#ask.mj

SO during the song "The Cyborg Slayers" from Dethalbum II, you can kind of hear what sounds like clean singing in the background during the chorus. the mtl fandom wiki has noticed this:

the vocals during that song are very subtle and in the background, so it was hard to know for sure. in "Hatredcopter" and "Blazing Star", it's really obvious that it's meant to be Pickles because he has solo verses (and the listing for "Hatredcopter" has the following):

so i know lots of fans had just assumed Pickles was on vocals during this track, but given the layering of the track and how, Nathan and Pickles are both voiced by Brendon, it's hard to say for sure that it's really Pickles and not just some weird mixing or vocal feedback or what. at least that was how i felt! and clearly the Dethklok wiki felt the same since it had never confirmed this, even after modern fans started updating it.

SO..."The Cyborg Slayers" had its LIVE DEBUT this show, along with a totally snazzy new video. and i MEAN snazzy, i saw the "Mutilation on a Saturday Night" video from fan recordings. that was not it....THIS was it. it had reused animation sure, but all the MVs do. but it ALSO had brand new animations completely. i really hope it gets a full HQ release, but i doubt it since Mutilation still hasn't had its full release (or the full MVs for "Aortic Desecration" and "SOS"), and neither has other songs performed live, both for the first time during this tour or previously, that had MVs made specifically for them. you're already here for spoiler territory, i'll tell you there's one other song that gets its live debut during this tour (but its video is already available HQ online...) and there's another song that i previously hadn't seen live but was performed in 2012. its video from back then and now is not available HQ online which really sucks.

i lost track of my point ANYWAY THE CYBORG SLAYERS WAS PERFORMED LIVE, and...okay i think you pieced it together lol, brendon sang parts of the chorus with his Pickles singing voice. that's it. :) i posted my partial recording of it, flashing lights warning

i didn’t make notes in this book as i was reading it like i fucking should have but luckily my library has it available as an ebook so i’m skimming through that trying to pull quotes and job my memory. however because of that some of the page number citations i’m giving might be off. i’m still including them for reference, but i might misestimate by a page or so.

here’s the basic premise: it follows a lesbian author named Astrid who accidentally gets canceled and ousted from her sapphic writing group, meanwhile there’s a love triangle between her, a grad student in her writing group named Ivy, and her older neighbor Penelope. on top of all this she’s working on getting one of her books adapted into a tv show. can you see how i was lured into thinking this book would be good.

so the thing about this book is i thought i would agree with the protagonist more because god knows i have my own complicated feelings about like the general “queer community” and especially its treatment of lesbians. that’s a conversation for another day, but in the second chapter i highlight this quote regarding the term sapphic:

It’s not that I have anything against Sappho; obviously, I stan a girl-crazy lesbian poet. And I understand the appeal of sapphic as a vaguely chic euphemism for lesbian. But recently words like sapphic and queer feel a bit corporate and TikTok-y. I don’t use TikTok because it makes me feel like I’m having a seizure, but suddenly I can’t open Instagram without being bombarded by some “sapphic bookstagrammer” or “queer radical sex therapist.” And, I don’t know, maybe I miss when homosexuality was a little less corny? I prefer the word lesbian because it conjures a less cringe, more libidinous past. (p. 9)

okay i definitely thought i was like “okay she’s harsh but she’s saying stuff that i and probably a lot of other dykes are feeling. cool!” she also prefers to call herself a dyke. this is where it fucking ends. this was the most i was endeared to her in the book it’s all downhill from here. literally in that same chapter she complains about how someone in her writing group once tried to kick her out for having not read stone butch blues. and that was the first time my eyebrow went up. like. hey. what do you mean by that. that’s not something people do? like yeah i would be a little confused if someone in a sapphic writing group hadn’t read a classic of lesbian literature but it’s not the only classic. like i haven’t read any lesbian pulp novels in full. but it’s how astrid tells us this information that annoys me. “[She] tried to kick me out of the group because I hadn’t read—I kid you not—Stone Butch Blues” (p. 11). i can’t gauge astrid’s cheeky tone here, but it sounds like she’s implying that that’s such a stupid book to get upset about someone having not read.

for some context, she’s a lipstick lesbian. not a butch not a femme. a lipstick lesbian. not that you CAN’T call yourself a dyke about it, but i have to establish this early so some of her actions make sense as to why they icked me out so bad. it’s why the stone butch blues comment made me uneasy. she’s not in the butchfemme community, fucking of course she’s not gonna care about that book. though that book has also been freely accessible and downloadable LEGALLY for over a decade, so her excuse is literally just “i don’t care.” she doesn’t have to care. you don’t have to like it. but that’s just the start.

i think her writing group is interesting because it COULD have something to say about faux inclusivity in wlw spaces. and i mean faux inclusivity. they have man moderator who writes lesbian erotica under a female pseudonym. that’s strange but it’s never really explored outside of astrid complaining about it and one of the other members brushing it off. idk, that could be something to explore about how tme wlw spaces will pretend to be progressive by including trans men but excluding trans women. or if he isn’t a trans man maybe he could have been writing under a female persona to explore closeted gender feelings and later comes out as a trans woman? but no it’s just a hollow “a man is in a women’s space” throwaway thing that means nothing. and look all i have to say is if he IS a purely cis man, no gender feelings or anything, he would not be fucking included in the group. idc how faux progressive they are, he wouldn’t be included and he CERTAINLY wouldn’t be a mod. this isn’t a thing that happens.

so she’s canceled. you might wonder why. sometimes books like this try to make a point about how cancel culture is so insane that your whole career can go under just for being off-color once. and that’s uh. kinda what they’re going for. she’s canceled for saying “faggot.” but more specifically, she’s canceled for calling herself “a female faggot.” in an interview. promoting her books. she called herself a fucking female faggot. A CISGENDER LIPSTICK LESBIAN WHO IS ONLY ATTRACTED TO OTHER LIPSTICK (and arguably chapstick) LESBIANS CALLED HERSELF A FEMALE FAGGOT IM GONNA CHEW THE FUCKING WALLS. NO SHIT YOU GOT CANCELED. HERE IS THE FULL FUCKING PASSAGE BECAUSE IT GETS WORSE:

I was being interviewed by this sycophantic gay man whose books I’d never read and despite his effusive compliments, I was certain he hadn’t read mine either. During the Q&A, he asked me about my sexuality, a question I always hate. Not because I have any doubts or discomfort about my sexuality, but because lesbians make everyone uncomfortable. With gay men, it’s completely different. The sex act is unsettling to people, has been criminalized at various points throughout history, but their partnering is championed, met with parades and rainbow flags and pride. With lesbians, it’s the opposite. The sex act is eroticized, drives the entire porn industry (so I’ve heard!), but our partner is unnerving to people. So, whenever I’m asked about my sexuality, it triggers a bit of panic. I could just identify as queer and calm everyone down, but when have I ever made anything easy for myself? Otto happened to be in town for the big Barnes & Noble interview and beforehand we went to the Cheesecake Factory where I chugged skinny margaritas on amphetamines and started joking about how I am a female faggot. I identified as a twink for a while, but I’ve obviously aged out of that. I’ve always felt close to gay male culture—uppers and camp and Azealia Banks. Like Camille Paglia said: “When I meet gay men anywhere in the world, there is a spontaneity and a spirit of fun and mischief that lesbians seem incapable of.” I suppose in aligning myself with gay men, I was participating in a subconscious form of lesbian erasure. And I was participating in a louder form of lesbian erasure that day when I looked the sycophantic gay man (Tyler? Kyler?) in the eye and said I “don’t vibe with dykes” and “identify as a female faggot.” I was expecting raucous laughter, hoots and hollers, wild applause. But instead, there was silence. Tyler/Kyler cleared his throat and said he took offense to that word coming out of the mouth of a “pretty girl,” someone who had clearly “not been bullied for roller skating down the street singing Britney Spears at the top of his lungs every day in elementary school.” And then came the enthusiastic cheering and laughter I had expected from my own answer, and I cheered along with them simply because Tyler/Kyler called me pretty. (pp. 44-45)

i’m not gonna get into discourse on whether or not lesbians can say faggot or call themselves that, that’s not the point here. the point is that regardless of your opinion, SHE is not the type of person to call herself a faggot. SHE is straight-passing (and spare me the discourse on that term too because those are HER WORDS—“the publishing world simply sees me as white and cis and straight-passing, which I am” (p. 46)) and is only ever interested in other women who would likely also be described as straight-passing (with one exception which we’ll fucking get to). that word does not apply to her in any universe. but don’t worry, her dyke mike token gay best friends Zev and Otto thins it’s fine. oh and also she says earlier, “fags are men who partner with men and are therefore the most powerful people in society, and I am a women who partners with women and therefore the most devalued” (p. 27). okay. so by that logic, she categorically is NOT a fag?? even if she were a “female faggot” wouldn’t that imply she’s straight? oh my god she’s so stupid but she thinks she’s so profound. and the fucking comment the gay interviewer has, give me a fucking break. whatever jesus christ we're not even fifty pages in.

oh but remeber how i said she prefers to call herself a dyke? but she just said she doesn’t vibe with dykes? YEAH. THAT STILL STANDS. she’s so filled with internalized lesbophobia that she doesn’t fucking recognize as lesbophobia. she just only cares about lesbians who look and act like her.

anyway this whole time astrid and ivy are flirting together and ivy brings up this interview and says she agreed with astrid cool. anyway. she’s also getting to know her apparent militant vegan older neighbor penelope who is a lesbian but despite being a militant vegan is still making a non-vegan cake for her ex-girlfriend. astrid gets super high while at dinner with her it legitimately does not matter, she’s hooking up with ivy anyway. i don’t fucking have time for this. HEY WOW WHY SKIMMING THIS BOOK I FORGOT SHE FUCKING COMPARED HERSELF TO KANYE WEST WHEN TRYING TO JUSTIFY HER BEHAVIOR TO HER AGENT HOLY ShIT.

she plagiarizes a pulp novel to turn in to her writing group, because she can’t be bothered to work on any original stuff, which she’s still in for some reason despite them being faux progressive and her being canceled and also being an author far more successful than any of them given that her book is currently in the process of getting a television adaptation.

also if i get into every single instance of this we'll be here for forever, but she constantly has these little asides about bisexuality/pansexuality that just come off as annoying at best and prejudiced at worst. i'm not bi, idk how much of these would be actually considered biphobic or just her being obnoxious, but it’s worth pointing out.

okay. this is the part that if i were any stronger, i simply would have DNF’d this book. but i had to see where this trainwreck went. astrid had just gone on a bender with ivy and hooked up with her. she ends up sleeping through a meeting with the studio and actress who are working on making her book a tv show, but her agent is able to get her into another meeting the next day. the people on the zoom call are Allison (astrid’s agent), Maude (a producer), Rye (a nonbinary blue-haired producer with pronouns I’M NOT JOKING), and Kat Gold (the actress and executive producer who wants to play the lead and is kind of sycophantic to astrid, she apparently loved the female faggot thing too). it is quite long, but i will now present in full the passage:

“Maude, you had one other thing you wanted to address, right?” “Yeah,” Maude says. She shuffles a stack of papers and clears her throat, and I brace myself. “So, we were thinking of ways to maybe, like, queerize the adaptation a bit. We love your voice and the story, but we think the older lesbian character is maybe a bit… dated?” Before I can really process what Maude is saying, blood rises in my chest. Allison looks at me with the most threatening eyes. “Rye had some interesting thoughts about this,” Maude says. “I’ll hand it over to them.” The person with blue hair who shuddered earlier starts talking. “Yeah, so, like Maude said, I was feeling a little alienated by the lesbian character, who felt maybe almost offensive to me? I know you’re being satirical, but I’m not sure it will translate that way on the screen.” I have a new private message from Allison. Take a deep breath. Think before you speak. Or let me speak for you. “I was thinking we could maybe get rid of her, or combine the two main characters,” Rye continues. “That they could be one main character, maybe nonbinary to modernize it a bit, which we all know Kat would totally slay.” Rye pauses, and yasses ripple around the Zoom. “I’ve always wanted to play nonbinary,” Kat Gold says. “I feel super oppressed by the gender binary all the time.” Blood continues to rise. Another message from Agent Allison. Breathe. “And their love interest could be queer or pansexual?” Rye continues, “I just feel like lesbians these days have a kind of alienating connotation, like I don’t want to use the word TERF, but—” “This is so dumb, I’m sorry.” I’m speaking, and Allison’s eyes are begging me to stop and she’s messaging me, but I am at the point of no return, a tea kettle reaching a boil. “You know they sell ‘Nonbinary Legend’ T-shirts at Target? Nike hands out ‘They/Them athlete’ pins at the door. There is nothing subversive or hip or progressive about making this adaptation nonbinary. It’s positively corporate!—” “Astrid,” Allison cuts me off. “I’m not done,” I say, feeling mildly possessed. “If you’re interested in me, in my book, in my writing, a big part of that is its femininity. I care about women, our stories, our experiences.” I’m not sure this is even true. I mostly write to make myself laugh. “And writing about lesbians does not make me a TERF.” I’m scared to look at the incoming messages from Agent Allison. Rye’s little Zoom square disappears. “Well,” Maude says. “Now seems like a good time as any to wrap it up. You’ve certainly given us a lot to think about, Astrid.” “Amen to that,” says Kat Gold with an unreadable tone. The Zoom meeting evaporates like mist. (pp. 100-102)

reading that again sent me into a fucking tailspin. i forgot how fucking terrible this is ohhhhh my GOD. OH MY FUCKING GOD. WHERE THE FUCK DO WE EVEN START.

i have absolutely no doubt in my soul that there are certain corporate or even queer entities out there who are interested in erasing lesbianism. believe me, i have been out as a lesbian on the internet and in real life for almost ten years now. i KNOW this shit. i KNOW this happens. it is the way this is presented that makes my blood fucking boil and not the way Dorn wants it to. first of all? getting the fucking blue-haired nonbinary person to be the mouthpiece for the lesbophobia is fucking vile. this is the only trans representation in the entire book, by the fucking way. yes, there are absolutely some queers out there who do hold this stupid fucking “lesbian = terf” ideology. i see it fucking everywhere. i too have been accused of being a terf by bad faith queers, just for being a lesbian expressing that i’m not attracted to men. i get it. this shit happens. some bad faith queers even do imply that lesbianism (and even all homosexuality) is regressive. but having your only non-gay/lesbian queer character being the one to say this, having your only TRANS character being the one to say this, is so fucking vicious for no reason. for astrid to act as though nonbinary people are more broadly accepted than lesbians is fucking laughable. oh so you can get a rainbow capitalism nonbinary t-shirt at target? guess what. YOU CAN GET A RAINBOW CAPITALISM LESBIAN T-SHIRT AT TARGET TOO. LOOK AT THIS. oh but that was only in 2023. when was this book published? oh. 2024. SO WHAT THE FUCK IS YOUR POINT ASTRID???

and THEN because Dorn clearly has never spoken to a nonbinary person in her fucking life, rye says that kat should play the newly nonbinary protagonist. because of COURSE the queer person arguing for more queer representation in the show would then say that the CIS WOMAN SHOULD PLAY A NONBINARY CHARACTER. ARE YOU FUCKINGGGGGGGGGG STUPID. i can pull exactly one example off the top of my head where a character was changed from being a cis woman in the book to a nonbinary person in the adaptation: Pin-Lee from the Murderbot series. in the books (which are delightful), Pin-Lee is a cis woman. in the tv show (which is a fucking JOY), Pin-Lee is nonbinary. and this was changed. because. the actor for Pin-Lee (Sabrina Wu). IS. FUCKING. NONBINARY. I AM TRYING SO HARD NOT TO SCREAM IN MY OFFICE RIGHT NOW. THIS WHOLE SCENE IS A FUCKING JOKE. IT'S FUCKING DISRESPECTFUL, AND ANY POINT IT COULD HAVE MADE IS COMPLETELY UNDERMINED BY THE OBVIOUSNESS WITH WHICH DORN FUCKING HATES BI/PAN PEOPLE AND TRANS PEOPLE. astrid claims to not be a terf but frankly at this point, we have no reason to believe that! her only interactions with trans characters are with rye, and she seems to hate rye just for existing with blue hair and pronouns. again, i too would be very angry if someone took my canonically lesbian characters and tried to change that about them. that would piss me off, especially if it was only for shallow “representation” lip service and not for any actual reason that would make sense to anyone (rye also mentions the character feeling offensive or outdated or satirical but we don’t really know what that means and the only way to find out is to read the ACTUAL IN REAL LIFE BOOK that Dorn wrote and published under astrid’s name. which is cute whatever i’m not fucking reading it just to understand this story. or ever). and i know that astrid is supposed to be kind of an asshole who speaks without thinking, but i genuinely think the book is trying to paint her as being in the right here, if only harsh. and she is right in not wanting people to fuck with her book, but jesus christ. you can portray this without being so fucking hateful.

so let’s move the fuck on because we are still not done with this hateful book. in one of the meetings with the stupid fucking sapphic writing group, we’re reminded ivy still lives with her ex-gf who’s butch. HEY A BUTCH. GUESS WHAT SHE’S EVIL. they get into a muted fight while on zoom until the butch slams ivy’s computer shut. cool. love that the only butch representation is portrayed as angry and physical with her ex, literally described as UNSTABLE, this is so GREAT I LOVE THIS BOOK. (oh don’t worry this will get subverted just you wait.)

meanwhile penelope is also being absolutely nothing but lovely to astrid but astrid fucking hates her. astrid claims to love women but she seems to hate nearly every woman in this book. and i’m not saying you have to get along with every single woman ever, but astrid only has one fucking female friend who i didn’t mention till now BECAUSE SHE LITERALLY DOES NOT MATTER TO THE STORY. all she is is the local lesbian slut who has like slept with every lesbian ever so she’s able to tell astrid who penelope is and later on who ivy’s ex is. THAT IS THE ONLY PURPOSE OF ASTRID’S ONLY FEMALE FRIEND. she has the women she sleeps with, the women she hates, and her gay besties. that’s it. astrid gets spit at by some liberal “bottoms for hillary” (YES REALLY) tank top wearing twink at a bar over the female faggot comment and i think that was the first and last time i smiled during this book. anyway i wanna include this passage too because it’s also fucking annoying and because i think it is a good way of showing how 1) astrid doesn’t actually love women like she claims, 2) Dorn clearly also has absolutely no respect for gay men despite pretending she does:

“You did a book event with my friend Kyler,” he says, and takes a sip of his hot pink frozen drink I didn’t notice before. “At Barnes & Noble.” I gulp my no-longer-virgin margarita. Apparently sensing my discomfort and the twink’s innately nefarious nature, Otto comes over and puts an arm around me. “What’s up?” Otto says. The twink glares, impervious to Otto’s eight-pack and piercing blue eyes. He’s out for blood. “You know your friend here”—he looks right at me and lowers his voice to a whisper—“said faggot.” He sips his drink again. “In a Barnes & Noble.” Otto rolls his eyes. “God, this again,” Otto says. “She is a faggot! She watches Bravo nonstop, counts calories excessively, and she’s Azealia Banks’s biggest fan. All her friends are gay men, and she can’t even look at a woman without trying to lick her pussy.” Penelope stifles a laugh, and I glare at her, then glare at Otto, shuddering at his crude and masculine reduction of lesbian behavior. “Astrid can say faggot,” Otto says. The bartender who slipped me the alcohol looks over at us. Otto lowers his voice. “It’s old news, queen,” he hisses at the twink. “She’s a Karen,” the twink says. Otto rolls his eyes again, this time more theatrically. “She’s not a Karen, she’s a feral faggot with little to no impulse control.” Penelope unleashes a laugh this time. “Why don’t you get lost?” Otto says. “Go bottom for Hillary.” The twink spits in my direction, then skips off to a gaggle of similarly corny, triangularly shaped men who are all saying yasss. (pp. 127-128)

wow that passage is almost as evil as the one with rye. jesus christ. i dont feel like dissecting it like the last one. just. this is fucking unbearable. this is so fucking unbearable. we’re not even halfway done i’m so sorry. but this is the turning point that finally makes astrid decide she likes penelope because SURPRISE. PENELOPE THINKS ASTRID DID NOTHING WRONG. astrid only likes women who fucking reaffirm her and all her toxic behaviors and she is never once fucking called out for this.

astrid is hanging out with kat, and ivy does not like that, claiming ivy just preys on dykes or whatever. then ivy acts super pissed and jealous because astrid hangs out with penelope as though ivy herself isn’t LIVING WITH HER EX. oh and astrid also has an evil ex. named DEVON. WHEN I SAW THIS NAME I WANTED TO SCREAM. but whatever ivy acts insane and yells at astrid and penelope, she tells penelope astrid hates her which like. yeah is fucking true. as revenge, in the next writing meeting, ivy reveals that astrid had plagiarized her draft from the original pulp novel Perfume and Pain (HEY THAT’S THE NAME OF THE BOOK).

zev calls astrid out for being selfish like constantly and i think that’s fucking fair but it still doesn’t even help really because this call-out only comes after the first event in the book where i would argue the bad thing that happened to her was not her goddamn fault. so ivy has blocked astrid everywhere, and she apparently runs a tumblr blog where she gives lots of humiliating and vile details about her experiences with specific people, including sexual details. she changes the names in the post but not in any way that it would make it impossible to identify them. anyway, she’s posted about astrid now. astrid doesn’t wanna look, but she’s very anxious because her toxic jaded former lover has just posted all about their sex life, and astrid is already a very public, very hated figure. like that’s a very fucked up situation to be in. that’s what she’s going through. and THAT is when zev decides to yell at her for always making every conversation about “Astrid’s never-ending cycle of self-created melodrama” (p. 198). and here she cries for being a bad friend, because she is. but also??? is NOW the fucking time to call her out for it?? when her toxic ex-lover has just publicly posted private details she was sharing with a lover?? this is the ONE problem she has had where it is NOT her fault, but astrid seems to believe zev for this. and so because this is the climax for someone finally calling her out, she still is NEVER fucking called out for all the terrible things that ARE her fault. EVERYONE IN THIS BOOK SUCKS SO MUCH.

slight intermission between act 2 and act 3; which funnily enough this book is broken up into 3 acts but not in any way that makes sense. this is naturally where act 2 would end and act 3 would begin, right? usually that point is when there is some kind of massive explosion, where the hero feels hopeless, where even other characters have turned against them, etc. no but apparently according to Dorn we’re still in act 2 for some ungodly reason. and i’m taking this intermission because i fucking despise the writing style here so much. i can be fine with a lot of one-sentence paragraphs or casual narration that makes the reader feel like they’re having a conversation with the narrator, but jesus. this one overdoes it so much. astrid’s head is insufferable to be inside, and she has so many meaningless one-sentence paragraphs that add nothing. one-sentence paragraphs should be impactful. they should punctuate something poignant or surprising. Dorn is overusing them at this point, especially during astrid’s interactions with penelope during this part of the novel. i think she’s trying to emphasize the sexual tension between the two. tell me if any of these one-sentence paragraphs that are all fucking back to back are being used impactfully to express sexual tension:

Penelope sits on the burgundy couch adjacent to mine. We’re silent for a moment. Nervous tension ripples through the room. Chan croons. “I’m sorry I’ve been kind of weird the past few days,” Penelope says finally. I’m glad she’s acknowledging it. I thought I was imagining it. Just inventing melodramas like Zev said. “I felt like you were avoiding me?” I say, and cringe at my own uptalk. “I was,” Penelope says, and I feel slightly less crazy, but also hurt. Penelope was avoiding me. She cuts a piece of vegan cheese and puts it on a cracker. I follow suit. We both bite into the cheese crackers, apparently thinking the other would fill the silence while we ate. Instead, we crunch, and we laugh. “Avoiding me why?” I say when I swallow. Penelope sighs, then washes down her cracker with a big sip of wine. “I’m a bit nervous,” she says. I slide my green amethyst along its chain. “Me too,” I say. “We can talk about something else.” Penelope smiles. (pp. 218-219)

these many one-line paragraphs back to back don’t have any impact. they’re boring. they’re remedial. the writing in this book is just as bad as the story. well. maybe not that bad. skipping ahead.

penelope and astrid hook up ad there’s 5000 more one-line paragraphs. but then penelope moves away oh noooo what will happen? astrid goes off the deep end in a bender and act 3 officially starts, according to Dorn. twitter finds ivy’s tumblr post which absolutely rips her to shreds and, again, does not fucking hide her identity at all (calling her Asterix Doll instead of Astrid Dahl and referring to her as a published author and even mentioning specific details about her published books). even though it may not all be horrible sordid details about their sex life, it still is just needlessly cruel. this is the only bad thing she doesn’t deserve, and somehow this is what cancels her. even the fucking plagiarism is brought up but it’s so nothing because it’s in a WORKSHOP. yeah plagiarism is bad, but sending in 7 pages of someone else’s book as a draft in a workshop, while still shitty, is hardly worth any of that time and energy.

anyway big plot twist (jazz hands) ivy’s ex wasn’t actually her ex. she was her CURRENT girlfriend while ivy and astrid were hooking up, she’s only her ex NOW, and her name is Joey. joey shows up at astrid’s how because ivy’s disappeared or whatever. ivy just says she hasn’t seen her and that’s the end of it. astrid apologizes to her writing group, rye got fucking fired i don’t remember that but astrid tries to plead for them to get their job back. this is all so shallow and i don’t believe for a second astrid actually regrets any of her actions. she just seems to feel bad because her career and her life is tanking. rye doesn’t even get their job back they turn it down, and kat gets canceled for making out with some republican politician. but anyway despite all the fucking media fire around astrid SHE STILL GETS HER TV SHOW MADE. SERIOUSLY???? DO YOU SEE WHAT I MEAN. NO ACTUAL CONSEQUENCES. she got the fucking trans person fired and then STILL got to make her show.

she crosses paths with penelope’s former lover and then later with penelope herself, years later. and they hook up. the end.

this book is so fucking miserable. it’s self-fellating written by someone who clearly thinks she’s smarter than she is. i love books with unlikable protagonists, but i need some kind of fucking concrete consequences or at the very least for the narrative to act as though they’re wrong. there’s no fucking concrete consequences to getting momentarily canceled on twitter MULTIPLE TIMES but still getting a tv show and ANOTHER book deal. this book is biphobic, enbyphobic, butchphobic, and even lowkey lesbophobic and homophobic and misogynistic! even if it turns out the butch isn’t fucking abusive like we’re led to believe, she still is given NOTHING. the disdain Dorn and astrid seem to have for anyone outside of straight-passing, self-hating lesbian women is fucking palpable, no matter what they try to convince us. this is astrid’s CORPORATE APPROVED statement on her writing:

I’m primarily concerned with writing stories that make women proud to love women instead of ashamed, like I used to be. I want to speak to young women who are afraid to come out because they don’t see themselves reflected in ... queer culture. Because they are feminine. Because they wear dresses and ribbons ... and have zero interest in home improvement. And because they’re attracted to femininity too. And when they hear the word lesbian, they imagine a volleyball coach or a woman in unflattering cargo shorts. ... Or a femme woman with a butch dyke, which looks identical to heterosexuality, to their parents, to the sexless partnership they’re dying to avoid. And for feminine-presenting out ... queers, who hear wildly homophobic statements in their presence because they don’t look the way society has been told gay women look. I want to remind lesbians it’s okay to revel in the feminine, to be frivolous, submissive, a brat. That we can be sexy and glamorous, and in fact, we’ve always been sexy and glamorous. That Sappho, and Marie Antoinette, and Virginia Woolf, and Patricia Highsmith were all dimes. That the word lesbian, unlike the word gay or queer or fag or dyke, has glamorous and not derogatory origins, of an idyllic Greek island where feminine women loved feminine women and truly lived it the fuck up! And that by identifying as lesbians rather than queer, we honor this legendary history. (pp. 160-161)

i have similar feelings regarding my preference for the word lesbian, but expressed like this is fucking disrespectful. butch/femme is heteronormative, give me a fucking break. and Dorn certainly doesn’t seem interesting in subverting that given the only butch in the novel is portrayed as pathetic, slightly volatile, and desperately in love with her toxic on-again/off-again girlfriend, and we never fucking see her again after she confirms ivy’s alive, so i guess we’re meant to believe ivy will torment this woman for the rest of her days. but, hey, i guess according to astrid’s statement, she deserves it for daring to replicate heterosexuality. this book is like the fucking meme of “good argument, unfortunately i have already drawn you as the soyjack and myself as the chad” but 300 pages.

i hate this fucking book. i hate this fucking book for trying to pretend it cares about women and lesbians. i hate this fucking book for holding disdain for anyone different from our protagonist. i hate this fucking book for giving astrid a happy ending with penelope, a woman astrid does not deserve in the SLIGHTEST. i hate this fucking victim complex, and maybe if i am filled with enough hate, i’ll read astrid’s actual book and review that one too. jesus.

i’m gonna look at their major interactions throughout the series so we’re on the same page.

“writersklok” - abigail is hired, nathan doesn’t like that she’s here (either because she’s not dick or because she’s trying to change things or both) and he tries to get rid of her.

“going downklok” - nathan is trapped in the sub for months with no groupies and not allowed to jack off. he briefly thinks about how having sex with abigail would be fun but doesn’t think he’s allowed to. pickles tells him that may not be the case, and he gets further interest in her. he still doesn’t pursue her for weeks, even despite having a small rivalry with pickles about it. he goes down on her, she runs off, he’s upset because he had to be a service top for once.

“dethdinner” - abigail dodges nathan’s calls after their sexual encounter. he tells skwisgaar he’s probably gonna marry her and have kids with her, he tries to force a connection with her in the album credits, he announces that they’re dating even though, again, she hasn’t spoken to him since the sub.

“breakupklok” - abigail officially quits as dethklok’s producer, saying the relationship was no longer professional.

“the church of the black klok” - nathan apologizes to pickles and tells him that he doesn’t even want abigail if it means he can’t have pickles. abigail is moved by this show of genuine emotion. and then revengeance happens. notably, pickles is the one who reminds everyone else that they have to rescue abigail in turn with toki.

DSR - nathan thinks about abigail while they’re partying around the world. he thinks about her purely in sexual terms, with her giving him a blowjob and having much larger breasts than she actually does. when she’s rescued, she’s either in skwisgaar’s arms or on the floor. she and nathan kiss.

AOTD - nathan decides he might want to quit music and focus on life instead, pursuing a life with someone he “likes.” he proposes to abigail when she comes to the funeral, telling her she’s the only thing that makes sense. she declines, telling him they weren’t even dating and that she only kissed him because he saved her life. she wishes him well and leaves. nathan and the rest of the band continually says she broke up with him, despite (again) that they were never dating. nathan wants to have a conversation with her but can’t, and when connecting each of the giant aux cords, he apologizes to an abigail that isn’t there, telling her he respects her and wants her to be happy. he also tells pickles that he and abigail never had sex and that if they’d had it wouldn’t have been right.

let’s cut out moments that are either purely sexual in motivation or otherwise platonic. that cuts out “writersklok,” “going downklok,” “breakupklok,” and DSR.

with “the church of the black klok,” this could also be considered a pseudo “breakup” with abigail, as nathan explicitly expresses how he is prioritizing his relationship with pickles over any potential relationship with abigail.

with AOTD, there is also a “breakup” and nathan expressing that he’s moving on from her. however, even the way he expresses feelings to her feel less like genuine romantic interest and more desperation. nathan is dealing with intense PTSD and wants to return to some sort of semblancy of normal. abigail is the perfect vessel to project that onto, and he even never says he loves her. he says he likes her, and he later says he respects her. we can’t really go off any kind of genuine romantic interest here, i think. he wasn’t thinking clearly, and even he didn’t believe he was in love with her. he had definitely deluded himself into thinking they had a relationship that she could “break up,” but again, i’m taking everything he did while he was on xanax and traumatized and depressed and dealing with the weight of the world with a grain of salt.

that leaves “dethdinner,” which i’d say is the strongest argument in favor of nathan having actual romantic interest in abigail—not just sexual desire and not drugged up lunacy. he’s calling her, telling her their moment meant a lot to him, planning their future, and calling her his girlfriend. i could definitely see the argument here that she’s a love interest, as this is the only time any of his romantic feelings for her seem genuine and don’t just seem like sexual desire.

however, and this is getting more into a headcanon/theory territory, i still don’t know if it is genuine. now we know nathan feels things very strongly and that he has had girlfriends before. each of them were very different, though.

rebecca nightrod was verbally abusive and he hated her, though he still felt a sense of betrayal when she cheated on him in her coma, he still devoted himself to her despite hating her. he saw her in her comatose state as the perfect girlfriend, because she could no longer berate him or tell him what to do. yes she was terrible, but the coma was the perfect get out of jail free card, and instead of taking it, he stayed with her. he loves the idea of a girlfriend, even one who’s terrible to him or fucking comatose, but he doesn’t seem to have interest in having to be an active boyfriend.

his different dates in “klokblocked” were never really girlfriends. even when nathan stopped seeing rachel and the band was upset, he insisted that he was never in a relationship with rachel. and of course he never got too close to the other girls because he didn’t like seeing his bandmates with them.

then trindle oh trindle. this is the only girl that nathan seems to really have fallen for. honestly, i mean that even more than abigail. he was much more distraught at the idea of trindle cheating on him. plus he actually spent time with her. like, a lot of time. they made out constantly. though that’s the other thing too. trindle’s relationship with nathan was almost exclusively sexual, the only difference was the label of girlfriend. but she was still seen as a crazy fan, and she never grew past that because she was basically bjork stalker level of crazy. but nathan dated a fan not necessarily because he liked her but because she was obsessed with him and she liked to flash him and suck his dick.

nathan, god i love him sweet as sugar and just as smart, though he’s the only one with several on-screen romances, doesn’t seem to actually want romance. he wants sex, obviously, and he wants the idea of a girlfriend or a wife. but does he actually want it? he stopped seeing so many girls just because his bandmates befriended them and made it difficult for him to have alone time with them. he got lucky that his bandmates didn’t see the girls as a threat and instead as potential additions to their group. that’s an ideal situation, but he still threw it away because it meant he couldn’t fuck them immediately.

so it’s basically my theory that nathan never had genuine romantic interest in abigail. she was another girl that he could potentially use to have his idea of a relationship, but he knew nothing about her. he only seemed to be pursuing her romantically just because they had a sexual encounter that he didn’t even enjoy. it feels to me more like obligation. i’m not saying he wouldn’t have wanted to be with her, he did keep pursuing her, but i doubt how much of that is because he likes her as a person and how much of that is because he wants her sexually.

Truthfully, Devon hadn't known better. He still probably should have thrown out the raw meat in the fridge once it had started to spoil, but he had he known how Abigail would react upon its discovery, he wouldn't have been so careless. It wasn't even that old, just enough for the smell to kick in. But that was all that was needed.

As the acrid, almost ammonia-like scent of rotting flesh hit Abigail's nose, she threw a hand over her mouth and nose, desperate to block it out. Her mind filled in the gaps in her sight, watching non existent maggots curl in and out of the meat. She doubled back from the fridge, eyes twisted shut in fear and disgust, curling in on herself.

She burned. She felt her tattoos burn. No, not her tattoos. She didn't have tattoos, she had a gaping, poorly-stitched together wound in her back and exiting out her front. The bright overhead lights stung her retinas, so used to squinting in the dark. She couldn't breathe.

The weight of the iron collar around her neck, chaining her to the ground, wasn't actually there. But the mental weight kept her locked in place regardless.

"Is everything okay in there?" came a voice. It was familiar, it was warm, but Abigail didn't trust any illusions of trust right now. She looked up, trying to figure out where the voice was coming from, trying to parse through the dank, dark room her brain told her she was at and the brightness that actually looked into her eyes.

She caught sight of a knife handle. Desperate for a means to defend herself, she grabbed hold of it, pointing it outward at the approaching person. "Don't come any closer!" she demanded. Her voice came off weak and hoarse, but she screamed out as best she could regardless.

"Abi?" The voice was far too gentle. It was confused, even. This wasn't the voice of the mindless revengencers coming to torment her, this wasn't the voice of Magnus coming to mock her or deride her for her involvement in the band.

She knew this voice. Devon?

"Abi, it's me, put the knife down."

No, how was Devon here? Had Magnus gotten to him too? She shook her head. "No no, I need it. I didn't have it at the funeral, I need it."

"It's okay. Abigail, you're home. No one's here to hurt ya. Gimme the knife."

Could it be true? It would explain the brightness everywhere. She became cognizant of her own breathing, shallowly wheezing to try to remain upright. She dropped the knife on the ground, close enough that she could still grab it in case this all turned out to be a cruel trick.

"Okay. Okay." She felt strong hands press against her shoulder and her waist. She was lifted just a bit into the air, and though she prepared for the sudden jerk of the chain to catch around her throat and bring her crashing back to earth, it never came.

And it was the never coming that made her shift, just so slightly, back to the now. Her brain clouded over, and she looked at Devon. She blinked, rubbing her head. "Devon...?"

"Yea. Yea, baby, it's me."

She had lost control. She couldn't parse how it had happened, not now with the post-episode fog, but she could see the red fire at the end of the black and green tunnel. And she broke. Wailing. Screaming. Sobbing. Hysterics, even. But did they come from the weight sinking in of what was a very rare, but still very real, PTSD episode? Or were they coming from the shame that Devon saw her like this?

"Abigail, Abigail," came Devon's voice again. She knew her name, why did he keep saying it? His hands came to her hair and she shoved him back.

"Don't, please," she cried. She hugged herself, keeping her head down. She couldn't stop the crying. How could she lose control like this? It wasn't like her. She felt so heavy.

"Don't push me away," he insisted.

"I don't want you to see me like this!" she screamed. "Go! Go, no one's supposed to see me weak like this."

Devon didn't listen to her. And another day she'd kill him for that. Hell, the bets weren't off on whether or not she'd kill him for this an hour or two from now. But he wrapped his arms around her, holding her tight against his body.

"Let go of me, please."

"Not if you're gonna run away."

"You don't know what's best for me!"

His shoulders were growing wet with her tears, her spit. He didn't let up. "Maybe not. But I'm not lettin' ya go no matter how weak you get, Abigail. I'm never lettin' ya go."

She relented. And once she stopped fighting the shame, she remembered just how good it felt to surrender into the arms of someone who loved you. She continued to cry softly into his shoulder, his hands slowly, carefully, caressing against her hair. "This might happen again," she whispered.

"And I'll be here again."

"But what if you're not? You weren't at the funeral." It stung to remind him of that, and she could hear his sharp intake of breath at that.

"I'll be there." He released her just enough to brush his fingers against her necklace. The ring on her left hand. "And you'll be with me." He did the same with his own necklace, his own ring. His hand came to her stomach, pressing against her scar.

Not her scar. The lavender adorning the place where a twisted madman tried to carve his mark into her. She remembered what Devon said the lavender meant. She took a breath, and the hand came to her back, to the snapdragons that now defended her there, too.