At least it didn't kill you.
"Arthur, my mustache is touching my brain..."
Someone is about to
turn into a monster. Or they have
something inside them that is definitely not supposed to be there. Or they wake up to find that they are missing some bits. Or they learn, too late, that they are a character in an
MPreg fanfiction...
Welcome to the lovely land of Body Horror. Simply put, this is any form of
Horror that is based primarily on the body visibly mutating and developing in out-of-control, hideous ways. Instead of a clean, smooth, shiny (and often quick) change from one form to another, as with many
Transformation Sequences, it's
painful,
Squickily organic, or just plain disturbing and played for all the
Nausea Fuel it's worth.
For maximum nightmare points,
the transformation should be slow, seemingly irreversible, and
force major personality changes.
Emphasis must be placed on disfiguring and distorting the victim's face. Slow transformations draw out the anguish. Being
near irreversible raises the stakes still further. Unsought personality changes mean the victim is
no longer truly themselves...
Sometimes, this implies an
Orifice Invasion or getting your
Face Full of Alien Wing-Wong, or even a
Chest Burster. Sometimes parasites,
Puppeteer Parasite, or a
Viral Transformation are the cause, but in that case the suspense comes from the implanted alien
slowly taking over.
Made most famous by the
Alien tetralogy, but obviously done by
plenty of older sources.
Naturally, there's quite a bit of crossover with
Painful Transformation,
Emergency Transformation,
Lovecraftian Superpower,
Shape Shifter Swan Song,
Came Back Wrong, and
Vagina Dentata. See also
Your Head Asplode,
Appendage Assimilation,
Squick, and
Nausea Fuel. For a character or
Mook who has this as their back story, see
Was Once a Man and/or
Tragic Monster and
The Grotesque. If the transformation is played for sympathy, it can be used to explore the issue of
What Measure Is a Non-Human?. The transformation may result in
Our Monsters Are Weird of the most horrific kind. See
One-Winged Angel and
Superpowered Evil Side for a different kind of scary transformation. Contrast
Alien Kudzu and
Meat Moss for the architectural/environmental variants.
Examples
