When I first heard about that girl who wouldn’t stop fucking rollercoasters I thought it was funny, then I got into the nitty-gritty of how she was fucking rollercoasters and I hate myself but I got it. What she does is, finds a support beam, grinds up against it, then waits until the roller coaster speeds over it and, just—
All that kinetic energy, all that vibration, focused through a single piece of metal, it was in that moment that I realised sitting on the washing machine was for fucking cowards. Yes, that pun was intentional. No, I will not remove it.
I used to live by a highway and every night the trucks would thunder by. At first I couldn’t sleep, but by the time I moved out, I realised the world outside was too quiet at night, that the thunder calmed me—that on some level my body needed to nightly receive a vibrational power only available to vehicles that require a special licence class to drive.
Anyway so there’s something inherently trans feminine about mechs, right?
An early stage of many transitions involves getting shot in the face with lasers until all your hair falls out. It hurts less than you’d think and it still hurts like hell. I loved the pain, sharp and clear, it felt like I was being reborn in fire. The lasers burned part of my old life away. Transition teaches you things about your body you wouldn’t believe, both its tolerances and its fragility. My body wasn’t doing what I wanted, so I tore at it and shot at it and pumped chemicals into it. I built my body in a way few ever do. I invented my body and it was the best idea.
We enhance our bodies every day, with glasses and pacemakers and good solid boots. Where our bodies are not fit for purpose, we build solutions. Where our bodies fail, technology steps up. That’s why I think so many trans women love mechs: it’s a body we can build and fine-tune, powerful and perfect and entirely ours.
Imagine what it feels like to sit in the cockpit. Your perfect body, yours, lovingly crafted in fire, thrumming to life beneath you. You are as beautiful as you are safe. As you take your first steps, you are subject to a truly immense vibrational energy. The cockpit is designed for comfort, but there’s no way to completely contain that power. It rolls through you in wave after wave. It is impossible to ignore. And if you shift in your seat juuuuust right—
I’m a sabre fencer, and when I fence everything else drops away. You can’t bring anxiety into the salle. You can’t cut or parry with any reliability if your hands are shaking. When I started I was a mess, but as my body got accustomed to sparring I found it one of the few peaceful places in my life, where nothing matters except the fighter directly in front of me. My goals are simple, my body capable, my footwork becoming increasingly instinctual. Barbasetti talks about that, about how with proper drills and practice the act of defence becomes as natural as breathing.
It is a beautiful thing, to be brainless with singular purpose. Empty. My days are anxious, my nights fretful, and it’s only when I let my body be a tool do I find any peace.
Every mech series has its own version of the neural link. While there’s none interpersonally hornier than drift compatibility (‘Oh no, only through the mortifying ordeal of being known can I use my laser chainsaw, what if there were a technological way to be completely vulnerable, more naked than naked, also my next movie is about monsterfucking.’ I SEE YOU DEL TORO!) we’re not here to get horny over humans, no, we’re here for the inherent eroticism of the fucking machine.
You cannot stop me making this joke. I have locked the exits.
Anyway, I like the neural links that fuck you up a bit. The ones that pump drugs into your brain, the ones that let your handler control your dopamine release and reward or punish you based on your combat efficiency. I love a bunch of random tubes plugged into hardpoints drilled directly into the pilot’s skull. I love an entry plug filled with amniotic LCL.
Oh, being a pilot changes your body? Changes your neurochemistry? Been there, done that, loved it. Burned and cut and changed the parts of me that weren’t fit for purpose. If you think I wouldn’t get a hardpoint installed in the back of my skull you haven’t been paying attention. Take my brain while you’re in there, replace it with something better, or at least do me the honour of filling it with sweet numbing chemical oblivion. Put your wires inside me, I want to plug the fuck in, chief.
Give me a task and the power to carry it out and empty me of everything else. Empty of doubt, of fear, of dysphoria, of pain, of the past. Set only the present in front of me, where my body is perfect because I made it so and let that body rumble like a rollercoaster track, rumbles like the highway as an 18-wheeler passes over it and lulls me to sleep.
God please, let me lose myself in thunder. Let lightning pass through me, let its fire shape me anew. Let me be strong enough to take it, whether it is battle or the world outside my room or a great big strap. Empty me out and fill me with whatever the fuck you want. I care so much, and I don’t want to care anymore, even if only for a while.
I built this body with purpose, but I still haven’t found one.
But maybe, just maybe, it has something to do with the girl who fucks rollercoasters.
Featured image, Bardiel from Neon Genesis Evangelion (1995) created by Hideaki Anno.
