rapsrose

[rapsrose]

greta thunberg, liam cunningham, rima hassan, and everyone else on that ship, thank you, and i hope you succeed. i really hope you succeed. you know what you are risking, and i wish for you to come back safely, having done what you set out to do.

[rapsrose]

Not Yourself

You are not yourself—

Not in the truest reckoning of flesh and bone.

Beneath your tongue, her heartbeat thrums—

A dark pulse, like a thing unearthed, still twitching.

You shove the thought away,

Yet the ache—

That desperate ache—

Claws at your ribs and coils low,

Curling somewhere no logic can reach.

You are ready.

So is she.

But flesh has its failings—

A body’s refusal like a locked door behind your ribs.

Still, you barter silence tonight,

Praying she'll forget,

Or offer you mercy in forgetting.

To be taken upstairs.

To be undone.

To be gentled until breath and breath mingle—

Until you unwind,

Like thread teased loose by want.

But she remembers.

Oh, she remembers—

And still, she lets your hands wander:

Delicate trespass,

Tasting fire blooming beneath her skin.

You tremble—

Small and stilling beneath her touch,

Ears straining for danger that never comes.

She strokes your head,

As if calming some soft, breathless thing

That twitches beneath her—

Skittish, aching,

So eager to be devoured.

“Poor bunny,” she whispers—

A balm and a curse—

As your need blooms wild,

Rooted deep in her lap.

You ache to drown in this moment—

Her hand a tether through the trembling.

That dark pulse again—dripping like honeyed venom on your tongue.

She pulls you up—

Into a kiss soft as graveyard dust,

Afraid your fragile edges might splinter—

And break—

And unravel—

In the hush between her lips.

You are not yourself—

And maybe, tonight,

You bare your throat to the loss.

[rapsrose]

Book Review: The Lamb by Lucy Rose

The very first sentence of The Lamb sets the tone: Margo, five years old, finds human fingers in the bathtub—and casually shoves them back down the drain. She doesn’t question what happened to the "girl with the purple nail polish" or the "shy boy." She simply accepts it. That matter-of-fact horror is the core of what makes Lucy Rose’s debut so deeply unsettling and so incredibly effective.

This is a coming-of-age novel, but one wrapped in blood, survival, and distorted love. Margo lives in the woods with her Mama, Ruth. They lure in lost travelers, kill them, and eat them. That sounds like a horror premise—and it is—but what elevates The Lamb is Margo’s narration. Lucy Rose writes her with an uncanny accuracy I rarely see. Kids in first-person are often unbearable—either too mature to be believable or so naive it's grating. But Margo is different. She’s written with such care and restraint that she feels real: not polished, not overwritten, just true. You understand her, even when her world is warped beyond recognition.

The book explores love, family, and what it means to belong. It doesn’t offer easy answers or moral clarity. Instead, it asks: what happens when love and violence are taught together? What does it mean to come of age when you were raised to be a predator?

And the ending—without giving anything away—lands like a sucker punch. The last two chapters are easily the most brutal and emotionally difficult parts of the book, which is saying something in a story filled with murder and cannibalism. They don’t rely on gore or shock, but on the emotional wreckage of everything that came before.

I can't quite pinpoint what Lucy Rose did so right here—but she did. The prose is clean and sharp, the pacing tight, and the emotional weight is enormous without ever tipping into melodrama. This book wrecked me in the best way. It’s disturbing, brilliant, and unforgettable.

[rapsrose]

It really is wild that some politicians can stand there and say "yeah we're getting rid of a program that keeps quite literally millions of people alive specifically so we can cut taxes for people who are already richer than god" as if it's a normal political stance and not so cartoonishly evil I'm legit shocked perry the platypus doesn't break through the nearest wall the minute the words leave their mouth.

[rapsrose]

Hey you! Did your autistic transfem friend make a social blunder without realizing it? Then it's imperative that you never tell her about it so that she can try to learn and change the behavior, and instead slowly stop talking to her as much until she's trying to continue conversations after having still not heard from you for weeks, watching her spirits slowly break down and die as she realizes yet another person she trusted dislikes her without ever knowing why. It's imperative to do this so that you make it harder for her to seek relationships, by extension causing her to self-isolate even more than she already does. She's obviously not isolated enough since everyone loves autistic people, transfems, and especially autistic transfems. Bonus points if you've bore witness, in real time, to this exact same thing happening to her several times already, and seen how depressed and closed-off it makes her. Nothing could ever go wrong by doing this.

[rapsrose]

*very emblematic of disney sanitizing the fuck out of stitch.

[rapsrose]

the fucking budget bill of hell passed the house that removes HRT from medicare, general medicare spending cuts, student financial aid cuts, and oh yeah lets the teump regime ignore court orders even harder and lets for even harder executive overreach. they did this shit at motherfucking 2 am so people wouldn’t notice too

it passed house like i said but still needs to pass senate.

tell your senators to invoke byrd rule which is a goddamn real thing apparently

call your goddamn senators i swear to god

and if you’re in DC there’s a protest going on as we speak

go do your civic duty you piece of shit

[rapsrose]

a question to my followers because i want to know your thoughts.

feel free to reblog! again, i must emphasize the following:

the person leaving the comment is unknown to you;

they did NOT reblog your post; they just left a response in the comments;

they are being polite. not an asshole! not snarky!

[rapsrose]

worst relationship status to have w someone is “objectively they’re a fine person who is nice but i don’t enjoy their company as much as they enjoy mine”

[rapsrose]

Tender is the Flesh Book review

I just finished reading Tender is the Flesh, and I’m still turning it over in my mind. I can't exactly say if I liked it—but maybe that's the point. It's a novel built on discomfort, on horror that feels too plausible for comfort. It has solid, deliberate themes: the blurring of the line between human and animal, the loss of autonomy, and the fragility of what we consider humanity. Still, for all its thematic strength, the ending felt predictable—at least once I started paying closer attention to the second half of the book.

The relationship between Marcos, the protagonist, and Jasmine—a human "head" gifted to him—sits at the core of the novel’s commentary. That dynamic is deeply unsettling, but it also encapsulates so many of the book’s central ideas. Jasmine, stripped of speech and socialization, is effectively livestock. Marcos initially keeps her locked in a barn, washing her only once necessary. Later, he rapes her—there is no question of consent. She doesn’t even have the capacity to understand what’s happening, let alone resist it.

Once he discovers she’s pregnant, his treatment shifts, but only superficially. He begins to feed and shelter her, but still confines her, offering the bare minimum of care. She’s treated more like a beloved pet than a person—kept locked in a room, with a bucket for a toilet, food and water left out. It’s not kindness. It’s possession.

Earlier in the novel, there’s an incident involving a female butcher. Marcos has sex with—or possibly rapes—her in the processing area, next to a freshly slaughtered body. It's deliberately ambiguous, but disturbing regardless. That scene feels like the turning point, the moment he begins to slip from pretending at empathy into a more open acceptance of violence and dominance. After that, Jasmine becomes just another body to him, albeit one he feels entitled to treat with marginally more care.

What bothered me most is the pretense that Marcos was ever truly empathetic. Yes, he expresses guilt. Yes, he has moral qualms. But he's also a man who works in a human meat processing plant and justifies it with weak reasoning about needing to survive. His compartmentalization is impressive, but it doesn’t make him sympathetic. From the start, his motivations are self-centered. He’s not trying to change the world, or even resist it. He’s just trying to stay afloat within it. And that, in itself, is part of the horror.

Tender is the Flesh doesn’t want to give you a hero. It wants to show you how easily people can adapt to atrocity, how quickly humanity can be rationalized out of existence when survival—or convenience—is on the line. The scariest part isn’t the cannibalism. It’s how easy it is for Marcos to slide into a role that dehumanizes everyone around him, including himself.

Sexual violence

[rapsrose]

maybe the "people are using chatgpt for therapy/social connection" conversation should pivot a little less on the "using chatgpt damages your Immortal Soul forever and also makes you a lazy socially inept invalid" discussion point and more on the "nobody has anyone real to talk to who won't either accuse them of 'traumadumping' or charge them $200 an hour and then have them detained and medically abused the first time they express an uncomfortable sentiment" thing

[rapsrose]

[rapsrose]

Luigi Mangione could be getting the death penalty…

This man is innocent, his appearance and build doesn’t match that of the killers, the only “motive” he had was a convenient written confession showing that he supposedly viewed healthcare companies as “parasitic” and too expensive (which does somewhat contradict the actual killers actions) he had said note and the murder weapon conveniently on him while living his ordinary life, the killer held the gun in his right hand while Luigi is left-handed, Luigi and the Killer were potentially seen simultaneously, they wore slightly different coats.

The NYPD KNOW these are different people, they know the evidence is lacking, this isn’t a mistaken identity, it’s framing, they are trying to make themself appear to still be control by catching this man, humiliating him, killing him, when they know full well that the person they are prosecuting ISNT EVEN THE RIGHT GUY! This is an injustice! This is not a fair trial! This is downright tyranny!

[rapsrose]

when cishet guy friends tease me about being a lesbian and ask how i "know" i'm gay i like to go "well have YOU ever had sex with a man?" and when they say no (they always say no) i go "then how do you know you're not into men?" and like... what IS it with how insecure cishet men who are scared of gay thoughts always assume they would bottom. like they talk like that's the inevitable outcome if they were to ever get bicurious. today i hit these two guys at work with a "what, are you scared?" and they frantically described to the most detailed prophetic visions of the biggest burliest bear topping them to death. which could mean nothing

[rapsrose]

girl who desperately craves something but is also deathly afraid of reaching for it: *hasnt responded to you in a week*

[rapsrose]

Republicans follow a rapist fraud adulterer.

Of course the Pope annoys them.

[rapsrose]

you've probably heard it before, but half-assed is better than no-assed. don't let perfect stand in the way of done. a 0 on your report card is worse than a 50. do it scared. do it wrong. do it ugly, just do it. do not wait for the perfect day to have your little treat. make a day better with the treat. life is for the living. make outsider art