Here’s a Halloween thought for you: what Halloween/movie monster do you most closely identify with? Is it the tragic cursed werewolf, doomed to a life of mad animal viciousness whenever the moon is full? Are you a more modern rage monster, a Freddie or Jason slashing their way through the world? Or a blameless Frankenstein’s monster, hideous and hated? There are a thousand choices. Pick one now and explain your reasoning.
I was thinking of this yesterday while I was doing some drudgery in the lab. I had fed the spiders the other day, lots of big juicy mealworms. I raise mealworms at home, and I have a terrarium in the basement where I cultivate thousands of the little bugs. You throw in a big box of cornmeal every few months, and periodically toss in table scraps — the ends of carrots, a mushy tomato, a shriveled orange, and they thrive in there. I comb my fingers through the meal, which is steadily being converted to frass, and scoop up handfuls of wriggling larval beetles. I drop them one at a time in the adult spiders’ cages.
Here’s the catch: the spiders are adept at quickly killing and eating them, but the way they do it leaves behind a tube of cuticle filled with the soupy mix of digested guts and venom. It’s an amazing medium for bacteria — you would not believe the stench that a rotting mealworm can produce. They reek of death and decay, and I have to go through all the containers and clean them out.
The younger spiders need more delicate food, so I raise fruitflies in an incubator in the lab. Flies are also easy, but the bottles full of medium can get quite nasty, when they got old they get moldy and a bit slimy. So yesterday I was scrubbing out a month’s worth of fly bottles, filling up a sink with scum and floating bits of mold and insect parts, and thinking…hey, this is quite pleasant. Low stress, no demands, light work, I was quite enjoying myself. I could be quite content as a lab assistant, doing the dirty work behind the scenes as long as I didn’t have any more long-term demands on myself.
It’s obvious then. I’d want to be a lesser horror movie character, not a monster, not a mad scientist, I just want to be an Igor, a Fritz, a Karl, maybe occasionally aspiring to a Renfield.
Me and Dwight Frye, we’d be the bestest buddies.
Your turn. What’s your Halloween avatar?
Mad scientists for me.. Becoz love science and not neurotypical & do get carried away so seems most apt.
Or black cat. Because just love them and thhad afew that have owned me so yeah, maybe.
Used to have a pumpkin cosume when i was boy that Mum made for me back when yes, we actually did trickor treating even here in Oz which some folsk here do turn their noses up at as “too American and an import” (which yeah, it originated in Europe as a Celtic / Catholic tradition fusion but anyhow..) which was fun so.. top choices I guess?
As a misunderstood loner who lurks at the edge of civilisation with my cat, and occasionally ventures forth to teach impressionable children about ancient languages and mediaeval daemon-lore, I think I’m pretty obviously a Witch.
A coven of my own and the occasional naked midnight orgy on the heath wouldn’t go amiss, though.
PS. So I guess if I can only choose one I’d be a half black cat, half pumpkin monster that was created by a mad scientist!
The Glitch from V/H/S “Tuesday the 17th”. There’s something unstoppably terrifying without match about it.
The classical Mad Scientist; well meaning, building a Better Future (TM) at any cost and playing god (somebody has to).
Also, I am too lazy to dress up for Halloween and this way I can just be my normal self. (Insert manic laughter)
Ann Leckie’s books have never been filmed, but I would go for the weird Alien Presger, entities with such powers and such a different world-view that in order to communicate with humans they had to create hybrid beings with both human and Presger DNA.
The recent book “Translation State” follows one of those hybrids.
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OT I have a doublet copy of the latest book. PZ, do you want it?
My friend and I used to dress as Death and Taxes. He wore a black robe and carried a scythe and I wore a black suit and carried my briefcase.
The observer of madness, driven insane and driven to never let the world forget, scribbling furisously in the asylum stories to warn the world of what lies beyond the veil. So, pretty much Edgar Allan Poe.
Lovecraftian Gentleman Sorcerer/Cultist, e.g. Joseph Curwin from “The Case of Charles Dexter Ward.”
Sithrak….the god that unconditonally hates you and sentences you to eternal suffering. On second thought, that would be Satan or Lucifer or the devil anyway. Shrug. But the burnig skull with stakes in both empty eysockets ist sorta cool.
Apropos werewolfs…..If a werewolfs does not know the he/she ist actually make him/her an unawarewolf? I’ll see myself out.
I would be a Professor of Analytical Chemistry.
“Welcome, students, prepare to have your grade point averages lowered! BWAHAHAHAHAHAHA!”
I would go for the loyal lab assistant, easy to be as that was what I was for years.
Colonel Fitzwilliam from Pride and Prejudice
In related news,
Teri Garr has died. I suggest capping the holiday with a rewatching of Young Frankenstein.
I’m neurodivergent so probably Frankenstein’s monster. Blameless, but ‘hideous’ and hated. But deep inside I think I long to be the werewolf.
PZ, don’t you have soft spot for Ungoliant in the Silmarillion? Ultimate super-spider and beats up Morgoth. Now who in our world be Morgoth (Sauron’s boss for anyone who doesn’t know)?
I think any sidekick character that allows me to do a Peter Lorre impression like Joel Cairo in The Maltese Falcon – not a horror movie, I grant you.
As to me, while I’m in Tolkien mode I suppose Gollum is the best that I can do.
Doc Bill @11
I had a friend in university who was a biology major on a premed track. She told me she wanted to take Analytical Chem. She didn’t have to. I warned her. She didn’t listen. Saw her later that term and she was the living dead with dark eyes and torn out hair.
I had heard horror stories long before I warned her.
I think it was also in the Forensic Science core.
The Great Pumpkin. I do exist.
Well, I was going to go as a Republican but didn’t want to frighten the children.
Considering the amount of sleep I’ve been getting recently, currently I’m definitely a zombie.
When I still had more hair on my head, people compared me to cousin It from the Adams – but these days are long gone (so’s the hair).
Mad scientist would be a good fit, I mean, I ended up being a software developer, but that’s pretty similar. I create abhorrent artificial things and unleash them on the unsuspecting poulace.
“It compiles, it compiles! Mhuahahahaha!”
Werewolf mad scientist.
submoron@18: The character I’d like to be in Tolkien’s lore would be Tom Bombadil, I think. But he’s not really a Halloween chracter… on the other hand no one knows who or what he really is or why he does the things he does.
Re watched Lugosi’s Dracula recently and Dwight Frye was amazing. Absolutely the best thing in the film. Remarkable acting, pathos, depth, sorrow, guilt, insanity, torment. Stole the show. Handsome too!
Oh and i would be, hmmmm, the witch from You Won’t Be Alone – which BTW is an AMAZING movie along with Hagazussa, Kill List, The Wicker Man (NOT the Cage version), The Ritual, Lamb, A Field In England, and The Devil’s Bath for those of you who love the folk/horror genre – all creepy as fuck.
Well, this is a more appropriate place for this comment I made a day or two ago:
I asked one of our cohorts, “what are you going to be for halloween?”
Her reply, “I’m going as a thing of unspeakable horror and stupidity: a human being!”
Re #26 Your friend’s comment also illuminates one facet of monsters: their maleness. Witches come up as occasional asides, but specific monsters are inevitably male.
#11: It’s advising week here, and a student just left my office after recounting their horror at experiencing A-chem this term. That is a very familiar sentiment.
Mordred@24. Bombadill is is odd. Neither ainur nor child of Illuvatar. I think that he’s an emergent being based in the literary pre-history of Tolkien’s Arda. if you know the Silmarillion you’ll know that the shepherds of the trees aren’t explicitly in any particular category saving ‘free peoples’. No, I’m not a fanatical Tolkienist but simply stupid enough to seek consistency in this chaos.
Cthulhu.
No other possibility.
Honestly, I’m kinda disappointed in y’all for not beating me to the punch.
I’d be a balrog—that way, I wouldn’t even have to do anything to people. They’d tear each other to bits, arguing over whether or not I had wings!
rwiess, #27,
Actually there are a fair number of female-coded monsters in world mythology, particularly in Classical Greek and Roman mythology – gorgons, sirens, Scylla and Charybdis, harpies, Echidna, the Graiae, the Lamia and so forth.This was probably partly to ensure that the monstrous creatures could breed.
I suppose that I am the Alien; just going about my business as my nature and evolution made me; so misunderstood; not evil just a natural combination of predator and parasite.
submoron @29: The simplest solution to Bombadil’s origin is that he was an Ainur who decided he wanted no part of power struggles. The other Ainur (including Morgoth and Sauron) chose sides. Bombadil opted out. That would go for Goldberry as well.
The real-life ‘exorcist’ who investigates the unexplained
Being an exorcist is a very important responsibility, much like being a Bigfoot hunter.
My monster? Grendel. He had problems with humans too, but I’m a bit more polite.
Dennis Nedry from Jurassic Park, I guess. He’s the main villain of that movie and one of rare examples of Mad Software Developers TM. As for more traditional movie monsters, ghostly librarian.
I may be an undersized human on the outside, but inside I’m Godzilla.
Alas, doing the costume right would ignite everybody else’s costumes…
Collosus (The Forbin Project)
In order to save civilisation, given the power of Collosus, I could see myself becoming that dreadful, murderous, controlling tyrant.
Understand, Frodo, that I would use this ring through a desire to do good, but…..
I’d be a cenobite.
A recently retired friend of mine could attend any party as himself, and get voted the scariest one there: an absent-minded airplane mechanic.
Who Goes There?
Pierce R. Butler @38
BÖC had a song about you.
My “costume” this year was a shirt modelled after the one worn by a character in Horizon: Zero Dawn, a 3d printed focus, and a iron on sticker for Faro Automated Solutions. Good old Ted Faro… the narcissism, greed, hubris, and blind self delusion of Elon Musk, but with something vaguely like actually expertise in robotics and AI, who managed to a) make death machines, b) make those death machines so they can 1) fuel themselves, if cut off from command by using nanotech to convert organic matter into fuel, 2) mine for resources, 3) repair each other, 4) build replacements and reinforcements, c) ordered that the companies back doors be removed, so people couldn’t hack into them and subvert the new machines, then d) somehow screwed up (or someone subverted) the massively encrypted command codes to one of the swarms, which he had sold to another country – thus having it lose track of its command, need to refuel itself, no longer recognize its own allies, and when they tried to stop them by destroying them, simply defaulted to, “Something is trying to kill us, fight back, and make more machines, until we win.” Grey goo – in the form of what are basically Terminators.
As to what I would actually be… Probably something along the lines of Megamind, or the character from a book series with a similar bent – “Sure.. I am a bad guy, and people piss me off, but, why the F would I let other villains wreck my city and kill people I find useful, or I just don’t find annoying enough to want to kill myself? Nope, not going to happen. This is my freaking city!” Kind of wish this was a real thing, a certain freak is causing chaos in “my country”, and yeah… as a super villain I wouldn’t have this annoying conscience thing, or a fear of legal consequences, to tell me, “Yeah, you can’t really fix this, and your not really supposed to hope someone else gets fed up and does either, because that is wrong too, and fixing stuff that way in the real world doesn’t work out well.”
Best costume, ever:
In University, in Calgary, in the late 1970s, one of my classmates was an American from South Carolina.
He was an Army Brat and had spent his very young years on Army Bases in the Caribbean, and Germany, and Africa; so his accent was unique.
When I first knew him he had shoulder length, auburn hair and a large red beard.
One Hallowe’en, he got a conventional haircut, shaved his beard, and dressed as a Republican Delegate.
He was completely unrecognisable. Until he spoke.
“Boeing QA manager” beats that, hands down. Of course, for real-world horrors, the bloated orange thing trumps them all — no pun unintended.
Same, except I don’t share your woeful lack of ambition. If I’m gonna transform into a rage-beast it’s going to be the huge green one.
As for specific, individualized female monsters, mythology supplies plenty, from destructive goddess Kali to petrifying Medusa to Grendel’s mother to an assortment of child predators and other things (think Medea, or the grandma/wolf from Red Riding Hood, or the queen who tried to have Snow White killed, etc.); more contemporarily, the mad queen who orders a lot of beheadings in Lewis Carroll’s writings, or the Xenomorph Queen, or female supervillains like Proxima Midnight, Faora Ul, Mystique, and Bellatrix LeStrange, or of course Gozer.
Throw in evil AIs and at least two have gendered themselves female, Viki from I, Robot (who is totally a ripoff of Colossus/Guardian) and Terminator: Salvation’s iteration of Skynet. The T-X also qualifies, if not considered just an appendage of Skynet. (The Kree Supreme Intelligence presents as a woman in Captain Marvel, but is stated to assume the form of the person one most admires when interacting with one, so this may only reflect whom Captain Marvel admires rather than the AI’s own gender identity, if it even has one.)
Another one like that is Bolivar Trask. Maker of queer-coded-people-murdering Sentinels. And clearly meant to be a kind of evil counterpart to Tony Stark — note how the surnames are anagrams of one another.
Frankenstein’s Monster started out blameless. He then went on to kill A WHOLE BUNCH of innocent people. No, not in self-defense, in revenge of Victor Frankenstein. He was not blameless by the end.
Someone I used to know was invited to a costume party with the theme of “aliens”. He went as the Fermi Paradox by not showing up.
I just remembered my favorite female monster; Grendel’s Mother from Beowulf. She was a Mom who really cared about her Monster Boy. and was ready to get her revenge. She didn’t seem to have a name, was always referred tp as just
Grendel’s Mother, which probably made her extra mad.
I would be a potentially dangerous alien camouflaged as human. Like in the film Under The Skin.