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Invent new monsters and/or revamp preexisting ones

Maybe, pokemons can be reworked into scary monstrosities. Just more wildness to them and interpret their powers a bit differently. Although, someone probably already tried this method.​
What about a monster, which fills up place of imaginary friend children often have? Like, it is not material, until it finds suitable imaginary friend and 'possess' it in a way. After this, the friend becomes more permanent, but still not fully real. It feeds on child emotions and grows more 'solid' over time. At first it only can sometimes interact with the child, and only seen by them even when the friend should have disappeared already. Then starts to interact with things close to the child, then almost becomes material and sometimes even visible for others, at least partly or when it does something bit. But in the end it possess a child and 'eat' them from inside, slowly changing their behaviour and turning into true physical monster. Cunning scary demon of sorts.​
 
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101001101 said:
You know, I don't see the witch/wizard/mage as horror monster much anymore and that's a shame.
I think magicians can be just horrific as vampires and werewolves, with just a little thought.
If you had to do a horror story where the monsters was a magician, how should it be done?
(Think archetypes, not stereotypes. Consider the essence of what makes mages scary. Riff on that for twists and turns.)
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"Oh, dear guest I know that we are in a desert, but I really need some frogs legs. Luckily for both of us I have a spell that turns people into frogs, isn't that good news!"
 
101001101 said:
You know, I don't see the witch/wizard/mage as horror monster much anymore and that's a shame.
I think magicians can be just horrific as vampires and werewolves, with just a little thought.
If you had to do a horror story where the monsters was a magician, how should it be done?
(Think archetypes, not stereotypes. Consider the essence of what makes mages scary. Riff on that for twists and turns.)
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
See, the trick is, wizard, witch, and magician all have considerably different vibes, even if most fantasy series don't agree which vibes each one should have. That said, for horror in particular:
Witches usually eat, imprison, enslave, and/or transform people. There's sometimes distasteful sex elements, but I try to avoid those works.
Wizards usually show up in the actiony pulp end of horror, and they tend to fill the "weaker less masculine man who has intimidating help" niche, from demons to dark knights to dragons to huge serpents to armies of beastly carnivorous things (sometimes zombies, but often something weirder).
There's also a lot of overlap between wizards and sorcerers, though 'sorcerer' is probably a much more common to call a villain because it's generally considered to sound more sinister. Sorcerers do seem more likely to shapeshift themselves into beasts or monsters, though, some of them very powerful. Something something 'weak guy who gets strong through unfair means'?
Magician horror is pretty inevitably based on stage magic, just because so much of stage magic is based on faking injury or death. There's probably some interestingly meta things you can do with that, and there are also things less played out than rabbit hat, throwing-knives-at-trussed-prisoner, and sawing women in half. (Card throwing, bullet catching, and mirror tricks have a niche, but I think there's also potential in "dip hand in 'boiling' oil or actually-molten lead", "walk across hot coals", and the rope trick.)
Finally, 'mage' is the sort of thing you call someone if magic is a standardized profession, and while it might be kinda funny to have a slasher named The Mage with exactly the same framing as a guy named The Welder, I'm not sure that's what you were going for.
 
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