Snakes Reads A Terrible Book: Manhunt, by Gretchen Felker-Martin - An utter waste of everyone’s time inspired by the Tranny Sideshows thread and its new favorite author

[blue gopher snakes]

What is this thread, Snakes, and why are you specifically reading THIS shitty book?
This thread is specifically a containment thread for criticism of Gretchen Felker-Martin's recent horror novel, Manhunt. Discussion of this book had previously been happening on the Tranny Sideshows thread when it was suggested that some Kiwis should read it all the way through and share their thoughts with the class. I volunteered and that's how this thread was born.

Link to the post in Tranny Sideshows where the pdf is available for download.

List of chapter reviews if you just want the highlights without wading through commentary, although the commentary is some of the best content on this thread tbh:

PART ONE: Misandry
Chapter One (this post, just scroll down), X X
Chapter Two, Crotch Rocket
Chapter Three, The Prize Drawer
Chapter Four, Chad
Chapter Five, Not All Men
Chapter Six, Dee Licious
Chapter Seven, Bowstring
Chapter Eight, Sleepover
PART TWO: The New Womyn's Commonwealth
Chapter One, Sicut Patribus, Sit Deus Nobis
Chapter Two, The Brat
Chapter Three, Never Have I Ever
Chapter Four, Safe Space (1)
Chapter Four, Safe Space (2)
Chapter Five, Daddy Issues
Chapter Six, Dirty Work
Chapter Seven, The Cradle of Beauty
Chapter Eight, Generation Z
Chapter Nine, Freon
Chapter Ten, Neutered and Exempted

Commentary on Gretchen’s other book, Ego Homini Lupus
Chapter One

If you like what we're doing here and want to join in on the fun, read this post before forging ahead on your own.

First, a little information about the book.
The cover art:


Gretchen Felker-Martin, everyone.
Here is his dox. His power word is Micah Elliott Martin and he's the roughest 32 I've seen in a while.


Who is GFW and why is he so ugly?

This is how he writes. Buckle up everyone. This is going to be an extremely long-winded ride.

Ugh you boring PRUDES with your distaste for reading graphic RAPE SCENES.

GFW might have a rape fetish. In fact, he has MANY fetishes which will be on full display in Manhunt.

Here he is in his own words admitting exactly this. My italics button is stuck in the on position so that's what's going on right now.

But of course, all criticism of this book is actually just TERF harassment rather than public outcry that anything this poorly written was allowed to be published.

Or don't. There's a download link to the pdf file in the Tranny Sideshows thread.

I felt like this was a nice little cherry for the top of this screenshot compilation. Make your own conclusions about GFW and his fanbase of rape fetishists.

Here is the Goodreads blurb for Manhunt:
Y: The Last Man meets The Girl With All the Gifts in Gretchen Felker-Martin's Manhunt, an explosive post-apocalyptic novel that follows trans women and men on a grotesque journey of survival.

Beth and Fran spend their days traveling the ravaged New England coast, hunting feral men and harvesting their organs in a gruesome effort to ensure they'll never face the same fate.

Robbie lives by his gun and one hard-learned motto: other people aren't safe.

After a brutal accident entwines the three of them, this found family of survivors must navigate murderous TERFs, a sociopathic billionaire bunker brat, and awkward relationship dynamics―all while outrunning packs of feral men, and their own demons.

Manhunt is a timely, powerful response to every gender-based apocalypse story that failed to consider the existence of transgender and non-binary people, from a powerful new voice in horror."

Now that blurb is a little more...flattering...than I would have written it. Let's see what the reviewers think.


Someone needs to check Carmen's browser history.

Poor Rachel, trying so hard to be a good ally she forced herself to read 304 pages of violent fantasies about her fellow born women.

The only review worth reading.

Master List of Festishistic Sexual Content From Manhunt:
Abandoned because there is too many to compile. Just read the damn chapter reviews and see for yourself.

Without further ado, let's dive in.



Chapter One

“Trannies, your families will never love you. You are living a lie & you know it. End your miserable existence. Commit suicide now.

—Unknown troll”

#BASED

“The man’s matted, filthy hair floated on the surface as he gulped down greedy mouthfuls, tilting his head back to swallow like an alligator horking down a fish.”

HORKING. And we’re off to a wonderful start, ladies and gentlemen.

“They had trouble with swallowing, these things the plague had made out of anyone with enough testosterone in their system to put out a decent crop of back hair.“

Please tell me that it’s not just the fact that I am buzzed on pinot grigio: This sentence is nigh incomprehensible. If it just me, please lie. Also, I find it interesting that the author seems to think that testosterone levels and back hair quantity seem to be directly related. Why are we so few sentences into this chapter and already discussing back hair? Is this a sore spot for the author? I have so many questions.

“Mostly they ripped their prey apart and gulped the meat down in chunks, or dug up grubs and beetles and whatever roots they could get their gnarled claws on. They’d eat pretty much anything if it came down to it. Fran had seen one choke on a tennis ball.”

In what universe is a tennis ball considered food? If these back-hair sporting man-zombies are so desperate to consume food that they would dig into the earth for bugs, why would they eat tennis balls? What do these things have in common? Why tennis balls specifically? Is this Freudian? It’s probably Freudian.

“For a single blessed heartbeat she felt weightless, her nostrils full of the warm cinnamon smell of dead pine needles, her neck and back slick with sweat under her sodden tank top.”

Man with man sweat thinks dead pine needles smell like cinnamon. Has he ever been outside? Has he ever smelled cinnamon?

“When she cut it open, his ballsack exuded a stink like a bath bomb infused with rancid pork.”

A BATH BOMB INFUSED WITH RANCID PORK WHAT THE FUCK THIS IS PAGE ONE YOU GUYS

“She packed his giblets into her duffel between layers of dry ice wrapped in yellowing newspaper.“

As one does.

“The good news was that pregnancy was shorter now. Much shorter. The bad news was that the babies ate their way out.”

The author is not doing a very good job so far of making me unsympathetic to the female survivors of this plague. Which is called “t.rex” apparently. Captain Tripps, it ain’t.

“most of the big game had been killed off years ago.”

This would have resulted in catastrophic habitat changes. Don’t make claims like this if you want me to believe that forests are otherwise unchanged. This is the author's response to questions about impossible claims such as this one in his writing:

“Out here on the coast, the things that had been men were scarcer, at least.”

LMAO BAY AREA GET REKT

“And if I ever run out of spiro and E I’ll be one of them a few weeks later, and then some other t-girl’s gonna put an arrow through my skull and slice off my balls. Oh well. So sad.”

The funny thing is that this could have been an interesting concept. Men having to supplement themselves in order to avoid succumbing to an illness and how that supplementation would change society moving forward. Instead we have this hot pile of shit.

““Are you sure you’re not just a jumpy bitch with clinical paranoia you’ll never get diagnosed because all the psychiatrists are dead or living in, like, Monaco in some really tacky American slum?””

I’m sorry, what the fuck? Is that what passes for world-building when one of your typing hands is permanently inside your Jockeys?

“Beth’s expression sobered when they both heard a high, scratchy woman’s voice shriek “Oh my GOD!” in a breathless titter.”

And thus we have our first introduction to a real-live woman in this novel. Behold the contempt with which she is described. This is definitely not at all projected rage and hate on the part of the author.

“A dozen women, most of them in their late teens or early twenties, a few younger, all in fatigues, most sporting undercuts, stood clustered around the bikes”

They sound hot, can we join them instead?

“ A dozen women, most of them in their late teens or early twenties, a few younger, all in fatigues, most sporting undercuts, stood clustered around the bikes where Fran and Beth had left them leaning up against a rusted metal rack, a holdover from when this place had been shot through with hiking trails for rich yuppies from Boston who wanted somewhere serene to surround themselves with nature and stargaze and do cayenne-and-lemon-juice cleanses.”

I have no comments, I just wanted you to read this sentence. This is ONE sentence.

“ And blow.”

This is the next sentence.

““Fffffuck,” Beth groaned, rocking back up onto her haunches and settling into a loose, ready crouch. “It’s the fucking chromosome crusaders.”

Hell yeah bitches. New girl gang rise up! Chromosome Crusaders, UNITE!!!

“On her forehead, dead center above the bridge of her pert little ski slope nose, was a stark tattoo: XX. Pussy certified all-natural by the Daughters of the Witches You Couldn’t Burn or whatever Michigan Womyn’s Music Festival bullshit the TERFocracy in Maryland bowed down to. Fuck.”

When other Kiwis said they had attempted to spork this pile of garbage, this is the type of sentence they were thinking of when they said they gave up and abandoned the endeavor. It is disappointing. So bad it’s bad. Un-sporkable.

““That’s Queen TERF. That’s fucking Teach.”

Fran’s eyes widened. She stared at the thin, long-haired woman currently sorting through the contents of Beth’s bike basket. They called her Teach, she’d heard, because she’d been a psychological consultant at Guantanamo before T-Day hit.”

Question: How did an employee at Guantanamo travel to a forested area for rich Bostonians following an extinction-level pandemic?

“Whatever her deal, and wherever she’d come from, there was no doubting she was hardcore. She got her hands on them and they were fucked. Dead. Done.”

In other words: The real hero of the story?

“The tattooed woman said something that made her retinue laugh. Fran watched her lips move, watched the play of muscles under her smooth face as she smiled. A cold thrill went up her spine. God, you don’t need to have a wet dream about a fucking gender-essentialist neofascist.”

Fran the Man proceeds to have an incoherent episode, losing time and his awareness of his surroundings, because he is so overcome with lust for a born woman. This is in no way supposed to be psychologically revealing about the author whatsoever.

“Her cock was hard, tenting the front of her stupid cargo shorts, and she was seized suddenly by the ridiculous fear that the pale woman could see it.”

Don’t worry, Fran. Your atrophied E-Peen can’t be seen with an electron microscope, let alone by a woman you covet many tens of yards away.

““Beth, what the fuck are you doing?”

“Making the world a kinder, gentler place,” said Beth, grinning like a fox with its head through the henhouse door as she nocked an arrow to the bowstring and drew it back level with the unscarred corner of her mouth. “I’m gonna put one through her fucking neck.”

One does not usually employ the “fox in the henhouse” as a simile describing the protagonist in a way that is meant to evoke sympathy. In fact, the descriptions of this duo of mentally ill murderous men makes me fairly certain they are meant to be viewed as uncontrolled villains.


This concludes my commentary on Chapter One of Manhunt. So far, our main characters have murdered a man, stolen his sexual organs which they have wrapped in newspaper with dry ice which seems like an excellent way to damage them, stumbled upon a group of natal woman, had an erotic fantasy about said women that was so potent they lost touch with reality momentarily, and then attempted to murder one of these women. I am entirely confused as to whether these main characters are supposed to be seen as relatable. Stay tuned for the next installment of “Snakes Reads a Terrible Book.” Or don’t. Maybe skip it.

 

[one_time_user]

I am picturing you in a velvet wing back chair next to a roaring fireplace.

 

[Apotheosis of the Liver]

““Fffffuck,” Beth groaned,

If you're groaning shouldn't it "Fuuuck" A person hissing should be "Fffffuck"

“She packed his giblets into her duffel between layers of dry ice wrapped in yellowing newspaper.“

Giblets are the heart, liver, and gizzard, of a fowl. I've heard it used as a euphemism for testicles before, but with the context of butchery it just confused me.

 

[Marcus Tullius Cicero]

While I've never written much myself, I do have at least some knowledge of what not to do. The quotes show that the author has a habit of forming clunky similes and metaphors and juxtaposing them with poorly-delivered exposition. Like with the character called "Teach." How would the main character (who I assume is Beth) know that this woman originally worked at Guantanamo Bay as a psychologist? I understand overhearing the nickname, at some point, but understanding her history shouldn't be something the character knows, right-off.

Another example of his poor phrasing is when he sets-up the attack with the bow. He goes from describing Beth's expression to detailing "her" readying the shot. The absurd method of drawing the bowstring notwithstanding, a good author would have described "her" expression and ended the sentence. Then, he would have described the bow being readied. Doing both at the same time ruins the flow of the narrative and makes for an uncomfortable read.

Perhaps the most egregious example of his poor worldbuilding is the quote about Beth being a bitch plagued by paranoia. It would have been much more effective if we'd seen it expressed naturally. For example, "she" could have heard the underbrush rustle, causing "her" to investigate for longer than one normally would. Anything would have been better than having "her" personality stated through dialogue.

This is also more of a personal writing choice, but I prefer leaving characters nameless until a moment comes to introduce them organically. Let's use that "Teach" woman again. Rather than exposit about her, there should have been conversation between her and her fellow soldiers where her nickname was used. Or perhaps someone stated her nickname to get her attention.

The only thing the author seems to have done right is end the chapter on a cliffhanger, of sorts. Assuming Beth readying the bow is where it ends. "Cliffhanger" may not be the right term, but it does serve as an adequate end for the chapter, as Beth prepares to kill that poor woman. Had this novel been written to make Beth a bona fide antagonist, this moment would have proved quite intriguing as we're left wondering whether "Teach" will die or not. Yet because Beth is the protagonist, we're supposed to find the death of "Teach" a worthwhile thing.

Overall, this didn't start well. There has only been one thing for which I can commend the author, but it's not much. This is going to be an utter cesspit, but worth the slog.

 

[Jah Hates Kaffirs]

Publishing is a joke.

 

[capsaicin]

Why couldn't it just be rancid pork? Why did it have to be a bath bomb infused with rancid pork? And what kind of bath bomb? Jasmine? Bergamot? Lavender? Rose? What sort of rancid pork blend are we getting, here?

 

[Kari Kamiya]

Godbear bless you for reading this, I read this chapter out loud on call with my fiancé and it was torture. I wanna add my quick two cents because this dude's a goddamn amateur writer.

Beth touched her thumb and forefinger together and raised them to her lips, then kissed them and opened her hand, gesturing as though to let the kiss take flight like a cartoon chef just after tasting a perfect sauce. “Bella, bella!” she yelled. “Bellissima!”

You don't need this many words to describe the chef's kiss motion. Here:

"Beth pressed her thumb and forefinger together and gently flicked them off her lips with an audible smack. 'Bellissima!''"

There. Still conveys the same motion with less bloat.

“Let’s boogie,” said Beth through a mouthful of protein bar as she straightened up and brushed crumbs off her ratty, threadbare hoodie. Letsh bugey.

Reverse the two sentences because Beth is talking through a mouthful, so convey it in dialogue and give the translation (even though you don't really need it tbh) at the end. Like this:

"'Letsh bugey,' said Beth through a mouthful of protein bar as she straightened up and brushed crumbs off her ratty, threadbare hoodie. Let's boogie."

Accentuated dialogue is a good skill for writers to have, as long as it's utilized right. Also, personally, I think it's trashy to have cuss words in the narration itself. Save that for the dialogue or if there's graffiti/a letter with curses in it.

The tattooed woman said something that made her retinue laugh. Fran watched her lips move, watched the play of muscles under her smooth face as she smiled. A cold thrill went up her spine. God, you don’t need to have a wet dream about a fucking gender-essentialist neofascist. She squeezed her eyes shut, nipping in the bud her imagination’s little spurt of latex tight against pale skin and thighs divided into lickable quarters by garters edged in delicate black lace, of a hand on the back of her neck squeezing tighter and tighter until—

What the fuck does this have to do with anything? Is Fran literally fantasizing about some dyke dominatrix? This is super gross, but it's at least comforting to know that in the very first chapter we find out real fast this is what "Gretchen" actually faps to.

Carry on, Snakes. Hope you have a lot of drinks on hand, you're gonna need it. Also please always highlight every single moment of sexuality that happens because it's quite possible a good portion of this book is nothing but sexual fantasies.

 

[Glenallen Mixon]

Glad to see this, I'm one of those kiwis who wanted to spork this but just couldn't.

“They had trouble with swallowing, these things the plague had made out of anyone with enough testosterone in their system to put out a decent crop of back hair.“

I'm trying to think of a way to rewrite this sentence without entirely excising the dumb back hair thing, but honestly, the writer had already explained what the zombies were at that point, right? It's really unnecessary and makes the whole sentence messy.

“When she cut it open, his ballsack exuded a stink like a bath bomb infused with rancid pork.”

Another person said this already, but including "bath bomb" is superfluous when you could've just said "exuded a stink like rancid pork." I imagine the writer was trying to compare the scrotum itself to a bath bomb. But they're not really writing it well, since bath bombs don't exude anything when you cut them - they react with water, right? So instead it's coming off like the smell itself is like a bath bomb. Just such weird phrasing.

I can't imagine this guy had an editor. And grammar aside, what a way to introduce the protagonists - killing a zombie, cutting its balls off, then getting weirdly horny when a bunch of TERFs show up. Really setting them up to be likable characters.

 

[Lady Bizness]

This is fantastic. Can't wait for the fanart.

 

[Niggaplease]

can I do chapter 2?

 

[cia-log]

“Mostly they ripped their prey apart and gulped the meat down in chunks, or dug up grubs and beetles and whatever roots they could get their gnarled claws on. They’d eat pretty much anything if it came down to it. Fran had seen one choke on a tennis ball.”

I tried reading this book a while ago but I couldn't get past this writing style combined with the author's perspective. It's such a cliched style of YA writing but this is supposed to be for adults. Every sentence is just some really artless description followed by the occasional irreverent quip. The only reason I can think to insert so much humor in the narration when there's none in the setting or plot is you just keep reading back your sentences to yourself and notice how boring they are and decide to undermine your own story with jokes to string the reader along like a dog you're trying to lure into the house with pieces of ham.

You know that Kafka story about the bug man that people on the internet like to bring up as a profound moral question, like what if the world was better off without you and you and everyone around you knew it? This book feels like the author is convinced of the opposite, like the world would be better off if everyone was dead except them and the small group of people they want to have sex with. There's so much contempt for people who aren't twitter-brained girldick enthusiasts, cis lesbians in particular are depicted as so hateful that without the pretense of law and order restraining them they instantly become nazi scientists for the sheer pleasure of it. This is in stark contrast to the trans lesbian who wants nothing but world peace and to spend all their time twirling around in a wheat field with both arms outstretched.

Good luck to you, I don't know how anybody who isn't already larping as a Jew in Auschwitz on twitter can stand this for more than a couple chapters. Every single page is the same My Immortal I'm-so-perfect-and-innocent-and-the-world-hates-me-because-they're-jealous-of-my-perfection diatribe without any variation whatsoever. Even for the memes this shit wasn't worth it.

 

[blue gopher snakes]

Hello and welcome to all my fellow Chromosome Crusaders! I am so pleased by the positive reaction to Chapter One that I decided to take a crack at Chapter Two before collapsing into complete drunken incoherence. I am nothing if not easily motivated by flattery. I’ve never actually sporked (is that the correct use of that word?) anything before so if anyone has suggestions for how I can improve formatting I am all ears. If you have suggestions on how I can improve the quality of my content keep it to yourself lest you end up with your giblets wrapped in newspaper. Do you want your mother to find you in your basement with your de-nutted corpse stinking of a bath bomb infused with rancid pork? It already does? Well fuck. Let’s continue, then, because I’m out of threats. No bully pls.



Chapter Two: Crotch Rocket

““She moved!” Beth hollered plaintively as they tore downhill through the woods, the wounded girl’s howls echoing behind them. “It’s not my fault!”

Those who have been with us since the beginning will remember the cliffhanger ending Chapter One, wherein Beth promises to “put one through her fucking neck.” The neck in question belongs to Teach, the ultra-terrifying TERF Queen of Guantanamo Bay and lately of a Boston-adjacent forest. So far we have learned that she has a forehead tattoo (XX) and an undercut. And also she HATES trannies. Presumably. We’ll have to take our bumbling duo of horny murderers at their word that Teach is actually way worse than them because we have no evidence to that fact as of yet.

“She’d loosed her arrow just as Teach knelt to inspect something on the ground, and then suddenly a big broad-shouldered girl with spiky blond hair who’d been standing behind the older woman was screaming bloody murder with three feet of carbon fiber sticking from her shoulder.”

Teach has conveniently-placed-blonde armor, apparently. Additionally, “screaming bloody murder” is usually not used in reference to ACTUAL bloody murder, right? Is it just me that finds that phrase a little out of place?

“She tried for a single absurd second to remember a tweet she’d once read”

That’s it. Pack it up, folks. This one sentence fragment perfectly encapsulates this entire book, the author himself, and the trans movement in general. I am now out of pinot grigio and it is all Gretchen Felker-Martin’s fault.

“The TERFs were hot on their heels, eight or nine of them with the kind of high-powered hunting crossbows that’d all been pillaged from sporting goods stores within a week of T-Day.”

The seethe in this sentence is palpable. Observe the way in which this natal male views womanhood as a finite resource stolen from him unfairly before he had a chance to lay his claim. What a whiny little bitch boy.

So our protagonists, Fran and Beth, escape from the TERF gang for the moment. They flee back into the woods along a stream with the Chromosome Crusaders in pursuit.

“Fran stumbled, nearly ate shit, and recovered with a lurching hop she was certain had looked incredibly stupid from behind.”

This is the prose that earned those rave reviews posted above.

“Her dad’s easy smile. His hand ruffling her hair. Looks rough, bud. You want me to kiss it and make it all infected?”

Observe the author’s fractured relationship with his father and, by extension, masculinity in general. The sarcasm and contempt with which a tender father soothing his child is described in so few words is frankly fascinating to me. I am beginning to see that the author’s completely batshit outlook on life and normal human things is going to bleed into this book quite a bit. Remember, we are supposed to think these two are the good guys.

“She pushed herself harder, eyes on the rocks ahead. She’d been a runner in high school and then in college, before she’d come out.”

Not even this murderous, sexually deviant nutjob tried to compete in women’s sports. Lia Thomas as Worst Troon Ever confirmed.

“You know what they do to trannies you stupid bitch. You’ve heard the stories and seen the Polaroids and unless you feel like posing for the mutilated faggot of the month inspirational calendar you’d better dig deep NOW.”

This is one of those lines that feels like it is SUPPOSED to be expository in some way yet serves only to leave me more confused than before.

Fran eats shit in a riverbed and one of the TERFs finally catches up to him and Beth. Beth threatens the TERF and orders her to drop her crossbow, which she does, and a Tense Moment Ensues. This moment of tension is interrupted by Teach, riding a Honda motorcycle and wielding a submachine gun.

“There, on the crest of the southern ridge of the defile, was Teach. She rode on a fast little Honda motorbike, the kind Fran’s dad would have called a crotch rocket, slewing toward them down the slope at breakneck speed. Her hair blew wild all around the pale, pointed oval of her face and she had something compact and black in her hands, too small to be a crossbow but —

“Beth!” Fran screamed. “Get down!”

Teach is a badass motherfucker and you can’t convince me she’s not the real hero of this book so far.

“The submachine gun barked like sped-up footage of a bichon frise having some kind of seizure.”

The gun sounded like a sped-up video of a dog having a seizure. What the actual fuck. Has the author ever HEARD a gun? Or a seizing dog? I haven’t heard a seizing dog but I have heard gunfire and I guarantee you that if your dog sounds like that, you should probably seek help from some kind of veterinary exorcist. Also, why a bichon frise specifically? Is it a dog breed known to be prone to seizures? I am confusion.

“The sewing machine clatter of Teach’s gun let up”

I am now convinced Gretchen Felker-Martin has never actually heard what gunfire sounds like.

Just as it seemed that Fran and Beth would be gunned down by the sewing-machine-bichon-frise of death, they were saved by the distraction of more zombie men screaming. Fran is particularly overcome with fear as the screams remind him of unpleasant memories:

“She knew that sound. It had chased her for five years, chased her all the way from the dressing room at the Charlotte Russe at the Steeplegate Mall to this overgrown ditch where she knelt quivering, sweat streaming down her face, waiting to die.“

Does Gretchen Felker-Martin (I’m calling him GFM from now on because typing his name is getting tedious) have any past incidents on record at the Charlotte Russe (a store for young adult ladies) at a mall near his home? Has anyone checked? Perhaps they should because this is so oddly specific that it seems almost autobiographical to me.

“They came on all fours, some still screaming, others making a kind of low, rhythmic grunt deep in their chests. It sounded like the tigers Fran remembered from York’s Wild Kingdom. Her father had taken her there a few times during the divorce, and the deep chuffing sound the tigers made to warn one another off had stuck with her.”

Even in fiction, troons are the children of divorce. Fathers, don’t leave your sons to be raised by the Internet lest they become degenerate “trashgirls”, a term this book actually uses to refer to trannies.

The zombie men are distracted by the presence of real natal women they might impregnate with their cannibal seed and take off in pursuit of Teach and her crotch rocket, leaving Fran and Beth alone. YWNBAW confirmed.

“Fran didn’t have the energy to ask her why. Her body felt raw and vulnerable, as though someone had rubbed it all over with a cheese grater.“

WHO EDITED THIS BOOK I DEMAND TO KNOW THEY SHOULD BE FIRED IMMEDIATELY

Uh oh Beth gets shot in the fucking face with a crossbow by Septum Piercing, the TERF that had been chasing her and Fran before Teach’s bichon frise and the zombies so rudely interrupted them.

SEXUAL CONTENT ALERT

“Across the ravine Septum Piercing slotted a bolt into the crossbow’s nut. Fran flushed red at her grin, picturing those sharp white teeth closing gently on her throat.”

“A brief but vivid fantasy of the nose-ringed girl trailing a riding crop’s cool leather keeper over her clenched and trembling ass shoved its way eagerly into Fran’s imagination.”

Someone add “watching your friend’s face be bisected with a crossbow bolt” to the running list of sexual fetishes this author admits to. What, we don’t have one yet? Well WHY NOT?

Septum Piercing leaves, but not before delivering a tidbit of dialogue exposition:

““When we catch you—” “—we’re gonna leave you staked out in the sun and let t. rex peel off your fucking womanface!”

Cut away to Fran contemplatively tending to Beth’s disfigured face meat:

“In an anime, Fran thought as she dabbed at Beth’s gashed cheek and ruined left ear with a cotton swab soaked in alcohol, the crossbow bolt would have given Beth a clean, sexy scar—something to give her an edge and make it clear she was haunted by her past.”

Anime. Not even once.

“In real life she had no more earlobe and a four-inch gouge in her face distressingly similar in shape to the Nike Swoosh.“

That feeling when you have no creativity and your only source for simile and metaphor is consumer shit.

““That fake-punk bitch,” Beth growled through gritted teeth as Fran probed at the edges of her wound. “Bet she had white dreads in college. Bet she blogged about how her straight boyfriend ‘felt unwelcome’ at Pride.”

I’m pretty sure she shot you in the fucking face, Beth. That’s quite a long distance off from FAKE. Aside from that, it’s fascinating that these are the type of insults the author considers to be appropriate for cursing someone that just shot you in the face. Oh no. White dreads? Blogging about Pride? The horror. Say it ain’t so, Beth.

The chapter ends after Fran sews Beth’s face back together. The description of the human body as “fixable” struck me as rather interesting. Instead of realizing the fragility of human life, troons are so privileged that they think of our bodies as infinitely customizable, repairable, and resilient to damage. This casual disregard for the true vulnerability of life is somehow significant in a way I am too drunk to properly articulate.

That’s all for now, folks!

@Niggaplease You do Chapter 3 and report back to the class, thank you!

 

[SofondaCox]

Thank you. My morbid curiosity would have eventually lead me to this literary hellscape. You've rescued me.

 

[umami's milk]

I was about to comment that maybe this crap deserves its own thread but I see it's already been done. Incredible. So bad that I can't wait to see how worse it gets.

 

[Glenallen Mixon]

“Across the ravine Septum Piercing slotted a bolt into the crossbow’s nut. Fran flushed red at her grin, picturing those sharp white teeth closing gently on her throat.”

“A brief but vivid fantasy of the nose-ringed girl trailing a riding crop’s cool leather keeper over her clenched and trembling ass shoved its way eagerly into Fran’s imagination.”

Keeping in mind the trans protags are basically just Gretchen Felker-Martin's self-inserts, I'd like to make sure you're all picturing what you're supposed to picture here.

There's something vaguely Linkara-esque about Gretchen's doughy face, but that might just be the fact that at a certain point of fatness people just start looking the same.

“She’d loosed her arrow just as Teach knelt to inspect something on the ground, and then suddenly a big broad-shouldered girl with spiky blond hair who’d been standing behind the older woman was screaming bloody murder with three feet of carbon fiber sticking from her shoulder.”

What a comically overused plot contrivance - the target of a shot conveniently leaning down so it sails over them. Also, "screaming bloody murder" is generally just used as a way to say "screaming loudly," so I wouldn't really say it's used wrong. Just kind of a strange choice cause it's a little old-fashioned compared to the rest of the language in the book.

“The submachine gun barked like sped-up footage of a bichon frise having some kind of seizure.”

I could almost give this sentence a pass if it wasn't for the seizure bit. I feel they were trying to describe less the noise of the gunfire and more how rapid it was. "Barking" is pretty commonly used to describe the noise of a gun firing, even if gunfire never really sounds like a dog barking at all. But adding the extra twist of the dog having a seizure, and having it specifically being a bichon frise, it just muddies what I think they were going for. Once again the author's insistence on tossing in more unnecessary wordage bites them in the ass.


Also goddamn, this writer is terrible at making us like who we're supposed to like. It's an Uzi-wielding ex-shrink who worked with terrorists in Gitmo with a cool motorcycle and a posse of female hunters VS two perpetually horny weirdos who eat zombie testicles and pop boners when people try to kill them. If you're not rooting for Teach at this point, I have to guess you're a tranny.

 

[Kari Kamiya]

That reads even more like a parody than the first chapter, what the fuck.

I hope one day we find this dude's fan fics that totally are floating around on the web somewhere because something tells me there was barely any improvement to be had. The tone-of-voice doesn't sound like an actual voice, let alone anyone's way of speaking, even within actual fan fic. Translated novels have better cohesion in tone than this guy does in two chapters. I'm with Snakes, this is just the author's twisted fantasies put into novel form.

Does Gretchen Felker-Martin (I’m calling him GFM from now on because typing his name is getting tedious) have any past incidents on record at the Charlotte Russe (a store for young adult ladies) at a mall near his home? Has anyone checked? Perhaps they should because this is so oddly specific that it seems almost autobiographical to me.

Agreed, that is way too specific. Just about everything mentioned about the "real" world has been way too damn specific that it goes beyond "write what you know". This might've been written in place of going to therapy.

 

[Least Concern]

So what was the protagonists' plan if they did manage to hit and possibly kill the leader of the TERFs? Wouldn't the rest of them still have just chased them down just like they ended up doing anyway? Are we supposed to read Fran as foolish and impulsive, or did the author just not think this through either?

 

[Dumb Bitch Smoothie]

I wanna see Chuck Wendig review this hahahah

 

[Xanax and Wine]

It's almost like GFM read "100 Ways to Write Badly Well" by Joel Stickley and decided to see how many writing mistakes fit into one book.

 

[AMHOLIO]

Have you ever walked down a flight of stairs with a low ceiling and hit your head on something on the way down? That's what this story is like, except you hit your head every step or two. Each new sentence gives me whiplash, brain damage, and kills the pace.

Thank you sweet femoids for tackling this true and honest woman's book. I love you very very much, full homo.

This might've been written in place of going to therapy

I'm incredibly curious about searching the author's tweets for mental illness and therapy mentions but about to take a nap so it will not be done. Highly doubt this man attends therapy.



My biggest comment so far is being stunned at how often horniness happens. Men, is this how you live your day to day lives? It can't fucking be, and I'd feel great pity for you blokes if 1/3 of your daily brain power went to thinking about fucking. Can any straight male volunteer if this is how horny the main character should be?