Unlike ocean mermaids who have plenty of room to grow their hair, freshwater mermaids prefer shorter styles similar to humans; because of their close proximity to the surface, “freshies” may also be seen wearing hats to block out sunlight and peek out from the water like alligators.
Additionally, due to their small size in even smaller environments like lakes and rivers, freshwater mermaids prefer human speech for communication over the whale-like humming used by their ocean relatives to speak.
Abyssal mermaid, humming: [Hello cousin…!] River mermaid, tipping their seashell cowboy hat: HOWDY
All credit to that visionary of an anon who is now officially responsible for some serious squealing on my part
Werewolves thinking they are dramatically smaller than they really are, walking over people’s legs and furniture
Werewolves thinking they can fit in their vampire friends laps but being way too big and absolutely smothering them (it’s a good thing they don’t actually have to breathe)
Werewolves giving friendly head-butts!
Werewolves lounging across the back of the entire sofa!
Werewolves trying to sleep rolled up at the foot of the bed and Not Fitting
Werewolves sleeping on top of their vampire friend’s coffin and effectively trapping them inside
Werewolves doing the swatting-paw thing cats do when they play!
There is a specific and terrifying difference between “never were” monsters and “are not anymore” monsters
“The thing that was not a deer” implies a creature which mimics a deer but imperfectly and the details which are wrong are what makes it terrifying
“The thing that was not a deer anymore” on the other hand implies a thing that USED to be a deer before it was somehow mutated, possessed, parasitically controlled or reanimated improperly and what makes THAT terrifying is the details that are still right and recognizable poking out of all the wrong and horrible malformations.
hey I totally fucked up and forgot the 3rd type, which is “Is Not Anymore And Maybe Never Was” monsters
“The thing which was no longer a deer and maybe never was” implies a creature that, at first glance, completely appears to be a deer, but over time degrades very slowly until you realize (probably too late) that it is not a deer anymore, and had you seen it in this state first, you wouldn’t have recognized it as a deer at all, and there’s a decent chance that it was never actually a deer to begin with but only a very good mimic, and what makes this one scary is the slow change from everything being right to everything being wrong, happening slowly enough that you don’t even notice it until its too late, as well as the fact that something now so clearly not a deer could have fooled you to begin with.
“There is a certain irony here, because many of the first werewolves to be outed in society from the 16th through the 18th centuries were actually women. Just as our American ancestors had their Salem Witch Trials, Europe had its Werewolf Trials, and a large number of the so-called “werewolves” tortured and burned at the stake were female. […]
In the 17th-century werewolf trials of Estonia, women were about 150 percent more likely to be accused of lycanthropy; however, they were about 100 percent less likely to be remembered for it.”
“Here’s also a pronounced lack of female werewolves in popular culture. Their near absence in literature and film is explained away by various fancies: they’re sterile, an aberration, or—most galling of all—they don’t even exist.Their omission from popular culture does one thing very effectively: It prevents us, and men especially, from being confronted by hairy, ugly, uncontrollable women. Shapeshifting women in fantasy stories tend to transform into animals that we consider feminine, such as cats or birds, which are pretty and dainty, and occasionally slick and wicked serpents. But because the werewolf represents traits that are accepted as masculine—strength, large size, violence, and hirsutism—we tend to think of the werewolf as being naturally male. The female werewolf is disturbing because she entirely breaks the rules of femininity.”
— Julia Oldham, Why Are There No Great Female Werewolves?
artherra 