Who Am I This Time?
I moved back home a few days ago, and while going through a number of items I had on order that had piled up, I ended up reading Mystique Volume 1 and watching Feat of Clay parts I and II from BtAS in the same day. Though I wouldn’t consider either to be literary masterpieces, they did delve into the psychology of appearance and identity in interesting ways.
While superheroes often deal with concept of identity, they are themes that are easily found in mainstream lit: dual identities, one’s place in society, etc. But shapeshifting pushes the concept of identity beyond the realm of the familiar. If you can be anyone or anything, why do you choose to be who or what you are? And if you can be anyone, is there really a definitive you?
Issues like this are what I love about speculative fiction. There are only so many ways of looking at normal human issues. Sometimes, to really learn something new about yourself, you need to look at outside of their expected limits of human experience.