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Perpetually Protean
- 218 statements
- 38 feature instances
- 27 referencing feature instances
| Perpetually Protean | type |
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Some shapeshifters just can't sit still. In most depictions of Voluntary Shapeshifting, the power is usually left idle until needed while the character goes about their daily lives in a single Shapeshifter Default Form; at the very least, they only make use of this power to take a single form per occasion. However, some shapeshifters have this power in use all the time, shifting wildly from form to form over the course of a scene, perhaps due to Power Incontinence or simply due to personal taste. In the case of individuals who constantly shapeshift by choice, characters with this brand of shapeshifting tend to have few (if any) drawbacks to using their powers and may possess bizarre personalities to match their constantly-changing bodies — from the harmlessly eccentric to the unabashedly mischievous. Some may even possess utterly alien viewpoints as a result of their powers, and rarely ever return to their true form — if they even have one. If their shapeshifting is involuntary, however, they may not have a choice in returning to their true form. In more fortunate cases, something may trigger their shapeshifting, such as people's perception of them. In the absolute worst-case scenario, their bodies may simply shift wildly without any obvious cause/trigger, and this can be played either for drama or laughs. Whatever the case, the shapeshifter is either unable or unwilling to retain a single form for very long — unless absolutely necessary. A possible hallmark of the Blob Monster. Compare Shapeshifter Showdown, which is essentially this trope utilized in combat, Shapeshifter Showoff Session, and Randomized Transformation. Contrast Shapeshifter Swan Song, which usually only happens when the shapeshifter is either horribly wounded or dying, and Shapeshifter Mode Lock, where the shapeshifter is unable to change at all. And no, this has nothing to do with being Prothean, you stupid primitives! |
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Dropped link to AscendToAHigherPlaneOfExistence: Not an Item - FEATURE | |
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Dropped link to DungeonCrawlStoneSoup: Not an Item - UNKNOWN | |
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Dropped link to FrancoBelgianComics: Not an Item - CAT | |
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| Perpetually Protean / int_18d2338d | type |
Perpetually Protean | |
| Perpetually Protean / int_18d2338d | comment |
Undercover police officers in A Scanner Darkly are required to exist in an electronic version of this state: in order to protect their identities while on official business in public or at headquarters, they wear full-body "scramble suits" that constantly cycle their appearances through a million and a half fractal identities — noses, eyes, mouths, etc. Consequently, the wearer is impossible to identify and is said to resemble a "vague blur." | |
| Perpetually Protean / int_18d2338d | featureApplicability |
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| A Scanner Darkly | hasFeature |
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| Perpetually Protean / int_2ae911a3 | type |
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| Perpetually Protean / int_2ae911a3 | comment |
In some editions of Warhammer, according to White Dwarf, champions of Tzeentch can earn the gift of a protean form: characters with this ability are perpetually mutating and warping beyond recognition, constantly becoming more unusual, more attractive or more nightmarish. Though quite useless for disguise, it's very handy in combat for the Healing Factor it confers on the bearer. | |
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| White Dwarf (Magazine) | hasFeature |
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| Perpetually Protean / int_2dcfb6cb | type |
Perpetually Protean | |
| Perpetually Protean / int_2dcfb6cb | comment |
Nethack often has rings of polymorph, usually a Cursed Item, which gives a 1% change per turn for the player turning into a randomly selected creature. It's undesirable unless it can be controlled (e.g. using a Ring of polymorph control), or if used at low level as a means to gamble. | |
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| NetHack (Video Game) | hasFeature |
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| Perpetually Protean / int_30d9627b | type |
Perpetually Protean | |
| Perpetually Protean / int_30d9627b | comment |
Following the trip to Milliways in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (1978), the heroes end up unwittingly stealing the flagship of a death fleet owned by the Haggunenons, an alien race whose bodies are in a state of constant and barely-controlled evolutionary flux as a result of having "The most impatient chromosomes of any lifeform in the galaxy". This instability has rendered them extremely resentful of all non-shapeshifter lifeforms and not above launching unprovoked military strikes on the "samelings." Thankfully, Zaphod and Trillian end up accidentally tricking the Haggunenons into thinking that they are both the admiral of the fleet in different forms. Unfortunately, the admiral is already on board, having fallen asleep in the form of Zaphod's chair — and is not at all amused. | |
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| Perpetually Protean / int_38c57aa2 | type |
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| Perpetually Protean / int_38c57aa2 | comment |
The changelings of Eberron shapeshift as instinctively as breathing, and some might shift their appearance multiple times in the span of a single conversation in order to punctuate their statements, or simply on a whim. | |
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| Perpetually Protean / int_42ffb88e | type |
Perpetually Protean | |
| Perpetually Protean / int_42ffb88e | comment |
SCP Foundation: SCP-7955 is a shapeshifter who is gradually losing control of his powers thanks to dementia. Consequently, the final stage of his condition features him being unable to hold a single shape at any time, leaving him constantly shifting from form to form even when he's asleep. It's so bad that Foundation staff have given up on trying to dress him, because he'll just grow or shrink out of whatever he's wearing, and in order to feed him, they have to aim a spoon into one of the many mouths he continuously sprouts and hope that he has enough of a stomach to digest it. | |
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| Perpetually Protean / int_547f3f50 | type |
Perpetually Protean | |
| Perpetually Protean / int_547f3f50 | comment |
From The LEGO Movie 2: The Second Part, Queen Watevra Wa'Nabi is not a minifig but made entirely of LEGO bricks. If at first she appears as a horse for a Bait-and-Switch, she soon enough demonstrates her shapeshifting power constantly, and in fact it is how she moves around. Especially during her Most Definitely Not a Villain Song, "Not Evil", where she transforms for about every verse. | |
| Perpetually Protean / int_547f3f50 | featureApplicability |
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| The LEGO Movie 2: The Second Part | hasFeature |
Perpetually Protean / int_547f3f50 | |
| Perpetually Protean / int_5d354f8 | type |
Perpetually Protean | |
| Perpetually Protean / int_5d354f8 | comment |
Red Dwarf features this in play whenever a Polymorph shows up; when not taking on forms designed to provoke emotions from its victims, it shapeshifts wildly into a huge variety of different bodies for the simple act of travelling down a corridor, only retaining a stable shape when it needs to remain hidden. | |
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| Perpetually Protean / int_68237790 | type |
Perpetually Protean | |
| Perpetually Protean / int_68237790 | comment |
Chaos Beasts from Pathfinder have no set form except a single eye and a maw with More Teeth than the Osmond Family. They shapeshift every turn and are actually immune to Forced Transformation of any stripe, including flesh to stone and the like. | |
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| Perpetually Protean / int_6ac55ec7 | type |
Perpetually Protean | |
| Perpetually Protean / int_6ac55ec7 | comment |
Dungeons & Dragons: Chaos beasts, fittingly for creatures from the Ever-Changing Chaos of Limbo, are amorphous monsters constantly shifting into new forms. This makes them immune to any Forced Transformation or magic like flesh to stone, but they avert Shapeshifter Weapon by having two puny attacks per round no matter how many muscles or claws they have at the moment. Their real danger is that their condition is contagious, causing those they attack to mutate and melt and roil until their sanity drains away and they become a new chaos beast. From the 3rd Edition Monster Manual II, the grimalkin is a shapeshifter whose true form is a large blue-gray housecat, but which can turn into any animal close in size. Their chosen form depends on the situation, but in combat, they will change shape every round to confuse the opponent and make it difficult to adopt a strategy. One of the many monsters featured in the Epic Level Handbook is the hagunemnon, a pretty obvious Shout-Out to the Haggunenons of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (1978). Like their inspiration, they are constantly taking on new shapes and possess a xenophobic hatred of all non-shapeshifters. More worryingly, they are known to travel extensively in search of new shapes to copy — and they prefer to kill their targets once they've finished acquiring their forms. Their talents allow them to mix and match body parts from multiple creatures to create some truly dangerous attack options, but the problem is, since they're constantly changing shape, they have to spend a move action each turn to keep the form they were in the previous round. The Homebrew Shapeshifter Class can eventually achieve this state: at the 20th level, the power of transformation is always active and the Shapeshifter becomes "an amorphous, mutating wonder" capable of casually taking on any form for any duration of time at the drop of a hat. For good measure, the Shapeshifter's ceaselessly protean nature allows players to flow through narrow gaps and manacles like water, regenerate or resist a huge range of injuries, and cease aging altogether. The changelings of Eberron shapeshift as instinctively as breathing, and some might shift their appearance multiple times in the span of a single conversation in order to punctuate their statements, or simply on a whim. |
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| Perpetually Protean / int_705bb59a | type |
Perpetually Protean | |
| Perpetually Protean / int_705bb59a | comment |
Vampire: The Masquerade: In the Gehenna event book, the Withering of vampire blood begins to have some rather unusual effects on the Tzimisce Clan: more specifically, in the scenario "Fair Is Foul," Vicissitude becomes simultaneously more powerful and significantly harder to control, prompting random displays of mutation in both the wielders and their targets. Towards the end, Tzimisce may lose their ability to maintain a single shape for even the briefest period of time, constantly sprouting new claws, tentacles, jaws, and eyeballs; as a result, breaking the Masquerade becomes practically inevitable. In another Gehenna scenario, "The Crucible Of God," the Tzimisce Antediluvian manifests as a gigantic blob of ever-changing flesh, constantly sculpting itself new appendages or sprouting secondary bodies to attack or feed. |
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| Perpetually Protean / int_7203e5dd | comment |
Sinbad: Legend of the Seven Seas has Eris, the Goddess of Discord. She's a somewhat downplayed example in that she does stay looking like a purple-skinned human most of the time, but her hair, her dress, and sometimes even her fingertips are constantly drifting around like smoke, and she's very casual about changing her size, often shifting from human-sized to kaiju-sized and back mid-conversation. | |
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| Perpetually Protean / int_76d1299a | comment |
In Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets, the shapeshifting burlesque dancer Bubble introduces herself in a performance that features her adopting a wide variety of fetishistic styles; even once the show's over, she reveals a habit of transforming on a whim until a standoff with Valerian forces her to revert to her true form. Justified, as she's an entertainer. | |
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| Perpetually Protean / int_80f6701b | comment |
The God of Animals in the RWBY: Fairy Tales of Remnant, "the Shallow Sea", is described as constantly shifting into a new animal or combination of animals every passing moment. The god can hold a shape for a long period of time, but it feels uncomfortable and unnatural to do so. | |
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| Perpetually Protean / int_810d4160 | comment |
Morph of Exiles is essentially a wisecracking Blob Monster with the power to transform into just about anything. Thanks to his hyperactive demeanor and childish sense of humor, he rarely retains a single look from frame to frame, regularly changing his face, his build, his costume, his gender and his species at the drop of a hat. Plus, he's in the habit of doing it both in combat and in simple conversation. Needless to say, if he's seen remaining in a single form for long periods of time, he's either in disguise or the situation has gotten very grim. | |
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| Perpetually Protean / int_93356177 | type |
Perpetually Protean | |
| Perpetually Protean / int_93356177 | comment |
With Apologies to Harlan Ellison features the Administrator subjecting the Team Fortress 2 team to decades of torture a la I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream. Apparently despising Spy worst of all, she inflicts the worst fate on him by making him into a real shapeshifter: not only is he perpetually transforming and unable to control it, but the constant process of growing, shrinking, expanding, contracting melting and morphing causes him agonizing pain — to the point that he avoids walking because his legs break and reset with every step. Also, making eye contact with him is extremely difficult, for not only is his face changing constantly into everything from Richard Nixon to Frank Sinatra, but his eyes are described as "runny." | |
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Perpetually Protean | |
| Perpetually Protean / int_9d963831 | comment |
In the Septimus Heap books, shapeshifters end up spending more time in a state of transformation the older and more powerful they get — to the point that they soon find themselves forced to spend less and less time in their natural form before they absolutely must turn into something else. And eventually, they always end up stuck in one specific form and unable to ever change again; Septimus' own shapeshifter grandfather ended up stuck as a sentient tree, and his granduncle settled on being a storm petrel. | |
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| Perpetually Protean / int_a04c736b | comment |
In the Thieves' World series, arch-wizard Enas Yorl is under a curse that makes him shape-change without any control at all. In some stories he changes shape all at once and then holds each new shape for a while; in others, his shape is always changing, a little bit at a time. | |
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| Perpetually Protean / int_a5b96841 | type |
Perpetually Protean | |
| Perpetually Protean / int_a5b96841 | comment |
Mortasheen: The garbage-type Decompoglob never stops mutating, sometimes to the point of spontaneously decaying into a heap of mush and regenerating back to normal. Less pleasantly, it's prone to cause mutation in others as well: its tissues are highly infectious and often cause those around it to sprout fish heads. The Ectozyme's body is constantly shapeshifting and is prone to absorbing anyone or anything it makes contact with; consequently, mimicries of past victims may occasionally be seen emerging from its body, though they are quickly reabsorbed and replaced by new appendages. Its only consistent features are its udders — which leak a noxious fluid that causes instant random mutation in anyone touching it. |
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| Perpetually Protean / int_aabf6d1d | comment |
In the first Darkest Dungeon, one of the bosses of the Warrens is the aptly named Formless Flesh. It's a big pile of semi-living demon-possessed pig bodies that's constantly shifting and mutating — in game terms, it's a set of four body parts that share a life bar and shift into one of several different forms at the start of every round. | |
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Skullgirls has Double, a Blob Monster who often serves as an in-universe justification for the occasional Mirror Match. In her true form, she is a constantly writhing mass of grotesque flesh, rarely staying in one form long and often switching between the appearances of other characters to use their attacks as her own. It's not unusual to see half the cast show up in her combos. | |
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| Perpetually Protean / int_aeb84363 | comment |
The Ghost of Christmas Past from A Christmas Carol is described as shifting constantly between various humanoid forms, most notably having a fluctuating number of limbs and somehow managing to look like a child and an old man at the exact same time. Allegedly, the description was so mind-bendingly weird that Dickens' illustrator at the time didn't even try to draw it, making it the only ghost in the cast to not have been illustrated by him. | |
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| Perpetually Protean / int_bb8d2f1a | comment |
In The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, the Haggunenons of Vicissitus Three possess the most impatient chromosomes in the galaxy, meaning that evolve into new forms at the drop of a hat. This is terribly inconvenient in their daily lives; if a Hagguenon can't reach their coffee mug, they will immediately mutate into a form with long enough limbs... but their new body will probably not be able to actually drink the coffee. Because of this, they harbor serious Fantastic Racism towards those who do not shapeshift; it's mostly jealousy, but they justify it by saying that as they have personally experienced what it's like to be every race in the galaxy, leaving them in good positions to appreciate their worst points. | |
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Josh Crayton from Welcome to Night Vale is a shapeshifter whose appearance keeps changing unpredictably because of his fluctuating emotions, though he has enough control over his powers to sometimes change into older-looking people so he can cut class. | |
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Warhammer and Warhammer 40,000: Chaos Spawn are wandering masses of ever-shifting organs, limbs, and perpetually-warping flesh, most commonly created when a Chaos champion or mutant receives too many "rewards" from their patron god, causing their bodies to collapse into an unending series of random mutations. Reduced to feral madness by the experience, Chaos Spawn will eventually die from their condition as the Chaotic energy mutating will quite literally rip them apart — though most tend to die in battle first. In some editions of Warhammer, according to White Dwarf, champions of Tzeentch can earn the gift of a protean form: characters with this ability are perpetually mutating and warping beyond recognition, constantly becoming more unusual, more attractive or more nightmarish. Though quite useless for disguise, it's very handy in combat for the Healing Factor it confers on the bearer. As one of the greatest of Tzeentch's daemons, the Changeling is capable of taking any form imaginable in order to advance his many pranks and schemes. However, according to his fellow daemons, he's changed so many times that he's long since forgotten his original appearance: whenever he appears undisguised, he wears a hooded cloak to hide the fact that he's constantly cycling through different forms in a desperate attempt to rediscover his old self — or so the rumors claim. |
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| Perpetually Protean / int_c346fa94 | comment |
Warlock of the New Mutants is a techno-organic being that exists in a constant state of transformation; lacking a default form, he instead alters his body to fit the situation at hand — meaning almost always — often demonstrating a wacky, anarchic sense of style in the process. This results in much hilarity when Warlock runs into Impossible Man and ends up in an argument with him, both of them shapeshifting on autopilot as they get angrier and angrier until the confrontation turns into an epic Shapeshifter Showdown. | |
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A hallmark of Darklord Amon in The Nekropolis Archives: as the king of the city's Shapeshifters, he can transform in ways that most werefolk can only dream of. His introductory scene features him transforming into a different shape on almost every page, each one concerned with hunting in some way — an English foxhunter, a gun-toting redneck, a fur-trapper, a prehistoric hunter... | |
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Downplayed in Captain Britain: A Crooked World. When Mad Jim Jaspers finally unveils himself as the Reality Warper behind the ongoing apocalypse, his hat keeps changing to fit his mood — and given how demented Jaspers is, he ends up wearing something new on every single panel. Later played straight in the case of his main universe counterpart — who in one scene shapeshifts from a giant-sized version of himself, his ordinary size, The Grim Reaper, the Devil, a stereotypical Sadist Teacher, and a farmer driving a combine harvester. | |
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Raggedy Ann & Andy: A Musical Adventure: One of the stranger characters featured is the Greedy, a huge shapeshifting blob of taffy and other confections so massive he counts as a landscape unto himself. Always hungry, the Greedy is constantly shaping his mass into new desserts and eating himself, or sculpting himself into an almost-human body before melting back into the ooze — usually while eating something. | |
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In Secret Invasion, as the Skrull goddess of change, Sl'gur't never stays in the same form for more than a few seconds. | |
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She-Ra and the Princesses of Power: While perfectly capable of remaining in a single form if they choose, Double Trouble has a habit of switching between forms while delivering breaking speeches to people in order to add a certain punch to a line delivery. | |
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The Genie from Aladdin transforms constantly, usually to impersonate various real-life celebrities but also changing his size and shape in other ways — from objects to animals to other humans; sometimes this is for specific practical purposes, but usually just for the sake of a gag (he's played by Robin Williams after all). He tamps down on it for the more serious scenes, though. | |
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Hellblazer: Dangerous Habits reveals that the Third of the Fallen AKA Beelzebub exists in this state: unlike the First and the Second, he is constantly transforming into different shapes, often taking wildly different forms from panel to panel. In this first appearance alone, he appears as a Blob Monster, a flaming serpent, a floating brain with eyeballs, an armoured warrior, a skeleton, Elvis Presley, and many more — though it's later revealed he's capable of disguising himself for long periods of time if need be as John Constantine's friend Seth finds out the hard way. For this reason, he's known as the Lord of a Billion Faces. | |
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Our Little Adventure: Quizmalia, the Lady of Fate and Fortune, is Chaotic Neutral Trickster Goddess that appears in Julie's dream. She has a basic shape, that a tall woman with "palm tree hair" (granting her the nickname of "Palm Tree Ghost" when all that could be seen of her was her darkened silhouette), but beyond that her appearance never stay the same from panel to panel. All of her colors keep switching, including gaining multicolored hair at times, and her skin goes through all coloration (even turning transparent one time). The details of her garments varies greatly too, often asymmetrically, her clothes even disappearing once (and she uses her hat as a Hand-or-Object Underwear). Not to mention other physical attributes, like suddenly growing a tail or a second pair of arms, or her face momentarily replacing her midriff. | |
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In the Lone Wolf series (and its spin-off World of Lone Wolf), the Chaos-master is an Eldritch Abomination that is pretty much chaos personified. As such, its appearance is that of a vaguely humanoid giant composed of the many parts of various animals... which keeps moving and changing shape unceasingly. | |
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Fantastic Four: Character Impossible Man has a particular flair for this. A cosmic Attention Whore with the powers of both reality-manipulation and shapeshifting, he can turn into literally anything from inanimate objects to all-powerful threats to humanity, his only limitation being the inability to change colors. Combined with his low tolerance for boredom, this often results in him shapeshifting on a near-constant basis, unless of course he's gotten more interested in futzing with the nature of reality. Case in point: his meeting with the Silver Surfer in Rebirth of Thanos, in which he spends almost every single frame turning into something new — much to the Surfer's annoyance. Downplayed but definitely present in Mr. Fantastic himself. Reed is only a rubber man, but he has absolutely no qualms about using his power to the absolute in Mundane Utility. Anyone else would spin around? Reed twists his neck. |
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Odyssey of the Dragonlords: Legends disagree on the exact height of the titan Kentimane because his form is always shifting. | |
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The Camp Half-Blood Series: Aphrodite is an Empathic Shapeshifter whose appearance is constantly changing to fit someone's perception of ideal beauty. | |
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