Taking a page from monster romance to help us bring into relationship and engage with the Other - both inner and outer.

What have I learned from reading Monster romances?

Since the beginning of this year, I’ve returned to my joy of reading by diving into romantasy novels that often feature a relationship between a monstrous being and a main female lead. Reading these novels has been the lifeline of how I’ve been navigating grief and reimagining this next stage of my life. I have more to say about the healing aspect of these novels themselves, but I’ll leave that to my soon-to-be-launched new Substack publication - The Healing Power of Fluff.

For the purposes of exploring the theme of the foreigner, the Other within and without, in these liminal times, I feel that the perceived fluff of romantasy novels has something to teach us. In my last post, I explored the idea that we’re all foreigners in these liminal times. Today, I want to further unfurl this topic to include both the wounding and the healing at our disposal.

One of the many elements of monster romances is how the main male hero, the monstrous other, is very attuned to the physical realm, giving them a sharp connection with their senses, especially smell, and with the needs and cravings of the body. They’re more embodied and at ease with their physicality.

The other element is a strong knowing of what they want and what they’re willing to do to get it. There’s no dithering; there’s doing what needs to be done to reach their desire. They’re catalysts of change, taking the human heroine out of her element and starting her on the heroic arch of broadening her sense of self and agency. Meanwhile, the heroine teaches them the complexities and nuances of relating.

These monstrous others also bring a different perspective on the human realm, being able to pinpoint the good, the problematic, and what makes humans both alluring and dangerous. They represent how we see the challenges and gifts of being human.

If one looks at book sales and the explosion of book recommendation videos on TikTok and YouTube, one can see how these books are definitely hitting a nerve in these times. In a world ever more removed from the physicality of being human through the plethora of screens in our daily lives, it seems that these physically attuned monsters serve as nourishment to our imaginations. Their otherness is precisely what makes them so attractive.

As I read these novels, I wonder why there is such an explosion of monster romances in a time when we fear the other—the immigrant, the foreigner, the one who holds different views from us.

Effectively, these are Venusian books that explore how we can relate to the foreign, the alien, the ultimate other, as love breaks down the barriers between us and them. In these stories, it’s the communion of love and sex that crashes through the boundaries between us and the other.

Romance books fall under the realm of Venus, with their focus on bringing things into relationships. This element can help us navigate these liminal times when both the fear and the gift of the other are prominent.

How can we bring things INTO relationship, instead of othering?

Venus rules the invisible force of attraction and the contemplative and dynamic aspects of all relationships. She teaches us to observe patterns of relationships and see beauty in things.

In monster romances, one noticeable story element is how the heroine learns to see the beauty in her monstrous counterpart. Beauty is beyond the physical; it speaks to behavior, values (another realm of Venus), and affinities.

Venus teaches us about attraction and the role of bringing beauty and joy into our lives and interactions. Plus, her presence always announces change, transformation, and a certain awakening while throwing us into a betwixt and between emotional space. She’s comfortable in liminal places and has much to teach us about venturing through these times as she creates and leads us toward new experiences. It’s no wonder that attraction, desire, and love take us out of our ordinary and routine world. Venus is our lifeline during these times.

Fearing the monstrosity of the Other - Pluto in Aquarius

Sometimes, I imagine Pluto’s arrival in a new sign as an auditor who is about to riffle through all of our things, unearthing all that’s ugly and hidden away. First, we find the fearful problem, and then we can move towards the deep transformation that Pluto affords us.

While much has been said about Aquarius and technology, another element of this enigmatic sign is the outcast, the other, the eccentric, the visionary, anyone that cannot be so easily cataloged and put in a box. Yes, groups fall under the realm of Aquarius, but we have to be more curious and thoughtful about how we’re thinking of groups here.

Aquarius is also about systems of ideas, and groups of people can be formed under the umbrella of vision, ideals, and theories. The prevalent confusion of these times is so heightened that it sometimes feels like we’re playing musical chairs, trying to find our ‘group’, our people, that are aligned with our systems of ideas.

Here, the fear that Pluto brings to the forefront is linked to groups of people whose ideas are different from ours. Also, remember that Pluto speaks to power, so we also fear the power that the other has, or could have, over us. Thus, we anxiously dance around these musical chairs, trying to quickly find our ‘people’ and hope that we’re not left out as outcasts, which is a sentence to be in a no man’s land. The fear of being ostracized, or worse, exiled.

What we fear is often what knocks on our doors to be acknowledged, welcomed, and integrated. If this were a romantic novel, it would be the monstrous other who comes to guide us through a soul-making adventure.

Pluto speaks to what is unconscious and when it arrives in a new sign, it will surface the secrets and hidden shadows that now beckon us into relationship. Aquarius is a realm that speaks to the different other, the outcast, the one that left the confines of their ‘normal’ group, and it also hides our discomfort with this part of ourselves and our culture.

Here, we can jump from a country made of those who left the known shores of their land of birth, now missing the opportunity to see this experience with more nuance and care. It’s easier to outcast the latest group that has arrived as others, burying ever deeper the discomfort that our ancestors felt as the other, outcasts who were exiled from their lands to take on the experience of being immigrants.

As a planet that rules depth psychology, Pluto in Aquarius is already pulling no punches as it guides us through the juiciness of shadow work around the archetype of the outcast and the other.

But wait, there’s more… Chiron in Aries and the wounding of a sense of self

Chiron stands between Saturn and Uranus, between boundary and expansion beyond our limits. While many know Chiron as the wounded healer, that’s the full story. I think in these times, it’s important to see the maverick side of Chiron’s story, the one where he made lemonade out of the lemons life gave him.

What I like about Chiron’s story is that while it speaks to the trauma of abandonment by both parents, the unwanted offspring of Saturn and a nymph, he turns this story around through guidance. Adopted by Apollo, Chiron is educated in all of the important healing arts and becomes the most respected teacher of the heroes of ancient times. He marries, establishes his mentoring school, and lives a full and rich life. It’s later in life, he is accidentally wounded by one of his most famous students, Hercules, and suffers from a wound that he can’t heal.

But we need to remember the other part of Chiron’s life, the part where he transformed his shortcomings - abandoned offspring (his mother was horrified to have given birth to such a monstrosity - half-man, half-horse), the otherness of his physicality, the identity of a centaur who didn’t fit with the other centaurs, and being raised by gods. Chiron was an outsider, an other, from the word go. But he leaned into it instead of running from it.

Was it without pain? No. But he transformed his pain into the medicine and the teachings he could gift to others.

Now I think of Chiron in Aries, where it’s been for quite some time. Aries is our sense of self, our agency to venture out and forge our own paths. You can think of Chiron in Aries as a wounding around the sense of self. The individual is wounded, made to feel inadequate or unfit for some reason. Self-agency and courage to forge ahead may be stunted at first, but it’s in this pain that the healing resides.

And yet, the time to wallow in our wounds is over. Yes, acknowledge them and do what is needed to heal them, but the time to wallow in them until our fingers are pruney is at an end. I feel it’s time to embrace the maverick aspects of Chiron and make lemonade out of the lemons we’ve got because we all have them.

This courageous attitude, in line with Aries, serves as one of the many guides for us to move from ‘what was’ to ‘what can come through us.’

Breaking bread together - Uranus in Gemini

One thing that befuddles me is how many folks say they want community, yet we see an impoverished level of communication. It seems that the more communication apps we create, the more we trip over ourselves. To paraphrase Marshall McLuhan, it seems like the medium is messing up our communication!

But community and communication have common roots - to make common. We have to meet in the middle ground between I and Thou. We have to transform the no man’s land into a connecting bridge between me and you.

In July, Uranus’ Gemini ingress, the maverick per excellence, will inaugurate innovative ways to reimagine the art of conversation within our communities. It may teach us to own up to our otherness, claim our outcast parts, and bring them to the community table to break bread together.

Add the transformative effects of Pluto in Aquarius, and we might just be ready to learn how to hold space for the other’s individuality and originality. I believe that Aquarius’ version of Namaste is: my eccentricity honors your eccentricity. My otherness acknowledges your otherness.

“Community has space to hold each one’s originality, personality and individuality as long as communicating, sharing and cooperating are part of the atmosphere. We call contribute to tending the space, equal parts of the whole.”

— Brian Clark

If we say we want community to satiate our thirst for belonging, then we must reimagine our communication skills and up our game on ‘generous curiosity’—curiosity that brings a beginner’s mindset, not one of false interest.

We can also take a page out from the heroines in the romantasy/monster romances, and build a relating bridge with the monstrous other - starting with the monster within.

Ease & Grace,
Vanessa Couto

The fear and the gift of romancing the Other