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Aug. 22nd, 2014 04:28 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dolariOne of the things about being trans is the wierdness of the mind-body disconnect. I don't know how often Non-trans folk think about how the mind is not the body - about who you are, in your mind, and how you express that with your body. My male body fights the expression of my female mind.
Being a writer, it's a disconnect that I like to explore in my stories. It's like "body horror" without the horror. The first being a character who was put in a woman's body for survival, and how he actually hates it. His main complaint is the voice that he uses to communicates his thoughts to others isn't the voice he hears in his head. He tends to hold his hands out in front of him, and look at them, because they aren't the hands he remembers.
Another was a story where I had a character undergo a transformation from human to a feline alien creature as a way of helping his human friends get off a failed colony overrun by said alien creatures. He himself doesn't change, at least in his head. But the real story behind the more actiony plot is how his friends begin to change around him, as the physical changes begin to represent. At first they kind of sympathize with is new growing pains, then eventually treat him almost as a cuddly pet, and eventually shy away as he's become so "other," they can't feel they can relate to him anymore. The problem is, his mind is still human...and he misses the friends who are hiding away from him.
My own mind-body disconnect also has me think about how we use our bodies to project who we think we are, or how things that happen to our bodies reflect the mind in them.
One of the major examples of that was in the recent Military Story plot I've playing with for years now. The main character, Dana, comes from a very distinct culture where wearing your hair in hundreds of tiny braids is a fad. When she's forced to work for the enemy, despite not liking the style, and the time it takes to make it, she braids her hair in the fad style her friends had. Because it's a physical expression of what she wants to project. Especially after being tattooed with a mark specifically branding her as "trusted enemy."
I've had other ideas I want to explore, but no story that goes with it yet. Such as characters whose bodies are reprogrammed to have wierdly colored hair or skin against their wishes, and how they deal with what they want to project, versus what is perceived from it. One story plot I have involves a character winning her fondest wish to the fullest - but has to live and be percieved as a completely different person for the rest of her life to get it.
The disconnect between mind and body, and how that divide is crossed, managed, or worked around fascinates the hell out of me.
Being a writer, it's a disconnect that I like to explore in my stories. It's like "body horror" without the horror. The first being a character who was put in a woman's body for survival, and how he actually hates it. His main complaint is the voice that he uses to communicates his thoughts to others isn't the voice he hears in his head. He tends to hold his hands out in front of him, and look at them, because they aren't the hands he remembers.
Another was a story where I had a character undergo a transformation from human to a feline alien creature as a way of helping his human friends get off a failed colony overrun by said alien creatures. He himself doesn't change, at least in his head. But the real story behind the more actiony plot is how his friends begin to change around him, as the physical changes begin to represent. At first they kind of sympathize with is new growing pains, then eventually treat him almost as a cuddly pet, and eventually shy away as he's become so "other," they can't feel they can relate to him anymore. The problem is, his mind is still human...and he misses the friends who are hiding away from him.
My own mind-body disconnect also has me think about how we use our bodies to project who we think we are, or how things that happen to our bodies reflect the mind in them.
One of the major examples of that was in the recent Military Story plot I've playing with for years now. The main character, Dana, comes from a very distinct culture where wearing your hair in hundreds of tiny braids is a fad. When she's forced to work for the enemy, despite not liking the style, and the time it takes to make it, she braids her hair in the fad style her friends had. Because it's a physical expression of what she wants to project. Especially after being tattooed with a mark specifically branding her as "trusted enemy."
I've had other ideas I want to explore, but no story that goes with it yet. Such as characters whose bodies are reprogrammed to have wierdly colored hair or skin against their wishes, and how they deal with what they want to project, versus what is perceived from it. One story plot I have involves a character winning her fondest wish to the fullest - but has to live and be percieved as a completely different person for the rest of her life to get it.
The disconnect between mind and body, and how that divide is crossed, managed, or worked around fascinates the hell out of me.
