Posts tagged #fiction
Anno: Everyone understands that it’s a fiction, but precisely because it’s a fiction you have a pure feeling, you fall for the character to an even greater extent. You assume that an anime character will not betray you. Iku-chan (Kunihiko Ikuhara) said to me, “in the last episode, please have Rei Ayanami get married and become pregnant. Just please betray the Ayanami fans. The Rei Ayanami they are thinking of is not real. The real Rei Ayanami gets married, and her belly…”, He told me something like, “please, make them realize that, If she were real, she would get married, become pregnant, have a child, and grow older.” I was thinking, “we don’t have to go that far…”
A fascinating statement on the nature of what tumblr has a habit of calling feels.
Zoe frowned. “You’re saying that peaceful protest is too lax.”
“I’m saying that there are people down there on the Battery who believe that America is sliding into a corporate fascism, and their best response is to camp out on the tip of a small urban island?”
Some writing got done today.
I just realized I named Mark’s father “Neil Harris”. Oops.
The wait at the Korean barbeque was nearly two hours, so the three of them ended up at a skeevy little gastropub a block over instead. Zoe and Mark had both eaten there before, and while Mark only dimly remembered it — “I guess the food was OK. Couldn’t tell you what I had, though,” — Zoe had thought that the waiter had been leering at her the entire evening.
She kept that to herself.
The ambiance hovered somewhere between “nostalgically smokey” and “1970s lounge room”, everything covered in dark wood and black pleather, with the lighting barely strong enough to see your plate. “Is this place supposed to be ironic?” Neil asked as they followed the host to their table.
Zoe stiffled a laugh. “No one knows what that means anymore.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean that there’s no way to tell, just from looking at something, whether it’s ironic. Not anymore, anyway. It’s entirely possible that the owner of this place just loves pleather and dark wood and average-tasting food.” She waved her hand at the half-empty dining room. “It’s every bit as likely that everyone else here is also here as sincerely as we are, trying to find a place to eat and not worried about the optics of the situation.”
“I thought New Yorkers were good at discerning irony, though.”
Zoe waved her hand. “A myth. I mean, it’s possible that some people here are buried under layers and layers of ironic sincerity. That couple, for example.” She pointed at a guy about her age, wearing a turtleneck and loose blue jeans, sitting across from a woman wearing a long green dress. “I would venture to guess that they’re here for what they think are ironic reasons — both of them seem like they have enough taste to know that the food here isn’t great, and they can afford to eat someplace nicer — but they both also sincerely and secretly enjoy eating here. Not that they’d admit it. Sincerity buried under irony buried under sincerity.”
Kissing her was an experience in duality. The overpowering image was of toothpaste energetically applied at every opportunity, a veritable cornucopia of minty freshness. Beneath it, though, he could sense a lingering bitterness — stomach bile imperfectly masked but constantly present. The pairing made sense, he supposed, and explained why she had horrible teeth, even if she seemed to brush them five times a day.
He knew he would be able to feel her ribs in the dark; they would be climbing up her side, nestling beneath her parchment skin and vanishing behind her slight breasts. The small journal on the night stand, the scale in the bedroom, the constant checking how her clothes wrapped her body: everything slotted together in that moment.
Jonas J. Jonasson.“Don’t you condescend to me, young man.”
“Sir, I understand you’re upset, but I don’t think there’s much of a case here. We have some options you could look at—”
“I did not come to your offices today to be told my options. I came down here to sue the pants off those comics men.”
Mark sighed and rubbed his temples in what he realized was probably a rather unprofessional way. “Mister Jonasson, there’s no basis for a lawsuit.”
“They are ruining my professional image with their horrible caricature of me, and I want to put a stop to it!”
“You can’t sue them. The character has been around longer than you.”
“Damnit! I just want them to stop using J. Jonah Jameson! I want Stan Lee’s head on a platter!”
sarah“So, wait, you went all the way to Paris and you ended up going to Disneyland?”
Sarah rolled her neck. “Yeah. So?”
“So? So?! Paris! It’s the city of light! It’s the most cultured place in Europe! And you went to a shitty American export. No wonder the French think Americans are all barbarians.”
She turned to me and gave me her patented ‘you are an ass’ look. “First: we spent a week in Paris and only half a day at Disneyland. Second: you sound like a romantic buffoon. Paris is crowded, smelly and full of rude Frenchmen who whistle as you walk down the street and try and steal your purse when they think you’re not paying attention. The art is nice, and some of the buildings are pretty, but Disneyland Paris was the nicest part of the trip, because it wasn’t chaotic.”
“But-but-but cultural imperialism!”
“Ass.”
We stared at our drinks for a long time.
“Does this me you won’t sleep with me?”
“Maybe.”
“She communicated mainly though clichès. Each one held a special, idiosyncratic meaning for her, though, that was generally unrelated to the clichè itself, so I had a hard time holding it against her.”
Ladies and Gentlemen, allow me to introduce Black Rabbit Magazine.
It’s a magazine, available right now for just seven dollars, that collects together 38 pages of content I have never made available online, including essays, fiction, poetry, and photography.
This is an experiment in self-publishing and a reminder to myself that I do indeed know how to lay out a magazine. (I learned in high school.)
Even if you can’t spare the money to buy and issue yourself (Only seven dollars for the print version! Only $1.50 for the digital PDF!), please pass along the link to everyone you know. I’m really proud of this, and want to make it a recurring publication, especially if there’s interest.
Again, that’s Black Rabbit Magazine. There’s even a full-text preview on the site! Go check it out!
Reposting for the afternoon crowd. Magazine! Buy it!
