Bodies. We have them. We feed them, water them, touch them, and spend all our time trapped inside. We also garner meaning from their shape and form. Our mushy brains catalog thousands of little cues and signs written on bodies in order to classify what or who we are encountering.
On a base instinctual level this process is happening so that we can identify danger and act accordingly. However, the meaning we make of the body goes beyond survival, and into the realm of symbolism.
The first human transplant, for example, was met with frenzy and speaks of human’s metaphorical relationship with their physical form.
“The surgeon had somehow strayed into a mythic landscape, a land of signs and metaphors, where ‘Heart’ still as a universal symbol of emotion, courage, intimacy, and will. Now for the first time one of the most important metaphors for personhood had been cut out, handled and cleaned, and placed inside the body of another individual.” (Helman, 1992)
We find personhood in the body, we find identity - one that we re-interpret across a lifetime. Whether that be illness, aging, or a new tattoo, as our bodies change, or as we change them, so does our sense of self change.
Gender and sex are contentious stories written on the body. Despite the corporeal reality that the human body manifests in a spectrum of forms, the idea of a strict binary persists. Maleness and femaleness are easy shorthands for the brain to interpret. Two boxes is much more comfortable than no box or thousands of boxes or a box that is not a box at all.
Trans bodies get caught in the crossfire of fear, misunderstanding, and outdated “facts”. Our bodies are politicized, our minds are scrutinized and our identity is medicalized. We carry the baggage of a binary society on our shoulders and it’s a tiresome and dangerous load to bear.
I write fantasy books so that I can imagine a new fate for trans people. The strange, the mythical, the unimaginable in fantasy, provides “a canvas for queerness to thrive, challenging and subverting societal expectations.” (Harry B, 2023)
My trans characters have bodies that tell a story. In Doombringer, the protagonist Oden, is a trans father desperate to protect his daughter from the reality of war. He casts a spell to rewrite the world, so that she, and she alone, will see the realm alive, rather than the reality of its destruction. But the magic to cast this illusion has a heavy cost. Oden grafts heavy, black crystals to his skeleton in order to conduct the power he needs to wield magic. Over the years his body has transformed:
“Oden blinked a few times trying to attach himself to the image in the mirror. He knew it was him; he knew those blue eyes, but the purple dark bruises around them looked unreal. His skull was a river of red, swollen skin, winding around large chunks of Lucent crystals bolted into the bone. He moved the mirror to view more of his body. Black shards drifted down his neck and covered his shoulders, poking through ragtag holes in his shirt. Oden held his breath and twisted, glancing over his shoulder at the torn open back. Fused with his spine, were the biggest crystals trailing from neck to pelvis. Stone pillars that looked like mountains on the horizon, or the spikes of a beast.”
Oden’s body is startling and confronting to those around him, who know that skeletons can only conduct so much magic before they turn to ash.
What does Oden’s body mean? What stories are written in those painful crystal implants?
What does this have to do with transness?
That’s for you, my reader, to explore in the tale of Doombringer. Though I will be exploring the concept of trans embodiment in fantasy further in the coming months.
I’d love to hear your thoughts on all of this.
Have you encountered any interesting bodies in fantasy stories?
References:
Harry B. (2023) 'Revealing the Liminal: Exploring the Intersection of Queer Magical Realism, their Writers and the Enchantment of Mythical Creatures'. In MAGIC REALISM: EXPLORING THE FANTASTIC AND REALISTIC ELEMENTS IN LITERATURE, pp. 90-101.
Helman, C.G. (1992) The Body of Frankenstein's Monster: Essays in Myth and Medicine. Pg. 2.
