Animorphism/Playing With

Basic Trope: A character, voluntarily or otherwise, ends up transforming into an animal.
 * Straight: The evil sorceress turns the hero into a rat.
 * Exaggerated:
 * Our hero is constantly turning into various animal forms, to the point where we hardly see them in human shape anymore. Some of said forms are truly bizarre.
 * There is a montage of the evil sorceress turning a succession heroes into various sorts of animals, but then moving on to plants, fungi, etc. When confronted with the last hero, she just disintegrates him before ranting about how she's used up all her ideas.
 * Justified: The evil sorceress doesn't have the power to kill the hero, so she puts his soul in the body of a rat instead.
 * Inverted: Humanity Ensues
 * Subverted: The evil sorceress threatens to turn the hero into 'something nasty with whiskers' -- a bearded man.
 * Double Subverted: The evil sorceress, after threatening to turn the hero into 'something hideous and helpless', turns him into simply ugly human... which turns out to be a sort of transition form as he then shifts into a mutant rat.
 * Parodied:
 * The evil sorceress turns the hero into a snake. He then bites and kills her, laughing at her stupid mistake.
 * The evil sorceress turns the hero into a kitten. She is then too distracted by having a kitty cat of her very own to manage any more evil for a while.
 * Deconstructed: The trauma of all the matter changing, including brain cells, leaves our hero more or less an ordinary rat when the evil sorceress changes him, no trace of his old self remaining.
 * Reconstructed: The initial transformation is horribly traumatic, but with gradual adjustment the hero gains from his new form and altered perceptions.
 * Zig Zagged: Sometimes the hero is just a dumb animal when he's around strong instinctual triggers in his new form, sometimes he's not; the voluntary and involuntary aspects of the transformation seem to come and go as well.
 * Averted: The evil sorceress does not transform the hero into an animal, or even hint at the idea.
 * Enforced:
 * This is a fantasy story for kids, so it can't be too scary, but the evil sorceress needs to punish the hero- how about she turns him into a cute animal for a bit?
 * Or: "I'm tired of drawing humans. I want to draw the main character as a tiger. Oh look! A wizard!"
 * Lampshaded:
 * "Haha, turning adventurers into animals is my favorite spell."
 * "Call me sentimental, but I've always loved cats."
 * Invoked: The hero asks the evil sorceress if she could spare his life and maybe just turn him into an animal instead.
 * Defied: The evil sorceress refuses to learn any animal-transformation spells because she finds them a waste of time compared to more lethal ones.
 * Discussed: "Oh no, the evil sorceress turned him into a rat! ...But wait, couldn't she do something better, like kill him? Oh well, good luck for us!"
 * Conversed: "Wait a minute, she turned him into... a large dog? Why would anyone do that- I guess the writers just can't stand to have their hero take any real harm.

Back to Animorphism