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eel, i

@eliacugini.bsky.social
974 followers 336 following 727 posts

writer & end-stage PhD student. i work on literary culture, sex, queer life, child liberation, and anti-trans persecution. contributing writer @ Vashti, work @ Baffler, Dazed, Defector, &c. he/him. 📍 manchester / belfast

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eel, i @eliacugini.bsky.social · 8h
reupping this, his therapist kept dragging their feet and only got him a letter this month, so he needs a few hundred more $ in order to stay in school and not risk homelessness again
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eel, i @eliacugini.bsky.social · 05/10/2026
recovering from thesis submission has caused the kind of fatigue and fogginess i last experienced post major surgery
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eel, i @eliacugini.bsky.social · 04/10/2026
like why am i seeing handwringing about Zionism as ‘safety’ in the big 2026
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eel, i @eliacugini.bsky.social · 04/10/2026
i don’t think you can have a radical and politically coherent analysis wrt the genocide that also holds back from making anyone uncomfortable if they have deep cultural ties to Zionist orgs/institutions. squashing leftist antisemitism doesn’t require that kind of cowardice
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eel, i @eliacugini.bsky.social · 04/10/2026
i think there are questions to be asked about the strategic efficacy of the zionism = racism motion but a LOT of the people commenting on it seem fundamentally uncomfortable with any pro-Palestine messaging more complex or divisive than thoughts & prayers
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eel, i @eliacugini.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
i did aerial hoop for 6 months last year and loved it! dropped it bc they kept cancelling the beginners classes but hoping to go back now i’m done w the thesis
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eel, i @eliacugini.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
easily some of the sharpest writing i’ve ever read on sexual violence and how it circulates culturally; reminds me of reading The Second Rape and thinking ‘damn this would be so good if it wasn’t so terrible’
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eel, i @eliacugini.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
read this book in bed while recovering from thesis submission, really like it / really attached to it. genuinely startling to see a decade-old book this incisive about the carceralism, gender binarization, and foundational shame that shapes narratives of sexual violence
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eel, i @eliacugini.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
i am the most tired man in the entire world
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eel, i @eliacugini.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
submitted my PhD thesis :) i spent 4 years talking about all these books (and a few more that I don’t have in physical copy)
‘A book that could kill’: Family, violence, and the antisocial in contemporary autofiction
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eel, i @eliacugini.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
and also, like, the getting paid part
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eel, i @eliacugini.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
fwiw i think it is / would be extremely weird to primarily value your work for AuthenticityTM reasons but the whole ‘we like your work but you are disposable’ thing is a really difficult embittering problem. i hope you can experience more of the kind of citation you value
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eel, i @eliacugini.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
will physically need a break for ~3 weeks (aside from a couple small projects and the class i teach) but i have other projects in mind
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eel, i @eliacugini.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
22/23: 50% of the proofreading is done! hoping to submit the thesis tomorrow evening :)
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eel, i @eliacugini.bsky.social · 27/09/2026
21/23: i finished the thesis draft on friday so i’ve taken the weekend off in advance of the final proofreading stint, except for fixing up a few citations. my wife and i are both going to read through the full thing, i’m going to send one last mini segment to my supervisor, but it’s almost done :)
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eel, i @eliacugini.bsky.social · 26/09/2026
i completed my PhD thesis today, barring proofreading / final corrections. also made tofu
peanut tofu
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eel, i @eliacugini.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
18/23: 2000 more words cut, chapter 3 edited, translations all vetted (thanks to friend with a french degree). i’m now within 750 words of the limit, though i’ll need to add a few hundred words of material to my fourth chapter and conclusion tomorrow before i do the last big chop
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eel, i @eliacugini.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
i don’t read norwegian worth shit but norwegian news articles are very, uh, to the point. whereas i do read some french but the french are more inclined to the…figurative
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eel, i @eliacugini.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
at least managing at points to go ‘this whips actually’
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eel, i @eliacugini.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
still gonna be doing a bunch of proofreading and checks and little edits from mon-weds but i’d like to close the week knowing that if i had to submit the thesis at gunpoint i could do it
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eel, i @eliacugini.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
17/23: footnoted all the translations and did a first pass of both remaining chapters. tomorrow i fix chapter 3 and vet the translations, friday i fix chapter 4 and the conclusion. am 2-3 more good work stints away from a viable thesis
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eel, i @eliacugini.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
man you wouldn’t believe how good the albatross is for building your lats
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eel, i @eliacugini.bsky.social · 22/09/2026
gotta vet 1,000,000 french translations and a couple norwegian translations. And footnote all the original quotes. which a better man than me would have systematically stored with my own translations 3 years ago. But I Didn’t
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eel, i @eliacugini.bsky.social · 22/09/2026
also working with texts that aren’t in english is ASS once you get to the citation stage. next article i write is gonna be monolingual as shit apologies
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eel, i @eliacugini.bsky.social · 22/09/2026
16/23: 2000 more words cut, and in a shockingly good mood, because i think this chapter is my best chapter. however dear God i hate citing marx and engels, why’d they put all their best lines in some random ass essays where i can’t find the correct edition or its translator
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eel, i @eliacugini.bsky.social · 22/09/2026
now hitting me that i am finishing my thesis…on campus…During Fresher’s Week
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eel, i @eliacugini.bsky.social · 21/09/2026
15/23: interview went well. 2000 words cut from the thesis’s first chapter. still needs one more intensive fixup stint - translations, add a couple things, change a couple things, the analysis of one of the books needs a touchup - but then it’ll be done imo
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eel, i @eliacugini.bsky.social · 20/09/2026
really not looking forward to monday because i have to do an unavoidable interview that day as well 😭
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eel, i @eliacugini.bsky.social · 20/09/2026
13/23: bibliography formatted! day off tomorrow and then we’re gonna be in the final editing stage (monday-friday) before the proofreading, finalising, and sendoff stage (saturday-wednesday)
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eel, i @eliacugini.bsky.social · 19/09/2026
watching naked acts (1996), which i’d never heard of before but which is a really really fantastic film
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eel, i @eliacugini.bsky.social · 18/09/2026
12/23: conclusion written (at least drafted, gonna send via supervisor for approval). derangedly happy that we got a new autofiction scandal like 3 weeks before my submission date i love being right
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eel, i @eliacugini.bsky.social · 17/09/2026
admin wise i think i basically just have to have a day where i lock in, fix up the full bibliography, find or cut my last 3 lost citations, learn how to cite all the finicky stuff i’ve been avoiding, and switch 3,000 intext citation colons into commas. or the reverse. i forget
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eel, i @eliacugini.bsky.social · 17/09/2026
i’m gonna have like 5 days to cut realistically 7500 words out of this thesis and edit it throughout for clarity and relevance to the final title before it gets to proofreading time. but we move
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eel, i @eliacugini.bsky.social · 17/09/2026
11/23: had a Bad Time again so forgot to update but i have now completed the chapter 4 rewrite and started the conclusion. tomorrow i finish the conclusion and then i do some administrative stuff over the weekend before the BIG EDIT/CUTDOWN next week
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eel, i @eliacugini.bsky.social · 14/09/2026
i’ve sent him $50 but i’m low on cash right now. if you can help please do. he’s been so thoroughly bureaucratically fucked over for years i just want him to be ok
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eel, i @eliacugini.bsky.social · 14/09/2026
a trans guy i know personally & can vouch for, who’s finally found housing and started a degree after years of homelessness, is at risk of being kicked out if he doesn’t pay off $350 of meal plan debt by 9/20. his therapist etc are dragging their feet www.paypal.com/paypalme/srlj2
paypal.com
Pay Samuel James using PayPal.Me
Go to paypal.me/srlj2 and type in the amount. Since it’s PayPal, it's easy and secure. Don’t have a PayPal account? No worries.
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eel, i @eliacugini.bsky.social · 14/09/2026
i now have my declarations, my little contents page, things of that nature. and have added some more stuff to my bibliography & my ‘read/skim before submission’ list. hoping that tomorrow i can get pretty close to being done with chapter 4’s rewrite before i get to the conclusion
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eel, i @eliacugini.bsky.social · 14/09/2026
8/23: had a Bad Time on friday so forgot to update, but i have rewritten 4000 more words of the fourth chapter and spent today going through the PhD presentation of theses handbook which i had been avoiding due to fear but which was fine lol
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eel, i @eliacugini.bsky.social · 14/09/2026
ugh hate that the writing and learning degree is keeping me from my favourite hobbies, writing and learning
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eel, i @eliacugini.bsky.social · 14/09/2026
i think i feel most worried that i’ll finish it and feel nothing and nobody will really care. i don’t think that’s true but i guess i have to believe in my own accomplishments in a way i don’t yet
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eel, i @eliacugini.bsky.social · 14/09/2026
finishing 9 month master’s programme while breaking down from incipient transgenderism was maybe worse but at least i only had to cough up 10,000 words that time
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eel, i @eliacugini.bsky.social · 14/09/2026
doing this PhD for the last four years (at realistically 3.5-year pace given how much extra work I’ve been doing the whole time) has been broadly alright most of the time but the last month fucking sucks oh my god. my mental health is up and down but the lows are the lowest they’ve ever been
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eel, i @eliacugini.bsky.social · 10/09/2026
so nobody mentions what that film is about huh
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eel, i @eliacugini.bsky.social · 10/09/2026
local queer media studies scholar just got oneshotted watching withnail & i for the first time
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eel, i @eliacugini.bsky.social · 10/09/2026
4/23: rewrote the introduction to the fourth chapter and did some bits of rewriting the first section. started rewriting the second section which is tomorrow’s job
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eel, i @eliacugini.bsky.social · 10/09/2026
yep lol
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eel, i @eliacugini.bsky.social · 09/09/2026
3/23: just did some planning today because too burned out after yesterday to do writing, but tomorrow the Lock In begins re redrafting my fourth chapter
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eel, i @eliacugini.bsky.social · 09/09/2026
not to get too personal about it but calling the lesbian poly wife of a trans woman a ‘tradwife with extra steps’ is not exactly uh. helping her optics
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eel, i @eliacugini.bsky.social · 08/09/2026
August: CRASH (1996) ROBOCOP (1987) TEENAGE SEX AND DEATH AT CAMP MIASMA (2026) BLACK NARCISSUS (1947)
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eel, i @eliacugini.bsky.social · 08/09/2026
2/23 done. wrote for like 7 hours and now have a functional introduction that is no longer a preface. pleased with myself & also very drained. also found a missing citation. i think i’ll avoid more than nominal writing tomorrow and just focus on bullet pointing what i’m doing w the last chapter
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