When I found out that leech saliva was antimicrobial I decided leeches are good and that disliking them is lookism

Even without a centralized brain, jellyfish can both learn from past events and change their behavior to preempt expected events.

No need to look for aliens in space when we've got plenty of them to make contact with underwater

People said nice things to me and I desired more

It's a good bit

I used to have one based on that odd "racism essentialism" from stuff like White Fragility

YOUR ATTEMPTS AT SYMPATHY ARE AS PITIFUL AS THE ATTEMPTS OF YOUR HAPLOTYPE TO ESCAPE ITS FEAR OF AFRICAN FEATURES kinda thing

EMBRACE DISCO ELYSIAN THOUGHT

SOMEWHERE IN A SAD LITTLE CHURCH THE FUTURE IS DEFEATING THE PAST

You are right, I shouldn't necessarily say "audience," as if he's in command, just that he's clearly capable of being wrapped up into a performance in the manner of an artist. It's something that is supposed to be one of those essentially "good" things, a socially experienced moment of ecstasy, to use your word. By weaving that group experience (something often associated with the essence of being human) with the specific violent character of settler society, your interpretation expands upon mine, so good one there (it has been over a decade since I read it).

Big agree, making him into something supernatural feels like it's just exchanging one metaphor for another

I have a buddy who went into the military and managed to make no friends and absorb nothing while playing monster hunter the entire time, he has my respect

That scene at the end where Holden is playing the violin is great. The judge, the most evil thing McCarthy ever created, plays music, and is good at it, he even feels the rapturous glee of artistic fulfillment as he plays in front of an adoring audience. He is not, in fact, a hollow man, not a demon that will be under your power if you learn his name. He is human, he is doing what he is best at, and reaps the rewards.

McCarthy was very focused on trying to capture and name "evil," and I think with that scene something made sense to me, maybe to him. Evil thrives when you feed it, when you incentivize it. Judge Holden might have wound up being a musician in another world, and never have hurt a fly. But there's a market for evil in Blood Meridian, and Holden discovered at some point that he could provide.

Love that one, George starts that episode out unemployed and is like "I'm a college grad, there has to be something unique I can offer the world" and instead of something that comes from his personal expertise or experience, he discovers that what he has is his hands lol

(I am stealing that rfk line)

I have very few resources to offer anyone in need, as it's really only by my basic unfair privileges as a cis white man that I even have a place to sleep, but I'm just trying to make it clear to the people I know that I have the space to house them/feed them if they are in crisis. Without much else to support them with it feels like the best I can do.

I think I've done too much generational analysis, everywhere I look I see generations. I think it's a millennial thing to do so much generational analysis. Everything feels enveloped in another generation to me. Now I can't tell gen alpha from gen Renaissance, it's all just gen post-agrarian to me now, and I find myself hating those boomer-gatherers for fucking it all up

Yes I'm joking, I just want the chance to luck into being able to write more stuff like it for grocery money

(Feeling smart and getting compliments for something I worked hard on would be nice too I'll admit)

Look I just want someone to say "this book is perfect and will grant you the immortality of a respected artistic legacy and will inspire the entire world ushering in a new era of understanding and enlightenment" is that so much to ask?

Oh I didn't mean to imply that it would be advice from veteran trans people over 30, just that since they are suffering from the worries and uncertainty that is youth on top of being trans, someone a little older might just have something to say with more personal maturity behind it

It kills me when all I can say back to them is "yeah that would be hard, damn"

I hope not, when I say industry guy I just mean another published author who has a bunch of contacts in the biz

This was said to me personally in an email, he's not done reading it yet either

lol I was cooking up a reply about how the abstraction of art makes it so that trans-positive narratives can be written by someone who is just channeling some tiny petty grievance or a vague "live true to yourself" mindset, then I read that quote

really feeling like someone killed a quest npc and we've just been persisting in the doomed world they created

was told my book was "very successful at accomplishing...whatever it's trying to accomplish!" by an industry guy

I hope that's not this reader just being conciliatory because it's firmly in the realm of the Weird and this would mean it's both good and weird