Oh let me tell you that even IF you are heavily into these subjects (I am) it’s sort of impossible. Sometimes good enough has to be good enough.
It’s a bit like if you give the option to pick a haircolor at the start. If you give the “red” option, people who wants to play a redhead will be happy. But give the option “strawberry blonde” and “ginger” and all of a sudden people who see their character as auburn will protest that “auburn” is also a red nuance and should not be included with brown hair. (yes. This happened.)
And those people are right! But yeah, “less is more” is a good maxim to keep in mind with choicescript projects. It’s very easy to get buried in fractal complexity of permutations on permutations. Knowing where to draw the line and move on is how you actually get things done (lord knows I should take my own advice more).
I don’t want to go too deep into it, i was writing a superhero world, based on the realistic interpretation of how i’d imagine, it would be
Magic, Tech, superpowers, mutants, aliens, and all
Particularly how a high functioning superhero world works
In my interpretation, it is neither as grim as shows like Invincible, or the boys present it as, nor as idealistic as DC shows
So, somewhere in between, where the tone of the story depends on the events happening, rather than just the tone of the world
Implementing a new advanced medical procedure for teens, or some magical ritual wouldn’t be something far off from being possible, since the world is one which has settled in a balanced powder keg, where innovation of good things, is just as possible as bad ones
First, that sound fun as hell. I would enjoy playing that.
Second, you have majorly overthought this! I don’t think almost anyone will even be thinking about the interbody dynamics of being trans, when you have aliens! My mind can fill in whatever blank holes are needed for the characters to work.
I’m more interested in the aliens!
Any single one of those can work as an explanation for a trans character. If they even need one! Like I said, I’d be thinking of the aliens more than our character’s body! It really, truly, only comes up if you bring it up. Make it be normal, in a world of un-normal things.
But to go back to the subject at hand, transition in an age of high magic or super tech!
I think one thing that’s worth considering is what living in a world where you have access to (somewhat easy) body modifications will do to people’s perception of gender.
For example, I remember a Tanith Lee book where it was easy to get your own bespoke body grown from scratch, so people could shift bodies and looks at will, and what that did to people’s gender. How some played around. How others had a very fixed self image or gender. There, it wasn’t strange to be a man one week, and a woman the next month, there were other things that were provocative (like a person always choosing to be ‘ugly’ for example).
If body mods are easy, will there be people who are against all body mods no matter the purpose? Who are about 'the natural" rather than the artificial? And how would you even know? People can just use the mods to look more natural? And some might make sure that they look as weird and exotic as possible? Is gender even the biggest issue here? Or gender expression?
I dunno, it is a fascinating thing and well worth thinking about! But as always, it is worth considering that the overwhelming majority of gender-affirming surgery is done by cis people, everything from hormones to surgery. Giving every character the option to experiment with their looks if this is a world that has that tech is fun. Sure, someone might use that advanced medical tech to get new/different genitals, but what of the people that wants pointed ears and fangs? Or cat ears? People will be people.
EDIT: Just consider computer game character creators. There will always be a Final Pam.
I have two ideas for now, setting the body morphing innovation as something that’s already present and common, or setting it as something that is new and coming thing
The former is better to just focus on the main story of the world, or main plot
The latter allows for a nuanced sub plot about the commodification and monetization of such procedures, which also involved political and constitutional debates about the moral, ethical, and medical dilemmas of such a procedure becoming widly used
Another thing could be, the complexity of MC potentially having various opinions about characters who don’t yet have access to the easy procedures, while they do
Some might feel grateful, others slightly bad that their friends, and common people can’t get the same privilege
That is sort of one angle i was going for in the latter half
That’s why my plan was to make it a new thing to think and wonder how this stuff would work, i actually planned to make it a magical procedure, than a medical one
Hence adding other nuances, about using magic so widely, like another commodity
Obviously, i feel like making it so the world is already having these things, solves all this problems all together, and the nuances would need to be discussed in a different way
Something that came as a surprise and a relief to me as a trans man was how little people actually care. I don’t think I’ve met a straight woman or gay man who had any qualms about what genitalia I had or didn’t have. Speaking to other trans friends who use Grindr and sites like that for casual hook-ups, they’ve never experienced any issues either. So at least from my experience, there is no need to worry about it, especially if you’ve already built up a romantic connection with the character.
Edit: realised I responded to another comment than the intended one. Feeling too old for this modern technology of forums
