CULTURE, ENTERTAINMENT

A Scene from “Brief Encounter”

Featured Artwork: ‘Brief Encounter’ by Stephen Pannell In David Lean’s 1945 film Brief Encounter, a middle-aged housewife Laura Jesson (Celia Johnson) meets the married doctor Alec Harvey (Trevor Howard) by chance at an English train station. With a friendly conversation over tea, a speck of coal caught under the eye, and a series of arranged […]

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CULTURE, OPINION, POLITICS

Asian Women Are Not Your Punchline

Featured Illustration: Phung Banh When I was eight, I visited my relatives in China for the first time in five years. I’d gone with my entire family. Much of the trip lives in hazy memory, born out of blazing summer days and in sweltering tresses of palm trees. It feels almost psychedelic now, looking back […]

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CULTURE, OPINION

Fantasy Has No Limits — Unless You’re Disney

Featured Illustration: Andrea Dezsö Over winter break, I decided to watch some of the films that had been racking up on my watchlist. I stumbled upon Guillermo del Toro’s 2006 Pan’s Labyrinth on Netflix (El laberinto del fauno in Spanish) — a lavish, at times stupendously dark fantasy film set in the era between the […]

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CULTURE, LGBTQ+, OPINION

“Hetero” — Is it a Mental Disease?

Featured Artwork: ‘What If?’ by Roxana Radulescu *Note: This piece is purely satirical. All quotes are works of fiction. . . . What if homosexuality were considered normal, and heterosexuality unnatural? A new study from Pfizer Inc. has revealed that heterosexuality is indeed a mental disease. The results were submitted to a peer-reviewed journal and […]

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CULTURE, LITERATURE, OPINION

Defining Les Misérables in the 21st Century

Featured Illustration: Cristiano Gonçalo The first time that I heard of Victor Hugo’s Les Misérables was in a café.  The shop looked something out of an auteur’s Elysian: the splendid oranges, shaded by moody hues of blues, the bale-like arrangements of fluffy breads and pastries. It was this pseudo-Parisian place — the mahogany walls, lined […]

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OPINION, POLITICS

Trump’s Presidency Eerily Mirrors “The Mob”

Featured Illustration: Jack Daly Donald Trump has said and done many things that would be considered political suicide for any other Republican candidate. From his impeachment, over 26 accusations of sexual misconduct, to his outrageous political statements, political analysts on both the left and right have predicted that he’d lose supporters. And yet, each time […]

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CULTURE, OPINION

The Fascination With All That is Morbid and Macabre

Featured Illustration: Marmite / Behance It could be the very reason you clicked — a glance, then come another, then that pulsating enthrallment — the tempo of the heartbeat, those drops of pitter-patter sweat, and those eyes, open wide and clear, to all that is morbid and macabre… There are some things in this world […]

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