1. Adam Bolander

    Adam Bolander Senior Member

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    Cool concept for shapeshifters?

    Discussion in 'Setting Development' started by Adam Bolander, Apr 4, 2021.

    I have an interesting idea I want to implement into the shapeshifter story I'm working on. I'd appreciate some opinions on it.

    The idea is that there is a race of shapeshifters who can change between human and animal forms, plus another form that's a mixture of the two. Each shifter is limited to one animal. They live in the wilds, switching between animal and half-form. They usually avoid interacting with humans, or even taking human form at all, but will do so if they have to.

    Now, there are three classes of these shifters, based on how they were conceived and born. There are manborn, where the shifter has a child with a human partner (usually without the human ever knowing). There are wildborn, where the shifter goes into animal form, finds another animal of the same species (not a shifter) and has a child with them. Then there are pureborn, both of whose parents are shifters. Pureborns are rare because the shifters themselves are somewhat rare, and the two shifters have to share the same animal they turn into to have a child. Manborns tend to display more openly human characteristics and a willingness to take human form and live among them. Wildborns are the opposite, having more animalistic traits and being more openly hostile to humanity. Pureborns are considered the ideal balance between human and animal, able to live happily in either setting—although, for reasons explored in the story, shifters have lived separated from humanity for several thousand years, and when one chooses to live with humans it's considered a betrayal and they're banished from the wilds forever.
     
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  2. Xoic

    Xoic Prognosticator of Arcana Ridiculosum Contributor Blogerator

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    Sounds pretty cool to me. I don't recall ever seeing anything like it before, but I don't read about shapeshifters often.
     
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  3. SapereAude

    SapereAude Contributor Contributor

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    What is "half-form"?

    It is, indeed, a novel concept. All my exposure to the notion of shape shifters has left me with the impression that they are humans who can take on the form of animals. I've never considered the opposite.
     
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  4. Adam Bolander

    Adam Bolander Senior Member

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    The half human, half animal form. Fur, claws, tail, and all that stuff, but walks on two legs, has opposable thumbs, etc.
     
  5. Adam Bolander

    Adam Bolander Senior Member

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    Another thing I want to do with them is their Instincts. Some shifters have special powers they call Instincts that are somehow related to the animal they turn into. The main character turns into a goat, and her Instinct is that she can eat anything and then convert it into instant healing energy. The villain is a deer, and he can grow his antlers into whatever shape he wants and then detach them to use as weapons. Another character turns into a moth, and he has the power to see into the future like the Mothman legend.
     
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  6. SapereAude

    SapereAude Contributor Contributor

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    You didn't mention that before, and I have never heard of such in association with shape shifters. It's your world, of course, so you can create whatever you wish, but I don't see even a small hint of this type of half-and-half creature in the descriptions you posted about the three classes of shape shifters.
     
  7. Xoic

    Xoic Prognosticator of Arcana Ridiculosum Contributor Blogerator

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    We've all seen it many times:
    [​IMG]
     
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  8. SapereAude

    SapereAude Contributor Contributor

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    ^^^ That would presuppose someone who watches movies or (ugh!) television.
     
  9. Naomasa298

    Naomasa298 HP: 10/190 Status: Confused Contributor

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  10. Adam Bolander

    Adam Bolander Senior Member

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    Weird thought here, but...does it make sense to anyone else that most manborns would have shifter mothers and wildborns would have shifter fathers? Keep in mind, even when they have children with a human, they don't want the humans to know they exist. It's easier for a woman to get pregnant and then vanish than it would be for a man to wait until the baby is born and then essentially kidnap it, never to be seen again, before it shapeshifts in front of its mother. Likewise, if an animal gives birth to your child, it might be confused when it suddenly turns into a human, but it isn't going to go blabbing to the news about it.
     
  11. SapereAude

    SapereAude Contributor Contributor

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    Why does it have to make sense? It's your world. You write the rules. If them's the rules, then it makes sense according to the rules.
     
  12. Adam Bolander

    Adam Bolander Senior Member

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    I don't like using the "because I said so" excuse. Even if the world I'm writing doesn't operate by the same rules as ours, the logic still has to be recognizable to my readers if I want them to identify with it and the people living in it.
     
  13. SapereAude

    SapereAude Contributor Contributor

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    I respectfully disagree. Anne McCaffrey spent 30+ years writing about telepathic dragons who are capable of teleportation and time travel. There is no logic to that -- that's the story, and she wrote the story well (in an entire series of 25 or so books). If the story is well-written and the reader can identify with the characters, I submit that the story doesn't have to be inherently logical. It only has to be [mostly] consistent with itself and its own rules.

    You don't have to "explain" it. You just write it according to whatever rules you have put in place and the readers accept it.

    Look at Superman. The basic story is that he came from a high-grav planet. Fine. That could explain logically how he might have more strength than an earthling, and it could allow him to jump higher and maybe run faster than an earthling. But fly? Fast enough to travel back through time? Breathe in outer space? Not logical -- it simply requires that the reader/viewer suspend belief in order to enjoy the story.
     
    Last edited: Apr 12, 2021
  14. John McNeil

    John McNeil Active Member

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    Our actual universe has some "because I said so" limitations (speed of light and a handful of other fundamental constants). A written universe is no different. I can accept anything that is coherent within the story as long as its quirks are shared in a sensible fashion. There is no use writing a character into a corner only to reveal the walls become insubstantial on the third night of Feb, which allows him to escape. That should be a quirk explained much earlier in the book. The actual mechanisms of how and why can be fun and interesting to work through for the author and reader but I don't think they are necessary.
     
  15. Naomasa298

    Naomasa298 HP: 10/190 Status: Confused Contributor

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    Originally, Superman could only jump very high rather than fly...
     
  16. Naomasa298

    Naomasa298 HP: 10/190 Status: Confused Contributor

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    There are stories out there where vampires have children. Well, why does that make sense at all? Vampires are supposed to be dead. Dead bodies don't produce sperm or have any other biological processes ongoing that can produce children. So yeah, it works because the author says it does.

    There's a reason these things are called fiction. The only thing that matters is that stories are internally consistent, and even that doesn't matter all that much if executed in a clever way.
     
  17. ruskaya

    ruskaya Contributor Contributor

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    I think that the issue is not about how strange or improbable a rule is, but that any rule is stated clearly right at the beginning (sort of) and followed consistently. If you have throughout a story a pureborn who has certain kinds of powers other types cannot have; and then at some point of the story a shifter who is not a pureborn actually has similar powers, so that those two can fight on equal terms and make that scene more interesting, then that is just convenient (a rule that popped in the middle of the book without warning or setup). I personally find the idea of the deer-villain who detaches its antlers into any weapon she wants rather improbable, but I just read about it here, you can persuade me to read on once you show me the rules for it to happen, and make me say "that makes so much sense (within the story world)!". It is the consistency that matters, that you are not cheating the readers. At least that is how I feel about it as reader.

    To a certain degree I would say that, generally speaking, randomness is boring within a story.
     
  18. SapereAude

    SapereAude Contributor Contributor

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    How originally? I'm 77 years old. The Superman in the comic books I was buying 70+ years ago could fly, and the bit about flying backwards through time appeared in one of those comics looooooong before it made it into one of the recent Superman movies. The Superman in the 1950s television series starring George Reeves could fly.
     
  19. John McNeil

    John McNeil Active Member

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    He started flying in the 1940s right after the creation of the Fleischer films. This was because it became difficult to show him leaping from place to place. The Fleischer films used a form of rotoscoping and many of Superman's actions had to be drawn by animators because they couldn't be rotoscoped at the time. It was easier to show him flying than leaping.

    His powers when he first appeared in Action Comics #1 in 1939 were:

    • Leaping one-eight of a mile
    • Nothing less than a bursting shell could penetrate his skin
    • Strong enough to lift an automobile of the time, cleanly over his head
    • He had no superhuman visions, senses or ranged abilities
    • Depending on what you read, all Kryptonians might have had similar powers on Krypton and were a race of genetically advanced humanoids

    Or so I heard... https://scifi.stackexchange.com/questions/92821/when-did-superman-stop-leaping-and-start-flying
     
  20. Xoic

    Xoic Prognosticator of Arcana Ridiculosum Contributor Blogerator

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    If you remember the old Superman cartoons, it's in the opening.
    "Able to leap tall buildings in a single bound."

    Here:


    It's weird, because at the very beginning he's flying all around the sky, but then they say he's able to leap tall buildings. A bit of overlap going on, he can already fly but they haven't changed the wording from the original.
     
  21. Naomasa298

    Naomasa298 HP: 10/190 Status: Confused Contributor

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    1938, or thereabouts.
     
  22. Adam Bolander

    Adam Bolander Senior Member

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    Guys, if you want to talk about Superman, please start your own thread.
     
  23. SapereAude

    SapereAude Contributor Contributor

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    Sorry -- natural thread drift. It relates to your question, though. The point is that readers/viewers are generally willing to suspend belief to some extent regarding technical issues in order to follow the story.
     
  24. hyacinthe

    hyacinthe Banned

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    So. Um.

    Have you ever played Werewolf: The Apocalypse?
     
  25. Adam Bolander

    Adam Bolander Senior Member

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    No. I've heard they just released a video game about it, but that's it.
     

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