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TMH-Sir-Iron-Vomit The clown of STEEL from Ichnusa Since: Mar, 2024
The clown of STEEL
#1: May 24th 2024 at 11:21:29 AM

Just how recent is Blob Monster? I had troubles doing the researche, but from what I've understood, it's just as old as the original The Blob (1958) movie! It's still not enough to put it among The Newest Ones in the Book, but for a creature that's become one of the most common Fantasy monsters, together with mythological veterans like dragons, goblins or titans? It really is recent.

Technically, The Blob was inspired by "star slimes", a phenomenon where people allegedly find slimes after heavy rains or comets (which could be cyanobacteria, slime molds, or even bird vomit according to some). In particular, the particular incident that would be the inspiration behind The Blob happened 8 years earlier in 1950, and recordings of "star slime" go as far back as the 14th century. But The Blob was the first time when the slime was seen as a monster in its own right.

Edited by TMH-Sir-Iron-Vomit on May 24th 2024 at 8:21:49 PM

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unregisteredaccount Since: May, 2024
#2: May 24th 2024 at 7:37:02 PM

Honestly a lot of monster tropes kinda throw me off with how new they are despite seeming like obvious trends. Folklore and mythology have relatively little in the way of abnormal insects, as common as they are in speculative fiction now. It also just seems like an obvious thing to find uncanny and be freaked out by.

I've noticed a lot of polytheism tropes are rather new, maybe more than a lot of people realize. For one thing when a deity is themed it would often be more like a position than some intrinsic property of them. They also often weren't totally bound to their domains with their abilities. They usually weren't presented as like, able to see through things related to them or the like and usually had powers not really related to their domain. In general deity abilities even in non-polytheistic cosmologies are a barely-coherent clusterfuck.

The whole "god born of belief" thing is rather new I believe. Hell, deities often didn't really have a common origin and sometimes could be considered different types of beings. Gods were often aided by belief, worship, sacrifice, etc in some way IE prayer being involved with Ra and Apep fighting but they tended to not be presented as like, spawning from belief (that's probably be some form of atheism, really).

Edited by unregisteredaccount on May 24th 2024 at 9:08:22 AM

JethroQWalrustitty Since: Jan, 2001
#3: May 24th 2024 at 10:05:14 PM

I was surprised to find out that most of what we think of established Vampire lore is actually from Dracula or from other works from the era, Vampires in Eastern European lore were more much less intelligent or sinister, usually just dead family members who clung on to life.

Reymma RJ Savoy from Edinburgh Since: Feb, 2015 Relationship Status: Wanna dance with somebody
RJ Savoy
#4: May 25th 2024 at 3:59:04 AM

[up] Part of the problem is that folklore had many different monsters that drank blood, ate corpses or hungered for souls, and the same few names would be applied to them by travellers to make them intelligible to outsiders. Intelligent vampires living in castles were there in stories, and Bram Stoker drew on them, but they were not the norm.

What originated with Bram Stoker was the idea of vampirism being viral. Before, it was either an evil spirit with no human origin, or a human whose soul is taken by the Devil and the body cannot rest, or one afflicted by a mysterious curse. The idea of it spreading to victims is his. But what I found interesting is that the novel is still quite different from the modern conception in that he is more associated with wolves than with bats, and is as much a werewolf as a vampire.

I was amused to find the origin of the idea that a stake through the heart kills a vampire: people would dig up corpses and if they hadn't rotted (which can happen in certain soil conditions), would conclude that an evil spirit was dwelling in it, and would put a stake through the chest in the hopes that it would prevent it from leaving and torment the living. It had nothing to do with the body itself rising.

Edited by Reymma on May 25th 2024 at 11:59:26 AM

Stories don't tell us monsters exist; we knew that already. They show us that monsters can be trademarked and milked for years.
Mara999 International Man of Mystery from Grim Up North Since: Sep, 2020 Relationship Status: Crazy Cat Lady
International Man of Mystery
#5: May 25th 2024 at 4:12:31 AM

I believe that while the details with tropes keep changing over time, with different fads changing the aesthetics of stories, there are some general archetypes that keep re-occurring no matter when people tell the story. You could essentially re-tell Star Wars in a bronze age setting, almost exactly the same shot-for-shot, as long as you adapt the technology to what people would have been familiar with. There are some quite fantastical machines in ancient Greek literature, so a Super Weapon like the Death Star could be retold as something like Archimedes' Heat Ray. That's why I think that the most fundamental story-concepts could be truly ancient, with the details adapting to the times.

Seeing stories evolve over time is fascinating. Especially how people forget the original concept behind a story element, and then try to re-contextualize it to make more sense for the current audience. As an example, in the story of Kullervo there is a scene where the matron bakes stones into a loaf of bread, which causes the eponymous protagonist's knife to break, leading to violence. It is speculated that this detail is in the story due to ancient Karelians baking stones into bread, to keep them warm for longer, or that the Karelians were at least familiar with another culture that practiced this. Anyhow, centuries pass and the Karelians forget about the practice, which causes later gnerations to question the matron's actions. The new context for the stones in bread is that she is an abusive harpy and did it on purpose, which causes significant changes for the tone of the narrative..

TMH-Sir-Iron-Vomit The clown of STEEL from Ichnusa Since: Mar, 2024
The clown of STEEL
#6: May 25th 2024 at 5:29:36 AM

It's always great discussing how narrative changes on the time period and society.

But the original question I asked (is the Blob Monster trope no older than 1958?), still hasn't been answered. But I can see how it might be hard to find an answer.

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Mara999 International Man of Mystery from Grim Up North Since: Sep, 2020 Relationship Status: Crazy Cat Lady
International Man of Mystery
#7: May 25th 2024 at 6:34:40 AM

At the literature section there are stories listed from the 1920's and 30's, but I would be very surprised if there are no amorphous monsters already in Victorian sci-fi or even older stories.

unregisteredaccount Since: May, 2024
#8: May 25th 2024 at 8:34:23 PM

I think some of old misunderstandings of biology could be equated somewhat to a blob monster, like those corpses of creatures that would wash up on shores nobody could identify. Also stuff like a misunderstanding of a species of geese where people thought they grew like a sessile organism. But I can't really think of anything pre-1900 doing the "mobile, hostile liquid" in the same way as The Blob. Honestly I feel like we take for granted how modern a lot of understanding of biological things are, and by extension how new a lot of fictional concepts from it is.

Of course remember how much data we're lacking in regards to old fiction. There's a lot of time and space for things to get lost. I could really buy some "obvious" tropes turning up far earlier than originally expected.

Edited by unregisteredaccount on May 25th 2024 at 8:38:06 AM

Reymma RJ Savoy from Edinburgh Since: Feb, 2015 Relationship Status: Wanna dance with somebody
RJ Savoy
#9: May 26th 2024 at 5:33:48 AM

I think blob monsters are more suited to visual media. There is something unnerving about a being that is clearly alive and moving but has no limbs or face. But it doesn't really work when it's described in words. Folkloric monsters tend to be made of parts of animals that the audience would be familiar with.

Stories don't tell us monsters exist; we knew that already. They show us that monsters can be trademarked and milked for years.
TMH-Sir-Iron-Vomit The clown of STEEL from Ichnusa Since: Mar, 2024
The clown of STEEL
#10: May 26th 2024 at 5:57:09 AM

That's an interesting observation.

Maybe it's not so much that ancient people couldn't conceive the concept of a Blob Monster; rather, they could have been invented at one point, but since tradition was mostly oral or written, they were not as interesting as more normal monsters because they were harder to imagine. And it's only thanks to films and animation that Blob Monsters could show off their full potential.

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Mara999 International Man of Mystery from Grim Up North Since: Sep, 2020 Relationship Status: Crazy Cat Lady
International Man of Mystery
#11: May 26th 2024 at 6:42:19 AM

Another issue is that most real-life creatures that could be called a Blob Monster are microscopical, so people would not even have known about them before strong enough magnifying lenses being invented. The only thing I can think of that would be visible to the naked eye, that would be bacterial colonies, or other microscopic organisms forming a biofilm. Though these would probably better fit in with peoples' belief in rot and slimes, as biofilm isn't as clearly mobile.

TMH-Sir-Iron-Vomit The clown of STEEL from Ichnusa Since: Mar, 2024
The clown of STEEL
#12: May 26th 2024 at 9:36:07 AM

But we do have blobby organisms in real life that can be macroscopic in at least part of their lifr cycle: the slime molds.
In fact, one of the largest unicellular protists ever recorded, is the slime mold Brefeldia maxima, of which one individual blanketing a forest had a mass in the DOUBLE-DIGITS KILOS. I can't remember if it was 30, 40 or even 50 kilos, but it's still titanic for a single cell.
And it was discovered in Wales, so it wasn't like it came from some isolated inhabitated place (unless they meant "North Wales" as in "part of Australia named after Wales").

It's very possible that at least some people before the modern age where aware that slimes existed, it's just that they didn't become part of folklore for the reasons speculated above.

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Mara999 International Man of Mystery from Grim Up North Since: Sep, 2020 Relationship Status: Crazy Cat Lady
International Man of Mystery
#13: May 26th 2024 at 11:26:19 AM

Slime-molds are pretty much in the same category as bacterial colonies I mentioned, meaning that they would likely be considered akin to rot and decay. Decay in nature has often been seen as a sign of moral decay in the nearest communities, because unlike the Blob Monster, molds and such do not really move that visibly. They might pulsate and glisten, but not really move in a manner similar to the Blob. As a folklorist, I am pretty sure that slimes would be seen in most places the same way as fungi: As sinister portents of upcoming horrible death, as mushrooms grow on dead things, or then as signals of something supernatural being active nearby, like ectoplasm. That's why many fungi have colloquial names like "troll snot" or "troll-cat shit", due to looking really weird and glowing eerily.

TMH-Sir-Iron-Vomit The clown of STEEL from Ichnusa Since: Mar, 2024
The clown of STEEL
#14: May 26th 2024 at 2:42:29 PM

But that's not even the worst part. Because some of Blob Monster's Sub Tropes coomplicate the matter.

If we define the Slime Girl as we usually do (humanoid with the properties of a blob monster), then it really is one of The Newest Ones in the Book, as it might not even appear in works before the Turn Of The Millenium...

But there are some figures in folklor that almost predict the trope, potentially making it Older Than They Think:

  • Paracelsus' undines from the 16th century, which were water elementals;
  • The Little Mermaid in the original 18th century Hans Christian Andersen version, which died and turned into sea foam;
  • The above differs from the Greek Love Goddess Aphrodite, which in some accounts was born from sea foam... after Uranus was castrated by his son Kronus, and the penis was cast into the sea, making this one Older Than Feudalism.

None of those really act or look like modern Slime Girls, and don't share much in terms of narrative or symbolism...
But how often can you say that a subtrope is older than its own supertrope? It's like history itself got drunk!

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Mara999 International Man of Mystery from Grim Up North Since: Sep, 2020 Relationship Status: Crazy Cat Lady
International Man of Mystery
#15: May 26th 2024 at 9:51:07 PM

Likely the standards of what counts as a sub-trope or a super-trope would definitely not remain the same, but would keep shifting along with other developments. Personally, I would not consider any of the above to be examples of Slime Girl or anything resembling Blob Monster, but I see where you are coming from.

TMH-Sir-Iron-Vomit The clown of STEEL from Ichnusa Since: Mar, 2024
The clown of STEEL
#16: Jun 13th 2024 at 1:54:13 AM

Ok, I think this one is pretty important:

The portrayal of magic, as in, its applications.

For a big part of human history, magic was something more of a powerful utility, something wondrous but mostly passive.

Belief in magic used to be expressed in charms to defend against the evil eye and demons, healing, curses, and prophecies.
If we check any narrative work from the Bronze Age up to the early 20th century, magic is also represented by illusions, super serums, Geas, and transformations. Even in the most important piece of Fantasy literature, The Lord of the Rings, "magic" means "driving others mad" or "prevent the enviroment to age".

All of this is still present in Speculative Fiction, but another portrayal of magic has become more common: magic as a weapon; now people usually imagine magic missiles, fireballs and freeze rays when thinking of magic.

While I can't really prove this, I theorize that this change was brought by Dungeons & Dragons: since it had a fantasy setting, magic users were inevitable, but since it worked more like a 'wargame', it changed magic to act more offensively to let mages contribute in battles, and the rest is history.

However, there's technically some precedent for this idea in The Chronicles of Narnia, where Jadis literally brought a wand to the battle against Aslan's army and spammed the petrification spell on the field.

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Reymma RJ Savoy from Edinburgh Since: Feb, 2015 Relationship Status: Wanna dance with somebody
RJ Savoy
#17: Jun 13th 2024 at 5:12:59 AM

You have to remember that before the Renaissance, "magic" meant "not available or understood to the expected audience". Blacksmiths were attributed all kinds of supernatural powers because turning rocks into shaped blade was magic as far as most farmers were concerned. Heroes did superhuman feats all the time, which was usually attributed to being blessed or conceived by a god, but there was no metahuman versus Badass Normal distinction.

There seems to have been some level of "Is this level of the supernatural appropriate to the story?" The Táin Bó Cúailnge is noted to be relatively grounded among Irish myths, because although it features Cú Chulainn killing several hundred enemies in a single battle, the conflict is between kings and chieftains of real places and people, there is no divine intervention, and the superhuman feats are in the realm of amplified skill and strength than shapeshifting or changing the weather.

But looking at the Epic of Gilgamesh, our hero at one point calls upon his father who sends the winds of every quadrant to confine his opponent. That feels pretty similar to a D&D control spell. Tolkien was very consciously restricting what magic could do (and he avoided the word, always associating it with evil), so he shouldn't be taken as representative of the time.

I think the "flashiness" of magic again has a lot to do with visual media. As soon as films and comics could show lightning or fireballs coming from a mage's hands, they did so.

Stories don't tell us monsters exist; we knew that already. They show us that monsters can be trademarked and milked for years.
Mara999 International Man of Mystery from Grim Up North Since: Sep, 2020 Relationship Status: Crazy Cat Lady
International Man of Mystery
#18: Jun 13th 2024 at 9:51:29 AM

I would say that the introduction of firearms could be a very likely inspiration for flashy offensive magic, especially when a culture unfamiliar with this technology encounters it for the first time. While Tesla lived during the early 20th century and had his flashy shows with electricity at the time, it would seem very likely for alchemists and other sorcerers of past centuries to do similar shows for the sake of impressing their audiences. Nikola Tesla's wielding of lightning was a direct inspiration for H.P. Lovecraft to create Nyarlathotep, portraying his human avatar like a sinister sorcerer who makes people despair over how little they understand of the universe. What Tesla did was very similar to tricks used by Victorian and Edwardian occultists, as well as by folk-healers and shamen further in the past.

TMH-Sir-Iron-Vomit The clown of STEEL from Ichnusa Since: Mar, 2024
The clown of STEEL
#19: Jun 22nd 2024 at 4:06:24 AM

[up]That's actually similar to a realization I had this morning... in a dream.

I said earlier that magic in Lord of the Rings has more subdued, seen mostly in enchanted items and forests that do not age; however, J. R. R. Tolkien confirmed in his letters that magic and technology are intrisically linked (due to being tools to make life easier).
And, in that sense, we have flashy, destructive magic, that releases flames and thunder, in Lord of the Rings.
And it's gunpowder. Literally, just gunpowder.

Once again, it's hard to find prrof of this, but their use in Dungeons & Dragons, and subsequent prevalence in Fantasy fiction, might derive from Tolkien's portrayal of gunpowder, but changed from being a form of alchemy, to a more familiar interpretation of magic.

Aside from that, I did find, after some time, a precedent to offensive magic in some mythology in the world, and it's the astras in Hindu Mythology.
Astras are magic weapons associated mostly with deities, but from what I gathered can be launched from mortals as well if they are trained properly and with Divine Intervention. They often require a medium to act through (which can be anything from an arrow to a blade of grass), but especially powerful users can cast them as pure spells.

But it's the effects of astras that look the most modern: we have Elemental Powers, Dispel Magic, Highly Specific Counterplay to the elemental astras, summons and just plain nukes. They're almost indistinguishable from Role-Playing Game spells.

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