#either of them

I want a moment just with you.

We all know how important it is in the series who's POV we are watching from, right?

Well, I think the couple of scenes where Jonathan calls Steve out for "flirting" or still trying to win Nancy are seen from his own perspective and Steve is seriously only caring as a friend.

In the first scene where Steve leans into Nancy, we don't see him acknowledging the act or searching for her reaction, that's just something he does (he does looks at her but I think is more of a wanting confirmation or waiting for instructions than anything). But, Jonathan does notice (Nancy too, but if this is from Jonathan's pov, it makes sense he is seeing too much into her reaction).

When they climb the tower, Steve is not trying to actually show off, he knows this type of thing is his thing, that's what he offers to the group. But, when Jonathan offers and even rushes off to "win", Steve gets competitive or threatened or fed up (I mean, let's consider in the 4 episodes he has being called stupid more than a couple of times). He wants to prove he's got this, at least.

And in the scene where they are in the van and Jonathan blows up, we finally see a look into the other side. Steve telling him he has being paranoid and that going to see nancy when something horrible had just happened would be a rational thing to do for a friend.

Tuesday July 18, 2017

EVERGREEN TIMES 16

URBAN

Triangle Bar Changes The Scene

In less than a year, Triangle Bar's eclectic space has become the place to meet for people looking for refuge and community.

Alex Willow

When you pass the threshold into Triangle Bar, you notice that the rest of the world seems to melt away. Perhaps it's the combination of the quirky neon lighting, the chilled beats playing throughout, and the excited chatter rounding out the experience that lets you know that you're somewhere you can be yourself.

When Triangle Bar opened almost a year ago, it was an unassuming sight. Nestled between Jade Garden Chinese Restaurant and Kleimann's Deli on 57th Street, the only way you could tell it was there was a single understated sign featuring just a lone pink triangle. It's a symbol that has long been associated with the people the bar seeks to serve. Today, it's much harder to miss, as there's a constant flow of excited regulars coming and going deep into the night.

Triangle Bar's proprietor and head bartender, Riley Verselis, had envisioned the space as being, first and foremost, for local queer communities to be who they are. As Verselis, who is themself nonbinary, puts it, "Triangle is a place you can go when there's nowhere else you can go." It's a promise they've kept up with as an iron-clad principle. They provide a place to rest, drink and mingle with others who are just like you. Feeling welcome and being welcoming are the only price of admission.

It's just after dinner and unusually quiet on the street when I arrive, but I can hear laughter wafting through the door. By the time I step inside and hang up, Verselis has already called out my name from the bar. I'm surprised that they recognized me so quickly, despite having spoken only via email. It's a testament to how attentive they are to everything that happens in the bar. Though their piercings and tattoos portray a rough exterior, it's immediately apparent that Verselis is as sweet as they come. After a little introductory chitchat, they offer me a drink.

Nearby, a regular overhears and tells me Verselis' signature cocktail changes on a frequent basis. Whether it's a change of ingredients or a change of method, they're constantly updating the recipe to taste. In something of a Ship of Theseus situation, the drink can be completely materially different after a few revisions but still be considered the same. A version of the drink may remain the same for a week, or a month, or two, but it's always a good measure of eccentric, and its mutable nature means the best time to experience this version of it is now. Tonight, it contains caçhaca, campari, a dash of lime juice, and a squeeze of a spiny, exotic-looking fruit I've never seen before. The cocktail, I'm told, does not have an official name as Verselis is loath to put a label on something that's still finding its identity, but regulars have taken to calling it "The Experiment" and Verselis understands. Whatever you call it, I call it delicious.

As Verselis attends to another customer, I get my first real chance to take in the scenery. The shelves and walls are laden with assorted tchotchkes—thrift store and occasionally sidewalk finds they say, as Verselis delights in picking up things that others have thrown away and giving them a new home. Despite the dark neon ambiance, there's a broad cross-section of the queer community here with people of all ages sharing the space. In the corner, I see a group of young regulars laughing over a small collection of old arcade machines. A young man who I had mistaken for a delivery guy enters and turns out to be a delivery guy just getting off work. He goes to join the arcade group, where they have cheers and an Experiment waiting for him. He's apparently very good at Cruis'n USA.

All along the wall behind them is a striking display of art prints. The theme of these seems to be a multifarious mix of queer, or at least queer-adjacent iconoclasts: Oscar Wilde, Marsha P. Johnson, Viktor Tsoi, Raffaella Carrà, SOPHIE, Angela Davis, St. Sebastián, Leslie Cheung, and others, I presume, I'm not cool enough to recognize. Accented by the neon lights, they give the effect of a modern day syncretic pantheon. Verselis would later tell me they make these prints themself and they're adding two more next week. I'm not sure where they find the time for all of it.

In the back, I see the makings of a small kitchen being renovated. With the success of Triangle Bar's first year, Verselis hopes to expand the team and offer food options. They show me a well-used notebook filled with menu ideas, complete with sketches which look good enough to eat off the page. Until that becomes a reality, however, they allow outside food but only from nearby restaurants, accounting for all the Chinese takeout boxes strewn throughout the venue.

"I guess it's just a small thing I can do to support local business," Verselis says. "We can't provide food right now, so if you're going to get some, get it from our neighbors." They shoot a knowing smile. "It's really good, to be honest. It'll be hard to compete with everyone when we get the kitchen up and running!"

"Triangle is a place you can go when there's nowhere else to go."

Verselis introduces me to Clara Dizon who, they say, is Triangle's first regular. "As soon as I walked in, I knew this place would be special," Dizon says. "I wound up bringing my friends and now we're here every week for board games. But I'm a day one! I know what the first Experiment was like!" This is a rather large point of pride for many of Triangle Bar's long-term regulars. According to local legend, the first Experiment was only available for four hours before it changed. By Verselis' reckoning, there have been almost seventy Experiments.

Dizon continues, "We really do love it here. If you want a place where you can just be, it's either here or the library. And drinking gets you kicked out of the library." Dizon may be a few drinks deep at this point of the night, but she's not wrong in her assessment. Everything about Triangle Bar, from the idiosyncratic décor to the ever-changing creative choices, says that everything is welcome and exploration is imperative.

With so many changes and running influences throughout Triangle Bar, I wonder if Verselis has a vision for how the bar would eventually end up. "Not really," they say. "I pretty much decide things on whim and whimsy. As long as it's a place for folks to feel safe and connected, I'm happy." I can't help but feel there's a parallel to be made here, in that Triangle gives people the freedom to be themselves and people give Triangle the freedom to be itself.

First, I'd intially assumed Heavy has some sort of super healing powers. But he doesn't, does he? In that one scene with Tonya, he says he's holding himself together and hoping it'll heal. So, he's using his gravity powers to physically put his body back together and hold it in place, but that doesn't speed up the healing process it only allows it to happen, in a way that it generally wouldn't happen for someone who just got their lower torso blown to bits. So there's scarring and pain and all that fun stuff, and he's not even sure it'll work. He's not sure he won't have to hold himself together with his powers alone forever.

Second thing. Etienne. What a shitty life. Like wow. Most people mostly get the things we need to grow up given to us -- sometimes there's some neglect, sometimes there's some abuse, but to survive infancy and early childhood we need things to be given to us freely. Etienne, from a few minutes of his birth, had to take what he needed, using his mind control powers, in order to not die.

Which means a couple things, firstly, no wonder he's not a Kantian, if he had moral lines he wouldn't cross and they included reasonable things like "not using your mind control powers to make someone else do a thing that they wouldn't have done otherwise", he wouldn't have survived at all. And it'd be a less interesting story. The surprising thing is that he didn't go full on supervillain. He's got a great supervillain origin story.

The other thing is, he's never been loved. Nurses physically cared for him, but he was unresponsive, there's a good chance none of them ever spoke kindly to him or showed him any sort of emotional affection. (Even setting aside the racism thing, and well, the racism thing was clearly there.) He's gotten little or no physical affection. No bedtime stories. No lullabies. No time when he fell and bumped his knee and got a kiss to make it better.

Who knows whether it makes it better or worse that he's known all along that those things exist and other people get them, just not him.

And yet, he gives the little kindnesses he never received to others. He does his God act to soothe Eliza -- yeah it's creepy and fucked up, but he understands the concept of trying to make someone feel better and how to make someone feel better. He's kind and gentle with Masumi. He lies to the public with the intention of keeping them calm. He takes this life of his that's been utterly devoid of any recieving of affection and kindness, and gives affection and kindness back, and is at least reluctant to respond to attempts to kill him with using lethal violence back.

Although I'm not sure what the deal is with him going after Kid Ignition, who after all didn't do anything to him and neither did Heavy and surely he knows that.

I think. I'm not sure how the psychic cage concept works. Magus thought he had the stadium set up to block Etienne's psychic abilities, but if it did that then how was "Etienne" still doing anything? It is confusing. Perhaps Etienne is lying about not being able to break through the Pyramid? Seems like a thing he'd do.

Back to Etienne's shitty childhood. I think there's a bit of ambiguity around his first act of mind control. Was Etienne already like that and "it'd be more ethical" was Etienne's words? Or did Etienne do some sort of nonverbal push on the doctor's mind and he came up with those words to justify trying to keep Etienne alive, and that's where Etienne's obsession with ethics began?