How does this monster sounds like?

In my story, the main Monster of the Week are currently called The Deviation. They are the spirits from the alternate world that takes over people's body in order to manifest in physical form. The result tends to be horrifying Body Horror inflicted abomination, kind of like necromorphs from Dead Space.

They vary in physiology but mostly have deformed skins, an extra limb or two, and at least seemingly, very high aggression. They are also very agile and stronger than most normal human, and worst of all, borderline immortal.

The Hero's work is to hunt them down and gather the spirit and crystalize it. He mostly uses them for fuel for his magic.

In my current draft, the spirits are actually spirits from alternate dimension, a place taken over by Eldritch Abomination, who just wants to escape from their land to somewhere safer. However, due to sheer incompatiblity of their spirit and our world's body and no way of communication results them being extracted and used up for more hunting.

What do you think about this. Any thing I can improve? Probably there a lot.

Axe the Eldritch Abomination sidestory and replace it with something more gruesome one so it feels more fitting.

Uhm...how can you be more gruesome than Eldritch Abomination? I'm not that good in non-psychological horror.

Also, what could harden an organic creature's body?

Sorry for mass Bump-ing. Lack of attention combined with explosion of ideas can do that.

If done the right way, a human(ish) antagonist can be much more gruesome than an Eldritch Abomination when their actions are so inhuman, yet they still resemble humans as a reminder of how screwy members of our race can be. Examples of these kinds of characters would be a Humanoid Abomination, Uncanny Valley Girl, etc.

@Vorpy: No, Eldritch Abomination does NOT mean "a giant squid".

Completely agreed, but neither does it necessarily mean "gruesome". House Of Leaves is considerably less gruesome than Saw, for instance.

edited 4th Apr '11 11:42:03 AM by Noaqiyeum

For something to be an Eldritch Abomination, it just has to be incomprehensible to humans. Lovecraft had a few of these that spanned galaxies, yet were totally incomprehensible. It does involve thinking outside of your element.

As for Humanoid Abominations, I find those a hell of a lot scarier, because they are just so deep in the Uncanny Valley. They can totally look human, but be totally alien in thoughts and actions. Those require thinking outside of your element, too.

Well, if that's definition, then they are not Eldritch Abomination, then. They look really strange due to mutation, but not incomprehensible.

About Humanoid Abomination, the Big Bad claims that he's one, to screw with the protagonists' head. Real or not, is to up for Epileptic Trees. He does have some ridiculously wide knowledge about things that he shouldn't know and can pull of Uncanny Valley very well if he wants to.

The Mentor believes that he's an incarnation of Loki. :D

I don't like using 'incomprehensible' in the definition for anything, because comprehensibly is such a personal variable. The author should always understand their own characters, even those that are very inhuman in their thoughts and actions. But other characters and the audience may find them incomprehensible.

For example, I often like to write species-specific morality, such as a vampire whose ideas of the morality of killing humans mirror how human hunters view killing deer (don't kill babies or mothers, but no concern about whether the person you kill was good or bad). That viewpoint easily makes sense, but it's also quite inhuman to see humans that way.

Souns interesting.

One of the more recurring monsters looks something like this:

It's based on a painting by Francis Bacon whose works are some of my many, many inspirations. Some of the more unpleasant scenes are based on his works, like this one, which is one of my personal favorites:

By the way, my demographic is Shōnen. They wouldn't mind something like this, would they?

So, does anyone knows any other artists who draw stuffs like this, asides the obvious ones?

Also, there's nothing wrong with liking paintings like these and using them for inspiration for my works, is there?

edited 11th Apr '11 3:27:44 AM by dRoy

of course not Roy! Just means you can draw inspiration from other mediums. I think Anselm Kiefer might be someone you want to look into by the way. His subject matter is not Bacon's but they have the same...feeling, if that makes sense. Oh and the artist who uses human corpses. Dont know his name. Wears a fedora.

Uses human corpses. Wears fadora.

I'm sold.

roy, can't you just condense everything for this story into one topic and not spam up the page? this is at least the second one you made for this story. also, the random question topic might work too

It's 8th. I considered that, but it's not random enough.

no, its for any small questions really, not just a random one. this would fit PERFECTLY.

What is this for, exactly?

Heh, this is the last thread I made before the inception of Random Question Thread, so...yeah. :D