Daybreak<\/em> was a “slave fantasy” and a “bad BDSM story”.<\/p>\nSo since June 1st, I’ve gone back to the start of Daybreak<\/em> and started another major edit. The main goal was to make Kaede’s motivations more obvious, especially to these modern power-fantasy \/ wish-fulfillment isekai readers, that trying to land with two feet on another world isn’t mere cakewalk. This ‘rewrite’ has since been finished.<\/p>\nI think most of the older Daybreak<\/em> readers already understood most of this. I’ll explain my intentions with some of the more notable changes I added down before. But first of all…<\/p>\nNote on Kaede’s Character<\/strong><\/p>\nA hurdle I’ve always struggled with is readers’ expectations of Kaede. Simply put, the old “genderbender” headache is striking me yet again. Daybreak<\/em> certainly isn’t written the way many genderbenders are. Nor is Kaede a typical boy, as even in flashbacks he complaints about the many unfair expectations leveled on him just because he was born male on Earth. However, to say that Kaede has gender dysphoria is also wrong. This leaves some readers who insist on putting Kaede into a trope, then complain when she doesn’t seem to fit in either.<\/p>\nTo pull a new excerpt from changes in v1ch2, when Kaede first discovers her new body:<\/p>\n
Is the universe playing a cruel joke on me or something? Kaede couldn’t help wonder. Is it because I complained too many times about all the unfair expectations placed on me just because I was born male?<\/em><\/p>\nSure, Kaede had always been called a ‘sensitive boy’. He never really fit in with what society saw as ‘masculine culture’. However this was definitely NOT what he had asked for!<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\nSome of the older readers here know how much I love to discuss psychology, or how much research I put into writing real-life psychological traits into the characters of Daybreak<\/em>. Kaede is no exception to this.<\/p>\nKaede is written as an individual with SPS (Sensory Processing Sensitivity)<\/a>, a term you’re unlikely to run across from just reading fiction as it’s a fairly new field of research. Coined by its pioneer, psychologist Elaine Aron, in the 1990s, SPS is a trait where someone have particularly strong sensory inputs compared to average people. Individuals with SPS (also known as HSP – Highly Sensitive Persons) typically exhibit high sensitivity, conscientiousness, and empathy, traits largely identified around the world as ‘feminine’. As a result, men with SPS often find themselves having difficulty matching society’s expectations towards them, as these traits are the polar opposite of stereotypical ‘male culture’. Kaede fits into neither gender neatly, and it’s the main topic of exploration for Daybreak’s genderbender tag.<\/p>\nInterestingly, the downsides of SPS also mark some of Kaede’s more notable character flaws, such as the fact she doesn’t deal well with surprises, how she’s prone to stressing out, or how she’s often indecisive and likes to push off hard decisions (i.e. procrastinate on them). It is easily the personality trait that most heavily influences Kaede’s personality, including her need to “emotionally self-regulate” and her dislike of crowded, noisy places.<\/p>\n