#this has truly been the year of movy!! my reading list is suffering for it

[spacebubblecat]

🫣

it's so crazy to me to look at people's letterboxd accounts and see that they've watched 50+ movies this year. that's insane, how do you even find 50 movies you enjoy enough to watch fully. I know that sounds dumb because there's soooo many but to me it's mind boggling. I think I watched like 5 this year. Anyway I want to watch more movies next year

[mapplesand]

Morbid Minds character's list

(yes even the non important characters are here, everyone is here)

Main cast

Marco "Cruz" Klein-Valdez, born April 15th 2007 in Winchester, Virginia, his family moved back to Grundale, Connecticut in 2012.

He is 5'7, was diagnosed with ADHD at 8 and is bisexual.

Marco can only be described as a troubled teenager, he has anger issues and he's overall seen as weird and creepy for the way he dresses and acts. If you asked him, people are just overreacting and they're the weird one for not trying to be friendly to him, but he's actually not really friendly to anyone.

He gets into fight a lot and has been sent to the principal's office for fights, swearing and wearing inapproriate shirts. Even if he prides himself for not being a like everyone else, he suffers a lot from his loneliness and struggles with self hatred. He's aware that he's being a moron to people but thinks no one would like him anyway, so why bother ?

Marco is also a guy with a bad case of toxic masculinity, as the story goes he learns that crying doesn't make him weak or that his attraction to men isn't a bad thing. His violent demeanor is a direct consequence of that mindset, he also hates his father for making him like this because he was always shamed when expressing any kind of emotion beside anger.

Sadly, he also have a fucked up relationship with sex in a way that makes him sound like a creep most of the time. This part of him is mostly witnessed by Tristan who kind of has to pull him out of his weird habits (and has to suffer everything he has to say regarding this topic)

-his favorite movie is John Wick

-he often tries to make Tristan watch fucked up movies like Cannibal Holocaust

-his favorite anime is Death Note and his favorite manga is Flower of evil

-he doesn't speak tagalog but does speak a bit of german (however he knows swear words in both)

-he had an hyperfixation on WWII in middle school and still has books about it

-his twitter name is "Manic Masturbator 1999"

-his celebrity crush is Keanu Reeves, but he denies it everytime someone brings it up

Marco's character intro

Marco's playlist

Marco's clothes

Marco's redflag list

Tristan Lambert, born February 23rd 2007 in Grundale, Connecticut.

He is 6'4, was diagnosed autistic at 11 one year after his mother died and is gay.

Tristan is a rather reserved individual who tends to blend in with people despite his height. He has a hard time making friend because he never really understood how to talk to people growing up and also because he spent most of his middle school years having selective mutism and depression.

He had a tendency to forget others can perceive him because he's so used of being a nobody that he doesn't understand why someone would remember him. He would rather ignore the things around him because otherwise it would make him anxious.

When unmasking, Tristan is a lot more talkative and even become more sarcastic. He often pokes fun at Marco especially if he's being openly stupid at something, he's also the only one who is actively smacking his head when Marco says something dumb, also because he knows he has some privileges around Marco that no one will ever have.

-he speaks with a french accent despite being a native english speaker, he also speaks french fluently

-he had a special interest on my little pony as a kid

-had an emo phase in middle school

-his gay awakening is Jeff the Killer when he was around 11-12, but truly it's probably Sunburst from My Little Pony when he was 9

-he's a furry

-he reads a lot of fanfiction and is the one introducing it to Marco

-One of his fictional crush is Eddie Munson from Stranger Things

-his favorite movie is Elephant

-he likes literature and poetry

Tristan's character intro

Tristan's playlist

Tristan's clothes

Joshua "Josh" Roberts, born November 5th 2006 in Grundale, Connecticut.

He is 5'11 and has a older brother named Logan (born 2003) in college.

Josh is part of the popular kids in their grade, he put a lot of effort in making himself likeable and nice looking, he goes along with pretty much anything even if it means being part of bullies. He's not proud of that but since he's not actively being mean to others, he thinks he gets a pass in his behavior.

In reality, Josh is a people pleaser who's scared of being alone, he does things that will make people like him so he'll always be part of a group. He wants to fit in so badly he'd rather represses what makes him weird in order to be with people he doesn't like than being himself and living hs own life. That would eventually lead him to identity crisis because he doesn't actually know who he is truly.

Despite him never publically making fun of people, he found himself clashing with Marco outside of school because he's envious of the fact that Marco is unapologetically being himself. He doesn't understand why the weird guy can openly say he hates everyone without fearing the consequences of his actions.

-he enjoys 80s mainstream music but would rather listen to what's popular on the radio at the moment

-he has guns in his bedroom's closet and his father is pro gun

-he frequently sleeps around when drunk and parties a lot

-

Josh's character intro

Josh's playlist

Josh's clothes

Tyler Giesler, born January 1st 2007 in Sante Fe, Texas. His family moved to Grundale, Connecticut in 2021, right before he started high school.

He is 6'2, is autistic and has two younger sister : Lucille who is non verbal (7, born 2015) and Miley (1, born 2021)

Tyler is a pretty monotone and inexpressive guy, he doesn't talk that much unless people talk to him first. He's also pretty blunt and always says what's on his mind without taking into account people's feeling or the context.

He has an extensive knowledge about human psychology and tends to observe people, with that he knows a lot about others without having to talk to them and remembers a lot about them. He struggles with empathy and uses this knowledge as a way to counter his lack of empathy, recognising when people are sad or upset even if he doesn't necessarily understand why they would feel this way. He's pretty disconected with his own feelings too and often forgets to eat or to do basics task because he doesn't feel the need to do them.

This is why when he interacts with more people, he found himself acting as the main character of his own life who has to experience himself the things he previously thought were interesting to observe in others.

-He likes to make explosives and to build things

-He's been friend with Carmen since they were 8 and she was his only friend until he met Josh

-He has a southern accent only noticeable when he starts unmasking

-he's an artist and draws a lot in his free time

-his room is in the garage of his family house

-he's pretty open about everything he does even if it's not appropriate, he would probably change in front of Carmen for example

-Carmen is the first person he texts every morning, often calling her before school and after

Tyler's character intro

Tyler's playlist

Tyler's clothes

Secondary Characters

Klara "KKK" Klein, born September 11th 2008 in Newtown, Connecticut. She is Marco's cousin. She's 5'4, her father is Franz Klein who is the younger brother of Bernhard, Marco's father.

She's Marco number one hater as they were both forced of seeing each others during family gathering but they also were in the same middle school and now the same high school. They both have very strong personalities that keep clashing. In the end, they don't actually hate each others, she just thinks Marco should stop being a creep.

She's annoyed by a lot of things and doesn't seem to like much beside her friends and sports. If she's completely honest with herself, she's just scared of being judged by people and comes off as loud so people see her as confident.

-Marco nicknamed her "KKK" because her full name is Klara Kate Klein.

-she plays tennis

-she likes Taylor Swift

Klara's playlist

Klara's clothes

Kipley "Kip Seven" Mercado, born July 10th 2008 in Grundale, Connecticut. He's non binary and uses he/they, he also has a younger sister (10, born 2012) He's 5'1.

Kip is a self proclaimed agent of chaos, a kid who spent too much time on the internet but who couldn't be bothered by what people think of him. He's very clingy and when someone talks to him, he thinks that means they're friends and will probably follow them everywhere. He tends to be overly dramatic and theatrical, being pretty obviously a theater kids.

He's always friendly to people even if he knows he's annoying. People makes fun of him of his cringe behavior and crazy scene or colorful outfit.

-he likes early 2000s internet aesthetics

-he used to be known as the "cat girl" in middle school

-will scream in the hallways, this is a threat

-has a lot of strange earrings

-

Kip's playlist

Kip's clothes

Carmen Diaz, born in 2007 in Santa Fe, Texas from an afro-mexican family. She is Tyler's best friend. She's 5'7.

Carmen is the opposite of Tyler, she's talkative and speak her mind freely, often mocking people around her and teasing them. She has friends outside of Tyler but stuck with him most of their time together because he was funnier to hang out with due to his strange behaviors. She always tries to find a way to make him react and but always fails because he's used to her being annoying.

-she was the one who wanted to try making something crazy (bombs) and it became a normal things for her and Tyler to do in their free time

-they used to sleep in the same bed during sleepovers

-she doesn't sleep much

-she knows too much about Tyler because he tends not to hide anything from her so she also tries to be as open about her life as he is with his

David Ostrovski, born in 2007 in New Haven, Connecticut. He has two mothers and was adopted, he's 5'9.

David is the extraverted nerd everybody knows about, he's smart and likes to be in charge of a lot of things which leads him to be the unofficial class representative of his grade.

-he's a speedrunner

-he's in the chess club with Tyler

-he was a boy scout

-he has ADHD

Ariane Faust, born in 2007 in Anchorage, Alaska. She's 6'1, she's also a trans girl.

Ariane moves to Connecticut in her sophomore year of high school and quickly meets David. She's a pretty calm girl who doesn't like raising her voice too much.

Brian Duncan, born in 2007 in Grundale, Connecticut. He has an older sister.

Brian is a friend of Josh and one of the popular guys, he's obnoxious and loud, not very smart but tends to still care about his friends. He's the main bully of Marco and later Tristan, but most importantly, the one behind the nickname "Cruz" that the whole school uses to talk about Marco.

Mason Smith, born 2007 in Connecticut.

One of Josh's friend, well it's complicated sometimes, he's a jock and one of the main bully along with Brian.

Kevin Nong, born in 2007 in New Jersey.

Usually follow Mason and Brian because he wants to be with the cool guys and get all the advantages of being with them. Flirts with Kelly and is a rival of Josh. Mostly target Tristan in his bullying and calls him the r-word.

Kelly Mcgee, born in 2007 in New Jersey.

She's Josh friend, well, girlfriend, well no that's still not it, situationship ? sex friend ? Even he doesn't know.

Courtney Garcia, born in 2007 in Grundale, Connecticut.

Friend of Kelly, flirts with Mason.

Maria Venturi, born in 2007 in Grundale, Connecticut. She was Marco's crush from childhood throughout middle school up until 8th grade. She's also the daughter of a neighbord's friend of Dalisay.

She was one of Marco's rare friends before high school, she stopped being friend with him around 8th grade because of how weird he was and because she didn't want people to get the wrong idea about them. He didn't took it well, flipped her off and told her he'd jerk off to her anyway (he regretted it like imediately after saying it but it was too late lol)

They meet again in their sophomore year, he tries to make peace with her with a handshake that she refused for obvious reasons. They do start speaking to each other again despite all that.

Richard "Rich" Brown, born in 2007 in Grundale, Connecticut.

Richard is in the same grade as everyone else, known loser and weeb, Brian calls him "Sticky hands" for various reasons but the most notable one is because he allegedly jerked it in class one day but keeps denying everything.

Families

Dalisay Valdez, born in 1974 in the Philippines, her family moved to the US in the state if California in 1989 when she was 15. She's 5'1 and has two younger brothers.

Dalisay would like to describe herself as a simple woman living a pretty normal life, she's an active member of the church in her neighborhood and is friendly towards everyone she meets.

Unfortunately, she is Marco's mother and her good image is forever linked with all the stupid things he does. She was always ready to face everything God would put in her way, especially with having to deal with a teenage boy, but she wasn't ready for this.

As an heavy catholic, Dalisay has to try to understand her troubled son who doesn't seem to be reasoned with so she has to pretend she doesn't see his hentais under his bed.

She is part of a mother of troubled teen support group were she often clashes with a woman called Becky. The more you know about Dalisay, the more you understand where Marco's temperament is from. Despite all of her best attempts, Dalisay has a lot of repressed anger that she's ashamed of, her whole life is a disapointement to her own mother and she was never enough.

Bernhard Klein, born in 1968 in West Germany (American occupation zone), his family moved to the US in 1974 when he was 6. He's 5'9 and has one younger brother (Franz Klein, born 1974) and one younger sister (Amelia Klein, born 1980)

Bernhard is not that much present in the story, as he is also not present in his own son's life despite living in the same house.

He's behind most of Marco's traumatic experience and toxic masculinity. He's a stoic man who was in the army, and never tried to connect with his son and if he did when he was a child, Marco would always mysteriously come back with a broken wrist.

Michael Lambert, born in 1982 in France, his family moved to the US in the state of Idaho in 1994 when he was 12. He is Tristan's father.

Michael was always a awkward man growing up, he never thought that being a single father would be so confusing.

For some reason, despite him not knowing anything, he still has the best relationship with his son out of every parents of the story. He simply tries his best and tries to be there for Tristan, often doing activities together like cooking, watching horror movies and going camping.

Jane "James" Anderson, born in 1983 in Idaho. She is Tristan's mother and died by suicide in 2017 at 34 when Tristan was 10.

Jane was always the oddball, her and Michael met in high school and were high school sweethearts. She was mostly known for her unpredictable personnality and somewhat reckless behavior during high school and then struggled a lot finding her place in an adult world. The world is mean to people who are different, and she couldn't handle it. Childbirth had been imbearable, she wanted to love her son the way every mother did, but she couldn't find the motherly side of her, everything just hurt instead.

Tristan remembers his mother fondly. Jane always tried to be there and would talk to him as if he was an adult, she used to call him "little stickbug".

Tristan often wondered if she was autistic just like him, and if she knew she wouldn't have felt so lost all her life.

Franz Klein, born in 1974, he's Bernhard and Amalia's brother and the father of Klara.

Amalia Klein, born in 1980, she's Bernhard and Franz younger sister and Klara and Marco's aunt. She has a son.

Scott Roberts, born in 1980, he's Josh and Logan's father.

Logan Roberts, born in 2003, he's Josh's older brother and is in college. He cut off his family.

Murry Giesler, born in 1976, he's Tyler's father.

Adelaide "Addie" Hart, born in 1988, she's Tyler's mother.

Lucille Giesler, born in 2015, she's Tyler's younger sister who's non verbal autistic.

Miley Giesler, born in 2021, she's Tyler's younger sister.

[agirlandherquill]

Written In Smoke - The Inceptive Letter

Now, for the first post of this series I thought I’d begin with something simple, explaining the name - Written, because of course I’m a writer and I adore the clickety-clack of keys (and writing with a fountain pen in a notebook when I’m outlining plot, which is a new little venture I’ve begun doing) and Smoke, because it’s a weekly account of events, nothing is going to be completely solid, and my memory will have gaps even if I attempt to note things down, and also because much like the flow of ink upon paper, life is similarly fluid too, in my mind at least, it’s very much like smoke - full of substance, beautiful, chaotic, and full of little moments (which I completely adore) and thus the use of smoke, because little moments disappear so quickly but the remnants remain with you forevermore, and that’s as much of an explanation as my mind can conjure, which for me at the very least, composes the introduction to this series!

And now to move on to the main substance of this post - much like the ingredients of a perfect dish, the parts are still a work in progress, so bear with me whilst I work out which to include and how to structure it

 (And come up with working titles for each section, which is part of the fun!)

A Glimpse Through Time - little bits about me and what I’ve been up to this week

This week marked the end of a chapter, a very important one, because I completed (some may say survived, barely) my final three papers and today was my final day of academic normalcy - everything from here-on-out is completely and utterly unknown - no more Lit, Bio, and Chem to worry about for the summer at least, which is very, very daunting but I did it, I made it through and hopefully my work paid off - we shall see in a few months time, but i’m not ready to think about that yet - Having to say goodbye to the people who have taught me for the past few years was difficult but I made it through with no tears, a few hugs and cards written, which was lovely, truly, and I’m grateful for every minute of it.

Other than completing the final obstacle toward the free-fall that Is adulthood (I say that as though the feat isn’t impressive, because it sure would be to me two years ago), only a few things have happened this week:

(I’m making this a list because who doesn’t adore lists? Perhaps only me, but that’s more than okay)

Stuff Your Kindle Day was yesterday, and my poor, poor kindle has to suffer with the acquisition of 50-odd books (I haven’t dared to count past that, and it was my first actual SYK day despite owning a kindle for 9 years), and I have no idea if it has the storage for it, so that’ll be fun to work through

I made a bet to watch star-wars, now of course i’ve seen most of it (movie-wise, definitely, and 3/4 of mandalorian minus s3 because let’s face it, I’m as behind on that as I am with Witcher, which is soon to be rectified but anyway redirecting back to Star Wars) but very little of the shows and it’s been so long I hardly remember the plots and such, which I’m very much looking forward to re-experiencing for the first “proper-ish” time - so I’m starting with Solo, then steadily working my way through ANH, ESB, ROTJ, Mando S1, Mando S2, Boba Fett, Mando S3, TFA, TLJ, TROS, TPM, AOTC, Clone wars (movie and plot-vital eps, I was given a list), ROTS, Obi-Wan, and Ahsoka - all of this in exchange for my friend to watch The Boys (I’m going to rewatch it all, then finally see Gen V, hopefully in time before S4 ends and I can watch the last few eps as they come out, like I did with S3)

I decided I want to go on a trip over summer, just me, which is frankly terrifying but I’m really excited - I’m thinking of Bath, possibly, because the Jane Austen Museum is there (Persuasion is the love of my life and i’ve only read it twice, I also need to read more than simply that and Pride and Prejudice) and a few doors down is Mary Shelley’s Museum too! It’s a trip that’s doable in a day, by train, which is pretty perfect for my first solo excursion - so bear with me since that’s in the works

To end this list I’m slipping in a note about a brief-exchange that my delusional mind brands rom-com noteworthy (only it’s not, unless it maybe is? i’ll leave that to the reader to decide), I gifted my chemistry lab-partner a chocolate bar and a note of gratitude because it’s down to him that I survived the practicals (only kidding, I’m not THAT dangerous, but we were the most successful pair in the class which was pretty awesome), and enjoyed the chem course even more than I thought I would - and on the final day (today, insert anxious and clueless screaming because it feels far, far too soon for everything to be over) on the way out, he gifted me something in return - I never thought a chocolate bar would make me want to cry and giggle at the same time, but there you go (part of me prays he will not notice the existence of my Tumblr, but it’s possible, and if he ever reads this - I am so, so, sorry, but either way my appreciation is known, and that’s good enough for me, and he’s very, very sweet)

Now, what else is there to include in this section? Oh, I know! The nightmare that is the vast variety of things that entertain me - cough, slightly melodramatic of me, but you’ll see what I mean momentarily,

Books - I’m roughly 120 pages into the Wheel of Time, which I already know will become my LOTR (assuming that is an actual phrase and not something my brain has made up, which is highly likely regardless - it’s also a slight reference to Ready Player One, since Kira reread LOTR every single year), because who doesn’t love danger, fantasy, and a delicious almost undecipherable prophecy? If I don’t re-read this book every year I will be incredibly, incredibly surprised. Fighting sleep one night this week I sought out my kindle, which had been sorely unused these last couple years, and I started to read Interview With The Vampire, and I’ve spent a couple hours reading it today, I’m about 25% in according to Kindle stats, so I’ll see how it goes. Surprisingly though, I stumbled across Perks of Being A Wallflower on Kindle Unlimited today - and 5 hours later, with a couple of breaks scattered between, I finished it, about twenty minutes before writing this section - and let me tell you, that book was a LOT, but a good lot? i suppose? And I’m glad I finally got around to reading it - It’s also given me the urge to reread All The Bright Places which I read for the first time last summer, and it’s beautiful, and so, so good,

Shows - Seeing as it’s the weekend I’m making my way through Dexter, I’m currently 3/4 through S4 and loving it, it’s INSANE, I’m also watching Shameless US, I’m on S6 and it’s actually baffling me how much I’m enjoying it (Lip is my favourite character, and this season HURTS me with how much it hurts him, mild spoiler possibly? apologies if so), I’m also going to start rewatching the Boys as aforementioned, seeing the dark side of superheroes is so incredibly genius, if not disturbing, and there’s plenty of that in the show to look forward to experiencing again, so wish me luck dear reader,

Music - I listen to a LOT. That’s the honest truth. Lots of genres, lots of people, but I’ll try and pick out some of the things I’ve been listening to this week: Outlander S1&2 Soundtrack (I’ve only seen up to s2, and after reading the first book last month it was perfect timing for exam season), Like That by Bea Miller (I rediscovered this recently and it fits so well with the characters in my head, and even though I haven’t been writing lately, believe me, I’ve been plotting), Trouble by Camylio (it reminds me of the main characters in my currently not fully-written book, as in the work I need to complete/redraft after I finish Ruin’s Reprisal), Ludens by Bring Me The Horizon (does this song really need an explanation? It’s just that good) and finally, to finish off this little list of things that I’ve hearing a lot this week, The Other Side by Stephen Sanchez, which is so so good

Spills From The Ink-Pot - writing, writing, and more writing

Seeing as it’s Friday, and today is the start of my lengthy, well-needed summer, there’s not an awful lot I can tell you all for writing progress, but so far this weekend I did manage to re-read the chapter I’m editing and the progress I’ve made in it so far, which was super helpful, and by the end of this weekend hopefully I’ll have that chapter all finished, and then afterwards have a lot more to share with you all next week!

But to make up for my absence from writeblr and being unable to post anything these last few weeks, I’ll add this in:

Just a little glimpse into my workspace/theme/whatever you wish to call it on Scrivener - that's right, I'm a Scrivener girlie, and I'm so glad I invested in it last May (take part in NaNoWriMo camps folks, you get 50% off, which is what I did, aka £25 for permanent use as opposed to £50, which is still really good compared to Word etc, in my opinion) - and a sneak peek at some of my Chapter Titles, which I really do love coming up with,

(if it's blurry I do apologise, but you get the gist, hopefully)

Incase it’s not obvious, this account was written in parts, over the course of Friday and Saturday (11pm today, roughly), since I lost the battle against exhaustion and fell asleep before I could finish compiling this lengthy post (that’s not a complaint, i’m really enjoying writing this) so I’m finishing this very first post a tad later than initially planned, but these things happen, and that’s all right - you’ll also notice my battle with autocorrect and its capitalisation, sometimes I win, sometimes I lose, but I’d rather not go back and correct things this late at night, so apologies for that slight blunder but I promise the next post will be all properly formatted with headers and capitals (as soon as I figure out how to include headers, and make them, hopefully trusty procreate comes in handy, but we shall see)

So that’s it! The very first Written In Smoke is completed, compiled and heading your way - I hope you enjoyed reading it as much as I did writing it, this is unknown territory for me and it feels as though I’m baring another piece of myself to the world, but it’s worth it, I knew it when this began, and I know it now as I write these last few lines, so if you’ve read this far - thank you, and I’ll see you all next week for the next entry in this series!

~ A Girl and Her Quill

p.s. if there’s anything else you’d like to know about, let me know! suggestions are greatly appreciated (cough, somewhat desperately needed because I have no idea what I’m doing)

p. p. s. being the utter genius I am, I pressed save as draft rather than post, so this is coming out even later than originally planned - whoops!

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Tag List! (if you want to be notified when a WIS post comes out, interact with this post :) )

@lead-to-code @catwingsathena @nothoughtsjustmhaandotherthings @thestorywitch @lunaeuphternal

@theaistired @frostedlemonwriter

[sofipitch]

1, 2, 6, 8!

1. Faves of the year:

Metal from Heaven by August Clarke: Group of lesbians who normally rob trains now have to pretend to be a part of the aristocracy. Also being a radium girl gives you radium powers. This one is dark and gritty and definitely self-indulgent. It also has "weird prose" of which I am an enjoyer but milage may vary

She Who Became the Sun and He Who Drowned the World by Shelley Parker Chan: Incredibly character driven story, like you can read the backcover premises but that likely won't be what sticks. Every character is so desperate to prove themselves, and vary if they are just desperate or full of self loathing. If you like a character driven story choose this

Bloom by Delilah Dawson: Hannibal but lesbians and cottagecore aesthetics as the glue trap instead of whatever it is in that show. What gets me is a mom wrote this for her daughter. Pulpy and fun, food descriptions that made me go home and bake bread

Space Between Worlds by Micaiah Johnson: Multiverse has been beaten to death in the movie world but this one manages to be fresh and interesting, mostly concerned with the idea of nature vs nurture, what makes us who we are, etc. In this universe multiverse travel is possible but only if the version of you in that universe is dead. So what does it say about you if you are dead in most of them?

2. Flops of the year:

I collected all of Nightmare magazine's Women/Queers/POC Destroy Horror special editions and finally read my last one, Women Destroy Horror. I think if you are making a point that women deserve a seat at the genre writing table, maybe put forward some better stories. (This does not apply to the Joyce Carole Oates story which was up there for most disgusting thing I've read this year, she can stay). Every essay I can't even call analysis, it basically just lists things, again maybe have something interesting to say other than "lists of famous female horror authors" and "list of famous female horror protags"

Virtue by Marquis de Sade: I found this at a used bookstore and wanted to see what the hype was around this guy, worst book of his to choose like nothing happens, not even anything really all that scandalous. Dangerous Liaisons but bad

6. Dead Dove Do Not Eat: Fluids by May Leitz, this is the best extreme horror I've read, that genre is often poorly written and known for revealing a lot about it's authors by what characters they most often brutalize. But this one is truly refreshing, about the abusive relationships that can form when you've been isolated to made to feel unlovable. But I read this at the same time as a friend and this was too much for her, she also didn't like that one of narrators are straight up unlikeable, so enter with caution

8: Blorbo of the year: I think Esek from These Burning Stars by Bethany Jacobs would do numbers, evil woman with a systematic brutality and glee at the suffering of others. She is truly fun and you know the author had fun. You get these glimpses of some insecurity or something beneath the mask, but I think it does a good job of showing that but not wanting to use it as a way to make her palatable to the audience, only used to make her real. If you like her it will be due to moral corruption. This book is by no means perfect, but it does have interesting characters. I both get and don't get why it doesn't have a huge fandom, I think its flaws can be found in other popular media too (think Dune)

[fujoreads]

Weekly Update (18/8/2024)

Hello hello, everyone! I was supposed to have published this a few hours ago as it's Monday here already, but alas! This will be a shorter post, just updating what I've been up to this past week :)

Surprisingly, I haven't touched a book besides finishing The Unwomanly Face of War. It was such an impactful book, and I think it mentally prepared me to finally watch Come and See which has been on my movie bucket list for years now. The things told there are brutal and will make you cry for these women who gave so much for their motherland only to be ignored after the war is over. Definitely a new favorite, 4 stars.

Speaking of reading! I finished 2 more Visual Novels, and dropped another. The DNF goes to The Fruit of Grisaia—it had everything to be good and keep me hooked, but the reliance in anime archetypes had me bored out of my mind. So sorry to all the Grisaia fans! Anyway, during the first days I also finished Sexcalibur: Knights of the Pound Table, which was another dumb smut, and one I deeply hated having to read. It was so lazy and in my humble opinion, not sexy at all. Would have DNFed it but I did end up skipping a lot of H-Scenes by the end of the game. 2 stars.

The other 2 VNs were Queen of Moths and un/FRAGMENT. Two very short reads, perfect for a weekend session! Queen of Moths is more of a Pixel Art Horror game. It plays a lot like those older point and click games but, as short as it was, it still makes you tense and ready for a scare. I enjoyed it! 3 stars. un/FRAGMENT. is another short game, more of a linear story this time. It was made for Nanoreno, so the dev only had 5 days to make everything. It was only 10-minute long and had the dev more time to develop the story more, I think it would have been a pretty decent work. The art is pretty nice, and the reveal was not all that bad, although my emotional connection to the character's feelings suffered from my short exposure to the story.

I also started Needy Streamer Overload and it's been so fun! It's definitely keeping me past my screen time limit but it's been a while since I've been this addicted to a game. It's somewhat dark and if you're not in a good space mentally, I wouldn't recommend it. I'm almost done with all the 22 endings! I can't wait for another game from the same devs called Yunyun Syndrome!? Rhythm Psychosis to release. I'm SO excited for that one specifically, since I can properly relate to the protagonist's struggles more (though that's not a good thing, necessarily LOL)

As commissioned by @diowatcher, I've been watching Serial Experiments Lain and I'm currently on episode 6. It's getting extra trippy right now, and I'm enjoying it a lot! The opening is so gooooood, I can't believe I had never heard it before. I've also been listening to the opening to Revolutionary Girl Utena and aagh it's so good! I'm adding it to my anime list.

And finally, I watched the 2020's The Boys in the Band yesterday. It was SO GOOD!! I had no idea this was a cinema adaptation of the Broadway revival, but it makes so much sense; it reminds me of the Falsettos stage revival, though that one doesn't have a movie adaptation, as far as I'm aware.

Anyway, it was truly a queer movie—as depressing as ever. It was an open ending too, ugh! I have a love/hate with queer works, as they have only started to become a bit more lighthearted these past years. I love these darker stories, but they also leave me bleeding (figuratively.) This is going to my favorites!

And that is all for last week! Let's see what this one brings us~

[standardlovers]

top movies of the year !! tagged by @sommerregenjuniluft who asked specifically for 10 and i will take any opportunity to talk abt films i watched <3

no pressure tagging: @sugarsnappeases @beaniebaby @casstration @bardofavon

Commentary on the films & honourable mentions below:

A Little Life (2023, dir. Ivo van Hove) this was a live show however i watched it as a movie and i hadnt even read the book bc everyone i saw who read the book was so deeply emotionally distraught that i avoided it BUT someone wanted to see it and i agreed to go with them bc it looked good and i like bonding activities. yeah its SAD AS FUCK. its complicated and devastating and very triggering at times and i recognised two of the cast and focused far too long on why do i know this guy but it definitely hit me hard as part of this years viewing experiences

The Book Thief (2013, dir. Brian Percival) this truly has been the year of sophie nélisse for me she has captivated me so ofc i revisited this and bought the book, both still as devastating as i remember

Talk To Me (2023, dir. Michael & Danny Philippou) HORROR OF THE YEAR EVERYONE!!!!!!!!! oh this did blow me away this was so fun to watch and while some of the symbolism was slightly on the nose it was never overbearing to draw away from the plot it really was engaging and had some amazing cast

The Sound Of Music (1965, dir. Robert Wise) i hadnt seen this despite being on my list for YEARS !!!! but when i did oh i was not ready its fun its sweet its whimsical its political its interesting its sad its a musical

Saw X (2023, dir. Kevin Greutert) HEHEHE SAW !!!!!!!!! MANDY CAME BACK !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! WHAT ELSE IS THERE TO SAY !!!!!!

The Poughkeepsie Tapes (2007, dir. John Erick Dowdle) this was so interesting !!! many people consider this a very intense horror and i was expecting the worst but i think primarily the fear factor of this is that it is formatted as a documentary discussing the events and tapes although they are real and some of the content is unnerving but ultimately as someone who deeply enjoys horror i did find the format and the approach to this new style of serial killer horror so engaging and creepy, however i wouldnt recommend it for people who arent already into horror

Beautiful Boy (2018, dir. Felix van Groeningen) i actually started this in 2022 but couldnt sit through timothee chalamet reciting poetry so i turned it off and tried again this year but it was very moving and i have like 100 beautiful boy edits in my tiktok folder

All Quiet On The Western Front (2022, dir. Edward Berger) if you are going to watch a war movie: WATCH ALL QUIET ON THE WESTERN FRONT it is very engaging from the perspective of german soldiers during the end of world war i.

The Spiderwick Chronicles (2008, dir. Mark Waters) Bring Back Fun !!! Bring Back Whimsey !!!!

Take Care Of Maya (2023, dir. Henry Roosevelt) oh this was Intense, this is a documentary about a real life legal case following the Kowalski family who have recently finished their trial against the hospital that put their family and their chronically ill daughter through severe trauma and suffering, it was deeply interesting and very painful but also so necessary for the many people who experience similar cases and circumstances. (Post Film Update/Not shown in the documentary: The Kowalski family has since won their trial and been granted over $250million for their trauma and damages. Maya is now seeking further legal action for other circumstances she endured during this time.)

Honourable Mentions:

[REC] (2007, dir. Jaume Balagueró & Paco Plaza) this was just a GOOD horror it had a slower introduction but once it got into the plot it was so interesting and intense and just a Fun movie which is interesting because its the second to technically include found footage (i have seen people call the poughkeepsie tapes found footage in some ways also) and i dont particularly enjoy found footage but this year it seems to have appealed to me more than i realised!

Uptown Girls (2003, Boaz Yakin) THE BOND BETWEEN A GIRL AND THE MESSY 20 SOMETHING SHE DOESNT WANT TO RELATE TO BUT DOES . "HER AU PAIR CALLED MY NANNY A SLUT BAG WHORE !"

Pamela, A Love Story (2023, dir. Ryan White) which is Pamela Anderson's documentary about her life so far and was very interesting even as someone who didn't know much of anything about her beforehand

Ferris Bueller's Day Off (1986, dir. John Hughes) which is, as always, a classic and lighthearted experience <3

Totally Killer (2023, dir. Nahnatchka Khan) because it is so good to see a cheesy modern slasher just be Fun again, it doesn't take itself too seriously and that's why it was so enjoyable to watch!

[uk-jake-professional-cynic]

Useful Sayings: Wisdom for Guiding Your Life

Over the years, I have encountered many useful sayings and philosophies that I have taken to heart. While they guide me through life, I must admit that I cannot always follow these principles. As a fallible human being, I do my best to incorporate them into my life. I continue to add new ones as I come across them, and I plan to do so in the next couple of weeks. 1) Above all things, be true to yourself! The statement above is definitely at the top of my list. I interpret it as: "Listen to your heart as well as your brain. If you feel that situation isn't right, then you are probably correct. Don't live your life doing something that is against your principles or morals." 2) Shit happens, it's what you do about it that matters 3) If something isn't right, do something about it. Otherwise, accept it. 4) Sometimes in life, you just have to jump through the hoops to move on A good example of this is worklife. You just have to do what is necessary to do your job to the best of your abilities. Keep in mind the reason why you work. It also means occasionally you have to do things that you don't want to do. 5) Sometimes, it may seem like the universe is against you. The truth is, the universe doesn't care about you or anybody else. It's just the way it is. The saying above stops me from thinking bad luck follows me 6) When things don't work, the best thing to do is do the right thing. The second best thing to do is the wrong thing. The worst thing to do is nothing. 7) Grant me the sincerity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference. The above is used by many, and it has been really helpful for me! 8) There is no such thing as bad language. There is only language used badly. 9) Rules are for the guidance of the wise and obedience of fools 10) If something has gone wrong, take the opportunity to learn from it. Do not beat yourself up about it; it's been and gone. 11) Don't eat yellow snow 12) You can't win an argument against an ignorant person 13) You can please some of the people some of the time, but never all of the people all of the time. 14) Pick your fights carefully. You don't have enough energy to take on the world. 15) It's okay to make mistakes; it's the best way to learn 16) "If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained, you will also suffer defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle." This is an excerpt from a truly amazing work of literature titled The Art of War by Sun Tz. It's a philosophical masterpiece, and I recommend that you read it.  17) Happiness is a state that sometimes requires effort  I have a plethora of philosophical sayings stored in my mind. If this page gains popularity, I will keep adding more valuable sayings to it. My intention is to use the wisdom these sayings offer to assist others in their life journeys. Try a Movie Quiz Take a Personality Test https://siliconhell.com/chase-quiz-uk/ I Hope You Enjoyed Philosophical Sayings To Guide You Through Life Read the full article

[denimbex1986]

'We knew from the moment we first saw All Of Us Strangers all the way back in January that Andrew Haigh's film, a haunting queer romance centred around Andrew Scott's isolated writer Adam and the connection he makes with Paul Mescal's sad-eyed drifter Harry, was special. Is it a ghost story? A fever dream? A tangible construct formed of a grieving man's subconscious? We didn't — and still don't truly — know, but by God we felt every exquisite moment of its magnetising melancholy, its smouldering sensuality. So much so that when we came to write Empire's 'Best Movies Of 2024 (So Far)' list in June, Haigh's movie sat comfortably in podium place on the list. And now, a full twelve months since the movie first released stateside, All Of Us Strangers has taken root even deeper in our hearts — and soared right to the top of our Best Movies Of 2024 list.

“This is so cool," says director Haigh when Empire shares the news that his latest has just been voted our film of the year, "I’ve read Empire literally since it first came out." And for the Harrogate born filmmaker, whose past works include the likes of Looking, 45 Years, Lean On__Pete, and Weekend, the recognition still being given to his sixth feature offers an opportunity for reflection. "The idea that I could ever be even involved in film, let alone be a director, was so out of my imagination, so it’s very cool to now be here. I appreciate it," says Haigh. "When I made the film, I was never sure if it would find an audience. So it’s been the biggest joy that it has found that audience, and continually finds that audience. The fact that people still even talk about it a year later is really meaningful. It really seems to have resonated. You can’t ask for any more than that. It’s pretty exciting that it’s number one after all this time.

One of the things that has really All Of Us Strangers stand out among its peers in what has been another exceptional year for cinema is just how intensely personal its story of love, loss, and soul-deep longing truly is. Even now, Haigh finds himself wrestling with just how much of himself he poured into this one. “I’m not a particularly extroverted person, and the fact that there is now this kind of personal story about me out there, I’ve found that a little bit hard," Haigh admits. "It’s taken me, actually, a little bit of time to deal with that. Even the fact that I shot it in my [old] house."

But if putting his heart on the line for his art was a huge and, at least for a time, difficult step for Haigh, then it was also one that ultimately felt worth taking. "The want of most filmmakers is to be able to say something about how they see and understand the world, and allow that out into the world, to resonate with other people," the director explains. "So it is really quite a powerful thing, when you are sharing your own personal philosophy of life, and something based on some element of personal experience, and then have that speak to other people. And I can’t tell you how many people have come to me to tell me their own stories, whether it’s about losing a parent, or whether it’s about growing up gay, or whether it’s just about feeling alone in the world. That feels special."

Reflecting on the outpouring of pure emotion All Of Us Strangers has been met with now, almost a full year since it was released into the world, Haigh is as philosophical, poetic, and honest as his work. “If a piece of art can make you feel less alone, even if it’s desperately sad and melancholy, if it allows you to feel like, ‘Oh my God, I am not the only one that suffers in the world’ — that’s a very powerful thing," he shares. "Because we often don’t express how we feel, even to those who are closest to us. And art can tap into that shared loneliness that we all experience in the world. It’s also quite unusual sometimes: I’ve been in places and someone will start talking about the film and they’ll start crying. That’s quite a powerful thing to have to experience. Sometimes you don’t know what to do. You’re sort of, ‘Okay...’ Pat them on the shoulder. ‘I’m sorry for you...’ I literally could not have asked for more for this film. It’s more than I ever dreamed.” That's the power of love, right there, people. And the power of All Of Us Strangers, Empire's film of the year. *Dissolves into the cosmos as Frankie Goes To Hollywood plays us out*'

[mooremars]

Tag game: tag 9 people you’d like to get to know better

Thank you @badsalmonella

Last song: Burn the Hard Drive by Jade Bird which just came out and I'm obsessed with it

Currently watching: Both the West Wing (complete with noting every Camelot reference) and Cursed by myself. Then What If season 2 with my roommate and Wheel of Time season 2 when I go home to see my family.

Three ships: As demonstrated by my tumblr I just cannot stop being fully consumed by one thing so Camelot revival (and literally no other version) Arthur and Genny do make up 90% of that part of my brain but let's stretch for the other two

Moiraine and Lan's platonic soulmate thing on Wheel of Time is giving me life

And then last week I saw this play called Jonah and calling this a ship is maybe inaccurate but I could have watched two of the characters continue to discuss trauma and desire with each other for another two hours or more, I cannot stop thinking about their conversation and in that shipping is really just enjoying the dynamic between characters, this one is doing a lot for my brain right now and it's killing me that no one I know has seen the play

Favorite color: The Barbie movie really put me in a pink phase and also I got some cute red nail polish so those two are dominating at the moment

Currently consuming: Nothing because it's 1am and I don't think consumption would help my failed quest for sleep

First ship: Will and Elizabeth from Pirates of the Carribean. There were probably some Harry Potter ones that came first but I was looking up youtube music videos for these two, they truly owned my middle school brain.

Relationship status: Single

Last movie: Mamma Mia

Currently working on: Well I cannot make or create things physically or with my mind so let's stretch again. I'm eternally jotting stuff down on my note of Camelot shit I want to rant about which could be called working on it. But mostly it's incomprehensible fragments like if you think about it the reframing of the love triangle makes the themes stop conflicting so gotta actually take some understandable notes before I can give the (five) people what they did not at all ask for, I'll keep the tag alive with garbage

Also my sister got me this super cute bag for Hanukkah but turns out I have not read almost any of these books so I'm suffering working through Ulysses right now on audio and hopefully I can get through a few of the books this year

So here's the thing about tagging... all I do here is Camelot and that list of five people has been exhausted. But there must be some of you still around that see my name on your dash and think oh I remember that weirdo from the Once Upon a Time or Timeless or Magicians fandom and you're who I'm looking for.

[introvertguide]

Abuse of Children Portrayed in Film

I like to use movies as an escape from the harshness of the real world and one of the things that I have learned about in my education is the effects on children when they are mistreated. I have a Masters Degree in Developmental Psychology and one of the hardest classes for me to handle was Abnormal Development in Children and Adolescents. We covered everything from dealing with dyslexia and ADHD to surviving severe abuse and loss at a very early age. We had guest speakers that ranged from people who had escaped genocide as children, to individuals who had been sold into prostitution by their parents, to people who had suffered severe abuse from their parents or guardian. I have heard stories that will stick with me forever and that is nightmare fuel that I don't want to share.

Because of my background education, I take note of the treatment and behavior of children and adolescents in the movies that I watch. There have been many great movies over the years that have depicted the suffering of children and it has always been difficult for me to deal with. There are more well known examples of films that focus on suffering but throw in more of a "sometimes we all suffer, even the children" message that demonstrate that kids aren't immune to great travesties (basically any film about The Holocaust). There are also well known films that show children "coming of age" through hardship (Annie 1982, Oliver! 1968) but end perfectly. There is a more current series of films that focuses entirely on a boy discovering a fantasy world that was robbed from him when his parents were murdered by a tyrant (Harry Potter series). But in this list I want to review some lesser known films that show examples of abuse. Even after all that I have seen and heard, the following list of films have affected me personally for one reason or another. Sometimes the children in these films endure and overcome their situation in the end. Sometimes these children do not survive or sadly remain in their misfortunes. To me, this can make the movie all the more powerful because of the incredible amount of pathos that endangering a child character can add. It can also make it a heart wrenching experience that is painful to watch. Here are some powerful films in which children suffer and the struggle is one of the main plot lines of the movie:

SPOILER WARNING AND VIEWER DISCRETION ADVISORY!!! I AM GOING TO GIVE AWAY THE PLOT TO THESE FILMS AND IT SHOULD GO WITHOUT SAYING THAT SOME OF THE PLOTS ARE DISTURBING!!! EITHER WATCH THE FILM IF YOU DON'T WANT SPOILERS OR CHECK OUT THE FOLLOWING SUMMARIES IF YOU WOULD RATHER JUST HEAR WHAT HAPPENS SO YOU KNOW IF YOU WANT TO WATCH OR NOT!!!

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Sybil (TV Movie) 1976

I just recently saw this film after I had heard of the story in my abnormal development class almost 10 years ago. It is the story of a woman who developed multiple personalities to deal with a childhood in the care of an undiagnosed schizophrenic mother. The movie stars Sally Fields and is based on a true account of Shirley Ardell Mason and her treatment by psychologist Cornelia Wilbur. The acting in the film is overdramatic at times, but it definitely reminded me of some of the actual old videos of Shirley Mason and her sudden strange switches in personality when she was scared or anxious. Dr. Wilbur used hypnosis to actually introduce Mason to her alternate personalities and she was able to recognize her disassociative identity disorder and overcome it. It still hurts me to think that this person was mentally wounded so deeply by her parents that it basically shattered her into pieces in an effort to make sense of things.

Leon: The Professional 1994

I mention this film a lot because it is a heartwarming story of an assassin teaching a young orphan how to murder. It is the breakout role for Natalie Portman and it is just amazing. Leon is a "cleaner" that lives next door to an abusive and addictive family with a troubled girl named Mathilda. The father gets in trouble with the mob and some enforcers come by and slaughter most of the family while Mathilda is getting groceries. She returns during the massacre and realizes what is happening so continues next door and pleads for shelter. Leon takes her in and teachers her the trade and protects her from the men who want to finish her off. The movie was written and directed by Luc Besson and stars Jean Reno, Gary Oldman, and Natalie Portman. The suffering that this girl endures because of her parent's addictions hurts me, yet I have seen and enjoyed this film many times. I recommend watching when in the mood to be deeply affected by the trials of a little girl and the killer who protected her.

Kids 1995

This film came out when I was early in high school and bothered me greatly. It is a story by Harmony Korine, and one of his many attempts to capture the hopeless lives of unmotivated and unsupervised teens. These are young teens having unprotected sex, stealing money to do drugs, and attacking people in the park. I did not really go to these kinds of parties when I was that age (or ever really) and it has bothered me to think that adolescents would partake in this kind of behavior. It is hard for me to believe that these kids had the ability to mentally comprehend the consequences of their actions and some of the characters end up contracting HIV from each other. I would not recommend the film because it is a depressing day in the life that no youth should have.

Gummo 1997

I would not call this a good movie and I wouldn't really recommend it. It is another work by Harmony Korine and really details the depravity that can occur with unsupervised youths living in low socio-economic conditions. This movie is just depressing and motivated me to find something to motivate me into action. I got into both psychology and teaching, which has served me well for the past 20 years. It was this film that showed me how low the bar for quality of life could be, and I guess for that I am thankful. However, I still wouldn't recommend it.

Happiness 1998

This movie I didn't see right away but noticed it at the video store on many occasions. I final watched it when I was about 25 on the recommendation of a friend and one particular storyline greatly disturbed me. It is basically the story of 3 sisters that feel they should be happy and project a face of happiness, yet they are miserable and have horrible lives. One sister in particular is married to a psychiatrist who turns out to be a pedophile that rapes the friends of his young son. At one point rather early on in the movie, this man confesses to his son that he raped the boy's friends and that he would do it again. The son is so confused that he asks his father why he never raped him. It is so disturbing to me because I know the boys that were assaulted will be forever damaged and this boy who was not actually raped will be mentally scarred as well. The fact that there are people in the world that would harm children that way, recognize what they had done, and then know they didn't have the self control to stop themselves from doing it again is horrifying to me.

Lilya 4-Ever 2002

This film is deeply disturbing and I highly recommend never watching it. I will spoil it for you now so you never have to see it if you don't want. A 16-year-old girl named Lilya lives with her mother. The mom gets a boyfriend and the couple move to America and abandons Lilya with a neglectful aunt. The aunt movies into the old apartment of her sister and Lilya is forced to move out and become a prostitute to make money. A boy comes along and convinces her to move to Sweden to escape her life. When they arrive, this boy sells her to a pimp and she becomes a teenage sex slave. She almost escapes, but is then captured and beaten almost to death. She escapes again and this time commits suicide so she won't be recaptured. This movie is awful and changed my mind about giving every film a chance. I wish I could forget this film, but I can't. Perhaps it is just not for me, but this film presentation is definitely an experience that you won't soon forget.

The Kite Runner 2007

I read this book in my twenties and saw the film in my thirties and both affected me greatly. A well-to-do boy and his friend are in a kite battle competition and the friend is beaten and raped when he goes to retrieve a fallen kite. The well-to-do boy denies knowing what happened to his friend (he does know) and basically shames and abandons him. This action haunts the well-to-do boy for the rest of his life. How the boy who was raped is basically falling prey to blaming the victim is heartbreaking, and the lifetime of guilt of the other boy is pitiable. Neither boy was the actual attacker yet they both were the ones that suffered.

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There are many other examples of movies along these lines and could be found if you feel like suffering. I can't say that I would recommend them because they are very difficult to watch. Beyond just dealing with the content, it is rare to find child actors who can actually portray somebody who has truly suffered. The mix of bad acting and a depressing plot can make for a terrible movie going experience. The genre of movie involving suffering does exist, though, and it could be enjoyed (?) by some. Just not generally by me.

[blacklodgemusictx]

A Nuclear Approach Pt 2: The Album

by Liz Berry

“Words are all used up, they are hard to say, they have all been wasted…

… on the shampoo commercials and the ads and the flavorings.

Hollow, beautiful words.

How can you love a floor wax?

How can you love a diaper?

How can I use the same word about you that is used about a stuffing?”

That quote is from the Steve Martin movie, “Roxanne.”  The supreme irony is Roxanne itself is a retelling of Cyrano De Bergerac.  Nothing new under the sun.

I think of this quote when I think about critiquing things.  I’ve done movie reviews before, but only when I truly feel the call to sway.  When it comes to music, the only way I can think if it is: it’s not my place.  People already get paid to tell other people what to think about music: that it’s great, groovy, it’s got a good beat, it’s easy to dance to.  Why in the world would my opinion matter?

Because it’s art.  And art needs to be experienced.  Without the lens through which an audience views art, songs are closed-room therapy, diary entries only the writer will read.

A Nuclear… approach.

Step one: wear head phones.  This album is mixed a certain way and if you listen to it without headphones, you lose out on some of what the listening experience was meant to entail.  Just a friendly suggestion. 

Track One:  Hazy Morning Glow

This song is already a memory in my head.

I try to document what I can when in Salim's vicinity. He doesn't do song intros so much as tell stories or drop clues. If I put my camera down between songs, I try to grab the clues as they go by.

If it's a song like the ubiquitous "1978," for example, I know that the world won't suffer if there's one more copy missing in the digital world.

It was the last show on the February 2020 tour - 02/09/20 at the Black Cat in Washington, DC.

I was already in a low mood knowing our adventure was coming to an end. It was a delight when Salim threw out some Marty Willson-Piper clues and we were treated to this gem.

Track Two: Loved by You

(digital art by me)

Look for: the clean, almost Joshua-tree era, ringing notes of the guitar and the lyric that gave rise to the title of Salim's 2018 album, Somewhere South of Sane.

This song is earnest.  A plea.  I want to be loved by you.  I need something and maybe you don’t notice.  Maybe it feels like you don’t care even if you care a lot.  Even if the daily grind is only a grind because you are trying to prove how much you care.  But words are words and actions are actions.  YOU is the emphasis.  Not the collective “you,” not “I want to be loved by you… mysterious person I haven’t met yet.”  It’s the pick me, choose me, love me scene from Grey’s Anatomy.  In my head, I see someone lost behind a newspaper and the other person has to rip it away – I’ve been here the whole time.  It doesn’t matter if it ends badly.  Love me and – no matter what – we get to be glad it happened.  No wondering “what if.”

Track Three: Under Attack

(Procreate art by me)

Look for:  the syncopated nature of the chorus – “Ticker tape of useless thoughts…”  

I have written before about the “emergency – break glass” nature of songs in my life – and as I have strung these Salim Nourallah-inspired narratives together over the course of several years, I am left wondering if I’m accidentally putting together his biography or my own—this song fits in to that category.

Keep this song to fight off the negative inner monologue that most of use deal with on a daily basis:

If the average human can manage 60,000 thoughts a day and 80% are negative, we can use all the help we can get.

There has to be a moment in the writing of certain songs where the writer pushes back from his physical and/or emotional “desk” with a satisfied grin and says, “damn, I’m good.”  This song contains one of those moment: Misery keeps you company/always feeds you loving lies …

Absolute perfection.

Negative self-talk may be lies, but at the end of the day, we are the only ones inhabiting the space between our ears.  It’s hard not to listen.

Track Four: I Don’t Know

This is another up-beat number with weighty content.

The optimism possibly of youth/newness… then confusion.  Things are a certain way… and then they aren’t.  I am here.  I am with you.  I am doing this thing or that.  Remove one piece and the rest start to wobble, topple, fall.

It’s easy to pack the days of your life with so much activity, you can’t or won’t question if you are where (or with whom) you are supposed to be.  Work all day, come home, eat dinner, play with the kids, walk the dog, fall in to bed so exhausted, you don’t have the time or inclination to question if you are where you are supposed to be.  I’m content… but am I happy? 

I don’t know if the future holds is what I want/And that can be a pretty scary thought

Love… and fear.  Could there be anything more native to the human condition?

Track Five: You are Beautiful

This is another song to keep in your emergency kit.

Unlike Under Attack, this song is slower and more wistful but the same themes of negative thoughts and beliefs are woven throughout.  Again – we are the only one truly inhabiting ourselves and therefore we are our greatest barrier to just seeing ourselves and where we are; sometimes the greatest liar is our own nature. 

We make what we visualize/come to be, come to life

Suicide took a dear friend of mine this year.  I can’t help, but think of him when I hear this song.

Sometimes the lens we gaze through is permanently darkened and the light never comes. 

And we stay lost. 

Still, the message I take away from this song is hope.  “You are beautiful… and perfect in every way.”

Track Six: The Sound of Suffering

Pair with Let’s Be Miserable Together (from Salim’s 2020 EP of the same name), sometimes it’s more fun to hang out on your cross than to climb down and live life; to take advantages of good things that might come your way… if you weren’t busy with fingers plugged firmly in ears going “lalala.” 

Through the sound of your suffering/Can you hear anything else?

Track Seven: I Can’t Take Another Heartbreak

(video by me from 10/19/19 Sons of Herman Hall gig)

Another deeply catchy tune that yanks the rug out from under you. 

I actually guessed this would be a single (Salim assures me only two of the tracks on the album have that distinction and this was not one of them – color me surprised.)

We all deal with daily heartbreak.  To be alive in the 21st century is to be slowly and methodically crushed mentally, physically, emotionally.   Daily life and all it contains will break your heart.  I’m dealing with everything I can right now and you want to throw happiness in to the mix? There’s no time for that, I’m going to be late for work.

Your partner stands at the home threshold watching you run off.  Their heart in a brown paper bag, held out like a sack lunch you forget, “Come back…?”

I can’t right now.  No time.

Gut punch line of this track: I love you/You love me/So how come neither one of us is happy?

Track Eight: Avalanche

(Procreate art by myself)

Listen for: the visceral, unsettling Twin Peaks-style bassline.

This song hurts.  The pain will be different to each listener because, again, we are viewing Salim’s art through the lens of our own experience, but this song is easily the rawest track on the album.  And unlike the other tracks, with pain as an undercurrent to a snappy beat, there is nothing here to protect us.  The doubt, the fear, the what ifs in the other songs all culminate in this deadly lyric:  our love don’t stand a chance.

I think a lot of you will understand when I describe this song in terms of cold:  how you can occupy space with someone and feel the ice coming off of them in waves.  You have to move out of the way, change rooms, go somewhere else or your fingers and toes might start to blacken.  A regard you used to be able to bask in; turn your face up to and drink in like flower drinking in the rays of the sun, turns deadly and soon there will be nothing left.  No safe place to go.

I read the beginnings of a book or an article or something a long time ago (probably recommended by any of a number of therapists I’ve had), equating relationships to a series of choices to either turn toward or turn away from your person even if the turning toward is to just mention something mundane, “Hey, did you see that thing I saw?” “Huh. Yea, weird.”

The turning away in this song is complete.  Lovers are now enemies.  Ears are deaf.  All the chances used up.  Salim’s whispery delivery evokes fear of final collapse and consumption.  If I say this any louder, if I ask you to see me one last time, the snow and debris will come rumbling down…

Too late.

Track Nine: Invisible Man

(pictured lifted from Salim's Facebook and reimagined by myself using Procreate)

I'm an invisible man/You don't notice me/I'm like a potted plant...Losing self-respect just as fast as I can

Familiarity breeds contempt. Unlimited access will get you taken for granted so fast your green, leafy head will spin.

A week ago... a month ago... a year ago - name your time frame, the inevitable progression of a relationship will go from the happy, drunk-dazed, rapid heartbeat flush of infatuation (aka The Fun Part) to conquest won. Come here, do this, watch this show I know you hate, do this thing I know you hate, hold my purse, stand there. Wait for me to come back.

The trying stops. The danger begins.

Track Ten: Let Go

This song was familiar to me and -upon the first few listenings I couldn't place why as some of the lyrics are edited from their original form. Finally, it was pinpointed - a version has been up on Salim's YouTube channel for years now and in the past, I've put his channel up and let it play just to keep me company while I did other things.

(This is a political cartoon from the Houston Chronicle that I altered for my own purposes)

This song puts me in mind of the quote about monkeys in rooms writing Shakespeare. I wonder how much of the human experience is practically identical and yet we all suffer shoulder-to-shoulder in silence.

Let go/You've gotta let go/Surrender to the things you can't control

I've had a similar idea in mind evolved from years in therapy: control what is in your power to control.

For better or worse, the musical journey is over.

Make whatever sense of it you wish, the material presented here is from a time past in the writer's life. Decisions were already made, hurts felt, love lost and found and lost again in whatever order makes sense to you as the listener. Like a Little Lending Library or one of those penny dishes at the gas station: take what you need from this song/album/life and move on.

Let go.

***

Look for this album: May 2023.

Salim's Bandcamp

Part One of this article

[danielxricciardo]

Can you do one with Max, with 46 and 55 from angst list?

Summary: You are suffering from depression and Max tries to be by your side

Warnings: angst, swearing, mentions of suicide, depression

Word count: 3.6k+

46. “I’ll leave, and the world will move on. I just wish I could see it. See how much better everything is when I’m gone.”

55. “You’re good at finding things. Find me a reason to stay.”

Depression feels like a lot of things.

It feels like sadness, which is what everyone will tell you. It's a pretty common thread.

"I'm worthless."

"Everyone thinks I'm a horrible burden."

So on and so forth.

Everyone in the world is happy but you, and in the end, you are a worthless piece of shit that doesn't belong in this otherwise glorious and happy place. The sun is shining, the birds are chirping, and you are lying there on your bed in the same unlaundered pair of pajamas, wondering why you are even allowed to keep living any longer. Some meteor strikes or lightning bolts should be reserved for people like you because you are taking up space and oxygen and food and other resources that real, happy, productive people need.

It feels like emptiness. You have all these possibilities and none of them seem interesting. You could do some art, or play some music, but that just doesn't feel right. There's no joy in it. You could have sex with your significant other, but you can't muster up the desire. You could play video games, or read a book. But what's the point? There's no real benefit to all of it but passing the time. You could get up and make lunch. But no, you're not that hungry, and if you close your eyes, time will pass a little faster. You can lie there. That works. It doesn't require active effort to do something fruitless. Everything is as empty and fruitless as lying and staring out your window at the clouds and the shifting shadows of tree branches, and so why do anything else?

It feels like fatigue. Standing up out of your bed requires the same amount of bodily effort as climbing several flights of stairs. Managing to get dressed and walk outside is like running a race. Heaven helps you if you try to go to the store or a friend's house -- that may as well be on the other side of the continent. Every step is heavy. Every muscle motion requires ten times the work it used to. Exercise becomes difficult, and control over your body expires quickly. You become clumsier, so heavy lifting is right out. You daze out randomly, daydreaming, even dozing, so biking or running is hard. You feel most at home when you are entirely relaxed, so you lie down...and don't get up again until something like your bladder compels you.

It feels like a loss of control. You have no idea why your brain and body are doing this. You don't want to feel sad. Nobody wants to feel shitty and tired and empty all the time. People will look at you and say, "It's like you don't want to get better." Those people are idiots. You truly, deeply, from the bottom of your soul, have no idea why this has happened or what to do. It's not logical. It makes no sense. You woke up like this, or it crept in overtime or something like that. It's like a fog, a force of nature that sweeps in, occludes everything, and there's not one thing you can do about it from where you stand. Trying feels like taking a paper fan outside and trying to blow away the morning mist. Someone has tied puppet strings to your brain and is playing this hideous dance with it, and you don't have the scissors to cut them away. The dance doesn't make sense; it's arbitrary and rhythmless. If you had any sort of reasoning behind it, you could take control. But you don't.

It feels like desperation. You can't find a way out. You lie there at night, keening into your pillow like a wounded animal, making all sorts of noises that no human being should be able to make. You claw and scratch at the sheets, or at yourself, as the pain wrings itself out through bodily expression. The tears won't stop. You don't know why. All you know is that it hurts, it really and truly hurts, and you think if it goes on any longer, you're going to die. Right there. Bleed out on the floor. So you grab up your phone, and you call someone at 4 AM, and you beg them to please just make it stop. You bury yourself in books and movies because at least then you can imagine something else than yourself. You read nonstop. You have to have your fix. It's like an addiction, no, more like a life support machine. Otherworlds, fantasies of happiness, and real experiences that aren't your horrible existence become the iron lung keeping air flowing in and out. You are alive because you can stop thinking for a while. Your friends come over to comfort you. Their stories keep you sane and well, like dialysis for all the toxins in you. Your mind has failed at being independent, and now it relies on a thousand little machines to keep itself running. You rely on one machine until another comes to save you. You read books until your friends come by. You stretch out your time with friends until you have to bury yourself in a movie again just to keep the thought of real-life away.

It feels like untamed anger. Your friends can't keep this up forever. You fall further and further, and you eventually start dropping commitments. You have become That Person, the flake that everyone knows will back out. People start getting annoyed at you, annoyed at how they have to spend so much time just keeping you afloat, annoyed at how often you're causing them trouble by constantly disappearing and backing out of appointments, and so on. Your workplace gets annoyed at your lack of productivity. And then you can't take it anymore, and you want to scream at them, grab them by the throat and shake them because IT'S NOT YOUR FAULT! You start having twisted fantasies, the ones where you walk up to that person who keeps telling you he can't do this anymore, you're just too unreliable, putting a gun to your head and pulling the trigger. Just to make him know, for once, that FUCK HIM, your problems are REAL, DAMMIT, REAL, and he better FUCKING RESPECT that. And when you're gone, he'll fall to his knees and cry, and he'll say, he wishes he had understood, that he didn't mean to be so unkind, and the scar on his heart from his own failure will remain fresh and knotted for eternity. And then you shake yourself out of the daydream, and you wonder why you have turned into such a horrible person, someone who even considers ending their own life just to spite another human being. Then it creeps back in, the knowledge that the world is getting fed up with you...and the cycle begins again. You start thriving off these daydreams, because at the very least if you can't be happy, you can throw caution to the wind and get the petty, oddly satisfying revenge buried under all those layers of morality that are becoming worn and flaking away. It's just a fantasy, right? And it helps pass the time...

It feels like forever. You have forgotten what it's like to truly be joyful. You can imagine it, but it's not really you in those thoughts. This is who you are. This is your life. This is you.

It feels like you have only one thing truly under your power: your existence. You cannot choose what life throws at you. Your brain and body have betrayed you. Your friends have worn away, and you've fled from your job and any commitments you have.

It feels empowering. You can jump whenever you want.

But he accepted you the way you are. He never reproached you for negatively influencing his mentality or life, even though you knew he felt it too. He always listened to you, he was with you even at 2 in the morning when you were crying on the bathroom floor with your knees to your chest, and you knew it wasn't right. It wasn't right for him to go through, basically, what you were going through. But no matter how much you told him you could do it without his help, Max was coming back more insistently than ever.

He came up with the idea to start therapy. "You have to find out why you feel this way. Go at least once, see how it is, if you don't like it or feel that it doesn't help you, you will give up, okay?" That was a year and a half ago.

The psychologist gave you a diagnosis from the first session: Major Depressive Disorder. Sure you knew what the three words meant, but you didn't know what it meant to have a label on your condition.

"A major depressive disorder is characterized by one or more of these depressive episodes. the diagnosis of major depressive disorder requires depressed mood or anhedonia which is the loss of interest in pleasure and five or more signs or symptoms for the SIGECAPS mnemonic for a 2-week period. (SIGECAPS) Sleep Disturbance, loss of Interest, feeling Guilty, feeling fatigued and low in Energy, having decreased Concentration, decreased or increased Appetite and been agitated and slow and having Suicidal ideation."

It sounds incredible to you. Suicidal thoughts? Not everyone has a thought, somewhere, behind their mind 'What if I disappeared?'

You were prescribed Prozac and Zoloft and it helped. You weren't always sad anymore, you could go to the races with Max and support him as a normal girlfriend does. You apologized to my friends who tried to help me and whose lives you made impossible and you managed to get back to work, from home anyway. Sure, you still had moments when you felt like you weren't 100% yourself but not like before. You did therapy twice a week and the psychologist was happy with your evolution.

But being the stupid ass that you are, you stopped taking the medication. You took the last pill on Friday. Because you were fine. You felt ok, everyone around you told you you were better, you were doing amazing, so you were cured, right? Or so you thought. Saturday was normal. Sunday was not. Your mood and energy were very low. You woke up at like 2 in the afternoon. That is not unusual for you. You’re used to it. You were sad. You were exhausted. You knew that feeling like this was “no excuse” so you tried to force yourself to do it anyway. Typical of your life. You feel like you had already taken so much off work because of the triple-header, you were for three weeks attached to the hips with Max.

The only thing you thought of was dying. And that terrified you. And Max senses something was wrong. But he didn't want to tell something and ending up being wrong and you being upset by his misinterpretation. But, yes, he sensed that you were becoming your old self.

"Hey, babe," he snapped you out of your daydreaming. A tragic one, where you were finally at peace and Max was crying for you. You were on the verge of crying yourself at the mere image of Max in your head. But you pushed it far from your mind, somewhere in a dark corner for you to find it at an appropriate time to fantasize about your dying. "How about we go to a picnic? It's sunny outside."

Yes, the wheater was amazing. It was finally summer and you could go outside and spend some time with Max. But your brain literally is tricking you into thinking you don't deserve to enjoy the sunny day. Why? You don't have an answer.

"I'm not really in the mood, Max. Sorry."

You are not in the mood. That was his affirmation. You are not ok.

"You feeling good?"

"Yeah. Just tired I guess."

"But you just woke up."

You shrugged. He was right. You just woke up, so why do you feel like you were carrying a ton of bricks on your shoulders? You couldn't walk. You almost felt like 18 months ago. And that is when it hit you. And Max, at the same time.

"Still taking your meds, I hope."

Silence. Your mind was like overcrowded and you couldn’t take it anymore. You grabbed your head and pulled your hair because you wanted it to stop. You were thinking that you didn’t know what to think. You didn’t know how to think. You didn’t know how you felt. You were like anxious-depressed-angry-miserable-irritable all in one. Your head was spinning with thoughts. Thoughts were talking over thoughts. So fast that you couldn’t even make out one complete sentence. It was just too much for you to handle. You just wanted someone to kill you.

Max came to you and he hugged you so hard you thought he could crush your bones right there and then. You calmed down eventually. But now you were embarrassed. Because Max saw you, again, at your lowest. Because you promised you'll get better, and for a while, you were better, but now you are fucked and back into square one. All those money on therapy and your pills, for what? For you to stop taking them because you thought you were feeling better? Well, you definitely were not ok, nor you'll be. So, yeah, being fucked sounded good.

Max brought you the medicine and a glass of water. Taking the pills again? For what? The pills only fuel the feeling that everything is fine and that you are a normal person. Nothing was good and you were not a normal person.

But you took the pills. And you looked Max in the eyes and you wanted to die. He seemed crushed. He was sad, devastated, maybe angry but definitely disappointed. In you. Because maybe you don't realize this, but while you were doing good, he was doing great. He knew you could be on your own so he stopped worrying that much, and that could also be seen in his driving. He was winning more races, he was at his best and now he was at his lowest. Because you were at your lowest; co-dependency and shit.

"I'm sorry, baby. I thought I was doing well enough to stop taking the meds," you say in a broken voice but the tears are yet to appear. He stroked your hair and kissed you on your forehead.

"You should have told me. You don't have to go thru this alone. I am here."

"Yeah, you are here. But you don't have to be!" you snapped. Irritability, one thing your depression came with. "I am just a burden for you. And no, this does not come from the fact I stopped taking my pills. You took care of me like I was a child, and, fuck it, you don't deserve this."

"Stop talking like this, alright? If I would suffer from depression you would have done the same thing. You would have taken care of me. Or am I wrong?"

"You are not wrong. To be honest, I don't think I would be here if it wasn't for you, but I don't want you to be. It's obvious that I would never get better. This is me. I am fucked in the head, half wishing I was dead and I am just bringing you down."

"Don't tell me this is a fucking break up, Y/N." he narrows his brows and looks at your features to make sure you were being serious.

“I’ll leave, and the world will move on. I just wish I could see it. See how much better everything is when I’m gone.”

"What the fuck are you talking about? Is this a break-up or a suicidal vocal note?"

You broke down. Crying can be cathartic and healthy, but if it goes on too long it can lock your body in a feeling of despair. Even if your mind works through the problem that caused the crying, because your body is still feeling the physical effects it will cause your mind to revert to the negative state. It's not sadness. It's dread and paralysis. You had a certain feeling of emptiness and purposelessness.

“You’re good at finding things. Find me a reason to stay,” you say between sobs.

"You want me to find you a reason to stay alive or to stay in this relationship? To be frank, I can name a thousand reasons, but it all depends on you."

Max hugs you from behind and you lay your head on his chest, listening to his heartbeat that was stronger than ever. You allowed yourself to inhale Max's scent, a soothing scent you could get drunk on.

"I want to believe you love me. I mean, I love you and I consider you the love of my life, you know? We are so young and I know it doesn't feel like it, but I promise you, I'm gonna marry you someday, even if right now you don't think you're gonna make it till tomorrow. So, yeah, this is reason number one," he said and pressed a kiss to your cheek. "This is not the worst you have been through in life. Remember where you were 18 months ago; you had no idea what was wrong with you. Now you know and you know you can be better. I know you get sick of those pills, but maybe, in the future, you won't need them. Isn't that exciting? This was reason number two," he said and pressed another kiss to your cheek. He was going to do that every time he would give you a reason. "Have you been to all the beautiful places around the world? Sure, you came to a few Grand Prix, but you never saw Great Ocean Road in Australia, you know Daniel promised he would take us there someday. You never saw Pamukkale in Turkey or Japan in Cherry Blossom season or the Blue Lagoon in Iceland. There are many places you need to visit, baby. So, yeah, this was reason number three. I don't know if you want me to continue but I can give you one more reason. Reason number four. Do it for you, baby. You deserve to live and be happy. I know you can be happy and I promise you I will do my best to help you. You just have to take it one step at a time. You just have to let me in. Let me help you, baby."

You turn around, facing him now. You loved him, with all of your heart. You love him for who he is. You love him because he literally came into your life as your lifeline. You love him because he helped you crawl up the deep bottomless abyss of depression. You love him because he had the patience and the audacity to bear with your depression, anxiety, and panic attacks, your phobias, your mood swings, your temperamental and short-tempered nature, your overthinking, your being overprotectiveness, and possessiveness. You love him because never once he thought of giving up on you in your hard times. You love him because he stands by you like a rock of unwavering support and he’s someone you can fall back on. You love him because he listens to you talking non-stop about your past, your pains, your fears, and your losses without complaining even once. You love him because he rediscovered you and helped you find yourself again when you were lost in darkness. You love him because he filled you with confidence and hope and strength and belief and determination. You love him because he believes you are the best when you set your mind on something and no one can stop you from achieving your goals. You love him because he is protective, caring, understanding, loving, and easy to be with while never being too suffocating or taking up your space. You love him because sooner or later he does everything you ask of him and does with his whole attention. You love him because whatever endeavor he engages in, he likes to give his 100% and hates doing half-hearted things. You love him because he can decode the nuances in your voice and judge your mood just perfectly. You love him because he read you like an open book and he can hear your silence. You love him because he never doubts your loyalty, your intentions, your hard work, and your million issues. You love him because no matter how busy he might get he never forgets that you are waiting for his message or his call. You love him because he keeps you in his priorities. You love him because he gave you a passion you never knew you had. You love him because he very strongly believes that you deserve the best of everything. You love him because he is empathic, kind, magnanimous, thoughtful, and down to Earth. You love him because he has eyes for no one but you. You love him because he wants to see you healthy, wealthy, prosperous, famous and he wants you to hold back at nothing, for no one, he wants you to be a Go-Getter. And most importantly you love him because no one ever loved you like he did.

"I will let you in," you say and you kiss him hard. "I'm sorry for the scene I caused."

"Don't be. It happens."

[thebooknearme]

Heathen: The Complete Series Omnibus Edition

About The Book:

Title: HEATHEN: The Complete Series Omnibus Edition

Author: Natasha Alterici & Ashley A. Woods (Illustrations)

Pub. Date: May 17, 2022

Publisher: Vault Comics

Formats: Paperback, eBook

Pages: 336

Find it: Goodreads, https://books2read.com/Heathen-The-Complete-Series 

WOMAN. WARRIOR. VIKING. HEATHEN. OUTCAST.  THE GODS MUST PAY… Born into a time of warfare, suffering, and subjugation of women, and exiled from her village for kissing another woman, the lesbian Viking warrior, Aydis, sets out to destroy the god-king Odin and end his oppressive reign. She is a friend to many as she is joined by mermaids, immortals, Valkyries, and the talking horse, Saga. But she is also a fearsome enemy to the demons and fantastic monsters that populate the land.  Heathen – The Complete Series Omnibus Edition trade paperback collects the entire twelve-issue series. Soon to be movie directed by Catherine Hardwicke (Twilight, Red Riding Hood, & Lords of Dogtown) Perfect for fans of Monstress, Helheim, and Northlanders.

Reviews:

“These declarations of self from women and queer characters fit so elegantly into the mythology Alterici uses to weave her tale, it reminds us that these narratives belonged there all along.”- The Mary Sue

“I want epics with female leads, and fortunately HEATHEN fulfills that desire in a big way, while also adding its own unique touch with themes that are as contemporary as they are timeless.”- Women Write About Comics

“One look at the cover and I knew this book was right up my alley. If you are into Norse mythology and aching for a lesbian angle, then this book is for you. If you want a love story that is more than a romance, a heroine that is truly honourable and fierce, then I urge you to pick this … up.”- The Lesbian Review

“Natasha Alterici's Heathen, has single-handedly redeemed the disaster that pop culture has been making of Norse mythology. It’s a smart, funny, feminist, queer and sex-positive take on the Viking world; one with a wide cast of diverse and endearing characters. Heathen is a must-read for comics (and mythology) lovers of all sorts and those in quest of superb queer and feminist comics in particular. RATING: 10/10”- Pop Matter

About Natasha Alterici:

Natasha Alterici is a writer and artist living in Tulsa, OK who has been working as a freelance artist for over ten years. Works include Heathen (Vault Comics), Dinosaur Project, Gotham Academy: Yearbook, Grayson Annual, The Lez Film Review, Mixed Signals, Lovers and Other Strangers, Transcience, and a number of others. When not drawing, she enjoys watching cooking shows with her wife and their two cats, Cheshire and Louise.

Website | Twitter | Instagram | Goodreads | Amazon

About Ashley A. Woods:

Ashley A. Woods is a comic book artist, writer, & creator from Chicago known for her work on the "Niobe", "Ladycastle" and "Tomb Raider" series. She got her start through self-publishing her action-fantasy comic series “Millennia War” which led to her career in comics and TV. After earning her degree in Film and Animation from IADT, she traveled to Kyoto, Japan where she presented her work in a gallery showcase called, “Out Of Sequence”. Recognized for her female illustrations and designs, her most prominent work is "Niobe: She is Life" with Stranger Comics. Her latest work can be seen on HBO's "Lovecraft Country", DC’s “Wonder Woman Black & Gold 2” and "Jupiter Invincible" with Pulitzer Prize winning author Yusef Komunyakaa which premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival June 2021.

Website | Twitter | Instagram

What was your inspiration for writing your graphic novel?

Heathen began with a simple Ren Faire costume design, I wanted to go as a barbarian, and the outfit I came up with wasn't far off from what Aydis wears in the book. After that I found myself drawing it again and again, and realized it was developing into a character. So the next steps were obvious; give her a horse and then write her a story. 

List your favorite graphic novels or comics from when you were a child and talk about how you see them as an adult.

I never got the chance to read any comics as a kid. I was too busy obsessing over a different Eyewitness book every month and then later Mary Higgins Clark mysteries and Lurlene McDaniel romance books. I got into comics in college after my English Comp teacher assigned Maus, and from there I sought out the classics like V for Vendetta, Persepolis, and some Sandman. I've always been a seasonal kind of reader, sometimes I'm devouring everything I can, other times I almost forget books exist. Just how I'm wired I suppose. 

List your favorite graphic novels this year and why you like them.

I've honestly only read one so far this year, but it was a great one! Laura Dean Keeps Breaking Up With Me by Mariko Tamaki and Rosemary Valero-O'Connell. It's so refreshing to read about queer characters who are neither role models nor tragedies (both are perfectly valid, just oversaturated). They're just normal kids with normal relationship problems that they have to learn to navigate. I really enjoy down-to-earth stories like that. 

Talk about your favorite kind of character to write about

I love messy flawed characters, the kind who want to be better but aren't quite sure how to go about it. I also love writing flirty characters, they're hands down the most fun to write. And if a flirt happens to be messy and flawed themself, well that's the perfect combination. 

Talk about your least favorite kind of character to write about

This is a difficult one, because if I were to describe the kind of character I don't like I'd inevitably be describing the kind of people I don't like  and I try to find the likable part of anyone I'm writing. Otherwise it's hard to empathize with them, and empathy is the most important part. I guess I'd say I find it hard to write about people who find joy in being cruel. 

Describe your ideal writing space.

Comfy chair with a foot rest, view of the forest or a field, music playing, unlimited access to some kind of sweet treat like peach rings or twizzlers, and plants to fuss over while I run through scenes and dialog in my head. 

Describe your ideal home library.

I'd love to have floor to ceiling shelves, with one of those rolling ladders. Everything is organized by Library of Congress call number system (I worked as a university librarian for a while), and it's dust and mold free somehow. And there's a big pile of cushions and pillows to lay in to read. 

What are some of your favorite video games?

I'm really into Ark: Survival Evolved right now, I enjoy finding and taming all my favorite dinosaurs and building things. I also play Phasmophobia, Minecraft, Katamari, House Flipper, and I like colony sim games like Oxygen Not Included and Banished.

[kuroopaisen]

tiny love || 8

➵ as tooru’s younger sister, falling in love with iwaizumi hajime was easy. iwaizumi ultimately decided to rebuff you. through a few strange twists of fate, you’ve ended up living with the very boy who’d broken your heart. but, perhaps it’s not as bad as you thought it’d be. he is the perfect gentleman, after all. 

warnings: f!reader, angst??

wc: 3.9k

m.list |  ch. 7 ↞ ch. 8 ↠ ch. 9

The film was alright. There was a certain chaos to it, an unhinged energy that gave it real character. Although, you weren’t quite sure how to feel about the reverse-Freudian implications of Marty’s mother getting a crush on him.

The phone in your lap buzzed, shooting light upwards into the darkened room. Glancing down, you read the name ‘Kohei’ on the screen.

It’d be rude to text him back during the movie, right? Since Iwaizumi was showing you this specific film… Although, it’d been your choice.

You turned your mind away from the question, your eyes flitting back to the screen.

The man with the frazzled white hair – Doc, was it? – was speaking at a rapid-fire pace. If it weren’t for the subtitles, you would’ve been totally lost.

Your phone buzzed again. Still Kohei. You covered the screen with your hand, trying to block out the ambiance-ruining brightness.

Yet another buzz.

“Who is that?” Iwaizumi frowned. “They’ve got a lot to say.”

“Sorry,” you blushed, turning your phone over so it was face down on the arm of the couch. “It’s Kohei.”

“Kohei?” There’s a strange lilt in Iwaizumi’s voice.

You ignored it. “Yeah. I’m pretty sure you met him at the party.”

“Oh,” Iwaizumi hummed. “Right.”

He said nothing more, turning his attention back to the screen.

You bit your lip, fingers tightening around your phone.

It felt a little weird, doing something so casual with him. Well, you’d been doing casual things with him for a while, but something about this just felt so domestic. Probably didn’t help that the last time you did this together, he’d kissed you.

Your stomach twisted at the thought.

God, that felt like a lifetime ago now. And maybe it was, in some way; neither of you were those people anymore.

But a part of you still wanted to kiss him, just like back then.

You knew you shouldn’t think about it. He’d pushed you away two years ago for a reason. If you wanted this whole living situation thing to keep going smoothly, you had to respect that.

And yet, it felt unfair.

This was all so easy. So natural.

But it was something you couldn’t have. Something you couldn’t hope for.

You swallowed roughly, slipping your hands under your thighs.

You couldn’t think about it. If you did, you’d just make things worse.

And you were willing to do just about anything to maintain the delicate friendship between the two of you.

✧ ✧ ✧

“So,” Tooru’s voice came through the speaker with its usual levity. “How’s living with Iwa?”

Your stomach dropped. “It’s good!”

It’s not a lie. You just didn’t want to talk about it with Tooru. At least half of the things that made the whole arrangement so fun were things you didn’t exactly want to mention to your older brother.

“You don’t have to rub it in!” He whined.

“Rub what in?” You blinked, a little lost.

“The fact that you get to live with Iwa!”

Oh. Right.

“You’re the one who suggested it,” you teased.

“I know, but it doesn’t make it sting any less!”

“He would’ve killed you within the first day,” you said, rolling your eyes.

“Not true!” Tooru barked.

You laughed. You didn’t need to see him to know the exact expression on his face. He’d always been comically expressive, even as a child.

That warm silence that always followed laughter settled over the call.

“Oh, man,” Tooru chuckled. “No, but how are you going?” He asked.

It’d been a while since the two of you had really gotten the chance to talk. Both of you had just been too busy; any catchups you managed to sneak in didn’t allow for much time to really get into the details of your lives.

But today was the day.

“I’ve been doing really well, actually!” It was such a delight to be able to say those words with full sincerity. “I’m still adjusting and everything, but… I think it’s going to be good.”

Small hiccups with Iwaizumi aside, everything was under control. Sure, sometimes you weren’t quite sure what they were saying in class, and yes, you did procrastinate more than perhaps you should’ve – but you were making a life here.

“See, I told you!” He chided.

“Yeah, you keep reminding me of that,” you said, rolling your eyes.

“I’m just saying,” he hummed, adopting his favourite ‘hoity-toity older brother’ tone, “you should’ve listened to me in the first place.”

“I know, I know…” You sighed.

Tooru had told you time and time again that things’d worked out. ‘If I can move to a whole new country on my own, then you can definitely do it with Iwa’s help,’ he’d said. You’d had trouble believing him at first; but for once, he’d been right.

“I’m glad the two of you have each other, you know?” He said.

You flinched. Now those were words you hadn’t expected to hear.

“Huh?”

“You and Iwa,” Tooru explained. “He doesn’t talk about his feelings often, but I think you being there has really helped him relax.”

Your stomach churned.

Was that true? Had your presence really made Iwaizumi feel better? He’d done a lot to help you, but you felt like you hadn’t really done anything for him. You’d just felt like something of a burden.

But if that wasn’t actually true…

“What do you mean?” You asked quietly. God, you hoped your voice wasn’t giving anything away.

“Well, you know,” Tooru said, “you’re someone he knows from home. That sounds pretty comforting to me.”

You were grateful he couldn’t see the pink blooming on your cheeks. “Are you asking me to move to Argentina?” You teased. You didn’t know what else to say.

“Well, I wouldn’t say no—”

“Because I’d rather die.”

The gasp that erupted from Tooru was so loud it peaked the audio. “How dare you? If we were living together, I’d be able to keep an eye on you. And, I could ward of any pesky boys.”

“That’s the problem.”

“Don’t be so inappropriate!” Tooru shrieked. “I don’t want to know the details!”

“I wasn’t going to tell you any of the details!”

“You were about to!”

“No I wasn’t!”

“I’ll have you know, you are far too young to be dating, young lady, and that—”

“I’m only a year younger than you!”

“And?”

“Shut up, Tooru!”

✧ ✧ ✧

You sighed, running a hand through your hair. The kitchen table was supposed to help you get your ass into gear. But instead, your laptop was open, but nothing had been done. The screen was probably a few moments away from turning idle.

A to-do list stared back at you, unrelenting. The sound of rain against the windows was your only companion. Iwaizumi had left for the gym some time ago, and you’d decided that music would be too much of a distraction.

Not that the absence of it was helping you.

Come on, you thought to yourself, just focus.

Easier said than done.

You groaned, leaning back against your chair. Why was it so hard to focus?

A deep breath, and then—

Slap!

Your cheeks stung from the impact of your own palms.

No difference.

The sound of the door opening was a beautiful reprieve. Finally, a worthy excuse to procrastinate—

“Hey.” Iwaizumi said a little breathlessly, holding his hand up in greeting.

You gaped at him.

Words might’ve come to mind if it was any other circumstances.

But when he was just standing there like that, you couldn’t help it.

A white shirt that clung to his torso, cheeks flushed with recent exertion, hair all messy—

It was official. You needed to start writing up your will, saying your goodbyes, getting all your chickens in order. Iwaizumi was certifiably too much, and you couldn’t handle it.

You were doing your best to respond. Truly. But it’s like his chest was a damn magnet, drawing your eyes back to it no matter how hard you tried to look at him respectfully.

Stupid Iwaizumi Hajime and his stupid shirt and his stupid chest—

“You good?” He asked, raising an eyebrow at you.

“Me?” Your gaze snapped up to meet his. “Oh, yeah. I’m great, actually.”

“If you say so,” he chuckled, shaking his head. “You look like you’re about to pass out.”

“Well,” you gaped at him, trying to fight off the myriad of phantasmal shirtless Iwaizumi’s dancing around your head. You were losing. “I’m offended that you’re not more concerned.”

“You’ll recover,” he grinned.

You pouted at him, crossing your arms over your chest. “I don’t know what I’ve done to deserve this treatment.”

Iwaizumi chuckled again, ambling across the room with an aggravatingly slow pace. The sooner he was out of sight, the better.

“It’s tough love, sweetheart,” he tutted. “It’s how the world works.”

“Well—” You huffed, trying to think of a retort. But, you were far too distracted by the use of ‘sweetheart’ – even if it hadn’t been used in an affectionate way.

“I’m going to have a shower,” Iwaizumi said, smirking at you. “I hope you’re feeling better by the time I get out.”

“Mhm,” you nodded, eyes fixated determinedly on your computer screen. If you looked up and saw his glutes, you were sure you’d implode.

You covered your face with your forearms, letting out a silent scream.

Why did God hate you? Why did he want you to suffer? Every time you thought you’d got it under control, you were reminded of the fact that Iwaizumi looked like that, and any work you’d done to neatly tuck your romantic feelings into a box managed to wriggle like a rebellious young cat.

Every goddamn time, you were reminded of just how determined he was, how responsible, how quietly caring, how—

No. You shook your head. No need to indulge those thoughts. Not when you were supposed to be doing work.

Although, there was no way you were getting anything done today.

✧ ✧ ✧

“How old are you in these?” You grinned, glancing at Kohei.

His cheeks flushed. “I think I was like… sixteen here?”

“Sixteen, huh?”

“You know what high schools like back home,” he whined. “We all deserve some stress relief.”

“And yours was… running at each other across a field while screaming at the top of your lungs?”

“You should try it,” he beamed. “It’s surprisingly effective.”

You laughed, your body curving towards him.

You hadn’t planned on inviting Kohei over today. You’d just happened to bump into him by chance on campus as you were heading home. As usual, he’d struck up quite the conversation. But you’d wanted to get home before it got dark, so you’d invited him to come with you.

So there you were, sitting on your couch in the front room, listening to Kohei tell you about the stupid video he and his high school friends made back in Osaka. Most of them were re-enactments of Naruto scenes.

To each their own, you supposed.

The creak of front door came from around the corner.

“Hey Hajime!” You called out.

“Hey,” he called back, voice warm.

“You’re home later than usual,” you said.

“I was hanging out with Taiki,” he explained. “We got bubble tea.”

“Oh, nice,” you nodded, watching as he came into view.

He smiled as he caught sight of you. It took him a moment to realise you weren’t alone.

“You remember Kohei, right?” You gestured to the boy sitting next to you.

“Hello,” Kohei nodded, bright smile on his face.

“Hi,” Iwaizumi said. His smile disappeared, expression becoming even stonier than usual.

The atmosphere felt a shade cooler than it had a moment prior.

“You didn’t tell me you were having someone over,” Iwaizumi said coolly, heading to his bedroom.

“It was impromptu,” you explained.

“Mhm,” was the last sound you heard before he disappeared down the hall.

You clenched your fists in your lap. Had something happened? Was it okay to ask?

If something was up, Kohei certainly hadn’t noticed it. Not that you expected him to.

“How’d you feel about the most recent Godzilla film?” He asked.

“Uh… I don’t think we have it.” That was the polite way of saying ‘Iwaizumi hates that film with his entire being, and he wouldn’t dare debase this household by buying it on DVD.’

You’d heard his rant a couple of times, actually – insufficient screen time for Godzilla, a lack of understanding of the point of a monster movie, mediocre battles.

“Oh, that’s okay,” Kohei shrugged. “It’s on Netflix.”  

“Ah, I see,” you nodded.

Why did it already feel like agreeing to a movie was a mistake?

✧ ✧ ✧

Thirty minutes in and you knew it was a mistake.

You were bored. Horribly, terribly bored.

But you didn’t have the heart to tell Kohei that when he, at least, seemed to be enjoying himself.

Besides, you could find other ways to occupy yourself. You could just think (see: fantasise) about Gojou Satoru. That’d been more than enough to keep you entertained during your duller classes.

Iwaizumi ambled into the kitchen, his eyes flicking to the two of you for only a second. You held up your hand a little as a greeting; he didn’t return it.

You swallowed, turning your ‘attention’ back to the TV.

Something was wrong. You didn’t know what, but… If Kohei wasn’t there, you would’ve just walked over to Iwaizumi and asked him if there was any way you could help. But having a guest… complicated things.

Said guest stretched his arms over his head. You hoped, absentmindedly, that he’d had a shower recently.

He laid one of his arms along the top of the couch, just ghosting your shoulders.

You managed to hold back a frown. What was he doing? Was he trying to hit on you? Or was it absentminded? If it was the former, then it was a rather childish way of—

A loud clutter erupted from the kitchen. A quiet ‘shit’ quickly followed.

You shot to your feet on instinct, rushing over to where a very disgruntled Iwaizumi stood.

“Are you okay?” You asked, looking him up and down.

Water stained his shirt, the water jug lying sideways on the countertop.

“I’m fine,” Iwaizumi grunted, setting it upright.

You grabbed the tea towel, dabbing at his shirt. Sure, it wouldn’t be much help, but—

“I said I’m fine.”

You draw back sharply, shocked by the harshness in his voice.

Instead you turned to the puddle of water on the counter, laying the tea towel over it. You watched as it turned a shade darker, seeping through the cotton until there wasn’t a single inch of dry cloth left.

Iwaizumi had turned away from you, standing in front of the sink as he refilled the water jug.

You pressed your lips together, concern and agitation brewing in your gut.

He seemed… Stressed? Irritated? Bitter?

But you couldn’t ask. Not right now. You’d have to wait until Kohei was gone, at the very least. And you didn’t want to pry. Iwaizumi didn’t appreciate that sort of thing.

Was there anything you could do for now? Anything at all?

“Did you want to order food with us?” You asked, tilting your head to the side. It was the best thing you could think of; giving him one less thing to worry about might help, right?

“No,” Iwaizumi said curtly.

You blinked at him. “You sure? It’ll save you the trouble of making dinner.”

“I’d rather eat on my own,” he grumbled.

“Oh,” you murmured.

You were at a total loss. Something was wrong.

But you turned away, slinking back to the couch.

“Is everything okay?” Kohei asked as you sat yourself back down.

“Mhm,” you nodded.

As a precaution, you set a little more distance between the two of you. If you sat any closer, he might get the wrong idea.

✧ ✧ ✧

After what felt like three days, the film was over. What’d happened in it? You couldn’t say. You hadn’t been paying attention.

You’d instead been preoccupied with Iwaizumi.

Maybe you were worrying too much over something minor. Maybe he’d just had a bad day at work. Maybe Taiki had just been a brat. Maybe he just had a few assignments due in close succession.

But that didn’t stop you from feeling anxious. Was that pathetic?

At the very least, you wanted to make sure he was okay. This behaviour seemed… weird.

“What time is it?” You turned to Kohei, tilting your head to the side.

“Uh… eight,” he said, checking his phone.

It was that late already? But there was still so much you needed to get done…

You yawned, stretching you hands above your head. “Thanks for hanging out with me today,” you said, turning to smile at Kohei.

“No problem,” he nodded, in response, offering you a smile that didn’t quite reach his eyes.

Nothing more needed to be said to get the message across.

The two of you walked towards the front door, Kohei’s steps a little slower than yours.

You didn’t want to make it look like you were trying to rush him out of there, but you also didn’t want to give him the impression that you wanted him to stay. Everything just felt so weird, so… so high stakes. Like any little action you made was at risk of being misinterpreted.

“Well…” Kohei lingered at your door for a moment, looking at you with what seemed to be hope in his eyes.

“I’ll see you later, okay?” You smiled.

“Sure,” he nodded, opening the door. “Thanks.” He seemed a tad more dour than usual. Your stomach twisted a little.

“Bye!” You said, hoping that this, at least, would set your boundaries.

He didn’t seem bold enough to make an actual move, but you’d rather save the trouble.

You watched with a tiny sense of relief blooming in your chest as he stepped over the threshold and walked away.

Once the door finally closed, you let out a long sigh.

Something was up. Even you could tell that. His attempts at flirting, while juvenile, were earnest. What a strange evening this had been…

At the very least, you made a note to not invite him to your house alone again. That’d been your first mistake.

You dragged yourself to the kitchen, pouring out a glass of water. The tea towel was still soaked through, laid out on the counter. You’d probably have to get a bath towel to clean this mess up.

You sunk to the floor, feeling the cool tiles against the back of your thighs.

Were you going to have to turn Kohei down? God, you didn’t want to do that. That sounded awkward. And he was genuinely a sweet guy – your heart just wasn’t in the right space.

Not while you were living with Iwaizumi.

Iwaizumi.

Something was off with him, too. But you had no idea what. He’s always been tight-lipped about his own feelings. Even two years ago, it had never been about him; it’d be about the potential ramifications his actions could’ve had on the people around him.

He never wanted to be a burden. Even though he’d leant you a hand so many times these past six months, you knew he’d never ask for the same in return.

But you wanted to help. He deserved support.

Should you ask? Should you try bringing it up, or—

“Oh, fuck.”

Your looked up sharply.

Iwaizumi was stood at the entrance of the kitchen, shoulders tense with surprise.

“Oh, sorry,” you swallowed, crossing your legs.

He just grunted in response, turning his attention to the fridge.

You bit your lip, watching him closely. His posture was tense, his jaw stiffer than usual.

“Hey, Hajime?” You asked, voice soft and quiet.

“What?” His response was quick, sharp.

“Are you alright?” Perhaps you should’ve asked this earlier. Perhaps you shouldn’t ask it at all. But it was too late to take it back.

“I’m fine,” he grunted, half-slamming the fridge door.

“I know you’re lying,” you said softly.

He may keep his feelings to himself, but he wasn’t the best at disguising them. Especially when it came to annoyance.

With Tooru, it tended to bubble over, resulting in some rant or threat. But these days, you didn’t really see him get pissed except for when the washing machine wasn’t working properly.

“Mind your own business.”

Those words cut you to your core.

This was… strange. Unusual. He’d seemed fine this morning, and as far as you knew, he’d just… been to the gym. His demeanour had only taken a nose-dive when…

“Why are you being like this?” You asked, voice thin and tight. God, this better not be what you were thinking.

“Being like what?” Iwaizumi mumbled, staring at his phone.

You bit the inside of your cheek.

Did he really have no idea that he was acting like a petulant child who didn’t want to eat their vegetables?

“Do you have a problem with Kohei?” He couldn’t dodge that question.

“No,” he said, still looking at his phone. “He just comes off as a bit desperate.”

“What’re you talking about?”

“You can’t be serious,” Iwaizumi scoffed. “He’s not subtle.”

You stared at him, total confusion clouding your mind.

What on earth was he on about? Desperate? Subtle? Wasn’t it just a case of him having a grudge for no reason?

Wait. Holy fuck. Was he… jealous?

The realisation washed over you like a fever.

Anger, rage, bitterness. It all collapsed in on itself, feelings you’d been supressing for two years.

He’d crushed your heart in the palm of his hand two years ago. Told you that any kind of romantic relationship between the two of you would be too much of a risk.

And you’d let him.

You hadn’t fought back. You hadn’t stood up for your own feelings. You’d just let him do what he wanted, what he thought was best. And never, not even once, had you made your feelings known.

But here he was, with the audacity to be jealous of a guy flirting with you.

He didn’t own you. He had no say in what happened in your personal life. If you wanted to sleep around, if you wanted to have a long-term partner that wasn’t him… it didn’t matter. It was your business, not his.

And yet, the worst thing of all was that this response, this jealousy, made your heart flutter. It made you hopeful; that maybe, this time, things might be different.

That Iwaizumi Hajime wasn’t so far out of reach. That this time, you had a chance.

Fuck him.

“No,” you hissed. “I’m not letting you break my heart again.”

Iwaizumi’s eyes blew wide, his lips parting slightly.

“You dropped me like I was nothing two years ago,” you scoffed. “You don’t get to act like a spoilt little brat just because you’re jealous.”

“Look, I—” He stopped himself in his tracks.

He really had nothing to say for himself, huh?

You glared at him, the corners of your eyes beginning to sting. “You’re acting like a child,” you hissed. “I hoped you were better than that.”

You didn’t give him time to respond.

He didn’t deserve to.

You stormed off to your room, slamming the door behind you.

A deep, shuddering breath wasn’t enough to still your stuttering heart. Nor was it enough to move the lump in your throat.

God, what a colossal disaster.  

But for once, it wasn’t your fault.

✧ ✧ ✧

a/n: sorry this one’s late! thank you for your patience :( i hope it was worth the wait

[innuendostudios]

Thoughts on: Criterion's Neo-Noir Collection

I have written up all 26 films* in the Criterion Channel's Neo-Noir Collection.

Legend: rw - rewatch; a movie I had seen before going through the collection dnrw - did not rewatch; if a movie met two criteria (a. I had seen it within the last 18 months, b. I actively dislike it) I wrote it up from memory.

* in September, Brick leaves the Criterion Channel and is replaced in the collection with Michael Mann's Thief. May add it to the list when that happens.

Note: These are very "what was on my mind after watching." No effort has been made to avoid spoilers, nor to make the plot clear for anyone who hasn't seen the movies in question. Decide for yourself if that's interesting to you.

Cotton Comes to Harlem I feel utterly unequipped to asses this movie. This and Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song the following year are regularly cited as the progenitors of the blaxploitation genre. (This is arguably unfair, since both were made by Black men and dealt much more substantively with race than the white-directed films that followed them.) Its heroes are a couple of Black cops who are treated with suspicion both by their white colleagues and by the Black community they're meant to police. I'm not 100% clear on whether they're the good guys? I mean, I think they are. But the community's suspicion of them seems, I dunno... well-founded? They are working for The Man. And there's interesting discussion to the had there - is the the problem that the law is carried out by racists, or is the law itself racist? Can Black cops make anything better? But it feels like the film stacks the deck in Gravedigger and Coffin Ed's favor; the local Black church is run by a conman, the Back-to-Africa movement is, itself, a con, and the local Black Power movement is treated as an obstacle. Black cops really are the only force for justice here. Movie portrays Harlem itself as a warm, thriving, cultured community, but the people that make up that community are disloyal and easily fooled. Felt, to me, like the message was "just because they're cops doesn't mean they don't have Black soul," which, nowadays, we would call copaganda. But, then, do I know what I'm talking about? Do I know how much this played into or off of or against stereotypes from 1970? Was this a radical departure I don't have the context to appreciate? Is there substance I'm too white and too many decades removed to pick up on? Am I wildly overthinking this? I dunno. Seems like everyone involved was having a lot of fun, at least. That bit is contagious.

Across 110th Street And here's the other side of the "race film" equation. Another movie set in Harlem with a Black cop pulled between the police, the criminals, and the public, but this time the film is made by white people. I like it both more and less. Pro: this time the difficult position of Black cop who's treated with suspicion by both white cops and Black Harlemites is interrogated. Con: the Black cop has basically no personality other than "honest cop." Pro: the racism of the police force is explicit and systemic, as opposed to comically ineffectual. Con: the movie is shaped around a racist white cop who beats the shit out of Black people but slowly forms a bond with his Black partner. Pro: the Black criminal at the heart of the movie talks openly about how the white world has stacked the deck against him, and he's soulful and relateable. Con: so of course he dies in the end, because the only way privileged people know to sympathetize with minorities is to make them tragic (see also: The Boys in the Band, Philadelphia, and Brokeback Mountain for gay men). Additional con: this time Harlem is portrayed as a hellhole. Barely any of the community is even seen. At least the shot at the end, where the criminal realizes he's going to die and throws the bag of money off a roof and into a playground so the Black kids can pick it up before the cops reclaim it was powerful. But overall... yech. Cotton Comes to Harlem felt like it wasn't for me; this feels like it was 100% for me and I respect it less for that.

The Long Goodbye (rw) The shaggiest dog. Like much Altman, more compelling than good, but very compelling. Raymond Chandler's story is now set in the 1970's, but Philip Marlowe is the same Philip Marlowe of the 1930's. I get the sense there was always something inherently sad about Marlowe. Classic noir always portrayed its detectives as strong-willed men living on the border between the straightlaced world and its seedy underbelly, crossing back and forth freely but belonging to neither. But Chandler stresses the loneliness of it - or, at least, the people who've adapted Chandler do. Marlowe is a decent man in an indecent world, sorting things out, refusing to profit from misery, but unable to set anything truly right. Being a man out of step is here literalized by putting him forty years from the era where he belongs. His hardboiled internal monologue is now the incessant mutterings of the weird guy across the street who never stops smoking. Like I said: compelling! Kael's observation was spot on: everyone in the movie knows more about the mystery than he does, but he's the only one who cares. The mystery is pretty threadbare - Marlowe doesn't detect so much as end up in places and have people explain things to him. But I've seen it two or three times now, and it does linger.

Chinatown (rw) I confess I've always been impressed by Chinatown more than I've liked it. Its story structure is impeccable, its atmosphere is gorgeous, its noirish fatalism is raw and real, its deconstruction of the noir hero is well-observed, and it's full of clever detective tricks (the pocket watches, the tail light, the ruler). I've just never connected with it. Maybe it's a little too perfectly crafted. (I feel similar about Miller's Crossing.) And I've always been ambivalent about the ending. In Towne's original ending, Evelyn shoots Noah Cross dead and get arrested, and neither she nor Jake can tell the truth of why she did it, so she goes to jail for murder and her daughter is in the wind. Polansky proposed the ending that exists now, where Evelyn just dies, Cross wins, and Jake walks away devastated. It communicates the same thing: Jake's attempt to get smart and play all the sides off each other instead of just helping Evelyn escape blows up in his face at the expense of the woman he cares about and any sense of real justice. And it does this more dramatically and efficiently than Towne's original ending. But it also treats Evelyn as narratively disposable, and hands the daughter over to the man who raped Evelyn and murdered her husband. It makes the women suffer more to punch up the ending. But can I honestly say that Towne's ending is the better one? It is thematically equal, dramatically inferior, but would distract me less. Not sure what the calculus comes out to there. Maybe there should be a third option. Anyway! A perfect little contraption. Belongs under a glass dome.

Night Moves (rw) Ah yeah, the good shit. This is my quintessential 70's noir. This is three movies in a row about detectives. Thing is, the classic era wasn't as chockablock with hardboiled detectives as we think; most of those movies starred criminals, cops, and boring dudes seduced to the darkness by a pair of legs. Gumshoes just left the strongest impressions. (The genre is said to begin with Maltese Falcon and end with Touch of Evil, after all.) So when the post-Code 70's decided to pick the genre back up while picking it apart, it makes sense that they went for the 'tecs first. The Long Goodbye dragged the 30's detective into the 70's, and Chinatown went back to the 30's with a 70's sensibility. But Night Moves was about detecting in the Watergate era, and how that changed the archetype. Harry Moseby is the detective so obsessed with finding the truth that he might just ruin his life looking for it, like the straight story will somehow fix everything that's broken, like it'll bring back a murdered teenager and repair his marriage and give him a reason to forgive the woman who fucked him just to distract him from some smuggling. When he's got time to kill, he takes out a little, magnetic chess set and recreates a famous old game, where three knight moves (get it?) would have led to a beautiful checkmate had the player just seen it. He keeps going, self-destructing, because he can't stand the idea that the perfect move is there if he can just find it. And, no matter how much we see it destroy him, we, the audience, want him to keep going; we expect a satisfying resolution to the mystery. That's what we need from a detective picture; one character flat-out compares Harry to Sam Spade. But what if the truth is just... Watergate? Just some prick ruining things for selfish reasons? Nothing grand, nothing satisfying. Nothing could be more noir, or more neo-, than that.

Farewell, My Lovely Sometimes the only thing that makes a noir neo- is that it's in color and all the blood, tits, and racism from the books they're based on get put back in. This second stab at Chandler is competant but not much more than that. Mitchum works as Philip Marlowe, but Chandler's dialogue feels off here, like lines that worked on the page don't work aloud, even though they did when Bogie said them. I'll chalk it up to workmanlike but uninspired direction. (Dang this looks bland so soon after Chinatown.) Moose Malloy is a great character, and perfectly cast. (Wasn't sure at first, but it's true.) Some other interesting cats show up and vanish - the tough brothel madam based on Brenda Allen comes to mind, though she's treated with oddly more disdain than most of the other hoods and is dispatched quicker. In general, the more overt racism and misogyny doesn't seem to do anything except make the movie "edgier" than earlier attempts at the same material, and it reads kinda try-hard. But it mostly holds together. *shrug*

The Killing of a Chinese Bookie (dnrw) Didn't care for this at all. Can't tell if the script was treated as a jumping-off point or if the dialogue is 100% improvised, but it just drags on forever and is never that interesting. Keeps treating us to scenes from the strip club like they're the opera scenes in Amadeus, and, whatever, I don't expect burlesque to be Mozart, but Cosmo keeps saying they're an artful, classy joint, and I keep waiting for the show to be more than cheap, lazy camp. How do you make gratuitious nudity boring? Mind you, none of this is bad as a rule - I love digressions and can enjoy good sleaze, and it's clear the filmmakers care about what they're making. They just did not sell it in a way I wanted to buy. Can't remember what edit I watched; I hope it was the 135 minute one, because I cannot imagine there being a longer edit out there.

The American Friend (dnrw) It's weird that this is Patricia Highsmith, right? That Dennis Hopper is playing Tom Ripley? In a cowboy hat? I gather that Minghella's version wasn't true to the source, but I do love that movie, and this is a long, long way from that. This Mr. Ripley isn't even particularly talented! Anyway, this has one really great sequence, where a regular guy has been coerced by crooks into murdering someone on a train platform, and, when the moment comes to shoot, he doesn't. And what follows is a prolonged sequence of an amateur trying to surreptitiously tail a guy across a train station and onto another train, and all the while you're not sure... is he going to do it? is he going to chicken out? is he going to do it so badly he gets caught? It's hard not to put yourself in the protagonist's shoes, wondering how you would handle the situation, whether you could do it, whether you could act on impulse before your conscience could catch up with you. It drags on a long while and this time it's a good thing. Didn't much like the rest of the movie, it's shapeless and often kind of corny, and the central plot hook is contrived. (It's also very weird that this is the only Wim Wenders I've seen.) But, hey, I got one excellent sequence, not gonna complain.

The Big Sleep Unlike the 1946 film, I can follow the plot of this Big Sleep. But, also unlike the 1946 version, this one isn't any damn fun. Mitchum is back as Marlowe (this is three Marlowes in five years, btw), and this time it's set in the 70's and in England, for some reason. I don't find this offensive, but neither do I see what it accomplishes? Most of the cast is still American. (Hi Jimmy!) Still holds together, but even less well than Farewell, My Lovely. But I do find it interesting that the neo-noir era keeps returning to Chandler while it's pretty much left Hammet behind (inasmuch as someone whose genes are spread wide through the whole genre can be left behind). Spade and the Continental Op, straightshooting tough guys who come out on top in the end, seem antiquated in the (post-)modern era. But Marlowe's goodness being out of sync with the world around him only seems more poignant the further you take him from his own time. Nowadays you can really only do Hammett as pastiche, but I sense that you could still play Chandler straight.

Eyes of Laura Mars The most De Palma movie I've seen not made by De Palma, complete with POV shots, paranormal hoodoo, and fixation with sex, death, and whether images of such are art or exploitation (or both). Laura Mars takes photographs of naked women in violent tableux, and has gotten quite famous doing so, but is it damaging to women? The movie has more than a superficial engagement with this topic, but only slightly more than superficial. Kept imagining a movie that is about 30% less serial killer story and 30% more art conversations. (But, then, I have an art degree and have never murdered anyone, so.) Like, museums are full of Biblical paintings full of nude women and slaughter, sometimes both at once, and they're called masterpieces. Most all of them were painted by men on commission from other men. Now Laura Mars makes similar images in modern trappings, and has models made of flesh and blood rather than paint, and it's scandalous? Why is it only controversial once women are getting paid for it? On the other hand, is this just the master's tools? Is she subverting or challenging the male gaze, or just profiting off of it? Or is a woman profiting off of it, itself, a subversion? Is it subversive enough to account for how it commodifies female bodies? These questions are pretty clearly relevant to the movie itself, and the movies in general, especially after the fall of the Hays Code when people were really unrestrained with the blood and boobies. And, heck, the lead is played by the star of Bonnie and Clyde! All this is to say: I wish the movie were as interested in these questions as I am. What's there is a mildly diverting B-picture. There's one great bit where Laura's seeing through the killer's eyes (that's the hook, she gets visions from the murderer's POV; no, this is never explained) and he's RIGHT BEHIND HER, so there's a chase where she charges across an empty room only able to see her own fleeing self from ten feet behind. That was pretty great! And her first kiss with the detective (because you could see a mile away that the detective and the woman he's supposed to protect are gonna fall in love) is immediately followed by the two freaking out about how nonsensical it is for them to fall in love with each other, because she's literally mourning multiple deaths and he's being wildly unprofessional, and then they go back to making out. That bit was great, too. The rest... enh.

The Onion Field What starts off as a seemingly not-that-noirish cops-vs-crooks procedural turns into an agonizingly protracted look at the legal system, with the ultimate argument that the very idea of the law ever resulting in justice is a lie. Hoo! I have to say, I'm impressed. There's a scene where a lawyer - whom I'm not sure is even named, he's like the seventh of thirteen we've met - literally quits the law over how long this court case about two guys shooting a cop has taken. He says the cop who was murdered has been forgotten, his partner has never gotten to move on because the case has lasted eight years, nothing has been accomplished, and they should let the two criminals walk and jail all the judges and lawyers instead. It's awesome! The script is loaded with digressions and unnecessary details, just the way I like it. Can't say I'm impressed with the execution. Nothing is wrong, exactly, but the performances all seem a tad melodramatic or a tad uninspired. Camerawork is, again, purely functional. It's no masterpiece. But that second half worked for me. (And it's Ted Danson's first movie! He did great.)

Body Heat (rw) Let's say up front that this is a handsomely-made movie. Probably the best looking thing on the list since Night Moves. Nothing I've seen better captures the swelter of an East Coast heatwave, or the lusty feeling of being too hot to bang and going at it regardless. Kathleen Turner sells the hell out of a femme fatale. There are a lot of good lines and good performances (Ted Danson is back and having the time of his life). I want to get all that out of the way, because this is a movie heavily modeled after Double Indemnity, and I wanted to discuss its merits before I get into why inviting that comparison doesn't help the movie out. In a lot of ways, it's the same rules as the Robert Mitchum Marlowe movies - do Double Indemnity but amp up the sex and violence. And, to a degree it works. (At least, the sex does, dunno that Double Indemnity was crying out for explosions.) But the plot is amped as well, and gets downright silly. Yeah, Mrs. Dietrichson seduces Walter Neff so he'll off her husband, but Neff clocks that pretty early and goes along with it anyway. Everything beyond that is two people keeping too big a secret and slowly turning on each other. But here? For the twists to work Matty has to be, from frame one, playing four-dimensional chess on the order of Senator Palpatine, and its about as plausible. (Exactly how did she know, after she rebuffed Ned, he would figure out her local bar and go looking for her at the exact hour she was there?) It's already kind of weird to be using the spider woman trope in 1981, but to make her MORE sexually conniving and mercenary than she was in the 40's is... not great. As lurid trash, it's pretty fun for a while, but some noir stuff can't just be updated, it needs to be subverted or it doesn't justify its existence.

Blow Out Brian De Palma has two categories of movie: he's got his mainstream, director-for-hire fare, where his voice is either reigned in or indulged in isolated sequences that don't always jive with the rest fo the film, and then there's his Brian De Palma movies. My mistake, it seems, is having seen several for-hires from throughout his career - The Untouchables (fine enough), Carlito's Way (ditto, but less), Mission: Impossible (enh) - but had only seen De Palma-ass movies from his late period (Femme Fatale and The Black Dahlia, both of which I think are garbage). All this to say: Blow Out was my first classic-era De Palma, and holy fucking shit dudes. This was (with caveats) my absolute and entire jam. I said I could enjoy good sleaze, and this is good friggin' sleaze. (Though far short of De Palma at his sleaziest, mercifully.) The splitscreens, the diopter shots, the canted angles, how does he make so many shlocky things work?! John Travolta's sound tech goes out to get fresh wind fx for the movie he's working on, and we get this wonderful sequence of visuals following sounds as he turns his attention and his microphone to various noises - a couple on a walk, a frog, an owl, a buzzing street lamp. Later, as he listens back to the footage, the same sequence plays again, but this time from his POV; we're seeing his memory as guided by the same sequence of sounds, now recreated with different shots, as he moves his pencil in the air mimicking the microphone. When he mixes and edits sounds, we hear the literal soundtrack of the movie we are watching get mixed and edited by the person on screen. And as he tries to unravel a murder mystery, he uses what's at hand: magnetic tape, flatbed editors, an animation camera to turn still photos from the crime scene into a film and sync it with the audio he recorded; it's forensics using only the tools of the editing room. As someone who's spent some time in college editing rooms, this is a hoot and a half. Loses a bit of steam as it goes on and the film nerd stuff gives way to a more traditional thriller, but rallies for a sound-tech-centered final setpiece, which steadily builds to such madcap heights you can feel the air thinning, before oddly cutting its own tension and then trying to build it back up again. It doesn't work as well the second time. But then, that shot right after the climax? Damn. Conflicted on how the movie treats the female lead. I get why feminist film theorists are so divided on De Palma. His stuff is full of things feminists (rightly) criticize, full of women getting naked when they're not getting stabbed, but he also clearly finds women fascinating and has them do empowered and unexpected things, and there are many feminist reads of his movies. Call it a mixed bag. But even when he's doing tropey shit, he explores the tropes in unexpected ways. Definitely the best movie so far that I hadn't already seen.

Cutter's Way (rw) Alex Cutter is pitched to us as an obnoxious-but-sympathetic son of a bitch, and, you know, two out of three ain't bad. Watched this during my 2020 neo-noir kick and considered skipping it this time because I really didn't enjoy it. Found it a little more compelling this go around, while being reminded of why my feelings were room temp before. Thematically, I'm onboard: it's about a guy, Cutter, getting it in his head that he's found a murderer and needs to bring him to justice, and his friend, Bone, who intermittently helps him because he feels bad that Cutter lost his arm, leg, and eye in Nam and he also feels guilty for being in love with Cutter's wife. The question of whether the guy they're trying to bring down actually did it is intentionally undefined, and arguably unimportant; they've got personal reasons to see this through. Postmodern and noirish, fixated with the inability to ever fully know the truth of anything, but starring people so broken by society that they're desperate for certainty. (Pretty obvious parallels to Vietnam.) Cutter's a drunk and kind of an asshole, but understandably so. Bone's shiftlessness is the other response to a lack of meaning in the world, to the point where making a decision, any decision, feels like character growth, even if it's maybe killing a guy whose guilt is entirely theoretical. So, yeah, I'm down with all of this! A- in outline form. It's just that Cutter is so uninterestingly unpleasant and no one else on screen is compelling enough to make up for it. His drunken windups are tedious and his sanctimonious speeches about what the war was like are, well, true and accurate but also obviously manipulative. It's two hours with two miserable people, and I think Cutter's constant chatter is supposed to be the comic relief but it's a little too accurate to drunken rambling, which isn't funny if you're not also drunk. He's just tedious, irritating, and periodically racist. Pass.

Blood Simple (rw) I'm pretty cool on the Coens - there are things I've liked, even loved, in every Coen film I've seen, but I always come away dissatisfied. For a while, I kept going to their movies because I was sure eventually I'd love one without qualification. No Country for Old Men came close, the first two acts being master classes in sustained tension. But then the third act is all about denying closure: the protagonist is murdered offscreen, the villain's motives are never explained, and it ends with an existentialist speech about the unfathomable cruelty of the world. And it just doesn't land for me. The archness of the Coen's dialogue, the fussiness of their set design, the kinda-intimate, kinda-awkward, kinda-funny closeness of the camera's singles, it cannot sell me on a devastating meditation about meaninglessness. It's only ever sold me on the Coens' own cleverness. And that archness, that distancing, has typified every one of their movies I've come close to loving. Which is a long-ass preamble to saying, holy heck, I was not prepared for their very first movie to be the one I'd been looking for! I watched it last year and it remains true on rewatch: Blood Simple works like gangbusters. It's kind of Double Indemnity (again) but played as a comedy of errors, minus the comedy: two people romantically involved feeling their trust unravel after a murder. And I think the first thing that works for me is that utter lack of comedy. It's loaded with the Coens' trademark ironies - mostly dramatic in this case - but it's all played straight. Unlike the usual lead/femme fatale relationship, where distrust brews as the movie goes on, the audience knows the two main characters can trust each other. There are no secret duplicitous motives waiting to be revealed. The audience also know why they don't trust each other. (And it's all communicated wordlessly, btw: a character enters a scene and we know, based on the information that character has, how it looks to them and what suspicions it would arouse, even as we know the truth of it). The second thing that works is, weirdly, that the characters aren't very interesting?! Ray and Abby have almost no characterization. Outside of a general likability, they are blank slates. This is a weakness in most films, but, given the agonizingly long, wordless sequences where they dispose of bodies or hide from gunfire, you're left thinking not "what will Ray/Abby do in this scenario," because Ray and Abby are relatively elemental and undefined, but "what would I do in this scenario?" Which creates an exquisite tension but also, weirdly, creates more empathy than I feel for the Coens' usual cast of personalities. It's supposed to work the other way around! Truly enjoyable throughout but absolutely wonderful in the suspenseful-as-hell climax. Good shit right here.

Body Double The thing about erotic thrillers is everything that matters is in the name. Is it thrilling? Is it erotic? Good; all else is secondary. De Palma set out to make the most lurid, voyeuristic, horny, violent, shocking, steamy movie he could come up with, and its success was not strictly dependent on the lead's acting ability or the verisimilitude of the plot. But what are we, the modern audience, to make of it once 37 years have passed and, by today's standards, the eroticism is quite tame and the twists are no longer shocking? Then we're left with a nonsensical riff on Vertigo, a specularization of women that is very hard to justify, and lead actor made of pulped wood. De Palma's obsessions don't cohere into anything more this time; the bits stolen from Hitchcock aren't repurposed to new ends, it really is just Hitch with more tits and less brains. (I mean, I still haven't seen Vertigo, but I feel 100% confident in that statement.) The diopter shots and rear-projections this time look cheap (literally so, apparently; this had 1/3 the budget of Blow Out). There are some mildly interesting setpieces, but nothing compared to Travolta's auditory reconstructions or car chase where he tries to tail a subway train from street level even if it means driving through a frickin parade like an inverted French Connection, goddamn Blow Out was a good movie! Anyway. Melanie Griffith seems to be having fun, at least. I guess I had a little as well, but it was, at best, diverting, and a real letdown.

The Hit Surprised by how much I enjoyed this one. Terrance Stamp flips on the mob and spends ten years living a life of ease in Spain, waiting for the day they find and kill him. Movie kicks off when they do find him, and what follows is a ramshackle road movie as John Hurt and a young Tim Roth attempt to drive him to Paris so they can shoot him in front of his old boss. Stamp is magnetic. He's spent a decade reading philosophy and seems utterly prepared for death, so he spends the trip humming, philosophizing, and being friendly with his captors when he's not winding them up. It remains unclear to the end whether the discord he sews between Roth and Hurt is part of some larger plan of escape or just for shits and giggles. There's also a decent amount of plot for a movie that's not terribly plot-driven - just about every part of the kidnapping has tiny hitches the kidnappers aren't prepared for, and each has film-long repercussions, drawing the cops closer and somehow sticking Laura del Sol in their backseat. The ongoing questions are when Stamp will die, whether del Sol will die, and whether Roth will be able to pull the trigger. In the end, it's actually a meditation on ethics and mortality, but in a quiet and often funny way. It's not going to go down as one of my new favs, but it was a nice way to spend a couple hours.

Trouble in Mind (dnrw) I fucking hated this movie. It's been many months since I watched it, do I remember what I hated most? Was it the bit where a couple of country bumpkins who've come to the city walk into a diner and Mr. Bumpkin clocks that the one Black guy in the back as obviously a criminal despite never having seen him before? Was it the part where Kris Kristofferson won't stop hounding Mrs. Bumpkin no matter how many times she demands to be left alone, and it's played as romantic because obviously he knows what she needs better than she does? Or is it the part where Mr. Bumpkin reluctantly takes a job from the Obvious Criminal (who is, in fact, a criminal, and the only named Black character in the movie if I remember correctly, draw your own conclusions) and, within a week, has become a full-blown hood, which is exemplified by a lot, like, a lot of queer-coding? The answer to all three questions is yes. It's also fucking boring. Even out-of-drag Divine's performance as the villain can't save it.

Manhunter 'sfine? I've still never seen Silence of the Lambs, nor any of the Hopkins Lecter movies, nor, indeed, any full episode of the show. So the unheimlich others get seeing Brian Cox play Hannibal didn't come into play. Cox does a good job with him, but he's barely there. Shame, cuz he's the most interesting part of the movie. Honestly, there's a lot of interesting stuff that's barely there. Will Graham being a guy who gets into the heads of serial killers is explored well enough, and Mann knows how to direct a police procedural such that it's both contemplative and propulsive. But all the other themes it points at? Will's fear that he understands murderers a little too well? Hannibal trying to nudge him towards becoming one? Whatever dance Hannibal and Tooth Fairy are doing? What Tooth Fairy's deal is, anyway? (Why does he wear fake teeth and bite things? Why is he fixated on the red dragon? Does the bit where he says "Francis is gone forever" mean he has DID?) None of it goes anywhere or amounts to anything. I mean, it's certainly more interesting with this stuff than without, but it has that feel of a book that's been pared of its interesting bits to fit the runtime (or, alternately, pulp that's been sloppily elevated). I still haven't made my mind up on Mann's cold, precise camera work, but at least it gives me something to look at. It's fine! This is fine.

Mona Lisa (rw) Gave this one another shot. Bob Hoskins is wonderful as a hood out of his depth in classy places, quick to anger but just as quick to let anger go (the opening sequence where he's screaming on his ex-wife's doorstep, hurling trash cans at her house, and one minute later thrilled to see his old car, is pretty nice). And Cathy Tyson's working girl is a subtler kind of fascinating, exuding a mixture of coldness and kindness. It's just... this is ultimately a story about how heartbreaking it is when the girl you like is gay, right? It's Weezer's Pink Triangle: The Movie. It's not homophobic, exactly - Simone isn't demonized for being a lesbian - but it's still, like, "man, this straight white guy's pain is so much more interesting than the Black queer sex worker's." And when he's yelling "you woulda done it!" at the end, I can't tell if we're supposed to agree with him. Seems pretty clear that she wouldn'ta done it, at least not without there being some reveal about her character that doesn't happen, but I don't think the ending works if we don't agree with him, so... I'm like 70% sure the movie does Simone dirty there. For the first half, their growing relationship feels genuine and natural, and, honestly, the story being about a real bond that unfortunately means different things to each party could work if it didn't end with a gun and a sock in the jaw. Shape feels jagged as well; what feels like the end of the second act or so turns out to be the climax. And some of the symbolism is... well, ok, Simone gives George money to buy more appropriate clothes for hanging out in high end hotels, and he gets a tan leather jacket and a Hawaiian shirt, and their first proper bonding moment is when she takes him out for actual clothes. For the rest of the movie he is rocking double-breasted suits (not sure I agree with the striped tie, but it was the eighties, whaddya gonna do?). Then, in the second half, she sends him off looking for her old streetwalker friend, and now he looks completely out of place in the strip clubs and bordellos. So far so good. But then they have this run-in where her old pimp pulls a knife and cuts George's arm, so, with his nice shirt torn and it not safe going home (I guess?) he starts wearing the Hawaiian shirt again. So around the time he's starting to realize he doesn't really belong in Simone's world or the lowlife world he came from anymore, he's running around with the classy double-breasted suit jacket over the garish Hawaiian shirt, and, yeah, bit on the nose guys. Anyway, it has good bits, I just feel like a movie that asks me to feel for the guy punching a gay, Black woman in the face needs to work harder to earn it. Bit of wasted talent.

The Bedroom Window Starts well. Man starts an affair with his boss' wife, their first night together she witnesses an attempted murder from his window, she worries going to the police will reveal the affair to her husband, so the man reports her testimony to the cops claiming he's the one who saw it. Young Isabelle Huppert is the perfect woman for a guy to risk his career on a crush over, and Young Steve Guttenberg is the perfect balance of affability and amorality. And it flows great - picks just the right media to res. So then he's talking to the cops, telling them what she told him, and they ask questions he forgot to ask her - was the perp's jacket a blazer or a windbreaker? - and he has to guess. Then he gets called into the police lineup, and one guy matches her description really well, but is it just because he's wearing his red hair the way she described it? He can't be sure, doesn't finger any of them. He finds out the cops were pretty certain about one of the guys, so he follows the one he thinks it was around, looking for more evidence, and another girl is attacked right outside a bar he knows the redhead was at. Now he's certain! But he shows the boss' wife the guy and she's not certain, and she reminds him they don't even know if the guy he followed is the same guy the police suspected! And as he feeds more evidence to the cops, he has to lie more, because he can't exactly say he was tailing the guy around the city. So, I'm all in now. Maybe it's because I'd so recently rewatched Night Moves and Cutter's Way, but this seems like another story about uncertainty. He's really certain about the guy because it fits narratively, and we, the audience, feel the same. But he's not actually a witness, he doesn't have actual evidence, he's fitting bits and pieces together like a conspiracy theorist. He's fixating on what he wants to be true. Sign me up! But then it turns out he's 100% correct about who the killer is but his lies are found out and now the cops think he's the killer and I realize, oh, no, this movie isn't nearly as smart as I thought it was. Egg on my face! What transpires for the remaining half of the runtime is goofy as hell, and someone with shlockier sensibilities could have made a meal of it, but Hanson, despite being a Corman protege, takes this silliness seriously in the all wrong ways. Next!

Homicide (rw? I think I saw most of this on TV one time) Homicide centers around the conflicted loyalties of a Jewish cop. It opens with the Jewish cop and his white gentile partner taking over a case with a Black perp from some Black FBI agents. The media is making a big thing about the racial implications of the mostly white cops chasing down a Black man in a Black neighborhood. And inside of 15 minutes the FBI agent is calling the lead a k*ke and the gentile cop is calling the FBI agent a f****t and there's all kinds of invective for Black people. The film is announcing its intentions out the gate: this movie is about race. But the issue here is David Mamet doesn't care about race as anything other than a dramatic device. He's the Ubisoft of filmmakers, having no coherent perspective on social issues but expecting accolades for even bringing them up. Mamet is Jewish (though lead actor Joe Mantegna definitely is not) but what is his position on the Jewish diaspora? The whole deal is Mantegna gets stuck with a petty homicide case instead of the big one they just pinched from the Feds, where a Jewish candy shop owner gets shot in what looks like a stickup. Her family tries to appeal to his Jewishness to get him to take the case seriously, and, after giving them the brush-off for a long time, finally starts following through out of guilt, finding bits and pieces of what may or may not be a conspiracy, with Zionist gun runners and underground neo-Nazis. But, again: all of these are just dramatic devices. Mantegna's Jewishness (those words will never not sound ridiculous together) has always been a liability for him as a cop (we are told, not shown), and taking the case seriously is a reclamation of identity. The Jews he finds community with sold tommyguns to revolutionaries during the founding of Israel. These Jews end up blackmailing him to get a document from the evidence room. So: what is the film's position on placing stock in one's Jewish identity? What is its position on Israel? What is its opinion on Palestine? Because all three come up! And the answer is: Mamet doesn't care. You can read it a lot of different ways. Someone with more context and more patience than me could probably deduce what the de facto message is, the way Chris Franklin deduced the de facto message of Far Cry V despite the game's efforts not to have one, but I'm not going to. Mantegna's attempt to reconnect with his Jewishness gets his partner killed, gets the guy he was supposed to bring in alive shot dead, gets him possibly permanent injuries, gets him on camera blowing up a store that's a front for white nationalists, and all for nothing because the "clues" he found (pretty much exclusively by coincidence) were unconnected nothings. The problem is either his Jewishness, or his lifelong failure to connect with his Jewishness until late in life. Mamet doesn't give a shit. (Like, Mamet canonically doesn't give a shit: he is on record saying social context is meaningless, characters only exist to serve the plot, and there are no deeper meanings in fiction.) Mamet's ping-pong dialogue is fun, as always, and there are some neat ideas and characters, but it's all in service of a big nothing that needed to be a something to work.

Swoon So much I could talk about, let's keep it to the most interesting bits. Hommes Fatales: a thing about classic noir that it was fascinated by the marginal but had to keep it in the margins. Liberated women, queer-coded killers, Black jazz players, broke thieves; they were the main event, they were what audiences wanted to see, they were what made the movies fun. But the ending always had to reassert straightlaced straight, white, middle-class male society as unshakeable. White supremacist capitalist patriarchy demanded, both ideologically and via the Hays Code, that anyone outside these norms be punished, reformed, or dead by the movie's end. The only way to make them the heroes was to play their deaths for tragedy. It is unsurprising that neo-noir would take the queer-coded villains and make them the protagonists. Implicature: This is the story of Leopold and Loeb, murderers famous for being queer, and what's interesting is how the queerness in the first half exists entirely outside of language. Like, it's kind of amazing for a movie from 1992 to be this gay - we watch Nathan and Dickie kiss, undress, masturbate, fuck; hell, they wear wedding rings when they're alone together. But it's never verbalized. Sex is referred to as "your reward" or "what you wanted" or "best time." Dickie says he's going to have "the girls over," and it turns out "the girls" are a bunch of drag queens, but this is never acknowledged. Nathan at one point lists off a bunch of famous men - Oscar Wild, E.M. Forster, Frederick the Great - but, though the commonality between them is obvious (they were all gay), it's left the the audience to recognize it. When their queerness is finally verbalized in the second half, it's first in the language of pathology - a psychiatrist describing their "perversions" and "misuse" of their "organs" before the court, which has to be cleared of women because it's so inappropriate - and then with slurs from the man who murders Dickie in jail (a murder which is written off with no investigation because the victim is a gay prisoner instead of a L&L's victim, a child of a wealthy family). I don't know if I'd have noticed this if I hadn't read Chip Delany describing his experience as a gay man in the 50's existing almost entirely outside of language, the only language at the time being that of heteronormativity. Murder as Love Story: L&L exchange sex as payment for the other commiting crimes; it's foreplay. Their statements to the police where they disagree over who's to blame is a lover's quarrel. Their sentencing is a marriage. Nathan performs his own funeral rites over Dickie's body after he dies on the operating table. They are, in their way, together til death did they part. This is the relationship they can have. That it does all this without romanticizing the murder itself or valorizing L&L as humans is frankly incredible.

Suture (rw) The pitch: at the funeral for his father, wealthy Vincent Towers meets his long lost half brother Clay Arlington. It is implied Clay is a child from out of wedlock, possibly an affair; no one knows Vincent has a half-brother but him and Clay. Vincent invites Clay out to his fancy-ass home in Arizona. Thing is, Vincent is suspected (correctly) by the police of having murdered his father, and, due to a striking family resemblence, he's brought Clay to his home to fake his own death. He finagles Clay into wearing his clothes and driving his car, and then blows the car up and flees the state, leaving the cops to think him dead. Thing is, Clay survives, but with amnesia. The doctors tell him he's Vincent, and he has no reason to disagree. Any discrepancy in the way he looks is dismissed as the result of reconstructive surgery after the explosion. So Clay Arlington resumes Vincent Towers' life, without knowing Clay Arlington even exists. The twist: Clay and Vincent are both white, but Vincent is played by Michael Harris, a white actor, and Clay is played by Dennis Haysbert, a Black actor. "Ian, if there's just the two of them, how do you know it's not Harris playing a Black character?" Glad you asked! It is most explicitly obvious during a scene where Vincent/Clay's surgeon-cum-girlfriend essentially bringing up phrenology to explain how Vincent/Clay couldn't possibly have murdered his father, describing straight hair, thin lips, and a Greco-Roman nose Haysbert very clearly doesn't have. But, let's be honest: we knew well beforehand that the rich-as-fuck asshole living in a huge, modern house and living it up in Arizona high society was white. Though Clay is, canonically, white, he lives an poor and underprivileged life common to Black men in America. Though the film's title officially refers to the many stitches holding Vincent/Clay's face together after the accident, "suture" is a film theory term, referring to the way a film audience gets wrapped up - sutured - in the world of the movie, choosing to forget the outside world and pretend the story is real. The usage is ironic, because the audience cannot be sutured in; we cannot, and are not expected to, suspend our disbelief that Clay is white. We are deliberately distanced. Consequently this is a movie to be thought about, not to to be felt. It has the shape of a Hitchcockian thriller but it can't evoke the emotions of one. You can see the scaffolding - "ah, yes, this is the part of a thriller where one man hides while another stalks him with a gun, clever." I feel ill-suited to comment on what the filmmakers are saying about race. I could venture a guess about the ending, where the psychiatrist, the only one who knows the truth about Clay, says he can never truly be happy living the lie of being Vincent Towers, while we see photographs of Clay/Vincent seemingly living an extremely happy life: society says white men simply belong at the top more than Black men do, but, if the roles could be reversed, the latter would slot in seamlessly. Maybe??? Of all the movies in this collection, this is the one I'd most want to read an essay on (followed by Swoon).

The Last Seduction (dnrw) No, no, no, I am not rewataching this piece of shit movie.

Brick (rw) Here's my weird contention: Brick is in color and in widescreen, but, besides that? There's nothing neo- about this noir. There's no swearing except "hell." (I always thought Tug said "goddamn" at one point but, no, he's calling The Pin "gothed-up.") There's a lot of discussion of sex, but always through implication, and the only deleted scene is the one that removed ambiguity about what Brendan and Laura get up to after kissing. There's nothing postmodern or subversive - yes, the hook is it's set in high school, but the big twist is that it takes this very seriously. It mines it for jokes, yes, but the drama is authentic. In fact, making the gumshoe a high school student, his jadedness an obvious front, still too young to be as hard as he tries to be, just makes the drama hit harder. Sam Spade if Sam Spade were allowed to cry. I've always found it an interesting counterpoint to The Good German, a movie that fastidiously mimics the aesthetics of classic noir - down to even using period-appropriate sound recording - but is wholly neo- in construction. Brick could get approved by the Hays Code. Its vibe, its plot about a detective playing a bunch of criminals against each other, even its slang ("bulls," "yegg," "flopped") are all taken directly from Hammett. It's not even stealing from noir, it's stealing from what noir stole from! It's a perfect curtain call for the collection: the final film is both the most contemporary and the most classic. It's also - but for the strong case you could make for Night Moves - the best movie on the list. It's even more appropriate for me, personally: this was where it all started for me and noir. I saw this in theaters when it came out and loved it. It was probably my favorite movie for some time. It gave me a taste for pulpy crime movies which I only, years later, realized were neo-noir. This is why I looked into Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang and In Bruges. I've seen it more times than any film on this list, by a factor of at least 3. It's why I will always adore Rian Johnson and Joseph Gordon-Levitt. It's the best-looking half-million-dollar movie I've ever seen. (Indie filmmakers, take fucking notes.) I even did a script analysis of this, and, yes, it follows the formula, but so tightly and with so much style. Did you notice that he says several of the sequence tensions out loud? ("I just want to find her." "Show of hands.") I notice new things each time I see it - this time it was how "brushing Brendan's hair out of his face" is Em's move, making him look more like he does in the flashback, and how Laura does the same to him as she's seducing him, in the moment when he misses Em the hardest. It isn't perfect. It's recreated noir so faithfully that the Innocent Girl dies, the Femme Fatale uses intimacy as a weapon, and none of the women ever appear in a scene together. 1940's gender politics maybe don't need to be revisited. They say be critical of the media you love, and it applies here most of all: it is a real criticism of something I love immensely.

[ja-khajay]

Stuff I read (and liked) this year

As promised, here’s a list of the novels, comics, manga, etc... I read this year, focusing on the ones I enjoyed and would recommend to people. Under a cut, this is going to be a little long.

-------- Books --------

Favorite book of the year: Stranger in the Woods, by Michael Finkel

Non-fiction. Based on the interviews of the man himself by the author, it is about a man who felt so unfit for society he decided one day to leave it, and spent the next 28 years as a hidden hermit in forest in Maine. The book details how he survived there, how he was eventually found, and some of his reasons for doing so. It’s a great reflection on the nature of loneliness.

Indian creek, by Pete Fromm

...Yet another detailed tale of living alone in the woods. This time, the diary of a student who spent a winter in the mountains to help tend for salmon hatchlings, and how he spent the rest of his days hiking, hunting, meeting the locals. It’s a fun little book who, being set almost the whole world away from where I live, was a nice way to travel.

Howl’s Moving Castle, by Diana Wynne Jones

I don’t feel the need to explain this one since everyone and their mom has seen the movie adapted from it. The book, that I first read a decade ago before I actually watched the film, is a less romantized, more spirited telling of the same story. The writing is absolutely delightful and so is the world it paints, and it’s the first time in ages a book had me laughing out loud during my entire read.

-------- Comics (BD) --------

Favorite comic of the year: Monsieur Désire?, by Hubert and Virginie Augustin

A discreet young woman becomes a maid for a decadent, unbearable, byronesque young lord. Caked in the rigid and oppressive social hierarchy of the victorian era, you follow a mental and verbal joust between the two, as the lord tries his best to offend and corrupt his new unrelenting servant, to little success. The writing and especially the dialogues were stellar, drawing me into the tense atmosphere, watching this trainwreck of a character flamboyantly destroy himself. While there’s no precise content warnings that I can give, this is a mature and heavy story.

World of Edena, by Moebius

Anyone who’s followed this blog for over a month knows how much of a Moebius fan I am. Edena combines the vague, dreamlike, wordless storytelling from stuff like Arzach or The cat’s eyes with an actual plot. While I haven’t completly finished the story, the evolution of the main characters and how the story is told have been great to read through, and as always the art is beyond gorgeous. Unfortunately suffers from some good old sexism in the writing that even if minimal, tasted sour

Le roman de Renart, by Joan Sfar (book 1)

Sfar’s work always has a signature vibe of being dreamy and light without being light hearted, of being down to earth but drifting in the fantastical, and this one is no exception. It’s an adaption of a series of medieval folk tales I grew up with, who uses the same characters to tell an original story. If you’re familiar with icons like Renart as well as other mythological big boys like Merlin you’ll fit right in. There is something special in how the dialogues are written, who feel natural in a way that you’d overhear in a street corner and is very special to me.

The mercenary, by VIncente Segrelles

Another one I post about a lot on this blog. The mercenary is a king on the throne of fantasy cheese. The worldbuilding is interesting at times but the writing is a pretty pathetic display of glorious old time sword and sorcery sci-fantasy 10 years too late for it’s prime (warning for ye old sexism and orientalism that plagues the genre, cranked very high...) but you come and stay for the art. The entire thing is drawn in a series of hyper detailed oil paintings with an insane eye for technical detail, from the engineering of the weaponry, to the architecture and weather, to the anatomy of the fantasy creatures... Each panel stands out as it’s own painting which makes even flipping through it without reading the scenario a treat. Click here to see more of the art, in my Segrelles tag.

The ice maurauder, by Jacques Tardi

A short story about mad scientists entirely drawn like a 19th century engraving. In great Tardi tradition everyone is ugly and mean, it ends terribly, it’s both a hommage to the genre of late 19th cent. to early 1900s dramatic adventure novels and a critical eye on it, and it’s morbidly funny. Most people I saw online hated the way this was written but I’m not them and I really recommend this book. Die mad

-------- Manga --------

Favorite manga of the year: it’s a tie between the following two.

Cats of the Louvre, by Taiyo Matsumoto

Most wonderful comic I have read in ages. The story follows a bunch of semi-feral cats secretly living in the Louvre museum’s attic, and the small group of humans who share their life, walking through the museum as the night watch. When the cats are together, they are represented in a humanoid way, but still act like animals, and “become” cats again when a human is nearby. The plot is a sort of supernatural mystery centered around a kitten who walks around paintings. It’s a love letter to art, sincere and beautiful, with a unique art style and great characters.

Memoirs of amorous Gentlemen, by Moyoco Anno

A sex worker in early 20th century paris starts writing down a diary of the clients she meets, in a quest to cope with the troubles of her life. You follow her, her colleagues, and her bittersweet relationship with an abusive lover. I don’t have much words about this comic, but the art and writing both are amazing, it’s the perfect length and drew me in like little series had before. Obvious content warnings as this is an adult story that talks about sexuality, but also depicts both mental and physical abuse.

Hana, also by Taiyo Matsumoto 

A very short story, this was not made to be read as a comic originally, but served as storyboarding and visual development for a play, and the way it is written follows that. Hana is a slice of life story set in a fantasy world, of a young boy, his family, his village. Despite the setting being an original one, the character interactions are refreshingly... normal, and there is no huge plot to speak of, just a bit of the life of these characters. The art is beautiful, entirely black and white, with a scratchy style and an emphasis on contrast. Matsumoto is on a speedy road to becoming my favorite manga artist haha

Delicious in Dungeon, by Ryoko Kui

While not marked as my year’s favorite, I still consider this series among my favorite manga ever. The art and writing are amazing, and it’s both heartfelt, well concieved and plain hilarious. The story follows several parties of dungeon diving adventurers each on their little quests with a premise of our protagonists, on a panic rescue mission, surviving in the dungeon by cooking and eating the monsters they come across. From a DnD party turned cooking manual dinner of the week beginning, the plot creeps up on you and slowly thickens. I don’t want to spoil anything about the overarching story of this because it was a delight to discover for myself. While everything about DinD rules, I am especially fond of the design philosophy of the author, who puts great detail in the practicality and biology of what she draws, as well as the character writing. Everyone even side characters has so much charm and depth to them, the cast is so diverse and entertaining...! Each character is just a bit lame enough but endearing, and has their own little backstory that shows in the way they exist. It’s a delight

Chainsaw man, by Tatsuki Fujimoto

I went into CSM expecting a borderline campy hyperviolent dumb fun thing to read and was very surprised to find an uncomfortably well written story about a teenager being groomed. The hyperviolent dumb fun fights are here nonetheless and the series still qualifies as shonen for some reason, but the more mature character writing as well as some truly outlandish visuals make it something very special. If you can’t stand shonen, not sure you will like it, but if you don’t mind it, worth trying.

Witch hat atelier, by Kamome Shirahama

The oh so elegant fantasy seinen every cool kid started posting about this year, who I also succumbed to and fast. Witch hat is hard to explain, as most of it’s plot revolves around the rules of the world it’s set in, specifically the regulations around it’s magic and the social and historical reasons for them. It’s about growing up, learning, disability, making art. You follow a little girl taken in by a witch as an apprentice, her magical education, and learn little by little why her lovely teacher is so willing to break a lot of rules... While a bit too gentle and pretty for my taste at times, Witch hat has great worldbuilding and explores sensitive themes I rarely see in manga, much less in fantasy. And Berserk wishes it had art this good