The field of comics, also sometimes known as graphic novels, is dominated by male creators and readers. However, there’s been increasing push in the last few decades by women to enter the field and make their mark. Though comics drawn by women are gaining popularity, most are classified as “indie,” distributed by small publishers that may not be able to advertise or place volumes in prominent bookstores. Naomi Nowak’s most recent graphic novel, Graylight, is designated indie, though it deserves to be appreciated by a wider audience.

Sasha is a German photographer on assignment somewhere in northern Europe, where the sun stays up all night in summer. She is a mysterious person, a foreigner. She attracts the attention of a journalist, and he invites her to join him on his quest to interview a famous recluse. The woman takes a disliking to both of them and refuses to grant him an interview. But Sasha leaves with her own prize—a book stolen from the house.

Read more: http://feministreview.blogspot.com/2010/05/graylight.html

Kate Perry is a pretty kickass chick. Her childhood dream was to be a ninja, and she’s now a seventh degree Kung Fu blackbelt. The serious study required in kung fu appears to have colored her novel, giving the ‘paranormal’ elements of this paranormal romance a more grounded feel than most Asian-inspired material written by Westerners.

Second in The Guardians of Destiny series, Chosen By Desire continues the modern legend of the Scrolls of Destiny, ancient writings that impart elemental powers on those who study them. Our heroine, Carrie, is a doctoral candidate looking for something to spice up her dissertation. On a tip, she travels to a Chinese monastery where her snooping uncovers exactly what she’s looking for. Frantic not to get caught, she stuffs the scrolls in her bag to study later. To ease her conscience, she promises herself she will return them as soon as her paper is approved, and she’s won a coveted position at her university.

But the legend is true and the current Guardians are onto her. Max, an American tapped to hold the power of Metal, follows her to California. Convinced that she is working with his rival to damage him, he invites Carrie into his home to translate the texts in his collection, giving him a chance to study her and learn her plans.

Read More: http://feministreview.blogspot.com/2010/01/chosen-by-desire-guardians-of-destiny.html

Louder Than Words is a series aimed at teenagers about teenage experiences. Atypically, the volumes are also written by teenagers. It may seem bizarre to ask teenagers to write memoirs—as Marni says, her siblings laughed—but Louder Than Words is dedicated to “reinforce[ing] the message that the experiences of teenagers and their perceptions and beliefs regarding [their] experiences have validity.”

Marni Bates comes from a dysfunctional home. Her parents are estranged long before they divorced, and her sister is her rival. Young Marni wants to be loved, so she plays into the manipulative games her father contrives. The shocking realization that her father sees her as a tool, rather than a daughter to love, is the first of many sledgehammers to Marni’s self-esteem.

Trichotillomania is a stress-related disorder. People pull their hair out as a means of coping, not unlike cutting or other forms of self-mutilation. Marni begins to pull at her eyebrows, taunted about her unibrow, a term she doesn’t even understand. Soon she is tugging out her eyelashes, her bangs, and the hair behind her ears. She knows she’s gone too far, but she can’t stop herself. Still, she hides the results of her pulling well, giving the disorder free reign over her mind and body.

Read more: http://feministreview.blogspot.com/2009/12/louder-than-words-marni.html

Nobody recognized her.

She was the tough girl,

The rough girl,

The badass, Do Not Touch Me girl.

She wore leather,

Chunky, heavy heels,

And pierced eyebrows

With fake eyelashes.

But when she wore pink,

She bowled the whole school over.

Her low-riders were on vacation,

The bra straps went back under.

She wore a jean jacket,

And her hair in a high bow,

But she chewed bubblegum

As she sauntered.

Her way through the hallway emptied,

Like Moses parting teens,

And she never cast a look

to any of those boring kids.

‘Cause the badass girl

Was wearing a skirt,

And her tough self was riding the wave.

Smooth silk tickled her ankles

In strappy black sandals

While her hips swayed and swished

To her class.

Her bubblegum cracked

As she opened the door,

When it closed, she looked back,

And she winked.

There’s this kid. He’s always there. Always sitting just a few rows away. Sometimes he’s talking, and sometimes he’s silent. Sometimes he’s bored and sometimes he’s excited. But he’s always there.

Next to him, there’s this other kid. She’s kinda like the first kid, but she’s also kinda different. Sometimes she flirts with the first kid, and sometimes he flirts back. Often she ignores him. But she’s also always there.

There’s a whole room full of kids. There’s a whole school full of ‘em. They’re all kinda different, and they’ve all got stuff in common. Each is a unique individual, and all together, they make up this complicated whole termed a high school.

Our high school is vast. It is filled with characters so complex, no writer could ever hope to match them. It’s not hard to find them- you just have to notice them.

These are their stories, better than even they could tell them. Because they don’t know how; Underneath it all, they’re still just kids.

Reviewed for The Feminist Review

By Lauren Lipton
5 Spot

**spoiler alert** At its core, Mating Rituals of the North American WASP is wholly typical. Girl goes to Vegas. Girl gets drunk. Girl wakes up to find she married some stranger. Girl flees back to New York. Boy calls her up to tell her that, yes, they’re legally married. In time, Boy and Girl fall in love and decide to stay married. Mix in a secondary cliché plot: if they stay married, they get money.

Peggy is a New Yorker who runs a shop with her best friend. They’ve been successful for ten years, but their rent is about to be hiked up (that much is realistic). Luke Sedgwick is the last surviving member of the venerable Sedgwick clan, a family that has not left Connecticut since its founder built a big house which is now falling apart. Luke would love to sell the house and leave his oppressive birthright behind him, but his great-aunt Abigail is in her eighties and she refuses to leave. Her health is deteriorating at the same pace as the house, and Luke is badly in need of a way to pay for both.

Read More: http://feministreview.blogspot.com/2009/07/mating-ritual-of-north-american-wasp.html

Once upon a time, Angelina had been from India, too.

But all the man behind her in line saw was her pale skin and her hazel eyes and what was that silly Midwestern girl doing buying extra-hot chili?

Angelina stepped out of the International Foods Emporium and into the cool fog of a San Francisco autumn. She slid the plastic shopping bag over one wrist, crossed her arms over her chest, and started walking toward the nearest trolley stop. The driver was a man with long, curling gray hair and Ringo Starr spectacles.

A long, long time ago, Angelina’s parents were hippies who kissed the sky and named her after the angel that had visited them when she was born.

Two years later, they divorced, and Angelina’s father moved to New Mexico.

Ding, ding, the city toured past them up hills and down avenues. People came and went; not so many tourists this week as there had been last month. Angelina liked it better this way. She didn’t like a lot of outsiders cluttering up her living space.

After the break-up, her mother had moved to Kansas, braided her hair in one thick rope, and sworn off men and moonshine forever. Angelina’s grandparents approved.

An old woman with jagged, sunken teeth grinned a mischievous warning at her from across the trolley aisle. Angelina did not smile back. The woman was a local; she ran- or, more accurately, now supervised (read: criticized) her son who ran the family restaurant in Chinatown.

Once upon a time, Angelina has flown to China and had lunch with a genuine midwife. There she learned that heat and cold in the blood can endanger, and heal.

The trolley dropped her off a block from home, but she took the long way around just to be able to walk past the window of the Portugese man who worked at the green grocer’s.

Last summer, a mysterious man with a dark, thick accent had seduced her into putting aside her responsibilities for a weekend of sensual exploration.

Her key was buried in her pocket below old gloves and movie ticket stubs. She took a while to fish them  out.

In Africa, she had sat beside monstrous rivers watching youths and men catch shining, scaly dinners for their families. Each time they checked to see if the fish could speak, and apologized even it couldn’t.

Up three flights of stairs she walked, with the chili powder burning in the Emporium’s bulk-stock “Thank You! Please Come Again!” bag. Another key turned the lock to her very own apartment, and she stepped-

Into a midwife’s clinic.

Onto the bank of the Nile.

Through curtains to a lover’s boudoir.

-over a pile of old magazines left there by her aging, hippie mother, and into the same Midwestern Kansas home she had grown up in. Almost-chili smells mingled with a library’s worth  of books, and Angelina breathed them in deeply.

Miles from anywhere, she knew she was home.

He isn’t exactly a catch, and he knows it. He doesn’t need to look at his reflection in the large gilt-framed mirrors scattered about the room to know that his face is round and red, his jowls puffing out of his collar. The suit is informal but it is choking him anyway. The gray wool is too heavy for a room full of excited adults; the sweat is running down his back. He does not dare take off the jacket that is both his torment and his shield.

“Hello, Martin. Ready to sweep some lucky lady off her feet?”

Martin turns and nearly misses the speaker—George McArthur is a diminutive five foot three. It is only out of habit that Martin drops his gaze to find him; when they first began working together he had spent entire conversations searching for the source of the voice.

“I suppose so. If she’ll have me,” Martin says slowly.

“Nonsense. She’d be a fool not to,” says George pleasantly, lightly, giving Martin a friendly pat on the arm.

Martin promptly resents it.

There’s no reason to be jealous. George is hardly attractive himself, even compared to Martin. Besides his height, he began graying in his twenties, and now long white threads dull his hair to a muddy sort of mess. To Martin’s grotesque fascination, he sees that George is still trying to grow a beard. ‘He becomes more and more like David the Gnome each day,’ thinks Martin, picturing a tall red cone upon the little man’s head. ‘David the Gnome was also bald,’ reminds his mutinous conscience. Martin chooses to ignore it.

George is rising to his toes, teetering in his good shoes, trying to peer through the crowd. “They ought to be starting soon. Do you see her?”

Martin looks anxiously toward the microphone at the front of the hall before he can pretend nonchalance. “Not yet.”

George drops back to his heels with a little huff, like an annoyed hedgehog. “It’s almost seven.”

“Perhaps she’s had an emergency,” says Martin, giving voice to the worry that has taken up residence in his belly. “Perhaps she won’t be coming.”

“Do you think so?” George is again trying to see the front of the hall, his own upset obvious. “I hope not. She can’t not come.”

To their great relief, a smattering of applause begins and spreads throughout the hell. She is here.

Eliza Quinn ascends the stage, blushing and smiling shyly at the applause. Martin’s hands drive together like drums, striving to be the loudest, the proudest. Her cheeks still pink, Eliza motions for silence and both Martin and George immediately stop their applause, long before the rest of the room dies down.

“Thank you, everyone, for coming to the town of Fenimore Flats’ Annual Tomato Harvest Ho-Down!” she begins with genuine enthusiasm and gratitude. In the room of 150 people, only she looks the part of a small farm town ho-down attendee. The Quinns are a family of dirty blonds, and Eliza is no different, her ashy hair pulled away from her face by bobby pins. She wears a red gingham dress cut from a modern pattern, but the white lace collar gives her the distinct look of a young girl who has not yet realized that she has become a young woman. She stands out even more against the backdrop of women looking to impress: high heels, low-cut blouses, and short, stylish skirts abound. Yet she could never dress as they do; she hasn’t the temperament for it, nor the form.

Martin is, as always, enchanted.

“Tonight we have some very special bands here to play for us,” Eliza continues somewhat nervously, voice growing stronger as she goes forward. “Several local bands from across the county are here to play for us later, including the Flat Hats, Mona and the Daisies, and, er, The Fury of Madame Bovary. Also, the high school orchestra is here to play the Stars and Stripes for us to begin the night. Mr. Underhill?” Another burst of applause, and the hall directs its attention to the cluster of students taking up a corner of the hall. Their conductor, Mr. Underhill, raises his arm, waits, and then begins.

George’s hand is on his heart, tears coming quickly to pool in his eyes. He never fails to find meaning in these little ceremonies. He snuffles through Sousa’s opus and doesn’t seem to notice as the partyers in the hall begin to slowly drift away toward the newly unveiled buffet covered in fresh tomatoes. He squeezes Martin’s arm with his free hand, truly moved—and truly preventing any escape. Martin is searching the crowd for Eliza’s pale head, but his opportunity to reach her before George can insert himself has been lost.

Resigned, Martin waits through the rest of the piece, forcing an untroubled expression, even when the brass go in and out of tune. George is puffing into a handkerchief when Martin sees a flash of red gingham. With a brief excuse about being thirsty, he pulls away from the tiny man and makes for Eliza Quinn.

It is not Eliza; another woman thought to be ironic in a long plaid skirt. Martin sights blond hair—everywhere. Some are obviously from a bottle, though the town is full of fair-skinned, light-haired men and women. Her faintly darker coloring is lost among them. He finds himself despairing of ever finding her such a crowd.

Then George’s keening chuckle reaches his ears from beneath the sway of the orchestra’s rendition of ‘Take the “A” Train.’  Martin’s vision narrows, spiraling inward to the exclusion of all else: between the dancers, beyond the buffet. Eliza’s elbow is caught by George’s stubby little hand, bringing her around to face him. He is introducing himself, reminding her of the last time they met, ever so briefly. She is nodding, in a way that could just be politeness, or cool recognition. George barrels ahead—complimenting, cajoling, ingratiating himself.

Martin believes at first that his vision is zooming in on them supernaturally; it is only as he clears the last knot of people in his way that he realizes he has crossed the room. His forehead has gone chilly with a fresh sheen of sweat; even his swaddled torso feels cooler. His limbs do not feel like they are his own.

It is Eliza who glances up first, in her nervous way. She looks as though she would like to acknowledge him, but she cannot decide how best to greet him. George has not stopped talking.

It is up to Martin to break in. “Good evening, Ms. Quinn. George.” He tinges the final name with disapproval.

She smiles awkwardly, “Good evening to you as well.”

“Oh, Martin. Hello. Nice to see you again. I thought you’d gone to speak to Theresa,” George interrupts, the slightest hint of suggestion in his tone.

“No,” Martin replies coolly. “I was trying to find our hostess to congratulate her on coordinating such a fine event.” He turns his full attention on Eliza, even bobbing a slight bow in her direction. Her cheeks light from within, as she stammers a thank you.

“Well, of course. Eliza is a marvel,” George says coyly, using the familiar. It nettles.

“The Harvest Dance is no small feat,” insists Martin.

“Nothing she cannot handle.”

Ms. Quinn is rosy-cheeked and embarrassed, perhaps more so than when she was on stage. She says nothing.

Martin is keenly aware of their bodies, of where they stand. They are a small, triangular island in the ocean of the hall. Martin himself is bolt upright, every muscled tightened and waiting. No doubt his thinning scalp is blazing, no doubt there will be talk as there is always talk. He does not think of that, only of the rigidity of his spine; the tense balls of his fists. George is a supplicant, his face upturned—even she is taller than him—to her beautiful face. He is dutifully ignoring Martin as best he can, clutching Eliza’s thin, pale hand in his meaty one. Her poor, frail body is angled between them, her eyes darting from one to the other like a startled doe. She cannot tell who is friend and who is foe. She has been cornered in the midst of the largest public space in Fenimore Flats.

George sees Eliza’s distressed eyes darting to meet Martin’s again and again. With a leering mouth, he leans toward her and she is forced to duck her face toward him to hear the words he whispers in her ear.

A red filter comes across Martin’s vision. Too far. George has gone too far. Martin’s muscles twitch and flex, writhing for permission to rend and to tear. The little man has overstepped his boundaries, has violated Eliza’s space and become far too intimate with a woman he barely knows. Any moment he will cross the distance between them and—

“Marty?” Eliza looks up at him in shock, her eyes wide and watery. “Is this true?”

“Is what true?” he asks testily, barely maintaining his control.

“George says… George says…”

“I believe I must take my leave now, Ms. Quinn. Mr. Quinn.” George says all too pleasantly, squeezing Eliza’s hand one last time and then stepping away. “See you at work, old chap,” he offers Martin, and disappears below the shoulders of the dancers.

Eliza is looking at Martin in absolute horror now, her lips curling apart—wide enough to engulf his throbbing heart. The eerie strains of “Why Don’t You Do Right” cast the room in sickening, copper hues. “George says you are in love with me.”

How can he possibly reply to this?

“Yes, sister, dearest. I am.”

Burnt protea flowers.

When in bloom, protea are flat, fat blooms, with a large pollen center surrounded by spiky petals. When baked in a bushfire oven, they are black and hard and lovely.

I fished several from the dirt and began to gnaw on them, enjoying the cracking of breaking, charcoaled petals. There was nothing quite like a hot protea flower.

Thoughtfully gnawing away, I watched the clouds cast shadows over the mountain. That mountain could well have been its own country, flat-topped as it was and being so large. Below it sprawled the city, cast in a large swoop around the ocean. I had never bothered to go down to the water; I preferred staying in the brush. And besides, the city had too many distractions to let me get that far.

The rumble of a jeep climbed the worn track, and my ears twitched. Tourists. I could hear the guide prattling on about the burning. I considered leaving, but there were more proteas buried nearby. Aah, protea, my love- you will be my undoing!

The car lurched into view, full with a passel of the most peculiar people I had ever seen. I fisted another flower and stuck it between my jaws, chewing while I studied them- just as they studied me.

Muffled behind glass and metal, the guide spoke. “You can see one, there.”

“What is it eating?”

“Protea. They love to come out after the burning and eat them.”

A middle-aged woman in the backseat said something in the most obscure language I had ever heard. I kept expecting her to open her eyes more fully, but they remained half-closed. Beside her, a small girl with similar features pressed her face to the glass.

“Will it come talk to us?”

“Bah-nie!” exclaimed her mother in harsh English. “They dangerous!”

The guide looked over his shoulder to speak to the girl apologetically, his white teeth flashing against his dark skin. He was almost as dark as the burnt proteas. “I’m afraid they are very dangerous. They’re very strong. Do you see his long arms?”

I stopped listening. It was the same babble all the time. The child seemed equally disappointed. She twisted around, trying to see me better. This afforded me a good look at her, and I stared right back. Her skin was unlike that of other humans. She was not burned flowers or brown like the bark, or pale like milk. Rather, her kin was like cream- but mixed with straw. The yellow of grass that must be burned before it catches fire on its own. I wondered if she would be dry like that grass. Her hair was glossy, and perfectly straight- and she had those same small eyes. No matter how wide she opened them to look at me, they remained… closed? I can think of no words to describe it. As the jeep began again to move, I wondered if she were ill.

“Bah-nie! Sit down!”

“But I want to stay and watch the monkey!”

And I wanted to watch her. With a regretful last look at my patch of flowers, I scooped a few into my gangly hand and followed them.

Only the child noticed. She wisely kept silent, allowing the guide to lecture her parents in blissful ignorance. They took the track back toward the city. I began to worry that they would leave my pack’s territory, but to my relief they stopped at one of several human homes on the mountain itself. I had seen it before; most of the humans living there only did so for a short time. The old man who remained kept fruit trees in the back, and I hid myself in these now.

The black man drove away, and the family stayed. I sampled a pear, listening as the woman babbled to her daughter in that strange tongue. Her husband replied, and soon they shooed the girl into the back yard to play. I set my snack aside and leaned down to watch her.

Her sleek black head gleamed in the African sun as she toddled across the grass. She examined the plants, fingering the leaves with stubby, pale hands. My own were dark and lithe. I had never been able to understand the height or proportion of humans. This girl child was probably of a height with me, but she was, comparatively, no more an adult than my niece, who still suckled at my sister’s teat. Yet I knew from experience that she was weaker than a lion cub, which at least had some claw and tooth. This babe had nothing to defend herself with, and she fascinated me.

Dragging her feet from boredom, she made a circuit of the garden, until her attention was caught and held by the pears. She licked her plump lips and came to the base of my very tree! Startled, we blinked at one another, she shining in the sun, and I hidden amongst the leaves. Delight and then fear crossed her smooth features. I could see everything she thought in her dark, dark eyes. She was afraid to scream, or run for help… and yet, she was enchanted by me, and her curiosity provoked this little speech.

“Hello. …are you a Bab-boon?” She paused, waiting for me to reply. Slowly, I munched on my pear. “Will you hurt me? Mum says you will. Will you?” This didn’t appear to bother her, that she might get hurt. “My name is Bonnie Song. We’re on vacation here from New Zealand. There aren’t any monkeys like you there.” I blinked in reply, fingering the sticky fruit. She was fascinating, all dauntless and round-eyed in my primal presence. For a moment I flexed, and knew again how easily it would be for me to tear her apart if I wanted to. “Mrs. McCoo, that’s my teacher- my last year’s teacher- she says we distended from monkeys. Is that true?” Her odd, fleshy little face tilted to one side. “You don’t look like anyone in my family. Your nose is too fat. And so- sticky-outted.” She scratched at her own nose, barely a bump on the slope of her skull.

A dog barked somewhere down the street, and I became aware of the time. I had been away too long, really. The pack might move on. I was not prepared to leave and join another; I liked this pack, with my sister and her children to keep company with.

The wind changed and I caught the small girl’s scent: salivating. I looked closer, and indeed her lips were wet and her eyes hungry. How foolish, I scolded myself. The child had come here for a snack, not to stare at some old baboon with a sagging bottom. Without hesitation, I reached far above our heads to pull down a branch laden with pears, and neatly plucked one. She squeaked at the abrupt snap upward when I released it, and quickly backed away when I offered her the new fruit. She blinked at me, surprised, and then carefully reached for it, hesitating. I moved it closer, and she took it, cradling it in honey-colored hands. At first I thought she was- bizarrely- challenging me- but then I saw the happiness in her eyes, and realized she was not baring her teeth at me.

She was doing what humans call smiling.

“Bah-nie! We leaving now! Come!”

“In a minute, Mum!” Her shoulders were tense as she glanced up at me again. Then joy lit her face once more, and she ran out from beneath the tree. Puzzled, I remained in the tree, mulling this over. Humans were such strange creatures. Everything about them seemed out of balance. Off-kilter somehow. Like not using their arms when they moved, or not having tails.

And then Bonnie appeared at my feet again, stretching up on her toes with something clutched in her soft, harmless fist. I stared, uncomprehending.

The fat pink blossom stared back at me, its spiky leaves touched with purple. “Isn’t this what you like? Proteas? You eat them, right? Right?”

“Bah-nie!”

“The guide said you like them…” Her little smile began to falter, and it pulled at something within me like the death of my nephew in the last drought. With great solemnity, I accepted it, and bowed, as I had seen other humans do. I did not fully understand the motion, but I knew it meant deference. Respect.

I swear, I could see nearly all her tiny teeth when she smiled. With another yell from her mother, she was off, across the lawn and back to another car for another trip to another tourist attraction.

Feeling some sense of accomplishment, I turned the fresh protea over in my hand. I would find out where the next burn was to be, and hide this flower where no other baboon would find it. And when I ate it later, I would think of this cheerful child and wonder again what it meant to be human.

If you didn’t have money and you had to grow old and die somewhere, this was as fair a place as any. The staff was kind and attentive for the most part, and the place wasn’t exactly decorated, but you could bring almost anything of your own that you wanted, as long as it could fit in the 22x18ft room without giving the staff a problem. He’d seen people expire in worse.

David… David, that was his name. It had taken him longer to recall it today than it had yesterday. The effort was exhausting, but he didn’t move. He had nowhere to go.

Like a victorious king, a new insurgent swept into the room. The fly went on a cursory circuit about and between and over David’s things, at last deciding that they were beneath it. It landed on the window frame– directly in the path of David’s line of sight.

Bzzzzbzzz…

“Shut up,” David mutters belatedly. A beat, two, three, four, “Shut up! God-damned-blasted– Nurse!” With effort, he grasps for the call button, eyes searching wildly for the invader.

“Nurse! Nurse, there’s someone in my room! …Nurse!”

At last the old fellow’s eyes land on the insect, and he falls silent. He squints hard, trying to see it. “Little bastard,” he whispers hoarsely, spitting. “You… why are you here? How dare you come here? I suppose you think you’re smart. Breaking in on an old man. Making him feel insecure. Well, I am secure. I am. I am!” He stops for a moment, jaw waggling, trying to regain control of its spasms.

“You don’t know the half of it. What it’s like here. Surrounded by- by OLD people! Your hear me, Frank!? You’re OLD!”

The man shuffling his way down the corridor turns to look in the room. “So’re you,” he replies obstinately, with no patience for the other man’s shit. Resolutely, he continues his measured trundle.

David stares again at the wall, jaw working slowly. “Bloody-damned… you dunno what it’s like to be left somewhere, do you?” His gaze lands again on the fly. “Left here, all by yourself in this god forsaken hellhole. People always coddling you… they treat us like babies. Can’t walk… can’t talk… Can’t think! They treat us like we dunno how to think! Like we’re stupid! Like we like that! It’s- it’s damned insulting. You know that? I am… insulted. I’m… I’m damned… insulted. Being here. I am. I’m insulted…”

“How are you feeling Mr. Bennet?” a chipper woman comes in wearing the pink-rimmed pin of nursing home staff.

David mumbles incoherently.

“That’s good,” she smiles, taking the handles of his wheelchair. Her calm manner is coached to be soothing. “Come along, it’s time for your afternoon medicines anyway.”

The wheelchair squeaks every time the wheel turns, and, uninhibited, the fly does what he does best. He flies.