Books book review Mythic Intimacy in Oath of Fire by K. Arsenault Rivera A review of K Arsenault Rivera’s new fantasy novel By Liz Bourke | Published on October 30, 2024 Comment 0 Share New Share K. Arsenault Rivera’s debut trilogy was an epic fantasy and a queer love story that was interested in the apotheosis of its arguably human protagonists—larger-than-life heroes—into gods. Oath of Fire is a different beast, though it retains Arsenault Rivera’s interest in the interaction between mortal concerns and more-than-mortal powers. It sets itself in New York, and gives us a retelling of the tale of Eros (better known, perhaps, in the Latin form as Cupid) and Psyche. The story of Cupid and Psyche was given its canonical form in Apuleius’s Metamorphoses, also known as The Golden Ass, a Latin novel which dates from the second half of the second century CE. Apuleius’s version is thoroughly heterosexual, and just as thoroughly saturated with the misogynistic norms of his society. It is also very much concerned with hierarchy and status: Psyche, though held by Cupid to be his wife, is considered as a slave by Venus, whose position is that their marriage is invalid as much because of the status difference between god and mortal as the lack of Cupid’s father’s permission and the lack of witnesses to the wedding. (Apuleius plays with Roman legalistic logic.) Arsenault Rivera discards the misogyny and prefers Greek names to Latin. In Oath of Fire, Psyche is still the youngest of three sisters. Her elder sisters are both more successful than she is, in conventional terms and in her own eyes. Psyche wants to help people, though (apart from her cat) she lives an isolated life. She has a small following as an influencer, making regular videos. Her only friends are fellow players of an online multiplayer game, most of whom don’t even know her real name. She’s driven by compassion, by the urge to help and be useful: As the novel opens, she’s employed as a therapist—a job she soon loses, thanks to a misunderstanding, rooted in Psyche’s deep urge to help, that means it looks like she outed a trans patient to said patient’s parents. Depressed, unemployed, and at loose ends, when she receives a peculiar party invitation from an online connection —a very very hot guy—who calls himself Zephyr, and who says he wants her to help his friend, it only takes a little persuasion to get her to go. Buy the Book Oath of Fire K Arsenault Rivera Buy Book Oath of Fire K Arsenault Rivera Buy this book from: AmazonBarnes and NobleiBooksIndieBoundTarget But this is no ordinary party. Instead, Psyche finds herself transported to an arcane court, full of ecstasy and terror, equal parts dream of desire and nightmare of terror and excess. It is here Arsenault Rivera marries the most sensuous and the most ruthless undercurrents of Greek mythology to modern fantasy’s more lush and erotic interpretations of faerie courts. There are, we learn, many such arcane courts, and their inhabitants are bound by laws that are part of their very being, such that they can’t break them and live. The gods are bound by oaths and compacts, which is a problem—for when Psyche’s escort, Zephyr, is shown to be in breach of his compacts, the protection his presence affords her is stripped from her. She’s prey for the court’s inhabitants, to be a sacrifice to its ruling lady, until Eros intervenes to save her. Eros here is feminine, beautiful, borne aloft on wings of flame, masked and armoured. Psyche finds her fascinating. And attractive. Eros wants to see her again, to talk with her even though she claims that she has no need of Psyche’s services as a therapist. In order for this to happen, they must swear an oath to each other. “[Y]ou’ll need stronger protection to see me regularly,” are Eros’s words. “If you haven’t noticed, Court is… intense. Too intense for most of your kind.” The oath (an “Oath of Fire”), sealed with a kiss, binds them: Eros pledges love and protection, Psyche to heed Eros, and Psyche is warned to not look under Eros’s mask. And after this dramatic quasi-marriage… …Well, they essentially start dating. Eros begins turning up in Psyche’s everyday life, and Psyche finds that the presence and interest of this fabulous otherworldly warrior gives her confidence to believe in herself and her capabilities in ways she hadn’t, before. Meanwhile, Psyche’s kindness and skills at getting people to open up cause Eros to acknowledge her own emotions. Eros invites Psyche further into her life and the life of the Courts, leading to Psyche learning more about the kinds of things that Eros has done in her very long life than, perhaps, she was entirely ready for. The push-and-pull interaction of the superhuman with the mundane—the intrusion of Eros’s fantastical self and world into Psyche’s everyday life, and the intrusion of Psyche and her human reactions into Eros’s context—is fascinatingly well done, and mirrors (albeit, as this is fantasy, in very exaggerated form) the interpenetration of realities and expectations, the compromises and the unexpected shocks, when two very different people begin a relationship with each other. But this is a Cupid-and-Psyche story, so the course of their developing relationship is ultimately to be sorely affected by the jealous fury and vengeful spite of Aphrodite, here playing the role of abusive, controlling parent. Psyche’s sisters play, here, much more supportive roles than they do in Apuleius’s version: It is Psyche’s subconscious that casts them as doubting figures, the avatars of her insecurity, where in Apuleius they manipulate her against her own best interests. (It bothers me a little that this appears to be a world without Greek mythology: Psyche, despite having Greek ancestry and being a video game geek, relates none of what happens to her to the myths of Greek antiquity.) This is a very intimate novel, concerned with interiors and emotions. It uses the strangeness of the Courts and of Eros herself to look at the estrangement that is that glittering period of early-relationship attraction, the erotics of limerence: The mask becomes a metaphor for uncertainty of knowing another person, the boundaries that every relationship has for trust and privacy. It draws itself larger than life, but it uses those larger than life elements to look at very common, ordinary things: isolation, anxiety, insecurity, the anomie and atomisation of having all your friends live in the internet, falling in love with someone you think is out of your league, the difficulty of relating to family, trust and mistrust, truth and power, cruelty and kindness. Aphrodite’s interference in Eros and Psyche’s love story has especial resonance in a queer retelling: Eros steps out of the box her parent has designed for her, to claim the right to direct her own life, and faces rejection and the rejection of her chosen partner in consequence. Once again, K. Arsenault Rivera gives us something that possesses uncomfortably familiar power, though cast in fantastic terms. Oath of Fire is also a novel that embraces the erotic. That is not to say it puts a great many sex scenes on the page, but rather that it sinks deep into sensuality, dwells lovingly on somatic sensation, on taste, on touch. Food and fragrance recur. It fills the world of the senses, portrays sexuality without shame, embraces a queered erotics of the body, with its emphasis on hands, on movement, on non-sexual touch that carries an erotic charge as well as the frisson of intentional, sexual touch. Danger, strangeness—estrangement from the ordinary—takes on erotic potential. The romance between Psyche and Eros lives in the orientation and instinctual reactions of their bodies, linked by the fiery oath Eros insisted upon, as much as in their speech or acts. Erotic but rarely explicit, yet deeply entwined in the flesh. A novel of embodied longings, consummated by degrees. It’s a fascinating interpretation, and an interesting, compelling novel in its own right. I’m glad to have read it.[end-mark] Oath of Fire is published by Forever. The post Mythic Intimacy in <i>Oath of Fire</i> by K. Arsenault Rivera appeared first on Reactor.

News Marvel Cinematic Universe We’ve Got Teasers and Release Dates for a Bunch of Marvel Stuff Heading to Disney+ Get your first glimpse of Daredevil: Born Again… By Vanessa Armstrong | Published on October 30, 2024 Screenshot: Marvel Studios Comment 0 Share New Share Screenshot: Marvel Studios The delightful Marvel series Agatha All Along has its finale today, and to celebrate the occasion/keep us excited about Marvel stuff, Disney+ has released a teaser showcasing the Marvel projects set to debut on the streaming platform in the next year. The less-than-two-minute clip gives us a glimpse of some shows we haven’t seen footage from before, and announces a slew of release dates. It also emphasizes that the mega-hit film, Deadpool & Wolverine, will be streaming on Disney+ starting on November 12. Here’s a rundown of what else we got from the teaser. First up is footage from Daredevil: Born Again, where we see Charlie Cox and Vincent D’Onofrio reprise their respective roles as Matt Murdock and Wilson Fisk (as well as a quick shot of Jon Bernthal once again as the Punisher). D’Onofrio even gets meta saying as Fisk that “it’s been a while,” which is correct given the Netflix Daredevil series ended six years ago. The new MCU show will premiere on Disney+ on March 4, 2025. We also got some first look footage from two other live-action series: Ironheart and Wonder Man. In Ironheart, we see Riri Williams/Ironheart (Dominique Thorne) being her badass genius self, and for Wonder Man, we get a glimpse of Yahya Abdul-Mateen II playing the titular character as well as Ben Kingsley reprising his role as actor Trevor Slattery. Ironheart debuts on June 24, 2025 and Wonder Man sometime in December 2025. There are a slew of animated Marvel series headed to Disney+, and we got a peek at all of them in this clip. First up is the third season of Marvel’s What If…? with a premiere date of December 22, 2024. After that, we’ve got Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man on January 29, 2025, Eyes of Wakanda on August 6, 2025, and Marvel Zombies set for next Halloween in October 2025. Check out the teaser below to get glimpses of all these shows firsthand.[end-mark] The post We’ve Got Teasers and Release Dates for a Bunch of Marvel Stuff Heading to Disney+ appeared first on Reactor.

A legendary abolitionist, political activist, and freedom fighter, Harriet Tubman was an escaped slave who dedicated and risked her life to help others gain their freedom as well. Utilizing the Underground Railroad, a network of anti-slavery safe houses, she led dozens of slaves to freedom, becoming a legend in her own right. However, this only scratches the surface of Tubman's actions. Source

It’s deliriously funny that The Washington Post jumped into a cauldron of boiling angst by refusing to endorse Kamala Harris for president. The decision is deeply weird. It’s like McDonald’s declining to advocate for hamburgers. We all know The Washington Post has a staff full of Democrats writing for an audience that’s mostly Democrats (and bureaucrats). Who would suggest that one editorial endorsement would suddenly reverse anyone’s opinion that the Post is hopelessly biased? It’s like the Post didn’t realize that posting the motto “Democracy Dies in Darkness” on the front page for eight years didn’t signal their belief that “Donald Trump = Authoritarianism.” They’re not alone. The Los Angeles Times decided not to endorse. USA Today decided not to endorse. It’s mildly amusing that NPR and CNN are trashing the nonendorsers, but the broadcast networks don’t endorse—except, again, everyone can figure it out, daily. NPR media reporter David Folkenflik is working his anonymous leftist inside sources who want to keep the Post as “progressive” as possible. The ideological enforcers are proclaiming this is a fiasco, that 200,000 angry subscribers have canceled over this lack of one article that would show up on page A-20. So, why not endorse? Even now, the Post editorial page is publishing self-righteous anti-Trump attacks from the editorial board. They just didn’t write anything explicitly declaring, “Vote for Her.” The endorsement is considered significant because it’s a branding exercise. An endorsement would signal the Post is on the “right side of history.” Failing to post this one edict is somehow an enormous betrayal. Liberal billionaire Jeff Bezos, who has owned The Washington Post for all its recent Trump-trashing history, wrote an editorial telling his troops that public trust in the media is cratering, so they shouldn’t endorse candidates. It makes them look non-independent. It’s nice that Bezos pays some attention to public trust numbers. But he’s not a meddler. Former top Post editor Martin Baron—who thinks the non-endorsement is heinous—told The New Yorker that “people had a lot of suspicions about Bezos, but the reality is that he never interfered in our coverage in any way.” Bezos failed to intervene when Baron’s Post won a Pulitzer Prize for a string of suggestive articles that Trump and the Russians were in cahoots, relying on (and boosting) the infamous “Steele dossier,” which was a bag full of nothingburgers. The billionaire failed to intervene in 2020 when the Post rained fire on the theory that COVID-19 leaked from a Chinese laboratory, or when Post reporters and “fact-checkers” couldn’t figure out whether the Hunter Biden laptop was authentic. (It only took them until 2022 to admit it was reality.) In other words, the Post has a history of acting like vicious attack dogs when they investigate Republicans and sheepish, dilatory skeptics when Democrats are faced with scandal allegations. They reliably act like an armored battalion of Democrats.   CNN’s Brian Stelter demonstrated how liberals believe they’re not partisan when they demand a Harris endorsement: “Some observers have been likening this audience reaction to the exodus Fox experienced after accurately calling the election in 2020. But the difference is that Fox fans recoiled when it reported the truth. Post fans are worried that the paper might be pulling back from truth-telling.” “Truth-telling” and Trump-ruining are synonymous. Voting for Trump is voting against truth. That kind of arrogance underlines why so many people tell pollsters they have no trust at all in newspaper people who still try to describe themselves as “mainstream.” COPYRIGHT 2024 CREATORS.COM We publish a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of The Daily Signal. The post The Hilarious Kerfuffle Over Washington Post’s Not Endorsing Harris appeared first on The Daily Signal.

Which Polls Are the Outliers in Michigan?

Why 'Garbage' Will Stick to Biden -- And Kamala

It’s not as simple as mailing out your ballots.

But it is a good solution if you want your house to be full of spiders AND conkers.

Snow typically tops the iconic volcano in early October, but it's yet to return this year.

Monday evening’s PBS News Hour devoted its first 11 minutes of news -- two full segments -- to bashing Donald Trump’s long rally at Madison Square Garden in the heart of his hometown of New York City. White House reporter Laura Barron-Lopez actually led with criticism from his Democratic rival Kamala Harris, not news about the rally itself. Laura Barron-Lopez: On her way to campaign in battleground Michigan today, Vice President Kamala Harris denounced recent rhetoric from former President Donald Trump and his allies. Kamala Harris, Vice President of the United States: He is focused and actually fixated on his grievances, on himself and on dividing our country. And it is not in any way something that will strengthen the American family, the American worker. Barron-Lopez: She was referring to a massive Trump rally at Madison Square Garden in New York yesterday, where a racist remark about Puerto Rico made headlines. After running the offending clip by comedian Tony Hinchcliffe, the reporter noted “Trump's team tried to distance itself from the comment” but “did not distance itself from other remarks made by multiple Trump allies who hurled racist and sexist attacks at Vice President Harris." A radical friend of the News Hour, New York University professor Ruth Ben-Ghiat, appeared in the following segment as the resident expert on what anchor Amna Nawaz called “The racist, sexist and vulgar remarks at Donald Trump's Madison Square Garden rally….” Nawaz: So we are just days from Election Day. This was probably one of the ugliest collection of remarks from selected speakers that we have seen at a Trump rally. You study this kind of rhetoric. So what stood out to you about this type of language this close to Election Day? Ben-Ghiat seemed to suggest that Madison Square Garden, where the Democratic National Convention, Ralph Nader, and thousands of musical acts have appeared over the years, was some kind of historically notorious Nazi hangout. Ben-Ghiat: So this place in Madison Square Garden, and it was one of many occasions that the Trump campaign has chosen to allow comparisons to be made to the Nazis. So that was Madison Square Garden, which was the site of a rally by American Nazis in 1939, talking about polluting the blood, speaking of Americans as an enemy within. This is all straight from fascism. In fact, fascism -- the core of fascism in Italy and Germany were combatants who followed their leader to bring the war home and turned their force against their own people…. Nawaz: I want to underscore that parallel you're drawing there, because this is what many are talking about today, both the remarks from Trump about America being an occupied country, but also last night we heard from Trump loyalist Stephen Miller, who said America is for Americans and Americans only. That, of course, was also another parallel drawn to that 1939 Nazi rally at the old Madison Square Garden, which back then promised to -- quote -- "restore America to the true Americans."…. Ben-Ghiat then suggested Trump would establish concentration camps for American liberals. Ben-Ghiat: ….And when the Nazis built Dachau in 1933 because they were running out of space in prisons -- they built this camp Dachau. And they didn't put Jews in it at first. It was for the political opposition, liberals, leftists. Then it had Jehovah's Witnesses, then LGBTQ people. All kinds of other people went in there, and then Jews were targeted as well by the regime…. That wasn’t even Ben-Ghiat’s first time making the insane comparison. In November 2023 she warned of Trump: “In 2025, he's got plans for mass deportations, mass imprisonments and giant camps.” If the professor truly believes a re-elected Trump would ship liberals off into camps, she’s certainly brave for continuing to pop up on government-funded television calling him dangerous. But she doesn’t really believe it, of course. Nawaz didn’t blink at Ben-Ghiat’s crazed comparison of a second Trump term to the Fourth Reich. If one really wanted to talk about modern-day Nazism, we could discuss why the pro-Hamas protesters that dominated college campuses earlier this year -- who agreed with Hitler on quite a few execrable matters -- were celebrated by PBS for months. These biased segments were brought to you in part by BDO. A transcript is available, click “Expand.” PBS News Hour 10/28/24 7:08:06 p.m. (ET) Amna Nawaz: The racist, sexist and vulgar remarks at Donald Trump's Madison Square Garden rally from the former president himself and his slate of speakers has drawn significant criticism the day after. For more on the rhetoric and its impact, we're joined by Ruth Ben-Ghiat, a professor of history at New York University. Ruth, welcome back to the "News Hour." Ruth Ben-Ghiat, NYU History Professor: Thank you. Amna Nawaz: So we are just days from Election Day. This was probably one of the ugliest collection of remarks from selected speakers that we have seen at a Trump rally. You study this kind of rhetoric. So what stood out to you about this type of language this close to Election Day? Ruth Ben-Ghiat: So this place in Madison Square Garden, and it was one of many occasions that the Trump campaign has chosen to allow comparisons to be made to the Nazis. So that was Madison Square Garden, which was the site of a rally by American Nazis in 1939, talking about polluting the blood, speaking of Americans as an enemy within. This is all straight from fascism. In fact, fascism — the core of fascism in Italy and Germany were combatants who followed their leader to bring the war home and turned their force against their own people. And when Donald Trump was talking about America as an occupied country and he was going to liberate it and also in the past talking about using the military on Americans, this comes out of fascism and also the tradition of military dictatorships like Pinochet in Chile. So it's a purely authoritarian spectacle that we saw. Amna Nawaz: I want to underscore that parallel you're drawing there, because this is what many are talking about today, both the remarks from Trump about America being an occupied country, but also last night we heard from Trump loyalist Stephen Miller, who said America is for Americans and Americans only. That, of course, was also another parallel drawn to that 1939 Nazi rally at the old Madison Square Garden, which back then promised to — quote — "restore America to the true Americans." Ruth, we have to point out, again, this is closing arguments time for the candidates. So why do you think this kind of rhetoric resonates with millions of people right now? Ruth Ben-Ghiat: I think Trump has been conditioning Americans since 2015 to see violence as something justified in certain cases and even patriotic. He's been conditioning them to see other Americans as enemies, as diseased, as dirty. And what we have to remember is that authoritarians might initially target one group, and he's been talking mostly about immigrants. But he's also calling the enemy within the political opposition. And when the Nazis built Dachau in 1933 because they were running out of space in prisons — they built this camp Dachau. And they didn't put Jews in it at first. It was for the political opposition, liberals, leftists. Then it had Jehovah's Witnesses, then LGBTQ people. All kinds of other people went in there, and then Jews were targeted as well by the regime. So when they're talking about deporting so many people in America, this is a massive amount of people, and thus you need an infrastructure of repression. You need camps. And the whole thing is a dystopia. And this is not what America is. But Donald Trump has been conditioning Americans to think that this is the way. Amna Nawaz: We have seen, obviously, these remarks strongly condemned by Vice President Harris and Democrats. But among Republicans, the response has sort of been a mixed bag. There's been some, like Senator Rick Scott, who's in a tight reelection race in Florida, who said in response to the comedian's racist remarks there about Puerto Ricans — quote — "This joke bombed for a reason." And then we saw Florida Congressman Byron Donalds, who also spoke at the rally, who said this on CNBC this morning. Rep. Byron Donalds (R-FL): This is the problem with most media today. They're too busy trying to fearmonger everything, instead of actually talking about the facts and the substance. Amna Nawaz: So, Ruth, members of the Republican Party now also criticize Vice President Harris for calling former President Trump a fascist, saying that that is the dangerous rhetoric. Are those kind of remarks on the same level to you? Ruth Ben-Ghiat: Not at all. And this is part of an authoritarian projection mechanism. I call it the upside-down world of authoritarianism, where, ever since Mussolini, he was the first to call democrats the real tyrants and fascism was going to be freedom. Fascism was going to make Italy great again. That was a slogan, as was drain the swamp. Trump took that from Mussolini as well. So this is pure projection to — and it's all — the endgame is to justify — to justify whatever they would like to do for retribution, locking up the political opposition by saying that they're the ones who are the tyrants, they're the ones who are repressive. Amna Nawaz: Ruth, if members of his own party did condemn this kind of speech from Donald Trump, would it make a difference? What has history shown us? Ruth Ben-Ghiat: You know, there's this concept of authoritarian bargains, where a party or elites, they could be religious elites, business elites, they sign on to protect the leader, and their job becomes to protect and support the leader. And it's very rare once they sign on that they renege on this. And so you don't see much criticism. It's easier to blame the press or blame the political opposition. And so once they sign on, they find themselves having to be the party of more and more violence and more and more repression. And many of them realize only too late what they have gotten themselves into. Amna Nawaz: That is Ruth Ben-Ghiat, professor of history at New York University. Ruth, thank you for your time. Appreciate it.