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thewarmvoid's reviews
40 reviews
PSYCHO NYMPH EXILE by Porpentine Charity Heartscape
5.0
This is some of the most incredible literature ive ever read. I love trans people. I love trans women. This is a love letter to everything transfeminine existence gives to the world. I am so full of love and feeling. I have never read transfeminine bodies written so beautifully and clearly. I fell in love 30 times over reading this. Thank you Porpentine.
You've Lost a Lot of Blood by Eric LaRocca
5.0
You’ve Lost A Lot of Blood - Eric LaRocca
YLALOB is a weaving of events from the perspective of Martyr Black, a serial killer and writer, as well as entangling parts of a book that he wrote titled “You’ve Lost A Lot Of Blood”. Inside of the novel he writes, there is a story of a young girl and her younger brother who she has assumed the care of after their parents died in an accident. She is a game programer and has been offered an on-site job at a massive estate to work on a game titled “You’ve Lost A Lot Of Blood” – It’s very layered, but in a way that is completely understandable and doesn’t confuse me, someone very prone to being confused by multi viewpoint stories like this one. YLALOB paints the portrait of the man Martyr Black, his actions, his motives, his thoughts and inner workings. I felt very attached to Martyr Black for the first ¾’s of the book, and then once the disconnect happened I almost couldn't believe I had humanized him so much in my own head. Eric’s writing is really good like that - it helps you examine emotions that you do feel, as opposed to misdirection that leads you into false emotion. We aren't being led to believe that Martyr Black is a good man who is just misunderstood. Martyr Black is who he is, and he is honest about it (as far as we are able to recognize). We are being shown Martyr Black - the things he does, the conversations he’s had, the things he has written and we are allowed to form our own feelings and conclusions about how we feel about him, how we feel about his partner in crime Ambrose, how we feel about his writing. We make our own interpretations of these things and then more information is revealed that may or may not change your perception.
One thing that YLALOB seems to reveal to me is that as deeply as we would like to understand the feelings and motivations of those that commit heinous acts, there isn’t a way to thoroughly and genuinely do it. No matter what materials we procure, journals, voice recordings etc. - we can never be sure what is obscured, what is unseen, what they choose to hide and what they don’t even understand they are hiding.
Eric writes of the centipede, later called an engine, in ways that remind me deeply of Junji Ito’s UZUMAKI, a comforting relation in my mind. The way that Eric writes the existence of a chaotic banality that breeds resentment in relationships is uncomfortably realistic to me. There is a line in which Martyr refers to Ambrose citing “I never wanted to be his home.” and the line both broke my heart and resonated with me in an intense way, reflecting on the past. The moments in a bitter relationship where in that very moment you realize that you are doing something you want to be doing, with the wrong person. It’s a bittersweet revelation.
We meet Presley and Tamsen in a situation very reminiscent of one that occurs in Ari Aster’s HEREDITARY. Tamsen comes to, covered in oil with a lighter next to her and Presely in the back seat. The scene where the mother stands in her son's bedroom, gasoline and lit match in tow. The unconscious desire to end things that manifests physically our psyche desires it so deeply. A desolate gas station stops to fix a headlight, turning into a surreal moment where an older woman goes into a trancelike state revealing prophecies, a thick black centipede crawling out of her stoma. The words feel like they crawl off of the page and onto me. An unsettling and obviously malevolent atmosphere coats the segments of the book titled “You’ve Lost A Lot of Blood”.
One thing about this novel that I adore is the juxtaposition between the relationships between Martyr and Ambrose, and Dani and Tamsen. Dani and Tamsen building a relationship based on closeness, trust and protection - Ambrose and Martyr having a bitter and cold comfort in the horror of their union. Eric LaRocca writes the act of murder in a way that makes me feel a sense of deep warmth and inspiration. Martyr says he doesn’t mourn some corpses, as the beauty they achieved in death is greater than anything they would have accomplished in life. A brutal and romantic sentiment. The story of Tamsen and Presley evolves into a virtual nightmare, something extremely Cronenberg-esque in the sense of not just body horror, but the marriage between body horror and machine, ala CRASH. A nightmare and a daydream of sorts, as Tamsens' unconscious desires manifest in front of her. Metallic grinding noises, wires under skin, weeping so loud it drowns all other sound out, personal totems as vessels. A soft girl turning into cold metal as she devours another’s warmth, a mass grave and bodies as conduits. Martyr learns something truly vile about a man who he had exposed his vulnerability to, and he felt ruined. The feeling of not knowing who someone is, the ways that we can reveal ourselves to someone who is hiding terrible awful things. This made me wonder, the worst person you know - think of them. Who is the worst person they know? And so on and so forth. Could we get to the root of evil this way? Hmm. It’s like a spiral. A centipede crawling out of a stoma. Bodies in latex pods, clones of clones of clones. The hell of repetition.
In the end, I feel exposed. I felt raw, and confused in the best way. Confused, as I asked myself questions. Why did I feel so connected to Martyr and so repulsed by Ambrose? Why did I feel so much empathy for Tamsen? The tying together of the two stories rooted in what is the truth, what *is* objective reality, and does it exist at all? I wonder.
I’m still wondering about a lot of things You’ve Lost A Lot Of Blood contained. Surreal and clear cut prose, born of romantic transgression. I do not understand for a second the people who said this doesnt have a plot or a point, or how they couldn't manage to link the two stories together, as I felt them interlock in so many ways. Eric knows exactly what he's doing.
5/5 stars.
YLALOB is a weaving of events from the perspective of Martyr Black, a serial killer and writer, as well as entangling parts of a book that he wrote titled “You’ve Lost A Lot Of Blood”. Inside of the novel he writes, there is a story of a young girl and her younger brother who she has assumed the care of after their parents died in an accident. She is a game programer and has been offered an on-site job at a massive estate to work on a game titled “You’ve Lost A Lot Of Blood” – It’s very layered, but in a way that is completely understandable and doesn’t confuse me, someone very prone to being confused by multi viewpoint stories like this one. YLALOB paints the portrait of the man Martyr Black, his actions, his motives, his thoughts and inner workings. I felt very attached to Martyr Black for the first ¾’s of the book, and then once the disconnect happened I almost couldn't believe I had humanized him so much in my own head. Eric’s writing is really good like that - it helps you examine emotions that you do feel, as opposed to misdirection that leads you into false emotion. We aren't being led to believe that Martyr Black is a good man who is just misunderstood. Martyr Black is who he is, and he is honest about it (as far as we are able to recognize). We are being shown Martyr Black - the things he does, the conversations he’s had, the things he has written and we are allowed to form our own feelings and conclusions about how we feel about him, how we feel about his partner in crime Ambrose, how we feel about his writing. We make our own interpretations of these things and then more information is revealed that may or may not change your perception.
One thing that YLALOB seems to reveal to me is that as deeply as we would like to understand the feelings and motivations of those that commit heinous acts, there isn’t a way to thoroughly and genuinely do it. No matter what materials we procure, journals, voice recordings etc. - we can never be sure what is obscured, what is unseen, what they choose to hide and what they don’t even understand they are hiding.
Eric writes of the centipede, later called an engine, in ways that remind me deeply of Junji Ito’s UZUMAKI, a comforting relation in my mind. The way that Eric writes the existence of a chaotic banality that breeds resentment in relationships is uncomfortably realistic to me. There is a line in which Martyr refers to Ambrose citing “I never wanted to be his home.” and the line both broke my heart and resonated with me in an intense way, reflecting on the past. The moments in a bitter relationship where in that very moment you realize that you are doing something you want to be doing, with the wrong person. It’s a bittersweet revelation.
We meet Presley and Tamsen in a situation very reminiscent of one that occurs in Ari Aster’s HEREDITARY. Tamsen comes to, covered in oil with a lighter next to her and Presely in the back seat. The scene where the mother stands in her son's bedroom, gasoline and lit match in tow. The unconscious desire to end things that manifests physically our psyche desires it so deeply. A desolate gas station stops to fix a headlight, turning into a surreal moment where an older woman goes into a trancelike state revealing prophecies, a thick black centipede crawling out of her stoma. The words feel like they crawl off of the page and onto me. An unsettling and obviously malevolent atmosphere coats the segments of the book titled “You’ve Lost A Lot of Blood”.
One thing about this novel that I adore is the juxtaposition between the relationships between Martyr and Ambrose, and Dani and Tamsen. Dani and Tamsen building a relationship based on closeness, trust and protection - Ambrose and Martyr having a bitter and cold comfort in the horror of their union. Eric LaRocca writes the act of murder in a way that makes me feel a sense of deep warmth and inspiration. Martyr says he doesn’t mourn some corpses, as the beauty they achieved in death is greater than anything they would have accomplished in life. A brutal and romantic sentiment. The story of Tamsen and Presley evolves into a virtual nightmare, something extremely Cronenberg-esque in the sense of not just body horror, but the marriage between body horror and machine, ala CRASH. A nightmare and a daydream of sorts, as Tamsens' unconscious desires manifest in front of her. Metallic grinding noises, wires under skin, weeping so loud it drowns all other sound out, personal totems as vessels. A soft girl turning into cold metal as she devours another’s warmth, a mass grave and bodies as conduits. Martyr learns something truly vile about a man who he had exposed his vulnerability to, and he felt ruined. The feeling of not knowing who someone is, the ways that we can reveal ourselves to someone who is hiding terrible awful things. This made me wonder, the worst person you know - think of them. Who is the worst person they know? And so on and so forth. Could we get to the root of evil this way? Hmm. It’s like a spiral. A centipede crawling out of a stoma. Bodies in latex pods, clones of clones of clones. The hell of repetition.
In the end, I feel exposed. I felt raw, and confused in the best way. Confused, as I asked myself questions. Why did I feel so connected to Martyr and so repulsed by Ambrose? Why did I feel so much empathy for Tamsen? The tying together of the two stories rooted in what is the truth, what *is* objective reality, and does it exist at all? I wonder.
I’m still wondering about a lot of things You’ve Lost A Lot Of Blood contained. Surreal and clear cut prose, born of romantic transgression. I do not understand for a second the people who said this doesnt have a plot or a point, or how they couldn't manage to link the two stories together, as I felt them interlock in so many ways. Eric knows exactly what he's doing.
5/5 stars.
Medieval Punishments: An Illustrated History of Torture by William Andrews
3.0
It's a really fascinating read, but I will say this is more about the ways in which these punishments were decided upon, the reasons, and whether or not the punishment was actually carried out and when they were phased out and NOT about the building, invention, usage of, mechanics and things like that. If you want a more indepth history when it comes to the actual implements and techniques used in medieval history, look elsewhere. If you want reference material surrounding the situations in which certain punishments were enacted and why, this is the book for you.
Erotism: Death and Sensuality by Georges Bataille
5.0
This changed my life. I think this should be required reading for erotic horror writers, those of us who seek transgression in our fiction. This made me a better writer, a better lover, a better communicator and a more avid sadist, now that I understand where these inclinations toward transgression truly stem from in my soul.
Red Room: The Antisocial Network by Ed Piskor
3.0
I wanted to like this more than I did, ultimately. The illustrations are killer, some of the absolute best drawn gore and graphic mutilation i've ever seen in my life. It's truly groundbreaking in terms of it's specific stylistic choices and how far it goes to make you squirm. I have a high tolerance for gore, so this didn't shake me, but it did excite me and that's good, too. The story and writing is kind of bland and crappy, though. I like the plot but the dialogue is just...ugh. I know the characters are mostly supposed to be sleazeballs but it still annoys me how often that translates to using terrible butchered AAVE. Anyways, good comic, i'm glad that I own it because the illustrations are some of the best i've ever seen and I will be cracking this book open again for inspiration.
The Fifth Wound by Aurora Mattia
5.0
Everyone who decides to read this has been given a gift. I finished reading many months ago, but it’s important to me that I represent the intensity of the feelings it left me with accurately, so here I am now, with the thoughts and feelings still just as fresh as the moment my eyes rested on the last page. The Fifth Wound is a text that perfectly articulates why I will always love to hurt, and why at the end of it all, I know we are here to hurt each other, in all the worst and most divine ways. An infinite undiscovered iceberg of the self we must chip at, incessantly, painfully. The gift of such sensations. Aurora Mattia’s words made me remember the rare moments in my life where I felt like a woman and I loved it. Her tales made me ache to find the place in my atmosphere where I might access those memories without dissociating the me that exists now from the woman I loved being then. I think of how much fear it fires in me, and how much the desire overwhelms it, still. I am always thinking gender thoughts, introspecting while I move throughout the world but what excites and overwhelms me about what Aurora presents, is how pure the desire feels. As a very openly and vocal transmasculine person, it often feels taboo, dirty, and inaccessible for me to associate feelings of joy and desire with femininity and womanhood, but those feelings are all taken and rinsed in waters so honest through the words she brought to me (and all of us), that I don’t feel too afraid anymore. I feel overwhelming desire to reconnect to the things I have been told I should be afraid of.
Aurora begins by beckoning the reader to promise not to fall in love with her. It might sound bold and presumptuous at first, but what follows is prose that separates blood from bone in such intimately visceral ways, that you, like me, might become convinced that the writer knows you much more intimately than they could possibly truly know. An energy that permeates throughout the novel and never ends, something so intense and light, all at once. The Fifth Wound feels like a cree to look beyond her siren song. Be patient with her prose, it demands it. It also demands persistence and urgency, with run on sentences and long footnotes full of passion, access to beyond what that intensity might mean, stories that layer over one another in flawless transition. Aurora paints images of memories past in vivid detail that make me burn to see it all through her eyes, and to comb through the recesses of my mind to find the colors I may have forgotten.
I want to say so often that this book is fundamental trans, gender, transgender, transsexual text – but that feels like a very flat summation of what The Fifth Wound does, and can do for a reader. It’s a weaving of myth, fantasy and reality that is nothing short of otherworldly, while maintaining a palpable mortality. Transition, love and sex, trans love and sex as genuine mythos, as written scripture, as history written by our hearts with our blood and breath and bodies. Her stories are never just one story, and I never felt a passive observer in them. I became the devil on her shoulder, the pen on the pages, a subway seat, the notes app in her iphone, the angel Ezekiel himself. Her words force me to contend with the idea that the things that happen to us, the cosmic and undefinable, all mean something, and that it all matters. To wonder why my love courses through me in the ways it does, why I compare it in my own mythos to sludge and plague. Pain and pleasures, folding into myths and mysteries.
The way that Aurora speaks of beauty penetrates the deepest parts of my fear centers as she interrogates what it means to be beautiful, what we gain and what we lose when we become beautiful. There is so much pain, and a just, vile amount of self awareness. There is so much willingness to admit the things others know about themselves but opt to lock away like ancient secrets. It is such fearless writing. From the moment Aurora begins to lead me into her tale of being visited by Saint Catherine of Sienna, I began to glow, and the intensity of that light did not cease, but shifted in color from soft pinks and purples to deep reds and blues.
She says, “whatever my genitals are, they were once a wound.” and that sentence alone is some of the most beautiful prose I have ever consumed in my life. It’s the truth for me, as an intersex person who was surgically “corrected”, whatever I have now, it was once a wound. That has healed, and split, and filled and split again. Violence is a language that Aurora understands fluently, and that speech intwines with the languages of prayer and memory to weave something truly magical. The waves of love, pleasure, of scent and sight, of fear and rejection, wash over me so aggressively that it makes me lovesick for the version of me that felt my love like hunger. She says that writing this book was a way to survive, and you can feel that in every page. She reminds me that attempting to outrun the pain will prolong it. She reminds me that I see us all as constellations in a vast galactic system, tangles together, planets and comets and moons, space dust in between. That love is often patience, that solitude is not a punishment for all. I relate heavily to Ezekiel in the sense that I am simply not very present day to day on an extremely consistent basis socially, or interpersonally. Aurora says “Paradise is nowhere” but to me, paradise is that mystery, the unknown, and the freedom to find what lies in between. I have hurt people with my desire for absolute freedom, for patience when my words are few and my presence is rare. I don’t feel proud of it. I feel angry that so much life and freedom was taken from me that I feel the fear down to my marrow of stagnancy, that I have accepted my own mortality so deeply that I want it to be a feature of me that is loved and admired, that I am only ever showing up in times where there is truly nothing else I would rather do, that all my thoughts and truth is in that moment, that I am ever present, that I am there there there. Im a fairy, like Aurora and Ezekiel. Paradise is nowhere, I exist in the wind, I love you from here, from there, from everywhere. Aurora frequently vanishes from heaving a presence online, without a word, without a trace, without a hint of when she might be back – The Fifth Wound is a visceral, intimate, reflective display of the parts of the mirage we don’t get to see, and an honoring of the parts that we do, a beckoning to let it go without claw marks.
-“Whatever my genitals are, they were once a wound.”
-“I am a blurry object.”
I am here, and I am gone. Love me and let me fly, watch the wounds split and fill and heal and split again. I have given up so many things in the pursuit of a satisfied mystery. To know it all, and to have it all, is to leave nothing left to learn. Aurora Mattia is an absolute fairy in every essence of the word. She created a portrait of the world with her words, and her wounds, that will stick with me forever. This is a book that reminded me, as fantastic writing usually does, that there are always new ways to put words together. There is always a new way to tell a tale, to weave a story, to construct a fantasy, to detail the viscera. I am grateful for The Fifth Wound and for the existence of people with such clarity of complexity like Aurora Mattia, Silicone Angel.
5/5 stars.
Aurora begins by beckoning the reader to promise not to fall in love with her. It might sound bold and presumptuous at first, but what follows is prose that separates blood from bone in such intimately visceral ways, that you, like me, might become convinced that the writer knows you much more intimately than they could possibly truly know. An energy that permeates throughout the novel and never ends, something so intense and light, all at once. The Fifth Wound feels like a cree to look beyond her siren song. Be patient with her prose, it demands it. It also demands persistence and urgency, with run on sentences and long footnotes full of passion, access to beyond what that intensity might mean, stories that layer over one another in flawless transition. Aurora paints images of memories past in vivid detail that make me burn to see it all through her eyes, and to comb through the recesses of my mind to find the colors I may have forgotten.
I want to say so often that this book is fundamental trans, gender, transgender, transsexual text – but that feels like a very flat summation of what The Fifth Wound does, and can do for a reader. It’s a weaving of myth, fantasy and reality that is nothing short of otherworldly, while maintaining a palpable mortality. Transition, love and sex, trans love and sex as genuine mythos, as written scripture, as history written by our hearts with our blood and breath and bodies. Her stories are never just one story, and I never felt a passive observer in them. I became the devil on her shoulder, the pen on the pages, a subway seat, the notes app in her iphone, the angel Ezekiel himself. Her words force me to contend with the idea that the things that happen to us, the cosmic and undefinable, all mean something, and that it all matters. To wonder why my love courses through me in the ways it does, why I compare it in my own mythos to sludge and plague. Pain and pleasures, folding into myths and mysteries.
The way that Aurora speaks of beauty penetrates the deepest parts of my fear centers as she interrogates what it means to be beautiful, what we gain and what we lose when we become beautiful. There is so much pain, and a just, vile amount of self awareness. There is so much willingness to admit the things others know about themselves but opt to lock away like ancient secrets. It is such fearless writing. From the moment Aurora begins to lead me into her tale of being visited by Saint Catherine of Sienna, I began to glow, and the intensity of that light did not cease, but shifted in color from soft pinks and purples to deep reds and blues.
She says, “whatever my genitals are, they were once a wound.” and that sentence alone is some of the most beautiful prose I have ever consumed in my life. It’s the truth for me, as an intersex person who was surgically “corrected”, whatever I have now, it was once a wound. That has healed, and split, and filled and split again. Violence is a language that Aurora understands fluently, and that speech intwines with the languages of prayer and memory to weave something truly magical. The waves of love, pleasure, of scent and sight, of fear and rejection, wash over me so aggressively that it makes me lovesick for the version of me that felt my love like hunger. She says that writing this book was a way to survive, and you can feel that in every page. She reminds me that attempting to outrun the pain will prolong it. She reminds me that I see us all as constellations in a vast galactic system, tangles together, planets and comets and moons, space dust in between. That love is often patience, that solitude is not a punishment for all. I relate heavily to Ezekiel in the sense that I am simply not very present day to day on an extremely consistent basis socially, or interpersonally. Aurora says “Paradise is nowhere” but to me, paradise is that mystery, the unknown, and the freedom to find what lies in between. I have hurt people with my desire for absolute freedom, for patience when my words are few and my presence is rare. I don’t feel proud of it. I feel angry that so much life and freedom was taken from me that I feel the fear down to my marrow of stagnancy, that I have accepted my own mortality so deeply that I want it to be a feature of me that is loved and admired, that I am only ever showing up in times where there is truly nothing else I would rather do, that all my thoughts and truth is in that moment, that I am ever present, that I am there there there. Im a fairy, like Aurora and Ezekiel. Paradise is nowhere, I exist in the wind, I love you from here, from there, from everywhere. Aurora frequently vanishes from heaving a presence online, without a word, without a trace, without a hint of when she might be back – The Fifth Wound is a visceral, intimate, reflective display of the parts of the mirage we don’t get to see, and an honoring of the parts that we do, a beckoning to let it go without claw marks.
-“Whatever my genitals are, they were once a wound.”
-“I am a blurry object.”
I am here, and I am gone. Love me and let me fly, watch the wounds split and fill and heal and split again. I have given up so many things in the pursuit of a satisfied mystery. To know it all, and to have it all, is to leave nothing left to learn. Aurora Mattia is an absolute fairy in every essence of the word. She created a portrait of the world with her words, and her wounds, that will stick with me forever. This is a book that reminded me, as fantastic writing usually does, that there are always new ways to put words together. There is always a new way to tell a tale, to weave a story, to construct a fantasy, to detail the viscera. I am grateful for The Fifth Wound and for the existence of people with such clarity of complexity like Aurora Mattia, Silicone Angel.
5/5 stars.