#FROMM SPACE

[holographic-mars]

Mars persona reveal mars persona

[unforgivable-thatswhatiam]

The (Ineffable) Art of Loving

The secret of GO lies in the pure beauty and profound depth of Crowley and Aziraphale’s relationship. Theirs is one of the most moving love stories I’ve ever encountered in fiction—without a doubt.

They weren’t made to love each other. And yet, they discover that they are.

From the day 1, they struggle against their feelings — the attraction, the fascination, the longing. But despite five millennia of efforts before the Arrangement began, they can’t stay apart.

So, they make a choice. Perhaps not fully realising it was love at the time — but still, they chose each other.

“Love isn't something natural. Rather it requires discipline, concentration, patience, faith, and the overcoming of narcissism. It isn't a feeling, it is a practice.”

I think these words perfectly describe what Crowley and Aziraphale share. And I hope that Erich Fromm wouldn't mind if I'll quote his The Art of Loving to explore more deeply the nature of the bond that binds the Ineffable Couple, their real love.

First, they show concentration on the other

They have patience - and respect for the other's needs

They have faith in the other - put their lives in the other's hands

There isn't in them - or I haven't noticed - any narcissism to overcome.

They aren't the typical dysfunctional fictional couple that audiences are trained to romanticise. They're not some Ross&Rachel or Buffy&Spike. Their relationship is anything but dysfunctional.

Aziraphale and Crowley don't hurt each other out of whim or caprices or the tropes of longing streched thin by time and space, they hurt each other because they love too much: I can't give you holy water, it'll destroy you completely; you are so clever, but also so stupid for still believing God might do something for the humans, but She ignores all of us; and so on with other painful truths spoken when love has nowhere safe to land.

To love someone whose very nature is meant to oppose yours — who was literally made to be your enemy and has the precise office to cancel you out — as an angel and a demon, should be impossible. It's difficult even for us, ordinary humans with our different natures! It seems unthinkable for them. And yet... their bond is ineffable.

Across the centuries, we see them dance together and get their own rhythm, softening the edges. They adapt, adjust, and grow — in the words of Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, not only gazing at each other, but looking together in the same direction too.

And they choose. Again and again, they choose.

“Love is a decision, it is a judgment, it is a promise. If love were only a feeling, there would be no basis for the promise to love each other forever. A feeling comes and it may go. How can I judge that it will stay forever, when my act does not involve judgment and decision?”

“Love is not primarily a relationship to a specific person; it is an attitude, an orientation of character which determines the relatedness of a person to the world as a whole, not toward one “object” of love.”

“If I truly love one person I love all persons, I love the world, I love life. If I can say to somebody else, "I love you," I must be able to say, "I love in you everybody, I love through you the world, I love in you also myself.”

They love each other, and they love humanity too, even if it puts them at risk. To love, in a world of orders and oppositions, is dangerous, sometimes even lethal.

But they love anyway. From always.

“What does one person give to another? He gives of himself, of the most precious he has, he gives of his life. This does not necessarily mean that he sacrifices his life for the other—but that he gives him of that which is alive in him; he gives him of his joy, of his interest, of his understanding, of his knowledge, of his humor, of his sadness—of all expressions and manifestations of that which is alive in him. In thus giving of his life, he enriches the other person, he enhances the other's sense of aliveness by enhancing his own sense of aliveness. He does not give in order to receive; giving is in itself exquisite joy. But in giving he cannot help bringing something to life in the other person, and this which is brought to life reflects back to him.”

Here we have a crowd of exemples, when it comes to the sacrifice: Crowley saving Aziraphale from the Blitz, Aziraphale giving the Holy Water, knowing what it might mean... Moreover, every time they meet, every time they speak they risk their life.

And they are full of each other's life, having something that in many long-term marriages is only a dream: to know each other by heart, to carry the other always within oneself. In magic, books, sadness, anxiety, tone of voice, sarcasm, glances...

"He does not give in order to receive; giving is in itself exquisite joy.”

"But in giving he cannot help bringing something to life in the other person, and this which is brought to life reflects back to him."

“Mature love is union under the condition of preserving one’s integrity, one’s individuality. Love is an active power in man; a power which breaks through the walls which separate man from his fellow men, which unites him with others; love makes him overcome the sense of isolation and separateness, yet it permits him to be himself, to retain his integrity. In love the paradox occurs that two beings become one and yet remain two.”

Infantile love follows the principle: "I love because I am loved." Mature love follows the principle: "I am loved because I love." Immature love says: "I love you because I need you." Mature love says: "I need you because I love you."

My favourite one. The first line isn't given to our ineffable pair, but we can find its echo in Adam. He's truly loved by his family, and because of that love, he loves Tadfield and the familiar world around him: he chooses love too, he chooses not to be the Antichrist, giving up unimaginable power in order to protect everything he loves.

Mature love follows the principle: "I am loved because I love"

Immature love says: "I love you because I need you." Expressed e converso, in denial - by both of them

Mature love says: "I need you because I love you"

“Love is an activity, not a passive affect; it is a “standing in”, not a “falling for”.

“Love is possible only if two persons communicate with each other from the center of their existence, hence if each one of them experiences himself from the center of his existence. Only in this “central experience” is human reality, only here is aliveness, only here is the basis for love. Love, experienced thus, is a constant challenge; it is not a resting place, but a moving, growing, working together; even whether there is harmony or conflict, joy or sadness, is secondary to the fundamental fact that two people experience themselves from the essence of their existence, that they are one with each other by being one with themselves, rather than by fleeing from themselves. There is only one proof for the presence of love: the depth of the relationship, and the aliveness and strength in each person concerned; this is the fruit by which love is recognized.”

But they are not whole — not yet: neither is one with himself, they flee from themselves. Each admires the other’s best, loves his uniqueness, and silently wishes he could accept it too: yellow is pretty — Aziraphale longs for Crowley to show openly his demonic and beautiful eyes and spread their yellow everywhere, and with this, the beautiful soul he hides behind dark glasses; Crowley, in turn, treasures Aziraphale's gentle heart and softness — that set him apart from other angels — and wishes Aziraphale wouldn't feel guilty or less angelic because of these. This is what goodness truly is, not blind obedience to orders, even from God, but compassion.

Still, they are more complex than humans. Crowley can't fully accept himself because he didn't mean to fall, he never truly understood the reasons of his demonic condition and so he couldn't fully accept it — yet he can't return to being an angel either, because they are "just pretendy good", not "properly good". Now he's only himself, less brilliant than his angel, not fully demonic, but perhaps still too much a demon to believe he could ever be fully loved by an angel. As a demon, he also feels powerless to protect the angel he loves from both Heaven and Hell, which means he can’t fully live this love in the open. The same is true for Aziraphale, who thinks he's not enough for Crowley's love, and struggles to accept himself also because he's still tied to a toxic and abusive Heaven - that has traumatised him but, even more, has deeply hurt his demon. And he couldn't do anything to stop it. He represents Heaven, somehow, and fears Crowley can't love him fully for that (even though he's the one who Crowley still calls angel).

They don't accept themselves, so they can't love themselves - and as a result, both fear they are not enough for the other, that they are unworthy of being loved (beautifully explained in this post by @dalliancekay), and they suffer for fear of abandonment too. Aziraphale because everytime they argue Crowley walks away (then returns, but...), except in the Final15, and Crowley is shaped by his trauma: he has already been abandoned, betrayed and metaforically killed (his POV) by Someone who claimed to love him.

But no love for another can be complete without self-love. Without it, love becomes fearful and needy. A love like this may be unconditional, but it stops being free, turns a relationship into a lifeline, the first if not the sole reason to go on. And no one can love wholly or safely without first loving themselves.

Actually, neither of them wants to be what they were institutionally made to be; instead, they belong to their own side, defined by human morality and human love. And they can't accept being anything else. So, I hope they might become everything they long to be on Earth ("we've come to a decision"?), finally free from fear, guilt and pain, so that they can simply love openly, safely, in peace 💞

“To have faith requires courage, the ability to take a risk, the readiness even to accept pain and disappointment. (...) To be loved, and to love, need courage, the courage to judge certain values as of ultimate concern — and to take the jump and to stake everything on these values.”

[yng1alpha]

Only the extremely fortunate get to serve me. I talk with fags, get to know them and make a plan to meet. It's simple. While I have made a few comments about the fake "alphas", this post is actually about the fake F@ggots.

Many fags always come in hot, with a lot of intensity then after a bit- usually the next day, disappear into what I only imagine, is a black hole of shame. They probably can't believe all the words they said during the interactions with me, probably are shocked out of their mind about things I got them to agree to. Or maybe they were fakes to begin with. I shall never know! But one thing I know for sure, through various means, you're still lurking here, following my account. I know you can see this.

I bet you're fucking jealous of this Faggot. He found the purpose of his life when he was used as my seat while I made it lick my shoes. He even got the huge privilege to eat food crushed under my feet. And not to mention the stream of Alpha piss. All the things you dreamed out, you wished for, pine for and desperate crave. He got it all because he wasn't a coward like you. Fucking burn fromm jealousy bitches, you know who you are. I am proud and secure in the knowledge that I am doing my duty to further the hierarchy. And I will not rest until all you Faggots realize your life's purpose and are owned. I know the fabric of space and time gets in the way but that's especially when you have to keep the faith. Have fortitude, believe in the hierarchy, believe in me. You will be OWNED. You will get to realise your life's purpose but you have to keep believing and you have to keep making sincere effort. Now get out of bed with a renewed sense of purpose to be useful to superior men like me. Embrace the Hierarchy! and have faith in it.

PS: DMs open. I'll reply when I can.

[dlstmxkakwldrlarchive]

240415 Fromm chat summary (for now)

jinki said that the reason he wasnt communicating via bubble is that he didn't know if we would've been charged, he said that he wasn't 100% sure on how everything worked and he wanted us to get a refund

he said he's healthy and that he missed us a lot

also he doesn't have enough space in his office because there are a lot of letters coming from fans

and he's preparing for new music, he'll sing a new song during his fanmeet!!

'im busier than you think' + praised griffin because they're working hard

jinki asked for a yt channel name since he cant use jinki jangpan anymore

(ONEW spamming the y/n feature)

[bumblingest-bee]

just saw assassins at my local community theatre!!! and i thought my fellow assassins fans would like to hear about it bc it was genuinely wonderful.

before the show started there was a medley of classic american showtunes about optimism and dreams playing somewhat creepily as everyone came in

the set used strips of draped fabric that looked like they came from a huge american flag to create a simple but effective circus-tent vibe. there were sideshow style posters up for things like "DEAD PRESIDENT FROM THE GRAVE" and "THE ELECTRIC CHAIR LADY!"

the proprietor was impeccably cast. handsome as hell with a big all-american tv show host smile and nothing behind the eyes.

the presidents were represented by the ensemble holding up photos of said presidents, which led to a hilarious moment after unworthy of your love where hinckley is converged upon by a multitude of ronald reagans chanting "there you go again! there you go again!" which incidentally is a scene from my nightmares

some of the standouts in the cast were czolgosz, who delivered the single best version of the bottle monologue i've ever heard, and byck, who was frighteningly believable and intense. guiteau was also very funny with impeccable comic timing and delivery

the balladeer can only be described as an elderly butch lesbian dressed as a cowboy. she was delightful and had a gorgeous powerful voice, however they only changed the keys of some of the songs for her! half the time she was singing so low it was hardly audible. nonetheless she was great and i want to shake the hand of whoever cast her. and she played her own guitar!!

fromme and moore were hilarious together. i loved them both but i thought the angle that the actress playing squeaky went for resulted in losing some of the vulnerability that makes her character compelling. otherwise they were just a brilliant duo and got the comedic nuances that a lot of other actors miss

the only gripe i really had was with booth, who (although he had the PERFECT voice, genuinely really really impressive) i thought at first was playing it too foppish and goofy to really pull off the gravitas that sells the show in the final sequence. and yet he came through in the end! i was so relieved when he pulled off the book depository scene.

which leads me to their oswald. he brought something i think a lot of actors don't, which is the fact that oswald's a little bit unhinged already. like this guy walked onstage, scrawny and shifty-eyed and nervous, with his ribs literally showing through his t-shirt, and i immediately was able to believe that this is someone so miserable and down on his luck that he's willing to kill for a scrap of attention or admiration. he was so intense and unnervingly hyperactive that it got uncomfortable to watch (which is a good thing in assassins).

i don't know if it was the small space of the theatre or just the fact that i was experiencing it live for the first time, but everything from another national anthem to the end was so emotionally raw and intense that it was overwhelming. i thought that since i know the show so well it would lose the ability to chill me. it didn't. i felt every single moment of that show and it was wonderful.

[transformers-mosaic]

Transformers: Beast Wars - Second Chances - Page 2

Originally posted on February 2nd, 2011

Story - Curt Lunsford Pencils - Ryan Miller Inks - Jake Isenberg Colours - Ray Fromme Letters - HdE

deviantART

wada sez: Starscream’s ghost returned in the Beast Wars��episode “Possession”; here, he’s back again, and he finds the dead body of Terrorsaur, who was last seen turning into a Transmetal as he fell into lava inside the Darksyde in “Aftermath”. Terrosaur’s actual toyline-only Transmetal toy is used for the character’s design. In case you didn’t know, Ryan Miller is prominent fanartist TGPing, who achieved popularity in recent years with his stunning watercolors of Beast Wars characters and toy-accurate G1 characters, and managed to sneak in a couple of covers for IDW before they closed up shop. His work here reflects his toy-accurate approach, as Starscream has been drawn specifically as his Masterpiece body for some reason. This was originally going to be Page 7 of the comic, but was bumped up earlier; according to a later comment by Shaun Flaherty: “Starscream's Page 2 originally occurred much later, but as we assembled the pages, it seemed to interrupt the natural flow of the "Beast Wars" characters' stories, so we sort of squeezed it in near the beginning. I feel comfortable with the idea that he's watching the events unfold along with the audience until an opportunity presents itself for him to intervene on his own behalf, but it is a long time between when the seed is planted and its payoff.” See the original script below, as well as Curt’s “Writer Spotlight”.

Second Chances Page 7

Panel One

(Shot of a twinkle in space.  This doesn‘t have to be very large)

TEXT BOX:  Maximals…

TEXT BOX:  Predacons…

Panel Two

(Shot of a grey and red blur flying toward the Predacons ruined base/ship.  This also doesn‘t need to be that large)

TEXT BOX:  Tremble in fear…

Panel Three

(Reveal of Ghost Starscream, screaming out loud above the ruined Predacon base/ship in a triumphant pose.  Starscream‘s spark is pulsating and clearly visible inside of his chest)

Starscream:  Starscream has returned!!!!

TEXT BOX(Lower right hand corner):  …

TEXT BOX(Lower right hand corner):  Where is everyone?!

Panel Fopr

(Shot of Transmetal Terrorsaur‘s arm, “encased“ in cooled lava.  It’s grasping toward the air, very similar to what we saw when Terrosaur was going into the lava during the episode “Aftermath”.  Starscream can be seen hovering in the air above)

TEXT BOX:  Hmm, what’s that?

Panel Five

(Shot of Ghost Starscream entering into the ground around the arm.)

TEXT BOX:  Looks like someone forgot one of their toys.

Panel Six

(Shot of Transmetal Terrorsaur “clawing” out of the ground.  It should be done in a way that the reader doesn’t quite know exactly what it is yet)

SOUND EFFECT:  Crrrack…

TEXT BOX:  Huh, seems a little broken…

Panel Seven

(Reveal of Trasnmetal Terrorsaur,   He’s in a “cool” pose, but is very heavily damaged, maybe even blackened somewhat.  Somewhere near his feet we can see the remains of McDonald’s Transmetal Scorponok if the artist wishes)

Starscream:  …but that doesn’t mean it won’t be fun to play with!

Beast Wars.  I think for me, it’s the series that sort of kept the Transformer spark in me alive.  However, it’s also kind of a weird series, as I keep it segregated in my mind from the rest of my Transformers.  Allow me to explain: Being born in ‘85, by the time I was old enough to remember, Transformers was off the air.  But there was the semi-local video store, hand-me-down and a few new Transformer toys, some G1 episodes of my own, various “Action Cards”, and a very cool big brother to help fill in my imagination.  So even though I didn’t get to see G1 firsthand, I can honestly say that Transformers was definitely a part of my early childhood. But, in hindsight, I’d say Beast Wars played a very integral part in keeping me with Transformers.  Ya see, I didn’t have cable/satellite until I was 12.  Therefore, my knowledge of G2 was sketchy at best, and I only got a whole nine figures from the line when I was a kid, all Decepticons oddly enough.  However, my awesome big brother was in college at this time, and he came home on the weekends, and he usually brought me home a tape of cartoons I couldn’t see otherwise.  It was through this method that I saw that unforgettable commercial... “In the beginning, there was the beast.  But it’s more than meets the eye, it’s a robot in disguise!”  I saw it, and said to myself “Hey, Transformers, cool!”  So I watched the commercial a few times, and immediately wanted Dinobot.  However, he wasn’t first Beastformer, that honor goes to McDonald’s Manta Ray.  It took a little while for my brother to find out when Beast Wars was airing and start taping me episodes, but in the meantime I again took up renting G1 episodes from the library and getting a few Beast Wars figures in the process.  Because of this, I was mystified the first time I laid eyes on Gorilla Optimus Primal and T-Rex Megatron.  “That doesn’t make sense, they’re supposed to be a bat and a crocodile!” When I finally did get to see some select, mostly first season episodes of Beast Wars, I immediately recognized it as a good show.  As I learned the characters, I collected a few more figures, though not too many.  Years later I realized that, barring Snapper and the McBeasts, all the characters I got when I was “a  kid” were from the show!  Of course, oddly enough, I always kept my Beast Wars in a box by themselves.  Once in awhile they’d have adventures with my other Transformers, Super Heroes, G.I. Joes, etc., but for the most part they stayed separate. Anyway, even though I got satellite in ‘97, it wasn’t until around ‘99 that I finally got to see Beast Wars in it’s entirety when FOX re-aired the series.  If I recall correctly, I watched it every day it was on, and loved every episode. Time went by.  I watched the first season of Beast Machines, but wasn’t really impressed at the time.  The DreamWave comics came out, Rhino released certain episodes of G1.  This, and a very cool bootleg lot containing all G1 and CG Beast Wars/Machines episodes my brother bought, firmly cemented me into the realm of the Transformers.  I was here to stay. But what does that have to do with Beast Wars?  Well, in that lot there was a “commercial” tape that had various commercials and U.S./Japanese intros to nearly every Transformers series at the time (up to Car Robots).  It was through this that I learned about Beast Wars II and Neo.  I was intrigued.  Suddenly I wanted to know more about those characters and that Universe.  Well, for a long time that was my only knowledge.  When I finally got the Internet, I looked into Beast Wars II and Neo, though I’ve yet to see either of those series with the exception of a couple fan-dubbed episodes and the BWII Movie on YouTube.  But I did learn about all these cool non-show Beast Wars characters, and I wanted more. So for the longest time, I kinda ignored the Beast Wars CG series.  In my mind, it was done, and everything about those characters had been told.  I eagerly awaited the DreamWave Beast Wars series once I saw it would star non-show characters (though we all know what happened there), and I loved IDW’s “The Gathering”.  But I still had little interest in the original Mainframe Beast Wars cast.  I’d seen the show through a few times by this time, and the show had lost some of it’s original luster.  The Beast Era was over, it was all about G1 homages.  Therefore, when new Beast Wars material surfaced, I was more interested in new Beast Wars exploits, with new non-show characters. Then I received the invite to join what would become BEAST WARS: Second Chances.  I, of course, wanted in on writing the story because, heck, Mosaic is a really fun project and I’d been itching to co-write something.  So I took another look at the series.  When we got into the nuts and bolts of things, I started to realize again why I liked those characters to begin with and I looked at the Beast Wars show in a new light.  It was still good, but I started to see things I hadn’t seen before.  There were aspects of characters that could still be explored and stories yet to be told.  The magic is back and now I look forward to hunting down figures from the show I never got.  Surprisingly, Dinobot II is among them (you’ll all find out why soon enough). So all in all, I’d say Beast Wars is kind of a weird area for me.  I don’t know if I’ll ever be as enamored with it as much as G1 or Animated, but Second Chances has certainly rekindled my love for the series as a whole. -- Curt Lunsford

[sasha-whos-askin-racket]

I JUST REALISED I NEVER POSTED ABOUT SEEING ASSASSINS LAST YEAR ANYWAY HERE ARE SOME OF MY FAVOURITE DETAILS (in no particular order

BOOTH STARTED IN THE AUDIENCE. Okay so I was sitting on the second row, right? And like, they did the first song, and Booth wasn't there, and when they do the "hey gang, look who's here" bit, its Prop noticing him in the audience. And from behind us, I hear "you want me up there?" and all the assassins start cheering and beckoning him up, and he goes "no, no, i'm just here to watch" and they all keep cheering and he kind of sighed and was like "oh, okay" and just GOT OUT OF A SEAT AND WALKED UP THE AISLE AND CLIMBED ONTO THE STAGE.

and then when he shot lincoln, he swung himself down the stairs off the stage and ran back up the aisle, and the "sic semper tyrannis" wasn't yelled by him, it was yelled by all of the other assassins. which was just. a really cool parallel to oswald.

oswald firing the shot at JFK was done really well. like, the other assassins kind of literally FORCED HIM. like, fromme and booth were holding the gun steady so he couldn't move it, and guiteau was holding his arms.

Moore was incredible during the gun song. as always. just. emptied her bag by throwing the things that she didn't want and therefore forcing guiteau and the others to keep ducking out of the way of flying objects. apart from the shoe, which she gave to guiteau. and he just held. and then when booth confiscated her gun, guiteau gave her the shoe back and she was just waving a shoe for the rest of the song.

Back to Oswald, they had two different people playing Oswald and the Balladeer, and the death of the balladeer was like, they tore her instrument off her and started ripping the petticoats out of her outfit and forced her offstage, and then the guy playing Oswald was the guy who was the bartender in the saloon, so Booth reaches over the bar, grabs him by the front of his shirt, drags him OVER THE BAR, THROWS HIM TO THE STAGE AND RIPS HIS DRESS-SHIRT OFF HIM, TO REVEAL HE'S WEARING LEE'S TSHIRT UNDERNEATH.

When Oswald tried to flee from the assassins, Booth chased him up and down the aisle and back up onto the stage, and Guiteau had to hold Booth back from attacking Lee when he was calling him a vacuous vapid non-entity. Like, Lee was kinda curled up on the stage and Booth was standing over him SCREAMING and the others had to hold him back.

Lee was killed at the end of Something Just Broke, they did the famous photo shot, and then the lights went out, and when they came back up they were back in the carnival and Lee was like, freaking out and patting himself down where he'd been shot (which has like, so many intriguing implications im OBSESSED.)

Booth did kiss Prop, which I am willing to accept only because Prop also had immense sexual tension with Squeaky (she had all of the guns on her person, and the one that she gave to Squeaky was in a thigh holster and she made squeaky take it OUT of the holster herself and they were very up in each others spaces about it.)

Booth stole the Balladeers banjo during the ballad of booth because the balladeer was pissing him off. Also Booths death was done by the balladeer shooting him and dragging his body off-stage rather than him shooting himself.

FROMME KEPT TRYING TO PICKPOCKET MOORE DURING THEIR SCENES TOGETHER. AND SHE WAS NOT SUBTLE AND MOORE ABSOLUTLEY NOTICED BUT SHE JUST KEPT TRYING.

How I Saved Roosevelt was done so cleverly, like, the actual song was done by Zangara forcing his way through the crowds, and during the bystanders versus they would step in front of him, so in his verses he was just running back and forth across the stage trying to get in front of the cameras but there was always a bystander in his way.

they hung guiteau from the ferris wheel in the carnival. not particularly important but the imagery was haunting.

the proprietor playing like, davey and emma goldman and the accomplicaces/people related to the assassins was so clever because it really leant into the temptation aspect of the character and i very much enjoyed it, because even when she was being goldman or davey or whoever, she was still also being the proprietor.

[an-absolute-nightmare]

i hhave never felt such deep ande full body rage as i did today. i have had multiple reasons to be thorroughly pissed, i have had my hands shaking. i have had rage so deep i bought myself a punchigng bag. but nothing so full body and prolonged as today. hte amount of self control i displyed today is something worrthy of congratulations i beliece. ignore the speellling mistakes my hands are shaking to o fucking hadr for me to rwrite. but one thing that i think i did good was that i didnot let it all go in vain. i did not stop myself fromm saying what was needed to be said. if i didn't think doxxing the person this rage was directed to would highly increase my chances on being doxxed by association, i would. that's how pissed i am. i punched and slapped the shit out of my punching bag. i wanted to punch it til my knbuckles were bleeding but i do not have the time to afford a migraine in my schedule rn, and if i punched it anymore my hand would start aching and so would my head and i would bacially be in pain all of today and tomorrow, which given my approaching miderms i can't afford. thus i have refrained. my body has been chock full of adrenaline and whatever other hormones and neurotransmitters that make you feel rage all day, and i will crash tonight. thank you for coming to my ted talk and it would please me graetly if you could wish your worst on this person that i'm talking about. if it helps she's the most sexist ablist hypocritical individual i have ever had the displeasure to encounter, and has no respect for personal space or even her own words. thank you

[jinkoh]

Ur subscribed to Kevin’s Fromm, right????? I am too so I have a quick question. I NEED to know if when an artist posts something with ur name, it’s done so that it automatically changes to the user’s name and so everyone gets the same message addressed to them. And since we’re subscribed to the same one (I assume based on what I’ve been chatting abt with Kate) we’d be able to compare or see if that’s how it works. What makes me curious is that although I have my name as ‘Claire ✨ (they/them)’, the part in parentheses was not included so I’m wondering if it’s because it’s in parentheses (and thus if it’s an automatic add of the name, the system may have left it out of the message) or if it’s due to being more personalized or it’s something else. 🤔

The messages I got were (I’m doing these translations myself so they may differ from the app)

“Claire ✨ 캬 많이 컸네” (kya you’ve grown a lot)

and

“Claire ✨ 오늘도 수고했어~” (you worked hard again today)

hiii yes i'm subscribed to his fromm~ yes it automatically changes to the usernames so the messages are the same for everyone except for the names. but i honestly can't tell you the answer on why they/them is cut--my guess is that it's either too long and/or is read by the system as a surname because of the space so that's why it's cut off? But idrk, i only use kebbi as a nickname and so kebbi is what shows up for me. maybe you can try editing it to experiment to see if other things would show/not show~🤗

[kisseobie]

You probably wont have the answer for what im asking, but maybe there's a general reason for it. Why isn't P1Harmony as active on Weverse? Is it just 'cause they don't feel like it or are they more active somewhere else? This is just out of curiosity. I'm new to kpop, and the first group that got me into the fandom space was Seventeen, so I'm used to getting sooo many notifications from them. But with P1Harmony, I've been on Weverse for a few weeks and only got like 1 random one from keeho, and Intak's birthday wishes (and it's been silent since, lol)

(Lives aside)

i think they come like once a week and maybe every two weeks a member will spam comment under a bunch of posts.. they typically are pretty active on tiktok + fromm (insta too but it’s usually their management) so maybe it’s just bc they are active on a lot of things lol

i also think weverse culture has changed a lot now.. it’s a lot of spamming and stupidity and i wouldn’t be surprised if piwon and other idols schedule their visits on weverse because if i had people saying the shit they do under my weverse i’d leave the app 😭

[givemearmstopraywith]

hey tthank you so much for being vocal about palestine! it's been so offputting seeing other theologians and the vague jesus side of tumblr be so quiet about this. i know Everyone should be talking about this but i feel it especially disappointing in their cases

hey!! this is really kind of you- i honestly feel like i haven't been saying enough (there isn't actually an "enough" as long as palestine is not free). i can't speak to the experiences and feelings of other bloggers in whatever jesus community we've created on this website but at least in my own experience up until i was in my late teens i had been in christian communities where you weren't given a choice on how to feel about palestine. i don't think there's an excuse for silence, or for passive compliance, but i do empathize with the difficulty of undoing your thinking on a topic that you've been essentially brainwashed into believing, especially when that is tied up with your religious beliefs and convictions (i have a very militantly zionist mother, unfortunately, so i think about this a lot). when i was growing up, and i'm sure it's worse now, it was just a given that as a christian, or someone in a christian space you would be pro-israel. this was the early to mid 2000s, so that came automatically with certain implications about islam, palestine, and the arab world in general that was anchored in fearmongering and very islamophobic. it's basically brainwashing. western christianity and zionism are deeply and inherently bound up- they historically always have been, with christian zionism directly precluding the emergence of fundamentalist evangelical movements in the 19th century. it's as equally bound up in antisemitism, and now with islamophobia, because christianity lends itself to the propagation of political goals and therefore with genocide (there's a reason why part of nazism's platform was the concept that hitler was "finishing" martin luther's reformation). erich fromm writes about this in his paper "the dogma of christ" which i highly recommend- how the messianic movement of jesus became warped by hellenistic greeks and romans so that rather than empowering the working class, it disempowered them to become compliant in their own domination by bonding earthly and heavenly authorities as singular. christianity as a religious ideology could never be used to justify being pro-israel or being quiet about genocide, but as a political ideology it's actually really malleable to support both of those things, and to staying quiet about them.

i think people have a hard time a) wrapping their minds around the idea that christianity is compliant in something that in theory it should be against, like genocide, and b) that a genocide is happening at all. but ultimately, having a hard time with intellectualizing something is a privilege that only the privileged can have: intellectualizing is a privilege. but ultimately this isn't a commentary on the community on tumblr so much as it is on conversations i've had with christians over the last few months, and the point is that none of this matters, because the experience of westerners doesn't matter in the scheme of palestinian genocide, or any genocide. we love to make conversations about ourselves and how hard it is for us to watch, and it does not fucking matter. being vocal is not even the bare minimum, it's just being a decent person. the bar is on the floor and every time i see footage of parents mourning their children i think about my own family who lost children during the holocaust and i feel so enraged because we already went through this once, in living memory, and people were incredibly passive then too, and it frustrates me because over and over agendas and politics and personal feelings wind up mattering more than the most vulnerable people, the people who are actively suffering. the fact that there are sides to take is baffling to me. anyway thank you for this skdfhgdfg

[inland--empire]

(I am using the template you used for your guys)

Name: Tomcat Wilwud

Caste: Rust

Classpect: Page of Doom

Strife Specibus: Guitarkind

Fetch Modus: Dufel Bag

Land: Aimlessness and Crossroads

Trollian Handle: unortodoxArrangement [UA]

Typing Quirk: Replaces all As with 4s and all of the Ts with 7s (Unlucky/Lucky numbers)

-

Name: Random Letter

Caste: Gold

Classpect: Seer of Void

Strife Specibus: Skateboardkind

Fetch Modus: Inventory Tab

Land: Mysteries and Clouds

Trollian Handle: ghostlyTypewritter [GT]

Typing Quirk: Reepeats aa randoom lettter fromm eacch wword andd replacce2 Ss with 2s / 54M3 45 M17UN4'5

-

Name: Dareal Sheidy

Caste: Olive

Classpect: Witch of Rage

Strife Specibus: Fireskind

Fetch Modus: Pocketkind

Land: Souls and Importance

Trollian Handle: unimitablePassion [UP]

Typing Quirk: B3 *dareal describes every thing she says as if they were her thoughts*

-

Name: Munlit Nights

Caste: Jade

Classpect: Heir of Hope

Strife Specibus: Boomerangkind

Fetch Modus: Comicbook

Land: Compation and Corruption

Trollian Handle: spaceWatcher [SW]

Typing Quirk: Repl^ces every A with ^ and every O with *

-

Name: Gimeur Paspor

Caste: Teal

Classpect: Bard of Space

Strife Specibus: Passportkind

Fetch Modus: Suitcase

Land: Revolution and Cities

Trollian Handle: passportGuardian [PG]

Typing Quirk: Starts every message with [I.D] < and makes noises like uh, err, em, and hm randomly.

-

Name: Blaike Syntus

Caste: Cerulean (Mutant)

Classpect: Prince of Blood

Strife Specibus: Sniperkind

Fetch Modus: Toybox

Land: Searching and Rivers

Trollian Handle: trollianClawbeast [TC]

Typing Quirk: Replaces D with ), C with (, and T with +

-

Name: Lalace Angels

Caste: Indigo

Classpect: Rouge of Light

Strife Specibus: Argumentkind

Fetch Modus: Zipbag

Land: Judgement and Statues

Trollian: aceAttorney [AA]

Typing Quirk: Remarks !Important things! With exclamation points and puts extra thoughts in parentesis (like this)

-

Name: Graape Souhda

Caste: Purple

Classpect: Knight of Breath

Strife Specibus: Axekind

Fetch Modus: Puns

Land: Help and Halls

Trollian Handle: funnyBusiness [FB]

Typing Quirk: Replaces I, S and A with the valentine's day date (2, 14) and Os with <3

-

Name: Aquama Rinnah

Caste: Violet

Classpect: Thief of Mind

Strife Specibus: Rapier

Fetch Modus: Hierarchy

Land: Leadership and Royalty

Trollian Handle: fishbonePicking [FP]

Typing Quirk: Types everything in upper case except for words that reffer to other people or names.

-

Name: Louvre Giever

Caste: Fuschia

Classpect: Maid of Heart

Strife Specibus: Spearkind

Fetch Modus: Aquarium

Land: Mirrors and Love

Trollian Handle: underwaterValentine [UV]

Typing Quirk: Replaces Is with ! To show her excitement

AAAAAAA I LOVE THESE gotta love Lalace's handle and boomerangkind is super creative!

[dlstmxkakwldrlarchive]

[UPDATE] Onew will continue to communicate more closely with fans through the 'Fromm' app.

Onew's Fromm message service, which opens on the 15th at 4 PM , provides private messages that permit the artist to communicate with fans through text, voice memos, photos, and videos in a one-on-one chat.

Users who purchase subscriptions through the Fromm Message Early Bird Event on the 14th at 12 PM/ 15th April 11 AM will be given three exclusive photo cards depending on the subscription period plan, and the benefit of having a conversation with Onew first.

A Onew's Fromm channel, which is free for anyone, will also be opened.

Fromm Channel is a space where fans can meet Onew in various aspects directly delivered through feed posts and comments and actively communicate with him. 

In addition, you can get updates on major activities through announcements, and various contents will be released.

source

[luffythinker]

Let's not wait until one day, let's talk about love CAUSE THAT ANON WAS SO SWEET FOR SAYING LOVE IS ACCEPTENCE AND UNDERSTANDING are you chill with talking about love as a concept?

I am!!! actually, love is currently my favorite subject to talk about, I started reading all about love by bell hooks this year with a study group and I've been getting through it slowly with lots of discussion so every other week it's on my mind.

a lot of my vision of what love is / could / should be comes from fiction and readings, so just bear that in mind.

If you asked me what love is in its purest form i would point you to Hua Cheng and Xie Lian from Heaven Official's Blessing (tgcf), because to me their love is a kind of love that can not be achieved in real life, the type of devotion, faithfulness, respect, and understanding is just something I could not see happening with us humans (hence why I think them being a ghost and a god is what makes their love the purest form).

And then I met bell hooks! I had never thought of love as an action before I met her work, and I think it's brilliant because we often use love as a sentiment (which is true, but a bit reductive). She takes on the journey of defining what love is, because how can we do something we can't understand? We can't describe? And while it's poetic to say love is beyond words, we kinda need it to be loveable and love. So i really enjoy her definition of love through other concepts like respect, affection honesty, responsibility, care, commitment, trust, and open communication. (I do not follow everything she says blindly, there are things I criticize and do not agree with her throughout the book, but she did eat with these ingredients to love)

But the thing that caught my eye was when she uses the work of Erich Fromm to say that "love is the will to extend one's self for the purpose of nurturing one's own or another's spiritual growth", and this blew my mind because 1) I'm an atheist, so I had to think about what spiritual meant to me and what that growth could/would look like; and 2) BECAUSE IT CIRCLES BACK TO TGCF!!!!

Since then, I have been thinking a lot about the moments I have thought I felt love in my life, and I think this makes it so much easier to navigate relationships. If you were here for my breakdown in February you know my relationship ended that month and I was a mess, but it was with a lot of introspection that I could look back and realize that even with so much care and respect I put into that relationship, it was not love in its entirety, it lacked trust, it lacked open communication and that made me understand that i while it hurt to end, it was better to not prevent her from growing and myself as well.

But also love is not all about romantic love, so I also often think about getting love from friends and community and having an ethics of love in general. It's a small thing, but that is why i try to keep this space here open with love as a base, i do not know any of you individually, but i hope that emanating what i believe is love can bring any of you to feel some part of it as well, and if this comes in a form of a safe space in a tumble blog i think it's worth it! It also helps to be more intentional with loving your friends, it's is really important to nurture your connections, because every relationship (romantic or not) needs care. I have a mantra on my wall that is from a youtube i liked a couple of years ago, and it's "I am open but I have boundaries", the boundary does not need to be a 2 meter wall, it can be a fence, you can set your boundaries without fully keeping people away. I think like that it's easier to keep the right people close while still knowing how to filter out the ones that don't match with your vibe.

SO ANYWAY all this to say love is still a bit of a mystery to me, but i try to cultivate it everyday bit by bit, and i hope i can get close to the love bell hooks talks about and hualian live (god bless you mxtx)

i know this was long but please please get back to me if u want to, i would love to hear your thoughts on love and experiences with it <3333

[meta-squash]

Squash's Book Roundup 2023

Last year I read 67 books. This year my goal was 70, but I very quickly passed that, so in total I read 92 books this year. Honestly I have no idea how I did it, it just sort of happened. My other goal was to read an equal amount of fiction and nonfiction this year (usually fiction dominates), and I was successful in that as well. Another goal which I didn’t have at the outset but which kind of organically happened after the first month or so of reading was that I wanted to read mostly strange/experimental/transgressive/unusual fiction. My nonfiction choices were just whatever looked interesting or cool, but I also organically developed a goal of reading a wider spread of subjects/genres of nonfiction. A lot of the books I read this year were books I’d never heard of, but stumbled across at work. Also, finally more than 1/3 of what I read was published in the 21st century.

I’ll do superlatives and commentary at the end, so here is what I read in 2023:

-The Commitments by Roddy Doyle -A Simple Story: The Last Malambo by Leila Guerriero -The Hero With A Thousand Faces by Joseph Campbell -Uzumaki by Junji Ito -Chroma by Derek Jarman -The Emerald Mile: The epic story of the fastest ride in history through the Grand Canyon by Kevin Fedarko -Venus by Suzan-Lori Parks -The Hearing Trumpet by Leonora Carrington -Sacred Sex: Erotic writings from the religions of the world by Robert Bates -The Virginia State Colony For Epileptics And The Feebleminded by Molly McCully Brown -A Spy In The House Of Love by Anais Nin -The Sober Truth: Debunking the bad science behind 12-step programs and the rehab industry by Lance Dodes -The Sailor Who Fell From Grace With The Sea by Yukio Mishima -The Aliens by Annie Baker -The Criminal Child And Other Essays by Jean Genet -Aimee and Jaguar: A Love Story, Berlin 1943 by Erica Fischer -The Master And Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov -The Mustache by Emmanuel Carriere -Maldoror by Comte de Lautreamont -Narrow Rooms by James Purdy -At Your Own Risk by Derek Jarman -Escape From Freedom by Erich Fromm -Countdown: A Subterranean Magazine #3 by Underground Press Syndicate Collective -Fabulosa! The story of Britain's secret gay language by Paul Baker -The Golden Spruce: A true story of myth, madness and greed by John Vaillant -Querelle de Roberval by Kevin Lambert -Fire The Bastards! by Jack Green -Closer by Dennis Cooper -The Woman In The Dunes by Kobo Abe -Opium: A Diary Of His Cure by Jean Cocteau -Worker-Student Action Committees France May '68 by Fredy Perlman and R. Gregoire -Capitalist Realism by Mark Fisher -The Sound Of Waves by Yukio Mishima -One Day In My Life by Bobby Sands -Corydon by Andre Gide -Noopiming by Leanne Betasamosake Simpson -Man Alive: A true story of violence, forgiveness and becoming a man by Thomas Page McBee -The Artist's Reality: Philosophies of Art by Mark Rothko -Damage by Josephine Hart -Schoolgirl by Osamu Dazai -The Passion According to G.H. by Clarice Lispector -The Sex Revolts: Gender, Rebellion and Rock n Roll by Simon Reynolds and Joy Press -The Traffic Power Structure by planka.nu -Bird Man: The many faces of Robert Straud by Jolene Babyak -Seven Dada Manifestos by Tristan Tzara

-The Journalist by Harry Mathews -Bullshit Jobs by David Graeber -Moscow To The End Of The Line by Venedikt Erofeev -Morvern Callar by Alan Warner -The Poetics Of Space by Gaston Bachelard -A Boy's Own Story by Edmund White -The Coming Insurrection by The Invisible Committee -Jesus' Son by Denis Johnson -Notes From The Sick Room by Steve Finbow -Artaud The Momo by Antonin Artaud -Doctor Rat by William Kotzwinkle -Recollections Of A Part-Time Lady by Minette -trans girl suicide museum by Hannah Baer -The 99% Invisible City by Roman Mars -Sweet Days Of Discipline by Fleur Jaeggy -Breath: The new science of a lost art by James Nestor -What We See When We Read by Peter Mendelsund -The Cardiff Tapes (1972) by Garth Evans -The Ark Sakura by Kobo Abe -Mad Like Artaud by Sylvere Lotringer -The Story Of The Eye by Georges Bataille -Little Blue Encyclopedia (For Vivian) by Hazel Jane Plante -Blood And Guts In High School by Kathy Acker -Summer Fun by Jeanne Thornton -Splendid's by Jean Genet -VAS: An Opera In Flatland by Steve Tomasula -Sorry I'm Late, I Didn't Want To Come: One introvert's year of saying yes by Jessica Pan -Whores For Gloria by William T. Vollmann -The Notebooks by Jean-Michel Basquiat, Larry Walsh (editor) -L'Astragale by Albertine Sarrazin -The Decay Of Lying and other essays by Oscar Wilde -The Immortal Life Of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot -Open Throat by Henry Hoke -Prisoner Of Love by Jean Genet -The Fifth Wound by Aurora Mattia -The Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx -My Friend Anna: The true story of a fake heiress by Rachel DeLoache Williams -Mammother by Zachary Schomburg -Building The Commune: Radical democracy in Venezuela by George Cicarello-Maher -Blackouts by Justin Torres -Cheapjack by Philip Allingham -Near To The Wild Heart by Clarice Lispector -The Trayvon Generation by Elizabeth Alexander -Skye Papers by Jamika Ajalon -Exercises In Style by Raymon Queneau -Tender Buttons by Gertrude Stein -The Feather Thief: Beauty, Obsession, and the Natural History Heist of the Century by Kirk Wallace Johnson

~Some number factoids~ I read 46 fiction and 46 nonfiction. One book, The Fifth Wound by Aurora Mattia, is fictionalized/embellished autobiography, so it could go half in each category if we wanted to do that, but I put it in the fiction category. I tried to read as large a variety of nonfiction subjects/genres as I could. A lot of the nonfiction I read has overlapping subjects, so I’ve chosen to sort by the one that seems the most overarching. By subject, I read: 5 art history/criticism, 5 biographies, 1 black studies, 1 drug memoir, 2 essay collections, 2 history, 2 Latin American studies, 4 literary criticism, 1 music history, 2 mythology/religion, 1 nature, 4 political science, 2 psychology, 5 queer studies, 2 science, 1 sociology, 1 travel, 2 true crime, 3 urban planning. I also read more queer books in general (fiction and nonfiction) than I have in years, coming in at 20 books.

The rest of my commentary and thoughts under a cut because it's fairly long

Here’s a photo of all the books I read that I own a physical copy of (minus Closer by Dennis Cooper which a friend is borrowing):

~Superlatives and Thoughts~

I read so many books this year I’m going to do a runner-up for each superlative category.

Favorite book: This is such a hard question this year. I think I gave out more five-star ratings on Goodreads this year than I ever have before. The books that got 5 stars from me this year were A Simple Story: The Last Malambo by Leila Guerriero, Capitalist Realism by Mark Fisher, The Emerald Mile by Kevin Fedarko, The Mustache by Emmanuel Carriere, The Passion According to GH by Clarice Lispector, trans girl suicide museum by Hannah Baer, The Fifth Wound by Aurora Mattia, Mammother by Zachary Schomburg, and Blackouts by Justin Torres. But I think my favorite book of the year was The Fifth Wound by Aurora Mattia. It is an embellished, fictionalized biography of the author’s life, chronicling a breakup that occurred just before she began her transition, and then a variety of emotional events afterward and her renewal of a connection with that person after a number of years had passed. The writing style is beautiful, extremely decadent, and sits in a sort of venn diagram of poetry, theory, fantasy and biography. My coworker who recommended this book to me said no one she’d recommended it to had finished it because they found it so weird. I read the first 14 pages very slowly because I didn’t exactly know what the book was doing, but I quickly fell completely in love with the imagery and the formatting style and the literary and religious references that have been worked into the book both as touchstones for biography and as vehicles for fantasy. There is a video I remember first seeing years ago, in which a beautiful pinkish corn snake slithers along a hoop that is part of a hanging mobile made of driftwood and macrame and white beads and prism crystals. This was the image that was in the back of my head the entire time I was reading The Fifth Wound, because it matched the decadence and the strangeness and the crystalline beauty of the language and visuals in the book. It is a pretty intense book, absolutely packed with images and emotion and ideas and preserved vignettes where reality and fantasy and theory overlap. It’s one of those books that’s hard to describe because it’s so full. It’s dense not in that the words or ideas are hard to understand, but in that it’s overflowing with imagery and feelings, and it feels like an overflowing treasure chest. Runner-up:The Mustache by Emmanuel Carriere. However, this book wins for a different superlative, so I’ve written more about it there.

Least favorite book: Querelle de Roberval by Kevin Lambert. I wrote a whole long review of it. In summary, Lambert’s book takes its name from Querelle de Brest, a novel by Jean Genet, and is apparently meant to be an homage to Genet’s work. Unfortunately, Lambert seems to misunderstand or ignore all the important aspects of Genet’s work that make it so compelling, and instead twists certain motifs Genet uses as symbols of love or transcendence into meaningless or negative connotations. He also attempts to use Genet’s mechanic of inserting the author into the narrative and allowing the author to have questionable or conflicting morals in order to emphasize certain aspects of the characters or narrative, except he does so too late in the game and ends up just completely undermining everything he writes. This book made me feel insulted on behalf of Jean Genet and all the philosophical thought he put into his work. Runner-up: What We See When We Read by Peter Mendelsund. This graphic designer claims that when people read they don’t actually imagine what characters look like and can’t conjure up an image in their head when asked something like “What does Jane Eyre look like to you?” Unfortunately, there’s nothing scientific in the book to back this up and it’s mostly “I” statements, so it’s more like “What Peter Mendelsund Sees (Or Doesn’t See) When He Reads”. It’s written in what seems to be an attempt to mimic Marshall McLuhan’s style in The Medium Is The Massage, but it isn’t done very well. I spent most of my time reading this book thinking This does not reflect my experience when I read novels so I think really it’s just a bad book written by someone who maybe has some level of aphantasia or maybe is a visual but not literary person, and who assumes everyone else experiences the same thing when they read. (Another runner-up would be The Hero With A Thousand Faces by Joseph Campbell, but I think that’s a given because it’s an awful piece of revisionist, racist trash, so I won’t write a whole thing about it. I can if someone wants me to.)

Most surprising/unexpected book: The Mustache by Emmanuel Carriere. This book absolutely wins for most surprising. However, I don’t want to say too much about it because the biggest surprise is the end. It was the most shocking, most unexpected and bizarre endings to a novel I’ve read in a long time, and I absolutely loved it. It was weird from the start and it just kept getting weirder. The unnamed narrator decides, as a joke, to shave off the moustache he’s had for his entire adult life. When his wife doesn’t react, he assumes that she’s escalating their already-established tradition of little pranks between each other. But then their mutual friends say nothing about the change, and neither do his coworkers, and he starts spiral into confusion and paranoia. I don’t want to spoil anything else because this book absolutely blew me away with its weirdness and its existential dread and anyone who likes weird books should read it. Runner-up: Morvern Callar by Alan Warner. I don’t even know what compelled me to open this book at work, but I’m glad I did. The book opens on Christmas, where the main character, Morvern, discovers her boyfriend dead by suicide on the kitchen floor of their flat. Instead of calling the police or her family, she takes a shower, gets her things and leaves for work. Her narrative style is strange, simultaneously very detached and extremely emotional, but emotional in an abstract way, in which descriptions and words come out stilted or strangely constructed. The book becomes a narrative of Morvern’s attempts to find solitude and happiness, from the wilderness of Scotland to late night raves and beaches in an unnamed Mediterranean city. The entire book is scaffolded by a built-in playlist. Morvern’s narrative is punctuated throughout by accounts of exactly what she’s listening to on her Walkman. The narrative style and the playlist and the bizarre behavior of the main character were not at all what I was expecting when I opened the book, but I read the entire book in about 3 hours and I was captivated the whole time. If you like the Trainspotting series of books, I would recommend this one for sure.

Most fun book: The Emerald Mile by Kevin Fedarko. This book was amazing. It was like reading an adventure novel and a thriller and a book on conservationism all wrapped into one and it was clearly very passionately written and it was a blast. I picked it up because I was pricing it at work and I read the captions on one of the photo inserts, which intrigued me, so I read the first page, and then I couldn’t stop. The two main narratives in the book are the history of the Grand Canyon (more specifically the damming of the Colorado River) and the story of a Grand Canyon river guide called Kenton Grua, who decided with two of his river guide friends to break the world record for fastest boat ride down the Colorado River through the Grand Canyon. The book is thoroughly researched, and reaches back to the first written record of the canyon, then charts the history of the canyon and the river up to 1983 when Grua made his attempt to race down the river, and then the aftermath and what has happened to everyone in the years since. All of the historical figures as well as the “current” figures of 1983 come to life, and are passionately portrayed. It’s a genuine adventure of a book, and I highly recommend it. Runner-up: Summer Fun by Jeanne Thornton. It asks “What if Brian Wilson of the Beach Boys was actually a trans woman?” Actually, that’s not quite it. It asks “What if a trans woman living in poverty in southwest America believed to an almost spiritual level that Brian Wilson was a trans woman?” The main character and narrator, Gala, is convinced that the lead singer of her favorite band, the Get Happies, (a fictional but fairly obvious parallel to the Beach Boys) is a trans woman. Half the book is her writing out her version of the singer’s life history, and the other half is her life working at a hostel in Truth Or Consequences, New Mexico, where she meets a woman who forces her out of her comfort zone and encourages her to face certain aspects of her self and identity and her connection with others. It’s a weird novel, and definitely not for everyone, but it’s fun. I was reading it on the train home and I was so into it that I missed my stop and had to get off at the next station and wait 20 minutes for the train going back the other way.

Book that taught me the most: Breath: The new science of a lost art by James Nestor. In it, Nestor explores why humans as a general population are so bad at breathing properly. He interviews scientists and alternative/traditional health experts, archaeologists, historians and religious scholars. He uses himself as a guinea pig to experiment with different breathing techniques from ancient meditation styles to essentially overdosing on oxygen in a lab-controlled environment to literally plugging his nose shut to only mouth-breathe for two weeks (and then vice-versa with nose breathing). It was interesting to see a bunch of different theories a laid out together regarding what kind of breathing is best, as well as various theories on the history of human physiology and why breathing is hard. Some of it is scientific, some pseudoscience, some just ancient meditation techniques, but he takes a crack at them all. What was kind of cool is that he tries every theory and experiment with equal enthusiasm and doesn’t really seem to favor any one method. Since he’s experimenting on himself, a lot of it is about the effects the experiments had on him specifically and his experiences with different types of breathing. His major emphasis/takeaway is that focusing on breathing and learning to change the ways in which we breathe will be beneficial in the long run (and that we should all breath through our noses more). While I don’t think changing how you breathe is a cure-all (some of the pseudoscience he looks at in this book claims so) I certainly agree that learning how to breath better is a positive goal. Runner-up: The Sober Truth by Lance Dodes. I say runner-up because a lot of the content of the book is things that I had sort of vague assumptions about based on my knowledge of addiction and AA and mental illness in general. But Dodes put into words and illustrated with numbers and anecdotes and case studies what I just kind of had a vague feeling about. It was cool to see AA so thoroughly debunked by an actual psychiatrist and in such a methodical way, since my skepticism about it has mostly been based on the experiences of people I know in real life, anecdotes I’ve read online, or musicians/writers/etc I’m a fan of that went through it and were negatively affected.

Most interesting/thought provoking book: Mammother by Zachary Schomburg. The biggest reason this book was so interesting is because the little world in which it exists is so strange and yet so utterly complete. In a town called Pie Time (where birds don’t exist and the main form of work is at the beer-and-cigarettes factory) a young boy called Mano who has been living his childhood as a girl decides that he is now a man and that it’s time for him to grow up. As this happens, the town is struck by an affliction called God’s Finger. People die seemingly out of nowhere, from a hole in their chest, and some object comes out of the hole. Mano collects the things that come out of these holes, and literally holds them in order to love them, but the more he collects, the bigger he becomes as he adds objects to his body. A capitalist business called XO shows up, trying to convince the people of Pie Time that they can protect themselves from God’s Finger with a number of enterprises, and starts to slowly take over the town. But Mano doesn’t believe death is something that should be run from. This book is so pretty, and the symbolism/metaphors, even when obvious, feel as though they belong organically in the world. A quote on the back of the book says it is “as nearly complete a world as can be”, and I think that’s a very accurate description. The story is interesting, the characters are compelling, and the magical realist world in which the story exists is fascinating. Runner up: trans girl suicide museum by Hannah Baer. This is a series of essays taken (for the most part) from Baer’s blog posts. They span a chunk of time in which she writes her thoughts and musings on her experience transition and transgender existence in general. It is mostly a series of pieces reflecting on “early” stages of transition. But I thought it was really cool to see an intellectual and somewhat philosophical take on transition, written by someone who has only been publicly out for a few years, and therefore is looking at certain experiences with a fresh gaze. As the title suggests, a lot of the book is a bit sad, but it’s not all doom and gloom. A lot of the emphasis is on the important of community when it comes to the experience of starting to transition and the first few years, and the importance of community on the trans experience in general. I really liked reading Hannah Baer’s thoughts as a queer intellectual who was writing about this stuff as she experienced it (or not too long after) rather than writing about the experience of early transition years and years down the line. It meant the writing was very sharp and the emotion was clear and not clouded by nostalgia.

Other thoughts/commentary on books I don’t have superlatives for:

I’m glad my first (full) book read in 2023 was A Simple Story: The Last Malambo by Leila Guierrero. It’s a small, compact gem of a book that follows the winner of an Argentinian dance competition. The Malambo is a traditional dance, and the competition is very fierce, and once someone wins, they can never compete again. The author follows the runner-up of the previous year, who has come to compete again. It paints a vivid picture of the history of the dance, the culture of the competition, and the character of the dancer the author has chosen to follow. It’s very narrowly focused, which makes it really compelling.

The Hearing Trumpet by Leonora Carrington could have easily won for most fun or most interesting book. Carrington was a surrealist writer and painter (and was in a relationship with Max Ernst until she was institutionalized and he was deported by the Nazis). In The Hearing Trumpet, an elderly woman called Marian is forced by her family to go live in an old ladies’ home. The first strange thing about the place is that all of the little cabins each woman lives in is shaped like some odd object, like an iron, or ice cream, or a rabbit. The other old women at the institution are a mixed bag, and the warden of the place is hostile. Marian starts to suspect that there are secrets, and even witchcraft involved, and she and a few of the other ladies start to try and unravel the occult mysteries hidden in the grounds of the home. The whole book is fun and strange, and the ending is an extremely entertaining display of feminist occult surrealism.

Sacred Sex: Erotica writings from the religions of the world by Robert Bates was a book I had to read for research for my debunking of Withdrawn Traces. It was really very interesting, but it was also hilarious to read because maybe 5% of any of the texts included were actually erotic. It should have been called “romantic writings from the religions of the world” because so little of the writing had anything to do with sex, even in a more metaphorical sense.

Every time I read Yukio Mishima I’m reminded how much I love his style. The Sailor Who Fell From Grace With The Sea almost usurped The Temple of the Golden Pavilion as my favorite Mishima novel. I’m fascinated with the way that Mishima uses his characters to explore the circumstance of having very intense feelings or reactions towards something and simultaneously wanting to experience that, while also wanting to have complete control and not feel them at all. There’s a scene in this novel where Noboru and his friends brutally kill and dissect a cat; it’s an intense and vividly rendered scene, made all the more intense by Noboru desperately conflicted between feeling affected by the killing and wanting to force himself to feel nothing. The amazing subtle theme running through the book is the difference between Noboru’s intense emotions and his desire/struggle to control them and subdue them versus Ryuji’s more subtle emotion that grows through the book despite his natural reserve. I love endings like the one in this book, where it “cuts to black” and you don’t actually see the final act, it’s simply implied.

In 2016 or 2017, I ran lights for a showcase for the drama department at UPS (I can’t remember now what it was) that included a bunch of scenes from various plays. I remember a segment from Hir by Taylor Mac, and a scene from The Aliens by Annie Baker. In the scene that I saw, one of the characters describes how when he was a boy, he couldn’t stop saying the word ladder, and the monologue culminates in a full paragraph that is just the word “ladder.” I can’t remember who was acting in the one that I saw at UPS, but that monologue blew me away, the way that one word repeated 127 conveyed so much. This year a collection of Annie Baker’s plays came in at work so I sat down and read the whole play and it was just incredible. I’d love to see the full play live, it’s absolutely captivating.

Narrow Rooms by James Purdy was a total diamond in the rough. It takes place in Appalachia, in perhaps the 1950s although it’s somewhat hard to tell. It follows the strange gay entanglement between four adult men in their 20s, who have known each other all their lives. It traces threads of bizarre codependency, and the lines crossed between love and hate. The main character, Sidney, has just returned home after serving a sentence for manslaughter. On his return, he finds that an old lover has been rendered disabled in an accident, and that an old school rival/object of obsession has been waiting for him. This rival, nicknamed “The Renderer” because of an old family occupation, has been watching Sidney all their lives. Both of them hate the other, but know that they’re destined to meet in some way. Caught in the middle of their strange relationship are Gareth, Sidney’s now-disabled former lover, and Brian, a young man who thinks he’s in love with The Renderer. The writing style took me some time to get used to, as it is written as though by someone who has taught themselves, or has only had basic classes on fiction writing. But the plot itself is so strange and the characters are so stilted in their own internality that it actually fits really well. Like The Mustache, this book had one of the strangest, most intensely visceral and shocking endings I’ve read in a while. It was also “one that got away.” I read it at work, then put it on my staff picks shelf, and only realized after someone else bought it that I should have kept it for myself.

The Passion According to G.H. by Clarice Lispector blew my mind. I really don’t want to spoil any of it, but I highly encourage anyone who hasn’t read it to do. The build in tension is perfect and last 30 pages are just incredible. Lispector’s style is so unique and so beautiful and tosses out huge existential questions like it’s nothing, and I love her work so much.

Moscow To The End Of The Line by Venedikt Erofeev was another really unexpected book. It’s extremely Russian (obviously) and really fun until suddenly it isn’t. The main character, a drunkard, gets on a train from Moscow to Petushki, the town at the end of the line (hence the title), in order to see his lover. On the way, he befriends the other people in his train car and they all steadily get drunker and drunker, until he falls asleep and misses his stop. Very Russian, somewhat strange, and I was surprised that it was written in the late 60s and not the 30s.

Dr. Rat by William Kotzwinkle was what I expected. Weird in a goofy way, a bit silly even when it’s serious, and rather heavy-handed satire. The titular Dr Rat is a rat who has spent his whole life in a laboratory and has gone insane. The other animals who are being tested on want to escape, but he’s convinced that all the testing is for the good of science and wants to thwart their rebellion. Unfortunately, all the other animals who are victims of human cruelty/callousness/invasion/deforestation/etc around the world are also planning to rebel, connection with each other through a sort of psychic television network. It’s a very heavy-handed environmentalist/anti-animal cruelty metaphor and general societal satire, but it’s silly and fun too.

Confessions Of A Part-Time Lady by Minette is a self-published, nearly impossible to find book that came into my work. It’s self-printed and bound, and was published in the 70s. It is the autobiographical narrative of a trans woman who did drag and burlesque and theatre work all across the midwest, as well as New York and San Francisco, from the 1930s up to the late 60s. It was originally a series of interviews by the two editors, who published it in narrative form, and it includes photos from Minette’s personal collection. It’s an amazing story, and a glimpse into a really unique time period of gender performance and queer life. She even mentions Sylvia Rivera, specifically when talking about gay activism. She talks about how the original group of the Gay Liberation Front was an eclectic mix of all sorts of people of all sexualities and genders and expressions. Then when the Gay Activists Alliance “took over”, they started pushing out people who were queer in a more transgressive or unusual way and there was more encouragement on being more heteronormative. She mentions Sylvia Rivera and Marsha P Johnson, saying “I remember Sylvia Rivera who founded STAR – Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries. She was always trying to say things – the same kinds of things Marsha P Johnson says in a sweeter way – and they treated her like garbage. If that’s what ‘order’ is, haven’t we had enough?”

Whores For Gloria by William T Vollmann was exactly as amazing as I thought it would be. I love Vollmann’s style, because you can tell that even though the characters he’s writing about are characters, they’re absolutely based on people that he met or saw or spoke to in real life. The main character, Jimmy, is searching for his former lover, Gloria, who has either died or left him (it is unclear for most of the novel). He begins to use tokens bought from sex workers (hair, clothes, etc) to attempt to conjure her into reality, and when that doesn’t work, he pays them to tell him stories from their lives, and through their lives he tries to conjure Gloria. This novel’s ending had extremely similar vibes to the ending of Moscow To The End Of The Line.

Prisoner Of Love by Jean Genet was a lot to take in. It was weird reading it at this moment in time, and completely unplanned. It’s just that I have only a few more books to read before I’ve made my way through all Genet’s works that have been translated into English, and it was next on the list. Most of the book focuses on Genet’s time spent in Palestine in the 70s and his short return in the 80s. He also discusses the time he spent with the Black Panthers in the US, although it’s not the main subject of the book. Viewing Palestine from the point of view of Genet’s weird philosophical and moral worldview was really interesting, because what he chooses to spend time looking at or talking about is probably not what most would focus on, and because even his most political discussions are tinged with the uniquely Genet-style spirituality (if you can call it that? I don’t know what to call it) that is so much the exact opposite of objective. It’s definitely not a book about Palestine I would recommend reading without also having a grasp of Genet’s style of looking at the world and his various obsessions and preoccupations, because they really do inform a lot of his commentary. It was also written 15 years after his first trip to Palestine, partly from memory and partly from journal entries/notes, which gives it a sort of weirdly dreamlike quality much like his novels.

Blackouts by Justin Torres was so amazing! It blends real life and fiction together so well that I didn’t even realize that most of the people he references in the novel are real historical figures until he mentioned Ben Reitman, who I recognized as the Chicago King Of The Hobos and Emma Goldman’s lover. The book follows an unnamed narrator who has come to a hotel or apartment in the southwest in order to care for a dying elderly man called Juan Gay. Juan has a book called Sex Variants, a study of homosexuality from the 1940s which has been censored and blacked out. Back and forth, the narrator and Juan trade stories. The narrator tells his life story up until the present, including his first meeting with Juan in a mental hospital as a teenager. In turn, Juan tells the story of the Sex Variants book and its creator, Jan Gay (Ben Reitman’s real life daughter). The book explores the reliability of narrative, the power of collecting and documenting life stories, and of removing or changing things in order to create new or different narratives.

Again, Clarice Lispector rocking my world! Generally I can read a 200-ish page novel in somewhere between 2 and 4 hours depending on the content/writing style. Near To The Wild Heart took me 9 hours to read because I kept wanting to stop and reread entire paragraphs because they were so interesting or pretty or philosophical. The story focuses on Joana, whose strange way of looking at the world and going through life makes everyone sort of wary of her. This book is so layered I don’t really know how to describe it. So much of it is philosophical or existential musings through the vehicle of Joana. Unsurprisingly, it’s a beautiful book and I highly recommend it.

I’m just going to copy/paste my Goodreads review for Skye Papers by Jamika Ajalon: This book had so much potential that just…fell short. I could tell that it was written for an American audience but the way the reader/Skye is “taught” certain British terms and/or slang felt a bit patronizing. The characters were fleshed out and interesting and I liked them a lot but the plot crumbled quickly in the last half of the book Things sped up to a degree that felt strange and unnatural, the book’s pacing was inconsistent throughout. Perhaps that was deliberate considering the reveal at the climax, but if it was, it should have been utilized better. If the inconsistent pacing wasn’t deliberate, then it just made the book feel strange to read. There were moments were I felt like there should have been more fleshing out of certain character relationships. Even with the reveal at the end and the explanation of Pieces’ erratic/avoidant behavior, I wish there had been more fleshing out of the relationship or friendship between her and Skye at the beginning, when Skye first arrives in London. Characters who seemed cool/interesting got glossed over and instead there was a lot more dwelling on Skye walking around or busking or just hanging out. I could have gone without the last 30 or so pages after the big reveal, where Skye went back through everything that happened with the knowledge she (and the reader) had gained. It dragged on and on and at that point I felt like the whole story was so contrived that I just wasn’t interested anymore. A friend who read this book before I did said she thought it was an experimental novel that just hadn’t gone far enough, and I completely agree with her. I think if the style with the film script interludes went further, into printed visuals or more weirdness with the interludes, more experimental style with the main story, or something, it would have been really good. It just didn’t push hard enough.

The Feather Thief by Kirk Wallace Johnson was a fun little true crime novel about a young flautist who broke into a small English natural history museum in 2009 and stole hundreds of thousands of pounds worth of preserved rare bird skins dating back to the 19th century. He was a salmon fly-tying enthusiast and prodigy, and old Victorian fly designs used feathers of rare birds. The book first goes through the heist and the judicial proceedings, then examines the niche culture of Victorian fly-tying enthusiasts and obsessives, and then chronicles the author’s attempts to track down some of the missing birds. It was a quick, easy read, but fun and an unusual subject and I quite enjoyed it.

In 2024 I don’t plan on trying to surpass or even reach this year’s number. I’m going to start off the year reading The Recognitions by William Gaddis, then I’m going to re-read a number of books that I come across at work or in conversation and think Huh, I should reread that one of these days. So far, the books I am currently planning to reread: Sometimes A Great Notion by Ken Kesey, As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner, The People Of Paper by Salvador Plascencia, Mrs Dalloway by Virginia Woolf, The Mustache by Emmanuel Carriere, McGlue by Otessa Moshfegh, Long Day’s Journey Into Night by Eugene O’Neil, Acid Snow by Larry Mitchell, and Nightwood by Djuna Barnes.