Transformation And Shape-Shifting (World 18)

⸺ by Charles Iliya Krempeaux

⸺ published 2021-11-17T09:14:11-08:00

Some background for the animation and fictional world story.

And I have been thinking about this for a while —

Let's talk about shape-shifting.

Shape-Shifting is a type of transformation., usually where a being transforms between two or more different physical forms.

Shape-Shifting appears in mythology, in fiction, in religion, and other forms of story telling and narratives.

One very popular form of shape-shifting I grew up with involved robots. And in particular, mostly involves humanoid robots — i.e., androids. The most well known version of this is probably Transformers, but — there are (currently) many others, and there were many others that came before it. This includes — Beast King GoLion, Beetras, Commandrons, Diaclone, Dorvack, Jizai Gatti, GoBots, Macross, Mecha Warriors, Micro Change, Mysterians, Tobot, Toybox, ToyCo, Voltron, and many many many others. These usually involve the ability of a robot to shape-shift between an android (i.e., humanoid robot) form and either a vehicle form or an animal form.

At least in the time and places I grew up in and lived in, another popular form of shape-shifting in fiction is lycanthropy. Lycanthropy is the ability of a human (or humanoid) to shape-shift between a human form a wolf form, which is commonly known as a werewolf. (In fact, the label “werewolf” is probably better known than “lycanthropy”.)

A more general form of this is called therianthropy — the ability of a human (or humanoid) to shape-shift between a human form an animal form. In this case, the animal type is called the theriotype. (There are probably very few people who are familiar with the labels “therianthropy” and “theriotype”.)

It could be argued that therianthropy appears within our main story inspiration. In fact, it seems to be a fan favorite.

With our main story inspiration, we already have a precedence that — extreme feelings of emotion can bring about a physical transformation. With one story arc, a transformation was triggered by (what I assume were) extreme feelings of both anger, shock, sadness.

But what about the other emotions‽