City of Roses is a serialized epic firmly set in Portland, Oregon: an urban fantasy mixing magical realism with gonzo noirish prose, where duels are fought in Pioneer Square, and union meetings are beseiged by ghost bicycles.
Boots Riley
So for me, the question isn’t “Is the public ready?” I start from: the public already knows things are messed up. The public is more open than we’re told. The question I ask myself is: how do I move people emotionally towards imagining something they can do? Not “the” solution, but a solution—something that shifts them from “It’s all hopeless” to “Maybe we can try this.” That’s what I’m after.
Miyazawa Iori
It’s true that I don’t want to say anything... I think there’s this mutual understanding among yuri fans, “don’t talk about yuri, make yuri.” If I accidentally blurt something out, it’ll provoke a flame war, and I don’t want to have what I say here spread around with a totally different meaning. And if it does, I’ll have to slice you all in half. I’ll be talking today with these feelings in mind.
The first of these aims will result in his being “kissed” or praised by the reading public and his courtly audience, but at the same time can only result from being “kissed” or touched by critical contact. If the poet remains unnoticed by criticism (“vnkisste”) he will always remain obscure (“vncouthe”) in the twin senses of unheard-of but also invisible, unavailable to the consciousness of his potential readers. The one who can provide him not only with fame but, at one level, his very existence, is the already knowledgeable EK.
Actually, having gone back to volume 5 already, I’ve finished the first draft of no. 47, and I’m a couple-thousand deep in the first draft of no. 48, which means I’m back again in volume 6, but today, today we’re doing the cover reveal for no. 47, which is in volume 5—thus, the title.
Anyway: the cover for no. 47, June 29th:
Stifling a shriek she steps too hastily back, stumble-scuff the pavement of the esplanade, arms outflung, bare arms against a fall that doesn’t, she’s, her T-shirt’s back to black, and cracked across the front of it a devil’s leer. Moody’s sitting on a stump with his back to the empty river, the shining city, smiling unctuously, black leather hat tipped up, his ragged jacket of army-surplus green.
“That’s, that’s mine,” says Jo.
“Yeah?” he says, stuffing his hands in the pockets of it, pulling them out, setting his collar, his shoulders as he rolls his neck. “You got my shirt,” with a jerk of his chin. “Took me way too long to put two and two together. You stole it. That night. Didn’t you.”
“How,” she says, and a deep breath. It’s all so quiet about them, even the overpasses behind and above. “How did that happen.”
“What,” he says, looking about, a performance of uncertainty, “all that?” undone by his smile. “Just now?” He points. “I live in your head, Bambi. Rent’s awful cheap.”
“You live,” she says, “in prison,” quiet and cold and definite. “You got arrested. You pled guilty, even if it was only a tenth of what you ever did. A hundred, and twenty-four, months,” stepping across the esplanade toward him, sat there on that stump, “and I didn’t have to think, about you,” she says, “I haven’t thought about you, not at all, not once since then, not till Christian went and said you, you were, back. Danny Moody’s back.”
He scowls, he shrugs. “I bet you don’t believe in tigers, neither,” he says.
“…like Little, Big crossed with Revolutionary Girl Utena.”
“The surrealism, the lush detail, and the loving attention to local Portland culture…”
