notably, I’m like, somewhere between form neutral and form radical but behavioral purist-ish.
A monster should be fundamentally monstrous by nature in some way. A werewolf who has full control over his transformations or who is just a giant puppy when he transforms isn’t a monster. he’s just a dude that’s an anthropomorphic dog once a month or a dude who can turn into an anthropomorphic dog.
A monster must have some element of danger, it must have something it fights against (or succumbs to) in order to be in a “relationship” with a human. It is fang and claw and could (and perhaps even might) cleave me in twain. If it is fang and claw but “misunderstood” and “actually so gentle and kind” and “would never hurt a fly”
Then that’s not a monster.
Likewise, if it’s behavior and motivation is human then I can’t see it as a monster. I think most vampires sit in the middle of a sort of venn diagram between human and monster (this is kind of a very VtM way of seeing them, I think). Some vampires I would not classify as monsters, just non-humans. Some vampires are absolutely monsters. Some straddle the line, some blur that line, some ping pong back and forth between sides at rapid speed.
(This is also probably true of any “monster” born from a human being)
But like, I think there needs to be like, something innately threatening and impossible for a human to fully understand about a monster. Which is why a lot of monsters
I think this is so fascinating from trans folks’ pov because for a lot of cis people I think the *transformation itself* is monstrous
where as for a trans person (or perhaps a furry?) it’s a neutral to positive thing, which means that danger has to be like a separate element to the fact that human becomes non human
I think with monsters a huge amount of their fascination comes from the sublime. so for some cis person who has never dreamed of shape shifting themselves the transformation becoming what they aren’t is sublime; where as to a trans person it just is not at all outside of their understanding, or their conception of self or humanity or personhood
AH! YES! THIS! Like, when I made my monster definition chart, when I labeled “inhuman in nature” that was what I meant, specifically. Like, to me Fae are monstrous because their instincts, their way of seeing the world is not human. They do not understand things the way humans do and it can be so removed from human understanding that it becomes genuinely frightening.
I think that a monster should, at its core, be something the viewer can’t fully comprehend, even if they might be able to empathize with it. Which is why vampires and any monster that started as a human and retains any sense of self/its original morals and instincts, sit in the middle between “monstrous” and “human”.
But yeah, I kind of think perhaps, for trans people and furries and otherkin/alterhumans, the discussion of “what makes a monster” is a lot like that XKCD comic about geochemists “Even when attempting to account for their expertise, most experts grossly overestimate the average person’s familiarity with their field”. The way of defining a monster is something very much outside of the average POV.
Because yeah, I don’t see a transformation as inherently monstrous at all unless it is a transformation against my will, over which I have no control and no say (which makes sense as a trans person, especially). But a cis person could theoretically see transforming, even willingly, as something horrifying or upsetting.
