“I want an actual creature"
June 27, 2024 12:39 AM Subscribe
When I first told friends about the latest turn my reading had taken, I got a lot of blank stares at first but soon fell into a delightful text exchange with a friend who has a Ph.D. and who also read Morning Glory Milking Farm. She sent me a link to Hermione Granger–Draco Malfoy fanfic that she said had taught her a lot about BDSM. I started to realize that, though many of us may be out here walking around with the latest literary fiction from Riverhead or Pantheon in our tote bags, our phones runneth over with stories of men with tails and two dicks. from Falling for a Minotaur [The Cut; ungated] [Text is probably NSFW]
One of a swelling series in The Cut's Summer of Smut
One of a swelling series in The Cut's Summer of Smut
The people who are into monsterfucking that I know are an intersection of parents with kids, anti-AI, sexually active so I’m fairly certain this is not what leads to human extinction.
posted by dorothyisunderwood at 3:37 AM on June 27 [3 favorites]
posted by dorothyisunderwood at 3:37 AM on June 27 [3 favorites]
Jeesh. Omegaverse is a way to examine gender politics around sexual politics, and monsterfucking has been around for a long time in literature and art. Booktok has to make everything novel (heh) but this is about publishing trends, not readers and writers.
posted by dorothyisunderwood at 3:41 AM on June 27 [8 favorites]
posted by dorothyisunderwood at 3:41 AM on June 27 [8 favorites]
people are literally out here reading is all that appears via the archived link (at least on my screen). hmm... when comparing the currently, briefly available other version, that appears to have been a part of a brief video. the update seems like a serendipitous improvement
posted by HearHere at 4:38 AM on June 27 [1 favorite]
posted by HearHere at 4:38 AM on June 27 [1 favorite]
Demanding that everyone take consent seriously all the time is good for the culture, but not always good for everyone's fantasy life. Monsterfucking can fill a need for CNC fantasy that draws an obvious line to keep it in the realm of fantasy. There's no such thing as normal, but staying safe while allowing yourself to try out your kinks is important.
posted by rikschell at 5:08 AM on June 27 [1 favorite]
posted by rikschell at 5:08 AM on June 27 [1 favorite]
... until such time as humanity, like pandas, are incapable of being aroused with each other.
Younger women report that this is happening with young men raised on internet porn. I don't know if this is actually statistically significant, but I feel sorry for everyone involved.
I am ... not unfamiliar with this topic, as a reader and as a writer. I haven't read most of the mentioned books, although I did try the Ice Planet Barbarians series -- interesting SF premise with sex scenes that I bounced right off of; not for me. I'm glad they succeeded, though, because it's refreshing to see popular MMCs that aren't terrible to FMCs or anyone else, really.
I can't explain how it is for other readers, but I get drawn to stories like this because the characters have to meet in the middle. The MMC can't take his masculinity and manly charms for granted. The FMC can't expect to be put in the usual female role in her society, for good or for ill. They have to find out about each other in order to have a consensual relationship, or even just ... well, I won't go there.
In real life, people come burdened with preconceptions about how men and women should be. (This applies to both, even though men have more structural power.) Even when a partner's outward personality or their statements suggest that they reject those preconceptions, you never know. It could be months or years before you find out what they really think of you as a man or a woman, and if you've been knocked around a bit, it's hard to feel safe. So people are drawn to characters that actively accept partners for what they are.
posted by Countess Elena at 6:15 AM on June 27 [7 favorites]
Younger women report that this is happening with young men raised on internet porn. I don't know if this is actually statistically significant, but I feel sorry for everyone involved.
I am ... not unfamiliar with this topic, as a reader and as a writer. I haven't read most of the mentioned books, although I did try the Ice Planet Barbarians series -- interesting SF premise with sex scenes that I bounced right off of; not for me. I'm glad they succeeded, though, because it's refreshing to see popular MMCs that aren't terrible to FMCs or anyone else, really.
I can't explain how it is for other readers, but I get drawn to stories like this because the characters have to meet in the middle. The MMC can't take his masculinity and manly charms for granted. The FMC can't expect to be put in the usual female role in her society, for good or for ill. They have to find out about each other in order to have a consensual relationship, or even just ... well, I won't go there.
In real life, people come burdened with preconceptions about how men and women should be. (This applies to both, even though men have more structural power.) Even when a partner's outward personality or their statements suggest that they reject those preconceptions, you never know. It could be months or years before you find out what they really think of you as a man or a woman, and if you've been knocked around a bit, it's hard to feel safe. So people are drawn to characters that actively accept partners for what they are.
posted by Countess Elena at 6:15 AM on June 27 [7 favorites]
I'm not a regular reader of paranormal romance, but I am aware of it because authors regularly give away free eBooks to hook people on their series, and I love free books. I'm not sure that monsterfucking's that much of a separate thing. When you're starting out with guys who aren't really human, where do you draw the line? When you're going Vampire -> Werewolf -> Shifter -> Orc -> Minotaur, which is regular fantasy romance, and which is monster romance? I mean, yeah, a lot of those minotaurs are shirtless, but so are the vampires. (Most of the fantasy romance Orcs I've seen are rather well dressed, on the other hand. Make of that, what you will.)
Almost all of the recommendations for MGMF that I've seen have been because it's absolutely filthy. People looking for something more specific tend to get directed towards Run, Run Rabbit, by the same author, which features werewolves committed to doing doggystyle properly, if you know what I mean.
Anyway, fantasy romance contains multitudes. Someone made a list of all the different shifters out there, and it included cheese and a crystal. A guy with 2 dicks and horns is hardly the weirdest one out there.
Anyway, as BG3's proven, plenty of people choose the bear over the man.
posted by Spike Glee at 10:54 AM on June 27 [3 favorites]
Almost all of the recommendations for MGMF that I've seen have been because it's absolutely filthy. People looking for something more specific tend to get directed towards Run, Run Rabbit, by the same author, which features werewolves committed to doing doggystyle properly, if you know what I mean.
Anyway, fantasy romance contains multitudes. Someone made a list of all the different shifters out there, and it included cheese and a crystal. A guy with 2 dicks and horns is hardly the weirdest one out there.
Anyway, as BG3's proven, plenty of people choose the bear over the man.
posted by Spike Glee at 10:54 AM on June 27 [3 favorites]
There was a point at which self-publishing nonhuman/human-and-something-else erotica was something of a cottage industry on Amazon. My fellow goons had a thread going about doing exactly that as a sometimes-surprisingly-lucrative side hustle...
...and I was tempted. Honestly, very tempted. I am a writer of reasonable ability, after all. I have a suitably warped imagination. I am not averse to the world of fanfiction, and felt that I would be able to catch a few eyes by focusing on the why as much as the how and what, the emotions rather than just the in-out mechanics. Maybe that's not what many of these customers would want, but you don't know until you try, right? Some extra cash in my pocket would've been nice. And everyone should be able to put "interspecies erotica author" under "Occupation" on their tax form at least once in their lives.
A few things stopped me.
One was that, according to what I'd heard, changes in how Amazon handled self-publishing made it far more of a pain in the ass to attempt.
Two was that I know, I absolutely know from fanfic authorship that I would have to get every single detail correct in every sentence of every work, even in cases where what is correct is open to debate, or I would hear about it from angry readers. Are you prepared to spend your quiet evenings defending your choices as to at which angles human-wereowl copulation is physically possible? That is, as they say, a commitment to accept.
And three was, well, this is the Internet. Nothing stays hidden forever. The idea of sitting nervously at a desk, an authority figure on the other side judging whether I would be worthy of a job or a loan or something similarly important, and having them ask "...ARE you, in fact, the author of The Cloaca Roared at Midnight?" was...
...offputting?
posted by delfin at 2:12 PM on June 27 [2 favorites]
...and I was tempted. Honestly, very tempted. I am a writer of reasonable ability, after all. I have a suitably warped imagination. I am not averse to the world of fanfiction, and felt that I would be able to catch a few eyes by focusing on the why as much as the how and what, the emotions rather than just the in-out mechanics. Maybe that's not what many of these customers would want, but you don't know until you try, right? Some extra cash in my pocket would've been nice. And everyone should be able to put "interspecies erotica author" under "Occupation" on their tax form at least once in their lives.
A few things stopped me.
One was that, according to what I'd heard, changes in how Amazon handled self-publishing made it far more of a pain in the ass to attempt.
Two was that I know, I absolutely know from fanfic authorship that I would have to get every single detail correct in every sentence of every work, even in cases where what is correct is open to debate, or I would hear about it from angry readers. Are you prepared to spend your quiet evenings defending your choices as to at which angles human-wereowl copulation is physically possible? That is, as they say, a commitment to accept.
And three was, well, this is the Internet. Nothing stays hidden forever. The idea of sitting nervously at a desk, an authority figure on the other side judging whether I would be worthy of a job or a loan or something similarly important, and having them ask "...ARE you, in fact, the author of The Cloaca Roared at Midnight?" was...
...offputting?
posted by delfin at 2:12 PM on June 27 [2 favorites]
"yes, I am indeed the author of Cloaca, that thing paid my rent for an entire month"
I draw furry porn and I find this whole thing charming.
posted by egypturnash at 2:58 PM on June 27 [11 favorites]
I draw furry porn and I find this whole thing charming.
posted by egypturnash at 2:58 PM on June 27 [11 favorites]
Every two or three years another reporter discovers the cryptozoological erotica community and we get features like these.
A friend experimented with this type of writing, under a pseudonym, and made decent money with eBooks on Amazon. That was almost 7 years ago at this point.
posted by jordantwodelta at 3:31 PM on June 27 [2 favorites]
A friend experimented with this type of writing, under a pseudonym, and made decent money with eBooks on Amazon. That was almost 7 years ago at this point.
posted by jordantwodelta at 3:31 PM on June 27 [2 favorites]
Tingle was pounding this beat nearly a decade ago.
posted by Iris Gambol at 4:02 PM on June 27 [2 favorites]
posted by Iris Gambol at 4:02 PM on June 27 [2 favorites]
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Thinking of the two, that could be a strange and decadent way to bring about extinction: an AI floods culture with stuff like the Disney Robin Hood, TMNT, Totally Spies, etc., pipelining ever more and more people to ever more impractical philias, until such time as humanity, like pandas, are incapable of being aroused with each other. As smut apocalypse. Seems slightly more merciful than the Water Wars and Killbots apocalypse that we seem heading for, anyways.
posted by LeRoienJaune at 2:05 AM on June 27 [10 favorites]