I've been thinking a bit about the logistics of shapeshifting.

[conuly]

Mostly because of reading The Tiger and the Wolf, of course.

At one point, a character who is a snake shifts into being a very small snake (because snake people can be any snake instead of being just one snake species, for reasons) and eats a very small meal, explaining that he can go quite a while on one meal like that. Presumably in this universe, shifting ("Stepping" with a capital S) doesn't have a large energy requirement, but what isn't made clear is whether or not he could have gone a long time like that if, for reasons of speed and stealth, he wasn't staying a snake nearly all the time during their flight. Could he eat a teensy meal and then be a human for a week or two? Or does it only work if he's a snake and working at speed of snake digestion?

And what if he had eaten something that wasn't good for him? Our main character is a tiger and a wolf (duh) and it is my understanding that humans can eat a lot of foods that those animals can't. Like chocolate. If she were to eat chocolate as a human, and then shapeshift right away, would it make her sick? Or, if she accidentally ingested it as a wolf, could she avoid getting sick by becoming human? If a horse eats a whole lot of grass or hay, and then becomes human, do they have a stomachache? What if our aforementioned snake had eaten a human-sized meal, and then turned into a little bitty snake? Where does the food... wait, that's a dumb question, I can answer this one. The food goes the same place his extra mass goes, and I guess that applies to horses as well. But all the other questions are still valid.

Comments

[mordorbot]

This raises a lot of questions about the boundary between "me" and "not me". A high school psychology teacher gave us each plastic cups, and had us spit in it, then drink our own spit. I couldn't do it. In theory, the saliva was from "me" only a second ago. In practice, it was now "not me" and I couldn't imagine drinking it.

So I think the question of "where does the extra food in the stomach go" is a valid one. But equally valid is "what happens to toenails clippings when you shift".

[conuly]

The toenail clippings aren't attached to you anymore, though.

[mordorbot]

So they're "not you".

But the food you eat - at what point does that become "you"?

[conuly]

I don't know, but I do know that in this series people's clothes change with them and can even provide a boost in their defenses (but it's hard to shapeshift with metal). So... immediately?

[rebeccmeister]

Yeah, so I'm thinking that, for this reason, as soon as food winds up inside one's digestive tract, it shifts along with the rest of the individual. But biologists definitely headscratch over this question: if everything's just encased in a long, fleshy tube, is it a part of us or not? (but what about organisms that don't have a linear digestive tract, like a starfish?).

[mordorbot]

If clothes change with you, I would assume food changes with you. In which case, the large meal for a small snake would turn into a large meal for a regular sized human. And maybe stop being a live cricket, too.

[calimac]

Definitely agree. If clothes are considered part of you for shapeshifting ability, then so is food. If a human eats chocolate and then becomes a wolf, the chocolate becomes something that wolves would eat (which humans probably wouldn't, like raw bleeding meat).

[mordorbot]

What if I shifted with a bite of food in my *mouth*

[conuly]

What if you've got it half in your mouth, half out?

[mordorbot]

What if you're a snake and this happens with a live cricket?

[conuly]

What if you're hiding something in a sensitive location?

[mordorbot]

I wouldn't do that.

[conuly]

(Unless you bite your nails, in which case - dude, I'm eating here!)

[mordorbot]

Lol

Reading recommendation

[polydad.livejournal.com]

May I suggest reading "Operation Chaos", by Poul Anderson? The protagonist is a werewolf, and weres in this ficton have to follow most of the rules of physics -- so at 180 pounds he's an average-ish human, but a damn big wolf. The were-tiger he runs into later is morbidly obese as a human, to the point of barely being able to move (about 700 lbs.), and a were-fennec is a 35-pound midget.

best,

Joel

Re: Reading recommendation

[conuly]

Sure, I'll give it a shot.

Isn't the term "midget" depreciated and now often offensive, though?

[nodrog]

You have almost certainly given this more thought than the author ever did.

[conuly]

It never pays to underestimate Adrian Tchaikovsky. Maybe he's addressed some of this in the next two books.

[elenbarathi.livejournal.com]

I'd suggest Owl In Love (https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/owl-in-love-patrice-kindl/1102554350) by Patrice Kindl. Owl ONLY eats rodents, even in her human form - the one time she brings a mouse sandwich to school for lunch (because people give her shit about not eating) the bread messes her up, so she can't shift.

It doesn't make any sense from a scientific point of view, because a human body requires a lot more calories than a barn-owl body, and at least some of those calories have to be carbohydrates, but... there it is. Science fiction is expected to conform to what we know of science fact; fantasy doesn't have to, because Magic. (Note: Star Wars is 100% fantasy; despite all the spaceships and stuff, there's no real science to be found in it anywhere.)

My daughter's fictional dragons can shapeshift to whatever form they please - the extra mass goes into a 'pocket dimension', which is scientifically plausible, or at least not instantly refutable. Her eldest dragon, Lord Petros, is the size of a flying mountain range, owns entire planets stocked with appropriate food-beasts, and only needs to eat once every couple of years, but he spends a lot of time in humanoid form, and enjoys human cuisine. She's also got a bird-shifter: he can be any kind of bird he's ever seen, and finds it convenient to travel in owl or hawk form, because he can easily keep himself fed that way.

Aha - I was looking for the story 'Cat Tale' by Vicki Ann Heydron, which appears in the anthology Greyhaven ed. by Marion Zimmer Bradley (https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/410898.Greyhaven) - didn't find it, but check this out: Shapeshifter Baggage (https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ShapeshifterBaggage).

[conuly]

Kindl writes such odd books. I've read that, and I think another, and also The Woman in the Wall, which... I don't even want to think about how the family explained this daughter after the fact. As an adult, I'm sure somebody considered calling child services, though I'm not sure that was a wise choice.

[elenbarathi.livejournal.com]

I will have to check out some of her others then; I just looked them up and they sound quite intriguing. From the reviews of The Woman In The Wall, it sounds difficult to tell how much of it is the fantasy world of a child who's basically hidden out in her own head.

Did you ever read We Have Always Lived In The Castle (http://www.angelamorales.net/uploads/1/1/4/2/11424937/we_have_always_lived_in_the_ca_-_shirley_jackson_21985.pdf) by Shirley Jackson? That is a strange tale.

Check it out: the third book of my daughter's 'The Sunborn Chronicles', Jump Forward (https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B082ZCXZFD/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_bibl_vppi_i1) is out - also there are new covers for the first two books, and she's just finished writing the fourth, Slide Between.

[conuly]

No, The Woman in the Wall is 100% literal "she lived in the walls of her home". She didn't imagine it, she holed herself up in her house and didn't come out. (It was an extremely large house, a Victorian mansion built for a big family with hordes of servants, and she was able to wall of whole rooms without her family quite seeing what she was up to because they never went in those rooms in the first place.)

And you know what? Once somebody actually tries to find her (spoiler) it takes, like, 45 minutes. Her mother and sisters could've done it at any point in the previous seven years. They just didn't. Her entrance to her hiding place was ingenious, but she was still only seven when she built it. It wasn't that well hidden.

The author doesn't treat this quite as a bad thing, but her family could've tracked her down rather than letting her raise herself and do minor home repairs and seamstressing for their benefit.