As @Laguz notes, for most desirable attributes, there’s a relevant mammal to imitate that requires less thoroughgoing change.
No, Changes don’t require the whole clan to be present. It takes a long time to transform yourself into a bear, and much of it is done on your own. The mentor(s) of a Seracca will generally pop round often enough to make sure things are progressing well and provide guidance for the next few steps, but especially after childhood, they won’t be around for every single Change. Life’s too short, even when you’re an Abhuman.
Created by the Nagyeh (or Theoi), the gods of the Abhumans, who are themselves spirits without material form.
The Seracca, unlike the Karagonds or Halassurqs, believe in ghosts, possession, and a range of disembodied spirits both friendly and hostile.
The Wild Rumpus starts.
No, I don’t know him, and from his other Atlantic pieces I know he’s much more conservative than me. But on this point I share a lot of his concerns.
I personally don’t think so – but I also think that the great compassion-traditions of Buddhism and Christianity are right that thoroughgoing compassion entails a pretty radical commitment to nonviolence and self-sacrifice, and thus a refusal of the most direct ways to end certain kinds of suffering. Reasonable people can see these things as inherently bad. My social media feeds are full of people arguing that we should forgo or severely limit our compassion for various categories of people in the name of (group or individual) self-protection or more efficient reductions in overall suffering.
Compassion also leads to challenges to the social order, which is always based on categorising certain groups of people as undeserving of compassion. And if your challenge is forceful enough to topple that social order, you may find that there are goods of order, even oppressive orders (as I saw in Afghanistan), which you miss when they’re gone.