mind if a little gayboy gets a little gay? /silly
okay sorry I'm hyped up on caffeine currently, and I realized that I've never explained publicly what inspires me so much about Harlans work! so uh. heh , it all started in a galaxy far far away....
Uh, of course, I got hooked through ihnmaims, after listening to the audiobook, I was completely floored ! lately before I knew Harlan, I was really.. well, upset with literature at the time. most of my hyperfixations were videogames or online media, but I've always had a very deep rooted love for reading. it was a really easy way for me to escape and really throw myself into a story without having to process all of the trauma I'm somehow consistently going through. but at the time, everything really felt the same. everything felt like a copy of a copy, it was all either deep romance, (don't even get me started on "dark romance") something I've seen before, or just bland in general! nothing was inspiring me like it used to! but of course, reading ihnmaims, I was completely enamored, it was something so insanely new to me, I loved it so much I read it in literally every other format it was in! (the comic, the radio drama, an audiobook, and of course, the physical copy I got from the Barnes and Nobel greatest hits special.) I immediately started doing other research on Harlan, and I remember looking for an interview to watch, and the first one I clicked was the "Good Afternoon" interview on science fiction writing, 1976. and just-- Ive never looked into the author of a book, but wow. he just had me completely wrapped around his finger the entire time he was talking. not only was he pretty as hell, I realized, but he was also something so awe inspiring it had every bit of dread I felt previously just wash away. I started watching other interviews, finding anything written on him or written himself, (like the first thing I really read from him was a digital copy of "Love Aint Nothing But Sex Misspelled," which I also loved so much that I got half way through it in a day or two.) then getting the greatest hits copy, really getting a good look at his stories, then I came up to Shatterday. I've heard about it a few times through interviews when it was just released and they were advertising it, but I was still going in pretty blind just like the other short stories I had read. but when I read Shatterday, it literally shook me to the core. call it cliche, but it felt like he was writing about me. my issues. my life. and it felt like he was telling me that it was gonna change. that it was gonna get better, and that I was going to improve. I was much like the main character, Novins I believe was his name, where I pushed everyone away, and I believed I was happy completely alone. but with the sudden doppelganger changing his relationships for him, the "original" bad version was thankful for the change. thankful that his life was fixed and in a better place. and when I say I literally could not stop crying, I really couldn't. it touched me in a way a story hasn't in a really long time, and I actually started to try and fix my relationships with my friends and relatives. of course I'm still having a hard time, 3-4 years of being a dick is gonna take some time to heal, but that story pushes me everyday I wake up. letting me know that those days of love aren't so far ahead of me as I originally thought.
and well ! yeah ! now Harlan is basically my lifeline, LMAO.
anyways sorry for the long ramble. hehe.