Ballister: The shapeshifting. Does it hurt or does it... Sorry. Small-minded question.
Nimona: Honestly? I feel worse when I don’t do it. Like my insides are itchy. You know that second right before you sneeze? That’s close to it. Then I shapeshift, and I’m free.
Nimona: Honestly? I feel worse when I don’t do it. Like my insides are itchy. You know that second right before you sneeze? That’s close to it. Then I shapeshift, and I’m free.
Transformation varies wildly across fiction, not just in how the characters react to it, but in how the narrative treats it: some treat the act of transformation as just a necessary steppingstone to get to the real action, some treat it as a horrifying curse that characters have to undo at all costs, some even treat it as amusing or even fun... but in some stories, transformation is freedom.
In these narratives, the character transforms as an escape from their emotional struggles, intentionally or otherwise. These problems can include stress, fatigue, personality conflicts, a desire for normality, dissatisfaction, guilt, anxiety, loneliness, depression, trauma, discomfort with one's own body, Trans Tribulations, Trans Nature, self-loathing, outright insanity, or even suicidal ideation. Sometimes, there may also be a literal escape from the physical circumstances that enforce these traumas, but not always.
The result usually takes one of two forms:
- Short-term change: This is most often used by true shapeshifters and characters who have access to some form of Applied Phlebotinum with a built-in time limit; here, transformation is used as a means of relieving psychological pressure, making hard times a little easier to deal with, and allowing the shapeshifter to eventually get on with their lives. Essentially, Psychiatric Mundane Utility.
- Permanent change: Here, the character's traumas are so severe and their circumstances so dire that the only escape is a permanent metamorphosis. In some cases, this is because the new form has benefits that can finally make life worth living, but in the case of an especially tormented few, it might be because the transformation will literally destroy their old identity. Usually, this transformation continues beyond the end of the story, but a few stories may undo it once the character's psychological healing is complete.
Often, this may overlap with Literal Transformative Experience, especially if the narrative draws attention to how the character's personality has improved in the wake of the transformation - though this trope tends to have an immediate positive effect, while the Literal Transformative Experience may take time to develop and isn't always in a positive direction. This can evoke Complimenting the Transformed if someone else notices the transformed character's improved state of mind.
Can also overlap with Being Human Sucks, in which a human form is regarded as something to abandon, and Reveling in the New Form, when the transformed finds their new body pleasing.
Contrast The Mind Is a Plaything of the Body, Transhuman Treachery, and Fully-Embraced Fiend, in which a transformation's effect on the mind is far less beneficial.
Compare Emergency Transformation, which is meant to be an escape from imminent death rather than from personal trauma and misery.
Examples:
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Anime & Manga
- Healin' Good♡Pretty Cure: Nodoka Hanadera finds her transformations into Cure Grace this as she starts the series at the tail end of a years-long Delicate and Sickly spell caused by Daruizen infecting her body with himself. While healthy, being bedridden for so long has prevented her from being active and she gets easily exhausted doing anything requiring a lot of energy; conversely transforming into Cure Grace allows her to be the girl she should have been and not feel the side effects of being bedridden.
- HeartCatch Pretty Cure!: Itsuki's older brother was meant to he Heir to the Dojo, but fell ill, so Itsuki promised to take the mantle in his place. As a result, she also believed she had to act as masculine as her brother to gain respect, wearing the boys' uniform at school, wearing her hair short, and repressing her love of cute and girly things in public. When she becomes Cure Sunshine, her hair grows out long and she wears a dress with a bare midriff, getting to openly explore her feminine side. Because of Cure Sunshine, she slowly starts to embrace femininity in her civilian form as well, growing her hair out a little and switching to the girls' uniform, eventually deciding to go into a fashion career.
- In Mission: Yozakura Family, Nanao's Adaptive Ability superpowers automatically adjust his body to account for external stressors. By the time of the story, this has turned 14-year-old Nanao into a grotesque tower of muscle who hides his face in a bucket. He develops a shrinking medicine that gives him a normal appearance so he can attend school with others his age as a "normal person". However, his own powers are reducing the effectiveness of this medicine and he fears the day it stops working entirely, as it would mean the end of his social life outside of the spy world.
Comic Books
- Shazam!: Freddy Freeman has a damaged spine and requires crutches to get around. Using the magic word "Shazam!" to transform into Captain Marvel, Jr.. turns him into an idealized version of himself with Flying Brick powers and fully functional legs. The only reason why he doesn't stay transformed full-time is that he feels "the meter is running" while acting as Captain Marvel Jr., implying that he has an unspecified limit on how long he can remain transformed that Billy doesn't have.
- She-Hulk: Jennifer Walters considers her transformations into She-Hulk to be this as, while as her normal self she considers herself meek and unattractive while turning into She-Hulk allows her to cut loose and be who she wants to be. During The Trial of Yellowjacket, she got massively depressed when Radioactive Man absorbed her Gamma Radiation and returned her to normal; when she got a massive boost of Gamma during her time on the Fantastic Four and made it seem she would be stuck as She-Hulk, she was actually happy that she could be her forever.
- Thor:
- In Journey into Mystery and the first run of Thor (1966), Donald Blake has a permanent limp that he can be rid of when he transforms into Thor. Though this is a relief to him, it makes him wary of telling Jane Foster about his feelings for her, since he can't imagine her falling for a disabled man when she's met someone like Thor.
- In Thor (2014), the female Thor, who temporarily takes up Mjolnir after Thor is considered unworthy, is revealed to be Jane Foster, who uses the transformation to escape her cancer- and chemo-riddled body and do some good. Deconstructed when it becomes apparent that each transformation is making her cancer worse when she shifts back to normal form, meaning the liberation comes at a huge cost and more pain down the line.
- Thunderbolts: Hallie Takahama, aka Jolt, preferred to spend much of her time in her energized electrical form, as when she returned to her normal human form, she suffered the debilitating after-effects of being shot in the head by the villain Scourge.
- X-Men: In X-Men (1991) #90, Gambit takes an injured Marrow to a doctor on the moon of the Skrull home planet, and out she comes with more control over her bone-growing mutation and much more comfortable in her own skin. When Gambit asks how she feels, she says she feels "wonderful."
Comic Strips
- Suburban Fairy Tales: Frog Prince is usually bullied by others for being ugly. However, when Frog Prince is kissed by a girl, he turns into a handsome prince that all the girls flock to. He enjoys this brief popularity to avoid being treated like a loser. However, he always turns back into a frog since the only way to permanently break the spell is true love's kiss, and the kisses are either done by accident or have some underlying condition that disqualifies it as true love.
Films — Animation
- NIMONA (2023): Perpetually Protean Nimona describes her shapeshifting powers this way: when she transforms, it's like letting herself breathe after holding in a sneeze, since even her "human" form becomes uncomfortable if she stays in it for too long — one of the many reasons why Ballister asking her to be "normal" was so hurtful.
- The Little Mermaid II: Return to the Sea: Melody has always felt drawn to the sea, but her mother Ariel forbids her from going in it for her own safety, because Morgana tried to kidnap her when she was a baby. Since Ariel never told her about Morgana or what she looked like, Morgana is able to gain Melody's trust by using a tiny drop of Ursula's magic to temporarily turn her into a mermaid, and it feels wonderful and freeing to her, naturally swimming in the sea and breathing underwater.
Films — Live-Action
- Shazam!: As with his comic book counterpart, Freddy Freeman must use crutches to get around, and he is picked on by a pair of brothers who delight in tormenting him, even taking his crutches. When Billy shares his power with the rest of his foster siblings, Freddy is revealed to already be lifting off the ground in delight with his newfound powers. He even takes a moment to rescue his bullies from Dr. Sivana, albeit with suitcase wedgies.
Literature
- Animorphs:
- Tobias jumped at the chance to morph into a bird as his escape from his miserable home life (constantly shuttled between a neglectful aunt and uncle), eventually leading him to morph as often as possible. Unfortunately, it ends with him getting trapped in the form of a red-tailed hawk after the raid on the Yeerk Pool goes horribly wrong at the end of the first book.
- The rest of the team frequently morphs for no other reason than to let off steam, bird morphs being a popular choice; this becomes especially necessary as the guerrilla war against the Yeerks grows more perilous and more stressful. In one book, Cassie admits to sneaking out of her house in the middle of the night, morphing a horse, and going for a gallop just for the sake of a brief distraction from her troubles.
- Arcia Chronicles: Lupe joins a circle of nature spirits after her One True Love is killed and eventually fully transforms into a guardian spirit herself, abandoning her human memories and emotions. Gerika initially attempts to make her remember, but backs off when she realizes that suppressing her grief this way was — and remains — the only way Lupe can survive.
- The Belgariad: Beldin the Sorcerer has hated his body for millennia, so at the finale of The Malloreon, having completed his duties to The Prophecy, he and his lover transform into a pair of magnificent hawks and fly away once and for all.
- Bloodsucking Fiends: One elder vampire who had been imprisoned in a metal shell stays sane by transforming into mist, which feels like a timeless waking dream.
- Played for Horror in The Divine Comedy. Deep in the eighth circle of Hell, most of thieves are punished by transformed into snakes. They can escape this form only by attacking one of the few untransformed thieves, causing them to briefly transform back into a human form while their victim painfully metamorphs into a snake. Since all the thieves are selfish and evil, the entire pit is a constant war of scoundrels selfishly dehumanizing each other.
- Goosebumps: At the end of "Be Careful What You Wish For (1993)", Samantha realizes that no matter what she wishes for, Judith will make her life miserable (either by being a Yandere of a friend or by bullying her and getting the other girls on the basketball team to do so). Finally, she decides to wish that Judith had met Clarissa instead, whereupon Judith wishes that Samantha would turn into a bird and fly away. This is exactly what happens, and Samantha happily leaves to enjoy a life free of Judith's teasing.
- Harry Potter: Sirius Black spent much of his time in Azkaban in his dog form because the simpler emotions of a dog made the proximity of the Dementors more tolerable.
- Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell: Later in the novel, while looking for a means to drive himself insane so he can see the Fairies and learn from them, Jonathan Strange encounters Mrs Delgado, an old woman who has shut herself away in her room and degenerated into a Crazy Cat Lady, no longer capable of speaking any human language and barely surviving on what her cats can bring her. After extracting some of her madness to use on himself, Strange frees Mrs Delgado from both her torment and her circumstances by transforming her into a cat, which is after all what she always wanted.
- The Magicians: In The Magician King, Julia Wicker has suffered a cataclysmic Trauma Conga Line in the wake of her flunking the Brakebills entrance exam: among other things, she's suffered chronic depression, undergone a descent into the magical underworld, forced to resort to Sex for Services, and gone on a quest for cosmic knowledge that ended with her friends being murdered by Renard the Fox and Julia being raped. As such, Julia spends most of the story grappling with trauma and grief, unable to connect with anyone or even hope for anything. In the finale, Julia uses the cosmic knowledge that her rapist forced on her to remake herself into a dryad-like demigod in the service of the Mother Goddess. In this new state, Julia is finally freed from her trauma, her faith is restored, and she's finally capable of happiness again — but also acknowledges that she cannot go back to being the girl she was before the entrance exam. Soon after, she leaves to Ascend to a Higher Plane of Existence.
- Repeat: Brad Cohen starts the story consumed with self-loathing, convinced he's a failure, and also dependent on pot to keep his depression from getting too much for him. After a spectacularly bad day, his wife gives him a potion that sends him Back to the Womb, allowing Brad to repeatedly relive his life as he wished he lived it in every possible permutation on an infinite loop, exorcising the worst of his demons and giving him a chance to learn what he really wanted out of life. The novel ends with Brad breaking free of the loop by reliving his life exactly as he did the first time around, awakening figuratively rejuvenated by the experience and free from his depression at last. For good measure, he's now surrounded by evidence that his life wasn't as bad as he thought.
- The Shadow over Innsmouth: By the end, the protagonist has been reduced to an invalid Nervous Wreck in the early stages of Metamorphosis into a Deep One. It's ambiguous whether or not it's Transhuman Treachery taking hold, but he becomes optimistic and even eager to live forever in their magical realms beneath the sea rather than waste away in a human madhouse.
Stupendous and unheard-of splendors await me below, and I shall seek them soon.
- Shrinking Pains: Doug attempts this after a long period of being left miserable and stressed-out from helping to clean up the Littleton's wrecked water heater. By drinking the Fountain water, he's able to regress to the point of almost literally sleeping like a baby; by the time he wakes up, he's back to normal again, but he's refreshed and ready to face the day ahead. Unfortunately, Doug is thirsty that morning, forgets that he still has a glass of the Fountain water by his bedside, and ends up accidentally regressing himself, right when he's supposed to be getting ready for school.
- The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde: Dr. Jekyll created his Transformation Potion so that he could indulge his darker side unrecognized, free from conscience and guilt. It went horribly wrong and slowly enslaved him to Mr. Hyde instead.
I had but to drink the cup, to doff at once the body of the noted professor, and to assume, like a thick cloak, that of Edward Hyde.
- Tales from Jabba's Palace: In J'Quille's segment of the Where Are They Now ending, he finds that the Lady Valarian isn't too keen to let go of her estranged lover, and has arranged for a price on his head if he ever leaves Tatooine — meaning that J'Quille can never go home to Tola and will never be free of the desert that's been driving him mad. As a result, J'Quille remains behind in Jabba's palace and joins the B'omarr Monks, knowingly accepting his surgical transformation into a Brain in a Jar as the only escape from his depression and Tatooine's oppressive heat.
- The Wheel of Time: After meeting a fellow Wolfbrother who lost his humanity entirely, Perrin spends much of the series afraid that the same could happen to him. However, when he finally meets the man's spirit, now living happily as a wolf in the World of Dreams, he learns that the man chose his path because he was miserable in his old life.
Live-Action TV
- Once Upon a Time: Jiminy Cricket's Origins Episode was that he was a human who lived with his con artist parents, who were so awful that he made a deal with Rumpelstiltskin in order to be free of them. After it goes horribly wrong, causing the parents of a young boy to be permanently turned into puppets instead, Jiminy makes a wish to the Blue Fairy to become a cricket, feeling truly free for the first time in his life and allowing him to make amends for his mistake by acting as conscience and guide for the orphaned boy, Geppetto.
Music
- Jamie Paige: The song Object of Affection in Constant Companions is about a gender-nonconforming prince whose abusive royal family turns "him" into a mindless doll, unable to speak or think for himself. A mage eventually rescues the prince, showing him that he's really a transgender woman; transforming her back and allowing her to live the life she was meant to live by her side.
Tabletop Games
- Mage: The Ascension: The Verbena character template "Shapeshifter" was once a deeply repressed young woman who drifted through life on whatever path her parents and/or society set for her. However, all this changed when she fell in love with a Verbena mage, who not only revealed his powers to her but also Awakened her over the course of a shapeshifting tryst. Now liberated from her old mindset, she happily shapeshifts her way through the world, finding freedom in her many different shapes and enjoying life as she never could before.
Video Games
- Ruphand: An Apothecary's Adventure: Under certain circumstances, Brill can be afflicted by a Transflormation, and when she mentions the status effect later:
Brill: ...I mean, there's an untapped market for being able to turn yourself into a flower for a short time.
Goblin Gadgeteer: Really? You're serious?
Brill: [smiling] Oh, believe me. I've had some days where just turning into a potted plant and resting on a sunny windowsill for half an hour would've sounded nice and relaxing...
Brill: [slight frown] ...buuuuut [pause] it wasn't so relaxing when I got turned into a flower in the middle of pitched combat. - Twisted-Wonderland: Azul Ashengrotto intensely dislikes his true octopoid merman form due to ugly appearance and low physical strength, which he was bullied for in the past. He much prefers his human form and refuses to revert to his true form even when traveling underwater.
Webcomics
- El Goonish Shive: Vladia (born Vlad) is a Heinz Hybrid shapeshifter created as part of Project Lycanthrope, but whose only attempt to shapeshift was so dangerously painful that she stayed in her birth hybrid form, in spite of her hatred of it and the fear it brought out in others. When she got hit with Ellen's transformation beam during "Painted Black", painlessly transforming her into a human female, Vladia decided not to risk changing back to her birth form, happy to restart her life as a new gender just for the chance to be out in normal society.
- This is a major theme in Jocelyn Samara's Rain-verse. In all of the three comics that make up The 'Verse so far, Rain (2010), My Impossible Soulmate, and Magical
, the difference between who we are inside and how we look to people on the outside has played a huge role. This has primarily been about Transgender people trying to transition to their preferred form, since Jocelyn is a trans woman herself, but it frequently extends beyond that to people who are intersex or dealing with conditions like androgen insensitivity. It's also been presented in different contexts. Rain was very grounded in reality, dealing with multiple LGBTQ people trying to simply be themselves in a frequently hostile world, and with any transformations happening through medication and surgery. Magical and My Impossible Soulmate, by contrast, are very fantasy-oriented, with many examples of people transforming, or trying to, using magic powers. In all cases, however, the whole point is the experience of people trying to transform from what they are into what they want to be.
Web Original
- SCP Foundation: SCP-7955 is a human cultist transformed into a shapeshifter in a magical ritual; given that a major side-effect of his growing powers is progressive dementia, it's assumed that he was a victim of the cult elders' cruelty. In the ending, 7955 admits that he willingly enacted the ritual on himself, having realized how much he hated his servile, conformist life, and made himself into a shapeshifter in order to free himself — knowing that it would eventually kill him. In the process, he got a few precious weeks of genuine happiness as a shapeshifter, even making a real friend when he met Dr Magdaleno, before finally dying content in his last Moment of Lucidity.
Web Video
- In Critical Role: Campaign Two:
- Caleb Widogast is a highly intelligent but deeply troubled wizard full of regret. When he gains the ability to Shapechange, he enjoys being able to temporarily take on the form of animals less intelligent than himself to take the weight off his mind.
- Nott the Brave is a goblin who hates being a goblin — and spends a lot of time in the Dwendalian Empire, which also hates goblins. She sometimes casts "Disguise Self" to give herself the appearance of a halfling, so she can briefly go out in public and feel normal. She also pushes Caleb to improve his skills in the hopes he will one day be able to change her form permanently, attempting to invoke the trope. It's later revealed Nott was originally born a halfling woman named Veth, but was cursed with her goblin body by a hag, and she hopes to get her old body back not just to be free from persecution and dysmorphia, but so she can return to her family. Caleb successfully casting Widogast's Transmogrification on her in "The Fancy and the Fooled" invokes the trope permanently.
Western Animation
- The Marvelous Misadventures of Flapjack: In "Gone Wishin'" after Captain K'nuckles steals the heart of the Mermaid Queen, Flapjack notes that she's not breathing and she's standing perfectly still in the water. Later, when they exhaust the mermaid tear wishes, the corpse of the mermaid queen screams and thrashes about int the water before being ejected into the sky while screeching in pain, to Flapjack and K'nuckles's terror. Suddenly, she transforms into a sky-maid, which leaves her with a fairer complexion and a great deal of relief.
- The Mask: Animated Series: In the finale of "Little Big Mask", Peggy is left physically and emotionally worn out after spending the last day trying to save an uncontrollably regressing Stanley from suffering a Death by De-aging while also being a Badly Battered Babysitter for the similarly regressed Mask. Even now that they've found an antidote for the youth cream (ordinary wet wipes) and restored Stanley to normal, Peggy's too fatigued to celebrate... only for the Mask to dose her with the youth cream, regressing her into a teenager. Once she's over the shock, Peggy's energy and joi de vivre is restored, and the episode ends with her running off to have fun.
- Miraculous Ladybug:
- Adrien's transformation into his superhero alter ego Cat Noir is shown as liberating, because being Cat Noir allows him to get away from his controlling father and enjoy a bit of freedom. However, this starts to become a problem in season 4 when, after getting dumped because he kept ghosting his girlfriend in order to run around as Cat Noir, he decides to spend even more time as Cat Noir, losing his sense of identity and also drawing the ire of the Guardians, who consider him to be a rogue Miraculous user. Things then get worse when he impulsively quits the team, then tries to pass himself off as a different Miraculous user called Cat Walker in order to avoid the Guardians repossessing the Cat Miraculous; he ends up becoming Lost in Character and begins to worry that he won't be able to become Cat Noir again. After that fiasco, he decides that he needs to start spending more time as himself, even if it's not as fun as being Cat Noir.
- Played with in "Daddycop", where a remorseful Sabrina has been using her new Dog Miraculous to perform heroic deeds as a way of atoning for all the awful things she did as a Beta Bitch, but it's not solving the underlying problem that she hates herself and still feels guilty about everything she did. It's also creating other problems — she's isolating herself from her classmates and lying to her father, and thus her classmates all think she's stuck-up and her dad thinks she's being bullied at school, and Marinette, one of the few people who might want to help her, does not realize she's having problems because she only sees Sabrina when she's Miss Hound and thus believes she has her life in order. After a string of events exposes just how much of a mess Sabrina's life is to everyone else, she tries to return her Miraculous to Ladybug, fearing that she doesn't deserve it anymore. Ladybug assures her that she knows she's not the same person she used to be, but she needs to start showing everyone else the person she is now. She helps coach Sabrina into making a truly liberating transformation that better fits the person she wants to be instead of the person that she thinks other people will approve of.
- Solar Opposites: Comedic example; Terry comes down to breakfast with a massive hangover from trying a new Funyuns Hard Seltzer and begs the rest of the Solar Opposites for some peace and quiet. Just then, Korvo comes in with a marching band and gender reveal cannons, announcing that he's going for a major character change. Terry just asks him to hold off until his headache goes away, to which he agrees to do so... Korvo then pulls a complete 180 by claiming that he has to practice for his "Stomp" audition. As he bangs trash cans, Terry starts screaming, then out of nowhere, his head erupts and a new one grows from underneath, which apparently cures his hangover.
Terry: Ah, shit, there we go. Nothing gets rid of a hangover like a big ol' dump!
[Terry's old, shriveled-up head utters a small meow] - Tangled: The Series: In "Freebird", a couple turns Rapunzel and Cass into birds for an hour to let them experience true freedom. Cass is reluctant, but after some encouragement from Rapunzel, she embraces her new form and the two enjoy the time flying freely. However, this transformation is a genuine risk, as once the hour passes, they will reduce to mindless animals to be added to the couple's aviary.
