Elliott Dunstan

Behind the Curtain: A Queer Revisiting of Puella Magi Madoka Magica: Episode 1

July 28th, 2020

Puella Magi Madoka Magica is, for varying and complex reasons, a controversial anime. Much like the Fullmetal Alchemist 2003 adaptation and Neon Genesis Evangelion, it is often recommended and panned in the same breath as a ‘deconstruction’ that doesn’t quite fulfill its promises, a “grimdark” take on more cheerful anime, or why “anime-first” properties are supposedly better or worse than manga-first properties. This isn’t helped by both what it shares with other controversial anime – themes of suicide and despair, queer subtext that barely qualifies for the ‘sub’ addendum, and a certain amount of unexpected violence – and what it doesn’t. That is, PMMM is a shojo (young girls’) anime and as such, attracts criticism that shonen just Does Not.

My personal relationship with PMMM is just as complicated as the rest. It spoke to me for reasons I still can’t fully put together, but at the same time, I can see its flaws so glaringly that sometimes I wonder why. So – this is me rewatching one of my favourite animes, with a proactively queer/trans lens!

Some important notes before going in: I am not watching, nor do I plan to watch Rebellion. This analysis begins and ends with the main show as presented; I firmly believe it’s a solid story arc on its own. So every column of this will have spoilers – but not for Rebellion.

Also, PMMM and this analysis deal with – to some degree or another – suicide, poverty, mental illness, psychosis, internalized homophobia, queerphobia, respectability politics and lateral violence within the queer community.

Episode 1 – “I First Met Her In A Dream…Or Something”

Oh boy, the first episode already has a lot to work with. Watching this episode with a queer lens, I’m already suddenly and quickly noticing how Madoka’s family has switched gender roles but is otherwise Very, Very Normal. Madoka’s mother is the breadmaker of the house and her father is a dutiful stay-at-home at dad – but otherwise, the nuclear family is just the same. Madoka doesn’t even have any grandparents around, which is actually kind of unusual for anime, isn’t it?

So here we are, with our potentially-queer protagonist, in a family that is – well, kind of peak white liberal feminism. (NB: PMMM is a Japanese show but I am inevitably going to be reading from a Western perspective.) Women have power! To engage in capitalism, make their husbands do all the work and wear cool pantsuits. Even the mother’s advice to Madoka is tinged with a certain amount of old-fashionedness even though she’s doing things like telling Madoka not to be afraid to stand out.

This just gets all the more striking when we get to Madoka’s friends. Hitomi is the model of ideal, traditional femininity – she has tea ceremony classes, gets suitors all the time, is always demure and put-together and even admonishes Sayaka and Madoka for goofing off too much. And Sayaka… Sayaka, honey. Within anime, she isn’t an unusual archetype – there are a good number of “female pervert” characters – but she’s bolder than many of them, jokingly-but-clearly stating that she wants to marry Madoka and that she’d be jealous of any man who stole her away. Sayaka, in short, is not so much in a closet as she is in a glass box. She is in the unenviable position of everybody around her knowing she’s a lesbian, and having to prove otherwise, unlike Madoka who mostly just keeps her mouth shut.

So, immediately, we have two models of femininity – one ‘traditional’ and one ‘progressive’, and both determinedly heterosexual. And Madoka and Sayaka playing boob-grab tickle games in the middle. (Poor beans. That’s not subtle.)

Enter, of course, Homura Akemi. Obviously, the blushing and stuttering that Madoka does is “supposed” to be because Homura is the girl from her dream – but realistically, within the anime, it plays out as immediate attraction. It’s not just about physical looks, either. I never put this together before, but Homura correcting the spelling of her name – with such confidence – is where Madoka seems to REALLY get antsy. Having a female character calmly and expressly exert the power to fix even a small thing shouldn’t be new to Madoka – she has a businesswoman for a mother – but names are of particular importance to the trans community. Oh, to have the courage to simply correct somebody!

On the way to the Nurse’s Office, Homura delivers her speech, so carefully rehearsed to prevent Madoka from becoming a magical girl. What does she say? “Do you treasure the life you currently live? Your family, your friends? Stay as you are and don’t change.”

It’s unintentionally cruel of Homura in a number of ways. Because what she’s saying to Madoka, put in the context of the most clearly queer character being said to the closeted/questioning one: Don’t come out. Don’t get involved with fighting to change things. Living happily and blindly is better than the cruelty you will have to face.

Cruel or not, it’s well-intentioned. How could Homura say anything else, knowing what she knows? But it’s also not the full story – because Madoka has to witness the violence that happens to her peers (Sayaka, Mami, Kyouko) anyway, and is targeted by witches regardless. In other words, it doesn’t matter whether she “gets” involved, or comes out of the closet, or is proud of her identity. It’s already true, and she’s already involved.

This can be read in any number of ways, obviously. I’m biased towards a trans reading because I identify as trans, but also because transformation and being a “truer, better” version of yourself versus for others show up a lot. However, a lot of that applies to sapphic identity as well! The collisions of queerness and misogyny leave very similar traces, and ultimately, despite what some people like to say, the communities have a lot in common even before they overlap. Is Sayaka a butch lesbian or a closeted trans man? In the context of PMMM it doesn’t matter – it’s the disconnect from the womanhood that Hitomi and Madoka’s mother offer that marks her as Different and Dangerous.

After that, and some more scenes reaffirming Sayaka as the Closeted Queer Kid and Hitomi as the Perfect Traditional Woman-In-Training, we get to Kyuubey’s entrance and Homura getting a faceful of fire extinguisher from Sayaka. This scene to first-time viewers very clearly sets up Homura as a villain; on rewatch, the DARVO jumps out. DARVO stands for Deny, Attack, Reverse Victim and Offender – a common practice of abusers in which they deny the initial assault ever took place, attack (often subtlety or passive-aggressively) the accuser, and reverse their roles. “I was the one REALLY being abused”, etc. Mami and Kyuubey do an excellent and terrifying job of making out like Homura is the scary one and protecting Kyuubey’s reputation and image of a Cute, Cuddly Creature that can do no wrong. Down to Mami subtly and passive-aggressively making sure Homura gets the message that she gets one extra chance and Kyuubey making the deliberate choice to call out to Madoka helplessly even when shooting him will not kill him, they use their relative power to change the narrative. The relative power, in this case, has a lot to do with respectability politics, which I’m going to be returning to as I watch the rest of the anime! For this scene, though, the most relevant part is that Mami and Kyuubey can ‘play the parts’ of victim better than Homura – the tough-as-nails, coping through blank effect, trauma survivor – can. Homura cannot, at this point in her story, allow herself to look pathetic or weak; Kyubey can and will, and at Homura’s expense.

Finally, the witch; while I’ll talk more about the witches next episode, it is definitely worth paying attention to that the same dynamics are set up here as with Madoka and Sayaka saving Kyubey. They are endangered by something that appears, at first blush, to be scary and violent – Mami appears in the nick of time, the hero who can protect them from the Big Scary Thing and look good.

That’s episode one! I’ll be getting back to this when I can, so expect these to show up consistently for a while.

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Behind the Curtain: Victor LaValle’s “The Changeling” & the Crossroads of Allegories

July 23rd, 2020

This is not a book review. If you’re looking for a simple good or bad, yes or no, star-rating of LaValle’s book, there’s no shortage; if you like dark fantasy and fairytale, you’ll probably enjoy it. This essay does include spoilers for the whole book. Trigger warnings are also in place for violent ableism, child murder, child abuse, anti-Black racism, and dehumanization.

Frankly, I adored this book. It’s beautifully written, funny at the strangest moments, dark, evocative…

… And yet.

And yet.

At the core of The Changeling is a murder. Apollo Kagwa, a rare book dealer, has his world torn apart when his wife Emma seemingly loses her mind and commits a terrible deed. She murders their infant son, Brian, and vanishes. It’s a cruel, terrible thing, and Apollo is driven to find her – whether to kill her or to question her, he isn’t sure.

The author of The Changeling, Victor LaValle, is Black, and so are his characters. So, immediately, this is a story about Black parenthood, not just American or ‘default’ parenthood, which is always White. Amal El-Mohtar comments in her review on how the novel spends time on the intricacies, joys and hardships of Black fatherhood. Notice the word there, ‘fatherhood’ – the book spends no time in Emma’s head, and El-Mohtar points out the same thing that I noticed. “…I kept imagining a shadow-book following my reading, the whole story from [Emma’s] point of view.” This gets particularly notable as the reveal draws closer and it becomes apparent that Emma’s “insanity” was simply her crying out a truth that nobody else would hear; that her child had been replaced with something else.

Like all the best fantasy novels, The Changeling is about more than just the trappings of fantasy – it’s about the institutionalization and gaslighting of Black mothers, the abduction of Black children, complete with white men sacrificing those children to maintain their power and superiority, while ignoring suffering simply because it belongs to Black children and not their own. It’s an intensely powerful message, delivered unflinchingly and without any kowtowing to respectability politics or white liberalism, and perhaps it suffers from not allowing the reader into Emma’s head – but perhaps it’s trying to say something with that, too.

And yet.

And yet, as an autistic person, the central metaphor and incident holds an entirely different significance to me. So much of the plot carries so much weight and significance that it doesn’t to an allistic or neurotypical person. I can’t let go of the image of a would-be “good mother” holding a kettle, about to brutally murder a baby for the crime of not being a Real Baby. It’s meant to be shocking within the text, absolutely; but as the story goes on and slowly absolves Emma, my heart remains with the unnamed changeling. Made of wood and bugs and enchantment; perhaps – but what if it’s not? Would allowing the reader Emma’s perspective improve this, or make it worse? How much harder would it be to sympathize with Emma if we saw the baby through her eyes and had to grapple with her dehumanizing a child? How many mothers, saddled with children they didn’t want or couldn’t make themselves love, fell back on claims that they weren’t real babies, that they wanted a real baby who did things the Right Way?

Consider, unfortunately: changeling myths often originated from ancient interpretations of neurodivergency. The “fae child” with the slow development of speech and thousand-yard-stare isn’t folklore fodder – it’s autism through a different set of eyes. This might seem irrelevant, but autistic children are still so frequently murdered by their caretakers that the intended horror of “That isn’t a baby” is lost in favour of an entirely opposite one.

If this had been one of those bog-standard urban fantasy novels with a white author and a white protagonist with a white girlfriend in a white city, with a conflict about saving the world, I probably wouldn’t have gotten past the murder. But if it had been a novel like that, it probably never would have introduced something so complicated in the first place. Even without this interpretation, it’s complicated. Is Emma Valentine an ableist murderer, or a brave and unbowed mother in search of the truth? Is she both? Can she be both? (I would end up saying no, but I’m a changeling with arms and legs of flesh and blood, not wood and vine.)

This is complicated by an anecdote within the novel. Apollo’s father, also named Brian, attempted to drown him at some point during his childhood, and Lillian murdered him for it. The parallels drawn between this and the case of Emma Valentine at first seem to indicate that Brian and Emma were doing the same thing, misguidedly and wrongfully; but Emma is exonerated and Brian never is. Once again, because we’re never given Emma’s perspective from inside her head, we don’t know if she and Brian had the same motivations, the same reasons – if perhaps, Lillian was wrong and mistaken, and Apollo is a changeling the whole time, or if the creature that Apollo later takes for a mimic of insects and wood was at some point a living and breathing thing, a victim of Emma’s cruelty.

Ultimately, the concept of kidnapped/replaced children is one with heavy baggage no matter where you go with it; Romani, Jewish, Indigenous, Latinx, Black, neurodivergent, disabled, transgender, and fat narratives around stolen children all carry a different weight, even before you get into the traumatic history of adoption and what “not my Real Child” can mean in that context. And then there’s the extra detail that Black and autistic narratives are not in opposition; Black autistic children exist and are underdiagnosed and ignored by both Black neurotypical adults and white autistic communities.

I don’t know if this book could have been written any other way, and ‘harmful’ isn’t the right word. Instead, it’s a particularly potent reminder that allegories can hold their own opposites within them for different eyes – empowering and belittling, harmful and representative, incisive and stereotypical. The changeling myth is not an apolitical fairytale for consumption and repackaging for any and every purpose, and LaValle makes an incredible allegory from it for one group, while neglecting to consider the impact upon another. I don’t know if it’s fair to ask any writer to consider every potential impact of an allegory, especially when Black stories are already so policed, and that’s one major reason I don’t consider this a review – but it’s something worth holding in mind when messing around with stories of the Other. The Other to you is life-as-normal for somebody else.

The Changeling is a book about fear, ultimately. But even without intending to, while it’s about the things that parents fear, it chronicles such a blinding brilliant example of why children fear their parents, too.
1.1 – CASSANDRA: TWO HALVES

July 22nd, 2020

the unbelieved prediction ˑ the unforeseen future ˑ the unexpected inevitable

Twins are supposed to get along – it’s one of those immutable rules in the social contract, right next to thou shalt not be inconveniently traumatized and mothers are all divine blessings – but Cassandra’s never quite clicked with hers. They’re two halves of the same whole, sure, but the whole was never particularly wholesome; most of Cassandra’s memories are competitive, jealous, vaguely sneering. In both directions, too. She can’t blame her twin for most of it. Any of it.

The point is – the point is, twins are supposed to get along, and even though she can’t feel the broken ankle she’s walking on, or the burns on her arms, she knows they still need treatment. The ferryman was very clear on that. And this is what she traded for – passage to the last family she has alive, the last family she gives a fuck about, even if the fucks she gives are complicated and all tangled up in a vague sentiment of ‘I hate you less than the rest of them’.

So. She’s standing here, on a street she vaguely recognizes as being in Sandy Hill somewhere, student residences and carved-up ancient houses with battered cars in the driveways and twisted oaks and birches hovering over the highest windows, dancing with the telephone wires, kissing the street lights.

Willow.

That’s the name she has to remember. The new one. She likes it, she just can’t remember it all the time. Her sister. Her twin. Willow.

Willow lives here.

Funny, she thinks. She’d always meant to reach out, after Willow had left home, after Alex had died, after, after, after. The weeks and the months had slid by. All it had taken was to kill everybody else for her to finally make contact with her sister again.

Joke. Funny.

She moves towards the stone steps, reaching for the metal banister – but then the door opens before she can get there. And there she is. Her sister.

It takes Willow a moment to recognize her. She’s confused at first, and Cassandra doesn’t blame her. It’s been at least a year, which adults will claim isn’t long at all and to kids like her is still a lifetime. Kids. That isn’t right. She’s turning seventeen in two months and so is Willow.

She looks good. That’s good news. Her hair is past her shoulders, streaked with blue, and the skirt she’s wearing is the kind of thing their mother would have burned, pleated and high-belted on her waist. And Cass knows she’s supposed to be saying something, but she’s been awake for two days, and the fact that she knows she’s supposed to be in pain is almost worse for all that she can’t feel it –

“What are you doing here?” It’s colder than she hoped for. But she can work with that.

“Willow.” Breathing, talking, feels like ice in her mouth. It’s not even cold out. Is it? She can’t really tell that particularly well either. “I, uh…”

“I’m serious. What are you doing here.” The march down the steps is made of suppressed anger, bitterness that Cass can’t blame her twin for. A year. She should have reached out. Said something. Anything. “How did you even know where to find me?”

Cass doesn’t understand what Will can do, not completely, or why, but she knows that she doesn’t have to answer. The information is there in her head, rising to the top like wood chips and scattered debris. But-

But answering out loud matters for other reasons.

“I’m sorry,” she murmurs, and it hurts to say, the pain she couldn’t sell, the humiliation of her own cowardice.

Willow is in front of her now, still taller, still skinnier, but older by more than just a year. But then Will is frowning, concerned –

“Cass, you smell of smoke.”

She starts to laugh. It’s funny, isn’t it? Joke. Queen of overreactions. That’s her. You’d think everything would have gone to shit earlier.

By now, Will has pulled what she needs from her head. The house bursting into flames. The boiler’s pressure rising. Bodies in the ashes. An accident. Maybe.

“I’m sorry,” she says again, but she knows what she’s apologizing for – and what she’s not.

Song: Alteration by Watchdog Reset https://watchdogreset.bandcamp.com/album/attraction

<- PROLOGOS 1.2 ->
First Chapter Thoughts: Annihilation by Jeff Vandermeer

July 21st, 2020

I’m somebody who enjoys both books and movies equally, and am often in the unenviable position of enjoying both a book and its adaptation. This is funny enough with things like Lord of the Rings, where at least the nerdboy contingent is balanced out by widespread cultural love. Annihilation, however, is an amusing case where the author is – not derogatory towards the movie, but not particularly fond of it either.

As it stands, I saw the movie first, and adored it – but even knowing about how different the book and movie are didn’t sink in until finishing the first chapter. There are hints, of course; the main character is still a biologist, and the psychologist still feels and sounds like the odd Dr. Ventress. But the atmosphere of the book reminds me more of older science fiction, the slow build, the threat of the unknown lurking just out of view.

I do love how completely unremarkable it is in-text that all of the characters are women. I wasn’t sure whether or not that was a decision the film had made, and considering hard scifi’s running gender problems, it’s refreshing to see from a male writer in particular. Additionally, there’s an expectation that books with female characters are YA-styled, romantic or otherwise moralistic, and while that might change, I’m unconvinced that the book will go that direction. (The YA thing in particular is aimed largely at female writers, so Vandermeer isn’t likely to get it, but still.)

One downside to the book’s pacing and differences from the movie is that I have absolutely no clue what to expect. Is this a horror novel? Aliens? Is the Southern Reach flawed and at fault? I don’t have my usual genre signs to draw on, and not knowing is fun – but it’s also stressful! Wah! Let’s see what happens!
Ghosts in Quicksilver: 2:13: Heavy the Heads

July 16th, 2020

tw: police brutality mention, suicide mention, Russia/fascism mention, porn/masturbation mention, vigilante justice/ethics discussed, lashing out/coping with violence, incredibly bad sibling relationships

Cassandra stayed framed in the window, staring at me and Jaylie through the opening. Then, once Will had stepped back and given her some room, she placed her feet elegantly on the sill and returned her sardonic gaze to her sister. “If I’d known you were entertaining, I would have simply—”

“One, no you wouldn’t. Two, gross. They’re babies.”

I chose not to take that personally. Much.

“In her defense,” Jaylie added slyly, “we did land in her bed—”

“Jaylie, fair warning, Will might throw you out the window.”

“Oh. Fair. I would deserve it.”

“I am not throwing anybody out of the window,” Will sighed. “Except possibly myself.”

“It’s four stories. It wouldn’t kill you.”

That answered that question, at least. Terrifyingly. I decided ‘flying people’ was too much.

“I’m not suicidal, dumbass. Just annoyed that you’ve successfully bullied your way into my apartment. But,” Will said cheerily, “you have company and people to talk to, or at, so I’m just gonna—”

Cass wordlessly hooked two fingers into the strap of Will’s tank top as she started to move away , and she batted the fingers away. “Fine, fine, message fucking received.”

“Uh huh. How did you two get in here? There’s only one door. I would have seen you.”

“Have you ever considered that’s kind of creepy, Cass?”

“Hush.” Then Cass narrowed her eyes at me. “You were in the Medium again.”

Ah. Excellent. Time to sweat nervously, since attention was finally back on me. “Uh.”

“It’s not Jamal’s fault,” Jaylie interrupted, and I was struck with the sudden relieved urge to melt into the floor. “I was trapped. She elected to come in after me.”

Elected? God. I was surrounded by smart kids. Again.

As Jaylie started outlining what had happened—more or less—Will’s voice floated into my head. Sorry about the bad timing. If I’d known you were coming, I seriously would have—uh—

Told Cassandra to shove it? I offered, trying not to sound too amused.

You’re not a Sulfur, you can’t tone control. Stop laughing at me, by the way. She sat down on the bed, attempting and failing to pull the sheets back over the corners.

I’m not! I’m just—

Uh huh.

I glanced up at her again—then realized she had one of those soft smiles on her face, looking back at me. To my horror, I felt a blush crawl up my face again and I tried to change the topic.

Does Cassandra make a habit of this?

Blegh.

Does that mean yes?

BLEGH. She gets all concerned about me when I don’t answer the phone or talk to people, or post on Facebook or Twitter, or do anything but play Darkest Dungeon, or—

So when you do things that are concerning.

Will promptly picked up the box of Kleenex next to her and tossed it at me. I batted it away, smothering the laugh that would have burst out loud—then picked up the box of Kleenex. Box of Kleenex on your bed? Really?

She turned an absolutely priceless shade of crimson. FUCK OFF.

Is there a copy of Playboy under your sheets? Or Playgirl?

First of all, she tossed her head, it’d be Playboy. I’m a lesbian. Er, sort of. Bi lesbian. But boys are on thin fucking ice. Second of all, I have higher standards than Playboy. Third of all I am not talking to you about porn and fourth of all I JUST HAVE ALLERGIES FUCK OFF.

But you might still have some magazines floating around, is what I’m hearing.

Go boil your head, detective lady.

I was ready to keep teasing her—it was bizarrely fun, especially since she was so pale that her blush reached all the way to her ears—but then some of what Jaylie was saying slipped into my ears, and I nearly dropped the box of tissues. “Sorry, what was that?”

Jaylie glanced over at me with a slightly-frustrated glare. “We’re going to kill her.”

“Wh—” Then I realized who she meant. “Kiera?”

“Of course.”

Cassandra shrugged. “She’s killed enough people as it is. I’m not… happy about it, but it seems like something to consider—”

I felt the tips of my fingers going numb. I hadn’t told anybody about what Kiera had actually said to me. How could I? And I knew what they’d say. It didn’t take away from what she’d done. It didn’t make any of it better. It honestly kind of made it worse. And I couldn’t make any sense of why the fuck I should care. But…

“Whoa, whoa. Alright. Hold on a sec.” There was a quiet, understated fury in Will’s voice as she stood up from the bed, switching from embarrassed to stubbornly angry in a matter of seconds. “We’re not talking about killing people.”

“She attacked a temple.”

“Yeah, and nobody died. It’s terrible. Not gonna debate that. But don’t you think—”

“Don’t you think it’s our responsibility to take care of threats in our own community?” Cassandra shot back, cutting Will off. “What do you want to do? Call the cops? Get her arrested? How long would that last?”

“I’m just saying maybe you shouldn’t be deciding for everybody.”

“Oh, yeah, let me just convene the tattered remnants of our community and take a fucking vote—”

Jaylie cleared her throat. “If I may interrupt? I can definitely say, she’s not going to listen to reason. If you were thinking about that.” There was the lingering fear under her voice,

What if she can’t? I thought quietly. I couldn’t say it. I couldn’t get my mouth to work. This was my own fault, for triggering that fucking memory – the psych ward, the number of times I’d tried to explain that my anger wasn’t irrational – only to end up right back at irrational. Apparently. I didn’t know. I couldn’t – Kiera didn’t have anything to do with that, but I couldn’t think in a straight line about it.

“If you want to be a dictator, Cass,” Will said in a threatening undertone, “fuck off to Russia.”

“Oh, pleasant. Telling other queer kids to go to the country with the gay camps.”

“You’re derailing. Don’t be a bitch.”

“Don’t overlook the problem.” Cass folded her arms, face pale with two spots of colour high on her cheekbones. “How many people are going to start dying without Salts to stabilize them, Will? Enough unstable elementals get shot by cops or jump off bridges as it is.”

Jaylie raised and lowered her eyebrows at the cops part, and I couldn’t blame her—no, not Jaylie. Her features had begun to shift, quietly and subtly enough that I wasn’t sure Will and Cass had noticed, but I did—mostly because I had a good guess who was taking her place. He looked different on the outside, just like she had, but the splash of white vitiligo over his face, the slight thickening of his chin and his nose, and the shift of his eyes to a lighter colour gave it away. The most conspicuous change was how Jaylie’s braids folded themselves up into a tight bun, looking for all the world like she’d tied them up herself if you hadn’t seen it happen. Sunvay. Of course.

“Right, so playing cops ourselves is a great idea. Or did you enjoy it so much last time—”

The slap pierced the room louder than a gunshot. For a second, I didn’t even realize what had happened. But then my brain processed Cassandra lowering her hand, Will’s closed eyes, the furious tears welling in Cass’s eyes—and then with an equally loud slam, Cass was gone, the door shutting behind her.

“Well,” Sunvay commented brightly a doom-laden silence later, “that could have gone better.”

“Are you kidding?” Will replied dryly. “That’s better than most of my conversations with her have gone in a while.” Then she glared at Sunvay. “So, how many of you are in there?”

“So glad to know you can’t keep your nose to yourself.”

“Not by choice, I promise. You can leave too, by the way—”

“No, no, he’s fine,” I mumbled. It was the most I’d managed to get out of my mouth yet. Will shot me a glance, then put a careful hand on my shoulder, getting me to sit back down on her bed. “Thanks.” I didn’t… like Sunvay, exactly. But despite how aggressive he’d been to me at first, I could vibe with ‘grumpy angry protector’ a lot more than most of the rest of Jaylie’s crew at the moment.

“Don’t worry about it.” Then she rubbed the back of her neck, exhaling. “You. Er, Jaylie—”

“Sunvay,” he offered.

“Promise to stop talking about killing people? At least for now?” Will sounded almost desperate, I realized. She was just as anxious around the topic as I was, if not more.

“Yeah, I can do that.”

“Cool. Siddown for a minute. Then we can go get McDonald’s.”

He sat down next to me, and I noticed with interest that he was taller than Jaylie, although not by much. Will was still taller than both of us, and she leaned against her chest-of-drawers, looking at both of us with her fingers tapping on the wood. She looked more tired than I’d noticed at first—no makeup, unbrushed hair, and an oversized shirt dwarfing her too-skinny shoulders. She actually looked young, instead of the Older Woman With Queer Mystique that my brain kept categorizing her as.

“…Isaiah’s been looking for you,” she said finally.

Shit.

“How, um. How long was I gone this time?” I asked, sounding appropriately cowed.

“No, no, not that long. Most of a day, at worst. But you went missing out of the blue. Would it—” She took a deep breath. “Would it fucking kill you to ask for help?”

I sat on my hands, unsure how to respond. I hadn’t even heard from Will since I’d disappeared into the Medium the first time. Two texts, sure, but ‘hru’ and ‘hey’ didn’t count.

“She was coming after me—”

“I know, I know.” Will sighed into her hands. “I’m tired. Let’s get burgers. My treat, before either of you complain. Give me a sec to get changed, I look like shit.”

Sunvay rolled his eyes and disappeared out the door. I hung back for a second, and Will had a hairbrush in her hand before she looked up at me. “Yeah?”

“You did that on purpose.”

“Which part?”

“Getting Cassandra out of the room.”

She gave me a half-smile. “…Everybody’s got their hangups. Can’t say I understand yours, but fair is fair. Besides, you’re the dumbass hero who dove into the underworld and rescued somebody.”

I tried—and failed—not to grin at that. “Not much of an underworld.”

“And I’m not much of a princess, but here we are. Now shoo.”

I did—and I did so, hopefully, fast enough so that she didn’t hear me think about what it would be like to kiss her. It was just a passing thought. I was no good at that kind of thing, anyway.

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Behind the Curtain: A Queer Revisiting of Puella Magi Madoka Magica: Episode 1

Behind the Curtain: Victor LaValle’s “The Changeling” & the Crossroads of Allegories

1.1 – CASSANDRA: TWO HALVES

First Chapter Thoughts: Annihilation by Jeff Vandermeer

Ghosts in Quicksilver: 2:13: Heavy the Heads