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Lev Mirov

@thelionmachine.bsky.social

2.6K followers 460 following 13K posts

poet, novelist, graduate student, time traveler. in my sock knitting era. Jewish genderfluid bone wizard writing queer trans speclit in hell. Medievalist inexplicably writing a dissertation about Anna Akhmatova's queerness. no English pronouns, thanks.

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Lev Mirov @thelionmachine.bsky.social · 5h

"sure, X is a misogynistic racist character but that's just a trope, you're supposed to dislike them"

It's not that it's got racism in it it's the ways it is casually and systemically racist and how the narrative punishes and demeans women but I am sure this guy is a feminist, they always are.

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Lev Mirov @thelionmachine.bsky.social · 5h

My actual take about literature that will get me excommunicated is that sometimes you absolutely CAN tell somebody is a horrible abusive fuckhead in their writing, but the big tells are things about racism, sexism, abuse, consent, gender, etc that we're told to just ignore.

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Lev Mirov @thelionmachine.bsky.social · 5h

Why do I always "or not" twice in "whether or not" clauses. Why. I Always Do This.

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Lev Mirov @thelionmachine.bsky.social · 5h

A lot of people do not actually read the book that you wrote, they read the book that they decided you wrote whether or not that's based on the words on the pages or not. There is nothing anyone can do to change this. It can happen to anybody on the wrong day.

Rachel Feder @rachelfeder.bsky.social · 1d

Tell me your most unhinged literary opinion, as a little treat

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Lev Mirov @thelionmachine.bsky.social · 20h

Does she really have no friends who care about human rights in the UK? Is she actually unaware of politics there? Wild if true but I do encounter people like that in performing arts.

Lev Mirov @thelionmachine.bsky.social · 20h

It seems impossible to me, but I keep running into people, public figures, who clearly do NOT know. They don't read the news, they don't follow her on social media, they don't follow human rights issues, they do not let anything unpleasant into their thoughts. I really don't like that any better.

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Lev Mirov @thelionmachine.bsky.social · 1d

Were??? I presume we still ARE birthday twins, I haven't changed my birthday

Lev Mirov @thelionmachine.bsky.social · 1d

Happy birthday to Donna! I didn't realize we were birthday twins!

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Lev Mirov @thelionmachine.bsky.social · 1d

My life would be crushingly small if I did not live with someone who will physically walk out the door with me. I'd just never be able to even START.

Lev Mirov @thelionmachine.bsky.social · 1d

The extremely arbitrary limits placed around my life and experiences by the agoraphobia is so frustrating! I know none of it makes sense. Brain doesn't care.

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Lev Mirov @thelionmachine.bsky.social · 1d

All of this because I'm still at home on my birthday trying to psyche myself up for a meal I cannot walk to.

Lev Mirov @thelionmachine.bsky.social · 1d

I think many people do not realize agoraphobia has a spectrum, that sometimes you see somebody out of their home but only in the small subset of things their brain allowed them to do and have no idea that if they need to go two blocks over or take a cab or go alone they simply CANNOT.

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Lev Mirov @thelionmachine.bsky.social · 1d

I can usually force myself to do things with Aleksei, because he wants to do them, because I also want to do them, because I want to be with him and do things, but a 7 minute cab ride is one of those things that will prevent me from going out with him.

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Lev Mirov @thelionmachine.bsky.social · 1d

My agoraphobia constantly makes up new rules to keep my world small. I have gotten a handle on walking to new things and doing new things on walks so it's targeting cab rides and "what if I get stuck there and there's nowhere to sit down" as reasons to never go places.

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Lev Mirov @thelionmachine.bsky.social · 1d

Trying to explain how my agoraphobia works to people with regular anxiety is really embarrassing. For some reason I would rather crawl over glass than ride in an Uber. Why? Dunno. I just hate it. It costs a lot of money to have this experience of forced proximity with a stranger, it's exhausting.

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Lev Mirov @thelionmachine.bsky.social · 1d

It's my birthday. I am 37. Not too bad given I was told as a teenager my independent adult life would probably be over by the time I turned 32.

My life is very much not over, I'm not sure what I'm gonna do but I'm gonna walk around New Orleans and enjoy it, at minimum.

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Lev Mirov @thelionmachine.bsky.social · 2d

People melting down about the anti-imperial refugee alien show being too woke has always puzzled me, it's always been trying to have conversations about a future where we can all be who we really are and that be seen as good and right. Even when that's been uneven and poorly done.

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Lev Mirov @thelionmachine.bsky.social · 2d

Thank you!! 💙

Lev Mirov @thelionmachine.bsky.social · 2d

What are people DOING to these hanks?? Are they being wrapped by gremlins?

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Lev Mirov @thelionmachine.bsky.social · 2d

I thought I would celebrate my birthday by casting on new colorwork socks, ha ha ha.

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Lev Mirov @thelionmachine.bsky.social · 2d

I just spent 6 hours trying to wind a ball of yarn and simply cannot wind the rest of this fucking nightmare without sleeping. There's still 30-40 grams left to untangle because of how badly the skein was wound up.

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Lev Mirov @thelionmachine.bsky.social · 2d

Sometimes those of us who say y'all because we live (or lived) here or close to southern folks who don't "sound southern" get shit over it and I think it's just so useful filling a gap in American English.

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Lev Mirov @thelionmachine.bsky.social · 2d

It's just the standard Southern US way of addressing a group of people, and a lot of us prefer it to things like "guys" or "gentlemen and ladies" because it's more friendly and implies absolutely nothing about the audience except there's more than one person there.

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Lev Mirov @thelionmachine.bsky.social · 2d

Unstylish lesbians knitting the same style of homemade rustic solid colored sweaters and simple colorwork will have tattoos or piercings or dyed hair or weird art in their background, they'll talk about stuff that isn't homemaking, they do not have faces always sad like mine in 2009.

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Lev Mirov @thelionmachine.bsky.social · 2d

There is a very specific "unstylish lesbian or Evangelical Christian?" hair and makeup thing that I keep seeing where something about the physical unhappiness in people's faces is just a dead giveaway to me

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