Maggie Zhu @zhuphilia Twitter profile

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Maggie Zhu

@zhuphilia

6 days

where r all the female edgelords at

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Maggie Zhu

@zhuphilia

3 months

Thinking of these Stasi employees disguised as West German tourists

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Maggie Zhu

@zhuphilia

2 months

somewhere near Tibet rn

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Maggie Zhu

@zhuphilia

5 months

If I was reading MFA applications, I’d take the top half of the stack and throw it in the garbage. Literary success boils down to luck, and I don’t want unlucky writers in my program

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Maggie Zhu

@zhuphilia

4 months

I don’t understand the appeal of M*ry Oliver’s poetry. It’s like an upmarket Rupi Kaur. I will spend my one wild and precious life walking on my knees for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting, to die on this hill

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Maggie Zhu

@zhuphilia

1 month

lots of upcoming books i'm excited for...i sure hope the MFA doesn't suck away every last drop of my free time

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Maggie Zhu

@zhuphilia

3 months

@prettystar334 It's boring, uncreative, and unfunny as a roast too. Wow, congratulations on being able to copy & paste a list of redpill talking points about women! Roasting is an art form, and not everybody was born gifted

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Maggie Zhu

@zhuphilia

8 months

What is the A24 of books?

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Maggie Zhu

@zhuphilia

1 month

@TW1NKD3STR0YER oh wow, where is this from? also, i can't fathom a greater humiliation ritual than publicly admitting to an unrequited queer crush

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Maggie Zhu

@zhuphilia

4 months

It’s interesting how defensive people are about “wholesome” art. They equate the work with the positive message/feelings it promotes. Liking it puts you on the side of Goodness, makes you a Good Person. Not being moved by it is tantamount to rejecting the message—

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Maggie Zhu

@zhuphilia

5 months

Too many people confuse having taste and standards with “being pretentious”

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Maggie Zhu

@zhuphilia

2 months

we saw this gorgeous white rabbit gnawing on random wires in the streets of Chengdu

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Maggie Zhu

@zhuphilia

3 months

This is what some of you think the Iowa Writers' Workshop is like

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Maggie Zhu

@zhuphilia

2 months

Beyond The Zero Podcast

@beyondzeropod

2 months

What is the most beautiful title for a book ? My vote is Light in August.

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Maggie Zhu

@zhuphilia

2 months

me hearing about 'character sheets' or 'save the cat' or 'hook' or 'plot beats' or 'plotting vs pantsing' or other such rigid cliches of the writing advice industrial complex

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Maggie Zhu

@zhuphilia

3 months

Never really felt invested in literary canon/great books discourse, because it's much more enjoyable to focus on building my own personal canon with little consideration for what is praised, prized, or popular

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Maggie Zhu

@zhuphilia

5 days

this seems more targeted at Philip Roth than me

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Maggie Zhu

@zhuphilia

16 days

while you're struggling to read 100 pages a day, i'm grinding books into powder and snorting them to absorb their contents

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Maggie Zhu

@zhuphilia

3 months

I deserve maximum reparations for coming of age when this was the overwhelming/dominant tone of the literary internet

Alexander Wells

@ajbwells

3 months

hey remember the 2018 american literary internet? wild stuff

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Maggie Zhu

@zhuphilia

3 months

What is your popular and correct literary opinion that has you like this?

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Maggie Zhu

@zhuphilia

4 months

I considered switching over until I saw their metrics for evaluating books. Then I walked right out.

Caustic Cover Critic

@Unwise_Trousers

4 months

Is it worth the hassle of going from Goodreads to Storygraph? All this restarting on new websites because the older ones are run by morons is exhausting.

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Maggie Zhu

@zhuphilia

2 months

i never know how to feel about this adage...i think suffering and trauma enlarges your awareness of danger, but beyond that, what you do with it is up to you. for some people, it can lead to more sensitivity & compassion. for others, a paranoid and fascistic mentality

jess!

@jessicobra

2 months

"suffering doesnt create empathy" okay yeah sure but have you ever talked to someone who has never struggled at all

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Maggie Zhu

@zhuphilia

4 months

and only a monster would do that, duh. It’s a bit perplexing, because I (and the people I know) would never feel our values and existence to be threatened by someone who doesn’t like, for instance, Jelinek or Mishima. But everyone is different, I suppose.

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Maggie Zhu

@zhuphilia

2 months

whenever this topic comes up, i think of this Maggie Nelson quote

olivia stowell

@oliviastowell

2 months

why is it that with like aesthetic/sensory endeavors, ppl who get "really into it" (so to speak) tend to also become drawn to "unconventional"/"abrasive" aspects of it? chefs w offal, readers w "difficult" poetry/literature, etc (seems to also hold with musicians?) - why is this?

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Maggie Zhu

@zhuphilia

3 months

No MFA program prepares you for lugging like 300+ books across state lines when you move...

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Maggie Zhu

@zhuphilia

2 months

i'm shaking my ass at the library tonight to promote my debut novel. the burden of marketing rests solely on these cheeks

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Maggie Zhu

@zhuphilia

3 months

@waitmanb @VisitNotts There's an old, but decent BBC docu following Nazis at a reenactment event. Some truly wild scenes, including a couple holding their wedding in the uniforms. David Irving even makes an appearance! 😬

Weekend 'Nazis' - BBC Panorama 31 August 2007

Re-enacting battles from World War Two is a popular summer pastime in the UK, but although we won the war it's the Germans that most people want to portray a...

www.youtube.com

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Maggie Zhu

@zhuphilia

3 months

I would only read an "Internet novel" if it's about tumblr in the first half of the 2010s

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Maggie Zhu

@zhuphilia

4 months

@piercepenniless I hate wellness culture I hate wellness culture I hate

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Maggie Zhu

@zhuphilia

4 months

@saintsoftness I like her music, but that’s…very much in spite of the marketing, lol, and there’s a simmering horror baked into my anticipation of this album. The aesthetics of ~reading~ without any actual poetry or literature in sight…

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Maggie Zhu

@zhuphilia

6 months

@TheLincoln Working 140 hours a week, never seeing my family, and dying of a stress-induced blood clot at the ripe age of thirty because I’m not a lazy librul snowflake

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Maggie Zhu

@zhuphilia

4 months

It's actually the height of pretension to claim that people aren't old enough, or deep enough, or have suffered enough to grasp the genius of your mediocre preacher-masquerading-as-poet. Many accusations are thinly veiled confessions.

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Maggie Zhu

@zhuphilia

9 months

@repairhollywood @youknowdaveed @BigMeanInternet I can’t believe Bill Clinton getting a blowjob in the Oval Office indirectly led to 9/11

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Maggie Zhu

@zhuphilia

3 months

What I’d like to do to many of you

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Maggie Zhu

@zhuphilia

1 year

@LydiaScribe @davidgross_man With difficult topics like rape, genocide, war, fascism, abuse, etc, there seems to be two narratives. 1.) The popular narrative: uplifting, karmic, sentimental, positioning those horrors outside of the zone of human possibility

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Maggie Zhu

@zhuphilia

5 months

I can’t handle another story about a bored, unfulfilled, and vaguely depressed young white woman fucking and sucking in the city. Wow, you date terrible men and revel in your unlikeability/abjection? Should we throw a party? Should we invite Anna and Dasha?

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Maggie Zhu

@zhuphilia

10 months

More people should sublimate their inherent perversion and suppressed violence through art

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Maggie Zhu

@zhuphilia

4 months

@haircomber I like Didion, but it was a devastating blackpill for my spergy ass to grow up and realize how much one’s image, appearance, and social affect matters if you’re a woman who writes

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Maggie Zhu

@zhuphilia

15 days

it brightens my day to see identity-brained takes that would've gone viral in 2018 receive heavy pushback today 😇

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Maggie Zhu

@zhuphilia

13 days

i'm excited for the mfa, but i dread rebuilding my social life & trying to date again. it's easier to imagine 26 million people in the tristate area collectively vomiting at my arrival than a single person being happy to see me

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Maggie Zhu

@zhuphilia

29 days

there was a glasses store in china called Helen Keller

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Maggie Zhu

@zhuphilia

3 months

I'm a separate the art from the artist extremist; my favorite writer could spit at my firstborn child in public and I'd still buy their next novel

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Maggie Zhu

@zhuphilia

1 year

@LydiaScribe @davidgross_man 2.) And the actual events, which are mundane, weird, genuinely disturbing, and people don’t always behave like they’re supposed to. Very infrequently is there any justice, and we are denied the possibility of complete understanding or a satisfying answer.

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Maggie Zhu

@zhuphilia

10 months

The folks who fret over “authenticity” in fiction are the same folks responsible for 80% of historical fiction (now) depicting Mary Sues with impeccable modern views, distorting the sociopolitical landscapes of the past to fit post-2016 US narratives

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Maggie Zhu

@zhuphilia

3 months

Really don’t like the implication that Diasporoids who eschew writing about their culture have made that choice out of a desire to assimilate. Some of us simply don’t feel called to write about it/don’t have anything to say about it.

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Maggie Zhu

@zhuphilia

17 days

if nothing works out artistically or romantically by age 35, i will divert my energy & need for meaning into being a single tiger mom

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Maggie Zhu

@zhuphilia

2 months

i think the same is true of the arts: the writers i know whose work excites me the most aren't always it-girls, exemplars of community, going along to get along. having both can be the winning combo, but many don't or can't

Ruxandra Teslo 🧬

@RuxandraTeslo

2 months

People are hating on this & saying oh but ofc you can be a genius and good at politics. Well, sure, you can, but talent is limited & the kind of person who cares obsessively abt truth (I call it weird nerd) is less likely to also be a skilled schmoozer. Academia should be a good

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Maggie Zhu

@zhuphilia

26 days

@AmericanGwyn everything must be a Goofus and Gallant comic strip

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Maggie Zhu

@zhuphilia

8 days

i don't want another fiction writer in my house, but having a theorycel gf would be amazing...we'd respect each other's cerebral pursuits, yet tend to separate gardens

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Maggie Zhu

@zhuphilia

9 months

I would never be caught dead “telling my story”

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Maggie Zhu

@zhuphilia

2 months

@hastifliche they send hateful missiles, i only send missiles of love and light and laughter

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Maggie Zhu

@zhuphilia

3 months

Just discovered a book I'm extremely interested in, but it hasn't been translated yet, and I don't speak the language. God's paywall strikes again...

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Maggie Zhu

@zhuphilia

1 month

yt libruls speak about marginalized writers' books like the catholic church peddling indulgences in the 1200s--the more you buy, the more you increase your likelihood of getting into heaven (or attaining Good Person status)

wendy xu 🤖 INFINITY PARTICLE OUT NOW!

@AngrygirLcomics

1 month

honestly hate that every time there's an industry bad actor, lists of "works by marginalized authors to support instead" start circulating like it's a moral obligation to be done out of guilt, & it's crickets every other day of the year. my work is not meant to serve your guilt

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Maggie Zhu

@zhuphilia

4 months

@Breen Accessibility is great when you’re designing a building or social program or political slogan, or anything with utilitarian purpose, but it makes me uneasy when people apply it to art: that it is doing something right only if it is understood by the greatest number of people

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Maggie Zhu

@zhuphilia

3 months

So does anybody, like, manage to eventually grow out of this? Or is the cycle never-ending?

Maggie Zhu

@zhuphilia

5 months

One inconvenient part of working on a novel in your 20's is the speed at which your writing improves throughout the long process, and the constant temptation to return to previous parts and revise them until they're up to current standards

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Maggie Zhu

@zhuphilia

9 months

@saintsoftness The only thing I’ve said in defense of her work is that I don’t expect Inauguration poetry to be particularly radical or profound. Like Live Laugh Love home decor for Capitol Hill, if you will.

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Maggie Zhu

@zhuphilia

5 months

@MicahSVernon It’s very weird. Sometimes, people make such jokes at me (perhaps they assume that I, a queer WOC, would agree?), and it’s really awkward/unintentionally callous when they’re mocking the “privileged” character over something that I deal with too 🤷🏻‍♀️

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Maggie Zhu

@zhuphilia

8 months

Oh, to be a punished University of Heidelberg student smoking opium in the early 1900s

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Maggie Zhu

@zhuphilia

1 year

@wars This would make a fantastic album cover

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Maggie Zhu

@zhuphilia

10 months

Sometimes, I hate being born at the end of history. The culture + politics feel broken and stuck and out of touch, and a dignified life unattainable. Clueless old people think that your generation is so “free.” I just wish there was something to believe in.

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Maggie Zhu

@zhuphilia

3 months

It's a thin line that separates the urge to protect others and the desire to control them

Hannah Crawford

@HannahCCoach

3 months

I haven’t watched Baby Reindeer. I saw the play at Roundabout in 2019 and i felt it to be an extremely unsafe experience for the audience and the actor. I have however seen much of the discourse which has followed. I find it utterly horrifying that 🧵

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Maggie Zhu

@zhuphilia

4 months

Anyways, my actual opinion is that it would be cool and interesting if everyone was forced to publish under pseudonyms for the next decade. We are all Elena Ferrante.

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Maggie Zhu

@zhuphilia

7 months

Most theory books become infinitely more interesting when you read them like a novel

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Maggie Zhu

@zhuphilia

5 months

One inconvenient part of working on a novel in your 20's is the speed at which your writing improves throughout the long process, and the constant temptation to return to previous parts and revise them until they're up to current standards

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Maggie Zhu

@zhuphilia

1 year

@LydiaScribe @davidgross_man And that makes people uncomfortable. It’s obvious why the first has more mass appeal, but unfortunately it does serves to cover up the actual events

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Maggie Zhu

@zhuphilia

2 months

rare foods of sichuan: yak butter tea & a popsicle which, according to my mom, was the only variety of popsicle available during her childhood. it tastes like bubblegum and artificial banana.

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Maggie Zhu

@zhuphilia

2 months

we must install loudspeakers on every street corner, blasting propaganda like in Mao-era China. silence is golden? no. silence is bourgeois, baby

The Atlantic

@TheAtlantic

2 months

If gentrification has a sound, it’s silence. Xochitl Gonzalez on why the rich love quiet so much, and what it means for everyone else:

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Maggie Zhu

@zhuphilia

4 months

Can’t wait to try this in front of all those National Guards when I’m in NYC next month

Future Adam Curtis B-Roll

@adamcurtisbroll

9 months

A skateboarder jumps a turnstile at Flagstaff Station in Melbourne, Australia, October 2023.

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Maggie Zhu

@zhuphilia

3 months

Garamond discourse makes me nervous because I submitted all of my MFA applications in Garamond. I wasn't aware people had such strong feelings about it; it's simply the default font I've used for years?

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Maggie Zhu

@zhuphilia

13 days

i never got to finish this book because i lost it in china 😡

Maggie Zhu

@zhuphilia

2 months

somewhere near Tibet rn

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Maggie Zhu

@zhuphilia

2 months

finally picked out the books i'm bringing to China this month

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Maggie Zhu

@zhuphilia

13 days

"i don't see the purpose of fiction...the contrivance of plot and character...the novel as a form has exhausted its possibilities."

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Maggie Zhu

@zhuphilia

4 months

Okay, I’m glad everyone had their fun, but I think I’ll die of boredom if I hear the name “Mary Oliver” one more time, so the gates are briefly closing 🤍

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Maggie Zhu

@zhuphilia

4 months

I think y’all know…

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Maggie Zhu

@zhuphilia

27 days

my worst trait is that i often forget to respond to people, and by the time i remember again, so much time has elapsed that i frankly feel embarrassed to revive the conversation

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Maggie Zhu

@zhuphilia

2 months

me entering an MFA program, trying not to think about the subsequent decades of scrounging for expired canned goods while fending off marauders in the smoking ruins of the publishing industry:

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Maggie Zhu

@zhuphilia

1 month

i can't read or write chinese despite speaking it fluently, so being here is a bit like microdosing illiteracy

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Maggie Zhu

@zhuphilia

20 days

publishing & book drama is so funny precisely because it's like late Qing dynasty court eunuch levels of scheming, scamming, resenting, gossiping, backstabbing, groveling, lying, stealing......all for the sake of made-up stories & made-up people 💀

Sophie Cass (is vague 👀)

@scasswriting

20 days

publishing should literally just be about writing and selling books like wdym there are people out here poaching clients & seven-figure deals and stealing work and faking their identities and whatever the hell else has happened recently??? like wtf is wrong with these people??

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Maggie Zhu

@zhuphilia

2 months

fascinated with deep sea oil rigs this summer...truly the modern towers of babylon

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Maggie Zhu

@zhuphilia

1 year

Great reference for any future novelists writing 2010s historical fiction

ch🧠rlie

@colorpulp

1 year

man... the list of bad jokes that workaholics writers weren't allowed to use is so painful, it's like a time capsule of the most annoying millennial humor from the early/mid 2010s

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Maggie Zhu

@zhuphilia

4 months

I’m probably biased because I’m halfway through Go, Went, Gone at the moment & obsessed with her cerebral/elegant/dreamlike style & wishing I could do that too

Adam Sternbergh

@sternbergh

4 months

what’s the best novel you’ve read that was published 2020 or later? One pick only:

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Maggie Zhu

@zhuphilia

17 days

i'm not under any illusion that there's some ideal country out there, and i know i'd remain an outsider to some degree wherever i settle, but i genuinely think i'd be happier outside america

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Maggie Zhu

@zhuphilia

23 days

i still do this (fiction-brained) and usually it's like reading a novel from the perspective of a raving madman with keen observational facilities, who occasionally makes a good point

Maggie Zhu

@zhuphilia

7 months

Most theory books become infinitely more interesting when you read them like a novel

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Maggie Zhu

@zhuphilia

1 month

i love dostoevsky, but it makes me cringe violently to see his quotes on my feed, isolated from context

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Maggie Zhu

@zhuphilia

1 year

@devilsdoorbell_ Who even reads The Mary Sue in 2023?

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Maggie Zhu

@zhuphilia

3 months

Translators are doing the devil's work by disobeying God's will for humans to speak different languages, and I think that is so cool 😈

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Maggie Zhu

@zhuphilia

8 months

Mary Gaitskill! (she is a GILF these days)

Beyond The Zero Podcast

@beyondzeropod

8 months

Who is your author crush? Mine is totally Clarice Lispector

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Maggie Zhu

@zhuphilia

22 days

they're dating

♡holistic honey♡Superfan

@doordashbliccy

24 days

🎯👀

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Maggie Zhu

@zhuphilia

4 months

NGL, I’d be deeply afraid and intimidated if I met (much less dated) somebody like this. This sounds like a description of a “get ready with me” TikTok, and not the actual texture of a human life/day

holistic mami✨

@LeArielleSimone

4 months

my hot take is i don’t think anybody should be dating until their shit is together. eating healthy, working out regularly, having a morning routine, a spiritual practice, a therapist, financial discipline. things like that have to come first.

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Maggie Zhu

@zhuphilia

1 month

it's incredible how much the compulsion to post my thoughts online melts away when i'm having a good time and enjoying my irl life

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Maggie Zhu

@zhuphilia

5 months

Vote for me in 2024. I will: - divert the entire US military budget to arts and culture - mandate everyone sit in front of a lithograph & contemplate for 1 hour per day - re-education camps for tech bros - open a White House MFA program, with a yearly stipend of $100K

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Maggie Zhu

@zhuphilia

2 months

friend returned from copenhagen, where he ate shrimp with eggs. a haunting combination. not sure if those animals are meant to be consumed together, because it's unlikely for them to meet under natural circumstances while alive

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Maggie Zhu

@zhuphilia

2 years

my stardew valley kegs remind me of a cat on the verge of vomiting

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Maggie Zhu

@zhuphilia

4 months

Depressive period over. I believe I will find love in this lifetime

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Maggie Zhu

@zhuphilia

21 days

pre-MFA doubt: sometimes i think writing fiction isn't for me, and i'm only in it for the low barrier to entry. my true calling? playing in a metal band with a name like Family Annihilator.

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Maggie Zhu

@zhuphilia

3 months

@bradkelly The narrator from Notes From Underground, but I wonder if that crosses the line from annoying to downright sinister

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Maggie Zhu

@zhuphilia

9 months

When people say they want to be able to “root for” the main character in a book, like they’re watching a sports game 🚩 🚩 🚩

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Maggie Zhu

@zhuphilia

1 year

Imagine the discourse that would ensue if a historical fiction writer cited reincarnation as "lived experience" that permits them to tell the story

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