Thank You, Dinosaur Erotica

I would like to salute the women who created dinosaur erotica this year. Most of the very short e-books are about cave-women-type people who engage in various sex acts with dinosaurs. Not because they have dinosaur fetishes (at least not that they know of, at first! ahhhh I love it), but because they get caught in unexpected hunting situations, etc. (putting aside that people and dinosaurs didn’t live at the same time. PROBABLY). For instance, the opening of Taken By the T-Rex:

Drin!! Can you guess what happens? Haha ahhhh, I just love it so much. I love it, I love it; it deserves the Pulitzer Prize. They can rename the Pulitzer Prize the Dinosaur Erotica Prize, for ingenuity and entertainment. Maybe dinosaur erotica existed before, but there’s something perfect about Kindles for making it feel sneakier.

There’s also something feminist about these, maybe?? Because it’s not like porn is going to disappear, and if some women can get turned on by the idea of being fucked by an actual DINOSAUR, then maybe it spreads porn empathy (“Babe? I saw … on your Kindle … ? Is that … what … you …?”). Presuming that everyone loves dinosaur erotica, which they should and must, right?! It’s also hilarious.

Anyway, the women who write it, Alara Branwen and Christie Sims (pseudonyms), are students at Texas A&M, supposedly, and they seem fun in this interview on The Cut. “And that is how we became the dynamic duo of monster porn!” It’s also possible they’re just dirty old men pretending to be sweet college women, and the more I look into it, the more that actually does seem like it could be the case (“Hi! I’m just a plain old, everyday Midwestern girl that lives a normal life”), but who cares! Putting joy into the world!

All right, I’m going to go read Taken By the Pterodactyl now. Wait oh my god they have AUDIBLE versions!? Hahahahah oh my god these books. Bless LITERATURE! [time passes] Okay I just read Taken by the Pterodactyl, and it is amazing. It’s about a young woman named Dianne, although sometimes it’s “Diana,” who lives in a colony somewhere away from earth, and she has to protect her family’s field of sheep from the pterodactyls that fly past every afternoon. Until one day, etc. My favorite line: “Sure, she loved her parents, and she had a good life at home, but what the pterodactyl had made her feel was unlike anything she’d ever felt before.” Mmm hmm. Yup. Yes. Put that on my tombstone. Please.

Edith Zimmerman is the founding editor of The Hairpin.