#give me south asian jason or give me death. you know?

[natashasfilms]

Chapter Eight - Machismo

Summary: FBI agent Leila faces a profound life change after giving birth to a baby girl, supported by her loving husband. Despite the challenges of motherhood, Leila returns to her role as a dedicated agent a few months later, ready to confront gruesome and haunting cases with the BAU team.

Pairing: BAU!Fem!OC x Male!OC , EVENTUAL Aaron Hotchner x BAU!Fem!OC (Like much later)

Warnings: This story contains mature themes such as sexual content, strong language, violence, mentions of alcohol and drugs, blood, gore, and death. All the usual Criminal Minds stuff. And there is NO CHEATING.

Note 1: I imagine Leila Kade as South Asian but I have decided to let you, the reader, imagine her appearance, hence the reason why I have not given her a face claim. However, her race does not affect the story, whatsoever. You, as the reader, are free to imagine her however you want. If you don't see her as South Asian, then that's fine. It won't affect the storyline. I also imagine the OC!Male as South Asian, but again, it won't affect the storyline.

Note 2: The team will consist of the main cast (Emily, Derek, JJ, Spencer, Penelope, Aaron, and Rossi) but will also include Elle Greenaway and Jason Gideon because they were some of my favorite characters and I wanted to include them with the rest of the team. Basically, Elle and Gideon never leave when Emily and Rossi join.

Note 3: There will be multiple time skips throughout this series. For example, the first chapter will begin on the first season and episode of the show but then there will be a time skip to later episodes (because there are obviously way too many episodes to write this series on and I wanted to include specific episodes that would help the plot of this story). This means that this series will be a slow burn romance but I believe it to be better this way. This will also stray from the actual show a lot, so don't expect it to follow the plot precisely.

Series Masterlist

Season 1, Episode 19

Leila settled beside the kitchen counter, enjoying a warm cup of tea while waiting for Zaid to tuck Jasmine into bed. Her last day of the break was approaching its end. Although she missed her colleagues, she acknowledged that this time off had been thoroughly deserved.

As she stood in the kitchen, Leila sensed approaching footsteps and then felt a familiar embrace encircle her waist, drawing her backward against Zaid's chest. She smiled as she recognized his soft kiss on her neck, reaching up to stroke his hair. Setting down her mug on the counter, she turned around, wrapping her arms around his neck.

"You're going back to work tomorrow, so let's do something fun." Zaid suggested, grinning at her.

Arching an eyebrow, Leila tilted her head slightly. "Oh really? What's on your mind?"

"I don't know. Maybe watch a movie, bake some cookies, makeout…"

Leila laughed, bringing his head down to her, attaching her lips to his. They smiled against the kiss as he picked her up, walking all the way over to the couch. Laying her down, Zaid broke the kiss, beginning to pull her shirt off. Leila held herself up with her elbows, looking up at her husband. Her eyes traced his form, down to his arms, falling on the watch she gifted him for his birthday when they first started dating.

"I can't believe you still wear that stupid watch." Leila chuckled, nodding her head towards his wrist. "You could buy any watch that includes better functions but you choose to keep this one."

He looks down onto his wrist, the black enclosing around the time device putting a soft smile on his face. "It's the first present you ever gave me. You best believe I'll be wearing this for the rest of my life." He pecked her lips. "Plus, it still works like it's new. You have some magic in you, I suppose, because all my past watches before you broke after the second day."

She rolled her eyes. "Maybe because you didn't know how to work a watch until I came along, dumbass."

He scoffed, putting a hand over his heart. "Name calling is very bad. Don't be a bully."

Leila groaned, cupping the back of his neck to smash their lips together. "Enough with your stupid jokes." She mumbled against his lips, causing him to grin even wider. He pushed her down onto the couch, kissing her with intense passion as Leila took off his shirt. Zaid began to untie his sweatpants, kicking them off along with the rest of the clothes on the floor. Leila pulled back enough to utter one more sentence. "And don't tease."

"Yes, ma'am." He replied teasingly, slowly entering her with a groan. Leila let out a moan as he began to stretch her out, her mouth hanging open at the pleasure.

Her hands gripped right onto his biceps, Zaid pulling back to push back in once again. He leaned down to muffle her moans with his lips, not wanting to cause any loud noise throughout the house. He continued a steady pace, only increasing his speed once she adjusted.

"Shit, baby." He grunted against her lips, feeling her tight walls squeezing him. "You always feel so good around me."

Leila ran her hand through his hair, gently pulling. "Plea—fuck." Her words were cut off by him hitting a spot inside her that shook her, the pleasure coursing throughout her entire body.

"Yeah? That feel good?"

She only quietly cried out in pleasure, unable to form any coherent thoughts other than him on top of her.

"Words, honey. I need to hear you say it." He breathed out, kissing down her neck. He ensured to leave a mark.

"Yes, it feels so good." She whispered, her lips attaching to his again. They moved in sync until they finally reached their climax, moaning into each other's mouth before Zaid gently collapsed on top of her, using his arms to hold himself up to make sure he didn't push all his weight onto her.

Zaid lifted his head from in between her breasts to softly kiss her all over her face. Starting from her forehead, to her cheeks, to her chin, all the way around until he reached her lips. He carefully scooped her up with his arms, flipping her over to hug her, and kissed the top of her head.

Leila cupped his cheek, locking eyes with him. "I love you so much, Zaid Divan."

He nudged his nose with hers before he brought her hand up to his lips, kissing her knuckles. "I love you more, Leila Kade."

Leila yawned, her eyes slowly shutting as she felt Zaid pull a blanket over them that had been near the couch. He kissed her forehead once more before the two of them fell fast asleep.

Stepping out of the elevator, Leila entered the office through the glass doors, greeted by her colleagues quietly working in the cubicle.

"Look who's back!" Derek chimed in with a hint of teasing in his voice, rising from his desk to welcome her with a brief hug. He then took a step back, appraising her appearance. "Looking sharp as ever, boss lady."

Leila returned his playful tone with a grin, playfully pinching Derek's cheek. "Always the charmer, aren't you?"

Spencer hugged her next, with Elle following right after, embracing her with a warm hug. "Missed you. How did your break go? Feeling refreshed?" The brunette asked.

Leila nodded her head, widening her eyes for the extra effect. "A lot better, actually. So, what's new?"

"There's a new case." JJ interrupted, giving Leila a quick hug. "I'm glad you're back but we'll catch up on the plane." The blonde said before she walked up the stairs towards the conference room.

Leila grinned, looking at her three friends in front of her. "Cool. Where's Aaron and Gideon?"

"Gideon is in his office calling Hotch." Spencer explained. "He took some time off this weekend since it's his birthday today but I guess he has to come in again."

Leila opened her mouth in surprise, her eyes growing wide. "It's his birthday? I completely forgot." However, she thought back to what she told him last week and was glad he decided to take a small break for himself, despite the fact he had to come in for a new case.

"Well, good thing he's here now so you can tell him." Elle stated, her eyes falling on the man who just entered the room. Leila turned around and the four of them immediately yelled out a quick "happy birthday!"

"Thank you." Aaron responded, a little flustered at the gesture. Leila hugged him and he reciprocated, the woman patting his back. "Nice to see you back."

Leila gave him a smile, following all the others who were walking towards the conference room. "Yeah, it gets boring without me, doesn't it?"

Aaron chuckled in response, nodding towards Elle. "Elle may have complained about your absence more than once. Perhaps Spencer too. And Penelope. Derek said he missed going up to your office to annoy you."

She looked up at him, a cheeky grin plastered on her face. "And you?"

He shrugged, but she could see a hint of a smile on his face. "I took your advice and decided to take the weekend off."

Leila grimaced, knowing how the plan didn't turn out all the way successful. "I'm sorry you have to come to work on your birthday."

He shook his head, allowing her to walk in first to the conference room. "Don't worry about it."

Their new case led them to Mexico, where several women had been fatally stabbed. Although local newspapers reported a series of killings and labeled it the work of a serial killer, the Mexican government held a contrary view, asserting that there was no such killer on the loose.

Despite the Mexican government's denial of the serial killer rumors, the team was summoned because they had the latest victim's son in custody as their primary suspect. The authorities wanted the team to travel to Mexico and confirm if this was a one time murder.

After the brief meeting concluded, the team rose from their seats to prepare their bags. As Leila stood up, she noticed Aaron's disappointed expression while he held his phone. Gideon, stationed by the door, also seemed to have observed it.

"Hotch," Gideon called out, prompting the dark-haired man to look up. "Call from the car." Aaron nodded but remained fixated on his phone. Leila sensed that he hadn't anticipated leaving for a case today and perhaps hadn't informed Haley that he wouldn't be back immediately after the meeting. Not wanting to intrude, she left the room, empathizing with him and his family.

After a swift briefing on the jet, Leila settled into her seat toward the back. Gideon approached and took a seat in front of her, placing a cup of coffee on the tray in front of her. Leila looked up at him and expressed her gratitude with a quick thank you.

"I take it you're feeling better?" He asked genuinely, nodding towards the others on the jet who were engrossed in their own activities. "It's been a little hectic without you. All I've been hearing are complaints from these people."

Leila smirked, savoring a sip of her coffee. "Admit it. You missed me."

Wearing a lopsided smile, he returned to perusing the case file. Leila's grin expanded even more, appreciating the camaraderie she shared with her teammates.

Arriving at the Mexico PD, Captain Navarro immediately recognized Gideon. He introduced them to Lieutenant Borquez and shook hands with Gideon. After everyone was acquainted, they were ready to inspect the crime scenes and commence their case.

"I didn't realize you spoke Spanish," Leila remarked, looking at Elle, referring to the moment on the jet when she corrected Spencer. The brunette smiled in response.

"Yeah, it's pretty useful. My mother's Cuban," Elle answered. The two women joined Aaron, Gideon, and Captain Navarro in the car to head to one of the crime scenes. "I don't suppose you know a language that may surprise me?"

"Estarías sorprendido," Leila smirked, prompting Elle to raise an eyebrow, not surprised that her friend also knew Spanish. "Sé mucho más."

Elle chuckled, shaking her head. "At this point, nothing surprises me with you anymore."

After inspecting the victim's house and noting they were searching for a heterosexual male, they returned to the PD. Captain Navarro decided to introduce them to the District Attorney General, Maria Sanchez. Upon their return, Sanchez approached them. "Do not be afraid," Captain Navarro said quietly to them.

"Agente Gideon, Agente Hotchner, Agente Kade," she greeted, shaking all of their hands with remarkable confidence. "It's an honor. Our papers are fascinated with the idea of a serial killer, and when Navarro suggested that I invite you in to dispel this nonsense, I immediately saw the wisdom."

Leila maintained a tight-lipped smile, impressed with Sanchez's boldness but still holding onto her skepticism.

"But enough formalities. I will let you get down to business," Sanchez concluded, her smile never wavering. She excused herself, moving past them with the three agents stepping aside to let her through, followed by her bodyguards.

"She's worse in Spanish," Captain Navarro informed them, leading them inside the PD.

While the guys engaged in conversation with Miguel, the prime suspect in his mother's murder, Leila took a seat beside JJ. The blonde looked up, a grin forming on her face upon realizing who it was. "Hey, you're back."

Leila raised an eyebrow, supporting her chin with a hand. "Yeah, and I just met the District Attorney General. Confident woman."

JJ laughed, nodding in agreement. "Definitely, but she really does not want to believe there's a serial killer here."

Leila bit her lip before sighing. "That's unfortunate. She's going to have to learn the truth sooner or later."

"Mhm. Love how the day you get back, you're already going to Mexico, huh?" The blonde asked.

"Hey, it's a nice surprise, I'm not going to lie," Leila laughed, raising her hands. "Who doesn't love a lovely trip outside of the states?"

JJ held up a finger, pointing at her. "You're not wrong." She glanced back at the guys talking to Miguel and then turned back to Leila. "So, what do you think?"

Leila shrugged. "I think that Miguel is hiding something, but he didn't kill his mother." She spoke truthfully. "His mother hid a photo of him in a drawer, away from all of the family photos on display. He had a fight with his mother before he left, but I believe it was because of something completely different."

JJ furrowed her eyebrows, still confused. "What do you think he's hiding?"

"His sexuality," Leila confirmed, crossing her arms. "Miguel is gay. That's why he'd rather stay quiet than reveal that part about him. If anyone were to find out, they'd kill him. Things work differently around here. He's scared because he knows he'll never be accepted for who he is."

The blonde nodded in understanding, her eyes shifting to the men walking back into the room. Aaron called them over to talk outside, and the two women followed.

"The best way to bring the attorney general on board is by providing a complete profile," Gideon told Navarro, making his case.

Navarro shrugged, looking at Gideon. "What do you need from me?"

"We'll need the files on all the murders," Derek said, his arms crossed in front of him as he leaned against a car.

The captain nodded. "Of course, but I must warn you. These reports were taken by local police in the area who are not used to this type of killer," he said honestly, sharing all the information. "Most basic details are missing."

"We'll take a look at them," Spencer responded.

"We also need to get the whole story out of Miguel Trejo, and right now, he's not talking," Aaron continued.

"But why does that matter?" Navarro sighed. "Obviously, he's not a serial killer."

Leila tried her best to make him understand, recognizing the difficulty of the situation. "Yes, we know that, but we need people to understand that these are serial killings and not just a crime of passion. The family is angry, and we understand that, but keeping it a secret would only escalate things further."

"And why wouldn't Miguel talk if he's innocent?" Derek questioned.

Captain Navarro leaned against the wall, shaking his head. "It must have something to do with the fact that he is homosexual."

Derek raised an eyebrow. "He'd rather be straight in jail than gay as a free man?"

Navarro pointed towards the PD. "I can protect him in here, but if he's taken to a prison in Mexico City and the other inmates find out that he is gay, he will be killed. That's the way things work here."

Spencer creased his eyebrows in confusion, not seeing any other solution. "So how do we get him to talk?"

Leila looked toward the woman sitting inside, and an idea instantly popped into her head. "His sister."

After questioning Miguel's sister and his boyfriend, Roberto, and uncovering more evidence, they reached the conclusion that the unsub was a man disguised as a woman. They presented the profile to the police at the department, but as soon as they finished, news came in that another body had been found.

The latest victim was identified as Isabel Santiago, displaying the same wounds found on the previous victims. The team went to the victim's house to search for new clues, paying particular attention to the necklace that had been torn off her neck.

"That's the first time he's taken jewelry from the victims," Leila observed, standing up after inspecting the victim.

"So, why was this one different?" Derek questioned, glancing at everyone in the room.

They exited the house and walked outside. The victim's daughter was sobbing near the police car, and Leila frowned at the heartbreaking scene.

"Over the past two years, we've had an average of one killing every nine weeks," Navarro stated, hands on his hips.

"Now two in three days," Aaron added.

"That's a pretty extreme escalation," Gideon commented. "He'll kill again soon."

Derek pointed to the daughter. "Who's that over there?"

"That's the daughter of the victim," one of the officers answered.

"Maybe she can tell us something about the necklace," Derek suggested.

Leila and Elle proceeded to question the daughter, Anna, while Derek stood by their side. They asked about the jewelry, and Anna responded, telling them that the necklace was hers, as her mother never wore jewelry herself.

Aaron approached them and spoke quietly, informing them that there was a disturbance at the police station.

They arrived at the PD, witnessing the chaos that had transpired in a short amount of time. "What is going on here, Borquez?" Navarro asked. "What did they do?"

Borquez shrugged. "They are following the orders of the FBI. Bringing in the sex criminals."

"What did you tell them?" Navarro asked the team.

Aaron stepped forward. "We put out there the possibility that he dresses like a woman. We told them to look into people convicted of sex crimes. We didn't mean this."

Leila looked around, her mouth agape at all the people being detained by the officers. A car pulled up, and Maria Sanchez stepped out in a rush. Leila could tell she was angry.

"These men were supposed to put the serial killer rumors to rest, and now they are making us look like a joke," Maria said with frustration. "What do you want people to think of us?"

"It was a misunderstanding," Navarro responded, trying to deescalate the situation.

"And it won't happen again," Maria looked towards the team. "It was your idea to bring them here, and obviously, it was a waste of time. Please, go home." She finished, turning around to walk back towards the car and entering it. They watched her drive away, and Leila leaned towards Aaron.

"She's scary," she said quietly, and the man chuckled in response.

Finally, they located the unsub and identified his next target. The pattern emerged: he targeted victims by assaulting and subsequently killing their mothers. With this realization, they rushed to intercept the imminent attack on the last person they believed the unsub would target.

Barging into the house, guns raised, they moved toward the back of the house. There, they discovered a person on the ground, surrounded by a pool of blood. As they approached for a closer look, Derek flipped the person over onto their back, revealing the unsub who had been brutally stabbed.

Noises emanated from the bushes, causing them all to raise their guns in that direction. They lowered them once they realized it was the women who had been the unsub's victims. "He pretended to be a woman," one of the women spoke. "Now he doesn't have to pretend." They all dropped their weapons, standing up straight as the team and the officers maintained their focus on them.

Having successfully wrapped up the case, the team headed back home. They gathered their belongings from the hotel and made their way to the jet, eager to return to the states.

Upon reaching the BAU, they collected the remainder of their belongings and prepared to head to their respective homes. Leila walked into her office, turned on the lights, and noticed something on her desk. Furrowing her eyebrows in confusion, she picked it up.

She instantly recognized the handwriting and chuckled, shaking her head. "Left this for you after you come back from your case. Jasmine says hi. We both miss you." She read the note, whispering to herself. Underneath was a photo of Zaid and Jasmine, and she tucked the note into her jacket pocket. "You just have to be so extra, don't you Divan?" She couldn't wipe away the grin on her face, knowing her husband would be the person to leave a physical note instead of a text message just to be dramatic. Grabbing her bag once again, she exited her office.

[prongsmydeer]

Ayesha Liveblogs the Good Place S1-S2

I’ve watched this first ep like three times and it took me until now to realize Michael is probably named after the show creator lmao

“One of the other people in your neighbourhood is your actual soulmate, and you will spend eternity together.” I just noticed Eleanor turning around and checking out Jianyu 

What happens if you were already married to your soulmate? Do they have a separate afterlife for singles 

“Why does she still have that accent? No one else here has an accent.” Chidi’s accent should definitely sound more Senegalese or at the very least have the tinge of a Francophone if there’s any accent retention after-death

Love how even when Tahani and Eleanor are being snarky about each other it’s through the lens of finding each other cute:

Unclear if the look on Jianyu/Jason’s face is guilt or worry for himself lol:

“It’s merely the construct of a dog. It feels no pain, or joy, or love.” This is because all dogs are in the Other Good Place LOL

Honestly I’m with Eleanor I didn’t realize Chidi ever had his own apartment in this show lol

“I won’t let you down... starting now.” I enjoy that Chidi’s face is a cross between ‘what have I gotten myself into’ and genuinely endeared by Eleanor’s ridiculousness

“I got a present for you... Senegal.” “That’s not a present; that’s just common decency.” Talking to white people really be like that sometimes

“I have what doctors call ‘directional insanity.” I’m Chidi, Chidi is me

I admire Jason’s prolonged stoicism lmao that takes dedication 

“Basically my life’s work is 3,600 pages of garbage.” Every writer has this feeling every so often LOL

“Not to mention, you have a rockin’ bod.” I really do hope they make a point of Eleanor being bisexual 

Lmao the transition from Jianyu to Jason is INCREDIBLE someone give Manny Jacinto an Emmy 

“Everyone here thinks I’m Taiwanese. I’m Filipino. That’s racist. Heaven is so racist.” GOD THE WRITING ON THIS SHOW IS INCREDIBLE

“Is she single, or is she married to Michael?” Team Jason/Janet 4ever

The depiction of Florida on this show is right on brand with everything I have ever imagined about Florida 

The hope on Eleanor’s face when Chidi offers Jason a lifeline GOD we love a man

“I am here to learn about ethnics.” Everything Jason says is so funny I’m losing my mind

Kristen Bell is really the only person who can pull off this role of being so excited for doing the bare minimum of human decency and actually make it endearing 

Based on Michael’s timing of showing up every time Eleanor and Chidi are mid-argument I wonder how much of his day is just dedicated to creeping on them in preparation for dramatic moments lmao

“It’s very... middle thermometer.” They’ve managed to capture my South Asian parent-child experience in less than ten words lmao 

Disclaimer/sidenote: Despite saying this, I am exhausted of the way people in western media write South Asian parents lmao. Give me an Ek Ladkhi scene where the parents are also willing to beat down people who insult their kids. It’s so one-sided:

Rich people are wild I cannot imagine giving up millions of dollars just because my parents loved me less than my sibling. Even if you didn’t want the money it could serve so much use to other people

I love how down Eleanor is to have sex with any person she meets given the right circumstances

“I know we’ll never be soulmates, but we’re friends.” ARE YOU SURE ELEANOR

“How do you row a boat?” With great difficulty; oars are very heavy

Which woman is so hard up for available friends that they would entrust Early Eleanor with a dog with kidney disease

“She’s so pretty like Nala from the Lion King.” The levels to this comment

"Three person couple.” “Does not compute.” Janet said no polyamory rights kjhkjhkjhjk

I really enjoy this montage of Michael and Eleanor enjoying human activities they are truly #friendgoals lmao

“Do you like France as much as I do?” “Well, they enslaved my country for 300 years, so no. But, they have great museums.” “Yes.” Tahani and Chidi’s conversation about France kills me lmao

I guess Tahani can’t really fault colonialism since she’s British LMAO

I like that they experiment with all the younger main characters together lmao there’s some implied chemistry in a lot of directions with Eleanor, Tahani, Chidi, Jason and Janet 

Fshjdghkjdshgkjhds

Eleanor: But leave up the sexy mailman. To remember me by.

Chidi: [nods seriously]

Janet’s delivery always kills me but her Count Chocula Sobs and whispered confident, “Yeah,” is truly something else:

“Those are the coolest boots I’ve ever seen in my life.” I’m so Chidi sometimes u catch urself telling very pointless lies for either a very mediocre reason or no reason at all just because ur caught up in a conversation and can’t stop saying things to fill the silence and then later it haunts u

“Killing is one of the most famous moral no-nos.” Every line of this show is beautifully written

KDJHFKSJHFKJ I love that this episode is the turning point for Chidi actually having his own moral failings

"And even if she were okay, it would be too painful for me to live with these lies.” CHIDI U HAVE BEEN LYING SINCE EP 1 LMAO IT’S A LITTLE LATE TO DECIDE U DON’T WANT TO

“The problem in the neighbourhood is me.” Say what you will about Eleanor at least in the afterlife she really cares about her friends:

“You will spend eternity with murderers, arsonists, and people who take off their shoes and socks on commercial airlines.” By this metric, at least one member of my immediate family is going to The Bad Place

If, as by Michael’s measure of Eleanor we are counting on the impact of our actions and not just intentions (i.e. Eleanor making her cousin happy as a positive) then objectively it is bizarre that none of the good Tahani has done for others through charity or even just like, hosting events for other people, means anything in the afterlife. What gives

“You’re too nice to humiliate.” I feel like this is foreshadowing of Michael being a Ineffective Demon and Great Friend

“There should be a medium place for people like me who kind of sucked, but in a fun, chill way.” [Sad chuckle] “I agree.” Awwww Chidi is sad to see her go

“You should smile more.” Adam Scott really has mastered the art of portraying an unpleasant man lmao

OMG CHIDI AND ELEANOR HOLDING HANDS WHEN SHE GETS OFF THE TRAIN

“You know, it doesn’t matter if you know things. All that matters is what’s in your heart.” Jason said Himbo/Bimbo rights

“Sorry you’re snorting the... concept of time?” I’m sure people on cocaine feel this way occasionally

“Who are they gonna believe, me, or a woman?” Men really do be like that sometimes 

“He’s the wise, eternal Judge who sits on high, has the final say on all disputes between our two realms.” “And his name is... Shawn?” The real tipping point for believing this is not The Good Place should’ve been how every person in charge of it is depicted as a white man lmao

Djfhkjh I forgot when Tahani found out about Jason. The end of episode reveals are great they really do know how to make you want to watch the next one 

How does Tahani know every celebrity EXCEPT Ariana Grande lmao 

“Oh Ariana, we’re really in it now.” God. I love Jason so much 

“Hooking up with someone with the exact same name is kind of a fun, narcissistic fantasy, I could be into it.” [’NSYNC voice] bi bi bi

Who in their right mind would let Chidi be a team captain lmao

“Congratulations, Chidi. You filibustered recess.” Kjfgjdhgj teach them early  

Every time Eleanor mentions a political philosopher I had to study I feel sympathy for how truly boring they are lmao. Honestly I didn’t retain much

KJHFJHSKJHFKJHKJAHKJ ELEANOR’S MONOLOGUE ABOUT LOVING CHIDI LMAO

Chidi running away because two beautiful and fun women have expressed feelings for him, is really a my-diamond-shoes-are-too-tight scenario

Janet giving Jason his favourite kind of wings 💗 They’re so sweet

“So you also love Chidi? And you just told him, right before I did?” “Technically you told him that he loves you, but yes.” lmao u right Eleanor

Happy Pride Month to Tahani whose every interaction with a man screams of comphet LMAO

I know Eleanor and Tahani is not what they’re aiming for here but jhgkjhg:

Eleanor: Are you ready to take our bonding to the next level?

Tahani: [gay intrigue]

Ahhh Uzo is such a good friend he knows Chidi and he’s so chill about him being anxious I love this dynamic I feel bad that Chidi’s dead

“Jianyu is a hot dummy, definitely my type.” LMAO I FORGOT ABOUT THIS AND ALSO ELEANOR REALLY WOULD SLEEP WITH ALL OF HER FRIENDS (EXCEPT MICHAEL OBVS) LMAO

OH MY GOOOOD POOR UZU AND A MONTH BEFORE HIS WEDDING TOO

“Does anyone here object to this marriage?” “Of course we do, how could we not object?” “Yes, it is a terrible idea.” “Overruled.” JANET KJHJKGHJKFH

Get someone who looks at you the way that Jason and Janet look at each other:

“True love is what Janet and Jianyu have.” YEAH IT IS

Digital Getdown being on the Jasonet wedding playlist was really an iconic move

Really it has to be a very mundane kind of torture to having someone foist a love confession on you lmao but I guess [Sartre voice] Hell is other people 

“I got ten bucks to my name. I spent 8 of it on this burrito, and the other 2 on the guac.” Been there Pillboi

The fact that Jason thinks Michael is Janet’s dad kkjdhgkjhg 

“I wasn’t a failed DJ, I was pre-successful.” I want to live in Jason’s brain

God we love a man who has emotional intelligence. Jason may not have a lot of logical reasoning skills but he knows how to calm someone down and how to love 

“Even when I do nice things, I’m only doing something so I get something out of it—the ability to stay here—which means none of this had any real moral value.” This is excellent Tahani foreshadowing but also I call bullshirt. 1) Doing good things inherently makes you feel better, so I think it would be very hard to find entirely selfless actions and 2) If you give care, time, or money to just causes and helping others whether you’re doing it for recognition or not you still have vastly improved someone’s life. It DOES count

“What if he reboots me and we fall out of love?” 😭😭😭 Let them be together!!!

Having Mindy live with her incurable addiction but be unable to fulfill it is a very medium thing to do

Eleanor’s first act of making herself comfortable in the Medium Place being putting photos of Tahani, Jason and Chidi 😭😭😭😭 She is SO endearing

Ajfhdkjhfsj Chidi immediately still wanting to jump in to defend Eleanor even after watching firsthand all the horrible things she did what kind of wholeass love and friendship

I have so many questions about where Janet’s genitals are located based on those diagrams, why did the second one not work

“I brought you two a little treat.” Oh my god Michael in Janet’s outfit hjkhkjhgkjfdk

Also I know it’s meant to be some form of torture, and like remind them of their impending doom. But what I see is a guy giving his friends a little snack

“I’m sorry Eleanor, but I engaged a ride-or-die protocol, so I’m loyal to Jason forever.” Get u a wife like Janet

The real question is why they had Kristen Bell play her high school self in a flashback if they were going to cast a teenager to play her later anyway 

Also as much as I love Kristen Bell: Definitely not a high schooler LMAO 

Maybe to draw a distinction between things she purposely did without regard for other people (as her main self) vs. when she was subject to other people’s neglect as a kid 

“I was dropped into a cave, and you were my flashlight.” Eleanor saying goodbye with a reference to Plato’s Allegory of a Cave the ROMANCE

I’d heard that the actors didn’t know about the reveal until they shot this scene so I’d be curious to see if they broke at some point 

“Didn’t you raise like, $1,000 for charity or whatever?” “60 billion actually. But it didn’t matter, because my motivations were corrupt.” Yeah call me a consequentialist but for one final time: I just can’t buy that doing nice things for a selfish reason COMPLETELY negates it??? Tangibly improving someone’s life situation, no matter what reason, seems like a good action. Fuck you Kant

“Side note, I might legit be into Tahani.” Tahani’s [gay surprise] expression oh my god 

I love how quick Eleanor is to think on her feet. Improv master lmao

Hjhjhkjhkjhlkjh now reading the credits: Pleased that they cast a Bengali actress as a Real Eleanor (who said she was from Bangladesh—even though they were accurate for Manny Jacinto’s ethnicity I wasn’t really sure if they would be regionally specific, like as far as I know William Jackson Harper doesn’t specifically identify as Senegalese

Also: Kills me that Bambadjan’s real name is Bambadjan, which implies both that his name is better than whatever name they had in the script, and that he is playing himself

“Eleanor - Bad Place,” would actually be one letter less than “Eleanor, Find Chidi,” but I understand that the message is less about identifying the lie and more about finding morality and her friends

We are finally progressing into the parts of the show I don’t know/remember 

“I won’t let you down.” “I think you will. I think this entire project of yours is stupid and doomed to fail. I think you’re going to be retired, eliminated from existence, and burned on the surface of a billion suns. And I have no doubt that you and your cockamamie experiment will go down in history as colossal failures.” “You know I think that—” “Toodeloo.” My high school guidance counselor to me when I said I wanted to go to school out of province lmao

“I can’t wait to have breakfast with Kant, and lunch with Michel Foucault, and then have dinner with Kant with Kant again so we can talk about what came up at breakfast.” “I’m sorry Chidi, all the great philosophers in history ended up in the Bad Place.” I believe this

I thought for a second Pedro, Angelique and Pevita were ALL Chidi’s potential soulmates and got excited, but straight people strike again lmao:

I have been wondering for a while whether or not sexuality plays into soulmates though. Does anyone have platonic soulmates in the afterlife lmao

“But good, would I go as far as to say to say you look good? Doubtful.” Chidi trying to be the appropriate amount of nice turns into negging lmao

Rhkjhgjhgg Eleanor immediately recognizing the slightly more whack energy this time around

“Charmed, I’m short.” Fghgkhgkgh the immediate fixation on her soulmate’s height and appearance in a way she didn’t do so meanspiritedly for any of the gang. Tahani said all of my friends are hot and Eleanor’s the only one allowed to be short

Tahani said: If Eleanor’s busy, I’ll step up to the plate to represent the Girlies Who Are Seconds Away From Losing It at All Times:

“Some of the [soulmate] pairings are platonic, some are romantic.” I guess that answers that question

Honestly didn’t think about it until now but it’s impressive that Jason can wear a Buddhist’s monks’ clothes the exact correct way based only on a single observation. He shows his intelligence in his way!!

“I am a Ferrari, and you don’t keep a Ferrari in the garage.” Vicky aka Real Eleanor knows her worth

The parallel storylines revealing what each character has been doing are very fun

Genuinely impressed by how much prop paper Kristen Bell just ate

“I’m too young to die, and too old to eat off the kids menu! What a stupid age I am.” Me too, Jason:

I also think having to go to a jazz show would tip me off that I’m in hell

“This is your soulmate, Tahani.” I know you can have a platonic soulmate now but I believe in my heart that this one wasn’t 

“Can you just chill out? Is that possible, Janet? Can you just chill out a little?” “Nope, it’s gonna be the same every time.” Me talking to my mother LMAO

“We are on strike until our demands are met.” #PayYourWriters

It’s impressive how many times Michael has managed to lose most of the only four people his entire neighbourhood is designed for

Chidi not hesitating for a second to tell Eleanor he loves her back:

“How many times have Chidi and I slept together?” “Eight different days, but like 20 different sessions.” GOOD FOR THEM LMAO

“I want to team up with you guys.” Michael said: Let me in the gang 💗

I am also genuinely endeared by Michael. His definition of torture is honestly so polite. Jazz and froyo LMAO 

“I’m sorry, has it been 100 hours?” Hahahaha I love how Tahani is genuinely intimidated by Eleanor’s confident dismissal 

Ethics question: If Tahani’s lack of care of other people is the reason she ended up in the Bad Place, do they also take into account the emotional abuse by her whole family and the way other people insistently dismissed her for Kamilah as part of that motive? Does enduring that so many times without complaint not tip the scales in her favour at all?

“And since you’re the only actual humans here, I’m on board for whatever fun little schemes you guys come up with.” Janet’s ride-or-die protocol is still engaged at heart

“Make all your memos one page, max, with pictures.” Vicky would’ve fit right in for the [Redacted] presidency

“These Millennials, they have no work ethic. Oh, sorry, a Millennial is someone who’s only been torturing people for a thousand years.”

This really is a good summary of what it’s like to take a philosophy class:

“Man, repressing your feelings is great.” Michael’s midlife crisis is very human man, down the to convertible and the much younger woman

Gdhkhdkjdh Tahani 🤝 Michael

Having very benign visions of what being tortured is like, as with someone throwing a better party than you

This is the line I quote most from this show out of everything:

[Gasps] “A family pack?” Me 🤝 Eleanor

Unprocessed spicy memories bubbling up in the middle of a mundane task in a communal space 

“You’re cool, dope, fresh and smart-brained. I’ve never seen you dance, but I bet you’re good. Because... you’re good at everything. You’re awesome. Be nicer to yourself.” Tahani 🤝 Jason 🤝 Jason

Falling in love anyone who is nice to you for more than a few minutes

“What do you think about writing a rap musical about Kierkegaard?” I want to read the songs that Chidi wrote LOL

“My name is Kierkegaard, and my writing is impeccable. Check out my teleological suspension of the ethical.” THANK YOU CHIDI FOR IMMMEDIATELY DELIVERING

You can tell this was filmed in 2017 because it is PEAK Hamilton era

“Plus they’re all French, so they’re going to the bad place automatically.” HGGHKGHGHKGH. Oh the French

“You’ve never dated anyone like Jason before.” Not Tahani getting love advice from Jason’s ex-wife

Take a shot everytime someone in this show says, “This is why everyone hates moral philosophy professors.”

Michael said: Chidi please adapt to my practical learning style

“But I tell her she’s pretty a hundred times a day, and she’s never said I’m pretty once.” Illegal. Tahani should be court-ordered to tell Jason he’s pretty

I believe in my whole heart that Janet lost a thumb because even as their couple’s therapist, she is still in love with Jason

“I’m your hottest friend. No, Tahani. I’m your nicest fr— no, Jason. I’m your friend!” LMAO at least Eleanor is self-aware

Fkfkjfhfjfh I guess technically Michael was doing his job by torturing Chidi

Also imagine the psychological trauma Chidi absorbs from having to decide to kill people so many times in the trolley problem. A reboot button would be helpful for him now 

“Aw, I’m happy for you guys.” [retches and vomits out a frog] JANETJASON ENDGAME

Michael’s little evil laugh also gets me every time. I love Ted Danson

“I call them ‘opposite tortures.’” “Do you mean, ‘presents?’” Hahahaha

Chidi’s a better or more morally stagnant inflexible than I am because I do think making people happy is a good thing even if the gifts are bribes in pursuit of forgiveness 

The way Janet malfunctions every time she supports Jason and Tahani. SHE’S IN LOOOOOVE

“Glitches may be a sign that your Janet is processing or disseminating information that is incompatible with objective truth.” Because she’s lying about her feeeelings

VINDICATIONNNNNNNNNNNN:

[Chanting] “Kill me, kill me, kill me, kill me.” Janet is perfect and also Jason was right she is Michael’s family LMAO

“The reason is friends!! You’re my friend, Janet, that’s why I can’t kill you.” MICHAEL SAID I AM A DEMON WHO CAN GROW

“This is my new rebound boyfriend Derek. I made him!” OH MY GOD

I guess Tahani and Jason have one thing in common aside from being hot: Their irreverant disregard for everything outside of themselves hahahaha

The cut between Tahani and Jason having a picnic and deciding to get married vs. Chidi, Eleanor and Michael having an ethical dilemma about whether to break them up the greater good of society (themselves)

“That [teacher-student relationship] used to happen a lot at Lynyrd Skynyrd High School, but this time you won’t be arrested.” 1) Someone please help the people at this high school and 2) We know that these are not the vows Jason is meant to have. Send Nude Pics of Your Heart to Me lives in my heart forever

Fjfkhfhfkj Poor Janet, she’s been through more human emotions in the past couple of weeks than in any iteration of herself before:

Eleanor ready to take the opportunity to forget she’s in love with Chidi jghkghg

“This isn’t about your wind-chime penis, in fact it’s not about you at all.” Underrated line from Janet LMAO

[Concerned] “Can you get pregnant from reabsorbing?” I would like to believe this is a lingering hint of jealousy from Jason

FKSJHSKJHS THE FACT EVERYONE LISTENS WHEN ELEANOR TELLS THEM NOT TO LOOK

This episode is emotionally a bummer for all involved couples 

“You really did just come here to chat. To shoot the shirt with your ole pal Eleanor.” “I guess so, why?” “It’s just a very human-y thing to do.” Michael and Eleanor are perhaps my favourite friendship

Eleanor said I’ve only had Michael as a friend for two weeks but if anything happened to him I’d stake the eternal souls of everyone in this room and then myself:

“What the here, dude?” Hahahahaha also a good line

“The other worst moment of Tahani’s life? Every other moment of her empty, pointless life.” This is like that scene in She-ra where they’re like ‘this feels way more personal compared to fire’ 

However, I do appreciate the dropping of hints that Michael is laying out: “Derek” Bortles - last song of a party -  the train/trolley

Janet’s version of magnet intoxication wanting to braid people’s hair is Peak Drunk Not-A-Girl in the Bathroom of a Nightclub Energy

[Sobbing] “You’re my friends and I wanted to save you.” I love one (1) Demon Buddy

Honestly props to Eleanor for figuring out Michael meant for them to stay because I personally would’ve interpreted the mention of Mindy St. Clair as enough reason to go 

“Here’s a willing sex robot and two duffel bags full of cocaine.” Mindy’s Medium Place is going to tip the scales in favour of the positive for her I guess lmao

“Maybe I should’ve realized this wasn’t the good place because of all the diarrhea.” “Maybe you shouldn’t be eating frozen yogurt right now.” Jason providing our Asian Lactose Intolerance Representation 😌💕

It actually does make sense that Eleanor loves Chidi when Chidi does not return those feelings because aside from the fact she has had that knowledge several weeks longer than Chidi, she is also a person who has consistently trusted her gut, and her gut tells her that she loves him, whereas Chidi needs time to think it out

“Once, you handed him a tissue right before he sneezed nd that simple act of anticipating his needs made him fall for you.” 1) Cute and 2) This isssss a love language

Ghkhgghkghg Michael coming into this with no plan and hoping to discover one along the way. Relatable demon 

The height difference with Tahani and everyone else is really apparent in this shot:

Chidi and Jason in particular doing the same dance move is so endearing. They all have something in common!! 

“All every wanted to was to know what it was like to be human. And now we’re going to do the most human thing of all. Attempt something futile with a ton of unearned confidence and fail spectacularly.”

Michael 🤝 Greed from FMA

Being primarily motivated by their love of their homies and general inclination towards more human emotion than any of their counterparts

“As long as I’m with you guys, I’m always in the Fake Good Place.” I want to give Michael a little kiss on the forehead

 “I just made an aphorism.” I just learned a new word

“Any time I had a problem and I threw a molotov cocktail, boom, right away, I had a different problem.” Jason does think outside the box

Tahani’s American accent is actually very good lmao 

“Principles aren’t principles when you pick and choose when you’re going to follow them.” I understand here Chidi means ‘principles’ to mean ‘fundamental truths’ and not ‘moral decisions’ but when it comes to an ethical principle, a person is always going to decide to follow it or not. That is the nature of being autonomous 

Unrelated to anything that’s going on in the Bad Place, the costume change really highlights that Manny Jacinto is so incredibly handsome, look at him, he’s like a painting:

Fully did not realize that Dax Shepard makes a guest appearance in the Bad Place. However. I believe it 

“Hang out with Johnny Depp enough, you become pretty good at lying.” This feels like a prophecy of some sort

“But then I remembered: I’m a naughty bitch.” The dialogue in this show has really transformed since they started being allowed to swear

“A moral particularist, like me—I’m one now, I just decided—would say there’s no absolute rule. You have to choose your actions based on the particular situation.” Turns out I am also somewhat of a moral particularist, Eleanor 

Honestly shocked and perplexed that it’s taken THIS long for anyone to catch Michael in a lie

Say what you will about Jason, he’s very good at molotov cocktails and knowing his own heart

“Goodbye Eleanor.” MICHAELLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLL. He is the best demon buddy they could ever ask for:

I don’t know who I envisioned as the All-Knowing Judge of All Realms but I do feel like Maya Rudolph is a strong choice

“In the words of one of my actual friends: Ya basic.” I love Michael absorbing Eleanor’s vocabulary

Tahani’s soft gasp and “Oh no,” at what the spa employees and bikini waxers think of her kjgkhgjhg. Fair and relatable but you’d think it’d be the butlers and waiters, considering it’s a morality test

The gang wanting to all stay together in their failure or success 🥺 I love them

You know, I think Tahani letting go of what her parents think of her IS success, even if it’s not technically the exercise

GO JANETTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTT

Eleanor choosing not to reveal that she is the only one who has gotten past her fatal flaw (selfishness, as opposed to Chidi, Jason and Tahani failing to get past their indecisiveness, impulsivity and care of how others think of her) is also her being selfless 

“Hey guys! How ya been?” THE GANG’S ALL BACK TOGETHER:

“If I’m right, the system by which we judge humans, the very method we use to deem them good or bad, is so fundamentally flawed that hundreds of millions of people have been wrongly condemned to an eternity of torture.” THAT’S WHAT I’VE BEEN SAYING, MICHAEL

“Whatever progress I have made, it’s because you and I have become friends.” I love Tahani and Eleanor’s friendship, they’re so sweet

“Jason, I love you.” “Oh, word?” “Word.” JASONJANET ENDGAME 💘

“I think I love you too girl.” YEAHHHHHHHHHHHHHH JASON!!! HE DOESN’T KNOW MUCH, BUT HE KNOWS HIS HEART

DOUBLE YEAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH, GO CHIDI, HE KNOWS HIS HEART TOO:

They all love each other so much they don’t want to be in separate Medium Places 😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭 THEY ARE THE CUTEST FRIEND GROUP

Hahaha, I notice that her roommates call her Elea-NOR instead of Elea-NER like her friends do which feels like something intentional 

“Do you want to come to Lauren’s baby shower?” “Do you want to chew on my ASS-ortment of brownies that I will be bringing to Lauren’s baby shower?” [Eleanor Shellstrop voice] Pobody’s nerfect

“That took a lot of courage for you to admit that, and I admire your honesty. You stupid skank! How could you do that to me? I hate you!” Newly Not Dead Eleanor is about to learn about moral particularism 

“I still think he’s kind of hot.” “I guess, in like a sick Victorian boy kind of way.” “Oooh, yeah yeah yeah, I want to like, feed him soup.” Brittany is fun. Also I know they said Benedict Cumberbatch but this is exactly how people talk about Timothy Chalamet

Michael loves his friends so much he cannot help but nudge them along through Moral Interventions at the Sports Bar:

“I argue that we choose to be good because of our bonds with other people, and our innate desire to treat them with dignity. Simply put: We are not in this alone.” I LOVE this brand of moral philosophy

Also this last nudge to bringing them back together is a really great way to end this season. This show is SO GOOD 

[aalghul]

oooh what IS ur fave race for jason 👀👀👀🥰

punjabi! it’s projection. i can’t pretend it’s anything else. dc didnt give me a punjabi character so i decided that Jason should be. also, i think that Sikhi would be a more interesting religion for Jason than Catholicism. because i’m sick of seeing Catholic symbolism💗 That’s just on Willis’ side.

Now, we all know that Starlin is racist and probably just forgot that Asians are not white. But he did have Sandra (East Asian, not to mention “Shiva” being a Hindu goddess) and a woman from “Israel” (Palestine) be conceivable possible biological mothers for Jason, and I’ll never let DC forget it. “But Sheila, his actual bio mom, is white?” Yes, but the blonde hair could be dyed, for whatever reason (dark hair absorbs more sunlight and she spends her day out in the sun all day, everyday. I don’t know, man). Also, blue and other rarer eye colours are not actually impossible to find across Asia. West, Central and South Asia especially. That brings me to my personal headcanon of Sheila being Assamese, the major ethnic group of Assam in Northeast India. IMO, Willis being Punjabi already gives us the possibility that Jason has features similar enough to someone from the general Palestine area. In general though, there’s a lot more diversity in South, West and Central Asia than people understand. An Assamese person can have blue eyes and features similar to a character who is only written as ~vaguely East Asian~. (So can a Bengali or Nepali person. Or any of the many other people in South Asia because most ethnic groups have a diversity of features. This is just my choice.)

This is so complicated but Jason is the only white character I’m this attached to so obviously I’m going to have fun with him.

Tl;dr: Punjabi on Willis’ side, Assamese on Sheila’s. And, hmmm, I think second generation American.

[i-watch-too-many-movies]

5 Favorite First Viewings of July 2021

Quick note: Hi everyone, I'm back, things have honestly been getting better for me, and I'm glad to be on this site full of cinephiles, people that are too horny, and cinephiles that are too horny. I'll be more active on here. But anyway, let's talk about some movies.

Beyond the Valley of the Dolls (1970) (dir. Russ Meyer)

CW: Abortion mention

What a picture. What a gorgeous, sexy, horrifying slice of what Hollywood and star life can do to a bunch of bright-eyed young people looking for success. Also is a critique of how macho nature can ruin friendships and romantic relationships with total ease. I was obsessed with the scene transitions, like Pet pouring pancake mix onto a plate after the abortion scene, or Kelly singing after someone screams before their murder in the opening scene.

Great, campy flick with exceptional music too.

Deep Cover (1992) (dir. Bill Duke)

Laurence Fishburne plays Russell Stevens, a Cincinnati police officer who hopes to do well by the community, to make a difference. He’s traumatized by the death of his substance-abusing father, and wants to make sure that he can help the people of his own town. He goes undercover on assignment as a drug dealer, where his boss orders him to take down the kingpin. Stevens realizes the police’s own failings while on assignment. The racist abuse he takes from Agent Carver, and the realization that the police department is protecting drug kingpins like Gallegos and Barbossa. Giving drugs to Black kids and Latinx kids so there will be less of them. The cops are no different than the drug kingpins looking to make filthy amounts of money.

Fishburne’s performance is excellent, as Stevens feels he has to maintain a stone face so he doesn’t get caught by Jason or Barbossa or any of his cronies, but also he maintains a stone face to try and hide his emotion, his trauma. But when he gets pissed, Fishburne acts it beautifully, as is when he has to deliver a funny quip to counter Jason’s douchebaggery. And the production design, holy fuck, the sets and the lighting.

A perfect neo-noir for the HW Bush years, arguably one of the most timeless commentaries on the era, as well as the police as a whole.

Fast Five (2011) (dir. Justin Lin)

I was torn between including this or Furious 7, but I ultimately went with Fast Five because it felt like an important turning point in the series, it's a great heist film, and it reached the same chaotic highs and genuinely excellent filmmaking that I had been waiting for since 2 Fast and Tokyo Drift.

Fast Five opens where Fast & 4ious left off. Dom is hauled away to prison on a bus. Mia and Brian drive in their high-tech cars and knock the bus over, helping Dom escape. The title drops. Fast Five. It’s such an intense yet short action scene, and dropping the title immediately after it lets the viewer know that this movie is not fucking around. It’s arguably gonna be more intense and insane than the previous one.

And it is. The filmmakers made the decision to use a lot more practical stunt work for the film, and as a result, it leads to, so far, the best action in the entire series, since 2 Fast and Tokyo Drift. It’s not just how it’s shot or edited, it’s the geography of the locations, the rooftop chase echoes the rooftop chase of Jackie Chan’s masterwork Police Story, particularly the way each character bounces from top to top.

And of course, there’s the silliest moment in the movie, the one that matches the intensity and kineticism of a film like 2 Fast, which is driving the Reyes’ bank vault throughout the street, getting chased by corrupt cops.

I know we make fun of Vin Diesel for saying “family” all the time in these films, but there’s a reason we remember him saying all of these impassioned monologues. Because he’s unbelievably sincere, and has so much love in his heart for every single person in the room. Anytime he delivers a speech to any of them, it’s genuinely heartwarming.

This is the film that finally shows La Familia in their best environment, which is working together, in a movie genre that allows them to work together, which is a heist film. And a great one at that.

Last Days (2005) (dir. Gus Van Sant)

CW: Mention of suicide

Several films have been made about legendary rock artist Kurt Cobain, and for good reason. He is one of the most tragic figures in rock and roll. A tortured genius who has written and performed classic song after classic song with his band Nirvana. He was called the voice of a generation, and helped change the face of mainstream alternative rock music as we know it. But with that fame, and all of those expectations came a worsening depression and further drug abuse, and his eventual death. But most of the films about Kurt Cobain ask one question which gets under my skin way too much:

“Who REEEEEEEEEEAAAAAAAAAAAAAAALLY killed Kurt Cobain?”

It was him. He did. And it’s okay, I’m sad too. Thinking that Kurt Cobain was murdered is completely ignoring the depression that he faced. And despite Last Days being more inspired by the death of Cobain rather than actually about it, it feels much more honest than the conspiracy documentaries on his death, wanting to leech off of his dead body.

This is the last installment of Gus Van Sant’s “Death Trilogy”, the previous two installments being Gerry (2001), and Elephant (2003). While I have not seen Gerry, I have seen Elephant though, and love that film for its minimalist, raw nature, and its boldness for not romanticizing the school shooter or the lives they had taken. Last Days falls into that trap once, as I don’t agree with the shot of Blake’s soul climbing up a ladder, that always struck me as cheesy in a film that is anything but.

Last Days is similar to Elephant in terms of the way it is filmed. Its usage of long takes, and still shots of characters doing various things, such as Blake playing his guitar behind a drum set. The way these moments are shot is similar to a Chantal Akerman film, particularly Jeanne Dielman. Where the acts of the mundane are the stars of the film. Blake wanders around an empty house, and the viewer can feel the pain, not just through Michael Pitt’s acting, but from the house itself. Its decay, its paint peeling from the walls, from the soft glow of the lamp that lights his face.

I say this is the most honest film about Kurt Cobain, because, despite the characters technically being fictional (the main character who looks, walks, and acts like Cobain is named Blake), this film focuses on the mental state of a person before they eventually take their own life. They’re still working, still making music, still trying to talk to friends and bandmates, but the depression lingers on. Not once does this film try to make you believe that someone else killed him, because you can see the signs of his own suicide taking place just through the film’s excellent cinematography by Harris Savides, showing his mental state only growing worse through the production design.

And it’s empathetic with him. There’s no judgement for leaving rehab, there’s no finger-wagging at him or the people he was with, there’s just a silent prayer at the end of the film, hoping that he is in a better place than he was.

Sometimes you don’t need to show every event that led you to where you are, all you can show is the moment, which also makes this better than most biopics as well, as it never feels messy or muddled, just showing one moment of Blake/Kurt’s life.

I really loved this film, and I’ll be writing about it in full soon.

The Village (2004) (dir. M. Night Shyamalan)

The Cracked.com/Channel Awesome audience stuck in 2012 will tell you that this was the beginning of the end for Shyamalan. That this was when people stopped taking him seriously, that this was when he became more of a punchline because of his twist endings.

But why?

The Village was released in 2004, deep in the Bush administration, during the early stages of the Iraq War. The leaders of the time were talking about imaginary boogeymen, terrorists that would attack the civilians if they could. Because of 9/11, politicians could get away with these false ideas with the majority of Americans fully believing them. The boogeymen in The Village are “The People We Don’t Speak Of”, monsters attracted by the color red. Yet we find out that they are all costumes made by the Elders of the land, designed to prevent people from going outside the land. They rule by fear disguised as love. They’ve gone through their own traumas through the deaths of their family members, but they’ve decided to completely abandon the lives that they’ve had and have their children living lies.

9/11 impacted American life by teaching citizens to live primarily by fear, to not trust anyone but their own people. And yet, post-9/11, all that increased was not “coming together”, but hate crimes against South Asian people. The rage white Americans had felt led to conservative politicians pushing fear-mongering agendas, and said white Americans blindly accepted. The outside world was progressing, but too many people were fine with living with further conservative politics only regressing American life further and further back, all for the illusion of safety. Meanwhile, the only threats to them were not the brown citizens outside of America they were so afraid of, but the white elders, the white politicians.

The Village explores these fears so eloquently, all while having a terrifying atmosphere, an enchanting score, and brilliant sound design. I enjoyed this movie very much.

Other viewings I enjoyed:

Beavis and Butt-Head Do America (1996) (dir. Mike Judge) (re-watch)

Blow Out (1981) (dir. Brian de Palma) (re-watch)

Clueless (1995) (dir. Amy Heckerling) (re-watch)

Furious 7 (2015) (dir. James Wan)

The Long Goodbye (1973) (dir. Robert Altman)

Lupin III: The First (2019) (dir. Takashi Yamazaki)

Unbreakable (2000) (dir. M. Night Shyamalan) (re-watch)

Velvet Goldmine (1998) (dir. Todd Haynes)

The Visit (2015) (dir. M. Night Shyamalan)

[dustedmagazine]

Dust Volume 6, Number 1

A new year means new music. At least eventually, it does, though January is notoriously slow for album releases. Meanwhile, there’s plenty we missed from late (and mid and even early) 2019, so let’s dig into that for one last big Dust. Here we cover subcontinental LGBTQ gangsta rap, industrial clangor, string quartets, Welsh agitpunk, electronics, free jazz, blackened death metal and an odd, charming collaboration between Cate Le Bon and Bradford Cox (see photo). Writers include Bill Meyer, Jennifer Kelly, Ian Mathers, Tobias Carroll, Andrew Forell, Ray Garraty, Jason Gioncontere, Ethan Militsky and Jonathan Shaw.

Jeb Bishop / Alex Ward / Weasel Walter — Flayed (Ugexplode)

Flayed by Jeb Bishop / Alex Ward / Weasel Walter

You know a party is good if it carries on even though the organizer can’t show up. Bassist Damon Smith planned this encounter, which involved his long-term partner in intensity and chaos, drummer Weasel Walter; New England improvisational fellow traveler (at least until Smith moved to St. Louis a few months after this March, 2019 session) Jeb Bishop on trombone and electronics; and Alex Ward, a veteran of work with Derek Bailey and This Is Not This Heat, on guitar and clarinet. Since Walter has played with both of the other guys in and outside of the Flying Luttenbachers, when Smith had to drop out for scheduling reasons, he was confident that the trio could make something of both the opportunity to play and the space made available by the absent bass. He was right. Both the title and prevailing assumptions about Walter might set you up to expect a one-dimensional blowout, but there’s loads of listening and thoughtful, instant reacting taking place on each of the album’s eight, mostly pithy tracks. This music plays out like a combination of jujitsu and shuttle diplomacy, with players shifting between support and challenge, density and space, rapidity and reserve from second to second.

Bill Meyer  

 Cartel Madras — Age of the Goonda (Sub Pop)

Cartel Madras turns gangsta rap’s hyper-male, African-American-oriented bravado on its side, filtering the guns and blunts ethos through a female, queer, multicultural lens without diluting its violence in the least. Sisters Priya and Bhagya Ramesh, known as Contra and Eboshi, have lived in Calgary since childhood, but they immigrated from Chennai, India, once part of Madras, hence the name, hence the tricky scales and intricate, not-quite-Western rhythms of their rhymes. Age of the Goonda works in a spare, menacing way, dense, referential wordplay atop an undulating threat of sub-bass and the occasional spray of bullets.

“Goonda Gold,” celebrates cartoonish dominance, though with a South Asian twist. Little bits of Hindi harmonics decorate the bare architecture of synth bass sounds and cracking, stabbing percussion (augmented here by gunfire); the Cartel’s chant of “Gold on my neck I’m a Goonda/got guns in the air like a junta” puts a subcontinental spin on ghetto law. The clever-est word sprays come in “The Legend of Jalopeno Boiz,” where the duo references everything from Frost/Nixon to incel stereotypes, but the single “Lil Pump Type Beat,” is all hedonism, devious syncopation and sexual predation. Though wildly intersectional, these tracks make no concessions to soft, liberal ideas about how women/minorities/LGBTQ people wield power; they do it just like the men do, with guns. “Take off your top boy/somebody bring me my gun/that bag in the back of the jeep/you just a bitch on the run,” asserts one or the other sister in “Jumpscare.” What was that you were saying about women and nurture?

Jennifer Kelly

 CIA Debutante — The Landlord (Siltbreeze)

CIA Debutante-The Landlord by CIA Debutante

A new Siltbreeze record is a rare blessing nowadays. The label’s first release since 2018 comes from Paris duo CIA Debutante. The Landlord fits in nicely with the label’s storied '90s output, particularly the Shadow Ring. The electronics aren’t quite glitchy—they sound more like the batteries in a cheap toy dying. Still, CIA Debutante are savvy enough to avoid getting too clever with their sputtering, plodding, and whizzing, and they don’t go the easy route when layering incongruous sounds. There’s never the fatiguing sense that they rely on the same few tricks. It helps that their murky, paranoid vignettes are fully engrossing. CIA Debutante tap into something truly nightmarish on The Landlord, which is a rare accomplishment. Sure, plenty of music shoots for tense and creepy, but CIA Debutante have an exceptional gift for the uncanny, the kind of stuff that haunts you long after you’ve woken up and can no longer hope to grasp it. Ethan Milititsky

Decoherence — Ekpyrosis (Sentient Ruin Laboratories)

Ekpyrosis by Decoherence

Decoherence is a pretty good name for a band that locates itself in the liminal space between industrial music’s stomp and clangor and black metal’s astringent tumult. The band’s new LP (and first full length release) Ekpyrosis is at its best when its waves of distorted hiss, dissonant riffing and distant shrieks and growls threaten to rend the record to shreds. One imagines that if you found yourself in an aluminum ladder factory, amid the massive drills and extruding machines and metal presses and then removed your ear protectors, you’d hear something akin to this — especially if the place was possessed by demons of ill intent. It’s a well-crafted, ritualized chaos. The band is so insistent on a specific set of sounds and forms that the record’s long tracks tend to blur into one another. Which may be the point. Decoherence, indeed.

Jonathan Shaw

 Bertrand Denzler / CoÔ — Arc (Potlatch)

Arc is a two-part, album-length work by Bertrand Denzler, a Swiss-born, Paris-based saxophonist and composer. It is performed by CoÔ, a string septet led by double bassist Félicie Bazelaire. The ensemble’s composition is a sort of funhouse reflection of a string quartet, distorted towards breadth; it comprises one violin, two violas, one cello and three double basses. But there’s nothing comic about this music, which is quite beautiful in the same way as a slow winter sunset. Denzler’s method here involves the use of continuous sounds, but don’t call it drone. The players use both conventional and extended techniques to create a continually changing sequence of striated sounds. Naked scrapes and cavernous groans arc in formation, changing fairly frequently over the course of each piece. The result is immersive enough to let you get lost, but keep your ears and eyes open; you wouldn’t want to miss one moment of gradual transition. A note about circumstances — Potlatch, the label that released this CD, has slowed its production in recent years, and this is the only record it released in 2018. Apparently, the label isn’t wasting its time with unnecessary effort; Arc clears the necessity bar.

Bill Meyer

 Fujiya & Miyagi — Flashback (Impossible Objects of Desire)

One of the interesting things about Fujiya & Miyagi’s songwriting is that as the UK post-motorik outfit’s music becomes ever more focused and sleekly propulsive, frontman David Best has zeroed in on any number of little aspects of life disturb and upset the kind of cool pulse the band specializes in. Here it’s everything from violations of your “Personal Space,” the “Fear of Missing Out,” and nagging thoughts in the title track to the more political concerns of the closing lengthy workout of “Gammon” (which eventually, in one of the little touches that makes F&M’s music so addictive, settles on the “pure evil vibrating” of a dial-up modem). That doesn’t mean the band can no longer bust a groove just for the pure joy of it, as “Dying Swan Act” proves, but it’s the combination of those chops and the perceptive if increasingly jaundiced eye they turn on life that makes them such a unique and compelling act.

Ian Mathers

 Cate Le Bon & Bradford Cox — Myths 400 (Mexican Summer)

Myths 004 by Cate Le Bon & Bradford Cox

Intricate fancies turn just out of true in this pop-up collaboration between Cate Le Bon and Deerhunter’s Bradford Cox, the fourth in a series of joint EPs recorded under the auspices of Mexican Summer’s annual Marfa Myths festival (hence Myths 400). The two artists work in a skewed, peripheral vision take on artful pop, building interlocking boxes of percussion and whimsey in which fleeting glimpses of loveliness flit by. The song-i-est bit of Myths 400 is undoubtedly “Secretary,” a Weimar-decadent bit of mournful song hedged in clanks and clicks, strings and clarinets, and the odd combination of Le Bon’s pure art-song shiver and Cox’s less pristine, more grounded voice. Yet the rhythm-centered oddities are just as rewarding; resist the slap-bang fanciful-ness of growly-voiced, Cox-led “Fireman,” with Le Bon trilling off center arias in the margins at your own peril. “What Is She Wearing” bangs out disconsonant guitar tones in slightly off center patterns and tunings; it’s a wind-up toy’s existential crisis. Le Bon chants in a Middle European cadence, as the cut falls somewhere between early Michachu and a Kurt Weil song. It’s about the last thing you’d expect to emerge from the desert, eccentric, abstracted, playful and utterly urbane.

Jennifer Kelly

  Urs Leimgruber / Andreas Willers / Alvin Curran / Fabrizio Sperra—Rome-ing (Leo)

Urs Leimgruber has covered a lot of musical ground in a performing and recording career that spans over 45 years. The three musicians who join the Swiss saxophonist on this freely improvised encounter, which was recorded in Rome late in 2018, are well chosen to access aspects of that history and shape it into sound configurations that are quite present-focused. Quick, light-fingered, and restless, drummer Fabrizio Sperra keeps things in constant motion. Swiss guitarist Andreas Willers stirs chunks of almost rock-ish noise and sprinkles stinging, pure-toned notes into the mix that give the music heft without slowing it down. Alvin Curran, an American keyboardist and composer (and member of MEV), draws on classical more than jazz elements in his piano playing; there are moments where he stubbornly erects a structure that the other musicians must either inhabit or work around. But his sampler also enables him to inject the sounds of other places. Shifting between tenor and saxophones, Leimgruber drives quickly spiraling phrases through the open spaces and uses astringent, distressed tone-shards to suggest where there needs to be more space.

Bill Meyer

 The Master Musicians of Dyffryn Moor — Music for the National Health Service (Amgueddfa Llwch)

Music for the National Health Service by The Master Musicians of Dyffryn Moor

When I was a younger punk, I would sometimes take in the phenomenon of bands’ whose lyrical explanations would take longer to deliver than the playing of the actual songs. And while I haven’t seen this crop up much recently, I feel like that aesthetic is alive and well when I visit the Bandcamp page of The Master Musicians of Dyffryn Moor, which includes a terse essay about the dangers facing the NHS under the current British government. This new EP follows two excellent full-lengths, Cerddoriaeth Ddefodol Gogledd Sir Benfro (Ritual Music of North Pembrokeshire) and Contemporary Protest Music, which blend the “instrumental music can be politically charged” feel of Godspeed You! Black Emperor with the intricacy of Steve Reich’s Drumming. These two songs continue in that tradition — furiously played percussion with a heated political subtext — but add a few tweaks to the sound the group has already established. Specifically, there’s a stronger electronic element here: you could probably get a dancefloor moving if you cued up “A spell to protect the NHS from those who seek to destroy it.” Its opposite number, “A hex on those who seek to destroy the NHS,” is built around a steady pulse. You probably can’t dance as well to that, but given the potential psychic damage incurred by dancing to a hex, would you actually want to?

Tobias Carroll 

 Overground Collective — Super Mario (Babel Label)

SUPER MARIO by OverGround Collective

The Overground Collective is a pan-European big band that is based in London and led by Paulo Duarte, a Portuguese guitarist/composer currently based in Scandinavia. If that sounds like a bit to get your head around, you probably need only wait a while to see what Boris’s Britain does to the freedoms of movement and thought necessary for such an endeavor to get off the ground. For the rest of us, it’s a nice illustration of why such fluidity is part of a better way. Duarte spent some time in England studying the ways of various improvisers, and recruited 17 to join him in realizing a set of compositions designed expressly for them. Certain of the participants come from free jazz (Julie Kjaer, Rachel Musson) or cross-genre experimentation (Yazz Ahmed), and you can hear the influence of such approaches in a few moments of freefall and adventurously conceived solos. But these elements fit into a structure that fits squarely in the tradition. Duarte sets tunes you could hum on grooves that’ll make you tap your feet, albeit quickly enough to annoy your neighbor if the floorboards happen to transmit your amateur approximation of his beats, and dresses them up in arrangements that could speak to a person who thinks that jazz’s lineage is a straight line from Duke Ellington to Maria Schneider. Music like this is a reproach to those who think that differences can’t be complimentary parts of a whole.

Bill Meyer

  Pictish Trail — Thumb World (Fire)

Thumb World by Pictish Trail

Folktronica from the tiny island of Eigg in the Hebrides, this latest album by Pictish Trail (Johnny Lynch) demonstrates the aesthetic value of both isolation and connection. Per isolation: Lynch lives on a windblown island with fewer than 100 other people. But as for connection, he is intimately involved in a northerly folk scene through King Creosote’s Fence Records and surrounded by local musicians. There aren’t that many folks on Eigg, but almost everybody plays an instrument. That kind of environment allows space for eccentricity and practice, which shows up on these expansive, dance-inflected, folk-shadowed cuts. Pictish Trail enlarges his subtle, personal songs with enveloping arrangements of rock sounds and club electronics; Kim Moore contributes some string arrangements and Alex Thomas of Squarepusher sits in on drums. “Double Sided” has the lilt and ramble of Three EPs Beta Band (Lynch has been out touring with Steve Mason lately), while gorgeous, glistening “Slow Memories” has the glitch, glow and aura of early Tunng. Thumb World demonstrates that music can be solitary without being lonely, introspective without self-absorbation. “You’re my solitude/I’m never so alone by myself,” sings Lynch, on the surprisingly rock-guitared “Bad Algebra,” underlining the fact that too many people (or the wrong people) can be isolating, and a few can provide the space for originality and experiment.

Jennifer Kelly

Pinkish Black — Concept Unification (Relapse)

Texas psych sludge prog metal duo Pinkish Black has been quiet for a little while; their last record, 2015’s Bottom of the Morning, was such a compact and potent summation of the miasmic bad vibes that Daron Beck (synthesizers, voice) and Jon Teague (drums) can summon up seemingly at will. No more than a minute into the opening title track of their fourth record you get a strong reminder of just that atmosphere; you might as well be in a haunted castle during the full moon. The closing, lengthy “Next Solution” also offers a reminder of what you might call classic Pinkish Black, but it’s the four songs in between that show Beck and Teague working to make sure there is always room to expand their dark palette. Whether it’s the relatively straightforward, thrashy “Until” or the prettily drifting “Inanimatronic” the results are always interesting. Bottom of the Morning remains the best introduction for now to this duo’s indelible sound, but once you’re a fan Concept Unification makes for a strong and promising follow-up.  

Ian Mathers

  Alexa Rose—Medicine for Living (Big Legal Mess)

“How I wish I were kinder, how I wish I were patient, I could learn all the songs on the gospel station,” trills Alexa Rose in a water pure soprano touched with shivery vibrato as she navigates the twists and corners of the title track from her lovely debut album. The Virginia-born, Memphis-based songwriter has a native’s familiarity with gospel, country and folk blues, but a fresh, sparkling delivery that makes these well-worn forms sound like she just thought of them. A lilting, effortless voice elicits spare melancholy sparked with hope and a crack band of Americana pros in tow – Will Sexton on guitar, George Sluppick playing drums and Mark Edgard Stuart on bass — fill out the songs without a bit of bloat. “Tried and True” enlists a cajun squeeze box and skittering banjo into Rose’s smart, unsentimental songcraft; country teems with strong women disappointed by love, but Alexa Rose is clear-eyed and strong enough to kick its ass without breaking meter. Gorgeous and empowered stuff.

Jennifer Kelly

Sartegos — O Sangue da Noite (I, Voidhanger)

O Sangue da Noite by SARTEGOS

This new release by Sartegos isn’t so much blackened death metal as it is a death metal record that morphs its shape and sound into black metal. The buzzy crunch and acrobatic soloing of opener “Sangue e Noite” gradually give way to leaner, meaner riffs, and by the midpoint of fourth track “Solpor dos Mistérios,” the record has fully taken on the properties of merciless, muscular continental black metal. The record may engage with various metal subgenres, but O Sangue da Noite is held together by Sartegos’s focus on Galician nationalist themes and celebrations of its landscape. The band is named for a miniscule rural hamlet in Galicia, and we are told that all lyrics are delivered in the region’s native dialect. Black metal and ardent nationalism don’t always make for the happiest of combinations. For those of us lacking fluency in the language, it’s tough to know what ideological charge the lyrics carry. And Galician regional politics feature a panoply of leftist and right wing factions, all with their own fiery arguments for the region’s autonomy. What sort of blood? Who sings in the night? Hard to say. But the music’s pretty good.

Jonathan Shaw

 Seablite – Grass Stains and Novocaine (Emotional Response)

Bay Area quartet Seablite’s debut album navigates the fuzzy end of indie pop with aplomb. Vocalists Lauren Matsui (guitar) and Galine Tumasyan (bass) are joined by drummer Andy Pastalaniec and ex-Wax Idol Jen Mundy on lead guitar for 11 tracks of chipper, summery shoegaze that sit easily alongside their most obvious influences Lush, Curve and Stereolab. Seablite’s songs are elevated by the interplay of twin vocals, clean guitar lines and bouncy bass lines supported by cymbal heavy motorik drums. There’s steel beneath the gauze as Mundy brings a little of the Idols’ shade to proceedings and Pastalaniec drives songs like “Pillbox” and “Polygraph” hard and fast down a euphoric freeway of top-down thrumming thrills. Yes, it sounds like a lot of bands you’ve heard and maybe loved but Grass Stains and Novocaine is so well put together and convincingly played it’s hard to resist.

Andrew Forell

 Seiðr — Intethedens Afsky (Nattetale)

Seiðr is a one-man band from Denmark. For just one man, he was awfully busy in the past year, having put out three records. Intethedens Afsky can boast of 10 tracks of dirty, primitive sound with bursts of melody buried immediately under a wall of noise. The inspiration for Seiðr’s music can be found in early 1990s Norwegian black metal, and Claus H. (that’s his name) cannot be blamed for being too much of a good student. Why shouldn’t he have learnt from his elders? The first two tracks here have samples from “nature,” and this gives us a hint to how Seiðr’s music can be interpreted: it’s ruptures in Nature’s hellish landscape. No one will be saved.

Ray Garraty   

 Spider Bags — A Celebration of Hunger (Sophomore Lounge)

SPIDER BAGS "A Celebration of Hunger" by Spider Bags

Spider Bags are still around, making a record every three or four years for Merge. But listening to this debut, it’s hard to imagine how they did it. If subject matter reflects life style, then the motto of these guys back in 2008 was, “We do the hard stuff so there won’t be any left for you. Say, can you loan me a couple of twenties?” But there’s a self-observing intelligence at work in these songs that suggests that self-awareness wasn’t totally obliterated, and a loose, rumbling energy to these roots-tinged garage-rock songs that confirms that the Bags spent at least part of everyday upright. Add to that engineer Brian Paulson’s knack for getting sound under challenging circumstances, which renders the live-sounding performances with sufficient but not distracting clarity, and you have a good soundtrack for the next time you want to drink yourself off the barstool in the privacy of your own home.

Bill Meyer

 Luke Spook — Small Town (Third Eye Stimuli)

Australian multi-instrumentalist Luke Spook steps away from the garage-punk of his Pinheads to conjure up lysergic specters from bygone times on Small Town. There are a fair number of freaked out boil-overs in the offing but the general tone is one of reserved simplicity. Whether sipping tea with the subject of “The Owl” or gathering around the fire with some fellow townsfolk on the title track, Luke channels Syd Barrett to the point of becoming nearly indistinguishable. But what makes Small Town more than just a covers album is Luke’s ability to vary the intimacy of his arrangements when needed. “All the King’s Horses” features a harmonica solo backed up with an (accidental?) chorus of distant, wailing hounds. Those types of moments lurk beneath the surface and inject a pastoral quality that feels authentic. More quirky utopian village than small town, the world Spook creates is a place to live rather than to pass through.

Jason Gioncontere  

 Nick Storring — Qualms (Never Anything)

Qualms by Nick Storring

Nick Storring’s latest recording started life as the score for a dance performance, and it is easy to imagine how it might function in that role. The composition, which spans both sides of a cassette, is episodic. Each moment feels unique unto itself, creating an environment in which things — maybe movements, or maybe something in your own imagination — have the space to happen. If you caught him onstage with the group Picastro, you would probably see Storring play cello, but for Qualms he plays a couple dozen keyboard, stringed, percussive and woodwind instruments. This allows similar themes and actions to appear and reappear in different garb. One stalking theme, for example, manifests once as a psychedelically dense string melody, and again played by gamelan percussion. Elsewhere passages of meter-less sound temporarily halt the progress. Moments of Steve Reich-like repetition surface, but instead of locking in like they might in a Reich piece, they quickly morph into something else. The same pattern of change that probably made this a handy program for a dance performance makes it an engaging pure listening experience.

Bill Meyer

 Sun City Girls — Dawn of the Devi (Abduction)

Dawn of the Devi by Sun City Girls

Dawn of the Devi holds an important place in the Sun City Girls’ discography. Released in 1991, it was the follow up to the much-celebrated Torch of the Mystics, which remains one of the more tuneful and easily-relatable records that Charles Gocher and brothers Alan and Richard Bishop ever did. As such, it had a job to do, and it did it well. That was to throw the followers who sandals instead of sturdy shows off the track. They did this by serving up a song-free album of jagged, totally improvised jams. While it did the job at the time, and in doing so established a pattern of giving the people something other than what they want, in retrospect, you can appreciate it for another reason. Dawn of the Devi makes a pretty strong case for the trio as a rock-derived improvisational ensemble. They sound like they’re listening and responding to each other, and their transitions from acidic splatter to swooning hesitation or heavy ambush make intuitive sense. It wasn’t always that way.

Bill Meyer

 These New Puritans — Inside the Rose (BMG)

Essex experimentalists These New Puritans return with a lush yet disquieting take on English pastoralism. On Inside the Rose multi-instrumentalist twin brothers Jack and George Barnett create an often lovely, occasionally portentous, romantic paean to nature and love. As the Barnetts move further beyond the fractured post-punk of their debut Beat Pyramid, this, their fourth album, elaborates the use of contemporary classical and choral orchestration into arrangements that channel Talk Talk. Jack Barnett’s voice is high in the mix and evokes David Sylvian at his most emotive. Beneath the sheen and swooning strings George’s drumming shifts and slides between Reichian repetition and fierce Taiko inspired rhythms. Inside the Rose is a meticulously produced but never fussy collection, welcoming the listener but refusing either to compromise or patronize. A serious but accessible work full of carefully considered details, some gorgeous melodies and an almost Pre-Raphaelite sensibility expressed in a thoroughly contemporary manner.

Andrew Forell

 Various Artists — No Other Love (Tompkins Square)

No Other Love : Midwest Gospel (1965-1978) by Various Artists

No Other Love is, like the several albums that Mike McGonigal has compiled for different labels, a sequence of gospel records drawn from one collection. In this case it is the collection of Ramona Stout. She culled the 45s that make up this set from her husband Kevin’s trawls of records that had spent years in Chicagoan basements. A graduate student who had spent much of her life outside the USA, she saw with clear eyes the grime of American urban poverty, and found herself deeply compelled by the discovery that hopeful music could grow in such decay. There are no big stars amongst these recordings. Even at the time they were recorded they would have sounded rough and behind the times production-wise — just electric guitars, drum kits, whatever piano or organ was sitting in the church where they were recorded, and congregants’ voices. But the fervor of yearning and the joy of release makes every track a transporting listen.

Bill Meyer

 WOW — Come La Notte (Maple Death Records)

Come La Notte by wow

Underground Roman duo China Now (vocals, drums) and Leo Non (guitars) recent album as WOW, Come La Notte (Like the Night), is seven tracks of 1960s influenced Italian noir cabaret high on atmosphere and drama. Now’s almost operatic vocals are at the forefront over skeletal brushed drums, minimal bass and restrained guitar. The band lulls then surprises with a spectral sax and bursts of crashing cymbals and feedback on “Niente Di Speciale” (“Nothing Special”), a keening gypsy violin on “Vieni Un Po’ Qui” (“Come Over Here”), middle eastern organ on “Occhi Di Serpente” (“Snake Eyes”). Fatalism drips from every note bringing to mind a low ceilinged club in the catacombs where refugees from the sun fill the air with smoke and their guts with grappa and cheap vino rosso as Pasolini scouts for rough trade and fingers grip switchblades concealed in socks. Come La Notte is a slow grower that draws you in even while it picks your pocket. Put it on and live a little vicarious danger in your own private La Dolce Vita.  

Andrew Forell  

[thomcoldman-blog]

My 10 Favourite Games Of 2017

This list was originally posted on the forum Resetera, but I felt like putting it up here too, with a little more insight into why I liked these games so much, and so they don’t get lost in the muddle of forum posts. Enjoy!

10. Snake Pass (Sumo Digital; Nintendo Switch, PS4, Xbox One, PC)

Sumo Digital has been a developer I've admired for years, particularly for their work on the Nintendo-tier kart racer Sonic & All-Stars Racing Transformed. Snake Pass is their first independently-produced title, and it has a great hook - the player controls a snake in much the same manner as a real snake might move. There's no jump button, no Earthworm Jim spacesuit, just the power to raise one's head and the strength to grip tightly to any object you've coiled around. There's no timer or enemies; Snake Pass is content to let you explore its levels at your own pace, letting you getting used to its unique feeling and take in the calming David Wise soundtrack. It's a game that feels like learning to ride a bike again, and the progression in ability over time is such a pleasing sensation that it earns it its place on this list by itself. The good use of collectables and generous helping of levels is icing on the cake.

9. Wolfenstein 2: The New Colossus (MachineGames; PS4, Xbox One, PC)

B.J. Blazkowicz returns and he's lost all meaning of subtlety whilst he's been out of action. Wolfenstein 2 shoots all of its shots - the action is bloody, explosive carnage, and the subject matter isn't satisfied with just skewering Nazi idiocy and narcissism, taking time to shine a light on White America's love affair with sitting back and reaping the rewards of compliance under fascist rule. Whether it's exploring B.J.'s broken psyche, giving Wyatt a crash course on hallucinogenics or putting you under the spotlight in a terrifying audition, MachineGames refuse to pull their punches, each great moment coming swinging like B.J.'s Nazi-reprimanding fireaxe. The combat encounters are far from polished, with stealth being heavily nerfed from The New Order and the half-way shift in tone from borderline-satirical diatribe on mortality and American race relations to comic-book capers is incredibly stodgy, but Wolfenstein 2 leaves a hell of an impression all the same. Shame about that credits music.

8. Gorogoa (Jason Roberts; PC, iOS, Nintendo Switch)

A good puzzle game can make a really strong impression, guiding you subtly by the hand to make you feel like a member of MENSA just for pressing a few buttons or prodding at a screen. With Gorogoa, I can't even begin to describe how the puzzles actually work. Imagine a window segmented with 4 panes of glass, and now imagine you can drag elements out of those panes and into other panes, or over where there isn't a pane to create a new pane... See, it’s hard! In as simple terms as I can muster, it’s a game about taking the world apart and putting it back together again to create paths and progress for your anonymous young hero. It’s intensely abstract, yet the South Asian aesthetic feels like a living locale, an exploration of a boy's days-to-come. It's a short experience, but with each puzzle solved making me feeling smarter than Albert god damn Einstein, it's one that will stick with me for a long time.

7. Splatoon 2 (Nintendo EPD; Nintendo Switch)

Like pretty much everyone, I didn't own a Wii U, but the sting of that decision never really happened until the arrival of Splatoon - Nintendo's first proper new "core" universe since what felt like Pikmin. It instantly looked like sheer fun - and as a big fan of both Jet Set Radio and The World Ends With You, it was clear as day Nintendo's younger designers were picking up the Shibuya fashion torch those games dropped behind them. Put simply, it's totally my shit. Splatoon 2 confirms my suspicions and then some, being the first multiplayer title I've enjoyed online in forever. I can't get enough of the soundtrack, the sound effects, the amazingly catty banter between Pearl and Marina, and just the feeling of dropping into ink, strafing around a sucker and blasting them straight between the eyeballs with my N-ZAP '85. 20% of Switch owners in the US can't be wrong.

6. Yakuza 0 (SEGA; PS4)

The only games I've played previously by SEGA's Toshihiro Nagoshi are the brilliant arcade/Gamecube bangers F-Zero GX and Super Monkey Ball 2, plus his one-off PS3 sci-fi shooter Binary Domain. Loving those 3 wacky games, I always felt a little put-off by his regular gig nowadays being a series about Japan's most decorated crime organisation, and a bare-knuckle brawler at that. Yakuza 0, the 80s-set series prequel that serves as a perfect entry point for series newcomers, proved my suspicions ill-founded. It's a game which instantly casts the majority of the yakuza as control freaks and bullies, pits its protagonists Kiryu and Majima as their unfounded targets and pawns... and then lets you fight your way out of hell via brutal finishing moves, bizarrely complex business management sidequests and, if you're so inclined, a gun shaped like a giant fish. It's that kind of game that always keeps you guessing whether or not you should take it seriously, and so it wins you over with its best-in-class action choreography, astonishingly good direction and a never-ending deluge of sidequests, minigames and challenges. Don't sleep on Kamurocho.

5. Sonic Mania (SEGA/Christian Whitehead/Headcannon/PagodaWest Games; Nintendo Switch, PS4, Xbox One, PC)

If you’re reading this, you probably know I'm a Sonic apologist. I don't really stand by the 3D entries - bar Sonic Generations, which I genuinely love - but the narrative that "Sonic was never good" is some ridiculous meme that I can't stand. They were genuinely fun games, albeit far from perfect; every game can use some improvement. Sonic Mania is that improvement, spinning the level themes and gimmicks from the original Mega Drive (and Mega CD) games into vast new forms, with myraid routes, tons of secrets, an astonishing sense of speed from beginning to end and fairer, more agreeable, more exciting level design. Old locales, new levels - oh, and some new locales as well, one of which (Studiopolis Zone) is an instant classic. 16:9 presentation, all new animations and crazy levels of animation detail, and a mind-blowing soundtrack by Tee Lopes - Sonic Mania is the perfect Sonic game.

4. NieR: Automata (Square Enix/PlatinumGames; PS4, PC)

For my first foray into the sunken mind of Yoko Taro, he couldn't have left a better impression. NieR: Automata uses Platinum's engaging-at-worst, thrilling-at-best melee combat as the language to tell his new story of how pointless it is for anyone to even bother throwing themselves after ideals of society or humanity, and why it's worth trying all the same. Every inch of this game feels crusted in Taro’s sensibilities, with the no-bullshit 2B and her curious whiny partner 9S running into robots waving white flags, avenging fallen comrades, establishing monarchies, throwing themselves to their deaths, and coming to terms with their crumbling existence in apocalypse.  It's crushing, it's raw, it's often dull, but its uniquely bleak vision of AIs breaking free of their programming has a grip as powerful as a Terminator's. And when it’s ready to let you go, it has you send it off with the most memorable credits sequence in history. Glory to Yoko Taro, glory to PlatinumGames - glory to mankind.

3. The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild (Nintendo EPD; Nintendo Switch, Wii U)

Standing in the centre of a bridge connecting Hyrule’s broad, emerald green fields to the desert mountain approach, a bridge overlooking the still Lake Hylia, I fire an arrow into a lizard bastard’s head, or at least I try to. He dodges it and rushes me, forcing me to jump away and retaliate with my claymore. Out for the count, I resume looking for the lost Zora wife I’ve been asked to seek out, who apparently washed all the way downstream in a recent downpour. I can’t see any wife - my entire view is dominated by the giant green dragon snaking across the night sky above me. The wind picks up, but I am too awestruck by its presence to take note that I could glide up to it and shoot off a valuable scale. Instead, I just stand and stare, this utterly unexpected moment happening before my eyes. Friend or foe? A boss monster, perhaps? A vital story element later on? The answer ended up being none of the above: in The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, there be dragons, and that fact in and of itself speaks volumes about what this game is about. After 30 years, Hyrule finally feels alive.

2. Night in the Woods (Infinite Fall; PS4, Xbox One, PC, Mac, Linux, Android, iOS)

Very few games instil a genuine emotional response within me, but the story of Mae Borowski's no-fanfare return from college to suburban gloom resonates hard with me. It's an expert at the little touches - the needless-yet-fun triple jump, the not-so-starcrossed rooftop musicians, the impulsive reaction to poke a severed arm with a stick - and woefully precise with its big swings, like an upsetting cross-town party, a wave of violent frustration amongst the townspeople, and the inability to just lay it all on the table with friends and family when you need to most. In the cosmic dreams of shitty teens, Night in the Woods finds an ugly beauty in depression. 

1. Super Mario Odyssey (Nintendo EPD; Nintendo Switch)

It’s impossible to deny 2017 has been the year of Nintendo. There’s plenty of celebrate elsewhere, but the Switch’s rise to prominence as the machine to be playing ideally everything on, and the amount of absolute smash hits Nintendo has producing this year makes it hard for the narrative to focus elsewhere. The epitome of all this is their final killer game of 2017: Super Mario Odyssey, the grand return of a more open-ended style of Mario platformer. A true blue achievement in joyous freedom, it brings together everything from Mario's history of 3D platforming - 64's freedom, Sunshine's other-worldliness and sky-high skill ceiling, Galaxy's spectacle, 3D World's razor-sharp platforming challenge - and throws into one big pot, creating a Mario where both the journey and the destination are one and the same, and exciting to the very end. In a year of amazing games that hit upon horrid, upsetting themes with delicate, pinpoint accuracy for tremendous success, I’m not sure whether it’s a shame or an inevitability that such an unapologetically surprising, happy game made the biggest mark on me this year, but either way, I’m welcome to have Mario be truly Super once more.

[the-voice-of-hell]

The Septagram

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***

Jason rolled the Prius down Beacon Avenue South, heading toward the old Veteran’s Administration building.  It was famously owned by Amazon for a minute, but was surely derelict once again.  It wasn’t his destination, specifically, when he set out.  But he didn’t find those police.

And cruising at a low speed, the drive was a chance to clear his mind.  He had the windows down and the fan on.  The air smelled smoky, but he thought it was probably from Eastern Washington burning again, and it didn’t alarm him much.

And the place began to grow in his mind.  He couldn’t see it past the wall of trees lining the roadside, but he thought about it, pictured it.  He knew the trees, like most of the trees in the Puget Sound area, were a thin facade to conceal a barren concrete land, promote the healthy verdant image that helped the state boom and sucker in tourists.  Beyond them there were homeless camps, ramshackle derelict homes two minutes from being cleared for condos.  And at the end of that strip of hillside, that mighty old art deco hospital building.

Maybe he could just stroll right in.  The power was on.  Maybe he could use the elevator, get out on the floors Bezos used to walk, get a view of the whole city.

“Movin’ on up, Jase old boy.  Movin’ on up.”

Then he was there.  He pulled into the driveway in front of the building and just parked there, because why not?  The sky was still blue.  He smiled at the building.  Why was it so pleasing to him at the moment?  He didn’t know.  Looking up at the big double door though, he saw chains looped through the handles.  But just ten feet from that laying in the grass, there was a shovel.

“It’s goddamn kismet.”

He broke and he entered, yet again.

There was a short stairwell up to a fancy landing.  The interior had been remodeled extensively to accommodate modern corporate sensibilities.  There were organically shaped floating walls paneled in stainless steel like giant lizard scales, concealing modern bathrooms.  Only minimal lights were on in side halls.  The atrium was dim but for the blue daylight spilling in from the giant windows on a higher level.  Long thin wires supported boring ultramodern light fixtures that remained unlit.  He wasn’t about to fish for the light switch in the convoluted walls that encircled the area.

He found an elevator and gave it a go.  It reached a high floor and he stepped out but he wasn’t convinced he was at the pinnacle yet.  He hunted the dully lit corridors for a stairwell.  It didn’t take long.  The central, highest part of the building didn’t have a very large floor plan.

There it was.  A floor paneled in shimmering darkness, the hall leading to one room.  A lucite booth stood outside it like an incongruous phone booth, or Roald Dahl’s Great Glass Elevator.  What was that for?  And beyond it, the room.

He tried the knob and got irate that it was locked.  Why?  The billionaire had left the building, and surely taken everything that could be anything to anybody with him.

Jason kicked the door a few times uselessly.  Then leaning against the wall, he noticed the phone booth was ajar.  He looked inside and saw a selection of buttons.  He tried pressing them, and soon a clicking sound came from the big man’s door.

He hopped out of the booth in a hurry, hoping it wouldn’t time out on him, and his foot snagged on something.  Glancing back for just a moment, he saw a box of “.45 ACP” bullets sitting on the floor.

He ignored it and went inside.  Behold, glory.  The most important office in the world.  Tall brass-plated walls, stained glass above, giant windows below.  Jason walked slowly toward them, only a single black desk and tall chair stood between him and the view.

The chair started to spin slowly in place.  He jumped a little.

A man sat there, nailed in place with great spikes, stripped to the waist, bleeding in streams, mouth open in a silent wheezing scream, eyes fish-like behind great globs of tears.  A little monster like Jabba the Hutt’s pet sat in the man’s lap, zapping his face with a taser until it noticed Jason, and whipped around to offer a happy face.

“Oh god!  What the hell is going on her…  Is that him?  Is that Mr. Bezos?”

The little thing nodded proudly.  “Hell is for sinners, bro!”

***

The anarchists couldn’t bring themselves to move.  They sat in a circle around Waxy Maxy.  He was dead - impaled with an oversized drumstick.  Every time someone suggested they get up and move, they just sat back down and cried some more.  They had accepted the mark for fear of death.  What was left for them?  How could they escape from Hell now?

Two women on bicycles rolled to a stop by them.  The blonde with glasses looked to be in better spirits and spoke on their behalf.  “Hey boys.  It’s time to blow this popsicle farm.  Come with us and I’ll keep you safe.”

Radical Huang said, “Huh?”

“I’m special, guys.  I can do it. Tell ‘em, Rosie.”

“I saw her kill one of them.  She’s a freak, dudes.”

They didn’t know what to say, looking at each other, looking at their arms bleeding lightly from the occult symbols pressed into them.

“It’ll be great.  Us on our bikes, you on your boards.  Let’s get everyone who stayed behind, give ‘em another shot at evacuation.  Whaddya say?”

Colin Guts was the first to snap out of the trance of sorrow.  “Shit.  Shit, you’re right.  C’mon dudes!  Let’s get the fuck out of here before those things come around.”

“They said we’d be safe,” Duke said.

“After they killed Maxy!  Don’t be a bootlicker.  We gotta go!”

They started to stand up, to grab their skateboards.  Rosemarie looked down at the impaled guy, shuddering.  Jennifer slapped her on the arm.

“Hey, pal.  You don’t wanna end up like that, right?  Let’s burn rubber!”

“Yeah.”

In her heart, Rosemarie felt they had been telling the truth.  If she stayed, she could have lived safely as a subject of their queen.  But what would that entail?  She raised the kickstand and started rolling.

She glanced up to the sky and saw something odd.  The wind was blowing, whipping tiny bits of detritus near the tops of the low rise buildings.  And through the sky directly above a flock of pigeons flew - single file.  They were beak to tail, dozens of birds long, flightpath wiggling like a giant snake.

A fleck of white splattered across her cheek.  “Ugh, shit!”

***

A sexy fair man stood in the road, sunglasses concealing his eyes.  One could guess he was east asian, or more likely, not human.  He wore a long red coat with gold and silver appointments over pure black clothing, his black hair was long on top, waving gently in the gathering breeze.  Dusk was drawing in.  The suburban street was one eternal strip mall by the name of Covington.  Everything from the dentists to the Fred Meyers to the accountants to the combination Pizza Hut and Kentucky Fried Chicken seemed to lean in his direction, praying to their new master.

He sipped a Dairy Queen Oreo Blizzard through a straw, waved the fingers of his free hand in the air, conducting powerful magic.  The demons around him were enchanted with invisibility, but it only worked fully when they sat still, and the hyperactive things danced to the sounds of Poison on a bluetooth speaker that sat in the gutter.  The song was “Nothin’ but a Good Time.”  The things shimmered like heat waves all around him.

A caravan approached - what was left of it after a few of the heavy vehicles ran out of gas along the way.  The occupants of those crowded into the remainder, reducing their already pitiful gas mileage.  The roofs, sideboards, and hoods were crowded with goat angels and starlings.  The lead angel sat on the hood of the lead vehicle - a yellow civilian hummer splattered with blood and gore.  He used his hands to prop up his broken wings, thus gesturing for the caravan to stop.  Then he hopped down and strolled toward the scene.

“Master Bybaal.  I offer servants to your great cause.”

“Have they been pressed with the Queen’s mark?”

“No.  Rather your own.”

“You have done well.  Marshal them for me.”

He turned around, snake tail arching over his shoulder with intense glowing light in its eyes, his halo fire burned brighter, and his voice boomed.  “PRESENT YOURSELVES TO HIM.”

He picked up his standard from where he’d lodged it in the car’s grill and strolled to make room for the goblins.  They all piled out of the caravan like it was clown cars and bumbled to stand before their new god.

Bybaal tilted his head, letting the shades slide to the end of his nose, and regarded the motley horde.

“Unworthy creatures.  Even the death shield would only serve to have them cut down faster.  Resach, what would you do with them?”

“Mm, my wisdom is as far below thee as my station.”

“The evidence stands before me.”

Big Donny nearly hyperventilated, afraid he wouldn’t make the cut.  Like being picked last for dodgeball.  He was shrieking inside.  Let us matter!  We are alive!  He was drenched in sweat, fast running out of the fluid necessary to continue living.

Resach spoke.  “Still, you must be able to empower them in some way.”

“Perhaps.  For now stow them in the apartment building down in Tukwila.  The one by my dove farm, marked with fire?”

“I can find it.  Thank you for allowing me to serve you, my liege.”

“You are welcome.  Bear these goblins from my sight.”

“I shall.”

Bybaal returned to his magic chores.  He was one of the wheels of Bymaan, broken angels of the highest orders.  For now he wove spells at her command.  Perhaps soon this wheel would turn another way.

***

A group of survivors huddled in the garage of their apartment building, contemplating escape, unsure of what to do.  They all claimed to each other that they hadn’t accepted the mark, but no one was showing their arms.  A young man was promising to lead them to safety, but it was hard to make themselves move.

At last they all piled into cars and formed up in a line all the way to the gate.  It had been left open.  The young man led them out into the street.  The idea was to take I-5 all the way to Canada, or possibly divert to State Route 9 to avoid the cities along the way.

They all got out of the parking garage and headed the right way.  It was a promising start.  But then the road split and a wall of pinkish light beamed into the sky like a curtain, so bright you could see it in the waning daylight.  There were multiple low speed collisions and people screaming.

The street ahead began to lift.  The whole area of Denny was rising like a step pyramid - the surface chunks staying horizontally level as they rose, the center reaching higher and higher.

Something swam out of the crack in the ground - a white worm-like thing at least dozens of feet long.  It smashed its face through the lead car’s windshield and pulled out the young man, lofting him into the air inside its warped jaws.  It started to hork him down.

Suddenly it jerked and spat the man back out.  He banged sloppy on his car’s roof.  The monster was twisting in pain.  A human-sized shape whipped around it, stabbing and moving, leaping out of the way whenever it tried to recover.

The people started to leap out of their cars and hustle away from the destruction.  A handsome lithe black man with a bald head and close-fitting dark black clothes tried to get their attention.  “Don’t run that way!  Get away from tall buildings!”  He gestured to a parking lot not far away and they complied.

Then the man looked to the battle and came as close as he dared.  “CLARK!  What are you doing?!”

The blur slowed down long enough to do a little plie and bow.  It was an old man in dance shoes, the toes of which were yellow-white with the worm-thing’s ichor.  “I’m saving the day.  It’s fabulous!”

The worm took advantage, tried to swallow him up, but Clark was too quick.  He did a triangle kick off the young man’s car and landed with a sharp toe in the thing’s eye-like area.  It flew back, bounced off the concrete, and slipped back into the abyss from whence it came.

The young man weakly propped himself up, looking at the distinguished gentlemen.  “What happened?”

“I happened, my boy.”

Thurston shook his head.  “Look at this destruction!  It might yet cause some buildings to collapse.  We need to get to safety.”  He helped the young guy down from his car.

The guy said, “We need to get everybody safe.  There’s more people in town here, I know it.  I don’t want anybody to hafta stay here.”

Clark cocked an eyebrow.  “Well let’s see what we can do about that.”

***

Jamie Infante couldn’t take religion as seriously as his parents did.  It was too full of bad ideas, cruel beliefs.  But now he saw that the world was indeed a cruel game set in motion by an insane God.

He wondered, there in the darkness, the horrible shocks of the hummer jolting him with every bit of grit that passed beneath the thing, he wondered if Jesus was the way.  Jesus didn’t bother with condemning gay people, seemed kind and cruel in relatable ways.  If Jesus was apiece with the God that created this situation, he must’ve been the sane part.

“Jesus, set me free.  In God’s name I will set this world right.”

Killing that fallen angel in Hilltop had probably given him delusions of grandeur.  What reason did he have to be so proud, in the trunk of some goblin’s overcompensation machine?

They came to a stop and he braced himself.  Any move was an opportunity to break free.  It was like the trunk shot from early in Pulp Fiction, the camera looking out at Sam Jackson and John Travolta.  But instead it was Infante looking up at two goat-angel soldiers.  One looked like a man but for the top of his head being far too small, horns growing where most of his brain should have been.  The other had a face like a baby goat - just too small for the human-like body it was attached too - and puffy black and red emo hair spilling out of its basket-like wire helmet.

They were stronger than the goblins, and maybe they understood they’d need strength to deal with this man.  Or it could be that the goblins would have killed him outright, but the angels had some other purpose in mind for him.

He looked around, tested himself with a few spasms of the body.  No, his legs were bound as well as his hands.  No running away yet.  He looked around, tried to get as much intel as he could.  There were fewer cars.  Same number of goblins and demons though.  The lead goblin begged for some word of favor from the lead angel and it set him in motion with a flick of the wrist.

Then it turned its attention to him.  The goats hauled him closer.  The fallen angel said, “You might get to know me better while we are together.  I am Resach, a squire in the legions of Bybaal.  A sergeant, if you will.”

“Because we’re both sergeants?  I’m supposed to like you now?”

“It was worth a try.  Jamie Infante?  You may not bend your knee to our Queen, but you are a prize nonetheless.  If you will just see that your power belongs among ours.”

“Go back to hell, cabrón!”

“Hell, Heaven, Earth.  They’re all the same.”

“Then go!  Leave us alone.”

The guards bleated laughter.

“That’s how God works.  We wouldn’t be so cruel.  Come along, Jamie.”

The creature walked up the steps to the shoddy old brick apartment building and his goatmen hauled Infante along behind him.

***

Park was inside his own skull again, in a pool of water-thinned blood.  Or was it blood-thickened water?  He looked up at the vault of his cranial dome.  The fontanelle was closed again.  But where was that light coming from?

He felt a shooting pain on the back of his head, clutched it, and looked up to the back of his skull.  It was cracked open - must have been from hitting it on the highway.  Light poured in, washed over him.  He felt the soft thumps of the Greeks walking atop his skull.  He pawed around in the pool, tried to find purchase.

Closer now to the crack.  He reached into it, tried to look out.  But he couldn’t fit his head far enough through it.  He pulled, trying to get it to part just a little more.  Then the pain in the back of his head became too much to bear and he fell back into the bloody water.

Light, still.  More light was spilling in from behind.  He spun about in the water and looked up to his eye sockets.  The light from the back of his skull was hitting his eye sockets.  It burned.

He saw Infante, not shirtless yet like in the future vision.  He was still in his bulletproof vest, bound at hands and feet.  A naked man sat beside him, big broken wings swept back.  A serpent grew out from above the man’s buttocks and curled around, going closer to the cop as he struggled.

It bit his thigh and started pumping venom into his body.  He screamed.

The naked man was that angel from the bridge.  Goat bleats and laughs surrounded him.  Bricks surrounded them.  A building like a flaming tombstone in a concrete cemetery - a neighborhood of Tukwila that should have been nothing but business, bearing one sad reminder of a residential past.  Park spun in place.  The sun was in the east.

He woke to see Iphigenia leaning against a rocky grass hill, his backpack under her head as a pillow.  He felt cardboard beneath his hands, his arms.  That had been his bed.  The world was a vivid dark blue, but was that after dusk or before dawn?

“Iphigenia!”

She stirred and wrinkled her nose at him.  “I never told you that.”

“It’s the light.  I hate it… But it showed me I was wrong.  You’re not going to find Infante.  I am.”

“What light?  I can’t see anything here, and more importantly, that fuckin’ minotaur can’t either.  It’s still alive, you know.”

“Doesn’t matter.  What time is it?”

She took out her cell phone.  She’d put it on super power saver mode a few days ago and it was still working.  “Nine fifty.”

“Whuh?  Oh.  Good.  At dawn the serpent will bite him.  We have time.”

“The light.  I heard someone else say they had it.  She didn’t seem to think the future could be changed… Well, aside from one thing.”

“I need to go.  Need to...”

“Fine, I’ll help you.  But there’s plenty of time before dawn, so we should get a bite to eat and new bikes.”  She helped pull him to his feet.

Where there arms gripped each other’s, he felt something strange.  Maybe the light was still with him.  She felt powerful, like she was skinny but covered in reedy steel-hard muscles.  For that her weight wasn’t much of a balance, and she had to go back on her heels to get him off the ground.  But he knew that she was powerful in a way he was not.  Where she touched him, he was soft and yielding under her touch.  Where he touched her, she was as firm as a metal pole.  He wasn’t a weak man, but he knew her strength was profound.  It meant something.

But she let him go.  He nearly swooned, and forgot about the moment.  It was going to be an effort just to keep walking.  Maybe the food would help but he felt nauseous.

He had to keep going.

They walked around the edge of the building.  Park forced himself to not lean against it.  Move like you’re well, maybe you can fake it ‘til you make it.  Iphigenia moved past him with shorter but faster strides.  He hustled as fast as he could go without blacking out or vomiting.  It was a struggle.

Bright lights.  They were in an abandoned grocery store.  A lot had been looted, but far from everything.  More people wanted to evacuate than hole up.  Park slumped into a chair at the deli area.

“You jus’... get whatever.  I’ll see you when you get back.”

She was already out of sight, but then quickly returned with some food, drinks, and medicine.  Or had she been slow and he just passed out for it?

“Cheese?  I’m lactose intolerant.”

“Me too.  That’s why this bottle.”  A lactase pill.

“Those don’t work for me either.”

“You need protein and fat.  I wouldn’t trust much of the meat here.  Might still be some jerky hiding somewhere, but all the spots I saw got robbed.”

“Protein bars?”

“All gone.”

“Shit.”

He tried to get some energy back with what he could, and took whatever pills she put in front of him.  Best not to think about it too hard.

Park considered his reluctant comrade.  “You were saying something before about the light, the future.  What was that?”

“Old lady in Elijah’s house.  She said she saw the future.”

“What did she see?”

“I’m gonna kill all the murderers.”

“Just you?”

“I dunno.  You want in?”

“I guess I do.  They got my...”

“Infant.  I heard you.  But you don’t look like you’re ready to fight.”

“I’ll do whatever it takes.”

“Saving Private Ryan.”

“Sergeant Infante.”

She rolled her eyes.  “Well, maybe when he gets free he’ll be better at fighting than you are.”

“Hey, I killed a freakin’ minotaur.”

“You shot it.  I told you it was still alive.  Pay attention.”

He grumbled and ate quietly.  All too soon, it was time to shamble on.

***

Jason apologized to Mr. Bezos and backed away.  The monster was a little thing, but what could he do?  It might be that demon magic was the only thing keeping him alive, forcing him to feel that pain.  He’d probably bleed out if Jason freed him.

A great rumbling shook the building and he heard glass starting to splinter.  He bolted for the stairs, moving as fast as he dared.  Part of him remembered in an earthquake one is supposed to stand in a doorway or get under a desk.  He couldn’t make himself do either of those things.  Well, maybe if the building collapsed, it would happen to do it while he was passing through a doorway.  You never know.

At the bottom floor he looked back to the atrium with the high windows.  They were filled with pink light.  Turning back to the door and hustling out that way, he saw the light again.  It was everywhere.

The ground was coming apart, raising in tiers, like Beacon Hill was trying to remake itself into a Q*bert level.  The festive glow of hell slipped through the cracks in the ground, creating curtains of light.

Jason made like Q*bert and started leaping between the blocks of earth.  At the outer limits, just past the parking lot, he broke into a sprint.  At last, several blocks away, lungs bursting with the exertion, he let himself look back, tripped, and collapsed.

The shaking had stopped, and the fancy old building was now taller.  Had it changed?  It seemed more like a fantastic brass castle - like that Disney logo redesigned for the demonic set.  One change was more clear - the ground below it had raised like a pedestal of black stone, hundreds of feet above the rest of the hill.

He let himself just lay there in the street, trying to recover from the damage the little action scene had dealt him.  If something came for him then, would he even fight it?

At last, he dragged himself to his feet, only slightly out of breath.  His throat felt bloody raw from the exertion.  But he had recovered enough to move - and just in time.  He saw headlights coming down the road.

He wanted to believe it was the missing cops, but hid in the tree line just the same.  As the cars passed by, he saw that it was three convertibles - wait, no, three cars with the roofs ripped off.  They were being driven by a bunch of freaks that looked part goat, part man.  Maybe the vandalism was just to accommodate the polearms they held up in the air.  They bleated and laughed.  Apparently, life was good for goat boys.

Jason started hiking back toward his mother’s house.  It was going to be a long trip.

***

It was a night of great movements.  Seven points throughout Seattle thrust into the sky as great citadels, forming a very irregular constellation of pink light.  Where there had already been great structures - as on Beacon Hill - they became crowns for greater structures.  Where there had been none - as in the Denny Regrade - there was instead a castle of earth and asphalt, brutal and foreboding.

And as the earth moved, those who had remained in the region during the evacuation were forced from their complacence.  Many had sworn an oath they could barely comprehend to this new Kingdom, but now they felt the full measure of its power - and wanted out.

They gathered in caravans and on foot - even on bicycles - by whatever means they had to hand.  They rolled along barren concrete strips, north or south - whichever way had them moving away from Seattle.  All the while they couldn’t forget the other movement that was sure to come.

For while some sparse demonic forces had stayed behind to recruit mortal subjects, that first wave that had set out with the orchestra was much larger - and they would surely be returning at some point.

Monsters moved as well.  The miasma of the changing world had them shimmying, lurking, screaming, wallowing in the night.  Some were born of the creatures unnatural to the land - imported flora and fauna from cattle to birds to blackberry bushes.  Some crawled directly out of hell where the land broke.

The Queen’s realm was taking shape.  She had to admit, it made her a little horny.  Humans were her sexual ideal, succumbing to their allure part of the reason she was cast out of Heaven.  In the warm haze of her reawakening desire, she thought of them - and it altered her shape.

She was a broken angel like the rest - her body a savage blend of the features of human, lioness, and cow - eternally dripping with the blood of her wounds.  Her four great eagle wings had long ago been torn to stumps bearing feather scraps.  Her four heads all sprang impossibly from the same neck, overlapping in space, making her quite eerie to behold - a woman, a cow, an eagle, a lioness.  Where once a proper halo had made her impossible for mortals to look upon with its brilliance, now pinkish flames licked through her hair and feathers, snaking as tendrils around her massive silver crown.

But that lust for human flesh pulsed from her fiery heart, crept down her limbs, subsumed feather and fur under voluptuous white skin.  She stretched on the stone floor of her throne room, recently upthrust high above the north end of Capitol Hill.  Pigeons flapped about, psychically driven by her aura to a mad orgy of their own, cooing and chasing each other about the floor.

Bymaan was splayed out on the ground like a cat.  No way to dignify her fresh human visage.  But she luxuriated in the sensation of the coarse stones on her bare skin, rolled in place and giggled.  Red hair fell over her face.  The giggles turned into peals of maniacal laughter, then subsided again into moans.  She rubbed herself up and down before finally reaching her labia with plump elegant fingers.  She gripped the thick red hair there and slipped one finger between the lips, cooing to herself.

“Damn, it’s good to have a human pussy again.  You ever try that, Abalaam?”

“I have felt them from the inside, Your Majesty.  Quite pleasant.”

“How about it, then?  I don’t have the time to properly seduce a mortal man at the moment.”

The pigeons had mostly sorted themselves into pairings, some male and female, many homosexual as well.  They shuffled about the floor like amorous feather dusters, trilling and cooing.

Abalaam stepped among them, still in his broken angelic form, a towering beast.  The little birds bounced off his hooves, oblivious.  The great eye-covered wheel in his back spun in agitation at this arousal, unable to complete a circle for its broken shape, whacking up and down in place.  Eyes bled in anger.

He hated his Queen as much as his brother Bybaal did, but her power was impressive.  Her lust compelled him, reminded him of his own ancient lust for the human form.  But he saw an opportunity to annoy her and took it.

“Mm, you are most comely to behold, my Queen.  Yet you may have difficulty drawing out the love of a man.”

“No!  Why would you say this?  Even in their fear of me, they may find something arousing.”

“You have changed your form to one arousing indeed.”  He underscored the point with a slight shift of his hips.  “But you did not have a human at hand to judge scale.  By my reckoning, you are twice the height and eightfold the weight they expect of their women.”

“No!” Her word send a blast of sound through the room, causing all the pigeons to roll and bounce away in confusion.  She folded up her huge legs, draped her arms over her knees, and pouted.  “Most vexatious.”

***

Infante lay on his side, felt like he was dying.  The angel had stripped naked for some reason, lay down beside him.  It had the form of a sexy man, muscular but not dehydrated like those lubricated beef jerky sticks on fitness magazines.  Did the thing know he was gay?  Was it taunting him?  It didn’t arouse him in the slightest, given the circumstances - the smell of blood, stifling dust, sweat.  The mortal terror, the monstrous details attached to the beautiful being.

But it smiled at him and made him wonder how far inside his mind it could reach.  It said, “This is an exciting time, Jamie.  Nobody knows what’s going to happen.”

“Somebody knows.”

“The oracles and sibyls, but who can hear them?  At any rate, I don’t know what’s going to happen.  You don’t know what’s going to happen.  Isn’t that interesting?”

“No.”

“This edifice is infused with dark energies.  Occultists convened here over a century ago.  I can smell it. I can see it, in the violet flames that dance across its crown.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Magic is possibility.  Things can happen within these walls that nobody can anticipate…  Well, I guess the poetry of it is lost on you.”

“Oh yeah, you can shove your poetry up your dickhole.”

“You should open your mind.  You could be so much more important to us than our other subjects.  These empty-headed murderers, or those cowards with her mark, hiding in these stone warrens like so many rabbits.”

“Why?”  He didn’t want to break, but a tear rolled down his face.

The devil smiled.  “Open your mind.  You’ll find out.”

***

  NEXT

  -

[houseofvans]

Sketchy Behavior | Hellen Jo 

Never afraid to speak and/or draw her mind, Los Angeles based artist and illustrator, Hellen Jo and her characters can be described as rough, vulgar, tough, jaded, powerful, bratty and bad-ass - AKA her own brand of femininity. Known for her comic Jin & Jam, and her work as an illustrator and storyboard artist for shows such as Steven Universe and Regular Show, Hellen’s rebellious, and sometimes grotesque artwork and illustrations are redefining Asian American women and women of color in comics. In fact, that’s why Hellen Jo was a must-interviewee for our latest Sketchy Behavior where we talk to her about her love of comics and zines, her antiheroines, and redefining what Asian American women identity is or can be; and what her ultimate dream project realized would be.  

Tell folks a little about yourself.  So is it Helllen with three “l”’s? Mainly because your IG handle and website has a whole lot of extra “l”’s? 

Haha my actual name is Hellen with two L’s.  All my emails and urls contain a different number of L’s to confuse everyone. My grandfather took my American name from the Catholic saint, but he spelled it wrong, and now I share the same name as the mythological progenitor of the Greek people. But I like it better than my Korean name, which literally means, “graceful water lily” HAHAHA. I am an illustrator-slash-painter-slash-I-don’t-know-what living and working in Los Angeles.

Let’s talk about your early childhood / background. I read you’re from San Jose, CA and both your folks were professors, which is really cool!!   How did you end up making art instead of teaching a room full of students about Hotel Management or Medieval History? Just curious where you got your “creative bug” and what early comics, arts, and/or influences led you down the road to becoming an artist?

I grew up in South San Jose, and yes, both of my parents are professors, of finance and of applied linguistics.  A lot of my extended family are professors too, so I grew up parroting their desire for academia, but really, I started drawing when I was a wee babe, and I’ve always wanted to be a cartoonist. When I was really young, my parents drew for fun, really rarely; my dad could draw the shit out of fish and dogs, and my mom painted these really beautiful watercolor still lifes.  I was fascinated, and I’d spend all my time drawing on stacks and stacks of dot matrix paper by myself.  My parents also had a few art books around the house, and I remember staring so hard at a book of Modigliani nudes that my eyes burned holes through the pages.

What was the first comics you came across?

The first comics I ever got were translated mangas that were given to me by relatives when we’d visit Korea.  I remember getting Candy Candy, a flowery glittery shojo manga for girls, and I was mesmerized by all the sparkly romance and starry huge eyes.  I was also enthralled by Ranma ½, a gender bending teen manga that was equal parts cute art, cuss words, and shit too sexy for a kid my age.  However, I was mostly thrilled that I could understand the stories with really minimal Korean reading skills, thus cementing a forever love of comics.  In junior high and high school, I read a mix of newspaper strips and some limited manga, and I was enthralled with MTV cartoons “Daria” and “Aeon Flux”, but I wasn’t exposed to zines or graphic novels until I moved to Berkeley for college.

Did you have a first comic shop you haunted? What did you fill your comic art hunger with?

Being a super sheltered teen with not-great social skills, I was lonely my first semester, so I would lurk at Cody’s Books and Comic Relief every single day after classes.  I read the entirety of Xaime Hernandez’s Love & Rockets volume, The Death of Speedy one afternoon at Cody’s, and it literally made me high; I was so hooked.  I amassed some massive credit card debt buying and reading as many amazing comics as I could those first (and only) couple years of school: all of Los Bros Hernandez’s Love & Rockets, Dan Clowes’ Eightball, Julie Doucet’s Dirty Plotte comics, Peter Bagge’s Hate series, Chris Ware’s Jimmy Corrigan, Charles Burns’ Black Hole, Taiyo Matsumoto’s Black and White, Junji Ito’s Tomie and Uzumaki volumes… I could not believe the scope and breadth of the alternative comics genre, and the stories were so insanely good; they literally mesmerized me. I was so obsessed; I even skulked around the tiny comics section at UC Berkeley’s Moffitt Library in search of books I hadn’t read, and amid the fifty volumes of Doonesbury strips, some sick university librarian had included an early English translation of the Suehiro Maruo collection, Ultra Gash Inferno.  That book blew my tiny mind about a hundred times; it’s totally fucked up erotic-grotesque horror porn, but the art is unbelievably beautiful.  I read that entire thing sitting on the floor in the aisle, feverishly praying to God to forgive my sins after I finished the book, because I was way too ashamed to check it out of the library.

How about zines? I imagine a comic devouring ….

I devoured zines at a nearly equally fervent pace, including those by Aaron Cometbus, Al Burian (Burn Collector), Doris, John Pham, Jason Shiga, Lark Pien, Mimi Thi Nguyen, etc. I had never seen a zine before in my life, and suddenly, I was living in a town full of zinesters.  I was drowning in inspiration.  I tried to copy the art and writing of everything I read, and I spent a lot of my time making band flyers, trying to pass off zines as suitable replacements for term papers (this worked just once), and making monthly auto-bio comics for a few student publications. Eventually, I dropped out of school, then dropped out of school again, and I made my first published comic, Jin & Jam; then it all became real.

What was your early works like? and how did these become fodder for your self-published stuff later?  What about your own experiences did you feel needed to be expressed in your own comics and artwork?

As a kid I was mostly copying sparkly girl manga and Sailor Moon stickers, and I don’t think I’ve really strayed all that far from that. My first few zines were cutesy autobiographical comics about crushes and falling asleep at the library; incredibly dull stuff.  I made a super fun split comic/ep with this band I loved, The Clarendon Hills, but after that point, I was tired of drawing cute, goofy shit.

I had also really been obsessed with Korean ghost horror movies in high school, and I wanted to make comics that reflected more of that kind of coming-of-age violence and rage, so I made a couple standalone horror comics, Paralysis and Blister.  These were longer than anything I’d ever done (forty to fifty pages each), and I felt like I was finally figuring out how to write interesting stories.  I eventually dropped out of school and made Jin & Jam, based a bit on growing up in San Jose and on other kids I had grown up with. 

At the time, there were still relatively few Asian American women in comics, and I was tired of whatever hyper-cute, yellow-fever, Japanified shit we were being pigeon-holed into, so I reacted by writing and drawing vulgar girls who started fights and didn’t give a fuck.  I went to art school for a few semesters, got better at drawing people, and went on to draw nothing but mean bad girl ne'erdowells.  I’d never been a very strong or defiant personality outwardly, but I’ve always been a pretty big fuckin bitch on the inside, and I just wanted to draw how I feel, in the most sincere way possible. And naturally, over the years, as I continued to develop this attitude in my art, I was able to express it better in person as well.  Self-actualization through making comics!

For folks who don’t read comics, can you explain why they are SO AMAZING and moving to you!  What about the format, art and overall genre makes them so great and not just your typical “funnies.”

I truly believe that comics are the greatest narrative format and art medium of all time!  They are completely full of potential; you can draw and write whatever the hell you can think of, there are no real rules, and you as author and artist can create a deep and intimate experience for your reader.  You can bare your vulnerabilities or yell at the world or create a visual masterpiece or inform people, visually and narratively.  I don’t even believe that good art makes good comics; writing is king, and the art should really serve to further the story.  Some of the worst comics I’ve ever seen had the most amazing art, and some of the greatest comics I’ve loved have the plainest, most naive, even ugly visuals, but those authors were able to finesse a symbiotic relationship between the text and the images to tell a compelling story.  People are already so drawn to images, so it makes sense to me that they can enhance a reader’s literary experience so much.

I read that Taiyo Matsumoto is one of your all time inspirations.  Most folks probably don’t know much about this master of comics, heck my knowledge is limited, so what makes his work speak to you so much?  Perhaps it’ll encourage folks to venture into a new world of art exploration through visual comics.

Taiyo Matsumoto is the all time master of coming-of-age comics. I worship at his altar, for real. He is a Japanese artist, so technically his work is manga, but his masterful storytelling and singular visuals are so different from most manga, beyond categorization.  He writes quiet, powerful stories about boys, girls, and teens who live in uncaring worlds surrounded by unfeeling adults, but they rise to these challenges and thrive in spite of themselves.  The characters feel deeply, and the reader can’t help but ache and rage and celebrate just as fully. The drawings are beautiful and sensitive, with rough, loose artwork consisting of scratchy lines and cinematically composed shots.

What were some of your first memories with his work?  

I remember buying the first two Pulp volumes of Black and White (also published as Tekkonkinkreet) at Comic Relief, reading them both at home that day, and then, covered in tears, literally *running* back that evening to buy the last volume before the store closed.  I probably cried a dozen times while reading it; it’s a story about two orphan boys who protect each other in a neo-Vegas-like city of vice, but the characters were so brutal and brilliant and poignant.  I had never read anything like that before, and it literally made me sick that, at the time, none of his other works were available in English.  Eventually, I figured out that he was more widely published in Korea, so on every family trip, I’d run away from my folks for a day and buy as many of his books as I could carry back to the US. I made my way, slowly, through the Korean translations of Hana-otoko, Ping Pong (another incredible favorite!), and Zero. A beautiful collection of short stories, Blue Spring, was published in English, and then VIZ began translating the series No. 5, but they abruptly stopped mid-series due to low book sales.  I was so starved for his work that at that point, I’d ebay his art books and comics only available in Japanese and just stare at them. Eventually, Black and White was made into the anime film, Tekkonkinkreet, and Ping Pong was made into an anime mini-series, and his rise in popularity ensured a wider English availability of his work.  His current series, Sunny, is being translated and published here, and every volume breaks my heart a million times.  

I’m sorry, this just turned into a gushy, gross fan fest, but Matsumoto’s books really changed my entire perspective on how comics can be written and paced, how characters can be developed fully, and how important comics really are to me.  I love them so much!!!!!

You’ve worked in so many cool fields such as a storyboard artist and designer, and on various cartoons, such as Steven Universe.  For folks who are interested in those fields, what can you tell folks about that?  I’m sure like most artists, you’d rather be spending those long hours working on your own personal art, so how do you balance them? How did you move from a comic artist to working as a storyboarding artist?

I stopped working in animation about a year and a half ago, but the transition from indie comics to storyboarding was rough one, for me.  I got into storyboarding at a time when a lot of kids’ animation networks were starting to hire outside the pool of animation school graduates and reach into the scummy ponds of comics.  In my case, the creator of Regular Show, JG Quintel, had bought some of my comics at San Diego Comic-Con from my publisher, and he offered me a storyboard revisionist test.  

Some cartoonists, like my partner Calvin Wong, were able to transition wonderfully; cartoonists and board artists are both visual storytellers, and once they’d learn the ropes, many of them thrived and succeeded.  I can’t say the same for myself; I have major time management issues, I draw and write incredibly slowly, and going from working completely alone to pitching and revising stories with directors and showrunners was just a real shock to my system.  For most of my time at Cartoon Network and FOX ADHD, I wasn’t able to do much personal work, but I crammed it in where I could.  

Storyboarding also requires a lot of late nights and crazy work hours, to meet pitch deadlines and to rewrite and redraw large portions of your board. I just couldn’t deal. I lost a lot of weight, more of my hair fell out, and the extreme stress of the job put my undiagnosed diabetes into overdrive (stress makes your liver pump out sugar like crazy, look it up, people!)  I realized that this industry was not meant for lard lads like me, and when the opportunity came to stop, I did. I could never figure out the balance between my job and my personal work, and I finally chose the latter.  Now I’m trying to figure out the balance between making personal work and surviving, but I’ve yet to crack that nut either!

From your art I get a sense of rebellion and angst, how did this morph into an outlet through comics, cartoons, and illustration?  Some aspects of your work that are so cool is the fact that your characters are female and women of color and in a completely new way.  Asian characters definitely get stereotype in art and comics, so when did you consciously start to create these awesome antiheroines and redefine what Asian/Asian American women/girl identity is or can be?

A lot of the seething rage bubbling behind my eyes has been simmering there since childhood, and a very large portion of that anger comes directly from all the racism and sexism I’ve experienced as a child and adult. I’ve been treated patronizingly by boys and men who expect an Asian girl to be frail, demure, receptive, and soft-spoken. I’ve experienced yellow fever from dudes who are clearly more interested in my slanted eyes and sideways cunt than in whatever it is I have to say.  Even in comics and illustration, people constantly tell me I must be influenced by Japanese woodblock print (pray tell, where in the holy fuck does that come from???), or they’ll look at a painting I’ve done of a girl bleeding from her mouth and dismiss my work as “cute”.  I despise this complete lack of respect, for me and for Asian American women in general, and I’ve made it my life mission to depict my girls as I would prefer to be seen: fucking angry, violent, mean, dirty and gross, unapproachable, tough, jaded, ugly, powerful, and completely apathetic to you and your shit.  Any rebellion and angst in my work comes directly from my own anger, and in my opinion, it makes that shit way better.  Girls and women of color get so little respect in real life, so why not “be the change I want to see” in my drawings?  

I think I was always aware of this lack of respect, and the “othering” of Asian American women, but once I got to college and learned to put a name to the racism and xenophobia and sexism and fetishism that we experience, my heart burst into angry flames, and it exploded into all of my art.  I’ve never been able to hold that back, and I’m not interested in doing so, ever.

Talk about your process and mediums and process.  Are you a night owl or an early bird artist?  Do you have stacks of in-progress works or are you a one and down drawing person?  Do you jot down notes or are you a sketch book person.

I am a paper and pencil artist all the way; I do work digitally sometimes, to make gifs or to storyboard, but I hate drawing and coloring on the computer. I’m terrible at it!  I draw everything in pencil first, erasing a hundred thousand times along the way toward a good drawing. For my paintings, I’ll then ink with brush pen and paint with watercolor, all on coldpress Arches.  For comics, I ink with whatever, brush pen or fountain pen, or leave the pencil, usually on bristol board.  I’ve also been keeping sketchbooks more recently (never really maintained the habit before), where I like to doodle fountain pen and color with Copic markers.  In sketchbooks, I’ll slap post-its on mistakes, a trick I learned from paper storyboarding on Regular Show.

I am a total night owl and a hermit; I have to be really isolated to get anything done, but at the same time, being so alone makes me crave social interaction in quick, fiery bursts.  I’ll go on social rampages for a week at a time, and then jump back into my hidey hole and stay hidden for months, avoiding everyone.  It’s not a very productive or healthy way to be, but it’s how I’ve always been.

I have great difficulty trying to juggle multiple tasks; I tend to devote all my mental energy and focus into whatever I’m working on at the time, so I need to complete each piece before I can do anything else.  It’s an incredibly inefficient, time-wasting way of making art, but it’s also the only way I can produce drawings that I am satisfied with.

If we were to bust into your workspace or studio, what would we find? and what would you not want us to find?

You’d find an unshowered me, drawing in my underwear, which coincidentally is also what I do not want you to find!

You’d also find a room half made into workspace (more below), and half taken over by boxes of t-shirts and sweatshirts (I do all my own mailorder fulfillment, like an idiot!)  I also like to surround myself with junk I find inspiring, so the walls are covered in prints and originals by some of my favorite artists, a bookshelf along the back wall is filled with about a third of my favorite comics and books and zines, and every available non-work surface (including desk, wall shelves, and bulletin boards) are covered in vintage toys, dice, tchotchkes, bottles, lighters and folding knives, weird dolls and figurines, a variety of fake cigarettes (I have a collection…)

Work-space wise, I have two long desks placed along a wall; the left desk has my computer and Cintiq, as well as my ancient laptop. Underneath and to the side of this desk are my large-format Epson scanner, fancy-ass Epson giclee printer, and a Brother double-sided laser printer.  The right desk has a cutting mat, an adjustable drawing surface, and a hundred million pens and half my supplies/crafts hoard.  I have a giant guillotine paper cutter for zines underneath this desk.  I’ve got two closets filled with button making supplies, additional supplies/crafts hoard, and all kinds of watercolor paper, bristol paper, and mailing envelopes are crammed into every shelf, alcove, gap.  This room has five lamps because I need my eyes to burn when I’m working.  Also, everything is covered in stickers because I am obsessed with stickers.

What is something you’d like to see happen more often if at all in the contemporary art world?  How’s the LA art scene holding up? Whaddya think?

As an artist who adores comics, I have a deep affection for low-brow mediums getting high-art and high-literary respect.  Not that a comic needs to be shown in a gallery to be a valid art form, but I am so excited that comics that used to be considered fringe or underground are gaining traction as important works of art and literature.  I wish this upward trajectory would continue forever, until everyone understands the love I feel for comics, but who knows what the future holds: the New York Times just recently stopped publishing their Graphic Novel Best Seller lists, and I think it’s a damn shame.

The LA art scene is really interesting to me, because it embraces both hi and lo brow work so readily; fancy pants galleries that make catalogues and sell to art dealers have openings right alongside pop-art stores that sell zines and comics, and I enjoy having access to both.  I will say that I think LA galleries are a bit oversaturated with art shows devoted to television and pop culture fan art; yeah, I get that you loooooooove that crazy 70s cult classic sci-fi series and you want to draw Mulder and Scully and Boba Fett in sexual repose for the rest of your life, but I’m more excited about seeing new and original work from everyone. I know you have something to say, and I want to see it.

Mostly, I’d obviously love to see more women of color making art and making comics; we’ve come a long way since I started making zines in 2002, and there are some incredible WOC cartoonists making amazing work right now, but we need more more MORE!  

What would be your ultimate dream project?  What is something you haven’t tried and would love to give it a go at?  Dream collaborations?

My ultimate dream project is the Great American Graphic Novel, but I am so shit at finishing anything that I have not been able to even approach this terrifying prospect.  But I figure I have until the day of my death to make something, so … one step at a time?

As far as something I’ve never tried, I’ve been recently interested in site-specific installation; I’ve always been a drawer for print, confined to the desk, and I’m in awe of cartoonists and illustrators who have transitioned to other forms of visual media, whether it be video, sculpture, performance, whatever.  I know my personality tends toward repeating the same motions forever and ever, and I hope I can break out of that and make something really different and challenging for myself.  I also secretly want to make music but I am the shittiest guitarist ever so maybe it’s better for the world that I don’t!

The dreamiest collaboration I can think of is to illustrate a skate deck for any sick-ass teen girl or woman skater.  Seriously, if any board companies wanna make this happen, EMAIL ME

Give us your top 5 of your current favorite comic artists as well as your top 5 artists in general.

Top 5 Current Favorite Comic Artists:

1. Jonny Negron 2. Jillian Tamaki 3. Michael DeForge 4. Ines Estrada 5. Anna Haifisch

Top 5 Artists of All Time

1. Taiyo Matsumoto 2. Xaime Hernandez 3. David Shrigley 4. Julie Doucet 5. Daniel Clowes

What are your favorite style of VANS?  And how would you describe your own personal style?

My favorite VANS are the all-black Authentic Lo Pros, although I have a soft spot for my first pair of Cara Beth Burnsides in high school (they were so ugly and I never skated, but I loved them).  

My personal style can be described as aging colorblind tomboy who dresses herself in the dark; my favorite outfit is a black hoodie with black denim shorts and black socks and black sneakers.

What do you have planned for this 2017? New shows? New published works?

I’ve got two group shows with some of my favorite artists in the works; I’m so excited but I can’t share any details yet. I’ve also been writing a new comic, but don’t believe it til ya see it!

Best bit of advice and worse advice in regards to art?

Best Advice: Never be satisfied; always challenge yourself to make your art better than everything you’ve done previously.

Worst Advice: Make comics as a stepping stone towards getting a job in animation.  When people do this, you can smell the stink of insincerity a mile away.  Fuck you, comics are a beautiful medium, and every shitty asshole who does this, I hate your guts!

Follow Hellen Jo

Website: http://helllllen.org Shop: http://helllllen.bigcartel.com Instagram: @helllllenjjjjjo 

Images courtesy of the artist

[neopuff]

riverdale ep 1-3

these twins always make me >___>

oh yeah i knew jason was gonna die

this is very artsy

i thought he was murdered

oh

tragedy

oh......a mom for veronica

what is a...chocolate shoppe? and why? does it sell? burgers?

is veronica the new kid

OH KEVIN

the gay kid gweiopubgoewgnew

the acting in this is terrible

the archie actor is clearly not a real ginger so i approve of this casting lmao

“to pass time i started composing poems in my head” shut up archie

archie: says anything betty: amazing!

lmao

betty: ive been thinking about us- archie: is that a hot bitch i see

“we do, both of us, together”

omg

GNOIWPEGWE BETTY’S FACE IS KILLING ME

awkward

oh....archies dad

thats not archies dad

archies dad got that fat gut

“im a sophomore’ BITCH NO UR NOT

SHES GOTTA BE LIKE 25 LMAAAOO whaaatt

im still dying theyre supposed to be 15 gwenpiubgewo;gwe

“gay, thank god, lets be best friends” im gonna piss and die

wow

love these pussycats

“ive had every flavor of boy except orange” its better that

waywiongubwepogn;wegew

ARCHIE AND GRUNDY IM DYING!!!!

IM GONNA FUCKINGGG DIIEEEE

GRUNDYINOGEW;EWL

im pissing im

DYING

shes the music teacher

why wouldnt they just make up a new teacherniogwepng;ew WHY IS SHE MS GRUNDY!!!

oh

archies dad/veronicas mom have a....history

“chose the rich kid”

wow

so many divorced parents

outdoor cafeteria

when will i see a high school that has one of these forreal

i assume its a west coast or south us thing

kevin: refers to cheryl as a widow me: i called the JOKES

“is cheerleading still a thing?” “is being the gay best friend still a thing”

the dialogue in this show is terrible its so funny

im glad betty/ronnie is a good ship

grundy is all turned on by archies music

this is so gross and im DYING

“i dont think thats a good idea” cuz u fucked a 15 year old bitch

oh

theyre not talking about the fucking

did cheryl murder her brother

why doesnt just one of them say it and not mention the other

bitch ur the only one who’d get in trouble ur an ADULT

that was so lackluster

wow

GNIWEUPGEW;OGWE

CHERYL’S FACEGNIEW;GEW

like yeah....not the kind of heat i meant :\

oh

im glad cheryls the villain i always hated her

wow

veronica: i know who u are [has known her for 2 minutes]

this dialogue is so unnatural and bad its cracking me tf up

get WRECKED cheryl

veronica: betty and i come as a matching set

i bet u do

time for football

“what you got something better to do” dont be rude

awww

“why did you defend me” just accept the kindness u fool

man

i like mr lodge

this is very awkward

was polly a character in the comics i dont remember her

WOW

“both of us” gewinouogbewgew

im DYING

in the headspace

“archiekins” gweinouobgweo;ngew

wow

“cheryl blossoms cheerleading squad.......”

bettys mom is so annoying

she sounds familiar

oh

mr lodge just sent a lotta money their way

why did the coach call his dad

he said hed give him a day

impatient ass

archies dad is just like :\

:/

:\

:/

these actors dont look related at all

which is funny to me

oh good its the pill in ibiza song

omg

i love that veronica is the speech giver in this show

moose/kevin gwiuebogiwgew

where is REGGIE

my SON

wow

openly talking about the illegal secrets at a big party

i just realized reggie is the asian guy

i didnt hear his name and couldnt figure out who tf that was gweopiubgwe;ngwe

im a fool

whered ronnie go

dancing with the gay guy, god

“i have this fantasy of us as a power couple” who asks someone out like that

STOP STARING AT GRUNDY

this is super awkward

cheryl is gonna murder...everyone

they could just

chill

“cheryl blossom truly is...the antichrist” just all her a bitch like a normal person

“we’re not just friends we’re best friends” shut up archie

wOW

hes NEVER FELT for betty

if these two make out i s2g

once they kiss cheryls gonna open the door

foolish children

ronnie dont DO IT

foolish

sighs

boring

what how tf would she know they made out

did they not come out at exactly 7 minutes

ok but wheres betty

oh hey jughead

i like jugheads not-crown

oh

now shes goin straight for love

“of course i love you” hes being so...obtuse

annoying

oh

ok now its about not being good enough

sure

did they find jayjay

and look at that

he got shot in the head

probably by his sister

ok

its obvious cheryl did it

im sure theyll switch it up like somehow it was secretly jughead

but it was cheryl

ok ep 2

fgewgw

why were they even fuckin at 6 am

cant believe they made moose gay

i forgot his gf’s name in the comicsniguwebgew

god

the actor that played jason was so uggo

GEWNIOG;EW SHARING A SHAKE WITH HIS TWIN SISTER!!!

maybe someone shot him for being so openly incestuous with his creepy sister

i know its like plagueing archie now but i feel like this should help him

“are you up?” “no” “youre killing your mother”

he went to grundys house

weird

and hes shirtless

“you could be expelled” “we could go to jail” NEITHER OF THOSE THINGS WOULD HAPPEN TO HIM!!!

pedophilia is not a two way street

oh

bettys mom is...the worst

betty plz dont talk to your bitch mother about your life

i love archies eyebrows

i hope this is the end of archie/betty forever

wow

“sardonic humor”

oh

bye jughead

oh

is kevin not out to his dad

“the yellows for friendship” sure

veronica is so aggressively into this friendship

YAYYY

the otp stays together

wow

betty u are a fool

that is your future WIFE

oh

hi mr weatherbee

cheryl is wearing a spider pin gewoinubgewlngkew

CHERYL

archie and mr weatherbee just gonna

make eyes

jughead: archie you KILLED him

fewijohuog

HE THINKS ARCHIE DID IT

no jughead i was just fucking the hot prof

jughead: ew

fewiougobewgno;ewlgew

kevin moose is your new bf

“fate throws us together” ok

wow

why is he rejecting moose

because hes in the closet???

hes clearly trying to come out cmon

oh

everyones terrified of cheryl now so thats good

oh

bettys mom

“i ship it” why

“moose has an official girlfriend...mitch” i feel like i heard this line wrong

oh, betty

dont cry sweetums

“im supposed to say yes” THE DIALOGUE

ronnie is trying so hard with these dramatic white ppl

really

they couldnt even keep weatherbee fat

is this channel afraid of fat ppl

wow

does this bitch just sit in her empty ass music room all day

is she not really even a teacher

DONT TALK ABOUT FEELINGS

YALL ARE GROSS!!!!

disgusting

bitch get a dog and leave teenagers alone

WOW

WOW LMAAAAOOOOOOOO

AAAAAAA

JUGHEAD: WHAT!! GROSS!!! WTF!!!

this is not high school cheerleading

one of the girls here actually looks like a high schooler

cheryl just called herself exoticgewiongewiogew; CUZ YOURE A GINGER? BITCH

i die

oh

betty why

wOW

betty dont do this

cheryls a crazy ho

i know theyll make up by the end of the ep but still

“like we were meant to be best friends” gweniguebwg

2nd grade tutor

gewinogubwegw

“oh, little archie-” little archiewgn;klew I DIE

references are what i live for

i cant believe betty let cheryl into her house

wheres her mom to scream and chase her out

welp

there goes that

betty dont let her into ur HOME

oh

whats betty doing

“BEFORE I KILL YOU” BETTY

terrible thing to say

are they not friends because archie stood him up

cougarngiewgew

SHES A PEDOPHILE

awkward

i guess bettys mom coulda killed jason

“sometimes a friend is better than a boyfriend” actually, always, not sometimes

oh reggies finally doin something

gonna keep up the reggie/jughead rivalry

FIGHT FIGHT FIGHT

ok

“you wanna d the right thing” the way archie said that made it sound like he wants to fuck her and she doesnt want to

but whatever

so does jughead and bettys friendship not exist in this universe

nod like douches and mutually suppress our emotions

wow

this dialogue is still awful its so funny

i hope it never improves purely for my amusement

out door pep rally...

[dances]

fewiulgbew

AHH HONEY HONEY

YOU ARE MY

CAAAANDY GIIIIIIRL

good shit

oh

cheryls having a Time

god the kid that plays jason is so uggo

oh

bye cheryl

finally getting a genuine emotional response from her

were they gonna fake his death for attention but then he was actually dead

yayyy

make up

veronica is over here like “betty and i were destined to be friends” and betty is like “im sure we wont know each other in a week”

aww archie and jughead back 2gedda

does jughead know betty or not

wheres the jughead/betty brotp of my past

veronica and jughead: interact me: yes...

im glad that, unlike in the comics, archie is not dating both girls at once and then also every other girl he meets

where ya goin weatherbee

wha

A CHALKBOARD LOL

i doubt a school like this would have a chalkboard instead of a smartboard

oh

did she do it

gasp

im sticking with my fake death for the attention theory

OK LAST EP

im enjoying this show

but i dont think i could take multiple Dramatic Teen Shows

how could cheryl be wearing that skirt in public school

“the plan was bananas”

oh

jason just wanted.....to leave

thats fine

oh

who got shot

gwneio;glkwe

in my neighborhood it wouldve just been the hunters

is archie gonna have a shiner for the rest of the show

oh

is betty not poor as shit in this universe?

i shouldve guessed from her moms outfits

“a lois lane type like you” nice and ronnie can be clark kent

omg leave grundy alone so she can die in hell

wha

why didnt you just say that you were alone

oh

dog

ok

a date....

oh

hes hot

good call, ronnie

CHUCK CLAYTON

“hes kind of a player” dont be racist, betty

he is hot as hell tho

awww “juggie”

finally jughead and betty are 2gedda

jughead you need shit for your college applications

oh right, dilton

what

“im not ten years old” but you are 15 which is not very different

so if chuck is in the show is nancy gonna be around too

ronnie/chuck is a good ship

“to OUR relationship” shut the fuck you youre a pedophile

wow

the sticky maple....

wow

chuck was cute

ronnie is gonna tear him apart

man

why does chuck have to be a dick!!! chuck was always a nice guy

fewionpgnew

betty: [COVERS FACE]

destroy him

PUNCH HIM

why is chuck a villain im bothered but also hes the worst destroy him

this terrible au version of chuck is terrible

“nothing is off the table...except for my body” weiugblewnkg

i love the pussycats

is this every other girl chuck did this to

oh

its ethel

hi cheryl

go away

lmao

whose this kid

wow

ok jughead

dont steal his ice cream

oh

dilton shot a gun gwoinegbpweo;nglwe

survivalist?!?! DILTON

IM DYING

HES A TECHNOLOGY OBSESSED NERD

why do the pussycats roll their eyes at josie

“a bnd with b&v”

did they find...ze book

so the football players dont even fuck the girls its just about getting a date and a selfie???

oh

cheryl, doubting her brother

what

just take the book

why not...just take the book

powerful

bettys rly lucky her mom isnt violent

(for now)

oh

she looks super awkward in that

omg

the sound of bettys lil demons in her head

“and a hot tub....”

this is such an awkward conversation

just imagining this with real 15 year olds is ridiculous

oh hey ronnie

chuck youre so fucking stupid

shes wearing a swimsuit and heels this is CLEARLY A TRAP

GWENOIGO;NEW

BETTY

black is not a good hair color

ronnie: im so turned on

GEWNIOG;EWG

SLAP!!!!

i just realized why archies dad is so familiar

he was on generator rex AND clone high

love it

part of me always liked archie/josie

15 is not late wtf

“slut shaming...its what they call it when sluts get shamed” wow

when does bettys mom get murdered

um

are they gonna burn him

UM

um

betty

LMAO

shes fine shes just pissed

awww

dads gonna support u now

must be NICE

gweoniugbweo;gew bettys face when ronnie said she called chuck “jason” was so funny

are they gonna do some she went off her meDS OO---OOOHHHA AAAHHH TERRIBLE BEAST

#burn it

cheryl tryin to make up for ze past

i still hate her idc

omg when does grundy get murdered too im done with this pedophilia subplot

STAY AWAY

FROM THE CHILD!!!

-___-

dilton you fool

im happy juggie and betty are hanging out

oh

dont mention ms grundys car

NO

YOU

FOOL!!!!

im tired of this pedophile plz shoot her next

ok im all caught up

whens the next episode

[natashasfilms]

Chapter Three - The Fox

Summary: FBI agent Leila faces a profound life change after giving birth to a baby girl, supported by her loving husband. Despite the challenges of motherhood, Leila returns to her role as a dedicated agent a few months later, ready to confront gruesome and haunting cases with the BAU team.

Pairing: BAU!Fem!OC x Male!OC , EVENTUAL Aaron Hotchner x BAU!Fem!OC (Like much later)

Warnings: This story contains mature themes such as sexual content, strong language, violence, mentions of alcohol and drugs, blood, gore, and death. All the usual Criminal Minds stuff. And there is NO CHEATING.

Note 1: I imagine Leila Kade as South Asian but I have decided to let you, the reader, imagine her appearance, hence the reason why I have not given her a face claim. However, her race does not affect the story, whatsoever. You, as the reader, are free to imagine her however you want. If you don't see her as South Asian, then that's fine. It won't affect the storyline. I also imagine the OC!Male as South Asian, but again, it won't affect the storyline.

Note 2: The team will consist of the main cast (Emily, Derek, JJ, Spencer, Penelope, Aaron, and Rossi) but will also include Elle Greenaway and Jason Gideon because they were some of my favorite characters and I wanted to include them with the rest of the team. Basically, Elle and Gideon never leave when Emily and Rossi join.

Note 3: There will be multiple time skips throughout this series. For example, the first chapter will begin on the first season and episode of the show but then there will be a time skip to later episodes (because there are obviously way too many episodes to write this series on and I wanted to include specific episodes that would help the plot of this story). This means that this series will be a slow burn romance but I believe it to be better this way. This will also stray from the actual show a lot, so don't expect it to follow the plot precisely.

Series Masterlist

Season 1, Episode 7

"Just call us if anything happens, and we'll do our best to get back as soon as we can." Leila told their nanny, Grace, as she and Zaid prepared for work. "Jasmine might get a little fussy, but don't worry if she keeps crying."

"Of course, I have everything under control. You guys focus on your work while..." Grace playfully tickled Jasmine's stomach, causing the baby to giggle. "Jasmine and I have a blast together."

Leila smiled, planting a gentle kiss on her baby's forehead. "Thank you so much, Grace. It's been challenging to find a good nanny who fits our needs. We truly appreciate you stepping in."

Grace returned the smile, nodding her head. "I'm grateful that you two chose me. You won't regret it."

Leila nodded in agreement and walked back to her room, where she noticed Zaid fiddling with his tie. She rolled her eyes playfully and approached him, standing in front of him. "How many years have we been together, and you still don't know how to tie a tie?"

Zaid flashed a cheeky smile, allowing his wife to fix his tie. "Who says I can't tie a tie? What if I pretend not to, so you can tie it for me?"

She finished tying his tie, her eyes meeting his. "You're such a dork." Leila teased.

Zaid gently cupped her cheeks, planting a tender kiss on her lips. "And I'm proud to be your dork."

Leila giggled, giving him a playful shove. "Come on. We have to get going, or we'll be late."

He groaned playfully, grabbing his briefcase and her bag, and they headed out of their room. After bidding farewell to both Jasmine and Grace, they quickly got into their car. Zaid drove Leila to the BAU before he left for work as a detective.

Arriving at the BAU, Zaid stepped out of the car and walked over to the other side to open the door for Leila. They strolled into the building together and stepped into the elevator, Zaid managing to sneak in a sweet kiss before the doors opened.

As soon as the elevator doors opened, Leila spotted her team huddled in a circle in front of the glass doors. Her eyes lit up when she saw Haley and Aaron, with their newborn baby Jack cradled in his arms.

Leila walked over to them, softly gasping with delight. "Aw, is that baby Jack?" Haley beamed and nodded, the two women sharing a warm embrace as Zaid approached Aaron, offering a quick hello and a congratulatory pat on the shoulder.

"He's so gorgeous." JJ remarked, a warm smile on her face as her eyes remained fixed on the baby.

"Thank you." Haley replied with a grateful smile.

"If you find baldness and wrinkles attractive." Spencer quipped, earning an eye-roll from Leila at his cheeky comment.

"Look at his little widdy biddy nose." Penelope cooed, playfully slapping Spencer's hand while sporting a big grin. Derek approached them, and Penelope turned to him, teasing him. "Don't you want one of these?"

Derek pursed his lips, allowing a brief smile to escape before adopting a more serious expression. "I'll stick to practicing."

Leila playfully furrowed her eyebrows. "Shh, there are children here." She said, making everyone laugh, and Derek playfully left the scene. Leila's eyes then locked with Zaid's, who winked at her. "I already miss Jasmine." She admitted with a touch of longing in her voice.

Elle walked up to them, and looked at both Aaron and Haley, congratulating them on their new baby. Her face seemed tense, which meant they had a new case. The Hotchners thanked her warmly, appreciating the kind words and well-wishes.

"She's amazing." Aaron said, looking lovingly at his wife and then back at the baby in his arms. "I'm a little terrified."

Zaid joined the conversation, a playful grin on his face. "Oh, I can relate to that feeling. I remember holding Jasmine as if she would be crushed if I so much as moved."

Everyone laughed once again, enjoying the lighthearted moment. Haley gently took Jack from Aaron's arms, cradling their precious baby close before putting him in the stroller. "Well, we should get going." She said, looking at Aaron with a loving smile.

Zaid checked his watch, realizing the time. "Ah, shoot. Me too." He kissed Leila goodbye and exchanged farewells with the rest of the team. After Haley and Jack got on the elevator, he followed suit, joining them before the doors closed.

"A pleasure seeing you, Mrs. Hotchner and Detective Divan." Spencer called out with a friendly wave as the elevator descended. Elle walked up to Leila and Aaron, handing them files on the new case. The rest of the team had already made their way to the conference room, ready to focus on the new case.

"Bad?" Aaron asked as he accepted the file from her.

"The worst." Elle responded, shaking her head.

Leila sighed, already looking through the case file as the three of them went to a separate room to look through it in detail. The new case involved a murder of the Crawford family, a mother, father, son, and daughter. They were found dead inside their home in what seems to be a murder-suicide.

However, the team isn't convinced that it is a murder-suicide since there was another family murdered the same way, the Miller family. The other connections between the two sets of deaths are that the families were found five days after the start of what was supposed to be a family vacation. The families ended up not taking the vacation, but their bodies were found less than a day postmortem.

There was already a suspect named Eric Miller, the deceased Reese Miller's ex-husband and the biological father of the two deceased Miller children. He was known to be extremely abusive towards his ex-wife, prompting Reese to get a restraining order against him for domestic violence.

Leila put down the file, closing her eyes for a few seconds before opening them again. Cases like these were difficult for her, as it reminded her of Zaid and Jasmine. She shook her head, grabbing the file once again to sort through the details.

Elle played the recording of a medical examiner detailing the autopsy report of the victims, which listed all the wounds inflicted on the family. "Sam Crawford, white male, aged five, multiple stab wounds, laceration to the left ventricle. No defensive wounds present. Allison Crawford, white female, 32, multiple stab wounds, COD, exsanguination. Emily Crawford, white female, eight, multiple stab wounds, COD, exsanguination. Christopher Crawford, white male, 36, point-blank single nine-millimeter gunshot wound to the temporal lobe."

Aaron looked through the photos of the victims, furrowing his eyebrows in confusion when he noticed something strange. "Where's his wedding ring?"

Elle looked through the personal effects, shaking her head. "It's not listed in his personal effects."

Aaron's frown intensified, and he turned a photo around to display it to both women. The image captured the husband's hand, revealing a distinct tan line where his wedding ring should have been. "He obviously wore one, so where is it?"

Leila tilted her head, mirroring Aaron's expression. "He took the ring?"

Spencer was tasked by Gideon to talk to Eric Miller, the primary suspect. Though Leila could sense his nervousness, she tried her best to encourage him. Leila, Elle, and Aaron stood outside of the interrogation room, observing as Spencer initiated the conversation with Eric.

As the younger profiler brought out photos of the Crawford family to show Eric, the latter began to grow increasingly agitated, slamming his handcuffed hands onto the table, causing Spencer to startle. Eric's voice rose as he got up from his seat, locking eyes with Spencer and shouting at him.

The trio swiftly entered the room, with Aaron using his commanding tone to immediately shut him down while other officers present restrained him. "Sit down. Now."

"Who's this? Your daddy?" Eric shouted, glaring at them. "I'm done talking to you people."

"You don't have to talk." Spencer cleared his throat, still nervous but confident enough to continue. "Just listen."

The three profilers listened intently to Spencer's words, observing as he skillfully broke through Eric's emotional defenses. Leila's focus remained fixed on Eric, witnessing the transformation of his angry expression into something more vulnerable. "I never laid a hand on my children. You hear me?" His voice cracked as he raised it again.

"I hear you." Spencer responded softly, offering empathy.

"I found them like that. Dead. Bloodied. My babies. My sweet babies." Eric's emotional walls crumbled, tears streaming down his face as he sank into the chair. "I was crazy out of my mind, I didn't know what to do, and I knew the cops were gonna blame me, and they have."

Spencer's brow furrowed as he probed deeper. "So you ran?"

Eric's gaze moved between the agents, searching for understanding. "So what have I got now?" He deflected, avoiding the question.

"You have your innocence." Spencer assured him, his voice sincere. "For the sake of your children, I believe that they, at the very least, deserve the truth."

As Spencer prepared to leave the room with the others, Eric's voice halted them. "I can't get the image of my dead children out of my mind. Ty, my little boy, he was clutching a piece of paper. I think it was a drawing, maybe a painting. Please. I'd love to know what he painted, Dr. Reid."

Leaving the room, Leila paused for a moment, her expression reflecting concern as she regarded Eric, before eventually following her colleagues out.

"Interesting interrogation technique." Elle remarked, directing her attention toward Spencer as they walked. "What'd you hope to accomplish?"

"Miller was closed off, defensive, hostile. I needed a way in." Spencer clarified, clutching the file in his arms. "He suffered a breakdown but I don't think he killed his family, and I know he still loved his wife."

"Why do you say that?" Aaron asked him.

"Even though they were divorced, he still wore the wedding ring."

With Penelope's assistance, they managed to access the Crawford family's financial records. It became evident that Allison Crawford was spending considerably more money than Chris could comfortably afford. Furthermore, Chris had written several checks for therapy sessions. Interestingly, Allison held two separate cell phone accounts, one of which was billed to an address located in Southeast Washington, D.C.

They stormed into the location they had uncovered, weapons at the ready as they methodically cleared each room. Gideon's attention was drawn to a painting hanging on the wall, which he took and examined closely.

Curious, Leila approached him and asked, "What's that?"

"It's a child's painting. It's a colonial house. Mom, Dad, two children out front holding hands." Gideon replied, his focus fixed on the painting.

"And a big dog." Leila added.

"I think this is the Crawford house, it's signed by Emily." Gideon's gaze remained on the painting as he remarked.

"Strange." Spencer's voice interjected, capturing Leila's attention. "Eric Miller said he found his son clutching a painting. He wanted to know what was on it."

"What was on it?" Elle asked.

Gideon turned to face her. "His son's blood."

An abrupt crash echoed through the house, instantly grabbing their attention. Reacting swiftly, they rushed toward the source of the noise, the accompanying sound of a dog barking filling the air. Someone whistled, prompting the dog to bound towards the person. With their firearms at the ready, they approached cautiously, their weapons trained on the individual who confronted them.

The man apprehended turned out to be Allison's brother, Frank. He was convinced that Chris was responsible for the family's demise. Despite Chris's disapproval and reluctance to let Frank visit their home, Frank had sneaked in after his phone was cut off. He recounted that he had peered through the window, spotting Allison, Emily, and a weeping Sam. Frank assumed that Sam was upset due to getting into trouble. As Allison noticed him, she allegedly mouthed a message that seemed to say, "Get the hell out," compelling him to leave.

Gideon probed further, asking if Chris had seen him. Frank confirmed that Chris was absent, but there was another person present at the head of the table. Derek raised an eyebrow, seeking clarification about this "friend." Frank acknowledged the peculiar detail, indicating that he saw someone, though not their face, but the person seemed notably petite.

Derek pressed on, asking whether the person was white or black. Frank couldn't definitively determine the person's ethnicity but hesitated before revealing that their hair was red.

Outside the interrogation room, Leila, Elle, Spencer, and Aaron stood watching. Leila's voice chimed in. "Frank didn't see a friend that night. It was the unsub."

"And she wasn't saying, 'Go away.'" Aaron added, arms crossed. "She was saying, 'Help me.'"

In that moment, the expressions on Derek and Gideon's faces made it unmistakably clear to Frank that the individual he had seen wasn't a friend at all. Filled with the weight of this realization, he began to bang his head with his hands, unleashing a piercing scream as he shouted about how that person had murdered his sister and her entire family. The urgency of the situation prompted all of them to rush into the interrogation room, where they tried to restrain Frank and prevent any further self-harm.

"Both families had a dog and both houses had a dog door." Derek pointed out, his gaze fixed on the photos displayed on the crime board. The team had reconvened to discuss the case, armed with the new evidence they had uncovered.

"Fielding said that the person he saw was small." Elle added.

"Yeah, well, in order to get through that door, you'd have to be 5'4", tops, and real thin." Derek replied.

"'When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.'" Gideon quoted Sherlock Holmes.

"Sherlock Holmes was a fictional character." Derek countered. "Whoever did this isn't."

"He's probably already found another family by now." Leila remarked, her gaze straight ahead of her.

With more thinking, discussing, and Penelope hacking through the Government's HMO database, they managed to find out that both the Crawford's and Miller's were going to a therapist. The therapist they discovered was not a man, but instead a woman.

Dr. Howard said she only saw the two families once but prescribed medication for them as she was the only medical doctor there. Gideon asked who she handed her files over to, prompting her to search through the files and identify Karl Arnold as the recipient.

Guided by Dr. Howard, they proceeded to Karl Arnold's office, only to find it locked. Swiftly, Derek took matters into his own hands, breaking down the door with a kick, a sight that left Dr. Howard astonished and concerned about the door. Derek turned on a lamp nearby and saw all of the children's paintings on his wall.

Derek got a call that Karl's home was raided, however, he wasn't there. Aaron reached out to Karl's ex-wife while Leila, Derek, and Gideon sifted through the office, searching for any clues to his whereabouts. Amid the stacks of patient files, they stumbled upon families with similarities to the Crawford and Miller cases, though only one family captured Dr. Howard's attention.

"Wait. The Dunkens. That's not one of his cases, that's mine." Dr. Howard declared, her voice quivering as she spoke. Tears welled up in her eyes as she continued. "They have a baby boy and a slightly introverted eight-year-old named Jackie."

Gideon uncovered another painting and presented it to her. "Jackie's work?"

"He took it from my office." She cried.

"Were they planning a trip?" Leila inquired, her expression filled with concern.

"To the Adirondacks."

Leila, Gideon, and Derek hurriedly exited the room, leaving Aaron to search Karl's office. They raced to the Dunkens' residence with backup in tow, approaching the house cautiously. The SWAT team paused briefly before forcefully entering. Inside, they encountered the mother, father, and daughter seated at the dining table. Panic-stricken, the family pointed out that the unsub had taken their baby to the basement.

Descending the basement stairs, Leila, Derek, and Gideon readied their guns and flashlights, their footsteps steady. Their voices echoed in the dim space as they called the unsub's name, scanning their flashlights for any sign of movement. Eventually, they spotted him, hunched on the ground with the baby in his arms.

"Karl." Leila's voice was measured, her movements cautious. "Give me the baby."

Karl moved his hand away from the crying baby's mouth, his eyes locked onto the agents aiming their weapons at him. Leila, taking a calculated risk, holstered her gun and slowly approached, extending her arms towards the infant. As Karl rose to his feet, his gaze remained unwavering, a shift in his eyes catching Leila's attention.

Just as she anticipated a sudden move, Karl unexpectedly tossed the baby into the air. Reacting swiftly, Leila caught the baby and retreated against the wall. Meanwhile, Gideon and Derek dealt with Karl, who brandished a knife. Derek swiftly disarmed him and pinned him to the opposite wall.

The cries of the baby reverberated in Leila's arms, her heart racing. She held the infant tightly, her thoughts racing as images of Jasmine flashed before her eyes. While her priority was the baby in her arms, memories of her own daughter briefly consumed her mind.

She shushed the baby quietly, her eyes softening at the small human. "Shh, you're okay. Let's get you to your mommy and daddy, okay?"

They brought Karl back to the precinct, determined to get a confession from him. Despite the absence of DNA evidence linking him to the families, their only chance at securing a conviction was to get Karl to admit to the brutal killings. Gideon devised a smart strategy, rearranging the photos of the families to provoke Karl's emotions. Their calculated approach ultimately led to a confession from him, avoiding the need for a prolonged struggle.

They all gathered at the conference table once again after Aaron found a box in Karl's office. An unspoken tension gripped them as they awaited someone to open the box, prompting Gideon to take the lead. He unlocked the box, spilling its contents onto the table.

Wedding rings started spinning on the table in front of them. Leila's heart clenched as she gazed down at her own wedding ring. She and Zaid had been married for about ten years and the thought of any harm befalling him or Jasmine sent shivers down her spine. She swallowed hard, her eyes transfixed on the last ring as it came to a halt.

As Leila packed her belongings in her office, a knock on the door pulled her attention away. Zaid had told her he'd pick her up once their case concluded, and Leila had called him as soon as they closed it. She turned, finding her husband leaning against the doorway, a warm smile gracing his features. But his expression shifted as he caught sight of the weariness in her eyes, prompting him to stride forward and gently cup her face.

"Tough case?" He inquired, his voice hushed.

Leila nodded subtly, and she found solace in his embrace as she wrapped her arms around his waist. "I just want to go home and cuddle with both you and Jasmine." She confessed, her voice a soft murmur.

Zaid's response was immediate and reassuring. "Okay. Let's go home." He murmured, pressing a tender kiss atop her head. Gathering her bag, he slung it over his shoulder and guided her out of the office, his arm securely draped around her shoulders. Together, they walked down the corridor, on their way to seek the comfort of their own home.

[janeaddamspeace]

Feminist Children's Books & Explorations of Gender Stereotypes #JACBA Newsletter 24Nov2017

Book Highlight: part 3

This third installment of our multi-part series on the 2017 Jane Addams Children's Book Award Ceremony features an introduction given by Book Award Committee Member Jenice Mateo-Toledo for We Will Not Be Silent: The White Rose Student Resistance Movement That Defied Adolf Hitler, written by Russell Freedman, published by Clarion Books, an imprint of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company, named an Honor Book in the Books for Older Children category.

Introduction by Jenice Mateo-Toledo

Russell Freedman writes:

The year was 1942 and World War II was in its third year, leaflets began to appear mysteriously in mailboxes all over Nazi Germany.... A person could not be too careful. Anyone caught with a seditious leaflet was marked as an enemy of the state and could land in a concentration camp, or worse... Neatly typed documents headed [with]... "Leaflets of the White Rose..." assailed the Nazi dictatorship as evil, denounced Adolf Hitler as a liar and blasphemer, and called on the German people to rise up and overthrow the Nazi regime." [but]... Who was the White Rose?...

Russell Freedman expertly utilizes eloquent prose, first hand accounts, and carefully curated black and white images to transport the reader to a time when German citizens were disappearing, when rumors of death camps were swirling, and when speaking out in public would warrant a visit from the Gestapo. It was a time when children were indoctrinated through their participation in the Hitler Youth Program, and the culture of fear and violence permeated every aspect of German life.

Yet... there was resistance.

The Scholl family and their like-minded friends were outraged by the occurrences in their country, and longed for the days when they spoke freely. They would not idly stand by and allow their beloved country to fall unchallenged into the hands of leaders who lost their humanity. No... the culture of fear and intimidation did not stop Hans and Sophie Scholl, along with other youth who attended Munich University. Instead, they met in secret to create the White Rose Student Resistance Movement that focused on publicizing Nazi atrocities and called on citizens to resist the Nazi regime. The students secretly cranked out thousands of leaflets in their hand-operated mimeograph machines and disseminated copies widely. Under the leadership of Hans and Sophie Scholl, this group of brave young students became the conscience of a nation, through printed word, when it appeared that all humanity was lost.

For creating a book that inspires young people to resist tyranny and oppression in our world, for reminding us all about the power of the printed word, and for sharing Han's final words with us... "Long Live Freedom!"...

I present the Jane Addams Honor Children's Book Award, in the Books for Older Children Category to Russell Freedman.

Acceptance speech by Dinah Stevenson, Editor at Clarion

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14 Feminist Children's Books To Give To The Young Activists In Your Life This 2017 Holiday Season

'The Youngest Marcher: The Story of Audrey Faye Hendricks, A Young Civil Rights Activist' by Cynthia Levinson

9 year old Audrey Faye Hendricks intended to go places and do things like anybody else. So when she heard grown-ups talk about wiping out Birmingham's segregation laws, she stepped right up and said, I'll do it! Meet the youngest known child to be arrested for a civil rights protest in Birmingham, Alabama, 1963, in The Youngest Marcher, a moving picture book that proves you're never too little to make a difference.

'The World Is Not a Rectangle A Portrait of Architect Zaha Hadid' by Jeanette Winter

Zaha Hadid grew up in Baghdad, Iraq, and dreamed of designing her own cities. After studying architecture in London, she opened her own studio and started designing buildings. But as a Muslim woman, Hadid faced many obstacles. In The World is Not a Rectangle, get to know Zaha Hadid and her triumph over adversity to become one of the most famed architect's in the world.

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We've Got a Job: The 1963 Birmingham Children's March by Cynthia Levinson 2013 Awardee

We Shall Overcome: The Story of a Song written by Debbie Levy, illustrated by Vanessa Brantley-Newton 2014 Awardee

Nasreen's Secret School: A True Story from Afghanistan by Jeanette Winter 2010 Awardee

Educational Leadership Summit preparing educators to lead the learning effort

As a child in a migrant Mexican family, Francisco Jimenez had a hard time learning English in California schools as he needed to travel with his family to follow the crops.

Jimenez, a retired professor and author of several books, was the keynote speaker for the third educational leadership summit for Monterey County educators at the Inn at Spanish Bay.

Jimenez used his own story to illustrate the importance of multicultural education. Students who see themselves reflected in the curriculum feel valued in school and gain more interest in their studies, he said.

"I had a traumatic experience when I went to school," he said. "Many, many years ago, we were not allowed to speak our language. As a matter of fact, we were punished for it. The language we use communicates our cultures, communicates who we are. If my language is not appreciated and valued in school, the message is that I, as a person, I'm not valued."

And that's why it's important to value all languages and cultures, Jimenez said. Not just Latino cultures but also Afro-American, Asian American, Native American, and all the cultures that have found a home in the United States.

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The Circuit: Stories from the Life of a Migrant Child by Francisco Jiménez 1998 Awardee

Rosie O'Donnell, Jesse Tyler Ferguson, and others contribute to new anthology How I Resist

"When is a YA publisher going to put together an anthology of essays about resistance?"

How I Resist: Activism and Hope for a New Generation, [is] an essay collection featuring contributions from celebrities like Rosie O'Donnell and Jessie Tyler Ferguson, and authors like Jason Reynolds, Jacqueline Woodson, Libba Bray, Jodi Picoult, Jennifer Weiner, and many more.

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Each Kindness written by Jacqueline Woodson, illustrated by E.B. Lewis 2013 Awardee

From the Notebooks of Melanin Sun by Jacqueline Woodson 1996 Awardee

I Hadn't Meant to Tell You This by Jacqueline Woodson 1995 Awardee

A CONVERSATION WITH LOIS LOWRY: AWARD-WINNING AUTHOR DESCRIBES IMAGINATIVE LIFE

Lowry's favorite book was a book called "Indian Captive" written by Lois Lenski. She was heavily inspired by this book.

"I discovered my love for books and I could relate to the character in the book," said Lowry. "When I started writing books, I got a letter from a girl talking about how she loved that book and thought it was me." She apologized and stated it was Lenski who wrote "Indian Captive".

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Number the Stars by Lois Lowry 1990 Awardee

Mansfield students raising money for Sudan water project

On Tuesday, fifth-grade students at Jordan-Jackson Elementary School will walk a mile around their school with pairs of students carrying a gallon of water in a quest to raise $15,000 to aid Water for South Sudan, a charity that drills new wells and rehabilitates others in the African nation to make drinking water available to all.

The students recently participated in the the 2017 Global Read Aloud by reading "A Long Walk to Water" by Linda Sue Park. The story recounts the extraordinary 1985 experiences of Salva Dut, a former "Lost Boy" of South Sudan and blends in a fictional character living in South Sudan in 2009.

While reading the book, the students were moved to help the people of South Sudan by holding a walk-a-thon.

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A Long Walk to Water: Based on a True Story by Linda Sue Park 2011 Awardee

When My Name Was Keoko by Linda Sue Park 2003 Awardee

Ballet Folklorico de Mexico's first steps

"Danza! Amalia Hernandez and Folklorico de Meico" written and illustrated by Duncan Tonatiuh is a work of art in many ways. It should inspire parents to give their children some leeway in where their interests take them.

The book includes a glossary, rich history and spectacular art making it a worthy addition to any child's library.

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Separate is Never Equal: Sylvia Mendez and her family's fight for desegregation, written and illustrated by Duncan Tonatiuh 2015 Awardee

Reading Corner: Celebrate Native American stories and Thanksgiving

The November calendar celebrates National American Indian Heritage Month and the Thanksgiving holiday, so now is a fitting time to introduce the family to the works of a prolific author, Joseph Bruchac. An award-winning poet and storyteller of 120 works for children and adults from upstate New York, he draws upon his family's Abenaki ancestry to bring to life stories centering on Native Americans.

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The Heart of a Chief by Joseph Bruchac 1999 Awardee

This new film series will make you painfully aware of gender inequality in the art world

The series is separated into past, present and future. The first video, "Past," features some art world heavyweights, including sculptor Barbara Zucker, co-founder of A.I.R. Gallery (the first artist-run gallery for women in the U.S.), alongside artist and activist Faith Ringgold, figurative painter Joan Semmel, early new media pioneer Lynn Hershman Leeson, and art advisor Todd Levin.

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Aunt Harriet's Underground Railroad in the Sky by Faith Ringgold 1993 Awardee

THEATER REVIEW Wedding Band: A Love/Hate Story in Black and White

Despite significant writing credits, Alice Childress' steadfast refusal to compromise in her depictions of injustice lurking in the shadows of our nation's history has resulted in a half-century of drama students imbued with the erroneous impression that the sole African-American playwright previous to August Wilson was a one-play-wonder named Lorraine Hansberry. Audiences in 1966 may have been ready for Herman's mother spewing forth racist epithets belying her patrician affectations, but they balked at hearing those whom she abused engage in offensive diatribes directed at likewise marginalized minorities.

The Artistic Home has displayed a welcome willingness to recognize this all-but-unknown author's significant contributions to the North American literary canon, however. Although Childress' script, by virtue of its period, could have succumbed to heavy-handed melodrama, Cecilie Keenan's direction keeps the action in this meticulously crafted production flowing smoothly and effortlessly, while an ensemble of marathon-sturdy actors deliver emotively nuanced performances, enhanced by Joseph Cerqua's wistful incidental music. They all remind us that tragic tales of love thwarted by filial obligation and societal pressure in an age characterized by pessimism, xenophobia and divisive unrest have not diminished in their timeliness.

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A Hero Ain't Nothin' But a Sandwich by Alice Childress 1974 Awardee

Book examines labor history through music of Woody Guthrie, Bob Dylan and the 1913 Calumet Massacre

Grown-Up Anger: The Connected Mysteries of Bob Dylan, Woody Guthrie, and the Calumet Massacre of 1913. Wolff explores the 20th century through the lives and songs of Dylan and Guthrie, which led him to the story of the tragedy on Christmas Eve 1913 in Calumet.

The '1913 Massacre' is the same kind of testament to a sort of lost chance. And a lost hope. Guthrie wrote it, as you say, during the Second World War. And it's, you know, Guthrie was famous for saying, 'I write songs that build you up, that give you hope.' This isn't one of them. This is about a massacre and a tragedy."

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This Land Is Your Land words and music by Woody Guthrie, illustrated by Kathy Jakobsen, 1999 Awardee

Benway, Bidart, Gessen, and Ward Win 2017 National Book Awards

National Book Award winner Jacqueline Woodson took the stage to name Jesmyn Ward the winner of the National Book Award in Fiction for Sing, Unburied, Sing (Scribner). It is Ward's second NBA for Fiction, and she is the first black person and the first woman to win two NBAs.

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Jamie Hogan Book Launch: Ana and the Sea Star

Peaks Island illustrator Jamie Hogan will have a program at the Peaks Island Library to launch her new picture book, Ana and the Sea Star, written by R. Lynne Roelfs and illustrated by Jamie.

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Rickshaw Girl by Mitali Perkins, illustrations by Jamie Hogan 2008 Awardee

The Best Animated Film of the Year Confronts Islamic Misogyny

Nora Twomey's 'The Breadwinner,' executive-produced by Angelina Jolie, is a harrowing-and spellbinding-exploration of life under Taliban rule.

Far from light and frivolous, it's a lament for the continuing persecution of women in a land beset by endless conflict, as well as a tribute to those valiant females, young and old alike, who refuse to reside quietly in the shadows.

... this parable speaks to fiction's ability to embolden, and define-which is also true of The Breadwinner itself, a movie whose own narrative aims to affect change by speaking defiant truth to sexist authority.

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Children's literature still in an utopian state, says Malayalam writer N S Madhavan

Extending his argument further, Madhavan said books such as Bread Winner and Sparrow Girl authored by Deborah Ellis and Sara Pennypacker have sought to break the stereotypes surrounding women in general and girls in particular by highlight the role that protagonists Parvana and Ming Li play in Afghanistan and China in the two novels respectively. "Children's literature should break such stereotypes and bring the readers in sync with modern realities," he argued.

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Using Her Imagination: Nora Twomey's 'The Breadwinner' follows an Afghan girl's struggle for her family

"Deborah Ellis went to Pakistan and interviewed a lot of Afghan women who were in refugee camps and that's what she based her book on," explained Twomey while attending the world premiere of The Breadwinner at the 2017 Toronto International Film Festival.

"Certainly, my biggest challenge on the film was not being able to go to Afghanistan myself and not being able to time-travel back to the period," Twomey confides. "There was not much photographic reference as to what it was like during that period, because photography was banned. That was difficult. Having to make sure that I talked to enough people who understood the time that we portray in the film so that it could be authentic as possible and making sure that the time pressures never got to the point if someone pointed out and said, 'That wouldn't happen at that time.' Or a prop doesn't look like it should exist in Kabul. We were always respectful of that and responded to that. It was important."

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Interview: Saara Chaudry Calls The Breadwinner a Hopeful Story About the Power of Girls' Education

Parvana is voiced by 13-year-old Saara Chaudry. Chaudry's lends her voice to Parvana, who herself plays several roles.

Saara Chaudry: When I was 9 I asked my librarian to recommend a book for me to read over March break. She handed me the Breadwinner. I started reading the Breadwinner, the first novel in the trilogy, by myself. Part way through, there were some scary parts, so I asked my mom to read the rest of the trilogy with me. I could not put the book down and read the entire trilogy in 10 days.

For myself, I think I am drawn to stories that have characters that are like me – that perhaps look like me, having similar experiences. Or like Parvana, has characteristics I can relate to: a young girl the same age as me, from the same region of the world where my relatives came from. The Breadwinner made me realise that if my grandparents and great great great grandparents had not been as lucky to have moved to South Africa and England and then Canada, I could have been one of those Parvanas.

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Breadwinner author Deborah Ellis remains hopeful

Canadian author's work draws on her experiences visiting some of the world's most troubled places, and her need to tell untold stories.

"I think it's just all about courage, right?" she said. "We all look for courage in our own lives. We look for examples of it wherever we can find them because we think if we can learn from other people's courage, that will help us to have courage ourselves.

"The Breadwinner is all about courage."

If there's something motivating about the courage of others, Ellis is as inspiring figure in her own right.

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The Heaven Shop by Deborah Ellis 2005 Awardee

The Breadwinner Trilogy, three books by Deborah Ellis 2004 Awardee

Parvana's Journey by Deborah Ellis 2003 Awardee

Author Louise Erdrich can do anything - even your basic apocalypse

But as another far-from-original phrase points out, there is nothing new under the sun. So perhaps originality isn't what readers should be looking for from this story. With its themes of evangelical fanaticism, racism and patriarchy, it gains resonance in being released during the Trump regime, which has cut off global health funding to organizations that offer or merely mention abortion as part of family planning.

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Louise Erdrich: Reproductive Nightmares, Real and Imagined

The author on control of women's bodies and writing dystopian fiction in dark political times.

Future, in Erdrich's words, "extrapolates a new reality from" the world we're currently bumping up against. Though the world is invented, its parallelism to today is eerie, at times dizzying.

Guernica: It was interesting to learn that you started this project in 2002, the year after George W. Bush passed the global gag rule and the Patriot Act, which are crucial to this story. You started writing at that time, but then you put the book away for a few years and wrote The Round House and LaRose.

Louise Erdrich: Yeah, I think it was about eight years. I had to reconstruct it. I came back [because] I really couldn't go back to the book I was working on after the election. In November, I just had to finish this book. I was compelled to finish it.

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Do we need another 'Handmaid's Tale'?

This is the awkward question inspired by Louise Erdrich's new novel, "Future Home of the Living God." ... "Future Home" marks a striking departure - an experiment of sorts, inspired 15 years ago and then reignited by the incendiary election of Donald Trump.

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Future Home Of The Living God' Is A Rare Stumble From A Great Writer

Erdrich's gift for innovation has paid off in the past, but her latest novel, Future Home of the Living God, is an overreaching, frequently bizarre book that never really comes close to getting off the ground.

It's never really clear, even by the end of the novel, what happened to cause the reversal of evolution, or, indeed, what that even means. The vagueness is certainly intentional, but it's also inexplicable, and it makes the novel nearly impossible to parse. "The first thing that happens at the end of the world is that we don't know what is happening," she writes. But neither does the reader, and that's a problem.

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Inside the Dystopian Visions of Margaret Atwood and Louise Erdrich

Margaret Atwood literally wrote the book on a society of female procreative slaves: The Handmaid's Tale. Now Louise Erdrich is churning her own vision of that future in her new novel.

So who better to interview Erdrich about her new novel than Atwood? Lo and behold: They agreed! Over the summer, the two writers-one in Toronto, one in Minnesota-amid jaunts to the Arctic and Winnipeg, engaged in a cross-border digital interview about the novel, their prophetic fears, politics, climate change, and why we idealize Canada.

Erdrich: And, of course, The Handmaid's Tale, which I profoundly admire. Your book has always resonated for me. Fundamentalist religions always include religious laws that control the female body-you got that perfectly right, and invented such a horrifyingly normal society based on literal readings of scripture. Of course, The Handmaid's Tale draws enormous energy from biological shuttering, or refusal. No babies, no future. No human race. Men find ways to engulf women and to manipulate the female body. We keep thinking about it, because we are always close to the edge. Women's rights are just a watery paint on the walls of history. We must not forget.

Future Home of the Living God is more about things falling apart, about the chaos in the wake of disaster, and about how little we know when we need information the most. It is about how vulnerable women's rights are.

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Shades of Atwood and Vonnegut in Louise Erdrich's Dystopian Novel

The funny thing about this not-very-good novel is that there are so many good small things in it. Erdrich is such a gifted and (when she wants to be) earthy writer; her sentences can flash with wit and feeling, sunbursts of her imagination.

Signs and portents, auguries and premonitions. Erdrich's novel is packed with them, push notices from an onrushing nightmare. One character says, in this novel's most pungent snippet of dialogue, "We ain't on no GPS, and Siri's dead."

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The Birchbark House by Louise Erdrich 2000 Awardee

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The Jane Addams Children's Book Award annually recognizes children's books of literary and aesthetic excellence that effectively engage children in thinking about peace, social justice, global community, and equity for all people.

[totesmccoats]

Batman #33

To close out the last arc, last issue, Catwoman accepted Batman’s engagement proposal. In this arc, she has to meet the last supervillainess that Batman proposed to.

Honestly, seems like a weird hazing ritual for Batman to force on Catwoman. “Thanks, for marrying me – but first, we gotta go to the desert, break a whole bunch of laws, and upset multiple Justice Leagues so you can meet – and possibly be murdered by – my ex.” Unless this was Catwoman’s idea? Sounds like it could’ve been her idea.

Back at the Manor, Alfred breaks the happy news to the Robins (and Duke), who don’t exactly take it well. Especially Damian, who blames himself, and is also the only Robin to realize that this involves his mother.

And, as weird as the premise is, King has not let Batman down yet, and this issue promises another instant-classic arc. He opens the issue with a scene right out of a western: Batman on a horse, handing a shotgun to Catwoman, who uses it to put a second horse out of its desert misery before continuing on their trek across the desert. Then, immediately cuts to Jason Todd wrestling with Ace for his jacket back in Wayne Manor. The Manor scenes really highlight how much the Robins have been missing from King’s run on Batman by demonstrating how well King writes each of them in dialogue with each-other, from Dick telling Duke about the cow in the basement, Duke criticising Jason for telling him to lighten up Batman, and Damian – the youngest one there – dismissing all of them as children until cracking under the news.

Joelle Jones is killing it on art, with a thick inky style that puts everything in high-contrast and gives Batman and Catwoman’s desert adventure a two-fisted pulpy feel. It admittedly doesn’t translate too well in the Manor, where the extreme shadows can’t be explained by a desert sun beating down on everything. Bellaire perfectly matches Jones’ lines with flat – almost cell shaded – saturated colors that also convey the extremes of the desert.

My biggest issue with the book, and it’s not this book alone, is that Damian is still drawn as just a white kid. Like, they show Talia – his mother – as a brown woman, and yet Damian doesn’t look like he has a hint of middle-eastern/south-asian in him. I know that in real life not all children of multiracial heritage look like a half-and-half combo of their parents, and some traits are more dominant than others; but in a medium where diversity is an issue, I don’t see why DC doesn’t take advantage of having one of their more prominent characters having a mixed race heritage to actually depict a person with that background in their art.

  Superman #33

Superman has just gotten comfortable with Luthor flying around and Metropolis’ other hero, when Lex is forcibly summoned to Apokolips to reclaim his throne as God of the planet (See: Darkseid War). Lex tries to contact Superman, asking for assistance, but Supes ignores the messages, believing them to be frivolous invitations to listen to Lex brag; that is until Lex forcibly brings Superman, and by accident Lois, and Jon, to Apokolips.

I am really not used to Superman and Lex Luthor being friendly with each-other, as they are in the opening to this issue. It’s honestly kind of disturbing. Just feels wrong. But the following scene, where Lex inner monologues to himself about becoming the people’s newest and native-born hero, and their increasing dependence on him; that’s peak Luthor. That’s the Luthor that makes sense to me.

This isn’t the best opener to an arc, mainly because the back half is Superman refusing the call to action twice, essentially just stalling the story and filling up pages so that we can end on the cliffhanger of family being split up on Apokolips.

Still, we haven’t gotten a good Superman on Apokolips story in a grip, so maybe this’ll be it. Sucks that it’s probably definitely going to compare badly to the other current Apokolips story going on in Mister Miracle tho.

  Green Arrow #33

Having crippled the Ninth Circle by taking out their satellite, Oliver returns to Seattle – now Star City – to find it almost completely remade in the vision of its new corporate overlords. Historic and cultural areas have been razed and replaced with luxury high-rises that have pushed out the middle and lower classes. And Green Arrow returns only to find himself defending one of those overlord-developers from an activist threatening to literally crush him under one of Seattle’s oldest trees that the developer wants to cut down anyway. Things have changed.

Meanwhile, Oliver is still under trial for the murder of a woman who – twist! – is still alive; and despite what Star City has become, the Ninth Circle is still disappointed by Moira Queen and Broderick’s progress, giving them a vote of no confidence; and Dante is also back, and hiring Shado for one last job on behalf of the Circle.

Percy continues his amazing run on the series, effortlessly setting up multiple story threads for this new arc, while developing the political backdrop of the new uber-capitalist Star City that Green Arrow will confront philosophically and physically through the story. Green Arrow’s been one of the more fun, solid, and smarter books since rebirth, and Percy seems poised to continue that trend.

The standout of the issue is artist Jamal Campbell, who previously worked on the fantastic Green Arrow #27, and who I hope stays on this book for a long time. His work is comparable to Francis Manapul’s, but a touch less stylized, preferring to use less dramatic curves compared to straight lines and angles; and a more toned down palette that does reflect the sort of lighting you would see in a cloudy north-western city. This is not to say that Campbell doesn’t have a sense of the dramatic. His designs for the various masks for the Ninth Circle are all fantastic, like some sort of dark zodiac, each of them brimming with style and personality. And he dips into the style of a steamy romance novel for his title page, where a shirtless Oliver lifts Dinah, who wraps her legs around his waist, over a bannister to give her a kiss. And then there’s the scene where Shado fights off a squad of ninjas, where every kill-shot has it’s own stark white-on-red panel. If DC’s smart, they’re gonna want to give Campbell whatever books he wants.

  Wonder Woman/Conan #2

As he slumbers, Conan dreams of the day he had spent with Yanna as a child, climbing mountains with the dark-haired daughter of a tribe of exclusively women. In the waking world, he is chained to another dark-haired woman who calls herself Wonder Woman. He tried to rescue her from a life as a gladiator servant only to get captured himself, and now the two will be forced to fight to the death. But it seems that another power has other plans for the Barbarian and the Amazon. And they have other plans themselves, with Conan winning the fight but refusing to kill Wonder Woman; which gets them both thrown on a pirate ship as forced labor.

Thankfully, Diana does have more to do this issue, even if it takes her a majority of it to remember her name. Simone actually writes a neat joke involving her name; Conan saying something with the words “Die Yanna” next to each-other gives Wonder Woman pause. But even if she has more to do, and takes the lead by the end of the issue, this version of Wonder Woman still feels underdeveloped, perhaps owing to her existence still being a bit of a mystery box. Considering how much time this issue devotes to the young-Conan and Yanna flashbacks, it’s gonna be weird if Diana isn’t somehow related to her. It also doesn’t help that she spends a good chunk of the issue not talking.

There are fun moments in this book, like a crow-lady biting a man’s fingers off for soliciting her, Conan waking up to discover he held Wonder Woman’s hand all night, or Wonder Woman bonking a man in the face with his own lute; but overall characterization is so thin – and mostly delivered by 3rd person narration – that it’s hard to really care about the protagonists. It’s a weird issue for Simone to have as a writer, who usually doesn’t presume empathy in her stories. Maybe it’s because this is a limited series crossover?

Another niggling thing – Wonder Woman’s breasts are distractingly large in this book. They’re bigger than her head and like, perfect spheres. This is bad, like, even for comics – even for Conan comics.

  The Wild Storm #8

Marlowe gives Angela the sparknotes version of what he and HALO are doing on Earth, which conveniently leaves out anything she might find threatening about why they came here, and gives her full access to his resources in exchange for her data. Meanwhile, King’s team at IO have made a breakthrough by uncovering Cole Cash’s identity, and are planning their next – possibly treaty-busting – moves of their own.

And in Amsterdam, we’re introduced to two more characters resembling but not identical to those from the previous Wild Storm. The first is Shen Li-Min; the latest incarnation of The Doctor (not that one), who uses her powers to psychedelically heal people by taking them on vision quests. The second is one of Shen’s patients, who her session doesn’t quite work on because she’s not exactly human. She’s a techne named Jenny Sparks.

Despite another issue full of exposition, including the introduction of two new characters, it’s Davis-Hunt and Buccellato who really get to flex their muscles with sequences involving interstellar travel, two psychedelic trips into character’s minds, and one visit to an extra-dimensional hospital. I’m mostly familiar with Davis-Hunt’s horror work, and am glad to see that he can do bright and colorful and trippy just as effectively, even if there remains a twinge of the uncanny even among his bubblegum pink skies. And you *know* that more than one person is going to get a tattoo of Spark’s heart – because that is one badass visual.

  Peter Parker: The Spectacular Spider-Man #5

At the top of the issue, Vulture kidnaps Mason and blows up his lab while Spider-Man and Mason’s assistant, Uatu, are still inside. And Teresa only manages to escape by grabbing a prototype web launcher and hitching a ride with Vulture. And while she rescues Mason, Spider-Man has to confront his most dangerous nemesis: heavy rubble.

That’s right, it’s a recreation of everyone’s favorite, Spider-Man #33. But, Peter’s better at this now, so it’s not that big a deal. What is a big deal is that now Peter’s got two people he has to hide, Teresa and Mason; and because of that photograph, the authorities will be looking for him, too. Luckily, he may be getting some help from an unexpected source, J. Jonah Jameson.

This isn’t Zdarsky’s strongest issue, probably because of the sense of urgency in this part of the story, which doesn’t leave room for the types of asides and extended character beats that often give his work their pop.

Kubert, however, must have found something inspiring in the script, as he does some of his more interesting work in this series so far this issue. I particularly like his use of framing things in the reflections of Vulture or Spidey’s mask; and Kubert also illustrates some really good of Spider-Man emoting through his mask, really showing him struggle while lifting heavy rubble, for instance.

  Kill or Be Killed #13

And we’re at the issue that closes the circle, bringing us to the cold open all the way back in #1, with Dylan going through the mob base, shotgunning everyone in his way. But before that, a revelation. Just before the shootout, Dylan had been obsessed with the demon, and decides to look through his dad’s stuff to see if there’s any more information about it. But he discovers something else entirely: a half-brother from his father’s first marriage whose suicide lines up perfectly with when his father started drawing the demon. A demon born out of one suicide by a man who committed suicide, and revived by his other son’s failed suicide attempt. Dylan isn’t one to miss a pattern.

But what I find more interesting than this new discovery is, again, how radically Dylan has transformed as a character. His obsession with the demon begins when he thinks to himself how proud the demon would be by his murdering two people in three weeks. And upon learning about his brother, and reminiscing on his father’s isolated and disappointing life, he is overcome by anger rather than sadness or empathy. Dylan’s obsession with the demon feels more introspective than otherwise, him unconsciously looking into how he so easily became a murderer.

Phillips illustrates this transformation subtly, by putting Dylan’s face in shadows more often than not, and especially when there are other people in the panel whose faces remain unobscured. Besides quite literally illustrating Dylan dwelling in darkness, it also creates a visible distance between him and other people. And the transition in style, from the series’ main style to the more photorealistic illustrations done in-universe by Dylan’s father is impressive as it always is; though it’s weird to be leafing through a comic on the subway only to suddenly be looking at a sci-fi pin-up.

  Bitch Planet: Triple Feature #5

The final collection of Bitch Planet shorts done by guest creative teams, who get to paint their own corners of Kelly Sue and De Landro’s dystopia, and one of the strongest.

The first story, by Matt Fraction, Elsa Charretier, and Nick Filardi is a brilliant twist on the “grandma/pa during holiday dinner” story. Kimmy brings her boyfriend, David Zeiss, home for his first Christmas, but warns him about her Grandma, who says some crazy things. But, instead of being anti-semitic, Nanna instead interrupts with stories of lesbian experimentation in college, and how women used to have their own jobs and weren’t just pleasure machines for men. It’s delightful! And, I honestly flipped back to the cover to see if the art was done by Bruce Timm, who’s style I want to say definitely inspired Charretier’s own; though she thankfully doesn’t give every man and women the exact same proportions.

The second, by Jon Tsuei and Saskia Gutekunst, follows two friends, one white, one asian, as they audition for the same role in a movie. If you even barely follow any actual Hollywood news, you can probably already sense where this is going. Gutekunst’s art in this isn’t really my taste; she uses a kind of manga-light style with soft colors and gradients. It fits the narrative because of the whitewashing story-line, but it’s just looks like a half-step in one direction, and another half-step in another.

The last story, by Nyambi, Bassey, and Eyang Nyambi, and Chris Visions is a doozy that creates a link between appropriation of black culture and beauty with the police violence against black bodies. When a white girl goes full blackface to join her friends at a danceclub, she gets pulled over by cops and can no longer rely on her whiteness to get out of a ticket – or much much worse. It’s the most Twilight Zone story in this anthology series so far, and one of the best encapsulations of the idea that America loves black culture and hates black people.

Comic Reviews for 10/18/17 Batman #33 To close out the last arc, last issue, Catwoman accepted Batman’s engagement proposal. In this arc, she has to meet the last supervillainess that Batman proposed to.