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Musings on transformation stories
12 years ago
I'm generally not into transformation stories; for the most part they just creep me out. Oh, there is the occasional exception -- I consider Skin Deep one of the best webcomics out there -- but for the most part I used to avoid TF.
Until, that is, a friend recommended me a TF series and I found myself avidly reading through all of it, easily getting past the parts that bothered me. I've been wondering why that is, and it's not just the intrinsic qualities of the stories offsetting my normal preferences.
The answer was served to me on a plate by Phil Geusz in his essay The Pornography Trap, in which he describes Heinlein's novel Double Star as transformation fiction. And Double Star just so happens to be one of my favorite novels ever.
Of course! That's it! I was defining the transformation genre way too narrowly!
Once this conclusion asserted itself, it was easy to start thinking about famous stories that are very obviously TF yet most people never think of them that way. Robocop, for example, is a superb specimen of the genre, and one everybody knows about too. So is Star Wars, insofar as it's about Darth Vader, not to mention virtually every story set in the World of Darkness. Vampires, werewolves, awakened mages... it's all about people turning into something else and having to deal with it... and everyone else with them. As Mr. Geusz points out, it's a powerful theme that resonates with all of us on a deep level.
So much, in fact, that my own stories mention transformation all the time, yet I never noticed before.
Take Bazaar in the Stars for example: Claude is so visibly the result of a transformation that Notand spends the better part of two paragraphs wondering what's his deal. Of course, Notand himself has recently suffered an even more exotic change (even by the surreal standards of the setting), but I never explore the consequences.
Likewise, in Arrow in the Sky, half the cast goes through big changes. Jake is half-machine following an incident he won't talk about; Carol becomes a mind upload, and Pete gains the magical ability to turn into vehicles. All of which I treated very superficially, simply because I wasn't interested in those aspects of the story at the time. But it's all there, and it may be worth revisiting one day.
Perhaps ironically, the closest I came to actually exploring TF themes was in a non-furry story called Parole Planet. This time, not only we learn why Carmen has turned into what she is now, but she also achieves closure by the end. And it's still an entirely secondary part of the story.
Will I go deeper into transformation themes in future stories? Maybe, with utmost care. For one thing, if you look at the examples above, most TF stories come with a massive dose of body horror. It's almost a given, really, unless it's a story about someone being turned into Captain America, or his rule 63 version. (Oops, did I just give another well-known example?) And if not, there's the psychological horror of having your entire previous life stripped away from you and replaced with one that may be better, more important, whatever, but it's not yours. And horror isn't exactly my favorite stuff.
But I'll certainly be more open-minded about the genre now, and I'll never see any fiction with the same eyes again. Which is a win in my book. What else is fiction for, if not expanding one's horizons?
This work is made available under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 license, http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/.
Until, that is, a friend recommended me a TF series and I found myself avidly reading through all of it, easily getting past the parts that bothered me. I've been wondering why that is, and it's not just the intrinsic qualities of the stories offsetting my normal preferences.
The answer was served to me on a plate by Phil Geusz in his essay The Pornography Trap, in which he describes Heinlein's novel Double Star as transformation fiction. And Double Star just so happens to be one of my favorite novels ever.
Of course! That's it! I was defining the transformation genre way too narrowly!
Once this conclusion asserted itself, it was easy to start thinking about famous stories that are very obviously TF yet most people never think of them that way. Robocop, for example, is a superb specimen of the genre, and one everybody knows about too. So is Star Wars, insofar as it's about Darth Vader, not to mention virtually every story set in the World of Darkness. Vampires, werewolves, awakened mages... it's all about people turning into something else and having to deal with it... and everyone else with them. As Mr. Geusz points out, it's a powerful theme that resonates with all of us on a deep level.
So much, in fact, that my own stories mention transformation all the time, yet I never noticed before.
Take Bazaar in the Stars for example: Claude is so visibly the result of a transformation that Notand spends the better part of two paragraphs wondering what's his deal. Of course, Notand himself has recently suffered an even more exotic change (even by the surreal standards of the setting), but I never explore the consequences.
Likewise, in Arrow in the Sky, half the cast goes through big changes. Jake is half-machine following an incident he won't talk about; Carol becomes a mind upload, and Pete gains the magical ability to turn into vehicles. All of which I treated very superficially, simply because I wasn't interested in those aspects of the story at the time. But it's all there, and it may be worth revisiting one day.
Perhaps ironically, the closest I came to actually exploring TF themes was in a non-furry story called Parole Planet. This time, not only we learn why Carmen has turned into what she is now, but she also achieves closure by the end. And it's still an entirely secondary part of the story.
Will I go deeper into transformation themes in future stories? Maybe, with utmost care. For one thing, if you look at the examples above, most TF stories come with a massive dose of body horror. It's almost a given, really, unless it's a story about someone being turned into Captain America, or his rule 63 version. (Oops, did I just give another well-known example?) And if not, there's the psychological horror of having your entire previous life stripped away from you and replaced with one that may be better, more important, whatever, but it's not yours. And horror isn't exactly my favorite stuff.
But I'll certainly be more open-minded about the genre now, and I'll never see any fiction with the same eyes again. Which is a win in my book. What else is fiction for, if not expanding one's horizons?
This work is made available under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 license, http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/.
In addition to this concept of lack/liquated there is also a concept of liminality things betwixt between. The phase of between things. This is where the realizations happen, the transformation occurring or not occurring, the fuel for the story.
On the farfetched notion, yes we are all writers of transformation with a transformation fetish.
Yes, it is often tied very much to horror especially Ovid Horror, a foul philosophical waxing of that liminality, nature, and what it means to be human. Good horror though does that, what's often missing nowadays. Not for everyone though of course… still in the right hands it can be joy, awe, learning, character growth, stuff you’ve already touched on.
Very important realization to have for good writing in general.