Shapeshifter Struggles

Polymorph problem, perchance?

Being able to transform part of, if not your entire body, seems like it would be a bonus. However, someone with body issues or incapable of dealing with these new powers might have Transformation Trauma, or at least have unforeseen issues they didn't have before having the ability to change their form.

Subtrope of Blessed with Suck. Compare to Becoming the Mask, I Am a Monster, and Split-Personality Takeover.

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• Alternate Identity Amnesia: Someone can't remember what they did in another form.
• Beauty to Beast: A (usually vain) character goes from beautiful to ugly.
• Empathic Shapeshifter: Your shapeshifting is dependent on other people's thoughts.
• Face–Monster Turn: A good guy becomes a villain not out of choice, and is usually accompanied by a change in appearance.
• Forced Transformation: A character is transformed against their will.
• Hulking Out: Transforming into a more monstrous beast form when sufficiently angry.
• Involuntary Shapeshifting: Shapeshifter can't control when/where their transformations take place.
• Living Mood Ring: A shapeshifter doesn't get to conceal their emotions.
• Mermanity Ensues: Shapeshifting into an aquatic form doesn't always go as planned.
• The Mind Is a Plaything of the Body: Shapeshifting changes your personality.
• Painful Transformation: Shapeshifting hurts.
• Perpetually Protean: Shapeshifting involves absolutely having to transform constantly for some reason or another.
• Randomized Transformation: The results of shapeshifting are out of their control.
• A Rotten Time to Revert: A transformed character is forced to revert to their natural form at the worst possible time.
• Self-Perception Shapeshifting: Shapeshifters are beholden to their self-image.
• Shapeshifter Baggage: Shapeshifters gain inexplicable mass when transformed into entities larger than themselves.
• Shapeshifter Identity Crisis: Transformations begin causing Sanity Slippage.
• Shapeshifter Mode Lock: When a shapeshifter gets stuck in one shape and can't transform.
• Shapeshifting Failure: Someone loses some of their shapeshifting ability or cannot keep a form.
• Slow Transformation: Shapeshifting that is time-consuming and gradual.
• Stumbling in the New Form: When a character transforms and has trouble moving around properly in the new body.
• Transformation Horror: Physical transformations that are graphic and/or disturbing, often crosses over with Painful Transformation.
• Woman Were-Woes: Female shapeshifters have difficulties that male ones don't experience.

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Other Examples

Comic Books

• X-Men: Part of Rogue's powers of power-stealing involves changing her appearance if the power has a specific physical component to it. Since Rogue already has issues arising from not being able to be touched, early in her career she didn't want to tarnish her beauty by risking looking like Colossus or Nightcrawler if she took their powers.

Fan Works

• The Land of What Might-Have-Been: The Amorphous League are a group of hobbyist shapeshifters who took up their powers in order to escape the stress of living in Unbridled Radiance... only to be hit by numerous iterations of this trope. First, becoming shapeshifters made them criminals under the Radiant Laws for "crimes against beauty." Second, the potion that gives them their powers runs the risk of reducing the drinkers to paralyzed goo if they overdose. Thirdly, it takes a lot of time to improve their abilities. Fourth, continuous use of the potion gradually erodes features, sexual characteristics, and even physical identity.^note  On the plus side, the most experienced of the League members eventually achieve "Shapelessness" in which they no longer need potion, attain virtual immortality, and exist in a state of endless transformation unless they need to take a specific form... but the First of the Shapeless reveals that there's a sting in the tail: shapeshifters can easily change sex and are fully capable of fathering children or getting pregnant — but most of the children will be incapable of shapeshifting, and those that can shapeshift tend to die young. It's for this reason that the First has decided not to start a family.

Films — Animation

• NIMONA (2023): The title character is a powerful shapeshifter capable of assuming almost any form... but is unable to connect with anyone as a result. Animals instinctively reject her, humans accuse her of being a monster, and even Ballister spends most of their early interactions asking her to be "normal" — not realizing that Nimona's shapeshifting is an integral part of her being and that not transforming is unbearable for her. In the finale, all these rejections and more drive Nimona to a suicide attempt — though Ballister thankfully saves her at the last moment.

Films — Live-Action

• X-Men Film Series: After living a life shapeshifting to blend in and survive, Mystique became deeply insecure that she is unlovable in her true (blue) form. After joining Magneto she does an 180, and now resents being forced to change her appearance to win the world's acceptance.

Literature

• Harry Potter:
  • People use Polyjuice Potion in many of the books, to transform into somebody else. This is introduced in Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, in which they learn how painful the transformation can be, and Hermione accidentally transforms herself into half a cat, when she mistakenly uses a cat hair as an ingredient.
  • Related to this is that Apparating (disappearing and reappearing somewhere else) is extremely difficult, and if not done correctly, can result in Splinching: leaving part of one's body behind.
  • A metamorphmagus is a variety of witch or wizard with the innate ability to change their appearance to anything human. Nymphadora Tonks uses this talent for infiltration purposes, and struggles to keep her balance because constantly changing her height and weight that way throws off her center of gravity.
• Red Dwarf: Symbi-Morphs have the ability to turn themselves into just about anything... but have been bred to use their abilities to sexually service their creators, and even after their masters aboard the Colony Ship were overthrown, their fellow genetically engineered life-forms continue to exploit them in a similar fashion. Symbi-Morphs are the only inhabitants of the GELF State that lack even the most basic rights, can find no work except as sex slaves, have to be "broken" before they can service clients, are beaten if they become too attached to one of their clients (which they were designed to do), and are threatened with spaying as punishment for resistance. For good measure, they're conditioned to only find Happiness in Slavery — to the point that an "unbroken" specimen by the name of Reketrebn doesn't even consider using their shapeshifting powers to escape until they are bonded with Lister.
• Reign of the Seven Spellblades: In volume 2, Pete Reston has a strange dream and wakes up to discover his body has become female below the neck. He spends most of the following day irritably snapping at his friends because he has no idea how to deal with this (and because the transformation is causing painful side effects because his body isn't used to it) before Oliver and upperclassman Carlos Whitrow figure out what happened. Oliver explains to Pete that he's a "reversi", i.e. a Sex Shifter, and Carlos invites Pete to join a (heavily queer-coded) campus club for students with gender- and sex-linked magical traits, with Oliver tagging along to keep Pete company.

Live-Action TV

• The Twilight Zone (1959): "The Four of Us are Dying" features a man who can imitate any form he sees, if he concentrates hard enough. Unfortunately for him, one of the identities he assumes is that of a man who so badly wronged his family that the father of the impersonated man shoots him dead in retribution.
• Star Trek: Deep Space Nine: The titular station's chief of security Odo is an alien made of goo that can imitate just about any object or life-form. However, he is young and inexperienced and has trouble getting the details of his forms down. The form he primarily takes on, that of his adoptive Bajoran father Dr. Mora Pol, isn't very convincing and has a misshapen, mannequin-like face.

Video Games

• Genshin Impact: Kirara has relatively few problems now being a Nekomata, but she notes that now having two tails makes it difficult to sleep. She also has to deal with the fact that things she gets away with doing as a cat are different from what she can socially do as a human.
• Star Wars Legends:
  • Clawdites have the power to disguise themselves as other humanoid beings... but unfortunately, the genetic mutations that led them to develop these abilities have made them a Fantastic Underclass on their home planet, segregated to slums and restricted from any kind of formal education. To add insult to injury, their shapeshifting powers can be quite painful to use for younger Clawdites, and even experienced members of the species require regular doses of moisturizing oils to prevent their skin from cracking under the strain.
  • The Shi'ido have it a lot better than the Clawdites, with longer lifespans and more impressive powers... but they still suffer from numerous drawbacks: because their powers were developed to hide themselves from predators, Shi'ido are extremely shy, to the point that even those who live public lives off-world are known for being cautious and withdrawn... and as Galaxy of Fear demonstrates, this can lead to their non-Shi'ido friends and relatives believing them to be uncaring, even if the shapeshifter genuinely loves them and the fact that Uncle Hoole is also struggling with the baggage of his Dark and Troubled Past doesn't help. Also, their powers and compulsive need to observe others have given them a nasty reputation as spies-for-hire, though Senior Anthropologist Hoole is doing his best to combat this stereotype.

Web Videos

• Pop Cross Studios: Redemption of the Were-Jaguar deconstructs this trope with the titular were-jaguar, Vasilia Kuznet. Despite projecting an image of herself as a "tall, confident and gorgeous" woman (which, for the most part, she is), she secretly harbours deep shame at having been bitten and turned by another were-jaguar that she killed at the age of five. Early on, she used to transform uncontrollably and attack her family and neighbours, so an ashamed Vasilia tries hiding it from her friends, and especially her boyfriend Heath. So, upon arriving in another dimension which leaves Vasilia in a Shapeshifter Mode Lock, she panics and tries desperately to find a way to get them all home without giving her secret away. On top of that stress, Vasilia has to work alongside the Van Helsing family, whose ward, Gangadharan, treats her with unwarranted suspicion, which makes her angry enough to feel tempted to lose control and lash out. But as Gangadharan points out, her past woes don't justify her secretive behaviour:
  Gangadharan: You claim I have trust issues, and yet, if you truly have control over this form and all its power, why would you not be constantly turning into it?
  Vasilia: Because I get enough judgment from family for it after years of not having control! Friends need not know about werejaguar form, even if I do have control now!
  Gangadharan: Only further emphasizing my point! Either you don't have as much control as you claim, and avoid turning to conceal that fact, or you do have full control, as you say, and don't trust your friends to be accepting of your... more fanged side. So, don't lecture me about trust, because you're either a liar... Or a hypocrite.
• Discussed and parodied in the Strong Bad Email "shapeshifter", where Strong Bad goes into depth on how shape-shifting wouldn't be a good idea as it always needs some kind of drawback and shows some comical examples. Highlights include the ability to change into any balloon animal or the ability to turn into "almost anyone" meaning that he shapeshifts into part of a person.

Western Animation

• Ben 10: The series revolves around a kid with an alien Transformation Trinket permanently attached to his wrist, so it should be no surprise that Ben's had just about every problem that a shapeshifter can run into. Sometimes the Omnitrix itself is as big a problem as whatever the current Villain of the Week is.

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