#i think this site has maybe warped my sense of humor just a little

[solena2]

Johnson:

Flying spaghetti monster: Son, is that a johnson?

Me: You fool. You moron. Johnson has been dead for 40 YEARS

Flying spaghetti monster: No, I asked if that’s a john, son. I need to fucking piss, son

Me: No, that’s the Rock

[spamzineglasgow]

PART ONE: Glitching the Collective Mind (Dan Power)

Figures 0.1, 0.2, 0.3, 0.4

“I am not a nihilist, but a mood of grim, jolly absurdism comes over me often, as it seems to come over many of my young peers. To visit millennial comedy… is to spend time in a dream world where ideas twist and suddenly vanish; where loops of self-referential quips warp and distort with each iteration, tweaked by another user embellishing on someone else’s joke, until nothing coherent is left…”

> This quote comes from ‘Why is millennial humor so weird?’, in which journalist Elizabeth Bruenig (2017) taps into the vein of gleeful absurdity which is emerging in online creative spaces. This insight seems to have struck a chord with creators and consumers of online content, as in response, the article itself has become widely memed. Above there are four examples of this, with each taking a meme that existed independently and reframing it with the ‘millennial humor’ headline. There is a degree of self-awareness to this reframing, as if the content creators have taken the label ‘weird’ as a challenge to rise to. The absurdity of the source material is heightened by recontextualising it as formal journalism. By prefacing this image with a frame that draws attention to the image’s weirdness, these anonymous content creators are wilfully resisting interpretation, revealing their intent to baffle, bemuse, or maybe even unnerve internet users.

> Bruenig observes a tendency in some memes to celebrate meaninglessness with comic sincerity. By responding to the article in the way they did, these content creators have proved Bruenig’s point. The theory is put into practice: a meme has entered circulation where the intention is to be deliberately and playful obscure, and where the individual memes are linked only by their deployment of the same frame. Importantly, for all the incoherence of the memes themselves, there is a coherence to the methods producing them.

> What sparks these acts of coordinated communal nonsense – are the motivations personal, political, or is it a celebration of weirdness for its own sake? By exploring the dark absurdism creeping into post-internet artwork, particularly in video content, this series seeks to examine the latent ideology underpinning the dark surrealism of internet humour, and how its rising popularity changes the ways we think about ourselves and our realities.

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“...that which was intended to enlighten the world in practice darkens it. The abundance of information and the plurality of worldviews now accessible to us through the internet are not producing a coherent consensus reality... It is on this contradiction that the idea of a new dark age turns: an age in which the value we have placed on knowledge is destroyed by the abundance of that valuable commodity, and in which we look about ourselves in search of new ways to understand the world.”

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In New Dark Age (2018), his examination of the internet’s infiltration of our daily lives, James Bridle only just stops short of declaring that the internet will be the death of humanity. As well as the environmental cost of constant streaming and downloading, Bridle argues that the internet poses an existential threat in a more epistemological sense, by attempting the impossible task of collating and networking humanity’s collective knowledge, history, and culture.

> This cataloguing is conducted through the use of databases, which media theorist Lev Manovich argues are becoming (if they aren’t already) the new dominant media (2010, p.70). The database is distinguished from a physical collection of items and information by its flexibility, and the user’s ability to manipulate the structure of the content by searching for key words. Here there is a paradox: because it is so meticulously structured, the experience of using a database is one apparently devoid of structure. Manovich notes that the database is “distinct from reading a narrative or watching a film or navigating an architectural site” since these experiences are all linear, and so are experienced by readers or viewers in the same way, with point b always following point a, and so on (p.65). In a database users navigate the information however they choose, in effect creating their own narratives, with no guarantee that any two users’ experience of a database may be the same.

> This same notion is put forward by Henry Jenkins in Convergence Culture (2006), where he says “each of us constructs our own personal mythology from bits and fragments of information extracted from the media flow and transformed into resources through which we make sense of our everyday lives”. The narratives we forge through our online experiences become part of our understanding of the world – and they seem to be creating more confusion than clarity. These narratives are arbitrarily structured, and may contain false information or information devoid of meaning. Also, thanks to the volume and speed of online messaging, language is evolving faster than it ever has before (Press Association, 2015). Information may be conveyed to us in unfamiliar terms, and so be open to misinterpretation.

> Internet users are bombarded with information, little of which has any meaningful or memorable content. Exposing people to a transparent mapped network of humanity’s knowledge, history, and culture has irrevocably warped our perception of ourselves, and our relationship to the world. As Bridle later notes, “the more obsessively we attempt to compute the world, the more unknowably complex it appears”. At best the database makes the sum of all the world’s content feel overwhelming, and at worst having it all laid out makes it feel mundane. Either way, the damage done is to expose internet users to too much information, and this can lead to an existential crisis.

> Spending too long online (or rather, too long outside of the real world) must saturate the mind. This oversaturation of meaning gives way to feelings of melancholic or manic absurdity, or as Bruenig puts it, a “creeping suspicion that the world just doesn’t make sense”. From this suspicion arises a new wave of disillusioned artists, who we will refer to as the post-internet surrealists. Unlike other meme creators (whose work arguably is surrealist in its Dada-like remixing of disparate elements), the post-internet surrealists are surrealists with intent, who respond to one another’s work, and whose videos consistently evoke alienation and absurd bemusement within digitally-rendered worlds. Videos such as BagelBoy’s pront (2017) engage with infinity as a source of existential confusion, and others like surreal entertainment’s What Kanye really showed Trump in the white house (2018) abstract real-life events to the point of absurdity (or make their inherent absurdity more apparent) by transporting them to a digital non-setting.

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Manovich argues that the database is a distinct cultural form, like a novel or film or building, in that it presents its own distinct model of how the world should be experienced. Unlike narrative, the database is non-linear. Unlike architectural structure, the database is non-spatial. It appears to us as information without structure and without context – in short, information divorced from the reality in which it takes meaning.

> This creates a tension, which grows stronger the more we rely on the online world to conduct business in the real one. It is resolved, or at least eased, by the digital world bleeding into the physical. The world becomes what Bridle calls ‘code/space’, which he defines as “the interweaving of computation with the built environment”. This term isn’t internet-specific, and covers anything which requires users to think computationally in order to interact, such as self-service checkouts, or traffic light buttons. However, its impact is most significantly felt in the prevalence of internet-connected devices such as the mobile phone, which turn the whole world into potential code/space.

> The internet is omnipresent. It is so vast in size that popular indicators of space and size fail to adequately describe it. It’s a hyper-object, to borrow a term from philosopher Timothy Morton, so large and far-reaching that it surpasses the boundaries of location, so and complex that it cannot be entirely comprehended at once.

> Morton is an ecologist, and develops his idea in relation to climate change. In the blog Ecology Without Nature, he describes the hyper-object global warming as being so “massively distributed in time and space” that we can consider it “nonlocal”, not existing wholly in any one place. He writes that when you experience rain you are “in some sense” experiencing climate, but “you are never directly experiencing global warming” (2010). Global warming is too big an object to meaningfully encounter, but to dismiss its existence on these grounds would be ridiculous. We may be unable to comprehend its existence entirely, but still we know it exists through the traces it leaves across the globe.

> Like global warming, the internet is a hyper-object, and the data we glean from it is just a fragment of the whole. When we consider the internet as one hyper-object, rather than a collection of individual data objects, then all internet-connected devices become components in a single global network, one global code/space.

> To meaningfully discuss the surrealism emerging online we will consider the internet not as a collection of individual texts, images and videos, but as one networked whole. Matthew Smith argues that, since digital media work by translating data into “universally exchangeable” bits, “all digital media are therefore identical in structure; like Campbell’s soup cans” (2007). The content of two memes may be worlds apart, but fundamentally they are both the same thing. Furthermore, if they both exist online, they are equally tiny composite parts of a larger total structure. This is not the same as, for example, claiming that all paintings in a gallery are part of the same work because they share a building. With physical objects, there is always the possibility of them leaving the gallery or entering a new one. This does not work digitally; you can’t have objects within the internet because the internet itself is an object of which digital artworks form a part.

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Briefly, we’ll consider a post-internet artwork which isn’t a meme. Crispin Best’s ‘pleaseliveforever’ is an eight-line poem which regenerates every few seconds under a new, randomly generated title (2017). By making the content arbitrary and fleeting, the poem draws attention to its medium, and flaunts its ability to do things pre-internet poetry never could. Musing on this, SPAM’s own Denise Bonetti asks “what is the poem, then? The structure? The algorithm?” (2019), and indeed, if the content of the poem is continually being remixed then the only constant by which we can define it is its invisible network of underlying code. Because it exists digitally, the poem’s structure and algorithm are indistinguishable – the algorithm is the structure. And it’s not a structure in its own right, but one small part embedded within the hypertext of the internet as a networked whole.

> The internet is a database of databases, one giant non-spatial structure too large to pigeonhole, but within which we can observe trends. It will be useful to conceptualise the internet as one giant work of art, a hyper-artwork with an uncountable number of authors and viewers. This artwork is mutable, and continually evolving. Since the internet is a network of information relating to the real world, it might be considered a reconstruction of reality. The internet then is a constantly changing map of the world, and if we consume its content on a daily basis, and if we never distance ourselves from its code/space, it throws our understanding of the world into a constant state of flux.

> This uncertainty, and the anxiety or absurdity arising from it, is key to understanding the work of the post-internet surrealists. BagelBoy’s icced (2017) might be set in the real world, but there’s no way to be certain. The plot is simply that a man goes to a store, buys a cola, then goes home to drink it, but through means of information saturation and a post-internet aesthetic these events are abstracted beyond relatability and almost beyond recognition. The film’s world is constructed out of PNG images, stock photos and text boxes – spoken words appear as text, characters glide across the screen at will, and at the end the film’s entire diegesis is hijacked by an advert. Either the video is deconstructing real-world events by moving them to a digital setting, or it’s physically depicting a virtual interaction (typing replaces speech online, people navigate between internet sites without physically moving, and adverts can materialise from anywhere at any moment with no prior warning). Like the explicitly surreal memes we’ll encounter in future instalments, icced presents an absurd but coherent depiction of code/space, a version of reality infused with internet logic.

> But before we examine these surreal memes in detail we’ll go briefly to the very beginnings of cinema, a period of experimentation and genre consolidation similar to that occurring in online spaces today. By examining the developments of early cinema and viral video in tandem, we’ll see that giving consumers the power to create and share their own work makes profit a less important factor in filmmaking, and that this fundamentally changes the kind of video content which gets produced and distributed.

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The prototype digital cinema emerging today may seem worlds apart from the first few years of cinema itself, but in fact the two share many common features. One scholar notes how “Both films of early cinema and online video clips are short films, mostly staying well under ten minutes in length” (Broeren, 2009). These short films were exhibited collectively in cinema’s early days (Gunning, 1990), keeping audiences supplied with a steady stream of novel content. Today they are exhibited side-by-side on databases like YouTube, where viewers can view as many as they desire in a single sitting, and sustain their own engagement by varying the content they consume at whim.

> In the early days of cinema, exhibitionists would often “re-edit” the films they purchased, and personalise their own exhibitions with offscreen supplements. This, too, occurs in online film. The media theorist Limor Shifman (2013) notes how “user-driven imitation and remix” as a mode of content production is integral to internet culture, and with video meme creators often accompanying their edits of other videos with captions, active comment sections, and links to other media, the off-screen supplements of old are today integrated into the on-screen experience.

> These similarities are not just superficial – they arise from the same factors. The birth of cinema saw large masses of people consuming and participating in the products of newly available commercial technologies, and the emergence of a distinct online cinema is, essentially, an accelerated replay of this process. Sharing in the same global code/space makes internet users a bigger potential audience than has ever previously existed, and the quantity and style of content produced by and for internet users is determined by the activity of this networked mass.

> Early cinema was concerned with newly-formed masses of people resulting from twentieth century modernity, not just for audiences but also as subject matter. According to Gunning (2004), the ‘local films’ of Mitchell and Kenyon would document crowds of people moving through public spaces, and when doing so they were tuned in to the growing public discourse around newly-visible congregations of people in developing urban areas. One particular style of film they produced, which we will take as out main focus, is the ‘factory gate’ film. These would document workers streaming out of a factory at the end of the day, almost universally consisting of single (occasionally sped up or spliced short) static long shots (LS) or extreme long shots (XLS). While the single take, duration and static camera are the result of practical limitations, the choice to employ LS or XLS is an artistic one. Greater distance allowed the frame to fill with a greater number of subjects, creating a visual cacophony and increasing the spectacle. The framing was often loose, meaning there were no focal points to direct attention. Viewer’s eyes would rapidly scan over the moving crowd, heightening any sense of the crowd being overwhelmingly large.

> As well as directly engaging with large masses of people, the demands of large audiences to see films made specifically for their local area meant Mitchell and Kenyon had to develop a way of turning out new films efficiently and affordably. In order to exploit the collective spending power of the masses, the form and content of these local pictures are wrapped around the desires of the masses to recognise themselves and their towns on-screen. The masses were not only the subject of the films, but also determined their mode of production, and by extension their formal properties.

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The factory gate picture is a genre, and films in this genre are produced by following the Mitchell and Kenyon template: set up a camera by a factory gate at closing time, framing the exit in LS to capture as many moving people as possible. Templatability allows for films to effectively be cloned, so it’s necessary in commercial filmmaking, allowing things to be produced and reproduced at more profitable rates. By following templates to easily reproduce a standardised kind of content, the early genre films of Mitchell and Kenyon reproduce similarly to online memes. Sean Rintel (2013) argues that “templatability lies at the heart of online memes”, and explains that “memetic process is a product of the human capability to separate ideas into two levels – content and structure – and then contextually manipulate that relationship”. A meme, fundamentally, is the deployment of a familiar template to reframe and alter our perception of otherwise familiar or unfamiliar content. It is almost mathematical in its generation of novel content, since there are as many potential remixes of movies and songs as there are unique combinations.

Figures 2.1 and 2.2

> Take these memes as an example. Their origin is the YouTube video Gordon Ramsay cannot locate the lamb sauce (2016), a remixed clip of gameshow Hell’s Kitchen (2005-) in which Gordon shouts at contestants who have not made lamb sauce in time. The video cuts out anything other than Gordon’s shouting, and accentuates the moment’s absurdity by elongating and pitch-shifting the word ‘sauce’.Figures 2.1 and 2.2 combine elements of the remix with existing meme formats (figures 2.3 and 2.4) by adding a picture of Gordon and key words ‘lamb sauce’ and ‘located’, either in reference to the video, or to other memes derived from it. These memes were created by reshaping the source material to fit another meme template.

> The prominence of the remix in post-internet art produces huge amounts content which can only be fully understood in relation to other content. Memes function like in-jokes, and in this way they are participatory. The collaboration and participation between an unknowable number of anonymous contributors is part of the enjoyment not just of post-internet surrealism, but of all memes. It’s like shouting into the abyss and waiting to see what echoes back. The communication is rapid and blind, and sublime.

> In commercial cinema templates are used to maximize profits, so it might seem contradictory that they have been embraced by meme makers. But, in online spaces, the use and misuse of templates is what makes the art form participatory. Just as the viewers of local films would attend screenings to see themselves projected, thus participating in the production of the product they consume, so internet users riff off each other’s jokes and meme formats as a way of contributing to the continual evolution of a meme they enjoy.

> It has been argued by film historian Charles Musser (1990) that “modern” cinema begins with the birth of the nickelodeon, the implication of this being that modern cinema is necessarily commercial, whereas pre-cinema films were not. This distinction might be crude, since films were being produced for profit before the nickelodeon came into fashion, but it’s a helpful distinction to make. What makes the form, content, and distribution of pre-cinema and post-internet film resemble each other so closely is the same thing that makes them dissimilar to industrial filmmaking: they’re not driven by profit, but by novelty for its own sake; they are not produced by companies of people, but by small teams or individual auteurs; they experiment with newly-accessible technologies to see what effects can be created; and importantly, since they do not rely upon the systems of capitalism to support their growth and distribution, these films can afford to scrutinise these systems rather than reinforce their ideology.

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> Today’s advances in affordable camera technology, internet access, and free video editing software have shifted the power of content creation away from industry and into the hands of consumers. Anyone with a smartphone can be an auteur, and anyone with a wifi password can become a distributor. Creating and sharing content is easier than it’s ever been before, and developments within the medium now occur at a rate too fast to thoroughly document. The continual crossing of templates and content items produces countless proliferations and variations of existing memes each day. These memes are characterised by hyper-intertextuality, each new remix a thread that further thickens the intertextual tapestry.

> In his seminal essay The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction, Walter Benjamin (1982) observes that as reproduction of artworks becomes more common, artworks are increasingly “designed for reproducibility”. With the emergence of templatability and ease of creating and sharing content in online spaces, this process is now more efficient than ever.

> Any image or video online can be downloaded in seconds, and a number of user-friendly picture and video editing programmes come pre-installed on most commercial computers. Mechanical reproduction allowed for films to be copied with ease and re-shaped at will, spawning a number of variants which today is unknowable, since many will not have been preserved. Online however everything is preserved, and this coupled with more efficient and accessible methods of reproducing and adapting works means that videos can be adapted, and their adaptations adapted, at such great volume and speed that they can quickly bear no resemblance to their origins. Cataloguing all the varieties of meme is an unfeasibly large task, but by examining trends within meme-making we can observe how the nature of an artwork changes, becoming more amorphous and apparently meaningless, in an age of digital reproduction.

~

Tune in later this week when we’ll be looking at ~ v a p o r w a v e ~, and navigating the maze of digital non-places and non-times which is rapidly becoming less distinguishable from the world we live in today.

Full list of works cited plus bonus discography are available here. 

This is part one of a three part series. Part two is available here and part three available here. 

~

Text: Dan Power

Published 5/10/19

[thecrazyanimegirl]

Spring anime 2018

And here is our review of the Spring season ^^ 

This is not everything we watched, but mostly things we would recommend or had something to comment. We also didn’t include some anime that had second, third etc season airing. If we missed an anime you think should be here, write it in the comments and help us complete the list ~

Remember, this is just our opinion, we never meant to offend anyone and we hope we made your decisions about what to watch next a bit easier ^^

Winter 17/18

3D Kanojo

K: I liked it at first, the main character is sometimes really relatable, an outcast otaku who is just trying to survive. And it has some very funny moments. But somehow too much drama got involved and I stopped following it on a weekly basis, but I’ll definitely binge watch it during summer too see the end ~

Neko: I like how characters are relatable and it was nice until drama came. It is still good though.

Kitsune: Watched the first episode but didn’t get hoooked on it :/

Butlers x Battlers

K: Yes, this has such typical and predictable plot. Like you know it right off the bat. But yes, I still love it (≧∇≦) The side characters are more capable than the main guy, but I like their interactions and it’s somehow really good.

Neko: The plot is really predictable, but that gives it charm, I guess? I don’t watch it for the plot anyway. I watch it because of the characters.

Kitsune: If you like good looking guys than this will be satisfying for you although the animation gets kinda weird at some points (mostly during the fighting scenes).

Caligula

K: This is definitely one of my favorites this season! I know it’s not for everyone, it’s confusing most of the time, but I like how every character has depth and they are all very interesting. The story is also very unique, I love it. Oh yea, the soundtrack is Amazing™️ ^^ (I guess I should mention it’s not for everyone because it has a lot of trauma, suicide mention, bullying...)

Neko: I love the plot and the thought behind this anime. It was really interesting and I got hooked really fast. It is confusing sometimes but I still love it!

Kitsune: Beautiful music and great plot! The characters are well developed and it makes you like even “bad” guys. Definitely worth the try! 

Comic girls

Neko: I watched this anime because I totally relate with Kaos-chan. If you like slice of life with manga artists and yuri then you probably will like this. 

Crossing time

Neko: I was actually skeptical about this one, I thought it will be bad, but in the end I quite liked it. It last only few minutes which is great for when you don’t have time and it is made up from different stories every episode so it doesn’t get boring. It’s great for short relaxing pause.

Dances with the Dragons

K: The story is very complex, so sometimes it’s hard to follow what’s happening because a lot of politics are involved. But beside that, the interactions between characters are amazing, it has some humor and a lot of fighting scenes. Less dragons then I though it will though. Even so, I liked it ^^

Neko: I have a feeling this story is great and really detailed, but it is really hard to follow. I think that if you read novel it is better? I think it would be really good, but unfortunately I really have hard time understanding what is happening

Kitsune: God help me with all those names and titles they use xD Also I think I tried much too hard to understand the politics in this universe than in the real world lol. I hope that the novel gets and English translation so that I will get to see more of these two’s interactions ;)

Devils Line

K: A really good romance, great fighting scenes, has some a bit more gore-y, nswf-ish scenes, but it really fit well with the theme. One of the more popular this seasons and it deserves it ^^ I love the characters. (and Miyano Mamoru’s voice in the ending song is a blessing *-*)

Neko: It has really good story and a bit of everything: romance, fighting, supernatural... It shows two people from different worlds (even different species?) overcoming all the obstacles to be together and also a lot of blood.

Kitsune: At some times I kinda felt a little bit annoyed with Tsukasa because of her actions BUT the whole anime is really good and I would recommend it to anyone who likes the combination of romance and action. The plot is deep and well explained so it’s a real treat to watch it.

Dorei-ku The Animation

K: Not the biggest fan, but the plot is interesting enough to make me want to watch more.

Neko: It’s intersting. It shows a lot of sides one person can have and how easy it is to change when you gain some power. I only wanted for the dog to get his revenge though XD

Kitsune: The idea of this anime is really interesting but I kinda felt disappointed for not seeing the complete dark and twisted possibilities that the device they use offers. Maybe the manga goes deeper into that points as the story goes on.

Dragon pilot: Hisone to Masotan

K: A really interesting idea, has dragons, amusing characters and a great ending song ^^

Neko: I really like this anime. Idea is great and it really surprised me because I really didn’t think it will be deep anime because it was really fun but it is and it is great. And it has dragons!

Kitsune: Really cute and different style of animations that made me fall in love with this anime from the start! I like it how the characters are developing through  the story and cope with their problems.

Golden Kamuy

K: Even though it has a lot of killing and maybe gruesome scene, the plot is intriguing and always made me wait for the new episode with anticipation. I can’t wait for the next season ^^

Neko: I love this anime. It has a serious plot but it’s still funny. Story is really interesting and characters are really loveable! I should mention it has a lot of fighting and killing. It is one of my favorites this season.

Kitsune: Many praises to this one, it has everything that a good anime has to offer! (except for the bear in the first episode lol, poor thing looked like it came from an other dimension)

Hina festival

Neko: It’s cute and funny and sarcastic. It’s about an overpowered girl who doesn’t really know anything about life living with her adoptive father with shady business and people around them

Jikken-kin Kazoku

K: This is amazing! It really needs more popularity. I love their soft interactions. A weird but loving family ^^

Neko: I love it! it is heartwarming and beautiful.

Kitsune: A cute story about a weird family that tries to find their place in the society :)

Kakuriyo: Bed and Breakfast for Spirits

K: A really good romance, food, cute and heartwarming stories, a bunch of hot guys, actually capable and most of the time useful main girl, what more can you ask for! I love it.

Neko: This is also one of my favorites. It has similar style as kamisama hajimemashita and other slow burn romances. Characters are loveable and the story is interesting!

Kitsune: Weeee more food in animes! Also, we finally get to see some other world experience other than getting sucked into video games xD

Last hope

K: I didn’t have much of an opinion about it at first, but I got hooked with each episode even more and started liking the characters. The mecha/animal combinations are interesting and even though the villain is a bit typical so far, its a good anime. I love it more and more with each episode ^^

Neko: At the begining it was just weird, but after a while it got a bit easier to understand. I think that you need patience for this anime? I like characters so it was good enough for me

Kitsune: Have you ever wondered what would it look like if a whale merged with a bulldozer? Then this is the right place for you xD An awesome mecha anime with tons of good-looking guys is waiting just for you!

Layton’s Mystery Detective Agency

Neko: I like this anime. At forst I thought it was made for the children, but the clues are really hard to get and the cases are really original and interesting so I think it is for everyone who likes detective anime with bright character ^^  

Legend of the Galactic Heroes

K: I heard a lot of bad things about it before I started watching it, but I really like it! The story is interesting, I love the battles, the characters are complex and the animation is amazing! So this is one of my favorites ^^

Neko: I am not really fan of it, but not because it is bad it’s just not my type. I don’t like when I have to use my brain too much so listening to their war plans is really hard for me XD I do love the characters and I think it is great anime if you are into this genre ^^

Kitsune: Although many had their doubts about this remake of the old anime version, I must say that I can’t see anything that could be considered “bad”. The new art style brings joy to the eyes and the story is marvelous!

Lost song

Neko: I love the story even though it is confusing at the end. It’s really beautiful and emotional ^^

Magical Girl Ore

K: Ummm, is there anything to say? Boy love, girl love, straight couples and none of the above, lots of humor, sometimes makes no sense, but is always entertaining. Sometimes I found a bit too much, but in the end, it’s a great laugh and an interesting idea for a plot.

Neko: I honestly don’t know how i feel about this anime. It is funny and weird. Sometimes it feels like a parody and sometime it looks like it has an actual plot. I really don’t know.

Kitsune: Weird. At first xD but at the same time interesting and funny. Some might call it cringey but if you get over some things this anime warps, you get an interesting story that makes you smile each time you see a girl transform into a guy xD

Magical Girl Site

K: Definitely not what I expected, but I ended up really liking the story ^^ It has a lot of blood, bullying, suicide and other thing so it’s not for everybody, but the plot is worth it all. Don’t give up after the first episode, it’s really interesting.

Neko: I like dark magical girls anime because they usually have a deeper meaning. I was really shocked at the first episode, it is really brutal, but story is really great! It has a lot of nasty stuff so I wouldn’t recommend it to everyone.

Kitsune: We all thought that there is no anime that can shock us anymore but this one definitely proved us wrong. “Cute” animations and a tad bit of yuri say that this anime isn’t your everyday shoujo story. 

My Sweet Tyrant

K: Extremely cute, funny, lasts 3 minutes. Cuties (❀◦‿◦)

Neko: It is really cute and short ^^

Kitsune: very sweet short story :3

Persona 5 The Animation

K: Another of the favorites! Amazing story, characters, animation and music *-* The soundtrack is constantly playing while I’m studying. Oh, yea, you can watch it regardless of the previous seasons, but it could make you want to watch everything and play all the games, so beware ;)

Neko: This anime is one of my favorites this season ^^ I like the animation and plot. I love it!

Kitsune: Still daydreaming about seeing the game to come on the PC!

Rokuhoudou Yotsuiro Biyori

K: The best thing when you need something warm, calming and full of feelings. They are all so cute! And I really want to try their coffee... and tea and sweets *-*

Neko: I love how therapeutic their shop is! Characters are cute and they all deal with everyday struggles and eat delicious food. It is great and relaxing anime ^^

Kitsune: Food, coffee, tea and beautiful guys? I wish there would be a similar cafe in my place xD

Space Battleship Tiramisu

K: I have no words  😂 I died laughing. The humor can get too much, but it’s still hilarious.

Neko: I guess it is funny just not my type of funny. It lasts a few minutes and is made to make you laugh. I guess people will either like it or not.

Kitsune: I don’t think there was even one episode that made sense to me but the main guy is funny xD you can literary watch each episode separately because the plot in them is not that connected

SAO Alternative: GGO

K: You can watch it even without previously watching sao ^^ It’s filled with action, a lot of battles and strategies, the plot stays the same throughout most of the episodes, but it still keeps you interested so I liked it a lot.

Neko: I guess everyone who watches SAO will like this. It is in the same style only with a different story and characters. Plot and characters are really interesting

Tada Never Falls in Love

K:  Amazing romance story, it has a lot of feels and interesting characters, I didn’t think I’d like a romance anime this much, but it’s really really good ^^ It also has a lot of funny and cute moments.

Neko: I think this is great romace anime. I really love characters and their interactions :)

Kitsune: A lovely and romantic story for relaxing and bring a smile upon your face. Also has a lot of cats!

The Scales of Nil Admirari

K: Since I’m an otome lover, I’ll always watch these anime and not feel bad about it, so for me, this is good! The characters are really cute and good-looking! As the episodes go on, the plot gets more ridiculous, especially the last few, but it did make me laugh (even when it probably shouldn’t) but I liked it ~

Neko: Sometimes I feel the plot doesn’t make sense, but that actually makes me laugh so I quite like this anime. I guess that people who like anime versions of otome will like it just like me.

Kitsune: A classic otome-turned-into-anime. Lovable characters and an interesting plot.

Wotakoi: Love is Hard for Otaku

K: I love this! The interactions between the characters are cute and interesting and they can be very relatable. If you don’t mind fujoshi’s, a lot of cosplays, weird, but somehow perfect relationships, this is amazing for you ^^

Neko: I like this kind of anime so I can only praise it. If you are like anime that are everyday life romance between weird people you should watch it and if not you will not like it  ┐(︶▽︶)┌

Kitsune: I have no idea what to say anymore other than what Neko and Kurohime already said xD It is good, watch it if you like romace xD

[the-uptake]

The Uptake, The 704. 2|2|3|W. Book 1, Chapter 3. Go to previous. TWs: needles/phlegbotomy, medical diagnostics, emetophobia, forcefeeding, abusive dynamic. Revised 2019.06.28.

Galen came to in a small room with a polished concrete floor and walls and ceiling edges with simple recessed studio lighting. He attempted to roll over on his back. When the discovery of handcuffs halted him, he instead rolled onto his face to ease getting into a kneeling position. He pulled on the cuffs to guarantee they had been soundly clicked shut. He looked around the room. Whoever had brought him here had removed his tattered attire and clothed him in a dark tank top and pajama pants.

Fumbling to his bare feet, he found a locked heavy metal door in the middle of one wall, while the flimsy door in the corner led to a one-person bathroom. The layout of the room couldn’t manifest its current function at first glance. He kicked at the metal door trying to make some noise, but it didn’t get him anywhere, and it didn’t have any knob or handle anyway. He tried repeatedly to reach the cuffs to suck on them, but couldn’t manage to get his hands in his lap from behind him, and each time an exhausted derangement defeated him more and more. Eventually, he laid back down in the middle of the floor, and welcomed the cool of the concrete against his body.

He must have dozed off at some point, because two pair of dress shoes appeared in front of his face. He jerked back a ways with a hushed slaggit! under his breath. They belonged to two clean-cut older men, one a good bit taller than the other.

“Sorry to startle you, Galen.” The taller one, brunet, crouched down nearer, and rested his arms on his sprawled knees. “And we’re sorry that you had to be brought here under such circumstances. Hopefully, we can help you.”

Galen gave them a wild, sarcastic look before the fatigue wiped the expression off his face. Still, he craved the cuffs.

“--I know y’all?”

“Oh, my, no.” The shorter one, with longish swept-back pepper-blond hair, adjusted his glasses by scrunching his nose a bit, and joined his colleague in crouching. “Confirm for us, if you would: You were in an accident recently? And you believe it was chemical in nature?”

“Forgive Lyst.” The taller one shot an annoyed glance at his colleague, then motioned at him. “This is James Lyst, and my name’s Daniel O’Donnell. He’s very... task oriented, to put it mildly. Try to be patient with him, if you can.”

“How do y’all know all this-- Bell.” The stalker deflated and slumped on the concrete, recalling how poorly the exam had gone. “Must be bad, if the Good Doc thought he had to toss me into somebody else’s care. I, I, I, I. I’m dead, yeah? Thought so. Y’all must be morticians, with my luck.”

His features sympathetic, O’Donnell’s nod turned into a shake of the head.

“We’re chemists. Well, a chemical engineer and a pharmacist. And we currently have you under supervision for the sequelae of your toxic waste exposure. Between access and the square footage to house it, our facility is better suited to accommodate whatever diagnostics we determine can assess your health.”

“It’s a momentous occasion, really,” Lyst continued with a grin of large teeth, in an affected lyricism which seemed typical of him. “A new class of metahuman. Really, you’re something special, Galen.”

Galen struggled to keep up.

“Metahuman? My DNA’s all screwy now? This didn’t happen cause a street chems. This was a buncha drums a truck. They. They fell on me an’ broke an’ I was trapped to where I. I think I inhaled and swallowed a buncha it.” He flinched from trying to piece together details, and shoved down his tic as hard as he could. Something about these two felt more trustworthy and candid than Bell had, but he couldn’t place why. “If y’need me to remember the exact names of every thing that bust open an’ drowned me... you’re S.O.L. ‘cause I. I. --I wasn’t payin’ attention t’that kinda stuff at the time.”

Lyst and O’Donnell listened attentively, but it was Lyst who spoke up.

“You don’t need to remember all that right now. It’s quite all right. But yes, metahuman. I’d suspect you’d know what a metahuman is through some knowledge of Ketonamil, considering its prevalence in casual Quarter use, or perhaps through the politics of hybrids, but based on our current knowledge of your predicament, we both doubt any of either related substance was present on site where the exposure took place. And although a number of different chemicals can induce metahumanity, in the history of the one we suspect... there haven’t been any who took exposure with such resilience as you have.”

Galen balked, increasingly nettled by the metal around his wrists.

“Wouldn’t call it resilience. --Are the handcuffs necessary? Course they are. Y’all had t’drug me to get me here. No tellin’ what my reaction could’a been. Forget it.”

“We’re to understand it’s for your own protection as well.” O’Donnell frowned. “You have compulsion troubles?”

“I get hungry. Brain’s slagged.” He turned over, away from them. “It’s... hard t’get comfortable. Not for the floor. ‘Cause the cuffs. ...Can I say somethin’ weird?”

“I’m sorry to hear the restraints are making comfort difficult. We’ll work on that. Are they on too tight? What’s on your mind?”

“...These handcuffs.” Galen jammed his tongue up in the roof of his mouth and squinted. “...Metal. I get y’all not trustin’ me, but can we maybe not do metal? S’not the cuffs hurt. S’that...”

“What is it? You can speak with us without consequence.”

“...S’makin’ me hungry. Don’t get how, but it’s like I, I, can smell ‘em. Metal’s been drivin’ me loon. An’ with my hands behind me. Sure y’got cameras in here or some truck. Couldn’t sleep, for tryin’ t’get at ‘em.”

“Fascinating...!” Lyst had to sit down at this. “It’s affected your sensory acuity as well?”

O’Donnell dismissed the callous commentary with a cough.

“Trying to sleep with a loud appetite can’t be working well for you.” He ignored his colleague. “We’re going to try to make this arrangement as easy on you as possible. I’ll look into it personally this afternoon.”

“You must be ravenous.” Lyst leaned in to coax Galen’s eye contact, without succeeding. “It’s been a while since you were brought here.”

“Don’t remember last time I wasn’t. Not since--”

“A healthy appetite isn’t always a bad thing.” He patted Galen’s shoulder. “What would you like us to bring you? Within reason, of course. Our budget won’t allow for steak dinners.”

Galen just lay there for a moment, in a double-take.

“I don’t get y’sense a humor. That was a joke right? He was jokin’?”

“We’ll get you whatever you like,” O’Donnell insisted, increasingly exasperated with Lyst. “Burger Block? Chick Digs? King Pho? A pizza?”

Another long silence.

“Y’too, then. Let’s get somethin’ crystal here. Last I tried t’eat food, threw up. Out every end. Know y’all don’t wanna clean that up, an’ I ain’t inclined to it neither.”

“Do you remember the last thing you ate, out of curiosity?”

“A bottle a iodine. Buncha those lil’ funnel things the doc sticks in y’ear. I dunno, was a little stressed out at the Clinic.”

“Food, Galen. Not the compulsions. Stay with me here.”

The stalker let out a shrill bark, unmoving.

“Been weeks since I ate food, doc. ‘Fore ‘Piphany. Can we--” He fidgeted with his wrists and swallowed his saliva.

“Which of us has the smart sense of humor here again?” Lyst rolled his eyes.

“Y’think I’m slaggin’ y’all? Bring me Burger Block. Don’t say I didn’t warn ya. Can we, maybe--” More squirming.

“If not... food... then what? The offer still stands, to get you anything within reason.”

“--I want these slagGIN’ HANDCUFFS--”

Almost in tears, Galen rolled on his face and tugged at the cuffs until his wrists were raw. The two men scrambled to each take one upper arm in hand and steady the boy.

“Cool it, cool it.” O’Donnell made hushing noises as he fished the key out of his pocket. “Stop squirming and I can-- Here-- wait, that’s not--”

The instant the cuffs were off, Galen wrestled out of their grip and snatched the restraining tool from them. They vanished down his throat in a series of curled links, and he lay back and stared at the ceiling with mental clarity afterward, hands laced on his stomach. Despite having contended with the offending article, an odor still divided Galen’s attention.

The scientists failed to hide their alarm.

“...You’ve... certainly done that before,” Lyst commented.

“Told ya I wanted ‘em. Nah. If y’makin’ a point f’me not, not chewin’. Y’couldn’t chew metal neither.”

“To your understanding, do you digest it slower or the same? The metal?”

“...Faster, t’be fair. A lot fastern’ what I think makes any sense. Paint. That’s what I’m smellin’, fresh paint. I...”

Lyst and O’Donnell glanced to each other.

“The lobby was being renovated earlier this week. Do you... you want paint?” Lyst looked at O’Donnell again, making sure he’d heard Galen right. “How-- how is he able to--”

“You’re able to smell the fresh paint upstairs?”

“Y’just seen me swallow handcuffs. Wouldn’t be weird as that, bringin’ me a bucket a paint, yeah?”

“You see that look in his eye.” Lyst wagged a finger at the flightiness Galen couldn’t quite shove down. “He’s just as overwhelmed by this as we are.”

“James, shush. It’s our job to figure this out, not shrink him. Besides, don’t you think it’s fair for him to be confused and disoriented? Clearly this condition has altered his perception in some way.”

“I’m right here, y’know. ...Will y-- will y’bring it? A bucket? Or a coupla cans?”

“Will that tide you over? We won’t be coming back to check on you until tomorrow.”

Entertaining his own warping appetites felt ill-advised at best.

“Ss, somethin’ plastic, maybe? Dunno. Don’t think ahead to well with it, jus’ makes me wanna eat it all at once if I do. Y’all haven’t got any books, yeah? It’s... borin’ in here.”

O’Donnell smiled, and helped his colleague up as they both stood to leave.

“We’ll see what we can do.”

Before Galen knew it, he was alone with himself again, the inception of the commonality of intermittent solitude. He didn’t catch how the door worked.

▼▼▼▼▼▼▼▼▼▼

A rough boot to the butt jolted Galen awake, and he rolled over in anticipation for a fight, but his fists and gaze stiffened where he lay in confusion when he saw a stranger joined him. The man pulled a folding chair across the concrete floor and unfolded it with a series of rusty creaks, purposefully generating nuisance, and he sat mere feet from Galen with a big paper bag with its top rolled over. Younger than the two scientists, he had long grey-blond hair with the top half pulled back, angular features, and a white neoprene jumpsuit. Galen could tell by smell alone the bag contained fast food. Burger Block. Queasy, his fists and face drooped.

The man set down a fountain drink to one side of him, and fished out a hamburger piled up with vegetables. He tore into it with a diligent politic, seemingly less for keeping it off his uniform and more for some obligation to etiquette. After a few bites, once he was sure Galen had thought he was ignoring him, he jammed the burger right under his nose with a curious brow.

“--I, what, no.”

Galen moved to squirm away, but from where he sat the man pinned him down by the inner thigh with one foot. The man pressed down harder on Galen’s leg, until the treads of the boot dragged his flesh through the thin pajama pants. The stalker winced, and the man offered again by holding it there.

“I, I, I, I, I, I--” Galen swallowed, trying not to tremble. "--Can’t eat that.”

The man sat up straight and pulled off the bun to glance coolly back and forth between the bun and toppings.

“Educated guess whether you were a mustard or pink sauce kind of dreg.” He put the sandwich back together and took another bite. “Couldn’t exactly take your order, you know.”

“Are you... with those two guys from before? Lyst an’ O’Donnell?”

“You could say that.” The man shoved the food against Galen’s mouth this time, smearing mustard at the corner of the stalker’s mouth as he sustained unblinking eye contact. “If you don’t eat, going hungry will be the least of your worries.”

Galen grabbed him by the wrists, and the man allowed it.

“I, ii, if you were with those guys, you’d know s’got nothin’ t’do with whether I like mus--”

The man had only let Galen talk to get his mouth open, and jammed the burger in, even once the rest met Galen’s gnashed teeth. The mixture of bread, meat, lettuce, tomato, onion, and mustard elicited the same revulsion as a wad of hair in his mouth. With Galen caught off guard, the man pulled one hand away easily and used it to steady the shaven backside of Galen’s head so he could continue forcing more burger. Galen’s hands flew up to pry the salty oil and veggies away from his face, but it did little good save scatter a bit of lettuce.

“Chew. Swallow. Repeat. Stop being difficult. Didn’t anybody teach you how to eat? Don’t make me help you the entire way. I don’t get paid enough to babysit.”

Galen could smell the man’s holstered gun through the assault of fast food smells right under his nose, and opted not to argue. But these mutations, if that’s what was really going on... they’d given him such trouble stomaching anything... Still, it couldn’t be worse to resume being bathroom-ridden, than to second-guess the man’s disposition. So, he swallowed. He pulled the burger out of the man’s hands and shoved the whole thing in his mouth, and after the same level of mental preparation as taking a large pill, he swallowed whole what was left of it, just to get it over with.

Feigning he wasn’t shaking at the display, the man unstuck by letting go and offering up the soda.

“Supposin’ I can’t just say no thanks.” Without objecting beyond that, Galen popped the lid and used it to skim the ice as he chugged down the soda. He withheld comment as to the rising temperature in his gut. He ate the straw to satisfy his spite, and roll-folded the lid into his mouth too. “Don’t get what y’want.”

Rather than answer verbally, the man produced his reader from his breast pocket, and pointed in demonstration to the tiny, brightly colored cubes visible in the clear tray door on the edge of it. Heavy-lidded and matter-of-fact, he opened a recording on one of the cubes, and it lit up a pale green when he began playback.

“--Y’think I’m slaggin’ y’all? Bring me Burger Block. Don’t say I d--”

The man played it back a few times, watching contentedly as the look on Galen’s face melted from physical displeasure to disoriented grief. Galen wasn’t used to hearing his own voice, and it didn’t even click at first that it was his. Why the hell did this guy have a recording of Galen? His head ran hot and cold at once, and sweat wrought him clammy all over. Then it registered for the stalker, that this guy likely had a recording of the entire conversation he’d had with the scientists earlier. A scientist jealous of hearing of his rivals’ new work in progress? A security guard seemed the more likely explanation, but it felt like too simple of one to explain potential motives for this behavior. The more his stomach churned, the less he could focus.

Eventually, the whole thing spilled out across the floor in a charred effervescent mess. The man moved a foot aside to avoid the splatter, and his skin crawled to observe that the stomach acid actively dissolved the varnish of the polished concrete. His lip curled at the display to bare a gold incisor. He stood and pushed over the limp stalker with a small nudge, then retrieved the paper garbage to leave.

“You’re to follow all instructions to the letter. Nod if you hear me.”

A small nod, as Galen tried very hard to ignore the near-garlicky rancid stench of his stomach contents digesting the flooring beside him. He clutched his stomach, still cramping despite how much better he felt without the offending stuff inside him. Half-consciously, he felt grateful that it had come out before it had hit his intestines.

“That’s how you show gratitude for people going out of their way to extend a little kindness to you? That’s filthy, you know. Absolutely filthy.”

Galen nearly blurted out well it’s your fault, I told you exactly what’d happen. When he glanced up, he understood he’d have said it to no one: the man had already left.

“...I know.”

▼▼▼▼▼▼▼▼▼▼

The door opened and shut, and a pair of shoes approached Galen, who’d curled up into one corner, lost in doldrums over the conviction that his family would not want him back until he was stable.

“Good morning,” O’Donnell started. “I brought you the paint you requested.”

He looked up over his shoulder to see the chemist had come alone, and he rolled over to sit up. When O’Donnell sheepishly handed him the can, he readily took it, but tucked it into his lap.

“Thanks.” He shied from eye contact.

“...Oh! You must be upset because you didn’t just ask for paint. Fret not.” O’Donnell reached into the hip pocket of his lab coat, and produced a reader and held it out to him. “You asked for books. I wasn’t sure what you might like, so I just downloaded a mess of things. You’re free to download whatever you like. The reader’s registered with the Central server.”

Galen stared at the device, and didn’t know how to respond to being offered such a thing. When he’d asked for books, he’d thought asking for a book would produce the physical copy of something, not a reader. He’d never had a reader to himself--the whole family had shared one, and Vana used it more than anybody. The irony was not lost on Galen, either, that O’Donnell had outfitted the thing with an impact-resistant protective case. Maybe this had been the man in white’s idea: a test of whether Galen could keep himself from eating something, when overcoming the compulsion would reward him by providing mental stimulation and alleviating isolation.

He caught himself glaring at the dark glassy stain in the floor and took the reader from O’Donnell.

“Y’all are... too generous. Don’t deserve this kindness.”

The chemist frowned at the sentiment.

“It’s the least we can do for you. You’ve been through so much already, and we haven’t even gotten to your diagnostics screening.”

Galen tapped the power button on the side and flicked the screen on. The navigation keypad along the bottom edge befuddled him and he pecked at it.

“Can I... ask a stupid question?”

“I don’t imagine it’s very stupid.”

“Has this place got security guards?”

O’Donnell crouched to be closer to the boy’s eye level where he sat in the floor, and tried to determine how to answer based on what reason Galen could possibly have for asking such a thing.

“This building is very secure. We have several guards, and extensive surveillance.”

“An’ their uniform, it’s an all white suit? Grey edges?”

The chemist’s eyes narrowed, brow shifting from scrutiny to concern.

“Why? Did one of them come in here?”

Again, Galen glanced at the vitreous slurry-stain. Left unattended, the stomach enzymes had reduced the food to carbon, and the mess had dissipated into the melted glass before the enzymes lost their potency and let the whole thing set up like it had been there all along. A lump formed in his throat.

“Long, greyish hair? But not all that old, I guess? Gold tooth. He’s one of yours, yeah?”

The chemist’s features flattened in a squint for a moment, but he reached out to hold Galen’s shoulders to look him in the eye.

“That’s... Michael. What did he want?”

“...Dunno.”

“Galen, I meant it when I said you could speak to us without consequence. The guards aren’t permitted in here unless they’re accompanying Lyst or me. No one but James and I have clearance to get in here. Did he say anything to you?”

Follow all instructions to the letter.

Galen shook his head and opened the first book he could click on.

“Thought it was weird, is all, that he wasn’t with you guys.” He tried to look like he had gotten absorbed in the romance novel, uninterested in conversation. “Guess he wasn’t supposed to be.”

“No. No, he wasn’t. Will you be all right for another day or so? We had to rent out a lot of the machines we need to run your diagnostics, but they won’t be here until tomorrow.”

“I’m fine.”

The flat affect indicated otherwise, but O’Donnell didn’t press him further.

“Please tell Lyst or me if Michael, or anyone else, comes in here again. You don’t have to go into detail, if you don’t want. But I promise you that the two of us want to keep you safe. If Michael doesn’t make you feel safe, neither of us want that.”

Galen didn’t have a response.

▼▼▼▼▼▼▼▼▼▼

Galen flinched when Lyst and O’Donnell next visited, and withdrew into the corner before either could even greet him. The paint, can and all, had vanished, as had the reader. Balled up inside his head, he upset himself all over again over his own lack of self-control.

“I, I, I, I, I-- couldn’t help it--” He swallowed hard, trembling. “There’s gotta be a way t’make it up t’ya somehow.”

“You... how did you...” Lyst uncrossed his arms, and was looking around the room for proof he was wrong. He didn’t find any. “How did you eat the reader? --And the can?”

“I--” He looked to O’Donnell for an affirmation that it was okay to speak. “Ss, sssuck on it ‘til it melts. Like candy, or s, somethin’, I guess...”

“Incredible.” Lyst dropped all incredulity, now again fascinated. “Really, though, Galen. If you’d known you were going to eat it, you could have simply asked for an old, broken reader. It would have been fine to ask for that.”

“I-- I thought y’was gonna bring me a paper book. Know it sounds real sorry of me t’say, but... I forgot readers could even have books.”

“I don’t know that our budget could allow for antiques like that.” As tactfully as possible, O’Donnell asked, “You mean to say you don’t think you would have any compulsion to eat paper?”

“Haven’t had one so far. Not that I noticed.” Galen sighed and stared at their shoes in dejection, trying not to remember how the security guard had removed all the paper from the room on his way out when he’d been there. “I... get y’all not entrustin’ me with antiques. It was dumb of me t’even ask. Knew better. I ate my own damn e-cig, an’ Walkman, and--”

“Hey, now.” Lyst wagged a gracious finger at him. “You needn’t beat yourself up. So you had an expensive meal. It’s quite all right. Part of this is learning how your appetite works, little Galen. Galenula. Hhn.” He grinned, scrunching his nose.

“You finished off that can of paint in no time,” O’Donnell began. “We expected it to tide you over for at least a day, but that’s clearly not the case. Do we need to bring you larger, ah, servings? It’s difficult to bring things more frequently, but if we need to figure out how to schedule that, we will.”

“Metal.” Galen got doe-eyed at having blurted out the craving, envisioning what a larger serving might resemble. “Lots a metal. Computer parts if y'can.”

O’Donnell smiled, able to get their subject on a thought which seemed to calm him.

“We’ll see what we can do. In the mean time, Galen, we did come today for more than to just see you... We can start one set of tests this afternoon, if you’re up for it.”

Galen shook his head in dismissal that he could tell them no, and stood compliant.

“Whatever you need of me.”

Lyst left the room long enough to wheel in a small cart with two trays on top. In one surgical tray lay a fistful of stoppered vials, while in the other lay a variety of tubing and sterile-packaged implements. O’Donnell retrieved a pair of folding chairs once his colleague had returned, as not to leave Galen unattended with the door unlocked, and set them out opposite one another next to the cart.

“A blood panel.” The pharmacist refrained from mentioning even anecdotally that it had been since college that he’d had any phlebotomy practice. “A rather extensive one, I’m afraid. I’ll be gentle.”

“Drawin’ blood? Don’t bother me any.” Galen sat in the chair Lyst did not, and already found himself eyeing the glass on the tray. “One of y’gonna hold me?”

“If it’ll make you feel better, I’m right behind you,” O’Donnell reassured, both hands on the back of the folding chair.

“First, vitals.”

Lyst produced a sphygmomanometer from a drawer in the cart. He wrapped the cuff around Galen’s upper arm, then depressed the auto-inflate mechanism so that the gauge pressed against his antecubital fold could take the composite measure of the boy’s blood pressure. With a holographic chirp, it annotated the measurement, and Lyst let the pressure out of the instrument and put it away. He got the infrared thermometer from the drawer next, and waved it over Galen’s forehead twice, and annotated its measure as well. Then, from the bottom drawer, the pharmacist set out a scale between the two of them, and suggested Galen stand on it. The only measure Galen saw for himself, it registered 81.6kg. The stalker never really had dealt much with metric, and he sat back down.

“Hm.”

“Hmm?” Hoping for an understanding, Galen looked expectantly to Lyst, who kept tapping away at calculations and annotations, then up behind him to O’Donnell, who also watched Lyst.

“How tall are you?” Lyst asked.

“Five-five. ‘Bout 130, last I checked.”

“Closer... to 180 pounds, it seems. Bell gave us his patient chart data when we overtook your care. You weigh nearly 82 kilo today. That’s about twenty-five kilo over what you should reasonably weigh. But, clearly you’re not overweight. Just... over what you ought to weigh.”

“He means to say, that kind of weight would normally factor as fat,” O’Donnell translated, concealing how wild his mind went with speculation. “Something internal has to be denser. The chemical composition of your muscles, perhaps. Or your bone mass.”

“Diagnostics will better inform us than any speculation.” Lyst put on a pair of latex gloves with minor flourish. “Now, Galenula, offer up an arm. And ball up a fist for me.”

When Galen did as instructed, Lyst gingerly tourniqueted it with a length of yellow rubber. The bespectacled pharmacist then cradled the elbow and palpated for a good artery. He took an alcohol-soaked poly swab to sterilize the area, then tapped at the resultant blood vessels again to test them to satisfaction. He nodded to himself, and unwrapped the catheter needle. Then he looked over his glasses up at Galen, who watched attentively all the while, then proceeded to eyeball exactly where to stick.

“I’m going to count to three, and you’ll feel a pinch, all right?”

Galen nodded. He had to look away, but it didn’t hurt too badly. Bell had hurt worse, he recalled, the doctor seemingly more compelled by speed and efficiency than avoiding exacting pain in the process. The stalker only looked down again once Lyst had snapped the first vial into place over the open tip of the tubing. Something about it felt wrong, and Galen tried not to squirm.

“...Shouldn’t it... be... red...?”

Rather than blood, a bright orange substance filled the vial.

“It wasn’t this color when Dr. Bell drew it?”

“...No...”

Lyst soon switched out the first vial for the second, going down the line. Some vials already contained something with which the blood was to interact, and one of these popped within a minute of the pharmacist setting it down on the tray. The burst startled all three of them, and Galen cried out when Lyst pulled the needle out and pressed down with a fresh poly swab, rather than accidentally jam the catheter further in. They all stared at the tray, wary that the others might follow suit. Galen nudged the caster-wheeled cart with his toe, to push it further away from all of them.

“I... only got seven of the eight vials drawn, but I think it’s safe to say that one wouldn’t have been a viable test sample.” Still holding the boy’s arm to apply pressure, he chuckled at how Galen had done what all three of them had thought of doing. “It’s fine. We got almost all of them, and these will definitely give us much information to work with. I won’t terrorize you further right now.”

Eyes glazed in revulsion, Galen couldn’t stop staring at the vials, many of which had turned nearly neon.

“That... that ain’t blood. Ain’t my blood.”

“It came out of your veins, Galen,” O’Donnell soothed, putting his hands to Galen’s shoulders. “The tests will tell us whether it’s supposed to be there.”

“It’s going to be all right,” Lyst seconded. “Once I get the chance to send off this panel to the lab, we’ll be sure to come right back with something you’ll like.”

“--Hhmetal,” Galen reflexively repeated, transfixed upon the fluid in the glass.

“Yes, yes. We know. Hm! You liked paint. Would you like soap as well, perhaps?”

“Soap sounds nice,” he agreed, becalmed by the idea of eating.

Lyst applied a patch of paper tape over the poly swab, and let go finally.

“Soap. And something metal. Absolutely.”

The pharmacist collected up all the vials into a foam-lined medical-grade mailer carton. From what Galen could tell as he watched, it wasn’t at all unlike a test tube rack fitted inside there, and it seemed to have thermal insulation to keep it within a certain range, as well. He noticed the side of the carton read BF Meehl before it vanished safely into the cart drawer, and Lyst tucked all the remainder of nonsense into the sharps bin in another drawer. O’Donnell patted Galen on the shoulder reassuringly, to shake him out of his stupor enough that he’d notice them leave.

“I’ll come and check on you in about an hour, all right?”

Galen took the shoulder pat as urging to stand so the scientists could retrieve the chair, then he returned to his favored corner next to the bathroom.

“Yeah. ...Thanks, any rate.”

He watched them exit, and observed this time the door opened in a series of magnetic buzzing. Maybe the security guard was watching the whole time, and let them in and out.

Once they were gone, he stared down at the taped poly swab, and forcing himself to take a nap was the only thing that kept him from ripping it off to see if the catheter had gotten out all the orange stuff.