#I started writing it FOUR years ago so if you feel like the style radically changes at any point it's because of that

[sentientcave]

Gonna post something original tomorrow get hyped

[rotworld]

i hope the new year has been kind to you !! please don’t feel pressure to write. take time to rest well. i go back and reread old pieces of yours all the time! i admire your writing a lot and wanted to ask if you had any more advice about writing .. am excited for whatever you post, whenever it is you post it ^__^ your sandman fic is so evocative and interesting.. the prose is so .. thick in a glutinous dough kind of way.. i don’t know where it’ll go.. thank you again!

thank you and happy new year! so far so good lol i’m with family and very happy. i appreciate your patience and understanding. while i am working on stuff again, i’m also sort of stranded away from home until the later part of this month lol so my schedule is a bit strange.

as for writing advice, here are some exercises to try!

.

.

.

->rewrite a classic: china mieville wrote four final orpheuses, a short story which explores four different reasons why orpheus failed in his quest to bring eurydice back from the underworld. these range from a moment of weakness to simple human error and tell radically different stories about their relationship and his state of mind in just a few brief snippets. 

find a story like a classic myth or fairy tale and rewrite it in ways that resonate with you. change the ending, reinterpret the characters, or focus on a different perspective. if you’re not sure what to do, try coming up with questions you want answered or alternate possibilities: how did marya morevna first defeat and capture koschei the deathless? what does the sea witch get up to when mermaids aren’t pestering her to see the surface world? hope is the last thing in the box pandora opens; what does it look like, and what does she do with it?

->imitate another writer’s style: i made a post one time about voice and said you shouldn’t feel pressure to change it, but i also think going out of your way to emulate another writer for an exercise can be fun and useful. for the sandman fic, i tried to imitate the “feel” and structure of gaiman’s writing. when i first read the comic, i was really amazed by how many plot threads he would juggle each arc, and how those threads would weave together in the finale, so i wanted to use that along with the more dreamy, surreal prose and absurd humor. 

find a writer or specific work that you enjoy and wouldn't mind imitating stylistically. study their voice (the aforementioned post has specific examples of what to look for) as well as how the work is structured. you could write fanfiction or something original with this exercise, but i think it’s easiest to stay in the same genre and use similar themes or aesthetics as the work you’re using for reference. 

->if you get stuck, time travel: recently i read a book on revisions (unfortunately can’t remember the title/author, i skimmed it at the star but didn't buy it) that gave advice along the lines of “if you suddenly get stuck and can’t figure out why, the problem is several sentences ago.” the thinking here is that we sometimes write ourselves into a corner without realizing it, and you need to back out of the corner by retracing your steps. you might’ve gotten bored or lost focus and that made the last few sentences really rough or go in a direction that’s hard to work with. go back a paragraph or two and reexamine what you have, cutting it entirely if need be. 

alternatively, i’ve found that if i get stuck at the very start of a piece, then the problem is where i’m choosing to start. i’ve been working on something about certain characters involved in certain illicit businesses and wanted to open with a party at a fancy venue. i was hellbent on opening with some scene-setting narration/exposition on the venue itself as the reader travels there, and i wasn't getting past the first sentence. so eventually i shifted forward. instead, the reader would have just arrived at the venue and the opening would introduce one of the characters at the party. this also just didn't work, so i moved forward even further. everyone's at the venue, the party has been going on for a while, and it starts with the reader considering the reasons they should not be at this party. what ended up working was cutting my initial, slow-paced plan and starting closer to the action, and i think that's a good idea in most situations. 

[zedecksiew]

Sentimental thoughts about the OSR

OSR -- Old School Renaissance? Revival? A style of making and playing games, where the focus is on the experience of shared imagined space, not narrative plots or arcs.

A style fostered by a community.

That community was ugly. Many alt-right-leaning white dudes. It sheltered abusers, like Zak S -- a person who, to my shame, I'd been a fan of.

That community was good. Many key figures were queer / trans. More so (to my impression) than any other RPG community (even other indie groups). Non-white folks, like me.

The popular TTRPG eye remembers the OSR for its ugliness, not its inclusivity. Probably because the assholes were loud. And because the non-white / cis / het-ness of folks was rarely advertised as a community selling-point: "Look at how diverse we are!"

The latter aspect made me feel welcomed. My work -- entirely informed by my SEA context, as it's always been -- got attention based on its merit, not its topicality.

+

The OSR as I joined it was based on blogs, and on G+. When G+ was shut down, the community had a diaspora.

You hear about BOSR (British OSR), or NOSR / NuSR. You used to hear about SWORDDREAM? I think FKR (the Free Kriegsspiel Revival) is an offshoot of the old community? There are a million Discord channels. Questing Beast, on Youtube.

The blogs are still going strong.

I can't keep track of all the places folks have ended up. I do feel bad about that -- that I'm less community-oriented, that I work more in isolation, now. I squat Twitter mostly. Twitter is not a good place for a creative community.

But it is what it is.

+

An article Ewan Wilson was writing about the OSR got spiked at Polygon. I was one of the folks he emailed questions to.

Ewan's questions prompted this bout of sentimentality, I guess?

Here are bits from email I wrote him, in reply:

+

The OSR scene began on blogs? That's certainly how I discovered it. I can actually remember the specific post that hooked me:

Patrick Stuart / False Machine, reading James C Scott's "The Art Of Not Being Governed" -- a history of the Zomia region of mainland Southeast Asia, a place of fluid cultures and peoples that have traditionally resisted the settled states surrounding it -- riffing on the historical information in Scott's book, spinning them into RPG campaign ideas.

+

A facet of the OSR scene is its willingness to use popular rulesets as a shared language.

Dungeons & Dragons (tm) not as a WOTC corporate property, but D&D as a community vernacular. (And D&D is just one example.)

Folks like Emmy Allen and Luka Rejec have talked about this quite eloquently, I think?

I think the OSR prioritises making stuff for games rather than crafting the bestest, most elegantly-designed game possible. If you are stuck arguing about which language works best for poetry, you'll never get to the point where you actually start making and sharing verse.

+

I associate the OSR style with possibility, too. I'm not sure why.

Mainstream WOTC D&D is trapped in a self-referential loop, recycling its own Forgotten Realms-adjacent tropes. Then you have the vast forest of licensed RPGs: "Alien: The RPG", "Avatar: The RPG"; "[Insert Popular Nerd IP Here]: The RPG".

Many indie-RPG communities prize genre-emulation -- here's a game where you can mimic the narrative shape of a slasher film; an urban-fantasy novel; Legend of Zelda.

Not that there is anything wrong with this. But if emulation is where you start and end you doom RPGs to a secondary role -- forever in the shadow of other arts.

For sure the OSR has its pop-culture and games-media touchstones; the scene loves to riff on metal album covers and Dark Souls a lot.

But I'd argue that -- relative to other RPG subcommunities, in my experience -- OSR creators are willing to push further down the rabbit-holes of their particular obsessions more often.

So, yes: Dark Souls and metal music. But also references weirder, personal, and as-yet-untapped: Zomia, punk zines, walks in backyard forests, Birkenhead folklore, the Permian Period, Moebius, East Malaysian myth --

Composted together to the point they become game things utterly unlike anything else, and the stories / experiences you can have in those game things you can have nowhere else.

+

The blogs are still going strong.

Today I was reading this series of posts, a theory-based critique at D&D, the OSR, and games design in general:

"the goal of what we call "old-school play" is not to create a story but to traverse a fantastic space guided by desire, such that any story which emerges is incidental and retrospective (much like stories that emerge from 'real life'). edwards prescribes that the goal of play is to create a story, elevates this prescription into a truth about play as such, and then claims that players who do not play with this aim actually fail to meet this aim because they are mentally damaged. perhaps this can be remedied by playing the correct game, or maybe not, but regardless the implication is that by playing the correct game, one can avoid brain damage.

my take is to not let salespeople convince you that you must buy their products to be politically or mentally correct, and on the flip side do not entitle yourself to the enjoyment of other people."

Part 1 / Part 2 / Part 3 / Part 4. All four are worth reading.

Today I was also reading the very first OSR blogpost I ever read, about Zomia. It is still as good as it was, six years ago:

"The Lisu, aside from insisting that they kill assertive chiefs, have a radically abbreviated oral history. "Lisu forgetting, Jonsson claims, "is as active as Lua and Mien remembrance." he implies that the Lisu chose to have virtually no history and that the effect of this choice was to "leave no space for the active role of supra-household structures, such as villages or village clusters in ritual life, social organizations, or the mobilisation of peoples attention, labour or resources."

18 Radically forgetting tribes. How far can you push that? Ancestor free tribes, then further away, one-year tribes, then in the reaches of the deeps, the one-day, impossible even to understand as they remember only for one day.

Patrick's blog turned 10 this week.

The blogs are still going strong.

[realisaonum]

book meme

thank you, jen @det395​ !! i feel like this meme got away from me a bit, but no shame! i love talking about books and writing so onward ~under the cut~

1- how many books are too many books in a series? 

mhmmmmm i guess it depends on the objective of the series, right? is the plan to have x number of books in the series and if so, when we finally get to the end will it be satisfying considering all the books we’ve read leading up to it? OR is the objective of the premise / characters just to exist doing whatever? both can be done well. i would say a lot rides on how much i trust the author.

2- what do you think about cliffhangers?

so this is meant for cliffhangers in a series like between books? i don’t really care if there’s a cliffhanger as long as i have the next book sitting right next to me. otherwise uh, only if the wait between books is tolerable, because at that point you need to know that the author can clear this mess up, right? there’s this other thing, like you know how if the entire series was already written, then they might release the books a month apart or a quarter apart - that could be alright too. but years in between? not especially a fan. is anyone a fan?

3- hardback or paperback?

jen, you and me are complete opposites here. paperbacks stress me out. i will go out of my way to buy a used hardcover if given the choice. of course, there are some publications i don’t mind in paperback —thinking poetry and super indie books that don’t have a hardcover release OR books where the spines are thin enough they won’t break and i won’t be holding them long enough for them to wear. hardcovers are sturdy and i don’t have to worry i’ll accidentally bend the cover in some damaging way. I am invested in keeping my books nice to the point that i create covers for my books out of kraft paper or brown grocery bags while i am reading them. this is something i started when i was in college and didn’t want these books i was hoping to probably resell get thrashed coming in and out of my bag for all these classes. My home library is probs more half and half paperback/hardcover but if given a choice usually it’s hardcover.

4- least favourite book?

i think it’s good to at least attempt to meet a book on its level. there are lots of books i didn’t like, but i wasn’t meeting them on their level and i know that so we’re ignoring those. i do however have a shelf on my goodreads dedicated to books that i have beef with so i’ll just go off on two of them.....

tana french’s the likeness for being plagiaristic shit. it is essentially poorly concealed alternate universe OC insert fic of the secret history. you’ve got french’s dublin murder squad folks and then this group they are investigating who bear a STRIKING resemblance to the greek students in tsh 🤔. this would be one thing. it is pretty well acknowledged that nothing is original and there are enough changes to The Likeness that MAYBE i could let it slide if not for this other thing: french’s book, the likeness, has lines that are just basically reworded quotes from the secret history and french positions these lines so they are said by the counterpart (essentially same!) character that gave them original life in tsh. i cannot stress this enough: you can HEAR how similar the sentences are and their core intent is always the same. it’s thinly veiled theft! it astounds me that French hasn’t been sued frankly. it is one thing to want to capture some of the genius that tartt’s debut novel holds, but it is completely lazy and disgusting theft to go about it in the way French did with this book. and YES the secret history was published before french’s book. if i could stomach how fucking goddamn boring the likeness was to read it a second time and cite every one of these offenses i would, but that’s yet a third strike against it—it’s too boring to be worth it. 

T. Kingfisher’s second book of the Clocktuar War duology : The Wonder Engine. this is a book that i feel violated the contract between writer and reader. the first book feels almost like a YA book. the stakes while described as very high are treated, as actions unfold, as very low. nothing truly irreparable happens until the climax of the second book and the fallout of that action is so off-tone of everything that came before i felt deeply betrayed. no, like, completely betrayed as in it ruined the rest of my afternoon, i am still viscerally angry eight months later, and i will never trust this author again. sure, maybe none of those actions that led to the climax were out-of-character, but there was nothing NOTHING in the proceeding action that even came close to that level of consequence. it’s a pity because right up till that point i was having a really good time. the entire vibe of the rising action to the climax of book one all the way through the rising action of book two was just a quippy fun version of roadtrip/quest - it felt like a comfort read. the abrupt tone shift had all the subtlety of dropping a graphically, brutal murder into Blue’s Clues. you don’t do that - this is a basic tenet of a writer / reader relationship. i’m not touching this bitch’s shit again.

5- Love Triangle, yes or no?

not so much. i like jen before me will scream ‘just be poly.’ love triangles that lead into poly relationships? yes, awesome will be glad i read. but i am at a stage in my life where your standard will-they-won’t-they-love-triangle is just fucking pointlessly frustrating to me. an example: i read a Nic Stone’s book Odd One Out a couple years ago and something about the synopsis or the hype made me think that it would resolve the love triangle that way, so when that did not happen i was incredibly frustrated and immediately wanted to resell the book. it’s the potential of the thing. stone’s book could have been the perfect vehicle for opening up the concept of polyamory to a ya audience but instead just really squandered that potential with weak floundering — in my opinion!

6- the most recent book you just couldn’t finish

uhhhhh i’ve got two and i’m not sure i’ve entirely given up quite yet buuuuuuuut 

fucking dune. i got really pissed off with this book. So just…setting aside the whole vaguing at a pedophilically inclined queer coded villain - it’s done so poorly, that it's almost funny? like it doesn’t (as of half way through) actually have any consequence on…anything at all and is tacked on like an afterthought to the end of his scenes. honestly it all could just be cut out entirely with no recourse to the larger story. So my actual beef with this book is the pacing is ATROCIOUS. like yo, not only do you expect me to give a shit about these Atreides cunts, when we just met them and we spend the same amount of time with them IF NOT MORE with the antagonist? but you also expect me to believe Paul was able to just convince the leader of the Arrakis people —the leader of an entire planet!!— with a single fucking sentence??? yeah, not so much. it was not set up for me to believe that Paul could do that! maybe if Kynes hadn’t died immediately after—or at least not died at that moment? baring the fact I thought he was by far the most interesting character, IF he had been convinced by Paul in that scene, it would have been great to see some actual work done around that - with a transfer or a liaise of power between Kynes and Paul and the Fremen. By not having any substantive scene that does it - it begs the question of what the fuck was the point of the character in the first place? unplumbed potential!!! over all there seem to be some key scenes missing to get the reader to where the narrative expects us to be? but the choices made of the characters we spend time with and the moments we see with them, the benefit to the larger story…is not always there. hey herbert, these words you have written aren’t doing what you want them to?? i feel like i should finish it but i reaaaaallly don’t want to :) the only thing i can say is it looks like from the trailer, villeneueve is giving space to these moments so that the viewer can foster a genuine connection with the characters? radical concept.

our lady of perpetual hunger - i started this one optimistically bc i like chef memoirs, but i am at the point where she has just given birth to her son and honestly DON’T CARE. i still haven’t officially given up on it yet since i actually fucking bought it like a dope. i certainly would not have if i knew how much NOT about working the line this was gonna be

7- book you are currently reading

Aside from the failures mentioned above, I am working on the second book in B. Catling’s Vorrh trilogy, The Erstwhile. Also very close to finally finishing Iain Sinclair’s The Last London - there’s a review of his work from the LA Times that goes “One of Sinclair’s greatest skills has always been his ability to take diverse if not chaotic source material and refashion it in a way that sometimes seems downright alchemical” which captures some of the wonder I experience when reading his work. His style and how he creates atmosphere and setting is just unique and astounding.

8- last book you recommended to someone

The Secret History by Donna Tartt. Before that I told my brother to read Eat a Peach, as we both love Anthony Bourdain and David Chang talks about him a bit here, plus it’s just a fucking great book. any book that gives insight into Chang’s methodology and paradigm is worth a shot.

9- oldest book you read

I think it might have to be Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night (which apparently according to wiki premiered on the stage a whole four months before Hamlet so that’s what we’re going with) and if plays don’t count, I don’t care. I think they count and that’s what we’re going with.

10- the most recent book you read ?

Given the previous question, the most recently published book, right? It’s gotta be the one I just finished: The First Collection of Criticism by a Living Female Rock Critic - Revised and Expanded edt., which like just came out this summer. I watched Jessica Hopper’s promo zoom, curtesy of my local indie bookstore, and went ahead and bought it. This was a great decision! It was just what I needed to read these last couple of weeks. i love there’s lots of short pieces that made the read quick and the fact that it’s non-fiction so there was no pressure of a plot or the emotional weight of character investment when I had a lot of big stressors dragging me down irl -it was such a relief. Hopper’s criticism is fun to read and there’s some real art in her appreciation of music here.

11- favourite author?

These are the top in a kind of order but not really: Donna Tartt, Jeff VanderMeer, Megan Whalen Turner, Flannery O’Conner, Chuck Palahniuk, Anthony Bourdain

Other faves very much worth mentioning: Emily O’Neill, Richard Siken, Brandon Sanderson, Warren Ellis, Nathan Englander, Stephen King, Eddie Huang, Carl Hiaassen, Anne Carson, and Iain Sinclair.

12- buying books or borrowing books?

Depends on if my library has it, of course! I nearly always see if my library has a copy first if i have never read it or the author before. If i’ve read the book before or trust the author, I’ll buy it. Like I’ll straight out buy new stuff from Jeff VanderMeer even though with him it’s either this-hits-exactly-and-is-my-new-fave or i-really-disliked-this-but-admire-the-boundaries-you’re-pushing-my-dude - so it’s always a gamble but a worthy one.

12- a book you dislike that everyone else seems to love

a little life (just bc it's torture porn elevated to art doesn’t negate the fact that it’s torture porn. Yanagihara’s project here is repugnant and the fact that this book is lauded as moving lgbt fiction makes my skin crawl)

sharp objects (good writing, compelling story, BUT typographical scarification doesn't work like that - i am not going to get into it but i know from first hand experience how Flynn described it is not accurate)

nesbø’s the snowman (what kinda dumbass detective would think THAT when a woman finds her missing father’s corpse? absolute idiocy - so obviously reverse engineered with that end in mind)

the raven cycle (fuck ronan lynch to start and then fuck him to end as well - there’s some other stuff but mostly he’s a total CUNT and if i don’t say that once a day i have probably died)

14 - bookmarks or dogears?

Bookmarks and sticky notes. Then I can place it pointing directly to the paragraph I last stopped on.

15- The book you can always reread?

This is my question because I reread all the time. ALL THE TIME. Books I reread often: The Secret History, Medium Raw (especially chapter 17 The Fury), Crooked Kingdom, The Violent Bear It Away, and The Goldfinch. Every year like clockwork (since it came out apparently) I will reread Stephen King’s The Outsider.

Other books I feel the urge to reread: VanderMeer’s Acceptance, Englander’s Dinner at the Center of the Earth, Frazier’s Nightwoods, Fresh Off the Boat, the Mr. Mercedes trilogy, the Peter Grant Series (which is queued up for another go here soon I think), any of the stories from A Good Man is Hard to Find, Sanderson’s Wax and Wayne Mistborn books, simon vs the homosapiens’ agenda, and there are two of Alan Morinis’ books on Mussar that I am technically always revisiting—when i need a reminder, i’ll jump around and read specific sections to get centered again.

16- can you read while listening to music?

Yes, but only ambient or near ambient (only usually one track on repeat) or a soundtrack I am extremely familiar with. No new music. I do usually need some audio stimulation or my mind will wander terribly.

17- one POV or multi POV?

Multi pov can certainly be done well (looking at the soc duaology and VanderMeer’s Acceptance) but working a multi-pov means there are more plates spinning, it’s more of a challenge, and some authors pull it off better than others.

18- do you read book in one sitting or in multiple days?

I don’t really do this anymore. that might have something to do with me picking up thicker books? but also i have a full time job now and let’s be real the book has to be hella good if i don’t want to put it down. the last book i attempted to shotgun was the final installment of my favorite series and it still took me two days so....i can get through a lot of books but none of them are ever in one sitting anymore.

19- who to tag:

@sybilius​ @mouth-rainboy​ @iwonderifthatisart​ @phereinnike​ @magnificentmoose​ @wambsgangs​ @moriarteaparty​ and anyone else if you feel so inclined!

Bonus Question: What’s on your to-read shelf? 

As for me, I am excited about one i just picked up, Danforth’s Plain Bad Heroines, which i might start tomorrow and I will be taking Paul Madonna’s Come to Light on my trip to see my brother this coming weekend. 

[authenticcadence18]

Butterfly pt. 1

Here’s the pre-Battle For Mewni canon-divergent Starco fic I wrote in 2017!!!

Have a note from my younger self to give context to the story:

“I'm not quite sure what events lead up to this or what happens afterward...this story is just a piece of what I imagine could happen during Toffee's eventual attack on Mewni. This scene takes place on Mewni, and Marco obviously used his dimensional scissors to get there.....duh 😜.”

(Also I wrote this four years ago, when my writing style wasn’t nearly as developed/polished as it is now. I could spend hours editing it, but I‘d feel kinda bad doing that to my younger self😂.)

...

AO3

...

"STAR!!!!!!!!!"

Marco struggled relentlessly against the green chains of energy that prohibited him from moving, but there was nothing he could do but watch, horrified, as Toffee drained the life out of his best friend

"STOP!!!! YOU'RE HURTING HER!!!!!"

Piercing green magic gushed from the severed crystal imbedded in the villain's hand and swirled furiously around Star, whose electric blue eyes were growing dimmer by the second. The princess lunged at Toffee, wand-in-hand, in one final attempt to subdue him, but his magical assault had weakened her body beyond repair. With a shrill moan, Star collapsed to the ground and lay motionless, the light in her pupils now almost completely extinguished.

A sob tore through Marco's throat as he struggled against the magical shackles binding him for the umpteenth time, only to discover that he was now able to move freely. He scrambled to his best friend's side and frantically began checking for a pulse, for breath, for anything that indicated she was alright. All the while, he continued to assure her, "It's okay, Star, you're fine, it's going to be fine, please be fine, you'll be just fine, Star, PLEASE be fine!!!!"

But he felt nothing.

Star Butterfly—crown princess, heir to the throne of Mewni, and Marco's best friend—was no more.

"......you killed her......" Marco uttered blankly, staring into the sunken black eyes of the girl who'd radically changed his life in such a short amount of time. Trembling, partially from despair and partially from fury, he inclined his head to meet Toffee's watchful gaze and repeated, "....you KILLED her...!!"

Toffee chuckled, the chilling timbre of his voice not quite clicking with the spindly bird form he still had possession of. "Well, not technically," the former Ludo corrected Marco smoothly, hovering above him with a smile that could have been perceived as understanding, had he not already revealed his hand. "I've merely drained her magical life force. It would be possible to restore it and revive her if you had any healers around, but..."

He smirked.

"I believe the Chancellor is still...out of commission."

Marco's eyes narrowed. "Alright, fine! You've got Star! What about me? Are you going to suck the life out of me too before I karate-chop you into the next multiverse???"

Toffee tisked, an almost fatherly expression appearing on his face. "Oh Marco," he crooned gently, as if gently chiding a disobedient child. "There's no point in that. Without her?" He gestured to Star's broken form. "You're nothing."

With this, the villain cackled menacingly and snatched up Star's wand before zooming out of the cave and slamming a rock in front of the entrance with a wave of his hand, leaving Marco alone with the shell of the coolest girl he'd ever known.

With Toffee gone, the reality of the situation slowly began to sink in....

Star was gone.

And it was his fault.

"....STAR!!!!" Marco wailed, tears blurring his vision. "THIS WASN'T SUPPOSED TO HAPPEN!!! I—it's all my fault..... If it weren't for me, you wouldn't have had any reason to cleave your wand in the first place!! You...you'd be alive..."

He took one of Star’s cold hands in his, despair weighing him down so heavily that he doubted he'd ever be able to stand again.

"You trusted me with your friendship, and I hurt you. You trusted me with your life, and I let you die....

"...you trusted me with your heart...." he managed to choke, the final lyrics of Ruberiot's song reverberating within his skull, "...and all I did was push it aside......"

He knelt near Star in silence for a few minutes, grasping desperately for answers within his head. How could this have happened? How could he have let this happen??

"You know," Marco murmured weakly, "Jackie and I decided to stop dating pretty soon after you left Earth. I knew finding my best friend and being there to support her was more important than focusing on a girlfriend, and Jackie agreed....but I also think she was convinced that I'd fallen for you..."

He winced.

“...but I guess none of that really matters now, huh?"

Marco gazed down at the princess's fallen form, wishing beyond belief that he'd done things differently in Star's time on Earth, wishing he knew what he could have done to prevent her from ending up like this, wishing he'd been able to see the truth before it had been too late to act upon it.

"I'll finish what you started, Star," he vowed, determination seeping into his voice. "I promise, I'll do everything I can to protect the citizens of Mewni and defeat Toffee. And I promise that I'll never stop looking for a way to bring you back and that you'll always be the best, most amazing friend I could've ever hoped to have, and that..."

His voice cracked.

"...and that I'll always love you."

Gently, Marco brushed a rebellious strand of blonde hair off of Star's forehead and planted a soft kiss on her brow.

"Goodbye, Star."

With this, Marco's resolve shattered, and he broke down in gut-wrenching sobs, shoulders quaking and chest burning.

So it made sense that he didn't notice when the two hearts stamped on Star's cheeks began glowing faintly.

Slowly, translucent webs of purple began weaving themselves around the princess's form, lifting her up bit by bit as they did so. Star herself did not stir, but something within her most certainly was stirring.

When Marco felt Star's fingers shift away from his, his eyes shot wide open. Out of instinct, he jerked back upon observing her continue to rise off of the ground, still unconscious. As the webs grew thicker and thicker, encasing the princess's entire body, the rosy glow emanating from them only grew as well. Marco watched in awe as the chrysalis began to vibrate when it rose to around five feet off of the ground. Faster and stronger it writhed, until at last, with a searing flash of light so bright and pink that Marco lost his vision for a couple of seconds, the figure within burst free.

"......am I dead? ..... Marco, is that you?? Are we both dead???"

Marco, unfortunately, was currently incapable of offering any sort of response. He simply stood, gaping, with his eyes set upon the girl hovering a few yards away from him.

Star waved her hands in Marco's direction, only to recoil when she found more than eight fingers—and purple ones, no less!—at her disposal. "Yikes!!" she shrieked, recoiling.

Her eyes narrowed as she examined her two newly-formed sets of limbs. "....wait a minute."

Tentatively, she craned her head back--and gasped with joy at what she discovered.

"MY MEWBERTY WINGS!!!!!!!" Star giggled gleefully, twirling circles in the air on a pair of intricately-patterned lavender wings. "THEY'RE ALL GROWN UP!!!!!!"

And indeed they were. Star Butterfly had at last unlocked the full heritage of the Butterfly dynasty coded deep within her DNA. Unfolding from her back were two massive butterfly wings adorned with shimmering hearts. Six arms extended from her torso now, and a pair of dainty antennae bobbled above her head. Her hair, now also a shade of dark violet, had shortened significantly as well, so as not to get caught in her wings.

"This is so cool...!" Star breathed. "Marco, what do you think??"

The sound of Star repeating his name finally snapped Marco out of his stupor.

"....STAR!!!!!!" he proclaimed elatedly, hastily rushing over to her with a luminescent grin on his face. "You're okay!!!!! Well—more than okay, actually!"

Beaming, Star scooped Marco up in a six-armed hug and spun him around in the air a few times, the two of them laughing and celebrating as if the events of the past month or so had never occurred.

But just as quickly as Star's mood spiraled upward, reality set back in as she began recalling where she was. Quickly, the princess set Marco down before planting her own feet on the floor.

"Wait a minute..." she voiced with uncertainty, cocking her head at her best friend. "Didn't Toffee, like, drain my powers and more or less leave me for dead? That's the last thing I remember..."

Marco nodded with a little shiver. “…yup.”

"So...how am I prancing about on newly-grown mewberty wings now?"

Marco shrugged. He had to keep blinking to assure himself that Star’s transformation wasn’t just a cruel trick of his heartache-addled mind.

Star stared at him for a moment, perplexed. Then, without quite knowing why she was led to do so, she tentatively raised a hand to her forehead and touched it—in the very spot where Marco had kissed her only minutes before.

Instantly, a wave of understanding pummeled Star, and she staggered back.

"...it was you!" she gasped.

But before she had the chance to elaborate on this, the stone guarding the entrance to the cave groaned and started shifting to the side.

“You know something, Marco?” Toffee called out as he pushed the stone away. “I’ve been thinking...maybe you have some potential after all! You see, I’ve been meaning to find a new—erm, shall we say, host? And what better person to destroy Mewni as than the former princess’s best fri—“

Toffee took pride in having mastered a distinctly precise ability to mask his emotions. It was one of the qualities that kept him on his toes after centuries of plotting against the Butterfly family. But even he, the immortal monster of legends and tapestries, could not contain his bewilderment at the sight awaiting him.

Star Butterfly was fine. More than fine, actually. She had never appeared more powerful. And Marco Diaz, the seemingly-useless karate boy, was standing right beside her.

Heroes and villain stared wide-eyed at each other, each wondering how to gain the upper hand. After matter of seconds that consisted of Toffee darting his gaze between the princess and her prince, understanding suddenly dawned upon him. He chuckled, quickly regaining his composure.

“Well well…” the monster crooned with a smirk, directing his gaze towards Marco. “Looks like you aren’t as much of a disappointment as I thought.

“And Star! Why, you look just like your mom did the last time we fought. It's a shame to think of her discovering that her dear little princess finally earned her wings but tragically had the life re-drained out of her before she really got to use them…I’ll be sure to dispose of her before she has to find out." With these words, Toffee fired a blast of green magic at the currently-wandless Star, smiling wickedly.

Star, however, wasn't going to give herself up so easily this time. Eyes and hearts igniting, she thrust her hands forward as searing pink magic gushed out of them like a waterfall and formed a bubble around her. Toffee's blast fizzled and sputtered away as soon as it touched the force-field.

Toffee's eyes widened in shock and then narrowed in disdain. He fired another shot at Star, and then another, and then another, but the warrior princess deflected every blast as effortlessly as if she'd been doing it for her whole life. When Toffee realized that he'd lost his chance to defeat her, he made a last-ditch attempt to gain the upper hand by manifesting a giant, luminescent green limb and snatching Marco—who'd been soaking up every second of the battle from the sidelines, awestruck—with it....not realizing his action would have the opposite effect of what he intended.

"NO."

The next thing Toffee knew, he was lying flat on his back with the wind knocked out of his host's puny lungs. He could vaguely make out the hazy form of Star Butterfly hovering over him with a venomous glint in her eyes.

"You can try and kill me all you want, but touch Marco....and I'll destroy you," she declared in a razor-sharp whisper.

For the first time since he'd lost his finger to Moon, all those years ago, Toffee's stomach--though, technically it was still Ludo's stomach--lurched as an unpleasant chill seized his body.

He was afraid.

With the last of his energy, the villain rose from the ground and frantically fled the cave, leaving Star's wand behind in his haste.

Star remained hovering in the air, glaring after him with the same stone-hard expression on her face.

".....Star?"

Tentatively, Marco approached the princess and grabbed the hand that was nearest to him.

"You can calm down now. He's gone."

Star's shoulders relaxed, and she gently sank to the ground, her wings and extra arms folding up and disappearing as she did so. Marco immediately knelt beside his best friend and helped her to stand, supporting her weight while she re-adjusted to her normal form.

Star winced, holding one of two hands to her now-pale forehead

"Ugh....Mom didn't tell me how draining it is to earn your wings...." she grumbled.

Marco, on the other hand, had never felt more alive. "Star, that was amazing!!!!" he exclaimed. "You just took down Toffee, the same guy who managed to defeat the entire magic high commission and drain their powers in less than two minutes!!! And after he'd drained your power, too!!!!! You still managed to beat him!!!!!!"

Star stared at the ground for a bit, the gears in her head whirring. Finally, she raised her gaze to Marco, hand still poised at the top of her head.

"But I couldn't have done it if it weren't for you.”

"....what do you mean?" Marco asked—though deep down he suspected he understood what Star was getting at.

"I--I'm not sure..." Star replied sheepishly, shrugging her shoulders with a meager chuckle. "It's just...it's like....you replenished my power source. I can feel it was you. But I can't figure out how!!"

Marco bit his lip, uncertain as to how he could be more anxious in this moment than he'd been when Toffee was about to possess him.

Then, he spotted the royal wand, which was still strewn on the floor. Swiftly, he scooped up the heirloom and held it out to Star, who seemed to snap back into focus upon seeing it.

"You're right, Marco," the princess decreed, reclaiming her wand from her best friend. "We'll talk through this later."

Grinning mischievously, Star sprang into the air and raised her arms, and suddenly she was a butterfly again!

"Right now, we have a kingdom to save!"

...

Thanks for reading!! I actually wrote part of a continuation to this back in the day but I never quite finished it...soooo I’m going to try to finish it and then post the conclusion sometime!

(And AGAIN there’s a lot of canon-divergent stuff in this fic, I know Star isn’t ACTUALLY biologically a Butterfly😅. But I didn’t know that four years ago, lol!)

[rosecorcoranwrites]

Happy New Year!!!

2020 in Hindsight

(I told you I would make that same dumb joke as I made last year.)

Anyway, 2020 is moldering in its grave, so it's time once again to briefly look back before gazing forward.

I won't bore you with all the numerical details, but, in brief, I didn't quite make it to my goal of four writerly activities a week, but considering what a wretched year it was all round, I don't feel bad about that in the slightest. All things considered (a pandemic, working in a city that doesn't require masks, clinical homesickness, riots, politics, wildfires, etc), I think I did rather well.

I got a ton of research done, including topics such as human experimentation during the Cold War, Arthurian legends, forensics, criminology, civil defense films on bomb shelters, female serial killers, auras, and 1960s radicals. (Yes, those are all for the same book series!). I also received the Encyclopedia of Occultism and Parapsychology for Christmas, which will serve my folklore and fantasy obsessed brain for years to come.

I've also been keeping up (mostly) with my 28 Rant Rave Reviews. Real people I don't know have subscribed to me and commented on my videos, which I consider a roaring success!

Finally, and most importantly, I have started drafting my AHFM trilogy (because, of course, it ballooned into a trilogy). The prologue and first two chapters are done! That being said, I still want to keep this one close to my chest for a while. I'll discuss it from time to time on my various social media sites, but I have other, bigger publicity plans this year.

2021: The Year of Styx!!!

Next year, I'm going to focus on two goals, and two goals only.

Finish the first draft of the first book of the AHFM WIP. It will be around 24 chapters long, so if I write two chapters a month, it should be doable.

Re-promote the Styx Trilogy!

I've noticed this odd trend on Writing Twitter and Tumblr to discuss "current WIPs" and nothing else, to write one (or more!) books a year, and, well, to just kind constantly produce and produce and produce and just, like, never stop? I'm not saying that focusing on churning out as many words as possible is false consciousness (but I am heavily implying it!), but it's not my style.

I love my WIP, with all it's secrets, but I also love my books, Miscast Spells, Outcast Shadows, Recast Light, and Love & Chaos. There is a reason I spent ten years of my life in that world; I really like it.

And, yet, when I first started promoting those books, five years ago (holy cow!), I was not as social-media savvy. I also had a tiny fraction of the followers I had now. Thus, while my new WIP is secretly cooking in the oven, I'm going to give my Styx books some much needed attention and TLC.

We might have one or two Styx-based surprises on here, but most of the action will be on Tumblr and Twitter, where I will be reposting/retweeting my Styxian stories, "World of" posts, and character profiles.

As for the blog, I'll still be posting my reading roundups (except for December, in which I read one book) and various thoughts on writing and storytelling. My Rant Rave Reviews shall continue as well, plus a few other vlogs that I can hopefully produce once I find some good (ie, free) editing software.

And with that, I bid you all a Happy New Year. Here's to making it one of the greats!

[thelarriefics]

ANGST FIC REC: Below you’ll find a collection of angst fics. Since some deal with heavy topics, please be sure to read the tags!

📖 Cocaine for Breakfast by @harryeatsburger​ (291k)

Louis Tomlinson is a drug addict, sent away from his beloved party-scene to recover. There, he discovers that small towns have just as much access to drugs as London did, plus something even better that he just can’t get enough of. That something is a boy with green eyes and bouncy curls named Harry Styles.

📖 Take My Breath Away by @realitybetterthanfiction (153k)

A Top Gun AU. 

📖 Own the Scars by @crinkle-eyed-boo (144k)

Louis has never felt like he was good enough: for his stepdad, for his life-long best friend, for the life he’s supposed to want. After an accident that nearly costs him his life, Louis’ parents send him to rehab where he’s forced to face his demons. On the long and difficult road to recovery, Louis must confront the truths he’s been avoiding about his future, his relationships, and his sense of self-worth. Because before he can love anyone else, he’s got to learn how to love himself first.

📖 Unbelievers by @isthatyoularry (136k)

It’s Louis’ senior year, and he’s dead set on doing it right. However, along with his pair of cleats, a healthy dose of sarcasm and his ridiculous best friend, he’s also got a complicated family, a terrifyingly uncertain future, and a mortal enemy making his life just that much worse. Mortal enemies “with benefits” was not exactly the plan.

Or: The one where Louis and Harry definitely aren’t friends, and football is everything.

📖 red hands by @dystopianharry (132k)

a dystopian au in which harry, an ex-soldier who’s escaped from his government run camp, accidentally stumbles across the biggest rebel movement in the country, and louis, one of the rebellion’s mysterious leaders who appears to hate him, seems to simultaneously have an obsession with keeping him alive. or: harry is wanted for treason, niall hasn’t changed in four years, liam is always smiling, and louis is angry. like, really angry.

📖 For As Long As I Can Remember (It’s Been December) by @greenfeelings (128k)

After recovering from a severe accident that causes Harry to lose his memory of three years, he moves to London to start his life over as a star chef. Little does he know that when he falls in love with Louis at first sight, it’s not the first time they meet.

Featuring an unintentional game of hot and cold, Harry chasing memories that won’t come back, Louis burying himself in work to try and forget what he can’t forget, Liam being torn between two of his best friends, Zayn as a moral compass and Niall saving the day with good music and brutal honesty.

📖 got the sunshine on my shoulders by @hattalove (124k)

five years ago, harry styles left his tiny home town to make it big as a recording artist. he didn’t have much regard for what he left behind - a life, a family, and a husband, who woke up one morning to find him gone.

now, harry has everything he could possibly want: he’s rich, famous, and adored by everyone he meets, including his boyfriend. but when said boyfriend proposes to him, he’s forced to face the uncomfortable facts of his past - and louis, who’s spent the last five years returning every set of divorce papers harry sent him.

(or, an au based on the movie sweet home alabama.)

📖 Promise in the Sky by @hazzabeeforlou ​(99k)

AU in which Harry Styles, a naïve, repressed, socially awkward Midwestern highschooler tries to navigate his fundamentalist evangelical parents and radically progressive older sister. He’s doing an okay job of this until the Tomlinson family starts attending Lakeside Baptist Church and a boy named Louis changes everything. Harry is forced to come to grips with his true self when Louis becomes more than just his best friend; but their relationship opens a can of worms and sends them on the most painful, heartbreaking journey of their young lives. They risk everything and nearly lose, and Harry learns that perhaps only one Bible verse is true: that perfect love casteth out fear.

📖 The Road Less Travelled By by @freetheankles (98k)

Louis is a widowed lumberjack, and Harry isn’t someone he needs to fall in love with. 

📖 For Reasons Wretched and Divine by @indiaalphawhiskey (94k)

Ten years ago, Harry Styles was just a nerdy kid with one friend and a debilitating crush on the captain of his school’s football team. He thought the stars were smiling down on him the day he and Louis Tomlinson were paired for their end-of-term Literature project. But because Harry’s life is decidedly not a fairytale, the budding friendship quickly leads to the least happy ending of all time.

Now, Harry Styles is a household name. Barely twenty-seven with two Grammy nominations to his name, the singer-songwriter is poised to take the music industry by storm with his highly anticipated third album. So, what happens when the best producer in the business is also the only person Harry’s vowed never to speak to again?

📖 (Take Me Home) Country Roads by @a-writerwrites (86k)

a Northern Exposure AU featuring Louis as the big city doctor, Harry as a natural healer, Niall as a secretive barkeep, Liam and Zayn head over heels for each other but they don’t know it and a lot of hurt, comfort and moonshine in between.

📖 Yellow by @13ways-of-looking (84k)

The city of Gotham turns blood red with a new, mysterious criminal element, a beautiful woman named the Blind Cupid. She threatens to tear the fabric of the city apart, aided by her deadly protégé, the Cat. Can Batman stop them? Will he resist the bewitching allures of the Cat? A Batman/ Catwoman AU.

📖 Chasing Empty Spaces by @domestic-harry (79k)

The year is 1934 and Harry Styles was to inherent the largest tobacco firm in the south. His parents have picked out the “perfect” girl for him to marry and he has the privilege of receiving the highest education possible. The problem was, Harry hadn’t realized he didn’t actually want any part of that future until he met a mechanic named, Louis Tomlinson.

📖 Far Away. by @dimpled-halo​ (57k)

Harry returns to London after five years. Stuck in the past with “what ifs” and “what might have beens”, he sees that his friends and ex (and possible love of his life) Louis have all moved on with their lives while he finds himself questioning his own life choices, past and present.

📖 The Second Hand Unwinds by @fullonlarrie (51k)

Louis Tomlinson is one of the first members of NASA’s top secret Chrono Exploration Program. When things go wrong and he’s sent further back in time than planned, he has no other option than to show up on his ex-boyfriend’s doorstep.

📖 Looking Through You by @allwaswell16 (41k)

Just as Louis and Liam were starting out in the music industry, writing and producing for up and coming artists, a fateful meeting with new pop singer Harry Styles changes everything. Four years later, just as Harry is set to embark on his next world tour, a drunken confession causes a rift between once inseparable friends. As Harry tries to make sense of his feelings for Louis, he begins writing his next album to express them as it may be the only way to break through the walls that Louis has built between them.

📖 Gracious Goes the Ghost of You by @haloeverlasting (25k)

Harry is a ghost who comes to visit. Louis feels like a ghost, himself. In forgiveness, they find their way back to life.

📖 We’ll Rise Up by @suddenclarityharry (18k)

Louis is a Pastor with no church and a heart filled with uncertainty. Pastor Payne is more than willing to give Louis a new place to work, but it’s Music Director Harry that helps him rebuild his faith.

📖 Escape (The Piña Colada AU) by @avocadolouie (10k)

Louis writes to escape. Harry answers to join him.

📖 A Year (and then some) by @bringmetheharry (6k)

Harry breaks and it takes a year of ups and downs for he and Louis to put themselves back together.

[maswartz]

IN THE PROGRESSIVE COLLEGE TOWN where I live, one sees a lot of “Bernie” bumper stickers on a lot of Subarus. Probably these are remnants of 2016, when the Independent from Vermont masqueraded as a Democrat, dividing the party and hobbling Hillary Clinton’s campaign just enough to fuck up the final tally. Although I held with HRC then as now, I don’t begrudge anyone who supported Bernie Sanders in the primaries four years ago, when we first became acquainted with the ugly font and awful shade of blue on his campaign merch. But to support him today, after Trump, after Mueller, is akin to insisting, on Christmas 2019, that despite ample evidence to the contrary, Michael Jackson is innocent, because you really dig Off the Wall.

“Don’t they know?” I scream when I see these Bernie stickers. “Don’t they realize who he really is?” Apparently not. But then, to them, and to most on what Sean Hannity might call the “radical left,” Bernie is not a person as much as an ideal: A sort of liberal Santa Claus who will come down our collective chimney to deliver free healthcare and free college, and, with the aid of his ineffable North Pole magic, break up the banks, slay the patriarchy, eliminate racism, end income inequality, and tax corporations into insolvency—all while raising the minimum wage for his workshop elves. How he plans to actually accomplish any of this he only hints at—Bernie rarely deigns to answer process questions and usually gets grouchy when pressed for details—but it all sounds so wonderful we want to believe, just as we every year insist that yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus.

Unfortunately, the flesh-and-blood Bernie Sanders, if elected, would not have the requisite power to fulfill his lofty promises—any more than the tipsy Macy’s Santa will leave the mall on a sleigh driven by flying reindeer. Bernie is a real person, and he is deeply, perhaps fatally, flawed. He would be a horrible candidate in the general election—like, McGovern-in-’72-level bad—and, more urgently, his nomination would ensure that, whoever won, the White House remained in Russian hands.

The Bernie extolled by the bros is a myth, just like the Trump that MAGA adores—just like Neverland, and just like Santa Claus. We need to face some cold, hard truths, before Sanders scolds and finger-wags his way to a second term for Donald Trump. We cannot permit this egomaniacal fraud to spoil yet another election.

Bernie is a socialist—but of the Union of Soviet Socialists variety.

Hey, there’s a reason Santa Claus wears red!

Bernie is a self-styled “socialist” who has bought, hook line and sinker, the Stalinist propaganda about Marxism and the glories of the Soviet Union. This was understandable if you were Dalton Trumbo in 1947. After all, the governing philosophy of communism is “let’s share everything so there is no want,” which is kind of appealing, especially next to the “fuck you, pay me” mantra of unvarnished Trump-variety capitalism. Seven-plus decades later, alas, the naïveté borders on delusional.

From the Young Peoples Socialist League to his membership in the Liberty Union Party, which sought to nationalize (and not just “break up”) the banks, to his time at the Kibbutz Sha’ar Ha’amakim, which extolled Stalin—who slaughtered more people than Hitler—as “Sun of the Nations,” to his hanging a Soviet flag in his Burlington mayoral office, Soviet boosterism is the thruline of Bernie's career.

Bernie took his wife to the Soviet Union for their honeymoon, as one does. For years, he extolled the virtues of the USSR. Rather than grok that it’s all KGB-fed propaganda and lies, he’s been a staunch Bolshevik apologist for his entire adult life.

I mean, the guy has a dacha, ffs.

Look, our healthcare system is flawed. I’d love some sort of universal coverage like they have in every other developed country. But the best person to promote the de facto nationalization of the healthcare system is not a Soviet apologist who once wanted to nationalize the banks, too.

Bernie is unpopular with Black voters.

To be fair, Sanders (likely) really does want equality and all those nice things he talks about. Good for him. The problem is that his vision of “socialist” utopia is absolutist and focuses too much on the (white, male) working class that he, like his beloved Marx, idolizes and idealizes.

Despite some high-profile Black supporters, Bernie remains unpopular with Black voters, particularly Black women. This, and not “the rigged DNC,” is why HRC kicked his ass in the primaries. Could it be that Black voters have made Bernie as a BS artist? Those are his initials, after all.

The failure of the United States to properly examine and make amends for slavery contributes mightily to the country’s enduring racism, on which MAGA feeds. Not to even discuss reparations is madness. Unsurprisingly, Bernie does not understand this:

Marcus H. Johnson@marcushjohnson

Bernie Sanders thinks reparations is "just writing a check" instead of a redress for state sanctioned terrorism, violence, and being shut out of the economic, political, and legal systems for 250+ years. How is reparations "just writing a check," and free college not?

Aaron Rupar@atrupar

Bernie Sanders on reparations on The View: "I think that right now our job is to address the crises facing the American people in our communities, and I think there are better ways to do that than just writing out a check." https://t.co/FXso34iSbs

March 1st 2019

470 Retweets1,065 Likes

To win the resounding victory necessary to defeat Trump and the Russian hackers threatening to sabotage yet another election, overwhelming African-American voter turnout is essential. Black voters are more likely to turn out in big numbers for Joe Biden—especially if he runs with Kamala Harris, as we K-Hivers hope—than yet another elderly New Yorker who makes pie-in-the-sky promises he can’t possibly keep.

Bernie is lazy.

Sanders spent the early part of his career flitting between low-paying odd jobs:

He bounced around for a few years, working stints in New York as an aide at a psychiatric hospital and teaching preschoolers for Head Start, and in Vermont researching property taxation for the Vermont Department of Taxes and registering people for food stamps for a nonprofit called the Bread and Law Task Force.

Then as now, he was more given to talking the talk than walking the walk. In 1970, the 30-year-old Liberty Union Party socialist was kicked out of a Vermont commune for not doing his share of the work. His days there were instead spent in “endless political discussion.”

Sanders’ idle chatter did not endear him with some of the commune’s residents, who did the backbreaking labor of running the place. [Kate] Daloz writes [in her history of the commune] that one resident, Craig, “resented feeling like he had to pull others out of Bernie’s orbit if any work was going to get accomplished that day.” Sanders was eventually asked to leave. 

Eventually, Bernie found a career that would allow him to talk a big game but accomplish precious little: politics. For the decades he’s been in Congress, his record is pretty scant. Seven bills in 28 years, including two that name post offices, is nothing to write home about (unless you’re writing home to one of those post offices)—although Sanders has been a quiet champion of gun rights for most of his Congressional career, as well as a dependable “nay” vote on Russian sanctions, so I guess there’s that.

But hey, I’m sure a guy who has avoided labor as assiduously as possible for 78 years will magically turn into a workaholic as an octogenarian. That heart attack no doubt jump-started his engines. Speaking of which…

Bernie is old, and he just had a heart attack.

Okay, maybe it wasn’t actually a heart attack. Maybe it was just a life-threatening cardiac issue that required emergency surgery. We don’t know, because Sanders has not yet released his medical report. But he has promised to do so, just as he promised to release his taxes and then waited a million years to make good. Will he bring the receipts before next week, as he said he would?

The Speaker's Basilisk⚖️@PelosiLegatus

Why hasn’t @BernieSanders released his medical records yet? He just has a heart attack three months ago, which he lied about. What is he hiding from the American people? Why is the press so afraid to dig into his dishonesty?

December 23rd 2019

173 Retweets444 Likes

Even if his medical report checks out, I mean…there’s ageism, and then there are actuarial tables. A President Sanders would turn eighty in 2021, his first year in office. That would make him the oldest first-term president by a significant margin. He can’t live forever; in that way, he’s not like Santa Claus.

Bernie is a misogynist.

That Bernie Sanders is some sort of radical feminist, a paradigm for how men should be in the post-Third-Wave world, is almost as ridiculous as his stubborn refusal to comb his hair.

Before he launched his political career, he was a deadbeat dad. Remember, Bernie was a graduate of the prestigious University of Chicago, in an era when college degrees were relatively rare. Instead of putting food on the table, he was running quixotic political campaigns as the standard-bearer of a barely functional party. As Spandan Chakrabarti writes:

In 1971, Vermont was debating a tenant’s rights bill. One of the testimonials to Vermont’s State Senate Judiciary Committee came from one Susan Mott of Burlington, who said the legislation did not go far enough in prohibiting discrimination against single mothers and recipients of welfare benefits. Mott had one child and was on welfare. That one child…was Levi Sanders, Bernie Sanders’ son. Which begs the question, why did Bernie Sanders’ (former?) girlfriend and his son have to be on welfare? Where was the University of Chicago graduate’s considerable marketable skills? What was 5-year-old Levi’s father doing that he couldn't afford to support his own child? It turns out he was too busy coming in third with single digit votes.

To be fair, Bernie did bring home a little bit of bacon writing stuff like this:

A man goes home and masturbates [to] his typical fantasy. A woman on her knees, a woman tied up, a woman abused.

A woman enjoys intercourse with her man—as she fantasizes [about] being raped by 3 men simultaneously.

Even if those lines were intended as a provocative rhetorical flourish to be shot down later in the essay, I mean…what feminist ally would write something like that?

And then there’s the more recent sexual harassment issues that seem to be pervasive in his campaign offices. He missed one of the Russian sanction votes because he was busy dealing with it:

The only one to miss the vote was Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt. He was meeting with women who had accused his 2016 presidential campaign of sexual misconduct, his spokesman, Josh Miller-Lewis, told CNBC.

As if to confirm his misogynist bona fides, Sanders this month endorsed the candidacy of Young Turks founder Cenk Uygur, no feminist ally—before the bad optics forced him to reverse course:

“As I said yesterday, Cenk has been a longtime fighter against the corrupt forces in our politics and he’s inspired people all across the country,” the Vermont senator said. “However, our movement is bigger than any one person. I hear my grassroots supporters who were frustrated and understand their concerns. Cenk today said he is rejecting all endorsements for his campaign, and I retract my endorsement.”

That Cenk is running for the California seat vacated by rising star Katie Hill, a victim of criminal revenge porn who was shamed into stepping down, makes the gaffe even worse.

Bernie is not a Democrat.

Of all the idiotic narratives spewed by the “Bernie bros” about 2016, the most asinine was that the process had to be rigged because the DNC clearly preferred Hillary Clinton to Bernie Sanders. Um…why would it not? Just as a New York Yankees fan club would want its leader to be a ride-or-die Yankee fan rather than a waffler who rooted for either the Bronx Bombers or the Red Sox depending on which was doing better that year, so the Democratic National Committee wants an actual Democrat to be its nominee. Duh.

And this was not any nominee. HRC was practically funding the operation herself, to help with the down-ballot races Bernie could give a shit about. Anyone can scold the country about big banks and wage inequality, but to actually, you know, govern requires working well with other people, a skill that seems to have eluded Sanders for the last 30 years.

Alas, the incorrigible Senator has learned nothing from 2016. He’s still playing the hackneyed “rabble-rousing outsider” card:

The Hill@thehill

Sen. @BernieSanders: "We are going to take on the Democratic establishment."

December 22nd 2019

426 Retweets1,930 Likes

The election of 2020 is, or should be, a referendum on Trump. It’s not about taking on the Democrats. That sort of internecine divisiveness is exactly what Putin wants. Which makes perfect sense when we consider that…

Bernie is (at a minimum) a Useful Idiot for Putin.

The bots go on the offensive whenever I tweet that Bernie is a Useful Idiot for Russia. But he is Useful, in that he operates as a divisive force in the Democratic Party, which aids Putin. And he’s certainly an Idiot, in that he doesn't realize the damage he’s done. But does he really not know?

The Mueller Report makes it clear that Russian IC was helping the Sanders campaign. Either Bernie didn’t realize this, and is an idiot, or he did realize it and played along, and is a traitor. Either way, the guy who hired former Paul Manafort chum Tad Devine to run his campaign cannot be trusted with standing up to Putin and the powerful forces of transnational organized crime, no matter how passionate his anti-Wall Street screeds.

(Sidenote: Tad Devine is now peddling his Kremlin-y wares for Andrew Yang, which perhaps explains Yang’s recent remark that he is open to granting Donald Trump a pardon. This, needless to say, is disqualifying).

Put it this way: Are we sure that a Nominee Sanders—an almost-eighty-year-old who just had a heart attack—would not pick the Russophile cult member Tulsi Gabbard as his running mate? The “anti-anti-Trump Left,” as Jonathan Chait calls it, is alive and well, sharing, “in addition to enthusiasm for Bernie Sanders, [a] deep skepticism of the Democratic Party’s mobilization against the president.” So: traitors, basically. Would not Sanders, if given the chance, throw meat to this rabid fan base, if only to generate more adulation? Do we really trust the judgment of the guy who can’t ensure that his own campaign headquarters is not a hostile work environment?

Bernie still, years after the fact, cannot understand that he contributed to HRC’s defeat—just as he can’t see that his ideas about the Soviet Union and communism have been debunked. He doesn’t have it in him to realize, much less admit, he was wrong. And why should he? As long as well-meaning people—especially young people; especially young women; especially pretty young women—keep “feeling the Bern,” he will continue to happily soak up the attention, like the insufferable narcissist he is. Why Millennials support the guy instead of OK-Boomering him to oblivion is a head-scratcher. Maybe it’s because he was born two months before Pearl Harbor and is therefore older than the Boomers?

Bernie Sanders is the Trump of the Left. Repeat: Bernie Sanders is the Trump of the Left. He’s an egomaniac who believes his own hype, like Trump. And like Trump, Bernie is selling snake oil; we just happen to like his brand of snake oil. He’s a bad mall Santa, promising everyone a pony, when all he can deliver is a lump of coal. And make no mistake: far from assuring a worker’s paradise, his nomination would bring about the end of the republic.

It’s not a “revolution.” It’s a con job. And it’s got the full support of the Russians.

[storywonker]

Series review: Gaunt’s Ghosts

(I posted this a few days ago over at r/fantasy because I’m having a go at their 2019 book bingo; the Hero Mode for that requires you to write a review of every book you read for the bingo)

Originally, I intended to simply read The Warmaster and Anarch for the tie-in Bingo hard mode square. I’ve been a fan of Dan Abnett, and Warhammer 40k’s longest-running book series, since I was a teen, but I hadn’t really read any of the books since about 2014, and I figured: hey, it might be worth rereading the books to see if they hold up.

They do.

For those unfamiliar, Gaunt’s Ghosts is a long-running (15 novels and two short story collections, with three other novels in the same broad chunk of the 40k galaxy) military sci-fi/fantasy series set in the Warhammer 40,000 universe. The books centre around the Tanith First-and-Only, commanded by Colonel-Commissar Ibram Gaunt, a regiment of the Imperial Guard whose world has been destroyed, leaving them the last survivors of their culture. Due to this, and their reconnaissance and stealth specialisation, they’re known, both in-universe and out, as Gaunt’s Ghosts. Their battleground is the Sabbat Worlds Crusade: an Imperial effort to reconquer a sector of space overrun by the forces of Chaos.

The series is roughly divided into four ‘arcs’, although two of these were defined after their release and there are storylines that run through the entire series.

We kick off with the Founding, comprising:

First and Only

Ghostmaker

Necropolis

The Saint:

Honour Guard

The Guns of Tanith

Straight Silver

Sabbat Martyr

The Lost:

Traitor General

His Last Command

The Armour of Contempt

Only In Death

And, latest, The Victory:

Blood Pact

Salvation’s Reach

The Warmaster

Anarch

Of these, I feel the first two books are a little weaker, but from Necropolis on the series hits a consistent level of quality that it never really dips from.

So, what makes such a long series worth reading? Why am I even bothering with this?

First: Dan Abnett writes the best damn battles in fantasy or science fiction. Yes, I understand that’s a bold statement. No, I haven’t read Malazan. I’ll stand by it, though: fifteen books that mostly comprise military engagements of one kind or another, and I can’t say I was bored at any point, or tired of Abnett’s battles. There’s a mix of gritty realism (insofar as anything in 40k is realistic), clear, lucid writing, and an eye for small, vivid details that keeps the firefights both engrossing and easy to understand. I don’t think at any point in the series I was confused about where a character was, or had to reread a passage because I didn’t understand what happened. That’s an impressive piece of craft, and it’s one Abnett’s kept up and improved over the twenty years he’s been writing this series. The little details are great, too: characters noticing how mass laser discharge feels like a visceral shock on a quiet, rainy night; the persistent bruise on a sniper’s shoulder from the heavy kick of an overcharged weapon; characters shouting ‘clear’ so their eardrums survive the backblast of a rocket launcher.

Second: Abnett’s character work and long-form plotting is excellent. He’s referred to it in interviews as ‘soap opera’, and there’s elements of that, certainly. The bonds and rifts between the soldiers of the regiment are a key point of the books, and there are innumerable small moments that humanise the Ghosts in between the shooting; gambling rings, family dramas, comrades discussing the quality of the regiment’s moonshine. This is all great stuff, and, after a while, eclipses the battles as the reason to keep reading, because, at bottom, we don’t want our favourite characters to die.

Which they do. A lot.

Abnett makes expert use of the ensemble cast to both kill enough characters that no-one feels safe and to introduce enough characters that the series doesn’t begin to feel fruitless despite the death toll. Many of the major characters as of The Warmaster and Anarch weren’t even in the first six or seven books, as Abnett keeps the Tanith’s strictly limited manpower pool topped up by periodic drats of new soldiers. Characters who started as broad sketches become more and more detailed as they ping-pong off each other and the enemy; ones who remain spear-carriers (las-carriers?) begin to matter more and more as their minor appearances build up. This cast also injects a lot of variety, as the narrative shifts focus to different parts of the regiment.

Abnett also uses these reinforcements to inject a much-needed influx of female characters. Where the first two books have only two speaking female characters (they’re very much a product of late 90s Games Workshop in that respect), by Anarch female characters are a major presence at every level of the regiment, the majority well-drawn and fleshed-out characters.

Speaking of variety, Abnett also varies each book’s war by changing the kind of military story each one tells. Where Necropolis is a massive, Stalingrad-style siege, Honour Guard is a quest narrative with the Ghosts being part of an armoured column and The Guns of Tanith is an airborne assault on a mountaintop city.

Even where the setup is similar (each of the first three arcs ends in a siege), Abnett varies aspects of the plot and theme to keep things fresh: Sabbat Martyr is part siege, part assassin-hunt; Only In Death is a siege story where the fortress is haunted, alternating between blazing action, the hopelessness of a trapped unit cut off by the enemy, and some utterly chilling psychological horror (it is, in my opinion, the best book in the series). Although the Tanith are usually a small part of whatever war they’re fighting, the length of the series means that the overall course of the war for the Sabbat Worlds develops and twists over time.

All of this means that, by the time we roll around to books 14 and 15, the Sabbat Worlds Crusade feels like it has a tremendous amount of weight and history behind it. Locations that were mentioned in throwaway briefings have become real places that we’ve visited. Enemy warlords mentioned in passing have grown to be massive antagonists. And, above all, the characters at the centre of the Crusade, mentioned only as distant names directing the action from afar, become central to the narrative.

The Warmaster and Anarch are, although released as two novels, best read as one single narrative (indeed, the whole Victory arc is one single narrative, including several novellas and short stories included in the Sabbat Crusade anthology). It takes the Ghosts to the Forge-World of Urdesh, mentioned as a manufacturing centre for the forces of Chaos as far back as book four. A freak warp-accident jumps the Ghosts ten years forward in time, and the crucial nature of the cargo they recovered in Salvation’s Reach thrusts them into the heart of the Crusade. These are novels about change, as the Ghosts adjust to their new position and importance, and the new draftees from Verghast and Belladon introduced in Salvation’s Reach settle in and prove their mettle.

The Warmaster, for all it radically shifts the scope and feel of the books, feels very much like a setup book. It ends without a great climax (lack of denouement is one of my criticisms of the series; generally there’s only a few pages of falling action after the battle turns in the Ghosts’ favour), instead keeping a cliffhanger ready for Anarch. It’s a character-focussed book, mostly setting up things to pay off in Anarch.

And pay off they do. Anarch is one of Abnett’s barnstorming arc-end books, and joins its three predecessors as some of the best in the series. Switching seamlessly between some of Abnett’s best horror-writing (which neatly combines with one of his most impactful character punches), the normal (but still very good) blaze of battlefield action, and tense infiltration, Anarch contains a cool or noteworthy moment for just about every member of the ensemble. It also includes a lot of deaths; I think probably the most of any book so far, and of several major characters. Abnett is ruthless in pruning his cast, but each one feels impactful.

What Anarch does that the other arc-end books don’t is set up more storylines for the future. This may be the consequence of The Victory being the most serialised arc yet, but by the end, not only has the war for the Sabbat Worlds changed for ever, but the Ghosts are set on a trajectory that promises to take them to even deadlier battlefields. Payoff for the plots set up in The Warmaster comes thick and fast, as does the resolution of other, longer-term plots. One in particular seems to have been started all the way back in book 3, a 19-year real-time gap. The regiment that emerges from these two books feels very different from the one that entered them, but no less interesting and engaging for that.

So, in sum: if you like military SFF with strong character-work, want to read some of the best battles in the genre, and want a long-running, interconnected series, check out Gaunt’s Ghosts.

Bingo Square: Tie-In Novel (Hard Mode)

Recommended for fans of: The Black Company, The Heroes, Grimdark, military fantasy.

[thetraficante]

YAY!!!! im sorry for this..... Edit but we have reached the end of 20gayteen and as always we’ve had wonderful incredibly well written fics by amazing, dedicated authors in every single corner of the 1d fandom, thank you SO MUCH for sharing your talent w us! i know that sometimes you feel like your work isnt appreciated enough, and im sorry for that because your talent is massive and we’re so lucky to have such legendary ppl writing stories out of their love for the 1d members. keep writing! keep doing what you love! you’ll always have an audience <3

this list is by no means Objective, its only a compilation of the 10 fics ive reread and yelled about the most. thank you to all the following authors for making me laugh, cry, gasp and shout! (for some of you i would’ve chosen more fics, your talent has produced many masterpieces in ONE year, how cool is that?)

now in a minute by @avocadolouie

13 feels like yesterday for many people, but for Louis it actually was.

More than anything in the world, Louis Tomlinson dreams of growing up. Simply skipping over all of the awkward, embarrassing years of teenage existence and getting on with life. Real life.

So when thirteen-year-old Louis wakes up in the body of his thirty-year-old self, he expected everything in his adult life to be picture perfect. And maybe it is. He has it all…or so it seems.

Except his favorite person and lifelong best mate, Harry Styles, is totally missing from the equation and Louis doesn’t understand why. He has a lot of catching up to do and as adult life turns out to be more than what he bargained for, Louis can’t help wondering why a life that seemed so perfect, feels so empty.

Or the 13 going on 30 au that should have been done years ago.

the second hand unwinds by @fullonlarrie

Louis Tomlinson is one of the first members of NASA's top secret Chrono Exploration Program. When things go wrong and he's sent further back in time than planned, he has no other option than to show up on his ex-boyfriend's doorstep.

just call me inspiration by @hereforlou

The truth is Louis knows he’s going to hell, if there is such a thing, but it isn’t because he writes erotic fiction for a living. If anything, it’s because his muse, the reason he’s inspired to write about people shagging in increasingly creative ways everyday, is the sweetest, loveliest, most genuine (and completely oblivious) future children-book illustrator in the world.

(Or, the one where Louis is a writer, Harry is an art student, and they inspire each other in very different ways.)

make your words a weapon by @helloamhere

There’s no single path forward from the connection, no truth other than the truth that the person whose words you carry is out there, an undefined something that you’re going to have to deal with.

In whatever way you can possibly deal with meeting the stranger who's always been there, and always been missing.

OR: Louis is a music critic, Harry is a rockstar, soulmates are destiny but no one ever said destiny was easy, music is everything.

the road less travelled by by @freetheankles

Louis was a lumberjack happy to be living his life alone in what could qualify as Middle Of Nowhere, Canada.

Every morning, he went out into the woods, cut his logs, then came home at dusk to a scalding hot shower and a good book by the fireplace. Rinse and Repeat. He had a good life, quiet and peaceful; simple. Not a secluded one as Niall annoyingly claimed.

Louis certainly didn't need some chatty trespasser dropping into his life, his forest, his home. Invading his space, his circle of friends, touching his stuff, asking questions about his husband. His late husband.

A trespasser who wasn’t supposed to crawl under his skin, occupy his thoughts, and steal his heart from where Louis had locked it safely away, only to put it right back on Louis’ sleeve — where it once laid.

No, Louis definitely didn’t need Harry.

for as long as i can remember (it’s been december) by @greenfeelings

After recovering from a severe accident that causes Harry to lose his memory of three years, he moves to London to start his life over as a star chef. Little does he know that when he falls in love with Louis at first sight, it’s not the first time they meet.

Featuring an unintentional game of hot and cold, Harry chasing memories that won’t come back, Louis burying himself in work to try and forget what he can’t forget, Liam being torn between two of his best friends, Zayn as a moral compass and Niall saving the day with good music and brutal honesty.

when the sun won’t let you sleep by @allwaswell16

Four years ago, Louis Tomlinson left the UK to live on an Antarctic research station for reasons best left in the past. He’s carved out a life for himself on the ice and has dedicated himself to his research, his friends, and especially the Halley VI research station. He’s less than thrilled when he learns that Harry Styles, a glaciologist from another base who once broke his heart, will be coming to Halley, and he’s definitely unprepared for the upheaval Harry brings with him.

promise in the sky by @hazzabeeforlou

AU in which Harry Styles, a naïve, repressed, socially awkward Midwestern highschooler tries to navigate his fundamentalist evangelical parents and radically progressive older sister. He’s doing an okay job of this until the Tomlinson family starts attending Lakeside Baptist Church and a boy named Louis changes everything. Harry is forced to come to grips with his true self when Louis becomes more than just his best friend; but their relationship opens a can of worms and sends them on the most painful, heartbreaking journey of their young lives. They risk everything and nearly lose, and Harry learns that perhaps only one Bible verse is true: that perfect love casteth out fear.

buried like treasure by @becomeawendybird

Prince Harry Styles is very private. He chooses to keep himself out of the public eye but feels lonely and isolated while surrounded by people in his hectic royal life. When he finishes his dissertation, he decides to take a solo holiday to one of the royal family's properties in the Swiss Alps.

Semi-retired thief Louis Tomlinson has been pulled in for one last job: steal a painting from an uninhabited mansion. Neither one of them expects a natural disaster.

take a chance on me by @velvetnoodle

Harry Styles, former member of the hugely successful boyband Status Single, returns to his hometown of Holmes Chapel with his daughter nine years after the band broke up and he disappeared from the limelight. Convinced he’s faded into obscurity by now, Harry deems this the perfect place to give his daughter a stable childhood, which includes signing her up to play football at the local club, of course.

The only problem is the coach, Louis, seems to dislike him. Like really, really dislike him. Which drives Harry mad, because everyone likes him. Everyone. So when he finds out Louis’ flat has flooded and he’s got nowhere to stay, Harry is quick to offer up his spare room in the hopes of winning the other man over.

(aka the Strangers to Enemies to Friends to Lovers Roommate AU you didn’t know you needed, feat. Single Dad!Harry, Footie Coach!Louis, a precocious 9 year old, a band of meddling family members, an overly excited labradoodle, an extremely Done cat, and a Shiall wedding you’ll never forget.)

[grimelords]

My November playlist is finished and I've done something slightly different by actually ordering the songs into a cohesive playlist rather than leaving them in the order I added them. Listen in for everyone's favourite genre, acoustic guitar instrumentals, followed by old fashioned cowboy country, comedy and ridiculous songs, 80s and modern dance, out-there piano instrumentals, rocks and rolls, oddball rap, christian rock buried where nobody will find it, noise rock of all flavours and Mirror Reaper in full. I guarantee there'll be at least something in four hours of music that you'll like. listen here!

Deixa - Toquinho: I love how much happens in this song even before it even kicks off at about a minute in. It cycles through so many different feelings before it really powers up and the drums come on. The rhythm from then on is just mesmerizing, it's just so busy and never dwells on any section for too long, the interplay between the melody, bassline and chord rhythm is amazing. And then at about 2:20 it powers up again! Bossa Nova Strong. Also I'm feeling very disrespected because I just did some research on this song only to find out it was sampled by Nujabes on one of his bad anime youtube hip hop songs.

Just A Closer Walk With Thee - Marisa Anderson: Traditional And Public Domain Songs is Marisa Anderson's weakest album, which is a shame because I love Traditional and Public Domain songs. Her playing is on point as always, but the tremolo and distortion she's using overwhelms the recording more often than not. This song is the best on the album purely because she's playing so quietly that it only shows up when she gets loud so it works perfectly near the end as it crescendos.

The Three Deaths Of Red Spectre - Gwenifer Raymond: Gwenifer Raymond has a new 'non-holiday specific single for a cold climate' in her words and I absolutely love it. The sheer velocity of the middle section is flooring, before it breaks apart totally and reforms into a sort of shanty before metamorphosing again into a heightening mania. I love the constantly shifting structure of this, it barely stops to give you room to breathe all the way through before the very end where it almost feels like it's going to collapse entirely.

Mister Sandman - Chet Atkins: Happy to report that I've had Mr Sandman stuck in my head for three weeks now and still don't really know the words because of tumblr posts. It alternates between 'mr email / e me a mail / make the attachment a pic of a snail' and 'mr sandman / sand me a man / make him the cutest man car door hook hand'.

Do I Ever Cross Your Mind - Chet Atkins & Dolly Parton: I've never gone much on Chet Atkins but my girlfriend showed my this song and it has completely reversed my opinion and it's mostly due to Dolly Parton. She is just so lovely on this it makes me tear up - the song itself is so nice and the playing is perfect but her personality just shines through so brightly it's an absolute delight.

There's A Man Going Around Taking Names - Lead Belly: I've been doing research to try to find out what this song is referring to, or its origin but I cannot find anything concrete. A few people are saying it inspired Johnny Cash for The Man Comes Around, which is plausible and adds a mystic bent to it. It seems incomplete, like it's missing the turn at the end that reveals who exactly he is or what's happening so the whole song just ends up feeling very mysterious and ominous.

When Mussolini Laid His Pistol Down - Merle Travis: This song is from 1943, which is sort of amazing because that means it's not a song about history particularly but rather current events. A great paragraph from wikipedia: "On 24 June Mussolini gave his last important speech as prime minister. It went down in history as the "boot topping" speech, with the Duce promising that the only part of Italy that the Anglo-Americans would be able to occupy (but forever and horizontally, i.e. as corpses) was the shore-line (for which he used a wrong word to define it). For many Italians, that confused and incoherent speech was the final proof that something was wrong with Mussolini." Mussolini, truly history's greatest moron.

The Master's Call - Marty Robbins: As a result of Red Dead 2 and my own natural instincts, I've been having a bigger than usual moment with cowboy music this month which of course includes Marty Robbins' Gunfighter Ballads And Trail Songs. In my mind this song is both the true ending and end credits music of Red Dead 2. Arthur sees the face of Christ in a lightning bolt and abandons his life of crime and sin, pleading with the lord to forgive him and then God kills a hundred cows with another lightning bolt just to make damn sure Arthur knows He's serious.

Saga Of The Ponderosa - Lorne Green: I was hanging out with my old housemate a few weeks ago and it turns out we were both having concurrent Marty Robbins cowboy music phases which was great news because then he turned me onto this album by Lorne Green who was on Bonanza and apparently took it upon himself to expand the Bonanaza Cinematic Universe in the 60s with a few albums. This song is apparently an origin story of Bonanza which I have never seen. It's extremely good, very powerful music. Great story of this godlike man striding across the country and overriding his wife's decision by naming his son HOSS.

Hard Sun - Eddie Vedder: I think it's interesting in A Star Is Born that Jackson Maine doesn't seem to be a real life equivalent of any actual musician. He's not obviously an archetype of any real person and so it's hard to place how exactly famous he is in the world of the movie. He's washed up enough to be playing pharmaceutical conferences but still has enough industry respect to be playing a tribute at the Grammys. The closest I could think of was Eddie Vedder oddly enough, and this song from the Into The Wild soundtrack really does sound like a Jackson Maine original.

For Chan - Tim Heideker: I'm having a real thing with comedy music recently and I can't tell if it means I've got a brain parasite or comedy music is good to me now. I think what I like about this song is the bluntness. There's no two ways about these people, and after years of hearing about the alt right as mysterious political genius computer brains it's a nice break to just hear them called greasy fat basement guys like we used to.

That's Right I'm Five - Don't Stop Or We'll Die: More good comedy music! They played this song on Comedy Bang Bang without announcing what it was called first, so the chorus really surprised me and made me laugh a lot. "They're selling the stocks so buy them, launch the torpedoes, tell my wife I love her, and send my son to college, bury me in the desert in my osh kosh b'gosh - that's right I'm five!" might be my favourite lyric of the year.

Future Brain - Den Harrow: Den Harrow is very good. He's like a beautiful moron American man that some italian scientists built in a lab in order to conquer America from the inside. Here are some good highlights from his wiki article: "The name Den Harrow was conceived by producers Roberto Turatti and Miki Chieregato, who based it on the Italian word denaro(money)." "After years of fame and popularity, it was revealed by frontman Stefano Zandri and his producers that Zandri did not actually sing the Den Harrow songs; he was essentially a character who lip-synched to vocals recorded by a number of other singers. Furthermore, since they did not consider Zandri's name and origin to be "trendy" enough, the producers R. Turatti and M. Chieregato concealed Zandri's Italian origin, marketing him as having been born Manuel Stefano Carry in Boston. This was done so Polydor Records could market him more easily in the English-speaking world, where Italian-produced music was, at the time, viewed with skepticism"

Love A Girl Right - Little Mix: Check out this rewrite of the Thong Song they did for the new Little Mix album. It's beyond belief. My girlfriend loves Little Mix and she's right to because they're the only girl/boy band that actually takes advantage of the form and does harmonies instead of just having them all sing in turn or all at once. They've got good vocal arrangements but they have the worst fucking songwriters working for them. Songwriters that pitch 'what if the Thong Song had a crunchy nu-metal guitar in it'.

This City Made Us - The Protomen: It's interesting to hear a band change styles - most other Protomen songs are a sort of Springsteen pastiche but this one from their newer single is more like Iron Maiden or Thin Lizzy. Approaching the 80s from a different angle. It's impressive to switch so radically and still have enough of a unifying sound that it feels like the same band. 80s throwback rock is a generally pallid genre populated by freaks who can't move on but Protomen put so much heart into it it's hard to write them off.

Teardrops - Womack & Womack: I love this song because it has two choruses. The drums stay the same throughout, the chords stay the same through the verse and chorus and only change for the second chorus/bridge part ("the music don't feel like it did when I felt it with you"), which just gives the whole song this feeling of beautiful endlessness. It goes and goes and goes and you're always already living in the best part of the song.

Boys Will Be Boys - The Duncan Sisters: Very very good piece of disco with a very nice piece of country picking guitar near the start for some reason. I quit like that the chorus of 'boys, oh boys, will be boys - they can really hurt you!' goes from a lighthearted thing about relationships until the bridge near the end where it sounds more like a dire warning. She's staring straight into your eyes and saying 'they can hurt you. boys can hurt you. they can really hurt you.' while motioning toward the exit with her eyes. 

Ayaya - Bicep: I've been trying to train my ear a bit better so I got a piano app on my phone and I just try to pick out the melodies of songs now when I'm bored. It turns out this is a very satisfying song to play. The melody is very simple, but the constant build and the couple of other melodies that come in around it make you feel like a super genius for just playing the same thing over and over.

The Call - David Mayer: I completely forget how I came across this song but I'm in love with the vocals on it. The effect reminds me of the one on Problem With The Sun by Nicolas Jaar, sort of pitched down and layered over itself. Outside of the vocals it's a pretty straightforward euro house chunk but damn sometimes a song just has a really good sound in it that you can't deny.

Problem With The Sun - Nicolas Jaar: My girlfriend's brother was telling me he was riding his bike the other day and had some kind of mental break where he was riding north in the afternoon but the sun was on his right, in the east - and for some reason his first instinct wasn't that he was wrong or disoriented, it was that there was a problem with the sun and it was in the wrong place. That boy ain't right but this song is good. I love that Nicolas Jaar uses this weird down pitched voice on a few songs and I really wish he'd bring it back, it sounds great and also funny to me.

Ensaslayi - Cecil Taylor: I don't have the brain power to comprehend any of Cecil Taylor's ensemble work that I've heard, free jazz in a band setting is simply too much for me it turns out -but I've really been getting a lot out of this solo album of his called Fly! Fly! Fly! Fly! Fly!. This song in particular is one of the longer ones on the album, where another is only 53 seconds long and a few last around ten minutes. This is a nice midpoint, where he gives himself so much room to get lost in different directions without losing the thread entirely. I said it last time I was talking about him but I've really never heard anyone play piano like this and I absolutely love it. A lot of reviewers describe it as him playing the piano like it's a drumkit, which I think is accurate to a degree - but I think looking back from here this music makes a lot more sense within the context of black midi and things like that. The extreme edges of what a piano can theoretically do, but with a decisive and beautiful human edge and human brain that's responsible for and making sense of the chaos.

The Homeless Wanderer - Emahoy Tsegué-Maryam Guèbrou: I found out about this album cause Benjamin Booker was posting about her on his instagram story and it's just incredible. The TL;DR of her story is she's an Ethiopian nun that studied music in Switzerland and Cairo and wrote this beautiful piano music based on traditional Ethiopian pentatonic music. I love the rhythm of it, every note in the right hand get swirled around and around before it's settled on while the left hand moves so smoothly and delicately. Unfortunately-ish she's obviously in that genre of Searching For Sugarman secret blog music evidenced by her spotify similar artists being Karen Dalton, Alice Coltrane and Connie Converse. That's not a bad thing exactly, at least people are hearing about her, but her music is unique and amazing enough on its own without needing much mythologizing.

Carnival Of The Animals: No 12 - Fossils - Camille Saint-Saëns: My girlfriend was showing me Saint-Saëns' The Swan and then we were going through the whole rest of the Carnival Of The Animals and I'm happy to report that he not only did he do one for fossils but also centered it around the idea of a bone xylophone. I'm going to write an article for Vulture tracing the origin of the cartoon bone xylophone and my thesis is it starts here.

Perth - Bon Iver: Just thinking about how good Bon Iver is. I love how massive this song can feel, the drums combined with the big brass. It's small and soft on the grand scale, but on an album that gets as quiet and soft as songs like Holocene this song blows up like an atom bomb.

Yet Again - Grizzly Bear: This really is one of the best songs of all time I've decided. It feels like I get into a thing of listening to it on repeat almost every month now. I don't know what it is exactly - I guess it's every part of it. The lyrics are impenetrable (check) the riff is simple and powerful (check) the drums are doing a lot and keeping it simple at the same time. The the way the harmony vocals all intertwine in the prechorus part is amazing. The way the whole song blows up into a big radio static solo at the end. Every part of this song is great, I just love it.

Fuckin N' Rollin - Phantastic Ferniture: I found out that Julia Jacklin has a side project with a very shit name and they make very good music. I love when people have a whole other band for another side of their self. This is just Julia Jacklin if the lyrics were just first draft whatevers instead of incredibly poignant and beautiful and the music was just rockin and rollin with your friends. It's great!

Soft - Kings Of Leon: Number one best song ever about havin a bad dick!! I'd love to hang out lady but my dick! I'm passed out in your garden, I'm in I can't get off I'm so soft! I'd pop myself in you body, I'd come into your party but I'm soft!

Soft Serve - Soul Coughing: I played this while I was driving with my girlfriend and she said 'what the fuck is this' and she's right, as usual. It's Soul Coughing baby! The 90s 'slacker jazz' band! They sound dated as fuck, a real product of their time but I think they've still got a lot to offer. I had the chorus of this stuck in my head for a couple days which made me listen to this album more than usual when I mostly prefer their first one Ruby Vroom. Irresistible Bliss might have the worst album cover of all time though, so it's got that going for it. Google it.

Ya Mama - Wuf Ticket: There wiki article for this band says they had two songs in 1982 and that was it. Then it has a section titled Greaseman and then the article ends. Here's the Greaseman section in its entirety: "Wuf Ticket's “Ya Mama” achieved its greatest notoriety, and airplay, as a music bed for bits by shock jock The Greaseman on WWDC-FM in Washington, D.C. and later his nationally syndicated radio show where Greaseman would argue with a surly service industry worker." Anyway this is more of that very good early hip hop shit where everyone assumed songs should go for 8 minutes. It's just extremely weak sauce Ya Mama jokes for a very long time before they change tack completely and start talking about how Every Woman Is An Angel And Without Mothers We Would Never Have Been Born So Think About That Next Time.

Gon Be Okay - Lil B: I had the part of this song where he sings 'things are never gonna be the same again' along with the piano in my head the other day and spent fully an hour googling to try to find what song it was from before giving up. I woke up the next morning and suddenly remembered it was this song but was very shocked to find out that he actually never sings that line along with the piano melody, he says it once at the start and that's it. What's going on with my brain. Anyway in my searching I found out that the piano is sampled from the Spirited Away soundtrack so once more in my life I've been led to ruin by anime.

2 Minute Drills - Allblack & Kenny Beats: This whole EP is great. More sports themed rap please. Allblack is ferocious and Kenny's production throughout is great, the perfect mix of simple straighforward beats that still have a lot of space and energy in them, plus 'Woah Kenny!' has my award for Best New Producer Watermark.

Don't Gas Me - Dizzee Rascal: I don't know how he keeps doing it but somehow Dizzee Rascal continues to make extremely fun bangers without ever slowing down. The best line in this is when he says "no I don't drink Appletiser" (the sparkling apple juice) which is an extremely weird flex if there ever was one.

Acid King - Malibu Ken: It feels insane that a Tobacco and Aesop Rock collab sounds as good as this. I love that there's no drums the entire time he's rapping and I completely love the Mort Garson vibes in the instrumental which turns out to be a perfect soundtrack to the Ricky Kasso satan worship LSD murder story that Aesop's telling. Also in reading about Kasso I just discovered the very good stoner doom band also named Acid King, so expect to see them in next month's list.

Pirate Blues - As Cities Burn: As Cities Burn have reformed and put out a new single so I've been thinking about them a bit. On paper they don't sound good, over three albums they morphed from a christian metalcore band to a christian alt-rock band, and while they never reinvented the wheel I think they're a remarkable band who took a lot of risks in their own way and made a lot of rock solid music. They've got a lot of great songs but I think this is my favourite from their third album when it finally felt like they'd settled into a steady alt rock sound informed by their much heavier past.

This Is It, This Is It - As Cities Burn: The thing I like about As Cities Burn is that as much as they're a christian band (yuck) they're more of a band of guys who are christians (slightly less yuck) and the difference is huge. Rather than evangelising or preaching, their songs are about their own personal struggles with their faith (still slightly yuck). I like this song especially because the lyric feels close to gospel, 'we're all singing for our sins, unless grace be the wind' but with the added twist of being furious that you're trapped by the sin of your physical body.

Timothy - As Cities Burn: I think this song is just incredible. The lyrics are so strong and direct and heartbreaking, the vocal performance especially is amazing and it may be the only time in history that a 6 minute guitar solo has seemed good and necessary.

Face Tat - Zach Hill: There's an incredible video of the recording of this song https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hGi9SOFX5rc that really looks exactly how it sounds and has a very similar energy to that video of 80 guys singing the halo theme in the boys bathroom. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wRG9KwvbVhk . This is what it sounds like when the boys are left alone. The biggest draw to Zach Hill's drumming is the intense primordial immediacy of it. He is just pounding away like a possessed animal and it's really on show here, especially combined with the occasional punctuating shout. Carson McWhirter's guitar is incredible too, the tone he's got where it sounds like three at once playing these incredible twisting riffs that turn on a dime. I think what I like most about this song is just how in sync they are - for such a chaotic, noisy song it sounds so rehearsed, somehow every single note is perfectly in time in the storm.

Betty's Worry Or The Slab - Hunters And Collectors: This is maybe the sweatiest song I've ever heard. It's a disgusting song about being incredibly sweaty and horny and I love the weird squeaky noise he makes after he says 'say it! say it!'. The bass sound in this is so fantastically meaty too, and combined with the brass at the end it's just great.

Worms Of The Senses / Faculties Of The Skull (live) - Refused: I cannot believe just how absolutely ferocious live Refused is. Insanely powerful without ever missing a beat in a song like this that requires incredible timing throughout. For some reason I've always thought Refused were an only ok live band after watching Refused Are Fucking Dead because all I remember of it is a clip where the guitarist accidentally hits the singer in the face with his headstock and they have to stop the show.

Mirror Reaper - Bell Witch: I got to see Bell Witch live a couple of weeks ago and it's one of the best shows I've ever seen. I can't really describe it other than it feels like the closest thing to a legitimate summoning ritual that I've ever seen. An invocation and an expelling of raw power and emotion between two people, it was really something. Also the best part was about two minutes in when they were really setting the scene with the sort of ambient beginning of Mirror Reaper and the whole crowd was dead silent and entranced as they built this mystic atmosphere and set the vibe a guy behind me said loudly to his friend 'hm pretty good so far!'

What's You Gonna Do When The World's On Fire - Lead Belly & Anne Graham: This is in my opinion the best genre of gospel song where they they just roast you for not being saved yet.​ 

listen here

[5questions]

Joselia Hughes

Joselia "Jo" Hughes is a Black 1.5-generation Cuban-Jamaican-Guyanese-American writer and artist from the Bronx. She lives with Sickle Cell Disease (HBSC) and ADHD.

Where did you find the 3rd grade poem? How did you decide to include it? What other collage or found art/poetry do you like?

The 3rd grade poem was from a collection of student works, Witch’s Brew, released by my grammar school, Horace Mann. I have two issues from 2nd and 3rd grades. Both of my works were quartered in the “Fantasy” section. There was another section called “Feelings” and, I think, The Sky more accurately suggests a feeling. Scratch that: it explicitly discusses a feeling. This misidentification by academic administration/curatorial staff (which doubles as a political demonstration) is telling. I think it explains a lot about the root confusion between what I have felt/feel to know as Experientially True versus what I’m told to know as The Truth. When considering the emotional and material lives of Black femmes, we must remember Black femmes have been historically disallowed, disavowed and dispossessed of creative virtuosity. Too often, we are strapped in the monolith of stereotyped caricature dictated by the manifested destiny written into commandments/constitution of misogynoir. Black femme virtuosity is reappropriated, regesticulated and worn like some earned bloody body wisdom by the Opps (Oppressive Forces). While I didn’t have those terms as a child, I experienced the consequences of misogynoir in conjunction with dis/ableism and classism, which aren’t separate entities but necessary vices that amplify asphyxiation. Is disabled Black femme loneliness only permissible when classified as fantasy? That shit don’t sit right in my spirit. I also used the poem because the title is Witch’s Brew and my zine, Heartbeats But No Air (HBNA), is a kind of exorcism. A few years ago, I pieced together that my maternal grandmother was a covertly practicing Bruja. With the widening reclamation of ancestral wisdom by BIPOC, in an effort to decolonize our existences, I was tapping into that tender tendon of wisdom.

Understanding my grandmother’s practice reminded me that she wanted to name me Darthula Verbena (daughter of God, enchanting and medicinal). I started referring to myself as DV, my pre-name, and inspected my childhood. That’s been a remarkable endeavor. I had to teach myself to play again. Through play, I learned how to feel. Learning feeling meant learning the qualitative and quantitative nature of the labyrinth of my thoughts. Once I learned some of the turns of the labyrinth, I could feel to know how to navigate the terrain without fear and engage in the rigorous study that’s always characterized my central self. Play is a code switch. I often think of code switching as a means to subvert/refigure power differentials. To hide in plain sight by retooling “seeing” to perception/sensing. How much are we perceiving/sensing? How often do we mean perception/sensing yet default to “sight”? Perception/Sensing adds dimensionality that isn’t always articulated with and through “sight” and “seeing”. Ralph Ellison’s identification of “lower frequencies” and J. Halberstam’s configurations of Low Theory do this work. I toy with these multiplicities in the zine. I work low to the ground which means I work close to my heartbeat, my central drum. I work meta; I go beyond. I like to sprinkle codes, tickle clues, tuck in questions, sew in wisdoms so I know what I’m doing, why I’m doing it, who I’m doing it for and to always remember the fun of FLiP (Feeling, Learning, iPlaying).

Some of the works/folks who’ve helped me FLiP are Dana Robinson’s meditative and piercing collages; Zulie’s mind bending, heart wrenching, time suspending zines; Nikki Wallschlaeger’s I HATE TELLING YOU HOW I REALLY FEEL; Seth Graham’s tattoo practice/paintings/unbounded love of outer space (they’ve done 3/4 of my tattoos); Amanda Glassman’s razor sharp poetry and encyclopedic curiosity;  L’Rain's music has literally helped me scale the side of a mountain and carried me through hospitalizations; KT PE Benito’s multidisciplinary liberation praxis and collaborative friendship; Zoraida Ingles' holistic creative prowess (a conversation with her is why Heartbeats But No Air, as a title, exists); and Marcus Scott Williams’ writings/video/sculpture work that readily embraces the persistence of ephemera. This isn’t an exhaustive list—I have a solid library of books and papers and zines and tunes at my crib—but, genuinely, I’m inspired by everyone I’ve had the honor to encounter.

There are themes of love and race and beauty and culture and self-transformation in this book. Paired randomly, some pieces may not make as much common sense together, but as a whole, it feels powerful and cohesive. What was the structuring process like for this chapbook? Each zine is different, right?

It is one zine. I find it cool that you consider HBNA a chapbook made up of many zines. The word chapbook had never crossed my mind. I walked into the process with DIY zine logic and HBNA was printed using office photocopiers. I think the feeling of cohesion you mention is what happens when you witness a lot of parts of one person. In this case, you’re witnessing a lot of different parts of me, my thoughts, my actual labor. Whole is the goal ‘cuz people are whole. I am whole. I consider HBNA a single revolution of myself— one big twirl around a fire, a sun. I was in a very strange place. I’d alleviated, with the help of acupuncture and CBD products, a significant amount of the chronic pain I’d been experiencing since August 2014. I fell around love with someone and rose in love to myself (thanks Ms. Morrison and Ms. Stanford!). I was in an unfamiliar painless trance. I created and tinkered with all of those pieces during a very short period of time from Summer 2017 to Summer 2018. HBNA was originally named Girl Pickney (the prose pieces were written under that moniker) and before that NggrGrl (a nod to Dick Gregory). I wrote the poetry in an even shorter period of time—March to July 2018—and the poems are actually part of a full length collection that I wrote in those four months. I didn’t decide on the layout of the zine until I was with two friends formatting it for printing two days before I was going to read at The Strand and sell it. I kept all the pages, the puzzle pieces, in a folder. A lot of book structuring, for me, is based on emotional knowing—when to slap, when to pound, when to breathe, when to confuse, when to stun, when to anger, when to tell, when to soothe. All of my structuring decisions are fly about to get swatted dead but fast enuf to fly away first intuitive. If I’m channeling that intuition, I know I’m in running in the proper heat and lane.

You were in an MFA program at one point. How does this chapbook contrast with your style from before that program and during that program? Did that program have an effect on your writing? This doesn’t feel like the most MFA-y writing, which is why I ask, and which I mean as a compliment.

I’ve attended a few schools. I’ve completed fewer than I’ve attended. Until my late 20s, I was shy and desperate for people, those noun-verbs, to stay. This desire for people to stay meant I spent an inordinate about of time and energy relegating the difficult parts of myself to the margins of the margins and continually stepped into social/academic shoes that did not fit. HBNA was the first fitting of the bespoke shoes I can now emotionally afford to make. The first copies I sold had typos! I misspelled my own pre-name and that’s exactly what I needed to happen. It needed it to happen because I’m full of mistakes and yet! I try! I understand HBNA as a radical refutation of embarrassment. Depending on when you purchased a copy, you’ll see I used white-out to make a few corrections. No two zines are the same; only 80 copies exist. I’m printing 12 more copies (they’ve already been claimed) and then on to new pastures! The zine was printed in three different places (two offices I don’t work in and a local printing shop) and I was lugging around 800 individual sheets of paper that I stapled, numbered, indexed and decorated with stickers by myself…standing barefoot on the carpet of Staples in Co-Op City, listening to Ryo Fukui’s Early Summer on repeat until I finished and then I jetted to the Strand to read. HBNA was how I knew to embody my physical, emotional, intellectual, and spiritual labor. I’m a goofball with zany ideas, an indifference to external definitions of relevancy, sickled cells and a lot of chaotically grounding love. I write for myself first. Of the school lessons I did receive and learn, there weren’t many I didn’t later disassemble to rebuild, freak unfamiliar or completely misunderstand. J. Halberstam calls this “failing”. Rejigging failure has been such a gift to me. How wonderful! A failure AND still happening? Fuck yeah! I was a wildly uneven student whose knees buckled at mere thought of rigid academic authority. After years of shame and refusal, I can finally admit I am an autodidact. I intentionally get lost and navigate in and to the direction of my own senses. School didn’t teach me to write for myself and that’s who I always have to write for. If that’s selfish, so be it. I am my first audience. If I’m sus of me, then me and myself got foundational problems. I know my writing is non-institutional and that lack of institutional alignment and support, while scary as shit, pushes me to make and take risks to believe beyond the immediate demands/plans/remands of whatever external force I am facing. My writing is constantly colliding into A New I can’t predict. I’m fully committed to unfolding, unraveling, for curiosity’s sake.

What’s a typical day like for you?

My day to day life is as predictable as it is unpredictable. I am formally unemployed and have been for awhile. I live on very little cash and am kept afloat because my mom is a gem and hasn’t kicked me out. My days are 100% influenced by the weather and I spend a good portion of my time negotiating how to minimize the occurrence of vaso-occlusive crises and other complications from the disease I have, Sickle Cell. Between January 2018 and January 2019, I was hospitalized three times. Each hospitalization was about a week long and recovery took significantly longer.

Here’s a sketch of what I call a really great day: I wake up before 10. If the night’s sleep was especially restorative, I can comfortably rise at 8. Depending on how my body feels, depending on how much pain I’m enduring, how much fatigue is shrouding/clouding my faculties, I decide if I have the energy to take a shower. I do the bathroom routine, get a cup of orange juice and take my medications (Endari, sometimes Adderall, Folic Acid). I use the first hours of wakefulness to connect with loved ones via text-phonecalls-DMs and browse the internet for headlines-news-updates-new smiles. I wear my fits comfortable. I call comfort my uniform—upend normcore to body sensible—sweatpants/leggings, pullover, one earring (although I’m leaning to pairs again), handy dandy baseball cap and sneakers. I keep it simple. If the weather is aight—if it isn’t too cold or too hot and if precipitation is mostly at bay and air quality isn’t extremely poor—I go outside and get some living exercise. When able, I take extremely long walks. Once I walked over 50 miles in a week! It’s my preferred form of meditation. Walking/body movement grounds my ADHD symptoms more effectively than stimulants, strengthens my body for potential Sickle Cell episodes and satiates my unyielding need to feel connected to other people. I’m at my best when outside and happening. Illness can create an inescapable interiority. Inside reminds me of the hospital and my relationship with the hospital is, at best, fraught. Walking allows me to follow myself. I engage in peek-a-boo with babies, witness accidents, smile at strangers, duck the eyes of leering people and learn how to love differently too. I go to playgrounds and swing. I take photos and notes. If I’ve got a lil cash, I ride the subway for fun. I poke into shops, admire graffiti and other street signs. I have one woman dance parties on sidewalks. I rest on park benches and read. I pick up grub from hole in the wall spots—you know—I live my life and embrace as much as I can while centering kindness and gentle flow. The walks are my favorite part of my job, which I do not have. When I return home, I rest then get to crafting which I sometimes call spelling. Crafting/Spelling can be anything from adding to my I-Box, spitting verses from the abstract (poetry), spinning short stories, detailing journal entries, doodling, painting, knitting, researching & studying,  dancing & stretching, bugging out on Twitter or reading. My bedroom is my studio so I work small yet widely. I intentionally provide myself with many targets so I can a) keep my thoughts and feelings flowing b) find the connections between all of my actions and c) mitigate the stress that sits in the heart of a lone project. I am a multifaceted, multifauceted being. Why not turn on all the taps?

The more long form prose pieces in here have the feel of nice punch-y flash fiction. Are you writing a fiction collection without poems and collage in it? I want to read that, too :)

Hahaha! You’re onto me! Yeah, I am writing another book of poems, a manifesto zine and a collection of fiction. I’ve been writing a collection of fiction since 2012. I had a lot of the difficultly writing the fiction because I was too attached to the title, the characters I conceived needed to grow up with me, and I experienced many years of unremitting and improperly managed mental and physical illness. I was holding onto and telling lies. The shame woven into those lies kept me silent and scared. All of that shit needed to get integrated or dropped. I couldn’t enter the prose/fiction I’m currently writing without learning how to survive myself and the world and bottom-belly-believe in survival too. I’m getting there— healing with primary, secondary and tertiary intentions. Won’t say much about the fiction pieces of than: ~15 stories, lyrically speculative fiction, capital B Black, disabled, and queerfemme parables of creation and destruction and maintenance. My website is in flux but I do readings and performances. Hit me up on Instagram , Twitter or email me at joseliawrites@gmail.com. Might take a minute for me to respond because I’m thoughtful yet questionably organized. Now go play, ya’ll!

Unintentionally wrote a poem in the interview. I call it A.B.B in Lieu of A.B.C

beyond

fly, about to get swatted dead but fast enuf to fly away first,

always believe beyond

[skatingmadwoman]

Lacey Baker vs. Nyjah Huston NikeSB

When I first wrote this, I was furious. I gave myself a few weeks of thought to see if I felt any different, and I didn’t. This post is purely my opinion, come talk to me if you have any thoughts on it as well!

Lacey Baker’s NikeSB video part for her Bruin Hi pro shoe came out on February 23rd, and Nyjah Huston’s ‘Til Death part for his pro shoe came out February 27th. In my opinion both parts are incredible for so many different reasons. Lacey has the technical style, and the fight for equality and inclusiveness. Nyjah is a master of skating rails and has his pure vision in the movie-like part. But, what has bothered me so much that I feel like I need to write this? It’s the radical online feedback between both. When I scrolled down to the comments on Lacey’s video, it honestly made me sick. Comments like, “Stfu with the equality bullsh*t in the description”, “This guy sucks”, and “these tricks were relevant in like 1995”.

Photo: Sam McGuire

Nyjah’s comments were more positive, although there are negative comments on his, they were more about the music choice? His positive comments were like “The best skateboarder”, and “I almost cried”. I know what you are thinking, why are you getting heated over YouTube comments? Because it’s not only on YouTube, it’s on Instagram, Facebook, and so many other sites. No matter what Lacey or any other woman skater does, there are always those comments yelling about how they or any other pro skater are much better than the women, and they deserve the sponsorship more than the women. If you are so mad about women skaters not being on the same skill level as men, maybe you should have let them start joining pro teams sooner. Give them pro boards when they are ten to keep them progressing. Let women be able to compete in Street League in the first place instead of adding their section FOUR YEARS ago! If women skaters had the support that men have had the whole time, then there would be that equality. Lacey wouldn’t have to be fighting for equality in 2018 if there had ever been that constant support. Maybe the haters would be sponsored like the women if they didn’t have such horrible attitudes. Skating comes from punk culture, a culture of misfits who don’t fit in. How dare you make women the outcasts of an already outcast culture?

Photo: Twitter

Both are great skaters, but Nyjah is nowhere near my favorite. You want to know why? I absolutely cannot relate to Nyjah. He has the star status. He lives in Cali, in a mansion, owns more cars than I ever will, and has his own skate warehouse. Lacey on the other hand, is a queer skater, living on the east coast in a New York apartment. I can see myself in Lacey’s shoes. I cannot see myself in Nyjah’s. And it’s fine if you can’t see yourself in Lacey, you don’t have to, you just need to respect that other people do. Both Lacey and Nyjah are Street League winners, they have both proven themselves to the world that they can skate on that level, so they both need the hype for them to keep up the good work. I will always stand by saying that skating is for everyone, no matter your gender, race, age, sexuality, skill level, or any of it. If you are having fun, you deserve it. It’s time that the industry and its followers start thinking the same. Below are links to both parts so you can form your own opinion.

Lacey Baker: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8RvKpAOaTv4

Nyjah Huston: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XBgbBrxj2to

[mysongfortheasking]

Disturbing Children’s Books

In her speech “Dare to Be Creative,” author Madeleine L’Engle starts off by referencing a question originally presented by TS Eliot: “Do I dare disturb the universe?” L’Engle admits that is a daunting and difficult question—do we dare disturb the universe? And how do we do that? She says: “I believe that good questions are more important than answers, and the best children’s books ask questions, and make the reader ask questions. And every new question is going to disturb someone’s universe.”

Children’s books, she says. Not grown up books. Not classic literature. Not self-help books or deep commentaries. Not ancient texts or old legends or myths or any other type of reading material. Children’s books. Something we (myself included) might be prone to dismiss.

I am currently working on my Master’s in English, and this summer, decided to take an online summer course. I chose “Picture Book” class because I thought, “How could a class focused solely on picture books be that hard?” (The answer, I discovered, is that it can be that hard when you cram an entire semester’s worth of work into a five-week express course. I made it, but I didn’t sleep much during the month of June.) Despite my lack of sleep and insane amount of coffee consumption during that time, the class changed my life. I could write an incredibly long and never-ending post about all I learned from that class or the valuable materials we received (which I might do at some point or another), but that’s not why I originally started this post. Today, I want to share some disturbing children’s books. But disturbing in a good way.

Since there are countless “disturbing” children’s books, I decided to just share four good ones I’ve recently read. I also decided to narrow it down to a “theme” for this post: these books are all focused on female empowerment. But just because I say, “female empowerment,” do NOT think these books are just for girls. These books are for everyone. These books will interrupt the mainstream narrative and say, “Hang on, let’s think about this.” These books that will make you ask questions. These books might tell you something you needed to hear—they might even make you say, “Wow I never thought about that.” These books will open your eyes, challenge your thinking, and speak to your soul. I’ve attached Amazon links to them all in case you think “Wow I need these in my life!” (Because I promise you, you will.) These books will certainly disturb your universe, if you allow them. Let the disruption begin.

1) MY Rules for Being a Pretty Princess written and illustrated by Heath McKenzie

The protagonist in this book is an unnamed little girl who “more than anything else in the whole wide world,” wants to be a pretty princess. Her wish comes true when a real princess arrives and tells her the rules of being a princess: wear a pretty dress, always have perfect hair and makeup, attend dainty tea parties, dance gracefully, and finally, wait (literally, just stand there and wait) for a handsome prince.

Our sweet little protagonist is quickly bored and uninterested in the rules of being a princess, so she makes her own. She decides that to be a princess, you simply have to be yourself. You wear FABULOUS (instead of uncomfortable) dresses. You have AMAZING (instead of “always perfect”) hair and makeup. You attend DELICIOUS instead of dainty parties. You simply dance, instead of always having to dance gracefully. And (my personal favorite part of the whole book) she scraps the rule about waiting on a prince entirely, and in a beautiful closing illustration, dresses up like a knight and becomes her own hero.

This book is a simple one only in the sense that it doesn’t have a lot of words. It’s more of a “comic-strip” style with pictures and speech bubbles. There isn’t a complicated plot or storyline, but despite being minimal in nature, this book is still radically “disturbing.” Even though I saw the name on the front cover, I didn’t think twice when I assumed a woman wrote the book for other young girls. When I finished the book and flipped to the blurb about the author on the back, I was surprised to see the photograph of male author Heath McKenzie, and even more pleased to read the explanation of why he created this book: “Before Ava [Heath’s daughter] was born and before he knew she’d be a little girl, Heath began wondering about what might happen if he had a daughter,” the blurb says. “He wanted to make sure she knew she could be anything she wanted to be when she grew up! Because she can!”

You could say that Heath wanted to “disturb the universe” on behalf of his little girl, and this book certainly does that. He wanted to tell his little girl something that ALL little girls (and honestly, all people) need to hear: “No matter what anyone says, YOU can be whatever you want.” And while there isn’t a complicated plot line in this story, the closing illustration subtly sends the message: “You don’t need saving and you don’t have to wait around for someone to come and get you—you can be your own hero.”

2) Dinosaur Expert written by Magaret McNamara and illustrated G. Brian Karas

This book is about Kimmy, a young girl who loves science, especially dinosaurs. She is excited to share all of her knowledge on a field trip to the dinosaur museum, but one of her classmates named Jake says, “Girls aren’t scientist.”

Kimmy sees all “boy names” in the list of accomplished paleontologists and gets discouraged. Maybe, she thinks, Jake is right—she shouldn’t talk anymore about dinosaurs because, after all, she is a girl. But when her teacher, Mr. Tiffin, shows her all the work done by female paleontologists, Kimmy realizes that Jake is all wrong: girls can be contributing scientists too.

While this book has a lot more words (there’s some big science words that even I struggled with), it teaches the same thing that Heath McKenzie wanted to show in his book: you can be anything. I love that they picked a “male dominated field” like paleontology to demonstrate this, but I think there’s also an extra layer in the use of dinosaurs. Dinosaurs are usually a “boy thing”—boys get to play with dino toys, boys get to watch Jurassic Park, and boys get to be paleontologists. But Mr. Tiffin helps Kimmy (and the readers of this book) realize that it isn’t a “boy-girl” thing: girls can love dinosaurs too. There’s also an extra “bonus” in the back of the book where Kimmy presents readers with seven different female paleontologists from all over the world and all different stages of life. (My personal favorite is Daisy Morris, a four-year-old who discovered the fossil of a new species of dinosaurs, which is now named “Vectidraco daisymorrisae” in her honor.)

There’s so much educational information about dinosaurs in this book, even I learned a lot from it that I never knew. Personally, I think this book is one that is most powerful, because it’s not only educational, but also shows children that science and dinosaurs and being accomplished isn’t just for one gender: anyone can love and do and be whatever they want to.

3) I Dissent: Ruth Bader Ginsberg Makes Her Mark written by Bebbie Levy and illustrated by Elizabeth Baddeley

This book is obviously a nonfiction biographical book about Ruth Bader Ginsberg’s life from childhood to present day. It’s illustrations are amazing, and it shows beautifully how Justice Ginsberg encountered lots of difficulties—social things like racism and sexism, but also things like the death of her mother and raising a family while going to law school and pursuing a career.

While it focuses a lot on the aspect of female empowerment, it really is a book about standing up for right and injustice in general too.

Even though it’s probably the wordiest of all the books I mention here, that is not at all a bad thing. It has a lot of historical information and even teaches children vocabulary (specifically the terms “dissent,” “concur,” “object,” “protest”—lots of legal and activist terms), and adults can easily find a way to communicate the ideas to young children. I read this to one of my students (a six-year-old girl), and I had to find ways to “shorten and simplify” it a bit for her attention span and understanding. But when I asked her what she learned from the book, she looked up at me, smiled and said through the gap in her mouth where her front teeth should be, “Girls can do ANYTHING.” So I’d say she got the point.

4) The Princess and the Pony written and illustrated by Kate Beaton

I go to the library literally every day for work, and a librarian approached me a few weeks ago and said, “Have you read The Princess and the Pony?” I am SO glad she suggested it, because it’s become one of my favorites.

The Princess and the Pony tells the story of Princess Pinecone, the smallest princess who wants desperately to be a big strong warrior. But Pinecone feels she is too “cute and cuddly.” “Warriors get fantastic birthday presents,” Beaton writes, “Things that make them feel like champions. Princess Pinecone got a lot of cozy sweaters. Warriors do not need cozy sweaters.” Pinecone tells EVERYONE she wants a strong warrior horse, but instead they give her a round little pony whose eyes sometimes look in two different directions, who eats things it shouldn’t, and farts way too much (not kidding, that’s in the book).

Pinecone tries hard to teach her pony to be a warrior horse, but the little horse just can’t quite get it; nevertheless, she enters a battle and hopes for the best. But instead of fighting and being “awful brutes,” the other warriors fall in love with Princess Pinecone’s cute little pony. They all stop fighting and gush over how cute the pony is. (My favorite is when Huge Harold, who also has eyes that sometimes look in two different directions, exclaims, “Aw, he looks a bit like me!”) When Pinecone says, “This is not how a battle usually goes!” another warrior responds, “You’re right, but we warriors don’t often get to show our cuddly sides.”

Pinecone realizes she can help them get in touch with their cute and cuddly sides, and all of the warriors work together and learn that being a strong warrior doesn’t mean you have to always be “very big and very tough.”

I love this book for a lot of reasons. First of all, this book is HILARIOUS. The illustrations are colorful and well-drawn and comical (especially the pony), and the details in the story itself are so funny. But I also love the subtle representation it offers. For example, Princess Pinecone’s parents are clearly drawn as an interracial couple: her mother has dark hair, skin, and eyes while her dad has light skin, blonde hair, and blue eyes. Pinecone herself is a mix of the two with dark eyes like her mother’s, blonde hair like her father’s, and skin that is a shade in between the two. The warriors themselves are all different shapes, sizes, and colors (in fact, in one illustration, there is a dark-skinned, female warrior in hijab subtly included in the fight). Even Harold’s little remark about how the pony “looks kinda like me” is representation—Harold sees a unique (not bad or funny, but unique) aspect of himself in a way perhaps he’s never seen himself before.

Another thing I love about this book is that unlike the princess in McKenzie’s book or Kimmy in Dinosaur Expert or even the great Ruth Bader Ginsberg herself encountered, there isn’t a clear outside force here: no one tells Pinecone she can’t be a warrior. Her parents support her completely, the warriors never question or make fun of her. The battle Pinecone struggles with is in herself. She thinks she is too small. She thinks she is too “cute and cuddly.” She thinks warriors don’t have the things she has, like cozy sweaters and fat ponies. She thinks these things make her weak. The struggle in Pinecone being a warrior is not one with the world outside of her: it’s an internal struggle with her own self-doubts.

Thankfully, Pinecone learns that warriors don’t have to be what she thinks. And, the other warriors learn this too. They all think that warriors have to be “a bunch of brutes,” as Beaton describes them. They (Pinecone included) think warriors have be tough and rough and always fight in some type of battle. But through Princess Pinecone’s silly little pony, warriors learn they can be cute and cuddly. Warriors can love cozy sweater and chubby ponies. Warriors can be small or big, male or female, and can appear rough or cute. And while I genuinely don’t believe there’s such thing as “girl and boy books” (all books are honestly for everyone), I do think another thing this book is especially good for disturbing the universe of toxic masculinity. It shows that to be strong, you don’t have to be a big tough brute who always fights angrily. It shows that it’s okay to be a warrior and be in touch with your “cuddly side.” It’s okay to wear a cozy sweater. It’s okay to gush over something that’s cute. It’s okay to feel. Through a story about a tiny princess and a farting pony, Beaton illustrates that being a warrior isn’t about your gender or your size or how many battles you partake in: it’s really just about being strong and accepting yourself just the way you are. And that’s a message that everyone needs to hear.

All of these books disturb the universe. These books make readers ask good questions. They cause readers to reevaluate their own ideas and the narrative around them. And they do it as children books. McKenzie’s sweet little princess helps us realize, “Hey, I don’t have to follow a set of rules and be perfect.” We learn along with Kimmy that girls can be scientists too (or whatever else they want). I Dissent shows that there is power in standing up to injustice and teaches toothless first graders “Girls can do ANYTHING.” And The Princess and the Pony shows that there is strength in both the tough and the tender. As I said earlier, these aren’t books just for children. These are messages and themes we all need to hear. All of us, regardless of our age, race, or gender should read these books and allow them to disturb our universe.

[liuglobal]

Yunnan and Sichuan Dreams

I was sitting in a noodle restaurant in Shanghai, one Saturday before we were set to leave for this legendary trip when I started coughing. It’s no big deal, I reasoned, these peanut butter noodles are spicy and there’s pollen in the air and plenty of smog, so surely the tickle in my throat is only that, nothing sinister. We live in a fair world, so there’s no way I could get a cold right before the amazing trip to the Yunnan and Sichuan provinces I’ve heard so much about.

It was a nasty cold, and I was banished from the trip.

I spend a week and a half alone, healing slowly, drinking buckets of water, and dreaming of the adventures my classmates were having. I was healed when they returned, and I eagerly cornered them and demanded stories. I began with Kate and Emma, shoving my phone in their face as we waited for our noodles.

Kate Yachuk: We talked to Professor Wang, I think, and he told us about the last living hieroglyphic language in the world, which is spoken by thirty people, of which he is one. He was one of the Yi people, he was super friendly and very knowledgeable. And he brought us to his house and gave us lots of candy!

Now, ask any Tom, Dick, or Harry, they’ll tell you how much I love candy, but what I love even more is linguistics. It drives my friends insane, but I’m proud of how truly nerdy I am. One of the main, nerdiest reasons I was so gung-ho for this particular field trip was to personally observe the culture of the Mosuo people, one of the last matriarchal society in the world, with whom I have been fascinated since I was ten years old. The Mosuo live around Lugu Lake, and Emma gave me the briefest of fill-ins on the matter.

Emma Barker: So, since we had to turn around and not go to the Tibetan village, we had to pull some strings, I think. We were going to the Lugu Lake anyway, but we had extra time from the change of plans, and Liu Wei said he had a friend nearby. We went and visited her house and talked about her culture and then we visited a monastery. We walked around there and were shown around by some monks and a living Buddha. Then we went back to this lady’s house and she wanted to dress us up in some traditional clothing; first we dressed up Zack and Samudra, then we roped Lyric and Liu Wei into doing it too. Everybody looked really good!

  Jealous as I was hearing of Emma’s adventures, I continued to seek stories of the trip. I knew, from years of Global College field trips, that the programming frequently outshone the way it was described on our itinerary, like the way the performance in Taiwan was explained to us as mere children’s theater. Sophie confirmed my beliefs.

Sophie Gagnaire: So, on the trip we met this Naxi woman and she took us to a monastery where her brother works, where we met the living Buddha. I was really blown away by how decadent and extravagant it was. The monastery was in this compound that also had a four-hundred-year-old building, so we got to see these original wall paintings from four hundred years ago, and this massive, thirty- or forty-foot Buddha statue. It was amazing!

One of these things that most clearly marks a Global College field trip is the last-minute adjustments. It is not that Global is unprepared; quite the opposite, in fact. It is rather than a field trip of this nature, twenty foreign students attempting to experience something meaningful in the same place, year to year, lends itself to mishaps and unexpected schedule adjustments, and Global is admirable in the way in which it adapts to such itinerary shifts, and the way in which its students learn to adapt and participate.

Santiago Sanchez y Lucero: So, we drove seven hours into the mountains to make it to the Tibetan region [of Yunnan province], and about six hours in, we ran into police officers who told us that we had to turn back because we were arriving on the tenth anniversary of an uprising that was orchestrated by American student. We seemed like a suspicious group, which I guess is fair.

I caught up with Nicole after I spoke to Santi, asking if they ever did come into contact with Tibetan culture. We were all, at least in our late-night pre-trip debates, keen to engage with Tibetan culture, given that this may be our only chance. We are, after all, a crew of liberal arts students from the United States filled with radical ideas and a truly American inability to censor ourselves when it is appropriate.

Nicole Price: I forget which day in the trip this was, but it was a few days into our trip, and we visited a university where they have an entire portion dedicated to Tibetan language and culture. We got to see their archives of Tibetan language and culture, and also other minority languages that have almost died out, like the Yi language. It was really cool because we got to enjoy a perspective, through these archives, that not a lot of people would have access to. It was exciting to see in practice the things we had been learning about all semester.

Now, Global field trips are, first and foremost, about learning; after all, we wouldn’t be going into this much debt for a degree if we weren’t being provided an excellent education. Still, I spent most of my childhood at summer camp, and I have noticed some close similarities between a day at camp and a day on a Global field trip. Many similarities are superficial, such as the odd sleep schedule, unusual group activities, and the way you seem to fit more into one day that you would fit outside of camp/field trip in a week. What stands out the most, though, are the ability you develop to adapt, at lightning speed, to adversity, and the degree to which you bond at dinner time. At camp, social life revolves around the dining hall, and in the mountains with your Global classmates, you feel the most like a wonderful family when you’re swapping food and stories and recounting your day over more food that you could ever finish. Courtney-Lynn agreed wholeheartedly.

Courtney-Lynn Mellina: My favorite group dinner from the Yunnan trip was the Tibetan-style dinner we had with the living Buddha and the rest of the class. It was, by far, one of my favorite dinners in all of Global, and the food was spectacular! I made some new Tibetan friends, we had great conversation and I tried foods I had never tried before It was a real sense of community that I’m so glad I was a part of.

Now, in spite of certain commonalities, every trip is different. I love taking the things we learned in the classroom out into the field, and I know many of my classmates feel the same. It’s always exciting to find a new way of learning, exploring areas made accessible to you only by the luck of going on the trip; I hope my jealousy isn’t coming through in my writing, I’m not bitter, I’m fine, everything is fine. Sophia and I caught up over dumplings.

Sophia Cox-Wright: One of the highlights, definitely for me, going on this trip would be that, because of scheduling matters and some things, logistically, that just ended up not working out, which kind of just happens sometimes on Global trips, we got a bit more time to just hang out and be alone. It gives you a chance to just learn from the place that you’re in. For example, one of the things that I really enjoyed was going in to the town square in one of the villages and just sitting there and watching the tourist trade and Chinese tourists. It was interesting seeing the effects of it, if that makes sense, and seeing it for myself instead of just reading, trying to integrate myself into that space. That experience is definitely something I’m going to be thinking about for a while.

 As I gathered these stories, both for the purposes of writing and personal gratification, I couldn’t help but compare them to the looks on my classmates’ faces when they returned and my own past experiences. This trip to Yunnan and Sichuan provinces was as intense an experience as promised, and like any field trip, the best and the worst part was coming home. After all that you learn, you just want to be somewhere comfortable to process it, even if that means leaving beautiful new places you have become attached to. By taking part in the post-trip emotional processes of my friends, I enjoyed the trip in my own way: vicariously. Until I have time to visit on my own, that will have to be enough.

by Julia McCoy.

[unionrising]

Black Bloc vs. Peaceful Non-violent Protest, infiltration and agent provocateurs 

Neo-Nazi Richard Spencer Got Punched—You Can Thank the Black Bloc A dispatch from inside the J20 protests.

https://www.thenation.com/article/if-you-appreciated-seeing-neo-nazi-richard-spencer-get-punched-thank-the-black-bloc/

Unmasking The Black Bloc: Who They Are, What They Do, How They Work -

what many are lacking is an understanding of the Black Bloc, it's history, the types of people who are in it, and the problems within.

 http://www.occupy.com/article/unmasking-black-bloc-who-they-are-what-they-do-how-they-work#sthash.CCrgouiX.TVOEQ75H.dpuf

‘Black bloc’ style tactics seen as chaos erupts in downtown D.C.

“They’re basically anti-capitalists,” Gomez said. “They like to destroy or damage businesses that reflect their view of the world order.”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/2017/live-updates/politics/live-coverage-of-trumps-inauguration/black-bloc-style-tactics-seen-as-chaos-erupts-in-downtown-d-c/?utm_term=.4af6226fa8a8

The Toronto G20 Riot Fraud: Undercover Police engaged in Purposeful Provocation

At the ‘Security and Prosperity Partnership’ meeting protests at Montebello Quebec on August 20, 2007, a Quebec union leader caught and outed three masked undercover Quebec Provincial Police operatives dressed as ‘black bloc’ protestors about to start a riot by throwing rocks at the security police.

http://www.globalresearch.ca/the-toronto-g20-riot-fraud-undercover-police-engaged-in-purposeful-provocation/19928

A Deeper Look at the Black Bloc: Did Trump's People Fund these Anarchists?

The black bloc anarchists's "tactic is go out and destroy property." Peaceful anti-Trump demonstrators tried to stop them during protests there, but they were "not having any luck," he said.

Some reports even say there are undercover police officers involved, with the government's goal to have a good excuse to impose Martial Law-like crackdowns. Some on the right say the bloc receives funds from liberal sources, while those on the left counter that money comes from conservative sources, such as financiers close to Trump. No one has figured out where the bloc gets much of its funds since it is not the kind of group that files financial reports or even has a general spokesperson. But let's just say this kind of violence does provide Trump a convenient reason to cite if he wants to, say, make all public demonstrations in D.C. illegal. Many might scoff at that scenario, but remember, many scoffed a year ago that Trump had a shot to become president.

http://www.opednews.com/articles/A-Deeper-Look-at-the-Black-by-Jackson-Thoreau-Anarchists_Anti-trump_Demonstrations_Inauguration-170121-319.html

Who Are These Protesters In Black And Why Are They Smashing Things?

The moment a bunch of masked thrill-seekers pull hammers out of their backpacks for some performative felony-committing, they have the attention of the media writ large.

Thadeaus said that generally black bloc participants are aware of the media dynamic they're participating in.

"I think there are a minority of people who engage in black bloc who aren't particularly conscious of the role that they're playing in the spectacle that they're creating for the media.  And there are people who try to resist that co-optation and becoming part of a media narrative, who are there for other reasons. They feel empowered to act in solidarity and act out their rage and encourage and empower other people to do the same thing."

http://dcist.com/2017/01/black_bloc_explainer.php

Police Violence Escalates As Provocateurs Infiltrate Standing Rock, #NoDAPL Protests

In stark contrast to the water protectors’ many actions of peaceful prayer and ceremony, the atmosphere at the bridge the night of Oct. 27 was more reminiscent of an outdoor rave. The protesters on the bridge set fire to an SUV, and threw rocks and other objects at a row of armored vehicles operated by law enforcement. This small faction of non-peaceful protesters and officers briefly tossed smoke bombs back and forth.

When several water protectors came to the bridge, they told those setting the fires and instigating violence that this isn’t what they want for the movement.

“We’re here to protect the water, not initiate a riot or some violent protest, which is the image that the whole world is getting right now. Our elders have come together to condemn all of these wrongful actions like catching things on fire.”

Apparently intent on forcing their tactics upon the movement, these outside forces appeared uninterested in listening to the Standing Rock Sioux or other Native water protectors.

Although the black bloc tactic has been used as a legitimate way for protesters to shield their identities from law enforcement, it has also been exploited by law enforcement. Police masquerading as black bloc activists have been exposed at the 2001 G8 Summit in Genoa, Italy, and at protests in 2007 in Quebec, and police posed as activists to infiltrate the Occupy movement.

http://www.mintpressnews.com/police-violence-escalates-provocateurs-infiltrate-standing-rock-nodapl-protests/222051/

At Least 217 Arrested, Limo Torched Amid Trump Inauguration Day Protests in Washington

The capital's interim police chief, Peter Newsham, said in a Periscope video posted on Twitter earlier today that the problems were caused by one group, "and it's a very, very small percentage of the number of folks that came here to peacefully assemble in our city."

The #DisruptJ20 coalition, named after the date of the inauguration, which promised that its participants would attempt to shut down the inauguration events, tangled with Bikers for Trump, a group clad in leather biker gear that backs the president.

Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Missouri, responded to the protests on Twitter, writing, "Nothing is more unAmerican than protesters who are not peaceful. Disgusting."

http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/arrests-violence-flares-parts-capital-inauguration-day/story?id=44925970

How a Radical Leftist Became the FBI's BFF

David McKay and Bradley Crowder, a pair of greenhorn activists from George W. Bush's Texas hometown who had driven up for the protests were wide-eyed guys in their early 20s, they'd come of age hanging out in sleepy downtown Midland, commiserating about the Iraq War and the administration's assault on civil liberties.

St. Paul was their first large-scale protest, and when they arrived they were taken aback: Rubber bullets, flash-bang grenades, tumbling tear-gas canisters—to McKay and Crowder, it seemed like an all-out war on democracy. They wanted to fight back, even going so far as to mix up a batch of Molotov cocktails. Just before dawn on the day of Palin's big coming out, a SWAT team working with federal agents raided their crash pad, seized the Molotovs, and arrested McKay, alleging that he intended to torch a parking lot full of police cars.

Back in Texas, flyers soon began appearing at coffeehouses urging leftists to beware of Brandon Darby, an "FBI informant rat loose in Austin."

The feds ultimately convicted the pair for making the Molotov cocktails, but they didn't have enough evidence of intent to use them. Crowder, who pleaded guilty rather than risk trial, and a heavier sentence, got two years. McKay, who was offered seven years if he pleaded guilty, opted for a trial, arguing on the stand that Darby told him to make the Molotovs, a claim he recanted after learning that Crowder had given a conflicting account. McKay is now serving out the last of his four years in federal prison.

Darby is through being a leftist radical. Indeed, he's now an enthusiastic small-government conservative.  He sounds a bit like his new friend, Andrew Breitbart, who made his name producing sting videos targeting NPR, ACORN, Planned Parenthood, and others. 

http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2011/08/brandon-darby-anarchist-fbi-terrorism