#traumaland

[idkimgayasf]

i js finished reading traumaland by josh silver and omfg i love this book. also happy head and dead happy.

[semper-legens]

26. Traumaland, by Josh Silver

Owned?: No, library Page count: 395 My summary: Eli just wants a quiet life. Surely that's not too much to ask? Trouble is, he has trauma he doesn't remember. He was in a car crash, and lost two months of his memory to the aftereffects of the manic episode he was having and the trauma of the crash. Months later, he's recovering - sort of. But things are…strange. His parents are loving, but they seem weirdly highly strung. His therapist is trying to help, but there's something off about her. And when Eli stumble into an underground club where people pay to experience traumatic events, he finds more than he bargained for… My rating: 4/5 My commentary:

Trauma is a difficult topic. People who have been through some horrible things and experience repercussions in their physical and mental health are very real, but their experiences are often sensationalised (or even fetishised) in media. Takes on Alice in Wonderland that focus on mental illness, drugs, and gritty dark narratives can often play into this - look how edgy our adaptation of this nonsense story for children is! Nonetheless, I find myself drawn to Alice adaptations and works that are a take on the story, but not without some trepidation. And it was with this trepidation that I approached this book; not a take on Alice in a traditional sense, but still a story that is using some of its iconography to tell a story that falls into some of those tropes. But, despite some initial qualms, I really enjoyed Traumaland. Which is a weird sentence to type, come to think of it! But still. I loved Eli, I thought the story developed well, and while I do have some quibbles, overall this is a solid bit of YA fiction. I was a fan!

Eli was an interesting protagonist. I'll admit, it took me a while to warm to him, and that's mostly because he seemed at first to be a teenage edgelord tryhard. He dresses as and quotes the Joker, he watches the Exorcist hundreds of times. Which, yeah, is actually completely appropriate for his character - he's a traumatised, mentally ill teenage boy who is dealing with his overly saccharine, white-picket-fence family in which he feels like an outcast. That's exactly the kind of person who would become an edgelord tryhard. I suspect this would be less of a barrier for the young adult audience of this book - I, an adult, however, took a bit to warm up to him. But to my surprise, Eli is a very credible messed up teenager. He's trying to do what his family and therapist want and follow the rules, but he's scared about his own lack of feeling, so much so that he sneaks out and steals just to feel something. I think that's the difference between him and other edgy characters; we know what he wants, and it's just to feel anything, no matter how negative. I can definitely relate.

The idea of Traumaland is also really credible. Sure, the tech used to pull it off is more sci-fi than anything, but the notion that people will pay to experience really messed up and traumatic events as though they were the ones in that scenario, but with the measure of safety that it all being a simulation affords? That'd happen. That's real. Hell, I kinda want to go, though not so much knowing how those scenarios are actually harvested. The idea, too, that (spoilers!) some people just want the memories of their trauma and everything they went through to be gone, and replaced with a more comforting lie - that could happen in real life as, sadly, would the idea that people in power would exploit that to get rid of memories that they don't want others to have. It's sci-fi, but it's credible, and that's the best kind of social commentary. The heightened reality that still could very much happen, if we had this technology.

Mainly, the thing I had issue with was the ending. Not because it wasn't a happy ending, but because it all just felt a bit abrupt - not out of nowhere, but without as much buildup as it could have had. The effect was that the author was just rushing to the end, as though they knew they were going to go over their word or page counts soon and were trying to sneak in just under target? I don't know, it's not like the ending wasn't effective in being chilling or creepy, it was just that I felt it needed a bit more room to breathe, you know? For the implications of what happened to sink in. Despite that, though, I enjoyed this book a lot more than I thought I was going to - if weird, messed up YA is for you, consider giving it a look!

Next, more gay lives at sea.

[thebronzehexagon]

engaging in the happyhead community to make up for my neglect

[fr0mtatuazawka]

M "Prawda jest gdzieś tam, i nie jest taka jak myślisz" - Elias Pew, Własność TEAR Solutions, piętro I Harper House

[etched-in-thesurface]

[stxrrysilver]

im dying for an update regarding the happyhead tv series🥺

OMFG. SAMEE.

[gladiolus-tattoo]

Question: Saw that Josh posted on his instagram the alternate cover/title for Traumaland set for release next year in the US and Canada (I think). Wondered if you had any thoughts on it, because my issue is that it doesn't seem to represent how dark the book actually is. Title and cover make it seem like a more serene and fluffy tale (which we know it is not)

What i personally find even more interesting is the change of the book's title??? why go from Traumaland to Erase Me? I fully agree with you this cover is a bit confusing, it doesn't show the dark, gripping club vibes but more of the mental health facility backstory? which is in parts way softer but still...interesting that the US/Canada version focuses on this instead of Traumaland itself? Bc YES i agree with you, the book is so very dark and this cover just isn't.

[gladiolus-tattoo]

traumaland vibes