[ Image One: A Reddit post on r/litrpg by user whoshotthemouse that says "I'm finally launching!", with the cover of a book. The book title is "The Staff: A Different Kind of LITRPG" and the author's name is Wild Rabbit. The cover shows a shirtless man holding a caduceus staff, standing among ruins in front of a seemingly naked minotaur. Text below the cover of the book reads "EDIT: Thanks to everyone for the honest feedback.
Just to be clear - and here's a brand new sentence for you - no, this book does not contain gay minotaur sex. Not even a little bit.
I'm going back to the drawing board with my artist tomorrow, and we're going to make a cover that conveys more accurately the precise amount of hot minotaur sex in this novel, which again, is zero.
EDIT 2: Apparently I also owe an apology to the small (but vocal) contingent who really wanted this to be minotaur smut. Sorry to let you down."
Image Two: A screenshot of tags that read "#this is why you cant judge a book by its cover #because sometimes the author's vision is delusional"
Image Three: Screenshot of text that reads "Book overview
The true story (-ish) of what really happened to America's most infamous thief.
Mere minutes after completing his legendary robbery, the man known to history as "DB Cooper" finds himself inside a strange underground maze full of magic and monsters, armed only with his wits, a half-loaded .22 revolver, and $200,000 in unmarked, non-consecutive one hundred-dollar bills."
Two reblogs down, there are two screenshots from reddit.
In the first: the author writes in a thread entitled, "Apparently I Make Minotaur Erotica Now, AMA":
I'm a straight man in my mid-40s. I'm married and I have a young child. And I'm starting to realize I'm just not nearly as horny as I used to be. Like I've mellowed, but the internet hasn't.
If we want to get super-Freudian, I would say that staves and swords can also represent manhood. So the sword represents on approach to being a man, and the staff is another approach -- probably a healthier one -- and part of what's happening in the book is Cooper is forced to learn that other approach.
Or everything can just be dongs I guess.
This is followed by a post in the same r/litrpg subreddit, presumably from the same author, entitled, "Announcing the 2026 Beefhammer Prize for Exellence in Minotaur Erotica", which goes onto say:
Listen, I get it guys. You really, really want me to make this book minotaur erotica. Like I know some of you are just screwing with me, but others are 100% serious when they say they feel personally let down. And while I simply will not -- cannot -- ruin something that I worked really hard on, I do want to offer the very passionate (and disturbingly large) pool of minotaur afficionados I've met this weekend some sort of olive branch. So here's what I'm going to do: as of today, I am offering to read any piece of minotaur erotica anyone wants to send me between now and May 1, 2026, and the best one gets $100. We'll call it the Beefhammer Prize. No charge to... (screenshot's text cuts off here). End ID]
(I'm grateful to Tumblr user nevershootamockingbird for the image ID write-up prior to "Two reblogs down", but the version of this post that I wanted to reblog went on further, so I added image IDs for the next posts too.)
There are over 41k reblogs of this at my time of reblogging, and I cannot go through them ALL. But I saw the revised cover added by several users, so here it is:
[Image ID. A new cover for "The Staff" by Wild Rabbit, still showing a man in the foreground, seen from behind, holding an Asclepius staff. In contrast to the original image, he is now wearing a shirt. Confronting him is a now-clothed/armored minotaur, which is shown holding a hammer as a weapon, and is in the middle of roaring and sending a bolt of flame towards the man, whose staff counters it with blue energy. The setting is also more dynamic, and on fire. End ID]
Gotta say, this is a much better job at hinting that this is NOT minotaur erotica (although for monsterfuckers, I think they wouldn't be surprised if the story also contained that).
Editorially, on my part, I want to say: that man is MUCH more buff than my impression of DB Cooper from other sources. But hey, who am I to judge.
I also want to point to another reblog from @galsinspace, here, which is a good argument for regarding this entire thing as purposeful engagement bait on the part of the author (even though he directly claims otherwise).
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