the (meg)iverse

The Key Monster on Instagram

“The thing that was not a deer” implies a creature which mimics a deer but imperfectly and the details which are wrong are what makes it terrifying

The “was not a deer” monster speaks to fear born of deception, dangers that approach under the guise of familiarity, with varying levels of success to infiltrate the familiar before lashing out

The “not a deer anymore” monster speaks to fear born of coercion. Whatever it is was once familiar and perhaps even comforting but through the action of another agent the familiar has become grotesque and dangerous.

The “Thing That Was Almost A Deer” something that, despite it’s best efforts, was never able to truly attain deerhood, and now spends it’s days being something wholly different.

Something that wanted to be a deer so very badly, but was turned away from the gates of deerhood, condemned to lurk in lonely the wilderness of liminality.

Monsters are monsters because they can’t be classified. The fear stems from our inability to understand what we are seeing. They are, by their very nature, unable to be understood. Which is why this is the most tragic kind of monster to me.

Smiley, the shark dragon

—two teenaged boys who WERE barreling towards a tragic rivalry that ends in one of them falling to darkness… until one of them confessed that he was just trying to show off because he has a crush on the other one. They’re now dating and the comedy comes from the universe CONSTANTLY trying to get them to fight and failing.

—an eight year old who keeps tattling on the demons who are whispering to her and then getting into sibling fights with them

—a brooding, edgy fire-wielding boy and a brooding, edgy fire-wielding girl who can’t figure out which mystical signs belong to who

The two fire kids have a big age gap, with the girl being 10 and the boy being 17. They spend so much time together trying to untangle their destinies that they wind up developing a brother-sister relationship. The girl is one of the Hopes and the boy’s name is Fox, which results in the following exchange being commonplace.

A: so then Hope—

B: which Hope?

Fox two years ago: Whenever he laughs I get all sweaty and agitated, and that stupid ‘oh look at me I’m so handsome’ grin is so obnoxious it bothers me for hours after I have talk to the guy! God, Raven’s the worst.

She is also, as the villain discovered in spectacularly violent fashion when he kidnapped her, the most dangerous member of the party by far.

Because she ISN’T a cleric and she wasn’t using light magic at all. She uses raw magic, which is a rare talent for humans because it’s hard to control and tends to destroy the weirder before their enemies. Maribelle’s love for her friends was LITERALLY the source of her healing magic, because she uses her emotions to shape her spells.

This started out with me just wanting to sketch a lace dress and then poof levitating witch making either the sickest pumpkin pie you’ve ever eaten or some poisonous concoction. Or both.

Other casters: That’s not really how spells -

Wizard: Oh look, one of our blankets is now a magic carpet.  Guess we don’t need a bridge.

Other casters: There’s been too much rain, it won’t -

Wizard:  I fixed it so that it’s in the same state it was yesterday.  Someone here knows how to start a fire, right?

Other casters: THAT’S NOT HOW MAGIC WORKS YOU IDIOT WE’RE GOING TO DIE

Dragon: *coughs* Did you just… cure my intestinal problems?  I’ve been trying to stop breathing fire for weeks, but it just kept spilling out, and every time I tried to ask for help, I burned everything down.  I won’t forget this kindness.

• Well actually, it’s fine because you didn’t need the tooth and you even get money

• What’s a “fae”?

• In my country it’s a mouse instead

• No! We they are totally nice and not sinister!

• Ohhhh shit my eyes are open now

• Let the children have fun, you monster

• Yeah be polite but don’t fuck with the fae, I am Irish/Scottish/etc and I have seen some shit

The scriptures tell us a dying leader lead humanity to the promised land.

I’ve seen some posts going around on what not to write in fantasy, many of which amount to:

Don’t write evil kings.

Don’t write people who are evil for the sake of evil.

Don’t write bullies.

Don’t write villains at all actually.

Don’t write mentors.

Don’t let your characters learn how to do hard things on their own though.

Don’t write people on adventures.

Don’t write people fighting evil governments.

Don’t write any fantasy species ever written before.

Don’t write any fantasy trope ever written before.

Don’t write any fantasy plot ever written before. 

Just… don’t fucking write fantasy I guess??

And this is such utter bullshit, my friends.

We do need more originality and diversity in fantasy, but we don’t need to remove everything that fantasy is and has been in the process.

(Especially, especially, when diversity is being included in traditionally cishet white male protagonist fantasy stories.)

Maybe the chosen one with special magic powers and a royal bloodline going on a quest with a group of friends to defeat the evil king has been done before with a white cis man a thousand times over, but how many times has a black trans woman got to go on that adventure? 

Maybe elves and orcs have been written into the dust, but they still make great templates on which to tell stories with original twists, and there’s nothing about them that stops a good, emotional story from hitting you straight in the heart.

Maybe dragons have been done by every writer ever to write fantasy, but you know what? Dragons are fucking awesome, my dudes. Many readers are always gonna love them.

Maybe we have told the same fantasy stories over and over again, but every step you take away from the known template is a step you have to spend more and more exposition on before the reader will understand your original creation.