#monsterhood

[chik3chirkun]

You live all your life in your body. It’s not the same as that of your brother or peers. You’re paler, leaner, don’t gain muscle as quickly. But it is your body and you are used to it, even if sometimes people tease you about it, that is normal.

Then a monster touches your hand and it turns the monster colour. At first you try to deny it, maybe the monster just cursed you. Buy your father confirms that you are one of the monsters. Those who eat naughty children in the bedtime stories.

Now you can’t stop staring at your hand afraid it would reveal the monster inside. You refrain from touching your loved ones so that you don’t accidentally harm them. You overthink why puberty hit you way too early. You bite your tongue with your teeth as hard as you can to check if they can pierce it. You stop eating meat fearing it would cause you to start craving children flesh. You stop looking in the mirror, you swear you can feel the phantom ridges all over your body. You wonder if being a monster made you perceive the world differently. Do you see colours the same with your red eyes? Does everyone hear people walking several floors below?

Your body is not normal and it is not your own. It belongs to the monster and you only know how to kill it. Your anger starts to frighten you. Is that why your parents didn’t tell you the truth? They didn’t dare to poke the dormant monster they managed to tame. But now that the secret is out, it is awake, and you can feel it taking over. It won’t need to touch the magical Casket to reveal itself. Its claws will flay the glamour along with your pale skin leaving not bloody red but only monster blue. You need to stop it before it’s too late. You need to kill it, kill them all. Destroy everything. But is it you or the monster talking? What a pointless question now that you know you’re one and the same.

[therightvillainouschapbooks]

from my new story "I Weird Ye" 2024

RightVillainousCo on etsy ;)

[pigeongoesvroom]

what objects do you associate with girlhood?

[see-arcane]

I have to say I'm excited for Barking Harker because I love how writers explore human characters becoming inhuman and what (in)humanity means. <3

Dracula is one of the grandaddies of supernatural horror and I will always love and appreciate its portrayal of vampirism not only as a ~seductive~ monstrous condition, but one that hammers home that it's a kind of eternity that Is In No Way Desirable unless you're pushed to maddening extremes.

Jonathan is great for displaying the sliding scale of horror to horrific acceptance over becoming a vampire: He would rather die than join the Brides, but he would rather be a vampire with Mina than lose her entirely to an undeserved destruction. Vampire business is just miserable from all angles in Stoker's book, whether you're turned or not.

By contrast, I also enjoy the contemporary view of Monsters > Humans as far as morality goes--what I like to call the Guillermo del Toro Effect--which shows more empathy to the inhuman Other and highlights how insidious and destructive plain old humans can be...

...with the issue that comes with it being the lowkey 'defanging' of the monsters in question. The threat and badassery kind of peters out when you're too busy crushing on/cuddling the bogeyman.

It's this same habit that's at least partly to blame for the massive amount of romantic/sexy vampire media. Not necessarily all Dracula media, though! That mess lands squarely on the shoulders of the writer-directors who refuse to respect the novel which stars the King of (Explicitly Evil) Vampires and keep sexifying the Count. That's their baggage.

With Barking Harker, I want it to be a little more of a mixed bag. It isn't strictly the species of a character that's to blame for everything; sometimes it just comes down to the person. But I know, I know--how can I explain the Bloofer Lady and the Brides? They turned evil due to vampiritis! That will be addressed (spoilers abound), as will Mina's deal.

And Jonathan's. And the Suitors Three and Van Helsing's. Among many more.

The power of cruel random circumstance, of personal upheaval, of influence versus resignation, will all come into it. Ditto the fact that, frankly, the novel gave its spotlight to a handful of supremely moral and good-hearted people. We never get to see a wider scope of villainy beyond Dracula and his hired lackeys. And while not overrun with horrid awful villains, the world is full of cruel and selfish bastards, whether they're human or not. We'll get to see those too.

That's what it will ultimately come down to. Not humans versus monsters (monsters who were all human once). Not tradition versus science or the Ancient versus the Modern or Demographic A versus Demographic B.

People are people no matter what else they are or where they hail from. People are varied. No one group will ever be wholly evil or wholly good, even in the scope of Stoker's take on vampires.

If nothing else, I want to use Barking Harker to satisfy my cravings for classic supernatural horror and the present care shown for our bogeymen/Other metaphors--and to maybe shake our saintly Victorian heroes off their moral mortal pedestals. Let them see what it's like having to exist in the dark and to fight a condition they never asked for. For as good as they are, they have only ever been able to guess at what such an existence is like, seeing death as the only cure.

I think it's about time they get to broaden their perspectives.

[sarahcarapace]

the Wounded, Hungry and Forgotten is a +18 bestiary and guide to monsterhood for Dungeon Bitches and is out on dtrpg! https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/385448/The-Wounded-Hungry--Forgotten?term=wounded+hungry It features a whole bunch of new art that is often wonderful and often horrid by yours truly :3

[questionable-bones-n-slime]

Monsters, disability and us :)

I've written about this before but I simply cannot stress the intimate and deeply significant that monster hood has to disability (and many other persecuted peoples).

Alienation, assumptions of morality, personhood and the hostility of a world not made for you are key parallels between disability and monsters.

Personally I love the superhero genre and new takes on fantasy creatures and curses. But disability is critical to these understandings and the questions they raise. Take X-men for example, lets say you have acid for skin. First thing, cover your skin! Most of your problems are solved! Vampirism? Just ask! Maybe get blood donations! Werewolves? Making a safe place is a viable solution!

In the above examples Alienation is a strong theme and we can see traces of it, intentional or not in many other works. Even Superman has this as despite being a 100% all american kind kansas beef boy, Kent can only truly connect and be fully himself with those in the know about his powers.

But all that, even minimal, thought is tossed out the window once the person or creature is sufficiently inhuman looking. This point isn’t to make people feel bad or shameful or guilty about doing this! In fact it is entirely natural that people do do this! Instead just pause to think about it.

What, exactly, makes a monster, a monster?

We like to think we judge people by whats on the ‘inside’ but that’s just straight up not true. Most people’s first instinct if they find a church with a bunch of corpses and a slime monster would be to attack the monster or bring reinforcements to attack it. We see the dead, see the monster and in our minds the obvious conclusion is that the deaths are the fault of the monster attacking.

In a world not built to accommodate even most humans many good monster stories serve as a reminder of person hood and acceptance. Accommodation in place of persecution makes people out of monsters. Monsters give us cause to question many human centrist ideas and thought patterns.

[therightvillainouschapbooks]

page from my new zine "I Weird Ye"

[therightvillainouschapbooks]

"I Weird Ye" pamphlet/ zine

Collaged from snippets of traditonal ballads and original writing, I Weird Ye is a tale of transformation