Monster Essays: Monster Media (Patreon)

I kind of just… went into a trance and wrote this one today. It was on my mind for a long time now, about how movies and games would need to change in a modern monstergirl world. Classic RPGs where you shoot hordes of orcs would be awkward to play at best, as suddenly you’re looking at a real Resident Evil 4 situation. People would try to make goblin folktales and elven legends into movies. People would try to sign minotaurs up to play football and not consider the horns. It’s still kind of wishy washy in the end, but there was some major backpedaling by a lot of media and hurried attempts to include/make money off of everyone they could. Some worked better than others.

Dylan Eywind

Interspecies Relations Masters Study

Monster Media; The Entertainment Industry in a Post-Awakening Society

**A. An extremely broad scope while covering many topics. I’m pleased to see you’ve learned a lot.**

The world was sparked with ideas and inspiration when they were exposed to other intelligent races. Cultural exchanges as well as sharing technology, medicine and magic opened the minds and eyes of many for new opportunities to better ourselves and our society. It was this togetherness that made each species stronger, leading to what Olaf Snowcapp to describe as “The closest to a utopian society has ever seen.”

What many people clung to was the changes this had on entertainment. All cultures had some version of it, from songs and plays to creation myths and bloodsports. Those that were more busy and work-centric cultures were fascinated by the idea while humans, already very indulgent on television and video games, reached a revolution of their own.

What some critics considered a stagnating medium ground to a temporary halt for a number of reasons. Countless movies were canceled while games and shows were halted to be more inclusive and appealing to other races. The attempted reboot of Packed Apartment (where a large family of humans live in a luxurious apartment building full of whacky neighbors) was completely scrapped after filming three episodes. It was replaced with a married human and elf with many adopted children from different species, including a goblin, orc and demon. The show was fairly well received in its time for being so inclusive, if considered somewhat cringe-worthy for its lack of understanding of their deeper cultures and implications of some of their race’s dialogue.

Another factor was the immediate change in technology available. The days of lighting stuntmen on fire or risking harm in explosive effects became a thing of the past as a few magic-users could do all that with no harm or risk to any given the proper space. There was a short-lived medium of “lusavision,” the craft of creating movies with nothing more than recorded illusion magic. While this had incredible potential, as no physical actors or restrictions were required, critics and online reviews panned most of them for coming across as subtly soulless and robbing cast and crews of jobs. There are some small-time producers of lusavision, but excessive use tends to be frowned upon in modern movies.

Classic movies also saw sudden revivals in profits, as several species appeared who had never seen series the likes of Rocky, Friday the 13th, or Disney princesses before since they were in other parts of the world (or even Hell itself). This also resulted in some awkward tensions or apologies given by studios when their depictions of a species were often less than accurate or flattering. Studios made efforts to downplay past video games about butchering goblins by the hundreds or movies depicting murderous demons, but a subculture remains that preserves their existence. These outside eyes caused not only the depiction of other species to be altered, but standards such as proper work hours and wages were altered now that they were under the watchful eyes and vocal listeners from these outside races.

“If there’s still Bugs Bunny war propaganda and racist Disney cartoons on Youtube,” orcish streamer Morick Vaydes explains. “Then we shouldn’t forget about our depictions. It was a time before they actually knew about us, and honestly, I could do a lot worse than a stereotype of chopping three dudes heads off at once with a battle ax. You don’t fuck with that.”

The use of stories as a whole became a fresh challenge and opportunity for creators. Fantasy became a difficult genre to tackle until writers became more familiar with the truth about races. Typecasting species became far less common, leading to more depictions of ogres or demons as heroes. Many attempted to document tales from other races, such as the successful stage and theatrical version of Mortis Moon, a tale of lesbian romance from gorgon storytellers. Others, such as the often-confusing play based on the goblin limerick Fuck Swamp, did not translate as well. The latter was also later revealed to be a matter of tax evasion and money laundering, so this came as little surprise in the end.

Some classic stories were reskinned retold in the nature of Packed Apartment. Coliseum City was released as a reimagining of The Warriors, where gangs of various species battle through a grim city with magic and motorcycles. Orcbeth was a combination of Macbeth and Fierce Deception, a human Shakespearean drama crossed with a vaguely similar tale of an assassinated orc chief.

The attempts at interspecies representation and political correctness appeared alongside the expected spike in pornography. Learning about other races and their differing anatomy led to people ultimately questioning the difference in their sex lives. With many species building new lives in a human-dominated world, those in need of some extra money or attention were quick to satisfy their needs as soon as they got their hands on a webcam. Sexual experimentation continued to be catalogued as these streams and pornographic videos discovered what species could comfortably mate and who could not, helping those interested in seeking relationships gain some frame of reference. It is currently estimated that 93% of people of any species with internet access has seen every major species nude or mating at least once in their lives.

Video games took a notable blow as xenophobic storylines left a bad taste in some players’ mouths. The meme of “Yea but can I fuck it?” quickly arose in the face of several big-name games. For example, the release of Invading Stars as an action-packed shooter where alien invaders come to invade the earth for no given reason, was looked at with far more open minds and eyes than usual. It was heavily mocked by people posting screenshots of the spikey, vaguely insectoid aliens (actively designed to not resemble any existing species of monster) with “Yea, but can I fuck it?” to indicate a lacking urge to simply shoot an unknown or misunderstood species. This has escalated to more ironic uses, such as people posting glitchy 3D models of NFL players with the same caption. Squad or co-op games became more popular as a result, with character customization reaching an all-time extreme to remain inclusive for numerous races. Arcades saw some revitalization as magically immersive games required more hardware than early PCs could handle, creating something akin to the earlier VR café phenomenon.

In a more direct issue, sports were quickly met with their own issues. The sight of watching several humans colliding on the football field somehow felt lacking when even larger orcs and cyclops were an everyday sight. Several leagues were engaged in controversy about including other races, but their inclusion eventually became seen as necessary since they had already incorporated magic as a safeguard to prevent and treat injuries in games. The XFL was the first league to officially sign on an inhuman player as Tucker Holston, an oni lineman for the Colorado Sphinxes. By the time his first game ended, he had injured five players, including one of his own teammates caught in the fray. This led to the codes of conduct in sports known as “Regulations For Physical Fairness,” separating most major sports into size and weight classes. They are stated as meant to “keep a halfling from playing basketball with a centaur and causing any more unfortunate incidents within the league.”

A few leagues still skirt around the matter of limited interspecies competition; the MMMA League is only separated by gender, tending to keep wins and losses as clear enough separations between fighters and mismatches. Pro wrestling maintains itself as a performance rather than a sport, which requires no such regulations. The same excuse is used for the more recently created Sexualympics, an adult parody on the standard Olympic games revolving around sexual competition while the original is fully separated by species. This resulted in some outcries with The Olympics as crossbreeds began to grow in population, though the event has lost much of its popularity to begin with.

The fact of the matter is along with many friends and new species to explore, we exchanged ideas and voices as much as social and mystical advances. Stories were relived and retold as the world realigned itself to share and accept. Missteps are maintained to look back at our paths to this peaceful future and bear in mind our flubs and mistakes, as well as to snicker at them as we browse our werewolf on imp pornography and centaur third-person shooters.