#stranger things science camp

[thegayhimbo]

Stranger Things Science Camp Review

If you haven't yet, be sure to check out my other Stranger Things Reviews:

Stranger Things Six

Stranger Things Halloween Special

Stranger Things The Other Side

Stranger Things Zombie Boys

Stranger Things The Bully

Stranger Things Winter Special

Stranger Things Tomb of Ybwen

Stranger Things Into the Fire

Synopsis: It's the Summer of 1985, and Dustin is at Camp Know Where, eager to put his knowledge of science and mathematics to work. However, things take a turn for the worse when a mysterious stalker shows up and counselors begin disappearing. Now Dustin is in a race against time to figure out who the culprit is before the camp is closed for good........

Observations:

This is what I'm talking about: Here is a comic that takes certain elements from the show that were given little to no screentime, and proceeds to expand on them in a meaningful way. We get to see what Dustin did during his time at Summer Camp, as well as the circumstances behind meeting Suzie and developing their relationship. We also get an intriguing mystery that pays direct homage to the first Friday the 13th movie while also being its own story. And it's all from Dustin's POV. Yay! 😊

I know I usually wait until the end of my reviews to say whether I'd recommend a comic/tie-in book, but this time I'm giving that opinion early: This comic is a personal favorite, and I strongly recommend checking it out.

The comics I tend to enjoy more (i.e. Zombie Boys, Tomb of Ybwen, Winter Special, The Other Side, Dungeons & Dragons, etc) are ones that either focus on the main characters and their dilemmas, or take place in-between seasons to paint a picture of what was going on during those periods of time. Will's week in the Upside Down, for instance, is something I wanted to see for years, which is why I was happy they wrote a comic focusing exclusively on his POV during the events of season 1. Same thing goes for Dustin and his time at Camp Know Where: Even if it doesn't play an important role in the main arc, it's nice seeing the writers take an obscure event and expand on it so that it could fit into the continuity of the show. I wish they would do this more often instead of writing comics that either focus on characters nobody cares about (Troy and James from The Bully) or introducing brand new characters who will play no part on the show (Francine and Ricky from Six and Into The Fire).

It's nice seeing Dustin embrace his intellect at camp, as well as demonstrating other qualities that make him lovable on the show: His compassion for others, his awkwardness around girls, his bravery, his imagination, and so on. His continuing character development is a joy to watch: From being able to stand up to the bullies at the beginning of the comic.....

...to befriending Steven and getting him to come out of his shell.....

...to crafting his own D&D Campaign as Dungeon Master (something Mike's usually been in charge of in the past) and drawing on his own experiences to make it a fun adventure....

....to meeting Suzie at camp and bonding with her (despite a few awkward moments beforehand)....

....to even forming a party to take on the culprit.

Contrary to what the camp counselors say about the kids at the beginning, Dustin's never been interested in gaining knowledge to elevate his popularity, but because he's genuinely interested in topics that fascinate him. He's also someone with a strong moral compass and believes in doing the right thing even when it's tough. All of which works when he's the one leading the mission to root out the culprit who's causing problems at the camp.

Speaking of which, as mentioned earlier, the main conflict centers around an insidious figure who specifically targets camp counselors:

The mystery is taken straight from the first Friday the 13th movie, with a few plot elements changed around. There's even a tongue-in-cheek reference to the movie in the comic:

I won't give away the identity of the culprit or their motivations in case people want to read this comic for themselves, but I will say I was satisfied with how it ended.

Something else I liked was how they wrote the bullies. Early on, the counselors remark that since a lot of the kids coming to this camp are nerds, this is their first time getting to be on top of the social pyramid. Two of those kids (Trevor and Dean) act antagonistic towards Dustin and Steven initially, and it's their goading that leads Dustin to create his own D&D Campaign to spite them. However, to Dustin's surprise, they actually express interest in wanting to play his campaign because they secretly love the game and are implied to be outcasts back at home who are looking for friends who share their interests.

On top of that, when push comes to shove and there's a real danger of the camp being shut-down because of the attacks on counselors, Trevor and Dean willingly join up with Dustin to help track down the culprit, showing they care as much about the camp as Dustin does. It's small, but it gives some depth to them, and it's a nice subversion of the one-dimensional bullies from the show (*cough* Angela *cough*).

Suzie also gets her time to shine in this comic. They introduce her as being shy and awkward around Dustin when they first meet, but once they get to know each other, she becomes fiercely supportive of him and helps rally the other campers around Dustin. Their interactions in the comic are sweet, and they thankfully avoid using the cringe-inducing nicknames of Dusty-bun and Suzie-poo 😖. We also get to see what inspired the duet they sing in the season 3 finale:

I'm curious if the Duffer Brothers will bring back Suzie for season 5, and if she'll finally find out about the Upside Down. In the past, she's usually made brief appearances where she acts as a plot-device to give the characters vital information (Planck's Constant in season 3, or the coordinates to Dr. Owen's silo in season 4) while being left in the dark about what's really going on. I get the feeling she might serve that role again in the final season, but I'd be a lot more interested if they expanded her character beyond that role, and either have her integrate with the Party and get to know the other main characters better, or give her more depth beyond being Dustin's smart girlfriend and having a stereotypical Mormon upbringing.

As for Dustin, I don't know if he and Suzie are intended to be endgame or not. It could go either way. It depends on whether or not Suzie is clued into everything, or if Dustin even survives (I know people keep saying the Duffer Brothers don't have the guts to kill off their main characters, but considering it's the last season and they need to keep the stakes high, I am betting on several main characters biting the dust before it's over).

On a final note, I liked how the comic highlighted Dustin's relationship with Steve and why it's important to him:

If Dustin ends up dead in season 5, the emotional fallout from Steve is going to be devastating. Same for Dustin if Steve dies (which A LOT of fans have been predicting for years now ☹️.)

It all depends on what happens in season 5.

[jonathanbyersphd]

"girls don't play video games" & "girls go to science camp?" is like 10x funnier when you remember that Will's main point of reference is Nancy

[353dcys]

love the thought of mike and el being secret haters (together)

they get home after a long event and it’s silence until el finally puts her purse down and says “did you SEE her dress?” “oh YEAH totally inappropriate. might as well worn a sign that says i dated the groom”

[zannolin]

attending a potentially haunted summer camp and solving mysteries whilst engaging in an ill-fated summer fling while the eventual end of the season and return to the crushing realities of our everyday lives looms over us all could fix me, i think

[gayofthefae]

@micuko It's true; they make a point of every character in a relationship express current or past attraction to at least one other person, with the exceptions of Mike and Will.

Hop's ex-wife and the librarian, Lonnie and Bob, Phoebe Cates, Max, Ralph Macchio, Robin, Tammy Thompson, Steve and Tom Cruise, Halloween party girl dressed as KISS

Even Karen and Carol have Billy, and ERICA makes her action figures make out! EV.ERY.ONE. (except Murry, shoutout aroace or gay king)

Not only does he not express attraction to girls - he expresses repeated confusion at the idea

- but they go out of their way to make him the odd one out by making sure that everyone else does.

(Well, not the odd one out. The canonically gay guy also expresses 0 attraction to girls and repeated confusion at the idea)

Mike has never shown attraction towards girls, we have the rest of the gang mentioning girls, female celebs etc, but Mike and Will never do that. So yes I think it's fairly obvious Mike is a closeted gay boy in the 80s.

[cigsaftersuh]

my youth, your kitchen

chapter 10 .ᐟ ૮ a little hope ྀིა

𐙚 pairing: non-idol! jeno x f! reader (.◜◡◝)

𐙚 genre: slice of life + strangers to friends to lovers

𐙚 in which y/n, a pre-med student, who loves to cook & feed people, meets jeno, the quiet sports science major with a soft smile, and discovers that the way to someone’s heart really is through their gastrointestinal tract, their stomach.

prev 𐙚 next

ㅡ my youth, your kitchen.

the bus ride is quieter than you expected, the occasional sound of conversations blending with the echo of the engine.

you're seated between renjun and jeno, your bag of groceries resting on your lap. jaemin, on the other side of jeno, is fiddling with his phone, half-listening to whatever conversation is unfolding.

renjun leans closer to glance at the list in your hand, his brow furrowing. “we really didn’t need this much marshmallows,” he mutters.

“you’re the one who grabbed the jumbo bag,” you reply, nudging him lightly.

“because you said, ‘go big or go home,’” renjun shoots back, his lips twitching in amusement.

jeno chuckles softly, catching the exchange. “i mean, you guys are set for a camping trip with that much.”

“and a really sugar high night,” jaemin adds, glancing up his phone.

“exactly,” you say, adjusting the bag of marshmallows on your lap. “besides, we’ve got chocolate strawberries to balance it out.”

“because that’s so much healthier,” renjun says, rolling his eyes, though he doesn’t argue further.

jeno smiles at the dynamic, but he doesn’t say much more. instead, his gaze lingers on you for a moment before turning to the front of the bus.

the warmth of the ride and the day’s events start to catch up with you. the soft vibration of the engine feels almost hypnotic, and before you know it, your eyelids grow heavier. you fight it for a bit, but your head dips slightly, making you straighten up quickly.

jeno notices immediately. “tired?” he asks, keeping his voice low.

you nod, stifling a yawn. “a little. it’s been a long day.”

he hesitates, shifting in his seat slightly, as though he’s about to offer his shoulder. but before he can move or say anything, renjun speaks up.

“don’t fall over trying to stay awake,” renjun says simply, tilting his shoulder toward you.

you start to protest, but renjun is already moving. with a gentle hand, he adjusts your head so it rests on his shoulder. “there,” he says, his tone nonchalant, like it’s the most natural thing in the world.

you blink at him but don’t argue, "mmm, thanks," you mumbled drowsily, your voice soft as your head rested against renjun’s shoulder. his jacket warm and familiar, making it easy to relax.

jeno leans back in his seat, his jaw tightening slightly as he watches the scene. there’s nothing inherently unusual about it — it’s just renjun being renjun. but still, he can’t help but feel a pang of something he doesn’t quite understand.

jaemin glances up from his phone, eyes flicking between jeno and you before landing on renjun. “you good, jeno?”

jeno clears his throat, looking out the window. “why wouldn’t i be,” he says quickly.

jaemin raises a brow but doesn’t press further, smirking faintly to himself as he goes back to his phone.

jeno mentally clicked his tongue and glanced away, pretending the scene didn’t bother him. it wasn’t like he had any reason to feel this way, you and he barely knew each other.

from where he sat, it was hard not to assume there was something more between you and renjun. the way renjun had effortlessly moved your head onto his shoulder, how you didn’t hesitate to lean into him. it all felt too natural to be just friendship.

still, jeno reasoned, he would know if renjun were dating someone. he knew renjun wasn’t the type to keep something like that a secret.

with that thought, he refused to let the hope of you and him die out entirely. it never hurt to have a little hope.

with love,

© cigsaftersuh

ʚ taglist - open ɞ

@t-102 @niniiflwr @dudekiss3r @defzcl @stqrgr7 @imalwaysjeno @jeongjaeleftbicep @rubiiisyeon @jae10velies @cookydream @222low @dearlyminhyung @mmjhh1998 @gukuwii @hyucksunset @chenlesfeetpic @urlocalbeaner5 @taeeflwrr @fullhyucksunny @hyuksworld @nmmsmari @jeonghansshitester

[irondadfics]

Hi so I've been trying to find this fic where peter is coming back from a science camp or something driving one of Tony's cars and he gets in a car accident and thinks tony will be more worried about the car and a bystander comes up to him and ask if he's OK and if he can call anyone and he calls tony and that's about all I remember

(I would so appreciate it if you found this for me) <3

this is for you. Enjoy!

Nothing So Valuable by JAWorley

"Why don't you call your dad? Your dad can't be too mad. Insurance will pay for this. If it was my son in a crash I'd just be glad that he's ok," the stranger says. As they stand on the side of the highway, Peter thinks that he really does need to call Mr. Stark and describe the destruction of his expensive car, there's no way around that. But it's not as easy as the man said, because Mr. Stark isn't his dad, as much as Peter would like that. Therefore Mr. Stark can be as mad at Peter as he wants to. OR Peter crashes Tony's car, but when Tony shows up, Peter realizes some things that he hadn't understood before.

[idkhoworwhytell]

an introduction was due

Here’s chapter 3,

I’ve decided in a name for the little guy , hero of the histories 

It’s a little over 1k words 

This isn’t edited 

They heard the boys give a yelp,and low and behold it was just the person they were expecting.

Swords raised at the neck the new link didn’t seem to be in much shock, of anything he seemed to relaxed for the liking of the chain.

“Boys.” Times voice echoed as he and warriors arrived, the boys gave both odd looks becuase they didn’t have said weapons raised.

“Stand down I’m only here to explain this morning, and I have all the proof you need to confirm my identity.” The stranger in there eyes slowly reached behind their back and pulled the sword that all the hero’s have once wielded.

A collective gasp ran throughout the chain, sky was seen looking up and down at the blade.

“Who are you and why do you have that sword.” An oddly defended twilight had his sword pressed up against the strangers scarf.

“ my name is link,” a pause in his sentence , and the boy was seen pulling something from his pocket, a scroll. He unraveled  it and it unfurled from the tip of his head to the beginning of the tree line. “Hero of too many  things.” A slight look of sympathy could be seen in legends eyes but was quickly composed. 

“I’ve given my evidence, now let me explain.”

Before the boys got any chance to butt in, time stopped their conversations and side glances towards the Person.

“From what I’ve heard you were the one who stopped by last night”

A curt nod from the stranger , with the name link like them nodded.

“And gave helpful information about the monsters lurking near hear”

A nod again. The science from the person was starting to get on the old man’s nevers slightly with the lack of answers.

“-and before you give me a speech about why you did that, answer our questions and we will answer yours.”

At this point it was easy to see that wars,time and twilight had slightly cornered the boy and 3 sides covered with his back to the tree , being able to stop sudden movements quicker.

“ as you are expecting answers-“ some stares were quickly made their way. 

“To cover my bases , I’ve dropped my sword, the master sword as you could see, my names link, the name you may call me in place of that is {reader}.

I came to your camp last night beucase I felt an odd number of Hylian presence, something uncommon for this world unless we are in a war.-“

You could warriors slightly perk at his nickname and the mention 0f war.

‘May that be why he has the mask?’

The link, dubbing themselves {reader} continues 

“I’d sensed a a hint of dark magic  off of some of you. I came by to check it out Becuase death seems to walk in masquerades here.”

“The reason you came by id Becuase you were worried about us ambushing you?” 

“Yes sir, i meant nothing more or less on my end, just making sure y’all weren’t darngerous or impeading on anything in this land.”

Times pov:

’did this boy just call a group of 9 hero’s not dangerous?’

i do find it odd he just called me sir, must be  a culture thing.

 I think we got off on the wrong foot with this link. If hes going to journey with us i think its best if we amend this right now, i dont want any hostility.

”i do think your intentions were made clear, but for now i think your going to have to stay with us for a bit.” 

I think this isn’t exactly what this boy wanted to hear. I saw his eyes narrow at me ‘why is everyone so hostile my goodness’ 

“Let us introduce and then we will explain , we have plenty of times tu it is best for you to give us your compliacne.”

”as you’ve said, your names link, but do you know your hero title?-

we can have the sword tell you.”

it feels as of this boy has mixed emotions about it.  He looked at me with almost  a glimmer of despair and remberance, as if the sword was an old friend of his.

the Moment after i said that sky was by my side, the sword seemed to be glowing a  faint blue at its mention. 

 I wonder if this hero has ever met the soul inside?

Sky handed the boy the sword, after a slight chastisement about dropping the sword willingly earlier. 

the sword was grabbed by the hilt out of skys hand, 

 the moment it was grasped we could see a swirl of faint blue cover the boys exposed part of his hand

not long after sky took the sword back and when he did the blue faded.

”hero of the Histories.”

sly said not to long after taking back the sword, directing my Foucus back to history,

”Welcome to our chain History.”

Back too Histories pov

huh, history  never though  i would be called that outside formal situations , the prince(ess?) barley even calls me that .

“ now that you have my title will i finally get an explanation as to hwy you’re here?“ the we’ve been dragging this for to long , unless their staling? 

“Right of course. A we’ve mentioned, we’re n a quest. There’s a an enemy as hes been dubbed ‘dink’- by wind.” 

You could see a proud grin at the mention of his name.

“He’s an enemy which seems to travel through portals to different worlds- throng different points of time.” 

I could see the one in the wolf pelt give a quick glance to him, finally all of their swords lower, ‘ finally how in the world not even slightly Tired?’

“It seems that you were needed as well, probably why we meet.” 

“ let me guess this has something to do with the black blooded monsters I’ve been spotting right?”

” That would be correct  , but since you know our names now  i suggest we get on the road.”

[meta-squash]

Squash's Reading List Year In Review 2024

(I've also posted this on WordPress here, where it might be more readable: https://jesuisgourde.wordpress.com/.../30/readinglist2024/)

Last year I read 92 books. I didn't plan on trying to surpass that number but I did, quite easily. This year I read 116 books. I didn't start off with any specific reading goal, but early on I decided to make it my goal to read more books by not-cis-men (women, trans/nonbinary people, etc) than by cis men. I hit that goal with 72 books. I did want to reread a number of books; I reread 7 books, but not all were the ones I listed in my last yearly reading review. I read 89 fiction books and 27 nonfiction. Of the nonfiction, the genres were mainly biography/autobiography, essay, science, and history. I read 45 books from small press publishers. I read 39 books by and/or about queer people. I don't have a super nice photo spread this year because I read a lot of books at work; I was going to screenshot my goodreads grid but unfortunately they have (frustratingly) changed the format from grid to list in the past week.

Here's a photo of the books I read that I do own, which isn't a whole lot, since I read most of the books at work this year:

I'll do superlatives at the end, here is the list of what I read this year, in chronological order. (Apologies for the random line breaks in the middle of the list, tumblr doesn't like it when you have 50+ lines without breaks)

-The Sorrows Of Young Werther by Johann von Goethe -The Changeling by Joy Williams -Child of God by Cormac McCarthy -Pierrot Mon Ami by Raymond Queneau -The Ghost Network by Kate Disabato -The Thirty-Nine Steps by John Buchan -Richard III by William Shakespeare (reread) -The Recognitions by William Gaddis -A Kestrel For A Knave by Barry Hines -Grief Is The Thing With Feathers by Max Porter -Bluets by Maggie Nelson -The Wild Party by Joseph Moncure March -The Hospital by Ahmed Bouanani -I Love Dick by Chris Kraus -Minor Detail by Adiana Shibli -Autobiography of Red by Anne Carson -Rent Boy by Gary Indiana -One Or Several Deserts by Carter St Hogan -Samedi the Deafness by Jesse Ball -Norma Jean Baker of Troy by Anne Carson -Die My Love by Ariana Harwicz -Missing Person by Patrick Modiano -Petite Fleur by Iosi Havilio -Freshwater by Akwaeke Emezi -The Address Book by Sophie Calle -In The Dream House by Carmen Maria Machado -Plastic Jesus by Poppy Z Brite -New Animal by Ella Baxter -The Effect of Gamma Rays on Man-In-The-Moon Marigolds by Paul Zindel (play) -Green Girl by Kate Zambrino -Death In Spring by Merce Rodoreda -Harold's End by JT LeRoy (reread) -Kitchen by Banana Yoshimoto -Stranger To The Moon by Evelio Rosero -H of H Playbook by Anne Carson -When The Sick Rule The World by Dodie Bellamy -Wittgenstein's Mistress by David Markson -Agua Viva by Clarice Lispector -Not One Day by Anne Garreta -Mauve Desert by Nicole Brossard -Binary Star by Sarah Gerard -Slug and other stories by Megan Milks -Weetzie Bat by Francesca Lia Block (reread) -The Deer by Dashiel Carrera -Mean by Myriam Gurba -Humiliation by Wayne Koestenbaum -The Toaster Project: Or A Heroic Attempt to Build a Simple Electric Appliance from Scratch by Thomas Thwaites -Kind Mirrors, Ugly Ghosts by Claire Donato -Our Wives Under The Sea by Julia Armfield

-Notes on Thoughts and Vision & The Wise Sappho by H.D. -Harrow by Joy Williams -A Feast Of Snakes by Harry Crews -Low Life: Lures and Snares of Old New York by Lucy Sante -Milkshake by Travis Dahlke -Little Fish by Casey Plett -Hurricane Season by Fernanda Melchor -Sex Goblin by Lauren Cook -Biography of X by Catherine Lacey -Why Fish Don't Exist: A Story of Loss, Love, and the Hidden Order of Life by Lulu Miller -Hir by Taylor Mac (play) -Daddy Boy by Emerson Whitney -Notes On Camp by Susan Sontag -Transformer: A Story of Glitter, Glam Rock, and Loving Lou Reed by Simon Doonan -Johnny Got His Gun by Dalton Trumbo -Acid Snow by Larry Mitchell (reread) -33 1/3 Joy Division - Unknown Pleasures by Chris Ott -The Silent Patient by Alex Michaelides -red doc> by Anne Carson -Darryl by Jackie Ess -A Visit From The Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan -The Postman Always Rings Twice by James Cain -Body by Harry Crews -St Sebastian's Abyss by Mark Haber -The Quick & The Dead by Joy Williams (reread) -Don't Think Twice: Adventure and Healing at 100 Miles Per Hour by Barbara Schoichet -Annihilation by Jeff Vandermeer -Timbuktu by Paul Auster -Nevada by Imogen Binnie -The End We Start From by Megan Hunte -Organ Meats by K-Ming Chang -Like Flies From Afar by K. Ferraro -Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland by Patrick Radden Keefe -Bestiary by K-Ming Chang -Playboy by Constance Debre -Red Dragon by Thomas Harris -Parting Gifts for Losing Contestants by Jessica Mooney -The Outline of My Lover by Douglas A Martin -Monstrilio by Gerardo Samano Cordova -Essex County by Jeff Lemire (reread) -Tacky: Love Letters to the Worst Culture We Have To Offer by Rax King -The Death of Francis Bacon by Max Porter -Lover Man by Alston Anderson -Cecilia by K-Ming Chang -The Employees by Olga Ravn -It Lasts Forever And Then It's Over by Anne De Marcken -Mercy Killing by Alandra Hileman (play) -Tentacle by Rita Indiana

-Nox by Anne Carson -What I Talk About When I Talk About Running by Haruki Murakami -McGlue by Ottessa Moshfegh (reread) -Fever Dream by Samanta Schweblin -John by Annie Baker (play) -Widow Basquiat by Jennifer Clement -All Down Darkness Wide by Sean Hewitt -The Blue Books by Nicole Brossard -The Book Of Difficult Fruit: Arguments for the Tart, Tender and Unruly by Kate Lebo -Blood Of The Dawn by Claudia Salazar Jimenez -The Balloonists by Eula Biss -Ravage: An Astonishment Of Fire by MacGillivray/Kirsten Norrie -Gods Of Want: Stories by K-Ming Chang -Fem by Magda Carneci -Miss Major Speaks: Conversations with a Black Trans Revolutionary by Miss Major Griffin-Gracy and Toshio Merino -Mr Parker by Michael McKeever (play) -Fucking A by Suzan-Lori Parks (play) -Dictee by Theresa Hak Kyung Cha -Otherspace, a Martian Ty/opography by Brad Freeman and Johanna Drucker

I DNF'ed a few books, but all were put down with the intention of finishing them at some point. Mostly they were books I needed to read when I was less busy/in a different headspace. I DNF'ed: Soldiers Don't Go Mad: A true story of friendship, poetry and mental illness during the first world war by Charles Glass, a reread of Her by HD, and The Apple In The Dark by Clarice Lispector. The Lispector and HD are both modernist novels that need 100% attention, and the Glass book is a nonfiction book (very good so far) that I put down in favor of something that at the time was more interesting.

I gave out a lot of 5 stars this year. The books I rated as 5 stars were: The Changeling by Joy Williams, The Recognitions by William Gaddis, Our Wives Under The Sea by Julia Armfield, 33 1/3 Unknown Pleasures by Chris Ott, Transformer by Simon Doonan, Johnny Got His Gun by Dalton Trumbo, Body by Harry Crews, Organ Meats by K-Ming Chang, Say Nothing by Patrick Radden Keefe, and Fever Dream by Samanta Schweblin.

~Superlatives~

Like last year, I'm going to do runners-up because I read so many books.

Favorite book: The Recognitions by William Gaddis. I have to pick this one as my favorite for the year, because reading it was a journey, and because it was a book that was exactly everything I love in a book: fascinating, very human characters, weird formatting, great dialogue, metaphors galore, and most importantly, hundreds of cultural, artistic, historical, biblical and literary references. I started this book on January 4 and I finished it February 22. It was so unbelievably dense, probably the densest novel I've ever read, and I absolutely loved it. So much is going on in this novel that it's hard for me to summarize. In the very shortest version of a summary, it is a novel about counterfeits (specifically paintings, but counterfeits in all and any forms) and Catholicism in 1930s/40s New York. The main character is a young man named Wyatt Gwyon, a talented artist who instead of painting for himself, becomes a skilled counterfeiter-- not because he wants to make money, but because he's obsessed with the perfection of making exact interpretations of other people's art. He also struggles with religion and belief due to his strange religious upbringing. Many, many other characters are also focal points throughout the novel. The book is unique in that it doesn't use quotation marks when characters speak and rarely uses "he said"/"she said" or any similar phrase. But Gaddis is incredibly talented at writing dialogue so that each character's voice comes through, and it's obvious (except when he doesn't want it to be) who is speaking. Gaddis is also wonderfully scathing, and much of the novel is incredibly witty and intelligent observations about the Modernist art world and artistic spaces in general. The characters are all fascinating, there is a lot of mirroring and metaphors. I say this book is about counterfeits in every form, because it constantly highlights different ways in which each character is faking something, or lying, or pretending to be/know/do/think something they are not. This book was incredible, I annotated every single page and had so much fun reading it, even though or perhaps because it was so unbelievably dense.

Just for a bit of reference, here are a few of the more annotated pages in my copy of The Recognitions:

Runner up: Body by Harry Crews (more on this one further down)

Least favorite book: Freshwater by Akwaeke Emezi. I was so disappointed by this book. The blurb on the back made it sound like it was going to be really beautiful and interesting and unique. It wasn't. It was all tell and no show. It follows Ada, a person who is born with one foot in the spirit world. A traumatic experience at university causes her to develop split personalities as the spirits from the other side step forward to protect her from trauma. Unfortunately, the spirits who now control her body have darker, more dangerous desires. Sadly, there was almost no plot, just description after description of Ada's unhealthy relationships and erratic behavior. But because the narrative is so distanced from said relationships and from Ada, the high stakes of this behavior is not felt, not really. Interesting characters can easily save 'all tell and no show type' books, but none of the characters get delved into with any depth, even Ada. The show rather than tell narrative also seriously undermines the poetic prose that crops up almost at random. This book felt flat. No plot, little stakes felt, no interesting characters, tell rather than showing everything, and it's not compelling at all.

Runner up: Playboy by Constance Debre. The back of this book describes it as a memoir detailing the writer's "decision, at age forty-three, to abandon her marriage, her legal career, and her bourgeois Parisian life to become a lesbian and a writer." Which sounds amazing! But it isn't! It's unbelievably pretentious and quite boring. It's mostly just complaining hidden by a facade of faux-philosophical meandering and directionless autobiographical vignettes. The author is a lawyer and she spends most of the time complaining about poor people and about women. It's so hilariously misogynistic. It's just various vignettes of her relationships with various women (who she dislikes and disparages for being femme or having bad bodies or for having lowbrow/uncultured interests etc etc) and then her going and visiting her ex-husband and teenage son, and then complaining that she has nothing. There's little to no emotion in the book, she is not charming, and her pseudo-philosophical musings are boring.

Most surprising/unexpected book: Body by Harry Crews. This book crept up on me in terms of a favorite. Crews' writing is not for everyone, but it's absolutely for me. The book follows bodybuilder Shereel Dupont and her trainer, Russell, who are at the world bodybuilding competition. Shereel has left home to compete over the past year and is now one of the most likely to win. Unfortunately, her family, who are "corpulent rednecks" with odd habits, show up to cheer her on, causing disruption and chaos throughout the hotel at which the competition is held and turmoil for Shereel herself. This book blew me away completely. Every time I thought it had reached a plateau of weirdness and chaos and insanity, it ratcheted that all up even higher, culminating in the most perfectly fucked up ending.

Runner up: Fever Dream by Samanta Schweblin. A mother trapped in the liminal space between life and death is made by an unfamiliar changeling child to retell the events of the recent past, desperately trying to pinpoint the moment she can reverse the environmental poisoning of herself and her daughter. I picked this book up because it sounded interesting, and then it ended up being an amazingly written short horror novel. It had a lot of interesting thoughts on motherhood and the horror of being a parent - not in a negative way, but the horror of wanting to protect and keep your child safe and the inability to do so.

Most fun book: Like Flies From Afar by K Ferrari. I fully judged a book by its cover with this one, and it did not disappoint. Small-time criminal/oligarch Mr Machi thinks he's hot shit, until he pops a tire on the way to an appointment and discovers an unidentifiable corpse in his trunk. As he scrambles to deal with the body, his paranoia grows as he tries to calculate who out of all his enemies and employees might be responsible, and who is trying to frame him, and who the body might be, and his life slowly transforms into a nightmare. Everyone in this book is loathsome, but in a way that is so fun to hate. The whole novel is a romp of panic and paranoia, people who think they're so cool and hard exposing how uncool they are, and a mystery that's so fun because watching the protagonist panic is a kind of schadenfreude.

Runner up: Transformer by Simon Doonan. This is a book for people who love Lou Reed, by a man who loves Lou Reed. It's just a wonderfully written biography that focuses mainly on the album Transformer, but also gives Lou Reed's history and is interspersed with stories about Doonan's own thoughts and experiences with Reed. The whole book is really passionate and vivid, and fun to read even if you don't have the album immediately to hand.

Best queer book: Our Wives Under The Sea by Julia Armfield. Leah, a marine biologist, has returned from a deep-sea voyage that went wrong. Her wife Miri begins to realize that something is wrong, and Leah came back changed. The narrative switches between Miri's point of view as she tries to reach Leah and struggles help her despite not knowing what's happening to her wife, and Leah's point of view as she remembers and recounts what happened to her during her submarine voyage. I started this book at work and brought it home. In the middle of reading it, I stopped to finish some task (I think it might have been to make dinner), and ended up having to cut the task short because I needed so badly to keep reading. The most compelling part of the book is the very different ways the two characters' love for each other shines through, even in the darkest moments of the novel.

Runner up: Darryl by Jackie Ess. The titular narrator of this novel discovers that he genuinely enjoys a cuckolding lifestyle, watching men have sex with his wife. But then he realizes that part of the reason he likes it so much, is that maybe he wants to be the wife. His explorations with sex and gender and relationships (and basketball) begin to unravel his marriage and his friendships and his own mind. Then he learns more about one of the men his wife has been sleeping with, and things get dangerous. I loved this book because despite it being written by a trans woman, the story doesn't at all go where you'd expect regarding gender or sexuality. It's satirical, it's witty, it's got some cool things to say about kink and about gender, and it's totally original.

Saddest book: Johnny Got His Gun by Dalton Trumbo. This is a classic I'd been meaning to read for a long time. The narrator is an American WWI soldier named Joe who was hit by an artillery shell and has woken in the hospital having had his arms and legs amputated, as well as most of his facial features mutilated beyond use/recognition. Trapped in his body, he drifts through memories and musings on life and war and philosophy as he tries to keep track of the days and to figure out some way to communicate with the hospital staff. It's no wonder this book is a classic. The writing is incredible, the imagery vivid and the plot totally gripping, even as it switches between the peaceful past and the horrible present. The end is completely gut-wrenching.

Runner up: Minor Detail by Adania Shibli. This novel explores what in history is a minor detail, and what impact that little moment might have on someone in the future. The first part of the novel opens in Palestine in 1949, in a military camp, where a group of Israeli soldiers (led by a captain suffering from a bite-induced hallucinogenic fever) kidnap, rape, and murder an unnamed Palestinian woman and bury her body in the desert. Fifty-odd years later, a Palestinian writer learns about this "small" moment in history, which occurred 25 years to the day before her birth, and becomes obsessed with learning more. She obtains an illegal pass to the Zone in which the woman died, determined to go there and find more information. I don't want to summarize much more because I don't want to give away any of the hard-hitting plot points. But Minor Detail was published in 2020, and it explores the cycles of violence and the ways in which oppression has not changed for the Palestinian people. It's a book that I wish I had read twice because (as the title suggests) there were a lot of small details that repeated themselves or were less noticeable at first but slowly grew or became important later in the story, and I'm sure I would have noticed more.

Weirdest book: The Changeling by Joy Williams. I love Joy Williams! I love everything she writes! Her themes are always so interesting and her writing style is so unique. The main character, a young woman named Pearl, escapes her terrible marriage by joining a rich older man and in doing so ends up living with him on an island that is populated by children he has taken under his wing. Pearl wants little to do with them and spends most of her days getting drunk by the pool -- the children are eerily smart and her son has joined their games and lessons, and they all want her attention. But her son is less and less her son as time goes on, and the children are not always the children, and the adults in the house are all bizarre and half-mad. I wish I could give a better summary, but Joy Williams books are always difficult to summarize, because so much of the stories are less about the plot and more about the characters just feeling things at the reader, and the plot is often built on or around odd occurrences and philosophical musings. This book blew me away with its imagery and its metaphors. I want to reread it, because it was just so amazing. My absolutely favorite thing about Joy Williams (and this is true for all of her books) is the way she writes these incredibly profound and philosophical phrases like they're nothing at all, like they're so easy, just breezes on by them even though she's just punched you in the chest. It's amazing.

Runner up: Fever Dream by Samanta Schweblin.

Most gripping book: Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland by Patrick Radden Keefe. This book is an absolute masterclass in pacing. It tells just a few fragments out of the whole history of the Irish Troubles, but the fragments that are focused on are woven together with brilliant timing, humanizing and vivid portrayals, fantastic analysis and contextualization, and altogether excellent writing. Every time I put this book down I wanted to keep reading, to know what was going to happen next. The book has 3 focal points: Gerry Adams, (alleged) leader of the IRA; Dolors Price, a member of the IRA; and the family of Jean McConville, a woman kidnapped by the IRA. At first, all three storylines are disparate, but Keefe slowly weaves them together, pulling all the threads of context and action and years in prison or government or delinquent schools together slowly but steadily. The book reads like a thriller, and I adored it completely. (Yes, I do know about the miniseries. I haven't finished watching it yet!)

Runner up: Our Wives Under The Sea by Julia Armfield.

Book that taught me the most: Say Nothing by Patrick Radden Keefe

Runner up: The Toaster Project: Or A Heroic Attempt to Build a Simple Electric Appliance from Scratch by Thomas Thwaites. This could also go under weirdest book, easily. As a graduate art school project, Thwaites decided to attempt to build the simplest (and cheapest) appliance he could think of - a toaster - fully from scratch. Quite literally, starting with mining the elements to make the right kinds of metal and figuring out how to make the right kind of plastic. Half of the book is Thwaites' attempts to build various elements of a toaster - and how they go wrong, or right, and why it's so hard. The other half discusses all the processes that go in to making all these elements in a more manufactured setting, their impact on the environment and the economy, and the difference between cheap mass-produced products that break down vs more expensive products that last longer. The writing was fun and included photos and diagrams and interviews with various industry professionals Thwaites contacted to learn more.

Most interesting/thought provoking book: The Recognitions by William Gaddis

Runner up: Organ Meats by K-Ming Chang. I've now read everything this author has published and this is by far her best book. Her narrative style is so unique and so poetic, and the themes she always comes back to are so interesting, and they culminate in this amazing novel. This magical realist novel centers around two best friends, Anita and Rainie, who are both first generation Taiwanese-American. The story opens when they are adolescents, and Anita has recently learned that they come from generations of dog-headed women and women-headed dogs. They vow to become dogs together, tying a string around each other's throats as collars and playing at dogs in the empty lot near their apartment complex. But Anita's dreamlike imagination and obsessively loyal personality starts to clash with Rainie's more reserved nature, and when it becomes too much, Rainie's family moves away. Rainie grows up, while unbeknownst to her, Anita has sunk into a dreamworld and her body has begun to rot. She narrates her family's past and her mother's bloodline because she cannot narrate her own present. When she returns to the town she grew up in, Rainie discovers Anita's condition, and knows that she is the only one who can save her. This novel is beautiful, incredibly poetic, and experiments with formatting and narration in really unique ways. Its exploration of friendship and queerness and obsession and tradition and folklore is absolutely fascinating. I often write in my books and underline sentences or paragraphs that I really love. I didn't write in this one, because I would have ended up underlining the entire novel.

Longest/shortest book: My longest book was The Recognitions by William Gaddis at 952 pages, and my shortest was Notes On Camp by Susan Sontag at 57 pages.

General thoughts on all the other books that didn't get superlatives:

-Child of God by Cormac McCarthy. This is the first McCarthy book I've ever read (I know, I know) and I really enjoyed it. You just watch a horrible guy walk around in the rural countryside of a small town, doing increasingly fucked up things and committing various awful crimes. Which is exactly up my alley in terms of literature. The main character, Ballard, is someone who is so weird and pathetic that he becomes turned inside out into evilness. You feel sorry for him but you also hate him and he's also fascinating because he's so fucking weird. It's a great book.

-The Ghost Network by Catie Disabato. This book was so much fun to read while living in Chicago. It's a rock n roll mystery novel that riffs on Situationism and the L tracks and maps. A rock star disappears, and the main character who is a fan of her's is determined to find out what happened to her. What she uncovers is a series of clues based on defunct lines and stations of the Chicago transit system, and the Situationist concept of detournment, which lead her towards finding out what actually happened to the rock star. This book was so much fun, and so much of it was based on real life defunct train lines and the actual Situationists, both of which I found really interesting. The ending was also just so good! Somehow I managed to have read everything I needed to in order to get every single reference in the book, which was really surprising to me, because they all came from different places.

-New Animal by Ella Baxter. This book baffled me. It is about a woman who works as a makeup-artist at her family's morgue. When her mother dies unexpectedly, she skips the funeral and goes to stay at her estranged father's house. While there, trying to figure out how to vent her grief, she decides to try out the local kink scene. Her first experience is with a dom who is a manipulative, horrible asshole. She has a bad time, but wants to try again, so she goes to a place that hosts scenes. She acts like she knows what she's doing when she doesn't, no one gives her any instruction, so she fucks up massively, and everyone has a bad time. It's the worst portrayal of the kink scene I think I've ever encountered. The author said she did a lot of research but it just seems like a lot of terrible assumptions and misinterpretations. I thought it was going to be a book that positively portrayed kink and people who like the kink scene, but it's very much not. It didn't even feel like the author was doing this so the character would learn that she can't run from her grief. It seemed more like the author had one bad experience due to poor communication or shitty individuals, and then decided that's what the whole scene was like.

-Harold's End by JT LeRoy. I read this book in high school (or perhaps just after graduating) and totally fell in love with it, and then never saw another copy until recently. It was so good to reread it, to re-experience the gorgeous watercolor portraits that come with it. The novel follows a young street kid/hustler who lives with other street kids; all his friends have pets but he doesn't. A john takes a liking to him and buys him a snail as a pet, who he names Harold. The book follows him as he lives on the streets and as his relationship with the john develops. The book is classic JT LeRoy, and the end is LeRoy's usual style of characters experiencing a life lesson and growth but not necessarily in a happy way. It definitely holds up!

-Wittgenstein's Mistress by David Markson. This was such a fun and weird book and I really enjoyed it. Markson's idea for the novel was "what if someone actually lived the way that Wittgenstein's Tractatus suggests?". What we get is a woman who believes she is the last person on earth (it is never confirmed whether this is true or not). She muses on life, culture, art, philosophy, and her past, and discusses her trips across the world despite its emptiness. But her story changes constantly; she's always referencing things she said before and editing herself. It's a weird, fun, fascinating novel with a lovably weird main character.

-A Feast Of Snakes by Harry Crews. Yet another fucked up book that I loved. It follows Joe Lon Mackey, a former high school football star that now lives a dead-end life in his hometown in Georgia. Each year the town hosts the Rattlesnake Roundup, where people come from many states away to try and catch as many rattlesnakes as they can in order to win a competition. Joe Lon is in charge of the event now that his father is too old and ill. He's uncomfortably self-aware of his own personal failings and his inadequacy and his abusive relationship with his wife; he'd rather not think about any of it and is incapable of figuring out how to change things. But his old girlfriend is returning for the event, and his father's attempts to control the goings-on from afar mean he's unable to stop thinking about where his life has ended up and where it's going. All this drives him slowly crazy with desperation until the insane ending. Crews is incredibly talented at writing characters that are likeable despite being so flawed and fairly awful people. This book is no exception.

-Milkshake by Travis Dahlke. What a weird novel! In a near-future dystopian heatwave, an 11 year old girl escapes the environmental catastrophe by traveling back in time to her past life as a fertilizer salesman whose marriage is slowly collapsing. I really enjoyed it, because it was just so odd. Now that I'm thinking about it, I feel as though it would have been really interesting to read just before or just after reading Tentacle; both books focus specifically on time travel and on environmental disaster.

-Hurricane Season by Fernanda Melchor. At the opening of the box, a Witch has been murdered in a small village in Mexico called La Matosa. The rest of the chapters are narrated by different characters, who all have some small or large hand in the death of the Witch, who was a woman who the whole town visited in secret for medicine, fortune-tellings, and advice. The narrating characters include a schoolgirl, a drug dealer, a prostitute, a hapless husband who wants to make something of himself, and a teenager in love with his young girlfriend. With each narration we learn more about the Witch, and her mother who was a Witch before her. Slowly, we get inklings of the nature of the murder, and the revelation at the end is brutal. Melchor's writing is incredibly vivid, and the characters are all caught in the cycle of poverty, driven by superstition and fear and hardship. None of the characters are likeable, but they're all so human.

-Biography Of X by Catherine Lacey. In a dystopic alternate-universe US, where the Southern Territory split from the North after WWII and established a fascist theocracy, a woman named CM grieves her recently deceased wife X, who was a famous artist. Despite X's wishes, CM decides to delve into her wife's past, researching her history before they met and before she was known as X. She uses her credentials and privileges as a journalist to cross into the Southern Territory and learn about X's family and the communities from which she came, her activism and her hidden lives, and begins to realize that maybe learning all this about the woman she loved won't benefit her in the long run and that maybe their relationship wasn't as rosy as she thought. This novel combined fiction and real life in really fascinating ways, and includes both real and fake sources in its footnotes.

-The Silent Patient by Alex Michaelides. A famous and successful painter murders her husband and then refuses to speak. A psychologist who is also a fan of her work is determined to get her to speak again. Obsessed with uncovering the truth, he ends up taking risks that threaten himself and his patient. A fun mystery that went down easy. It didn't attempt to be too realistic from the start, so suspension of disbelief wasn't hard. I do think the book could have done without the entire last part. Leaving it on the realization of what had happened and allowing the reader to sit with that realization (especially with how creatively the twist is presented) would have had more impact I think than the slower and less engaging denouement of the last 3 chapters, which were far weaker than the rest of the book.

-Acid Snow by Larry Mitchell. I reread this book for the first time since about 2009 and really enjoyed it. It's a very sad novel about a man living in NYC during the height of the AIDS epidemic. Most of his friends and lovers have died and he's scared and sad about his own life and cynical about love, but he's attracted to the man who owns the shop below his apartment. It's a dark book, sad and scared and jaded. I think the main character's anxiety and grief that slowly escalates into paranoia is an amazingly surreal way to portray all the emotions that consumed the queer community at that time. I also loved the sort of lack of closure at the end - because many people didn't get that.

-Annihilation by Jeff Vandermeer. I don't generally go for science fiction novels, but I read this one because so many people said they had liked it. I really enjoyed it. The unnamed narrator, a biologist, is part of an all-female expedition into a harsh, unknown territory that has appeared adjacent to the US. The suspense and strangeness of the novel had excellent pacing. The descriptions were also so vivid and clear, which made the story's weirdness so compelling. I loved watching the main character struggle to remain objective the whole time while knowing that she's failing. Her growing fascination and terror is so fun to read as each feeling tries to overtake the other. I also think it was great as a standalone and I feel no interest in reading the other books in the same universe.

-Nevada by Imogen Binnie. I'm a bad queer person, I hated this book. In it, the narrator, a trans woman, is frustrated with her life and has just broken up with her girlfriend, so she steals her ex's car and drives away, ending up in a small town where she spends the night with a department store employee. I just really don't like books that are meandering tell and no show without characters or a plot that are interesting. This entire book felt like someone recounting their weekend over breakfast, complete with casual informal language and overuse of the word "like". Which would be fine if any of the characters were compelling, or if the plot was really interesting and went somewhere, but it didn't. A good portion of it is just musings on New York City, but without the creativity or vividness that other portrayals of NYC have to offer. After I read it, I learned this book was kind of the catalyst for a specific style of trans writing. Which also explains why I hated Detransition, Baby when I read it a couple years ago, as it's a sort of literary descendant of this. I'm happy to read books that are tell rather than show....so long as something interesting happens or at least one of the characters is unique and compelling. This book sadly has neither.

-Essex County by Jeff Lemire. I read this for an English class in university, so this was a reread and I really enjoyed reading it a second time! All the stories in this collection are so beautiful and compelling, all the characters are so real. And the art style is fantastic. The stories revolve around characters living in the titular Essex County in Canada, across a number of generations. It weaves together their relationships and their lives, much of which revolves around hockey. There were some storylines I remembered quite well and others I didn't remember at all, so it was really nice to revisit this one.

-Ravage: An Astonishment of Fire by MacGillivray. Man, this book had so much potential. This novel is a fake biography of a fake poet who disappeared from a Scottish island in the 1960s after falling into delusions that he has become a demon. The fascinating thing about this book (at first), is that it's completely convinced that it is an actual nonfiction book. It gives no hints that it's fake, and the first 50 pages are convincingly written with an academic, nonfiction voice as the novel is utterly convinced of its own delusion of factualness. The novel claims to be an analysis of found papers: first, the poetry and written tracts of Tristjan Norge, a Norwegian poet, then the analysis of his works by MacGillivray, and finally, the diary of his companion Luce Montcrieff. Unfortunately, it is fairly repetitive in a way that bogs the reader down quite a bit. Even so, I think I would have enjoyed much, much more if the ending did not abruptly switch genres to a supernatural/fantasy novel in a way that was startling and had no previous indications of earlier in the book. Up to the last 20 pages I thought it was interesting, even when it was dense, but the end felt like the author didn't know how to end the novel and just used the deus ex machina of supernatural occurrences.

My goal for 2025 is to read majority nonfiction. I don't know if I'm going to actually meet that goal, but I'll try. I don't have any goals for how many books I want to read, especially because I tend to read nonfiction quite a bit slower than fiction, so I don't have a good idea of what my reading amount goal should actually be. This year I also forgot entirely about my attempt to read all of Jean Genet's (translated) works, so I will hopefully actually meet that goal in 2025, since I only have one or two books left to read. But my first three books of the year are going to be Soldiers Don't Go Mad by Charles Glass, which I started this year but didn't finish, The Declared Enemy: Texts and Interviews by Jean Genet, and Rogues: True Stories of Grifters, Killers, Rebels and Crooks by Patrick Radden Keefe.

[thexphial]

An excellent rundown from The Stranger on JKR's Holocaust denial. As a Jewish woman who lost actual family in the Holocaust, her twisting of the narrative is genuinely offensive and harmful.

Hey all, it’s Vivian. If you've freed yourself from wandering the wasteland of weirdos and robots on x.com, you may not have seen a series of tweets from JK Rowling about trans people and the Nazis. Rowling first questioned if Nazis ever burned research on trans people (they did) and then linked a thread excoriating problematic grandaddies in the field, implying that trans medicine carried on a eugenic or Nazi legacy of human experimentation (it doesn't). I really hate inaccurate history, so I called someone who actually knows what the hell they're talking about, University of Washington's Laurie Marhoefer, the leading expert on trans people and the Nazis. You just can't unpack this complicated, nuanced bit of history in a tweet.

A memorial in Tel Aviv dedicated to the LGBTQ victims of the Holocaust. URIEL SINAI / GETTY

Yes, JK Rowling, the Nazis Did Persecute Trans People

We Asked the Leading Expert on the Topicallot Initiative Success in Western  VIVIAN MCCALL Last week, children's book author JK Rowling tweeted some more nonsense about transgender people. In this case, she disputed the fact that Nazis destroyed early research on the community:

Despite Rowling’s dismissal, it is an established fact–not a fever dream–that the Nazis persecuted transgender people. And it’s not the first time this debate has come up on social media. Denying this history is part of an overall effort to discount the discrimination trans people still face in their pursuit of fundamental rights today. It is important to remember the truth and to evaluate what research we have, especially at a time when far-right attacks against trans people are increasing in the United States and elsewhere.

The Looting and Burning

In 1933, the Nazi-supporting youth with the German Student Union and SA paramilitary looted the Institute for Sexual Science (Institut für Sexualwissenschaft) in Berlin. The institute collected the earliest known research on gay and transgender people, and it helped people obtain legal name changes, medical treatments, and “transvestite certificates” from local police that allowed them legally to present as their gender.

Days after the looting, Nazis took to the streets to burn the 20,000 books looters found inside the building, and they placed a bust of the institute’s founder, Magnus Hirschfeld, on the pile in effigy. Hirschfeld was out of the country at the time, but he later died in exile in 1935. 

In the years that followed, trans people were busted under German laws criminalizing sodomy and wearing clothes associated with their birth sex. They were imprisoned in concentration camps before and after the start of World War II. Some were murdered there. Others escaped with their lives.

We’ve Been Here Before 

Since Rowling posted about the subject on x.com, misinformation about trans people in Nazi Germany has circulated widely. Some people have also claimed that the discussion of trans victims of Nazi violence distracts from the “real victims” of National Socialism. In light of this discourse, I called the leading researcher studying trans people and the Nazis, University of Washington professor Laurie Marhoefer.

“My first reaction was, they’re totally wrong,” Marhoefer said of the posts. “They’re not even in the ballpark. My reaction 1.5 was, ‘Oh this is eerie, the same thing happened in Germany two years ago.’”

Back in July of 2022, a graduate biology student named Marie-Luise Vollbrecht, who was known for her “gender critical” anti-trans views, made headlines in Germany.

She tweeted that the Nazis had never targeted trans people, and to say they did “mock[ed] the true victims of the Nazi crimes.” People responded with a hashtag that claimed she denied Nazi crimes. Vollbrecht filed a lawsuit against some of them, claiming their hashtag violated her rights and basically called her a holocaust-denier, which is a crime in Germany. She lost her case, and, after parsing the historical facts, the court officially recognized trans people as Nazi victims. A few months later, Germany’s parliament issued a statement recognizing the queer victims of Nazis and of post-war persecution. 

We Don’t Know Much, but What We Do Know Is Grim 

That ruling aside, this history is by no means complete. Scholars still don’t know much about the lives of trans people in Nazi Germany. Researchers have only recently started to study the subject and to undo false assumptions that cis gay men and transgender women were essentially viewed as the same in the eyes of their oppressors.

Through years of research and the review of published literature, Marhoefer has identified 27 criminal cases involving trans men, women, and gender nonconforming people in Nazi Germany. Locating them is hard work, and it requires parsing heaps of documents in non-keyword-searchable archives to find police files on a very small group of people that did everything in their power to avoid police detection. Marhoefer has 30,000 Gestapo files on their laptop alone. The little we do know, so far, is grim. 

According to research from Marhoefer, beginning in 1933, Hamburg police were instructed to send “transvestites” to concentration camps. A person named H. Bode lived in the city, dated men, dressed in women’s clothes, and once held a “transvestite” certificate. After multiple public indecency and public nuisance convictions, she was sent to Buchenwald, where she died in 1943. Liddy Bacroff, a trans sex worker in Hamburg, died at Mauthausen the same year. Officials sent her there because she was a “morals criminal of the worst sort.” 

Essen police ordered Toni Simon to stop wearing women's clothes, as she had done for years. She served a year in prison for disrespecting police officers, hanging out with gays, and speaking against the regime. The authorities called Simon a “pronounced transvestite,” and a Gestapo officer said placement in a concentration camp was “absolutely necessary.” She ultimately survived. 

Unlike today, Marhoefer said, trans people were never a front-and-center political issue for the Nazis, nor were they rounded up in the same systematic way as Jews or the Roma. Nevertheless, the Nazis did specifically target them for their gender identities. On a fundamental level, transness was incongruous with Nazi ideology, a hyper-masculine fascism that emphasized purity and traditional gender roles. 

The enforcement of moral laws prevented them from living as they did in the Weimar Republic era, the democratic government in power before Adolf Hitler and a time of limited acceptance. Magazines, nightclubs such as the Eldorado, and nascent organizations for trans people were shuttered. The state forced detransition, revoking a permit from at least one person named Gerd R. and driving them to suicide.

“I think we expect the crackdown, and then it’s all over their media, but it’s quiet,” Marhoefer said. “How many in a camp do we have to find before people will be like, ‘Okay, there was persecution?’”

While the Nazis did not often discuss transness much, at least one 1938 book, Ein Beitrag zum Problem des Transvestitismus, provides some idea of how party officials thought about trans people. 

Author Hermann Ferdinand Voss described trans people as “asocial” and likely criminals, which justified “draconian measures by the state.” Nazi rhetoric also linked trans women and pedophilia, which mirrors the contemporary allegations from conservative Republicans about trans and queer people “grooming” children.

When they came after Hirschfeld, who was gay and Jewish, propagandists also framed homosexuality as a Jewish plot to feminize men and to destroy the race. Years before Nazis stormed his institute, the pro-party newspaper Der Stürmer labeled him the most dangerous Jew in Germany, which brings us to another point Rowling shared in a thread on X.

Problematic Granddaddies 

After x.com users told Rowling that Nazis did, in fact, persecute trans people and burn research about them, she accused people who corrected her of valorizing Hirschfeld, rather than doing what they were actually doing, which was simply correcting the record. 

Indeed, Hirschfeld, the granddaddy of the gay rights movement and a pioneer for trans health care, was a eugenicist. Furthermore, the early practitioner of vaginoplasty, Erwin Gohrbandt, who operated on Lili Elbe of The Danish Girl fame, was a Nazi collaborator connected to Dachau.

History rightly doesn’t look back on eugenicists and Nazi collaborators fondly, but those facts have nothing to do with whether or not Nazis persecuted trans people or burned research. 

Apparently unsatisfied with spreading historical misinformation in one instance, Rowling followed-up with a tweet that directed users to a “thread on the persistent claims about trans people and the Nazis.” The thread implies that trans medicine is eugenic or Nazi in some way, and it draws a false connection between gender-affirming care and tortuous human experiments in the camps. 

Broadly, the thread argues that early trans medical care constituted medical malpractice and the development of a new kind of sterilization in the form of gender-affirming genital surgery, and it contends that Gohrbandt performed his early vaginoplasties with the same regard for humanity as he displayed in his later work with the Nazis.

But the beliefs of these flawed medical pioneers have no bearing on trans people or trans politics, and conflating modern gender-affirming care with this early experimental treatment ignores the state violence trans people faced at the hands of the Nazis.

Despite Hirschfeld’s contributions to the field, people are right to criticize him for seeing the world through the lens of eugenics, even if that view was common in the 1930s. 

Marhoefer literally wrote the book on his eugenic beliefs. Hirschfeld thought that gayness was eugenically beneficial because queer people did not reproduce, but he made no eugenic arguments for or against his work with trans people. He dedicated one of his books to eugenics, and he believed they sat at the heart of the science of sexology. And while he was critical of scientific racism, you can find anti-Black statements in his work, too, Marhoefer said.

Moreover, while Hirschfeld’s writings suggest he empathized with trans people and wanted to alleviate their suffering, he still staked a career on them. He photographed trans people in demeaning ways and trotted them out for demonstrations in front of other doctors.

It’s important to remember that Hirschfeld did not invent or create transness. The community existed before he discovered it, and the trans people themselves were not advocating for eugenic sterilization. The man was a trailblazer, not a saint. In fact, his approach to trans medicine laid the foundation for a system that forces people to jump through hoops for medical care. To this day, the majority of people who do trans medicine are not transgender themselves, and they do not always have the best interests of trans people at heart, Marhoefer said.

Gohrbandt would certainly make a list of medical practitioners who did not always have the best interests of trans people at heart. The pioneering plastic surgeon’s career bloomed along with his field, which quickly advanced to treat disfiguring battlefield injuries from World War I. He did not work at the institute, and because the surgeries were still very rare, he didn’t make a living performing them, Marhoefer said. We can count on one hand the number of gender-affirming surgeries he performed.

Unlike the Jewish and leftist doctors he worked with, Gohrbandt did not have to flee Germany. He endorsed the regime and later became the chief medical advisor for the Luftwaffe’s sanitary services division. In 1942, he participated in a secret conference on the results of fatal hypothermia experiments performed on Holocaust victims, and later reported the results in a German surgical journal.

Marhoefer said it is not strange that a future Nazi worked with progressive Jews on gender-affirming care in the 1920s. Many German doctors backed the regime and committed atrocities because they wanted careers. 

There’s no defending Gohrbandt, but his path does not suggest anything unique and nefarious about gender-affirming care. It says more about the heartbreaking situation these trans people found themselves in when even the few doctors they could turn to for medical care treated them with disdain.

Marhoefer said doctors of the day took advantage of desperate women such as Elbe, Dora Richter, and Charlotte Charlaque, who was Jewish and fled the Nazis. They endured experimental surgeries with no oversight before antibiotics, patients’ rights, or ethics protections. Many doctors saw them as a means to an end in the overall development of plastic surgery.

What All of This Is Really About

Trans persecution is simply one story in a much larger one about the Holocaust. Trans people today who point out this history as right-wing attacks against them intensify around the world are not erasing the murder of Jews and Roma in concentration camps, or the extermination of disabled people, or the deaths of millions of Soviet POWS in Nazi Germany’s murderous campaign to seize eastern territory and farmland. 

But this conversation is not really about Nazis any more than constant squabbles over gender-affirming care are about children. Nor does it honor victims of Nazi crimes.

No information, scholarship, or detailed account of a complicated history can satisfy someone who is fundamentally opposed to a person existing as they do. No number of mainstream medical organizations that again and again defend the efficacy of gender-affirming care can assuage their doubts. The benchmark for correctness is constantly moving and shifting, and the argument has no logical endpoint.

Meanwhile, ordinary trans people who rise to their own defense are labeled activists and needled for their wording, or their temperament, or their appearance, or the smallest misstatement. 

At the same time, people like Rowling expect transgender laypeople to possess the knowledge of Holocaust researchers, of doctors, of psychologists, and of public policy experts. Every week, it seems, anti-trans interests push out another poorly researched hit meant to undermine the community’s existence in some way. It is trolling, and it is exhausting, and that’s all it is. 

[monasteryicons]

1 - Turning the bad times into good times We have been here before, and chances are we will find ourselves here again – history shows us that this is the way of this world. What to do? Saint Augustine answers: “Bad times, hard times, this is what people keep saying; but let us live well, and times shall be good. We are the times: Such as we are, such are the times.”

2 - "You are the light of the world." What an incredible statement by Christ! As men and women of prayer, we are not weak, we are not powerless. And together, our seemingly small lights can bring a great illumination. In the 1940’s a religious teacher brought his students to a nighttime concert at the Hollywood Bowl. At one point small candles were distributed to the audience members, and at a signal everyone lit their candle. The amphitheater was gloriously illuminated! The lesson being ended, the teacher led his students out of the concert.

3 - "The effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man avails much." - Saint John Vianney These words from Saint James the Apostle should not be taken lightly. The history of the Church abounds in stories of the miraculous effect of prayer, and even science has finally begun to catch up with the religion and realize this. In 1988 Dr. Randolph Byrd organized a double-blind study of 393 patients in a coronary unit, dividing them into two randomized groups, one of which was put on a list to receive intercessory prayer on their behalf without their knowledge. The other group was a control and was not prayed for. The study concluded that the patients in the first group scored statistically lower in the severity of their medical needs, showing that prayers even from remote strangers positively affected the outcome of their medical treatment. It works! (But you already knew that.)

4 - Don't forget your heavenly friends The sense of isolation and of powerlessness are probably what make difficult times so painful for so many. But as Christians, we are never alone, we are never helpless. Don’t forget to call on your heavenly friends, who are always ready and eager to help you and all those you pray for – the holy angels, the saints, and of course our Lord and the Blessed Virgin. “The Church Militant” is not just a metaphor. We are part of, and surrounded by a great heavenly army.

When the king of Syria sent a great army to capture the prophet Elisha, the prophet’s terrified servant cried “What shall we do?” Mystically seeing the great angelic army which God had sent to protect him, Elisha told his servant: “Fear not, for those who are with us are more than those who are with them.” (2 Kings 6:16)

5 - Pray for your enemies - Betsie Ten Boom Christ taught that we must recognize the reality of evil in the world; ours is not a faith of rose-colored glasses. As Christians, how should we react to this evil? Among other things, Christ taught us to pray for our enemies. Think of the tortured condition of the people wreaking havoc in the world at this time. As difficult as it may be, let us bring them too before God in prayer, that His light will drive the darkness out of their hearts and minds.

After some months of their imprisonment in a Ravensbruck concentration camp because they concealed Jews in their home in Holland, the two Dutch sisters Corrie and Betsie Ten Boom learned the identity of the Dutch man who had colluded with the Nazis and betrayed their family. Corrie brimmed with hatred for the man who had brought such suffering literally to their doorstep. Her father was dead because of this man, and it was because of that traitor that Betsie was slowly dying. When she asked her sister “Doesn’t it bother you?” she replied “Oh yes, Corrie! Terribly! I’ve felt for him ever since I knew—and pray for him whenever his name comes into my mind.” As Betsie grew weaker, she kept insisting that she and Corrie had work to do after the war. She planned to have rehabilitation homes – with green paint and window boxes – for concentration camp survivors as well as for people who had helped the Nazis.

[thegayhimbo]

Stranger Things The Dustin Experiment Review

If you haven't yet, be sure to check out my other Stranger Things Reviews:

Stranger Things Reviews/Theories:

Stranger Things Play:

Stranger Things The First Shadow

Stranger Things Comics/Graphic Novels:

Stranger Things Six

Stranger Things Halloween Special

Stranger Things The Other Side

Stranger Things Zombie Boys

Stranger Things The Bully

Stranger Things Winter Special

Stranger Things Tomb of Ybwen

Stranger Things Into The Fire

Stranger Things Science Camp

Stranger Things “The Game Master” and “Erica’s Quest”

Stranger Things and Dungeons and Dragons

Stranger Things Kamchatka

Stranger Things Erica The Great

Stranger Things “Creature Feature” and “Summer Special”

Stranger Things Tales From Hawkins

Stranger Things x Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Crossover

Stranger Things The Voyage

Stranger Things “Deliver Me From Evil”

Stranger Things Tie-In Books:

Stranger Things Suspicious Minds

Stranger Things Runaway Max (Part 1 of 3)

Stranger Things Runaway Max (Part 2 of 3)

Stranger Things Runaway Max (Part 3 of 3)

Stranger Things Darkness On The Edge Of Town (Part 1 of 3)

Stranger Things Darkness On The Edge Of Town (Part 2 of 3)

Stranger Things Darkness On The Edge Of Town (Part 3 of 3)

Stranger Things Rebel Robin Book and Podcast (Part 1 of 2)

Stranger Things Rebel Robin Book and Podcast (Part 2 of 2)

Stranger Things Hawkins Horrors Review

Stranger Things Flight Of Icarus

Stranger Things Lucas On The Line

Stranger Things Episode Reviews:

The Vanishing of Will Byers (Season 1, Episode 1)

Synopsis: Following the Battle of Starcourt, Dustin attempts to adjust to life in high school as he deals with the fallout of being targeted by bullies and his friends growing distant. When he learns of a science fair taking place in Indianapolis, Dustin enlists the help of Eddie Munson to get the project off the ground as he begins to consider his future.............

Observations:

I ended up reading this book twice, prior to the 2024 Election. First time was difficult to get through due to a slow beginning and my mixed feelings about the last 4-5 pages. Rereading it a second time and thinking things through was a more positive experience, and I ended up having a lot of fun with the story, especially when it came to Dustin's science project and his personal adventure at the science fair.

In terms of how I'd rank it, I'd say it's definitely better than last year's Flight of Icarus, and even a cut above Lucas on the Line due to not having continuity errors. However, it's not quite to the level of Rebel Robin or my Top 5 best tie-ins in the series. There were issues with it, but the book does a good job sticking after you've finished it, and what it presents does make me excited for the direction they could go with Dustin in season 5.

I'll start with the parts I took issue with, and work my way up to the positives that made the book worth reading:

Part 1: Bullying (i.e. The First 3rd of the Book)

Those who have followed my blog know I don't have any patience for bullies. In fact, when it comes to Stranger Things and the themes it explores, I have a harder time watching scenes with characters like Troy, James, Tommy, Carol, Billy, Jason, Angela, the Rink-O-Mania crowd, and Two, in comparison with the horror aspects like the Upside Down, the Mind Flayer, and Vecna. A lot of it has to do with how the bullying is uncomfortably grounded in reality, as well as a lifetime of experience on my end dealing with people like this (both on social media and off it). The last year alone especially has been eye-opening with how shamelessly vile and hypocritical some people will be, especially if they think they can get away with it. It's gotten to the point I'm not hesitant anymore about blocking people, or dragging them over the coals if they continue to poke the bear one too many times. At some point, you either develop tougher skin and a "No patience for bullshit" attitude, or you continue to be a target and a dormant for these people. I chose the former.

Having read Lucas on the Line beforehand, I knew that a story focusing on Dustin between seasons 3 and 4 was bound to focus on him and Mike getting bullied, and wasn't surprised when they depicted it in all of its ugliness:

I'll be honest in admitting I never liked Jason as a character. When I first saw season 4, I pegged him immediately as self-absorbed and coasting on self-righteousness and arrogance (even before Chrissy got brutally murdered), and the way things played out did NOTHING to alter that perception. While I initially felt bad for him over the grief and anger of losing Chrissy, that immediately vanished the moment he whipped the townsfolk into conducting a witch hunt against the Hellfire Club without giving a damn about whether innocent people would be hurt in the process (which they were).

Since the release of Season 4, and the subsequent tie-ins that have accompanied it, my opinion of Jason has NOT improved, especially with how this book, Lucas on the Line, and Flight of Icarus depict him as a bully with his own prejudices and anger issues that would lead him to look for any excuse to pick fights with people he didn't like.

I would go as far to argue that Chrissy's death didn't turn him into a monster so much as it brought out the nastier aspects of his character that were already there to begin with. This dude was a timebomb waiting to detonate, and even if Chrissy hadn't died, something was eventually bound to set him off.

On top of that, Jason's treatment of Mike in this book is pretty awful, and only made him more detestable. It also makes his not-so-subtle threat to Nancy in "Papa" about going after Mike a lot more heinous in hindsight:

The book helps flesh-out Mike and Dustin's irritation with Lucas wanting to join the basketball team and why they have a problem with it. It also give context into why they believed Lucas was deluding himself when he claimed this would allow him, Mike, and Dustin to become popular in High School and therefore untouchable to bullies: That was ALWAYS a fantasy that was never going to happen. Jason and his squad were repeatedly awful to Mike and Dustin during their first year of high school, and no amount of Lucas kissing up to Jason was going to change that. Their frustration with Lucas was less about him wanting to play basketball (though neither of them show much enthusiasm for the sport to begin with) and more about wanting Lucas to wake up and realize how much of an asshole Jason and his buddies are.

I've seen fans criticize Mike and Dustin in the season 4 premiere for skipping Lucas's championship game to do Eddie's D&D campaign, and while I initially could understand that position, having time to reevaluate has made me realize they probably made the right call in hindsight. For all of his flaws, Eddie accepted Mike and Dustin and gave them sanctuary within the Hellfire Club, which made their lives in high school bearable. He even offered that same courtesy to Lucas in spite of Lucas also doing basketball (something that Jason had no intention of ever doing for Mike or Dustin while they were a part of Hellfire Club). Whatever acceptance Jason initially gave Lucas (which arguably had a lot to do with Lucas making the winning shot in the championship compared to if Lucas had messed up and cost them the game) came with strings attached. The moment Lucas crossed Jason is the moment he would become Jason's enemy, regardless of the reasons.

All of this makes me indifferent towards Jason's eventual fate. I'm not going to say I was glad he died, but at the same time, my sympathy was nonexistent by the time he bit the dust. Some people might call what happened to him Karmic Overkill, but Stranger Things has always made a point in demonstrating that karma doesn't distribute itself how you want it to. Decent characters like Barbara, Chrissy, Benny, Bob, and Eddie all suffered horrific fates they didn't deserve, whereas awful people like Troy, Tommy, Carol, Colonel Sullivan, Dr. Brenner, and Angela were lucky if they got any sort of comeuppance. Hell, Angela is one of the most loathsome characters in the entire series, and the best she received for her sadism and public humiliation of El was a Grade 2 concussion as opposed to the grisly death she arguably deserved.

Hell, I would go as far as to argue everyone in Rink-O-Mania who took part in El's bullying deserved a gruesome end a la Stephen King's Carrie, but I don't get to make that decision, and neither did El. They're all disgusting people devoid of any redeeming qualities, and I won't feel bad when they're eventually on the receiving end of the cruelty they've dished out (especially since none of them have the self-awareness to recognize how mean-spirited they are), but the cold hard reality is people like Angela and her ilk get away with that kind of behavior in real life (as we just saw a few weeks ago with the 2024 U.S. Elections). Characters like Angela and Jason getting any sort of consequences for their behavior, even if it's small, is cathartic for me, and that's not something I'm going to apologize for.

I will say that, for all the bullying Dustin experiences in this book, he handles it in a mature manner. A lot of this has to do with Dustin having life experience dealing with this kind of crap, and recognizing how pathetic and unoriginal it is:

Out of all the characters in the Party, Dustin is the one who adapts well to his environment, and it's a big reason he's been able to survive the hardships life throws at him. It's something I admire about his character.

Part 2: Dustin's Friendships/Relationships

Adding on what I previously said, it's notable Dustin is the one who makes friends the easiest. He may have come late to the Party (around 4th grade, according to him), but he was able to integrate seamlessly with Mike, Lucas, and Will, which is something the comic Stranger Things and Dungeons & Dragons depicts:

A good chunk of this has to do with Dustin working to find common ground with people and seeing the positive merits in others. It's how he developed his friendship with Steve and looks up to him in a big-brotherly way. It's how he formed a bond with Eddie in this novel. It's even how he's able to reach across the isle towards people like Ankia (who initially has a haughty attitude towards Dustin before she mellows out), or Danny, or Suzie, or the kids at Science Camp as depicted in that comic:

It's a good life skill that will serve him well when (and if) he leaves Hawkins alive.

A central focus in this book is Dustin reevaluating what he wants in his life, as well as how he views his relationships. Since the events of the Battle of Starcourt, the Party has split, and Dustin feels he's been left to fend for himself. In many ways, the structure of the story echos what Lucas went through in Lucas on the Line, except in this instance, it's Dustin aiming to try out something new in order to deal with the changes in his life. While Lucas veered into basketball, Dustin decided to put his intellect to use by entering a science contest. Unfortunately for him, neither of his friends express much interest in his passion: Max is depressed and isolated following Billy's death and Neil leaving her mom, Mike has shut himself away following Will and El's departure from Hawkins, and Lucas is in basketball training and hanging out with Jason's jock friends, which causes friction between Dustin and Lucas. The most support he gets for the project is from his mother and Eddie.

Speaking of Eddie, his introduction doesn't disappoint. Just like in Flight of Icarus, Eddie is someone who's moved past caring how others think of him (something Dustin respects him for), has no issue publicly calling out Jason and his jocks for their bullying, and is quick to adopt Mike and Dustin into the Hellfire Club (and later Lucas as well). Dustin's desire to impress Eddie, first by fixing his walkman and later his AMP box, is what inspires Dustin's science project: A Super AMP box of his own that would allow Dustin to record sounds, play them back, and measure changes in distortion and signal-to-noise ratios. With some encouragement from Eddie (as well as a promise for a drive to the fair and an arrangement to listen to Eddie's playlist of Heavy Metal music), Dustin heads out on his own side-quest (as he cheekily puts it).

The friendship between Dustin and Eddie is a highlight, and Eddie's attempts at helping Dustin are hilarious as well as heartwarming. Eddie is someone who likes Dustin for who he is, and encourages him to not let others tell him who he should be:

In many ways, Eddie reminds me of Jay from Lucas on the Line who also acted like a mentor figure/friend to Lucas, and motivated Lucas to be his true self.

The tragedy is, in spite of both Jay and Eddie being positive influences for Lucas and Dustin, both of them were cruelly driven out: Jay was forced to move after being targeted in a racist attack against him, whereas Eddie got scapegoated for Chrissy's death and died before he got to clear his name. It's a parallel that reminds me of Karen's words to Nancy in season 3: "This world, it beats you up again and again until eventually........most people, they just stop trying." Both Dustin and Lucas have always been fighters (same with the other members of the Party), but it doesn't make it any easier that the people they care about disappear from their lives when they're at their most vulnerable.

Speaking of vulnerable, part of the conflict Dustin has with his friends is also similar to Lucas's conflict in Lucas on the Line where both characters are going through their own hardships and assessing whether their friends will actually be there for them. Dustin does clash heads with Lucas over basketball, but a good chunk of that has to do with the crowd Lucas is hanging out with. Dustin knows Jason and his jocks are NOT nice people, and is baffled over why Lucas would want to be someone like that:

It takes some time, and a few missteps, but Dustin is able to eventually not only see Lucas's perspective, but also Mike's perspective regarding his issues, and make amends with both of them before things permanently fall apart:

This isn't much of a spoiler since the group is united again at the end of season 4, but the suspense leading up to that point comes from HOW they're able to keep their friendship together in spite of life's tribulations. There's a moving scene at the Video Rental Store where Robin and Steve hold an intervention to get Mike, Dustin, and Lucas to reconcile. During it, each find out that, despite the surface differences, their fears are similar in nature: Behind Left Behind. Losing friends. Failing the people they care about. Their bond is a lot stronger than they give it credit for. And as Steve notes, a lot of the problems they're having are manageable if they're willing to talk through it:

Speaking of Steve, it was nice seeing the book cover his relationship with Dustin. Just like in season 2, Steve takes on the role of mentor as Dustin keeps barging into his workplace (oftentimes before Steve closes, or else scaring off customers in the process) to vent about his issues. Steve, of course, takes it in stride, and offers what advice he can (along with the new video releases that Dustin is interested in).

I was initially worried this book would feature petty jealousy and contrived drama between Steve and Eddie over which of them Dustin liked the best as a friend (similar to what the show Supernatural did with Sam and Dean Winchester in Season 8 when they introduced the vampire character Benny and tried to play him as the new "brother" that Dean wanted over Sam). Thankfully, the book steers clear of that. We get brief glimpses that Steve is insecure that Dustin has started to lose interest in him as a friend (something that Dustin refutes in the narration), but Steve never becomes actively malicious against Eddie or tries to prevent Dustin from seeing Eddie (which is in direct contrast to how the Benny/Dean/Sam drama played out in Supernatural). The regrettable thing is that, had Steve and Eddie talked beforehand (similar to how Steve was encouraging Dustin to talk to Mike and Lucas before making any rash decisions), they could have become friends a lot earlier before season 4. 😞

Suzie also makes an appearance, and just like with Steve, she acts as an encouraging presence and voice of reason for Dustin as he's navigating high school. Their interactions are sweet without being over-the-top, and they even run a book club where they discuss novels they're reading together. In fact, compared to Mike and El's stilted communication while they're apart in different states, Dustin and Suzie are a lot more open with each other about what's going on in their lives (minus anything to do with the Upside Down). It makes their relationship look healthy in comparison.

I know people see Suzie as a "take-or-leave" character, but I like her, and I'm glad Dustin and her are a couple. I'm not sure what the future holds for them, but I hope she is eventually clued in to the Upside Down. I'm also hoping we get to see her interact with other characters besides Dustin (like she did with Mike, Will, Jonathan, and Argyle in season 4) and maybe even have some kind of role in helping Dustin against Vecna's army. Who knows? Her intelligence and love for fantasy could be put to good use in that situation.

We also see a little more of Dustin's friendship with Will in how they keep in touch via letters. It's a relationship that remains solid, with a nice balance between Dustin's intellectual side and Will's perceptiveness. Will encourages Dustin with his science project, and gives advice to Dustin regarding his difficulties with Mike and Lucas, as well as what he should do with his future:

There is something to be said about Dustin and Will being the glue that holds the Party together. Considering that Dustin is able to talk about his problems easier with Will in letters than he's able to with Mike or Lucas, it gives the impression that, out of all the members of the Party, Dustin is able to relate better to Will. Or maybe it's because it's easier for Will to speak openly about his thoughts and emotions, compared to Lucas and Mike who struggle more.

Dustin's interactions with Max and El are shown briefly, but aren't given the same in-depth look as his other relationships. Dustin is aware of Max's depression and living situation (and later finds out she broke up with Lucas) and does what he can in offering to be there for her. As for El, while he doesn't know the particulars, he picks up pretty quickly that El is unhappy in Lenora for reasons that are obvious to the audience (May Angela continue to get hit in the face with a heavy object every day for the rest of her miserable life). 😒

Finally, there's Dustin's relationship with his parents. The few interactions I've seen between Ms. Henderson and Dustin have always given the impression they're close and that they do a good job supporting one another, and this book confirms that. She knows that her son is a genius and allows him to nurture his creativity and scientific interests (even as she's having to call the power company multiple times since Dustin uses up the electricity in the house). I like their mother/son relationship, and I'm disappointed she's not coming back for season 5.

As for Mr. Henderson..............Dustin sums it up best to Eddie:

This is pretty consistent with how Walter Henderson was depicted in The First Shadow, and I'm glad the book includes this nod to the play.

Part 3: The Science Fair

The middle part of the book, which deals with Dustin building his "Bard Box" (i.e. the AMP box he uses to record sounds) and his adventure with Eddie in Indianapolis, was my favorite part. Not only does it feature great bonding moments between Dustin and Eddie (including the hilarious revelation that Eddie has a fear of ducks), but there's a fun mystery Dustin stumbles upon while he's at the fair that allows him to put his deductive skills to work. It's a plot with similarities to the comic Science Camp in that Dustin meets a group of nerds like him whom he befriends and they work to track down a culprit with malicious intentions.

Just like with Science Camp, I won't reveal the particulars or who the culprit is, but it was pretty easy to figure out the culprit's identity. However, the journey with Dustin and the new friends he makes is enjoyable, and I wouldn't mind seeing those characters again in a future tie-in. There's also a fun bit with Eddie having to look after a duck named Frodo Quackins (yes, that's actually his name) and his ability to improvise and entertain people:

If Eddie had survived, he could have had a career in theater, and he would have been good in it. 😞

All of this leads up to a moment where Dustin is offered the opportunity to escape Hawkins and attend a prestigious science school called Eastwood. And the remainder of the book deals with Dustin struggling over whether to accept the offer or not.

Based on how season 4 went, you can already guess how that panned out.

And this brings me to where Dustin's story goes from here......

Part 4: Dustin's Future in Season 5

I've speculated for a while that, just like with Nancy's crusade to get justice for Barbara in season 2, Dustin will be trying to clear Eddie's name in season 5 for Vecna's murders. Based on the BTS photos they've released, it looks like there's a long road ahead for him:

I'm hoping there's a major payoff to this potential arc beyond just clearing Eddie's name. Part of the reason I brought up bullies like Jason and Angela earlier in this review is because I've started to grow sick of seeing the main characters repeatedly getting dumped on while receiving zero credit for putting their lives on the line to save the world. Meanwhile, assholes like Angela and Jason make the main characters lives a living hell, all the while enabled by the people around them, and are either coddled for their behavior (Angela) or memorialized for it (Jason). While I doubt Angela or any characters from Lenora (including Argyle) are coming back for season 5 (though if she does return for some reason, I hope Vecna causes Angela's head to explode), I have a sick feeling that Jason's hold over Hawkins will still be there by season 5, and characters like Dustin will be dealing with the fallout of Jason's crusade. Whether it's in the form of Jason's basketball team taking revenge for their fallen comrade, or Hawkins residents swallowing the propaganda about the Hellfire Club being a Satanic Cult, I expect life isn't going to be easy for a while. That's not even getting into how Dustin will still be grieving Eddie's death and having to put up with the slander thrown Eddie's way.

What I'm hoping for is that, during all of this, there is an eventual reckoning for Hawkins. That the residents are forced to come face-to-face with the lies, the bigotry, the prejudices, the bullying, and all the uglier aspects rooted in the town's social structures and history. I'm not going to be happy if the townsfolk remain passive while reacting to the horrors around them as the main characters are forced to do the heavy lifting in keeping Hawkins safe. We've seen that for 4 seasons now. It's old and tired. The status quo needs to be broken in a major way that forces changes in Hawkins which will actually stick. The show has hinted in season 4 that it could go in this direction, especially with Vecna destroying the town and opening a large gate, and I'm hoping season 5 makes the most of it.

There are plenty of stories out there that have done this. J.R.R. Tolkien's Lord of the Rings did this with the Scourging of the Shire where the Hobbits had their lands decimated by Saruman and his men, and were forced to take up arms and become self-reliant in fighting back and no longer remaining isolated from the world around them. Fullmetal Alchemist Brotherhood also did something similar where the main characters were forced into a reckoning with how the nation of Amestris was formed, as well as the corruption rooted in its government, and make hard but necessary changes that would bring peace to the world and allow for a better future. That is the kind of arc I hope Stranger Things explores with Hawkins in the last season. Not just having the main characters receive credit for defeating Vecna and the Upside Down, but actually having the residents of Hawkins play a role in that and go through a permanent change in the process.

As for Dustin.........if he survives the events of season 5, I hope he gets the opportunity to leave Hawkins and pursue his scientific interests in a way that makes him happy and allows him to keep in contact with his friends and family. He deserves that much.

[black-arcana]

EPICA's SIMONE SIMONS Explains Why The Time Is 'Right' For Her To Release Her Debut Solo Album

In a new interview with El Cuartel Del Metal, EPICA singer Simone Simons discussed her upcoming debut solo album, "Vermillion", on which she collaborated with her longtime musical partner Arjen Lucassen (AYREON). Asked how long she has been planning the project, Simone said (as transcribed by BLABBERMOUTH.NET): "Well, actively for, I guess, one and a half years, or one year even, with Arjen. We started, yeah, last year, I think springtime or so. But I talked to him about working together, I asked him if he wanted to work with me on my solo album already years ago, if he would be interested. And he was, but we were both just too busy. And last year, we also did the AYREON shows together; I was part of that. But already before those took place, we met up because he already started writing songs, and he always kind of wrote two, three songs and then I would come over to him to record vocals. And then a couple of months later he would have more songs. So it was not that all songs were there all at once. But we did it in a couple of sessions. And, yeah, EPICA was not touring a lot. And writing a new record for EPICA was kind of a little bit like at the end of the last vocal recordings for 'Vermillion'. EPICA was also in the studio, or writing camps, writing albums. So, for me, I guess this was the freest I could get my calendar, but I still had things going on. And in the past we were just touring too much. So the wish was always there, but not the time, also for Arjen because he's very busy as well. But now we were both motivated and had the time. The time was right now."

Regarding the first two singles from the LP, "Aeterna" and "In Love We Rust", Simone said: "Well, 'Aeterna' was the idea of Arjen to release as a first single track, because it is a little bit of a perfect blend of AYREON and EPICA; there's quite some similarities of both our music career, I guess. So it would be kind of a soft introduction to both our fans, to get warm with the project. But it's definitely not an indication of how the whole album sounds like; it's still very, very different. And 'In Love We Rust' is one of both Arjen and my favorite tracks of the album, and it's a beautiful ballad. Who doesn't like a ballad? And this month, there will be a third single, which will be a very heavy song. So I'm curious to see what people are gonna say about that. But all songs are brilliant and I like 'em all. They're like all babies in a way. But 'Aeterna', I felt a little bit sorry for Patric [Ullaeus] who did the video because it's a long song to do a video for. Nowadays singles are always three, max four minutes, and EPICA is always surpassing that, but, yeah, six minutes of supernovas, planets and many dresses. [Laughs]"

Arjen is no stranger to Simone's soaring operatic voice, one that can stir even a gargoyle's stone heart to tears. Together they have crafted a sonic universe that befits the influential figure she is. Due on August 23 via Nuclear Blast Records, "Vermillion" emerges as a gargantuan goose-bump generator, a universally touching, stellar tour de force.

Simone and Arjen previously stated about "Aeterna": "'Aeterna' is the big, epic opener of the album and it comes with this amazing video too, directed by Patric Ullaeus. It definitely sounds the closest to EPICA and AYREON, blending powerful Latin lyrics with a touch of an oriental feel. We've tried to strike a balance between the mighty, bombastic sounds and the more atmospheric parts. Since it's the first track people will hear from this album, it's super important to us and we're really excited for people to hear it!

"'Aeterna' takes the point of view of a star about to go supernova to explore how everything in the universe is interconnected, like a cosmic web made from stardust. It deals our deep emotions, consciousness and other mysteries of life that science still can't fully explain. Essentially it's a reflection on our place in the vast universe and the connections that bind us together, as we're all, to quote Carl Sagan, 'made of starstuff.'"

About "In Love We Rust", Simone and Arjen said: "The video was filmed in just one take to keep it as pure and raw as possible. We opted to keep it in black and white so as not to distract from the song or the performance.

"'In Love We Rust' is quite different from our first single 'Aeterna', which shows how diverse this album is. This is one of our favorite songs. We hope you love this as much as we do."

For more than 20 years, ever since she was a teenager, Simons has been carving her own path as a woman within the world of metal. As a lead singer, icon, and role model for a whole generation of female metalheads, the EPICA lead singer remains one of the most prominent key figures in all things metal. After eight albums and countless global tours with her band, Simone Simons finally found the time to release her first solo album — a moment 15 years in the making. Her breathtaking debut "Vermillion" is a stunning feat chronicling her storied past as well as her rise to fame, and showcasing her many different influences ranging from prog rock to film scores to metal to electronic elements.

Of the timing for her eagerly awaited foray into the realms of a solo career, the Dutch singer says with a disarming grin: "EPICA has my priority and I always have the liberty to do other musical projects besides my career in EPICA. Yet I never had the time to dive into a project to this extent."

"Vermillion" track listing:

01. Aeterna 02. In Love We Rust 03. Cradle To The Grave (feat. Alissa White-Gluz) 04. Fight Or Flight 05. Weight Of My World 06. Vermillion Dreams 07. The Core 08. Dystopia 09. R.E.D. 10. Dark Night Of The Soul

[hyperfixated-maybe]

Not what I usually post, but I need people to see this insanely intimate moment I had with two complete strangers at the airport the other day. This was typed out in my notes app on the bus ride from the airport so I’d get every fresh little detail from my memory.

“Sitting on a Lufthansa flight, eight hours from Frankfurt to Boston. We’re a half hour ahead of time, sitting on the runway awaiting an open gate. I hear a clang, and under my seat rolls a metal water bottle. I reach under and pass it back to the kid who dropped it. They wear a soft jean jacket with a shirt underneath reading something along the lines of “I’m really a moth and this is my human costume”.

“Here you go, bud.” I say.

They thank me. 

Five, ten minutes later and everybody is getting up to be deplaned. I hear behind me the same kid talking to their mom. “There’s a type of jellyfish that can live forever. If something doesn’t eat it. They go back to an earlier stage of their life…” 

I turn back and pull lobsters into the conversation. They tell me they went to an away science camp where they learned about marine biology. 

“I’m Moth” they draw out the “th” sound. 

I repeat it back: “Moth?? That’s such a cool name dude!”

The mom jumps in. “They named themself that!”

“What’s your name?” Moth asks me.

“Sam. My pronouns are he/him, what are yours?”

“They/them!”

“That’s so cool! I’m trans too!”

The mom again: “They have older siblings, so they’ve had a lot more time to think about these things than most other nine year olds.”

There’s a pause in the conversation here, and I can feel my emotions bending. “You know you’re the luckiest kid ever, right?”

“I am?” 

“Mhm..” I’ve started to get shakey now. I look away and bring my arm to my face, trying to control my emotions. The mom looks at me, and waits a moment before saying, “y’know, I give out mom hugs to anyone who needs it.” She opens her arms and I lean into the embrace. 

When it’s over I find myself saying “You’re the coolest person I know. I hope you have a great life!” to Moth as I leave. I wave behind me as I get off the plane. 

“Me too!”

I wait on the edge of the group as the rest of the cadets trickle off of the plane and condense beside me. I see Moth and their mom walk by, and I catch the mom’s eye. We smile at each other. Moth doesn’t see me.

They came back. To find me. And Moth asks for a hug. (Or, more accurately, if they can hug 𝘮𝘦.)

“Of course!” I bend down. We’re at an awkward height, and I shift to see if I should kneel or remain. By the end I’m kneeling. 

We hug more times than I remember. Eight, nine, ten times? I don’t rightfully know. Each hug they get more emotional, and I see tears well up in their brown eyes. 

The mother says “sorry, I’m sorry, I didn’t know they’d start crying like this.” I tell her it’s fine, it’s okay. 

Their straight, brown, a bit longer than shoulder length hair is messed up, and the mom is behind them, smoothing it behind their ear. So am I. 

“It’s gonna be okay.” The mom says to them. 

I tell them that they’re the coolest person I know. We hug, and each time we pull away, we hold each other’s arms, or grasp each others hands. 

“Sorry about this. With the jet lag and stuff they start acting like a drunk person!” 

Moth laughs through their tears, and I laugh with them.

“Sam’s gotta go with his group now,” the mother says. So I do.

The last time I saw Moth was about a half hour after our first interaction on the plane. I’m walking with my group to get my passport stamped. Moth is alone now, waiting for their mom outside a bathroom. I hug them one last time as I walk by, and file down through the seatbelt barrier maze. 

I wave, and Moth smiles back. 

And that’s it. That’s my whole story. As much as they’ll ever know of it, at least.”

[sunshine-tattoo]

So Jurassic World Dominion has some really good pieces but it would have done so much better as a TV series like the original stranger things.

Because stranger things is effectively three different genres all happening at once but it doesn't feel weird due to good timing and separation of the plotlines until everything is ready to come to a header.

Dominion also has three different genres as plotlines but because of the film's time frame they feel muddied and not nearly flushed out enough.

This was a movie that wanted to be good and thoughtful but was put into the jurassic park "running from dinos" box.

Which is so sad because the book version of this world actually has a lot of elements they were trying for in this movie. Like political intrigue and the real risks of science under capitalism.

The camp cretaceous series does a pretty solid job at bringing this more to the forefront.

And their new series, chaos theory, really drives it home.

But both are still animated series for young people and I wish these was an R rated live action series that bridges the gap between these two.

All that being said, I really love that the film actually tries to give real respect to all the iterations of this franchise.

And how the characters really feel genuine and three dimensional.

I was prepared to go into this movie to hate it. Yet I think it actually might be my favorite after the OG '93 film.

Also. Kayla is an absolute hottie and I need her to sit on my face.

[zoey-angel]

I don’t understand how you could possibly support Israel and the genocide they are commenting against Palestine. It’s absolutely heartless to see.

There's actually a story behind this!!

Okay so, back when I was very young, my mom would take me to preschool and there were a lot of other kids, sometimes they were nice and other times really mean. I remember really liking the walk there too, and I liked playing outside, and in the spring our kindergarten teacher took us to plant little sprouts in the mud and we sang songs and watched them grow over the next few months.

When I was in elementary, first I was in a religious school where we were told all these stories about the bible, but I was actually switched schools in fourth grade because the new school was closer to home, and every morning I had this walk uphill to reach it, and I hated it pretty bad but I didn't have lots of friends so it some days on the way home I took my time and it ended up being the highlight of my day.

Then following that, in middle school I had a gay bible teacher (!!) who would teach us in this really backhanded way about the old testament, and my homeroom teacher was this tree hugger type who loved to travel and he took our class on so many field trips and well, everyone went on those field trips but not everyone had a trip-enthusiast as a teacher! And he was the best teacher I ever had

Every time we would stop in out trek, and they would take us to nature reserves and historical monuments and stuff, he would bring out these endless stories about the place, and quiz us on flower names, and once a kid got really dizzy so he took her on his back and ran to the end of the trail for medical attention.

My class in middle school had this thing with a specific burger joint, so they'd hang out there all the time, and I didn't have lots of friends and I was also vegetarian but I remember going and remember it really brought everyone together to hang out after school as a whole class, and we also drove the waiters absolutely crazy with the middle schooler chatter.

When I was in highschool tho, I finally figured out the friends thing, and I even had my first kiss with my then best friend on a days-long field trip, and the entire friend group was both nerdy and queer, into anime and gaming, but nobody messed with us, maybe because we gave off these crazy vibes. I really liked being in highschool, I loved the library and the lawns and the science building, and my peers from the art electives threw entire showcases of artwork at random times a year

One of my friends even painted a mural all over the cafeteria, and I helped, it took us weeks but we made it and that was her final project for the art elective. She got a really high score and everyone got to see her art while eating.

I have other core memories, like going to the beach with my family, or going to grandma's, or camping up north in the summer, or that time my parents took us to see the observatory and go down a crater and collect colorful sands

The point of all this is that somewhere along the way someone informed me that the place I was growing up was called israel. I was randomly born in that country I guess, you know? Not up to me or anything, just happened.

The deal is that since my birth I've been told, so many times, by mostly people who don't know me, don't even try to understand me, have never been here or there, that I don't belong here, that I'm awful for being here, don't deserve to exist and don't deserve to live.

I'm not just "a Jew" I'm also someone who's right here, right in the middle of the conflict. When you hear in the news about this or that, I'm in the shelter with my family waiting for the iron dome to neutralize the rockets some other stranger launched at us. This is real for me.

I don't know why people struggle so much with the concept of Israelis being people. Have I ever killed a gazan? No, I just live here. People will scream at me at the top of their lungs for having blood on my hands where I don't, and when I say I want to live and to be protected, isn't that valid?

I don't want to go immigrate somewhere far away from my preschool, my schools, my parents, family, friends, my university. To be banished again somewhere I can't fluently speak their language at all because my mother tongue is hebrew. I don't want to live somewhere where synagogues are sprayed with swastikas and politicians heil. No, I want to stay here where my home is

Now you can sit with that and think if it's heartless for me to say I want to continue being alive and not hunted by nazis in my home where I grew up, or you can try to figure out my side of things to realize the conflict is actually nearly all grays and nuances, nothing's black or white here