Horrifically agonizing transformations my beloved <3<3<3<3<3
A shapeshifter’s first experience shapeshifting should always be painful, terrifying, and potentially fatal <3 it’s vital for their development. Bones twisting and cracking apart. Flesh turning in on itself. A new body ripping through the seams of the old one. When it’s done they should collapse, glassy eyed and panting, laying in a pool of their own blood (and maybe vomit also) before pulling themselves to their feet on week, trembling legs. That’s just how it works <3
And when it goes wrong they should shudder and convulse and helplessly hack up blood and plead for someone to help them but there’s nothing anyone can do and they’re twitching and writhing in pain as their body tries over and over to force them into one transformation or the other, until at last they go utterly still, broken, twisted body lying limp, caked in blood, caught somewhere between what they were and what they were trying to become, but unrecognizable as either form.
I mean regardless of whether or not they survive the pleading is Important. Breaking down from the pain and begging to helpless onlookers who can’t even get close, because their body is so out of control that they’re at risk of hurting the shapeshifter or being hurt themselves and all they can do is sit and watch as bones creak and reshape and flesh shifts and protrudes and the shapeshifter screams and begs and bleeds from all the places their body is tearing itself open in.