Beauty is constantly on the mind. With the oppression of beauty constantly waved in my face, I started to seek out the beastly. This is where monster erotica comes in.
For a while, monster erotica was more of an “if you know, you know” genre. It’s existed on the fringes of the romance novel ecosystem for decades, and you could even read romantic connection into early Hollywood monster films like King Kong and The Creature from the Black Lagoon.
It started bubbling up in the mainstream with the Guillermo Del Toro movie The Shape of Water winning the Academy Award for Best Picture. Though Del Toro has always found beauty in monsters, this was his most earnest depiction of that kind of love. In the BookTok world, Ruby Dixon’s Ice Planet Barbarians series took the platform by storm and millions of users started posting about their love of less-than-humanoid bodies.
Before an immediate “ew” of disgust, consider the joys of monster erotica. Imagine if the Beast never turned back into a foppish prince, then keep going.
‘Ice Planet Barbarians’ by Ruby Dixon.
The Growth of Monster Erotica
While Del Toro provides a high-brow version of monster love, true monster erotica and monster romance were always a small-but-mighty section of the romance shelves. Folktales that have a “Beauty and the Beast” theme have cropped up around the world in various cultures: Maria Tatar’s book brings together children’s stories where women marry snakes, warthogs, lizards, and more.
But the current trend of super-sexy monsters pushes the boundaries even further. Outside of vampires and werewolves, romantic protagonists can now be orcs, dragons, or aliens with non-human anatomy. Many monster romance and erotica novels also include classic tropes of enemies-to-lovers romance novels, but instead of a tall handsome prince who’s kind of mean, it’s a tall sexy dragon with abs. Like any high romance sub-genre, read what’s on the tin to ensure you align with the tropes.
One of the queens of fantasy romance, Katee Robert and her series A Deal with a Demon, was an excellent starting place for me with monsters. She was writing romantasy long before it had a catchy portmanteau. The first book, The Dragon’s Bride, follows a young maiden Briar Rose being purchased at a bride auction by a dragon named Sol. Even though she is in his service, Sol is attentive to Briar Rose’s pleasure and comfort. He also has two dicks. The rest of the Deal series follows these Beauty and the Beast type pairings with different monsters: kraken, gargoyle, succubus, and a classic demon. In a crucial detail, the current trend of monster erotica involves monsters who are attentive to their sex partners and focused on their pleasure.
‘The Dragon’s Bride’ by Katee Robert.
The next exciting trend that caught my attention involved aliens. Ice Planet Barbarians by Ruby Dixon was originally self-published in 2015, then picked up by Berkley Romance after the series gained a ton of traction on BookTok. In 2021, bookstores were placing special orders to keep up with demand. The male aliens in these books satisfy two important fantasies: being obsessed with their romantic partners, alongside a knobbed and ribbed for-her-pleasure dick.
The other fandom overlap that leads one inevitably to monster erotica is Dungeons & Dragons. The games themselves don’t have to be spicy in nature, but many of us are inspired by the creatures of DnD. Consider the orc: painted as ugly by Tolkien, and often on the wrong side of a fantasy war. Tusk Love by Thea Guanzon provides a necessary intervention for those of us who believe in the redeemability and sexiness of orcs. Guinevere, a merchant’s daughter in search of excitement, falls in love and gets consistently pleasured by Oskar, a stone-faced orc.
‘Tusk Love’ by Thea Guanzon.
Queer relationships often take center stage. Claimed by the Orc Prince by Lionel Hart, How to Get a Girlfriend (When You’re a Terrifying Monster) by Marie Cardino, and Legends and Lattes by Travis Baldtree are just a few of the excellent queer books embracing monster love and sex.
Our Future with Monsters
My favorite post-reading ritual for monster erotica is checking the Goodreads reviews. No matter how explicit the covers, how clear the title, or how spicy the description is, there will be a review that essentially boils down to: “this is gross because there is monster sex.”
In an article for GQ, Charlie Sosnick interviewed a variety of monster-fuckers: people who dream of cockroaches, inhuman Nosferatus, and even the Internet creepypasta monster Salad Fingers. They described the resonance they feel with the idea of monsters being marginalized, the excitement of a monstrous character showing kindness, and the undeniable fact that they find monsters sexy.
‘Legends and Lattes’ by Travis Baldree.
In the fantasy world of monster erotica, we have more freedom to embrace the strangeness and unbridled lust. It’s similar to the basic appeal of the enemies-to-lovers dynamic: the feeling of stepping outside the approved codes of engagement. Erotica about a non-humanoid creature allows for more creative erogenous exploration and helps redefine what we find attractive, both for writers and readers.
The excitement of an anatomically distinct creature is appealing. The mechanics of writing sex are different when focusing on an arthropod-alien or a kraken: the focus is more on animalistic sensation. By allowing ourselves to focus more heavily on the imaginary physical extremes of monsters, we can get more comfortable with expressing our desires openly.
Finding beauty in the monster is also a successful way to fight against compulsory perfection. That’s the joy of loving the monster and being loved as a monster: you are loved and desired for all your thorniest, most complex, societally-unapproved parts.
