Dragoonfliy Teeth

When you combine monster romance and dark romance in trad pub or indie pub or self pub 90% of the time it’s nothing I want to read! I am a freak! Write some good erotic monster horror romance! Fuck each other up and kiss romantically about it!

so if your mmcs can shapeshift into monsters and you discuss that their monsters are like… alters present that they can communicate with and accidentally turn into but there is no conflict there at all? Despite that this is an inhuman thing you never accidentally get shunted into being the Monster in an inappropriate situation? It’s just something you mention casually? You’re in a high stakes physical and emotional environment and it never cracks? You are not giving me what I want give me some threat!

This is why The Guest (2014) has brainwormed me I think. I can tell the writer+director duo were inspired by The Terminator because David doesn’t act right. Even with how charming and socially capable he is he occasionally acts freaky and weird and not right and says some insane bullshit while running social programming that clashes with his spoken words and it’s not so much the mask slipping (I’d argue there’s no mask) as it’s that particular set of social skills no longer in use/on default. He can override or alter them consciously (mostly to fuck with people, like threatening Garth at the party) or be honest and use the default social script delivery to drive it home and his honesty is a lil fucked up (giving Luke advice, at every point that he gives Luke insane advice he’s using the friend/surrogate big brother social script to lethal effect). (I’M ABOUT TO PROJECT. I’m social like that. I almost can’t consciously control my social powerhouse behaviors I just know the social script well and have the behavior baked in and the second I don’t need to use those skills it shuts off but both states are inherently me. I’ve felt the switch flip quite a few times at this point, it’s like a social autopilot. Staring at the wall recovering energy after expending it to socialize HASHTAG #RELATABLE)

Anyway there’s still clearly conflict between the desire (help family) the skillset (killing people) and the baked in protocols that both help enact that mission and also override everything when shit hits the fan (oops kill family).

And you’re telling me all THREE of your mmcs have monster alters, as in completely separate entities with their own wants and desires, that they physically shift into sometimes and there’s barely any conflict besides “oooh if I’m mad I may shift! It could happen!”