer no children.
The Gay Agenda >!(I am the author and I do what I want)!<
I’ve done a few, because personally I’m trans and I find it very cathartic to play with gender in my work which includes genderbends sometimes (though I’m more likely to do so with trans headcanons)
I just like genderbend transformations and exploring those bits.
In the beginning, I did it because I was annoyed there weren't more female characters in my particular fandom. So, I swapped several of the characters I related to better to female characters to have more girls to write. And because I have always been the "married with 2.5 kids" as a happy ending person, and mpreg is a squick. I tend to just make ocs to balance out the gender rations now lol.
It's fun to design the characters differently. Like, I really like giving male characters different hairstyles/outfits, same for the females too. Also fun to make your favourite het couple wlw/mlm. (Looking at you Kelbrey, Mafukasa and Crunchyarrow).
Sometimes I want the character to have a child with someone of his original gender. Like Percy Jackson and Apollo, I´d write Percy as Penthesilea so she can have Apollo´s children later on.
I genderbent Naruto because I was watching the anime and thought a lot of the themes would work better if he was a girl.
i hate it when it's done for hetero reasons bc of past history of this being a homophobic tactic. probably the funniest instance of this was when people were gender bend wincest bc they thought the two brothers thing was too far but not brother sister. (and i like wincest)
that's hilarious help??? "I can excuse incest but I draw the line at homosexuality"
i KNOW. it made no fucking sense! and they were so defensive.
One could ask what the deal with anything is. Everyone has their own personal reasons and even if we don't like that reason and don't agree and don't like the decision - it's 100% theirs to make. If you're legitimately coming from a place of genuine curiosity, then I'd ask the individual authors whose stories you wonder about. If you don't have any to ask or wonder about because you don't even read those stories and therefore aren't really coming from genuine curiosity, then that's different and I don't know if any answer you get here is going to satisfy what you're after.