I love this article so much and it reminds me how important queerness is to not just sexuality but to our understanding of the whole world. My girlfriend [4, F, Octopus] spends most of her days sleeping in a cavern beneath a rock, emerging only at night to hunt for prey. I’d like us to spend more time together and am concerned she may be depressed. She says I’m not respecting her boundaries. AITA? Very rarely, at like 4am, my depression takes a break and my girlfriend has to deal with the hyperactive giggling creature I become. I just asked them if I could become a wiggly octopus, and there was a note of fear in their response: "Please don't become a wiggly octopus".

In 2010, the renowned nature filmmaker Craig Foster started free diving in the icy, brutal ocean waters off the Western Cape of South Africa. He was suffering from debilitating burnout and adrenal fatigue and was desperate for “radical change” — but unsure what shape it might come in. Then it arrived in the form of a speckled, eggplant-hued octopus. After their first encounter — both of them under the sea, she so expertly camouflaged beneath a pile of abandoned shells that even the surrounding fish were perplexed — he was so mesmerized that he resolved to visit her every day. The resulting Netflix original documentary, My Octopus Teacher, chronicles the yearlong relationship between man and cephalopod.