Okay, so here's something I started writing this morning that I intended as a short story, but apparently kinda just turned into micro fiction instead. Heh, micro. ^_^ That's not directly referenced, but it is one of the many things on my mind whenever I start trying to kick around this particular story-ball of "everyone spontaneously gets unlimited shapeshifting powers. What do?"
Because it feels like there's so much story potential here! And wish fulfillment! But also, like, chaos, the absolute UNIMAGINABLE FALLOUT. And I'm over here like, "But what if we try to imagine it anyway?" So yeah. I don't know that this particular iteration is gonna go any further than where it's at, I kinda need more of a thread to trace than I currently have to take it anywhere, but it's an idea I keep coming back to, so I very much doubt I'm done with trying to come up with something a setting like this.
It was only a year ago that our world had utterly changed. In the span of twenty four hours, like a wave rippling over the planet, everyone had gained shapeshifting abilities. Unlimited shapeshifting abilities. It hadn't been obvious, at first, that that was what had happened. Some of us flowed between forms more readily than others, some of us were more inclined towards more drastically less human forms than others, or seemed to change more impulsively, more instinctively, than others. But once it became obvious that most people had been affected, then nearly everyone, then probably everyone but there were a few last, stubborn holdouts, the debates truly started.
Some stayed human, and that was fine, I supposed. Some settled on just one new form, others a myriad. Yet others changed small aspects every day, keeping to their old form mostly and only adding flourishes they varied like outfits. Everyone debated which choice was best. Everyone wondered how our world would grow as time went on, and more and more questions were posed and answered and re-answered. What would it be like for the ones being born who would only ever have known the new world?
Moreover, as people are wont to do, some tried to assert control over others' forms, by insisting it was only good and proper to stay human with no changes, or trying to stipulate what sort of changes should be allowed. "You shouldn't be allowed to be a dragon!" or "You shouldn't be allowed to be a fire hydrant!" Arguments, even demands, being made over the perceived ethical nature of the form, far apart from the individual's choices in said form.
Capitalism collapsed pretty quickly, which was a serious relief. So frankly I didn't see much but net gain for all involved. My friends and mates and I were all able to be our real selves, finally, and the world was restructuring. We would do our best to shove it towards a better, more compassionate, sustainable future.
I started writing this this morning more to start unpacking my relationship with my shapeshifting than to actually delve into this setting, though the setting I'd been trying to find a story for was one that would be an interesting backdrop for what I was trying to examine, and give me a good space to do said exploring in.
I'm probably doing myself a disservice limiting my shapeshifting as much as I do. But as much as I've observed that before...I haven't really been able to, heh, shift my thinking on it. I don't want to accept myself as a polymorph any more than I did when I was 12. I've had times I've done better and worse...but I don't like it. I like the stability of being Sonic, and the novelty of being both Sonic and my alicorn self. I don't want to take on more forms, or incorporate more True Forms into my understanding of my identity, or even really look at my gestalt forms.
Like, there's nothing wrong with any of it. But it leaves me feeling off-balance. Insecure. Like a faker. And I hate that. It's hard enough to not be yourself. It's even harder to be constantly questioning what that even is. And like, yeah, I guess there's no option for transitioning our bodies to our real selves right now, but once that starts to be an option, I can only assume that will be to one form. Choose wisely. I guess in some ways I'm trying to practice being just one thing. But it's also the Faker thing, and the stability thing. But yeah. Let's do this instead, I guess.
The ocean taught me years ago that the only way to keep the current from killing you is to ride with it calmly until it tosses you to a place you have a chance to catch a breath. Heh...I still can't believe no one realized I was nearly getting myself killed over trying to get a good look at the parrotfish out there. Chaos, they dumb. Not the fish.
I like that I'm impulsive. I like that I'll do dumb, sometimes dangerous things because it's fun...because that makes me feel more like myself. Like Sonic. And sometimes I feel so far away from that. I feel so stymied by my fear, or by what I need to do in any given situation, or just...out of touch with what makes me me. I have to be so perfectly calm, calming at work. I have to soothe the scared animals, and customers, and my co-workers. Chaos, even Boss Man, when I have to work with him. It sucks that I have to be unflappable, when...fuck yeah, I flap. I flap hard, bro.
It feels weird to be my hedgehog self, but with wings. It feels weird to get comfort from said wings. It feels weird to be my hedgehog self, and feral, and need to move quadrupedally...because since when does Sonic do that? But...also? It just feels right?
So I guess there's two issues. I don't like feeling comforted being out of an Established form because I need stability as well as novelty, and I don't like to deviate from this idea of Myself. Which, of course, is a super constraining way to be.
So yeah. I guess that's the crux of the issue right there.
Oh, but we're NOT DONE. Because I've avoided, even for myself, enumerating many of the different forms and combinations of forms (or what I assume is a way a combined form is expressing itself) for YEARS.
First up: Sonic. Sonic the Hedgehog. Hedgehog me. Baseline super fast hedgehog boy. I'm awesome, did I mention I'm fast, I'm sexy and hot, and I'm a superhero? I help people and protect them from villains, bad guys, fascists, and natural disasters. I'm fast, and I'm good, and I'm fun. I live for adventure, and I love my mates and my friends. And my home. I'm a living chaos emerald, not because I'm connected to the chaos emeralds the way Knux is connected to the Master Emerald, but because I'm connected to the Heart of Mobius like an emerald myself. I'm unsure on whether I should capitalize "chaos emerald" or not. I live a parallel life with myself, where our Mobius was put to sleep to help it heal from poisoning, and where it only recently woke, reverting all us back to our real selves, and leaving things in a bit of flux as we work out the new status quo, and how much of the old is coming forward, and how much of the timeline we borrowed from this world is coming with. It's a bit of a cluster fuck. But, yanno. It's Home.
Non-baseline hedgehog me, I guess? I think about this different depending on what shift I'm in, and a few hours ago I was alicorn, but right now I'm very hedgehog. It's pretty unpredictable, and can fluctuate wildly even in a single day. Or it can be solidly one or the other for months making me wonder if the whole shapeshifting thing was ever really A Thing, or if it was just temporary. Yeah, shit's whack. Mostly I've learned that's an incorrect impulse. So yeah. Hedgehog +? Hedgehog me but trans, hedgehog me but with alicorn parts, like horn, or wings, or hooves, or tail (or all of those). Probably other combinations, but it's hard to track, it being astral and not physical and all. And it's not really like any of it really feels super wrong (having a vag and no peen does, but yeah), but I do tend to push it aside sometimes, too. It's weird.
Alicorn me. Part of me wants to stop there, because my noemata is super sus and super not pleasant for this form. Plus it's hard to feel out what I even look like sometimes. I'm usually a colt, sometimes a weanling, sometimes more of a yearling. I can be as old as young adult, but often that takes exerting extra energy. ^_^;; Basically I'm an age slider, which isn't really something I've admitted before. I usually draw myself as medium blue with silver markings and mane and tail. My hoof and horn capsules appear to be this emerald crystalline material that's translucent enough to make out the underlying bone. Which is pretty cool. ^_^;; My first impression of it was basically, "Great. That clashes horribly," but it actually works alright, having made plenty of art of it. I'm still not sure of the placement of all my markings, there's some stuff that feels right, and stuff I'm guessing on. As far as that part of my life, abusive unicorn mom liked to punish members of her glory that stepped out of line by incarnating them as regular non-magical animals to live out a lifetime and then zap back to their unicorn body. Which is extremely cruel. In this life when I chanced into contacting her, she did her best to try and break me. It was bad. So while the form feels good and like me, it comes with a lot of baggage. Sometimes that's a relief, since it's a bit of a break from homesickness for Mobius, but it's not actually all that much better. Wheee, dysphoria. It was really hilarious that I knew my unicorn self was male for so long without accepting myself as a trans boy. (Which I didn't do until I Awakened as Sonic)
Next up we start to get into some of the forms I'm more hesitant with. Like, I do have a feral hedgehog form, and a feral silver fox form, and I can take on a hedgehog-fox-hybrid form...but like, my relation to those forms is more uncertain. Like, I usually think of my feral hedgehog, or even hedgefox form as kinda interstitial between my hedgehog and alicorn selves, since it seems to be kinda the balance between the two, while still being a complete form unto itself? Shit gets messy here. But like, the fox form I've fallen into several times, or been in dreams, and while it's a pretty natural form for me, it's not one I end up in very frequently, or for very long. IDK, I don't know a lot about what these forms are, or how I should relate to them, and don't really have an understanding of where they fit into my personal story, or how. They're just there, being confusing. I don't know whether they're even "True Forms" I have or not--whether they're just something I ended up doing aesthetically, or what.
Then we're gonna start working backwards through forms that popped up while I was going through a pretty long period of a lot of trauma, since apparently a lot of forms were just popping up at that time, possibly as a coping tool. IDK, shit's weird. Like, they don't feel like soulbonds, and I didn't intentionally craft them or anything, they're very much involuntary. Near as I can figure, they're more or less past lives that would otherwise have just been past lives, nothing to do with current life except that they happened, but trauma required me to pull lessons back from them to get through. That's my working theory, anyway, I could be entirely wrong.
And yeah, I also haven't ruled out the whole, "Being more multiple than I realized," thing. But if that is the case we end up so co-conscious when fronting that there's no real respite? And having everyone ready to tag in, if that's more of what's really going on with our shifting, doesn't actually give anyone a real respite to come in fresh. Like, I've definitely noticed that I need to re-learn or re-teach myself a skill when a new form pops up or becomes very dominant after a long time out of the driver's seat/flow, which does put some tally marks in the "more multiple" column, but mostly it seems like we're so median it almost makes no nevermind from us being singlet and shifting. Shit's weird.
Working backward we'll stop over at my rabbit/pooka form, which I spent some time in before cycling back to being Sonic as my main form. This form was definitely influenced by my soulbonds with a Bunnymund from Rise of the Guardians and Bugs Bunny, and no I will not be taking questions at this time.
Next up we've got my toon roadrunner form, a dusty green and purple roadrunner of "adolescent" age. Like, midway between The Roadrunner from the Wile E. Coyote and Roadrunner cartoons, and Little Beeper from Tiny Toons. I don't think I have much finished art from when this form was dominant posted? I drew it a lot in my sketchbook, but yeah, that was mostly pen sketches. I know I posted some stuff, but a lot of it would've been buried or moved to scraps.
Directly before that was my Rev Runner from Loonatics Unleashed period. My memory starts to get sketchy between forms sometimes, and I really wasn't my hedgehog or alicorn self very much during the period that this was really ascendant, so some of the memories I might not be able to touch without forcing a shift--which, yanno, I can do, but it's not usually the best or healthiest idea. The balance I have going on right now has been enough to deal with, I also don't want to risk a hard or long shift to this form, where I need to stay in it for a long time. Anyway, this form is where my "past lives maybe," theory really started to come out, because I had a Real bad dream the Loonatics, my team, all died and I couldn't save them...but I think it was really that I died? Shit's weird, bro.
Moving on. Idk, Pokemon now, I guess. I had two Pokemon forms, Lucario and Mew, Idk, it is what it is, I don't know how and why anything. No noema for either of these forms/lives, though I did come to believe that my Mew shift was mostly to shove at me the whole New Beginnings and Hope thing that Mew represents. Which I know is vague, don't worry, it's always vague. Also, Of Course Mew is a Pokemon with shapeshifting abilities, what the hell do you take me for. My alicorn form also has shapeshifting and transformational abilities, so do pookas, and so do foxes in a lot of folklore. We're drowning in TF up ins, it's not actually surprising. ^_^ TFs and chaos, my brand.
^_^;; So yeah, that's everything, unless I'm forgetting something, in which case it's not. Gonna table this for now, because all of this makes me feel deeply uncomfortable, and I hate talking about it. And it's 2 am.
EDIT: Okay, let's add one more, since I went through all this old art anyway.
If we're gonna include my fox form(s), we might as well toss in Tsuki, my first fursona, which I definitely was in some sort of shift of most of the way through high school and into college. Whether what I was feeling was actually other forms and me misinterpreting what I was feeling, or what kinda doesn't even matter at this point? But it is part of why I didn't initially include her in this list. Tsuki is from the Japanese for moon, and has a moon marking on her forehead--which is something I think my alicorn form has. She's a fox, and yeah. Kinda needed at least some sort of honorable mention.