Always Autumn Hoplophobia By Autumn Wright • July 17th, 2024 In the great tradition of obscuring the true big bad of its story, the ostensible antagonist of Chainsaw Man is a compelling kaiju.
The Guest Monsterfucking By Amanda Hudgins • July 5th, 2024 Monsterfucking is about showing a mirror to the monstrosity within – both in terms of society and in terms of the relationships between the parties involved.
“Rage, rage against the dying of the light” By Zonghang Zhou • July 3rd, 2024 Though the fear of impending death is rendered moot by respawn mechanics, you know it will eventually run out. Still, you flatly refuse to go gentle into that good night.
Past Presence Killing the Dragon By Emily Price • July 3rd, 2024 Both Dungeon Meshi and the Katamari franchise ask you to zoom in and look closely, keep your eyes peeled for small details, and never forget them even when they’re a speck on the surface of a massive star.
Exploits Feature Three New Novels That Change How You Think about Reality By Kathleen Levitt • July 1st, 2024 The older I get, the more I gravitate towards fiction that messes with the real.
Always Autumn The Worst Case Scenario By Autumn Wright • June 11th, 2024 It’s worth asking whether people in the past thought they lived at the end times. It’s worth more to realize that despite the recurring sentiment, we do.
Mind Palaces Booking It (Vol. 1) By Maddi Chilton • May 30th, 2024 Maddi sets out to read the International Booker Prize longlist, 13 books from around the world that were translated into English within the last year.
Run It Back 1966 By Oluwatayo Adewole • May 28th, 2024 Much like Isherwood, Capote’s writing relies on a gay fly-on-the-wall positioning.
Interlinked A 16-Bit Memorial Garden By Phoenix Simms • April 3rd, 2024 If All the World and Love were Young is not only a stunning elegy for Stephen Sexton’s mother, but an ekphrastic piece about the nature of play and memory.
Mind Palaces Lost in Translation By Maddi Chilton • April 2nd, 2024 I’m reading War and Peace for the first time, and probably the only time, and I’d like to do it right.
Jack of Shadows By Stu Horvath and John McGuire • March 4th, 2024 Revenge is a dish best served over and over and over again.
Mind Palaces Mostly Normal People By Maddi Chilton • February 7th, 2024 In the past few years of weird and superficial social media-based media criticism, a character’s relatability (or, used not synonymously but often close to it, likability) is shorthand for how successful they are within their text.
Self-Insert Mary Sue By Amanda Hudgins • February 2nd, 2024 She is you, a teenager who is stuck in a small town with no friends, with cruel acquaintances who don’t love any of the things that you do, who has been told for years that boys bully you because they like you.
Noah's Beat Box Hip Hop at Fifty By Noah Springer • January 9th, 2024 After stepping back from the contemporary, Noah reflects a bit more on the different eras of hip hop and what they mean to him.
Mind Palaces Shelf Fodder By Maddi Chilton • December 29th, 2023 The sacralization of literature – the item, not the concept – becomes annoying at best when faced with just how much of our literary ephemera is garbage.
A Plague of Denial: The Haunting of One’s Mind By Brea Shanice • October 10th, 2023 How would this version of A Turn of the Screw live up to all the others? I can say without a doubt that I have found a new favorite adaptation.
The Cloven Is A Conspiracy Thriller For Everyone Just Wanting To Exist By Elijah Beahm • September 19th, 2023 This is a cohesive creative vision the likes of which most could only dream of.
Video Game of the Year By Noah Springer • September 15th, 2023 “…an inviting look into the history of the genre since Pong popped into people’s homes all the way back in 1977.”
Noah's Beat Box An Adult Critique of Books for Children By Noah Springer • September 13th, 2023 You know what doesn’t get enough hate in Noah’s opinion? Children’s books.
Mind Palaces Architectural Intent By Maddi Chilton • September 6th, 2023 For a book that is nominally about the hubristic imaginings of a genius architect, Rose/House seems to have no actual interest in architecture.
Self-Insert Mafia By Amanda Hudgins • September 5th, 2023 KinnPorsche is probably the best example of the mafia alternative universe aesthetic. Everyone is beautiful and darkly dressed and prone to drinking and smoking in dark rooms.
Run It Back 1934 By Oluwatayo Adewole • July 27th, 2023 In this case it seems dear reader, that the enemy of our enemy is not quite a friend – or at least they’re one who we shouldn’t invite to stay in our home.
Always Autumn A Golden Halo That Could Be the Sun Part II: The Ones Who Stay and Fight By Autumn Wright • July 13th, 2023 What does it mean to be born of the dead?
Mind Palaces Marathon May By Maddi Chilton • July 5th, 2023 This is not the best way to interact with art, but it’s also hard to see what the alternative is.
Casting Deep Meteo Threading the Timeline By Levi Rubeck • June 9th, 2023 What is myth and legend other than image control, public relations, bending truth into natural blondness (or just that if one’s hair is blond they are a blonde).
Mind Palaces Honor Among Adaptations By Maddi Chilton • May 4th, 2023 A faithful adaptation can be satisfying, but an unfaithful adaptation can be invigorating.
Self-Insert Cisswap By Amanda Hudgins • May 2nd, 2023 Known under many tags (including Rule 63, genderbending, gender swap, Always a Different Sex), cisswap is an fandom device most commonly used to make male characters women.
Empire of the East By Stu Horvath and John McGuire • May 1st, 2023 So wait, demons are nukes? Apparently! At least as far as Fred Saberhagen is concerned.
Self-Insert Thread Fics By Amanda Hudgins • March 28th, 2023 In a lot of ways, Twitter is the home of the thread fic and when it goes, so will they.
Mind Palaces Almost All About Eve By Maddi Chilton • March 3rd, 2023 She was flagrantly, cheerfully, and simply bisexual. Odd that her biographer did not seem to have noticed this.
Past Presence Being So Normal By Emily Price • February 28th, 2023 Sally Rooney books are basically Victorian novels in millennial form, Middlemarch if Dorothea and Lydgate had cell phones and email.
Past Presence Recursion By Emily Price • January 26th, 2023 Over the break, I started playing Dwarf Fortress, a game about avoiding the recurring, inevitable spiral of collapse for as long as you can.
Pentiment: Thirteen Ways to Look at a Murder By Francisco Dominguez • January 10th, 2023 Once you’ve dismantled religious conviction and the formative myths behind a place’s existence, what comes next?
Self-Insert Elevating Trash By Amanda Hudgins • November 30th, 2022 If you, dear reader, are someone who loves Harry Potter, do yourself the service of rereading the series as an adult. Interrogate it. Be prepared to actually know what you’re talking about.
Exploits Feature Les Femmes Grotesques By Noah Springer • November 10th, 2022 Victoria Dalpe’s newest collection of horror shorts offers up visions of the weird and the terrifying that will linger in your head long after you’re done reading.
The Enchanted World By Stu Horvath and John McGuire • October 24th, 2022 “These are the books that let you fly along with the unlucky spirits condemned to haunt the world of the living.”
Always Autumn Another Meaning of the Words By Autumn Wright • October 12th, 2022 The alphabetical arrangement of Alaska for Looking brings attention to the nonmaterial components of text as a mode, and to the construction of the novel as a form rather than material object.
Always Autumn Realism, Reality and the Real By Autumn Wright • September 13th, 2022 A statement of intent.
Interlinked The Hopeful Disharmony of Into the Doomed World By Phoenix Simms • September 8th, 2022 Phoenix talks to Javy Gwaltney about Into the Doomed World, his new short-story collection about 30 self-aware NPCs in a world that’s been sentenced to a slow apocalypse by its player.