#Content Warning: Everything

[lifeinpoetry]

“but why did you feel you had to kill yourself, baby love?”

i thought it would be a useful sacrifice

habit, or morbid tradition

god and i were in a feud

this world is foul i needed to bathe in my blood

spite and vengeance

no one else would do it

i missed not existing

how can you ask me that

knowing how lonely

i have been

— Akwaeke Emezi, from Content Warning: Everything

#quote #Akwaeke Emezi #poetry #Content Warning: Everything #out of my collection #but why did you feel you had to kill yourself baby love? #blood mention cw #suicide cw

[romanticbroadcast]

i would die, i would die for him

want of my afterlife, brand on my chest

do whatever you like with me

— Akwaeke Emezi, Content Warning: Everything

#quote #literature #words #poetry #akwaeke emezi #content warning: everything #q

[vf-thompson]

Book Review: Content Warning: Everything Will Fuck You Up and It Will be Your Fault

It seems odd that i'm sitting down to write a perfect review of a book that has, as far as a book can screw up a life, sent my own careening wildly off track.

My introduction to Emezi was the diabolical little YA spec fic Pet, which was assigned reading in my Transgender Literature class i took a few semesters ago. i was struggling with my academic workload, and admittedly only read pieces of that book, enough know what was going in class discussions, but shelved it to finish later. i did not realize at the time that i had one of the writer's other books in my possession already, a threatening little collection of poems that my best friend had gotten me for my birthday right before beginning the semester.

It sat on my shelf patiently, biding its time, dreaming its sick little dreams, until i needed it.

i can't tell you how the explosion happened, only that it did. Call it a gas leak, maybe. Entropy did as entropy does. i was separated, overnight, from everything smelling and tasting of home, born on Christian hands and pagan winds into the wild to be taught the true ways of the world. Apotheosis knocked for the third time in my heathen life, and this time i let the sonuvab!tch inside at last to make herself at home.

i found myself in a hotel room, on the other side of a bombing, stranded. This book was in my hands, had made it instinctively into my bag as i escaped the slithering fire that consumed my house and my life. i read the title, read the author's name, realized i had heard the name before. i ached for familiarity, and opened the book.

Everything was inside waiting for me inside, as Emezi warned. i blundered into the bloody-berry red thickets of their serpentine prose, joining them in their dirty, dismal trek up the Holy Mountain. i found, immediately, in her words, a kindred spirit, crimson as my own sin-stained soul. i can only be frankly honest: the poems in this collection seemed to resonate with my own life and its events to a degree that is uncanny, almost abject. The second poem, "christening", tore me open, and i understood, feverishly, wrongly: i too could speak the truth.

i took to my notebook, trying to put my frayed and desperate grief into words, grief at my sudden exile from Eden, using Emezi's words as model. i crafted my own imitative poems in the key of confession and launched them into the sky like a rocket, hoping to explain away the pain with meter and meaning. But like our viperous little narrator, the ouroboros sharing their tale with us, i swallowed myself with my own words, burned up in my own stomach acid, vomited myself out somewhere worse than before. My confessions did not cleanse me; they branded me Barabbas. My attempt to reach for the sky left me falling back towards earth, landing in a black muddy river, washing up somewhere by Bethlehem with venom in my eyes. As the book warns at the top, the urge to explain can often only make things worse when you see the world wrong.

It has since taken me five months to finish a book that is 45 pages long. i can't blame the book. It told me its mission on the front cover, warned me as well as a book can. It told me what was waiting inside: Everything, undiluted, unadulterated. This book blew my mind in the worst kind of way, which is of course the best way, which is of course the only way. Books are here to challenge us, to change the way we see. There is nothing comforting or safe about the work here, blowing past trigger warnings in a way that no edged-out Netflix comedian could hope to touch.

If you can handle it, allow Emezi to take a scalpel to your life, as they did mine. Inside you will find ruminations and meditations on what is means to be a pagan, to be spirit, to be of any faith or no faith, to be less than a man and more than a god and to do-se-do around the black heart of a dying, diseased brain. Big thanks to the bitch who bought it for my birthday, who read it and decided i should too. She's never let me down with a recommendation, and i'm happy to say this book continues that trend. It has been a campfire to sit beside in one of the darkest periods of my life, throwing shadows of hope against the wall even as the cave threatens to collapse down on top of us all.

#poetry #book review #poetry review #akwaeke emezi #religion #writing #bookblr #content warning: everything #queer poetry

[onebluebookworm]

Ranking Books I Read in 2022: 45-41

45. Dark Waters by Katherine Arden

What I Liked: Like the other books in this series, it’s a fun introduction to horror for kids, with some interesting concepts, and I did like the bittersweet ending What I Didn’t Like: This is the definitely the weakest of the three books, and honestly the Smiling Man has worn out his welcome. Final thoughts: Felt very much like an interlude with a villain who isn’t fun anymore.

44. Dead Voices - Katherine Arden

What I Liked: Lookit that rad ass cover art, snowy landscapes are always ripe for horror and I wish more people would use them What I Didn’t Like: Kind of a lame ghost, obvious red herrings are obvious Final thoughts: Better than Dark Waters in execution, but nowhere near as good as Small Spaces in terms of quality and atmosphere.

43. The Six Sisters series - Marion Chesney

What I Liked: Standard wacky Regency hijinks that make me smile, plus some fun characters What I Didn’t Like: A lot of characters I dislike, Annabelle is a goddamn test of patience, I would dropkick Rev. Armitage if I could, Lord Edwin could have been a way more effective villain Final thoughts: Not the worst thing from Chesney I’ve ever read (that honor still belongs to A House for the Season), but not something I’ll ever revisit

42. Content Warning: Everything - Akwaeke Emezi

What I Liked: Some excellent poems that made me need to put down the book for a minute. What I Didn’t Like: For every excellent poem, there were several that just didn’t do it for me. Final thoughts: Definitely worth a look, but not really anything special.

41. Giant Days - John Allison

What I Liked: Adorably funny characters, nice to see college-age characters in stories like these, I want every piece of clothing that Esther owns What I Didn’t Like: Some of the humor could be kind of juvenile, and the feminism was a little on the nose Final thoughts: A silly, fun read with lovable characters that I definitely want to read more of in the future

#ranking books 2022 #dark waters #dead voices #katherine arden #the six sisters #marion chesney #content warning: everything #akwaeke emezi #giant days #john allison

[yesmissnyx]

An Unsexy Post About Censorship

Sooo...gumroad is shutting down NSFW content sales because of Stripe and Paypal. This is also why Wishtender has been down as well, if you weren't aware. And why Patreon is also cracking down on anything remotely kinky.

(If you're wondering why your favorite FICTIONAL sexual content isn't allowed on most platforms, it's payment processors.)

Please be extra kind to anyone who works with NSFW content right now, whether it be art, writing, audio, photos or video. Whether it be tasteful erotica, or the kinkiest BDSM porn you can think of, we're all in the crosshairs right now.

And, judging by trends from these past few years, this is only going to get worse.

Support NSFW creators where you can, whether by tipping or buying our content (where you still can) or just helping boost content on sites where algorithms want to drown us out.

Call representatives where you can and complain about payment processors acting as arbiters of what YOU are and aren't allowed to pay for and enjoy.

This may be about porn right now, but censorship of this caliber doesn't just stop with porn. Any transgressive (read: non-conservative) media is fair game.

Fight against it where you can. Support creators where you can.

Art is important. Reflections of our sexuality are important. We don't want a world where people aren't free to make or see the things they love and enjoy.

#nyxrambles #Warning: I'm going to get kind of grim in the tags so peace out of you have to. #This bums me out so fucking hard! #I have artist friends who are struggling because their content suddenly goes against these stupid fucking guidelines! #I'm going to have to take my stuff off of Gumroad even though it was previously allowed! #It's hard to not feel like everything is just spiraling toward fascism sometimes yanno? #I am usually opposed to slippery slope arguments but the goal of moral conservativism is to destroy everything that isn't in line with it. #They will not stop until the world reflects their narrow ideals. Like...that's the whole point of it! #Sorry guys I'm just having a rough one. #Between this and being sick for months I'm getting pretty fucking Done. #I'll be okay but I'm not going to pretend it isn't hard and scary.

[cipheramnesia]

The "movie about a movie that kills you" is a surprisingly robust genre of horror. There's a wide range of approaches, but one key factor is the question of how good the deadly film in a film is, on its own. Some approaches are keeping the faux film entirely unseen, use brief clips, or make it real short.

Antrum: The Deadliest Film Ever Made goes in for a high risk approach and delivers a complete finished film, ostensibly made in the 70s and never released, framed by brief opening and closing info bites to set the stage of it.

Somehow this thing was completely off my radar, which means I was taken fully off guard as an ominous warning about the content in white text on black appeared on screen, giving a thirty second count down to leave if I wanted.

Wonderful showmanship and canny filmmaking that got me right in the mood to enjoy what followed. While I wouldn't call it a scary movie, I found it almost delightful in the atmospheric dread and devotion to its aesthetic of low budget 70s films. Nothing in it feels like a curse on its own, but it does feel like the sort of movie that could easily prompt psychological distress for anyone under psychotropic influences, pre-existing emotional vulnerability, or prone to delusional states. Not through anything supernatural, more because it works hard to keep the viewer in constant doubt over what is and is not real for the characters in the film. Combined with the framing device of it being a movie somehow able to influence the real world of the viewer, and the use of fractionally visible flashes of occult symbols on the screen, it generates an intense feeling of unreality which for me was an almost drug-like high and an immersive pleasure.

The premise of Antrum is simply a brother and sister decide to dig a hole to hell, and the movie plays out around this event by surrounding it with disturbing sounds and imagery, as well as real world dangers that weave the protagonists between the supernatural and mundane while keeping them in a state of terror and madness that grows until it becomes unrelenting.

In a certain sense it also feels cursed, like the kind of film where there are elements that feel very transgressive - in particular the opening scene which to my mind evoked Un Chien Andalou - not the infamous eyeball slicing scene, but the use of rotting animals. The few and very basic visual effects remind me as well of the early Survival Research Laboratory devices engineered by Mark Pauline.

However, the core question for me is also always what is the movie about besides the plot. If I had to identify some rough themes, I would say it's trying to explore the idea of understanding death and violence through the eyes of children who do not yet have the psychological tools for processing such matters, but who have been left on their own to do so regardless.

Many of the unusual elements in the movie can relate to death rituals poorly understood, starting from the very premise of digging a hole into the earth. And the same act is surrounded by strange rituals unclear in their origin, ideas which might be logical drawn from watching words recited over a grave without having a connection of purpose. Their encounters with other people are fully without possibility of communication as none of them speak the same language, and these mundane threats feel at times akin to a satanic Alice in Wonderland, rituals and violence whose meaning cannot be understood by the protagonists.

Likewise the supernatural is full of unprocessed images of death. Demons with black skin who look like mummified corpses. River crossings and empty chains dragging through leaves. It's as if death itself has manifested through the ambient world, surrounding the two children and refusing to let them leave its circle.

In combination with the intriguing use of sigils inscribed throughout, it creates a movie that is for me a joy to watch. An absolutely perfect Halloween spook for next year, but your mileage may vary between finding it full of pretentious nonsense or maybe the scariest film you'll ever watch. It can really come off either way, and I'm honestly not quite sure why my reaction was actual joy in the watching. Not to undercut the severity of the subject matter, but I just can't stop thinking about how happy I was to watch the movie at work mechanically, to enjoy the well oiled pieces fitting together, and then all topped off with the delicious extra treat of the framing device. Surely worth 90 minutes of your life.

#antrum #unreality #definitely big content warnings about animal death and injury #also children in danger and possible child deaths #not many jump scares though if any #also tbh i genuinely think it has the potential to bring on a delusion because it is very committed to the bit #there's no part where its like haha jk this isn't a real documentary about a movie its all fake #the framing device is used to wrap everything up in a way that never breaks the immersion #so if you're in a really suggestive state there's a nonzero chance you may believe the movie is going to kill you for real

[pinetreevillain]

Representative of my comic line up for the next few weeks.

#my art #rottmnt #comic #brace yourself #some of them are going to come w content warnings and everything #consider yourself warned

[nicosraf]

all of the front matter for Angels & Man ! apparently none of my betas really used the dramatis personae (character list) but it'll still be there! u know, for fun

#please take the content warnings seriously #please #angels before man #angels & man #mine #yeah im ! posting this at 12 am #i am submitting everything aahha

[arcadekitten]

WATCH ME CHOKE IT DOWN SO I CAN THROW IT UP

#never did content warnings like this i dont think but a first time for everything! #sweet no death #sweet no death spoilers #lambchop #ruuuby #art #my art

[mattynmarns]

bro I've thought about leaving dtblr so many times within the past year but like. I've got to stay at least until primeboys meetup. then maybe I'll turn normal

#(I will Not Be Normal. btw) #everytime I see George I turn into la creatura #but idk been thinking about if opening tumblr on my phone makes me more happy or stressed #I'm still so so so interested in dteam and friends and everything #but sometimes being on here suck. lowkey lowkey #maybe I just want to consume content without knowing who's picking fights with dream this week #idk many thoughts #but if I do Become Normal here's your warning #heckin rants #mcyt #I will probably delete this soon but. I needed to say this somewhere

[lifeinpoetry]

one day a coward who will break my heart asks me how i ended up still so soft i tell him i am stubborn i wanted a better world a diving bell made of tender glass a better family i remembered how to be a god i give myself what i want

— Akwaeke Emezi, from “disclosure,” Content Warning: Everything

#quote #Akwaeke Emezi #poetry #Content Warning: Everything #out of my collection #disclosure

[romanticbroadcast]

i only know the softness

that is cherished before

the small violences set in

— Akwaeke Emezi, Content Warning: Everything

#quote #literature #words #poetry #akwaeke emezi #content warning: everything #q

[hopefullystillliving]

You ever get lulled into a false sense of security during the first two thirds of a kid's movie that's good with a serious plot but mostly a pretty fun time, only to have the entire final third tear your heart out, chew it up and spit it out, crush it into even finer paste beneath its heel, and add the fine powder your ribs have been turned into by the sledgehammer it whammed you with as a seasoning?

Anyway Nimona was great, 10/10 would recommend, I was crying on and off for what probably totaled 20 minutes of tears.

#hopeful rambling #nimona #cw graphic #i think that's probably the right tag for that description #anyway yes im a little late to the train but i was waiting until i could watch it with my dearest #my takeaway is that they should put a content warning on it for trans people especially bc you will feel punched in the face #that allegory sure can trans. #i think i related to it in a different way than most people #bc being genderqueer yeah nimona going im not a girl im just myself hit home but im not *trans* #so i think i actually ended up projecting onto balistar as someone who deeply loves a trans person (different ways obviously) #being told 'yes you can rejoin the society you betrayed you aren't like *her* you arent a monster everything can go back to what it was #you can be one of the good guys if you reject the freaks' #but they betrayed you first and the good guys aren't good and how things were is worse actually than saying i love you i see you im with you #to the freaks and the monsters who will accept who you are unlike the society that never will always keeping you to an impossible standard #of never being yourself #so yeah the religious/societal prejudice trauma was very felt at some points #and i grieved for nimona not because she was me but because she was my dearest and she was a friend #and she was a thousand people i will never know who decided it was better to die as yourself than be killed as someone you aren't #and didn't have a person to say im sorry. i see you. #anyway. yeah im still crying. altered my brain chemistry is mild i think it rearranged my organs punched a hole in my chest and i thanked it #nimona spoilers

[borbology]

"Puppet king, oh puppet king When you sleep do you dream of control? Everything run by strings Your shadow has a voice of its own Puppet king, oh puppet king Have your subjects found out that you're dead? Whispers sing in the wind The puppet mob has come for your head"

Puppet Show - by Avatar

Speedpaint (it's ass. first speedpaint lol)

sorry you had to figure out this way lmao

#when i said part of why i started drawing kirby stuff was to practice with cute things i wasnt kidding #happy halloween #content warning #gore #body horror #scopophobia #king dedede #dedede #dark matter kirby #please dont report me kids i did everything right /hj

[fiddlersgray]

one of my toxic traits is that i really like Daniel!Dream and the way u could explore him but like. every “official” comic(minus the little bit that neil wrote about him) kind of sucks

this is an invite to rec y’all’s favorite daniel hall content btw

#i mean I’ve read worse #but i went into the dreaming with zero warning abt what was gonna happen #and got jumpscared by the ivy walker thing #EUGH #the wake/endless nights daniel? sublime #everything else? questionable #whutever I just need good daniel content #newish member of the fandom btw so still looking around!! just arrived here lmao #dream of the endless #daniel hall #the sandman comics #the sandman #the sandman netflix

[thatskindarough]

“Suddenly you realize you’ll never have the good relationship you wanted. And as long as they were alive, even though you’d never admit it, part of you, the stupidest goddamn part of you was still holding on to that chance. And you didn’t even realize it until that chance went away.”

Bojack horseman got me messed up. I think Izzy would enjoy the show. And have some major self reflection.

#art #illustration #izzy hands #ofmd fanart #bojack horseman #“my mother is dead #and everything is worse now #becuase now I know I’ll never have a mother who looks at me from across the room and says #‘Bojack Horseman I see you’ #but I guess it’s good to know #sorry sorry #I think a lot of Izzy fans would enjoy Bojack so watch it WATCH IT #but uh…content warning for everything #finish season one I know it might start off slow but trust me it gets GOOD