Why is every almost fantasy adventure story with a female MC gender bender?

[PieCoNsUmEr]

Something I’ve noticed is if a story is fantasy (though it happens most often in isekai,), with a female protagonist, and isn’t primarily romance, it’s gender bender. Why?

Is it because a lot of the authors are male? If so, then why not have a shut, non-feminine female who was reincarnated?

Is it because you want the character to feel alienated? That’s a more valid excuse, but couldn’t you just use their situation to alienate them, or have them reincarnated into something gender less? (Futa’s don’t count.)

Is it because you want your character to be gay, but don’t know how lesbians think, so you just turn a strait guy into a girl? Your making the character, just give them a kinda manly personality, make them like girls, and then boom, a kinda manly lesbian.

Is it because your character has gender dysphoria, and the fact they turned female hasn’t helped things much? If so, good on you.

You want sex with the MC not totally comfortable with their body? Then you can just have the MC uncomfortable in the first place.

Keep in mind this is just a discussion starter.

 

[JayDirex]

flee before you get the, "you can filter out those stories if you want using the filter tool." or some such dribble.

But to answer your question, it's the nature of where a crowd will follow. If an author writes genderbender stuff and lots of readers keep flocking to this site and reading it, then more authors are going to keep on writing it since it attracts readers.

do you see where we lose the chicken and the egg?



After a while the site will be known as nothing but smut, gender bender, etc. and much tougher for a regular straight-up fantasy novel to get seen since all the gender bender readers are here outnumbering the regular fantasy readers. So that's how that works.

 

[Sahara]

I highly doubt it's a sexist thing (as it seems that you're implying). I hate gender-benders in general, and I despise the "male forced to be hot, gorgeous female" trope as much as you do (if not more). However, that's just where people follow. We can't do much about it. If I write something about a zombie apocalypse, but what's considered trending is fantasy, it's probably going to be less popular than fantasy. Yeah, sure, I might hate fantasy, and I prefer reading and writing sci-fi, but I can't change the fact that the majority don't think like me.

So, I get you. I do. But we can't control a majority's trends unless we have a large platform, and even that can be difficult to do.

 

[PieCoNsUmEr]

flee before you get the, "you can filter out those stories if you want using the filter tool." or some such dribble.

But to answer your question, it's the nature of where a crowd will follow. If an author writes genderbender stuff and lots of readers keep flocking to this site and reading it, then more authors are going to keep on writing it since it attracts readers.

do you see where we lose the chicken and the egg?



After a while the site will be known as nothing but smut, gender bender, etc. and much tougher for a regular straight-up fantasy novel to get seen since all the gender bender readers are here outnumbering the regular fantasy readers. So that's how that works.

I agree and disagree, some who write for views and maybe money do that. I think others just write gender bender because they don’t know how to write women super well, and saying they weren’t always women helps that.

 

[PieCoNsUmEr]

I highly doubt it's a sexist thing (as it seems that you're implying). I hate gender-benders in general, and I despise the "male forced to be hot, gorgeous female" trope as much as you do (if not more). However, that's just where people follow. We can't do much about it. If I write something about a zombie apocalypse, but what's considered trending is fantasy, it's probably going to be less popular than fantasy. Yeah, sure, I might hate fantasy, and I prefer reading and writing sci-fi, but I can't change the fact that the majority don't think like me.

So, I get you. I do. But we can't control a majority's trends unless we have a large platform, and even that can be difficult to do.

I’m not implying it’s sexist, I just think many male writers don’t know how to (or don’t feel confident in) write female characters.

 

[ZesshiLavi]

I don't know, maybe some people have the kink for it?
Sometime it's really interesting tho, I wont really call it a BL at that point tbh, I guess you can call it a romance with a different vibe.
Sometime about a male that transformed into a female falling in love with a male do somehow intrigue me, it's not much but it does keep me interested.

 

[ZesshiLavi]

I don't know, maybe some people have the kink for it?
Sometime it's really interesting tho, I wont really call it a BL at that point tbh, I guess you can call it a romance with a different vibe.
Sometime about a male that transformed into a female falling in love with a male do somehow intrigue me, it's not much but it does keep me interested.

Oh and also I think it's because some male do have the fantasy of transforming into a female I guess, heard my friend once said that.
I asked if he were gay but his answer was :" No I don't think so? I just think that I prefer being a woman than a man."
It's peculiar but not uncommon I would say so.

I still like that guy, he would often recommend me some gender bender content and some of them are rather interesting.

 

[PieCoNsUmEr]

I don't know, maybe some people have the kink for it?
Sometime it's really interesting tho, I wont really call it a BL at that point tbh, I guess you can call it a romance with a different vibe.
Sometime about a male that transformed into a female falling in love with a male do somehow intrigue me, it's not much but it does keep me interested.

It’s nice when they mix it up like that, most romance ones are girls love.

 

[ZesshiLavi]

It’s nice when they mix it up like that, most romance ones are girls love.

True that, but honestly I would prefer having none of the romance in a fantasy adventure.
When I search for adventure I sorely want adventure, some author always forgot their original plot for the fantasy and include way too much romance which kind of ruined the story.

 

[SailusGebel]

There is also a more common reason. They like the genre, but they haven't seen enough stories in that genre with a trope 'x'. So they decide to take a pen(keyboard) in their own hands and write their own ideal novel with the said trope.

 

[DreamOfRen]

As one such author I don't even think my story applies to "gender bender", however -- readers do.
Being reborn as a woman means you're now a woman .

For me my reasoning was simple. I want to explore sexuality from a different perspective. In the fiction I use this technique in, the MC has a complex that results in making her early life difficult.

She's reincarnated into the body of a woman and a succubus.

As far as there being "too much smut", I don't really believe that's a thing.

 

[Jamminrabbit]

It's a fetish thing. A lot of guys, authors and readers, take boner-inducing joy in the idea of becoming an attractive woman fucking other women. If the MC is female to begin with, the MC will naturally have a female-born perspective which most men are unable to associate with. If the MC is male-born genderbent to a woman, they have the easy segue of adopting their perspective.

They also want the heteronormative psychological love of being a man, while taking the physical homoeroticism of girl's love/shoujo ai/yuri to take pleasure in. If you ever wondered why most readers of genderbender cheer for the gxg pairing than the gxb, well there you go.

 

[PieCoNsUmEr]

True that, but honestly I would prefer having none of the romance in a fantasy adventure.
When I search for adventure I sorely want adventure, some author always forgot their original plot for the fantasy and include way too much romance which kind of ruined the story.

Agree x 3

 

[DreamOfRen]

do you see where we lose the chicken and the egg?



After a while the site will be known as nothing but smut, gender bender, etc. and much tougher for a regular straight-up fantasy novel to get seen since all the gender bender readers are here outnumbering the regular fantasy readers. So that's how that works.

I'll just say that you probably aren't taking advantage of the system. I noticed how to get to trending quite a while ago, I just never said anything. In general though, it has more to do with the tags you use (and # of them) and consistent posting. The authors who realize this and do weird mash ups of tons of things to make their stories fit tons of categories will of course reap the benefits.

Of course, your story also has to be interesting to people. Just being a good fic isn't good enough, or rather an idea that you think is good. The readers need to feel the same as well. For example, once My Succubus System started trending, I noticed way more people using the Succubus tag. I happen to think Lust Witch Chronicles is a good story and a great idea, but it's nowhere near as popular as M.S.S. It also features smut. Is that the fault of wholesome fics?

Blaming "smut" is kind of a cop out. It's actually harder to promote or gain prestige from a fic that's not clean. In fact, most of the fics in the top trending generally are smut free from what I see. Quite a few wholesome stories make it there as well. I know because quite a few of the stories dominating the trending charts are also present on smut free communities.

Also if you want a more popular smut free forum, just post on Royal Road. I have a fiction there under a different pen name that is currently in the top 600 (pretty hard due to all the competition) with just 30 chapters in under 3 months.

In short, it really doesn't matter if a fiction has smut in, people aren't necessarily flocking to it just because of that.

 

[Cossimeri]

Something I’ve noticed is if a story is fantasy (though it happens most often in isekai,), with a female protagonist, and isn’t primarily romance, it’s gender bender. Why?

Is it because a lot of the authors are male? If so, then why not have a shut, non-feminine female who was reincarnated?

Is it because you want the character to feel alienated? That’s a more valid excuse, but couldn’t you just use their situation to alienate them, or have them reincarnated into something gender less? (Futa’s don’t count.)

Is it because you want your character to be gay, but don’t know how lesbians think, so you just turn a strait guy into a girl? Your making the character, just give them a kinda manly personality, make them like girls, and then boom, a kinda manly lesbian.

Is it because your character has gender dysphoria, and the fact they turned female hasn’t helped things much? If so, good on you.

You want sex with the MC not totally comfortable with their body? Then you can just have the MC uncomfortable in the first place.

Keep in mind this is just a discussion starter.

As a female author of GB content... I just read a lot of it, and so that situation seemed to be what was in my head when I started writing my own work. I do try to write characters who fit comfortably into their new genders, I would hate to write a character who honestly hated their body. That feels like a dark novel and I like fluffy cute things.

I never set out to write a character who was alienated, one of my characters is gay (because I am XD ), and... I can't write sex scenes cuz they embarrass me.

Not trying to take anything away from your argument... I've read enough GB content to know you have valid points, I just wanted to throw my own little weird version of it in there.

 

[JayDirex]

True that, but honestly I would prefer having none of the romance in a fantasy adventure.
When I search for adventure I sorely want adventure, some author always forgot their original plot for the fantasy and include way too much romance which kind of ruined the story.

plot vs romance... I guess could be a thing but in my view you have to have the human condition in the story. there has to be character development/interaction, it can't just be plot. plot means the character is constantly moving from place to place and doing things. But for a story to resonate, the character has to stop and be human at some point. If not, it will just be a story about a person going from point A to B.

 

[PieCoNsUmEr]

It's a fetish thing. A lot of guys, authors and readers, take boner-inducing joy in the idea of becoming an attractive woman fucking other women. If the MC is female to begin with, the MC will naturally have a female-born perspective which most men are unable to associate with. If the MC is male-born genderbent to a woman, they have the easy segue of adopting their perspective.

They also want the heteronormative psychological love of being a man, while taking the physical homoeroticism of girl's love/shoujo ai/yuri to take pleasure in. If you ever wondered why most readers of genderbender cheer for the gxg pairing than the gxb, well there you go.

I know that, the main reason I brought up this subject is to maybe make somebody realize they can just have their protagonist born female and that works just fine.

 

[Mihou]

I am exempted from this!

 

[ZesshiLavi]

plot vs romance... I guess could be a thing but in my view you have to have the human condition in the story. there has to be character development/interaction, it can't just be plot. plot means the character is constantly moving from place to place and doing things. But for a story to resonate, the character has to stop and be human at some point. If not, it will just be a story about a person going from point A to B.

Hmm yea I can understand that but sometimes it's just that sometimes 2 character has received a lots of so called "Ship" and the author goes like: "Alright since there's people that like them to have a relationship, why not?"
But here's the thing, I have always realize that when an author do this, they go extreamly overboard.
Not all of them, but most.

 

[Jamminrabbit]

I know that, the main reason I brought up this subject is to maybe make somebody realize they can just have their protagonist born female and that works just fine.

This is the same argument of the isekai genre where, "Why not just have the protagonist originally be a native of that world?" Then it wouldn't be isekai.

Gender bender is a fetishization of transgenderism. It exists to fill the sexual and psychological niche of people who can never be the opposite gender, jump into the high heels of it and jerk off to it.

Yes they can just make their character originally born female. But the whole point of originally being male is to play with the tropes of "Oh, no! I have tiddy and vajin." "I can be grill and kiss other grill cos its hot!"

Spoiler

It's also a lot more popular and sells more