Mothman is cool to me.
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The mainstreaming of the concept ruined my interest in it. It went from goofy weirdo stuff and local folk lore about weird shit like the racoonigator to dozens of shitty horror movies based on white guy’s misconceptions of indigenous beliefs, or “i want to fuck the sqonk” smut which is only fun the first few times. And any actual cryptids, you know, like butterflies or birds that hand’t been seen in a while or that aren’t supposed to be in that region, no one seems interested in those.
Mothman’s still cool though.
My thought is, cryptids are a small town thing, a neighbhood legend thing, an i lived here my whole life and only seen it once thing.it’s arguing about whether the thing that ate your aunt’s dog 50 years ago was a bear or a coyote or a glowing mutant that crawled out of the old chemical plant. It can’t be for everyone, cryptids are kind of by definition local folk lore, tourist traps, in jokes, and the occaisional legitimate head scratcher. If you bring too much attention and too much commercialization the charm goes out of it. Monsters and loogaroo and mothmen and frog people are very fragile, they can’t survive too much handling without falling apart.
And the world has just gotten to small, too jaded, too hungry for a moment of novelty, for things like thata to hide in the woods and moors anymore.
And the world has just gotten to small, too jaded, too hungry for a moment of novelty, for things like thata to hide in the woods and moors anymore.
nah we just all have cameras in our pockets
For some reason seeing indigenous legends turned into internet cryptids by hwite people pisses me off way more than it probably should. If I never see another wendigo depicted as a big spooky zombie deer, or skinwalkers as scawy SCP monsters, it’ll be too soon
It really does. Like I don’t talk about one of the ones you mentioned because the Dine’ say you’re not supposed to talk about them, and they’re not my monsters, so I don’t talk about them. They don’t belong to me, Dine’ religious beliefs aren’t a threat to me like Christian or large scale religions with institutional power are, so I think it’s appropriate to respect their wishes on the matter and avoid whistling at night. Same with the Wendigo concept. It’s not at all what white people conceive it as and the cheap, crude distortions are pathetic and sad. The only white culture product I’ve seen that I think uses the Wendigo concept well is Ravenous, and there it’s used as a metaphor for the cowardice, greed, and brutality of white settler colonialism, with the white US army occupation troops literally devouring each other in an orgy of hatred, greed, and fear. And it’s not about indigenous people, but rather white people critiquing white culture and appropriating an Algonquian concept as a macguffin. It has two indigenous actors who take on stereotypical roles, with the indigenous man being the first to die and the indigenous woman mostly being there to provide exposition.
https://manorvellum.medium.com/decolonizing-dread-the-ravenous-nature-of-colonialism-91d327a362b3
https://atribecalledgeek.com/5-horror-movies-horrendous-indigenous-rep-2023/
I’d really like to learn more about indigenous representation in film as a whole. It’s a huge mess of grotesque racism with occasional gems, but I really don’t know much and I struggle to find discussions from indigenous people that are directed at white audiences. Which is totally understandable, but I wish I had more access to discourse and knowledge.
So the subject of using that particular proscribed term is interesting for me personally, as I’m not a part of the Dine’ culture - I respect people wanting others to refrain from using their cultural terms in a frivolous manner but I’d also been told that the english colloquial name is fine…? Its the internet though so it could easily be an excuse to keep using it. All that being said I should probably refrain from using it for basic decency reasons >.>
Yeah, I’ve just heard that you’re not supposed to talk about them or name them because it can draw their attention and cause problems. I don’t believe in them, but out of respect I’ll follow what I’ve been told is the custom as best I can. I could certainly be wrong, I often am.
The little guy that steals my socks while I dont watch
The Noid
My favorite is Colorado’s cryptid, the Slide-Rock Bolter, which is basically a big whale-like thing with claws on its tail that it uses to hold onto the top of a mountain. Then whenever a miner or lumberjack is walking down below in a valley, it will let go and start sliding down the mountain, building up speed until it catches the person in its mouth and uses the momentum of its slide to bring it up the mountain on the other side of the valley. Then it will grab onto that mountain and wait for its next victim to appear down below.
Here’s a sketch I found online
Mothman is just a little guy
the good liberal
whatever kind of gremlin messing with my electronics
why cant they be my frens ill exchange megabytes for the burning ashes of my enemies servers
The Sandal Man
The Jersey Devil
The Carolina Parakeet.
The Fresno Night checks notes Crawler. Granted, you wouldn’t guess it based on all my Mothman stuff. I’m the bug-guy in most circles, so people naturally gift me stuff based on the cute feller.
Myself
I have a mothman tattoo
