"FAUXDESTINY" by Brennan Richie. "FAUXDESTINY is a short poetry book focused on embracing imperfection and accepting flaws. It was inspired by a dark glimpse into a possible future: a future in which humans are melding with technology, sacrificing their bodies for eternal metal shells, and surrendering their minds to artificial emulation. FAUXDESTINY was written as a message for our final moments. It encourages reconsideration; it begs us to stop fleeing from our earthly roots and take pride in our human spirit - however flawed we may be." is the summary given to this small collection. As someone who thinks and writes about the way capitalism is encouraging human beings to replace their sense of self and sense of humanity with non-human identities and personalities (the best win for a corporation is replacing one's humanity with a product or consumption of specific ones), any writing project about coming to terms with being human is something I'm definitely going to vibe with.

The design of the chapbook is that every page is entirely black. I think the font used is "inconsolata" which is a sibling font to "consolas" (the font I write all my GoogleDocs in) and all the text as well as the sketchy drawings surrounding every page are in a bright nearly neon magenta. It feels like a very personal computer terminal recovered from a future archive. Maybe this is what the final diary entries from a dying human in the year 2084 could look like. It's a very graphic account about leaving one's state as a human. It can come across as being about suicide or clearly explained self-harm, but technically the character writing the entries only dies in one kind of way. They technically still live, just without a human form. It's a gore-filled narrative about completely leaving the self behind, and that maybe that's not the best choice. A lot of people can understand or may posses the desire to stop being human, to run away from internal voids or senses of shame by becoming something with no connection to anything. But how do we know those things won't follow us anyways? Does death really allow us to escape suffering? Is the price it costs to try to cheat fate worth something we have no true certainty of? Probably not. FAUXDESTINY is a read that takes you down these pathways accompanied by a collection of doodles and drawings full of messy chaos seeking order. It's a strange little pocket of science fiction, and while graphic, is great for considering those questions on the human plane of existence.

"Every time you give another chance, you tend to assume I want to take it.

You insist that this is good for me, but I will never fall to your complacence."

[CW // Gore, Death/Allusions to Suicide, and Self-Harm]

Beautiful illustrations accompany the whole collection. They really helped immerse me while reading. Interestingly enough, the first one "Red Curtain" was  the one that stuck with me.

"SKIN" hit me especially hard. You put words to a feeling I've had a lot. "Your skin ends somewhere," I mean, God, that really hits. And I love the zine-like quality of the whole thing, the art is fantastic. Sorry this is so short but I just wanted to let you know how much that poem grabbed me.