Body Horror/Playing With

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Basic Trope: A transformation is slow, painful, Squickily organic, or all of the above.

• Straight: A character is transformed into a monster; the process is slow, painful, and not pretty.
• Exaggerated: A character falls down into organs and finally cells to be reconstructed in graphic details bit by bit into a horrible mishmash.
• Downplayed: There are some creepy or painful moments in an otherwise sleek transformation sequence.
• Justified: The change is moving bones and muscles around. As anyone who has gone through puberty can attest, this can take some time and involve some growing pains.
• Inverted: The transformation looks neat and tidy. Its mental toll is nearly enough to drive the character insane each time it happens.
• Subverted:
  • A character goes through textbook body horror, but then crosses a Bishounen Line, and the creature they wind up as is actually quite attractive.
  • Bonus points if they look at their new body in the mirror and lampshade: "Well, I dodged a bullet."
• Double Subverted: The final creature is pretty, but it has Lovecraftian super powers.
• 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.
• 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...
• Lampshaded: "Why are transformations that horrible all the time???! Why can't there be normal transformations????!!"
• Invoked: "You think being a frosh is the worst part? Think again!"
• Exploited: Even though she's not dangerous, the character uses her transformation to gross out and frighten attackers.
• Defied: Researchers try to make the transformation process less traumatic, and they succeed.
• Discussed: ???
• Conversed: ???
• 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.
• Plotted A Good Waste: ???
• 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: The victim goes insane from the pain and either kills everyone it once held dear until it is finally killed because it is a terrible and dangerous monster, is in such agony someone decides it is neccessary to euthanize it, or is actually fine, but is killed because everyone assumed one of the former possibilities was the case.

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