Hello all. My newest project one of those fantasy stories in which monsters and monstrous races have no place in organised society. I want to portray this effectively, so I'm polling opinions on the matter: What's the most common reason for creatures such as these to be incompatible with society? What's your favorite reason? Thank you for your time!
Some ideas from "My Monsters Creatures Lore". Dragons, trolls, goblins, kobolds, wereX (wolfs, bears, etc), vampires, leeches, wrights, undead minions, and similar can't fit in a fantasy humanlike society because: 1) Table manners: they use to eat humans or souls to get around its daily endeavours. 2) Race driven behaviour: they use to live in dark messy caves full of bones and scary stuff. 3) Evil prone: the use to workship evil Gods of Death and Destruction and similar and some summon very sticky things. 4) Language: can't speak/understand Common Human language very well. 5) The sense of Life: some of them are already dead and don't intent to get better, they just crawl around Boooing people.
Essentially you're just transposing racism into non-human characters and races. Same reasons you would shun half-dragon, half-humans, orcs, fairies, serpent people, etc... they're the same reasons a racist shuns other human races. Skin colour, facial structure, language, culture and so on. For monsters specifically, they eat people.
Just be careful with making a racism allegory if there actually is a legitimate reason to fear that race. Like how in the Drizzt novels, we were constantly reminded it was wrong to judge Drizzt on his appearance, but the Forgotten Realms are a setting where if you meet a dark elf, there's a 90% chance they're about to kill or enslave you.
No place in society, because something in them does not let them conform to a more human appearance or behavior? Do they want to blend in? Does society know they exist? If they can mimic human appearance/behavior until something happens that forces their true self to appear that could be interesting. In the 50's people would "pass" as another race because of racism. Why not a monster passing as human?
I'm a Seahawks fan, all other teams should be exterminated. Wait, that won't work. Who would they play? Same thing.
I like this, not intergrated with Humans like in Bright but passing as human. There was an article on cracked the other day where "people of colour" in the USA would son turbans to pass as more exotic Indian. Pre 9-11. As for reasons, is the point of your story to make an allegory for prejudice or is this a side note. Usually someone is ramping up the fear of the Stranger for political ends. You could have a recent war, recriminations still alive. Or the fact that Dragons are behaving like 80m wasps and incinerating entire streets.
A race would have no place in organised society if they showed no inclination to be part of any organised structure. They would have an inherent individualistic attitude where they consider each-other as competitors rather than partners. They would essentially lead a hunter-gather type lifestyle where they cater only to their own needs rather than the needs of their communities. Anything more than this would require some organisation and mutual respect. This is 'greed-is-good' and 'screw-you' type thinking which sounds a lot like unbridled capitalism.
Probably because they're big predators and you can't communicate with them to make some sort of wary peace and exchange of labor. Though actually I would rather write from the angle of finding ways to tame them like the Flintstones. I could've used a firebreathing dragon today to melt the snow off my driveway.
With that kind of monsters it is best to make as much distance as you can and keep it. Getting protective distance might cost you a lot. Time, money, restrictions to your life, living in a way that does not make her notice you. Sometimes that keeps you alive even when you can't avoid that kind of predators. Maybe the same principle might help with imaginary monsters like dragons also.
