#commentary on my trans experience in America tbh.

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what do you read in your spare time? you’re one of the most eloquent users i know, id love to hear how you find the media you consume and what your favorites are

omg ei 😊 welcome back to the inbox! thank you for your sweet words although i'm probably not qualified enough to be considered the full definition of eloquent. i am going to preface this post by saying that i definitely don't read as much as i should, so this list is not going to be comprehensive whatsoever. the last time i even visited an in-person library was like half a decade ago, and since then my spare time has been nonexistent lmao. anyways, here are some of my favorite/most recent reads as listed by author:

POETRY

richard siken: i think siken is already well-known both in the literary world and in whatever booktok deems is popular culture. if you don't already know him though, he is best known for his poetry collection crush, which delves into themes of obsession, gay love, and violent eroticism. i actually read this chapbook unknowingly. as in i was hounding sketchy pdf download sites at 3 AM and saw a man with bloodied lips on the cover and decided to read it. he basically became my summer fever dream after that. the way he juxtaposes images is seamless, smoother than water. only richard siken can talk about violence without making it sound violent. i also enjoyed his other poetry collection war of the foxes, especially "portrait of fryderyk in shifting light." i think light is a common motif throughout most of his poems, and he manipulates it effortlessly. the most recent piece i read from him is "piano lesson." i have nothing left to say that he didn't already say, so i would just recommend reading it for yourself. he is the og big brain when it comes to word play.

ocean vuong: he's unforgettable, and i mean that literally because nobody forgets a person named ocean. time is a mother was exactly what the name suggests: an exploration of grief, loss, and the rewind of time after his mother's death. some of the poems are almost cinematic in quality. "künstlerroman" is my favorite because it feels exactly like watching a video tape in reverse. i think his most famous work is "someday i'll love ocean vuong." it was the first piece i ever read from him, and to this day, it remains my comfort poem.

silas denver melvin: i only recently discovered him through his chapbook grit. i think he's also on tumblr @/sweatermuppet. he writes a lot on the trans experience, and his work gives me a mix of southern gothic and country vibes. would definitely read his other publications if i had the time.

chen chen: one thing about chen chen is that he always comes to devour. my favorite works from him are "self-portrait as so much potential" and "song of the anti-sisyphus." you have to put on your thinking cap for some of his poems, but once you grasp the meaning, everything makes sense all at once.

franny choi: "disaster means without a star" was the entire inspiration behind my first rin fic. i relate to her more personally in regards to the diaspora experience, but her collections are worth reading in general because of the sheer quality.

pages matam: his poem "piñata" was what got me into slam poetry. his work mostly consists of political commentary which i feel is particularly relevant in today's social climate. "on learning america's english" also resonates with people who have encountered the entire losing/learning immigrant tongues experience.

laura lamb brown-lavolie: i've only read one spoken word poem from her, and tbh i only needed to read one. "on this the 100th anniversary of the sinking of the titanic, we reconsider the buoyancy of the human heart" is my two-headed calf poem. one day i will get this tattooed.

brendan constantine: once again, this was the result of me being chronically online coupled with the boredom of an august heat wave. i found "the opposites game" through TED. honestly, i was a bit unsure about it at first, but it's a cute little poem that makes you really delve into the intricacies of craft.

TEEN POETRY & PROSE

yasmeen khan: she could mouth her words onto every square inch of my body, and i would still be coming back for more. ingraining them into flesh is not enough. "movie stars" is by far my favorite work from her. she writes about femininity and womanhood so profoundly. it's tragic, but really i wouldn't have it end any other way.

kaya dierks: her writing is basically middle-of-nowhere small town stoner teenage life but personified. "crushed" is my favorite piece from her. the soundtrack for this work was definitely by ethel cain, and you cannot convince me otherwise.

FICTION

madeline miller: i was first introduced to her when i read the song of achilles. let's just say that book had me nonverbal for the greater half of three months. it was my metaphorical hatchet. i buried it once, and i never want to dig it up again. i read circe a few years later. the first time was during the blue hour at an airport, right between one red-eye flight and another transfer. i don't even remember that experience because i was heavily sleep-deprived. i read it again recently for a literature course, this time for academic analysis. overall, i enjoy the the heroine-centric narrative. typically, i'm a bit wary of novels with heavy feminist themes because they either project their agenda too strongly or they run the risk of misrepresentation. circe doesn't exactly have that problem. it was more about empowerment and less about exercising power over others.

charlotte brontë: as a historical figure, brontë was questionable, but jane eyre most certainly was not. that book rewired my brain, and that is saying something because i have never read any classic by choice. and it is so important to me that jane was the ugliest, plainest girl you could ever imagine. also cus i unironically enjoy angst, and this book was full of dramatic misunderstandings.

yoko ogawa: i love japanese literature, so there is no reason not to include this one here. "a peddler of tears" is one of my favorite short stories. i did not expect the ending at all, but it was welcome. something about violence, body gore, and dismemberment being framed as romantic and semi-erotic just gets to me. sign me the hell up. hotel iris is a hit-or-miss with some people. either you like the fact that art makes you uncomfortable or you shut it down completely. for me, i was alright with exploring some of its darker themes, but read at your own discretion.

NONFICTION

ross gay: he lives up to his name both in optimism and in carefree joy. probably one of my favorite creative nonfiction authors simply based off the accessibility of his writing style. easy to read and understand but still hits you with the full force of a semi-truck. i would recommend his book inciting joy. it's a collection of essays that delve into grief, but since this is ross gay, he makes it seem like a quintessential part of life.

paul kalanithi: sixteen-year-old me was mind blown by him cus before that doctors were shrewish old men with bald spots and sterile coats, not poetic surgeons who dissected the anatomy of word and recited t.s. eliot in the most heart-wrenching way possible. he is everything i want to become in both life and death. when breath becomes air literally does take your breath away.

[pinkcloudsnightlightbell-remade]

[This post really doesn’t make sense but you should deffo have some experience with the game Resident Evil 2 : Biohazard (2019) -- here’s a short livestream of the 30-minute demo by some cool video journalists and a H U G E L Y Y influential horror gamer’s video of the demo, as well. (And here’s a favourite artist who is probably the very one you can blame for me wasting your time/gushing sm lol...) ]

Input/commentary is sincerely, absolutely, and aggressively, encouraged! ! 

Leon Scott Kennedy is nooooooooooot supposed to be any heterosexual woman`s fantasy because he is bisexual let me get into it

👉 First like the whole thing with Ada manipulating him? 

GOLD

but it’s unfair to Leon who’s actually incredibly...human?

And the other thing is that (and I probably have made it really clear) Resident Evil and the fandom are so ... weird and racist but I like seeing all the changes from the remake as well as (to a lesser degree) backtracking through the games where Leon’s appeared

I love seeing him in 2019 being completely off-the-bat friendly towards Claire and then flirting -- and it being okay with me???? I went ahead and looked up tags on here and @/mikaeled had a drawing of the RE 2 protagonists 

The first protagonist, Claire, is drawn with the bi flag colours

The second protagonist, Leon, got the ace flag

THAT made me want to tap into fandom a little bit more and I went on Twitter and Pixiv and got to see some weird fantasies of being a really controlling Leon but on the other hand saw amazing depictions of Claire being in a loving relationship with a Leon whose kindness lined up with my first exposure of him. (The other day I had a similar experience looking up lesbian/bi claire redfield on this hellsite and someone wrote that Claire is a lesbian -- big big yes -- but added in the tags that “Leon is a trans bi guy!”)

So.

Why not get into it a bit while I’m overcaffeinated?

👉 Leon and Ada is ... weird and people can read weird, bad things into it especialllllllllly if you consider “yellow fever” but it can also be smth super cute where a bi guy and a really cool girl he meets allows him to survive the events of RE 2 (1998) because she is literally mourning the death of her boyfriend in Umbrella. I think that Capcom unbeknownst to their demonic loudmouth staff have created some really thoughtful chances for representation and that helped them get so big--so Ada and Leon are good

But like...

Claire is right there! Leon and Claire become friends like that and tbh they make my bisexual heart melt as individuals. As a couple I feel hope imagining the ways they’d buck the trend of alienation and the threat of abuse...I feel like I care nothing for the fandoms, the creators, and even a majority of the games’ plot points, but here Leon and Claire are, making me feel so much pride because they show that there’s a way for men and women to be ... healthy while in love. They’re the couple that’d be great peer parents (Shirley is a big part of their game they’re protagonists of, and I love how she is written both in 1998 and 2019 which parallels how Moira Burton is written--and completely diverges from the tragedy of the pigeonholey writing of Ashley Graham) and then while they’re wonderful supports to Shirley and are intimately “””together””” in many aspects of life I believe that they’re the type to not even date because the intimate devotion and protection or sticktoitiveness of a friendship ends up building first, because it matters more. Which is not to say that when they do get into a relationship it’s anything but one that is rare.

It’d be r.a.r.e.!!

look at this ... fucked me up 

👉 In regards to this rare kind of love, the key isn’t sympathy or understanding and cooperation even through struggles ranging from PTSD to personality clashes through the years, nor is it chemistry and attractiveness (yeah I will go on record that they’re for better or worse based off of Caucasian models who are paid to be taken pictures of in real life and it fucking shows like I’d be a dishonest bisexual if not just a bad bisexual if I said I didn’t wanna ram both of them into a mattress shut up).To me it’s how Claire is as much of a hero as a typical Die Hard movie hero and YET no more of a hero compared to Leon who is, very clearly, atypical. That’s the biggest part. I love the atypicality. Leon’s seen as hot but approachable and even “a little baby who’s an incompetent rookie cop” but he isn’t... the usual cop, a.k.a. a batt*rer and a **pist and a vio*ent threat and a pig... He’s known to be a soft kind person in the remake.... so to me... 

I love him for Claire but I love the possibility that Leon Scott Kennedy’s bi and gender-nonconforming, and asexual (being demisexual) and not-cisgender and completely proud. I love that he could be this and he IS as good as this ...and he supports lesbians and bi women and alll trans and gnc and nb people unequivocally, maybe,,? Yes? Sbshshdjdjd 

Granted this is all a LOT. Let me defend myself and say that perhaps this is a hyperfixation for me but I’m the type that likes to mix into some of the emotions a tiny nugget of logic so let me make the disclaimer that, ya boi isn't an easy 'n convenient character that's hot into which I as a reader can insert myself... For me I’ve pieced something together that brings comfort and makes some sense. I like to think that he is a survivor of gay-bashing, ostracization, financial abuse, emotional abuse, ****, humiliation, public threats, familial bullshit such as custody battles and gaslighting and is transgender but he’s proud... he’s proudly trans and perhaps he is touchaverse and in terms of sexuality is bi/pansexual while in terms of who he has dated before it’s very messy as he is very aggressively misandrist and hates men and perhaps he’s very stone when he is in a mewd -- and perhaps transphobia makes him go into a rage and he has actually gotten in lots of trouble before as a kid which came back to bite him and he’s lost family and found family and best friends and the loss really hurt and made his choice to go to police academy ring hollow by the end of his training and made him a big believe in social justice and in defending people who society left behind and in therapy and self-change and in accountability (he ISN’T a selfinsert prOMISE!!) but he’s been through a lot aaaaaaaa lotttttt like idk hes just a dude sure

he’s just a dude.b,ut theres a reason zombies don;t faze him!

LOVE THAT. That part.

👉 to sum up: i support the remake fans not being uncritical and loving on the cast of characters and leon specifically! there’s a reason he recently bucked the trend of masculinity and (21 years of fandom and 21 years of problematic annoying fans, perhaps also writers, aside) has always been objectifiable, that is, seen as hot/a sidepiece/specifically desirable for women--but just /: not /: women /: as in /: Women slash str8s /: . . . .RETCH lmao he’s a gun toting hero that is very atypical but not in a disempowering manner -- rather, in an empathetic and emotional one and I want to see the RE2 protagonists heal through a life changing care and tender friendship rather than bonding through liferuining catastrophes 💓💓💓but what I am trying to say in the end is that they are so inspiring both together and as individual protegonists due to their abiliy to weather thru struggles that I as a qtwoc immigrant in America can identify with🤧 

[📍]  tl;dr   -- - 💓cute pan pew pew man is loving and cute ! :> also claire is 💓💓💓💓💓💓💓💓���💓💓💓💓💓💓 so cute...........................pls support/refute my theory