broken-nosed gods

I love things like Detective Conan/Magic Kaito and DNAngel(god knows why) and Yu-Gi-Oh! and Katekyou Hitman Reborn, I really do. Because I love phantom thieves and detectives and weird magic-y shit and reincarnation and whacked-out fights and art and the mafia! They're super fun to write about, you can do all sorts of stuff with them.

But all the phantom thieves and detectives and mafia bosses are boys.

And that should be fine! It's bad that there aren't more women in those positions, of course, and that bothers me just as it should. But I love all those things listed above, and want to write them, and the fact that those characters are male stops me from writing about them.

I have very complicated feelings about this. Because of course that shouldn't stop me, and if it bothers me that much I should just genderswitch one or two and be on my merry way. But I don't do that, because . . . why don't I do that? I don't know why. It would help, even if it wouldn't fix the underlying problems in canon. But that feels like it would be too complex, too top-heavy (hah) for the little ridiculous crossovers and for-want-of-a-nail I want to write, and I know all too well how changing too many things right off the bat can unbalance a fic liek whoa.

I don't think my problem with the canons mentioned above (and others) is that the main characters are male. My problem is that the main characters, their best friends, their rivals, their colleagues, their villains (well, okay, their shounen villains; I'm not sure about Vermouth, as I haven't gotten to her yet) are all male. DCMK almost makes up for this with Ran and Ai and Sato-keiji, but it's not enough: if Heiji or Hakuba or -- ooh, yes -- Kid were female, I would be writing so much fic right now and re-reading bits of canon every week. If Satoshi and Krad and/or Dark were female, I would still be in love with DNAngel no matter how stupid it was. If Kaiba Seto were a girl, I would write thousands and thousands of words just about her being awesome in a trenchcoat. KHR . . . well, my feelings are complicated about KHR.


Well, off to read some josei, and maybe see if Kamikaze Kaitou Jeanne gets any better.