• She/They/He

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FinchTale
@FinchTale

What would you do if you suddenly found yourself with the ability to shapeshift?

Chances are, it'd have a pretty significant impact on your life whether you want it or not because, once you're a shapeshifter, there are no more set species for you. There is no more gender. You can be whatever and whoever you want.


There's a few ways to go about it.
One of them is you do nothing or very little with your newfound powers. You are who you have always been after all.

Another is to constantly shapeshift, adapting your form to whatever suits your current needs, likely losing any real concept of what you are in the process. You are a shapeshifter, and nothing else.

Or maybe you're sitting somewhere in the middle of those two options? Maybe something completely different? The possibilities are endless!


Rules and Limitations

Shapeshifting, at a base, is pretty interesting. But it only gets better once you add limitations!
As a few examples: You can make it very draining to shapeshift into something else, you can add a time limit with varied consequences once time is up or you can make shapeshifting incredibly painful, making quick/frequent shapeshifting incredibly unappealing.

Or you can go the other way entirely and make it extremely easy to accidentally shapeshift and/or very hard to keep a form!

A personal favourite of mine is to have the shapeshifter inherit some of the instincts of the creature they turn into.

There are plenty more possibilities, all around that one seemingly simple power. Possibilities that, in the end, bring a seemingly endless amount of potential stories that either already exist, or that are just waiting to be written.


Shapeshifter as an identity

While we can not actually change our bodies as we see fit, identifying as a shapeshifter tends to bring a lot of comfort to those who do it. It comes in a lot of different shapes and flavours which, from what I've seen, are all distinctly unique from eachother.

As an example, just from some of the shapeshifters I know: One has a lot of forms that they change between depending on their mood on a daily basis, while another changes forms much less regularly and only has a handful of them.

Those are just two examples from many, and I know for a fact that there are countless more possibilities for one's identity through the lens of shapeshifting.

As for me, my relationship with being a shapeshifter has changed a lot ever since I first took on the label. At first I was playing around with several forms, just for fun. I had a list of forms I like more than others, certain physical attributes I like more than others (such as fur being heavily prefered over scales).
While those lists aren't entirely incorrect today, they hold a lot less importance to me nowadays.

I actually find most comfort in my base form out of any other, which means I'll rarely shapeshift just for the fun of it. I've recently described myself as a shapeshifter of convenience: only ever shifting if it helps me achieve my immediate goal.


All of this is to say: Shapeshifting is extremely versatile in every area you want to apply it to. Whether it's for storytelling or for your own identity, you have a multitude of options to choose from, with those listed here being only a very limited amount of ways to explore it.


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