#notes of a crocodile

[mordax101]

Andrew and Neil’s relationship will always be impactful to me because it’s about independence existing with love rather than in defiance of it. “I’m not your answer and you sure as fuck aren’t mine,” isn’t a throwaway sentence; it’s not Andrew trying to deny the thing growing between him and Neil. It’s saying the pure and simple truth: love isn’t going to fix everything. Love isn’t going to heal Neil or Andrew; infatuation isn’t going to last an eternity; this interest isn’t going to be a life purpose.

Both Andrew and Neil see it. Instead of pretending they can be enough for each other, they both work to help the other stand alone. Andrew helps Neil stand his ground and stop running. Neil helps Andrew accept his brother and the importance of other people. They help each other find answers that aren’t just themselves. (Although I would argue Andrew had this intention while Neil more or less saw himself as insufficient -- 'nothing' -- and therefore not enough to depend upon; but that's a whole other thing for a whole other post)

I think Andrew has a much deeper understanding of trauma responses and recovery than he lets on (he had so many sessions with Bee). He sees the signs of Neil growing dependent on him. He knows Neil is prone to dependency after his mother; he knows he himself is prone to controlling people and situations. They are the perfect recipe for toxic reliance. Knowing this, he tries to push Neil away. When he figures out he can’t, he tries to change the trajectory their past and their trauma has them set on. Everyone emphasizes how much Andrew focuses on not becoming his past via his ‘yes or no’, but he also focuses heavily on letting his family stand alone. In more ways than one, Andrew actively aspires to be better.

There’s a quote from a book I read recently (Notes of a Crocodile by Qiu Miaojin): “Only healthy people are capable of being in love. Using love to treat an illness just makes the illness worse.” So many stories romanticize love bringing people back from the dark. Andrew and Neil don’t drag each other out of dug graves. Instead, they hand each other a shovel and start digging themselves.

It's been on my mind; how Nora Sakavic masterfully concocted an outline of characters with a disaster waiting at the end of every road and told us a story about how people can take control of their lives and redirect themselves to something healthy and beautiful. I'm excited for TSC :)

[phaedraismyusername]

Happy International Lesbian Day! Here's some super brief book recs to celebrate

Books dealing with love, loss, longing and abandonment

This is How You Lose The Time War is a short but beautifully written epistolary novel between two agents on opposite sides of a time war as they slowly fall in love.

Our Wives Under the Sea is one of the most beautifully written debuts I've ever read about a woman whose wife comes home wrong after they thought she'd died at sea and how it feels to grieve the loss of someone who's still in your home.

Lucky Red is a western novel about a young girl working in a brothel who meets her first female gunslinger and falls head over heels for her, and the consequences that come with loving dangerous people.

Body horror galore

Camp Damascus is about a young woman living in a super conservative christian town built around the worlds most successful conversion camp and the horrors that are uncovered there when praying the gay away fails.

To Be Devoured is about a woman whose fascination with the local vultures turns into obsession and the urge to know what carrion tastes like overtakes her life and leads her down stranger and stranger paths.

Chlorine is about a girl whose entire life revolves around being a competitive swimmer, and how abuse, neglect, and obsession with being the best takes its toll on the young women caught up in these destructive cycles.

Flawed character studies

Big Swiss is about a woman who has a kitchen floor reset in her 40s, moves away and starts a new life as a transcriber for a sex therapist and becomes obsessed with one of his clients before inserting herself into this poor woman's life.

The Seep is a speculative sci-fi set in a future where there's been a quiet alien invasion that has given people the ability to make almost any changes to their own bodies and what that world feels like to someone who doesn't want to partake.

Milk Fed is about a woman in therapy who feels cut off from almost everything until she meets another woman who triggers in her a melding of sex, hunger, and religion and where that takes her. Huge trigger warnings for ED content. It gets tough, y'all.

Fantastical wlw books

Bitterthorn is an amalgamation of fairytales retold as a slow burn sapphic love story between a sad young girl from a cursed land and the evil witch who takes her as a companion in the latest of the generational sacrifices made to appease her.

All the Bad Apples may be set in contemporary Ireland but it is a fairytale following a young girl as she travels across the country looking for a sister she refuses to believe is dead and the people she meets along the way.

Gideon the Ninth needs no introduction on this site but for the sake of formatting - lesbian necromancers in space who find themselves in an isolated murder mystery plot. It's not a romance but it is a love story and this series will change your life if you let it.

Translated novels

Boulder is a short character study following a free spirited woman when she accidentally settles down with the woman she loves and how love and resentment can take up the same space in your chest when life doesn't turn out the way you hoped it would.

Notes of a Crocodile is a cult classic coming of age story about queer teens in Taipei in the 1980s. It was written in the 90s so please keep that in mind if you choose to read it.

Paradise Rot is about an international student studying in Australia and her growing obsession with her housemate as they share a space that allows no privacy. I've never read anything that feels stickier.

[smokefalls]

I don’t want to be close to you again. Our fighting knows no end. I want you to shatter the illusions I created, and go out and love someone else. Don’t love too much but don’t fail to love, either. Love prudently. Love realistically, just enough to treat someone well. Though you don’t love me anymore, relationship or not, I want you to be well now and always. I want you to love someone else, even if it hurts me.

Qiu Miaojin, Notes of a Crocodile (translated by Bonnie Huie)

[aiwiloart]

collage I did back in June based on one of my favourite books, notes of a crocodile by qiu miaojin!!

[philiania]

Secretly though, I did sort of enjoy being a fucked-up mess. Apart from that, I didn’t have a whole lot going on.

- Qiu Miaojin, Notes of a Crocodile

[haveyoureadthisqueerbook]

[florizels]

There are some sorrows so great that they are unspeakable, taking hold in the body and leaving a void after the fact. There are some depths that love can never again reach. The mind anoints every fossil with significance in an attempt to preserve it—but in time, they all invariably turn to dust.

Qiu Miaojin, from Notes of a Crocodile (trans. Bonnie Huie)

[rosesteeth]

— from notes of a crocodile by qiu miaojin

[bloodhive]

"I'd wrenched our relationship to the breaking point and watched it split apart. I know I made you suffer. I'll never cut you off again. I spit out the words that were caught in my throat. She let out a laugh, and then, as if she'd finally been torn open, a cry of pain. To paint a picture of our embrace, I'd almost have to use her blood and guts."

— Qiu Miaojin, Notes of a Crocodile, trans. Bonnie Huie

[liulyam]

Notes of a Crocodile

—

4/4, part of a series of illustrations for Pride. A book cover based on the novel “Notes of a Crocodile” by Qiu Miaojin

[feaftlikeabeaft]

My dealer: got some straight gas 😛🔥 this strain is called “notes of a crocodile” 😳🐊 you’ll be zonked out of your gourd

Me: yeah whatever. I don’t feel shit.

5 minutes later: dude I swear I just saw some lesbians in the forest

My buddy Tun Tun pacing: Zhi Rou is lying to us

[hoyatype]

In confronting my desires, ] felt sorrow and regret over my former, unrealistic ways of thinking, but I was also moved and inspired. After having come so close to ending my life, I came back, my will to live completely re-awakened. I faced reality, where I would learn to live again, this time boldly and fearlessly. My body was screaming at me, telling me that life was a gift. The agony of the past few years, like the conflict between the real me and the one everyone knew, is gone. I even feel a little sorry for my old self, so feeble and self-pitying. It seems I’ve finally come around to living the life I’ve always dreamed of.

qiu miaojin, notes of a crocodile

[legendarycollectiveflower]

Who was the real me, then? It was an abstraction that hadn’t yet taken shape in my lifetime.

-Qiu Miaojin, Notes of a Crocodile

[smokefalls]

The best way for any relationship to end is with the sentiment I wish the best for you, and I am grateful for what we once had together.

Qiu Miaojin, Notes of a Crocodile (translated by Bonnie Huie)

[sssammich]

notes of a crocodile by qiu miaojin

image IDs under the cut

[First Image ID: She didn't understand. Didn't understand she could love me, maybe that she already did love me. Didn't understand that beneath the hide of a lamb was a demonic beast that had to suppress the urge to rip her to shreds. Didn't understand that love, every little bit of it, was about exchange. Didn't understand that she caused me suffering. Didn't understand that love was like that. She gave me a puzzle in a box. She put the pieces together patiently, one by one, and completed the picture of me.

Second Image ID: Those wrenching eyes, which could lift up the entire skeleton of my being. How I longed for myself to be subsumed into the ocean of her eyes. How the desire, once awakened, would come to scald me at every turn. The strength in those eyes offered a bridge to the outside world. The scarlet mark of sin and my deep-seated fear of abandonment had given way to the ocean's yearning.

/End ID]

[evil-jennifer-hamilton-wb]

“I was determined to transform myself into a real girl. At Tun Tun’s encouragement, I made a big decision: ”I wasn’t going to fall in love with another woman. This time, I was going to make a clean break with the past and pursue a normal happiness” jgfyugdvfecwjd She's so fucked up! I love that she says that her relationship with Xiao Fan was the only time she was truly happy IN THE SAME NOTEBOOK as this quote!

And bitch wdym Tun Tun's encouragement?! She tells you she dosen't even give the men in her life names, and she thinks of Zhi Rou every night, and you take this to mean that you need to become straight?

I love Lazi so much she's so fucked up!!