A jello with complicated relationships <3

Dave and Busters wishes they had Dabo tables

Didn't they originally say his looks were because it was the best he could do to imitate humans because he needed to learn to take shapes? And then his kind show up and they look just like him? I mean he has to concentrate to keep the humanoid form, why do they choose to look like the fucked up human form?

Iirc the rest of his group were called the grand communion of something, and they had trained and practiced shapeshifting for many years through their lives (centuries iirc) so they find it incredibly easy to adopt any form they choose, and they choose humanoid when interacting with lesser advanced humanoid forms.

Poor Odo is essentially a lost child that was raised by wolves (the DS9 community) and as such he's a noob shapeshifter.

Yeah, but then why are the practiced shapeshifters also looking like shit when they turn human?

Odo was forced to take that form and it's part of his trauma. While the other shapeshifters can change into humanoids without issue, they disdain the form and only choose to appear as one in support of Odo, who is a lost youngling.

All of their chosen human forms to represent themselves are variations of Odo's. All other human forms used are perfect copies of their targets when needed to for infiltration and sabotage.

Maybe because they think humans are shit and it makes them feel filthy to look like that?

He does eventually learn to take the human form perfectly when he's stranded on that planet for 200 years.

Dave and Busters named themselves after DaBo.

Even before he was on DS9, he was treated as a specimen by a scientist who would electrocute him for "science".

So, an aspic?

Quark is far less shady than D&B.

Change my mind

I wanna say that's their generalized shape from when they were solids and it's their default form. Odo, the female changeling and Las all have that similar facial structure

I could be wrong, but I also thought it was a conservation of energy thing. Like it took energy to hold humanoid form, so he just did the low-poly version for day-to-day stuff. Maybe I'm mis-remembering.

*bajorans, but yes

They originally appeared like that so as to be immediately identifiable as Odos people, then just stuck with the forms solids had seen them in so as to be recognized- whenever they didn’t want to be recognized, they weren’t.

That would definitely be on brand for them

Maybe he was born with it...

language

By choice. Maybe they choose it to comfort Odo, or maybe because other humanoids recognize them as like Odo (the only shapeshifter they'd known before).

Have to watch DS9 again but remember the scenes where he encounters his abuser facading as his family as being particularly brutal and being annoyed he was put in that situation to begin with. Like the crew of DS9 didn't recognise any issue until he'd involuntarily shapeshifted into a monster

stardate 2460.1

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My head-canon is that the Founders met the Progenitors somewhere along the way and hard-coded a kind of “default” solid look into their collective matrix that resembles the Progenitors. The Founders emulate them in a lot of ways (affecting the evolutionary trajectory of life forms like the Jem’hadar and Vorta) and so “honor” their work by trying to look like them when they take on a humanoid form. Given this, Odo looks the way he does because that’s what a solid form Changeling is intended to look like.

(This is my nerdy way of reconciling that the Progenitor in TNG is played by the same actress as the Female Changeling in DS9 and both have very similar make up effects)

If he ever said how fast the Defiant was traveling, would he be an Odo-meter?