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Shapeshifter-to-Human Tail Injury?

Hi all.

I have a weretiger character who sustains a pretty major injury to his tail in a fight - it's almost severed. How would that translate when he shifts back to human? A back injury of some sort?

Thanks in advance.

MotherofDragons
 

T.Allen.Smith

Staff
Moderator
Have you considered phantom pain?

When a person has a limb amputated, they often report feeling pain where the limb or appendage used to be. For example, if you had a partial leg amputation, the patient might feel pain in the foot that is no longer there. It's an interesting phenomenon that might work well for you.
 

CupofJoe

Myth Weaver
I really like the idea of pain in a limb you no longer have...
The character might not want to sit down because the "tail" will hurt or wincing/crying out with pain for no obvious reason...
 
I've actually seen this addressed before in Poul Anderson's Operation Chaos. "As a wolf I have a stumpy tail, and as a man I don't like to sit down in wet weather."
 

TWErvin2

Auror
Consider that during transformation, bones, muscles, tendons and skin are all reforming, stretching, being absorbed, forming beyond what exists, etc. Is there a reason that during this process limbs that are not severed would heal during this process?
 

Lord Ben

Minstrel
Have you considered phantom pain?

When a person has a limb amputated, they often report feeling pain where the limb or appendage used to be. For example, if you had a partial leg amputation, the patient might feel pain in the foot that is no longer there. It's an interesting phenomenon that might work well for you.

Yeah, I was going to post the exact same thing but it looks like someone already said it. Phantom pain works perfectly for a limb that only exists in one form or the other.
 

A. E. Lowan

Forum Mom
Leadership
As I am currently sporting a broken tail bone (yes, fellow sitters, feel my pain), if you choose to go that route let me describe what it feels like.

Standing, it actually doesn't hurt. Walking is also no problem. It does not hurt to touch or press with my hands so I can actually feel how the bones are now misaligned. It's sitting that's the issue. The pain is dull, aching, forces me to shift from hip to hip to alleviate the pressure which builds the longer I sit. It radiates up my spine and out into my hips. If I take an impact to the break (which I did, from a flying water bottle during a panic stop in the car) the pain is sudden, intense, and nauseating.
 
Consider that during transformation, bones, muscles, tendons and skin are all reforming, stretching, being absorbed, forming beyond what exists, etc. Is there a reason that during this process limbs that are not severed would heal during this process?

A good point... but it starts to get into how incredibly complex shapeshifting would be, if it weren't done almost entirely through shortcuts of matching and jumping into one form as a total pattern. You could do your shifters as able to heal, but without careful limits it's very close to making them unkillable.

Come to think of it, one of the first themes to pop up in shapeshifter myths was that the only way to recognize them is through injuries carried over. And these days, it's getting harder and harder to find characters who can turn into things they can just see or imagine, rather than needing something like a DNA sample (or absorbed soul) from what they imitate. We're starting to see that they need limits like that, for plot balance and to help us swallow the idea.
 

Svrtnsse

Staff
Article Team
Aren't tigers and other animals with tails using them, at least in part, for keeping their balance while moving? In his human form he won't have a tail, but the difficulty in keeping his balance may carry over - most likely in the same way phantom pains might.
 

Guy

Inkling
Consider that during transformation, bones, muscles, tendons and skin are all reforming, stretching, being absorbed, forming beyond what exists, etc. Is there a reason that during this process limbs that are not severed would heal during this process?
That's exactly what I was thinking. Just to toss out some rules I have for shapeshifting:

It's uncomfortable. A human changing into another human form would find the sensation weird. A human changing into a non-human form would find it excruciating.

One runs the risk of permanently losing one's humanity. For example, someone turning himself into a sparrow to spy on enemies would find it very difficult to squeeze a human intellect into something the size of a sparrow's brain. When the shapeshifting process finished, he would likely be a sparrow in every way, including mentally, and would thus have no way of changing back.

They can heal through shapeshifting, but there are limits. Things like burns or brain damage couldn't be healed, or at least not without extreme difficulty.
 
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