#monster studies

[secretsofthewilde]

"It is a child of particular disposition that looks at gargoyles while others sing hymns to the Lord at church. I have to believe [Mary Shelley] felt, like me, more at home with the wretched than with the winners. History is written by the victors, but art is mostly chronicled by the disfranchised.

All of my life, I was in love with monsters; this is a fact."

- Guillermo del Toro, Introduction: Mary Shelley, or the Modern Galatea; The New Annotated Frankenstein (2017)

[greaseonmymouth]

How I Fell For Monster Sex Books

Monster smut is the big new thing in publishing. It’s not just about the extra-long tongues.

I saw this shared around on Threads (why do I go there, I hate it) and commented on as 'this article is so good' and 'must read' including by a few people whose opinion I normally respect, and seeing as monsterfucking and monster everything is like a special little interest for me, I of course instantly clicked through to read it

and I have to say

what the everloving heterosexual fuck is this

two fat paragraphs about omegaverse that don't even mention its origins - I mean - I just - gaze upon this phrase, and despair:

During estrous, Omegas’ vaginas ooze with “slick,” responding to the Alpha’s intoxicating pheromonal perfume.

IT'S CALLED "SLICK" BECAUSE IT'S FROM SELF-LUBRICATING ANUSES. THE REASON THE OMEGAS NEED SELF-LUBRICATING ANUSES TO BEGIN WITH IS BECAUSE THEY DON'T HAVE VAGINAS.

I. have been rendered figuratively speechless. the straights don't know what slick is. the. i. how. how did we end up like this

their dicks swell at the base, creating a “knot,” which lodges them inextricably in the Omega’s slick-soaked (I am so sorry) vagina.

"(I am so sorry)" girl you're writing an article about monster smut and then you have the gall to be embarrassed by the this tame ass (or should i say vagina?) heterosexual omegaverse?

okay, okay. deep breaths. we've only just got started. we started by covering Morning Glory Milking Farm, a minotaur/human erotic romance novel, which well - I've read it, and it's not a bad book by any means, it was actually very very good, a solid story with a great cast and perfectly paced and satisfying romance and loads of sex - is very straight. it's just a minotaur. it's a big guy with a big dick. it's your standard gentle giant/normal sized girl romance. it's not very freaky, but you know, I don't blame the average reader for coming into this thinking this is some out there stuff. gotta start somewhere, right? we didn't all come up through draco/the giant squid crackfic in 2005, you know? and now we've covered Sarah J Maas and we're entering omegaverse territory, this is getting knottier now, right, freakier? this article is going somewhere, right?

you can imagine the intrigue, enemies-to-lovers, and other story lines involved as each captured female eventually finds the member of the barbarian tribe who is destined to worship and fuck the living daylights out of her for the rest of their lives. Oh, and their dicks have a sensitive spur on top designed for clitoral stimulation. It’s just as blue and velvety as the rest of their big alien bodies.

okay so the minotaurs aliens are blue now, i guess.

It seems, also, like the romance genre as a whole is being pushed by monster romance to make things in human-human books as freaky as possible.

ohh?? are we finally getting a proper freak on now??

This genre, “why choose?” or “MMF” (or sometimes even MMMF or MMFM), and also known as “reverse harem,” always features a heroine who is showered with sexual attention by men who are also sexually involved with each other.

having a thousand yard stare moment over here

this author seriously thinks that all these heterofied monster romance tropes are paving the way for the real freaky stuff that is, checks notes, "two hockey players fucking each other while the heroine calls the shots"

this author is positing that human queer erotica/romance are freakier than monster erotica/romance. like. she said that. with her whole chest. black on white.

on one hand a monster, an inhuman being, and on the other, a queer person, a human being. and apparently the real freak is not the minotaur or the blue alien. it is the queer human.

is this satire? it has to be, right?

because if it's not satire, this article is an entire case study in itself on the monstering* of queer people. stunning.

*academic term

[themonsterandthechild]

What would make a parent determine that their child is a monster? What does that do to a child -- and what does it say about the parent? Dive into these questions with me through an analysis of Guillermo del Toro's "Frankentein" and the Disney film and stage adaptations of "The Hunchback of Notre Dame." Let's all avoid the parenting styles of these adapted classic lit dads together!

[asfearlessasamango]

tumblr pic limit cut me off cause it's homophobic :( stay tuned for ppt part two

[badass-at-fandoming]

Hey Vampire fans, what's the deal with vampires and angels?

Like, I didn't realize the pattern until this morning, but:

[SPOILERS FOR VARIOUS BOOKS]

In LJ Smith's Vampire Diaries books, Elena is a human/angel hybrid

Similar, Katee Robert's protagonist Mina is an angel/vampire hybrid in Court of the Vampire Queen

In Caleb Roehrig's The Fell of Dark, the Vaddy (vampire dad) is a fallen angel possessing humans throughout time

In Romancelvania, the Van Helsing family is descended from angels (which is why their voices are bell noises)

And of course we have Caine flipping off angels and getting cursed in The Book of Nod.

What gives? Why? Is there some older text these stories are all drawing from? The only reason I can think of is if a writer's vampire lore is based in Christian mythology, the only other obvious ooglie booglie are angels.

I'd love to hear your theories, VtM tumblr!

[salvadorbonaparte]

Martin Rogers "Hibridity and post-human anxiety in 28 Days Later" 2008

[beforeliteracytherewasdeez]

"Monster" and "weird" are labels people put on you based on their understanding of normality. If they broaden said understanding, you become normal. So you can convince them that you are indeed a better or more capable person than they think you are, or thrive in their misunderstanding of you and then move on.

An example from film is one called (captain) Jack Sparrow, not because he's a pirate, but because he is excluded by both main society and pirate society. He has a unique look that very few people understand or appreciate, and he knows it, he has learned to go around it even after his entire crew left him for dead. He is a threat to any established order in his universe and so he would be considered a monster by Foucault's standards. He even tells Barbosa "Me, I'm dishonest, and a dishonest man you can always trust to be dishonest". He is playing with what Barbossa thinks of him, just to pull the rug from under his feet in the next line, when he shoots Barbossa right after the curse is lifted.

An example of telling people about the idea of society vs monstrosity is when he tells Will, who is smacked right in the middle of the normalcy spectrum, the 'what a man can do' speech:

"The only rules that really matter are these: what a man can do and what a man can't do. For instance, you can accept the fact that your father was a pirate and a good man, or you can't, but pirate is in your blood, boy, and you'll have to square with that someday. "

He is inavertedly talking about how he navigates the world as someone who has been twice marooned by society. His life as the outlier. As the monster.

So, is Jack Sparrow neurodivergent? Yes, obviously. Apart from the obvious way he downplays his trauma and avoids personal questions, his mannerisms were from before his main trauma happened, and only some of them can be explained away by gayness. He has an odd style of communication, he overuses alcohol (propensity to addiction), he doesn't take to personal cleanliness even more than the other pirates, he lies at the drop of a hat, often shows no remorse, and often has to play around the fact that he screws up, which is often. The psychologist from Cinema Therapy diagnosed him as ASPD, but I would like to also propose inattentive ADHD along with the aforementioned trauma, because that is the magic of these conditions, they are stackable. And the more you stack'em, the less you're "with it". The less you are seen as "normal". The more monstrous you become.

[latinocas]

Under the cut you're going to find some folklore creatures you can use in your spn fanfics that are from the north part of South America (Colombia, Venezuela, Brazil, etc) + how you should use them for it to be a proper portrayal of their culture:

La Muelona / La Dientona:

She was the victim of abusive and she died because of them. As a ghost, she appears on the edge of roads as a very attractive woman with a beautiful voice. Her main victims are men with alcohol problems, men who abuse women and cheaters. Her title can be translated as "The woman with big teeth" and it makes reference to her main trait, which either make men run or she uses them to eat them alive.

This is more a rural tale. For the purpose of this post, you can use it as a version of the "woman in white" or the ghost of a woman searching for revenge.

La Mano Peluda:

This monster is a hairy hand, double the size of a human hand. It goes alone without a body and drags kids out of their beds, wounding them. It is in fact a common tale to tell your kids when you want them to behave. "If you don't behave, la mano peluda is going to come to take you away".

This monster can go after Latine kids, using the power of their families' beliefs.

Curacanga:

Curacanga is a fire ball that roams in nights were the moon is full or every Friday at midnight. It scares everyone and leaves burning ground wherever it passes. However, there is a woman's head in the middle of the fire ball. The story tells that the woman goes to sleep, not knowing that as soon as he falls unconscious, her head separates from her body and catches fire, going through the town.

This is a Brazilian tale and in some versions, the whole things is caused by her being the seventh daughter of a seventh daughter. This could be a family thing, in fact.

Procissão de Almas:

This parade of souls is part of a story of who a woman that was really into gossip payed for her sins. In Latam during the colonialism and still like that on more rural towns, it was and it's normal for houses to have big windows where women could sit inside the house to see the street. They could stay there and talk with people outside or have visits.

The gossip woman was there late at night when she saw the parade of souls. The were dressed in white with lighten candles. In front there had a black cross with black covers and behind a reaper itself followed them. They gave the gossip woman a candle to keep and told her the next day, they would talk again.

The woman when to sleep with the candle beside her bed. When she woke up, instead there was a children bone when the candle should be. She was dead before help arrived.

This could happen in graveyards with a lot of Latine people buried there and it could be a reaction of a person ruining the community, or making their families suffer.

Las Animas Benditas del Purgatorio:

The "blessed souls of Purgatory" are a huge thing, being honest. This belief comes from catholicism and it consists on the idea that some souls who sinned on Earth will go to heaven, but first they need to purge their sins. To help them purge their sins faster, people request them favors and in exchange for a good service, they pray for their sins to be forgiven, the burn candles for them, stuff like that.

However, if you request something from them, if they help you but you forget to help them in return, they're going to follow you and scare you and do shit like drag you out of bed by your feet.

They will help anyone, if they promise to help them in return. It's popular for people to asks them things like take care of their houses when they're away, and that night the neighbors would say it was a party on that house. Or to accompany them while traveling alone by car, and people would swear they saw two people inside the vehicle.