#a girl is a half-formed thing

[soracities]

In my quiet in my bedroom in my on my own. Where there’s a mirror that is empty. Where there’s a worn out pair of pants. Where my shoes lie turned over. Where hairs are knot and fall behind the radiator. Where the smell of empty spreads out across the air.

Eimear McBride, A girl is a half-formed thing

[angel-void]

A Girl is a Half-formed Thing

[vouseofwolves]

im reading a girl is a half-formed thing rn and its like. changing my stream of consciousness actually

[miasbooks]

a girl is a half-formed thing - eimear mcbride

rating: 4/5

beautiful and tragic story, religious trauma, very interesting characters

would have been 5 stars but i just couldnt get used to the writing style it was just a bit to experimental for me

other than that it portrays everything extremely well, illness, grief, trauma, trauma responses, abuse

at times really hard to read bc its really dark in some ways but still really really interesting would definitely recommend

[introvertedexhuastedpigeon]

book thoughts

milk fed is kind of weird but overall good. the chapters are really short and addictive which makes an easy read imo. it's about a bisexual jewish woman who deals with her ED and cuts contact with her highly critical and emotionally abusive mother. she navigates a relationship with a younger jewish woman who is the physical manifestation of the biggest fear behind her ED (in other words she fat). it also briefly touches on the Palestinian genocide. i think i went into more detail in one of my other posts.

a girl is a half-formed thing is a book that even after deliberating on for months, i still have mixed opinions about. because on the one hand it is innovative and creative and the writing style is unlike anything ive ever read before. it allows for a more intimate dive into the main character's psyche and inner world than would be achieved with traditional writing styles. but on the other... i felt like i was having a stroke when i first started reading. it's hard to get into. i found myself reading the same page twice or maybe thrice for about the first twenty pages of the book before i fully got into it. it was worth it, i'll admit that, but the hurdle is not something to be overlooked. another point of conflict for me was the role of her brother in the book. the blurb makes it seem like he'll have a larger role or that more of her story would centre around her experience as his sister (which is what initially drew me to the book) but this is simply not the case. her story is worth reading on its own, i just dont like the false advertising, and the fact that towards the end it was just so trauma heavy. it felt a bit much. i think what makes me so firm in my decision that this deserves 4.75 stars (out of 5) is the fact that i cant stop thinking about this book. the way it's worded is so utterly impactful. it's like the story is burned on my retinas. reading it was a transformative experience.

i want to die but i want to eat tteokbokki is one of the best book titles i have ever heard. in the first half of the book i couldnt help but feel like it was personally written for me. there were so many lines and paragraphs and passages and PAGES that i ended up highlighting. there are so many experiences that ive kept to myself because i didnt think anyone else would understand it or that i didnt know how to verbalise or maybe even admit to myself that this author has put into words. it's such a strange thing to have 22 years of experiences, battles, with your own mind kept quiet and hidden only to come across a book written by a stranger that so astutely holds up a mirror to your own face and shows you your own mind, fears and flaws better than you'd be able to. im using "you" a lot just to avoid the accusatory "i" but i hope my meaning is clear enough. if you're dealing with depression or anxiety, it may be of comfort to read this book. but towards the second half of the book i sort of lost interest and became disinterested in the book and author and the story. the last bit of the book also had a completely different structure to the rest of the book and that felt off.

[buglaur]

fireworks show 🎆

material preview version is very cute also :)

i struggled with the lighting on this one so badly, but it turned out alright in the end.

i actually started it last year for new years 2023 but never got around to finishing it, hence no progress pictures this time sadly lol. i do have a very low-res, first draft, test gif though

stills 🥳

[jennycalendar]

your tags on that fandom post got me thinking of how... defensive fandom is of the status quo kinda? like I'm white so this might come off like I'm absolving myself which I'm not, but so often I see "fandom is a queer run space that fixes canon! buuuut we're going to focus on the white men because they're the only ones with depth :) and we're going to make actually good female characters cookie cutter. and we're going to ignore black men and especially black women. but queer run safe space!!"

the minute i got this ask i knew i had to wait until i was at home with my laptop because my fingers cannot fly as fast on my phone as they can on the computer keys. this is literally so much of what is happening in the buffy fandom. the whole thing is built on intrinsic systemic racism n misogyny that's reinforced within the show and that many in the fandom do not critically engage with in the slightest. it is absolutely objectively insane to me that i can make a post going, for example, "hey, isn't it fucked up as hell that the show treats the romani people as evil for wanting angel to suffer?" and then people will come into my inbox or land in my reblogs and go "well, actually, the show treats the romani people as shortsighted and bad at long-term planning, and i choose to read them that way too :)" and fully not see that there is a hell of a problem with THAT statement as well (real thing that happened). OR that kennedy hate is still hugely in vogue because she's mean and bratty and terrible and doesn't know her place!!! OR kendra's death & how easily she is forgotten by the fandom!!!!! OR the entire trend of handing buffy to a person's favorite character like a little trophy they've earned for being tortured and sad, reducing her to a facet of a romantic relationship & implying that this is what she needs to feel and be complete!

OR OH MY GOD THE ENTIRETY OF EVERYTHING SURROUNDING SPIKE. where do i even start with spike. completely serious, i am honestly endlessly impressed by the people who can still handle being fans of spike, because being a fan of spike means having to wade through 20 million fics where That Bitch Buffy must be narratively punished for abusing poor baby spike who only ever wanted to love her and was totally out of character every time he hurt her (and also drusilla is a vapid whore who didn't love spike, ever.) like i am not at this point in time always strong enough to engage with spike content simply because there is so much spike content that is SOAKED in violent misogyny repackaged as Deep, Torrid Romance. it's exhausting to try and find the good stuff when sometimes even the good stuff will throw you a curveball in chapter five or shy uncomfortably away from the racist realities of spike's character. the fact that robin wood has been hated for so long because he had the Nerve and the Audacity to want retribution for his mom, and that he is framed as in the wrong for wanting that, is in and of itself so fucking upsetting to me.

AN Y WAY. i agree with you. and i get what you're saying. i think an awareness of the pattern and a willingness to feel uncomfortable within your own mistakes is always a good place to start. i try so hard never to dig my heels in if i can avoid it.

[petz5]

grabs him by the scruff of his neck like a kitten

[aroaessidhe]

2023 reads

The Girls Are Never Gone

a girl does a summer internship with the historical society cleaning up an old estate where a girl died 30 years ago, so she can investigate it for her ghost-hunting podcast

she’s a skeptic who privately thinks she’ll be able to find evidence of non-supernatural, but weird things start happening to her and the other two girls in the house

spooky lake & creepy dolls

bisexual diabetic MC with a service dog, f/f

[thats-my-passion-right-there]

I finally saw the mean girls musical (the movie one) I have so many fucking thoughts oh my god

[soracities]

I have. Nothing against this. No defence at all. But. To fall on the spindle. To be turned into the darkness. To be turned into stone.

Eimear McBride, A girl is a half-formed thing

[louderfade]

if you decorated your apartment/house/homespace to be beige/grey/off-white/basically a noncolor i automatically do not trust you. why are you afraid of colors. why do you want to live in a realty photograph or a hampton inn. i asked my sister why people do this (she's my go-to for explanations of normies bc she would've been one except she does drugs and was raised by me so got early immunity from full frontal lobe shut down) and she said "people find it calming" like wow really how strange. expressing zero personality/taste calms them down? that shit makes me feel like there could be a threat lurking near. it puts me on edge. it sets off alarms in my instinct center. i feel like a dog who senses an approaching animal has rabies. warning: some shit is deeply wrong with this organism and they pose a threat to your well being. flee without engaging. my grandparents are 90 and conservative and even they had a house with colors and patterns and art they enjoyed. millennial apartments terrify me. our boomer parents were hit or miss with their ticky-tacky suburban houses. some of those houses had a soul but many didn't. "hanging stuff on the walls decreases the property value" and other such statements that prove you're already dead. millennials seem worse though bc they do it to rentals bc they LIKE it. maybe those old women haircuts all the girls had in hs in the 2000s (this is my fav gen z criticism of us millennials bc so fucking true in hs i was like wtf are these middle aged hairstyles how did this become cool everyone looks 35) are responsible for this particular variety of brain damage. from now on i believe in this link. 32 year olds live in light grey horror boxes bc sporting 40 year old hairstyles at age 16 makes you permanently boring and unable to display any taste or personality. these are people who get uncomfortable looking at art or when a friend cries. these are the people who say "i'm sorry for your loss" to a grieving person instead of "life is cruel af my brother no answers come still we must try to survive do you need a fierce hug at this moment or not also i brought you a xanax" like a real human being would. the craziest thing i ever saw my mom do was pay to paint our foyer "eggshell" when the damn walls were already white. this is actual mental illness. not me screaming in the road about how the modern world makes no sense and all the food is microplastic poison. not a single child on earth says their favorite color is light grey or dark white. your soul is sick if beige calms you down. i diagnose you with a severe deficiency of humanity. you need to be hospitalized and forced to discuss philosophy and engage with music until you remember what is valuable about consciousness, which is beautiful as well as cruel, both a gift and curse but it's worth it. i'd rather be awake and have to go to the hospital sometimes when it becomes too much and i end up sobbing drunk in the yard than lobotomized to the point of trading my precious time on earth for money i then spend on beige curtains and a sign that says "caution: caffeinating" to hang in the kitchen proving i am a corpse whose bland heart forgot to stop beating. i mean they shoot horses don't they.

[phagodyke]

grrr.... my boss came in and asked to talk to me for a moment and basically she was asking how I distinguish between production stock/my stock bc the stock/supply staff had insinuated to her that I'd been stealing their stock which I HAVEN'T!!!! I would never + my boss knows that but she still had to ask.... so annoying

[miasbooks]

[tbpbsides]

no safer space than tumblr dot com to confess the last year of my life has been one of the loneliest - undoubtedly one of the most peopled and most filled with growth - but loneliest all the same, except for the fact of recency bias, which means its actually probably been like this the whole time

[skrunksthatwunk]

fuck offfff poor audio processing makes ppl flirting with me so stupid they'll be like hey you're pretty and I'll go ah 👍😐. or omg yeah! 🤘 or i just laugh bashfully without even knowing what they said until like a minute later. help help my default responses are making people confused and unsettled. and those are the same responses i give when ppl talk shit about me too it's not good