So, I had a bad time this weekend, I'm still having a bad time. I've had a bad past week, or like, maybe last couple of weeks? Anyway, it's a mess. It's just so, so frustrating to exist like this, I really don't know how I'm supposed to function, and my head is still killing me from that concussion, and the symptoms are getting worse somehow? I really don't understand. Anyway, I was busy last week avoiding the universe as much as I could, and Rin went home early this weekend because... I think I used too much room spray after the house starting smelling bad? I made beyond burgers, and like, I usually stay away from stuff like that, so I think that might have been why the house smelled like rot, but SHE said it didn't smell like rot, just vanilla candle, and when I used the room spray she said I ruined her drink and made her sick and she got really mad at me and the whole weekend fell apart and idk if she's going to come over anymore. It's a mess.
Anyway, I had a lot of time to... do nothing I guess, so I read a lot of books. I know I usually read 1 book a week, maybe 1 book every other week, but this week I read three books, and six comics. Which, I'm running low on comics already so reading that many in one week was kinda dumb. Comics are expensive and it's hard to find good ones.
The first book I read was called "We Won't Be Here Tomorrow And Other Stories" by Margaret Killjoy. It's a collection of short stories, not tied by any greater themes.
Honestly, this is EXACTLY what I'm looking for in a short story collection. A solid mix of horror, sci-fi, fantasy, whatever, and it was so, so queer, I think every, or almost every story had queer characters, so many trans people just living life, it was really great to see. I think my favorite story was about the girl who lured people to her mermaid girlfriend so they could be eaten, but each story in it was really fun. I was left wanting more, more stories about the vikings resurrected to fight neo-nazis, more stories about the orcs living in the north west woods of north america founding their own society, more stories about the couple banished to the 21st century from the 29th as their prison sentence, just so many good ideas, so much fun. If you have any interest in queer fiction and short stories, this book has something for you, give it a read, you'll like it I promise.
Next up was a comic, In Utero, by Chris Gooch. It's a weird fiction story, I think? It's a little bit odd, but it's fun overall.
It's a story about a little girl who lives in a town where a massive 20 block explosion happened 12 years ago, and the world was confused, but it moved on. She's sent to a day camp in an abandoned shopping mall kinda close to where the hole is, and she meets a new friend, a strange one who can do weird, unnatural things. While she's exploring the building with her friend, two other members of the day camp find a cabinet full of weird gooey brain things, and while playing with them, they realize that they're alive.
From there, it's a kind of mix of exposition, monsters, two new friends bonding, and light horror. It's a weird comic, to be sure, but it's not a hard read, it's very soft and pretty, art-wise, and the writing flows well, I just feel that it needed to be much much longer to really have the impact it was going for.
After that, I read "Bad Girls" Camila Sosa Villada, translated to english by Kit Maude.
This one made me cry. It's a story about a trans woman's life, as told by herself, so of course it'd make me cry, yeah. I think it's an autofictional autobiography, but I'm not sure entirely? If not for one fantastical part, I'd have assumed it was just a regular autobiography, and I think the fantastical part is supposed to be some kind of metaphor, but I have no idea for what, which is frustrating, but it does add to the story.
Like a lot of the books I've found about trans women, most, even, this one is about a sex worker. She spends her days in a lovely house full of travesti (which is what Camila prefers to be called instead trans) women who support and love and fight and share with each other, and she spends her nights in the park, sipping rum, doing coke, and looking for 'johns'.
It sounds like a beautiful life, if a hard one, and while she struggles a lot over the book and her and her friends suffer so, so much at the hands of others, the sisterhood they share is just so lovely. I admit that I'm very jealous of what she had with them. One of her friends, the 'mother' of the group, Auntie Encarna, finds a baby abandoned in the park, and she brings it back to their house, and they all raise it together (although Auntie Encarna is very much the main caretaker). The baby isn't the focus of the story, but rather the glue, the spot on the center of a map. The main story is mostly just Camila's life, told from her perspective, out of order, and in her words. It feels like she's just having a conversation with you, and sharing her backstory in bits as she goes along. In that way, it almost feels like a series of connected short stories, focused on her.
I think this book was so, so beautiful. Like I said, it made me cry, any I thought and thought about it after. If you're up for another "trans woman becomes a sex worker" story (I know I've recommended a lot of them lately) then please give it a try.
I followed that up with another comic, "Soft", by Jane Mai. It's a more modern comic retelling of the story "Carmilla" by Sheridan Le Fanu, though it stands alone despite the inspiration.
The story is largely the same, but set in Hong Kong, and the main character, Laura, is 15 years old. She has a close friend who she spends most of her time with, but after hitting a cat with her bike and meeting a weird girl in dirty clothes, she starts to neglect her friend to hand out with the new girl. The new girl, of course, is Carmilla, and the two soon fall in love. It's a bit of a rough relationship, as Carmilla is 16, but has been 16 for a long time, and "just lost track of her moral code" as another vampire put it. It's a bit abusive at times, mixed with a sweet sense of tender protection. "Toxic Yuri", is what my sister calls it, she says it's a trope, idk, but it's interesting at least. The art is kind of sketchy, and it was drawn on graph paper I think? So the lines in the paper come through and make it look really cool, like you're reading the artist's sketchbook or something. If you like gay vampires (the only kind, really) then give it a shot, for sure.
After that, I read another novel, "Boy Parts" by Eliza Clark. It was recommended to me by a friend as part of a list of trans stories that didn't fetishize trans people or make them into tragic characters. And... I guess??? There IS a trans guy in the story, and sure enough, he's just treated like, some guy. There's a bit of realistic micro agression too, which is realistic, but the story really did just treat him like some guy.
That said, he's in it for like, almost none of the book. So... I'll be looking at the book as a whole, and not touching on the trans aspect.
This one was... Weird. I liked, it, don't get me wrong, but it was very strange. It's about a photographer named Irina who really likes taking erotic photos of men who aren't considered "attractive" by most people. Not ugly people, just, normal, plain, regular men with nothing special about them. She loves getting to see the beauty and reality of the model, and she recruits new models in bars, on buses, anywhere. One person she photographed though, was underage. He gave her a fake name and ID, and she'd taken his pictures. The guy's mother found her at her bartending job, and smashed her face, which means she got time off work to do... whatever she wanted, and that time is the focus of the story.
Irina is a bitch. Like, full on, selfish, snarky, evil bitch, and I love her for it, I wish I had half as much bitch energy as her, it's fantastic. She's also really funny, in a sort of cruel way? The book overall is very funny, but her and her bitchyness is a big part of it. I will say that she's a bit of a narcissist, and she is so, SO manipulative, like, constantly, so she's not like, the kind of person who's mean to stand up for herself, she's just mean to get ahead, to get what she wants.
The book does get a bit dark, and a little bit violent, especially toward the end as it follows Irina's slow breakdown of who she feels she needs to be, but it's not overwhelming. I saw one person compare it to American Psycho, but I really don't see it? It's really a lot more than that, I feel that Irene has a lot more... complexity to her than Bateman, and yeah, she does do the thing where her inner monologue will go on for a while and ramble about stuff we don't need to know, but she's not talking about fashion or fancy dinners, she's talking about lord of the rings, or her past life. I think the comparison is an unfair one, and I'm a big believer in letting things stand alone unless they're derivative, and I don't feel Boy Parts is. For this one, I'd only recommend it if you are ok with being inside a mean, selfish person's head for the whole story, and only seeing things through her eyes and having to figure out what's actually going on through her cracked lens. It's a fun one, but it's weird and maybe not for everyone.
Next up we have a comic called "When To Pick A Pomegranate" by Yasmeen Abedifard.
I admit it, this one is a bit over my head. It's a story (?) about a pomegranate man named Anar and a human lady named Guli, and they are forced into existence by god, and then pushed together into some kind of series of fates, life, death, rebirth, rot, splitting and regrowing, twisting into one being. It reads like a drug trip, but like, a light one, when you're dreaming and the dreams are so, so vivid but you're still aware of what's going on. I honestly couldn't tell you what it means, I know that I got a metaphor for life and the journey through it ending where it began in an endless loop of self, but like. I already believed that, so I'm pretty sure I'm projecting.
I feel like I'm missing so much, I may re-read it sometime and figure out what I currently don't get, but for now, I'll leave it be. If you do decide to read it yourself, please let me know your interpretation! I'd love to hear someone else's opinion.
I read two little comics, but I don't want to review them because they were just like, 5 minute reads, so I'm skipping ahead to the next one.
"Ditching Saskia", by John Moore, illustrated by Neetols.
Ok, THIS one made me cry. I'm a baby, I know, but it's really sweet and sad... It's about a guy named Damian who's mom died a while ago, and he really really needs to talk to her, so he saves up his money and sells all his stuff, and buys a flower that will let him communicate with the dead; to summon their spirit for as long as the flower stays alive. Unfortunately, his grandfather had lied to him about the resting place of his mother, and he ends up summoning the spirit of a 9 year old girl, Saskia, instead. He's very upset, and just wants her to leave him alone, but her indomitable attitude and high spirits means she refuses to let him ignore her.
The story changes after that into Damien dealing with lies and mysteries and trying to maintain his status at school, while all the while his new tag along happily gives her opinions and tries to help as much as she can. I don't want to go too much into the story, but like, "angsty one and sunshine one" is a wonderful trope anywhere, and with ghosts and stuff involved? The draw speaks for itself, obvs.
Lastly, I read... 'Werewolf Jones & Sons Deluxe Summer Fun Annual", by Simon Hanselmann and Josh Pettinger.
Like I said, I love the Megg and Mogg series, with my whole heart, but Werewolf Jones is by far the worst part of the series. I went into this book assuming that it'd be my least favorite of the series so far, and I was actually surprised, Below Ambition is still my least favorite. This one was a mess, yeah, and it's largely just a series of child abuse comics and Werewolf Jones exposing his children to horrible things, but I was interested to see that I care a lot more about the boys, Jaxon and Diesel, after seeing them react to how their father acts. Jaxon crying when his father acts violently, Diesel dealing with trauma and his growing sexual confusion, it just makes them more real, and it hurts more when Jones does terrible things to them. I know Jones is supposed to be tragic, he's trying his best, his insistence that "We're a good family!" and his efforts into trying (and failing) to bond with his kids are supposed to illicit sympathy for him while you watch his life fall apart, but I don't feel sympathy for him, I feel sympathy for Jaxon and Diesel, yeah, but none for Werewolf Jones.
As with Below Ambition, I can only recommend this one to someone who has read and loved the main comics in the Megg and Mogg series, you won't get much out of it if you just dive into this one, but as someone who's read the main ones, I do think it's worth reading anyway.
Gosh, that was a long post, I can't let the books stack up like that, That was over 2500 words just in book reviews... And here I wanted to write another Vervex story today. Maybe tomorrow.
Until next time,
Erica
