#I heard so much about how the cut between the apes to modern times is so good but genuinely I paused it and rewound five times while laughin

[neverendingford]

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[pjstafford]

A Review of KEPLER by David Duchovny and Phillip Sevy (spoiler free)

KEPLER takes the reader on a journey to another planet through which we are allowed a distance to process the multitudes of crises and stress which overwhelm our daily thoughts back on our own planet. I ended the novel with tears streaming down my face and, yet, a hopeful view of a better tomorrow. This graphic novel provides a cathartic release we all need right now, a realistic framework of how to face each new day with determination and hope, and a thought-provoking cautionary tale.

David Duchovny, best-selling novelist and actor most known for playing Fox Mulder on the iconic science fiction/ horror series The X-Files, teams up with illustrator and writer Phillip Sevy to present the graphic science fiction novel KEPLER. The graphic novel is adapted from a television pilot David Duchovny wrote. Influenced by both The Planet of the Apes and the book Sapiens by Yuval Noral Harari, KEPLER is the name of a planet with three distinct species of hominids. Each species has its own specific physical and cultural characteristics. The graphic novel opens with the planet facing startling climate events due to the overuse of coal and other pollutant-heavy power sources. There is a race on to develop nuclear capability. The story is largely told from the point of view of a teenage girl with mixed parentage.

The action is fast-paced and the characters are quickly and successfully developed. I don't usually read comics. However, I found the illustrations much like seeing a movie frame by frame. The illustrations carried action, pathos, and nuance. As a novice to the media, I was surprised by how the layout worked so well to portray the pace of the story - when the action sped up and when the story slowed to allow the reader to realize key character developments.

It's hard to express criticism with a story that so effectively accomplished the three things mentioned in the first paragraph. However, certain elements of the story felt a little rushed. To equate it back to the movie analogy, it felt like a season of a television series was forced into a traditional hour-and-a-half movie format. As Phillip Sevy says in the afterword, the initial script page to comic page outline was 124 pages - too long apparently for a graphic novel- and about 30 pages were cut out. There is a love story that seems a little rushed, a startling character transition that wasn't foreshadowed enough, and not enough time spent on the dynamics of the relationship between the estranged parents of the teenage girl, West. If these were the elements that were cut, then it might have been better to go with a longer book or a more serialized approach.

For those reading this review who are wondering about how the storytelling style of David Duchovny came across in this media, I refer you back to the first paragraph. David Duchovny is a master at showing the beautiful wonder of human resiliency in the midst of the greatest despair. Since the first six pages have already been publically previewed, I won't consider it a spoiler to mention that some narrative is in the form of West's journal entries. As Duchovny continues to explore his own interest in the forms of storytelling with this new media, his use of a storyteller narrative continues. Also, please note the F-bomb drop in the first six pages, The full use of the vernacular of the language is a characteristic of his work. Comedy exists but is not as prevalent in this work as in his other writing.

There is an element of the novel that does harken back to the topic of his unwritten doctorate dissertation - Magic and technology in modern fiction - for anyone who has heard him explain how technology can seem like magic and the morality distinction in magic as opposed to technology.

KEPLER is available now in comic stores and will be distributed more widely in bookstores and through Amazon in December.

A shout out here to Albuquerque's Astro-Zombies Comic Store who had the foresight to order one copy that I purchased.

[lostinwoods]

A different take on SessKag relationship or why it would be more realistic than InuKag.

Let me begin with

Sesshomaru's and Kagome's past and how they are similar.

Sesshomaru had always been a very sentimental and emotionally receptive being. He had loved and cherished his dad the most. Loving and competing with him, wanting to surpass him, desiring recognition and acceptance so much so that his entire world revolved around his father. He did not want the swords because they were powerful or the bs about supreme conquest. What is that shit? Sesshomaru never needed that. The swords, especially Tessaiga was the most important acceptance to Sess. I will get back to this later.

Now Kagome. This kid was born and then we never saw her dad even when she was a kid. Another classic case of growing without a dad? Perhaps. But I feel her grandpa filled her missing dad's place. That is why the kid grew up in a lovely household, filled with love and peace and made Kagome what she was later on, a selfless girl who wants to love and protect her friends. Because that is what she learnt. Her grandpa, mom, everyone and her own family dynamics taught her how important it was to cherish the ones she loved.

What they initially thought of Inuyasha in their life

Now back to Sess. When his dad died, he dies saving Izayoi. What is the thing he feels at the time I wondered. Surely devastated? Yes, but even worse. His most important person, his goal, the thing his life revolved around was gone. And for what? To protect a weak, useless bitch like Izayoi? Here is a thing, he never knew Izayoi but knew the hut had collapsed on his dad when Izayoi had escaped. What can a teen feel when they hear such a thing? 'That useless bitch, ran away when my dad was in danger and cost him his life. Fuck that bitch and that kid they made. Useless, all humans are useless and weak.' This was really where his hatred came from. Probably.

Kagome on the other hand from the beginning was shown as a selfless kid, who loved both humans and demons alike. Reason? She had never lived in the feudal era. She was a kid grown in a society where everyone is placed on a equal pedestal. How would she, a modern kid understand the bad blood between demons and humans? If she were ever born in Feudal Japan, would things have changed? Maybe. Then she falls into a world where nothing was similar to where she was from. She was frightened, unsure and confused. And then Inuyasha came into her life. Honestly their first meeting was not romantic and pretty terrific in a sense. That was a weird day for Kagome. She fell into an alien world only heard in fairy tales, got involved in a weird prophecy, learnt she was a mythical sort of being herself and then got attacked by a guy who had saved her only seconds before, all ready to rip her heart out. In such a case, the 'osuwari' was probably a safe word for her. Why she uses it later in the series? Probably because she never trusted Inuyasha and felt more comfortable using a word which gave her power over him. Honestly, what would you expect? Kisses and love showers?

Analysis: Kagome was still scared of Inuyasha for a long time and did not trust him completely.

Before Inu no Taisho's tomb battle

Kagome before this went home and then cane back because she felt that fixing the Shikon was her duty. More honestly, she just returned coz Yura attacked and she wanted her family to be safe. Here I want to take some time to gush over how cool Kagome is. Intelligent, smart and extremely powerful. How she understood that Yura's skull was her weakness and breaks the god forsaken thing with just an arrow. That is some level of OPness. Who says Kags is useless?

Anyways, after that when Inuyasha called her 'Kagome', a lot of the viewers thought that Kagome was ecstatic because it was romantic and she was in love. But that is bs. It is not possible to love someone a week later they tried to gut your heart out. It is masochistic and unreal. Kagome over here felt a sense of acceptance from a guy who she felt previously hated her enough to kill her. And that to Kagome was a sign of friendship and more like, 'don't worry, I am not at least gonna attempt to kill you anymore.'

Kagome, inheritently a person who gives a hand when given a finger. She accepts Inu as her friend and they were far from being lovers.

It is exactly this time that Sess attacks them. And quite cruely might I say. Bringing Inu's dead mom like that was not funny and Sess was an outright jerk for doing that no matter how much he hated Inu and Izayoi. He is all weird and sarcatic at high levels. And Kags hated him. She hated how he was attacking this one friend she had made in the era. She hated how cruel this bastard was and how much pain her friend was going through. And her own lovely bond with her brother did not help her to look into their complex brotherly bond which seemed to her more like some battle royale. She probaably hated the bitch for showing up and hurting her friend like that even when he, being the older brother should have loved his younger brother and nurtured him like she would do for Souta.

For Sess, it was really weird and shitty all over. A basic human bitch, standing behind Inu like she was weak fawn. Reminded him so much of Izayoi. Someone who never even tried saving his dad. That was why his sarcastic words were like, "Inuyasha, it suits you so much to have a human behind you". Ya and he was irritated by looking at how helpless af the bitch was. He was narcisstic, filipant of Kags presence and all around indifferent to a 'weak human filthy woman', who he felt was just like the one for whom his dad died.

Surprise is how he did not outright murder her. Perhaps he felt like they were worthless and beneath his boots.

Lol, these two are the best.

Inside Inu No Taisho's tomb

Kags was really angry with this bitch who just chained her up, clawed a pearl out of her friend's eye and then jumped into a black hole. That is why she followed with, "This sort of a person, with no blood or humanity in his veins, I cannot forgive him" and then she chased. Even Inu was like, WTF bro. It was fun. Then she spouted lines like, " Take the sword Inuyasha, it will be like a hit to his pride, what a shame!"

How tf did she know about how much his pride hurt him. Lol felt like Kags knew Sess more than Inu ever would and they only met. That was some soulmate level shit right there. Lol!

Then there was Sess who was outright dismissing Kags and she was not even a spec of dust in his eyes. Then she went and pulled that sword out. Remember the scene where he was so surprised that he stopped the battle with Inu and turned around and LOOKED. Like really LOOKED. It was such a heart stopping moment and for good measures as well. He saw a girl, a woman standing there, holding an inheritance which was supposed to be his and she did something he could not. Did Tessaiga accept her then, did his father accept her more than him? He was baffled, confused and low-key awed. That was why he said, "What are you?" And legit measured her top to bottom. That was some turning point for Sess. Something that proved to him that all humans cannot be dismissed. But he was in rage. How can a mere human be worthy of Tessaiga and melted her along with that sword. I wonder if it was his second test to see whether Tessaiga would protect her or not. And then it did!

Sess went ape-shit crazy after that. A sword he desired for so long (The sword used to protect Izayoi was a thorn in his heart. Made him feel like his father had chosen a human over him. But if the sword had accepted him, it would have proved that his dad had still loved him, thought of him). That was the significance of Tessaiga to him. Power sure, but more of an acceptance. His dad's acceptance. And then what happened? The sword preferred a human who then gave it to his damned hated brother.

Aftermath of tomb battle

Kagome never really liked Sess's guts and probably had no form of sympathy towards someone like him. On the other hand things picked up with her and Inu's relation. She came to know some facts about Kik. And her inferiority complex began with her incarnate. But having a part of Kik's soul in her, began her obsession with Inu. She strived to understand him, make a better person of himself. But their relation was still not there to lovers.

Then Sess came across Naraku. He probably just wanted to dick around more with Inu and accepted the human hand.

2nd battle for Tessaiga

Sess's desire to possess the Tessaiga had increased at this point. His rage of having his arm cut off by that sword felt like the worst rejection from his dad. He was going insane and might have wanted to kill Inu for real in this fight. He was in no mood for theatrics in this one, unlike the tomb where he actually watched some InuKag drama and even applauded (lol). He was absolute business this time. He snached the sword and showed Inu exactly why he should not get that sword, 'You cannot even make the wind rift, why should you be more worthy?'

He meant to kill Inu and then Kags arrow sailed in, charging with enough power to even cancel the demonic energy filled into the sword by Sess himself.

His thoughts were for the same reason, " She canceled Tessaiga's transformation? Who is this girl?"

His respect scale jumped for her here. He truly had never met anyone who could rival his power to such extent. He had never met a girl who stood so powerfully in face of danger to protect this some half-breed scum. She was like the embodiment of everything he had hoped Izayoi to be to his dad. A strong woman who would wager her life to save the one she holds dear. Sess had learnt this fact from his dad's death. To sacrifice in name of love and then in this fight he understood how much that meant both for Inuyasha and Kagome. He probably somewhat understood what this feeling was after seeing these two.

Sess had an idea of love and protection and Kags became its centre. She was this vague expectation Sess had of human love and an absolute loyalty towards whom you love most. He felt complicated towards her. He respected her.

3rd Tessaiga battle

Sess's most sceptical battle yet. Why break the tessaiga? 'I will break it if I can't have it!' Desperate much?. Then the wind drift appears and for the first time Sess acknowledges Inu. For maybe being a somewhat worthy of having Taisho's blood, only if a little bit. He is saved by Tenseiga. Oh, how he hated this worthless sword more. This sword could not cut throught things and saves his life. What a worthless shit.

Kagome's narrative here was important. "How can he weild the Tenseiga? He needs a compassionate heart for that." Always wondered why Kags was the one to say this. But realised the reason later on.

Rin

Obviously the most controversial topic of Inuverse. What Sess felt for Rin, why was she there.

Rin has often been compared to be the Kagome version of Sess. And that is the only truth. She came in like a ray of sunshine when he was in most need. He was in self doubt, hate towards Inu and complex emotions towards Kags. And then Rin was there with the exact same face and the same warm feeling like Kags. Even he knew what InuKag were to each other then and no matter how much he respected Kags, he was not really interested in a further relation with Kags. But his deeply unsated desire to understand his dad's mentality and reason behind saving a human was what made him think of Rin. As she was his chance to understand that. His chance to understand why his dad could do that, why Inu could do that and why humans like Kags and Rin could save and love demons. It was not romantic in any sense. He had a confusion and Rin was his way towards a solution. Though it was a different fact that he loved her later on and cherished and protected her. Enough to feel that there was no meaning to his anything if she was not there.

So yes in a way, she is Kags embodiment in Sess's life, a picture of Kags selfless love. His desire to truly understand such beings called selfless humans and the result of his single minded belief of human women being trash and unable to love shattering.

And for fun just to contradict Kags speculations, for first time ever, Sess uses the sword and we viewers realise how wrong Kags was. Sess had every bit of compassion in his heart.

Later events

The events went on with Kags finally understanding her position in Inu's life and her single-minded chase to be accepted by Inu as just Kagome and not Kikyo's reflection. I do not even know if this could be called love or just a misinterpreted need of attention from someone you hold dear. But whatever, we realise Kags is in love with Inu now and still cannot stop from feeling compassion towards Kikyo. Honestly she and Sess are truly two opposite sides of a spectrum.

Sess on the other hand gets Tokijin and attacks Inuyasha. This time around, I highly doubt he was still chasing Tessaiga. It had more evolved into his need to show he is more powerful than Inu. 'What you do best, I can do better.'

Stopping Inu from transforming

In this the most debatable question was whether he was there to stop Inu or not.

Sess had wanted to see and experiment the limits of Inu's blood beast.

After some fighting, Kags jumped in. Sess stared at her, like forever. That staring tho. Even when she was like, "Stay away, you idiot." Sess stared. For Sess, that was what he admired the most in Kags. Her selfless devotion. He was staring at that fearless figure who once again surprised him by being a sacrifice to save her loved ones. She was to Sess what he had always thought of 'love' to be. She was the embodiment of the term 'love' to Sess. For a guy who knew nothing of how to define emotions, it was Kags who showed him what love was. And thus he jumped over and over again in front of Rin to protect her. She taught him how to cherish even the even the most weak individual in a group, and thus he protected Jaken.

Rin was there to show him the same thing everyday. But no matter how much Rin showed him her own loyality, love and warmth, Kags always remained that shining beam to him. I will say later on how I understood this.

Kag's love was the validity of his dad's sacrifice. A way for him to make sense of his dad's mindless death over protecting some weak human.

And in this scene for the first time ever, Kags saw Sess as more than an insufferable pest to her friends. She saw his noble ideals and realised why he was there and thus she thought, "Was he here to save Inuyasha?"

It is very curious as to why Kags was again given these lines. It was probably because her opinion mattered, to Sess it did. And we will see more why in the future.

Random encounters

There was one time when Kags saw Rin while Jaken was trying to steal Tessaiga and she had asked herself, "Why is a little human girl traveling with Sess?' It was again a small thing which she did not need to feel but was very imp. for her development towards Sess. How she started to understand him more.

Kohaku incident

Here we saw how was the first time Sess listened to Kags.

Kags opinion mattered. Inu's mattered and when he realised that Kohaku was being used he let him go. There was one reason that he did not want to be used, the next I am sure was for Kags and Inu. He knew then that Kohaku was imp. to them and he stopped. Big character jump for him.

Then the most curious fact was how Kags knew what the girl meant to him, "Please let him go Sesshomaru, the girl is fine."

Kagome: Thanks Sesshomaru!

Sesshomaru: I just never wanted to be used by Naraku and fall into his trap.

Lol...

Then after Rin left, Kags thoughts about how she had left with Sess and was awed . An important point for her change in feelings towards Sess. She understood the guy was changing and Rin was changing him.

The fun fact was how she was instantly in love with this little girl and that would become important later on.

More random events..

After that it was shown that many times Kags was the only one who could stop a fight bet. the brothers. Example that time when he fought with Inu to get some direction for Naraku. And then Kags came and told him to go north or something and he was like, "That is all I wanted to know." And left.

What is to be seen in these parts is how RT made only him and her interact like this. He listening to her like they have been friends forever.

The saving of Kanta's father was also an example of how much she affected him.

Her plea to save Kanta's dad even when no one believed and no one bothered to ask him. Tensaiga moved because he felt deeply moved by her plea. He might have never wanted to voice it but since Tensaiga only worked when the weilder felt compassion and a need to save someone. Sess must have felt it subconsciously and Tensaiga had stired. Or it had stired because it is a SessKag shipper as well. Lol!

Mukotsu

I wonder how Sess knew Kags was in trouble. Another fun fact like how he appears at times when Inu is not there to save Kags. Sess is there. Probably he knew her scent too well and hence could even distinguish between that and the poison. After that was the gruesome death of Mukotsu. The thing to notice over her was how large Sess looked in that hut doorway, it was a symbolism to how big and huge his protective self looks when he is protecting Kagome. A very romantic thing indeed. The first time he protects someone who is not under his protection. A complete selfless act if considered from his pov. Sess being a very private person and while saving Kagome showed her place in his heart. Yeah and that was very visible from how he killed Mukotsu.

The takeaway from this episode is not this though. It was the fact that Kags defended Sess. For the first time ever, all the good deeds she had seen him doing had outplayed her hatred for him. She accepeted him as a friend with these words, "No Inuyasha, he was here to protect us, he saved us." It was a completely unnecessary detail in the whole scheme of this episode but very important for Sess. Her acceptance matters, her opinion matters and Sess is a Tsundere.

Sesshomaru: I did not save YOU, I just killed him coz he did not answer me properly.

This proved how much she affects him, rattles him and how much her life means to him. And an unspoken promise to himself to protect her when Inu was not around.

Fight with Shishinki

No one ever mentions this fight. But there is a very important SK interaction in here. Something which was important for Sess. Kagome's understanding.

When Sess was lost in the same darkness of never being accepted by his dad, Shishinki made things worse by saying Tenseiga was a cast out of Tessaiga and it was given as a leftover to Taisho's least fav. son. Sesshomaru was hurt, lost, and his daddy issues, his biggest weakness was sharply opened by a knife, cruely and Kagome's words saved him.

Kagome: But there might have been a reason their dad had done this.

Kags belief that Taisho had infact not rejected Sess was like a balm to his soul, the only thing he had needed to hear throughout his life. The thing which made him accept in the end that Tensaiga was there to protect Inuyasha, the thing that was needed to sort of activate Tessaiga and then he finally formed his biggest and truest meido. It was romantic, touching and outright heavenly. Then it was made cute with Inu's awkward concern. It was the best ep. as of yet.

Kagome's deep concern and her understanding of Sess's pain was brilliant and alien level insane. She should not have, but she did and that's why they felt more like soulmates.

Battle with Magatsuhi

Sess had gone batshit crazy when Magatsuhi had hurt Kagome and that had only been worsened by him questioning Sess's honor and pride. Sess had turned full on doggy mode and lost control in that way for the first time since the tomb. And the strike at Magatsuhi's eyes was another symbolism of his revenge for doing shit to Kags eyes and mindfucking her.

RT has always thrown these small hints in between IK drama. Which are brilliant and lovely. Even that one scene where he stands protectively inbetween Kags prostrate body on Kilala and Magatsuhi. Beautiful symbolism, really.

It was also fun to see how Kags half power was sealed by Magatsuhi and Sess's half power was returned via Bakusaiga. I felt that Sess's true acceptance of his protection to Kagome and his detachment from Tessaiga was what made him the true daiyokai and surpass his father. Since somehow Tessaiga has always been linked to protecting Kagome and somehow protecting her might have also been the thing to finding Bakusaiga. The desire to protect her perhaps.

Soul mate mind link theatrics

This is something only some people realise. Sesshomaru and Kagome have been shown not once, but twice to be doing this. Once while fighting for Kohaku's life and the last shard and the other in Naraku's body. Kagome and Sesshomaru had been shown to think in absolute synchronisation. He thinks half the sentence, she completes the rest. Absolute soul mate shit.

SessKag power combo

Shown a lot of time in Inuverse. Sess attacks and Kags completes. A small thing but their timing is insane. And is defintely the best power combo, far better than an InuKag combo.

Fight in Naraku's body

This was the time when Sess finally shows what Kagome means to him. Where she stands and how much he cares for her. She is his FIRST priority. Proof? When Rin and she are in simultaneous danger, he stands there infront of Kags for God knows how long, removing those snake things like he had all the time in the world and once she is awake he is concerned about her well being.

Sess: Those wounds, are those Inuyasha's doing?

And his disappointment in Inuyasha not being able to protect Kags.

Sess: As expected of a half-demon. He lost himself in the bloodlust.

Kags obviously considered Sess to be a friend at this point. A very close friend at that. Family perhaps? Their familiarity here was not missed by anyone. Her defending Inu and then still prioritising Rin over Inu were only somethings we realised this chapter.

The most important was her belief in him.

Manga exclusive,

Kags: I believe that you would be able to do it. Do not fall into Naraku's trap and play his cards that is what he wants. Only you can do this, I know.

Wow, Kags wow...just wow... It is the best actually. She does not believe Inu in this situation but she does Sess. She believes in his protection and she knows her influence on him. This speaks volumes. This shows her unreal connection to him and how they match each other instinctively.

Sess knows her influence. This is his weakness.

The mokomoko scene was truly Sesshomaru's best confession. For him who cannot say much in words, allowed her to fly on mokomoko. Something which everyone of us know has a heavy weightage for Sesshomaru. It is his weapon, his forever companion and his support when he is injured and tired. Offering such a thing to her for whatever reason was truly his way of showing what he exactly feels for her. He cherishes her the most and I could say even more than Rin. Trusts her the most and would jump in front of danger to protect her.

Which is only seen more when he asks her to stay away from the fight because she would be a 'hinderance'. Which means he could not fight if she is in the middle. He would be vulnerable and weak. Intersting, very interesting. Another time where he stood between her and a dangerous blood beast that Inu had become.

The best part was truly him getting concerned when she fell down from the top while removing Tessaiga and then when Magatsuhi tried to possess her.

His anger was so vibrant. "Get away from her!"

What a brilliant thing to say. The possessiveness. The will to protect her. The absolute anger. Brilliant. So much was spoken in those lines.

The best ending though was the SessKag power combo of Bakusaiga and holy arrow. Best ending. Inu was not even much involved in ending Naraku. It was weird how the titular character failed in finishing the main villain with his meido. Shows a lot what SessKag meant to RT.

Big brother

Yes, the iconic scene where fans of all ships shout out that SK is not a romantic ship.

Well over here I want to say that Kagome truly saw Sess as a big brother figure at this point. Part of it was because she still felt that she was in love with Inu and part because she was not receptive to her reactions to Sess and what he truly meant to her at this point. She feels an intimate connection to him but cannot justify the weirdness because she still feels a closeness to Inu so she thinks of him as big brother. Which was a very intimate thing for Kagome to say. She loves him like family and clearly places him higher than the rest of her friends only second to Inu. That was more of a declaring her closeness to Sess rather than a confirmation of her and Inu's relationship. Kags is not a vain character who does things coz they are convinient. She would not call a friend if they are not a friend. And certainly not a big brother if she does not feel so.

Sess actually was relieved, ecsatatic and happy when Jaken informed hin of Kags arrival as was seen in his expression. Very funny actually. Because next second he was called big brother and he was hilariously ticked off. He could not believe what he was being called. Lol that interaction though. It showed how close they ended up being. Even more close than he was to his own brother.

But he accepted the title even if with much pain in his neck and then was really offended when Jaken badmouthed Kagome.

Conclusion: No one badmouths Kagome.

Haaha....end of this long analysis. I tried to analyse it from the character's pov and found some interesting small tidbits and detail that RT had hidden in this story.

Thus I felt that SK would be a more natural ship maybe not outright. Since Sess loves her truly but does not understand the nature of the relation and Kags is still too much blinded by Inu filter a.t.m. Maybe given years when Kags will realise exactly what sort of love she feels for Inu. Which will happen because such a toxic relation like IK should not exist and then she will probably see Sess's love for her.

My Conclusion: SK is a defintive. It will happen with some time and care. When both would mature. But it will happen for sure. All the ingredients are there, the stage has been set just the players have to realise what they feel for each other.

[dustedmagazine]

Dust Volume 7, Number 9

Les Filles de Illighadad

Another collection of short reviews closes out this week at Dusted, with selections ranging from avant garde classical to free jazz to whacko punk to an unusually gender-inclusive guitar band from Niger.  Writers this time included the usual stalwarts, Bill Meyer, Ray Garraty, Jennifer Kelly, Jonathan Shaw, Bryon Hayes, Tim Clarke, Andrew Forell and Chris Liberato. Enjoy.

All Set — All Set (RogueArt)

In 1957, serialist composer Milton Babbitt’s All Set applied his language-transforming compositional tool kit to the sonic resources of a jazz orchestra. Six decades and change down the road, such ideas haven’t exactly infiltrated the mainstream of either jazz or orchestral music, but they’ve become as handy for some music makers as hammers and nails are for carpenters. So, when saxophonic colleagues Ingrid Laubrock (who sticks to tenor here) and Stéphane Payen (playing the straight alto) needed to come up with a framework to make music together, out came Babbitt’s notion, which they did not play straight, but used as a suggestions for writing their own tunes, and for good measure named their band after the Babbitt’s piece The formative influence manifests in zig-zagging intervallic leaps, but instead of treating these of ends in themselves, the saxophonists carry on constant overlapping dialogues. The rhythm section of Chris Tordini (bass) and Tom Rainey (drums) can’t help but swing, but they do so in a shifting, discontinuous fashion that occasionally leaves it to the saxophonists to play the gaps as well as the horns they use the fill them.

Bill Meyer

 Rodrigo Amado Motion Trio & Alexander Von Schlippenbach — The Field (No Business)

The Field by Rodrigo Amado Motion Trio & Alexander von Schlippenbach

Motion Trio is one of tenor saxophonist Rodrigo Amado’s more enduring combos. But it’s not one that has played often in the years preceding this concert, a consequence of the growth and success of its members; Amado, cellist Miguel Mira and drummer Gabriel Ferrandini all keep busy with other projects. So, this encounter with pianist Alexander von Schlippenbach, which took place in Vilnius, Lithuania in 2019, was not just a reenactment of the trio’s favorite tactic of improvising with a strong fourth musician, but a reunion of the trio itself. This means that the process-oriented can listen for three comrades finding reviving a common language at the same time that they confront with an outsider’s efforts to deal with it. Schlippenbach’s playing brings an unusual harmonic density to Motion Trio’s music, which seems to coax an especially dynamic and at times reflective response from the saxophonist. Ferandini, on the other hand, proposes shapes and timbres that seem to build out from Schlippenbach’s intricate constructions, while Mira keeps up a steady, almost subliminal stream of contrapuntal commentary that is simultaneously assertive and nearly subliminal. But some of the concert’s most exciting moments come when the pianist lays out for a second, and you can hear Motion Trio’s members responding to each other.

Bill Meyer

  BangGang Lonnie Bands — H2K On the Way (TF Entertainment \ Anti Media)

Lots of artists have watched small projects intended only as appetizers grow to surpass their grander efforts. BangGang Lonnie Bands’ recent work, especially his King of Detroit albums, contained a few gems but were bloated in length. There was an ironic twist, as Lonnie’s claimed the throne to the city where he no longer resides. While it remains to be seen what the rapper brings after H2K On the Way, this 15 minutes long EP is his leanest work in years, leaving a long list of LPs behind. Lonnie no longer flirts with scam rap and returns to murder music, fusing gutsiest Michigan-style punchlines with no hostage Californian approach to verse spitting. He’s the naughtiest when he’s trolling the music industry: “Copped a 100 pounds of crank \ should have bought a verse from Drake.” 

Ray Garraty  

  Buffalo Daughter — We Are the Times (Anniversary)

Buffalo Daughter always caught in the cracks between mainstream and experimental, layering vocal sweetness over chopped up blippy beats, not as wildly original as OOIOO, but not exactly girl pop either. This latest album comes after a long break and a slightly less lengthy COVID lockdown, and it’s got some prickly, dreamy jams, part dance, part pop, part funk, part inscrutable. “ET (Densha)” is the mad, moody single, full of low-end synth blasts and thundering drums, but leavened by high whispery vocals. It’s like Shackleton sound-tracking a Hello Kitty movie. “Global Warming Will Kill Us All” is similarly ominous, with vocoder chants and trippy pop choruses and blown out by phosphorescent blots of synth, but I like “Don’t Punk Out” the best, because it struts like an animatronic James Brown, the funk percolating through gleaming futuristic swells of sounds. If disco’s going to come back, can it be this weird and disorienting?

Jennifer Kelly

 Fashion Pimps and the Glamazons — Jazz 4 Johnny (Feel It Records)

Jazz 4 Johnny by Fashion Pimps And The Glamazons

This new EP from Fashion Pimps and the Glamazons manages to fit into the tradition of whacko punk records from Cleveland (and what a tradition that is…) and to comment on the problematic nature of tradition itself. There’s a decided No Wave vibe to Jazz 4 Johnny: listen to it, and you’ll flash on Buy Contortions and on Robert Quine’s attempts to channel Miles Davis and Pharoah Sanders through his guitar. At points you’ll swear there’s a sax somewhere in the buzz and thunder that the Fashion Pimps create — but that’s just Richard Glamazon’s skronky guitar tone, which does Quine one better by not only aping the cadences of a free jazz solo but also the sound of a brassy axe. That’s fun, but we should also recall No Wave’s sharp antipathies for concepts like “tradition” or “perpetuity.” A lot of those bands wanted to neutralize their own existence and thus evade the ultimately conservative action of canonization. Other tunes on Jazz 4 Johnny are more engaged with the later Downtown noise rock scene. The guitar on “Dream Police” gestures toward early Sonic Youth—but even there, the band can’t quite help themselves. Vocalist Steve Chainsaw shouts, “Show me your DNA!” Most of those references are based in Manhattan, so what about Cleveland? The city often recedes into the background when conversations turn to rock-n-roll history, which is too bad. Fashion Pimps and the Glamazons don’t sound all that much like electric eels or Pere Ubu, but the band is tuned into a similarly feral, post-industrial ethos and an avant-garde sensibility that makes anti-art into art you can dance to. Or break things to. Or both. Which may be the best response to the wild and smart tunes on this record.

Jonathan Shaw

 Les Filles de Illighadad — At Pioneer Works (Sahel Sounds)

At Pioneer Works by Les Filles de Illighadad

The entrancing At Pioneer Works documents the American touring debut of Niger-based Tuareg ensemble Les Filles de Illighadad, specifically a pair of shows at the eponymous Brooklyn venue. Travelling as a four-piece ensemble, the band created a swirling three-guitar maelstrom, as captured on this pristine-sounding recording. Founder Fatou Seidi Ghali — the first known woman Tuareg guitarist — and her cousin Alamnou Akrouni were joined by Fatimata Ahmadelher, the only other known woman Tuareg guitarist, with Ghali’s brother accompanying on rhythm guitar. Blending the traditional calabash drum and call-and-response vocals of the tende song form with the electric guitar, Ghali and company steep the communal origins of their sound with a gentle clangor. The music is simultaneously hypnotic and driving, the four performers acting as one multi-limbed, multi-throated being. For the most part, Ghali is content setting the pace and playing along with the melody. One exception is the trio of deftly executed solos during “Chakalan,” where she demonstrates her prowess with six strings. Reports from those Brooklyn shows indicate that the band completely enraptured their audience, and if At Pioneer Works represents only a fraction of how powerful Les Filles de Illighadad are live, this writer doesn’t doubt that at all.

Bryon Hayes  

 Henri Guédon — Karma (Outre National)

Karma by Henri Guédon

You don’t have to be a big fan of R.E.M. to feel overly familiar with “It’s The End of The World As We Know It (And I Feel Fine).” In dire times, it’s such an easy go-to tune that even adherence to lockdown prescriptions won’t keep it out of your ears. So, deejays, we’ve done your research for you, and found a new tune to soundtrack defiant frugging in the face of disaster. It’s called “Fin Di Mond,” by Martinique-based singer/percussionist/sculptor Henri Guédon. It, and eight more similarly motion-motivating tunes, can be found on Karma, a predominantly celebratory set of retro-futuristic, Franco-Caribbean grooves. Mind you, this music wasn’t retro when Guédon recorded it 46 years ago; the synth lines that swoop through its massed percussion were probably the height of modernity back in the day. Heard now, this music is just the thing to put time itself on pause.

Bill Meyer

HTRK — Rhinestones (Heavy Machinery)

Rhinestones by HTRK

Rhinestones is a sneaky one from Melbourne’s HTRK, a slight but incisive release that seems minor compared to their previous albums but cuts just as deep. Running to a brutally economical 26 minutes, most of the album is built around delayed guitar, drum machine and Jonnine Standish’s ghostly, dejected voice. To a world laid low by the pandemic, Standish sounds startlingly apposite for these times, and track titles like “Sunlight Feels Like Bee Stings,” “Real Headfuck” and “Straight to Hell” signpost the vibe clearly. This is sad, skeletal music, sure to offer a degree of solace if you’re weary, wrung out or wasted — 2021 in a nutshell.

Tim Clarke  

 Matt Jencik — Matt & Lyra (Trouble In Mind)

Matt & Lyra by matt jencik

Matt Jencik is a member of doomy, spacey Chicago band Implodes, plus he’s released two solo guitar albums: 2017’s Weird Times and 2019’s Dream Character. For his latest, Matt & Lyra, part of Trouble In Mind’s Explorers Series, Jencik focuses on the thick, fuzzy tones of the Russian-built Lyra-8 synthesizer (hence the album title). Having said that, he does pull out his guitars to add some acoustic strumming to “Cmellow Ayellow,” and builds 16-minute closer “Clandestine Half Pipe” around electric guitar drones before the Lyra begins to dominate the frame. Jencik apparently made this music to help him sleep, and while this music is suited to nocturnal listening, with an all-enveloping warmth, there’s also the sense of something looming in the darkness. Whether this presence is reassuring or threatening probably depends on the frame of mind with which you approach this immersive 35-minute release.

Tim Clarke

 Joakim — Second Nature (Tiger Sushi)

French producer and Tiger Sushi founder Joakim’s Second Nature is a reflection on the state of the world. It combines samples of whales, elephants, toads and other wildlife with the kind of pop facing ambient techno from aughts chillout compilations.  It is testament to his skill as a producer that the record doesn’t wear out its welcome despite the occasional lapse into the anodyne and the associations this kind of gentle background music evokes. When Joakim disturbs the tranquility on tracks like “Sferics & Whistlers” with its crackles of static and breakdown of discordant notes, Angel Bat Dawid’s klezmatic clarinet on “Waves Ahead” and the komische roll of “Kepler-39” that one is jolts from reverie and pays close attention, but at 16 tracks it feels like Second Nature needs more such moments.

Andrew Forell 

 The Killing Popes — Ego Kills (Shhpuma)

Ego Kills by The Killing Popes

Thank god this unfortunately named combo isn’t someone’s absurd scheme to crossbreed the sounds of Killing Joke and Smoking Popes. Instead, the Berlin-based project exists at the crossroads of jazz and electronics. I know what you’re thinking, and no this isn’t a modern take on acid jazz; this crew makes a jazz-on-acid sort of racket. The core Popes are drummer-percussionist Oli Steidle and multi-instrumentalist Dan Nicholls, who together conjure up a brew with a myriad of ingredients. Their genre-defying fusion of disciplines does have a center, however. Steidle’s dextrous drumming and the elastic band bass proffered by Phil Donkin serve as an anchor point for the other elements — both melodic and bizarre — to revolve around. The addition of vocals inserts the sense of narrative, creating a gravity that tugs at the sounds and prevent them from spiralling out of orbit. As zany as Ego Kills may be, it’s jazz-like enough for afficionados to appreciate. On their own, each of the instrumentalists demonstrates a mastery of their craft; together, they create an uncanny sort of magic.

Bryon Hayes

 Norman W. Long — BLACK BROWN GRAY GREEN (Hausu Mountain)

BLACK BROWN GRAY GREEN by Norman W. Long

Chicago soundscapist Norman W. Long walks his southeast Chicago neighborhood, listens deeply and records the ambient sounds of nature, the echoes of railyards, wasteland and industrial sites both working and abandoned. Adding subtle electronics and treatments to his field recordings, Long conjures atmospheres that speak to space, atrophy and the delicate symbiosis between nature and humanity. On BLACK BROWN GRAY GREEN he immerses listeners in the often unnoticed aural richness at the intersection of the built, neglected and the natural. His choices about when to augment or to present his sources as are forms a narrative of associations, displacements and tensions. Long’s is also a story of reclamation and recognition, a rumination on the situation of the largely minority and migrant populations who live in the neighborhood, many of whom toil as essential workers across the city in the face of ongoing prejudice and hostility. Site specificity is integral to Long’s art but his themes are universal.

Andrew Forell 

 Andy Moor — Music For Safe Piece (Unsounds)

Music For Safe Piece by Andy Moor

Music For Safe Piece is the antidote for every piece of children’s music that’s ever made you want to not hear another played or sung note, ever again. Electric guitarist Andy Moor (the Ex, Dog Faced Hermans) and dancer Valentina Campora have included their sons, Elio and Milo, in onstage performance ever since they were so young, they had to be swaddled and strapped to one of their parents in order to participate. The recorded results of this shared adventure are raw, unpredictable and exhilarating. Moor’s guitar, occasionally augmented by a child’s vocalization, a foot pounding the floor or some choice tune fragments on a cassette tape, blazes a trail of reverberations, scrapes and wobbles. In performance, the boys are known to get in on the act, helping pop to make his sounds while mom handles the movement. This music isn’t particularly pacific, but it’s pretty close to the way kids actually play when no one’s stopping them. The technologically adept will find a QR code inside the CD’s gatefold, which unlocks the short film, “Safe Piece.”

Bill Meyer

RXM Reality — Advent (Orange Milk)

Advent by RXM REALITY

Long-time Hausu Mountain dweller Mike Meegan has relocated to the Orange Milk abode, taming his frenetic brand of electronic mayhem in the process. The blown-out, off-the-grid beats are still plentiful, but with Advent Meegan injects his tunes with melody. He’s also allowed himself to slow down and relax. The vast expanse of “Character Limit” literally breathes deeply as Meegan allows it to swirl around. He drinks up the pleasant melodic aromas of the track before switching gears and unloading burst after burst of explosive beats. “These Days” comes off as an electro-shoegaze hybrid, with gauzy synth pads that float effortlessly among bouncy percussion clusters. Of course, the signature RXM Reality sound — a hybrid of 1990s video game and blockbuster movie — is present and accounted for in tracks like “Allure,” “Screaming,” and “Grip of Evil.” Yet even these balls of energy are tempered with shades of consonance. Having blunted some of the jagged edges of his frantic brand of electronic music, Meegan fits in nicely among the kooky ranks of the Orange Milk imprint.

 Bryon Hayes

 Macie Stewart — Mouth Full of Glass (Orindal)

Mouth Full of Glass by Macie Stewart

You might already know Macie Stewart as one-half of the complicated indie rock duo Ohmme or for her regular appearances as violinist of choice in Chicago jazz and experimental music scenes, but this solo LP shows another side.  These eight songs are lushly, intricately arranged with strings, orchestral instruments and brass, recorded with precision and clarity, but nonetheless personal and introspective.  “Garter Snake” sheathes flaying honesty with baroque instrumental flourishes. Stewart’s voice is bare and unaffected as she confides, “I am addicted…to indecision,” but she makes riveting choices in framing the melody.  Old-fashioned movie strings swell in the spaces between talking-right-to-you verses; agile guitar chords mark time.  “Finally” begins in bare, Bahian guitar play, as Stewart’s voice flutters and floats an unpredictable but fetching tune.  Strings swoop in at the end of the phrase, lavish and lucid.  The title track unlooses massed, harmonized vocals on the spare architecture of picked guitar, a shock of extravagant sung beauty in an otherwise restrained palette.  Like Wendy Eisenberg, but with different instruments, Stewart weaves post-modern complexity into the delicate fabric of pop songs.  The difficulty — combined with the beauty — makes this music memorable.

Jennifer Kelly

 Stingray — Feeding Time (La Vida es un Mus)

Feeding Time by Stingray

In places where heavy music is played and endlessly debated, 1982 might be most strongly associated with English street punk — see the ersatz “genre” of UK82, which enshrines the year and ties it to acid green liberty spikes and scuffed Doc Martens. Fair enough. But street punk was thoroughly informed by the dirty working-class metal being made by bands like Motörhead and Venom, and this new EP by Stingray celebrates those noisy intersections of influence. Of course, Stingray’s version of celebration likely involves several cases of Bass Ale, an eightball of something white and a fistfight or two. Or five. The English band features members of other current hard-driving acts, including Subdued, the Chisel and Chain of Flowers, but Stingray doesn’t prize currency. The songs are short, hard and nasty, landing their punches like a “Bomber” and also like a bunch of “Death Dealers.” The guys in Stingray understand the past they’re drawing on, but does music like this have a future? Fuck knows. Do any of us have a future? Does the earthball? The tunes are less interested in such flights of existential angst, and more intent on their rapacious appetites for speed, sweat and raunch. It’s Feeding Time. Get it while you can.

Jonathan Shaw

Nick Storring — Newfoundout (Mappa)

Newfoundout by Nick Storring

You’ll miss some towns if you blink. The ones that have given their names to the compositions on Newfoundout might confound both eyesight and your GPS, since they are all ghost towns in Ontario, Canada. The music that Nick Storring has made to go with these titles is correspondingly elusive. Performed entirely by the composer, using strings, percussion and whatever bric-a-brac happened to be at hand, it is by turns lush, staccato and propulsive. “The sounds are never particularly difficult, but they rarely telegraph where they’re going, so if you listen passively, sooner or later you’ll look up in dismay, wondering how things got from where they were to where they are now. “Khartum,” for example, starts out sounding a lot like “In A Silent Way,” and finishes up sounding like a respectfully paced conference of grandfather clock chimes. So, put your head back and your ears forward, and let Mr. Storring do the driving. 

Bill Meyer

Ten Ka — Sonic Geometry: Structures, Patterns And Forms (Jersika)

sonic geometry: structures, patterns and forms by TEN KA

Ten Ka is experimental side project of Deniss Pashkevich, a Latvian woodwinds player. The album title’s invocation of mathematics is apt, since this music is produced by dissimilar musical values acting upon each other. Pashkevich’s sound on tenor sax is full and soft around the edges, which is probably what it takes to be a working musician in a part of the world that doesn’t have much of a jazz tradition; on flutes, and especially the Bansuri, he hints at a far Eastern vibe. He also plays Fender Rhodes and prepared acoustic piano, bringing in further elements of user-friendly jazz, but also some sharp, Cage-y edges. But most of the nine tracks on Sonic Geometry: Structures, Patterns And Forms feature modular synths, which provide a foundation of pulsing bass patterns and some intriguing disruptive, acidic sizzles.  It all adds up to something simultaneously familiar and out of the ordinary.

Bill Meyer

 Luis Vicente / Vasco Trilla — Made Of Dust (577 Records)

Made of Mist by Luis Vicente & Vasco Trilla

Not many improvisational settings are more exposed that the drums and trumpet duet. The two instruments are sufficiently different in timbre and frequency range that you can’t help but hear everything each player does, and also how those actions fit together. Trumpeter Luis Vicente and percussionist Vasco Trilla approach this situation with a combination of relaxed consideration and wholly earned confidence. Vicente can power-play when necessary, but for this session, he exercises restraint, using mutes to extract the most lyrical and vocal sounds he can muster. Trilla likewise seeks out the extremities of his kit, drawing continuous ribbons of widely differing characters, such as the alarm clock-like clatter and low-scrubbed drumskin heard on “Swirling Mist.” Their interactions are not just sonically novel, but trusting and deeply intimate.

Bill Meyer   

 Simon Waldram — So It Goes (Self-released)

So It Goes by Simon Waldram

Simon Waldram’s refrain-heavy eighth solo album, So It Goes, is a song cycle on love, loss and acceptance influenced by classic indie pop bands like The Field Mice, The Fat Tulips and The Go-Betweens. Indeed, it was the Grant McLennan-channelling “Don’t Worry,” a plaintive reassurance to a past lover, that initially caught my attention. But “I Miss The Sun” betters it, really laying on the Hammond, and squeezing in something noticeably absent from the other songs: a bridge. “When will we see the lull again/Feels like these dark days will never end,” Waldram sings, reestablishing buoyancy as it winds down repeating the title phrase. There’s promise elsewhere, like on the 1960’s-flavored psych strummer “Boats In The Sky,” before it lifts its bow in harmonic repetition a few too many times without checking its fuel gauge first, stranding itself in the firmament. “The Wild Wanderings of Wildebeests” is another one with potential, but its flawless first verse’s worth of strum and fuzz just recurs instead of building towards something of greater impact. The record hits its lowest point on the nearly nine-minute “Windswept,'' a “Primitive Painters'' rip that goes nowhere productive. When Waldram starts repeating ad infinitum “I miss you so much/ I can’t let go of this dream of ours,” you wish you could step in and save him from himself. A pleasant enough acoustic instrumental with birdsong follows in the form of “One May Afternoon,” serving as a much-needed palate cleanser and bridging the gap to the album’s closer. However, “Shimmer” is another moaner that never quite rounds into shape and instead fades out and then, unremarkably, back in.  There’s an EP’s worth of good material on So It Goes, but as an album it only ends up burning itself with the flame its carrying, leaving the listener wondering, “Who hurt you, Simon?”

Chris Liberato

[thesteadydietofeverything]

Top 10 Games of 2019

This was an extremely good year for games. I don’t know if I played as many that will stick with me as I did last year, but the ones on the bottom half of this list in particular constitute some of my favorite games of the decade, and probably all-time. If I’ve got a gaming-related resolution for next year, it’s to put my playtime into supporting even smaller indie devs. My absolute favorite experiences in games this year came from seemingly out of nowhere games from teams I’ve previously never heard of before. That said, there are some big games coming up in spring I doubt I’ll be able to keep myself away from. Some quick notes/shoutouts before I get started:

-The game I put maybe the most time into this year was Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn. I finally made the plunge into neverending FF MMO content, and I’m as happy as I am overwhelmed. This was a big year for the game, between the release of the Shadowbringers expansion and the Nier: Automata raid, and it very well may have made it onto my list if I had managed to actually get to any of it. At the time of this writing, though, I’ve only just finished 2015’s Heavensward, so I’ve got...a long way to go. 

-One quick shoutout to the Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney Trilogy that came out on Switch this year, a remaster of some DS classics I never played. An absolutely delightful visual novel series that I fell in love with throughout this year.

-I originally included a couple games currently in early access that I’ve enjoyed immensely. I removed them not because of arbitrary rules about what technically “came out” this year, but just to make room for some other games I liked, out of the assumption that I’ll still love these games in their 1.0 formats when they’re released next year to include them on my 2020 list. So shoutout to Hades, probably the best rogue-like/lite/whatever I’ve ever played, and Spin Rhythm XD, which reignited my love for rhythm games.

-Disco Elysium isn’t on this list, because I’ve played about an hour of it and haven’t yet been hooked by it. But I’ve heard enough about it to be convinced that it is 1000% a game for me and something I need to get to immediately. They shouted out Marx and Engels at the Game Awards! They look so cool! I want to be their friend! And hopefully, a few weeks from now, I’ll desperately want to redact this list to squeeze this game somewhere in here.

Alright, he’s the actual list:

10. Amid Evil

The 90’s FPS renaissance continues! As opposed to last year’s Dusk, a game I adored, this one takes its cues less from Quake and more from Heretic/Hexen, placing a greater emphasis on melee combat and magic-fuelled projectiles than more traditional weapons. Also, rather than that game’s intentionally ugly aesthetic, this one opts for graphics that at times feel lush, detailed, and pretty, while still probably mostly fitting the description of lo-fi. In fact, they just added RTX to the game, something I’m extremely curious to check out. This game continued to fuel my excitement about the possibilities of embracing out-of-style gameplay mechanics to discover new and fresh possibilities from a genre I’ve never been able to stop yearning for more of.

9. Ape Out

If this were a “coolest games” list, Ape Out would win it, easily. It’s a simple game whose mechanics don’t particularly evolve throughout the course of its handful of hours, but it leaves a hell of an impression with its minimalist cut-out graphics, stylish title cards, and percussive soundtrack. Smashing guards into each other and walls and causing them to shoot each other in a mad-dash for the exit is a fun as hell take on Hotline Miami-esque top down hyper violence, even if it’s a thin enough concept that it starts to feel a bit old before the end of the game.

8. Fire Emblem: Three Houses

I had a lot of problems with this game, probably most stemming from just how damn long it is - I still haven’t finished my first, and likely only, playthrough. This length seems to have motivated the developers to make battles more simple and easy, and to be fair, I would get frustrated if I were getting stuck on individual battles if I couldn’t stop thinking about how much longer I have to go, but as it is, I’ve just found them to be mostly boring. This is particularly problematic for a game that seems to require you to play through it at least...three times to really get the full picture? I couldn’t help but admire everything this game got right, though, and that mostly comes down to building a massive cast of extremely well realized and likable characters whose complex relationships with each other and with the structures they pledge loyalty to fuels harrowing drama once the plot really sets into motion. There’s a reason no other game inspired such a deluge of memes and fan fiction and art into my Twitter feed this year. It’s an impressive feat to convince every player they’ve unquestionably picked the right house and defend their problem children till the bitter end. After the success of this game, I’d love to see what this team can do next with a narrower focus and a bigger budget.

7. Resident Evil 2

It’s been a long time since I played the original Resident Evil 2, but I still consider it to be one of my favorite games of all time. I was highly skeptical of this remake at first, holding my stubborn ground that changing the fixed camera to a RE4-style behind the back perspective would turn this game more into an action game and less of a survival horror game where feeling a lack of control is part of the experience. I was pleasantly surprised to find how much they were able to modernize this game while maintaining its original feel and atmosphere. The fumbly, drifting aim-down sights effectively sell the feeling of being a rookie scared out of your wits. Being chased by Mr. X is wildly anxiety-inducing. But even more surprisingly, perhaps the greatest upgrade this game received was its map, which does you the generous service of actually marking down automatically where puzzles and items are, which rooms you’ve yet to enter, which ones you’ve searched entirely, and which ones still have more to discover. Arguably, this disrupts the feeling of being lost in a labyrinthine space that the original inspired, but in practice, it’s a remarkably satisfying and addicting video game system to engage with.

6. Judgment

No big surprise here - Ryu ga Gotoku put out another Yakuza-style game set in Kamurocho, and once again, it’s sitting somewhere on my top 10. This time, they finally put Kazuma Kiryu’s story to bed and focused on a new protagonist, down on his luck lawyer-turned-detective Takayuki Yagami. The new direction doesn’t always pay off - the added mechanics of following and chasing suspects gets a bit tedious. The game makes up for it, though, by absolutely nailing a fun, engrossing J-Drama of a plot entirely divorced from the Yakuza lore. The narrative takes several head-spinning turns through its several dozen hours, and they all feel earned, with a fresh sense of focus. The side stories in this one do even more to make you feel connected to the community of Kamurocho by befriending people from across the neighborhood. I’d love to see this team take even bigger swings in the future - and from what I’ve seen from Yakuza 7, that seems exactly like what they’re doing - but even if this game shares maybe a bit too much DNA with its predecessors, it’s hard to complain when the writing and acting are this enjoyable.

5. Control

Control feels like the kind of game that almost never gets made anymore. It’s a AAA game that isn’t connected to any larger franchises and doesn’t demand your attention for longer than a dozen hours. It doesn’t shoehorn needless RPG or MMO mechanics into its third-person action game formula to hold your attention. It introduces a wildly clever idea, tells a concise story with it, and then its over. And there’s something so refreshing about all of that. The setting of The Oldest House has a lot to do with it. I think it stands toe-to-toe with Rapture or Black Mesa as an instantly iconic game world. Its aesthetic blend of paranormal horror and banal government bureaucracy gripped my inner X-Files fan instantly, and kept him satisfied not only with its central characters and mystery but with a generous bounty of redacted documents full of worldbuilding both spine-tingling and hilarious. More will undoubtedly come from this game, in the form of DLC and possibly even more, with the way it ties itself into other Remedy universes, and as much as I expect I will love it, the refreshing experience this base game offered me likely can’t be beat.

4. Anodyne 2

I awaited Sean Han Tani and Marina Kittaka’s new game more anxiously than almost any game that came out this year, despite never having played the first one, exclusively on my love for last year’s singular All Our Asias and the promise that this game would greatly expand on that one’s Saturn/PS1-esque early 3D graphics and personal, heartfelt storytelling. Not only was I not disappointed, I was regularly pleasantly surprised by the depth of narrative and themes the game navigates. This game takes the ‘legendary hero’ tropes of a Zelda game and flips them to tell a story about the importance of community and taking care of loved ones over duty to governments or organizations. The dungeons that similarly reflect a Link to the Past-era Zelda game reduce the maps to bite-sized, funny, clever designs that ask you to internalize unique mechanics that result in affecting conclusions. Plus, it’s gorgeously idiosyncratic in its blend of 3D and 2D environments and its pretty but off-kilter score. It’s hard to believe something this full and well realized came from two people. 

3. Eliza

Eliza is a work of dystopian fiction so closely resembling the state of the world in 2019 it’s hard to even want to call it sci-fi. As a proxy for the Eliza app, you speak the words of an AI therapist that offers meager, generic suggestions as a catch-all for desperate people facing any number of the nightmares of our time. The first session you get is a man reckoning with the state the world is in - we’ve only got a few more years left to save ourselves from impending climate crisis, destructive development is rendering cities unlivable for anyone but the super-rich, and the people who hold all the power are just making it all worse. The only thing you offer to him is to use a meditation app and take some medication. It doesn’t take long for you to realize that this whole structure is much less about helping struggling people and more about mining personal data.

There’s much more to this story than the grim state of mental health under late capitalism, though. It’s revealed that Evelyn, the character you play as, has a much closer history with Eliza than initially evident. Throughout the game, she’ll reacquaint herself with old coworkers, including her two former bosses who have recently split and run different companies over their differing frightening visions for the future. The game offers a biting critique of the kind of tech company optimism that brings rich, eccentric men to believe they can solve the world’s problems within the hyper-capitalist structure they’ve thrived under, and how quickly this mindset gives way to techno-fascism. There’s also Evelyn’s former team member, Nora, who has quit the tech world in favor of being a DJ “activist,” and her current lead Rae, a compassionate person who genuinely believes in the power of Eliza to better people’s lives. The writing does an excellent job of justifying everyone’s points of view and highlighting the limits of their ideology without simplifying their sense of morality.

Why this game works so well isn’t just its willingness to stare in the face of uncomfortably relevant subject matter, but its ultimately empathetic message. It offers no simple solutions to the world’s problems, but also avoids falling into utter despair. Instead, it places measured but inspiring faith in the power of making small, meaningful impacts on the people around you, and simply trying to put some good into your world. It’s a game both terrifying and comforting in its frank conclusions.

2. Death Stranding

For a game as willfully dumb as this one often is - that, for example, insists on giving all of its characters with self-explanatory names long monologues about how they got that name - Death Stranding was one of the most thought provoking games I’ve played in a while. Outside of its indulgent, awkwardly paced narrative, the game offers plenty of reflection on the impact the internet has had on our lives. As Sam Porter Bridges, you’re hiking across a post-apocalyptic America, reconnecting isolated cities by delivering supplies, building infrastructure, and, probably most importantly, connecting them to the Chiral Network, an internet of sorts constructed of supernatural material of nebulous origin. Through this structure, the game offers surprisingly insightful commentary about the necessity for communication, cooperation, and genuine love and care within a community.

The lonely world you’re tasked to explore, and the way you’re given blips of encouragement within the solitude through the structures and “likes” you give and receive through the game’s asynchronous multiplayer system, offers some striking parallels for those of us particularly “online” people who feel simultaneous desperation for human contact and aversion to social pressures. I’ve heard the themes of this game described as “incoherent” due to the way it seems to view the internet both as a powerful tool to connect people and a means by which people become isolated and alienated, but are both of these statements not completely true to reality? The game simplifies some of its conclusions - Kojima seems particularly ignorant of America’s deep structural inequities and abuses that lead to a culture of isolation and alienation. And yet, the questions it asks are provocative enough that they compelled me to keep thinking about them far longer than the answers it offers.

Beyond the surprisingly rich thematic content, this game is mostly just a joy to play. Death Stranding builds kinetic drama out of the typically rote parts of games. Moving from point A to point B has become an increasingly tedious chore in the majority of AAA open world games, but this is a game built almost entirely out of moving from point A to point B, and it makes it thrilling. The simple act of walking down a hill while trying to balance a heavy load on your back and avoiding rocks and other obstacles fulfills the promise of the term ‘walking simulator’ in a far more interesting way than most games given that descriptor. The game consistently doles out new ways to navigate terrain, which peaked for me about two thirds of the way through the game when, after spending hours setting up a network of zip lines, a delivery offered me the opportunity to utilize the entire thing in a wildly satisfying journey from one end of the map to another. It was the gaming moment of the year.

1. Outer Wilds

The first time the sun exploded in my Outer Wilds playthrough, I was probably about to die anyway. I had fallen through a black hole, and had yet to figure out how to recover from that, so I was drifting listlessly through space with diminishing oxygen as the synths started to pick up and I watched the sun fall in on itself and then expand throughout the solar system as my vision went went. The moment gave me chills, not because I wasn’t already doomed anyway, but because I couldn’t help but think about my neighbors that I had left behind to explore space. I hadn’t known that mere minutes after I left the atmosphere the solar system would be obliterated, but I was at least able to watch as it happened. They probably had no idea what happened. Suddenly their lives and their planet and everything they had known were just...gone. And then I woke up, with the campfire burning in front of me, and everyone looking just as I had left it. And I became obsessed with figuring out how to stop that from happening again. 

What surprised me is that every time the sun exploded, it never failed to produce those chills I felt the first time. This game is masterful in its art, sound, and music design that manages to produce feelings so intense from an aesthetic so quaint. Tracking down fellow explorers by following the sound of their harmonica or acoustic guitar. Exploring space in a rickety vessel held together by wood and tape. Translating logs of conversations of an ancient alien race and finding the subject matter of discussion to be about small interpersonal drama as often as it is revelatory secrets of the universe. All of the potentially twee aspects of the game are balanced out by an innate sense of danger and terror that comes from exploring space and strange worlds alone. At times, the game dips into pure horror, making other aspects of the presentation all the more charming by comparison. And then there’s the clockwork machinations of the 22-minute loop you explore within, rewarding exploration and experimentation with reveals that make you feel like a genius for figuring out the puzzle at the same time that you’re stunned by the divulgence of a new piece of information.

The last few hours of the game contained a couple puzzles so obfuscated that I had to consult a guide, which admittedly lessened the impact of those reveals, but it all led to one of the most equally devastating and satisfying endings I’ve experienced in a video game recently. I really can’t say enough good things about this game. It’s not only my favorite game this year, but easily one of my favorite games of the decade, and really, of all-time, when it comes down to it.

[imagineclaireandjamie]

anonymous asked: we know Claire usually just becomes more determined if someone tells her she isn't good enough to do something, but what if someone finally tells her something she's truly affected by? How do she and Jamie react / deal with it?

--

Modern Glasgow AU

Jamie turned off the screaming kettle and carefully poured hot water over a fresh teabag. Turning an idea over and over in his mind – how to pitch Lord John Grey’s three-book proposal to Rupert MacKenzie, his boss at Leoch Editions.

 John was a nice enough guy. His family had more money than God, and rather than be yet another bored member of the aristocracy, he’d decided to become something of an amateur historian, focusing on daily life in Britain during the Second World War. Three books he wanted to write – one about the children sent into the countryside for their safety, one about women on the home front while their men fought in Italy and North Africa and the Pacific, and the last about day-to-day life and survival in the midst of the Blitz.

 The man had fantastic ideas, to be sure – but his resume was terribly slim, just a few articles in cigar and hunting magazines. Jamie was convinced that John had what it took to focus and become a big-name writer. He just needed to convince Rupert.

 Which was why he had stayed home today – needing the peace and quiet of the flat to just mull it over and concentrate. He had one shot to pitch John – to help the eager man gain a foothold in his future. And he had to do it right.

 And with almost-two-year-old Faith and seven-month-old Bree dropped off at Murtagh’s flat for the day, Jamie and Claire’s flat was suspiciously quiet.

 Jamie sat back down at the kitchen table, steaming mug of tea in hand –

 - to watch his distraught wife crash through the front door, tears streaming down her face.

 Within a breath he was beside her. Catching her as she collapsed into him.

 “Claire! Are ye well? The bairn – ”

 Protectively his hand cupped the small two-month swell of their third baby.

 She shook her head against his neck, gripping him for dear life in the doorway.

 Not the bairn, then. But what? She’d left extra early this morning…

 “Did ye lose the patient, Claire?”

 She stiffened and pulled back a bit, red-rimmed eyes – still so beautiful – meeting his.

 “I made such a stupid mistake. Thank God I caught it myself – but everyone in the operating theater knew.”

 Gently he stroked her cheek. Thumbed away her tears. “Well, that’s all right, then – isn’t it? It’s no’ like ye havena made mistakes before.”

 She sniffed. “No – but not when Dr. Fentiman was in the room with me.”

 Jamie bristled. Dr. Fentiman had the best reputation at the hospital – perhaps even in all of Glasgow – for his experience and skill with open-heart surgery. He had healed everyone, from common people all the way up to celebrities and members of the nobility. He was one of the reasons why Claire had elected to stay in her position at that hospital, after her medical training concluded.

 The fact that he was almost unbearably misogynistic was the dirty secret that too many people seemed to happily sweep under the carpet.

 Claire had taken it upon herself to begin a secret diary, writing down specific dates and times when she had personally heard – or other female doctors and nurses and staff had heard – the doctor say incredibly demeaning things about his female patients, his female colleagues – anybody female in general.

 She cleared her throat. “I made an obvious but easily fixable mistake. I identified it right away, and announced it to the room. Along with my recommended course of action.”

 Jamie waited. Squeezed her hands.

 “He was coldly professional. And after I announced my recommendation, he just shrugged, and looked at me across the patient, and said, ‘Well, that must be what happens when “mommy brain” gets the best of you.”

 Fire rose within Jamie’s heart and limbs.

 “How dare he?” he hissed.

 Claire swallowed. “I was so flabbergasted – but the other people in the operating theater, they just carried on like nothing had happened. I had to work so hard to control myself to focus, to not be distracted for the sake of the patient.” She closed her eyes. “How does he always know what to say, to cut someone right to the quick?”

 “Are ye bringing up this nonsense again, Claire, about how ye fear ye canna be a good mother and work at the same time?” Jamie’s voice rose with passion. “Because if ye are telling me that that…ape of a man has brought all this crap back up again…”

 “I can’t help that I think of the girls, and this new baby, all the time. They and you are what’s most important to me.” Her voice sounded so far away, eyes still shut tight against the world. “You know I’ve been doing a lot of thinking, with this new baby on the way. How to balance it all. Whether I should be spending so much time helping other people rather than being with my own children.”

 Jamie set his jaw, wanting so badly to stop it – but patiently, silently, he let her speak.

 “And you know how I feel I’ve become more absent-minded since Faith was born. Christ, Jamie, we both can’t sleep at night just worrying about all of them sometimes. And now with this one, we need to move, and how will we be able to afford everything, and what if the birth doesn’t go well this time, and – ”

 “Are ye done beating yerself, Claire?”

 She sighed deeply. Almost resigned.

 “Will ye please look at me, mo nighean donn?”

 She did.

 He cupped her cheeks in his hands. Eyes boring into her.

 “I understand why ye feel the way ye do. We wanted our bairns for so long, didn’t we?”

 She hiccupped, and nodded.

 “They are well. They are more than well. They have so much love and support from the two of us, and Murtagh, and Jenny and Ian and everyone else. We have so many people who want to help us be successful, Claire.”

 “I know,” she sighed.

 “And please don’t get on about being lacking as a mother. Those girls love you more than anything.” He pushed up her shirt and lay his hand on the bare skin of her belly. “And this bairn too – think of all the precautions you’ve already taken to make sure the bairn is safe.”

 She swallowed. Eyes still bright with tears.

 “Do not let that bastard ever make you doubt yourself or your abilities. Can ye just stop for one second and reflect on everything you’ve been able to accomplish?”

 “I know. I know, Jamie. It’s hard to not get tunnel vision sometimes.”

 “Oh, love, I know.” He gathered her close to him, hand still on her belly. “Never doubt yourself. It kills me to see you doubt yourself.”

 “I love you,” she whispered against his skin.

 “Christ, Claire, how I love you.” He squeezed her so tight. “May I take ye to bed now? Just to show you? And to help you just let it all out?”

 She wrapped her legs around his middle.

 He bolted the front door and carried her to their bedroom.

 Sometime later they lay naked on their bed.

 Claire had thrown her left arm over her eyes, wanting to shut out the world and just feel the aftershocks of the mad, passionate, affirming love they’d made.

 Jamie had done yeoman’s work to help her let out all the anger and frustration and tension. Now he turned his head a bit and rested it on her hip, catching his breath, watching her body deliciously quiver and shake.

 “Are ye sure you’re only nine weeks along? Your belly was a bit smaller at this point, the last two times.”

 Feebly Claire groped with her other hand for an anchor on the bed – and she dug her fingers into Jamie’s hair, pushing him back. She felt his chuckle against her.

 And finally, finally he – she – needed a wee rest. Jamie scooted up the mattress, kissed her belly, and rested his head beside hers on the pillow, watching her sleepily smile at him.

 “Better?” he whispered.

 She sighed, so happy. “I’m going to take my notebook to Personnel. Get his ass fired.”

 Jamie grinned. “Good. You should.”

 She rubbed her nose against his. “You make me feel so powerful.”

 He shifted his body closer. Pressing his chest to hers. Darting a hand back between her legs as she threw one leg over his hips.

 “It’s because you are powerful, Claire. You have so much power within you.” He kissed her long and deep.

 “The power to heal.” Kiss.

 “The power to forgive.” Kiss.

 “The power to create life.” Kiss.

 “The power to love.”

 She laughed, and rolled him onto his back, and rose above him, and rejoiced.

[shark-myths]

3. Hold Me Tight Or Don’t

THEORY CONFIRMED: M A N   I    A IS A PETERICK RETROSPECTIVE

part 3 of shark-myth’s mania meta series

(See other posts about the singles from Mania here and here, and here and here)

Following the idea that the singles are time-stamped for certain eras of FOB, I think that sonically and based on other cues Hold Me Tight Or Don’t fits squarely in the modern era. More detail on why and lots of crunchy lyrics meta below the cut!

I never really feel a thing I'm just kinda too frozen You were the only one That even kinda came close I just pinch myself No longer comatose I woke up, no luck I woke up, no luck

Pinching himself, waking up—dreams are all over this album, dreams have been an important metaphor for the whole history of this band, I need to do some serious and intentional digging into this theme!

The verse links itself to Y&M, waking up on the wrong side of reality, and to Centuries, with the reference to being/feeling frozen. ‘I never really feel a thing’ has an obvious link to the themes in the song Novocaine, which was originally written for SRAR. It holds the iconic lines ‘this is our culture’ and ‘in the truly gruesome do we trust, I will always land on you like a sucker punch’ which both inspired merch for the AB/AP tour cycle. We know Pete liked this song enough to try to fit it on another album after it was cut from SRAR; we can guess it is a song that is important to him. Novocaine reflects the angrier half of the emotions expressed in Hold Me Tight—it’s the punch, it’s the result of all that distance sharpening Pete like a knife. This is a softer and more interactive, conversational expression of that theme: it’s saying, meet me in the middle. Hold me tight or don’t. (But if you don’t, I won’t be your favorite what-if—I will be your worst nightmare.)

And when your stitch comes loose I wanna sleep on every piece of fuzz And stuffing that comes out of you, you

I took too many hits off this memory

I need to come down

Okay, is this evoking MAD Winnie the Pooh vibes for anyone else? No? Just me? Okay then.

This isn’t the first time we’ve heard about stitches coming loose: Snitches and Talkers Get Stitches and Walkers, The Music or the Misery’s ‘I got my stitches stitched, I got my fixes fixed,’ The After Life of the Party’s ‘I’m a stitch away from making it, a scar away from falling apart.’ This is an image he’s been playing with for a long time. Do you think, here, it indicates waiting for someone else’s resolve to break? Pete’s written about himself falling apart for years, but now he’s eagerly waiting for someone else to crumble, unravel, spill out. Someone like PATRICK MAYBE???

 The other really significant thing here is the drug use metaphor. As I detailed excessively in my Peterick Primer powerpoint¸ Pete has a history of characterizing his own feelings for Patrick with the desperation of drug use. So in this song, ‘I got high again’ and ‘I took too many hits off this memory’ to me references trysting—when the two of them would have illicit sexual interludes, #trysttheory #forlife, and also his recursive, self-consuming obsession with rehashing those memories and not letting them go. This pulls up Boycott Love (detox just to retox) so strongly. It also pings on content like ‘a bad trip I couldn’t get off,’ ‘when I said I’d return to you I meant more like a relapse,’ ‘I want it so bad, I’d shoot the sunshine into my veins,’ ‘doing lines of dust and sweat off of last night’s stage just to feel like you,’ ‘I’ll be your favorite drug, I will get you high’ and my all-time favorite, that sweet sweet overlap between the drug metaphor and the Novocaine metaphor: ‘I just need enough to you to dull the pain.’

Hold Me Tightly or Don’t fits squarely in the drug use/love metaphor Pete’s so fond of.

 Another day goes by

So hold me tight

Hold me tight, or don’t

Oh no, this isn’t how our story ends

So hold me tight

Or don’t

 Just a brief note that Pete wrote ‘this isn’t how our story ends’ on his Gucci hoodie in fucking sharpie because he is the prince of trash and I love him. I got too high again Realized I can't not be with you Or be just your friend I love you to death But I just can't, I just can't pretend We weren't lovers first

Confidants but never friends

Were we ever friends?

The most immediate reaction I have to this verse is its contrast with Bang The Doldrums, which imo is a song about the Summer of Like with Mikey Way. Here, it seems clear he’s singing to a different person, just because he’s asking questions that he already answered about the other person in, like, 2007. ‘We weren’t lovers first; confidants but never friends; were we ever friends?’ He is plagued by the same definitonal/territorial issues he always has, in relationships. Pete Wentz is a liminal creature and he craves more than anything classification—but when he gets things hard, fast, labeled, he almost always loses them. He almost always lets them slip through the cracks.

 Also worth noting: when he’s too high on Patrick he realizes it’s absolutely insane to try to act like he can just be Patrick’s friend and not want all of him, not always be at least a little heartbroken that he can’t have it. I RELATE TO THIS SO HARD.

 Finally, the word pretend. See the Black Cards song End of Pretend for extra suffering, and of course Alone Together—‘let’s go back and play pretend’—and Wilson (Expensive Mistakes)—‘I miss the day when I pretend with you.’ SOBBING

'Cause I'm past the limits

The distance between us

It sharpens me like a knife Past the limits The distance between us It sharpens me like a knife The distance reminds me so much of the content in The Last of the Real Ones. This is it, this is the Real True stuff here. If anyone has that Mr. Crocker reaction image on hand you can toss it at me now, because that’s me, that’s my life, tryst theory tryst theory tryst theory.

  I could go on about the song forever and maybe I’ll have more to say after I’ve heard it a few more times! I’ll leave you with some parting thoughts on the video:

can we just talk about how much FUN everyone is having? And Patrick. Why. Why does he look like that. Why is he so fucking beautiful. I’m sweating.

Seriously, Patrick, S T O P

SMILEY JOE

SMILEY PETE

SMILEY ANDY

Did the grey washed-out doom skull turn to a gold skull through the course of the video? Because if that’s not a metaphor of Pete’s experience of loving Patrick what is

Did the skeleton’s suit remind anyone else of DOB-era Brendon Urie

boy I hope they worked with some actual people from mexico on this and it’s not the uncomfortable video equivalent of a white girl’s sugar skull halloween costume

 Check out my lyrics meta tag for more screaming! See you guys with new material soon.

part 0

part 1

part 2

[recentanimenews]

Anime in America Podcast: Full Episode 6 Transcript

  We may not be able to go to the movies right now, but at least we can live vicariously through anime history in the latest episode of Crunchyroll's Anime in America podcast. Read on for the full episode 6 transcript! 

  The Anime in America series is available on crunchyroll.com, animeinamerica.com, and wherever you listen to podcasts. 

  EPISODE 6: AT THE MOVIES: EVENTUALLY

Guest: Jerry Beck

  Disclaimer: The following program contains language not suitable for all ages. Discretion advised.

  [Lofi music]

  There is one name you HAVE to talk about when it comes to anime. A foundational influence on the entire medium and an enervating force in the animation market. A man without whom we may not even have the anime we know and love today.

  It’s not Tezuka, but good guess.

  When it comes to the world of animation, and honestly most media, all roads lead back to Walt Disney. The man who all the animators in Japan’s growing post-war industry were trying to emulate. Most prominent among them, the legendary manga author and Japanese national treasure Osamu Tezuka who truly lived up to Walt’s legacy both by popularizing the medium of animation and establishing many regrettable business practices still felt in the modern industry. 

  Disney’s beloved animated features were the envy of every studio on both sides of the Pacific and the pursuit of that special magic Walt brought to the silver screen was what kicked off the race to bring Japanese animation to America. So, I guess…we can start there.

  [Lofi music]

  In the ‘50s Toei Animation was basically the only major animation studio in Japan and had the stated intent of becoming “The Disney of the East.” Toei’s first 3 films, Hakujaden, Shonen Sautobi Sasuke, and Saiyuki were all released near the end of that decade and all stuck very closely to the Disney formula, retelling traditional folktales with colorful animation, plenty of cute animals, and, in the case of Saiyuki, musical interludes.

  Back home in the U.S., Disney was deep in a run of blockbuster releases with titles like Cinderella, Alice in Wonderland, Peter Pan, and, umm [cough] Song of the South. Just about every major studio was trying to figure out how to steal some of that thunder. Metro-Goldwyn Mayer was one such studio who considered Disney their rivals at the box office. If you wanna know how that turned out for MGM, uh, Disney acquired their parent company Fox in March 2019.

  It was never much of a rivalry to begin with. MGM put out a behind the scenes docu series called The MGM Parade aping Disney’s “The Magical World of Disney” series in 1955 and decided to close their animation department in 1957, the heads of which, a Mr. William Hanna and Joseph Barbera, would depart along with most of the staff to form the very successful Hanna-Barbera Productions. 

  So, what do you do when you want to compete with a company like Disney in animated features but don’t want to go to the trouble of producing any animated features? MGM became the first company to license and release a Japanese anime in the United States, premiering Toei’s Shonen Sarutobi Sasuke, retitled Magic Boy, in theaters in July 8th, 1961, winning a close race against Global Pictures and American International by only two months ahead their releases of Toei’s two other films, Hakujaden, retitled Panda and the Magic Serpent, and Saiyuki, retitled Alakhazam the Great.

  They didn’t do too great, which probably explains why between those three movies released in 1961 and Hayao Miyazaki’s debut in American cinemas in 1986, only 3 other anime made it to theaters in the U.S. 

  Not even Tezuka’s magic could break open the box office for anime in the ‘70s. His production company, Mushi Production, had two films, A Thousand and One Nights and Cleopatra: Queen of Sex that were both released early in the decade and flopped. In the case of the latter, Xanadu Productions’s attempt to sell the erotic historical drama as a porno probably didn’t help.

  The rest of the following two decades saw plenty of anime films being released in the West but only for direct to video releases with major Japanese studios leaning hard into this new market. Many U.S. distributors were now exploiting Japanese studios to animate their own cartoons, so many of the same era took on a sort of Western bend. Toei Animation in particular released a number of films during that period that seem pretty focused on replicating that Disney formula even more closely, using Western history and folktales as source material. Some of my favorite examples are The World of Hans Christian Andersen (originally Anderson Monogatari), Les Miserables (originally Jean Valjean Monogatari), 30,000 Miles Under the Sea (yes, miles), Animal Treasure Island, and even Puss n’ Boots (who became Toei’s logo) during the ‘70s.

  [Music from “Toei Logo History” plays]

  In 1986, Hayao Miyazaki finally appeared in the American scene. If you haven’t heard of him… how the fuck not? How is that possible? I don’t, I don’t understand. Often referred to as the Walt Disney of Japan, Miyazaki is the primary creative force of what would become the internationally renowned Studio Ghibli which we’ll get into a bit later. Their first film Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind was created before the studio even had a name, wowing American audiences with its beautiful art and epic story involving environmentalist themes... kind of. Well not really, actually. Manson International and Showmen Inc. got their hands on the movie and cut it up so bad you couldn’t really call it a Miyazaki work anymore. I mean, they didn’t, they changed everything. They changed the title to Warriors of the Wind, [Clip from 1985 commercial for Warriors of the Wind] renaming Nausicaa to “Princess Zandra” and doing their best to make it an action movie while cutting out any of the environmental themes at the core of the narrative by cutting out a whole 22 minutes of the film. Then they drew up a He-Man ass poster with a whole squad of dudes and a pegasus that were not even in the movie.

  [Lofi music]

  Enter Streamline Pictures.

  Co-founded by Jerry Beck and Carl Macek. Each already working to spread the good word of anime, the two were disappointed in early dubs and brought a new philosophy to the localization game with Streamline. 

  Do. Not. Mess. With. It. Don’t do that. For your own good. 

  Beck: We were quite proud of them, because we had a theory on how to do this, which was to use the original music and effects tracks, not cut anything, uh and to do the dubs as accurately and as correctly as we possibly could, with the best actors we could get. Our model was the Warriors of the Wind, meaning we were going to be everything that movie wasn’t. We were going to be the opposite of Warriors of the Wind. 

  That was the man, Jerry Beck himself. The formula was simple, arguably a lot less work than completely changing a movie to shoe-horn it into some western film archetype, the two-man company began visiting Japanese studios… or rather their Los Angeles offices since every major Japanese studio had one of those in the 1980’s, and asking for dubbing and distribution rights.

  Both passionate anime fans, the two had a ton of knowledge of emerging anime titles and an interest in bringing many of them over which larger studios would have passed up for dumb reasons like “profitability.”

  Beck: We literally made a checklist that we got all the films. We wanted Fist of the Northstar, we wanted Wicked City, we wanted Vampire Hunter D, we wanted Castle of Cagliostro, we wanted- you know, we wanted Lensmen, but I’m not sure why, I actually know why at the time, but that’s such an odd film. So, but we ended up getting them all.

  After handling the theatrical screenings of the Mangum Dub of Castle in the Sky, Macek secured a deal with Japanese publisher Tokuma Shoten to dub future titles, including My Neighbor Totoro and Kiki’s Delivery Service. After that they went on a tear, where they were basically the only company in the game theatrically releasing anime from 1985 to 1995, averaging almost 2 movies a year in a period where non-Streamline anime films could be counted on one hand with room to spare. 

  I cannot emphasize enough how much Streamline did for anime in America. They even helped the medium properly break into American television in the early ‘90s alongside Central Park Media by contributing to Syfy’s anime block which aired Dominion Tank Police, Robot Carnival, Project A-Ko, Vampire Hunter D, and another film brought to the U.S. by Streamline which could be considered their greatest achievement.

  Akira. Or AH-ki-ra [first syllable stress], if you’re a purist.

  Beck: Marvel Comics was printing an adaptation of Akira and we knew about the film [Requiem from Akira plays]. And at that point, that was like, of course like ‘88 or so, you know there were already bootleg VHS copies for sale at comic book conventions and stuff. But we looked at it and went “oh my God, this is like state of the art, you know? This is really a big deal for film.” And I don’t even think we had seen it on the big screen or anything, we just knew we wanted it, if it was gettable. And the good news was that the Akira Committee was kinda desperately wanted it to be shown in America, and they had gone to Paramount, Universal, Fox, everywhere, trying to get somebody to pick up Akira, and nobody would because it was too violent. The idea of that kind of thing being shown in America was, you know, unthinkable. So we were like “we’ll do it!” 

  Akira was a cultural and technological achievement in animation. It set a new record number of colors used in an animated feature at 327, 50 of which were unique colors created specifically for the movie. You could fill a mega size box of Crayons with colors that only exist thanks to Akira, which is insane. The film consisted of 160,000 frames, clocking in at almost 3 times the average for an animated feature of that same length. It was also the most expensive anime film ever produced at the time with a budget of 1.1 billion Japanese Yen. As Jerry said, it was also intensely violent, considered graphic in Japan and especially in America which still considered animation almost wholly a realm of children’s entertainment. The Akira Committee was desperate to get it in American theaters. And obviously, there were difficulties. 

  After being collectively shot down by Hollywood, the Akira Committee was approached by the small and unproven Streamline with a unique offer: if the Akira Committee could put up the cost to dub and distribute, Streamline would give them 100% of the profits up to a cap before beginning to collect their own percentage.

  And it was not easy. Jerry had to negotiate for months with an agent from the committee who basically watched their operation at work to make sure they knew what they were doing. Then Streamline was given an opportunity to prove themselves by hosting a screening of the film in the Spreckles theater at ComicCon. Only once they pulled that off did the committee ink the deal, but with one demand. They were adamant about getting a quality dub and wanted someone who had, at the very least, been nominated for an Academy Award to manage it. At the very least. Carl Macek had one of his associates search around and eventually they landed on Sheldon Renan, who had previously received recognition from the Motion Pictures Association of America for a documentary short just to fit the bill. 

  [Akira versus Kaneda, english dub clip]

  And it was a hit. Screenings pulled in profits on par with or even exceeding critically acclaimed live action foreign films. Streamline established their reputation in the industry on the success of Akira, and the next step was home video, which turned into another battle for Streamline as one of the principles of the committee, Kodansha, was intent on selling out the rights to a large distributor based on Akira’s success in theaters. Still they were turned down and once again, despite not even being a home video distributor, Streamline made an offer.

  Beck: We said to them, you know, we’re gonna get you the reviews, you’re going to get reviews in every town. We got Siskel and Ebert, they reviewed it; we got it on Entertainment Tonight, we got it everywhere. And so we were doing all this stuff, the idea though, the goal, was to get all this coverage and then they would go, they would instead of going to movie studios they would go to the home video people and try to convince them to put it out on home video. No home video distributor wanted it. Nobody. Because there was nowhere, we found out later, there was no place in a video store, then, for them to put it. They couldn’t put it in the kids’ cartoon section, the idea of putting it in science fiction, I don’t know why that didn’t work, that should’ve worked, but they probably had Heavy Metal there, but they for some reason that was not a thing that- they didn’t, there was nowhere to put what we call “anime” in a video store at that time. They did say to us “you gotta have a bunch of them. Five, six, seven, and we’ll create a shelf, we’ll put a shelf in our stores.” This is what Blockbuster said, this is what Suncoast said. So we ended up, we ended up, what we did was we got the vid- they couldn’t sell the video rights, so WE got the video rights, even though we weren’t a video company! And so we ended up putting out Akira on VHS. We couldn’t sell it in video stores. So we ended up- and there was no Ebay or Amazon, that didn’t exist, so we actually went to comic book stores and obviously it was the perfect thing to do, because Akira was a comic book, it was manga, and Marvel was printing it. And we ended up selling them to comic book stores and we- it worked. It was exclusive to comic book stores, it was the only place you could get it. Oh my God, we sold… thousands. 

  Streamline hung up its hat with the release of Space Adventure Cobra in 1995 but many of their partners who handled the theatrical distribution like Tara Releasing and Fathom Events continued without them. Just as TV anime was headed toward its own watershed moment, the field for anime movies broadened in the second half of the ‘90s. Manga Entertainment brought over Ghost in the Shell with Palm Pictures in 1996. VIZ Media broke into films by capitalizing on Ranma ½’s growing popularity with the release of Ranma ½ the Movie: Big Trouble in Nekonron China alongside CBS theatrical in 1998. 

  And then the big one came. 4Kids partnered with Kids WB and dropped Pokemon: The First Movie in 1999. And to call it a smash hit for anime movies would be an understatement. [Pokemon: The First Movie, trailer 1 plays] I saw it. Because my dad bought the VHS from one of those dudes that sold bootlegs in the Kroger parking lot. The one he hand recorded himself. You remember those? We had ‘em. 

  The movie hit $10.1 million in the box office on its opening day, which was a Wednesday, by the way. Over its opening weekend it would climb to $31 million and eventually cap out at $85 million at the box office which has remained the record anime movie in the United States for 20 years. For a moment in time it even claimed the best opening weekend for an animated feature full stop until Toy Story 2 dropped two weeks later. [Pokemon Bumper - 2000] Plastic-faced newscasters began referring to its opening weekend as “Pokeflu,” since so many kids mysteriously called in sick from school the same day.

  “Pokemania Comes to America - 1999, ABC News”: Pokemon is now in full mania! And others may follow suit, when a new Pokemon movie hit theaters this fall, spurring even more… Pokemania.

  "’Pokémania’: 1999 MSNBC Pokémon News Report”: School officials are finding that Pokemon cards are responsible for fist fights and the constant trading is not only distracting kids from classwork, but turning the playground into a black market. 

  And ya know what? Given recent events, Pokeflu sounds very racist. But that’s what they called it. 

  Anime was still a few years off from its Oscar grab and even today hasn’t fully reached acceptance as a respected form of media, but the Pokemon movie proved there was lots and lots of money to be made from anime if you played your cards right. Although it’s difficult to tell if that's what 4Kids and Warner Bros did. Each subsequent Pokemon movie pulled in roughly half what the previous managed. Pokemon: The Movie 2000 scored a total box office of $43 million and Pokemon 3: The Movie grabbed $17 million before the whole thing fell off a cliff. Pokemon 4Ever pulled in only $1.7 million and Pokemon Heroes didn’t even crack $1 million. Mind you, this still gives Pokemon the 1st, 2nd, 6th, and 19th highest box offices of anime films in the U.S., so, you know, what do I know?

  Pokemon’s explosive success at the box office inspired other attempts to grab some of that Disney demographic. Fox was the first to jump after the 1999 success of the first Pokemon movie with Digimon: The Movie which I’m definitely gonna talk about in a little bit. 4Kids itself also tried to recapture that Pokemon magic as the franchise was showing diminishing returns with Yu-Gi-Oh! The Movie: Pyramid of Light.

  Unfortunately the Pokemon movies were also a return to form for crazed American producers with scissors. 4Kids onigiri erasure in Pokemon TV series is notorious on its own, but its former president Norman Grossfeld also feared the Pokemon: The Movie movie would do poorly as written. Casting Mewtwo as a sympathetic antagonist confused and angered the profit-minded execs who produced content for children despite probably never having children of their own. They cut out the prologue describing Mewtwo’s past as the victim of genetic experiments and made edits to portray him as a generic villain and Mew as… like some kinda savior, messiah-type thing?

  [Lofi music]

  Fox, in its desperation to compete with the success of Warner Brothers’s Pokemon looked to Digimon, spawning the creation of the cinematic chimera Digimon: The Movie. You see, there wasn’t actually a movie called Digimon: The Movie in Japan, but several short Digimon films titled Digimon Adventure, Digimon Adventure:... um… Children’s War Game?, and Digimon Adventure 02: Digimon Hurricane Landing!!.

  The first two had been directed by the acclaimed Mamoru Hosoda and the last by Shigeyasu Yamauchi. I really want to emphasize these were three different movies utilizing different art styles and creative processes with the last one even focusing on an almost entirely different cast of characters. So, like Harmony Gold before them, they took a knife to all three features, leaving more than 40 minutes on the cutting room floor to create a bizarrely paced, three-arc, Digimon feature before slapping on a mostly ska soundtrack and Angela Anaconda short in the beginning [Angela Anaconda part of the Digimon Movie]. The movie premiered in 2000 and was panned by critics but walked away with a $9.6 million box office, making it the 9th most successful anime film in the States, so I’m sure the producers cried all the way to the bank while the rest uh… learned that evil pays.

  Yu-Gi-Oh! The Movie: Pyramid of Light came later in 2004 and might be an even more bizarre feature than Digimon, since 4Kids produced the movie rather than just chopping it up after the fact. In fact, it might be the first anime film to be screened in the United States before Japan, releasing in August while Japan didn’t get the theatrical release until November. Somehow the Japanese version was still a full 14 minutes longer than the U.S. release. It’s not really clear whether Studio Gallop made the film whole cloth and 4Kids cut it down, as was their usual practice, or if they added some extra content after the fact that 4Kids didn’t want for the American audience. I guess we’ll never know.

  Since it was produced for the U.S., we did get the bonus of having all the cards appear like the actual game complete with english text, even if it sometimes appeared upside-down. Pyramid of Light also had ska music unfortunately. Umm… the 2000s was a, it was a big time for ska. Once again the movie was panned, finding a place in Rotten Tomatoes’s 100 worst reviewed films of the 2000s, but became the 4th most successful anime film in the U.S. ever, with a $19.8 million box office.

  But that is enough about box office for now. Now we can talk about home video releases.

  [Lofi music]

  If you’ve ever tried to catch an anime film in theaters, you’ve probably noticed that even today they usually have extremely limited showings. At Streamline’s peak, they weren’t the only company localizing anime films, they were just the only ones making a push to put them in theaters. Other publishers were going for the straight to video route, but there was one serious hang-up. Blockbuster just didn’t give a shit. 

  Streamline’s own Akira release had limited theatrical showings, meaning they were leaning heavily into home video and the movie really beat the odds, finding success in the two markets mom and pop video stores and comic shops. Bootleg fansubs of Akira had been in circulation for months before the film’s official release, so Streamline sweetened the deal by including actual original animation cels with the VHS which seems less an intelligent marketing gimmick and more of a giveaway of cultural artifacts in retrospect. Those people are probably very wealthy, now. It was probably also unnecessary. Akira’s home video success was a moment in anime history in many ways, but it was also an exception. 

  The direct to video market would never find the same success in comic shops that Akira had. You could find anime in privately owned video stories but even then they were being crowded out by mainstream outlets like Blockbuster who were much less interested in putting anime on their shelves, especially of the famously violent variety like Akira. For anime to get its foot in the door, it would need a new face that was not only child friendly but also insanely popular. I know I just talked about Pokemon’s breakout success, but its home video wouldn’t hit the shelves until 2000. Instead, the man who would help open Blockbusters’s blue and gold doors for other anime in the late ‘90s was one of its creators who most famously hates home video. Hayao Miyazaki.

  Miyazaki was already making the rounds in the U.S. via World Pictures and Streamline dubs of a few of his films which was probably fine by him, as he seems to resent the idea of people  watching his movies in any setting other than a theater, but Ghibli producer Toshio Suzuki had his sights set on dominating the animation industry and Disney just happened to be in the market for international films. Former Head of Disney Home Video International Division and current CEO of Herbalife Nutrition Michael O Johnson inked a deal with Ghibli in 1996 granting global distribution rights to their entire library of films. 

  This was thanks in large part to the effort of Disney’s Steve Alpert who went so far as to film a mini-documentary in Disney studios to basically show Eisner and his fellow suits that every single person they employed to draw moving pictures was already a diehard fan of Miyazaki’s work. Alpert himself would jump ship to Ghibli to work alongside Suzuki battling his former employer at every turn to make sure they kept their promise about not cutting Ghibli films.

  Probably expecting Ghibli’s next film to be another Totoro or Kiki, Disney was shocked to see limbs flying off people's bodies in Princess Mononoke and pushed the distribution under their Miramax label to distance themselves from its morally objectionable content, which I can only assume came from a place of deep ignorance of both their own company’s history and the work of their HR department. Also the notion that um… just producing the same thing under a different wing of your company makes you any less morally objectionable… is also morally objectionable. 

  Unfortunately the Harvey Weinstein-lead Miramax was dead set on changing everything about Mononoke that it possibly could. And with Ghibli holding onto an iron-clad contract giving them final say, this transformed into all-out warfare with Miramax trying to weasel in every change they could and Alpert flying over the Pacific to nip that shit in the bud, only ending after Weinstein himself was twice humiliated in public. And to that I say: Good. First in a now iconic story wherein Suzuki presents him with a unsharpened prop sword at a meeting full of Disney and Miramax suits while shouting “Mononoke-hime NO CUT,” and then when Miyazaki and crew left in the middle of their own post-premiere party to carefully consider the suggestion Weinstein had been shouting at Alpert to chop 40 minutes off the movies runtime or they’d “never work in this town again.” And then several years later, the entire entertainment industry said “no, YOU’LL never work in this town again!” 

  Although Streamline had been following our modern era’s best practice of not messing with the source material for about a decade, Ghibli’s “no cuts” policy was one of the first pushes in that direction to come from Japan and doubtless helped to normalize the practice… eventually. As I said before, 4Kids and Fox raked in millions spinning out heavily edited films but Buena Vista bending the knee to Ghibli’s demands, the lasting cultural impact of Ghibli movies, and an increasingly saturated market of TV anime untouched by an editor’s razor eventually pushed the industry in the right direction. After all, no edited anime movies ever have been nominated for Oscars, but more on that later.

  Despite being a global hit, Princess Mononoke didn’t really take off in the way Disney had hoped, only pulling in $2.3 million in its first eight weeks. But it recovered in… that’s right, home video releases! Boom. Got ‘em. They also started churning out actual VHS releases for other Ghibli titles like Kiki’s Delivery Service and My Neighbor Totoro and then, when Streamline’s rights expired, Disney produced their own lavish dubs for DVD re-releases featuring a star-studded cast with voices like Dakota Fanning, Kirsten Dunst, Patrick Stewart, and uh, Shia LeBeouf. What?! Blockbuster was finally persuaded to start moving in anime content when Disney’s Buena Vista came knocking and the doors were officially open for more anime content.

  Ghibli was way ahead of its time in many ways and rights management was no exception. Or at least Miyazaki’s insistence on the purity of a theater-only movie-viewing experience had some unintended benefits. A mere two years before 4Kids would pull off the heist of the century screwing Shogakukan and Nintendo out of millions in profits in their deal of the explosively popular Pokemon franchise, Ghibli would deny Disney digital rights to their works in their contract. Disney was fine with that, the prevailing belief among executives being that those rights were basically useless. Ha-ha! Imagine that.

  Disney wasn’t interested in digital and if Disney, the most powerful media rights holder in the world, wasn’t going to push into that new sphere of distribution, then it was doomed to failure. Which, looking at the titanic size of Netflix who recently acquired streaming rights to the Ghibli Films worldwide minus Japan and the U.S. and is now staring down the barrel of Disney’s own competing streaming service Disney+ and Warner’s HBO Max, is kinda funny in retrospect.

  [Lofi music]

  Buena Vista might’ve helped Ghibli in another way though. Let's talk about when anime won an Oscar. No one’s quite sure how it happened, really. Not that Spirited Away didn’t deserve it. It definitely did. It’s a good movie. It’s just, uh, this was the first and only of Miyazaki’s works to have even been nominated. Ever. In fact, no anime films before Spirited Away in 2003 received a nomination for best animated film in the Academy Awards, and only The Tale of Princess Kaguya has been nominated since. Maybe the stars aligned, maybe it’s because Spirited Away’s stiffest competition in the 75th Academy Awards was Lilo & Stitch and Ice Age [Spirited Away Wins Animated Feature: 2003 Oscars], maybe it's because Spirited Away carried extra credibility by being released in the U.S. under the auspices of Disney. Whatever the cause, anime, via Ghibli, had grabbed a piece of critical acclaim in the American entertainment industry that seemed otherwise determined to ignore it.

  Not that Hollywood hadn’t noticed anime long ago. Two of America’s most celebrated directors, Christopher Nolan and Darren Aronofsky, have both committed what can charitably be described as borrowing from a certain Japanese director by the name of Satoshi Kon to build their respective, uh repertoires. Aranofsky heavily borrowed story, themes, and imagery from Kon’s Perfect Blue in his film Black Swan and even recreated the bath scene from Perfect Blue in his Requiem for a Dream. Guess which two of those three movies were nominated for Oscars? Nolan’s Inception collected four Oscars in 2010 which contained several scenes that anime fans got a sneak preview of 3 years before in the limited screening of Kon’s 2007 Paprika. And also in that one uh, Donald Duck comic strip. 

  Uh, look, I’m not trying to roast anybody or anything like that. Maybe Aronofsky. But you just can’t talk about Spirited Away grabbing an Oscar without giving mention to not just anime films, but foreign films in general which Hollywood seems to find value in but only when filtered through one of its own creators. So what does this get us? It gets us Scarlett Johansenn playing a woman named Motoko Kusanagi and an Oldboy remake that completely misses the point. 

  Trust me when I say the only good adaptations by Hollywood are Doug Liman’s Edge of Tomorrow and the Wachowski sisters’s Speed Racer. You heard it here. If you want a new Ghost in the Shell movie just open your wallet, call Mamoru Oshii, and ask him to make another one. Stop with this weird shit. 

  Although many films were in uncertain licensing situations until GKIDs started recollecting them, the works of visionary directors like Mamoru Hosoda, Satoshi Kon, and Isao Takahata have managed to find their way to American theaters over the years without edits and a minimal delay that recently has been reduced down to less than a year. Not quite simulcasting, but given none of them have had a real breakout hit, it’s long strides to think that fans have had consistent opportunities to watch their movies in theaters over the years and purchase them in home video.

  [Lofi music.]

  Since Miyazaki’s most recent retirement, Ghibli underwent a sort of identity crisis on what to make of their studio or even if they would continue making films at all. During this period many of their creators left to join other studios, some of them even forming their own Studio Ponoc itself dedicated to continuing Ghibli’s traditions of movie making. Ghibli itself was just kinda there until very recently, when the aforementioned GKIDs secured the rights to Ghibli within the U.S. and entered into a deal to stream the entire Ghibli library on HBO Max. Ghibli also recently announced that it's nearing the release of TWO new films, Miyazaki’s own How Do You Live? and the studio’s first entirely CG feature film Earwig and the Witch, by Miyazaki’s son, Goro. 

  And I know what you’re thinking. I thought the same thing until I saw the images and I will just say I’m definitely gonna go see it.

  And y’know what? That’s great for Disney, but Ghibli’s downtime created an existential dread within the anime industry and fandom, because there wasn’t any other big name director to replace Miyazaki in the collective consciousness of America as “THE anime director,” or as Mother’s Basement on YouTube would say “the new Miyazaki,” until only recently...

  Makoto Shinkai has been directing anime movies, arguably the SAME anime movie, since 1998 and has been a well known quantity in the fandom since his 2002 film Voices of a Distant Star. But something changed in 2016. His movies are almost always about young people in love separated by time, space, circumstance, or supernatural circumstance, but each iteration has refined his technique until one finally reached critical mass. Your Name became the most successful Japanese film of any kind in multiple countries, including China, and Japan’s second most successful anime film domestically behind Spirited Away. Didn’t even crack the top 10 in the U.S., though.

  And no Oscar.

  That said, Your Name was a resounding success in the United States, now surpassed by Shinkai’s newest film Weathering with You last year. Each pulling in $5 million in the box office is no small feat for anime films. Appearing more frequently in mainstream outlets may be slowly growing Shinkai into a household name which, matched with his own formula for successful films, could be the beginning of another single director legacy that will pull the industry up with it.

  Now although we’ve seen less explosive releases since the children-focused anime movies around the turn of the millenia, it’s hard to describe our past decade of the 2010s as anything but a stateside renaissance for anime film. While the collective box office brought in by anime in the U.S. during the 2000s completely dwarfs that of the ‘90s, there weren’t all that many more films making it over. The real difference in the marketing and theater availability after Pokemon provided a proof of concept. Although there’s been roughly 50% more anime films coming out per year in Japan in the 2010s than the 2000s, the yearly average with theatrical releases in the states more than doubled between the decades.

  And while TV anime are slowly being consolidated into a few select streaming services, more distribution companies have entered the industry to put anime films in theaters. Nowadays GKIDs, Fathom Events, and Eleven Arts have an almost monthly churn of screenings that actually top the daily box offices… on their Wednesday showings. Wednesday. Still, given the movies are airing in limited theaters and showings, the numbers are very good. Just last year Dragon Ball Super: Broly had the 3rd most successful box office for an anime film in the U.S. at $30 million.

  Sounds like we’re in a pretty good place. Well, it’s all- I mean, it’s all relative. We have doubled the number of movies we license every year since last decade, but American theater-goers still only get the opportunity to watch maybe half of the anime films that come out every year in Japan. Meanwhile, there are an average of over 200 TV anime produced every year and, with rare exceptions, every single one is licensed and distributed in the United States across a number of streaming services. Next up, we’re going to talk about anime on TV and how it's grown into one of the largest, fastest, and most sophisticated localization industries in the world.

  Bye!

  [Lofi music]

  Thank you for listening to Anime in America, presented by Crunchyroll. If you enjoyed this, please go to Crunchyroll.com/animeinamerica to start your 14-day free trial or just log on for some free, ad-supported anime. 

  Special thanks to Jerry Beck. You can find more of Jerry’s work over on cartoonresearch.com along with the history of Streamline Pictures written by Fred Patten, one of the co-founders. 

  This episode is hosted by me, Yedoye Travis, and you can find me on Instagram at ProfessorDoye or Twitter @YedoyeOT. This episode is researched and written by Peter Fobian, edited by Chris Lightbody, and produced by me, Braith Miller, Peter Fobian and Jesse Gouldsbury. 

By: news+feed@crunchyroll.com

[devhak22]

Discourse on Inequality (1755)

By Jean-Jacques Rousseau

As translated by Franklin Philip

The book itself is a mildy dry read, but not terribly so as it brings forward much fodder for thought, and plenty of insight into the realm of the political and social situation of western Europe in the 1700s. It is notable the that 'Notes' section at the end is very intreguing and well worth the read.

Rousseau presents a convincing and logical order for the devolpment of human cultural evolution, though, understandably, due in part to technological limitations, lacks a concrete timeline, much of which has been substantiated by modern scientific and historical studies. There are definitely ideas that are likely to be precursors to the theory of evolution presented throughout this piece of literature, especially as concerning the connections between humans and great apes.

In the language and worldview of his time, Rousseau describes those living in a more natural state as 'savages', but also shows a longing to experience what he seems to perceive to be a more innocent time of cultural history, before the growth of modern civilization created vast inequalities among its members. The cyclical nature of society does not return it to that of the natural society, but rather in turn brings economic decline to the majority, including primary producers (farmers), so that luxuries are increasingly reserved for the most wealthy, which escalates social and economic declines for the majority, expanding the wealth gap.

In essence, supposedly civilized persons live lives of servitude and control, while those under a more natural inclination live a life of independence and peace. And to put one in the situation of the other would bring about despair. Much of the luxuries provided in the 'wealthy' societies may cause more anxiety than they're worth. Keep in mind there is a difference between the provision of clean drinking water, and the acquisition of fancier and expensive, but ultimately unnecessary, novelties.

Much of the views expressed in this book are quite relevant to the turbulant political and economic situation at present, but there is hope, as appropriate social systems integrate to improve equality, including access to health and education, across the board.

Notable quotations:

'...as he was well aware, nostalgia for the simple life is itself a byproduct of advancing civilization.' ~ Patrick Coleman, Introduction, p. xi.

'The concept of perfectability provides a key to human history, but it is not connected to a goal, either of biological adaptation or of moral perfection.' ~ Patrick Coleman, Introduction, p. xx.

'Indeed, it seems that I am obligated to do no evil to my fellow man, it is less because he is a rational being than because he is a sentient being—a property that, because it is common to both animals and men, should at least give the beast the right to not be needlessly mistreated by man.' ~ Preface, p. 18.

'When we think of the good constitution of the savages—at least of those we have not devestated with our hard spirits—and realize that they have almost no afflictions except wounds and old age, we are much inclined to believe that the history of human ailments could be written by tracing that of civilized societies.' ~ Part I, p. 30.

'...the first man who made himself clothes and a lodging was supplying himself with things that were hardly necessary, for he had hitherto done without them and it is hard to see why as a grown man he could not tolerate the kind of life he had tolerated since his infancy.' ~ p. 32.

'I would observe that the peoples of the North show generally more industriousness than those of the South because they are less able to forego this attrubute, as though nature had chosen to equal things out by giving men's minds the fertility it denied the soil.' ~ p. 35.

'Let us bear in mind how many ideas we owe to the use of speech, how much grammar facilitates and trains the operations of the mind. Let us think of the incredible exertion and infinite time that the original invention of language must have cost. Put these thoughts together, and you may imagine how many thousands of centuries were required for the successive development of all the operations of which the mind is capable. ~ p. 37.

'Which was more necessary, a previously established society for the invention of language, or a previously invented language for the invention of society?' ~ p. 42.

'Now I would like to have it explained to me what kind of misery could exist in a free being whose heart is at peace and whose body is healthy: I ask what kind of life—civilized or natural—is more apt to become unbearable to those who experience it? Around us we see people almost all of whom complain of their existence and even several of whom renounce it as much as possible; and divine and human law together do little to arrest this disorder. I wonder whether anyone has heard of the free savage who ever dreamt of complaining about his life or killing himself?' ~ p. 43.

'...not only does education determine a difference between minds that are cultivated and those that are not, but it increases the difference between cultivated minds in proportion to their cultures...'~ p. 51.

'When we compare the great diversity in upbringing and ways of life that prevail among various classes in the civil state with the simplicity and uniformity in animal and savage life, where every creature eats of the same foods, lives in the same manner, and does exactly the same things, we understand how much less the difference between man and man must be in the state of nature than in society, and how much natural inequality must have increased in the human species through the effects of institutionalized inequality.' ~ p. 52.

'The founder of civil society was the first man who, having enclosed a piece of land, thought of saying, 'This is mine', and came across people simple enough to believe him. How many crimes, wars, murders and how much misery and horror the human race might have been spared if someone had pulled up the stakes or filled the ditch, and cried out: 'Beware of listening to this charlatan. You are lost if you forget that the fruits of the earth belong to all and that the earth itself belongs to no one!'' ~ Part II, p. 55.

'Each person began to gaze on the others and to want to be gazed upon himself, and what came to be prized was public esteem. Anyone who best sang or danced; he who was the most handsome, the strongest, the most skilful, or the most eloquent came to be the most highly regarded, and this was the first step to inequality and also vice.' ~ p. 60.

"Where there is no property, there is no injury." ~ Locke, p. 61.

'Finally, in all men a consuming ambition, the burning passion to increase one's relative fortune, less out of real need than to make oneself superior to others, inspires a dark propensity to harm each other, a secret jealousy that is all the more dangerous because, to strike out from a more secure position, it often assumes the mask of benevolence; in short, we have competition and rivalry on the one hand, and antagonistic interests on the other, and always the hidden desire to gain some advantage at other people's expense. All these evils are the first effects of property and the inseparable escort of nascent inequality. ~ p. 66.

'All ran headlong for their chains in the belief that they were securing their liberty; for although they had enough reason to see the advantages of political institutions, they did not have enough experience to foresee the dangers. Those most capable of predicting the abuses were precisely the ones who counted on profiting from them; and the wise ones saw that men must sacrifice one part of their freedom in order to preserve the other, just as a wounded man has his arm cut off to save the rest of his body.' ~ p. 68-9.

'...according to the law of nature, the father is the child's master only as long as his help is needed and that beyond this point the two are equals, the son becoming perfectly independant of his father and owing his elder only respect and not obedience, for gratitude is clearly a duty to be owed and not a right to be demanded.' ~ p. 73.

'It thus seems to me certain that governments did not originate in arbitrary power, which is only the endpoint in the corruption of governments, one that eventually brings them back to the very law of the strongest that they were first introduced to remedy; but even if they did begin this way, such power is inherently illegitimate and hence could not serve as the basis for rights in society, nor, hence, for the established inequality in society.' ~ p. 75-6.

'The magistrate cannot usurp illegitimate power without finding operatives to whom he is forced to yield some part of it. Furthermore, citizens allow themselves to be oppressed only so far as they are impelled by blind ambition; and fixing their eyes below rather than above themselves, they relish domination more than independence, and agree to wear chains for the sake of in turn imposing chains on others. It is difficult to reduce to obedience a man who has no wish to command, and the most crafty politician could not succeed in subjugating men whose only wish was to be free; inequality, however, readily spreads the craven and ambitious souls, ever ready to run the risks of fortune and almost indifferent about whether they command or obey, depending on which is more advantageous to them.' P. 79.

'It is not without difficulty that we have managed to make ourselves so unhappy.' ~ Notes, p. 94.

'...man in society does not have a moment of respite.' ~ p. 96

'Luxury is a remedy much worse than the evil it claims to cure, or rather it is itself the worst of evils in any state, whether small or large; and feeds the crowds of lackeys and poor people it creates, luxury crushes and ruins the farmer and the townsman.' ~ p. 99.

'...we know that most animals, and man is no exception, are naturally lazy, and take no more pains than absolutely necessary.' ~ p. 105.

'However much individuals come and go, it seems that philosophy does not travel, so true is it that the philosophy of one nation is ill-suited for another.' ~ p. 107.

[housetohalf]

STC Mackers thoughts below. LONG POST

I think this was the least magical Macbeth I’ve ever seen. Liesl Tommy chose to set it against modern North Africa, (Libya? but not specifically) and remake the Witches and Hecate into Western semi-government white war profiteers. I don’t hate the concept behind that, because the witches spin everything into place, pop up to prod the story along (one played the bleeding soldier who told Duncan of Macbeth’s bravery, another joined the murderers out for Banquo. What I bumped on was how specific their language is that the mental gymnastics required to equate the text to the story device i think kept the whole show at arm’s length for me. For example the typical cauldron scene became an intel power point presentation to Hecate, and the animal parts became the honorifics for various soldiers, with the cast’s face intermingling with AP photos of soldiers, conflict, and suffering (which made me feel kind of uncomfortable. The last image that stayed up the longest was of several people burning from a gasoline fire and it’s like....that’s a real person who is dead or seriously disfigured, and they are just part of the stage picture now?) 

And smushing text with concept was an ongoing struggle throughout the piece. I’m fine with saying Scotland or Yorkshire or Cawdor when you don’t mean the actual place, but saying sword when you’re brandishing a knife smaller than a dagger after you threw away your gun is a little harder for me for whatever reason. Maybe because knife combat implies and requires a different kind of intimacy with your enemy?

Casting a woman as Duncan is fine (the Macbeth I did in college did that) but changing her title and pronouns to Queen and she/her put a weird kind of patriarchy bent on it (Donalbain was also a woman, Malcom was a man), like did Hecate and the witches target this monarchy because there was a female head of state? 

Macduff reacting to to the death of his wife and daughter (again, gender switching made for a different emotion) was...yikes fam. I have a weird affection for that moment, because like any family that has someone who is serving in the military, it’s the soldier you worry about dying. His wife and child are almost painfully comfortable with Macduff’s death, to the point of assuming he’s already dead anytime he’s gone, a coping mechanism designed to live with grief as a constant thing. Macduff on the other hand doesn’t live that way. His family is untouchable, and always there when he goes home. Imho, hearing word of their deaths should shatter him so that he lose all manly composure, becomes a being of pure emotion. What I got instead of someone who wanted to react that way, was trying to hold it together because of either a directing choice or acting choice, and failing equally at both. (also there was a really weird moment when one of the male witches as a murdered is with Macduff’s daughter, this tiny girl of maybe 8 in a head scarf and school uniform, who is already bleeding out of a knife wound to the back and he stands her up and holds him against his kneeling body her as she dies, and I legitimately had a blood-chilling thought that he was going to rape her. He didn’t, she just died and he carried her offstage, but there was a weird note of it. I guess I’m so used to hearing about child rape in times of chaotic conflict. Which just goes to show how fucked up things are.

There was kind of a heavy-handed sound choice: pretty much anytime Lady M had a Bad Thought(tm) you heard the wail of an infant, and that underscored the whole “Out Damned Spot” scene. One downfall of making the witches real, if superpowerful, people is that when Lady M calls upon the supernatual element to unsex her here and other moments when people reference the supernatural, they felt kind of random and ineffectual. And there was a laughably bad sound choice, at the end when Macduff drags Macbeth offstage to behead him, you hear Macbeth’s screaming until it is literally cut off with a very wet, squelching sound. And while that may be what a beheading actually sounds like, without the visual component it was almost funny, like squeezing and then popping a balloon covered in dish soap. (the severed head itself was cool af tho)

They employed my least favorite lighting device (which I also saw in their Othello last season) which is making the asides and soliloquies to the audience and given their own special light that darkens the general action and throws harsh focus on the speaker standing downstage and facing the audience. I feel like it just screams, “Hey! He’s saying stuff the other people can’t hear so pay attention because it will justify his actions later! You understand Shakespeare now because you are very smart!” and it’s annoying to because if you’re doing a modern interpretation where doing an aside or soliloquy in the classical way (of just like, cheating out a bit, subtle physicality shifts of the speaker, and the general acting not reacting) doesn’t work for whatever reason, modern television has already taught us how to know when someone is saying something just to the audience, from reality tv confession rooms, to Jim-looks-at-the-camera takes, to the documentary-ish style of The Office generally and Parks and Rec, to vlogging, to Carrie’s narrated articles on Sex and the City, to whatever creepy shit Kevin Spacey does on House of Cards. Confiding in the audience is an ancient and and evolving device, it doesn’t now need abrupt lighting shifts to send it home. (Also as an SM, I hate calling them because timing is everything lol)

Bad blood. Like bad prop blood. And bad combat work. I don’t know whether there were issues with the tensile strength of the blood bags but I saw more than a few people fiddling with their costumes to get them burst after the fact. I was sitting pretty center center in the house and I saw knife lunges that were comically off-mark, punches feet away from landing. At no point did the combat feel real, except the playfight between Fleance and Banquo, the two of them had good chemistry, given how brief their scenes together are.

Generally, I felt as though everyone was playing the show. Like, there were no stakes, no tension, everyone was playing a foregone conclusion, “I say ‘is this a dagger which i see before me” because I’m supposed to because this is Macbeth and I am Macbeth and this is the scene we’re doing now so this is about how freaked out I am by what’s happening so I’m hallucinating this ok let’s go” which may just be performance fatigue of being a Friday night towards the end of the run. (that may also explain the combat stuff)

High points: Lady M’s queen costume was basically its own character and absolutely stunning, the coronation scene felt perfectly uncomfortably decadent in a way where the nicest things in this world are from the 70s, the singing was the right kind of discordant and “ethnic” sounding, the raked stage and structural lighting filled the cavernous theatre well, the Porter of course (if your Porter is bad nothing can save you)

Overall, i didn’t hate the concept Liesl Tommy was trying to do, and I get wanting to use the play to discuss who benefits from chaos, how do you live with grief, what it’s like to live in a rapidly shifting world. I just think some parts of it really missed the mark or felt forced.

[michaeljtraylor]

Anarchy in the GDR | The Nation

German punks, Nov. 29, 1984. (AP Photo / Andreas Pechar)

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Burning Down the Haus, a new book by journalist Tim Mohr, details how a small group of East German teens kickstarted a movement that contributed to the fall of the Berlin Wall. The 1970s were oppressive years in the German Democratic Republic; there was no space, literal or philosophical, to live outside the system, let alone criticize it. Upon hearing The Clash and the Sex Pistols via forbidden British military radio broadcasts, a handful of young people began to embrace punk mentality, dressing differently, and shaking the foundations upon which the authority had been built. And despite the East German secret police, or the Stasi’s best efforts, the movement grew throughout the 1980s as punks developed their own little world, disconnected from society. Punk was the soundtrack to the million-person demonstration on November 4, 1989. A few days later, the Wall came down.

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Mohr, who arrived in Berlin in 1992 and now lives in Brooklyn, learned about this history and has spent 10 years documenting it in as much detail as possible, recognizing, too, the parallels with modern society.

William Ralston: You write that your initial belief in this story was reinforced after you returned to the USA and “recognized an ominous echo in developments in your own country.” Can you elaborate on these parallels?

TM: The book went from a story that was just fascinating to something that was actually disturbingly relevant because of the parallels I began to see in our own society—the revelations from Snowden about the scale of mass surveillance here in the US, the militarization of our police forces, and the treatment of peaceful protesters here. I think we can’t dismiss comparisons between what’s happening in the West to what happened in the Eastern bloc; when our own mass surveillance was revealed, people were quick to say, “but you can’t compare this to the Stasi”—but you can!

I’m not suggesting our situation is completely analogous, and I don’t think the solution to whatever needs to be remedied in today’s society is the same as what’s described in the book—it won’t be solved by passing out a bunch of guitars to teenage rebels and telling them to make anti-government music—but I think this story shows what is possible. It offers a concrete historical example of a grassroots youth movement that made significant changes in its society. Maybe the lesson to be learned is something they used to spray as graffiti: “Don’t die in the waiting room of the future.” Meaning, you can’t sit around hoping for change to happen; you have to make change happen.

WR: The GDR in the late 1970s was not a stable state. It was struggling with a generational transition and the economy was ceasing to function. Why was it vulnerable?

TM: One of the reasons the hardliners of the GDR were able to stay in power for so long was because the GDR didn’t have the type of conditions that we associated with the Soviet Union. There were no food shortages; everybody had modern conveniences, televisions, refrigerators; jobs; booze. I think this created a level of complacency that allowed the regime to stay in power longer. Given halfway decent conditions, the majority of people seem to just go along with the system, regardless of what the system is. The punks were among the first to challenge it in a direct way. They did so by addressing the regime’s failure to practically implement its ideology, an ideology, incidentally, that most of them shared—they were critics of the dictatorship from the left. Punks were among the loudest in making these points, and I think one of the most important roles they played was steeling the resolve of other opposition groups.

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One of the great unknowns in opposition circles was what would happen if you ran afoul of the security apparatus and the punks learned exactly what happened. They showed other opposition-minded people that it was possible to resist and survive the Stasi. They were subject to the harshest crackdown of any opposition group, including serving the longest jail terms. To then come out and keep fighting encouraged everyone else.

WR: They conquered their fears.

TM: Yes, and as a result they were a big component of the early street protests, and these protests created a boomerang effect. In the GDR, as in most societies, conformity ruled the day. But when the protests started to spill out onto the street and into the public eye, ordinary people—who might otherwise be inclined to go along—were confronted with state-sanctioned violence that made many of them cringe. It just snowballed from there. You have the early activists who take things out on the street and they have to convince other opposition groups, and then it’s a matter of converting a significant enough part of the population to your cause. It took the 1989 mass demonstrations for the Wall to fall—but the seeds were planted several years prior in street protests in which punks were indeed central.

WR: And it was in the Protestant churches—which opened their doors to offer shelter—that punks began to rub elbows with other opposition groups.

TM: Yes, the churches were important. Though as an institution, the church didn’t necessarily wish to nurture these groups; many leaders were actually opposed. But individual clergymen took in these so-called enemies of the state. Once they were under the roof of the church, the punks began interacting with different activist groups, who began to take the punks more seriously.

WR: You write in the book that the Stasi were “paranoid” about the punk scene from early on. What made punks such a threat? 

TM: From a western perspective, it’s not easy to see why a bunch of kids with bad haircuts could be so threatening. The deeper I dug into this, it became clear to me that the Stasi were correct in their fear. They were trying to keep people on a pre-ordained path and people, like the punks, who were influencing youths to stray off that path, were threatening. It’s also important to remember that punks expressed their opposition whenever they were in public. Other forms of protest were often done behind closed doors, whereas the punks were so in your face; their music was loud and even just their appearance on the street was a form of opposition. That’s how the movement grew so quickly: teenagers saw punks and they seemed cool because it was so daring and exciting that many people joined them. Many of these kids, as with the first generation of punks, originally joined for non-political reasons; it was just cool.

WR: You write in the book that the state’s paranoid behavior “backfired.” Can you explain this? 

TM: I think this is true all through this battle. To begin with, the punks just wanted to wear these clothes and cut their hair this way, and then suddenly they were being hassled by the police on a daily basis, being kicked out of schools or apprenticeships, having their IDs confiscated. This turned the movement political. And even the smallest signs of rebellion were so impactful;  every time people stepped off the path, it was a political act, even if, like the early punks, they themselves didn’t conceive of it to be so. Then, later on, ordinary citizens began to recoil at the level of violence against protestors, significant parts of whom were punks. The security forces kept making the same mistake.

WR: It feels that there was absolutely nothing that the Stasi could have done to stop this. They tried threats, locking up, even removing people.

TM: I think part of this is that the punks had such a fundamental criticism. A lot of the other groups were nitpicking over this or that policy, focusing on specific issues like military training in schools, and they fancied themselves negotiating with the government. They wanted to try to change the government whereas punks wanted to cast off the system, to destroy it. During the fight itself, this was certainly a strength.

I think it’s also important to note that while the Stasi saw the punks as a significant threat, they also tried to blame it on the West. As late as 1989, they listed punk as the top youth problem and yet, in the same report, they say that the scene is being manipulated from the west by punks who had been expatriated, which was completely false. They seemed to overlook that it had become an organic eastern phenomenon.

WR: Do you perceive punk music to have inspired punk’s dissidence, or was it just a vehicle for it? 

TM: I think it’s a bit of both. Almost everyone spoke of feeling as if a switch had been thrown inside them when they first heard punk. For the majority of them, I think the thrill was musical: the bassist in Planlos told me that he loved The Ramones because it was the only record he’d ever heard with no slow songs. Only a few of them immediately connected it with anarchist philosophy. But the music also offered an avenue of self-expression that they had never really thought of before and became a soundtrack to rebellion.

WR: The mass protests grew in the late ‘80s. Why do you think law-abiding citizens, who violently opposed the punks to begin with, went on to join the movement? 

TM: If we knew the mechanism then we could recreate it elsewhere. Conformity is natural and most people abide by the system and don’t like people who make trouble. I think a lot of people had the feeling that there were things wrong with society but once the protests began to reach a certain mass, when they were in open view on the street in the second half of the ‘80s, then more of the general public joined because the state-sanctioned violence gave credence to their own misgivings about how things were run.

WR: What started off as a resistance eventually cast off the dictatorship. Do you think this the movement exceeded punk’s ambitions? 

TM: Even though the Stasi were paranoid about the punk scene, I don’t think anyone felt it was the start of a type of opposition that would bring down the dictatorship. One of the things that the punks were brilliant at was carving out space, both physical and philosophical. They took over all these empty buildings and by the late 1980s untethered themselves from the economy, when some were able to operate in the grey areas by selling homemade jewelry and clothing. At that point they were no longer dependent on being part of society. As opposed to British punks, who railed against “No future,” the East German punks had seen their problem as “Too Much Future.”

Their whole lives were planned out for them almost from birth and it felt stifling. Once they were able to at least partially wrestle control of their futures, they had probably already gotten farther than many of them realistically expected. Though of course there were some who were always quite convinced they’d succeed in toppling the regime. 

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[illyriantremors]

Beneath the Stars Bonus Chapter II: Among the Stars

This the second Moriel bonus chapter for my Modern AU fic. I hadn’t originally intended to write it, but @acotarshipweek gave me the perfect excuse to for Moriel Smut Week. Day 3′s prompt is First Time. Thank you for including this prompt!! And thank you to @kitashiwrites for reading it over and providing endless support and encouragement while you play video games. I love you!!

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Summary: Morrigan and Azriel have been together for several months now, but they still haven’t made the all important decision to sleep together... yet. Feeling nervous about it, Mor drags Feyre with her on an unexpected shopping trip to help her work out some of the details. When her and Az sit for their portraits later that same day as part of Feyre’s AP exam project, things escalate quickly between them afterwards as they realize they both might finally be ready for the next step. NSFW

Among the Stars

“Don’t worry, it’ll be easy! And all of the paints are non-toxic, I promise. Everything will wash out.”

I listened to Feyre chat merrily on about my afternoon portrait session ahead of us for her AP Studio Art exam. Feyre hadn’t told any of us much about what to expect for these portraits and Rhys was keeping his lips sealed shut with the details except to say he hoped Feyre didn’t give us quite the same treatment he had received - whatever that meant. All Feyre would say was to pick a time to come by the gallery she worked at and bring a change a clothes, something we wouldn’t mind getting dirtied up in.

Naturally, I panicked a little. I didn’t like not having a roadmap for where I was going or what I was getting myself into. Which was probably why it was a good thing Feyre didn’t know where I was dragging her to as we walked around the mall. She might not have agreed to come if she’d seen today’s roadmap.

Even seeing the store some fifty feet ahead of us as we wove between the crowds, our shoes clicking on the shiny tile floors, I was worried I might have trouble getting to not just wait outside.

But damn it, I had a problem only Feyre and a credit card could fix. So one way or another, I was getting her in that store.

“The paint’s mostly going on your skin anyway, so it won’t be hard to wash up,” Feyre said by way of finishing.

“Ooh, do I have to get naked?” I asked adding a little shimmy and batting my eyelashes at her.

She snorted. “Why do you look far too happy about that idea?”

“You know you want me.” I feigned a dirty gesture and she shook her head, looking away, but not without a smile.

“Save it for Az, please.”

She threw the comment out right as we came to the doors of the store behind today’s hidden agenda.

“Well actually,” I said, stopping at the doors. “I sort of could use your help with that.”

Feyre shot me apprehensive look wrought with discomfort. “I don’t like the sound of that.”

“Don’t worry, it’s nothing horrible! I just need your womanly wisdom on a few choice ideas is all.”

“Okay, well… Express is a few doors down. You can tell me in the dressing room after you help me find a dress to try on.”

Instantly, a huge grin overtook my face. I clicked the heels of my patent leather pumps together while my hands danced nervously in front of me. Feyre’s entire face fell.

“Oh shit, what is it?” she asked.

“Nothing!”

“Don’t you nothing me, Morrigan. You’ve got that - look.”

“What look?!”

“The look! Where your lips smile so wide, it’s like I can count every tooth you’ve ever had. It’s the look you have when you’re trying to con me into something, so spill. What aren’t you telling me?”

“Nothing I haven’t already told you! Gosh, Feyre. You make me out to be some horrible devil of a friend.” I pouted in jest, but Feyre was having none of it, raising one wary eyebrow until I caved. “I really didn’t lie. I asked you to help me shop for some new clothes today.”

“What exactly does that have to do with your love life?”

I bit my bottom lip trying to stifle the smile of infamous the look! fame as I turned my head towards the bright pink doors of the Victoria Secret on my right. Feyre followed my gaze and her jaw slowly sank open.

“Are you kidding me?!” she gaped. “You told me you wanted to go dress shopping for graduation. Not to help you pick out lingerie for to wear with your boyfriend! Which… I don’t even… no.”

“Please! Please, please, please, Feyre!” I was dancing on the balls of my feet like a five-year-old. “Technically, I never lied to you. I just casually mentioned new clothes and graduation in the same sentence.”

“Ha! As if a bra and a g-string qualifies as new clothes.”

“Feyre,” I grabbed her hand, mustered my biggest brown puppy dog eyed look in the arsenal, and fired. “You are my best friend. My very best friend in the history of forever. After two years with all boys and Amren who never deigns to come out in the sun, I finally have a girl to help me kick all these boys into shape.” I lowered my voice so no one shopping around us would hear the next part. “I think Az and I really close to finally sleeping together and I… want it to be special. For both of us.” Feyre’s chest deflated.

Bingo.

“So would you…” I nodded towards the store, into which I could see the glorious displays of lace and straps I was dying to dive into, “you know, help me be an awesome girlfriend pretty pretty please with a cherry on top and Chipotle on me for lunch because you love me???”

“Alright, alright! I will help you, but you don’t need to buy me Chipotle. Let’s just-”

I pounced, attacking her with the viciousness of my arms drowning her before she could say another word. I may have gotten a tad carried away because I kissed her on the cheek for good measure. Feyre simply tugged my arm and dragged me inside. “Come on,” she hummed, but I knew she was happy.

We looked first at the separates, all manner of lace and silk from low rise panties to push-up bras in every color and cut imaginable. But it all just seemed so… unexciting. I already had enough thongs to last me a lifetime and I had a feeling Az would appreciate the sensuality of something that left a little more to the imagination.

Which was why Feyre and I quickly ended up in the dressing room with no less than ten different one piece ensembles between us, four of which she held outside the door for me since the attendant would only let me take in six sets at a time. I quickly shed my top and skinny jeans along with the boring set of underwear I’d brought (but totally kept the red heels on because they were gonna look bangin’ with several of the pieces I’d chosen) and started slipping into the first new set of lingerie. An emerald green lace number that pushed my ass into the middle of my back in ways I never knew I needed.

“Morrigan,” Feyre said on the other side of the door as I hooked myself together.

“Mhm…”

“I thought you and Az had already slept together.”

“Oh.” I giggled and took a moment to admire myself in the mirror, fanning my hair out around me to imagine how it might look if Azriel saw me like this, if he’d like it. “Yeah, he and I decided that first night in the tent we were gonna wait.”

“Really?”

“Why do you sound so surprised?”

“It’s just…” I tensed as she paused, wondering if I’d really given off that impression and starting to feel a little hurt that she might think I was that shallow - or that it should matter in the first place. But then Feyre carried on. “I could have sworn I heard you giggling like the love-struck idiot you are upstairs the morning after Starfall.”

Relief had little more than a second to sink in before I had that dressing room door flying open in her face. “I knew you two were together on Starfall! I knew it, I knew it, I knew it!” Feyre blushed a bright shade of crimson.

I told Cass when he’d dropped Az and I off that night and we saw Rhys’s car in the driveway that Feyre was more than likely downstairs with him. It had been an effort not to go to Azriel’s knowing what Feyre and Rhys were likely doing… but my house didn’t have chaperones mulling about for the evening given that Rhys’s dad was an inconstant workaholic, so inside and upstairs it was.

But we didn’t sleep together. Not then. We had only just started dating and even though the night was set up perfectly for it, in the end… we just laid awake in my bed, snuggled up for most of the night talking. We didn’t even take our clothes off.

Well, Az did remove his dress jacket, but I stole it to wrap myself in anyway before he tucked us both in with a blanket.

I walked fully out of the stall and let Feyre get a good look. “So, whaddya think?”

She made a squishy face and shook her head. “Phenomenal as ever. You make me wish I had four years of cheer under my belt to pull that little number off, but I don’t think the green is quite, well, you.”

I stood up straighter. “What do you think is me, Feyre darling?”

“I wish you wouldn’t call me that, especially while we’re lingerie shopping.”

“Why’s that, Feyre? Thinking of someone in particular?” I stuck out my tongue and cackled like a madwoman as I disappeared back into the dressing room. “I’ll try the red one next.”

“You always pick red, though!”

“Then be helpful! If you’re gonna turn down ideas, then you need to suggest some of your own.”

There was a brief silence while I waited and then finally Feyre offered, “Got anything blue?”

I perused my options and found one. A deep cobalt color that could have moved heaven and earth itself - and hopefully my boyfriend - it wasn’t what my eye would have been drawn to first. I think I’d even grabbed it on a whim, but it was worth a shot. “Got it!” I called to Feyre.

“So seriously,” she said when I was halfway through switching garments. “You two never… not even once?”

“Oh Feyre, you’re adorable.” Damn, this blue lace was soft. “No, we haven’t had sex, though not for lack of wanting to. But… our entire relationship has taken so much time, it didn’t feel right to rush it. And at first - shit, just holding his hand was practically enough to make me cream myself. Everything has been so different compared to past boyfriends who just wanted to feel me up and get the show over with before some stupid breakup. But with Azriel… it’s like every little touch and look actually means something. I don’t know if this would sound weird to you or not-”

“Never.”

The immediacy of her interjection and support bloomed a sweet smile on my lips. “With Azriel, I feel like I’m experiencing everything the way a person’s supposed to. It’s like the first time all over again, but better. Right. Because it’s with him…”

There was a long pause as I stood in front of the mirror feeling the way the material clung to my skin. It was a corset combining lace and satin, with a sheer overlay on the breasts so that my nipples peaked through some.

“Are you… are you going to say anything?”

“Show me the blue one,” Feyre replied and there was a surety to her statement that boosted my confidence.

“Are you sure? This one’s a little more revealing than the last.”

“Hit me with it.”

I unlocked the door and walked out, leaning against the frame with one ankle wrapped around the other as I balanced in my pumps. Feyre looked me up and down in barely no time at all before she’d made her call.

“That one.” And there was no question to it as she smirked and grabbed the remainder of my options from the dressing room so I couldn’t change my mind. I spun around to look at myself in the mirror again and knew it too. She was absolutely right. The way the corset hugged my hips, accentuated my breasts - wasn’t a dorky little teenager anymore, but a real woman, and I looked incredible.

“Azriel isn’t going to know what to do with himself,” Feyre said. “I hardly know what to do with myself.” I looked at her in the mirror with a little curious playfulness. She shrugged. “What? You look hot. I ain’t afraid to say it.”

I knew I’d brought her for a reason.

The bathroom at Feyre’s art gallery was glorious. My opinion of public restrooms was forever altered just from washing my hands in the stone basin sinks adorned with the sweetest honey-scented hand soap I’d ever come across. As I straightened the elegant chignon I’d fixed my hair into as per Feyre’s request, I vaguely wondered if her boss needed an extra receptionist for the summer because I could get used to this kind of bathroom treatment.

Azriel was already inside the studio getting set with Feyre for his portrait while I changed and I wondered if making him go first hadn’t been a mistake because when I walked into the employee studio, Feyre immediately pulled me aside with a fistful of the plain white button up shirt I was wearing (also per Feyre’s request).

“He’s tense,” she said. I scoffed.

“He’s Azriel. When is he not tense?”

Feyre frowned. “When he’s with you - that’s when. Can you do something?”

“Like what?”

“I don’t know. Just…” She eyed my Starbucks and shrugged. “Drink your mocha, giggle obnoxiously, make goo-goo eyes at him. Just be the perky little brat we all know and worship, yeah? But don’t touch him.”

“Yes, Madame Secretary,” I said with a mock salute. “I will do my best to shoot sunshine out of my ass and make Azriel not tense.”

“That’s my girl.”

I followed Feyre further into the studio and saw Azriel looking at the broad white expanse of the canvas behind him. He was perched on a plain wooden stool, his hands gripping the seat between his thighs, wearing plain denim jeans and… nothing else. His hair was a floppy mess around his ears.

I stopped dead in my tracks at the sight of him. Az without a shirt was something I would never get used to and I’d only seen the spectacle a handful of times. His chest was beautiful, allowing the scars of his hands to weave up his arms and disappear into a solid expanse of skin that I could have kissed for days.

It was a little surprising to me he’d agreed to go shirtless for this. His scars were something he normally shied away from showing off, they made him too self-conscious. Even when we were together a bit more intimately, there were times I found him pulling back from touching me, or if he did touch me, it was always so sweetly like he was afraid he might get his scars on my skin and ruin me.

But I loved his scars and I made it a point to soothe and love them every chance I could. They were a part of him - my Azriel. I was glad they were allowed to be included for his portrait.

“Azriel?”

Feyre’s simple question was quiet, but it was enough to drag Az’s attention away from the canvas. His eyes glanced over Feyre for the briefest of moments before they spotted me and the relief that washed over him in that single second our eyes hooked on each other… it brought my Starbucks cup darting up to my mouth to hide the grin that was spreading.

“Called it…” I heard Feyre mutter as she mixed a last touch of paint before walking over to my boyfriend. “Do you mind if I paint you? I promise it won’t be much and it will all come off. And you can tell me to stop if I do anything you don’t like.”

Azriel took one look at Feyre before his eyes whipped back to me and I nodded casually, offering him the shyest of smiles, the one I reserved only for him. “Okay,” Azriel said.

And just like that, Feyre began to paint. And it was… sort of fascinating.

Within a few strokes, she switched to a soft makeup sponge and blotted dark clouds of greys and blacks along his skin in a way that pulled the sharpness of his bone structure out to the forefront. But where it all should have looked jagged and intense, Azriel just looked… rather elegant.

Beautiful, even.

His hazel eyes shined beneath the darkness of the paint that Feyre dragged downwards into little clouds of smoke along his neck and collarbone, stopping just above his pectoral muscles.

“See, that’s all,” she said when she was finished. “Now just sit tight for a bit. I’m gonna work on the canvas and then I’ll take your photo.” She turned to me and added, “You can talk if you want. Just no-”

“Touching, I know, I know.”

I couldn’t be annoyed though. There was something magical about watching Feyre work, how focused she was. She just had this instinct about her that was bringing out all these new wonderful facets of this man I loved that I could have watched go on and on forever.

Loved.

I still hadn’t told him I was in love with him. I didn’t doubt he knew it. He knew it everyday, but he also knew how badly I was trying to work up the nerve to tell him and I think he liked that for once he wasn’t the one battling a ridiculous amount of nerves. So he waited patiently for me, gave me every opportunity and never scoffed once as I fumbled my way through it. That was the best part about being with Azriel, though: he let me be me in my own way on my own time, something my family had never once given me.

It made me love him more. And I thought he loved me too.

I just had to figure out when I was gonna say it. I wanted some sweeping romantic gesture, like a candlelit dinner or moonlit walk on the beach, typical cinema cheesiness, but just something that was more than the usual date night to make it special.

We didn’t really talk as Feyre finished up on the canvas. I realized she was almost done and that in a moment, I’d lose this sight of Azriel for who knew how long and I couldn’t have that. So I pulled my phone out and held it up at just the right angle that I could snap a few pictures while pretending to text. He’d die of embarrassment if he knew I was immortalizing him like this, but to hell with it. He was gorgeous and I was utterly shameless.

“Picture time!” Feyre chimed, wiping her hands free of paint and reaching for the insanely legit Nikon that must have cost the studio a fortune, but would undoubtedly kick my stupid smartphone snaps out of the water.

I drew back to give her space to work and she stepped in front of me, taking a few photos. But after a moment, she brought the camera down and tisked, stepping back aside. “Morrigan?”

“Hmm,” I said trying to sound distracted as I continued to text. And then I looked up and Azriel was staring at me. Just staring. I heard the click - just one before Feyre said, “Got it,” and Azriel was done. Which meant…

My turn!

My session was much quicker than Azriel’s. Feyre flecked my face and neck with spots of bright metallic gold paint that sparkled and shined in the light. I held the collar of my shirt down a tad so she could reach my collarbones too. She did a similar technique on the canvas. It was simple and not nearly as done up as Azriel’s, but Feyre told me she had her own art magic to work with the photos and I would understand when I saw the final portrait.

And just like that, I was done.

“You don’t need anything else?” I asked after Az and I had cleaned ourselves up.

Feyre set the camera down and connected it to the computer over the wifi. “Nope! You guys can clean up and peace out if you want. I’ll be here a while and besides, I don’t want you two peaking early and spoiling the surprise!”

I looked at Azriel who smiled down at me and took my hand. “Shall we?” he asked. There was a spark in his hazel eyes that I hadn’t quite seen in him before, something that made him hold on to me a little tighter, lean in just a little closer. I squeezed his hand in reply.

“Absolutely.”

“It’s a shame you had to wipe it off,” Az said in the car on the way home. Outside, the sun had started to set.

“What, the paint?”

“Mhm.” He nodded, his gaze intently fixed on the road as one hand gripped the steering wheel and the other rested around the back of my seat. His thumb just reached down far enough to brush against the back of my neck making me feel all warm and gooey inside.

“Why?”

“Because,” he said with a pointed attitude that it should have been very obviously why I should dress myself in paint day-to-day. “You looked exquisite.”

Too giddy to blush, I reached over and brushed against his own neck. With the way the sunlight streamed the through the window against his skin, Azriel looked radiant, a strong contrast to the boy in shadows and smoke from an hour ago.

“I could say the same thing about yourself, shadowsinger.”

Azriel lifted a sharp brow, turning onto our street. One of the many perks of dating Azriel was the fact that we lived next door. He was never far, never lost to me. Always waiting and close by if I needed him or he needed me, precisely the way it should always have been.

“Shadow… shadow what?”

I giggled and brushed my thumb over his neck as he was doing to me. “Shadowsinger.”

He parked the car on the street just in front of his house and killed the engine so he could turn in his seat to look at me. It was momentarily painful to feel his hand leave my neck so he could park, but a moment later he was taking my hand from his neck and pressing a kiss against the inside of my wrist.

“What on earth is a shadowsinger?”

“I don’t know I made it up.”

Azriel snorted with a small smile. “Of course you did.”

���That’s what you reminded me of today when Feyre painted you. All mysterious and phantom-esque with the clouds hanging about you. It was like you were singing to the shadows themselves.”

“Is that a good thing?”

“Of course! Azriel,” and this time, I took his wrist and applied my own lazy kiss, “my sweet, sexy shadowsinger.”

His eyes sparkled with night and for a second, he returned to being that same person Feyre had painted - powerful and elegant, rippling with the might of some other worldliness none of us knew about but him. But then his gaze softened, and a sly smile turned up the corners of his lips.

“You think I’m sexy, eh.”

“Every day. Now do me next!”

Azriel laughed. It was a sound I could have listened to for the rest of my life. Hearing that sound come sweeping out of him no matter how gentle or full it ever might be, was like being granted access to some divine secret in life, and I was hoarding as many of those secrets as I could get my hands on.

“Well you… you looked…” He stared off, refusing to meet my gaze as he tried to find the right words, and a faint pink color spread beautifully across his face. “Morrigan, you looked like a queen. Like the strong warrior who won her crown enshrined in gold and glory. You looked… positively radiant. A dreamer dancing in the sunlight.”

His eyes met mine as he finished his speech and my heart cracked open, my face breaking into a decadent smile just for him.

For Azriel - my shadowsinger.

I should have never let us be just friends for so long. I should have told him every day how much I cared for him, from the second I met him and it was all shy smiles and accidentally on purpose touches under the table and stolen glances after school.

Without warning, Azriel leaned forward and captured my lips with his in the tenderest of kisses. His lips were soft, applying the carefullest of pressure as we sat suspended in time for several long seconds that made my head explode. I wouldn’t have been surprised if the sun had finished setting and come back to rise again in the moments we sat their getting a gentle feel for one another.

Azriel was the one who broke the kiss. Between us, our hands remained firmly clasped though no other part of us touched. “Morrigan” he started to say, considering our hands between us, and there was more certainty in his voice than I’d ever heard. “Do you want to come inside?”

Heat sizzled over me in one great wave that had me biting my lip. I could practically feel the sparks dancing in my eyes as I looked at him and I knew he could see it too because all too quickly, Azriel was smirking at me suggestively.

“I’d love that,” I said.

“Okay,” he replied.

“Okay.”

“Inside.”

“Uh-huh.”

We fumbled for the doors and strolled up the short driveway to Az’s house towards the front door. I spared half a glance towards my own house next door and noticed Rhys’s car and his dad’s.

“Is your grandmother home?” I asked, my mind starting to buzz with how to navigate the rest of the evening.

“Nope.” Azriel slid his key in the door and swung it open. “Her bowling league plays tonight. She probably left right before we pulled up, so…”

…we had the house to ourselves for a considerable amount of time.

We stepped inside and no sooner had the door closed behind me did Azriel guide me promptly up against it and this time, his mouth consumed me with an intoxicating rush of need and want that I could never have refused. His kisses were hungry, devouring, and insatiable. On and on they took me even as the rest of him held still against me, his hands holding firmly at my waist while I was lost to the corruption of his lips.

And all the while, a small ache blossomed in my core that led me to his face where I clung on for dear life down to the nape of his neck getting lost in the haze. And all I could think was Azriel, Azriel, Azriel.

I yanked my lips from him, rather roughly, and a trembling gasp came out of me as I searched for my voice. “Az…”

He leaned his forehead against mine. “Morrigan, I think I’m ready.”

It took a moment for his intentions to sink in and when they did…

“Are you sure?”

I didn’t really need to ask. He had been sounding more and more confident since we left the studio. Azriel rarely spoke as it was unless he was sure about what he wanted to say, so this… this was serious business.

“I’m absolutely sure,” he said and the intensity of his stare threatened to tip me over past the breaking point of what I could handle. “I want you, Morrigan.”

Morrigan.

Fuck me, no one ever said my name like that. Not with such promise. Not with such piercing adoration. Not ever in the way that Azriel said it, cradled it with his tongue and sung it from his lips.

Slowly, in one long motion, I nodded. An infectious grin spread across both our faces.

“Say it again,” I said, asking him for a gift he’d once asked of me. Azriel leaned down to kiss me and when he’d finished…

“Morrigan.”

His kisses continued across my jaw, peppering my skin with such utter devotion until he’d reached my neck to spread his heat across me further. And all the while in between…

“Morrigan.”

My neck…

“Morrigan.”

My collarbone as his fingers deftly unbuttoned my blouse…

“Morrigan.”

Along the tops of my chest hovering just over my bra…

“Morrigan.”

My bra! Shit.

“Wait!” I yelled suddenly frantic and Azriel downright froze against me. “Wait, wait, wait!”

“I’m sorry,” he said instantly recoiling from me. My entire body went cold feeling him take a step back, undoubtedly worried he had hurt me somehow or misread my cues. “Morrigan, I’m so sorry. If you don’t want to-”

“No! I want to, but I…” I felt myself blush what I was sure was a shade far darker than the pale pink lipstick I had on and stammered.

My bra. My damned stupid, plain, undecorated, no lace whatsoever, boring, beige bra.

In my nervousness, I reached up and undid the chignon my hair was still in enjoying the release of tension it gave me as my hair fell in waves around my shoulders. Azriel watched it fall with a saddened look on his face and it nearly killed me to think I’d caused that with how completely daft I was. I had to fix it.

“Azriel,” I said reaching for him and mercifully, he let me take those beautiful blessed scared hands of his back. “Make no mistake. I want to sleep with you. Trust me, heaven knows I want nothing more than to get inside your bed and do unspeakable things to you until I’m forced to sneak out several hours later.”

Azriel brushed off a laugh and my chest sighed in relief. “But?”

“But I bought special lingerie for this - the really dirty trashy kind! Lingerie that I’m not wearing! And you,” I spread our interlocked hands wide and motioned up and down to my torso that he’d exposed unbuttoning my shirt, “have already spoiled the big reveal!”

Azriel stared at me for ten seconds or ten minutes, I wasn’t quite sure. And then he laughed. Laughed so hard, I could have cried.

“You bought lingerie… for me?”

I nodded. “Yeah.”

“That’s fucking hot.”

And then he took me back in his arms, and that’s when I really did start crying.

“Morrigan,” he said bringing his face very close to mine again so that I could feel the heat of his breath against my skin. Our noses just touched. “Morrigan, Morrigan - my Morrigan, please don’t cry. Look at you.”

He looked down at my chest and I followed his gaze, landing on that very boring bra of mine. Azriel’s hands went to my waist and slid up slowly, caressing me so gently with the patience and skill only he could control, and when those damned beautiful fingers of his reached the hem of my bra running around my chest, Azriel stopped and returned his gaze to mine.

“You’re perfect. Absolutely perfect. This is the Morrigan I want.” His hands gave a little squeeze. “Right here.”

And it utterly overwhelmed me to hear him say it, to watch him look at me like the most precious person in his world, to hold me as his own, to take me and care for me in all the ways that only he could. It cut me to the heart, spilled the truth pouring right out of me.

“I love you,” I said, blinking back tears that Azriel took care to wipe away for me. “I love you. Never has anyone meant more to me than you.”

Azriel nuzzled against my brow, his eyes closing softly as he lingered before opening again so he could look me in the eyes as he held me close and whispered his greatest secret, “…I love you too.”

Nervous smiles broke out between us. Azriel’s hands moved to my hips and scooped me up. I brought my legs around his waist and stared down at him, my hair curtaining around his face.

“My dreamer,” he said and I grinned like a wildcat. “Let’s go upstairs.”

“Mhm,” I said, too blissfully giddy to say anything further.

Az took me up the stairs. He took me into his room. He closed the door. He laid me down on the bed and finished undoing my blouse. When he removed my bra, he flung it aside and made me realize the packaging was far less important than the treasures it contained.

We’d been with other people before, but we both agreed after it was all over that nothing compared to the way being with each other felt. He fit perfectly with me - alongside me skin on skin, around me as his arms held me tight, inside me as we moved together. Heaven on earth was cradled between our breaths, the laugh he made when we both had trouble getting the condom out of the wrapper, the giggles I made when he tickled my skin, the groan he made entering me…

And all the while, that chorus sang fluidly between us.

Morrigan.

Azriel

Morrigan…

Azriel…

Until at last we were left a shattering, fragmented mess, stitched together each of us by the other and the love we’d been building for two and a half years.

The love that I would treasure for many more years to come between us - a shadowsinger and his dreamer.

xx

[katierosefun]

Completely and Utterly

Plot - [modern re-telling of Rochester and Jane’s story. wrote this for my ap class so mind the frenzy towards the end] Her hands didn’t shake. 

A small part of her thought that was wrong somehow—in such dramatic moments like these, she figured, one’s hands ought to shake. Her eyesight should be blurry. Her heart should be beating at a hundred beats a minute. Her mind should be racing, racing, racing to keep up with the rest of her body. 

And yet, only a numbing calm fell over Jane. 

Her clothes—the grey, black dresses she was always fond of wearing, not the bright, vivid garments Rochester bought for her—went into Jane’s suitcase in quick succession. She ignored the jewelry that sat on her dresser. That belonged to Rochester, not her. 

Nothing in this place belonged to her.

Also read on ao3

Her hands didn’t shake.

A small part of her thought that was wrong somehow—in such dramatic moments like these, she figured, one’s hands ought to shake. Her eyesight should be blurry. Her heart should be beating at a hundred beats a minute. Her mind should be racing, racing, racing to keep up with the rest of her body.

And yet, only a numbing calm fell over Jane.

Her clothes—the grey, black dresses she was always fond of wearing, not the bright, vivid garments Rochester bought for her—went into Jane’s suitcase in quick succession. She ignored the jewelry that sat on her dresser. That belonged to Rochester, not her.

Nothing in this place belonged to her.

--

“Don’t forget to read the next two chapters for tomorrow!” Jane called over the din of scraping chairs and shuffling papers. “And remember to get permission slips signed for the field trip coming up!” There was a brief chorus of “yes, Miss Eyre” before the bell rang, and then Jane was all alone in the classroom.

Well, almost alone.

“Relieved the day’s over?”

Jane swept up the pile of papers sitting at her desk. “I don’t know what you’re talking about, St. John,” she replied lightly. She only caught a glimpse of the top paper—Alice Wood, it seemed, had forgotten to write the date again. Her handwriting was improving, though—Jane could actually distinguish her vs from her rs. Paper-clipping the papers together, Jane tucked the pile into her bag and turned to find her cousin standing in the doorway, arms crossed over his chest and expression as cynical as ever.

“You don’t mean to tell me that you actually like working here, do you?” St. John asked incredulously.

“I do mean to tell you that,” Jane responded, shouldering her bag. “Though I can’t recall why that should bother you so much.”

“No one honestly enjoys being an elementary school teacher, Jane,” St. John said, sidestepping so Jane could pass through the classroom door. Following her down the hallway, he continued, “I know that Mary and Diana would rather do anything besides teach children how to multiply and divide.”

“You’re right,” Jane said over her shoulder, “they’d rather teach children how to appreciate the joys of German literature.”  

She heard St. John scoff. “You’re not being serious.”

“I am, actually,” Jane replied, still not looking at her cousin. “Honestly, St. John—there’s nothing wrong with teaching. It’s a good thing to do.”

“If you were interested in doing something good, then I’m sure you can find that same satisfaction in—”

Jane stopped in her tracks with a sigh. “For the last time, St. John, I’m not interested in being a missionary.”

“Why not?”

“Because I wouldn’t like it,” Jane answered. “I’d never survive.”

“You can survive a group of young children struggling with their cursive, but you can’t survive an—”

“Extremely long, tiresome trip halfway around the globe completely cut away from civilization?” Jane interrupted. “No, I don’t think I can survive.”

“You underestimate yourself,” St. John continued, refusing to be deterred. “You could certainly—”

Yes, Jane thought, relieved, as her phone went off. Shooting St. John a smile—which she did not put any sincerity into—she lifted the phone to her ear. “Hello?”

“Are you almost here yet?”

“Sorry, Diana,” Jane replied, re-shouldering her bag. “I’ll meet you at the house in a few minutes. I still have to get to the car.” A beat passed, and then Jane added, “St. John was just telling me about all of my qualifications in becoming a missionary.”

“Not that again,” Diana sighed. “I thought we told him that you didn’t want to join him.”

“I did tell him that,” Jane said, shooting St. John a pointed look. Her cousin let out a huff, but all the same, he walked ahead to the school doors. As Jane followed him, she continued, “But I’m sure he’ll stop trying to persuade me soon. It’s only been—”

“A few weeks?” Diana offered.

Jane winced. “Well, I’m hopeful that he’ll stop.” She smiled as St. John (grudgingly) opened the door for her. “I refuse to let something as petty as this get between all of us,” she added, giving St. John a slight nod. He only looked at the space behind her shoulder, but Jane could have sworn she saw his expression softening. High time, too—Jane knew that St. John would tire eventually. The only thing that kept him from giving in completely, Jane suspected, was his pride—but she could wait for that.

“We’ll be home soon,” Jane told Diana as St. John and she made their way to the parking lot. “Don’t start the movie without me.”

“Wouldn’t dream of it,” Diana replied. “Can’t make the same promise on the food, though.”

“Oh, please—you wouldn’t dare.”

“Hurry up, then—no, Mary, we can’t start the movie yet!”

Jane grinned, putting her phone in her bag. She looked over at St. John, who was standing by the car with raised eyebrows. “Seems like Mary’s already getting impatient,” she told St. John, getting into the car. “And Diana’s fending her off all by herself.”

“What do they want to watch again?” St. John asked, sliding into the seat next to Jane.

“Something German, I think.”

“No surprise there.”

Jane smiled again, though it was more to herself than to St. John. Though he might find Diana and Mary’s interests below him, Jane absolutely admired the women for it. In the short months she had stayed with them, Jane had found herself occupied by all that Mary and Diana wanted to do – whether it was painting (which mostly involved Jane teaching and Diana trying to mimic her style) or watching a foreign film or something as simple as walking through the parks.

“You’ve got a following,” St. John said suddenly, pointing out the window. Jane craned her neck briefly to see that indeed, some of her students were waving frantically from the playground. Jane felt a warmth spread from her chest to the tips of her fingers as she lifted her hand to wave back. The children, encouraged by this tiny gesture, only waved with more vigor.

“They’re so excitable,” St. John mused, and Jane cast him a sidelong glance.

“What?” he asked, genuinely looking bewildered by Jane’s look. “It’s true.”

Jane sighed, pulling out of the lot. “Happy children are good children, St. John,” she only said.

“I didn’t say they weren’t,” St. John protested.

Jane shook her head, and for perhaps the thousandth time since she moved in with her cousins, she thanked God that she had not taken St. John’s offer to join him on a three-month long trip with him. However, if St. John had noticed Jane’s exasperation, he didn’t bother making it known.

“We need to make a stop,” he said instead as Jane started down the road. “I forgot to pick up the supplies Diana wanted for her class. Cotton balls, I think she said they were. That won’t be too much trouble, would it?”

“No,” Jane responded. “Sweet of you to pick things up for Diana, though. I could have done it, if she asked me.”

“You were busy with grading classwork when Diana was looking for someone to pick the materials up for her,” St. John told her. After a beat, he added, “And she didn’t want to bother you since it was—” He shot a quick glance at Jane before clearing his throat. “Exactly a year since you—”

“Yes, St. John,” Jane interrupted quickly, pressing a little harder on the gas pedal. She ignored the disproving look St. John gave her. “Look—the store’s coming up in a few minutes. What was it you said Diana wanted again? Cotton balls? I heard she was going to put up some kind of arts and crafts project for her students—you should get glitter. Children love glitter. And stickers. I’m sure Diana will appreciate it.”

“Jane.”

Jane tightened her grip on the wheel, keeping her eyes straight ahead. “There’s a grocery store nearby, right?” Jane continued, forcing her voice to remain light. “I think I’ll go get some cookies. Seems fitting for movie night and all.”

“You still miss him.”

The warmth that Jane had felt a few moments ago had all but dissipated. She felt instead something cold and heavy lodge into her stomach. Her fingers felt numb from squeezing the wheel so hard. Odd, she thought to herself. She felt she should be crying right now—at the very least, she should give some kind of response to St. John.

Odd, she thought again.

She didn’t feel anything.

Jane heard St. John give a long, weary sigh, as though he was the one who was suffering. “Jane,” he said in exaggerated patience, “you do realize it’s been a solid year since you’ve last seen him. Rochester—oomph!”

Jane had pulled up in front of the store. She had never been more relieved to come to the almost-full parking lot with its many shopping carts and seagulls. Across the lot, Jane saw a couple get out of their car. A woman, Jane noted dully, with a man getting out on the other side. Jane watched as the two shot each other warm smiles, and then the man reached into the car and helped a little girl climb out of the passenger seat. The girl had her hair up in a pretty pink ribbons.

Jane blinked—but no, the ribbons weren’t pink at all. They were white.

For some reason, Jane didn’t feel better by that.

“You go get the cotton balls,” Jane heard herself saying as she undid her seatbelt. “I’ll get the cookies.”

“Jane—”

“Go,” Jane interrupted, practically ripping the keys out of the ignition. “We shouldn’t keep Diana and Mary waiting.” Not bothering to wait for St. John’s reply, Jane pushed the car door open. She marched—marched—across the parking lot, car keys squeezed in her hand.

One whole year, Jane thought. One whole year. She felt the grip on her keys loosen.

“I want the chocolate cookies—can we get the chocolate cookies?”

Jane looked over to see the couple from before with their child. The girl was holding her mother’s and father’s hand, skipping between the two in the way all loved children skipped. “Can we get the sprinkle ones, too? Can we? Please?” the little girl wheedled, leaning into her mother’s side.

“You won’t be able to eat dinner,” her father pointed out.

“Of course we’ll get the cookies,” the mother said, giving her husband slight smile.

“Traitor,” the father groaned, but all the same, he beamed at his wife.

They all entered the store—Jane just a little ways behind them. She was close enough to hear the father call her daughter’s name (Alex), learn about the trip to grandmother’s house, and that the mother was expecting another child soon.

She should have just left the store. She should have just gone back out to the parking lot after buying the cookies—she should have just called St. John for him to hurry back to the car.

Instead, she stayed even after buying the cookies. She stood by the front doors of the store, pretending to take interest in the tabloids while the family continued to bustle around with their groceries. The little girl was begging her father for a piggy-back ride, while the mother was sneaking a quick photo of the pair. Catching his wife trying to take a photo, the father reached out and playfully nudged the phone away. The three of them started laughing, continuing with their shopping trip without even the slightest notice to Jane, who was starting to lean forward.

“You’re so pitiful,” Jane muttered to herself, quickly drawing back. “What, you think that’s all great? Really? Is that all it takes?” She looked down at the tabloids—something about a scandal, as usual. A divorce gone wrong—the man taking on a new wife.

Wasn’t that what it always was?

“See, this is why you’re here,” Jane said, turning on her heel. “You can’t get tangled up with that.” She nodded to herself. That’s right, she assured herself. You’re happy. Absolutely happy. And you’re surrounded by your family, and you have a wonderful job, and things are just fine.

“Was it hard to find the cookies?” St. John asked when Jane finally came to the car. “You came out later than I thought you would.”

“I was just considering the choices,” Jane answered, unlocking the doors. She slid into the seat without looking at St. John. She didn’t start up the car until he had put on his seat belt.

“Well,” he said, tossing the cotton balls in the passenger’s seat, “did you find what you were looking for?”

Jane lifted her shoulders. “It’ll have to do,” she said, and the two lapsed into silence for the rest of the drive home.

--

“That was a good movie,” Diana yawned, stretching out her long limbs from across the couch. “What time is it?”

“It’s late,” came Mary’s muffled response. Jane lifted her head wearily from her chest and found, not to her surprise, that her cousin had half of her face buried into a pillow. Jane was tempted to do the same, but instead, she forced herself off the couch and started to clear away the plates.

“I love weekends,” Mary groaned, rolling over on her back. “I’m going to sleep here.”

“No, you’re not,” Diana replied, gently tugging Mary up to her feet. “Come on—Jane’s cleaning up. We should help.”

“It’s fine,” Jane replied over her shoulder as she made her way into the kitchen. “You two should go up to bed now.”

“Oh—well, at least let St. John help,” Diana called after her. Jane started to protest, but before she could, she heard the clatter of more plates coming her way—St. John had, of course, already started on his new duties. Jane let out a quiet sigh. All she wanted was some quiet time to herself, but still, St. John came in.

“Hand them here,” Jane said, turning on the faucet. “I’m just going to give them a quick wash before heading up to bed.”

“We should have used paper plates,” St. John said, placing the plates on the counter.

“Next time, we’ll remember,” Jane agreed. She took the first plate and placed it under the steady stream of water. She cringed at the sudden heat and quickly adjusted the handles. She looked over her shoulder. St. John was still there. Resisting the urge to sigh again, Jane turned back to the sink and said, “You can leave now, St. John. There’s fewer plates than it seems.”

“Are we not going to talk about what happened earlier today?”

“There it is,” Jane muttered, scrubbing a little harder at the next plate.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” St. John snapped.

“You know exactly what that means!”

“Fine—since you won’t say it, I will,” St. John said, jabbing a finger in Jane’s direction. “You’re still thinking about Rochester, aren’t you?” When Jane didn’t respond, he threw his hands up in the air. “How can you?” he asked, exasperated. “Everyone knows now about what happened with that wife of his—and you—you, of all people, should know how he is—”

“I’m not going to talk to you about this,” Jane said, turning on the faucet again. “It’s not something you should concern yourself with.”

“You’re completely blinded, Jane,” St. John continued, his face turning red. “And what are you doing now? Certainly not anything meaningful—”

St. John was interrupted by the sound of the phone ringing.

Right on time, Jane thought, and without so much as a word to St. John, she walked across the kitchen to pick it up. Lifting it to her ear, she asked, “Hello?”

“Hello?”

Jane’s breath caught.

“Hello? Is this the right number? Is there a Jane Eyre there? Is this—” There was a sigh from the other end. “Dammit,” the voice muttered. Then, louder, Jane heard, “I’m losing my mind.”

There was a click—the phone call was over.

“Who was that?” St. John asked, arms crossed over his chest.

Jane stared down at the phone in her hand.

“Jane.”

One whole year, Jane thought.

And he was calling for her.

Why would he call for her?

Jane slowly set down the phone. She didn’t hear St. John calling her name as she went up the stairs, nor did she hear the worried whispers from Mary and Diana when she entered their bedroom. The image of the family from before flashed through her mind—they had been happy. They had all been in love.

Jane found herself squeezing her hands together. There had once been a time, hadn’t there? When someone else had taken her hand. When she had been smiling just as that mother had.

“Are you alright?”

Jane looked up. Diana was watching her, concern evident on her face. “You’ve gone pale,” Diana noted slowly. “Did something happen?”

“We heard the phone ringing,” came Mary’s half-awake voice. “You picked up, didn’t you?”

“Yes.” Even to herself, Jane’s voice sounded far, far away—miles and miles away. (Miles and miles and miles away to a different house—to a different person—to a different home.) “Someone called.” She looked back down at her hands. “I think,” she said softly, “someone was looking for me.”

“Who?” This time, it was both Diana and Mary who asked.

Again, Jane imagined the young couple standing before her. Even still, she could picture perfectly what they would be doing now—the young pair would be nestled together in bed, no doubt, with their fingers entwined and foreheads tilted ever-so-slightly towards each other. They’d wake up tomorrow morning, and they’d first giggle over ungraceful morning breath and then they’d try to stay in bed for just a little longer—just to wait for the sunlight to properly filter into the room. And God, Jane knew that they’d be looking at each other all over again, the husband thinking that he was the lucky one, the wife thinking the same.

“I need to take a trip tomorrow,” Jane said, turning to her cousins. “Would you mind?”

Little lines of worry creased the space between Diana’s eyebrows. “Well—of course not,” she said hastily, “but what for, Jane?”

Jane slid under the covers of her bed, staring up at the ceiling. She had done this before, she thought—a year ago, she had been staring up at the ceiling with the same dazedness, only then, the daze had been brought on under different circumstances. She imagined her hand holding onto someone else’s again.

Then, with her voice coming out louder and stronger than she had expected, Jane said, “I need to find someone.”

--

“How long do you think you’ll be away?” Mary asked as they waited for the train to arrive. It was a surprisingly bright day, with the sun unashamedly alight and the sky cloudless. It was as though the weather, too, had determined its alliance with Jane.

“Four days, at least,” Jane replied, managing a quick smile. “I’ll call if the stay goes on for longer.” There was the sound of rumbling—the train was coming closer.

“Well,” Diana said, reaching over to squeeze Jane’s hand, “even though he didn’t make it, St. John wishes you his best.”

“I know,” Jane replied. “He sent me a message.”

“Not in person?” Mary asked, bewildered.

Jane shook her head. “No, I’m afraid not,” she answered, inwardly wincing at the argument last night. Shaking her head slightly to herself, Jane added, “But it doesn’t matter right now. He’ll come around sooner or later.”

“Of course he will,” Diana said warmly. As the train came to a slow stop in front of the three women, she squeezed Jane’s hand again. “Have a safe trip.”

“I will,” Jane promised. She leaned over to her cousins for a quick hug—and with another smile and wave, Jane boarded the train.

--

Jane watched the fields of Morton blur away from the windows as the train sped along. When she had first come here, she had been struck by how vast and empty the space was. No trees or gardens or birds—just grass, some in drier clumps than others. And as these fields faded from view, a certain distantness blanketed over Jane. It wasn’t as though she was willing to forget Morton, nor her experiences there, and yet, as the train left it behind, Jane, too, felt as though she was ending something. Not all of it, of course—but she felt as though she had bookmarked that little place.

For the rest of the trip, Jane alternated between staring out the window and checking her phone, as though by some miracle, he might call again. (Which was highly unlikely, especially since the call had been directed to the house, not to her personal cell. She had changed her number, so he wouldn’t know it.)

It wasn’t until Jane saw the greener plains and brighter flowers did she pay any attention to the station stops. Almost there, a small voice whispered at the back of Jane’s mind. Just a little longer now.

When the train doors opened, Jane was the first one to run out.

--

She had never been athletic as a child, but she had certainly been strong; that strength carried her now.

Jane made her way up the long driveway—

(“Who are you?” he asked, staring up at her. “I’ve never seen you in these parts before.”

Jane didn’t put down her hand. “I’m the new tutor for the girl who lives here,” she replied. “Adele Fairfax?” She leaned a little forward. “Are you hurt?”

“Isn’t it obvious?” the man asked, though not snappishly. “You said you were the new tutor?”

“Yes,” Jane responded. The man’s eyes widened briefly—and then, in a lower tone, he muttered, “Of course, the tutor.” He looked back up at Jane. “Well, then. Help me up.”)

Jane came to a short stop.

The house was in ruins.

Jane froze, her eyes roving over the blackened porch and the crumbling walls. There was empty space where there once had been grand windows—there were skeletons of what had once been furniture—there was nothing when there had been once been almost everything.

In halted, uneven steps, Jane walked toward the doorframe. She felt a hard surface under her feet, and her veins ran cold. She looked down, fearful of what she might find—but to her relief, she had just stepped on fallen bricks.

(“What took you so long?” Mrs. Fairfax asked, quickly taking away Jane’s coat. “I was about to send someone after you!”

“I—” Jane never got to finish her sentence. Mrs. Fairfax waved her hand, saying, “Mr. Rochester—Adele’s guardian—has returned just now. He wants to see you.”

“See me?” Jane asked, bewildered. “When did he—”

“He came just now,” Mrs. Fairfax interrupted. She gave Jane a small shove. “Hurry, now! He’s in a bad mood. Slipped on some ice, he said. If I had known he was coming, I would have…” She turned to Jane, eyes widening. “What are you still doing here?” she asked, giving Jane another shove. “Go! He’s in the sitting room!”)

Jane made her way through the entrance (or what had been the entrance) and into the ghost of the sitting room. There was nothing left—a few scorched tapestries, and the burned remains of armchairs.

(“Tell me, Miss Eyre,” Mr. Rochester said, his eyes flicking up to meet Jane’s. His eyes were sharp—fierce, made even more so in the light of the fireplace. “Do you find me handsome?”

Jane didn’t blink. “No, sir.”

She thought she saw a small twitch in Mr. Rochester’s lips, but as quickly as it came, it disappeared. “You’re honest,” he said, leaning into his armchair.

Jane lifted her chin. “I didn’t mean any offense.”

“No, no—go on.” He brushed aside his dark hair, revealing his forehead. Jane caught a few grey hairs just barely peeking from the otherwise burnt-brown locks that tumbled just barely over his hand. Eyes wide, he asked, “Do I look like a fool to you now?”

“Hardly,” Jane replied dryly. “Maybe a philanthropist.”

“There’s that bluntness again.” Mr. Rochester dropped his hand, turning a little ways to the fire. There was a short pause, and then he said suddenly, “There’s not too much company in the house.” He gestured towards Jane. “You. Start a conversation.”

“Start a conversation? About what?”

“About anything.”)

Jane placed a hand on what should have been the crown of the armchair. It was cold. She didn’t know why she would have expected anything otherwise. Slowly, Jane headed to the former dining room. She eyed the skeleton of the piano—once so grand with its ivory keys and polished black surface now only a rickety structure with broken strings.

Jane fingered a string—it crumbled right then.

(“Come, Rochester,” Blanche said sweetly, playing out a chord. “Sing with me.”

“Your wish is my command,” Rochester replied with such a soft smile that Jane felt her heart drop. She cast a quick look around the room to see if anyone was watching her—and to a mix of both her relief and disappointment, no one was. All eyes were fixated only on Rochester and Miss Ingram—Blanche Ingram, who was beautiful and talented and everything Jane was not.

Silently, Jane stood and started to make her way to the doors. She was tired, anyways. There was no reason for her to be there—certainly not if Blanche was keeping Rochester busy. Jane had only just started to make her way up the stairs when she heard the dining room open and close just as softly.

Jane wasn’t sure what compelled her to look—but look, she did, and she found herself face-to-face with Mr. Rochester himself. Too soon, Jane felt her heartbeat stutter. She wondered if Rochester heard it, and for a moment, Jane wished he did.

“Jane.”

“Yes.”

Mr. Rochester shifted his weight from foot to foot—out of embarrassment or otherwise, Jane wasn’t sure. She shouldn’t’ care. Why did she care?

“Are you…alright?”

Jane stared at the space behind Mr. Rochester’s shoulder. “I’m fine.”

“Why didn’t you come talk to me?”

Jane flicked her eyes to meet Mr. Rochester’s. He looked genuinely confused—and for a moment, Jane fanaticized telling him exactly why she hadn’t been able to come talk to him. Instead, she replied somewhat coolly, “You seemed busy.”

Mr. Rochester’s brow furrowed together. “You don’t look well.”

“I’m fine,” Jane repeated, focusing her attention once more on the space behind Mr. Rochester’s shoulder. Go back to Blanche, she thought. Go back to where you belong. At the thought, an uncomfortable heat welled up behind Jane’s eyes. She blinked a few times, willing the tears to retreat.

Mr. Rochester, to Jane’s dismay, didn’t miss a beat. “You’re crying,” he said softly, reaching forward—but just as his hand lingered over Jane’s cheek, it fell limply to his side. He cleared his throat. “I know why you’re leaving,” he said in a quieter tone. “And…if you feel so inclined, you can leave still.” He tilted his head toward Jane. “Good night, my—” He stopped. He nodded only once at Jane, and then, spinning on his heel, he left for the dining room.)  

As though she was in a trance, Jane walked back out of the house. It had only been a year, hadn’t it? Surely, this couldn’t have happened while she was gone. This couldn’t have.

“But he called me,” Jane whispered. “And I came.”

Her feet carried her back to the gardens. There were weeds growing amongst the beds of flowers—and though they no longer grew in their neat, enclosed bunches, the flowers seemed, ironically, more beautiful than ever.

Cruel, Jane thought, turning away from the flowers. She made her way into the orchard instead. And at its very center, of course, was a tree, split and in ruins. At least, it had been in ruins before—now, there remained a few springs of green curling out of the ruined trunk.

(Jane stared at Mr. Rochester. “That’s not funny,” she said, bunching and re-bunching her hands. She searched Mr. Rochester’s face for the slightest bit of humor—but he looked more serious than Jane had ever seen him. She tried again. “You’re engaged to Miss Ingram,” she pointed out. “You two had—” She sucked in a quick breath. “You two are in love.”

Mr. Rochester stared back, bewildered. “Whoever said I was in love with Miss Ingram?” he asked.

“You did,” Jane replied, letting her hands fall to her sides. “You—before—you were going on about how wonderful it would be to have a bride, and, well,” she let out a short laugh, “it all fits, doesn’t it? You wouldn’t leave her side. And now you’re asking me to marry you? I don’t know what your idea of humor is, but I don’t find this even a bit funny. In fact, I—”

“Jane,” Mr. Rochester interrupted, “Blanche doesn’t love me and frankly, I don’t love Blanche.” He took a few tentative steps forward, his hands outstretched. “Jane,” he said, “I want you by my side. I love you.”

“Me.” Jane turned her eyes upward. She counted the branches of the tree dangling above her before looking back at Mr. Rochester. “I have no one. No parents. No money. Nothing to offer you.”

“None of that matters, Jane,” Mr. Rochester said earnestly, grabbing Jane’s hands. Jane looked down at their clasped hands—his touch was warmer than she thought it would have been.

“Do you really love me?” Jane asked. She gripped Mr. Rochester’s hands tighter. Drawing in a shaky breath, she whispered, “You need to say it. Say it, and I’ll believe you.”

She felt Mr. Rochester’s forehead bump lightly against hers.

“I love you.”

She closed her eyes.

“I love you. Jane, I love you.”

She lifted her face ever so slightly, feeling—reaching—until she felt another pair of lips brush her very own. She heard the wind rustle the branches hanging above her—heard the distant rumble of thunder—but she paid no attention.

Yes, she thought.

“Yes.”)

“What are you doing here?”

Jane spun around, shocked to hear a voice beside her own.

A man in a pair of sneakers and jogging shorts was frowning at Jane, earbuds dangling in one hand and phone in the other.

“What are you doing here?” Jane managed to ask, ignoring the shakiness in her voice. “This is private property.”

“Not much property left, if you ask me,” the man snorted. He waved a hand wildly at the ruins of the house. “Were you just in there? Do you know how dangerous it is? God, lady—you could have been hurt! Bricks have been falling left and right in there!”

“What happened here?” Jane only asked. “How did this happen?”

The man balked at Jane. “You mean to tell me that you didn’t know?” he asked incredulously.

“Well, of course I didn’t know,” Jane replied, trying to keep her voice level. “Otherwise I wouldn’t be here.”

The man lifted his hands in surrender. “Sorry, lady,” he said, though he didn’t look apologetic at all. He nodded at the house. “Crazy fire happened a few months ago. The dude who lived here—pretty wealthy, but he was a bit of a nut. Shut in for a while.”

Jane felt something lump into the back of her throat. “That doesn’t explain what happened to the house.”

“I’m getting there,” the man responded. “The dude had some former wife—almost divorced. She refused to sign the papers, and she got a little…well, it was rumored she was a little off, anyways.” He lifted his shoulders. “She set the whole place on fire. The guy living here managed to get his household out, but he…” He winced.

Jane’s veins ran cold. “What?” she demanded. “What happened to him?”

“Something fell on him,” the man replied. “Lost a hand. I mean, the doctors got him one of those glove-things, but…” He shook his head, his expression softening into a more sympathetic one. “You know how things like this goes.” He cast a sad look at the house. “Dude got himself blinded, too. Pretty bad, huh? Too bad, to be honest—”

“Where is he now?” Jane interrupted.

The man scratched his head. “I dunno—there was something about in the papers. Living in…a private estate a few towns away from here. Fernburrow? Nah, that wasn’t it…Fernhaven? No—wait!” He snapped his fingers. “Ferndean! That’s what it was called—Ferndean. Guy decided to lock himself up in there.”

A new strength filled Jane. “Thank you,” she whispered. “I appreciate it.” With that, she started down the driveway.

“Don’t think about visiting the guy!” the man called after her. “He doesn’t accept any visitors, you know!”

“I’m not a visitor!” Jane shouted over her shoulder.

--

She found him where he would always be—in the garden. His hair was the same rich, sable color that it had been the year before, with perhaps only a little more grey visible in both the locks and the new beard he wore. His eyes—so dark and so fierce they once had been—were staring at nothing and everything at once, so different from the look they had before. And yet, despite all the changes, Jane’s heart only ached more.

She didn’t bother quieting her steps as she made her way towards him. Instantly, Mr. Rochester’s head lifted up. “Mary?” he called. “Is that you? I told you not to bother me.”

Jane was surprised that her voice was still working. “It’s not Mary,” she whispered. She slowly made her way in front of Mr. Rochester until she was only a few breaths away. Recognize me, she thought. Please, please know me.

Mr. Rochester’s face—which was already pale to begin with—whitened. “Not this again,” he murmured. He reached out, his hand trembling. “I’m dreaming again. Again.”  

Jane didn’t hesitate at Mr. Rochester’s hand. She twined her fingers around his, saying quietly, “You’re not dreaming.” She gave the hand a small squeeze. “See?”

“This is her hand,” Mr. Rochester whispered. “And her voice—”

“She is all here; her heart, too,” Jane breathed. She brushed her hand against Mr. Rochester’s cheek. “I’m here. Completely and utterly here.”

“Jane,” Mr. Rochester’s voice cracked. “Tell me it’s true. Tell me, and I’ll believe it. Show me, and I’ll believe it.”

Jane stood on the tips of her toes, pressing her lips lightly against the lids of Mr. Rochester’s eyes. “I’m here,” she repeated. “I really am.”

“You are,” Mr. Rochester echoed. “Completely and utterly here.”

--

Reader, she married him.

--

-fin-

[newstfionline]

Headlines

Research Shows Students Falling Months Behind During Virus Disruptions (NYT) While a nation of burned-out, involuntary home schoolers slogs to the finish line of a disrupted academic year, a picture is emerging of the extent of the learning loss among children in America, and the size of the gaps schools will be asked to fill when they reopen. It is not pretty. New research suggests that by September, most students will have fallen behind where they would have been if they had stayed in classrooms, with some losing the equivalent of a full school year’s worth of academic gains. And the crisis is far from over. The harm to students could grow if schools continue to teach fully or partly online in the fall, or if they reopen with significant budget cuts because of the economic downturn. High school dropout rates could increase, researchers say, while younger children could miss out on foundational concepts in phonics and fractions that prepare them for a lifetime of learning and working.

Unemployment rate drops to 13.3 percent (Washington Post) The federal unemployment rate dropped in May for the first time since the coronavirus sent the economy into a tailspin, the strongest sign yet that the economic damage is bottoming out—although 21 million people remain out of work. The economy gained 2.5 million jobs in May, the first time it has added jobs since February, as hundreds of thousands of workers flooded back to jobs in restaurants, health care and construction with the reopening of several states in mid-May.

Biden formally clinches Democratic presidential nomination (AP) Joe Biden has formally clinched the Democratic presidential nomination, setting him up for a bruising challenge to President Donald Trump that will play out against the unprecedented backdrop of a pandemic, economic collapse and civil unrest. The former vice president has effectively been his party’s leader since his last challenger in the Democratic primary, Bernie Sanders, ended his campaign in April. But Biden pulled together the 1,991 delegates needed to become the nominee Friday after seven states and the District of Columbia held presidential primaries Tuesday.

Demonstrators vow to sustain momentum until change happens (AP) Protesters stirred by the death of George Floyd vowed Friday to turn an extraordinary outpouring of grief into a sustained movement as demonstrations shifted to a calmer, but no less determined focus on addressing racial injustice. The country’s most significant demonstrations in a half-century—rivaling those during the civil rights and Vietnam War eras—resumed for an 11th day nationwide with continued momentum as the mood largely shifted from explosive anger to more peaceful calls for change. Nakia Wallace, an organizer of protests in Detroit, said people were beginning to understand the movement’s power. “The world is watching,” she said, adding: “The main strategy is to get people to collectively come out and make demands until those demands are met.”

Pandemic accelerates Mormon missionaries’ transition online (AP) Wearing dress shirts, ties and name tags, three missionaries with The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints sit around the kitchen table inside a Utah apartment planning how they’ll spread their gospel that day: wording their Facebook post. This is what missionary work looks like during the coronavirus pandemic. After hastily bringing home more than 26,000 young people from overseas missions aimed at recruiting new members, the church has begun sending many of them out again in their home countries with a new focus on online work that may persist even after the pandemic, officials told The Associated Press. “The leaders of our church have been asking us: What are we learning from this pandemic that will help us become better, become more efficient,” said Brent H. Nielson, executive director of the church’s missionary department. “We’ve learned that finding people, teaching people online is much more effective than trying to meet people in person on a bus or on a street corner or somewhere else. This will change what we do, I think, forever.”

Protests over police abuses flare again in Mexico’s two largest cities (Reuters) Masked men and women protesting police abuses vandalized buildings and threw stones at the U.S. Embassy in Mexico City on Friday as Mexican state authorities arrested three officers in a bid to quell anger over the death of a man in police custody. Protesters have been demanding that authorities be held accountable over the death of Giovanni Lopez, who died in police custody in the western state of Jalisco last month. Footage on social media shows a young man, identified as Lopez, being detained by police in early May. Bystanders can be heard saying he was arrested for not using a face mask to prevent the spread of the coronavirus. Protests in Jalisco’s capital, Guadalajara, flared up again, though on a smaller scale. On Thursday, protesters set a police officer on fire and vandalized buildings and police cars.

Coronavirus infections haven’t spiked since Europe loosened lockdowns (Washington Post) Virologists from Milan to Berlin have become much more optimistic about Europe’s ability to manage the coronavirus pandemic and say that, at least through the summer, the continent might have nothing more than localized and hopefully-containable hot spots. Europe’s experience, at least so far, suggests that sending children back to school, reopening restaurants and even making way for large outdoor protests does not lead to an inevitable resurgence of the virus. But scientists also readily admit there’s much they don’t know about the idiosyncrasies of this virus. They are still trying to make sense of why it is behaving as it has in Europe and whether those trends will hold—and what the answers might mean for the rest of the world.

India’s lockdown caused untold hardship. It also inspired extraordinary generosity. (Washington Post) Rajesh Rana and his three children were surviving on one meal a day when the call came. The 40-year-old carpenter in Mumbai had spent two months without work amid India’s stringent pandemic lockdown, unable to earn money or return to his village. On the phone was a stranger offering to fly the whole family from India’s financial capital back to their home state more than 1,000 miles away—for free. When India instituted the world’s largest lockdown to combat the novel coronavirus in late March, it plunged millions into extreme hardship. It also inspired unlikely and extraordinary acts of generosity. Individuals across the country have stepped up to tackle the gap between the government’s relief efforts and the vast need for help. Some have worked to feed people deprived of their incomes. Some have stepped in to deliver goods to those who cannot leave their homes. Others have banded together to help transport migrant workers who were stranded.

Fuel leak in Siberia (Foreign Policy) The Russian government declared a state of emergency in northern Siberia after 20,000 tons of diesel fuel leaked from a power plant fuel tanker into a river near the city of Norilsk on May 29. It is believed to be the second-largest such accident in modern Russian history, posing a significant threat to the local environment. Greenpeace Russia compared it to the Exxon Valdez tanker spill in Alaska in 1989. Workers on the tanker, owned by a subsidiary of the world’s largest nickel producer, spent two days trying to clean up the spill themselves before alerting authorities. “So what, we are going to learn about emergencies from social media now?” Putin said on Wednesday, chiding the regional governor and plant managers.

US will allow limited flights by Chinese airlines, not a ban (AP) The Trump administration said Friday it will let Chinese airlines operate a limited number of flights to the U.S., backing down from a threat to ban the flights. The decision came one day after China appeared to open the door to U.S. carriers United Airlines and Delta Air Lines resuming one flight per week each into the country. The Transportation Department said it will let Chinese passenger airlines fly a combined total of two round-trip flights per week between the U.S. and China, which it said would equal the number of flights that China’s aviation authority will allow for U.S. carriers.

The Philippines Passes Strict Anti-Terrorism Law (Foreign Policy) On Wednesday, the Philippines’ House of Representatives passed antiterrorism legislation that would endow the authorities with a dizzying degree of power to arrest and detain government critics—under the guise of fighting terrorism. The new legislation, which is expected to be signed into law by President Rodrigo Duterte shortly, creates a new counterterrorism council appointed by the president with the authority to designate individuals and organizations as terrorists, absent any legal or independent oversight. Critics fear that the vaguely worded law will enable the government to detain its opponents for up to 24 days without charge.

Desperate Middle Eastern women resort to selling their gold as pandemic grinds on (Washington Post) Sarah Itani took her 2-year-old daughter’s tiny bracelet, engraved with “Angie” in cursive, and handed it to the gold merchant. He weighed it, along with one of Itani’s wedding bangles and a few other pieces of her daughter’s jewelry, then offered her $84 for the modest collection. She took the cash. Then she raced to the hospital to buy medicine for her young son. With her husband out of work, sent home because of the coronavirus lockdown in Lebanon, Itani said there was no other way to pay for the three doses of medicine their son so badly needed. Across much of the Middle East, women pushed to desperation by the economic pressures of the pandemic have been selling off their gold. Strict public health measures, coming on top of a severe economic downturn since the fall, have left many Lebanese families without income. More than a dozen jewelers across Beirut said their gold purchases had spiked after Lebanon imposed its lockdown in March, forcing businesses to shutter their doors and lay off their employees. Women like Itani unearthed their delicate gold chains and intricate bracelets—some even took off their wedding bands—and solemnly made their way to jewelers.

A general’s retreat in Libya (Foreign Policy) Renegade Libyan Gen. Khalifa Haftar has withdrawn his troops from the outskirts of Tripoli—15 months after he launched a brutal campaign to capture the capital. The conflict between Haftar and the U.N.-backed Government of National Accord (GNA) quickly became a proxy war as a number of international players have waded into the conflict. Haftar received weapons and support from Russia, Egypt, and the United Arab Emirates. When Turkey sent troops in January to bolster the GNA, it tipped the balance of power in favor of the Tripoli government. Libya has been plagued by conflict since longtime ruler Col. Muammar al-Qaddafi was toppled in 2011. While Haftar’s forces are in retreat, there is little optimism that peace will follow. Some experts caution that Libya risks becoming an intractable quagmire as foreign powers vie for influence in the oil-rich country.

[garkomedia1]

Anarchy in the GDR | The Nation

German punks, Nov. 29, 1984. (AP Photo / Andreas Pechar)

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Burning Down the Haus, a new book by journalist Tim Mohr, details how a small group of East German teens kickstarted a movement that contributed to the fall of the Berlin Wall. The 1970s were oppressive years in the German Democratic Republic; there was no space, literal or philosophical, to live outside the system, let alone criticize it. Upon hearing The Clash and the Sex Pistols via forbidden British military radio broadcasts, a handful of young people began to embrace punk mentality, dressing differently, and shaking the foundations upon which the authority had been built. And despite the East German secret police, or the Stasi’s best efforts, the movement grew throughout the 1980s as punks developed their own little world, disconnected from society. Punk was the soundtrack to the million-person demonstration on November 4, 1989. A few days later, the Wall came down.

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Mohr, who arrived in Berlin in 1992 and now lives in Brooklyn, learned about this history and has spent 10 years documenting it in as much detail as possible, recognizing, too, the parallels with modern society.

William Ralston: You write that your initial belief in this story was reinforced after you returned to the USA and “recognized an ominous echo in developments in your own country.” Can you elaborate on these parallels?

TM: The book went from a story that was just fascinating to something that was actually disturbingly relevant because of the parallels I began to see in our own society—the revelations from Snowden about the scale of mass surveillance here in the US, the militarization of our police forces, and the treatment of peaceful protesters here. I think we can’t dismiss comparisons between what’s happening in the West to what happened in the Eastern bloc; when our own mass surveillance was revealed, people were quick to say, “but you can’t compare this to the Stasi”—but you can!

I’m not suggesting our situation is completely analogous, and I don’t think the solution to whatever needs to be remedied in today’s society is the same as what’s described in the book—it won’t be solved by passing out a bunch of guitars to teenage rebels and telling them to make anti-government music—but I think this story shows what is possible. It offers a concrete historical example of a grassroots youth movement that made significant changes in its society. Maybe the lesson to be learned is something they used to spray as graffiti: “Don’t die in the waiting room of the future.” Meaning, you can’t sit around hoping for change to happen; you have to make change happen.

WR: The GDR in the late 1970s was not a stable state. It was struggling with a generational transition and the economy was ceasing to function. Why was it vulnerable?

TM: One of the reasons the hardliners of the GDR were able to stay in power for so long was because the GDR didn’t have the type of conditions that we associated with the Soviet Union. There were no food shortages; everybody had modern conveniences, televisions, refrigerators; jobs; booze. I think this created a level of complacency that allowed the regime to stay in power longer. Given halfway decent conditions, the majority of people seem to just go along with the system, regardless of what the system is. The punks were among the first to challenge it in a direct way. They did so by addressing the regime’s failure to practically implement its ideology, an ideology, incidentally, that most of them shared—they were critics of the dictatorship from the left. Punks were among the loudest in making these points, and I think one of the most important roles they played was steeling the resolve of other opposition groups.

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One of the great unknowns in opposition circles was what would happen if you ran afoul of the security apparatus and the punks learned exactly what happened. They showed other opposition-minded people that it was possible to resist and survive the Stasi. They were subject to the harshest crackdown of any opposition group, including serving the longest jail terms. To then come out and keep fighting encouraged everyone else.

WR: They conquered their fears.

TM: Yes, and as a result they were a big component of the early street protests, and these protests created a boomerang effect. In the GDR, as in most societies, conformity ruled the day. But when the protests started to spill out onto the street and into the public eye, ordinary people—who might otherwise be inclined to go along—were confronted with state-sanctioned violence that made many of them cringe. It just snowballed from there. You have the early activists who take things out on the street and they have to convince other opposition groups, and then it’s a matter of converting a significant enough part of the population to your cause. It took the 1989 mass demonstrations for the Wall to fall—but the seeds were planted several years prior in street protests in which punks were indeed central.

WR: And it was in the Protestant churches—which opened their doors to offer shelter—that punks began to rub elbows with other opposition groups.

TM: Yes, the churches were important. Though as an institution, the church didn’t necessarily wish to nurture these groups; many leaders were actually opposed. But individual clergymen took in these so-called enemies of the state. Once they were under the roof of the church, the punks began interacting with different activist groups, who began to take the punks more seriously.

WR: You write in the book that the Stasi were “paranoid” about the punk scene from early on. What made punks such a threat? 

TM: From a western perspective, it’s not easy to see why a bunch of kids with bad haircuts could be so threatening. The deeper I dug into this, it became clear to me that the Stasi were correct in their fear. They were trying to keep people on a pre-ordained path and people, like the punks, who were influencing youths to stray off that path, were threatening. It’s also important to remember that punks expressed their opposition whenever they were in public. Other forms of protest were often done behind closed doors, whereas the punks were so in your face; their music was loud and even just their appearance on the street was a form of opposition. That’s how the movement grew so quickly: teenagers saw punks and they seemed cool because it was so daring and exciting that many people joined them. Many of these kids, as with the first generation of punks, originally joined for non-political reasons; it was just cool.

WR: You write in the book that the state’s paranoid behavior “backfired.” Can you explain this? 

TM: I think this is true all through this battle. To begin with, the punks just wanted to wear these clothes and cut their hair this way, and then suddenly they were being hassled by the police on a daily basis, being kicked out of schools or apprenticeships, having their IDs confiscated. This turned the movement political. And even the smallest signs of rebellion were so impactful;  every time people stepped off the path, it was a political act, even if, like the early punks, they themselves didn’t conceive of it to be so. Then, later on, ordinary citizens began to recoil at the level of violence against protestors, significant parts of whom were punks. The security forces kept making the same mistake.

WR: It feels that there was absolutely nothing that the Stasi could have done to stop this. They tried threats, locking up, even removing people.

TM: I think part of this is that the punks had such a fundamental criticism. A lot of the other groups were nitpicking over this or that policy, focusing on specific issues like military training in schools, and they fancied themselves negotiating with the government. They wanted to try to change the government whereas punks wanted to cast off the system, to destroy it. During the fight itself, this was certainly a strength.

I think it’s also important to note that while the Stasi saw the punks as a significant threat, they also tried to blame it on the West. As late as 1989, they listed punk as the top youth problem and yet, in the same report, they say that the scene is being manipulated from the west by punks who had been expatriated, which was completely false. They seemed to overlook that it had become an organic eastern phenomenon.

WR: Do you perceive punk music to have inspired punk’s dissidence, or was it just a vehicle for it? 

TM: I think it’s a bit of both. Almost everyone spoke of feeling as if a switch had been thrown inside them when they first heard punk. For the majority of them, I think the thrill was musical: the bassist in Planlos told me that he loved The Ramones because it was the only record he’d ever heard with no slow songs. Only a few of them immediately connected it with anarchist philosophy. But the music also offered an avenue of self-expression that they had never really thought of before and became a soundtrack to rebellion.

WR: The mass protests grew in the late ‘80s. Why do you think law-abiding citizens, who violently opposed the punks to begin with, went on to join the movement? 

TM: If we knew the mechanism then we could recreate it elsewhere. Conformity is natural and most people abide by the system and don’t like people who make trouble. I think a lot of people had the feeling that there were things wrong with society but once the protests began to reach a certain mass, when they were in open view on the street in the second half of the ‘80s, then more of the general public joined because the state-sanctioned violence gave credence to their own misgivings about how things were run.

WR: What started off as a resistance eventually cast off the dictatorship. Do you think this the movement exceeded punk’s ambitions? 

TM: Even though the Stasi were paranoid about the punk scene, I don’t think anyone felt it was the start of a type of opposition that would bring down the dictatorship. One of the things that the punks were brilliant at was carving out space, both physical and philosophical. They took over all these empty buildings and by the late 1980s untethered themselves from the economy, when some were able to operate in the grey areas by selling homemade jewelry and clothing. At that point they were no longer dependent on being part of society. As opposed to British punks, who railed against “No future,” the East German punks had seen their problem as “Too Much Future.”

Their whole lives were planned out for them almost from birth and it felt stifling. Once they were able to at least partially wrestle control of their futures, they had probably already gotten farther than many of them realistically expected. Though of course there were some who were always quite convinced they’d succeed in toppling the regime. 

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[mado-science]

Mind blowing! Read this book in two days! Absolutely fascinating! I had read Edward Hoopers book "The River: A Journey to the Source of HIV and AIDS" which gives account to the possible origins of HIV to the polio vaccine campaign conduced in Africa, but David Quammen's book investigates further. I don't want to spoil this book, but I would recommend this book to anyone who is interested with the origins of HIV and how it has become one of the biggest pandemics known to man. Wonderful book! Go to Amazon

It isn't patient zero, it's animal zero... It's been a while since I read a book on AIDS. I saw this book when I was getting other books on infectious disease, and put it aside for future reading. I had read "And the Band Played On" about 20 years ago, when I started working in a Lab on HIV. I knew so much had been found out concerning AIDS and where it came from. But much of this book was a surprise to me. I always felt that we didn't know the whole story about when AIDS actually started to infect the human race. The research that has been done in monkeys and apes, to determine the relationship between SIV which is simian immunodeficiency virus and HIV. Quammen provides a lot of background into what had previously been known and talked about. When I teach microbiology to my students I want to impress upon them the importance of knowing where these diseases come from. So many of the emerging diseases today are zoonoses, meaning they come from animals. Human invasion into habitats that used to rarely be seen by humans is introducing new viruses that some animals could live with, and others that were killers, no matter what the species. Go to Amazon

Glossy overview of the history of HIV Quick read about the history of HIV. I didn't quite realize before purchasing (although I think it's clear, I just didn't pay attention) that this is taken from another of his books. He references that a few times in this book, and glosses over some details that I think must be explained in further detail in the larger work. I would have liked to see more discussion of some of the biology, as he does often skip the details of how exactly how the microbiologists have derived their findings. Also, be warned that a good chunk of the middle of the book is pure speculation about the Cut Hunter hypothesis and how the virus may have spread to other humans from the Cut Hunter. That was a bit disappointing from a science writer. Go to Amazon

A good but not a great book A good but not a great book. Basically it says "The AIDS virus developed in this geographical area in Cameroon, as a disease in chimps. Somehow, through blood-blood contact, it jumped to one or a few people and figured out how to survive. One of those people made it to the big city (then Leopoldville, now Kinshasa), had sex, and spread the disease. A few other people got it, but it was no big deal until, many years later, it found its way into people who left Kinshasa and took it around the world." The interesting part is the sleuthing the virus back to that corner of Cameroon more than 100 years ago - the first part of the book. After that it becomes pretty dry and drab. Go to Amazon

Part of the "Spillover" book by same author Was looking forward to reading this book due to working in the medical field. Most of the book was very factual and enlightening, but some fictional guessing went into parts. It's a good read, but did not realize it was from the "Spillover: Animal Infections . . ." by the same author. I also bought Spillover, should have read it first and not purchased this one. But a good read nonetheless. Go to Amazon

The Chimp and theRiver: How AIDS Emerged... Part of this book was included in another Quammen book on sudden outbreaks of viral disease, but there is much more in this expanded edition that is about how and where AIDS originated. Illuminating. Go to Amazon

Superbly written! For anyone who takes an interest in the evolutionary origins of AIDS. We've heard about it's introduction to the West in the early 80's but never did I imagine the epidemic began at the turn of the century. Go to Amazon

A short and concise tale everyone needs to know. This is an excellent book. In a little over 100 pages Quammen tells the origin story of one of the most serious health threats in the modern world. The book is very clear and concise. Only an elementary background in the biological sciences is necessary to understand the book. However if you have already read the author's book Spillover there isn't much new information her so don't bother buying it. Towards the end of the book he mentions another book which is also very good, (The origin of AIDS, by Pepin). If one want's a far more detailed look at the story of the origin of AIDS i would I highly recommend Pepin's book but a much stronger background in biology is needed to fully appreciate it. If one want's to read more about the political and social history of the disease in the US in the early 80's I would highly recommend "And The Band Played On" by Randy Shilts. All in all this is a terrific short read. Go to Amazon

As a microbiologist student this is an absolutely fantastic book! Quammen is a great writer and I ... Four Stars Primate zoonoses and molecular phylogenetics Five Stars Very well written Five Stars Another great book from Davi Quammen I used this book as a reference for my doctoral ... terrible thing terrible time This is a wonderful book that builds on information found in the "Patient ...