In a world with talking trees and singing animals it makes perfect sense
In a world with talking trees and singing animals it makes perfect sense
21 comments
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Its scifi but in the Culture series by Iain M Banks, this is basically the case. Genetic engineering has come so far that people's bodies produce drugs just by thinking about them. Gender transition is so complete that pregnancy is possible - one male character transitions every so often just because he likes being pregnant, then goes back to male. You're considered odd if you haven't transitioned at least once out of curiosity.
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Ok if someone that plays videogames 24 hours a day told me in their 35 years of gaming they haven't picked a character of the opposite gender once I would consider that odd too.
Like it heavily implies sexism at this point.
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Or being afraid of the feelings they might feel if they do.
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It's interesting to look at the Culture series with a modern eye. Many of the ideas he had about what humans would choose to do in those circumstances were interesting, but he was also kind of comically unimaginative with how people would choose to change themselves. The humans of the Culture seem to be incapable of transitioning to a more androgynous or nonbinary gender, at least for the long term, and are also incapable of altering their own sexual preferences. At one point a character expresses disappointment at not becoming attracted to men when they transition to a woman, which seems like an odd lapse of imagination for a society that would bother to give all their members full conscious control of their genital function and the ability to change genders at will by default. No big dick goth futas or furries in the culture, even though there are people living today who would do almost anything to be that in real life. All of the humans depicted appear to remain approximately human shaped, which in itself isn't necessarily unexpected, but with the kind of biological engineering they're capable of you would imagine some people would want to be some other shape. No one decides to be a space whale that can swim between the stars under their own power. No one decides, or perhaps are unable, to expand their minds to significantly increase their intelligence or alter their consciousness. Everything he imagined they would do to themselves was essentially a refinement of some feature already present in humanity. Even more strangely he imagines that, to the Culture, remaining young forever is seen as a social faux pas, that they would value aging and death from age for some reason, despite creating immortal true AGI so advanced none of them even need to do anything anymore. To be sure some of this is practical for the sake of storytelling, but it's interesting to see the statement that "science fiction isn't about the future, it's about the present" played out in the Culture like this. What might current science fiction writers imagine post scarcity people would do? How comically unimaginative will that seem to future humans doing things we couldn't have even imagined today?
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No big dick goth futas or furries in the culture
No, but isn't there a guy who's just covered in dicks? I'm fairly sure there are folk described who choose to take weirder and wackier shapes, but they kinda live on the fringe of things,
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Charles Stross' Glasshouse gets into more of those themes. You can tell he's writing from a masculine point of view, but I appreciate his attempts to explore more ideas of dysphoria, and the crazier body mods people would try.
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It always amused/annoyed me how turning into a completely different species was often considered more "normal" than swapping genders in these games.
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95% of the non-humanoid races don't have "gender" so it's really low in both supply and demand.
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The goblins just carry it because it tastes like cherry coke.
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I think there might be a slight miscommunication around the word "fantasy" here
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Cmon now, it’s NOT that easy to make your own HRT drugs…is it?
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There are diy guides online. In a more civilized society, they wouldn't be necessary.
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Image Text Transcription:
People who object to trans people being in fantasy are wild. As though some silly-hatted alchemist wouldn't simply invent Almazar's Gender Fluid in an afternoon and distribute it to every dungeon chest in the land. It's Common on the loot table and half the goblins drop it. You can brew it yourself with three mushrooms and eight snail shells. It sells for 1 copper at the merchant because the supply is so abundant. You fool. You melon. You absolute buffoon. The limits of what you are willing to imagine are an epitaph you wrote for your own freedom.
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Think about the societal ramifications of that. Like, you go to a pub, like a seedy pub, doesn't matter if you're a guy or a girl, you're gonna be watching your drink like a hawk to make sure nobody does something to you.
Actually, you'd probably be watching everyone's drink like a hawk to make sure that nobody does anything seedy to anybody because it's so commonplace that everyone's vulnerable to being forcibly sex changed, abducted, and sold into slavery.
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Given that everyone is already capable of being drugged, its kinda wild that more people arent hyper vigiliant when publicly drinking. Not just for their own drink, but for everyone elses too. I am always on the lookout for suspicious behavior when out with friends
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Come all to Almazar's gender fluid sex party! First 3 mystery potions free.
21 comments
The problem with these characters is not the trans part but the poor writing that comes with them. They can never be complex in any qay because ni writer would dare to depict a "bad" trans person, so they are always boring, virtue signaling goodie two shoes.