For those of you who aren't familiar, I live in an exceptionally flammable part of the United States, and despite the fact that every goddamn year multiple parts of my state catch fire, destroy homes and kill people, the local assholes insist on getting drunk and setting fire to a bunch of illegal explosives anyway.
In 2023, God granted me a Miracle that prevented my house from burning down.
Last year, I had to resort to Psychological and Chemical Warfare to keep the patriotic arsonists at bay.
This year is apparently An Important Birthday for the clusterfuck we have the nerve to call a nation, so despite the fact there is so much smoke in the air that the sun has literally been blood red for the last week, the pyrotechnic fetishists are out in force.
Last year, I hit upon the concept that if my neighbors were going to act like problem animals, it would make sense to use the management techniques on them that you might use on say, a Bear that was doing serious property damage. Thusly, I created The Stench, a nontoxic but FOUL smelling concoction that I could discretely spray around the flammable gatherings and render the area extremely uncomfortable to occupy for the rest of the night, forcing them to give up or move on.
If this seems harsh:
There is no story from 2024 because a grass fire was started by fireworks less than 12 miles from me and the high winds put me in the evacuation zone in under an hour.
Over fifty people lost their homes.
Errant fireworks burning my house down is a very real possibility, and I pay the price in anxiety and insurance premiums.
The Stench is noxious but harmless, and also very effective at building a buffer zone around my home. But sneaking up to parties on foot in this heat is both exhausting and nerve-wracking. There have to be more effective ways to do this
-And there is!
It involves Weeds and Business Cards :)
All of this spring, I've been battling Bindweed and my City Code Enforcement Officers.
The city code people have been professional, but the truth is that one of my neighbors is calling them on use because one of my housemates is transgender. It's extremely grating to get these notices, having to explain repeatedly that I *AM* working on the weed situation, I just have a heart condition and No Money. It's also deeply paranoia-inducing to know that the city is regularly coming by and photographing my house.
The Solution to the Bindweed is 1 gallon of high-concentration vinegar, half a cup of Borax, a quarter cup of salt, and a couple tablespoons of dish soap. Get one of those weed sprayers from a hardware store and mix it up in there. Spray it on your thistles, bindweed, kudzu, garlic mustard or whatever your local herbaceous invasive is on a day with bright sunlight, and in a few hours the entire part of the plant above the soil is Deceased. It's non-toxic to insects, pets and wildlife (just wait a few months before trying to plant anything in the area for the traces to wash out).
The only real downside to this stuff is that it smells HEINOUS.
Sure, The Stench is nauseating, but WeedFucker 5000 is genuinely painful to inhale. Again, it wont hurt people- even my asthmatic housemates can use the stuff- but boy howdy it sure smells toxic. I've got the ingredients for about 40 gallons of WeedFucker 5000 prepared and ready to go.
I've also got a disposable hazmat suit, rubber boots and gloves, respirator, goggles and a shitty little golf cart from the free section of craigslist to haul my shit around in.
I also have Business Cards!
See, the very nice officers from the City Code department left some Very Nice business cards so that I may contact them about "the fucking bindweed is gone, get off my back".
So I scanned the business card into my computer, fired up Clip Studio, and made my own business cards. I've turned my City's Abstract Triangle Logo into an Eye of Providence and the slogan of "E Pluribus Unum" to "E Plurbis Anus", Changed my city's name to a dumb pun, and stated the card originates from "The Department Of Public Nuisances".
Crucially, where the name and contact information of the real city employee has been replaced with the name and business email of the neighbor who has been bragging on facebook about calling the city code department on my home because he hates my housemate :)
It looks, at a glance, very much like the business cards of city employees. If you look at it for like 5 seconds though, there's no way it could be mistaken for the real thing.
I've printed out 500 of these bad boys and will have them on hand as I, a put-upon employee, am forced to work overtime on a national holiday doing weed mitigation, because my boss can't manage deadlines for shit.
You're mad about it? I've been out here since 5 AM! But if we don't finish by the deadline we lose the contract and I could get fired. You know what the economy is.
Here, this is my Boss's Business card- how about you send him an email about how this has ruined your barbecue?
It's golden hour now, so I'm Suiting Up and preparing to embark on some civil service in the form of Noxious Weed Eradication, and by coincidence, Fire Mitigation.
I'll report back later Tonight🫡
(If you'd like to support your local disabled storyteller in their Acts Of Public Service, please consider donating to my Ko-Fi or supporting me on Patreon)
Well.
It's not quite an hour into July 5th.
I am very tired, may have destroyed my sense of smell, and am not sure if I'm proud of or VERY disappointed in my fellow citizens.
On one hand: FAR fewer fireworks parties this year!
- Only nine to last year's thirteen
- three of them had the good sense to be firing their recreational explosives out over the local reservoir
- That's far from foolproof
- and really bad for the fish
- also y'all are RIGHT NEXT to where the Bald Eagles are nesting
- but congratulations on at least attempting some risk mitigation!
On the other hand.
Absolutely NOBODY questioned why the hell I was out spraying weeds.
- In a Hazmat Suit (technically it's a coverall for painting rooms, which is much more breathable, but looks the part)
- In a Residential Area
- After Dark
- On a Federal Holiday
Like I'm glad I didn't get into a fight or something, but like.
I was Ready.
I had that conversation locked and loaded.
I MADE BUSINESS CARDS.
...But instead of Very Reasonably asking What The Fuck I Was Doing, the crowds at these parties saw me (5'0" flat, potato-shaped, sweating profusely) trundling up on the slowest and least-intimidating motor vehicle in the county*, hanging a bit out the side to spray thistles and bindweed on the streets and sidewalks**, and instead of raising a rival stink, I was instead greeted by some derisive muttering and a couple of "OH COME ON!"s, but the groups dispersed and retreated indoors or at least away from the general direction of my home.
*Like genuinely, I think Barbie's Dream Car has more horsepower than this golf cart. This thing doesn't have horsepower. It doesn't even have ponypower. It's running on duckpower. It waddles, something I didn't know a wheeled vehicle could do.
**Actually completely legal and a welcome community service in my city. Thank you Neighbor Barbara for telling me the exact part of city code that details what civilians are allowed to do about weeds on public roads, which is apparently "LOTS". Theoretically I could bill the city for my time tonight.
Do people not know how to Make A Scene anymore?
I was absolutely sure I was going to get filmed and shit thrown at me, or someone would call the cops. My beloved was terrified I was going to get shot. I at least had ONE woman shout "YOU'RE RUINING EVERYTHING!" at me, which isn't quite as good as being told I'm ruining Christmas, but she said it with a genuinely heartwarming anguish while gesturing to a homemade "HAPPY BIRTHDAY AMERICA!!" banner, with an attempt at rendering The Evil Orange that as so enthusiastically yet talentlessly executed I almost stopped to get a picture of it. He looked like he'd been put in a wafflemaker.
I promised my beloved that I would turn around and come home at midnight, and I did, having eliminated every fireworks party and Scottish thistle in a five-block radius despite the lackadaisical maximum speed of my Steel Steed.
The complete lack of protest is honestly shocking to me. My flabbers are completely gasted. I waddled home on the golf cart in a sort of stunned silence that this HAS worked so well. The whole world is almost eerily quiet, and reeking of vinegar.
...Which is maybe why I didn't notice the cop pulling up beside me at a red light until he rolled down his window and leaned out at me.
"WHAT'RE YOU DOIN'?" He asked, in a voice that could be used as a foghorn in emergencies.
I probably would have jumped were I not currently melting into a semblance of the Chernobyl Elephant's Foot in the heat, which was the first thing that saved me.
The second was the voice of my Grandfather, coming to my aid through decades of generational memory, to tell me his words of wisdom, usually spoken right before doing something wildly inadvisable:
The Age Of Miracles Is Not Yet Over.
"Weed Mitigation!" I called back.
"CHRIST ON A BIKE, THEY GOT YOU GUYS WORKING THE HOLIDAY TOO?" He said, in the same fontissimo as before. Apparently Officer Foghorn just talks like this.
"Yep." I nodded.
"SHIT." He blared in solidarity. "WHEN DO YOU GET OFF?"
"Just finished."
"MOTHERFUCKER. THEY GOT ME OUT HERE UNTIL GODDAMN 5 AM." Officer Foghorn whined in THX.
"Shit." I commiserated.
The light turned green.
"ALRIGHT YOU GET HOME SAFE! GOD BLESS!" He waved, and drove off at something significantly above the speed limit, and I trundled on home.
I must have still looked shocked when I came in, because My Beloved immediately got up to hug me and ask if I was alright.
"The Age Of Miracles Is Not Yet Over." I nodded slowly as the animals all battered me about the legs for attention. "...For real though, absolutely nothing happened."
"What?" he squints, wobbling slightly as Charlie tries to shove him aside for better access to me. "That's... Is it weird to say I'm almost disappointed?"
"I mean, I confirmed that I inherited my Grandfather's supernatural ability to get out of trouble for no good reason, but we knew that from the code enforcement people." I shrugged. Selene finally noticed the smell of vinegar and retched in disapproval.
"How about a shower and some Ice cream?" My Beloved suggests.
So now it is July the 5th.
- My house is not ablaze
- There are four medium-sized carnivores sleeping on me
- I am freshly bathed
- and I have a pint of Americone Dream all to myself
Here's to you, your health and your happiness, and a reminder to go make good trouble. Goodnight all.
---
(If you enjoy reading about my adventures (and the occasional curious non-adventure) I'd appreciate it if you could tip me on Ko-Fi. Apparently my Patreon link is fucked but it's basically 1 in the morning and I can't be arsed.)
This is Jonah. He's a roughly 9-year-old Beagle/Jack Russell mix who lives in the no… Shanna Legg needs your support for Help Jonah Recover
I hate to post this so soon after gaining followers from an interaction with a larger Tumblr blog, but Jonah's surgery WASN'T CHEAP. While we were able to pay for it on credit, the interest is going to eat our finances alive if we can't pay it down soon. I won't guilt anyone into donating - but if you'd be willing to help signal boost this I'd really appreciate it!
What if the children go to schools unafraid of tear gas and bullets?
What if the birds come back, and the bees are healed, and every species moves from endangered, to threatened, to thriving?
What if the rainforest ADVANCES?
What if every parking lot had solar panels? What if every structure had solar panels? What if we built climbing gyms and terraced gardens in the skeletons of old coal power plants?
What if you baked your neighbor bread, and they shared their home-grown blackberries?
What if every person who needed a home, had one? What if every person who needed healing was healed?
What if every body was treasured for what it was, not what it should be?
What if every trans child's parents attended their graduation, their wedding, their new-name-day?
What if every warehouse became a closed-circle repair station? Goods flowing out, and back, and out again? What if landfills started to SHRINK?
What if the water and air were clean? What if there was enough public transit that the cars dwindled, leaving the streets safe for kids on bikes, evening deer, midnight cats and foxes?
The condors are back. The whales are saved. The sea turtles are no longer endangered. The cranes are back. The bees are recovering. The air in LA and Tokyo and London is clean again. The aquifers in the LA Basin are refilling.
Children are kinder than previous generations. Parents are stopping the abuse cycle. Being trans and queer is more acceptable than ever on a ground level.
It's hard to see if you're young, if you don't know how to step back from social media and the news. But remember--bad news sells, and the algorithm knows despair keeps you scrolling. It's a skewed lens.
We are fighting and we are winning against this adminstration's bullying. We are coming together against the bullies and they are running away scared because they don't understand that we will do that.
People are working hard every day to find ways to make sure fewer animals get hit by cars and planes and rockets.
Maker spaces are more common than ever. Solar and wind are more common than ever. Coal plants are shutting down every day.
Unprecedented numbers of acres are being bought back or given back to their rightful stewards, and the world heals because of it. People are working hard every day to learn how to help a forest recover faster.
We are not at zero. We are at decades of effort to heal the world. We've come SO far.
In 1982 there were only 22 California Condors left in the world. In 1992, when the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS), with its public and private partners, began reintroducing captive-bred condors to the wild. In 2001 the first wild nesting occurred in Grand Canyon National Park since re-introduction. In 2002 there were only 8 pairs of wild nesting birds population-wide. In 2008, for the first time since the program began, more California condors were flying free in the wild than in captivity. Today there are nearly 500 – more than half of them flying free in Arizona, Utah, California, and Baja Mexico.
When I was born, there were no condors in the wild. I'm 37 now, and there are over 250 condors flying free.
When my mom was born in 1955, there were days when she wasn't allowed to go outside to play, because of the air pollution. When I was born, that never happened anymore.
When I was born, humpback whales were critically endangered, and people thought they were going to go extinct. Today, they've recovered to exceed their recorded numbers. Other whales too!
We fixed it.
We CAN fix it and we ARE fixing it and we DID fix it.
Believing that things can get better is not blind hope or optimism--it is based on hard data that many things have consistently gotten better over the arc of history.
In addition to all that was mentioned above:
The likelihood of dying in infancy or childhood--or losing a child--has plummeted just in my lifetime. The likelihood of dying in a natural disaster is the lowest in recorded human history. Yes, even with the uptick in natural disaster intensity from climate change!
Humans alive right now are more likely to have access to healthcare, electricity, education, birth control, clean water, and nutritious food than at any other point in human history. There are so many diseases we can treat now that were a death sentence for 90% of human history.
This is not by accident. This is because generations of humans put in work to make life better for their communities.
Some of our solutions had the side effect of creating other problems--better access to electricity that ultimately made people's lives easier and safer led to pollution and climate change, for example--but we are tackling those knock on problems too. Our generation's solutions to our current problems will probably create their own less-bad side effects for the humans after us to deal with.
Is it silly and naive to believe we might actually be able to make things better? Not at all. We have many times before. We are doing it right now.
Might I inquire as to what, precisely, a Mustain't is? (Aside from a string of letters I hesitate to Google in that order.)
In October 2014 I went on a road-trip to the Driest Place In America.
I was having a rough year, very depressed from having dropped out of college for the third time. I decided a road trip was in order to re-set my brain and get a little distance. Being that it was October, and therefore all the campgrounds in the American Southwest were filled with people who have the good sense to camp in reasonable temperatures, I elected to take my parent's minivan so I could car-camp anywhere suitably isolated, and looked up some of the southwest's geographic extremes- the highest place I could drive to (Pikes Peak), the lowest place (Badwater Basin), and for fun, the Dryest Place in the continental US, which turned out to be the Pinacate Volcanic field just west of Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument. It gets rain maybe twice a century and has no standing water, despite being less than 100 miles from the gulf of California.
It's a startlingly beautiful and alien place. The ground is a deep chocolate brown to black volcanic sand, and in mid October, the rabbit brush is turning bright yellow as it shifts to autumn, the organ pipe cacti are a dark green and stand, partially concealed in the brush at exactly human height. The air is alive with birds and insects and bats at night. The stargazing is like looking into the eyes of God.
You get there by driving down a little dirt road called "El Camino Del Diablo", or "The Devil's Road".
I drove out about three hours from Glendale, AZ to get there, arriving at sunset, and felt a profound sense of peace. I stargazed, listening to the bats hunt and sing, and slept peacefully for the first time in months.
I stayed out there for three days, sketching and painting the landscape, taking strolls through this almost alien landscape, and enjoying the light and sound and total absence of human intrusion besides myself.
On the fourth night, it was a new moon, and I awoke in the middle of the night.
Something was amiss, and it took me a while to realize it was because I could NOT hear the bats. I was sleeping inside the van with the rear windows rolled halfway down rather than trying to set up the tent, so I when I sat up, I looked out of the van's reflective windows to discover what at first appeared to be A Horse.
It was something between pale gray and bright white in the starlight, standing maybe a dozen feet from the van, sniffing curiously. It made sense- I was in the middle of mustang country and there was quite a bit of foliage in the area for it and it did look like a truly wild horse- lumpy where the bones were jutting out, dusty about the hooves and face.
I was instantly seized by the sort of paralytic fear Sleep paralysis is made of.
I couldn't move.
It wasn't quite looking at me because it couldn't quite see through the windshield into the shadowy into the shadowy interior, but I had the distinct impression that if I looked away,
it would know,
and get me.
I already had problems with horses. My beloved Aunt Helen's Prize mare tried to kill me on two separate occasions, and the year before I had to carry my sister-in-law backwards out of a slot canyon whilst reciting the Saint Crispin's Day Speech as loudly as possible to keep a mustang from trampling us to death.
This is approximately what it should have looked like:
Instead, it was... off. like trying to draw a horse from memory.
The waist tapered in.
The legs were slightly too long or the torso slightly too short, probably both.
The ears were Triangular.
The head wasn't quite right- Too narrow and the jaw wasn't heavy enough.
The tail was too long and arced unnaturally away from the body.
The neck arched.
The nostrils were too high and close
The mouth too long.
Whatever this is, a Mustang it Ain't.
I watched it from the back seat as it sniffed around the front of the van, curious with about the side mirrors.
It moved around the van, nibbling experimentally on the front door handle.
It came up to the side windows, sniffing like a dog, and it's breath didn't fog up the glass.
Finally, it came up to the rear window, which was rolled halfway down to let the fall night air in. Not even half a pane of glass and two feet of air between us, and I could clearly see it's bright blue eyes.
Horses have Elongated pupils to give them a wide field of vision, and eyes that rotate sideways in their sockets so the pupil remains parallel to the ground. Rather creepy to watch, especially the ones with blue eyes.
A real horse that was curious about the interior of the van would have come up to the window more or less sideways, and looked at me with something like this:
Instead, the damn thing walked up and faced the back window head on, staring back at me with this:
I'm not sure how long we watched each other like that, eyes locked.
My eyes burned. I couldn't blink.
My mouth was dry. I couldn't swallow.
My throat began to ache. I couldn't make a sound.
My skin began to twitch, like I was severely dehydrated. I couldn't move.
My lungs burned. I couldn't move.
I couldn't move.
I couldn't move.
I couldn't move.
Something was touching the side of my hand on the seat next to me.
It's my water bottle.
The realization must have broken the terrible paralysis in the lower parts of my brain first, because by the time I consciously realized I could move again, I was already flinging my water bottle out the window at it.
The top was open, and splashed out the window at the Mustain't.
I've never heard such a scream out of an animal.
Something halfway between the sound of unquenchable rage vibrating in someone's chest and the way rabbits cry out to God when the dogs catch them.
It jumped back, pivoting away from the van, snarling at the water bottle. I don't think you're supposed to be able to see All of a horse's teeth at once, no matter how angry it is.
I watched it run into the night for some distance, it's pale body visible against the black sand and the dark gray shadow of the ancient volcanic cone it was headed for.
When the blood stopped pounding in my ears, I could hear the bats again.
I debated leaving right then, but I didn't want to get out of the van with that thing in the area, nor litter by leaving the water bottle out there.
I also had the awful idea that if I left now, it might somehow be able to follow me home.
I ended up staying up three hours to watch the sunrise, shaking and trying to figure out if I'd woken up from a vivid dream, if my meds had stopped working, or if that had really happened. I didn't dare move until I actually felt the temperature rise, before stepping out of the van to grab the bottle.
I had my camera ready- I was still using a DSLR back then- to take pictures of the hoofprints, to show how close it had gotten to the van.
No hoofprints.
Beetle tracks in the soft sand around the van, and the clear foot-and-wing prints of a bird that had hopped around then taken off.
But no hoofprints.
I went over the entire campsite with the tent broom, to make sure I removed every scrap of evidence I had ever been there, including my footprints, grabbed my water bottle, and drove the three hours back back to Glendale, then decided to do seven more hours of driving to Moab, Utah just to put more than 500 miles, the state line and at least nine things that could be considered "running water" between me and the Mustain't.
-
I still have that water bottle. It has a dent in the bottom from hitting something, but that could have happened at any time.
Strange thing though.
I can't drink that bottle dry.
I'll have it on me, drink whatever I've put in there- water, juice, iced coffee- and eventually feel like I've drunk the whole think and that it's empty.
But I open it up and it's still at least a quarter full.
I drink that.
I get thirsty.
I open it up again.
...and there's always a mouthful left.
Not sure what the side effects of drinking from a bottle cursed by a Mustain't to always have some left are, but it lives in the Emergency Breakdown Kit in my car now, just in case I meet another one.
---
(I'm a disabled artist and make my living telling stories, please consider supporting me on Ko-Fi or Pre-order the Family Lore book on Patreon)
pardon the terrible picture, I just got home from work BUT! Got my package from @daflowerzine today and to say I'm completely blown away by not only the content, but the level of care put into the packaging and presentation is an understatement. An incredible amount of love, care, and hard work clearly went into this, not just from the participants, but the mods as well. Y'all busted your asses on this, and it shows!
You're about to close on your very own, suspiciously affordable and comfortable house. Just before you sign the contract, the realtor shows you the required legal disclosure: your new house is haunted by the type of presence you'll get from this spinner wheel.
Of course it is.
Are you still buying the house?
🥳 Yes! Are you kidding?!!! Now I'm buying the house BECAUSE of the ghost!!!!!
😊 Yes. I'm happy to have found this house, and the ghost is a nice addition.
😶 Yes, but the ghost doesn't play into my decision at all.
😒 Yes... I guess. I'm not happy, but I'm not passing up an affordable house.
❌ No. I've found my limit, and this ghost is past it.
“Don’t tell me you’re becoming unwound in your old age?” The Ghost asked, cocking his head at Shadi as he lounged in his throne, elbow on one armrest and legs thrown over the other. “Is that why the Pharaoh put you in charge of the Millennium Key? So you may wind yourself up like a watch? No. You wouldn’t know where to stick it!”
Thief King Bakura is back and a verbose little shithead.
Surprise! Tumblr just got turned into an epic fantasy RPG, just like [your favorite appropriate media franchise]. And the Tumblr RPG's plot needs to have all of its characters covered, in roles both large and small.
That means that you are assigned to a stereotypical RPG role inside our new fantasy world. Spin this wheel to find out what you are now doing for a living.
How well suited are you for your new role?
Noooooo this doesn't sound fun :(
Not what I would have picked for myself, but... I'll make it work
fighting art block with silly little projects like this Teapot Animal, sipping from your cup. i finally got to experiment with gold leaf on a bjd & that was a lot of fun.
im a bit of a pointless hater about certain usages of the term “monsterfucker” bc i think it’s often one of those things people say but don’t believe with their whole chest. like if all the “monsters” you like are vampires and similar mopey human-looking folks it’s possible you are actually just into goths. Let’s not dilute the beautiful world of teratophilia for our bloodborne sex soldiers out there fucking and sucking in yharnam or whatever. Anyone on earth would fuck a vampire. that’s vanilla
Don't you DARE gatekeep monsterfucking OP, all fuckers of all monsters are valid. If one person mostly prefers the twink bodytype and another prefers the bear bodytype, they're both still attracted to men. Some people fuck monsters because of the taboo of finding something dangerous or other than "human" attractive and some people fuck monsters because they want to feel a tentacle force their butthole open like an anteater snout into a termite mound. All of us are nasty freaks and there's no need to create unneeded barriers between us.
if we’re considering essentially cannibalistic human people with bad teeth to be monsters we must include those who are attracted to British people under the banner of monsterfucking lest someone feel invalidated
The "attraction to vampires and other mostly-human monsters" end of the spectrum gets debated like this because it is both monsterfucking AND normie at the same time. It also has its equal and opposite twin in wanting to fuck a person so idealized they no longer resemble a human.
Hear me out. (Long post under the cut)
I think that at least some degree of interest/attraction to the monstrous is an extremely commonplace human condition. See how insanely popular monster movies and tales are. See how we keep mixing sex into our horror movies. I think the vast majority of people WOULD or already do find Dracula Castlevania or Pyramidhead or Beast Disneyfranchise hot. It's monsterfucking because it is an attraction to the monstrousness, it's also vanilla because most of us experience some degree of that.
What it clarifies for me is that it attraction to the mildly monstrous is the middle of the normie/spectrum, the far ends are not the total absence or total inhumanity, but two very different extremes of monstrousness: broad-spectrum hyperpersonalization and narrow-spectrum depersonalization.
We freaks on Tumblr are more familiar with the hyperpersonalization end of the spectrum: attraction to beings that in no way resemble humans in form or consciousness, but who are still find mentally *people*. Wanting union with sapient mycelial networks. Thinking The House from House of Leaves is kind of a milf. The monstrousness here is the horror of personhood in a formnot recognized as a person. You can see the appeal to all the ND and disabled people here. It's broad spectrum because not only has the definition of person been widely expanded, people on this far end are attracted to multiple very differently shaped monsters. This is important because it helps explain what's happening on the other end.
The far opposite end involves attraction to extremely specifically shaped beings that have been completely stripped of any personhood. Really putting the objectification in the Object of Affection. It begins with being into people with very specific features, like being into perisex cisgender Caucasian women with blue eyes and blonde hair under the age of 25 and ONLY them. Having a preference for certain features is normal, but it begins to loop back when the presence of these features eclipses the actual personality of the subject when it comes to attraction- both in the sense of "would not even consider looking a 26-year old" and "the specific entities they're looking at? They are not listening to" . As you continue down that end of the spectrum, not only does personhood become less important, the desired body becomes more and more specific until you have an entity of such outrageous proportions and inorganic perfection that it no longer resembles a human. The monstrousness is in the total absence of personhood, even in something that (sort of) looks like a conventional person.
This isn't a value judgement on either end. You can have whatever bizarre fantasies you want so long as you are kind to your fellow beings.
This is only one of the two snakes in this double oroborous of monsterfucking because of course the kink is shaped like that.
So far, we have only been discussing someone being attracted to a variably monstrous subject. The other snake is when the monster they want to be fucked is themselves. Again, the hyperpersonalization/depersonalization axis is in play: people who would want to BE the parasitic goo monster and have their personhood recognized in a grand romance, and people who wish to shed their personhood entirely and become a sexy, sexy table lamp.
These two orobori- attraction to the monstrousness of the other and monstrousness of the self- cycle through each other in many ways through many intersections, but the thing that both the hyperpersonalists and the depersonalists have in common is the creative exploration of the form that could be, whereas the normies have only begun to consider "huh. That guy is kinda fucked up, and that sorta makes him hot?"
Re: the middle of the spectrum: monsterfucking exists as extremes of what could be, and normcore is the absolute lack of creativity, but I think humanity in general sits in a bimodal distribution centered on the first deviations away from that very boring middle. Wanting to be or fuck a vampire is not the most vanilla, but it is very common.Likewise, wanting to be or fuck Barbie is also not totally vanilla, but more common than actual vanilla is.
TL; DR: wanting to fuck a vampire is both normie and monsterfucking, as is wanting to fuck Jessica Rabbit, to about the same degree in the other direction.
Actually I'd like to revise my opinion a bit because I'm hydrated now and my friend in chat pointed out that my "inhumanity of form" and "recognition of personhood" are just two of the MANY axes upon which the monsterfuckerness of anything can be judged, so I propose this:
Kink in general, but ESPECIALLY monsterfucking, is the exploration of what could be. Playing Imagination, if you will. Therefore, it's opposite is a total lack of imagination.
Since it's extremely weird for a human to be totally without creativity, what you get is a bimodal distribution on either side with a sharp dip in the middle, where the vast majority of people are into something A Little Weird, tapering out the Spiders Georgs out there who want to be actually jacked off by the invisible hand of the marketplace or suchlike esoteric and unachievable fantasies.
Hence, wanting to fuck a vampire is both monsterfucking and normie at the same time.
An Example Graph for people that didn't take stats back in high school: The distribution of attraction on the Hyperhuman-to-Inhuman Anatomical Axis of Monster Fuckery (one of MANY axes of monsterfuckery)
Figure 1: classic Nonhuman Antatomical Form Monsterfucker Spectrum
Figure 2: Proposed Inverse of the previous spectrum, AKA "Hyperhuman Anatomical Form" Monsterfucker Spectrum:
Figure 3: The full spectrum of Deviance From Human Anatomy Axis of Monsterfuckery:
My theory is that you can analyze "Monsterfuckery" on various axes (inhumanity of form, social monstrosity, etc.) and the population distribution will shake out the same way.
You show up for your first day at Copyright-Free Magic School. As you're going through orientation, you're informed that all new students get a school-assigned familiar that they are responsible for housing and maintaining. The staff member assures you that your assigned familiar is appropriately chosen and reflects you in some way.
Spin this to find out yours. (Remember, you are responsible for maintaining this familiar in your dorm room.)
What's your reaction to what you received?
Oh, hell yeah!
Pretty nice
I can work with this
Not what I would have picked, but okay
Ugh. Ugh. ...Ugh.
How does this reflect me?!
...........I'm supposed to keep this in my dorm room?
