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lovelylogans · 3 years ago

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honey, you’re familiar (like my mirror)

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chapter three: psycellic consentia

psycellic consentia: psycellium (or psycelium) is a psychic nervous system that allows sensates to connect with one another. sensates have a solitary "above" existence, and are connected "below" via the psycelium. consentia, latin: knowledge shared with others, being in the know or privy to, joint knowledge; complicity; knowledge within oneself, consciousness, feeling.

ROMAN

It hasn’t even been five minutes since Sasha left to grab dinner, but Roman’s already feeling strangely jittery.

A nap would be a fruitless venture, he’s realized, so he’s gotten up to pace around the room, reciting the lines of the scene he’s meant to be filming tomorrow. He knows them all by heart, naturally, but it’ll be an odd scene to shoot anyways. His character, Pablo, would be escaping from the grasp of his friend-turned-betrayer (who would turn out to have been bluffing and truly Pablo’s friend all along by the end of the movie) by sprinting through the forest, making his getaway by leaping into a river and swimming away.

This stunt he doesn’t get to do; he’s already technically filmed the scenes when he’s in the water, and a stunt double will be “jumping off the cliff.” So tomorrow is going to be entirely on-location, acting then sprinting through the forest.

So Roman chants his lines to himself, pacing in his room with his eyes closed, trying his hardest to sink into Pablo’s mindset. And, after a few minutes of running his lines over in his head, it’s like he’s actually walking in the forest; the snap of a twig under his feet, the smell of leaves and dirt, the cooing of various birds.

Roman’s jaw drops, because—because no way. No way.

No fucking way is his brother standing there, with a bundle of twigs tucked up under his arms, staring at Roman the way a kid would stare at a particularly adventurous snail journeying along the ground.

Well, the way Remus would look at an adventurous snail, as a kid. Roman would have probably just fled the snail in favor of playing with wooden swords and rescuing imaginary damsels.

"Aw, c’mon, man, what the fuck," Remus grumbles, looking skyward as if asking for some kind of divine intervention, though Roman knows that's never been the case, much to their chronically Catholic abuela’s dismay.

She probably would have been pleased if Roman tacked on a God rest her soul there, but considering her abysmal reaction when her grandson decided to be an actor and an even worse reaction when her other grandson informed them all that he was, in fact, a grandson, he's never really wanted to please her anyway.

“What the fuck are you doing here?” Remus says tightly, dropping his bundle of twigs.

Remus. Remus is here. Or Roman is there? Whatever, it doesn’t matter, there he is. That’s Roman’s brother.

“What, are you trying to lure me in for the police to catch me? Because it’s not going to fucking work, Roman.”

God, he’s alive, he doesn’t look hurt, he’s—well, actually, Roman has no idea if he’s safe or not. He just kind of looks like he’s dirty, with scraggly hair and smudges on his face. This alone isn’t entirely unusual for Remus, but the amount of it is. But—he’s here. He’s alive. He has some form of shelter, he’s probably been eating, he’s okay—

“Or are you just here to—”

Roman staggers forward and flings his arms around Remus’ neck, hugging him as tight as he can, almost as if he can feel what Remus feels, the arms wrapping around his neck and the arms wrapping around his torso in kind, feeling echoes of what he does, and what Remus does, bouncing between like a seismic shock.

Across the world, Janus smiles in his sleep; Emile wiggles happily in his chair while waiting for his next therapy session; Patton grins at a wall about nothing in particular; Logan touches his own shoulders, blinking rapidly in surprise at the weight of phantom arms holding him close.

REMY

Remy is used to experiencing emotions that aren’t his.

When he feels a near-violent joy sprouting up in his chest, he pauses briefly in pouring a customer a cup of coffee to put a hand on his chest and smile to himself.

He’ll ask Emile what’s got him so happy later. He’s just happy that Emile is happy.

REMUS

Remus blinks at Roman after Roman pulls back from the hug, hands on his shoulders, still beaming at him.

“—For a while I thought that you were coming to stay at my apartment with me, but then you never showed, and I was worried sick wondering where you were all this time. I’ve been reading all about the case—oh, that doesn’t matter now, we’re together! Now you can come here to the city, and I can post your bail so you can stay with me, and I can get you a really good lawyer, and—!”

“You’ve been reading about the case?” Remus says, his voice sounding strange even to his own ears.

Roman blinks at him. “Yeah?” There’s an unspoken duh in his tone.

“So you know that I’m the main suspect,” Remus prompts.

“Yeah…”

“So, you,” Remus says, “acting sweetheart of the nation with your dear fake girlfriend—you want to bring in a dirty gremlin accused of murder? The sibling the whole country doesn’t even know you have?”

Roman looks suddenly anxious, as if expecting Remus to blow up and yell at him.

“Do you even think I’m innocent?” Remus continues, only faking his bluster a little.

“I mean,” Roman says. “It doesn’t really matter to me.”

“Does what matter?” Remus says. The bluster is much more faked this time.

“I mean, you’re my brother,” Roman says. “I don’t really care if you killed him or not.”

Remus bursts out laughing.

Roman gawks at him, caught off guard, and Remus doesn’t know if it’s just from seeing Roman again, or the fact that he’s been on the run for over a week now and has only been eating the plants a hallucination taught him about, or what, but the expression on his face is just too good.

Roman! Who regularly gets caught in the tabloids! Getting a snapshot of him escorting a man wanted for murder into his warm, loving home! The mental image of the shocked expression on any pap’s face is just—oh, it would be so perfect.

“And your ‘girlfriend?’” Remus says, using air quotes. “Does she know about me?”

“No, but,” Roman says, still with that stupidly heroic, determined look on his face. “I’ll tell her. I’ll tell her tonight, even. She’ll understand.”

Right. If anyone else was as much of a media darling, it was Roman’s fake girlfriend, with her big, brown, innocent eyes and absolute inability to seem like she’s used to being famous.

“Oh, that’s too good,” Remus chortles. “Yeah, Roman. Okay. Sure. You go ahead and tell her.”

“I’m gonna!”

“Sure, fine,” Remus says, waving him off. “Make arrangements to bring your murderous brother home. I’ll catch a bus or something, I’m sure no cop is gonna see me and arrest me on the way to your apartment.”

“I will,” Roman says, firm and resolute, and Remus just shakes his head, grinning still.

Of the pair of them, people seemed to think Remus was the crazy one when it was clear that Roman was absolutely bonkers. But at least he’d grown a pretty good sense of humor since Remus had been accused of killing someone.

JANUS

“Fucking finally, Jazza.”

Janus considers getting up and walking right back out, but unfortunately, his stomach is already set on fish and chips with the made-in-house sauce here. He wearily begins to weigh the costs of putting up with Key and the nickname “Jazza” against the benefits of sriracha aioli.

And money. The money ends up winning out every time.

Three more jobs, Janus tells himself. Just three more jobs, and then you don’t have to put up with the risk anymore. Two, if one of them has a bigger compensation than average, and for the quality of my work...

It’s a lie, of course. Janus has been telling himself three more jobs ever since he clawed his way onto the bar standards board, years ago.

“What’s been going on with you, anyway?” Key says around a mouthful of chips, which garbles his speech beyond recognition. Unfortunately, Janus has known Key long enough that he can translate it with ease.

“Chew with your mouth closed and clean up your face,” Janus says, unable to stop himself. Habits are difficult to kill, Janus supposes.

Key rolls his eyes but obligingly blots at his face with a napkin. “D’you got it?”

Janus offers a small box wrapped like a present in answer. Inside is a hard drive containing the information their client had requested.

Key takes it, grinning, and stuffs it into his hoodie pocket.

“Be careful with that,” Janus scolds.

“You say that every time,” Key says. “Have I ever lost one of your—”

Janus glares at him.

“—one of the fruits of your labor?” Key says, quickly back-pedaling, realizing they’re in a public setting and a waitress is fast approaching with Janus's order.

“This smells amazing.”

Janus tries his best not to startle, but even with two days to process what the man in his mirror had told him, it’s still bizarre.

The actor beside him looks briefly embarrassed as if he hadn’t meant to say that aloud. Janus glances over at him—a member of his cluster, what an unappealing word—and sees a glimpse of a cramped little trailer. On a movie set, probably? He’s wearing leather pants and a leopard-print shirt that Janus has the feeling he’d never wear in real life.

Janus also feels the grumbling in Roman’s stomach. Janus sighs to himself.

“And another basket of chips with extras of that same sauce, please.”

“You got it, lovey,” she says, turning to go.

“Extra hungry, then?” Key says.

“Something like that,” Janus says neutrally. Without asking for Janus's permission—maybe knowing Janus was about to offer anyway—Roman reaches out and gulps deeply from Janus's Ribena.

“How’s,” Janus says, briefly casts about in his mind for the name of the latest love of Key’s life, and lands on, “Francesca?”

Key snorts. “Ancient history, mate.”

Not exactly surprising. Key’s always fancied himself a romantic, but he’s never been able to follow through on his commitment to anything ever.

“M’goin’ on a date with a bird tonight, though,” he says around a mouthful of chips.

“For God’s sake, Key, could you at least pretend you weren’t raised in a barn?” Janus snips at him, even as he’s dunking his own chips into the aioli.

Key grins at him, and Janus wrinkles his nose. He can tell Roman is doing the same beside him. They share the same sentiment at the moment, but it’s Roman’s “that’s disgusting” that falls out of his mouth.

He realizes why Key’s brow furrows a moment too late.

“Uh, bless you?” Key says; the closest he’s ever been to the Mexican vernacular of Spanish is ordering a fajita at a local Tex-Mex restaurant.

“Oops,” Roman says, not particularly apologetically. He grabs another handful of chips.

“I’m studying in my spare time,” he says and fixes Key with a look. “A hobby you could choose to emulate.”

“What’d I need more school for?” He scoffs. “Ten years was well enough.”

“To aspire for more for yourself—”

“Oh, here we go,” Key snaps, tossing down the piece of battered cod he was about to eat, splattering sauce on the wood table. “I am so sick of your “high and mighty” act.”

He mimics Janus's accent at high and mighty; Janus grits his teeth, and very purposefully enunciates his next few sentences.

“This cannot last forever, you understand.”

“No, just so long as you get rich off it, eh?”

“Um,” Roman says. “I’d offer to go and leave you two to duke this one out in private, but I’m not really sure how to stop this weird astral projection thing—”

Janus ignores him.

“Oh, as if being a lawyer doesn’t pay enough. Put your brain to some use and think, why is it that I keep helping you?!” Janus snaps, leaning across the table and softening his voice. “Why on earth do you think I continue with this?!”

“Spare me,” Key scoffs.

“The only reason I keep doing this is because you keep doing this,” Janus hisses. “The only reason I became a lawyer was because of you getting us into trouble.”

“Don’t—” Key says, his face twisting up.

“It is because of me we are not rotting in jail, Quirinus. I’m sure it’s such a burden I want more for you.”

“It’s Key,” he grumbles before he rolls his eyes at Janus and tilts his baseball cap at him in farewell. “And since you have aspired to more for yourself, and since being a big fancy lawyer does pay so much, and since you saved me,” this is said with heavy sarcasm, “you fucking prat, you can get the bill. Much obliged, big brother.”

As he walks off, he tosses a “wanker” over his shoulder for good measure, jamming his orange cap onto his head.

Janus pinches the bridge of his nose, exhaling sharply.

There’s a pause.

Then: the slurping of someone draining his Ribena.

Janus opens his eyes and turns his head to Roman, who’s chasing the last drops of Ribena about the glass with a straw.

“So, he’s probably not finishing that, right?” Roman says. Without waiting for an answer, he grabs a handful of chips and shoves them into his mouth. “‘Cause I’ve been waiting for Sasha to come back with dinner for like an hour now and I’m starving,” he says loudly while chewing.

Janus's jaw is slightly unhinged.

“You are a pestilence upon my life,” he says at last.

Roman smirks at him, mercifully close-mouthed, and swallows down the food that Janus supposes he’ll be paying for. Janus is certain that Roman is doing this to annoy him.

“Wait ‘till you have to deal with my brother.” He dunks the cod into the sauce. “Also, how much do you know about what’s going on here, anyway? Why do random people keep popping into my life?”

Janus lowers his voice so they aren’t heard by any random passerby.

“Allegedly, we are known as sensates. I assume you’ve been seeing other people—we’re stuck seeing them psychically for the rest of our lives, as well as sharing specific skills, languages, emotions…”

Roman reaches for Key’s Ribena and drains that too.

“Tastes,” Janus adds pointedly. “That the other is paying for.”

“Yeah, exactly, you’re paying for it,” Roman says, and grabs another piece of cod. “It won’t go to waste now.”

“You won’t even get the nutritional benefits of eating food,” Janus says. “You’ll just get the taste of it.”

“Still, you’re getting your money’s worth. I’m helping.”

“Aren’t you rich?” Janus says. “Being an actor and all.”

“Aren’t you?” Roman counters. “Being a lawyer and all.”

Roman jams the cod into the ramekin of sauce.

“Either way, this place sure won’t take pesos, and it’s not like I can psychically transfer you money. Hey, how much do you know about Mexican law, anyways?” He takes a massive bite.

Janus puts his face into his hands for a few moments, before he reaches into his messenger pad and pulls out a legal pad and pen.

“Enough,” he says grudgingly—truthfully, not quite as much as English law. However, with this whole connection thing, they do share knowledge, so he certainly knows more now than he did before. He gestures at the waitress for another couple of Ribenas. “Why don’t you refresh me on the details of your brother’s case?”

PATTON

Patton frowns, tapping his pen against his chin as his kindergartners are all sprawled out on their mats for their post-lunch nap. He usually takes advantage of this time to catch up on marking (normally, just putting “good job!” stickers on their papers, they’re five) but right now he’s staring at something he’d written down out of the blue and trying to understand it.

He knows that he’s technically a sensate now, but does that mean his kindergartners are going to have to put up with scrawlings about Mexican flora when Patton had meant to be writing down the activities of the day?

“Aw, jeez,” someone grumbles, and Patton turns to look over his shoulder.

He grins sheepishly at the sight of an academic article plastered over with shiny star stickers. “Oops.”

The man is familiar and yet not; Patton doesn’t think he’s seen this one outside of briefly popping in and out.

The man sighs, turning the paper over and then looking back at Patton.

“At least they’re purple,” he grumbles, and within a heartbeat, he’s gone. Patton returns his attention to his marking.

Oh, yay, he did end up putting stickers on the kiddos’ papers!

LOGAN

Not many people were particularly aware of this, especially considering the average population was generally unaware of the space research in Antarctica, but the cafeterias here are actually excellent.

In the history of Antarctic explorers and researchers, it had gone quite differently—Ernest Shackleton and Tom Crean ate seal, dog meat, and biscuits mixed with melted snow during the Trans-Antarctic Expedition of 1914—but chefs now seem to view it as an intriguing challenge, a way to sharpen their skills.

Logan is an adequate enough cook, to the point where he can feed himself at home, but the food here is on another level. He’s finishing off his dessert, a lovely chocolate tart when a chef sits across from him at the dinner table, the same one that had served him his tray tonight.

He doesn’t know her well, so he hopes he’s disguised her squint at her nametag under the guise of adjusting his glasses.

“Very well done, Dot,” he says, lifting his fork to his mouth.

“Oh, good, you are one of us,” she says, with a level of relief that seems odd for hearing a compliment about her cooking. “I was wondering, Casimire gave me the oddest look when I told him to head off early so I could make eye contact with you.”

“What are you—?” Logan says, eyes narrowed, before his eyes flash to the kitchen, automatically looking for Casimire, the chef he’s most used to seeing.

True enough, Casimire isn’t there.

But Dot is here.

Dot is here twice.

Dot is sitting at the table with him. But Dot is smiling and chatting with one of the marine biology research team members, ten feet away. But—

“Oh, I can hear that brain working,” Dot says. She reaches out to pat his hand; it feels as warm and real as a hand can feel.

“What is this,” Logan forces through numb lips, appetite gone, chocolate tart entirely forgotten. “What are you—what is happening—?”

“Shh, shh, not too loud,” Dot says in a hushed voice. “To everyone else, it looks like you’re sitting alone. Here—you’ve got your bag with you, did you pack your earpiece?”

Logan nods.

“Put that in.”

He does as she says. What else is there to do?

The Dot in the kitchen turns to wink and smile at him reassuringly. He isn’t sure how to tell the Dot before him that there is absolutely nothing in this situation that could comfort him, and pointing out that there are two of her and that he is seeing things is not a particularly good way to go about it regardless.

He fumbles with the earpiece a few times, but he puts it in and clicks it on.

“There,” she says in satisfaction. “Now it’ll look like you’re talking over Bluetooth. Neat little trick, isn’t it? Keeps us from looking,” and she circles her ear with her finger and gives a two-note whistle, the universal sign for off your rocker. “I’m surprised your parent hasn’t taught you yet, but I suppose you are very new. Has your migraine stopped yet?”

Logan gawks at her. “How did you know I have a—?”

“Because I had one too when it all started,” she says. “All of us do. Let me tell you, I really wasn’t expecting to see a sensate down here, but I guess when you come to a place like this nothing should surprise you, right? That’s what my Larry said. But this’ll be handy, he was hoping I could meet a nice scientist to connect to the Archipelago! You’re an astronomer, right? That’s a very brainy subject.”

“Wait, go back,” Logan says. “How did you know I have a migraine? Why are you talking about my mother? Why should she have taught me about using Bluetooth? What does a group of islands have to do with anything, and what’s a sensate?”

The smile on Dot’s face slips.

“Oh dear,” she says. “Oh dear, you don’t know anything at all, do you?”

Logan gives her an offended look before he can really stop himself.

“Well,” Dot says thoughtfully. “A scientist. I bet you’d be really interested in the opportunity to send a question around the world within seconds, wouldn’t you?”

“Google exists,” Logan points out.

Dot smiles at him. “Where do you think they got the idea? Sapiens invented it in the 1990s; we’ve had it since the Neolithic.”

Against his better judgment to stop listening to what is most likely to be a hallucination, Logan finds himself very intrigued.

VIRGIL

Virgil is elbow-deep in papers about abrus precatorius, sorting them into piles for useful information or irrelevant when there’s the sound of someone hitting their knees beside him.

Virgil jumps, startled, and looks into the stunning blue eyes of Logan, the handsome Pole in Antarctica. His eyes are bright, eager, excited, and there’s a wide smile on his face.

“We’re not hallucinating,” he declares and spreads out an armful of his own notes; hastily taken, from the look of it, and he presses his fingers against an earpiece that’s blinking blue light. “Oh, and get one of these, by the way, technology has apparently made things much better for us, Dot said we’d get burned during the witch trials because we’d be talking to people who weren’t there and knowing things we shouldn’t know, but I think that’s an exaggeration. I wish there was a more central written history, but I suppose we’ve evolved in a way that word-of-mouth knowledge is the most efficient, haven’t we?”

There’s a lot of thoughts whirling around Virgil’s head—what do you mean, how do you know, why are we talking about witch burnings and evolution—but what comes out, a bit stupidly, is “You look good.”

Logan’s rambling stops in his tracks as he stares at Virgil, bemused, mouth slightly ajar.

“Um, I mean,” Virgil says. He coughs. “You look… less worried than last time. Which is. Good!”

Logan keeps staring. With his lips parted like that, it’s all too easy to see that Logan must have licked them, recently; the sheen of it catches Virgil’s eye. He stares at Logan’s mouth. He stares at Logan.

Stop it stop it stop it he’ll think you’re weird, something in his brain shrieks, and that breaks the spell.

“So, uh, you’ve figured out what’s happening to us?” Virgil prompts.

Logan shakes himself, before he spreads out his papers, picking up one in particular. Virgil takes it, examining it; it’s two sketches of a brain. He’s familiar enough with biology by virtue of having doctors for parents to know that the sketch on the right side of the paper is not right.

There’s something wrong with this brain.

“This,” Logan says, tapping the leftmost brain with his finger, “is the typical human brain.”

“Right, yeah,” Virgil says, frowning, and points to the rightmost brain. Their hands almost touch. “There’s something wrong with this one—something about the hemispheres, I think? It’s like there’s a growth.”

Logan moves to point to the rightmost brain, and this time, their hands do brush. But, before Virgil can think anything about it other than his hands are soft and he feels a little cold—

“This is what our brains are becoming.”

Virgil immediately panics.

“But it’s okay!” Logan says quickly as if he’s able to tell. Maybe he can—Virgil isn’t sure how clear it reads on his face. Or maybe, the way he’s been laughing at nothing or frowning at thin air, Logan can feel it. “It’s okay, it’s totally natural for us. For homo sapiens, no, but for homo sensorium—”

“Homo sensorium?” Virgil repeats, brow furrowed.

“It’s what we are,” Logan says. “Scientific name homo sensorium, colloquial name sensate.”

Sensate. Virgil hears the word, and something slips in place in his mind—it’s as if he’s heard that term before. It feels like breathing in a whiff of air and catching the scent of a sweet that sends your memory careening back to a time when you were seven and elbow-deep in dough with your grandmother. But it’s like he can’t quite fully grasp the memory. Something niggles just at the edge of it. It’s like his brain is trapped on the grandparent metaphor because he cannot stop thinking about his mother’s mother.

He sets the memory aside, for now; he’ll have time to think of it later.

Because, as Logan explains everything he’s learned so far, Virgil has absolutely zero chance of thinking about anything else.

They spend most of the night talking about it. Even with all the bizarre aspects of what this new information brings, it’s easy to talk to Logan in a way that isn’t typical of Virgil speaking with other people. Virgil isn’t sure if that’s because they share this psychic connection, or if they’re both doctors, or if it’s some other connection.

“The way it was phrased is that we’re different types of human, but I don’t think we’re so different that it sets us apart from other people. From what I understand, the growth of our population is primarily due to epigenetic factors…”

Okay, so, primarily due to how behaviors and environments affect his genes. But what epigenetic factor triggered this in Virgil? Was this a dormant thing that could be triggered by ingesting some sort of chemical, or was it due to the way Virgil behaved? Had he done something in his life to cause all of this?

“A lot of the science is conjecture,” Logan warns, “and there was apparently some big corporation intent on doing medical experimentation on us ten or so years ago, but that’s mostly handled, you just have to be more careful about making eye contact with strangers in public…”

Oh, great, scientists hunted them down for medical experimentation so now he had to closely guard himself in any hospital! What a thrilling thing to hear for the son of two doctors!

“I’ve gathered that we can “share” certain skills or memories and that these things will become easier with practice. That’s why I could speak Xhosa and you Polish when we first met, it was the skill-sharing attribute, which could certainly come in handy for several reasons, but I also understand that we can visit each other at various times. There’s apparently a medicine you can take to block it, but it’s rather rare to come by, so unless you know a pharmacist willing to do some work under the table…”

That would almost definitely come to bite one of them in the ass at some point. What about privacy? Was he just doomed to have people from all over the world pop in on him while he’s in the shower or something?

“Dot said that she met her husband Larry through the connection, which drove off into a whole side-tangent. Apparently, romantic partners in clusters—that’s the widely accepted term, ‘cluster.’”

Virgil pulls a face.

“I know, they could have picked literally any other more appealing word for it, couldn’t they? Bunch, group, flock, clique, assemblance—Anyways, romantic partnerships within clusters are somewhat common, and most of the sensate community finds it quite normal. I think our parent is in one, or at least that’s what Dot said.”

Logan clears his throat and adjusts his glasses. “Apparently some of the old-fashioned sensates think it’s like—what was it Dot’s parent said?—”the worst sort of narcissism.” Apparently, her parent was very displeased to be a parent and wanted nothing to do with creating bonds. I personally think that’s a rather backwards—humanity survives and thrives due to its ability to create bonds and care for each other—but I suppose I tend to think that way about a lot of old-fashioned things.”

“I guess I do, too,” Virgil muses aloud.

They sit quietly, for a while, so quietly that Virgil doesn’t notice when Logan slips away; the only thing that does bring him back from his swirling thoughts is when a voice breaks Virgil’s silence. It sends the emotions of knowing what’s happening to him shattering to the ground.

“Who on earth are you talking to?”

#my fic #my fanfic

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thediverismylove · 5 years ago

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every book i read in 2019

full list under the cut! faves are bolded and books read for school are starred

Hunger by Roxane Gay (4/5 stars)

Girls of Paper and Fire by Natasha Ngan (4/5 stars)

Who Is Vera Kelly? by Rosalie Knecht (4/5 stars)

History of Wolves by Emily Fridlund (3.5/5 stars)

Becoming by Michelle Obama (5/5 stars)

Girl Made of Stars by Ashley Herring Blake (5/5 stars)

The Wicked King by Holly Black (3.5/5 stars)

Sawkill Girls by Claire Legrand (5/5 stars)

The Gilded Wolves by Roshani Chokshi (5/5 stars)

What Girls Are Made Of by Elana K. Arnold (4.5/5 stars)

I Gave Birth To All The Ghosts Here by Lyd Havens (5/5 stars)

Tyler Johnson Was Here by Jay Coles (4/5 stars)

Our Year of Maybe by Rachel Lynn Solomon (4/5 stars)

Shrill by Lindy West (5/5 stars)

Children of Blood and Bone by Tomi Adeyemi (3.5/5 stars)

The Perfect Nanny by Leila Slimani (4/5 stars)

Ivy Aberdeen’s Letter to the World by Ashley Herring Blake (5/5 stars)

Like Water by Rebecca Podos (4/5 stars)

The Disasters by MK England (3/5 stars)

On The Come Up by Angie Thomas (5/5 stars)

The Falconer by Dana Czapnik (4/5 stars)

The Opposite of Loneliness by Marina Keegan (4/5 stars)

The Poet X by Elizabeth Acevedo (5/5 stars)

The Dreamers by Karen Thompson Walker (4.5/5 stars)

The Fever King by Victoria Lee (3/5 stars)

*Symposium by Plato (4/5 stars)

The Past and Other Things That Should Stay Buried by Shaun David Hutchinson (4.5/5 stars)

Educated by Tara Westover (4.5/5 stars)

My Sister, The Serial Killer by Oyinkan Braithwaite (4/5 stars)

Like Water for Chocolate by Laura Esquivel (3.5/5 stars)

Meddling Kids by Edgar Cantero (3/5 stars)

Beloved by Toni Morrison (4/5 stars)

The Truth About Keeping Secrets by Savannah Brown (5/5 stars)

Sink by Desiree Dallagiacomo (5/5 stars)

When The Sky Fell On Splendor by Emily Henry (3/5 stars)

They Can’t Kill Us Until They Kill Us by Hanif Abdurraqib (4/5 stars)

Damsel by Elana K. Arnold (5/5 stars)

*The Aeneid by Virgil (2/5 stars)

Daisy Jones & The Six by Taylor Jenkins Reid (4.5/5 stars)

Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier (4/5 stars)

A Queer Little History of Art by Alex Pilcher (3.5/5 stars)

King of Scars by Leigh Bardugo (4.5/5 stars)

If Beale Street Could Talk by James Baldwin (3.5/5 stars)

The Care and Feeding of Ravenously Hungry Girls by Anissa Gray (4/5 stars)

The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake by Aimee Bender (2.5/5 stars)

Smoke Gets In Your Eyes by Caitlin Doughty (4/5 stars)

Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott (4/5 stars)

*The Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri (3.5/5 stars)

A Man Called Ove by Fredrik Backman (4.5/5 stars)

The Gypsy Moth Summer by Julia Fierro (3/5 stars)

We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson (4/5 stars)

My Best Friend’s Exorcism by Grady Hendrix (5/5 stars)

Beartown by Fredrik Backman (4/5 stars)

Her Royal Highness by Rachel Hawkins (5/5 stars)

You Must Not Miss by Katrina Leno (4.5/5 stars)

Mermaid in Chelsea Creek by Michelle Tea (2/5 stars)

My Lovely Wife by Samantha Downing (4.5/5 stars)

The Devouring Gray by Christine Lynn Herman (3/5 stars)

Night Sky with Exit Wounds by Ocean Vuong (4.5/5 stars)

Hot Dog Girl by Jennifer Dugan (5/5 stars)

There There by Tommy Orange (4/5 stars)

The French Girl by Lexie Elliott (3/5 stars)

I Wish You All the Best by Mason Deaver (4/5 stars)

Dead Girls by Alice Bolin (3.5/5 stars)

The Mighty Heart of Sunny St. James by Ashley Herring Blake (5/5 stars)

Foolish Hearts by Emma Mills (5/5 stars)

Eileen by Ottessa Moshfegh (1/5 stars)

Dress Codes for Small Towns by Courtney Stevens (3.5/5 stars)

With The Fire on High by Elizabeth Acevedo (3/5 stars)

Good Omens by Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett (3/5 stars)

The Gloaming by Kirsty Logan (3/5 stars)

This Darkness Mine by Mindy McGinnis (4.5/5 stars)

The Weight of the Stars by K. Ancrum (4/5 stars)

These Witches Don’t Burn by Isabel Sterling (2.5/5 stars)

Normal People by Sally Rooney (3.5/5 stars)

The Death of Mrs. Westaway by Ruth Ware (5/5 stars)

The Wife Between Us by Greer Hendricks and Sarah Pekkanen (3.75/5 stars)

A Ladder to the Sky by John Boyne (5/5 stars)

In A Dark, Dark Wood by Ruth Ware (3.75/5 stars)

My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She’s Sorry by Fredrik Backman (3/5 stars)

The Woman in Cabin 10 by Ruth Ware (3/5 stars)

Women & Power by Mary Beard (4/5 stars)

The Bear and the Nightingale by Katherine Arden (4/5 stars)

The Last Time I Lied by Riley Sager (4/5 stars)

Near to the Wild Heart by Clarice Lispector (4/5 stars)

Fantasyland: How America Went Haywire: A 500-Year History by Kurt Andersen (3/5 stars)

Wilder Girls by Rory Power (4.5/5 stars)

Murder, Magic, and What We Wore by Kelly Jones (2/5 stars)

The Kingdom by Jess Rothenberg (4.5/5 stars)

The Grief Keeper by Alexandra Villasante (5/5 stars)

Lock Every Door by Riley Sager (5/5 stars)

I Like to Watch by Emily Nussbaum (5/5 stars)

Gingerbread by Helen Oyeyemi (2/5 stars)

A Heart in a Body in the World by Deb Caletti (5/5 stars)

In the Neighborhood of True by Susan Kaplan Carlton (3/5 stars)

The Way You Make Me Feel by Maurene Goo (3/5 stars)

Tell Me How You Really Feel by Aminah Mae Safi (4/5 stars)

The Turn of the Key by Ruth Ware (5/5 stars)

Trick Mirror: Reflections on Self-Delusion by Jia Tolentino (5/5 stars)

Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup by John Carreyrou (4/5 stars)

Laura Dean Keeps Breaking Up with Me by Mariko Tamaki & Rosemary Valero-O’Connell (4/5 stars)

The Whale: A Love Story by Mark Beauregard (3/5 stars)

Not the Girls You’re Looking For by Aminah Mae Safi (3/5 stars)

Very Nice by Marcy Dermansky (2/5 stars)

Red, White, and Royal Blue by Casey McQuiston (5/5 stars)

The Devil Wears Prada by Lauren Weisberger (2.5/5 stars)

How (Not) to Ask a Boy to Prom by SJ Goslee (4/5 stars)

We Sold our Souls by Grady Hendrix (3/5 stars)

The Unhoneymooners by Christina Lauren (4.5/5 stars)

Natalie Tan’s Book of Luck and Fortune by Roselle Lim (4/5 stars)

*Othello by William Shakespeare (4.5/5 stars)

*Lysistrata by Aristophanes (3.5/5 stars)

How It Feels to Float by Helena Fox (4/5 stars)

The Tattooist of Auschwitz by Heather Morris (2/5 stars)

The New Me by Halle Butler (4/5 stars)

*Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe (2/5 stars)

Midnight at the Electric by Jodi Lynn Anderson (4/5 stars)

Sula by Toni Morrison (3.5/5 stars)

*Emma by Jane Austen (4/5 stars)

Sleepwalking by Meg Wolitzer (4.5/5 stars)

Ninth House by Leigh Bardugo (4/5 stars)

Carrie by Stephen King (4.5/5 stars)

*Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë (4/5 stars)

Catch and Kill by Ronan Farrow (5/5 stars)

Trust Exercise by Susan Choi (4/5 stars)

*The Importance of Being Earnest by Oscar Wilde (4/5 stars)

*The Seagull by Anton Chekhov (4/5 stars)

Call Down The Hawk by Maggie Stiefvater (5/5 stars)

In the Dream House by Carmen Maria Machado (5/5 stars)

*Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf (3.5/5 stars)

Well Met by Jen DeLuca (2.5/5 stars)

Soft Science by Franny Choi (4/5 stars)

Conversations With Friends by Sally Rooney (5/5 stars)

To Night Owl From Dogfish by Holly Goldberg Sloan and Meg Wolitzer (3/5 stars)

*Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys (3/5 stars)

The Bookish Life of Nina Hill by Abbi Waxman (4/5 stars)

On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous by Ocean Vuong (5/5 stars)

*Small Island by Andrea Levy (3.5/5 stars)

Little Women by Louisa May Alcott (4/5 stars)

One Day in December by Josie Silver (1.5/5 stars)

The Collected Schizophrenias by Esmé Weijun Wang (5/5 stars)

Final Girls by Riley Sager (3/5 stars)

Milkman by Anna Burns (5/5 stars)

Wayward Son by Rainbow Rowell (4/5 stars)

Famous In A Small Town by Emma Mills (4/5 stars)

Blud by Rachel McKibbens (4/5 stars)

#personal

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justawfulxmenart · 6 years ago

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My SO asked me what the deal is with Nocturne, AKA TJ Wagner.

Me:

Once upon a time Wanda, AKA Scarlet Witch, lived secluded in Magneto’s palace on Genosha, her father’s island-nation-dictatorship. She was a great beauty (not to mention insanely powerful mutant/sorceress) and the likes of everyone from Stephen Strange to Thor himself tried to court her. But the beautiful Scarlet Witch would have none of them and sent them all away - usually turning them into animals. (She turned Thor into a frog ((he got better.))

One day Nightcrawler and Wolverine are out drinking beer and making Colossus' life miserable (he’s broken it off with Kitty again and Kurt and Logan are having their revenge) when Kurt overhears some big buff Marvel heroes bemoaning their fate when they attempted to woo Magneto's fickle daughter.

Kurt smells a challenge. Logan smells trouble, but there's no deterring the Incredible Nightcrawler.

"Just be careful, elf," Logan growls, sipping his beer and shaking his head.

Magneto is, after all, the X-Men's greatest foe - he and his Brotherhood of Mutants have been waging a personal war against the X-Men for years. Kurt, however, ever the swashbuckling hero, cannot resist the prospect of a damsel in distress ... a damsel in distress of being without a dashing fuzzy elf of a lover, Nightcrawler thinks. At any rate, there is no changing his mind. He will have Wanda's heart. It's not like she can turn him into a furry little monster, can she?

Getting to Genosha is no problem for Kurt. He teleports from island to sailing ship until he finally arrives at Magneto's stronghold. Ole Mag's isn't home. Wanda is alone in the palace. She has no guards. Why should she? She can easily protect herself. In fact, she is the one to be most feared by her victims - er, suitors, that is.

Kurt has confidence, however. And charm. He's practically oozing it. Perhaps that's what wins Scarlet's heart. He doesn't grovel and cower the way her other suitors have as they approach the mighty Scarlet Witch, the daughter of Magneto, the Princess of Genosha.

She could poof him with a snap of her fingers, but when he flashes that fanged smile and encircles her waist with his bifurcated tail, Wanda's heart melts to goo.

It’s love at first sight.

Kurt presses a single scarlet rose in her hand as he 'ports her away to a shadowy, secluded alcove. A few months pass and Magneto notices a change in his baby girl. For one, she isn't turning superheroes, sorcerers and gods into toads any longer; she simply dismisses her suitors away with an airy wave. But she's wandering about the palace with a distracted moonstruck expression and she's always wearing that scarlet rose in her hair ...

Well, the truth can't be hidden forever, especially not from the mighty Magneto, the Master of Magnetism. Wanda doesn't really have to tell her dad. Her ever-expanding waistline tells him for her - Ole Mag's is going to be a Grandpa.

Magneto flips out, going raving raging mad, promising death and destruction on whoever dared breech his daughter's private chamber (ifyaknowhatimean).

Wanda watches him calmly, not impressed at all by her father's tantrum. After all, there's nothing he can really do. Scarlet is far more powerful than her father even.

"B-But the X-Men are our greatest enemies, darling!" Magneto sputters as she reveals the identity of his new son-in-law. "We've been at war with them since you were a child!"

"Not anymore," Wanda replies with icy calm. "An X-Man is the father of your grandchild. Would you make your firstborn granddaughter an orphan? This ridiculous war between the X-Men and the Brotherhood is officially over."

And so, the long grueling feud between both sides of the mutant war was stopped by a bloodless treaty laid down by Magneto's daughter. Talia Josephine “TJ” Wagner was born seven months later, a healthy baby girl with six fingers and six toes, just like her dad. Her skin was covered in fine blue fuzz and her hair was indigo with a shock of her grandpa's famous silver locks.

Magneto was smitten the moment he laid eyes on his granddaughter. He retired from supervillainry for good the day TJ was born and became a full-time grandpa. These days you'll find the Master of Magnetism picking up TJ from her ballet lessons. TJ still isn't allowed to 'port by herself; Magneto picks her up in his minivan - which doesn't run on petrol, by the way.

The End

#nocturne #exiles #xmen #Kurt Wagner #scarletwitch #wanda maximoff #magneto #nightcrawler #tj wagner #talia josephine wagner #brotherhoodofmutants #nightcrawlerxscarletwitch #kanda #kurtxwanda

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impressivepress · 4 years ago

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The Political Life and Cinema of Comrade Charlie Chaplin

Charlie Chaplin’s sympathy for the working class defines all his most famous silent films.

In September 1952, Charlie Chaplin (1889-1977) looked back at New York on board the Queen Elizabeth. He was bound for Europe, to introduce the continent to his latest film Mousieur Verdoux. On the ship, Chaplin learned that the US government would only let him return to the US – where he had lived for the past three decades – if he subjected himself to an immigration and naturalisation inquiry into his moral and political character. “Goodbye,” Chaplin said from the deck of the ship. He refused to submit to the inquiry. He would not return to the US until 1972, when the Academy of Motion Pictures gave him an Oscar for Lifetime Achievement.

Why did the US government exile Chaplin? The Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) – the country’s political police – investigated Chaplin from 1922 onwards for his alleged ties to the Communist Party of the United States (CPUSA). Chaplin’s file – 1,900 pages long – is filled with innuendo and slander, as agents exhausted themselves talking to his co-workers and adversaries to find any hint of communist association. They found none. In December 1949, for instance, the agent in Los Angeles wrote, “No witnesses available to testify affirmatively that Chaplin has been member CP in past, that he is now a member or that he has contributed funds to CP.”

Beside the charge that he was a communist, Chaplin faced the accusation that he was ‘an unsavoury character’ who violated the Mann Act – the White Slave Traffic Act of 1910. Chaplin had paid for the travel of Joan Barry – his girlfriend – across state lines. Chaplin was found not guilt of these charges in 1944. It has subsequently been shown in a number of memoirs and studies that Chaplin was cruel to his many wives (many of them teenagers) and ruthless in his relations with women (Peter Ackroyd’s 2014 book has the details). In 1943, Chaplin married the playwright Eugene O’Neill’s daughter – Oona. She was 18. Chaplin was 54. They would have eight children. Oona Chaplin left the US with her husband and was with him when he died in 1977. There was much about Chaplin’s life that was creepy – particularly the way he preyed on young girls (his second wife – Lita Grey – was 15 when they had an affair and then married; he was then 35). FBI director J. Edgar Hoover had considerable evidence to sift through here, but none of it was found to be sufficient to deport Chaplin.

What was the smoke that got into Hoover’s nose from the fire of Chaplin’s politics? From 1920 onwards, it was clear that Chaplin had sympathies for the Left. That year, Chaplin sat with Buster Keaton – the famous silent film actor – to drink a beer in Keaton’s kitchen in Los Angeles. Chaplin was at the height of his success. With Douglas Fairbanks, Mary Pickford and D.W. Griffith, Chaplin created United Artists, a company that broke with the studio system to give these four actors and directors control over their work. Chaplin was then working on The Kid (1921), one of his finest films and based almost certainly on his childhood. Keaton recounted that Chaplin talked “about something called communism which he just heard about”. “Communism,” Chaplin told him, according to Keaton, “was going to change everything, abolish poverty.” Chaplin banged on the table and said, “What I want is that every child should have enough to eat, shoes on his feet and a roof over his head”. Keaton’s response is casually insincere, “But Charlie, do you know anyone who doesn’t want that?”

Chaplin came to the US just after the Russian Revolution. He saw the growing lines of unemployment and distress in the US – an unemployed population that grew from 950,000 (1919) to five million (1921). This was a time of great class struggle – the Palmer Raids conducted by the government against the communists, on the one side, and the general strike in Seattle as well as the Battle of Blair Mountain by the mineworkers of Logan County, West Virginia, on the other side.

Chaplin’s silent films were anchored by the figure of the Tramp, the iconic poor man in a modern capitalist society. “I am like a man who is ever haunted by a spirit, the spirit of poverty, the spirit of privation,” Chaplin said. That is precisely what one sees in his films – from The Tramp (1915) to Modern Times (1936). “The whole point of the Little Fellow,” Chaplin said in 1925 of the tramp figure, “is that no matter how down on his ass he is, no matter how well the jackals succeed in tearing him apart, he’s still a man of dignity.” The working class, the working poor, are people of great resourcefulness and dignity – not beaten down, not to be mocked. Chaplin’s sympathy for the working class defines all his most famous silent films.

It was Chaplin’s popularity and his message that disturbed the FBI. “There are men and women in far corners of the world who never have heard of Jesus Christ; yet they know and love Charlie Chaplin,” noted an article that an FBI agent clipped and highlighted in Chaplin’s file. Chaplin’s plainly-depicted criticism of capitalism did not fail to impress the world’s peoples nor disturb the FBI. “I don’t want the old rugged individualism,” Chaplin said in November 1942, “rugged for the few and ragged for the many.”

The great limitation in his films is the depiction of women. They are always damsels in distress or rich women who are desired by poor men. There are few ‘women of dignity’, women who – at that time – were in pitched battles for their own rights. In fact, many silent films in both the UK and the US disparaged the Suffragette movement of their time – from A Day in the Life of a Suffragette (1908) to A Busy Day (1914, which was originally titled A Militant Suffragette). In this latter film, only six minutes long, Chaplin plays a suffragette who is boorish and then dies by drowning.

The film was released the same year as Sylvia Pankhurst (1882-1960) founded the East London Federation of Suffragettes to unite suffragette politics with socialism. Pankhurst, unlike Chaplin, would join the Communist Party and – in 1920 – would author A Constitution for British Soviets. She would leave the Communist Party, but remained a devoted communist and anti-fascist for the rest of her life. If only Chaplin’s sexism had not blocked him from celebrating his contemporaries such as Pankhurst, Joan Beauchamp (another Suffragette and founder of the British Communist Party) as well as her sister Kay Beauchamp (co-founder of The Daily Worker, now Morning Star) and Fanny Deakin.

What drew Chaplin directly into the orbit of institutional left-wing politics was the rise of fascism. He was greatly troubled by the Nazi sweep across Europe. Chaplin’s film The Great Dictator (1940) was his satire of fascism – a film that should be watched by all in our times.

Two years after that film was out, Chaplin flew to New York City to be the main speaker at a Communist-backed Artists Front to Win the War event. Chaplin took the stage at Carnegie Hall on 16 October 1942, addressed the crowd as ‘comrades’ and said that Communists are “ordinary people like ourselves who love beauty, who love life”. Then, Chaplin offered his clearest statement on communism – “They say communism may spread out all over the world. And I say – so what?” (Daily Worker, October 19, 1942). In December 1942, Chaplin said, “I am not a Communist, but I am proud to say that I feel pretty pro-Communist”.

Chaplin was impressed by the principled and unyielding stand taken by the communists against fascism – whether during the Spanish Civil War or in the Eastern Front against the Nazi invasion of the USSR. In 1943, Chaplin called the USSR “a brave new world” that gave “hope and aspiration to the common man”. He hoped that the USSR would “grow more glorious year by year. Now that the agony of birth is at an end, may the beauty of its growth endure forever”. When asked a decade later why he was so vocal about his support for the USSR – including with appearances at the communist fronts such as the National Council for American-Soviet Friendship and the Russian War Relief – Chaplin said, “during the war I sympathised much with Russia because I believe that she was holding the front”. This sympathy remained through the remainder of his life.

Chaplin had not calculated the toxicity of the Cold War era in the US. In 1947, he told reporters, “These days if you step off the curb with your left foot, they accuse you being a communist”. Chaplin did not back off from his beliefs or betrayed his friends. At that same press conference he was asked if he knew the Austrian musician Hanns Eisler, who was a communist and who wrote the music for many of Bertolt Brecht’s plays. He had fled Nazi Germany for the US to work in Hollywood. Eisler had composed songs for the Communist Party (he would write music for the anthem of the German Democratic Republic – Auferstanden Aus Ruinen). Chaplin came to his defence. When asked about his association with Eisler at that 1947 press conference, Chaplin said that Eisler “is a personal friend and I am proud of the fact…I don’t know whether he is a communist or not. I know he is a fine artist and a great musician and a very sympathetic friend”. When asked directly if it would make any difference to Chaplin if Eisler was a communist, he said, “No it wouldn’t”. It took a lot of courage to defend Eisler, who would be deported from the US a few months later.

When Chaplin died in Switzerland in December 1977, he was mourned far and wide. In Calcutta, where a Left Front government had only just come to power in a landslide in June, artists and political activists gathered the next day to mourn him. The main speaker at the memorial service was the Bengali film director Mrinal Sen. In 1953, Sen had written a book on Chaplin – illustrated by Satyajit Ray.

Neither Sen nor Ray had made any of their iconic films as yet (both released their first films in 1955, Ray’s Pather Panchali and Sen’s Raat Bhore). “Without a moral justification,” Sen said at the memorial meeting, “cinema is ridiculous, is atrocious, is an outrage. It is a social activity. It is man’s creation.” The gap between art and politics should not be too wide, Sen warned. He was thinking of Chaplin’s films, but also of his own. At that time, Sen was working on Ek Din Pratidin (One Day, Everyday), a superb film that chronicles the possibilities of women’s emancipation. Here Sen went far beyond Chaplin. His communism included women.

Vijay Prashad · 29. Jul 2017.

Vijay Prashad is the author of The Death of the Nation and the Future of the Arab Revolution from LeftWord Books.

#film #Charlie Chaplin #history article #the wire

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