#grotesque monsters

[charlesreeza]

St. Anthony Tormented by Demons, engraving, Martin Schongauer, c. 1470

Städel Museum - Frankfurt, Germany

[jareckiworld]

Jeremy Olson — Boundaries of Sentiment (oil on canvas, 2020)

[fhtagn-and-tentacles]

DOROHEDORO 

by Bolzak

[toxooz]

been sick as a mf dawg but i managed to draw the ol Ollie n Kari halloween costumes for this year🤘

[freaky-flawless]

Created from the parts of the most perfect teenage girls,

by Professor Bootonuim,

but he accidentally added an extra ingredient to the concoction,

CHEMICAL HEX

Thus the PowerDeath girls were born!

Bluddles (Blood Puddles), Bloodsom, and Butterknife!

(ID in alt text)

[blogfanreborn777]

Czernobog by Matt Cowdery

[bornulhuu]

Ancient father and mother of humanity. Brutish deity that created the human race. In antedilluvian times it taught them how to nurture and conquer. It is wise yet easily provoked. It's presence is unknown in the current age, it might not even be on this planet.

[0bolzak0]

ABERRATION 1

[msfcatlover]

Every Monster Can’t Be Your Kid, Bruce.

Inspired really heavily by You, Me, and the Humanity in Between by JUBE514, which I misunderstood the first time I read it and thought they were all going to be different types of monsters. So Dick & Jason are very close to that story in their origins here. You should absolutely read that fic, because it’s fantastic, but the major take away for my AU is that if you pour enough love into something, it can come to life, and the more life & love it carries the more “real” that life becomes.

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Dick is an antique doll, handed down through generations of Graysons, becoming gradually more alive & aware as time went on. It was John Grayson and eventually his wife Mary who managed to tip Dick over into being animate even when people were watching him. Dick only became more & more real from there, as John & Mary shared their love of flying with him, and eventually shared the spotlight & love of their audience. The circus as a whole saw Dick as a blessing, being fully aware of his inhuman nature but accepting him as a source of good luck… until John & Mary fell, leaving their doll-son behind. Dick could actually see his place in the family he’d been part of turn towards superstitious whispers, as his movements stiffened and his joints became more visible. He wasn’t anyone’s good luck charm anymore.

Bruce also saw how everyone turned on that poor little boy, and rushed to give Dick a place to stay, haunted by the whispers of his own childhood that found ways to blame Bruce for what happened to Thomas & Martha Wayne. Bruce isn’t exactly great at expressing his love, but Dick never needs to doubt it when he can see & feel the evidence right there in his own body. And when Robin met the rest of the hero community, they loved him too, giving Dick the chance to actually grow up for the first time in almost 150yrs.

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The first thing Jason ever experienced was love, as the city itself brought him to life. The second thing was freedom, as Jason slipped from the rooftop he’d been carved for and for the first time experienced flight. The third was agony, as Jason struck the ground and his wings snapped right off.

Jason’s not technically a gargoyle. Gargoyles are structurally important, directing water away from the building, and basically never come to life. Jason is a grotesque, carved for decoration & to ward off evil spirits. Without any family to go to, Jason stuck to that second job, protecting the people of his neighborhood as best he could. Batman investigated what he thought was a new vigilante, and found a boy carved from solid stone who could almost pass for human if he stayed out of the light. Bruce worried Jason would suffer the same rejection Dick had, and offered Jason a home; it took some convincing to tempt Jason away from his territory, as it is in Jason’s nature to stay in place in order to protect, but eventually Jason agreed in exchange for training.

(The new Robin doesn’t bend or jerk the way the last one did, but he hits the ground like a meteor strike, and rakes gouges in brick with his claws. He doesn’t shatter & grin through any injury, because most weapons glance off or shatter themselves against his stony skin.)

(Joker submerged a boy carved from centuries-old limestone in an acid bath, and by the time it was drained there wasn’t enough left to animate. Bruce still called every magician he knew, hoping to hear someone say Jason was still alive despite that.)

(Talia had a marble sculpture carved, and had what was retrieved from Jason’s coffin sealed at its core. It still took one hell of a ritual to bring him back, now with a tail that lashed & wings that swept the ground behind him to go with the fangs & claws he’d always had. The new body was perfect in the way only sculptures can be, and Jason just kept himself covered up rather than bother painting & repainting color onto his skin every time he went out in public, lacking the love to lock it in.)

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Tim was the opposite of his brothers. If you love something, anything, you can bring it to life; if something goes unloved & ignored, on the other hand… Tim just slowly faded into the background of his own life. Nobody talked to him at galas. His parents overlooked him at dinner. Other kids avoided him, while staff wouldn’t look him in the eye. Until one day Tim’s teacher was calling attendance and called Tim’s name three times before Tim abruptly stood up, chair screeching across the floor, and snapped, “I said, I’m right here!” The whole class stared wide-eyed, as though Tim has appeared from nowhere.

Tim learned to take advantage of it. He learned what he could do, as something reality itself sometimes ignored (if Tim closes his eyes and has no one else observing him, he can even bypass laws of physics to move through walls or take a few steps out on open air.) Tim tried to convince himself it was just meta-powers manifesting, and it was pure coincidence how closely his condition mirrored mythical Echo (at least people always hear her voice.)

The only time it doesn’t work is if someone wants to notice Tim. A paradox, as first they need to know the true Tim well enough to want to notice him, rather than their own preconceived notion of Tim or one of the masks that Tim puts on. On the plus side, once Tim became Robin that meant he had people he could reach out to who would answer the phone & talk him through it when reality felt especially swimmy or Tim’s own sense of self might waver. Being overlooked is also just one hell of a superpower, and Tim puts it to good use.

(Tim is eternally annoyed once he starts getting close to people and can no longer slip past them. He demands to know why they can see him, and they’re like, “Because we want to? Because we care about you?” and Tim’s like, “Well that’s inconvenient!”)

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Finding a decapitated teenage girl caught under one of the docks was just an especially depressing day for the Gotham PD. Finding a corpse that grabbed back when the coroner went to move it meant it was time to call in the Batman. Steph didn’t know Morse code and her eyes & ears were currently stuck somewhere in muffled darkness far away from the rest of her, so communication was rough but they eventually got her story out of her. Revenants come back for specific reasons, so it was expected she would be there when her father was apprehended; the words he screamed when he saw her corpse, and the beeline Steph made for the box under his workbench put any remaining doubts to rest. Steph picked the lock by touch, and retrieved her head with a huff of relief.

Then Robin said, “Did you find it?” and Steph jumped, throwing her head at him on instinct. It was very embarrassing for both of them, and when Robin handed Steph her head back and she balanced it back on her neck, she immediately started blushing.

(Bruce buys Steph a whole lot of beautiful “necklaces” to help keep her head balanced. Spoiler is the Headless Horseman of Gotham, and Steph finds it hilarious to play into the image. She no longer experiences true pain, just deep discomfort, and gets very good at lobbing her head like a grisly dodgeball at anyone she dislikes.)

(Steph’s a lot more lively than most people expect of the undead, eating & chattering, even getting sick sometimes. She loudly proclaims that the best part of losing her head is that she no longer has to taste it when she throws up, as long as she’s quick enough removing it—when Steph does puke, it’s mostly bilge-water, no matter what she put in her stomach ahead of time.)

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Cass is a homunculus, but I have no details. Damian’s got his “mixed DNA clone” origin going on. That’s where I’m at with this one.

[legaltrashgoblin]

Mr Bonzo reminds me of that one analog horror thing about the guy that grew into his kaiju suit and I feel like it'd be so cool if Johnny Sims and Alexander J. Newall executed it like that because that story always strikes unease in me

[90smisaki]

zombie with brains all over its head

Your support unlocks new creative adventures for me!

[belle-keys]

Anne Rice's Interview with the Vampire seems to me to be lovechild of The Picture of Dorian Gray, Dracula, and No Exit.

Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray, because Louis is primarily drawn to vampirism as it awakens the senses and reveals the rich hidden beauty of the world. Louis observes life with an impressionist painter’s eyes and is on a quest to contextualize the beauty of humanity around him, that which he can’t himself partake in. Like Dorian, he’s immortal and invincible, but he has paid for this infinity of living with his soul and his humanity. Borne of evil himself, he can only behold goodness and beauty by gazing at the canvas. Also, gay.

Bram Stoker’s Dracula, because the novel pays homage to 19th-century Gothic literature. This time, the vampiric monster is the protagonist, the Byron, the anti-hero, the person we’re forced to sympathize with. The novel answers questions Jonathan Harker never bothers to ask: Where did Dracula come from? What does he feel? What does he want? What is human within him? Rice’s novel further enriches the vampirical canon by situating Louis, who believes himself to be a child of the devil, as the moral heart of the story. We are left wondering how much of Dracula, Stoker’s villain, had remained human upon his death.

Jean-Paul Sartre’s No Exit, because the characters are living an undead existence of angoisse and our vampires can’t handle their infinite, solitary existence without companionship. Their loneliness is hell, but we learn through the dynamic between Louis, Lestat, and Claudia that “hell is other people” also. Louis is grappling with the existentialist question of how to give his life meaning, trying to discover the essence of himself and vampirism, struggling to take action and evade cowardice. The Sartrian idea that existence is inherently meaningless and vampires are cursed with the burden of endless consciousness is the hell Louis can’t bear.

[jareckiworld]

Jeremy Olson — The Accelerationists  (oil on panel, 2019)

[fallbabylon]

Mad Meg “Dull Gret” by  Pieter Bruegel the Elder on display at  Mayer van den Bergh Museum- Antwerp, Belgium 

[hermithomebase]

#GEORGE: one of them I actually just threw out 'cause it was almost just purely black, because we don't know how to use the polaroid camera, apparently.

[evolutionsvoid]

When the Church of Divine Wealth began to crumble, and war within its ranks broke out, it was the beginning of madness for the land. An age of prosperity had come to an end, and the consequences of countless actions in the sake of taking and keeping were now coming to light. Dwindling resources, drained lands and systems meant to bring peace and plenty now turned against all. The internal war spilled out onto the lands, destroying the defenses and laws that kept order, and ringing the dinner bell for all the carnivores and scavengers to come to feed. Violence and insanity are commonplace now, and those who survive the endless torment struggle to keep alive and hopeful. From the ashes and chaos has arisen many a monstrosity, like the Arimakki who run rampant in the lands. Another horror that has revealed itself claws its way back from the cycle. One whose very presence terrifies those who still cling to their faith.

It was around when the madness started that these creatures came to light. Horribly mangled things, bodies an amalgamation of dripping flesh and useless limbs. They were patchworks of life, chewed up and spat out into some unholy wad of tortured meat. It comes to no surprise that they have been dubbed the Grotesques, for their very appearance invokes disgust in the masses. They are things that are reborn from the cycle, but have come back all wrong. Whatever process that was meant to take one's fluids and reshape it into a new form for their new life has been corrupted. The sculptor has gone blind and sick, and these mangled creatures are the artwork that comes from their hands now. These are souls born as horrid amalgamations now, bodies slapped together with numerous other fluids from other sources, creating something unholy and unwanted. The Grotesques are truly vile, and it seems even they are repulsed by their own forms. Their flesh is soggy and soft, their limbs struggling to support their forms. Teeth, claw and horn may be upon them for protection, but there is no telling if they are even in places for one to properly use them. Just by looking at a Grotesque, you will see something that struggles to live, their movements clumsy and tired, their breathing labored and wet. They are in misery and pain, and this terrible state has driven many to anger and mindless violence. Crazed malformed beasts that lash out at those who dare get close. 

Some would say that they are creatures that beg for death, but sadly it seems it cannot be an escape for them anymore. For many, death is like a long slumber, where you are returned to the cycle and returned some time later in a new form and life. Those who suffer in this war may even pray for it, as they hope they may die and reawaken in a better age. The Grotesques get no such comfort, as it seems their affliction is a permanent one. Those who perish as a Grotesque return as one, there is no escaping it. These are tormented souls, through and through, doomed to be demons and monstrosities who haunt this world. 

To the Church, the Grotesque are abominations to be slain and burned, their vile forms utterly destroyed. They point to these wicked creatures and preach of how these horrors are embodiments of sin and failure. This is a punishment from the world itself, condemning humanity for its cruelty and failures. Those whose fluids are steeped in sin and sent back to the cycle will be punished with this pathetic form, and brought back to terrorize the rest of humanity. These creatures are born from man's crimes and violence, and the Church is quick to see them cleansed. Most folk agree with the Church, as they despise these wretched creatures, and kill them whenever they show their ugly faces. Destroy the monsters and burn the sin, that is the only way for humanity to be absolved of their faults.

Yet, if one were to pause in their execution, and seek these creatures with the intention of peace, they may find something different beneath that malformed flesh. While some may have been driven mad by their failed resurrection, others still cling to some kind of mind and wit. Despite their looks, they still live lives and seek existence, as Grotesques band together to form communities. Even in their horrid shape, they find a way forward, a way to continue on. Things are not perfect, but they try to eek out some kind of life from all the madness. If the hunters were not so quick in their killings, so deaf to the words of their "enemy," they would find plenty of Grotesques pleading for mercy and their lives. So many who flee instead of fight, who cower in fear despite their status as "demons." Man isn't the only creature in this world that seeks to survive the madness, but they may be uncaring to the plights of those who are unlike them. 

It is strange, how the Church claims that the Grotesques are punishments against humanity for its violence and hatred, and yet their path for absolution is carved with cruelty. Would not compassion be the way forward, would kindness not be the answer to the creatures born from anger? Who looks down upon the weak and helpless, and finds purpose in punishing them for it? But alas, it is an age of war and madness, and there are many who dare not think too hard on their own actions... 

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"The Grotesques"