#monstrous: book one

[tearblossom]

[vampirehizzies]

the cato to annie pipeline is still real to me btw and something i think about because katniss is here thinking about both of them like "wow they are mentally ill" except she's legitimately scared of one and sees the other as docile/meek/an extension of her boyfriend/odd/non-threatening.

but what katniss doesn't seem to remember is annie came from a career district so not only could annie have easily been (and probably was) raised with a similar rhetoric/propaganda/mindset as cato but she also could have terrified the other kids in her arena the same way he did. they became trained killers but they're both exposed to the harsh realities of the arena, watch someone they care about die in a horrifically violent way, and lose themselves/their minds/what they were raised to believe in because of it

[souenkun]

Takashi living the warm, full-of-love life that reiko couldn't have (as far as we know in the current canon) feels very much like the grief that dawns for children when they finally realized how much sacrifice their parents didn't always tell them just to give birth and raise them.

Like, technically speaking, reiko only gave takashi a world of problems by passing down the sight and the book of friends decades after her death, but takashi also grasped the wholesome and the awful parts of interacting with both humans and youkai from the memories she had left behind, scattered among all these eternal monsters she had defeated, leaving in them unintentional, but important life lessons for him to find later on in the future. If it weren't for all those societal rejections that reiko received from humans and the hardships from youkai that led her to start the book of friends, takashi wouldn't be able to avoid repeating her mistakes (and, consequently, could be just as comfortable with isolation like reiko was), let alone make the precious balance we now see him have in the present time, where he can make genuine connections with humans and youkai while also maintaining a balance to them. Do you get what I'm saying 💔

[do-you-know-this-queer-character]

Do you know this queer character?

Jack is transgender and MLM, and uses he/him pronouns!

[cosmicrhetoric]

REVENGE IS NOT REDRESS. REVENGE IS A WHEEL AND IT TURNS BACKWARDS. THE DEAD ARE NOT YOUR MASTERS

[eisthenameofme]

Reading the Sabbat: The Black Hand v5 book, and it is apparently impossible for me not to see the Sabbat through a Queering Vampirism lense with some of the ways they're describing it. It's very obviously not what they're Trying to do, but that's the impression I'm getting anyway.

Like they start by saying the Purpose of the Sabbat is fundamentally to challenge the status quo, right before calling them fundamentally evil/monstrous antagonists and right after describing how scared all the other kindred are of them and how inscrutible they find their motivations. And then they go right into talking about the philosophy of embracing the Beast and fundamentally Cainite traits and inhumanity/monstrosity (what they are and what seperates them from the rest of society, the Other, which in this reading is also Queerness), to the horror of everyone else, and it's considered fundamentally an aspect of self destruction (see: how people act about trans surgeries). Also, treating something otherwise extremely taboo (ex. diablerie) as a "sacrament", like treating what is normally taboo/reviled as divine isn't also incredibly queer. Also alienation from society and difficulty forming connections.

You couldn't create a queer allegory more like catnip to me if you tried, is what I'm saying

[seefasters]

i have to wonder why "an autistic coded character with a very specific special interest" seems to be a trope in terry pratchett's books

[libraryleopard]

reading monstrous regiment and wrath goddess sing at the same time is really wild because they're both fantasy novels about gender and the patriarchy during wartime that also include a dead god and characters trying to get into the enemy's stronghold but they're completely different in tone and plot

[cirr0stratus]

George MacKay you are wazzer goom To Me

[mareastrorum]

Brevyn isn’t a D&D goliath blood hunter. She’s a WoW Kul Tiran enhancement shaman.

D&D Blood Hunters:

Are a martial class with the crimson rite ability to spill their own blood to temporarily enhance weapons with cold, fire, lightning, necrotic, psychic, thunder, or radiant damage (there is no rock/earth/lava version)

Don’t use fist weapons because D&D has no such weapon category (requires homebrewing, or just unarmed strikes, which generally suck for every class but monks or BH lycans)

Some subclasses have limited self-healing (Ghostslayer rite revival, Lycan regeneration, Mutant reconstruction mutagen), but only the Profane Soul subclass with a celestial pact can heal others with blood maledicts

Can be goliaths, which is a D&D race of humanoids distantly related to giants (implying they are more human than giant) that have skin reminiscent of stone.

WoW Enhancement Shamans:

Are a melee specialization that, along with the other shamans, have/had the ability to enhance weapons with fire, water, earth (which went through multiple iterations before ultimately being removed from the game in 2020, but still exists in WoW Classic), or wind at no cost

Can use fist weapons, including an iconic set that is literally molten lava fists (player characters can use this appearance as long as they have previously looted the item, so this has been a popular farm drop for shamans for more than a decade)

Always have access to a standard healing spell that can be used on others despite being primarily a DPS subclass

Because WoW has race/class restrictions, the only humans who can be shamans must be Kul Tiran (human, but Bigger), a race which was first added to the game in 2018 and playable in 2019 (when Madeleine Roux played the game (especially Classic) to immerse in the lore while writing a WoW novel, which featured several shaman characters, but none of which were Kul Tiran)

Here's a picture of the in-game item:

Man, that sure looks like molten lava claws wrapped around fists, just like the names of the twin weapons: Fist of Molten Fury and Claw of Molten Fury.

Brevyn:

Spilled blood so that "[h]ard, black stone rippling with molten fire formed around her hands"

Otherwise used bare fists instead of a standard D&D weapon

Healed other characters and had no reference to a patron or Profane Soul abilities at any point in the novel

Was a “half-goliath” with normal skin, as opposed to a D&D goliath, implying even less giant ancestry than a typical goliath (human, but Bigger)

The only thing suggesting that Brevyn isn’t a WoW shaman is that she didn’t self-rez, but you know what? Skill issue.

[just-spacetrash]

how do i make you guys read monstrous regiment without spoiling the whole thing

[tearblossom]

[corporalmaledict]

Reading Discworld novels "out of order" can give some whiplash. By "order" here, I mean the in-world timeline

Going backwards in Moist von Lipwig's trilogy was absolutely hilarious, seeing him go from train master to banker to postmaster.

The whiplash gets extra when you go from a book where a character died to a book where they were alive, well, and present in the story

[ninashiki]

tagged by @thecactifindahome <3

i tag @lipid, @menstits, @sunieepo, @cocovet, and @kotoneshiomiofficial! but don't feel obligated to if you don't feel like it ^_^

[cosmicrhetoric]

but it is extremely funny that when mal finally gives up the ghost and says something about the a at the end of his name the only reaction he gets is jade going "dat's nice :) 👍" and polly going "yeah yeah whatever. huh i'd be cleaning the toilets right about now"

[nellasbookplanet]

I'm still working on the monster romance book rec list (it’s gonna be at least another month, I have like five potential entries to read first, but there’ll be a different rec list posted by new year's in the meantime) and truly I'm only growing more consternated about the lack of monster ladies in f/m romances.

Most of the monster ladies I found were f/f. Obviously it's great that there's several sapphic monster romances, but it's a bit strange to me that m/f romances are so unwilling to make the heroine monstrous or inhuman in appearance. Historically the beauty and the beast story (and its many monster/animal bridegroom variations; east of the sun west of the moon, prince hat under the ground, eros and phsyche, etc) could be used as a lesson/comfort for girls entering arranged marriages, telling them that this strange man might seem monstrous at first but if only she's Kind and Good and Trusting maybe it'll turn out he's a Good Man Actually (take a look at these videos by lindsay ellis and princess weekes for more info!), but today the monster romance vibe is more that of recognition of the Self through the Other (think Shape of Water) as well as questions of What Makes a Monster, Really (also smut, lots of smut, but that's not my vibe and not what I was looking for for this list). A good beauty and the beast retelling will take this into consideration (disney's version being an excellent example).

But is there no longing in the m/f romance world to as a woman feel that we are the monster and wanting to be recognized as worthy of love regardless? Why must the self-recognition always be through a pretty (or at most bland) face? Why is the only piece of media seeming willing to even consider taking the concept of a monster woman finding love seriously fucking Shrek?

Anyway, do tell me if you know of any other titles doing the monster lady romance thing, please, I'm dying.