The Former Librarian

"I was a sad, closeted kid when a friend (same one who introduced me to Bowie!) loaned me her stack of Weetzie Bat books, along with some others by Francesca Lia Block. She painted such a hopeful world of queer, magical, arty friends living together. #ThisBookTaughtMeSomething"

Which led me to looking up how people respond to her now and like.

Criticism of her early work in regards to cultural appropriation/terms? Valid! She has very much grown and learned since then!

People calling Weetzie Bat basic, fluff, immature romanticism of queer life, though....?

Fuck you all the way off, lol. It's YA, it's not for your grownass. It was written in the 80s about an LA that doesn't exist anymore, to give HOPE to young LONELY people in the midst of the AIDS crisis, like.

I became insane, with long intervals of horrible sanity.

By Edgar Allan Poe

It was many and many a year ago,

   In a kingdom by the sea,

That a maiden there lived whom you may know

   By the name of Annabel Lee;

And this maiden she lived with no other thought

   Than to love and be loved by me.

I was a child and she was a child,

   In this kingdom by the sea,

But we loved with a love that was more than love—

   I and my Annabel Lee—

With a love that the wingèd seraphs of Heaven

   Coveted her and me.

And this was the reason that, long ago,

   In this kingdom by the sea,

A wind blew out of a cloud, chilling

   My beautiful Annabel Lee;

So that her highborn kinsmen came

   And bore her away from me,

To shut her up in a sepulchre

   In this kingdom by the sea.

The angels, not half so happy in Heaven,

   Went envying her and me—

Yes!—that was the reason (as all men know,

   In this kingdom by the sea)

That the wind came out of the cloud by night,

   Chilling and killing my Annabel Lee.

But our love it was stronger by far than the love

   Of those who were older than we—

   Of many far wiser than we—

And neither the angels in Heaven above

   Nor the demons down under the sea

Can ever dissever my soul from the soul

   Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;

For the moon never beams, without bringing me dreams

   Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;

And the stars never rise, but I feel the bright eyes

   Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;

And so, all the night-tide, I lie down by the side

   Of my darling—my darling—my life and my bride,

   In her sepulchre there by the sea—

Mark Twain in the lab of Nikola Tesla, 1894. He is holding Tesla’s experimental vacuum lamp, powered by a loop of wire which is receiving electromagnetic energy from a Tesla coil (not visible). Tesla’s face is visible in the background.

“We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be.”