&.

mostly right now im interested in "love" and "monstrosity" as broad concepts in relationship to one another and in conversation with one another within a story. if love can turn a monster into a human, can lack of love turn a human into a monster?

consider monstrosity as a category defined by that absence. consider how many aspects of human life are an aspect of our love for one another. sharing meals, sharing resting space, healing each others injuries, shouldering each others burdens, compensating for each others losses. whats a monster? whats the inverse of a life lived with love? a thing that eats alone, bogarts its possessions, constantly guards its own back jealously and licks its wounds in solitude. an unnamed thing, since to be named is to have had someone who loved you. i think about how dragons are often characterized as greedy, hoarding creatures. i think about how in some tellings the only requisite needed to break the beast's curse is to love the humanity beneath the monstrous appearance, and how in others the beast is required to extend love to the other as well. i think about panna a netvor's version of the beast for whom accessing his humanity is framed as a horrifying transformation on par with the more commonly depicted shift from human to monster. i think of stories where the monster, the beast, the frog, the dragon has to die, whether symbolically or literally, before they can be freed from their curse. love as a violent interruption of solipsism. monstrosity as a shield that protects the monster from that violent intrusion. the curse is incurred when a human rejects a stranger from their home. the first step to lifting it comes with a stranger entering uninvited.

i think about trauma. i know "it was trauma all along!" is a horrible cliche and thats not the sort of vibe im trying to invoke here but i do think about trauma. i think about that weird purgatory you enter when you escape from a bad place or situation or person where instead of getting better the way you expect to you only seem to be getting worse, sadder, angrier, meaner, more isolated.