
There used to be this show called Beast Wars; it was a spin-off of Transformers. I don't recall being a loyal viewer or anything close to a "fan", but I do remember enjoying it when it happened to be on. What the main antagonism of the story was is unbeknownst to me. What the characters' names and relationships were is a total blur. But what does really stand out about it is the process of identification the characters went through to become the colorful, bestial, cyborg creatures they were. There was an episode where this pod had crashed onto their planet. Inside of it was a Spark; a soul of their kind. These robo-animal creatures could exist without a physical vessel if their Spark was somehow sustained. The Spark hat crash-landed (a la escape from Krypton?) had no physical body until the pod performed a scan looking for the nearest lifeform it could imitate. Let me reiterate, these were animal-inspired robots. They were super robot versions of animals AND they spoke English! SO... the Spark/pod scanned the area and found a falcon. It then transformed into this robo-humanoid-like Bird of Prey.
Because it was in desperate need of an identity, it searched the local environs, chose some random muse, and became the result of itself and the said muse. It self-fertilized in order to become something more whole. I feel as though I have been in a beast war at different points in my life. I've been shot to Earth in an amorphous state. And I have
tolerantly scanned and attempted to self fertilize (by way of choosing associations that I've hoped would mold me). That
tolerant scanning is problematic, though. When you're incredibly desperate to shape others' perception of yourself by assimilating into a group or by pairing up with someone, like I occasionally seem to do, you tend to weaken your filters and attract less than quality inspirations and life sources. the more desperate you are for anything, the more vulnerable you are to those viruses that you, when in your "right mind", should know better than to let in.