Are You My Monster?

We’re living in a post-monster world, and that’s ok.

Cover of the D&D book *Volo’s Guide to Monsters,* illustration by Tyler Jacobson

I love monsters. Bizarre, horrifying, unexplainable… a great monster can redeem a terrible movie. That’s the promise of most monster movies, frankly, which aren’t know for their quality. As a lifelong D&D player, I’ve spent hours “designing” the perfect monster to pit against my players. What is this thing? Where does it live, what does it eat, what terrifying powers does it wield? How can it kill you? How can you kill it? What does it want?

How does it feel?

Wait, how DOES it feel? How does it fit into the local ecology? What about the local politics? Heck, the local theology - can it get religion? Is it a sin to murder it, or is it your duty?

These questions come up almost immediately, and they all go back to a fundamental question: what’s a monster? I’ll lead with my answer:

A monster acts outside of human understanding, cannot be governed by human law, and cannot be redeemed by human morality.

This is descriptive, not prescriptive: there’s no class of creatures called “monsters.” It’s just an adjective we use for a certain kind of being. I find it holds up really well, though. A zombie is a good, clear example. It shouldn’t exist; we don’t gain anything by putting it in prison; and we can’t expect it to change its ways. It’s mindless, which simplifies things.

I’m not going to delve into the deep history and mythology of monsters like Grendel, Humbaba, Medusa - if you’ve come to me for scholarship, you’ve come to the wrong place. (I had to Google Humbaba.) I am more interested in how we define monsters now, our knee-jerk portrayal in tv shows, video games, etc.

In modern narratives, a monster is something we can kill without remorse.

From the anime *Arifureta*, which I am not necessarily recommending you watch.

I touched on this briefly in this post. Basically, we use monsters as the ultimate “other”, forever outside of society. In horror stories, a monster is something that hunts us, that society doesn’t protect us from. In other forms of fantasy, a monster is something we can fight and society won’t punish us for it. Introducing a monster makes violence ok. Fun, even!

Zombies in the Walking Dead; vampires in Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Orcs in D&D; those big flying worm things in Avengers (I refuse to look up what they are called.) Super mutants in the Fallout video games. Serial killers.

Bunny-girl has an epiphany, saying "I guess I'm finally strong enough to be called a monster, too." — More *Arifureta.* It’s almost as if this trope is one that shows up in literally any random anime you happen to watch.

Right, serial killers. Staples of both slasher movies and true-crime documentaries, demonstrating that monsters can be people. People can be monsters! If a guy in a hockey mask comes after you with a machete, you should run away or fight him! He’s a monster! I don’t make the rules.

Actually, wait - until the end of this post, I do make the rules. Why is a serial killer a monster?

Does a serial killer fit my definition of monster (i.e., the only definition that matters)? Serial killers operate outside of our understanding, although we love the quest to understand them (thanks, Mindhunter!) We don’t really feel like our justice system can handle them - that’s the point of movies like Silence of the Lambs and shows like Dahmer. And we really don’t believe they can be redeemed. Thus our obsession with them: they are anomalies more than they are people. Monsters.

Why can’t we, though? That seems like too easy a way out. Shouldn’t we be able to understand serial killers (and genocidal dictators, and abusers)? Shouldn’t we be able to punish them? Can they never be redeemed? Or have we simply stopped trying?

Yes, we have. We can just as easily turn my definition back on us:

To call someone a monster is to show a failure of imagination, of courage, and of compassion.

**Juan:** "We should call the police."
**Abbi:** "Calling the police is what normal people do. We're not normal people anymore."
The Imperfects is a Netflix show about self-identifying as monsters. Not perfect, but pretty good.

In other words, we’re back to othering. We call somebody a monster so we don’t have to put in the work to understand them, or even deal with them. We call them a monster to avoid examining the limits of our society.

I am not breaking new ground here. This is the plot of the world’s first science-fiction novel, Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, written in 1818. Science fiction got its start by questioning the role of monsters as “the other,” and we’ve been questioning it ever since. It’s not a stretch to say that almost every monster story since has asked some version of the question.

Did we create a monster?

What if we’re the monster?

Do my actions make me a monster?

What happens if we view monsters as people?

What if monsters are just doing their jobs as hourly nightmare staff and babysitters?

Maybe Mary Shelley marks a turning point in western storytelling from “monsters as mythology” to “monsters as social critique.” I bet there are a hundred dissertations written on that topic (google google… yep). I am not going to explore this because I am lazy, but it brings me back to my initial assertion: we are post-monster.

Post-monster means we no longer accept monsters as fact, but as a critique of our culture.

This critique shows up in virtually every modern monster story. Supernatural gives us demons as fundamentally evil beings, but then immediately gives us Meg, the “not quite so bad” demon. Predator gives us a a lethal hunter of humans, equivalent to a human big-game hunter in terms of moral compass. Alien gives us a parasitic raptor with acid spit, essentially an animal out of its ecosystem.

Abbey Howard lays it out in her strip Junior Scientist Power Hour.

Cartoonist Abby Howard breaks down some of her favorite horror movies, including The Fly and Hellraiser, with really insightful commentary on why she likes them. They have real “who’s the monster?” energy. Read it.

Zombie movies and shows give us “true monsters”, but the villains are almost always the human creators of the zombies, or the survivors who are only too willing to turn on their fellow humans. King Kong is the king of monsters, but we cry when he dies.

Once you make society the villain, you make the monster the hero.

Which we love. That’s Teen Wolf, or The Imperfects (above), or the underrated My Boyfriend’s Back. That’s the Hulk and Swamp Thing, that’s Being Human, that’s Turning Red. That’s Monsters, Inc., and Disney’s Zombies (I assume).

We love an underdog story, and “monsters are people” is the greatest underdog story of all time. Outsiders trying to fit in. Weirdos just trying to belong. The scope for storytelling is huge, as is the scope for analogy.

I would argue that the genre of “monsters as heroes” has essentially replaced “monsters as horrors” as the default storyline. True horror has become almost a niche, the exception rather than the rule. These days, if you want to portray unstoppable killing machine free from ethical considerations, you have to work for it. You have to posit a fundamentally evil Hell, or an alien dimension hostile to all life. You have to defend your core statement - monsters are real - before you tell your story.

Unless, of course, you’re playing D&D. You monster.

If you are a D&D player of a certain age, you’ve encountered a debate raging in the hobby, one that has burned for decades. The crux of it is, “are orcs evil?” More generally, “can a sentient species be a monster - incomprehensible, ungovernable, irredeemable?” You can get the gist of this debate by googling “killing baby orcs” or “are orcs racist.” In other words, is there something wrong with playing a story where there are no moral questions about killing something - or someone - because they are a monster.

I am not going to try to lay down a moral absolute. I do think, though, that there’s a reason this debate survives in gaming (both role-playing games and video games) when it has been mostly settled in popular fiction. And that reason is: fighting monsters is fun.

That’s the whole argument. Games like D&D are games of heroism, of adventure, of high-stakes combat against terrifying foes. Many of us sit down at the gaming table (or computer) expecting to fight, and the game gives us endless opportunities to do that. We engage our imaginations and tactical skills and roll the dice. I’m not going to lie, there’s adrenaline involved.

Fighting monsters in D&D is part of the fantasy. Cutting down dozens of orcs without worrying about moral consequences is part of the fantasy. It’s just a game.

Orcs, as illustrated in the 1977 AD&D *Monster Manual*. Other monsters in this book include such terrifying adversaries as “horse, pony”.

Is that ok?

Yes. But also, no.

I don’t have a glib answer to this. I do think that the thousands of words spent on “why it’s ok to kill orc babies” are dishonest on some level. I see a lot of arguments that start “in my world, orcs…”, and then go one to justify the various magical and social reasons that orcs (and goblins, kobolds, drow, dragons, werewolves, whatever) are “just evil”. Very few of them go deeper than “I want guilt-free villains in my D&D game.” You might as well just say, “I don’t want to examine the moral issues too deeply, it gets in the way of my good-vs-evil narrative.”

There’s nothing wrong with fighting evil. In fact, it’s a necessity. Games give us a chance to fight evil gloriously, clearly, free of the real-world gray areas. I get it, and I enjoy it. (Let me tell you about my halfling librarian hexblade some time.)

It stops being ok when we make monsters out of people, just so we can stop treating them as people.

This is the terrible logic of monsters. Once I decide you stand outside of humanity, I no longer have to treat you as human. You may speak, love, laugh, raise children, create music, and make terrible career decisions, but once I decide you are a monster, none of that matters. Because you are a monster, everything you do must be wrong. Because I am a person, everything I do must be right.

And that’s messed up.

If that’s where your game leads you - if that’s the mindset you have to adopt to play your game - then I urge you to be very careful. Making monsters out of people is all too common in the real world, and the people around your gaming table are (probably) real people. I am not going to tell you how to play your game. But I am asking you for empathy for the people around you, and to listen when another player says, “Wait. That’s not right.”

“And sin [...] is when you treat people like things. Including yourself. That’s what sin is.”

— Granny Weatherwax in Carpe Jugulum by Terry PratchettTerry

I love monsters. I love the unknown entity, the impossible creature, the terrifying challenge.

And I love that they are a lie. I love that the answer to the question, “are you my monster,” must always be “no.” Monsters aren’t the other, they don’t live on the other side of some bright hard line. They are within us. They are us. And fantasy is richer because of it.

I don’t know that I supported my thesis very well, but I got my thoughts on the page. I’ll save for another time a world-building question: what is a “true monster,” what does “elemental evil” look like? In other words, how can a writer or dungeon-master ethically source their monsters? More on this later.

In the meantime, if you’re interested in RPGs that ask what it means to be a monster, I recommend: