I was chatting with a friend and we’re both curious about the wider world of opinions here on this:
If you’re a fan of fae/werewolves/vampires/any other supernatural types of ROs, what do you love most about them? When you go into that romance, what are you hoping to experience? Any specific tropes you’re hoping it will hit?
I just want to romance a dwarf. Or a gnome, a goblin, a hobbit, any kind of short fantasy race. I’ve played many RPGs, most of them with some kind of romance, but there’s just no love for little folk anywhere.
If there is a supernatural romance available in a game I always hope for an experience that doesn’t feel like they’re human. I often feel you can swap a human character and a supernatural one and there won’t be a lot different. If you’re writing a non human as a romance option why not lean in to it?
I’m not sure if there are tropes I like over others, it often comes down to execution of the romance route, not necessarily what that route is about.
I’m more of a subtle fantasy fan, so some things just don’t appeal to me because they are often presented as the most over the top versions of themselves.
For instance, vampires. I like vampires, but I don’t read vampire romances (in traditional novels) because 9/10 times, it’s “mate” this and “seduction” that and “Xoltaire has spent 10000 years waiting for his soul mate Karleigh to be reborn.” There’s nothing wrong with that, it’s just not as appealing to me because I find when supernatural/fantasy/folk things get mixed in with romance, they tend to lose the things I like most about them, that often being the sharp edges and danger, and are replaced with either soft fuzzy and well defined emotional boundaries or Cringey Edge TM.
If I am reading or playing a vampire romance, the thing that is going to make me happiest is recognizing the danger inherent in it because vampires are, to me, cool because they are predators. To engage in a relationship like that creates inherent conflict with personal well-being, temptation and restraint, the heart and the head. Twilight had moments where I could tell Meyer was thinking about those things, but realistically, Edward was never dangerous (and he was a dweeb) so even if Bella had been an interesting or likable character, it wouldn’t have worked for me because the conflict just wasn’t real. It’s the same with Wayhaven. It has plenty of upsides, but the vampires could just as easily be genetically engineered failed Captain Americas and the story would change very little, the way the MC actually has to approach the relationships would change very little.
So that’s what I (don’t expect but) want in vampire routes.
I also enjoy Fae–the I can’t lie but I’m a rules lawyer and I will fuck you up for my own gain or just for fun kind. Doesn’t matter if they’re human adjacent or invisible tinkerbells or trolls made of rock, I love a character (or a demographic of characters) that I have to work to understand. I don’t want to be able to accurately compile a list of traits and motivations for them within a paragraph of meeting them. I think it’s a fun trope because even though it’s predictable, you can still maintain mystery. I might know they’re lying, but what are they lying about, why, and what’s the truth instead?
I also would love more characters like Roach from The Passenger–not personality-wise, necessarily, but creatures that are beyond what we usually expect from supernatural. Creatures that aren’t so simple to understand as “short greedy human,” “short clever human,” “tall fancy human with pointy ears,” “tall fancy human that drinks blood,” “furry” etc. The reason I enjoyed the hanar and the geth so much more than turians or quarians is because they physically, biologically, mentally approach the world in a completely different way. It’s interesting and expansive and I like that element of supernatural and fantasy and feel like it may be falling more and more by the wayside in favor of things like elves or dwarves or vampires that have a sort of cultural shorthand and so don’t require as much work to connect the reader to.
That’s exactly what I tried to say in the comment above! You managed to explain it a lot clearer than me. Roach is indeed a good example of a romance option that did not feel human, the author did a great job fleshing them out.
I’m not a big trope person myself - I just don’t really think about them all that much, though perhaps I should (I might be engaging with them in more places than I expect and it’s good to be informed) - but @levviathan actually sums up my own feelings here pretty well.
I particularly wanted to pull this quote out of their reply:
Because this is something I’m pretty passionate about; I adore stories that surprise me with alien characters that challenge my perspective and experience of existence and I will absolutely romance these characters if given the opportunity.
To bring this back to examples from IF, both the entity you meet and possibly romance in Professor of Magical Studies and the Jovians(?) from The Superlatives were so much fun. I think I’d also include several characters from The Passenger (like Roach, lol) as well. I’d given anything to interact with more characters like this.
I also would like to give a shout out to Donor. The story doesn’t have romance, but the two vampires that keep you captive sure felt not human. Both not feeling much (if at all) empathy for MC whilst their behaviour towards the MC was very different but equally disturbing. The danger of being around them was noticeable throughout the game.
For me as a reader, I am most interested in pursuing romance options that are interesting characters within the context of who they are.
Their personality and how it is defined and shaped by their “nature” is the trigger for my interest in that character.
So, a character that is appealing to me within the context of them being supernatural will be a character who I would be interested in having as a love interest.
As a writer, my goal is to develop my characters as individuals, with their supernatural aspects being just one of many. Their supernatural attribute may influence that character but it will not be the defining attribute necessarilly.
As an example: in one of my creative short stories I have a vampire character talking with a “nightblade” assassin (who only works at night) and the nightblade declares that the darkness is not a bad thing.
The vampire replies that it might not be a bad thing for the nightblade because he chose to embrace the darkness. The vampire was ripped from her life and thrown into the darkness without her choice and thus she despises and hates the darkness, although she must embrace it to survive.
My goal as a writer was to develop both of these characters using their embrace of the darkness but in different ways which would (hopefully) appeal to the reader within the context of who these characters are… one a nightblade assassin and the other a nightembraced vampire.
I enjoy getting to know this kind of character where it feels like the supernatural character is different to a human. That could mean something like the rough-and-tumble werewolves of Blood Moon, the coldness of Oriana in Heart of the House, or the varying directions the Lodger can go in Professor of Magical Studies or the Djinn in The Dragon and the Djinn.
If the supernatural creatures are part of their own society, I like having a sense of that and how they interact with human society. I think Barbara Truelove does this particularly well in her urban fantasy games. Josh LaBelle does it well too with the fantasy races of Crown of Sorcery and Steel, which are D&D-ish but to me fresh too with their own cultural feel.
What I like best, although it’s so rare, is to be the one that isn’t human, falling in love with someone who is. It doesn’t matter much what kind of nonhuman, so much as just being not human in the way they experience the world. All the better if I’m forced to pretend to be human along the way, and at some point the love interest finds out or I tell them and they love me anyway.
These are great answers, thank you everyone! 
Agreed. To me, the appeal of the “monster romance” is to explore and validate the part of myself that feels “monstrous”, “inhuman”, rejected, or sometimes even twisted and cruel. All depending on the style of story, and how it presents the contrast between human and inhuman characters.
I like to see characters that are physically, psychologically, and culturally different. I prefer characters who have a complex, even ambivalent relationship with their culture of origin, rather than ones that are either 100% stereotypical, or 100% rejecting of stereotype. (One of the things that frustrated me about the Dragon Age games is that I felt like they characterized their elf characters in this dichotomous fashion, and I found it increasingly irritating with time.)