#women and other monsters

[readtilyoudie]

People look through your face, or past it, when there’s nothing there they want. They’re not afraid to meet your eyes—they just don’t see the point.

Women and Other Monsters: Building a New Mythology by Jess Zimmerman

[berattelse]

One of the origin stories for the Furies is that they were born when Earth, their mother, was fertilized by drops of sky deity Uranus's blood after he was castrated by Cronus, his son (and the father of the Olympian gods). They are, in other words, the literal daughters of emasculation. When a male god is brought low, when his blood is spilled, Furies are born. [...]

Zimmerman, Jess. Women and Other Monsters: Building a New Mythology. Beacon Press, 2021.

[morgan--reads]

Summary: This collection of essays explores the experience of women through the lens of female monsters from Greek Mythology.

Quote: "Not every monster devours, but the drive to consume—to gobble up children, or swallow the sun, or eat young women’s hearts—is considered a monstrous trait. Outsize hunger is the province of the monster, and for women, all hungers are outsize.”

My rating: 3.5/5.0   Goodreads: 3.79/5.0

Review: In some ways this feels like internet feminism. Zimmerman draws broad conclusions from her own personal life, the Greek myths sometimes no more than an aesthetic prop for the point she’s making. They’re very well-written broad conclusions, though, and Zimmerman’s willingness to be vulnerable about her personal life lends them poignancy. If you go in accepting these more as personal essays than anything deeply engaging with Greek myth, they can be quite moving. 

[999999999inadream]

toby fox needs to add like a bit of narration in deltarune abt kris like "they themmed they/themily down the stheirs" cus i cant go on seeing them constantly get he/himmed in yt comment sections

[frog-in-a-dew]

Help me choose a design for this oc please??

The last one is the closest one to me in spirit rn, but it still missing something??

Any criticism is both wanted and accepted, just plz be gentle my frog heart is fragile 😔

[hornyharpy]

Bro is not going to make it to the princess...

[semisolidmind]

somebody should study dj’s hold on us. it’s been like 3 years and i still dream of that man lol

well, there are some factors to consider when studying popular fictional men. one must ask;

do they exemplify some of the following traits?

long/beautiful hair (not required but appreciated)

pretty/unique eyes, usually half-lidded

sharp teeth or fangs of some kind, usually shown via cocky smirk or smile

b i g (though a quick study of tumblr sexymen would say this one isn't required)

by this criteria, DJ is certifiably irresistible.

[tenderjock]

BUFFY BROKE UP THE COVEN (but make it gay) ->

in which DARLA is the vampire cursed with a soul who falls in love with the slayer; and DRUSILLA is the monster who remakes herself in order to earn a chance at buffy summers' love.

insp | insp

[alexiethymia]

just watched beetlejuice beetlejuice at the theaters, and can I just say, I loved it! it definitely didn’t disappoint and was a zany adventure, just like the first one.

and it kinda added layers to betelgeuse in a way. because spoilers I definitely thought they would go the same route for astrid and jeremy, the same way they did for lydia and betelgeuse in that what jeremy wanted was for astrid to marry him so that he could get out. instead it was a more sinister method, and it makes me wonder why betelgeuse never tried it. it can’t be because he doesn’t know about it, because he’s the type of ghost to read the handbook backwards and forwards just so he can find every loophole to exploit. like my head keeps going in circles. especially for the first movie where lydia had initially wanted ‘in’ while he wanted ‘out’, the switcheroo method that jeremy tried with astrid would’ve been perfect then. even in this movie where he already has experience of lydia backing out of their deal, he could have had lydia promise to exchange her soul for his. with how much she wanted to save astrid, I’m sure lydia would have agreed. instead, he just wanted to remarry her. it’s interesting because it means betelgeuse, as putrid, crass, disgusting, and opportunistic as he is, actually seems like he has lines he won’t cross.

[readtilyoudie]

Being a teenage girl is dramatic in part because it’s your first, chilliest dunking in the certain knowledge that your body is your worth. I’d been a chubby kid, and so the idea that my body was a source of shame wasn’t new to me, but previously I’d only been a disappointment to my family. Now, I was understanding that an unbeautiful woman is an unfulfilled promise to the world.

I realize now that some of this is illusion—that those promises were made on my behalf, without my input, by people who didn’t have my best interests at heart.

Women and Other Monsters: Building a New Mythology by Jess Zimmerman

[berattelse]

Most cultures have a female monster who preys on pregnant women, fetuses, newborns, and children. It's a near-universal nightmare: the creature who rips babies from the womb or steals them from the cradle. her name is Abyzou, Penanggalan, Lamashtu, La Llorona. Her purpose is sometimes to scare children into compliance, but it's often to scare women into compliance as well. Only monsters stand in the way of the natural order: women as incubators, as conduits for birth. In ancient Greece, the baby stealer's name was Lamia. The myths agree on her name, and her role as a murderer of children, and that's about it. Her backstory and her appearance vary almost psychedelically from story to story. In some, she is a sea monster; her name is the ancient Greek for a rogue shark. In others, she is half-woman, half-snake -- or, as in Keats's poem "Lamia," a multicolored snake with a woman's mouth. In some, she is even plural: the Lamiae, a swarm of vampiric demons. She also appears in a seventeenth-century bestiary with a woman's face and breasts, a four-legged body, front paws, back hooves, scales, and a penis and testicles. Unlike so many of her sister monsters -- snake-haired Medusa, lion-bodied Sphinx -- the important feature of Lamia is not what she looks like, but what she does. The fear of the monstrous mother can have many faces, many forms.

Zimmerman, Jess. Women and Other Monsters: Building a New Mythology. Beacon Press, 2021.

[aliciavance4228]

"Medusa x Perseus" Why don't you guys ship Bellerophon with Chimera? Or Heracles with the Hydra?

[hotpinkboots]

okay listen. fellow monsterfuckers. we talk about this way too much:

AND WE DON'T TALK ABOUT THIS ENOUGH:

LIKE. SHE LOOKS HORRIFIC. AND I LOVE HER FOR IT

[anetherealpoetess]

empathising with the women who feel forbidden from expressing desire over villains by some imaginary morality clause. villains are so, so sexy. villains transgress all manner of societal norms which is especially appealing to women as we have been confined and restricted all of our lives.

[kind of personally thought woman loving villains who want to burn it all down should make far more sense to everyone than woman identifying with heroes who want to keep everything intact? heroes uphold the status quo. the status quo in our world is patriarchal. there is no catharsis for women in seeing the current state of a world upheld, even if that world is in a galaxy far, far away. but seeing a character played by a handsome actor want to carve up the status quo? yeah. that's sexy. obviously.]

we aren't attracted to villains because we don't understand that they're bad; we like them because they are bad. because in their otherness we find symbolic representation. because in their defiance of societal norms we find catharsis.

[half-shadowgalra]

Sally Jackson, Maria di Angelo, and Naomi Solace would be badass, bestie, wine mamas if they got to meet each other

[sk-ench]

delicious in creeking!! 1/2 in a series

[Image Description: A drawing of Falin, Laios, Marcille and Izutsumi from Dungeon Meshi. They are all near or wading through a creek. Falin is the nearest figure, squatting and pointing to a bug on a blade of grass. She calls back excitedly to Laios, who is wading towards her through the creek. He shields his face from the sun while smiling and holding a container for keeping bugs. Marcille stands just inside the creek with her hands on her knees. She appears to be catching her breath. Izutsumi squats on the side of the creek, looking at a small fish in the water with wide eyes while flicking her tail. End Description.]