Waffles (@electropengwing) · DIRTY

Waffles

@electropengwing

25+ | she/they | Let's go lesbians. And cats. Storygraph: electrifyingpenguin #BookReview | #SapphFic

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Waffles@electropengwing· 5d

Review of The Moon on a Rainy Night by Kuzushiro (vol 1-4): 4⭐ Love the thoroughly researched depiction of life with disability in Japan, though I wish it's got more yuri than Saki's painfully obvious crush. #BookReview #yuri #manga 🌈📚💙

Front cover image for volume 4, showing a scene where Saki and Kanon were playing on the couch, both of them laughing and smiling as Saki is sprawled over Kanon.

Review of volumes 1–4: Very sweet yuri manga with a realistic portrayal of life with disability in Japan. All the research that the mangaka did shows clearly in their story and how they approach Kanon's character, and I loved seeing Saki and Kanon become closer as they try to understand each other. But although Kanon is very open about how her life is like after she let her walls down, I still know very little about Saki, and they're both still dancing around Saki's feelings for Kanon as of volume 4. But I hope in the next few volumes I'll get to see more!

Waffles@electropengwing· 5d

Review of Monstrilio by Gerardo Sámano Córdova: 4.5⭐ A slow burn and a wild ride at the same time. I loved the characters and their messy ass relationships and decisions, and I loved how it all comes back to grief and letting go 💯 #BookReview 🩸📚🌈📚💙

Front cover image: Blocks of colors in different shapes are placed over a grainy, textured blue-gray background. A bat-guy looking thing with dark leathery skin and huge ears peers up at the viewer with bright red eyes, their fingers in their mouth. The title is in white cursive type.

Review: I loved this approach to Frankenstein's monster, focusing on grief and motherhood and learning to let go. Every character, including Monstrilio himself, is dealing with grief in their own way—for Santiago, for the life and love they used to have, and even for the freedom to live unapologetically as a monster. They're all very complicated, making shitty choices again and again, and Magos especially takes the cake for how utterly unhinged she is from the start. What I loved the most is the emphasis on Monstrilio himself and the struggle he has with living as the second-chance child that Magos and Joseph wanted, and seeing the characters slowly learn to let go of that need to make Monstrilio into something he is not is my favorite part of the novel. My tiniest complaint is that I wish I got more of Monstrilio's POV, but this is already so wonderfully queer and human.

Waffles@electropengwing· 5d

Review of Bellies by Nicola Dinan: 3⭐ I wish I didn't have to read the thoughts of a cis white gay man who's really struggling to accept and support their partner through transition, but it at least made for an interesting book club discussion. #BookReview 🌈📚💙

Front cover image of the hardcover edition: a minimalist style illustration of two people sleeping in bed, one tucked in under the covers while another has their body half off the image, only their legs visible, tangled in the blue bedcovers.

Review: Read for a book club pick—if I'd picked this up on my own, I don't think I would have made it far in the first hundred pages or so. Reading from the perspective of a cis, gay, white man who may or may not have been willfully ignorant of his partner being trans (or at the very least, gender nonconforming) was a pretty unique experience, and Tom is not the kind of character I would've wanted to step into the shoes of. But once I'm past the initial period of denial and get into the era of acceptance of Ming's transition, the book opens up on Tom and Ming's respective lives, with and without each other as lovers. From the midway point onward, it was definitely easier to accept them as flawed and human characters just trying to find the people they want to become. But wow, were there so many issues with communicating (specifically, not communicating) with each other through the entire novel.

Waffles@electropengwing· 5d

Review of An Unkindness of Ghosts by Rivers Solomon: 4⭐ I loooooved Aster, Giselle, and Theo omg. Queer, disabled Black characters!! Who don't exist solely to lecture readers on disability! Very excited to get into more of Rivers Solomon's books. #BookReview 🪐📚🌈📚💙

Front cover image: a watercolor-style illustration of a person looking at the viewer with a guarded expression. The entire cover is washed in cool blue, green, and gray, with stars scattered all over.

Review: For plot-driven readers, this novel will probably fall short, as it's but a brief glimpse into life aboard the generational spaceship Matilda three hundred years into its journey, with no clear beginning or end of the ship's purpose. But for me, who appreciates flawed characters brought to life with love and complexity, An Unkindness of Ghosts is probably what I had wanted more of when I'd first read The Deep.

Review (continued): Aster, Giselle, and Theo are well-written and beautifully flawed, trying to survive with their own disabilities and ways of being in a system designed to hammer them down into submission. I love the different kinds of love they hold for one another, how even Aster, as uncaring as she is for social norms, finds compassion and companionship with Giselle despite her frequent mood swings and psychotic episodes. Even Melusine, a side character, has depth beyond the typical caretaker/ward figure for Aster. If this were given the chance to expand into a full series, it would likely be even more amazing as a space opera. But even as it is now, I loved it—just queer, Black, disabled characters finding love, surviving, and fighting back under a system of slavery.

Waffles@electropengwing· 5d

Review of Herculine by Grace Byron: 2⭐ Had high hopes for the toxic T4T lesbianism but alas it only kept going downhill after the first quarter. #BookReview #SapphFic 🩸📚🌈📚💙

Front cover image for Herculine: an illustration of a person partially hidden in waves of neon green flames that engulf the entire cover. A pair of disconnected horns hover over their head as they gaze with furrowed brows at the viewer.

Review: Interesting ideas, poor execution. From the start I was very excited about the potential T4T toxic lesbianism between the main character and Ash, but the author kept throwing in more ideas that ultimately became meandering tangents—religious trauma, demons, a trans girl cult complete with ritual sacrifices, even demonic pregnancy???? There were so many things going on, yet I knew next to nothing about the main characters by the end, especially Ash, who was the main driving force of the plot. And then the greatest disappointment was the ending just taking me back right where I started! There was no message, no point, no resolution to any of the themes brought up throughout the novel. Bonus point given for the hot lesbian sex, really wish the author knew what she was doing.

Waffles@electropengwing· Jul 2

Pride power!! We are so back for summer reading yippeeee 🌈📚🏳️‍⚧️📚💙 #WrapUp

@electrifyingpenguin's June 2026 StoryGraph wrap-up graphic

Books read: 9
Pages read: 1591
Hours listened: 22.88
Average rating: 3.5

Highest rated reads: I'm a Fool to Want You by Camila Sosa Villada, The Thirty Names of Night by Zeyn Joukhadar, and Notes of a Crocodile by Qiu Miaojin (reread)

Genres from most read to least: LGBTQIA+, Literary, Horror, Young Adult, Short Stories

@electrifyingpenguin's June 2026 reads in a rating collage from StoryGraph. From left to right, top to bottom:

When Devils Sing: 3 stars
The Thirty Names of Night: 5 stars
The Broposal: 4 stars
Bone of My Bone: 3 stars
Notes of a Crocodile (reread): 5 stars
The World Keeps Ending, and the World Goes On: unrated
Open Throat: 1 star
I'm a Fool to Want You: 5 stars
The Monster of Elendhaven: 2 stars

Waffles@electropengwing· Jul 2

Review of The Monster of Elendhaven by Jennifer Giesbrecht: 2⭐ Cool concept, boring execution? I'm imagining the editors are Tor were clutching their pearls over two men going beyond a little flirting or kissing on the cheek when publishing this lmao. #BookReview 🌈📚🩸

Front cover image: a bleak cityscape painted in black rises in the background, releasing smog through the smokestacks. A spindly silhouette in white stands in contrast, holding a long knife, as the foreground bleeds into white. The title and author are set in black and red type reminiscent of the font used in The Nightmare Before Christmas.

Review: Slow to start, and it focused on the atmosphere and intrigue at the cost of everything else lol. The author spent an awful chunk of the novella describing the scenery of basically northern Europe during the Industrial Revolution, with a hint of magic, but completely missed the mark on the relationship and plot development, so most of the book is two emotionally repressed men flirting and dancing around each other for over half the book. The story sounds interesting, but the execution is just lacking and even a little boring at times.

Waffles@electropengwing· Jul 2

Review of I'm a Fool to Want You by Camila Sosa Villada, translated by Kit Maude: 5⭐ Magical stories of trans women: as sex workers, beards, wives, lovers, mothers, sisters, and more. Beautiful writing and amazing translation! #BookReview #SapphFic 🌈📚🏳️‍⚧️📚💙

Review: Beautiful and poignant stories of trans women existing, loving, and struggling through the ages. From precolonial to modern times, the author painted the lives of so many trans women, many of whom are also sex workers, the communities they formed with other queer people, the way they supported one another and became new families together. Full of pain, rage, tenderness, love, and everything in between.

Waffles@electropengwing· Jun 28

Review of Open Throat by Henry Hoke: 1⭐ idk why there's so much praise for this when Walking Practice by Dolki Min does everything this tries to do better AND with more style smh 🤨 #BookReview 🌈📚💙

Front cover image: an illustration of a lion or some other big feline opening its mouth wide at the viewer, with what would've been its teeth instead being the type that spells out the title Open Throat. The background is a bright bubblegum pink.

Review: This was a real nothingburger of a book. I was sold on the premise of a gay lion living in LA, but the gayness was not the main point (there was only one scene, maybe two if you squint, where that was even relevant). I have no idea how the praise for this was so blown out of proportion for what's actually in this book—there are some hints of critique of capitalist greed destroying nature and disconnecting humans from the world they live in, but ultimately whatever commentary the lion has to offer is only surface level because it's just a lion. And the author makes sure the prose is as dry and to-the-point as possible so we all remember that this is from the perspective of a lion with limited understanding of human culture. Whatever I was hoping to get out of this novella, there are other books that do it better and in more interesting ways—namely Walking Practice by Dolki Min.

Waffles@electropengwing· Jun 28

Review of Bone of My Bone by Johanna van Veen: 3⭐ I'm afraid this was kind of a flop for me 🥀 but the necromancer guy (diva was never named nooooo) was the greatest highlight for me 🙂‍↕️ #BookReview #SapphFic 🌈📚💙

Front cover image: a faceless nun holds a cushion on which a skull bedazzled with jewels and ornaments is resting. The cover is awash in scarlet, in the background, over where the nun's face should be, and even staining the nun's clothes. The title is set in an ornate serif type in a light golden color.

Review (part 1): This is my first time reading something from Johanna van Veen that's not her usual gothic horror, and I'm disappointed to say that I wasn't very impressed. I appreciated the folk horror included here, but this could've been either a hilarious horror-comedy or another devastating, doomed sapphic love story, yet the way these elements are mashed together is neither here nor there. I didn't feel any connection to Sister Ursula or Elsebeth (it doesn't help that I don't care about Christianity and all its different branches), and they lack the longtime understanding and chemistry that van Veen's other characters share in My Darling Dreadful Thing and Blood on Her Tongue. And the whole road trip premise demanded very fast relationship development that felt mostly left out for the sake of plot advancement.

review (part 2): On the horror-comedy aspect of this novel, I loved the necromancer, and I wish the story focused on him more! Besides the intrigue of the antagonist being a male witch, this man is also a diva and a total jester, poking fun at the absurdity of thousands of people killing each other in the name of religion or making light of the morbidity of death whenever the scenes pivot to him and his zombie assistant. And since the author isn't as serious about history accuracy in this book anyway, it would've been even funnier to make everyone gay and equally unserious lol.

Waffles@electropengwing· Jun 28

Review of The Broposal by Sonido Reyes: 4⭐ A super cute gay best friends to lovers romance with some tough conversations about life as an undocumented immigrant in the US. Also has two sex scenes but they're not too detailed! Another banger from one of my fave authors 💙 #BookReview 🌈📚🌶️📚💙

Front cover image: an illustration of the two main characters, Han and Kenny, in their room, with their dog lying down in the corner. Han is kneeling on one knee, proposing to Kenny. Both are secretly crossing their fingers behind their backs. The walls are painted a soft seafoam green while light streams in from the window, illuminating the pair.

Review: This was such a cute and fun read! Han and Kenny are both so precious—I was completely attached to Han and his constant fear of commitment to a life that he's not allowed to have as an undocumented immigrant. And with his fraught relationship with his parents back in Mexico, I was captivated by Sonido Reyes's superb character writing as always. Kenny, too, is adorable in his very unsubtle yearning for his childhood best friend. Their ups and downs with Kenny's ex-girlfriend from hell was a little too repetitive though, and the whole conflict with Jackie became too overblown to be easily resolved by the end. But overall, I loved the chemistry between Han and Kenny, the care they had for each other and their families, and even the way the story handled the realities of grieving for absent parents and dealing with abusive relationships.

Waffles@electropengwing· Jun 28

Review of The Thirty Names of Night by Zeyn Joukhadar: 5⭐ Beautiful, lyrical writing centering the queer immigrant experience of a trans Syrian American boy in NYC, searching for both a sense of belonging and a mythical bird from Syrian folklore 🐦🩵 #BookReview 🌈📚🏳️‍⚧️📚💙

Front cover image: an image of a bird wing against a white background, the feathers in brilliant shades of blue and tipped with dark brown. The title is set in red all caps.

Review: This is a beautiful, lyrical exploration of grief and queer existence across generations of Syrian American immigrants. As an immigrant New Yorker myself, much of this novel hit home for me—the quiet grief for a lost home, culture, and family; grief for their understanding of my true self that may or may not ever come; the gentrification and reality that this city was never built for us; and the desire for a community that understands both the immigrant/BIPOC experience and the queer experience. The author weaves all of that together with a little magical realism and a great love for birds (especially pigeons, we love pigeons). Very happy I read this. (smiley face)

Waffles@electropengwing· Jun 28

Review of When Devils Sing by Xan Kaur: 3⭐ Cool, eerie happenings with devils and cicadas in Georgia, just another day in the land of the Southern Gothic (but featuring a South Asian character!). #BookReview #SapphFic 🩸📚🌈📚💙

Front cover image: A crow, a golden snake, and a cicada intertwined over a bed of leaves and twigs. The background is pitch black, with the title set in an almost neon yellow serif type.

Review: I loved the atmospheric, Southern gothic writing—the cicada calls during the hot summer months in Georgia, the folktale of the three devils at the crossroads and people selling their souls to them, the mystery of people going missing every few years in Carrion. But the story suffered from being split across four different POVs, especially when Neera and Sam's characters feel stronger than the others and they are more directly involved with the folk horror. I wanted to love Isaiah more, but it felt like a missed opportunity for him to lead a true crime podcast and not explore the racist history of the South more deeply.

Waffles@electropengwing· Jun 28

Review of Juliet Takes a Breath by Gabby Rivera: 4⭐ Very sweet intersectional, queer coming-of-age story. Juliet is adorable lol, but the shit she's had to put up with from these Portland hippies!! #BookReview #SapphFic 🌈📚💙

Front cover image: an illustration of two girls riding a red motorcycle. The driver is dressed in all black, with black makeup and floral tattoos on her wrists, her long black hair flowing behind her. The girl sitting in the back, Juliet, spreads her arms out in a moment of joy, her face tilted up at the viewer. The cover is set with a bright yellow background and the title and author in bold red font.

Review: Juliet is such a cute, lovable baby dyke! Though I've mostly aged out of these coming-of-age stories, the exploration of white queer and feminist spaces is very interesting from Juliet's perspective. She doesn't have much experience or understanding in her identity, and on top of that she's stuck with this strange hippie who claims to value her perspective but can't even be bothered to refrain from smoking when Juliet clearly has an inhaler for asthma, among so many other examples of lack of care for her. The culmination of Harlowe's fake, feel-good, racist, and TERF-y feminism was very well done, but the ending doesn't quite tie up all the loose ends of the fallout. This would've been a great story for my teenage self, but that finale really had me going what the hell is wrong with all these crazy hippies!!

Waffles@electropengwing· Jun 28

Review of The Reformatory by Tananarive Due: 5⭐ Another banger, if you want additional reading after watching Sinners, this and Buffalo Hunter Hunter are perfect! #BookReview 🩸📚⏳📚💙

Front cover image of The Reformatory: A hazy view of a colonial-style building with the drooping silhouettes of trees in the background, the sky painted in sunset-orange and dusky magenta.

Review: Another essential reading after watching Sinners, centering the brutal violence and injustices of the legal system in the Jim Crow era. The horrors of Black history are front and center here, further exacerbated by the restless haints who cannot have peace even in death. Every single character is written with such heart, nuance, and complexity, and I especially feel for Gloria, who's had to grow up too fast shouldering the burden of parenting her younger brother and then both of them facing so much cruelty and violence in a system that was made to break them when Robert is sent to the reformatory. But despite the gripping tension and horror that never truly eases up, it is both heartwarming and heartbreaking to see Robert and Gloria find the support that they need—and what they had to sacrifice to break free.

Waffles@electropengwing· May 16

#CurrentlyReading Juliet Takes a Breath by Gabby Rivera 🌈📚

Photo of a copy of Juliet Takes a Breath next to a latte.

Waffles@electropengwing· Mar 22

Review of Women in Gray by KD Rye: 4⭐ Toxic wlw with freaky mind control, noncon, and morally ambiguous sex with your subordinate that your crazy, controlling wife is also into. The ending could've been even more fucked up but I admit I just prefer bad endings lol. #SapphFic #BookReview 🌈📚💙

Cover image for Women in Gray: a headless body holds a string tied to a black balloon, the balloon floating where the head should be. Two other black balloons hover in the background.

Review: Toxic wlw, my love! The constant tension and feeling of oppression with the amount of control that Daphne has over Hazel's every move is the exact kind of toxicity I was looking for, and all the characters are written with such care and complexity—especially Daphne and Hazel. Hazel is such a competent main character despite having little autonomy, and Daphne is equally cunning while still having moments of emotional vulnerability. I love the exploration of consent and morality between them, even more so when Cameron is dragged into their relationship.

The only complaint I have is for the lack of emotional payoff in the ending—after all that Hazel's been through, I think she deserved a good rage/ugly crying session! And since she's been restrained physically and emotionally for almost the entire novel, the lack of catharsis just made the ending feel stifled.

Waffles@electropengwing· Mar 5

back with another rare piece of Finn merch, this one from @MissMearKat on insta 💙

Photo of a beaded craft pixel art of Finn from FE4 with his beautiful brave lance.

Waffles@electropengwing· Mar 5

joining in on the fun 🤭 9 games that make me who I am I actually had to think really hard for my switch era lol I've only been revisiting old games lately 🥀 🔗 my9games.com

from left to right, top to bottom:

first row: Pokemon Mystery Dungeon Explorers of Sky, Pokemon Black, Etrian Odyssey IV

second row: Fire Emblem 4: Genealogy of the Holy War, Hades, AI: The Somnium Files

third row: Even If Tempest, Ring Fit Adventure, Tiny Bookshop

Waffles@electropengwing· Mar 2

let us all acknowledge and put to rest the remake we're never ever getting 🍃

"explorers of sky" set in the pokopia font against a background of a blue sky

Waffles@electropengwing· Mar 1

posting my February reading and music wrap-ups side by side cuz it's just hilarious how I said I wanted to read this or that and then did not do any of it (and you can take a guess at what I've been doing instead of reading 🤡)

My storygraph February 2026 wrap-up:

I read 3 books, 637 pages, with an average rating of 4.5

Highest rated reads: On Sundays She Picked Flowers (of course) and Capitalists Must Starve

My Musicolet February 2026 wrap-up, which is basically just Fire Emblem 4 music lol.

Waffles@electropengwing· Mar 1

Review of On Sundays She Picked Flowers by Yah Yah Scholfield: 5⭐ I'm afraid this will be my favorite read of 2026! This was especially relatable for me as a child of immigrants who are definitely carrying a ton of unresolved trauma 🥲 #BookReview #SapphFic 🌈📚🩸📚💙

Front cover image of On Sundays She Picked Flowers: a Black person, mostly hidden in darkness and dense flowers, looks at the viewer. A snake slithers across the top, mouth open as if intending to swallow a green bug in the corner, and a few butterflies are scattered across the cover. The title is in large white type across the whole image, leaving just the person's eyes uncovered.

Review: This book resonated with me deeply on so many levels, I'm very thankful to my book bestie for recommending this to me. What started out as a painfully relatable story about familial abuse as a result of generational trauma turned into such a beautiful transformation for Jude. I felt the pain and helplessness Jude felt toward her family, how beaten down she was, and I felt the same grief that I can never become the best version of myself as long as my own family is alive. I loved that Jude finally finds the strength to escape and fight for herself at the age of forty-one, both for the fact that trauma can in fact stay with you and affect you for so long, and also that it's never too late to become the person you deserve to be. (continues in next screenshot)

Everything else, from Jude settling down in the haunted swamp house to her romance with Nemoira, is so perfect and freeing and healing to read, and Jude remains realistic and complex in her trauma responses long after she'd escaped and made a life for herself. (spoilers marked in review) That's a book of all time right there.

Waffles@electropengwing· Feb 28

I'd let Tailtiu knock me up with Arthur and Tine. Imagine getting to have such beautiful and precious kids with this woman!!

Official artwork of Tailtiu from the FE4 art book.

Waffles@electropengwing· Feb 27

HELL YEAHHHH THAT'S MY GIRL TAILTIU 🙂‍↕️👏👏

Screenshot of FE4 of my promoted Tailtiu decked out with a magic ring, barrier ring, and pursuit band.

Waffles@electropengwing· Feb 23

she

screenshots from chapter 3 of FE4 featuring Claud being entirely done with Tailtiu

Claud: yapping politics to Sigurd
Tailtiu: Clauuuuuude! C'mon, let's go! Stop chewing off the poor man's ear. I'm getting bored here.

Claud: Gods, give me strength to cope with this child... Anyway, I'll rendezvous with your group once I've learned the truth.

Tailtiu: What, that grubby little cane? (referring to a holy staff lol)

Claud: Tailtiu, please. Do try to mind your manners.

Tailtiu: Huh. So what you're saying is, with this rod you could bring my sweet old grandma back to life?

Claud: Alas, most likely not. Valkyria is limited in many particular ways, and so cannot be used on just any lost soul.

Waffles@electropengwing· Feb 21

Review of Capitalists Must Starve by Park Seolyeon, translated by Anton Hur: 4⭐ Devastating but so inspiring!! I loved Juryong's growth from just tagging along with her husband to join a liberation army to learning to fight for herself and all the working women around her. 🥹 #BookReview 💙📚

Front cover image of Capitalists Must Starve: an all-type design in black serif over a bright orange background.

Review: This was both such an inspiring and tragic read, following the fictionalized life of 20th century labor activist Kang Juryong. She is written as a fierce but also funny and relatable figure, finding herself a part of Korean liberation and labor movements without necessarily understanding her place in them and how her actions can affect society, and all the buildup to her rubber factory labor strike is so humanizing and emotional and makes the ending all the more devastating. (continues in next screenshot)

I loved how Juryong kept calling out the misogyny in the liberation and activist groups she participates in, when women do so much of the factory work, domestic labor, and childcare that is always taken for granted, while the lack of women's education is also seen as completely natural. Her unique perspective as a young widow is in stark contrast to every other woman she meets in life, stuck in arranged marriages or forced to give up their own education to support the men in their families, and I loved seeing her find her drive to fight both for herself and her friends at the factory who even had to bring their babies to work because they didn't have any parental leave. This is as much a feminist read as it is an anticapitalist one. The ending is nothing short of heartbreaking, but it's a reminder of how far we've come thanks to the sacrifices of Juryong and every other worker who striked for better conditions.

Waffles@electropengwing· Feb 21

MY BLORBOS I LOVE THEM SO MUCH THEY ARE SO PRECIOUS

FEH chibi artwork of Arthur and Tine from FE4

Waffles@electropengwing· Feb 18

@littlegamer.bsky.social thank you so much for making a Finn charm for me! And sending a freebie pin and sticker too 😭💙💙 he looks so beautiful omg... everybody order from them now!! www.etsy.com/listing/1000...

Photo of my custom Finn charm with a sticker and pin. A small paper envelope reads "First time character! You were the first person to order a charm for Finn! Here are some goodies to celebrate!"

Waffles@electropengwing· Feb 18

every time I see seliph drawn with a cute baby face I think of the old fe4 arranged music videos (RIP I miss you every day) with that image of seliph where no one can tell if he's a guy or a girl because he's just so Gender

Screenshot of said video with the comment "Who is the babe? She looks like Lucina!"

Waffles@electropengwing· Feb 18

happy new year featuring giant Costco strawberry lmao 🍓🧧

Photo of a giant bright red strawberry the size of my palm, with some fresh flowers in the background.