honestly Poppy Z. Brite never gets enough credit for being a formative fucking luminary of the horror genre, especially in regard to queer and trans narratives during a time when mainstream horror was pretty spooked by those kinds of stories

like Clive Barker's queerness was never a secret in his fiction, but Poppy Z. Brite was absolutely balls-out about it in a way that's like, genuinely inspiring. his stories are horny and terrifying and upsetting and full of absolute full-throated queer rage

and he missed the mark a lot, a LOT, and his work is messy as shit and probably indefensible in a lot of ways, but reading his work as an angry, scared queer teen made me feel like somebody SAW me and would swing a bat at someone's head for me. it was important

idk man i am compelled to stan somebody who managed to get major publishers to print and distribute copies of his Jeffrey Dahmer/Dennis Nilsen fic. complete legend