consumption (or lack of) as an expression of love

(the gun song, car seat headrest / bones and all, 2022 / things have gotten worse since we last spoke, eric larocca / beach life-in-death, car seat headrest / bones and all, 2022 / famous last words, ethel cain / things have gotten worse since we last spoke, eric larocca / the gun song, car seat headrest)

I know I already made a post critical of Things Have Gotten Worse Since We Last Spoke, but I feel mean today and I want it to be said: Eric LaRocca's writing style is fucking insufferable for horror

‘You can’t play the “gracious host” forever […] This is what you wanted, after all.’

lesbian movies are either the most boring 2 hours of your life or fucked up psychological horror

I remember reading Things Have Gotten Worse Since We Last Spoke for the first time. Can't say it's excessively disturbing, although, some parts still left me deeply affected.

I highlighted a few quotes, and as I went to reread them years later, it occurred to me how similar they sound to what Neil would say.

The mother-hurting-to-protect-thing

The eyes—what have you done to deserve them, Nathaniel, my greatest disappointment?

The "funeral for my former self"

And feeling more like myself when talking to you, because you are amazing! You're amazing, and it's always yes, and you know that I'd give you anything—

And Neil—after so many years running and hiding and keeping to himself—remembering that he has teeth too

I couldn't not write. It was my first fic in English, and I'm rather proud of it no matter what

"At the end of each day, he used to ask me, 'what have you done today to deserve your eyes?'"

Clementine von Radics Mouthful of Forevers, from "That Spring Everything Grew Wild and the Rain Came Down Like Punishment" / @/haraiva (tumblr) / Mitski A Burning Hill / Sophokles Elektra, from "An Oresteia: Agamemnon by Aiskhylos; Elektra by Sophokles; Orestes by Euripides" (tr. Anne Carson) / @/jovialtorchlight (tumblr) / Gillian Flynn Dark Places / Eric LaRocca Things Have Gotten Worse Since We Last Spoke / unknown

i. Clementine von Radics Mouthful of Forevers [ "What no one ever talks about is how dangerous hope can be. Call it forgiveness with teeth." ]

ii. @/haraiva [ Three-paneled comic colored in with crayons. The first panel is the largest. It shows the perspective of the windshield of a car. The second and third panels are smaller than the first and overlap slightly. The second shows rocks by the beach. The third shows a small figure looking up at a mountain range. "I'M SORRY I LEFT SO SUDDENLY / BUT / I MADE UP MY MIND SO LONG AGO !!!" ]

iii. Mitski A Burning Hill [ "I am a forest fire / and I am the fire / and I am the forest / and I am a witness watching it" ]

iv. Sophokles Elektra [ "I am the shape you made me. / Filth teaches filth." ]

v. @/jovialtorchlight [ A pencil sketch of a dog's face. "you made it. you're home. / just as you left it. there's a box / of your favorite cereal / in the cupboard. / your favorite soda is in the fridge. / your favorite movie / is in the VCR. / your safe bed is / made and waiting for you. / this was the final test / and you passed. you can rest now." ]

vi. Gillian Flynn Dark Places [ "I was not a loveable child, and I'd grown into a deeply unloveable adult. Draw a picture of my soul, and it's be a scribble with fangs." ]

vii. Eric LaRocca Things Have Gotten Worse Since We Last Spoke [ "People like to eat other people. I spent so many years forgetting I had teeth, too." ]

ix. unknown [ Two printed images of a woman. The first shows her holding the side of her face, staring at the camera. The second is head-on and shows her looking down and clutching her head. "HAVE DRUGS STOPPED WORKING ?" ]

Have you read...

Sadomasochism. Obsession. Death. A whirlpool of darkness churns at the heart of a macabre ballet between two lonely young women in an internet chat room in the early 2000s—a darkness that threatens to forever transform them once they finally succumb to their most horrific desires. What have you done today to deserve your eyes?

submit a horror book!

sorry agnes petrella and jane prentiss are on my mind. sorry. will happen again

Booktok bitches be like "most horrifying books I've read" and it's just an accurate description of mental illness 🙃

This is genuinely a hilarious way of describing this book

Poorly written. Amateurish. Lacking in any substance. Best character was the tapeworm baby. I wish people would stop hyping up boring shit like this by calling it Problematic and So Fucked Up when the most it deserves is a shoulder shrug and a momentary pause to wonder how such an inadequate author could elicit any sort of response at all, let alone one of shock and appall. If I was this author, I would feel embarassed knowing I published such an incompetent piece of work.

Things Have Gotten Worse Since We Last Spoke is just mediocre shock fiction that would make a decent r/nosleep story. I don't feel like I completely wasted my time reading it, but if all your book has going for it is a very poorly-written lesbian relationship and gross-out horror, the gross-out horror needs to be REALLY good. Also, the two leads write emails in the exact same tryhard way. Not every shade of red mentioned in the book needs to be compared to an artery or an organ in lengthy purple prose by both characters, holy shit.

Also, it frankly feels weird that a nb gay guy would write from the point of view of a lesbian character whose primary motivation (which is brought up out of nowhere) is... to have a baby, and specifically to be pregnant. This story and the dynamic of the central characters would have made so much more sense as a heterosexual relationship, and it would have left less of a bad taste in my mouth (and I say this as a lesbian).

Anyway, I'd give it a 5/10. It was completely average. If you want an actually disgusting and scary horror novel involving a tapeworm, pick up The Troop by Nick Cutter.

still very really right for this one

im so sad that someone on instagram didnt know what body horror was and they made me go into the book with expectations :c

SPOILERS for "Things Have Gotten Worse Since We Last Spoke"

can someone please just explain to me how agnes gouged her eyes out/killed herself with the antique apple peeler bc im watching videos of antique apple peelers and trying to see how that applies to a human head or how it would be able to gouge out eyes?? i'm not making the connection.

also lol did she eat her "baby"? like, was that the implication, harking back to the story about her aunt and the eggs?

im too autistic for splatterpunk as a genre, man. i need ANSWERS!!! i have so many questions, and somehow, "why did i read this?" is not one of them

Tbh in the days since reading things have gotten worse since was last spoke I’ve been ruminating a lot and I think my final conclusion is just….idk it has good ideas but no teeth. Like the concepts were pretty interesting, esp the tapeworm as birth thing. The ending with Agnes and the tapeworm really did hit hard for me for personal reasons. It’s sad certainly. But also it really doesn’t carry the shock that larocca wants it to. Not to mention Agnes’ whole desire for motherhood came out of nowhere. Idk it could have benefitted from slower pacing, and an actually good conclusion. Everything moved too fast, and I think if we sat with the couple, the slow descent would be more effective. Not to mention if they, I don’t know, descended into literally anything. It felt weak, and made it so Agnes’ death felt kinda random and anticlimactic. The only moments where larocca puts any amount of horror into the book is when Agnes is describing things OTHER PEOPLE have done. It’s not even a part of the plot!!! Idk maybe I went in with the wrong expectation. I’d been told it would be like toxic and fucked up and brutal. But instead it was just some cool concepts delivered in a very unsatisfying package

also like larocca is really bad at making these emails sound real good lord