editing has got to be the most miserable part of writing 

Hello! As finals season (aka 5-research-papers-due-in-a-week season) dawns on many of you, I thought I would share the process I used to write papers in college. This made writing long research papers much less daunting (but can also work on shorter papers). I really hope this helps some of you who feel stuck. Especially during these ridiculous times, when you're stuck at home and might have other uncontrollable factors affecting your mental health, a clear framework of what to do could be helpful. Good luck, my friends! You got this.

About me

I graduated college in 2018 with degrees in Political Science + International Studies and will be starting law school this fall. I wrote nearly 20 15 to 25-page papers, never earning below an A. I loved researching about my topics but hated writing. It's tedious, takes so much time, and everything I write sounds bad at first. Plus, I was a terrible procrastinator so most of these essays were written in under a week. Talk about stress.

Over time I found a process that worked for me, one that made churning out a paper seem straightforward, like going through a factory line rather than this terrifying concept of writing 10,000 words. It kept me sane without decreasing the quality of my work (or more importantly, how much I learned!) 

I'm thinking about making a short video to show this in action… let me know if that could be helpful!

Step 1: Research

How you organize your research is a key step in keeping you sane. Usually I'll have a pile of 20 books in my dorm along with dozens of JSTOR tabs open on my laptop, and that can get overwhelming very fast. Right now just focus on collecting ideas, not developing an argument or even an outline! As with most research papers, you could be starting with little to no background information on the topic, so it is still too early to be thinking about an argument.

Put all your research in one document

Open up a new doc: this will be the heart of everything. For a 15-page paper I usually end up with around 14-18 pages of typed research, 10 pt font, single spaced, tiny margins. This seems like a lot, but essentially all I do is type up anything I read that seems relevant to my topic, so luckily this step does not require that much brain power. Just type type type!

Use the table of contents

Find the chapter(s) that are actually relevant instead of skimming through the whole book. Time is of the essence here!

Use Zotero, cite right away

You can also use easybib or whatever you're used to, but keep track of your sources. I like Zotero because I can keep a log of all of my sources and copy the footnote or bibliography version whenever needed. Before you even begin reading, cite the source and copy it into your research doc. This will save you so much time later when you have to put in your citations in the actual paper. 

Here is an example of what my research doc looks like:

Full citation is my heading for each source just so it’s crystal clear

I ignore all typos (I don’t think there are any in this part though, go me!) because my head is buried in the book just trying to get all the info down

I always start with the page number so I know what to cite when I go back

Create a shorthand 

While typing up research, you might think of something that the author didn't talk about that you'll want to write in your paper. Or perhaps a few sentences already start to form. Put them all in one place, with your research, so you know what source you'll have to cite to then lead into your idea. I type "!@#" before anything that is strictly my own idea so I'm never confused. It's fast and stands out.

This is an example: the two bullet points above are evidence from my source, which made me think of this argument I could make, which I noted with “!@#”

Step 2: Read Your Research

Now that you have all your information, go back and read through it all. Every time you read about a new theme/person/event, write it down somewhere. You may come up with a list of 20+ different ideas in your research. No matter how small, as long as there is something about it, write it down. Each of these mini themes is going to end up being a paragraph in your paper or combined with another mini theme. 

Once you’ve made your list, look for larger overarching themes. In the paper I’ve shown you, I had mini categories like “political party x” “religion” “labor groups” “little organization” and “hierarchy.” When I looked back I though, hey these are all groups and how groups are working together, so they each became their own mini paragraph under the subsection of “Alliances.”

As with most research paper structures, I try to find three general themes/subsections (like an extended version of that 5-paragraph essay we wrote in middle school). It makes the paper less messy and also makes sure I’m not covering things that are beyond a reasonable scope.

During this step, you are also searching for your thesis. It won’t be your final version. As you fill in your outline in the next step you may make slight changes. But this is definitely when you start thinking about it.

Step 3: Outline

We’re ready to outline! Once I’ve collected all my different themes and organized all my subsections and paragraphs, it’s time to fill in that outline. I start a new doc just for the outline and take advantage of google doc’s headings function to make a clear document outline.

Here comes the fun part, I read through my research one more time, this time copy and pasting all my research into each section of the outline. The document outline in google docs makes this easy because I can just click on each subheading to get me there (super helpful when you’re dealing with 15+ pages of research).

Here is what it looks like:

Let’s say I need to add something to my outline about labor groups. Boom, labor groups. Also, the typos are really abound here haha

Step 4: Write the Paper

Okay, I get it, easier said than done. BUT! You already have everything set up. Your outline is essentially just a list of your paragraphs and all you have to do is paraphrase, cite, and create a topic sentence. And that’s how you should think about this: you’re essentially transforming bullet points into sentences and adding footnotes. 

In high school my English teacher introduced us to Sh*tty First Drafts for creative writing, but honestly the same applies to research papers. Sometimes I’ll even have phrases like “wait no that’s not what I meant but basically...” and when I go back to edit, I realize that what came after “but basically...” is fine! And I keep it. So just start typing.

How do you cite while you write? Because we’re trying to get a constant stream of writing going, inserting proper footnotes after each sentence you type is too bothersome. I usually split screen with my outline and my paper so I just copy and paste a few words from my bullet point into my footnote, like so:

(This is from a different paper about cluster munitions.)

Step 5: Edit the Paper

I work best when I print out my first draft and make all edits in red pen. I feel more productive and can visually see where I want to move sentences and what I need to change. The more red there is the better I can feel the paper getting. (Whether or not that’s true doesn’t matter. We’re trying to stay motivated here!) When it’s all digital I don’t really see the progress. Plus, once I finish all the red, I get another moment of passive brain work, where all I’m doing is transferring edits rather than thinking. And at this point in the process, that kind of relief is much welcomed. 

The good thing about this process is there’s not usually a need to cut entire paragraphs or pages because the paper you end up with is just a formalized version of your outline. Because you started with such a detailed outline, the cutting and editing now is just to refine your word choices and get rid of the “but basically”s. You’re almost there!

Step 6: Replace your citations

Now it’s time to go back and replace your footnotes with actual citations. Zotero makes this easy because in Word you can just insert and add the page number, and it’ll automatically do “Ibid.” for you when needed. Ctrl+f in the original research doc to quickly find the source.

Step 7: One More Read-Through and Submit!

Congratulations!! You’ve got a fully-researched and well-backed paper! Of course, even though the process is straightforward, it’s still a lot of work. In ideal situations I would start researching two weeks before the deadline, but if need be, I believe I’ve done this all in three miserable panic-filled days as well. 

Please message me if you have any questions at all! I really hope some of you find this helpful! Good luck!

Saw this for the first time today and just about died. Then this happened:

https://archiveofourown.org/works/32013415

(Edit: a big thanks to @stevieshelby for a much better quality picture.)

Alfie Solomons does not run. Ever. Men who run, in his opinion, are silly and weak; either running from or to something and either way showing far too much desperation in doing so. Alfie is a firm believer in acting with as little urgency as possible.

He knows, of course, that most people running are doing so for the sake of exercise. But it’s a bloody foolish way to achieve fitness, if you ask him. Likely does more harm than good, slamming your joints together against hard pavement. Swimming is a much more sensible form of exercise.

Point is, Alfie doesn’t run.

—

Leave it to Tommy Shelby to ruin Alfie’s first true holiday in years. It’s summer and it’s Margate and Alfie is altogether content to let work fade into oblivion and get some much-needed rest. But of course, he can’t get one fucking moments peace before the little prick is calling him, demanding that they meet, that it’s urgent, cannot be discussed over the phone, and what’s Alfie’s rental address, he’ll be there first thing in the morning.

And mornings, right, mornings are sacred to Alfie, especially when on holiday. He likes to take his fucking time, stretch languidly while the last remnants of sleep slip away, stay in bed however long he pleases and not leave a moment sooner. And then, when he deems himself ready to rise, make his way to the terrace with coffee and biscuits and a book and cigar. Greet the day with leisurely intent.

And fuck if he’s gonna let Tommy interfere with that pleasure. So the next day he goes about his morning just as he normally would, and when Tommy pulls up in his sleek Royce he’s just opened his book and taken his first sip of coffee.

“Just come on up, for fucks sake,” he hollers down when Tommy knocks on the front door. Moments later Tommy is standing in front of him, looking incredulous. Or really, looking entirely impassive, if you don’t know him. But Alfie does, so, yes, it’s definitely incredulity swimming behind those flat eyes.

Thing is, another part of Alfie’s morning routine is not getting dressed. Dressing really defeats the point of lounging around, doesn’t it? It’s boxers and a loose robe for him, and there’s nothing like the feeling of the warm morning sun on your bare chest, is there?

“You forget I was coming, Alfie?”

“Naw mate, how could I? Been anxious for my groceries, haven’t I?” He’d texted Tommy as soon as they’d hung up last night, Be a dear and stop by Kosher Kingdom before you leave, followed by a rather extensive grocery list. Just to be a prick, really; hadn’t expected any follow-through. But Tommy’s holding a grocery bag.

“Those ‘em?” He asks and grabs it from him. Tommy pays this no heed.

“You didn't think a business meeting warranted, I don’t know, putting some trousers on? Maybe a shirt?”

“Business meeting? Naw. I’m on fucking holiday, ain’t I?” He says it into the bag, busy shuffling through the contents. Only half his requests are in there. “Where are my bourekas?” He asks, looking up.

Tommy glares at him and pulls out a cigarette. His eyes flit unwittingly over Alfie’s bare torso as he lights it. Alfie suppresses a smug grin.

Could be that not wanting to disrupt his normal routine isn't the only reason Alfie declined to dress for Tommy’s visit. Could be, yeah, that they’ve been in business together for seven months and those seven months have felt like a fucking eternity, all of them spent with Alfie not so secretly lusting after Tommy and Tommy, cunt that he is, determinedly ignoring his advances (even though Alfie is damn sure his desires are reciprocated). So yeah, he stayed half-naked to make a point about holidays and respect and all that, but also to taunt Tommy.

Rather transparent. Could be he’s getting a bit desperate.

“So what’s this big emergency, then? You finally set the factory on fire smoking those godforsaken fags? Tear a hole in that favorite suit of yours, hmm? Someone finally snap and off Arthur? Out with it, treacle.”

Tommy sighs as he slides into the seat opposite Alfie. “How’s it you’re even more fucking irritating on holiday, Alfie?”

Alfie just smiles.

“Alright,” Tommy says, pulling some papers from his briefcase and onto the table. He launches into a story, and Alfie immediately forgets to listen. Thing is, there’s a lot going on in Margate in the summer, even this early in the day. Folks are up and about and Alfie can’t help it if he’s an avid people-watcher. Not really in the headspace for business, is he?

Alfie’s somehow getting away with not paying attention to Tommy when the group of runners pound by. They look equally smug and miserable and he can’t help but mutter, “Ridiculous fucking hobby.”

This stops Tommy mid-sentence. “You hear a word I just fucking said, Alfie?”

Alfie nods. “Yeah, mate, sure. Something about a shipment and a fuck up.”

Tommy’s jaw clenches, his eyes narrow. He looks from Alfie to the runners and to Alfie again. It’s a long, heavy silence. Long enough that Alfie grabs the grocery bag again and begins pawing through it. He can practically feel the annoyance radiating off Tommy.

“You remember when you set me up with that cousin of yours?” Tommy asks, an eternity later.

Alfie can’t help it, he breaks into a toothy grin. He remembers it. Often and fondly. It’s not every day Tommy is in need of a last-minute date for an important business dinner and turns to Alfie for help. And really, Tommy should have known better. Of course, Alfie was going to hire an escort to accompany him, paying her extra to pretend to be his cousin. Of course, he was going to relish the opportunity to fuck with the great Tommy Shelby, delight in the knowledge of him prancing proudly around London with a high-end prostitute on his arm.

Hadn’t expected him to ever find out, at least not until a few years later when he’d randomly decide to let his duplicity slip. Hadn’t anticipated that there’d be an adversary present at the dinner who knew just who his ‘cousin’ was, did little to hide it and, in fact, outed Tommy on spot. Alfie can’t quite regret this, though. Would never have gotten to see his cheeks flushed so darkly, red with rage and embarrassment, the next day, would he have? It made the fist to the face and ensuing month of stony silence entirely worth it.

“Course I remember, treacle. One of my finer moments. Really though, you were rather ungrateful, weren’t you? Just trying to give a mate a pleasurable night and all I get in return is a black eye and broken nose.”

Tommy is looking at him with that look of his, the one that means there’s a scheme brewing and you’d best brace yourself.

“Tell you what, Alfie,” Tommy says, leaning forward and stamping out his cigarette. “You make it to the pier and back in under a minute, and I’ll return the favor.”

“What, you’re gonna hire me an escort?” Alfie asks, amused.

“No.” His eyes bore into Alfie, the blues in them much darker than usual. His meaning, suddenly obvious, clicks.

There’s not many things that can stun Alfie into silence. He blinks stupidly at Tommy for a few beats, then leans back, dragging his hand over his beard.

“Let me get this straight. I go for a quick jog and we fuck?”

“Think it’ll have to be more of a sprint, Alfie.”

Tommy knows Alfie’s feelings about running. Knows them because Alfie had told him, can never keep his fucking mouth shut and stop the landslide of damning information that falls out.

A run for a fuck. It’s tempting, for sure. But Alfie has his pride. There’s lots of things he’d do for a fuck, but running definitely ain’t one of them, no matter how desperately he wants it.

“Naw mate. Don’t feel like getting dressed, quite yet.” Tommy quirks an eyebrow.

“Didn’t say anything about getting dressed, did I?”

Alfie laughs at this. Of course, it’s his unkempt appearance that Tommy thinks adds an extra punch of humiliation to this bargain. But Alfie could give a fuck, and Tommy should really know better. He’d meet the Queen in his boxers and robe, head held high, wouldn’t he? But running? No.

“Tommy, sweetie, it’s not going to happen. Now, isn’t there some world-ending urgent reason you are here?”

Tommy shrugs and starts over.

Alfie listens. Or tries to. Tommy himself proves to be the distraction this time. First, he takes off his suit jacket, and fucking well he should, he’s got too many layers for this heat, so that’s just fine.

Then he starts to roll his shirt sleeves upwards. Not in the messy, rushed way that Alfie shoves his own up, but slowly, methodically, one careful fold over another. It takes a tedious amount of time for his forearms to emerge and Alfie tracks the progress hungrily. He’s always had a weakness for those arms, which Tommy, of course, well knows. Another stupid thing he’d let slip. But no matter, they’re just arms, after all.

The lazy recline against his seatback is definitely unexpected. So unlike Tommy, to don a posture of such ease. Yet it suits him, stretches his body out more fully, allows Alfie a more substantial view. And there’s the leg too, that has slid out as result, and is now pressing firmly against Alfie’s own, calf to calf. It’s not moving or anything, so, really, it’s no big deal.

Tommy keeps talking and Alfie keeps listening. Problem is, Tommy’s doing this thing, and it’s definitely the most distracting of all the things. He keeps slipping his eyes from Alfie’s face, raking them over his body, slow and deliberate, licking his lips as he does. And that, well that is just fucking sinful and cruel and underhanded and right up Alfie’s alley.

A run for a fuck. It’s ludicrous, yet…

The leg next to his gives a forceful nudge.

“Asked you a question, Alfie.” There’s a drop of sweat running down Tommy’s throat, spilling onto his clavicle. When had Tommy undone the top two buttons of his shirt?

Maybe, maybe, just one, short run won’t kill him. He clears his throat.

“A minute, you say?” Tommy blinks, then nods, trying and failing to keep his lips from twitching upwards. The hair on his forehead has begun to curl slightly in the humidity. Alfie wants to run his hand through it, brush it away, feel how soft it must be.

“Fuck it. Where are my goddamn trainers, then?”

—

Alfie runs like the wind, or so he’d like to think. It’s not far in that he first considers, with slight panic, that this distance might not be doable in under a minute, not for an avid non-runner, such as himself. But there’s no fucking way he’s not getting his reward for this ridiculous exercise in humiliation.

He picks up his pace, stiffens his hands, pumps his arms with vigor. He runs like the devil’s chasing him and there’s a naked Tommy Shelby jumping and cheering his name at the finish line. He can only imagine what he looks like, face set with anguished determination, robe billowing behind him.

Tommy’s holding in laughter, eyes brimming with tears, when he heaves to a stop beside him, gasping violently, his hands on his knees. He’d silence him with a righteous punch to the dick if he could only catch his breath.

“Well?” He asks, a moment later. Tommy holds out his phone to him.

“Minute three seconds,” he says.

“Fuck off,” Alfie breaths, but the timer indeed reads as Tommy says. Three fucking seconds. “This goddamn robe, too much resistance.”

Tommy laughs. “Nah, I must have hit the start a bit too soon,” he says, and closes the distance between them, wrapping an arm around Alfie’s waist and kissing him vigorously.

—

And so that’s how Alfie finally managed to get Tommy Shelby into his bed. Still fucking hates running. Hates it with unyielding passion and will never partake again. But, he figures, just that once, it had been worth it.

Books of 2021: The Way of Kings - Brandon Sanderson

I have a few things to acknowledge here before we get into the proper review - this is REALLY LONG and VERY CRITICAL. I promise you I do genuinely love The Stormlight Archive, but if you are someone who doesn’t like to see criticism of Sanderson or Stormlight, then please don’t read this.

This review has spoilers for The Stormlight Archive - you have been warned.

I’ve made no secret of my love for the Stormlight Archive - it’s my favourite ongoing fantasy series. I’ve also avoided reviewing it, and I’ve been putting it off since I first read it back in 2016 (could be 2017? It was a while ago.) How could I review something I love so much? How do I approach reviewing a 1,100 page epic fantasy novel? I just didn’t know. To be honest, I still don’t. I adore this series, it’s become part of my identity - if you asked any of my friends what’s Lizzie’s favourite book they would probably say Stormlight. Maybe Lord of the Rings but that’s a different kettle of fish.

I’ve reread The Stormlight Archive annually for the last five years. I promise myself I won’t reread it and let myself come back in anticipation for the next book. I’ve failed miserably every year. And these aren’t small undertakings - they’re each 1,000 pages and there’s four of them now! For context I usually only read 2,500 pages a month. 

So, I’ve finally decided to review these doorstoppers dressed up as fantasy novels. These reviews are mainly for myself, they’re going to be self indulgent, long, and focus on what I want to discuss like characters, structure, and prose - rather than reviewing the things I should probably talk about (like the actual plot…) I want to work through all the things I love about this behemoth of the modern fantasy genre, but also focus on its flaws. The praise for Sanderson is everywhere, so I want to work through my honest opinion of these books, work out why I love them, and I’ll invite you on this journey of self discovery with me. 

Structure

I’m yet to work out why I’m starting with structure but we are, I guess it helps with the framing. In case you’re reading this having not read The Way of Kings, each book in the Stormlight Archive is made up of 5 main parts that follow major viewpoint characters, and the parts are split up with small interludes that expand the worldbuilding, follow important secondary characters, or foreshadow future moments. Everybook is centred on a key character - in The Way of Kings it’s Kaladin - who we follow in the present day as a major viewpoint character and explore their backstory through a flashback sequence. Each book also has a prologue which retells the assassination of the Alethi king, Gavilar Kholin, and an epilogue from Wit. 

Firstly, this book takes FAR too long to get going and even longer to get into as a reader. I’m not joking when I say there are FIVE introductory chapters: the prelude, a prologue, Cenn’s second prologue (technically the first chapter but it’s a prologue), Kaladin’s introduction, and Shallan’s introduction. It’s too much. We’re jumping around, nothing really makes sense, and we’re not sure how these characters are related. They could be taking place in different worlds for all you know on a first read.

When I first read this book I was a lot more patient with long introductions and multiple false starts - I had the time to dedicate to getting into the story. I could, and did, forgive the THREE false starts to this story before we get to Kaladin’s first chapter. However, the opening structure of this novel is a mistake. If someone gives up in this section I honestly don’t blame them - if I was reading this for the first time in 2021 I probably would too.

The prelude and prologue are both excellent. The prelude in particular is weird and confusing but also sets up a clear mystery and sense of the sheer scope of this story. Szeth’s prologue, the first time we see Gavilar’s assassination, is flawed but still wonderful. The fight scene needed a bit of cutting, for my tastes, and I think the introduction to the magic system is clumsy - there’s far too much obvious info dumping and it needed some serious editing, especially as the complicated use of the magic that Szeth uses is barely relevant in this book. However, I think the Herald’s giving up the Oathpact and a magical assassin is great! They’re a bit weird and you’re not sure what’s going on, but it’s engaging. 

Then there’s Cenn. Poor, innocent Cenn. I’m sorry but he’s completely unnecessary. Independently of the rest of the introduction to the Way of Kings Cenn’s chapter would be a pretty good prologue as he’s there to set up our main hero Kaladin from an outside perspective. We love Kaladin and Cenn’s chapter is fine for establishing him as a typical fantasy hero – he’s a warrior, cares about the people, and so forth.

However, Cenn’s chapter in the context bogs down the opening too much. It’s too long, not particularly relevant, and adds yet ANOTHER prologue to this already enormous book. Cenn’s chapter offers nothing to the reader that we don’t learn later on in the text when the content of Cenn’s chapter makes more sense. We even see the exact same sequence of events from Kaladin’s perspective in a flashback! Not having Cenn’s chapter would add more interest to Kaladin’s character and add more weight to the flashback sequence because we wouldn’t have met Kaladin at his peak (sort of…?) 

Kaladin’s flashbacks aren’t that engaging as it is, he’s a fairly standard fantasy hero from a small village who ends up leaving his happy family to go to war. So leaving a small mystery around him in addition to ‘how did he become a slave’ would help with my engagement. It would leave me wondering how reliable is Kaladin as a narrator, is he really as good with the spear as he claims? I wouldn’t know but Cenn’s chapter removes all the mystery apart from ‘how does Kaladin become a slave’. It needs to go to make Kaladin more interesting and cut down on some of the unnecessary page count.

While we’re at it… Just cut out ALL the interludes in this book, except for the Szeth through line. I KNOW they are here for the Cosmere connections and to foreshadow things much later in the series. However, new readers and Stormlight only readers don’t know this and, quite frankly, they SUCK. In later books the interludes make sense but here they add so much tedious, pointless crap to an already bloated book. They’re too much and add next to nothing – other than seeing Szeth lose it as he kills people, that was fun (in a disturbing, creepy way… Can you tell I like Szeth?) Either this stuff needs to be relevant to the book we’re in now, or painfully obvious that we’re coming back to this stuff in later books. I still don’t know why we got Ishikk’s interlude with the Worldhoppers, and I completely forgot Nan Balat had an interlude. I’ve read this book 5 times… THAT IS HOW POINTLESS THEY ARE! Sanderson should weave the necessary foreshadowing into the main text, intersperse the perspectives we do need for THIS story into the main sections, or cut them out. When I get to the interludes I physically sigh and sometimes put the book down - now I just skip everything but Szeth - but on a first read they’re really off putting. 

To finish up with my complaints about the structure, and this is a big one for me - why do we have huge chunks of this book without major viewpoint characters? I’m biased here but Dalinar is probably the most important POV character in the story because he introduces the real stakes of the story. He has the groundbreaking visions of the past, he is the viewpoint we get into the politics of the war, he is the character who does and continues to have the most impact on the development of the story on his own.Yet, we don’t meet him until we’re 190 pages in… 

Sanderson alternates Shallan and Dalinar’s chapters between the five different parts and that means they vanish for 400 pages at a time. Why? I ended up caring about them right as we’re about to lose their viewpoint again for the next part. We needed to see the three major POV characters interwoven together throughout the five parts, not randomly dropped and picked back up again. The structure of this book was a mistake. 

Okay, I promise I do actually like this book…

Worldbuilding

Something I do love is the worldbuilding of Roshar, and I usually don’t care that much about worldbuilding. I can really appreciate good worldbuilding, especially on the history side of things, but for most novels it’s just fine? If I roughly know what’s going on with the world then we’re good, I can just get on with the story and not worry about it. However, Roshar is genuinely beautifully built! It takes A LOT to get me to visualise a world as I’m not a visual reader. I can feel the atmosphere, get to know characters, but can I imagine a face or setting? No.

There are three fantasy worlds that have allowed me to actually see the world and it’s landscape: Middle Earth, Discworld, and Roshar. The bleak, storm weathered landscape of the Shattered Plains is so embedded in my mind it’s ridiculous, the only place I can picture more is the Shire – and Lord of the Rings has a film to help it!

Now, to be fair it’s hard for me to separate the worldbuilding in The Way of Kings from the rest of the series, so I now have 4,000 pages worth of worldbuilding in my head… However, it’s certainly strong and I distinctly remember having a vivid image of understanding this world, the atmosphere, landscape, and so forth, on my first read. Although it did take me until Oathbringer to realise that everything, except humanity, was basically a crab… (I think that was just me being dense.)

I do think Roshar needs much more of its history to be expanded on. We don’t have much between the Last Desolation (don’t ask me to spell it's in-world title!) and it shows at times. I don’t expect something on the level of The Silmarillion for Roshar, however, I do think we need to see something more substantial in the period between the Desolations and the present day. We know about the Recreance, the attempted takeover of the Vorin Church, and the Sunmaker? That’s 4000 years! To put it into context it’s the distance between us and Jesus’s birth TWICE, it’s like we know about the end of the 11th Dynasty of Egypt, the Reformation, and the British Empire in our own history... We need to find a balance, especially as we get so much development of science in the later books. More history please - but this is a personal issue and a series wide problem, not just The Way of Kings.

Magic System

Now, this is controversial for Sanderson, but I’m going to skip this for now. This review is already well over 1,000 words long and I’ve not even started on the meat of the novel yet. The magic system isn’t really fleshed out in The Way of Kings, we only really know stuff about the Windrunners (in an abstract kind of way) and the very basics of the Knights Radiant in general. So I’m going to discuss the magic when I get around to reviewing Words of Radiance, Oathbringer, and Rhythm of War, basically whenever I have the energy and more space.

Safe to say I actually really like the magic system in the Stormlight Archive. I usually dislike hard magic systems (I think I’m the only person who dislikes Mistborn’s Allomancy - while very well developed, it’s a bit silly and is far too much for my tastes...) as they often take some of the wonder, mystery, and excitement of fantasy out of the story for me. However, I think surgebinding is a fun system and there is a lot more of it for use to discover, preserving some of that mystery. Oh and, if you were wondering, I would be a Skybreaker!

Prose

Okay if you read the structure section and were wondering - why is this woman still reading these books, you’re in for another head scratcher. 

If you’ve ever talked to me about literature you’ll know that there are two things I look for in a really good book: characters and prose. Now characters are something Sanderson does phenomenally well in the Stormlight Archive, but that’s not something you can tell 100 pages into a 1,000 page tome. You have to sit with the characters for a long time and give the author some page time to familiarise you with the people you’re following. If you trust him, Sanderson pulls off some stunning character arcs, especially in the long term and I’ll talk more about characters later on (or you can just skip this section? Up to you really!).

However, prose is something you notice immediately, and Sanderson’s is…utilitarian at best. At worst it’s abysmal. These days I’m very picky about prose, a utilitarian style is fine but a book is unlikely to become a new favourite of mine without good writing. This doesn’t mean I want or expect the writing to be flowery or elaborate, but it does mean I want, and appreciate it when, the prose suits the tone of the narrative and world. I must acknowledge that I’m in a (vocal) minority here, a lot of people either don’t notice Sanderson’s style or like it - I certainly didn’t mind it when I first read ther series - so this is definitely a subjective opinion but one I’m certainly not alone in. 

Nevertheless, for me Sanderson’s prose is overly simplistic, repetitive, and very American. Okay so the American is probably only noticeable if you’re not American. However, I’m used to fantasy having a certain Britishness to the writing style, even when the author isn’t British, but to me (as a Brit and fantasy reader) the Americanisms are painful at times… There is no way in hell I’m ever going to acknowledge that aluminium is aluminum no matter how many times Sanderson uses it! 

Yet it goes beyond a spelling issue because, let's be honest, in this day and age American English is widely spoken and regularly used in fantasy literature - you can’t escape from it as much as I want to. It’s in the style of writing and construction of sentences. The entire narrative reads like an American has decided to tell me a story using their colloquial, everyday speech. It’s a deliberate choice on Sanderson’s part to make things accessible and digestible, and for some people this works. I do think he has a fantastic style to get readers in, especially readers who are getting to grips with high epic fantasy as it’s one less barrier to entry in an already difficult novel. But it does mean rereading isn’t always the best experience and sometimes the writing can jar me out of the story. 

In places it’s too simple and colloquial, so much so the writing becomes clunky, clumsy, and unrealistic to the world he’s creating, especially in descriptive passages and dialogue. It reads like Sanderson could have used more lyrical or formal writing but deliberately chose not to - at the detriment of the prose. This is particularly noticeable with characters like Jasnah Kholin. Jasnah is a princess, brilliant scholar, and political mastermind, she’s known for her poise, elegance, and intelligence. Yet she often speaks like an everyday 21st century American and other characters who haven’t had the same education or training as she has? I can’t believe this for a moment, her dialogue is so egregious in places that it’s like I’ve been hit over the head with my own book! I physically cringe when she says things like ‘“scoot over here”’ (chapter 70, p.1083). WHY is Jasnah talking like this?! It doesn’t make sense to me – Shallan maybe, but Jasnah? No. It doesn’t fit with what we’ve been told about her character.

(Just as an aside, I loathe the word ‘scoot’ – it should be burnt from the English language as an abomination!)

Part of the issue with this is Sanderson usually doesn’t distinguish between the character's voices, both in the dialogue and prose. Most of the time if you dropped me into a random section of the Stormlight Archive with no context I honestly couldn’t tell you who’s speaking or narrating without the signposts Sanderson gives us. This isn’t a huge issue as he’s writing in third person limited, and with context and the chapter icons we know who we’re following. However, it does mean we don’t have any idea of character voice – in the general prose, internal narration/thought, or speech. What’s the difference between Kaladin’s dialogue and Jasnah’s? I have no idea from the sentence construction or speech patterns. Certain descriptions of how characters speak help to differentiate (Jasnah is commanding, Shallan squeaks, Kaladin grunts, etc.) but from their speech patterns I wouldn’t have a clue.

All of this comes back to Sanderson’s overly simple and Americanised style. It’s his choice and it does work for many people, but personally it doesn’t always work with the characters or story. I’m not expecting him to write like Robin Hobb or Guy Gavriel Kay, but some finesse and awareness of character would be appreciated, especially if it helped to differentiate character voices.

I’m also going to throw this out as a very personal issue because I’m not sure where else to put it… Sanderson has the worst sense of humour I’ve ever had the misfortune to read. The comedic moments are occasionally amusing… However, Shallan’s puns are worse than my Dad’s jokes. Every time she says something apparently ‘witty’ and someone else remarks how clever and funny she is I want to hit them... At best she’s mildly amusing, at worst she’s cruel. It’s never funny. (This only gets worse with Lift, I almost DNFed the entire series because of the Lift interlude in Words of Radiance. And don’t get me started on Lopen.)

Characters

At last! Something I genuinely love and the reason I read these books! Sanderson has created some of the best characters in modern fantasy in this series and they are the only reason I’m still going. I like the worldbuilding and plot, but I adore the character work in this book and the series as a whole. The characters are generally so good that, even when I dislike them, it's because I dislike them personally, not that they’re badly written characters! Usually I love Sanderson’s characters though, even when they’re incredibly flawed (looking at you Dalinar!) because he’s particularly good at complex character arcs. 

Szeth – I love Szeth, slightly irrationally for how much he’s in both this book and the series as a whole, but he’s one of my favourite “secondary” characters in the series! Szeth is actually the character who made me fall in love with the series in the first place, which feels weird to say because he only has five or six chapters in the entire novel. However, a magical assassin with a strong, if morally dubious, sense of duty and obligations? Sign me up! The opening prologue from Szeth’s perspective is wonderful - it’s far too info-dumpy but it’s highly engaging and one hell of a way to open the series. 

What really intrigued me about Szeth was his role as the interlude throughline character for The Way of Kings. His internal conflict between his obligation to follow the Truthless’ laws and his personal morality is fascinating. Szeth’s character development has been one of the highlights of the entire series for me, especially as we explore his personal morality, questioning of power, and commitment to law and justice. This conflict is one of the reasons I love the Skybreakers in general and I sincerely hope we get to see more of this (and their conflict with the theoretically similar, although realistically very different, Windrunners) in book 5. However, Szeth is a promise that Sanderson hasn’t kept yet. So much has been built up around his character and we haven’t explored him properly (as of Rhythm of War) and I’m mad about it! He’s an incredibly interesting character, morally and thematically, and I hope Sanderson can live up to the hype he’s built up around him in the first four books of the series. 

Kaladin – Okay the real reason we’re all here, the shining beacon of the Stormlight Archive, everyone’s favourite heroic bridgeman: Kaladin Stormblessed. Confession time – I didn’t love Kaladin the first time I read The Way of Kings. Don’t get me wrong I liked him but I’m generally not a massive fan of underdog superhero narratives. (I’m still not a fan of Bridge Four in general for the same reason, I would apologise but I’m not sorry…)

Kaladin spends most of this novel running bridges for Highprince Sadeas on the Shattered Plains. Unjustly enslaved by a corrupt member of the aristocracy, Kaladin is fighting to keep himself and his bridgecrew alive during one of the most pointless “wars” I've read in a fantasy novel - the pointlessness isn’t actually a criticism. He’s facing systematic oppression and disregard for human life, as well as battling his own depression and forming a bond with a spren named Syl (I absolutely adore Syl! But I want to talk about her in my review for Words of Radiance.)

So… I’ve always been frustrated with Kaladin’s fundamental drive to save people and take responsibility for people’s deaths, even when there was nothing he could have done to save them. This book is probably the worst for it out of the four currently published and I just found it a bit much because I personally struggle to relate to his attitude. This level of personal responsibility is a completely alien concept to me, at least to this level, and it’s Kaladin’s entire thing - his driving personality trait - and I just didn’t get it. Kaladin and I are very different people and for a long time I really struggled to relate to him on the same level everyone else seems to in this book. It also didn’t help that the main plot around Kaladin running bridges, struggling with his depression, and trying to keep his men alive is very repetitive… So when you’re in the midst of it and struggling to connect quite so deeply with Kaladin this book can become a slog - yet, the pay off for his struggles is so satisfying and it is very much worth it for making the end feel earned. 

However, my issues with connecting to Kaladin is definitely on me and this is by no means to say Kaladin is a badly written character, I’ve always admired how well Kaladin is drawn in this book. Within a few chapters I understood who Kaladin is, and really loved the conflict he had with his depression and role as a fantasy hero. It's beautifully painful to watch and, even when you’re a bit ambivalent about Kaladin, you really care about whether he and Bridge Four are going to survive the bridgecrews – and the climax sequence with Kaladin becoming Stormblessed again at the Tower is still one of my favourite moments in the entire series!

However, on this reread of the series I had a completely different experience to what I’ve had on previous reads, and a lot of this is down to Rhythm of War. I don’t want to say too much here because it’ll involve spoilers for Rhythm of Warm but having seen Kaladin confront his, as Ron Weasley would say, “saving people thing” and really struggle to keep functioning as Stormblessed, I was so much more on board with this book. Rhythm of War’s much more personal approach to Kaladin really helped me understand him as a person, not just the underdog hero. The struggle with his sense of self, the way his depression impacts his ability to act, and the way he’s moving forward in Rhythm of War let me appreciate the character work for Kaladin in The Way of Kings. The struggle, graft, and determination, especially given his mindset, is much more admirable when I can strip away the focus on doggedly protecting everyone no matter the personal cost. 

Kaladin and I are very different people, but that’s okay and I’ve come to appreciate him a lot more in the last 7 months. Now I can happily adore him alongside everyone else, and not just nod along with the rest of the fandom because I understand he’s objectively a well written character. Also Kaladin’s mental health rep is some of the best I’ve seen in an epic fantasy series. However, I would approach this book, and series, carefully if you’re sensitive to depression.

Shallan – confession time round two: I hate Shallan. I really loathe her on a deeply personal level. And I’m still bitter about it because I used to love her, when I first read this book she was my favourite character! This was partly due to relating to her and partly due to my frustration with Kaladin. However, as I read Words of Radiance I grew uncomfortable with her and by Oathbringer it became a full on HATED of her…and it’s never gone away.

I first met Shallan when I was a shy 18-year-old, budding historian and scholar. I got Shallan, I loved her plotline, and found Khabranth a lot more interesting than the endless bridgeruns with Kaladin (sorry Kaladin!) I connected with her because she represented (projected) a lot of what I was at the time - and still am today, just an older version of that person. She was the main character that really drew me into the story - yes I loved Szeth and thought he was brilliant, but Szeth is largely absent from this novel and Shallan is the main female lead. 

And then I got hit in the face by the infamous Words of Radiance “Boots” chapter, and I immediately got iffy vibes, then there was the Chasm sequence, and so many other moments that made me uncomfortable. I’ll avoid spoilers and, for now, just say I got hit in the face by Shallan’s innate privilege, her causal abuse of social rank, and complete lack of social and self awareness. To top it off the narrative gives her no consequences for this and even rewards her for her behaviour, rather than making Shallan work through the issues around classism (something I, as a Brit, am hyper aware of and it SHOULD NOT under ANY circumstances be ignored, especially with Kaladin’s narrative running parallel to Shallan.) However, this is later book issues and a major dropped theme that I’m fuming about, but I still found I liked Shallan in THIS book when I reread the series.

Not this time. 

There are moments in The Way of Kings where we can already see Shallan’s privilege and complete disregard of anyone who is remotely lower than her in the Vorin hierarchy. The scene with the book merchant stands out. No one in that scene is innocent, and I’m much less annoyed by it than I am at the “Boots” scene, however, it shows an early form of Shallan’s complete inability to reflect on her own behaviour towards those with less power than herself. She’s casually abusive and manipulative, but no one really calls her out on it. The few moments when someone does confront Shallan about it, and the narrative consistently forgives her because Sanderson allows her to come across as the victor in each of the arguments. This isn’t to say Shallan’s causal abuse of the Vorin social system shouldn’t be present in the book. It’s actually very realistic, in our world white people (especially white women) have behaved like Shallan for centuries. However, what does matter is the narrative framing. However, I’ll dig into this when I get to reviewing Words of Radiance because a lot of my planned review for that book is centred around this issue.

I’m also resentful that Shallan’s character in The Way of Kings is a complete lie – we don’t know her at all, but not in the same way as Dalinar? We KNOW something is off with Dalinar, we KNOW he was a terrible person and a warmonger from the way people talk about the Blackthorn – but Shallan’s reveal largely comes out of nowhere in some respects and I HATE that the person I loved so much 5 years ago was a complete lie. I’m a bitter person and I will continue to hold a grudge until Shallan dies or the series ends, whichever comes first.

Jasnah – my problematic QUEEN. Is Jasnah a shitty person? Yes. Do I love her anyway? Yes. Difference is I knew Jasnah was shitty from the start… I like problematic characters, I just hate being lied to (*cue insincere smile at Shallan*)

Jasnah is a difficult character to talk about in this book because we don’t know much about her other than her public persona, however, she’s a large part of why I love it so much. I just like brilliant women who would kill me, okay? It also helps that she's an historian, I have a soft spot for murderous historians. I’ll talk more about Jasnah when I review Oathbriner, hopefully that won’t be in another 5 years…! I just wanted to highlight that I do love a female character in this book!

Actually on the topic, Sanderson is still a shitty author for female friendships – he has included more female characters in Stormlight but why are there no female friendships that aren’t rooted in backstabbing and lies?!

Dalinar – if Jasnah is my problematic Queen then Dalinar has to be the problematic King. Dalinar is my favourite Stormlight Archive character. I could wax lyrical about what a BRILLIANT character he is. You may not like Dalinar, you may not forgive him, but you have to admit he is the best written character in ANYTHING Sanderson has written, and one of the best in modern fantasy. Nevertheless, much like Jasnah I’m going to wait until I review Oathbringer before I talk about Dalinar because I can’t do him justice without his flashbacks. However, I will tell you a story about the time I first met Dalinar Kholin.

So, I first read The Way of Kings on my commute back and forth to Worcester Cathedral because I had a work placement in the Cathedral’s archives. I’d been doing this commute for months and reached the point where I knew when to get off the train by feeling, no need to check the stations (this is relevant).

 I was on my commute home, and as I was walking to the train station I started part two. I met Adolin and he was fine. I was a bit confused because this was a whole new perspective and set of characters, but I was doing okay. (Yes I was walking and reading, no I do not recommend this arrangement for health reasons.)

And then I met Dalinar. As I got on the train we got into his own head, with the mystery of the visions just starting, the hints towards his complicated relationship with Elhokar, and the amazing fight with the Chasmfiend. Bearing in mind I was automatically doing my commute through this – I’d become so invested in Dalinar, I missed my transfer on the train. I’ve never done anything like this before in my life. I’m paranoid about it! But I was so engrossed in this aged general, who was potentially going mad, that I missed the stop on my train and didn’t even notice until we hit Birmingham New Street.

I was so in love with Dalinar Kholin that I travelled to the wrong city… And my love for him has only gotten stronger*.

Conclusion

Overall I have a complicated relationship with The Way of Kings, and The Stormlight Archive in general. I love this series, I particularly adore the characters and character work Sanderson is doing as the books continue. However, it is severely overhyped. There are a lot of flaws in this book, especially with the writing and structural aspect of this novel. It’s poorly paced, clumsily written, and lacking finesse. For me Sanderson is an okay writer but a wonderful storyteller. As a storyteller he’s made a huge contribution to the fantasy genre and I’m here for the major improvement he’s made in popularising more complex character work and the inclusion of mental health representation. We’re just seeing the start of this shift in the fantasy genre and I’m excited to see where Stormlight and fantasy are going to go with this movement. 

However, as a writer he has a long way to go in improving his craft of writing. These are big books, and I will often forgive mistakes with narrative structure in books of this size because they are so huge. However, this doesn’t mean we shouldn’t acknowledge them when reviewing the novel. Mistakes were made, especially in The Way of Kings, and are still being made but Sanderson has been slowly improving with the later books.

There’s a lot to love in The Stormlight Archive - the worldbuilding is insane, the characters are incredible, and the plots are gripping. I love them, and I will continue to eagerly await the next installments! But they’re far from perfect, and that’s okay. Sanderson has captured the imaginations of thousands of fantasy readers and I would highly recommend you give these books a go, despite my critical review. This is a fabulous time to be a fantasy reader and The Stormlight Archive is one of the most exciting reasons to be reading the genre!

*Dalinar and I are going to be on thin ice if Sanderson continues with his character as he did in Rhythm of War, but again I’ll address that when I review Rhythm of War.

Woeful WIP Wednesday

Hi! This is the start of my Woeful WIP Wednesday series of posts which will happen on Wednesdays, duh. And before anyone gets up at me about it not being Wednesday yet... just remember time zones exist in this world, and yeah, it is actually Wednesday.

Other things about the name... Most of these WIPs I'm happy with so it's not the actual stories that are woeful. It's the fact that they are still WIPs and not finished that is woeful to me, hence the name, yeah? Ok 😄

So with that out of the way...

I've gone through all my folders and found the various bits and pieces of writing I've begun and let slide or abandoned. My hope is that by letting them be free on Tumblr I might either A) remember that these stories exist, B) perhaps get a renewed appreciation and motivation to poke them, C) give myself permission to never look at them again.

Some of these WIPs I 100% mean to finish one day. Some I know I won't. Some I have actually finished but haven't polished completely or something's getting in the way of me doing a final pass so I don't consider them worthy of going onto my Ao3 account just yet but hopefully will one day.

The WIPs I'm gonna upload are also of various lengths. I have some completed chapters that are thousands of words long, I have some that are mere hundreds of words long and are slips of ideas I started to formulate.

I have 10 AkuRoku WIPs and 6 Zakkura ones. Each week I'll post one WIP and the pattern will be 2 AkuRoku WIPs followed by 1 Zakkura to mix things up a bit. I'll blab a bit about the WIP and post the full WIP under the cut.

If there is anything in particular people would like to know about the stories or the creative process in future posts please let me know and I’ll incorporate more information if people are interested in that sort of thing. If you give me direction I can follow through.

I hope you will enjoy these WIPs and I trust you'll judge them way less harshly than what I judge my own writing.

So anyway, kicking things off I have a very short and sweet AkuRoku WIP. 

I started this in May 2019 and it's technically 'done' but I haven't posted it because it's not done to my specific level of 'done-ness'. All it needs is a little polish. A little editing here and there. Fixing the grammatical and spelling errors, and fleshing it out in a few spots perhaps.

It's the 'fleshing out' bit that hasn't happened and that's truly stopping me from considering this a finished product.

This story is called ‘10 ways to fall in love’ but I never came up with 10 scenarios which I suspect is why this story will never be finished. I could change the name of it and if I ever post it I will change the name of it. In fact, most of the WIPs I post would have different names if they ever do go up on Ao3.

But going back to this specific WIP— it is a canon story spanning Days, KH2, KH3, and after, which is maybe the biggest culprit in regards to why I never finished this story. I don’t do well with canon-based story telling. It’s too much pressure to get everything canon-compliant. Do people ask for things to be right? Probably not so much, but my brain is very hyperfocused on getting things right, which is a huge road block to my creativity and the reason why I prefer AUs.

I don't have much else to say about this story but if you enjoy this, or any of the other WIP’s it would be great if you would let me know.

If others are passionate about these stories it might make me passionate about them again. But who knows.

Rated G

Word count - 951

10 ways to fall in love

What do you call it?

This feeling I have?

Love?

No. Too strong, or not strong enough

A name

A special name

Your name

It was always your name

That made me feel like I had a heart

They didn’t have a name for it. They didn’t even know if what they felt was real because how could a Nobody feel anything. For Axel it was just a ghost of a memory of his old life. For Roxas it was an endless source of confusion because these strange sensations fluttered in his body all the time when he was around Axel. It was incredibly dull at first but grew exponentially bigger with the passing days.

He couldn’t reconcile that even the most tedious missions were made fun when they were around each other - though he shouldn’t be able to have fun without a heart. What were any of the experiences that ever happened between them, without a heart? They felt nothing. They were Nobodies. They couldn't be anything other than empty husks.

That had always been the greatest lie which had been told to them, which they chose to believe, until it became impossible, though the denial sat rife in the way they denied their joy, sadness, and anger. But the strongest denial flowed from the warmth and nameless affections that fluttered in the chest and stomach when they were together. Such a thing was most unbelievable of all and merely a figment of the imagination - a vestige of when they were Somebodies, a quiet echo in a vast nothingness of their actual existence. Even for Roxas, with his half-formed ideas of his Somebodies life.

But none of these things mattered because Roxas disappeared and Axel died.

"He made me feel like I had a heart." A quiet whisper of a thought, made real and said aloud finally crumbled the paper-thin veneer which Axel had clung too, all too late to do anything about.

And he is reborn, and now knows better. Lea knows better. He understands his returned heart which aches and bleeds broken and shattered even as it is physically whole inside himself, pumping blood. His soul has gone, reappearing for fleeting moments when he sees Sora get a certain look in his eyes, or uses a turn of phrase. A spark exists and it jolts Lea every time closer to awareness - closer to a name.

And then he is in that most miserable of places, fighting a war that might never be won, but he must try because the promise of what lies ahead if he does win is worth every risk. He fights for his friends, present and gone, and then out of almost nowhere Lea's heart is returned and whole and stronger than ever before, and his memories are back, and he holds the two people most dear to him. He cannot lose them again and does everything in his power to protect them both, and it is a safe feeling because it stops him from thinking too hard or feeling too strongly the flutters and warmth, and the soothing in his heart.

But he feels it all again, and let's himself be overcome by it as the never-setting sun of Twilight Town is observed with his most favorite people in the whole wide world sitting next to him.

He scooches a little closer, seeking the warmth and reassurance of Roxas next to him. The tinkling laugh builds his own and drips deep down into his body and soul to become the best sound he's always known to miss.

Happiness engulfs him. But it is not the word he looks for when he sees Roxas walking, talking, laughing, grumbling, and eating ice cream. It is so much bigger and all-encompassing than this miniscule word for a feeling..

"I never stopped wanting you back. I never stopped fighting to get you back," he confesses in the evening on Destiny Island, during a rare moment alone on this summer vacation full of reunions and happy tidings.

"I know. I saw, I heard."

"You did?"

Roxas nods and swings his legs as they dangle off the pier the both of them at sitting on.

It warms Lea’s heart to know Roxas was never far away. “I think I felt you – there in Sora. When he got angry and frustrated.”

Roxas laughs. “I was always angry and frustrated in Sora. Everything felt so warm and fluffy inside of there.”

“Realy? Why would that make you angry?”

“Because it’s like eating nothing but honey – you get sick of it,” Roxas shakes his head, “But it’s worse because someone else is force-feeding it to you.”

"It's ok. Just seeing you – knowing you were there wanting to get me back was enough." Roxas leans, Lea receives and the feels which are always right there, in the middle of his chest ignite and burn so bright.

"I'm sorry I couldn't do anything to help you."

Lea hugs him tight, almost too tight. Roxas writhes against his arms and just as Lea makes to let go Roxas gets his own arms around Lea and squeezed him, robbing him of his breath for a few seconds, but Lea feels he could happily die in Roxas' arms and savors the crush.

They both end up laughing against each other, inhaling deep breaths, rubbing their cheeks against each other and leaning their foreheads together.

Everything they ever felt for each other is still there, but stronger, because they have hearts and acceptance of their reality.

"Axel," Roxas' breath tickles Lea's lips. He doesn't care to correct Roxas. Roxas could call him a heartless and he wouldn't care because Roxas is back and with him.

"I don't want you to ever disappear again," Lea murmurs.

"I don't want you to ever suffer again," Roxas apologizes. 

Lea cups Roxas' cheek, which is so soft and warm. "I never will as long as you're with me."

1997 - This Year in Gaming

Muggins here was born in ‘97, and can’t really remember much of it, natch. But there were some good things released this year - I’ve played every one of these, and have missed so many more.

Diablo - Windows, January 3rd

We start with dungeon-crawl-em-up and well-loved out of season April Fool’s Joke, Diablo. I’ll be totally honest - I don’t like Diablo that much. It’s absolutely fine, I just can’t get into it. The writing, setting and characters are all very good especially since this year only marks the beginning of games being seen as a bit more adult and intelligent. Check out this gameplay from Hour of Oblivion on YouTube, and marvel at the faux-Scottish accent on Griswold the blacksmith.

Mario Kart 64 - Nintendo 64, February 10th

Compared to its more recent versions, Mario Kart 64 is a veritable bloody relic of the past - solid controls and a quirky style mean it’s still a crowd pleaser to this day, but you’d be hard pressed to find anyone right now that would die on the hill of it being their favourite single-player racing experience. It’s also got some of the deepest, impenetrable lore in any medium known to the human race - why exactly is Marty the Thwomp locked up here?

Blast Corps - Nintendo 64, February 28th

February’s position as most boring month of the year is shaken up a bit by having a uniquely designed Rare game slammed into its 28-day long face. Blast Corps is the puzzle-action game where you take control of several vehicles to destroy homes and buildings in order to prevent a nuclear warhead exploding in the coolest incarnation of Cold War politicking ever seen in a video game. Calling Blast Corps a “hidden gem” these days is like calling Celeste a hidden gem - it impresses nobody and makes you look like a dick. 

Turok: Dinosaur Hunter - Nintendo 64, March 4th 

The N64 was home to a surprisingly large number of above-average shooters despite its muddy graphics and small cartridge space - Turok is one of these, a great FPS game where you shoot the SHIT out of dinosaurs. Brett Atwood of Billboard said it was like Doom and Tomb Raider mixed - Doom Raider, if you will. I say it isn’t - there’s no demons, and there’s no polygonal breasts to poke dinosaurs’ eyes out with! 

Castlevania: Symphony of the Night - Sony PlayStation, March 20th

What is a retrospective? A miserable little pile of opinions. I’ve only recently played through SotN for the very first time on a TOTALLY LEGITIMATE copy with a CRT filter. Bloody good (geddit?) game, that takes the repetition of its predecessors, improves on it in basically every conceivable way, and combines it with special effects and graphics that even 23 years later had me going “ooh, that looks quite good!” Symphony’s music and audio design are wonderfully paired with a deeply enjoyable experience that’ll have you saying “mm, maybe just one more room?”

Tekken 3 - Sony PlayStation, March 20th

Also releasing from the Land of the Rising Sun that day was Tekken 3, which many believe is still one of the best fighters ever made. Tekken 3′s combat is so fast and responsive that it’s better than some games made today. T3 is also the best and easiest way to knock seven shades of absolute shite out of your friends without risking a massive head injury or a trip to the headmaster’s office... where you could also challenge him, but only if he plays as my favourite Not-Guile-or-Ken character in gaming, Paul. 

Sonic Jam - Sega Saturn, June 20th

The moment Sega realised that re-packaging old Mega Drive games would net them serious cash - although unlike later collections, this is a strictly Sonic affair, and has a neat little 3D world to run around in as a sort of hub world. Sonic X-Treme proved that Sonic Team would have to work hard at getting the fastest thing alive into 3D space properly: Jam is the sort of test ground for it too. It features some genuinely good emulation work for 1997, although it’s basically the gaming equivalent of going round to your grandparents at Christmas only for them to give you the exact same gifts you got in 1991, 1992 and 1994 but wrapped in a bow to make you think it’s different. What are you lookin’ at, you little blue devil?

Star Fox 64 - Nintendo 64, June 30th

So there’s this German company, right, called StarVox. Nintendo look at Europe and say “shit, we don’t want another lawsuit... after all, we’ve done three this year!”. So they give us in the PAL region the exciting title of Lylat Wars which as far as I know means absolutely fucking nothing in the context of the game. They’re still called Star Fox in-game too so what was the point? Anyway, fun 3D shooter with graphics that’ll make you do a barrel roll off the sofa and onto the power button to make the brown and green blurs a little easier on the eyes. Hello 2007, I’ve come back to make old references with you!

Carmageddon - Windows, July 30th

The game so scary it was BANNED in the UK! More like the game so fucking shit it was banned. Carmageddon is so deeply boring to play on PC that I can only imagine that Stainless Games made it tasteless by 90s standards simply to ramp up demand - much like another game we’ll be covering soon. 

Herc’s Adventures - Sony PlayStation, July 31st

“And they said Kratos was the best hero? Shish... they got it wrong, sister! Hercules is clearly better... he even has a coconut weapon.” A surprisingly fun overhead action game that most people only know for... well, I’ll just embed it.

Mega Man X4 - Sony Playstation, August 1st

A few years ago I tried playing every Mega Man game there is - I gave up at X3 because I was getting bored. Even still, Mega Man bores me - but at least the level design is good. Stay away from the Windows port. Pictured: me in the background yawning.

GoldenEye 007 - Nintendo 64, August 25th 

The name’s Intro. Overused intro which I also managed to fuck up twice through the deeply editable medium of text. GoldenEye is like the Seinfeld of console shooters - playing it nowadays you’re unlikely to be amazed but holy shit there’s some absolute greatness in this game. Every sound and every piece of music in GoldenEye is permanently seared into my brain - sometimes I’ll just hear Facility or Frigate in my head alongside the door opening sound and the gentle PEW of the PP7. I mean come on, fucking listen to this and tell me Grant Kirkhope isn’t cool as all hell.

LEGO Island - Windows, September 26th

The first open world experience I ever had was LEGO Island. It’s still quite good today, utterly deranged animation from the likes of the Infomaniac and Brickster - a cautionary tale for children that giving pizza to high-profile criminals is disastrous for the human LEGO race. 

Fallout - Windows, October 10th

War never changes, but franchises do. Fallout’s legendary status in the industry is exemplified in how different it feels. Yes, we had the game Wasteland nine years prior, but until September 97 there was nothing quite like Fallout. From the chilling introduction sequence showing the ruins of the United States to the tragic ending, Fallout is an exercise in pure human misery with the brightest spots of hope it can possibly muster thrown in for good measure. What begins as a tedious isometric point-and-click RPG ends as a minigun-wielding power fantasy, before your entire worth is stripped from you at the finish line. You have 500 days to find a water chip before it’s too late, but you’re constantly being fought by terrifying Super Mutants, irradiated animals, and the biggest monster of all - humanity. See what I did there? If anything, humanity in Fallout’s setting would be the greatest unifying force possible against the horror of the outside world. But how is it? It’s dull, it’s sluggish, and it’s really hard to get into even if you’re already a fan - but push through that and it’s worthwhile to see exactly how far the series got before Todd Howard said “eh fuck it” and had the whole thing dipped into an FEV vat.

Grand Theft Auto - Sony PlayStation, October 21st

To put it simply, the first in the GTA series is now nothing but a novelty. It has an irritating camera, wonky controls, poor graphics and deeply repetitive gameplay. But thank fuck it exists, because without it the Rockstar story may have been very different indeed. It’s quintessential cops and robbers gameplay, spanning across Liberty City, Vice City and San Andreas in one game, but with maps so far removed from their modern incarnations they may as well be named “Not New York, Possibly Bristol and Orange Town”. People really fucking hated Hare Krishnas in the 20th Century, didn’t they?

Crash Bandicoot 2: Cortex Strikes Back - Sony PlayStation, October 31

A hard one to talk about, honestly - it’s more Crash and better than the first one. It looks great, and Crash controls so well compared to his first outing. It’ll also keep you playing for 100%, fiendishly addictive and unashamedly difficult. Had a weird cover that moved with your head. 

PaRappa the Rapper - Sony PlayStation, November 17th

Type type type the words into the box! (Type, type, type - uh oh - the box?)

PaRappa is a gorgeously stylised rhythm game about rapping to steal the heart of the girl of your dreams - which involves learning karate, getting your driver’s license, selling bottle caps and frogs, making a cake, desperately trying not to shit yourself, and finally performing live on stage. Every one of its segments is so well-produced that they’d genuinely sell like ghost cookies in this era of shite rap. Notable for producing the greatest Jay-Z backing track ever made.

Sonic R - Sega Saturn, November 18th

Sonic R is absolutely FINE with vibrant textures, interesting levels, neat gimmicks and decent controls. But I’m gonna talk about its fucking AWESOME soundtrack by Richard Jacques and T.J. Davis, an eclectic mix of Europop and New Jack Swing - even thinking about it is bringing tears of absolute joy to my eyes hearing Super Sonic Racing in my head. You’ve got the main theme, Living in the City, Can You Feel the Sunshine, Back in Time, Diamond in the Sky, Work It Out and Number One - all of these are absolute club bangers and genuinely wouldn’t be out of place in a 90s disco. 

Tomb Raider II - Sony PlayStation, November 18th

Lara Croft returns to single-handedly endanger every species on Earth. TR2 is really good, the exploration and puzzle-solving aspects of the first game expanded upon here and the gunplay remaining just as punchy. Lara’s got a fully-functioning ponytail which absolutely boggles the fucking mind - a lot of work went into Lara’s hair for the 2013 reboot, so I can’t imagine the amount of man hours it took to get fluid(ish, come on, it’s the PS1 we’re talking about) hair movements in 1997. 

And really, that’s all I played from 1997. I’ve left out big hitters like Quake II, Gran Turismo and Diddy Kong Racing, but I simply haven’t formed an opinion on them yet. Maybe in a future post. 

Thanks for reading.

785

When was the last time you changed your opinion on somebody? A few days ago I found out that someone I probably know (but is anonymous) filed a complaint towards another person that I also know for acting indecently towards the complainant. I always knew that person had a...vibe, but I just didn’t know it was going to be the worst vibe possible. I never want to see them ever again because I might actually kick them. When did you last change your opinion on a situation? I haven’t changed my opinions in a while... literally what I can only remember is listening to a few Billie Eilish songs and accepting that she has some okay music lmaoooo, and this was a few months ago. Why did you last visit the doctor? My left eye was acting up so I wanted to have it checked before the lockdown that we all knew was going to happen. What was the last thing that made you feel proud and why? Finishing my thesis. Because duh, I actually did it? Do you like salt? Sure, it makes a lot of food more delicious.

Do you feel uncomfortable when people you hardly know confide in you? Honestly yes. I pride myself on being a good listener, but it doesn’t mean I’m comfortable with listening to everyone. I prefer keeping that opportunity to my close friends. I suppose it’s flattering when people I’m not close to see me as trustworthy, but if I had it my way I wish they went to another person instead. Have you ever regretted what you said in drunken conversation once sober? Sometimes. Is there anything coming up which you're dreading? I’m a little afraid of the period following graduation because it’ll be the first time in 18 years that I’m not in school, and it’ll be such a crazy transition. Let’s hope it doesn’t eat me alive. Anything you're looking forward to? Also the period after graduation, because yay adult life and independence and no more exams and stuff. Idk, lots of mixed feelings about it obviously. Do you ever do tedious tasks just to keep your mind occupied? Yes. It actually really helps and I like having things to do when there’s conflict or tension going on in my personal life. Have you ever lived with somebody with truly repulsive habits? Nah, I don’t think that about my family. Repulsive traits sure, but not habits. Do you tend to say things because they're appropriate not because you mean them?  Sometimes, and it’s usually to be polite and/or nice. It costs nothing to tell someone you like someone’s dress or makeup or shirt, and you can even help make their day. What was the last thing to perplex you? Probably some stupid, nonsensical thing Duterte said in one of his addresses. What was the last thing to fascinate you? I rewatched Beyoncé’s Homecoming on Netflix and everything about it fascinated me, as always. I will neverrrr get tired of watching her concerts; she always puts so much love and effort and soul into each show. What was the last thing to annoy you? I don’t feel like getting into it. When did you last work your socks off fruitlessly? A few months ago, in the earlier stages of making our thesis. Andrew and I would often bust our asses into the night, tweaking and researching and editing, and submit our work feeling proud of it only for it to be thrown back at us with a million comments and corrections in bloody red ink. I feel like we got a record number of sermons and unaccepted drafts compared to other students, so it just made me detached from my thesis altogether and in the end I mostly finished it for the sake of finishing it. I’m proud of finishing it of course, but I’m no longer passionate about it like I used to be, and I doubt I’ll ever bring it up in future conversations unless someone asks. When did your hard work last pay off? Today, in the final stages of our thesis. I really wish I loved it more, though. What is a word you hate? Grind makes me uncomfortable lol Do you have a favourite childrens book? Sure. If yes, what is it? Corduroy. I would go to the school library to read it almost everyday; I never got tired of it. I also really liked Tikki Tikki Tembo because his whole name was so fun to pronounce haha. When did you last feel a need to be alone? Last week when it rained and it was cold for the first time in months. The weather made me feel ~some type of way~ and I stayed in my room all day. I wasn’t sad, I really just wanted to savor the weather by myself. When did you last "need" to be around people? Right now. I’ve increasingly been feeling this way by the day.

Have you ever been in a job where you didn't fit in with your co-workers? Not a job, but this was me during my experience applying for a local chapter of an international youth org called AIESEC. I really thought I could fake my way in and I was adamant at first because I like what the org does and besides, AIESEC looks really good on a resumé; but it’s one of the rare times that even faking it didn’t cut it for me. I was miserable and no one talked to me every time I hung out in their lounge, and their org culture was so different from what I’m used to with my home org. I didn’t last long and I ghosted the application process after a month. What do you do to "expand" your mind? For me that’s always best achieved by trying out new things, so I make it a point to have brand-new experiences every time I can. When did you last REALLY want to go out but couldn't for whatever reason? LOL. March to present. Do you need a wee right now? I do not. Is there a certain noise/sound which scares you? Yeah, loud ‘DUN’ sounds that come with jumpscares, the Windows XP shutdown sound is also weirdly scary to me, and people yelling when they’re drunk. The last one particularly reminds me of fights at home. When did you last eat sweeties? Idk what you mean by sweeties, but the last time I had anything sweet was this afternoon when my dad made churros with a chocolate dip. Do you have a favourite micro-organism? No lol What was the last thing to upset you? The recent news about a wrestler, Shad Gaspard, who was reported missing after he got swept out to sea while at the beach with his family. He told rescuers to save his kid first, but they were never able to find him after. They tried to look for him for several hours but eventually, they called the search off and now he’s presumed to have died. It’s very sad and heavy and a lot to take in. He was one of my favorites growing up because he was in a hilarioussssss tag team with another guy, JTG, and both of them were always so entertaining. It sucks, and 2020 continues to suck. What was the last thing to make you happy? Like I said, I watched Homecoming earlier. Beyoncé always puts me in a better mood, so there’s that. Have you ever eaten chocolate for breakfast? Just hot chocolate. I’ve never eaten like a chocolate bar or anything similar. Do you like balloons? They’re admittedly fun, but I know they can also be harmful to the environment so I don’t buy or use them if it’s even remotely unnecessary to. Out of the people you know, whose birthday is next? Laurice. Does that person have any plans to celebrate their birthday? I’m sure their family has something planned out inside their house, but obviously they can’t celebrate by going out for now. Do you enjoy swimming? Yes. When will you next go to the beach? I have no clue. When at the beach do you like to swim in the sea? Ugh man. Awful timing for these questions... yeah I guess. But I don’t want to think about that now. If you have pet fish do you bother to name them? When I was a kid I did name each of my goldfish. Do you like adventure games like Monkey Island and Diskworld? No. Did you ever read the Terry Pratchet "Disk World" books? I did not. If yes to the question above, what are they like? Have you had to change a nappy lately? Nope, no babies around here. Would you like a holiday about now? Not really. It’s not like I can celebrate it or go for a vacation. What's stopping you from going on holiday right now?  So tired of saying it every time. If you know you know. Do you keep your eggs in the fridge? Yes, we do. Have you ever owned chickens? Nope. Super common to just see chickens running about the highway once you reach the province though hahaha. Do you like classical music? Some. I sometimes like listening to classical playlists when I study, but not always. When did you last listen to music? An hour ago. Have you ever seen "Canibal the Musical"? I haven’t. Are your breasts sore? Nopes.

Let’s Write a Different Ending.

Pairing: Sam Winchester x Prophet!Reader

Word Count: 4,343. // Episode Setting: The Monster at the End of This Book.

Summary: What if the “Supernatural” book series wasn’t written by Chuck Shurley? Instead, by a young woman named Y/N Y/L/N? She finds herself living out her most recent story—about the end of the world, an archangel whose sworn to protect her is moonlighting as a trickster and two fictional characters by the name of Sam and Dean are about to drag her straight into it. (Semi-rewrite from episode 4.18 The Monster at the End of This Book to—?)

Full Masterlist | My Other SPN Rewrite

Note: Is this a possible semi-rewrite of the show for my Sam girls???? Yes, it is! And no...This is not like my regular rewrite where I do it episode by episode, this is more like I’m taking Chuck’s entire plot line and writing it as the reader up until the season five finale. Along the way I’m gonna try to focus on a Sam/Reader element ‘cause my boy needs some love.

And before you fret...this is a side project. My original rewrite will always come first. Plus I’m still figuring out the details of what I want to do, but updates for this are gonna be really scarce. I don't know how many parts this will be or how many episodes I will cover, but it'll be part by part. Updates are probably gonna be scarce until I finish season six. More importantly, if you guys like this and want to see more, please let me know. I hope you guys enjoy possibly a new series! 

Chapter One: It Started With a Knock. 

Carver Edlund: it was a name nobody would be probably familiar with if you asked a stranger on the street who he was. To Sam and Dean, he was a man who knew too much. A thief who made a buck and gained an underground cult following from a book series he wrote called "Supernatural." Twenty four books detailing the lives of two hunters who traveled across the country in their 1967 Chevy Impala, saving people from monsters and seeking revenge on the yellowed eyed demon who killed their parents. Each action, every little personal aspect of their lives—from their upbringing, to every internal thought—was all in paperback for the world to read. 

The brothers made the horrifying discovering when they were working a case in town, the first stop on the list of places to check out was some run-down looking comic store. The guy behind the counter mistook their questioning as a game of "LARPing" and failed miserably in attempting to remember the main character's names, only for the younger Winchester to correct him after the third time. That's when they discovered the first book in the bargain bin, a hidden gem abandoned with other comics no one bothered to read. The cover alone looked like a seedy romance novel someone might find on their middle middle-aged mother's nightstand. Sam and Dean found every copy they could find and examine each word. 

Sam tried to figure out who this Carver Edlund was, but he was shady as the characters he wrote about. There wasn't a single paper trail or photograph of him in an attempt for either of the boys to recognize his face to figure out who he was. Best guess the guy was using a pen name to keep his identity. All they knew that the books started rolling out in early of'05, the year Sam left a life behind after tragedy hit. His girlfriend Jess, the only woman he was weeks away from asking to marry him, was killed in the same gruesome manner as his mother. The finale of the "Supernatural" series ended in of Dean being torn to bits by Lilith and Sam alone, just like reality they were forced to live in.

Sam and Dean doubted it ended here. There was someone behind this name, a person the boys were itching to have a  “formal” chat with to figure out how he knew so much about them. The boys decided to start with the most obvious place to track down the author’s real name, the publishing company that printed the crap. A lovely young woman held the possible trail to finding out who it was, only it came with a test when Sam and Dean claimed to be journalists wanting to write an article about the books.

The publisher wouldn’t give up any sort of information so easily. She grilled them with all sorts of questions each of the boys got correct, but only seemed satisfied they were the real deal as she sat in her office chair, watching with a close eye as Sam unbuttoned his flannel and under shirt slightly to reveal the anti-possession tattoo on his chest. She had one of her own, right on her bare ass to show the boys. But the view that made Dean’s day wasn’t the only parting gift she gave the boys. She might not have known the true identity of the person who wrote the books, she had a  current address the boys could visit. All though she warned them—authors were temperamental people.

“He’s very private.” She warned them. “Like Salinger.”

You lifted your hands away from the keyboard when you attempted the second draft of the newest edition to a series that ended months ago. But it didn’t mean the adventures that ran through your head would stop. It flowed vividly as it did after the first dream you had them and sat down to write the first page of the "Supernatural" series. You read the words back to yourself as another part of the newest story printed, waiting for your approval to join the rest of the story you were working on.

Writing was a tedious process. Some people could whip out a beginning line to sink the reader in, others thought to start in the middle and figure out the rest later. Your process was a jumbled mess. You wrote down fragments until everything connected itself together into a perfect story you were happy with. However, the newest story you were working on was a bit...different.

You sat in your office, a small room containing a desk pushed up against the window to enjoy a spacious backyard and the rainy days when you felt the most inspired. Behind was you as book shelf taller than you, crammed with novels your family collected over the years along with bound and unpublished books that haven’t seen the light of day. You reached out to grab the second cup of coffee you made for yourself and the still warm papers from the printer. Skimming the words, you snickered into the ceramic mug at what the hell you were attempting to write late last night.

You took pride in being a creative person since early childhood. Maybe it came with having both of your parents being successful writers and having a hunger for all sorts of adventures you tried to seek in reading endless books. Ever since you could hold a pen and form proper sentences you were writing down all your crazy stories. You were a daydreamer, with a wild imagination to match. Never did you think any of it would be good enough material to be published.

It was the summer before you were supposed to start your freshman year of college when you had a dream that felt so real. Normally you forgot the dream you had the night before the second you woke up. But this one stuck like glue. All day your mind wouldn’t stop replaying what you dreamed about, thinking about these characters you named Sam and Dean. For a week you had dreams that felt so vivid about them, the first adventure of many to come. Over the years you had some that were pleasant and quite enjoyable to form into words. Other ones made you wake up in a cold sweat, terrified from the horrendous things your brain could think of all on your own. You showed the first fifteen pages you had wrote nonstop in the span of three days to your parents—who suggested you to go for it. Write a novel and see where it took you.

It took you farther than you ever expected. You made the decision to publish the name under a pen name of Carver Edlund, You were afraid nobody would take an eighteen year old with no prior experience seriously. You sent the books off to every publishing company you could think of and waited for nothing but rejection letters. Almost all of them were a fail, until you got your lucky break with an Indie company that loved your work. She gushed over the first "Supernatural" book and how good it was, so good that she was reading for the second time after finishing it all in just a day. The work was so good, she  desperately pleaded for more. You agreed to work on more stories, if you were granted complete and total privacy. She agreed.

You placed the cup back down on your desk in favor for a pen, deciding to edit the part you were working on last night. You felt a tinge of embarrassment from what the kind of nonsense your mind was able to come up with. It was always the day after you decided to edit. A fresh perspective to edit the mistakes you might have made and correct words that might flow better. However, it didn’t take much effort to slip back into the fictional world you thought you created.

“Sam and Dean exited the Impala and stepped onto the sidewalk. Dean took out the ripped piece of paper with the address scribbled down and read it one more time, wanting to make sure it was correct. All though he wasn’t sure what kind of house a man who wrote the lives was to look like, what they saw wasn’t what they...perceived. A small two-story house laid in front of them didn’t look like it belonged to a person they never met. It looked like every other one on this street, a white picket fence and a flourishing garden blooming this early spring. The boys knew looks could be deceiving. They wanted to make sure this was the residence of the man who knew personal details about themselves, things nobody should know.

The boys waited not a second longer. They approached the front door with trepidation. Did they really want to learn the secrets that lay beyond that door? The brothers traded soulful looks, answering the question without speaking a word. With determination, Dean pushed the doorbell with forceful...determination."

You furrowed your brow when you noticed you accidentally repeated the same word twice. You clicked on your pen and scratched out the word for something better. Before the tip of the pen could even touch the paper, you found yourself looking over your shoulder when the doorbell rang. Your dog, who had been peacefully resting at your feet, raised his head in curiosity. You rolled your eyes when he followed the behavior by a series of loud barks. You shushed the German Shepherd, mumbling for Winchester to calm down as rubbed a hand across his fur. You weren’t expecting any visitors today. And it’d been ages since you ordered any packages. You pushed yourself up to your feet, deciding to answer it anyway.

You heard a set of nail tap across the wooden floors, Winchester followed behind you to join you in the adventure of who was bugging you this early afternoon. You lived in a safe neighborhood, it was the reason why you moved here in the first place. Plus the rent was cheap. You unlocked the dead bolt and opened the door a crack to see who stood on your porch, two men you’d never seen before.

You noticed their hands were empty—no bible, no useless products to sell you. It meant the “No soliciting” sign worked. But the “Beware of Dog” didn’t ward off strangers who weren't’ here with a good explanation. You were a single woman living on your own and two men that looked to be twice your size were visiting you. Nobody could be too cautious these days with all those sickos running around. Winchester peeked his head out from behind you to see who it was.

“Excuse me, we don’t mean to bother you, but…” The man standing closest to you greets you with an expression that makes it look like he’s having a bad day. He trailed off momentarily when he saw Winchester peek his head out, the dog staring at him. The stranger continued on by asking you a question that made your welcoming smile drop slightly. “We’re looking for a Carver Edlund.”

“Never heard of the guy.” You lied straight through your teeth, shrugging your shoulders. You gave the two strangers another smile, this time, more sympathetic. “You got the wrong house.” “We’re looking for the man who wrote the ‘Supernatural’ books.” You turned your head to the second man, who’s taller, but much more nicer looking. “We know he wrote them under a fake name. But we didn’t get his real one, just his address. We were told he lives here.”

“We really need to talk to him.” The man standing next to you said, urgency in his voice. You could tell he was trying to be polite. Your swallowed slightly as you wrapped your fingers around the door frame. It seemed he could read your hesitance. “Let me guess, he’s your boyfriend. He probably likes his privacy. But this is important. Is he home, by chance? It’ll just take five minutes. That’s all.”

“Why do you want to meet him so badly?” You questioned the both of them.

“We’re...We’re really big fans.” The taller one said. You narrowed your eyes slightly when both of them share a look before directing their attention back to you. “You see, my brother and I are journalists and we were hoping to have an interview with him, see who the real man is behind these books. Shed some light on the series to gain more attention. That’s all.”

You looked at the two of them for a moment, wondering if what you were hearing was true. You had never had something like this happen before. Most journalists, all three of them, contacted you through email to try and get a personal interview with you. You never had someone show up on your front door, trying to figure out the true identity behind a book series that paid your way through college, something that started out from a vivid dream. Your body relaxed as you let out a sigh, deciding if they were big fans, you’d let him in on a secret.

“Well, since you guys went all this trouble...Hi,” You opened the door slightly wider and leaned yourself against it, your lips stretching into a smile when you spoke the truth you had been trying to hide for over four years. “The name’s Y/N Y/L/N. I’m the author of the ‘Supernatural’ books.”

"Wait, you? You’re the sucker who wrote all those books?” Your face scrunched up slightly when the man standing closest to you changed his attitude. He suddenly broke out into a smile, acting as if you told him a funny joke. You slowly nodded your head and gave him a dirty look. If he was here to make fun of your work, you’d be more than happy to tell him to shove his arrogance where the sun didn’t shine. It seemed that wasn’t the case. He sobered up when he realized you were telling the truth, he was in the right place, and he was speaking to the author. “Well, nice to meet you. Let me tell you who we are. I’m Dean. This is Sam.” He pointed a finger to the taller man stan is next to him. “The Dean and Sam you've been writing about.”

You stared at the two men standing on your porch, trying to process what they just said as the ends of your lips slowly stretched into a smile. You didn't know what you should laugh first at. The fact that these two men went through all the trouble of tracking down your publisher that you hadn't talked to in almost five months for an address to figure out who the real writer of a barely popular book series. Or they were crazy, pretending to be fictional characters you made up. You didn’t even bother wasting your breath to give a response. You stepped back and slammed the door right on their face. You reached up a hand to lock the door, but before you could, you heard the doorbell go off again.

You contemplated for a moment if you wanted to do the right thing and ignore them. Worst case scenario if they got rowdy you'd call the cops and get their asses hauled off. However, you found yourself suddenly overcome with anger when you heard them switch from the doorbell to furiously pounding on your front door. You rolled your eyes, you decided to confront the two very delusional men who needed a dose of reality.  

“Look, uh... I appreciate your enthusiasm. Really, I do. It's, uh, it's always nice to hear from the fans. But how about you be like everyone else and drop me an email or something. Not show up on my doorstep like a bunch of freaks. The reason why I wrote under a fake name was so I could keep my privacy. And I’d like to keep it that way.” You spoke in a serious tone, informing them they needed to get out of here. “For your own good, I strongly suggest you get a life.”

Your left the two men with the words of advice they should take as you swung the door shut to end this conversation once and for all. Instead the one who called himself Dean thought it was a good idea to reach out a hand and slam it against the door, using his strength to keep it open.

“See, here's the thing, sweetheart. We have a life.” He said. You scoffed loudly at his words that sounded like a lie from how they were acting. You attempted once more to shut the door and lock it, but he was quicker than you. He inched himself closer so his fingers wrapped around the edge of the wood. “You've been using it to write your books.”

“Right.” You mumbled, chuckling at the tough guy act this idiot was putting on. You didn’t try and make Winchester calm down when he prowled closer to the two strangers. He let out a low, threatening growl when he sensed a changed in the atmosphere. “You have five seconds to get your hand off my door and off my property before I call the cops.”

It seemed “Dean” would take his chances with your threat. He pushed his way into your house, making you stumble slightly into the place as Winchester jumped in between the both of you, making the men suddenly stop dead in their tracks before they could do anything else. The dog began to bark incessantly and growl at the strangers when he thought one of them might try and do something stupid.

“Look, we’re not here to hurt you.” The one who thought he was Sam reassured you. Your face scrunched up from his words that sounded the least bit comforting. Their actions spoke louder, and it screamed they were a bunch of lunatics. “We just want to know how you’re doing it.”

“Doing what?” You asked them. “I’m not doing anything.”

“Are you a hunter?” The other man questioned you.

“What? Are you high or something? Get out of my house. Now” You ordered, as if you had any sort of authority to do such a thing. It took all of your control to keep your voice steady as your heart pounded roughly against your ribcage. The two men didn’t listen, they just stared at you, waiting for an answer. "I'm a writer. That's it."

“Then how do you know so much about demons and tulpas and changelings?” Dean threw out a few fictional monsters you wrote about in your series. You backed away slowly, wondering how to stop this situation before it could escalate to the nightmares a single woman had while living on her own. Murdered, robbery...other things that made a shiver run down your spine just form the thought.

“I read a lot of science fiction and horror books. H.P. Lovecraft, Stephen King all that stuff. That’s where most it came from. And I did research, too. I wanted it to be realistic as possible.” You admitted. You thought the answers would be enough, but the one who thought of himself as Dean wouldn’t back down so easily. “Look, is this some kind of weird ‘Misery’ thing because I killed off Dean?”

“It’s not a ‘Misery’ thing. Believe me, we are not fans.” He said, shaking his head at the accusation. You didn’t believe one word he spoke. The man looked down at your dog when he heard it stop barking but showing no signs of backing down. Because it thought his owner was in danger. He quickly realized barging in like this made a wrong impression. They didn’t think a twenty something year old woman wrote their lives. The man changed his tone of voice, into more of a calm one. “Look, we aren’t here to break your legs. We just wanna talk. That’s it. Five minutes. And then we’ll be out of your hair for good.”

You didn’t feel the least bit reassured by his promise, but as a sign of good faith, or stupidity on your part, you stepped forward and shushed Winchester to keep quiet. You ushered him to back down and reassured that everything was fine. You stared at the two men in front of you, wondering if they were going to keep to their word.

“Fine. Who are you?” You asked them. “Really?”

“I’m Sam. This is Dean.” The taller man must have thought you were stupid when they tried to keep pulling this little act.

You rolled your eyes and pushed yourself back up to your feet, trying your hardest not to lose your patience with them. “For the last time, Sam and Dean are fictional characters.” You told them in a quiet, strained voice from what was going on. “I made them up! They're not real!”

The two men thought they could change your mind with some proof. You didn’t know why, but you found yourself following outside to their car—which was a 1967 Chevy Impala, color black and in mint condition, kept a single scratch on it. You’d never seen one in person, but she was a sight for sore eyes. Winchester trailed behind you to the outside and sat himself down on the sidewalk after you told him to. He was quiet, but he remained diligent, waiting for one of them men to try something.

The one who called himself Dean wanted you to take a look at the inside of their trunk, the words were a bit more creepier than he expected. You crossed your arms over your chest, expecting it to be empty and for one of them to shove you inside before locking you in there. When the trunk opened up, it wasn’t empty and you remained where you stood, but what you saw was even more horrifying. You inhaled a deep breath as you felt your eyes jumping around at all the stuff they had in there, an arsenal for a mad man.

“Are those real guns?” You asked in a meek tone.

“Yup.” The one who thought of himself as Dean said. You swallowed when he pointed out all the things you mentioned in the book. “This is real rock salt, these are real fake IDs.”

“Well, I got to hand it to you guys. You really are my number one fans. That’s,” You scratched the back of your neck as you felt yourself choosing the flight option in this situation. You nervously chuckled and began to slowly back away, hoping you might be able to dash inside the house and call the cops before things got too far. They were crazy, you thought. Obsessed. “That’s awesome. So, I-I think I've got some posters in the house.” You turned so fast on the back of your heels, you had a shot at running for your life. But before you could take a single step to safety, you heard the one who was pretending to be Dean spoke up. “Y/N, stop.” He called out to you, and for some reason, you listened to him.

“You lay one finger on me and I’ll start screaming.” You warned them as you turned back around to face the two men. You gave them a deadly glare as Winchester pushed himself back up on all four legs and came back over to you. "What the hell do you want?"

“How much do you know?” The taller one, Sam, questioned you with all sorts of things that you had written about in the secrecy of your own office. “Do you know about the angels? Or Lilith breaking seals?”

“Wait a minute. Wait a minute.” You mumbled, shaking your head from what he was asking you. You looked at the two men in front of you with a confused expression from what was going on, all of a sudden you had a few questions of your own. “How do you know about that?”

“The question is,” This supposed Dean asked, “how do you?”

You furrowed your brow slightly, "'Cause I wrote it."

“You kept writing?” Sam, or so he called himself, wondered.

“Yeah, even after the publisher went bankrupt, but those books never came out. Nobody's ever seen them except for me.” You said, telling them as you pointed a thumb over your shoulder and to your house. You suddenly felt a nudge against your leg, the dog was growing funny all of a sudden when he let out a low whine. You rolled your eyes and gave him a command, speaking his name for the first time in front of the boys. “Winchester, sit.”

"You named your dog Winchester?" You nodded your head, knowing this was the conversation that you would make up the lie that it was about how your dad was a big fan of guns and you named the dog after him. The man decided to formally introduce himself. "Well, nice that's a mighty fine coincidence. Cause you see, like I said...I'm Dean Winchester, and this is my brother, Sam."

You looked up from your dog after you began to subconsciously ran a hand through his fur to try and calm him down. You felt your face fall in surprise from what they told you. "Last names were never in the books. I never told anybody that. I never even wrote it down. Nobody knows I even wrote those books. People only think I named my dog after a freaking gun. You mumbled. You suddenly felt yourself hit with a dizzy spell from the things that were slowly connecting in your head. You stared at the two men in front of you, the ones you had wrote God knows how many books on and years of dreams about. Alive and in the flesh. “Sam and Dean Winchester...Well, nice to meet you.”

[Next Part]

The Book Ramblings of February

In place of book reviews, I will be writing these ‘book ramblings’. A lot of the texts I’ve been reading (or plan to read) in recent times are well-known classics, meaning I can’t really write book reviews as I’m used to. I’m reading books that either have already been read by everyone else (and so any attempt to give novel or insightful criticisms would be a tad pointless), or are so convoluted and odd that they defy being analysed as I would do a simpler text. These ramblings are pretty unorganised and hardly anything revolutionary, but I felt the need to write something review-related this year. I’ll upload a rambling compiling all my read books on a monthly basis.

Gogol - The Collected Tales (as published by Granta) It took me a while to find a Gogol collection with all the stories that I wanted; this is still not it, but it’s as close as I could get without buying the Everyman’s Library edition with the shite cover. I’d describe Gogol as a nice writer; his narration is always warm and inviting (even when adopting different voices for the frame narratives of the individual stories), his tales are often engaging, funny, and easy to follow, and there’s no shortage of amazing weirdness. The book is separated into his Ukranian tales, which remind me a lot of Russian fairy tales (and I guess by extension Arden’s The Bear and the Nightingale), and his St Petersburg tales, which are more like what I’ve known Gogol to be from my readings of his work in the past. I haven’t the foggiest idea what to call his works, which is just as well since critics can’t figure this shit out either; it’s like magical realism but with subdued magic and a loose grasp on realism, where weird and unrecognisable events happen in a weird but recognisable world. I love both of these varieties of stories for different reasons, but I reckon I prefer the St Petersburg stories; fairy tales can get a wee bit repetitive (especially if you read them one after the other), but the St Petersburg stories are just inherently interesting, if only because of how bloody difficult they are to describe. Gogol manages to create some bloody great characters, distinctive and memorable, out of just a few sentences of description, and yet his descriptions are worded so nicely as to find the  good in everyone and never outwardly antagonise any position in society (with the noteworthy exceptions of dissolute drunkards and the devil - Gogol really hates those guys). This does mean, however, that the really minor characters get a maximum of one sentence dedicated to establishment, and when there’s a shit load of minor characters being introduced as soon as they appear, it can be a tad confusing and not a little frustrating when it comes to trying to figure out if I’ve missed something. Also, not to seem thick, but I found remembering all of the million Russian names, and being able to match everyone to their names, a bit of a challenge (especially since, in some stories, the spelling of said names changes every now and then). There are some much-appreciated fiddlings with the storytelling format in Gogol’s tales that usually make for interesting reading; some of such additions to the stories, such as the establishment of some definitive narrators to form a frame narrative to the tale in question, or how unreliable narrators mess with the reality of the story, work quite well, but there are some that are a tad frustrating by how unnecessary they seem. For example, 'The Terrible Vengeance' does not reveal the framing explanation for the story’s events until right at the end, making everything prior to the explanation confusing and subsequently tedious, and 'Ivan Fyodorovich Shponka and His Aunt' is deliberately written to not have an actual ending - I get enough of incomplete stories from writers who unintentionally don’t finish their works, without Gogol pulling a deliberate fast one on me because he cannot be fucked to resolve one of his stories. I will, however, admit to being a tad hypocritical in this complaint; consider for a second ‘The Nose’, how it is deliberately written to be obscure or to have no clear explanation for the story’s bizarre events, cuts away from every encounter without revealing why anything happened as it did, is questioned even by the author, and yet is probably my favourite Gogol story (to some extent because of this stupid structure). The titles of the story’s bely how interesting they actually are; in the St Petersburg stories, the titles are short and succinct and can convey mystery through ambiguity in just a few words, but the titles for the Ukrainian tales were often needlessly verbose and consequently established the stories as perhaps being a tad boring (kind of like the titles of the short stories in Lem’s anthology Mortal Engines).

Voltaire - Candide This is some quality satire right here. This is a ridiculously fast-paced rollercoaster of a novel, a wild world-spanning picaresque narrative of stupid proportions. Harking back to Oliver Twist, another novel that uses satire to examine the world, I wrote that I found its highlighting of social issues to leave a sour taste in my mouth, as I didn’t believe the reasons for foregrounding these issues to be noble; society doesn’t dramatically change its flaws just because some dickhead wrote about them, and so I reckon that writing with the intentions of ‘improving the world’ is folly and what’s more total bollocks. However, this book is not trying to change anything. It is a big fuck-off harangue in novella form, less concerned with changing anything as it is with taking the piss. It expertly highlights exactly how the optimistic philosophies spouted by its idealistic cast are total bullshit, by writing this whole book to completely and utterly fuck these characters up. Reading these characters stumble from one horrendous catastrophe to the next is bloody hilarious; you’re prompted to keep on reading just to see what shit these lads would end up in next, and how their circumstances could possibly get any worse. Obviously a book that emphasises the very worst acts and disasters that the world has to offer might come across as a bit sad and fucked up, but this book avoids such labels by a) making the pace so fucking fast that you don’t have any time to have a contemplative pause about the atrocities being written about before you move on to the NEXT horror, and b) our protagonist Candide is so unwaveringly happy and genial, emphasised excellently with the reductive language of the characters and narrator. The story is absolutely ridiculous, spanning half the bloody world and satirising every city Voltaire could get away with writing about (although I will say I wasn’t a fan of how England was not a major part of Candide’s adventure), and yet characters still fortuitously stumble across one another (usually in significantly shittier circumstances than when we last saw them). If I was feeling cynical I would say that the constant returns of characters previously thought to be lost was due to the fact that there really aren’t many memorable characters in this story, and so Voltaire needs to get the most out of the few interesting characters that he has; of course all of the characters are funny because of their status as reductive character archetypes (and because of their laughably hyperbolic downfalls), but aside from Pangloss and Martin there aren’t many characters in this story who will stick in your memory. However, I am well disposed to this convoluted and stupid story, not only because such serendipity is justified within the framework of the picaresque narrative, but because the circumstances behind characters’ impromptu returns to the text are often fucking hilarious (especially Pangloss). The story is just the right length; it’s fast pace ensures that it gets more than enough out of its ninety-something pages, and if it was any longer than it would probably outstay its welcome and lose some of its novelty trying to come up with new problems for its protagonists to be fucked over by. I’ll freely admit to knowing absolutely fuck all about the setting that this book takes place in, but for the most part, thinking about that was hardly forefront in my mind as I was reading; the setting changes so rapidly that you hardly have a chance to focus on any one setting, and since the story is entirely defined by a long stream of grim and miserable events, it’s hardly as though you need to know all the relevant historical context to understand what’s going on. This does, however, make the constant namedropping of place names and historical details seem a tad incongruous with the breakneck pace, as I’ve got to keep flicking to the annotations at the back to understand them. (Yes, I really ought not to bother, as not knowing all this shit isn’t essential to understanding what is going on, but I still feel like I’m missing something in my reading if I’m not understanding everything). I feel that the story takes quite a long time to get to the moral; as much as I love the great amount of shit that is dealt to the characters, the book really keeps dealing out the shit right to the very end, to the point where when the ending moral does finally come along, it seems very much out of the blue and wasn’t really given enough build-up.

Bulgakov - The Master and Margarita This is among the more interesting texts that I have had to analyse, due in part to the fact that the narrative is split into two storylines, one of which is incredibly compelling and fun to read and the other is really rather dull and boring (especially by comparison). I suppose it’s lucky that the Pontius Pilate storyline (i.e the really boring one) is overshadowed by this book’s vast quantity of good shit. I’ve been trying to take a more professional look at the books that I ramble on - these are classics, after all - but I must admit that I struggle to think about this book in a professional way, because it’s very reminiscent of the usual low-brow fantasy nonsense that I pass the time with. Anything ‘proper' I can think of to talk about this book pales in comparison to the nonsense and hilarity of its content. Supposedly it is a satire, and I’ve held the view that all messages in satire are painfully obvious once you know that the text in question is meant to be satirical, but I struggled finding the message of this book. The gist of the book is that the Devil comes to Moscow to bring havoc and disarray to society, but the trouble with this is that I’m no expert on how the seemingly very complex and convoluted Russian society is supposed to run, and so any disarray catalysed by the Devil and his entourage is somewhat lost on me when I could have just as well attributed it to the overall madness and chaos of this sensationalised depiction of normal Russian society. Even before the Devil comes along, there are aspects of society that are told by the narrator as though they are attributable to otherworldly or otherwise fantastical sources, but because I often wasn’t fully sure as to what such fantastical stuff was actually satirising, I didn’t really get the full impact. Some elements of the satire are basic comments on universal human nature, with the Devil making fools of people who are vain or gluttonous or whatever, but oftentimes the satire is indeed dependent on knowing the ins and outs of 1930s Moscow; some of it I could surmise, some of it I couldn’t. The story follows a series of different characters whose lives are negatively altered by the influence of the Devil’s entourage, with things going wrong in any number of ways, and it is amazing fun to read; it’s very disorderly, but that’s the whole point. What did pose a challenge to me is how, with all these characters popping in and out of the story, with minimal descriptions and often not as much characterisation as I would have liked, I often got confused between them all - because, of course, we’ve got an abundance of three-part Russian names with ten bloody syllables in them (honestly whoever thought up the idea of patronymic surnames can bugger off). Obviously this isn’t a deal breaker, and anyone who reads this book will get the hang of it, but this book’s abundance of minor characters posed a bigger challenge than usual. (Oh and also the character names differ in different translations of the text, which is ever so fun to have to figure out). The characters are all alright, especially the Devil and his retinue, who are an absolutely delight (though they are admittedly best when they don’t have to carry stories on their own). I did however feel that the eponymous Master and Margarita didn’t really seem like main characters; the Master isn’t introduced until a good ways into the book and even then could easily be mistaken for another of the minor characters who appear and disappear in that part of the book, and though Margarita has a good few chapters to herself that really establishes her as quite a good character, by the end of the book she is subsumed pretty much entirely by her relationship with the Master. Also their connection to the ever-so-boring Pontius Pilate storyline can get a tad vexing, having to keep on returning to read about Pilate for a bit before the actual storyline can continue. I was wondering how a book with such a basic premise as this would have ended, since I didn’t really think this book could have ended in a way more interesting than ‘the Devil went home again and things returned roughly to normal’, but this book cleverly subverted my expectations by making the ending more Pontius Pilate bollocks.

Burgess - A Clockwork Orange I get the feeling that a lot of modern classics that are heralded as ‘the book that will change your life’ are going to be like this one, in that the actual story will by far and away be the most forgettable aspect of the book. Most of the things I love about this book are attributable to the narration. As someone who loves colloquialisms, Nadsat is an absolutely incredible language and it colours the book so brilliantly. Not only does it make the book incredibly fun to read, but it’s incredibly versatile, being able to diminish the horror and repulsion of the book’s acts with its alien descriptions and subsequently reflects Alex’s desensitisation to such matters. Alex is an incredibly interesting and compelling character, to the extent that I can forgive the book for not really having any other memorable characters. The book is really rather disturbing at points (to the extent that I don’t reckon I’ll ever be able to watch the film), but the aforementioned beautiful writing style/language and overall black comedy tone of the book carries it well. You don’t get a detailed look at the dystopian setting that the story takes place in, but what you can glean from Alex’s perspective is bloody amazing. However, the story is exactly what I expected it to be; heavy-handed satire with a few cool bits interspersed throughout, but overall the least interesting part of the book simply because it only serves to highlight the issues that it is satirising. The premise for this book is really cool, but in practice the story cannot do much other than display Alex being a bad person, or describing how his sadistic tendencies are remedied, over and over again. And in the end it hardly really mattered, because he goes back to the way he was at the beginning of the novel, and the one permanent change of his character occurs right at the end of the book in a rather anticlimactic manner. But of course you can’t feel too irritated by it, because the story, seemingly uneventful and circuitous as it is, is written so eloquently and fantastically that it is still a joy to read, and you’re willing to forgive its possible flaws.

Himes - The Heat’s On I haven’t read many books in the hardboiled genre, mainly because I felt that I didn’t need to read a lot of them to get a feel of what they are all like. This book features most everything I would expect from the genre, but perhaps a tad more sensationalised, which I like a lot. There’s a big horrible crime-ridden city, and there’s not one but TWO hard-as-nails policemen who have got to swear a lot and pistol-whip some motherfuckers for the good of society. Reading the blurb of this made me think of Sin City; the setup is generic but the characters and events within the story are absolutely ridiculous and very memorable. Characterisation is kept minimal because this is hardly the most profound of books, but none of the characters are one-dimensional. The writing is of course bloody great; it’s tight and clear, employs some excellent turns of phrase that make for surprisingly rich analysis despite how simple it is when taken at face value, and facilitates the story’s fast pace. Oh and of course, an important trope of hardboiled literature, this book included, is that the ending simply must be an anticlimactic frantic tying together of all loose ends. Since this book is essentially what I’d expected from a hardboiled text, I don’t have anything to say about it as an overall piece that couldn’t have already been surmised from me saying ‘it is a hardboiled text’; therefore, any comments that I have on this book aren’t really especially academic, but are more of just little subjective nitpicks. I do think that this book does venture at points into being a bit too silly; obviously I’m not expecting, or even hoping, for sophisticated literature here, but there needs to be consistency in its established stupidity. There’s a fine line this book walks between Machete’s level of dumbness and Machete Kills’ level of dumbness, and it often threatens to audaciously cross that line. Though I do appreciate the fast pace, because you need a fast pace in a book like this, there are times where character development occurs too quickly to be logical, and said development is often made when the plot itself has somewhat slowed down, which makes the irrational changes within people all the more noticeable. I base what I know about the hardboiled genre off of Hammett’s Red Harvest, and I reckon that although Himes is better than Hammett, Hammett did a few things better. Red Harvest took place in a fictitious city, and whilst Himes’ representation of Harlem is very sensationalised and fun, his constant name dropping of real place names can be a bit alienating when I know fuck all about anything American. Also this book isn’t really as centred on Harlem itself as I would have liked, instead continuously reaching out to other places in the world for its characters and plot progression. The lack of any molls or femme fatales was a bit saddening in some regards because that is a trope that I enjoy, but honestly the pursuit of love isn’t really forefront in the protagonists’ minds, and I’m content to substitute some romance subplot with more stupid action sequences.

Stuff I read this month that I couldn’t be arsed to ramble about: Maud: A Melodrama by Tennyson and a few miscellaneous poems from Christina Rossetti. 

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Hello! As finals season (aka 5-research-papers-due-in-a-week season) dawns on many of you, I thought I would share the process I used to write papers in college. This made writing long research papers much less daunting (but can also work on shorter papers). I really hope this helps some of you who feel stuck. Especially during these ridiculous times, when you’re stuck at home and might have other uncontrollable factors affecting your mental health, a clear framework of what to do could be helpful. Good luck, my friends! You got this.

About me

I graduated college in 2018 with degrees in Political Science + International Studies and will be starting law school this fall. I wrote nearly 20 15 to 25-page papers, never earning below an A. I loved researching about my topics but hated writing. It’s tedious, takes so much time, and everything I write sounds bad at first. Plus, I was a terrible procrastinator so most of these essays were written in under a week. Talk about stress.

Over time I found a process that worked for me, one that made churning out a paper seem straightforward, like going through a factory line rather than this terrifying concept of writing 10,000 words. It kept me sane without decreasing the quality of my work (or more importantly, how much I learned!) 

I’m thinking about making a short video to show this in action… let me know if that could be helpful!

Step 1: Research

How you organize your research is a key step in keeping you sane. Usually I’ll have a pile of 20 books in my dorm along with dozens of JSTOR tabs open on my laptop, and that can get overwhelming very fast. Right now just focus on collecting ideas, not developing an argument or even an outline! As with most research papers, you could be starting with little to no background information on the topic, so it is still too early to be thinking about an argument.

Put all your research in one document

Open up a new doc: this will be the heart of everything. For a 15-page paper I usually end up with around 14-18 pages of typed research, 10 pt font, single spaced, tiny margins. This seems like a lot, but essentially all I do is type up anything I read that seems relevant to my topic, so luckily this step does not require that much brain power. Just type type type!

Use the table of contents

Find the chapter(s) that are actually relevant instead of skimming through the whole book. Time is of the essence here!

Use Zotero, cite right away

You can also use easybib or whatever you’re used to, but keep track of your sources. I like Zotero because I can keep a log of all of my sources and copy the footnote or bibliography version whenever needed. Before you even begin reading, cite the source and copy it into your research doc. This will save you so much time later when you have to put in your citations in the actual paper. 

Here is an example of what my research doc looks like:

Full citation is my heading for each source just so it’s crystal clear

I ignore all typos (I don’t think there are any in this part though, go me!) because my head is buried in the book just trying to get all the info down

I always start with the page number so I know what to cite when I go back

Create a shorthand 

While typing up research, you might think of something that the author didn’t talk about that you’ll want to write in your paper. Or perhaps a few sentences already start to form. Put them all in one place, with your research, so you know what source you’ll have to cite to then lead into your idea. I type “!@#” before anything that is strictly my own idea so I’m never confused. It’s fast and stands out.

This is an example: the two bullet points above are evidence from my source, which made me think of this argument I could make, which I noted with “!@#”

Step 2: Read Your Research

Now that you have all your information, go back and read through it all. Every time you read about a new theme/person/event, write it down somewhere. You may come up with a list of 20+ different ideas in your research. No matter how small, as long as there is something about it, write it down. Each of these mini themes is going to end up being a paragraph in your paper or combined with another mini theme. 

Once you’ve made your list, look for larger overarching themes. In the paper I’ve shown you, I had mini categories like “political party x” “religion” “labor groups” “little organization” and “hierarchy.” When I looked back I though, hey these are all groups and how groups are working together, so they each became their own mini paragraph under the subsection of “Alliances.”

As with most research paper structures, I try to find three general themes/subsections (like an extended version of that 5-paragraph essay we wrote in middle school). It makes the paper less messy and also makes sure I’m not covering things that are beyond a reasonable scope.

During this step, you are also searching for your thesis. It won’t be your final version. As you fill in your outline in the next step you may make slight changes. But this is definitely when you start thinking about it.

Step 3: Outline

We’re ready to outline! Once I’ve collected all my different themes and organized all my subsections and paragraphs, it’s time to fill in that outline. I start a new doc just for the outline and take advantage of google doc’s headings function to make a clear document outline.

Here comes the fun part, I read through my research one more time, this time copy and pasting all my research into each section of the outline. The document outline in google docs makes this easy because I can just click on each subheading to get me there (super helpful when you’re dealing with 15+ pages of research).

Here is what it looks like:

Let’s say I need to add something to my outline about labor groups. Boom, labor groups. Also, the typos are really abound here haha

Step 4: Write the Paper

Okay, I get it, easier said than done. BUT! You already have everything set up. Your outline is essentially just a list of your paragraphs and all you have to do is paraphrase, cite, and create a topic sentence. And that’s how you should think about this: you’re essentially transforming bullet points into sentences and adding footnotes. 

In high school my English teacher introduced us to Sh*tty First Drafts for creative writing, but honestly the same applies to research papers. Sometimes I’ll even have phrases like “wait no that’s not what I meant but basically…” and when I go back to edit, I realize that what came after “but basically…” is fine! And I keep it. So just start typing.

How do you cite while you write? Because we’re trying to get a constant stream of writing going, inserting proper footnotes after each sentence you type is too bothersome. I usually split screen with my outline and my paper so I just copy and paste a few words from my bullet point into my footnote, like so:

(This is from a different paper about cluster munitions.)

Step 5: Edit the Paper

I work best when I print out my first draft and make all edits in red pen. I feel more productive and can visually see where I want to move sentences and what I need to change. The more red there is the better I can feel the paper getting. (Whether or not that’s true doesn’t matter. We’re trying to stay motivated here!) When it’s all digital I don’t really see the progress. Plus, once I finish all the red, I get another moment of passive brain work, where all I’m doing is transferring edits rather than thinking. And at this point in the process, that kind of relief is much welcomed. 

The good thing about this process is there’s not usually a need to cut entire paragraphs or pages because the paper you end up with is just a formalized version of your outline. Because you started with such a detailed outline, the cutting and editing now is just to refine your word choices and get rid of the “but basically”s. You’re almost there!

Step 6: Replace your citations

Now it’s time to go back and replace your footnotes with actual citations. Zotero makes this easy because in Word you can just insert and add the page number, and it’ll automatically do “Ibid.” for you when needed. Ctrl+f in the original research doc to quickly find the source.

Step 7: One More Read-Through and Submit!

Congratulations!! You’ve got a fully-researched and well-backed paper! Of course, even though the process is straightforward, it’s still a lot of work. In ideal situations I would start researching two weeks before the deadline, but if need be, I believe I’ve done this all in three miserable panic-filled days as well. 

Please message me if you have any questions at all! I really hope some of you find this helpful! Good luck!

How To Harness The Power Of Visualisation In Your Spells

Julie Hopkins

Visualisation is the practice of using your mind to affect your physical world by imagining yourself in ideal situations or performing skills you want to get good at. Basically, it’s a super-focused form of daydreaming.

A lot of times, we do it without even thinking about it. When you’re driving to work and you start thinking about that order of cheesy mozzarella sticks you’re going to share with your friend later that night, you’re using visualisation. Or say, for instance, you’re researching a new car purchase and imagining what it would feel like to drive up the California coast in a Mustang convertible, that’s using visualisation too.

There are two types of visualisation, outcome-based visualisation and process-based visualisation. Both can be effective for use with your magic.

Outcome-based visualisation is popular in personal development circles. It’s when you create a detailed scene in your mind of yourself after you’ve achieved your goal. For example, if your goal is a trip to Bali, you could imagine yourself strolling through the Ubud market, holding a basket of fresh fruit, feeling the sun on your bare shoulders.

Process-based visualisation is popular with athletes, among other high-performing individuals. Pro golfers Tiger Woods and Jack Nicklaus used visualisation before matches. Nicklaus invested a lot of time imagining himself playing every hole, hitting each ball perfectly. Visualisation exercises were also part of basketball players Michael Jordan and Larry Bird’s workout regiment. You can read more about that here and here.

A process-based visualisation for your trip to Bali would be if you imagined yourself packing your favourite sandals into your suitcase, driving to the airport, and getting on the plane. You could end your visualisation with you stepping out of the Denpasar airport and smelling the sweet, exotic scent of Balinese flowers.

Why Science Says it Works

The science behind this is fascinating, though that’s not what this article is about. So here’s the super-condensed version.

When you visualise an experience in detail getting your emotions and senses in on the action, the neurons in your brain react as if your visualisation is actually happening. Essentially, your brain doesn’t differentiate between a real experience and an experience you create in your mind. When you practice visualisation you forge new neural paths in your brain, priming your mind and body for the experience to actually happen in your life. Read more about that here and here.

Grab your FREE copy of the Visualisation Worksheets for Spells & Rituals!Get the Workbook!

Why Visualisation is Perfect for Magic1. Visualisation allows you to believe that the goals you have for yourself are possible.

Magic depends A LOT on the intention you put into the spell and the mindset you’re in when you’re performing it. If you don’t actually believe the thing you’re going for is possible for you, it will not happen. Period.

That’s where visualisation comes in. If you spend some time visualising before or during your spell, you’re aligning your beliefs about yourself with your goal. If you see yourself in your mind’s eye hiking up a volcano in Bali, you’re much more likely to believe it will actually happen.

2. Visualisation puts your focus on what you want, not what you don’t have.

Again, your magic is powered by your intention. If you really want something, it’s easy to get stuck in the overpowering knowledge that you don’t have the thing you want.

When there’s two feet of snow outside and you’re digging your car out of a big, fluffy drift, you might think you’re sending out the thought that you want to be exploring a hot, steamy Balinese jungle. If you’re spending most of your time focusing how cold you are now though, you’re putting the intention and feeling of “cold” into your magic. Since you’re powering your spell with what you don’t want, your spell will probably work—by bringing you more snow.

Instead, if you spend a few minutes visualising, immersing yourself with thoughts of your Bali trip, you can be sure that you’re setting a strong, accurate intention for your spell.

3. Visualisation helps you get clear on what exactly you want.

You know the saying, “be careful what you wish for”? I’ve so been there. A while back, I wanted nothing more than to make a full-time income working remotely. Then, when I finally got hired by a company that offered me just that, I found I was miserable. I ended up working around the clock and feeling overwhelmed for months. Had I been more clear about what I wanted when performing my job spells, I could have specified that I wanted to make money remotely while living a balanced life instead of the vague intention of making money online.

Magic is a powerful tool and if you don’t get clear about what exactly you want from the spell, you could end up with some interesting outcomes.

Practice visualising in detail what you want out of your spell or ritual. Allow your desired outcome to play in your mind like a scene from a movie. If there are parts that you’re glossing over (like what the rest of your life will look like after you score that “dream job”), dig into that and make edits until you’ve created the perfect vision to power your magic.

4. Visualisation sheds light on resistance that might be holding you back.

Visualisation is a super fast way to connect with your deepest, more private, beliefs about yourself. Think of it as a way to “hack into” your subconscious, and pinpoint the limiting thoughts you have about yourself.

For example, you could be visualising your trip to Bali, and suddenly, a negative thought flits through your mind.

“Do I deserve to spend that much money on a vacation for myself?” or “My boss will think I’m so flaky if I take off work to go on this trip.”

Uncovering and acknowledging those thoughts is the first step to getting rid of them and changing your mindset in a big way. Note any negative thoughts that come up in your visualisation and take them apart.

For example, if your thought is, “My boss will think I’m so flaky if I take off work to go on this trip.”  ask yourself if that’s actually true. Would she really think you’re flaky? Do you have a history of missing deadlines or showing up late? Do you call in sick a lot?

If the answer is no, then your boss thinking you’re flaky is probably not something to worry about.

If you’re still worried, you can think up some ways to make sure your work will be covered while you’re gone. Are there things to delegate to others? Would having a conversation with your boss resolve the issue? Can you finish your projects before you leave?

I know it’s a lot of work to sift through all your beliefs, but with the help of visualisation, you can identify them quickly without the stress of actually being in that situation. Once you get rid of those negative thoughts, you clear the way for all your magical spells and rituals to manifest.

5. Visualisation supercharges your spell with raw emotion.

When you’re really focused on a goal and you imagine it unfolding moment by moment, strong emotions are bound to show up. Joy, contentment, and giddiness are some of the emotions I’ve felt during visualisations, and spells I perform while I’m feeling that potent, glowy energy are supercharged. Emotion fuels magic, so get yourself feeling great and see the results in your magic.

4 Tips to 10x your Spells and Rituals with Visualisation

Be Specific

When you’re using visualisation in your spell work, pick a specific moment you’d like to manifest in your life. Being vague won’t do it. You have to get down the nitty gritty of the vision you’re creating with your spell. Make sure you’re visualising yourself in a specific place, doing a specific activity, with specific people. Notice how the “you” in your vision reacts to things, such as opening up that college acceptance letter or seeing your checking account balance on your online banking app. The more detailed you are, the clearer your intention.

Use All Your Senses

Get all of your senses involved to make your vision feel as real as possible. What does the air feel like against your skin? What does it smell like? What do you see? Is it a bright afternoon or a colourful sunset? Can you taste anything? What can you hear? Music? Laughter? The sound of crashing waves? There’s no such thing as too much detail here!

Get Emotional

Allow yourself to feel your emotions that will come up when you’re really present in your vision. Let those feelings flow through your body and mind like a stream of water pouring from a faucet. Don’t hold onto any emotions during your visualisation or push them away. Just let them move through you organically and know they’re going to strengthen your magic.

Practice, Practice, Practice

If you try visualisation during your spell, but you just can’t seem to focus, that’s ok! Don’t beat yourself up about it. Simply guide your mind back to your vision. Everyone gets distracted sometimes, but the more you do it, the better you’ll become. A good way to ease into this is to pick an amount of time you know you can do, like one minute. Then set a timer and start visualising. Once you feel comfortable with one minute, try two and so on. You don’t have to visualise for a long time for it to be effective. Three to five minutes is plenty.

If this feels tedious at any point, it’s time to stop. Visualisation should feel fun and joyful. If it doesn’t, it won’t have a positive effect on your spell.

My Favourite Visualisation Spells and Rituals

I like “charge” my spell candles with my vision. I sit in a comfortable position and set a timer on my phone for three to five minutes. With my eyes closed, I hold the candle and start visualising a scene of what I’d like my life to look like after my spell does its thing. When the timer goes off, I open my eyes and light my candle. As I watch the flame flicker, I think about my vision rising up into the universe like a beam of light.

Sometimes I choose to journal my visions rather than imagining them. If I’m doing this for a full moon ritual, I’ll spend five minutes journaling, then set my journal outside or put it by a window while I sleep so the powerful energy of the moon will charge my pages with moonlight.

If you have access to a campfire, grill or backyard firepit, I enjoy journaling about my vision and burning the pages once I’m finished. The smoke sends my vision straight up into the abundant sky. Make sure you stay safe while doing this, especially if you write a lot like I do and have several pages to burn.

Feel free to get creative with visualisation! You can try listening to a guided visualisation recording on Spotify or Youtube. Maybe you’d like to try visualising while listening to your favourite song or the soundtrack of your favourite movie. If it’s a pretty day, you can take a visualisation walk and enjoy nature!

However, you choose to use this powerful tool, make it your own and always, always have fun with it.

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https://thetravelingwitch.com/blog/2018/4/26/visualization-in-spells

To End The Year, A Mini-Magpie With A Mini Mystery.

Has mega-fraudster Craig Gore skipped Australia? And if so, why hasnt this been reported in the media especially since he is supposed to have made a midnight flit the very day after a judge refused to allow him to leave? In other matters, one has to admit that the Townsville Bulletin is consistent it has ended the year as it started, continuing its weekly Olympic-standard shambles. And Mongrel the Barrister has left us lawyer Mark Donnelly, the man who inspired a much loved Magpie character has passed away. and our final visit to Trumpistan for 2018. But first Its hard to keep a good man down, and our fav toonist Bentley is nothing if not a good man. Even in the holiday season, he casts his jaundiced eye over the news, and brings us a different and rib-tickling perspective. This week, he was much taken as most of us were with the drone drama at Gatwick Airport in the UK. A professional drone was reported in the airports approach and departure air space, and thousands of travellers were stuck when the whole shebang was shut down for a couple of days while the wallopers tried to go hi-tech and trace the source of the bastardry. Its not fully sorted yet, but Bentley thinks the drone may have already met its fate.

Why Arent All The Gore-y Details Available?

Will ye no come back agin, laddie? Now to our mini-mystery. On December 19, this report appeared in the Courier Mail. Judge denies disgraced former rich-lister Craig Gore request to travel overseas Vanessa Marsh, The Courier-Mail December 20, 2018 2:21pm A DISGRACED former rich-lister accused of ripping off almost $800,000 from investors has broken down in court after a judge refused his request to leave the country to visit family. Lawyers for alleged fraudster Craig Gore today launched an application in the Queensland District Court, seeking for the former businessmans bail conditions to be altered to allow him to travel to Sweden to visit his wife and children. But Judge Paul Smith denied the request, saying Gore faced a long time in prison if convicted and there was a real risk he would not return to Australia to face trial. Gore is facing 12 charges of fraud over allegations he swindled about $800,000 from self-managed super fund investors in 2013-14. He also faces three charges of managing companies while disqualified. Now that seems pretty definitive and eminently sensible. But The Magpie was informed two days later, by a regular contact and mate who has always been on the money in the past, that Gore went back to court the next day on another application, and had his passport returned so he could be with his family in Sweden at Christmas. He was to return in three months to face trial and possibility of a lengthy striped suntan. The Pies contact says Gore was on a flight out of Brisbane that night at 11pm, accompanied by a lawyer (that was apparently part of the arrangement) who will return with certain paperwork. Gore will be expected to make his own way back to face his fate in March. Yeah, right. Now all that is as it may be, BUT THIS SPECTACULAR REVERSAL OF A JUDGES IMPLACABLE DECISION HAS BEEN NEITHER EXPLAINED OR APPEARED IN THE MEDIA. Well, not that The Magpie can find, after days of searching to verify. If it is true, there will be a hell of a lot of very pissed off people Gores victims and the tireless investigators who nailed him who know just how long are the odds that we will ever see this shyster again. Shades of Skase!! Perhaps we will never know how this came about if it did come about because there will be a lofty judicial silence of unaccountability if he is a no show but surely the second hearing was an open court? Hard to fathom why it wasnt reported. Mongrel The Barrister Is No More The Magpies good mate Mark Sludge Donnelly the man who partially inspired the popular Magpie character Mongrel the Barrister, died in his family home in Cairns last weekend. It is fair to say that Mark was my best mate in the halcyon days of Portraits Bar in the Exchange Hotel all through the Noughties, the years when I was reporting court matters for the Bulletin. We were part of a memorable and disparate group, the bar crowded with our marvellously mixed group every Thursday, Friday and sometimes Saturday nights. (The fondly remembered Portraits became Poseurs Bar in the newspaper column and then in this blog.) Mark was universally known as Sludge, which he happily answered to, but never fully explained, even to me, its origins apparently it had something to do with a memorable comment from a lecturer or senior teacher suggesting Marks behaviour at that time some comparable to something from the bottom of a pond. Sludge was one of the wittiest people Ive known, and his memory was nothing short of astounding, not just for quoting legal precedents but in all things, particularly pop music. He always commandeered the music machine at parties, and was a pretty good DJ. He also had an eye for a well turned ankle, and his way of getting ladies to talk about themselves endeared him to more than one. Like many a member of the Portraits push, Mark liked a drink, and some believed he was a bit too enthusiastic in this direction. But I would say that rather than having a battle with the bottle, he just had frequent skirmishes with it, as we all did and any excess rarely affected his work at the other more sedate bar, where he often shone. Mark left Townsville when his father died, to live with his mother in the family home in Cairns. He didnt practice in Cairns, and went into virtual retirement, which was plagued by ill health for some time. He returned to Townsville annually for his birthday, but I lost touch in the past few years, for which I feel a bit miserable now. Sludge is now undoubtedly arguing the finer points about the Laws of Entry with St Peter for that is certainly where this witty, soft-hearted old friend of mine now is because we all know God loves a larrikin. Mark was 62. They Really Dont Understand Language at The Astonisher, Do They? And they even get the wrong WORD for a headlines. Even when theyre trying to make a pun, which kinda depends on the right word, yes? But we got a headline quoting some bizoid saying Townsville is bracing for a great 2018. Bracing for? Ahem. Youve managed to say EXACTLY THE OPPOSITE of what you meant. Heres the dictionary definition of bracing. verb[withobject] prepare (someone or oneself) forsomethingdifficult or unpleasant:both stations arebracingthemselvesforjoblosses|policeare braced fora trafficnightmare. So although this paper goes through life like a bouncing Hari Krishna whos visited the medicine cabinet once too often, giving us totally unquestioning, unexamined glop about our economy (usually from someone with a vested interest), it seem to have inadvertently hit on the truth here. However, the most tedious aspect of the paper of late is the dreary attempts at humour in headlines, particularly about crime, a subject no one in Townsville with the exception of you folks in Flinders Street, finds the least bit funny. AND EVEN THEN, LANGUAGE FAILS YOU let alone a sharp sense of humour.Take this major front page fail on Thursday.

Swindler? My dear headline writer, stay with me on this and read slowly, feel free to move your lips as you must. Now lets see, a swindler is someone who fiddles some unsuspecting victim out of something. That person would be called a fiddler, and if hidden in a ceiling, could be described as ta da a Fiddler In The Roof. You see, this would then coincide with the hit musical of the same name oh, how we would have all fallen about, clutching our sides in mirth, and holding your superior wit in such esteem!!! But swindler? Now weve just got a headache from smacking our foreheads yet again. And this one in simply NOT TRUE. This online

The actual number of people who said (or may have said, who knows, its probably a fiddled fantasy anyway) was 55% of the 700 or so people who responded to a totally uncontrolled survey. If there area 220,000 potential readers (ha! you wish) in the circulation area, the percentage is not even .5 of one percent. But we all know that the on-line edition is sloppy, so the paper itself will temper the outlandish claims, wont it? Errr no.

This is simply lying, and treating people like morons. And still they wonder But barely have we swallowed our anger before we start scratching our heads over weird genuinely weird stories like this, which would suggest that English isnt TEL boss Patricia OCallaghans first language, or she was suffering mild sunstroke when she was penned the media release from which the story was transcribed.

This story is selective twaddle certainly straight off an unedited media release from the Dudley Do Nothings, meaningless twaddle in which Ms OCallaghan specialises. It has often been said of her that she has the gift of the gab, and aint that the truth, just about all of what she has to say, in The Pies experience, is just that meaningless gabble that sounds good until it is more thoughtfully examined. Like this: The Museum of Underwater Art, located within the heart of The Great Barrier Reef, is a proposal based on the works of international sculpture and underwater artist Jason deCaires Taylor. Whats that bit located in the heart of the Great Barrier Reef? Has there been a Krakatoa-like geographic shift we havent noticed? The Underwater Museum, one of several planned along the coast, will be, at last report, just of Maggy Island, the GBR is a at least an hour or more away by fast cat . But in it goes to the story, with a newbie cub reporter just churning out this PR bumf. But wait, theres more. We then get this prize piece of meaningless gabble from the top executive charged with attracting and promoting tourism to Townsville: Its a project that is going to enhance the Great Barrier Reef experience and also educate visitors on how we manage and live with the reef everyday Ms OCallaghan said. That is absolute poppycock that is totally meaningless. And We? Bloody WE? FFS, girl, get a bloody grip. Insulting, uppity tripe from Ms OCallaghan and lazy, presumably unsupervised reporting (read: select all, copy and paste) by a very uncurious junior reporter (read: stenographer). Really, a monkey using scrabble board wouldve made more sense. The clusterfuck continues no wonder were so deep in the shit. Other matters As if golf didnt already have enough hazards.

Words of Wisdom From Two Funny Men

Frankie Boyle The cleverest quote of the week comes from the Scottish comedian Frankie Boyle in the Guardian. But first, his preamble touched a chord for The Magpie, who can vouch for it when Mr Boyle writes: The plight of the satirist, such as it is, is a compulsion to look at the grimmest, most important thing they can think of, and then for reasons that probably wouldnt survive a really good therapist, try to make it funny. To try to address the iniquities of their society, the satirist must manufacture some hope that what theyre doing might make a difference, then type it all up and send it off somewhere before they remember that it never does. Looking back over the events of this year is a bit like holding a doll for a therapist and pointing to where the bad man hurt you. Mr Boyles point is a universal one, which can be shared by Townsvilleans looking back over the past shambolic year. But his prize quote is so subtle, that you may have to think about for a while The Pie roared after a few seconds. The murder ofJamal Khashoggiby Saudi Arabia is another very difficult subject to find the lighter side of, unless someone in the Ecuadorean embassy has clipped the story out and stuck it to the fridge. (Sigh) Dear Mystified of Mysterton, it means that the Ecuadoreans might be giving their Wikileaks guest Julian Assange a hint.

Dave Barry The other funnyman worth a quote is the inimitable Dave Barry , the American columnist who talks about Florida the way The Magpie talks about Townsville only he is far funnier, proof being that The Magpie pinches more of his lines (many) than he does of The Magpies (none). This was his challenge to a graduating class, but it can just as well apply to the year 2019. How are you, Class, going to respond when the Clock-Radio of Challenge emits the Irritating Buzz of Opportunity? Are you going to roll over and hit the Snooze Button of Complacency? Or are you going to wake up and, after performing the Bodily Functions of Preparedness, boldly grasp the Toothbrush of Tomorrow? And no matter what you do in the coming year, make sure youre always politically correct, so no snowflakes will melt before your harsh words.

And So To This Week In Trumpistan First, compare Trump as Commander In Chief of real US soldiers, on his surprise visit to Iraq

Guess whos wondering if she packed the shampoo? with this.

And now to our final gallery of the year about the man Frankie Boyle described as this troll-doll King Lear, who looks like something youd pick off a baking tray after cooking pizza above it.

And Finally How The Hell ? The Pie has been occasionally upbraided for the use of naughty words in this blog well, one word in particular. He is aware that it can be confronting, but it is the other F word Frustration that compels him to sometimes resort to other for emphasis. Anyway, so what, if its good enough for Sesame Street, its good enough for The Pie. .. So that was the year that was, and what a rip-snorter we have coming up. Turns out this edition wasnt so mini after all. Comments run throughout the holiday break 24/7, so you dont have to wait to have your say. And the New Year will look even rosier for the old bird if you think the Nest is worth a small donation to keep it neat and tidy. The how to donate button is below. HAPPY NEW YEAR, YALL. http://www.townsvillemagpie.com.au/to-end-the-year-a-mini-magpie-with-a-mini-mystery/

As promised before, I bring you my first contribution to the Yuuri Harem Villain AU, starting with a Yuuri/Eros one-shot :D As it is currently midnight here and I’m kinda beat, I’ll most probably edit this post later so to link it to my other websites and so on. This is dedicated to my muse @yuuriharemheadcanons and to you lovely people who were kind enough to accompany me through the process of writing this. This was non-betaed and largely written/edited in a hurry (cue the sucky ending - bear with me, I haven’t written or published since forever ^^’). Feel free to comment and send me feedback!

***

“I thought we’d agreed that you wouldn’t jump from the top of buildings.”

“And I thought we’d agreed that you wouldn’t do that either.”

Yuuri has enough strength left to snort at the man’s reply. Trust Eros to sass him half dead on his feet, soaked to the bone and blood gushing from wounds he couldn’t diagnose, hidden under wet leather and lace.

“How can you still have enough energy to sass me when you’re the one injured?”

Eros shrugged. “I’ve had worse before. That’s  fine by me.”

Yuuri repressed the need to scream, unsure whether to be more frustrated or angry at Eros’ carelessness.

How had they even come to this?

It had happened too fast for him to even register what was going on. One moment he was battling his opponent, edging closer to a side of the roof he couldn’t see, and the other Yuuri couldn’t feel the ground under his feet nor air in his lungs. He barely had time to register he was falling before a pair of arms wrapped around him, holding him in a tight grip, swiftly rotating him so he wasn’t facing the sky anymore.

The next second, they were colliding with the ground, Eros landing on his back and Yuuri somehow getting away with scratches on his side and possibly his face. He wondered briefly how he would explain those to Celestino on Monday morning.

And then he registered blood was oozing from under Eros’ head, and his mind went blank.

They stumbled inside the apartment, dragging each other’s weight until they both crashed in the living room, landing on the couch.

Yuuri raised himself with difficulty, leaning over Eros who had closed his eyes and looked a shade paler than usual. The bleeding had stopped, but Yuuri still worried given Eros’ complexion.

“Wait here, will you? I’ll go get us some towels and bandages”. Eros grunted affirmatively. Yuuri made his way to the bathroom – not without stealing a few glances back at Eros to make sure he was alright. He probably wouldn’t go anywhere given his state, but Yuuri wouldn’t start betting on that too soon. Months spent in his company didn’t make Eros any less unpredictable.

Yuuri groped blindly at the wall, reaching for the switch with only his knowledge of the apartment as a counterpart for his lack of contacts or glasses. The sudden light made him squint, its sharp glare almost made him trip backwards. Slowly coming back to his senses, he set out to find th necessary equipment.

In his quest to the bathroom to find towels for both of them and his medical kit, the mirror sent back his disfigured reflection. Despite his lack of contacts, the blurry patches of dirty white meddled with runny crimson and black lines were enough to guess he looked like a mess. Yuuri might as well have auditioned for Pennywise the clown in his current attire and gotten the part. Thankfully, no one had been around to witness the pair he and Eros made on their way back home. At least he hoped so.

“Christ” he swore, taking in his full appearance. If Georgi could see him now, he’d be getting a tongue lashing just for getting his makeup ruined, nevermind the costumes.

That could wait though. For the timebeing, Eros was his priority.

Eros waited for him slumped on the floor, visibly too tired to pull himself back up on the couch. At the sight of his rather miserable-looking companion half drowsing and wetting the carpet, Yuuri sighed. He debated whether he should leave the man on the floor right where he was or move him. Ultimately he settled on the latter, placed the towels on the low table in front of him and bent up to his companion’s level.

“Let’s move you, yeah? You’re wetting the living room”.

Eros finally opened his eyes, sluggishly batting his eyelashes and glancing up at the sound of Yuuri’s voice. Yuuri tried to smile at him, but only managed to grimace.

“Sorry. I must be a fright.”

“It’s no problem”, Eros muttered in a sleepy voice.

“Let me see your wounds.” Without further prompting, Yuuri proceeded to unzip his costume. Eros complied easily and left his master to work, sitting still. Out of context, Yuuri would probably have laughed out loud at the strangeness of their predicament. As a general rule – if “rule” was even the right term –,  Yuuri never laid his hands on Eros or made a move to remove his clothes. Eros always took the lead for him. To have the situation reversed usually brought unease; as bold as Yuuri could be at times, he’d found that he prefered it when Eros took initiatives by himself when they were alone, intimately speaking.

When he managed to completely peel the wet leather off Eros, taking time to remove it without inflicting further damage, he took in the extent of Eros’ wounds. He had scrapes running along his back, thankfully not profound enough to need stitches, but visible enough to tell he would need to be thoroughly bandaged. Eros would have scars, but like any previous injury he’d sustained, they wouldn’t last long.

Yuuri’s eyes drifted to his sides. While he had expected at least a few marks, the skin was bare and untainted. Turned out Eros had naturally started his healing process long ago, probably straight after they’d landed on the pavement. The rest of him was just fine, he assessed. Still, for a second he thought of reaching out and brushing his fingers against Eros’ skin, just in case. One could only be so superhuman for long. He’d find the sore spots to nurse, visible bruises and hidden places he would only need to press lightly in order to elicit a reaction from Eros.

Yuuri shook his head, mentally cursing himself for getting distracted in such a moment.

He started to clean Eros, lightly wiping away water and sweat with the towels, and then wrapping it around his shoulders. He then dropped some drops of disinfectant on the cotton balls, and proceeded to treat his back wounds. Upon feeling the sting against his back, Eros jumped forward, stepping as far away from Yuuri’s hand as he could.

“Behave,” Yuuri growled without much bite, too tired to properly chastise Eros.

Eros moaned a little, but made no further complaint, probably sensing his master’s weariness. He sat back down, and gritted his teeth against the renewed burn of alcohol on his open wounds. Yuuri tried to dab them as carefully as possible, noticing how hard Eros was fighting not to fidget under the cotton balls.

This is new, he mused silently as he put the cotton balls away and reached for the burn ointment inside his box, pouring some on the tip of his finger. Eros didn’t use to be so sensitive to touch. When he touched Eros again, this time making direct contact with his skin without fabric between their skins, he could physically sense the other man tensing under his fingers, but making an effort to  repress his discomfort. There was no heartbeat under his fingers.

How strange, really. Up to now, Yuuri had only thought of Eros as this otherwordly, superhuman being incapable of feeling even the smallest human emotion, whether it be physical or psychological. At least he’d thought as much the first time they officially met – the image of a reckless hunter, face devoid of expression haunted Yuuri during the last semester of his first year in Detroit. A nameless monster who wore his face and carried himself with enough grace to make a kill look like a work of art.

This first encounter left Yuuri beyond shaken. It later took a panicked call to Japan to get direct confirmation from his cheery, though confused mother to conclude that Yuuri was – and remained – to this day their only son and the sole sibling of Mari Katsuki. Not a single twin in the picture.

Besides, the odds of him encountering someone who shared his features were rather low. Hypothetically, six to seven people had a face similar to his somewhere on the planet. But still – finding such a person in Detroit, the very city where he had lived for the past months and struggled to find himself. The then freshman’s wild brain went overdrive, making him shudder at the idea that such a person could potentially be from an entirely different world.

The meetings that followed, official presentations and all did little to ease his mind. More often than not, Yuuri found himself unwillingly running into his doppelganger – or were these chance meetings purely coincidences? And further examination later, Yuuri decided that there was no way Eros and him were even remotely alike. While the similarity between their faces remained undeniable, Eros lacked Yuuri’s soft features and curves. His soft skin stretched on slender limbs, no hint of fat visible, highlighting the proeminent cheekbones and shapely figure that contrasted with Yuuri’s hourglass body and round cheeks.

Differences didn’t stop there. One could also point out the striking contrast between both of their personalities. Where Yuuri was shy and tended to be very expressive, Eros was the king of bitch faces. His stiffness and lack of response to any situation had initially frightened Yuuri. But somehow the sociopath’s cold demeanour peeled away whenever the other was present – or at least he tried. Having a non-existent social life made Eros less empathetic to people’s feelings (not that he actually met any), and yet he and Yuuri shared a connection that went beyond words.

He supposed it might have truly begun when he baptized Eros. And Lord, giving Eros a name before finally settling on his current one had proved to be tedious, if only because he sounded strangely adamant on being treated like a slave.

“Dog” sounded like an insult, and a personal offence towards Vicchan. “Puppet” gave Yuuri a guilty conscience. As his interactions with the doppelganger became more frequent, so did his hyperactivity. The tranquility he usually seeked in his apartment after a long day at work was quickly shattered by an excited Eros, who didn’t miss a chance to jump on him whenever he came back home. This, combined with the blinding smile he reserved for Yuuri, had instantly reminded him of a puppy. So he settled on”Pup”, or “Pet” whenever the mood was appropriate.

As for Eros, it took Yuuri some more reflection, and a college assignment on the theme of love. He’d found something exciting in the nameback then; and as such, it could only fit the man who now bore it. In his eyes, Eros mirrored his divine counterpart: he oozed sexuality from head to toe, and was a walking contradiction; a man capable of the best and the worst, both in life and in his bed, the offspring of Love and War that never quite leaned towards a side of the battlefield nor stood in the middle. Eros was an endless maze of grey closing onto Yuuri by the minute, as he tried to escape his clutches while knowing he’d get caught anyway.

Eros knew him well – too well in fact. It both unnerved and comforted him to know that someone out there was able to see past his half-hearted reassurances and cold facade. Yuuri couldn’t remember the last time he had opened up to someone like that. With Yuuko busy with her triplets and his own family taking care of the onsen back in Hasetsu, the only impression left was that if he tried to break through their tranquility he would shatter everything; bring back unwanted memories and unnecessarily worry them over matters that were truly obsolete and exagerrated. Thinking out loud, feigning to talk with Vicchan when his beloved companion probably didn’t get a word of what he said didn’t ease his troubles either. They opened old wounds that sent him back to his childhood home in Hasetsu, blindly staring back at the stranger whose poster he’d just disfigured in the darkness.

And yet…

Somewhere in time, at a moment he couldn’t exactly pinpoint, Eros has turned into a permanent fixture. Now that they had settled in a routine, life without Eros seemed unconceivable. Yuuri had given in to him reluctantly at first, attributing it to nerves and an unconscious need for closeness that he had repressed for so long since his arrival in Detroit.

Eros held many of Yuuri’s firsts. First real friend, first comfortable conversations, first kiss, first touches…only to name a few.

With Eros by his side, he somehow became more self-assured. In the beginning of their partnership of sorts, with Yuuri slowly making his own assertiveness as a vigilante, the “clone” complimented his appearance, deciding that his master’s chubby parts went well with his disguise. Put in that way, generally with lackluster words and a stoic expression, Yuuri was offended the first times. He was past his teenage self-consciousness, but being reminded that he wasn’t as thin as he desired remained a sensible point. Eros had only grown better with time, and Yuuri had become bolder.

“Good boy,” he cooed softly, caressing the other man’s cheek in reward for his good behaviour. This development had come as a surprise as well. While Eros had rapidly taken to Yuuri like a fish to water, Yuuri had needed more time to get used to the other man’s presence in his life.

Not that Eros had helped in any way. From their first official meeting, his shadow called him by other names than his own, generally “Master” or “My king” among many terms of… endearment.

Eros leaned into his touch, eyelids fluttering and drooping slightly. He often reminded the Japanese man of an animal, more of a feline nature than a canine one like his Vicchan; Yuuri wouldn’t be surprised if Eros suddenly decided to purr in response to his ministrations.

“Let’s move you to the bed, shall we? You must be tired after today.”

“’M not tired,” Eros muttered against his hand, but there was no mistaking the tiredness in his voice. Yuuri merely smiled tenderly at him as he placed one arm under his knees and the other under his arms, and lifted him. Eros laid his head on his shoulder, glancing up at him with a similar smile on his face, albeit strained from the hectic day. Yuuri held his eyes until they reached the master bedroom, and moved his arm slightly so to move the covers, and place Eros delicately on the mattress. The latter automatically latched onto the pillow under his head, burying himself under the duvet and rolling into fetal position. Yuuri chuckled lowly. Yep, definitely a feline.

He was on his way back to the living room to grab a towel to dry himself, but felt something tug at his sleeve.

Yuuri turned. Eros had grabbed him by the tip of his fingers, and was now looking up at him with an almst pleading way. “Will you hold me, Yuuri?” Eros whispered almost inaudibly to Yuuri in his sleepy state, but he was close enough to hear him.

Yuuri exhaled. He desperately needed to get out of his wet clothes, and into a warm shower, but he was practically too tired to function properly, and the sight of Eros in such a dishevelled state was too endearing to ignore. He must have been truly drained if he could only call him by his real name.

Yuuri sighed, defeated from a battle he wouldn’t have won anyway. He pulled himself out of his shirt and pants, only keeping his boxers on, and slipped under the warm covers.

“As if you needed to ask,” he whispered back, rolling towards the warmth of his bed partner who instantly wrapped his arms around him, head pressed where Yuuri’s heart was. He pressed a small kiss on the top of Eros’ head, inhaling the scent of rain and their shared shampoo, and let himself drift to sleep alongside his companion.

the bookworm tag

I was tagged by @ladyhamiltons ♥♥♥

I’m tagging: @borispavlikvsky @la-violet-sent-mari @asapphicmess @sherlocks-east-wind @sarahlancashire (not sure if you all like to read or would like to do this, so feel free to ignore!)

1. Do you remember how you developed a love for reading?

I dunno, I feel like it didn’t even have to develop. I’ve been into reading ever since I finally grasped the concept of it, really.

2. Where do you usually read?

At the moment, my favourite spot for reading (and napping) is my parents’ bedroom for reasons unknown. But I’m also okay with reading while lying on my own bed lol

3. Do you prefer to read one book at a time or several at once?

I would prefer to read one book at a time but I’m too impatient for that, so it’s like a million books at once.

4. What is/are your favourite book(s)?

I’ll list some off the top of my head: Mourning Becomes Electra by Eugene O’Neill, The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov, A Series of Unfortunate Events by Lemony Snicket, Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier, And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie, A Streetcar Named Desire by Tennessee Williams...

5. Do you have a least favourite book?

Oh man. I don’t really have a book that I absolutely hated, but there is a couple that I didn’t like, like Angels and Demons by Dan Brown. To be fair though, I started reading it while knowing I don’t even like Dan Brown (ha!). I just wanted to watch the movie and used the opportunity to read the book first. But at least I got to imagine Ayelet Zurer in shorts while reading it, so... not a complete waste of time.

6. What is your favourite genre?

Crime fiction, thrillers, classic, anything really? I’m not even sure which genre is my favourite anymore, but it used to be crime fiction.

7. Is there a genre you won’t read?

Nope, I doubt there is one at this point

8. What is the longest book you ever read?

Uhh, it’s been a while since I’ve read a really long book... I would say It by Stephen King was at least one of the longer ones - idk how long it is in English, but the Russian edition is quite a brick. Oh, and speaking of bricks, Les Miserables by Victor Hugo definitely counts as the longest book or one of them.

9. What book are you currently reading?

The Martian by Andy Weir, End of Watch by Stephen King, Paradise Lost by John Milton, and doing a reread of The Austere Academy by Lemony Snicket.

10. What was the last book you finished?

Finders Keepers by Stephen King

11. What was the last book you bought? 

I may have ordered five books... accidentally... knowing that I have to save money for the Pia trips which are supposed to happen later this year... oopsies. Anyway, I ordered The Beatrice Letters and The Unauthorized Autobiography by Lemony Snicket because the Netflix show rekindled my love for ASoUE ♥ And the other three books are fragments of Sappho translated by Anne Carson, A Self-Portrait in Letters by Anne Sexton and four plays by Noёl Coward (in one book).

12. Do you have a favourite book quote?

I definitely have a lot of favourites but I can’t really pick one right now (as usual, I forgot every single one of them as soon as I read the question lol). I’ll go with the first verse of T.S. Eliot’s The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock because a). I love it, and b). it calms me down when I’m anxious.

Let us go then, you and I, When the evening is spread out against the sky Like a patient etherised upon a table; Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets, The muttering retreats Of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels And sawdust restaurants with oyster-shells: Streets that follow like a tedious argument Of insidious intent To lead you to an overwhelming question ... Oh, do not ask, “What is it?” Let us go and make our visit.

13. Do you prefer library books or buying books?

Libraries are wonderful, but I personally prefer buying books. I like having them all to myself and reading them whenever I want.

14. Where do you buy your books?

In Russian chain bookshops, mostly, but if I’m abroad I usually take some time to visit English bookshops (preferably the ones selling used books because I love a bargain)

15. How many books do you buy a month?

I don’t really keep score on that. Sometimes it’s zero, sometimes it’s 33456 if there’s a sale or if I want to cheer myself up

16. How many books do you own?

I haven’t the slightest idea.

17. How do you feel about second hand books?

THEY ARE AMAZING, LOVE THEM

18. Do you prefer E-books or physical books?

Physical books, but I’m totally okay with e-books most of the time

19. Do you prefer paperback or hardback?

Paperback. I hardly ever buy hardbacks for myself because they are overpriced and heavy, albeit nice to look at. Not that I’m a huge fan of paperbacks (definitely not lmao) but they just seem more practical.

20. Do you prefer to read trilogies/series or standalones?

Depends on wether I like the book, I suppose. Some books are better as a part of a series, some are better as standalones. I may get bored and not continue reading a series if I disliked one of the books, but sometimes I wish a standalone got a sequel or something. I really have no preference here. It depends.

21. What is the weirdest thing you’ve used as a bookmark?

I don’t think I’ve ever used anything weird as a bookmark? I usually use old price tags and stuff like that but if I don’t have one of those, I have plenty of random paper scraps on my table or a spare notebook in my bag. Also, if the book is mine, I may just dog-ear it and carry on with my life.

22. What is more important to you: characters or plot?

Godddddd. Well, to me, either of them can save the book. I like it when the book has a character I love or relate to, in this case I can let the bad plot slide. The same happens the other way around, so I feel like they are equally important for me.

23. Do you ever judge a book by its cover?

I hardly ever buy books that are completely unknown to me, but I still do judge books by their covers sometimes. Especially if the cover is a still from a film adaptation.

24. What’s the most beautiful book you own?

I initially struggled with this question because most book covers in Russia are ugly as fuck, but probably The Rendezvous and Other Stories by Daphne du Maurier! It’s really pretty. 

25. What is your favorite book to movie/tv adaptation?

I don’t think I’ve ever enjoyed an adaptation as much as I have enjoyed Netflix’s A Series of Unfortunate Events so I’m gonna go with that :)

26. What is the best beverage to drink while reading a book?

Any kind of tea ♥ not vanilla flavoured though, that one’s gross

27. Are you looking forward to any book release? If so, which one? 

Hmm, I’m not really informed about upcoming book releases, so I’m not looking forward to any book in particular. But I’m gonna buy whatever Stephen King writes next as soon as it hits Russian bookstores.

28. Recommend me a book :3

The Color Purple by Alice Walker, We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson, everything I mentioned in the ‘favourite books’ question :)

Basics of the Histogram: From Foe to Friend

A long, long time ago, that is, in days of film photography, it was a rather difficult task to learn how to produce properly exposed pictures. There was no instant feedback and the only way to see how good of a job you did exposing the scene was to wait until the picture was developed.

Nowadays, regardless of your skill level or how advanced are you with any photo editing software, if you are using a digital camera, there’s a slice of digital information that can help you instantly adjust your camera settings in order to take a picture with near perfect exposure. This piece of information is probably something that you might have even noticed before, but never really paid too much attention. Indeed, I’m talking about the histogram, which is often overlooked or completely ignored.

Yes, I understand, that strange diagram with mountainous peaks might seem too technical to go into too much, especially when you have an LCD display on the back of your camera showing you the picture you just took. However, I believe that there are a number of ways to improve your photography once you understand how to read the histogram.

In this article, we will explore the technical aspects of it as well as ways to incorporate it with your workflow on the field and in post-processing.

Breaking Down the Histogram

In essence, the histogram is a visual representation of the brightness values of all the pixels in your image. Generally, we use a combined histogram of the three main color channels (red, green and blue) or RGB histogram. However, if needed, you can dwell deeper into the histogram of each individual color channel.

First, let’s try to break down what exactly is represented in the histogram. If you look at any histogram you will notice two axis – horizontal and vertical. The horizontal axis represents the number of tones and their level of brightness, starting from 0 (pure black) up until 255 (pure white). The vertical axis represents the number of pixels at each level of brightness.

So, if you follow the line within the histogram, those highest “mountain peaks” tell you exactly where on the brightness scale you have the most amount of information about the image. If the “mountain peaks” are stacked more towards the left side, even without looking at the actual image, it tells you that it’s dark. On the contrary, if they are towards the right side of the histogram, the image is bright. This is probably the most essential aspect of the histogram that you would need to remember.

For an image to be correctly exposed, you need to stay within those walls on each side of the histogram. If you expose beyond those walls, in photographic terms we call it clipping. So, if any part of the histogram reaches the right side of the wall, the image is considered to be overexposed and means that every single pixel that reaches this wall, will be represented as pure white.

In simpler terms, all you will see in the overexposed part of the image is nothing else but white pixels. Similarly, if the histogram touches the left side of the wall, it’s considered underexposed and you are left with pure blacks. Take a look at this picture. Here you have a visual representation of how an underexposed, overexposed and correctly exposed histogram looks like.

We established that overexposing and underexposing is something that should generally be avoided, however, there might be situations when dynamic range or difference between the darkest and brightest parts of the scene are so high, that it’s virtually impossible to capture it without clipping either shadows or highlights.

Of course, you can use neutral density graduated filters to compensate for the difference or even bracket the shot and correct the exposure in the final image during post-processing.

Let’s imagine you don’t have these options or the scene is too complex to bracket without failing miserably. In this case, it is advised to underexpose the scene rather than to overexpose. Modern digital cameras are capable to record quite a lot of information about the details in the underexposed areas and bring them out later during the post-processing of the image. However, it is virtually impossible to recover any of the information in the overexposed areas.

Additionally, some cameras are more capable in one thing than the other. For example, Nikon cameras are performing better at recording the details in shadows, so Nikon users have to worry less about underexposing than, for example, Canon users. On the other hand, Canon cameras have a higher capability to record details in the highlights than Nikon users.

Expose to the Right

I would like to mention another aspect of the histogram that might be worthwhile to learn. As I mentioned before, every scene is different and on the whole, there’s no such thing as an ideal histogram as it depends entirely on what are you shooting. However, there’s one piece of advice you might have heard before and I suggest you listen to it: expose to the right!

What it means is that you should generally push the exposure to the brighter levels of the histogram. The reason behind it is simple: the number of tones within the horizontal axis of the histogram. Let’s split the histogram into 5 equal parts starting from left to right, from darkest part to the brightest.

The first section only has 575 tones available, next one has 1149 tones. These two sections make up the so-called darks in the picture. The third section is composed of mid tones and has 2298 tones within it. Last two sections represent the brightest part of the picture and have a combined number of 13,788 tones available.

In simpler terms, if your picture is dark, you will only have a very limited amount of tones available to work with. Let’s say you would like to adjust the picture during the post-processing by increasing the brightness, contrast or do any other changes. Lack of information about the tones will manifest in banding (pixelated gradients), increased noise levels and other problems. On the contrary, if you have a picture that exposed towards the right side of the histogram, you are less likely to run into these problems during post-processing.

The Back of Your Camera Lies

Another important aspect of learning to read the histogram is that once you understand it there is no need to rely solely on LCD display built inside the camera. Why is it a good thing, you ask? Because the LCD display lies!

While it gives a reasonably good interpretation of the image, it’s far from perfect to determine, for example, how correct the exposure is. First of all, the LCD displays only a JPEG preview version of the image, even if you shoot RAW files. Besides, the LCD screen has a much lower resolution than the image itself and the brightness level of the screen might be adjusted too bright or too dim. This is especially important to remember when shooting in very bright or dark conditions.

For example, when shooting northern lights, while looking at the screen in these dark conditions, it might seem that the picture on the back of your LCD is correctly exposed, however, this is misleading. This is due to the way how our eyes adjust according to the viewing conditions. In this case, when viewing the picture it in the dark, it will look much brighter than it actually is.

Making Use of This Knowledge

There are a number of ways how to implement an understanding of histogram in a photographer’s workflow. First of all, most of the modern cameras have an ability to represent histogram on an LCD screen even before making a shot – through live view mode. This way you can adjust your exposure exactly, even before taking a shot.

Ideally, I would suggest making it a habit to check the histogram after each shot. If that sounds too tedious, one can at least use “highlight alert” function built in the camera. Once a shot is taken, it is possible to view the image and allow the camera to detect if there are any areas that are overexposed.

Additionally, you can use your knowledge of histogram while making adjustments to an image during the post-processing. Increasing or decreasing brightness might result in lost pixels and to prevent that you can always rely on monitoring the histogram while making sure that no clipping occurs.

It doesn’t necessarily make you a professional just because you are able to read the histogram, but learning it can be very helpful at times. I hope that this article helped you to understand the basic principles behind the histogram and with time you will be able to incorporate this knowledge in your workflow and ultimately improve your photography.

About the author: Kaspars Dzenis is a landscape photographer based in Iceland. The opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the author. Dzenis conducts photo tours and workshops in his country. You can find more of Dzenis’ work on his website, Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, 500px, and Instagram. This article was also published here.

from Photography News https://petapixel.com/2019/03/15/basics-of-the-histogram-from-foe-to-friend/