The monster hunter role does resonate with me to a degree, appearing in media such as the Witcher, Supernatural, and Ghostbusters
Part of what has kept me from a monster hunter theme is it focuses on individual evil entities, something I’ve never been that interested in. In my writing since I was a kid, I’ve always gravitated toward making evil and villainy somewhat nebulous.
I think also there’s something a little too war-like about being a monster hunter. I don’t want James to be very war-like. Fugue is more of the warrior.
Part of my issue with monster hunting is it focuses so much on the negative.
<aside> 💡 Similar to the issue Tolkien depicted with Saruman in the Lord of the Rings, where Saruman specialized in studying the enemy, and ended up becoming one of them.
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I think part of the issue here is a monster hunter’s job is completed simply by killing the problem. While I’m leaning toward downplaying creativity, most problem solving and cleanup doesn’t simply involve deletion, but also addition.
The inclusion of addition and creativity offsets the focus so that it’s not exclusively negative, but also positive. The problem solver’s job is to transition the situation from positive to negative.
A monster hunter simply needs to kill the monster, and then hope things get better after that. I think writers of monster hunting literature sometimes realize part of the problem here, where they depict the aftermath of the monster slaying as tragic. The monster is gone, but the damage is already done, leaving little to salvage.
In a way, monster hunter’s are like the stance I implicitly criticized in the start of the first book:
Mr. Tralvorkemen was one of those beings who believed that all one had to do in life was to dispel all of the bad, and naturally all that would be left would be good. And since good is generally considered a rather good thing to possess, Mr. Tralvorkemen was determined to remove every shade of evil from the world.
Also, I don’t like the tension that without monsters, there’s no work for the monster hunter. Many jobs depend on bad things happening to good people, but they usually aren’t exclusively dependent on misfortune. A plumber will have less work if people’s pipes never leak, but there’s still cases where the plumber needs to install new plumbing.
However, while I’m trying to avoid James’ primary role being a monster hunter, there may still be room for some monster hunting. In other words, it doesn’t have to mean that he never needs to rid the world of a monster that is causing problems.
Maybe some jobs could start out more mysterious and as the problem is revealed, the job turns into a monster hunting job.
<aside> 💡 The following is an excerpt from the forest arc brainstorming which may be a little redundant on this page but is being kept here for historical reference (and may eventually be consolidated with the rest of this page’s content).
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That is one of the main issues I have with most of the narrative inspirations I have for a forest horror story arc. They focus on a single danger, and the plot usually all about ridding the world of that single danger. I find that underwhelming and detracting from the mystery of the general setting.
The job can be about removing a particular danger, but not all of them. If that is the case, it may not even be the greatest danger, just simply the most problematic. Such a danger would be one threatening the business of the client or some core stability. The client has a good thing going, and this particular danger could be jeopardizing it.