Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-38887775-20200429004337

(https://1d4chan.org/wiki/Monster_Girl_Encyclopedia)

(https://1d4chan.org/wiki/Magical_realm)

personally this sums it up pretty well.

i coppied the text from the site

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The Monster Girl Encyclopedia is a NSFW encylopedia fleshing out a setting of monstergirls written and impressively illustrated by Japanese hentai creator Kenkou Cross. The artwork is great (if somewhat contentious in content). Some of the premises are as interesting as they are "enjoyable".

So what's the problem?

Well, while everyone more or less likes the entries themselves, the setting around them is pure skub, built on a mixture of fetishized rape and other such sketchiness, along with the sort of unintentional grimdark only a /d/M building a world entirely for his penis to the exclusion of all other cocks could create. That didn't stop it from getting an English-translated hardcover first volume printed thanks to Life With Monstergirls. Time will tell if that was a mistake or not.

The first encyclopedia is written from the perspective of a human, a nameless Wandering Scholar. The second one is written by Saphirette Spherica, a formerly human monster girl. Whether or not this change in author actually results in a change in editorial viewpoint is... debatable. Kenkou Cross has tried to claim that the first paints the monsters in a harsher light due to faulty information, and the second in a more favorable light thanks to being written by one, but considering the first volume has nary a good thing to say about the monsters' enemies, stops just shy of all-but urging the reader to go fuck a monster right now, and is actually revealed to be cursed by a succubus at the end, well... doesn't really hold water upon any kind of inspection. Not to mention the idea that the monstergirl would not be biased in her writing is inherently stupid.

But, we're getting ahead of ourselves...

Contents

 * 1 The Setting
 * 2 The Factions
 * 2.1 Monster Lord
 * 2.1.1 Sabbath
 * 2.1.2 Zipangu
 * 2.1.3 The Land of Mists
 * 2.2 Pandemonium
 * 2.3 The Gods
 * 2.3.1 The Order
 * 3 (Unintentional) Grimdarkness
 * 4 ...What? You're still here?
 * 5 So Why Is This Here?
 * 6 /tg/ Races
 * 7 Gallery

The Setting
A brief summary is pretty simple. A Succubus has become Monster Lord, god-like ruler of all monsters. Taking the throne for herself, the Succubus has enacted a plan to bring about her vision of peace upon the world: transforming all monsters into lusty monstergirls, known in universe as mamono, and setting them out to score themselves human husbands. Peace through mutually-ensured copulation, you might say. She even convinces the Hero who is sent to slay her to join her in her rebellion against the Chief God and become her husband.

Monster Lord
The aforementioned Big Chief Succubus, her human husband, their daughters, and pretty much every freaking mamono in the world. Want to bring about peace between humans and monsters by making human man/monstergirl relationships the norm of the world. To be fair, though, the vast majority of "normal" mamono don't really have a lot of ideological indoctrination so much as help her goals by trying to find someone to slip 'em the d - the Monster Lord basically leeches off of their "mamono mana", which increases when they fuck, to boost her own strength.

Thanks to blatant creator favoritism, the Monster Lord has so many ludicrously-overblown advantages piled up on her side it's honestly more incredible she hasn't instantly won the conflict seconds after starting it. And the fact that her ideal world would look like Brave New World as run by a particularly sick combination of Nurgle and Slaanesh is something of a turn-off for a lot of readers. Seriously, go read this page, mentally find and replace all the furry stuff with this-setting stuff, and see how accurate all the descriptions still are.

Part of her eventual endgame involves causing monsters to have male incubus children, in addition to their own female offspring. Again, most monsters have no interest in actively conquering human lands so complete assimilation of humans into the "new humanity consisting of incubi and monster girls" will, probably, take a while. It's been a few centuries now and things are still in a relative stalemate, though every once in a while something dramatic happens, especially since lately one of her daughters, Derulla, has taken it upon herself to probe the human kingdoms for weak links, and has already destroyed the nation of Lescatier by exploiting its internal flaws and transforming its various heroines into ravenous and evangelical monster girls by exploiting their neuroses.

Sabbath
A sub-faction under the Monster Lord's banner, led by baphomet mamono and primarily staffed by cults of witches, many of whom joined for "eternal youth" without reading the side effects too closely. This group is comprised entirely of loli mamono and is dedicated to spreading lolidom (in both senses of the word) over the world. Or, in other words, they want to convert women into loli mamono, convert non-loli mamono into loli form, and convert human men into "Big Brothers" (lolicons). They're the monster's primary source of R&D for various weird and sexy inventions. While each branch of the Sabbath is run by a baphomet, the organization as a whole is led by the strongest baphomet of all. This same baphomet also leads the Mamono Lord's army and holds considerable influence in the world of monsters. Surprisingly, she is noted to still be single, perhaps because baphomet normally only marry men who can beat them in battle, but more-probably so the lolicons in the audience can still hold onto hope of tappin' dat semi-jailbait ass.

Zipangu
The not!Japan of the setting, not technically loyal to the Monster Lord but still held up as the shining example of what she wants to achieve, with humans and monstergirls living together relatively peacefully, though often with monsters dominating humanity in the bargain. Would be Mary Sue if they had a bigger role in the world instead of being in the ass end of nowhere, but what do you expect when the creator is Japanese? Often a source of various "Eastern" versions of already-released mamono. Whether this is a bad thing really depends on your perspective, as well as the degree to which they successfully differentiate themselves from their predecessors.

Supposedly has clans of exorcists who fight monsters with about the same success as the Order, but are tolerated since some vicious monsters really do need clearing out.

The Land of Mists
Like Zipangu, only not!Chinese instead of not!Japanese.

Pandemonium
A faction operating out of a timeless demiplane. Allied to a high tier god called "the Fallen God", they're basically extremists on the Monster Lord's plan who seek to convert men and women to go to a dimension (Pandemonium) that consists essentially of one eternal, never-ending orgy. KC only made three profiles for this faction - the Dark Angel, Dark Valkyries and the Dark Priest - and often doesn't touch it for ages between profiles, probably because they tended to be the biggest fuel for the "anti-mamono interpretation" of the setting in the early days due to the rather limited lifestyle they subject their converts to. Hilariously, compared to the Monster Lord, they're practically vanilla: since none of them seem to go in for rape when "conversion" is much more fun. Moreover, since they have their own dimension, they aren't all that interested in altering the rest of the world, instead seeking converts to leave with them for Pandemonium.

Of course, the featured Fallen God-aligned maiden in Lescatier went and raped a couple little girl orphans she'd been caring for immediately after converting to its worship (with some prodding by Derulla), then pimped out all the other orphan children to random perverts in the street, so maybe not as vanilla as many would like...

The Gods
The original masters of the world, led by a Chief God, who was gravely injured by the Monster Lord and her husband while trying to kill them both to stop their plans. Currently split between those who support the Monster Lord's plan and those who support the Chief God in trying to slay the Monster Lord and return things to the original cycle. Mentioned goddesses in the first faction include Poseidon, Eros, Ares, and Dionysus. Hilariously, the English translations refer to every single god thus far as a goddess, and most of them are named after a deity that was originally male.

In all honesty, some fans find the Chief God (who isn't the original Chief God) far more sympathetic than the Monster Lord. Yes, she wants to bring back the old cycle, which is bad, but otherwise she doesn't really work as a villain and is written too sympathetically to be truly hateable. KC has admitted that she was a rookie, and she knows this and that she's over her head. She's still hurt from a thwarted attempt at smiting the current Monster Lord and her husband, and she has no idea what she's doing, but she's trying to do a good job and set things "right" as far as she understands it, because that's what's expected of her. She's so ineffectual as an antagonist, especially with how stacked things are in the Monster Lord's favor, that some fans want to comfort her rather than see her lose.

To try and counter this, KC has put out that it's officially fact that the Chief God will accept nothing less than the restoration of the old cycle, and doing so will result in countless grisly deaths as every former-mamono reverts to a man-eating monster and devours her spouse. Unfortunately, rather than instantly silence his critics, it has only made the setting look like a "you're fucked either way" sort of deal. (Pun semi-intended.)

The Order
The chief religion of the setting and a fairly standard weeaboo take on Medieval semi-Christianity. Dedicated to the Chief God first and foremost, their duty is to ensure humanity lives safe, moral lives. To this end, they train divinely-empowered Heroes to go out and fight monsters. It's kind of unclear as to whether they don't know that the new Monster Lord wants to end the cycle, if they even know there is a cycle, or if they know everything and are deliberately lying to the general populace so they still believe that all mamono want to kill and eat them. The Wandering Scholar is worried he'll be killed if they catch him, and the original Encyclopedia had a warning about people being punished for being caught with it, but, well... remember how it ends with a call to arms for everyone to go out and become or fuck a monster, then with a second reveal that it's actually a cursed book that's either turned you into a monster or sent you off to stick your dick in the nearest one?

A lot of fans like to portray them as essentially a fantasy take on the Imperium of Man, but, really, that particular interpretation doesn't hold much water. If nothing else they aren't racist, having been on excellent terms with a number of non-human races before current events left humankind alone. Shit, settings material outright states that monsters are always happy when the Order comes crusadin', because it means they're about to enjoy the fantasy equivalent of a massive speed dating party. Due to the very nature of their teachings, the Order's men are such good people that most of them can't bring themselves to actually hurt a mamono when they meet one. Consequently, mamono consider Order men damn fine husbando material, and are eager to capture and "convert" them when they show up.

There are Order soldiers and heroes who will kill monsters readily of course, but given monsters will still fight and even kill to defend themselves it's dangerous work. Fortunately (or unfortunately, depending on one's perspective), the goddess of war protects both side of the war, and getting killed in battle is rare, so lots of beaten knights just end up getting convinced "the hard way" after a fight.

(Unintentional) Grimdarkness
The original Chief God created humans, but was worried about overpopulation for reasons. So it created monsters to slaughter humans in sufficient numbers to cull them, before eventually creating the program of the Heroes and the Monster Lord: the Heroes get empowered when humans are too weak to disrupt the monsters' attack by killing their demigod leader, the Monster Lord, throwing monsterkind into disarray so that humanity has time to recover, and then eventually a new Monster Lord rises up and starts the same shit over again once humanity is waxing in strength. Said Chief God also forced the other gods to get in on this - Poseidon supports the new Monster Lord because she's sick of having to kill people with tidal waves, storms, and sea monster attacks.

Think the new Monster Lord is any better? Only if you don't mind the fact that she's bungling her job, and so mamono have swapped "kill and eat humans" for "kidnap and rape" humans. It would be a relatively tolerable subjugation were it not the fact her stated goal is to drive human women extinct so human men would have to marry monstergirls, and so she is actively seeking to convert (physically and mentally transform) all women into mamono.

Also, a lot of the time when KC writes profiles he focuses so goddamn much on the aspect of how the men that monsters catch react sexually and how women caught by monsters end up going "Oh noes, how embarrassing, everyone can see my sexual repression!" that he forgets to actually write the profile, causing several monsters to come across as significantly more horrible than he intended. Though this is still absolutely a rod this idiot has made for his own back, and he deserves your scorn rather than your pity for it. (Significant mentions include the matango, which as written was in everyone's "least favorite" category for years, thanks to, in a reference to a classic Japanese horror picture, seeming more like a plague of mindless fuckmushrooms than a fun monster, the mind flayer, where he got so wrapped up in masturbating over how the mind flayer can make a woman slutty that he forgot to clarify basic facts like a man's ability to go back and forth between squid-monster form and human form and that women don't actually turn into lobotomized corpses after being fed on, and the atlach-nacha, which, in addition to being a loli, and therefore heresy, also fails to clarify that the human being they turn into their spider body can turn back in favor of going on and on about random minutae. There are many other examples; these are merely the most infamous.)

Kenkou Cross has disagreed with observations on his setting's grimdarkness. According to him, the encyclopedia descriptions were exaggerating both the nymphomania of the monstergirls and the intentions of the Monster Lord - the unintended grimdarkness was in fact the product of shoddy translation work. As a result, he forced the most popular website supporting of his work to cease hosting translated versions of his material when a user for there haressed him personally, among other reasons.

He also supposedly likes to argue that the "blame" lies squarely on his Western fandom, since they don't get the overworked-Japanese-salaryman mindset (because apparently a love of pedophilia/body horror/mindrape is a side effect of stress now?) that apparently makes his setting such a paradise. So if he didn't want it to be grimdark, he shouldn't have written himself into a corner where grimdarkness was the only logical explanation for how everything was still working. Though, admittedly, his attitude wasn't helped by Western anti-fans sending him hate-mail and death threats.

Oh, a reminder by the way: if the Chief God wins, then all those sexy monstergirls? They immediately revert back to being hideous monsters, and the mamono mindset of "love humans" will be forced to return to "kill humans" and most monsters will not be able to resist it. So a Chief God victory means restarting the original cycle, and anyone who has a mamono lover, is going to wind up being killed and eaten by his wife. And this time it isn't hyperbole, that's plain and explicit fact, straight from KC, so that's one bit of grimdarkness he's actively promoting, to make the Monster Lord seem the better choice than the old status quo.

The paradox is perhaps best exemplified by the infamous "Fallen Maidens" series, from a side book about the human kingdom of Lescatier, and a selection of unhappy heroines who got turned into monsters by a lilim before all going after the boy they collectively like. KC's intent was to present a pallet of girls who were essentially incapable of finding happiness as humans... but, in the process, he made them deeply fucked-up people, and had them carry the scars of their fucked-up lives into their new existences as monsters. The tomboy soldier with a complex about her own womanhood thanks to her abusive mother that ran out on her family and caused her father to undergo a possibly-lethal breakdown becomes an obsessive pregnancy-fetishist who wants to force everyone to become like her and doesn't even think about her dad anymore. The half-elf with species-angst becomes a nearly-feral wolfgirl who leads "wild hunts" of forced transformation to feed her own sense of liberation-through-animalism. The two princesses, one a heroine put on an impossible pedestal and the other ignored and overlooked due to a weak constitution, find joy in almost literally screaming "fuck you got mine!" and abandoning all concern for the rest of humanity besides than her beau and in transforming into a massive tentacle-queen and turning the entire castle into her mind-controlled sex slaves, respectively. The list goes on. Rather than actually finding happiness and peace, or acknowledging the ways in which their problems were all in their heads, the Fallen Maidens continue to unhealthily project their issues onto the world rather than healing from them, and their trauma creates such extremist monstergirls that it makes them almost impossible to like or relate to.

This is probably why later stories, set in the same continuity, heavily tone down both the wild debauchery of post-lilim Lescatier and the severe mental issues of the post-conversion Maidens into something much more palatable.

"All The Tropes Wiki" (an uncensored fork of TvTropes that hosts all the PROMOTIONS the advertising companies threw a shitfit over) theorizes the grimdark is actually intentional after all, a sort of saccharine-flavored crapsack world where the glass is only half full (as opposed to Warhammer 40k, where the glass is half empty with holes drilled along the bottom). It's not a nice place to live, rape and kidnapping are so common on the frontiers almost everyone is desensitized to it, and roving packs of Amazons and Dark Elf slavers aren't sugarcoated at all... but there's plenty of people living decent lives and there's still plenty of ways things can get better.

Maybe.

...maybe not.

As an aside, many also criticize KC because his girls look like mundane cosplayers, but A) it's not necessarily exclusive to him, B) there's definitely plenty of more 'creative' monstergirl designs in his world too, and C) that's honestly like criticizing the Nazis for their fixation on leather and jackboots. It's valid, sure, but ultimately rings as a jaywalking charge amongst the arson-murder orgy that is everything else wrong with the setting.

Crossover fanfics with various other settings have always been popular. Take, for example, StaffSergeant's Bloodborne fic, The Good Hunter, which has inspired many others.

...What? You're still here?
Oh, so you wanna know about the monstergirls we keep insisting prop the whole thing up? Also, specific answers from Kenkou Cross's Q&A site, which briefly hint at the future of Monster Girl Encyclopedia world: New profiles have been on temporary hiatus for a while while he slaps together his first game. You can look it up and support him on Patreon if you want; but he updates sparingly, being older than the current internet system of content creator support. (That said, his Twitter is apparently pretty active.)
 * Here, look at their wiki.
 * Or go buy it, you /d/egenerate
 * The Order and the Chief God are, as anyone following the source material is unsurprised to learn, fated to lose, or at least never to win.
 * The plan to have mamono give birth to incubus children is going to succeed within one lifetime, so complete extinction is not on the table.
 * Even after completely defeating the Chief God, the Monster lord will not kill her.

So Why Is This Here?
You may be asking just why this page is here, and what possible relevance it has to /tg/. Well, there's a couple of reasons.

Firstly, /tg/ loves monstergirls, plain and simple - the average fa/tg/uy has grown up with plenty of media featuring settings where humans lived alongside other non-human sentient beings, and for all its many faults, the MGE is a widely recognized and well-detailed MG setting which both has consistently appealing artwork and does not shit it up with some of the more hardcore /d/ fetishes, like vore. Whilst the MGE's setting could definitely be better, it could very, very easily be a lot worse than it is. Deviantart is full of artists who add cannibalism, hard bondage and slavery being common to monster-rich fantasy settings, and Kenkou, though misguided, still has a vague semblance of 'decency' in form of the monster wargods preventing death on both sides, so the victor can fuck/love the defeated to their hearts' content.

Secondly, every so often, a thread pops up on /tg/ about adapting the setting in some way. Sexuality aside there are good idea among the smut for interesting takes on monsters, spirits and other D&D creatures. If it's not anons asking how they can stat up a given mamono race as either PCs or NPCs, it's a thread asking how you might rework the setting for use in running your own campaigns, or even a simple "your last character/party gets dumped into the MGE world; what happens?" idle chatter-thread. In fact, this happened so loften that there is now a pretty much permanent "Monster Girl Worldbuilding" thread that has been running for months - in the grand tradition of /tg/ getting shit done, it's even produced four sets of homebrew rules for running a game in the setting: Thirdly, 4chan's wanna-be rival 8chan has the board /monster/, for which this setting is basically their bible: all monstergirls that don't follow KC's rules of sexuality and morality are banned from the site, with the virtually dead board /chaos/ existing as a gathering for those few fans of monstergirls who aren't MGE-vanilla, monsterboys and monsterfutas. 
 * One using the WHFRP 2e system (still WIP): https://docs.google.com/document/d/1-khJ4fE5v2MyrumyZoauEJ4VIucMO-kP1MGHNVtaDkc/edit
 * One using the Genesys system: https://docs.google.com/document/d/166447sk679VFybDfLoNwilCfYmtHZbCt3626u6BWPG0/edit
 * One using the Dungeon World system: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1tnxUNkYKWeDtVtyPk8sYAiTsfwBwcNeC1DKg_0GTb8U/edit?usp=sharing
 * One original system: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1tMoWhMeJ4I6eonyao4GB-kGXzO4CGN4NpbyyXIvwyeo/edit#heading=h.er3da2rqdt3