forlorn in sullen head

“You read something which you thought only happened to you, and you discover that it happened 100 years ago to Dostoyevsky. This is a very great liberation for the suffering, struggling person, who always thinks that he is alone. This is why art is important. Art would not be important if life were not important, and life is important.”

i genuinely don’t get cishet monsterfuckers. for context, in the wake of shape of water i participated in this loving-the-monstrous type discussion event slash publishing party wherein i debuted a short story about a woman who “befriends” a cave monster—but that isnt the point. the point is i had to hear straight women talk for hours about how the appeal of monsters is some kind of weird “taming the beast” fantasy—loving a monster until it loves you back, sounding like every bad beauty and the beast take ever.

Oh. I'm guessing those were all yt women, too. Del Toro isn't Queer, afaik, but he -is- Mexican in the us. It wasn't really that long ago that interracial relationships were just as forbidden and taboo as Queer ones and there's still obviously race tensions going on. The other in Shape of the Water is just as much, and likely written as, being a different race and the feeling of alienation of having a different place of origin. It happens to resonate with everyone who's ever been considered a monster by society, and there's not just one way this has happened.