Author Topic: Interspecies Dating?  (Read 4862 times)

Offline belial.1980

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Interspecies Dating?
« on: August 25, 2015, 12:00:47 PM »
My protag is a human sorcerer and his love interest is a demon. Most of the time the demon character maintains a human appearance, but her true form is a monstrosity which resembles the lovechild of a Preying Mantis and a dragon. The overall tone I'm shooting for is sort of John Hughes flick feel, mixed with demonology, black magic, and savage monster on monster battles. 

In any case, the two characters never get it on when she's in her true shape. Still, I'm worried that, because of her inhuman nature, there could be an underlying "ick" factor that might turn readers off. Any thoughts or suggestions on how I could make this work? Thanks in advance!
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Offline Quantus

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Re: Interspecies Dating?
« Reply #1 on: August 25, 2015, 02:22:44 PM »
My protag is a human sorcerer and his love interest is a demon. Most of the time the demon character maintains a human appearance, but her true form is a monstrosity which resembles the lovechild of a Preying Mantis and a dragon. The overall tone I'm shooting for is sort of John Hughes flick feel, mixed with demonology, black magic, and savage monster on monster battles. 

In any case, the two characters never get it on when she's in her true shape. Still, I'm worried that, because of her inhuman nature, there could be an underlying "ick" factor that might turn readers off. Any thoughts or suggestions on how I could make this work? Thanks in advance!

Hmm...General adviceto avoid the Ick?  Try to balance the physciality of Inhuman monstrocity with a relatably Human Personality and Emotional presence.  Human manorisms and expressions coming from inhuman forms can help with this.  Beyond that try to make any interspecies differences closer in tone and scale to a Cultural Difference rather than something fundamentally alien to the Human experience.  Or else make it 100% alien and just run with it, I guess. 

The more you can make you demon a relatable and symathetic Person rather than just a monster in human form, the less chance of giving the Ick factor.  Unless you stumble onto an entirely Human ick, so maybe avoid extreme age differences or too much Oedipal vibe or whatever other taboo's that you dont want to specifically make features of the narrative.
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Offline Farmerbob1

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Re: Interspecies Dating?
« Reply #2 on: August 25, 2015, 03:30:13 PM »
Is there any specific requirement that the demon's natural form has to be so squick?  If it were me writing it, I would have the demon's natural form be more human, but give them the ability to take on a combat form that is unnatural to them, and very inhuman.  The sheer effort you are going to have to put into making the relationship believable without creating a lead that nobody can identify with is going to be daunting, unless it's a central theme to your book (Don't judge a book by it's cover, beauty is more than skin deep, etc.)

As a middle ground, you could perhaps arrange it so that the sorcerer doesn't know what the real form of the demon is.  If you wanted to go even further, the demon might not know what her true form is.  It might even be that her primary form is slowly defined by exposure to others.  As the years go by in exposure to him, she might find it harder to change into the squick form.

There's a lot of ways around this, but you are going to have to be careful.  Beauty and the Beast worked, but the Beast was a lot more human than this demon is in her inhuman form.