brain rot
Hi, hello, I lied. I’m back.
Anyway, I’ve been thinking a lot about how little I think these days. I do consume a lot of content which could be considered educational in some point, but I’m not absorbing it. I’m not taking notes, discussing it with someone else. I’m not articulating my thoughts into words, and it’s harder and harder to do so, especially when I actually have to talk aloud.
I join online book clubs, buy notebooks, create blogs. The idea is exciting, and I promise myself this time I won’t give up!, and then I give up. I could blame a million things, but it’s the screen. We all know it’s the screen. The thing is, it’s not. It’s me. It’s easy to tell myself falling into a rabbit hole is research, but I’ve already asserted that I’m not reflecting on anything, nor engaging in any kind of analyses of the content I’m consuming. So, no, it’s not research. Research is not meant to be this passive.
This is the plan—I’m going to try and post more frequently. I’m not going to worry about the fact that I’m not a very interesting person. You know that article someone wrote about Brandon Sanderson being just a normal guy? Well, at least no one’s writing an article about how painfully ordinary I am. And if they were, why would I care? I doubt Sanderson is losing sleep over that one article.
I’ve been striving to read more for a while, and I’m succeeding. I’ll continue doing that, but I’m thinking of posting less vaguely about the books I read. I want to digest those stories here, writing my thoughts down, and maybe some of you will interact and we can have a discussion. Maybe not. That’s also fine. Most of all, this is a thinking, writing, and self-searching exercise.
So, here we go.
I just finished the audiobook of It Will Only Hurt for a Moment by Delilah S. Dawson. It got me thinking about trigger warnings, and how well they work for me. I can handle dark themes, but I like to be warned first. A few weeks ago I read Yellowface and Mona back to back, and it wasn’t great—not because of the books, but because I went in blind, without searching for content warnings, and both books feature sexual assault (this isn’t a spoiler, it’s literally a TW). Because I wasn’t expecting it to be there, and I was mostly reading them for fun, it hit me pretty hard. It Will Only Hurt for a Moment explores sexual assault much more in depth—at least, in comparison to Yellowface, where it wasn’t the central point of the story—but I knew it was coming, so it didn’t bother me. Lesson learned. From now on, I’ll go in a little less blindly.
It also got me thinking about the type of horror I gravitate towards (I think. Don’t quote me on that.), and this is good to keep in mind, as I’m planning my own horror books. I like subtle, slow horror. I like atmosphere, building up to the midpoint, where everything picks up the pace. I love when the horror is intrinsically linked to something that feels extremely human, something I could go through. That’s one of the reasons I enjoyed The Finalist by Faith Gladwin so much, too. If she took Eden’s chronic illness from the narrative, it wouldn’t be the same book. It felt extremely fresh, despite haunted houses being a frequent trope in horror.
I won’t do an actual review, but if you like slower horror, can handle heavy topics, and like narratives that are extremely female-focused, without it turning into vapid, hollow feminism that reads like a leaflet, I wholeheartedly recommend this book. I’ll definitely read more of Delilah’s books.
This post is long enough, so I’m stopping here. I’ll be back soon! Thank you, if you’ve read it this far :)