Tbh I can get behind the gender bending to straight as long as it examines gender in an interesting way. ‘How would that character have been treated by others had the been a woman’ is cool and fun. ‘What if they’re trans’ is cool and fun. You can kinda tell when the author wants to make it straight vs. when they wanna write the character in a way that calls back to their life experiences

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How do you feel about bending one character in a straight ship so it’s gay

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only exception is when it explores misogyny or gender issues instead of changing it so that it perpetuates sexism. a lot of the f1 straight genderbend ships i’ve read are good and good at this because yeah a female f1 driver would experience a lot of struggles and weird flack for dating her male teammate or opponent

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I agree, one time I think it was done well was when every main character's gender was swapped to explore what that universe was like if the story was about women rather than men (making most of them gay now), which left one couple in a straight-passing relationship (even though that main character was still bi).

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My one exception to this is when it’s bent to a straight passing relationship, but they’re both veeerrrryyy queer. Only read one fic with that that I actually liked tho

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