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The true nightmare of BLM Gothic is that in a society in the business of making monsters, (inherited) monstrosity might be inescapable.

...normality itself is a nightmare that requires undoing as it destroys the humanity of both the anti-Black assailant(s)/cultures and the Black protagonist.

Rage in BLM Gothic signifies a wound in the Black body through which monstrosity can infect. Of course, as suggested by the previous section, African Americans are not the originators of the illness but a victim of the infection.

...one of the primary horrors of BLM Gothic: the seeming inevitability of Black turns to monstrous violence in response to profoundly violent anti-Blackness.

...white Americans prove more nightmarish and horrifying than a Lovecraftian monster by connecting their institutional dominance and the whiteness of American hegemony to a very base need: insatiable hunger. BLM Gothic argues that the rationale for anti-Black violence is ultimately white craving for Black suffering.

this is the normative practice of necropolitical societies: ‘Habituation to sadism, the implacable will to know nothing, to experience no empathy toward the victims, to be persuaded of the natives’ villainy, to hold them responsible for the atrocities as well as the exactions and massive damages inflicted upon them

Black communities as phobogenic objects. (Fanon again)
The ghetto is not just a dumping ground for the impoverished but a prison for the unruly ‘savages’ outcasted from ‘civilized’ society.

...reproducing scenes from recent events and history to produce Real Horror rather than imagined terrors. As Robert C Solomon notes, unlike Art Horror, Real Horror denies us satisfaction and pleasure. Real Horror is that which is truly horrible and ‘renders the subject/victim helpless and violates his or her most rudimentary expectations about the world’.

Gothic’s insistence that we are far from the civilized, enlightened societies that we imagine ourselves to be

Aw hell no.
DNFing this at the consummation scene.
Petur is a complete a-hole and I'm not wasting more time.
Too bad, I liked Sy.

Temporary Exhibition
"Proust and the Arts"
From 4 March to 8 June 2025

Maybe this is the year I finally read Proust.
Anyone have strong feelings about translations?

Disappointing absence of cryptid so far. I guess that's realistic.

From the blurb I pictured the MC rushing into the woods after her friend, but in fact the girl has been missing 20 DAYS before she goes back to look for her and I'm having trouble getting past how low the odds are of any missing person being both alive and still in the wilderness where you last saw them? This makes no sense to me.

Smashwords Sale through the end of July!
I haven't found much so far that I didn't buy in previous sales.
Give me recs if you find anything good,

I'm confused as to why everyone in her community thinks Leah is a "bad girl." Did she do something that we'll eventually find out about? She mentioned skipping a year of school. Or is just the way her mom treats her? I understand kids do sometimes get a bad rep for almost no reason...

Nebula finalist list is up! I haven't read any of the longer works.
https://www.sfwa.org/2024/03/14/sfwa-...

"By the stroke of midnight"?

They've been wandering in the woods for hours, how is it not already past midnight?

I'm vexed by the switch from "see this book" to "shop this series."
I'm NOT going to ever buy a whole series I haven't looked at, and it's just adding extra layers of click-thru.

What indie publishers are having sales this weekend?
I know JMS Books is 60% off everything.
Timber Ghost has a coupon code Shadow15
I heard Castaigne but haven't checked yet

Goodreaders, does the site have a "fiction with an author as a character" list in listopia? I thought for sure that would exist but I'm not finding one...

Indie publishers having Halloween sales:
JMS Books
Shortwave
Brigids Gate

If you're aware of other sales please comment below!

There are things I like about this, but I keep getting put off by the tstl MC and his dumb decisions. You work with law enforcement and 3 personal endangerments in a row have forgotten to get your cop bf's phone #? Someone threatening breaks into your aunt's house and you don't warn her about him?

The surrealists also celebrated so-called hysterics for upsetting bourgeois social expectations as well as for their supposed closer connection to the unconscious. Since hysteria as a medical-diagnosis was in some disrepute by the 1920s the surrealists celebrated it as poetic expression rather than pathology.

[you must be a librarian to add a new book record to the site]

That's new!

JMS Books gives away a book a day thru Dec 24th. They're primarily a romance publisher, but usually there's some PNR or fantasy with romance elements included. For instance, today's free book is a noir mystery in a sci fi setting with mythological creatures. And a couple years running there's been a freebie from KI Noone, who I always recommend to Patricia McKillip fans.
https://www.jmsbooksllc.com/advent-ca...

To read with recognition (not just simple understanding) is to realize why writer made the choices he or she made

Did the new goodreads format eliminate the reading status comment function? If not, where do I find that now?

GASP!
He just took his cupcakes out of the oven and immediately iced them!

Dolphins sometimes rescuing drowning humans is reasonably documented, however, "people pushed away from shore are unavailable to give their testimony."

Ugh, it has always annoyed me when people apply human ethical terms to animals, eg. "cheating," "slut," etc.