Transness, Scars and Imagined Worlds

When I imagine worlds, it feels enticing to have worlds where people like me and my friends would not be scarred or wounded in the ways we have been. After all, is that not the kind of world we are striving to create, one where people aren't othered for arbitrary parts of their identity?
But when I reflect upon such imagined worlds, and the characters within them I'm supposed to identify with, I can't. They aren't me or my friends. They don't have the scars placed upon them by the society we live in. They don't have the wounds that mark them, that make it easy to connect between fellow queers. When I meet a fellow trans person, I don't know all of them, but I know they have wounds. Wounds that differ from person to person in their exactitudes, but have the same general shapes on all of us. But when I encounter a character that is "trans" but has none of these markers I can't identify with them.
Maybe that shouldn't come as a surprise to me, after all doesn't identifying with someone or something come down to shared experience? Would I feel the same disconnect if I met a happy trans kid, who had never known the issues I had? Would I be able to connect with them as they aged and grew, somehow dodging the trials and tribulations of being gender deviant in any society? I don't know. Right now I think not. I'd be happy for them. Proud we created a world where they can live happily, but I wouldn't relate to them. Our lived experiences would be too different.
When I see worlds, like Baldur's Gate 3, as an example, where you can create a "trans" character, I at first was excited. After all, representation is good and all that. Yet, the more I played the less I... cared? I could make my characters "trans" but I put it in quotes, as all that amounts to is having genitals, pronouns, or a voice that doesn't match with your otherwise extremely cis and conventionally attractive body. You being trans is never brought up, never commented on, never even able to be discussed through dialogue. Your character has no option to express their concerns over passing, their confusion over past or current identity. Let alone any deeper, personal traumas. Even when characters like Nocturne exist, a character in the game who is canonically trans, you cannot talk with her about it. You cannot bond with her over it. You are trans, and you are alone in that.
In doing so, this depiction of transness feels hollow, empty: to be trans in isolation is devastating. It feels like an impossible challenge to surmount. Then you find other people who feel like you do and everything changes. Slowly, you grow and evolve into a happier more fulfilled version of yourself. Perhaps just as confused. Perhaps just as messy. But now you have community. You have people who understand what you are going through and can actual relate, not just sympathize.
So to have these imagined spaces where the communal aspect of queer identity is just... ignored? Is bizarre. I have been a "queer elder" for a number of people, some older than me. I have had queer elders. The path towards self-discovery is not an entirely internal one. We need to hear from those who have taken these steps before us, even if it is as simple as "I lived" or "I exist".
I know Baldur's Gate 3 and games like it are trying to be open minded, progressive and all the good things, but yet, when I see depictions like it, where transness for the most part boils down to naked bodies for the player to ogle, it feels fetishistic. It's transness as surface level, consumable. An aspect not of ones personality, or self, but exclusively of their body.
That's not to say media is the only place this issue of trans-in-body-only crops up. In my home games of TTRPGs, I've made queer characters. I've played an ace kobold. I've played a lesbian warlock. I've created NPCs that are enbys and trans, but none of this ever came up. In a way, none of them were queer. I mean, if it never actually came up in gameplay, and it never affected anything in the story, to what extent did their queerness matter? My friends probably don't even know that they were. Is that a positive? A negative? Probably some level of neutral. Just the way it is.
I end up thinking so much more about worlds where queerness is not perfectly accepted. Where characters are scared, hurt, and traumatized by the reality of their inner self coming into conflict with a constricting society. With their internal monologues parrot back learned behaviors at them, that they have to struggle against. Worlds like that in The Sapling Cage, where the main character Laurel worries about things like ensuring they're seen cooking and cleaning, to make sure they aren't perceived as a guy in girls clothing. Even worlds like Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door, where Vivian is trans, and faces bullying from her sisters for it, misgendering her whenever she falls short of their expectations. Even children's graphic novels like Mooncakes touch more on the social ramifications of being queer, than supposedly groundbreaking levels of representation in the gaming space like Baldur's Gate 3 or Cyberpunk 2077.
Of course, these characters are not just their scars. They go on journeys, save people, and grow. Yet, by having that texture of their self coming into conflict with a unaccepting world, it feels so much more real. Even if Vivian is a silly purple ghost.
Real people aren't just their scars either. To be queer is to be in community with all the rest of a hugely expressive group, that all is able to identify to an extent with the struggle of the rest.
I do understand that some people do find some sort of escapism in such works, imagining a world where our traumas aren't perpetuated, that there will exist a generation beyond us freed from the struggles we've endured. That is valuable. That is good. Its worth fighting for.
And yet, I care about worlds where me and my friends do exists, scars and all. A world where we are happy, together, and not having new traumas scarred into us, yet with our old ones there. Healed, but present. A lesson for ourselves and anyone else we can assist down the road. A world for the us who exist now. A world built of solidarity. A world that feels real.