Look, I could give you the easy answer here. I could tell you I write alien romance because it’s fun, because space is cool, because building alien cultures scratches the same itch as those elaborate performance art pieces I used to create.
And sure, all of that’s true. But that’s not the whole truth.
The real answer? Alien romance lets me ask questions I’m not allowed to ask anywhere else. And as someone who’s spent a lifetime being the weird one, the one who doesn’t quite fit, the one whose brain works at 120% while everyone else seems content with the default settings — well, those questions feel pretty damn essential.
1. Cultural difference as lived experience.
Coming from a multicultural and multilingual background, I’ve always been hyperaware of how much we take for granted. Often, we don’t even really see our own culture until it’s juxtaposed with something different.
Take idioms. Never have I ever felt so dumb as when I’m translating an idiom to people who don’t speak my native languages.
For example, from Swedish:
- “skägget i brevlådan” (the beard in the mailbox) means being caught in the act,
- “ingen ko på isen” (no cow on the ice) meaning there is no problem,
- “glida in på en räkmacka” (slide in on a shrimp sandwich – which is an iconic Swedish sandwich) meaning having an easy time due to luck or privilege,
- “fara dit pepparn växer” (go where the pepper grows), to say you want someone or something to get lost (and go really, really far away).
And from Finnish:
- “sopii kuin nyrkki silmään” (fits like a fist in the eye), describing how two things go perfectly together,
- “oma lehmä ojassa” (having your own cow in the ditch), same as having a horse in the race but with cows,
- “kadota kuin pieru Saharaan” (disappear like a fart in the Sahara), meaning something disappeared without a trace,
- “eteenpäin, sanoi mummo lumessa” (forward, said the granny in the snow), meaning you just have to keep going even if it’s difficult.
And while I’ve endured some furrowed brows and a few “are you sure you’re okay?”s, I wouldn’t change it for the world. I wouldn’t save the Tower of Babel at any cost, because understanding how ridiculous your own language and culture can be is priceless.
And this extends to so many things, because every culture sees things differently – the “right” way to speak, the right way to love, the “right” way to build family, the “right” way to show affection, to communicate desire, to structure our lives around relationships and our view of the world around us.
Except there is no right way.
There’s just our way and their way, and somewhere in between is the work of translation that makes connection possible.
Alien romance takes that experience — of standing between worlds, of translating yourself constantly, of knowing that genuine intimacy requires someone to actually see you across that gap — and makes it literal.
When a human character falls for an alien, they can’t coast on assumptions. They can’t expect their love interest to understand unspoken cultural cues or implicit expectations.
They have to actually communicate. They have to ask questions. They have to sit with the discomfort of not knowing, of being the one who doesn’t understand the rules for once.
And here’s the radical part: that’s intimate, it’s the actual work of love. Not as a burden to overcome but as the process of truly learning to see the other person.
2. The body as political statement.
There’s something deeply political about making the alien desirable.
For most of science fiction’s history, aliens represented our fears — contamination, invasion, the threatening foreigner (even Dracula does that one). They are monsters to be defeated, not lovers to be cherished. They are everything we fear about the Other made flesh (or scales, or tentacles, or whatever).
Alien romance flips that script entirely. It says: the other is not just acceptable, but actively desired. Worthy of love. Sexy, even.
When you desire an alien body — one that doesn’t conform to human standards of beauty, that might have wildly different anatomy, that experiences pleasure or connection in ways completely unfamiliar to us — you’re practising radical acceptance.
You can’t love an alien and still cling to your narrow beauty standards. You can’t desire across species lines and maintain that there’s one “normal” or “correct” way for bodies to be.
As someone who’s queer, who’s watched my community fight for the right to love who we love without apology, this resonates on a cellular level. Alien romance is doing similar work: insisting that desire doesn’t have to follow prescribed patterns, that connection can exist in forms we haven’t even imagined yet.
It’s not just about accepting difference. It’s about desiring it. About finding the alien beautiful precisely because they’re not human, finding them beautiful precisely because they are not the same.
3. Building better worlds (and I mean that literally).
This is where my feminist heart really starts to sing.
See, sci-fi alien romance doesn’t just let me critique human social structures. It lets me build alternatives. Fully realised, lived-in alternatives that prove other ways are possible.
What if partnership didn’t default to heterosexual marriage? What if family structures were communal, or triadic, or based on chosen bonds rather than blood? What if gender didn’t exist as a binary — or existed in a completely different framework altogether? What if consent and desire and commitment had entirely different cultural meanings?
I’m not writing a manifesto here. I’m worldbuilding. I’m creating societies where these alternatives aren’t theoretical — they’re just how things work on that planet. They’re normal. They’re functional. They’re desirable.
And because it’s aliens, readers can engage with these ideas without their defences immediately slamming into place. It’s speculation. It’s just a fun thought experiment about how things might work in a galaxy far, far away.
Except we both know it’s not just that.
Every time I write an alien culture that structures relationships differently, I’m proving something: the way things are isn’t the way things have to be. There are other possibilities. Better possibilities, even.
4. Power made visible.
One thing I genuinely love about alien romance is that it can’t pretend power doesn’t exist in relationships.
When one character is literally from a conquering species, or has radically different physical capabilities, or comes from a more technologically advanced society, you can’t ignore those power dynamics. They’re right there on the page, impossible to miss.
The characters have to negotiate them explicitly. They have to talk about what equity means when you’re not equal in conventional ways. They have to figure out how to build something fair in a context that’s inherently unbalanced.
This mirrors work marginalised people already do in human relationships.
We’re already negotiating power differentials. Already having conversations about whose needs get centred, whose comfort gets prioritised, whose reality gets validated. Already figuring out how to build fairness in contexts that aren’t level to begin with.
Alien romance makes this work visible.
It models the kind of explicit negotiation required for ethical relationships across difference. And crucially, it shows that this negotiation isn’t a failure of romance — it’s central to it.
Love doesn’t erase power. But it can transform how we hold it.
5. Communication as intimacy.
Here’s something alien romance does that I don’t see enough of elsewhere: it makes communication sexy.
When you can’t rely on cultural shorthand, when you can’t assume your partner understands what you mean by a particular gesture or phrase, when even your biology might process emotional or physical experiences differently — you have to actually talk to each other.
You have to ask questions. Clarify meaning. Explain yourself in ways that feel vulnerable because you’re laying bare all your assumptions about how the world works.
This is the kind of explicit communication that cross-cultural relationships require. That queer relationships often demand. That any partnership built on genuine intimacy needs.
And in alien romance, it’s not portrayed as tedious or clinical. It’s portrayed as intimate. As the thing that builds real connection.
There’s something almost unbearably hot about characters who have to work to understand each other, who choose that work because the alternative is not knowing this person they’re falling for. Who risk the vulnerability of being misunderstood because understanding matters more.
6. The personal is intergalactic.
Here’s what I keep coming back to, what makes me put aliens (or monsters) in every damn thing I write:
Alien romance takes the fundamental promise of romance — that connection is possible, that we can be known and loved across difference — and refuses to let us be lazy about it.
It won’t let us assume our way is the only way. It won’t let us ignore power. It won’t let us pretend bodies don’t matter or that desire should follow neat, acceptable patterns. It forces us to imagine alternatives and then fall in love with them.
For someone like me — autistic, queer, foreign, perpetually outside the lines of what’s considered “normal” — alien romance isn’t escapism.
It’s hope.
It’s proof that difference doesn’t preclude intimacy. That you can build connection without erasing what makes you you. That love doesn’t require sameness — in fact, it might be richer, deeper, more transformative when it bridges genuine difference.
In a world that keeps insisting there’s one right way to love, to build family, to structure relationships, to exist in a body — writing aliens who do it differently feels like exactly the kind of rebellion we need.
So yeah. That’s why I write alien romance.
Because reality is overrated.
Because I’ve always looked at the stars and thought “what if?”
Because somewhere between the space battles and the tentacles and the slow burn that takes three books before anyone kisses, there’s a radical act of imagination happening.
We’re imagining a universe where love doesn’t require conformity. Where the other is not just tolerated but desired. Where different ways of being aren’t just possible — they’re beautiful.
And if that’s not worth writing stories about, I don’t know what is.
“When Sasha Barrett gets bitten by a snake on a mission, her squad captain’s quick actions not only save her life, but also make her realise something she may have known all along…“
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