#“WHEN DOES A MAN BECOME A MONSTER?”

[potatounicoorn]

I just listened "Just a man" from Epic the musical and thought it fit early season Lord Garmadon and now my day is ruined

[tuba-david]

Eurylochus: Captain, what’s the plan to fight Scylla?

Odysseus:

[guest-1-2-3]

when the piece of media explores themes of humanity versus monstrosity. on one hand, it’s “how far can I go before I am just as monstrous as those I deem my enemies? the further i go the more certain i am that i’ve crossed a line. am I even human anymore?” and on the other hand it’s “was the monster always a monster? what makes it evil, what makes it inhuman? what has it done that i fear it?”

in both cases it is “i am looking at the creature I am fighting and i see a mirror of myself. was i always this way? was it always this way?”

[fauvester]

little moshang fan kid <3

spoiled, aloof, a bit of a bitch, terminally 'weak constitution'-ed, lowkey lazy, prefers reading his dailies in the office and pretending to do paperwork to fighting

[fun-esta]

[maplebitts]

Thinking about thunder bringer

[kyodoesstuff]

WAIT WAIT WAIT WAIT A FUCKING SECOND WAIT

Odysseus singing with Scylla "we are the same you and I" or whatever the lyrics were

Scylla aiming for the six men holding the torches

The suitors in King going "keep your head down he's aiming for the torches"

[el-255]

I remember when I knew little to nothing about the Odyssey and its story, I made my own conclusions on how the story was going to go. When I first heard the song ‘no longer you’, I thought that the prophet was telling him that another one of his men would be the one who made it home, so I assumed that Odysseus becoming the ‘monster’ would be him killing that crew member so it would go back to being him.

LITTLE DID I KNOW THAT WHAT HAPPENED IN THE THUNDER SAGA IS A HUNDRED TIMES WORSE THAN WHAT I EVER THOUGHT.

[epicthemusicalstuff]

I was watching a reaction to Ruthlessness and the "when does a man become monster" line came on. And for the strangest reason, I imagined Odysseus doing the "I'm a savage" dance. I know it's like a dead trend but I would love to see someone animate that

I’m gonna be completely honest, I had to look up what it was (I am not caught up on any sort of dance trends). It would be hilarious though to see!!!

[riacte]

so hey guys i finished dungeon meshi yesterday and i'm still thinking about it

[celesrangeepic]

“You’ve hurt me enough” / “When I kill you my pain is over” / “You won’t live through this day, now die”

-Polyphemus in Survive

I just find this part interesting because Polyphemus had every right to be mad and upset because:

1) Host rules— in Ancient Greek, there was a policy called ξενία (English: Xenia) which consisted of two rules- Respect from Hosts to Guests, Respect from Guests to Hosts. Odysseus was a guest in Polyphemus’ cave and broke the rules of ξενία by killing Polyphemus’ favorite sheep and was a threat.

2) After the “gift exchange” (aka Odysseus giving Polyphemus the wine), Polyphemus thought he was being nice by letting Odysseus be the final man to die— because he gets to live longer than the rest and keep in mind that Polyphemus doesn’t understand human customs, he’s a cyclops and a monster.

….

“We are a different beast now” / “No more of us deceased now cause we won’t take more suffering from you” / “You are a threat no longer”

-Odysseus and the Crew in Different Beast

This draws parallels to Polyphemus because the sirens never directly hurt Odysseus or the crew (yet), so it made no sense for it to be “We won’t take more suffering from YOU” if they never hurt them. So it makes sense for it to be a parallel to be to Polyphemus and when their suffering and all their problems started. It also details how, if Odysseus had the chance he would kill Polyphemus (also related to “I made a mistake like this, it almost cost my life. I can’t take more risks on not seeing my wife.”) and then Odysseus cut off their tails.

It just shows how in this situation, Odysseus is the monster and causing the suffering. Not the monsters themselves. Throughout Epic it’s about Odysseus learning to be ruthless but in the process he has to become a monster, which kind of draws the question of are the monsters “monsters” because they’re just following what they were made to do and just following their instincts? Or, alternatively; When does a man become a monster :)

[distant-screaming]

the fact that throughout this saga the monsters aren't really looming dangers the way polyphemus and circe were - and in fact it's odysseus, eurylochus and zeus who are the 'bad guys'

[esthergravityfalls]

I cannot stop thinking about Armand, an ex slave who worked in a brothel where he was constantly abused, getting together with Louis, an ex pimp, just to prove himself that he is stronger now and that no one can hurt him anymore (it's not true)

[bacchuschucklefuck]

Can you expand on what you mean by Baron being "too cool" to really fit a horror monster? It's a very interesting concept and I'd love to hear your thoughts. Is it that they're too active/involved/tangible and it detracts from their scariness?

I feel like I should preface this with a wall of disclaimers lmao 1/I am a hardcore, down-to-the-marrow, avid, deeply sincere horror enthusiast, esp. horror creatures. this usually means my mileage is vastly different from the average populace's, and my scaredy bone has been disintegrated by longterm exposure. most things in a piece of horror media won't scare me! so I practically never use that on its own as the scale to talk abt horror experiences, but when something does scare me it's always a special occasion to be treasured. 2/canon d20 is never really meant to be horror horror, and for good reasons: it doesn't fit the company's output, it takes a kind of carelessness in production estimation that is always a huge risk, it's often vulnerable in a way that kinda goes against how TTRPGs usually facilitates vulnerability, and for most people it's just! stressful! d20, even with the "horror-themed" seasons, generally just plays with horror tropes and stays focused in its goal of being a comedy improv tabletop theater show. 3/fantasy high's chosen system is DnD, which as I've mentioned before is before all a combat-based game system, which means the magic circle of play is drawn based on stats that facilitate and prioritize combat. want or not this affects every interaction you have in the game, and given fantasy high's concept from the ground up (everyone's going to school of DnD stuff to get better at DnD) it's doubly relevant. 4/This Is Fine I have no quarrel with this. my meters are internal, I do not ask this show to be anything it doesn't advertise itself to be, and what it is is fucking great! I like it! when I expand on this ask's question it will be like a physicist going insane in a lab. that's the mindset we're going in with.

disclaimers done. my stance on horror as a genre is that it's a utility genre rather than a content genre or a demographic genre; it is the discard of narratives. it's the trash pile. horror, above being scary, is about being ugly and messy, it's the cracks on the ground any story inevitably steps over to stay a genre that isn't horror. the genre's been around long enough to develop a codex and a general language that medias and makers and enthusiasts of the genre can use to talk about and build onto, but if you go into individual pieces there's really no unifying Horror Story. one person's beautiful life can be another's horror story, it's just how it is.

this makes The Monster a deeply intriguing piece of the genre. thing is a monster is in a decent percentage of any story - it's just when the antagonist force steps into something past a certain line traced out in the story's world. monstrousness is in pretty much every western fantasy story, it's in any story with a hero and something to vanquish or win; more than anything it's a proxy of that thing up there. the line in a narrative's world. the monster is the guard of the unknown lands, where heroic, civilized people don't tread.

what does this mean in the context of horror? the genre is about that perceived lawlessness, that "unknown land" so to say. we're in the monster's home. that's the literary context that we often walk into a horror piece with; the monster knows more than you about where you are. it may not understand you, but it holds more information than you, and with that it moves swifter than you, has more covered than you, and is more assured in its existence in this context than you. it's a struggle to catch up to it, it's nigh impossible to get one over it, and you're never sure it'll 100% work, because you just don't have the information necessary to.

with that framing you can kinda see where I'm coming from here: horror's often about the breaking of rules. I always think a monster's most effective when it breaks well-established rules of both existence and visual storytelling. think Possum (2018) or Undertale's Omega Flowey or the Xenomorph Queen - unique change in medium, unique change in graphic, unique change in design language, etc. in that sense I actually really like how canon baron plays out: they don't really function like anything else in the fantasy high universe, the bad kids have not managed to kill them when they've felled literal gods, their domain in fhjy literally introduces new mechanics to encompass their existence! from an experience design standpoint they slap mad shit. BUT! I can't help finding their character, like as a character riz (and the other bad kids, eventually) interact with, to be very... coherent? in design. this is kinda hard for me to articulate in words, it's more often a sense you get once you've looked at enough of these scrumptious fuckers, their general design and the way they show up is just kinda too clean, so to say. always kinda newly made? fresh unboxed. it, once again, makes sense for their lore - they are looking for more about themself from riz - and their function - they're an antagonist in a game experience, they're meant to be interacted with in a way that produces results and meshes with the existing magic circle - but that shininess takes away from the implied history they should have dominion over and the person they're haunting doesn't.

from another angle there is kinda something there about how put-together canon baron is as a concept; the domain they call home is riz's deep-seeded fears, extremely vulnerable things he's drawn borders around to quarantine and refused to walk into. things that from his perspective would irreversibly shatter certain pleasant fictions his world is built on top of. canon baron, While Extremely Cool, I feel is kinda too neat to connect with and signify the apocalyticized mess that'd result from this paradigm shift. the part where they're in riz's briefcase and looking through every mirror is Very Cool And Fucked Up! but ultimately the show draws a line around them as well, by making game-physical, tangible spaces they're in (the mirrors and the haunted mordred manor) and put riz and the bad kids there only when they need to confront stuff. riz is meaningfully narratively away from baron's unknown land for most of fantasy high.

with that and all of my disclaimers in mind my conclusion here is if canon baron wants to be a Horror Monster they'd have to cross way more lines. be a Lot more invasive. hence (holds up my class swap baron like a long cat)

[franollie]

im having thoughts…

[sowlmates]

oh odysseus we're really in it now...