pteridomaniawriter

[pteridomaniawriter]

Le Désespéré

[pteridomaniawriter]

so like that tweet like "why was spamtenna written like under the hays code" got me thinking

thinking about the fact that TV shows as a format are inherently both very SFW and repressed and also heteronormative. I don't know if heteronormativity even exists in the deltarune universe but there's certainly at least a meta implication meant to invoke it from a viewer perspective surrounding tenna and we DO know sexual puritanism is a thing in the DR world and that toriel is especially a hardass about it, so tenna by his literal nature in the household he is and by his format is basically forced to repress his sense of love, sexuality and ability to say outrageous things (especially because of the parental locks). we see this change when he's immediately freed from this using swears and showing the music channel in chapter 4.

game shows are ESPECIALLY heteronormative, often with jokes about nagging wives and usually the only leniency of sex mentions is often at the detriment of women, which makes tenna's lack of mention for any of these aspects particularly standout, like a negative space of something where you'd expect to be there but there isn't. instead you get fun flourishes and flamboyant movements and a desperate desire to keep being watched.

I'm saying basically that TV is gay as hell and represses the fuck out of it, and you include the knowledge that being gay was a HUGE career ending accusation that was taken as seriously as death threats throughout the entire 20th century up until the 90s (and extending a bit into the 2000s) and it very much gives the vibe that tenna is supposed to invoke an older gay man coming into the new millennium unaware of how much the world is changing, allowing him to express himself and be himself, instead shoving it down in fear that he will no longer be relevant or watched or loved for it. you throw in that "4am shock therapy" joke and it's BLATANTLY clear yeah, this is an older repressed gay man who lived in a sexually puritan household who is afraid to fully express himself due to abandonment issues. ouch!

and then we got spamton.

despite all of the jokes about haha internalized homophobia spamton, actually, spamton has no shame about his sexuality. he still can't fully express it for a couple reasons, the first being in a game that's mostly SFW and it just wouldn't be relevant, with the bulk of what we got coming from the spamton sweepstakes (business loving businessman) but also, because now in his current form, he's a spam email. an inherently heteronormative format as well.

spam emails are literally a format that falsely feigns attraction and the allure of women for the sake of scamming people, often out of desperation. it's a veneer, an obfuscation of true intent for the sake of getting money. it's especially interesting cause again spamton doesn't hide what he is—into men—and he clearly DOESN'T WANT to be a spam email. it's literally him losing the ability to speak truly as himself and having to supplant it with raunchy and deceptive ads to convey what he wants. which you could argue mirrors societal pressures where even if you're honest with yourself about being queer, you still need to play by society's rules and use the words of greater heteronormative society to get what you want. it's like it's literally injecting itself in his brain despite that not being who he is. and we are supposed to get the sense that spamton is the way he is—rendered unable to speak normally like he wants to—from whatever eldritch force contacted him on the phone. throw this in with him being the key to the weird route with the thornring and it's literally like he's been forced into heteronormativity as an eldritch force (which, again, doesn't seem to exist in the deltarune universe!) and then we as a player in the weird route are literally forcing kris (nonbinary) and noelle (likely a lesbian) into heteronormative roles that make them miserable and destructive to try to defy the very cloth of the reality of deltarune and break the game down to its barest bones.

and then we gotta remember spamton wasn't always like that. if he can be upfront while still speaking in spam injected format, he was probably more upfront and blatant about it back during the big shot era. by his very nature, he could be! he's part of the internet, a new modern age where people can freely communicate without worrying about the censors killing them. he's also an advertisement, which famously even on television could get away with overtly sexual ads that normal programming couldn't, and then you start to realize the deeper implications of spamton offering to bring tenna into the new modern era and teach him the ropes.

it ain't just about technology. spamton literally represented on a metanarrative level, to tenna, someone able to be freely himself in his orientation and who literally haunted the halls of TV world with how he asserted himself. it's something unthinkable to tenna and yet technically allowed since ads can get away with that, right? and then you got spamton offering to teach him technology and how that represents freeing tenna from obsolescence and when you connect the two it's literally like spamton brought out a side of tenna that he deeply repressed and felt shameful about and could bring him up to speed that in the new era he doesn't have to hide it. and when he lost spamton he lost that assurance that he could exist in the modern era. he lost the ability to fully be himself. it's not until the fun gang free him from the dreemurr home that he can start to feel that again. it's literally the embodiment of outrageous, open advertising meeting the repression of cable television. spamton literally loved tenna so much he was going to let him be open and free, on a metatextual level, before being robbed of that ability by the very same eldritch forces that robbed his speech and forced him to speak in the words of others with desires he doesn't want.

yeah he totally fucked that TV

toby fox is a master of subtext cause what the fuck. normally with most writers I'd think this is unintentional and just a convenient coincidence but that's never the case with toby!!! he always loves adding 15 billion layers of subtext!!! what the fuck man. just rip out my heart and stomp on it

[pteridomaniawriter]

[pteridomaniawriter]

This is Jim Sinclair, at the time going by Toby. They are a neuter, asexual and intersex enban, and a seminal autism activist. They have been an educator on transneutral nonbinary identity, non-binary transition, the anti binarist position and intersex issues for decades. This is an interview with them from the 1980s, talking about their experience as a non-binary/genderqueer person at a time where the community was just coming together.

"In a 1997 introduction to the Intersex Society of North America, Sinclair wrote, "I remain openly and proudly neuter, both physically and socially."

Nonbinary people have always existed, and will always exist. Happy Trans History Week! 💛🤍💜🖤

[pteridomaniawriter]

I've finally played Deltarune to catch up and enjoy the chapters. Looking at the current online speculation I'm surprised no one is talking about the way toby is playing with animism and is questioning our capitalistic understanding of items and objects.

Like Susie has a deep emotional connection to these objects and sees them as a part of her life in an integral way.

Why must we treat objects the way we currently do? Why don't we value them as if the common person could see them as darkners?

Why does Tenna and Spamton have some good toxic yaoi vibes that make me feel things? Why is Tenna such a good fucking design with his tight shiny ass pants?

[pteridomaniawriter]

ADHD meds have been adjusted again, very fun. It really is the bane of my existence, I can't even blame my job because I work 12 hour shifts weekends.

I've been writing but it's all been poetry and I've been waiting for the contest responses (aka their rejections) to come back so I can have a few I can publish.

I have also been working on other personal projects, but those are very big and I do not trust my ADHD to not try and be like "you've gotten the dopamine for this, never work on it again and quit it." So no updates besides vaguery: one of them is a novel I've been working on the first draft for a year or so, the second is an online horror project that I've been working on the past 2 years (half that time is being spent learning GIMP), and my brain has come up with more novel ideas and more silly online horror.

Essay writing has been on the back burner because the ADHD crop rotation of interests has graced me with focus on a few fields.

[pteridomaniawriter]

People do not see masculinity as being as fluid and complex and nuanced as femininity and it’s annoying as hell. Because of patriarchy’s stranglehold on masculinity and radfem theory’s stranglehold on queer spaces, people really think with their whole heart that only femininity is subversive or experimental, or frankly, queer, and that masculinity is only a power grab and nothing more. Embarrassing!

[pteridomaniawriter]

ive never seen anyone capture the feeling of meeting older dykes as well as this

[pteridomaniawriter]

sample of kim sketches over the last few months

[pteridomaniawriter]

Yeah, a part of me finds the Internet rumor only reading kind of insulting to the author. Like it makes a coward out of Domenico. He motions to these very serious topics and instead of full facing us and being like 'youre apart of the problem, were all apart of the problem, this is real' it instead makes the work into a 'tehe Child abuse is bad, but that's the cooky internet for ya! Teehee! They just make some messed up stuff just for the shits and giggles!'. And he's not doing that. He's quite literally bludgeoning the whole internet culture.

tbh the interpretation of 3d workers island being about rumors/internet horror tales or even the idea that it supports that interpretation and is open ended in that sense (that both the child abuse and rumor readings are just as plausible as each other) really falls flat for me for just the fact that plawler is all throughout the story to very openly have a dismissive attitude toward kids.

like This Is Just a Fact. one of the forum conversations has her calling amber lazy but this is blatantly incorrect, amber is the Only child we see doing chores. even beyond that in that one conversation about the parent helping their kid w their school project about islands plawler Automatically assumes the parent is spoiling their kid and kind of condescendingly tells the parent to not do the whole thing for them. like. hell. plawlers number 1 hater is an internet user named goodkid who is Also A Child (one thats looked down by the adults in their life even!)

plawler pretty undeniably has Weird ideas about parenthood and children that are just ignored by interpreting that all of the amber stuff is just kids scaring other kids on the internet. at least in my eyes it kind of takes that same dismissive tone toward children plawler has, w her even being the one to in-universe propose this idea. like "oh its about how ppl just lie on the internet! thats it".

earlier i saw someone saying that even if it was all fake it still means a lot for the people that see themselves in amber, and i feel that the rumor reading just hand waves that away, it ignores that 3dwi.scr Does say stuff about child abuse. it is In Fact, Explicitly, not only mentioned but talked about at length. it ignores stuff from the text in a way that the child abuse reading doesnt.

if u Do Believe this is a tale about being a bystander to child abuse, that the screensaver is the immortalization of someone's pain within fiction for all to see but not do anything about, it all fits, theres not a part you have to dismiss or ignore.

[pteridomaniawriter]

100 Dialogue Tags You Can Use Instead of “Said”

For the writers struggling to rid themselves of the classic ‘said’. Some are repeated in different categories since they fit multiple ones (but those are counted once so it adds up to 100 new words). 

1. Neutral Tags 

Straightforward and unobtrusive dialogue tags: 

Added, Replied, Stated, Remarked, Responded, Observed, Acknowledged, Commented, Noted, Voiced, Expressed, Shared, Answered, Mentioned, Declared.

2. Questioning Tags 

Curious, interrogative dialogue tags:

Asked, Queried, Wondered, Probed, Inquired, Requested, Pondered, Demanded, Challenged, Interjected, Investigated, Countered, Snapped, Pleaded, Insisted.

3. Emotive Tags 

Emotional dialogue tags:

Exclaimed, Shouted, Sobbed, Whispered, Cried, Hissed, Gasped, Laughed, Screamed, Stammered, Wailed, Murmured, Snarled, Choked, Barked.

4. Descriptive Tags 

Insightful, tonal dialogue tags: 

Muttered, Mumbled, Yelled, Uttered, Roared, Bellowed, Drawled, Spoke, Shrieked, Boomed, Snapped, Groaned, Rasped, Purred, Croaked.

5. Action-Oriented Tags 

Movement-based dialogue tags: 

Announced, Admitted, Interrupted, Joked, Suggested, Offered, Explained, Repeated, Advised, Warned, Agreed, Confirmed, Ordered, Reassured, Stated.

6. Conflict Tags 

Argumentative, defiant dialogue tags:

Argued, Snapped, Retorted, Rebuked, Disputed, Objected, Contested, Barked, Protested, Countered, Growled, Scoffed, Sneered, Challenged, Huffed.

7. Agreement Tags 

Understanding, compliant dialogue tags: 

Agreed, Assented, Nodded, Confirmed, Replied, Conceded, Acknowledged, Accepted, Affirmed, Yielded, Supported, Echoed, Consented, Promised, Concurred.

8. Disagreement Tags 

Resistant, defiant dialogue tags: 

Denied, Disagreed, Refused, Argued, Contradicted, Insisted, Protested, Objected, Rejected, Declined, Countered, Challenged, Snubbed, Dismissed, Rebuked.

9. Confused Tags 

Hesitant, uncertain dialogue tags:

Stammered, Hesitated, Fumbled, Babbled, Mumbled, Faltered, Stumbled, Wondered, Pondered, Stuttered, Blurted, Doubted, Confessed, Vacillated.

10. Surprise Tags

Shock-inducing dialogue tags:

Gasped, Stunned, Exclaimed, Blurted, Wondered, Staggered, Marvelled, Breathed, Recoiled, Jumped, Yelped, Shrieked, Stammered.

Note: everyone is entitled to their own opinion. No I am NOT telling people to abandon said and use these. Yes I understand that said is often good enough, but sometimes you WANT to draw attention to how the character is speaking. If you think adding an action/movement to your dialogue is 'good enough' hate to break it to you but that ruins immersion much more than a casual 'mumbled'. And for the last time: this is just a resource list, CALM DOWN. Hope that covers all the annoyingly redundant replies :)

Looking For More Writing Tips And Tricks? 

Check out the rest of Quillology with Haya; a blog dedicated to writing and publishing tips for authors!

Instagram Tiktok

[pteridomaniawriter]

I am working on writing, but it is my creative projects

.... I'm sorry to say but the ADHD flow has to be worked with

[pteridomaniawriter]

the way disco elysium plays with and ultimately shatters the concept of "camaraderie" in the police and the military truly is So. Good.

it introduces you to kim who is this ideal of the Brother in Arms - you meet him and you know. he'd lay it all down for you.

you then proceed to realize this is a kim thing, not a cop thing, despite the skill that informs you about it being The Cop Camaraderie skill

the rest of the cops are not just unhelpful, they're cruel. they're a boys' club of toxic masculinity, homophobia and joking about how they abuse their power, like when jean stole mustard from a homeless man. if harry begs them for help, the greatest kindness the operator can do for him is pretend he didn't hear and cut the connection to save harry's pride. the more you put into this skill, the more the rancid underbelly of policing and policemen as individuals in this system comes to light.

and that's before we get into the plot-relevant stuff, how martinaise was abandoned by jean and co because jean was too damn busy trying to make a point to harry than do his fucking job.

then there's the bond between the paramilitary squad. unlike the cops, they're tight, a family to each other, and it makes them completely immune to reason the moment the Head of their hierarchy gets murdered. and this head of theirs, the most rational, most charismatic of them all, their leader, still was a monster who, for His Men and their Morale, saw kidnapping some poor girl and offering her like a human sacrifice to the pit of animals that was his squadron as a Rational course of action.

maybe there's love there, in a way, but it's the kind of love that wholly depends on seeing your circle as the only people deserving of life, and the rest of the world as insects.

and i think abt how so many other stories that try to be cop or military critical still fall into that trap of believing that the people in these environs are a Family doing their Best, that they got each others back and thats all that they need to get through this!(whatever plot event is happening)

and not that its like. a cesspool of keeping each other in Check or maintaining that Family only by Othering the rest of the world

[pteridomaniawriter]

Magic in Ancient Greece: An Introduction

I have seen some people claim that magic or witchcraft did not exist in Ancient Greece. This is not the case. So, I thought I'd take the opportunity to introduce you all to the strange and wonderful world of Ancient Greek magic!

First, what do we mean by "magic"? Radcliffe Edmonds, one of the leading scholars on Ancient Greek magic, defines "magic" as "non-normative ritual behavior." In short, what makes something magic, and not just normal religion, is that people in a given culture think it's weird. The word "magic" itself refers to the magi, Zoroastrian priests — the Ancient Greeks thought they did magic because to them, Zoroastrianism was foreign and weird. They also thought that Ancient Egyptians could do magic for the same reason — what the Greeks thought was spooky magic was just normal religion in Egypt. Within their own culture, magic was basically heteropraxic religion. Magic was not considered hubristic, at least not inherently.

There are multiple Ancient Greek words that refer to magic. The word μάγος, magos, itself means "magician" or "charlatan." There's also γοητεία, goetia, usually translated as "sorcery." The word most often translated as "witchcraft" is φαρμακεία, pharmakeia, the use of drugs or herbs to transform or influence people. This is what Medea and Circe do.

One of our best sources on Ancient Greek magic is the Greek Magical Papyri, or PGM, a set of magical texts from Hellenistic Egypt. When I first learned about it, I thought it was too good to be true, but here it is: uncorrupted ancient pagan magic! Essentially, the PGM is one of the oldest known grimoires, and the ancestor of the entire Western magical tradition. The papyri contain spells and rituals for almost every purpose: curses, love spells, divination, dream oracles, summoning daimones, necromancy, even full mystical rites. Most of them include invocations to various gods, which are heavily syncretic. Helios/Apollo (treated interchangeably) is invoked the most often. Aphrodite appears pretty often, too. Hekate-Artemis-Selene-Persephone (conflated with a whole bunch of other chthonic goddesses, including Ereshkigal) has her own set of spells. You'll even find the names of Egyptian gods and Hebrew angels in there.

One of the most common features in PGM spells is voces magicae or barbarous names, nonsense words that are supposed to be the secret names of the gods, which give you the authority to call them up. They act almost like a written form of glossolalia. Most are supposed to be spoken or chanted aloud. Some sound like actual names, or are well-known magical epithets like ABRASAX. Some are just strings of Greek vowels. Some of them are palindromic; there's lots of spells that use the "abracadabra" disappearing-letter-triangle format. There's also charakteres, apparently-meaningless magical symbols, the distant ancestor of modern sigils.

Another major source for Ancient Greek magic are defixiones or katadesmoi, curse tablets. They're little lead leafs called lamellae, which are inscribed with curses and then deposited in wells, graves, and other chthonic places. Thousands of them have been found.

Here's the text of a curse tablet that invokes Hekate and Hermes Kthonios (copied from Curse Tablets and Binding Spells from the Ancient World by John G. Gager):

Hermes Khthonios and Hekate Khthonia Let Pherenikos be bound before Hermes Khthonios and Hekate Khthonia. I bind Pherenikos’ [girl] Galene to Hermes Khthonios and to Hekate Khthonia I bind [her]. And just as this lead is worthless and cold, so let that man and his property be worthless and cold, and those who are with him who have spoken and counseled concerning me. Let Thersilochos, Oinophilos, Philotios, and any other supporter of Pherenikos be bound before Hermes Khthonios and Hekate Khthonia. Also Pherenikos’ soul and mind and tongue and plans and the things that he is doing and the things that he is planning concerning me. May everything be contrary for him and for those counseling and acting with…

Another curse tablet, which invokes Hekate to punish thieves, includes a drawing of her and charakteres. This is how she's depicted:

From Curse Tablets and Binding Spells in the Ancient World by John G. Gager

It's supposed to be a woman with three heads and six raised arms, but to me it looks like Cthulhu, which is honestly appropriate.

There was a very fine line between love spells and curses in Ancient Greece. Some love spells in the PGM call upon the spirits of the dead and chthonic gods to torture a poor girl until she submits to the magician. Just as many defixiones attempt to forcefully bind a lover. But there's another, gentler kind of love spell described by Theocritus in Idylls, in which a witch named Simaetha invokes the Moon and Hekate and uses an iynx wheel to make a man love her.

If you want to know how to apply all of this in modern practice, I'm still working that one out. I've found the PGM very hard to adapt, because a lot of its requirements are dangerous or impractical. Many of its spells require gross ingredients worthy of the Scottish play, or plants that scholars can't identify, or procedures that I don't plan on attempting. And if you haven't noticed by now, most of them fly in the face of modern magical ethics. (Don't let anyone tell you that the gods will punish you for doing baneful magic, because that's clearly bullshit.) On the other hand, Crowley adapted his Bornless Ritual almost word-for-word from PGM V. 96—172. So far, the best resource I've found on modernizing Ancient Greek magic is The Hekataeon by Jack Grayle. Its material is clearly historically-inspired, but still doable, and spiritually relevant. I really recommend getting it if you have the means, especially if you have an interest in Hekate specifically. I'm happy to have it as a model for how to adapt ancient magic for myself in the future. To me, it strikes the perfect balance between historically-informed and witchy, which is right where I want to be.

If you can't access that one, here's some other books I recommend:

Drawing Down the Moon: Magic in the Ancient Greco-Roman World by Radcliffe G. Edmonds III: An introduction to Ancient Greek magic, both scholarly and accessible. It covers the definitions and contexts of magic, curses, love spells, divination, theurgy, philosophy, basically everything you need to know.

The Greek Magical Papyri in Translation by Hans Dieter Betz: The definitive English edition of the PGM. A must if you plan to study ancient magic in-depth, especially as a practitioner.

Curse Tablets and Binding Spells in the Ancient World by John G. Gager: An English edition of the texts of many curse tablets.

Magic, Witchcraft, and Ghosts in the Greek and Roman Worlds by Daniel Ogden: a sourcebook of ancient literature concerning magic.

The Golden Ass by Apuleius: A Roman novel about a man who is turned into a donkey by a witch. A very entertaining story, also our source for "Cupid and Psyche" and one of the best sources on the Mysteries of Isis that we have.

Ancient Magic: A Practitioners Guide to the Supernatural in Ancient Greece and Rome by Philip Matyszak: A simple and straightforward introduction to Ancient Greek magic, less scholarly but very easy to follow and directed at practitioners.

[pteridomaniawriter]

I'll never forget first watching this and immediately experiencing an intense negative reaction. I was in tears over Petscop 11 and at the time I didn't completely grasp why. I had to really think about why this made me so emotional.

Care A, B, and NLM are one character at different stages of trauma. Once Care A becomes Care B, or is changed by whatever horrors she went through, she can never return to who she was before. Eventually, she may slip into NLM (nobody loves me). She can never go back to A, but she can go back to B. She may even remain as NLM. She can still be saved, and is worth saving.

Change is terrifying, especially when it's sudden and very negative. Especially for a child. It's a fact that you don't really get to return to the carefree innocence of before once you've gone through something so awful.

But what I love about Petscop is the message that even if you're different now, even if you'll never be the same, there will always be a place for you. You will always have people that love and support you. And you can still reclaim your happiness and heal from your trauma in spite of how it shaped and changed you. It means a LOT to someone like me.

[pteridomaniawriter]

she did say she always wanted a cat… so she can have flesh kitty :)

[pteridomaniawriter]

2025 Book Review #10 – meat4meat (ed. Gray Levesque)

This is I think the first book I have ever read before it was published – as of posting the crowdfunding campaign is still ongoing! - so it’s a fun novelty to be able to say that I received an early copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. The book itself is also – well okay no, ‘fun’ is probably not actually the correct word, but it’s a body horror collection that succeeded at making me physically queasy at several points so it’s an unqualified artistic success in at least one dimension.

meat4meat is a short story horror anthology – specifically body horror, extra specifically body horror as written by trans and disabled authors (to quote the marketing copy, ‘by those who know it best’) – properly speaking it is an illustrated anthology, but that art wasn’t ready for inclusion in the copy I read, so I’ll stick to talking about the writing. Within the very vague remit the book sets out for itself, there’s no real unifying theme or much of a throughline between the eighteen stories included. They’re all very much short stories – I don’t think any were over twenty pages? - and flipping between them is a study in serial whiplash. Writing style, subject matter, thematic concerns and perspectives, even just conceptions of what ‘body horror’ means all vary drastically from story to story.

To be clear, I consider this a huge positive – it’s an anthology that really lives up to the potential of the medium, and makes an honest effort of capturing the diversity of perspective that’s pretty clearly part of the artistic project here. It also just keeps the reading experience from ever dragging or getting monotonous – if I do not vibe with one author (as is inevitable with these things), there’s a dozen and change others with entirely different takes on the subject. Even if it is somewhat grating to have one story use different paragraph breaks and spacing from the next.

I’m on record as often being pretty annoyed with how ‘horror’ as a genre label is used in books these days – which is to say how often it ends up being life-affirming tales of togetherness and found family but cast from the universal monsters catalogue – so for the sake of consistency I should really praise meat for really living up to the genre label. Even the stories happily framed from the perspective of something monstrously inhuman and happy about it are more than fucked up enough to still be compelling reading.

I’m also very much on record as thinkingthat horror is far better suited to short stories than novels; the extra length of which seems to bring a pressure towards explaining things and giving neat, validating endings on the one hand and on dragging out the tension past what the reveal can sustain on the other. This book’s an excellent case study of that – most of the stories are bare handfuls of scenes, hitting a particular beat or bit of imagery with as much force as they can; very nearly all of them can be summed up as ‘something really fucked up happens to someone’. Triumphantly happy and reassuring endings are thin on the ground, extended denouncements nonexistent. If anything, there are a couple stories that probably could have used a bit more space to breathe – ending up feeling more like imagery without the connective tissue or context to really make it land – but that’s just the natural tradeoff of the format forcing focus and writing economy.

Speaking of imagery – the book advertises itself as a body horror anthology, and it is not lying. There are several stories I would really recommend skipping if you have a weak stomach (which is, in this context, high praise). There’s also several stories that do take a more symbolic or oblique tack when discussing the ruin and gore they make of the human body (a couple of them are some of my favourites in the whole book), but I’d be lying if I didn’t say that the most memorable by far are the gleefully, explicitly vulgar and carnal ones. Here meant in the most literal sense of being fixated on the mess and meat of your body, the way parts of you can swell and suppurate and rot and burst before your eyes (though there are one or two that leave you acutely aware the only difference between horror and niche erotica is framing and perspective).

The anthology is themed around trans and disabled authors, and it’s really very interesting how different stories lean into that. Some are very literally and directly about e.g. the misery and desperate hope of looking for a doctor who can help you until you’re willing to look past every red flag from one who says they will, others are far more symbolic or metaphorical (or else simply aren’t stories I would have though to view through that lens if they were in any other book). There is little (though not no) body horror in the sense of shocking and gory violence or something directly inflicted upon you by an obvious outside force. Instead it’s the horror of the body being usurped or broken from within, horrifying parasitism, some invisible injury or lack making it impossible to do what is expected of you, or a terrifying transformation that’s only dimly understood as it’s lived through that predominate. There are, unsurprisingly, quite a few stories that are in one way or another about the horror of pregnancy, of some disease or failing leaving you so disgusting as to be exiled from conventional society, or both.

While there isn’t much of a unifying subject or throughline between all the stories in the book, the organization and ordering of them actually does a very good job highlighting similarities between specific pairs or small sets of them. One story that is in some sense about or preoccupied with pregnancy or disfigurement or parasitism or romantic connection will be followed by another with an entirely different setting, plot and subject matter which is still very interested in the same theme. It works very well to give the book a sense of cohesion and structure, and makes some of the stories feel like much more than the sum of their parts.

This is definitely a book for a very specific audience – the kind who will read a first story that starts with strange pupating growths breaking across the narrators chest being described in careful and loving detail, and happily power through as it mostly just escalates from there. But for that audience, I absolutely recommend giving this a try.

In which case, the crowdfunding campaign is still active until March 11th – you can back it here.