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My standing on Transformation (Journal version)
12 months ago
Have you ever felt dissatisfied or unhappy about transformation based comics or stories,thinking things could have been better? Or even that under the surface,these stories may be conceptually dark like the stuff made by snake89? Then I guess we might be on the same page. Personally,I've always found plots in transformation stories to be inherently negative,and even though the genre CAN be likable,it's pretty hard for me to because of one simple reason: I (somehow) get too attached. Like,I get it: the characters are supposed to be one-note and unimportant and I shouldn't pay too much attention. But the thing is, it's not them losing their humanity that bugs me,it's the reason and ends that get to me. Let me give you an example: a guy is being a dick to his pokemon and soon after,some force or circumstance like a mew or sumn turns him into a pokemon. In this scenario,what is the main motivation for this happening? Karma. Now,let's say the pokemon uses this opportunity to take advantage of the guy,and that's when the story ends. Is this a good plot? No. How about after all is said and done,we get a small time skip where the guy and the Pokemon are still together? Is this positive now? Barely. My point is that the cause of this was karma,but even though the guy probably learned his lesson,he is in no way rewarded for this: the damage is done and nothing is done to make anything better or reverse the damage. That's the thing about TF Stories that I hate the most. Now for another example: a guy is being a good person to his pokemon,but he wants to have a closer bond with his pokemon. So some force or circumstance turns him into a pokemon. Is this a good thing? Of course it is. And of course we say that the guy and the Pokemon have fun,get together,maybe even tie the knot...this is definitely positive. But then we say that there's a scene where someone's looking for the guy but can't find him since they don't know what happened? Does this change things? Yeah. Does it make things better or worse? Definitely worse! The takeaway here is that things we're building up to be a story of dreams come true,just for the consequences of these wishes to be revealed,and it just makes me feel guilty for feeling good about it.
Look,what I'm trying to say is: Positive Tf stories are hard to tell well. That's why I mentioned snake89,because I think his work does a good job at illustrating what I think of when I see any usual transformation story. And the fact of the matter is that although nothing needs to change,things can improve. Although it can be a challenge to pull off,positive tf stories CAN be told.
Look,what I'm trying to say is: Positive Tf stories are hard to tell well. That's why I mentioned snake89,because I think his work does a good job at illustrating what I think of when I see any usual transformation story. And the fact of the matter is that although nothing needs to change,things can improve. Although it can be a challenge to pull off,positive tf stories CAN be told.
I do honestly think you raise a really valid point with this and the sort of general “style” a lot of people go for when writing tf (and by extension I’d refer to mental changes as well as physical ones with a similar “negative outcome and overall tone”). Admittedly I’m a massive nerd who likes writing in general (and by extension writing tf) and as silly as it sounds I do feel the whole narrative of change (be it physical and/or mental) can have a lot of interesting dynamics that mix the “theme” with the story's plot as a whole, and that doesn't have to be in a negative way whatsoever.
Evidently as a random nerd who writes this stuff mostly for fun, I’m not acting like I'm devoid of the same pitfalls, but I had been playing around with a story idea in a similar state of mind of wanting a positive outcome for the characters because I do feel it's a more fun thing to both write and read. I do like the idea that a person’s transformation (and how they cope with them) can be representative of changes with their personality or even having these physical changes catalyse a narrative change in them as a person. It can obviously sound a bit silly for some to treat stories like this in such a way, but I do feel there's some merit to treating the story with some care outside of the tf aspects itself.