Eldritch Fappenings
This review is of a homoerotic romance work which deals with mature themes and tentacle erotica.
Reader discretion advised.
Romance fiction is about the churn. Individual works often have minimal lasting value; only a rare few works of the sticking power or cultural cachet of Maurice (1971) by E. M. Forester. Yet the appetite for such works is constant. Consumers don’t just want porn, they want characters, settings, relationships, hardship, overcoming adversity, happy endings, unhappy endings—new stories, all the time. And creators need to eat, so they need to keep producing more and more to try and fill that demand.
Sometimes, this results in works that are less character-driven romance and more of erotica of dubious quality. Erotic ebooks like Booty Call of Cthulhu (2012) by Dalia Daudelin and its sequels might be produced rather quickly to hop on a trend. Creators might explore specific niches; Tentacles and Wedding Bells (2022) by Margaret L. Carter is about a young woman marrying into a family that just happens to be a bit inhuman, while Widdershins (2013) by Jordan L. Hawk explores a same-sex relationship in a fantasy steampunk setting, and “Moonshine” (2018) by G. D. Penman does much the same in a Prohibition-era gangster story.
There are times when a spate of Amazon erotic ebooks in a month are focused on bigfoot weddings, or older bosses (of either gender) seducing a new employee, or being isekai’d into a novel and now locked into a forbidden sexual relationship with a step-sibling. One month the flavor might be elves, another Regency-era settings, and sometimes a clever or ambitious author might combine the two. All’s fair in love and genre fiction.
Holiday-themed offerings are available in abundance. Hallowe’en, Thanksgiving, and Christmas are all well-represented…and probably also Boxing Day, Hanukkah, and Arbor Day too. Christmas, however, remains a particular favorite. There’s something about the immense cultural memeplex that extends far beyond the actual celebration of Christ’s birth. A jolly old elf has never stuffed so many stockings; kids who wished for new siblings for Xmas may well get them, Rudolf may be a well-hung were-reindeer with amorous intentions toward Mrs. Claus, and the mistletoe works overtime to trigger steamy kisses. The literary stakes of such works are often pitifully low, with writers and readers more or less satisfied so long as the product delivers the bare minimum of what it promises or hints at.
Content Warning: violence, mature content, brief discussion of child abandonment
—Meghan Maslow, “Cthulhu for Christmas” (2023)
To paraphrase Roger Ebert, I have a sneaky respect for anyone that goes much, much further than too far. With a premise that starts out with “Cthulhu-themed Christmas book” and then expands into: “A Winter Holiday MM Tentacle Romance,” it would have been easy—ridiculously easy—to do a minimalist job, check off the hashtags, and pump out a simple, quirky, and porntastic M/M tentacle erotica ebook in time for the Xmas sales boost. No one would have complained.
What readers get is so much more. Readers going in hoping to see tentacles stretch out holes like pre-lubricated o-ring orifices from page one will be disappointed to find themselves going through short chapters filled with with well-developed characters, in an interesting and evocative setting (with map!), as personal dramas and a murder mystery slowly unfolds. Many of the plot-beats might feel like a Hallmark Christmas movie mixed with your favorite detective show. Will gay cop Zen King tell his straight best friend he’s in love with him? What does Zak’s best friend Grey Criswell and his old money family have to do with the mysterious murder at Salem’s Tree Lot? And what the heck does any of this have to do with a break-in at the local library?
“Cthulhu’s Compendium is a one-of-a-kind artifact. I can’t believe you glimpsed it! Please tell me you were able to read some of it! I’ve requested permission from the Special Collections numerous times, but they always inform me it doesn’t exist.”
“Cthulhu’s. Compendium.” Uh huh. “Like Lovecraft? It’s a work of fiction?”
I’d actually read some Lovecraft in high school when an emo kid recommended him.
She huffed. “It’s not fiction. And while it’s unsubstantiated, it’s well known that Lovecraft vacationed here on many occasions. Even visited the museum. You do the math.”
—Meghan Maslow, “Cthulhu for Christmas” (2023)
The Mythos elements of the plot don’t come exactly as a surprise (it’s in the title), but to Maslow’s credit the story takes the time to build up to the revelations. The tone is paranormal romance rather than horror—and because Lovecraft’s work is explicitly fiction within the setting, there’s room for Maslow to play fast and loose with what is “true” in terms of the Mythos. For the most part, that means that sometimes there are tentacles and sometimes they are frisky, though not always cooperative.
If you’d have told me I’d be cock-blocked by tentacles, I’d have laughed. But I wasn’t laughing now.
Fuck my life.
—Meghan Maslow, “Cthulhu for Christmas” (2023)
(For those interested in the steamier bits, the tentacles don’t cock-block for long. Quite the opposite.)
There’s a lot of little silly details that add up in the story to make it more charming. There’s a beaver that’s moved onto a houseboat like a stray dog. A pair of caribou driving a sleigh that work like a Uber service with an app called Caribou For You. An arranged marriage. An ugly sweater contest. If that sounds silly—that’s the point. Mundane weirdness tends to ground a story with more fantastical elements.
“Cthulhu for Christmas” (2023) by Meghan Maslow is not some quick and dirty romp churned out to meet a Yuletide theme and a couple keywords. There is a lot more heart to the story, and a lot more craft to the writing this tale of love, lust, and magic, than a reader might expect.
This story was written as part of a set of holiday-themed tentacle romance offerings: Tinsel & Tentacles.
Bobby Derie is the author of Weird Talers: Essays on Robert E. Howard and Others and Sex and the Cthulhu Mythos.
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Deep Cuts in a Lovecraftian Vein 