sciatrix

You know, it bothers me how almost all the female monsters are either ~*~sexy~*~ or mothers sometimes. At least, almost all the ones we see in fiction, especially media that are in any way visual. Female monsters are so often vampires or succubi or sirens, luring men in with their temptations and their beauty and, well, their consumability.
 
And if you don’t get that in your female monsters, you get female monsters who are all caught up in the monstrous mother archetypes: Echidna birthing all the familiar Greek monsters from her mating with Typhon, or Tiamat and her own chaotic brood, or Gaea making the Hekatonchires walk, or Grendel’s mother. Mothers of demons and mothers of hives and mothers of, you know, the real threat: dangerous not because of who and what they are, but what they can create.

No.

Make me a Gorgon, who lives alone with my immortal sisters and turns any man who sees me to stone with a glance; make me a Diana of the hunt, who tears anyone who sexualizes me to death by the hands of their own hounds with a thought; make me a Sekhmet, my leonine face spattered in blood as I rule over the wars of my river people. Make me scary in my aspects of being inhuman and untouchable.

Let me be the Fates or the Norns or the wise women who carelessly card the wool of your fate between my clever fingers. Let me be Baba Yaga, riding her chicken-footed house through the forests, who knows mysteries and visits places no other person might find; or a Sphinx, sitting in judgement and waiting to devour the foolish or the glib of tongue and slow of wit. Let me be Eris who sows chaos and fear as casually as a twisted, lovely smile, my face unremarkable as my flattering and barbed words drop from between my plain lips. Let me be a banshee, whose face is all but forgotten in the horrified attention that mortals pay to the sounds of my mouth. Let me be feared for my knowledge and my words.

Make of me a Medea, so terrible in my insulted fury that I will destroy everything you might have loved, if you are foolish enough to cross me. Make of me a Demeter, stalking the world in grief and rage, ripping the life and fertility from the world in my rage over my stolen daughter. Make of me a Maenad, blood dripping from my slack-wide jaws as I race with my sisters in ecstatic, terrible joy to hunt and rend and tear everything before me. Make me terrifying in my anger and my destruction.

Let me be a She-Hulk who is not beautiful, who does not stand in a leotard, whose breasts quake under the rippling power of my broad shoulders and deep muscle and widened, bonified face. Let me be Ammit, my crocodile jaws gaping over my crouched haunches as I judge the living and the dead and delight in swallowing the souls of the unworthy. Let me be the Crommyonian Sow, roaming the countryside and consuming anything I find in my path. Let me be a mermaid, sinuous spine slipping through the waters as I bare my needle-like teeth and devour the unwary. Let me be a fire-breathing chimera, an ungainly assortment of bodies and patchwork creatures, who should not move, let alone terrorize cities. Let me be ugly, a creature defined by the predatory power coiled within my body, and not by the daintiness and desires of men.

Let me be monstrous.