Okay no this is a stupid bit

I've been carrying on and on about Nevada and like, yes it's incredibly sick I love it to death. But I also noticed that it maybe deliberately makes itself really inexplicable? Like, you know The Last Girl Scout by Natalie Ironside? It seems cool/weird to have a t4t romance sandwiched into a post-apocalyptic anarcho-communist Great Patriotic War with zombies and vampires, right? But it says in the bio and shit that Ironside comes from having been a dumb rightwinger first, and then a trans woman in leftists orgs, and the book draws from like Fallout and S.T.A.L.K.E.R. and George A Romero films, and it makes a ton of sense. Basically every individual element can be tied back to a logical influence or element of the author's life.

Nevada is like... uh you know the 1990s queer scene? No not that one, the one in New York? No the other one, it's like Riot Grrl except you were a repressed trans woman I guess, all punk "DIY" shit. It's like Any Other City by Hazel Jane Plante if it didn't make any sense. You can read Gender Outlaw and Whipping Girl and some stuff about Topside to get a little more on it, but like what the fuck is Michigan Womyn's Festival, right? What the fuck is fictionmania dot com? What is any of this bizarre subculture?

I kind of feel like Nevada makes itself impenetrable in an if you know, you know way, and if that's 100% relatable to anyone I want to know them. But then Little Fish by Casey Plett and Detransition, Baby by Torrey Peters (as well as her short stories) and Tell Me I'm Worthless by Alison Rumfitt and Manhunt by Gretchen Felker Martin all add pieces on top of this weird thing, bring Nevada from the era of Myspace and DVDs into streaming and twitter. It's hard to parse, you know? I am always trying to puzzle it out.