Not everyone wants to change. Upon realizing that they're in danger of undergoing some seemingly undesirable Metamorphosis or some other form of Involuntary Shapeshifting, some characters are able to prevent themselves from changing, either through sheer willpower, esoteric drugs, supernatural power, or maybe just by avoiding the source of the change. In some extreme cases, the character might even be convinced that death is the only way to stop transforming.
But all too often, there'll be a point when they can't avoid transforming a moment longer, because they've run out of distance, stamina, drugs, and most often of all, the will to resist. At this point, the character is so physically and emotionally exhausted by the struggle that they will just stop resisting, instead allowing the transformation to progress to its logical conclusion — even if it involves a Death of Personality.
One variation of this can feature the character finding themselves trapped in an area with a source of transformation and spending most of the story trying to stay away from it, only to give in after finding that everyone else has succumbed to it and there's no hope of being rescued from it.
And in another variation, the character turns out not to be resisting at all and only gives the vaguest pretense of doing so, having resolved to surrender to the change from the very beginning — either due to being The Fatalist, secretly longing to change, or knowing full well that there's absolutely nothing they can do to stop it.
In some cases, the transformation can be avoided or resisted up until the life of a loved one depends on it, whereupon the character accepts the change for the power to save their friend — even if it means never being human again.
And there's even a variant experienced in which the transformation isn't a one-off at all, but regular shapeshifting — in which case, the end of resistance simply takes the form of the sufferer willingly transforming for a change.
Regardless of the variation used, depending on the tone of the story, this can be played as either a bittersweet acceptance of a new life, an unexpected source of happiness, or a full-blown Despair Event Horizon, to the point that it can even be framed as a Metaphorical Suicide.
May overlap with Transformed Ever After and Trauma-Induced Transformation. Can likewise lead to Transhuman Treachery if they come to like the change.
Compare Resist the Beast in which a character fights a negative influence on their mind and body, and Emergency Transformation, in which someone is forced to accept a transformation for the sake of avoiding their own death.
Contrast Fully-Embraced Fiend.
Examples:
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Anime & Manga
- Puella Magi Madoka Magica: Late in the anime, it's revealed that Witches are the inevitable result of a Magical Girl who has lost all hope. Any time a Magical Girl defeats a Witch, uses a Grief Seed, or anything of the sort, they're only delaying their transformation into a Witch. After Sayaka realizes she's no longer human, she passes her Despair Event Horizon, losing her mind and turning into Oktavia.
Audio Plays
- Big Finish Doctor Who:
- In "Loup Garoux," when Pieter Stubbe arrives at the werewolf gathering and unleashes his influence on the pack, Ileana De Santos is left struggling to resist the urge to transform and spends several minutes audibly trying to get herself under control, breathing heavily and desperately calling out for her servants to help her (to no avail, since they've transformed as well) or trying to listen to the Doctor's entreaties. Unfortunately, she can't fight her werewolf instincts for very long, ultimately transforming with a snarl of "it's true, I want it..."
- Late in "Singularity," the Somnus Foundation finally begins their plan to merge all humanity into a Deity of Human Origin, rapidly bringing all of Moscow into a psychic Singularity. As such, Lena soon begins to feel the psychic transformation like all other humans in the city, forcing her to hang on while the Doctor improvises various defences, even fleeing into the Moscow Metro in the hope that the underground station will shield her. Unfortunately, Lena has been teetering on the edge of the Despair Event Horizon for most of the story thanks to her failure to protect her brother from the Somnus, and she eventually stops resisting the change, allowing herself to be absorbed into the Singularity. Worse still, Lena's transformed self then joins the rest of Moscow in chasing the Doctor across the city.
- In the final act of "The Magic Mousetrap", the Celestial Toymaker challenges the characters to compete against each other in games of his choosing, with the losers being transformed into dolls and added to his toybox. Comedians Harry and Herbert take on Lola in a game of "What's My Punchline?" only for the two Shell Shocked Veterans to deliberately flub every question so that Lola wins, willingly accepting their transformation into dolls as their second chance at "going over the top together."
Comic Books
- Black Cat Mystic: In issue #60, protagonists Frank and Parker stumble upon a Ghost Town populated entirely by babies, the result of the Fountain of Youth leaking into the local wells... and by the time they discover this, both Frank and Parker have drunk the water. Frank is able to resist the change and remain a teenager for a little while, even as the significantly older Parker regresses to childhood, but Frank only does so he can get all the babies into one house and provide enough food for them to survive on until help arrives. As soon as he's finished, he settles in with the rest of the kids and allows himself to go on regressing, happily musing that they're all getting the chance to restart their lives as he shrinks into infancy.
- The Simpsons' Treehouse of Horror: In "Bart People," Bart and Lisa are cursed to periodically shapeshift into panthers, and after Bart has already mauled Groundskeeper Willie, the circumstances for another change are guaranteed to be dire. So, when the next transformation occurs, the two are left struggling to regain control of themselves: Lisa is able to completely suppress her transformation by thinking about jazz music, but after barely a few seconds of trying and failing to think of things that can calm him down, Bart mutters, "Oh what the hell," and transforms.
Fan Works
- By the time Hybridized!
started, Remy Buxaplenty grew up as a fairy demigod and accepted the fact his transformation is irreversible. It helps that it allowed his fairy godfather Juandissimo Magnifico to adopt him as his son and has the family he wished he had.
- Dev is starting to accept the possibility of his transformation to a Fairy/Anti-Fairy hybrid is irreversible. As he hates his father for being emotionally neglectful and is now in the loving care of the Cosma-Fairywinkle and Anti-Cosma-Anti-Fairywinkle families, has two kinds of magic instead of being a godchild with a fairy godparent, and can have a fresh start at a new life, it's a little obvious why he feels this way.
- Research Fever: Implied to have happened to Gourdy in some form. At first, he seemed terrified of the fact he was transforming into a clone of Rodger, begging his friends to stay away from him so he wouldn't hurt them, but eventually he began to gladly embrace it. The original Rodger's notes imply that he wants Toodles to do the same as well.
- Total Undead Drama: Tammy ends up captured by the vampire, Storm, while on a stakeout with Leonard, Courtney and Jo. Leonard tries for a rescue and manages to reach her, but it's obvious Tammy has long since been bitten. Leonard tries to get her out of the manor, thinking it's reversible. But it's only until the two are cornered in a locked room with Storm's coven closing in that she reveals to Leonard that she's let herself turn completely after a brief bout of trying to resist it (even admitting she lasted like 10 minutes before giving in. Citing that real curses are stronger then they look). Plus Storm convinced her being a vampire was more fun anyway since it was real magic than pretending with LARP. And doesn't even mind the blood feeding, being surprised how fast she got used to it.
Films –- Animation
- Turning Red: The female members of the Lee family have the power to shapeshift into giant red pandas as a hereditary blessing. Unfortunately, the change is activated by any intense emotion, so the blessing warped into a curse over time. To avoid the psychological burden of the transformations, the Lee women began sealing off their panda spirits permanently. When Mei's red panda power first awakens, she hates it so much that she tries to avoid triggering the transformation at all. However, she begins to appreciate her red panda form as the movie goes on due to her friends' acceptance, and she gradually figures out how to control her shapeshifting power. When Mei's given the option to seal her panda form permanently, she chooses not to since she's found that she loves the ability, becoming the first Lee in several generations to keep the gift.
Films –- Live-Action
- Annihilation (2018): During their expedition, the protagonists struggle to fend off The Shimmer's mutagenic powers as the monsters created by it pick them off one by one. When only Josie and Lena remain, Josie is too traumatized to continue, and she willingly surrenders herself to The Shimmer, visibly sprouting vines on her arms before walking off into a field of human-shaped plants — seemingly becoming one of them the moment she steps out of view.
- Bad Moon: Ted spends most of the film trying to overcome his lycanthropy or at least stave off his transformations. It doesn't work. At the end, when his sister Janet catches him in the middle of restraining himself, Ted crosses the Despair Event Horizon and decides to let himself transform unimpeded, uncaring that he'll end up killing her and his young nephew.
- Count Yorga: After Erica is bitten by Yorga the first time and displays vampiric behavior (she trashes her house, feeds on her pet cat, and acts erratic), she fears the change, though doesn't understand what happening. Yorga visits her later that night to finish feeding on her, rather then fear him she embraces him and is ultimately drained and turned. When Hayes and, later, Micheal see her, she completely a vampire and doesn't hesitate to help kill Hayes with Yorga's other brides.
- Dog Soldiers: Towards the climax, Megan reveals she's a werewolf herself, having been forcibly "adopted" into the pack the soldiers have been fighting. She initially hoped the soldiers would rescue her, but she's lost hope and decided to embrace it. She sabotages their escape route and transforms to join the pack in slaughtering the survivors.
- Together (2025): Tim and Millie spend the second act of the film trying to resist being merged, trying everything from using drugs to halt the process to sawing their merged arms apart, which at least buys enough time for the two of them to go looking for a cure in opposite directions. However, when Jamie slices Millie's arm open to speed the process along, Tim is forced to merge his arm with hers yet again just so she won't bleed to death. In the wake of this, the two of them wearily admit defeat, deciding that it's pointless to resist any longer: instead, they put on their favourite music and merge completely in a final sex scene — the film ending with Tim and Millie answering the door as a single androgynous being.
- V/H/S/Halloween: In "Coochie Coochie Coo," the ghost known only as the Mommy regularly ensnares rowdy teenagers in her Nightmarish Nursery and forces them to drink her milk, mentally and physically transforming them into overgrown infants with bizarrely childlike faces. Of the two protagonists, Kaleigh is the most resistant to the Mommy's tactics, refusing to take the bait, staying ahead of the pursuing ghost, and resisting her Super-Effective Lullaby... but when Lacie is captured and turned into one of the Mommy's children, Kaleigh loses all hope of escaping. Instead, she snuggles up to the Mommy and falls asleep, the segment ending with the guarantee that Kaleigh will transform as well...
Literature
- The Cell: the unnamed narrator has a hereditary condition that causes him to transform on a full moon into a werewolfnote . Initially, he locks himself in a Werewolf Kennel before it happens. However, as time goes on, he grows to enjoy the power and starts "accidentally" letting himself transform outside the kennel. By the end of the novella, he's convinced his lycanthropy is a divine gift to allow him to murder sinners and has become a Fully-Embraced Fiend killing anybody who annoys him.
- Dracula: Lucy Westenra is implied to have been trying to resist the incoming vampiric changes as she slowly turns, telling Seward and Van Helsing about the nightmares she has while under the effects of the bite, but isn't quite sure what's happening to her. After the third bite by Dracula, she can sense the transformation coming and manages to briefly reel it back after it comes out and nearly "kisses" Arthur. When it becomes obvious she won't hold on further, she uses the last of her humanity to tell Helsing to protect Arthur before she ultimately dies and lets the transformation finish.
- The Shadow over Innsmouth: In the finale, the protagonist belatedly realizes that he's a Deep One hybrid as well, and after experiencing vivid dreams about how the US navy has failed to destroy Y'ha-nthlei, awakens to find that he's now sporting the Innsmouth Look. For a while, he seriously considers killing himself and even buys a gun to that end but can't go through with it. Eventually, he gives up on resisting his transformation altogether, instead resolving to break his similarly afflicted cousin out of the madhouse, complete their transformation, and spend the rest of their eternal lives beneath the waves.
- Warhammer 40,000: The Twice-Dead King: When Oltyx can no longer deny he has the Flayer Curse, to himself or to his subjects, he exiles himself on a suicide mission aboard the enemy flagship Polyphemus where he can finally give in to his Horror Hunger... and when he does, the experience is so underwhelming it makes him angry. It's not until he realizes that he isn't alone, and has the acceptance of the countless other Flayed Ones in the universe, that he begins to feel the change as euphoric — eons of stigma towards a condition Necrons normally find shameful and disgusting dissolving to discover that being a Flayed One only seems so from the outside.
Live-Action TV
- Doctor Who:
- "The End of Time": The Tenth Doctor, after receiving a fatal dose of radiation, starts to regenerate. Stopping it by a force of will, the Doctor sets out a Farewell Tour to say goodbye to all his companions. After wishing Rose Tyler a Happy New Year, the Doctor finally surrenders to the inevitable, with the resultant energy burst nearly destroying the TARDIS.
- "Twice Upon A Time": Both the Twelfth Doctor and the First Doctor are reluctant to allow themselves to regenerate and spend most of the episode forcing themselves to remain as they are — even if it runs the risk of killing them permanently. By the finale, they've finally come to terms with the end of their incarnation and move on to their respective next incarnations, the episode ending with the Twelfth Doctor regenerating.
- Star Trek: Deep Space Nine: Odo and his fellow Changelings need to revert to their true liquid form every sixteen hours, but Odo finds it embarrassing to liquefy in front of others. In "The Forsaken", Odo ends up stuck in a turbo-lift with Ambassador Lwaxana Troi, and he tries to prevent himself from liquefying for the sake of his dignity, even though it leaves him in almost unbearable discomfort; eventually, Lwaxana opens up to him about her own secrets, building up enough trust for Odo to be vulnerable around her, and he finally allows himself to revert while Lwaxana protectively gathers him up in her dress.
- The Twilight Zone (1959): In the episode "Number 12 Looks Just Like You", everybody who turns 18 has to undergo "The Transformation", mandatory cosmetic surgery that makes them extremely attractive but also unquestioningly conformist. The protagonist Marilyn does not want to undergo The Transformation, preferring to be unique even if she is less attractive than everyone else. Her family and friends pile on the social pressure to change until she finally agrees to the transformation, becoming more beautiful but losing the personality that makes her unique.
- Wednesday: In season 2, Enid is revealed to be a rare werewolf variant called an "alpha", which are stronger but more feral, and unable to return human if they change again during the next full moon. She ultimately chooses to transform in order to rescue Wednesday, leaving her permanently a werewolf, and she ends up leaving her friends to live in the wilderness.
Tabletop Games
- Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition: Lycanthropes who Resist the Beast have no control over their transformations, whereas those who surrender to the curse can transform at will but have their Character Alignment change to match their new form.
Theater
- The Guy Who Didn't Like Musicals: The whole point of "Let It Out" - Paul has failed in his attempt to destroy the meteor in the Starlight Theater, and the infected are trying to turn him into one of them by singing at him. His lyrics describe this sort of fight.
Video Games
- Darkest Dungeon II: In the Abomination's backstory, after he was attacked by a werewolf-like beast late at night, he initially tried to resist the infection by consuming potentially toxic herbs and concoctions in search of a cure. After one such "remedy" knocked him unconscious, he awoke to find that he'd apparently transformed uncontrollably and slaughtered a cow while he was out, leading to him being arrested by the local church inquisition. He attempted to hold out against the inquisitors torturing him with branding irons, but eventually the pain proved to be too much. Pushed past his breaking point, he embraced the infection and willingly transformed into his full beast form to brutally slaughter his captors and escape.
- Elden Ring: Malenia has been afflicted by the Scarlet Rot since her birth, but she has always resolved to keep it under control throughout her life even as it claimed her eyes and limbs. However, during the fight against Radahn after the Shattering, she embraced the Rot after the two fought each other to a standstill, resulting in all of Caelid being consumed by the Rot and Radahn becoming a mindless Rot-eaten beast. She does it again during the second phase of her boss fight, turning into a Goddess of Rot after the Tarnished first strikes her down.
Web Original
- Creepypasta: In "I guard an abandoned house. The owners are reborn every year", one unfortunate ghost hunter who made the mistake of exploring Koel House began transforming into the youngest of the Koel family's grandchildren. However, he was able to resist the change for several days out of sheer willpower, routinely regressing then forcing himself to grow up again while he looked for a cure. It wasn't until the ghost hunter lost his wedding ring to another transformation that the unfortunate victim finally gave up, accepting that all his hopes of repairing his marriage were in vain and his life was over. From then on, he allowed his transformation to progress all the way to the end while the Gamekeeper drove him back to Koel House.
Western Animation
- Beast Machines: After waking up dazed and confused on Cybertron following their victory in Beast Wars, the Maximals have new techno-organic bodies that don't work the same way as their old ones. The most dramatic difference is that they no longer have internal computers to help trigger transformation, and learn they must accept they are both technological and organic to achieve a pseudo-Zen state to transform (punctuated by the Zen-like statement "I am transformed"). Rattrap has the most trouble with this, as the idea of surrendering himself to some nonsensical, poorly defined state of mind goes against all his survival instincts. That Optimus Primal goes from being The Captain in Beast Wars to a religious zealot spouting platitudes does little to convince him.
- Futurama: In "The Honking", Bender is hit by a were-car and turns into one himself. Scared he'll kill Fry in this state (though he attacks Leela first to Fry's jealousy), they track down the original were-car just in time for the change to begin in Bender again. Rather than fear it though, Bender cites "Hey this is starting to feel pretty good" and lets the transformation take him.
- Super Robot Monkey Team Hyperforce Go!: Downplayed; it's revealed late into the series that the Skeleton King is actually The Alchemist, the Fatherly Scientist who created the titular team. The Alchemist was infected by the Dark Ones and gradually transformed into their monstrous servant. He fought the change right down to the wire, but the second it's complete, the Skeleton King becomes a Fully-Embraced Fiend.
The Alchemist: Now the Dark Ones…Skeleton King: Take my soul! (Evil Laugh)
- The Owl House: Eda spent most of her life fighting against the curse that turns her into the Owl Beast. In "Knock Knock, Knocking on Hooty's Door", however, she is forced (drugged) to sleep by Hooty and comes to learn how the Owl Beast was sealed inside of her. She proposes a truce to the Owl Beast, and by accepting it as a part of her, she becomes able to transform into a harpy.
- Wizards (2020): After being turned into a half-troll during Trollhunters, Jim is struck with an onyx shard during a battle with the Green Knight, where the shard gradually ingrains itself before it inevitably corrupts Jim. Even though Jim resists its effects for a while, Jim is ultimately forced to embrace the corruption when the Green Knight attacks his friends a second time. Pushing the shard into his heart, Jim becomes fully troll to buy his friends time to escape. However, this change allows the Green Knight to gain complete control over Jim, and he turns Jim into his slave. He remains under control until the series finale, when Jim's mind is restored and he's turned back into a human.