Template:Featured Articles/19-2025

Moment of Awesome - Jessie Drake/Chameleon: Jessie and Sharon S. share perspectives as two very different kinds of shapeshifters. "I appreciate she was given no 'true' form," Sharon continued. "Such assumptions plagued me also. Preferred forms were had, but she changed always, subject to mood or situation. This is my experience also." "Right? I've seen people online talk about how the form she used in the movie was obviously her 'real' form, but it wasn't really. We saw a thousand years earlier that she had a different form she preferred when she was friends with Gloreth. And she still used it a couple times in the present day." "Such a form did not exist until humans were encountered. Always she was herself, translated into another species only." Sharon leaned back and stretched her arms over her head, arching her back with lazy flexibility. "This is my wish also. Still I toil to attain shapeshifting beyond my four forms. Yours is the potential to select from many more. Within human parameters," she clarified, which in her opinion was an important distinction. Shapeshifting without the ability to jump onto a different branch of the evolutionary tree seemed rather limited. She straightened and studied Jessie curiously. "Features and pigmentation change based on personal affinity. Does protective camouflage occur also? When space is predominantly male, or majority non-white, maybe." "I could maybe do something like that?" Jessie tilted her head, thinking. "So like - it's not for protection or anything, but the face you see right now is all kind of subtly changed. When I first manifested, my face liked to change to match my mother's features more than my father's, probably because of gender preferences, so if I preferred blending in... I've never changed my skin color, though." "It would be the most useful. Adaptive camouflage. But unsure of your level of intentionality?" Carelessly, Sharon dropped to the floor and wrapped her arms around her knees so she could gaze up at the shorter girl like a kindergartener at story time. "Instinctive reorientation towards gender preferences, this is interesting to me. Assumption is always that shapeshifting conceals, but this is lies. For us it reveals." Jessie marked her place in the book and rolled so she was on her stomach, looking down at Sharon. "I never really thought about it like that. I've always felt like I'm kind of cheating, especially as a trans person, because most people can't just think and make their face look the way they want it to look - and believe me, trans people would kill for an ability like that. But I can hide the parts of myself that I don't like. But who I am underneath the changes isn't really me either. It's my 'default' form I guess, but it's not who I am." Sharon moved her head in a short, dismissive jerk. "Is not hiding if it is our nature. Our flesh is not fixed. Therefore, all forms are equally ours. Why should we not choose the expression that best suits us? Is this not 'mutant pride'?" Jessie perked up a little. When Sharon put it that way... "Yeah, I suppose it is. Using our powers to choose the face we show the world, right?" "Felicia says that a different face is different armor," said Sharon matter-of-factly. "A projection of who you are that day. This is truth. Felicia is the most wise." "Is Felicia also a cat person?" Jessie asked, tilting her head. "That sounds like a cat name." Sharon's nod was solemn, but her eyes shone. "Felicia is the most Cat of humans. She has taught me much of shapeshifting without shapeshifting using clothing and makeup only. She has claws also, though they are made of metal. Even her disadvantages become strength." The girl hugged her tail to her chest with remembered excitement. "I fought at her side. She took the lives of two men with a dumpster." "She..." Jessie blinked a few times, trying to parse all of that. She thought she had been following pretty well until they got to the part about the dumpster. "Is that a metaphor or did she really kill people with a dumpster? No judgment, I'm sure they deserved it. Just curious." The ailuromorph considered this. "Yes," she said at last. "You have shared with me your knowledge of Nimona. This debt shall be repaid." Sharon dropped her tail, straightened her spine, and nodded to herself. "I shall tell you of Felicia Hardy."