#and realize that fiction will never have a visceral affect on reality

[alexandraisyes]

Can I Be Real With You?

I do not give a fuck what you do or do not ship.

I do not care if you hate or love a character.

I don't even care if you like reading and writing the most atrocious shit under the sun.

Be respectful. It's fiction.

If you are going to have such a stick up your ass about people who will never exist that you are disrespectful to real people get off the fucking internet you are not wanted in fandom spaces. This applies to both people who only enjoy "pure and socially acceptable" fanworks and people who enjoy "socially tabooic" fanworks. Both sides of fandom are fucking disgusting in how you treat other people because of fictional characters.

Bring back treating and judging people based on their actions. Stop labeling people's merit by the type of content they do and don't enjoy.

[wardens-stew]

my review of The Mask Falling - an ode to Arcturus and Paige

For me, the soul of this series has always been the relationship between Paige and Arcturus. It’s apt that this book, the exact middle of the series and as @sshannonauthor​ describes it, its heart, spends so much time with this pair. The intensity and uniqueness of their bond really emerges as the shining jewel of this series.

It’s clear that Samantha Shannon was intentional about putting Arcturus and Paige on equal footing for the first time in The Mask Falling. She manages the power dynamic between them with such attention and nuance, reversing their roles often and fluidly escaping gender roles. The protector role comes naturally to Arcturus, given his immortal strength and anxiety about losing Paige (it’s even part of the etymology of their names), but for much of The Mask Falling he is her silent shadow, trailing being her and supporting her quietly. They negotiate their differences with refreshing candor and in good faith, their arguments free from ego. “My fear is not your cage,” Arcturus tells her. “I will never ask you to mold yourself to it.” His affection for her is empowering, supportive, never constrictive or diminishing. Paige herself is markedly independent, doing the bulk of her fighting and plotting on her own. When she does seek support from Arcturus, there is no sense of her own strength being diminished, and as often as he rescues her, she turns around and rescues him just as easily. 

Indeed, while Arcturus is the immortal god, it is Paige’s power that really shines in this book. Her incredible ingenuity and strength is on full display, getting her out of certain-death scenarios at such a gripping pace I had to cover the pages with my hands to avoid glancing ahead. She couples her incredible powers with extraordinary mental fortitude and an acute conscience; each of her escapades has a satisfying emotional resonance that enlivens her broader quest. Whereas many YA heroines possessed of supernatural power oscillate between immobilizing moral anxiety and moral bankruptcy, Paige tempers her impulsiveness with reason (most of the time) and a powerful motive for justice. It’s clear that she has yet to access the full extent of her abilities, and I’m eager to see what roles she’ll play in the fight to take down Scion. 

While previous installments show Arcturus/Warden on various levels of guardedness, The Mask Falling gives us time and space in excess to see his true character. I was struck by his compassion, his hopefulness despite all that he has endured. He is often reassuring and comforting Paige, his optimism clear-eyed and measured. The contrast is especially stark with his persona in The Bone Season, where he appears cold and calculating, morally gray at best. In this book, he is almost unbearably kind, devastatingly sweet and thoughtful. As Paige remarks, “there was nothing terrible before me now.” The almost unimaginable beauty of his character is achieved with such a soft touch; the books are not about Arcturus being the the epitome of goodness - he simply is. 

A central thread of tension of this book follows Paige and Arcturus negotiating their relationship and coming to terms with their mutual attraction. Samantha Shannon manages this tension beautifully, carrying it forward constantly with poignant moments of intimacy interspersed with Paige’s honest internal dialogue. The smallest interactions and gestures between them felt so heightened. There are all the classic scenes - getting drunk and saying too much, jealousy spirals about past relationships, almost-kiss scenes interrupted, near-death confessions - all building up to a beautiful and satisfying climax. 

Samantha Shannon writes intimacy incredibly well. The love scenes feel specific to the characters, managing to be both meaningful and erotic. Romances between an immortal man and a mortal woman in particular tend to translate the man’s primal instincts and extreme physical strength into a voracious sexual appetite that leaves little room for gentleness and consideration. Arcturus really breaks the mold in this respect. He is so reverent, so sincere, so generous with Paige in a way few male characters with female partners approximate. Rather than relying on an imbalance of power in order to convey eroticism, the sexiness of Arcturus and Paige’s dynamic derives from the equality of their relationship.  It’s so difficult to create a heterosexual romance unsullied by patriarchy, and Samantha Shannon gets close to that here. 

I wonder if it is Arcturus’ immortal nature that makes him such a uniquely engaging character. Samantha Shannon really commits to that aspect of him - he’s not just a hot teenager. The best word I can think of to describe him is mature. He is so beyond the petty concerns of YA love interests, so ego-less and self-reliant. One of my favorite ways he diverges from human men - and traditional male love interests - is his lack of fixation on Paige’s physical appearance. This book has several of the classic moments that would typically elicit a remark or a look from the love interest on the heroine’s appearance, often framed as a cute romantic moment. Yet when Paige dresses up, or dyes her hair - even when she asks him outright - he never comments on the way she looks. “A human might have whispered in my ear, told me I was beautiful or perfect, but not him.” I love that. I’ve never found that lustful, almost predatory demeanor in male love interests nearly as sexy as the author would like it to be, and it always rubs me the wrong way when the man telling the woman she’s beautiful is framed as the epitome of romance. It strikes me as a very lazy way to convey attraction, for one thing, and it reeks of benevolent sexism. Arcturus never plays into those supposedly romantic tropes of disparaging other women in favor of the heroine or being selectively kind. His love for Paige is so pure. 

I continue to be impressed by the sheer scale of worldbuilding in this series. Many books attempt to create fictional tyrannical governments, but few succeed in building one as convincing and elaborate as Scion. The Mask Falling peels back even more layers of this complex world, bringing to fruition seeds planted in the very first book. Although the basic plot leans on some familiar tropes, Samantha Shannon always manages to add an additional twist of the screw. The complexity of this series is truly extraordinary, drawing on etymology and mythology, dropping mysteries and complicating loyalties with incredible dexterity. 

SPOILERS!!!!! --> I am still struggling with Arcturus’s possession and Paige’s failure to connect the dots and realize the reality of his situation. I see Samantha Shannon has pointed out on Twitter that Paige’s trauma and illness may have affected her judgment and decision-making. She says, “There's a particular scene where Paige reacts to an event in a way that is so deeply rooted in her PTSD and past experiences.” (I assume this is the scene she’s referring to.) I think that’s fair - Paige has been so inundated with the Rephaite aversion to humans that it’s almost as if she only needed one piece of evidence to confirm her doubts and destroy her trust in Arcturus. And it’s not as if she just takes it at face value, either - she does question him and try to convince him otherwise. But I still can’t help feeling that it’s a stretch. The Mask Falling makes Arcturus’ character so clear that the prospect that he would be loyal to Nashira the whole time is just ludicrous. Not to mention the fact that Paige somehow overlooked the obvious signs that he was being possessed. His eyes were such a dead giveaway - Paige had already seen that same thing happen when she possessed him! And when he moved to strike her and then suddenly stopped and his eyes flared - come on! That’s a classic mind-control trope. Paige is usually so perceptive, and they had built such a strong foundation… it feels unrealistic that she wouldn’t have connected the dots just because she hadn’t thought there could be another dreamwalker. 

If I had to find fault with this book, and it is difficult, I would say that it leans a little too heavily on some YA dystopian fantasy tropes towards the end - the mind-controlled love interest, for example, instantly made me think of Divergent, The Hunger Games, The Mortal Instruments, etc. Likewise, the forced memory loss is a fairly common fantasy trope that tends to be really frustrating to read. I have faith that Samantha Shannon will keep it from sliding into those tropes, and of course there remains so much mystery still to be untangled from those final 100 pages. /END SPOILERS :) 

This was the kind of book that captivated me immediately, left me lying awake at night and had me eating energy bars for dinner so I could keep reading. It was such a visceral, immersive experience, the kind where returning to the physical reality is almost physically disorienting. It’s been two days since I finished it and I’m still clinging to that fictional world, wishing I didn’t have to leave. Books like these are rare for me, and I’m still marveling at the miracle of finding that book that in Arcturus’ words, exists for everyone: “a book that will sing to them.”

[terramythos]

Review: Vicious by V. E. Schwab (Villains #1) (REREAD)

Length: 364 pages. 

Genre/Tags: Fantasy, Urban Fantasy, Science Fiction, Superheroes, Revenge Narrative, Dark, Time Jumps, Perspective Shifts, Third-Person, Great Characters, Duology

Warning(s): Graphic violence and torture. One of the main characters is just straight up genocidal. There is a very dubious consent scene later in the novel (non-explicit). Child death (sort of?). This is like, a gray versus black morality kind of story, so don’t read it if that isn’t your thing?

My Rating: 8.5 / 10

My Summary:

Victor and Eli, two genius college roommates at the top of their game, come up with a hypothesis for their senior project— that near-death experiences sometimes result in superpowers. However, when they test their theory, things go terribly awry, and both are left forever changed. Victor finds himself with the ability to manipulate pain. Eli becomes functionally immortal. And with a body count behind both young men, they transform from best friends into bitter enemies. 

Ten years later, Victor escapes from prison. Cunning and manipulative, Victor has had a decade to contemplate revenge against the man who put him there— Eli. When he finds an injured 12-year-old girl on the side of the road, he discovers Eli has spent the last decade systematically murdering EOs— people with supernatural abilities. Sydney, who can raise the dead, is the one of the few to escape. 

With the help of Sydney and his former cellmate Mitch, Victor begins to enact his revenge. But it’s only a matter of time before Victor and Eli finish what they started ten years ago…

But these words people threw around— humans, monsters, heroes, villains— to Victor it was all just a matter of semantics. Someone could call themselves a hero and still walk around killing dozens. Someone else could be labeled a villain for trying to stop them. Plenty of humans were monstrous, and plenty of monsters knew how to play at being human. The difference between Victor and Eli, he suspected, wasn’t their opinion on EOs. It was their reaction to them. Eli seemed intent to slaughter them, but Victor didn’t see why a useful skill should be destroyed just because of its origin. EOs were weapons, yes, but weapons with minds and wills and bodies, things that could be bent and twisted and broken and used.

Vicious is an interesting book to reread because, while the book itself hasn’t changed, the context behind it has. When I read this back in 2016 it was a standalone novel, originally published in 2013. Now I’m rereading it specifically because there is an unexpected sequel (Vengeful, 2018), and I wanted a refresher before jumping into it. Second, maybe a more minor detail— this book is homoerotic as hell, and I remember wondering if it was intentional on a first read. Now that Schwab recently came out as gay, I’m thinking it probably was, which makes it all the more entertaining.  

It’s also interesting to see how much Schwab’s writing has changed over time. Originally, I read Vicious, enjoyed it, then decided to read her big fantasy series Shades of Magic, and… Well, let’s just say *that* ended up being one of my favorite trilogies ever. Whoops? But in many ways I feel my enjoyment of Shades of Magic overshadowed Vicious. I enjoyed this book, but honestly I kind of forgot about it even though it was the first one I read. That was another reason to revisit it; while I might not like it as much as Shades of Magic, it’s still plenty good.

Before I do a deep dive into the book, I think it’s important to discuss the structure. Vicious basically has two stories— one in the past, and one in the present. The first half mostly focuses on the past, while the second half mostly focuses on the present. “Mostly” is important here— the story is very anachronistic. This serves to heighten the drama; we learn about Victor and Eli’s past relationship, then get a glimpse of just how corrupted and different it is in the present day, and of course wonder what got them to this point. While I feel it’s easy to do time and perspective jumps poorly, the chapters themselves are pretty short, so I never felt disconnected from any particular plot thread. The pacing was always solid. If anything I found this novel pretty easy to read, because I could tackle just a few chapters at a time yet make significant progress in the story.

Vicious is, without a doubt, character-driven. People with superpowers exist— called ExtraOrdinary people (EOs)— and said powers develop in a unique way. Other than that there’s nothing super special about the setting. And aside from the interesting structure, the story is pretty standard. But the characters themselves are fascinating and by far the strongest point of the novel. The main focus is obviously on Victor and Eli, and how they serve as foils to one another. Both are arrogant and straight-up terrible people, but the way they see the world differs greatly, and that’s ultimately what separates the “hero” of the story (Victor) from the villain (Eli). Gray versus black morality, hooray!

Seeing the initial relationship between the two leads and how it sours and twists over time is quite interesting. At first Eli seems to be the most level-headed of the two, but as the story develops you learn how fanatical and unhinged he really is. Dude just straight up embraces genocide after a point. Meanwhile, Victor is clearly a vindictive and selfish dick from the get-go, yet as Eli’s true nature shows, seems much less terrible by comparison. The story is sometimes a bit on-the-nose with the whole hero vs villain thing and how the two defy usual expectations, but it is still interesting to realize you’re genuinely rooting for Victor. Despite everything he’s a pretty likable character.

Aside from Victor and Eli, there are three supporting characters who substantially affect the story. Preteen Sydney gets the most screentime, and with Mitch (Victor’s bodyguard/hacker/cellmate) serves as the humanizing part of the story. Victor even seems to sort of care for the two! Though how much of that is genuine attachment versus just finding them useful is debatable. There’s a super twisted found family vibe with the trio which starts to form near the end (they adopt an undead dog and everything!). On the antagonistic side of things, we have Serena, Sydney’s older sister, who has the power to compel others. She’s pretty terrifying, and has her own twisted motivations for helping Eli. At times she’s honestly more unsettling than he is.

One of my main complaints about Vicious when I first read it was *just* as I started to really dig the side characters, their relationships, and their developments… the novel ended. Yes, Sydney gets significant development through the story. But Mitch and Serena get shafted. We only really get to know them toward the end of the novel with backstory dumps or a handful of perspective chapters. A lot of the novel’s real estate centers on Victor and Eli’s past, and while I think that’s an integral part of the novel, it feels like something is missing. At the time I thought this novel either needed to be longer or it needed a sequel. Well, now it has one of those things, so it will be interesting to see what Vengeful does with the characters.  

Thematically and philosophically there’s some interesting stuff going on. The hero vs villain thing is the most obvious, and as I mentioned gets pretty direct at times. But one idea I found interesting to consider is what happens to the souls of ExtraOrdinary people. It’s initially stated as fact that EOs lose a part of themselves when they die and return. They’re different, changed in a way they can’t quite describe. And for most of the novel this seems to be true. Victor and Eli both become twisted, detached people, obsessed with their own perceptions of reality. The two realize they should feel or think certain things and simply… don’t. Both attribute it to the fact they died and came back “wrong”. But the more we learn about both characters, the more we realize they were pretty much like that all along. The idea that people lose something doesn’t really hold up when you examine Sydney, who turns into a stronger and more vibrant person after coming back. It’s an interesting realization, because it highlights just how wrong Eli’s actions are.

There’s also a whole deal regarding God and spirituality vs science. Eli justifies nearly everything he does in the name of God, whereas Victor is an atheist— but the extent to which this affects things is a definite gray area. There are some uncanny coincidences in the story (like Victor discovering Sydney) that would be bad writing… except the characters notice it happening. On multiple occasions Victor notes that if God or Fate exists, it seems to be siding with him, not Eli. Even the formation of ExtraOrdinary abilities is bizarre. One gets superpowers based on their final thoughts and feelings? That’s so decidedly unscientific, especially from something that starts as a science experiment, that it really sticks out to me. Is there more to this dichotomy? I guess we’ll see if the sequel explores it more.

There are some small details I really like, but I think my favorite is the blackout poetry thing. There’s just something interesting and really funny about Victor defacing his famous parents’ self-help books. He mentions it’s one of the best gifts he got in prison, and it’s also one of the first things he does when he gets out. Probably the funniest part in the whole story is an intense chase scene where Victor is trying to escape someone through an unfamiliar house. He spots a Vale book on a shelf, and pauses EVERYTHING to just grab it and throw it out the window, then returns to the scene as if nothing happened. It’s just such an unnecessary detail that might have ended up on the cutting room floor but I honestly lost my shit laughing.

The ending is also viscerally satisfying. So much stuff ties together well. While the novel is about Victor and Eli and (ultimately) Victor’s revenge, you don’t actually learn much about his plan until it happens. A lot of lines and actions read differently in context of the ending, which is always something I like in a story.

(And here’s a totally skippable aside— *is* there some connection between this series and Monsters of Verity? The latter is a young adult duology by Schwab, which I read and reviewed here and here. But the first book has an opening quote from Victor. Hell, it’s part of the quote I picked for this review. They don’t seem to be in the same universe but… maybe they are? It’s just such a goddamn weird choice to quote a “V. Vale” at the beginning of an unrelated series. Maybe Vengeful has an explanation? Maybe Schwab just really liked that whole monsters vs humans line? I have no idea.)

Anyway, yeah, that’s Vicious! It’s certainly a fun one to read. The writing is punchy and easy to get through. The conflict between Victor and Eli is very well written and compelling. And, as I mentioned, the characters are the strong point (in my opinion, anyway), so if you enjoy character-driven media I definitely recommend it. Just note my caveat about some of the character development. Skip it if you’re one of those people bothered by Bad People Doing Bad Things In Fiction or think portraying Bad People Doing Bad Things is somehow Endorsing Bad Things. If dark stories aren’t your thing you definitely won’t enjoy this one. There are some aspects of the story that I feel could have been smoother or done differently, most of which I touch on in the review. I think Schwab has improved a lot since writing it, which is one reason I’m excited that my next read is the 2018 sequel.

[ryanmeft]

Ryan’s Top Ten Films of 2017

I happen to think 2017 was a particularly fine year for movies. Of course, I also thought that about 2016, and 2015. If I could remember how I felt before that, I’d probably say the same thing about almost every year. The constant refrain that this is the year movies died or that we’ve fallen from some feverishly imagined golden age rolls off me like water off a stone, and I am unmoved.

In the end, though, as decreed in the esoteric conventions of the movie gods, I had to pick ten. And it was a tough choice. As usual, I did not attempt to decide the ten best films. I only highlighted the ten I liked the most.

I numbered it this year, but for the most part you can shuffle these around and it wouldn’t matter. My list encompasses a daring allegorical film, a story about ambition killing humanity, a rare take on the most famous war in history, a meditative haunting, and a movie about a fishman. In every case, they are on here for the same reason: they affected me at a guttural level, made me think, made me feel, perhaps influenced my own work. On with it.

10. mother! Roger Ebert said of Pulp Fiction “I knew it was either one of the year’s best films, or one of the worst.” One of those comes along every now and then, and I cherish them either way, because it’s impossible to be wishy washy about them. Darren Aronofsky’s uncompromising allegory is such a film. Is it a blood ‘n’ guts version of the book of Genesis? A meditation on ancient paganism? A primal scream about the very act of creating something from an artist who never does anything but exactly what he wants? Who knows? Jennifer Lawrence is a lot better utilized in dark roles like this, and Javier Bardem is an obsessed creator every bit as inscrutable as any god. Ed Harris and Michelle Pfeiffer are Adam and Eve, unless they aren’t. I usually say you ought to leave your baggage at the ticket counter when you see a movie, but mother! Absolutely demands you react to it on a visceral level. There’s no way to walk out of this one and be non-committal.

9. The Shape of Water

This is the kind of film that makes me happy I’m not so jaded as to demand some sort of lofty artistic merit (and who decides what art has merit, I might ask?) from every movie I see. You might fairly point out that some of the characters are not the deepest. You might fairly point out that’s it’s heavy on the sappy romance. You might fairly point out that the film isn’t a heavy hitter intellectually. I might fairly point out, in return, that I don’t care. Guillermo Del Toro’s lavish Cold-War-Meets-Creature-Feature-Love-Story, led by a mute Sally Hawkins, is a watery confection that I loved not because it made me think, but because it made me feel. A talent-loaded cast---Richard Jenkins, Michael Stuhlbarg, Octavia Spencer, Michael Shannon and Doug Jones as the creature---fuels a movie I just wanted to sink into like a pool under starlight, and to top it off, it treated sex as something people actually do, rather than simply pantomime.

8. The Meyerowitz Stories: New and Selected

To a creative sort, the sting of a parent who is indifferent to your life’s passions can be withering, but Noah Baumbach flips that. Here, a floaty, disinterested, perhaps somewhat delusional aging sculptor, played by Dustin Hoffman, is immensely dissatisfied with his three children’s desire for a normal life. The movies rarely deal in this, because it’s easier to draw sympathy for a hero when their parent is more viscerally abusive. The children all have their own ways of dealing with this, and they are brought to life with immensely affecting performances from Ben Stiller, Elizabeth Marvel, and…Adam Sandler? Yes, to everyone’s shock, Adam Sandler has one of the best roles of the year. I am less shocked, because I know he can act when he desires it. And act he does, playing the dutiful son who remains to endure his father’s stubbornness while the others attain greater degrees of freedom. What do you do with a parent who demands you desire their approval but will only give it on their terms? You learn to live with it.

7. Spider-Man: Homecoming

I’m a sucker for Spider-Man. Really, all you have to do to get me to like a Spider-Man movie is to make a halfway decent one. This one may not have been the all-time classic Spider-Man 2 was, but it gave me a relatable Peter Parker, a cast of affecting friends for him, Michael Keaton as the best on screen Spidey villain since Doc Ock, and plenty of Spider-action. I’m going to be honest with you: I think that’s all I need. If you need more, though consider that the MCU formula, which, critics have rightly said is liberally applied to almost all characters, actually works for Spider-Man. Having this excitable super-powered teenager crack jokes about everything to paper over his insecurities and refuse to take his powers or the world he’s a part of all that seriously, only to learn a harsh lesson about how much that life can cost him, fits not just the character but the John Hughes-esque High School setting perfectly. After Tobey Maguire got Peter Parker right and Andrew Garfield nailed his alter-ego, Tom Holland and director Jon Watts are the first pairing to land both halves. The fact that it is such a near-perfect invocation of my favorite comic superhero didn’t affect my review (I still stand by my judge-a-movie-based-on-the-movie mantra), but it did help land the film on this list. Because it’s my damn list and I’ll do as I please.

6. Call Me by Your Name

It’s impossible to shoot a movie in the environs of rural Italy and not make it look gorgeous, it seems. You just point the camera. Setting a gripping story with compelling characters against this backdrop is a challenge, one that Luca Guadagnino accomplishes. He weaves a languid tale of idle academics in a beautiful place, and normally that would be anathema to me, as I’m not a big fan of stories featuring well-off people who live in paradise. Something about this one, however, grabbed me, and it isn’t just Timothee Chalamet’s career-making performance. I think it is the lack of forced drama. 17-year-old Elio may be the main emotional attraction, but where lesser romances take the easy way out, with histrionics and unrealistic contrivances, Guadagnino creates people, people who are capable of coming to peace with their situations and recognizing that life may not always turn out the way you want, but that there’s a large gap between “fairy tale” and “nightmare”. It isn’t a “gay movie”, but a movie about two people who happen to fall in love. It is erotic in the broadest sense of the word.

5. In This Corner of the World

To the casual moviegoer, it may seem that a war movie without any war in it should be reclassified. Certainly, it once seemed that way to me. I’ve learned better, and Sunao Katabuchi’s film centering around one young woman trying to have something like a normal life while Japan is in the midst of World War II took me by surprise. Whereas Saving Private Ryan or Grave of the Fireflies might hit you in the gut by displaying the most horrible effects of war in graphic detail, ITCOTW takes a different approach. Warships wait languidly in the harbor of an otherwise peaceful town. Rations run low and ordinary people must make sacrifices. Life goes on surrounded by only indirect reminders of pain, and I was hit by a revelation that seemed obvious in hindsight: most citizens were as unaware of the extent of their government’s ambitions as we are, and were at best distant collateral in the pursuit of empire. In one of the most indelible scenes of the year, the residents witness a massive flash of energy come from from far over the mountains, and after a second we realize with a start that it must have been Hiroshima. Then they go about their day.

4. Detroit

Here we have the most egregious Best Picture slight since Inside Llewyn Davis. In 1967, police staged a raid on a party for black veterans, which touched off a riot during which several black men ended up dead at the hands of the police. Kathryn Bigelow takes on this material and decides the audience must be spared no discomfort or disgust in seeing the terror unfold. A row of black men are lined up against a wall and interrogated, including being terrorized by a sadistic game wherein one is taken into another room and pretend-murdered to scare the others. Two white women at the hotel are swept up, their crime to have been spending time with black men. The movie is anchored by a horrifying performance by Will Poulter as a beat cop so vehemently bigoted that even his white superiors hate him, and a sadness-inducing one by John Boyega as a black security guard who knows that even a hundred years after emancipation he must cower and grovel before authoritative whites to maybe, possible, if he’s lucky prevent black deaths. It is as harrowing and nerve-wracking a depiction of systematic violent racism as I’ve seen. If I may get a bit snippy for the moment, it is worth nothing that in a world where well-meaning voices decry both an alleged lack of films about black culture and a definite deficiency of women directors, this movie, despite a wide release, bombed at the box office. Reality is hard to face, but some people don’t have a choice.

3. Kedi

Would I have loved this as much if the focus were on dogs, not cats? Probably not. I am firmly in the cats-r-gud camp, and might even be said to be in the pocket of the powerful pro-kitty lobby. Thing is, I also wouldn’t have loved this movie so much if it were just about cats. Ceyda Torun’s documentary ostensibly about Istanbul street cats is really about life in one of the world’s most ancient cities. The feline stars of the film are simply catalysts for drawing that life into the open. Each of them have a distinct personality and some distinct humans to fit with. My favorite is the one who is absolutely loyal to his shopkeeper human, and also absolutely loyal to his other shopkeeper human. Shot using inventive techniques to capture the lives of the cats when they go out-of-bounds, and infused with a haunting Kira Fontana score and mesmerizing beauty courtesy of cinematographers Alp Korfali and Charlie Wupperman, you need not have a cat to love it, but you do require a heart. These people, all among the “common” working classes of Turkey, commit what will, for the sadly xenophobic world we currently live in, be a mortal sin: they force you to admit everyone, everywhere, is just human. Even the furry ones.

2. A Ghost Story

The most common thing I hear when I bring this one up is “Oh, the bedsheet one!” It makes me remember a time when I could casually write off such a film by reducing it to its most unusual element. Actually seeing the film makes me glad those days are gone. David Lowery’s haunting (pun definitely intended) meditation on life, loss, time, memory, holding on and letting go is not a film you watch if you want everything explained to you, or even want things that can be explained. Like the unfairly-maligned Cloud Atlas, it pokes gently at the mysteries of life and death and love by encouraging the audience to draw their own conclusions. We’re never quite sure of where we are in time and space, or how one scene relates to another, which is the point. As I’ve gotten older, one of the only things I’ve learned to do well is appreciate time not only as it relates to my immediate life, but as a sort of web that everyone experiences differently. I suspect such a mentality will be needed before one can really draw the marrow from this film. Once you do that, though, you’ll be treated to something that will stay in your mind, always.

1. Lucky

From Inside Llewyn Davis to Locke to Fruitvale Station, I’m always going to be a sucker for well-done films about various people just living life, mostly free from the conventions of pumped-up drama. That’s not to say I don’t like drama, but the films that make me reflect on the ordinary, real world are almost always going to end up higher in my esteem at the end-of-year roll call. Such is the case here. Lucky is not about anything. If you’re looking for some anchor for a plot, there isn’t one. Played by the great Harry Dean Stanton in the last performance released during his lifetime, Lucky is a 90-year-old man who is dying. He doesn’t have a disease. He isn’t injured. He’s just old. He’s an avowed atheist. He’s a bar stool philosopher. He’s kind of a prick. These things are not plot. They are just aspects of a man who, after nine decades on earth, has picked up many aspects, not a one of which feels like something a real person wouldn’t acquire. That’s the beauty of John Carroll Lynch’s film: you’re not going to find Lucky doing anything a man like him would be unlikely to do for the sake of cheap entertainment.

So what does happen? He lives in a dusty old town without much in it and watches game shows. He does crosswords. He eats at the diner and drinks at the bar that hasn’t banned him. He goes to a child’s birthday party at one point, sure, but where I was fearful the film would veer off into contrivance, it instead gave me one of the most beautifully natural scenes of the year. Lucky does have a struggle, and it is to face the (admit it) horrible truth that, even if you do everything right and don’t get sick and don’t get broken and live a good life, you still have to die. No one who was familiar with him didn’t feel the loss of Mr. Stanton, but what a film for him to go out on. What a film. Some films almost made the cut, so here are my honorable mentions, in alphabetical order. Most of these movies, if going by the anachronistic system humans seem to prefer, would also have gotten 3 1/2-to-4 star “official ratings”. In the end, though, there could be only one. Er, ten. There could be only ten. Beatriz at Dinner Darkest Hour I, Tonya It Comes at Night Lady Bird The Lost City of Z Mudbound Phantom Thread The Greatest Showman Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri

[rhetoricandlogic]

THE MANUAL OF DETECTION BY JEDEDIAH BERRY

KAREN MEISNER / ISSUE: 9 MARCH 2009

Borges wrote in praise of the detective story that "it is safeguarding order in an era of disorder" ("The Detective Story," 1978). This notion is given a playful surrealist treatment in The Manual of Detection, by Jedediah Berry. Berry is no stranger to strange fiction; he's been up to his neck in it for years as the assistant editor of Small Beer Press, and his own short stories have been widely published to critical acclaim. Now he's written his first novel, and it is a stylish, exciting debut. In this story, sleuthing is more than a trade; it embodies an orderly approach to life. Mysteries must be solved to separate truth from illusion. Even the criminals seem mainly interested in crime as a mission, an artform, a way of affecting the world. Their leaders are magicians, masters of disguise, illusionists. The conflict between detectives and criminals is a clash of philosophical positions, a metaphysical struggle for dominance.

Our hero is Charles Unwin, mild-mannered file clerk for Detective Travis Sivart. They work at The Agency, a monolith of respectability which protects its city by standing firm against the criminal element. Unwin is a mild, unassuming fellow, never without his umbrella (it is always raining in the city). He excels at organizing and cataloguing files, comfortably contented within his appointed role. But when Detective Sivart goes missing, Unwin is unexpectedly promoted to detective and thrown into the field as an operative. Being thoroughly unsuited to the job, he protests his promotion, but when he comes under suspicion for murder, he must follow the clues in order to figure out what's going on. As he reluctantly begins to ask questions, he discovers that many facts in Detective Sivart's files are false. Soon he is swimming out of his depth, floundering in mysteries. In the thickening plot he finds evidence relating not only to the case at hand, but to secrets that may undermine all he's held true.

Unwin's initial approach to detection is clerklike: mechanically attempting to do what he thinks is expected of him, sorting the facts, bluffing his way through an assortment of odd discoveries. His transformation into an agent begins when he opens a copy of The Manual of Detection—the Agency's bible of the theory and practice of detective work—and reads his first bit of advice (under the header "Mystery, First Tidings of"):

The inexperienced agent, when presented with a few promising leads, will likely feel the urge to follow them as directly as possible. But a mystery is a dark room, and anything could be waiting inside. At this stage of the case, your enemies know more than you know—that is what makes them your enemies. Therefore it is paramount that you proceed slantwise, especially when beginning your work. To do anything else is to turn your pockets inside out, light a lamp over your head, and paste a target on your shirtfront. (p. 52)

Proceeding slantwise is also good advice for readers of this novel. The narrative does not propel us forward, guns blazing, so much as slowly draw us deeper into a mysterious world. Boundaries are blurred between realism and dream-states. The time in which events take place is never specified, though the story sustains a vaguely early-twentieth-century atmosphere throughout, as though tipping its bowler hat to the great mystery novels of that era. And yet the book feels fresh and new, even experimental. It's a book that provokes comparisons to other works of fiction, because it is so difficult to classify without reference points. However, I promised myself I would get through this review without quoting Chesterton, and I will not backslide now. The fact is that The Manual of Detection is a singular creation, confidently constructed in its genre-synthesizing originality.

Despite the book's many charms, I did not warm to the story immediately. The plot quickly becomes complicated, hallucinatory; I found it difficult to follow. (There's now a helpful websitethat makes it easier to keep track of personnel and other pertinent information.) The mannered, faintly Edwardian prose struck me at first as overly refined; corpses pile up and yet much of the action feels curiously bloodless, more dreamlike than visceral. Like Unwin himself, who "felt he had stumbled into the mystery he was supposed to be solving," I was thrown when the ground started shifting before I'd become quite anchored in the story. It was all a bit dizzying.

In 1924, André Breton wrote in the first Surrealist Manifesto that he sought to expand awareness and find a superior reality by exploring the associations of the unconscious mind. In Berry's novel, a similar notion is employed to practical ends by operatives of the Agency, who are able to spy on suspects within dreams, and see clues the unconscious may reveal about their crimes. As Unwin uses this surveillance method to track clues, the story drifts into the surreal. Curiously, the further Unwin submerges into the dreaming world, the more vivid and solid and awake a person he becomes, the more known to himself. When we first meet him, Unwin is a far cry from the hardboiled model of sleuth; he is a bit of a cipher, meekly shrinking from action, so buttoned-up and cautious that is difficult to get a grip on him. As he struggles toward understanding and his adversary, however, he begins to develop his own instincts, and life floods into the story.

Similarly, as the novel develops, the juxtaposition of precise, dapper prose in a bizarre context becomes hypnotic. The precision of Unwin's perspective gives every scene a realism that is constantly being subverted. The story never veers off into mere weirdness, but stays grounded in the inexorable dream-logic of its world. It reaches and unsettles the reader at an unconscious level. Science-fiction fans like to talk about the "sense of wonder" that results from encountering new concepts and creations, but what I got from this was the delicate sensation that arises when the familiar is made strange: a sense of mystery. Witness this scene when Unwin realizes he's being spied upon:

"He is trying to focus," said the man at the telephone.

Unwin set down the Manual and rose from his seat. He had not misheard: somehow the man with the blond beard was speaking Unwin's thoughts aloud. His hands shook at the thought; he had begun to sweat. The three men at the lunch counter swiveled again to watch Unwin walk to the back of the room and tap the man on the shoulder.

The man with the blond beard looked up, his eyes bulging with violence. "Find another phone," he hissed. "I was here first."

"Were you speaking about me just then?" Unwin asked.

The man said into the receiver, "He wants to know if I was speaking about him just then. He listened and nodded some more, then said to Unwin, "No, I wasn't speaking about you."

Unwin was seized by a terrible panic. (p. 54)

In short, Berry has put together a novel with the perception-challenging impact of a Magritte painting, and every element of the story works together to create that effect. It is Unwin's receptive, uncarved-block quality that allows him to traverse the landscape as a kind of lucid dreamer, sifting through information as it comes to him, without getting too bogged down in what he knows, perhaps falsely, to be true. He continues in his clear-headed, methodical approach even as reality is deconstructed around him. It is entirely right that the story should proceed at the pace it does, because the nature of this book is that it does not bombard the reader with emotion, action, or florid images. The storytelling is the opposite of bombastic; it invites you in to its stylish world, and parcels out its clues sparingly. It's an ambient kind of book. You sink into its atmosphere and let it wash over you, and it does things to your mind.

The surrealist painter Ian Hornak once wrote,

My idea of a perfect surrealist painting is one in which every detail is perfectly realistic, yet filled with a surrealistic, dreamlike mood. And the viewer himself can't understand why that mood exists, because there are no dripping watches or grotesque shapes as reference points. That is what I'm after: that mood which is apart from everyday life, the type of mood that one experiences at very special moments. (Ian Hornak, The 57th Street Review, January 1976)

By this definition, The Manual of Detection succeeds brilliantly as surrealist art. It is also, without doubt, a sincere piece of good old-fashioned detective fiction, in which everything is connected, and readers are offered the satisfaction of a riddle that can be deciphered, of fitting interlocking pieces together into a logical whole. But something larger lingers in the wake of the individual mysteries Unwin investigates: mystery itself, strange and unknowable. Long after I finished reading The Manual of Detection I kept returning to it for the sheer pleasure of resting my eyes on the sentences, and falling back into that transcendent, mysterious mood. Unwin is described at one point as a "meticulous dreamer", and this elegant, intricate, ambitious book leaves me feeling that is a most wonderful thing to be.

Karen Meisner lives in the small city of Madison, Wisconsin, where it rains just the right amount. She edits fiction for Strange Horizons.

[thebookbeard-blog]

December is for Star Wars.

At least that's what I decided at the end of 2015 after watching The Force Awakens, a movie that re-kindled a love and passion that had been dormant since my teenage years. I went back to the theater three more times. I left each showing feeling like a kid, in the best of ways. I was, at almost thirty years old, Star Wars trash once again -- a label that I happily and readily accepted. I began to consume more SW-related pop culture. I started watching Star Wars Rebels, which in time I came to realize captures the spirit of the original trilogy better than almost anything else. I started reading some of the comics being put out by Marvel at the time, chiefly Kieron Gillen's Darth Vader run, a brilliant piece of storytelling on its own. Then I started to explore some of the books set in the Star Wars universe. 

The trash of the thing.

The first SW book I ever read was Claudia Gray's Lost Stars. My expectations were low: Star Wars is such a visually rich setting, after all, and I had doubts as to how well it would translate to the written word. If anything, I only expected a fun romp through the Star Wars universe. I certainly didn't expect it to be an arresting and heart-wrenching piece of fiction. But it turned out to be both. I loved it enough that it was the first book I picked as a favorite read for last year. And I loved Gray's writing enough that I would eagerly pick up whatever she wrote for the expanded universe next. The fact that this happened to be a story that focused on Leia increased my interested only by a hell of a lot.

Bloodline features and older, wiser, slightly weary Leia, still serving in her function as a Senator for the New Republic. At the beginning of the story, tired of all the ceremony and hypocrisy of politics, she's determined to retire from it all, but not before engaging in one last diplomatic mission which she hopes will do some actual, genuine good for the galaxy -- not to mention serve as one final adventure. That this adventure should prove to uncover a vast and deep conspiracy that threatens not only her personal safety and reputation but the fate of the entire galaxy should really come as no big surprise -- this is a Star Wars story, after all.

Gray's portrayal of Leia is beautifully nuanced, and balances the political and personal aspects of the character with grace and aplomb. This is a Leia that is a brilliant and savvy politician, as well as a bad-ass who knows how to handle a blaster and is ready to throw down at a moment’s notice.

Leia lifted her blaster, losing her sights on Rinnrivin’s guard — and targeting the central strut of the tunnel support directly overhead. One bolt held the entire thing together. That bolt was no larger than a child’s fist. At this range, in semi-darkness, perhaps one shot in a thousand might be capable of destroying that bolt. But Leia made the shot.

In short, the very same Leia that we all know and love. The same Leia that the late, great Carrie Fisher brought to life. Gray's capable prose does her more than enough justice.

The story is made all the more interesting by the fact that it deals heavily with politics, something that the prequels tried to do with very mixed and muddy results. It’s one of the more fascinating aspects in Bloodline however, and the intrigue and West Wing-like drama of it all carries the story through. That the political landscape of the novel happens to look very much like our own just adds a more surreal and slightly ominous layer to it all. 

Gray has gone on record to say that Bloodline wasn’t written as commentary, but it's pretty hard, especially after the events of last November, not to view the story as a reflection of our current reality. Part of the reason that Leia wants to retire has to do with the Senate devolving into a two-party system -- parties that are themselves fragmented into conflicting fractions. She laments how "every debate on the Senate floor turns into an endless argument over ‘tone’ or ‘form’ and never about issues of substance." And try to read this bit of dialogue and tell me it doesn't sound like something you’d find on a recent think piece.

“Surely you won’t deny the New Republic is committing mistakes of its own.”

“Not the evils of tyranny and control.”

“No. The evils of absence and neglect.”

And, of course, there’s the now viral quote at the close of the book that has gained new relevance in light of yesterday's marches:

“The sun is setting on the New Republic," Leia said. "It's time for the Resistance to rise.”

Indeed. 

Bloodline is both a brilliant character portrait and relevant social commentary. Claudia Gray can write Star Wars like no other and I will read anything she writes in this universe.

After dealing with the heady but heavy themes of Bloodline however, I figured I was due some for some warmth and comfort. At which point I usually turn to a Rainbow Rowell book.

I love Rainbow Rowell. I love her quirky and clever and passionate writing (if there was a book equivalent to Gilmore Girls, it would be a Rowell book). I love her amazing and uncanny ability to make you fall for a character in almost no time at all.

This same talent is brilliantly showcased in Kindred Spirits, a slim novella that, over the course of sixty-two pages, manages to have more character development than most sprawling, brick-sized novels.

It's an unfair gift, really.

This is a story about three Star Wars geeks camping out in desolate line in front of an Omaha theater for the premiere of The Force Awakens. It is lovely, and it is charming, and it is so wonderful. I finished the story in one sitting, desperately wishing there was a full-length novel featuring these characters that I could immediately pick up. Heartwarming and beautiful.

And so December rolled around once more, and with it another Star Wars film, because Disney will never be stopped.

But of course I loved almost everything about Rogue One: I loved its beautiful and beautifully diverse cast, I loved its relentless and brutal pace, I even dug its CGI missteps. It's a dark, dark film, to be sure, but it also seems very apt and timely. Rebellions are built on hope, etc.

I picked up the Rogue One: A Star Wars Story novelization by Alexander Freed because I kept coming across good reviews. I was skeptical -- I had tried to read Alan Dean Foster's adaptation of The Force Awakens and found the writing style so tedious that I couldn't get past the first chapter. Thankfully though Freed doesn't seem to suffer from this: his writing style is relatively spartan and straightforward, which serves this kind of story well. Even so I was still very much surprised at how much I enjoyed reading this, and even more surprised at how much more depth it managed to add to the story. 

One of the main criticisms about the film is that we don't spend enough individual time with the characters too feel much of anything when they meet their ultimate fate. Which is fair: movie's are all about the external after all, whereas in books and comics you can delve more into the character's feelings and motivations -- literally get inside their heads. This is what Freed does in the novelization, and to great effect. We get so many details regarding each character's background, personality, and motivation.

Cassian stashed his paranoia in the back of his brain -- out of the way but within easy reach.

Jyn knew the sounds of occupation well. They were the sounds of home.

Baze did not limit his targets to those who might spot the blind man, but he kept Chirrut under observation nonetheless; where the Force would fail Chirrut, Baze would not.

And it does affect how you feel about the characters as the plot happens to them. This is made most evident in K-2SO's final scene, an already heartbreaking moment in the film, but here Freed adds one last final touch that makes is all the more tragic and all the more beautiful. Totally evil stuff, but good nonetheless.

This device isn't limited to the characters either: for the more technical aspects of the plot we get things like communiques and log entries interspersed throughout the story, and they are also used to great effect. In a particularly brilliant entry, we get to find out just how Galen Erso, with the help of sheer bureaucratic nonsense, ensures the flaw he engineered in the Death Star reactor remains in place. A detail that is both morbidly hilarious and also incredibly realistic.

I do think that one of the things that makes the movie such a visceral experience gets totally lost in the translation, however, and that is much of the action. Freed does a serviceable job, but the action still very much slows down and lack urgency and tension. Darth Vader’s big scene is an absolute show-stopper in the movie, for example, whereas here it reads as very much anticlimactic. 

But that is admittedly a minor criticism that applies mostly to the third act, and I do think that the material and information that was added to the story more than makes up for it.

Highly recommend reading this before you watch Rogue One for the eight time.

It was raining. It didn’t rain in L.A. It was raining in L.A. and I was Princess Leia. I had never been Princess Leia before and now I would be her forever. I would never not be Princess Leia.

And then there's Carrie. Oh Carrie.

December was a particularly tough month in a particularly tough year. Too many artists I admired passed away, and then halfway through December I went a personal loss that left me dazed and numb. Then Carrie Fisher died, and it all struck me as once, and I was just sad for a long while.

I had downloaded The Princess Diarist shortly after finishing the Rogue One novelization. It seemed like an appropriate follow up, and I've been meaning to read Fisher's stuff for years anyway. It stayed unread on my tablet for a bit (the aforementioned personal loss took any desire I had to read much), but I picked it up immediately after learning of Carrie's death. It seemed like the appropriate thing to do.

The Princess Diarist is about Fisher looking back on diary entries she had penned in the late seventies, during the filming of Star Wars. It's a meditation on fame and growing up in Hollywood and being young and growing old. It's a wonderful read. Raunchy and hilarious and clever; whimsical and melancholy. Brutally honest and full of life truths. I highlighted a great many passages:

The crew was mostly men. That’s how it was and that’s pretty much how it still is. It’s a man’s world and show business is a man’s meal, with women generously sprinkled through it like overqualified spice.

I looked at her aghast, with much like the expression I used when shown the sketches of the metal bikini. The one I wore to kill Jabba (my favorite moment in my own personal film history), which I highly recommend your doing: find an equivalent of killing a giant space slug in your head and celebrate that.

Back then I was always looking ahead to who I wanted to be versus who I didn’t realize I already was, and the wished-for me was most likely based on who other people seemed to be and the desire to have the same effect on others that they had had on me.

I don’t just want you to like me, I want to be one of the most joy-inducing human beings that you’ve ever encountered. I want to explode on your night sky like fireworks at midnight on New Year’s Eve in Hong Kong.

Because what can you do with people that like you, except, of course, inevitably disappoint them?

I wish that I could leave myself alone. I wish that I could finally feel that I punished myself enough. That I deserved time off for all my bad behavior. Let myself off the hook, drag myself off the rack where I am both torturer and torturee.

I was sitting by myself the other night doing the usual things one does when spending time alone with yourselves. You know, making mountains out of molehills, hiking up to the top of the mountains, having a Hostess Twinkie and then throwing myself off the mountain. Stuff like that.

Trying relentlessly to make you love me, but I don’t want the love -- I quite prefer the quest for it. The challenge. I am always disappointed with someone who loves me -- how perfect can he be if he can’t see through me?

I call people sometimes hoping not only that they’ll verify the fact that I’m alive but that they’ll also, however indirectly, convince me that being alive is an appropriate state for me to be in.

I had feelings for him (at least five, but sometimes as many as seven).

Time shifts and your pity enables you to turn what was once, decades ago, an ordinary sort of pain or hurt, complicated by embarrassing self-pity, into what is now only a humiliating tale that you can share with others because, after almost four decades, it’s all in the past and who gives a shit?

This is a joy of a book, but it still made me sad. Sad that I never got to read and appreciate her written work while she was alive. Sad because the beautiful gem of a person who wrote these true beautiful things was now gone, drowned in moonlight, strangled by her own bra, and we'll never, ever see her like again.

“Carrie?” he asked. I knew my name. So I let him know I knew it. “Yeah,” I said in a voice very like mine.

Good night, Space Momma. Thank you for you voice. Thank you for being so unabashedly you.                                                                                           

[recentanimenews]

Why "Bye Bye Butterfree" Is The Saddest Episode Of Anything Ever

  What's the saddest episode of a TV show ever made? "Jurassic Bark" from Futurama? "Everyone's Waiting" from Six Feet Under? "Papa's Got A Brand New Excuse" from The Fresh Prince Of Bel-Air? All fine choices, but they're not the saddest, not by a long shot. No, that honor goes to "Bye Bye Butterfree," the Pokémon anime episode that introduced me to the idea (and reality) of sobbing over fictional characters.

  For those of you who've never gotten to watch this runaway train of animated melancholy, here's how it all goes down: Ash Ketchum, Brock, Misty, and Pikachu find themselves near a large group of Butterfree. The insects are all finding partners to mate with, and Ash sends up his own Butterfree. Sadly, Ash's Butterfree isn't able to find one, which depresses everyone, including the audience. Dejected, Butterfree flees into the forest. Eventually, Ash and the gang find him, and help give him tips to better impress the object of his affection, a pink Butterfree. Decked out with a brand new scarf from Brock, Ash's Butterfree heads back to the bug group with his confidence renewed.

  Sadly, that's when Team Rocket shows up. They catch a ton of the Butterfree and leave, but thanks to the combined efforts of Butterfree and Pikachu, the Butterfree are eventually freed. The pink Butterfree notices that Ash's Butterfree is dope, and they decide to be partners. They dance and then, at the end, Butterfree and his partner bid Ash and everyone else farewell as they have to go start their own families. Ash remembers all of the memories that he has of Butterfree and his earlier evolutionary stages and then Ash, along with everyone else, sobs and waves goodbye.

    Okay, so on a base level, this is inherently sad. It's a good friend leaving. Of course everyone will cry over that. But that's not the only layer here. Actually, there are MULTIPLE levels of sad at work. See, "Bye Bye Butterfree" goes against everything that Pokémon has stood for thus far. In the anime and in the games, it's kind of up to you when a monster leaves your group. If your party gets too full, you can just shove the creatures that you don't really want in your computer and carry on with your life. But in "Bye Bye Butterfree," Butterfree leaves Ash in a way that almost seems like uncontrollable destiny. Ash can't deny Butterfree his chance to find a partner, because then he'd just be kind of a rude jerk. It's out of his hands.

  This also looks into Ash Ketchum's role as a Pokémon parent, a role that he arguably fits in best when it comes to Butterfree. Aging is rarely brought up in Pokémon, so we measure the effects of time with evolutionary status. And Butterfree is the only one of Ash's Pokémon that's ever evolved, with Ash catching it when it was a Caterpie, its "youngest" form. So Butterfree is the only Pokémon that Ash has truly ever raised. It's the only one that he's watched "grow up."

    And because he's ten, Ash doesn't really ever grasp what's going on. Obviously, these Butterfree are gonna go off and have a big family of Caterpie. But to him, his pal is flying away, a pal that he once traded away, only to realize that he wanted him back (a no-no in the games.) Despite Brock's best attempts to teach him about the importance of all of this "partner" stuff, by the end, he's still kinda baffled by this biological event that apparently has to happen. So Ash is losing someone that he's served as both a parent and friend to, though he only really understands his relationship as the latter.

  That said, he does say to Butterfree that, to make it easier on the other Pokémon, he'll tell them Butterfree is "on a trip and he'll come back some day, maybe," which is very much how a parent would relay a sad separation to a young child. 

  Also, in the grand scheme of the Pokémon anime, this is a new kind of misery. Because it's the first departure of anyone who's ever really meant anything to Ash. Sure, at the end of their respective episodes, people like Seymour the Scientist and AJ and Samurai leave and he learns little lessons about Pokémon and life, but after that, those characters are gone forever. They've got their own paths. But Butterfree was on Ash's path until, suddenly, he wasn't. 

      Finally, the music that they choose for the goodbye scene is the "Tears After Cloudy Weather" song, a song that to this day gives me the very visceral reaction of, "Oh, I should be, like, super sad now." It follows that up with the Pokémon opening theme as Butterfree flies away. And as all anime fans know, when the show plays the opening theme in a non-opening location, some BIG stuff is going down. 

  All of this adds up to make "Bye Bye Butterfree" one of the saddest and most beautiful experiences I've ever had while watching TV. So, if you don't mind, I'm gonna go watch it again, because I'm a glutton for emotional anime punishment.

  What's the saddest Pokémon moment to you? Do you remember the first time you saw "Bye Bye Butterfree"? Let me know in the comments!

  ------------

  Daniel Dockery is a Senior Staff Writer for Crunchyroll. Follow him on Twitter!

  Do you love writing? Do you love anime? If you have an idea for a features story, pitch it to Crunchyroll Features!

  By: news+feed@crunchyroll.com

[glorykrp]

SHOWING RESULTS FOR: RYUSE.

✩ Ryu Sehan                             ✩  July 21st, 1994      ✩ Seoul, South Korea                ✩ Soloist

LATEST RESULTS ON THE TOPIC.

Ryu Sehan – Artist Profile. Ryuse is Nebula Prism’s soloist. He trained for 5 years prior to debut.

RYUSE (류세) “STEREO / 스테레오” Music Video – Youtube. Jun. 13, 2013. Watch the official music video for Ryuse’s debut song.

Ryuse's Sensual Charm Graces Elle Issue – Naver. ❬ +1,607; -72 ❭ Sehan-ah, Maeo are always cheering you on!

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» Nebula Prism          » 1987 Album          » Ryuse Blind Item

PERSONAL LIFE.

TEN. There’s four of them when he’s born. Mother, father, big brother, and him. Only shadows of those days remain in his memory, filtered through the ethereal languor of infancy. Mother, father, big brother, and him – a family, on vacations, father behind the wheel with mother at his side, short hair dancing in the wind next to the rolled down window. They’re ancient ghosts, seating in the back of his head for what feels like decades, centuries, tasting of old water and dust. Even as he holds the picture album in his hands, evidence of their existence in a simpler time, they paint like fiction rather than fact. These days, he prefers it that way. NINE. He remembers his story as a fatherless child, with a mother and a big brother who were always bending themselves to fill that hole. The culprit left the scar shaped in his silhouette, moving on to a new home and a family he would love more. He remembers being difficult, morose, siding with his father when his mother complained, clamoring his name whenever it was silenced. As he did it, seeing the hurt he inflicted shatter in his mother’s eyes, he didn’t know why he felt that visceral need to keep a rotting corpse tied to his body like that. Maybe it hurt more than he could understand, maybe the chaos of that first year was enough noise to drone out the torturing emptiness in the house, in his life. He remembers having his childlike innocence tainted with the precocious realization of his impotence. EIGHT. Not to say it was all gray clouds and battle cries in the house. He was filled with love and affection and childhood conventions, not a lot missing from his plate. He didn’t have superheros and augmented fantasies, but he dreamed. Collected dreams, kept a shelf full of alternate lives he would live, ever so often circling back to song and dance. His mother used to joke he had a head among clouds, made sure to anchor his feet. Studies and preoccupations with future were the constant imperative in the house, their stiff seriousness often wrapping too tight around his neck. In hindsight, he gets it – early divorced and morally crushed, his mother was only looking to protect her children from a similar fate. But in adolescent candour, the fickle balance between sweetness and hurricanes so often combusted as discussions edged around the subject of the future. The harder his mother tried to pry him away from music, the more stubborn he became, sinking a grip into it, finding a calling in the strive. SEVEN. At the age of thirteen, Sehan leaves his house on a saturday afternoon, with the excuse of working on a school project at his friend’s. At the age of thirteen, Sehan auditions for Nebula Entertainment. And passes. In his defense, he hadn’t expected much from it. He had no idea of what to expect from an audition, had so little planned beyond the few stories he had heard in school. When he passes, the euphoria erupts mixed with anxiety. He skims the practice room, the numbered tag laying on his chest, the dark sweatpants sagging on white sneakers, fearing this would be his last taste of it all. SIX. The process of moving into the trainee dorm is sweetened by the silence his mother offers him, the brimming frustration that comes as the calm after the long tempest she had lashed on him. She wishes him good luck, and even the severity of her tone becomes something he can hold onto. His family doesn’t talk to him for months, he doesn’t allow them a chance, doesn’t give his hectic schedule a rest because he is far too scared to be met with nothing if he ever opened that door. FIVE. Emotional solitude threw him into a frenzy in the first years of his training. He dived right in, energy divided between school, practice and extra hours of practice, more time spent in the white training rooms than he thought possible. It was the fear, but also the hunger, the realization of how much he had to learn, and the addiction to the labor, to that all business and nothing personal. He had a thirst for the impeccable, and the thrumming of his overexerted flesh under a warm shower stream fed his brain an analgesic high. FOUR. It’s not all work and no play. He finds companions, those who laugh and worry and practice with him day to day, swimming in sweat and anxiety like fish in water. He has his circle of friends and his circle of strangers, like most kids his age must have. Especially since joining ATLAS – the sense of purpose the prospect of starting a career puts him at an ease he hadn’t experienced since he joined the company. He loosens up, enjoys the ride. THREE. He got removed from the group’s debut project. There was no explanation, he was simply demoted despite his best efforts to show himself worthy of the opportunity to debut. The only thing they give him is the crash, burning out faster than he feared he would. Calling it a moment of vulnerability is an understatement, nothing but humiliation in those halls, small shoulders bearing terror. He had wasted so much time, there was no going back, no new beginnings. That was the night he made the first phone call to his mother in two years, and her voice boiled with concern, cradling his directionless mind in its warmth. He had forgotten what yielding felt like, but the hours of sobbing in that silent practice room came close to it. TWO. Staying was an option he made again, and then again, because that was the person he grew into – that was what his mother told him, pride swelling in her tone. When he debuted, it was on his own, a glaring sensation of intimacy with the camera as it faced him directly at all times. He stuttered his way through the cards they gave him to memorize, nervous laughter and repeated apologies filling unused footage. One day he looked around, standing on a stage in his tailored costume among a crowd of celebrities he had seen litter billboards before, a couple of girls waving at him from the crowd, their faces hidden by prints of his promotional pictures, and his mind failed to connect the image with reality.

ONE. His heart races, the smile on his face as honest as it was farcical, and he is so lost, feet on the track but so lost.

STRENGTHS & WEAKNESSES.

Sehan’s a product of his condition. The constant sways between ups and downs in Nebula has made him alert, the inconsistencies taking a toll on his psyche, leaving behind traces that never seem to efface. He is eternally a competitor, mind wired like a beast’s, primal and trained to survive. In his field, that makes him a perfectionist, wringing himself over every detail of whatever part of his career, obsessed with any flaw he can find. That is usually pointed out as a positive of an already promising artist, considering his talent for performance as not only a consistent vocalist but also a highly skilled dancer. But it becomes a harrowing torture to watch, to put others under, worrying over every audio filter, every shot, every move, pulling himself down into a frenzied work load that kills him again and again. He’s a divisive figure in studios, becoming less filtered as his career progressed, and turning enough heads to call management’s attention on his behavior. He doesn’t like it when they call it an attitude -- it’s insecurity, rooted in his frustration and weaknesses ( he’s not interesting enough to be in variety, upvotes, do they call that acting?, upvotes ). But it has become harder and harder for him to play the well meaning card, especially after butting heads with a renowned production director. All his fire glimmers on stage, but burns bridges behind the scenes, a fact he’s been forced to confront repeatedly in recent years. For all the damage done, he struggles to find his limits, and remain contained inside them, making note to remember the world goes on beyond his mania, remember the people ahead of his own insecurities. Call it a work in progress.

2017 INTERVIEW.

Fame is clearly imposed on him as a natural consequence of his career choice, but not a prominent preoccupation in his daily life. The path to that status was often distressing enough to distract him from the miniscule repercussions in his life, fool him into believing it just happened to be his normality. Hiding behind a mask became second nature, the shrieks of fans and the criticism of his every action blurring into the background of his incessant schedule. Fame isn’t burden, luxury or any sort of gravitational influence in his life, it’s mundane. And then, his father is standing outside the studio. Sehan stops on his tracks, freezing over, iced tea in his hand, fingertips growing numb as silent seconds roll by. He hadn’t seen the man in over ten years – he had stopped by to pick up him and his brother out on the weekends to have store-brand ice cream in the park a couple times after the divorce, but the habit faded out in the first years after he moved to Gwangju, empty promises over the phone replacing the visits. He talks a lot, puts a hand on his shoulder, gives that awkward, flamboyant smile and picks his words with medical precision. Nearly a full deadbeat father package, only missing the use of the word son, because even he will not stoop so low. He wipes out his wallet, shows Sehan the picture of his daughter, starts a childhood story when Sehan looks him in the eye. The question is what the fuck is he doing here. His father stops, hesitates, and tells him he wants to be part of his life. Comical stuff, especially when he avoids talking about Sehyuk and his mother altogether, because of course he just wants to talk to his famous son and how great of a dad he would be in another life. When Sehan walks out as he stammers through an excuse, he swallows. It’s the first time he tastes fame at its crudest, and the rot seeps deep into his tongue, carving a memory in it.

[psychotherapyconsultants]

Stop Letting Fear Be Your Ultimate Enabler

Today, being blind does not scare me. It hasn’t scared me for more than a decade. I must remind myself that this aspect of my existence, which is like any other as far as I am concerned, stands out for others like a baby on a battlefield—and is terrifying to them. I have to remind myself that years ago I, too, was terrified.

Of course I can remember the fear. But I remember it the same way you might remember cowering in your bed at night as a child, frightened of the monster under your bed. You now understand there never was a monster, that your fear was irrational, self-imposed, the product of your imagination. You can recall feeling terror back then, but when you lay down tonight, you will not be afraid, not of nighttime monsters, at least.

That’s how I feel about blindness. It is the monster that didn’t really exist. Odds are that you find this hard to believe. I understand every detail and every practicality of blindness. I’m an expert at being blind. It is familiar, comfortable, normal, routine. Still, you likely don’t believe me when I tell you it isn’t that bad. I’m the exasperated parent, stomping my foot and repeating, “There are no monsters, go to bed!”

That is the point. Most people have little or no experience with blindness, but nonetheless harbor a visceral fear of it. I had such a fear when we left Dr. W’s office the day I was diagnosed with retinitis pigmentosa, the disease that would slowly take my sight. I was 13, but I felt a lot older.

Blindness is my death sentence, I thought. It will end my life as I know it. End independence and confidence. End strength and leadership. End achievement. Blind, I will cease to be special, funny, successful. I will be helpless, pathetic, weak.

I am living a dream — child prodigy and sitcom star — but I know in advance that I am experiencing the best my life will ever offer. This foresight is a cruel persecution. The anticipation of my decline is not the worst part. The worst part is that the unwelcomed prophecy has stolen even the triumph before my fall. There is no more joy when I take the stage, no pride when the crowd cheers. In my achievements and blessings I see that which I know I will lose. I experience them in preemptive mourning.

I mourn the things I’ll never have, too, like a wife, a partner in life. I will be alone. How can I capture a woman’s affections while in a process of total ruin? Can I expect someone to fall in love with me as my every attractive quality is fading away?

I will never be a father. It is for the better. No child deserves that. Besides, I’ll no doubt remain a child myself, dependent on my parents. Whom will I turn to when they are gone?

Fear’s Tunnel

Psychologists have a great term: awfulizing. Put simply, to awfulize is to make something its most awful in your mind. Awfulizing is a mental construction, the product of imagination. But we experience as reality that which we awfulize. It is our manufactured truth.

Through my teenage years, I awfulized blindness. I did not know the first thing about it. I had no experience with it. I had not thought much about it. On this blank canvas of ignorance, my fear painted with a palette of anxiety, insecurity, and doom. The horrific scene it created captivated my attention, drew me in, consumed my thoughts, overpowered me.

It felt so real that it became real. I could not look away. I saw my destination, my future, my fate in that scene, and I did not question it. Blindness was my death sentence. It was only a matter of time.

Fear’s work does not end with the baseless reality it concocts in your mind. That is where fear’s work begins. To perpetuate its reality, fear must lull you into playing your part. Fear’s accomplices in this elaborate con are your villains and your heroes.

Fear conjures a world in which these villains and heroes command responsibility for your fate like the gods of Greek mythology. Blame your villains, fear whispers in your ear. The fault lies with those around you. The problem is your awful circumstances. Worship your heroes, fear admonishes. They have the power to solve your problems, to make you happy. They can save you.

The drama is epic and endless, shifting and complex. You sit back and struggle to take it all in, to keep it all straight, to see how it will shake out. With supernatural villains and heroes, fear procures for the awful shadows of your imagination your willing suspension of disbelief.

That’s the con. The details are unimportant. The drama is smoke and mirrors, a diversion. What matters is that you have accepted the reality fear has created for you. You are a cooperative participant in that unfounded reality. You do not question the premise. You play nice. You abdicate responsibility. You blame and credit others. You outsource your destiny.

Destiny Outsourced

I was trapped in an awful world of gloom and haze by the promise of rescue. My heroes, brilliant research scientists, would deliver a treatment or a cure for me. I was certain of it. Because they would soon rescue me, I did not need to confront Blindness. I did not need to rescue myself. I was paralyzed by hope.

That was fear’s con. The drama, villain and heroes in conflict, drew my focus to the stage. The unconvincing details of the set faded away, as did the audience around me, the theater. There was only the play. I watched, my disbelief willingly suspended. I believed in Blindness. I believed in Science.

I was Science’s active, enthusiastic fan. Shortly after the diagnosis, my parents set out to understand the state of the research efforts to develop treatments and cures, and they devoted themselves to the support of that research. I joined my parents in this mission, serving as a spokesperson in the media, at fund-raisers, and in governmental lobbying efforts. Like my parents, I will forever feel profound gratitude for the many angels who helped us raise funds and awareness. I’m proud of my parents and glad to have played my part in the scientific mission.

Looking back, however, I realize that my crusade for the cure played into the hands of my fear. It was cover for the outsourcing of my destiny. I felt I was taking control, taking charge, swinging at the proverbial curveball life pitched at me. I was not.

I confused fighting for a cure with confronting my fears. The embodiment of hope and optimism, I played the leading role in my fear’s epic drama. I projected outward courage and bravery in my charge for research dollars. I would surely be rewarded with a Hollywood ending, saved in the nick of time. Disaster averted, problem solved. It felt good to play the part.

Psychologists have a term for this, too: denial. I thought I was taking a stand when I was really running away. My fight for a cure fueled the flames of my fears. I was reinforcing the awful narrative—Blindness as death—by committing myself to its defeat at the hands of Science.

I did not question the premise, fear’s premise. I cheered frantically for my heroes. I bet it all on their victory. Blindness grew uglier, more awful. It had to be vanquished. It just had to be. Blindness is death. Fight. Survive.

While I fought, while I ran, my retinas deteriorated. Blindness was on my heels. Science’s cure was miles back, crawling. Rescue was decades away. The equation flipped. Blindness now, a cure in my 30s, 40s, or 50s. I am not going to win this race. Science will not save me.

My fears foretold my awful fate. There would be no last-minute pardon from the governor. No stay of execution from the Supreme Court. It was time to accept my death sentence, to face it like a man, to lie still in bed, to wait for the monster underneath to attack.

Eyes Wide Open

I had an epiphany, a revelation. There is no Blindness, only fire hydrants, those who are unaware of my challenge, disappearing computer pointers on the screen, an open landscape of practicalities stretching to the horizon.

The scene on fear’s canvas is a fiction, a mirage. You will never face fear’s execution day. But tomorrow you will face your life, and the next day, and every day thereafter, until you have none left. Those days unlived are reality’s blank canvas, and you are the only creator.

The palette of your fears is limited and ugly: anxiety, insecurity, doom, and loss. But you have a million more colors. Countless hues of strength, an endless rainbow of adaptations, growth bright and beautiful. You paint one stroke at a time, one day at a time, breathe a single breath after your last, a single breath before your next. You will never control tomorrow, but you can always choose whether to act today, and how.

With empowerment comes responsibility. There are no villains, no heroes, no gods on Mt. Olympus. No monster under the bed. Those shadows of imagination are excuses, rationalizations, justifications, stall tactics, cop-outs. Without them we are accountable. That is why our fears manifest these figments in defense, and it is why we cling to them. It is why we must let them go.

I chose to let go of Blindness. I stepped out of fear’s tunnel into the wide unknown, shifting my focus from the foreground to the horizon. After fear’s narrow, contrived, myopic scene, reality’s expansive landscape of potential was exhilarating. My awfulized assumptions about Blindness had felt like immutable truths, inescapable reality. Now they were exposed as fear’s self-limiting fictions, fish swimming backward through my mind. My destiny was again my own, my future unbounded. I could stop running.

The terrain ahead was undefined and uncharted. Fear’s superficial struggle with Blindness was awful, but it was simple, too. Reality was far more complex. I contemplated the myriad discrete, specific challenges I would face—physical challenges, practical challenges, emotional challenges. I had a lot to learn and a lot to figure out.

It was my responsibility to do so. I accepted the obligation to help myself, to achieve my potential, and I committed to hold myself accountable at all costs. I took ownership of my fate. It weighed heavy on my shoulders.

I swam in a swirl of emotions. The heroes and villains I had come to know so well had vanished, and I felt an odd sense of loss. I was embarrassed to have run for so long from my illusory villain. Thinking about the years I’d wasted borrowing imaginary troubles and the agonies I had needlessly inflicted upon myself, I felt a deep sadness. I was impatient to master the tools and techniques I had learned about, and to discover others. I felt great joy. I felt immense gratitude. I felt profound relief. I was giddy and somber at the same time, both energized and exhausted, inspired and overwhelmed, confident and apprehensive. It was confusing.

Lying in bed that night, I was at peace with my confusion. I did not have the answers yet, but for the first time I had zoomed out far enough to focus on the right questions. It was a good start. I was many things, felt many emotions. But I was not afraid. It was a good start indeed.

This post courtesy of Spirituality & Health.

from World of Psychology https://psychcentral.com/blog/archives/2017/05/06/stop-letting-fear-be-your-ultimate-enabler/