bridget-vibe WE BEAT THE NEWS MEGA bridget-vibe

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    • ashinadash [she/her]
      ·
      6 months ago

      lea-happy Absolutely!!! I can recite passages of this from memory so hit me up anytime!!!

          • 🎀 Seryph (She/Her)@lemmygrad.ml
            ·
            6 months ago
            Chapter 2

            So she wrote about it. She laid it out and connected all these dots: the sometimes I want to wear dresses dot, the I am addicted to masturbation dot, the I feel like I have been punched in the stomach when I see an un-self-conscious pretty girl dot, the I cried a lot when I was little and don’t think I’ve cried at all since puberty dot.

            Fuck I felt all of these. I haven't felt half of these feelings in years but reading them each just felt like a punch in the gut when I remembered. Especially the first and last, although I felt both of those still less than a year ago.

            • ashinadash [she/her]
              ·
              6 months ago

              yea Nevada is Like That tbh, possibly the first time anybody put those feelings onpage in a novel too. It's kinda rad.

              • 🎀 Seryph (She/Her)@lemmygrad.ml
                ·
                6 months ago

                Yeah definitely noticing, very rad.

                Chapter 3 (CW: Suicide)

                That sudden shift of Maria's thoughts towards something suicide-adjacent to avoid thinking about something she doesn't want to think about is... Very close to home. I've definitely done it, but the particular example here also just reminds me of the ideations I used to consistently have during classes when I started thinking a little too much about myself. I'll spare you the details.

                If she were a goth she’d tell you about how broken she is, but since she’s an indie-punk diy book snob, like, here we are.

                Um Maria, have you met book snobs? They love that shit. Or at least the theatre-adjacent ones do. Also she just like me frfr.

                I don't know if I really relate to her emotionlessness and masking, but that's because I think getting on estrogen has mostly helped my old depression symptoms so I can't really relate to them still being there like hers are. Maybe also just me being more neurotypical than she is meant to be. I can still relate to them to an extent but now that its been a few months the feelings almost feel a little alien to me. Odd. Actually wait I just realised this is just a more deadpan version of the thing I do when arguing sometimes where I switch into humour to cope instead of actually engaging with the situation. Somehow never thought of it that way but it makes sense.

                • ashinadash [she/her]
                  ·
                  6 months ago
                  spoiler

                  SHE JUS LIKE ME FR FR, Maria is def not a theatre kid though lmao.

                  Haha look at that, you got got!! A neurodiverse read of Nevada is pretty interesting though, many layers at play.

                  Her bike messenger shit makes me think that Maria Griffiths is transfem Ramona Flowers also. No I will not be taking questions.

                  • 🎀 Seryph (She/Her)@lemmygrad.ml
                    ·
                    6 months ago
                    Chapter 7

                    Her bike messenger shit makes me think that Maria Griffiths is transfem Ramona Flowers also.

                    Oh she absolutely is, I was already mentally imagining her with the same hairstyle, albeit not dyed

                    God the play-argument between Kieran and Maria about Joyce and Acker is so literature student-y. Literally shit I'd argue about before class lmao.

                    but for Kieran it’s like, Fuck yeah! Being trans, all right! Trans guys seem to have this relationship to being trans a lot more often than trans women. It’s understandable. Sometimes trans guys come out of radical activist dyke communities where having a punk rock gender is kind of like, chic, or whatever. Whereas for trans women, this tends not to be the case. When they come out trans women tend not to have the analysis that comes from having existed in a queer community where people talk about gender; the mistake some people make is assuming that this means trans women never put together an analysis.

                    I quite like this passage, while I'm probably closer to the fuck yeah! point than not nowadays, it does touch on why it took me so long to get there and I like that. I don't really have much to add honestly, I just like it.

                    Eventually you can’t help but figure out that, while gender is a construct, so is a traffic light, and if you ignore either of them, you get hit by cars. Which, also, are constructs.

                    I know you discussed this one a few days ago but I didn't say my piece on it since I hadn't read the book. I feel like the analogy is definitely half baked but there is that certain sense of 'Yeah!' when initially reading it. But I think in the context of modern philosophical theories of mind and metaphysics, even mental-oriented ones, it's just overly basic and doesn't consider the further implications of what it's saying since it's more oriented around being quippy and easy to remember. In other words it's perfect characterisation for Maria! She's not me, with my weirdo philosopher brain, she's a tired, emotionally dead woman who can't even finish a damn zine. She cares more about the immediate vibe that something seems right to her rather than actually developing a rigourous understanding. And that's a great character to read! I love it.