TeratoCon 2025 Write-up

Had a spectacular time talking monsters at the very first special convention!

Yesterday, I had the delightful privilege of attending the very first TeratoCon at the Future Inn in Bristol, an 18+ convention for monster lovers with a special focus on all things monstrous, especially on monsterfucking and monstrous romance! 

I had an initially bumpy journey getting there, entirely as a result of my own silliness — I came down south from Bradford to stay with my family in Chepstow the day before yesterday on the train, which came with its own issues (no seat on the entire train between Bradford and Derby, meaning my body was fucked the rest of the day, I fell asleep and passed by Chepstow Station, had to get off at Newport and then go back towards Chepstow, etc), got the bus into Bristol from Chepstow the following morning… Whereupon I promptly got a bus in the wrong direction, went to the wrong hotel, then had to get an Uber literally to right beside the bus station, where the convention was being held at the Future Inn! 

I was unfortunately only a minute or two late to the opening ceremony and was able to see Zoey Burgess-Foreman and Tim Mendees introduce the convention, and then we were able to jump into things!

I can’t name a literary convention I’ve actually had a bad time at, they’re normally very warm and welcoming environments and it’s great to be around other people who share a particular passion enough to want to travel across the country and chat about it, but there was an extra pleasure and ability to relax at this convention because it was 18+ and explicitly was intended to allow and center adult discussions, especially when it comes to sex, desire, and kink. 

On the one hand, it’s great that many conventions allow for teenage self-exploration and for people to be able to decide their own comfort level and opt into adult themes, but many cons end up shoving a lot of adult events and stalls in dark shadowy corners and corridors, or we end up doing our panels in smaller out-of-the-way rooms after dark with less advertisement and publicity, and especially as a creator who centers many adult themes — not just in terms of erotica, but also in terms of trauma, chronic pain and disability, marginalisation, homophobia, and other themes that I explore using sex and sexuality, or intimate forms of violence, as vessels, you end up feeling more than a bit hemmed in!

I was obviously especially grumpy about this issue having been grappling with Patreon’s seemingly random approaches of recent to banning and hiding my own work (this week was censoring a fully consensual erotic novella for “glorifying” sexual abuse and rape by… including a single criticism of rape culture within the British police forces), thus why I recently set up my new website, albeit with all the technical difficulties that came with for me. 

With rising censorship online and cultural changes toward sex and sexuality in public spaces — explicitly fascist government in the USA and rising queerphobia everywhere, including the UK, has already caused many pride flags to quietly disappear from shop fronts and businesses all around us, a real canary in the coal mine — it was such a relief to be at a professional event for creators and enthusiasts that not only didn’t give into those attitudes, but pointedly stood in opposition to them. 

The Future Inn decided to euphemistically label our little gathering Literature Convention on their posters and signage, but other than that, once we went up in the lift to the sixth floor where the conference center was, liberty reigned!

All of the creators selling art prints, stickers, t-shirts, plushies, and other merch were able to put their work on display without hiding their erotic and explicit art in secreted folders or under carefully-positioned post-it notes, and there was a real freedom of expression in all our panels and discussions as well, knowing that not only were there no one’s kids in the audience or likely to come wandering past with too-sensitive ears, but that everyone had come to the convention knowing exactly what the topics were and that this was the state of affairs. 

TeratoCon 2025 was a rather intimate affair — less than 60 attendees — and that created a really friendly and warm atmosphere with lots of chat and cross-talk that isn’t always possible at larger conventions; it was considered and focused in its approach to ease of access; there were a variety of events and panels on its modest schedule; and most of all, it was great fun!

First up for me, I was moderating a panel at 11:00:

11:00 — Why Monsters?

What draws us to the monstrous? Why, when given the option, would we rather have a sexual encounter with a beast than a handsome prince? Is the monstrous so arousing that we forget the dangers, or is that danger the arousal? A discussion on why we enjoy Teratophilia, how it speaks to us, and the monsters that bring out such passion and rejection of mainstream romantic narratives.

This panel was such a pleasure to moderate!

I was unfortunately more than a little scrungled from my journey(s) on both this panel and especially the one I joined as a panellist in the afternoon, so I was not nearly as eloquent as I might have liked, but such is the way of these things. 

The excellent panellists were:

Zoe Burgess-Foreman, Chairman of TeratoCon, artist and author of queer horror with an especial focus on yaoi monster boys, cosmic horror, and most of all, tentacles. They and Tim Mendees have a podcast called The Monster in my Bed, where they discuss different instances of monstrous romance in cinema across all sorts of genres. Zoe’s Instagram & BlueSky. 

Tim Mendees, also on the committee for TeratoCon, is also an author of cosmic horror and weird fiction, and most recently has collaborated with Zoe Burgess-Foreman on Beyond Desire: 10 Tales of Erotic Horror. As well as The Monster in my Bed, he also hosts The Innsmouth Book Club alongside Rob Poyton, devoted to Lovecraftian fiction and cosmic horror. 

4MinuteWarning, the project lead for Ravager, a very NSFW game where you play a young dragon determined to reclaim his birthright. Also on BlueSky.

N J Adam, a queer illustrator and TTRPG enthusiast and also the director of Pride Comic Art Festival. Nate’s Instagram & NSFW BlueSky.

And I was moderating the panel, which I always have such fun doing — I’m Johannes T. Evans, I recently included a piece in SLAKE HOUSE, a choose-your-own-ending erotic horror anthology published by the Circus Collective, published some more monsterfuckery eBooks such as The Mermaid and the Fisherman, Fallen Dust, and many more short stories on my site, of course, I annually run the Monstrous May Challenge, a monster-focused daily prompt meme! 

We had some great discussions, talking about the driving forces behind our monstrous desires and what makes different monsters so incredibly compelling and intriguing — the sheer size of different monsters, the sinewy and deceptively powerful nature of their muscles or pheromones or other features, and how easily and completely they might overpower us, especially if we often don’t feel that a human would feel able to or confident enough to dominate us; the extraterrestrial, supernatural, and cosmically giant nature of many monsters and how that removes the constraints of conventional morality or sexual limitation from them, guiltlessly consuming victims and pursuing pleasure and desire; how explorations of the monstrous — generally in some way Too Much, Too Little, Too Strange (definition coined by 4MinuteWarning)— reflect the same or similar anxieties in ourselves. 

We talked about our favourite monsters — dragons, tentacles, and Eldritch beasts, the Alkonost a legendary woman-headed bird, and various snake-women, and of course, the not-at-all humble minotaur — and our own sexual awakenings, and what first drew us toward monsters and monstrous desire. 

Some recommendations from the panel and works that we discussed included: 

• Urotsukidōji: The Legend of the Overfiend, the original erotic horror manga series often credited with first popularising tentacle rape as a trope.
• Bondage Fairies by Teruo Kakuta
• Species (1995, dir. Roger Donaldson) 
• Meridian: Kiss of the Beast (1990, dir. Charles Band) and The Beauty and the Beast (1991, dir. Gary Trousdale & Kirk Wise)
• The Blood Beast Terror (1968, dir. Vernon Sewell) and The Possession (1981, dir. Andrzej Żuławski)
• The Shape of Water (2017, dir. Guillermo del Toro) and The Creature of the Black Lagoon (1954, dir. Jack Arnold)
• The Lure (2015, dir. Agnieszka Smoczyńska)
• Treasure Planet (2002, dir. Jon Musker & Rob Clements) and The Lion King (1994, dir. Roger Allers & Rob Minkoff)

15:00 — Monster Romance in Movies & Games

To many, monster romance seems like a new and emerging genre of film and gaming. With Movies such as Venom putting the Monsterfucker community into the mainstream and Shape of Water being praised for its originality, you would think people being attracted to monsters was new. In this panel, we look at a wide range of films that predate these titles but also reflect the changing nature of the monster as an erotic and dateable entity: not just the embodiment of horror and fear, but also a representation of the other, as well as how it speaks to the diverse tastes of the audience.

I’ve already introduced Zoe and Tim further up, but Mark Richard Adams joined us for this panel and was phenomenal — Mark is an editor at Hellbound Media, a small-press comic publisher with a focus on cult horror and fantasy, and he wrote his dissertation on Clive Barker’s queer monsters: Exploring transgression, sexuality, and the other. Hellbound Media is also on BlueSky. 

This panel was great fun, and wonderfully moderated by Tim, especially as he had to step up last-minute and write his questions for the panel on the train to Bristol! 

We talked much more about all manner of our favourite works in this panel, talking about what has done monstrous romance and fucking well and what has done it, uh, less well. Some of the many works we talked about include several of those that came up in the Why Monsters? panel, and also:

• Monsters in the closet: Homosexuality and the Horror Film, by Harry M. Benshoff 
• Alien (1979, dir. Ridley Scott) and Aliens (1986, dir. James Cameron), as well as discussing Species again, generally looking at the designs of Hans Ruedi Giger
• Hellboy (2004, dir. Guillermo del Toro) and Hellboy II (2008, also my boy Memo), particularly when discussing Hellboy’s own design, Abe Sapien’s, and the use of CGI alongside practical effects
• Fenoxo’s erotic flash games, Corruption of Champions and Trials in Tainted Space
• The hentai visual novel & anime, Princess Knight Catue ~Ochita Ryuuki Hime, from Valkyria
• Clive Barker’s body of work, especially Hellraiser (1987), Nightbreed (1990), and Lord of Illusions (1995), and the queerness of his work, as well as the impact of his cinematic BDSM-influenced character designs and costumes
• James Whale’s body of work as a gay man, especially Frankenstein (1931) and Bride of Frankenstein (1935), as well as Gods and Monsters (1998, dir. Bill Condon), which is a fictional exploration of James Whale’s (Ian McKellen) last days and his homoerotic friendship with his handsome young gardener (Brendan Fraser)
• An American Werewolf in London (1981, dir. John Landis), Teen Wolf (1985, dir. Rod Daniel)
• A Company of Wolves (1984, dir. Neil Jordan) and Brothers Grimm (2005, dir. Terry Gilliam)
• Rosemary’s Baby (1968, dir. Roman Polanski) and The First Omen (2024, dir. Arkasha Stevenson)
• The romance and psychological horror game, Slay the Princess
• And finally, after someone asked for recommendations for monster romance without sex, we mentioned Luca (2021, dir. Enrico Casarosa), Maleficent (2014, dir. Robert Stromberg), Corpse Bride (2005, dir. Tim Burton & Mike Johnson), and I also mentioned Transylvania 6–5000 (1985, dir. Rudy De Luca)

All in all, the convention was spectacular, and I’m delighted at the prospect of another TeratoCon in future, so long as the organisers have had ample time to recover before taking on the project again!

A special thank you to Zoe and Tim, and of course, treasurer Claire Cartwright who has done an incredible job of wrangling, herding, organising, and scheduling the event, especially whilst Zoe and Tim were running panels!