Has anyone else noticed that monster ecology is pretty darn weak?
I noticed the opposite, akshully. Will get to that in a bit.
You've probably noticed that most monsters are apex predators - they have their pick of prey, but nothing seems to ever prey on them.
So why not? Why don't vampires have parasites? What predators do werewolves compete with? Are there any ambush predators for ghosts? What about eldritch blasphemous glibberers? Is anything out there fast enough to run down a shoggoth? What gets Dagon looking over his shoulder?
Vamps have crazed humans after them. I realize that doesn't count as a predatory thing, but it counts as giving them competition of sorts. Werewolves compete with werecats... I mean,
duh.
Ghosts aren't really predators I don't think, they just scare the bejesus out of people. Poltergeists are different, though, but I'm not familiar on the methods to dispatch them. Eldritch what huh? I'll get back to you on the Shoggoths. And dragons are probably afraid of other dragons. (I assume you meant dragon, not "dagon"?)
Suppose that global warming produces high levels of climate change. Rising sea-levels, droughts, floods and major storms; a gradual increase in average temperature. Ice-caps melt, glaciers disappear...
Which monsters win? Which lose? What happens? And how does this change affect humanity?
Hypnotoad wins. (hee... sorry had to say it.)
The monster with the best agenda wins, which could actually make a really good story. Battle Royale of all the baddies. But, lemme play on global warming here for a sec.
Teh ice caps, they melted. This means Yetis are out of a habitat, as well as the abominable (sp?) snow man. Poor hairy bastard. And ice dragons are going to have issues. But, this is good news for all the water dwelling creatures, as there will be more water for them to move around in, and a possible surge of food sources if the temperature of the water raises enough to support more life in more areas. Water based storms and floods only serve to expand their territory, or at least assist their movement into new areas.
In places of extreme drought you're going to see more sand monsters and those big worm things from Dune (sorry, don't shoot me, I forgot what they were called), maybe even some graboids, as well as a lot of scavengers coming pick at the remains of dead and dying animals/people, which also means a surge in zombie population. This is good news for the werethings, some dragons, and other creatures that might wish to scavenge.
The vampires would have some issues if the human population was affected too much. They would either have to start feeding on other things or be a lot more active in hunting us down, because with the increased activity from other monsters the humans are going to be more frightened than ever, and will be harder to catch alone. Not to mention if things get extreme there's going to be a limited supply of us and more potential for inter-monster-species fights to see who gets to eat the puny little humans.
The humans... o boi. The monsters always seem to be more organized than we are, and we're pretty easy to panic, so I don't see us having a very fun time through all of this. It would take a while but I think our population would dwindle some and the monsters might even have to take some drastic measures to keep us alive so that they still have a source of food and entertainment.
But back to ecology... Some monsters have suffered a lot through the 20th century, I reckon. Only a few have come out ahead.
Werewolves for instance, must be finding it harder and harder to live on the fringes of human habitation (because there are so few fringes left).
Yes, but at the same time, it's very in right now to be "different." I imagine a half form werewolf would get no more attention than your local goth crowd. I mean, there's people that have had surgeries / tattoos / implants to make themselves look like various animals or devils or whatever. I'd expect this would be prime time for them to be like yeah I'm a werewolf, do you have a problem with that? They'd have problems in full wolf form for sure, but then, people would probably just mistake them for stray dogs, especially around a city or in suburbia.
The main issue I see for the werewolves is all the damned competition. Werecats, Werebears, Weresnakes, Werehyenas, Werebunnies, frikkin' Werepokemon too I'm sure. The werewolves are getting lost in the crowd!
Mummies... Heck, when was the last time a mummy attacked someone? They're all locked away safely in museums; we just don't find new evil ones much these days (but I bet that global warming would annoy them - mould, fungus, bandage rot...)
Yeah, the mold and fungus would give 'em hell. Besides I think we destroyed all the evil mummies. Amirite?
Vampires... you'd have to figure that they're thriving in a globalised world. Lots of travel opportunities, anonymous urban environments, gated communities. Vamps are probably very happy about how human civilisation's developing -- except maybe the holes in the ozone layer.
Oh yes, the vampires have never been better. (I actually think that's why they're so popular right now... they fit right in with modern society.) Slap a little sunscreen on 'em or put 'em in protective clothing and they can even go out in the day now.
Frankenstein monsters... we're too politically correct these days to squeal at the sight of stitched flesh, and we're too cosmopolitan to consider neck-bolts as anything but a body-piercing idiosyncracy. We could have a Franky monster wash our windscreen at traffic lights and the kids wouldn't even scream. Also, electricity is abundant. You have to figure that Franky monsters are ahead in a modern world.
Yeah, they're in with the vampires having an easy time of it. Kind of sucks for them that they aren't as scary anymore though, but I guess it means they'd have an easier time of deciding to go on a psychotic killing spree since it would take the authorities a while to figure out they aren't exactly human (if that happened at all).
Brain-munching zombies... As for Franky-monsters, this world is a good place to lumber around in. Homeless people are scarier than zombies these days - cos they're a shade faster. But... are they worried about the effects of mobile phones on their food source? I would be!
Now, now... the zombies have been evolving, too. They run like frikkin' Olympic sprinters now, didn't you know? And they expanded their diet to include other organs. Well balanced diets make a healthy zombie.
Ghosts... There ought to be lots of these, but everything's so well-lit and there are closed circuit cameras everywhere... I wonder if they aren't suffering some sort of adjustment anxiety.
Yeah but ghosts are the shit. They like playing around with us stupid humans and our equipment. Lookit, I'm right in front of your face but I can't appear on camera so you have no proof! HA! Take that!
Although I guess to your point they might be having a hard time scaring people these days. We're looking so hard for UFOs that the ghosts are probably being ignored, and since, like above, we can't catch them on camera and it's so light these days, they're probably being dismissed as figments of our imagination. So they're probably really irritable, but that won't make them disappear.
Unless there's a poltergeist somewhere... but I imagine they're doing pretty good these days having their pranks blamed on others.
Giant Ants, Bees, Spiders... I'm worried that they're an endangered species. So many pesticides, and who isn't copping radiation these days? If they start menacing us, I think that the likelihood is that we'll just up the hormones in our chicken and outgrow them.
Yeah, I'm pretty sure they're extinct.
Invisible people... I'm not sure if there are more or less than in the 1930s.... On the upside, everything's electronic nowadays so they can probably get around fairly easily. On the downside, it's all so crowded... I'm worried that a lot are dying unbeknown to us from being shoved off subway platforms in rush hour.
More of them since the 30's, I'd say, but yeah they're probably having a shitty time of it. Then again, it's easy to get lost in a crowd, and people don't pay attention as much these days.
Body snatchers... These guys have got to be an over-all winner so far. Who even cares what their neighbours look like these days?
Especially with all the foreclosures and short sales...
Malign sentient vehicles... I'm sure that they've been flourishing to date, but with the rising price of fuel they have to be worried. Everyone's downsizing and growling driverless V8 monstrosities are going to become very conspicuous soon -- even in LA. (I've heard that they've been trying to breed a Malignant Prius, but the darn thing just breaks into power substations and sits there basking like a lizard)
Yeah, they'll need some body work quicklike before they start sticking out like sore thumbs. I hear their cousins in the supercar category are having a fun time of it, though.
There's a lot of creatures I don't see on this list. Tsk, tsk, tsk.
Like changelings. It is *so* easy to pull off identity theft now, these guys have to be flourishing.
And mutants. They fit in pretty well with the goth crowd.
Demons! How could you forget about demons? They're incredibly popular in various social circles. I hear one of them is Paris's BFF, too. (Which reminds me... the incubi and succubi are probably makin' bank.)
There's more but I can't think of them off the top of my head right now. I'll get back to you...
