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Serious Weakness
An art restorer meets an art vandal.
An autistic failson meets a school shooter.
What could be more interesting to ruin than a beautiful painting?
An autistic failson meets a school shooter.
What could be more interesting to ruin than a beautiful painting?
625 pages, Paperback
First published October 30, 2022
59 people are currently reading
1081 people want to read
About the author
Porpentine Charity Heartscape
8 books225 followerswrote Serious Weakness, Torture Works, a bunch of other shit
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 84 reviews
November 9, 2022
The history of art, in general, manifests itself as a ghastly scab that certain informed people can’t help but keep picking at. We are learning that any restoration work worth bragging about needs a coat of actual human effluent—that is, a fuckton of it. Porpentine Charity Heartscape’s Serious Weakness is a thruple meal deal combining Antiques Roadshow, The Little Mermaid and de Sade’s The 120 Days of Sodom. It’s all “man vs. pus” in this near-future universe of consolidated museological excess, floorbound pizza slices and blood-thinning codependency.
A shift in emphasis for the Slimetrash Cinematic Universe, for those familiar with Low Kill Shelter or PSYCHO NYMPH EXILE. The characters here probably are the ones who will have grown up hyperdependent on those very franchises. But don’t worry Draconic Boys: you’ll absolutely find the same underlying cladist-masochist tendencies, and in some cases significantly intensified.
The last time I felt this claustrophilically repulsed by a power couple was my Schedoni / Ellena ship from Ann Radcliffe’s 1796 creepypasto-RPF The Italian. There is actually a fair amount of Italian in this book too. And energy drinks and aquariums. It was getting pretty dark outside as I was hitting the last 100 pages and I actually couldn’t even get up to turn on the lights, so contagious is the soporific weakness of this future-perfect disaster mockumentary’s emetopilled dénouement. I sat in the goddamn dark and finished it with my shirt collar clenched between my teeth.
Importantly, the novel contains the following indestructible sentence and if for nothing else deserves to be read in its entirety just to unpack the layers that cake around it: “Trepanation works, if you do it on someone else.” Make blood, not pour. What your Moby-Dick was for 19th century whaling, Serious Weakness is for Spirit Halloween.
A shift in emphasis for the Slimetrash Cinematic Universe, for those familiar with Low Kill Shelter or PSYCHO NYMPH EXILE. The characters here probably are the ones who will have grown up hyperdependent on those very franchises. But don’t worry Draconic Boys: you’ll absolutely find the same underlying cladist-masochist tendencies, and in some cases significantly intensified.
The last time I felt this claustrophilically repulsed by a power couple was my Schedoni / Ellena ship from Ann Radcliffe’s 1796 creepypasto-RPF The Italian. There is actually a fair amount of Italian in this book too. And energy drinks and aquariums. It was getting pretty dark outside as I was hitting the last 100 pages and I actually couldn’t even get up to turn on the lights, so contagious is the soporific weakness of this future-perfect disaster mockumentary’s emetopilled dénouement. I sat in the goddamn dark and finished it with my shirt collar clenched between my teeth.
Importantly, the novel contains the following indestructible sentence and if for nothing else deserves to be read in its entirety just to unpack the layers that cake around it: “Trepanation works, if you do it on someone else.” Make blood, not pour. What your Moby-Dick was for 19th century whaling, Serious Weakness is for Spirit Halloween.
December 12, 2022
This book is truly cathartic, and I mean that in the original Greek sense. A purification of the mind through raw violence, through tragedy. It’s an emotional laxative, poison pumped into your body to be feverishly evacuated, prepped for a colonoscopy. There’s few books I’ve read that I immediately wanted to return to, pore over, force onto other people (my mother, my friends, heterosexual male coworkers) because I refuse to be trapped in this dark elevator by myself, but this one stared into my soul. It punched me in the face. It dragged me to the eye of the hurricane, kicking and screaming, through the high winds and mass destruction, so I could sit in that calm in the center of the storm, gazing at the broken world around me, knowing the worst is behind me and also the worst is yet to come but at least today is a good day.
This book made me want to start writing again.
This book is the quintessence of the phrase “The only way out is through”, and in such a situation, once you’re through, there’s no going back and the future is scary, but Triannon and Insul aren’t alone anymore. They have each other, for better and worse, and sometimes that’s all you can ask for.
This book is for Scorpio Venuses, autists, and people with father and/or older brother issues (and I happen to be all of the above).
This book is like if Killing/Stalking was set in the universe of Children of Men. The world is crumbling around us and no one wants to acknowledge it--because then it would be real--except people like Insul and eventually Trianon as well. (And isn’t that what love is all about, mutual understanding?) We really live in a society and the alternative Insul offers us is quite appealing when you know how fucking abysmal the status quo is, how cruel the world is while the people doling out that cruelty pretend it isn’t. At least Insul doesn’t pretend.
Insul is a character whose life and philosophy seems ripped from the lines of Allen Ginsberg’s Howl: a great mind “destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked, dragging [himself] through the negro streets at dawn looking for an angry fix”, and I’m with him in Rockland. Trianon’s mind breaks in the best way possible, purged of the lies of Late Capitalist social conventions and societal obligations, the fuckedness of the world revealed to him. Realizing that is always traumatizing, whatever way one comes upon it, and a less kind story (because I believe this is a kind story in the end), might use such a realization as a trumpet of doom but Trianon survives the apocalypse of Insul as well as that more impersonal, slowly encroaching, apocalypse that nips at the heels of humanity’s hubris.
There is so much brutality and suffering here mixed with so much helpless desperate insane love and tenderness and endearing warmth, like the warmth of fresh blood on your mutilated chest or piss soaked bedsheets or hot tears streaming down a psychopath’s face, and I found it hard to truly ever hate Insul, even though he’s an evil demonic sadistic bastard because he tries so hard to love even though he’s so bad at it and I found that really heartwarming, in that conflicting way the best Yandere characters make one feel. I think he’d be at home graffitiing a bullet perforated wall in a war ravaged failed state wearing a leather jacket that says FUCK THE WORLD or PISSFAGGOT on the back of it spitting slurs at an amnesiac alcoholic cop.
There, is that something?
This book made me want to start writing again.
This book is the quintessence of the phrase “The only way out is through”, and in such a situation, once you’re through, there’s no going back and the future is scary, but Triannon and Insul aren’t alone anymore. They have each other, for better and worse, and sometimes that’s all you can ask for.
This book is for Scorpio Venuses, autists, and people with father and/or older brother issues (and I happen to be all of the above).
This book is like if Killing/Stalking was set in the universe of Children of Men. The world is crumbling around us and no one wants to acknowledge it--because then it would be real--except people like Insul and eventually Trianon as well. (And isn’t that what love is all about, mutual understanding?) We really live in a society and the alternative Insul offers us is quite appealing when you know how fucking abysmal the status quo is, how cruel the world is while the people doling out that cruelty pretend it isn’t. At least Insul doesn’t pretend.
Insul is a character whose life and philosophy seems ripped from the lines of Allen Ginsberg’s Howl: a great mind “destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked, dragging [himself] through the negro streets at dawn looking for an angry fix”, and I’m with him in Rockland. Trianon’s mind breaks in the best way possible, purged of the lies of Late Capitalist social conventions and societal obligations, the fuckedness of the world revealed to him. Realizing that is always traumatizing, whatever way one comes upon it, and a less kind story (because I believe this is a kind story in the end), might use such a realization as a trumpet of doom but Trianon survives the apocalypse of Insul as well as that more impersonal, slowly encroaching, apocalypse that nips at the heels of humanity’s hubris.
There is so much brutality and suffering here mixed with so much helpless desperate insane love and tenderness and endearing warmth, like the warmth of fresh blood on your mutilated chest or piss soaked bedsheets or hot tears streaming down a psychopath’s face, and I found it hard to truly ever hate Insul, even though he’s an evil demonic sadistic bastard because he tries so hard to love even though he’s so bad at it and I found that really heartwarming, in that conflicting way the best Yandere characters make one feel. I think he’d be at home graffitiing a bullet perforated wall in a war ravaged failed state wearing a leather jacket that says FUCK THE WORLD or PISSFAGGOT on the back of it spitting slurs at an amnesiac alcoholic cop.
There, is that something?
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
March 5, 2024
seminal piece for the burgeoning transwomen guro fujoshi field
March 19, 2023
In some ways, really different from most of Porpentine's prior work: there's absolutely nothing here to indicate a fantasy or sci-fi setting. As far as I can tell, everything in the story could really happen, at least technically speaking; there are elements that suggest the setting is intended to be the near future, or a slightly divergent version of our present day world, but it's pretty grounded. The violence, rape, murder, and torture aren't surreal, magical, or abstract, and that makes them much more difficult to read; the first ~250 pages of this 800 page e-book were something of a slog for that reason, in much the way parts of Dennis Cooper novels or EXQUISITE CORPSE were slogs for me. But, like those, SERIOUS WEAKNESS becomes magnetic when it starts probing into the psychology of its antagonist, Insul, and when the relationship between Insul and Trianon begins to grow more complex than that of kidnapper/tormentor and hostage/victim. The character writing here is some of the strongest I think Porpentine's ever done, at least that I've seen, and that extends to side characters it would be easy and unremarkable to quickly write out of the story and/or turn into one-note jokes. Ultimately, this book wants the reader to exercise empathy for everyone, even/especially where that's extremely uncomfortable or feels purposeless.
June 10, 2024
about halfway thru serious weakness a pressure built in my core, and i realized i was about to scream out loud, suddenly, a desperate attempt to exorcise myself from the hostage/kidnapper relationship this book slowly and insidiously places the reader in alongside its characters. captivating, insane, unspeakably fucked up nightmare eroticism for only the most brain damaged and brave fujoshi. if you are wondering if you should read this or not with no external prompting it probably wasnt a coincidence you wound up here. make no mistake: this is dangerous, mind altering necronomicon yaoi. i unconsciously writhe in a hysterical something - repulsion? ecstasy? horror? jealousy? - as a twink in a dress is tortured in a basement. the world is ending and a terminal empire has no use for its sick children. dad was a gamer and a fascist and your boyfriend likes to hurt you. i think i love everyone ive ever known.
December 27, 2022
M/M/MF/F/M/FM/M/F/fM/mF/M, Canon Typical Violence, Established Relationship, Enemies to Lovers, Drug Use, Non Con, Threats, Domestic Bliss, Body, Dead Body In the Water, First Kiss, Childhood Memories, Attempted Murder, Animal Death, Dead Body In the Water You're the Only Ones There, Sci-Fi AU, You're the Only Ones There and No One Else Can See It, No One Else Can See Anything, Salad
August 17, 2025
I originally gave this a 4.5 when I read it over a month ago, but I'm increasing it to a 5 as I haven't been able to stop thinking about it 😭 My eighth five star out of the 184 books I've read so far this year 💔
August 25, 2025
this is like if killing/stalking was more pretentious
January 10, 2025
Más que una reseña quisiera escribir un ensayo, y quizás algún día lo haga. Serious Weakness es incansable. Siempre va más allá y un poco más allá todavía. No para, no se detiene, sigue. Siempre hay más.
La prosa de Porpentine es brillante de un modo que duele. Y Serious Weakness es Lolita si Nabokov fuera furry, o es un hijo ilegítimo de Homestuck y It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia, o es el Necromonicón, un libro que no hay que leer porque te daña.
Creo que hay tres lecturas posibles sobre este libro, y las tres tienen que dar cuenta de ese modo en que la escritura está permanentemente desestabilizada, desbordada.
Primero, como una narrativa sobre cómo las personas se rompen. Es lineamente lo que relata el libro: Insul secuestra a Trianon y lo destruye hasta que no puede más, y entonces empiezan a destruirse mutuamente, y entonces vuelve a entrar en escena Oenone y se destruyen de a tres. No es una narrativa de abuso, solamente, es siempre más. En esta lectura querría detenerme en las frases que me perforaron el cerebro ("you're like a retarded little brother I can put my tongue inside", "it's not gay, it's incest", etcétera) porque el modo en que Porpentine escribe la violencia es trascendental. Y es trascendental ese final: desde el momento en que Trianon finalmente se salva, por segunda vez y, finalmente, algo sobre el poder cambia; desde ese momento hasta la escena de cierre: los tres viviendo juntos, todavía.
Segundo, como una narrativa apocalíptica; ni pre- ni post-, una narrativa sobre el lento fin del mundo, una narrativa que agoniza porque el mundo agoniza. Es estrictamente una novela sobre el capitalismo tardío, bastante explícitamente (aun si nunca aclaran cuándo está ocurriendo). Esta narrativa habla sobre la creciente precariedad de las cosas, no necesariamente la "enshitifficación" pero sí algo del convertirse en mierda de todo. Sobre cómo todo va dejando de importar un poco porque hay problemas más importantes que a la vez son irresolubles: el cambio climático es un agente, un protagonista casi de la novela.
Y hay un motivo para unificar esta narrativa con la primera: no porque la crueldad de Insul refleje la del mundo, sino porque si Insul puede escapar de las consecuencias de sus actos es justamente por esa indiferencia, esa fragilidad de las cosas. No quiero dejar de mencionar lo difícil que es escribir una novela que use continuamente palabras como "cringe" y referencias a la cultura online de los años 20 sin quedar inmediatamente vieja (en este sentido, escribir desde un futuro donde esto es nostálgico es una decisión brillante).
Tercero, como otra cosa. No sé bien qué. En la edición que leí, después de los agradecimientos hay dos capítulos más (!), que luego me enteré (con ligera decepción) que son en realidad dos cuentos incorporados a posteriori. Prefiero leerlos como capítulos de la novela, una novela que se rehúsa a terminar. Serious Weakness es una metástasis. Trascurren aún más en el futuro, volviendo real el mundo de videojuegos que sólo aparecía como interfaz previamente. Son fanfiction de una novela que, en sí misma, se siente como un fanfic y, también y al mismo tiempo, como literatura. La literatura puede hacer metástasis porque la cultura tiene cáncer, porque la humanidad es un tumor de la Tierra. Y algunas de esas células cobra la forma de dos tipos meándose y llamándose hermanos mientras se violan. Gracias.
La prosa de Porpentine es brillante de un modo que duele. Y Serious Weakness es Lolita si Nabokov fuera furry, o es un hijo ilegítimo de Homestuck y It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia, o es el Necromonicón, un libro que no hay que leer porque te daña.
Creo que hay tres lecturas posibles sobre este libro, y las tres tienen que dar cuenta de ese modo en que la escritura está permanentemente desestabilizada, desbordada.
Primero, como una narrativa sobre cómo las personas se rompen. Es lineamente lo que relata el libro: Insul secuestra a Trianon y lo destruye hasta que no puede más, y entonces empiezan a destruirse mutuamente, y entonces vuelve a entrar en escena Oenone y se destruyen de a tres. No es una narrativa de abuso, solamente, es siempre más. En esta lectura querría detenerme en las frases que me perforaron el cerebro ("you're like a retarded little brother I can put my tongue inside", "it's not gay, it's incest", etcétera) porque el modo en que Porpentine escribe la violencia es trascendental. Y es trascendental ese final: desde el momento en que Trianon finalmente se salva, por segunda vez y, finalmente, algo sobre el poder cambia; desde ese momento hasta la escena de cierre: los tres viviendo juntos, todavía.
Segundo, como una narrativa apocalíptica; ni pre- ni post-, una narrativa sobre el lento fin del mundo, una narrativa que agoniza porque el mundo agoniza. Es estrictamente una novela sobre el capitalismo tardío, bastante explícitamente (aun si nunca aclaran cuándo está ocurriendo). Esta narrativa habla sobre la creciente precariedad de las cosas, no necesariamente la "enshitifficación" pero sí algo del convertirse en mierda de todo. Sobre cómo todo va dejando de importar un poco porque hay problemas más importantes que a la vez son irresolubles: el cambio climático es un agente, un protagonista casi de la novela.
Y hay un motivo para unificar esta narrativa con la primera: no porque la crueldad de Insul refleje la del mundo, sino porque si Insul puede escapar de las consecuencias de sus actos es justamente por esa indiferencia, esa fragilidad de las cosas. No quiero dejar de mencionar lo difícil que es escribir una novela que use continuamente palabras como "cringe" y referencias a la cultura online de los años 20 sin quedar inmediatamente vieja (en este sentido, escribir desde un futuro donde esto es nostálgico es una decisión brillante).
Tercero, como otra cosa. No sé bien qué. En la edición que leí, después de los agradecimientos hay dos capítulos más (!), que luego me enteré (con ligera decepción) que son en realidad dos cuentos incorporados a posteriori. Prefiero leerlos como capítulos de la novela, una novela que se rehúsa a terminar. Serious Weakness es una metástasis. Trascurren aún más en el futuro, volviendo real el mundo de videojuegos que sólo aparecía como interfaz previamente. Son fanfiction de una novela que, en sí misma, se siente como un fanfic y, también y al mismo tiempo, como literatura. La literatura puede hacer metástasis porque la cultura tiene cáncer, porque la humanidad es un tumor de la Tierra. Y algunas de esas células cobra la forma de dos tipos meándose y llamándose hermanos mientras se violan. Gracias.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
March 5, 2025
Es tremendo este libro. Pensé que quizás no llegaba a las cinco estrellas, calificación que me reservo para cosas que me parecieron genuinamente magistrales, o clásicos, o me cambiaron la vida. No pensé que fuese el caso de Serious Weakness, pero pasan las semanas y este libro se insertó en mi cerebro como un parásito. No sé si me cambió la vida a mí personalmente, pero es el tipo de narrativa sobre el que se pueden escribir libros enteros. Creo que que puedo calificarlo de clásico moderno sin que eso me genere conflicto. PEDAZO de literatura.
Para ser un concepto relativamente simple hay mucho jugo que se le puede sacar. Por supuesto que en un nivel superficial es una historia sobre sadismo y trauma, y también sobre amor y conexión humana, ponele, pero lo que en realidad estás leyendo es una historia profundamente anclada en la crítica social, y sobre todo un relato del fin de los tiempos. Sí, Triannon está siendo secuestrado y torturado, pero en la gran trama del mundo, ¿qué es eso? Cosas que pasan todo el tiempo, la crueldad haciéndose manifiesta cuando en realidad es rutinaria. Podés salir a la calle cubierto de moretones y sangre, nadie te va a ayudar. Ese dolor es invisible para la gente. Más aun hay, también, un comentario constante sobre las instituciones (la escuela y la familia, fundamentalmente, pero también lo profesional, y acá entra también en discusión lo que es "el mundo del arte", la sacralización insípida y vacua del arte vía el dinero) y sobre la norma social, específicamente en lo que respecta a la psicología; ¿qué implica ser "normal", a quién sirve, qué consecuencias tiene apartarse de eso? La exploración del género y la sexualidad se enmarcan también dentro de la discusión sobre la "normalidad", magníficamente.
Todas estas cosas existen con el trasfondo de un futuro cercano en el que el cambio climático lleva a pequeños apocalipsis cotidianos. Esa construcción de mundo me pareció, también, magistral: sutil y pertinente. Los nombres, los géneros musicales, los eventos, qué cosas se describen como "retro" o "nostálgicas".
No podría decir todas las cosas que pienso sobre este libro porque serían infinitas. Enfocándome menos en la filosofía de la novela, los personajes me parecieron maravillosos e ir conociendo de a poco cómo funcionan me resultó muy gratificante. El lenguaje es también muy bueno, sobre todo los diálogos, y también me pareció innovadora la forma en la que pasa sin demasiado problema de la tercera persona limitada a la omnisciente a la primera persona a la segunda. Y es muy efectivo en hacerte sentir verdaderamente mal, lo cual valoro. ¡Al mismo tiempo es muy cómico! Tiene un humor sardónico muy divertido.
Lo recomiendo muchísimo, pero no a cualquiera. Como ya leí a varias personas mencionar, es difícil describirlo sin hacerlo parecer ni más "suave" ni más oscuro de lo que es. Es ambas cosas.
Para ser un concepto relativamente simple hay mucho jugo que se le puede sacar. Por supuesto que en un nivel superficial es una historia sobre sadismo y trauma, y también sobre amor y conexión humana, ponele, pero lo que en realidad estás leyendo es una historia profundamente anclada en la crítica social, y sobre todo un relato del fin de los tiempos. Sí, Triannon está siendo secuestrado y torturado, pero en la gran trama del mundo, ¿qué es eso? Cosas que pasan todo el tiempo, la crueldad haciéndose manifiesta cuando en realidad es rutinaria. Podés salir a la calle cubierto de moretones y sangre, nadie te va a ayudar. Ese dolor es invisible para la gente. Más aun hay, también, un comentario constante sobre las instituciones (la escuela y la familia, fundamentalmente, pero también lo profesional, y acá entra también en discusión lo que es "el mundo del arte", la sacralización insípida y vacua del arte vía el dinero) y sobre la norma social, específicamente en lo que respecta a la psicología; ¿qué implica ser "normal", a quién sirve, qué consecuencias tiene apartarse de eso? La exploración del género y la sexualidad se enmarcan también dentro de la discusión sobre la "normalidad", magníficamente.
Todas estas cosas existen con el trasfondo de un futuro cercano en el que el cambio climático lleva a pequeños apocalipsis cotidianos. Esa construcción de mundo me pareció, también, magistral: sutil y pertinente. Los nombres, los géneros musicales, los eventos, qué cosas se describen como "retro" o "nostálgicas".
No podría decir todas las cosas que pienso sobre este libro porque serían infinitas. Enfocándome menos en la filosofía de la novela, los personajes me parecieron maravillosos e ir conociendo de a poco cómo funcionan me resultó muy gratificante. El lenguaje es también muy bueno, sobre todo los diálogos, y también me pareció innovadora la forma en la que pasa sin demasiado problema de la tercera persona limitada a la omnisciente a la primera persona a la segunda. Y es muy efectivo en hacerte sentir verdaderamente mal, lo cual valoro. ¡Al mismo tiempo es muy cómico! Tiene un humor sardónico muy divertido.
Lo recomiendo muchísimo, pero no a cualquiera. Como ya leí a varias personas mencionar, es difícil describirlo sin hacerlo parecer ni más "suave" ni más oscuro de lo que es. Es ambas cosas.
May 30, 2023
Serious Weakness is a book that is difficult for me to review or even talk about without hyperfixating on the minute details, which made the book one of the most thrilling things I've read in recent memory. That being said, I will do my best to avoid spoilers because this is a book that rewards the reader for going in blind and experiencing the trauma it contians along with its character. I will, however, talk about the books' vivid descriptions of neurodivergency and the autistic experience.
Serious Weakness is a story about trauma on multiple levels but the parts of the book that hit the hardest for me weren't the details of physical truama, violence, and murder (which are brutal af and sometimes might be hard to read). It was the books unveiling of the more insidious everyday trauma of a high masking autistic adult that has continued to burrow a pinhole in my brain like an illegal substance snorted in the bathroom of a dive bar.
The book immerses you into the heightened sensory world of Trianon as he experiences trauma and connection, not only at the hands of Insul but with the crumbling neurotypical world at large. From his compulsive info dumping to his social awkwardness to the comfort of pressure applied to his body by a stolen cars drivers seat pinning him to the vehicles floorboard; we are shown Trianons autistic sensory experiences. What we also see as the story progresses is the slow unmasking of other autistic traits belonging to Trianon.
For a book containing a vast amount of abuse, rape, and murder... this is really a story about self-acceptance, belonging, and unmasking.
As a 31-year-old self-dignosed autistic queer who's just starting the process of unmasking while working on my mental health, this book feels like it was written specifically for me.
"I'd rather be a fucking toilet if it means people stop expecting things of me."
Serious Weakness is a story about trauma on multiple levels but the parts of the book that hit the hardest for me weren't the details of physical truama, violence, and murder (which are brutal af and sometimes might be hard to read). It was the books unveiling of the more insidious everyday trauma of a high masking autistic adult that has continued to burrow a pinhole in my brain like an illegal substance snorted in the bathroom of a dive bar.
The book immerses you into the heightened sensory world of Trianon as he experiences trauma and connection, not only at the hands of Insul but with the crumbling neurotypical world at large. From his compulsive info dumping to his social awkwardness to the comfort of pressure applied to his body by a stolen cars drivers seat pinning him to the vehicles floorboard; we are shown Trianons autistic sensory experiences. What we also see as the story progresses is the slow unmasking of other autistic traits belonging to Trianon.
For a book containing a vast amount of abuse, rape, and murder... this is really a story about self-acceptance, belonging, and unmasking.
As a 31-year-old self-dignosed autistic queer who's just starting the process of unmasking while working on my mental health, this book feels like it was written specifically for me.
"I'd rather be a fucking toilet if it means people stop expecting things of me."
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
October 11, 2023
holy shit this book has rewired my brain in such an important way. it's like finding a part of myself I blocked out for years. this book genuinely made me want to puke time and time again and yet I could never put it down. sickening and intrusive and relatable and fucked up. I will re-read this again and again in a desperate attempt to understand myself. I could never recommend a book more, although it may seem horrible and torturous to some instead of intrinsic and relatable. wow
December 5, 2023
easiest five stars i've given in years. completely engrossed me. left my real review for porpentine lol but i'll say here that this was visceral, graphic, utterly enthralling, drenched in neon and blood, soul-crushing, clever, hilarious, a mirror of our modern world, etc etc etc. just insanely good. i can only recommend this to certain people but to those that can stomach it it will be one of the best books youve ever read.
November 4, 2022
Not what I expected, very disturbing and uncomfortable. My chest was tense basically the entire time I was reading it. Not for the faint of heart, but incredibly effective at what it sets out to do with some fascinating, terrifying, heartbreaking characterization.
February 11, 2025
I went into this book knowing absolutely nothing about it beyond the fact I love the author’s writing. I didn’t know how long it was (625 pages) and there was no blurb or reviews on the back to indicate literally anything about the plot, setting, etc. I bought it because I had just read two extremely captivating and intense novels and knew I was going to need something even more captivating and intense to get me out of my book hangover, and I figured I could reliably count on Porpentine for that.
It did the trick, that’s for sure. What a fucking book. What a blast. What a delight. My face has ached from three days of manic grinning. I ate this shit up, I brought the gigantic tome with me everywhere to steal a few lines here and there and kept forgetting my water bottle because I was so into it. This is a brilliant novel. It is SO funny and SO sexy and SO immersive and the writing is SO vivid and the characters are SO real. I loved every second of it.
However I came over here to leave a review, and was actually sort of shocked to find that most people had a really different reading experience than I did, and took away really different things from this book. So instead of rehashing shit that’s already been said about Serious Weakness, I thought I’d share a few things I took away from it that I have not seen mentioned yet:
This is a book largely about the cult of masculinity and the deep, complex trenches of male solidarity, even in the face of superficial feminization. Insul and his victim turned bullet wife Trianon choose each other, again and again, under increasingly absurd circumstances and after numerous deaths and resurrections. You could argue that Insul traumatizes Trianon into this, but it’s more messy and technicolor than that. This is a love story. They choose to freeze time together: embrace the immortality chimera together. Trianon’s girlfriend is so deeply insignificant and superfluous to this dynamic that despite her doing everything she can to penetrate their duality (fighting back, offering love, mothering Trianon, bargaining with Insul) they STILL choose each other, because they are the same. That sameness is illustrated explicitly as other things— neurodivergence, lack of empathy, selfishness, a super humanity born from dehumanization, an otherness, shared exclusion from idealized manhood— but the unspoken layer of homo social supremacy permeates everything about this novel. It is a 625 page study (and I’d even say criticism) of the specific breed of misogyny that grows like mushrooms in the deepest recesses of every man born in to and under the patriarchy. Even feminine men. Even gay men. Even abused men. Even disabled men. Even men who choose to cede their power and embrace subjugation at the hands of other men. At the end of the day— there’s still a woman chained to the bed who did nothing wrong.
Other stuff I loved about this novel I see very few people discussing: it takes place in a near future California amid a landscape altering climate disaster and the world building of this near future is SO chillingly and wonderfully done. Porpentine is so insanely talented at this sort of speculative immersion, it blows my mind. The main character is a the son of a right wing d list celebrity streamer and it alters Trianons worldview and characterization in such a well observed and hilariously organic way. I laughed aloud at every other page of this book honestly, because it is just packed, claustrophobically, with holistic near future cultural references that feel SO insanely real to me.
I wish everyone could read this novel. It’s genius. It raw and fresh and incisive and honest. It’s tender and malicious and cute and hollow. But tbh I wouldn’t recommend it to most people because I don’t think they’d enjoy it as much as I did, or get far enough into it to actually reach the point it all comes together as a brilliant work of art. However, if you wish the Passenger (2023) had been explicitly instead of implicitly gay, are in school shooter/ TCC fandom, or have idly wondered what Disco Bloodbath/Party Monster would be like if it was 600 pages and fictional and pornographic, then you will likely love this book as much as I did.
It did the trick, that’s for sure. What a fucking book. What a blast. What a delight. My face has ached from three days of manic grinning. I ate this shit up, I brought the gigantic tome with me everywhere to steal a few lines here and there and kept forgetting my water bottle because I was so into it. This is a brilliant novel. It is SO funny and SO sexy and SO immersive and the writing is SO vivid and the characters are SO real. I loved every second of it.
However I came over here to leave a review, and was actually sort of shocked to find that most people had a really different reading experience than I did, and took away really different things from this book. So instead of rehashing shit that’s already been said about Serious Weakness, I thought I’d share a few things I took away from it that I have not seen mentioned yet:
This is a book largely about the cult of masculinity and the deep, complex trenches of male solidarity, even in the face of superficial feminization. Insul and his victim turned bullet wife Trianon choose each other, again and again, under increasingly absurd circumstances and after numerous deaths and resurrections. You could argue that Insul traumatizes Trianon into this, but it’s more messy and technicolor than that. This is a love story. They choose to freeze time together: embrace the immortality chimera together. Trianon’s girlfriend is so deeply insignificant and superfluous to this dynamic that despite her doing everything she can to penetrate their duality (fighting back, offering love, mothering Trianon, bargaining with Insul) they STILL choose each other, because they are the same. That sameness is illustrated explicitly as other things— neurodivergence, lack of empathy, selfishness, a super humanity born from dehumanization, an otherness, shared exclusion from idealized manhood— but the unspoken layer of homo social supremacy permeates everything about this novel. It is a 625 page study (and I’d even say criticism) of the specific breed of misogyny that grows like mushrooms in the deepest recesses of every man born in to and under the patriarchy. Even feminine men. Even gay men. Even abused men. Even disabled men. Even men who choose to cede their power and embrace subjugation at the hands of other men. At the end of the day— there’s still a woman chained to the bed who did nothing wrong.
Other stuff I loved about this novel I see very few people discussing: it takes place in a near future California amid a landscape altering climate disaster and the world building of this near future is SO chillingly and wonderfully done. Porpentine is so insanely talented at this sort of speculative immersion, it blows my mind. The main character is a the son of a right wing d list celebrity streamer and it alters Trianons worldview and characterization in such a well observed and hilariously organic way. I laughed aloud at every other page of this book honestly, because it is just packed, claustrophobically, with holistic near future cultural references that feel SO insanely real to me.
I wish everyone could read this novel. It’s genius. It raw and fresh and incisive and honest. It’s tender and malicious and cute and hollow. But tbh I wouldn’t recommend it to most people because I don’t think they’d enjoy it as much as I did, or get far enough into it to actually reach the point it all comes together as a brilliant work of art. However, if you wish the Passenger (2023) had been explicitly instead of implicitly gay, are in school shooter/ TCC fandom, or have idly wondered what Disco Bloodbath/Party Monster would be like if it was 600 pages and fictional and pornographic, then you will likely love this book as much as I did.
June 19, 2024
i would give this more of a 3.5/5 stars, if only because the author's way of writing dialogue made me confused about who was speaking sometimes, and that annoyed me. also, her writing style, which runs the gamut from disgusting & shudder-inducing to gorgeous & moving, took me a bit of time to get adjusted to. the book started off a little rough for me, & i was like "wtf am i even reading?" until things really started to make sense about what was going on. (i knew barely anything about this book before diving in other than how fucked up it is. i kinda recommend the same to anyone else who reads the book, except u should probably know there's lots of violence, multiple rape scenes, school shootings, animal violence, pretty much everything lol)
one of the grossest, most violent & disturbing things i've read in a long time, but strangely tender, moving & captivating. i don't like it when horror fiction makes me feel like the creator is smugly rubbing their hands together & saying over my shoulder "oh yeah, i did that! bet that pissed u off, didn't it? bet i made you uncomfortable, didn't i?" it's one of the biggest things that will turn me off of a movie/tv show (like American Horror Story, Game of Thrones) or novel (see my review "Manhunter" by Gretchen Felker-Martin)
but i didn't feel that at all while reading "Serious Weakness." i don't know how to articulate this fully, but it was empathetic in its brutality. or maybe brutal in its empathy? (i have similar feelings about the film "Titane") i had to reread the last 50 pages after i finished the book the first time because the ending hadn't quite sunk in. i really do recommend this book to people who like hyperviolent horror & are interested in a kidnapper/hostage situation, or just anyone who likes transgressive fiction, but only after you read the trigger warnings and HEED THEM.
there are also lots of really interesting nuances to this story re: gender, neurodivergence & Society (TM). some of the discussions the characters had about The State Of The World & The People In It veered slightly close to "We live in a society" territory, but there was such a keen sense of Self-Awareness throughout the entire novel that it never felt... well, "i'm da Joker, babey" if that makes sense. i'm saying that given the subject matter, it rly could have, but it DIDN'T, at least to me. it all felt horribly real, & i couldn't believe it when i felt myself empathizing with a murderous rapist. after a while of reading this 600+ page novel, i think i started to get stockholm syndrome a little bit.
i read a review from someone who said they felt like they were molested by this book. i kind of agree with this sentiment... but at the same time, i feel like i would love to meet porpentine charity heartscape & just have coffee & chat for hours? i am going to read more of her work. i will also eventually reread this book, which is something i am looking forward to and simultaneously dreading. i've never read anything like this before.
one of the grossest, most violent & disturbing things i've read in a long time, but strangely tender, moving & captivating. i don't like it when horror fiction makes me feel like the creator is smugly rubbing their hands together & saying over my shoulder "oh yeah, i did that! bet that pissed u off, didn't it? bet i made you uncomfortable, didn't i?" it's one of the biggest things that will turn me off of a movie/tv show (like American Horror Story, Game of Thrones) or novel (see my review "Manhunter" by Gretchen Felker-Martin)
but i didn't feel that at all while reading "Serious Weakness." i don't know how to articulate this fully, but it was empathetic in its brutality. or maybe brutal in its empathy? (i have similar feelings about the film "Titane") i had to reread the last 50 pages after i finished the book the first time because the ending hadn't quite sunk in. i really do recommend this book to people who like hyperviolent horror & are interested in a kidnapper/hostage situation, or just anyone who likes transgressive fiction, but only after you read the trigger warnings and HEED THEM.
there are also lots of really interesting nuances to this story re: gender, neurodivergence & Society (TM). some of the discussions the characters had about The State Of The World & The People In It veered slightly close to "We live in a society" territory, but there was such a keen sense of Self-Awareness throughout the entire novel that it never felt... well, "i'm da Joker, babey" if that makes sense. i'm saying that given the subject matter, it rly could have, but it DIDN'T, at least to me. it all felt horribly real, & i couldn't believe it when i felt myself empathizing with a murderous rapist. after a while of reading this 600+ page novel, i think i started to get stockholm syndrome a little bit.
i read a review from someone who said they felt like they were molested by this book. i kind of agree with this sentiment... but at the same time, i feel like i would love to meet porpentine charity heartscape & just have coffee & chat for hours? i am going to read more of her work. i will also eventually reread this book, which is something i am looking forward to and simultaneously dreading. i've never read anything like this before.
July 26, 2025
really fantastic stuff. serious weakness is meaty and juicy like nothing ive read before.
loses a star for two reasons: purely as preference i wasn't a huge fan of when the prose would shift to poetry. the bigger thing is that the third act stumbled for me. it started to feel repetitive, like the author wanted to continue in the setting but didn't have much plot left (honestly fair - i didn't want to leave the setting either), and the ending was a bit disappointing. it felt a little bit like the central relationship jumped from a to c and left b behind.
but in the ending's defense i am really glad that a lot of things went technically unresolved and unspoken, and it also left me with an extremely strong mental image of the protagonist that keeps popping up in my head. yay for serious weakness!!
loses a star for two reasons: purely as preference i wasn't a huge fan of when the prose would shift to poetry. the bigger thing is that the third act stumbled for me. it started to feel repetitive, like the author wanted to continue in the setting but didn't have much plot left (honestly fair - i didn't want to leave the setting either), and the ending was a bit disappointing. it felt a little bit like the central relationship jumped from a to c and left b behind.
but in the ending's defense i am really glad that a lot of things went technically unresolved and unspoken, and it also left me with an extremely strong mental image of the protagonist that keeps popping up in my head. yay for serious weakness!!
August 12, 2024
A disgusting and cruel book, but with depth and reason that left me stunned. In today’s world it feels like things like gayness and neurodivergence have been finally accepted, but only on the condition that you still adhere to the ideals of neurotypical/straight people. That’s why it’s so refreshing to have a book which recognises this, and exposes you, ripping you out of your numbed socially acceptable existence, and forcing you to feel the things you were always too scared to. Although it may not be healthy or entertaining to have a book hurl slurs at you, and confront you with disgusting things which you likely wouldn’t enjoy even if it was socially acceptable, it is still unspeakably cathartic to know what’s possible.
October 26, 2024
this was completely insane. intensely humanising, cathartic, disgusting, and beautiful. somehow all horrifying, hilarious, and... heartwarming? in some ways trianon is viscerally relatable to me. physically disabled, socially disabled, genderally disabled, weak-bodied, drifting-eyed autist. i love him.
February 6, 2024
It all bled together in the end - it was so horrific I had to take breaks, it was an out of body experience, with a strange sense of catharsis. I’m scared of how this book made me feel and I love that feeling. So many emotions, such incredible writing.
November 23, 2022
abject suffering
November 4, 2024
autistic gays never beating the school shooter allegations
December 1, 2024
Go into this blind. PLEASE
November 13, 2025
"Its going to get really dark now"
Obra maestra del dolor. Lo leí en el trabajo, donde al terminar cada jornada, me sentía más cansado por el libro que el laburo en sí. Me pareció dolorosísimo y me cuesta escribir a detalle de él, así que solo dos ideas:
1. Propentine entiende a la literatura en esa forma purista de ser el medio que mejor captura la forma y los ritmos del pensamiento. Sus casi seiscientas páginas no las abarcan tanto eventos, sino la forma de procesarlos. Es un libro que se revolca en cada idea, sentir, textura y sufrir.
2. Me movió cosas muy personales que creeía olvidadas, de las que en parte va la novela: ese constante, pero bien escondido miedo, de nunca haber dejado de ser aquella versión tuya que tanto despreciabas, aunque nunca lograste sofocar la idea de que era tu verdadero yo: y al verdadero tú nadie lo ama; y a la persona que sí aman no eres tú; y que la forma de amar a ese verdadero tú es a través del daño, de lo insano, de lo subhumano, lo cringe, lo denigrante, lo infantilizado, la desnudez absoluta. Confundir la vulnerabilidad con el abuso, y que no tanto creas que aquello es verdad, pero que resulte serlo: ser libre es ser tu mismo, y tú, estás roto.
Propentine es increíble. Una de mis nuevas escritoras favoritas.
Obra maestra del dolor. Lo leí en el trabajo, donde al terminar cada jornada, me sentía más cansado por el libro que el laburo en sí. Me pareció dolorosísimo y me cuesta escribir a detalle de él, así que solo dos ideas:
1. Propentine entiende a la literatura en esa forma purista de ser el medio que mejor captura la forma y los ritmos del pensamiento. Sus casi seiscientas páginas no las abarcan tanto eventos, sino la forma de procesarlos. Es un libro que se revolca en cada idea, sentir, textura y sufrir.
2. Me movió cosas muy personales que creeía olvidadas, de las que en parte va la novela: ese constante, pero bien escondido miedo, de nunca haber dejado de ser aquella versión tuya que tanto despreciabas, aunque nunca lograste sofocar la idea de que era tu verdadero yo: y al verdadero tú nadie lo ama; y a la persona que sí aman no eres tú; y que la forma de amar a ese verdadero tú es a través del daño, de lo insano, de lo subhumano, lo cringe, lo denigrante, lo infantilizado, la desnudez absoluta. Confundir la vulnerabilidad con el abuso, y que no tanto creas que aquello es verdad, pero que resulte serlo: ser libre es ser tu mismo, y tú, estás roto.
Propentine es increíble. Una de mis nuevas escritoras favoritas.
October 17, 2025
I regret reading this book. My morbid curiosity really screwed me over this time.
This reads like a bad fanfic. Almost all the characters had names I couldn’t pronounce if you asked me to. The characters are constantly on the verge of dying and probably should’ve died at least three times over. The use of the R slur was unnecessary and made me very uncomfortable. The lyrics made me want to throw my phone at the wall, and in the end I wish I could get back the days it took me to read this because I hated it. Thank you for coming to my ted talk.
This reads like a bad fanfic. Almost all the characters had names I couldn’t pronounce if you asked me to. The characters are constantly on the verge of dying and probably should’ve died at least three times over. The use of the R slur was unnecessary and made me very uncomfortable. The lyrics made me want to throw my phone at the wall, and in the end I wish I could get back the days it took me to read this because I hated it. Thank you for coming to my ted talk.
December 1, 2025
In keeping with the American tradition of minstrelsy, Porpentine constructs a novel that claims 'authenticity' as a shield for mockery. The book is proudly labelled 'LGBTQ+' in the Goodreads tags, despite its story being about a school shooting loner abducting a male-presenting AMAB individual who uses he/him in a heterosexual relationship, slowly breaking down his boundaries and then ultimately raping him until he is rendered a pathetic mess on the floor begging for his captor. It's labelled 'transgender' even though the extent of the exploration of gender non conformity is forcing this person to wear feminine clothing even though he doesn't want to and using said feminization as a tool of humiliation. This practice is well documented as a tool of patriarchal violence (the most pressing example I can think of being its explicit description in the UN report on sexual violence against Palestinians in the ongoing genocide against them), yet it is presented here as something 'queer'. If this is queer, then effectively anything can be queer. Could pederastic rape be queer? Could zoophilia be queer? The very application of the term betrays its uselessness: to whom does this empower? Will the closeted queer kid stuck in a household that doesn't see them as a human being find power in their terms of self-description becoming synonymous with inveterate child molesters? Speaking as someone who will sometimes call myself a gay man cause it's easier but is really more of a shy non-binary agender kinda 'guy' that likes occasionally to dabble in femininity, I certainly don't find it (nor this novel's portrayal of GNC AMABs) empowering.
Porpentine attempts to resolve this issue twofold. First, they construct a story which cynically assures its reader that assimilation is impossible. You will never fit in, you will never be 'accepted' by 'them', you will always be outcast, so why bother resisting the association? Maybe you're the Uncle Tom! For who and by whom is of course never explicitly answered because even the specificity of it is enough to give the game away. Are autistic white Americans in autistic white American society uniquely predisposed to eternal ostracization? What does 'assimilation' mean and what is it juxtaposted to? In lieu of alternatives Porpentine offers the aforementioned minstrelsy, the uncritical embracement of stereotypes (the autistic school shooter, the perverted rapist gay man obsessed with feminizing and 'converting' straight men) because what this novel is really about is the jaded 30 something year old (at time of writing) millennial porn addict who wrote it attempting to rationalize their poor life choices.
Spite is a common theme in Porpentine's work. Their other work from last year revolves around the repeated sexual degradation of a robot named "Pink Rubber Animal" which is itself a thinly veiled allegory for the complexes around cisgender women that Porpentine still has. Of course rather than do anything to interrogate how cisnormativity projects the perversions of pedophilia and other assorted trinkets of patriarchal violence onto queer individuals gay or trans, Porpentine would rather just whine that they don't get their fair slice of the patriarchal pie. It's afro-pessimism adapted perfectly for the tastes of the most crusty Lain fan you wish you didn't know.
This leads us to the second thing Porpentine does to 'innovate' the format of minstrelsy: they dabble in the American innovation of changing 'minstrelsy' to auto-minstrelsy because as we all know so long as it's #OwnVoices then that means writing anything you want is okay, so long as you never 'swerve out your lane'. Perhaps this is why everything Porpentine writes is a bleached landscape of mayonnaise because it would give the game up if Pink Rubber Animal happened to be Black, or if Trianon was East Asian.
In this same sense, a violently ableist story can be passed off as 'revolutionary' commentary on neurodivergence by idiots. The story repeteadly invokes Insul's history as a school shooter so that it can feign nuance when it gives him fake depth by creating ocean-wide-and-knee-deep depth sob stories for him about how he was horribly outcast from society and viciously bullied, implying that some angle of sympathy must exist for him even if certainly we can all condemn what he turned out to be in the end. In discussing school shootings the book also repeatedly invokes Columbine. Since it started the discussion, let's talk about Columbine.
That day in the library, there was a boy named Kyle Velasquez. He was mentally disabled owing to a stroke he suffered as a baby and was therefore quiet and ostracized at school too. At the time of the shooting he had finally started to make friends, but he would not get to do anything with them when he was shot in the head while hiding (according to Reddit posts from Randy Brown who saw the crime scene photos). Velasquez was a disabled individual who was mercilessly murdered that day for no other reason than him happening to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. Porpentine has nothing to say for the Kyle Velasquezes of the world and everything to say for Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold who weren't even fucking neurodivergent. In seeking to write a narrative that would explore the complicated history of 'antisocial personality disorder', Porpentine had a lot of options at their disposal. They could explore how this disorder is uniquely applied to black and brown kids, they could explore how many of the symptoms of ASPD are also symptoms of PTSD and complex abuse (especially as someone who has PTSD!), or what I suspect was the original intention: they could explore how seemingly 'normal' individuals with good families can be total psychopaths behind closed doors. Think of how many suburbs hide closet child molesters or murderers, all those good-man veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan whose hands are still wet with the blood of murdered families.
Instead, they chose to write a narrative that constructs 'sympathy' for one such murderer at the expense of depriving the voice of his victims. In a fetishistic and exploitative scene whose artistic motivations and general construction I Will Get To, he gleefully executes two scared children hiding under a lunch table simply for the thrill of it. These children are never even named, their stories never explored. Porpentine decides that in a novel of 571 pages there is simply no room for their voices, where instead the run time could be dedicated to incredibly predictable non-setpieces where Trianon will attempt an obviously doomed to fail plan of escape, Insul will catch him, and then the need to 'punish' Trianon will become a motivator for exploitative sequences of Trianon being tortured which are the real selling point of this novel. Porpentine in this formula replicates perfectly the format of sadist pornography all over with no subversion or innovation to make it worthwhile, ergo minstrelsy played straight as 'artistry'. American as apple pie.
I said earlier I suspect it was the author's intention to make a point about Insul not being terribly unique. We can all recognize that Insul is not far off from the average well-adjusted suburban father veteran who went off to murder civilians in some such forever war, the only difference is that he's an embittered petit blanc (in the Haitian sense, read The Black Jacobins: Toussaint L'Ouverture and the San Domingo Revolution) who resents his failure to succeed. Adam Lanza was similar, a wanna-soldier whose mental breakdowns upon being informed that his disability would not make that possible could be attributed to important catalysts in his decision to massacre schoolchildren. However, I'm only aware of these things because of my outside familiarity with the subject matter. Intentions don't magically create outcomes, they can only ever guide. If you follow the compass north but walk into a trash compactor because it never occurred to you to go east a little to get around it, then that's your fault. The core of the 'shooting while crying' archetype is that it's you who picked up the gun, and the anger it inspires in everyone is in how it obfuscates reality. The sound of crying muffles the sound of gunfire, the sight of tears fogs the sight of murder. Porpentine never taps into these nuances in the novel, Trianon's dad is never really explored other than just 'bitter asshole'. They reveal statements in this vein at the conclusion like it's meant to be fucking revolutionary despite having not put in any of the work to build them up over the story. The only mention of anything non-white in this novel is when Insul and Trianon play Not Call of Duty (because I almost forgot to mention, the novel is set in a 'vague near future' so that means we're not allowed to know what anything going on in pop culture is) in a level that is described as vaguely Middle Eastern, i.e. the city from Aladdin. This is never tied into anything or called back, you're just meant to see it and maybe clap like a seal. Besides these non-commentaries is over 500 pages of what is ostensibly a straight man being raped and broken that suddenly pulls the rug out from its epic "you're like an autistic little brother I can jam my tongue into" Deadpool quips to pretend it said something it didn't.
Among other things, Porpentine is known for an essay they wrote called "Hot Allostatic Load" where they reflected on how cisnormativity socially enforces itself in isolating and ostracizing trans women via the language of a kind of sexual protectionism. Cis women become dainty angels, trans women become vicious rapists. Sounds great, right? Exactly the kind of incisive commentary we need? Just one problem:
Porpentine writes rape porn for a living. You can't trade in literature which romanticizes rape and sexual assault and then get mad when people associate you with rape and sexual assault. What do we call this, writing while crying? Not even Sotos pitied himself this much. Porpentine has found themself in the unenviable position that many a chickenhawk found themselves in back in the 90s where their sexual orientations and experiences of oppression clash against their very undesirable and very bad personal sexual tastes. The general coping mechanism among such a group is to attempt to merge the two, so we arrive at the weird Twilight Zone this book inhabits where being queer equals being a rapist and reproducing patriarchy, where the fifth columns of queer resistance deceive us by presenting themselves as 'radical thinkers' but in reality repackaging the enforcing arms of cisheteronormativity right back at us. Such is the starting point of 21st century minstrelsy.
Furthermore, one of the main aspects of minstrelsy is how it reflects the desire of the rapist to be the raped. "Playing Indian" by Deloria Jr. explores this for Native Americans, minstrelsy reflects it for Black Americans, yellowface for East Asian Americans, so on. I would go to argue that Porpentine plays 'Tenderqueer'.
Let's unpack that school shooting scene now. It's a terribly lascivious sequence in which Insul happens to be at his school when a 'friend' (flashbacks at the near conclusion reveal it's complicated) Blake comes in and starts shooting the place up. The two engage in casual banter before Insul asks if he can try it out, and then Blake hands him the rifle and he eagerly executes the aforementioned two children hiding under a table. Insul being a child himself certainly complicates the matter but not in any way that changes how the book handles Insul, besides perhaps his infantilization (sorry for all the pins I'm asking you to put in things but really, we'll come back to this). In addition to being exploitative it's also terribly childish, the scene representing the perverted fantasies of a school shooter more than how school shootings actually realistically play out, or for that matter all those shitty pretentious uploaded-to-YouTube Oscar bait 'short films' about school shootings.
In an interview, Porpentine describes their work as such:
I don't think this actually makes them happy. So much of their work is revolved around hatred of what I'll call the Tenderqueer, the successful-assimilated-and-content member of an oppressed group who doesn't think too much about these issues. I don't really care for highbies or passoids or Grindr gay men or whatever you want to call them either myself to be honest, but anyway. The Tenderqueer in Porpentine's work is constructed to be brutalized, indoctrinated to the harsh reality. In much the same way, minstrel shows were intended to mock the notion of freedmen by showing just how terrible their lives would surely be if they were free, with the eventual punchline being their violent correction back into the white order. I would argue that they are also united through resentment. Minstrelsy was the bitterly jealous sneering of a white order at the very notion that the status quo could be different, fox and the grapes in the form of "Oh well you wouldn't be happy ANYWAY" from racists presenting resentment as comedy, confident laughs hiding weary fears of social progression. In this same sense I think Porpentine's destruction of the Tenderqueer is fueled by this same resentment, the fear that you don't actually need to live at the margins of society as a forever unhappy minority, that you actually won't be held in a prison (mental or physical) for the rest of your life, that you actually can find happiness. It also obviously comes with the envy: I don't doubt Porpentine wants to be happy and popular and integrated and successful and all those other nice things, the robbery of them was the core angst behind 'Hot Allostatic Load'.
I hate this profoundly. I hate it because at a time where our elites normalize us to violence ever more with "Collateral Murder" esque atrocities casually visited upon Caribbean fishermen and the largest pedicide campaign in modern military history being met with indifference, our supposedly revolutionary queer artists will instead give us art that perpetuates the same resentment of humanity. Let's not forget that even if what the settler feels for the Indian and what the poor white feels for the freedman and what Porpentine feels for the Tenderqueer is ultimately downstream of envy, that emotion is still resentment and to punish you must first resent and punishment is the core of sadism. So here we are with a novel that indulges in rape and cisheteronormative abuses while insisting it's all queer because of the virtue of identity politics. In the face of my non-white friends facing increasing anxieties and discrimination over their fate in our societies, a true feeling of horror and non-belonging as far-right politics close in on them in the Core while climate apocalypse strangles them in the Periphery, I cannae even fucking begin to imagine how they'd feel to know that us virtuous allies are wasting our time jerking off to rape porn in our gooncaves while the world burns (another shitty theme in this story by the way is the vague cli-fi streak put on it like chocolate flavoring in toothpaste and it's about as convincing). We have plenty of fires we need to put out and all this story does is put gasoline on them.
To conclude this review, I'll go back to the pseudointellectual resentment that makes this book so appealing to a lot of idiots and quote from a parent of a school shooting victim at Uvalde, addressing a school shooter not unlike Insul, platforming not the voice of the perpetrator nor their fanboys (which is another thing I could get into, how this book furthers TCC shit by creating a narrative that infantilizes school shooters as uwu sad boys but what the fuck ever) but instead the voice of someone whose life was actually altered by school shootings, someone who has a stake in this debate:
Porpentine attempts to resolve this issue twofold. First, they construct a story which cynically assures its reader that assimilation is impossible. You will never fit in, you will never be 'accepted' by 'them', you will always be outcast, so why bother resisting the association? Maybe you're the Uncle Tom! For who and by whom is of course never explicitly answered because even the specificity of it is enough to give the game away. Are autistic white Americans in autistic white American society uniquely predisposed to eternal ostracization? What does 'assimilation' mean and what is it juxtaposted to? In lieu of alternatives Porpentine offers the aforementioned minstrelsy, the uncritical embracement of stereotypes (the autistic school shooter, the perverted rapist gay man obsessed with feminizing and 'converting' straight men) because what this novel is really about is the jaded 30 something year old (at time of writing) millennial porn addict who wrote it attempting to rationalize their poor life choices.
Spite is a common theme in Porpentine's work. Their other work from last year revolves around the repeated sexual degradation of a robot named "Pink Rubber Animal" which is itself a thinly veiled allegory for the complexes around cisgender women that Porpentine still has. Of course rather than do anything to interrogate how cisnormativity projects the perversions of pedophilia and other assorted trinkets of patriarchal violence onto queer individuals gay or trans, Porpentine would rather just whine that they don't get their fair slice of the patriarchal pie. It's afro-pessimism adapted perfectly for the tastes of the most crusty Lain fan you wish you didn't know.
This leads us to the second thing Porpentine does to 'innovate' the format of minstrelsy: they dabble in the American innovation of changing 'minstrelsy' to auto-minstrelsy because as we all know so long as it's #OwnVoices then that means writing anything you want is okay, so long as you never 'swerve out your lane'. Perhaps this is why everything Porpentine writes is a bleached landscape of mayonnaise because it would give the game up if Pink Rubber Animal happened to be Black, or if Trianon was East Asian.
In this same sense, a violently ableist story can be passed off as 'revolutionary' commentary on neurodivergence by idiots. The story repeteadly invokes Insul's history as a school shooter so that it can feign nuance when it gives him fake depth by creating ocean-wide-and-knee-deep depth sob stories for him about how he was horribly outcast from society and viciously bullied, implying that some angle of sympathy must exist for him even if certainly we can all condemn what he turned out to be in the end. In discussing school shootings the book also repeatedly invokes Columbine. Since it started the discussion, let's talk about Columbine.
That day in the library, there was a boy named Kyle Velasquez. He was mentally disabled owing to a stroke he suffered as a baby and was therefore quiet and ostracized at school too. At the time of the shooting he had finally started to make friends, but he would not get to do anything with them when he was shot in the head while hiding (according to Reddit posts from Randy Brown who saw the crime scene photos). Velasquez was a disabled individual who was mercilessly murdered that day for no other reason than him happening to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. Porpentine has nothing to say for the Kyle Velasquezes of the world and everything to say for Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold who weren't even fucking neurodivergent. In seeking to write a narrative that would explore the complicated history of 'antisocial personality disorder', Porpentine had a lot of options at their disposal. They could explore how this disorder is uniquely applied to black and brown kids, they could explore how many of the symptoms of ASPD are also symptoms of PTSD and complex abuse (especially as someone who has PTSD!), or what I suspect was the original intention: they could explore how seemingly 'normal' individuals with good families can be total psychopaths behind closed doors. Think of how many suburbs hide closet child molesters or murderers, all those good-man veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan whose hands are still wet with the blood of murdered families.
Instead, they chose to write a narrative that constructs 'sympathy' for one such murderer at the expense of depriving the voice of his victims. In a fetishistic and exploitative scene whose artistic motivations and general construction I Will Get To, he gleefully executes two scared children hiding under a lunch table simply for the thrill of it. These children are never even named, their stories never explored. Porpentine decides that in a novel of 571 pages there is simply no room for their voices, where instead the run time could be dedicated to incredibly predictable non-setpieces where Trianon will attempt an obviously doomed to fail plan of escape, Insul will catch him, and then the need to 'punish' Trianon will become a motivator for exploitative sequences of Trianon being tortured which are the real selling point of this novel. Porpentine in this formula replicates perfectly the format of sadist pornography all over with no subversion or innovation to make it worthwhile, ergo minstrelsy played straight as 'artistry'. American as apple pie.
I said earlier I suspect it was the author's intention to make a point about Insul not being terribly unique. We can all recognize that Insul is not far off from the average well-adjusted suburban father veteran who went off to murder civilians in some such forever war, the only difference is that he's an embittered petit blanc (in the Haitian sense, read The Black Jacobins: Toussaint L'Ouverture and the San Domingo Revolution) who resents his failure to succeed. Adam Lanza was similar, a wanna-soldier whose mental breakdowns upon being informed that his disability would not make that possible could be attributed to important catalysts in his decision to massacre schoolchildren. However, I'm only aware of these things because of my outside familiarity with the subject matter. Intentions don't magically create outcomes, they can only ever guide. If you follow the compass north but walk into a trash compactor because it never occurred to you to go east a little to get around it, then that's your fault. The core of the 'shooting while crying' archetype is that it's you who picked up the gun, and the anger it inspires in everyone is in how it obfuscates reality. The sound of crying muffles the sound of gunfire, the sight of tears fogs the sight of murder. Porpentine never taps into these nuances in the novel, Trianon's dad is never really explored other than just 'bitter asshole'. They reveal statements in this vein at the conclusion like it's meant to be fucking revolutionary despite having not put in any of the work to build them up over the story. The only mention of anything non-white in this novel is when Insul and Trianon play Not Call of Duty (because I almost forgot to mention, the novel is set in a 'vague near future' so that means we're not allowed to know what anything going on in pop culture is) in a level that is described as vaguely Middle Eastern, i.e. the city from Aladdin. This is never tied into anything or called back, you're just meant to see it and maybe clap like a seal. Besides these non-commentaries is over 500 pages of what is ostensibly a straight man being raped and broken that suddenly pulls the rug out from its epic "you're like an autistic little brother I can jam my tongue into" Deadpool quips to pretend it said something it didn't.
Among other things, Porpentine is known for an essay they wrote called "Hot Allostatic Load" where they reflected on how cisnormativity socially enforces itself in isolating and ostracizing trans women via the language of a kind of sexual protectionism. Cis women become dainty angels, trans women become vicious rapists. Sounds great, right? Exactly the kind of incisive commentary we need? Just one problem:
When I look at a cis woman these days, the first thing I think is, I bet no one ever casually called her a rapist.
Porpentine writes rape porn for a living. You can't trade in literature which romanticizes rape and sexual assault and then get mad when people associate you with rape and sexual assault. What do we call this, writing while crying? Not even Sotos pitied himself this much. Porpentine has found themself in the unenviable position that many a chickenhawk found themselves in back in the 90s where their sexual orientations and experiences of oppression clash against their very undesirable and very bad personal sexual tastes. The general coping mechanism among such a group is to attempt to merge the two, so we arrive at the weird Twilight Zone this book inhabits where being queer equals being a rapist and reproducing patriarchy, where the fifth columns of queer resistance deceive us by presenting themselves as 'radical thinkers' but in reality repackaging the enforcing arms of cisheteronormativity right back at us. Such is the starting point of 21st century minstrelsy.
Furthermore, one of the main aspects of minstrelsy is how it reflects the desire of the rapist to be the raped. "Playing Indian" by Deloria Jr. explores this for Native Americans, minstrelsy reflects it for Black Americans, yellowface for East Asian Americans, so on. I would go to argue that Porpentine plays 'Tenderqueer'.
Let's unpack that school shooting scene now. It's a terribly lascivious sequence in which Insul happens to be at his school when a 'friend' (flashbacks at the near conclusion reveal it's complicated) Blake comes in and starts shooting the place up. The two engage in casual banter before Insul asks if he can try it out, and then Blake hands him the rifle and he eagerly executes the aforementioned two children hiding under a table. Insul being a child himself certainly complicates the matter but not in any way that changes how the book handles Insul, besides perhaps his infantilization (sorry for all the pins I'm asking you to put in things but really, we'll come back to this). In addition to being exploitative it's also terribly childish, the scene representing the perverted fantasies of a school shooter more than how school shootings actually realistically play out, or for that matter all those shitty pretentious uploaded-to-YouTube Oscar bait 'short films' about school shootings.
In an interview, Porpentine describes their work as such:
I write for the tastes considered juvenile or embarrassing. Chuunicore. I want to make the world’s best hamburger, and I want it to give you the world’s best food poisoning, and it’s not a hamburger, it’s your arm.
I don't think this actually makes them happy. So much of their work is revolved around hatred of what I'll call the Tenderqueer, the successful-assimilated-and-content member of an oppressed group who doesn't think too much about these issues. I don't really care for highbies or passoids or Grindr gay men or whatever you want to call them either myself to be honest, but anyway. The Tenderqueer in Porpentine's work is constructed to be brutalized, indoctrinated to the harsh reality. In much the same way, minstrel shows were intended to mock the notion of freedmen by showing just how terrible their lives would surely be if they were free, with the eventual punchline being their violent correction back into the white order. I would argue that they are also united through resentment. Minstrelsy was the bitterly jealous sneering of a white order at the very notion that the status quo could be different, fox and the grapes in the form of "Oh well you wouldn't be happy ANYWAY" from racists presenting resentment as comedy, confident laughs hiding weary fears of social progression. In this same sense I think Porpentine's destruction of the Tenderqueer is fueled by this same resentment, the fear that you don't actually need to live at the margins of society as a forever unhappy minority, that you actually won't be held in a prison (mental or physical) for the rest of your life, that you actually can find happiness. It also obviously comes with the envy: I don't doubt Porpentine wants to be happy and popular and integrated and successful and all those other nice things, the robbery of them was the core angst behind 'Hot Allostatic Load'.
I hate this profoundly. I hate it because at a time where our elites normalize us to violence ever more with "Collateral Murder" esque atrocities casually visited upon Caribbean fishermen and the largest pedicide campaign in modern military history being met with indifference, our supposedly revolutionary queer artists will instead give us art that perpetuates the same resentment of humanity. Let's not forget that even if what the settler feels for the Indian and what the poor white feels for the freedman and what Porpentine feels for the Tenderqueer is ultimately downstream of envy, that emotion is still resentment and to punish you must first resent and punishment is the core of sadism. So here we are with a novel that indulges in rape and cisheteronormative abuses while insisting it's all queer because of the virtue of identity politics. In the face of my non-white friends facing increasing anxieties and discrimination over their fate in our societies, a true feeling of horror and non-belonging as far-right politics close in on them in the Core while climate apocalypse strangles them in the Periphery, I cannae even fucking begin to imagine how they'd feel to know that us virtuous allies are wasting our time jerking off to rape porn in our gooncaves while the world burns (another shitty theme in this story by the way is the vague cli-fi streak put on it like chocolate flavoring in toothpaste and it's about as convincing). We have plenty of fires we need to put out and all this story does is put gasoline on them.
To conclude this review, I'll go back to the pseudointellectual resentment that makes this book so appealing to a lot of idiots and quote from a parent of a school shooting victim at Uvalde, addressing a school shooter not unlike Insul, platforming not the voice of the perpetrator nor their fanboys (which is another thing I could get into, how this book furthers TCC shit by creating a narrative that infantilizes school shooters as uwu sad boys but what the fuck ever) but instead the voice of someone whose life was actually altered by school shootings, someone who has a stake in this debate:
As the father of a murdered child from a school shooting, I think of you as exactly the monster that you are. You are scum. You will never receive my compassion, you will never receive my respect, and even though that I wasn't even involved with the school shooting that you initiated and did, you will never get my forgiveness for it. And I don't feel sorry for anything, anything, that you have faced since then. You deserve it and more. And you're on TikTok, chasing clout. It's pitiful. It's also pitiful the people that follow you, and boost your ego, by telling you that 'oh it's okay, you changed your life'. The man that attacked you got 25 years. You started shooting in a school, and you only did 17. You both should be locked away. For life. And it's infuriating, it's infuriating that I can't say the things that I want to say because I've already made this video and it got blocked. And I know that you follow me. See, I saw it when I went to go and look at your profile, after I'd already seen a couple of your videos. It's very, very selfish of you to be doing the things that you are doing. You disrupted everybody's life, and you wanna blame it on mental health. Yeah, mental health is a big, big issue in the United States. But the thing is, is that you're not the only one that had a fucked up childhood. And a lot of these people ain't shooting up schools. You're not the only one that wanted to be seen. Everybody does. But you made it about you. And you wanna talk about how 'you didn't want to hurt anybody' except you shot at people. So, make it make sense. You said you went to the school to die. Why bring anybody else into it? Why shoot at other people? Now these other people are scarred for life, and you wanna talk about how 'oh, in Columbine', when Columbine happened, you were terrified, and then you turned around and became that monster! So no. I think what would be best for all of society is for you to do a little soul searching, realize that you are not fit to be out. Anybody that shoots up a school is not fit to ever return to society, and that all you are doing is clout chasing.
December 15, 2022
FUCK!
November 7, 2025
as promised i deleted my old account B.P. (before porpentine) to create a new one A.P. (after porpentine). this book has caused me to reevaluate the purpose and limitations of literature; i literally don't read books the same way anymore. every contemporary fiction i'll read from now on will be compared to this one. every piece of classic literature i read i hope will evolve my critical thinking so that i can fully appreciate my subsequent rereads. every work of non-fiction will help me understand the thematic and extant context of this book. if goodreads ever incorporated half-star ratings, i'd change all my ratings just so that this would be my only 5. for now, just assume all other 5 star ratings are really a 4.99.
i'll write up a real review if and when i find the words to express what this book means to me and why i genuinely believe porpentine is the dostoevsky of our time.
and do not necessarily take this as a recommendation. i think the prerequisite to even reading, much less understanding and appreciating, this book is that you've undertaken a suffering so intense and prolonged in its nature that, somewhat out of necessity, you've come to enjoy it—both in others and yourself, out of evolutionary benefit and, most importantly, as a fetish. and out of this you must implicitly understand that rape is not just a trope in yaoi but is fundamental in its structure, classification, and workings. thank you and have a blessed day 🙏🏽🌈☀️🌹🕊️
i'll write up a real review if and when i find the words to express what this book means to me and why i genuinely believe porpentine is the dostoevsky of our time.
and do not necessarily take this as a recommendation. i think the prerequisite to even reading, much less understanding and appreciating, this book is that you've undertaken a suffering so intense and prolonged in its nature that, somewhat out of necessity, you've come to enjoy it—both in others and yourself, out of evolutionary benefit and, most importantly, as a fetish. and out of this you must implicitly understand that rape is not just a trope in yaoi but is fundamental in its structure, classification, and workings. thank you and have a blessed day 🙏🏽🌈☀️🌹🕊️
July 12, 2025
Fanfic-y in a bad way. Some dialogue made me physically cringe. Plot felt like killing stalking, but the character dynamic was bakudeku (neither are things that I enjoy.) Characters had stupid names, one of which I gave up on trying to pronounce in my head. (Seriously, how are you supposed to say Oenone???) Characters were constantly vaping, no matter how close they were to the brink of death. But, I did read the whole thing in a couple of days and stayed engaged, which is more than I can say for some books, especially at this length.
Despite my complaints above, the setting was pretty interesting. I thought it was cool that it took place in a near-future, and felt that it was pretty realistic to what the next couple decades will be like. I liked the science fiction aspect, I liked the in-universe cultural references to things that don't really exist in real life, like bands and video games. I thought it was amusing that a Rick and Morty vape was included, even if I got annoyed at just how often characters were vaping in this book. I chuckled at the fact that the car they stole had a giant tacky anime girl decal.
Overall, I was entertained, and there were several parts of the book that I would even say that I enjoyed, but my complaints feel too big to ignore.
Despite my complaints above, the setting was pretty interesting. I thought it was cool that it took place in a near-future, and felt that it was pretty realistic to what the next couple decades will be like. I liked the science fiction aspect, I liked the in-universe cultural references to things that don't really exist in real life, like bands and video games. I thought it was amusing that a Rick and Morty vape was included, even if I got annoyed at just how often characters were vaping in this book. I chuckled at the fact that the car they stole had a giant tacky anime girl decal.
Overall, I was entertained, and there were several parts of the book that I would even say that I enjoyed, but my complaints feel too big to ignore.
December 21, 2023
Would calling this 'locating femboys in the Gothic tradition' be pretentious? This is Porpentine taking on the serial killer kidnap romance genre (it's a thing) with all her usual nuance, which is a) wild, and b) excellent. Her perspectives on transfemininity and disability/embodiment are, in hindsight, super Gothic, so embracing that in a near future setting is really fun. We open with a view on a slashed up pseudo-classical painting, which more or less says it all.
I will say, I have some issues with the treatment of Oenone. I'm aware that that's the point - think Hannah in 'Tell Me I'm Worthless'; you're meant to be uncomfortable; it's commentary - but, nevertheless, I don't think that point is executed so well that it redeems the female lead character's general objectification. Her dialogue is on point, and her ADHD is an interesting troubling of everything else the novel has to say on the subject of disability... But she could have used an extra flashback or two, in line with Insul and Trianone. This is a minor gripe, because I tend to find fault with the things that I love.
I will say, I have some issues with the treatment of Oenone. I'm aware that that's the point - think Hannah in 'Tell Me I'm Worthless'; you're meant to be uncomfortable; it's commentary - but, nevertheless, I don't think that point is executed so well that it redeems the female lead character's general objectification. Her dialogue is on point, and her ADHD is an interesting troubling of everything else the novel has to say on the subject of disability... But she could have used an extra flashback or two, in line with Insul and Trianone. This is a minor gripe, because I tend to find fault with the things that I love.
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