“The so-called ‘psychotically depressed’ person who tries to kill herself doesn’t do so out of quote ‘hopelessness’ or any abstract conviction that life’s assets and debits do not square. And surely not because death seems suddenly appealing. The person in whom Its invisible agony reaches a certain unendurable level will kill herself the same way a trapped person will eventually jump from the window of a burning high-rise. Make no mistake about people who leap from burning windows. Their terror of falling from a great height is still just as great as it would be for you or me standing speculatively at the same window just checking out the view; i.e. the fear of falling remains a constant. The variable here is the other terror, the fire’s flames: when the flames get close enough, falling to death becomes the slightly less terrible of two terrors. It’s not desiring the fall; it’s terror of the flames. And yet nobody down on the sidewalk, looking up and yelling ‘Don’t!’ and ‘Hang on!’, can understand the jump. Not really. You’d have to have personally been trapped and felt flames to really understand a terror way beyond falling.”
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“Try to imagine what it will be like to go to sleep and never wake up... now try to imagine what it was like to wake up having never gone to sleep.”
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“There's a difference between the fact that the universe is inherently unfair on a cosmic level, and the fact that life is unfair because people are actively making it so.”
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“Forget trying to pass for normal. Follow your geekdom. Embrace nerditude. In the immortal words of Lafcadio Hearn, a geek of incredible obscurity whose work is still in print after a hundred years, “Woo the muse of the odd.” You may be a geek. You may have geek written all over you. You should aim to be one geek they'll never forget. Don't aim to be civilized. Don’t hope that straight people will keep you on as some sort of pet. To hell with them. You should fully realize what society has made of you and take a terrible revenge. Get weird. Get way weird. Get dangerously weird. Get sophisticatedly, thoroughly weird, and don't do it halfway. Put every ounce of horsepower you have behind it. Don't become a well-rounded person. Well-rounded people are smooth and dull. Become a thoroughly spiky person. Grow spikes from every angle. Stick in their throats like a pufferfish.”
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“Human beings are the only creatures on Earth that claim a god and the only living thing that behaves like it hasn't got one”
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Transgressive Fiction
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— last activity Apr 18, 2026 04:31PM
wikipedia: "Transgressive fiction is a genre of literature that focuses on characters who feel confined by the norms and expectations of society and w ...more
Folk Horror Revival
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— last activity Feb 24, 2026 04:04PM
A gathering place to share and discuss Folk Horror in fiction and non-fiction and also the related fields of psychogeography, hauntology, folklore, cu ...more
Andy’s 2025 Year in Books
Take a look at Andy’s Year in Books, including some fun facts about their reading.
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Adult Fiction, Book Club, Classics, Contemporary, Crime, Fantasy, Fiction, Graphic novels, Horror, Memoir, Mystery, Paranormal, Politics, Science fiction, Thriller, Travel, and War
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