I was reading a bodyswap story awhile ago that was really fucking me up
So like the characters, after switching bodies, were also gaining the body’s personality traits and its memories, just ship of Theseus’ing them
And I really thought the author was going to commit to that, where at the end it’s like having those two people back, but we’d know that they didn’t actually switch back, they just became each other
But after the swap back it became apparent that they did actually swap back before becoming each other because they had memories from during the swap that they wouldn’t have if the swap back hadn’t actually happened
So the ending helped my distress a bit, but ever since reading that I’ve been plagued with horror over the thought of ship of Theseus body swaps and I hate it!!! Yes it’s sort of them but also it isn’t!! A change has occurred!! Your friend isn’t truly your friend but you’d never know it!!!! Aaaahhh!!!!
“Body Swap movies are always something I enjoy. I finally got to see the Freaky Friday sequel and I loved it. It’s just as good as the original.”😸
“It made me think about that time that Alvin and I swapped bodies. (We call it Wacky Wednesday) I wonder what swapping bodies with my sisters would be like” 🤔
“Not that I’ll actually try that. I don’t even know where Simon’s invention is. And it wouldn’t be ethical unless I get their permission.” 🧬
“But it sure is a thrill to think about the possibilities. Very stimulating and fascinating. A prime opportunity for a lot of growth.” 🌱
KYLE CROUSE: [referring to the topic of the mini] Alright, here’s one suggested by HappyTimes. “Shadow and Cream?”
IAN FLYNN: [snerk] Everyone’s a little surprised that Shadow seems to be making a concentrated effort to go around and make nice. Apologize for any rude comments he may or may have not said.
KYLE: [laughs]
IAN: He just, he’s been very grumpy, and he shouldn’t take that out on others, so he’s here to apologize, just in case, and he hopes that they can be friends in the future. Meanwhile… Cream is on the warpath, riding around on the motorcycle as fast as she can. [as Cream] “Where’s that damn bodysnatcher?!”
KYLE: [laughing] Oh, no! Give her a gun.
IAN: [chuckles, then as Cream] “Cheese! Get ‘em!”
KYLE: Oh, no. Oh, no! Terrifying, I love it. [yawning] Absolutely love it. Tear him to pieces!
——
TRANSCRIBER’S NOTE: Please remember that nothing that is said on BumbleKast is canon! It’s just some guys and their opinions occasionally spitballing ideas. If you don’t like an answer, you don’t have to take it as Word of God or anything like that. It’s all just for fun!
mine is:
Scary played by Will
Normal played by Beth
Link played by Freddie
Taylor played by Matt
(doing just two pairs swapping was not intentional, but I think I just really wanna see Scary and Normal’s thing approached from backwards and I want Matt and Freddie to have field days)
I was gonna say no, but actually, yes! Once! In an AUpril thread on the murderbot discord, where we were noodling about some body swaps during ASR!
Which i think you knew already, because I wrote a snip in response to a snip that you wrote--about Mensah and MB bodyswapping. My snip was right after they fixed the body swap situation, so like, technically I suppose it might not even count as writing body swaps lol. But it was part of the narrative we were constructing as a group.
(This trope is fun, but also leads to certain kinds of Awkwardness that I don't like as much--so I don't really see myself writing it again anytime soon. And if i did, it would likely be in snips, rather than a whole story where i have to actually explain why the body swap happened and all the consequences etc.)
My snip isn't on ao3 or anywhere, but I'm fairly happy with it as a snip, so I'll share it under the cut :)
---
It was disorienting, settling back into my own mind. Everything felt out of alignment, and I spent 0.65 seconds worrying that something had gone wrong, before realizing that I could think in fractions of a second again. I could think again, at normal speeds, instead of stumbling along sluggishly with organic-only hardware. I had gotten used to human processing speeds eventually, but it had felt like wading through mud, and now I was sprinting. My systems were all there, reconnected. Memory was intact, and so was my storage, still full of all my media (I had really missed my media). Risk and threat assessment were online, performance reliability was within acceptable ranges, and my governor module was yelling about protocol (I had not missed that). I started a diagnostic to make sure that the human who had been camping out in my brain for the last few hundred hours hadn’t messed anything up. I reached out into SecSystem, expanding my awareness, checking that my hacks were still in place. I opened a dozen new inputs—I had cameras again. I loved cameras. I was never going anywhere without camera access again.
Being in my own body again was a relief. I was not going to miss disgusting human bodily functions, and I was really not going to miss talking to humans. Although I guess I hadn’t minded talking to these humans as much as usual. It had been kind of nice to be treated like—like a human.
But I wasn’t a human. They had been nicer than I’d expected, but only because I looked like one of them, and that had never been permanent. I didn’t want it to be permanent. I was glad to be back in my own body. Back to security protocols and hiding behind my armor and half-assing my job. I didn’t have to care anymore. Caring about all of this had been exhausting, and I never wanted to talk about it again.
Across from me, in her own body, Dr. Mensah closed her eyes and took a deep breath. She stretched out her arms, and then exhaled loudly, relaxing her whole body. “Thank goodness.”
Then she opened her eyes and looked at me. “We have some things to talk about.”
