#even mentioning delany...

[cliveguy]

this is why i never take book recs from this site omfg

[cute-sucker]

note: thank you @.princessbrunette for creating boxer!rafe !!

extra note: this is an unofficial part 2 !! link

˚❀༉‧₊˚.˚❀༉‧₊˚.˚❀༉‧₊˚.˚❀༉‧₊˚.˚❀༉‧₊˚.˚❀༉‧₊˚.˚❀༉‧₊˚.˚❀༉‧₊˚.˚❀༉‧₊˚.˚❀༉‧₊˚.˚❀༉‧₊˚.˚❀༉‧₊˚.˚❀༉‧₊˚.

you clutched the pregnancy test, clammy hands shaking as you felt more scared than ever. rafe was still in his match, and you- you were forbidden from coming to his matches. the last time you came his opponent had made a pass at you after rafe brutally beat him. 

the guy plummeted to the ground before he could utter another word, and rafe decided that enough was enough. so he sat you down, in your little cameo shorts and baby white tee. your thick lashes battered as he tried to come out the truth. the two of you were in the completely vacant locker room. 

"listen, kid, i don't think you should come to my matches anymore," he said gently, as you gripped his arm. you had a sweet expression on your face before you heard what he had said - quickly wilting as you frowned at him. before you could open your mouth he had already cupped your face as softly as he could.

his hands were rough and warm on your face, you could smell the brutality on them, yet you felt yourself at ease in his embrace. you could never admit it - but rafe had some control over you that you could never explain. 

"i know you're going to say it's your calling," he quipped, leaning in closer. his hot breath fanned your neck, as his mouth nipped at your cheek, "but baby i don't think this place is good for you." you felt yourself unwind and opened your mouth to blubber something. 

you finally gasped out, "but i wanna see you!" 

he groaned, steady hand moving down to your waist. there was an amused expression on his face, but he stayed firm. 

"rafe? please." 

"no."

that was it. so you got another job, and later on, rafe told you to stay at tanyhill with him. you were overjoyed that you would get to see him more and that he was being so gracious. all the girls in the ring had told you he was a playboy and nothing more than that. and you would never tell rafe but it was nice not being a ring girl. sure it was a way to get money fast, but your thighs ached from the amount of times you shined and plucked them.

but it wasn't just that. it was also the dark humid lights that dawned upon you, and trotting while people eyed you like a piece of meat. and now, you felt free, and while rafe would never understand why you chose it - you were a waitress. 

the owner, delany liked you, so she didn't give you a hard time about anything. it was a cafe where time seemed to slow and it was as if nothing could go wrong. you got up early in the morning, giving rafe a goodbye kiss while he was in bed as he groaned about you leaving so early. you took life at strides. things were great. 

but here it was. a sign that maybe everything was going to go to shit. be fine. your heartbeat quickened and you could barely breath - that was when you knew it was going to be bad. you could barely imagine yourself pregnant. 

how old were you? 25? yeah, that was too young and quite frankly did rafe even want a baby? sure he mentioned it sometimes, when you went to baby showers and cooed a baby clothes. but would he-? it was another mouth to feed and god you didn't know if you could support that. rafe, sure, but if he left you? and it was an actual human being to love.

finally, you found yourself rushing out of the bathroom. you had to tell him now, as your heart was on fire, and your hands were stinging. quickly you gathered your stuff and headed over to delany. 

"i have to go." 

˚❀༉‧₊˚.

the ring was the same as usual. the same musty smell, and that feeling of everything being possible. you weren't recognised - though you did see a couple of familiar faces in the crowd. but you weren't here to chit-chat. 

urgency drummed through your veins as you found rafe. 12:35. it was almost time for his first match, and you couldn't dump on him like that. no, you really could there was this feeling. this feeling that ran through you like wildfire as you stumbled to him. 

he looked good, better than good, but he looked alarmed as you twisted yourself around his body. 

"hey, hey kid," he laughed at you furiously hugging his middle, "i love that you're here but i told you about visiting me, didn't i? we had this conversation-" he was stopped right there as you kissed him, cupping his face. he was out of breath, pupils dilated when it finally set in. 

maybe he saw the way you sweet doe eyes were welling up with tears, or the way you swayed in his arms as if he let you go you could crumble, or the way you were trying to mouth words, but nothing was coming out of your mouth. he furiously swore under his breath, and pulled you along with him - you followed like a puppy. 

the dim lights of the corner he had pulled you in soothed your state. no longer did your skin ich, but your head still pounded. rafe looked down at you with a worried expression, as he rubbed your back. you were still holding on to him, wide-eyed. 

"hey?" he snapped his fingers, "can't be doing that here. not right now. what's wrong?" he asked harshly, and you shook your head, completely nonverbal. he raised a hand through his buzzed hair, concern evident in his eyes. whenever you got like this- which was never he had to remind himself to be gentle. 

finally, he dropped himself, voice quiet. he didn't care if people saw him like this- all vulnerable. "sweets are you okay?" he probed again. finally with trembling hands, you reached out into your bag to get the pregnancy test- and broke into tears. the two double lines spread fear throughout his heart. 

rafe had changed. that was a fact, he no longer was plagued by his fathers words as much as before. but could he be a father? suddenly he looked down at you, wispy lashes wet, and doe eyes pleading. suddenly, he felt something blossom in his heart. he imagined you running around in tannyhil, round with his kid. you would be wearing a pretty sun dress, as laughter rang through you. 

finally, he closed his eyes, "it's gonna be okay." 

you seemed to take that as a bad sign, gasping out muffled words, "no, rafe, i didn't know what was going to happen, please-" your hand reached out for his, hoping that things were going to be okay. 

rafe was still looking at the test, as he closed and opened his mouth before shaking his hand, "we're gonna get married, all right? yeah, and i want you to stay here with me. 'cause i need you here." he said tapping your head. there was a watery smile on your face, as you jumped into his arms. 

he held you tightly, and you sniffed. before letting go of him to look into his eyes. it was at that moment that you realised how much he loved you. when he's staring at you like you are his world, and his steel eyes are soft. when his eyes are welling up with tears. 

"just really happy and shit," he chuckled, "i can't believe this," he murmured out before pressing his lips on yours. finally, he pulled apart from you, still gazing into your eyes. 

 "you should go," you found yourself whispering out "it's time for your match." yet your hand found a deathly hold on him.

you saw him smile, and give you a peck on the lips, "want you to watch, 'kay? i'm fighting this match for you," and then his hands travelled down to your stomach, "you and baby." 

dazed you watched him step up into the ring and sighed. if this was love, you'd fight for it any day. 

[multiplekittens]

booooooooooks 4, 12, 17

Books!!!

4. Did you discover any new authors that you love this year?

Definitely Samuel Delany, like I mentioned in the last post; also Seth Dickinson of Baru Cormorant fame! I also really loved When the Angels Left the Old Country by Sacha Lamb, although I've only ever read one of Lamb's books (unlike my other two listed authors)

12. Any books that disappointed you?

Out of my whole list of read books, I think there were only two that I went in thinking they would be better than they were, but I truly hate to say it for both of them 😭😭😭 they were The Daughter of Doctor Moreau by Silvia Moreno-Garcia (I found the character super wooden and uninteresting) and (I'm very sorry) Witch King by Martha Wells 😔😔😔 I really wanted to like that one for Reasons Of My Own but I think it revealed to me some things about Wells' writing style that really, really don't work for me; it's unfortunate, but it's even made me like the Murderbot series less (although I think Wells' writing style works better there)

17. Did any books surprise you with how good they were?

I had heard someone say that Clariel was the worst of Garth Nix's Sabriel series (not its real name but I can't remember that rn), so I went into it with really low expectations, but it ended up being my favorite of the whole series, I think! Have the character be [redacted] really helped Nix get away from his more stereotypical plotlines, which meant the book felt really fresh. This only half counts, because I went into both Traitor and Monster Baru Cormorant expecting to like them, but both were great in ways I didn't expect; Traitor had such well-written lesbians that it made me mad a man wrote them, and Monster (which I had, again, been told was worse than its predecessor) had genuinely the best fat representation I've ever read in a book.

Sorry I wrote so much, I hope it's fun to read!!!

[noah-luck-easterly]

So I've been rereading Randall Garrett's Lord Darcy stories, and they're a fun time I haven't seen anyone mention on tumblr, so I thought I might as well.

They're detective stories, set in a alternate universe where the Plantagenet line has ruled a united England and France for over half a millennium. Aristocracy still rules, this is no constitutional monarchy. Magic has been studied as a science, with trained magicians licensed by the Church. Effects are understood and predictable, though only those with Talent have access to it. Some Talented members of the clergy are trained as Healers, able to treat physical and mental ailments, bringing the life expectancy up to 125. There are trains, but no motorcars, and belief in the healing powers of moldy bread is backwards superstition. It is the 1960s, and Lord Darcy is the chief investigator for the Duke of Normandy. He and his forensic sorceror, Sean O Lochlainn, are responsible for looking into every death among the nobility in his region. If you're willing to give 60-year-old speculative fiction a whirl, I recommend them. They're fun little locked-room mysteries.

If you keep your eyes open, you can spot some fun shout-outs in the text. My favorite is the Marquis de London and Lord Bontriomphe - obvious expys for Nero Wolfe and Archie Goodwin (Bon/Good + Triomphe/Win; I'm a sucker for a pun).

Garrett drops references to prior cases, but all the stories are stand-alones, so you can jump in anywhere you like.

Caveats: If you expect your speculative fiction to have a more critical eye for power structures like monarchy, aristocracy or colonialism, you won't find it here. The Anglo-French empire are presented as the good guys here (or at least the home team). They claim the Americas (New England = N. America, New France = S. America) and are at war with unspecified groups of indiginous peoples there; though they seem to have assimilated the Aztec Empire entire ("Mecchicoe") as a Duchy without warfare. There are a variety of female characters throughout, but not in high enough density to even pass the Bechdel test. Only one speaking character is explicitly described as being non-white. No evidence of any queer lifestyles, other than an offhand comment about a lord's taste in lovers not including men. ("It's 60 years old", yeah, well, Delany's Dahlgren turns 50 next year)

[masonhawthorne]

What I read in August

Don't Panic!

This looks like a super long list, but actually there are a lot of short stories on here!

The Henchmen of Zenda, KJ Charles ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Morning Star, Peter Atkins ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Subsidence (ss), Steve Rasnic Tem ⭐️⭐️⭐️

The Man in the High Tower, Philip K Dick ⭐️⭐️⭐️

What the Dead Know (ss), Nghi Vo ⭐️⭐️⭐️

Maze Runner, James Dashner ⭐️

Unfit to Print, KJ Charles ⭐️⭐️⭐️

Chill, Elizabeth Bear ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Bryony and Roses, T Kingfisher ⭐️⭐️⭐️

Confessor (ss), Elizabeth Bear ⭐️⭐️⭐️

Grail, Elizabeth Bear ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Babylon (nf), Paul Kriwaczek ⭐️⭐️⭐️

Unquiet, E Saxey DNF

The Ritual of the Labyrinth (ss), Esmée de Heer ⭐️⭐️⭐️

Terminal World, ALastair Reynolds ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Essays of Flesh and Bone (ss), Victoria Audley ⭐️⭐️⭐️

The Book Eaters, Sunyi Dean ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

The Future of Work: Compulsory (ss), Martha Wells ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

The Lady or the Tiger (ss), Frank Stockton ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Too Like the Lightning, Ada Palmer ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Falling Free, Lois McMaster Bujold ⭐️⭐️

Dreamsnake, Vonda N McIntyre ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

The First Fossil Hunters (nf), Adrienne Mayor ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Shards of Honor, Lois McMaster Bujold ⭐️⭐️⭐️

Red Land, Black Land (nf), Barbara Mertz ⭐️⭐️⭐️

On Planetary Palliative Care (ss), Thomas Ha ⭐️⭐️⭐️

Nova, Samuel R Delany ⭐️⭐️⭐️

ss= short story nf= non fiction

stars awarded at my whim

I think the ones that really stick with me this month are Elizabeth Bear's Jacob's Ladder trilogy (Dust, Chill, and Grail, reissued as Pinion, Sanction, and Cleave).

The series is about a long-lost generation ship, which has been travelling so long that it has forgotten its destination (if it ever had one) and the people on board have developed incredible biotechnology, and some nasty internal politics.

The vibe of the Jacob's Ladder Trilogy is impeccable. It's Arthurian legends grafted onto military sci-fi. It's body mods, and body horror. It's talking plants. It's angels, and knights, and incest, and quests, and cannibalism, and wonder.

I don't quite know how to explain the way that these books fit exactly into the niche of things that appeal directly to me personally. So if you like the stuff I like, definitely read them.

The other standouts were Dreamsnake by Vonda N McIntyre, and Too Like the Lightning by Ada Palmer.

Dreamsnake is one of those incredible sci-fi's of the 1970s that does interesting things with gender, and familial relationships, and social structures, and concepts of childhood and responsibility and environmentalism. It also has a dreamy kind of wandering quality to it that made it really enjoyable.

Too Like the Lightning was not at all like I had expected, but in a great way. I think I had read a negative review about it some time ago, and put it to the bottom of my list, but a friend read it recently and told me I should read it. So I did. This is my jam. There's so much going on in this book I can't even start to break it down. Huge, elaborate political machinations, weird gender stuff, a narrator with an agenda. It's a lot of fun.

Honorary mention to Morning Star for being one of the strangest vampire novels I've come across.

And that's what I've got to say about that.

[thekimspoblog]

Iris Wexler-McGill (Born Dec. 2017) They/Them

The night dad didn't come home. They never forgave their mother for it.

They steal. EVERYTHING!

Poetic sensibility. Their sister warns them that their recklessness is going to backfire, but they went and shook-down the old HHM building anyway. The way they see it; that building always belonged to them.

FIGHT! Quick thinking and deception is the first course of action, but Iris will always stand their ground over fleeing. Thinking globally means realizing you cannot outrun tyranny.

That's a tricky question, because they would do anything for the cause, but it isn't really THEIR cause. They were born into a second civil war; defending feminism and LGBTQ rights with tooth-and-claw is all they've ever really known.

Iris isn't willing to kill, not by acting on purpose and directly at least. And there are many times where murder would have been the easiest option.

A lot of things, up to and including their gender. But the biggest thing is obviously that they were originally supposed to be born in June of 2004.

Absolutely. Call it a hereditary trait. But mostly just... see aforementioned Second American Civil war. As I've mentioned in other posts, this kid's gonna grow up post-apocalypse. If it wasn't for the time capsule Iris dug up, there would be little evidence this country ever even HAD law and order.

"Do the Evolution" by Pearl Jam

The sequel to BCS I want to write focuses more on how the Breaking Bad universe occasionally teases magical or supernatural elements. And yeah if I get bored it's going to stop being subtle and its' just going to turn into an urban fantasy AU. I'm waiting for "WYCARO" to air.

Iris can use guns for self-defense and intimidation tactics. But their most prized possession is the pinky ring they inherited.

Iris isn't LITTERALLY a reincarnation of Howard Hamlin, but there is a sort of symmetry to their character arcs. Iris spends their whole life into young adulthood fighting the same war/revolution their parents did, under great pressure to uphold some family legacy that promises to retroactively make all the bloodshed justified. But after a full television season of their sister begging them to reevaluate The Cause, Iris finally does decide to lay down their proverbial sword. The cause might have been righteous, but Iris isn't a messiah; they're just another stray dog roaming the wasteland. Kim and Jimmy took up this cause to give everyone's children a better future; neither of them would have wanted their kids to die for this crap.

I'm trying my best not to write Iris as a self-insert. This character (and other similar baby OCs from other fanfics) is significant to me because my mom is the person who got me into this show in the first place. A few years ago, my mom and I were fighting really badly and (to paraphrase) my mom said something to me: "If your 20-something kid is standing in front of you yelling 'you screwed me up!' it means you did at least TWO THINGS right; you kept them alive and you gave them the emotional freedom to be critical of you". MOM is a very crushing label to put on someone, and you're bound to be criticized for falling short sooner or later. But just remember motherhood is a primordial force of nature, not something you can actually succeed or fail at, no matter what the justice system says. And you can't be paralyzed by fear of failure from living your life indefinitely. That's what I think is the heart of any fanfic exploring a surprise pregnancy and Kim's mom baggage. So to answer your question, it's not about any specific overlap I have with this character (or Kim), but the intergenerational dynamic of mother/daughter is somewhat autobiographical.

Tough. Unflappable. Rebellious. Just. Always the one with the witty comeback and the plan to save the day.

Originally it was going to be Hadley Delany, but I guess representational casting would necessitate finding someone who's actually nonbinary.

High. Iris is a hardened soldier. Basically Se6 of Better Call Saul didn't turn out how I expected, but we DID get a post-apocalyptic miracle baby in the form of Frankie Nichols from Westworld. Iris and Frankie are basically the same character.

See #1 again. A lot of childhood was spent with the au pair, and their parents disappearing for weeks on end. It was always scary, the possibility they wouldn't come home that time. And then one night... it finally happened. RIP Jimmy.

It's more like if the Joker had a coherent and ethical reason for their actions? Iris is warm and bright and funny. Because "Mother's sharp ruthlessness + Dad's cavalier attitude = a dangerous winning combination" is the persona they've lived all their lives. But don't mistake that for intimacy; it's all an act. Their sister is the only one Iris actually talks to.

"One must imagine Sisyphus laughing" - Albert Camut. A lot of scarring things happen in Iris's life, but they're able to take most of it in stride. Because they are so certain of their own convictions, it's like they can see 100 years into the future, when so many small horrors will be forgotten. So it's not really about rage; raging against the machine is what they do on a good day. It's when Iris's faith in THE PLAN is shaken, that you would actually be able to provoke them.

Jealous? No. Passing-off-an-act-of-selfishness-as-being-for-the-greater-good-because-they're-a-spoiled-brat? Yes. Iris does believe the world and the future belongs to them.

Healthy as a clam. Can ward off the evil-eye. Closest thing to a disease, the unnatural circumstances of their birth lead Kim to always find her daughter a little creepy. They're a changeling.

Lawful-good in a chaotic-neutral world.

Doubt.

Jimmy and Kim had ample choices to pick alternate timelines for their daughter. But Iris was always going to be generally the same person in generally the same circumstances.

This is my Half-Life 3 bro. Hollywood can never stop milking a cash cow, and if we get any more content set in the Breaking Bad/Better Call Saul universe, I hope we get more stories about the crotch-dumplings' abilities to survive. If not Iris, the demand to know what Kaylee, Flynn and Holly did next seems pretty vocal.

Edgy/misc OC ask meme ᕕ( ᐛ )ᕗ

Send me a number and an OC, and I'll answer.

What memory would your OC rather just forget?

What's something about your OC that people wouldn't expect just from looking at them?

What is your OC's fatal flaw? Are they aware of this flaw?

When scared, does your OC fight, flee, freeze or fawn?

How far is your OC willing to go to get what they want?

How easily could your OC be convinced to do something that goes against their moral compass?

What's one way your OC has changed since you first came up with them?

Would your OC ostensibly be able to get away with murder?

Do you have a specific lyric or quote which you associate with your OC?

What's an AU that would be interesting to explore with your OC?

What is your OC's weapon of choice? Have they ever actually used it?

Is your OC self-destructive? In what ways?

If you met your OC, would the two of you get along?

How does your OC want to be seen by other characters?

Does your OC have a faceclaim? If so, who?

What is your OC's pain tolerance like?

What is the worst thing you have put your OC through story-wise?

Is your OC more cold and detached or up close and personal?

How does your OC behave when enraged?

Does your OC have a tendency to get jealous? If so, how does this manifest?

Does your OC have any illnesses or disorders? How do they handle it?

What character alignment would you consider your OC to be?

What emotion is the hardest for your OC to process? How about express?

What is an alternative life path your OC might have gone down? How different would their life be if they'd made those decisions?

What is your favorite thing about your OC?

[silic0n0asis]

its never not an interesting conversation but i find any discussion about the cultural relevance of an artistic work with respect to time (e.g. notions of "prescience") leaves me with this song stuck in my head. not tagging this as "songs i like" even though i do like it to the extent that i think it serves the films purpose hilariously well—im not tagging it exactly because it is only to that extent. but it definitely makes me think a lot! it also reminds me of the overt/covert narrative split ala Delany's narratological experimentation that i mentioned in a previous post both within the movie and on its own but im very tired so i will just expand on that another time

edit: ive decided to tag it as such actually because it is a very funny and catchy song so there's at least 2 other heuristics by which i could be described as liking this song, as much as they would probably be very weak and unsuggestive of anything on their own if it were not for the preamble. mostly i think i just want to group it with my other music posts

[grandhotelabyss]

I noticed you restructured the American syllabus for the IC, and after groaning at the extra cash I would have to lay down to buy the readings (and at there being only one week of Dickinson*), I rejoiced that I would finally get introduced to American modernism. Along those lines —

Would you consider postwar literature (through to the millenium) for a future IC? If not (or even if so!) I would love to hear how you’d structure this era/a syllabus on it, which you’ve talked about in glowing terms before. But I’m too young to have picked it up as it happened, and it’s too young to have been really canonised yet (or at least, the culture wars have stopped it from being canonised on its own terms rather than primarily political ones). Or maybe it has been but I don’t know where to look, although you said recently that criticism for that era hasn’t yet lived up to the books themselves.

But like, Morrison and DeLilo and Ellison and Bellow and Roth and Baldwin and Pynchon and McCarthy and Nabokov (kinda) and Wallace (apparently) and who else am I missing, and a handful of romancers like Dick and Le Guin — not to mention poets, playwrights, essayists, or Brits! And I don’t know how it all fits together, since we’ve (as Bloom predicted!) handed over the keys to the cultural narrative to the ‘cultural studies’ people who know only how to read films and magazines, and even then just barely.

*Also, do you think you might be able to include at the end of the syllabus a note on the works you’ve swapped out? The expanded guide would be useful, even though (indeed because!) it includes some of the more obvious picks, which I can return to later.

Thanks! I did address some of your questions about how exactly I changed the syllabus in my most recent Substack. I mainly just deleted a few Emerson essays (Nature, "The Divinity School Address," "Circles," "Experience"), Thoreau's Walden (in favor of two shorter pieces by him), and a handful of Whitman's Civil War poems.

I have the lectures for a course I taught on American Lit from 1945 to the present on YouTube here. I wouldn't do anything differently when it comes to poetry and drama than I did there. With fiction, I focused on the short story because it was an intro-level class; for that reason I omitted some writers mainly known for novels (Ellison, Bellow, McCarthy) but I didn't avoid anyone on strictly political grounds (Roth and Wallace are included, for instance, despite the controversy about them). I don't really think of Nabokov as an American writer! For the criticism of the era, big names include Irving Howe, Lionel Trilling, Elizabeth Hardwick, Gore Vidal, Susan Sontag, and then it becomes more strictly academic...I'm not sure I'd ever teach a course on that per se.

I would consider and have considered an IC course focused on the postwar American novel, though I'd probably cut it off at 2000. (As Roger Shattuck once said quixotically of the Visible College, "Students can read living authors on their own time." The few living authors below are over 80 and effectively beyond criticism.) The reading list would probably look like this:

Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man

Flannery O'Connor, The Violent Bear It Away

Saul Bellow, Herzog

Thomas Pynchon, The Crying of Lot 49

Samuel R. Delany, Babel-17

Joan Didion, Play It as It Lays

Leslie Marmon Silko, Ceremony

Cynthia Ozick, The Cannibal Galaxy

Cormac McCarthy, Blood Meridian

Maxine Hong Kingston, Tripmaster Monkey [*]

Don DeLillo, Underworld

Toni Morrison, Paradise

With the postwar British novel, I don't have a list at my fingertips and would have to think about it—and probably read more widely myself. Graham Greene, Christopher Isherwood, Muriel Spark, Iris Murdoch, J. G. Ballard, A. S. Byatt, Angela Carter, Salman Rushdie, Kazuo Ishiguro, Ian McEwan, Zadie Smith, David Mitchell...who else? I'm probably missing obvious people! (I've never read Penelope Fitzgerald, for example. I want to read The Blue Flower but have to read that Novalis thing first and then it never happens, etc. Never read Kingsley Amis, don't care for Martin Amis...)

___________________________

[*] This one would be aspirational. It's long and ambitious, and I read and was fascinated by some of it while researching for the "U.S. Multicultural Literatures" class I used to teach. I never finished it, though, and keep meaning to get back to it.

[mystacoceti]

It’s too easy to reduce the problem of “the gay writer” to the split between those gay writers (like myself) who, on the one hand, feel that all art is political one way or the other and that all they write is from a gay position—and, in my case, from a black and a male position as well—and those writers who, on the other hand, feel that all they write is fundamentally apolitical, even if it involves gay topics; that they are just writers who happen to be gay, or, indeed, black, or female, or male, or Jewish or what-have-you. Whatever one’s knee-jerk reaction to either stance, the truth is that a tally of what writers from both groups actually write in their fictions, in their poetry, in their plays would show that, outside of direct statements on the matter, there’s no simple way to tell from their creative work—for certain—which ideological theme each espouses. Writers who believe that art is fundamentally apolitical often produce extraordinarily socially sensitive works. And it is an endless embarrassment to us who believe in the fundamentally political nature of all human productions that, simply from the plot reductions of their stories, or even from the expressed sentiments of their poems, measured against whatever notion of “political correctness” they believe in (and, like the rest of us, I believe in mine), writers who express the most “correct” political sentiments can produce the most politically appalling work.

If we are ever to solve our problems, I believe the opposition between the two—the belief in the fundamentally apolitical nature of the best art and the belief in the fundamentally political nature of all art—needs to be carefully undone. Personally I suspect that more important than which of these positions a particular writer adopts is whether that writer sees his or her own position as opposing the majority opinion around, or whether the writer sees his or her position as merely an extension of what most other intelligent people think. In the academy, for instance, there’s a tendency to see everything as politicized: Thus writers who have longstanding academic connections can assert their oppositional stance by upholding art to be fundamentally apolitical.

I’ve lived most of my life outside the academy, in a society and at a time where and when the notion that there might be any political aspect to any work not announcing itself as propaganda is hardly entertained or is wholly pooh-poohed. Thus my oppositional belief in total politicization. But, if I’m honest, when I read with great care, say, much of Harold Bloom, or even Paul de Man, not to mention Milan Kundera, in The Art of the Novel (three critics who uphold that art is fundamentally apolitical), it seems that much of what they mean by “apolitical” is precisely what I mean by “political.” I just don’t know if they’d give me as generous a reading as I give them. And, indeed, the generosity of their readings, one way or the other, would be controlled, I suspect, by their perception of what each saw as the major abuses of the position he polemicizes against.

"The 'Gay Writer' / 'Gay Writing' . . . ?", Samuel R. Delany

[afrofuturismnmtb1999]

#1

This week’s blog post will be the first part of a six-part series surrounding all things Afrofuturism. This week I will be focusing on providing some background and historical context on the genre, as well as its significance and impact on not only the black community but popular culture/arts in general. Before, taking this I was admittedly not as well versed or educated on what Afrofuturism truly is. Although I do attribute this to the lack of mainstream attention and accreditation Afrofuturism received before the release of the first Black Panther film and the release of Jordan Peele’s Get Out. However, I also recognize that only citing these major works as being the reason for the rise of Afrofuturism is discrediting some of the brilliant works that musicians, writers, and film producers of works like Octavia E. Butler, Parliament/ George Clinton, Sun Ra, Janelle Monáe, Samuel R. Delany and others. An intriguing and eye-opening aspect of the Afrofuturism genre is the fact that it also includes musical acts and artists. Artists like Parliament and George Clinton, Lil Das X, Sun Ra, Janelle Monae, and even Beyoncé have employed or implemented Afrofutruistic elements in not only their songs but into their visual and live performances as well. Some artists like Janelle Monáe have even transcended their initial boxes or labels and singers and have become deeply ingrained in the genre of Afrofuturism. This was something that I had never thought about before this class, as I admittedly had a rather narrow and uniform description of Afrofuturism. While I was previously familiar with I had only briefly heard a couple of her songs and n not seen any of the aiding visuals. Once I took to the time to view her short films and music videos I found myself to be in c complete awe of her expressiveness, creativity, and art. She not only represents the genre of Afrofutruism with great detail and care, but she also does so in a way that provides social commentary on issues that plague minority groups within our black communities such as sexuality. I previously only thought of Black Panther as Afrofutrism because I was under the impression that it only applied to film and as previously mentioned until recently there weren’t many mainstream screen portrayals of the genre. 

[manybcdthings]

Nate made a hesitant laugh as they walked, somewhat exposed with Delanie's comment. He was a book snob and a literature snob, a little bit of everything snob and those were crucial conversations he had with her that cemented this rather long running...crush sounded childish. Admiration? That's better. "Yeah, basically most modern literature." he grinned at her quickly. "Which is a bad comparison for your thing, then? You dislike most modern art?" he clicked his fingers as a light bulb went off. "Classics girl, right? Renaissance and all that?" The more Nate learned about her the more he...admired. Laughing as they reached the line, he made a subtle step in front of her and offered a playful shrug. "Hey, don't even mention it. Most people think I'm a little bit of a dick already. I don't think anyone would think you were rude, though. Probably wished they could escape as smoothly as you did it."

"It's not, not my thing." Delanie shrugged, walking towards the closest truck and feeling thankful for the familiar face. "I mean, it's probably obvious what I think. The whole art is about perception thing. There's probably plenty of books people like that you think are awful." she smirked slightly, choosing to word it that way around instead of the opposite to appeal to Nate's pessimism. Lanie then waved a hand over her shoulder to the show, or not show, behind them. "But that is er...I don't know. I think managing expectations comes to mind?" she laughed, coming to a stop in the line and smiling up at him. "So thanks for being my scapegoat. I know nobody would have cared if I just walked away but it made me feel better making you look rude at the same time."

[recreationalprozac]

any-e-ways here's what i've been reading these past few months:

earthsea cycle by ursula k. le guin (seriously SO GOOD i'm just a big le guin fan in general altho my poetry prof told me he couldn't get past her prose, which i don't get. wizard of earthsea, no joke, saved my LIFE. i fucking love earthsea and wizards and don't care who knows it. plus the narrator i got (harlan ellison) fucking ate up every single line. 10/10 don't care that it's children's fiction.)

kindred by octavia butler (it's interesting how pessimistic butler can be but all-in-all really incredible look at ancestry esp. white ancestry and gen. trauma.)

the left hand of darkness by ursula k. le guin (also loved bc of course i did. how could i not love. a genderless society. required reading for cis. also they were absolutely kemmering on that ice idc)

one hundred years of solitude by gabriel garcia marquez (it is a classic for a reason truly deeply something that stays in your soul. so so glad i finished it even though it's long and winding because it's some of the most impactful imagry probably ever)

orlando by virginia woolf (the version i borrowed had like. classical music interspersed throughout it. woolf always kills it with the prose like even when i read the voyage out which was slogging and went literally nowhere-- fascinating and beautiful. also... the inherent relatability of being a suffering transgender poet. also best t4t vibes of that time period probably)

dhalgren by samuel r. delany (ngl this is a bit of a slog. apparently the plot goes nowhere but i would be curious to see how the world develops i guess. but it's literally 35 hours. interesting concepts and place. incredibly hot homosexual scene in the first few chapters for a book written in the 70s that made me want to keep reading but no one will tell me if it gets gay again or not)

annihilation and authority by jeff vandermeer (currently reading the later and again the world is so good! i love how you can tell it's florida/the south without it ever being mentioned that it's florida/the south. the premise itself could have been handled SO cheesily and like fandomified (iykyk) but it's enshrined in pure mystery it's gorgeous. love the biologist's autistic behavoir)

plz drop reccs if you have any!!! bc now i can meaningfully update my reading list and get to them :)

[goodegrrrl]

Random TV Shows

that I love and have rewatched because I’m stuck in a hospital 🥲 (in no specific order)

1. Ratched

This will forever be my favorite show. Sarah Paulson as Mildred Ratched just made me so, so happy. And the aesthetic just blew me away. THE COLORS.

2. Castle

I loved this show so much until all the drama with Nathan Fillion happened. That just ruined the show for me. But let me just say - Stana Katic is phenomenal. I actually got to meet her on set and she was the sweetest soul.

3. Bones

Such a comfort show. I love them all. I didn’t like the whole pregnancy and running away stuff but well.. you win some, you lose some.

4. Desperate Housewives

Absolutely amazing. I love this show (and the hot women!)

5. Modern Family

I started watching this one because we had a class on tv in college. I was hooked after one episode. Such a sweet show with so many important messages.

6. Rizzoli & Isles

In my head they’re together.

7. Grey’s Anatomy

This show is my home base. The first show I was ever obsessed with and now watching it feels like a warm home cooked meal.

8. Orange is the new Black

I LOVED this show when it first came out. So much that I dyed my hair black because I thought that it’d make me as hot as Alex.

9. Parks & Rec

Leslie Knope will forever be my spirit animal. This show makes me feel like I’m being wrapped in a warm blanket.

10. American Horror Story & American Crime Story Impeachment

I mean my whole tumblr is filled with that show. Coven will forever be my safe place!

And I know it’s two shows but I just had to mention ACS because of how good Lady Paulson was in it!

OTHERS

11. Jack & Jill

I remember my mom watching that show when I was supposed to be in bed. I was allowed to stay with my parents downstairs but only if I didn’t face the TV and actually tried to sleep. Which I never did. Loved Sarah Paulson ever since.

12. Body of Proof

Honestly I just watched that one because it has Dana Delany and she’s super hot.

13. Suits

It still hurts my soul to even think about that show. It’s just so good and the only show with a heterosexual couple that I absolutely love and adore. I miss this show every single day.

14. Sex and the City

A childhood favorite and I am actually embarrassed about how many times I’ve rewatched it.

15. Friends

I have rewatched this one a million times. Probably every single year since it first aired.

I tag @chl0writes & @paulsonsratched

[rviner]

Laughing as the cards were tossed to the table, Delanie quickly tried to plead with her younger sister but for some reason, the rules of any game just scrambled into nonsense where it almost physically pained her to listen to them. "No, please! I'm not a lost cause. I've only had one glass of wine so this won't be like Christmas." she promised, remembering Ivy and Mel passionately explaining Uno to her and that wasn't even the first time either. She shrugged about the fundraiser, looking between her sisters for a moment. "Mom might want to? But, I was kind of not feeling it." she mentioned and then gestured to both of them. "I'll go if either of you want to?" Lanie offered, idly lifting a game card and glancing to it. What the hell were all those arrows for? She flashed it to Mel quickly with a curious glance. "Switch? Is that it?"

+ DELANIE & IVY / MEL'S APARTMENT, DOWNTOWN

"How have you never played uno, Del?" she tosses the card in a pile after an unsuccessful attempt at explaining to their older sister how to play. Taking a sip of her beer, she nods at them, "are you both going to the DuPont's Fundraiser?" she asks after a beat, their family invited annually, though it depended on the year if they went or not. Even if Mel typically never went. "Or do you think mom and dad will just donate this year? Mom mentioned dress shopping...I said she should ask you," she nods at Ivy. @blackheartatl & @dxrkenedheights

[yrmixedfeelings-blog]

tiny portions

January 31, 2022

· Audio: Tiny Portions

Image: Interior of St. Marks Bath after the closure. 1993. Photo by Ira Tattelman. Via. 

In Motion of Light in Water Sam Delany describes seeing a mass of gay men for the first time. It was in the 1970s on his first visit to the St. Marks bathhouse. He walked into a “gym-size room” drenched in blue light, where he made out 16 rows of beds and about 125 men — “an undulating mass of naked, male bodies, spread wall-to-wall.” What astonished him was something he labored carefully to describe. 

“Let me see if I can explain,” Delany writes. In the fifties the image of homosexuality was one of “solitary perversion. It isolated you.” But “what this experience said was that there was a population — not of individual homosexuals, some of whom now and then encountered — not of hundreds, not of thousands, but rather millions of gay men...” 

Image: St. Marks baths illuminated sign, New York City, c. 1917. Via NY-Historical Society.

He felt a similar fear when the police raided the trucks parked at the docks beside the West Side Highway. The cops might drag a handful into the wagon but what you’d see is what they didn’t catch: hundreds of men fleeing through the cargo and down the street. It was this image of gay masses that produced in Delany a kind of frightened awe, a major difference from the monadic perverts populating the public imaginary.

“Institutions such as subway johns or the trucks, while they accomodated sex, cut it, visibly, into tiny portions. It was like Eighteen Happenings in Six Parts. No one ever got to see its whole.” 

The piece he mentions, Eighteen Happenings, is the 1959 Allan Kaprow performance that “engaged the audience” (in 2022 I might as well be reading an Ikea brochure) by giving them postcard cues that told them how to participate. There were 6 sections with 3 “happenings” that occurred simultaneously. Like a silent rave. Is there a better image of neoliberalism, or whatever nominal hellscape we’re living in, than a silent rave? A dance party without common music, where everybody moves to sound that may or may not be what everybody else hears, and music delivered individually rather than carried by vibration, tactility, interference by other bodies? This is what I hate about substack but I digress.

The deconstructed rave reminds me of Matthew Crawford’s description of working out at the YMCA across from Berkeley High. It was 1979, the weight benches were red sparkly vinyl and the room seemed mostly neglected, save the die-hard dudes loading the squat racks every day. The common music came from a cassette player in the corner and people would either vibe to it or complain, but it was linked to somebody. Decades later Crawford stared at a floating speaker in the ceiling at a university gym wondering who the fuck was in charge. When he asked about the music, the student desk clerk said he “didn’t want to impose his choice on others.” We’re all suffering from the absence of a certain kind of imposition. 

When Delany saw these masses of gay men he felt fused with an overarching whole. “Whether male, female, working or middle class, the first direct sense of political power comes from the apprehension of massed bodies.” 

I can’t stop thinking about Delany’s careful scene because it’s the closest I can get to a description of the present. Except the lubricated seventies are the past and the austere, lonely fifties are right now. 

Images: Top, St. Marks locker room after closure of the baths. 1993. Photo by Ira Tattleman. Bottom, official court order, 1985. Photo by Rene Perez.

I don’t want to acclimate to the loss we’ve suffered since the onset of covid. In pandemic time a totality has been pared down — to individual nuclear units, to a rotating few people, to the actual interior of your house. Even the zoom screen delineates the property lines of the liberal self; we can only rub outer dimensions of identical geometries. In person, interactions are cut up into tiny portions. One-on-one hangouts because risk is low. Everything has become so dyadic, and for me, this means more risky. I want a dyad to be enhanced by its social lubrication. I wanna see you free associate with your object world, and not in a judgmental way, just for the feeling of lubrication. 

I’ve tried to describe the grief I feel from this degree of social loss. The best I’ve done is to say I miss feeling hot in circulation. Or to recall the demonic feeling of walking into a sea of dykes at Ships in the Night, where everybody’s fine and mean. (I was heartened to hear daemonum x mourning in a similar way here.) The only sea I’m seeing right now is a heterosexual one at the university gym, or traffic, which is just a scaled-up zoom room. US social life was stripped down before Covid, and without this virus it would’ve been right for someone to complain about the meagre collective sense on offer. Liberalism’s isolating effects have only been enhanced. Someone recently asked “How are things in your world?” with an air of utter separation. We live in the same town. But we also live in the world and the world is shared. I want connection without property lines, which is not the same as bad boundaries. 

Some of Jack Halberstam’s recent work (on Alvin Baltrop’s photos of the NY piers) is premised on the idea that we don’t live in the same world, or moment, as Sedgwick and Muñoz were living in when they wrote about “worldmaking.” He studies Baltrop’s photos of queer people and “collapsed architectures.” I think queerness and dereliction have always been intertwined. Fucking in abandoned places. Outerspace and post-apocalyptic vistas. Finding the interstices of capital or whatever’s the opposite of spectacle. As long as we live in this version of a world it’s fine for architectures to be collapsed. But I don’t want my social world to resemble this aesthetics of collapse, settling with the drywall dust or razed for a new Costco. So I’m gonna keep remembering what it was like before, resisting the presentist amnesia that the before was where it was at, and knowing that every encounter has the potential be more rich than the circumstances would have it.

-lazz

[bagofbonesmp3]

do you think theres like, any way to move forward in fantasy/scifi where different cultures are represented with composites without it being wildly offensive, or is just that a lot (in particular white gentile) writers dont do it in good faith/have sensitivity readers at all lol. it's honestly exhausting that a lot of big works from these genres are so bad with this

the thing about "the pillars of modern sci fi" (ie, star wars, star trek and dune) is that a) they were written 50+ years ago b) it was at the hand of white gentiles who had never thought that their appropriation was wrong. it was the norm to see something pretty, understand it superficially and make it yours. sci fi by nonwhite authors have always existed (not to go far, lots of early anime/live action japanese shows and movies were science fiction, astroboy, ultraman, the whole Kaiju genre.) black sci fi authors like octavia butler, samuel r delany are also great pillars of modern sci fii

if you want to find sci fi from and by the cultures the big names have appropriated from, you can easily look for them. it's just that their work rarely gets picked up, and when it does, audiences fail to show up. in the cases of these big franchises mentioned before, the solution would be to give creators from these cultures significant creative power (the new star wars ronin novel, written by a japanese american author is a good example) and not just in optics, but also in the writers room and directing matters (also ehem. monetary compensation from the multimillionaire companies would be nice)

that's the easy solution, i guess, but if the new dune adaptation tells me anything is that storytellers don't care even in 2021, as much as they cast actors of color in their modeen stuff, they're happy to continue using these cultures as settings and profiting off of it. i can just say support sci fi storytellers from the cultures star wars, star trek and dune have ripped from, and more importantly, give them your money