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john-taylor-daily · 4 years

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Want to feel really old? Oh, go on then. Duran Duran turn 40 this year: the band, that is, not the members. For them it’s worse: Simon Le Bon is 61, John and Roger Taylor, each 59, and Nick Rhodes, the baby, 57.

As you would expect of a pop group who always appeared happiest hanging off a yacht in ruffled Antony Price suits, accessorised with a supermodel and a cocktail, they intend to celebrate in style, coronavirus permitting. So the plan, announced this week, is that on July 12, exactly 40 years since their first gig at the Rum Runner in Birmingham, they will perform in Hyde Park, headlining a bill that includes Nile Rodgers & Chic and their pal Gwen Stefani. Four of the original five will be there: the guitarist Andy Taylor, 59, left the band in 1985 and, after rejoining in 2001, walked out again five years later. In the past, the guitarist Warren Cuccurullo has filled in; this time Graham Coxon from Blur will take his place.

Then in autumn Duran Duran are releasing a new album, their 15th, which they are halfway through making.

Growing up in the West Midlands, I was a Duranie; my first gig was theirs at the NEC in Birmingham. To give an idea of the level of devotion, I had house plants named after each of them. John, his initials “JT” written on the pot in nail varnish, was a begonia; Rhodes, a busy lizzie; Le Bon, a rubber plant; Roger and Andy Taylor were cacti. My memory, foggy on so much, still holds the name of Nick Rhodes’s cat at the time (Sebastian). The household appliance “JT” would choose to be? “A refrigerator, so I would stay cool.”

But despite previous opportunities, I’ve avoided them bar an awkward backstage handshake with Le Bon. In the meantime, they have notched up record sales of 100 million, had 21 Top 20 hits in the UK and, unlike many bands who came to fame in the 1980s, they produce different, exciting, if not always lauded albums, working with new producers and musicians. They’ve had top five albums in each of the four decades they’ve worked. Their last album, Paper Gods (2015), produced by Mark Ronson and Rodgers, was their most successful for 25 years.

Now 46 and with no desire to anthropomorphise greenery, I meet Rhodes, the keyboardist, and John Taylor, the bass player, once described as having the squarest jaw in rock. Rhodes suggests his “local”, Blakes hotel in Chelsea, near the home he shares with his Sicilian girlfriend, Nefer Suvio (he and Julie Anne Friedman divorced in 1992; they have one child together, Tatjana). Taylor, just in from Los Angeles, home to his second wife, Gela Nash, who runs the fashion label Juicy Couture, invites me to his flat in Pimlico. Le Bon, still happily married to the supermodel Yasmin Le Bon with three grown-up daughters, is busy in the studio and Roger Taylor, four children and with second wife Gisella Bernales, is otherwise occupied.

Rhodes, who joins me in the bar at Blakes, has the same peroxide mop and alabaster skin that were always his trademark. He wears black trousers by the English designer Neil Barrett and a Savile Row jacket dressed down with a rock T-shirt from the Los Angeles company Punk Masters.

Four days later, I arrive at Taylor’s flat in a garden square where he greets me at the door dressed in black jeans and T-shirt, with sculpted bed-hair. I’m reminded of the time my brother splashed Sun-In on his to emulate Taylor’s bleached New Romantic fringe.

It’s good to have them back. They started on the new album in September at Flood Studios in Willesden, northwest London, and, as well as Coxon, have been working with three producers: Giorgio Moroder, Ronson and the DJ Erol Alkan. “The whole place is filled with analogue synthesizers, so it’s just joy for me,” says Rhodes, who began life as Nicholas Bates but renamed himself after a make of electronic keyboard.

Rhodes met Moroder — the “godfather of electronica” and the man behind Donna Summer’s I Feel Love — through a mutual friend of his girlfriend. “We talked about music and what had happened to us,” Rhodes says. “He is as sharp as a razor, 79 going on 45.” They worked with Ronson, who has produced Amy Winehouse and Adele, in LA. “The first thing Mark always says is, ‘Let me hear the rest of it,’” Rhodes says with a laugh. “He is quite competitive.”

Taylor, who leads me into a room that’s more gentlemen’s club than rock-star pad with an open fire, armchairs, brown furniture and bad Victorian paintings, says the break of five years has refuelled them. “We have to starve ourselves of creativity long enough that when we do show up we have something to say,” he says. “[The studio sessions] are quite exhausting because we have been down this road. We can finish each other’s sentences and I guess, to some extent, we can do that musically as well. We are working with the same cast; it’s like a soap opera. That’s why collaborators become so important as you need to keep the spirit lively.”

Rhodes, who says the new album is more “handmade” and “guitary”, explains the working dynamics: “John and Roger’s rhythm section often drives a track. Simon, the lyricist, gives all the songs our identity; it’s his voice that tells you it’s Duran Duran. My part has more to do with sonic architecture.” That may be the most Nick Rhodes phrase yet.

We move on to Andy Taylor. “Forty years ago we had Andy in the band and he was a strong flavour and a northerner and brought a rigour,” says John Taylor. “Filling that vacuum has always been one of the major challenges of version two of the band; we did it with Warren Cuccurullo and with Graham on this record. But it’s not the same. Andy didn’t mind telling people what they were doing wrong.”

He pauses. “We had a reunion with Andy [in 2001] and that was enormously difficult, actually.” How so? “That’s a book really,” says Taylor, who has written about the saga, along with his struggle with drink and drugs, in his excellent 2012 memoir In the Pleasure Groove. “Or it’s a mini-series.”

“It was very uncomfortable for us,” Rhodes says of Andy leaving in 1985. “For sure, it had become stressful over the previous year — we were all burnt out from not having stopped for five years — but we didn’t see it coming at all.”

What are relations with Andy like now? “I don’t really have any,” says Rhodes. “I haven’t seen him for many years since he left the last time. I was not even slightly surprised when it did fall apart. I was relieved. As much as Andy is a great musician he is not an easy person to play with.”

I mention to Taylor that Andy has just announced his own UK dates in May, playing Duran songs. “Uh-ha,” he says. He didn’t know. Does he mind? “I don’t mind at all. All power to him,” says Taylor. “I would rather he be out playing.”

Taylor has the sanguine air of someone who has spent decades nuking his demons (he’s currently working on guilt; he had a Catholic mother). He has been sober for 26 years after an addiction which in part led to the break-up of his marriage to the TV presenter Amanda de Cadenet in 1997. Was it hard at first? “It was like turning round an ocean liner,” he says, his voice posh Brum with a California chaser. “I work a daily programme and that’s what keeps me sober. It’s not something that just happens; it takes a lot of attention.”

We move on to the themes of the new, as yet untitled, album. Le Bon lost his mother recently, so we can expect songs inspired by loss. Taylor says he took inspiration from “the challenges of long-term relationships . . . Take a song like Save a Prayer, which personally I think is one of the greatest ever songs in praise of the one-night stand,” he says. “It comes to the point where you can’t write something like that. It’s not age-appropriate; yet it is sexy. So how do you write from the perspective of someone who is trying to keep a long-term relationship together? That is the challenge of any late-age pop star. How do you make it chic, to use one of Nick’s favourite words.”

It is hard to forget how impossibly chic Duran were in the 1980s: from their beginnings in Birmingham (Nick and John, anyway), where they met when Rhodes was 10 and Taylor 12, to a world of famous friends, beautiful partners and exotic travel. Le Bon married Yasmin after seeing her in Vogue, Rhodes was with the shipping heiress Friedman and Taylor the teenage de Cadenet. Andy Warhol was a close friend of Rhodes.

While others were singing about the dark side of Thatcher’s Britain, they were . . . more opaque. “In the 1980s a lot of what we did was somewhat misunderstood because we were living in the same gloomy years with high unemployment and miners’ strikes and civil unrest as everybody else,” Rhodes says. “But our answer to it was we have to get away from this and make it a little brighter because it didn’t seem like a particularly promising future.” Don’t expect that coronavirus torch song any time soon.

Their association with Bond — they wrote the 1985 theme A View to a Kill — only added to the glamour. What do they make of the new one by Billie Eilish? Rhodes admits that he mostly listens to classical music these days but “was thrilled to hear Billie Eilish. I think it’s by far the best Bond song since ours.”

But not better than yours?

“I am very happy that she reached No 1.” Duran’s got to No 2.

Taylor is more critical. “I thought it was lacking in a bit of Billie Eilish to be honest. It could have been madder. It was a little bit too grown up,” he says.

Is it as good as A View to a Kill?

“No!” says Taylor, theatrically. “Although,” he admits, “it was the most difficult three mins that we have ever produced.”

It had a great video, in which the boys slunk around the Eiffel Tower. Taylor frowns. “I hate that video. So stupid. I can’t watch it.” One for the fans, then.

A secret of their longevity, Rhodes says, is not bowing to nostalgia. “I like to keep my blinkers on and look forward.” Having said that, he sounds ready to write his own memoir. “I would do a book yes,” he says. “I haven’t read John’s on purpose. I even wrote a foreword for it for the US version without reading it, but I did own up to it. I think mine would be very different from a lot of the rock biographies. The one that sticks with me is David Niven’s.”

Rhodes featured in Warhol’s diaries and Warhol, the subject of a show at Tate Modern in London that opened this week, would surely feature in his. He “invented the 20th century”, Rhodes says. “Andy was making reality TV in the Sixties. Can you imagine what he would have thought about the internet? It was all his dreams come true, but he would never have got any work done.” Rhodes says he stays off social media for that reason. “It’s not that I don’t like it; I fear it. I am going down a rabbit hole I may never get out of.

They’ve spent twice the time being famous as being unknown. Are they the same people they were in Birmingham 40 years ago?

Rhodes nods. “Yes, yes,” he says. “There have been big changes — marriages, divorces, kids, moving countries in John’s case — but when we are all together we have known each other for so long there is no room for anyone to behave in a way that would be unacceptable. There is no room for divas. We have lasted longer than most marriages; it is like being married to three people but we each get to go home on our own every night.”

Taylor tells me: “Without getting into recovery talk, a lot of that is about scrubbing away the masks that you tend to accrue to cope, so I think I am as close to that person as I was 40 years ago.”

Rhodes says tolerance is the key. “Sometimes when I arrive at the studio it is really bright, maybe someone is writing, and so everyone accepts I can’t cope, and so the lighting comes down.” I tell him I once read he always wears dark glasses before noon. He laughs. “Pretty much. That’s funny. I am hyper-sensitive to light. It’s not just pretentiousness. “

They appreciate they will have to prepare physically for the dates. For Rhodes, a terrible insomniac, that means “fruit and vegetables and grains” and lots of walking. But no workouts (“I am not a big fan of gymnasiums”). Taylor says he needs to start practising bass and the need to get back in shape is “keeping him awake at night”. “I like to run, I do Pilates, I do yoga and I think about everything that enters my mouth, everything. I am 90 per cent vegan. I don’t drink, take mind-altering chemicals. I am on and off sugar.”

Perhaps the greatest sign that they still have it is that their children want to see them play. Taylor just heard from his daughter, Atlanta, who lives in New York and is soon to be married to David Macklovitch from the Canadian band Chromeo.

“It’s a surprise when you get a text from a child and they say, ‘You’re playing Hyde Park — my boyfriend and I want to come.’”

#duran duran #DD40

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oops-prow-did-it-again · 4 years

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were do the one shots of pokemon character interactions go? i saw someone ask for one of nanu and white. i really want to read it. do you have an estimate for when it will be out?

I apologize in advance for how long and rambling this became! But I figured I’d clear up some questions for anyone else as well.

Short Answer - 3 months.

In the meantime, you can follow me here on tumblr as well as AO3, and FFN to keep up with the stories that are out. Reviews, comments, asks, etc are ALWAYS welcome!!

Pokemon Retold - AO3 (series link)

Pokemon Black - AO3 | FFN - Hil (Hilbert) has been dreaming of a way to escape his suffocating home for a while. He is offered a way out in the form of a partner pokémon and the offer to traverse the Unova region with his friends Cheren and Bianca. He never had the intentions of becoming champion or fighting Team Plasma, and yet, that's exactly where he finds himself--clashing with idealistic N over deadly truths. ((Warnings: referenced suicide. Occasional strong language. Mild Bianca x Cheren shipping. Occasional descriptions of blood/violence. No explicit sexual content.))

Pokemon Sword & Shield - AO3 | FFN - He's chasing a ghost and she's wishing he'd see sense. Gloria and Hop's adventure through Galar is one that will surely change them, for better or for worse. ((Warnings: Occasional descriptions of blood/violence. Occasional strong language. Brief mentions of alcohol. No explicit sexual content.))

3AM in Unova - AO3 | FFN - Sequel oneshot to Breaking the Ice. Bede discusses a one-night stand with Piers. ((The prompt behind this will end up canon, however this particular oneshot will be taken down/updated once Black, Black 2, and SwSh are finished. WARNING - strongly implied sexual content. Strong language.))

Breaking the Ice - AO3 | FFN - Prequel to 3AM in Unova. The Galarian and Unovan gym leaders meet up and have a party. Leon pulls a dirty trick on Raihan. ((The prompt behind this will end up canon, however, this particular oneshot will be taken down/updated once Black, Black 2, and SwSh are finished. WARNING - mild sexual content. Alcohol mentioned. Possible strong language.))

Some Nights - AO3 | FFN - The usually unshakable new gym leader of Ballonlea, Bede, has his heart thawed by a little girl who begs him to give her a starter pokemon and an endorsement for the Galarian Major League. ((This oneshot is canon to the SwSh retelling and will be moved to the appropriate Galar oneshot collection once I make it. No warnings.))

Marlon’s Misunderstanding - AO3 | FFN - Marlon is forced to face the music over his past following the Plasma Frigate’s attack on Opelucid City. ((The prompt behind this oneshot will end up canon, however, this particular story will be taken down/updated once Black/Black 2 are finished. WARNING - strong language. Reference to physical abuse.))

Long Answer -

So, before I get to the oneshots, the primary stories have to be finished. What’s a “primary story”? Well, that’d be the retelling of the game(s) involved. Why do these need to be finished? Because, as I write the primary story, stuff I have planned to happen can change. If I were to write the oneshot before then, it may no longer adhere to the retelling I write of the game, and therefore end up unrelated, which is not the intention. These are all supposed to fit into the same coherent universe.

The only reason some oneshots are written prior to their primary story being finished is because I had those ideas before I intended to make this a series. Those oneshots will be edited to conform to the universe and reposted in their respective oneshot collections once their primary stories are finished.

So for Nanu and White’s (who goes by Hilda in my stories), that means Black, Black 2, and Sun/Ultra Sun (they will be merged into one story in my universe, probably just called Sun) would need to be finished. Black is currently underway and I expect to have it finished by the end of May, and Black 2 by the end of July. Sun/Ultra Sun, on the other hand, will be started in probably June and finished by the end of July.

Actually, I’ll just go ahead and clarify my plan-

Red - Started by October 1st. Finished by November 30th

HeartGold - Started by October 1st. Finished by November 30th

Omega Ruby - Started by November 1st. Finished by December 31st

Platinum - Started by August 1st. Finished by September 30th

Black - Started April 1st. Finished by May 31st

Black 2 - Started June 1st. Finished by July 31st

Y - Started August 1st. Finished by September 30th

Ultra Sun/Sun - Started June 1st. Finished by July 31st

Sword & Shield - Started March 17th. Finished by May 31st*

*Sword/Shield is technically already finished, I have just been having to overhaul significant parts of it prior to releasing them because I started writing it prior to thinking of making this a series.

It takes about 2 weeks to fully organize/plan a retelling and then about a month and a half to completely write it out, at least as far as I estimate it. So, with the above dates in mind, any oneshot prompts involving characters from the above regions/games will happen after the official retelling is written out. Once some of the main stories above are finished, you can expect a pretty steady stream of oneshots, likely once a week or more.

So the earliest you could expect one involving Nanu and Hilda is early August.

#pokemon #pkmn #pokemon retold #pokemon black: the novel #pokemon sword and shield: the novel #pokemon sword & shield: the novel #asks #fanfiction #fanfic

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the-quiet-winds · 5 years

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Making Friends with Shadows on the Walls

so now that we’re all done with installment two of hold onto me, you’re all i have, so i’ll post a few modern things in the meantime, and then put up installment three in a few days. @ichlugebulletsandcornnuts and i focused on a different dynamic in this one, so... i hope y’all enjoy.

since katherine introduced jane to the library earlier in the year, they started going on a semi-regular basis. they tried to go at least every month, and occasionally parr joined them on their trips.

in early september, however, something slightly different happened. jane and katherine are getting ready to leave the shared house to go to the library, a canvas bag full of books to return, when boleyn suddenly pokes her head over the bannister.

“you going to the library?” she asks. when jane nods she adds, “you mind if I tag along?”

jane and katherine exchange slightly confused looks; boleyn had never expressed any desire to go to the library before. nevertheless, katherine nods.

“sure.”

boleyn sends them both a grin. “thanks. lemme grab my coat and i’ll be right down.”

katherine looks to her mum again, and jane just shrugs.

boleyn comes back down the stairs a minute later. "alright, ready."

the three set off, jane commandeering the wheel as they drive to the library.

the librarian, theresa, lights up at seeing them. "katherine!" she says brightly. "have a cookie, love."

katherine blushes and takes one, then she and jane pile all of the books onto theresa's desk. boleyn wanders off towards fiction, but, out of the corner of jane's eye, she sees her divert and enter the history section instead.

with all the books checked back in, katherine races off towards the fantasy section, eagerly searching for the continuation of a series she had started. jane watches her go with a fond smile, then turns into history, seeing boleyn amongst the shelves of massive tomes.

“do you need any help looking?” jane calls softly. boleyn jumps slightly and turns around, as if caught doing something she shouldn’t.

“nah, i’m okay,” she waves a hand. “thanks, though.”

“you sure?” jane asks. she doesn’t want to push it, but the way a library is organised can be confusing on your first visit. boleyn smiles and shakes her head.

“don’t worry about it.” she turns back to the shelves and scans through them. jane turns to head back out to the fiction section, but hesitates.

“you know, you can search on the library computers if you’re looking for something specific,” she says. “it’ll tell you where you need to look.”

boleyn sends her a grateful, if slightly embarrassed, look. “thanks, jane.”

jane gives her a soft smile. she puts a hand on her bicep and lightly squeezes. "i'm glad you came with us today." she lingers for just a moment longer before turning and going to find katherine.

only about a half hour later, they were ready to leave. katherine had the next two books in the series she had been reading, and hurried out to the car while jane went to find boleyn.

she finds her still in the history section, a stack of books in her arms.

"you almost ready, love?"

boleyn jumps and turns again. "uh, yeah, i think so."

she tries to quickly brush by jane, using her unzipped leather jacket to hide the covers of the books she was taking, but jane sees a legendary portrait of a queen with red hair and smiles softly.

"excellent reads, you know," she comments nonchalantly.

boleyn blushes but drops her head. "it'd be her birthday next week. thursday, actually," she admits in a very quiet voice.

“oh, that’s lovely,” jane smiles. “we could have a little celebration, if you liked?”

boleyn looks almost surprised at the suggestion. “you... you think the others would want to celebrate her birthday?”

“i don’t see why not,” jane nods. “but only if you wanted to do it, anne.”

boleyn seems to have a mini discussion in her mind before she meets jane’s gaze again.

“i’ll think about it,” she says, and there’s the twitch of a smile on the corner of her lips. “I- thanks, jane.”

jane smiles back and begins to shoo her towards the door. they check out all five of boleyn’s books and meet katherine in the car, who is already well into her new read.

that night, jane finds herself waking up around one, cursing her nature of light sleeping.

then she hears quiet tears.

on autopilot, she heads straight to katherine’s room and opens the door. but her girl is asleep, peaceful.

no, the tears are coming from the next room. boleyn’s room.

jane knocks gently on boleyn’s door. “anne?”

the tears pause for a moment, then there’s a stifled sniffle. there’s no reply, so jane slowly opens the door and peers around it.

boleyn is sitting on her bed, the lamp on her bedside table lighting up the room enough to see the open book in front of her. boleyn hurriedly wipes her face with her sleeve as jane enters the room.

“hey, jane,” she says, croaky voice attempting to sound nonchalant.

jane looks at her sympathetically. "can i come in?" she closes the door behind her as boleyn gives an affirmation. jane crosses the room and sits down on the edge of the bed. "what's got you up so late?"

boleyn gives a choked laugh. "i could ask you the same thing." then she deflates, her cool nature diminishing. "i got so caught up in reading about bess..." she points to a picture on the page, a colored portrait of the young queen. "that's my baby girl," she whispers faintly, the tip of her finger tracing over elizabeth's face. "she did all of these amazing things..." she trails off as a few more tears trickle down her cheeks. she hastily wipes them away. "i wish i had been there."

jane understands; she feels the same about edward, although with a twinge she remembers that edward didn’t get the chance to do nearly as much. she tries to push that thought from her mind, however, as she sits down next to boleyn on the bed and looks down at the book.

“she really was an amazing woman,” jane says softly. boleyn gives a watery smile.

“i knew even when she was little. by the time I- I died,” boleyn stutters slightly over her words, “she was saying all kinds of words, in english and french, and she wasn’t even three years old yet. she was the cleverest little girl.”

more tears start to fall down boleyn’s face but this time she doesn’t wipe them aside. her face turns dark.

“how could he just toss her aside after that? she was his daughter! she was so young and he got rid of her like she was nothing. none of it was her fault.” hot angry tears were streaming down her face now.

jane feels a pang at that - it was her own son that caused elizabeth to be cast out of court, out of the line of succession. but she can’t dwell on that.

she gently reaches out as wipes tears off boleyn’s cheeks. “look what that did though,” she offers quietly. “look what she became. what she did.”

boleyn gives a slight nod. “still-“

“i know,” jane concedes. “i know.”

boleyn sniffles. “these books, they like to say that i was a pretty wicked person,” she says. she tries to keep her voice light, but it shows that those words hurt. “i was a witch, a homewrecker. that bess was just a bastard.”

jane wraps a gentle arm around boleyn’s shoulders and rubs her thumb in soothing circles against boleyn’s upper arm.

“and look how wrong they were,” she says softly. “they can say she was just a bastard all they like, but that doesn’t change the truth, that she achieved all these amazing things and became maybe even more famous than her father. in the same way that they can call you all those things, but it doesn’t change who you really are. and i know that bess definitely didn’t see you that way. she loved you, anne.”

anne sniffles again, slightly leaning into jane’s hold. she lets herself rest her head on jane’s shoulder, the soothing ministrations of jane’s thumb calming her nerves slightly. “how do you think they told her?” she asks hollowly. “that i was allegedly unfaithful, that i was executed...” she gives an empty laugh. “how do you tell that to a three year old?”

jane realises with a guilty twinge that she didn’t know. she should know; her betrothal to henry had happened the day after boleyn’s execution, she should have paid attention to what was happening to the poor little girl whose mother had just been killed. instead, she’d... what had jane even been doing? focusing on wedding preparations?

“i don’t know,” she admits. “i really don’t know.”

they sit in silence for a while, boleyn leaning against jane.

“i want to ask parr about her,” boleyn admits suddenly. “y’know, since she looked after her and everything. i just...” she trails off, but jane understands. boleyn, out of all of them, probably found it the hardest to open up to the others.

“well,” jane says kindly, “when aragon asked about mary, i was more than happy to fill in the details.”

boleyn gives a hopeful smile.

“and i know parr isn’t made of stone,” she adds, a glimmer in her eyes.

boleyn’s face falls.

“what is it, love?” jane asks, giving her a light nudge.

“i just don’t want things to be weird...like i suddenly care about bess.” she lowers her voice. “i always have.”

“oh, love,” jane rubs her arm gently. “i know you always have, and i’m sure parr knows that too, and everyone else.” she takes a deep breath. “you, me, aragon and parr. we have that in common. we’d do absolutely anything for our children and we’ll always love them, no matter how little time we got to spend with them.”

boleyn’s face suddenly turns panicked.

“god, jane, i’m sorry, i didn’t even think.”

“hey,” jane frowns. “what are you sorry for?”

“i mean,” boleyn leans back slightly, “at least i got to spend nearly three years with her. i didn’t even think about you and edward. god, i’m so stupid.”

jane can’t deny the stinging reminder did make her heart ache. she missed her son and all that they didn’t get to share everyday. her new found family couldn’t change that.

“you’re not stupid,” jane says firmly. then she softens. “i miss eddie a lot, i can’t say that i don’t, but that doesn’t make your loss any less significant.”

“but-“

“no buts,” jane interrupts. she sighs. “you still lost your child, that never gets easier.”

her mind flashes to that time at the airport when she’d nearly lost katherine and she shudders. “never.”

boleyn gives a half laugh and leans her head on jane’s shoulder again.

“how is it you always know what to say?”

“trust me, i don’t always,” jane smiles, but then she turns more serious. “it’s just the truth, anne, that’s all i’m saying. and... i know it’s difficult, and i don’t want to push you to do anything you don’t want to do, but i don’t think you need to be afraid of talking to the others about this. but if you don’t want to talk to them, then you know you can always talk to me, okay?”

boleyn looks at jane, scanning her face, waiting for the punchline. all she sees, however, is a soft sincerity and her resolve crumbles. “yeah, i do.”

jane smiles again, then presses a gentle kiss to anne’s temple. “and i mean it, love,” she says quietly. “you can always come to me about anything, anytime. i promise.”

boleyn gives a faint smile. then, with a very faint voice, she whispers, “thanks jane.”

“it’s okay, love,” jane says softly, giving anne’s forehead another kiss. boleyn starts to relax against jane’s shoulder until a thought suddenly strikes her.

“will... will katherine mind? y’know, with me talking to you about stuff?”

jane knows boleyn is remembering the uncomfortable period of time when katherine lashed out at the others for getting too close to jane. she’d be lying if she wasn’t afraid of some kind of negative reaction from kat, but she also knows they’ve come a long way since then and hopefully katherine would be secure enough not to mind. it wasn’t as if boleyn was attempting to take katherine’s place or anything.

“it might take a bit of getting used to for her,” jane admits, “but she’ll understand, i’m sure of it. don’t let that stop you from talking to me if you need to talk about anything.”

boleyn gives a quiet noise of affirmation, followed by a soft smile.

“jane? can i be honest with you?” boleyn asks in a timid voice.

“of course you can, love,” jane answers kindly. “what’s on your mind?”

boleyn blushes slightly. “i know i wasn’t alive all that long to find comparisons, even in this life, but...” she trails off and looks up a jane. “you really are one of a kind, jane seymour.”

a soft, genuine smile creeps it’s way into jane’s face. “thank you, love. and you know what?”

“what?” boleyn asks.

“i think you’re rather one of a kind too, anne.”

boleyn blushes even darker and she’s unable to keep the grin off her face. “you don’t have to say it back just because i said it.”

“it’s true,” jane smiles. “i promise you.” boleyn’s eyes study jane’s face for a moment before she rests her head back on her shoulder.

“thank you, jane,” she says quietly. “...for everything.”

#six the musical #six musical #jane seymour #anne boleyn #katherine howard #julie and jess write #making friends with shadows on the wall

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cindylouwho-2 · 5 years

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RECENT NEWS, RESOURCES & STUDIES, September 2019

Welcome to my latest summary of recent news, resources & studies including search, analytics, content marketing, social media & ecommerce! This covers articles I came across in the past 5 weeks, although some may be older than that.

I am still working on scheduling enough time to post these every 10 days or so, but lately luck is just not on my side. Writing this elsewhere then cutting & pasting it here is creating some significant formatting issues, so if you find any errors or broken links, please let me know.

Are there types of news you would like to see here? Leave a comment below, email me through my website, or send me a message on Twitter.

TOP NEWS & ARTICLES

Etsy introduced Etsy Ads at the end of August; I covered it on my blog. Some people are seeing decent returns, but many are not. I started a forum thread here for continuing discussion.

A day later, Amazon announced it has waived their $40 a month shop fee for Handmade by Amazon shops. See the pinned post on their Facebook page.

A large study of click-through-rates (CTR) on Google reveals that the top link gets over 30% of the clicks, titles with questions get 14% more clicks than those without, and moving up one slot in the results leads to more clicks, unless you move from 10th to 9th. They cite Etsy’s study of titles & CTR (which showed that shorter titles get more clicks, something that this study also found).

Trend watch: a suggestion that Americans can avoid most of the tariff pain in the pocketbook by buying used clothing & other items. “Secondhand and vintage is no longer synonymous with a dusty pile of outdated sweaters in the corner of a church basement, or a yearly rummage sale. Online resale, including high-end designer items, is booming, thanks to start-ups like The RealReal, Depop, Poshmark, eBay, and Etsy. It’s possible to fill your entire closet this way”. Pre-owned & rented clothing also makes fans of sustainability happy.

Also, “grandmillennials” are a thing.

ETSY NEWS

Etsy US searches often now have a full first page of items that ship free or have the $35 free shipping guarantee, as of September 6 (although they were testing it earlier than that.) I was seeing the rare exception, beyond searches that have fewer than 48 items shipping free, but it wasn’t clear if these are tests or personalization. Then on September 21, we started seeing many items with shipping charges on the first page of even very large results, & most smaller results didn’t give much if any priority to free shipping at all. There has been no statement from Etsy, so your guess is as good as mine ...

In the meantime, they’ve begun promoting free shipping to buyers, which has led to some media coverage. Some note that the timing is good, since most US holiday purchases online in the past several years have included free shipping.

There is a new chapter in the Ultimate Guide To Etsy Search, involving attributes. The accompanying podcast with Etsy’s head taxonomist [transcript with links to the podcast] is quite interesting. She says that one of the reasons that some attributes haven’t shown up yet as search filters is that not enough sellers have applied them to listings. “If we have 100,000 items in the search results and a buyer uses a filter, and that filter causes the results to return just 20 items, that makes it seem broken. The buyer no longer trusts the results. If only 20% of sellers fill out an attribute, showing a filter based on that attribute to buyers isn’t going to be helpful because such a drastic reduction in results makes them lose confidence in those search results. We have to wait until a large number of sellers fill out that data to show it to buyers as a filter. When we do, sellers who have filled out that attribute show in those filtered search results. Sellers who haven’t, don’t.” Also, “[w]e know that shoppers who interact with these filters tend to buy more expensive items.” And, there aren’t separate jewellery attributes for “gold”, “gold-filled” & “gold-plated” because “[m]any jewelry buyers don’t have your experience and don’t know the huge difference between these things.”

The new commercials were launched earlier this month; you can check them all out here, and here is some media coverage. Some analysts think this is a good thing for the stock.

Vox published a review of Etsy’s latest free shipping push, in contrast with its history. [I am sure most of you have seen that, but if not, it is a good read!] “Silverman doesn’t like the words “handmade” or “craft” because they “don’t communicate anything to buyers about when to think of Etsy.” he says now. Nobody wakes up thinking, “Gosh, I need to buy something handmade today,” he tells me, which may be true but I rarely wake up thinking I need to buy anything at all, and more commonly wake up in horror because I’ve already bought way too much. “You need to furnish your apartment. You need to prepare for a party. You need to find a gift for a friend. You need a dress. Handmade is not the value proposition — unique, personalized, expresses your sense of identity, those are things that speak to buyers.” [emphasis added] Also, apparently Etsy founder Rob Kalin “didn’t know what seed funding was when he took it” 😮

The new tool for creating country-specific sales is finally out. You still can’t create the equivalent of the $35 free shipping guarantee for countries other than the US, however, which makes this pretty useless for people wanting to offer free shipping in the US and to their own country. The only way to come close is to set a 30 day free shipping sale to your own country, but it won’t show up in search (unless people filter for free shipping) or get the Canadian search boost for items that ship free, and you still need to renew it every 30 days. In short, Etsy is telling us to overcharge our customers in other countries with no way to offer them the same deals Americans are getting.

Sellers can now use Etsy Labels for USPS First Class letters & flats.

Holiday tips continue to roll out: here are some ideas for running holiday sales and promotions on Etsy.

Advanced content on machine learning: Etsy is employing its data on styles to serve up personalized recommendations, including the “Our Picks for You” section on the home page. The purchase and favouriting rates are part of what gets shown. They’ve discovered that some styles are more popular are different times of the year.

For those of you who think Etsy doesn’t spend enough on advertising, they are actually buying spots on tv shows now, including this Las Vegas morning show. [video]

SEO: GOOGLE & OTHER SEARCH ENGINES

Sad to report that Keywords Everywhere is becoming a paid tool starting October 1st (although it may take longer to roll out to your account). https://keywordseverywhere.com/news.html They need to do this because they were being scraped by bots, which was affecting user experience & costing them a lot of time and money. Fortunately, it is still going to be very cheap - 10,000 keywords for $1 USD, purchased ahead of time as credits. They say that the average user will spend less than $2 a month, & I suspect that the average Etsy user will spend less. Once your account moves to a paid one, you will no longer see the search volume, cost per click & competition numbers under search terms until you buy credits, although the "related keywords" & "people also search" sections will still show up on the right side of Google search. I usually do not recommend any paid tools, but I do think this will still be worth every penny, especially if you remember to turn it off when shopping instead of researching! Every comparable paid tool costs way more than this. And despite the rush of attention since their announcement, I still received a personal reply to my email within 24 hours.

You know how I always talk about nofollow links? They still exist, but Google has expanded their link attribution codes to include “sponsored” & "ugc" (user generated content), and all might be crawled at any point after March 1, 2020. Moz did a top level explanation, and here is Google’s (shorter) summary. But it may not really matter much to the average site.

Want to rank well on Google and other search engines? Create “complete content.”

A followup on last edition’s discussion of canonical URLs - Google gets the final say. [video]

Google is now releasing monthly videos of their search news; first one is here.

Some of you will remember Moz’s Whiteboard Friday series on learning SEO in one hour. They’ve now compiled all 6 videos in one place.

And if you want to learn the basics of link building quickly, Moz has a short version of that chapter from their Beginner’s Guide to SEO.

If you are afraid you are missing some SEO rules on your top pages, check out this complete checklist for on-page SEO.

There are tons of SEO tools for Wordpress; here are 15 of the best.

Many people will find your blog through search engines, so make sure you use keywords in your blog posts.

If you have a website, check out 16 things that can harm your search engine rankings [semi-advanced in part, some points are discussing coding]

Success on YouTube involves SEO, something I find many users forget.

Mostly advanced: reminder that as of September 1, you can’t use robots.txt to tell Google not to index pages or sites.

Advanced content for website developers: you need to make sure the site is ready for SEO work.

There are always more Google updates; this one is still rolling out, and was confirmed by Google, but very few details were given. Sistrix did the first comprehensive analysis, although it is still early, and health and media sites seem to be the most dramatically affected.

CONTENT MARKETING & SOCIAL MEDIA (includes blogging & emails)

Marketing emails need to be carefully designed for success. Everything from the layout to the “preheader” matters.

If you have content on one medium that is doing well for you, it’s time to “repurpose” it for different platforms.

Infographics are very popular in content marketing; here’s how to make one, with 15 free templates.

Some Instagram posts do better than others; here’s why. Among other study findings, “smaller profiles which use more hashtags actually do see better engagement rates per post.”

If you aren’t getting much interaction on Instagram, you could be “shadowbanned.” There are ways to avoid that happening, and ways to fix it when it does.

“Content factories” are a big part of Instagram traffic. Maybe Facebook should crack down on this?

Pinterest is combining image recognition visual search with Shoppable Pins.

Facebook is considering hiding the like counts on News Feed posts, as Instagram is testing in 7 countries right now. “The idea is to prevent users from destructively comparing themselves to others and possibly feeling inadequate if their posts don’t get as many Likes. It could also stop users from deleting posts they think aren’t getting enough Likes or not sharing in the first place.”

Video app TikTok can be confusing, so here is a step-by-step guide for beginners. And here’s a podcast [with text] on the basics.

Twitter chats are a great way to attract interest in your business.

ONLINE ADVERTISING (SEARCH ENGINES, SOCIAL MEDIA, & OTHERS)

Facebook is testing new shopping ads, but they are only available to small groups at the moment: checkout from the Facebook app, and turning Instagram shopping posts into ads. Here’s more on the latter.

Snapchat now has longer ads and different formats.

I see a lot of questions on what you can advertise on various platforms; here’s a good summary of items/topics prohibited on major sites.

Since so many sellers are interested in other types of advertising right now, here are a few primers, most of which I have posted here before: Setting up Google Shopping for your website Instagram Sponsored Posts How to beat Facebook’s ad algorithm Setting up Pinterest ads

STATS, DATA, OTHER TRACKING

Have Google Analytics set up on your website but don’t know how to use it? Here are some common features [text and video] you may want to take advantage of. Note that the part about setting it up doesn’t apply to most marketplaces and many website builders, which have a more simplified set up, as Etsy does.

The old Google Search Console (formerly Google Webmaster Tools) is now almost entirely converted to the new version. Expect all of the old reports to be moved to the new version soon.

ECOMMERCE NEWS, IDEAS, TRENDS

There’s new evidence that Amazon has skewed its search algorithm to favour its own products & third-party products that make Amazon the most money. ”Executives from Amazon’s retail divisions have frequently pressured the engineers at A9 to surface their products higher in search results, people familiar with the discussions said.” In case that WSJ article goes back behind a paywall, here is some news coverage of it. “Instead of adding profitability into the algorithm itself, Amazon changed the algorithm to prioritize factors that correlate with profitability, the article said.” Amazon denies this, of course.

Despite the legal agreement in Germany, Amazon is still suspending accounts without 30 days notice.

Want to use cash to pay for online purchases? Amazon is now offering that option in the US.

eBay listings now default to 1-day handling; if you ship slower than that, make sure to remember to change the default on each new listing you make.

eBay managed payments (the equivalent of Etsy Payments) are now available in Germany.

A review of major shipping trends in ecommerce notes that “[t]he accelerated supply chain is putting small sellers at a crossroads regarding if they can afford to take a hit on margins” when discussing Etsy’s free shipping push.

BUSINESS & CONSUMER STUDIES, STATS & REPORTS; SOCIOLOGY & PSYCHOLOGY, CUSTOMER SERVICE

Over ⅓ of US adults have bought something on social media, over 50% of 18-34 year olds are in that group. Far fewer had used visual search or virtual reality.

More people are shopping online late at night; women are more likely to do it, but men spend more when they do. [I’ve noticed this trend on my site and Etsy shop for a few years now,compared to when I first started selling in 2008.]

The majority of shoppers worldwide who are online use videos to make some purchase decisions, as shopping lists, how-to research, and to check reviews.

Gen Z (the generation after millennials) is more concerned about their health than the the previous 2 generations, and sometimes avoid the stresses of social media by shopping in brick & mortar stores. “About two-thirds (67%) of Gen Z prefer products made with ingredients they can understand, and tend to buy products in health and wellness categories more frequently than other generations. On environmental issues, 65% said they prefer simple packaging and 58% said they want eco-friendly packaging. Half of the group seeks products that are locally sourced or made, and 57% are seeking products that are environmentally sustainable, but fewer are willing to pay a premium price for them.”

For the 2019 holiday season, “65% of holiday shoppers will use a mobile device to shop, and 65% will make an online purchase via mobile.”

How do different industries get their online traffic? Google sends sites 8 times more traffic than all social media sites combined, and Facebook drives nearly ⅔ of all visits from social media. Instagram is responsible for less than 1%, while Twitter tops 10%. The author notes that “faster-growing social networks like Instagram, Snapchat and TikTok are designed from the ground up in a way that makes it difficult to drive traffic to external sites.”

MISCELLANEOUS (including humour)

Google is working on letting you search your Google Photos for text; it seems to be using AI to identify & store the text in your screenshots and other images. It’s interesting technology that will likely be used in many ways, including search engines, if it works well.

If you like convo snippets on Etsy, here’s a tool that will make them possible in many more places.

Need a photo editor that works on mobile? Here’s a list of 12, most of which are free or cost only $1 USD.

This one simple trick makes everything faster and easier.

Stuff that probably shouldn’t taste like pumpkin spice. [humour]

#seo #search engine optimization #search engine marketing #etsynews #analytics #stats #social media #contentmarketing #content marketing #Ecommerce #smallbiz #CindyLouWho2NewsUpdates

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wannabealexjenningscoffee · 5 years

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Notes on a fair lady

As an icon of screen and stage makes her Australian directing debut, her "gorgeous" aura has made a lasting impression on her cast, writes LISSA CHRISTOPHER.

'It was a complete no brainer," says Alex Jennings of his decision to take up the role of Henry Higgins for a third time. In this instance, it came with the opportunity to be directed by the legendary Dame Julie Andrews, to visit Australia for the first time and to relish what the 59-year-old feels is probably his "last chance" to play the eccentric professor of phonetics in a credible way. Rex Harrison - My Fair Lady's first Henry Higgins - was still reprising the role well into his 70s. "But I do not want to be doing that," says Jennings. "You'd have to find an actress in her 90s to play your mother, Mrs Higgins, for a start, and then there's the whole relationship with Eliza. Is it a romance? I know older men do marry much younger women, but I think it's slightly queasy-making if the gap gets too big."

Jennings is one of those high-calibre, never-seen-in-Who-magazine British actors whose faces are probably more recognisable than their names, particularly for Australian audiences. His career has been focused primarily on the stage - he's a veteran of the Royal Shakespeare Company and the National Theatre - but he has had some significant film roles. He played opposite Maggie Smith, as the writer Alan Bennett, in The Lady in the Van, for example, and Prince Charles in The Queen. He has appeared in a number of well-known British TV series, from Whitechapel to New Tricks to Foyle's War and later this year, viewers will see him as the Duke of Windsor in the Netflix series The Crown. Every story about Jennings, including this one, points out that he is the only person in history to have won uber-prestigious Laurence Olivier theatre awards for performances in the comedy, drama and musical categories, the last for his first rendition of Henry Higgins, in 2003. Jennings has such a deep, clear and resonant speaking voice that the timber and steel table between us, in a small rehearsal room at Opera Australia's Surry Hills headquarters, seems to vibrate slightly under its influence. It's a beautiful voice and narrating audiobooks is also a big part of Jennings' professional repertoire. His register is particularly low today, he says, because the cast did a full run-through of the show the day before. My Fair Lady is a taxing show, particularly for him and his co-star, Anna O'Byrne as Eliza Doolittle. To sustain your voice over the season, he says, "you have to warm up, warm down, keep hydrated, steam". Then, adopting a plummy tone, "You have to tend your instrument." The upcoming Australian production of My Fair Lady celebrates the musical's 60th anniversary and is a homage to the original, successful Broadway production, starring Julie Andrews and Rex Harrison. Jennings says he was nervous about meeting Andrews for the first time - "I mean, she is an icon really, isn't she?" - but he soon relaxed in the 80-year-old's "gorgeous" company. Somewhat heavy-handed attempts on the part of your correspondent to wring a morsel of gossip or criticism from Jennings about Andrews end in failure. "No! She doesn't have any strange habits!" he says. "She is fan-tastic. Honestly. Just fantastic. Working with her is like a masterclass. It's amazing. And very sort of touching to see her revisiting something she did 60 years ago. Her staging instinct is immaculate. Her notes are incredibly detailed. She is so fantastic and generous with the ensemble, and gorgeous to be around. She is amazing. Amazing. Amazing." The 2003 production of My Fair Lady was the first musical of Jennings' career. "It was sort of the obvious one for me to do because ... you don't need to be a beautiful singer," he says. He went on to do Candide and a long West End run as Willy Wonka in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. His singing, he says, has come along in leaps and bounds, with help from the renowned voice coach Mary King. "I always feel slightly nervous about saying I can sing, probably because someone will say 'well, go on then', but I can sing." He says he has spent time working with the voice coach on really singing - rather than talk-singing - Higgins' lyrics. "I wanted to see how far I could go with that, but Julie is pushing me in the opposite direction - to sing less. It makes sense. His songs are patter songs and you can do more with the lyrics if you speak them than if you adhere to the notes." O'Byrne, who as Eliza spends much of her time on stage with Jennings, says he brings a sense of playfulness to the production. "He's a joyful person, a lot of fun to be around on a personal level, and professionally, his skill level is so high. His attention to detail and his willingness to play around with new things on stage is wonderful to watch." The role of Eliza is a huge one. O'Byrne has played Christine in The Phantom of the Opera and its sequel, Love Never Dies, but never a role with as much stage time as this. "It's one of the dream roles in music theatre," she says. "Eliza has so much strength and bravery. She is the most human character I've done on stage. But on a practical level, the trickiest thing is keeping the storytelling strong all the way through." Andrews, who created the stage role of Eliza when she was 21 years old, encouraged O'Byrne to make the role her own. "She didn't want a carbon copy and I don't think that would be right in our version of the show, so I've felt great freedom in that respect," she says.

After decades of highly respectable success as a theatre actor, including his dream job playing Hamlet with the Royal Shakespeare Company, Jennings says he wouldn't mind a bit more Hollywood-style celebrity in his life. "When I was doing publicity for The Lady in the Van, being flown first class to LA and being picked up in nice cars and things like that, that hadn't been my career, really, but I thought oh, hello, this is quite nice."

He even harbours what appears to be a near-genuine ambition to appear on Strictly Come Dancing, the popular British version of Dancing with the Stars. "I don't actually think I could do it. It's such hard work, but they seem to have such a good time ... My agent doesn't want me to do it though and I haven't been asked, you know. I don't have that kind of profile."

In the meantime, Jennings and his wife, Lesley Moors, a landscape gardener, make do as enthusiastic amateur hoofers. It transpires that Fred Astaire rather than, say, Laurence Olivier, was Jennings' childhood idol. "I've always been quite a nifty disco boy ... We are party dancers and Prince is very big in our lives. We mourn him." My Fair Lady opens opened at the Sydney Opera House on September 6.

Lissa Christopher Sydney Morning Herald 3 September, 2016

#alex jennings #my fair lady #uk actors #alex jennings interviews #sydney opera house #henry higgins #dame julie andrews #julie andrews #musical theatre #opera australia

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inyournightmares97 · 6 years

Text

The Passionate Discourse

Part of the Thirsty Days of September series, a collaboration with @ijustwantacue. Find her version here!

A difference of opinion leads to a healthy debate between you and the sexy Professor Mark Tuan… and just maybe, a little something more.

Word Count: 7k+

Warnings: A little steamy but no smut, also some strong opinions on feminism and other sensitive subjects. The opinions stated by the reader or Mark are not necessarily my own so don’t attack me for them, I just took up two extreme viewpoints.

This was possibly the most pathetic excuse for a party you’d ever seen.

Then again, your mother had organized the whole event and a large majority of the invitees were busybody women in their late fifties from her new book club. You had been worried that your mother would be sad and lonely after her recent divorce, but she had taken on life as a single woman with fresh vigor by joining a new book club and becoming quite popular among the elderly and retired in your community. You’d never seen her pick up a single book throughout your childhood yet now she met up every Saturday with a group of similarly lonely women to discuss the likes of Jane Austen and Charlotte Bronte.

Oh, well. As long as she was happy you had nothing to complain about. You wished that she wouldn’t invite her friends over here on weekends and pressure you to serve them tea and buy those cute little finger foods while they told you that you looked exactly like your mother and commented on how you were still unmarried.

It was demeaning, really. You were a fully-grown adult woman and you didn’t need to be subjected to this infantile treatment.

“Darling!” your mother came over to you and grasped your arm firmly as she pulled you aside. You had been trying half-heartedly to explain to a group of older women what you did for a living. With their dangerously limited knowledge they had somehow wrongly concluded that you were a doctor and you didn’t care quite enough to correct them. You were rescued from hearing about Mrs. Lee’s backache when your mother pulled you away. “Darling, I must have a word with you. Do you remember I mentioned Mrs. Tuan the other day?”

You blinked. “You might have. I can’t remember.”

“Well, she is one of my very dearest friends,” you mother explained, although it was much more likely that they’d just met a few times at the book club. “She’ll be coming down here to join the party and she messaged me to let me know that her son is dropping her off. Now I know that you don’t really like me to recommend you to my friend’s sons because it hasn’t gone very well in the past-“

You glared at your mother. “Not very well? The last man had been divorced twice already and he was one of those!”

Your mother frowned. “One of those what?”

You folded your arms across your chest and hissed. “Those anti-vaccine movement supporters! He told me right to my face that he would never let his children get vaccinated because vaccines were a conspiracy created by the medical community to make money! Do you know insulting it is as a biomedical scientist to be told right to your face that your entire life’s research is a cheap scam? Was I supposed to date that disgusting man?”

Your mother sighed. “Yes, all right. I see how he wasn’t right for you. For your information, it’s very difficult to find men who can live up to your absurdly high intellectual standards. But Mrs. Tuan’s son is different. I think you might actually like him. He’s a Professor! Isn’t that exciting?”

“Not particularly.”

Your mother frowned and her grip on your arm tightened. She lowered her voice to make sure that nobody else at the party was listening to you. “Now listen. You’re not getting any younger and it’s hard for women like you who are so constantly focused on their careers to find men willing to put up with them. Mark Tuan is a perfectly lovely man. He’s never been married or divorced, he’s a Professor at a rather prestigious university and judging by the summer holiday pictures that his mother showed me last week, he’s also extremely handsome. At least give him a chance?”

You sighed. “Yes, fine.”

“Thank you, darling. I knew you wouldn’t disappoint your mother. It’s been so lonely since the divorce, you know, and I at least want you to find some happiness and not end up like me.”

You resisted the urge to roll your eyes. Reading too much Jane Austen was turning your mother into one of those typical, overdramatic mothers from the Regency era whose sole aim in life was to marry off her daughters. You opened your mouth to tell her that maybe she should remember what century she was in, when the doorbell suddenly rang. Your mother jumped up with an enormous smile on her face.

“That must be Mrs. Tuan! Come with me, darling, let’s go greet them together….”

You followed your mother to the door reluctantly. It was indeed Mrs. Tuan; you smiled and greeted the older woman pleasantly before allowing your gaze to turn to her son standing just a little bit behind her. You froze for a moment while you looked at the man.

Well, well, well. Mark Tuan was handsome indeed.

Your heart did a little leap when he smiled at you, his gorgeous lips spreading into a rather boyish but still extremely attractive smile. Mark was wearing a dark blazer and the round spectacles on his face made him look intelligent and mature despite his young age. Your mouth went dry as he held out a hand to you. His handshake was firm and his skin warm. You couldn’t help but look down at the large hand grasping yours. You’d always liked a man’s hands. Mark’s were smooth yet strong.

“Mark Tuan,” he introduced himself in a soft and deep voice. You looked up into a pair of chocolate brown eyes that seemed innocent, yet briefly flickered up and down your body as they drank you in. You forgot how to speak for a moment so your mother grasped your arm and smiled for you.

“It’s such a pleasure to meet you, Mark. Won’t you come in and join us?”

Mark hesitated and as he exchanged glances with you, you saw a mild hint of panic in his eyes. He clearly didn’t want to be trapped into discussing Wuthering Heights with his mother’s friends. You decided in that split instant that you were rather attracted to this Mark person and that if you were going to be stuck at this stupid party anyway, you would much rather be stuck with him.

“Actually, I had just come to drop my Mother off. I wasn’t planning to stay-“

You gave him one of your most welcoming smiles. Mark was surely handsome, but you knew how to handle yourself around handsome men. “But you must come in for at least one cup of tea! The book club meeting doesn’t start for another twenty minutes and I’m sure that everyone would love to meet you in the meantime. We’ve heard so much about you, Professor Tuan.”

Mark blinked at you in surprise. “Well, um-“

“Come dear, have some tea with us!” his mother insisted, grabbing him by the arm and pulling him inside. You noticed that both of your mothers exchanged a rather mischievous glance and realized that they had probably been planning this for a long time. Honestly; were they running a book club or a matchmaking ring for their children? Either way, the longer you looked at Mark, the more you decided that perhaps your mother hadn’t made such a terrible choice after all.

You followed them into the dining room where all the women almost literally pounced upon Mark at once. You had to admit that in that dark coat and with his naturally charming smile he looked like a hero straight out of a Jane Austen adaptation. You left the older women to badger him with questions and compliments while you slipped into the kitchen. For once, you weren’t the center of attention and the moment’s respite was a relief. You turned the coffee machine on and listened to the chattering drifting in from the dining room half-heartedly. If he survived the crowd of women and lived to tell the tale, you decided that you would give Mark a chance.

He was definitely a treat for the eyes, after all.

About fifteen minutes later, Mark entered the kitchen by himself. He was straightening his jacket and you noticed that he seemed a little bit flustered. He adjusted his glasses on his face and gave you a small, slightly embarrassed smile that made your knees feel weak. Damn. It should be criminal to have such a gorgeous smile.

“Hi,” he greeted you shyly.

You smiled at him. “Survived the wolves, did you?”

“Yes, they’re finally starting their book club discussion now,” Mark replied, shoving his hands into his pockets. You leaned back and noticed that despite being slender, he looked extremely athletic. The jacket buttons were certainly straining over his chest. He leaned against the counter. “I’m informed that it’s Sense and Sensibility they’re discussing today, although there seems to be very little of either to go around in that group.”

You giggled. He had an interesting way of speaking. Perhaps he taught Literature, or something along those lines. How interesting and poetic. You heard the coffee machine behind you ding and gestured towards it. “Can I offer you some coffee? They’re only serving tea out there today. Apparently it’s in keeping with the Jane Austen theme but neither I nor my mother have ever made tea so I’m sure it tasted disgusting.”

Mark grinned. “The little tea cakes were all right.”

“Oh, those were store-bought.”

“Good decision.”

You turned to grab mugs as you poured generous amount of coffee into them. It smelled heavenly and Mark stepped closer to you in order to peek at the delicious beverage. He pointed out your extremely fancy coffee-maker with a smile. “That looks like the sort of machine you would find in an actual coffee shop. A little bit much for a normal household, isn’t it?”

You shrugged as you added milk into the heavenly brew. It became a lovely dark color and you made a little white swirl on the top. “I love coffee. I bought it as a gift for my mother but I think we both know that it was really for me. Sugar?”

“Yes, please,” Mark replied eagerly. You turned to him and noticed that he still had that handsome, boyish smile on his face. He took the coffee mug that you offered him and took a small sip. You couldn’t help but watch as his tongue darted out to lick his lips gently. God, did this man have any idea how attractive he was? Mark noticed you staring at him and his mouth twisted into a small smirk but he said nothing. “This is delicious. Thank goodness I can finally get the taste of that tea out of my mouth.”

“You’re welcome,” you told him.

Mark nodded and took another sip of the coffee before placing the mug on the counter. He was still leaning against it with his arms folded across his chest and you noticed that his chocolate-colored eyes were looking you up and down gently. His gaze sent a shiver down your spine, even though his eyes didn’t linger at any one place for too long. Well. At least he knows how to keep it classy. You found yourself subconsciously straightening your shoulders so that your chest looked nicer.

“So,” Mark began casually. “Do you live here with your mother, then? I don’t see any other reason why you would spend your weekend doing something like this.”

“Unfortunately, yes. I moved back here after my mother’s divorce was finalized because I thought that she might be lonely. I had no idea that she’d suddenly developed a more active social life than my own,” you said with a small laugh. You leaned against the counter and smiled. “I don’t think I could get this many friends to come over to my house at once. I’m always working.”

Mark blinked. “Oh? And what do you do?”

“I’m a scientist. I specialize in biomedical research and I work for the Medical Research Council,” you explained. Mark’s eyes widened and you could tell from his expression that he was impressed. You gave him a small, teasing smirk “But before you ask, I’m not a doctor and no, I don’t know why you’ve been feeling a little warmer than usual these days. My best guess is either menopause or global warming.”

Mark nodded. “That’s very impressive. Don’t worry, I won’t ask you to diagnose my health problems. Although I wonder if there’s anything you can do about this one constant headache I’ve been suffering. It gets significantly worse when I’m in the same room as the women from my mother’s book club, you see…”

You could tell from the mischievous smile that spread across his face that he was joking. You laughed and rolled your eyes at him. Handsome, intelligent and funny. You wondered if this man could get any more perfect. This was the first time that you’d ever felt so attracted to someone that you were meeting for the first time and from the way Mark’s eyes never moved away from yours either, he was equally attracted to you. You bit your lip and smiled at him.

“So, Professor Mark. Let me guess what it is you teach,” you told him with a flirtatious smile.

Mark took a sip of his coffee and shrugged. “Go ahead.”

“Your comment about Sense and Sensibility was rather interesting. At first I thought you might teach something like literature, but then I realized that the comment was a little superficial. It’s not likely to come from somebody who’s actually read the book and knows that the title is referring to foolish young love and not gossiping old women. So I’m guess your field of study has nothing to do with Literature or Poetry or anything like that.”

“You’re partly right,” Mark told you with an amused smile. “I’m not a Literature professor but I have read Sense and Sensibility. So that leaves your conclusion accurate while your analysis is rather lacking.”

You tapped your cheek with a finger as you scanned him. What did this mysterious man teach? It was difficult to tell just by looking at his face. Mark merely pushed his glasses further up his nose and looked at you calmly while you stared at him. You finally snapped your fingers and pointed at him. “Okay. If you read something like Sense and Sensibility, then you must be a rather sensitive and romantic person. I’m getting some sort of artsy vibes from you. And you have a lovely voice. Do you by any chance teach some sort of music?”

Mark laughed his gorgeous laugh and shook his head. “No, you’re going in the wrong direction. Thank you for the compliment about my voice, though. I’ve never heard anyone say that before.”

You flushed. “It just has a rather nice, deep tone to it.”

Mark simply smirked. “Well, you’d better stop getting distracted by it because you’re losing whatever little game we’re playing. Music and Literature? Is that all you can think of?”

You frowned. “Give me a hint.”

He rubbed his chin thoughtfully for a moment. Then he smiled and straightened up a little bit. “Okay. But this is a pretty obvious hint. You know how I said earlier that I read Sense and Sensibility? Well, I did read it from an academic perspective. So make what you will with that.”

A little lightbulb went off in your head and you beamed. “Ah! History, then!”

“No, not History.”

Your lower lip jutted out into a small pout at the slightly triumphant expression on his face. You honestly couldn’t think of anything and you wondered what you could possibly be missing. You sighed and raised an eyebrow at Mark. “Why one earth would you read Sense and Sensibility from an academic perspective if you’re not looking either at the literature or at the historical aspect? What other angle could a Jane Austen novel about a pair of sisters looking for love possibly have?”

“Are you giving up that easily?” he teased as you felt your cheeks warm. You hadn’t intended to make yourself look like an idiot but Mark seemed extremely amused. “I thought scientists were always on an endless quest for answers about the universe?”

You rolled your eyes. “You’re definitely not a scientist if you believe that.”

Mark nodded. “That’s correct.”

“Well then, please tell me. What does the mysterious Mark Tuan actually teach and what academic angle could he possibly have found in a classic romance tale such as Sense and Sensibility? I’m just dying to know.”

“Let me give you a few more hints because you’re almost there,” Mark explained. “Sense and Sensibility was written by a woman. The main protagonists are all women and it talks about the lives of women. So therefore I must be studying….?”

You blinked at him. “Women?” you asked, confused. You stared at Mark for a few more moments until the puzzle clicked in your mind. “Wait… you can’t be referring to feminism?”

“Close enough. I teach Gender Studies.”

You couldn’t help it; a slightly derisive snort escaped your mouth. He couldn’t possibly be serious? You searched Mark’s dark eyes for any sign that he was joking and concluded that he looked perfectly serious. You had to cover your mouth in order to hold back the amused chuckle that was pushing past your lips. You had never heard anything more ridiculous in your life. Why on earth would a handsome, intelligent man like Mark Tuan choose to study something as frivolous as Gender Studies?

Mark raised an eyebrow. “Is something funny?”

“Yes!” you blurted out. You knew you were being extremely rude but you had never been one to hold back whatever you wanted to say. “I mean, why would you choose to become a Professor in something like Gender Studies? You can’t mean to say that you actually did a bachelor’s degree and then a masters and then a doctorate, all those years of study… on something as useless and commonplace as gender?”

The smile had dropped from Mark’s face. There was a slightly serious, more intense look in his eyes and his voice sounded a little hard. “I’m sensing some condescension in your tone.”

“You’re sensing right!”

“I take it you don’t approve, then.”

“It seems like a complete waste of time to me,” you replied with a challenging stare. “I mean, I’m assuming you talk about things like feminism and you argue over whether this gender is more oppressed or that gender is more oppressed or… oh wait! There’s no gender at all! It’s a social construct that has been imposed on us without any scientific backing, and the world is a better place because we’ve somehow all decided that. It’s a waste of time. It’s like arguing over whether jam tastes better on toast or butter. It doesn’t make the slightest bit of difference to anyone or really impact anything.”

Mark bit the inside of his cheek and looked down at you. You could see that his eyes had darkened and his arms coolly folded across his chest. “So if I’m hearing correctly, you think my field of study is… pointless? Or that arguing about feminism or gender-based discrimination is useless?”

You stared back at him, unblinking. “Isn’t it?”

“You don’t believe that women are oppressed?” he demanded.

You sighed and rubbed your temples. “Look. I agree that there are orthodox countries and parts of the world where women are locked up indoors and denied education and the basic freedom to move around and killed if they have sex before marriage. It’s terrible. It really is. I agree that social reformists are extremely important in places like that. But you’re not in one of those countries. Why on earth would educated and developed people like us still sit and whine about gender discrimination in the First World? We’re not locked up. We have access to resources. Everybody agrees that women should be allowed to be educated-“

Mark sighed and shook his head. “You can’t really believe that gender-based discrimination is restricted to orthodox, backward countries where they murder women for having sex.”

“I do, actually,” you replied with a frown. “Look. Feminism was relevant when, for example, women weren’t allowed to vote. It’s not relevant now. Now people who have all the resources and the money and the time in the world are just wasting their time conducting research about useless things like gender when they could be spending their efforts doing something more productive.”

Mark scoffed. “Like what? Biomedical research?”

“Yes, actually. I’ll have you know that my field of research saves lives.”

“Do you really think that a woman would be able to work in STEM fields like biomedicine if it wasn’t for the work of so many feminists before you? Scientific research is a male-dominated field. It always has been. Not only is it dominated by men in numbers but the inherent structures and the demands of the field are such that men are preferred for the work-“

You scoffed. “Don’t tell me about my own field. Do you think I’m an idiot? I’m a woman who’s been working in biomedical research for over five years and I know perfectly well that gender studies is just an excuse for women who don’t want to put in the hard work it takes in order to study and be successful in such a highly demanding field. Women like that just want things handed to them because they don’t want to struggle. So they like to blame the system.”

“And you don’t think they struggle more than men do?” Mark demanded.

You laughed. You couldn’t believe the nonsense that this man was speaking. “Why on earth would women struggle more than men? It’s exactly the same work! I’m sorry to break it to you, Professor Tuan but there are an absurdly large number of women who sit and study about why there are so few women in STEM fields while none of them actually have the courage or the intelligence to enter into a STEM field themselves… I have nothing to say to women like that, and I don’t think a man like you should be encouraging them to waste their time.”

“You’re unbelievable,” Mark said with a soft chuckle. He didn’t even look angry anymore. He just looked bewildered. “How can a woman like you be so blind to the institutional problems and everyday sexism of STEM fields?”

“Maybe because I’m not looking for excuses to slack off.”

Mark pushed himself away from the edge of the counter and stepped closer to you. You felt your heartbeat thud as he stepped closer, his dark eyes piercing into yours as he approached.

“Okay,” he said in a soft, low voice. “Let’s assume for a moment that you’re right. That my research is a complete waste of time and that women like you don’t need feminism. Let’s assume that the only reason so many women fail to be successful in STEM fields is because they don’t want to put in the hard work. Can you seriously tell me, on a basic level, that men and women are entirely equal in society?” he demanded. The smile had disappeared from his face and he was moving closer to you every moment. “Are you telling me that you are capable of doing every single thing a man is doing?”

Your heartbeat raced as you felt the kitchen counter pressing into your back. Mark didn’t stop moving. He was standing inches away from you and his face was leaning down closer to yours. You could see his dark eyes staring down at you and the perfect angles of his gorgeous face. You tried not to blush and maintained eye contact with him despite the blood rushing to your face.

“Yes,” you replied. “I believe that I am just as capable as a man. And a study trying to convince me that I’m weaker or that the world is unfair and that I need someone’s help is a waste of everyone’s time.”

Mark’s hands moved to both sides of your waist and he gripped the kitchen counter behind you. You were trapped in between his arms while his head dipped down to level with yours. “So,” he said as he lowered his voice to a whisper. “You’re telling me that if I decided to take you, right here and right now on this kitchen counter just to satisfy my carnal urges then you would be able to fight me off?” Mark’s breath was warm on your face and his tongue darted out to lick his lips. “You wouldn’t feel a little bit… powerless? Like it was an unfair fight?”

You couldn’t help but smirk as you leaned closer to him. “I think the question you should be asking,” you whispered in a sultry voice. “Is why I would want to fight something like that at all?”

Mark chuckled. The deep rumble in his chest sent shivers down your spine as one of his hands left to the kitchen counter to gently caress your waist. His hand splayed out on your side, a feather-light touch that was possessive and yet left you craving more. “I should have seen that coming,” he admitted with a small smile as he bit his lip. “You really haven’t been able to take your eyes off me from the moment I entered this house.”

You felt your cheeks flush. “And you’re not attracted to me?” you demanded.

Mark raised an eyebrow. “I didn’t say that. You’re an extremely attractive woman.”

“But you think my views are stupid, is that it?” you demanded. Mark’s eyes were fixed on your lips and you felt a surge of confidence. Gender studies professor or not, the lustful part of your mind had taken over the logical portion and you decided that you wanted this man. Nobody had ever made your heart race like this before. Your body was physically craving him. “I suppose our opinions don’t really coincide, do they?”

“No, they don’t,” Mark whispered. “And that is a little bit of a problem.”

“I have a simple solution.”

“Oh?”

“Yes. We stop talking.”

Mark looked down at the twinkle in your eyes before smirking. “For once, I think I agree with your idea.”

You leaned up and kissed him, your lips colliding together in a furious clash. Mark pressed you against the counter harshly while he devoured your lips and molded your bodies together. Your head spun in a cloud of lust. Mark’s tongue slid into your mouth and his hands cupped your ass. Within moments, he had lifted you up by the thighs and set you on the counter without once breaking your kiss. You moaned as he pulled away from you to breathe for a moment.

“Fuck,” you whispered.

He let out a soft, boyish chuckle. “Enjoying yourself?”

“Yes.”

“Good,” he growled before kissing you again. You let your hands slide into his dark hair as his palms gripped your thighs tightly. You melted against him while he nipped at your lips and smiled into your kiss. Mark kept teasing you and you had to thread your fingers into his hair tightly to keep his lips connected to yours. He didn’t seem to mind at all. Your forehead kept hitting his glasses and you let out a soft whine before reaching up to rip his glasses off his face.

“You don’t really need those, do you?” you teased as you kissed him again. Mark let out a low moan that made your stomach twist. You tossed the glasses onto the counter and whimpered as he sank his teeth into your lower lip softly. It was getting harder to stay quiet and Mark’s hands had started to move higher up and were beginning to slide under your shirt. He pulled away from you and pecked your lips softly.

“You’re getting too loud, sweetheart,” he whispered with a smirk. “Is there anywhere more private that we could continue, uh, not talking?”

You gasped as Mark’s cold hands trailed up the bare skin of your torso.

“Fuck. Fuck, okay, let’s go upstairs. Through the back door.”

“Lead the way.”

Mark Tuan was an amazing lover.

Admittedly, things got a little clumsy and awkward after you’d both fucked in your bedroom. Neither of you could entirely forget that your mothers were right downstairs, discussing a classic romance novel and probably hoping that the two of you would fall in love at first sight, get married and have children. Mark had looked a little embarrassed while he gathered up his clothes. He gave you a sheepish smile and pointed out that he should head back downstairs before your mothers noticed.

That had been your opportunity to say something. Let’s exchange numbers, you could have said. Or do you want to have coffee sometime? Mark had paused in your doorway and looked at you for a few moments, giving you the opportunity to say that this wasn’t a one-time thing. But you simply couldn’t do it. Despite how extremely attracted you were to Mark and even though it was the first time you’d ever slept with a man that you’d just met, you knew deep down that it wouldn’t work.

If I can’t respect what he does, then how can I ever respect him?

So you merely nodded and smiled, letting him walk out of your room and out of your life. Your mother looked heartbroken when you told her that things with Mark hadn’t worked out. But she knew better than to pressure you, and so you simply moved on with your life and convinced yourself that you hadn’t let go of an amazing man.

(A few days later)

You entered the office building and headed straight for the break-room. You were early and you planned to have a cup of coffee before a meeting with your boss. Some of your coworkers were sitting and having a quick breakfast so you smiled at them in greeting.

“Hey guys. Have a nice weekend?” you asked the pair of guys sitting and munching on toast.

“It was all right. You’re at work pretty early today!” Youngjae greeted you with a friendly smile. He was one of the brightest and happiest guys that you worked with, and one of the few that never seemed to differentiate you as a woman. He offered you some toast and shrugged when you refused. “Going to get cracking early on Monday morning, huh?”

You shook your head. “Hardly. I have a meeting with Dr. Lee today, I’d applied to be a part of his research group on antibody research and I’m going to find out whether I made the cut. It’s a five-year project and I’ve been focusing on antibodies recently, so it would be amazing to finally be a part of some solid, useful research instead of all this medical testing nonsense they make us do.”

Youngjae blinked at you. “…Oh.”

“Is something wrong?” you wondered.

“It’s just… um, I don’t know how to tell you this. But I heard that all the positions on that research team were filled. I think the last slot went to Park Jinyoung.”

You stared in shock. “What? Park Jinyoung? But I have at least three years more experience than him and I don’t think he’s ever done any specific research on antibodies before. I thought his specialty was stem cell research? Why on earth would Dr. Lee choose him over me?”

Youngjae looked embarrassed. “I don’t know. Maybe you should ask Dr. Lee.”

You nodded, setting down your coffee mug and storming over to your boss’ office. It was at least fifteen minutes before your scheduled meeting with him but you weren’t going to wait around in order to hear about whether you’d been rejected. You knocked loudly on the door and were told to come in. You put on your sweetest smile as you faced the older man who sat behind his desk.

“Dr. Lee! I hope I’m not disturbing you. I was hoping we could talk about my research?”

The man blinked at you through his glasses. “Of course! Come in, come in. I know you applied to be a part of my special research team and I’m sure you’ve heard already but I had to give the position to Park Jinyoung. I hope you understand that I had to take into account the stability of the project and the limited funds we have.”

You bit your lip as you sat down in front of him. “I… don’t exactly understand, to be perfectly frank, sir. I have at least three years more experience than him. There’s nothing wrong with my work records here and I already have specific research experience in the field of antibodies. Why has he been preferred for the position over me? If there’s something lacking in my performance then I’d like to know.”

Dr. Lee shook his head. “Certainly not! We’ve had consistently excellent performance from you. It was merely a strategic decision.”

“Well, I’d like to know what the strategy you applied was.”

The older man cleared his throat and for the first time, you noticed that he looked a little uncomfortable. You had no idea what was wrong. You’d been working for him for almost four years now and he had always been perfectly pleasant and seemed to appreciate your work. Why wouldn’t he want you on his research team? Dr. Lee placed his hands on his desk and gave you a gentle smile.

“All right, dear. I know you’re one of those people who considers the progress of science to be much more important than individual goals so I’ll be perfectly honest with you. This is a five-year project and I have to get a lot of research done in a very limited budget. I need to be assured that everyone on the team is entirely dedicated to the project and we don’t fall behind schedule.”

You felt hurt. “And you don’t think I have that level of dedication-“

“I’m sure you do. But this is a five-year project and you’re a woman in your mid-twenties. I have to consider… I mean, if you suddenly chose to go on maternity leave for a few months… well, that could be enough to derail the entire progress of the project. I had to choose Jinyoung to be safe.”

You stared at the man, unable to believe what he was telling you. Did he just deny you a position on the research team that you’d been aiming for year merely because there was a chance you could choose to get pregnant? You had never heard anything more absurd. You gritted your teeth and tried not to lose your temper. It wasn’t Dr. Lee’s fault, he was just doing what was best for his research team.

“Dr. Lee, I’m not even married-“

“But you could get married soon, if you chose. And so many women choose to become single mothers through donated sperm these days. As I said, I need a guaranteed five years of dedication.”

You felt helpless. How could this be happening? You weren’t pregnant and you hadn’t gotten married so how could he deny you the position due to something so flimsy? You felt a surge of desperation and leaned forward. “Dr. Lee, you know that I’ve been focusing all my efforts towards contributing to your work in the hopes that I would be able to be a part of this research. It’s one of my life’s dreams, and getting married or having children is entirely secondary to me. I would be willing to sign a legal statement waiving my right to maternity leave or any such benefit if that was what it would take…”

Dr. Lee merely gave you a sympathetic smile. “You know I can’t ask you to do that. Such a document would have no value, it’s entirely illegal to ask a woman to do give up her right to maternity leave.”

You felt a burst of anger flare inside of you. “It’s also illegal to deny a woman a position solely on the basis of her sex. We live in the twenty-first century, in case you’d forgotten.”

“I expected better from you. I thought you would understand that the consistent pursuit of science and saving lives comes before any individual person’s interests-“

You scoffed, glaring at the old man sitting in front of you. You had always thought he was sweet, kind and brilliant but it suddenly struck you what selfish creatures men really were. How dare he deny you a position that should have rightfully been yours? How dare he accuse you of not being loyal to science? You had dedicated your entire life to the cause until now and they still didn’t trust you to hold out for another five years? Would Dr. Lee have hesitated to hire Park Jinyoung if he wanted to have a baby?

“Does it really?” you asked with a sweet smile, as you stood up. “Well. We’ll see how your noble pursuits hold out in court, shall we?”

Professor Mark Tuan was sitting in his office and preparing for his lecture the next day, when he heard a sharp rap on his office door. It was regular office hours. Plenty of students walked in around this time, hoping to discuss the reading material or get help on their research papers so he merely pushed his glasses higher up his nose and called out.

“Come in!”

The last thing he expected to see was you.

You entered his office, looking as beautiful as ever despite the slightly embarrassed smile on your face. Mark felt his heart skip a beat. He hadn’t expected to see you again. If the disagreement you’d had over feminism wasn’t a deal-breaker, then the awkward goodbye after sex certainly had been. Mark had felt angry with himself after he left your house. Sleeping with you had been amazing, but he wondered whether, if he had held on for a little while longer, he could have gotten to know you better. Something about you still intrigued him.

“Hi,” he greeted you, unable to hold back a bewildered smile as he saw you hesitate in the doorway. “Wow, I certainly didn’t expect to see you today. What are you doing here?”

You bit your lip as you stared at him. This was so humiliating. “Uh…”

“Why don’t you sit down?”

You sat down awkwardly, wondering how to go about this whole thing. It seemed a little silly to be talking to a man whose life’s work you had dismissed and ridiculed just a few days ago. But Mark seemed genuinely glad to see you and deep down, you knew that he wasn’t holding a grudge over your previous conversation. “Sorry to come to your workplace like this,” you apologized softly. “It’s just that we never exchanged numbers that day and I didn’t want to get my Mom involved so I thought I’d just come to the university and ask about your office hours.”

Mark nodded, his eyes twinkling. “Well, it’s nice to see you again.”

You bit your lip. “You too.”

“Is there something you wanted to say to me in particular?”

You took a deep breath but it was difficult to speak. The events of this morning were still fresh in your mind and you couldn’t get over it. It had taken you years to get your dream job and you had just walked out on your boss and risked everything in a moment’s rage. But the rage was still burning inside of you. Mark seemed to notice the pain in your eyes because he walked around the desk and stood beside you, placing a hand on your shoulder. “Hey. Are you doing all right?”

You shook your head, finding it difficult to speak. “I… um. I quit my job today. Well, not exactly. I didn’t hand in a resignation or anything I just threatened to sue my boss and stormed out of the office, so…” you choked out. Your shoulders trembled and to your surprise, Mark gently pulled you up and wrapped his arms around you. You let yourself relax into his warm embrace. His touch felt amazing; not like the electric sexual tension you’d felt before, but a soft and comforting feeling that you needed.

“It’s okay,” he whispered gently, his deep voice relaxing you. “Take a deep breath and talk about it.”

“You were right. He denied me a position on a 5-year research team because there’s a chance I might get pregnant and want to take maternity leave during that time. That asshole. I thought Dr. Lee was a good person and I thought that he really valued my work because he always seemed to treat me as an equal with all the other male employees but- but the moment my gender posed the slightest inconvenience to him, he…”

Mark’s hand stroked your back comfortingly. “I’m sorry that happened to you.”

You blinked back your tears and looked up at him. “You’re probably thinking that I deserved it, right?”

He chuckled and one of his hands reached up to cup your face gently. Mark’s dark brown eyes were looking down at you with a hint of kindness as well as sympathy. “I won’t lie, there are probably things you could have done if you’d been a bit more prepared and accepted that this was something that could happen to you,” he said lightly but his tone change once he saw your face crumple. “But, no. Nobody deserves this.”

You closed your eyes. “What am I going to do?”

Mark looked down at you and before you could react, he leaned down and pressed a gentle kiss to your forehead. You were surprised at his sweetness as he stepped back and gave you his charming, handsome smile. “We are going to go and get a cup of coffee while you tell me exactly what happened and then we decide whether to sue this bastard in court or write an anonymous article shaming him before the entire academic community.”

You giggled. “I like both of these options.”

Mark grabbed his coat and put it on before reaching out to squeeze your hand comfortingly. “Thank you for coming to me about this,” he said softly. “I was worried I’d never see you again and I was starting to regret walking out of your room without saying anything that day.”

You bit your lip. “What would you have said?”

Mark stepped forward until he was standing inches away from you and he leaned down to whisper into your ear softly. “I would have told you that you are the most beautiful and sexy woman I’d ever met, and I wouldn’t mind arguing with you every single day of my life if at least half of our arguments ended the way ours did.”

You shuddered as his lips brushed your ear and you gave him a teasing smirk. “You haven’t seen the worst of me yet. I can be extremely stubborn about my views. What are your opinions on multilateral free trade at the international level?”

“Isn’t free trade a good thing?”

You leaned back and smirked. “Excellent. Let’s discuss that in detail, shall we?”

#got7 #got7 scenarios #got7 fanfiction #got7 angst #got7 fluff #mark tuan #got7 mark #mark scenarios #mark fluff #mark tuan angst #got7 imagines #got7 reader #mark tuan imagines #professor mark tuan #got7 professor!au #thirsty days of september

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awfully-sadistic · 5 years

Text

Week 1: Oct 2nd

The Adventures of Dottie and Dodger A series of linear prompt one-shots.

I kind of broke my own rule and couldn’t resist adding in a little something-something special. You’ll know it when you see it. I just hope it’s not too strange. But what the fuck, I can mold this story any way I want.

It was very early morning in the second day of October and Dot was on her way to the office building she and Dodger had purchased just yesterday. Driving down the road, Dot could see that various Halloween objects have been put out decorating yards and roofs with over-sized grim reapers, inflatable and real pumpkins, and strings of lights celebrating Halloween colors, but that wasn’t a surprise. It was as early as mid-September when she began to see signs of Halloween and it excited her.

Halloween was her favorite holiday and the entire month was already promising to bring along the spirit as soon as it could. With the appearance of the Poltergeist yesterday (and the paperwork that followed, but we don’t talk about that), Dot thought that Halloween had definitely come early. She wasn’t complaining. She wished it was Halloween all year-round, but with the spooky month comes attached their busiest time of the year.

It was expected that Human and Supernatural alike call upon the Agency in a tizzy about hauntings, possessions, and other spook factors that wouldn’t normally make an appearance any other time of the year. Obviously, Halloween lowered some sort of barrier that allows the things that go bump in the night liberated freedom this time of year.

She remembered last year; she didn’t think she’d survive much longer running their business out of her home. There were people coming and going and she didn't like the unexpected visitors who would appear in the dead of night for an emergency. She would not admit this, but it was also kind of freaky hearing about all these spooky stories and then having to go to sleep in the same house. There were times when Dodger had been called and invited to stay the night simply because Dot had heard something she wished she hadn’t and her overactive imagination had convinced her that everything was out to get her.

In those times, Dodger was nice enough not to question her intentions as if he had already known what had been bothering her. Then he’d attempt to bore her with interesting tidbits he might have learned that week. It normally had the opposite affect; they’d both stay up all night talking.

Dot finally pulled up to the office space. The building on the outside looked as abandoned as it had on the inside. But Dot figured with a little TLC, the place would brighten right up. A little bit of rose bushes lining the sidewalk to the front doors could work wonders and baby’s breath with some carnations and other filler flowers as accents would make the place seem cheery and fragrant. Someone to take care of the grass would flush this place with some much-needed color instead of the concrete jungle in its place. Trees were scattered about but they looked like they were dying; granted it was in the middle of fall, perhaps they’d look a little different come spring.

It was all one story, (thank god because who liked to climb stairs?), with the parking lot in front right off the road with enough space for the employee range given in the office. There was about twenty-four rooms and Dot knew because she had made a quick run back and forth from her home to make good on the promise about filling the rooms with her old outfits. She had her very own personal dressing room and it felt real fancy if anyone asked.

She just didn’t know what to do with the rest of the rooms. Rooms with more than enough space than an employment of two.

Well, three now with Armand, Jr.

Armand, Jr. or from this point forward known as Armand was the ghost that lived in the Grandfather Clock Dot had named Armand. So, in reality, the clock would be Armand, Sr. There was honestly no reason to tack on a Jr. to Armand, Jr’s name but for the sake of this on-going inside joke now, it was there now and Dot didn’t want to change it. Perhaps it hinted at her personality that she was resistant to change, no matter how little. Dot wouldn’t give it another thought now especially since she was pushing her way through the glass double-doors that would sweep her into the receptionist and waiting area.

Her eyes widened as she took in the receptionist area. It was like a whole new place. Yesterday, there had been cobwebs and dust settled on surfaces and white sheets over various furniture pieces that had been left behind. It had given the place a gloomy look.

Now, there was no sign that there had ever been a speck of dust. The area was brightly lit and felt welcoming. The walls were painted, she now realized. A light, baby blue. She could see there was also an assortment of hanging pictures and magazines laid out on the coffee table nearby and stocked with one of those wooden holders you’d mostly see at an official looking doctor’s office or a dentistry. She was taken back by the presence of a water cooler; she hadn’t seen that yesterday. Perhaps even more surprising was a working 32” flat screen television on the wall opposite the assembly of chairs and it was switched on, mute, showing various flashing pictures about Ashbourne; News. Local stuff. Captions on.

Looking at her feet, she could see that the carpet had been vacuumed recently and perhaps possibly cleaned but she couldn’t tell. But it surely seemed like it because it wasn’t this color yesterday.

Holy fuck, this place was actually functional.

She bumped against the receptionist area, the cutout window reminded her something of a shell and she hung in, trying to take a peek in the back. From what she could see, the police station area with its cubicles was arranged, straightened out, and she thought she could hear voices further back.

“Helloooooo?” she called out.

The voices stopped. Dot strained to hear if Dodger or Armand had been talking to each other but when she felt a light tap on her back, she nearly shrieked. Pulling herself out of the cutout, she whirled around and saw that both Dodger and Armand had come in from the outside with grocery bags in their hands.

Dodger had been the one to tap her. Dot placed a hand over her racing heart, taking in a deep breath to steel her nerves. “Goddamn it, Dodge. What did I say about doing that?”

“Announce ya’self.” Dodger repeated using the same inflection Dot had always used on him.

“Cheeky bastard.” Dot scolded but she had a grin on her face. “Don’t just do that. It’s a good way to get smacked one day.” her gaze trailed down to the bags they held, a question already forming in her eyes even as she finished speaking.

“We thought we’d stock the break room.” Dodger met her halfway, nodding his head beyond the door separating the waiting area from the rest of the office building. Dot followed his gaze before coming upon a sudden reminder. One that sent little shivers up her spine. It had suddenly clicked that she had without realizing, subconsciously noticed, she was the only car in the parking lot.

“I thought I heard voices back there.”

“You probably did,” Dodger said, looking at Armand. “there’s a television set in the breakroom, too. At his insistence.”

“I tried to get one put in the bathroom but I remembered, I do not have to use one.” Armand smiled.

“I reminded you of that.”

Armand’s smile never wavered even as he amended, “Dodger reminded me of that.”

Dot still didn’t feel comforted for some reason but it might have been her overthinking everything. But the banter between Dodger and Armand did a good job of distracting her enough to push that uncomfortable feeling away.

“I didn’t know you could eat, Armand.” Dot said, giving him a rub on the head. In his corporeal form, Armand was physical to the touch which allowed him to hold on to the groceries and appreciate Dot’s gesture. He was also taller than her and she had to stretch her arm up to even do that much. Armand ducked his head and the look on his face was similar to the look he had when he was praised.

“I can eat. I can taste flavors. But it doesn’t do anything for me. I cannot gain any nutrients or get the same satisfaction of feeling full. I think it does help me with energy, but I don’t know for sure.”

“I suspect it helps him keep his corporeal form for longer.”

Dot looked surprised at Dodger’s input, “He can’t hold onto this form for very long?”

“He can go about a full day but needs to rest the next so he’s told me. So, every other day. To see if eating restores any energy to allow him to hold onto this form for longer, I would have to test this theory by feeding him and then checking against how long he can previously hold out, if there’s any change at all. It’s going to take weeks to gain a definitive answer.”

“How exciting.” Dot said dryly before adding, “You do know, he’s not a science experiment. Right?”

Armand, silent through the exchange, finally spoke up, “It’s alright, Dottie. I told him he could try. If it helps you guys, I would love to be in this form for much longer. It just feels right.”

Dot could feel that Armand meant that with every ghost fiber of his pure being. She could feel her heart melting at his resolve and knew he earnestly meant to do anything he could for them. It had been radiating off of him in waves. Armand almost seemed desperate to be of use to them.

For what reason, she still had to find out but she wasn’t about to make him bend over backwards in the meantime. It was even harder to tell if he was mistaking this corporeal form as to partake in being alive again. His comment about trying to use the bathroom was funny but the undertones seemed depressing. He was doing live things or entertaining the thought, but what for? Because Dot and Dodger were alive and he was trying to fit in? Was he staying in this form because it helped them or him?

And was it wrong to encourage him to stay in this form longer in case it feeds into the fantasy? Dot wasn’t one to turn away from anything fantasy related because reality sucked. She daydreamed all the time. She didn’t want to tell Armand to face reality. He shouldn’t have to especially if she didn’t want to.

And why was his personality as eager to seek out praise as often as he did? Was this part of his unresolved business? Ghosts were tricky because there could be many reasons they stayed behind. Armand showed no indication that he was disgruntled or regretful in anyway. If anything, he seemed happy-go-lucky and incredibly naïve. Trusting. Perhaps, too trusting.

She searched Armand’s expression; he stared back at her with a smile that looked hopeful. She knew she couldn’t help him if it turned out he missed being alive if only because she didn’t know how to bring back the dead and the day when that realization hit him was going to break her heart. She hoped that wasn’t the case. With every fiber of her being, she hoped so dearly.

She took the groceries from Armand’s delicate looking arms, signaling the men to follow her as she pushed through the doors to head for the breakroom.

“What would help us is you being yourself, Armand. I don’t expect anything from you except to do what you want to do. If you want to help us, that’s great! And if you want to help Dodger with his weird experiment, you can do that, too.”

Dodger made a discontented noise at the back of his throat as they settled the groceries on the counter in the breakroom. Dot made a note to check the television; to her relief, it was still turned on. To her ‘not relief’, the volume was turned down so low, you could only be in the breakroom to hear it. She hoped to god sound traveled in this building.

“I don’t think I’ve ever been part of an experiment. Do you think it’s fun?” Armand asked, looking between Dodger and Dot. Dot was pulling apples out of the bag before she turned to look at Dodger because she didn’t know how to answer this one.

“It’s fun for me.” Dodger replied, pulling out a hand of bananas.

Armand pulled out a toilet brush scrubber, “How do you eat this one?”

Dot took the scrubber gently from Armand’s long, graceful fingers. “You don’t eat this, honey. And Dodger is going to try to make this experiment as fun for you as he can or I’m going to make him eat this.”

“Noted, love.” Dodger murmured, preoccupied with his groceries to worry about what was in Dot’s hand. Armand had a look of realization on him.

“Oh, it’s Dodger food.”

“Exactly.” Dot laughed.

Putting away the groceries was longer than usual if only because Armand kept asking how to eat everything. And not everything Dodger had bought was for consumption. But Dot had the patience to teach him what was and was not safe to eat. Basically, anything in the fridge but if Armand was unsure, he was to get Dot’s approval first. Dot also had to hand it to Dodger; he did a good job of stocking the breakroom with lots of snacks and he didn’t forget her creamer and fixings for her coffee.

“After five years paired with you, I better remember.” He said, taking a sweep around the breakroom. “I’ll have to write a thank-you note to the Agency for giving us their old equipment.”

“Ah, I was wondering where we got half this shit.” Dot commented. “Can’t believe Chief Aldric would part with any of it to help us.”

“He specifically told them to give us the stuff they had in the storage room. If they attempted to give us anything new, they could start working for us. At least, that was what Agent Hartwin told me while sounding very apologetic.”

Dot’s face grew a discontented look about it, “Mm. He’s always been a little cowardly. But that’s the same storage where everything gets thrown in once it outlives its usefulness? That sounds more likely. Yeah, thank them for me too.”

“I kept telling them I could repair almost anything. Everything they’ve given us I was able to repair with no real cost. I had most of the spare parts I needed at home.”

“Well, like you’re fond of saying, their loss.” Dot said, wondering what the inside of Dodger’s house looked like. “It certainly looks like everything works like new. I wouldn’t have thought we got hand-me-downs whatsoever.”

Armand looked lost, “Isn’t that a good thing?”

“Free stuff usually is,” Dodger pointed out. “but they meant to give us their broken and out of date equipment. Perhaps as a way to haze us. Or thumb their nose at us.”

“I don’t think anyone’s used that saying since the 1800’s,” Dot cracked.

“Actually, my dear, the first usage was recorded around the 1920’s. It made a reappearance around the 1930’s but since then I’ll admit it’s a little out of date.”

Dot and Armand stared at Dodger who didn’t say anything after that, content that his lesson had gotten across. Learning something new was never expected or planned as far as Dot was concerned. However, Dodger’s matter-of-fact way of speaking and on a rare note, when he went on spouting facts about word usage or anything else he seemed to be an overnight expert on, she would let him babble on about the little factoids because she would learn something new whether she asked for it or not.

For the most part, he could come across as a know-it-all for those who didn’t know him.

Dot did know him and understood he wasn’t just showing off. He was genuinely sharing something with her and she often replied like a proud mother. “Thanks, Dodge. That’s really interesting.”

“That sounds silly,” Armand said next. He placed his thumb on his nose, “What is the point of this?”

“It’s a gesture that’s meant to disrespect,” Dodger replied. He took a moment to extend Armand’s fingers so he was doing the gesture correctly. “wiggle your fingers. That’s how it’s supposed to look.”

Dot placed a hand over her mouth to conceal the giggle wanting to escape. Armand looked confused, seemingly still not understanding how it’s supposed to be an insult. But he seemed to realize that he was currently gesturing towards them and gasped at the sudden revelation. “Oh no! I didn’t mean any disrespect!” His hand flew off his nose and straightened to his side. “I’m so sorry!”

Dot laughed this time, “You didn’t do anything wrong, Armand. It’s just a silly little gesture and if you want to do it, go ahead. But always at Dodge and never at me.” She gently teased. Armand seemed shocked at the insinuation that he could ever thumb his nose at Dot. The very idea of insulting her whatsoever seemed to pale him more than his ghosted form.

“I’d never!”

The sentiment was sweet and filled Dot with a warm feeling that surely showed in her smile.

“I’ve had the business cards renewed, “Dodger brought up, calling their attention. In a separate bag that Dot hadn’t noticed, Dodger pulled out a cardboard container the size of a medium jewelry box. The top came off like lid and Dodger pulled out a single card. It was a matte black cardstock with their new address and phone number pasted under the name of their office in sprawling gold script. It looked incredibly fancy, Dot was afraid to touch it.

“Sanctum Sanctorum?” Dot asked, looking up at Dodger. “Isn’t that that one place where you-know-who lives in New York or… something? It was all over the news years and years ago, we can’t get away with something like this.”

Armand quirked his head, “Is something wrong with the name? When Dodger explained it’s something you really liked, we thought it was the best idea to go with.”

Dot could feel herself grow soft at the thought they put in for her especially since Dodger remembered a passing comment from more than a year ago. But she shook her head, “You probably don’t know this, Armand, but it’s a really big world out there. Aside from the Agency, there are organizations out there that do bigger work than what we do with a lot more pull and power.” Then she turned to Dodger, “We’re going to get sued.”

“It’s alright. It’s a Latin phrase and the last time I checked, there was no copyright on it. There are plenty of places that use the same phrase. By its very definition, all it means is a sacred place.”

“You really have an answer for everything.” Dot remarked but she couldn’t believe they were actually getting away with calling their new office building a Sanctum Sanctorum. As long as they didn’t put “the” in front of it, maybe it’ll be okay. That way it didn’t seem official and they didn’t step on anybody’s very important toes…

“Well, we better start calling it the Sanctum for short before we get a call from… disgruntled but really impressive superheroes.”

“Superheroes?”

Dot and Dodger glanced over at Armand. In a lot of ways, he really was like a baby. He remembered some things from the time he was alive but other things, you had to explain to him. It was a good thing both Dot and Dodger exhibited patience well beyond their years. Dot cleared her throat taking the lead on this one. After all, she’s been following the history and accounts ever since their appearance.

“Years and years ago, like way before Dodge and I were born and before our parents were born and perhaps even their parents, so we’re talking about grandparents and maybe even great-grandparents, there was a really scary war. Like, we’re talking throw everyone back in medieval times, end of the world as we know it, war. Back then, relations between Humans and Supernatural beings were non-existent as proof of the Supernatural was more or less unverified. Things like Ghosts, Vampires, Weres, Witches, or anything else like that was deemed legend and at most, urban legends. Other times it was fuel for scary stories on camping trips and scaring little children into behaving.

But it was near impossible to prove the existence of anything Supernatural and for the most part, Humans didn’t have anywhere near the impressive range of abilities they have today so everything was really boring and mundane. Even so, Humans were pretty advanced. I mean, the stuff they had back then doesn’t hold a candle to what we have now, but they were pretty advanced in technology and space exploration and in those times, it was pretty impressive especially when we look back in the past and see how far we’ve come. Back then, they could only get to Luna. Now, we have a colony on Luna. See the comparison?”

“Luna?”

“The moon, love.” Dot laughed. “So, circling back to the Supernatural, Humans had sightings, superstitions, and sometimes proof like video and pictures but that eventually ended up as hoaxes most times. They didn’t have the equipment we have today that can verify Supernatural presence without a doubt or equipment that detect latent power in Humans. Furthermore, people liked feeding into the fear that there might be something wandering on this planet other than themselves. Yet, ironically, Humans were, and some could say still are, really arrogant in terms of their chain of command in life. Even if there had been something out there, they would always deem themselves higher than anything else that came along. They’ve just been in charge for so long, it was unthinkable that anything greater could challenge that. And in a lot of ways, Humans were right. They have the capacity to think a lot bigger than they are and when they band together, they can pull off some of the most incredible spectacles. But Humans are also very prideful creatures which prevent them from reaching their full potential.

Or so it’s been hypothesized. After all, they did fight with each other over territory and stupid shit like that impeding their own progress.

In a lot of ways, the Supernaturals should have expected it. But one day, there they were. Tired of hiding, tired of their cultures and beliefs being ridiculed and turned into insulting myths, they just emerged. As I remember every account in the history books have put it, it was like an invasion. However, no one could tell who was put on the planet first. Humans thought they had the right to the world because they’ve been the ones to dominate it. Supernaturals felt they’ve also been there just as long but were forced into hiding because of the discrimination and hatred Humans fueled into their stories turned them into hideous things. Monsters, honestly. They would have been hated.

But everyone hated each other. There were clashes, skirmishes, wars. Cities were decimated because despite the Humans claiming to have dominated the world, they were still Humans. They bled easily, bruised easily, weren’t as psychically or physically gifted like Supernaturals were known; enhanced strength, telekinesis, flight, shapeshifting—as you can imagine, it really tipped the scales in the Supernatural’s favor.

But one day, there was a point where Humans were able to somehow turn it around. If you ask anyone their opinion, there are many guesses as to what happened. Some say that at a certain point, to save themselves, Humans just evolved. In high stress situations or faced with extinction, it awoken something in Humans that allowed them to push back. Others say a miracle took place bestowed upon whatever God they worshipped that saw the Humans suffering and decided to help. And if that were the case, whatever God touched them never fucking appeared again. Kind of ridiculous if you ask me—”

“Dot,” Dodger cut in, steering Dot back into the story. He turned to Armand and explained, “Religion is a touchy subject. Every case she’s had at the Agency concerning the religiously imbalanced turned everything upside down and inside out. She’s never had a good experience dealing with them.”

“Don’t forget they are often the most judgmental and preachy assholes to ever deal with. Sorry.” She cleared her throat, finding her stride again. “Anyway, whatever had happened imbued the Humans with the strength to fight evenly with the Supernaturals. The powers that Supernaturals exhibited were suddenly shared with Humans. If a Vampire had super strength, so did Herbert the Human. If this Werewolf can run very fast, so can Susan the Human. It was both a good thing and a bad thing; that meant Humans wouldn’t be extinct but it also meant it fueled their idea that they were the true inheritors of the World. I mean, what else could convince them if not that moment that they evolved or were God-touched on the butt or whatever.

The fights and wars escalated and this happened all over the World. Human and Supernatural homes and cities and lands were absolutely fucking wrecked. Civilians that didn’t have supernatural abilities, and that accounted for Supernaturals and Humans alike, were housed in safe zones; it was about the only truce Supernaturals and Humans honored. People or Beings who couldn’t fight back to defend themselves should be given protection was the one thing they agreed upon, it was a fucking miracle. Now that I think about it, it might have to have been who was in power back then, honestly.”

“That sounds so terrible,” Armand said. He looked like he was about to cry. Dot was starting to regret telling the story. “everyone really hated each other.”

“Well, I mean, it sort of gets better.” Dot pointed out, “I’m not done yet. I promise the superheroes are coming in.”

Armand’s eyes brightened, “Oh yes! Superheroes! What are they?”

Dot laughed, “Now hold on. Before they came along, we need to get to the part about the aliens.”

Armand looked confused for a second before he finally asked, “What is the aliens?”

Dot and Dodger exchanged glances. Dot seemed worried and Dodger just looked perplexed. The things Armand did and did not know were astounding sometimes. It never failed to throw them for a loop when he asked.

“You don’t know what aliens are?” Dodger asked. Before Armand could reply, he explained, “Extraterrestrial life. Or, a person who is not a national of the country they are living in.”

“Or a movie franchise,” Dot input.

“What is extraterr—”

“Something that did not originate of this earth.” Dodger quickly explained. “Aliens come from outer space. Outer space is the big thing above our heads past the sky with many stars and planets.”

Dot laughed, smacking Dodger on the arm playfully. “I’m sure he knew what outer space was.”

“I, for one, am not quite sure, love.”

Armand replied, “I know! I know now.”

Dot gestured, pulling attention back to her so she could continue with the history of their planet that apparently Armand might need another run through with. She hoped she hadn’t lost him somewhere along all that explaining.

“The aliens. Okay, with the Humans and Supernaturals fighting each other, it seemed like nothing could have been able to stop this on-going war that would surely have pulled us into it years down the road. But we were either very lucky or unlucky because Aliens appeared out of nowhere and blasted all of our collective asses.

The sorry thing about that was the Aliens waltzed into a war that they weren’t even concerned with. They were running away from their own stupid shit. Apparently, history reports from an Alien POW had revealed they were on the run from a fleet from another freaking dimension. It shocked everyone to the core hearing about different dimensions and seeing Aliens that the war against Humans and Supernaturals seemed so… petty, now.

In the meantime, Aliens killed without discrimination. Remember the safe zones that both sides had agreed were untouchable? Aliens struck there first. Humans and Supernaturals alike were being targeted and even dragged into a war that wasn’t theirs. An even larger war on a scale that no one could fathom. We eventually figured out why we were being hit so hard. Aliens had the technology to brainwash their prisoners to use themselves as canon fodder so they’d lessen their own causalities and since the World was ripe with many shields, Humans and Supernaturals found out really fast it didn’t matter what they were. As far as the Aliens were concerned, they were the same.

I remember reading that it was the point where Humans and Supernaturals banded together to fight a common enemy to save themselves. By then, about one-third of the population had been wiped out.”

“To put it into perspective,” Dodger interrupted, “That’s two billion people. Total, our population including the Supernatural was about seven billion. Our history’s worst genocide before the Alien invasion is about six million. Doesn’t even come close to the damage of almost wiping us off collectively as a species and without a certain intervention, we would have been wiped out without a doubt.”

Armand’s brows were furrowed as he tried to imagine what two billion people looked like. The numbers were huge, he understood that much at least. “What is this certain intervention?”

Dot continued with a smile that stretched widely. This was a subject she knew all about as it fascinated her. “This is where the superheroes come in. In this other dimension, people with incredible gifted abilities who use them for good and justice were fighting the Alien race on the other side. Our planet didn’t know at the time and assumed the Aliens were just fighting other bad, stupid aliens. But that wasn’t the case. This Alien race who were crystalline and spindly were called the Dovirs. They had been trying to take over another earth-like planet coincidentally… named Earth-616 but bit off more than they could chew and were chased off. That didn’t mean they were retreating. They were desperate as it had been explained to us. In the midst of this chase, they ripped a tear into another dimension to cheat and bolster their numbers—which they accomplished coming here—to one day go back and try taking over once more.

If my memory serves correctly, and it always does, we’re Earth-6969. Which, by the way, we came away as the winner for coolest planet name. The representatives from Earth-616 landed here and explained it for us. It’s all over history books and by now is common knowledge.

In a lot of ways, Earth-616 is like our planet; same geographical lands and climate. We even have the same cities give or take a couple of small towns that differ between us. Oh yeah, and they weren’t in the throes of war waged in the name of discrimination but for the most part, yeah. We were pretty similar. Granted, they were more advanced in terms of technology but with the appearance of the Dovirs and our access to their technology, we’ve bolstered our own. Earth-616 even shares some of its technological advances with us which was pretty cool of them.

But comparing the two worlds, the Human races are the same, the Supernatural races are the same, we were just lacking our own Superheroes. And Armand, that means they are a band of people that come together despite their differences to make the place they live a better environment for everyone.”

Armand smiled, finally understanding. “So, they’re really important.”

“I’d say that they were. I know there are people who don’t share the same sentiment. It’s stupid and surprises me that this is coming from both sides.” Dot took a deep breath before she went down that road. It was clear to anybody listening that this was a passionate subject for her.

“I’d say we’re getting close to the ideal of living together in harmony, slowly. That’s why organizations like the Agency and what we do popped up. The Dovirs made us realize that we were entirely unequipped to handle an outside invasion. At the same time, we can’t keep fighting each other.

Taking a page out of 616’s example, their Superheroes and Supernaturals and Humans live together in a way that we’re trying to pull together nowadays. I’m not saying their side is perfect; if you pay attention to them, you’d see they just as well have their own issues with discrimination and blatant racism. Their government can be corrupt just as any political power, but we’re all trying to fight that and have been for a long time.

If it’s going to end in our lifetime remains to be seen, but I’d like to think we’re closer than five, ten years ago. It took a long ass time for our present to happen. I mean, the effects of that war are still very present today; tensions between the Humans and Supernaturals are still tense in some situations but for the most part, we’re getting there.

Plus, there’s still that nasty tear between our dimensions that now connect us to Earth-616. Isn’t it cool we’re neighbors?”

Armand was silent for a very long time, his expression reflecting a thoughtful gaze. Dot wondered if she had lost him along the way somewhere. She winced, glancing over at Dodger, “I might have gotten a little preachy at the end, there.”

Dodger shook his head, “Nonsense, I think you’ve pulled together a very beautiful summarization of our history. There wasn’t anything in what you said I disagreed with.”

Smiling, Dot gave Dodger’s hand an affectionate pat before Armand finally spoke which took them both by surprise as he asked, “How do we visit Earth-616? Do we have a very long ladder we climb to get there?”

Dot remained in a stupor for another second before laughing almost in disbelief, “Oh, no, honey. Haha, that’s where the Sanctum Sanctorum comes into play.” She further explained as soon as she saw the confusion in Armand’s features, “There’s a Sorcerer who lives down in New York that bridges the connection between our two worlds otherwise it’d be dangerous keeping that tear unsupervised. It’s complicated. Something about not having our own guardian. From what I know, he spends his time between the two worlds; we’re sort of like his vacation house.”

Then it clicked. Armand’s mouth formed a perfect ‘o’ as his eyes rounded in unison. “That’s why we’re going to get sued!”

“We’re not going to get sued.” Dodger argued.

Dot turned her head to face Dodger, almost jumping when she came face to face with a terrifying red expression. It took her a moment to realize he had pulled something out of a grocery bag and put it on his face.

“Take off that mask,” she scolded before adding, “that is a mask, right?”

“Ah! My Halloween costume!” Armand exclaimed, taking the mask from Dodger’s hands. “Dodger explained in the store why there were so many skeletons and witches on display. Hellowoon.”

“…Why would you think that was my face?” Dodger asked but went unheard as Armand continued.

“You’re supposed to dress as something scary, so I thought this was scary.” The ghost lifted his pale hand up to cover his impressive face with the unimpressive red mask. It had a long nose and angry eyebrows, its mouth furled down in the snarliest of snarls. Dot eyed it wearily.

“That’s great, honey. But you don’t have to be scary if you don’t want to, you can be anything you want. Also, did you say Hellowoon?”

“That’s not what it’s called?” he asked, pulling the mask to one side. He peered out with an amethyst hued eye expectant of Dot to correct him. But she didn’t have the heart.

“Well, it’s official. Happy Hellowoon, everyone!”

“I’m serious, did you really think that was my face?”

“Dodge, I swear to god. Any god.”

There was ring from the front which caught Dot, Dodger, and Armand’s attention. Their heads turned towards where the receptionist desk area sat before they looked at each other again.

“Do we have a literal doorbell?” Dot asked.

“Mm, I think there was a little “ring for service” bell somewhere on the desk. Armand was ringing it incessantly earlier.” Dodger replied.

“I had to make sure it would ring the next time, too.” Armand whispered.

“I’m not sure what that means.”

“What do we do?” Dot asked Dodger lowering her voice to a conspiring whisper. “It can’t be a client, right? You just printed the cards out today.”

“You might have, but I asked around and found out where you relocated. In any case, I let myself in. I hope that’s okay.” The new voice spoke with an authority that told anyone listening that he had every right to be there. It didn’t fail snapping their attention to the doorframe where a tall man stood as if he belonged there clad in a red cape that seemed to have a mind of its own. It moved where there was no wind and occasionally, the man would brush back the flap of the collar out of his face. The breakroom never had a more important guest. In all of her life, Dot never expected to come face to face with anyone as extraordinary or significant as Doctor Stephen Strange.

Dodger leaned in, whispering, “On second thought, we might be getting sued after all.”

“That wasn’t quite the idea I had in mind.” Stephen smiled. It looked like he was confronting a group of guilty children. Well, two guilty children. The third was quite obviously unusual. A flicker of recognition sparked in Stephen Strange’s gray gaze before it landed on Dot. “I was hoping you could take on a case for me.”

Dot swallowed dryly and she gripped the sides of her shirt, then ran her palm down the side of her leggings. She was nervous and it wasn’t coming from Stephen. She couldn’t believe what she was hearing. Stephen Strange, THE Stephen Strange, visiting the planet just to enlist her services? From what she could remember, she didn’t know how often he visited 6969, but it couldn’t have been that often, right? He had his own responsibilities on his own planet, didn’t he?

“O-Of course,” she put cautiously. She couldn’t help the stutter in her voice mainly because she had never expected in her lifetime to ever run into a Superhero from 616. An encounter was supposed to be rare. Even if their planets were connected by the rupture the Dovirs were responsible for, that didn’t mean the two planets could interfere with one another unless absolutely dire. Unless, that had changed? “What could we do for you, Doctor Strange?”

There was a brief moment when it looked like Stephen Strange looked in approval at being recognized. He all but purred the next statement, “Good, so we know of each other.”

“Y-You know me?”

“Dot Dreadful and Dodger Ainsworth Mac Alister of the private eye institution, Supernatural Investigations. Previously employed by the government sanctioned organization known as The Agency, real creative name, hm? You guys obviously have the superior one.”

Dot laughed nervously.

“You two were employed by The Agency for ten years, partnered for five because you, Ms. Dot, weren’t compatible with anyone who didn’t overload your empath abilities and Mr. Dodger stayed at entry level because he just liked doing the paperwork.”

Dot and Armand looked at Dodger who shrugged. Doctor Strange continued.

“You two quit a year ago and partnered to create your own business citing irreconcilable differences for your departure with the Agency to mask the fact you two were really unhappy there but it was an open secret considering how much Dot was known to push the cases deemed too “unimportant” by The Agency to favor the ones with more publicity to shed the project in a better light. In reality, you understood the corruption taking place once the previous Chief was replaced with Aldric, the mayor-elected official with a discrimination against Supernaturals. Another reason included being tired of being tied up by bureaucracy and wanted to make a genuine difference. Starting yesterday, you relocated to this site after operating out of your home for the last year. I hope I didn’t miss anything.”

“We hired a ghost as a receptionist.” Dodger pointed out. Stephen’s gaze trailed from Dot, then to Dodger, and last to Armand. “His name is Armand.”

“Yes, of course. That’s how he fits in.”

“And this is my Hellowoon costume,” Armand added, lifting the thing to his face. “It’s spooky, isn’t it?”

Stephen pointed, almost doing a double-take. He seemed genuinely taken aback by the outburst but covered it up as soon as the emotion flickered across his face. “Did he just say Hellowoon?”

By this time, Dot stepped up to Stephen, floored by how he knew so much. And it seemed everyone she was meeting lately simply towered over her. She extended an arm out towards the main office space.

“Why don’t you tell us the details of this case, Doctor?”

Stephen glanced down at Dot, giving her a charming smile that Dot could sworn was her imagination. Only in her dreams could someone this amazing exist, right? She had many fantasies about meeting any of the Supers in 616 but to actually be meeting one right now? …Maybe reality didn’t suck for once.

She led the Doctor to a random desk hoping it was to his taste. Maybe she should have paid more attention to the furniture. Once seated, she took out a legal pad and grabbed a pen. She had no idea where the invoices were but it was a good thing Dodger had her back. He grabbed an invoice while Dot recorded the details for any pertinent information.

Doctor Strange had the presence even while sitting to intimidate her. He seemed so regal and she could feel the pen feel warm in her hand. It took a while to realize the warmness was coming from her own hand. She just seemed so flustered! She hoped she looked composed on the outside at least.

“This peculiar case is located in the small town of Whitecrest. I’m sure you know it.”

Dot nodded, getting down to business. She ducked her head and wrote down Whitecrest as she spoke, “I know it. It looks like a little village from a medieval fantasy. Has a tavern and inn, even a functioning blacksmith. Everyone likes to ride horses to get around. It shouldn’t be too far from Ashbourne.”

Armand, seated across from Dodger who was copying the information for the Invoice asked, “Is Whitecrest that different?”

Stephen smiled, approval glinting in his eye. “After the Great War, as your planet calls it, a lot of towns had trouble rebuilding. Or more correctly, the people of states and towns all over had trouble deciding how they wanted to rebuild. Some had the finances to support their ambitious renovations while other towns like Whitecrest ended up looking like a piece of the past.”

“Way past,” Dot input with a smile, looking at Stephen. It was amazing how much of their history he bothered to learn. “Towns like Whitecrest have a lot of problems. It has nothing to do with the people most times. Ah, Doctor, what would you like for us to do while we’re there?”

“I’ll be honest,” Stephen suddenly said in a serious tone. His face took on a pensive expression and he seemed hesitant on admitting something. Up close, Dot could see that there was a gathering of wrinkles at the corner of his eyes and with the addition of the white at his temples made him seem a little older than he appeared just a few minutes ago. Whatever he wanted to say weighed heavily on his mind for a while before he finally continued, “I don’t usually put off my tasks like this but I don’t trust going to The Agency to carry out what I’m about to ask you. I can’t do it myself as I’m needed back home, in fact, as soon as I’m done here, I’ll be heading back to my New York.”

“You’ve traveled a long way to see us,” Dot encouraged. “Whatever you have to ask, I promise we’ll do our best to carry it out.”

Stephen looked up giving Dot a little jolt as their gaze connected. He still looked grave and serious. “I don’t like passing the tasks I can do myself onto anyone else, especially if I don’t know them. But I’m taking a chance on your business.” He paused and his next statement lightened up his features, “What can I say, I have a soft spot for it.”

Dot tried her best to quell the blush that was threatening to rise to her cheeks. She cleared her throat and took her legal pad to fan herself, “Ah, haha.”

“The reason we don’t trust The Agency are possibly the same as yours,” Dodger put quite bravely. Dot was often surprised by the way he spoke as if he knew everything. By the way Stephen nodded convinced Dot that Dodger probably did know everything. Dodger continued, “Then all we have to do is prove that we’re not The Agency. We can complete this job. I’m sure of it.”

Coming from any other man, it may have sounded like boasting and Stephen said as much. “But there’s something in your tone that could reassure me that’s the case,” he admitted with a slight chuckle. “It reminds me of someone else I know. A little egocentric, likes his name on tacky buildings that he owns.”

“That’s not just a little.” Dodger said.

Stephen’s grin widened a little, “And much like that egotistical man, I like you.” Stephen took a glance at his watch and realizing he was pressed for time, decided to wrap it up. “When you get to Whitecrest, there’s a person I want you to see. The name I was given was Fitzsimmons. Word is that he hangs around the tavern or the inn.”

“We talk to him?” Dot asked, writing down the name.

“I’d like if you could. I wasn’t given much information myself but to get to me, it must have been significant. I’ll find out what that is as soon as I get back and you can report to me what that was.”

“Is this case was giving to you and is so significant, would it be dangerous?” Dodger asked. Dot was thinking it but she wasn’t sure she could pose the question without insulting Stephen. She cautiously looked up, thankful for Dodger who always said what was on his mind.

“It could very well be dangerous. But I had been digging around and came upon the conclusion that I could pass the task on if I didn’t have time for it. That is what I’m doing as much as I would like to solve this myself. I was told The Agency had the equipment handled to deal with almost anything but I don’t exactly approve of the publicity my name brings in this world.”

“We have the same equipment The Agency has,” Dot interjected quite confident herself. “so you don’t have to worry there. And we have no problem keeping your name out of anything, anywhere. Even out of our mouths. No one say Doctor Strange’s name.” Dot put a hand over her mouth then mumbled, “Starting now.”

“Can we call him Doctor Cape?” Armand asked.

“That’s insulting,” Dodger said.

“We have to call him something, right?”

Stephen surprised them by laughing. “That’s alright. I meant in newspapers or in any media where the public can get to it. I’m sorry to ask as I’m sure the exposure could help your company—”

“No no no! Don’t worry about that!” Dot exclaimed, wide-eyed. She had almost reached across the table to take his hands but restrained herself and her emotional self by sitting back in her chair and gripping her pen with both hands, longways. “That isn’t why we’re here. We really want to make a difference, doesn’t matter if our names are attached or not. If the people of Whitecrest can benefit from being helped by us or even Doctor Stephen Strange, it’s the outcome that’s important.”

“Besides, if we’re good at our job, our name will get out there somehow.” Dodger added.

Dot was nodding in agreement. Stephen chuckled again, quite entertained by this little group. If it wasn’t the strange ghost that didn’t know how to say Halloween, it was the blunt Dodger and the compassionate leader of the group, Dot, that made up Stephen’s mind.

“Alright then, I’ll entrust this task to you.” he deemed. Dot was filling out the last-minute details such as the date and time as Stephen stood up. For the first time, he took a good look around. “It’s just the three of you, right?”

“Yeah,” Dot said, looking up and following Stephen’s gaze. “it’s big, huh?”

Stephen sent her a wink that sent Dot’s tummy flipping. “I think it’s about the right size. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to take my leave. Do you mind if I meet you here the day after tomorrow, around the same time?”

“Oh, definitely!” Dot smiled. “So, the fourth at around seven-thirty.”

“It’s a date.”

Dot blinked, feeling herself flush this time. Before she had a chance to reflect on it, Doctor Strange opened with a strange gesture with a swing of his hand and an orange portal flickered to life in the middle of their office. From the other side, she could barely make out something that looked like an office and dark wood.

“From one Sanctum to another,” Stephen mused. “Good luck.” He finished before stepping into the portal. It disappeared as soon as his cape had cleared.

Dot, Dodger, and Armand were left gaping.

“Whoooooa! I can’t believe it!” Dot shrieked, throwing her hands up. Legal pad going with them.

“Fascinating. I wonder how he did that,” Dodger sounded just as thoughtful as Stephen had, moving around the spot where the portal had been.

Armand was the only one who wasn’t saying anything. Instead, he was looking at his mask. Dot, noticing, frowned and asked, “What’s wrong, love?”

“I wonder if it’s too late to change my costume.”

#{{ original drabbles: spooktober 2019

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dcarevu · 6 years

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DCAU #10: Be a Clown

“They don’t make straight jackets like they used to! (I should know…)”

After that last oddball episode, it feels nice to settle back into some familiar territory for this one, at least somewhat. Admittedly, even though we have been enjoying the show, it does have kind of a slow start, and to me, this episode isn’t really an exception. Next time things are scheduled to rise to the next level, but in the meantime, let’s look at why Be A Clown was passable, but a little underwhelming.

Villain: The Joker Robin: No Writers: Red Pedersen, Steve Hayes Director: Frank Paur Animator: Akom Airdate: September 16, 1992 Episode Grade: C

Having the Joker disguise himself as a birthday clown and fighting Batman at an abandoned (or maybe it was simply closed?) carnival is an obvious setup for an episode, maybe a little bit too obvious? It didn’t make for much excitement, at least not until the end where Bruce Timm ended up storyboarding (apparently they had a freelancer leave before the episode was finished, so Bruce Timm had to finish it himself). I think this episode was another example of them not taking full advantage of their concept. But like I said, I did enjoy the ending, particularly when Batman was attempting to get the situation under control while on the roller coaster, and Joker is lobbing those “baby bombs” as Char called them.

The baby bombs were cool because it would be so easy to give the Joker some cornball 60’s-inspired clown weapons and call it good. I feel like the “baby bombs” in a way were partially that, but they also had a sense of weird and creepiness too, and work for a modern version of the Joker. We also see the return of Joker’s razor sharp throwing cards, along with a card that could somehow expel knockout gas. The razor cards are awesome, as they are a play on actual card throwing. A very real stunt among magicians, such as Ricky Jay, is throwing cards at such a speed that they can actually stick into objects such as a watermelon. The Joker is a dishonest manipulator, so giving him what is basically a cheater’s version of throwing cards, along with that being an actual weapon, makes sense with his personality. The knockout card was a bit weirder, neither Char or I really know how that would work. It jumped the shark a little, especially with how quickly it seemed to work on Batman. That must have been some strong stuff! Batman wasn’t super prepared for that one, and moments where he lacks the competence he usually has does stick out a little. But that’s more just nitpicking, and it didn’t really take away from anything.

I also thought that the Joker easily could have unmasked Batman when he was out cold, but maybe at this stage the Joker didn’t care so much about seeing Batman’s true face? The Joker is almost like a cat playing with a mouse sometimes, he doesn’t really care that much about what ultimately happens in the end, or even planning the next time they meet. He mostly cares about the in the moment plan, and having fun making life a living hell for everyone involved, including Batman. And I mean, he decided to set off a bomb at a child’s birthday party just because the mayor noted in an interview that he wanted to keep Gotham a safe place. As Char said, Joker may seem to have a high IQ, but his insanity level is also high, and they are constantly at odds with each other.

This episode also gave us our first major look at Mayor Hill. We have seen him before, but I think the most we’ve seen of him was his appearance in On Leather Wings which I didn’t even note when I covered that episode. I had honestly forgot that he becomes a semi-recurring character. Like the series bible planned, going by this episode, he seems to be a wishy-washy man that has practically zero guts, zero spine, and zero ambition to do anything aside from making sure he is seen as good in the eyes of the public. It’s not really clear as to whether or not the ordinary citizens of Gotham appreciate him as a mayor, but with how phony he seemed, it wouldn’t surprise me if people saw right through him. Come on, there is no way anyone living in Gotham would believe that the police chase which interrupted his speech on the new apartments was an isolated incident, right? This is the main reason why The Joker decides to challenge him a little, and show just how easy it is to detonate a bomb and rack up a body count it is in this place. I like seeing some actual motivation for the Joker, even if for any sane person this wouldn’t be.

On top of a phony politician, the mayor seems to be a disconnected father who thinks that he cares about his son, or at least wants people to think that. His son seems to love his father, but get easily frustrated with how he behaves, projecting himself onto his son all too often, and not truly getting to know what his son likes or wants. He completely dismisses his son’s magic hobby, as an example, and he turns his son’s birthday into what is basically a meeting among people with power and people with money. Poor kid. At least his father did have the courtesy to hire Jekko the Clown, but not even that can go right as it ends up being the Joker in disguise.

As a child-focuses episode, something I mentioned not typically being very good before, a lot of the usual sins aren’t here. The integrity of the episode isn’t completely thrown away to completely turn it into a kids’ show. We actually do have some relatable emotional scenes as well, such as when the kid is returned to his father, or even when it comes to the father being so distant toward his son. Also the child voice actor is surprisingly pretty good! Basically, I didn’t find myself embarrassed to be showing this episode to Char, and that’s a main reason why I find this episode to be passable in my book, despite it being a recipe for disaster. The only thing about the kid that Char and I really didn’t care for was his design. There was another kid at the birthday party with the same design issue, too. They don’t really look like kids, they look like mini adults with high-pitched voices. I don’t know if it’s the suit, or the hair, or the proportions, or something else entirely, but the kids in The Underdwellers looked a lot more like kids to me. Yeah, maybe they were meant to be younger, but one thing about kids is that they’re god damn goofy looking, particularly when placed inside an adult-looking suit. This kid doesn’t. Oh, and that receding hairline didn’t help, either.

It is interesting to see the Joker interacting with a kid, though. When they’re at the party, the Joker doesn’t seem to put too much attention into the kid, aside from messing with a him a little bit. But then back at the amusement park, he gets a little bit more giddy at the thought of ruining the kid’s innocence, and he even abandons Batman to chase after the kid to get him to watch Batman die. That’s pretty messed up, when you think about it! Char thought that the Joker seemed to work off of a partner in crime pretty well, and that maybe in a sense he is lonely. But I think we’re also both on the same page where we think it more comes from his joy of manipulating people, brainwashing them, and molding them to fit his needs, much like what happens with another character that we all know and love. Other than that, though, I never really got the sense that the kid was in any real danger, at least not in the moment, but who knows what would have happened if Joker did manage to escape or take Batman down. I think that if Joker escaped, he would have left the kid at the park. Maybe even on the roller coaster. But if Batman was killed, I have a suspicion that Joker would not be able to ignore the opportunity to adopt him in his own special kind of way, and morph into something similar to what we see when we get to Batman Beyond. But that’s not until way later. This is probably my favorite bit of the episode by the way, when the Joker is exposing the kid to his madness, as Char and I both think that this segment contained some of the best lines in the episode. One of them is the first quote used in this post, and then we had others such as, “If it wasn’t risky, I wouldn’t enjoy it,” and “Quiet, kid, it’s a free ticket.” Mark Hamill’s delivery is probably 60% of why these moments were so funny.

So this episode did have quite a bit going for it, but before we get to the spooky carnival stuff and the Joker/mayor’s son dynamic, there really just wasn’t that much which I considered entertaining. It’s hard to narrow down exactly why, but because there isn’t too-too much to complain about, I can hardly say the episode failed. It just turned out to be a little too forgettable for me. If they had gone further with the initial concept of Batman having a hard time saving the boy due to his frightening costume I think we would have had something much more worth watching (again, Batman Beyond). This is also our 3rd Joker episode, so he has made up 1/3 of the series so far. Maybe a little break from him would do some good? At least he didn’t trip and fall over a pit of something this time, but, yeah, he still fell at the end. Oh, Joker. You have gotta do something about that.

Char’s grade: B Major firsts: A close look at Mayor Hill.

Next time: Two-Face (Part 1)

Full episode list here!

#batman tas #batman the animated series #the joker #dcau #dc animated universe #be a clown #batman

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laikagohome · 7 years

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Introduction: This is an interview with the manga author Yoshida Takashi. The original article is here: http://mangaonweb.com/news/2018/01/27/448. There are some interesting opinions in it, so I decided to translate it.

If you asked which ebook people are talking about the most right now, there would probably be many people who would mention the name “Yaretakamo Iinkai.” It’s always up there on the sales rankings of each of the digital bookstores, its live drama adaptation begins on January 27th on Abema TV, people are always talking about it on the net whenever there’s a new chapter, and its paper publication is slated for a second printing -- just to name a few things it’s got going for it. It really is a major-level grand slam.

The reason for its success is, of course, how interesting it is. But that’s not all, there’s another unexpected hidden aspect to this work that deserves some attention. The creator of this work, Yoshida Takashi-san, actually manages the copyright of this work on his own and takes care of everything from the writing to the sales. The publication of “Yaretakamo Iinkai” isn’t exclusive to any magazine put out by a publisher. The creator publishes his works on each web platform independently and makes a living using the royalties he earns from them as a source of income. The only contract he’s signed with a publisher is for the paper edition of the work to distribute it to bookstores, but he manages the digital version, drama adaptation, and such all himself. He doesn’t have to deal with any restrictions and can create his works freely. In other words, the work is one that is produced in an almost completely indie style.

It’s quite rare for a creator to be able to make this a reality. If you consider all the ins and outs of the publicity and distribution for a work, the contract negotiations, production costs, etc., taking care of it all on your own would require an extraordinary amount of labor. A single creator standing against the world without that ever-critical factor -- the backing of a major company -- would face extreme difficulties.

Why did Yoshida-san choose a path filled with such hardships? What’s really going on behind the scenes? How was he able to parlay that into the success that he has now? Let’s hear what the man himself has to say.

“Yaretakamo Iinkai” Yoshida Takashi Special Interview

The Royalties from Digital Publications Exceeded 1 Million Yen per Month

The drama adaptation has begun airing, and now people are talking about “Yaretakamo Iinkai” even more, but it’s not being serialized in any particular magazine. It’s a comic that gets tweeted about pretty regularly, but there are also probably a lot of people who are wondering how the creator makes money. Could you tell us a bit about what’s actually going on and how that works?

Yoshida Takashi:

To begin with, there are four platforms that my work is published on. “cakes,” “note,” “PixivFANBOX,” and “Manga on Web.” The way things are structured on “cakes,” “note,” and “PixivFANBOX” is that you only get the royalties for your works that people buy on each of the sites. From those three sites combined, I make around 100,000 to 110,000 yen a month. “Manga on Web” is an online magazine. You can buy it in all of the domestic digital bookstores. The agreement there is that I make a fixed amount of money from it, the minimum publication fee, as well as royalties that correspond to the amount of sales that the magazine makes. If anything could be called a "manuscript fee," then that would probably be it.

And then there’s income that I make from the royalties on the paper tankoubon as well as the digital versions. The other day, I got the royalties from the digital books for the first time. It was over 1 million yen for a single month. I’m a bit anxious about what will happen to the taxes I’ll have to pay for next year, but it’d be great if it kept selling at this pace.

Making over 1 million yen in a month on one book is pretty amazing. If you were talking about royalties from a paper publication, that would be about the amount you’d make if you sold 15,000 copies. It’d be a dream to get that much every month. Why did you decide to make your money writing in this way anyway? Please tell us a bit about the circumstances of how you came to draw “Yareta Iinkai.”

Yoshida:

Well, it’s not like I intended to do things the way I’m doing them now from the very beginning. At the start, I was just going to try to do things like any regular mangaka. I did the normal assistant thing, sent in an entry for a newcomer’s award that a publisher was running, and my gag manga “Finland Saga (Sei)” got serialized in Morning Two, but that ended in 2011. The tankoubon didn’t seem to sell very well. After the series ended, I brought in the name for my next work to the Morning editorial department, but I couldn’t get it past them at all. Like, really… it was almost like they had tacitly decided they weren’t going to allow me to have another series (laugh.)

I had no other choice, so I took the rejected names and turned them into manuscripts and sent them all over the place for newcomer awards at other publishers and magazines. One of the shorts I included in those was “Yaretakamo Iinkai.” It got noticed in the newcomer's award for Shougakukan's Superior magazine, and received an honorable mention. That was in 2013, but I had actually written “Yaretakamo Iinkai” a long time ago before that. I was assigned an editor, and I wanted to write the second chapter of it, but the editor said that the material was only good for a oneshot and wouldn’t let me draw a follow-up. I drew another name on some other subject and brought it in, but that didn’t get greenlit either.

While I was doing all of that, another 2 years passed, and in the meantime, I continued to send out my manuscripts to other editorial departments and win awards for them. It was like I somehow ended up with an editor in each of the editorial departments. I started thinking, “I really can’t let this go on,” and that’s when I came up with the idea for my work named “Share Body.” I felt like I was onto something that was sort of new, so I drew three chapters worth of names and sent them around to all the editors that I’d met so far. That ended up catching the eyes of the editor at Spirits.

I Still Haven’t Read the Last Volume of “Share Body”

You didn’t get to writing “Yaretakamo Iinkai” right away, did you?

Yoshida:

That’s right. At the time, I still wanted to have a series in a commercial magazine. But that ended the worst way possible and was quite traumatic for me… The editor in charge of me at Spirits who read the name for “Share Body” said it was interesting and wanted to make it a series. I should’ve been happy about that, right? But they wanted to use it as the original story and have another mangaka draw it. Of course I wanted to draw it, since it was my own work, but none of the names I had drawn were going anywhere, and I really wanted to do a series. So, after agonizing over it, I ended up accepting that condition. Someone else did the art, the series began in September of 2015, the first tankoubon came out in January of 2016, and 5 days after it went on sale, they told us to end it. So I was out of a job by spring. My dream was over in an instant.

So after bringing in all those works to be evaluated all those times, you didn't even get to draw the series that you finally got. And it even got cancelled too. I can see how that might be traumatic.

Yoshida:

Around the time the 6th chapter got printed, the editor in charge said “It’s not doing well in the surveys, so redraw the name.” I’m the type of person who can’t draw when they’re pressured, so before the series started, I had drawn about 30 chapters worth of names ahead of time. Of course, I showed all of those to the editor, and they said it was good back then. Fixing the names was really difficult. For example, if I revised the 7th chapter, then I’d have to adjust the 23rd chapter as well, otherwise it’d be inconsistent. There were important scenes, and that’s why I’d drawn them, but when I explained that things wouldn’t make sense later if I changed them, the editor wouldn’t budge and kept going on about how the survey results were poor. Even when I brought up the fact that they’d said it was good before, they just said, “Well, it’s not.” You’d hope that if an editor said something was good, then they’d stick by it till the end.

Anyway, I couldn’t change something that I thought was already interesting into something that I found boring, so the editor and the artist came together and changed the story. The artist probably didn’t want to do something like that either -- and I don’t really want to badmouth anyone -- but I felt like if I were drawing the pictures myself in a situation with a deadline, then I could’ve at least forced my way and drawn what I’d wanted. The survey results just kept getting worse, and the series got cancelled.

In the later half of things, it was being produced in this inexplicable way where I was drawing the names for the original work, and the artist and editor would base things on that, change it, and draw the manga. Now that I think back on it, it’s a complete mockery of how to go about producing anything. We were making fools of the readers. After the name were getting changed, I couldn’t read the magazine it was being published anymore. I kept having nightmares about running people over in a car with a broken steering wheel.

From the second half of the second volume onward, it pretty much wasn’t based on what I wrote. I told them myself, “The 3rd volume isn’t really based on what I wrote, so please downgrade what I’m being credited for.” I thought that might convey to them how I felt about having the original work changed, but they replied, “Then it’s okay if we lower your percentage of the royalties, right?” So I got in a fight with them, saying, “That’s not what’s in the contract!” It was a total quagmire. In the end, I still haven’t read the last volume of “Share Body.”

I couldn’t forgive myself for releasing something that didn’t live up to my original intentions into the world, and more than anything, I had done something inexcusable to the readers. The experience was traumatic for me, and I decided not to trust the judgement of others.

I Decided on Four Things that I Would Not Give Up

You were now pretty far off from the “regular mangaka” that most people would imagine. So is that when you started to draw “Yaretakamo Iinkai” for real?

Yoshida:

No, I had already tried bringing everything I thought up, and my series failed, so there was no way left for me to do things. I started uploading my manga onto twitter. I’d upload a 20-page manga that got rejected at Morning, 1 or 2-page manga, 4-panel comics, and I had a tons of rejected names. At the time, I was doing this livestream once a month on Nico. I’d announce that I was going to go viral on the program and keep uploading my manga. Deep down, I did wonder if there was any point to it, but there wasn’t anything else I could do.

And then, around a half year later, because I was uploading stuff every day, eventually there were some things that’d get retweeted 5,000 or 10,000 times. People began taking a look at my older works from that, and it caught the attention of sites like Omokoro and net celebs like Yoppii-san. In September of 2016, “Yaretakamo Iinkai” saw the light of day.

Oh, finally! It’s easy enough to say, “I’m going to go viral in half a year,” but it’s another thing to be able to accomplish that when you have nothing to guarantee it. That’s amazing.

Yoshida:

It’s going to sound like I’m tooting my own horn a bit, but back then I really felt like I was working hard (laugh.) The first chapter hit around 200,000 views at the time. I got a flood of requests to turn it into a book right away. I think it was about 4 or 5 publishers that asked to publish it, but because “Share Body” was such a big failure, I decided to be quite careful with everything, right down to dealing with the editors. That’s when I decided there were four things that I would not give up. They were basically, “I would decide the title myself,” “I wouldn’t have any meetings about it,” “I would do the art myself,” and “I would manage the digital publication myself.” The first one may sound quite obvious, but when you get a publisher involved, the title reflects on their brand, so they make you change it often times. (Though I was able to decide the title for “Share Body.”)

The second item had to do with the same thing. There are a lot of editors that will meddle with the work, and there are a lot more people than you think who will be very heavy-handed when dealing with you because they feel like they’re the ones paying you. When I would go to meet them after they invited me to turn it into a book, they’d say, “Let’s have some meetings about this and make it together.” I turned them all down. They’d say things like, “I can come up with all sorts of ideas that could fit the story,” and go on about all these different plans they’d have, and I’d just listen to what they had to say with a smile, and then leave. I was asked if it was possible to participate in the selection process for the different episodes, but I even said no to that. It was pretty brazen of me, but my stance was, “You’re the ones that said you wanted to turn it into a book, so please just do that.”

I also wanted them to accept that I was going to do the art as something that was a given. The publisher was coming on board after the planning, so handing over the digital rights would be strange too.

That all makes sense, but it must’ve been a perilous path. I can’t imagine talks proceeded all that smoothly once you made your stance clear to the publishing companies. They probably felt like they were setting the stage to make the chances of profitability higher, and you were refusing to go along with it. Did they feel a bit like, “Why is this guy even meeting with us then?”

Yoshida:

I did get told with a sigh that they didn’t want to talk to me anymore about that sort (negotiations about the rights) of stuff (laugh.) They’d laugh and ask me, “What happened to you to make you feel this way?” “Yaretakamo Iinkai” was the first piece of work out of all the manga that I had drawn that I actually felt like was going well, so I didn’t want to change the system that I was using to produce it until it was over. The things I was asking for came from a place more of fear rather than desires. I didn’t want to have the work get messed up anymore.

You felt like you were cornered. Thinking about it normally, a company offering to publish your work would have you take down the stuff you had put up publicly on “note,” serialize it exclusively on their own media platforms or magazines, and want to sell tankoubon. Did the conversations ever turn into something like that? That’s usually the pattern of what happened to other manga that got popular on the net at least, which is why I think it’s truly impressive that you were able to present a different method of success.

Yoshida:

Naturally, I insisted on not taking down anything on the sites that I had already put up. I had all these people on the net reading my work, so what would be the point of taking it down? Even if you go viral, what you really need to value the most aren’t the publishers that will give you work but your readers.

When I see people tweeting, “My series is starting,” or, “My book is coming out,” and fans respond, “Congratulations,” I end up thinking, “It’s not worth getting that happy about,” because I got cancelled after a half a year. Delivering your work to the reader is the goal, and having a series or putting a book out is just one way to do that. I know I’m being mean about it, but it’s almost like people just want to do a series so they can tweet about how it’s about to start. Having the publisher validate you and starting your series… it feels real nice for a moment, but then they suddenly stop tweeting for a month, and you see they’re getting cancelled. The story ends in the middle of things, and they end up letting down all the readers they worked so hard to build up.

After that, the mangaka that had their series cancelled are regarded differently. They won’t let you do things by yourself next time. They’ll have you adapt someone else’s original work or pair you up with a different person to do the art. The mangaka could just part ways with the publisher at that point, but they think to themselves, “If I just listen to what I’m told, something good might happen,” so they follow the rules that get set for them. Whenever I see someone talented just doing whatever they’re told by the publisher and the original work they’re adapting is no good, I wonder why they’re doing that. Like, “They’re so talented, and it’s such a waste!”

Starting your series or putting out a book, it’s not really something to celebrate. You may not be able to see it with your eyes, but delivering a work to the readers is what you should be most happy about. Having a series or putting out a book isn’t even a completely effective way to deliver something to the readers nowadays.

Tweets Are like Dust or Pollen

If delivering something to the reader were established as the goal of the process, then the landscape of this scene should look different. It’s certainly true that just drawing whatever the publisher tells you to do won’t always lead to good results. Did you have some plan you’d concocted to succeed without joining up with a publisher though?

Yoshida:

Not at all (laugh.) It feels like it just ended up this way because I decided what I didn’t want to do, like it was a process of elimination. I went viral once, so I thought if I just quietly drew a volume's worth of material and sold a digital version, I’d probably make some money. Even if I didn’t make that much money, as long as it was enough for me to draw my next piece, that would be enough.

A big reason why other mangaka-san get fixated on the idea of a series probably has to do with getting paid a manuscript fee. I understand where they’re coming from too, but if I were aiming to become a mangaka with everything I know now, I’d draw the manga that I want in the way that I want while working a part-time job or something, and put out an ebook once a year. I probably wouldn’t sell anything at first, but I’d polish my skills while seeing what works through trial and error, and then when someone comes across my work and it goes viral, I’d sign a contract that would be advantageous for me with the publisher. That’s the method I might choose to pursue. You can still dream like that.

Futabasha, the publisher that put out the tankoubon, didn’t pay a manuscript fee, but they were okay with me keeping the works I had up on “note,” “cakes,” and “Manga on Web,” gave me the freedom to put out a digital edition, and allowed me to have creator control over any application of it for derivative works, such as movie adaptations and the like. If I had made it my goal to put out a paper book, I don’t think it would’ve turned out this way.

After hearing everything that you’ve said, I can see that you have a deeply rooted distrust of the publishing companies at your core. But at the same time, although you make use of the internet and social networks in a very proactive way, there’s also this sort of vibe that you don’t believe they’re completely awesome either. It feels like the existence of the net was indispensable for the success of the work. You could even say that the success of “Yaretakamo Iinkai” was only possible because someone famous on the net picked up on it. How do you feel about that?

Yoshida:

I was honestly thankful that they were spreading it around the net. But it didn’t really change anything about my fundamental distrust in others. I might need some counseling or something (laugh.) It’s obvious, but it’s not like I think that everyone at the publishing companies are evil and everyone on the net is good. People who work in marketing or other internet-related fields are always looking for the next big thing that people will be talking about, and are incredibly fickle, so I’m trying to remember to not get consumed by that.

Also, people in IT can create places and spaces for manga (manga sites and applications,) but they can’t actually create the content itself. They can only make the restaurants and plates; they aren’t cooks. There are tons of sites out there with someone famous supervising but no views or ones with views but no monetization system in place. There are more apps and sites now, and the places you can draw manga have exploded in number, but the creator has to be careful and needs the power to carefully examine the place where they’re going to serialize their work.

If all you do is believe in the word “serialization,” you’re going to get turned into a dancing bear to attract attention. And you might even be made to do your jig in front of an empty audience. You want to at least have an audience if you’re going to be a dancing bear.

It’s true that there’s this idea of people who work in internet-related fields swarming around something in a flash, eating all they can, and then leaving. It’s common for new services to pop up one after another, and then disappear. They all seem very transitory.

Yoshida:

I was contacted by someone working for a certain application, asking me if I wanted to put my work on it. When I went to meet that person, they kept on saying things like, “You should do it now,” “It’s now or never,” “If you do it now, it’ll definitely do well.” They just kept saying the word “now” over and over. I said to them, “It’s true that “Yaretakamo Iinkai” might just be a flash in the pan, but you don’t really have to be so blunt about it, do you?” They responded, “Sorry, that’s not what I was trying to say. Please consider putting it on our service…” The conversation didn’t go anywhere. They were trying to make things go viral in the now, and I was wanted to continue drawing manga for the long haul. It got me feeling like our sensibilities were pretty different.

Recently, I’ve gotten quite skeptical of people who approach others just because they get a lot of retweets or have a lot of followers and ask them if they want to put out a book. Numbers make things easy to distinguish, so people tend to see retweet counts and follower numbers as having some value, but is it really okay for professional editors to be trusting them?

Are you talking about how editors are starting to resemble people who work in internet-related fields?

Yoshida:

They have, haven’t they. An editor I met the other day said to me, “I found this promising creator recently with around 6,000 followers. It’s my job to turn that number into 30,000,” and I was like, “Seriously?” Apparently there’s some data that came out that said if you have 30,000 followers, 1 in 10 or 1 in 20 will buy the book. I don’t think you can really believe in any of that, but they were telling me all this sort of proudly, so I started thinking, “What’s with this guy? I really shouldn’t trust him! I can’t trust him!!” (laugh.) I think everyone’s reacting too much to numbers. I mean, we’re not dogs here.

It would be simple if all you were trying to do was get people to clap their hands together and tell you it’s good, but you need some sort of action to get people to open up their wallets and give you their money. I think the act of pushing a “like” button is about as minor as patting the head of a Jizou statue. No matter how much something gets posted on the web, when it comes to which ebooks are selling, it’s always “One Piece” or “Shingeki no Kyojin” or “Dungeon Meshi.” Twitter has nothing to do with it. I think tweets are like dust or pollen. The lighter the dust is, the further it can fly, but nobody is going to remember what was flitting around last year.

I think that something a person will pay for might need to have a certain kind of weight to it. I believe that it’s not about likes or retweets, but rather that it’s important the person who put down the money for it feels like they bought something worthwhile and will want to buy it again.

The reason why books aren’t selling has nothing to do with people reading less manga, pirate manga sites, the internet, the end of paper publishers, or ebooks.

The people who determine that lightness or weight are supposed to be the professional editors, but are you saying that’s not really the case anymore?

Yoshida:

I think so. There’s this negative current of completely trusting in fabricated numbers the worse that books sell. There’s been some recent news about how “comico” has been driving down the price they’re paying for manuscripts (though “comico” denies that to be true) and that manga tankoubon sales are half of what they used to be in the heyday of manga.

I think the two are connected. Around 2013, IT enterprises like “comico,” “LINE manga,” “GAMMA,” “Mangabox,” etc., came into the manga marketplace with ample amounts of funding. But fast forward 4 years, and I don’t think they’ve made much money. As for why, it’s because they’re using a business model where they depend on selling paper tankoubon to make money. If they could come up with a single “Shingeki no Kyojin,” then they could make it all back, but it’s not going well. Why isn’t it going well? Because tankoubon aren’t selling. And why is that? I think it’s because the number of publications have increased too much.

IT companies enter the market, comics increase, as if in opposition to this, the publishing companies make their own manga sites and applications and create even more content, they cut down on the page count to increase the numbers of volumes, and the result of that now is that the comic corner at bookstores are in complete disorder. I think it’s too much of a pain for readers to choose, so they just don’t buy manga anymore.

It’s like when a non-native creature is introduced to a pond and it ruins the ecosystem. The water gets muddy and people don’t want to approach it. They don’t know what’s interesting anymore. There are even too many books that recommend manga like “Kono Manga ga Sugoi,” “Manga Taishou,” or “Kono Manga wo Yome.”

In my opinion, the reason why books aren’t selling has nothing to do with people reading less manga, pirate manga sites, the internet, the end of paper publishers, or ebooks.

Mangaka are drawing manga that suit their editors, editors are trying to proceed with projects that suit the editor-in-chief, and IT companies are trying to hit it big on a single jackpot manga. This is the natural result of nobody paying attention to the reader.

If the market goes back to being healthy, I think that manga will start to sell again. It’s not like you can drain all the water out of the pond though, so it’s pretty tough. I don’t think you can expect much from paper tankoubon until the water is clean again. The ones that have it the worse here are the people running the bookstores. But I believe that the ones that do a good job of selecting what they carry will be able to survive.

Right now, I have the good luck of being able to just focus on the reader and draw my manga. There’s no greater joy than that.

(My Own) Commentary:

At https://note.mu/shuho_sato/n/n657d9e19f18f, there are some additional notes on this article written in a blog post by Shuuhou Satou. If you’re familiar with some of the details of Shuuhou Satou and Yoshida Takashi, then the interview would’ve come off as maybe slightly disingenuous. The mangaka that Yoshida Takashi was an assistant to was Shuuhou Satou, and Shuuhou Satou runs “Manga on Web.” Shuuhou Satou is a very vocal person about these issues (publisher vs creator rights, digital publications, etc.) and even manages a consulting service for mangaka contracts as well as a ebook distribution consulting service (Densho Bato.) In the blog post Shuuhou Satou confirms that the interview was meant to help a bit with the sales promotion and that Yoshida Takashi did go through his service with his ebook. He talks a bit about the perceived success of the article in boosting its position on Kindle’s comic ranking, but there are some more interesting points that he makes. One of them is that he made sure to not include his own name in the interview (though he was the one who authored and conducted it.) For anyone not familiar with the history, it probably doesn’t make a difference, but if you do know who he is, then it comes off as a bit underhanded. I think a lot of the things Shuuhou says are interesting, even if I don’t particularly think his comics are. Not putting that out there upfront for the reader when the interview is going to touch on the issues he’s known for getting into just makes Yoshida seem more like a parrot than his own person. It should be noted that Shuuhou and the people that he represents are really among the most successful in terms of making money off digital distribution, but Shuuhou is also pouring tons of money back into marketing and promotion.

Also, some of the numbers that they mention people talking about always strike me as a little humorous. At the moment I’m writing this, Yoshida has about 7,000 followers on twitter, and Shuuhou has about 10,000. Most of the retweets for the interview come from someone else’s account. Many of the authors that I enjoy reading and follow have lower numbers or no twitter account at all. That makes the editor’s comment about getting an author’s follower count to 30,000 pretty funny. In context, with the “data” that was getting mentioned, you’d move 3,000 units at best, which is close to the minimum of what you’d want to make profitability feasible on a tank’s print run.

Regarding the comments Yoshida makes about the marketplace currently, I do think there’s a lot of shit in the water, but I also think it’s worth mentioning that this shakeup also allowed for the existence and development of manga sites like Torch (Leed) and Mavo. I never would’ve expected the publisher that puts out Comic Ran, a magazine that is basically all samurai comics, to be behind something as forward-thinking as Torch. Shuuhou’s own Manga on Web is also one that was built in the muddied environment, though Manga on Web has been running in the red just like all of those other IT based sites. It’s not as though editors at paper publishers were making amazing decisions all the time prior to this marketplace flooding either. They may not have been looking at follower counts, but they definitely were stressing sales numbers, and a lot of them went with veterans that drew crap that sold rather than developing and fostering younger authors. At least in this environment, younger authors have some places online to put work up when niche magazines are getting shuttered, even if they’re all working side jobs at the same time. For the general consumer, it may be too confusing to choose, but for someone who will invest their time into finding works they want to read themselves, it’s not the chaotic environment he makes it out to be.

As for “Yaretakamo Iinkai,” you can actually read some of it in English “officially” on pixiv at https://www.pixiv.net/user/3130738/series/22797. My personal opinion of it is that… I’d rather read this than Shuuhou’s comics :T

#translation #manga #shuuhou satou #yoshida takashi

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christinaengela · 4 years

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Hello friends and fans!

Welcome to my 46th newsletter – October 2020!

On A Personal Note

September was a fairly quiet, uneventful month… actually, no… who am I kidding? There were a few things that made September an interesting and busy month! Aside from the editing work I’ve been doing on the sideline, I also had to undertake the Herculean task of migrating my website from WordPress.com’s hosting to a new home. The newly migrated site is pretty much sorted out now, but if you find any glitches, like broken links or missing images etc. please do let me know! I also added a ecommerce functionality to the site – now that I’m able to use plugins – and visitors can buy eBooks direct from the shop page now without having to go to other online shops – isn’t that nice? 🙂

On the social side, I had a brilliant email interview with fellow South African author Simon Corn this past month, you can read that from the link further along!

Further afield, I indulged my love for woodworking this past few weeks, and finally got round to building that bookshelf I longed for to complete the feel of the ‘study’ corner of our lounge! As you can see in the photo, it’s in the corner (which makes it stronger – a must to hold all that weight haha) and it’s filled with an array of some of my favorite books – fiction and non-fiction! Our Star Wars collection of memorabilia fills the gaps quite nicely too! The shelf above the window is home to the bulk of my collection of antique telephones, and beneath the shelf – on a cupboard you can barely see in the photo – are two antique typewriters, a 1939 Remington, and a 1952 Olivetti, both in good working order!

This year’s almost over – and with the entirety of the last week of September being taken up by my website migration, I’m looking at the remainder of 2020 a little bleary-eyed! I still have some work left in the writing department for this year – aside from the editing projects I’m doing for clients – and as always, I’ll keep you posted on my progress!

Moving on, let’s take a look at the usual list of goodies!

Art

I also indulge in painting from time to time – and no, I don’t mean walls! The following paintings are in my portfolio:

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2017_Human Nature A4 acrylic canvas

20200620_Balancier A2 acrylic canvas

20200628_Rescuer A2 acrylic canvas

20200705_The Awakening A2 acrylic canvas

20200712 The Earth Wept 40x40cm acrylic canvas

You can read more about my art projects on the Art page.

What do you think of them? Feel free to let me know!

Music

Yes – I also make music from time to time!

A selection of music tracks I made using eJay and other similar apps between 1999 – 2008 are available on my YouTube channel.

You can read more on the Music page on my website!

Activism

For those of you interested in my activism-related posts and activities, you can follow them at “Sour Grapes: The Fruit Of Ignorance“.

Current Writing Projects

For the past few weeks, I’ve been dividing my time between performing editing and formatting work for Moon Books Publishing, and writing new material for Galaxii Book 4, which I haven’t formally named just yet! Operating under the working title of “Dreams of Innocence” – from an old draft I’d worked on a long time ago and which set the background foundation of this otherwise entirely new story – this book will once again be looking at the Corsair menace.

Set a short time after the collapse of the Corsair home world Meradinis, the story focuses on the starship I.S.S. Munray – a ship crewed by ill-disciplined misfits barely one step away from court-martial and dismissal, filled with bitterness, resentment and axes to grind with anyone in authority – and the Captain’s the worst of the lot! His career has soured and he ‘works the system’ to get himself removed from command and assigned to an easy desk job at a starbase – but the powers that be have other plans…

A new Captain is assigned in place of the malingering Captain Polluk – a young, ambitious up-and-coming and capable officer – and Sonia LaBelle is the literal new broom! She manages to overcome all the obstacles in her path; a ship in a poor state of repair, an uncooperative senior staff, negative hopeless crewmembers – in time to meet the deadline set by Vice-Admiral Beens.

Meanwhile, a couple of extremely dangerous high profile Corsair convicts escape from an isolated, virtually escape-proof prison complex, which sets the cat among the pigeons! The Munray is diverted from a routine space patrol to pursue the escaped Corsairs, an exercise which will push the already strained interpersonal relations among the crew – and between the crew and its new Captain – to the limit!

At least, that’s more or less the broad overview of the fourth book in the Galaxii series! I’m quite excited about it, since I haven’t really worked on that series since I last revised all the titles back in 2018! Book 4 doesn’t feature any of the characters of the previous books (at least not as yet) but I might still be looking at drawing in one or two later, I’ll see how the story progresses and where it takes me!

Editing

I recently completed editing “Avenging Aranis” by UK writer Steve McElhenny – a sci-fi tale for Moon Books – and the first part of a trilogy! Currently I’m editing “The Darkness Within Me”, a dark fantasy novel by South African author Anya Louw, also for Moon Books.

I’ve also recently started offering my editing services on a freelance basis to interested parties. More about that here.

Marketing – The Dreaded “M” Word!

Portfolio 2020!

I thought it would be nice if I could produce a neat, organized catalog of all my books that interested parties could download and browse – a free, distributable and shareable catalog, and so I created “Portfolio 2020!” – a listing of all my currently available titles!

Portfolio is more than that though, because it also contains a biography as well as synopses for most of my titles – and I have a plan to update it regularly, perhaps on an annual basis! Portfolio 2020 is available as a free download from my website.

Videos

I’ve nothing new to show you here this time, but feel free to browse through the videos on my YouTube video channel!

Sales

Sales for September have been holding a constant trend, with figures for 2020 indicating that I’ve already doubled the total for 2019! Things have been slow in progressing, but at least they’ve been consistent, with a gradual improvements across the board – accompanied by an increase in distribution as well as with the addition of external marketing on the part of my publisher, Moon Books Publishing, who’ve been doing their own marketing of my titles! That tells me things will get better!

Additionally, having migrated my website to a new hosting service (where I can actually install plugins!!!) I’ve installed ecommerce and set up direct purchasing options for interested visitors, so I’ll let you know how that goes next time!

Publishing

These are the books I’ve released so far this year!

Between January and September 2020 I released eight new titles! Of these, two – “Duck Blind” and “The Next Room” have been replaced by one combined title, “Mirror, Mirror” which includes both of them. Of course, this reduces my count back to 30 again – but when you already have 30 or so books to your name, what’s one here or there?

New Releases:

I’ve nothing new to show you here this time!

Audiobooks

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“Malice” (2020)

On September 11, 2020, “Malice!” was released as an audiobook, narrated by Michelle Innes!

“Malice!” is a collection of my horror tales. Read more about the book.

Details:

Published: June 25, 2019, audiobook September 11, 2020.

Words: 21770

Pages: (6×9 Paperback)

Duration: 02:10min (audiobook narrated by Michelle Innes)

Book Trailer Video:

Buy now: eBook Paperback Audiobook

Coming Soon

In the meantime, here’s a look at the covers for hot new audiobooks currently in the pipeline:

Stay tuned for updates!

Reviews

You can see all my previous reviews here.

Currently Available Titles

I now have 30 unique titles available in 4 series (not including books I’ve been the editor for, and my 16 free promotional items)! My books are available in three different formats: EBooks, Paperbacks and Audiobooks. Click the links or images below to view titles available in these formats.

Communication

Below are links to a few of my most recent posts and articles since my last newsletter:

Now You Can Buy EBooks Direct From Christina Engela Dot Com!

The Last Post! Please Subscribe To My New Website! 🙂

New Website For Christina Engela Dot Com!

New Release: “Malice!” – The Audiobook!

Indie Copy Editing Services Offered!

Another Round At The Crow Bar #45 September 2020

If you want to see more articles, just click on the category links below:

Elements of Horror

FAQ Answered

Fun Facts

LGBT Heroes

The Tech Side

Secret Weapons of the Resistance

Writing Advice

Guest Writers

Newsletters

Interactions

Fan Mail, Reader Reviews & Honorable Mentions

I have the following awesome items to show you this month!

I found this share of one of my articles “A Treatise On The Psychic Abilities Of The Common House Fly” on Odd Mag from February 02, 2020.

“Christina Engela is an excellent editor. She helped me open my mind to a different perspective, to see my work through the eyes of the reader. Most importantly she taught me more about writing than any teacher in my entire 12 years of education! I’d rate her at 100 out of 10!” – Anya Louw, author of “The Darkness Within Me” and “Normanwood” (Aug 28, 2020).

“I recently had the pleasure of an editorial experience with Ms. Engela. As an entry level author and with some trepidation, I submitted work to Ms. Engela for editing, uncertain of what to expect from the process. Ms. Engela read and corrected my work. Her approach is professional, encouraging yet precisely on point. There was not ever a need to query the work she did on my script. I was also particularly impressed with her turn around time. I would strongly recommend her editorial services and I look forward to a time when I can work with her again.” – Cedar J. Lockheart, author of “Skinwalker” (Aug 28, 2020).

“In running Moon Books Publishing I know the value of a good proofreader and editor. Christina is a proven author who has released over 30 books, so she knows the ins and outs of writing. I’ve discovered that not only is she witty, bright and verbose in her writing, but she is also meticulous and professional in her proofreading and editing skills. You won’t find a more professional proofreader and editor than Christina. That is why I will ALWAYS choose her to handle proofreading and editing at Moon Books Publishing.” – Brandon Mullins, publisher, CEO Moon Books Publishing (Aug 29, 2020).

A fantastic, swashbuckle through space. “While Fantasy is my primary love in literature, I have always enjoyed a good science fiction yarn and when this one came to me via the narrator I figured it may just satisfy an itch I’d been having of late.

Sheesh, where to start with this book? Simply put, it has everything! There’s adventure, space battles, fistfights, pirates and, of course. romance.

The story revolves around Mykl, ex-combat pilot turned down-on-his-luck cargo captain who begins the book afloat in space after most of his crew, for reasons unknown, mutiny and fly off in the ships sole shuttle. Shortly afterwards the starships drive explodes, killing his two remaining crew and leaving him marooned in deep space with no hope of survival. That is, until a ship full of marines rescues him from certain death only to then get into a battle with a ship full of space pirates, Mykl has to rely on his military training to survive and capture the dreaded Blackhart!

It’s only now that things really start to get bad when his military contract is reactivated and he’s tasked with a critical, possibly suicidal mission into enemy territory.

Every primary character in the book, from Mykl to Ripley and Blackhart himself are extremely well fleshed out, interesting and fantastically voiced by Nigel Peever, each given a real sense of identity and more than a little snark. In addition to the reading, there is the addition of sound effects and some incidental music which is just enough to add atmosphere without distracting from the reading like often can happen with this in audiobooks.

There’s so much in this story that I could talk about but I don’t want to spoil anything but do strongly suggest that, if you like Buck Rogers, Firefly or Pirate stories you give this book a go as I thoroughly enjoyed everything it had to offer.” – Ryan Pascal review “Blachart” Audible UK, August 29, 2020.

“Christina performed a fantastic editing service for my novel. I was blown away by the pace she worked at, her accuracy, and the improvements she made. It would be no understatement to say she went above and beyond what I expected and was incredible value for the more than reasonable cost for her services. I look forward to using Christina again in the future as I know I’ll be in safe hands.” – Steve McElhenny, author of “Avenging Aranis” (Sept 07, 2020).

“Blachart. A good read. Well written good story line. Well narrated. All in all a good listen.” – Richard Davis, Audible UK, “Blachart”, September 09, 2020.

Spotted on the internets… Brandon Mullins of Moon Books Publishing made and shared this awesome meme to market my audiobooks:

Quotefancy shared a quote by me, found on September 22:

I display my Fan Mail, Reviews & Compliments with pride, gratitude and humility. You’re always welcome to have a look.

Hate Mail & Horrible Mentions

I’m rather proud of my hate mail, and you can review my collection here – but be forewarned, don’t do it while eating or drinking, or you might choke while laughing!

Apparently I’m unhinged and need help? LMAO… Oh, won’t someone please help me?

Interviews

A Moment With Christina Engela – I had an interview with Simon Corn on his author blog – it went live on September 28.

All my interviews are linked to from this page. If you would like to do an interview with me about my work, please do get in touch!

In Closing

Well, that’s all for this time, folks! 🙂

Thanks again for all your support, friendship and interaction!

Feel free to email or message me via Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn if you have any comments or questions!

Until next time, keep reading!

Cheers! 🙂

Catch me on social media!

If you would like to know more about Christina Engela and her writing, please feel free to browse her website.

If you’d like to send Christina Engela a question about her life as a writer or transactivist, please send an email to [email protected] or use the Contact form.

Show your appreciation for Christina’s work!

Another Round At The Crow Bar #46 October 2020 Hello friends and fans! Welcome to my 46th newsletter - October 2020!

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