#the people exploding in the background are those 'quirky' people who keep trying and failing to 'explain' away artihunter

[luhman16]

Do not interact with trolls its not worth it, interacting with trolls is the mind killer, its the little death that brings total obliteration, i shall let it pass over and through me, and when i will look back, only i will remain

[permian-tropos]

might as well set down my full case for the extreme shippability of gallirae, for that twitter person’s sake (that’s my excuse but hey, I can vent by being positive about things I like)

step one would be to explain why I think they have canonical sexual tension and the point I like start with is the fact that Adea tells Sloane she wanted to “be with them both”. we already know she’s sleeping with Rax and honestly book 1 leaves plenty of room to imagine Adea has a thing for Sloane so why don’t we imagine Adea is bisexual as hell and has had a thing for the both of them, and wanted a sugar mommy and a sugar daddy simultaneously but if they couldn’t get along she’d pick one

Sloane is the one who doesn’t see it like that. but Adea admires Sloane for being ambitious and powerful and in a position to rule the Empire and create a new galactic order. this is the same case she makes for Rax, and she seems frustrated that Sloane can’t see how well they’d go together.

given that Adea and Rax’s only scene together has them talking about whether Sloane will join them and Rax is the one who’s confident about it (and Adea is the hesitant one) I feel free to imagine that an initial condition of their relationship was “we’re going to be a hot problematic threesome with Sloane”. and if Adea can ship them together why can’t I?

but moving on. why do I imagine Rax being into Sloane? well besides the fact that he keeps her around and stokes her ambitions even as he knows she wants him dead, the fact that he flatters her and makes himself her advisor even though he outranked her in book 1, and talks about how much he wants her to be a part of his galaxy-ruling business.

there’s also the fact that he gives her a mixtape of his most emotionally resonant piece of music, the opera that he associates with escaping a life of poverty and misery. it’s not an act of manipulation, because there’s no clear intended effect, it’s just a way for him to share a piece of himself in a rather awkward and indirect way. he makes choices on Jakku over and over that avoid killing Sloane in the moment, and his final moments aren’t anger at her for defeating him but regret over his own failures. he might assume the planet will explode or that she’ll be taken prisoner by the New Republic and he could let that be revenge but he wants Sloane to live and rule his Empire. he considers her a “fellow outcast” likely from their backgrounds being lower class which Sloane responds to and doesn’t dispute.

why would Sloane be into Rax? well there’s the fact that she considers herself “seduced” by him and asks herself if she’s “falling for his strange way” after he gives her a flirty smirk during the Shadow Council meeting even though in that moment she’s furious at him. “she hates him, but she admires him too”. a lot of the metaphorical language her POV scenes use to describe her fear, hatred, or apprehension of Rax also have a suggestive element to them, whether he’s a sea before a storm or a snake in her bed or a predator who wants to pick out and eat the juiciest bits of her flesh and at that point I have to blush just retelling what’s written in the book! the scene where she listens to the music brings back the ocean metaphor but has it be a “gentle wave that calls her out to sea” (bear in mind she’s in bed while she’s listening to it) and “its ethereal beauty haunts her”. since the ocean has been used to describe Rax and the opera itself represents him, it feels like a metaphor for a sexual encounter — or Sloane’s desire for one.

I think it’s extremely easy to read canon where Sloane is attracted to Rax and finds him intimidating and overwhelming for that reason, and she is especially disgusted and angry and put off by him any time he does something that seems to Zone her as a platonic political ally or a pawn in his game. she takes a lot of his betrayals extremely personally, in ways she doesn’t with characters like Vidian or even Adea. she is basically cyberstalking Rax throughout book 2 and real stalking him throughout book 3 and she has perfectly good political reasons for it but the intense emotions attached could be both dread of his creepiness and deep Frustration. she has several moments where she mentions having no children or husband or wife and you could imagine her career with the evil Empire as the war went on has been very unhealthy and draining and isolating. she’s a bit deprived and starting to get depressed about it, though she weathered it for a long time. loneliness takes its toll on everyone eventually.

so you could read Rax and Sloane as both being hampered in their capacity for healthy romance by their ambitions and flaws and emotional hangups and general evilness. Rax is avoidant and vague and nihilistic about his desire for Sloane, and Sloane is aggressive and bitter and fearful about her desire for Rax.

so obviously the idea of them overcoming these roadblocks and succumbing to their desires is Hot As Fuck

and I consider them to be extremely hot when they’re in conjunction with each other because they’re obviously terrible people but they complement each other’s terribleness. they have two different strains of fascist brain worms and their collusion and subsequent falling out is to me a great place to pick apart the toxicity of both their ideologies. their ability to destroy each other’s faith in their own megalomaniac space nazi delusions is HOT because tearing down fascist delusions is good and narratively cathartic.

the fact that they’re locked in mortal combat is kind of necessary to this. they’re not going to reject a whole ideology if there isn’t an extreme pressure to do so. this is why I enjoy their moments together in canon. particularly with Sloane’s hatred — everything Rax does calls her faith in the Empire into question and it might not be his intention and the struggles might not be romanticizable but their canon doesn’t have to end up in a romantic or pleasant situation for it to set up fascinating conflicts.

they’re also aesthetically hot. Rax is described as pale and dark haired and black-eyed and he smirks a lot and says corny pretentious crap and wears sumptuous red robes and listens to opera and has a shipboard garden. he also has a tragic backstory as a cult-raised orphan on a desert world, conscripted and groomed for his position as the Contingency by Darth Emperor Sheev himself! so he’s a sad traumatized fuckboy too, teeming with suppressed self-loathing and coping mechanisms. he deserved to get murdered and I appreciate that he does but I still find him a glorious and perhaps personally relatable disaster. his deep fixation on and love of stories should technically be relatable to everyone on here but for me it seems to resonate especially strongly.

Sloane is the one with an official character design and she is Very Hot with her dark complexion and broad shoulders and handsome features only slightly touched by age. her hair is a bit long for an Imperial (not too many women overall) and she canonically is pleased with it and rightly so, it’s gorgeous, and the white streak is oddly cute. and she’s also got this stern commanding air but you can imagine her being suppressed about various desires just like Rax is and so obviously it’s great to imagine those desires breaking through. she is kind of a jock nerd, a former boxer who also loves research and libraries and math. her determination and badassery is as aesthetically enjoyable as her moments of fatigue and despair and folly. she’s a complicated person, with plenty of moments of badness and a fair amount of potential for goodness. and she has many moments from POV sections where you could extrapolate into a quirk or peculiar trait, instead of considering the quirkiness artistic license (ie. the ghost retinue, her being overly familiar with or possessive of people in her thoughts). she’s snarky and casually self-centered and staunch in her ideologies but also constantly suppressing empathy or unease.

I like the fact that Rax is a rather flamboyant and effeminate man and Sloane is a pragmatic and masculine woman. I know it’s bad to villify gender noncomformity but frankly I just am super weak for that het dynamic, it works well with my own gender feelings, sue me

the ship comes packaged with so many aesthetics and features; a cursed sort of wasteland with Jakku, the Opera, failed attempts at galactic conquest, a viable side OT3 with Adea, Palpatine’s bullshit hanging over both of them, plenty of action and intrigue, options for canon divergences where they rule side by side, or divergences where they are forced to expel their fascist brain worms and start on a road of ideological and emotional recovery.

they are given a ton of parallels in canon, with their backstories trying to stow away on ships to escape their homeworlds as children, their weird fixation on predators and prey, to their desires for revenge or glory, their willingness to dispose of their allies, often using the same language culminating in them finishing each other’s sentences, improvising bluffs and distractions tailored to the other’s personality on the fly.

and their relationship, such as it is, ends with extreme violence and cruelty and suffering. given their high levels of participation in the big bad autocratic space regime it’s no less than either of them deserved. neither of them work through their deep and extreme issues. yet it feels like there’s room for both to change, since Rae questions her faith in the Empire and Gallius questions Palpatine’s narrative of destiny.

so if I imagine them together but unable to throw down with murder duels (because they decide to care about each other) they might be forced to completely change, and that’s a really compelling dynamic arc

and there you have it. that’s not even everything. but it’s a lot of it and it’s way way more than is ever necessary to justify a ship.

[hmhteen]

HMH Teen Teaser: CALCULUS OF CHANGE by Jessie Hilb!

‘Tis the season for romance, right? We are so excited that CALCULUS OF CHANGE by Jessie Hilb, an incredible debut about first love, identity, religion, and grief, will be in bookstores on 2/27/19. But there’s no time like the present to introduce you to these quirky, heartfelt characters. Without further ado, you can read the first three chapters of this YA below.

ME

Immediately I want him. Not because he has pierced ears. Not because he has unruly brown hair and gray-blue eyes. I want Tate Newman because he is wearing a two-toned blue handwoven yarmulke atop his head. It’s like he’s wearing a piece of his soul outside himself. I’ve been watching him for a few weeks now. We have math together, which is where I noticed the yarmulke. He’s just returned from a summer trip to Israel with a big group of Jewish kids from Bentley. He’s the only one in the group still wearing his yarmulke, and when I look at him, I see audacity and spirit, and I want those things in my life. I decide I want him in my life.

“Aden.”

He says my name like we’ve talked a million times before.

“Tate.”

I wonder if he can hear the nervous laughter behind my voice.

“Calculus,” he says.

And I know exactly what he means.

“Calculus,” I say.

So this is how we meet. We meet after school in the hallway of Bentley High over happenstance and a calculus problem.

He couldn’t know that I have a secret passion for all things calculus. Calculus, as it has been described by our math teacher, “is the study of change.” I like the idea of infinitesimal change. Small change in several steps makes sense to me because it feels like somehow I can control it. I am in charge of getting the numbers and symbols where they need to go. And though from start to finish it looks different on paper, I am really showing the tiniest shift. What I can’t control in real life is the sudden, catastrophic change that often comes without steps or warning and makes life insufferably different. Like a dead mom. Calculus? Calculus is change I can wrap my head around.

“Aden.”

He says it again. My name.

“Yes,” I say, answering the question he hasn’t asked yet. “I can help you with the calculus problem.”

“Thank you,” he says.

I’m smiling again, and I notice when he looks at me he cocks his head a little like he’s trying to figure me out.

“What?” I say.

“Fast friends.”

“Fast friends?”

I let myself laugh because I might explode if I don’t.

“Yes,” he says. “It’s weird we’ve never met before. I think we’re supposed to be friends.”

Supposed to be.

“Okay,” I say. “Then let’s be friends.”

“Fast friends.”

“Whatever that means, Tate. Fast friends.”

Talking to Tate is like swimming underwater. Everything silences, and it’s just him and me. But I can’t breathe.

“Talk after class tomorrow and we’ll sort something out?”

I can’t breathe but somehow I speak. “Looking forward to it.”

He smiles.

I’m toast.

MARISSA

Marissa lies on my bed reading a magazine, her feet resting on my pillow, her long brown-auburn hair hanging off the side in its usual mess of waves. A half-eaten candy bar sits next to her. How can she do that? Eat only half.

I’m at my desk working on a four-part calculus problem. I have part one and half of part two completed, but I’m not in the zone.

“Oh my God,” she says. “Turn it up. I love his song.”

She’s right. The music is good. Really good. Deep, gospel-like singing, severe drums, a choral background. It’s rock and soul, emotional. I lose myself. First, it’s the singer’s voice pulling me into the music and out of my calculus homework. Then, the drums have me tapping my pencil on the desk, bobbing my head with the beat. Finally, the choral background kicks in with the crescendo. Colors, lights, feelings burst and swirl in me. I close my eyes and let the music swallow me. And then the song is over and I look at my half-finished calc problem.

“Because I can concentrate so much better with the music blaring?” I say. I look past Marissa where my guitar leans against the nightstand. I wonder if I could trim the song down and cover it with just the guitar. I’d have to change the key. Lower.

Marissa tracks my gaze and props her head in her hands. “Write anything good lately?”

“I’m almost finished with the song I played for you the other day. It’s not right, though.”

She sighs, and with a smile she says, “Ade. Always the perfectionist. I thought it was amazing.”

“It’s not amazing yet.”

“It will be.” Just like that, Marissa believes in me, unfailingly, ferociously.

I put my pencil down, hating that my calculus problem is half finished and I’ll have to start from scratch when I get back to it. But I should have known I wouldn’t get much done with Marissa here. She flips the page in her magazine, a history book lying untouched on the floor next to her.

“Make contact with Josh today?” I ask her.

“Yeah.”

“And?”

“And he’s so . . . uninteresting.”

“Uninteresting?”

“I’m bored. We have to stop doing our thing. It’s so old.”

I think about Josh and his piercings and his attitude and the way he’s always just there for Marissa, and I say, “Yeah. I get it.” I feel bad for the guy. Josh pales in comparison to Marissa, with her light and love and charisma. He’s a stoner who fails classes and plays video games every spare second. But he’s been home base for Marissa all through high school. He’s the guy she’ll keep returning to because he’s a warm body, and he always wants her. The same cannot be said of her deadbeat dad who left when she was a little girl.

“So who now?”

She raises an eyebrow and glances back at her magazine.

“Missy! Who?” She hates it when people call her Missy, but I do it because we’ve been best friends since forever ago.

“Lance,” she says, still looking down.

“Lance? Lance who?”

“Lance Danson.”

“Wait, what? I’m confused.” Mr. Danson is an English teacher at our high school. A shaggy-haired, white-button-up-shirt-wearing English teacher with muscular forearms. He incites passion in his students because he cares so much. I had him for English last year.

“His name is Lance Danson,” she says slowly, enunciating every syllable.

“As in Mr. Danson?”

She looks up without raising her chin, her eyes hooded so I can’t read her expression.

“Huh. Mr. Lance Danson. Seriously? You have a thing for a teacher?”

She rolls onto her back, looking at me upside down. “I don’t know. It’s complicated.”

“I’ll bet it’s complicated. He’s, like, a thousand years old.”

“You know he’s not.” It’s true. I know he’s only twenty-six or twenty-seven.

“He said I have the eyes of an angel.”

I choke a little on the soda I’ve been sipping. “He didn’t.”

Marissa smiles and pulls the hair tie out of her hair.

“When did Danson talk to you about your eyes?” I say.

“When I stayed after school yesterday to work on my essay.”

“Huh. Weird.”

“Why is that weird? You don’t think I have beautiful eyes?” She flutters her eyelashes at me and puckers her lips. I roll my eyes. In fact, I do think she has beautiful eyes.

I throw my pencil at her.

“Dude. Don’t throw shit at me.” She tosses the pencil back and it hits the wall, bouncing off so that I have to duck.

I toss my hands up in surrender.

“So you were just, like, what? Leaning over the desk under the guise of working on your essay, and he looks up into those bad boys of yours and says ‘Oh, Marissa, you have the eyes of an angel’?”

Marissa laughs. “Something like that, cheese ball.”

“Wow.”

I think about Danson and his arms and smile and the way he paces the room when he’s onto an idea. And I understand the attraction there. I do. It seems weird that Danson would tell Marissa she has angel eyes. I wonder if she took it out of context. Either way, Marissa changes love interests daily. I’m sure this will pass.

“Dude,” I say because something niggles at the back of my mind anyway, “be careful there.”

She laughs. “Careful is my middle name.” Careful is far from how I’d describe my best friend.

She goes back to her magazine, perusing the story with the title “I Was in a Relationship with (insert celeb-of-the-week name here)!” She’s not vapid. I’ve heard some of the girls in my AP English class talking about her. I’m sure they were speaking out of jealousy, or if Marissa got to one of their boyfriends. I believe the word they used was vacuous. As though a single one of them has any clue about Marissa. I know her. She’s a mess. She’s wild. She spontaneous. She’s funny. She’s desperate for male attention, and she knows exactly what to do to get it. She’s directionless. But she’s my best friend, and I love her not in spite of all that, but in part because of it.

“Your turn,” Marissa says. “Spill.”

I guess we’re done talking about Danson and angel eyes. Which is okay because it weirds me out to think about Danson like that. He’s one of my favorite teachers.

“Spill what?”

“There’s something we’re not talking about. I haven’t heard a word about what’s-his-name.”

“Cody. His name is Cody.”

“Are we still crushing or have we moved on?”

“I believe we’ve moved on.” I can’t think of Tate without that stupid smile. A dead giveaway.

Cody is the senior class’s best-looking lacrosse player. He’s also been in my brother’s circle of friends for the last three years. He’s completely unattainable. He’s nice enough, but I know he doesn’t see me in that way. I’ve been crushing on him for a long time, but somewhere in me I must know it’s not going to happen. Plus, besides his wonderful looks and the fact that he’s sweet, Cody doesn’t seem . . . thoughtful. Like Tate. Or electric, like Tate.

Marissa turns her attention back to the magazine. She takes another agonizingly slow and small bite of the candy bar. Now she’s on the “Spotted at the Beach!” section of the magazine, one skinny movie star after another clad in nothing but strings. I have the sudden urge to rip the candy bar away from her and scarf the rest in one huge, satisfying bite because, my God, I will never be skinny and I’m so sick of wanting it.

She’s impassive when she says, “Who is he? Do I know him?”

“I’m not sure.” I sigh. Out with it. “Tate Newman?”

She pauses, scanning her brain. “Nope. I don’t think I do. Senior?”

“Yeah. Yarmulke.”

“What?”

“He wears that yarmulke around. You know, the little hat that Jewish guys wear.”

“Oh yeah. That.” She looks up. “He wears one to school? Seriously?”

“Yes, seriously.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know. I guess it means something to him.”

“Huh. And you like him?”

“Kinda.” Understatement of the week. “It’s cool he wears the yarmulke. Different. He has earrings, too. I like it.”

“Huh,” she says again. “So do you think he’s into you?”

I guess I hadn’t fathomed the possibility.

“Don’t know.” I’m trying to sound casual when it’s so far from what I feel. Giddy, awkward, sparkly. But casual and cool? Not me right now, or ever, really.

TATE

I lean against a locker on the other side of the hall, opposite Tate, watching him. He’s talking to a group of kids. I’m etching in my mind the way he throws his head back and laughs when someone says something funny. I want to make him laugh like that. He’s completely unselfconscious. No one wants to miss a beat of what Tate says because he’s fluorescent in an otherwise dull, lightless room. He thinks no one is watching, or maybe he doesn’t care. But I’m watching. I think everyone in his general proximity is watching—at least out of the corner of an eye. He’s a glow stick.

He looks up from the conversation and smiles. At me. I guess he knows I’ve just been stalking him. I lift my hand in a half wave, and I think a full-on bird just flew out of my mouth because butterflies-in-my-stomach doesn’t begin to describe what happened to my body when Tate smiled.

“Problem number three,” he says.

We’re both smiling stupidly. As if problem number three is some inside joke between the two of us, when really it’s just a math problem that at least forty other kids were tasked to solve.

“I know,” I say. “Did you figure it out?”

“I needed you.”

I can’t get my mouth out of this smile.

“Everyone needs me.” Still smiling.

I might be trying too hard. Am I trying too hard? I wish I hadn’t said that of all things.

He laughs. I just made Tate laugh.

Then neither of us says anything for a beat. Laughing gray-blue eyes are my new drug of choice.

“My dad doesn’t know I have a C,” Tate says.

“In math?”

“Yeah. He wants me to be a doctor or an engineer. Like him.”

“Your dad’s a doctor?”

“Yeah. Neurosurgeon.”

“Jeez. No pressure.”

“Ha. I know, right?”

He looks so weary. I feel like hugging him because I can’t seem to stand close enough. But we’re in the hallway of Bentley High between classes and this is only the second time we’ve talked. I concentrate on breathing for a half second because I could swear I’ve forgotten how.

Instead I reach out and touch his arm.

“I’m sure you don’t suck at it.”

He doesn’t seem to notice that my hand was on his arm for far too long.

“Would you be willing to help me? Like forever?”

I want Tate to say the word forever to me again and again and again.

He laughs a little, the sound bouncing off the walls in my head, a low, clear brass instrument—a tenor sax.

“Obviously, yes.”

I just said that out loud when I meant to say yes.

“Okay, then. After school?”

“Sure. I’ll meet you at the benches.”

The benches are an area where only seniors are allowed at Bentley. One of those unspoken rules. I rarely go there because I think people who feel particularly cool hang out there and I’ve never felt particularly cool. But today I throw caution to the wind. Today I crash the dreaded benches.

Tate raises an eyebrow.

I laugh. He caught me. Am I see-through?

“We meet there. We walk to Ike’s,” I say.

“Okay. I’ll buy the coffee.”

“Deal, but I only drink coffee if it’s a mocha,” I say.

He laughs. I just made Tate laugh again, and I could listen to that sound on repeat. If I had a pen and paper, I could write a song to the sound. It’s a tenor laugh. Not high-pitched, but not low or booming. He laughs in D-minor.

“A mocha is not coffee. It’s a hot milkshake.”

“Great, then you can buy me a hot milkshake.”

“See you at the benches,” he says.

 I have to remind myself that today I’m a senior and I’m meeting Tate Newman at the place where everyone at Bentley who matters hangs out, and this is all okay because talking to Tate about nothing makes me feel like something. And no one cares where I happen to meet new friends.

I stand next to a group of kids I’ve probably never talked to in all of our school years together. As I watch the girls around me, I’m conscious that I’m not wearing a chic pair of knee-high leather boots. Likely because I can’t get a pair of leather boots to zip over my calves. They’re the cool kids. I’ve never been a cool kid. What was I thinking, meeting him here?

I breathe and sit down. I question my decision to sit down as soon as I do it. Cross a leg. Uncross the leg. Look down at my thighs and cross a leg again. Repeat. Try not to think about my thighs or my calves or some other part of my body that would disqualify me from wearing what I want. Where the hell is he? It’s been fifteen minutes since the bell rang, and on the day I finally decide to the brave the benches, Tate would forget. Or worse, decide he had something better to do than hang out with me and a calculus problem. I scan the crowd for someone I know, but then a girl with long blond hair—Stacey?—moves, and I see Tate.

He’s surrounded by another group, again with the energy and the lit-up face and the attention of everyone in this general area. I forget what I was thinking because thinking isn’t something I can do when Tate makes everything in me vibrate. And that’s before he looks at me.

He’s midsentence when he spots me sitting on the bench, watching him, legs crossed. His smile suspends time. He waves me over, and I am not my calves or my thighs or my awkward legs crossed, because Tate sees me.

“Guys, this is Aden, the girl I was telling you about. Calculus wiz, and she’s awesome, too.”

I laugh.

With Tate stands a freckled, redheaded girl I’ve never seen and Paul and Alana, friends of mine. I smile at the redheaded girl and immediately forget what Tate said her name was. I didn’t realize Tate and I had mutual friends. This fuzzy, fluffy, bird-in-my-stomach thing is happening and the stupid smile, and I wonder if everyone can see it. I feel transparent.

“We know Aden.” Paul elbows my arm with familiarity. I smile and nudge back, glancing at Tate. He raises an eyebrow in surprise, those gray blues vibrant, interested. Surprising Tate just became my favorite thing.

“You all know each other?” Tate says.

“We do.” I amaze myself with the ability to speak because my body and mind are saying everything should be to the contrary.

“Yeah,” says Alana. “It’s the choir thing. We’re tight.” Alana winks at me.

“Awesome,” Tate says. We look from each other to Tate. “I love it when cool people know each other.”

I can’t focus on anything other than Tate and the space he consumes, a universe.

“We have a bitch of a calculus problem to solve,” he says. He puts a hand on my shoulder, pointing me in the direction of Ike’s.

I disintegrate.

 I concentrate on the sounds our feet make as we walk side by side to Ike’s—it makes me feel sane. Otherwise I’d lose myself when Tate is next to me, and I’d end up saying something embarrassing and not sane. Four feet walking forward. The sound is soft on grass, and then there’s the crunch of the first autumn leaves underfoot. Louder on concrete. Like the sound of bongos and then the clash of symbols. We make eye contact. Tate’s eyes are filled with a kind of wonder, and suddenly there’s this word on the tip of my tongue . . . hope.

He holds the door open for me, motioning for me to go ahead. I squint up at him.

“I’m perfectly capable of opening a door,” I say.

“Prove it.” He steps aside and the door slams shut while the two of us stand there staring at it.

I push him to the side with my hip and grab the door handle.

A man behind us clears his throat before Tate makes a big deal out of walking through the doorway.

“Thank you,” Tate says. “This is so kind.”

I roll my eyes and continue holding the door for the man behind us.

“Yes,” says the man. “Thank you.” I can’t tell if he’s annoyed or joking.

Then Tate reaches around the stranger and grabs my hand, pulling me into line with him, into him. I glance at the man, hoping he sees the apology on my face.

As we stand in line together, Tate puts a hand on my back, between my shoulder blades, inching me forward. My skin burns in the best way underneath his hand.

The barista looks from me to Tate.

“A small mocha, please.” I take the lead.

“Whip?” He writes some kind of symbol on the cup.

“Obviously,” I say to the barista with a smile.

Tate elbows me. “Thatta girl.”

“Glad you approve.”

“Approve? Nah. I totally worship you.”

“Wow. All it takes is whipped cream? You must be easy.”

“You have no idea,” he says with a wink.

This feels like flirting, and I’m on fire, and how do people do this—flirt—when everything inside feels ablaze?

I want to say something witty, but I can’t speak or breathe or function. His hand is still there, a torch between my shoulder blades, a slow, sweet burn.

Tate pays for both of our drinks. “You better make this mocha worth my while,” he says as he removes his hand from my back.

“I’m sure I already have.”

We sit in the corner next to the window.

“So you’re a genius, right?” Tate is pulling his math book out of his backpack.

“Yes, but I’m not doing this for you.”

“I’d never ask you to,” he says without irony. “But I can’t get a C in this class.”

“Because of college?”

“That and my dad.”

“Pressure?”

“Well, I’ve spent the last eighteen years tricking him into thinking I’m smart, like him.”

“But you’re not?”

When he smiles at me, it doesn’t reach his eyes. “Not in the way he thinks.”

“What does that mean?”

He runs a hand through his curly brown hair. “I don’t know. I’m a lost cause.”

“I don’t get it. Why?”

“I hate math,” he says.

“So? You don’t have to love math, or even be good at it, to be smart.”

“Yeah.”

“So why is math so important to your dad?”

“Math and science. All of my grades, really. I think it’s the whole neurosurgeon thing.”

“Oh.”

“It’s not like he expects me to be a doctor, but he thinks I’m an idiot because of what I want to be.”

“Well, what do you want to be?”

“A musician.”

I raise an eyebrow. “Really?”

“Yeah.”

“Cool.”

I have this vision of Tate and me playing music together, and it’s so powerful I look at Tate and wonder if he can see my thoughts.

Tate stares down at his coffee cup, turning it in circles, his mind lost in his dad’s unfulfilled expectations.

“Your dad wants you to have more security in life.”

“I guess. But it’s like he’s asking me to be someone I’m not.”

“Yeah, it sucks to feel like you’re letting him down.”

“Yeah.” He looks up for just a minute, and when our eyes meet, something I can’t name passes between us. It’s more than understanding; it’s recognition. We both know what it means to live up to impossible standards. Even if no one says it out loud, I carry so much weight for my family—the weight of my dad’s unresolved grief and the weight of my brother’s everything. And Tate, having to be someone he’s not to make his dad proud. I get it.

“So what do you play?” I say.

“What?”

“You want to be a musician: what instrument do you play?”

“Piano. I play the piano.”

“Really? Classical?”

“Jazz, mostly. But I can play bits of anything.”

I can’t shake the image of us playing music together. Tate on the piano, me on the guitar, singing.

“Do you sing, too?” I ask. We could play an epic duet.

“Hell, no. I can’t carry a tune to save my life.”

“I can.”

“Oh yeah?”

I answer him with a smile, too hypnotized by the fantasy of us onstage together to say anything else. Tate on piano, me singing with my guitar, bright stage lights, the two of us imbued with our music.

“I’d love to hear you sing sometime.”

Love.

“Sure.” My answer is sure out loud, when, really, the answer is something more like I’ll sing to you and in you and with you and about you.

“So what about you?” he says. “What do you want to be?”

“Like, when I grow up?”

He laughs.

“Because, isn’t that pretty much tomorrow?” I say.

“Or a few months. Or years.”

“I don’t know. I want to be a math major.”

“Figures.”

I stick my tongue out at him.

“I might double in music composition. But only if I can find a program that will support the kind of song writing I love.”

“Which is what?”

“Mostly folk and rock.”

“Where are you applying?” He takes a drink of his latte. A piece of curly hair falls into his eyes. I wish I could lean forward and brush it away.

“NYU, Brandeis, and CU.”

“Top choice?”

“I think it’s Brandeis.”

“Really? You know that’s a Jewish school, right?”

“In fact, I do, Mr. Jewish.” I wink at him.

“So what’s the draw?”

“Um.” I pause. “My mom went there. She’s Jewish, and she—” I don’t know why I just talked about my mom in the present tense. It feels easier than dropping the casual she-died bomb on him right now.

“Really? You know, officially, that makes you Jewish, too?”

“I know,” I say. “But I wasn’t raised that way or anything. So I don’t feel Jewish.”

“Well, maybe you just need to find a way to connect with it.”

“How?”

“Take a trip to Israel.”

“Ha. Yeah right.”

“Seriously, you should look into it. It’s called Birthright. You can get a fully funded trip. Find out who you are, Aden.”

“I know who I am, Tate.”

Tate leans back in his chair, and I swear I could jump into his smile and stay in its warmth forever.

***

The swoons are just beginning for Aden and Tate, so pre-order this incredible debut at any of the links below:

Amazon Barnes & Noble Books-a-MillionHudson IndieBound Powell’s

[entergamingxp]

Disintegration review – a quirky but troubled sci-fi shooter • Eurogamer.net

Back at last year’s E3 – an event that now feels like a lifetime ago – I had a chat with V1 founder Marcus Lehto to pin down what Disintegration was all about. Due to the game’s dystopian sci-fi setting and Lehto’s background as the co-creator of Halo, I came away thinking Disintegration’s narrative had the potential to explore some fascinating topics, including post-humanism and the threats to our world today.

Disintegration review

Developer: V1 Interactive

Publisher: Private Division

Platform: Reviewed on PC

Availability: Out now on PC, Xbox One and PS4

In the end, Disintegration doesn’t ever delve too far into these ideas: but what I didn’t expect was a silly yet genuinely convincing shooter hidden beneath the surface.

Disintegration bills itself as a first-person shooter with real-time strategy elements, half campaign and half multiplayer, set in a future version of Earth ravaged by every bad thing under the sun. Climate change, pandemic, war – all things so alien to us here in 2020… The premise is that swathes of the Earth’s population have chosen to “integrate” in order to survive the harsh conditions: a process of transplanting someone’s brain into a robot body to preserve their consciousness. It was intended to be a temporary measure, but a nefarious group called the Rayonne decided integration was actually the future of humanity. The motives for which aren’t really established at the start of the campaign, unfortunately, but at least you can tell they’re bad guys from their glowing red eyes. As Romer Shoal – a celebrity who previously convinced people to integrate – you and your band of robot outlaws team up to take down the Rayonne using a combination of your Gravcycle (a weaponised hoverbike) and ground units, each of whom boast special abilities and can be commanded to attack specific enemies.

Here is Black Shuck, antagonist and Rayonne thug who menacingly thrusts a robot switch-blade at you when angered.

Disintegration’s story blurs into a jumble of missions, but the levels are such a romp that I didn’t really care about the narrative reasons for being there – I just knew I was having a good time. Each one introduces new challenges, with varying team compositions, Gravcycle weapons and enemy types which force you to reconsider and evolve your tactics. Thanks to the hybrid nature of the combat, you can opt to just shoot your way out of trouble, but the secret to success is managing battles through the RTS mechanics. It’s about knowing your enemies, and which ones to prioritise. I soon discovered aerial units and snipers could easily destroy my Gravcyle, which was also hard to heal and would instantly fail the mission if blown up. I started commanding my troops to prioritise those units first, and later learned how to manipulate the Gravcycle’s mobility to swoop behind cover. It’s easy to be overwhelmed during the chaos of these battles, and sometimes the best approach is to methodically pick off enemies while keeping your Gravcycle distant, rather than flying in guns blazing. As I learned to my peril.

The enemy AI is surprisingly responsive, with enemies ducking and rolling behind cover when shot. The player’s own units, however, can sometimes be a little slow to react when directed to certain areas. Yes, that is an enemy there, you can shoot them.

Some of the main tools in your arsenal are unit abilities, and these are deeply satisfying when used to good effect: landing a mortar barrage on a bunched-up group of enemies results in a satisfying crunch of robot bodies, while a time-slowing dome creates a shimmering Matrix moment amidst the disorder. Adding to the chaos is the destructibility of the surroundings, which shatter and explode across the screen. It’s not just about cool explosions, however, as destroying enemy cover will make it far easier for your team to get a clean shot.

In classic video game form, someone’s left dozens of hazardous exploding oil barrels around the place. Who keeps doing this?

The level design in Disintegration’s campaign forces significant changes in gameplay style more broadly, some areas requiring the player to ferret enemies out of hollow brutalist buildings, others providing life-saving refuge in the midst of a heavy aerial battles. One tense rescue mission requires precision flying and sneaking around in tight spaces – without backup from your team – armed only with sticky grenades. Another sees you shepherd your team between protective domes, or risk being stunned by an EMP pulse mid-battle. And there’s just something rather lovely about the use of scale and perspective in these levels. One of the earliest sees you fight amongst ruined wooden houses and a graveyard, like directing toy soldiers between doll houses. Later in the mission, you skim over vast golden plains to explore the wreckage of a vast, burnt-out spaceship which dwarfs you and your crew. There’s storytelling within the levels that feels enjoyably dramatic in a Call-of-Duty way, with my personal favourite mission seeing the outlaws ascend grassy hills to fight a climactic battle atop a dam. Despite the world feeling desolate and barren, I kept wanting to explore and admire the gorgeous North American landscapes.

It’s hardly a narrative masterpiece, but Disintegration’s campaign is about putting a new spin on the classic sci-fi shooter… and letting rip on waves upon waves of robots. The mechanics alone are novel enough to keep you entertained, and once the ability to multi-task the FPS and RTS elements clicks, there’s plenty of room to keep refining your techniques. Once I’d finished the campaign, I went back to replay levels on a higher difficulty with my new-found knowledge, and found myself thinking more carefully about timing my special abilities, and how to smoothly manoeuvre the Gravcycle through levels. In short, it not only entertained me for the nine hour campaign, but kept me coming back.

The multiplayer is, unfortunately, where all this good work comes unstuck. I played a brief two-hour session before Disintegration’s release, but I wanted to test the multiplayer in public matches before writing this review. After three days of trying, I have been unable to connect to a match on PC. Judging by comments left on Steam and Twitter, I’m not alone in experiencing this, although I cannot say whether the problem lies with a technical issue or a simple lack of players.

It’s a shame, because I felt I’d only just scraped the surface of Disintegration’s multiplayer experience. It’s a team-based shooter, kind of like Overwatch if everyone played Pharah. You can pick between nine different Gravcycle crews, all with different perks, strengths and specialities, in three different game modes: Zone Control (capturing zones), Collection (basically team deathmatch with tags), and Retrieval (attack/defence). The modes themselves are fairly standard stuff, but the complexity comes from the ground units, team composition, and maneuvering your Gravcycle. In the first few matches, I initially focused my attention on enemy Gravcycles – which you would, seeing as they’re the enemy player. Yet that’s only half the story, as the ground units are often essential in completing each mode’s objectives. In Collection, for instance, points can be gained from killing enemy ground units rather than just other Gravcycles, and it makes more sense to target these as they’re much easier to kill – and there are simply more of them. In Retrieval, only your ground units can carry the core to the drop-off point.

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I tried flitting between a few different crews to get a feel for them, and went with the obvious tactic of choosing faster crews for attack, and tankier Gravcycles for defence, but I found some of the lighter crews would simply crumble into dust when put under any kind of pressure, and the increased maneuverability wasn’t enough to balance it out. I enjoyed experimenting with the different abilities for each crew, but in the end I found myself favouring high-damage crews like The Ronan to keep up with the carnage. Or maybe that’s just my playstyle – dumping a load of rockets on a fellow journalist’s Gravcycle is quite fun, what can I say?

There were moments in the demo session where I felt the team genuinely start to pull together: people were healing each other, moving as a group to target weaker Gravcycles, and setting up proper defences on zones using proximity mines. To Disintegration’s credit, the multiplayer did make me want to improve. The battles are frantic and not immediately readable to new players, and I imagine there’s a fairly high skill ceiling. This might be where the problem lies, as the multiplayer doesn’t instantly grab you, but becomes more interesting over time.

In the end, of course, I wasn’t able to spend more time with the multiplayer – and it’s disappointing, because Disintegration’s campaign gameplay is so compelling that I would happily recommend it to anyone who asked. Yet it’s hard to justify a £39.99 price tag when half of the game is, for many, currently unusable. I also fear Disintegration’s realistic art style and gritty sci-fi setting makes it appear run-of-the-mill, when its gameplay actually has quite a lot to offer. This might be a case of holding off until later (or perhaps until V1 makes the multiplayer free-to-play), but if you do decide to take the plunge on Disintegration, I can guarantee you one thing: somehow, inexplicably, you will never get tired of smashing robots.

from EnterGamingXP https://entergamingxp.com/2020/06/disintegration-review-a-quirky-but-troubled-sci-fi-shooter-%e2%80%a2-eurogamer-net/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=disintegration-review-a-quirky-but-troubled-sci-fi-shooter-%25e2%2580%25a2-eurogamer-net