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Maya Ben David
Maya Ben David

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Just had one of my biggest brain explosions to date

Level one: monsters are mythology created to make sense of the unknown and “the other”.

Level two: Monster girls are a fantasy of a beautiful creature that is tamed, and dangerous but ours.

Level three:  Monster girls present a universe in which cancer, mutations, and limitations of the body are loveable. Where cancer and disease is no longer a monster.

If you have a level four, explode my brain even further I dare you.

Comments

been thinking about body horror and clinicalized disability as 'caged divine,' like.,.... idk, as a presentation of the Universe's multitude or an infinite cycle of variation birth/growth/decay intertwined with a living soul, an inherently holy entity. what we perceive as normal or grotesque is as limited as the color spectrum our eyes see versus the whole gamut of light. a "monstrous" being can be seen as one that holds a polarizing representation of one's preferred reality, but maybe it's more like a window/demarcation into a place most people will never see, a plane beyond the scope of the viewer, one that stitches together the fabric of the seen and unseen.

NuhEyeNuh

Initially, monster girls were strictly feminine presenting but now I'm seeing every kind of gender expression with monster girls. There is certainly baggage, especially the way they are drawn to emphasize their "exotic" and animal-like qualities.

Maya Ben David

Level 2.5 The monster girl represents a being that is recognizably feminine, but exempt or removed from our cultural ideas of womanhood. This could be expansive and exciting: “what even is femininity? What does it mean in their world? What are they free to do that we are not?” But often it’s the very obvious “what if they’re more sexually open? what if they’re better in bed than my dang wife?” In either case, monster girls inherit some real baggage from colonialism. Whether they serve to launder that dark history, or reclaim the imagination about otherness and direct it towards something more wholesome…¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Griffin Deary


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