The Shape of Water – Elisa x Amphibian Creature – A mute woman with a mysterious past encounters a peculiar creature trapped in her workplace. Turns out, not only is he a live experiment, but also the key to her heart.
Ex Machina – Caleb x Eva – The final steps of this AI’s development process requires a human subject to run a Turing test over the course of a series of sessions. Seems like just another day at the… uh… hidden testing facility?
Avatar – Jake x Neytiri – A man travels to a foreign world, intent on getting some thrills and scouring for precious resources, but finds love with a native female instead– WAAAAIT, this is just Pocahontas, isn’t it?
Shrek – no really, they had babies–
Hellboy series – Liz x Red – A supernatural creature with hellish abilities and a human woman (with powers of her own) navigate the seedy, paranormal world in which they live in while also navigating their feelings for one another.
Romantic Visual Media
Her – Man x Operating System – A philosophical exploration of how human lives entwine with technology. How far is too far? How weird is too weird? Does it even matter?
Megamind – Megamind x Roxanne – A blue-skinned alien with a bulbous head grows up inside a prison and is raised by inmates. Is it any wonder his evil-genius antics aren’t appreciated by his wise-cracking, ethically-sound, average-citizen love interest?
Marvel Universe – Vision x Scarlet Witch – Oh yeah, they’ve been a thing for a while. After they fall in with the Avengers, they also fall in love. Aww, who knew the daughter of Magneto and the son (?) of Ultron could make for a cute, Good-Side couple? They even have kids! (Don’t ask me how that works)
The Bee Movie – According to all known laws of aviation, there is no way a bee should be able to fly–
Platonic or Familial Visual Media
A Monster in Paris – Frank “The Monster” / Main Leads & Town – A monster has been spotted stalking the streets of Paris, but will anyone stop to look past the frightening visage to see the gentle soul within? Also take a look at Lilo & Stitch.
The Cat Returns – Haru / The Baron – A girl thinks the life of a cat isn’t so bad, but what about being a cat’s bride??? Hi-jinks ensue as she tries to escape her fated wedlock and her newfound furry friends come to her rescue!
My Neighbor Totoro – Girls/ Forest Spirits – Another Ghibli movie! a sweet tale of two girls moving into town and encountering the supernatural around their rural home. A charming bond forms between the girls and the local forest spirits.
Robot and Frank – Titular Frank is an elderly man who is way past his prime and living alone, but when his son gets him a robot to help take care of him and the house, Frank thinks it might be time to team up with his new metal friend to get up to his old tricks – mainly, heists and robberies.
The Iron Giant – Hogarth/ Iron Giant – When a giant alien robot crashes on Earth, a human boy has to protect their odd (and possibly dangerous) friendship from his mom, the town, and the U.S. government.
Honorable Mentions
Warm Bodies – Julie x R – I only didn’t include this because, come on. A zombie is still pretty human. But you’ve got to admit, it’s a pretty fun spin on the classic zombie apocalypse setting when one half of your leading couple is one of the walking dead; see also: The Corpse Bride.
Beauty & The Beast – titular characters – Take your pick of which version. Only put this down here because the Beast usually turn into a human at the end. Same deal with Spirited Away.
Bicentennial Man – Similar to The Little Mermaid, titular character here slowly becomes more human on the outside to pursue romantic interests, and changes as a…. person (?) as the result.
This book was made for me, I s2g. It’s cover is the worst I’ve ever seen outside of an MS paint doodle, but the prose is phenomenal and its like the Marquis de Sade on crack. Honest-to-god-monster angel meets Giger fever dream meets zombie apocalypse meets death and the maiden. Its the darkest, goriest, most existential erotica I’ve read in ages.
Spoiler alert: the protag, Lan, shacks up with Azrael, literal Biblical Angel of Death. He’s this 10ft foot tall grey-skinned motherfucker walking around like a strung-out Pyramid Head, complete with claws and eyes so bright they basically burn and a voice that makes your ears bleed. He wears a ram helmet–or has ram horns???–and wears a golden mask because his face makes people freak the fuck out, like actual angels do.
In between fucking Lan with a cock the size a horse, he opines about existentialism and the nature of pain and how he wishes he had a mother, so its oedipal too. Did I mention there are zombies???
10/10 recommend and I’m only 20% through this book.
I mean its so oedipal he’s literally creating “children” out of corpses because he’s lonely af. He makes them call him Father. He’s a goddamn tsundere with image issues that just wants to be loved, but he also has no earthly inkling of how do this because he’s going around impaling people and flaying them alive and creating torture rooms that put the cenobites to shame. So far he’s landed on earth–cast out, maybe?–and he’s set up some sort of sadomasochistic garden of Eden and started a zombie apocalypse in the interim. The dead rise because he controls the dead, and they cannot die unless he reaps their souls, so no one is escaping this pain anytime soon.
The motherfucking protag entered this underworld via literal ferryman in a pseudo-coffin. She paid the ferryman–who is dead–by sucking him off. So I guess there’s necrophilia too???
Fuck. This is going to turn into a liveblog. Spoilers, fuk. sPOILERS-
THERE IS A SCAR TOUCH. I REPEAT, A FACIAL SCAR TOUCH STRAIGHT FROM THE MOST HEATHEN REYLO DREAMS-
Add incest to the list of taboos this fic ticks off. I’ve got to the part where the brother and sister fuck like rabbits while they complain bitterly about their “Father’s” concubines.
oh my god. oh my gOD
This is the most sinful shit I’ve ever read. It is me. I am the new vanilla. My own words are dempster’s white bread compared to this cornucopia of eldritch horror erotica. I have found God and dug too deep in my quest for kink. I am undone and made raw
Day 2 of Liveblog:
This is either gonna end in redemption or tragedy cuz this cenobite-cum-angel just wants to be loved and has it bad for Lan, and she doesn’t get it at all. gOD MY SHIPPER HEART
Fun quirky linguistic fact about this book: zombies are called eaters and concubines are called dollies and Azrael has had exactly 483 dollies and is trying to work his way to 484. There’s a new dolly in this city of the dead he’s set up–this post-apocalyptic garden of eden–and her name is Cassius. Considering the historical significance of the name Cassius I’m pretty sure she’s here to kill Azrael and is gonna try to kill Lan in the process, because Lan is loyal to him.
The book has been making a big deal about how he rises up the dead like vampires to keep them preserved forever, but refuses to do it with Lan and gets straight up triggered by the notion. $10 says Cassius gonna poke Lan with the sharp end of a needle and he’s gonna be forced to rise her up, or something similar, and it’s gonna wreck him.
Seriously though, this book cover is a fucking crime to grace a goddamn masterpiece like this. Look at it. Not even a mother could love it:
It’s a combination of the worst typography impulses known to man, the sort of graphic design my first year professors would fail me for, and that bargain-bin Rey from the TLJ porno parody. Who the hell signed off on this. My soul is cringing into oblivion and crab-walking backwards out of my body
Ah yes, great book! The author is the queen of monster romance/erotica (complete with good plot and characterization).
I’ve put two of her other works on my list of books with monsters as love interests. I only didn’t include this one because I liked the other two on the list even better and I wanted variety.
Monsters and Villains 