A funny thing happened today. Last night (well, more like early this morning but who is even counting anymore) I published the 7th chapter of my current project, Transliterated. Today, two different friends talked to me about how interesting a certain plot point was entirely unprompted. It was one that just kinda came naturally to me when writing and I didn't think twice about until it they highlighted it and got me thinking about how uncommon it really is.
The spoiler-free version of the scenario is that I wrote about an unwilling TF victim, you probably know the type. The hapless human who through no fault of their own (or perhaps some fault) ends up as something else and just has to cope. Usually it becomes the catalyst for a great improvement in their life and all manners of self discovery, even if they're grouchy about it at first.
What I did instead was write about an unwilling TF victim who would have been a willing TF beneficiary in any other story. You also probably know the type. The miserable human who just can't quite get a grip on what's wrong with them, only that they don't feel right in their own skin. Then they get the opportunity to become something else, or else have their subconscious wish granted, and it is a joyous and fulfilling experience for both character and reader.
So what you have is someone who yearns to be something other than human getting the monkey's paw version of that wish. They became something else with no regard to their own wishes or preferences, becoming a creature that in no way resembles their idealized self, but is still so distant from what they knew that they don't have human comforts to cling to either. What does one do in that scenario, when you still don't feel right in your own skin, only it's not your own skin, it's completely foreign on top of it all?
In retrospect, I shouldn't have been surprised that it stuck out to people, given all the fiction in the genre that I have already consumed. But it didn't strike me as weird at all.
Because I'd already lived that.
See, I have a theory about TF fiction, or at least TF fiction written by those with a keen interest in it, rather than stories that simply contain transformation in them towards for other ends. TF fiction is about dysphoria. It is the core of the conflict in most TF stories, if not in plot, then in theming. The mismatch between who you feel you are or what you want to be and your physical body, and all the stress and pain that causes. Oftentimes, TF is the solution to the dysphoria, the means to become who and what you really want to be. Other times, the TF is the cause of the dysphoria, circumstances beyond your control imposing a body upon you that you did not want and do not identify with. But that binary doesn't encompass the entirety of people's experiences, or at least not mine.
To get personal, I started transitioning almost 9 years ago as an AMAB young adult in my early 20's. I'd found an incredibly supportive and affirming community and group of friends, and so I just went for it, because I knew that I was like them, that I didn't feel right with the body I had. And it didn't work. Not the practical parts of transitioning, I got on HRT just fine and it worked wonders for my body, I got people to help me shop for clothes, my therapist was affirming and supportive. No, what I failed to account for was the possibility that binary transition wasn't right for me, because I'd never been exposed to anything other than the stock gender binary. So I transitioned to being fully femme, name, pronouns, and everything. And it nearly destroyed me, because I'd just changed one style of dysphoria for another, but I was so ignorant of what was actually happening that it took a complete breakdown for me to figure it out. Nowadays I've settled in a bizarro limbo somewhere between full detransition and agender and it fits me like a glove, and I don't regret trying to transition at all. But it leaves me with a thought.
Why does it always work out so cleanly in TF fiction? Either characters are granted exactly what they always wanted, or are ripped from what they were perfectly happy with. I have literally only ever seen one story about someone already dissatisfied with themselves who then gets turned into something that also isn't what they want, but has to make do anyway, and that's Tobias the Red-tailed Hawk from god damned Animorphs, which straddles the line between TF fiction and "fiction containing TF" so evenly that I've always failed to categorize it.
So with that as my primary inspiration, I think the answer is simple. This specific clean binary is universally relatable. Specifically the binary between "wrong body" and "right body". I feel that. Even the shapeshifters who constantly change forms feel that, because they are changing into what feels right at the time, even if the stakes are way, way lower. But my experiences left me craving depictions of not just the messy in-between, but the disaster zig-zag. Getting shunted all the way to what you or others thought would be ideal or "complete," only to have to crawl just as far towards your goal from a direction you were entirely unprepared to come from.
Is it weird? Probably not, relatively speaking. Self-indulgent? Absolutely. But if I don't see it in the world, then I'm just going to have to make it myself. And from the sounds of a few friends, it's an angle that others enjoy contemplating as well. Anyway, this was a random 1:30 AM ramble, but I hope it provides some food for thought. Or at least let people get a better grasp on my perspectives if nothing else.
