So, can we talk about the werewolf’s penis, or no?
I recently bought “Bride” by Ali Hazelwood on an impulse – Target had a special edition with a reflective cover. The bride’s flowers and the werewolf’s eyes shine when the light hits them. How am I supposed to resist that?
Anyway, it is no secret that my favorite type of romance novel is paranormal romance. I blame my mother for leaving her Anne Rice books unattended when her daughter was 12 and out of kids books to read. And so, many years later, here I am, excited to read a book about a Vampyre who marries a werewolf in an arranged marriage for political gain.
For those of you new to paranormal romance, there are different types of … species? I guess I could say? … and each of these species have their own set of rules and traits. On top of that, each author can build their own world and make their own rules so no two books are alike. I really enjoy paranormal romances with immortal beings, mostly because I want to live forever.
There are some paranormal romance subjects I do not enjoy reading – basically any type of being that shape shifts into an animal, I just can’t. No shade to those that are into this kind of thing, it’s just something I usually avoid. Aaaaand then came along Bride.
As far as rom-coms go, it checks all the boxes. The characters are funny, they turn out to be fated mates so there’s lots of tension and pull towards one another that increases the anticipation of them finally admitting they are in love, but, well, then there is the problem of the penis.
The Deep Dark Corners of the Internet and Werewolf Penises (DO NOT READ THIS SECTION IF YOU ARE UNDER 18 YEARS OLD. IT IS FOR YOUR OWN GOOD)
Yeah. I guess I’m writing a blog about Werewolf cocks. I hereby can never ever run for PTA. Darn.
Anyway, for those with Kindle Unlimited subscriptions, you have access to a lot of writing that probably won’t get published because some of the paranormal romance species are kind of freaky. There’s Reverse Harem romance, that involves a woman with a harem of men (of any humanlike species) who don’t mind sharing, there is the Omegaverse, where humans behave like packs of wolves and I’m not here to judge anyone’s kink, but that’s the place I noped out of self-published romance novels.
There are a lot of monsters and aliens and I don’t want to even think about what else, those are just the ones the almighty algorithm threw into my “you may like” feed right before I made the sign of the cross and said three Hail Mary’s (I’m not even Catholic, but I was SHOOK).
Imagine my surprise when I was halfway through Bride and the main male character mentioned that they couldn’t have sex because he has a knotted penis. You know, like dogs. If you aren’t aware of what happens when dogs mate, and I cannot believe I’m actually writing this, the base of the dogs penis inflates and it holds the two mated dogs together for a minute until he <ahem> settles down. I will not link a source for this and I will not explain further.
So someone, somewhere, was writing and thought that werewolves must also have knotted penises, and so that is one of the traits they’d keep when they shifted into human form. This must have been a hit with readers because it’s not an uncommon trait in some genres. So it stuck. Oh GOD WHAT AN AWFUL PUN.
Well. In contemporary paranormal romance novels, that means the knot is going to be part of the story of their compatibility. I’m seriously afraid my blog is going to be flagged somewhere.
I was pretty shocked that the publisher – Penguin Random House – is heavily promoting a novel with this type of sex in it. Now, I don’t believe in book banning and I’m happy to see that publishers are starting to cater towards what people are actually reading instead of gatekeeping stories. I’m interested to see what else hits mainstream publishing houses in the near future. I’m even planning on reading the sequel to BRIDE, hinted at in the epilogue.
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