#and so is this book

[bookshelfmonkey]

So, I've finished my reread of Hell Followed With Us by Andrew Joseph White.

This time round, I tabbed a bunch (by that I mean, a metric fuck-ton) of quotes.

Because I'm an english lit student at heart, I'm going to list them here, with a bit of (likely incoherent) analysis where it seems fit.

Hell Followed With Us spoilers ahead. These quotes are in order of when they appear in the book, so read as far ahead as you want.

"'You awake?'

'No'"

Honestly this just reminded me of a book I loved as a kid. We're starting with a light one

"'I'm super trans. Like, an honestly heretical amount of trans. Why?'

I've never met another trans person before."

This took me back to when I first found my community and started to feel a little less alone.

"Make them suffer."

Revenge.

"Shedding my insides out one orifice is more than enough"

"Thanks for the brain rot, Mom"

"Being autistic was just another thing his parents could hold over his head, could carve into his skin as they reminded him what a failure he was."

"he digs his palms into the rough carpet until his skin stops trying to crawl off his body"

Meltdowns. Gotta love 'em.

"His leg is still bouncing, but it always does that"

Despite this being one of my more "socially acceptable" stims, I still get a lot of shit for it. It was nice to see it mentioned in a book.

"and even with Erin, he finds himself trying not to be too autistic"

"Being transgender is who you are. The pain is what happens when you and the world go for each other's throats."

Although I still experience a lot of dysphoria related to my physical form that I still think I would experience if I was never again perceived by another human, a lot of my dysphoria and suffering comes from what the world has done to me. It took me a while to accept that.

"The lengths she's going to in order to avoid saying autistic is admirable"

Yeah, I hate it when people do that. Autistic isn't a dirty word. I also appreciate people not revealing that to others without my consent. It's a difficult line to walk.

"'It's okay to be scared,' he says.

I say, 'I'm scared all the time. I'm tired of it."

Yeah. This is definitely an attitude I get in response to my mental health and I hate it.

"dysphoria had to wrap its hands around my neck and hold me down, baptism in drowning, before I faced the fact that living as a girl would kill me long before the angels did"

"How dare you imply I'm heterosexual. I am disgusted and appalled."

"My dysphoria burns. I'll never get to have that. I've come to terms with it, sure, but that doesn't mean it doesn't hurt."

"It's harder for someone to pin you down as a girl when they need a moment to pin you down as human"

"I've always been his boyfriend, his fiancé, his future husband. Always Benjamin. Always me.

All that gets reduced to an elegant, 'Gayyy.'"

"Everything hurts. I want to take handfuls of my face and pull it off."

This feels like a metaphor for dysphoria.

"Vengeance is mine; I will repay, saith the Lord."

The raw power of some of these lines.

"it is a relief to let go of the wrong pronouns. The actual ones are a blessing because they are the truth, and as much time as Nick spends lying, the truth is beautiful."

"I open my mouth to speak but can't"

"it's helpless, I never asked for this ... I'm a kid, and all I ever do is ruin things"

"'I don't know how to tell if I like someone. I don't know how it works, and I don't want to be wrong.' He says, 'I don't know why you would like me, I don't understand.' He says, 'There are no rules for this. It scares me'"

I can only hope I will find someone who understands this. In the meantime, I have this book.

"I will be good. I will make the angels fucking suffer."

"Do you believe in God?

- I do, please stop, there's so much blood"

"Nick told me that 99 per cent of lying is just figuring out what the other person wants to hear. He said it's what the Angels have always done, and I laughed because otherwise it would have hurt too much to acknowledge"

"I will be good, I will be good, I will be good, and I will feel far worse things than this."

"Hell has followed us onto Earth, and I am the monster that has brought it forth."

"We are alive, we are alive, holy shit, we are alive."

Thank you for listening to this TED talk.

[angelofdumpsterfires]

presented without comment

[roach-works]

speculative fiction writers i am going to give you a really urgent piece of advice: don't say numbers. don't give your readers any numbers. how heavy is the sword? lots. how old is that city? plenty. how big is the fort? massive. how fast is the spaceship? not very, it's secondhand.

the minute you say a number your readers can check your math and you cannot do math better than your most autistic critic. i guarantee. don't let your readers do any math. when did something happen? awhile ago. how many bullets can that gun fire? trick question, it shoots lasers, and it shoots em HARD.

you are lying to people for fun. if you let them do math at you the lie collapses and it's no fun anymore.

[sanguinifex]

You gotta read and watch some old books and films that aren’t 100% modern politically correct. I’m not saying you should agree with everything in them but you need to learn where genres came from to understand what those genres are doing today and where media deconstructing old tropes is coming from.

Also, more often than you might think, they’re not actually promoting bigotry so much as “didn’t consider all the implications of something” or just used words that were polite then but considered offensive now.

Kill the censor in your head.

[candycatfalls]

Wait the book of bill appearing to Ford first is fucking HILARIOUS actually. Ford literally killed Bill less than a month ago, and Bill's still banking so hard on him getting him out of therapy that the book shows up in Ford's stuff MULTIPLE TIMES. Girl the situationship has been over for thirty years give it up 💀

[roseworth]

i think theres this idea in the general public that the "best" fanfic gets turned into real books like 50 shades of grey. but the truth is that the best fanfic can never be published as an actual book because its intricately woven into the canon material so its inseparable even if you change the names

[starridge]

puppet hour was brutal

[lesbxdyke]

I could think of no better way to share the news than this!

So when I was 17, my cat went missing and I'd given up hope of ever seeing him again.

Until on Monday, 27th of May, 2024, my friend sent me a FB post asking 'isn't that your mother?' about the person named on the microchip.

Here he is! 16 years old, and found safe, twelve whole years after he went missing!

Yesterday (Tuesday the 28th of May, 2024) I went to the rescue that had him, and I reclaimed my boy, renaming him Artie! (He'd originally been called 'Cat' because my mother and I couldn't decide on a name)

He's home safe with me now, currently inhabiting my bathroom and purring up a storm every time someone goes in there!

I'll be doing slow introductions between him and my current cat to give them the best possible chance of living in harmony!

Here's some pictures of Artie once we let him out of the carrier:

[evilgoodguys]

caught them doing the SIN, cos, tan (bad trigonometry joke, I'm sorry, you have permission to euthanize me)

bonus:

[mosslingg]

life lessons with grunkle ford

you can support my work on kofi!

[dr-rato]

GET ROTATED

[s0up1ta]

toxic yaoi or something idk i haven't watched gravity falls

[eggsistential-breakdown]

Okay, but hear me out -- what if his parents weren't usually red and blue?

[happyheidi]

𝖠𝗋𝗍 𝖻𝗒 𝖠𝗇𝗇𝖺-𝖫𝖺𝗎𝗋𝖺 𝖲𝗎𝗅𝗅𝗂𝗏𝖺𝗇 | 𝖨𝖦: 𝖺𝗇𝗇𝖺𝗅𝖺𝗎𝗋𝖺_𝖺𝗋𝗍

[baravaggio]

one of my favorite facts about gekko hayashi (artist who drew gay erotica) is that he was straight guy who pivoted from sci-fi & monster stuff to illustrating for gay & bdsm mags at like 50 years old because he wanted to expand his artistic horizons, and compensated by lack of lived experience by setting up a phone line for gay men to call in & recount their stories so he could illustrate them...legend

[that-butch-archivist]

"Lesbian Weddings" by Wendy Jill York

source: The Femme Mystique, edited by Lesléa Newman