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Aug. 5th, 2016 09:01 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dolariLissa's upstairs watching an episode of Charmed where the characters switch bodies around. Switching bodies is a trope among transgender folks, but I've often wondered how much people who think about body swaps consider the changes.
Sure, there's going to be the very obvious ones if you're swapping genders...but what about the non-obvious ones? What does the world look like when you're a foot shorter/taller? Seventy pounds lighter/heavier?
But let's get even more subtle than that. If anyone swaps places with me, they'll have t get used to my tinnitus. I've had from such a young age that I've long since tuned it out (along with a good portion of that whole "Frequency"). Would someone in my body be able to deal with the constant 24 hours a day high pitched whine?
What if the color I saw as orange, was actually yellow for you? Sure, you call it orange, but you perceive orange like I perceive yellow. Now what if that went to smells and tastes? Hearing?
Only one comic I ever read dealt with that (El Goonish Shive), and really only superficially. One where a male character had trouble walking due to the new female hips and breasts ( http://www.egscomics.com/index.php?id=695 & http://www.egscomics.com/index.php?id=696 ), while another female character is unsure about the her male body's strength ( http://www.egscomics.com/index.php?id=709 ).
One of my other stories deals with a man put into a woman's body (without him being conscious or able to know what was going on) as a way to survive while his original body heals. I actually spent time dealing with that - where he spends time literally having to rewire his thinking just to move a muscle to get off the hospital bed, and having to "think" about what he sees because the colors feel off.
I wrote that story about 1991 or so. And in one of that stories more comedic moments, he complains about how bouncy his breasts are. 16 years after starting hormones and a good number of years after they've fully developed on me, I'm still not used to that bounce. So I did manage to get that part of the story right.
Just something on my mind after seeing a bad episode of "Charmed."
Sure, there's going to be the very obvious ones if you're swapping genders...but what about the non-obvious ones? What does the world look like when you're a foot shorter/taller? Seventy pounds lighter/heavier?
But let's get even more subtle than that. If anyone swaps places with me, they'll have t get used to my tinnitus. I've had from such a young age that I've long since tuned it out (along with a good portion of that whole "Frequency"). Would someone in my body be able to deal with the constant 24 hours a day high pitched whine?
What if the color I saw as orange, was actually yellow for you? Sure, you call it orange, but you perceive orange like I perceive yellow. Now what if that went to smells and tastes? Hearing?
Only one comic I ever read dealt with that (El Goonish Shive), and really only superficially. One where a male character had trouble walking due to the new female hips and breasts ( http://www.egscomics.com/index.php?id=695 & http://www.egscomics.com/index.php?id=696 ), while another female character is unsure about the her male body's strength ( http://www.egscomics.com/index.php?id=709 ).
One of my other stories deals with a man put into a woman's body (without him being conscious or able to know what was going on) as a way to survive while his original body heals. I actually spent time dealing with that - where he spends time literally having to rewire his thinking just to move a muscle to get off the hospital bed, and having to "think" about what he sees because the colors feel off.
I wrote that story about 1991 or so. And in one of that stories more comedic moments, he complains about how bouncy his breasts are. 16 years after starting hormones and a good number of years after they've fully developed on me, I'm still not used to that bounce. So I did manage to get that part of the story right.
Just something on my mind after seeing a bad episode of "Charmed."
