“A time-and-motion engineer watching a bear near a berry patch would not know when to punch his clock. Does the bear start working when he walks into the berry patch, when he picks the berry, when he opens his jaws? If the engineer has half a brain he might say the bear makes no distinction between work and play. If the engineer has an imagination he might say that the bear experiences joy from the moment the berries turn deep red, and that none of the bear’s motions are work.”
Freddy Perlman
pls if you have a TikTok you have to follow this account
everything moralists like Bookchin and the like accomplish with ‘self-sacrifice’ and self-abnegation I accomplish with egoism and love, and far grander extend than they do.
A short list of extremely-specific lesser-known mythical monster tropes which I didn’t expect to be super widespread:
1. Ogres which, when slain, spawn huge amounts of mosquitoes out of their bodies.
2. Humanoid horrors that lurk at the tops of cliffs and kick passerbies down off of the ledge so that their mates and/or offspring can kill them.
3. Depraved ex-human cannibals for whom one of their feet has rotten away into a spike of bone which they then stab people with.
4. Creatures which resemble pitiful old men and beg people to carry them but their legs are actually tentacle-like “straps” which they use to kill or enslave their victims.
5. Hairy ogres with axe-heads sticking out of their chests.
6. Grotesque female humanoids with enormous, pendulous breasts, one of which they throw over their shoulder. (That last detail specifically shows up more times than you would think possible.)
7. Flying detachable heads. Organs hanging down frequent but optional.
8. The “animal that cannot lie down,” i.e. a monster without joints in its limbs that, you guessed it, cannot lie down and has to lean on things.
10. So. Many. Backwards. Feet. Usually as a means of making trackers think they went in the opposite direction.
11. Swallowers. I.e., monsters that swallow huge amounts of victims but keep them inside in their stomachs before spitting them out when slain. Most famously present in Sub-Saharan Africa, but basically everywhere.
12. Bisected humanoids. Creatures with only half a physical body, cut vertically.
13. Headless monsters with faces on their chests.
14. Natal revenants. The undead remains of women who die in childbirth, usually as some sort of ghostly Succubus.
15. Female creatures with hollow backs, the main giveaway of their supernatural nature.
16. Living meteor demons that spread disease.
17. Chicken-snake hybrids.
18. Rattite-snake hybrids.
19. Parrot-snake hybrids.
20. Monsters that fly around in the atmosphere, and if you look at them you die. (Related to number 16.)
21. In arid regions, RAINBOW TASTE YOU. (Because it signals the end of much-needed rain and is therefore seen in a negative light and personified as something malicious.
22. Owl demons! Tend to be witchy/hag-like.
23. Succubi whose only giveaway of their monstrousness is a single hooved foot.
24. People cursed into becoming weird donkey-things.
25. River blockers. Monsters who block off water supplies in order to cause droughts, and must be slain for that reason.
26. Monsters who inflict some kind of seemingly unsurvivable body horror on you, before resurrecting you long enough to go home at which point you promptly die for reals this time.
And many, many, more, but I’m tired right now. Might update later.
Update: Wow! I did not expect this blow up, or for this many people to be interested! This was very spur of the moment and off the top of my head, I assumed I would just be infodumping into the void. I’m going to write up examples for all of these, I’m just going to need a little bit of time to get my sources in order to make sure they I don’t misrepresent or misremember anything. How common a lot of these are varies, some tend to be primarily amongst neighboring cultures in specific regions, others tend to be downright global. And some have dozens of instances while others are more like that Doofenshmirtz meme. (I’d only have two nickels but I’m surprised it happened twice).
I think I found my new favorite rabbit hole. This voice actor does Shakespeare scenes in a southern accent and I need to see the whole damn play. Absolutely beautiful
One time i tried to explain this to someone at a party and i stopped in the middle of it because i realized how stupid i was sounding
Elden Ring (2022) From Software
Did you get my ask that said “egoist bottoms milk their apostate”?
yeah, i got it
i want out of this infernal machine, you want it well-oiled and running smoothly







