Depends what game am I playing? Or book I am reading? Dragons are cool, until their not. Same with all the other races. Humans are generally a pain in the ass though.
I like all of them, if they're written well. Given that I'm a smut writer, I'm sure you can guess just how I usually measure things. That said, setting "sexiness" aside (foxgirls rule. Nothing will ever beat a soft, fluffy tail to bury your face in), I generally like the idea of turning "evil" or "dangerous" races good. Chromatic dragons, drow, svirfneblin, etc.
There's just something about the danger and intrigue of having a member of an "evil" race be good, when no one has ever seen it before (in-universe. Obviously, in meta, we've seen every evil race be good and ever good race be evil).
Huh, my first guess would be slimes that can take on humanoid forms, as they can have so versatile interactions.
But I'd also like a water elemental with those traits.
Then maybe some eldritch shapeshifter, but those tend to be stuck in thir ways and aren't offering meaningful interactions.
Last, I currently have a slight fascination for lunar bunnies.
Shapeshifters, which I refer to personally as ‘Shoggoth’ due to the prevalence of shapeshifter stories that involve Shoggoth and lesser tentacle monsters.
As defined as: shapeshifting maybe-bioweapons, sometimes-tentacled, always-slimy, often-superpowered, horrifying monsters-that-are-people.
There’s never been a story about a mind-breaking people-craving shape-shifting world-crushing tentacle/slime/tech monster I haven’t enjoyed on the basis of that creature’s existence alone — entirely independent of whether the work was morally outrageous or even half legible, or had a functional plot at all.
Do I hate multiple things about princess magical chaos? Yup, I truly despise these elements. Did I read the whole thing? I might once have done so. Do I regret pushing through them? No.
Do I hate anything about Getting Warhammered? Nope. That is perfect: do that with your tentacular shapeshifting bioweapons.
Just as whatever the robot in Rhapsody and the original Super Minion are: they’re both marvelous examples of the scary, deadly, amorphous monster-cum-human trope.
From everybody loves large chests, to the tentacle monster boss floor trashy romp, to the reincarnated roper who is shy and the reincarnated tentacle monster full of love, to the stream of consciousness Isekai’d Shoggoth:
I love it.
if you put one of these in your story and it comes across my plate: I am eating it up.
It’s one of those few things where the idea alone will make me see the rest of the story with rose coloured glasses, where the concept by itself lets me defer judgement on morally unquestionable choices made by any given author.
Until I am forced to reckon with the sheer weight of how awful the story is: It’s all in good fun.
Shoggoth rock my world, and all shapeshifting monsters rule.