I Heart Characters! is a weekly meme hosted by Dani @ Perspective of a Writer to showcase our book blogger lover for characters! Each week she’ll supply a topic and you’ll supply the character. Post on whatever day suits you, about characters from whatever media you love (books, movies, K-dramas, television, manga, anime, webtoons, whatever!) and link up on Thursday so YOU and others can blog hop and share the character love.

Dani made me sweat this week. I raked my brain so much I had no need to heat my house anymore.

Today’s topic is a totally crazy one *I think Dani must have smoked too much weed while writing this one but shhhhh*

You have to imagine reading a story or watching a movie or …and Bam! The main character changes gender.!!! What would happen to and in your story?

When you come up empty with no idea except obvious choices that would be too easy what do you do?

Well I let fate decide and went with it!

I could have taken the easy road…

My obvious choice was Lada and Radu.

What would have happened if Lada had been born male and Radu female?

Well we wouldn’t have much of a story really as the whole plot is based on Lada being of female gender and unable to inherit her father’s legacy and rule easily.
It is because she had to make herself, prove that she was worthy of any man that she was so thirsty and fierce.
And it’s because Radu was born male but abhorred violence and fight that he felt so out of place and had to grow.

That’s it easy way.
BUT
I love challenges

So I decided to go to my read shelf in GR sort from highest ratings to lowest, put my hand on the mouse, close my eyes, hold my breath, cross my fingers, burn a candle and pick the book my mouse ended pointing at.

Fate chose Vampire Academy and Rose Hathaway.

What would have happened if Rose was a man?

First of all her badassness wouldn’t have been different.

You have male and female badasses so that’s not a problem.
But she certainly would not have been assigned to Lissa’s private security.
Meaning that we wouldn’t have had a great friendship.

Countless times Roses relied on her intuition to avoid disaster. Would a male rose have been able to do the same or is intuition a typical feminine attribute? I think guys can be intuitive too if they learn to listen to their inner voice. So maybe it wouldn’t have made a big difference.

We also would have had very steamy MM sex scenes with Dimitri Belikov!
Imagine two badass male warriors fighting, paring and ending groping each other in a flurry of entangled limbs and scorching hot rugged kisses!
I bet you feel all hot and bothered now! 😀

So is the gender essential in this story? Not really.
The romance could have happened between same sex Rose and Dimitri if Dimitri was open minded.

Comparing these two stories shows that gender does not play a crucial role in every book.

It can be the heart of a story if it revolves about women’s (absence of) rights. Otherwise you could change the hero’s gender without affecting much of the story. It would probably have been a whole other problem some decades ago when same sex romance stories were unconceivable.
Morale of the story: we live in a very auspicious era as far as gender is concerned at least in most western lands.

Now do tell me your “opposite sex” theory please.

Sophie