iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

the horrors persist but i saw some dear friends for the first time in A While, bothered their cats, and bitched about AI and how Big Corpo doesn’t know shit with my uber driver on the way home

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elri @eyebright-iris.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

15: Meet Me at the Surface by Jodie Matthews. Merryn is called home to Cornwall from university for her ex-girlfriend Claud’s memorial, but nothing is as it seems, and folklore keeps pressing its creeping fingers closer to reality. Delicious folk horror, unsettling and earthy and inevitable.

A white hand holding a white paperback book, Meet Me at the Surface by Jodie Matthews. The book shows a black eel-like creature with white eyes and white details of fronds or feathering all down its back qeaving between the title. Red foliage is scattered around.

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elri @eyebright-iris.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

⬅️ this user was allowed loose in Big Waterstones again today purchased: our cut of salt by deena helm one day, everyone will always have been against this by omar el akkad chasing the dark by ben machell

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elri @eyebright-iris.bsky.social · 15/09/2026

14: City of Others by Jared Poon. You’re government employees. Your department is “keeping the world from learning about the supernatural”. A floor of an apartment complex just glitched out of existence. You are still expected to take part in office sports day.

A white hand holding a book, ‘City of Others’ by Jared Poon. The cover is deep blue-green, with a city skyline and palm fronds at the bottom. From behind the city rises several red tentacles, with the edges at the top of the cover flanked by waves. The title is in yellow-orange ombré font, with a white cat wearing a red scarf sat on the letter R in ‘Others’. It reaches a paw up towards one of the breaking waves.

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elri @eyebright-iris.bsky.social · 05/09/2026

a DAY after i post this i’m let loose in waterstones and pick up harbour of hungry ghosts so this list is already out of date smh

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elri @eyebright-iris.bsky.social · 03/09/2026

it’s SEPTEMBER!!!! so it is time for me to look at all the delicious hardbacks waiting for me this winter :3

eyebrightiris.substack.com

Hardback season 2026/27

Books I’m looking forward to this winter reading season

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elri @eyebright-iris.bsky.social · 29/08/2026

13: The Life and Rhymes of Benjamin Zepheniah. Honest, upfront and bittersweet at the end - all the ways the world fails that he didn’t see righted. A man I wrote to when I was 11, a white kid without a clue; I still have his reply. What an extraordinary man. What a privilege to read.

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elri @eyebright-iris.bsky.social · 16/08/2026

shoutout the girl who cannot be older than 13 on my train in a shirt with marx’s face on it and the slogan “sharing is caring”

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elri @eyebright-iris.bsky.social · 13/08/2026

universities reaching results day without any embargo breaches ✌️

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elri @eyebright-iris.bsky.social · 19/07/2026

oh yeah please enjoy my #menhirsfate crew kit! swing by the faith tent to meet desdemona for help with all your shrinetending needs ✨

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elri @eyebright-iris.bsky.social · 19/07/2026

beautiful day for all argentina haters but especially for me, who just won my work team’s world cup sweepstake and gets a free pint (i do not drink) (it will be a crisp non-boycotted soft drink)

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elri @eyebright-iris.bsky.social · 09/07/2026

12: The Sapling Cage by Margaret Killjoy. It’s hard when you want to be a witch, but all witches are women - and you were born a boy. Lorel hides herself, joins them anyway, and meets a myriad of bitchy teen girls and pissy old crones as blight spreads across the land and nobles vie for power…

A white hand holding a book, The Sapling Cage by Margaret Killjoy. The book is pale green with lots of foliage, growing from a golden cage in the middle. In the cage is a skull, with the leaves growing out of it.

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elri @eyebright-iris.bsky.social · 09/07/2026

remember gang, you have free will. you can soak your hair in the office bathroom sink every hour to stay cool during the heat. no one can stop you.

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elri @eyebright-iris.bsky.social · 02/07/2026

moving day (2026, oil on canvas)

A photograph of a standard dirty pavement with some green growing in the gaps between the paving slabs. A black and white photograph of a number of young women taking a selfie together at a party is lying on the floor, another rectangle of paper just above it. The white tip of a converse shoe is just visible at the bottom of the frame.

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elri @eyebright-iris.bsky.social · 28/06/2026

shoutout to my family for letting me say “for one of our three days in edinburgh can we go to this bookshop i blorbo’d online” @argonautbooks.bsky.social are wonderful, great pride & palestine displays, & when i bought more books than i should have done they threw in a GORGEOUS high quality tote bag

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elri @eyebright-iris.bsky.social · 28/06/2026

TWENTY ONE DEGREES AT MIDNIGHT is this what y’all have been dealing with this past week jesus CHRIST i hate it here

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elri @eyebright-iris.bsky.social · 27/06/2026

having spent the last week in scotland/on the northumberland coast where it’s been balmy warm and we are now descending into hell (the rest of the country)

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elri @eyebright-iris.bsky.social · 21/06/2026

t shirt of protection from h*rry p*tter (we are headed to edinburgh)

A forest green t shirt with a dark orange circle in the middle, an orange sky dotted with many white stars and broken up by dark tree branches. A ghost hovers in the middle with top surgery scars; the caption reads “Gender Affirming Scare”.

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elri @eyebright-iris.bsky.social · 16/06/2026

11: Pagans by James Alistair Henry. Alt history with no Norman invasion, with the unimportant island of Britain split between Saxons, Celts and Scottish Norse. Two cops, one Saxon, one Celtic, work to find a killer as a Summit meets to see if the three nations could ever unite as one.

A white hand holding a book, ‘Pagans’ by James Alistair Henry. The book has a white cover with a black silhouette of a skyline stretching down to cover most of the cover. A split down the middle of the skyline comes down to a point, with a red blood droplet in stylised Celtic knotwork dripping from it. Beneath the blood are two white human silhouettes, small.

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elri @eyebright-iris.bsky.social · 05/06/2026

gearing up to brave Big Brum Primark and there are 20 year olds dropping slurs that make me flinch in public at the station is not the vibe

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elri @eyebright-iris.bsky.social · 31/05/2026

it’s that time of year when we start vivisecting my mother’s tomato plants (it’s character building for them) (if you don’t do it they produce infinite leaves and no fruits)

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elri @eyebright-iris.bsky.social · 26/05/2026

10: Uprooted by @naominovik.bsky.social. Joining Spinning Silver as one of my favourites. A war against slithering corruption joined by an unwilling girl so blunt and grounded that the world bends to her, reaches for her, sings back to her. Indescribably rich and beautiful. And the END! I cry i cry.

A white hand holding a book, ‘Uprooted’ by Naomi Novik. The cover is white? showing a dark wood with a white tower rising from it. Thorny vines coil in the foreground, rising to a single red rose.

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elri @eyebright-iris.bsky.social · 25/05/2026

yes i am watching life in the undergrowth for the fifty billionth time in my life (my wifi is out and i’m dying from the heat, i deserve to watch bug time and listen to some of the most brilliantly designed scoring of any docuseries ever)

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elri @eyebright-iris.bsky.social · 25/05/2026

wasps will see fucking anything and go “is anyone gonna parasitise that” and then not wait for an answer

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elri @eyebright-iris.bsky.social · 18/05/2026

what level of parasocial internet relationship is “i’ve followed you on tumblr for years because i love your little freak cats, but i just read your book and i really liked it, also i swear it was on my TBR before i knew you wrote it”

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elri @eyebright-iris.bsky.social · 18/05/2026

9: Apparently, Sir Cameron Needs to Die by @greerstothers.bsky.social. A Douglas Adams-esque novel for the fantasy genre, brilliantly daft and delightfully twisty under the surface. I laughed aloud so much reading this; massive recommend for all TTRPG nerds everywhere.

A white hand holding a book, ‘Apparently, Sir Cameron Needs to Die’ by Greer Stothers. The book has a pale purple castle wall overlaid with a dark purple banner holding the novel’s title. Two insets show a silhouette of an ominous man with one normal eye and one glowing green eye, and a squawking vulture. The banner is shot with arrows.

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elri @eyebright-iris.bsky.social · 16/05/2026

fuck i forgot to align my celestial net today and everything feels weird

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elri @eyebright-iris.bsky.social · 15/05/2026

get told to book your appt so you call & they say she’ll call you back but when you call later she was actually sick all day so you call again & they say she’ll call you back & you say not at this time pls and they say after 4 so you call right before they close to ask what gives & they say. monday

Meme taken from ‘The Devil Wears Prada’. Emily Blunt’s character rubs her eyes and temples in frustration at her desk, then goes back to working on her computer. The line from the film, “I love my job, I love my job, I love my job” has been edited to say “I love the NHS, I love the NHS, I love the NHS”.

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elri @eyebright-iris.bsky.social · 13/05/2026

one of the peak things i’ve got going on rn is my alma mater has peregrines at the top of its Really Big Clock Tower and they have BEBES

A screenshot from a youtube livestream ‘Live Peregrine Falcon BirdCam | University of Birmingham’. The image shows a wooden structure, boxlike and open at one side, with a nest in it. Three tan brown eggs are unhatched, but there is one scruffy greyish fluffy baby bird. One of the parents, an adult peregrine with grey plumage, is perched on the open edge of the box. In its bright yellow hooked beak it holds a bit of red meat, and is leaning forwards to feed the chick.

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elri @eyebright-iris.bsky.social · 12/05/2026

born to lock in forced to wait for microsoft authenticator to send me a text message

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Ash @queerash.bsky.social · 11/05/2026

Labour MPs calling for an orderly transition but unfortunately their government needs to be at least 18 years old with four doctors to sign off first

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elri @eyebright-iris.bsky.social · 10/05/2026

“oh elri you were away at a larp this weekend what did you do” i drank and played cards and smoked a pretend cigarette. went for a little walk to a nearby church. had a little singsong. i can NEVER be accused of being dehydrated at these larps because i am always full of fake wine

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elri @eyebright-iris.bsky.social · 10/05/2026

having spent this weekend at a 1930s larp you understand intimately why everyone in those days was on something there’s fuck all to do! you just drink, smoke, and fuck around! doing it temporarily for a larp is great fun but dear god if that were my reality? deathly tedium

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elri @eyebright-iris.bsky.social · 07/05/2026

8: The Hearth Witch’s Guide to Magic & Murder by Kiri Callaghan. I was honestly disappointed :( My storygraph has a full detailed review but this book was PAINFULLY written by an American, London felt flat & its fae creatures shallow and not engaging with the city’s culture. Murder plot was fine tho

A white hand holding a book ‘The Hearth Witch’s Guide to Magic and Murder’ by Kiri Callaghan. The book is dark green with a pink border and objects in the corners: A pink doughnut with sprinkles in the top left, a skull in the top right, a china teapot and teacup in the bottom right, and a wand and small bottles in the bottom left. In the bottom centre beneath the author’s name is a human heart.

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elri @eyebright-iris.bsky.social · 06/05/2026

sorry, call me insane but “the POV character has their consent overridden by magic and their deepest traumas viciously raked to the surface” probably deserves more of a content warning than “there might be death or blood in this murder mystery”

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elri @eyebright-iris.bsky.social · 06/05/2026

every god damn time i read a book and it hits one of my *major* triggers, it’s never mentioned in any of the warnings this book has a content warnings note at the start of the book like “you’re reading a murder mystery, there might be blood!!” traumatic overriding of consent via magic is fine though

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elri @eyebright-iris.bsky.social · 23/04/2026

sometimes you’re on your way to a weekend larp and that all gets overshadowed because you meet someone from god damn time team on the train that’s made my week holy shit

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elri @eyebright-iris.bsky.social · 22/04/2026

7: Old Wounds by @transhorrors.bsky.social. A gutting but fantastic book, terrifying and hopeful in equal measure. Time to fight, to dig your heels, to refuse to run. Trans horror WILL put you through The Horrors like nothing else then make you go “fuck. it’s all worth it, despite despite despite”

A white hand holding a book, ‘Old Wounds’ by Logan-Ashley Kisner. The cover is black showing two teenage figures from behind in greyscale. A pair of red glowing eyes int he centre-distance illuminate the trees and brush between the teens and the eyes. The title is written in uneven red font.

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elri @eyebright-iris.bsky.social · 06/04/2026

6: All The Murmuring Bones by @angelaslatter.bsky.social. A dark & ruthless story about women, the men who try to control them, & the price of freedom. I loved all the complex women, selfish, cruel & wilful; especially love how breaking the cycle of violence requires being a girl’s girl (hell yeah).

A white hand holding a book, ‘All The Murmuring Bones’ by A.G. Slatter. The cover is dark blue, with blue swirls in iridescent inlay. The title is in white, and below it is a white silhouette of a harpc, and a tail - perhaps a seal, a whale, or merfolk - diving out of sight at the bottom of the cover, also in white.

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elri @eyebright-iris.bsky.social · 05/04/2026

having a family member who does muay thai is an extreme endurance sport

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elri @eyebright-iris.bsky.social · 27/03/2026

5: The Seance by John Harwood. Alas, my first DNF in a long time. I usually stick with gothic because the end can really make it work, but halfway through and I just wasn’t invested. Also why were there like. four separate sad artist men introduced back to back. Onto the next I guess!

A white hand holding a book, ‘The Seance’ by John Harwood. The book is monochrome, white with a black silhouette design like Victorian silhouettes. The elaborate design shows a street with horse and carriage at the bottom, with various figures and foliage around the outside, and a mansion at the centre.

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elri @eyebright-iris.bsky.social · 10/03/2026

4: Test Signal, ed. by Nathan Connolly. 5 years after backing it on Kickstarter, I finally read it. Strong collection of Northern writing - I think my favourites were Wabbits, Clean Work and 7.43, but honestly all of these were engaging works.

A white hand holding a book, ‘Test Signal: Northern Anthology of New Writing’, edited by Nathan Connolly. The book is a hardback with a bright red-orange cover, the title unevenly spaced in black, broken lettering. Behind the letters is a white circle, with a white bar beneath it.

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Catsuka @catsuka.bsky.social · 05/03/2026

From the first trailer of "Kindred Spirits", the new animated feature film by Tomm Moore & Cartoon Saloon (Secret of Kells, Song of the Sea, Wolfwalkers) + Folivari. Coming in 2028. Full video >> www.youtube.com/watch?v=QQn9...

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Memento Mori @mementomori4950.bsky.social · 02/03/2026

Politics of semantics 😏

The New York Times

U.S. and Israel Attack Iran

LIVE Updates

What to Know

Photos

Ma

Casts Doubt

Iran Says Dozens Are Killed in Strike on School

No Responsibility

The New York Times

U.S. and Israel Attack Iran

LIVE Updates 4m ago

What to Know

Photo

Stated as Fact

9 Killed in Israeli City Near Jerusalem After Iranian Missile Strike

Actor Named

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Reposted by elri

Jordan aka Jirdan @slclunk.com · 28/02/2026

I think about this Tony Benn speech much more than I used to

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elri @eyebright-iris.bsky.social · 14/02/2026

my last christmas present got stuck in shipping hell but it’s FINALLY with me, hell yeah

A selfie with one hand holding the phone. I’m a white femme-presenting person with a round face, large square glasses, and short fluffy black hair. My free hand is up in a peace sign and I’m doing a lil blep with my tongue with my head slightly tilted. I’m wearing a purple sweatshirt with the photo angled to show off the embroidery on the front, which reads “I don’t struggle with autism, I’m actually really good at it” in white capital letters. Around the text are little yellow stars with eyes and a smiling mouth in black.

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Amanda Katz @katzish.bsky.social · 10/02/2026

Always a great sign for how things are going in your country when 21-year-olds are like “hey, I innovated a system to play bagpipes in tear gas”

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elri @eyebright-iris.bsky.social · 07/02/2026

(yet, with all its interest in boundaries, what is *in* and what is *out* - if the sea claims the town, as so often it does…what does that mean, when the bounded becomes one with the utterly unbound?)

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