At one point in I Live in Your Basement!, Marco is working on a creative writing assignment where he has to write a story from a different point of view. He talks about how much fun it is to "try to get inside the mind" of another being. The big twist of the book is that this was all Keith's dream, meaning a majority of the book was told from a different point of view. In other words, the paper was clever foreshadowing to this reveal.
I Live In Your Basement is freakish and bizarre as it is, but when you ask yourself how long Keith and his mother have lived in the basement, how they got down there, and the need for "monsters" to hide away in such tiny, cramped spaces, it takes on a much, muchdifferent atmosphere.
The way Keith comes off in the initial parts of the story, combined with the fact that "monsters" do not dare emerge from the basement, that Keith very, very obviously wants to be friends with Marco, but it's treated as impossible lends a tragically horrific queer subtext to the book. Knowing the twist completely changes how the rest of the book comes off - Keith's stalker and uncanny behavior can be read as how he thinks Marco will see him and react to his attempt at friendship. He fears Marco would see him as a stalker, would interpret what Keith says as if it was the notes and messages he was getting in those dreams. Keith wants Marco to care for him, but he's afraid that knowing what he truly is will make Marco recoil in fear and loathing toward him. And then there's the paperweight dream - which could well represent Keith's fear that "coming out" will result in Marco murdering him. The ending of the book includes a tragic note of Keith very desperately wanting to be friends, but at the end he just tells the real Marco to just go back to sleep - probably aware that Marco will never like Keith the way Keith likes Marco.
