I was just a regular guy in my senior year of high school. I had dark hair, collected anime figurines, and spent most of my time alone reading gender bender manga online. Normal guy stuff. So what if I wanted to be a girl, had liberal and accepting parents, and was aware that trans people existed and were valid? I couldn’t be a girl, obviously, because then I’d have to deal with real world issues that trans women have to deal with rather than waiting for some kind of magic to show up and turn me into a Real Girl ™.

On one bright and sunny day, right before I was about to graduate from my senior year of high school, I was walking to school when I saw a kitten in the middle of the road. I ran out to save the kitten, which was very cute and don’t worry I somehow saved it despite myself being hit. Anyway, don’t worry too much about the details because none of this will ever come up again.

I never saw Truck-kun coming, or heard it, despite the fact that it was huge and had a shiny metal front and, in addition to being quite loud with its engine running and its hydraulic brakes squealing, and the driver noticing me and honking several times because what kind of terrible truck driver just wouldn’t see someone run out in front of them. Also, why is there a big truck on this residential street? Or does my route to school cross a highway for some reason? That’s right, I’m giving the truck that literally killed me--Truck-kun--a fun and cutesy nickname. I was also pleased as a bonus because the truck was made by Isuzu, a Japanese company, and I was blindly obsessed with what I perceived as Japanese culture, not understanding that anime and manga are only a small countercultural subset of Japan that’s often looked down on, and that many tendencies in those media are essentially a direct opposite reaction to issues in real-world Japan, such as being sexually repressed and lonely versus being surrounded by girls with big boobs. Also, death is fine and cool, and in fact you’ll be rewarded for it! But only if you do it in a way that frames your death as a result of your own heroic actions. That way, the reader--who I’m basically just a blank self-insert for--can feel like good deeds will be rewarded, and that it was a noble sacrifice rather than a senseless waste of life. Framing your death as inevitable and heroic and something you’ll be rewarded for definitely isn’t weird and not at all reminiscent of religious extremism or fascism.

Everything went black.

I woke up in an unfamiliar place. I was lying down, swathed in soft blankets. They were silk, maybe? I had thoroughly researched the fabrics used in women’s clothes because I liked women’s clothes. Again, even though I absolutely could have transitioned in the real world and that kind of realistic ideal of self-actualization is probably a much better message, rather than helping people do nothing but fantasize and try their best to avoid and not think about the real world, to the extent that they do nothing but hang out online and read isekai and become more and more detached from reality, maybe even believing things like that there’s a spirit co-living in their head or that they can teleport to Hogwards by meditating. Groggily sitting up and turning to look around, I saw I was in a lavish canopy bed, surrounded by a group of excited girls. Except… all of them had cat ears?! Although I’ve already been established as a huge weeb who reads lots of gender bender stuff online, I’m not going to make any connections between my genre savviness about those stories and what’s happening to me at the moment in this story. That would get weird and meta, although it could be good if I could then also frame my psychological escape into and preoccupation with fictional universes as a good thing that would also be rewarded. Anyway, I could’ve just said catgirls instead of girls with cat ears, but then it doesn’t sound like I woke up in a new and weird world with things that don’t exist in the real world, if I just casually throw around an existing term for the type of being they are. Also, wait, do they have two ears or four? And did they evolve naturally, or were they magically created? And if they did evolve, was it from cats, humans, or neither? The more I think about this the less sense it makes. Weird that this world seems to have really elaborate worldbuilding for chuuni things like the magic system and the demon kingdom’s military hierarchy but the catgirls seem like they were just thrown in as if obligatory for the genre. Also, people will definitely care as I tell them about the systems of this world in exhaustive detail, right? I won’t give them a reason to care such as the systems directly impacting a character we’ve spent time on establishing as sympathetic, but I’m sure they’ll care anyway because the system I came up with is just so cool! I like and care about the thing I made up, so surely everyone else in the world will also like and care about it! I--I mean, the world that the author came up with. The author is definitely not writing this imagining herself as the main character. That would be weird.

Anyway, so: this world has 26 different magical elements, each one represented by a unique letter of the alphabet. Also, the main character is going to have a special 27th element, represented by &, because the main character has to be special and unique and important. That’s definitely a very healthy mindset that I, as a smart kid, definitely can’t relate to as being an ongoing source of stress and self-esteem issues for me in real life. You can’t ever settle for average or normal or just okay, because if you’re not the best and most important and the main character, what’s even the point? Here’s an extremely long list of all of these elements, being dumped at you right at the start as exposition instead of being organically introduced over the course of the story.:

• Fire
• Water
• Earth
• Air
• Wind (which is separate from Air for some reason)
• Plant
• Metal
• Life
• Death
• Lightning
• Ice
• Flesh
• Blood (that’s the cool edgy element)
• Bone
• Uh Phlegm or something idk, fill in later
• Curds
• Light
• Sanity
• Eagle
• Owl
• Ivory
• Ebony
• Raven
• Darkness
• Dementia
• Whey

“She’s finally awake!” one of the girls said. “Let’s take her to meet Mistress.” She had big boobies and long black hair.

‘She? How strange. I’m a guy, obviously. Although as mentioned earlier I have persistent cross-gender fantasies and frequently feel that I would be happier as a girl, but I haven’t connected that with my gender yet because I have an artificial blind spot around that subject so that later in the story we can act like me realizing I’m a girl feels like a triumphant climax, unlike in real life where realizing the possibility can take years and you’ll likely never be 100% sure about it and realizing is only the beginning of a long journey that’s absolutely worth it but you’ll likely have to face a lot of shitty stuff along the way.’

I was helped to my feet by a girl with ginger hair and calico ears. The group led me out of the bedchamber and into a massive great hall. I haven’t figured out exactly how many other girls there are because I want the main character to have lots of metamors but the more I have, the more actual character descriptions I’ll have to come up with. Also, yes, I’m throwing out words specific to a somewhat niche culture of polyamory mostly found in certain queer parts of the internet and in the San Francisco Bay Area of California, because I assume anyone reading is exactly like myself and there’s no need to make it comprehensible for the vast majority of people, because I’m basically just writing this for myself and a few friends who are very demographically similar to me, mostly likely white, lesbian or bi younger trans women who spend a lot of time on the internet and are probably furries or are into BDSM or are autistic or something. I can dismiss anyone in the outgroup as being cis normies who I categorically refuse to interact with because I assume without checking that cis people bad and that they’ll oppress me, even though I don’t seem to think about my own privilege as a younger, middle class white trans woman who speaks English and is a citizen of a developed country and maybe has a job in tech.

The hall was made of a smooth black stone and was decorated with rich tapestries and orbs of light that seemed to float in the air. I gazed around in awe before being pulled along by the ginger girl.

I was led into another, even larger chamber, this one with huge steps that led up to an imposing throne, which was black and spiky. A really big and strong and sexy lady lounged across it seductively. … and she had horns? And a pointed tail?! She had huge honkers and dark red skin, because she’s supposed to be a sexy demon and I didn’t think about the weird racial history of calling skin red. Also she wasn’t wearing very much clothes, despite being the authoritarian military leader of a kingdom. Also it’s fine that she’s an authoritarian ruler who enforces her authority through violence, because this is a fantasy setting, so you’re supposed to turn your brain off and not think about any parallels with real-world politics. Besides, she’s a nice dictator, so actually it’s good.

“Y--you can’t seduce me, demon,” I cried out. “I’m not into that kind of thing. I’m a good Christian boy!” I noticed my voice seemed higher than usual. Weird. In fact, it sounded like a girl’s voice. If I had to describe it specifically, I’d say it sounded like an American voice actress dubbing an anime character who was supposed to be a cutesy and sexy girl. 

“Sure you are,” the demoness purred. “I’ve seen your browser history. Besides, you don’t look like much of a boy.” She waved her hand and a floating mirror materialized in front of me.

I stood there in shock, gaping at my reflection. I was a girl?! A cute girl, with cat ears and stuff! And I had huge boobs and no dick, which I somehow didn’t notice at all until now. This was so great!

But I put on a strong face and turned to the demon queen. “Hey, what the fuck is even going on here anyway? This all seems really horny and wish-fulfillment-y and cliched.”

She silenced me by wrapping her lithe, powerful tail around my neck and squeezing. In real life that would be assault, but it’s fine because it’s a sexy lady in a fantasy setting and somehow she knew I was into it despite no relevant communication taking place beforehand. Also, surprise! This is going to have slowly more and more weird things that make you think the author has some specific, niche fetishes, that she keeps putting in and thinks she’s being subtle but she’s not and honestly it’s just kind of uncomfortable because some of them involve violence or non-consent (which is definitely different from rape, because I feel like I’m allowed to like it if I call it that) or humiliation. She reached out with her powerful, muscled arm and gave me headpats with her delicate yet strong fingers that were tipped with elegant, glossy black nails. I melted under her touch, but not literally. “Jrkdfld,” I babbled because I’m being portrayed as a stereotypical bottom who likes headpats and babbles incoherently at the sight of a cute girl, which would be weird if a dude did it in real life, but it’s cute because I’m an anime girl and it’s fine if they do things like being unable to function around certain people or hit people or messily eat huge amounts of food. That way, it’s cute! Also, I have no idea what’s considered normal or acceptable in real life anyway, because I never go outside and only read fiction written on the internet by other people who never go outside and therefore assume real culture and relationships are like anime tropes, which only further isolates me from the real world as all my attempts to make friends either drive them off with behavior that I don’t understand is weird like glomping or writing erotic RPF about them, or I meet on the internet and get into an unhealthy co-dependent relationship where we all exchange empty praise and validation and lack healthy boundaries.

“Never mind, everything is good and I’m happy!” I instantly changed my mind and was happy and everything was good now and also I realized I’m a girl all of a sudden, because sudden epiphanies are very cool and not at all overused in this kind of stories and definitely realistic.

Later a hero showed up and she easily defeated him and also turned him into a girl for some reason. I’ll spend a while describing that in another story that’s very specific about things like the manner the boobs expand, which definitely doesn’t feel like I’m fetishizing the process of transition. Anyway, everything is perfect and I have huge boobs and am very cute and get to snuggle with cute catgirls and this is definitely a reasonable and realistic story and not undisguised pure wishfulfillment for weird lesbian weeb trans girls.