"It helped to imagine myself as a monster clawing my way up from the depths, and so when I finally reached the surface that's exactly what I was. A monster."
— The McGill, Ever Lost
A person's self-image is usually nestled deep inside their dome where no one else can see it. Not so with shapeshifters. Self-Perception Shapeshifting is when someone's physical form modifies itself based on how they imagine themselves to be. Maybe you think you're ugly, or immature, or a monster. Your physical form will come to reflect that.
Sometimes this is the only kind of Shapeshifting allotted to a character in their setting (perhaps due to a curse), but it can also happen to traditional shapeshifters subconsciously. While this would seem easy enough to avoid, it can be more dangerous than you'd expect. It places them at risk of self-inflicted Shapeshifter Mode Lock if they get fixated on the wrong ideas about themselves, and over a long enough time period can lead their form to distort hideously if they forget their own appearance.
On the more optimistic side this trope can also achieve good outcomes. Such as enabling a desired Gender Bender for a trans character, or helping someone's newfound self-confidence manifest outwardly. While usually a case of Involuntary Shapeshifting, it doesn't have to be, and certain characters can invoke a change in self-perception consciously with practice.
This trope is a logical bedfellow of Residual Self-Image settings that update your look to match a changing self-concept. Psychic or dream selves nearly always operate on the same principle, and a transformation may become part of a vision quest to confront a character's insecurities or past. If they went through a Face–Monster Turn it usually ends with the character Turning Back Human after repairing their self image.
Compare Living Mood Ring where transformations broadcast emotions rather than directly reflecting how someone sees themselves. Also compare Shapeshifter Identity Crisis where a rapidly fluctuating form may or may not represent unstable self-perception. If you shapeshift based on how others see you, that's Empathic Shapeshifter. Contrast The Mind Is a Plaything of the Body.
Examples:
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Films — Animation
- Howl's Moving Castle: Implied with Sophie, who grows older and younger depending on various factors throughout the movie: including her confidence, whether she sees herself as mature, and what social role she is embodying.
Literature
- In The Cosmere, self-image is part of people's spiritual aspect, influencing powers like healing and shapeshifting.
- The Stormlight Archive: Healing magic works by changing the physical body to match the spiritual aspect. In Dawnshard, a transgender man who gained a Healing Factor had his body spontaneously transition to match his inner self.
- Warbreaker: The Returned, believed to be humans ascended to godhood, are all incredibly good-looking, athletic, and tall. It's revealed to be subconscious shapeshifting to fit their bodies to their exalted state; with training, they can make themselves look ordinary.
- Yumi and the Nightmare Painter: While Painter and Yumi are taking turns in each other's bodies, Yumi's body doesn't change, but Painter's transforms to look like Yumi. It turns out that Yumi's spiritual aspect has such vast Soul Power that it automatically changes the body to match it.
- The Skinjacker Trilogy: Everlost children take the form they remember themselves to be, but their appearance can change as their memory of themselves is forgotten. The most extreme example of this is Mikey McGill, who when falling to the center of the earth, pictured himself as a monster clawing his way back out, and remained that way after he escaped. He reverts back to his real appearance after his sister shows him a locket containing a picture of himself.
- In the Whateley Universe, most mutants have a transformation state (called a Body Image Template) that is partially based on their subconscious image of themselves. Considering that most of the main characters are transgender, this means they get superpowers-induced gender reassignment. Others are not so lucky, having a BIT that are monstrous.
- In Witches Abroad, the witches turn Greebo (a tomcat) into a human by making him believe that he's human so strongly that it rewrites his morphic field.
Fan Works
- Dungeon Keeper Ami: Yoma are noted as having their form largely depend on their self-perception. This complicates things when Ami starts using the possession spell on them.
Live-Action TV
- Buffy the Vampire Slayer: In "The Killer in Me", Willow is transformed by a hex into Warren Mears, the man who killed her girlfriend Tara via collateral damage and who she in turn brutally murdered out of revenge. The witch who hexed her reveals she didn't choose the form — the Penance Maledicition hex punishes the victim by turning his or her own subconscious against itself. Willow's guilt over kissing Kennedy, feeling that she was killing the memory of Tara by doing so, transformed her into Tara's murderer. note
- Lucifer (2016): Lucifer has a handsome human face he presents on a daily basis, and a "devil face" that he wears when dealing with evildoers. Eventually, it is revealed that Lucifer's appearance is determined through self-actualization. When he feels human, he looks human. When he feels devilish, he looks devilish. He at times lost the ability to use his devil face when he felt extremely content with his relationship with his human partner, and he lost the ability to look human when he felt guilty about his relationships with his friends and family. Similarly, he has feathery or leathery wings along the same logic. Self-actualization like this is a recurring element in the show, and mostly shows up in angels because there is no distinction between their spiritual and physical states. Lucifer's twin brother Michael has a metaphorical chip on his shoulder that manifests in a perpetual hunch on one side of his body, even his angel wings.
Tabletop Games
- In Changeling: The Lost, this trope is one reason that Arcadia is so dangerous to humans. A person might be forced to transform into a changeling (who invariably have freaky appearances, like leaf-hair or giant stature or horns), but more often the transformation is a passive effect that reflects their personality or what they need to be to survive Arcadia. Someone who really needs to hide from a Fae might become a blob of shadows. Someone whose life depends on pleasing their kidnapper might become a Barbie-esque beauty- or a mirror of that same kidnapper, because their trauma has left them unable to imagine any other face. If a changeling manages to escape Arcadia, these effects fade, but they never truly go away.
Web Original
- El Goonish Shive:
- Gender-fluid Tedd receives a magic mark that allows them to change their default sex (as opposed to a mere enchantment that can be dispelled by someone else) based on whether they are feeling more masculine or feminine. Since Tedd is already so androgynous, barely anyone notices when they do this unless they are really looking at their chest. They can also unconsciously disenchant themselves, so any transformation they no longer want is dispersed.
- Inverted with Elliot. Due to touching the Dewitchery Diamond, Elliot had an improper magic awakening. Because a person's spells are supposed to reflect who they are and Elliot's magic awakened while transformed into a girl, Magic kept giving Elliot female transformation spells under the assumption that that was what he wanted. However, the whole reason Elliot touched the Diamond was because he didn't want to be female anymore, so he kept getting magic buildups that forced him to transform when he didn't want to. Tedd realizes that the more uncomfortable Elliot is with the female forms, the more female spells Magic gives him, trying to get it right. Eventually played more straight, since Elliot becomes more comfortable with the female spells and uses them more when he feels like being girly.
- Kill Six Billion Demons: Although it happens too slowly to be seen in the comic, the spiritual bodies of angels shift over time to represent their self-image. White Chain's appearance as a Winged Humanoid is taken as proof
that she's been "infected" by humanity.
- Snapback Comic: A closeted trans woman spontaneously develops elasticity powers and after pulling herself together finds that her new Shapeshifter Default Form is more feminine than her prior body. Apparently it's common in-verse for shapeshifters to subconsciously match their self-perception.
Western Animation
- Adventure Time: in "Don't Look" Finn acquires magic eyes that alter everything to reflect how he truly sees them. After he transforms his surrogate son Neptr into a toaster, he reflexively transforms himself into an abomination resembling his deadbeat father. His friends work together to coax him out of the negative beliefs and return him to his original form.
- The Amazing World of Gumball: Penny is a fairy and usually takes on a bright yellow humanoid form, but she is a shapeshifter whose form reflects how she feels. This is best exemplified in "The Shell," where Penny initially comes out of her shell to reveal her true form. However, she begins to shapeshift to reflects her insecurities. If Penny feels ugly, she turns into a short, ugly goblin. If she feels like a monster, she turns into a destructive dragon. If she feels like nothing, she turns into a tiny wisp, etc. It's only after a heart-to-heart with Gumball that Penny learns to control her powers, and comes to accept who she truly is.
- Avatar: The Last Airbender: This seems to be how the Spirit World works. When Aang enters it in season 3, he is returned to his bald state and air nomad clothing. This was also the case for The Painted Lady, when they transcended into the Spirit World, gradually leading to their current appearance over generations.
- The Legend of Korra: Korra while in the Spirit World shifts into a child while feeling incapable, and remains that way until she overcomes her surroundings.
- My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic: In "What Lies Beneath", Ocellus faces a test that uses her worst fear: still being evil deep down as a Changeling. This turns her into Queen Chrysalis, the Changelings' former Insect Queen who had committed many atrocities, and she is unable to change back to her normal image until Smolder admits to her that she secretly likes being cute despite being a dragon and invites her to a tea party, convincing her that Changelings can indeed have a true change of heart.
- Steven Universe: Steven's shapeshifting operates on this principle. Which results in him not aging for a couple stable years of his life, and then rapidly aging into elderly and baby forms when he sees himself as especially decrepit or infantile. He eventually synchronizes his self-perception to his natural aging.
- In Steven Universe: Future this escalates into Steven transforming into a monstrous Kaiju to reflect believing himself a monster that destroys everything around him.
- Young Justice: M'Gann's self-chosen Shapeshifter Default Form is ultimately revealed to be this, to the point it psychically reads as more honest than her species default appearance. Played With in that it wasn't entirely authentic at first, and it took time for her to identify fully with it beyond using it as a source of escapism. She also modifies it over the years to update with her current self-concept.
- Naturally, she also takes on this form when we see inside her psyche.
