MonsterHearts is a 14 day event (named after a pervy RPG) wherein my writing group votes on a monster each day to include in a story concept.  As we march toward Valentine’s Day, the theme is supernatural romance.  This year I have been worse than usual in composing very slight ideas to justify whatever cover I was able to squeak out of Midjourney and Photopea.  In Midjourney I’m using versions 6.0 and 5.2 and Niji 6.  Some of these needed a lot more Photopea, some practically nothing.

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MONSTER HEARTS DAY TEN:  BEASTLY

TITLE:  UNDER THE BEAST MOON

CHARACTERS:  Aramis Spinoza: the Wan Dreamer, Rath Darrow: the Beast

PREMISE:  A pallid young dude trips through the forest looking for his lost memories. He’s sure they’re out there, somewhere, and won’t be dissuaded. But the world has turned into a gnarly beasthouse, and everything wants to eat him. A dark stranger appears and tries to get him to give up his quest, retreat to safety, but he refuses, and as they travel love begins.

THE HOOK:  Dark Stranger Rath is actually one of the beasts – so powerful that he can devour other beasts for food – and was actually about to eat Aramis when he changed his mind on a whim. Or is it something more? He tries to maintain a human guise, so as not to scare the dude, but he can’t keep that up forever…

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MONSTER HEARTS DAY ELEVEN:  MUTATED

TITLE:  MUTANT REIGN

CHARACTERS:  Jonathan Israel: the Mutant Man, Jonathan Tullio: his Powerless Sidekick

PREMISE:  The two Johnnies are buff gay mechanics in a retrofuturist metropolis. Tullio is more of a tinkerer, Israel more of a philosopher. Something gets in the water or whatever, and rats are mutated by evil, heeding the call of some kinda Ratlord. Some of them are the size of small buildings with horns and scales and fangs, not even recognizable as rats. Israel somehow gets mutated by the same evil, but can control it, and uses his powers to fight the monsters. Tullio tries to keep him safe with gizmos and fisticuffs, the things a non-superpowered guy can do.

THE HOOK:  What if the mutation takes control, and Johnny Israel becomes a rampaging monster? Will Johnny Tullio have the stuff to do what’s necessary? Probably love wins.

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MONSTER HEARTS DAY TWELVE:  HYBRID

TITLE:  ROSE GOLD

CHARACTERS:  Isadora Kors: a CyberMonster, Stuck Steppy: her Human Lover

PREMISE:  Isadora and Steppy are street punks in a world run by evil corporations, so like, this could take place any time in the last several decades lol. Steppy is known as Stuck Steppy because she keeps catching knives in streetfights. Isadora catches the biggest knife of all trying to save Steppy, a machete that ends her life quick.

But corporate medics notice her cells match a certain profile and route her corpse straight to Brycine Prosthetics, where they sustain the life in her tissues long enough to reanimate that bod – with experimental photosynthetic cybernetics. I guess every cyberpunk has its rose thorns, just like every cowboy sings a sad sad song.

THE HOOK:  Isadora is part plant and part machine and part the lady Steppy loves. She can be rescued from a lab, but without the lab, how long can she live? Drama.

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MONSTER HEARTS DAY THIRTEEN:  DEMONIC

TITLE:  MEN ARE EVIL

CHARACTERS:  Linda Goldman: a Lady, Mark Anthony Aguirre: a Man, or Is He a Demon?

PREMISE:  Linda and Mark Anthony are trans for trans lovers in the Haight-Ashbury district of San Francisco when the world began to melt in 1974. They’re scrounging together the funds to medically transition and Mark Anthony decides it’s time to start doing the testosteroni. The problem? It starts transitioning him into a Demon.

THE HOOK:  The horrible transphobic feminists were right – being a man is inherently evil! It’s impossible to change who you are, what nature makes you, and all gender essentialisms are dogmatical troof of the universe. Or maybe they just accidentally scored a bad batch, in their economic desperation. At any rate, Mark Anthony must destroy the world with fire unless his loving lady can cool his jets. Will he have to detrans just to survive? Fuck that noise.

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MONSTER HEARTS DAY FOURTEEN:  AND THE REST
All Those That Lost Previous Voting, Lumped Into One…
ARTIFICIAL, CELESTIAL, CURSED, DREAMER, ELDRITCH, GHOULISH, GIGANTIC, INANIMATE, MINUSCULE, NATURAL, OVER-POWERED

TITLE:  A HOUSE UNDER HEAVEN

CHARACTERS:  Brooke Storm: the New Girl, TallDeer Rayburn: the Philosopher, Dollhouse: a Mansion, and Celeste: the Stars Themselves

PREMISE:  Brooke is that clumsy but enchantingly beautiful new girl in town, and the popular kids want her to be theirs, but she is drawn to ghoulish (GHOULISH) trans dude TallDeer Rayburn. TallDeer cracks wise about how everybody is skeletons inside and to the grave we shall all return and stuff, and nobody likes him. They circle each other in weird courtship until the night he reveals – he is Accursed (CURSED) by Philosophy. In an effort to understand what a Man really is, for the purposes of transing his genders, TallDeer’s meditations brought him in contact with Plato’s Realm of Forms – a real place where the ideals of all things exist, and the rest of our reality is its pathetic shadow. This eldritch (ELDRITCH) knowledge makes him dangerous. The more he knows of your soul, the more abstract you could become. It makes sense, trust me.

THE HOOK:  TallDeer is like, my philosophy will kill you Brooke. I love you too but it can never be. She’s like, take me you darkly majestic (OVERPOWERED) monster. He takes her to his mansion in the woods, and things start to suck…

Brooke and TallDeer have some bad arguments and it’s like Bella and Beast up in there. Brooke retreats from the middle floors, yea, unto the roof. Up there she falls in love with the depths of the night sky, and it comes to love her back (CELESTIAL, NATURAL). That sky comes to her in dreams (DREAMER) in a human-like form so they can bone down. TallDeer finds out she’s been untrue and is like, no! Banished from rooftops!

Brooke goes to the basement, where she finds a dusty little (MINUSCULE) dollhouse (INANIMATE, ARTIFICIAL) that is a replica of the mansion she’s trapped in. Out of rage at her imprisonment, she knocks it on the floor, and the whole building shakes. It cries out, no, I’m the building you’re in, this is the tiny version of the real me (GIGANTIC). She is sad for him and commits to patching him up. TallDeer is like, you damn well betta! You broke it you bought it.

But then she falls in love with the dollhouse / mansion, who is a swell guy when you get to know him. TallDeer is filled with sorrow and rages until he realizes there’s no keeping that girl from being in love with the world. He uses his eldritch overpowers to embody the sky and the mansion in human bodies named Celeste and Dollhouse respectively, and lets her have her lovers.

In gratitude she forgives TallDeer, and invites him into this Polycule. They lived happily ever after but probably fucked up the fabric of reality somethin’ fierce.

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