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Anarchist Trans Witch
I grew by the woods in a rural village where they tell stories of witches and magic. I drowned myself in the lore of these places. The earths power of mystery. And the feminine as a weapon, not to conquer and own. But to consume and be consumed. To share with everyone regardless.
I grew up to see that they were not things people believed I should be. Being ascriped an future from birth. That in crossing this fate only lies decieption and evil. And then I learned of the possibility, the truth late. I could only imagine what this little girl could've done if only she had known earlier. How much pain would've been spared.
Margerat Killjoy is one of the greatest fiction writers. The Sapling Cage is her most approachable work todate.
I do not like fantasy in the hands of most writers. Too often have I read books that were too long and in love with power/hierarchy. I know it's a limited viewing of the space and that I just havent found the novels for me yet. Killjoy has proven that there is a story for me in there. Except she has proven that she made THE story for my inner child.
This is not a novel I could've wanted as a child, because I did not have the tools to concieve of it. Fiction has the possibility to create something revolutionary, something no one but the author is able to dream of. Margaret Killjoy made a loving story in a painful fantastical reality. Her imagination wills you into feeling the hurt of incomprehensible things. It wills you to c a r e
She gave me a place where I was told to never belong. And she made it kind.
For the past few years it's become a tradition for me to start out the year with this novel. After the Revolution is a deeply endulging genre novel. In a genre I despise. It's difficult for me to read any fiction novel about war, even less so if it's speculative fiction AND adventure. I turned to this novel regardless of my preconception because I enjoy Robert Evan's voice.
After the Revolution is not revolutionary, nor is it a masterpiece. I adore it for one simple reason that will become clear.
After the Revolution cares about war unlike most people do. It almost makes war fun. It's combat seems joyous, because guns will give you exactly that feeling. The power, excitement and adrenaline. There is nothing that can even come close. Even all the drugs that are consumed on page, will make you feel the difference to actual, real fighting. And then Evans will detail the aftermath of the violence you so thouroughly enjoyed. Roland is the key to follow. His entire being exists in this ambivilance. He cares about people, he knows how to fight, he is addicted to it. Roland tries to be better, but even a superhuman cannot control the chemistry in your brain. Do you get it yet?Nothing has inspired Evan's speculation of another US-civil war like the Syrian Civil-War. It's everywhere in this book. The Heavenly Kingdom is the ISIS/Daesh-Clone. We have the old Regime still clinging on to something. A free and liberated Texas with the SDF. And then you also have Rolling Fuck.Rolling Fuck is what After the Revolution is build around. A traveling city of superhuman freaks, addicts, lovers and anarchists. It's the most indulging Part of the novel. And surprisingly I am into it. How heavinly an anarchist commune of freaks sounds, that can also beat up an army with 10% of the headcount. Of freaks that can change their appearance on a dime. Modificate their bodies how they want.But it is not why I return to this book every year. If you have not understood why, the novel has no qualms about spelling it out for you. Fighting Fascism is necessary. But we must never ever forget that they are also humans. We must not loose ourselves in the violence, no matter how justified, it will make us loose our humanity.
After the Revolution answers the question of how to make a Revolution sound fun in the 21st century. But it also wants us to be better doing it. Remember that all this violence is still human.
Jennifer Clements prose will find your heart and take deadly aim. and i am unsure if it's saying something complex about guns, violence, gender, ableism and class. Clements can weave together leitmotifs in brilliant ways to make a bleak world seem true, but i am not of the usa-working class to question how much truth her story covers. while there's alluring to the absolute inhumane condition poverty in the usa causes and how it's classist healthcare together with the unrelenting racist core of life can make a whole culture obsess over weapons to use for solution. ultimately it reads a bit superficial to me.
gun love is amazing and rightfully loved! Pearls story captures childhood in poverty so well. while you know it's not good or okay, if there is no other way – there is always love of community to relish in. even when the trailer park becomes a fucked up crime scene, Clements won't let you forget about the love.
kathleen hanna's authobiography is just as good as grown feminists expect it to be. her prose is captivating in your gut. just screams it the fuck out. she takes grace to her past and embraces it in all it's difficulty. white guilt/savorism and all.
most important of all, she takes her time trying to demythologize herself and her part in feminist history. and she gives credit where it's due.
yet kathleen hanna remains an idea to my reality. she exists and lives! but i probably wont get to know her. it's what she had to say that remains with me. the struggle, honesty, believe in going out and doing the fucking work and having fun doing it.
a literary horror masterwork. alison rumfitt took one look at the contemporary horror fiction landscape and said, i'm gonna go the moon with this shit. except she doesn't. rumfitt found a place by writing exceptional vile scenes made for dissecting it's layers of themes. it is being overshadowed by what readers want to read into it. as correct as their readings might be, brainwyrms can walk between ambiguity and certainty. what carries it to such length is it's commitment to reality and portraying it honestly in the best way artists do.
fake it by lily seabrooke is exactly what it wants to be, optimistic romance indulgence. i have a hard time describing genre fiction in a way that does not sound reductive or negative. because i adore genre fiction, at least in genres i like, in others they scare me away. fake it makes a review hard because it's confidently genre fiction, and i won't get you to care about this book if you hadn't already considered it and here i am desperately organizing thoughts about it's themes without misrepresenting it.
i adored my time with it, because it gave me something utterly unique in sapphic romance. a trans story that is oozing in positivity. seabrooke might have said she does not consider this a trans story, but i disagree wholeheartedly. fake it does everything exactly like a good trans story often does. the risk taking, radical change, emotional toll and most importantly not feeling good enough. all this does not make it unique oh no; seabrooke said fuck it, i'll make it so optimistic, emotional intelligent and loving story i can, because trans love is exactly this magical!
that is what makes fake it such a lovely time for a lil tranny like me. i'm no expert on trans fiction, but i try as much of it as i can. i love the brutally honest prose trans authors have in often hard to read novels like stone butch blues or nevada. lily seabrooke took all the truth those carry and made it in a genre that was greatly missing it.
Marc-Uwe Klings Krimi ‘Views' war wohl überraschend für viele, wie sonst wird es vermarktet als ‘Ein ganz anderer Kling'. Dabei hatte ich nach Qualityland schon das Gefühl er würde sich langsam von seiner Komedie weiterbewegen und mehr sich auf seine Gesellschaftskritik fokusieren. Ein Krimi ist nach Spekulativen Science Fiction nur ein weiteres Genre dem sich Kling widmet.
Wäre dieser Roman nicht von einem Autor dessen Sichtweise ich bereits ein klein wenig kenne würde ich ihn nie anrühren. Als Person am Rande der Gesellschaft, mit Hintergrund in ‘Extremismus' bzw. ‘Accelerationism' Forschung in Online Kulturen, ist die Vermarktung und Anspielung auf was wir ‘Rage-Bait', also ‘Wutköder' nennen, ist dies abstossend. Und bis zum letzten Drittel war ich mir nicht sicher ob ich es für gerechtfertigt halte.
‘Views' ist eine Zeitgenössische Einschätzung der Deutschen. Sie ist keineswegs übertrieben, da vieles davon schon stattgefunden hat. Dabei fokusiert Kling sich nicht auf die Graussamkeit oder der sexualisierten Gewalt, eine wahre Einzigartigkeit in diesem Genre. Dabei erinnert alles andere an Stieg Larsson.
Die KI, welche die Videos generiert ist zwar etwas Wunschdenken von Tech-PR, aber generell zeigt es ein gutes Bild wie diese KI's eingesetzt werden und werden würden. Dabei sind wir längst an dem Punkt vorbei an dem sich etwas verändern liesse, denn mit den KI-Gesetzen und Chatcontrol im Nacken bleibt die Beschleunigung von Faschismus bestehen. Ich hoffe ein linker Blick wie es Kling auf Technologie hat, führt zum besseren Verständniss der Dynamiken die sich aufzeigen. Wie es der letzte Satz besagt, der Hass ist echt. Die Folgen von Faschismus sind es immer. Auch das Versagen der Behörden wird angesprochen, allerdings bleibt das Bild der guten einzelnen Polizist*in. Im Genre leider normal und für den Roman auch ein zu grossen Thema um es näher zu behandeln. Vielleicht ist Kling auch der Falsche Autor dafür. Was mit aber fehlt sind die Verbindungen zwischen den Rechten Netzwerken und der Polizei/BKA.
Wird der Roman zu einem besseren Verständniss von den drohenden Gefahren von Social-Media führen? Nein, aber diejenigen unter uns die eh schon dieser Arbeit machen haben ein Unterhaltungsmedium auf das wir hinweissen können um Menschen diese Konzepte näher zu bringen.
Leitz is an incredible author. Her debut shocked me into crying for an hour. Her sophomore novel made me an advocate for her work. She writes a dire and (not but) hopeful lovestory in girl flesh. Leitz creates unwelcome scenes. Each sentence viciously cutting out detail you dont want to be a witness too. It's main pair are loveable struggling assholes to anyone that isn't them. They're in an impossible position and yet they find the ability to love and trust. It's a theme that has been central to Leitz's whole body of work so far.
Girl Flesh is a testament to the horror of true love. Because loving isnt easy. It requires bloody sacrafice.
I can't tell you if it's going to be worth it to you. Girl Flesh is a hard read. One you might find repulsive. I did. I hated reading through many of the chapters. This book stands out from the depths of shit that plague horror fiction. Leitz is an author first, one that happens to be versed in genre fiction. Her second published story went hard. I implore anyone daring to engross themselves into Leitz's outstanding prose. It will leave you haunted for a better, loving world
this is a book about the day after. about all the pain they caused and the wounds that we try our best to sew up. it is about the effect of communal love.
and god how desperate i am for these stories. the revolutionary aspect of it all. jakobson coming of age romance is kind and funny. it's for us survivors in the exact way we don't get to see all to often. old enough isn't about our abuse, it's not about victimhood.
living on the edge of society made me very aware about what happens there. my attention to public discourse and political developments with a focus on online spaces has been invaluable and deeply traumatizing.
this is a novella about the necessary work of moderation and evilness that is capitalism. with no support is the work being sold to the lowest bidder. dont underestimate the truth hiding in this sensationalist(compliment) story. bervoets understood the mechanics of accelerationism on social media and how easy it is for us to find comfort in fantasms.
priya guns debut is smart, funny and fucking amazing. she writes smoothly about gig economy, exploitation of poc, complicity of the middle class, white guilt and the very weird shit white people say. guns prose is succint, like a knife to your throat. read it if you too want to go squat in abandoned buildings and are the only one who takes the damn trash outside.
Benno Gammerl's Einstiegswerk in die Queere Geschichte Deutschlands ist genau was es verspricht. Eine grobe und dennoch aufschlussreiche Erzählung der vielen Verschiedenen Facetten der queeren Geschichte, mit hervorragender Literaturliste sollte es zum Basiswerk in jeden Deutschen Geschichtsunterricht werden.
by chance did i come upon the translation of isabella lorusso's “fighting women” its not a deep exploration into the history of one specific thing and that makes it so compelling. lorusso's interviews read smoothly and goodness do i appreciate her for making sure these stories would be written down. most of the women who were interviewed died before the book was published. these women were fighting long before this new kind of world started and did so more modern than many are now. its the difference between them that brings this collection together. for now its unto us to be a new kind of fighting women.
michelle zauner is a gifted artist in composition, lyric and prose. i should not have doubted for a second that this book was as good as people had been talking about. but i am always wary of memoirs, as their emotional connection is often tied to your personal affection of its writer. that is to say i love zauner's band japanese breakfast. but this book stands on its own even better. i do not think me loving her work made this one better. instead she wrote this the same way she did with her music. taking the idea to its natural destination. and my goodness does she write as if its easy. what a beautiful memoir.
this book doesnt stand on its own at all. however if you are craving more twin peaks, this is it. more so than other additional works. the writing is at times clunky but when this novel hits it will crush you under its weight. twin peaks remains a humanist work and this is no different. only this time written in the voice of the teen that lived it.
there are elements in this story that i loved, especially its place in time, the start of relationships. but its too short to get a feeling for the deterioration thats so central for its idea.
the depiction of hard bdsm stuff makes me uneasy. so much of it is how people not in the space believe it exists. with the twist being that its the sub who goes too far...i wont deny that something can be had from this story. but for now i cant look past the awkward delivery.
after 3 months, i finally got to the end of a book i wont ever forget. every new page made me cry. every page made me scream out loud in awe of qiu miaojin prose. i took so long as there is no way i could process it otherwise. dont give up on it if you find it harder to read.
notes of a crocodile is almost 30 years old. it took 20 to get translated and thats a shame. its a classic in every way except for its place in the literary canon.
Rober Evans is now mostly know for his various podcasts about bad people in history or his work in conflict journalism. Before he became a household name in that he wrote this weird historical account of the importance that drugs, sex and bad behavior had and continue to have on human life. To do this he tries to recreate a bunch of old drug receiptes. From smoking Tabocco as native americans have, brewing a beer from human spit or fasting for several days to trip like greek philosophers would've. Its mostly gonzo journalism with a bit of historical summary and speculation (in which case he makes it clear that he is doing so). Evans has a redneck style of humor (no not the racist, bigoted style that you think of.) that makes the exploration of weirdness and in many cases the ugly parts of history palletable.