Abstract

“I Love (Monster) Girls” is a hybrid-poetic exploration of monstrosity as an escape from queer trauma, disability, and grief. The project has two primary components; (1) autofiction as ‘Syd’ seeks therapy for their slew of tumultuous relations and suicidal ideation; and (2) prose, lyric, and film script that explore Syd’s explosive and occasionally violent relationship with the shapeshifting Monster Girl that they find in their apartment wall. These two components shift between real world experiences and a highly fantastical look at self-loathing, anxiety, anger, hypersexuality and isolation. The project is inspired by
other contemporary texts such as Ariana Reines’ Coeur de Lion and Carmen Maria Machado’s In the Dream House, that also seek to comprehend heartbreak and violence through an author-forward perspective, and by monstrously queer media such as Psycho Nymph Exile by Porpentine Charity Heartscape, the film Ex Machina directed by Alex Garland or the graphic novel Layers of White by solopipb, all of which explore sexual and often violent relationships with monsters.