Monkey-Scientist
patreon
Favorite Aspect of Body-Swaps
🕑 Added 2023-08-28 07:50:29 +0000 UTCWowzers, a rant/opinion piece! Yep, wanted to talk about my favorite aspect when it comes to body-swaps: The struggles of the new body. You go from being a big buff lion to being a scrawny monkey, or from being human to being a giraffe. There's this sudden change in size, status, physique, etc.
I like the idea of having a new body and struggling to control it, like learning how to walk all over again. It makes for some fascinating storytelling potential, putting the protagonist in the literal shoes of another and watching him struggle trying to be someone else. Sadly, this aspect tends to be wasted in a lot of forms of media.
They're often more focused on gags or forced morals to really do something interesting with that body-swap aspect. I think that's where literature succeeds, since you can do a lot with body-swaps when it comes to writing.
You can explore different aspects of the body, play around with perspective writing, and focus on details that a show or a movie just can't give you. I think that's why most movies and shows fail when it comes to body-swaps, they just can't give you the details that would make their new forms all that interesting and so just rely on cheap recycled tropes. Oh well, at least y'all got stories by me and others!
