Basic Trope: A transformation is slow, painful, Squickily organic, or all of the above.
- Straight: A character is transformed; the process is slow, painful, and not pretty.
- Exaggerated:
- A character disintegrates into a tumorous mass of organs and bones and slowly, graphically reforms into a horrible mishmash of parts, awful crunching, squishing, and gurgling noises included.
- Any and all transformations are very graphic, disgusting and/or horrifying in some way.
- Downplayed:
- There are some creepy or painful moments in an otherwise sleek transformation sequence.
- The transformation isn't necessarily painful by any means, but the character being transformed is very freaked out and confused as to what's going on.
- Justified: The change is moving bones and muscles around; not to mention internal organs. As anyone who has gone through puberty, a hernia, or broken bone can attest, this can take some time and involve some growing pains and psychological toll.
- Inverted: Alice's transformation is actually quite beautiful to witness, and she loves her new wings and Cute Little Fangs.
- Subverted: A transformation begins as textbook transformation horror, but then crosses a Bishounen Line and becomes far less squicky.
- Double Subverted:... but its mental toll is nearly enough to drive the character insane each time it happens.
- Parodied:
- A female werewolf's bloody, skin-ripping transformation garners the same reaction from her as bad cramps, down to a 'that time of month' line.
- Alice dreams that she is becoming...her mother.
- Unparodied: Alice dreams that she is becoming her mother, but it proves to be genuinely horrifying considering her mother is abusive and she's worried that she really is turning out to be like her.
- Zig Zagged: Transformations (even if they are the same) vary strongly in their degree of disturbingness.
- Averted: Any transformations are clean, quick and relatively painless.
- Enforced:
- "We need something really everybody fears- disfigurement, pain, eyeballs popping out of sockets..."
- As a way to show why shapeshifters don't want to transform around other people.
- It's a horror work involving werewolves, so having a graphic transformation sequence is practically expected.
- Lampshaded:
- "Why are transformations that horrible all the time???! Why can't there be pretty, clean transformations, without exposed organs and screaming????!!"
- After seeing the horrified face of an observer, the shapeshifter quips "Serves you right for walking in while I was changing."
- Invoked: The evil witch intentionally transforms Bob into a frog slowly and in the most painful way possible.
- Exploited: While Alice's ability to become a rabbit isn't particularly dangerous, she uses continuous partial transformations to unsettle and disorient foes.
- Defied: Researchers try to make the transformation process less traumatic, and they succeed.
- Discussed: Mages Bob and Alice trade Noodle Incidents from Transmogrification 101 while setting up the spell to turn the party into bats to infiltrate the overlord's castle, much to the dismay of their fellow heroes.Alice: "Remember when Charlie forgot a rune, and kept sprouting random limbs for the next six weeks till it wore off?"Bob: "Oh! And Darla's second project! The one where she tried to scribe it all five minutes before class started?"Alice: "Who could forget? Took the nurse a week to figure out how to undo that one. I still can't eat spaghetti..."
- Conversed: Alice and Bob wrench in horror watching a transformation sequence during a horror movie. "I hate it when they do that thing where the eyes pop out..."
- Implied: The shapeshifter is never shown transforming, but there is a mention that the process is extremely unpleasant.
- Deconstructed: The shapeshifter is most vulnerable at this point, especially to infection, as bodily fluids are exposed and protective membranes are breached. There is a severe danger of having loose organs get trapped outside the body. Shapeshifters are deathly terrified of ever using their abilities.
- Reconstructed: While the transformation looks horrific, it's tantamount to an orgasmic experience for the shapeshifters, and the rapid increase in metabolism means that any injuries they take will be rapidly healed.
- Played For Laughs: The character's top half is transformed into an eggplant, and he flails about aimlessly, bumping into walls and running in circles in panic.
- Played For Drama: Bob, slowly succumbing to The Virus, desperately tries to get Alice to stop trying to find a cure for him and save herself. Alice struggles to see her husband in the horrifying thing he is becoming, and worries she might not find the cure in time to save him.
There's a way back to Transformation Horror, but it's not pretty...
