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thesarcasticside · 3 years

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Anything-$00000DDD

Summary

He could have been anything. When he looked inside his own mind, he dug through darkness. Memories like ashes, the particles filling his lungs were all that were familiar to him—and those only felt like nothing. No fragments, just a fine powder.

Janus is a cyborg who works for the Dragon Witch, a criminal mastermind who runs a company that designs cybernetics.

He meets Remus, a self-taught biomedical engineer, and a variety of other robotic and alien characters, all of whom are trying to convince him that he is more than just a cybernetic puppet.

But who is “Dee” if not an empty husk created only to be controlled?

General warnings

Psychological horror, body horror, cybernetics, missing limbs, artificial limbs, Non-consensual forced medical treatment, physical abuse, blood, violence, guns, mind control, permanent amnesia, manipulation, emotional abuse, gaslighting, nightmares, streams of consciousness, unreliable narration. Content that resembles depersonalization, derealization, or dissociation

More notes, links, and chapter text under the cut

AO3 Anything, AO3 series, Chapter 1, Chapter 2, Chapter 3, Chapter 4, Chapter 5, Chapter 6, Chapter 7, Chapter 8, Chapter 9, Chapter 10, Chapter 11, Chapter 12, Chapter 13, Chapter 14, Chapter 15, Chapter 16, Chapter 17, Chapter 18

This is my story for the 2021 Storytime! Big Bang! @ts-storytime Thank you to @ben-phantomhive-trash, who is the artist I was partnered with for the event! They created this fantastic art!!!! I love it so much I can't even.

Thank you to PunkRock for helping me figure out the shorts characters and other plot things. Also thank you to AryaSkywalker, Thembo, and Carrotflowerking17 and the Big Bang 2021 discord for additional help!!!!

This fic is an alternative entry point to my (In Other Worlds) Series. This fic happens at the same time roughly as Millennia, a companion novel. You can read this fic and then check out the rest of the series, or check out the series and then read this.

Also, I don't use Janus's actual name throughout the fic for thematic and narrative reasons. You'll see. I hope that does not put you off too much. Consider it part of the angst.

Clarification of general warnings and pairings, minor spoilers

I added the tag unreliable narrator, but I will clarify that the narrator is not actively lying to the audience. This tag relates to Janus's memory issues and the uncertainty resulting from that. tbh I would not worry too much about the events being untrue, and more be concerned about these being Janus's imperfect recollection of events.

I think this fic is a bit more violent than Millennia at times, hence I added the archive warning for violence. I still feel like a teen would be fine reading this, so I am keeping the rating Teen and Up. This fic focuses the most on what I dub psychological horror (angst, mind control, memory issues, consciousness, nightmares, etc.). I also tagged this story with disassociation, and content in this fic may resemble derealization and depersonalization.

If you think I should warn/rate this fic differently, I am happy to hear feedback and reconsider.

I tagged this as Remus/Janus, but like, ya gotta squint. Mostly banter and being soft. I love romance, but I have a hard time writing it. Could be seen as platonic too.

HINT 1: KEY.

HINT 2: "kind of" not "kinda"

CHAPTER START

NAME J. D. Dedrick ID 25:35--25:44 / 51:09 ALIENRACE Dūcesnaca OCCUPATION Robotics Researcher

Chapter Warnings cybernetics, missing/artificial limbs (eye, legs), forced medical treatment/experimentation, amnesia, depersonalization/derealization/dissociation, unreliable narration, psychological horror, swearing Chapter Characters Janus, the Dragon Witch, Virgil (not by name)

He woke up to yellow in his eyes, stinging and unfocused. Lights beyond the veil flickered. He saw a figure move; he looked small. After a brief glance into the world, he began to drown. He threw everything into the yellow encasement, and after an agonizing struggle, the rush of acceleration threw him to the ground.

When the air touched his face, black fireworks exploded in his hazy vision, and the first memory he had was gone.

He woke up again, like a corpse left in the stale air for vultures: beaks plucking out his skin piece by piece. His vision blurry and halved, he stared up at the birds breaking his body into bits.

Reports say he was involved in a huge space crash. DRACANA has generously sponsored his artificiality.

That sounded like a lie. That sort of blatant untruth where there was no connection to reality tied to it. Everything his senses told him felt unreal, everything except the pain that grounded him like a shot duck.

Whispers like gossip broke into his mind between droughts of consciousness. His senses were pieced together and broken apart, like pieces of clay in a kiln shattering. Memories of vultures and lab coats glued together by agony floated through space until eventually he was awake.

Probably just one of her business rivals

Dei’dra—he knew her name—loomed over him, to his right. He could see nothing to his left. The light stung, he squinted and blinked his eye. He could feel nothing on the left side of his face. Dei’dra smiled at him.

“Wake up, dollface. Didn’t think you’d make it, but you pulled through.”

He did not know where he was. He did not know who he was. All he knew was that this woman was Dei’dra, the Dragon Witch, and he hated her.

“Well, he seems to be doing well. Might as well put him under and move onto the next stage.”

He lived out his days creating sand sculptures in his mind. He saw himself running in place, downloading skills and targets and concepts. The sand would blow away each day, leaving him with nothing to remember them by.

Between bouts of black unconsciousness, he saw grey, and white, and pale pink, brown, and blue. Abstract shapes morphing into creatures that prodded at him. Cold metal seething, machines twisting his body together like crochet. He gave nonsense names for some, not even names consisting of words, just pure thoughts.

Slowly, he lost sight of the sand in his brain, yet the grains still dripped from his ears when he shook his head. He became a part of reality. Or perhaps he became part of a hellish dream.

Darkness huddled in the damp sides of his eyes, danger snapping at his bruised joints and soles. Deep inside his chest, his heart damned, words mixed with intuitive instincts, daring his body to live beyond the yellow veil.

Stage One of Project $DEE has been completed.

$DEE was not his name. It was what he was called. One of the words that would echo in his brain. Dee. Dee. Dee. Like a rhythm, like the beeping machines. Like the ringing of the heart monitor. It was embedded in his ears. Baby words jumping around, forming pictures, babbling him into nothing.

Dee, his brain still a desert, started to make better sense of this reality he lived in. He could control his body sometimes. He could move his arms. Or what was left of his limbs. Or what they had lent him.

The second picture in his brain, the one after the yellow veil: it was the artificial lights on Lab C’s ceiling. Grey illuminated by white, he stared up at the square tiles and textured glass, like undulating waves of melted sand.

With how long he was locked in place staring up at this picture, he memorized it. He could close his eyes at any moment and picture it in its exact detail again.

“Time to get up, Doll-face. It’s time for your first mission.”

He saw Dei’dra’s face again. He felt his restraints loosen and break away.

His first mission was not all that glorious. He was lanky, unused to moving in his body. He was a wall of meat. Disposable. He followed a trail like a zombie. He barely spoke to the team he was placed in. He remembered their orders regarding him.

“He’s still pretty out of it. Give him some good experience, but we’d like to keep working on him so bring him back in one piece.”

Dee felt like a puppet, simply put. Some machine inside him aimed his cannons and lasers. He stood in place, shooting at targets. He was guided by an invisible leash by the team he was assigned to. He saw sepia shapes. Blurs of bodies. All he could feel was the emotions in his gut telling him, repeatedly:

Youaregoingtodieyouaregoingtodieyouaregoingtodieagainyouaregoingtodiestoppleasestoppleaseyouaregoingtodiestopstopstopstopstop.

He was kept suspended in place while his body completed the mission. And then he was back in Lab C, mind clearer.

He was thinking in sentences now. He could monologue, like any great villain. That is what he had become, hadn’t he? Why a villain? Where had he learned that word? The more he sifted through the sand, the more words he could find he no longer remembered learning. They were just there, connected to nothing. No memory. No past life.

He kept thinking these words. And then he decided that since his jaw was not glued shut, he would give speaking a try. Garbled and slurred at first, he kept talking as much as they let him.

They made him run between ceilings of grey. They made him speak between illuminated square tiles. He practiced lines of a script. Subterfuge settled in his brain like a mirage in the distance between the settled sand.

He could walk on the unsteady ground once again. He could see. He could hear. He could experience the world around him. He gazed up at the ceiling but was interrupted by a splotch of dark violet.

Another blot. Another vulture. He stood there out of the corner of his artificial eye.

“What are you waiting for? Get on with the tests.” His voice sharp, cutting through his tongue.

This was an unusual time of day for tests. To say it was a time of day was generous. It was more like he would be experimented on for hours upon hours and then suddenly they would stop. Nothing to do but bask in the nothingness it brought.

At this point, Dee thought that he was done with most of the tests. He had his limbs. He had an eye, which he opened wider to get a better look at the violet blotch. Something about the blotch was connected to something else in his brain, but he could not quite place it.

“Well, whatever it is, get on with it, it certainly could not have waited until morning.”

It shuffled closer to him. Less of a blotch now. He could make out shapes. He could recognize his face now if he saw him again.

Air escaped his lungs, and then he said again, asking, “Whatever might you need from me today, doctor?”

The blotch was shaking. “If you are just here to sight-see, I am going back to sleep.” His eyes weighed heavily on his face, eyelids falling through his willpower.

“Are you… okay?”

No, I am not ‘okay’. I am ‘$DEE.’

“Do I LOOK okay? Yeah sure, I am right as rain, having a grand old time—feeling peachy, even.” At this point, the words just spiraled off his tongue and through his teeth. The blotch made a sound, and Dee’s frustration grew, the pain of today’s tests ricocheting in his body.

“If you aren’t here to run another one of your little tests, then just get out. Go tell your superior, or better yet, go tell Dei’dra to go fuck herself and leave me alone.”

And he left him alone. He wondered vaguely what that was all about. He then fell asleep.

#ts (In Other Worlds)#ts (INW)#ts Janus #ts deceit #ts the dragon witch #ts storytime #ts storytime 2021 #ts big bang #ts Virgil #sarcasm writes #sarcasm ts fic #thomas sanders #sander sides #sander sides fic #ts Anything

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newty · 4 years

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A collection of over 40 writers and their work from World War 1 and the years that followed.

11/11. Happy Armistice Day!

This is by no means a guide so much as it is recommendations and selections from my reading list, but I hope it can interest others in some extraordinary or important lives. Enjoy!

POETRY

Richard Aldington (1892-1962)

British. 2nd Lieutenant, Royal Sussex Regiment.

Themes: Callousness, Apathy, Sound, Myth & History, Art

War and Love 1915-1918 (1919)

"Trench Idyll"

"In The Trenches"

"Apathy"

"Soliloquy I" & "Soliloquy II"

Exile and Other Poems (1923)

“Eumenides”

“At a Gate by the Way”

Edmund Blunden (1896-1974)

British. 2nd Lieutenant, Royal Sussex Regiment.

Field: Ypres, Somme, Passchendaele

Themes: Survivor's Guilt, Isolation, Nature, Post-War Reflection

The Waggoner (1920)

"The Estrangement"

The Shepherd and Other Poems of Peace and War (1922)

"11th R.S.R."

"Reunion in War"

"The Troubled Spirit"

"War Autobiography: Written in Illness"

"Third Ypres: A Reminiscence"

Rupert Brooke (1887-1915)

British. Sub-lieutenant, British Mediterranean Expeditionary Force, but died of sepsis before reaching Gallipoli.

Themes: Colonialism, Memory & Death

1914 and Other Poems (1915)

"1914"

Robert Graves (1895-1985)

British. Captain, Royal Welch Fusiliers.

Field: Somme, but also in a POW and Garrison camp iirc.

Themes: Camaraderie, Grief, Flippancy/Humor, Personal Change

Faeries and Fusiliers (1919)

The Pier-Glass (1921)

"Lost Love"

Collected Poems 1955 (1955)

"Recalling war"

Frederic Manning (1882-1935)

Australian & British. Private, King's Shropshire Light Infantry. Lance Corporal, 7th Battalion. 2nd Lieutenant, Royal Irish Regiment.

Field: The Somme, Ancre

Themes: Collective identity, Numbness, Individuality, Ritual as a coping method, Myth

Eidola (1917)

"αυτάρκεια"

Wilfred Owen (1893-1918)

British. 2nd Lieutenant, Manchester Regiment.Also see: The Hydra (1917-1918), the Craiglockhart War Hospital magazine.

Field: Northern France

Themes: Inhumanity, Protest, Disgust & Pity

Poems (1921)

“Apologia Pro Poemate Meo”

“Mental Cases”

“Dulce et Decorum Est”

"S.I.W" (Self-Inflicted Wound)

“Wild With All Regrets”

Poems of Wilfred Owen (1931)

“The Unreturning”

The Complete Poems and Fragments (1984)

Isaac Rosenberg (1890-1918)

British (also Jewish!). Private, 12th Bantam Battalion of the Suffolk Regiment, then South Lancashire Regiment, then King's Own Royal Lancaster Regiment, then King's Own Royal Regiment.

Also see: Joseph Cohen Collection of Rosenberg documents and artifacts

Field: Arras

Themes: Heroism, Loathing, Confusion

Poems (1922)

"Significance"

"The Immortals"

Delphi Complete Poetry, Plays, Letters and Prose of Isaac Rosenberg (2015)

Not free, but like the one for Wilfred Owen, I recommend these collections since they're super cheap (like $3) and mostly comprehensive even if there are some formatting errors.

Siegfried Sassoon (1886-1967)

British. 2nd Lieutenant, Royal Welch Fusiliers.

Also see: A Soldier's Declaration.

Field: The Somme, Arras

Themes: Activism, Self-Expression, Nature, Leadership, Camaraderie, Grief

The Old Huntsman and Other Poems (1918)

“The Kiss”

“The Last Meeting”

Counter-Attack and Other Poems (1918)

"Suicide in the Trenches" (sometimes typo'd, like in Collected Poems, as "Suicide in Trenches")

"Repression of War Experience"

"The Dream"

A Suppressed Poem (1918) (alternative/full text)

War Poems (1919)

"Everyone Sang"

Picture-Show (1920)

"Concert Party"

"Phantom" (removed from Collected Poems in 1961)

"Aftermath"

Vigils (1936)

"War Experience"

"Revisitation"

The Collected Poems 1908-1956 (1961)

Contains text edits and revisions of previous work.

MEMOIR

Will R. Bird (1891-1984)

Canadian. 42nd Battalion, Royal Highlanders of Canada.

Field: France and Belgium

Also see: his bibliography. His work seems to have been popular, but is now exceedingly rare other than in some recent reprints.

And We Go On (1930)

Reissued as Ghosts Have Warm Hands (1968) which removes several anecdotes--and in particular, removes many instances of the ghost of his brother (who often appears to guide him after dying before Bird enlisted).

Thirteen Years After: The Story of the Old Front Revisited (1931)

Funded by Maclean's Magazine, Bird returned to France and wrote a series of reflections.

The Communication Trench: Anecdotes & Statistics from the Great War, 1914-1918 (1933)

A Soldier's Place: the War stories of Will R. Bird (2018)

Fifteen anecdotes from various war-time and post-war publications.

Edmund Blunden (1896-1974)

Undertone of War (1928)

Philip Gibbs (1877-1962)

British. Extraordinarily popular war journalist and later war correspondent.

Heavily censored in publications like the Daily Telegraph and Daily Chronicle.

Field: Western Front

The Soul of the War (1915)

From Bapaume to Passchendaele, 1917 (1918)

Reissued as The Struggle in Flanders on the Western Front, 1917 (1919)

The Way to Victory: Vol 1: The Menace and Vol 2: The Repulse (1919)

Wounded Souls (1920)

Now It Can Be Told (1920)

US title: The Realities of War

More That Must Be Told (1921)

Robert Graves (1895-1985)

Goodbye to All That (1929)

Censored (1929), Revised (1957), and I think Uncensored (2014)

Also a personal memoir--the first few chapters detail his childhood and discuss homosexuality.

Arnold Gyde (1894-1959)

British. Captain, 2nd Battalion South Staffordshire Regiment.

Field: Le Havre, Mons, Aisne

Contemptable (1916) as Casualty

Part of the Soldiers’ Tales of the Great War series

T. E. Lawrence (1888-1935)

British. Archeologist but mostly a military informant.

Field: Arab Revolt, Palestine

Themes: Isolation, Brotherhood

Seven Pillars of Wisdom (1922)

Abridged "subscribers" edition subtitled with A Triumph (1926), Further abridged as Revolt in the Desert (1927), Unabridged as "The Oxford Text" (1997)

Also see: With Lawrence in Arabia (1924) by Lowell Thomas

Thomas was a war correspondent for the US, and who filmed and photographed Palestine and Lawrence and created the media boom surrounding the two.

Also see: Lawrence and the Arabs (1927) by Robert Graves

This book was initially panned for showing Lawrence as more of a flawed person than England's glorious war hero.

Edward C. Lukens

American. Lieutenant, 320th Infantry 80th Division.

Field: Meuse-Argonne

A Blue Ridge Memoir (1922)

Includes an afterword titled “The Last Drive and Death of Major G. H. H. Emory” by E. McClure Rouzer

Wilfred Owen (1893-1918)

Journey from Obscurity: Wilfred Owen, 1893-1918 (1963-1965) by Harold Owen

Published in three volumes: Childhood, Youth, and War

E. M. Roberts

American. Lieutenant, RAF.

A Flying Fighter: An American Above the Lines in France (1918)

I’m not finding much on this book atm, but I remember finding some articles after I had read the book that mentioned much of it was embellished.

Siegfried Sassoon (1886-1967)

Siegfried's Journey, 1916-1920 (1945)

Discusses the range of his life on leave or otherwise away from the battlefield, along with his post-war travels and struggles. For his more military memoirs, see the Sherston Trilogy below.

Also see: Lady Ottoline's Album (1976)

included entirely bc there's a cute pics of him (pg 66-67,90-93) but also bc there's a lot of cool ppl in it (also Robert Graves 68, Edmund Blunden 69)

Diaries:

Scans of 1915-1922, 1924-1927, 1931-1932: Sassoon Journals @ Cambridge

Siegfried Sassoon Diaries 1915-1918 (1983)

Highlights: 27 May 1916. 13 July 1916. 23 April 1917. 17 April 1918. 27 April 1918. 9 May 1918. 19 December 1917.

Siegfried Sassoon Diaries 1920-1922 (1981)

Siegfried Sassoon Diaries 1923-1925 (1985)

FICTIONAL MEMOIR

Giving a third person narrator one's trauma or life allows the writer to view those events in a new light–and also partially absolve themselves from ownership of their actions and feelings. Thus, it was super popular to deflect the shame of trauma.

Richard Aldington (1892-1962)

Death of a Hero (1929)

Uncensored in two volumes (1930), in one volume (1965) and (1984)

Roads to Glory (1930)

Short stories

Hervey Allen (1889-1949)

American. Lieutenant, 111th Infantry Regiment of the 28th Division

Field: Marne, Aisne, Château-Theirrey

Toward the Flame (1926) (limited preview)

Henri Barbusse (1873-1935)

French. Western Front. Anti-war.

Under Fire: The Story of a Squad (1916)

One of the first WWI novels published. Formative work for Sassoon, but also popular with Owen iirc.

Larry Barretto (1890-1972)

American. Ambulance driver in France and Belgium.

A Conqueror Passes (1925)

The soldier protagonist swiftly falls into depression upon returning to civilian life, so he abandons everything to return to France. Where he hopes to return to the mental occupation of service, he finds instead that the world has moved on without him.

James Norman Hall (1887-1951)

American. Posing as a Canadian: Royal Fusiliers. After being discovered, Lafayette Escadrille and Lafayette Flying Corps, then Captain of US Army Air Service. German POW for several months.

Kitchener's Mob: The Adventures of an American in the British Army(1916)

Describes the Battle of Loos during his time as a machine gunner with the Royal Fusiliers.

High Adventure: A Narrative of Air Fighting in France (1918)

Also see: The Lafayette Flying Corps Vol 1 and Vol 2 (1920), a history written with fellow pilot Charles Bernard Nordhoff.

Also see: Falcons of France (1929), another memoir written with Charles Bernard Nordhoff.

John Dos Passos (1896-1970)

American. Ambulance Driver in France (Norton-Harjes Ambulance Corps) & Italy (American Red Cross)

One Man’s Initiation: 1917 (1920)

Reissued as First Encounter (1945)

Three Soldiers (1921)

Frederic Manning (1882-1935)

The Middle Parts of Fortune: Somme and Ancre, 1916 (1929) as Private 19022

Uncensored in two volumes

Censored edition is Her Privates We (1929), and Uncensored (2014)

Primarily depicts the mundane life of a private. A deserter crops up throughout the novel for commentary on the intersection of mental illness and perceived cowardice. The chapters on the trenches are extraordinary imo, and it's a great look at the unsensational life of billets and drill that most accounts leave out.

Charles Bernard Nordhoff (1887-1947)

American. Ambulance driver, then Lafayette Flying Corps, then Lieutenant of US Army Air Service

The Fledgling (1919)

Series of letters (and dairy entries?)

Also see: The Lafayette Flying Corps Vol 1 and Vol 2 (1920), a history written with fellow pilot James Norman Hall.

Also see: Falcons of France (1929), another memoir written with James Norman Hall.

Erich Maria Remarque (1898-1970)

German. 2nd Guards Reserve Division, then 15th Reserve Infantry Regiment, 2nd Company, Engineer Platoon Bethe.

Field: Hem-Lenglet Torhout and Houthulst.

All Quiet on the Western Front (1929)

The Road Back (1931) (limited preview)

Siegfried Sassoon (1886-1967)

The Sherston trilogy follows his entire service, although purged of anything literary or concerning his family. He also changed the names of almost everyone in it. The third book does a great job confronting the trauma he swears he doesn't have up until the last couple pages.

Memoirs of a Fox-Hunting Man (1928) Memoirs of an Infantry Officer (1930) Sherston's Progress (1936)

FICTION

More on the Internet Archive

Hervey Allen (1889-1949)

It Was Like This: Two Stories of the Great War (1940)

Leonid Andreyev (1871-1919)

The Confessions of a Little Man During Great Days (1917

Russian. Account of a fictional banker in St. Petersburg struggling through war shortages and family strife. Anti-war.

E. F. Benson (1867-1940)

British. Archeologist, Greek Scholar, Worked in Cairo with T. E. Lawrence. also hes gay

Up and Down (1918)

An at-home drama which begins pre-war and descends into featuring the relationship of letters between home and the front.

Dodo Wonders-- (1921)

Sequel to Dodo: A Detail of the Day (1893) Dodo’s Daughter (1913) and Dodo the Second (1914) social dramas.

Will R. Bird (1891-1984)

Private Timothy Fergus Clancy (1930)

John Buchan (1875-1940)

Scottish. Popular novelist, Writer for the Propaganda Bureau, Director of Intelligence, and Lieutenant of Intelligence Corps

The Thirty-Nine Steps (1915)

First in the Richard Hannay series, suspense spy novels meant to sensationalize war intrigue and German barbarism.

Also see: Nelson's History of the War, a serial which began in 1915 to become a 24-volume account of censored and pro-Allies Great War history.

Wilfrid Heighington (1897-1945)

Canadian. Lieutenant, 4th Canadian Infantry Brigade

Field: The Somme, Vimy Ridge

The Cannon’s Mouth (1943)

Edward Edward Plunkett, Lord Dunsany (1878-1957)

Anglo-Irish. Captain, Royal Inniskilling Fusiliers. Also participated in the Easter Uprising. Traveled to Ploegsteert, St-Emilie, the Somme, and Bourlon Wood as work for the MI7 (b) creating propaganda.

Tales of War (1918) & Unhappy Far-Off Things (1919)

Short stories largely created as propaganda and published in various papers before being collected in book form.

Also see: Patches of Sunlight (1938), his autobiography.

Rebecca West (1892-1983)

The Return of the Soldier (1918)

A rather fanciful novel of a woman confronting her cousin soldier returning home with amnesia, having forgotten the past 15 years of his life from shell-shock.

LETTERS

T. E. Lawrence (1888-1935)

I'm more familiar with Lawrence's post-war relationship with mental illness, which seems to be rooted in his tendency for self-reproach. He consistently bemoans his difference from the others, and details his reliance on military companionship for connections.

Highlights: To Lionel Curtis, 19/3/23. To Robert Graves, 12/11/22. To Lionel Curtis, 14/4/23.

Also published in: Lawrence, T. E., and Garnet, David. The Letters of T. E. Lawrence. Doubleday, Doran & Company, 1939.

Wilfred Owen (1893-1918)

Owen defends himself at every opportunity to eliminate the possibility that his distress is from cowardice, so while his testimony is valuable for its real-time recording, it's more difficult to pick out such violent and clear instances of trauma compared to other writers.

Also see: Uncensoring Owen Project

Highlights: To Susan Owen, 16/1/17. To Susan Owen, 4/2/17. To Susan Owen, 18/3/17 (which describes The Sentry). To Susan Owen, 6 (or 8)/4/17. To Susan Owen, 1/5/17. To Mary Owen, 8/5/17. To Siegfried Sassoon, 5/11/17. To Susan Owen, 6/17. To Susan Owen, 31/12/17. To Susan Owen, 4 (or 5)/10/19. To Siegfried Sassoon, 10/10/18.

Siegfried Sassoon (1886-1967)

Siegfried Sassoon letters to Max Beerbohm : with a few answers (1986)

Vera Brittain (1893-1970)

& Roland Leighton, Edward Brittain, Geoffrey Thurlow, Victor Nicholson

Letters From A Lost Generation: First World War Letters of Vera Brittain and Four Friends (1998)

PLAYS

R. C. Sherriff (1896-1975)

British. East Surrey Regiment

Field: Vimy Ridge, Loose, Passchendaele

Journey's End (1929)

Also novelized (1930) with Vernon Bartlett

J. M. Barrie (1860-1937)

Scottish. Propagandist. Also see: famous author propagandists

Echoes of the War (1918)

Four humorously written yet hard-hitting plays concerning the war, particularly interpersonal relationships at home. More like satire than jingoism tbh.

MEDICAL ESSAYS

Shell-shock and Other Neuropsychiatric Problems Presented in 589 Case Histories (1919) by E. E. Southard (ableist af but these case studies are an extraordinary insight into the breadth of symptoms and their treatment. highly recommended.)

War Neuroses and Shell Shock (1919) by F.W. Mott

Hysterical Disorders of Warfare (1918) by Lewis Yealland

Army Report of The War Office Committee of Enquiry into Shell Shock (1922)

Shell Shock and Its Lessons (1918) by Sir Grafton Elliot Smith, Tom Hatherley Pear

Repression of War Experience (1917) by W.H.R. Rivers

Conflict and Dream (1924) by W.H.R Rivers

Instinct and the Unconscious (1924) by W.H.R Rivers

MEDICAL ACCOUNTS

Harold Barclay (1872-1922)

American. Captain, American Expeditionary Forces. Roosevelt Hospital Unit, then 42nd Division.

Field: Château-Thierry, St.-Mihiel

A Doctor in France, 1917-1919 (1923)

His diary--also published after his death.

Vera Brittain (1893-1970)

Testament of Youth (1933)

Also see: Vera Brittain and the First World War: The Story of Testament of Youth (2014) for its extra chapter on Edward Brittain and his oft-discussed death (spoiler: they confirmed he was gay).

Ellen La Motte (1873–1961)

The Backwash of War (1916)

American. A collection of fourteen stories from the hospitals of France.

Helen Zenna Smith/Evadne Price (1888-1985)

Not So Quiet: Stepdaughters of War (1930) (limited preview)

Written in the style of Remarque’s All Quiet on the Western Front using Winifred Constance Young, an actual ambulance driver as inspiration.

Sequels: Women of the Aftermath/One Woman’s Freedom (1931), Shadow Women (1932), Luxury Ladies (1933), They Lived With Me (1934)

May Sinclair/Mary Amelia St. Clair (1863-1946)

British. WSPU and WWSL member/Suffragette. Founding supporter of the Medico-Psychological Clinic in London, Munro Ambulance Corps in Flanders for a few weeks.

A Journal of Impressions in Belgium (1915)

OTHER ACCOUNTS

A. T. Fitzroy/Rose Allatini (1890-1980)

Despised and Rejected (1918)

Austrian-British. A novel following members of the CO and Pacifist movement. also v gay

Father Bernard Carey (1865-1932)

Leaves from the Diary of a Catholic Chaplain in the Great World War

(1920)

Irish. A chaplain's memoir of Egypt and East Africa, and the religious and racial intolerance in the military.

Philip Gibbs (1877-1962)

Germans on the Somme (1917)

John Masefield (1878-1967)

British. Poet Laureate. Briefly a Red Cross orderly, then propogandist with the Department of Information.

Gallipoli (1915)

Account of the campaign's failure to counteract anti-German propaganda in the US.

The Old Front Line (1918)

Eyewitness account of the Somme. Revisited and further completed in Battle of the Somme (1919)

The War and the Future (1918)

Also see: John Masefield's Letters from the Front, 1915-1917 (1985)

Also see: His poem “August 1914″

William Le Roy Stidger (1885-1949)

American. YMCA Pastor working with the AEF.

Soldier Silhouettes on our Front (1918) & Star Dust From The Dugouts (1919)

Stories of Christian faith through portraits of various soldiers.

Stanley Washburn (1878-1950)

American. Correspondent of the London Times in Russia.

Field Notes From the Russian Front (1915) The Russian Campaign: April to August 1915 (1916) Victory In Defeat - The Agony Of Warsaw And The Russian Retreat (1916) Field Notes From the Russian Front (1917)

BLOGS & PROJECTS

Siegfried Sassoon resources

Cambridge Sassoon Project Blog

T. E. Lawrence texts and resources

Life timelines for several poets, like Sassoon and Owen

War Poets Association

Oxford War Poetry Digital Archive

List of additional war poets

WWI fiction resource

WWI timeline and artifacts resource

Today in WWI with Literary and Historical contexts

List of WWI authors and dust jackets

Additional WWI writers

Great War Theatre

Essay on American pilots in other armies

#writing #siegfried sassoon #wwi literature #tbh making this thing #made me want to make a reading blog #like some of the project blogs linked #anyway this thing is p severely lacking in stuff from Not The Western Front #and lord knows i want to find more stuff on the eastern front #so ill likely update this when i find some good ones #i put in brooke bc his poetry is genuinely good #but i neglected other early poets #(i usually find women poets publishing early tbh)#bc their work just..isnt v enjoyable or written v well #or just blatant uninspired jingoism #like. i included buchan and some others bc its important and interesting stuff #but Defeating The Purposefully Vague Evil Beast For Christ And Goodness #gets real old real quick when it isnt well done #anyway theres my meta lmk if u have any questions #i hope all the links work #brianna babbles

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dianafloresx · 4 years

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Week 6: September 30, 2020

Why do individuals avoid the topic of race?

Although race matters no less in cyberspace than it does in real life (Kolko, 2000), it is a sensitive topic to talk about. Many consider talking about the structure of racism as racist, as it may cause some discomfort between different races. For example, a new belief that people discriminate against whites has developed as minorities confront years of discrimination. Although that is not the case, this idea of “reverse discrimination” highlights how many avoid talking about race and consider it a taboo subject.

How is cyberspace a constructive environment?

Due advancements in technology, many have turned to cyberspace to disembody themselves from the real world. Individuals tend to behave differently when interacting with cyberspace. However, Kolko (2000) mentions that individuals cannot wholly escape their real identities as they are responsible for deliberately constructing an identity for themselves. Although cyberspace allows for anonymity, individuals often incorporate a part of themselves into their profiles which showcases who they are in real life. This facilitates a fragmentation of identity.

How are minorities affected by white supremacist websites?

The internet allows for easy access to many websites supporting white supremacy and creating online hate groups. Such websites can lead to violence, harassment, intimidation, and racial terror (Daniels, 2009). White supremacy websites are a growing threat, especially to minorities, because it fosters the idea of a race more significant than others. Individuals like Patrick Wood Crusius, responsible for the 2019 El Paso shooting against Hispanics, are influenced and inspired by white supremacist posts found online. Said beliefs make it harder to achieve racial equality because they are very narrow-minded and fail to accept other races.

How do video games promote a racist and sexist agenda?

The creators of the game, Shadow Warriors, are enablers to a narrow mindset and enforce false narratives. Due to their preconceived notions and ideas of others, they incorporate their beliefs into a game’s algorithm. This promotes a racist and sexist agenda. There are subtle (and sometimes overt) aspects of the game that showcase a group of people’s misrepresentation. For example, the 3D realm showcases women in nudity and subject them to verbal abuse (Ow, 2000). Although a gamer cannot see their character’s entirety, the sound effects confine the gamer to a single narrative and limit their imagination (Ow, 2000). Thus, video games can influence and distort a gamer’s view of others in the real world.

Daniels, J. (2009). White Supremacy in the Digital Era. Cyber Racism: White Supremacy Online and the New Attack on Civil Rights (pp. 3-16). Rowman & Littlefield.

Kolko, B. E., Nakamura, L., & Rodman, G. B. (2000). Race in Cyberspace: An Introduction. Race in Cyberspace (pp. 1-13). Routledge.

Ow, J. A. (2000). The Revenge of the Yellowfaced Cyborg Terminator: The Rape of Digital Geishas and the Colonization of Cyber-Coolies in 3D Realms’ Shadow Warrior. Race in Cyberspace (pp. 51-68). Routledge.

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carinazef · 4 years

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Week 6 Blog Post Due 9/30 :)

How can cyberspace provide a powerful building and progressive medium for minorities?

Cyberspace can be helpful because users are able to bring their assumptions and discursive patterns regarding race with them when they log on and they are able to discuss issues. This can also help build interaction and shared experiences about certain issues and shed light on why it is important. Furthermore, they can make their voice be heard over the internet, and “the representations of cyberspace in popular media highlight an array of ideological attitudes toward race” that can promote change or support of issues (Kolko et al., 2000). It was also mentioned that cyberspace engenders new combinations of ethnicity and raciality and engagement with these new constructions of race and cyberspace. These can be seen in forms of academia, commerce, politics, and other popular media such as film, fiction, advertising, and video games.

How has White Supremacy played a role in online interaction with users?

One thing that was mentioned was the way that the Internet allows “whites-only digital space where they can question the cultural values of tolerance and racial equality unchallenged by anyone outside that frame” leading to consequences. This can have negative implications because these online sites tend to change the story of history such as describing slavery as a “sanitary, humane, relaxed” institution which in fact was something horrible that happened (Daniels, 2009) Furthermore, they affect minority and oppressed groups by claiming that White males are superior. White supremacists are able to take advantage of the Internet by creating linkages and express radical views. These types of sites are fostering false information and are trying to get rid of racial equality by justifying racial issues that have or are happening. This is detrimental because white supremacy online sometimes leads to violence in the lives of minority groups.

How is racism seen in video games/development?

To begin with, the author argues that “yellow-faced cyborgs” are problematic because of the narratives of racism and colonialism that are tied to the character and overall game mechanics. The author focuses on the game called 3D Realms where the Yellow-faced Cyborg Terminator, is on his “solitary quest to rape, pillage, and claim the Asian continent, leaving nothing but carnage” and gives off a racist remarks about the Japanese and making the player to become a “colonizer” (Ow, 2000). The way that the game is designed influences the player’s role within the game. For instance, a first-person perspective was given in the game where the player is able to imagine themselves as the character and engage in the different types of violence that the game offers. The characters of the game are often created with stereotypical features that make false representation of certain groups. Colonizing becomes present in the game which focuses on “conquest and exploration, rather than upholding justice” that the player had to complete (Ow, 2003). Furthermore, the game has sexist agendas by making all-female characters sexualized and submissive.

How do online environments facilitate the fragmentation of identity of individuals?

Many people use the Internet/ technology for communication Social media allows people to create a virtual identity such as “choosing an e-mail name, putting together a webpage, designing a graphical avatar, or creating a nickname for a chat room or virtual world” (Kolko et al., 2000). People can take on a different persona online which could be different from reality through language and gender. However, most tend to bring their real-life identity and experiences online and share it. Cyberspace influences users because people engaged in topics concerning race. Gender affects online interactions that people have with each other because it affects the way they experience cyberspace. Those that do not put out there gender identity often take on a cyborg identity. Users can also adopt a different gender identity online and see what that experience is like and this leads to the real-life and offline biological identity.

Citation:

Daniels, J. (2009). White Supremacy in the Digital Era. Cyber Racism: White Supremacy Online and the New Attack on Civil Rights (pp. 3-16). Rowman & Littlefield.

Kolko, B. E., Nakamura, L., & Rodman, G. B. (2000). Race in Cyberspace: An Introduction. Race in Cyberspace (pp. 1-13). Routledge.

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tanaudel · 5 years

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Diana Wynne Jones conference proceedings

The proceedings of the 2019 Diana Wynne Jones conference are now available as an ebook!

The Proceedings of the Diana Wynne Jones Conference, Bristol 2019.

Table of Contents

Diana Wynne Jones Conference E-book – Introduction

1. Everything I learned about running a convention I learned from Deep Secret

The Pleasures and Challenges (Expected and Unexpected) of Teaching Diana Wynne Jones in the College Classroom

2. Teaching Fire and Hemlock and Charmed Life

3. "Not One Hobbit Have I Seen!": Generic Conventions and Teaching Diana Wynne Jones' Work

4. Teaching Howl's Moving Castle

5. Diana Wynne Jones' Stories for Young Readers: "How Do Young Readers Like Them?"

Families and How to Survive Them

6. The Tough Guide to Growing Up: Diana Wynne Jones' Lessons on Coming of Age

7. Family in the Works of Diana Wynne Jones

8. Step-parents in The Ogre Downstairs and Howl's Moving Castle

9. Diana Wynne Jones and Cats

Wiles and Wisdom

10. Mini, Millie, Magid: Unconventional Women in the Works of Diana Wynne Jones

11. "Drowning in Bleach": Guilt and Shame in Diana Wynne Jones

Under the Influence

12. What Did They Teach Her in Those Schools? Or "Damn It! I'm Turning into C.S. Lewis": Diana Wynne Jones and C.S. Lewis

13. Where She Got It From: Diana Wynne Jones, Other Towns, and Piers Plowman

14. Invisible and Visible Influence: Diana Wynne Jones, E. Nesbit, and Children Who Are Not Seen

15. Keynote: Living a Charmed Life

Concealment and Revelation

16. "Do We Know Each Other?": Hidden Identities, Referential Characters, and Narrative Possibilities in Diana Wynne Jones' Hexwood

17. Concealment and Revelation: Reading Diana Wynne Jones' Magic through Western Esoteric Traditions

18. Buried Alive: The Arthur/Merlin Motif in the Novels of Diana Wynne Jones

Built Environments

19. Contracts and Calcifer, or "In Which A Contract Is Concluded Before Witnesses": the Transactional Structure of Howl's Moving Castle

20. Jones and Quantum Foam

21. Making Sense of Settings: How Sensory Description Builds Dalemark

22. Diana Wynne Jones' Contemporary Medievalism

Into the Woods

23. Ideologies of Power in Hexwood

24. Fractured Humanity/Fragments of Humanity in Hexwood

25. Time in Diana Wynne Jones

26. There's Nothing Magic About Words: Translating Diana Wynne Jones into Hebrew

Wizarding Worlds

27. "So Would You Mind Telling Me Where I Am? It's a Stately Home of Some Kind, Isn't It?" (Charmed Life)

28. Walled Gardens, Lonely Attics and Public Schools: the Romance, the Canon and Constructions of Englishness in the Chrestomanci Series

29. It Takes a Wizard: Exploring the Role of Wizards within their Communities in Howl's Moving Castle, Frogkisser! and The Evil Wizard Smallbone

30. The Wizard of a Thousand Faces: Pinning Down the Trickster Wizard in The Howl Trilogy

Power and the Corporations

31. A Remedy, or, the Meaning of the Goon's Small Head

32. "Want Television!": the "Drama of Screens" in Archer's Goon (BBC, 1992)

33. "We Need to Make the Place Pay Somehow": Magical Universities and Money in Year of the Griffin

Nationality and Borders

34. Deconstructing Dalemark: an Alternate History of Northern Europe

35. Bounds, Homes and Riding away: An Exploration of Border Representation and National Identity within the Novels of Diana Wynne Jones

36. In Short, the Map is Useless: Cartography and Maps in Diana Wynne Jones' Books and Stories

37. Diana: My Sister's Imagination

Primary Bibliography: Works by Diana Wynne Jones

The Contributors

Kickstarter supporters

Index of Chapters Discussing Jones' Books

Poems, by Diana Wynne Jones.

#the one about contracts is by me #diana wynne jones #dwj #howl's moving castle #deep secret #chrestomanci #hexwood #c s lewis #Garth Nix #delia sherman #the ogre downstairs #archer's goon

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cctinsleybaxter · 5 years

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2019 in books

The year’s contenders for the good, the bad, and the rest. I used to make a list of the ten best books I read all year, a tradition encouraged by my mom as far back as high school, but out 2019′s twenty-six mediocre offerings it didn’t really come together. Instead I’ve decided to break my ‘honorable mentions’ category into three subsections that I hope you’ll enjoy. In order of when read, not in order of affection:

Honorable mentions [books I liked; 3+ star material]

The Fifth Season by N.K Jemisin was given to me as a Christmas present last year, and I wasn’t sure how much I would like it since I don’t really do high fantasy. Rules need not apply; I loved the world building and narrative structure, and the characters were so much better than I’m used to even when their arcs seemed familiar at first glance. I guessed what was going on with the formatting maybe a little too quickly, but even then it was emotionally engaging and I was eager to keep reading and see what happened next. Haven’t devoured a book that way in years.

The Periodic Table by Primo Levi has been on my list for a while; as a memoir told through short stories it’s hit-or-miss, but so worth it. I especially loved getting to read his early attempts at fiction, and the chapter Phosphorus regarding his first real job as a chemist in 1942 (his description of his absolute disgust at having to work with rabbits, the feel of their fur and the “natural handle” of the ears is a personal favorite.) This excerpt is one I just think about a lot because it’s full of small sweet details and so kindly written:

“[my father] known to all the pork butchers because he checked with his logarithmic ruler the multiplication for the prosciutto purchase. Not that he purchased this last item with a carefree heart; superstitious rather than religious, he felt ill at ease breaking the kasherut rules, but he liked prosciutto so much that, faced by the temptation of a shop window, he yielded every time, sighing, cursing under his breath, and watching me out of the corner of his eye, as if he feared my judgement or hoped for my complicity.”

Slowing Down from Mouthful of Birds by Samanta Schweblin is a one-page short story, but I’m including it because it’s the best in the book and one of the better stories I’ve read in general. I won’t spoil it for you since it’s more poem than anything else (and you can read the whole thing here.)

A Short Film About Disappointment by Joshua Mattson deserves to be lower in the order because it’s like. Bad. But I couldn’t help but have a self-indulgent kind of love for it, since it’s a book about white boy ennui told through movie reviews. It definitely gets old by the end (one of those things where you can tell the author lost steam just as much as his leading man), but parts of it are so well-written and the concept clever. 80+ imaginary movie reviews and psychosomatic possession by your traitorous best friend.

The Gone-Away World by Nick Harkaway has one of the greatest twists I’ve ever read in a novel, and no that’s not a spoiler, and yes I will recommend it entirely on that basis. It does its job as a multi-year sci-fi epic; reminds me a lot of Walter Moer’s early stuff in that it’s a bit Much(tm) but still a good mixture of politics and absurdity and absolute characters. Tobemory Trent was my favorite of the ensemble cast (but also boy do I wish men would learn how to write women.)

My Only Wife by Jac Jemk is a novella with only two characters, both unnamed, a man describing fragmented memories of his wife. It has me interested in Jemck’s other writing because even though I didn’t love it she writes beautifully; reading her work is like watching someone paint. The whole thing has a very indie movie feel to it (no scene of someone peeing but there SHOULD be), which I don’t think I’ve experienced in a story like this before and would like to try again.

Mentions [books I really wanted to like but my GOD did something go wrong]

Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup by John Carreyrou is the most comprehensive history we have of Elizabeth Holmes and her con-company Theranos. It’s incredibly well-researched and absolutely fascinating, but veers into unnecessary pro-military stuff in one chapter (’can you believe she tricked the government?’ yes i can, good for her, leave me alone) and carries an air of racism directed at Holmes’ partner and the Pakistani people he brings onto the company. Carreyrou works for WSJ so I don’t know what I expected.

Circe by Madeline Miller was fun to read and goes down like a glass of iced tea on a hot day, but leaves a bit of an unpleasant aftertaste. It says a lot of things that seem very resonant and beautiful but ultimately ring hollow, and the ending is too safe. Predictable and inevitable.

I was also bothered about Circe’s relationships with Odysseus and Telemachus as a focal point, not because they’re father and son (Greek mythology ethics : non-committal hand gesture) but because it’s the traditional “I used to like bold men but now I like... sensitive men.” Which as a character arc feels not unrealistic but very boring. You close the book and realize you’re not nine and reading your beat-up copy of Greek Myths, you’re an adult reading a New York Times Bestseller by a middle aged straight white woman.

Reservoir 13 by Jon McGregor could have been the best thing I read all year and I’m miserable at how bad it ended up being. The concept is excellent; a thirteen-year-old girl goes missing in a rural English village, and every chapter chronicles a passing year. I knew it would be slow, I like slow, but nothing happens in this book and it ends up it feeling like Broadchurch without the detectives. Plus, McGregor, you know sometimes you can take a moral stance in your story and not just make everything a grey area? Especially with subplots that deal with things like pedophilia and institutional racism?

Paul Takes the Form of a Mortal Girl by Andrea Lawlor is about a twenty-something who moves from Iowa to San Francisco in the 90s and explores gender and sexuality through shapeshifting. It was something I really thought I would like and maybe even find helpful in my own life, but I couldn’t stand a single one of the characters or the narration so that’s on me! It does contain one of my favorite lines I’ve read in a long time though:

“And anyway, weren’t French boys supposed to be like Giovanni, waiting gaily for you in their rented room and actually Italian?”

Dishonorable mentions [there’s no saving these fellows]

The Butterfly Garden by Dot Hutchinson was supposed to be a fun easy-to-read thriller and what can I say except what the jklfkhlkj;fkfuck. It very quickly goes from ‘oh hey I read books like this when I was 15’ to ‘oh the girl who intentionally gets kidnapped by a wealthy serial killer is accidentally falling in love with his son and can’t stop talking about his eye color now huh.’ I felt like I was losing my mind; why did grown adults give this 5 stars on Goodreads.

The Beautiful Bureaucrat by Helen Phillips is supposedly surrealist horror fiction about working an office job in a new town, and reminded me of that rocky third or fourth year when I really started hating Welcome to Night Vale. All spark no substance, and even less fun because you know it’s going nowhere. I’ve also realized this past year that I cannot stand stories about women where their only personality trait is the desire to have children. People will throw the word ‘Kafkaesque’ at anything but here it was just insulting.

The Great Believers by Rebecca Makkai alternates point of view between Yale, a gay man living in Chicago in the late 80s and watching his friends die, and Fiona, the straight younger sister of one of those friends now looking for her erstwhile daughter in 2018. It was nominated for the 2018 Pulitzer, and part of my interest was in wondering how we were going to connect the plot lines of ‘the personal cost of the AIDS crisis’ with ‘daughter lost to a cult.’

The answer is that we don’t. The book is well-researched and acclaimed beyond belief, but it is SUCH a straight story. Yale’s arc is fueled by the drama of his boyfriend cheating on him and infecting them both, Fiona is painted as a witness to tragedy and encouraged to share their stories with her own daughter. “You’re like the Mother Theresa of Boys Town” one of the men complains bitterly of her, and the claim goes undisputed. It’s a story that makes a lot of statements about love and families and art that I feel we’ve all heard before to much greater effect.

#long post #stardate 2k19 #apologies for any typoes or bad wording i've been trying to write and edit this for like the past week and a half

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phantomladyoverparis · 2 years

Photo

13 Fragments & 3 Narratives from Life (1968), dir. Jon Jost

#13 Fragments & 3 Narratives from Life #jon jost #60s #experimental film #short film #american cinema

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bathtubmadonna · 5 years

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“I know what it means to break apart. I observed it in my mother, in myself, in many women. The process of fragmentation in a woman’s body interests me very much from the narrative point of view. It means telling the story of a present-day female I that suddenly perceives itself disintegrating, it loses the sense of time, it’s no longer in order, it feels like a vortex of debris, a whirlwind of thoughts-words. It stops abruptly and starts again from a new equilibrium, which–note–isn’t necessarily more advanced than the preceding or even more stable. It serves only to say: now I’m here and I feel like this.”

“Mother, I have pasts inside me I did not bury properly. Some nights, your daughter tears herself apart yet heals in the morning.”

"Hi Mom and Dad, it’s me, Christine. It’s the name you gave me. It’s a good one. Dad, this is more for Mom. Hey, Mom, did you feel emotional the first time that you drove in Sacramento? I did and I wanted to tell you, but we weren’t really talking when it happened. All those bends I’ve known my whole life, and stores, and the whole thing. But I wanted to tell you I love you. Thank you, I’m… thank you."

─────────────────────

Motherhood / things that remind me of my mom

1. Ruth Orkin (American photographer and filmmaker) 1921 - 1985

2. Elena Ferrante, Frantumaglia: A Writer’s Journey

Mother and Daughter Waiting at Penn Station, New York, ca. 1948

3. "The Exorcist"

4. Marcel Khalife, Mother

5. x

6. Ijeoma Umebinyuo

7. I Know it's Over - The Smiths

9. Hereditary (2018) dir. Ari Aster

8. Jeanette Winterson, Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit

10. Come Down - Sylvan Esso

11. Class of 2013 - Mitski

12 & 13. Ladybird (2017) dir. Greta Gerwig

#mine

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speckeh · 6 years

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My 2019 Garbage Book Dump

It’s 2019! I’m tired, I’m hella gay, and I’m still reading books as much as I can with my busy life! Enjoy this book list with reviews!

1. Thunderball: 5/5 stars. Mormon jokes. Making fun of dietary changes? A young Italian woman (girl) who controls the island with her beauty. It becomes a mission against nuclear threats against the Europe and the US? Not exactly the MOST thrilling James Bond book, but I had a lot of fun reading it. I’m glad this was my first read of the year!

2. The Lydia Steptoe Stories - Faber Stories: 4/5 stars. I found these short, tiny books in a local bookstore. There were 6 of them on the table and I bought three. Sometimes I wish I bought all of them, but not all of them spoke to me. The Lydia collection was interesting as it held three stories with: a young man being “seduced” by his aunt, a young girl wanting to be a dominatrix, and a woman who wishes she could be youthful again. While I didn’t find the stories awe-inspiring, I did find them extremely entertaining and nice to think about.

3. Emma Cozy Classics: 5/5 stars. I have the pride and prejudice one. While it might not be as fabulous as a full book, but the pain-staking skill of felt art is entirely impressive. It went on my Jane Austen book shelf.

4. Come Rain or Shine - Faber Stories: 3/5 stars. What would you do if your friends thought you were absolutely insane and their lives are falling apart worse than yours? What would you do if your friend asks you to play absolutely stupid to his wife to make him look better and for her to realize her life isn’t so bad that she got lucky enough to not marry you? I for one, would drop these fucking friends and never look back. The story was a fucking train wreck and absolutely insane to the point where it wasn’t even humorous to me. Several authors state it’s Ishiguro’s step into comical writing and I wish he wouldn’t.

5. Passionate Minds - Women Rewriting the World: 1/5 stars. I found this book at my Uni’s free bookshelf. I was super excited to read this book but it’s one of the dullest and full of biases book I’ve had the displeasure of picking up. I got to read about my girl Gertrude Stein but I was expecting more female writers, not actors who the writer obvious gets off on. There’s nothing wrong with that, and this book has rave reviews, I just couldn’t stand the writing style and obvious fawning she had (and not in the academic/historically reserved way authors should be).

6. Wandering Island Vol. 2: 4/5 stars. It’s been two years since the first volume came out. I found myself reading it in record time which has me both disappointed and a bit confused (not because I read it fast, but because of the strange editorial ending). The art is impeccable with a few questionable “obviously a man drew this” moment, the story has kind of been a bit muddled up and didn’t necessarily go anywhere this volume. It felt more of a build up for Volume 3 which I don’t know when will be released. The editor wrote this strange 6 page essay that started off they were going to postpone Wandering Island 3, then went on a long rant about how the manga editing world has changed with ^-^ faces all throughout, only to then write fan theories of where they think the story is going to finish with: “We’ll translate the pages as soon as they come out! ^-^” what the fuck?? Haha

7. Fun Home - A Family Tragicomic. 5/5 stars. I bought this book today and I finished it this evening. I’m still processing everything that happened but one thing I know for sure is that I found one of my top 5 books of 2019 as well as a new favorite already. Alison approaches a hard topic of coming out, learning about her father’s secret life of being bisexual, and coming to terms with the strange person with anger issues that was her father. While my father wasn’t gay, there were several elements of her father I saw in my own. The volatile anger, learning more about his life after his death, hearing shattering truths from your mom, the regret of not having conversations sooner and him not seeing who you truly are before their passing. It struck a chord with me and I’m going to be thinking about this comic book I feel like for two months.

8. The Real McCoy: 4/5 stars. This is like a small wikipedia pamphlet book about the famous names, phrases, or lyrics you might know. I wasn’t necessarily impressed with the booklet, but I found some of it entertaining. I gave it a high rating because it served its purpose but I’m totally gifting it to a friend who loves random facts.

9. The Heart Affirming: 5/5 Stars. Epic poems about the Greek Gods, the universal feeling of appreciating nature, the wondering of the cruelty of humanity. This is a rare find of a poetry book not popular and one I found at my local library book sale that was signed by the author. If you have the pleasure to pick up this 1939 poetry book, please do! It’s a treat from the past that shows we still yearn for the same poetic romanticism we did then to now.

10. Bloom: 4.5/5 stars. I’ve realized I’m going to graduate college in the fall and this weird depression hit where I realized my life is really finally going to change forever. So I’m having a mixture of senioritis where I don’t want to do any work when I’m done with school by Wednesday, and I’m having a mid-century life crisis where I don’t know what to do with my life (I mean I do, but it’s terrifying). So I went on a LGTBQ+ splurge on amazon, something i haven’t done in awhile, Bloom was one of those books. Bloom is a fast paced comic about a high school graduate who wants to move out and move on, but his friends are dicks and his parents want him to stay. Welcome the new hot boy whose grandma just died and conveniently loves to bake. Ari wants to leave the bakery and this new hot guy is just his ticket to leave, or is it? I really liked this comic for the art and the story line was refreshing. But there were several instances where the book moves really quickly and the development was… meh. HeartStopper has great, slow pacing that lets you feel like the characters and story moves in a believable way. Bloom is rushed in some parts, but still.. So cute.

11. Spinning: 5/5 Stars. 2/4 of the LGTBQ+ books I ordered have been read! I read this book the day before valentine’s day and I’ve already been in a weird mode/crisis of being a university senior. I, loved this book for all the reasons why people gave it 3 stars. Everyone stated the story didn’t wrap up, that i jumped, that it felt fragments, but if you read the very end the author state not all books should make sense or follow a timeline or be accurate and these followed her own recollection without revisiting anything. I really appreciated and I loved the style. It’s a heavy book with sexual assault, manipulation, child abuse, and a very unhappy protagonist who isn’t likeable. But at the same time, finishing this book I just felt such grief that I didn’t pursue an art career. That I didn’t just join an art program or give my art career a chance. I think when I’m in the end of my career, retirement, I may go to art school again or maybe I’ll splurge money on lessons or maybe I’ll just accept my art as is. Either way, this book made me fiercely jealous of a 21 year old. It reminded me of a famous story of my dad reading a book about astronauts and crying in the bath because he should have been an astronaut, and how this book made me want to cry because in some form I should have been an artist. But like my dad, we’ve both chased careers that really inspired and gave us amazing opportunities. But I think it’s natural to miss over those childhood passions you didn’t follow through with because you felt like you weren’t enough.

12. My Solo Exchange Diary Vol 2. 2.5/5 stars. I read the first volume last year due to prompting from one of my precious friends (Ramona). My loneliness with Lesbianism was AMAZING. I bought it. My Solo Exchange Diary felt like the author was rambling in circles, completely mentally unwell, and had no ideas of how to properly take care of herself. In Volume 2 she was able to search for some help and she was able to deal with some introspective thoughts about how her viewpoint might have been wrong and how she was toxic to herself and her family. Volume 2 still left a taste in my mouth that felt… weird? She’s moving in the right directions but I think she’s desperately trying to follow the hype of her lesbian hit manga and she’s failing due to her wants to surpass herself. I laughed and felt bad as she mentioned how people slammed her for Volume 1, so it felt very meta to read how she reacted because my comment was also criticizing her: read here. But if you’re reading it in a bookstore or a library, do it. It’s nice to see how she’s slowly making progress with herself.

13. Sputnik Sweetheart. 1/5 stars. I picked this up in Brussels in the select few english section because the cover was intriguing and the back cover claimed it was a lesbian story. I was so excited, and imagine my absolutely hatred when I realized a straight cisgender man had written a “lesbian” story through the eyes of a straight male who is lusting after his lesbian best friend. He proclaims he gets boners at looking at her breasts and how her eccentric style only makes her that more beautiful just to him. I hate everything about this book. I wish straight cisgendered men would leave lesbian narrative stories alone unless you’re going to write them right. Get the fuck out of my books.

14. Fortunate Beasts: Letters to Lucardo Vol 2: 5/5 stars. The long waited and anticipated sequel to Letters to Lucardo!!! It’s been two years since I read the first volume, supported it on kickstarters, and I’m going to keep funding each release until the quadiology is complete! This had a lot less background building, exciting sex scenes, but you now understand the two lovers and get to see them develop their budding relationship. While it wasn’t as smut riddled as I expected, I was very happy with the continuation!

15. The little Lame Prince: 2/5 stars. DNF. Did not finish in case for those who don’t know/can’t remember (I hardly remember what DNF stands for myself). I’m torn as I want to eventually finish this book but I’m just not in the mood for it. It’s a sweet story but is very slow and from what I can tell, repeats itself a lot. It’s a old book from the early 1800s which explains the somewhat hard language and problematic moments, but it’s still charming. I’ll debate when I’ll try this again. For now, it’s returning to my shelves with a bookmark in the pages.

16. Shounen Houkokusho. 5/5 stars. A shounen-ai soft, wholesome gay family about a little boy standing up for his dad’s long time partner and asking them to get married. Very sweet. So precious. I love.

17. Same Difference and Other Stories: 4/5 stars. This was a reread from my friend Mark who gifted this to me back in december of 2014. It’s been 5 years since I picked up this book and I decided to see how its changed. As an adult, this comic speaks to me a lot louder than it did nearly half a decade ago. Struggling to find your way through life, seeing all your high school “friends” getting married, having jobs, meanwhile you’re just.. Here. Definitely a story I needed to revisit again in the future and also I still appreciate Mark’s notes he left in here for me!

18. Amazing Women: 101 Lives to Inspire you: 4/5 stars. This was my gift after finally being cut loose from the cancer clinic. I never had to go back there again and so I decided to pick up a momento. This was the book I chose that they offered. I really appreciate how they cover diverse women from all over the world rather than American-centric. They don’t go further than 1826, keping mostly within 200 years which is a bit of a bummer. There were also some choices I felt were questionable, like Zoe Sugg (who had her book ghost written and scams her viewers) and that they didn’t have Alison Bechendel was a huge disappointment. But this book is opinionated as they did have to narrow it down to 101 women, so I’m never going to be happy unless I pick my own. I also appreciated that if a diplomat was assassinated they mentioned it in the book.

19. The Epic of Gilgamesh: 5/5 stars. I learned about the Epic of Gilgamesh back when I was a itty-bitty sophomore in high school. I remember being so intrigued and would draw my gay ass characters as the Harlot and Endurk. I think I still have the drawings somewhere and they’re cringey. I bought the book and it’s been sitting on my shelf for YEARS. I did a deep clean of my bookshelves last night from 11:30 pm - 4:30 am, and this morning I just wanted to read since I haven’t been able to for months. I loved it! I love creation myths, old myths from “lost” cultures, plus the language was hella gay in this story. It’s a short 61 pages, so if you have like an hour or two and are in the mood for some myths baby, pick it up!

20. The Making of Pride and Prejudice: 4/5 stars. This book is chalked full of interviews from staff, actors, photos of the sets, and a bit too long section on the director and writers moaning about a script. I loved the photos of the behind the scenes and reading Colin Firth’s reluctancy to take, arguably, his most iconic role because he didn’t care for classical movies. Thought they were boring. Really a cool book to have if you’re a big Pride and Prejudice 1995 fan.

21. Greek Myths: 2/5 stars. I love the artwork in this book, but the author shows a lack of research when he writes the Roman names for the greek gods. I’m all fine with showing a Roman cultural story, but if you’re writing a Greek Myths story, BITCH use the Greek names!!! If it wasn’t for the artwork, this book would be traaash.

22. Wicked: 5/5 stars. I’ve been in a reading rut for almost a month where I’ve felt unmotivated to do anything. Since going back to brief counseling and getting my head on straight again, I’ve felt the motivation to read. I’m also doing the 2019 OWLS for a Wandmaker and this was one of my assignments. I absolutely loved Wicked. The musical came in last month and it reinvigorated my love for the show. I’ve been wanting to read the book, it’s been haunting me for awhile and I found a back of the Wicked series for 5 dollars at my library sale. Snatched that bitch up. I read this 408 pages in two weeks, probably would have in a week but school. God, I related so much to Elphaba. Not so much the whole, feeling like she has no soul, but taking school seriously and not making friends, coming from a religious family and rebelling, feeling like she’s responsible for her whole family, (not feeling like she’s attractive) and seeing her growth and becoming more comfortable with herself really made me feel better about myself? It’s a super dark book, but it’s great. It’s really great.

23. A Children’s Guide to the Night Sky: 4/5 stars. This was essentially the condensed and easier version of my Stars and Cosmology course I took two years ago!! I sped read this and some of the greek myths they described were dumb down/removed the queerness of it. Which is why I took off a whole star.

24. The Life-Changing Manga of Tidying Up: 5/5 stars. Hello Marie Kondo. Everyone is on a cleaning kick/obsessed with Marie Kondo. I liked this comic because it was short and also made her book in a bite size, story drive style. I liked its simplistic form!

25. Julian is a Mermaid: 5/5 stars. I’ve had my eye on this book for a year, ever since it was announced in Goodreads’ monthly list. I found the last copy and snatched it up. I like the muted colors, the art style, the different bodies, and letting little boys know it’s ok to dress up as mermaids or anything feminized. A great message!!!

26. Kiss Number 8: 5/5 stars. This is one of those random comics I saw in the new releases and the cover caught my eye. I read the first few pages and decided to buy it. I loved it as it’s a coming out story but the main story isn’t revolved around coming out. It’s about the complicated nature of family, coming out through the years, and trans themes. I know some people say this book and the characters are transphobic due to misgendering and dead names used, but the main character is catholic. Her family are mega catholic. She’s going to a catholic school. Of course there’s going to be misgendering and dead names used! It’s how people naturally react to news. If you’re super sensitive, I wouldn’t read this book, but I loved it to bits. I held it to my chest like I do rarely with those books that give you the warm feels.

27. Elephi - The Cat with the High IQ: 5/5 stars. This was a book I grabbed at a close down sale. It’s about Elephi who sees a small fiat car abandoned in the snow outside and decides to use his brains to get the car inside the fifth story apartment. The author really knows how cats act and I felt like all the mannerisms were perfect for a year old cat(kitten). Really a cute book that I read in 40 minutes??

28. One Happy Tiger: 4/5 stars. A book about a tiger counting friends. Cute. It’s a children’s book. Not too substantial in anything.

29. The Language of Thorns: 5/5 stars. Ok WOW. I bought this about a year ago during B&N’s signed deals where they just had a ton of books signed by the authors. I’ve seen this book floating around on BookTube for awhile and I decided to check it out at the bookstore. The illustrations sold me and I bought it. Imagine the already dark Grimm’s fairy tales, but darker. More context for the characters: Ursula, the Nutcracker, Hansel and Gretel but if Gretel was the only one at home. Really amazing stories and if you’re interested in dark, pretty illustrations that change with each page, pick it up!

30. Satoko and Nada vol 1: 5/5 stars. Ramona and I went to B&N yesterday, just sitting around like two useless gays reading a bunch of manga. This is one she picked out and told me to read it. You know me, as a white academic I am constantly on the lookout for narratives that aren’t white and can educate me. This was one of them! Satoko is from Japan while Nada is from Saudi Arabia, both are exchange students in the US. Their friendship, learning about each other’s cultures is so fucking cute. ;0;

31: I Hear the Sunspot vol 1: 4/5 stars. I docked this down from a 5 star rating because it just jumps into a established plot. I had no idea if this was a continuation from another series or if the author purposefully just threw us in the mix of an established gay relationship but they’re not really (they are but they’re confused) with some flashbacks that looks like it came from another volume? But despite those factors, the art is gorgeous. The characters are well developed and have complex background and stories to tell (one of the main characters has a degenerative hearing issue and will eventually become deaf).

32. Building Writing Center Assessments that Matter: 4/5 stars. This was a required text I had for a independent study I was a part of where I created a assessment of the climate of where I worked. This is a great resource in learning how to build assessments from scratch, and if you’ve never conducted one. I found the information they gave was limited to assessment of students who use the a writing center, while my assessment was more focused on how safe, valued, and heard those who currently work in the space feel. A great way to step into assessments!

33. Mary Ventura and the Ninth Kingdom: 4/5 stars. This was the first fictionalized piece of Slyvia Plath I’ve read. I can understand why it wasn’t published at first. There’s a lot of loose ends. Why was Mary going to the Ninth Kingdom? Why is everyone so placant in going to a “hell” type place? Also what the hell was the ending and her running away? This story left a lot to be answered, but I also love that about this short story.

34. Momo to Manji Vol 2: 5/5 stars. Volume two of one of my favorite historical yaoi mangas. It’s still hasn’t been fully translated just yet but I love it all the same!! So many complex characters, relationships!

35. Sweet Blue Flowers Vol 1. 5/5 stars. The first edition of a 5 volume series. Ramona told me to read this and I devoured the first book! Wholesome young girls falling in love with each other! Boyish girls who are heartthrobs! Unrequited love galore! Definitely going to check out the rest of the volumes!

36. Laura Dean Keeps Breaking Up with Me: 5/5 stars. Man. This comic took me through a roller coaster of feelings. First it kind of made me miss the constant interactions I had with people in junior high and high school. It also reminded me heavily of my first gf and I wondered if she and her friends viewed me as Laura Dean (in terms of being too cool. I never cheated lmao. And always just out of reach). It made me melancholy for a younger me who was also hopeless in love with their best friend. It was a wild ride, but one I recommend wholeheartedly!

37. Lovable Lyle: 5/5 stars. I’ve been looking at this little crocodile for awhile and I’ve come to the conclusion he is me. This book was silly but heartwarming as Lyle is beloved but suddenly receives letters from his sworn enemy. They try to ignore it, but they are persistent until they catch the culprit. Fucking ridiculous story but I loved every second.

38. The Great American Pin-Up: 5/5 stars. It was really cool how they sectioned off each famous artist of pin-ups. Some of them were tasteful nudes, semi-nudes, or lingerie teasing moments. As someone who is both gay and used to draw pin-up girls, this is a great reference!!!!

39. Drawing the R.A.F.: 5/5 stars. This book is one of those rarer finds. A british artist was commissioned to draw the officers of the R.A.F. in the middle of World War II. Some portraits are far better than others, but the worser ones are attached with amazing stories. Such as a 6”6’ pilot having to be physically shoved in a spitfire. These are fantastic and the art work is really beautiful.

40. Where’s Will? 4/5 stars. Where’s Will is a William Shakespeare version of Where’s Waldo. The art is beautiful and the hidden characters are extremely clever. However, I remember so often spending hours upon hours trying to find Waldo and the extreme satisfaction of finally finding him. Where’s Will I could find him within 5 minutes. It never went long enough to the point I feel worn and frustrated and finding several more interesting characters. He stood out more than he should and I flew through this book that Waldo would find insulting! But the illustrations are beautiful!

41. Carr’s Pocket Books - Florence Nightingale: 4/5 stars. This mini collection of Nightingale’s journals throughout her life is really interesting. As a woman who revolutionized what it meant to be a nurse and nurse practices, it was nice to see her own words from age 9 to 90. She was an elegant little girl with her writing and she showed wisdom beyond her years. Did I learn anything substantial about her work? No. But I did come to know her on a far more personal level that I appreciate.

42. Carr’s Pocket Books - How Horatius Kept the Bridge: 5/5 stars. Another one of these small pocket sized books I bought in Oundle, England. I don’t know why, but I’ve just been desperate to go through my books and get rid of any and all that don’t speak to me anymore. I also just want to read, a lot. This was part of my kick this week, trying to get through as many as possible. This poem story is about Roman soldier Horatius and how he single handedly took the Bridge against the Greeks. It’s a military triumphant, silly, and mystical, but I really enjoyed the structure of it. It was short and sweet.

43. Echoland: 3.5/5 stars. Echoland follows Arvid, a 12 year old Norwegian boy who visits his grandparents in Denmark for the summer. However, he’s growing up and he’s realizing that his parents are strained for some reason, his sister is too grown for him, and his grandparents are getting older. This book was confusing. It was short, quick, and I think younger children would enjoy this book more than me. It deals with more adult themes but through the eyes of a 12 year old. However, I found a lot of the storyline to be confusing: Why does Arvid not want to be touched? Why are his parents fighting?? Why does he hate all the men in his family? Why is he pushing everyone away? Why are his parents putting up with his attitude? There are a LOT of questions I have and there’s no real answer to be found. Maybe it’s the author’s style, but I found the story to be not as believable, but still enjoyable.

44. Mathilda. 2.5/5 stars. Mathilda was an audiobook I listened to as I suddenly got a migraine at around 6 pm and it didn’t let up until around midnight. The last three hours I’ve been listening to it. I thought this was Matilda from Roald Dahl but was instead by Mary Shelley herself. This was a very bizarre story. I really enjoyed the first half of the story which is about Mathilda writing a final letter to her best friend upon her deathbed. She’s retelling him her tragic story and how the death of her father was her fault. Her childhood was very bleak, touch starved as her mother died and her father abandoned her to his half sister. Her half sister wasn’t warm to her and saw her as a pest, which had Mathilda growing up til she was 16 without a father. Suddenly her father decided to return and within 2 months of his return her aunt dies, and now she’s in his custody. At first everything is fine, until her father starts to lash out at her and is very distant. He at first wants Mathilda to replace her mother and then rejects the idea. They go for a walk and Mathilda presses her father to tell her his deep secret and why he hates her all of a sudden. He refuses until she presses on and then he tells her that he lusts for her. She freaks out, he almost dies in the woods from shame, and then he leaves the next morning. Mathilda is then angry because SHE wanted to leave her father, but because he’s abandoning her again she chases after him. She finds him dead in a hotel room and then Mathilda begins to resent life and living. The story was great up until she decides to chase her father after he leaves her. It became a jumbled mess and Mathilda herself says her mind is a little mad with her decisions. The story started off as an intrigue with beauty descriptions, intense, and then just went bat shit crazy. The story ended on beautiful reflections on nature and how death is not beautiful for those living, but it really lost me. The last hour was a drag. I would definitely suggest listening to it if you have a migraine!

45. Megume to Tsugumi: 5/5 stars. Gay comic, lmao.

46. Golden Sparkle: 5/5 stars. I don’t remember the plot but it was cute.

47. Maltese Falcon: 2/5 stars. I was forced to read this for a film and literature class. Everyone was ranting and raving how the main character should be a male role model but that’s extremely stupid. Look, I love bad male representation (looking at you James Bond), but he was just trash. I get this is a famous crime novel, but GOD. It’s bad.

48. Maiden & Princess: 5/5 stars. This was about a maiden going to a ball who everyone thought she would marry the Prince. Except she and the Prince are best friends and she really fell in love with his sister. We love pride month books!

49. Prince & Knight: 5/5 stars. A gender-swap of Maiden & Princess except this was a Prince who goes off to slay a dragon to save his kingdom only to fall in love with a knight and marry him. SO GOOD.

50. Komi Can’t Communicate, Vol. 1: 4/5 stars. My friend Ramona told me to read this volume since she read it and loved it. While I loved the art and Komi, the story line was just a tad flat for me. It’s a really fun series if you like high school semi-romance but mostly heavy on friendship~!

51. What was Stonewall? 3/5 stars. This was one of those children informative books where they retell a piece of history. I thought this was great for children who know nothing about Stonewall but are hearing it from Drag Queens or in June for Pride History Month. I thought the information about Stonewall was short and concise and also good for children, however the book did verge off point and talk about other points of history as well as random actors who are gay. This is good, but it isn’t Stone wall, you know?

52. Pride: The Story of Harvey Milk and the Rainbow Flag: 4/5 stars. I watched Milk and I cried at the end. I’ve been wanting to know more about how Milk created our Pride Flag and this was another one of those books where it’s curated for children. So I appreciate the run down version it gives us, but they had to “modify” what the stripes mean, such as purple being Sexuality. Let kids hear the unfiltered truth!

53. TBH #1: TBH, This Is So Awkward: 4/5 stars. This was in the teen new released section and it’s a book of text messages. I hated this book, but also was way too invested in it when I was reading it out loud to my date. It’s just a bunch of middle school people sending love notes, getting the Valentine’s Day dance cancelled because they won’t stop using their phone and their principal said “Social Decency.” And then it ended by one of the girls bringing the valentine’s day dance back by creating a Task Force to enforce no texting during school. It was fucking wild and I loved every page I flipped through and wrote in.

54. Adaptations from Short Story to Big Screen: 4/5 stars. I liked it well enough, it was a textbook so I didn’t really read the stories in-depth. However, there are two stories I absolutely love which are Field of Dreams and Smoke Signals.

55. Our Father Who Art in a Tree: 5/5. I loved this book. It’s very true to the experience of what it’s like to be depressed and the first few months of deep grief. While I didn’t lose my parent until my teenage years and my brothers were older, but the strained relationships grief causes is so fucking poignant.

56. Little Miss P: 5/5 stars. I know it’s strange, because it’s a man writing a book about periods, but this was an excellent book. It really showcased the love-hate relationship women have with their periods and also sometimes accurate representations of what it feels like.

57. Ginza Neon Paradise: 4/5 stars. I don’t remember reading this manga! (I’m updating my book list after some months)

58. Na Leo I Ka Makani/Voices on the Wind: 5/5 stars. A book of history and photos of native Hawaiians, royals, and other cultural aspects important to the island. Some really cool photos.

59. Satoko & Nada vol. 2: 5/5 stars. Satoko and Nada are back again, continuing on with their studies and friendship. This book still continues to teach westerners some cool Eastern values while the main characters are learning about each other as well. I think the 3rd volume will come out soonish and that might be the end!!! I love this little series!

60. Annie on My Mind: 5/5 stars. One of the first lesbian novels to show a happy ending with the characters. It’s very much a high school love story and first real love. There were some parts of the story that were absolutely aggravating, painfully embarrassing, but also really heart warming. It’s a queer foundational book in literature, and if you’re interested in the history of queer literature, this should be on your list.

61. Killing Stalking: 5/5 stars. The comic finally ended. I started reading it in 2016 and finished in 2019. God was it a ride. It was full of conflicting feelings, creepiness, and an ending that leaves the reader confused, fulfilled, and also not fulfilled at the same time. I wouldn’t suggest reading it for those who are squeamish with gore, violence, and dark sexual themes, but it’s a fantastic read into what it’s like to experience stockholm syndrome and intense violent trauma.

62. Go for it, Nakamura!: 5/5 stars. A high school student falls in love with his popular classmate, but his classmate doesn’t know he exists! A cute gay book about falling in love, making friends, and pushing yourself to achieve your goals!

63. The Great Gatsby: 4/5 stars. The next two books are books I listened to while deep cleaning my room. It took me two days to fully clean my room, and this was also a challenge for my N.E.W.T.S 2019. I remember reading this book in high school and liking, and I think I lent out my copy and never saw it again. I bought it recently and decided to give it a re-read/listen. I think reading the book would have made it more engaging to me, but I found the themes to not be as impressive as an adult. Maybe it’s because I can’t relate to the characters or their choices are so dumb that I just can’t believe it anymore, but it was still entertaining to listen to. The narrator was great!

64. Emma (Narrated by Emma Thompson): 5/5 stars. This feels a bit like cheating because this rendition was not only abridged, but also had live actors. I’m very familiar with Emma, and Emma Thompson as the narrator was a genius move. However, do I feel like I read/listened to Emma? Not really.

65. Fresh Romance, Vol. 1: 4/5 stars. Half of the stories were very confusing and not very good. However, I really loved two stories about a Regency marriage and a spin off of Beauty and the Beast. I would read this volume just for those additions.

66. Pilu of the Woods: 5/5 stars. A cute story about emotions, friendship, and the woods. It even has a recipe on the back I want to read it!! The colors and characters are adorable. The storyline might not be as solid, but it’s a great read!

67. Ou-same to Puppy Love: 5/5 stars. A foreign prince falls in love with a neat-freak government official. Queue stupid boys in love!

68. Sugar Days: 5/5 stars. Childhood best friends, one small and manly, one tall and feminine, both love each other without having the courage to tell the other!!!! Very cute!!!!!

69. The Tea Dragon Society: 5/5 stars. I remember seeing this book a year ago and how everyone was ranting and raving about it. However, I never bought it or saw it. My best friend brought it over the other day for me to read and I could finally see what the fuss was about. QUEER CHARACTERS, LITTLE DRAGONS WITH TEA LEAVES GROWING OFF OF THEM, MULTIPLE REPRESENTATION!!!! IT’S SO GOOOOOD!

70. Luminous Animal: 5/5 stars. A jazz poetry book. It’s interesting how Tony Moffeit can write the same theme over and over, with the same lines but in different poems with different perspectives. It was really cool!

71. Still Mostly True: 5/5 stars. A weird poetry book that has philosophy and deep meaning poems with also weird ass drawings. However, my poetry book had inscriptions from someone else to their friend. The inscriptions were sometimes very annoying, but also kind of heartwarming how this friend made sure her friend knew she was thinking of her and loving her.

72. Sky, Wind, and Stars. 5/5 stars. A poetry book that was a Korean activist who was murdered by the Japanese through medical experiments for his radical poetry. We watched the movie in my Korean History through film class, and I loved it to bits I wanted to read his poetry. The movie downplayed just how radical his poetry was. Even as a English speaker, I can clearly see the activism, Korean pride that was written during the Japanese occupation. It was a wonderful poetry book, and an important one to Koreans at that. If you have the chance to read it, please do.

73. Memoirs of a Geisha: 5/5 stars. Haley (one of my bffs) recommended me this book like 3 years ago. It’s her favorite and I kept saying I would read it. August was the N.E.W.T.S. challenge and this fit the category of “audiobook” as I listened to a fan read audio of it and then had to read the last 7 chapters. I completely see where my friend finds inspiration in her writing from this book! I really loved the sad story, the harsh reality of Japan, even if this book was more on the idealized version of WWII in Japan and how Geishas were. Some of the thinking of Chiyo I feel could be chalked up to white men ideal sexualization, but overall I really enjoyed this book! Plus the fan who read it was really into her characters and she made the experience really fun.

74. Be Prepared: 5/5 stars. When you’re poor, Russian, and have the All-American-Girls as your best friends, life is extremely hard. No one likes your Russian food, the smallness of your home, and listening to a language not their own. VERA NEEDS SOME FUCKING NEW FRIENDS. As someone whose best friend is Russian, has a sister-in-law who is Russian, and a nephew learning to speak Russian, some people are really insensitive and it drives me nuts. I know a lot of people are upset with this book because it’s not a “full memoir” and yet is described as a memoir. I’ll just pose the question, can you remember 1 month straight at 10 years old, from people to dialogue? No? Yeah, cut the book some slack. This has great representation in terms of Russian culture and learning through it from little Russian eyes.

75. Kiraide Isasete: 5/5 stars. It’s another gay manga.

76. I married my best friend to shut up my parents: 4/5 stars. While I appreciate this story is light-hearted, it seems a bit far fetched for my taste. Also the main character doesn’t believe she’s gay, so I find it hard that a) she would actually get married and b) would just readily fall in love with her friend when she’s literally had no sexual desire for anyone. But other than that, it’s a ridiculous love story and it’s to the point!

78. Heartstopper V.2: 5/5 stars. I already read this awhile ago but I finally got my copy! So I’m just putting it in my list!

79. Raven: 5/5 stars. Raven is the first installment of the origins of the Teen Titans characters. I really loved this novel since Raven has always been a dark character in the original show. This book explores her experience with death, coming to terms with her birth origins, and New Orleans with ancient magic. A great start to a series I’m looking forward to reading the rest of!

80. Heartless. 4/5 stars. A child is taken care of by a succubus (male) after a religious cult burns down a hospital to get rid of the succubus. This story is intense in the gore and horror, but pretty light in plot. There’s no real driving force behind the characters and what they do, no explanation, it’s all just there for the reader to assume it just happened. But the characters were dynamic and interesting with superhuman powers and abilities.

81. The Adventure Zone Vol. 2: 5/5 stars. Every time I see Madame Director I sigh in relief because she exactly looks how I envisioned her while listening to the podcast many years ago. The story line is short, I feel like some of the build up jokes are lost or the frustration Griffin has with his brothers and dad that make the podcast so hilarious are missing, but it’s a really beautiful comic and also a great way for people to start listening to TAZ and MBMBAM

82: The Wind in the Willow: 4/5 stars. An audiobook I listened to. I had the paperback but it was too much reading for my mind for a classic children book. When I found the option on Libby, I listened to it as I started my preparations for the start of my final semester as an undergraduate! It went by fast, the actors were in their characters and there were some songs performed. I really enjoyed it, even if Mr. Toad is ANNOYING AS FUCK. Would recommend for those wanting to kill 2 hours of their time.

83. Classmates: 5/5 stars. High school sweethearts? Can’t express their feelings well? Uh, sign me the FUCK uP.

84-108. W Juliet: 5/5 stars. I haven’t read W Juliet since I was in 7th grade. I remember that I loved it so much that when I was in high school I began collecting the volumes and proudly put it on my shelf. I used to have two bookshelves worth of manga, and when I grew older I sold them but only kept two series: Marmalade Boy and W Juliet (I’m gonna read Marmalade Boy next). I’ve been wanting to reread W Juliet recent and revisit Mako and Ito’s silliness, and with the long weekend I did. I was not prepared for the analysis it would give me to my own life. Like, holy shit. This manga series was so important in developing me who I was as a kid, (some of them very mild kinks that my rp friends are subjected to), the loss Ito has and her issues with gender and like 100000% me and how I don’t like masculine guys at all with their toxicity (hello Mako, you summer child boy). I honestly want to do a fucking research paper on this series with an analysis of myself because of how much I love this series and how I connect to it. You can bet your ass this manga is coming with me for the rest of my life.

109-117. Marmalade Boy: 3/5 stars. Marmalade Boy was the manga that started it all. I remember being 8, having found the manga section with my best friend, and we decided to share reading Marmalade Boy. I was so captivated by the story that I made her wait in the car at her house, refusing to let her have the book until I finished it. It was the final of the volume, and it wouldn’t be another 3 years until I read the series OUT OF ORDER. I kept rereading this series, picking it up, I remember it felt like watching a movie. As an adult? God this series is really awful. The characters are very annoying, the teacher is very creepy, the plot moves WAY too quickly, and no one knows what consent is. It’s fucking insane. 1-7 volume is trash, but the 8th volume really put to life in the characters. For one, they’re older, it's been a few years, and they can step back from the crazy lives of high school. If it wasn’t for the sheer nostalgia, I would be giving these books away. But you gotta pay respect to those books that introduced you to life changing moments.

118. Ouji to Kotori. 4/5 stars. An art student, a prince who buys him, trying to escape, foreign lands, a story that has a “romantic” but is open ended. I liked the flow of the story, the art, and the characters were actually believable.

119. Mean Girls Club. 3.5/5 stars. Mean Girls Club is a 1950s tale of girls rising against the patriarchy through sex, survivor, drugs, and murder. The art style is amazing. But the story line is flat and feels rushed. Not a favorite, but still pretty enjoyable.

120. Grumpy Monkey. 5/5 stars. Grumpy Monkey is the story of a monkey who wakes up grumpy. Despite everyone not believing he can be so grumpy on a beautiful day, him denying that he’s grumpy, and getting angry at people telling him HE’S grumpy, is such a goddamn mood. Nothing pisses me off more than people telling me my mood. You don’t know me. Fuck off. Anyways, this also felt like a mental health book for kids, letting them know it's ok to NOT feel ok. As long as someone is willing to listen and not wanting to fix your grumpiness.

121. Dia de los Muertos. 4/5 stars. A children’s informational book about the Day of the Dead. Short, simple, great education.

123. Wild Cherry. 4/5 stars. Wild Cherry is a poetry book I’ve been totting around for 2 months but have had no energy to pick it up. I’ve been very depressed that I haven’t had time to read, and despite me falling asleep right now, I forced myself to read it. It felt very repetitive after a while with her constant calling back to long lost love, death, and April, but I appreciated the 1923 themes that were NO doubt soo popular.

124. Through the Woods: 5/5 stars. A horror comic book that reminds me a lot of “Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark.” I lent it to my co-worker since he loves these types of stories!

125. Dancing with Mr. Darcy: 1/5 stars. I read the first story which was Jane Austen crossing the River Styx and facing her judgement and then I tried to read the rest and it was all so fucking boring??? I put the book down and will not be continuing.

126. The Night Diary: 5/5 stars. So this was an audiobook I listened to during the week I had awful vertigo. I couldn’t go to work or university and I laid on the couch, glasses off, just listening to this story. If it hadn’t been read to me, I don’t think I would have loved it as much. It follows Nisha who is forced to leave after WWII when India is split into New India and Pakistan. All muslims are allowed to stay, but all Hindus must leave for New India because of territorial wars. It follows the dreadful path during the desert, the violence they faced, and the child’s innocence slowly being robbed from her. It’s all told through Nisha’s diary who pens it to her mother. The voice actor did a wonderful job.

127. We Contain Multitudes: 5/5 stars. Tiny twink nerd falls in love with Giant Jock football star. And then he falls in love with the nerd and they’re hormonal and coming out and angst with love. I understand why people are upset with the novel: the plot twist seems like a total cop out that the author placed and a 15 year old dating a 18 year old can get borderline statutoary rape. However, I absolutely loved this book. It was refreshing to have a “coming out” narrative that wasn’t focused on coming out, but rather these two boys falling in love through letters, reading the cringe of HS romances, and desperately following these boys through it all. It’s definitely a favorite I read this year!

128. Lovely War: 4/5 stars. This is the third book I read while going through vertigo, and my second audiobook. It’s set during WWI, following two love narratives but told through the perspectives of the Greek God. It was really refreshing, the voice acting was excellent, and I really enjoyed listening while dizzy constantly. I would have given in a 5 star rating, but near the end, Hazel’s pixie-manic girl stereotype was getting out of hand and her hypocrisy was really fucking annoying. However, up until that point, I really enjoyed it and recommended it to several friends!

129. The Assassination of Brangwain Spurge: 4.5/5 stars. I really struggled not giving this book five stars, but I thought some of the narration and story-telling could have done a tiny bit better. This was a great audiobook to listen to while I packed and finished projects before my plane ride to my first ever work conference. I was bummed out that I couldn’t listen to this audiobook on the plane because Libby requires wifi, but I really enjoyed the fantasy comedy of this book (even though fantasy tends to be a topic I don’t dare approach because it just through you into a world with no explanation). 10/10 would recommend to strangers on the street.

130. Aaron and Ahmed: 4/5 stars. I read this books during my great “aaaAH I’M GRADUATING TIME IS UNREAL” So these will be short. A story about after 9/11 and the brutality American soldiers went to gain answers, even if there were none.

131. The Tea Dragon Festival: 5/5 stars. Dragons? Tea? LGTB+? Who could ask for more??

132. Roadqueen: Eternal Roadtrip to Love: 5/5 stars. Lesbians calling out how trashy other lesbians treat girls who generally like them. “Fuck Boy” was used a lot and I loved this.

133. Skull-face Bookseller vol. 1: 5/5 stars. A skeleton tries to sell manga and explores the crazy customers who come in, the social mistakes foreigners make with Japanese booksellers, and Honda-san doing her best to survive in her job.

134-136. Beastars Vol 1-3: 5/5 stars. I saw a bit of the anime and realized there was a manga. I bought the two volumes I could and then the third one from amazon. I really enjoyed this series and look forward to reading it more!

137. I hear the Sunspot Vol 2: 5/5 stars. It’s nice to see the couple going on, even if its GUT-WRENCHING and stupid how they refuse to communicate!!!!! But it hits hard topics of the community for the hard of hearing and functioning in a world where signing is considered not important enough to teach.

138. Pink: 5/5 stars. A sex worker who spends all her money feeding her alligator and the trouble she gets into. Weird art style and at first I opened this book and didn’t buy it. 3 months later, decided to buy it and I adored it.

139: Restless: 4/5 stars. I don’t remember much about it, but I think it was cute. Maybe boyfriends find each other again?

140. How can one sell the air?: 5/5 stars. I’ve had this “calling” to start really reading native american stories and heritage. This is a controversial book with Suquamish people as they either see their leader finally giving up or instilling courage to stay firm even as the world does their best to destroy them. I really enjoyed reading his speech.

141. Skull-face Bookseller Vol. 2: 5/5 stars. Honda-san comes back again with her friends and exploring working in the shop with more crazy customers but also with her new found fame being a manga artist.

142. Gold Rush Women: 4/5 stars. A lot of white women with these narratives, which was disappointing since most of the Gold Rush Women were indegenious or came from other areas of the world rather than just Europe or East America. Wish there were more stories on the black, mexican, indegineous, or chinese women who were forced into slavery or abused or helped create the west.

143. No one is too small to make a difference: 5/5 stars. Greta Thornberg amazes me. Here we have a 15 year old with aspergers who is doing her best to inspire scientists, politicians, and anyone in the world to take charge of our climate change issues. It also amazes me how many people are threatened by a 15 year old and she’s forced to repeat herself in her speeches because people refuse to listen to what she has to say. She’s amazing.

144. Ookami he no Yomeiri: 3.5/5 stars A bunny and a wolf get married. What more can I say?

145. Monody: 3/5 stars: Monody is a strange poetry book. The lyrical writing leaves lacking in terms of uniqueness and deep thought, but aesthetically it is beautiful. Blue font paired with geographical maps of Reno, Nevada, the poetry book comes off more of an art piece.

146. Usagi no Mori: 3/5 stars. Uhmmm. Don’t remember…

#2019 books #2019 book reviews #2019 book list #book reviews

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toaarcan · 6 years

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RvB 15-17 Condensed

The working title for this was “RvB 15-17 but not crap”.

Now, this might seem a little presumptuous to include Season 17 in this, which, at time of writing, has yet to be released, buuuut I’m basically mashing S15 and S16 into a single block which would make S17 actually the sixteenth season in this version. So the rewrite is that Season 17 happens a year earlier.

Now, I have my problems with RvB 15-16.

I don’t want to start off on such a negative tone, but I feel like I need to establish that before we go ahead.

While Season 15 was at worst, a mediocre RvB Season with tonal problems and inconsistent characterisation for our leads, Season 16 is all of those problems made worse. Like, it’s not Season 9 bad, but it’s still bad, and while I’ve mostly covered those issues in past posts, I haven’t really covered how much the setup for the climax is just plain stupid.

Like the setup for the finale, and thus Season 17, is as follows:

Atlus: Don’t do the thing.

Wash: Don’t do the thing.

Huggins: Don’t do the thing.

Carolina: ... Alright guys let’s do the thing.

[Time breaks because they did the thing]

It’s a little more complex than that, but not by much.

Now, I ummed and ahhhed over how to make this work for a while, but ultimately, I came to the conclusion that this is how I would do it.

For starters, 90% of Season 16’s plot is getting dumped. If not all of it. Legitimately all I’m keeping is the ending. Sorry, it’s not exactly a big loss.

Second off, I’m not heavily altering Season 15. While there’s definitely a good Season 5-13 tier plot that could be told with a fake BGC, this isn’t it, and attempting to alter that leads into a completely different set of stories. So Season 15 is mostly unchanged, just assume Temple is actually a competent villain and the plot isn’t driven entirely by the BGC being dumber than usual for a week.

So the timeline is now Season 15 -> Paradox -> Season 17.

We’re also scrubbing Wash’s injury from Season 15. It’s going to be an unnecessary complication for the lead-in to the next season anyway. If we’re going straight for the time paradox, then having Wash be injured is kinda pointless. Given that Season 16 ended on a warped Blood Gulch way before Wash ever showed up, there’s nothing to gain by having him out of action. He’s already imperilled enough by time being fucked.

“But wait,” I hear you say. “If Wash and Locus are with the heroes when they take on the Blues and Reds, surely they catch up to Temple quickly enough that the time machine doesn’t get turned on!”

Ah, but that’s the beauty of it. Whether the time machine is turned on or not is not the focus of the paradox here. And because that’s not a vital plot point, we’re free to have the characters just Travel At The Speed Of Plot, and arrive precisely in time for the actual climax.

You see, rather than changing history around Wash’s injury and thus fucking the timeline up, the key to the paradox is Church. Specifically, what happens when Church is removed from their history because someone pulled him into the present before the events of Blood Gulch really happened.

In the actual show, when Church appears in the portal, Tucker tells Caboose to pull him through, and Caboose refuses, instead bidding farewell to an extremely confused Alpha and allowing the portal to close. It’s a big moment for Caboose’s character, and it’s one of the parts of Season 15 which is pretty well-executed.

Obviously, I’m not going to overturn that and have him not have the growth. So, how does Church end up being pulled through?

“Tucker did it!”

Now, I’m not a big fan of Joe’s Tucker. In fact, that’s an understatement. I hate the way Joe writes Tucker, and I’d rather not fall into that same trap, so I’m going to explain in detail why Tucker would make this mistake.

1) Tucker just had Epsilon die on him. Inside his head. And at the same time, the other remaining pieces of Epsilon all faded away too. And Tucker didn’t even notice it was happening, by the time he realised what was going in, the fragments were gone and he was left in a very empty and very non-functioning suit of power armour. Given how heavy this armour is, with it non-functioning, Tucker was probably unable to move until his friends removed most of the suit, so he was trapped in a coffin that was emptier than it should’ve been.

2) Struggling to cope with his grief, Tucker does something frankly stupid and activates the Temple of Procreation.

3) A while later, Tucker is starting to recover from his friend’s death, when Dylan shows up and he finds out in short order that A) Someone is committing terrorist acts while disguised as him and his friends, B) The planet he sacrificed so much, and Church gave his life for, is being blamed and might be invaded, and C) Church might be alive. This effectively halts Tucker’s recovery.

4) The consequences of his fuckup with the Temple of Procreation come back to haunt him, and suddenly, something Tucker has always been proud of- that he’s a great father to Junior- is called into question because he’s now an absentee dad to a fuckton of Chorus babies, which deals a blow to the poor man’s ego.

5) Shortly after that, the fiasco where Temple manages to manipulate him happens, and it makes things even worse for him. He should’ve seen through it after Felix, but he didn’t. And now, Wash and Carolina are hurt because of him, and the message from Church was a fake.

6) Finally, after all of this, he’s face to face with Church, and he has the chance to save him, and while maybe he could follow Caboose’s example… there’s one key problem. This isn’t Epsilon, it’s Alpha.

Y’see, there’s a big difference between those two. As has been pointed out before, Epsilon was always kind of a total prick to Tucker. A lot of this can be chalked up to Epsilon’s knowledge of the BGC coming entirely from Caboose, who purposefully left Tucker out of his recounts of their many adventures.

But this isn’t Epsilon. It’s Alpha. Tucker’s best friend, Alpha. Alpha, who went off and died without Tucker being there. Without Tucker ever getting a chance to see him once again. They got separated and one year later, Alpha died, in denial about a fact that Tucker had figured out long ago. Maybe Tucker could’ve helped save Alpha if he’d been there. Maybe Alpha wouldn’t have had to leave the safety of Wash’s suit and end up vulnerable to the emp if someone else had been there to hold the Meta’s attention.

Tucker decides to save his friend. He’s at the end of his rope and after all the crap he’s been through on this journey, which he set out on because he wanted to save Church, he’s going to damn well save Church.

Additionally, by tying Tucker into the portal scene properly, there’s now a proper narrative throughline from the characters receiving Church’s message to the portal. Caboose has been covered, but Tucker hasn’t.

Time paradox.

Despite his best intentions and hopefully understandable motives, Tucker has just pulled Alpha-Church out of their history before it even got started. And given how much of Seasons 1-13 was motivated by Church in some form or another… well, they’ve just unmade themselves.

The final twist is that time isn’t rewound to Season 1. We don’t need to see that. Season 1 retreads aren’t needed. If they want to remake Season 1, they should just bite the bullet and do a full remaster of the early Seasons to clean up the audio, rather than forcing new Seasons of the show to ape it.

Instead, we see a Blood Gulch wherein the same amount of time has passed since S1E01, but with none of the elements that Church brought in having happened.

Tex never goes to Blood Gulch. She spends her time hiding from Freelancer and desperately trying to find her other half, whom she was ripped away from and now will never be able to reunite with.

Tucker loses his friend, and is left with Caboose, who already doesn’t like him.

Caboose, for his part, doesn’t get brain damaged by Omega, but he still has his air shut off and Church still convinces him to drink Scorpion fuel, so he’s not doing much better.

Kai probably gets deployed to Blood Gulch faster, since Blue team is undermanned. She’s stuck in an empty box canyon with the rest of them.

York lives on, not getting recruited by Tex, until the Meta comes for him. The Meta takes Delta and leaves York to die alone.

Wyoming is not sent after Tucker, and doesn’t get the chance to formulate the plan with Omega.

Junior is never born.

Because Wyoming’s plan doesn’t happen, Wash is left to try and combat the Meta without the aid of the Reds and Blues. He fails.

The Meta remains free to hunt down and murder its former comrades. Like Tex, it ends up searching endlessly for the Alpha, which it will not find.

Without the Project’s downfall, and without Epsilon’s activation, Carolina remains in hiding.

The Director remains in hiding, endlessly repeating his attempts to perfect his remake of Allison. He never finds the answer.

Chorus is destroyed by perpetual civil war, all according to Hargrove’s design.

And as the galaxy darkens, people who would’ve been friends die or are left alone to rot, and the Project that put them there tears itself apart until only Tex, the Meta, Carolina, and the Director remain, scattered to the winds and pursuing impossible tasks, Blood Gulch remains. Its purpose is lost without Alpha, and the Project is gone, but with no new orders, VIC perpetuates the “war” between Red and Blue teams, and so it goes on. Static. Unchanging.

Cue the ending, and the setup for the next season. A Blood Gulch without Church.

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chinapaper · 2 years

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2021.06.06 - 2021.07.24 Riffling Through History

Wang Haichuan: Riffling Through History by Leigh Tanner

In his artistic practice, Wang Haichuan has developed a unique language to dismantle reality and devise a new approach to understanding the world. In his painting and sculptural works, his eye for pairing disparate elements for stunning effect belies a need for coherent narrative. Displaced from their original contexts, the figures, shapes or pieces of old furniture remake themselves as something beyond preconceived ideas of the boundaries of a respective medium. This manner of working has allowed him to develop an aesthetic playing with both figurative and abstract techniques, eliciting an organic response from viewers rather than dictating their impression. Including references that run the gamut from daily life to architecture and the history of art, Wang skims history as he constructs a new chronicle of the present. The artist himself explains, “my paintings have something to do with collective memory, with what we can find from our history.” Just like collective memory, Wang’s artworks offer no definitive testimony, merely a compilation of singular impressions to be considered as a whole.

Wang’s ongoing fascination with collective memory and the architecture of collectivism is rendered most clearly in his works and programs engaging the Tong Yuan Ju (铜元局) neighborhood in Chongqing beginning in 2009. Previously the site of copper manufactory workshops and related dormitory-style housing units, what began as a plan to explore the architectural contours of the community evolved into a series of works examining how urban forces rewire collective frameworks into those of the individual. Wang returned to the people and spaces of Tong Yuan Ju again and again over the years, witnessing the neighborhood’s material and societal transformation as it played out a narrative common in rapidly developing cities in China.

In a 2012 interview with Ni Kun, Wang explained how over time he has begun to describe his role as that of “image collector”. This self-styled designation speaks to the collage-like allure of his works and the way in which he is able to juxtapose divergent imagery in a manner entirely his own. He serves as a custodian of history: in connecting with the residents of Tong Yuan Ju and gaining deep knowledge of both their stories as well as the physical spaces they had called home, Wang holds together vestiges of their past. Wang Haichuan’s plan for the artistic outcome of his time in Tong Yuan Ju developed as he amassed more material and with more experiences of the social fabric that held the community together. Although not everything he collected was realized in an artwork, they all have value, regardless of if it was a mere brief encounter and conversation or remnants of the resident’s former homes.

Not merely decorative, his sculptural works repurpose fragments of furniture, giving the pieces new life as part of a functional object. The worn and well-loved scraps of Yin-Yang Chair (Yin) and Yin-Yang Chair (Yang) once again have the capacity to offer rest and relief in their regenerated forms. Similarly, the wood cast out from the Soviet-style buildings in Tong Yuan Ju has the opportunity to house living things once more as Birdcage #3 and Birdcage #5. The stark lines and configurations of all Wang’s practice mimic the Constructivist and Geometricist movements from which he draws inspiration, but these ties can be seen most keenly in Collage #4, Collage #13 and Collage #17. These three-dimensional works are made all the more poignant as the artist extracted from communal windows, doors and furniture to construct commodities for individual use, exploring the decentralization of labor production and reorganization of urban centers.

Wang Haichuan’s background in architecture and landscape design is a constant presence in his work. Although it manifests distinctly in his sculptural methodology, it is keenly visible in his paintings. His conception of space is revealed both in the architectural references he makes as well as the lack of perspective or physical structuring in his works on canvas. The six paintings named with “Modernism” and then subsequently numbered feature a cacophony of imagery and colors, making far-reaching references never repeated or fully demystified. A landscape, an emu, a modernist building, and a partially rendered figure all blend into one dimension across the canvas’s surface. There is no rhyme or reason to the proportional size or positioning of each reference, only their existence together in the artist’s imagination.

Acutely aware of the cultural canon of history, Wang peppers his artworks with famous figures and iconic spaces. In Art and Life, the artist paints a portrait of Pablo Picasso in a hat as a nod to the seaside location of most photos taken of Picasso and Wang’s inclusion of his earlier painting of a dam from 2009 in the background. This water connection is made complete by a fish rendered from an image sent by the artist’s friend to demonstrate the success of a recent catch. Unmoored to context, Wang reaches for citations both high and low, sifting through the hyper saturated imagery of the internet age as well as the annals of history. Although he sees all elements of his artworks as equal in significance, upon finishing a work Wang draws out a single component to serve as the central focus, indicating its importance through titling. In the painting, these snapshots overlap and layer, partially complete and in various levels of detail to leave viewers with only two ideas: art and life.

About Writer

Leigh Tanner is the Founder of Museum 2050 and formerly was Deputy Director of Yuz Foundation. She previously worked in the Research and Exhibitions Departments of the Shanghai Project, an interdisciplinary ideas platform launched in 2016 at the Shanghai Himalayas Museum. Her time at the Shanghai Project as well as earlier experiences in the curatorial departments of the International Center of Photography and the Museum of Modern Art, New York, have led to her believe passionately in the importance of institutions and the potential for their innovation, most especially in the context of China. She completed her BA in Art History from Stanford University and MA in Critical and Curatorial Studies from Columbia University.

#Art+ Shanghai Gallery #In his artistic practice #the figures

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hannahberrie · 7 years

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Everybody Talks | Chapter 7: Telephone II

Fandom: Stranger Things Pairings: Mileven Rating: K WC: 5450 Summary: In the aftermath of Jennifer's party, El struggles to come clean to her loved ones.

[AO3] Chapter Selection: [1][2][3][4][5][6]-7-[8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15][Epilogue]

[A/N]: I probably should have said this earlier, but small disclaimer: in this AU, I don't imagine Hopper and El living in the cabin. They have a small, comfortable house, still kinda on the outskirts of town though.

In the winter of 1980, the laboratory that El was raised in was shut down.

The morning that she learned this was completely ordinary. At least, it had been, up until Hopper had approached her, holding a copy of the Chicago Tribune.

“You see this, kid?” He asked, passing the newspaper to her.

El sat up on her bed, taking the newspaper from him with a puzzled look on her face. She scanned the front page article, mind working so fast, she was hardly digesting the words she was reading. The big stuff stuck out to her though. Government conspiracy. Experimental malpractice. Hundreds of arrests. Complete shutdown.

“It’s over?” She whispered, looking up at Hopper in disbelief.

“Yeah, kid,” Hopper knelt before her, smiling warmly, “It’s over.”

“We’re safe?”

“We’re safe. They can’t hurt you.”

No more bad men.

El let out a shaky breath, eyes starting to well with tears. Hopper pulled her in for a tight hug, and she collapsed into his arms.

The following fall, El started 6th grade at Hawkins Middle. She knew no one, nor how to get to know someone, and yet, everyone knew her.

People talked. They talked about how Hopper had left for Chicago when he was 18 to become a big-city cop. They talked about he supposedly married. They talked about the daughter he had, the daughter he then brought back to Hawkins with him years later. The daughter that was then inexplicably sheltered for years, never leaving the house, never daring to venture into the public.

It was all half-truths, pieces of the story that didn’t fit, but were instead shoved together to fit an easy-to-understand narrative. In reality, El’s history was messy. It was dark, complicated, and something that she could never tell anyone.

And yet, people still talked. El was their enigma, their ghost story. She saw it in the scrutinizing stares they gave her when she walked into school for the first time. She could hear the whispers follow her throughout the entire day — new girl, weirdo, shut-in, freak.

By the time the day was halfway through, El had already grown so sick of it all. The stares, the whispers, the rumors. She thought that things would be different, that all the other kids would readily accept her. That they’d see her as being just like anyone else, as being normal.

She was naïve, blissfully naïve.

After pretending to not hear another round of judgmental snickers from some girls in her class, El just couldn’t take it anymore. During lunchtime, when all the other kids were filing into the cafeteria, she’d dashed out the back doors and ran as far as her legs could take her.

Considering that she’d spent most of her life sitting around indoors, her legs didn’t take her that far.

She made it to the soccer field, stopping beside the rows of metal bleachers. She hunched over, breathless, hands grasping her knees.

This was a mistake. She was a mistake, and she didn’t belong here, and soon everyone would find out just how different she was and—

“Hey!”

El jolted upright, frightened by the sudden noise.

She looked over to see a girl eating her lunch on the bleachers, completely alone. The girl’s hair was long and vividly red, and she was wearing a yellow sweatshirt and jeans. As she and El stared at each other, the girl took a bite of her sandwich.

“Hey,” The girl called out again, mouth full, “You’re that new kid, right? The one everybody’s talking about?”

El blinked at her. It was the first time that day that someone was actually talking to her, not about her. She wasn’t sure what to do.

“Um, hello?” The girl asked, raising an eyebrow, “Do you like, speak English?”

“Yes!” El replied quickly, moving closer to her.

“Yes, you’re the new kid, or yes, you speak English?”

“Both?”

“Oh. Cool.”

El nodded. A moment of silence passed before she hesitantly asked, “Why are you here?”

“Uh, ‘cause I kinda go to school here?” the girl replied indignantly.

“I meant outside,” El amended, cheeks flushing red. “Why are you alone?”

The girl shrugged. With a couple more bites, she finished off her sandwich and moved onto a bag of Red Vines. “I dunno,” she replied, slipping the licorice in between her teeth, “It’s nice out here. There’s no annoying mouth-breathers.”

El nodded, thinking back to her scornful classmates. “No mouth-breathers,” she echoed.

“Hey,” the girl took another Red Vine out of the package and held it out to her. “You want one?”

El smiled gratefully. She stepped up and onto the bleachers, taking her seat beside the girl.

“I’m Max,” the girl said, handing over the licorice.

“I’m El.”

“El?”

“Like...Eleanor,” El said carefully, remembering what Hopper had instructed her to say.

Max snorted. “That’s so dorky.”

El frowned a bit and looked away.

“But…I guess it’s still better than Maxine.”

El smiled. She glanced back up again and held back a giggle. “Maxine?”

“Yeah,” Max replied with an eye roll, “Don’t tell anyone, okay? It’s so embarrassing.”

“Okay,” El replied, adamantly meaning it. She took a bite of the candy as the two girls stared at the empty soccer field together. The tangy sweetness of the licorice was addictingly delicious, and it wasn’t long before Max was handing her a second Red Vine.

“So, how do you like it here so far?” Max asked, glancing over at her.

El hesitated. “I thought things would be different,” she finally admitted, “I wanted...I thought I would fit in.”

“Why?” Max asked incredulously.

“I want to be normal.”

“Please.” Max made a dismissive snort. “Being normal is lame.”

El eyed her warily. “It is?”

“Totally. All those ‘normal’ kids all dress the same, talk the same, act the same, annoy me the same — it’s just so boring.”

“Boring,” El echoed resolutely. By the amount of scorn Max used to describe the ‘normal’ kids, El realized that she definitely didn’t want to be boring.

“Exactly,” Max nodded, taking another bite of licorice, “So, like, don’t feel bad about not fitting in. That’s a good thing. That’s what makes you cool.”

“I’m cool?” El asked hopefully.

Max shrugged. “I mean, I don’t really know you, but yeah, you seem cool.”

El felt her shoulders sag in relief.

“Screw those other kids for acting like brain-dead morons around you,” Max continued. “Like, screw all of them.”

“Yes,” El smiled, a new surge of confidence swelling within her, “Screw them.”

When El awakes, her head is still ringing. She opens her eyes, but her vision is kinda blurry and everything looks like those posters of shapeless amoebas that hang on the walls of the Biology classroom.

Biology...school...Mike...the party...

El gives a small gasp and sits up in bed quickly, though immediately regrets it. The ringing in her head crescendos to a screeching halt and the sudden movement causes her head to pound. She winces, covering her face with her hands.

“You’re up,” a voice says.

The sudden noise causes El to flinch, which only makes her head hurt more, and she groans slightly.

What the—?

El carefully opens her eyes, blinking as she adjusts to her surroundings. She realizes that she’s in Max’s bed and still wearing her party clothes from the night before. The lights are off and there’s an old quilt draped over her. The clock on the nightstand reads 8:00 AM, though a quick glance out the window reveals that it’s still a little dark outside.

Max is sitting at the edge of the bed dressed in an old set of pajamas, watching her. Her eyes are slightly bloodshot and her hair is a disheveled mess. She looks like she hasn’t gotten much sleep.

“Max?” El asks. Her throat feels hoarse and she has to cough a couple times to clear it. “What happened? Are you ok?”

“Me?” Max laughs in disbelief, “Seriously? What about you?”

“Me?” El frowns.

“Are you okay after last night?”

“What happened last night?”

“You don’t—?” Max stops, hesitates. Her gaze drifts away from El for a moment, and El can see her start to pick at the threads of the quilt “What do you remember?” She carefully asks.

El frowns and tries to focus as best as she can. Memories start to come back as static-filled images, jarring, fragmented.

Jennifer’s house. Music. Mike’s face, coming in out of focus.

“We went to the party,“ El says slowly, “And…Mike was there…”

Max watches her silently, a worried look on her face.

Noise. Flashing. Falling.

“And…I think…someone might have gotten hurt,” El continues, “I’m not sure. There was a lot of yelling.”

Max still isn’t saying anything.

And then…darkness.

El starts to feel anxious. “Why can’t I remember? Did something happen?”

Max opens her mouth to reply only to shut it again a second later. She drags a hand through her loose hair, causing it to tangle even more at the ends. “It’s…complicated, El.”

“Max,” El repeats, “What happened?”

Max swallows, takes a deep breath.

“Max!”

“I’m sorry, okay?!” Max finally bursts, “It’s all my fault! We were at the stupid party and then some rando spilled a drink on me, so I went to the bathroom to clean myself off, and I left you alone! Then Greg McCorkle — you know, that one asshole senior? He gave you this drink or something, I don’t know what was in it, but whatever it was, it was really bad. It totally messed you up, and you were acting all weird and drugged-up and spaced out. Then these two drunk wasteoids got in this fight and we almost got hurt, and then you accidentally used your powers!”

Max’s impassioned ramble takes a minute to fully set in. As El begins to process all the words, a horrible, sickly feeling tightens her gut. “W-what?!” She asks, staring at Max unblinkingly. “I…I…used my powers? At the party?”

“Yeah,” Max nods grimly. After speaking so quickly for so long, she sounds slightly out-of-breath. Despite this, she continues. “One of the guys that was fighting like, threw a lamp, and it was about to hit us, and you…you stopped it. Then the lights started flashing, and there was this noise, and then it was just…dark. All the power in the house went out, and then you passed out, and then Mike totally started freaking out because your nose was bleeding and you weren’t moving or anything, but then I pulled you outside and Billy drove us back home.”

“Mike?” El swallows thickly. Her hands start to shake, and she clenches them tightly. “He was there? He saw?”

“I’m not sure,” Max hesitates, “But he might have. I mean, he saw a lot of you. You were kind of hanging over him all night. Like…saying he was your best friend, and trying to cuddle him and stuff.”

No, no, no, no.

The room starts to spin. El feels like passing out again. She remembers the last time she’s ever felt this lonely, this afraid.

She was in 7th grade. It was an accident. She’d hadn’t meant to use her powers in front of Max, but she’d just gotten so caught up in the excitement of spending time with a real friend, that she’d lost control. They were in Max’s room, joking about something frivolous, and El accidentally laughed so hard, she’d fallen out of her seat…

…and levitated in place.

She hadn’t meant to, but she had, and then Max started asking questions, and El had to answer them. Max, of course, promised that she’d never tell anyone, but that didn’t stop the overwhelming sense of panic that set in afterward.

Later that day, when El returned home recounted this all to Hopper, he was furious.

“What did we talk about!?” He shouted, his voice so loud it made her ears ring. “You’re not supposed to tell anyone!”

“I’m s-sorry!” El sobbed, nose running, voice hiccuping, eyes tear-filled. “I’m s-so s-sorry!”

She was afraid. Afraid of losing her only friend. Afraid that the bad men, somehow, would come back. That she’d lose her life as a normal kid just as she’d started to live it.

The fear had completely engulfed her, much like it was now.

Back then, Hopper had softened, pulled her into his arms, and held her until the tears stopped. He’d apologized for yelling, and El had promised to never tell anyone else.

Right now, even though Max is here, El feels that same overwhelming, isolating fear once more.

“Max!” She whispers, voice cracking, “I r-ruined e-everything! N-no one is s-supposed to know about m-my powers!”

“I don’t know if they do,” Max wavers, “Nobody was really looking at you when your powers went off. The lights were so bright and it was crowded and—“ Her voice trails off, and her gaze falls towards her lap, “It was crazy.”

The news doesn’t make El feel much better. Even if her powers are still a secret, that doesn’t change that she still completely embarrassed herself in front of everyone, in front of Mike. He’s probably never going to speak to her again.

Her eyes start to sting, so El squeezes them shut tight and leans back against the headboard.

This is all my fault,” Max mutters, looking forlorn, “I shouldn’t have left you alone!”

“It’s not your fault,” El mumbles.

“It is! If I hadn’t left you alone, you wouldn’t have talked to him, and you wouldn’t have gotten—“ Her voice breaks off mid-sentence, and El suddenly notices how much it’s shaking, wavering.

Max isn’t a crier. When she gets upset, she glares, scowls, and yells. Out of their 4 years of friendship, El has never seen her shed more than a single tear. And yet, El knows that in this moment, Max is dangerously close. She doesn’t want El to know it, but she is.

“Y-you got hurt and it was all because of me,” Max continues, keeping her head low, hair obscuring her face from view. “It was my idea to go to the party, and I was the one who took us there, and—“

“Max!” El wipes the tears from her own eyes and crawls across the bed, enveloping her friend in a close hug. “It’s not your fault.”

Max doesn’t hug El back but doesn’t move away, either. “It is,” she mumbles.

“It isn’t,” El negates. “You kept me safe.”

Max is silent for a moment as she keeps her face rested on El’s shoulder. “I just feel like a shit friend.”

“You’re my best friend.”

Max gives a half-hearted snort. “Last night you said Mike was your best friend.”

El feels her face heat up, but she tries to brush the feeling aside. “You are,” She insists, “Not Mike.”

“Well,” Max says with a small sniff, and now her voice sounds a little hoarse too, “One of us better break it to Wheeler, then. Because I’m pretty sure he’s off writing like, Star Wars-themed friendship vows, or something.”

El giggles for the first time that morning. The feeling of just being able to laugh again rushes over her with a comforting reassurance and she finds that she can finally breathe again.

Max giggles too before pulling away. She tucks her hair behind her ears and El notices that her eyes are a little red from tears.

“God, look at us,” Max sniffs again, wiping at her eyes quickly, “Crying like a pair of babies. Let’s never do that again.”

“Yeah,” El nods, then pauses. “…Max?”

“Yeah?”

“I don’t want to go to any more parties.”

Max laughs shakily. “Agreed. That party was completely stupid anyway. It was just a bunch of wasted mouth-breathers.”

El gives a faint smile at the use of the old, but never inaccurate, insult. “Yeah,” she murmurs.

They fall silent for a moment. Outside, the sun is starting to rise. Its warm light gently peeks in through the windows, filling Max’s bedroom with a soft glow.

“Well,” Max says, letting out a slow, heavy sigh, “The good news is that it’s just us right now. My parents went to that lame potluck and I don’t know or care where Billy went.”

“Ok.”

“But!” Max adds, more excitedly, “I can make us breakfast! I asked my mom to buy some Eggos for us!”

“Really?” El perks up.

“Yeah!” Max nods, crawling out of bed. “I’ll go get them ready.”

El nods and follows her out of bed, but when Max heads to the kitchen, El goes into the bathroom.

She turns on the light and steps in front of the mirror, staring at her reflection scrutinizingly. Her mascara has smudged off, leaving black trails running down her cheeks. There’s still a red blotch under her nose, the remnant of her nosebleed.

With a heavy sigh, El leans over the sink and washes it all away, scrubbing her skin until her face is left clean and raw.

The rest of the morning passes by easily. After washing her face, El changes into a simple t-shirt, denim jacket, and jeans, not wanting to stay in her party clothes any longer. Max and El watch TV and eat waffles on the living room couch until 10, when Hopper stops by to pick El up and bring her home.

“I’ll see you tomorrow, ok?” Max says as she hugs El goodbye.

El only nods, grabs her bag, and follows Hopper out the door. While she was feeling better earlier, being around her dad is making her anxious all over again. She doesn’t want to tell him about the party, and yet she’s paranoid that he somehow already knows about it.

Despite the sunlight, it’s still a typical, chilly October morning. El sees her breath fog in front of her as they walk, and the rising mist reminds her of the nicotine smoke plumes from last night.

She bites down on her lip.

They board the police cruiser.

“So, how was the sleepover?” Hopper asks as El buckles herself in.

“Fine,” El mumbles, slumping back in her seat.

“Just fine?”

El nods.

Hopper eyes her. “What’d you girls do?”

El has to stop herself from snorting aloud. If he only knew… “We listened to music,” she mutters instead.

“All night?”

“Yeah. On...MTV.”

“What kind of music?”

“Cyndi Lauper.”

“You like Cyndi Lauper?”

El shrugs.

Hopper eyes her. “So that’s it? You just listened to music?”

El nods.

“Nothing else?”

“Nothing,” El repeats, not looking at him.

“Humph,” Hopper snorts, but proceeds to start the car. The engine revs to life, the radio starts to play, and the cruiser backs out of Max’s driveway.

As Hopper drives, El leans her head against the passenger’s side window. The cool touch of the glass feels comforting in an odd sort of way, and she resigns herself to watching the trees as they pass by.

A few minutes pass before either of them speak again.

“Hey kid — I busted some of your classmates last night,” Hopper says teasingly.

For a second, El feels her heart completely stop. “What?”

“Oh yeah,” Hopper nods, sounding a little too smug about the whole thing, “At the Hayes’ place? We gotta call at the station about a bunch of teenagers raising hell, starting fights, trashing the place. When we showed up to break it up, the whole house was a complete shit hole.”

“Oh,” El says quietly, keeping her gaze trained out the window.

“Apparently, it was some kind of big house party,” Hopper continues, “A lot of high schoolers.”

El stays silent.

“Did you hear about it? This party thing?” Hopper presses further.

El can feel his gaze on her back, but she doesn’t turn to look at him. “No,” she lies, keeping her eyes on the trees.

“Really? It seemed like everyone from your school must have been there.”

El closes her eyes. “I don’t know,” she mutters, not quite sure what she’s even supposed to be knowing in the first place.

“You don’t know what?”

“Dad,” El whispers, voice sounding strained, “I’m tired.”

She knows he’s eyeing her, studying her, and more than likely suspecting her, but nevertheless, Hopper relents. He lets the conversation drop and doesn’t question her further, and El allows herself to relax once more.

The rest of the drive home is silent, accented only by the radio and the sounds of passing cars.

When they pull up in front of the house, Hopper walks El inside the house before he has to leave for work.

El takes her bag and starts to move towards the stairs, but Hopper stops her in her tracks.

“El,” he says, and El stops because he’d used her name (not ‘kid’), which always means that he has something important to say.

El turns and looks over her shoulder at him, meeting his gaze for the first time this morning. “Yes?”

Hopper pauses for a moment, studies her face. “You know…you know you can tell me anything, right?”

El blinks at him.

“I know I’m the sheriff, or whatever, but I’m also your dad. I don’t want us to keep things from each other. I want…I just want you to trust me.”

“I trust you,” El says truthfully.

“So, if something was wrong, you’d tell me?”

El doesn’t know if he knows or not. He’s suspicious, at the very least, but El isn’t eager to fess up. How would she even begin to explain it, how much she had completely, royally screwed up?

Her eyes start to water again as she questions how many times she’s going to cry this morning. She wants to come clean, and yet, as Hopper’s eyes soften, she has the feeling that he already knows.

She should tell him, but she can’t.

Instead, El drops her bag, steps forward, and wraps her arms around Hopper in a close hug. Her nose buries itself into his chest, taking in the comforting scent of coffee and cigarettes.

Hopper hugs her back tightly, brow furrowed in concern. As El starts to shake, he raises a hand to cup the back of her slicked-back hair, gently smoothing down the many flyaways she’s accumulated ever since last night.

It’s a silent answer and an unspoken reconciliation.

After what feels like forever, Hopper lets her go, tells that her everything’s ok, promises that they’ll talk more about this later, and leaves for work.

The house seems numbingly silent without him.

El grabs her bag and trudges up to her bedroom. She tosses her bag aside and flops onto her bed face-first, burying her face in her pillows.

Evidently, this proves to be a bad move, as El accidentally flops right onto the pillow that conceals her yearbook. The bulky object pushes up through the pillow and knocks against her head.

El sits up, rubbing her forehead with a scowl. She picks up the pillow and moves it out of the way, revealing the yearbook underneath.

She stares at it. It stares right back.

She knows she shouldn’t, but old habits died hard, and screw it, she wants to see him.

She picks up the yearbook quickly, flipping to his page with practiced fingers.

His picture looks the same as it always does. Bright-eyes, a slightly awkward smile, a collared sweater, and wavy dark hair.

Cute, cute, cute, cute.

She’s spent what’s probably an absurdly unhealthy amount of time looking at this photo, hoping that one day he’d notice her, that he’d actually like her, despite how aloof and weird she was.

And then she had to go and screw everything up. She’d had her chance with him and lost it.

With a frown, El shuts the yearbook and hides it under her pillows again.

The empty silence of the house makes itself known again, so El tries to distract herself. With a flick of her head, she turns on the TV, trying to find something to watch, but all the shows on are boring, considering that it’s a Sunday afternoon. She next tries to listen to music, but that only makes the ringing in her head come back, and she starts to get a massive headache.

She trudges back downstairs to the bathroom medicine cabinet, retrieves a couple of aspirin, and moves into the kitchen to get a glass of water.

The kitchen is a mess, as it often is. Hopper hates doing dishes and consequently doesn’t wash them until they run out of plates to eat off of. They’re piled up in the sink and El can’t help but shake her head in displeasure. A frying pan is left dirtied on the stove and the coffee pot is still filled with leftover coffee. The kitchen table still has an empty coffee cup on it, as well as a precautious stack of books, newspapers, and —

— the Yellow Pages.

El gets her water and takes the aspirin. As she swallows it down, her gaze lands on the yellow book.

She can hear Max’s voice in her head, and it’s infuriating.

“Call him.”

But—

“Are you really going to just keep moping around like a total bonehead or actually do something?

According to Max, Mike was worried about her. To be fair, if El had seen Mike pass out and start bleeding at the nose, she knew that she’d probably be losing it, too.

She doesn’t want him to worry.

“Then call him.”

El takes a deep breath.

She finishes off her water, sets the glass down in the shamefully messy sink, and grabs the Yellow Pages. Before she can talk herself out of it, she takes the book and runs back up to her room.

She sits on her bed, grabs her phone, and turns to the “W” page.

Wheeler, Ted and Karen.

For the second time, El dials the number with shaking fingers.

Please don’t hate me, she mentally pleads, heart pounding in her chest. Please, please, please don’t hate me.

The phone picks up on the third ring. El braces herself for another awkward introduction with his mom, but this time, it’s Mike who answers.

“Hello?” He asks eagerly.

El wasn’t ready to talk to him so soon. The fact that he answers takes her by surprise, and she momentarily has to remind herself how to breathe.

“Hi,” She replies shakily.

“El!?” Mike gasps, “Is that you?”

El swallows. “Yes.”

“Holy shit!” Mike exclaims, sounding shocked, “El! Are you okay? What happened last night? I was so worried about you! Like, I was up worrying all night! I wanted to call your house, but Max said that your Dad didn’t know that you went to the party, so I didn’t want to get you in trouble, or anything! After you left, it was so crazy, the cops showed up, I think your Dad was there, and we all had to take off. I wanted to bike to your house to check on you but I didn’t know where you lived and Dustin said that would be kinda creepy, but I just wanted to make sure that you were okay and—”

He’s impossibly considerate.

But he doesn’t hate her.

“Are you sure you’re okay?” Mike finishes, sounding worried.

El chokes back a laugh, feeling utterly relieved that Mike is even thinking about talking to her after everything that happened. “Yes, I’m okay,” she says, voice shaky, “I…just…uh…got scared.”

“It was really scary! No, it was like, totally insane, actually! Do you remember everything that happened?”

“Kinda.”

“So, did you see what happened to the lights? And the lamp?”

Shit.

El’s breath hitches. “The lamp?”

“It was flying,” Mike says breathlessly, sounding awestruck, “I saw it! Right above my head! It came right at me and just stopped!”

El remains silent.

“I saw it happen, I know I did,” Mike laments, “But I don’t know if anyone else saw. They were all freaking out about the dumb lights.”

“I don’t know,” El finally mumbles. “You might have been seeing things.”

“I wasn’t! I know what I saw! I’m not crazy!”

El falls silent again.

Mike does too.

For a moment, there’s nothing but crackling white noise. Then, hesitantly, Mike asks, “You believe me, don’t you?”

El swallows.

What is she supposed to say?

If she says yes, she’ll be confirming that something weird happened at the party. She’ll be spurring on more suspicion, more questions, more rumors.

If she says no, Mike will be heartbroken. He’ll think that El is judging him or that she doesn’t trust him, neither of which is true.

She doesn’t want to call him a liar.

She doesn’t want him to know she’s a freak.

So what does she want?

“El?”

Him.

“I believe you,” El replies, fingers clutching the receiver tighter.

“Really?”

“Yes.”

Mike gives a relieved sort of laugh, and El can almost see the dorky grin he probably has on his face now. “Thank you! I told the other guys, but they didn’t believe me! Lucas said I was probably wasted, but I wasn’t! I wouldn’t! Not while you were—“

His voice stops abruptly.

El frowns.

“Shit, I’m sorry,” Mike groans, “I didn’t mean…”

“It’s okay, Mike,” El assures him, “I’m sorry.”

“…Wait, what? What are you sorry for?” Mike asks, sounding completely confused.

“For acting so…” El hesitates, “Stupid.”

“You weren’t acting stupid!” Mike protests, “The whole thing wasn’t even your fault! That other guy, Greg, or whoever, was being an asshole!”

“I guess,” El admits, still feeling a little embarrassed.

“What kind of guy even tries to get girls drunk at parties?” Mike continues to rant, “Like, how messed up can you be? It’s idiotic! You’re like, the coolest girl ever and he shouldn’t have done that to you! I should really get him back for doing it.”

El tries to holds back a laugh. “What would you do to him?”

“I dunno,” Mike admits, “I mean, I’ve never really been in a fight before, not a real one.”

That isn’t surprising to El in the slightest.

“I know!” Mike continues excitedly, “I could like, get him to buy test answers off of me, and then totally get him busted for cheating on a test!”

“Mike!” El exclaims, torn between laughter and indignation, “Then you’d get in trouble. Again.”

“I don’t care — it’d be worth it,” Mike contends, “He deserves it!”

“Mike, it’s okay,” El insists, “Really.”

In reality, it isn’t. What happened to her at the party wasn’t okay, but then again, most of what had happened to her growing up wasn’t okay, either. Regardless, El knows that none of this is Mike’s responsibility. She doesn’t want it to be.

“Are you sure that you’re ok?” Mike asks, “Like, are you really sure?”

“I’m sure.”

“You promise?”

El flushes pink as she thinks back to their hallway conversation earlier that week. “I promise,” she affirms.

Though they haven’t known each other long, El knows that Mike wouldn’t lie to her. Though it’s a simple word, ‘promise’ means something important, something special.

She might not be able to tell him everything about herself, but she can still promise to believe and trust in him.

It’s not ideal. She hates keeping secrets. It feels like lying, and she doesn’t want him to think she’s a liar.

Regardless, for now, it’s the best that she can do.

#mileven #mileven fanfiction #stranger things #stranger things fanfiction #berrie fics #everybodytalks #lovecolesprouse #miss-sad-marshmallow #wrongirish #lonewolfhard #bbc-radio-phan #ontariokid #strangerstxrdust

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