How Do We Relationship? is a Japanese yuri manga written and illustrated by Tamifull; it follows the development of a romantic relationship between college students Miwa, a shy and closeted lesbian, and Saeko, sociable and more experienced yet at odds with her own lesbian identity. In the commentary at the end of the manga, the author expresses their desire to write a relationship that is particularly messy in contrast to the romanticization and build-up towards first relationships. Tamifull strays from common tropes in yuri manga by focusing on college students rather than schoolgirls, and dives into the actual relationship as opposed to the ‘slow burn’ build-up that leads to it, aiming to depict a relationship in all its ups and downs, including the “self-interested calculations” and compromises that real relationships must work out. Although navigating a new relationship and discussing sex and boundaries is something every couple must work out, cisheteronormative expectations and societal views on lesbian relationships can bring about new layers of complexity and present unique challenges, such as internalized homophobia, when it comes to living and depicting these romances. How Do We Relationship? discusses these issues through the lens of a modern lesbian relationship, and brings light to the nuances that make lesbian relationships different from their heterosexual counterparts. By using queer theory and accounts of the queer experience in Japan, How Do We Relationship? can be examined to analyze how lesbians perceive themselves in reaction to homophobia and cisheteronormativity.
darkness is a comfort, but only sometimes.
she wraps herself around me, whispers a love i can’t understand into my ear. i feel her in my chest, shadows tracing my heart and suddenly i can’t see without her forming the words and drawing the pictures.
sight is a daydream in the morning and a delusion at dusk; she waits, knows when i’ll reach for her at night and she comes, wraps my head in her shadows and guides me to bed, tells me that love and trust are one and the same and that both are blind.
again, again, again
i wish i knew you better,
enough so that i could prepare you for the next month,
but the truth is we’re both just beetles in the leaves, taking every day, every second step by painful step. our feet sink into the earth the way her fingers sink into your skin and you think she’ll never let go until she does, forcing a stake into the earth to do it. the ground shakes, you fall, watch the dying roses above your head shake and shiver in the earthquake.
we’re only beetles. sometimes i wish we were more, that our shells weren’t as tough, didn’t cause as much pain when someone rips them off.
when i mourn you i mourn myself, watch the way the ants carry their dead and i see you carrying my body, wonder which way we could have died. was it heartbreak? fear? did we suffocate from never talking, never opening our mouth to breathe the words i had to say and let them tear us from inside, instead.
and it makes me wonder if i’m fooling myself to look for a god, if it’s worth looking for one in this universe. he only watches, anyway, gifts me with the red of the beetles and the roses but leaves me for dead on the earth. “make something,” he says, but i don’t know what to make of myself, what the fuck do i do with beetle eyes and rose petals when the earth shakes harder than my grieving body.
but eventually, the ground stops shaking. the roses grow back next year, and the beetles keep going without knowing when the next earthquake will come.
From a Former Top 10 Scholar: A Letter About My Experiences at RHS
The following is a letter I wrote to the principal of my former high school, written a year or so after I graduated, about my concerns about things I had witnessed and experienced as a student there. For privacy reasons, names of people and the school have been censored or abbreviated.
To the Principal:
My name is Phoebe, and I am writing to you today as an alumna of RHS. You may remember me as I graduated recently, but I don’t believe we had many chances to interact. I wanted to discuss with you some concerns about my experiences at RHS, in light of all that is currently happening in the world right now.
A bit of background on myself: I am Chinese American (my parents being immigrants from Hong Kong), a cisgender woman, a lesbian, and an artist. My family is middle class, and I graduated as a top 10 scholar while struggling with anxiety and depression, which still affect me today. I’ve lived in this town my whole life and have gone through all stages of the town’s school system. I am including my demographics because it’s important for you to know who I am, and because I want to draw attention to the demographic disparities between your staff and the student body.
My experiences at RHS were full of frustration. Between constantly changing principals and constantly changing rules, I felt that many teachers were dismissive of what was going on in students’ lives and treated some better than others. There was a mentality that Honors students were inherently hard working, and that anyone who took lower level classes were stupid and less capable. This mindset existed across the student body and the faculty; I’ve had teachers say to my face that I’m “hard-working” or a “good person” just because I do my homework. Good grades don’t define morality and kindness, and I didn’t and still don’t appreciate being used as an example to put down my fellow peers. This sort of attitude was rampant, and served to praise students who already had the time and resources to be good at school while putting down the students who were, in reality, the ones that needed more support. Just because a student—a teenager who is still learning—has behavioral issues or is less receptive to academics, doesn’t mean they are less deserving of support and patience. In fact, it means the opposite.
At my time at RHS, students were stripped of their stability—principals changed every year as did the rules, many of which punished the student body. This chipped away at morale and the relationship between students and faculty; trust eroded, and it increasingly seemed like the teachers and administration wanted to work against the students rather than with. No matter the intent of these actions, this was an inevitable consequence. Perhaps, in the years since I left, things have or will settle down and this will no longer apply as much as it did as when I was there. But I wanted to warn you about how constant changes affect students, and that the seed of “Teachers VS Students” is planted long before high school. Please be wary about helping it grow, because doing so will damage the future and the education of your students.
7 sins
Coffee is Hot
CAST TONY: A grumpy, miserable young adult who works as a cafe barista. Life does not agree with him, and most of the time neither do customers. DAVID: Tony’s roommate and polar opposite. Hyper, optimistic, and full of energy. Works with Tony at the same cafe; customers love him. STANLEY: The manager of the cafe. A shady, sleazy middle-aged man with a yorker accent and love for money. CUSTOMER 1: A customer who despises both Tony and (surprisingly) David but keeps coming back to the cafe for some reason. Is always asking for the manager. CUSTOMER 2: A customer who is usually the first of the day; comes in at an ungodly time. Tony thinks she stalks the store until they open. Setting: (The curtain opens in on Blendin’ Bagels, a knock-off, low quality cafe. TONY is behind the front counter, while DAVID is in front, organizing mugs for display. They are bickering over how they should be set up.)
Macbeth as an Analysis of Environmental Destruction
As Earth’s environment continues to deteriorate, world leaders have yet to make any significant changes or go so far as to acknowledge it, even as they watch their people suffer from its effects. Instead, some may opt to invest in the very corporations that contribute to it. Shakespeare’s Macbeth tells the story of a man who becomes blind to the harm he causes to his country in his effort to pursue and maintain power. These leaders are unable to make the connection that the people suffer because of their actions—or inaction. Using the symbolism present in Macbeth, readers can better understand how ignoring the plight of climate change in favor of wealth can lead to disaster.
Historically, humans have used nature and superstition as a way to explain happenings in the universe, shown in Macbeth as Shakespeare incorporates the beliefs and cultural influences of his time. The strange noises during the night of Duncan’s murder serve as an example; “…The obscure bird / Clamored the livelong night. Some say the Earth / Was feverous and did shake” (2.3.54-56). Lennox remarks that people had also heard grieving voices predicting terrible events, and immediately after Macduff arrives to announce the King’s death. Shakespeare’s juxtaposition of the two accounts can be used to explain how modern people use science to illustrate happenings in nature, particularly climate change.
In curious contrast to Lennox’s account of the birds, Rachel Carson’s 1962 book, Silent Springs, was an investigation first started by the absence of bird cries—before pesticides had been regulated, resulting in the decline of many bird species and ignited the conversation on the impacts industry could have on human health. Her book criticized the government’s inaction regarding public safety, yet the most severe backlash came from the chemical and agricultural corporations, who claimed that it was an “unreasonable and unscientific account that … would halt human progress” (Wright 420). The defensiveness observed within the corporations, even as they were not the target of Carson’s grievances, reveals that they felt their profits were threatened. Macbeth may have believed that his services would have helped people, yet upon gaining power, any remote threat given to him by way of prophecy was eliminated, such were the casualties of Banquo and Macduff’s family. The industries felt that Carson’s accusations shone a negative light on them, therefore threatening their business and power. Through Macbeth’s greed and his actions as a result of it, one can use him to understand why corporations might go to such lengths to discredit opposition against them.
secrets
1. it’s not like it’s a secret
(even though you like to pretend it is.)
i step over the conversation like it’s roadkill. everyone else steps on it, grinding blood and bones into the pavement as they continue on.
they all walk. i weave, look down at my feet. it’s a sad sight. i don’t know what it was before it became a footprint.
i don’t know if i’d end up like that if i tried to tell you, so better to grind myself down than let you do it for me.
leave with me on the bullet train
“leave with me on the bullet train,” i say to her, come september i’ll be gone with my suitcase of weeds and the razor blades i used to cut along the lines of our town her face is a rose but her eyes gleam with thorns meant for snakes she baptizes me in a different way, with words instead of holy water talking of eternity and death and anger our foreheads meet and she mumbles the words her breath smoked, her language soft “don’t listen to their white voices, my dear,” she says to me “they know nothing.” but so much of the world is filled with snakes who talk of ash “go to hell,” they say, so i’ll go, i’ll go! i’ll trade your cathedral hallways and church bells with censors burned onto my body, with scorched breaths who will say, “go breathless, go everywhere,” i cut all my ties with those fucking blades so cut my body into your soul and leave with me on the bullet train, i don’t want one of them to be yours fuck the white walls, the watching hallways, we can be our own testament to God we can be eternal, don't you want to be eternal? “go mindlessly,” they say, “and death awaits,” but i can’t die if you come with me, dream of me i can’t die when your words are my air and your soul is my atmosphere.
plastic bags
“You hoard, honey. Admit it.” Locke is giving me that look again. Pursed lips, hands on hips, narrowed eyes. I hate it. Partly because I know deep down that he’s right, but even deeper down is my unbridled impulse to deny it at all costs. My pride is at stake.
“I do not!” I say defensively, moving some things aside to clear a path. “These things are going to be useful one day.”
“That’s what a hoarder would say,” he says, rolling his eyes.
“False! False.”
“Zip, you gotta let some of this stuff go…” he takes a step forward to put a hand on the side of my arm, and I feel this electricity where he touches me and a chill goes up my spine. I freeze; it’s really hard to tell if I’m imagining it or not, because it’s been happening a lot lately and it feels so…not imagined. But how else would I explain it?
I can only feel and dwell on said feelings for a split second though, because Locke yelps and doubles over right after, taking his hand off me to reach for his foot and plopping backwards on his ass. I jump a bit, giving a small, “Eep!”
“Ah shit, what the hell?!” He growls, grimacing.
I chuckle, bending down to pick up the thing he stepped on; a small—and very hard—pewter owl, colored in a lovely graphite gray and leaning forward for a pounce.
“I remember this guy,” I say, turning him toward Locke’s face. “Isn’t he cute?”
copperkinqs 