Shelling Trans OCs

Hope my post earlier does not come across in the wrong way, but not all who suffers from gender dysphoria are able to come to terms with that this is how things are...

In my situation things feel complicated and messy, and I'm not sure what to do, nor do I know if I'm able "to" even though the dysphoria hurt very much. One one side, health-wise I have to think about my own safety, but on the other side I really want the upper part of my body which I can't name, gone because it makes me most uncomfortable!


But as of right now I feel the need for a trans character like myself. I guess it is a roller-coaster how I feel when it comes to all of this But at the moment I haven't had any plans for quite some time.

 

I have one character in my BJD story that has already been in transition. I solved it by attaching a female body (with wider shoulders and narrower hips) to the originally male head. Karen (Soom Chrom head + Granado nuevo female body, sm. br.) is very original and hot.

 

Honestly, I'm such an escapist that I would shell any trans characters in the body sculpt of their gender! Although I do understand that some people prefer the realism, or maybe they find it cathartic and more affirming of their bodies. Kudos especially to people who have the patience for modding! It's really lovely to see the variety of trans experiences reflected in our dolls!

 

I prefer the realism, as you say, @electrospecter.

Vhei-wen will have his chest bound underneath his Jedi robes. He already has a packer since I needed to find a use for the horn that he came with anyways.

Ryu

 

Ah, shout out to everyone who can't physically transition, for various reasons. I'm in that boat too.

Honestly, I'd most likely put my trans OCs in to the proper body, ie. their respective identity, though I'd buy some of them as-is, and hybrid or mod (like sanding the bust down to create a flat chest) for others. Currently, the doll I'm waiting for (a DZ Little Rain) won't need any modifications because of the body shape (thank goodness lmao, I hate all the dust it'd make otherwise).

There are so many varying experiences when it comes to being trans/nonbinary/etc, and I like that the world of BJDs offers so many possibilities when it comes to shelling our characters.

 

Not exactly a trans OC but I asked this question to myself in the past with a gender fluid OC.
I never got to embody this character in the end cause my resin family took a different direction, but they were officially born a female with a certain medical condition that prevented female characters to show (and also had a personality disorder due to trauma) and I had my doubts about choosing a body for them.

I'm not trans myself but have a trans friend who is in the process of transitioning and I talked with them about this character. Taking into account that I like my human characters as realistic as possible, they agreed with me in that starting with a not too feminine female body and making a few modifications seemed the way to go in my case, but it is a very personal matter, I think.

 

I've never thought about it, but that's a good idea! I'm trans myself, and I like both ideas (of having a doll with a post-transition body, or having a doll that hasn't/won't transition). I think the normalization of trans bodies through BJDs is a great thing.

 

Me! (I am also trans), it really depends on the character. I have a boy who has a dollfie dream body coz I don’t see him as wanting top surgery, I am also planning a hybrid doll but he’s taking time for the plans coz I want him to be tan and that presents more challenges with swapping parts OTL

 

I'm glad to see such threads exist here!!

I am a trans man and I am currently looking into making several trans dolls, each at different stages of transition. At the moment, my ideas are a trans man who is fully post op- one that I will draw each scar on- and a fully pre op man. The second is more likely at the moment as I am not very practiced with my painting and I have already had a word with Resinsoul about their doll/doll head combos. I would also like to try my hand at sanding down a character's breasts but I am worried about sanding too much and ruining a really expensive doll XD

 

I’ve done a ton of chest mods! If you sand down too much, it’s super easy to get a little bit of milliput and resculpt the chest. I’ve modded chests onto a couple of flatter-Chested bodies, and sanded down and resculpted the chest on another.

 

Ah, that would be a great help! Thank you Now I have no excuses to not go ham on my poor dolls XD

 

In the beginning of the hobby I didn't view the dolls as abstract representations of the characters and instead very literally was planning out their transitions in my head, so the body looking like it "should" at the stage of transition they were in was important to me. I wanted multiple bodies for each stage, which is frankly expensive and I had to realize it's just not how I enjoy playing with my dolls. I don't change them to different bodies much, so there's no point. So now, I'm a lot less literal-minded and just focus on the aesthetics. If they're a girl they're a girl regardless of the body they have, and they go on a body that fits their silhouette the best, regardless of what's underneath their clothes.

 

There's a seller on Etsy that sells BJD STL files and one of the "add-on" files is of a chest with top surgery scars!

I don't have any dolls that the characters are trans or nonbinary, but I have a few "on paper" characters that are nonbinary and/or trans. It would be interesting to have a doll that as that kind of story, especially for me. I'm starting to branch out in that aspect of character making so a trans or nonbinary doll wouldn't be too far out of my way.

 

Recently, one of my DnD characters came out as trans. I, as DM, kinda wrote it on impulse—I’d read some really meaningful headcannons on how another DM wrote him as trans, and how that altered the storyline, and I liked that better than anything I had planned for the character, so I made him trans.

the problem was, I had already dyed a feeple60 body to match his head. And this character canonically binds, so the feeple60 chest was way too big to work for him. So I sanded his chest down, and got to work sculpting, and I’m really happy with him now. He was my first ftm mod, and I really like him. I’m also happy he got to be on a shorter body than would have been available if I’d gone for a doll body that was already assigned male.

 

I’m in the midst of planning one out! His character needs some more planning but I’m likely going to buy an androgynous body for him but it really depends on what I find and which bodies I like

 

I have three trans-spectrum characters as dolls so far.

Percy is trans-masculine and he is on a boy body. I never bothered modding surgical scars or anything because I didn't feel confident in my skill level and the character is usually clothed anyway. Percy is from a historical fantasy where you could pass as male just by changing clothes and cussing a bit (True story from the Napoleonic wars xD "cusses a lot, probably a guy!")

Temir is AMAB and identifies as agender (he/it pronouns). He doesn't really have a medical transition, so he is on a boy body.

621 is... ambiguous in origin (amnesia and covered in scars and answers "catheter" if you ask about the pants situation) and identifies as agender. They have a boy body because their body type is noodle.

Ironically, the one doll I have that does have a body that needed to be modded to match their gender is cis. Kergat is built like a brickhouse and no femme bodies fit the bill so I have a buff male body that I modded to have boobs.

 

i think it would depend entirely on the character i was trying to shell! for some characters, it might be more appropriate to use a body that matches their ASAB, but for others it might be better to go with one that matches their actual gender.

as a trans person myself, i honestly feel it would be cathartic to start with a body that matches the ASAB and then mod it to match the character's desired body. as someone who is currently seeking out gender-affirming care, i feel like i'd enjoy the process (even though i know it can be very nerve wracking to start carving and such in a way it mirrors the emotions i'm experiencing right now!). if i wasn't going to do that then i'd probably personally just rather give them their preferred body from the start, but i also can see how having a doll with an ASAB body could feel affirming. i also have characters who are trans but choose not to physically transition, so if i were to shell one of them, i'd just pick one that matched them best!

i don't currently have any dolls who would need any sort of physical transition, so that's all hypothetical for now. perhaps in the future?

 

At present, I don't have an on-topic trans doll-- there's one I'm hoping to bring to resin 'life' where I am getting the male body and just... ignoring it if he happens to have any kind of sculpted genitals. Since I don't really plan on taking any pictures of him undressed, it doesn't matter, his face and how he'll be styled is all that matters to me. But there's another character who's been a floating head for ages because I really need him to have a specific body, I want him to be a hefty, wide-hipped guy, I want him to feel kind of like... well, me, in some ways!

 

Shelling a trans OC in a male/female doll depends completely in what state of transition your OC is in, at least for me.

I have several trans/non-binary OC's and currently one shelled into a doll, which has a male body because he's gone thru transition (hormones, top surgery and stuff like that). His genitals I see as a packer. I don't feel comfortable enough to sand it off (or sand off breasts on a female body etc), but I have considered making that kind of part myself and switch it out.

I don't think this kind of thing has to be linear, bjd's are customizable for a reason and you van do whatever you want with them to match what you have in mind for them.

 

As a trans man myself, I've had this discussion a lot with one of my characters who, admittedly, is pretty much a vector for me and my experiences, and I've been torn for a while on wanting to shell him onto a more feminine or masculine body. My dream is to ideally find a nicely androgynous body, as he has breasts and does not intend to have top surgery but has also medically transitioned in other ways resulting in a less "feminine" body shape compared to many sculpts. It's also a bit difficult as he has a twin sister as well, and I want them both to have close to the same body while still showing his transness..... It's important to me to feel represented especially within a character so important to me and so this has been a very long process lol