#lyons ga

[antifainternational]

January 13 - Global Day of Action for Palestine

Here is a list of protests in solidarity with Palestine for January 13th. If there's no protest on saturday near you, take a look at this site (where we got this list from) to see if there is one near you on another day.

It's a looong list so it's under the cut here:

AUSTRALIA

ADELAIDE, AUSTRALIA – Sat Jan 13, 5 pm, Parliament House. Info: http://www.afopa.com.au/afopa-events/2024/1/13/global-day-of-action-for-palestine

ALTONA BEACH, VIC, AUSTRALIA – Sat Jan 13, 11 am, Altona Beach (Kites for Palestine). Info: https://bukjeh.org/etn/fly-a-kite-for-gaza/

CANBERRA, AUSTRALIA – Sat Jan 13, 1 pm, Garema Place. Info: https://www.instagram.com/p/C1Tmi9jyT6x/

DARWIN, AUSTRALIA – Sat Jan 13, 5 pm Nightcliff Foreshore. Info: https://www.instagram.com/p/C13PZfQyx6P/

GOLD COAST, AUSTRALIA – Sat Jan 13, 3:30 pm, Surfers Paradise Esplanade. Info: https://www.instagram.com/p/C1vvY_kpjkM/

HOBART/NIPALUNA, AUSTRALIA – Sat Jan 13, 1 pm, Davey Street in front of Grand Chancellor. Info: https://www.facebook.com/events/877061687400715/

LAUNCESTON, AUSTRALIA – Sat Jan 13, 12 pm, Civic Square. Info: https://friendsofpalestinetasmania.org/

MOSS VALE, AUSTRALIA – Sat Jan 13 (Weekly), 1 pm, Leighton Gardens, 127 Argyle St. Info: https://apan.org.au/event/weekly-moss-vale-vigil-for-peace-justice-in-palestine/

MPARTNWE, AUSTRALIA – Sat Jan 13, 9 am, Cars meet at Telegraph Station, 9:30 am Bikes meet at Snow Kenna Park. Info: https://www.instagram.com/p/C10iKLbSjU-/

NEWCASTLE, AUSTRALIA – Sat Jan 13, 1 pm, Newcastle Museum. Info: https://facebook.com/events/s/protest-end-the-genocide-in-ga/351713430807807/

PORT MACQUARIE, AUSTRALIA – Sat Jan 13, 10 am, Oxley Beach (Kites for Gaza). Info: https://apan.org.au/event/port-macquarie-fly-a-kite-for-gaza/

AUSTRIA

GRAZ, AUSTRIA – Sat Jan 13, 4 pm, Grazer Hauptbahnhof. Info: https://www.instagram.com/p/C1xAHAstgtj/

SALZBURG, AUSTRIA – Sat Jan 13, 1 pm, Alter Markt

VIENNA, AUSTRIA – Sat Jan 13, 3 pm, 1070 Platz der Menschenrechte. Info: https://www.instagram.com/p/C12dm9itpPv/

WIENER NEUSTADT, AUSTRIA – Sat Jan 13, 2:30 pm, Herzog Leopoldstr. 32 beim BORG.

BELGIUM

BRUGGE, BELGIUM – Sat Jan 13, 2 pm, Burg. Info: https://www.facebook.com/events/1413973119327402/

GHENT, BELGIUM – Sat Jan 13, 2 pm, Stadshal. Info: https://www.instagram.com/p/C1xNF3Drkr4/

BRAZIL

SAO PAULO, BRAZIL – Sat Jan 13, 2:30 pm, MASP. Info: https://www.instagram.com/p/C1uPIywL3Ch/

CANADA AND QUEBEC

COBOURG, ON (CANADA) – Sat Jan 13, 11 am, Victoria Hall (every Saturday). Info: https://www.facebook.com/events/1050719572872023/

WINNIPEG, MB (CANADA) – Sat Jan 13, 1 pm, Winnipeg City Hall. Info: https://www.instagram.com/p/C12TvRUgZr5/

DENMARK

COPENHAGEN, DENMARK – Sat Jan 13, 5 pm, Sundbyoster Plads to Amagerbro Station. Info: https://www.instagram.com/p/C141sIFsEyb/

ENGLAND

HALIFAX, ENGLAND – Sat Jan 13, 1 pm, Savile Park (Kites for Gaza). Info: https://www.instagram.com/p/C1rcDm1M-bN/

HALIFAX, ENGLAND – Sat Jan 13 (every Saturday), 1 pm, Wilkos on Southgate. Info: https://www.instagram.com/p/C14Vb4wMgI_/

HEBDEN BRIDGE, ENGLAND – Sat Jan 13 (every Saturday), 3 pm, Roadside Rally, Holme St; 4 pm, Vigil, St. George’s Square. Info: https://www.instagram.com/p/C14Vb4wMgI_/

LEEDS, ENGLAND – Sat Jan 13, 12:30 pm, Leeds Becket University to City Square. Info: https://www.instagram.com/p/C1zmlUvMtUE/

LONDON, ENGLAND – Sat Jan 13, 12 pm, Bank Junction. Info: https://www.instagram.com/p/C1uiCejM9U7/

NELSON, ENGLAND – Sat Jan 13 (every Saturday), 1:30 pm, Nelson Bazaars. Info: https://www.facebook.com/events/1745872575916888/

NOTTINGHAM, ENGLAND – Sat Jan 13, 12 pm, St Peter’s Church. Info: https://www.facebook.com/events/895516721895213/

SHEFFIELD, ENGLAND – Sat Jan 13, 10:30 am, Ellesmere Green. Info: https://www.instagram.com/p/C131K5OqywW/

FINLAND

HELSINKI, FINLAND – Sat Jan 13, 3 pm, Central Railway Station. Info: https://www.instagram.com/p/C1zWU7JtCWt/

FRANCE

LYON, FRANCE – Sat Jan 13, 2:30 pm, Place des Terreaux. Info: https://www.instagram.com/p/C12BHiDoyBT/

PARIS, FRANCE – Sat Jan 13, 2 pm, Republique. Info: https://www.instagram.com/p/C12Kx3hIFnC/

TOULOUSE, FRANCE – Sat Jan 13, 2 pm, Jean Jaures to Arnaud Bertrand. Info: https://www.instagram.com/p/C1wtkVPiTaC/

GERMANY

AACHEN, GERMANY – Sat Jan 13, 3 pm, Hauptbahnhof

AUGSBURG, GERMANY – Sat Jan 13, 3 pm, Moritzplatz

BERLIN, GERMANY – Sat Jan 13, 2 pm, Neptunbrunnen. Info: https://www.instagram.com/p/C1uWAoUMYgr/

BRAUNSCHWEIG, GERMANY – Sat Jan 13, 2 pm, Schlossplatz 1

DUSSELDORF, GERMANY – Sat Jan 13, 2 pm, Hauptbahnhof

FRANKFURT, GERMANY – Sat Jan 13, 1:30 pm, Hauptwache. Info: https://www.instagram.com/p/C1xJbX7tDbH/

FREIBURG, GERMANY – Sat Jan 13, 3 pm, Konzerthaus. Info: https://www.instagram.com/p/C1wmG5TKy0H/

JENA, GERMANY – Sat Jan 13, 2 pm, Holzmarkt. Info: https://www.instagram.com/p/C15Gvxyse7n/

KIEL, GERMANY – Sat Jan 13, 2 pm, Bootshafen

MAINZ, GERMANY – Sat Jan 13, 1 pm, Hauptbahnhof

MUNICH, GERMANY – Sat Jan 13, 2 pm, Odeonsplatz. Info: https://www.instagram.com/p/C1vDFzfsviF/

SAARBRUCKEN, GERMANY – Sat Jan 13, 3 pm, Landwehrplatz

STUTTGART, GERMANY – Sat Jan 13, 5 pm, Schlossplatz. Info: https://www.instagram.com/p/C1uhwaBs1OB/

TUBINGEN, GERMANY – Sat Jan 13, 2 pm, Holzmarkt. Info: https://www.instagram.com/p/C1uiIwVooMj/

ULM, GERMANY – Sat Jan 13, 3 pm, Marktplatz

IRELAND

CARRICK-ON-SHANNON, IRELAND – Sat Jan 13, 3 pm, The Bridge. Info: https://www.ipsc.ie/protest/emergency-protests-for-palestine-around-ireland

CORK, IRELAND – Sat Jan 13, 1 pm, Grand Parade

DERRY, IRELAND – Sat Jan 13, 12 pm, Derry Waterside Train Station. Info: https://www.facebook.com/events/379355981136459/

DUBLIN, IRELAND – Sat Jan 13, 1 pm, Garden of Remembrance. Info: https://www.ipsc.ie/protest/emergency-protests-for-palestine-around-ireland

SKIBBEREEN, IRELAND – Sat Jan 13, 12:30 pm, Aldi Carpark. Info: https://www.facebook.com/events/884577173028746/

ITALY

FIRENZE, ITALY – Sat Jan 13, 2:30 pm, Corteo da Piazza dei Ciompi.

NAPOLI, ITALY – Sat Jan 13, 3 pm, Piazza Garibaldi. Info: https://www.instagram.com/p/C11jF13IMfk/

ROME, ITALY – Sat Jan 13, 3 pm, Via dei Fori Imperiali to Largo Corrado Ricci. Info: https://www.instagram.com/p/C12TtZUNVDn/

KOREA

SEOUL, KOREA – Sat Jan 13, 2 pm, Zionist embassy. Info: https://www.instagram.com/p/C1wWJ2WJvMn/

MEXICO

GUADALAJARA, MEXICO – Sat Jan 13, 4 pm, Rambla Cataluna to Plaza de la Liberacion. Info: https://www.instagram.com/p/C13FY23uHH_/

MEXICO CITY, MEXICO – Sat Jan 13, 4 pm, Angel to US Embassy to Zocalo. Info: https://www.instagram.com/p/C126FgtOh2y/

NEW ZEALAND

TIMARU, NEW ZEALAND – Sat Jan 13, 2:30 pm, Face of Peace, Caroline Bay. (Kites for Gaza). Info: https://www.facebook.com/events/351982744232340/

WHANGAREI, NEW ZEALAND – Sat Jan 13, 10 am, Town Basin. Info: https://www.facebook.com/events/1062868608192188/

NETHERLANDS

AMSTERDAM, NETHERLANDS – Sat Jan 13, 1 pm, Museumplein. Info: https://www.instagram.com/p/C14bgz6skSe/

AMSTERDAM, NETHERLANDS – Sat Jan 13, 5 pm, Dam Square to Museumplein. Info: https://www.instagram.com/p/C15I-anI-lc/

LEEUWARDEN, NETHERLANDS – Sat Jan 13, 1 pm, Leeuwarden Station. Info: https://www.instagram.com/p/C1rgX_OoVe4/

ZWOLLE, NETHERLANDS – Sat Jan 13, 3:30 pm, Starbucks station. Info: https://www.instagram.com/p/C11cUhjsyFd/

NORWAY

OSLO, NORWAY – Sat Jan 13, 2 pm, Youngstorget to Zionist Embassy. Info: https://www.facebook.com/events/876776784142252/

PERU

LIMA, PERU – Sat Jan 13, 3:30 pm, Plaza 27 de noviembre, San Isidro – Parque Kennedy. Info: https://www.instagram.com/p/C1r3BHZrSSM/

PORTUGAL

PORTO, PORTUGAL – Sat Jan 13, 3:30 pm, Praca da Batalha. Info: https://www.instagram.com/p/C14UrYhs-hB/

PORTO, PORTUGAL – Sat Jan 13 (every night), 10 pm, Camara Municipal (Vigil). Info: https://www.instagram.com/p/C1mWoJ0srwr/

ROMANIA

BUCHAREST, ROMANIA – Sat Jan 13, 2 pm, Universitate to Victoriei. Info: https://www.instagram.com/p/C11qxxuIlKe/

CLUJ-NAPOCA, ROMANIA – Sat Jan 13, details TBA. Info: https://www.instagram.com/p/C1tsmB2ojCq/

TIMISOARA, ROMANIA – Sat Jan 13, details TBA. Info: https://www.instagram.com/p/C1tsmB2ojCq/

SCOTLAND

EDINBURGH, SCOTLAND – Sat Jan 13, 2 pm, Foot of the Mound. Info: https://www.instagram.com/p/C1od7QsNlCM/

INVERNESS, SCOTLAND – Sat Jan 13, 12 pm, The Spectrum Centre. Info: https://www.instagram.com/p/C15ggmFtNyg/

ORKNEY, SCOTLAND – Sat Jan 13 (every Saturday), 1 pm, St Magnus Cathedral Steps. Info: https://www.facebook.com/events/899757958430523/

SOUTH AFRICA

CAPE TOWN, SOUTH AFRICA – Sat Jan 13, 2 pm, Mandela Glasses, Sea Point Promenade. Info: https://www.instagram.com/p/C14N2xlqjyK/

JOHANNESBURG, SOUTH AFRICA – Sat Jan 13, 11 am, US Consulate, Sandton. Info: https://www.instagram.com/p/C13qpzSNbYt/

KNYSNA, SOUTH AFRICA – Sat Jan 13, 9 am, N2 C/O Main Service Rd and Wagtail St, Sedgefield, Western Cape. Info: https://www.facebook.com/events/910931826901335/

SPANISH STATE

A CORUNA, GALICIA, SPAIN – Sat Jan 13, 5 pm, Praza de Lugo. Info: https://www.instagram.com/p/C14lQvascZx/

BETERA, VALENCIA – Sat, Jan 13, 5 pm, Ayuntamiento de Betera. Info: https://www.instagram.com/p/C1ISqjUN2ir/

COMPOSTELA, GALICIA, SPAIN – Sat Jan 13, 12 pm, Praterias. Info: https://www.instagram.com/p/C14lQvascZx/

MOLINA DE SEGURA, SPAIN – Sat Jan 13, 12 pm, Plaza de Ayuntamiento. Info: https://twitter.com/LibreRegion/status/1743912944612540608

VIGO, GALICIA, SPAIN – Sat Jan 13, 12 pm, Porta do Sol. Info: https://www.instagram.com/p/C14lQvascZx/

SWEDEN

KARLSKRONA, SWEDEN – Sat Jan 13, 2 pm, Klaipedaplatsen. Info: https://www.facebook.com/events/7004450806289059/

KRISTIANSTAD, SWEDEN – Sat Jan 13, 2:30 pm, Stora Torget. Info: https://www.instagram.com/p/C15GIWbNI_K/

MALMO, SWEDEN – Sat Jan 13, 2 pm, St Knuts Torg. Info: https://www.instagram.com/p/C1348ATC6Uq/

VARBERG, SWEDEN – Sat Jan 13, 11 am, Varbergs Torg. Info: https://www.instagram.com/p/C1piXtgLGYj/

SWITZERLAND

BASEL, SWITZERLAND – Sat Jan 13, 2 pm, Theaterplatz. Info: https://www.instagram.com/p/C1m6lOxLDI-/

UNITED STATES

EUGENE, OR (US) – Sat Jan 13, 1 pm, Federal Courthouse, 405 E 8th Ave. Info: https://www.instagram.com/p/C1jOAiXiUJ0/

FORT COLLINS, CO (US) – Sat Jan 13 (every Saturday), 3 pm, Old Town Square Stage. Info: https://www.instagram.com/p/C1n9pmNOGFd/

FORT WAYNE, IN (US) – Sat Jan 13, 1 pm, MLK Bridge.

KALISPELL, MT (US) – Sat Jan 13, 12, Main and Center by Depot Park (Every Saturday). Info: https://www.instagram.com/p/C1puNa1ucrm/

KANSAS CITY, KS (US) – Sat Jan 13, 1 pm, Granada Park, Roeland Park. Info: https://www.instagram.com/p/C10Y27LJ1EO/

LANGLEY, WA (US) – Sat Jan 13, 11 am, Bayview Rd and Hwy 525. Info: https://www.facebook.com/events/373235975254744/

MIAMI, FL (US) – Sat Jan 13, 2 pm, University Metrorail Station. Info: https://www.instagram.com/p/C15V1BXLyc-/

NEW YORK, NY (US) – Sat Jan 13, 12 pm, NE Corner 5th Ave and 44th St, Brooklyn. (Vigil, every Saturday). Info: https://www.instagram.com/p/C0KsY8PvCwp/

NEW YORK, NY (US) – Sat Jan 13, 5 pm, Bryant Park Library Steps. Info: https://www.instagram.com/p/C145mA_Jido/

OAKLAND, CA (US) – Sat Jan 13, 5 am, West Oakland BART, Port Shutdown for Palestine. Info: https://www.instagram.com/p/C1qpwPaLsLY/

OLYMPIA, WA (US) – Sat Jan 13, 1 pm, Heritage Park, 5th Ave SW. Info: https://www.instagram.com/p/C1xUYlRPtRc/

PETALUMA, CA (US) – Sat Jan 13 (every Saturday), 12:30 pm, Petaluma Blvd and East Washington. Info: https://www.facebook.com/events/362661229552435/

PORTLAND, OR (US) – Sat Jan 13, 6 pm, Protest Michael Rapoport, Helium Comedy Club, 1510 SE 9th Ave. Info: https://www.instagram.com/p/C1nDhO7vNM4

SACRAMENTO, CA (US) – Sat Jan 13, 1pm, State Capital, West Steps. Info: https://sac4palestine.org/january-3-2024-solidary-rally-with-national-march-on-washington/

SAN DIEGO, CA (US) – Sat Jan 13, 11 am, Plaza de Panama, Balboa Park. Info: https://www.instagram.com/p/C13b08grRj2/

ST PAUL, MN (US) – Sat Jan 13, 2 pm, Western District Police Dept to MN State Capitol. Info: https://www.instagram.com/p/C12sMuQJHeh/

VIROQUA, WI (US) – Sat Jan 13, 11 am, Main St and Decker St, Weekly Vigil by Driftless Solidarity. Info: https://www.instagram.com/p/C1fWWvKNJlI/

WASHINGTON, DC (US) – Sat Jan 13, 1 pm, Freedom Plaza, 1325 Pennsylvania Ave NW Info: https://march4gaza.org

BUSES ACROSS THE COUNTRY to this national march from CT, FL, IL, IN, MA, MI, MO, NC, NJ, NY, OH, PA, VA and WI – get at the website

PRE-RALLY – WASHINGTON, DC – Sat Jan 13, 7 am, National Mall. Info: https://twitter.com/_FRFP_/status/1742706175114661946

HEALTH CARE WORKERS MARCH – Sat Jan 13, 10 am ,Dept of Health and Human Services, 200 Independence Ave SW. Info: https://www.instagram.com/p/C10DXDiADMK/

[railsistem]

HS2 Launches Second TBM to Tunnel Under London

HS2 Launches Second TBM to Tunnel Under London

A second 140 metre long, 2,050 tonnes tunnel boring machine (TBM) has begun its journey across London for HS2. This was switched on by HS2 Civils Delivery Director Mike Lyons. HS2 launches second London tunnel boring machine – Caroline © HS2 Named Caroline, after the first female professional astronomer Caroline Herschel, this TBM is the fifth of ten being launched by HS2 to construct the…

[hedgehog-moss]

Update on the French protests: we've had a well-known expert in contemporary political history call the situation we're in "the worst democracy crisis France has known since [the end of the 4th Republic]" and meanwhile the government is trying its hardest to maintain a façade of normal functioning by a) hiding from protesters, b) hiding protesters from view, and c) banning saucepans and other means of drawing attention to the protests that are being swept under the rug.

I mean casserolades are an old tradition in this country but they wouldn't have been needed if Macron &co hadn't started almost systematically banning protests in entire districts of the towns they visit and setting up police roadblocks to prevent peaceful protesters from going anywhere near them. (Too bad because these are the kinds of images the media get (these 2 are from Le Monde) when protesters get to talk to Macron <3) :

Protesters corralled away where they can be easily ignored started banging pots and pans so the protest could at least be heard in the background of TV footage, and then pans started being confiscated.

French courts have repeatedly struck down the bans as illegal but police prefects keep churning new bans out every time Macron goes somewhere anyway, trying to publish them at the last minute so there's no time for a judicial review. (I saw a sign at a protest last week that went "Stop with all the bans we no longer have time to disobey all of them")

After boldly banning saucepans by calling them "portable sonorous devices" last week, today a police prefecture banned "festive gatherings of a musical nature" in a town Macron will be visiting tomorrow. They're (ab)using counter-terrorist legislation for all this, so these days we get to read unheard-of court rulings that go like "We are suspending this prefectural decree as we do not consider festive gatherings of a musical nature to pose a significant terrorist threat to the President."

If Macron had people showing up in support I don't think we would see so many pissy protest bans because then the media could show backers vs. opponents and things would look normal (and not like 70% of the country is very pissed off with Macron). But there's not much for them to show if they don't show the angry people banging pans and it clearly rankles Macron—we learnt yesterday that he sent a letter to 200,000 political supporters of his essentially ordering them to start making appearances all over the country, to show they are "proud of what you are and of what our country has become [since I got elected]." That seems a bit desperate.

For months Macron &co have been predicting that people would get tired of taking to the streets in large numbers, and now that people are going like—right, let's try a new strategy, small local protests greeting gov members everywhere they go!—we're hearing a clear "no not like that, that's not what we meant :l " reaction from the government.

They've also been trying the strategy of announcing stuff at the last minute, like on Monday the Minister of Education announced at noon that he would visit a higher learning institution in Lyon 2 hours later, and a hundred of protesters still showed up and tried to force their way into the building. They were held off by cops using tear gas and trying to block entrances (there's a pic that made me smile, showing cops trying to barricade university gates with garbage bins—how the tables have turned...!) and the Minister ended up not showing up and moving on to the next step of his schedule (protesters tried to follow him there but police vans were blocking the street.)

The first half of the video is at the uni in Lyon; the second half is in Paris later that day. When he returned to Paris the Minister was greeted by protesters with saucepans at the train station, it's like a national relay race of protesting at times. He had to go back through the train to leave via the other end of the platform under police escort so as not to meet any protesters (god forbid).

Macron commented that this was "uncivic" behaviour and I agree, civic behaviour on the part of gov members would be to at least face the people they choose to fuck over, instead of hiding behind cops and fleeing. Obviously Macron was condemning the 'uncivic' protesters though, and the Minister said he felt "physically threatened" by the "violence of [the protesters'] speech" which is a shit thing to say considering on the same day that he was mildly inconvenienced by having to take a different exit and felt physically endangered by words, yet another protester was mutilated after being shot at by police with a rubber bullet. Not a peep about this incident (or previous ones) from the government. The Minister of Education never even condemned that time high schoolers trying to protest got tear gassed and threatened with riot guns by cops in front of their school earlier this month.

But while people continue protesting despite the actual violence from cops, our ministers are looking pretty scared of citizens banging pots and pans. Here's a list of official visits that got cancelled "for safety reasons" (saucepan terrorism) in the past week:

1. Minister P. NDiaye cancelled a visit in Lyon 2. Minister F. Braun cancelled a visit to Evrard Hospital 3. Minister Delegate O. Klein cancelled a visit in Bobigny 4. Minister Delegate O. Grégoire cancelled a visit in La Baule 5. Minister S. Guerini cancelled a visit in Castelnau 6. Secretary of State B. Couillard cancelled a visit in Rochefort 7. Minister S. Retailleau cancelled a visit to the Paris Saclay University (electricity trade unionists cut the power in the building she was supposed to inaugurate, so) 8. Minister C. Grandjean cancelled a visit in Toulouse (this article says it was probably because the visit was quite near a big highway protest where protesters among other things were building a concrete wall on a national road)

In the same bullshitting vein as "portable sonorous devices", gov spokespeople have been insisting that visits aren't being cancelled, ministers are just "adjusting the course of their trips" which is funny to me. I guess we never beheaded any royalty we just adjusted the course of their necks. I also read a newspaper article that made me laugh, that went like "Minister cancels visit; trade unions disappointed" and I thought it was because the cancelled visit was a meeting with the unions which they wouldn't get to have, but the article said it was actually because they had a good protest planned and wouldn't get to hold it...

Watching protesters mess with the government in small ways on a daily basis has been good for morale—on Twitter the hashtags #IntervillesMacron and #IntervillesduZbeul popped up (zbeul = chaos, mess, and Intervilles was a TV game show that aired for over 50 years, where French cities competed against one another in goofy challenges). I only mentioned cancellations above, but fun things also happen on non-cancelled government visits, like a Minister having to leave a building via the emergency exit because of protesters blocking the building entrance (which some people argued is worth more points than a cancellation as it's more entertaining):

Various websites were created to keep track of all these smaller protests and to officialise the point system that ranks cities on their efforts to fuck with the government:

(the first symbol means a protest, the second means a casserolade, the last one means protesters managed to get inside a building where a visit was taking place)

(Translation: Ruckus (saucepans, heckling...) 1pt Protest: 1pt Creative action (chasing minister in the woods, etc): 2pts Measures of energy conservation (= power cuts by unions) 3pts Action that leads to a political figure fleeing: 4pts Cancellation of a visit: 5pts — then there's a weighting system where the score is multiplied by 3 if it's a Minister, by 5 if it's the Prime Minister, by 6 if it's Macron.) (I also saw an interesting debate on Twitter this week—since our leaders often embarrass themselves, how should the government's own goals fit into the point system?)

Right now the Hérault department is winning because on top of protests, power cuts and casserolades, protesters greeted Macron with a giant "MACRON FUCK OFF" sign hung from a cliff (!) and took over a highway display so it'd say "Welcome to [region] Butthole Ist"

These past few days I've been discovering unknown French cities (and Ministers) thanks to them showing up in the hashtag after a good protest. I discovered a mediaeval castle I'd never heard of when unions hung banners featuring our most famous revolutionary dates from the castle's battlements. (Two days later, another protest with eloquent banners in the Musée d'Orsay in Paris:)

People are very creative—last week we heard that protesters got prosecuted for giving Macron the finger and insulting him during one of his official visits (< we are a healthy democracy), so protesters in another region tried a more sarcastic approach, and greeted a deputy from Macron's party at a strawberry fair this week with clapping and confetti and "Thank you for making us work 2 more years, thank you for police repression, thank you!" The deputy beat a hasty retreat. Then said he would file a complaint against the harassment and intimidation he had been subjected to. (The tear gas and riot guns and arrests and protest bans are not intimidation of protesters on the other hand. Or the fact that another deputy from his party recently said on TV that they were "ready for war"... They're ready to wage war, but run and hide when people clang saucepans and throw confetti.)

Anyway. I'm enjoying the fact that they can't even attend a small strawberry fair without getting heckled right now. In one of my first posts about the political crisis in March I wrote something like "How will Macron and his gov have any legitimacy to speak about any issues after this?" and it cheers me up to see a lot of people across the country agree that they have no legitimacy to talk about anything, not even the strawberry harvest.

The next nationwide protest is of course for May 1st, but in the meantime it's been really fun following the smaller protest actions all over the place. Members of government & Macron's party keep making whiny statements along the lines of this is terrorist behaviour, we can't go anywhere, why are people not getting tired of fucking with us and the answer is, because it's really entertaining!

This was the last sentence of a recent Le Monde article about Macron's situation and it has such a sinister, end-of-reign tone:

"I'm moving forward," Macron concluded, on April 20th in the Herault department, while behind his back echoed the sound of saucepans.

[allaboutnayeli]

red looks good on you [e.de almeida x reader]

prompt: you find it hot when elisa gets angry on the pitch

author notes: been missing writing for my babygirl elisa 🥳 she's injured right now, so this is me trying to get over the fact she isn't playing with psg right now. enjoy it!

word of the fic: "anger" chosen by the loml @moonystoes

there are mainly two types of players. some are more clean and try their best not to foul anyone. while others are more aggressive. finding joy in not only fouling, but tackling and even obviously yellow card offenses on the pitch. elisa was definitely the second. the french woman had no problem pushing, colliding hard into, or taking the legs right under from her opponent. it was a part of the fun of the game and a way for her to be over competitive.

you didn't mind seeing elisa act like this on the pitch. it's entertaining, that's why she has so many fans. you often tag along with the paris saint germain feminines team when you weren't in classes. living the wag life was fun and you have gotten close to almost all of the girls on the team expect for a certain blonde.

however, sometimes elisa went too far. she would get so angry, her play would get aggressive enough that it showed she obviously didn't care if a red card was put up by the ref directed at her. you knew in the back of your mind when you see elisa starting to push a player a little too much you should disapprove; knowing damn well that if some other player was doing that to elisa, you would not like it. at the same time, can you really be blamed for finding it attractive when her aggressiveness is ramped up.

it's not your fault you have double standards. blame the attractive woman you call your girlfriend.

it's around the 71st minute in the match against lyon. the game has been intense since the first minute with the two clubs being huge rivals in the french women league. players on either side were getting desperate to break the 2-2 deadlock that was going on. sakina has been working particularly hard, but she just keep losing the ball. you remind yourself to buy her some cookies after the match for her efforts.

all the psg players on the pitch are trying to absolute hardest to beat the other french soccer giant. your eyes are glued to elisa as she passes the ball to chawinga who almost gets the ball into the back of the net, but one of lyon's players come in at the last minute. kicking the ball and causing it to fly away from the net. you can tell that elisa is getting more frustrated as the minutes passed. lyon was letting up and she didn't plan to either. putting on the hardest defense she could manage. the expression on her face along with how tense she looked already told you everything you need to know; elisa was about to snap if something happened.

and something did. as elisa was running to stop a ball coming near the psg's goal, she collides with danielle. sending both her and the smaller woman to the ground. danielle is able to stand up quicker than elisa, already ready to shout.

"watch where you're going!" the dutch player shouts out after elisa stands and comes close. elisa looks down at danielle, just narrowing her eyes. the ref quickly comes over to defuse the situation, but the moment danielle pushes elisa, it all goes to hell.

elisa is quick to push her back, sending danielle to the ground. her lyon teammates rush over to defend their teammate. ellie helping danielle up and pulling away from the small crowd of players. it only takes two minutes for sakina to reach elisa from where she was on the pitch. holding onto her as the french player glares over at danielle.

the ref doesn't even lecture elisa before holding up a yellow card. pointing at danielle before pointing at elisa; neither of them were about to walk off scoot free. then the game is allowed to continue on.

it seemed like the situation was put behind everyone as the players put more attention towards trying to score in the last ten minutes of the game. however, you can tell from a far that elisa wasn't over it. this is confirmed when elisa takes selma's feet right from up under her after selma tried to foul eva. was elisa's action out of self defense of her teammate or just her trying to get out some annoyance? we'll never know.

when the ref comes over to hold up a yellow card then a red, elisa acts clueless. throwing her hands up as if she's confused on why the ref is going after her. the rest of the psg players run over to elisa's defense, but it's no use. she walks off of the pitch and into the tunnel so she could go straight to the locker room; ignoring the psg coach who was trying to offer her water.

you just sit back and sip on your drink, watching the rest of the match unfold.

lyon wins with a late goal in the 87th minute, making the score 3-2. the fans in the crowd were not happy and you couldn't agree anymore, but nonetheless lyon came out on top.

you wait for the fans in the stadium to clear out before making your way into the tunnel. not even having to go into the psg locker room as elisa is standing right next to the door. she's leaning against the wall, her usual taper fade is slightly wet. after being sent off, elisa must have showered to cool off her anger.

"i know what you're going to say," she says, leaning off of the wall to pull you close. nuzzling her face into your neck.

"what?"

"that i should control my anger and that i costed my team the game?" she mumbles into your neck. you chuckle before kissing the side of her head.

"i'm your girlfriend not a soccer critic, babes," you say. your words make elisa giggle. she pulls away slightly to look at you. a smug smile on her lips.

"so..?" she says. you roll your eyes at how quickly her emotions can flip; finding that smile on her lips annoying but very attractive.

"so?" you say back to her

"so.. what do you think about it?"

"i thought it was pretty hot," you pull her closer by the collar of her shirt. giggling once you two's noses bump against each other. "yeah?" she says. you don't reply, just pulling her into a kiss.

the kiss only lasts for so long when sakina pops her head out of the locker room. scrunching her nose once she sees what you two are doing.

"have some public decency," she says before rolling her eyes, "elisa come get your cleats off my bag."

elisa pouts at having to stop kissing you, but still what sakina says goes so she pulls away. dragging you along with her into the locker room after sakina.

© thinkingaboutjaedyn

[hometoursandotherstuff]

9 Columns, built in 1910 in Lyons, GA has been operating as a Bed & Breakfast, but it's also a 4bd, 4ba single family home. $$599,900.

Lovely entrance hall. L-shaped window seat and delicate stair railing. I love hydrangea, but this is a profusion.

I'm seeing some wear on the wood. The columns going into the sitting room are lovely- I prefer pocket doors, but this is fancier.

Peachy keen sitting room. I keep thinking back to the home in Detroit and how elegant the sitting room was- this is kind of maximalist/on-the-verge-of-tacky.

Large dining room. This room also has built-in benches and an original non-working fireplace.

Because it's a bed & breakfast, the kitchen has an industrial sink and island.

It's nice, though.

This looks like a 2nd kitchen in the pantry with a normal sink. I'm confused. B/c of the coffee maker and microwave, etc., it looks like it could be for the guests.

Those peach inserts in the non-working fireplaces are starting to bug me. The rooms will be large and each one has an en-suite, but it's hard to see rooms in home with so much decor.

This room has a sink and dressing screen.

I don't know, it looks like this tub is behind the screen.

This smaller room has an en-suite. I'm not seeing any toilets, though.

This bathroom has a tub in what used to be a hallway.

There's a nice big side porch on the 2nd level.

I'm thinking that the attic must be the owner's suite. They get a cool new tub.

The front porche has a beautiful view of the water tower.

Lovely pond in the garden.

There's also a beautiful pool.

0.61 Acre lot

https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/180-NW-Broad-St-Lyons-GA-30436/76609330_zpid/

[wouldvebeensweet]

Eras Tour photos masterpost!  ⁺˚⋆。°✩

General eras tour tag → here

Filter by show

US Leg (2023) 🇺🇸

→ Glendale, AZ (3/17, 3/18)

→ Las Vegas, NV (3/24, 3/25)

→ Arlington, TX (3/31, 4/1, 4/2)

→ Tampa, FL (4/13, 4/14, 4/15)

→ Houston, TX (4/21, 4/22, 4/23)

→ Atlanta, GA (4/28, 4/29, 4/30)

→ Nashville, TN (5/5, 5/6, 5/7)

→ Philadelphia, PA (5/12, 5/13, 5/14)

→ Foxborough, MA (5/19, 5/20, 5/21)

→ East Rutherford, NJ (5/26, 5/27, 5/28)

→ Chicago, IL (6/2, 6/3, 6/4)

→ Detroit, MI (6/9, 6/10)

→ Pittsburgh, PA (6/16, 6/17)

→ Minneapolis, MN (6/23, 6/24)

→ Cincinnati, OH (6/30, 7/1)

→ Kansas City, MO (7/7, 7/8)

→ Denver, CO (7/14, 7/15)

→ Seattle, WA (7/22, 7/23)

→ Santa Clara, CA (7/28, 7/29)

→ Los Angeles, CA (8/3, 8/4, 8/5, 8/7, 8/8, 8/9)

Asia, Australia and Latin America (2023)

→ Mexico City, MX 🇲🇽 (8/24, 8/25, 8/26, 8/27)

→ Buenos Aires, ARG 🇦🇷 (11/9, 11/11, 11/12)

→ Rio de Janeiro, Brazil 🇧🇷 (11/17, 11/19, 11/20)

→ Sao Paulo, Brazil 🇧🇷 (11/24, 11/25, 11/26)

→ Tokyo, Japan 🇯🇵 (2/7, 2/8, 2/9, 2/10)

→ Melbourne, AUS 🇦🇺 (2/16, 2/17, 2/18)

→ Sydney, AUS 🇦🇺 (2/23, 2/24, 2/25, 2/26)

→ Singapore, SG 🇸🇬 (3/2, 3/3, 3/4, 3/7, 3/8, 3/9)

Europe Leg 2024

→ Paris, FR 🇫🇷 (4/9, 4/10, 4/11, 4/12)

→ Sweden, SE 🇸🇪 (4/17, 4/18, 4/19)

→ Lisbon, PT 🇵🇹 (4/24, 4/25)

→ Madrid, ESP 🇪🇸 (5/29, 5/30)

→ Lyon, FR 🇫🇷 (6/2, 6/3)

→ Edinburgh, SCT 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿 (6/7, 6/8, 6/9)

→ Liverpool, England UK 🇬🇧 (6/13, 6/14 6/15)

→ Cardiff, Wales UK 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿 (6/18)

→ London, Engand UK 🇬🇧 (6/21, 6/22, 6/23)

→ Dublin, IE 🇮🇪 (6/28, 6/29, 6/30)

**If you don't see photos for your show, don't worry! I'll be going through and adding more. This is just what I have so far!

[kvetchlandia]

Danny Lyon Teenage Civil Rights Activists Imprisoned in the Leesburg Stockade for Trying to Desegregate a Theater in Americus, Georgia, Leesburg, GA 1963

[seeminglyranch87]

Taylor & Travis Timeline

June 2024 - Part 1

June 2 - The Eras Tour, Groupama Stadium, Lyon France N1 - rain show.

The Prophecy x Long Story Short (guitar) & Fifteen x You're On You're Own Kid (piano)

June 3 - The Eras Tour, Groupama Stadium, Lyon France N2

Glitch x Everything Has Changed (guitar) & Chloe or Sam or Sophia or Marcus (piano)

June 6 - Travis to appear on Good Morning America

June 7 - Chiefs OTA's, Kansas City - Travis (x)

The Eras Tour, Scottish Gas Murrayfield Stadium, Edinburgh, UK N1

Would've Could've Should've x I Know Places (guitar) & ‘Tis The Damn Season x Daylight (piano)

June 8 - The Eras Tour, Scottish Gas Murrayfield Stadium, Edinburgh, UK N2

The Bolter x Getaway Car (guitar) & All Of The Girls You’ve Loved Before x Crazier (piano)

More promotional deals for Travis; Accelerator with Livvy Dunne.

June 9 - The Eras Tour, Scottish Gas Murrayfield Stadium, Edinburgh, UK N3

It's Nice To Have A Friend x Dorothea (guitar) & Haunted x Exile (piano)

Travis participates in David Njoku’s celebrity softball game. Travis is winner of the home run derby

June 10 - Travis in KC for media day (x) Let's go #87

Travis comments on GoJo & Golic's podcast where he raves about Travis' athleticism, simulating a conversation between Tay & Trav (x)

"The only thing I can come back to with all this ... is how difficult it is to register on the Richter scale in the house that he's now apart of with Taylor Swift where its like 'Oh babe, what did you do this weekend?' 'Well, I stimulated the global economy, I went to a new a new city and enriched the lives of hundreds of thousands of people, babe, what did you do?' 'I cracked 11 dingers (11 home runs) in a celebrity softball game, feeling pretty great about this one babe, thanks for asking' "

June 11 - Chiefs training camp

Travis is asked at Chiefs press conference what he and his significant other cook together based on the Youtube Short Taylor posted (x 6:30)

"I'm gonna keep that one it myself, because I thoroughly enjoy cooking with her, so its something I'd rather keep personal" and later adds " Taylor makes a great pop tart and cinnamon roll" with a big grin on his face as he leaves.

Taylor out at Casa Cruz in Notting Hill, London, UK dining with Cara Delevingne, Stella McCartney, Phoebe Waller Bridges, Kate Moss, Este Haim, Danielle Haim, Lena Dunham, Andrew Scott, Martin McDonagh & others. Taylor wears the choker she also wore to the Grammy's when announcing TTPD and receiving her 4th Album Of The Year. I'm suspicious...

Look at that smirk...

New Heights Ep. 94 airs (x) Jason and Travis talk about Travis’ Kids Choice Awards nomination, Jason is convinced Travis will win. Jason is not recognised by young women and girls...

“oh my god you’re the brother of the Travis dating Taylor Swift!!”

June 12 - Chiefs training camp. "Tight end Travis Kelce made a great catch over the middle despite good coverage during a 7-on-7 period."

Go to previous update -> May part 3

Go to next update -> June part 2

Return to the timeline

[bracketsoffear]

Spiral Leitner Reading List

The full list of submissions for the Spiral Leitner bracket. Bold titles are ones which were accepted to appear in the bracket. Synopses and propaganda can be found below the cut. Be warned, however, that these may contain spoilers!

Abbott, Edwin Abbott: Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions Amato, Mary: The Word Eater

Barker, Clive: Abarat Basye, Dale E.: Fibble Borges, Jorge Luis: Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius

Calvino, Italo: If on a winter’s night a traveler Carroll, Emily: A Guest in the House Carroll, Lewis: Alice's Adventures in Wonderland/ Through the Looking Glass and what Alice found there Chambers, Robert W.: The King in Yellow Coltrane, John: Giant Steps Cortázar, Julio: Rayuela (Hopscotch) Cutter, Nick: The Deep

Dahl, Roald: Charlie and the Chocolate Factory Danielewski, Mark Z.: House of Leaves de Cervantes, Miguel: Don Quixote DeLaney, Samuel R.: Babel-17

Eliot, T.S.: The Waste Land Ewing, Frederick R.: I, Libertine

Gaiman, Neil: Neverwhere Gilman, Charlotte Perkins: The Yellow Wallpaper

Hall, Steven: The Raw Shark Texts Hamilton, Patrick: Angel Street/Gas Light Hawke, Marcus: Grey Noise Hodgson, William Hope: The House on the Borderlands Hunter, Erin: Warriors

Ito, Junji: Uzumaki

Joyce, James: Finnegans Wake Juster, Norton: The Phantom Tollbooth

Kte'pi, Bill: The Cheshire

Lovecraft, H.P.: The Color Out of Space Lyons, Steve: The Stealers of Dreams

Mathers, Edward Powys: Cain’s Jawbone Mearns, William Hughes: Antigonish Miles, Lawrence et. al.: The Book of the War Morrison, Grant: Doom Patrol Moore, Christopher: Sacré Bleu: A Comedy d’Art Muir, Tamsyn: Harrow the Ninth

National Governors Association and Council of Chief State School Officers: Common Core Math Textbook Nikolson, Adam: Life between the tides

O’Brien, Flann: The Third Policeman Ogawa, Yoko: The Memory Police Orwell, George: Nineteen Eighty-Four

Pelevin, Victor: The Helmet of Horror Pratchett, Terry: Moving Pictures Pynchon, Thomas: The Crying of Lot 49

Ryukishi07: higurashi no naku koro ni (When The Evening Cicadas Cry)

Sachar, Louis: Wayside School Is Falling Down Schwartz, Alvin: "Maybe You Will Remember" (short story from Scary Stories 3: More Tales To Chill Your Bones) Serafini, Luigi: Codex Seraphinianus Shakespeare, William: A Midsummer Night's Dream Shakespeare, William: King Lear Shakespeare, William: The Winter's Tale Silberescher: SCP-1425: Star Signals Stine, R.L.: Don't Go to Sleep!

Unknown, Voynich Manuscript

Wells, H.G.: The Door in the Wall West, A.J.: The Spirit Engineer Whorf, Benjamin Lee: Relation of Habitual Thought and Behavior to Language Wyspiański, Stanisław: The Wedding

Abbott, Edwin Abbott: Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions

Both a satire on Victorian hierarchies and a mathematical examination of lower and higher dimensions, Flatland's narrator has strange dreams of a one-dimensional Lineland where he can only be seen as a series of points on a line. Following this, he meets A. Sphere, whom he in turn can only see as a circle, and is exposed to the three-dimensional space of Spaceland. When he returns home to try and explain what he has seen, he is thrown into an insane asylum.

Amato, Mary: The Word Eater

The titular Word Eater is a worm born with eyes and the magical ability to eat words instead of dirt, named Fip. Whenever Fip eats a word, the object or subject that word was referring to vanishes, at one point accidentally erasing a recently discovered star. When used on a subject, erasure removes any ontological effects, as when used on a torturous dog training method the dogs it was used on all suddenly become docile instead of vicious. The conflict of the story comes in the fact that words are the only thing Fip can eat, so keeping anything else from being erased becomes a matter of starving him. There's also some disgruntled students who almost use him to erase their school, with the protagonist worrying that the effect could abstractly extend to the staff and students, necessitating their thwarting.

Barker, Clive: Abarat

Candy lives in Chickentown USA: the most boring place in the world, her heart bursting for some clue as to what her future may hold. She is soon to find out: swept out of our world by a giant wave, she finds herself in another place entirely...

The Abarat: a vast archipelago where every island is a different hour of the day, from the sunlit wonders of Three in the Afternoon, where dragons roam, to the dark terrors of the island of Midnight, ruled by Christopher Carrion. (...)

Abarat is an extremely Spiral coded place working so differently from the real world and being extremely nonsensical that I think this book deserves to be the Spiral Leitner.

Basye, Dale E.: Fibble

"When Marlo Fauster claims she has switched souls with her brother, she gets sent straight to Fibble, the circle of Heck reserved for liars. But it’s true—Milton and Marlo have switched places, and Marlo finds herself trapped in Milton’s gross, gangly body. She also finds herself trapped in Fibble, a three-ring media circus run by none other than P. T. Barnum, an insane ringmaster with grandiose plans and giant, flaming pants. Meanwhile Milton, as Marlo, is working at the devil’s new television network, T.H.E.E.N.D. But there’s something strange about these new shows. Why do they all air at the same time? And are they really broadcasting to the Surface? Soon Milton and Marlo realize that they need each other to sort through the lies and possibly prevent the end of the world—if Bea “Elsa” Bubb doesn’t catch them first."

The Fauster twins are caught up in yet another apocalyptic scheme as hellish figures plot to stoke a ratings war into a holy war, using elaborate lies and propaganda to provoke the end of humanity itself.

Borges, Jorge Luis: Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius

A short story concerning the author and his friend stumbling upon a mention of the Uqbar region in an encyclopedia, a place which is found in no other literature. One of the myths of Uqbar concerns Tlön, a fantastical place where people do not believe in the reality of the material world, and only the most outre scholars would dare suggest that objects have permanence. Objects there "grow vague or sketchy and lose detail" when they begin to be forgotten, culminating in their disappearance when they are completely forgotten. One year later, Tlönian objects begin to appear in the real world. Then a complete encyclopedia of the world turns up, transforming the human understanding of science and philosophy. As the author writes his postscript, the world is transforming entirely into Tlön.

Calvino, Italo: If on a winter’s night a traveler

The postmodernist narrative, in the form of a frame story, is about the reader trying to read a book called If on a winter's night a traveler. Each chapter is divided into two sections. The first section of each chapter is in second person, and describes the process the reader goes through to attempt to read the next chapter of the book they are reading. The second half is the first part of a new book that the reader ("you") finds. The second half is always about something different from the previous ones.

Carroll, Emily: A Guest in the House

"After many lonely years, Abby’s just gotten married. She met her new husband—a recently widowed dentist—when he arrived in town with his young daughter, seeking a new start. Although it’s strange living in the shadow of her predecessor, Abby does her best to be a good wife and mother. But the more she learns about her new husband’s first wife, the more things don’t add up. And Abby starts to wonder . . . was Sheila’s death really by natural causes? As Abby sinks deeper into confusion, Sheila’s memory seems to become a force all its own, ensnaring Abby in a mystery that leaves her obsessed, fascinated, and desperately in love for the first time in her life"

While most riffs on the Bluebeard story are probably slaughter, buried, or eye aligned, much of the horror in this story is the uncertainty and loss of a clear sense of reality. Also the art of Sheila feels very spiral.

Carroll, Lewis: Alice's Adventures in Wonderland/ Through the Looking Glass and what Alice found there

Both books have a similar structure and are spiral for the same reasons: little Victorian child Alice founds herself in a strange world with rules vastly different from hers (for example, there’s no real geography and the scenery changes suddenly from one place to another very much like in a dream). The characters she crosses constantly defy her understanding of the world and applies logics she struggles to understand. Even though she ends up going with the flow most of the time she never ceases to question whether she’s experiencing real life or a dream; sanity is brought up a few times, and there’s also the popular quote "We're all mad here. I'm mad. You're mad", delivered by the grinning cat that appears and disappears like a slippery distortion. Lastly I may add that the TMA episode whose title references the book (Mag 177, Wonderland) is a spiral episode.

Chambers, Robert W.: The King in Yellow

A collection of short stories, most of which revolve around a fictional two-act play of the same title: The King in Yellow. Although the play is never described in any great detail, anyone who reads it is driven to madness.

Coltrane, John: Giant Steps

At first a reader simply sees the rapid changes, seemingly random and discordant. Further investigation will begin to reveal patterns, the chords begin to outline other chords, that in turn outline further chords, only to loop back to the beginning. A master or his craft, the creator can seemingly effortlessly navigate this fractal of potential sound. You, can only hope to keep up as the endless, rapidly twisting patterns give you no time to comprehend the page in front of you.

This is specifically against tournament rules, but I still wanted to at least give it a submission.

Cortázar, Julio: Rayuela (Hopscotch)

The story of two young writers whose lives are playing themselves out in Buenos Aires and Paris to the sounds of jazz and brilliant talk, Hopscotch, written in 1963, was the first hypertext novel. Anticipating the age of the web with a non-structure that allows readers to take the chapters in any order they wish, Hopscotch invites them to be the architects of the novel themselves.

Cutter, Nick: The Deep

A strange plague called the ‘Gets is decimating humanity on a global scale. It causes people to forget— Small things at first and eventually their bodies forget how to function involuntarily. There is no cure.

But far below the surface of the Pacific Ocean, a universal healer hailed as “ambrosia” has been discovered. In order to study this phenomenon, a special research lab has been built eight miles under the sea’s surface. But when the station goes incommunicado, a brave few descend through the lightless fathoms in hopes of unraveling the mysteries lurking at those crushing depths."

At first glance you might think this book is much more aligned to The Buried than The Spiral and while it does have a lot of claustrophobic elements, the true horror the protagonist (Luke) faces, comes from slowly losing your perception of reality. The relatively small laboratory soon becomes a labyrinth, as he moves from room to room he also moves through memories that become more and more vivid as time goes by. He has hallucinations, falls asleep and dreams of being awake while sleepwalks, he is chased by monsters that are very real and some that are just his own demons.

(spoilers) At the end we find out he and all the other people in the laboratory were lured by two ancient creatures trapped both at the bottom of the sea and another dimension and needed Luke's body to be free. The Figmen are tricksters, they enjoy doing "experiments" seeing how much a body can twist and what it takes to break a mind. The people inside the laboratory were little more that mice they wanted to see run around for their amusement before being freed

Dahl, Roald: Charlie and the Chocolate Factory

I want off Mr. Wonka's wild ride. Why the fuck is this man dragging children through his acid trip pun-tastical Saw movie. OSHA get his ass

Danielewski, Mark Z.: House of Leaves

The novel is written as a work of epistolary fiction and metafiction focusing on a fictional documentary film titled the Navidson Record, presented as a story within a story discussed in a handwritten monograph recovered by the primary narrator, Johnny Truant. The narrative makes heavy use of multiperspectivity as Truant's footnotes chronicle his efforts to transcribe the manuscript, which itself reveals the Navidson Record's supposed narrative through transcriptions and analysis depicting a story of a family who discovers a larger-on-the-inside labyrinth in their house.

***

Come on, its the book that gaslights you. Some pages are literally typed in spirals. Its about a beautiful new house that breaks the laws of physics and also eats some people- Helen Richardson would be PROUD. Its a story in a story IN A STORY. The introduction of the book is about how the man annotating the manuscript of the documentary and his friend used to pick up girls by telling fantastical and false stories about their lives. Everyone in the books universe thinks the documentary was faked. What can i say that hasn't been said before? The “M” in Mark Z. Danielowki stands for “Mr. Michael Distortion”

***

I mean, look at the book. Look at it. I feel like I'm going mad every time I see its pages.

de Cervantes, Miguel: Don Quixote

After reading too many courtly romances, Quixote's perception of reality is warped, and he seeks to become a knight and restore the courtly chivalric graces. Also he thinks windmills are evil giants.

DeLaney, Samuel R.: Babel-17

Rydra Wong is a top linguist, acclaimed poet, and former military cryptologist. When the Alliance military come across a new code used by the enemy, which is beyond their ability to crack, they come to her for help. She informs them that it is not a mere code, but an actual language, and agrees to accept the challenge.

Quickly assembling a crew, Wong heads to the Alliance War Yards to study the raw data on this new language, which the military calls Babel-17. However, shortly after she arrives, an enemy attack forces her to flee in disarray, and she falls in with a privateer, who is, fortunately, on the Alliance side.

Or mostly so. On board the privateer's ship, she begins to learn more about Babel-17, and the surprising benefits and dangers it offers to someone who learns to speak it. The language literally twists the thought pattern of its speakers, making it easier to conceptualize certain ideas, but more difficult to translate your thoughts into anything others can understand.

Eliot, T.S.: The Waste Land

Here's a link to the text if anyone is curious

The Waste Land is a poem that describes a...place? state of mind? an arc of history?...in a series of fragments. It weaves together fractured dialogue, mythology, language, and popular culture of its day into a bizarre but beautiful landscape that defies easy explanation.

Ewing, Frederick R.: I, Libertine

New York Times Best Selling novel by acclaimed author, Frederick R. Ewing, “I, Libertine” tells the story of a social climber who styles himself as Lance Courtney.

I highly recommend those voting seek out the book to read for themselves, as it is truly one of the great works of modern American literature.

Gaiman, Neil: Neverwhere

"Under the streets of London there's a world most people could never even dream of. A city of monsters and saints, murderers and angels, knights in armour and pale girls in black velvet. "Neverwhere" is the London of the people who have fallen between the cracks. Strange destinies lie in wait in London below - a world that seems eerily familiar. But a world that is utterly bizarre, peopled by unearthly characters such as the Angel called Islington, the girl named Door, and the Earl who holds Court on a tube train. (...)"

Extremely weird world that unsuspecting civilian can be stuck in, and there is a door motive. This is a Spiral Leitner if I ever saw one.

Gilman, Charlotte Perkins: The Yellow Wallpaper

Link

From Wikipedia: "The story is written as a collection of journal entries narrated in the first person. The journal was written by a woman whose physician husband has rented an old mansion for the summer. Forgoing other rooms in the house, the couple moves into the upstairs nursery. As a form of treatment, the husband forbids the journal writer from working or writing, and encourages her to eat well and get plenty of air so that she can recuperate from what he calls a "temporary nervous depression – a slight hysterical tendency", a common diagnosis in women at the time. As the reader continues through the journal entries, they experience the writer's gradual descent into madness with nothing better to do than observe the peeling yellow wallpaper in her room.”

***

Epistolary novel about a woman who's being made to live in a single room to treat her post-partum depression. Over the course of the story, she becomes increasingly obsessed with the patterns of the room's wallpaper, spending hours gazing at it and trying to make sense of it. By the end of the story, she believes that there's a woman trapped in the wallpaper, or perhaps that she is the women trapped in the wallpaper. Throughout the story, she's also gaslit by her husband.

***

It's a short story and I highly recommend that you read it. Spoilers (of course) are ahead, so if you want an unspoiled experience, skip past.

This story follows the narrator, as she is locked up by her husband who cares for her and ultimately makes all decisions for her. He makes her doubt her state of mind as she suffers from a nervious disorder. As she stays in the ex-nursery attic, she writes of the horrendous yellow wallpaper. She becomes obsessive of it, watching it night and day amd watching as the colours change with the lighting of the room. She begins seeing a woman locked behind the twisting patterns, and in the end she becomes it - or it becomes her, and she has a hysteric breakdown.

Hall, Steven: The Raw Shark Texts

Eric Sanderson wakes up with no memory of who he is or any past experiences. He is told by a psychologist that he has a dissociative condition known as fugue but a trail of written clues purporting to be from his pre-amnesiac self describe a more fantastic and sinister explanation for his lack of memories. According to these, he has activated a conceptual shark called a Ludovician which "feeds on human memories and the intrinsic sense of self" and is relentlessly pursuing him and will eventually erase his personality completely.

Also at one point there's about 30 pages of an ASCII shark moving towards the reader. Could easily be interpreted as the Ludovician actually approaching the reader in a Leitner-ized version.

[SPOILERS] When the Ludovician attacks Eric, he decides to go in search of a doctor named Trey Fidorous, identified by the letters from his previous self, in the hope he may be able to help to explain what happened to him and how to defeat the shark. Eric travels through Britain in search of clues and is contacted by a mysterious figure called Mr. Nobody, who is part of a megalomaniac network intelligence called Mycroft Ward. Mr. Nobody attempts to subdue and control Eric but Eric manages to escape with the help of an associate of Fidorous named Scout. Scout takes Eric to meet Fidorous, travelling through un-space (an underground network of empty warehouses and unused cellars). They begin a romantic relationship during the journey but Eric feels betrayed when he discovers that Scout has brought him to Fidorous to use him as bait for the shark in the hope of destroying Ward.

With their help Fidorous builds a conceptual shark-hunting boat and they sail out on a conceptual ocean. After a battle with the shark they throw a laptop hooked up to the Mycroft Ward database into its mouth, destroying both Ward and the shark. Eric and Scout remain in the conceptual universe while Eric's dead body is discovered back in the real world.

Hamilton, Patrick: Angel Street/Gas Light

Under the guise of kindness, Jack Manningham is slowly torturing his fragile wife Bella into insanity in his efforts to cover his search for treasure from his diabolical past. He makes her think she is forgetting things and rattles her nerves with the flickering gaslight, which he controls from another room. One day, when Jack is out, Bella has an unexpected caller: kindly Inspector Rough from Scotland Yard. Rough is convinced that Jack is a homicidal maniac wanted for a murder committed fifteen years earlier in this very house. Gradually the Inspector restores Bella's confidence in herself and as the evidence against Jack unfolds.

The play that inspired the movie 1994 "Gaslight" which brought the term "gaslighting" into the public eye.

***

The literal origins of the term "gaslighting," the play follows the recently-married protagonist as her husband tries to convince her that she's going mad.

Hawke, Marcus: Grey Noise

Evan is just trying to get his store, REWIND VIDEO, up and running. Fate, unfortunately, often has other plans. Then he finds something that would be the perfect touch, an old vacuum tube TV. One that keeps turning to static. And it too has other plans. It follows you. Drives you. It’s already inside you. Lose yourself in...GREY NOISE.

Hodgson, William Hope: The House on the Borderlands

Fishing buddies Tonnison and Berreggnog didn't bargain for what they found while on holiday near the remote Irish village of Kraighten. While walking along the riverbank, they're astonished to see that the river abruptly ends. It reappears as a surge from a chasm some 100 feet below the edge of an abyss, where also stand the remains of an oddly shaped house, half-swallowed by the pit.

Exploring the ruins, the friends discover the moldering journal of an unidentified man--the Recluse--who had lived in the house with his sister and faithful dog years ago. Its pages reveal the man's apparent descent into madness--how else to account for his chronicles of otherworldly visions, trips to other dimensions, and attacks by swine-like humanoid creatures that seem to have followed him home? After one particular vision in which he witnesses the end of the earth and time itself, the Recluse awakens in his study to find nothing has changed--except that his dog Pepper is dead, dissolved into a pile of dust. And then the "swine things" return...

Hunter, Erin: Warriors

Can you keep track of who the fuck is related to who and who died when and what these cats look like and what they're named? No you fucking can't, there's four writers all sharing a pen name and metric shit ton of books in the main series alone, let alone the spinoffs. Continuity is dead and these cats murdered it.

Ito, Junji: Uzumaki

Uzumaki follows a high-school teenager, Kirie Goshima (五島桐絵); her boyfriend, Shuichi Saito (斎藤秀一); and the citizens of the small, quiet Japanese town of Kurouzu-cho (黒渦町, Black Vortex Town), which is enveloped by supernatural events involving spirals.

As the story progresses, Kirie and Shuichi witness how the spiral curse affects the people around them, causing the citizens to become either obsessed or paranoid about spirals. Shuichi becomes reclusive after both of his parents die from the horrific psychological and physical powers of the spirals, but also gains the ability to detect when the spiral curse is taking place, although he is often dismissed until the next paranormal effects of the curse become obvious. Eventually, Kirie is affected by the curse as well, when her hair begins to curl into an unnatural spiral pattern, drains her life energy to hypnotize the citizens, and chokes her whenever she attempts to cut it off. Shuichi is able to cut her hair and save her. The curse continues to plague the town until a series of typhoons conjured by the curse destroys most of its structures. The only remaining buildings are ancient abandoned terraced houses, which the citizens are forced first to move into, and then begin expanding as they grow more and more crowded.

As a series of increasingly powerful earthquakes and additional destruction from delinquents able to utilize strong winds strike the town, Kirie and Shuichi devise a plan to escape Kurouzu-cho, but when they attempt to escape, their efforts are unsuccessful. After returning to the town, they discover that several years have passed since they left, as time speeds up away from the spiral. The other citizens have expanded the terraced houses until they connected into a single structure forming a labyrinthine spiral pattern, but have become mutated as a consequence of overcrowding, their limbs twisting and warping into spirals. Kirie and Shuichi decide to search for Kirie's parents, which brings them to the center after many days of walking through the labyrinth.

At the center, Shuichi is hurled down a pit leading deep beneath the earth by a mutated citizen, with Kirie herself descending via a colossal spiral staircase to find him. She falls but is saved by countless bodies making up the ground of a vast, ancient city consisting entirely of spiral patterns in various arrangements. As Kirie looks for Shuichi, she finds her parents twisted and petrified, resembling stone statues, along with many other citizens of Kurouzu-cho who have met the same fate. Then, she hears Shuichi call for her and goes to him. Both are overwhelmed by the ancient spirals surrounding them and Shuichi points out how it seems as though the spiral ruins have a will of their own. Noticing that the petrified citizens of Kurouzu-cho are all facing the spiral city, Shuichi theorizes that this is the source of the curse; the city expands on its own periodically and has cursed the land above out of jealousy from having no one to view it.

Shuichi urges Kirie to leave without him as he can no longer walk, and that the curse should be over soon, but she replies that she does not have the strength and wishes to stay with him. The two embrace with their bodies twisting and intertwining together, signifying their acceptance into the never-ending curse. At the same time, a stone tower in the shape of a drill bit rises out of the city, and breaches the surface, forming the centerpiece of the abandoned town. As Shuichi and Kirie lie together, Kirie notes that the curse ended at the same time it began, for just as time speeds up away from the center, it freezes at the center. The spiral's curse is eternal, and all the events will repeat when a new Kurouzu-cho is built where the previous one lay.

***

I was debating if I should just do the first volume but three in one horrors sounded great to me. So Uzumaki is largely about spirals, to put the most obvious reasoning first. That's that Uzumaki translates to, after all. Spirals begin enveloping this small town, causing supernatural events. But the madness side of things comes as quickly as the spirals are there. You see it first in completely opposite ways with Shuichi's father and mother, with one becoming obsessed with spirals to the point of madness and eventually becoming one himself and the other being so terrified of spirals that it turns into its own psychological torment as she tries to remove spirals from her life and eventually realizes that those spirals are part of her naturally, causing her to try to take apart those aspects of her as well. Over chapters, characters become warped and characters succumb to the madness of spirals. Some fear the spirals, while others embrace them. Escaping the spirals is proven futile, and through that, it is also proven how out of sync the town is from reality as a whole, with time being sped up. Also, it has a labyrinth at this point, built by those suffering from the curse, so I think the Spiral would love that. In the end, the spirals are proven inescapable, and the two main characters warp together into a spiral of their own. The curse seems to end here, but really, it's a never ending cycle, and a curse which will never go away. The curse and the madness it brings won't fade.

***

Kurouzu-cho, a small fogbound town on the coast of Japan, is cursed. According to Shuichi Saito, the withdrawn boyfriend of teenager Kirie Goshima, their town is haunted not by a person or being but a pattern: UZUMAKI, the spiral—the hypnotic secret shape of the world.

***

Plot is about a town cursed by spirals which make you go insane

Joyce, James: Finnegans Wake

Considered to be one of the great literary mindscrews. The plot is covered in about a tenth of the chapters in the book. The rest tell a series of unconnected vignettes, describe minor characters in excessive detail, give allegories for the main plot, and teach you geometry. One chapter was described by Joyce as "A chattering dialogue across a river by two washerwomen who, as night falls, become a tree and stone." Some chapters feature random doodles in the margins. The first sentence is the ending part of the last sentence, making the book circular. Finally, it's written in a combination of five dozen or so different languages, random puns that you need a doctorate in ancient mythology and the aforementioned languages to understand, and general stream of consciousness. In short, it makes no sense. Which is awesome. Joyce stated that it was supposed to be a dream-like "night book" in comparison to his "day-book", Ulysses, which described a day in the life of some ordinary Dubliners but whose style and construction was almost as weird.

***

Finnegan's Wake is one of the most experimental novels of the twentieth century. Rather than write using conventions of novels--or of the English language--Joyce structured his book on language itself. The result is surreal, dense, and famously difficult. To get a sense of just how strange and dreamlike the whole thing is, even its Wikipedia page compares it to Lewis Carroll's "Jabberwocky" before pointing out the the book begins with the second half of a sentence, which it gives the first half of at its end. Tl;dr Finnegan's Wake is so unsettlingly experimental that Joyce had to break the English language down to its components to get his vision down on the page.

Juster, Norton: The Phantom Tollbooth

Milo receives a package one day, from an unknown source. The package takes him on a journey where he meets the judge jury and executioner, the princesses rhyme and reason, and more

Kte'pi, Bill: The Cheshire

If you don't want to read this whole summary, here's a song based on the story

Alice Little came out of a showing of Disney's Alice in Wonderland sixteen years ago with nothing but a blue gingham dress, a faded daguerrotype of cats, and jumbled memories of being Alice Liddell. Specifically the fictional character: "she'd never thought of herself as the 'real' Alice, the one Charles Dodgson wrote Alice's Adventures in Wonderland for - she had no memories of that Alice's life, only of the life chronicled by Lewis Carroll - madness and tea parties and talking animals. Worse, her memories conflicted, as she remembered Alice's Adventures Underground, Wonderland's first draft, as vividly as she did the two published novels." After years of attempting to return to Wonderland failed--she'd "tried every drug she could, hallucinogenic and otherwise [...] meditation, trances, pain rituals, sweat lodges, prayers and madness and hypnosis and psychotherapy"--Alice tells herself that her memories are merely symptomatic of a dissociative disorder and tries to go clean. But she puts an ad in the paper asking "Why is a raven like a writing desk?" (which includes a coded message saying "SAVE ME"), searching for answers despite herself, and eventually gets an answer. She meets a grinning man "in a purple-striped turtleneck, with odd-shaped nails and a tattoo of a mushroom on one of his knuckles" at a bar and they talk about her struggles, with him eventually getting her to ask what she really wants to know--if he can take her back. The man replies, "'There's no back to take you. You never left [...] Maybe we recognise each other because you're Alice and I'm the Cheshire Cat. Maybe we're descendents of the originals. Maybe we're brother and sister, separated after our parents' deaths and so traumatised we sought refuge in the books Father read to us as children. Maybe we're simply mad.'" After giving her LSD, the man tells her that a raven isn't like a writing desk at all, "And he faded away, leaving nothing but a grinnnnnnnnnn."

Lovecraft, H.P.: The Color Out of Space

An indescribable color leaches the life out of a patch of farmland and everyone on it.

Lyons, Steve: The Stealers of Dreams

Synopsis: "In the far future, the Doctor, Rose and Captain Jack find a world on which fiction has been outlawed. A world where it's a crime to tell stories, a crime to lie, a crime to hope, and a crime to dream.

But now somebody is challenging the status quo. A pirate TV station urges people to fight back. And the Doctor wants to help -- until he sees how easily dreams can turn into nightmares.

With one of his companions stalked by shadows and the other committed to an asylum, the Doctor is forced to admit that fiction can be dangerous after all. Though perhaps it is not as deadly as the truth... "

Why it's Spiral: A society where lies and fictions are forbidden is, evidently, a society that will fall for anything. The repression of any untruth -- by threat of violence and by invasive brain surgery to paralyze the region that dreams -- means that people are more desperate than ever to believe in anything. Fiction has consequences on this planet. And what could be a more obvious lie than the time-traveling man in his blue box...?

Mathers, Edward Powys: Cain’s Jawbone

I'm just going to quote an article from The Independent: "Cain’s Jawbone, originally published in 1934, is a murder mystery puzzle composed of 100 pages – all assembled in the wrong order. The only way to solve all six murders in the prose narrative is to reorder the pages and correctly identify the crimes, their victims, and who perpetrated them."

Here's the link to the article

Mearns, William Hughes: Antigonish

It's all pretty much all in the TMA episode (Upon the stairs). The little man who "wasn't there" in the stairs.

Miles, Lawrence et. al.: The Book of the War

Synopsis: "The Great Houses: Immovable. Implacable. Unchanging. Old enough to pass themselves off as immortal, arrogant enough to claim ultimate authority over the Spiral Politic.

The Enemy: Not so much an army as a hostile new kind of history. So ambitious it can re-write worlds, so complex that even calling it by its name seems to underestimate it.

Faction Paradox: Renegades, ritualists, saboteurs and subterfugers, the criminal-cult to end all criminal-cults, happy to be caught in the crossfire and ready to take whatever's needed from the wreckage… assuming the other powers leave behind a universe that's habitable.

The War: A fifty-year-old dispute over the two most valuable territories in existence: "cause" and "effect."

Marking the first five decades of the conflict, THE BOOK OF THE WAR is an A to Z of a self-contained continuum and a complete guide to the Spiral Politic, from the beginning of recordable time to the fall of humanity. Part story, part history and part puzzle-box, this is a chronicle of protocol and paranoia in a War where the historians win as many battles as the soldiers and the greatest victory of all is to hold on to your own past."

Propaganda: A text which purports to be a constantly shifting and updating guide to The War, a conflict so overarching and complete that every other conflict is but a pale shadow thereof; the Time War. Of course, since it would shift retroactively with the changing timelines, there is no way to prove or disprove this claim. Notable entries include cities built from days stolen from shifting calendars, the secrets of removing yourself from history while still leaving yourself free to interfere, Grandfather Paradox, the location of the exact centre of history, how to weaponize banality, and Parablox.

Oh, and there's something else in there. Something that seems to be talking to you...

Morrison, Grant: Doom Patrol

The series in general could easily fit in the Spiral, but I'll focus on a certain arc. A great new evil emerges! The Brotherhood of Dada! Its members: a woman that has super strength when she's asleep, a man that is made of fog and swallows his victims(and then has to put up with their voices inside his brain forever), a woman that has every super power you haven't thought of and is deathly afraid of dirt and an illiterate man that can turn into a hurricane. And their intrepid leader! Mr Nobody! He used to be a boring, average man. With the help of a very criminal doctor he tried to turn into a new man...but he went so insane he's always slightly left of reality and 2D. He doesn't mind though, he rather enjoys the meaninglessness of it all, which is a bit Vast of him. He also calls cops fascists.

The bad guys steal a painting that swallows everything and anything and they put Paris inside it. One of the funniest panels ever is various super heroes sitting around a painting wandering what they're supposed to do. Thankfully, Doom Patrol knows how to deal with the weird stuff. They go into the painting, get separated in different artstyles and beaten up.

But the Fifth Horseman of the Apocalypse is coming, so they cooperate and put him in the dadaist section, making him lose all meaning and turning into a wooden horse.

A big part of the arc is also narrated by the illiterate hurricane guy, which makes it harder to understand since he writes phonetically.

The whole thing is absurdity, the first bad guys are absurd and the second bad guy gets beaten by the absurd. After a few more arcs Mr Nobody runs for president(with some members of the Doom Patrol endorsing him) and gets killed by the CIA in a similar manner to Jesus. For his campaign he drove a bus that made everyone behind it feel like they've taken lsd.

Moore, Christopher: Sacré Bleu: A Comedy d’Art

The story surrounds the mysterious suicide of Vincent van Gogh, who famously shot himself in a French wheat field only to walk a mile to a doctor’s house. The mystery, which is slowly but cleverly revealed through the course of the book, is blue: specifically the exclusive ultramarine pigment that accents pictures created by the likes of Michelangelo and van Gogh. To find the origin of the hue, Moore brings on Lucien Lessard, a baker, aspiring artist and lover of Juliette, the brunette beauty who breaks his heart. After van Gogh’s death, Lucien joins up with the diminutive force of nature Henri Toulouse-Lautrec to track down the inspiration behind the Sacré Bleu. In the shadows, lurking for centuries, is a perverse paint dealer dubbed The Colorman, who tempts the world’s great artists with his unique hues and a mysterious female companion who brings revelation—and often syphilis (it is Moore, after all). Into the palette, Moore throws a dizzying array of characters, all expertly portrayed, from the oft-drunk “little gentleman” to a host of artists including Édouard Manet, Paul Gauguin, Georges Seurat, Claude Monet, Camille Pissarro and Pierre-Auguste Renoir.

Muir, Tamsyn: Harrow the Ninth

Harrow the Ninth is, above all, really fucking confusing. Roughly every third chapter is actively gaslighting the reader about what happened in the last book. The main character is fucking struggling to maintain any sort of grip on reality all throughout the story, and more often than not, she fails miserably. This is due to several factors, including, but not limited to - sleep deprivation, latent schizophrenia, ruthless emotional manipulation from everyone around her, being full of a frankly alarming number of ghosts from several entirely unrelated sources, childhood parental and religious trauma, and a self-inflicted amateur lobotomy.

***

Takes place post(sometimes pre) DIY lobotomy; leaving our protag, who already struggles identifying between reality and hallucination, a paranoid, constantly questioning wreck. It's written in second person and does not follow events chronologically, leaving the reader questioning everything almost as much as the protag.

National Governors Association and Council of Chief State School Officers: Common Core Math Textbook

Drives me up the damn wall insane. This is mostly a joke suggestion but also I think there’s something to be said about fractals’ place in mathematics, and the widespread range of common core math’s influence. To be honest, submitting this is a gut feeling of dread to me.

Nikolson, Adam: Life between the tides

Look this probably shouldn’t even make it into the bracket and this is mostly a very dull book about shoreline ecosystems but there’s this one chapter where the dude gets positively poetic about I think?? winkles?? (a kind of snail) and it absolutely reads like a statement like we are talking fractal winkles-all-the-way-down insanity. I need to tell someone about it bc it was like suddenly reading another book. A better and also worse book. I’m pretty sure he quoted philosophers in it. I wish I had taken notes. He would get along with Ivo Lensik’s dad.

O’Brien, Flann: The Third Policeman

Synopsis from Goodreads: "The Third Policeman is Flann O'Brien's brilliantly dark comic novel about the nature of time, death, and existence. Told by a narrator who has committed a botched robbery and brutal murder, the novel follows him and his adventures in a two-dimensional police station where, through the theories of the scientist/philosopher de Selby, he is introduced to "Atomic Theory" and its relation to bicycles, the existence of eternity (which turns out to be just down the road), and de Selby's view that the earth is not round but "sausage-shaped." With the help of his newly found soul named "Joe," he grapples with the riddles and contradictions that three eccentric policeman present to him."

Ogawa, Yoko: The Memory Police

The story is set in an alternate Japan where people's memories of certain things and concepts (e.g. birds, hats, winter, books, seasons, even their sense of self) are slowly taken away from their collective minds for 'their safety' by the titular Memory Police, a government force of sorts. This forced forgetting goes to the point where they can't physically perceive that concept; birds are weird creatures because no one remembers what a bird is like, and it's always winter because no one remembers what spring is. The story even ends with the unnamed protagonist (along with several others) eventually fading away from existence (read: forgetting) as memories of certain body parts and finally the concept of the human body is taken away by the Memory Police. It's like if the vase from MAG 38 formed and entire task force to do its job.

This one has narrative potential too; imagine a statement where someone slowly lose memories of certain things after reading this Leitner, gradually becoming an unreliable narrator as reality slips away from their conscious.

Orwell, George: Nineteen Eighty-Four

Pelevin, Victor: The Helmet of Horror

Eight people find themselves in eight different rooms with a labyrinth behind them and a computer in front of them. They try to communicate via the computer that allows them to chat with one another, but has nicknames set for them(IsoldA, UGLI 666, Ariane...) and blocks their personal information. They(and us) can't know if they are lying. When two of them try to see each other by visiting a spot in the labyrinths that should be the same they each then recount a completely different experience and accuse each other of lying. Another character claims they all must be figments of his imagination, he must be very drunk. And they're all afraid of the minotaur. It is a book where no one, even the reader knows what's real, everyone is afraid of what might appear if they turn a corner and no one knows what's going on.

Pratchett, Terry: Moving Pictures

"‘HOLY WOOD IS A DIFFERENT SORT OF PLACE . . . HERE, THE MOST IMPORTANT THING IS TO BE IMPORTANT.’

A new phenomenon is taking over the Discworld: moving pictures. Created by the alchemists of Ankh-Morpork, the growing ‘clicks’ industry moves to the sandy land of Holy Wood, attracted by the light of the sun and some strange calling no one can quite put their finger on…

Also drawn to Holy Wood are aspiring young stars Victor Tugelbend, a wizarding student dropout, and Theda ‘Ginger’ Withel, a small-town girl with big dreams. But behind the glitz and glamour of the clicks, a sinister presence lurks. Because belief is powerful in the Discworld, and sometimes downright dangerous…

The magic of movies might just unravel reality itself."

Pynchon, Thomas: The Crying of Lot 49

Oedipa Maas spends the whole book trying to figure out if the conspiracy she’s trying to unravel about the US postal service and a conter-postal service via plays, signs/images, and history is real or if she’s being gaslit by her ex, who just died and made her executor of his will.

Ryukishi07: higurashi no naku koro ni (When The Evening Cicadas Cry)

The series explores paranoia and deceit among friends. It uses its POVs incredibly well, limiting your view of the situation so much that it is genuinely incredibly hard to figure out what happened or why (until you read the answer arcs ofc). Several key plot points involve characters getting so consumed by their own madness that they cannot see reality for what it is and wildly assume false things. This madness repeats and repeats and repeats, consuming the friends group over and over and over, leading them to do horrific things to each other. Many a character become so consumed by suspicion and fear that the world distorts and details change in their mind to match what they think is happening. I am desperately trying to describe the series without spoilers rn

Sachar, Louis: Wayside School Is Falling Down

Obviously all of Wayside School is a little Spirally -- the weird architecture, the cow invasions, occasional hypnosis, and more -- but this one tells a story of the nineteenth floor. Wayside School has no nineteenth floor. There is one teacher on the nineteenth floor, and only one class, who learn about how to alphabetize every number. Sometimes, new students arrive...

Schwartz, Alvin: "Maybe You Will Remember" (short story from Scary Stories 3: More Tales To Chill Your Bones)

A girl, Rosemary, and her mother are on vacation in Paris. Rosemary's mother is ill, so Rosemary is sent to get medicine, but ultimately has her time wasted by the driver on the way back, and when she returns to the hotel, nobody recognizes her, telling her she has the wrong place. Her mother is gone, too, and when Rosemary asks to see the room they stayed in as proof they were there, the clerk shows her a completely unfamiliar setup, making Rosemary wonder what happened to her.

In the appendix of the book, the scenario is explained. Rosemary's mother was sick with the plague, and the doctor, recognizing it, knew she would be dead very quickly. Rosemary was put on a wild goose chase for the medicine and given a driver who would delay her, with the doctor and hotel staff working to dispose of her mother's body and re-decorate the hotel room while Rosemary was away. With Rosemary unable to verify that she was in the hotel, and unknowing that her mother died of plague, the hotel avoided any negative publicity that would have occurred if anyone were to find out a guest had the plague. The hotel's PR was saved, but Rosemary was left doubting her sanity.

Serafini, Luigi: Codex Seraphinianus

The Codex is an encyclopedia in manuscript with copious hand-drawn, colored-pencil illustrations of bizarre and fantastical flora, fauna, anatomies, fashions, and foods. The illustrations are often surreal parodies of things in the real world, such as a bleeding fruit, a plant that grows into roughly the shape of a chair and is subsequently made into one, and a copulating couple who metamorphose into an alligator. Others depict odd, apparently senseless machines, often with delicate appearances and bound by tiny filaments. Some illustrations are recognizable as maps or human faces, while others (especially in the "physics" chapter) are mostly or totally abstract. Nearly all of the illustrations are brightly coloured and highly detailed

***

It's an encyclopedia for a universe that doesn't exist, treated as if it does exist in another universe while being written in a nonsense, impossible to understand language. The things it depict doesn't make sense either, ranging from swimming trees and eye-shaped fishes to absolutely bizarre creatures and technology, like a rainbow-making cloud shaped like Da Vinci's aerial screw. The entire thing comes off as surreal nonsense because it's meant to symbolise the feeling of trying to understand something that you can't understand, but finds cool because of the visuals. It's a book that you aren't meant to read understand, but simply look at, because trying to understand it just... doesn't work.

***

The Codex is an encyclopedia in manuscript with copious hand-drawn, colored-pencil illustrations of bizarre and fantastical flora, fauna, anatomies, fashions, and foods. It has been compared to the still undeciphered Voynich manuscript, the story "Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius" by Jorge Luis Borges, and the artwork of M. C. Escher and Hieronymus Bosch. The illustrations are often surreal parodies of things in the real world, such as a bleeding fruit, a plant that grows into roughly the shape of a chair and is subsequently made into one, and a copulating couple who metamorphose into an alligator. Others depict odd, apparently senseless machines, often with delicate appearances and bound by tiny filaments. Some illustrations are recognizable as maps or human faces, while others (especially in the "physics" chapter) are mostly or totally abstract. Nearly all of the illustrations are brightly coloured and highly detailed.

The false writing system appears modeled on Western writing systems, with left-to-right writing in rows and an alphabet with uppercase and lowercase letters, some of which double as numerals. Some letters appear only at the beginning or end of words, similar to Semitic writing systems. The curvilinear letters are rope- or thread-like, with loops and even knots, and are somewhat reminiscent of Sinhala script. In a talk at the Oxford University Society of Bibliophiles [...] Serafini stated that there is no meaning behind the Codex's script, which is asemic; that his experience in writing it was similar to automatic writing; and that what he wanted his alphabet to convey was the sensation children feel with books they cannot yet understand, although they see that the writing makes sense for adults. Take a look for yourself:

Shakespeare, William: A Midsummer Night's Dream

The way the fey play with the perceptions and emotions of the wandering youths in the woods is peak Spiral, as their loves and disdains change with the machinations of Oberon and Puck.

Shakespeare, William: King Lear

The play has everything: real descents into madness, fake descents into madness, betrayal by trusted loved ones, loyalty from betrayed loved ones, and would-be wise men who turn out to be fools.

Shakespeare, William: The Winter's Tale

Imagine that you are absolutely, completely, 100 percent certain that your wife is cheating on you with your best friend. Now imagine you're the king, and your best friend is the king of a far-off kingdom. Now imagine that the consequences of your actions spiral outward: your wife and son die, one of your trusted advisors has disappeared with daughter on your orders to kill her.

This first half of this deeply underappreciated play explores the consequences of one man's fear of betrayal. Coincidentally, it is one Shakespeare's more surreal works. It's the origin of the infamous "Exit pursued by a bear," a stage direction that concludes a scene set on the coast of a kingdom that in real life was landlocked. And--spoiler alert--the play concludes with a statute coming back to life.

Anyway, it's a surprisingly Spiral-like play with a dream-like atmosphere, fairy-tale logic, and a Distortion-esque look at the fear of betrayal.

Silberescher: SCP-1425: Star Signals

Stine, R.L.: Don't Go to Sleep!

"Matt hates his tiny bedroom. It's so small it's practically a closet! Still, Matt's mom refuses to let him sleep in the guest room. After all, they might have guests. Some day. Or year. Then Matt does it. Late one night. When everyone's in bed. He sneaks into the guest room and falls asleep. Poor Matt. He should have listened to his mom. Because when Matt wakes up, his whole life has changed. For the worse. And every time he falls asleep, he wakes up in a new nightmare... "

Inception, for kids! Whenever Matt falls asleep, he changes reality -- and a group of special agents want to stop him by putting him to sleep, permanently.

Unknown, Voynich Manuscript

Many call the fifteenth-century codex, commonly known as the “Voynich Manuscript,” the world’s most mysterious book. Written in an unknown script by an unknown author, the manuscript has no clearer purpose now than when it was rediscovered in 1912 by rare books dealer Wilfrid Voynich. It's a strange code describing alchemical formulae and unknown life forms, and no one understands it. It's a mystery waiting for you to lose yourself in its pages.

Wells, H.G.: The Door in the Wall

This short story is about Lionel Wallace, who at the age of 5 encountered and entered a weird door. Behind it he found a beautiful and peaceful garden and felt such happiness and bliss, that when he was transported back on the street and escorted back to his home, he was very upset. He would see the door again many times later in life, but every time he will refuse to enter it due to his responsibilities (for example, to not be late to class, to catch a train, to be on time for an appointment). He grew up and became a successful politician, but the perfect world behind the door haunted him, and his success felt dull and boring. The book ends with people finding his lifeless body at the bottom of a pit, and that he had in poor light walked through a small doorway that led onto it. The narrator then speculates that maybe Lionel saw the perfect garden behind the doorway and was finally able to find happiness.

West, A.J.: The Spirit Engineer

Based on a real story about a guy who was convinced that one particular medium was the real deal. He completely upended his career for it, and wrote a paper on the science of the ghostly plane.

He did several shows, and got relatively famous. Eventually, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle [someone who wanted to believe] and Harry Houdini [An avid non-believer] invite him over to convince them that séances were real. In the process, Houdini completely disproves him, and outs the medium he thought was real as a fraud.

It turns out his wife and coworker had convinced the 'medium' and their family to run a prank on him. In his fury, he kills everyone involved, and then drinks Poison to try - one final time - to proove his theory.

Tldr: A real story who unknowingly changed his life and ruined his reputation because of the lies of the ones he trusted. When he realises, he looses his sanity and kills everyone around him, including himself.

 Whorf, Benjamin Lee: Relation of Habitual Thought and Behavior to Language

The famous text about language as a symbol that can never truly reflect reality can kinda fuck with your perceptions about how our language serves to construct our own realities. We're programmed to experience the world in different ways according to the way we interpret language.

Wyspiański, Stanisław: The Wedding

Relevant parts from Wikipedia

"The play's action takes place at the wedding of a member of the Kraków intelligentsia (the Bridegroom) and his peasant Bride. Their crossclass union follows a then fashionable trend of chłopomaństwo ("peasant-mania") among some Polish intelligentsia, who were often scions of the historic Polish szlachta (nobility). (...) Among the live guests are ghosts of personae from Polish history and culture, representing the guilty consciences of the living. The two groups engage in dialogues. The wedding guests are hypnotized by a rosebush straw-wrap (Chochoł) from the garden which comes to life and joins the party. (Offending a chochoł, according to folk beliefs, could provoke the thing to play tricks).The "Poet" is visited successively by the "Black Knight" (a symbol of the nation's past military glory); the "Journalist"; the court jester Stańczyk, a conservative political sage; and the "Ghost of Wernyhora" (a paradigm of leadership for Poland). (...)Thus the wedding guests, symbolizing the nation, waste their chance at national freedom. They keep on dancing a "chocholi taniec" (a "straw-wrap's dance") "the way it's played for them" (a Polish folk saying), failing in their mission." This play is as if patriotically motivated Spiral avatars crashed somebody's wedding, and I think it deserves consideration as Spiral Leitner.

[eretzyisrael]

At the extraordinary UN General Assembly in New York (2021), held at the request of the leaders of the European Union and the New Arab Bloc, Israeli representative Miriam Novak spoke.

Standing on a high podium against the backdrop of the green marble wall of the main UN meeting room, Miriam Novak said into the microphone:

 Ladies and Gentlemen! As you can see, eighty years ago, Europe, led by Germany, carried out an ethnic cleansing:

 it destroyed almost all the Jews living there. The French, Belgians, Dutch, Norwegians, Hungarians, Slovaks, Poles, Lithuanians, Ukrainians - all helped the Nazis.

You killed at least six million Jews along with their newborn babies.

Each of them could give the world children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren, so you can safely multiply the number of those killed four or five times...

And now, when we are again robbed, beaten and killed in all your countries, and your courts set the murderers free, you tell us that we have no right to defense?

 Don't we have the right to warn our enemies that we will respond to a new ethnic cleansing with an even more powerful blow? 

Maybe you can name another nation that your new international community led by Iran is so fanatically striving to destroy? And for what? 

For two thousand years we lived among you, giving you our knowledge, discoveries and inventions. 

We have given you the alphabet, the Bible, the Virgin Mary, Jesus Christ, the twelve apostles, Spinoza, Disraeli, Columbus[?], Newton, Nostradamus, Heine, Mendelssohn, Einstein, Singer, Eisenstein, Freud, Landau, Gershwin, Offenbach, Rubinstein, Sen -Sans[?], Kafka, Lombroso, Montaigne, Mahler, Marcel Marceau, Vsevolod Meyerhold, Yehudi Menuhin, Stefan Zweig, Arthur Miller, Maya Plisetskaya, Stanley Kubrick, Irving Berlin, Edward Teller, Lyon Feuchtwanger, Paul Newman, Robert Oppenheimer, Benny Goodman, Eugene Ionesco, Imre Kalman, Marcel Proust, Charlie Chaplin[?], Marc Chagall, Barbra Streisand, Claude Lelouch, Steven Spielberg, Anouk Aimee, Leonard Bernstein, Norbert Wiener, Larry Page, Mark Zuckerberg, Sergey Brin, Andrew Lloyd Webber and thousands of other scientists and educators. 

Just imagine how many of the same geniuses the millions of Jews you killed, and then their children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren, could give birth to the world!

But these unborn geniuses disappeared forever in the ovens of crematoria, burned synagogues and mass graves.

So do you really think that with your resolutions, boycotts and sanctions we can be driven into gas chambers again? 

No, gentlemen! 

Having lived among you for two thousand years, we had to adapt to you and learn not only your languages but also something of your psychology. Otherwise, how would we have survived in Persia without Persian treachery? In Spain without Spanish cruelty? In Germany without German obedience to discipline? In France without French stinginess? In Poland, without Polish swagger, and in Russia, without swearing and the Russian habit of using yard toilets, where you need to sit like an eagle and talk about your spiritual greatness? - (Laughter in the hall.)

Read the whole thing. EY

[konohamaru-sensei]

Some kind of follower event or other.

im very sorry if you follow both blogs and have to see this double. ily for following both tho. special love and kisses to you.

In celebration of my 1000 follower milestone on a blog I pretty much abandoned (@wind-becomes-lightning) and my 100 followers on the blog that I am now using (@konohamaru-sensei) (and because I really love doing things for others), I’m hosting a little cross blog event. I anticipate that most of the entries will be from friends anyway and gifting friends makes little Nisi happy.

So, what are we going to do? Well. You have the choice. Either you request a little story from one of the prompt lists (please specify or send the prompt) or you send me a link to a reference and I will do an art. Either or is fine if you adhere to the rules

Stories will be around 1k length (maybe longer if I’m feeling it)

Artworks only for up to 2 people (You can look at art refs in my pinterest board if you don't have an idea.)

Off Anon only. (If you feel embarrassed please just dm me beforehand so I know it is you sending anons, or at least sign the request with your name, thanks!)

One request per person. (Q, I love you, but I still have like 5 requests of yours in my waiting list)

Absolutely no requests for “no-no ships” and “no-no characters” allowed.

OC requests only if you are from the Anxiety Anonymous server or if I have written for your oc before. (You may of course request my ocs if you care)

You can send Naruto related requests to any blog, but send any other fandoms to @konohamaru-sensei

Reader inserts are fine, as long as they are done with Yes-please characters. 

Fandom list for this time:

Naruto (obv)

Fairy Tail

Haikyuu

JJK

MHA

One Piece 

Prompt lists:

Romantic

Spicy

Angsty

Kisses

Recent art examples x - x - x - x

If you send me a “Yes-Always” ship or a “yes-please” character I will prioritise your request, because it will be more fun for me, but anything is welcome as long as you don’t break the rules.

I will leave this open until I feel like closing it. In my experience, there wont be too much anyway.

Ok thanks, BYE.

Ship list under cut.

Yes-Always Ships

Naruto: OBKK | KKYM | OBYM | OBKKYM | OBKKRIN | SAIINO

Fairy Tail: Jerza | Gruvia | Gruvion | Luvia 

JJK: SatoSugu

HQ: Oikawa x Kuroo

Yes-Please Characters

Naruto: Kakashi, Obito, Yamato, Konohamaru, Hinata

Fairy Tail: Lyon, Erza, Juvia, Jellal, Gray, Rogue, Loke

Haikyuu: Kuroo, Oikawa, Hinata, Bokuto

JJK: Gojo, Geto, Yuuji, Choso, Maki

MHA: Hawks, Iida, Dabi 

One Piece: Sanji, Robin, Law, Zoro, Luffy, Sabo, Ace

No-No Ships

For all fandoms: no inces-t, no teacher and student, no mentor and student, no adult and child

Naruto: S-NS | Na-ruSa-ku | Kaka-Ga-i| InoS-aku

Fairy Tail: Gajeel x Juv ia | Gra L u | Gr arza

Haikyuu: Iwao i | Kurook en | Suga x D aichi

JJK: any yuuji ship

MHA: Ba-kuD-eku

One Piece: Lu ffy x A c e

No-No-Characters

Naruto: Sa suke, Ma dara

Haikyuu: Tsukish ima

JJK: To ji, Na oya

One Piece: P udding

Every ship not mentioned here is one I am fine with, but not in love with. Which means you can request it just fine.

this whole thing will probably fail spectacularily and i will feel like shit but i mean... no risk no depressive hole to dig myself in later, so whats the fun?

[nando161mando]

🔴 L’EXTRÊME-DROITE SORT TABASSER DU GAUCHISTE

Une cinquante de militants d’extrême-droite se sont retrouvés dans les rues de Lyon ce dimanche soir, à l’issue des résultats du 2nd tour des élections législatives qui a vu la gauche l’emporter, pour agresser des passants et en particulier les personnes qui leur semblent de gauche.

Aux cris moyenâgeux de « avant, avant, lion le melhor » et munie de matraques, bombes lacrymogènes et couteaux, ils ont été aperçu en train de frapper un jeune homme seul sur la place des Célestins après lui avoir dit qu’il était de « gauche ».

Bien que la plupart des structures lyonnaises aient été dissoute, cela n’empêche en rien le passage à l’acte de ces groupes violents.

🔴 THE EXTREME RIGHT COMES OUT TO BEAT THE LEFTIST

Around fifty far-right activists found themselves in the streets of Lyon this Sunday evening, following the results of the second round of the legislative elections which saw the left win, to attack passers-by and in particular people who seem left-wing to them.

With medieval cries of “avant, avant, lion le melhor” and equipped with batons, tear gas bombs and knives, they were seen hitting a young man alone on the Place des Célestins after telling him that he was “ LEFT ".

Although most of the Lyon structures have been dissolved, this in no way prevents these violent groups from taking action.

[mikefaistinfo]

Interview: Mike Faist Pulls Back the Curtain

By AnOther Magazine

A decade on Broadway, a critically acclaimed turn in Steven Spielberg’s West Side Story, a role in Challengers alongside Zendaya – but who is Mike Faist? The Ohioan actor has remained an enigma, until now

One evening in 2016, the curtains fell on a normal weeknight performance of Dear Evan Hansen at the Music Box Theatre at 239 West 45th Street in Midtown Manhattan. Mike Faist quit the stage with the rest of the cast and was met with a guest, who had come backstage to see him. “I love a ghost story,” said the guest. It was Steven Spielberg.

Spielberg told Mike that he was working on a new film adaptation of West Side Story and that he wanted him to audition for it, breaking from a long tradition of Hollywood directors taking inspiration from Broadway but casting Hollywood actors in the roles. Mike had never thought he’d be in movies but loved the idea of being able to say he’d once auditioned for Spielberg. So, he put a tape together for the role of Tony, but Spielberg ended up giving him the role of Riff, the leader of the Jets – which he was thrilled about, having loved Russ Tamblyn in the original. Plus, “Everyone wants to be Mercutio,” he says.

Mike was lauded for his performance, which earned him a Bafta nomination, though Quentin Tarantino said he should have got an Oscar – something Mike hadn’t heard about before I told him when we met; he expressed a certain bemusement at the news. His portrayal of Riff represented a departure from previous interpretations of the character; instead of a corn-fed all-American type, Mike’s Riff is wild and waifish – he lost weight for the role and pored over Bruce Davidson’s seminal 1998 photography book Brooklyn Gang. “That’s where I found Riff,” he says. “They always cast jocks, muscular guys, obviously alpha guys. But that’s not who these guys were, they’re drunk, broke, heroin addicts, starving … ”

Now, the 32-year-old Ohio native is poised to star in two films: Challengers, the new romantic (read: love triangle) drama from Call Me By Your Name director Luca Guadagnino, starring Zendaya and Josh O’Connor; and The Bikeriders, Jeff Nichols’ new feature inspired by Danny Lyon’s 1967 photography book of the same name, featuring Austin Butler, Jodie Comer and Tom Hardy, which follows the rise of a Midwestern motorcycle club, the Vandals.

The Midwest is where I’m heading to meet Mike – Columbus, Ohio, specifically, which lies an hour and a half up the highway from Cincinnati (presumably a route once traversed by the Vandals), where The Bikeriders was filmed. It’s here, in a suburb to the north-east of the city called Gahanna, that Mike was born and spent his formative years, and it’s here that he returned to in February 2021 when his father got sick, to be closer to his family.

Mike pulls up to my hotel in a silver-grey Ram pickup (huge for British standards, modest for American ones). I jump in and he greets me warmly – though not as warmly as his rescue dog, Austin, a pitbull cross, who leaps onto my lap and tries, persistently, to lick my face. Mike wears a scruffy brown shirt and muddy workman boots; a baseball cap crowns his tousled, mouse-brown hair and a beige bandana circles his neck – until he pulls it over his mouth, which happens periodically, when he laughs or, as I later interpret, when he is feeling shy. Confronted with this vision of Americana, it’s hard not to be reminded of Mike’s role as the cowboy Jack Twist (played by Jake Gyllenhaal in the film) in the 2023 West End production of Brokeback Mountain.

I’d been expecting just to go for lunch at a nearby restaurant, but Mike explains that we’re heading out to Woodville, a small town two hours outside of Columbus where his father grew up and his Aunt Christy and Uncle Bernie still live. We drive out of the city and onto the highway, which is roaring with trucks that dwarf Mike’s own. Strip malls, gas stations and chain restaurants flash by and soon give way to farmland – wide-open fields of corn (at this time of year, just a sea of dead, damp stalks) that stretch out like an endless brown carpet laid beneath a grey, wintry sky.

Speaking with a barely detectable Midwestern twang, Mike opens up about the past couple of months: on December 12, his father, Kurt, died of a blood clot, following a three-year battle with pulmonary fibrosis. A month later, his grandfather, known to him as Papa, died too. Death has long weighed heavily on Mike’s mind – in a way that now feels pre-emptive. Despite moving to New York when he was 17 and spending the majority of his twenties there, building his career as a theatre – then film – actor, he moved back to Ohio when his dad fell ill. He sold his flat in Brooklyn and bought a house in Columbus’s German Village, which he has since renovated almost entirely by himself. It now appears that Mike is a quadruple threat: he can sing, dance, act and flip houses. (He can also fly small planes, but that’s possibly less relevant.)

“There’s something very humbling about coming back to Ohio,” he says, “about going off and working with Steven Spielberg, and then coming back here.”

“My friends are super supportive and they’re super proud, but at the end of the day, I’m still just Mike to them, which is great.”

“Have you ever seen Fargo?” he continues, after a brief pause. “Well, in Fargo, they have this amazing Midwestern accent. My family speaks a bit like that.”

After a two-hour drive, we arrive in Woodville, a small, blue-collar town home to just 2,000 people, a lime plant and the oldest Lutheran church in the US, which is where Mike’s father’s funeral took place a few months prior. The church is a stone’s throw from Mike’s aunt and uncle’s house, a typical, clapboard dwelling just off the main street.

When we step through the front door, it appears that we’ve entered an Easter grotto – Mike’s Aunt Cheri takes decorating very seriously, completely transforming her home for every holiday imaginable: not just Easter, Thanksgiving and Christmas, but Halloween, Fourth of July and St Paddy’s Day, too – despite not having any discernible Irish heritage. Easter bunnies, chickens and eggs cover every conceivable space – from the table in the kitchen to the towels in the bathroom.

I’m quite taken aback by Mike’s vulnerability here, bringing me to an intimate Faist family gathering so soon after meeting. He’s opening up in a very real way – inviting me into the home his father grew up in and where he spent all his holidays as a kid. It’s a reflection of ‘Midwestern nice’ (the famously friendly disposition of the people who inhabit the region), but also his desire to be authentic – to show himself, his roots and his real life instead of just a manicured version of it. Instead, I meet Aunt Cheri, Aunt Christy, Uncle Bernie and Cousin John, who have all come over to meet me and, as Mike predicted in the car on the way over, Cheri and Christy have gone all out, putting on a lavish spread of cheese, crackers and ham-and-cheese rolls.

Cheri and Christy talk like Fargo, yes, but also like Jodie Comer in The Bikeriders; in fact, Mike found Jodie’s portrayal almost disconcertingly accurate. “I remember shooting a scene in a kitchen,” he says. “And there’s cigarette stains on the walls and ceiling and she’s just gabbing away in this thick Midwestern accent. I was like, oh my God, you’re my aunt.”

“[Jodie’s] incredible. I have a couple of scouse friends, and when I drove to Liverpool on a road trip [while living in the UK for Brokeback Mountain], I saw a lot of similarities with Ohio. A kind of blue-collar mentality.”

The conversation quickly turns to Mike’s father, Kurt. Cheri and Christy talk fondly of their brother’s sense of humour and practical jokes, including one called ‘the Witch’s Zebra’, which I couldn’t quite follow. “Kurt had the best laugh. He did. No matter what he went through,” says Cheri. “That guy could laugh and make us laugh when we came down to see him after the surgeries. A couple of times we were crying because he would get us laughing so hard about old memories.”

Cousin John, it turns out, was in an alternative rock band called Introspect that once opened for Bon Jovi (the Faist men are musically talented according to Cheri, who admits that the women of the family aren’t gifted in this respect). I ask him what Mike was like as a kid. “He was a quiet young man. And he’s always been very committed to his family. He’s been through a lot of stuff … ” he trails off. “I’m proud of him.”

When he was 17 years old, in 2009, Mike graduated from high school early and, like so many before him, left his hometown for New York. His father drove him there and, after a ten-hour journey, dropped him off at a halfway- house dorm room in the middle of Manhattan. “I was terrified,” he remembers. “So was my dad. But I knew I wanted to do this more than anything in the world.” Still, there was a romance to it all: like a scene out of Patti Smith’s Just Kids, he recalls sitting on his fire escape that first night, drinking a coffee, smoking a cigarette and feeling like he’d arrived.

Still, those first few years were tough: he was poor and often hungry. While Jimmy Stewart and Henry Fonda had once lived in his building, and James Dean had lived down the street, his accommodation (then a flat on 64th Street) was pretty basic: his sink was a hole in the floor and his kitchen was a microwave, also on the floor. There were times when he was on food stamps and others when he’d carry around a loaf of bread and a jar of peanut butter because that was the only food he could afford. He worked a variety of jobs: selling tickets for Off-Broadway shows to tourists in Times Square; working as a bar host and runner at Harry’s Burritos; and even, briefly, collecting signatures campaigning for same-sex marriage (he remembers panicking because he only got nine, but when he returned they told him that was amazing and that he’d only been beaten by one person who’d got 13). It was hard, attending theatre school (the American Musical Dramatic Academy) while working hard to make ends meet; many of his contemporaries came from wealthier backgrounds and didn’t need to work while studying. He remembers bumping into the actor (and Dear Evan Hansen co-star) Ben Platt when he was on a job for Postmates (a food delivery service) and feeling so ashamed that he pretended he was doing something else.

After appearing in several Off-Broadway productions, most notably Newsies, he landed a role in Dear Evan Hansen, which made it to Broadway in 2016. Initially, he felt as though he was floundering in the role – “It was a new show,” he remembers, “and it was a character that is more or less a ghost or ethereal, ambiguous creature.” He decided to do some research into suicide survivors online and came across the website LiveThroughThis.org, which tells the stories of people who have survived their attempts to end their own lives. He spoke to Dese’Rae Stage who founded the initiative, and it allowed him a way into the character, lending him understanding and empathy about the experience. “It really grounded me with what I wanted to do with the role. Since then, research has been my way to feel more secure, to feel like I am prepared. Even if you have to throw it all away in the end.”

Then of course came West Side Story, which remains the project he is most proud of and a convergence of everything he wanted to achieve. Working with Steven Spielberg and screenwriter Tony Kushner, he says he found pieces of himself he never knew existed and let go of his inhibition. “It felt transcendental,” he says. “It felt like: I’m not me right now, I’m being used to tell the story in the best way possible. I don’t know how to explain it, it was like I had no control over the situation. It was like being used as a vessel, and that was the best feeling ever.”

After wrapping up lunch, we head back to Columbus, driving back through the Ohioan countryside, with Sufjan Stevens playing on the speakers. This feels appropriate for several reasons: not only is Stevens a fellow Midwesterner (the singer-songwriter hails from Detroit, Michigan), but he shares a similar sensibility to Mike: he too is thoughtful, poetic, and committed to his art. As with Stevens, fame and celebrity feel like an accidental or even unfortunate side-effect of doing what Mike loves. “I don’t want to do this as a job,” Mike says at one point, staring ahead at the road before him. “For me, it’s deeper than that.”

I thought this might be the end of our interview, but we arrive back at Mike’s house in the German Village and he beckons me in, introducing me to his roommate Dan, who has known Mike since he was 16 – the pair met acting in plays at high school. What was Mike like back then? “A loose cannon,” Dan says with a wry smile. “Eccentric,” Mike corrects. “Floaty and an idiot.” He was going through a rebellious stage in this period of his life, and, while this didn’t mean anything too nefarious (he was mainly just smoking and selling a bit of pot), he wasn’t heading down a good path and was bored stiff. It was theatre that saved him: he was keen to take part in the various productions his high school theatre club was putting on, but his teacher, Miss Macioce, disallowed him because of his behaviour, which is when he decided to make a change.

Mike shows me around the house he did up with some help from his dad before he died. It’s handsomely but humbly decorated, with a fair amount of older or thrifted furniture and a picture of his dog Austin (drawn by a young neighbour from Gahanna) hanging in the downstairs loo. His bedroom is painted dark green and books line the walls; it looks like a normal thirtysomething’s bedroom, except for the flash of gold on the bookshelf – the Grammy he and his castmates won for Dear Evan Hansen. (They were also nominated for a Tony for this.)

We head out to take Austin for a walk through German Village, the oldest and most affluent part of Columbus populated with lawyers and doctors who work at the local children’s hospital, one of the largest in the US. Real gas lamps flicker in the porches of smart, red-brick Victorian houses built by German settlers who arrived here in the early-to-mid-19th century; front gardens are lined with coiffed box hedges, while Ukrainian flags fly alongside the regular Star-Spangled Banner, indicating the liberal values and Democratic leanings of the neighbourhood. Two kids come up to say hi to Austin and Mike chats amiably with them, producing some dog treats for them to feed him (Austin appears to be more famous here than Mike).

An hour or so later, we’re still hanging out and sitting at the bar of a nearby restaurant called Cobra, which was set up by Alex, another high-school friend of Mike’s. It’s been an unmitigated success – the place is packed. We’re having a fairly furious debate over which superpower would be preferable: the ability to fly or be invisible. Mike wants to be invisible which I think is ridiculous, because what – besides things that are a) creepy or b) illegal – is being invisible good for? Doing random acts of kindness, like watering an old lady’s garden, says Mike. I laugh. Dan and two more high-school friends, Garet and Kaine, join us and quickly the debate resurfaces. Obviously, everyone agrees with me, but Mike isn’t backing down.

I suspect that the real reason is Mike’s discomfort with the public position his job is putting him in. He’s dreading the Challengers press tour and admits he was even dreading this interview a bit. It’s part of the reason he enjoys Ohio; no one knows who he is or treats him any differently. The gift of invisibility – or anonymity – is attractive to him.

On set for Challengers, Mike says he felt a natural synergy with O’Connor who “just wants to make pottery and be in his garden” in the Cotswolds. “I think he’s a bit more accepting of it all than me. Because he’s always had to do a lot more of it [press tours, et cetera], so I think he’s at least mentally prepared. And I’m like, coming around slowly. But luckily, Z [Zendaya] is a pro.”

“But she grew up with it, you know, kid actor and Disney Channel … It’s a different world … I think it really got crazy for her while we were shooting actually, when she fully acknowledged the scope of her fame. Because we were in Boston and she had an apartment and she just couldn’t walk outside. I would take Austin to the park, have a cup of coffee and walk around, and she just couldn’t do that.”

Mike doesn’t have this problem yet. Here in Ohio, his friends don’t treat him differently. To them, he’s the same guy they befriended at theatre club all those years ago. They’ve all rallied around him in the wake of his father and grandfather’s deaths and their support, as he says on multiple occasions, means a great deal to him.

These friends soon decide that I need to experience a proper American dive bar, which is where we head next: a crowded, noisy and sweaty place crammed with locals. There is sport on the TV and darts are being played in the corner. I’m soon plied with Busch – a classic Ohioan beer – as a couple more of Mike’s high-school friends join us: Julia and Garet’s wife Aileen. The gift of flight or invisibility debate soon rears its head again, but Mike is still unable to find a majority.

It’s the next day and Mike and I are discussing Challengers and the preparation he had to undergo to play a professional tennis player. He’d suggested meeting again and had picked me up from my hotel early in the morning to drive me to a Waffle House, where we’re now eating a classic syrup-laden American breakfast.

Breakfast, in fact, was a key part of his preparation for the film: he had to eat eight scrambled eggs every morning to help build up his physique, and work out for four hours a day for 12 weeks – he put on 20lbs of muscle.

“I enjoyed working out, but I think it made me feel like I lost some brain cells,” he says, laughing. “I enjoyed the challenge, I enjoyed the ritual of it, but I don’t know if I need to be eating a cake every morning. I was eating like every two hours.”

Tennis, of course, formed a big part of his preparation too; he was trained by Brad Gilbert, a former player who has won 20 pro singles tournaments and coached Andre Agassi and Andy Murray, among others. “Brad was really insistent that my character, Art, played with a one-handed backhand and his reasoning was that there was this big rivalry between Andre and Pete Sampras. Andre was more like the wild child, like Josh [O’Connor]’s character, and Pete was the more ritualistic, professional, disciplined one. Brad got really interested in that dynamic, so he was like, ‘You’re gonna play with the one-handed backhand.’”

The build-up for the film had challenges that went beyond the physical, too. Mike admits he had some hang-ups about taking on the role – insecurities that sometimes flare up about his being a small-town boy from Ohio working alongside major-league actors and directors. But as his performance in the film shows, he not only holds his own alongside Zendaya and Josh O’Connor (no mean feat) – he shines. His role is the more challenging; while Josh’s character, Patrick, is the slightly more cocksure bad boy, Art is a more internal, introverted character which Mike plays deftly – it’s more than skin-deep; he inhabits the role totally.

One line from Challengers that stuck with me occurs when Art is contemplating giving up his career in tennis. “I’m tired,” he sighs, in a way that expresses a weariness that is deeper than physical exhaustion. It’s the weariness of having pursued your dreams for ten years and being worn down to a point of real, inescapable fatigue. I ask him if he relates to this at all.

“What drove me to understand this character – why I liked and was interested in the character – was this idea. In Andre Agassi’s memoir, he talks about why he hates tennis throughout the entire book. And I understand,” he says, as we continue to eat breakfast. “The reason I moved to New York was to become an actor – like, I had no choice. And yeah, when you’re in your twenties, you’re just trying to get your foot in the door and make it happen by any means necessary; you’re gonna show up and you’re gonna hustle.”

“I enjoyed playing Art because I have a strange relationship to acting: I really love it, but at the same time I get so exhausted by it. And I fall in and out of love with it on a pretty regular basis. It’s just the truth of the matter. So I think I really understood Andre, and Art, when they talk about this idea of falling out of love with your craft.”

He felt another synergy with O’Connor in this respect: “Josh is always torn too. Honestly, he’s more Art than me … He’s like, ‘I’m tired.’”

It was on the set of Challengers where Mike first met Jonathan Anderson, who worked as the costume designer on the film. The pair quickly struck up a friendship – Mike says he appreciated Anderson’s sarcastic sense of humour. The designer later asked Mike to appear in a Loewe campaign (for the SS24 pre-collection) and while Mike was initially reticent, it was soon apparent that Jonathan wasn’t going to take no for an answer. On set, Mike had his initiation into the world of fashion and particularly took to photographer Juergen Teller, who shot the campaign and entertained Mike with the story behind his famous photo of OJ Simpson. “I love Jonathan no matter what,” he says. “He’s a great guy and a great friend.”

Later, we drive over to Gahanna, where Mike grew up. The houses are bigger and more spread out here, and it’s a lot leafier; there are bigger yards, lots of trees, with the odd lake or oversized pond. He drives me past his high school, which is currently getting an extension and vast new football stadium (a lot of pressure on the football team, the Lions, he says), and past his mum’s office, out of which she’s practised law for the past 40 years, only retiring last year. We keep driving on, past his friends’ houses – where Kaine, a friend we’d met last night, used to live; where a former girlfriend used to live; where other people he’d spent his teens mucking about with used to live. Many of them have stuck around; others flew off like Mike did, only to circle back home in their late twenties and early thirties.

Finally, we arrive at a classic American suburban home, with an open garage and stuff teeming out of it. We enter the house through a door at the back of the garage, Austin in tow, and hear the yapping of dogs. Two King Charles Spaniel-Shih-Tzus race out to meet us, a flurry of white fur and shining brown eyes the size of saucers. Charlie and Huck (named after Huckleberry Finn, of course) are followed by Mike’s mum, Julie, who sits down with us in the living room, where family photos sit framed on shelves and two sofas face a large TV (Julie loves home makeover shows).

“At two years old,” she says, “Mike became obsessed with dancing.” His grandmother, who had been living with them at the time and was suffering from dementia, loved old movies and would watch them on repeat. Mike, therefore, spent his first few years on Earth soaking up Gene Kelly and Fred Astaire like a sponge. “I’m going to be Gene Kelly one day,” he told his mum, before asking if he could go to dance class. Julie did her best, but couldn’t find a dance class that accepted infants, so Mike had to wait until he was five before finally enrolling in one. “He was born an adult,” says Julie. “At six, he told me he wanted to start saving for college. At six!” He asked her to write to the Barney show and see if he could go on it, but that didn’t work out, and Mike got his first taste of the cruel world of showbiz. He continued guzzling down Gene Kelly movies – On the Town, An American in Paris and, most importantly, Singin’ in the Rain, which he still ranks as one of his favourite films of all time.

According to Julie, Mike thought Gene was “the perfect man” – “he could do everything and would always get the girl. That was important: he always got the girl.” He started to wear suits to pre-school – a school photo on the shelf shows Mike in a pinstriped suit, smiling ear to ear – and even, on occasion, took to wearing a top hat. Julie encouraged Mike to try his hand at everything – from baseball to basketball and tennis, which has now – thanks to The Challengers – come in handy. He even had a brief but successful stint as the school mascot, donning an enormous lion costume to football games. This was largely an excuse to hang out with the cheerleaders, but when I ask if he had any luck in that department, he laughs. “No, I was definitely not cool enough for that. I think I sold them some pot though.”

It was at dance class where he really shone; Julie said he was always leading the other guys – at nine, he was helping dancers eight years his senior learn the choreography. One time, when they went to a Broadway show, Mike came home and wrote down the entire choreography – literally typed it up – and then taught it to his classmates, which they then performed (or rather, plagiarised, says Julie).

He didn’t do many school plays but there was an alternative theatre arts school in Columbus, and he decided to go there. His first production was an American play called Life With Father, in which he played one of the sons. And then he took part in a production of Grease – playing Danny Zuko, naturally.

Mike, Austin and I go out for a walk, through the wide streets and large front yards, down into the woods that back onto the suburbs. Here, Mike, spent his youth, messing around, collecting frogspawn and later smoking et cetera. The weather is unseasonably warm as we walk down by the creek, through the woods and onto a football field, where kids are warming up for sports to the sound of Soulja Boy. It’s a supremely American scene.

Mike suggests that we go to the cemetery where his grandfather has just been laid to rest. No one from the family has been there yet, and again I’m taken aback. His sister, Krista, calls on the way down, and Mike explains where we’re going. We’re not entirely sure where – in the sea of stone plaques, metal vases and artificial flowers that stretches out before us – his Papa has been laid to rest, and we search for half an hour in the fiery glow of the Ohioan sunset before calling it quits. We head to a brewery a half-hour drive away to catch the last embers of sun sinking down over Columbus and discuss The Bikeriders.

In preparation for the film, Mike spent two days in Maine with Danny Lyon, who he plays and who gave him some photography lessons. He takes out his Fuji camera and flicks through the photographs that he took on set, some of which represent restagings of Lyon’s original photographs, which will be compiled into a photo book. “It’s a small part but I just wanted to watch these great actors – Austin, Jodie, Tom. I wanted to be a fly on the wall and just be there. I was learning photography at the time and it was a great opportunity to get paid to photograph some of your idols. And it was in Cincinnati, so close to dad, and around the holidays.”

Once we’re back on the road, we decide to stop off at Massey’s – a local roadside pizza joint about 15 minutes away. His father loved this place and Mike says he would have found it hilarious that we’d come here. The air is thick with the smell of oil and cheese, and the interiors look like they haven’t been touched since the 70s: neon lights in the window; a swirly, navy-blue carpet; sticky, plastic tables; no music, just the sound of chatter from the few other diners. Julie joins us and we discuss family; how her grandparents had arrived in America, how her parents came up from the Dust Bowl during the Great Depression, and lived that Grapes of Wrath life. “That’s the Midwest,” says Mike. “Everyone has the mentality of work, work your ass off.”

“That’s the unfortunate thing about America. That’s something that physically hurts me,” he continues, his voice cracking and his eyes suddenly smarting with tears. “Because I’ve been so fortunate in my life to have crazy adventures and pursue my dreams. And my mom and my dad … They just worked so hard to make sure I was able to do what I do. And I don’t know, the cost of that, on their health and whatnot … ”

To date, Mike has made interesting choices in projects he’s decided to take on, which reflect his instincts and interests as an artist. And while he loves acting, he doesn’t love everything that comes with it. In many ways, I wouldn’t be surprised if Mike did a few more roles, had a five-year break – during which he flips houses for a living and enjoys a more regular existence in Ohio – and then comes back and does another role that lands him an Oscar. “I had this conversation a lot with [The Bikeriders director] Jeff Nichols, saying that I only really want to do pieces that come from a place of love,” he’d said earlier on in the day. “Like, it’s coming from me. Like not necessarily for love, but from love. It may not be good [laughs] but it’s coming from that place of ‘I’m free, I’m liberated, I’m the most authentic I can be.’”

After dinner, Mike makes me drive his truck part of the way home (despite my lack of pretty much any driving experience or, more crucially, a driver’s licence – we both fear for our lives), concluding not just a whirlwind journey through Ohio, but through Mike’s life. As we part ways, I wonder where his journey will take him next, and how these two major films will affect its course.

Hair: Tsuki at Streeters. Make-up: Kiki Gifford at Streeters. Talent: Mike Faist. Lighting: Eduardo Silva. Photographic assistant: Nathaniel Jerome. Styling assistants: Bella Kavanagh, Alexander Bainbridge, Umi Jiang and Alexa Levine. Production: Second Name

This story features in the Summer/Autumn issue of Another Man, which is on sale internationally from April 25, 2024. 

You can find this interview here: https://www.anothermag.com/another-man/15568/mike-faist-challengers-the-bikeriders-interview-profile

[shadowetienne]

Reflecting on seeing OnlyOneOf for Things I Can't Say LOve tour stop in San Francisco (2024/05/03)

I meant to type this up sooner, but I've had several hectic weeks (leading up to going down to SF to see OnlyOneOf and since). Mostly good hectic, but hectic nonetheless. It was incredible getting to see OnlyOneOf again though, and I want to write up the experience before it fades in my memory.

This was a much less whirlwind trip than last year (where we drove down the night before and back up the next day), but it was still an adventure. We started very early in the morning on Wednesday, May 1st, with @redeim and his partner picking me up around 6 am just north of Seattle, and then us going to pick up another friend who was roadtripping down to CA with us to see relatives but not to see the concert. We had two drivers this time (Redeim and his partner) which was already an improvement on last trip. Redeim was coming off a knee and ankle injury, which will come up again, but was a bit of an impediment. The trip was, as expected, long. We didn't actually make it to where we were staying (with Redeim's partner's family over across the Bay from SF) until something like 1 am. I did knit an entire cowl on the trip down though, and it was nice to get to see a lot of the trip in daylight this time. Thursday (all day) and Friday (morning) were spent visiting with people we know in the Bay Area.

We went up fairly early for when we needed to be there for VVIP check in, but not absolutely as early as we could have (here we are before we headed out: https://shadowetienne.tumblr.com/post/749535185571315712). It was easy enough getting in and getting checked in, getting our lanyards for VVIP and our premium snapshot tickets. We didn't take that long in and out which was nice because Redeim's partner hadn't gotten VVIP so was waiting for us outside while we did the check in. We then went to get caffeinated beverages and some food (and a silver sharpie from the art store a few blocks down because we'd forgotten ours in Washington and we wanted to have it for people to be able to sign the flag).

But soon enough, we were back to the venue area, and during the time we'd done our little wander, the lines had started to properly gather (even though it was technically early for the VVIP line to have started to form). We wandered the VVIP+ line side for a while trying to get as many signatures on the flag and getting a fair number of freebies in exchange. There were also a good number of people with GA tickets around who we were able to get a chance to sign the flag. But after a bit of this, people were herded into the VVIP line for not blocking the sidewalk reasons. Redeim and I were still getting a pretty steady stream of people to sign the flag because we had it out and people were wandering along the line with freebies, or walking around if they were in VIP or GA and didn't have a line up area yet. At some point in here we got the delightful chance to see @jungwookjins and @tolkpopfan who swung by to sign the flag and say hi! (Standing in line and getting the flag signed: https://shadowetienne.tumblr.com/post/749535784683667456)

We also got to chat with the people around us in line, and as always lyOns are delightful. I got so many compliments on my outfit, and so many people who remembered me/us from last year. Handed out a few of the little pride flags that we'd brought for people who didn't have lightsticks (or just wanted a pride flag). There was a lot of commiseration about how much of a menace Rie can be (was last year, and it turns out would continue to be this year).

Eventually, after a good long while of waiting, it was VVIP's turn to go in for fansign. I liked the set up for this better than last year because where we were queued up let us watch the members for a while before we actually went up to get the posters signed. I got to watch the tail end of the fanchat before they took the chairs away, and then a chunk of VVIP that came before us. Some fun observations from that time: Nine continues to move constantly in his seat. I was very entertained watching him kicking his heels together with his feet resting on the cross bar of his chair and just being incredibly wiggly. Junji was very very smiley, and he seemed to be really enjoying being there. Also his hair was so good. KB projects the most of all of them in terms of being able to hear his voice when I was standing in line. I definitely spent most of this time watching Rie though (I suspect no one is shocked). He looked incredible, and I was so curious how the interactions would go this time.

At last, it was our turn to go up for the fansign. I believe it went Yoojung, Mill, Junji, Rie, Nine, KB, but the middle could be out of order there. Yoojung and Mill were both quick for me, they signed, they said thank you/love you, it wasn't a big interaction. Junji did a repeat of last year's interaction a little bit. He looked up at me, gave two thumbs up and said "shirt!" with a big smile again, and then said "thank you for coming again." At this point, I suspected that he might remember me from last year, or at least my shirt. Rie was, unsurprisingly but somehow still surprisingly, a menace. He looked up, definitely remembered me because the first thing out of his mouth was "thank you for coming back bestie" (he kept using bestie, it was somehow very charming). I told him he was my favorite, and he said, "I love you," and at this point he's trying to be handed Redeim's poster and I'm only freaking out a little bit. I got passed along to the rest of the members to sign, but I've got to tell you, I don't remember as much about what they did because Rie had just done his Rie thing.

This is where Redeim being in the process of recovering from an injury comes back into play. He was using a cane, and after the fansign, they were going to herd us down into a room downstairs for waiting until the high touch and group photo, down the steep stairs in an old building. One of the staff noticed Redeim using the cane, asked if he was OK with the stairs, and then herded us over into ADA (I was like "can I stay with him" which they were chill about). This was the first bit of venue weirdness, and it turned out ADA wasn't very well placed. It was sort of off to a side and too far back, especially for a standing venue. People sitting in ADA were going to have a very hard time seeing the stage. We had to wait for a while, and they ended up having the ADA area folks all go up together for the group photos (because they forgot to tell us how they wanted us to join the line until it was getting into VIP, and there were a mix of VVIP+, VVIP, and VIP folks in the ADA section at this point). This did mean that I got to watch most of the high touch and group photo process from over at the ADA section. They are so sweet and friendly and good at fan interaction. They're very clearly happy to see all the fans!

When we got to do our high touch and group photo it went pretty fast, I did get to confirm that the shoes that I wore this time made me about Junji's height, which was fun. Mill only startled a tiny bit at my tiny hands this time. Rie continued to be a menace. Got a smirk and a hand squeeze again this year. Then for the group photo, I was standing behind in a sort of in between way Rie and Nine, which was nice (hopefully group photo turns out OK, haven't seen it yet).

Then it was back to ADA to wait for a bit while stuff got set up and it was time for them to start letting people in. It ended up being a standing only venue other than the ADA section because they'd closed off the balcony (Redeim's partner had originally been expecting to sit up in the balcony for GA). I'd decided that I was going to go stand as close as I could to be able to get the flag up to the stage, but Redeim also decided that he would come stand up there with me, so once VVIP started coming in, we made our way up to stand as close as we could (they gave us little stickers that meant that we had in and out options for ADA). Redeim's partner got a great photo of us while we were standing waiting for things to start because he was just a little behind us: https://shadowetienne.tumblr.com/post/749583294468849664

I'm tall enough that I could see the stage quite well (or well, as well as I can see anything), Redeim was struggling a little bit more, and would at a point end up going back to ADA for a while, and then standing a bit further back with his partner while I stayed as far forward as I could. This is wild for me because with any other crowd, there would be absolutely no way I'd be comfortable standing away from my people. I generally feel really comfortable around lyOns though, and so many people had recognized me from last year, and had said nice things about my outfit. As we were settling in waiting for the show to actually start, we passed out all the rest of our little pride flags to people who had been standing with Redeim's partner in GA or who were clustered near us and didn't have something to wave. It was lovely how excited people were about them.

Eventually the concert started, and all my focus was on the stage. OnlyOneOf are incredible performers. I couldn't tell you the set order, or exactly what they performed off the top of my head for the most part (Redeim has videos), but every single stage was so good. I was definitely the most focused on watching Rie, but all of them had pretty good coverage of the stage when they were doing talking bits or songs that didn't have choreo and they wandered around. There were some moments that stood out to me a lot because of who I was watching: so many cute JunRie moments sort of scattered through out. Rie was having trouble with either his microphone or something on his outfit, and during one of the first ments, he and Junji sort of dropped back to the back of the stage and Junji helped him fix it. There were several hugs scattered through. The entire wonderful nonsense of Junji doing the challenge dance with the belt, and KB stealing Yoojung's belt for him to do it with, and Rie joining in on the choreo (and then KB also joining in and being very silly). And the ui medley stage, which was incredible. We didn't get one of the most exciting JunRie endings of the entire tour so far, but they made hearts together and then walked off holding hands which was sweet. But then after the ui medley, we got the treat of all of the members messing around trying to show Nine and Mill that they could clearly do the ending choreo of beyOnd better.

As we were approaching the end of the show, I got the flag out and was holding it up at times (I was trying not to block anyone's view, but I wanted to make sure that the guys got a chance to see it in the audience). Flag definitely got a few of their attention! I got reactions (pointing to it with a big smile, hand hearts, some combination there of) from everyone but Mill (he didn't make it over in the area during one of the times it was more visible). I also may have hidden behind the flag a little bit when they sprayed us with water because I did not entirely enjoy that sensory experience. I actually tried to send the flag up at two different points, but the first one ended up coming back to me because for some reason it didn't keep getting passed forward, but after another flag had gone up successfully, I managed to send the flag up on stage: https://shadowetienne.tumblr.com/post/749535481042272256

Mill is the one who ended up with the flag, and it was around his shoulders for a good long while. I wish that they'd gotten more chance to look at all the messages that people left for them, but I'm glad that it made it up on stage and all the members interacted with it at least a little. They had to send all the things back into the audience this year (sadly, we really wanted to have the flag be a gift to them). Redeim and I are plotting ways that we might be able to get it to them as a gift if they come back next year/in the future.

I already talked about the premium snapshot experience (and my confirmation that both Rie and Junji remembered me from last year) here: https://shadowetienne.tumblr.com/post/749574999788109824/got-premium-snapshots-with-both-rie-and-junji-it

It had started drizzling a little bit by the time I got out of the venue, but we were able to make our bus and train connections back to where we'd parked just fine, and then back to where we were staying. I'd originally been hoping to go into SF the next day for a bit, but between weather (pouring rain) and being exhausted, we ended up having a rest day, and then we drove back up on Sunday (again leaving very early). Got home just before midnight, and I'm definitely still just rotating the experience in my mind.

I hope they are able to come back again next year, and maybe also come to Seattle next year (though I'm going to be so very very tempted to try to see them at multiple stops if I can manage it). They are so incredible, and while I think that last year is still my very favorite concert I've ever been to, this year was amazing, minor venue issues and all.

Also, I'm just going to be reeling for a while over Rie and Junji both remembering me. I'm not sure how I feel about being perceived, but overall it was a nice feeling, they seemed so happy that people were coming back to see them again. Also Rie is an absolute menace and flirt, but it's charming.

[wind-becomes-lightning]

Some kind of follower event or other.

im very sorry if you follow both blogs and have to see this double. ily for following both tho. special love and kisses to you

In celebration of my 1000 follower milestone on a blog I pretty much abandoned (@wind-becomes-lightning) and my 100 followers on the blog that I am now using (@konohamaru-sensei) (and because I really love doing things for others), I’m hosting a little cross blog event. I anticipate that most of the entries will be from friends anyway and gifting friends makes little Nisi happy.

So, what are we going to do? Well. You have the choice. Either you request a little story from one of the prompt lists (please specify or send the prompt) or you send me a link to a reference and I will do an art. Either or is fine if you adhere to the rules

Stories will be around 1k length (maybe longer if I’m feeling it)

Artworks only for up to 2 people (You can look at art refs in my pinterest board if you don't have an idea.)

Off Anon only. (If you feel embarrassed please just dm me beforehand so I know it is you sending anons, or at least sign the request with your name, thanks!)

One request per person. (Q, I love you, but I still have like 5 requests of yours in my waiting list)

Absolutely no requests for “no-no ships” and “no-no characters” allowed.

OC requests only if you are from the Anxiety Anonymous server or if I have written for your oc before. (You may of course request my ocs if you care)

You can send Naruto related requests to any blog, but send any other fandoms to @konohamaru-sensei

Reader inserts are fine, as long as they are done with Yes-please characters. 

Fandom list for this time:

Naruto (obv)

Fairy Tail

Haikyuu

JJK

MHA

One Piece 

Prompt lists:

Romantic

Spicy

Angsty

Kisses

Recent art examples x - x - x - x 

If you send me a “Yes-Always” ship or a “yes-please” character I will prioritise your request, because it will be more fun for me, but anything is welcome as long as you don’t break the rules.

I will leave this open until I feel like closing it. In my experience, there wont be too much anyway.

Ok thanks, BYE.

Ship list under cut.

Yes-Always Ships

Naruto: OBKK | KKYM | OBYM | OBKKYM | OBKKRIN | SAIINO

Fairy Tail: Jerza | Gruvia | Gruvion | Luvia 

JJK: SatoSugu

HQ: Oikawa x Kuroo

Yes-Please Characters

Naruto: Kakashi, Obito, Yamato, Konohamaru, Hinata

Fairy Tail: Lyon, Erza, Juvia, Jellal, Gray, Rogue, Loke

Haikyuu: Kuroo, Oikawa, Hinata, Bokuto

JJK: Gojo, Geto, Yuuji, Choso, Maki

MHA: Hawks, Iida, Dabi 

One Piece: Sanji, Robin, Law, Zoro, Luffy, Sabo, Ace

No-No Ships

For all fandoms: no inces-t, no teacher and student, no mentor and student, no adult and child

Naruto: S-NS | Na-ruSa-ku | Kaka-Ga-i| InoS-aku

Fairy Tail: Gajeel x Juv ia | Gra L u | Gr arza

Haikyuu: Iwao i | Kurook en | Suga x D aichi

JJK: any yuuji ship

MHA: Ba-kuD-eku

One Piece: Lu ffy x A c e

No-No-Characters

Naruto: Sa suke, Ma dara

Haikyuu: Tsukish ima

JJK: To ji, Na oya

One Piece: P udding

Every ship not mentioned here is one I am fine with, but not in love with. Which means you can request it just fine.

this whole thing will probably fail spectacularily and i will feel like shit but i mean... no risk no depressive hole to dig myself in later, so whats the fun?