Things Have Gotten Worse Since We Last Spoke

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It was a fun read, gives a thrill at the end. This book contains a bit of violence which didn't reach that horrific level for me but was actually entertaining however all the wires and electrical stuff was quite hard for me to imagine. Third story may have actually been the best in terms of being a cohesive whole, though it was clunky in a few spots.

In an interview with the Guardian five years after his predecessor, Philip Alston, angered the Conservative government by accusing it of the “ systematic immiseration of a significant part of the British population”, the Belgian lawyer risked a fresh confrontation by saying: “Things have got worse.” And in November, Weirdpunk is accepting submissions for an upcoming anthology titled Stories of the Eye, edited by Sam Richard and Joanna Koch. They’re seeking horror stories “that explore the complex relationships between artists and models. Go beyond the male gaze. Show us the queer gaze, the disabled gaze, the un-colonialized gaze, the intergalactic gaze.” Things that could have been used to unsettle the reader (how does a teenager crucify themselves, alone? what's up with how they're about to run out of food almost immediately and yet somehow keep having access to food?) seem most of all like plot holes. Perhaps it was intentional but the skill is just not there to make it WORK. The surrealism/spooky elements are not given enough attention to not look like accidents/plot holes. The gory scenes are visceral and are the best parts of the book, in my opinion. But the rest of it was just too ridiculous and shallow to take seriously.In the year 2000, two gay women - Agnes Petrella and Zoe Cross - meet online as Agnes attempts to sell a family heirloom. As their relationship develops, they find themselves succumbing to a spiral of depravity. You've Lost a Lot of Blood is a high concept, very strange splatterpunk with a holdover on the "splatter". Eric LaRocca puts more focus on traditional horror elements of this one.

De Schutter said: “It’s simply not acceptable that we have more than a fifth of the population in a rich country such as the UK at risk of poverty today,” referring to government data showing that 14.4 million people lived in relative poverty in 2021-22 – a million more than the previous year. “The policies in place are not working or not protecting people in poverty, and much more needs to be done for these people to be protected.” This was just fine. Again, it had an interesting concept but the execution left something to be desired. Once again, the characters were bland and unbelievable and the story simultaneously felt drawn out and underdeveloped. The first plot point was way too predictable and also logistically impossible, how does someone crucify themselves? I also found the story, though having quite a good atmosphere and being potentially interesting, didn’t really make sense. I guess this was due to them being dead all along but even that wasn’t made clear at the end and the reason for everything that happened wasn’t either. I found it forgettable and undeveloped. An evocative tale of sapphic love in a post-apocalyptic world dominated by religious zealots and supernatural monsters.According to the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, in 2022 3.8 million people experienced destitution (struggling to afford to meet their most basic physical needs to stay warm, dry, clean and fed). This included about 1 million children. It was almost two and a half times the number of people in 2017. The cover art was done by the incredible Swedish artist Kim Jakobsson with the text design handled by the one and only Ira Rat (of Filthy Loot). I know there’s a line in here about how sometimes there is no point other than to disturb and like… nah I want a point lol. The author has noticeably marked these redacted elements with [omitted.] The absent contents remain in the archives of the Henley’s Edge Police Department and are strictly forbidden from being removed from their records." I'm going to be honest, this just comes off as trauma lesbian porn from an author who a) isn't a lesbian and clearly can't even imagine what it's like to be one, and b) didn't even bother to create realistic characters. I love the idea of queer horror and queer people behaving in monstrous ways - we don't always have to be saints in literature - but I don't like the idea of queer women (I am one) being portrayed in such shallow and exploitative ways.

Bleak, clever, edgy, and vicious. Eric LaRocca draws his readers in for something they will never expect and never forget.” -Sadie Hartmann, ‘Mother Horror’ If Things have Gotten Worse was too dark for you, You've Lost a Lot of Blood is a reasonable middle ground. Its dark but not disgusting, and much more psychological...with a hint of body horror. It doesn't inspire the same level of dread, rather, it focuses on mostly being very weird. The A plot structures itself like a dark academia (These Violent Delights) with the characters being a bit pretentious. The B plot gives off David Lynch vibes. They are pretty different, but work together to tell a complete story. The official release date is 11/15 and we’re hoping to have our copies a little earlier than that so we can get them to everyone a bit early.

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Things Have Gotten Worse Since We Last Spoke is the kind of body horror that is more disturbing because of the psychological implications. There are two memorable scenes here. The first one includes eating spoiled meat, maggots and all. The second—which I won’t give away here because it’s a little gem all readers should discover themselves—involves a tapeworm. Together, and taken along with the rest of the narrative, these scenes prove that body horror punches harder when we know why it’s happening and have built some empathy for the characters involved. The poems and recordings veered into philosophical territory so much that there was little to no horror—and the one thing that was horror-y made me uncomfortable but not in a good way. My eyes rolled on their own from the halfway point. Tamsen’s story was okay, though it would have been better if there was something concrete enough to tie that story to the bigger picture of this novella. This is honestly my biggest complaint, because having an idea of how these two parts connected in the end would have single-handedly made this book a whole other experience. I find the vague plagiarism explanation to be flimsy at best.

A nightmarish fever dream of inspiration, an arduous ordeal of painstaking creativity.. I quite literally pushed myself to dangerous areas of my mind during those five days of creative Armageddon. He avoids this problem with the first story by making it entirely conversation, but the same can't be said for the last two.The ending redeemed this book quite a lot for me, it explained the dismembered feel of the whole book. But it’s just not good enough to justify how bad the book feels (except the novella, a full star goes to it). I suffered through this book, and not in a good way. A whirlpool of darkness churns at the heart of a macabre ballet between two lonely young women in an internet chat room in the early 2000s—a darkness that threatens to forever transform them once they finally succumb to their most horrific desires. Second, great cover. That smooshed-in blurt of a head…. Perfect. Round of applause to Kim Jakobsson.