#and such a wonderful reinvented look at London

[ennaih]

Every Film I Watch In 2023:

100. Rye Lane (2023)

[alarrytale]

When do you think the window will close for HL to become a power couple or to CO and make a big impact? I was just thinking about how Nicholas is gaining a lot of attention and he's almost 29, not far off Harry. His age hasn't really worked against him. Same with many other musicians and actors who are in their 30s upwards and are doing great. I don't know why but it feels different with HL. Maybe it's because they've been in the limelight for so long. Generally speaking, they're very boring compared to other celebrities. Their images haven't changed much since the beginning of their solo careers. Whereas someone like TS keeps reinventing herself. Harry is still a womanizer and Louis is still a laddy lad. Because they're in the closet they're not unleashing their full potential. It holds them back in every way. It affects both of them but I think it especially affects Harry. He looks so tired and fed up. It would be a huge weight off them if they CO. The longer it takes them to CO the less impact it'll make.

Here's a few asks about Harry in regards to coming out, hussell, citrus fruit bicycles and rebranding, and my answers to them.

Hi, anon!

I think mostly it's because as you say, they haven't really reinvented themselves. They don't have social media precence and is not engaging their audience in other ways. It's like they're tired of playing these games and they're low effort and low energy.

They've also got so much baggage, so many loose ends to tie up before everything is forgiven and forgotten. As much as they are going for a blank slate, the slate is alredy full of paint. They can't rid themselves of their history and former actions.

Harry really isn't bothering to spend much time with Louis. He's been in London for well over a month now.

Well, Harry is on a well deserved break from touring (while pursuing other ventures...) and he's working. Louis is working too. Do you know anyone who brings their significant other to work? They're obviously both prioritising work rn, and they've talked about it and decided it together. We also do not know if Harry's been to see L on tour. So do not fret. All is well in larryland.

He's not a slow burn, but a quick and fast burning star./// Even if Harry lost all his fans tomorrow he would never be described like this. He's been hugely famous and successful since 2010, that's 13 years. Even as a soloist he's been around for 8 years. A fast burning star is a two album wonder like Shawn Mendes.

You misunderstand me, anon. We are talking about H's career not being designed to last until he's 80yo here. He can't stunt until he's 80 and expect to keep his fans. He can't rely on his good looks and womaniser image to bring in fans in the year 2073. In order to do that he'd need a different fanbase demographic and a different USP.

I see you mentioned that you are on twitter, so what im about to say might not be news to you but I have to disagree with that ask mentioning Harry’s new stuntship is garnering positive attention, full disclosure im not on tiktok but I have been monitoring Harry/Harries/Larries on other social media platforms like twitter/instagram/tumblr to see the reaction of his fandom, I have to say that there is a general indifference to H and her, most of their outings don’t even make noise outside of a relatively small portion of Harries (im basing this on comparing the numbers of interactions Harry gets on his own versus he gets with her, bigger update accounts dont even posts updates on them (it is funny that hld does and other dont lol) -i saw his team got an account posing as a new pop culture account post about them tho it is hilarious), he has a large fandom that is known to be online all the time so a couple of hundreds of people talking about those outings is nothing compared to thousands of people reacting to his ‘newest’ tattoo reveal, funny enough that is the most he was talked since the tour ended, that must be alarming to his team seeing that he has a new fling, so we know how exciting and erratic that gets within fandom with girlfriend harries acting like they are the ones in the honeymoon period of said relationship and larries trying to prove that it is yet another pr attempt, larries have the biggest “whatever” energy I have seen we have when it comes to this, what must be concerning for them is that this is not a consequence of conscious effort on fandom’s part, people just don’t care. I’m of the opinion that his team pit hets against larries or vice versa to generate nonstop convo surrounding Harry, but that is not happening rn. I give them that they tried something new with this pr, they chose a poc interest which became a hot topic for just a minute but people quickly got used to that “reality”. However some poc harries are not as much pleased by this situation bc they are realizing that so much of Harry’s public persona and life is just him/his team reacting to how he is perceived so they are feeling like this is not something genuine but an attempt to savor a part of Harry’s image -this i observed in older harries (when i say older I mean people aged 22 and above), younger ones are just accepting it as is.

I talked about this with another blog in detail, but his former stuntship being so exposed ruined the fantasy of boyfriend harry for too many of his fans especially older ones which is a shame bc it shows a)they got wiser to his public persona/brand and didn’t like it b)those are the fans that needed to stick around for harry to have a longer career as they were (imo) leftovers of 1D fandom, they literally outgrew him, I watched some of them leave during the former stunt and now im seeing the ones that are left publicly making fun of him, I know so many of Harry’s fans, larries or harries, are not ready to talk about this but boyfriend H is an enormous selling point of Harry as a brand so his team being so invested in pushing stunt after a stunt is not helping him, on the contrary it is giving non-larrie fans an opening to question what he/his team serve as harry styles. They are catching up on the fact that there is always the same formula at play when it comes to his private life or his interactions with his fans or his need to be seen only when he wants to sell smth. I saw his team paying well known accounts on instagram/twitter to post about him, his music, his heartfelt moments from the tour, name anything outside of his relationships (there is nothing wrong with this by the way, so many of celebrities do this to get their news out there ‘organically’) but GP don’t respond well to Harry, he might be well known but the reputation he has with gp wont help him prolong his career, on top of that seeing the state of fandom rn, he is in desperate need of rebranding asap, idk if his latest antics have anything to do with showing record labels that he has what it takes to get another multimillion dollars contract but they are failing and turning off some of his fans that are in his corner from him.

Hi!

Yes, yes, yes! I hard agree. I think you, i and the tiktok anons who thinks hussell is garnering a lot of attention just have to agree to disagree on this.

As i said, i think we're at a cross road. He needs to makes some decisions on how to proceed next. Does he want a short career or a long one, does he want to risk losing core fans, does he want to risk becoming a laughing stock and not be taken seriously as an artist? Or does he want longevity and respect?

Harry is a multimillionaire. Why the hell would he rent L*me bikes in London, where he lives, when he could just use his own bike? Antis are so stupid. How do they explain him disappearing for weeks and then getting spotted every single day. I'd bet they think that in the month over the holidays we didn't see him that he never left the house. Ridiculous lmao. The real reason why they are arguing against L*me being a PR deal is because by admitting that Harry does PR it means that his 'relationship' with TR could be PR for L*ewe. Which means his other 'relationships' could be PR. By admitting he does PR it opens up a can of worms. So they'll never admit to that no matter how obvious it is. They're ignorant by choice.

Hi,

Again, i'm not happy about the name calling here. Antis have been gaslighted for years and it's not their fault. So please refrain from the name calling. I've seen a lot of het harries calling out the citrus fruit promo, so some see it. Some i think is seeing it, but they have an ingrained need to defend him from critisism. There is no doubt it's promo.

I think the relationship with TR is to repair his image after the damage Holivia did, and also the L*ewe connection. It's image rehab and it's working. They picked a poc, an unproblematic woman and it's a 'low key' relationship. The Harries and the gp are eating it up. It's getting him back into people's good books. People are really invested. I can't see it being a short stunt, it'll be at least a year. If it ends in a few months it's not going to look good for him. Harries want to see him settle down and are questioning why he isn't. There will be more questioning when he hits his 30s. Short flings are going to make him look as if he can't hold a relationship down so the stunts will be longer. You said that we might be due for a rebrand sooner than we think. I wish for this too but I don't see him CO very soon as he's with TR. He holds hands with her so they do want people to think they're in a relationship.  If he isn't CO soon then what kind of image rebrand can he get? He can't be rebranded as queer as he's still going to stunt with women. He'll get even worse backlash. I can only see them pushing his het image more. Showing that he can hold down long term relationships with women. Doing the power couple thing with a woman. Which I think I'd rather not have lol.

Hi!

Would you repair a failed pr relationship with another pr relationship that might also fail? That's a big risk to take. I'm not sure i agree that hussell is image rehab for harry. People are tired of stunts in general and i think no matter who he chose as a new stunt after O, we'd be just as fed up and tired.

Also see two asks above. There is fandom disagreement on this point.

I don't know if this is going to be long or short. It depends on Harry's next plans, and we're not privy to them yet.

A rebrand doesn’t have to mean a coming out. It might just be changing the target audience, changing music genre or changing clothing style. Maybe he's doing more movies or maybe he wants to start a luxury clothing brand. We don’t know.

Hussell will never be a power couple. She's too unknown and not on his level. And i don't think Harry would want that either. He'd look visibly unhappy and uninterested if they tried that. More than he already does with her now.

[aliypop]

Back To Black : Chapter 4

latest chapters : Chapter 1  Chapter 2 Chapter 3

Word Count:  7,319

Writers Notes: Here we are Chapter 4  topping off season 3 and kicking into gear of season 4, I hope you all are enjoying the series so far, I’ve been enjoying writing and watching Peaky Blinders

shout to @herosneednotapply​ and her oc Florence

Warning: Show violence and language Suggestive themes

Pairing: OC ( Eleanor Williams ) / Thomas Shelby  

(Claudette Williams) / Finn Shelby

Song to listen to as you read

Plot: What happens When the Williams Family makes their grand return back to London from a war stricken France to only find the rocks of war and the runts of crime the Shelby family slowly leaking into their world,

1924, The 1st Of June, New York City

My Dearest, Thomas Shelby

Regarding your last letter, I'm terribly sorry about your wife, Grace. I'm sure she was a great wife while you were married. I also hope you received my gift for Charlie. 

I know it isn't much, but I saw the jockey on the horse, and I figured it would remind you of when we crossed paths at that derby. To think that was only two years ago. We were nearly at each other's throats. Virginia told me about what happened between Leslie and her. I could see why she'd be upset.

 I  thought the woman was dead. After all, if I weren't the head of The Black Pearl Oyster company, I  would have left. 

Meanwhile, you were right. Florence did  ask, "Why the fuck were you in the south?" I do like her quite a lot. She keeps me up on American trends and ways. 

I now have a song on the radio, a cover, if you will, they give a chance for any gullible fool to have one, but I figured why not. I have a voice, and it brought in money at The Pearl. Perhaps I can make a few records here. It's a bit of a ballad, but the words reminded me of us. If it ever swims across the pond, you'll know of it. 

By the way, Polly tells me you've met my aunt Vadoma, and I know you're wondering. Polly talks to me, and yes, she expresses a lot of how much she likes me and how much Virginia comes around to kiss Ada backward, as the kids call it.

 She also told me you had a problem with the Russians and a Priest. I wish you would've told me. After all, diamonds are girls' best friends, and I've made allies with the Russian Mafia. I met one man who could out-talk Alfie. On the other hand, I met a man writing a book, a struggling artist named Francis Scott Fitzgerald. Scott says he's writing a book that's gonna blow the blues. He calls it Among the Ash-Heaps and Millionaires, but I think he should name it The Great Gatsby. 

Anyways It seems I'm running out of room on my paper, and Florence calls me to go into this dreaded heat of American summer, give my sisters my best regards, and give Charlie a kiss on his forehead for me,

Best Wishes

With Love

Eleanor Vadoma Williams

PS. 

I hope Polly received the earrings I bought her.

1924 -  London The Pearl

"Mr. Williams..." Claudette said, sitting in the chair backward. Andre looked at his adopted sister, sickened by her appearance. She was wearing black breeches, a button-up shirt with pearls, a vest,  a black overcoat with dressy oxford heels, and suspenders keeping her pants up, 

"Claudette, it's been a while since you've shown your face..."  he laughed, "I've done some thinkin, reinvented meself," removing her gloves as she turned to Isaiah, "Butt me, will ya," handing her a cigarette, 

"Anything for you, Etta, " he smirked, 

Tommy had sent Isaiah, Finn, and Claudette to deal with Andre, who was running the club almost to the ground had Virginia not known anything, 

"Thank you, Isaiah. Now Tommy Shelby sent us here because it appears your fuckin with his shares on his Gin..." looking into her cousins' eyes as he laughed,

 " A group of children policing me, oh this is fresh." Andre laughed harder, mocking them. Finn and Isaiah stood up as Claudette motioned for them to sit, "Have you or have you not been keepin the money to yourself?" Finn asked, his trigger-happy hand on his gun, 

"I broke his deal off," a smug look on his face as he lit his cigar, "Passed it to a woman who really cares about this shithole of a place." motioning his index finger in a circle, "Who'd that be," Isaiah questioned as Claudette leaned forward, 

"Your mother Claudette," he smirked as her brown face went pale, " I partnered with her to start getting kids your age something to do; I think, what you slum rats call snow?" he smirked, 

" You snake!" pulling out her razor blade from her overcoat pocket as it was under his neck. The two boys and their guns were drawn, ready to blow a hole in his head if need be, "Look at this. This isn't you. You were the cute pearl to be, Eleanor 2.0. and-" feeling blood drip from down his neck. 

"I'm not from Manchester and be careful who you call a slum rat. Last time I checked, we were born to freed slaves who could barely afford food. The only difference was everyone in Small Heath couldn't, but we fuckin worked for what we 'ad. So yeah, this is me," she laughed, "Workin' with everythin I fuckin 'ave!" Andre's eyes grew wide to see the girl who called him her brother betray him in such a way,  

"I hope Will was good to you, Lorcan," Virginia said, pocketing her money and giving half of it to Julian, 

"He was an angel with a throat that wouldn't let go." Lorcan laughed, the three coming down the stairs as Andre rolled his eyes, "I train my girls and guys to do only the best." she grinned, Lorcan taking the keys to his car out of his pocket as he fixed his hat, "You know back home we have Lizzie, 

she's great, but every man in towns had Lizzie,"

"I remember my first time with Lizzie,"  Julian and Virginia said in unison. Virginia looked over the railing, and she then noticed Claudette. She had to admit that peaky look was looking good on her, as was the grasp of power surrounding herself. This was the Claudette that had always been inside her, 

"Look at you, Ms. Williams." Virginia smiled, motioning for them to disarm themselves, 

"It's Hilda, Claudette Hilda," taking a long drag of her cigarette, 

"Forgive me, Ms. Hilda. turn so I can get a good look at ya." Claudette turned as Andre was still stunned, "You carry power well. I'm sure Nora would be proud if she'd seen you." hugging her cousin tight as Claudette hugged her back, 

"Aye, Hilda, you ready?" Finn asked as her face flushed, turning a deep red by the cheeks,

 "Coming, Mr. Shelby." she winked at him as Finn got flustered, 

" What's that about," Virginia asked,

"Never you mind. Oh, and Andre, clean your hands. You're dripping blood on Eleanors' floors." Stomping out her cigarette and walking out the door,

 "That was a ballsy move, Etta," Isaiah said,

"He better be lucky I haven't got a hat yet." taking Finns as she ruffled up his hair, placing it on his head, "Claudette Hilda Shelby," she grinned,

"Gotta nice ring to it." Lorcan looked back at the three as Julian snickered, "Could have a ring to it..." Finn mumbled enough for Isaiah to hear it.

1924 The 21st Of August, Warwickshire

  Dear, Elle

Thank you for your condolences. You seem to be the only one saying them with good intentions, and I respect that. For the time being that I had with Grace, she was what I assumed a good wife was, but I wouldn't know what one really does. And yes, the gift for Charlie. He seems attached to it, anything to do with horses,  just like his old man. And yes, it does remind me of the derby. If I'm not mistaken, the horse looks like yours that we beat. I still remember that look on your face,

However, when it comes to your aunt Leslie, we all wish she'd have died, but I'm keeping her alive because one, I assume you want me to spare her, and two, she's a minor inconvenience, 

sure she and your bastard of a brother have messed with our bootlegging deal,

 But I sent Claudette to handle that. I may never say this to her, or I may, but I am proud of her. She's more ballsy and gutsier than Finn but less impulsive.

Regarding New York City, I'm glad you ran into Florence. She's a good friend and confidante, and I wouldn't call you gullible, a fool sometimes, yes, but you have a gift, Eleanor, singing, something my late wife tried her hardest to do. Claudette actually bought it. She plays it all the time. It Had To Be You, the words are charming, and about the Russians, they're manically fucked up, or perhaps it was just the duchess. But I don't doubt you could tame them. For all I know, you tame lions for fun, 

And yes, I did meet your aunt Vadoma. You're splitting the image of her as beautiful, eccentric, and emotionally connected. However, she talks in metaphors, but I feel they hold unforeseen truths. And as for Pol, she loved the earrings. I will say I was surprised to learn you're of Romani people, Pol, however, said she knew by your bones, whatever that means, really because she knew Vadoma, 

And a writer? Careful, he may make you his muse. Lorcan does it all the time. Lorcan's either buried in a prostitute, he's painting them, or both. You have no idea how often  I've walked in on him bending some whore over a canvas. You never know with a Lee man, 

Sorry, it took so long to respond. I feel my next time will be longer, things are changing, and I can feel it. 

Yours truly,

Thomas Shelby

PS,

Emeralds suit you better from the picture you sent. 

Small Heath

"Good mornin, Aunt Polly," Claudette smiled, walking through the halls of the gambling den, "Morning, Claudette," Polly responded from her office, passing Finn as he was flirting with another girl, her face green with jealousy as Tommy looked up from the paperwork on his desk, but with a slight smirk on his face, 

"Finn, can I talk to you..." Claudette asked as he ignored her,

"You probably make everyone jealous," the girl's eyes looking directly at Claudette, 

"I wouldn't say that." checking over the numbers. "Besides, you ain't bad looking yourself." he winked at her, tipping his hat, "Finn!" Claudette shouted again as he shrugged her off, 

"Fine," walking off, she took his keys and a pack of his cigarettes, putting them in her own pockets, 

"Try impressin her now, flyboy."

"Ay, I saw that..." 

"Mr. Gray, how's the accountin going."  sitting on Michaels's desk as he laughed, "It's shit. I don't get to be out there like you, which is odd considering you're a girl in breeches." he looked at her, her face frowned up, "Don't give me that look Dette," his index finger under her chin, pulling her closer towards him,

"I hate it when you frown,"  he whispered. Finn walked by, clinching his fist, "And I hate it when you tell me not to." Getting off his desk, she gave him a wink,

 "Oh, check the total from the shares of The Pearl club and trading company,"

"Let's say Tommy's a little pissed at ya for not catching the added surplus charges we 'ave to pay." she walked out of his office, "Hope you don't die, or maybe you will." she shrugged as Arthur laughed, 

"How's me favorite, little lady?" Arthur asked. Arthur had now embraced her presence rather than seen it as a threat. And maybe it was because he understood her, or he was there on the lonely nights when she would fall asleep in Tommy's office screaming from night terrors as to why her mother left her. After all, he had been in a similar situation, "Still wantin her hat," she joked, sitting next to him, watching his Whiskey glass, 

"Can I?"

"When ya turn 17,"

"So 1925!"

1925  6th Of January 

My dearest; Tommy

When you get this letter, it will hopefully be on your birthday, but before I get into that, I'd like to wish my condolences on the life of your brother John. The splitting of your family. We have lost family, my father, and Andre. It seems my Aunt Leslie has pissed off Luca Changretta, and he's coming for us just as he's coming for you. Virginia has been teaching the rest of her girls to shoot. She's building them as soldiers, and I fear they'll kill her too. Claudette tells me Andre nearly raked our businesses across the mud. of course, that could never happen. 

See, I thought up a plan, and that is for Shelby limited to buy half of The Black Pearl Oyster businesses. That way, if Changretta or anybody else comes for your shit or mine. We can protect each other. I know I haven't met your brothers other than Julian yet,

 But I assume you can muster the will to convince them. Florence tells me you're good at these things.

 Florence also told me it'd be a bad idea to come home, Yet it's so hard to explain plans in writing rather than face to face, 

Vadoma tells me Polly tends to host séances since your family tussle. Which, yes, did cross the pond amongst the organized crime world. 

Everyone says she has a gift, and Vadoma sees it as well. Of course, from what I'm learning, Vadoma sees a lot of Polly, but I digress. I hope you got my gift, for it may be my last yet, 

My mother thought it well to go back to the practices of her youth and decided maybe I should settle down for the business and marry a politician who wants to change the world. I see it as being silenced and shown as a trophy; 

women aren't allowed much here to have opinions or be heard, they are dainty decorated things, and you and I know that's not me. I have a mind and a sharper tongue. But never the less, may you have a happy birthday, try not to work too hard, and have an old fashion in my honor.

Your dear friend,

With love

Eleanor Vadoma Williams 

  1925-London Docks

"You be gentle with my Myrtle, you hear." Virginia smiled, pocketing half the money, the rest going to Myrtle. Virginia had always done business around the docks, for it was the most desperate place where men would do anything for a quick fuck. Since Andre had gone, Virginia threw herself deep into the family business. It was time for her to step up, and she knew it. Sitting at the docks, she had been waiting for Thomas Shelby. Her sister was smitten with him. Hearing footsteps on the cobblestone Virginia grabbed for her gun. As the man stepped into the light, it was none other than "Luca Changretta..." flicking her cigarette out her mouth, "Who was you expecting, sweetheart," his New York accent getting under her skin, "One of my girls, actually," she looked at her nails then back at him, 

"You mean my broads?" his hand out as if he were expecting money.

"Expecting something?" she glared at his hand, 

"My money for my share of the fuckin girls..." he said, almost like a spoiled brat, 

"Sorry," Virginia said, 

"Sorry for what..." Luca grabbed her by the chin, his grip on her tight, 

"That I don't speak bullshit." 

BANG!

A bullet lodged right in her ribs, crimson blood staining her suit. Virginia tried reaching for her gun, but her vision was blurry. She could only hear voices, "Go ahead, shoot her, Andy." Luca said, a shot to the chest,

 "That'll teach her not to talk back," Luca smirked as the man next to him spat at her body. Running out covered in blood, Myrtle fired a few warning shots. Luca could smell the scent of sex and the cologne of one of his men on her, 

"What did you do to her!"

"She's just sleep angel face," he said, pushing her up against a wall. Myrtle spat in his face, her gun pressed to his head, "Shoot me do it," he whispered in her ear, "But I warn you, you'll be shootin fucking blanks, dear." Luca growled, 

"You don't deserve to live, you monster, you-"

BANG

BANG

BANG

Her Red Clara Bow styled curls slid down the cement bridge. Myrtle's  lifeless body lay there, a fresh bullet hole in her head, next to the slowly dying woman she'd loved, "Is this the war you want, Andy?" Luca asked, patting him on the back, "That is the warning sign." he laughed, cigarette now in his mouth. It wasn't his first choice, but it would do for now. 

"The real war is with the remaining Shelbys. You can kill the other bastards. Just let me share the main one." he grinned, snapping his fingers as a few goons dumped myrtles body in the water. 

"What'dya we do with the other,"

"Clean her up and leave her at the doorsteps of the Shelby's," Leslie said, her heels making the entrance first, "But keep her alive, and make sure the girl sees her first. Let her know she's next."  Leslie smirked. 

The Shelby House

"So this sister of yours has a plan..." Ada asked Claudette, the two drinking Whiskey, "How come I've never seen her?" Claudette sighed, "She's in the states, but she wrote Tommy the plan." leaning over the table as a sense of sadness took over in her eyes, "Eleanor was the glue to the family, and when my father, uncle told her she could never come back the family went to shit." she laughed, "Well, welcome to the Shelby family, it's always going to shit." she sighed,

 "So this Changretta shit, can she ..."

"Mhmm, Squash it, yes, but to kill it, you'll need more than the Shelby family. Two wars are going 'round, and I'm the target." she looked up at Polly, her cigarette burning as usual,

 "You won't be a target, not while you're here. I won't allow it," Polly smirked, "Now eat." Polly looked at her, "Yes, Aunt Pol." Claudette smiled, eating her sandwich, "Heard anything from Virginia lately?" Polly asked as Ada rolled her eyes, 

"Pol!" she grumbled, "No, I haven't,"

"Well, you should. I like having Virginia around. Besides, she beats all the men you've met." Polly mumbled the last part as Ada blushed, 

"We haven't talked in a while. Virginia's grown busy and-"

A plumping noise stopped the three women from talking, "I'll go see what it is." Claudette said, taking her revolver with her, "Ada go with her," Polly commanded as Ada stood up, walking with the young girl, Ada looked out the window as she saw no one but the usual bustle of the town, nodding to Claudette to open the door, laying there was Virginia bloodied, beaten, and almost on a dying limb, Ada ran to her side as Claudette was standing frozen by her feet, she couldn't breathe, her mouth was dry, and suddenly she wasn't there, this was her warning sign, this was her reason to fight. As she stood there like a dead weight, she saw her mother standing across the street in the shadows, giving her a menacing wave. This officially meant war, 

"Arthur, Finn, Julian, one of you move your asses and help!" Polly shouted as they rushed to carry her in, "Lorcan,  get Tommy, Michael, get Claudette some tea..."

"But, I'm not a maid." Michael sassed,

"Make the fucking tea Michael!" Ada glared at him. 

An hour later, Tommy had arrived with a firey fury, perhaps from meeting with Alfie or having Ms. Jessie Eden in the office. Either way, he was needed in the gambling house for a family meeting. Shrieks of pain were heard from Ada's old room. Tommy raced toward to see a brown-skinned woman dressed in one of his brothers' suits. 

"Who the fuck is this..." Tommy glared at Ada, 

"Virginia, bite the cloth, don't suck the gin out of it!" Polly grumbled, pulling the bullet from her chest out. 

"I can tolerate the OUCH FUCK!" 

"Virginia Williams, " he nodded, remembering that Eleanor had told him about her in his letters. It was strange how they never crossed paths, "Don't just stand there, help or something!" Ada growled. He took off his overcoat, he began walking over to her. She didn't look too bad, nothing he hadn't seen in France, but he knew if one thing went wrong, Eleanor would be on the first boat back to have his head. Pouring Gin over the bullet wounds, Virginia bit harder against the rag, "Ada, hold her down. Polly, get the bandages." he sighed, his fingers going into the cavity of the hole in her rib, from where it was she was lucky to be alive, "Alright love just stay calm Tommy's got you." Ada cooed, rubbing the side of her face,   and that's when it connected, but he hadn't had time to address that just yet, "It's out..." Examining the first bullet, it said Virginia, which wouldn't be surprising. After all, he had one with Tommy's name on it, but the one in her chest was different. Taking the other out, he could read the name on it clear as day, 

"Claudette..." what would Luca want with her. She wasn't officially a Peaky, and she hadn't caused any harm, but then there was Andre, who was dead, or was he. 

"So, you're Thomas Shelby..." she winched as Polly wrapped her up, 

"That would be me, yeah," he looked at her.

"We met briefly at the charity event. The night you caused my sister to leave home." Virginia said with gritted teeth, "She left because she wanted to," he stared her down. Virginia could see the hurt in his eyes, the look of a man spending sleepless nights in the arms of lovers who weren't Eleanor. 

"Well, I feel better, and I should head back to Lon-"

"STAY!" Claudette shouted, rushing over, " I mean, if you'd like to," clearing her throat, 

"You're worried about your sister?" Ada smiled. It was nice something wholesome was in the Shelby home, "I don't want Luca tryin to shoot the only family I got." Claudette said, sipping her tea. Tommy looked up at her. He could see the look of relief in her eyes. Knowing that she wasn't dead was enough for her, but knowing she might next wasn't enough for him to look her in the eyes,

"Shouldn't you be in bed, young lady?" Polly asked as Claudette shook her head, "Why's that." Claudette tried to think of an excuse, "I'd like to be tucked in first, perhaps a warm glass of milk even ?" she mentioned as Tommy laughed among himself,  that she hadn't changed much from he first met her, "You're fucking seventeen Dette," Virginia bluntly said as Claudette rolled her eyes, "Virginia and I will tuck you in, and Pol will make you some milk with honey," Ada smiled kissing her forehead, "What about Arthur and Tommy?"

"I already have Charlie to tend to." he looked at his pocket watch as Claudette nodded, 

"I'll be in bed then." she sighed, noticing how Tommy wouldn't look at her, dressed in one of Ada's old nightgowns. Claudette was tucked and comfortable as anyone could be living in Small Heath. As her eyes began to grow heavy, she could see Ada and Virginia sharing a passionate kiss with each other. 

"You should really rest," Ada suggested helping Virginia out of the room, "Fuck it, I'll be fine, my darling," her arm around Ada's waist, the two walked down the hall past Arthur as he glared at her, his wife Linda already sleeping peacefully, 

"When I let go, run for your life," Andre said, hugging Claudette tight, pushing away his grip as his hands now were around her neck, squeezing tighter. She couldn't breathe. Claudette felt lightheaded and dizzy. As if the room around her was spinning, focusing, she was in The Pearl. This much she knew, 

"Let... me ..." 

"Let you what..." Andre growled, "Go, you owe me something, Etta..."  he laughed as he pinned her against the mirror, her face towards the mirror,

"I don't owe you shit,"  she growled, his neck oozing with blood as it did on the day she cut him, 

"Oh, but you do..." another familiar voice said, peering from the shadows. Leslie had a revolver in her hand. Pointed towards Claudette. As she tried to break free, Andre slammed her face into the glass, shattering it, shards cutting deep into her face as it oozed with the red liquid on the floor. Claudette only laughed, her disfigured face looking at her mother, 

"Is that all you got..." another thrash into the mirror as she only laughed harder, 

"No, there's more..."

Bang!

Bang!

Bang!

"I wish I never had you..." her body lay lifeless as a gaping hole was in her chest, the bullet next to her with her name engraved. As she tried to get up, she saw another person, Luca Changreta, 

"Send this one to Tommy..." 

BLAW!

"No....No....No...NO!" Claudette screamed, jolting out of bed. She was sweaty and sticky, her hair felt stuck to her head, and her body felt like dead weight, "No, don- don't touch me!" Claudette screamed, backing away from Finn as she flinched. Finn's eyes had gone wide until her breathing was faster and shallow,  her body trembling in fear, and she was known to never fear anything.

 "I'm not gonna hurt you. Just tell me what's wrong..."

"I-I C...Can't," her teeth chattering as hot tears pricked her cheeks. Her body shaking like a leaf, 

"Darlin, tell me, please." 

BLOOM!

"NO!"

A crack of thunder across the sky only caused her to panic more, "They're coming for me..." she whispered, laughing out of anxiety, "He's coming for me, and he's going to kill me..." Finn tried to touch her again, as another sound of thunder happened, 

"TOMMY!" she shouted, "Where's Tommy..." she asked. Claudette was 4 again, cowering in fear, screaming, kicking, and crying just like she was that night. 

"In his office," extending his arm out to her, Claudette took it. Trying not to focus on the shadows surrounding her or the many tricks her nightmare-stricken mind played on her, "Could you take me to him?" Claudette asked, counting his freckles, trying to calm herself down, "Yeah, uh, Claudette..."  Finn locked eyes with her. Something about the moonlight and the vulnerability of how close the two were was taking over his senses, 

"Yes, Finn..." the two walking towards the gambling house offices, "I wanna tell you somethin if that's okay..."  he asked, as she was snuggled up into his warmth, 

"Tell me,"

"I'm here for you." he kissed her forehead. Tommy looked up from reading over the books that Michael handled as he smirked to himself. Finn was growing up right, and he was proud. As Finn wiped away a loose tear, "If you need me, I'll be in John's old room," Tommy cleared his throat startling the two, "Finn bed... now." Tommy grumbled as Claudette straightened up, "Tommy, sorry... I." Claudette took a deep breath,

 "Why are you up. It's 3 in the morning," Tommy pointed out, "You're up too," she glared at him, "To answer your question, I had a nightmare..." she sighed, 

"But you wouldn't care 'cause you're busy workin," Tommy had finally looked up at her, puffy red eyes and drenched clothes, "I'm all ears now, tell me what was it that made you scream like a fucking banshee."

"You heard me, and you didn't think to help!"

"Can't depend on me all your life." he shrugged, "Gotta learn to do things on your own sometimes," Tommy was right, but it wasn't what she wanted to hear, 

 "That's why I got shot in my dreams by my mother..." she mumbled, "Because you weren't there, You know Andre... he haunts me in my sleep every night, and Eleanor isn't here to tell me it's okay, and Virginia's drinking her sorrows out with Ada as we speak, so forgive me if I wanted sympathy from THOMAS FUCKING SHELBY!" she broke down and cried screaming as Tommy scooped her up and held her, something he wished his own father would've done for him when he was little,  

"Hey, hey, hey," he cooed, brushing out her hair with his hands. He may not have been as paternal to Charlie, but he was learning through Claudette,

 "Talk to me..." 

"Promise you won't leave..." she asked, looking at him, trying not to cry himself, remembering how it felt when he asked his father the same thing, 

"Claudette..." 

"Promise me, even if you don't mean it!" she sobbed into his waistcoat, " I'd get it. No one wants me, not my father, Eleanor, or mother. They all left me," 

"Claudette Hilda Shelby!" Tommy took her chin to look up at him,

 "Don't you ever fucking say that, yeah they left you, but Elle, she's coming back, and the rest of us, we never left you, and fuckin won't," his hands on her shoulders as he bent to her height, "I'm not fucking leaving you," he smiled at her wiping her tears away, Claudette looked up at him still teary-eyed, "I'd even do the most shittiest Charleston for you," he began to dance, as she shook her head, "Eleanor does it better," she mumbled, "You bet she fuckin does, but just know we'd throw ourselves in front of every damn bullet with your name on it, to keep you safe."Hugging her back made Tommy feel like, just for one time in his life, he deserved to do something good, to have something good, 

"You really think of me as a Shelby?" Claudette asked, her tired puffy eyes nearly closing, 

"I don't know..."

"You called me Claudette Hilda Shelby..."

"You're delirious go to bed." he said, sitting back down about to type on his typewriter, "But I'm not tired..." yawning as he peered over his glasses, 

"Okay, I'm going, but you better go to sleep too,"

Walking down the halls, Claudette heard a whispered noise. Looking for a weapon, she grabbed the nearest bottle and swung it like a bat. The creaking of the floorboards as the nose got closer to her, she felt a halting motion towards it.

 "Put the Whiskey down..." Finn glanced at her, 

"Finn..." she sighed, "You scared me..."  taking the bottle from her hands as they brushed against each other, "Just tryin to keep you safe," he winked,

 "Finn!" she gasped, " What are you tryin to do?"

"We could drink a little Whiskey, maybe..." he smirked, "Calm down those nerves of yours..."   Claudette rolled her eyes as if he didn't have her with the mention of Whiskey.

 "Whadya say?"

"Cups or the bottle?"

"We drink like Peaky's out the fuckin bottle," he smirked, taking the first swig and passing it over to Claudette, who nearly drank the entire bottle, "I see why Arthur told us no to touch the Whiskey," she laughed, "Kinda burns." Finn chuckled as she got a bit giggly, the two laying in the bed as he held her closer, their lips inches away from each other,

 "Finn..."

"Yeah... Claudette,"

"Can we always be this close?" she whispered as the wheels in his mind began to click. Seven years he'd been trying to get the girl,  she'd rejected him, it seemed the seventh time would be the charm, "Why do you like me or somethin." he asked, "I wouldn't say I like you. But... lately, I've wanted to kiss the freckles on your face, and punch that girl you've been talkin to," she grumbled as Finn laughed, to think Tommy's advice was working, "Are you sure it's me you think of and not Michael or Isaiah." Finn asked, a dorky grin on his face,

"I'm as sure as a rainy day that I only think about you." she snuggled into his side, and Finn took in her features. They were soft,  like her brown skin, her curls poked out of her scarf. She  looked at him like he was her world, kissing her nose as she giggled, "Finn, kiss me?" she murmured, "In the morning." 

The sun rose only halfway as it did in the winters of England. A cold, pale landscape, but it was home and somehow comforting to a woman like "Virginia, what are you doing..." Ada laughed, hearing soft music playing as the brown skin woman limped her way toward her, "I'm in the mood for dancing in honour of Myrtle's life and in honour of you saving mine." she gave Ada a quick peck on the lips, 

"Virginia, you haven't even healed properly yet," 

"Don't care, I feel fine, so butt me a cig, would ya, and let's dance." dipping Ada as she laughed, their eyes meeting, 

"We could be dead at any moment," her hand on Virginia's cheek, "I'd rather die by your side. Then without you at all." she sighed, 

"When did you get so fucking romantic..."

"When I started losing everyone..." she sighed, "It's fucking pathetic, innit..." she mumbled as Ada shook her head, "It's-"

"Ada Tommy's arranged a family meeting. Uh hey, Virginia..."

"Julian, you're a Shelby?" Virginia smirked, "I knew it,"

"We'll be there..."

The taste of Whiskey was still fresh on their lips. And her hands were everywhere, not knowing where to go at first, "Claudette, have you ever actually been kissed," Finn asked as she looked away from him, "You haven't..." he laughed a little. 

"I haven't done a lot of thins but don't go fucking laughin at me!" she pushed him playfully, 

"It's cute." he smiled, "But let me show ya how to kiss," he winked at her as she rolled her eyes, "Then fucking do it, Fi-" her eyes closed as her arms were around his neck, she was breathless but fully breathing, Claudette felt like her body was on fire, but also felt like she was flying, "How was that,"

"It... it was good but uncomfortable," she said,

"Uncomfortable ?"

"Yeah, layin like this on my side, no," she grumbled,

 "Fine then, what's more, comfortable." Claudette sat in his lap, looking at his lips, " That's uh comfortable very..." his brain short-circuiting. Claudette ran her thumb over his lips as she smirked,

 "Soft. I like that in a man." 

"Claudette, will ya please just kiss me alread-" Claudette leaned in, kissing him as the lingering taste of Whiskey smoke and sleep took over. His hands were around her waist, pulling her closer to him, goosebumps peppering Claudette's skin. Biting his bottom Finn flipped her over. So he was on top of her with his hands on either side of her head, 

"I can stop if you'd want." 

"By all means, please continue, Mr. Shelby..." hoarse from the kiss, Finn kissed her neck, then her cheek as he loomed right over her lips. Claudette had pulled him down to finish what she had started, 

"The French invented this one..."

"Invented what?"

"Finn, have you ever been kissed," she smirked, taking his face in her hands and licking his lips as she snuck in her tongue. Finn was flustered for once. And by the one woman, he found peace in. His fingers were in her thick curly hair, lost in everything that was,

"Claudette..."

"Where the bloody hell is Claudette..."

BLAM! 

Claudette and Finn both pulled apart from each other as their hazy gaze's cleared on the sight of Arthur, "What the fuck were you two doin?" both Claudette and Finn were lost for words and lies to come up with, 

"We were-"

"Fuckin snoggin, wait till Tommy 'ears about this." Arthur laughed, "Family meetin, by the way," he left as Claudette giggled,

 "Get dressed..." Polly said, walking by, her cigarette in hand,

 "And before you two get any more ideas, separate rooms!"

1925 12th Of January

Dear, Elle

I did get your gift. Unfortunately, I won't be able to make it to the states just yet, but I  hope you've gotten my gift. Claudette told me you're only a day younger than me. I find that ironic, or maybe it's fate, as Pol would say. Either way, things have been getting worse since Luca arrived. It seems he and your aunt partnered off and attacked Virginia with someone else by their side until she's safe. Ada has commanded her to stay here, and I've learned they're secretly together. However,  enough about business. 

Flo tells me you're flourishing in New York, making quite the name for The Black Pearl company. I'm proud of you and wish I could see it. I've gotten on Ms. Jessie Eden's good side, a boxer under my belt, and on top of that, if we aren't careful, you might become an aunt and I an uncle again. Arthur caught Claudette and Finn in the middle of snogging each other's faces off, and I can't say I'm not surprised. I  don't know which to threaten first. After all, Finn is my brother, and Claudette is like a daughter to me that I hope to one day have. I can only hope you'll return to London. There's so much unfinished business that we left.

Manhattan New York

"Unsaid... from your dearest Tommy Shelby..." Eleanor sighed, laying on the floors of her penthouse in her Chanel nightgown, "Flo, did you hear that..."  the woman could hear the lovesick sigh in her voice, "You read his letter for what has it been the 6th time?" she rolled her eyes, "Can't like read some other shit," Florence asked, as Eleanor got excited, "No, no more letters," Eleanor let out a sigh, "Fine," she groaned, "Don't let me have my excitement." she huffed, a knock on her door, as a maid went to open the door, 

"Ms. Williams, it's a gift." perking up as Flo sighed. She already knew it was one of Tommy's gifts, after all. She's been right where Eleanor had, 

"Send it back..."

"Ignore her. I want to see it." running toward the door, "Ellie, this gift is going to break your-"

"It's a ring box!" 

"Heart..." she mumbled, "See, he's not giving out necklaces anymore," Flo said, watching Eleanor taking the ring out of its box. It had a golden band with a garnet in the middle and pearls surrounding it. It was the most beautiful thing she'd ever seen. Taking the note card from the box, she then looked at Flo, 

"Happy birthday to the pearl in my life, Thomas Michael Shelby." she swooned harder. Flo didn't want to break her heart, for it was the happiest she'd ever seen the woman, but she couldn't let her go on like a bumbling idiot,

 "I should head back to London..."

"Luca will eat you alive."

"What if he loves me the way I love him."

" It's Romani culture to give gold. I read that somewhere," Florence responded, 

"What if he's proposing and I have time to say yes but is it too soon. It's been a year and!"

"The man's engaged to a Lizzie Stark!" 

"Oh..." Eleanor nodded, setting the ring down, "I'm sorry, sweetheart. But you're a bit too late." she sighed, "But you can put it on a chain and wear it close to your heart." Eleanor nodded, 

"He can write me about family updates but not his engagement..."

"To be fair, dear, you haven't been honest either," pointing to her cheek, "I'm fine," she rasped out, "I have dinner at eight with the Barlow's and my mother." her heart was beyond breaking. It no longer existed, 

"He could've knocked her up." she shrugged, 

"That's pretty common for Tommy to do... and,"

"Silver or blue..."

"Silver, with the feathers and the diamond headdress, "Flo suggested, 

"Is fur too much?"

"Ellie, it's snowing outside,"

"So fur," she smiled, her smile tarnished into one that would be never-ending pain, 

"Do you want to talk?"

"Have you seen my cake mascara?"

"Dresser." 

"Are you sure you're okay?" 

"Necklace or no necklace..." 

"Necklace, Eleanor, you're avoiding my questions. Are you sure you're -"

" I LOVE HIM, AND FOR ONCE, I THOUGHT I HAD A REASON TO GO FUCKING HO-"

"Ms. Williams, Bernadette Willaims, and Mr. Carlton Barlow are here." taking a deep breath, she hid the ring under the neckline of her dress, 

"Mother, you've made it,"

"You look beautiful, like a bride-to-be,"  she kissed her cheeks, 

"How's that campaign about those handsome colored soldier boys going for you, Carlton..."

"Hello to you too, Florence, Eleanor. You look,"

"Radiant, breathtaking, stunning?" Bernadette asked,

"Pretty." Kissing her on the cheek as if it nearly pained him too, "Thank you, you look handsome yourself," she complimented, "Will you be joining us, Florence?" Bernadette questioned, 

"Oh, no,  I have a business to attend to, but Ellie, tell me all about the dinner," she smiled as Eleanor winked. The three walked out the door. Eleanor had been courting Carlton, who came from an old money family, the Barlow's from Louisiana, but he had his secrets, and their names were Thomas, Raymond, and Walter, but this was something Eleanor already knew, after all, she agreed to let him screw around with any man he wanted, as long as she pretended to be his loving fiance and convince his family that he was the perfect southern politician, 

"Eleanor Williams."

"Mrs. and Mr. Barlow." she sat down at the restaurant as Carlton took her fur coat off, "You must be Mrs. Williams," his father kissed her hand as she smiled, "Ms. Dupont, my husband's deceased." Bernadette sighed as Carlton looked at her, mourning the loss for her,

 "Dupont, is it Creole?" Harold asked,

"French, my mother was a -"

"French soothsayer, " Eleanor butted - in, both Carlton's parents looking at her as if they'd come across the table and smacked her, much like his sister did for her talking back to her, "You hold your tongue and let her talk," Sally glared as Eleanor nodded, 

"As you were saying?"

"She was a whore, and a Romani prophesier. She fell in love with my father, who was a rich Irish man,"

"What... an interesting bloodline." 

"Sex sells especially in Manhattan." 

"Carlton control your girl," Harold ordered. Bernadette gave him a glance as Carlton cleared his throat, 

"You know, I was thinking of a way to help our colored folks, with all the protesting happening and the rise of White Mob bosses, which all illegal crime should be stopped if you ask me."

Bernadette nearly choked on her champagne.

"I think they should all be hanged for every crime they've committed and every sin they've done." Sally smirked, looking over at Eleanor, "Don't you agree."

"I think we're all sinners in the eyes of God, and sometimes I think the worst sinners are the ones who doubt that they aren't." lighting her cigarette and waving over the waitress,

 "Ms. Williams, we didn't expect you here tonight, checking on the club, Ma'am."

"No, just taking out the family," both Harold and Sally looking at the young woman. Bernadette looked frightened for her daughter as if she'd had maybe made the wrong choice,

 "Ay, I see. will it be an Irish Whiskey, Scotch, or-"

"Give me your best Gin," she winked, watching the man walk away,

"Ladies don't own dance halls, and they don't drink Gin-"

"They don't tell me how I raised my daughter either," Bernadette growled. Eleanor fiddled with the ring around her neck as the light glistened. Bernadette knew it all too well. It was her mother's engagement ring that she gave to Vadoma for safekeeping, but how did it get from where she was seeking camp to New York, 

"Lovely ring," Harold smiled, "Did Carlton get it for you?"

"No, it was a birthday gift from a good friend." Eleanor smiled as she held the bottle, 

"Distilled for the Eradication of Seemingly Incurable Sadness."  

"Is the Gin not to your liking,"

"I think I'm going back to England..." Eleanor smiled, 

[john-carle123]

Understanding the Basics: An Introduction to the Laws of UX Design

So, you've decided to take the plunge and start your own business. Maybe you're a budding entrepreneur in London, a tech whiz in Silicon Valley, or a visionary in Dubai. Whatever your story, you know that in today's digital age, having a killer website is non-negotiable. But here's the thing – it's not just about slapping together some fancy graphics and calling it a day. Enter the world of UX design, where psychology meets technology to create websites that not only look good but actually work for your users.

Let's dive into the basics of UX design laws, shall we? Don't worry, we're not talking about legal jargon here. These are more like the golden rules in ui ux development that'll help you create a website that your customers will actually enjoy using. And trust me, a happy user is more likely to become a loyal customer.

1. Hick's Law: Keep It Simple, Stupid

Imagine you're at a coffee shop in New York City. The menu has 50 different types of coffee, each with its own fancy name. Suddenly, ordering your morning brew feels like sitting for a PhD exam. That's Hick's Law in action – the more choices you give people, the longer it takes them to make a decision.

a) The Paradox of Choice

In the online world, too many options can lead to decision paralysis. Your potential customers might just give up and go elsewhere.

b) Simplify, Simplify, Simplify

Take a leaf out of Apple's book. Their product pages are clean, focused, and guide you smoothly towards making a purchase.

c) Progressive Disclosure

Think of it like peeling an onion. Reveal information gradually, giving users only what they need at each step of their journey.

Real-world example: Remember how Amazon started? A simple search bar and a few product categories. Even now, with millions of products, their homepage remains surprisingly clutter-free.

2. Fitts's Law: Make It Easy to Click

Picture this: you're trying to tap a tiny "Buy Now" button on your smartphone while riding the Tube in London. Frustrating, right? That's where Fitts's Law comes in – the easier it is to interact with an element, the more likely users are to do so.

a) Size Matters

Bigger buttons are easier to click. It's not rocket science, but you'd be surprised how often this is overlooked.

b) Location, Location, Location

Put important elements where they're easy to reach. On mobile, think about thumb-friendly zones.

c) Visual Feedback

Give users a clear signal that their action has been registered. A color change or subtle animation can work wonders.

Real-world example: Take a look at the BBC News app. Notice how the headlines and navigation elements are generously sized and spaced? That's Fitts's Law in action, making it easy for users to tap what they want, even on a bumpy bus ride.

3. Miller's Law: Chunk It Up

Imagine you're at a networking event in Dubai, and someone rattles off their phone number without pausing. Chances are, you'd forget it immediately. But if they group the numbers (like 055-123-4567), suddenly it's much easier to remember. That's Miller's Law – we can only hold about 7 (plus or minus 2) items in our short-term memory.

a) Group Related Information

Organize your content into logical categories. It makes it easier for users to process and remember.

b) Use Visual Hierarchy

Headers, subheaders, and bullet points aren't just for show. They help break up information into digestible chunks.

c) Progressive Disclosure (Yes, Again!)

Don't overwhelm users with all the information at once. Reveal details as users dig deeper into your site.

Real-world example: Check out how Gov.uk organizes its vast amount of information. They use clear categories, concise headlines, and a clean layout to make finding information a breeze, even when dealing with complex topics like taxes or immigration.

4. Jakob's Law: Don't Reinvent the Wheel

You know how when you walk into any supermarket in the UK, you pretty much know where to find the milk? That's because we're creatures of habit, and we expect certain things to be in certain places. The same applies to websites.

a) Stick to Conventions

Put your navigation where people expect to find it. Top or left is usually a safe bet.

b) Use Familiar Icons

A magnifying glass for search, a shopping cart for... well, shopping. Don't get too creative with the basics.

c) Follow Platform Guidelines

If you're making an app, stick to the design languages of iOS or Android. It'll feel more natural to your users.

Real-world example: Look at any major news website – BBC, CNN, Al Jazeera. Notice how similar their layouts are? That's not lack of creativity; it's Jakob's Law in action. Users can navigate these sites easily because they're familiar.

5. Law of Proximity: Keep Related Things Together

Imagine you're at a farmers' market in California. You'd expect to find tomatoes near other vegetables, not next to handmade soaps, right? That's the Law of Proximity – things that are near each other seem related.

a) Group Similar Elements

Keep your "About Us" link near other company information, not floating randomly on the page.

b) Use White Space Wisely

Don't be afraid of empty space. It can help create visual groupings without the need for borders or backgrounds.

c) Consistent Styling

Use similar colors, fonts, or shapes for related elements to reinforce their connection.

Real-world example: Take a look at Airbnb's search results page. Notice how each listing is a distinct unit, with the photo, price, and description all neatly packaged together? That's the Law of Proximity making it easy for you to compare options.

6. Von Restorff Effect: Make It Pop!

Ever been to a bazaar in Istanbul and noticed how one particularly vibrant rug catches your eye amidst hundreds? That's the Von Restorff Effect in action - we remember things that stand out from the crowd.

a) Highlight Key Information

Got a limited-time offer? Make sure it stands out on your homepage. Use a different color, size, or even animation to draw attention.

b) Break the Pattern

If your website uses a lot of rectangles, try using a circle for an important call-to-action button. The shape difference will make it pop.

c) Use Contrast Wisely

A bright red "Sale" tag on a primarily blue website will definitely grab eyeballs. Just don't go overboard, or you'll end up with a visual circus.

Real-world example: Check out how Dropbox's homepage uses a vibrant blue "Sign up for free" button that stands out against the white background. It's impossible to miss, making it clear what action they want you to take.

7. Doherty Threshold: Speed Is King

Imagine you're at a coffee shop in London, and it takes 20 minutes to get your latte. Annoying, right? The same principle applies to your website. The Doherty Threshold states that productivity soars when a computer and its users interact at a pace (<400ms) that ensures neither has to wait on the other.

a) Optimize Load Times

Every second counts. Compress images, minify code, and use caching to speed up your site.

b) Provide Instant Feedback

When a user clicks a button, something should happen immediately, even if it's just a color change or a loading spinner.

c) Prioritize Above-the-Fold Content

Load the visible part of your website first, so users can start interacting while the rest loads in the background.

Real-world example: Google's search results appear almost instantly as you type. This rapid response keeps users engaged and coming back for more.

8. Peak-End Rule: First Impressions and Last Impressions Matter Most

Think about your last vacation. Chances are, you remember the highlights and how it ended more than the mundane middle bits. That's the Peak-End Rule - people judge an experience largely based on how they felt at its most intense point and at its end.

a) Create "Wow" Moments

Include unexpected delights in your user journey. Maybe a congratulatory animation when they complete a purchase?

b) Smooth Out the Rough Spots

Identify the most frustrating parts of your website (like checkout) and make them as painless as possible.

c) End on a High Note

After a user completes an action, don't just show a boring confirmation. Thank them, offer a small reward, or suggest a next step.

Real-world example: When you complete a course on Duolingo, you're greeted with a celebration animation and encouraging message. This positive ending keeps users coming back for more.

9. Aesthetic Usability Effect: Pretty Does Matter

You know how people tend to flock to the trendiest-looking café in Dubai, even if the coffee next door might be better? That's the Aesthetic Usability Effect - users often perceive aesthetically pleasing designs as more usable.

a) Invest in Good Design

A well-designed website isn't just pretty - it builds trust and credibility with your users.

b) Maintain Consistency

Use a cohesive color scheme and consistent styling throughout your site. It looks more professional and feels more usable.

c) Don't Sacrifice Function

Remember, beauty shouldn't come at the cost of usability. A gorgeous but confusing website won't do you any favors.

Real-world example: Apple's products and website are prime examples of the Aesthetic Usability Effect. Their clean, minimalist design is a big part of why people perceive their products as intuitive and easy to use.

10. Zeigarnik Effect: The Power of Unfinished Business

Ever had a song stuck in your head until you finally heard the end? That's the Zeigarnik Effect - people remember uncompleted or interrupted tasks better than completed ones.

a) Use Progress Bars

Show users how far they've come in a process. They'll be more likely to complete it if they can see the finish line.

b) Save Partial Progress

If a user starts filling out a form but doesn't finish, save their progress. They'll be more likely to come back and complete it.

c) Create a Sense of Achievement

Break long processes into smaller steps. Each completed step gives a sense of progress and motivates users to continue.

Real-world example: LinkedIn uses a profile completion bar, showing you how "complete" your profile is. This subtle nudge motivates users to fill out more information and engage more with the platform.

Remember, whether you're launching an e-commerce site in New York, a tech startup in Tel Aviv, or a consulting firm in London, these UX laws can help you create a website that not only looks good but also works effectively for your users. By understanding and applying these principles, you're not just building a website - you're crafting an experience that can turn visitors into loyal customers. And in today's competitive digital landscape, that can make all the difference.

Wrapping It Up

Look, I get it. As a business owner, you've got a million things on your plate. The last thing you need is to become a UX design expert overnight. But here's the thing – understanding these basic laws in fundamental of ux designs can make a world of difference to your website or app.

Think of it like this: if you were opening a physical store, you'd put thought into the layout, right? You wouldn't put the cashier in a hidden corner or stack your best products where no one can reach them. Your website is your digital storefront, and these UX laws are like the basic principles of good store design.

Remember, your website isn't just a pretty face for your business. It's often the first interaction potential customers have with you. Whether you're a cool tech startup in Tel Aviv, a boutique consulting firm in Manchester, or an e-commerce pioneer in Riyadh, your website needs to make a good first impression.

So, as you embark on your entrepreneurial journey, keep these UX laws in mind. They're not just for the big players – they can give your small business a professional edge right from the start. And hey, if all this still sounds Greek to you, don't sweat it. That's what UX professionals are for. Consider it an investment in your business's future.

After all, in the digital world, user experience isn't just nice to have – it's the difference between a website that works for your business and one that doesn't. So go ahead, apply these laws, and watch your digital presence transform from just another website to a user-friendly powerhouse that turns visitors into customers. Your future self (and your bank account) will thank you.

[fashionspottt]

Trapstar Hoodies: Elevate Your Street Style

Trapstar London has solidified its position as a prominent player in the world of streetwear fashion, with its distinct aesthetic and bold designs. Among its range of apparel, Trapstar hoodies stand out as iconic pieces that seamlessly blend urban style with luxury fashion.

History of Trapstar Hoodies

The journey of Trapstar began in the streets of London, where a group of friends with a passion for music and fashion decided to create a brand that reflected their lifestyle. Since its inception, Trapstar has been synonymous with rebellious attitude and cutting-edge style. The evolution of Trapstar hoodies mirrors the brand's journey from underground sensation to global phenomenon.

Unique Features of Trapstar Hoodies

What sets Trapstar Authentic Hoodies apart is their attention to detail and innovative design elements. From intricate graphics to bold typography, each hoodie tells a story of urban culture and self-expression. Crafted from high-quality materials, Trapstar hoodies offer both style and comfort, making them a wardrobe essential for fashion-forward individuals.

Popularity of Trapstar Hoodies

With a legion of celebrity fans and a strong presence on social media, Trapstar hoodies have become a symbol of streetwear culture. From hip-hop artists to fashion influencers, everyone wants to be seen wearing Trapstar. The brand's ability to stay ahead of trends and constantly reinvent itself has solidified its status as a global fashion powerhouse.

Variety of Trapstar Hoodies

Whether you prefer classic designs or avant-garde styles, Trapstar has something for everyone. From oversized fits to cropped silhouettes, there's a hoodie to suit every taste and occasion. Limited edition releases add to the allure, with collectors scrambling to get their hands on the latest drop.

Quality and Durability

Despite their fashion-forward appeal, Trapstar hoodies are built to last. Made from premium materials and crafted with precision, these hoodies are designed to withstand the test of time. Whether you're hitting the streets or lounging at home, you can trust Trapstar to deliver on both style and durability.

Styling Tips for Trapstar Hoodies

The versatility of Trapstar hoodies Collections makes them easy to style for any occasion. Pair them with ripped jeans and sneakers for a casual daytime look, or layer them under a leather jacket for an edgy evening ensemble. Accessorize with statement jewelry and a bold lip to elevate your outfit to new heights.

Affordability and Accessibility

Despite their high-fashion appeal, Trapstar hoodies remain accessible to a wide audience. With competitive pricing and widespread availability online and in stores, Trapstar has made it easy for fans to get their hands on their favorite pieces. Whether you're a seasoned collector or a newcomer to the brand, there's a Trapstar hoodie waiting for you.

Customer Reviews and Feedback

The rave reviews from satisfied customers speak volumes about the quality and craftsmanship of Trapstar hoodies. Influencers and celebrities alike have been quick to endorse the brand, citing its unique aesthetic and comfortable fit as major selling points. With such widespread acclaim, it's no wonder that Trapstar hoodies continue to fly off the shelves.

Environmental and Social Responsibility

In addition to creating fashion-forward apparel, Trapstar is committed to making a positive impact on the world. Through initiatives focused on sustainability and community outreach, the brand is using its platform to effect change and inspire others to do the same. By choosing Trapstar, you're not just buying a hoodie – you're supporting a movement.

How to Care for Trapstar Hoodies

To ensure your Trapstar hoodie stays looking fresh for years to come, it's important to follow a few simple care instructions. Machine wash cold with like colors, and avoid bleach and harsh detergents that can damage the fabric. Hang to dry or tumble dry on low heat to preserve the shape and fit of your hoodie.

Future Trends in Trapstar Hoodies

As fashion trends continue to evolve, Trapstar remains at the forefront of innovation. With a team of talented designers constantly pushing the boundaries of streetwear fashion, you can expect to see exciting new releases from Trapstar in the months and years to come. Stay tuned for the next big thing in urban style.

Comparison with Other Streetwear Brands

While there are countless streetwear brands vying for attention, Trapstar stands out for its unique blend of style and substance. Unlike other brands that prioritize hype over quality, Trapstar delivers on both fronts, making it a favorite among discerning fashionistas. When you choose Trapstar, you're choosing authenticity and originality.

Buying Guide: Where to Purchase Trapstar Hoodies

Ready to elevate your street style with a Trapstar Hoodie of your own? You can shop the latest collection directly from the official Trapstar website or visit authorized retailers in your area. With worldwide shipping and hassle-free returns, it's never been easier to join the Trapstar revolution.

Conclusion

In a world filled with fashion trends that come and go, Trapstar hoodies stand the test of time. Combining urban edge with luxury craftsmanship, these hoodies are more than just clothing – they're a statement of individuality and self-expression. Whether you're hitting the streets or making a statement on social media, Trapstar has you covered.

[apirateslifefor--smee]

Sunday, November 12 -- Background NPC: Write about a moment of your character’s life from the perspective of an NPC character. 

Time For Tea | Mary

Warnings for: xenophobia

Mr. Arnold didn’t invite street rats ‘round for tea because he wanted to impress them. Or maybe he did, but not in the same way he wanted to impress the bankers and businessmen whom I typically served. It was about putting them in their place, impressing upon them his vast power and resources to crush them if they stepped a toe out of line. He never said this, but we all knew it. 

Still, I was to treat them like any other honored guest. That much was communicated to us, quite directly, by Mrs. Arnold. 

Samuel was small and pudgy, eternally ruddy-cheeked as though he was permanently in a state of stepping in from the cold. He looked familiar, though I couldn’t initially place why. I didn’t ask, anyway— I wasn’t supposed to make idle chatter with the guests. I took his (ill-fitting) coat and disappeared to the behind-the-curtains places staff are supposed to disappear.

I always found these teatimes odd, the ones with youths not much older than I, whom I might have lived and worked alongside if certain events in our lives had gone differently. And sometimes I wondered if that was part of the point. To remind us of our own place, too.

Mrs. Barton piled my tray high with scones just as I finished making the tea, hardly giving me a second look. I knew she didn’t like me. I wondered if it had to do with the fact that I had lied about my age for this job, but I suspected it had more to do with my accent, with the fact that she probably believed my family was here to take jobs away from people who had been here longer. I’d hoped she might see something in me the way Mr. Arnold sees something in the young men he takes under his wing, but at this point I think she refuses even to look.

It was alright. Every week, I collected my carefully-printed check and took it to the bank, and there would be just a bit of money left after all the family’s expenses that I told myself I could one day use for my education. Maybe.

But it was hard not to feel jealous as I round the corner, overhearing Mr. Arnold lecturing Samuel on politics and philosophy.

Of course, it was all horribly boring. But it was a small price to pay. I could already see it— just a few years of coming ‘round for tea and Samuel would be reinvented, in jackets that actually fit him and a refined manner of speaking that made people believe he was born in this part of London and raised at a posh public school in the country. Not that he was—

Well, bloody hell. Now I knew where I had seen Samuel before. Sam, as I’d known him then. I could see it on his face, too, that he knew where he’d seen me before, too. 

I kept my expression frozen, though, as I set the tray down on the table. And Sam rearranged his expression to a neutral one just as quickly. Mr. Arnold thanked me, and I scurried away to my next task. It was all a carefully-choreographed dance: not just the things Mr. Arnold and his company did to impress one another, but my list of duties as well.

The dance continued— topping up the tea and scones, helping Mrs. Barton with the cleaning, tending to the fire, standing by in case I was needed for anything. Eventually, Mr. Arnold instructed me, as he often did, to show our guest to the washroom.

It was only when we had made it to the hallway that Sam finally spoke to me, his eyes wide with surprise. “Mary,” he breathed. “How did you- what are the chances- how are you?”

“Sam,” I replied bluntly, under my breath. “Don't do this. I know from this point forward how this is going to go. You’re going to go back in there and pretend you’ve got no idea who I am-”

“Well-”

“You don’t have to defend yourself. I wasn’t expecting otherwise.”

He opened his mouth to say something, then closed it again.

“Don’t make promises we both know you won’t keep. We’re both trying to make our own way. I don’t want your help, or your pity, or any of that.” I knew better than that, at this point. “But send Stefan my best, alright? If you still talk to him.”

I could tell from the look on his face that he didn’t.

“This is where I leave you,” I added, arriving at the washroom. “Goodbye, Sam.”

It wasn’t, and yet it was. I would continue to see Sam for years after, as his bond with Mr. Arnold grew stronger. And then he was off to Eton and I remained in London, still nursing my small pile of savings. That, nobody could take from me. 

He forgot about me, I’m sure. I forgot about him, too, for the most part. But one weekend I took my grandchildren to the magical town where a fall festival was happening and saw a ruddy-cheeked man instructing a younger person at a game of darts, and I had the oddest feeling that I’d seen a ghost. Or perhaps it was just someone else. These old men in their fine coats and polished speech tend to blend together, don’t they?

[agentnico]

Peter Pan & Wendy (2023) Review

Would that it weren’t for Once Upon a Time.

Plot: Wendy Darling, a young girl looking to avoid boarding school, meets Peter Pan, a boy who refuses to grow up. Wendy, her brothers, and Tinker Bell travel with Peter to the magical world of Neverland, where she encounters an evil pirate captain by the name of Hook.

I always find myself feeling apprehensive whenever another remake of a classic comes flying in. As rarely does a remake surpass the qualities of the original, as such begging the question what is even the point of redoing something that ain’t broke, besides financial purposes. That being said, recently I have been enjoying playing through the Resident Evil 4 remake that came out last month, and I would be lying if it didn’t make me rethink about the nature of remakes. For the original Resident Evil 4 on the GameCube was a classic. Still is a classic. So at first glance a game like that had no reason to be redone. Yet haven’t now experienced the new version I solemnly now see why it did. The new version manages to pay full respect to the original without hindering it nor trying act as a replacement, yet manages to also reinvent the title with new ideas, twisting expectations and allowing the love of that game to come to the hands of modern day players. The Resident Evil 4 remake is a total blast, so much so that I have now unlocked the Infinite Ammo Rocket Launcher, so now there’s even more blasting as you can imagine. But I digress; with the new Peter Pan remake that has now released on Disney+, straight away one wonders do we really need yet another take on Pan? There’s been so many! However I decided this time around to keep a more open mind, so I wacked on my Disney+, cracked open a can of H. Brompton’s London Ice Tea, rested my feet on my alpaca shaped foot stool, and allowed myself to be whisked away to Neverland...again.

This is an absolutely gorgeous looking movie. Having already shown he’s capable of delivering a mystic looking fantasy world in The Green Knight, David Lowery imbues this film with the dark, greenish-black atmosphere, though using lighting very cleverly to allow the sunlight shine through in parts throughout the setting to create almost painting like visuals. After all these years you can still tell how The Lord of the Rings trilogy dictates the look of young adult fantasy movies, with the long sweeping shots of the landscapes, with the cliff and sea shots very reminiscent of the later Harry Potter movies, especially The Half-Blood Prince. There’s definitely that sense of atmospheric fantasy awe as the camera swoops alongside Tiger Lily (Alyssa Wapanatâhk) on horseback, then cuts to a dramatic wide shot as she launches Peter Pan off a cliff and a flying ship.

As for the narrative, the first half of the movie is very much familiar ground, with Pan coming to the window of the Darlings’ home, and taking the kids with him to Neverland to meet the Lost Boys. To be honest, 30 minutes in I was finding myself wondering what’s the point of it all, as it’s exactly the same as we’ve seen before. However after a riveting clash with clampy killer croc (you can tell where the visual effects budget went), the movie takes a breather and here we realise what attracted Lowery to this project and script, as the movie then explores the backstory between Pan and Hook, one that is filled with tragedy and betrayal. That dynamic alongside the coming-of-age message that being a child is good, but one should be afraid to grow up are all brought really well to screen, and makes for an overall passable Peter Pan venture, that doesn’t really break new ground, but for a straight-to-streaming movie on Disney+ its perfectly acceptable. 

In terms of the cast, this is where I believe the movie does suffer. I must say though that I am a bit spoiled as recently me and my fiancée have been rewatching the Once Upon a Time series, and we’re actually just at the season where the characters are dealing with Peter Pan as the villain. And the actor who played Pan in that show both looked and felt like Pan. I mean yes that version of the character was super evil and an arse, but he was a powerful and memorable arse, you know? He was our arse!! Whilst Peter Pan in this new film (played by Alexander Molony) made me feel nothing. He wasn’t by any means terrible, but I simply didn’t buy him as Pan, and no Disney, just sticking the trademark Alpine hat on a random kid doesn’t straight away make them Peter Pan, just saying. As for Jude Law’s Hook - I appreciate what he was trying to do with playing the character less flamboyantly as previous iterations and instead giving us a salty, sombre man that’s hurt and broken, but his performance comes off as really bland. Certain strong lines of dialogue like “you’re guilty of being a child” should have been said with more power and gusto, but Law says it very monotone, making the moment lost. Again, I am spoiled by Once Upon a Time’s Colin O’Donoghue who played that Captain Hook so so charmingly. Honestly, season 3 of Once Upon a Time is absolutely ace - has to be said!

All in all, as remakes go, Peter Pan & Wendy is actually pretty watchable. It doesn’t in any way reinvent the Peter Pan lore, though it does not hinder it either. It’s visually amazing, with David Lowery bringing to life a real fantasy spectacle, and delving deep into the character motivations of Pan and Hook worked for some interesting if rushed dramatic tension. Also I was never bored, and I’m not a big Disney fan, so that must count for something, right?

Overall score: 6/10

[earthboundvalkyrie]

Vikings Valhalla Season 2, Episode 2 "Towers of Faith" Recap

New Post has been published on https://www.ebvs.blog/2023/02/01/vikings-valhalla-season-2-episode-2-towers-of-faith-recap/

Vikings Valhalla Season 2, Episode 2 "Towers of Faith" Recap

Caution:SPOILERS

The second episode opens with a series of brief scenes, catching us up with our key players. Olaf and Svein have chased down some Heathens, questioning one about the Jomsvikings, before Olaf tells Svein that to be King, he must bloody his sword. Svein kills the man.

Freydis arrives in Jomsborg where she is recognized by several people there and introduced to Harekr and Gudrid, a married couple who are the leaders of Jomsborg.

Leif and Harald arrive in Novgorod. Leif learns about opium and Harald finds his uncle Yaroslav. When Yaroslav’s guards won’t let Harald speak to him, Harald jumps into the fighting arena, and yells that the fight needs “a Viking named Prince Harald Sigurdsson, great-grandson of Harald Finehair and blood relative of Yaroslav the Wise.”

And in London, Earl Godwin is torturing a man who tried to assassinate Emma to find out who else was behind the plot. When the man says he knows nothing more, Godwin has them burn out his eye as the man says he heard someone call his contact “Bear.”

Back in Jomsborg, Freydis is admiring the way the Jomsvikings are being trained. Harekr asks if she’ll share some of her training. She agrees and steps into the practice area, where she quickly defeats several attackers. She and Gudrid start talking about families, and Gudrid says Freydis’ baby will be one to celebrate, explaining she knew Freydis was pregnant by the way she protected her belly while fighting.

Harald explains his situation to Yaroslav, who says he’s unable to help because a group known as Pechenegs have been blocking the route to Constantinople and right now, he can’t afford to upset Forkbeard. He suggests Harald should either go swear fealty to Olaf or “do what Vikings have always done – reinvent themselves.”

In Jomsborg, Harekr talks to Freydis and asks her to be the new Gudjia (priestess) of the temple. Freydis has her doubts because she ran from Kattegat.

Leif is looking out a window and sees a comet overhead. A woman named Mariam comes over to speak with him. She says she has come to Novgorod to find rocks that fall from the sky and explains to him how what the comet is. She then excuses herself, coughing, saying it’s too cold for her by the window.

Jorundr returns to Jomsborg with more refugees. Freydis notes that they are required to turn in their weapons as they get off their ship, before they are given food and clothing. Harekr points out they don’t know for sure who they can trust, indicating there may be Christians hidden amongst the refugees. He tells her they take the refugees to the forest where they have places to live and can work, helping make new weapons that will be needed to fight the Christians. Freydis goes back to her hut and finds the robes of a Gudjia laid out for her. She picks them up, wondering what to do.

King Svein and Jarl Olaf return to Kattegat, where they are greeted by Svein’s mother, Queen Aelfgifu. She looks at the blood still on Svein’s face, and Svein explains he killed a Pagan. Svein wants Olaf to eat with them that night, then leaves. Aelfgifu tells Olaf she won’t allow any dogs at her table.

Leif sees Liv entering the opium den and speaks to the proprietor before leaving and running into Harald, who has decided he wants to buy furs to take to Constantinople to sell, so he can raise cash to put an army together. To get the money to buy pelts, Harald needs Leif to join him in the fighting arena, where they can gamble on their ability to win. Leif balks at this, so Harald challenges two men, saying he will fight them himself.

Sam Corlett and Leo Suter

When one of the two fighters becomes is unable to continue, then promoter throws a fresh fighter in the ring. Leif protests, but when the proprietor stands his ground, Leif jumps into the fray, where he ends up killing a man. The men running the fight grab all the money that has been bet on the match and run out of the tent, leaving Harald with no money to buy his furs.

Later that evening, Yaroslav finds Harald and says that he has an idea to help Harald obtain the capital he needs. Yaroslav claims he has something he must get to the Emporer of Constantinople and adds he feels Harald is the man who can take it there.

Olaf joins Aelfgifu in her hall. She explains her son will not be joining him, as Olaf has exhausted him. She asks why he’s hunting the Jomsvikings. He points out it’s because they’re giving Heathens refuge, and he thinks Harald is amongst them. He then flirts with Aelfgifu, telling her Canute was wrong to throw her over for Queen Emma. When Aelfgifu says such talk is dangerous, Olaf replies its just the two of them there, a Queen and her dog.

Back in London, Earl Godwin and Emma return to the prison, where they find that all the prisoners have been “slaughtered like cattle,” including the man Godwin had been questioning.

Freydis leaves her hut wearing the Gudjia robes with her forearms painted white. Harekr is clearly pleased. Gudrid carrying Freydis’ sword, leads Freydis into the temple. Freydis then proceeds to the top of a nearby tower. A woman, vocalizing a wordless song, brings many people from the forest to the tower. Freydis then raises her blade and declares that to the people that Jomsborg is safe, and that it is their new Uppsala. The crowds cheer.

Leif goes to the opium den and partakes, hoping to see Liv again. When she appears to him, she asks him to come with her, so he follows the hallucination outside into a fierce storm.”She” leads him up a tower to its roof, where she calls for him to join her in Valhalla. She continues backing up, beckoning to Leif until she is standing off the roof, floating high above the ground. Leif continues to follow, until he finds the cross he was given in the first season in his coat. As he looks at it, “Liv” frowns and then disappears. Leif is distraught and starts towards the edge anew when he is struck by lightning and collapses on the roof of the tower.

[cathygeha]

REVIEW

Impeccable by Darcy Burke

The Phoenix Club # 5

 The book before the last in this series sees Evie, once a courtesan protected by Lucien, find her happily ever after. I had expected Evie to end up with someone else and though surprised, can see her quite happy with the man she married in the end and look forward to reading the conclusion of this series when the next book is published.

 What I liked:

* Evie: patroness of the Phoenix Club, good friend of the club proprietor, keeps secret her past as a courtesan and her French origins, daughter of a Chevalier, arrived in London as a baby, strong, intelligent, formidable, and loving

* Gregory: second son, even tempered, interested in education, and learning new information, has a contemptible older brother and sister-in-law, smitten with Evie, perseverant, quick study, loves animals…and Evie

* Lucien: good friend, giving, takes care of others, has a difficult relationship with his father, faces issues with the Phoenix Club’s future by the end of this book, will hopefully figure out the problem and find his happily ever after in the conclusion of this series

* The meet-cute that sees Gregory and Evie rescuing a puppy

* The relationship of Evie with her sister – very close and loving and there for one another

* Hearing more of Evie’s backstory

* Seeing characters from previous books in the series

* The surprise Evie and her sister have at the end of this book and who provided the surprise

* Wondering how the series will conclude

 What I didn’t like:

* Who and what I was meant not to like: Gregory’s sibling and sister-in-law, the behavior of the Hargroves, and the treatment Lucien receives from his father

* Having to wait for the book that will end this series and having to say goodbye to the characters

 Did I enjoy this book? Yes

Would I read more in this series? Definitely

 5 stars

     BLURB

 Society’s most exclusive invitation... Welcome to the Phoenix Club, where London’s most audacious, disreputable, and intriguing ladies and gentlemen find scandal, redemption, and second chances. Former courtesan and pretend widow Evangeline Renshaw is happy with her reinvented life as a patroness of the Phoenix Club. She doesn’t need or want a husband or a lover…until she meets the devastatingly charming and surprisingly virtuous Lord Gregory Blakemore. He’d like to court her, but he’ll have to settle for a short, thrilling affair instead. After the death of his father and the marriage of his older brother, Lord Gregory can finally focus on what he wants: a government appointment. However, the enchanting Evie makes him desire intimacy for the first time, and now he wants her most of all. Their entanglement is supposed to be temporary, but he can’t let her go. As Gregory reveals himself to Evie, she wonders if she might finally share the truth of her past. Unfortunately, there are those who seek to ruin her carefully crafted second chance. To protect Gregory’s dreams, she must sacrifice the only love she’s ever known.

[pochiperpe90]

Here comes “The Old Guard”. Marinelli goes to Hollywood, alongside Charlize Theron.

“Alone, fragile and immortal.”

A story of love, friendship and compassion with an ancient warrior and a young African American, who has just discovered she is immortal, as protagonists. Because the world needs women and courage knows no gender differences. 20 years after “Love & Basketball” and after “The Secret Life of Bees” and “Beyond the Lights - Find Your Voice”, Gina Prince-Bythewood comes to the action movie with very clear ideas on how to reinvent the rules. We talked to her over the phone while she was in Los Angeles during the lockdown. 

A superhero movie that doesn't look like a superhero movie. Is that why you decided to make it? 

Absolutely yes, when I read the script I realized that despite the fantastic genre there was a very realistic background. These characters are real and it's easy for the audience to relate to them despite being immortal. They fight for goals and reasons that people understand. The more realistic the film, the more viewers can reflect themselves in the protagonists. 

In fact, the most fascinating aspect of the characters is their vulnerability: they are immortal, but up to a certain point, which is a paradox. They too have to deal with the sense of the end. 

There is a possibility that they may die, that their immortality is interrupted, that they still suffer from their wounds, and this brings them closer to us. The public still feels sorry for them when they see them in danger.

Immortals suffer, and not just physically.

Many think that being able to live forever would be extraordinary, but no one asks what this really means. Immortality has consequences: it can be a gift, but it can also be a curse.

And we don’t know why immortality fell to them. 

The thing I loved about the graphic novel and the script is the fact that there is no explanation. Not only do we not know it, but neither do the protagonists. But it is a trilogy and therefore there is still a lot to tell.

Could you offer your contribution to the script? 

It was a great script, with great roles based on the graphic novel so I stayed very true to the text. With the author, Greg Rucka, we wanted to reflect on the fear of taking someone's life, the one that sometimes overwhelms soldiers in war, whose psychology is often neglected. Hollywood films have never been very concerned with this aspect, as if killing had no consequences. The protagonists are forced to kill, but if someone has been doing it for centuries, for others it’s the first time. 

What struck you about Luca Marinelli? 

I could talk about him for days, I love him, he's the actor that all directors dream of having on set. He loved the character and gave him life in a very credible way. Between him and Marwan Kenzari is born a great complicity, necessary between two people who have been together for centuries. Luca's eyes are full of soul, his Nicky is the heart of the group, he’s the most sensitive character of all of them. 

Charlize Theron, who is also one of the producers, has an increasingly and more torn body.

Charlize has already played roles like this one, she is very credible in the genre of action and has been helpful to who had never faced it before. From her, who really worked hard, others learned to do the same. She is very credible in the role of a woman who lived for thousands of years.

Matthias Schoenaerts, on the other hand, has an insidious role. 

He embodies the tragedy of immortality, loneliness, betrayal. He is the actor who most resembles his character in the graphic novel. He wanted to make the film at all costs because he had never measured himself with the action genre and felt he had things to express. 

The film underlines how today it’s no longer possible to hide, images can capture you at any time. 

In a scene near the end, when the immortals look at photos and articles about them, they truly become aware for the first time of everything they have done to protect humanity. They understand the power of images from which they continually try to escape in order to hide their identity. 

And then we talk about science and profit. 

In the film, people from different places join forces to protect the world, a need even more relevant today. Yet it is increasingly evident that profit matters more than human lives. 

Do you think the film industry is becoming more inclusive with women? 

Things are finally changing and I am grateful that, despite having no other action films on my resume, I have been entrusted with The Old Guard. I am grateful for the trust they have placed in me. It should be taken for granted by now that women are capable of coping with any film genre and I think how much pressure from the industry Patty Jenkins, who directed Wonder Woman to success and opening the door for many of us, went through. But the door must be wide open because there are still few who have such opportunities. 

In your opinion, have opportunities grown with the arrival of platforms like Netflix? 

Netflix wasn't afraid to trust a series of directors. Which studio would have produced Roma or Irishman? He has the courage to make films that Hollywood deems too risky.

The Golden boy

“Luca Marinelli, as we have never seen him before: in his Hollywood debut, he becomes an immortal and fights with Charlize Theron to save the world.”

Just before the lockdown he was one of the jury members of the 70th Berlinale in the city where he has lived for years - and he swears he had so much fun watching three films a day. The audience awaits him in theatre in the role of Diabolik, in the film directed by Manetti Bros., but on July 10th he arrives on Netflix with The Old Guard, the action movie that sees him alongside Charlize Theron. And where he plays the Italian Nicolo, Nicky for the group of immortals he belongs to. Directed by Gina Prince-Bythewood and based on the graphic novel by Greg Rucka and Leandro Fernández, the film offers Luca Marinelli an insidious superpower, an endless love and a new opportunity to demonstrate his talent as a true champion. We reached him on the phone and he, less shy than usual, told us how he became a secular "superhero".

How did you get to the project? 

I auditioned in London, where I later returned and met the director. Lastly, there was a final meeting between me and Marwan Kenzari. We made a scene together and then they announced to me, "We'd love for you to be Nicky." 

What struck you about this character? 

The story fascinated me because it tells of immortals as if they were the damned. Nicky and Joe live this condition as a gift because they are linked by a wonderful love story and they are not alone. They met in an absurd and paradoxical situation, during the Crusades, ready to kill themselves. They did it a hundred times and then they looked at each other and fell in love. But others suffer from it, like Andy and Booker. In a beautiful scene, Booker, played by Matthias Schoenaerts, explains what happens to them: they see the people they love die and blame them because they cannot prevent it. And they are tired of watching the world repeat itself following the same dynamics. They fight to save people, but everything seems to go on the same way. Only in the end will they discover what they have done and what they are doing. 

How did it go with Charlize Theron? 

Well, it was wonderful! As I read the script I said to myself: am I really going to make a film with Charlize Theron? And hug as well! I was very excited and intimidated already while reading. She is an extraordinary actress. In the scene where we are at the table and everyone tells Nile something about us, Andy tells her what we are and it was nice to see her running and venturing into the midst of emotions and thoughts. Sometimes I got distracted and didn't say my line. But Charlyze is also a crazy athlete. You have to be really athletes, otherwise you don't survive at the end of the day. And Charlize is an athlete of the body and the heart. 

What about her athletic training? 

We got together a month before shooting to start working with the stunts. I had to get some athleticism back: when I arrived and they looked at me I think they were a little worried. We had to become familiar with martial arts and then we switched from the sword to other weapons and to hand-to-hand combat. We prepared scene by scene, including the choreographies, different for each fight, and each of us had his own rubber reproduction of the sword. It was an unforgettable training.

The immortals come from different places in the world. How much of Italy is there in Nicky? 

Apart from the pronunciation? They still laugh at some of the things I said. Marwan and Matthias, but also Charlize, speak Italian at different levels and every now and then I enjoyed shooting a few sentences to which they could answer me. 

Did you offer your character something that wasn't in the script? 

Well, being in such a group, shy as I am ... I tried. I have always focused on the bond between Nicky, Joe and the other members of the group, because I am interested in discovering what is inside a character, his feelings, how he looks at the world, what excites him. Nicky has lived for centuries, but still greets the people he meets in the desert with a smile, inside him there is the flame of an infinite good. Each character has a different sensitivity and their own armor. Nicky is perhaps the least armored one.

The challenge was also to make people believe in a love story that has lasted for centuries. 

Marwan recites a beautiful monologue in which he talks about their love story. I hope that each of us, in their short life, can say the same thing about the person they love. 

You’ve already had superpowers in “They Call Me Jeeg”. What is your relationship with this genre? 

I like it very much and I think that both films, very different from each other, have a very interesting soul. In Jeeg Robot, Enzo Ceccotti uses his superpowers to help others, taking on a social responsibility. In The Old Guard the protagonists put themselves at the service of others, even if no one has asked them to. “This is what we do,” they repeat over and over to each other. What they do is save people, participate in what they think is right. 

How do you think they would react to protests on American streets and around the world?

I don't feel like playing games, mixing reality and fiction on a terribly real subject like this. I think that in reality, outside of any cinematic fiction, it’s fundamental to fight for equality, within society, but also within ourselves. To go back to our film, if in a microscopic way we manage to carry a message in that direction, I would be very happy. 

What director was Gina Prince-Bythewood? 

She is always ready to listen, and I am someone who asks a lot of questions even at inappropriate times. She always had great patience and was very attentive to the emotional side of the film, to the interiority and beauty of the characters.

CIAK Magazine - Luglio 2020

Just wanted to translate this old interview for the non-italian’s fans ^^ (sorry for my English)

[qqueenofhades]

Hi, I’ve been tasked with researching Richard Plantagenet for a paper and thus far found extremely negative accounts of the king, his religious bigotry being a reoccurring theme (his treatment of Jewish dignitaries attending his coronation and his reasoning to join the third crusade etc)

I stumbled across your wonderful tag for Richard at the weekend and wondered if you wouldn’t mind sharing your informed opinion of Richard and his views on religions ? Your writing seems very well balanced regarding his attributes and flaws. Thanks :)

Oof. Okay. So, a short and simple question, then?

Quick note: when I was first reading your ask and saw "Richard Plantagenet," I briefly assumed that you meant Richard Plantagenet, father of Edward IV, or perhaps Richard III, both from the Wars of the Roses in the fifteenth century, before seeing from context that you meant Richard I. While "Plantagenet" was first used as an informal appellation by Richard I's grandfather, Geoffrey of Anjou, it wasn't until several centuries later that the English royal house started to use it consistently as a surname. So it's not something that Richard I would have been really called or known by, even if historians tend to use it as a convenient labeling conceit. (See: the one thousand popular histories on "The Plantagenets" that have been published recently.)

As for Richard I, he is obviously an extremely complex and controversial figure for many reasons, though one of the first things that you have to understand is that he has been mythologized and reinvented and reinterpreted down the centuries for many reasons, especially his crusade participation and involvement in the Robin Hood legends. When you're researching about Richard, you're often reading reactions/interpretations of that material more than anything specifically rooted in the primary sources. And while I am glad that you asked me about this and want to encourage you to do so, I will gently enquire to start off: when you say "research," what kind of materials are you looking at, exactly? Are these actual published books/papers/academic material, or unsourced stuff on the internet written from various amateur/ideological perspectives and by people who have particular agendas for depicting Richard as the best (or as is more often the case, worst) ever? Because history, to nobody's surprise, is complicated. Richard did good things and he also did quite bad things, and it's difficult to reduce him to one or the other.

Briefly (ha): I'll say just that if a student handed me a paper stating that Richard was a religious bigot because a) there were anti-Jewish riots during his coronation and b) he signed up for the Third Crusade, I would seriously question it. Medieval violence against the Jews was an unfortunately endemic part of crusade preparations, and all we know about Richard's own reaction is that he fined the perpetrators harshly (repeated after a similar March 1190 incident in York) and ordered for them to be punished. Therefore, while there famously was significant anti-Semitic violence at his coronation, Richard himself was not the one who instigated it, and he ordered for the Londoners who did take part in it to be punished for breaking the king's peace.

This, however, also doesn't mean that Richard was a great person or that he was personally religiously tolerant. We don't know that and we often can't know that, whether for him or anyone else. This is the difficulty of inferring private thoughts or beliefs from formal records. This is why historians, at least good historians, mostly refrain from speculating on how a premodern private individual actually thought or felt or identified. We do know that Richard likewise also made a law in 1194 to protect the Jews residing in his domains, known as Capitula Judaeis. This followed in the realpolitik tradition of Pope Calixtus II, who had issued Sicut Judaeis in c. 1120 ordering European Christians not to harass Jews or forcibly convert them. This doesn't mean that either Calixtus or Richard thought Jews were great, but they did choose a different and more pragmatic/economic way of dealing with them than their peers. This does not prove "religious bigotry" and would need a lot more attention as an analytical concept.

As for saying that the crusades were motivated sheerly by medieval religious bigotry, I'm gonna have to say, hmm, no. Speaking as someone with a PhD in medieval history who specialised in crusade studies, there is an enormous literature around the question of why the crusades happened and why they continue to hold such troubling attraction as a pattern of behavior for the modern world. Yes, Richard went on crusade (as did the entire Western Latin world, pretty much, since 1187 and the fall of Jerusalem was the twelfth century's 9/11). But there also exists material around him that doesn't exist around any other crusade leader, including his extensive diplomatic relations with the Muslims, their personal admiration for him, his friendship with Saladin and Saladin's brother Saif al-Din, the fact that Arabic and Islamic sources can be more complimentary about Richard than the Christian records of his supposed allies, and so forth. I think Frederick II of Sicily, also famous for his friendly relationships with Muslims, is the only other crusade leader who has this kind of material. So however he did act on crusade, and for whatever reasons he went, Richard likewise chose the pragmatic path in his interactions with Muslims, or at least the Muslim military elite, than just considering them all as religious barbarians unworthy of his time or attention.

The question of how the crusades functioned as a pattern of expected behavior for the European Christian male aristocrat, sometimes entirely divorced from any notion of his private religious beliefs, is much longer and technical than we can possibly get into. (As again, I am roughly summarising a vast and contentious field of academic work for you here, so... yes.) Saying that the crusades happened only because medieval people were all religious zealots is a wild oversimplification of the type that my colleague @oldshrewsburyian and I have to deal with in our classrooms, and likewise obscures the dangerous ways in which the modern world is, in some ways, more devoted to replicating this pattern than ever. It puts it beyond the remit of analysis and into the foggy "Dark Ages hurr durr bad" stereotype that drives me batty.

Weighted against this is the fact that Richard obviously killed many Muslims while on crusade, and that this was motivated by religious and ideological convictions that were fairly standard for his day but less admirable in ours. The question of how that violence has been glorified by the alt-right people who think there was nothing wrong with it at all and he should have done more must also be taken into account. Richard's rise to prominence as a quintessentially English chivalrous hero in the nineteenth century, right when Britain was building its empire and needed to present the crusades as humane and civilizing missions abroad rather than violent and generally failed attempts at forced conversion and conquest, also problematized this. As noted, Richard was many things, but... not that, and when the crusades fell out of fashion again in the twentieth century, he was accordingly drastically villainized. Neither the superhero or the supervillain images of him are accurate, even if they're cheap and easy.

The English nationalists have a complicated relationship with Richard: he represents the ideal they aspire to, aesthetically speaking, and the kind of anti-immigrant sentiment they like to put in his mouth, which is far more than the historical Richard actually displayed toward his Muslim counterparts. (At least, again, so far as we can know anything about his private beliefs, but this is what we can infer from his actions in regard to Saladin, who he deeply respected, and Saladin's brother.) But he was also thoroughly a French knight raised and trained in the twelfth-century martial tradition, his concern for England was only as a minor part of the sprawling 'Angevin empire' he inherited from his father Henry II (which is heresy for the Brexit types who think England should always be the center of the world), and his likely inability to speak English became painted as a huge character flaw. (Notwithstanding that after the Norman Conquest in 1066, England did not have a king who spoke English natively until Henry IV in 1399, but somehow all those others don't get blamed as much as Richard.)

Anyway. I feel as if it's best to stop here. Hopefully this points you toward the complexity of the subject and gives you some guidelines in doing your own research from here. :)

[fishymom-art]

Hi

These are the titles I promised you. I tried to put all the genres, all the styles of my favourite books (and still, there are a lot missing).

"Neverwhere" and "American gods", Neil Gaiman, fantasy, classics I could reread endlessly. The first one will take you to the basement of London with the forgotten of reality, the second one to America where a widower mourns with old gods.

"The 5th Wave", Rick Yancey, sci-fi, post-apocalyptic, hard but very well written, very fine on a psychological level. What if the invaders used human hands to eradicate those who got in their way?

"Dangerous Liaisons", Pierre Choderlos de Laclos, epistolary novel, classic, or how a very bad reason can give birth to a very beautiful love.

"Pride and Prejudice" and "Mansfield Park" by Jane Austen, two English classics, three very different ways of seeing love. Very nice.

"Hunger games", Suzanne Collins, I guess you know them but I found the books really more advanced than the movies and Katniss is more interesting, tougher but also more fragile.

"The Long Walk" and "Running man", Stephen king, the first one is a cruel race done by teenagers and the second one is the struggle of a man who just wanted to be able to feed his wife and child: the game show in all its horror.

"The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy", Douglas Adams, science fiction, what if the average Englishman found himself embroiled (literally!) in an adventure that could save the planet itself? Very funny.

"The Chalk Man", C. J. Tudor, interesting triller, which shows us children more as constructed beings than as innocent little beings.

"Mortimer" and "Men at Arms", Terry Pratchett, part of the Discworld cycle, two of my favourite characters: Death himself and a tired, alcoholic little commissioner with a strong sense of duty. Brilliant. Funny and yet very accurate.

"The Gospel of Loki", Joanne Harris, where the story of the god of Chaos is told very modestly by the god himself.

"A Thousand White Women", Jim Fergus, a bittersweet look at the slow agony of the Indian tribes, and the detestable contempt of the colonists.

"Malavita", Tonino Benacquista, how would a family of repentant mafioso live if they found themselves stuck in the north of France?

"Heroes die ", Matthew Stover, science fiction, what would Men do if they had the possibility to go to another dimension full of magic, elves and fairies? But virtual reality films, of course!

"Breakfast at Tiffany's" ,Truman Capote, who would you become if you had the opportunity to reinvent yourself? That's what the bubbly young woman the narrator is about to meet has done.

"Brockback Mountain", Annie Prouxl, romantic, the story of two cowboys who love each other in a time when it is not possible. Wonderful.

"His at Night", Sherry Thomas, also romantic, or how a man who lives by playing a role will fall in love with someone stronger than him. Nice.

"Lie with me", Philippe Besson, a boy's first love with a friend from his class, whom he will never see again but never forget. Quite sad.

I hope that you will find a way to protect yourself and that this period will pass as quickly as possible. Good luck to you.

WOOOAAAHHHH!!! I know some of them, like Hichhikers Guide and Pride and Prejudice. My bro and father have read the whole Hichhiker series and my mom is a big Jane Austen fan. I don’t like those kinds of books tho.

But the Neverwhere got me, you know I love myself some London mystery + Neil Geiman, my beloved <33 he is VERY good.

The Gospel of Loki sounds very promising, will probably check it out, hmm...

Some of them sound like musical materials, so that’s a good sign 👀

Thamks a lot!!!

[dilfbane]

Koschei - Dhawan!Master x Reader - Part I

Summary: On the streets of London, you find a notebook. And you see the Master, there in the darkness. He teaches you how to be God. Doctor Who x Death Note crossover. 

Pairing: Dhawan!Master x Reader, minor/implied Dhawan!Master x Thirteen

Warnings: Death and descriptions of death, darker tone, and liberal reinvention of some of the main mechanics of how Time Lords and Death Notes work. 

Word Count: 1.4k

Prologue

A/N: Wanted to get the first chapter out today since yesterday’s prologue was super short, and also didn’t have much to do with Death Note. This chapter will serve as set up for the whole premise/jumping off point for this story, and I will be posting the second part later this week, where we’ll finally get to see the Master and the Death Note in action! Hope that you all enjoy. 

Part I - Midnight

You were almost twenty-one years old, the very first time that you saw him. It’s always better to start at the beginning, he’d told you, once - So, when you think your life over, and the lives of the ones who have died, you do your best to go back to that sweltering night with the Doctor, all of those long years ago, when you were only a child, and Kira only a ghost. You were twenty years old, threaded over with Cyberman nightmares and faded Silurian scars, your mind full to bursting with visions of Davros and creatures you could not remember, and the Doctor had worn a man’s face and tuxedo, black pockets lined with red velvet; sharp eyebrows, and, somehow, a much sharper tongue. 

You had never known him to be scared, before, but that night - hot with threat, and with foreboding - he had been, and as you had wound your way through grimy nightclub back alleys, he had cursed under his breath. 

“Don’t touch anything,” He had told you, in that way that he did; the one that reminded you what, exactly, he was, and how human you’d seemed to him. You’d followed him silently, knowing not how to argue, or what he was funning away from, and the world had seemed to exist behind you - some alternate plain of muddled dimension to which you’d no longer belonged, hurtling towards its doom. You had heard a drum beating, then, loud in the night air, and frantic, matching the thrum of your pulse. 

“It’s my last chance,” The Doctor had said, collapsing onto his knees in a labyrinth of busted cartons and dirty brickwork. “Rassilon,” He’d said, “I’ve failed you.” 

You hadn’t known what he’d meant when he’d said it, but the lights from seedy massage parlors had spilled out of open windows, yellow and filthy on him, and you had seen he was crying, suit pants smudging with dirt. 

“Go back to the TARDIS,” He’d told you, “Now,” He had said, “That’s an order,” When you’d opened your mouth to protest. The tears had gleamed on his cheeeks, and your bones had ached in raw terror, but he had been the Doctor, yet, and eep in your heart, you had known. 

The way back, it had been harder. You hadn’t remembered where the Doctor had parked, and the night’s shadows had lengthened, reaching out for you with sharp and steely fingernails, tearing at your calm like thorns. There was a time when such things would not have frightened you, but it had been long past by then - You had known the Doctor too long, and too well, to ever truly feel safe. Sometimes, when you’d closed your eyes, the intricate lines of the Pandorica’s coding would flash, neon, onto the screens of your eyelids, and the piercing pain of the handcuffs punched new marks into your wrists; for a moment, it was easy to see the universe, and when you had, it was on fire, the sound of harsh laughter afore you, the Doctor nowhere in sight. 

That night, caught in the web of your fear for yourself and your worry for him, the only thing that you’d really seen had been the notebook, black leather corners poking into the caustic flourescence of spill-over lights, sinister letters cutting into your mind as it had beckoned to you. You had stared at it for a moment, feeling some dark, foreign emotion suffuse you, and despite feeling eyes on your back, you had found, when you turned to look, that you’d been completely alone. Your feet, your gaze, had gone frozen. 

What would the Doctor do?, You had asked yourself, in that instant of nerved time, suspended, as if you could ever have known. You’d taken one step forwards, then another, and the front of the notebook had swung into bright and clear focus, written in a lattice-work of circular motions that you had been unable to decipher. A new fear’d come over you, then, as your traitorous hand had reached out for it against your will, and a voice in your head that shifted and changed had said, frowning, This isn’t right. You’d seen one last glimpse of the Doctor as you’d first known him, when you were stupid, and young - Spiky hair untameable, coat tails flapping as he ran; a man who sat in front of monitors all night long, never needing to sleep, and took thirteen sugars in his tea - before your fingers brushed the skin of the notebook, feeling the slick, supple leather. The world had unfolded around you, and the dead things had metastized into unloved, solid forms. Somewhere to your left, through the din of a million people squandering their fragile, soon-ending lives, you’d heard a stone angel weeping, pouring its vitriol into the churned, bloodied earth. 

You’d felt him, before you’d seen him, a shape in the darkness too near you. All of your bad dreams, and every pani; each jump at an unexplained noise, and you had imagined what he must look like - yellowed and crumbling bones, black eyes and long, tattered robes, ripped full of holes by the pleading, scythe a devastating harbinger fashioned from polished and rippling metal. You’d imagined how his voice would sound, and wondered, Why me, Doctor? Why now? 

“Oh,” Said the Time Lord whom you would know as the Master, “This is going to be fun.” 

                                                   *

The being whose name is written in this notebook shall die. 

If cause of death is specified within six minutes and forty seconds, such a death will occur. If time of death is unspecified, the chosen being will die of a heart attack, or nearest equivalent, after forty seconds have passed in the current causal nexus. 

A being who uses the Death Note can go neither to Gallifrey, nor to Skaro, upon the moment of their death. 

                                                  *

He’d told you that it was a Death Note, and you had not looked at him. 

“You can’t go back to the TARDIS now, love,” He had told you, with that too-human,m too-cold, too-amused tone in his voice. “If you want to see the Doctor again, I’m afraid you’ll have to come with me.” 

“Who - who are you?” You’d asked, hand still clutched in a vice around the notebook, its front cover soft and warm. His cruel smirk and glinting gaze had been audible in the silence; you had not turned around. 

“If you must know,” He’d said, “I’m a Time Lord. You may call me the Master.” 

A wave of revulsion and shock had torn through you, and in it, you’d told him, “You can’t be,” From somewhere far outside your body. “You can’t be a Time Lord, the Doctor said they were all gone.” 

“You’d heard, and felt, his malicious grin widen, your ears picking up on the sound of the night breeze rustling fabric. 

“Rule number one,” The Master had told you, “The Doctor lies.” 

“No,” You had said, “Not to me.” 

“Mm,” He had told you, dripping with anger and spite, “Is that what you think about him? Do you think that he cares about you? The Doctor has lived for a very long time, love. He knows better than to care. Still, I have to applaud him for getting his hooks into you. It really is an impressive feat, considering you’ve found my Death Note.” 

“Who are you?” You’d asked him, voice cracking, limbs shaking, night cold. “Who the fuck are you?” 

“Me?” The Madter had asked, with a twinge of steely amusement, “Consider me to be… a friend. That’s not the right question, you know.” 

“Sorry?” 

“Who I am. That’s not the right question. You should be asking who you’ll be.” 

“Who will I be, then?” You’d asked him, and his voice had gone low and deceptive, silky as a stranger’s touch. 

“Look at me, love,” He had told you. “Look at me, and I’ll tell you.” 

You still remember how he had looked, when you think back on it all now. How he had been beautiful, all dark eyes and purple jacket, lapels embroidered with gold. All rough sideburns and inky, mussed hair, every joint and muscle deadly, elegantly poised. 

“Y/N,” He’d said, and nothing had been in his eyes but the sight of a planet aflame, a symphony of drums beating and shattering glass, “With my help, you’ll be a God.” 

[princessanneftw]

Princess Anne: the best queen we’ll never have

Discreet and dependable, she is a royal cast in her mother’s mould. No wonder many long for her to reign over us, write Roya Nikkhah and Tony Allen-Mills

Roya Nikkhah and Tony Allen-Mills for The Sunday Times

When the Princess Royal turned up at one of the charities she supports to meet a gathering of disabled and autistic children, a young girl boldly informed her: “You don’t look much like a princess.” Anne didn’t miss a beat. “Good,” she replied. “That’s very reassuring.”

There have been moments over the past half-century when the Queen’s second child didn’t behave much like a princess either. She acquired a criminal conviction after her bull terrier, Dotty, bit two children. She tried to wriggle out of a speeding fine. She once owned a Reliant Robin.

Anne was unprincesslike in other ways too. As president of Save the Children, she has toured remote corners of Africa, Asia and the Middle East. She slept on camp beds and shared a bathroom with up to eight people. She visited parts not many British royals have reached: Madagascar; Peru; Wuhan, in China. In London she travels to some engagements by Tube. In 1971 she was the BBC’s sports personality of the year.

Today, as she approaches her 70th birthday, Anne has in many ways emerged as the royal family’s most valuable member after the Queen.

Captain Sir Nick Wright, a former naval officer, was Anne’s longest-serving private secretary, retiring last year after 17 years. He has never previously spoken about the princess. Now he says her sense of humour is “marvellously wicked” and her stamina endless: “The day starts early and ends at 11pm, day in, day out. Like the Duke of Edinburgh, she’ll just go on and on.

“She is totally consistent. If I’d done something wrong, I’d get a look, which can be disarming at times, but then she would immediately move on. Now, more than ever she will be a great stabilising influence for the monarchy, and when the Prince of Wales accedes to the throne, I don’t see her role being diminished, because she is such a valued and committed member of the family.”

Amid the chaos that has engulfed the dukedoms of York and Sussex, Anne has appeared a pillar of probity, devoted to her royal duties, impervious to the fallout from successive family scandals.

Although she is now 14th in the line of succession, it is tempting to reflect, as the nation braces for a whirlwind of birthday tributes — including a fly-on-the-wall ITV documentary promising to tell the story of “a royal mould-breaker, a princess who refused to follow the script” — that Anne may come to be remembered as the best queen Britain never had.

It has been quite a turnaround for a distant, largely unknowable princess routinely described as “no-nonsense”, “brusque” or “as stiff as her hairdo”. She was the first daughter of a monarch to be sent to boarding school. One of her contemporaries at Benenden in Kent was the royal biographer Penny Junor, who later described her as “one of the rudest people I have ever come across”. Anne inherited her father’s fondness for swearing at photographers and brushing off unwanted attention, earning her the tabloid title “Princess Sourpuss”. A Sunday Times profile in 2001 mockingly described her as an “enemy of the people”, after her lawyers explained that the reason why she didn’t slow down her speeding Bentley when flashing blue lights appeared behind her was because she thought it was a royal police escort.

She was never mistaken for a “people’s princess” and her relations with her former sisters-in-law Diana, Princess of Wales and Sarah, Duchess of York were by most accounts somewhere between chilly and arctic. She was reported to have shouted during a royal Christmas party at which Diana was present: “I will not be pushed around by that brainless woman.”

Her 1973 marriage to fellow equestrian Captain Mark Phillips produced two children; long before Harry and Meghan shunned a title for their son Archie, Anne insisted that her son Peter and daughter Zara remain Mr and Miss.

“I think it was probably easier for them,” she told Vanity Fair earlier this year. “I think most people would argue there are downsides to having titles.”

Over the years there have been occasional upsets, notably in 1974 when Anne survived a kidnap attempt in central London. Some years later she was linked romantically to her Scotland Yard protection officer, who was removed from royal service in 1982 amid newspaper reports of “overfamiliarity”.

Several more rumoured romances were reported but shortly after divorcing Phillips in 1992, Anne married Commander Timothy Laurence (now a retired vice-admiral and a knight). There has been speculation in recent years that the couple have grown apart and live separate lives, but people who know them say the partnership remains watertight.

“I’ve seen them together often and they seem to me a very good team,” said the lyricist Sir Tim Rice, a long-standing friend of Anne’s. She and Laurence attended a revival of the musical Chess at the London Coliseum. “She rang me up and wanted it to be very downmarket,” said Rice. “They sat at the back, we had a sandwich at half-time and when some of the producers found out they said, ‘Why didn’t you tell us? We could have made more of a fuss.’ But that’s exactly what she doesn’t want.”

Indeed, it has been precisely the avoidance of fuss that has turned Anne into such a discreet, dependable and desirable patron for so many of the more than 300 charities, military organisations and associations that she supports.

Unlike Prince Charles, Anne rarely courts public displeasure by pronouncing on government, family or any other policy matter. At her many public engagements — she has often topped the list of busiest royals — she tends to dodge the top brass and head straight for the lower ranks, military or civilian.

As she told Vanity Fair: “It’s not just about ‘Can I get a tick in the box for doing this?’ No, it’s about serving. It comes from an example from both my parents’ way of working and where they saw their role being.”

Gareth Howells, chief executive of the Carers Trust, of which Anne is also patron, said: “At every event she goes straight to talk to the unpaid carers first. They are her priority. She doesn’t just rock up to shake hands.”

Major Tom Gibbs, the officer commanding C Squadron, King’s Royal Hussars, recalled Anne ripping up the programme when she arrived at the unit’s base in Germany shortly after it was mobilised for the Gulf War in 1991: “Instead she spent hours talking to the [soldiers’] wives to understand the impact it was going to have on them. She gives the unit what it needs, rather than what is expected.”

Colonel Jason Gunning, of the Royal Signals, another of Anne’s regiments, added: “She doesn’t seek the limelight, but she’s very good in it.”

A month after Harry and Meghan announced their departure for a new role across the pond, Anne told Vanity Fair: “I don’t think this younger generation probably understands what I was doing in the past. Nowadays, they’re much more looking for, ‘Oh, let’s do it a new way’. And I’m already at the stage [of], ‘Please do not reinvent that particular wheel. We’ve been there, done that. Some of these things don’t work. You may need to go back to basics.’ ”

All this suggests that Anne, in radically different circumstances, might have become the worthiest of successors to her mother. The Queen and her daughter are said to have become much closer of late and one royal source noted: “The feeling is that if the Duke of Edinburgh isn’t around any more, it will be the princess who is giving her mother more support and not the Duke of York, who was trying to insert himself into that role.”

Andrew is now more concerned with extracting himself from trouble. “With everything that’s been going on recently, the members of the royal family you have left are the really hard-working ones, like Anne, who just get it; who knuckle down and know ‘it’s not about us, it’s about them, the public’,” the source added.

The Princess Royal may have been a mould-breaker once, but today she has reshaped and remade herself very much in her mother’s image. All hail not-to-be Queen Anne II, the monarch Britain never knew it might need.

[bringingbacktheboosh]

BBTB2020 Fanworks Masterpost

We know this post is late, but if you’ve been paying attention to the news this week, shit’s been going down and everything is terrible. Luckily, we have 17 brand-new fics to help distract you from the fact that the world is on fire. 

Thanks for your patience, and big thanks to everyone for participating in this year’s Bringing Back the Boosh event. All of our creators deserve mad kudos and comments for creating so many wonderful works under such extraordinary circumstances. 

Here’s a masterlist of all the works submitted to our AO3 collection! Don’t forget to let our artists and writers know how much you appreciate their work.

“Naboo and the Marriage of Incovenience”, by @littlebooshmaid for @iocococo, The Mighty Boosh, Mature

Naboo receives some unwelcome news from Xooberon: everyone on the planet is supposed to be married by the age of one hundred, or face execution. Now they’ve caught up with him, it looks as if only marrying Howard will save Naboo from certain death. But how will Vince feel about that? And will anything where the Shaman Council is involved turn out as expected?

“Cut Your Bangs”, by @the-stoned-ranger for @anciientboosh, Nathan Barley, Explicit

After slipping in his sobriety, Dan Ashcroft, forty-year-old fuckup, attends Alcoholics Anonymous and gets his shit together. It just takes almost losing everything to motivate him to do it. This started off as a simple fic about Dan learning how to have a relationship with Jones, and became a 40k epic of a redemption arc. For reasons known only to the muse, Nathan Barley insisted on tagging along for the ride, as he so often does when Dan Ashcroft is concerned.

“The Wrong Kind of Monsters”, by @concupiscence66 for @littleredchucks​ , The Mighty Boosh, Explicit

Howard and Vince were both lonely and lost, but when they met... it was actually pretty awful, but stories can always be re-written. In a world of magic and monsters, there's no reason to settle for just one reality.RedChucks asked for "A second shot at a first kiss" and I went a bit off the rails here. The story is about... reinvention. I adore RedChucks, so I hope they forgive the liberties I took with the prompt.

“we've got to live, no matter how many skies have fallen”, by @silentorator for @badbadbucky, The Mighty Boosh, Teen (you must be logged into ao3 to read this fic)

Vince and Howard go to a psychic to get their tarot cards read.

“The Simple Life”, by @bob-skeleton for @peacockbluey, Mature

A look at a more mature Howince, with a lot of backstory of how they got there.

“Borrowed Light”, by @iocococo for @bob-skeleton, The Mighty Boosh, Explicit

A Victorian AU!When Howard Moon moved to London to pursue his dreams... well, he probably shouldn't have. Turns out getting a gig with the London Symphony Orchestra isn't as easy as he'd hoped. He's broke, nearly homeless, and bombarded by the pesky attention of his housemate, Vince Noir, who doesn't annoy him nearly as much as Howard pretends he does. With a unsympathetic landlord, a boss dead-set on making his life miserable, and magical shenanigans afoot, can Howard ever sort out what he really feels for Vince? Will he ever achieve his dream job? Will I actually have written a semi-competent summary of this fic by the time I stop typing this?Find out in Borrowed Light!

“Walking a mile in unfashionable shoes”, by @littleredchucks​ for @kateyboosh, The Mighty Boosh, Teen

Howard makes a wish and things go slightly wrong, though more so for Vince than for Howard, which is strange for them both. This was meant to get sexier at the end but it didn't end up that way. My apologies.

“The Kiss of a Mermaid”, by @datcilly for @r3lilith, Teen 

And then Howard was back in that dreadful wet cave. His heart was beating fast but filled with determination because this time - he was on a mission.

“The Mortifying Ordeal of Being Known”, by @peacockbluey for @littlebooshmaid, The Mighty Boosh, Explicit

When a spell gone wrong forces Howard and Vince to get closer to each other in more ways than one, certain things are forced into the open. Written for the Bringing Back the Boosh Fic Exchange 2020. Slight AU, set post-Party.

“you can't always get what you want (but if you try sometimes)”, by @culumacilinte for @the-stoned-ranger, Sweet, Explicit

Five times Pete caught Stitch having a wank, or: four times Pete caught Stitch having a wank and one time Stitch tried and failed to get caught, or: these two idiots are kinky and make bad decisions but it all works out in the end.

“If You Think This is Real Life”, by @anciientboosh for @chagrinfalls, The Mighty Boosh, Mature

An adventure is had, strange things start happening about the flat, and Howard is sick. Guess it's up to Vince to save the day. Should be easy right?

“Touched”, by @agarlandoffreshlycuttears  for @datcilly​, The Might Boosh, Teen

A prompt for the Bring Back the Boosh challenge:Likes: Naboo, the Shaman Council, Gen, a good laugh

Pairings: Open to anything but only platonic :)

Prompt 1: A stag tour to Xooberon does absolutely not go as planned. Prompt 2: Howard and Vince mess with the Occult again, bad juju is afoot!So I mixed the two together (sort of): Howard goes missing again and Naboo has finally had enough of his pet humans being a complete bloody nightmare and decides to get to the bottom of why they can't go five minutes without something terrible happening to them (and thus Naboo).

“Worst Dressed List”, by @badbadbucky for@agarlandoffreshlycuttears The Mighty Boosh, Teen

Vince finds himself on Cheekbone's Worst Dressed List. And even worse, Howard is on the best dressed list.

“Call the Fashion Police”, by @badbadbucky for @silentorator, The Mighty Boosh, Teen

After the owners of a high end fashion shop make fun of Vince's clothing designs and Howard, his slightly absent minded boyfriend, fails to notice for far too long, vince decides to get rid of all his clothes. Now Howard must defend his boyfriend's designs and unravel a fashion conspiracy.

“I’m Having a Party”, by @r3lilith for @fucking-pimberly-i-guess​, The Mighty Boosh, Teen

Vince notices that Howard has not been the same since the disastrous party he threw for his birthday, and decides that another party is just the thing to cheer him up.

“Episode 9″, by @kateyboosh for @concupiscence66​, The Mighty Boosh, Mature

What happened between Series 1 and 2? Why did the Zooniverse close? Why are Vince and Howard so sexy and half naked in Series 2?All these questions from the lovely concupiscence66 answered inside, along with healthy doses of mischief, mayhem, fluff, angst, and smut, references to later events in S2 and S3, and blatant disregard for the Zooniverse map.Connie, thank you for the challenge of this prompt. I sincerely hope I did it justice, and that you enjoy reading.

“Miseducation”, by @chagrinfalls for @culumacilinte​, The Mighty Boosh, Gen

Howard goes on a school field trip. It doesn't go as planned.

[joannerowlingfans]

JK Rowling’s Track Of My Years choices:

Cloudbusting by Kate Bush

Heaven by Emeli Sande

Big Country by Big Country

Court and Spark by Joni Mitchell

All Along The Watchtower by Jimi Hendrix  

River Song by Dennis Wilson  

Ramble On by Led Zeppelin

Waitress by First Aid Kit

Ain’t No Sunshine by Bill Withers  

Dream On Dreamer by Brand New Heavies

Cloudbusting by Kate Bush – being a student in Paris:

JK: [Cloudbusting] came out in 1985 when I was still a student… because I was studying French I spent a year in Paris… I was teaching students in a lycee, basically a comprehensive on the outskirts of Paris. It was a very particular experience going away, I left a boyfriend back in Britain and we were all quite young and we were all quite broke… we had some wonderful adventures during that time… there’s something very wistful about that track… we were all people who like to travel and there was a sense of being lost, but in quite a nice way I suppose, we were exploring life a lot at that time… I don’t know how I managed to get Paris because a lot of my friends ended up in tiny little towns in the middle of nowhere so we all had very varied experiences. I couldn’t believe that I’d got Paris which was of course my first choice.

Heaven by Emeli Sande – remembering the fear of doing the London Olympics Opening Ceremony

JK: I love this song so much, but I have a particular memory attached to it which was the London Olympics Opening Ceremony. They played this track during the ceremony and that was probably the most terrifying thing I’ve ever done in my life, being part of that Opening Ceremony and, in fact, I told Danny Boyle twice, ‘I can’t do it, Danny, I just can’t, I would be too scared’. I’ve got better, but I find public speaking an ordeal. I’ve got better at it and I’ve made myself get braver about it, but I said to him I can’t do it in front of that large an audience, I can’t do it live, please don’t ask me and he kept asking, kept asking me and finally he just said to me, ‘Look, we’ve got the Queen jumping out of an aeroplane’ and when he told me that I honestly thought, [that] no-ones even going to remember I was there. If that’s happening, that’s sort of takes the pressure off! But I do remember just rehearsing and practising and practising this little piece I had to read and when it was over I cannot tell you the sense of exhilaration that I’d done it, I hadn’t fallen over, I hadn’t messed up the reading so I went up into the stands to sit with some people I knew and then we watched this extraordinary ceremony and they played this Emeli Sande track and I will forever associate it with that night…. I said to my husband on the night, ‘On my deathbed, that will be a moment I remember, going out into that stadium.’ It was the most epic event that I’d ever been involved in and I think all of us who participated would say the same thing, nothing will ever come close.

Big Country by Big Country – first ever gig

JK: Now I had to put Big Country by Big Country on the list because this was my first ever live gig. I went to Dingwalls in Bristol with my teenage boyfriend… and they were amazing live… and I just thought they were wonderful, they really were.

Ken: You’ve lived in many different places, where do you feel home is, where do you feel drawn to?

JK: Well, home now is definitely Scotland. I’ve lived most of my life now in Edinburgh, I’ve lived here longer than I’ve lived anywhere else, but when I was younger I had very itchy feet and I’ve lived in London, Manchester, Paris, Oporto… I’ve moved around a lot. I also, within those cities, kept moving. I just do have very itchy feet. But when I had my daughter, I decided consciously, not that that has to stop because I love travelling and as a family we travel a lot, but I decided that she needed roots so we stayed in Edinburgh, which I now love and really do consider my home and my city… [Travelling] is a useful thing to have done and to have seen life from a lot of different perspectives… and I love exploring.

Court and Spark by Joni Mitchell – on inspiring her latest book

JK: Before I began writing Troubled Blood… I looked up all the albums that came out in 1974 because the whodunnit… concerns a women who vanished in 1974 and I wanted to peg her disappearance to an album that she would have loved and I saw that Court and Spark… had come out then and I thought that’s perfect, perfect for this character. So then I began listening to it and listening to it and listening to it and then I loved it so much I now literally own everything that Joni Mitchell has ever brought out and I can now honestly call myself a mad Joni Mitchell fan. It was an odd way to discover all her other work, but I think she’s just untouchable, and as a lyricist I think there’s no one better. My husband last Christmas bought me a book of all her lyrics and it can be read like fine poetry. She’s absolutely extraordinary… Court and Spark is now one of my very favourite albums.

All Along The Watchtower by Jimi Hendrix  – playing it after a bad break-up and being insecure

Since first hearing this song when I think I was probably 18 or 19, I’ve always had it in my music. I do remember playing it very loudly and drunkenly after one bad break-up and I think the attraction there was the opening line, ‘There must be some way out of here’. But it’s just a great song and he again, what a talent and at the venerable age I have reached now, looking back at artists who died so young is particularly poignant I think. I mean you ache for them because you think what would Jimi Hendrix have achieved if he’d lived to past the age of 27? It’s just extraordinary that people produce work of that quality when they’re so young… I think the thing I admire most is having the confidence because I had the idea for Harry Potter when I was 25 and I’d done a lot of writing before then, but I was extraordinarily insecure and very rarely shared anything that I’d written. I wrote some spoof things for friends to make them laugh, but I never shared anything that I’d written in earnest because I was quite insecure. But of course performers are different and they are driven to share in a way that writers don’t do; obviously we live in a far more introverted life, but… I am drawn to biographies of people like Hendrix because I am just in awe of what they did and what they achieved.

River Song by Dennis Wilson – reminding her of the pandemic during lockdown

This is always going to remind me of the pandemic, this song, because I’ve been listening to his album Pacific [Ocean] Blue which is a bit of an undiscovered gem. I’d had it for a while and listened to it, but it seems to be speaking to me in lockdown and River Song – maybe it resonates because certainly lots of my friends have talked about rediscovering being in the natural world in lockdown – having space and time to appreciate the small things. That’s not to say that any of us wouldn’t change things in a heartbeat, but it has brought a lot of us closer to family. Just having time to enjoy small things has been one small upside of the pandemic

Waitress by First Aid Kit – reminding her of an old friend

I think they’re kind of wonderful. This song in particular reminds me of one of my oldest friends Lynn she and I were in Paris together, we’d never have met otherwise because she’s American. There’s something about our shared nomadic tendencies in this song because it is a song about escape and reinvention. Now I’m very fortunate, I no longer feel the desire to escape or to reinvent myself I am very happy and I have a wonderful family. But I think this is a song about young women feeling displaced and feeling anxious and I think that’s the reason both of us particularly love this track.

On her lack of belief/confidence in writing

You have to push through your lack of belief. Certainly with Potter and with other things I’ve written, I’ve put them down for months at a time. I have got better at believing that I can push through. I remember when I was writing Potter I was writing two other things simultaneously and slowly but surely I realised that Potter was the best of them. And even though I was very insecure I just kept pushing on, pushing on. Actually, the thing that pushed me to complete the book and really to have belief, was having made such a mess of my life generally. In fact I do remember feeling, ‘Look, so you get turned down by every publisher in the country, what’s to lose now?’ Well you know, it was even that I thought it would be a massive success because I certainly didn’t. What I did believe was, I came to a point where I thought, ‘This is a good story and I’m going to put everything into this and see what happens.’ And I’d lost the fear of failing or rejecting that had probably hampered me a little bit early on in my writing.

On the Robert Galbraith books being a desire to that that the writing was as good as she thought it was and it wasn’t her name that was selling?

Yeah, that was definitely in there. I think I had a real yen to go back to the beginning, to go back to what’s important. And to get unvarnished criticism. And so I became Robert and it was a fantastic experience. I can honestly say the rejection letters were fantastic. I know that sounds bizarre and masochistic, but it was satisfying because I was getting unvarnished feedback and I was resilient enough to think, ‘Well that is a fair comment, but no I don’t agree with that comment’ because you’ve got to have faith in what you’re doing but I’ve never been arrogant enough not to believe that I need feedback and a good editor is essential, however successful you are.

Ramble On by Led Zeppelin – growing up

When I was really young, I mean sixteen or seventeen, growing up on the Welsh border, Led Zeppelin was a real thing for me as an adolescent and my oldest friend Sean he loved Zeppelin and it was something we shared. I just love Ramble On.

Ain’t No Sunshine by Bill Withers – on a moving marital moment and lockdown being a special time with her family

JK: Well I think of all the love songs written, this might be my favourite. It’s such a beautiful, simple sentiment, but I have an additional reason for choosing it, which is that it took lockdown for my husband to say to me… I was playing it in the kitchen while cooking something; he walked in, he said,  ‘This always makes me think of you when you’re down in London’ and that was a very moving marital moment so now it has an extra layer of meaning for me. [On lockdown]…. Well, I hope that all listeners have had the happy experience that I’ve had of it being quite a special time. We also have teenage kids and it’s been kind of wonderful to spend that extra time with them.

On being involved with the screen adaptations of her work

JK: Well, interestingly, I’ve been much more involved in the TV show than I have been with the movies. With the TV show, because I’m writing a series about my detectives, Strike and Robin, I have been very involved because I didn’t want the TV show to take them to places that I know they wouldn’t go because I know what’s coming, so that’s been such a happy project. I’ve loved all of it and I think and believe it’s been a very happy experience for everyone involved… a lovely cast and amazing crew, it’s been really satisfying…. It’s always a challenge because certain changes need to be made between novel and screen and I’m always sympathetic to that; different media have different demands, but the tv adaptations of the Galbraith novels I think have been very very faithful.

On fan feedback before it was known she was writing as Robert Galbraith

JK: The first three months I had, when no one knew it was me and I was Robert Galbraith, and Robert started to get letters… and fan feedback which was so genuine and so lovely. I think what people are mostly drawn to are the central relationship between the two detectives and I’m constantly being asked, ‘When are they going to get together?’ So, yeah, I think people will be happy with this book because they certainly do advance in their relationship, though possibly not quite the advance that everyone’s hoping for, but I loved writing that [latest book], it was a joy.

Dream On Dreamer by Brand New Heavies – on dreaming that Potter might be a success

JK: This is such a personal and meaningful track to me. When I was finishing the first Potter book, this track was being played constantly on the radio, and in one of the cafes that I used to write in, it felt as though this song was played every three minutes and I can remember more than once asking myself, ‘Is that who you are, are you the dreamer?’ [for] thinking that this can be published or will be published? But I still had this degree of belief in the story that quelled my doubts and made me keep working, difficult though it was at that time, so it always takes me back to just being on the threshold of the insanity that then ensued, because at that time I could have had no idea what was coming.