Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-26516813-20190711012913/@comment-995426-20190714010538

First of all, it's not "gender bending." It's designing a character as a different gender from the design stage. At most, it's gender flipping. Not hugely different in concept from the 2016 Ghostbusters movie, and I actually like that movie more than the 1980s movies.

And why no gender flipping? It's not like turtles in general really even have visible sexual characteristics, and the rest is sex chromosomes, hidden internal biology and gender identity (whether cis or trans).

One thought experiment I made years ago was that 2K12 season 1 Raphael could have been born female all along and no one knew. The theory being, if a male turtle and female turtle can't casually be told apart in real life, then maybe a male mutant turtle and female mutant turtle might not be told apart either. Splinter raised four completely unknown mutant children, and he either guessed their gender or relied on them to gender identify themselves to him (the latter probably being more likely), and by the time it was in any way clear whether any of them were cisgender or transgender, their identities were set. (Personally, I think the four 2K12 turtles were cis men, but the thought experiment is still a worthy one.)

Right now even Jennika in her mutant form appears to have lost all her visible sexual characteristics, and only identity and clothing are setting her apart as female.

A rebooted character for a redesigned continuity wouldn't necessarily be completely the same as their equivalents from previous continuities. In that respect, no gender flipped character is gender flipped in-universe anyway, let alone "gender bent."

And I don't think gender flipping necessarily changes everything as much as you might be afraid it does.

Take 2K12 Raph and 2K12 Karai, who had such extremely similar personalities: If Karai had been raised by Splinter, she'd be a sister Raph, and if Raph had been raised by the Shredder, he'd be basically another Karai.

(Sorry, I have to end my message prematurely because I just had an unrelated painful injury.)