#and this website making thing does the job beautifully for some reason

[elektroyu]

Spent the last 2 days programming a cute lil website for my kinda-sorta-comic projects, just because I feel it could help with inspiration. Which I think it DOES, judging from what's going on in my head rn, but now there are more important things I have to do so it's a bit of a waste to have to let all of this potential-idea energy go 😂 Hopefully it'll work in the future without me first spending 2 days programming stuff tho lol.

[writingsbychlo]

smoke and fire (epilogue II)

word count; 3193

summary; deep into your relationship, and still happy, there’s a bigger step on the horizon.

notes; please note that this is based two years after the events of the main series!

warnings; reference to arson, reference to injury.

“Tommy, where the hell are we? Why does it smell like burned wood?” You grinned, your vision blocked by the tie Thomas had used to cover your eyes, holding onto one of his hands tightly as he guided you up the pathway beneath your feet. “Seriously, I thought we were having a date night. You said we were going out!”

“We are out, technically.” He pressed a kiss to your cheek, your skin tingling a little where his lips had pressed, before he was slowing you down, bringing you to a stop, and his hand left yours. The sunlight that had been pocking through the tie was blocked, shadowed as Thomas came to stand in front of you. “It’s just not what you think. But we are on a date, and we can order some food out here later.”

“Where exactly is ‘out here’? Because we were driving for, like, an hour.”

“Okay, well, it wouldn't normally be that long. I got a little lost because I couldn’t use the SatNav.” He huffed, fingers smoothing over the knot on the back of your head and trying not to pull on your hair as he undid it carefully. You were buzzing with excitement, wondering where exactly it was that he’d brought you, and you blinked a little at the light burned ta your eyes, finally able to see again. Thomas had blindfolded you upon leaving the station after your shift, not wanting you to have any idea about where you were going, and it took you a moment to readjust. “You ready?”

“Totally ready.” You beamed, and Thomas nodded, dipping down to press a quick peck to your lips, before he was stepping out of your way. Staring up at the building for a second, your blinked once, and then twice, before your lips were pursing, head tipping to the side. You stared for another moment, before turning to look at Thomas. “We’re at a burned-up house from a call last month?”

“Yeah!”

“Yeah! Cool!” You faked his enthusiasm for a second, trying to understand where it was coming from. “Huh. Why?”

He rolled his eyes fondly, tucking the tie into his back pocket before taking your hand and tugging you up the steps. The doorframe was burned, the door pulled closed but unable to lock as it hung unevenly on its hinges, and Thomas pushed it open again carefully. “I thought you might want to look around? Can I show you around?”

You didn’t understand much, but you smiled, sensing his excitement in it, and nodding your head. “Yeah, Tommy, of course.”

You stepped in a little more, eyes flicking over it all. There was peeling wallpaper that was scarred with ash and black stains, burned away right down to the foundations in some places, and the ceilings were covered in soot. The floors creaked under your feet as you stepped in glass smashed and the shards stained, and it was unusual to see the remnants of a building like this without all the smoke and fire that usually came with it when you were on the job.

The first room looked like it was supposed to have wide doors, an entrance that would take double doors but they’d fallen down, ripped laces along the frame where they’d torn of, but the debris had been moved from inside of the house. The living room was beautiful, you couldn't deny it. There was a large fireplace against one wall, real log-burning with a chimney up to the roof and if you hadn't actually worked on the case, you’d have immediately put the large accessory down to the cause of the fire.

Unfortunately, it wasn’t. The reason this beautiful large house had burned down was stupid kids messing around with fireworks in the back garden of a house for sale, which was now completely destroyed. What would once have sold for over a million was barely worth a couple hundred thousand anymore, despite the beautiful neighbourhood it was in.

“This room is huge.” You mumbled, stepping a little further inside, and Thomas nodded. There was a file on one side, a place that was covered in old and destroyed bookshelves, a large windowsill beside it, and you could already picture it extended to make a little reading nook.

“Do you wanna’ see how it looked before? There were pictures on the real estate website, it was beautiful.”

You nodded, tuning to your boyfriend as he pulled out his phone, pulling up the pictures and swiping through them, Standing by his side, you looped an arm around his waist, leaning in slightly, and his arm went over your shoulders. Finally finding the right one, he positioned you both to be facing in the right direction, a set of large bay windows on one side that went out towards a decking that had been burned away.

In the photograph, the window had curtain rails and soft white curtains made of a thin kind of mesh, letting in the natural light as they hung over large glass doors. The walls were done up with a pale grey and white wallpaper, leaving it simply for the furnishings, but everything seemed to be in pale shades that made it all feel modern and elegant. Turning you both, he showed off the fireplace, decorated with old cobblestones and shale around the base that decorated it beautifully, before fading away into what had once been smooth oak wood flooring.

There were pictures on the wall at one end, and it reminded you of the wall Thomas had in his apartment, the one you had moved into almost a year ago, but his one was bigger, and looked like it could hold at least three times the quantity. There were couches laid out, surrounding a large television, and it was a huge area, a coffee table that looked like it was almost the size of a dining table.

Moving through to the kitchen together, you were even more taken aback by it. To one side was what was once a dining room, connected fully and open space, enough to seat a whole extended family, and you could only imagine the thanksgivings or the Christmas’, and you would be able to fit the whole squad into that room without trouble, without sitting in different rooms or connecting tables, all squeezing around the kitchen counters at Newt’s place or sitting in the tables, couches and floor like at Minho’s last Christmas.

There was space in the kitchen for an island in the centre, stools in front of it, and built-in ovens and fridges like at the station. There was also a set of large doors here, the glass broken, and you assumed this was where the fireworks had burst right though because there was a hole in the centre of the ceiling up into one of the rooms above.

“I saw this kitchen and I was immediately thinking about the size of it. Y’know, like, imagine the parties or the holidays, with a dining room like that and a kitchen like this I remember thinking it when we were putting out the flames, too.” He scratched at the back of his neck, looking around for a second, and you guided his face back to your own, leaning up to press a kiss to his lips. “Weird thing to think about when putting out a fire, I know.”

“I was thinking the same thing. Big kitchen and dining room, you’d actually be able to fit a family our size into it without trouble. It’s kinda’ wild to think about.”

He chuckled, nodding his head, and his hands lifted to cup your cheeks pulling you back in closer to him. His nose bumped against your own, dragging together for a second in sweet Eskimo kisses, before his lips were meeting your own. Pressing in softly, he was still smiling into the connection for the first few seconds, before his head was twisting to the side, one hand dropping from your face to your waist, smoothing around your lower back and pulling you in even closer.

Pressing up into him, your arms circled his neck, pulling him down to your level as his tongue soothed over your lower lip, and you parted them for him. He sighed, a breathy and delicate sound, before his fingertips were digging into your flesh, holding you tightly as he pulled you impossibly closer. Scratching lightly at the hairs along the base of his neck, he rumbled happily, chest vibrating under your own with the noise and your fingers tangled a little more, and you pulled back. He whined, chasing after you for a few seconds, before letting you go, his forehead resting against yours instead.

“Your hairs getting kinda’ long.”

“You don’t like it?” He teased, and you shook your head, slightly kiss-swollen lips puckering for a second to press to his own again, a series of short pecks, before you pulled back.

“I like it, but you always complain about how sweaty your head gets in your helmets when your hair is too long.” He sighed, knowing you were right, and shrugging it off with a ‘hmph’.

“You know, talking of parties, there’s this amazing outdoor area. It's huge, there’s the decking from the living room and a patio outside here, there’s a big tree at the end of the garden and this amazing barbecuing area.” You nodded along, eyes narrowing on him again as he got excited over it, walking you a little closer to the broken doors so that you could see out.

He was right, there was a tall oak tree at the end of a huge garden, a fire pit made in the middle surrounded by beer cans and wrapped from where you assumed the teens who’d started the fire had been messing around, but with a little love and care, it would be all fixed up. The patio would seat big outdoor furniture, and you could picture a smaller firepit in the centre for later summer nights, as well as the proud barbecuing area Thomas had mentioned, built into the stonework with different levels and multiple grills.

“What do you think?”

“What do I think of this house?” You echoed, and he nodded slowly, almost hesitantly, before you took a deep breath, staring back out to the garden.

“I think it’s beautiful. Or, it was. Has a lot of potential to be incredible again.” You didn’t know much, you’d barely seen half of the lower floor and none of the upper ones. “I haven’t seen much of it, but what I have seen is nice.”

“Well, y’know, there’s big bedrooms. The master bedroom is amazing, it has an en-suite with a shower and a bathtub, a big closet and huge windows for natural light with a little miniature balcony outside of it. There’s a study down here which would make a really nice snug or cosy room, it didn’t get touched as much by the fire so you can get a better image of it when I show you. There are so many bedrooms, seriously, like, six bedrooms. There’s an attic, and a basement, and-

“Tommy, why are we here?” There was something hidden under his voice, his words trailing off after you’d interrupted him and his hand sank back to his sides from where he’d been making gestures with them, his shoulders slumping a little.

“It’s a cool house, I thought you might want to see inside of it! Especially since you and Newt didn’t get to do much when we were here, there wasn’t anybody injured, so you were just left waiting around, and I wanted to share it with you.”

“There’s more to it than that, I know I’m not great at picking up on signals, Tommy, but I’d like to think I got pretty good at reading you over this last year or so.” You studied him for a second, and he shrunk a little more under your gaze, before huffing out a laugh.

“Almost two years, now.” You placed a hand on his shoulder, squeezing to reassure him, before sliding up to sit on his neck, letting your thumb brush over his pulse point and calm him. His hand landed on your wrist, following as he trailed it up your arm to find your hand, pulling it away from his body and linking your fingers together instead. He kissed along your knuckles, remaining in silence, but you felt like you were drowning in the nervous tension he was letting off.

“Talk to me, Tommy.”

“Okay.” He let out a shaky breath, nodding his head before looking back up to you. “Well, you and Newt were talking after the case, right? He said Derek lived in a neighbourhood like this when he was younger, and that you had always wanted to live in an area like this. Well, when I was in here, I kept thinking about how beautiful this place was, and how big it was. The whole squad could fit in, and it would be so comfortable. This is the sort of place you spend the rest of your life in, right? I was looking through it all and doing a sweep and because I knew it was empty my mind was wandering. I just thought about how I would never normally be able to afford a place like this, and how the value would go down so much because of the fire, and..”

“Oh, wow, are you thinking of buying this house?” You couldn't hide the shock in your voice no matter how much you tried, and Thomas chuckled as he watched you look around, with a little more interest now as you took it all in with more attention to detail.

“Well, yeah. Kind of. It’s only a thirty-minute drive from the house so it’s pretty much the same commute as right now, and-” He huffed, nostrils flaring a little as he thought, and you raised your brows at the way he suddenly went quiet, the gears in his head visibly turning as his brows furrowed a little. “Look, I’m struggling here, I’m nervous, okay?”

“Thomas, you’re getting all panicky.” You whispered, pulling him in a little, and leaning up. He was eagerly awaiting the kiss you gave him, body relaxing a little as you balanced yourself with one hand, thumb playing with his own where the other was still held by one of his, and he didn’t let you go when he pulled back. Instead, his head dipped lower, pulling you in and wrapping an arm around your waist, needy kisses that left you breathless as he held onto you, tension melting away and becoming a little hazy instead as he clung to you.

“I’m just,” His teeth nibbled a little on your lower lip, panting slightly as he pulled back for breath, and you were stealing more kisses through gasping laughs as you tried to get enough air, smiling and teasing as you did. “I’m just trying to ask you,” He was cut off again, your mouth meeting his and he laughed against your lips, his hand leaving your own to hold onto you more, fingers tickling over your sides lightly as you laughed into the kiss. “Cut it out, I’m calm now, but I have to say this while I have the courage.”

His cheeks were flushed when you pulled back, hair a little messy and lips a darker shade than usual, and he licked over them as he stared down at you, undoubtedly staring at an equal messy composure. “You have my undivided attention. Go right ahead.”

“I remember that a while ago, we were lying in bed and talking about things we wanted that we never thought would happen, and you said you’d always wanted to rebuild a house. Renovate it, was the word you used. You wanted to make it your own, but you never thought you’d afford it. And, on a paramedic and a firefighters wage, we’d never be able to afford a place like this, normally.”

“We?” You echoed, a soft smile on his lips as your heart thudded in his chest. You knew what it meant, it was a heavy commitment to buy a house with someone, living together was one thing but buying a house was basically a step away from a proposal, it was an investment in a long term future together, and you felt like you could barely breathe. Your chest felt tight, shock and adrenaline racing through you and you stiffened slightly, fear lacing itself into Thomas’ features once again. “You, uh, you want us to buy a house together?”

“Maybe..” He sighed, a little timid again now. “It was just a thought, because it’s such a beautiful house, and as soon as I saw it I was thinking about things you’d said, and it just seemed perfect for us, but if you don’t like it then that’s fine, just don’t shut down on me, okay?” He rested a hand over your cheek, thumb brushing softly, and his lips pressed a soft kiss toy our forehead. “Just tell me you hate the idea, but don’t go silent, alright?”

You nodded, letting him kiss your temple too, before pulling back to look at you. “I, um..”

“Hate it?”

“Love it, actually.” You choked on the words slightly, feeling a little breathless as they were wheezed out, and Thomas paused. He looked sceptical, shaking his head slightly, and you tried your best to smile. “No, I do. I really do. I’m just terrified, okay? I’m not good at long-term commitment, I’m scared, but I want it. With you.”

“Really? Because I know it’s a big step, and I know what it means, I’m not blind. It’s buying a house together, so if you wanna’ freak out or you don’t want it, that's okay, just tell me, alright? Because I’m in this with you for the long haul and you’ve got to know that by now, it’s not a secret, so I can wait until you’re ready.” The words sped from him, a little too fast, and you shook your head, leaning up to press your forehead to his.

“I’m really, totally sure. I just hadn't thought about it, okay? I was caught off guard, I’m not much one to think about the future, it doesn’t come naturally to me. But when I do think about my future, you’re always there.”

“Always?” He teased, twisting his head to brush his lips with your own.

“Every single time.” You gave him a quick kiss, a happy hum to accompany it and he relaxed once he let you sink back. “So, why don’t we order some pizza to be delivered here, and you can show me around some more. You said there were lots of bedrooms, which is good, because you know Newt will want his own.”

“So, we’re buying a house?” He looked a little unsteady, eyes glossing over, and he sniffed lightly. You matched him, nodding your head and beaming as the emotions overwhelmed you.

“Yeah, baby, we are.”

[foxymoxynoona]

Ashtoreth

Ok, I had told Tae_ree on ao3 that I was inspired by her story Cam Girl back in the day to barf out a little cam girl story of my own, which I then immediately abandoned. I looked and I wrote this on July 20, 2020. It's not a full story arc or anything, just a little snippet I abandoned BUT I had forgotten that actually this was a stepping stone to writing Amended and Meadow, as you'll see from some themes I repurposed. I thought I'd share even though this isn't really a complete story because I think it can be interesting to see how inspiration and ideas morph over time into something completely different.

Content warnings for this: nsfw, 18+ , cam girl, voyeurism, masturbation, I don't actually know anything about cam girls and I didn't bother to learn since this was just a little writing exercise, so there ya go...

Tattoo Artist!JK x Camgirl!Reader

He didn’t watch much. Well, he watched plenty of porn, but Jungkook didn’t follow live camgirls because seeing the show live made him feel… awkward. Nervous. It felt so intimate, to have a girl talking live to the camera, to be able to type in the chat and have her notice your comment. It made it feel too much like a living, breathing person --not that he didn’t think women in porn were real! But… it was an image he was watching. Something a woman had cultivated, edited, decided to share. A live camgirl was performing in a different way and…

Well, he just felt guiltier watching camgirls. So he didn’t watch them much. Maybe he’d tune in if there was one on, and then he’d feel too ashamed of his own… earnestness. Live cam girls were a level of intimacy that… that was cruel. That he wanted. Camgirls reminded him too clearly of what he didn’t have in real life, and that made him feel ashamed and pathetic and broken. And so he’d leave almost as soon as he started watching and go find some safe, static porn.

But there was one. Ashtoreth. He couldn’t resist her. He was pathetic, weak for this woman, and wound up making an account --which he never did-- just so he could subscribe and get alerts whenever she scheduled a show. Even just the act of getting an alert made him stiffen, made the blood start to trickle south, because he knew what was coming.

He didn’t know what Ashtoreth’s face looked like. And she often wore colored wigs, so whatever he did see wasn't identifiable She had a pretty average body, neither the fit nor voluptuous extremes that tended to dominate the suggested videos. She had a somewhat soft belly and hips and thighs. She had those stripes on the inside of her thighs, too. And a beautiful tattoo along her hip that he desperately wanted to see in closer detail. Her tits weren’t huge, but soft and squeezable and real. Sometimes she presented herself bare to the camera, other times tidy, and sometimes fully grown out. She said she felt like it was a matter of principle to create videos with natural hair growth, even if she preferred to be better kept because she often got horny and juicy throughout the day and it was easier for her to keep clean. That had fucked Jungkook up for a little while. It didn’t help that she had the prettiest pussy he had ever seen, beautifully shaped and colored, and even just tuning in to see how much he’d be able to see was worth the effort. And he liked the idea that she had principles like that.

In fact, he liked all the things she talked about. She was very personable, in a way that was horribly endearing. She played video games, which had actually been what struck him first; that was how he’d found her, because he’d seen that a camgirl was playing Overwatch with a vibrating egg in, and so he’d tuned in, and she was good, and it meant the next time he’d played, it had made him too hard to concentrate, remembering the way she’d whined and moaned and cum just after she’d won her match. Fucking dream girl.

She took suggestions of things to do from high donors, within reason. He wasn’t the only one that liked when she got sort of passionate and fixated on something interesting she’d learned and wanted to share. She spoke several languages and alternated between them --English and Spanish. She claimed to speak more Korean, but never spoke that on her cams, and Jungkook was far too shy to ask her to. It would do him in, but it was also his fucking dream. Did she really speak Korean? It seemed so unusual for a foreigner.

So he liked the things she spoke about too, he liked when she shared her interests, even though it made him feel guiltier because he knew he was looking for the wrong sorts of connections in porn. A cam girl was just performing. It was possible everything she talked about was fake. She was trying to earn money, after all. It funded the toys she bought, the pretty lingerie. People funded those things, all the men and women who tuned in to watch her tease herself into a whining mess and then cum all over the sheets. She’d taught herself to squirt on camera, even giggling at how unreliable it was. She’d just started doing some anal and admitted it made her nervous. She was just so sweet and sexy at the same time, and it all fed into this horrible, horrible fixation Jungkook had that she was his dream girl, even though he knew it wasn’t true and it wasn’t real.

And then at the end of a live, she’d curled up on her side, flushed, panting a little, hand lazily stroking her hip, and said in Korean, “By the way, I thought I’d mention here because my stats say I have a lot of viewers from Asia, but I’m looking for a tattoo artist and it’s hard to find. So if anyone knows a good one in Korea, let me know!”

Jungkook came on his hand. He hunched forward, spluttering and frozen. It had ruined his good orgasm, the shock --he always had good orgasms when he jerked himself off to watching her. He particularly loved after she came, the way she lay there and giggled sort of breathily and talked about the random things that came to mind. But he had not expected her to speak Korean for the first time. And he had not expected her to ask for tattoo artist recommendations.

He froze. He stared at the screen, grunting a little as his cock twitched. Should he-- no. He couldn’t. He shouldn’t. That would be stupid. And weird. And creepy. But like… what the fuck? Did she actually live in Korea?? Her profile didn’t give a location, but he’d always assumed the States since she spoke English primarily. Did… what… and she needed a tattoo artist…

“Fuck. Fuck fuck fuck,” he grumbled, grabbing a tissue and wiping his hand off. He couldn’t say anything. He shouldn’t.

But if he didn’t, her other followers would, right? Why was she asking for recs? She was setting herself up for harassment! She couldn’t just ask people who watched her pleasure herself for IRL recommendations!

Frantic with a need to protect her, it was perhaps the only thing that could have led him to message her.

GKtat97: hello. Are you sure it’s a good idea to ask for suggestions here? You could get bad guys answering

Ashtoreth: hello. Are you saying you’re a bad guy? ;)

GKtat97: no! I’m very serious! Be safe! But if you need a place my friend does really good tattoos in seoul. I don’t know where you are looking but I didn’t know you were in Korea

Ashtoreth: oh really? Yes I have moved a few times but I’m currently in Korea. Does your friend work in a parlor somewhere?

GKtat97: yes. Byeolbit Tattoo downtown. Whole studio of great artists

Ashtoreth: awesome, thank you! Have you had work done there?

GKtat97: yeah

Ashtoreth: cool I will definitely take a look. Thank you for the recommendation! What’s your friend’s name?

GKtat97: anyone there is good but my friend is jjk. If you ask for him, he’ll hook you up

Ashtoreth: excellent, I’ll check out his portfolio on their website. Thanks babe :*

Fuck fuck fuck, what was he doing? If anything, he should have suggested her to one of his friends there. Because what if she actually did follow up? What if she made an appointment and came in for a tattoo by him and he got to touch her… fuck, that was entirely unprofessional. He couldn’t do it. Maybe if she knew he was the one watching her, then he wouldn’t feel so morally conflicted, but there was no way he could tell this woman to her face oh yeah, that was me messaging you, I watch you finger yourself to get off. Fuck.

Well. It was highly unlikely she’d be following up, anyway. He comforted himself with that. Probably a dozen guys were messaging her now, trying to get her business so they could tattoo her body.

Ugh. She’d called him babe. He groaned and felt his cock twitch in pleasure just at that reality. She’d called him babe, this faceless woman with the beautiful voice and body. Fuck.

**

As far as he could tell, no one unusual had reached out to the tattoo parlor, though it was hard to really guess what that would mean. He’d idly flipped through the appointment calendar but of course it wasn’t like she’d make an appointment under Ashtoreth. No one had requested him out of the ordinary. And she’d done a couple more lives in the past couple weeks, so he figured that meant she’d decided to go with someone else. Which hurt a bit, sure, but he was trying to be an adult about it. After all, it was for the best.

And then during lunch, Mina popped her head back and asked, “Hey, there’s a woman who came by to see if you can do a consult…”

“Is she in the schedule?” Jungkook asked.

Mina made a face but admitted, “No… but that’s my fault. I’ve been trying to get something scheduled for her for a couple weeks now and forgot to write it down-- I’m sorry!”

Jungkook rolled his eyes and teased, “Mina, it’s the whole point of your job to write it down…”

“I know. I feel so bad. I’ll buy your lunch tomorrow. Can you meet with her now?”

“Fine.”

He shoved one final bite of food into his mouth, then went to wash his hands and rinse his mouth out so he wouldn’t risk sauce or broccoli in his teeth for a consult. He was still hungry but maybe if this went quickly he’d have time to scarf down the rest of it.

He stepped out to the front area where a woman sat in one of the chairs, looking a little uncomfortable actually. He thought it must be her first tattoo and that she was nervous; he got a lot of young women in for their first tattoo, a little butterfly or hummingbird on their ankle or wrist. She stood when he approached and gave him a rather dubious smile.

“Are you Jeon Jungkook?” she asked. In Korean, which was unusual but not unheard of for a foreigner. A young woman had probably come here to teach or something and learned the language, but she had a good grasp of it.

“Yes. Hello.”

“I’m Y/N,” she answered, shaking his hand.

“Nice to meet you. Sorry about the mix up--”

“It’s my fault!” Mina sighed dramatically.

“I’m sorry I’m interrupting your lunch. Should I come back another day?”

“No, it’s fine. What are you looking for?”

“Well, I um, I need one covered up and I was hoping to get something custom to cover it. I saw your portfolio and it looks like you’ve done that kind of thing before.”

He nodded, “Yeah, it’s not a problem. Do you have ideas?”

“Yeah… but I’m also kind of open… I’m not an artist, so…”

“Can you show me what you’re wanting covered up?”

“Uh, yeah…”

“We can step back here,” Jungkook offered when she seemed a little shy. She followed him back to one of the pods and leaned her hip against the table as if for strength, then lifted her shirt to show him a man’s name scrawled across her ribs.

“Is it ok if I examine it?” he asked her. She nodded and he sat on a stool to lean in close and look. It was not well done; if it was the man’s copied signature, he had an ugly hand, but the tattoos itself was also uneven, too shallow in some places, too deep in others. However the scratchy and loopiness of it would be pretty easy to design a pattern over.

“I can see by your face it’s ugly. I know. It was… complicated,” she admitted. “I keep it covered with make up usually but I want it gone.”

“That’s easy to cover,” he assured her. “What do you want over it?”

“Well, I thought-- I have this tattoo,” she told him, lifting the other side of her shirt to expose the flower design crawling out of the waistband of her pants over her hip.

Jungkook froze. She was talking but he didn’t hear anything she said because he knew that tattoo. This was Ashtoreth. He looked up at her face, frozen with shock. This was Ashtoreth’s face. How had he not recognized her voice? But she was speaking Korean and he’d only heard her speak it that once and he hadn’t expected this

“Will that work?” she asked.

“Sorry… could you repeat?” Fuck.

“If it can match this?” she asked him. “Except adding in some violets.”

“Oh. Yes. That’s not a problem,” he assured her. “Um, how big are you thinking?”

She motioned with her hands, then asked, “Am I going to die? I know rib tattoos are supposed to be pretty bad… But I’ve had a baby and I got this thing so I’m not a total baby…”

“You have a kid?” he repeated, then immediately cursed himself. Why did that matter? But it was a real thing about her and it was not what he’d expected.

“Um, yeah. Do you have kids?”

“No,” he said simply. And then because apparently he couldn’t stop himself, he pointed, “I guess he wasn’t a very good father, huh?”

She gave him a small laugh and a crooked grin that made his heart actually flutter and agreed, “No, he wasn’t. But I did get something good out of it, so that’s what I want to cover his name with.”

“Flowers?”

“Violets. My daughter with him is called Violet.”

“Ah. That’s… sweet.” He looked away from her, sliding over to the counter to get his camera. “Can I take a picture? I’ll draw a design and you can leave your email with Mina. Once we get that, we’ll make an appointment.”

“Ok. Yes.” She turned to the side and held her shirt steady for him to take a picture of the names, a couple so he’d be able to recreate it flat.

“Mind if I get one of that too, so I can remember it?”

“Do you want the whole thing?”

“No, just the top is fine, if this has all the style elements you want.” So turned and posed for him to get this second one, and he tried to ignore that he was sweating a little to now have personal photos of Ashtoreth. This wasn’t ok. It wasn’t ok. It was unethical. It was ok for him to tattoo her if she knew he knew, but otherwise it was unethical, right?

But he didn’t tell her. Because he was stupid and struck a little dumb by her. He couldn’t comprehend that he was seeing her in person right now, that he was seeing the tattoo up close that had factored into how many of his solo sessions now? And this other tattoo, that never showed in her videos! He knew something now none of her other viewers did.

She thanked him for his time and he promised to get her a sketch within a week and then she left. The whole exchange had been so… normal, compared to how he might have envisioned it.

She hadn’t been anything like he’d expected, but maybe that wasn’t fair. He tuned into her next live after debating it, but he couldn’t bring himself to miss it. He wanted to see if he could see traces of her bad tattoo, but she did a good job of hiding it.

Anyway, why should he be surprised that she had been polite and sweet and a little shy? Because he didn’t expert a camgirl to be those things in real life? But that came through in her cams and it was one of the things that had even initially drawn him to her channel.

It was different now though. She slid her fingers down her panties and he knew what her face looked like. She pressed her fingers into her wet hole and he knew she’d had a child. He knew her real hair color and her real eye color and the sound of her voice in person. Soon he would spend hours hunched over her body, etching something permanent into her skin that would hopefully please her, that all her viewers would see on her. How would she unveil it? Would she give him credit? She’d already been very excited about the design he’d emailed her.

[froggycreekfarm]

Important lessons to learn from Gabby’s tragic life and death.

1. Based on the body camera video posted by the officers who pulled Gabby and her fiancé over for suspicious driving, some viewers assumed Gabby was suffering from mental illness and Brian was the stable one.

2. Some people may have assumed both partners were equally abusive and equally at fault. The old “it takes two” myth that doesn’t really apply to most abusive situations.

3. Some people may have even assumed Gabby was the abuser and Brian was the victim.

4. These assumptions are classic. Why? Because, in many cases, the target manages to keep things together until her breaking point, at which time others may see her crying or hear her yelling or see her breaking, and then they assume she’s “crazy.”

5. Meanwhile, the abuser plays the part of the poor, patient partner who has to deal with this crazy person. But all the while, he’s been acting very differently behind closed doors, pushing her to this point intentionally and feeding on her emotional break. He LOVES to see evidence that he has hurt her. He LOVES to see her pain.

6. For this reason, “breaking her” has been his goal from the start. It may take him hours or weeks or months or even years to break her, but he won’t stop until he gets that reaction, and then he’ll point the finger and say, “See? She’s crazy. I’m just trying to keep her calm.” And then he’ll do it again. And again. And again.

7. As a result, some people will buy into that false narrative. Even the target. Which brings me to my next point.

8. In the video, we see Gabby making many excuses for Brian’s behavior, and she takes all the blame for everything he does.

9. We also see Brian blaming Gabby and saying he was just trying to keep her calm.

10. This is also the norm for victims of long-standing abuse. A target becomes conditioned to believe everything the abuser does is her fault.

11. Also, she clearly doesn’t want Brian to be in trouble. She’d rather pay the price and protect the man she loves. Also, remember she truly believes he only acted this way because of her, so she doesn’t want him to be blamed. This is also the norm.

12. Smart officers see right through this. Others buy the cover-up story. (And because some officers are also abusers, they all too frequently side with the abuser even when they know exactly what’s going on.)

13. I actually credit the police in Gabby’s situation. They were calm, they separated the couple, they interviewed them individually, they split them up for the night, they did everything right. I’m sure the officer has tremendous guilt about the end result and wonders if he could have prevented it, but I don’t blame the officers in this case. I was actually pretty surprised and impressed with how well they treated both Brian and Gabby (and, sadly, I was thinking how rare it is to see that.)

14. Many people have been shocked by Brian’s family’s refusal to cooperate with police. I’m not shocked at all. Let’s look at that a little more closely.

15. I’m also not surprised to learn that Gabby lived with the Laundrie family for a year. We all see this family will do anything to protect their son, even at the cost of an innocent young woman who was a real part of their family and soon to be their daughter in law. While most of us can certainly understand them wanting to protect their child, they crossed a moral line when Gabby went missing.

16. But I think it goes deeper than that. I think it shows them as a system of enablers who not only allowed Brian to abuse Gabby over a long term (which probably led to her intense anxiety) but also a system of gaslighters who were probably always shifting the truth to keep Gabby confused and make her believe she’s the problem. She was caught in an entire system of abuse. And once you’re in that web, it’s very very very difficult to see a way out.

17. I imagine they probably contributed to her abuse from the start and encouraged their son’s abusive behaviors by rewarding him, making excuses for him, blaming Gabby, flipping the script, and keeping her in the fog that breaks down a person’s psyche and spirit over time.

18. Gabby and Brian had been together since their teens. This is also common. These immature relationships work beautifully when both partners grow together and mature emotionally. But when one wants to keep the other down, naive, and under his control…and the other is growing, learning, and maturing, it doesn’t work.

19. We hear Gabby tell the officer that Brain didn’t think she could do her travel blog. It seems clear that he didn’t believe in her and was trying to make her not believe in herself.

20. She also says he didn’t like her working and that he locked her out of the van because she wouldn’t calm down. But when you listen to the full video, it sounds like he was upset because they’d spent too much time at the coffee shop with her working on her website when he wanted to go hiking. She wasn’t in her seat when he was ready to leave. Control issues?! He squeezed her face with his hand in anger. He cut her down and criticized her, verbally abusing her until she was a wreck of tears. He was breaking her spirit, intentionally.

21. Why? Because her focus wasn’t 100% on him. And because she had found a job she enjoyed and was good at and that allowed her to connect with other people, when he wanted her all to himself.

22. She now had this one little piece of her life that he couldn’t completely control, so he wanted fo get rid of that. It angered him. He punished her for it. See the pattern?

23. The overall takeaway? When you see someone crying like this, don’t assume she’s crazy. Don’t buy into the false narrative given by the abuser. Don’t believe the cover-up story by the target who has been conditioned to carry all the blame and shame. And don’t assume she’s going to be okay. She just may end up your next recovered body.

24. If you or someone you love are in an unhealthy relationship, please don’t assume it will get better in time. I haven’t heard one single story where it got better. Not one. Not with therapy. Not with church. Not with prayer or forgiveness or complete surrender. Nothing works when the abuser is determined to destroy that target. He will not stop until she is erased from this world or from her life. And in many cases, he’ll walk away without any consequences.

Please don’t let the next Gabby be you or someone you love.

Domestic violence hotline: 1-800-799-7233

credit: Julie P Cantrell

[letterstoleia]

Important Lessons Learned from Gabby and Brian

As an author and advocate for survivors of domestic violence, I’ve learned a lot about the predictable patterns of unhealthy relationships. After years of personal experiences, research, and outreach, I’ve learned to recognize the tell-tale signs of abuse. I am not a licensed therapist, social worker, police officer, or minister. So please understand I shared my thoughts as 3 a.m. musings. When a few people asked me to make the post public, I agreed, reluctantly. I had no idea this message would resonate with so many people. I've worked back through the original post to explain a bit better how I'm feeling. I realize not everyone will agree with me, and I respect all opinions and views. All I ask is that we engage in respectful discourse on all sides. Thank you all.

In recent days, the tragic events involving Gabby Petito and Brian Laundrie have given us a lot to learn. This case is still under investigation, and I can only make assumptions based on the textbook patterns of abuse I’ve witnessed too many times to count. I also recognize that multiple families are grieving, and I have tremendous empathy for everyone involved. However, many survivors will resonate with at least some of the following insights, and I’m hoping we can use this tragedy to shift the way we as a culture approach the complicated issue of domestic abuse.

Let’s examine 30 important lessons this couple teaches us:

1. Followers on social media saw a smiling, happy couple, full of love and wanderlust, setting out for a cross-country adventure while documenting all the joys of young life. In many cases, targets become very good at smiling through the pain.

2. When the public was shown body camera footage captured by Moab City Police officer Daniel Robbins, (who pulled Laundrie and Petito over after the 911 call on August 12), some viewers assumed Petito was suffering from mental illness and Laundrie, while nervous, was the steadier of the two.

3. Other viewers assumed both partners were equally at fault—the old “it takes two” myth that doesn’t really apply to most abusive situations.

4. Some people even assumed Petito was the abuser and Laundrie was the victim.

5. These three assumptions probably crossed everyone’s mind as a possibility (they did mine). Healthy minded people tend to give others the benefit of the doubt, especially when someone is being accused of a negative act. Also, we can all understand that mental illness is a difficult situation and can tax even the kindest most gentle of souls (and the people who love them). Unfortunately, in many cases, this thought pattern leads us to assume the victim is mentally ill or that the victim is to blame for an altercation.

6. “Victim blaming” can happen even in the worst cases of abuse because we don’t see the longitudinal story unfolding. What we don’t see is that the target has managed to keep things together until she reached her threshold, at which time we may see her crying, yelling, or breaking down emotionally. By exhibiting those behaviors, many might assume the target is “crazy,” and it’s natural for us to feel as if the more stable person is more trustworthy.

7. If we listen carefully to Laundrie’s conversation with the officers, he even laughs and says, “She’s crazy.” (17.09) Then he dismisses it as a joke. Of course, he’s already put this claim in the officers’ minds (and by the nonchalant way he says it, many might assume it’s not the first time he’s said these words.)

8. So while viewers (and officers) start wondering if perhaps the target is “crazy,” the abuser plays the part of the poor, patient partner who has to deal with this irrational person. In the video, Laundrie mentions Petito’s anxiety and her OCD, painting her as an unstable partner. (Please note: I’m not at all justifying any physical violence against either party. No one should intentionally harm any other person. Period.)

9. A typical abuser would be skilled at convincing people that he’s innocent, while in fact he’s been acting very differently behind closed doors, pushing his target to this point intentionally and feeding on her emotional break. Many abusers LOVE to see evidence that they’ve hurt their target. They LOVE to see their target in pain. For this reason, “breaking” the target is usually the goal from the start. In cases of abuse, it may take an abuser hours, weeks, months, or even years to break the target, but he won’t stop until he gets that reaction, and then he’ll point the finger and say, “See? She’s crazy. I’m just trying to keep her calm.” And then he’ll do it again. And again. And again.

10. As a result, some people will buy into that false narrative. Even the target can be brainwashed to doubt her own truth. Which may be one reason we see Petito making many excuses for Laundrie’s behavior and taking the blame for everything.

11. In contrast, we see Laundrie blaming Petito, insisting he never hit her and saying he was just trying to keep her calm. He’s charming. He comes across as the loving and loyal partner. He’s joking around with the officers and even gives one a fist bump in the end. All the while, his fiancée is at risk of being charged with domestic assault and possibly spending the night in jail.

12. Later, we’ll hear the 911 recording that (it seems) the responding officers were not fully informed of at the time: “I’d like to report a domestic dispute.” The 49 second audio recording continues as the caller says, “The gentleman was slapping the girl.” When the dispatcher asks him to confirm that the man was slapping the girl, the caller responds, “Yes, and then we stopped, they ran up and down the sidewalk, he proceeded to hit her, hopped in the car, and they drove off.”

13. But long before the 911 call was made public, many survivors could already see through the spin playing out on the video footage. They easily recognized the “red flags” because these cycles become the norm for victims of long-standing abuse. Many targets eventually become conditioned to believe everything the abuser does is her fault. Covering for the abuser, accepting all the blame, trying harder to make the abuser happy—this warped reality becomes the only truth a target knows.

14. Also, it seems clear that Petito doesn’t want her fiancé to be in any trouble. She’d rather pay the price and protect the man she loves. And because she probably believes he only acted this way because of her mood/behaviors/anxiety/OCD/job, she doesn’t want him to be blamed. This is also the norm in abusive relationships.

15. Many experienced and well-trained officers see right through this typical pattern. Others buy the cover-up story. And, sadly, because some officers are also abusers, some side with the abuser even when they know exactly what’s going on. Throughout the video, we get the sense that Officer Robbins senses there’s more to the story.

16. I credit the police in Petito’s situation, especially Officer Robbins. The four responding officers (two of whom were park rangers) remained calm, they separated the couple, they interviewed them individually, they split them up for the night, they consulted the domestic violence shelter … many would say they did everything right considering the information they had at the time.

17. I imagine the officers involved may be suffering from tremendous guilt and wondering if they could have prevented Petito’s death, but I want to give credit to the officers in this case. While it’s easy to look back and say maybe they should have handled things differently, knowing what we now know, I was impressed with how well they treated both Laundrie and Petito (and, sadly, I was thinking how rare it is to see that level of respect and professionalism in most cases of domestic violence, particularly in the South where I’ve been most involved with survivors’ stories.)

18. After Petito was reported missing, many people expressed shock in response to the Laundrie family’s refusal to cooperate early in the investigation. Petito reportedly lived with the Laundrie family for more than a year. Anyone can see that this family will do anything to protect their son, even at the cost of an innocent young woman who was a real part of their family and soon to be their daughter-in-law. While most of us can certainly understand parents wanting to protect their son, most would agree they crossed a moral line when his fiancée went missing.

19. But perhaps it goes deeper than that. Perhaps what we’re seeing is a system of enablers who not only allowed their son to abuse Petito (which may have been a factor in her reported anxiety) but also a system of gaslighters who may have always been shifting the truth to keep Petito confused and make her believe she was the problem.

20. It’s not a far stretch to assume Petito was caught in a system of abuse. And once a target is caught in that psychological web, it’s extremely difficult to see a way out. Reality becomes flipped.

21. It’s also worth noting that Petito and Laundrie had been involved in various levels of a relationship since their teens. This is also commonly observed in dysfunctional partnerships.

22. These immature relationships work beautifully when both partners grow together and mature emotionally. But when one wants to keep the other down, naïve, and under his control … and the other is growing, learning, and maturing … it doesn’t work.

23. We hear Petito tell the officer that Laundrie didn’t think she could succeed with her travel blog (3.25). It seems clear that he didn’t believe in her and that he was trying to make her doubt herself.

24. Throughout the conversation, he implies that he locked her out of the van because she wouldn’t calm down. But when we listen to the full video, it seems he was upset because they’d spent too much time at the coffee shop with her working on her website when he wanted to go hiking. This suggests that because she wasn’t in the van when he was ready to leave, he lost his temper.

25. In the moments that followed, the altercation became physical. Reportedly, Laundrie squeezed Petito’s face with his hand, cut her down verbally, and criticized her.

26. Some would argue that this escalating abuse typically persists until the target reacts emotionally and/or physically. If this case follows the norm, Laundrie may have been trying to break her spirit, intentionally.

27. Why? Again, if this case follows the typical situation, it would likely be because Petito’s focus wasn’t 100% on Laundrie. She had found this new job she enjoyed. She was succeeding at it, and it was allowing her to connect with other people. (Remember, she’d already left her job as a nutritionist to travel around the country with Laundrie.)

28. In a healthy relationship, the new job might be considered a positive opportunity for Petito. Especially considering Laundrie admits they have very little money (not even enough to afford a hotel room to prevent his fiancée from going to jail). But in an unhealthy relationship, the abuser wants the target all to himself. And when that doesn’t happen, he can become increasingly violent.

29. Petito now had this one little piece of her life that Laundrie couldn’t control, so if we’re looking at textbook patterns, perhaps her blog angered him. Perhaps he didn’t like all the attention she was getting on social media. Perhaps he punished her for it. And then a cycle developed. Even though she was doing nothing wrong by building a new career.

30. The next thing we know, we have a missing person, a recovered body, a young man on the run, and several families destroyed. Too much grief to measure. And the truth is, it will happen again tomorrow, and the next day, and the next day, until we learn to recognize and respond to abusive situations in healthier ways.

The overall takeaway?

When we see someone at her emotional end during a domestic dispute, we shouldn’t assume she’s crazy. We shouldn’t buy into the false narrative given by the abuser. We shouldn’t believe the cover-up story by the target who has been conditioned to carry all the blame and shame. And we shouldn’t assume they’re going to be okay.

Instead, we should all learn the difference between healthy and unhealthy relationships. We should learn to recognize the warning signs of abuse. We should engage in respectful, fact-based conversations about trauma bonds, abusive cycles, and emotional intelligence. We should be familiar with terms like gaslighting, hovering, love bombing, enabling, triangulating, and projecting. We should stop blaming targets and help them reclaim their truth. And we should stop repeating the age-old myths that keep targets trapped in these dangerous and all-too-often deadly cycles.

Finally, while I’ve used the most common scenario of male-on-female violence in this article, we should recognize that abuse crosses all barriers and can impact anyone regardless of gender, sexuality, ethnicity, nationality, religious affiliation, age, or socio-economic level. And we should stop assuming these situations will get better in time. Personally, I haven’t heard of one abusive relationship that became healthier. Not one. Not with therapy. Not with church. Not with prayer or forgiveness or complete surrender. When an abuser is determined to destroy his target, he will not stop until that target is erased from this world or stripped from her life. And in many cases, he’ll walk away without any consequences, often taking the target’s finances, home, vehicle, reputation, or even her children with him.

Please don’t let the next statistic be you or someone you love. For support, contact the Domestic Violence Hotline. From a safe phone, call 1-800-799-SAFE (7233) or text “START” to 88788.

[residentlesbrarian]

The First Book I Read In the Dark: Queer Witches and a Whole Bunch of Redwood Trees

The Lost Coast by Amy Rose Capetta

Let me set the scene...we start Day 1 of this experience curled up next to the white painted fireplace desperate for warmth with two blankets, an extra hoodie, a stocking cap, and my trusty lazy husband for that much needed lumbar support. 

Now The Lost Coast was a book I had checked out multiple times over the past year of silence on this blog because every time I saw it on the shelf I would pick it up, flip to the blurb, read it and go, “Man, that sounds so good! I gotta read it!” Then I’d check it out and it would sit in my locker, or in my car, or on my desk for three weeks and I’d turn it in completely untouched. But this time...this time I swore I was reading this damn book! Even if I was reading 10 pages a day during my breaks at work I was gonna finally read this book, it wasn’t going unread sitting somewhere for three weeks again. Little did I know how right I would be! 

So as a bit of a precursor this is the only book of those I read in the dark that I had already started. I was 90 pages in when I started reading on Day 1 and I only get more incoherent from here so let’s do this!

Unicorn Rating:

Blurb: Our protagonist is pulled across the country to the yawning redwood forest of northern California and discovers more than she could ever imagine. Her mom  thought Danny kissing girls was the worst of her problems but now she has to deal with witches and magic and is that a dead body! This non-stop ride is just getting started!

Disclaimer: I will try my best to not spoil anything from the book, but my book loving rambles may give more away than a traditional review. Here we go! Ramble time!

Review: 

Okay so I would say this book pretty firmly falls in a middle ground of okay for me. It was some really great escapism for me in a time when I really needed it, but the way the book was structured and written just didn’t really jive with my usual reading tastes. It felt to me like it was trying so hard to be poetic and artistic that it got a little lost at times, no pun intended with the title of the book. 

Now for the plot, which I think was maybe the strongest element of this book. The driving plot of the book never changed and was always consistent and I really liked how the author wove the magic of the world and the unique structure of how she was telling the story while never losing the plot in that unique structure. It was always peeling away one layer at a time and showing us just a bit more without holding our hand. It was very well done and kept me guessing and trying to figure out what was going to happen and how it was all going to end. Next we have what is usually my favorite part of a review but this time...isn't. 

I have so many conflicted feelings about the characters in The Lost Coast. On one hand holy giant redwoods I haven’t read a book since Not Your Sidekick that had this many casually queer characters just strutting about doing their thing, but on the other hand I feel the way the story was written leaves so much to be desired. The characters feel so thin and lacking when they had the potential to be so rich and diverse. Don’t get me wrong they are diverse in the bare bones definition, but we know so little about them at the end of the day it feels like it doesn’t really matter. We have our protagonist, Danny, who we know has a strained relationship with her mother but is close enough with she was willing to move her across the country in an attempt to try and give her a fresh start. Now there are somethings that take place in the story that explain a lot of the odd things about Danny’s character and made me a lot less unhappy with her by the time the book ended but it was really hard to get behind her as a protagonist at the beginning not because I didn’t like her but because I wasn’t motivated to follow her into the story. She was just going along from one event to the next with no real drive of her own, which brings us to the Grays: Hawthorne, June, Lelia, and Rush. They at least have a consistent motivation, but they had such potential to be really interesting characters but each one fell just short for me. The closest one to a compelling for me was Rush, we learned the most about her and I think that was mostly because Danny paid the most attention to her for obvious gay reasons. Now I can’t really expand too much more without going into massive spoiler territory for the plot which I don’t want to do, because the book is good and is an experience I don’t want to take away from anyone it just fell flat for me.

So yeah, this book wasn’t what I expected and I think a huge part of that was because the blurb is so much different than what is in the book itself. And I know, as a lesbrarian I should know not to judge a book by its cover or its blurb...but that is your first exposure to the story you are going to be reading and in this case the tone was so much different. Now let me reiterate this book wasn’t bad. There were parts that were so beautifully written I had to reread them several times to take in the layers of imagery and sheer poetry of the prose, but I feel like at times that style took away from the story itself and most of all it took away from the characters so that by the end of it they just fall a bit flat for me. I do recommend you give it a shot though because you won’t find a book with a queerer cast out there and maybe it will speak to you more than it did to me. 

Queer Wrap-up: Alright lets look at the this stellar tally shall we. Even with my own lack luster feelings toward the characters from a story perspective you can’t over look the fact that all but one character we interact with on page regularly is queer. That is something I have never seen before, so it more than earned its five unicorns, even if the quality was a bit lacking on the tail end the quantity really pulled it out. So we have our protagonist who is unapologetically kissing girls from page one and doesn’t ever shut up about it but also doesn’t shy away from the fact she also finds boys undeniably adorable and cute. In a scene that makes this tally easier than most she defines herself as queer so we are gonna stick with that. Within the Grays we have Lelia who is a tiny nonbinary gray ace person who will get in your face and is not afraid to be called a weirdo, June is a “femme as fuck” lesbian who is also not white (I belive Danny describes her as vaguely pacific islander at one point. I swear it was more specifically stated what her ethnicity was somewhere later in the book but I didn’t write it down at the time and couldn’t find it in my quick flip threw the book when I grabbed it to jot down their stated sexualities, but she is definitely not white), Hawthorne is a bisexual black witch who states she has “a strong lean toward masculine folks” which is refreshing to see bisexual representation that isn’t just “gay but guys exist I guess”, then we have Rush who very succinctly sums herself up with “Fat. Queer. White. Cello Player.” She is also some add rep in the form of having synesthesia where she can taste words. We also have some disability rep as June has an injury to her leg from a fall out of a tree that never healed properly and it does cause problems for her throughout the book, not the greatest rep but it’s there and shouldn’t be forgotten or not included. Man, oh man, this is the longest wrap-up I think I’ve ever written but I am still not done yet. We have Imogen who is the missing Gray mentioned in the blurb and brought up pretty quickly in the story and without spoiling anything we do get confirmation she is also undeniably queer as well as another character that I can’t even begin to talk about without a giant redacted stamp for spoiler reasons, but just know this book does have queer rep coming out its ears. 

Links: 

Amy Rose Capetta’s Website

Goodreads

So yes here we come to the end of the first Book I Read In the Dark it was a whimsical journey through redwoods with witches and more queerness than you could shake a widowmaker at (if you don’t get that reference read the book). I finished this book on Day 1 and immediately dove right into Book 2 because well I didn’t have anything else to do and I was kinda reeling from the confusion of this book and wanted something to ground me. The next book was one I had wanted to read for a very long time. You’ll see whether it did the job or not. 

As always if you want to read this but don’t want to spend the money without knowing for sure you are going to like it, go to your local library. You’d be surprised what they have on their shelves just waiting to be discovered. Trust me, I’m a lesbrarian.

[hrmphfft]

controversial opinion time I guess but

hey gang? hey, gang. gang, hey. blaming your fans for them not reblogging your content enough (and saying that they’re Directly Responsible For Tumblr Dying) is an extremely passive aggressive, mean thing to do, and also completely ignores so many other reasons as to why engagement has changed on this site and posts don't circulate like they used to.

for one thing, whenever I see these posts, I rarely see the ops acknowledge the HUGE HIT to tumblr's userbase following the 2018 policy change/implementation of tumblr's terrible content filtering algorithm. tumblr lost roughly 1/3 of its engagement (https://mashable.com/article/tumblr-lost-a-third-of-its-users-after-porn-ban/) and countless content creators with it. some of them migrated to twitter and other sites, some of them seem to have straight-up vanished into thin air, and countless others lost their biggest or main userbase with barely any time to shift gears to something else. that's a huge, website-shaking change! but so often in these 'reblogs vs. likes' posts I don't see anyone acknowledging that and it makes me really upset!

you can't talk about the ways tumblr has undoubtedly changed these last few years and NOT address the nsfw ban! it's completely unfair to your fanbases to shift the blame of the biggest displacement of users the site has ever experienced on...the users who had no say in the policy change and reacted accordingly when the site started softbanning everyone, and filtering all sorts of tags from the search function (including important sfw ones, lest we forget The Entire Furry Fandom on tumblr discovering that basic-ass tags like #furry and #anthro were being blocked when the ban rolled around), and making uploading anything vaguely beige-colored a dice roll. tumblr still hasn't recovered from that, and unfortunately probably never will, not without some hail mary of policy changes and overhauls.

I've seen some pretty ageist shit regarding content engagement as well that tries to paint younger users as just Not Getting how tumblr functions vs. other social media sites like instagram and twitter, and on top of that just showcasing a really uncomfortable disconnect/animosity towards new users whose only crime is being younger than op and also more experienced with other social media platforms, it also is just. it's really unkind? it's super rude? how can you call your followers too clueless to know how reblogging works and then expect them to support your content via reblogging and not feel like you're insulting them until they give you the result you want?

moreover, lots of young/new tumblr users get the gist of tumblr's controls and get it very quickly! technology literacy is becoming more and more a part of everyday life for everyone, and if you really think that a teenager can't understand that reblogging puts a thing on their follower's dashboards, one of the main functionalities of the site (and also very similar to twitter, one of tumblr's main competitors), I really don't know what to say. sometimes people just straight-up don't want to reblog stuff to their blogs, and that's okay.

there's also a tendency to ignore the ways that blogging on tumblr has changed as its userbase has became more well-versed in its functions and, frankly, a portion of the userbase has grown up on this site. when I first started blogging on here, I was 17, I didn't use tags, I commented unrelated (and frankly sometimes really regrettably rude) replies directly onto artist's posts, and I basically just reblogged whatever I vaguely liked, and a lot of things I didn't totally get but thought Looked Cool/Funny so I reblogged anyways.

and that's fine, that's pretty par for the course of being young on the internet and doing whatever you want and having a good time (barring the rudeness, being respectful to people is the ideal), but as time went on my interests changed, my time spent online changed (I went from highschool to college to a full-time job that limits my time on social media), and I began engaging with tumblr's content differently. I made sideblogs for interests and content themes I didn't want on my main blog, I started liking stuff and then going back through my likes to reblog posts later, and generally speaking my number of posts a day dropped and I stopped being able to catch up on my dashboard every single day. and I'm sure my experience isn't unique for some other people on here.

a lot of the tumblr users I've known for a while just don't have the same level of intensity in fandoms like we did years back, not because of any malice or selfish, content-hogging intent, but because our priorities have changed. I definitely miss a lot of things about years past on tumblr when fandoms were booming and new Big Name Creators were cropping up all the time, and to be fair that's still happening on parts of the site if you know where to look! it's just different now. time has passed. people have changed!

that isn't to be defeatist and say that we can't show up for content we enjoy and reblog it, but instead that people can feel differently about stuff they used to adore, and be more particular about one thing or another they reblog, and straight-up miss stuff that they would have really liked but just didn't catch up on for a myriad of reasons. and that's also okay. engagement on tumblr is really, really tied up in personal preferences, and sometimes it feels like it does that more than most other social media sites. this is kind of the wild west of internet presences and everyone operates differently on here as a result.

and probably the most touchy point of all: no one is obligated to give you validation on the internet. no one. not even if they've read all of your fanfics you've worked really fucking hard on for forever and a day, or your comics that you've spent months, years, a lifetime researching and creating, or your beautifully, painstakingly timed and masked fan videos. they can absolutely consume any of these, and more, and they're still not obligated to reblog your work or promote you. it's not fair, yes, and it's completely understandable and super relatable to want recognition for the work you've done and the ways you've brightened other people's lives, but online most of your fans are still total strangers to you, and trying to control the behavior of total strangers because you’re owed their acknowledgement isn’t a healthy mindset to have.

and you can say that any fan of yours stops being a fan after they drop you for you lashing out at them for not unquestioningly giving you space on their blogs like you're owed, but being upset at being accused of bad behavior for what amounts to not wanting to reblog something this time around and changing your opinions based off of that is also a very understandable thing to do.

and that isn't because of any sort of innate cruelty, or pointed attack towards you. it's just because there is always a disconnect between the creator and the creation, and some people will never bridge that gap and engage with you more, or build a parasocial relationship with you, or seek out ways to support you. and plenty of others will do the exact opposite! it's a total dice roll because you're dealing with a lot more people than you realize scrolling past your content, and every person is different, and some of them don't fully understand how reblogs help a creator, and some of them do but just don't want that content on their feed, and none of them are inherently bad people for that.

I'm not saying creators have to be perfectly kind and civil and praise their fans all the time, but when you engage with your followers like it's a battle where you have to keep devising new ways to get them to share your content, it just comes across as super disingenuous, and people cop to that very fast. 

it also, frankly, can make longtime fans who reblog your work regularly feel like their interest doesn't matter, and wasn't good enough, and that then it really is their fault that other people (other STRANGERS ON THE INTERNET) don't engage with your content the way you wanted them to. you don't owe them perfection, but that doesn't mean it isn't still an unkind thing to do.

so like. what can we do about this?

asking users to reblog your work is totally fine and can help! calls to action work more than nothing at all. it's possible to be respectful when asking people to reblog your work without also guilt-tripping them with "likes < reblogs" banners and passive aggressive tags/comments. generally speaking guilt is a really shitty motivational tool, and tends to breed more resentment than actual outcomes people want. like this post for example! I wouldn't have sat down and typed this all out if I didn't resent the hell out of being told I'm, personally, the reason tumblr is demonstrably not an ideal website for building a fanbase anymore. if I had that much power over this website I would have given the whole thing to the xkit team years ago and reveled in a functional website instead.

changing the way you post content might help! every site has its ideal posting days, times, and reasons for why some are ideal for one site and not another. doing a little research (https://sproutsocial.com/insights/best-times-to-post-on-social-media/) will yield some potentially helpful tips and tricks that might result in a post reaching more people. utilizing tumblr's search function is also important, and understanding the limits of the tag function (ie. only the first 5 tags of a post are used for tag searches) can help change one's habits to something a little more effective. this is why I tend to leave my tag babbling until after the main fandom/category tags on my posts, so that tumblr's jankass search has a better shot, haha

broadening your online presence can definitely help! this is by far the most terrifying option since it involves branching out onto other social media platforms, some of which really don't lend themselves to whatever fandom/content one produces, so like the other two above it's only a suggestion.

I keep coming back to twitter and instagram, but that's mainly because they're the two other powerhouses of social media right now, though admittedly they only really cater towards visual media (and mainly imagery, not longer video pieces), and they have their own weird quirks to learn and jank to deal with. but given how precarious tumblr's status has become in some ways, trying to build a presence on multiple sites means that you reach more people across the internet, and also means that if tumblr does yet another website-shattering policy change, your eggs aren't all in one basket.

of course these options aren't foolproof, and won't work for everyone in some cases or not at all for others, but my main point in all this is this: tumblr has irrevocably changed, its userbase has changed, and we are limited in the ways we can directly influence it, but there are still options. I'm by far not a social media expert, but then again none of the posts I've seen so far were made by social media experts either, so I honestly don't feel too bad for throwing my hat into the ring while we're all thrashing about in confusion

y'all aren't wrong that things have changed, but I'm begging you to have some compassion and to try not to turn the relationship between creators and consumers of content into a battleground, especially when a lot of the influences on these changes are things entirely outside of any of our's direct control.

also because it makes y'all sound exactly like this:

[letterboxd]

How I Letterboxd #5: Will Slater.

Talking mullets and other manes with the man behind the internet’s definitive ‘exploding helicopters in movies’ catalog.

“Man cannot live on helicopter explosions alone. Even I need some occasional intellectual nourishment.”

A London-based PR man by day, by night Will Slater has a thing (and a podcast, blog and Twitter account) for movies that feature exploding helicopters. According to his Letterboxd bio, it’s “the world’s only podcast and blog dedicated to celebrating the art of exploding helicopters in films… as well as shaming those directors who dishonor the helicopter explosion genre”. As Will tells Jack Moulton, he also loves film noir, Wakaliwood, masala movies and much more. Just don’t get him started on the one action movie cliché that never fails to disappoint.

Sylvester Stallone takes aim in ‘Rambo III’ (1988).

First things first, have you ever had a ride in a helicopter? Will Slater: What, do you think I’m mad? Of course I’ve never flown in a helicopter! If I’ve learned anything from watching hundreds of films where helicopters spectacularly explode, it’s that they are a singularly dangerous form of transport. You never know when Sylvester Stallone is going to pop up with an explosive-tipped arrow and blow you out of the sky.

I’m going to say the words ‘the definitive action hero/heroine’. Who pops into your head first? No runners-up. Go. Snake Plissken, no question, for a number of good reasons. First, there’s the look: that eye-patch, the beaten-to-hell leather jacket and Kurt Russell’s lustrous mane of hair. Second, there’s the attitude: his contempt for authority, the drawled sarcasm and all-round bad-assery. And I also like that he doesn’t have any special abilities. Action heroes generally tend to be either musclebound slabs of beef—Arnold Schwarzenegger, Stallone—or martial arts specialists—Jean-Claude van Damme, Jackie Chan—Plissken is just a pissed-off, angry dude who’s trying to stay alive. He’s very relatable. Plus, I’d argue he pretty much invented the whole anti-hero formula that rules our screens today.

Kurt Russell as Snake Plissken in John Carpenter’s ‘Escape from New York’ (1981).

When did you start your podcast and which film got you into looking deeper into the topic? It was while watching the cheesily bad Cyborg Cop that I first had an epiphany about the weird and wonderful ways in which helicopters seemed to continually explode in movies. But the film that convinced me to start documenting the phenomenon was Stone Cold. If you’re not familiar with the film, it was an attempt to turn former gridiron star and mullet-king Brian Bosworth into the next big action star. It goes without saying that Stone Cold did not transform ‘The Boz’ into the next Arnold Schwarzenegger, but the film wasn’t a total failure as it features a helicopter explosion that is as brilliant as it is gloriously stupid.

And that was the prompt to start the Exploding Helicopter. I launched the website in 2009, and the podcast followed 2015. Since we started, our aim has been a simple one: to celebrate the strange and inventive ways that helicopters explode in films.

Motorcycle crashes into helicopter in mid-air, ‘Stone Cold’ (1991).

When did you join Letterboxd? What are your favorite features here? I’ve been around since 2013. As for the features, the stats are very cool. When you dig into your viewing history, you can learn some very revealing things about yourself. For example, I generally like to think I have a commendably broad taste in film, and watch only the most important and influential works from every decade, genre and country. But then you look at the data and find you’ve watched Thunderball nine times in the last five years, so maybe you’re not as cool as you thought.

We noticed that your profile faves are low-key and explosion-free, given your theme of choice. Why these four and not Die Hard four times? Man cannot live on helicopter explosions alone. Even I need some occasional intellectual nourishment, between watching whirlybird conflagrations. There’s a little bit of nostalgia tied up in The Ipcress File. I first saw it as a kid, and it made a big impression on me. It’s very stylishly directed, has a great John Barry score and a star-making turn from Michael Caine. I’m a big film noir fan and Sweet Smell Of Success is a beautifully sour tale of cynicism and manipulation. To borrow the words of Burt Lancaster in the film, it’s a “cookie full of arsenic”.

Jean-Pierre Melville is my favorite director and Le Samouraï was the first of his films that I saw. What Melville does so masterfully in this, and his other crime films, is distil the elements of film noir. Basically, he takes the genre’s iconography—the gun, the trenchcoat, the fedora—and familiar plot tropes—the betrayed assassin, the heist gone wrong, the criminal doing one last job—then elevates them above cliché into something almost mythic. And what do I really need to say about Taxi Driver, other than it’s a masterpiece?

Now you say you shame directors who dishonor the art of helicopter explosions? Which directors did you dirty? Well, one of the biggest names in our hall of shame is Tony Scott. For a man who specialized in hyper-stylized, pyrotechnic-filled action movies, he flunked every helicopter explosion he filmed. In our eyes, one of the most egregious offences you can commit is failing to show the helicopter explosion. And in both Spy Game and Domino, old Tony cheats the viewer by having the chopper fly out of sight before it explodes. Now, I can accept such visual chicanery in a low-budget film, where they presumably don’t have the money to stage the scene, but what’s Tony’s excuse? If you look at his filmography, at one time or another he’s wrecked trains, planes and automobiles in spectacular fashion. But for some reason, he repeatedly couldn’t be bothered to give us a satisfying chopper conflagration. At a certain point, it starts to feel like a personal slight. Tony, what did I ever do to you?

In your immortal words, “a film is always improved by a helicopter explosion.” When has this been especially true? When you see lists of worst-ever directors, Uwe Boll is a name that always seems to turn up. And, according to the internet, one of his worst-ever films is the video game adaptation, Far Cry. Now, I’m not going to try [to] convince you that the film is a neglected classic, but it does have a very imaginatively staged exploding helicopter scene. It’s too convoluted to explain here, but take my word that it wouldn’t be out of place in a Fast and Furious movie.

What about the unsung heroes; the stunt artists, the pilots, the pyrotechnicians, the VFX wizards who have worked on numerous iconic action moments, all of whom deserve a shoutout? Personally, I don’t understand why the Academy doesn’t have a stunts category. But if they did, I’d be lobbying hard for Spiro Razatos to get the first award. These days, he works as a stunt coordinator on the Fast and Furious and Marvel films, but I’d like to draw people’s attention to some of his early work. Back in the nineties, he did a lot of work with PM Entertainment films, an independent company that made low-budget action films for the home video market.

They might not have had much money, but they put every cent on the screen with glorious, raucously inventive set pieces that were often more spectacular than big-budget Hollywood offerings. And remember: this was in pre-CGI times, so every death-defying detail was absolutely ‘real’. Go back and watch films like The Sweeper or Rage, and you’ll can see why Super Spiro has now graduated to these more prestigious gigs.

Narrow this list down for us: which is the ultimate most spine-tingly epic “we got company” movie moment? As you may have gathered, I do like an action movie cliché. When you encounter one in a film, it’s like meeting an old friend. And one of my favorites is when someone uses this classic line of dialog to signal that a car chase or a gun battle is about to start. I’ve heard people deliver the line in all sorts of ways–funny, scared, angrily and often just badly. But if you want spine-tingly, then you can’t beat Harrison Ford in Star Wars. He drops the line during the detention-block scene after failing to bluff an imperial officer. As soon as he says it, John Williams’ iconic score kicks in. It gives you the ‘feels’ every time.

“Boring conversation anyway.” Han Solo and Chewbacca in ‘Star Wars’ (1977).

And which action movie cliché can you simply not stand? Stop it: my hackles are raising just thinking about it. For me, the trope that never fails to disappoint is the ‘reluctant’ hero being convinced to take up arms and join the fight. You know the scene. Invariably, the hero has hung up their spurs and is living a bucolic existence ‘off the grid’, when a gruff buddy shows up asking them to risk almost certain death by taking on ‘one last job’. Now, dialog is rarely an action film’s greatest strength, and these beefcake actors generally are not cast for their dramatic chops. Which means we get subjected to the same perfunctory and uninteresting scene over and over again: “I told you, I’m out the game”, “Goddamnit, we need you”, “OK, I’ll do it”. These scenes just never work and are never less than painful to watch.

Which up-and-coming action director are you most excited about? In terms of up-and-coming action talent, I’d pick the director Stefano Sollima. I first noticed his work on a couple of TV series: the fantastic Italian crime dramas, Romanzo Criminale and Gomorrah. The way he composed shots really stood out, and it was clear he had a very cinematic eye. He rather reminds me of Michael Mann. He’s now on Hollywood’s radar and got to direct Sicario: Day of the Soldado the other year. And he’s lined up to make a Tom Clancy adaptation with Michael B. Jordan. I can’t wait to see what he comes up with.

Have you witnessed the glory that is Wakaliwood—Ugandan DIY action filmmaking—three of which make Letterboxd’s official top ten films by black directors? Which international films do you feel out-match Hollywood? I love the Wakaliwood films I’ve seen. It’s fascinating to watch action films from around the world and see their different styles and flavors. Recently, I’ve been trying to investigate Indian cinema and, in particular, what are known as ‘masala movies’. These mix action, comedy, drama, romance and dance numbers into one big, crazy, entertaining mess. They’re a unique experience. If you want to check one out, I’d suggest Dhoom 2. It’s bananas.

Can you believe there are only two female directors represented in your exploding helicopter list? Do you believe that’s due to systemic or thematic reasons? You have to say it’s systemic. Men have dominated filmmaking for more than a century. Until women have the same opportunities to direct and make films as men, it’s impossible to know what their interest may or may not be in blowing up helicopters. [Will has previously written about the search for “true gender equality in the world of exploding helicopters”.]

To address the elephant in the room, how has Kobe Bryant’s unfortunate death earlier this year changed the way you look at these scenes? Obviously, I appreciate that Kobe Bryant’s death was very shocking and a tragedy for his family and fans. But basketball really is not a thing on these grim shores, so it didn’t register with us unenlightened Brits other than [as] a sad headline about a US sports star.

What was your most anticipated movie event of 2020 before Covid-19 pushed every tentpole back? That’s easy: No Time To Die. I’m a huge Bond fan and as soon as tickets were available, I booked myself in to see it on opening day at an IMAX. But if the Daniel Craig era is synonymous with anything, it’s lengthy delays between films.

Freerunner Sébastien Foucan in the opening scene from ‘Casino Royale’ (2006).

What’s a fond memory you have in theaters related to the Bond franchise? I remember going to see Casino Royale. I was excited, but also nervous to see it. The Brosnan era had ended with the risible Die Another Day: invisible cars, kitesurfing and, worst of all, John Cleese’s awful Q. Since that had come out, we’d had Mission: Impossible, Bourne and the Triple X films, so it wasn’t beyond the realms of possibility that Bond might be finished. Then the first ten minutes of Casino Royale happened. And while that outstanding parkour-inspired chase was terrifically exciting, it also hit me like cinematic Valium. I suddenly realised I could sit back and relax, safe in the knowledge that 007 was going to be just fine.

Are you planning on returning to theaters as soon as you can? When would you feel comfortable? I’m taking a wait-and-see approach. I’d love to see films back on the big screen again, but I want to know more about how cinemas are going to maintain social distancing inside.

Finally, what three Letterboxd accounts should we all be following? Why not give Todd Gaines, Jayson Kennedy or Fred Andersson a follow? If you’re interested in genre films that are a little off the beaten trail, they’ll likely all steer you towards some hidden gems.

[saintheartwing]

Invader Zim: The Pigshit Troll, Part Three

"So it's coming from Dad's lab?"

Gaz was now very intrigued indeed. She sat across from Dib in the living room as he pulled open his laptop, Gaz pulling open a can of "Mountain Spew" and drinking away. Dib glanced over at the black can, raising an eyebrow. "Yeah…but why are you drinking that new flavor? Aren't you more into the original?"

"Yeah, but I wanna give the new flavor a try and I gotta be honest, it ain't bad for a zero calorie soda. It tastes like the way Mountain Spew used to way back in the day. A LOT better than their diet one, I'll tell ya that." Gaz remarked. "And it ain't given me diarrhea yet, so that's a plus."

Dib did the very best he could to suppress his laughter. When it came to Gaz's diet, her constantly going to Bloaty's Pizza Hog had real consequences. The cheese round the clock was getting her blocked, but when the levee finally broke, well…frankly, so did the toilet. Many, many times. And she would make him clean it.

There had been a positive to this though. Dib was now amazingly good at plumbing and mechanical engineering and he was actually picking up some decent money loaning his services out to the neighborhood as a plumber…provided nobody told the local trade unions about what he was up to, because compared to them, he was real cheap. So now he could afford a VERY nice laptop with all the bells and whistles as he showed it off to Gaz.

"Yeah, the IP address was traced back to Dad's lab. Unfortunately, I can't track it down to the very computer, Dad does have enough security in place to keep me from seeing that and no way am I risking jail time by cracking that open. They almost busted me last month when Dad tried to install the "Parental Controls" on our new television and I don't want Officer Krupke giving me that lecture again."

Indeed, in one of the very few times Dib and Gaz had been bound by common strife and pledged to work together for a common good, Professor Matthew Membrane had installed parental controls on their television because he was concerned about the damage being done to them from exposure to new Netflix series. Especially with all the brand new true crime dramas popping up all the time, it turned out to be something both Dib AND Gaz positively loved, the chase, the investigation, the grisly details, it was so engaging. They would watch together on the couch, eyes glued to the screen, binge-watching for hours and hours and then eagerly chatting about ALL they'd seen at dinner.

Well, Membrane had been determined to stop them from having their minds all twisted up by violence and at first it worked really well.

"C'mon! I wanna watch "The Ken and Barbie Killers!"

"Fat chance. You're gonna watch Cupcake Wars and you're gonna like it."

"Damn it, lemme watch Don't F—k with Cats, it's a classic!"

"No way. You're going to watch "Masterpiece Theatre"."

"Well…if it's got Patrick Stewart in it that might not be so-"

"Featuring Brian Blessed in the star role of Macbeth!"

"OH GOD NO!"

"Hey, what gives?!"

"That's enough cartoons for you today. You're gonna watch some Animal Planet…no, wait. Better. C-Span. It's good to be involved in politics these days."

"Oh c'mon, it's just hearings on air traffic controllers! You fiend!"

So finally, Gaz had insisted Dib get rid of the thing.

"I'd be risking major jail time!"

"Dib…it's recording the best of Fuller House."

"…I'll go get my screwdriver."

Dib had indeed almost got caught and had to listen to a very irritating lecture from the police. It was rather astounding they got to the house so quick over that, but whenever Dib tried to let them know Zim was up to something, it was "Yeah, we'll get to you when we can".

The good news was the parental controls issue got solved soon enough. Professor Membrane himself decided to get rid of it, saying that though he was worried about the things they were watching, it was his job, not some machine's, to judge and curate what his children saw.

Translation: the parental controls wouldn't let him watch "The Mandalorian" because it was too violent.

"Well can we look up who's working at Dad's laboratory who might have a grudge against you?" Gaz asked as Dib grinned.

"Luckily, that's not protected health information, Dad lists all the employees on the website and under "Contact Us"!" He remarked as his fingers flew across the keyboard and he then turned the laptop to fully show Gaz the list. "Look at who's listed? Keef, of all people is one of the assistants, he's an intern!"

"Hmm. I've always thought there's something off about him…and his stories, well…" Dib cringed.

Keef was definitely, one hundred percent not allowed to write anything even remotely close to sexual. The school had no problem with stories about, say…Zim skinning people alive in one of HIS work. For some reason, that was just fine. Oh, but a bit of soft sex, nakedness? No no no no no! Bad!

But Keef had found a way around that and did stories with lots of innuendo, and a ton…a ton of stories involving Dib, Gaz, Zim…and romance. He called the ones between Zim and Dib "ZADR" and with Gaz and Zim "ZAGR". You could find them cute if you were into that sort of thing, after all, many were astoundingly well written, lovingly detailed, and your heart would begin racing as you kept reading his creative writing tales.

But Dib didn't much like the idea. For one, Zim was over 150, he was waaaaay too old for either him…or Gaz. Two, EW. Three, a lot of the stories had Dib's own personality being ignored just so he could smooch it up with Zim! It didn't come across as a natural evolution or a progression or character development that made sense, it was just "I want this person here, so I'm just going to force them to be there, even if it makes no sense, because the plot is pretty much porn".

Gaz, however, kinda thought it was cute in a funny sort of way. She also knew it wasn't like Dib had never thought about kissing Zim, Dib was still discovering himself, after all, and he had had dreams about…that sort of thing.

"And there's Mr. Elliot!" Dib added. "Wow, why did he decide to work there?"

Gaz smirked and chuckled inwardly. Nobody would EVER know how she got rid of him, and she wasn't gonna tell anyone. And if she wanted you out of your job at the school, it would happen. Now, there were three ways to stop her from doing what she do.

…what? You think imma TELL you?

"He could have finally snapped." Gaz mused aloud. "I mean, when the nice ones snap…they really, really go wild. It's the nice guys you need to watch out for, you can trust a jerk to always be a jerk. But when a decent person goes bad, they go baaaaaad."

"Yeah, that's possible." Dib confessed. "Hmm. Look, our janitor works there too." He murmured. "Johnny."

…Johnny. The one and only Johnny. A slim, slender man, messy black hair that was just downright ugly and grimy. A pale body, sunken eyes, and he smelled strange too, like meat that had been left out on the counter for far too long. He liked making little snappy remarks at people too.

"Did you wash the bathrooms like we asked?"

"I'll wash the walls with your blood!"

"Well before you do that, wash the bathrooms."

On top of that, there were rumors that he caked blood on the walls of his janitorial closet to feed a monster that laid within. He was always seen sinisterly smoking at the very edge of school property at night, an anti-social, creepy figure indeed. Him being the actual troll…it wasn't unreasonable to think of Johnny, curled up in his closet, hunched over his laptop, spewing hate out into the world.

"Wait. Wait, wait, wait, look!" Gaz pointed at one of the names. "…Tassirak. That girl's name's Tassirak Doe."

Dib frowned, and he examined the photo that went with the name. "Doe" was a common name for a dead body you hadn't identified and-wait. Wait. Those eyes. The facial structure. The hair may have been different, the skin tone less pale, but Dib recognized those eyes instantly, and that faint Mona Lisa smile too.

And he knew that name, because Tak, Irken Invader, had divulged that to him.

Dib had gotten really close to Tak when she'd first arrived, the purple-haired British-accented girl had been charming, intelligent and clever, and they'd had similar interests. He'd soon spent weeks with her, the two just…talking. Making fun of Zim, chatting about their favorite books and movies they'd read, sharing stories about adventures out in the wild…

And of course, that Valentine's Day dance. "No, no. One-two-three, swing! One-two-three, swing!" Tak had insisted to him.

"Ouch! Don't drag me!"

Her lessons on dancing were harsh but in truth, that time spent with Tak had probably been the happiest he'd ever been.

And that's how he should have known it was a lie. Because Dib knew he wasn't meant to be happy. He'd known that…for a long time.

She'd revealed her real name. They'd eaten lunches and even a dinner or two together. Seen movies and he'd walked her home. And then, just a few days later, she'd turned out to be an Irken invader.

It had hurt. A lot. He'd lost a friend. And maybe someone more. It had really…really hurt.

"Does SHE have an account on the website?" Dib murmured as he examined the school's creative writing website. "…oh wow, yeah, she does, she's using her old username and password she got when she first enrolled, there's not much, but they're there. Wow." He examined them. "She wields metaphors like blunt instruments. You can feel Tak in every single sentence, so much of it is in first person and there is a lot of really biting, cynical wit in here. It feels almost nihilistic. And it's super petty, too. A lot of really nasty stuff happening to folks she doesn't like."

"Wow, one story has her as the Tallest." Gaz remarked. "…damn, she cooked and ate the last ones. That's hardcore scary."

"It's beautifully written though, I'd like to shake her hand than recommend her to therapy." Dib admitted. "I mean, she's going into really grisly detail on every minute they die. She must be super bitter. I don't even wanna imagine what happens to Zim when she updates this story, she just finished catching him and she's got him tied up in…Japanese rope bondage? She's into BDSM?"

"The safe word is "eine kleine nachtmusik"." Wow, somebody's letting their inner Hannibal Lecter out, alright." Gaz said with a whistle. "…still, I kinda WANT her to update just to see what happens. It's like watching a train wreck, you kinda can't look away."

"It could definitely be here. We need to go to the lab and sneak onto those computers. If they saved their work on them at any point, I could prove they were behind it." Dib reasoned.

"I dunno, Dib. Not sure I wanna help you with this. I mean, don't get me wrong, it's not really fun anymore watching you get dragged again and again for what the troll's doing, but…" She shrugged. "I mean, it's not my problem."

"What if I paid you?" Dib offered as Gaz rubbed her chin.

"…keep talking, Mr. Moneybags."

"My new job is paying me verrrrry well. To plant roses, I've shoveled a lot of manure, as it were." Dib remarked. "So how about it? Is there a new game you want me to buy?" He offered as Gaz thought to herself.

"Hmm. Well…now that you mention it, there is one game that's coming out that I really want. It's Sekiro: Shadows Die Thrice. Comes out in a week. You buy me that, I'll come with you."

"Deal." Dib insisted.

And so, Dib and Gaz made their way to Professor Membrane's lab that weekend as a quilt of dark clouds obscured their stealthy approach. Slinking on inside through the ventilation shaft as Dib temporarily looped the footage of the nearby camera watching the southern side of the laboratory, they crept through the vents and finally deposited themselves in, of all places, Johnny's closet in the lab.

There was a laptop there, hidden by a bucket. Gaz picked it up, gazing through it as she nodded over at Dib. "I'll look over this one, you go look for Keef's. Then we'll meet back here in…half an hour and go look for Mr. Elliot and Tak's."

"Deal." Dib said with a nod, quickly exiting the closet, getting his camera-hacking tool ready as it was clasped tight around his wrist. The lab was almost utterly closed for the moment, most people were heading home, there was just a skeleton crew left over. This meant it was easy for Dib to sneak around, avoiding spots in the security camera's vision and using his hacking tool to loop footage when he couldn't.

At long last, he reached a work station, the same station Keef had been said to be working at, since the website had said he was paired with a "Dr. Jones". Dib looked about, listening intently. No cameras here, and nobody was inside or anywhere nearby. So he slunk over to the computer and booted it up.

Ha! Keef had been the last one to use the PC, his username was on display. And Dib had a feeling he could guess the password.

Yep! Sure enough, it was "ZADRZAGR". "Oh, Keef…ya basic." Dib chuckled as he looked over Keef's internet history and-

"…hoooooo boy."

Well, Keef definitely, one hundred percent was not the one who sent the reviews. But now Dib knew where Keef got so much help in…inspiration…for his work. He had no idea Keef swung that way!...and that way, AND that way and THAT way.

"Well, um…whatever does it for you, Keef." Dib decided, quickly deciding to erase the internet history and log off, shaking his head. Meanwhile, Gaz had finally guessed Johnny's password. She'd had a feeling it was "Mammon" and yep…it was Mammon. Johnny may have been a loyal, devoted Satan-worshipping weirdo…but he wasn't very smart. He'd left a post it note reminding himself to change his last password since it was too easy to guess, and he needed a better one, and to pick a better demon lord. Unluckily for him, not only had he tossed that post it note in the trash can in the very closet Gaz was in, she'd realized the password hint immediately. "Greed is Good". Well, there were a few Demon lords best known for Greed and one of the best had been what she'd picked.

PING! She was in. And my oh my, Johnny had been a naughty boy. He'd taken selfies to share on the Internet of him and the bloody wall he caked gore on, selfies he was sharing on the Dark Web. Nasty stuff indeed. One particularly "funny" one showed him making a kind of macabre "snowman" on the wall with some exposed ribs and a bashed in nose and two eyes burned up like coals!

And then there were his uploads to "Bestgore". Yeccchhh. Gaz was fine with dooming the deserving wretches, but Johnny was just an outright creep about this-

Wait.

Wait, was that a cat?

He wouldn't.

…he WOULDN'T-

Gaz's mouth fell open and then she darkly glowered, shutting the video off and going through the rest of the janitor's internet history. No, he wasn't the one leaving those reviews. But he was guilty, alright. Just not of the sin Dib thought he was guilty of.

A few minutes later, Dib knocked on the closet door and she exited it, giving Dib a solemn look. "He's not the one. He's a piece of shit, but he's not the one."

Dib could see something was very, very wrong, Gaz had a look on her face he'd only seen when she'd seen crime specials on killers who hurt animals. He thought it best not to ask about it. "I understand. It isn't Keef, either. He's into a lot…but not into that sort of thing."

So now it came time to check the other computer stations. Luckily for them, both Mr. Elliot and Tak were working in the same wing.

Unluckily for them, they were still there. A fact the two found out when they opened the door…

Just in time to see Mr. Elliot AND Tak currently hunched over a computer screen. "What the?!" Dib gasped out as the two wheeled around, seeing Dib and Gaz, staring in surprise as Dib and Gaz looked behind them and-

…Jackass? They were watching Jackass videos?

"You're into those stupid stunt videos where the guys get, like, basketballs bounced onto their balls after they're launched onto trampolines?" Gaz inquired as Tak and Mr. Elliot deeply blushed, Dib racing over to the computer, gaping at the sight before his eyes. He couldn't believe it.

"But it's so…lowbrow! So…STUPID!" He remarked aloud.

"But it's funny." Mr. Elliot said with a shrug. "I can't help it, I find it funny."

"Yeah, something about it simply clicked with me." Tak admitted. "I mean, I do enjoy watching stupid humans suffering for my amusement."

"Yeah, the Germans have a term for it. Schadenfreude." Mr. Elliot confessed. "Happiness at the misfortune of others." He added as Dib looked through their internet history. Yeah, they'd hadn't left the reviews either. All that work, all that effort for…nothing! Except now he knew stuff about his classmates he really, REALLY wish he could unlearn.

"It's not that funny." Gaz said, though she chuckled as she saw a video of Johnny Knoxville soaring off a motorcycle and into a ball pit, groaning loudly…because he was butt naked when he did it. "Okay, maybe a LITTLE funny."

"Sometimes you just wanna indulge in something nice, simple and a bit stupid. Not everything has to be Shakespeare, after all. It fills a need and it doesn't really harm anyone." Tak remarked. "Well, except them, but they get paid for it, so…" She shrugged.

Dib moaned. "Damn it. Damn it, damn it, damn it. I thought for SURE…"

"You're really not that Pig Shit troll, huh?" Tak wondered aloud. "I thought maybe you were doing some kind of false flag, Dib, but…no, it really isn't you." She commented dryly. "Hmm. Well, best of luck with that. Unless another classmate of yours, like, pees their pants or something in front of everyone in school, nobody's going to forget this anytime soon. The good news is that people have short memories. A month or two passes by, and you'll be fine. Folks are like GOLDFISH. Best and worst thing about them!" She laughed.

"…yeah, maybe if I slip Zim some ex-lax under the guise of it being a candy bar I can trick him into taking from me…" Dib mumbled as he slunk out of the room. "This sucks. This totally sucks."

"Cheer up, tomorrow Dad's going to treat us to breakfast, remember?" Gaz offered. "You always like that." She told him as they headed out the office door and down the hall to exit out of the building.

"Yeah, him making his pancake and eggs combo with bacon always-"

Dib stopped. Wait.

…wait.

Could it be?

"…I need to check one more computer." He quietly muttered at Gaz, his voice sounding cold and dead.

…

…

…

… "You liking your delicious breakfast, son?" Professor Membrane asked as Gaz stared at Dib, waiting for the other shoe to drop. He'd said absolutely nothing since their Dad had begun making breakfast and now he was halfway through his meal when he slowly finished chewing and looked up.

"…it's really nice." Dib remarked. "Can I ask you something, Dad?" Dib wanted to know, as he put the fork down and folded his hands in his lap.

"Of course, son! Anything!" Professor Membrane said as Dib took in a long, deep breath.

"Why did you do it? Why did you do those reviews?"

Professor Membrane dropped the plate of bacon he had in his black-gloved hands, looking astounded. Dib went on, speaking quietly. Softly. Soft…but with an edge.

"I thought about it, long and hard. I remembered you were the one who encouraged me to come see you if I kept having problems. The IP address was also traced back to your lab. And then I thought about how…ridiculous the reviews were. They were so badly written but…not badly written enough for someone in my class to have done it. I mean, even a 9 year old knows not to write in all caps. It had to be somebody older, trying to be over the top. And then when I checked your computer, just to be sure…I found out…yes. It was you." He remarked. "…so Dad…why'd you do it?"

Professor Membrane sighed as he sat down at the table, and held his head in his hands. "I…I did want to try and…push you into my arms, as it were. That if I put a little pressure on you in your school setting, you'd keep coming back to me to talk about how you felt. It allowed me to feel like I was the only person you could truly trust, and that felt good. But it wasn't just that, I…" He took a deep breath. "It was…funny to write those reviews. Sometimes it just feels good to be…so lowbrow and coarse and nasty." He admitted. "It was like I tapped into some dark, twisted part of me that'd I'd been ignoring for so long, and when I finally got a chance to let it run wild, it felt amazing!"

He rose up a little and went on. "I have the weight of the world on my shoulders. I need ways to unwind myself. I didn't really think I was actually doing any harm. Or maybe…I didn't want to believe it, because I didn't really mean all the things I said, so how could it be anything that bad?" He murmured as Dib took off his glasses, Gaz taking in a short, sharp breath.

Dib never…ever did that. Him doing that meant he must have been really furious.

"…I don't think I want to talk to you for a while, Dad." He quietly muttered.

"…I thought as much." His father sighed as they sat across from one another in silence at the breakfast table, and Gaz quietly sipped on her orange juice.

Come the next day, it was a school day again, and Dib was making his way down the hallway before he overheard a rather familiar accusation.

"I'm telling you, he's writing about your fic in his fic. He's trashing your fic and making fun of it and you as a writer. He's a troll but pretends he isn't and just blames it on another troll when he keeps trolling."

Dib turned around, seeing Zita talking to the Letter M and he frowned a bit as he stared at the girl and the African American boy she was talking to.

"You know, you're just plain wrong." He said aloud, as other kids began to look at him. "It was my dad all this time. Not me. And I don't really care if you don't believe me. I've said my piece. You don't like it, tough." He told her, walking off.

"You think that'll convince us?"

"No. But maybe there's no point in casting pearls before swine." Dib said with a shrug as he walked off. "And people like you who just plug their ears and won't listen to any counterarguments are real pigs indeed." He remarked as he walked off, Gaz walking alongside him.

"Pearls before swine, huh? Nice Bible quote." She remarked. "But I wouldn't be too worried. Tak was right. Just wait a month or so, folks will forget."

"Oh, I don't doubt it. I thought about sneaking Ex-Lax to Zim but…I'm not going to lower myself to that." Dib insisted. "Even if it would be really funny."

"Well, I've got something that'll cheer you up." Gaz offered. "I copied the videos Johnny the Homicidal Maniac did for the dark web and I sent it to the police and now he's in jail! So we're gonna need a new janitor."

Dib stopped in the hall. "…wait, is this because of how good I am at plumbing now? Look, there's no way I can be the new janitor. I'll be a laughingstock! Dib, the janitor!"

"Yeah…but you will get keys to every single room in the school." Gaz added. "And paid twice what those neighbors pay you."

Dib chewed his lip. "…well…when you put it like that…I mean, it would be nice to be able to literally go anywhere I want in the school at any time…and I could use the dough…"

"You could rig the toileeeeets so that they always act uuuuuup whenever Zim goes to use iiiiiit." Gaz added in a faint, singsong voice.

"…I KNEW there was a reason I respected you." Dib said with a big grin.

[aewriting]

Authursday: Tasyfa

For today’s Authursday, I wanted to highlight @tasyfa

Tasyfa has not only produced one of the best long fics in the Roswell NM fandom, but she has also created this entire AU world set in Toronto that explores a sub/dom relationship between Michael and Alex.  In preparing this post, I realized that she has actually written 41 fics for the Roswell NM fandom, which is incredible!  Quite a lot of range, and the writing is always high quality.  For the purposes of this post, I am going to focus on her masterwork, “Through the Violet Glass,” as well as her AU series, “Spinning Circle of Flames.” There will be some spoilers, so if you haven’t read these, go now!

I think we are really lucky, in the Roswell NM fandom, to have a lot of talented writers, including folks that make some excellent longer, novel-length works of fiction. There are a few of these longer works that I read real-time, such as beamirang’s “The Old Astronomer” and myrmidryad’s recent “Shadow Work” (both excellent).  For whatever reason, though, I did not discover “Through the Violet Glass” until it was well underway.  From reading works in tasyfa’s “Spinning Circle of Flames” series, I was pretty darn sure that I would like it, but I wanted to be able to really sink into it and enjoy it, and that can sometimes be tough to find the time to do with a long fic.

About a month ago, I unexpectedly had to go on a lengthy road trip with only my youngest child (little enough that it wouldn’t really matter what I listened to in the car). I was contemplating what I wanted to hear – podcasts, playlists, audiobooks? And then thought to myself, I wonder if there’s an app that would read a website to me?  That would, um, read “Through the Violet Glass” to me? So I downloaded an app called Motoread, and that is how I “read” “Through the Violet Glass!”

II was so impressed with the plot of “TTVG.” I think that, at times, when you’re working from canon (and a fairly limited one, as tasyfa started this work early in the series), you can be somewhat constrained in where you take your plot, but oh my god, there were a few twists here that were SO good and so creative.  I remember being in the car and gasping when Alex found out that his father had married Violet, the fourth alien. I also thought that tasyfa’s choice to make Sanders the fifth alien, and to reveal him the way she did, in the midst of Alex’s showdown with his father in the junkyard, was very well done.  I always appreciate a twist that is creative but still earned, if that makes sense, and I believe tasyfa really delivered in “Through the Violet Glass.”

As much as "TTVG" is focused on action, adventure, and intrigue, though, at its heart it’s a story about Michael and Alex rebuilding trust with each other and trying to form a real relationship.  This is a really good slow burn.  Their physical relationship feels very hard fought, and I think tasyfa does a nice job of exploring the impact of Alex’s PTSD, and of Michael’s psychological scars from his upbringing and feelings of isolation and abandonment.  There are some beautifully written passages that really stuck with me.  I thought Alex and Michael’s initial attempt to help Michael control his powers, which included Alex goading him in some not so nice ways, was well-done, as was the scene in which Michael first puts up a bit of a bubble-like “forcefield” and allows a bottle to shatter over it in Alex’s backyard (and tasyfa is able to work in fragments from the bottle in a meaningful, romantic way).  I also loved a scene with Kyle, in which he finally gets Michael to speak about the injury to his hand. 

Perhaps some of the best scenes, though, concerned Alex’s relationship with his father and his sexuality. There was a really excellent exchange (Chapter 49) in which Jenna speaks to Alex about his relationship with Michael, and it incorporates an analogy using apples that speaks to the larger issues of homophobia that Alex had to face in his relationship with his father:

“Oh, come on. Look at the people who were here last night. Your oldest friend from the first day of school? Two more from elementary school. Almost everyone else was from high school, which was more than ten years ago, as you just pointed out. That is not a chosen family assembled by a guy who can't commit," she asserted.

"Well, yeah, but those are friendships, not romantic relationships. Apples and oranges."

"No, Captain," her headshake was vehement. "That's Red Delicious and Golden Delicious. Two varieties of apples and they both make good pie. Family."

"They're different for me," Alex disagreed.

"Because someone taught you one variety was rotten and you were too young to know it was a lie."

"You sound very sure of that," he was taken aback by how sure.

"Look, you're not the first gay soldier I've seen struggling to get out from underneath the horseshit their daddy piled on. Your father is an extreme case, and it's all extra complicated because of real live aliens and government conspiracies and God knows what else, but the bottom line is the same damn thing. He convinced you your Golden Delicious apples were really oranges and no good for pie. And he was wrong."

Tasyfa revisits this message during a conversation between Violet and Alex as well, in which Violet is very dismissive about Jesse Manes and his homophobic beliefs, having trouble believing that such hatred for Alex stems from Alex’s sexuality (Chapter 52):

Violet cocked her head. "Why does he hate you, Alex?"

No beating around the bush here, and Alex answered in the same vein, "Because I'm gay."

She stared at him for long minutes, brow furrowed in confusion, and finally asked, "That's it? Because you're gay?"

"That's been his problem since I was 13 years old, yes. I'm sure he's added more reasons over the years, but that's the foundation," Alex said mildly.

The way she snorted in disgust and rolled her eyes was eerily reminiscent of Isobel. "He's even stupider than I thought."

"That isn't a nice thing to say about your husband."

"If I had married him for love, perhaps."

"Fair enough." This ranked up there as one of the strangest conversations Alex had ever had. "Why did you marry him then?"

"Security. Stability. Continuance of life." She shook her head. "All that obsessive idiocy because one of his brood is gay. I thought it was a real reason."

Alex couldn't think of a response. To say that her dismissiveness and scorn for his father's opinion of Alex's sexuality was a shock to hear, didn't begin to cover it.

"This is a personal matter, this gayness. It has no place in a warrior's professional vocabulary," Violet sounded frustrated now as well as scornful. "Men don't get their balls out on the battlefield."

"No, they don't," Alex agreed, maintaining a calm façade when he wanted to burst out laughing. She seemed offended his father had mixed up the personal and the professional.

Like he'd broken some kind of warrior's code.

Again, if you have not read “TTVG,” it is well worth a read (or a listen)!  Well-written, well-plotted, with fleshed out supporting characters and a great Michael and Alex romance at its core, as well as a really thoughtful take on some of the psychological aspects of these characters, and the impact of Alex’s relationship with his father.

AND THEN, tasyfa creates a WHOLE different universe in her “Spinning Circle of Flames” series.  As I was preparing this post, I tried to think about what stood out to me the most about this series, and it was two things: 1) smut, and 2) world-building.

So, smut first, ha.  The premise of this series is that Alex is a Canadian, ex-military musician, and Michael is a happy-go-lucky grad student.  They meet at one of Alex’s shows and embark on an extremely intense sexual sub/dom relationship. Tasyfa does an incredible job fleshing out the power dynamics at work here, as well as detailing the conversations that must take place in a relationship like this.  This is a topic I don’t know much about, and it honestly felt like an education, just reading this.  Some of these scenes, too… my goodness.  Sometimes smut can run together, but it doesn’t here. Like, this is a very detailed, thoughtful exploration of a sexual relationship between two complex people, and tasyfa handles it so well. It’s fascinating to see what she does with these familiar characters. Like, they are still Michael and Alex, but with different backgrounds, and thus somewhat different personalities and approaches to life.

I also love the attention to detail and worldbuilding that tasyfa includes in this story. The story is set in Toronto, and I think that the city is described so beautifully here.  There’s a real sense of place.  Like, I can practically taste the chocolate croissants she writes about, see the intimate Italian restaurant, hear the clatter of the public transit, see the little fairy lights in the bedroom. It’s so rich in these sensory details, and that really adds to this already-sensual story.  Just very well-done.  I also love what she’s done with the supporting characters!  Isobel and Maria are in a relationship, and Kyle shows up as one of Alex’s past lovers (and I truly hope she gives us more background on that relationship in her sequel, because I loved Kyle and Michael’s exchanges and the reaction it provoked in Alex).

All this to say that tasyfa is an extremely talented and creative writer.  I am always excited when I see a new work from her! So thank you, tasyfa, for creating such excellent works!

[notsopersonalcharlie]

Existing Beautifully

Spencer Reid x Reader

Spencer hates being in pictures, but he somehow ends up on a famous photography blogger’s page for "existing beautifully" only these pictures were taken of him naked in the morning light. JJ and Garcia are on the case.

Notes: MGG being a beautiful human really helps my ability to get these out at a timely fashion. photo isnt mine

Garcia typed in her password, JJ sitting against her back desk. 

“So I have all the ideas on my Pinterest board. He’s going to love his new room, I promise that much.” Penelope pulled open the website and it opened to her homepage, which was mostly colorful animals, glittery pens, and weird angle photography. So in short, it was Penelope. She moved her mouse to the corner and was about to click when JJ dove for her hand, taking the mouse and navigating to something else.

“Hey! Don’t disrespect my baby like that.”

“Penelope, look at this.” JJ had clicked on a picture of a man’s back, bare and covered with sheets. 

“What about it? Don’t tell me you and Will broke up!” JJ hit her on the arm. 

“No, look at that bedding and the scar on his neck. That’s Spencer.” Garcia frowned, examining the photo again. They had been to Spencer apartment hundreds of times, several times just so they could make sure he was okay and cleaning up his apartment. Which meant washing his bedding and on occasion forcing him to shower.

“You’re saying you think that’s him?” 

“No, I’m saying I know that’s him. Who is this person?” Garcia reclaimed the mouse and opened the page of the person who had posted the picture. It led back to a blog called RightAngels. The name seemed to be a play on words because the page was filled with photos of all different kinds of people. One of the most recent stacks of pictures was of what appeared to be the same person, never showing his face, but it was very clearly Spencer. The name of the stack was Existing Beautifully and the caption was “I want to thank this man for existing beautifully despite what we go through every day”.

“That has to be him.” JJ’s phone pinged and she looked at it. 

“Damnit, we have a case. Find out who this is?” 

“Legally or illegally?” JJ seemed to actually consider the question. 

“Start with legally. I’ll try to talk it out of Spencer. If I can’t, we can start on illegally.”

Spencer was late to the briefing room, later than he usually was considering he could count exactly how long it would take to get from his apartment door to the round room. JJ raised an eyebrow at him, which he ignored, and Garcia started on the briefing.

-/-/-/-

“What have you found out?” JJ asked, sitting in Garcia’s chair. The techie huffed but maneuvered around her friend.

“RightAngels has no public information listed, but this is what I concocted in my computers of potions. The owner of the blog lives in the DC area based off their photographs. There’s lots of distinguishable backgrounds and a lot of shots from protests, which says something about this person. I couldn’t determine the writing style, I guessed that the BAU resident boy genius is the only one who could figure that one out. Someone around Spencer’s age, living in the DC area, and definitely has a day job that involves a camera.” JJ looked curious at that. 

“The photos are all shot at different times of day, but all of them are uploaded later at night, which means that they have access to their camera, but they can’t post personally during the day.” JJ nodded and then stood up.

“I’m going over to his place.” 

“Without asking? You know that won’t go over well.” JJ stood, considering, and walked out of Garcia's office. They had just gotten back from a case, but the team had fled like rats off a sinking ship as soon as they hit the ground in Virginia. Will would be expecting her home soon.

-/-/-/-

You frowned when there was a knock on Spencer's door. You were waiting for him to get home with the takeout you ordered, but he wouldn't knock. Maybe his hands were full. Spencer’s door didn’t have a peephole, which didn’t make any sense to you because he was paranoid enough about his safety as it was, so you opened the door with the chain on it. A pretty blonde was standing outside, curiosity in her eyes. 

“Hi, how can I help you?” you asked. 

“Is Spencer home?” You paused. Could this be someone Spencer didn’t want in the house? Or was it one of his friends? He didn’t talk much about work, and you figured the less you knew the better. But you did know all his friends by name. 

“No, but I can let him know you stopped by. Your name?” 

“Uhm... no need. I’ll catch him tomorrow at work.” She was about to walk away  when curiosity got the best of you too. You closed the door, slid the chain, and then opened it again. 

“You work with Spencer?” The woman turned in surprise.

“Yes.” 

“Are you... Emily?” She shook her head with a laugh. 

“No, I’m JJ.” Your face must have lit up because she smiled back at you.

“Come on in. He doesn’t really tell me much about his life, I think he’s worried it’ll scare me off.” JJ frowned when the woman turned and led the way back into the house. 

“So you know what Spencer does?” You had offered her something to drink, which she declined, and sat across from her in the den. Spencer didn’t have a TV, just two mismatched couches and an armchair that sat across from each other in a triangle around an old coffee table. JJ was sitting in the armchair and you’d curled your feet under you on the loveseat. 

“Uhm yeah, FBI is all he says. Sorry about the prints, I’m trying to organize for a showing.” JJ shook her head.

“You’re here for a reason?” you asked, suddenly realizing she hadn’t exactly had a clear message to give Spencer. She paused and mulled over her words. You waited, Spencer’s pauses usually lasted a few seconds, but his brain was huge and he could get his thoughts together on the fly. You’d never met anyone who could do that. Till Spencer of course. 

“A couple days ago I saw something you posted of Spencer on your blog. I found it on Pinterest. I figured it was just someone who looked like Spencer, but-”

“The scar, damnit. I knew I should have gotten better lighting.” JJ’s head tilted to the side. 

“Sorry! I was trying to keep it as anonymous as possible. He told me not to post pictures of his face. Said it could be dangerous. Continue. Please.” A smile slid across JJ’s face. 

“What?” 

“You’re just like him. Perfect for him from what I can tell. He never told us about you. I was coming here to confront him, but you were already here.” 

“His apartment is way more conducive to work. I live with two roommates and Saturdays are party nights.” JJ laughed.

“And besides, we talked about not telling the team for a while. We thought about saying something a few weeks ago, four months in, but he had a case and I had to be on call during the New Year, so we missed it by a mile.” JJ leaned back, seemed to survey you, and the nodded. 

“I won’t bother you any more. I’ll talk to Spencer later.” You stopped her by waving a hand. 

“He’s going to be back any minute now. He stopped on his way home to grab some food. Plus you seem like you have more questions.” JJ smiled. 

“Profiler rubs off doesn’t it?” You laughed a little bit. 

“He does it to everyone I take pictures of. That’s actually why I started taking them of him. He can’t get mad about it if it’s him.”

“How did you two meet?” 

“I was doing shots at a book convention in a bookstore he goes to all the time, the one in Georgetown with the big windows in the front?” JJ nodded, she’d picked Spencer up from there on numerous occasions. 

“Well he was just sitting in the corner being a perfect subject so I got some shots and then went to tell him I took them. I have to, some liability thing. He told me his name and I gave him my phone number because I had to get going. He texted me and we talking about the photos and well... we started dating.” JJ smiled at the thought of Spencer sitting in the back of a store and jumping when he heard the shutter of a camera. A key rattled in the door and Spencer walked in toting his satchel and a large brown bag.

“Hey (Y/N)... JJ?” 

“She saw some pictures of you online and stopped by to ask about them,” you explained, going to help him with the food. JJ got up and made her way to the door. As she did, she stopped at Spencer and gave him a hug.

"Keep her around." Spencer smiled and JJ left. Spencer locked the door behind her and turned to find arms wrapped around him. He rested his chin on your head and smiled.

"Thank you for existing beautifully."

[odinsonsobsessed]

Beautifully Complicated || Chapter 16: Realization

A Tom Hiddleston x OFC Matchmaker AU series by @odinsonsobsessed and @mrshiddleston-uk

Kate Rees just wants some romance in her life, but she hasn’t had the most pleasant dating history. After yet another date gone wrong, she nearly gives up until her work colleague mentions a matchmaking website she’d seen an ad for. Little does she know, the mystery man she’s been matched with is handsome, rising star, Tom Hiddleston. And that’s when things get complicated.

Rated M (18+) || Word Count: 5.9k || Warnings: Swearing, NSFW

A/N: @mrshiddleston-uk and I worked hard this week to be able to get this chapter up for you guys, so that you wouldn't have to wait too long after the way the last one ended. We think you're really going to like this one ;)

You can also find us on AO3:

@odinsonsobsessed - Mischievousbellerina

@mrshiddleston-uk - Crimson_peak

Likes, Comments and Reblogs are always encouraged and appreciated! Enjoy!

Series Masterlist

Tom could still feel Kate when he woke. He could practically feel the warmth of her body heat, the softness of her lips as they brushed against his and the way her body reacted to the touch of his fingertips as he ran them along her spine. A sigh blew past his lips as he blinked his eyes open, aimed at the ceiling. He hated when he had dreams like the one he just had - it made it that much harder to get over the only woman he ever truly loved.

It had been six months since Kate had broken his heart and five of them were spent halfway across the world from her as he worked hard on the film he'd been cast in. He threw himself into his work, spending long hours memorizing his lines and going over scenes more times than he could count. Anything to wipe Kate from his mind, if only temporarily. It didn't work quite as he'd wanted. 

Working with Charlotte again after the break up was… it was rough. She was one of the main reasons Kate had broken it off with him and seeing her was a constant reminder of that.

When he had arrived in L.A., he had mentally prepared himself to look happy to see Charlotte, to fool the paparazzi that he knew would be there, when really it was like a twist of the dagger in his heart to see her again. But on the other hand, it had been nice to see a friendly face. Tom had tried to meet with Charlotte sooner to have a chat with her about Kate, but between Charlotte having to head to L.A. early to get resettled into the house she had there and his own preparations for his stay and the film, it was next to impossible. 

After getting settled in his apartment and having a nap following his travels, he met Charlotte for drinks. One of the first things she asked him about was him and Kate.

“We, um…” Tom shifted uncomfortably in his seat. It still hurt every time he had to say these words. “We broke up.”

Charlotte's jaw dropped as she looked at him wide eyed, “Seriously? I thought you were so into each other!”

Tom wasn’t sure if that was a question or a statement. Either way, he didn’t want to go into any more detail. Not with knowing how Kate felt about her. Instead, he shrugged. “It just didn’t work out."

Charlotte smiled at him sympathetically, reaching out to squeeze his forearm gently, “I always thought she held you back anyway. You’ll be better off without her."

Wait, what? Tom forced himself to smile back at her but her response had triggered something in his brain. Had she ever told Kate that she thought that? Clearly Charlotte hadn’t been as fond of Kate as she’d made herself out to be. 

Charlotte pulled him from his thoughts, telling him that she'd be there for him should he want to talk about it, which before he would have taken that as a sweet, friendly gesture. But now he found himself questioning her and her flirty smile, her finger twisted around her hair in an attempt to make her look sexy.

Tom tried to go on like normal after their meet up that day, but something felt different. He was a bit taken aback, because he’d always thought Kate was overreacting. Had he really been that blind to it? Or perhaps she didn't used to be this way, maybe this had just developed since he'd seen her all those years ago at RADA. Some people let the fame go to their head and perhaps Charlotte had fallen victim to that, and he hadn't realized fully until he watched her interact in L.A., being around more celebrities and crew members. But it was Charlotte. He’d known her for years and she’d always been so sweet and friendly and caring. She was a naturally confident and outgoing person and he supposed if someone weren’t used to it, maybe it could come across as flirty and a little high and mighty. She certainly hadn’t ever given him any signs that she wanted anything more than friendship from him, and she’d never tried to make a move on him. 

His head hurt as he questioned everything, analyzing it and looking for hidden meanings in every interaction he’d ever had with Charlotte. Tom had always considered himself a pretty good judge of character, could he really have gotten it all wrong with her? They were friends, close friends. They’d always got on so well and Tom just couldn’t believe he wouldn’t have noticed if Charlotte had wanted more from him. 

Things were tense during filming. His relationship with Charlotte was strained at times, though she hadn't seemed to notice. She carried on as normal, inviting him over to her place for late night script readings to go over their scenes, but whereas before he would have seen it as just two friends hanging out, he found himself questioning her intentions. But she knew he was single now. If she was going to try it on with him she’d had ample opportunities in the last few months, yet she remained exactly how she always was around him and Tom started to sway the other way again and think that perhaps Kate really had just not been used to Charlotte’s touchy-feely natural affection. 

Now that they were finished shooting the movie, Tom was way past ready to fly home and leave this all behind him. He just wanted to be alone, in his house with Bobby. But he couldn't yet, he had to stay in town for just another day. There was a party for the cast and crew at an exclusive club later that night. He had to make an appearance for that, then he'd be able to fly home the following day. He did his best to be sociable and ensure that he spoke to every member of the crew during the evening, but as the time approached one o'clock in the morning, he was getting tired and irritable. 

Tom stepped out onto the private terrace of the club, dropping onto one of the plush outdoor sofas and exhaling loudly, closing his eyes and dropping his head back. Tom loved his job but at times it was exhausting. He could feel the tension in his neck and shoulders and he made a mental note to try book himself in for a massage once he was home. 

He sat there quietly for some time, grateful for the gentle breeze that was blowing and cooling him down. He wondered what Kate was doing now. She was never far from his thoughts, even after all this time. Even though she wasn’t his anymore. God, he still missed her so much.

“Here you are!” A voice exclaimed from behind him, shattering the silence. He opened his eyes and lifted his head to look at Charlotte as she stood in front of him, a drink in each of her hands. She held one out to him and he took it, taking a sip and putting it down on the table as she seated herself next to him on the sofa. She slipped her heels off with a relieved groan and tucked her legs underneath her before looking back at him. “What are you doing out here?”

Tom shrugged, “Just getting some air.”

Charlotte tilted her head to one side as she studied him. “Thomas! You’re not still moping after that woman, are you? It's a party! We should be celebrating!”

Tom sighed and looked into his lap, “I don't feel much like celebrating, Lottie. Not tonight."

Charlotte set her drink down on the table and reached out, placing her hand on his thigh, “C'mon, Tom! Hey…” She moved a bit closer and brought her hand up to his cheek, turning his head so he would look at her. “C'mon, she’s not worth it.”

“I-” Tom began to argue, his brow furrowing. Their faces were only inches apart as Charlotte tightened her grip on his face, interrupting him.

“You're better than that, better than her. You deserve more, Tom.”

Suddenly, before Tom knew what was happening, Charlotte closed the distance between them, pressing her lips against his as she practically climbed into his lap. Tom quickly realized what was going on and grabbed her roughly by the shoulders and shoved her away from him in disgust. He swiped his thumb along his lips in an attempt to rid himself of Charlotte's lipstick. He didn't need anyone seeing this and getting the wrong idea. He was so tired of scandals and assumptions about his love life.

Tom looked around for signs of anyone having seen what she'd just done and ran his hands through his hair. He stared at Charlotte as she scrambled to keep her balance on the sofa.

“What the fuck was that?”

Regaining her composure, Charlotte smiled sweetly at him, “I know you feel it, too. There’s something between us, there always has been!” She leaned toward him again, but Tom dodged her, lifting himself off the sofa and sending Charlotte forward, forcing her to brace herself on her hands as he turned around to glare at her.

“Jesus, stop! Are you mad?"

“Tom-“ She began, starting to get up from the sofa but he held his hand out in front of him.

“Don’t! Just… don’t touch me. Don’t even come near me."

Charlotte stilled again and Tom exhaled angrily as he looked at her with disbelief. That was it. This was his breaking point. After everything that happened, everything that Kate told him and the comments that Charlotte made, it was clear to him now. There was no more room for excuses. “Kate was right! All those times she tried to tell me and I wouldn’t listen!"

Tom pinched the bridge of his nose, shaking his head before looking at her again, “I defended you!” He growled, “I told her she was wrong about you!"

Charlotte stood up again, taking a cautious step forward. “I didn't… I wasn’t…" She stuttered, unable to speak properly. She let out an awkward laugh when she couldn't seem to get the words out.

Anger and frustration building, Tom moved towards her, bending down so he was the same height as her, “Let me clear a few things up for you, Charlotte.” He sneered. “Firstly, I never have and never will have any interest in you." He could see Charlotte’s cool exterior starting to crumble as he continued, “Secondly, you are a jealous, devious, poisonous little bitch and I will never forgive you for what you did to Kate." 

Charlotte's eyes began to water and it no longer affected Tom. He didn't have an ounce of sympathy left for the selfish woman in front of him. He held eye contact with her for a few seconds longer before standing upright again. “I hope that tonight I’ve made you feel as miserable and humiliated as you made Kate feel. I hope that I've made you realize that nothing will ever happen between us. And if I have, then at least something good has come out of this vile situation."

He started to walk away, back towards the door into the club, his head down. As he reached the door, Charlotte called after him.

“Tom, please! I… I love you!”

Pausing, he turned back to her. “I don’t love you, Charlotte. I don’t even like you anymore.”

As he opened the door to go back inside, Charlotte’s sobs were drowned out by the noise of the party inside, but Tom didn’t rejoin the celebrations. He walked quickly through the club towards the exit, ignoring the people around him that were calling his name. He was done with tonight, with L.A. and with Charlotte. 

He just wanted to go home.

Tom climbed the stairs to Kate’s flat two at a time in his eagerness to get to her. And this time he wasn’t going to give up. He was ready to admit he’d been wrong about Charlotte and tell Kate how sorry he was, and that he should have listened to her. He wasn’t going to leave until he had the woman he loved back in his arms.

Taking a deep breath and trying to compose himself, he knocked twice on her door and plunged his hands into his pockets nervously as he waited. He heard footsteps approaching from the other side of the door, then it cracked open and Kate was peering around it at him, her eyes wide as she took him in.

“Tom? What are you doing here?”

“Can I come in?” He asked hopefully.

Kate glanced behind her awkwardly and was about to speak again but Tom interrupted her. “Kate, listen… I know about Charlotte. I know about everything she did to you and I’m so sorry I didn’t listen to you."

Kate watched him silently as he continued, “I should have taken it more seriously. God Kate, I wish I could turn back the clock and I know I can’t but I’m here now… and I’ll do whatever it takes to make things right between us. I can’t spend another day without you."

Kate looked to the floor, seemingly deep in thought. Tom watched her anxiously. Finally, she looked back up at him and shook her head, “It’s too late."

“W-What?” Tom stuttered, taking a step backwards in shock.

“It’s too late, Tom." She repeated with a frown. "You should have listened, but you didn’t. You had your chance. It’s been months now. I’ve moved on with my life… I’ve moved on from you.”

“But…” Tom could feel panic starting to rise in his chest as he stared at her.

Kate shook her head again, “I’m sorry, but nothing you can say will change the way things are…" She sighed, "I think you should go."

“Kate, please!” Tom begged, moving back towards the door, towards her.

“Don’t come here again." Kate answered flatly, before closing the door in his face.

Suddenly, Tom woke with a gasp, bolting upright in his seat. His skin was clammy and he was breathing hard as he glanced around the plane.

“Tom? You okay, mate?” 

Tom glanced across to Luke who was seated next to him on the plane, nodding before turning away and staring out the window with a sigh. “Just a bad dream.”

“I’d say more of a nightmare to have got you that worked up." Luke replied.

Tom squeezed his eyes shut and dropped his head back against the seat. “I went to see Kate. She rejected me, told me it was too late and she shut the door in my face.” He opened his eyes again and stared into his lap with a shake of his head and a humourless chuckle.

“Are you going to go and see her when we get home?” Luke asked cautiously.

Tom sighed, “How can I after all this time? She was right… or rather, the Kate in my dream was right. It is too late. I never should have doubted her in the first place. I should have listened… and I let her down.”

Picking at the seam on the armrest of his seat, he sighed again, “I lost her the day I let her walk out of my house. Too much time has passed now, I can’t just stroll back into her life and apologize and expect her to be okay with everything.” 

Not to mention she'd already moved on with Zack. He recalled the moment he saw her with Zack all those months ago when he had tried to see her and she'd looked... happy. How could he waltz into her life now and re-complicate things, or worse, embarrass himself like in his dream?

He felt a reassuring squeeze on his shoulder from his manager, “If that’s the case then you need to move on, mate. You said yourself, it’s been months now. You’ve got to get on with your own life.”

Tom responded with a sad nod of his head. He knew Luke was right. He had to pick himself up and try to forget about Kate. 

Tom knew he should try and stay awake for the rest of the day and go to bed at the normal time, but he was exhausted. He arrived home to be greeted by Bobby who had been dropped off by the dog sitter earlier in the day. He spent a good half an hour rolling around on the floor with his most faithful companion in a mixture of cuddles and play, Bobby ridiculously excited to have his dad home again at last. 

After a quick survey of his kitchen cupboards, Tom realised he had pretty much no food at all. He’d thrown away anything that could go off before he left for L.A., and all that was left was a few tins of various foods, none of which seemed particularly appealing. After all those months of American food, Tom was dying for some proper English home cooked grub. Well, at least grocery shopping would keep him awake for a bit longer. As he left the house, Tom decided against going to the small Tesco close to his house in favour of visiting a larger superstore a short car journey away, so he could fully restock his kitchen as he didn’t plan on leaving his house again for the next few days. 

Shopping complete and cupboards restocked, Tom made himself a cup of tea, armed himself with a packet of chocolate hobnobs, and made himself comfortable on the sofa. He went through his post and saw to anything that needed immediate attention, before powering up his laptop to go through his emails. By now it was quite late into the evening and Tom was starting to lose concentration. He was pretty sure he fell asleep momentarily a couple of times as he scrolled through his junk folder after attending to all the more important emails in his inbox. He flicked through them absentmindedly, paying little attention as he deleted them, until one made him stop dead. It was from One True Match. 

Still looking for love? Re-join for free today!

Tom slammed the lid shut with a huff. Just seeing that email had made him irrationally angry as it brought back yet more memories of Kate. How had someone as incredible as her ever needed a dating website? She should have had men falling at her feet, just like he had… like Zack had. The crushing reality of the situation hit him again, reminding him that Kate and Zack were a couple now. He wondered if they were still together. Of course they were, only an idiot would let Kate go… an idiot like him. All Tom could hope was that Zack was treating her well, just like she deserved. 

Not even thoughts of Kate were able to keep Tom awake and with a yawn he decided to call it a night. He let Bobby out quickly and made his way to bed, too tired to think anymore about anything for the day.

Tom slept solidly for fourteen hours, and it was only the sound of the heavy rain falling outside that woke him up. 

Welcome back to England.

Dragging himself out of bed with a groan, he wandered into the bathroom, turning the shower on and stepping under the warm spray. It was so good to be home, despite the weather. As he let the water wash over him he thought about the fact that he had a few weeks off to do whatever he wanted. He’d catch up with some of his friends, maybe go and stay with his mum for a few days, read some of the books he’d bought while he’d been in America… it was just lovely to think that for a while his life wasn’t all planned out for him. 

After he’d finished in the shower and had a coffee, he took Bobby out for a long walk around Primrose Hill. It was still raining but he didn’t actually mind too much after months of blistering LA heat. He needed to start running again too. There were plenty of things he could do to get his life back to normal, back to the way it was before Kate. He was forever going to regret letting her go but he had to try and move on now, just like Luke had said. Despite how stupid he'd been, he deserved to find happiness… even if it meant doing it without her.

Later that evening as Tom lay on his sofa reading quietly, his back started to ache again and he remembered that he still hadn’t booked that massage. Sitting up, he pulled his laptop towards him and opened it up to email the sports clinic he went to. He hadn’t shut it down properly the night before and his emails were still open on the screen, reminding him of the one from the dating website. He stared at it for a few moments as he thought it over. Maybe it was what he needed to do - throw himself back out there and meet someone new. If he could find someone as amazing as Kate on a matchmaking website, maybe he could find someone else that way, too? He reached out to click onto the website and paused again. He wasn’t sure… was he really ready for this? 

“Fuck it." Tom mumbled to himself as he loaded the website. He had to do something to try and get Kate out of his head. He typed in all his registration details again and quickly pressed submit before he had time to change his mind.

It had been put off for much too long. Kate should have packed them away six months ago, but she kept telling herself that her Loki Funko Pop!'s were just figurines and they didn't look like Tom… But she was constantly reminded of the movies, she would think of Tom's face and how captivating he was as Loki. Her mind would absently be drawn to the comic con event in New York and their roleplay adventure back at the hotel, and it would send her spiraling into her longing to see him again.

Kate ran her thumb over the freshly fallen tear drop on Dark World Loki's face and quickly scrubbed at her eyes. She put the figurine into the box and swept her gaze over the rest of her Loki memorabilia inside. She knew taking them down shouldn’t be such a big thing but they were the last trace of Tom in her flat, the last reminder of him being part of her life. They were nothing more than memories, just like Tom himself. 

Kate regretted giving up so easily. She missed him so much, the man that treated her better than any of her past boyfriends had. What had she been thinking...? Clearly, she hadn't. It wasn't perfect, but she threw away the best relationship she'd ever had because she couldn't deal with Charlotte or the how busy he was with his career. She should have tried harder, she should have been more understanding about his schedule. But what good would that do her now? Tom was in L.A., moving on with his life, with Charlotte, after letting her go way too easily.

Her thoughts were interrupted by her phone ringing on the table beside the box. She picked it up once she saw Roxy's name flash across the screen and wedged it between her ear so she could place the last of her Loki merchandise into the box.

"Hey Rox."

"Kate! What are you up to?"

Kate sighed as she closed the flaps on the box over each other. "Nothing… too important, really." Her procrastination of getting rid of an ex's constant reminders was not something she felt like sharing at the moment. "Just doing a bit of cleaning up."

"Well, how 'bout a break? Can we meet for coffee?"

Kate let go of the box with relief and stood up, heading for her room. Anything to take her mind off of things, she could use an afternoon out with her friend. "Sure! Let me just have a shower and I'll be ready. Meet you in an hour?"

"Let's meet at Coffee House, yeah?"

"Of course! See you in a bit!"

Kate ended the call with Roxy and began to get ready. Once she was showered and dressed, she put a bit of make up on and grabbed her umbrella before she walked out of her flat. Her favorite coffee shop was only a few blocks away and it wasn't raining very hard, so she walked. About halfway there, she wished she had worn a light jacket over her long sleeves. The September air was beginning to get chilly, as October was quickly approaching and so would the lower temperatures. She wasted no time in entering the shop once she arrived, sighing with relief when she felt the warmth of the coffee shop.

Walking up to the counter, she ordered her coffee and turned around to find Roxy. To her surprise, not only did Kate spot her, but sitting there right next to her was Zack. Her eyebrows drew up in surprise as she headed over, smiling at him when she sat down. "Zack! Roxy never mentioned you were coming!"

Zack gave her a sheepish smile, "Sorry, I hope you weren't expecting girl time."

"No no, that's okay! I was just surprised to see you here is all."

"I'd like to tell you that I just popped in for a coffee by coincidence, but… that would be a lie. You see, there's something Roxy and I want to talk to you about."

Kate furrowed her brow in confusion again, "Yeah?"

Roxy and Zack exchanged a look before Roxy took a nervous breath. Okay, they were acting really strange. What had gotten into them?

"Erm… Kate… Zack and I… Well, we…-" Roxy started, but Zack interjected as she struggled. 

"Roxy and I are together. We're dating." 

Kate's mouth dropped open and she looked between her two friends. "You… two... are dating? Have I heard that correctly?"

"Yes." Roxy spoke up a little more confidently this time.

Kate stared at them silently for a few moments, taking the news in before reacting. "Wow, I… I don't know what to say! I mean, it's a little unexpected, but… I'm happy for you guys!" Kate smiled.

"You are?" Roxy seemed to relax a bit after Kate voiced her approval. "Gosh, I was so nervous to tell you. I don't know if you noticed, but I could barely keep it together on the phone!"

Kate laughed, shaking her head. "No, I didn't actually."

Zack slipped his hand in Roxy's and gave it a gentle, reassuring squeeze as he grinned at her. "See, I told you she would understand."

Roxy blushed and looked at him with a small smile, "Well, yeah but…"

Kate watched their little exchange, wondering how she'd missed it. Had they always been into each other? "So when did this happen?"

Zack rubbed the back of his neck with his free hand, "Well… to be honest? It started about five months ago…"

Kate widened her eyes, "Five months?" 

"Remember that night we dragged you to the bar, but you weren't quite ready…?"

Kate thought about it for a moment, recalling that night. She had caught the attention of a guy across the bar and she realized it was too soon after Tom. So she left early, leaving Zack and Roxy… by themselves…

Her mouth dropped open and she looked between the two with a look of realization.

“We were both really drunk… I was trying to move on from Greg and Zack was trying to move on from-” Roxy began to explain, but Zack cut her off quickly. 

“My single life.” Zack glanced at Roxy sternly for a moment before turning back to Kate with a smile like nothing happened. There was something about his tone Kate had picked up on, but she quickly forgot about it as he continued. "Now before you assume-" He added quickly, pointing at her. "-we haven't been serious the whole five months. We hooked up that night and after that we weren’t sure what we really wanted out of it.”

“Right, we thought maybe it was just a one night stand kind of a thing, so at first we acted like it never happened... Then eventually we went on a few dates and decided we really liked each other and wanted to give it a shot.”

As Kate processed everything her friends had just told her, she took a long drink of her coffee, which had cooled down a little since she’d sat down so it went down without burning her throat. “Wow…” She finally said after swallowing the warm, bitter liquid and tapped her finger on the lid a couple of times. “I mean, I know that you guys weren’t officially together until recently, but… how did I not notice it?” The question was more to herself than it was directed at them, but Roxy spoke up anyway.

“Well… You have been pretty distracted lately, Kate.” Roxy pointed out softly, earning her a curious look. “Ever since Tom… you haven’t really been yourself. And I’m worried about you.” She reached across the table between them and covered Kate’s hand with hers. “I’m not trying to rush you, but maybe now it’s time that you moved on?”

“We just want you to be happy, Kate.” Zack added with a smile, “You don’t have to go out with the next guy you meet, but maybe just think about it, yeah?”

Roxy sat back and watched as Kate picked at the hem of her top. She sighed, looking down as her eyes watered. "Maybe you're right…" She looked back up, holding back her tears as she cleared her throat. "You know what I was doing before this? I was packing things away that remind me of Tom. There's a box sitting on my living room table with my Loki figures, the book he gave me when he took me to New York, the bracelet he bought me for Christmas, and his Cambridge hoodie that I couldn't bring myself to return to him…"

"That's good, Kate! It's progress. Moving slow is okay, as long as you keep moving forward. You'll never get over him this way."

Maybe I don't want to get over him… Kate thought briefly, but quickly abandoned it. She had to. As much as she didn't want to, this was something she had to do to be happy. Even if she had to be happy without Tom.

Kate had a lot to think about on the way home. She walked slowly in the rain under her umbrella, her thoughts shifting from Zack and Roxy, to Tom, to the fact that she had to move on. Could she? Could she try and find someone else to love as much as she loved Tom?

She certainly had to try.

When Kate got back to her flat, she kicked off her shoes and dropped her bag and keys on the table. She looked across the room at the box she abandoned earlier when Roxy had invited her out. She sighed, walking over to it and staring, contemplating her next move. Finally, she decided to scribble Tom's name on the box and tape it closed before placing it on the top shelf of her closet in her room. Baby steps.

Perhaps someday she could part with it. She'd find someone to sweep her off her feet and she wouldn't feel like she needed it anymore. Then she would get rid of it. But for now, it would stay nestled safely in her closet, where she could access it if she wanted another look.

Later that evening, Kate was curled up on the couch with Netflix on the telly and her laptop propped open on her lap. She was scrolling through her emails while occasionally texting with Roxy. There was one email that nearly made her drop her phone. Are you still with us…? It was from One True Match. She abandoned her phone on the couch next to her and clicked on it, reading it's contents. 

Hello Kate!

It's been a while since we've heard from you! One year to be exact! Last match didn't quite work out? Don't let that stop you from getting back out there! Please take a few moments to sign into our website and update your profile, then begin the process of finding another match - on us! 

One True Match Customer Service 

Kate stared at the email. She couldn't believe the coincidence of them emailing her today, of all days. The day she chose to move on from Tom Hiddleston. 

Chewing on her bottom lip, she clicked on the link at the end of the email, which took her to the website. She slowly typed in her login details and with her cursor hovering over Login, she clicked on it. It took her to her old profile page and she looked everything over, deciding nothing about it had changed. The website automatically updated her age, as her birthday was stored in her settings, and she still had the same job and hobbies. So there was nothing more to do than to find her next match. After staring at it for a minute while she thought it over, she chose to go for it.

"Well, there you have it matchmaking gods. Don't let me down this time." Kate's voice fell into a whisper as she talked to no one in particular, feeling silly toward the end.

Knowing it would take some time, she shut her computer and decided to finish watching the remaining twenty minutes of the movie she had put on and head to bed. 

Kate woke up the next morning feeling the absence of a weight that had been resting on her shoulders for a long time. She knew it had to do with her choosing to finally move on and take a step toward finding someone new. Nerves twisted in her belly as she laid there, wondering if she'd been matched yet. There was only one way to find out…

After she had gotten up and sat down with her coffee, Kate checked her email. Her brow furrowed when she realized she hadn't received any word from the website yet. The last time she had done this, she'd woken up to a match. Perhaps it would take a bit longer this time. 

Kate decided to keep busy and not drive herself crazy over it. She finished her coffee, had some breakfast and did a bit of much needed cleaning around her flat. Grocery shopping was added to her list of things she needed to do, so she got herself dressed and popped over to Tesco after she ate some lunch. When the groceries were all put away, she decided she'd done enough chores for the day and settled down in front of her computer to check the website. To her surprise, she'd received a notification. 

Match found.

Excitement thudded in her chest as she stared at the same words she'd seen for the first time a year ago. What kind of man had the world thrust at her this time?

The moment she clicked on the link, she was taken to the page of her match, and her breath caught in her throat. 

Tom H.

@fandom-and-feminism @fadingcoast @igotloki @nikkalia @manager-of-mischief @spidey-bites @dangertoozmanykids101 @xxloki81xx @furstinnajoelle @just-the-hiddles @wholelottatiffy @libbymouse @kitsuneharo12 @michelegurl @I-cant-remember-my-old-login @thathedonistgirl @vethrvolnir2 @fairlightswiftly @jessiejunebug @ihthr @devilbat @exbandragirl @joyofbebbanburg @sabine-leo @mandapanda8 @officiallyunofficialperson @wolfsmom1 @littlefrogstuff @writingmi @drakesfiance @scorpionchild81 @little-moonbeam–666 @canadianjelly @originalsoulcollector @gorgeous1974 @teylacarter91 @stubby-toe-589331 @kcd15 @sterwild

[goodticklebrain]

Q&A August: Kate Pitt, Pocket Dramaturg

I’m so very excited about today’s installment of Q&A August, because it means I get to formally introduce you to Kate Pitt, my pocket dramaturg and Shakespearean soulmate! I first met Kate when she saved my life by letting me crash on the couch in her hotel room before the closing banquet of the 2016 Shakespeare Theatre Association conference. It was my first conference and, by the last day, I was so sleep deprived that I could hardly function. Despite meeting me in such a ragged and incoherent condition, Kate, who was then working in Public Programs at the Folger Shakespeare Library, decided to invite me to the Folger for a public interview/talk event.

You can read up on my visit to the Folger here: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4. But, long story short, in Kate I found an absolutely kindred spirit. Within half an hour we were completing each others’ sentences, most because we were conversing almost entirely in Shakespeare quotes. Since then we have gone on several Shakespeare adventures together, including a long-overdue joint pilgrimage to Stratford-upon-Avon earlier this year. Despite having spent extended periods of time in close proximity, we have remained friends, which is something of a minor miracle.

Apart from being a delightful human being, Kate is also a genuine Shakespearean powerhouse, with a vast amount of both scholarly and practical Shakespeare knowledge and experience. You might have noticed that many of my recent comics have included the note “Thanks to my pocket dramaturg, Kate Pitt, for consulting with me on this comic.” This is because I quickly fell into the habit of texting Kate with random Shakespeare-related questions, like “IN HOW MANY SHAKESPEARE PLAYS DO SHEEP REGULARLY APPEAR ON STAGE?” Kate, in her infinite patience and bottomless depth of knowledge, would always promptly text me back with answers, including sources. It was like having my own personal dramaturg in my pocket.

Since then I have often brainstormed comic ideas with her, run drafts past for her approval, and asked for her help when wrestling with particularly troublesome punchlines. (Among other things, she helped me finalize the list of questions I’ve been asking everybody this month!) Creating Good Tickle Brain is a very solitary occupation, and for most of the past five and a half years I’ve been essentially operating in a vacuum. It’s been fun, but it’s also been lonely and isolating at times. Being able to bounce ideas off of Kate, and occasionally commiserate with her on the challenges of being self-employed businesswomen in the Shakespeare world, has made both my job and my life immeasurably more enjoyable.

And so, it gives me GREAT pleasure to turn things over to my pocket dramatrug!

1. Who are you? Why Shakespeare?

I’m Kate Pitt. I’m a dramaturg, writer, producer, and director. I grew up watching Shakespeare films with my parents and saw an outdoor Midsummer at the Edith Wharton house in Lenox when I was about seven. The Mechanicals drove up in a real Jeep, the fairies crept out of the actual woods (I was a city kid – trees were a big deal!), and I was hooked. I’ve also had many wonderful teachers.

2. What moment(s) in Shakespeare always make you laugh?

Orlando forlornly waving his arm and saying “It is my arm”? I’M THERE. A really good (bad) Viola-Sir Andrew fight? SIGN ME UP. Benedict being terrible at hiding? THE BEST. Pyramus’ never-ending death? I LOVE IT. The physical comedy in the plays always makes me laugh. There are lines of text that I almost always laugh at, but I’ve been more delighted when those bits are reinterpreted in ways that sacrifice the laugh, but gain something more interesting in its place. Olivia’s wide-eyed “most wonderful!” is a war-horse, but I once heard it delivered with quiet awe rather than schtick and it was shockingly beautiful. “The dead can live again” rather than “another one!”

Mya interjects: Ok, yes, I also love “It is my arm.”

3. What's a favorite Shakespearean performance anecdote?

A Winter’s Tale where the bear was a puppet, and entered down the aisle sniffing at the audience as it slowly stalked Antigonus. The bear nosed at the handbag of an old lady in the front row and growled at her. She growled right back.

Mya interjects: Don’t mess with old ladies’ handbags.

4. What's one of the more unusual Shakespearean interpretations you've either seen or would like to see?

The opening speech of Richard III done as Bunraku puppet theater, but with a person as the puppet. It showed the pain of being “unfinished” so beautifully while also being horrifying and incredibly funny. This Richard was so close to being a person (“a real boy!”) but knew that he lacked some essential, animating humanity and made a conscious decision to hurt people because of it.

5. What's one of your favorite Shakespearean "hidden gems"?

I love watching the characters on the sidelines – the ones who aren’t the center of attention but are telling incredibly rich stories with their silence. Margaret in Much Ado is a great example and I always watch her when the Prince explains why he thinks Hero is disloyal. Margaret knows in that moment that the ruined wedding is her fault but she says and does…nothing. Aufidius and Isabella also have whole histories in stillness.

6. What passages from Shakespeare have stayed with you?

I’ve had Henry V’s “upon the king” and the Scrivener from Richard III on my mind – the responsibility of leadership and the realization of its corruption – but my favorites are the ones I think as my own thoughts and it takes a minute to figure out where they came from. i.e. on a hiking trip in the pouring rain, carrying a heavy pack, and staring up at switchback #492, I thought, “Blow, wind! come, wrack! At least we'll die with harness on our back!” It took until the top of the mountain to figure that one out.

Mya interjects: If you’re not familiar with the Scrivener from Richard III (and there’s no reason why you should be,  since his scene is almost always cut), his one speech goes as follows:

SCRIVENER Here is the indictment of the good Lord Hastings, Which in a set hand fairly is engrossed, That it may be today read o’er in Paul’s. And mark how well the sequel hangs together: Eleven hours I have spent to write it over, For yesternight by Catesby was it sent me; The precedent was full as long a-doing, And yet within these five hours Hastings lived, Untainted, unexamined, free, at liberty. Here’s a good world the while! Who is so gross That cannot see this palpable device? Yet who so bold but says he sees it not? Bad is the world, and all will come to naught When such ill dealing must be seen in thought.

I’ve never gotten over the beauty of this line from Pericles – silence may be the perfectest herald of joy, but if you must use words, these ones are pretty great:  

“Give me a gash, put me to present pain, lest this great sea of joys rushing upon me o’erbear the shores of my mortality and drown me with their sweetness.”

7. What Shakespeare plays have changed for you?

All of the plays have changed as I’ve gotten older, but the ones that deal with grief have altered the most. A friend died suddenly when we were eighteen and I reached out for Cleopatra and Constance without consciously knowing why. My father died five years later, and by then I knew that I would find some kind of recognition in the plays and I deliberately went to them. The words were always beautiful, but now I knew what they meant. I must have heard Claudius’ “that father lost, lost his” speech a hundred times but never understood the obscenity of telling someone “the right way” to grieve until someone did it to me. Cordelia comforting the confused and frightened Lear sits close to my heart now, and Ophelia’s madness has method in’t. Hamlet’s “mirror up to nature” didn’t tell me what I’d see or how to respond, but it allowed me look at myself and observe both the shadow of my sorrow and the thing itself when I needed it most.

8. What Shakespearean character or characters do you identify the most with?

Beatrice. I love her wit, her walls and her willingness to climb over them, her delight in her friends’ happiness and her white-hot fury at their pain.

Mya interjects:  Can confirm, Kate is totally Beatrice.

9. Where can we find out more about you? Are there any projects/events you would like us to check out?

You can follow me on Twitter @katepitt and keep up with me on my website www.katepitt.com.

(Back to Mya)  Thanks so much to Kate not only for answering the questions she helped me come up with, but also for being an unfailingly helpful creative and emotional outlet. Get thee a Kate.

COMING NEXT WEEK: A wonderful woman who is training small children to become the next generation of Shakespeare geeks, and two Shakespeare geeks who regularly act like small children! 

[naveenkumarchandra]

I have received multiple requests, thus, here it is, a comprehensive topic wise book list and strategy to prepare PSIR.

Hope it helps, Good Luck!

Now, let me first begin with congratulating you guys on your decision to prepare for this exam. Although it is definitely just an exam but I am sure that many of you must have taken some very tough decisions and sacrificed a lot to begin this.

Let me give a very brief introduction, my name is Naveen Kumar Chandra, did my graduation from IIT Roorkee, passed out in 2015, I will be joining the IAS through CSE 2017. I am already in service, that is civil service, the IRPS through CSE 2016. My optional is PSIR, I got a very decent 153 in paper 1 last year but my marks in paper 2 disappointed me, a lowly 93, this also led to a great slide in my rank and I missed the IAS. This year, I improved a lot in Paper 2, securing a good score of 150, it is an improvement of 55 marks, which could’ve given me IAS last year itself, but I took Paper 1 very lightly, not even read the entire thing once completely, my soccer thus, came down to 130, this again made me miss the top 100.

So, the first lesson is, NEVER IGNORE ANYTHING, EVEN YOUR STRONG POINTS.

I have over 2 years, come to develop a comprehensive way to study PSIR, which led me to score good scores in both the papers.

But, first things first. If you have opted for PSIR, I guess it must be due to some underlying reasons, like:

Interest

Background

Overlap with GS

Scoring Nature

Now, if your reasons are first 2, then great. But, if your reasons are the bottom 2, let me clear a few doubts and bust a few myths. There is indeed a huge overlap with GS and it is also true that you might not need to study a lot of topics owing to your studying them for your optional. But, the answers demand different things, this was my mistake the first time around, as I didn’t join any test series, out of over confidence, of either mains or prelims, I didn’t realize that my optional answers and GS polity answers were similar, too deep for GS.

Then, if you have are in due to the scoring nature and the recent good results, then, this is never ever a surety. The results of a particular optional can go up or down but yes, a good student is rewarded even in a bad year of his optional.

Let us now come to some generic tips which will help you in your entire optional preparation:

Don’t end up doing a research project, stick to your syllabus and UPSC demands, you don’t have that much time and neither is it required.

Too many books, too much trouble, just pick one book and follow it religiously.

Make your own notes if you have time, you will end up memorizing a lot of it.

Always practice answer writing, daily, without fail.

Don’t try to impress strangers, by buying books with fancy names, and becoming a collector. Even if you love books, I know it can be a temptation sometimes, it was with me, but you will have time later to read them.

I will now cover the syllabus, as comprehensively as possible:

PAPER 1 PART A:

Although there are 10 topics to be covered in this part, they can all be clubbed under 2 main headings,

Political theories and Ideologies: This would include the theory of power, equality, justice, state, democracy etc

Political Thought: This would include, both, western and Indian political thought.

First and foremost, let me be very honest, I would recommend you guys to get Shubhra Ranjan’s Notes, not that they are sufficient enough to score well but, they are a very good foundation, especially if you have never ever read the subject. The process would thus be, go through the topics from the notes, you are now good to add to your knowledge, fill the gaps and complete your preparation. You might feel a bit weird about this, but as I mentioned, your goal here is to clear the exam and not to write a PhD thesis.

Once you have thus read the first part(a) as mentioned above, then, you have to refer to the respective chapters in the book, ‘Introduction to Political Theory by O.P. Gauba’. You don’t have to read the entire book, as many topics have indeed been covered quite comprehensively by Shubhra maam. The areas you need to focus on are, theory of state, justice(apart from rawls, especially his criticism), equality and affirmative action amd concept of legitimacy and authority.

You have to make additions to the notes or you can either decide to take up the topic from zero. I would suggest that, even if you are using Shubhra Ranjan’s notes, you would need to add a lot to them, thus, it is better that you make your own notes, in the process you will memorize a lot by writing.

Now, for part (b), western political thought has been covered beautifully by her. You would only need to read a book to get a new perspective and add a few scholars and their views but even if you don’t want to, you can do that. The book I would recommend is, ‘Western Political thought by Brian Nelson. It’s a beautiful book, I love it and its not that heavy a read either, if time permits, you must read it and fill in the gaps in these areas, J.S. Mill, Bentham, Rousseau and Marx.

Now, for Indian Political thought, you must read, V. R. Mehta, reason being Indian Political thought is not that well covered by her.

Also, you must develop a way to correlate certain thinkers from the same and opposite parts of the world, example, Machiavelli and Kautilya, Gandhi and Marx, Gandhi and Ambedkar, Ambedkar and Marx, Plato and Aristotle, Socrates and Plato, Hobbes and Locke, Bentham and Mill etc. Must make a note of the similarities and differences in their core philosophy.

PAPER 1 PART B

This part is again divided into 11 topics, I would again like you to club them into 3:

Indian Constitution and Government

Indian Polity

Institutions

For, 1st topic, you must get P.M. Bakshi, it is the bare text of the constitution, develop a habit of carrying it with you and reading it whenever you get a chance. Then, other very small but useful book to get a head start is S.C. Kashyap’s OUR CONSTITUTION.

After that, you can go through Shubra Ranjan maam’s notes, once you are done, you can add and fill gaps by referring to B.L. Fadia.

For the next part, which is mainly about the peculiarities of Indian Political system, like caste, communalism, regionalism, ethnicity etc, you can rely on her notes, she has covered it quite extensively, after that, you can buy Oxford Handbook. It has some beautifully written chapters, on these areas.

This paper, the first one, is more of what we call a static nature, that is, it contains mainly things and concepts which might not change. What you have to make sure is that you get the views of some contemporary as well as some classical commentators and experts.

PAPER 2 PART A

The second paper, part A is divided into 11 topics, I clubbed them into 3 major ones:

Comparitive politics

Theory of International Relations

Major Groupings

The first topic here is the most neglected one by Shubra Ranjan maam, maybe she took it lightly or maybe she has covered others better, whatever be the reason, you can’t rely only on her. For this part, the best source is IGNOU BA study material. Quite surprisingly, they cover the topics exactly as given by UPSC in its syllabus. One very great book that I would recommend you must read is Global politics by Heywood, it is an excellent work and would supplement the entire syllabus beautifully, don’t read all the chapters though, stick to the syllabus.

For the second topic, you can rely completely on her notes, she has done a great job in covering them. But for one topic in particular, the changing nature of international political order, you will again have to refer IGNOU material.

For the third topic, you will again have to go through both the notes and the IGNOU material, especially for SAARC, ASEAN, NAFTA, UN, NIEO and CMEA in particular.

PAPER 2 PART B

This is again a part with 8 points, divided by me into 2:

Foreign Policy

International Relations

This is perhaps the most dynamic of all the 4 parts. You will have to make sure that not only are you going to refer the standard books but some innovative mediums as well. Some very excellent sources are, apart from following foreign policy commentators and columnists in the Express and the Hindu, the website of MEA, you get some brilliant lectures and videos there and RSTV’S India’ World.

For the 1st topic here, you can read, apart from her notes, ‘Does the elephant dance’ by Malone.

For the 2nd topic, you will have to more heavily rely on her notes and the artices in the newspapers, you can also read one or two issues of foreign policy magazines. Although here, you will make, note of some country and region specific scholars and commentators, like retired ambassadors, UN representatives, Foreign Secretaries etc.

This is the entire book and material wise strategy. You must make sure that you have at least 10-15 scholars on your tips, for the entire syllabus, many of them, classical ones like Gandhi, Ambedkar and Nehru are very useful in Paper 1 Part A, while many contemporary ones like P.B. Mehta, C. RajaMohan, Suhas Palshikhar, Shashi Tharoor etc have written on a variety of subjects and thus can be used very intelligently in the entirety of the syllabus.

Again, you must also make it a point that theoretically static answers cover the core points first and the periphery is indeed the periphery, not the centre.

It must also be kept in mind that your answer must be a very healthy mix of static and dynamic.

Now, a few tips on how to approach answer writing, here, you must concentrate on the following points:

Be precise and to the point

Quote scholars

Write in paragraphs

Try to write in a good hand writing and underline important points

Make it a point to include the recent events wherever possible, especially in IR

I would now like to conclude, it’s a great subject and would fetch you great marks, some would say that they read it for 3 months only, that too only Shubra Ranjan maam’s notes and they succeeded, that might be even true but it’s an exception and their sheer good luck, there is no guarantee that they would even get a 100 marks if they wrote again, same is true for this approach as well but it surely does one thing, it minimizes your risk and you should always try to be sure then sorry.

I wish you luck, if you guys still wanna ask something, you can on quora, I write there regularly.

Thank You

[tinkerd]

THE COMPLETE GUIDE TO ASTERIX’ BY DAVID LITCHFIELD

(This post was originally written for the website nerdybookclub.com on April 3rd 2019)  

One Saturday afternoon, many, many years ago, my nan bought home a book called ‘The Complete Guide To Asterix’. She picked the book up from Kempston Library thinking it was another narrative adventure in the series of books she knew I loved so much.  The book was in fact a detailed text book  written by Peter Kessler which offers a thorough behind the scenes breakdown of every Asterix book that had been created up to that point. There was also a number of features in the book that looked at the creators of these great characters- the writer René Goscinny and the illustrator Albert Uderzo.

The Asterix books were a big deal for me growing up.  They are essentially comedy books but there is something very emotive about them. Asterix and his fellow villagers have so much heart and soul and the companionship between Asterix and his best friend Obelix was a beautiful thing. This may sound odd but carrying an Asterix book around with me at school gave me a sort of weird confidence that is hard to explain.

The exquisite artwork made it very easy for me to escape into this different time and place and visit ancient Gaul.

Growing up in a small town in Bedfordshire, England, there was something magical about reading books that were written and drawn in a different country that- at the time- seemed so far away. This was in the late 80s/early 90’s, before the internet. In a funny way reading Asterix made me feel more connected to the world. I consumed as many of the stories as I could. The artwork was always what drew me in. I still find the Asterix books a real source of inspiration in terms of Uderzo’s drawing style

In fact, I think it is fair to say that  I learnt to draw by copying the illustrations in the Asterix books and spent hours trying to capture Uderzo’s distinctive style. I love how beautifully ‘French’ a lot of the gestures and mannerisms his characters have.

When my nan bought home ‘The Complete Guide To Asterix’ that Saturday I remember being initially disappointed that it wasn’t a new adventure to get lost in.  However, I soon forgot this disappointment and read the whole book that afternoon. I reveled in the background information it offered on how these fantastic, beautifully exotic and hilariously funny comic books were bought to life.

The reason that the moment my Nan bought this book home is so important to me is that I am pretty sure that this is the precise moment that I realized that an ‘Illustrator’ was an actual job that people did.

The book told me that the illustrator and co-creator of Asterix: Albert Uderzo got paid to draw everyday and create characters and worlds and come up with adventures.  I found out that  Uderzo didn’t have to go to school, or go to work- (or at least the type of ‘work’ that I was getting accustomed to through my parents moaning about their own jobs) – Uderzo went to an art studio everyday. In this studio he was surrounded by pens, paint, paper and inspirational books and colorful posters. And he got to create new things every day.

There were photographs of Uderzo in the book. One was of him in his studio at his drawing desk staring up at us smiling. Another was of him working, totally focused on the page he was drawing and the new adventure he was creating.  These photos were captivating.  Uderzo was an actual illustrator. And he did get to do this every single day.

The thought that it was someone’s job to come up with these characters and spend their days drawing them was hugely exciting. When I realised that I could possibly do something similar and that could be my job …well, that thought blew my mind.

The life of Albert Uderzo sounded like a really happy and wonderful life to lead.

We didn’t have a great deal of money when I was growing up and we didn’t have computer games or satellite TV anything like that. But a library card was a very important object indeed and the library was a very important place. One of the most important places in the world in fact. It was there after-all that, aged 5, I found my first Asterix book. ‘Asterix & Cleopatra’.

Every weekend my brother, sister and I along with my mum or my nan would head to Kempston library and I would grab me some more Asterix.

Another thing we did seem to have a lot of back then was paper. My mum was able to get hold of lots of blank paper from her workplace. And I just drew all of the time.

With that paper I made my very own Asterix books. There was ‘Asterix & The Giant’ ‘Asterix In Space’ ‘Asterix Back From the Future’ All these self-made books were around 4 pages in length and written and drawn by me, inspired by the creations of Goscinny and (especially) Uderzo.  This soon developed into me coming up with my own characters and brand-new stories not associated with Asterix. I started to make comics for my brother and sister and my friends. I remember, when I was around 7 or 8, that we had a comic club where me and a few other kids would create comics together in my friends shed. It was a really great time and further sparked the creative fire inside me. There was- and still is- a magic to creating an image or a whole story from nothing. Something that didn’t exist before and now it does. Although, I have no idea where most of these comics are now. There are probably some remnants of them in various attics, garden sheds and birds’ nests around the Bedfordshire area.

When I did grow up and I really committed to becoming a full-time illustrator I thought about what area I wanted to focus on. I kept thinking back to the joy I felt getting lost in the artwork of, not just Asterix, but ‘Where the Wild Things Are’ by Maurice Sendak and ‘The Moomins’ by Tove Jansen.  I thought about how much these books inspired me when I was young.

I thought about how great it would be to be given the opportunity to create my very own, real life picture books.

It is obviously a joy to be able to do what I do and I am incredibly lucky. Illustrating books for children is one of the greatest jobs in the world. But, this job does also comes with a lot of negative factors. The hours are long, the deadlines come around too quickly, being sensible with money is hard, there is no paid holiday leave or health insurance. Sometimes these things can make you feel overwhelmed and down into the dumps.

But when I do feel like that, I think back to those photographs of Uderzo looking happy and content, lost in a zen like state whilst drawing in his studio. I remember how those photos made me aspire to want to live that creative life and how his art made me feel.

I still can’t quite believe that I get to do that now. I draw giants, bears and aliens all day, every day in my very own art studio. Just like Uderzo. That is obviously incredible thing.

I have only been doing this full time for just over 4 years and I still feel very humbled by it all. I feel humbled when someone says that they enjoyed my book, when someone wants me to draw their book or when someone asks to buy some of my drawings.

One of the most humbling and rewarding aspects of this job however is talking to kids at signings or reading the letters they send me about how much they have enjoyed my book and that they read it every night. That is seriously one of the greatest feelings ever. It really does make me feel very honored. It’s such a privilege to have my books be- maybe just in a small, fleeting kind of way- a very small part of someone’s childhood.

I hope that I never lose that feeling of being humble. I hope that I feel humble forever.

Those Asterix books and Albert Uderzo’s illustrations meant so much to me when I was a child. The thought that maybe my own illustrations will maybe do the same and inspire a child today is one of the main reasons of why I do what I do.

David Litchfield is the creator of the award-winning The Bear and the Piano, as well as the illustrator of Miss Muffet, Or What Came After by Marilyn Singer and many other picture books. He lives with his family in Bedfordshire in the United Kingdom. Visit him online at davidlitchfieldillustration.com, on Twitter @dc_litchfield, and on Instagram @david_c_litchfield.

[natsthinkitythinkthinkthonk]

Underrated Anime Series (Part One)

I can’t say that this will be the only part, but I don’t know when the next part will come! “Underrated” is a little broad. 

My definition means that I haven’t met a whole lot of people that have watched it, and I haven’t seen a whole lot of content or it on this website. Of course, you might not agree with this list. If there’s one missing, it’s probably because I haven’t watched it (Mushishi, 3-Gatsu no Lion, etc.). 

In order to qualify, I watched 12+ episodes or the complete series (only Honey and Clover remains uncompleted for now). 

NO ANIME MOVIES! That’s over here “Underrated Anime Movies (Take One)”

The descriptions, general information, and recommendations are generally provided by MyAnimeList with some editing done.

This list started off small then swelled out of control. It took me a long time. Hopefully, you can find a new anime to like on this list! Prepare for a long post!

Hachimitsu to Clover / Honey and Clover

Genre: Comedy, Drama, Josei, Romance, Slice of Life Studios: J.C.Staff Length: 24 episodes (23 min per ep)

Three poor college guys live in a rundown apartment building. Shinobu is a mysterious, quirky person, who does things on a whim. Takumi is passionate both in work and love, and Yuuta is a simple person with simple dreams and desires. They meet a girl named Hagumi who is friends with Ayumi. Hagumi is a petite young-looking girl (basically, what the internet calls a loli). Ayumi is a beautiful and talented young lady. Together, they all try to get through college life and romance.

Similar Anime: - Nodame Cantabile: College students from artistic faculties both overcome personal hardship while finding their own personal romance. - 3-Gatsu no Lion: From the same creator and mangaka, the slice of life way of telling the stories of these dynamic characters and the differences and contrasts between the two stories definitely make them unique in their own right.

This is a great anime with a light palette, a simple yet stunning soundtrack, and a great story that brings realism and charming characters together. With strong performances from the voice actors, you will notice notable names like Tomokazu Sugita and Hiroshi Kamiya. To me, this was one of Sugita’s best roles. It showed me a more dramatic, vulnerable, and emotional side of his acting which was probably shown in Gintama a few hundred episodes in.

My complaints are that the pacing is a little slow sometimes (as expected with a slice-of-life series), and I didn’t like Hagu much because the internet poisons those types of characters (lolis). It makes her romances very shady and uncomfortable for me. You also might be deterred if you don’t like the genre.

Death Parade

Studios: Madhouse Genres: Game, Mystery, Psychological, Drama, Thriller Length: 12 episodes (23 min per ep)

This originally came from a short film called Death Billiards which was part of the Young Animator Training Project's Anime Mirai 2013. This series is basically a young animator’s film being made into a series, and I think that’s awesome. It has the same director as Mob Psycho 100 despite being a dramatic series with no comedy.

After death, you arrive at a bar with no memory of how you died. Without heaven or hell, there stand two options: reincarnation or the void. To decide, you play a game like bowling, darts, or pool. Winner gets reincarnation while the loser is sent into the void. Welcome to death! Don’t be fooled by the opening, this anime is not happy.

Similar Anime: - Jigoku Shoujo: Divine punishment is delivered by emotionless beings. Each episode seems to have its own cast with an overarching storyline even though Jigoku Shoujo is a lot longer. - Psycho-Pass: Even though I haven’t watched this one, both touch on very philosophical subjects that contain the idea of the difference between right and wrong and the lines in between. They are both psychological thrillers.

This anime was one that introduces a new story every episode but has an overarching plot that wraps it together. Its development is done well. The characters may seem blank, but that’s for the sake of the new characters that come with each episode. It can be felt to be very emotional so have your tissues at hand for the finale (I didn’t cry, but I hear it was really sad?)

The art fits the plotline perfectly. The voice acting is strong with a cast that is filled with notable names like Tomoaki Maeno and Asami Seto, but there are many names in the supporting cast as well.

The side plot seems poorly done at times, and there are plot elements that are introduced that indicate another season, but we won’t be having one. There is pretty much no happiness to be found here.

Barakamon

Studios: Kinema Citrus Genres: Slice of life, comedy Length: 12 episodes (23 min per ep)

Handa is a calligraphy prodigy who is sent to the Goto Islands as punishment for punching a veteran judge who called his work “unoriginal”. He must find inspiration and learn the ways of his new life.

Similar Anime: - Poco Udon World/Sweetness and Lightning: I’m not including Usagi Drop because of the manga. SCARRED ME FOR LIFE. These are all about people who fall into a single-parent situation. - Shigatsu wa Kimi no Uso: Both are about child prodigies who have to explore life beyond the book, but Shigatsu takes a more romantic drama kind of approach. *Gin no Saji: [ON THIS LIST - Please look at both anime entries to see why!]

This is one of my favourite anime out there! Its story is relatable to many people who grew up with expectations. It’s about a guy who gets wisped into a life he never asked for and experiences a taste of the childhood he never had. This is one of the first anime I recommend to anyone of any age especially if they’ve never watched anime before. I think this was the first anime I showed to my own mom, and she enjoyed it.

Gakkou Gurashi!

Studios: Lerche Genres: Psychological, Slice of Life, School, Horror, Mystery Length: 12 episodes (24 min per ep)

Yuki loves school so much that she never wants to leave! But it’s not as if she can. She’s part of the School Living Club which consists of the president Yuuri, Kurumi, Miki, Sakura-sensei, and the club dog Taroumaru all live at school. Despite the illusions of Yuki’s imagination, the real purpose of the School Living Club is to escape from the shocking and disturbing truth: the girls are in the middle of a zombie apocalypse and have barricaded themselves inside the school as the sole survivors.

Similar Anime: - Madoka Magica/Higurashi: I haven’t watched Madoka and Higurashi, but they both use cute as a facade to hide the darker themes and horrors behind everything. “Moe moe kyun”? More like “moe moe kill”. (I’m going to be kicked in the balls for that) - Girls’ Last Tour: I haven’t watched Girls’ Last Tour, but I know they have post-apocalyptic cute girls doing normal things. They all only have each other and try to enjoy each day peacefully. - Angel Beats: Both shows present normal high school students who live in excruciating circumstances that all hide a deeper meaning. This show has less cutesy moe stuff though.

It delivers on the promised cute elements. I even tried recommending it to a friend who likes Love Live! Let’s just say, there are some differences. The voice actresses do a great job, and I actually found this anime kind of scary (although I get scared too easily).

Gin no Saji / Silver Spoon

Studios: A-1 Pictures Genres: Comedy, Slice of Life, School, Shounen Length: 11 episodes (23 min per ep)

Hachiken is a studious and diligent student who found it unbearable to live with the expectations of his parents and society. With his entry into high school, he decides to attend a unique boarding school in the countryside. The new environment isn’t what he expects, and along with meeting his new classmates and surroundings, he tries to adjust while trying to survive his new life.

Similar Anime: - Fullmetal Alchemist: This is an unexpected entry, but they have the same creator! Both are beautifully developed stories with lovable characters that you get attached to. Hiromu Arakawa is a genius in her own right, and this story has her art and her brilliant storytelling. *Barakamon: [ON THIS LIST - Please look at both anime entries to see why!]

The voice acting here is great too, and the animation does its job well, but the real magic here is in the storytelling and the characters. I love the entire cast so much. Each of them are realistic and hardworking despite having their own quirky attributes. The setting and the meaning of every line of dialogue really sticks with me. The morals in both Barakamon and Gin no Saji are ones that I will never forget. The only reason why I don’t actively recommend this is because it is a farm, and those with weak stomaches might not like the idea of dealing with farm animals that get eaten, but if that’s the case, why eat meat at all? No animals are killed on-screen.

Hai to Gensou no Grimgar

Studios: A-1 Pictures Genres: Action, Adventure, Drama, Fantasy, Isekai Length: 12 episodes (24 min per ep)

*Isekai = Term used for fictional stories where characters are thrown into a new (usually fantasy RPG-style) world

Thrown into a foreign land with nothing but hazy memories and the knowledge of their name, a group of strangers is given no other choice than fight and eliminate anything that threatens the peace in their new world, Grimgar. This is no game—there are no redos or respawns; it is kill or be killed. It is now up to this ragtag group of unlikely fighters to survive together.

Similar Anime: - Sword Art Online/Goblin Slayer: They are of the same genre, but Grimgar does a better job than both combined (but I dislike SAO and Goblin Slayer). - Tate no Yuusha: Another Isekai anime (like SAO and Goblin) except unlike the two other similar anime, these ones are both done well. Tate no Yuusha already has a following.

The voice acting here is great, and we see Hosoya playing the main role for once! The art and animation are done well. This anime takes a far slower approach comparing to other Isekai anime. They spend more time on the emotional burdens of each of the characters and their slower adjustments. While that’s a turnoff to some, they make you view the lives of these former normal citizens and make you wonder whether you’d be able to survive these circumstances, and if you don’t like that... well... there is the fan-service I guess.

Hinamatsuri

Studios: feel. Genres: Comedy, Seinen, Slice of LIfe, Supernatural Length: 12 episodes (23 min per ep)

Yakuza member Nitta is rudely interrupted when a young female esper barges into his life. He quickly finds himself being a caregiver and parental figure to the girl. The unlikely duo lives life unconventionally as circumstances change and everyday chaos ensues.

Similar Anime: - Mob Psycho 100: The number of similarities often go unnoticed, but they are both about shady adults (a conman and a yakuza) taking in a young esper (Mob and Hina) with hilarious stories. YOU MUST WATCH BOTH. - Gintama: Odd choice, I know. Both are quite similar in terms of humour. Gintama takes the shounen route while Hinamatsuri is a seinen series.

The majority of this voice cast are newbies (meaning people I’ve never heard of before), and honestly, they do such a great job that I genuinely thought that these people were seasoned veterans. Same with the studio. I don’t usually see them take on these kinds of projects (with most of their things being basic Slice of Life). The faces are hilarious. The characters are hilarious (thanks to brilliant writing and voice casts). It was so much fun to watch. I had to conceal my laughter at 2am because I was secretly binge-watching this. I failed multiple times. 

Net-juu no Susume

Studios: Signal.MD Genres: Game, Comedy, Romance Length: 10 episodes (23 min per ep)

30-year-old Moriko Morioka is unemployed—and she couldn't be happier. Having quit her job of over 11 years, Moriko quickly turns to online games. With the pesky societal obligations of the real world out of the way, she dives into the realm of an MMO. Life online and in the real world intertwine.

Similar Anime: *Wotakoi: [ON THIS LIST - Please look at both anime entries to see why!] *ReLIFE: [ON THIS LIST - Please look at both anime entries to see why!]

This oddly relatable and adorable (don’t know what other words to use) romance between two people who meet online is honestly so pure, but let’s not forget that one of the high-ranking staff members of this anime is... uh... less than wholesome. 

Kazuyoshi Yaginumi (director) is a Holocaust denier and a supremacist who has radical political views. But hey, if you’ve watched the third season of Natsume’s Book of Friends, Naruto, No. 6, Tokyo Magnitude 8.0, Hotarubi no Mori e, Black Bullet, Beck, or Akira, I hate to break it to you, but he was a part of all of them. I found this out after I watched the anime. I probably would not have watched this if I knew. But if you dismiss the anime that this man has worked on, you are truly missing out. Let’s not forget that he wasn’t the only person working on these projects, and he isn’t the creator, but let’s pray that he isn’t hired to do anything else!!! I don’t know of any other major work he got after this one (aired in 2017)

Wotakoi

Studios: A-1 Pictures Genres: Comedy, Romance, Slice of Life Length: 11 episodes (22 min per ep)

Narumi Momose finds herself running late for her first day of work at a new office. She makes a promise to herself that none of her coworkers will find out about her dark secret: that she is an otaku and a fujoshi. This goes wrong when she runs into Hirotaka Nifuji, a friend from middle school. Luckily for her, the only witnesses to this slip-up are Hanako Koyanagi and Tarou Kabakura who are otaku as well. But what happens when otaku date each other?

Similar Anime: *Net-juu no Susume: [ON THIS LIST - Please look at both anime entries to see why!] *Gekkan Shoujo Nozaki-kun: I constantly swear on this anime because I like both of these anime a lot.

I liked this one better than Net-juu no Susume, but that isn’t because of the director of the other one. I like this one for its cast of characters, its use of references that go beyond the gaming world (although this anime touches on it too), and the fact that there are different type of otaku out there. I seriously understood more references than I would’ve liked. 

No. 6

Studios: Bones Genres: Action, Sci-Fi, Mystery, Drama Length: 11 episodes (23 min per ep)

Many years ago, after the end of a bloody world war, mankind took shelter in six city-states that were peaceful and perfect... at least on the surface. However, Shion—an elite resident of the city-state No. 6—has an encounter with a mysterious boy, Nezumi who lived in the desolate wasteland beyond the walls of the supposed utopia. Despite knowing that the other boy was a fugitive, Shion decided to take him in for the night and protect him, which resulted in drastic consequences. Now, a long time after their life-altering first meeting, Shion and Nezumi are finally brought together once again—the former elite and the boy on the run are about to embark on an adventure that will, in time, reveal the shattering secrets of No. 6.

Similar Anime: - Banana Fish: I haven’t completely watched Banana Fish, but it features the darker sides of society with loads of casualties.  *Zankyou no Terror: [ON THIS LIST - Please look at both anime entries to see why!]

Hosoya and Kaji are both amazing in this anime. This anime meant a lot to both of them. Hosoya wanted to give up voice acting while Kaji was a fan of the original series and was hyped to hear its news for adaptation. This heartwrenching story suffers from the whole “rush this bad adaptation”, but as someone who doesn’t read manga/novels, this anime is a great look into the inside of this intricate universe. Again, most of the shortcomings have to do with poor pacing and toned down storytelling (and toned down violence) which come from being badly adapted from the source material, but even after taking away all that good stuff, we’re still left with a pretty good anime. Just don’t cry... too hard... yeah.

Kimi to Boku 

Studios: J.C. Staff Genres: Comedy, Drama, Romance, School, Shounen, Slice of Life Length: 13 episodes (24 min per ep)

Four high school boys, who have known each other since childhood, hang out together in school every day in their mundane lives. There's the handsome twins Yuuki and Yuuta Asaba, the gentle Shun Matsuoka, and the calm class head Kaname Tsukahara. Although they have become used to a lack of excitement in their lives, the addition of a new transfer student, Chizuru Tachibana, may add a little more adventure to their routine.

Similar Anime: *Danshi Koukousei no Nichijou: [ON THIS LIST - Please look at both anime entries to see why!] *Hachimitsu to Clover: [ON THIS LIST - Please look at both anime entries to see why!]

While I wouldn’t classify this as a complete shounen nor would I call it a shoujo, it achieves a happy medium with enough anime cliches to call it an anime and enough ordinary elements for me to truly feel that it can be relatable. It has a really nice OST that’s sung by Aoi Shouta at times. We have a stacked and entertaining voice cast, and the story is slow but nice. It pulls more at the slice of life side rather than romance.

Danshi Koukousei no Nichijou / Daily Life of High School Boys

Studios: Sunrise Genres: Comedy, School, Shounen, Slice of Life Length: 12 episodes (24 min per ep)

Hidenori, Yoshitake, and Tadakuni are just an everyday trio of ordinary guys trying to pass the time, but who said everyday life couldn't be interesting? 

Similar Anime: *Nichijou: [ON THIS LIST - Please look at both anime entries to see why!] *Kimi to Boku: [ON THIS LIST - Please look at both anime entries to see why!] *Gintama: The shows do share a number of voice actors, the humour is similar, and the general nonsensical writing will draw audiences from both sides.

Here’s the more comedic and strictly non-romantic side of Kimi to Boku. This one is probably relatable in way that shouldn’t be shared with the general public. Unlike the other Nichijou (with girls and by Kyoto Animation), this one doesn’t rely on the animation. It relies on humour in its writing. There aren’t any really good female characters in this anime. It does focus on three guys and their antics though. And I mean, is anyone in this anime really a winner?

Natsume Yuujinchou / Natsume’s Book of Friends

Studios: Brain's Base Genres: Slice of Life, Supernatural, Drama, Fantasy, Shoujo Length: 12 episodes (24 min per ep)

Takashi Natsume has had a connection with youkai all his life and soon discovers that his deceased grandmother Reiko had passed on to him the Yuujinchou, or "Book of Friends," which contains the names of the spirits whom she brought under her control. This makes him a target of enraged youkai that want their names back. His only companion is a self-proclaimed bodyguard named Madara. Fondly referred to as Nyanko-sensei, Madara is a mysterious, pint-sized feline spirit who has his own reasons for sticking with the boy.

Similar Anime: *Mushishi: I haven’t watched Mushishi (even though it’s on my watch later list). It contains similar ideas and concepts. *Hotarubi no Mori e: Same creator/mangaka! Yuki Midorikawa has taken her masterful storytelling to other stories, and Hotarubi has a wonderful anime movie that manages to get you with the feels in less than an hour.

I know this anime gets a lot of attention already, but I feel like I haven’t met a whole lot of people who’ve watched it. A shoujo without romance? It’s unusual, but this definitely works out. The simple art works in its favour, and its music is beautiful. This anime has a way of making all of its stories resonate, and if you aren’t going to watch it for the youkais’ stories, watch it for Nyanko-sensei. He’s honestly the best.

Sakamichi no Apollon / Kids on the Slope

Studios: Tezuka Productions, MAPPA Genres: Drama, Josei, Music, Romance, School Length: 12 episodes (22 min per ep)

Introverted classical pianist Kaoru Nishimi has just arrived in Kyushu for his first year of high school. Having constantly moved from place to place since his childhood, he abandons all hope of fitting in, preparing himself for another lonely, meaningless year until he encounters the notorious delinquent Sentarou Kawabuchi. Kaoru begins playing the piano at after-school jazz sessions, located in the basement of fellow student Ritsuko Mukae's family-owned record shop.

Similar Anime: - Your Lie in April/Shigatsu no Kimi no Uso: Both anime are about classical musicians breaking out of their shells in beautifully written stories. Sakamichi no Apollon is arguably more serious and take on a bit of a darker and more mature tone since Shigatsu is a shounen anime while Sakamichi is a josei. *Kimi to Boku: [ON THIS LIST - Please look at both anime entries to see why!]

This anime suffers the same thing that No. 6 does. The story gets watered down and condensed to fit the short-episode format, and so much is left out in terms of pacing. The voice acting in this is phenomenal. Ryohei Kimura and Yoshimasa Hosoya do not disappoint. Yuuka Nanri barely has any other lead roles, but she does an okay job here too. Yoko Kanno on score composition is one of the best decisions to be made for this anime even if jazz isn’t her main genre of choice. She composed everything masterfully. I wouldn’t have thought that she did it if I didn’t see it on the staff list. Those things are the reasons why I liked this anime so much. The OST and voice acting are good enough for me to recommend this anime despite (like No. 6), the adaptation quality not being that great. Even taking that stuff away, we are still left with a great anime.

ReLIFE

Studios: TMS Entertainment Genres: Slice of Life, Romance, School Length: 13 episodes (23 min per ep)

Hopeless 27-year-old loser Arata Kaizaki bounces around from one job to another after quitting his first company. He meets Ryou Yoake who offers Arata the opportunity to change his life for the better with the help of a mysterious pill. Arata takes it and awakens to find that his appearance has reverted to that of a 17-year-old. He takes part in a unique experiment and must attend high school as a transfer student for one year. Arata struggles to adjust to his hectic new lifestyle and avoid repeating his past mistakes, all while slowly discovering more about his fellow classmates and himself.

Similar Anime: - Erased: Both anime are about adults reliving their past and trying to make amends for past mistakes that they’ve made. Erased takes more of the murder mystery route while ReLIFE stays in a simpler slice of life style. *Net-juu no Susume: [ON THIS LIST - Please look at both anime entries to see why!]

This anime suffers the same thing that No. 6 and Sakamichi no Apollon does. The story gets watered down and condensed to fit the short-episode format, and so much is left out in terms of pacing that they had to fit hundreds of chapters into the second season which had FOUR episodes. This one has an awesome casts which mixes experienced voice actors with newer ones. This was one of Yuuma Uchida’s first major roles, and we see new(er) people like Reina Ueda and Himika Akaneya mixed in too. In terms of experienced voice actors, we can look forward to Kensho Ono and Ai Kayano playing the main characters along with Haruka Tomatsu and Ryohei Kimura also playing major characters along with appearances from Noriaki Sugiyama, Daisuke Namikawa, and Miyuki Sawashiro. With a bunch of new EDs with practically every episode and an OST that people seem to love or hate (jazz piano riffs have to be your thing, and I liked it), the music is hit and miss. For me, it was a hit. The jazz soundtrack is out-of-place but unique. It takes a sharp contrast, and it isn’t bad music. 

Senyuu

[This anime is on the “Anime with Short Episodes” list]

Studios: Ordet, LIDENFILMS Genres: Action, Comedy, Parody, Fantasy, Shounen Length: 13 episodes (4 min per ep)

In a story we’ve all heard before, the demon lord is sealed until things go amiss! Amateur adventurer Alba Frühling and sadistic talented soldier Ross must go defeat monsters and seal the demons away.

Similar Anime: - Saiki: Both episodes have short run-time and derive their humour from parodying genres. Senyuu takes the RPG adventure genre and flips it on its head while Saiki takes overpowered espers and pulls it like Hinamatsuri and Mob Psycho 100. - Konosuba: I know this is strange coming from someone who actually detests Konosuba. I couldn’t stand the characters that were flawed to the point where I couldn’t like them no matter how hard I tried. Both take the RPG adventure world and parody it to the point where you wonder why these flawed buffoons are trusted with anything.

This anime is one of my favourite short anime out there. With a short run-time of four minutes, it quickly got me invested in the story and the characters. It was so funny that I found myself binge-watching both seasons and the OVAs within the same day. Yuuichi Nakamura and Hiro Shimono provide their perfect performances for this anime. The other cast members contribute a lot as well with other names like Ai Kayano, Yumi Uchiyama, Takahiro Sakurai, Kenichi Suzumura, and others. Hiroshi Kamiya also takes the lead role in the OVAs. Overall, it’s a great watch when you have no patience for 24-minute episodes.

Honobono Log

[This anime is on the “Anime with Short Episodes” list]

Studios: Fanworks Genres: Romance, Slice of life Length: 10 episodes (2 min per ep)

Insights into couples, why they’re better than being single, and why you’re just a sad loner.

This is actually based off a picture book.

Similar Anime: NONE!  I truly haven’t seen an anime like this around. While Tsurezure has its similarities in short-run time and romance, this one is vastly different. Dareka no Manazashi is too different to say it’s similar. Both are short (although Dareka no Manazashi is a short film) and about life, but Dareka no Manazashi is different because it focuses on one person doesn’t have romance and relies on more of the “growing up” part whereas Honobono relies on each specific situation.

This anime is another one of my favourite short anime out there. With a short run-time of two minutes, they manage to guilt-trip you for being alone and single. Of course, not all of them are about cute couple stuff, but some are about family and growing up. Miyu Irino and Asami Seto do an amazing job, and the OP is really nice and adds to the heartwarming factor of this anime.

Zankyou no Terror

Studios: MAPPA Genres: Thriller, Psychological, Drama Length: 11 episodes (22 min per ep)

Six months after a mysterious unsolved terror attack, a strange video makes its way onto the internet. In it, two teenage boys who identify themselves only as "Sphinx" challenge the police, threatening to cause destruction and mayhem across Tokyo. The police struggle to act effectively against these terrorists, with Detective Kenjirou Shibazaki caught in the middle of it all. The two boys behind the masked figures of Sphinx are known as Nine and Twelve, and they stand strong in a world of deception and secrets while they make the city fall around them, all in the hopes of burying their own tragic truth.

Similar Anime: - Death Note: I haven’t actually watched Death Note (haha), but they are both similar. I know that much. Both are about the police lagging behind some teenager as they wreak havoc, but while Light Yagami has a god-complex, Sphinx has its own secrets. - Psycho-Pass: I haven’t watched this one either, but both take on philosophical ideas that make you wonder whether society should be run one way or another. They are both centred around law enforcement and the detainment of those who step out of line.

Yoko Kanno provides yet another stunning masterpiece for this anime’s score which really drives the anime further. Along with extremely strong art style from Studio MAPPA, it creates for a very mysterious and eerie tone that fit the anime so well. The voice acting from the two leads and the detective are amazing, but I can’t say they have good female characters in this anime, and without good characters, I can’t say there was good voice acting on their parts, although, Megumi Han did sound pretty good in her given role. Soma Saito and Kaito Ishikawa are both close in real life, and it almost transcends onto the screen in this anime.

The story is riveting even if it’s been done before. It’s not the most unique in that right, but I still found myself finding these characters to be human. It was well-paced too and didn’t feel dragged or rushed for the most part. Shinichiro Watanabe directed and created this, and you might know him for Cowboy Bebop, Samurai Champloo, Kids on the Slope, Space Dandy, and more, and he certainly does not disappoint with this anime.