I think one of my favorite ideas in the Animorphs book series was the idea of "estreen", which was an Andalite term for someone who was very artistic or skilled at morphing to the point of making it fascinating and pleasant to look at, instead of purely functional and horrifically grotesque. I think it's neat that the Andalites developed the morphing technology for military espionage and foreign relations, but also used it for art and professional dancing and entertainment in the civilian areas of life.

I've seen a lot of really pretty artwork featuring transformation on this website that isn't mind-numbingly creepy and reminds me of the concept of estreens, it's just a nice idea to think about. I like transformation art because it makes me think about anatomy and how similar life forms are to each other, and it fascinates me to see a good breakdown and comparison of species. I also really like the psychological horror aspect that it has, in the same way people seem to like watching scary movies, I guess.

It could almost be schadenfreude for me, except that I like the really pretty and flowing transformations as well, the ones that aren't jarring examples of extreme body horror. I don't think I have many characters that could be considered estreens when it comes to shapeshifting, they're all either clumsy or unskilled at it, and the ones that are adept don't have particularly pleasant-to-look-at forms to begin with.

What about you guys? Any estreens amongst your original characters? Or any characters from any other series that you might admire for being like an estreen?