GOD LOVES YOU, BUT NOT ENOUGH TO SAVE YOU // GOD AND SUFFERING
Andrew Joseph White Hell Followed With Us // Elizabeth Lindsey Rogers Questions About the Father // Brittany Broski Why I Left the Christian Church // Clarice Lispector (tr. Katrina Dodson) "The Departure of the Train," The Complete Stories // @/katabasiss // "Shiizakana," Hannibal (2013-2015) dir. Michael Rymer // Xooang Choi // Ocean Vuong "Prayer for the Newly Damned," Night Sky with Exit Wounds // The Vaccines Wetsuit // Mitski I'm Your Man // Fall Out Boy Just One Yesterday // Hélène Cixous Readings: The Poetics of Blanchot, Joyce, Kafka, Kleist, Lispector, and Tsvetaeva
As excited as I am for the PJO show I am going to ALWAYS beg people to pirate it!! Every single time!! I love the series just as much as anyone but I'm not gonna pay for these piles of shits!! Yes I'm also talking about Rick!! Him being "Neutral" about the Palestine Genocide is absolutely disgusting!! The idea that people don't care that innocent lives, including infants, are dying day by day is honestly concerning for them!
That being said there are many other authors who do support Palestine 100%!!!
. Andrew Joseph White - Author of "Hell Followed With Us" + "The Spirit Bares Its Teeth"
. Xiran Jay Zhao - Author of "Iron Widow"
. Aiden Thomas - Author of "The Sunbearer Trials" + "Cemetery Boys" + "Lost In The Never Woods"
All books are very Queer and POC also so you'll be supporting those communities as well!!
Please please please feel free to add any authors you can think of that support Palestine!! FREE PALESTINE 🇵🇸!!!
If you liked Camp Damascus, try Hell Followed With Us
and vice versa!
There's a lot to love in both Camp Damascus by @drchucktingle and Hell Followed With Us by Andrew Joseph White. As horror novels about queer youth with, shall we say, complicated relationships with religion, they have a lot in common - if you liked one you very well may like the other. Let's take a closer look.
Characters:
Both books feature queer, autistic youth fighting back. The characters are trying to survive in a world created for them by abusive adults and religious institutions that hold power over them.
In Camp Damascus we follow Rose (autistic, lesbian). In Hell Followed With Us we follow Benji (neurodivergent, trans) and Nick (autistic, gay).
Genre:
Both books are horror, but with two distinct flavors. Camp Damascus has more of a creepy factor, while Hell Followed With Us leans more toward gore. In Camp there is some mystery to the evil, but in Hell the evil has a name, a face, an address - and a to-do list.
Both books deal with Christian cults and the horrors of indoctrination. They deal with the characters' complicated relationships to Christianity as an institution and God as a concept. They also both quote Christian scripture heavily.
Vibes:
While both books are horror, they do feel very different, largely because the primary emotion that drives each story is different. In Camp Damascus, it's love. In Hell Followed With Us, it's rage. You'll certainly find both emotions in certain quantities in either novel, but what they primarily put forward distinctly changes the vibe of both books.
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So there you have it! Two fantastic reads in close thematic conversation with each other - but still quite distinct. If either sounds good to you, do yourself a favor and check out both today!
"I wrote this book for a few reasons: Because I wanted more stories about boys like me. Because I was angry. Because I still am. But mainly, I wanted to show queer kids that they can walk through hell and come out alive. Maybe not in one piece, maybe forever changed, but alive and worthy of love all the same.
"That's what you'll find here. Terrible things, survival, love, and a future worth fighting for.
"Sharpen your teeth, take up your fire, and let's do this."
"For the kids who sharpen their teeth and bite."
I will never be over this book, bro. Just looking back at the author note makes me want to reread it again and I've read it 5 times now. It's a book that makes me want to scream and cry and throw it across the room and vomit up my insides and finally yell at the people who hurt me in the past. It makes me want to reach out to the people I used to know because it reminds me of them. Because Theo reminds me of one of my old best friends because Benji reminds me of myself and so many other beautiful and hurt and angry people because Nick reminds me that I'm not the only one going through this shit right now, that just because I'm neurodivergent doesn't mean I'm automatically weak or broken or less than even though that's what so many people that I grew up around want me to belive.
This book makes me feel so many fucking things at once, and I don't understand half of them, but I have never felt so seen. I have never felt so real and understood. I have exhausted my friends of sharing about it and gushing it, but I don't care because it's a book about boys like me and I can't get enough of it.
For fucks sake, I could already recite half of the god damned bible verses in the book and it made me cringe everytime but it made me feel so fucking seen because I know that I'm not alone in thinking like that. I know other people know that pain of not being able to get away from those verses and quotes, no matter how hard I try.
Andrew Joseph White has touched me in so many fucking ways with his writing, and I don't know how to feel about it, but I know for one thing now, no matter how much shit is thrown at me.
I am not alone, because I am one of the kids who needs to sharpen their teeth, and bite.