#((So i might have to switch to a sketchy style because lining takes a very long time. the lines will be clean to my Best ability but

[batwynn]

Hello. So I have a genuine, honest question as someone who isn't an artist. I saw you made a post about AI art floating around Tumblr lately. How does one differentiate between AI-created art vs. ACTUAL art? Some things have been easier to notice than others (ie: YouTube videos and like, moodboards and the opening to Secret Invasions) but for art specifically, are there any key things to look out for that make it obvious it's AI generated? I do not support AI in any fashion but in this day and age I do find it increasingly more difficult to tell the difference between something that was created by AI vs. created by an actual person.

Hi anon! So, heads up this might be a bit long of a post but I wanted to point out some things that I don't see frequently mentioned in other posts about A.I stuff.

First things first: Look at their other 'art' pieces. If they have a generally consistent style, a consistent type of work (Realism vs ink art for example), characters you see more than once and from different angles, character sheets, etc. You're going to notice if someone suddenly switches from little ink doodles to fully colored and realistically rendered 'art'. Now, this doesn't mean everyone switching styles or mediums is A.I, but it means to take a closer look if you notice something vastly different than their usual stuff. More A.I. clues below!

For things to look for, there's a lot of different clues but generally you're going to notice a certain new car shine to everything. Everything will be a little too clean, even if the style they are ripping off is sketchy. Sketches will have crosshatching that doesn't really make sense or random lines in a place that an artist probably would not put there. That being said, here's some examples where that isn't as noticeable:

Here you've got your usual body/anatomy problems. (Plus some elements I'll talk about later as well. This one's got it all!)

Glitchy foot, glitchy hands. glitchy eyes. Strange proportions for legs that don't exactly fit a stylization, but more of an glitch. Now, of course an artist can draw 'glitchy' things like this either by accident or intentionally, but you really only see these types of things in A.I vs actual art of a similar style. Realism artists are generally not adding extra fingers or varying sized fingers, they're not rendering the foot to only have too many toes, missing toes, and the foot also... sort of part shoe. Unless art artist is otherwise intentionally including these elements, it's generally a clear cut example of A.I stuff. (For example: Different body types and disabilities exist, and there are people with different shaped hands, shorter/longer fingers etc. But you will also usually find some kind of info with the post about the person/character that will tell you about them that can clue you in on if it's A.I vs real art.) If the artists are drawing in a style with 'exaggerated' anatomy, you can almost always see that as a persistent and intentional STYLE in their art. If they aren't, this is something you'll really notice in A.I vs realism. It can be especially true with people who fully render realistic art because it's not in line with the style, and the relevant elements of rendering art this way. Artists who do realistic rendering at this level generally know their anatomy very well, and are going for realism in all elements of the art. Some stuff like the exaggerated long legs in women are kind of everywhere, but the hands, the foot, the lopsided winky eyes (I don't know how to describe it) are not things a professional artist rendering realistic art would generally do. It's just not in line with the style, or the ability/skill that the artist has worked on. (Again, unless completely intentionally and in line with the person/character.)

For 'real' life items like the tables below, you've really just got to ask yourself: Is this physically possible? Do all the elements make sense and actually work together in a real way?

Sometime it's hard to know if you don't have any experience with, for example, acrylic and wood table making. But there are things that just don't work in real life, and there are things that maybe someone can do, but even in the provided examples it just doesn't make sense to do. For example, the little 'tree' hanging from the bottom of the left table. Would that be possible? Probably. Would someone do that? Probably not. If you're really stumped, sometimes just looking up videos of people making that type of thing can give you a better idea of what actually works together, how it's made, etc.

Here's something that really helps when you're really struggling and zooming in for every detail: TANGENTS

Ok, so tangents in art are when you're drawing a thing, like hair, and it's lining up with a different object to the point where the visual line continues from one part of art to another and it looks really unrealistic/weird. Most artists figure out how to avoid this on their own just from noticing it and feeling uncomfortable with how it looks, while others learn via the internet etc. It can happen in anyone's art at any skill level, but the amount that it happens in A.I stuff is HUGE. It's almost every single image, and you can really notice it in places where something overlaps like hair or, from the above image with the money: there's two bills that just kind of bleed together. From the same image, you can also see how her hair bleeds into the wrinkles of her jacket in an unnatural way. Comparatively, you can see in the Hela art I did below that there are overlapping elements like the hair and the ribbons behind it that do not mesh or bleed together.

Something else to look at: Symmetrical elements that don't work right. So, this is kind of getting harder to see depending on what they're generating as a subject matter and the style they are using. As always, there is a disclaimer for this. Art does not always have perfect symmetrical elements in it.

For example: in the real world, this dude's coat would have more clean symmetrical elements. As it is a sketchy doodle, they're there but they're not 100% symmetrical. With a LOT of A.I stuff, you'll notice that something meant to be mirrored on the other side of the clothing, room design, etc. is actually completly wonky/incorrect or not even there at all.

For example, in this A.I we have missmatching elements on both sides. Not only in things that could be designed to be asymmetrical, but also things that 100% should be mirrored. The left side under the buckle on the shoulder has a diamond shape. The right has a weird spikey thing. The little leaf pattern on the gold lapel area appears to be just blobs on the right side. The left shoulder area has a button and additional little detail under the buckle area. It is not there on the right side. And, again, some of this can be intentional with real art. Her arm bands could be intentionally different, for example. But elements that clearly should be reflected on the other side and are very clearly not are generally a good clue that it's A.I. A few last moment things to look out for:

Styles that are recognizable someone else's whole thing. Example: The monstrosity that someone just generated that is supposedly Calvin and Hobbs. It's pretty easy to tell because it looks like shit right now, but generally if someone is ripping off a distinct style of someone famous, it's probably A.I or at least worth double checking.

Did they suddenly start doing ______? This could be anything, backgrounds, drawing horses, full color, etc. But if they're suddenly, overnight just BOOM they're 'drawing' in a whole other style, it's suddenly really rendered, and/or there's no 'growing pains'/work shown that they've started working on drawing the thing they never drew before... It's time to take a closer look. Last but not least, look for the language they use around the stuff they're putting out. A.I people are often... a certain type. They use a lot of that NFT bro lingo that can tip you off. The tags might be all over the place for styles, or tagging certain famous artist's styles, etc. They also can be a bit more blatant in the tags and just outright tag A.I or NFTs somewhere in there. And, in the end, if you really can't tell and you really love the thing and want to share it: Ask an artist. Or just don't share it.

Thanks for reading, and I hope this is helpful in some way!

[asktheprivatekids-blog]

what r u dummies doing now

————–

[A rescue team appears

Asks are open for both parties, foe and friend. Who will you talk to first?]

(( ANYWAY hi guys we’re back after a long, very unfortunate, hiatus. Sorry about that I ran out of brain juice for a very long time there. But im readyish to continue now. Updates still might be random but hey theres progress

I will be talking about other things in the tag too so weeee ))

[cullen-collective]

do it. write it. do it

Say. Less. 

*

There’s never anyone actually interesting in these chats. 

There’s me, who actually wants to discuss music, the way it feels, the lyrics’ poetic meanings, the way the drums crash like they’re my own heartbeat. And then there’s guys who might want to discuss that, but are probably here for the other occupants of the forum: girls obsessed with band members. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t have anything against them, and I fully understand geeking out over Pete Wentz (although I’ve always been more of a Stump girl) or Gerard Way or even Chester Bennington. I just keep having to switch to new forums when it’s clear that no one else wants to talk about the music, but instead have guys who claim to look like Adam Lazarra scam the email addresses and photos off those girls. 

Which brings me here, to another new forum chat, scrolling through older posts about who drums harder: Travis Barker or Mike Kinsella, as the chat scrolls by on the right side of the screen. I was mindlessly scrolling, mentally agreeing or disparaging the opinions of other posters, too scared to comment. This site was pretty neat, and the account I’d had to create to post comments and chat had spaces for a list of my favorites, which I’d happily included. It also had a little bio, which I’d filled in with my name and age, as well as one of my favorite lyrics.

I kept one eye on the chat as it went, keeping up with the current discussion of how best to cut your bangs. I typed up a quick note that the best way to cut your bangs was to see a local hairdresser so you didn’t end up with Buffy season three bangs instead of the side-sweep you wanted. 

Emo-ward: But is it really, truly in the spirit of punk rock if you don’t cut them yourself?

HellsBells: I think to be a real punk, you’d probably need to like different bands. To be alt, you can visit a salon or resign yourself to botched hair. 

Emo-ward: Seems like the majority is going to choose the second option.

HellsBells: Well, sometimes we must suffer for the cause. 

Emo-Ward wants to send you a private message. Accept. Decline. 

I was stunned. No one ever requested me. My cursor hovered over “Accept”, my finger twitching. My mother, as scattered as she was, had always warned me about being too open online. What if this was like, a forty-five year old man who preyed on kids in chat rooms? What if it was a serial killer? What if it was someone from school trying to humiliate me? What if it was a kid from school who wanted to humiliate me and also did a little serial killing on the side? 

Okay, I was being ridiculous. I knew nothing about this person. Hell, I hadn’t even looked at their profile. So I right-clicked the name in the chat and opened another window to his profile. Like mine, the profile had no picture, and instead had a graphic. It was Gerard Way but his hair had been edited to be bright green. I snorted, remembering my own, which was Britney Spears edited with a scene girl haircut that this chick in my Western Civ class had emailed to me as a joke after seeing the Ataris CD in my portable player. The name listed was Edward, the age as 16, and he had a lyric on his profile too. 

“Watching from the floor.”

I recognized it, small as it was. It was from “Dear Maria, Count Me In”. I was a little surprised. Great song choice. 

It seemed he wasn’t too sketchy. 

I went back to the original page, steeled my nerves and hit “Accept.” 

Emo-ward: Do you really have time in your veins? 

My tongue pressed to the inside of my cheek. If this really was a sixteen-year-old boy, I was in trouble. He had just referenced the lyric in my bio, (from “Understanding In A Car Crash”: “It starts and stops and starts and stops again.”) and made it a joke. I had to one-up him. 

HellsBells: Yes. I am also a pen.

Emo-ward: Where are you from, girl with time in her veins who is somehow also a pen?

I smiled at my screen. I couldn’t help it. He was kind of funny. 

HellsBells: Forgive me, sir, if I’m not very specific. I’m from the Southwest. You?

Emo-ward: Well, miss, I will follow suit. I’m from the Northwest. 

There was something about the way he wrote that made me want to trust him. Maybe it was that we had similar chat styles. Although… My mother had always said I talked like I was sixty. What if he was sixty?! Edward is an old man's name. 

HellsBells: You kind of talk like an old guy, you know that, right?

Emo-ward: That’s because I’m 104. 

HellsBells: Wow. You use the internet pretty well for a senior citizen.

Emo-ward: They had us take a class. So, what’s your favorite album right now?

I smiled. Funny, and hopefully not an old guy. 

HellsBells: Will you stop talking to me if I say Take This to Your Grave?

Emo-ward: Only if you stop talking to me for saying mine is Meteora. 

HellsBells: Only if you tell me your favorite song off the album is Numb. That’s where I draw the line. 

Emo-ward: While that song isn’t my favorite, it’s pretty good. Anyway, the actual favorite is Somewhere I Belong. 

I thought about that for a minute. I liked that song, but I hadn’t listened to it a lot. I’d have to give it another go. I had Meteora around here somewhere. I found the album in my bookshelf, put it in my portable player, and put the headphones on. I skipped to the right track, and let it play while I answered. 

HellsBells: Not that you asked, but mine is Patron Saint of Liars and Fakes.

Emo-ward: Aggressive. I like it. 

I burst out laughing. Out loud. In my house. On a school night. At eleven. 

“Bella?” my mom called from across the hall. “Are you on the computer?” 

Shit. “Uh… no?”

I heard Mom start giggling. “Go to bed, kid!” 

“Okay!” I grimaced at the screen. No way I was ever going to hear from this guy again. But… I had to try, right? He was funny, and he had great taste in music. 

HellsBells: Well, grandpa, if you can get the orderlies at the nursing home to let you use the computer on Friday, I’ll be here. Until then, I’m not an adult and have to deal with things like school nights. 

Emo-ward: I’m sorry about that. I never sleep, so my school nights are exactly like regular nights. I’ll be here. 

I shook my head at that, holding in a giant smile. You know what, fuck it, I let the smile loose. It wasn’t like he could see me. And I let “Somewhere I Belong” play on repeat until I fell asleep. 

[just-mirko]

BINARY BNHA HACKER AU - CHAPTER 1

MASTERLIST

Mirko x F!Reader

Warnings: swearing. nothing much yet ;)

WC: 1.3k (short because its just the beginning)

—

You were just a simple hacker. Exposing buinsess leaders and gathering information for whoever offers the highest amount. But when you take a strange job and are suddenly invited to an underground school for the best hackers in all of japan, Life is suddenly far from simple.

—

Hey so I basically stole most of the school design and hierarchy from Kakegurui (the amazing gambling anime 10/10 would recommend) but twisted it to match a hacker style au. Idk I guess 707 is getting to me. Reader is female, but there isn’t any lemonade here so if need be I can change the pronouns if anyone wants. :) Other than that, I hope you like the first chapter! I hope to make this a series Maybe like 50k max. Anyways, lets get onto the story. This is my first dedicated fanfic so bear with me if I don’t update that much! 

—

The consistent waves of tapping sounding from the keyboard below me was the only sound present in the room, save for the occasional rubbing of my blinds up against my windowsill. The slightest breeze flew through the crack in my window, billowing and swirling around my fingers.

          It was something I knew I should not be doing. God knew it was all forms of illegal, but of course, that would not stop me. I mean why would it? I got a burner drive, 2 VPNs and at least a dozen forms of encryption on my ip address, but something felt off. This job was too easy.

          From the beginning I knew it would be simple, but that never meant a simple job could not take hours. It had only been 30 minutes sitting at my computer before I cracked the first firewall with ease.

          An “anonymous” (or so they thought, I could back-trace to their identity within a minute) client had requested for a high-risk job. My brain instantly told me to turn it down, as messing with companies was one thing, but the government was another. Lucky for them, the hefty offer of almost $3,000USD easily swayed me.

          I continued my assault on my keyboard before a small little black tab on my screen showed up and began spewing out information. To anyone who did not know what to look for, they would see it as mindless code, but there. Right there, nestled between two little brackets was a chain of numbers. Copying it by hand onto a scrap of paper then switching onto another computer monitor, I entered the digits onto a pre-determined code with one purpose. To track.

          Normally this phase could take up to 1 hour depending on how hard the person on the other side of the screen was trying to hide their dirty little secrets, so I sat back, and watched the progress bar begin to tick forward in slight increments.

          I had to stop taking money orders. One day I would be found, and with how often I accepted the jobs, and how little I cared these days to change up my encryption methods, it’s not going to be long before I got caught. Yet I still did it. Was it the headlines on the news? “Local millionaire exposed to embezzlement?” I found that out, the work had my name all over it. Was it the knowledge that I maybe, just maybe, might be helping the world just a little bit?

          No.

          I knew it was not. Deep down, I knew it was the thrill. God each time I feel the power. I can break down corporations. I can break down people! I can destroy careers and I can mess shit up. Ha!

          Maybe the pride was getting to me. My popularity was rapidly growing on the black market as more and more people demanded to have their enemies exposed. The thing is. Only rich people can afford to get rid of their enemies, which puts me in a very profitable place.

          Another factor was a few special rumors going around. Apparently, there were ‘hacker hunters’ trying to match people’s signature corrupt handiwork to a name. Online we all went by pseudonyms and pen names mine being Shad0w, but in the real world I guess we all were people too, none of us  aware of what we were capable of.

          At the amazing age of 17 I became the 12th most popular hacker-for-higher. And at the opportunist age of 18 I got my first jab to the neck. I guess got paid by a pretty sketchy person and faced his consequences. That day I had to physically destroy one of my old hard-drives just out of fear that someone was still coming for me. I did not get hurt physically of course, but the threats they shot left a deeper mark than a bullet could of. Since then I have been careful. Always covering my steps and hiding in the shadows of the web. No matter how hard I tried though I cou-

BRZZZ!

          A loud hum from my computer snapped me awake, and after further inspection, the loading bar was complete. The neon colors were taking their toll on my eyes. What a struggle it was to keep them open.

          The whole ordeal barley took an hour… and I was getting paid $3000? No. That could not be right. My cursor stood above the ‘next’ button that would retrieve all the data from my target, and hesitantly, I clicked it.

          The little loading circle of doom (kasdjfkdjkdfd) spun around my screen before disappearing leaving nothing but white.

          Nothing but a white screen.

Just a second. Did my computer crash? What is this.

          Nothing but a white screen.

          What is happening? This CAN’T be right. It was supposed to lead my to the retrieval page. I should be collecting my pay right now.

          “Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuuuuu” I whispered to nobody other than myself. As I clicked around the screen, even tried existing before sitting back and looking at it. It was dauntingly blank, and panic was slowly beginning to creep it. It must have been a trick. They have all my information now. Is it just a virus or something more what is going on?!

          As if the computer could read my mind, it began to release a distorted sounding audio from the speakers before a voice finally came through. Obviously having gone through software to make it unidentifiable, the voice was deep and smooth.

          “Dear (y/n) (l/n). Hello. We have been watching your progress for a while.”

          Oh no. They know my full name. At this point, they might know everything. This is bad… really bad.

          “Since you began at 17 years old, you have successfully destroyed a lot of people’s lives. Good for you.”

          As dull as the computer augmented voice was, it was dripping with sarcasm.

          “Despite this, you have led to the downfall of quite a few toxic corporations. No matter your good though, these actions are obviously quite illegal. If you have no intention of getting well hacked yourself then it would be in your best interest to accept.”

Accept what? The voice paused before all noise cut out completely. What screen dimmed slightly before text began showing up line by line in the blandest of fonts.

The text only read:

This is your request to attend UA, the prestigious underground academy for the architypes of modern genius.

We welcome you to our decryption and data collection course.

Below we have attached the address and date for when courses start.

Should you choose not to attend, pretend you never saw this.

Should you choose to hand the address over to authorities, We will know and stop you before you get the chance to.

We look forward to seeing you in class.

Principal Nezu.

UA High

222 Enshu St.

Musutafu Japan

First semester start date:

April 14th, 2276.

You may arrive at the school 1 day before to set up in dorms. Failure to arrive on time on the fist day will result in termination from the course.

Welcome to the class of 2280 (y/n)(l/n)

[hellzyeahwebwielingessays]

The Not-So-Amazing Mary Jane Part 28: AMJ #3.2

Previous Part

Next Part

Master Post

As with issue #2 (and all future posts) I advise you to read the prior instalment as I’m not going to recap the first half of the issue again here.

Moving on, we finally get to meet these new crewmembers. They consist of:

H.E.R.B.I.E. 1.05, a version of the F4’s robot buddy

Screwball, a “… self-styled as a performance artist and the world's first live-blogging super-villain. She was an Internet personality and social-media attention monger to such an extent that she committed crimes on camera.”

And Master Matrix. He's a whole mess. Basically he is the world’s most powerful LMD, and a highly dangerous weapon. He views Spider-Man and Deadpool as his ‘fathers’ in a weird way.

Beck starts to justify the hires, but MJ says that if they believe in the project as she does and have earnest intentions then she’ll reserve judgement.

Screwball tells McKnight that she’s leaked some fake photos to mislead the Savage Six and buy them some time. With that McKnight is eager to get to work.

Let me be upfront about this, I know little about HERBIE or Master Matrix. I’m not an F4 expert and I never bothered with the Spidey/Deadpool ongoing. So I will admit that maybe I’m missing some important context here. My research on the Marvel.wiki didn’t yield any results on who HERBIE 1.05 is beyond him maybe being the regular version of HERBIE. And last I checked the regular HERBIE wasn’t a bad guy. Master Matrix in contrast seems to have been a morally ambiguous character initially but grew to be a good guy. He has a kill switch he willingly handed over to SHIELD just in case he ever went rogue.

So 2/3 of them are perfectly fine. I don’t even know how much MJ would know about HERBIE or Master Matrix. However, Screwball?

Screwball is a straight up criminal. Not an especially dangerous one granted, perhaps not even a D-lister. But a criminal nonetheless. MJ has seen her before, as she witnessed Superior Spider-Man assaulting her on TV in Superior Spider-Man v1 #6.

Realistically, given how horrified MJ was by the incident you’d imagine it’d stick in her mind. Additionally, given how Screwball is an attention monger and very into social media I’d imagine MJ would have some awareness of who she is. MJ herself is very up-to-date with the latest trends and would be plugged into modern pop culture and social media.

However, for the sake of argument let’s say MJ doesn’t remember Screwball at all. Let’s say she’s never heard of HERBIE or Master Matrix. Given how in the first issue she was taking note of the criminal and super powered crewmembers, wouldn’t she at least suspect these people might be shady? Wouldn’t she double-check somehow that they are legit? It all leads back to the same complaints I made between my coverage of issues #1-2. She’s not even checked that Beck is out and about legally for God’s sake!

What’s so much worse is that the story acknowledges  that these hires might be shady. Beck is concerned MJ will have reservations. MJ decides to reserve judgement.

This means she doesn’t fully trust them, that she acknowledges they might  be sketchy.

And her conditions for reserving judgment depend upon even shakier criteria.

How the Hell can she tell in this singular moment, when she’s barely spoken to any of them, that any of these people:

a)     ‘Believe’ in the movie like she does?

Or

b)     Have earnest intentions?

She’s not verified any of them are reformed or on probation. She’s got no idea what they are fully capable of or if they are on the run.

Once more she is engaging in blind faith. She is trusting the word of a super villain who’s entire skillset revolves around lying.

The final thing to take note of is the fact that the crew are actively avoiding the Savage Six; hence the new shithole location.

Um…why aren’t they just contacting the authorities or organizing protection for themselves?

SIX super villains just attacked them and want to do so again. That’s surely grounds to bring in the police or the West Coast Avengers or somebody.

Surely, MJ herself could arrange that.

Alright, maybe you could argue they want to avoid arousing suspicion because of their criminal crewmembers. But this leads back to the fact that MJ wouldn’t stand for criminals working on the movie and Beck wanted press attention for the movie anyway. In fact if a civilian like Diperna knows about the movie how do the press not? How could no one have noticed that there are super powered people and criminals working on the set?

Everyone should know that about the movie anyway, so why not bring in help from superheroes or the authorities for protection?

The answer lies in the fact that this story is incredibly half-baked and inconsistent.

I will also add that on a purely personal note I dislike 616 Screwball so just seeing her annoys me.

The next day filming has been delayed again because of bad weather. Mysterio decides they should shoot in the caves.

Filming inside some caves nearby an abandoned zoo whilst it’s raining. Seems like a health and safety nightmare doesn’t it?

If so then it’s yet more evidence of how vain and selfish Mysterio is.

Days later, we see some crewmembers intimidated by Screwball. Their conversation with her reveals she hacked someone’s private information and threatened them to deliver food to them.

MJ overhears this conversation and learns that, in order to evade the Savage Six, Screwball arranged an unmarked truck. MJ decides to solve the problem by contacting Peter and asking if he knows any teleporters in L.A.

Later, Cloak and Dagger show up and deliver food to the cast and crew.

*pinches bridge of nose again*

God, where to start with this?

So, Screwball has definitely committed a crime in the course of her role as production manager. Hacking someone’s cloud server is very much illegal and an invasion of their privacy.* Depending upon whether you believe her or the truck driver she might also have threatened the driver’s life.

Screwball admits to having done this and MJ over hears it. And yet MJ is still ‘reserving her judgment’? 

I guess earnest intentions+believing in a movie>>>>>>>>>>>harming people in Mj’s book right?...

...what the fuck Williams seriously…

But the stupidity goes another level when MJ contacts Peter so she can get super powered assistance.

Let me get this straight, MJ and Beck are on board with using superheroes to deliver food to them, but not as protection for actual super villains who want to hurt them?

And MJ in particular doesn’t feel she should let Peter or other heroes know about Mysterio or his criminal crewmembers. BUT she will still contact them for a far less serious reason?

Anyone still arguing that for MJ to ask for help would be reductive to her/female characters no longer has a leg to stand on. MJ just used super heroes to solve a problem for herself. Scratch that, she asked her super hero boyfriend to solve a problem for her. And by bringing in characters like Cloak, Dagger, HERBIE and Master Matrix AMJ has arguably invited the wider Marvel universe into the story too. At which point MJ has no end of options available to her to ensure Mysterio isn’t a danger. She just isn’t using them because Leah Williams Mary Jane is not the Mary Jane we’ve known and loved. She’s this weird facsimile with all her social skills and charm but none of her deeper moral convictions.

Finally, if Beck and MJ (hypothetically) aren’t getting protection because they have crooks on staff then why bring in super heroes at all? I admit we never see what crewmembers are in Cloak and Dagger’s line of sight, so arguably MJ asked the criminal crewmembers to scram. But a hint of that would’ve been nice.

As filming inside the cave proceeds we see the Spidey actor struggling with his lines. The scene depicts ‘Spidey’ saying ‘You’ve gone too far this time, Mysterio. Now it’s personal.’ Amidst a street full of injured/dead people.

Mallorie is playing one of the injured people.

First of all, Mallorie wasn’t an actor or extra earlier in the story. But I suppose it’s not uncommon for crewmembers to have small roles in movies and with a reduced cast it’s likely she was just filling in.

More problematically, the scene is clearly depicting the fact that Mysterio has hurt (even murdered) people in his past. He’s done stuff so bad that Spider-Man, a hero, has been personally enraged by his evil acts.

This is in the movie. It’s in the script. MJ read this. MJ is seeing this recreated.

This eviscerates  even the slightest remnant of deniability on MJ’s part. As I’ve argued in prior instalments, MJ SHOULD know Beck is a killer and a violent person. There was no denying that. But even if you were being wilfully ignorant or belligerently insisting only the events of this mini-series ‘counted’, the mini-series just spelled out for you that beck has seriously hurt people and that MJ knows  that.

But she is still allowing him to make his vanity project. She’s still letting him walk free. She’s still chummy with him. She’s still showing no sign at all that she’s going to make Beck face justice.

On the last pages the actor playing Spider-Man quits after a light falls nearby. This leaves Beck and MJ sad, wondering how they can finish the film without Spider-Man.

I have nothing to say about this beyond a heavy light falling inside a wet cave should’ve been an obvious health and safety concern.

So, that was Amazing Mary Jane #3, quite possibly the single worst issue of the entire series thus far.

Honestly, I’m going to soldier on through this series, but I’ve made my points.

There is no hope of fixing this series now.

Not because there couldn’t be a justifiable explanation (or several) that could address all the problems. But because it’s become plain to me that Williams will not provide them to us.

Williams frankly seems like someone who understands aspects of MJ as a character. She knows how to make those aspects shine.

But there are other aspects she so fundamentally doesn’t get that it debilitates any good she might’ve done.

And more poignantly, even within the context of the story she is telling she has been incredibly inconsistent and at times downright baffling.

She either needs a better editor or she might be someone who ultimately wasn’t a good fit for this character/story.

*It’s extra bad considering several years ago in real life there was a major news story about the private photos of celebrities being hacked, perhaps the most notorious example being Jennifer Lawrence. I’m like 99% sure Leah Williams heard about that because I  heard about that just from tumblr and I’m not someone who used to work in Hollywood nor do I work in the entertainment industry in any capacity.

P.S. How does Peter not know about the Savage Six?

Super villain attacks aren’t that common outside of New York city and the villains in question are predominantly associated with operating in NYC.

Three of them are very recurring enemies of his, one of which committed some very violent crimes during a traumatic recent event; the ‘Hunted’ storyline.

They attacked the set of another of his very recurrent enemies that his lover is working on.

None of this happened in a secluded location, it was all perfectly public.

So how on Earth does he not know about this? Why hasn’t he contacted MJ to ensure she’s okay? Why isn’t he riding down there to see if he can help her or trying to arrange his Avengers buddies to provide some protection?

The only answers are that MJ has lied about that again, Williams is mischaracterizing Peter indirectly or this story is badly written.

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[itsclydebitches]

RWBY Recaps: Vol. 6 “Uncovered”

This is a re-posting from Nov. 4th, 2018 in an effort to get all my recaps fully on tumblr. Thanks!

So much for Thursday/Friday postings. This episode ripped my heart out through my teeth, so you know I've gotta get thoughts down on paper. What’s today’s theme? The folly and inexperience of youth, but as much as I want to dive straight into my impassioned defense of Ozpin, we need to make sure that we unpack the new intro first. And, you know, the rest of the episode...

The highlights have already been circulating for the last week, most notably the animation of Ozpin’s (presumed) past reincarnations… and the fact that the one right before the guy we think of as Oz looks like a dad. He looks like Tai’s brother. One of these Ozpins is not like the others and honestly I kind of love it. Seriously though, in the realm of actual analysis there are a number of details I want to make sure we put a pin in before moving forward. Let’s make use of our good friend the list:

The beginning is super fluffy with the gang hanging out while waiting for the train, Ruby chasing after Weiss, and Blake watching them fondly. Out of the whole group Yang is the only one who appears upset, staring morosely out the window where we get a flash of Adam. I think this is significant given that she seems to be the most volatile of the group right now. As we’ll see, though most of them have beef with Ozpin, Yang is the one instigating the fights.

We have a moment where the camera moves through Maria’s eyes and then immediately does the same with Ruby’s. Are Maria’s eyes also important? Perhaps her semblance is connected to her blindness somehow.

We see (I think??) Roman’s hat blow by right before the hooded person (Cinder) is broken up by red slashes across the screen. Omg could he actually come back? I mean yeah, he literally got swallowed whole by a grimm, but he also might have cut himself out a la Hannibal Chau style. Please bring back my flamboyant fave and have him get revenge on Cinder. That would be so very excellent.

There’s a young woman (Salem) staring up at a statue of Oz. Last week it seemed weird that this statue looked so very much like his Vol. 1-3 reincarnation, but considering we’re in Jinn’s story world she might be borrowing imagery that the gang is familiar with. Either that or the reincarnations tend to look like each other in time? Idk. To be decided.

Jaune slams Ozpin up against a freaking wall. Given how this Volume is going so far, I’m pretty confident that it’s Ozpin and not Oscar. Wonder if Jaune is finally going to confront him about his part in Pyrrha’s death…

Plenty of potential WhiteRose (as mentioned in the first recap). Seriously, I try to keep shipping out of these (a few Ozqrow jokes aside…) but I’ve also gotta call any potential setup as I see it, and given the happily chasing after her, using her glyphs at the end, the final shot of Weiss helping Ruby to her feet, Ruby collecting dust cartridges later in the episode, her calling Weiss's name in Jinn's world, Weiss doing the same for her… all of this could just be them re-developing their relationship after the separation. Could also be something more.

Also in terms of that final shot: having the whole group—Ozpin included—standing together and facing down some threat is very reassuring after this week’s episode. Ngl lol.

Finally, we have those grimm arms reaching out to drag Qrow into darkness, notably while he’s drinking. “Wow,” I say to myself. “Those arms sure do look a lot like Cinder’s!”

Oh look. We open on Cinder.

Classic rule of television: if you don’t see a body they’re not dead yet. (Unless, apparently, you’re Ozpin.)

(…but maybe not Roman.)

She’s clearly terrified, waking up in water with her eyes darting every which way, groaning when she finally pulls herself to shore. It’s always good to throw your villains into moments like this where their basic—human—instincts take hold. It makes them a little more sympathetic (if not more justifiable) and therefore more compelling. At this point I really have no desire to see an attempt at a Cinder redemption arc, but even I’m wincing at that panicked look on her face.

She’s having trouble summoning up her power, presumably because she just got her ass beat by another Maiden. It comes back pretty fast though, which really helps put into context how powerful these women are. Even freezing them from the inside out is only going to knock them out of commission for a little while.

Cinder takes a look way up to where the tree stands and pounds her grimm hand against the rocks in frustration. Apparently these things are ridiculously strong because it opens up a crack in the mountain, letting a sliver of light shine through to her face. (A trope normally reserved for the heroes.) Cinder then uses her One Punch Man powers to break out, considering that her flames are still sputtering.

Outside she meets a sweet, no-name woman who makes the mistake of stopping to help. Cinder steals her clothes, her money, and presumably kills her. RIP nice lady just trying to do her grocery shopping.

We realize that Cinder woke up weeks ago as we move into another flashback at the house. There the team has their first conversation about the relic.

Ruby: “We need to take the relic to Atlas?”

Qrow: “That’s what Oz said.”

For all his banter and bluster, Qrow is a very passive character. He has so little faith in himself that he needs to put it in others—so he fosters pretty much all of that onto Oz. Ruby is the one who subtly questions why they’re taking the relic all the way to Atlas. Qrow is the one who just reiterates that these are Oz’s orders, so that’s what they’re gonna do. Right now he’s not questioning his general and I’ll be interested to see if and how that changes after the events of this episode. One of the reasons for Qrow’s dark descent in the intro?

We have a funny exchange where Ren points out that the borders of Atlas are closed, but no worries. They have a missing Schnee heiress to get them through! What’s less funny is when Qrow mentions that they actually wanted to seal the relic back up in the vault but can’t because they don’t have access to the Spring Maiden. Cut to a guilty looking Yang. Not that they’d have much chance convincing Raven to help them (what is she up to with Tai??), but again: Oz isn’t the only one keeping secrets.

Ozpin comes out leaning heavily on his cane and wincing with each step. Hmm. Another indication that, despite his power, he’s surprisingly fragile? I’m still wondering how Cinder won that fight and it looks like he isn’t recovering as quickly as the rest of the group, despite the fact that everyone took a beating in Haven. Something to chew on.

Still talking about the relic, Jaune mentions that they don’t know what the thing actually does and we get to see Ozpin’s conflicted expression before he whirls around with a smile. He’s clearly weighing what he should and shouldn’t tell them, secrets later revealed in the episode. He says that the relic has a “wonderful and incredibly dangerous ability”—important wording! We’ll come back to that. It can answer any three questions every 100 years, provided they’re not about future events. Ozpin claims that the questions were asked before the relic was sealed away so, sorry, no knowledge to gain right now.

Jumping a little farther into the episode, we also continue the plot-line with Cinder sneaking around in the dead woman’s clothes, realizing that she’s very much a wanted criminal now. She heads into this super sketchy spider gang and asks for information on Team RWBY and the others—not going back to Salem then—throwing down the woman’s lien as payment. The leader assures her that she’ll have their locations within a week… despite the fact that she already knows where they are. The “big guy,” Hazel, was asking first.

Back with the group. Ruby finds the relic lying nearby while Yang tries desperately to get her bike out of the snow. Despite having agreed to this plan of separating and stranding themselves, Yang is expressing her frustration by treating it like a cruel trick of fate, complaining about that as well as the fact that they’ve “gained a defenseless old woman.” After Maria introduces herself and comments a little about being hard of hearing, blind, and how her glasses need a tuneup, we slam hard into the heart of the episode. Good. I’ve got things to say about how these kids are acting like… well, kids. Yang has basically just had a temper tantrum in the snow and Qrow rightly points out that they need to try to keep calm so as not to attract more grimm. Yang—as we expect—uses this opportunity to segue back to the relic. She wants to know why Ozpin lied to them. Oscar thinks they deserve to know too and forces (maybe?) the switch.

“I didn’t lie,” Ozpin says. He just didn’t provide them with all the information. This immediately sets Yang off because that’s just a technicality. An excuse. Right? Well, yes and no. Do people sometimes manipulate others by doling out pieces of information and then claiming, “I didn’t really lie”? Yes, absolutely. But there’s also something to be said for adults withholding information in an effort to protect their charges. Like… if a kid asked you how someone died there’s a BIG difference between saying, “They were murdered” vs. “Oh, well the murderer tortured them for days and then sent pictures of it to their family and then gutted them very slowly….” Yeah. Sometimes you don’t need that kind of shit weighing you down and in this case Ozpin has an additional, practical reason for not telling them that the relic attracts grimm: their worry would just bring more. Which is exactly what I said last time. Telling them wouldn’t change the situation—there’s a very good chance it would actually make things worse—so he tried to give them what little peace he could.

Weiss: “You know, I’m getting real tired of people choosing what’s best for me”

An understandable statement? Sure, but Weiss is still a kid. Yes, 14, 15, 16, and even 17yos are still kids, whether we want to give them the label of “teenager” or not. It’s sometimes hard to remember given their responsibilities, but Team RWBY is still a collection of developing brains challenging thousands of years of experience. Kids never like it, but sometimes adults do know what’s best for them. All of this is complicated by the abuse in their lives—notice that Yang (Raven), Weiss (parents), and Blake (Adam) are far less trusting of Ozpin than Ruby is—but that doesn’t change the fact that a teenager is not equipped to make these world-altering decisions in the same way an adult is. Combine this with the fact that they have implicitly acknowledged Ozpin as their leader and them thinking they can challenge his well thought-out choices in this manner is a big problem.

Ironically, Ozpin and James have a lot more in common than they think they do when it comes to leading: they both understand the importance of compartmentalization, it’s just that James is more obvious about treating subordinates as subordinates. Ozpin cozies up to people and then they’re surprised when they don’t have his ear. As I said before, you can trust your army without giving them every single secret. That’s dangerous, and the girls aren’t entitled to dangerous information just because they want it.

Ozpin says he’s not entirely sure why grimm are attracted to the relic (another lie?) and we learn that he was the one who spun the story of Lionheart’s heroic death. Again, Yang sees things in a very black and white manner—that’s another lie and lies are bad—and Ozpin angrily argues that Lionheart doesn’t deserve to have all the good he did erased by his final mistakes. That's a pretty loaded conundrum and I’m definitely not equipped to untangle it. Rather, I’m more interested in how the girls are completely unable to consider that viewpoint. Because (common theme here) they lack the experience that Ozpin does. To them Lionheart was just a Bad Guy and should be treated accordingly because they’re teenagers who have never faced a betrayal like that. They might have a very different reaction if, years down the road, one of Team RWBY succumbed to Salem and betrayed them in the end. Would Blake want Yang’s name forever tarnished if she gave in and joined Raven? Would Ruby be okay with the whole world thinking nothing but awful things about Weiss if she went dark? No, it’s more complex when you love someone… but they’re too young to understand that yet.

Age matters here. Experience matters.

Just as important, Ozpin is an emotional, flawed human being who is being cut very deeply right now. That is, the girls have 100% condemned Lionheart despite the good he did in the past… and Ozpin has no doubt done things just as bad, if not worse. Though unintentional, their rejection of Lionheart’s worth is a rejection of Ozpin’s as well. If they can’t consider forgiving Lionheart for his mistakes, how could they possibly forgive him? “Does one lapse in judgement truly negate all of his good?” he asks, a question he no doubt poses to himself all the time. As Ozpin defends his friend he’s also trying desperately to defend himself and what he’s hearing from Yang is, “No. You’re irredeemable.”

Whether we consider Ozpin’s past to actually be irredeemable or not, that’s a pretty hard blow. Remember last recap I pointed out how shocked he looked at Ruby’s support? It’s because this is what he’s used to hearing. Everyone (like Qrow) looks to him to be their leader and then reacts with fury when he makes decisions they don’t like; people insist they care for him and then condemn those who have made far fewer mistakes. And he’s been dealing with this for thousands of years. Honestly, I’m surprised the guy can even get out of bed anymore.

“Do you really think Leo was the first?” he growls when Yang insists that he can trust them. Of course Leo wasn’t the first to betray him and, as Ozpin points out, he said those exact same words. You can trust me. Ultimately, why are these kids any different? Because they’re the heroes? No, that’s the perspective of the audience. From behind our fourth wall we know that Team RWBY is trustworthy, but Ozpin has no such reassurances. If a friend he had for years could suddenly betray him like that, what the hell is stopping a bunch of former students who are already frustrated with him?

Also… just pointing out… Yang insists he can trust her and then two seconds later she, along with Blake and Weiss, have their weapons pulled on both Ozpin and Qrow. So he can trust them… but only if he does what they want and tells them what they want to hear. And people question why Ozpin has trust issues.

I do want Ozpin to trust more—both for himself and for others—but my god does he have good reasons for holding back.

Sadly, we don’t get to see Yang try to grapple with the revelation that she’s parroting Lionheart’s words (because, as I’ll discuss a bit below, RWBY ultimately dodges any real sticky moral questions and segues back into simple story logic). Instead the conversation is derailed as Ozpin realizes that the relic is missing.

Ruby has it, but she’s not willing to hand it over. So much for my theory of her sticking by him this Volume. At least right now, she’s acting as much like a kid as any of the others. In what I think is a reckless move, Oscar realizes that Ozpin is hiding something from them and briefly takes control, telling Ruby to say the name Jinn.

She does and all the snow stops.

A sort of genie appears and says that she was created by the God of Light to “aid humanity in its pursuit of knowledge.” Jinn then reveals that Ozpin did lie outright. There are still two questions left.

And with this revelation we come to the crux of the matter. His own very personal history aside, compartmentalization aside, why doesn’t Ozpin just give the gang all the information they want? Why all the lies? Because they’re children and right now they’re acting like it. Yang isn’t interested in making sure everyone gets to a safe place after Qrow mentions that they’re probably attracting grimm, she wants answers right now and she won’t move until she gets them. They’re not considering the hypocrisy of demanding Ozpin’s secrets when they’ve all had (and for some still have) secrets of their own. The girls aren’t responding logically to Qrow’s innocuous “Hey” later—why does he deserve their wrath?—they’re reacting with pure emotion, pulling their weapons on him for daring to just try and voice an opinion. That is an incredibly extreme reaction and in my opinion shows how little they’re thinking through their actions right now. They are, to put it bluntly, acting like a bunch of bratty teenagers. They want something and the adults in charge won’t let them have it, despite having numerous good reasons for withholding it (both practical and personal). So they throw a fit. The only difference is that instead of stomping their feet these girls have crazy powerful weaponry and a relic at their disposal.

All of this culminates in the release of Jinn. Let’s think back to that moment in the house: Ozpin tells them that the relic has a “wonderful and incredibly dangerous ability”—emphasis mine. Do the kids stop to wonder why the ability to answer questions is called incredibly dangerous? No! They’re just fascinated by the shiny new toy. Ren thinks it’s cool, Blake is amazed, Yang notes that picking the right questions would be a big responsibility but doesn’t back down from the challenge, and Nora immediately leads them in a charge to determine what they’re going to ask. Not one of them says, “Hey. What’s the catch here?” They’re all ready to jump into asking three questions without thinking through any of the potential repercussions of messing with an ancient object they know absolutely nothing about.

This no doubt tells Ozpin, as it told me, that they’re still kids and as such are in many ways still thinking like kids too. They don’t have the experience and the maturity yet to consider the consequences of their actions. What? Do we think someone as controlling as Ozpin just let two questions remain without a very good reason? That it’s a coincidence that immediately after he—or someone else—used the first question the relic was sealed away? No, there’s some downside here… but the gang never considered that possibility. So rather than explain all that and risk them insisting that they use the questions anyway—as kids are wont to do—Ozpin says the questions are used up for now. That way there’s no risk to them.

I’m thinking that when Ozpin charges Ruby he’s trying to reach her to protect her somehow. It's not just about him keeping his secrets. Jinn’s smoke is reaching for her too and he’s trying to get there first. He’s flawed, yes, but he’s not going to attack her. When has Ozpin ever been violent towards them? When has Ruby ever hesitated to defend herself? This isn't an experienced Huntsmen going on the offensive, nor a talented Huntress scared for her life---it's a desperate man and a young girl panicking at this mess of a situation. Because let's be real, if Ozpin had wanted to take the relic by force he easily could have. But he wouldn't do that. He’s not the one who drew his weapon here. No, if there’s a catch attached to these questions he wouldn’t want Ruby to pay it. He literally begs her on his knees not to use the relic… and when that fails he gets desperate and uses incredible speed to try and reach her before the magic does.

Remember, he wanted to immediately seal the relic back up in the vault and would have it they’d had access to the Spring Maiden. It might not just be because they’re worried about the relic falling into Salem’s hands. It sounds like there’s danger attached to using it too…. and people would absolutely be tempted to use it.

As we see here.

Ruby says, “What is Ozpin hiding from us?” WHICH IS ABOUT THE WORST QUESTION YOU COULD POSSIBLY ASK.

That’s not a targeted question to help you understand what Oscar was hinting at before. That’s an entirely open ended question that, depending on how Jinn works, will show you every secret Ozpin has ever had. What kind of fucked up invasion of privacy? Granted, we don’t have time in RWBY for something like that to actually happen—looks like Jinn is going to show us Ozpin’s greatest mistake/regret, something he thinks they’ll abandon him because of—but that doesn’t change how horrible that question was. I don’t care if the girls are right that Ozpin needs to work on trusting people more. You know how you don’t help people do that? By forcibly pulling all their secrets out into the open without their consent. Ruby’s question wasn’t just horribly invasive, it wasn’t thought out at all because no matter how frustrated she might be I don’t think she’d ever want to do that to a person. She, like the rest of her team, isn't thinking clearly.

Finally, you know what the real kicker is? All of this—everything I’ve mentioned throughout this scene—is done in front of Maria. What’s the latest definition of oblivious immaturity? Demanding that your leader reveal his secrets in front of a complete stranger.

Honestly I wanted to rip out my hair through this whole part of the episode. It’s easy to identify with Ruby and the gang because they’re our protagonists. The show wants us to empathize with them, but in this case it doesn’t change the fact that they’re acting their age and making really uninformed decisions. Despite the huge range of ages in this fandom, sometimes I feel like I’m watching RWBY very firmly from an adult’s perspective while the vast majority of the fandom is watching from the perspective of our heroes. They see the mean adult keeping secrets—and in a black and white universe secrets are bad!—while I’m seated firmly in Camp Context. It’s like that post about watching The Little Mermaid at different stages of your life:

As a child: She loves him! How romantic…

As an adult: You love him? You’re sixteen and you met him yesterday!

The thing is, I know RWBY isn’t going to take that adult perspective. That’s not how most stories go. Ozpin’s secrets will be revealed, he’ll probably be forgiven, and he’ll learn the lesson that it’s Bad to keep things from your friends. The intricacies of the situation and his very justifiable reasons will be brushed aside because he’s not our primary hero. Ruby is and her view of the world is that nearly blind faith in humanity. She doesn’t understand that after thousands of years Ozpin’s fractured faith doesn’t mean he can’t encourage others to be better than he is, she just pouts and says he should trust them specifically because he preaches trust as a general principal. At its core RWBY follows the simplistically moral logic of a fairy tale and though that’s great in many ways, I’m still at times frustrated by how the show introduces adult viewpoints without ever having the narrative justify them. Ozpin tells the group that he has more experience than them and has carefully considered his choices, but we’re encouraged to frown at him like the rest of the cast. Except Ozpin is right! He’s right!! He’s right and he should say it!

But most people don’t seem to agree with me. Oh well. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

We end the episode with Jinn’s magic reaching the group before Ozpin can reach Ruby. They’re all seeing the same vision of a castle and a beautiful woman, Jinn’s voice telling them a fairy tale:

“Once upon a time there stood a lonely tower that sheltered a lonely girl named Salem…”

So Salem’s backstory coincides with whatever Ozpin is so terrified of them figuring out about him. Full disclosure: if he starts crying next episode I will also be an emotional wreck. Here’s hoping that whatever the girls see, they’ll start mending their trust in one another once it’s over. I’m not sure I can take a whole Volume of everyone eviscerating Ozpin for trying to protect them, himself, and the rest of Remnant.

What’s he doing? His best. It’s far from perfect, but give the poor immortal a break.

Here’s hoping for one in episode three!

Other Details of Note

Of course it’s raining when Cinder leaves the vault. We need appropriate atmosphere for her dramatic collapse and rejuvenating murder lol

Except can we please have women remove their heels when everything goes sideways? I’m sorry, but if I were that exhausted and injured getting the spikes off my feet would be the very first thing I did.

Love that they essentially gave Maria’s glasses eyelids. Makes it very easy for her to express herself.

Okay so we pretty much know for a fact now that Ozpin and Oscar are starting to share thoughts both ways. I can’t imagine that Ozpin went, “Yeah so I’m still hiding something and you can figure it out by saying ‘Jinn’ to the shiny relic over there, but don't tell anyone else, okay?” Oscar is starting pick up on things as they (presumably) merge.

The relics are entities! And now we know why the the statue in Haven was of a woman bound in chains—she’s Jinn. Look at Ozpin’s dramatic ass designing lairs that reveal secrets no one realizes are there.

“It’s a pleasure to see you again, old man”—evidence that Ozpin either used that first question himself, was there when it was used, or has used the relic at another time in the past.

[lavieendonna]

Snapshot || ArtMajor!Ashton AU (Chapter 1)

Summary: A ‘Brushwork’ spinoff where Tillie - VCA’s resident library assistant - has to supervise Ashton - VCA’s holiday troublemaker - and she discovers that a collection of photographs is the biggest inconvenience she could have ever agreed to. Date: 7 Feb 2019 Requested: lol no  Pairing: Ashton x OFC (original female character)  Words: 4.9K Warnings: none! A/N: So this (and two other spin-off stories) have been in the works for... so long. It’s got a long way to go, and it’s still in an experimental phase. I wasn’t going to post this until Brushwork was completely wrapped up but I thought this might motivate me to finally tie the knot in the end of that. So let me know what you think, if you liked it, if you didn’t, if you want more... I could use all the love I can get! Big Love xo 

Ask | Masterlist | ‘Snapshot’ Spotify Playlist | Next Chapter | ‘Snapshot’ News | Brushwork

Chapter 1: Disappointed Soccer Mum 

‘So, are you coming out with us tonight?’ Wren asked, and I could tell that she was teasing me because she was already laughing at the thought of me going with her wherever, just waiting for me to say ‘no’. I rolled my eyes at the older girl, a small crooked smile finding my lips.

‘I’ll give you one guess.’ I laughed at her.

‘Thought so.’ She chuckled back, and I felt like a normal person would have been offended that Wren wasn’t in the least bit surprised that they weren’t going anywhere with her. But this happened every other night and had for nearly four years now, and we were both just used to this whole routine. Wren planned something fun, she offered for me to tag along, I politely declined and made my own entertainment for the night.

‘Well,’ Wren checked the silver watch dangling on her slender wrist before looking back down on me. I was sat at my usual spot in the very back corner booth of the restaurant, my things sprawled across the table. ‘Do you want anything before I clock off?’ I shook my head but smiled gently.  

‘I’m okay.’ I told her quietly. ‘I’ll grab some leftovers before I go upstairs.’

‘You make sure you do.’ Wren gave me a stern look with a matching pointed finger and I just nodded quickly, almost afraid to disobey (even though I knew I would). She had this habit of getting a little mothering toward me about this stuff. Actually, when I thought about it, everybody in the restaurant had the same habit when it came to me.

It made sense, I guess. Harvey owned the restaurant so he was, naturally, the head of this little family situation thing he and his staff had going – I was basically part of the furniture, the way I treated the restaurant like a living room, so I guess I was kind of included in all of that. Not to mention he and Queenie had just become first-time grandparents, so to Queenie I was like her third chance at parenting.

Wren was a little different; like me, she was single and lived alone –  but she was a few years older than me so she was entering that stage in her life where she just wanted to take care of somebody. I was still studying and had a bad habit of neglecting my basic human needs, so naturally I was the prime candidate for her to unleash her inner caretaker.

Wren was also essentially the closest thing I had to a “best friend”, and though she’d never explicitly said the words I knew that she was aware of how I’d ended up living in the flat upstairs. Harvey knew because he was my landlord, and Queenie knew because she was married to Harvey. But I really had this gut-deep feeling that the older couple had told Wren too. I didn’t mind too much; she never mentioned it. She and the bosses just hovered and mothered and asked me why I hadn’t eaten yet.

‘Did I just hear you turn down food?’

Queenie had come marching out of the kitchen, hairnet almost falling off of her head of greying black hair, and what looked like a tomato sauce covered wooden spoon sitting in the front pocket of her stained white apron. Her hands were on her hips, brow furrowed together with pursed lips, and I got the feeling this was what a disappointed soccer mum looked like when she stormed into the living room to find the kids playing ball in the house after she specifically told them not to.

‘Uh, yes?’ I nodded, not meaning for that to come out like a question. ‘I’m not hungry.’ That was clearly the wrong answer, I realised, as Queenie’s disapproving stare turned into one of bewilderment.

‘I haven’t seen you eat all day, Missy.’ The older woman scolded me. ‘It’s eight o’clock! You need to eat, you can’t keep starving yourself!’ I rolled my eyes, all in good faith. This was also a common occurrence.

‘I ate upstairs, I promise.’ I told her with a small, reassuring smile. ‘And anyway, I was just about to go home, right after I finish this email.’ Queenie shook her head at me, hands folding across her chest, hoop earrings hitting her neck with every shake. I could’ve bet everything I owned and then some that she was scolding me in her head. In Spanish. Loudly.

‘At least take some soup home with you.’ She said very pointedly, and before I got a chance to decline she’d taken off into the kitchen again to get the damn soup that, honestly, I probably was going to forget about and let it go off in the back of my fridge.

I chuckled quietly as I turned back to my laptop screen that was glowing bright in the dim mood lighting of the back of the restaurant. The feeling of Queenie making a fuss over me, while it made me kind of uncomfortable (even after all these years), ultimately still felt kind of nice.

The email in question, however, that sat unfinished on my screen, was starting to give me a migraine. I’d been trying to write it for a few days now, but every time I tried it sounded so… whiny. It sounded like a “why me?!” kind of email which, to be fair, was exactly what it was but I knew that there had to be a more professional way to word it.

Hi Leanne, I tried again.

I understand the situation; however, I feel that Carolyn or Stefan would be more suited for the task because…

And this was the part where I got stuck every time. I couldn’t say that Carolyn and Stefan had more experience than I did, because that wasn’t true. And I couldn’t say that I didn’t have time because Leanne was my boss and she’d been conspiring with the school’s Head Office and, you know, it was kind of their job to search me in the database and just knowthat when I wasn’t working in the library or in class that I had literally nothing else to do.

No, the truth was that I just really didn’t want to conduct community service in my library, supervising some delinquent dude who couldn’t sit still over the break. I enjoyed my solitude here, and I liked the quiet and I liked being on my own. I actually got things done when I was working alone, and if I had to babysit all semester then I could kiss all of that goodbye.

Hi Leanne, I tried one more time.

That’s fine. Please have him come to the service desk at the library at 12pm with his paperwork.

Thanks,

                Tillie Daniels

Well. So much for fighting the power. I hit send and prayed to God that I wouldn’t regret it. I mean, I already kind of did, so I guess I was hoping I wouldn’t regret it even more.

After packing up my things and begrudgingly accepting the damn soup that Queenie shoved under my nose in the plastic takeaway container, I waved goodbye and called out my farewells to the rest of the staff on my way through the kitchen before I pushed through the back door that lead into the back courtyard, headed for the metal stairwell just to the left and flush with the building.

When I first moved to Melbourne after getting accepted into VCA, I nearly dropped dead thinking I was going to have to live in the actual restaurant on a stretcher in a pantry somewhere – either that or worse; that Harvey and Queenie were going to kill me in the courtyard and feed my flesh to their customers. But, no, neither of those things happened. Instead I was shown what looked like a fire escape out the back. It still seemed sketchy to me, but against all better judgement I followed the Cook and his Wife up the rickety stairs and, lo and behold, I was pleasantly surprised.

The flat wasn’t overly big, but without the unnecessary clutter of furniture and the like it looked quite spacious for what it was. The two windows in the living area were big and wide and let in so much light I didn’t really know what to do with it all. They took up most of the far wall, and in front of them were a couple of cushion-clad bench seats – very FRIENDSstyle – and the thought of curling up on one of those with a good book and some coffee got me more excited than I’d been in years. The kitchen was on small side, but it had the most gorgeous white faux-marble benchtops I’d ever seen, and the bathroom benches seemed to match too which brought great peace to my inner OCD.

The bedroom was a modest size, although I did have to buy a hundred-dollar IKEA closet for the corner of the room. It did have a tiny ensuite attached to it, though, and the little window inside had a gorgeous view that was, probably, my favourite in the whole house.

It was like there were just layers and layers of mini horizons outside of the small rectangle. There were the tops of the trees that lined the street behind the restaurant, and then behind that I could see the tops of all the buildings and town houses of all the streets that lay behind that. Off in the distance was the silhouette of the Melbourne skyline, and beyond all of that was the rest of the sky that seemed to just stretch on forever.

I locked the deadbolt of the front door as soon as I walked inside, switching on the main lights as I somewhat floated through the flat putting my things away. The soup went straight into the fridge to be forgotten, laptop on the counter in front of the only barstool I owned and my bag hung on the back of my bedroom door. I finished tidying what little mess there was in the flat, and when I felt content, I flicked the kettle on and found a Bluetooth speaker to let some gentle music float around me to fill the space.

The flat didn’t feel empty or anything, it was just a habit of mine that I had formed over the years. My whole life had been surrounded by noise – every home I’d had was noisy whether it was from music or TVs or loud conversations. These days I had the library, which had the gentle buzz of students and teachers, and the restaurant that had the rustle and bustle of staff and customers.

The flat just had me. And having control over the noise that surrounded me made the flat feel like it really belonged to me this time.

By the time the kettle finished boiling I had swapped out my jeans for a pair of warmer sweatpants and some UGGs, making a coffee carefully – despite it being nearly half eight in the evening – and finding my old, weathered copy of Mansfield Park. To say it was my favourite was a slight understatement; the spine was currently being held together with so many layers of invisible tape that it really wasn’t invisible anymore.

As I sat down on the banquette seating in front of the window my phone started to ring. I quickly put my book and drink on the coffee table beside me, pulling my phone out of my pocket to find Queenie’s number and picture lighting up the screen.

‘Queenie?’ I answered without a proper greeting, part of me worried that something was wrong with Harvey. Queenie didn’t usually ring this late, especially since she was just downstairs and I’d just seen her barely half an hour ago. Harvey was a pretty old guy (I suspected, anyway) and he’d not been well the last couple of weeks. I felt like it was pretty fair for me to think that maybe something had happened. ‘You okay?’

‘Hi, yes, everything’s fine.’ Queenie reassured me right away, though I wasn’t a hundred percent convinced. ‘Sorry, Mija, you’re probably already settled for the night.’

‘It’s fine, Queenie, I was just having coffee.’ A small lie, technically, but she didn't need to know that.

‘At this hour?’ The older woman laughed on the other side of the line. ‘Dios Mío, girl, you’ll be up all night.’ I chuckled but rolled my eyes as if Queenie could still see me – though with her Super Spanish Mother Powers I wouldn’t put it past her if she could.

‘Ah, you know me.’ I said simply. ‘You all good? Did you need me to come back?’

‘Nah, nah, stay there.’ She said gently. ‘I just wanted to ask a favour from you for tomorrow morning.’

‘Sure, Queens, what do you need?’ I picked up my coffee and had a quick sip, knowing that sometimes Queenie got carried away on the phone. Knowing my luck my coffee would be cold by the time I finished talking to her.

‘I have to take Harvey for another appointment tomorrow so we won’t be able to come in for the Leone’s delivery in the morning.’ Queenie said and my heart sank as soon as I registered the words because I knew exactly where this was going. ‘I just need you to let the girls in the back when you hear the buzzer, she’ll know what to do.’

‘Girls?’ I made a face. ‘I thought Tony and his son did the deliveries?’

‘Jules said something came up so they’re sending Rocky and Claudia instead.’

‘Huh.’ I gave a quiet sigh. ‘Alright then. What time are they coming?’

‘Probably around seven.’ I could almost hear the grimace in Queenie’s voice as she spoke and I groaned inwardly. ‘I know it’s early – I can ask someone else if it’s too much trouble, Tills.’

‘Nah, don’t stress. I can do it.’ I told Queenie as I pinched the bridge of my nose, feeling the migraine begin to make a comeback. ‘I have to be up early anyway.’ Another lie, but I felt like I owed Queenie this much. And regardless of that, even though I didn’t technically work for the restaurant, I was probably one of the better people she could have asked anyway.

‘Ah, gracias, Mija, really.’ Queenie gushed. ‘I owe you, okay? I’ll have Harvey cook you up something nice.’

I tried to decline the offer but, naturally, Queenie was having none of it and pretty much planned the meal there and then. Eventually she let me go and, as expected, my coffee was cold. I sighed again, taking the mug back to the kitchen to tip the rest of the contents down the drain. I wouldn’t be needing it anyway, I had to be up early apparently.

The thought of an early start as well as that stupid supervising shift in the library, the prospect of tomorrow really didn’t seem so great. Switching off the music and shutting the blinds gruffly, I hauled myself to bed and fell face-first into the pillows, almost wishing that I would suffocate before morning came.  

Seven o’clock rolled around quicker than I wanted it to, but my saving grace was that both Claudia and Rocky, the Leone’s delivery boys for the day, looked exactly how I felt. Claudia had this long dark hair that was thrown up into a messy top-knot, Rocky’s shaggy (almost) pixie cut hidden under a maroon beanie. Both of them were in oversized hoodies and tights, which made me feel a hell of a lot better about my UGGs and sweater paws while I helped them unload the van into the restaurant kitchen.  

‘You guys don’t really do this often, do you?’ I asked with a small laugh as I helped Rocky with a particularly heavy box of what I guessed were vegetables while Claudia took a phone call from their father, I deduced based on the fact that she was repeating ‘yes I know,Dad’ many, many times.

Rocky scoffed at my question, trying to disguise it behind another yawn.

‘I could ask the same thing,’ She said with a curt – but friendly – gesture at my feet once the box was set down on one of the steel counters. ‘Are those uniform around here or what?’

I glanced down to the UGGs on my feet and laughed.  

‘Ah, no.’ I admitted. ‘No, I don’t actually work here.’ Rocky’s eyebrows shot up in a silent question. ‘I live in the flat upstairs – Queenie asked me to supervise the delivery.’

Rocky seemed to smirk at the new information, dark eyes crinkling in the corners just a little.

‘What, they don’t trust us?’ She asked me with a tilted head. I rolled my eyes at the girl, Claudia coming back around the corner (though she was still on the phone, and unimpressed by the looks of it).

‘More like they don’t trust the bozo’s in here.’ I grinned and Rocky gave a loud laugh with a slightly impressed nod before we dragged our feet back outside to the van to help Claudia with the rest of the boxes. 3

We all yawned our way through the next hour and we all sat and had coffee while the morning staff prepared for the day and before I knew it, it was almost nine and it was time for them – and me – to go back to work.

*

I could think of a hundred different things that I could have been doing that would have been more productive than just sitting around at the service desk in the library waiting for this Ashton guy to grace me with his presence.

At twelve thirty, when he was officially half an hour late, I’d already sent out overdue emails to half of the students in the entire university and had started stamping the new books that had been delivered earlier in the morning. That was supposed to be his job, and here I was doing it for him. In those thirty minutes, I’d looked at my watch more times than I had all year. I was aggressively unimpressed.

‘I’m looking for, uh… Tillie? Tillie Daniels.’

‘Who’s asking?’

‘Uh, I’m Ashton.’ He said. ‘I was supposed to be here at –’

‘Twelve.’ I finished for him. When I looked up at him, face rock hard and glaring daggers, he was looking down at me over the desk, shifting his weight from foot to foot sheepishly with a small smile twitching on thin lips. ‘You know you’re late, right?’

‘Yeah… I’m sorry about that that.’ He said, smile wavering (though he didn’t look away from my killer scowl, which surprised me since I was usually pretty good at making people uncomfortable with that Angry Librarian Face). ‘I woke up late and had to do a make-up test for one of my classes. Then my roommate was having a bit of a crisis, then I couldn’t find the library –’

‘Did you bring your paperwork?’ I cut him off. I wasn’t interested in his life story, I just wanted to get this over and done with. The sooner he started stamping books, the sooner I could get back to inputting the new books into the system and, more importantly, the sooner my shift would be over and I could ditch this guy.

‘Oh.’ Ashton said dumbly. ‘Yeah.’ He fumbled around in a seemingly empty satchel that hung over his shoulder for a minute or two before he produced two slips of crumpled paper and an envelope. He handed them to me and it took me a couple of moments to actually take them from him, just because I hadn’t quite finished staring.

He was wearing a loose, white muscle shirt and black board shorts, vans on his feet – with no socks, since no guy seemed to feel the need to wear socks anymore – and his blondish hair was slightly wet as it curled around his ears. I cocked an eyebrow, my fingers brushing his as I took his paperwork.

‘Couldn’t find the library?’ I questioned and the guy kind of shrugged. He didn’t seem uncomfortable, but he didn’t elaborate on it either which made me think that he hadn’t thought up a detailed enough story to continue the lie. I just blinked away the thought, trying to flatten the papers on the counter while Ashton stood there, hands in his pockets as he waited for me to read them.

One was pink and was double sided. It was a time sheet, one with a grid that I realised, without even looking at it properly, that I was going to have to sign and stamp every day for the next few months. The other was a letter from the Dean, explaining that Ashton’s presence here was mandatory. There was no way he was getting out of this, and consequently that meant I wasn’t getting out of this either.

‘What’s with this?’ I asked as I turned over the last item in my hands, trying (kind of) to smoothen out the creases while I looked for a label or stamp. But there was nothing on it, it was just an off-white, sealed, blank envelope. It barely even felt like there was anything in it. I stared at Ashton incredulously and, once again, he just shrugged without even looking bothered by it. He pulled out his phone instead and started to scroll or text or whatever, and I suppressed the urge to scream.

Usually I was pretty patient with people and strangers, but for some reason there was something about this Ashton guy that just really irked me. He was standing there, lying about why he was late and wasting my time, and then he had the nerve to mess around on his phone like he wasn’t wasting my time as well as his own.

I took a breath and counted to five in my head, trying not to snap too soon. This was already going to be a long semester – I didn’t want to make it even longer by completely throttling the guy on the first day.

‘Alright, whatever.’ I huffed, stamping the pink slip and handing it back to him gruffly. Ashton shoved his phone back in his pocket and took back the time sheet hurriedly, a flash of annoyance passing through his eyes that made me roll my own.

I took a second to glance around the area where we were to see if there was a free three feet of space for Ashton to work and shuddered inwardly when I realised that the only table that wasn’t currently being used was almost right next to me. I fluttered around for a bit, letting Ashton tap his feet and look around with a glazed over and bored expression while I stood and pushed the trolley of new books a few feet down the long librarian’s desk. I found the other School Stamp and set it down in front of a desk chair, rolling an empty trolley between his chair and mine to create two separate work stations.

‘You can come ‘round over there,’ I finally spoke again, gesturing to the small entrance gap at the opposite end of the desk. ‘You’ll be stamping the new books we got in yesterday.’

‘O-kay.’ He pursed his lips but made his way around anyway, dumping his bag next to the chair before he sat down. ‘That’s it?’

‘That’s it.’ I said shortly, picking up a textbook from the pile and sitting it in front of the blond. ‘Just open the book –’ I opened it. ‘– stamp the inside –’ I stamped. ‘– flip to the back –’ I flipped. ‘– stamp again.’ I stamped again. ‘If it has a jacket, stamp the inside of the jacket too. Stamped books go on the empty trolley; you’re here ‘til two.’

I dropped the newly stamped book onto the empty trolley before I sat myself back down in my own chair, intending to ignore Ashton for the rest of his stay here. But as I stole one last annoyed glance at Ashton, he was grimacing again.

‘Two?’ He asked, though I wasn’t sure it was really aimed at me entirely. Regardless, the whine annoyed me – probably more than it should have, but I really didn’t have time for this today. I was not in the mood.

‘I should make you stay ‘til halftwo, you know.’ I shot, unable to help the acid in my voice. ‘You were late by like thirty minutes.’

‘Yeah, you mentioned that.’ Ashton sighed, taking the first book from his full trolley very begrudgingly. ‘I just thought I’d be doing something a little more… interesting.’

There was no way this was real, like, he was not saying that right now. I’d never met somebody so obnoxious in my life.

‘Maybe you should have thought of that before you pulled whatever stunt landed you in here in the first place.’ I snapped back, and I watched as Ashton recoiled though he was smart enough not to comment.

‘Can I at least listen to some music while I do it?’ He asked with a slightly arched brow, gesturing to the headphones he’d just pulled from his pocket. I gave a small shrug but nodded.

‘Yeah, do whatever.’ I huffed and that was end of it.

With a tense silence falling between us – finally– I was able to turn back to my computer and finish sending out the emails I needed to. Despite how annoyed Ashton had made me, it was surprisingly easy to tune him out. He found a kind of rhythm for his stamping that sort of set the pace for the afternoon. It was a little slow, but it was better than him giving lip and annoying me with actual words. I would take it, I decided, and used the constant thudding to gently guide me into my own rhythm until the sound was nothing but dull background noise.

I’d progressed from emails to homework over the course of time, but when a literary analysis failed to peak my interest I moved on to a piece of writing I was in the middle of brainstorming for the school magazine. I didn’t contribute to the VCA Focus often, but the Autumn Edition was going to be published soon and the Editor in Chief, Rae, actually came to me and asked if I would write something to be featured.

It was an honour, really, I’d never actually been askedto write before. Usually I submitted things on a whim. They were weirdly popular, my pieces. I saw my poems and flash fiction pieces being talked about on the school forums and in classes more often than I thought they would. It was flattering – and exhilarating at the same time since nobody (except for Rae) knew that those pieces belonged to me.

I was never sure why, but it never really appealed to me to have my name out there. Part of it was that whenever I was writing I seemed to just dissociate from my regular self and become somebody else, and I felt like if I ever put my name onto my pieces I would lose that part of me forever. TD wasn’t Tillie Daniels. She was somebody else who didn’t know anything but writing for writing’s sake.  

It wasn’t the cleverest of pseudonyms, but it was enough. There were an infinite number of students in this school with the same initials, so I still felt safe. I felt insured.

This particular piece was starting to do my head in a little bit, though; it felt like I’d been ‘brainstorming’ for days. Rae had said the theme for the Autumn Focus was something along the lines of “longing” and “desire” – but I wasn’t really sure if I was supposed to take that literally or not. Then there was the added problem that I didn’t usuallycorrespond to any particular theme when I wrote. I just wrote whatever came to me in the moment, or whatever felt right, and the Focus usually accepted anything I submitted because there wasn’t usually a set theme in mind. Rae was introducing a new system this year, for some reason, and whether she knew it or not she was messing with my own system (or, you know, lack thereof).  

I was immersing myself into research and definitions, as time went by, and before I knew it, Ashton was tapping me on the shoulder and bringing my attention back to earth.

‘It’s two.’ He said simply and flatly. I just stared blankly, stealing a glance back at the monitor and then back to Ashton who was staring at me almost impatiently from where he stood on the other side of the half-full trolley of books.

‘Okay?’ I twitched my eyes ever-so-slightly, thinking Ashton would have just gotten up and left on his own. But he didn’t, he just kept staring.

‘Can I go?’ He tried again as he made a quick gesture in the direction of the library exit. I gave a nonchalant shrug and nodded.

‘Yes?’ I half-mumbled and Ashton rolled his eyes and left. I huffed, watching him sling his bag back over his shoulder and turn on his heel to wander with that obnoxious walk he had going on. I was still scowling when he turned to call over his shoulder.

‘See you tomorrow, I guess.’ He said, and he already sounded defeated.

‘Whatever.’ I muttered again, but he was already out of earshot, almost moseying out of the doors.

[ Snapshot Masterlist | Next chapter ] 

[concentratedevil]

E3 2017

While this show has been predictably underwhelming, there are some games I'm excited about. Some that I'm cautiously optimistic about. And a bunch that I don't care about that won't be mentioned. I'm not going to rate the different press conferences. Everybody had games. I like games and will play some of these new games. In alphabetical order: Beyond Good and Evil 2 I've only played a bit of the first game, but I know it's made a favorable impression on people. This reveal was unexpected; as were the superfluous f-bombs that flowed from the mouths of pigs and monkeys. I'm surprised that the art style is realistic now and I'm hoping the game isn't reliant on cussing. Because this was just a CG trailer, I'm not expecting to see the actual game for at least two more years. Cuphead Even though I've read that Cuphead aims to be brutally hard on purpose (which makes me not want to play it), I can't help but love the art style of Cuphead. I've always liked the look of those old cartoons from the 1930s and 40s that you'd see on Pee Wee's Playhouse during the King of Cartoons segments. I just hope that I end up enjoying playing the game as much as looking at it. Destiny 2 I wasn't expecting to be interested in this game at all given that I don't care one iota about the first game, but from the recent reveal that was hosted by Luke Smith, I've come around. The way they've talked about how people who prefer single player experiences will still be able to enjoy all of the content of the game with no real commitment to online clans and whatnot was like a message specifically for me. The news that it would be on PC pushed me over the edge. Dragon Ball Fighter Z This game looks fun even though I'm not a Dragon Ball Z guy (I like the OG Dragon Ball cartoon a lot and the first season of Z, but I find the rest of the franchise to be pretty dumb). The art style is on point, but all of the recent DBZ games have nailed Akira Toriyama's art style with beautiful cel shaded models. If it plays like a Capcom fighting game (and maybe has a half speed mode), then I think I might pick this one up. God of War (2018) I like the new direction God of War is going in. I think "mature" is an apt descriptor in terms of story, tone, and gameplay. I thought the PS2 franchise was just OK, but this looks far better and like it won't have any eye rolling moments that involve pushing a button to have an orgy. Horizon Zero Dawn DLC: The Frozen Wilds I've got a copy of the vanilla game just waiting to be played as soon as I get a PS4 this holiday season. So sure, I'm interested in new terrain and content for a game that already looks badass. Mario + Rabbids: Kingdom Battle I guess this is kind of Final Fantasy Tactics with Mario and Minions, er, Rabbids? I don't care for them Rabbids, but this could potentially be fun. (Also weird to see Mario with a gun... the guy can throw fireballs, hammers, and boomerangs you know.) Marvel VS Capcom Infinite I don't know about story mode for this game... I'm also not seeing any X-Men or Dr. Doom and that makes me nervous. I hope this game doesn't end up like Street Fighter V; I hope it's strong out of the gate, but Capcom doesn't inspire hope. Maybe in several years this game will be everything I want it to be, but at launch things are already looking sketchy. Metroid Prime 4 and Metroid: Samus Returns OK, OK, OK... Please, please, please be good! (Thanks for listening, Nintendo!) Moss Mouse Guard maybe? I'm cautious about this being a VR game and am wondering if this will be a better story than a game, but the trailer was a nice little breath of fresh air. Ni No Kuni 2: Revenant Kingdom I think the first Ni No Kuni was underrated and Ni No Kuni 2 is coming out at a time where I could really use something that's kind and goodhearted. With the second game coming to PC, I'm hoping that the first game also makes its way there. Ori and the Will of the Wisps I've yet to play Ori 1, but that doesn't leave me any less intrigued by Ori 2. I love Super Metroid-style games (such as Axiom Verge) and the Ori games look marvelous. Pokemon (Switch, 2018) Nothing is known except that we should "please look forward to it". I have lots of big dreams for a new Pokemon game. Will those dreams come to fruition? Probably not. But here are my hopes: it contains the entire world of Pokemon (not just one set of islands), it revamps and simplifies the various stat systems (goodbye IVs!), breeding and trading are as easy as X/Y and OR/AS, Pokemon Bank integration, minimal forced tutorials, have only one version of the game, and have Pokemon retain all learned moves but have it so that they can only equip four moves at a time from their list of moves. Sonic Forces and Sonic Mania Forces is basically a sequel to Sonic Generations which I actually quite enjoyed (until the later levels which paid homage to newer Sonic games). Sonic Mania is the much hyped game that takes all its cues from the classic Sega Genesis Sonic games. I'm stunned that there are not one but two new Sonic games that I'm looking forward to. Will wonders ever cease? South Park: The Fractured But Whole I enjoyed Stick of Truth a lot and even though I don't think Obsidian is behind this new game, it seems like it will be very similar. Spider-Man (Insomniac Games, 2018) This game looks spectacular -- amazing even! (Excelsior!) This game basically looks like the Batman Arkham games through the brighter, more vibrant lens of Spider-Man as brought to you by the guys who have gave us Ratchet and Clank. This has the potential to be not just the best Spider-Man game ever but maybe even one of the best super hero games. If I get to face off against a bunch of Spidey's classic foes and there's a good story to it, then from the looks of things I'll be pretty happy. Super Lucky's Tale Sure, I'll support playing new platformers that aren't Mario. The style for this one intrigues me. Even if it turns out to be a B level Rare wannabe, that's still more interesting to me than more games with guns and zombies. Uncharted: The Lost Legacy I'm still confused about this one. Is this DLC for Uncharted 4 or a whole new $60 game? At any rate, I love Uncharted and I'm cool with playing characters that aren't Nathan Drake for a change. So those are the games from this E3 that I'm interested in. I'll wrap up by talking a bit about Nintendo. I wish that Super Mario Odyssey wasn't so... weird. I'm sure it's the number one complaint that the different art styles are incongruous. I also don't like that hat. And I especially don't like the Super Mario Sunshine vibes I'm getting (Sunshine being my least favorite Mario game of all time). Odyssey comes off more like the direct to DVD version of Mario; it just feels tremendously off and like it doesn't have the Mario A Team behind it. I wish that Metroid: Samus Returns used 2D sprites. The ugly 3D already looks worse than AM2R, but I guess I can't look a gift horse in the mouth. Yoshi and Kirby... are pleasant but toothless. I wish they were a little more engaging and less sedate. I want a platformer with a challenge and depth more along the lines of the original Yoshi's Island or Donkey Kong Country 2. Trust me, young children can handle that level of challenge. I don't care anything about ARMS or Splatoon or Pokken... Breath of the Wild DLC was underwhelming. I was hoping for a quest to make weapons unbreakable (because fuck weapon degradation) or some new dungeons or regions. Happy E3, everybody!

[loriglessner]

In the first part of my 2018 Resolutions post I encouraged you to draw at least 15-30 minutes a day and as a result of this prompt, I received many requests for suggestions on how to get started. Even if you think you can’t draw, think you don’t know how or just stubbornly refuse, these 5 exercises will help. But before I discuss the How, I would like to discuss the What and Why I feel you must draw everyday.

The What…let’s take the word ‘drawing’ out of this article for now because it tends to scare people. When I’m teaching, I use the words drawing and mark-making interchangeably because for my purposes they are the same thing with only very slight differences. Think of it this way…a mark communicates a word and a drawing expands that word into a sentence…a poem…a sonnet. As artists, whatever we do in the course of making work begins as a mark on a surface made by one human to be interpreted by another in an effort to communicate. Mark making is expressive, gestural, emotive and works of art that contain such marks are the ones I will cross the room to view-they literally speak to me without words, they communicate. No matter what kind of work you make or in what medium, understanding your mark, what it is and how to make it, will make you a better communicator through that work.

The Why…Critic Lance Esplund writes, “Line is a rich metaphor for the artist. It denotes not only boundary, edge or contour, but is an agent for location, energy, and growth. It is literally movement and change – life itself.” This quote speaks to lines specifically, but for the purposes of this article, we’ll think of marks and lines as one in the same. The mark adds the lifeblood to the work that sets it apart from anyone else’s. Your personal mark or gesture is literally as unique as your signature and practicing making marks everyday is the only way to find that mark. As I mention in my Resolutions post, when you practice moving those parts of your body and brain required to make a drawing, everything else in your art making process flows much more smoothly. How many times have you entered the studio cold and stiff from not working and end up puttering around wasting time? Or picked up a paintbrush, but just couldn’t make the paint say what you wanted? The more marks you make and the more frequently you make them, they become indelibly written on your brain, your movements in the studio become more practiced and you will approach the work with confidence and knowing. I’m not saying that drawing everyday will rid you of all the struggles us artists face in the studio, but I absolutely guarantee that it will get you moving faster and in the right direction toward your goals.

The How…Now for the fun part. Your daily drawings can be made with any media on any substrate and inspired by any subject. I like to give myself ‘projects’ in which I work on a series of drawings inspired by one thing with the same media for one month. This offers me a chance to work out every angle of a certain subject and/or experiment with new media. At the end of the month, I also have a series of drawings that may be strong enough to show. Visit this post to read about one of these drawing series’ of mine. You can choose to work with monthly projects or you can draw something different everyday, the point is to make marks daily for 15-30 minutes. For those of you who think you’re too busy to spare this time, I suggest in my resolutions post that you always have a sketchbook and drawing tools with you in your bag because you may have more time than you think…on the bus/train, waiting at the doctors office, waiting in line at the food store. It’s almost depressing how much time we spend waiting so why not do something constructive while you’re at it. Last, don’t forget to set that timer! I’m a stickler about setting the timer for daily exercises like this and I explain a bit about why in this post. In a near future post I’ll talk about restrictions and why they are so important in art making. For now, understand that the timer will create a time-space for you to focus only on what you’re doing. For that short time, you don’t have to think about or do anything else but that draw.

The following drawing ideas are tried and true-a few have been used in art schools for centuries and a few I’ve modified and used over and over in my workshops. Once you start, your creative brain will begin to flow with many of your own ideas. At the end of this article I share some drawings from my workshop participants as well as some other artist’s works whose marks and processes I find inspiring. If you see your drawing below, let me know and I’ll add your name!

The Ideas

Blind Contour Drawings If you went to art school, you probably went blind making blind contour drawings-they are used so much as a learning tool and that is because they are so helpful. Start by staring at an object in front of you for one minute. Then close your eyes and imagine the object in your minds eye…try to see its color, its form, its texture, it’s scale. Then open your eyes and look at the object in front of you. How does it look? Try to spend two minutes (or longer) just looking at the object, examining it in great detail. Then close your eyes and draw it continuously, keeping your eyes closed for a full two minutes. Don’t lift the pencil or open your eyes until your full two minutes are up. If you ‘finish’ drawing your object under two minutes just draw it again. If you find you can’t help yourself from cheating, wear a blindfold. Do this with the same object over and over, or try different objects in order to fill your 15-30 minutes. Another variation is to begin with the blind contour and then with your eyes open, ‘connect’ the sketchy lines you drew to make a new drawing.

Opposites Make drawings in pairs which express opposite adjectives. For example, make a drawing which is noisy in as many ways as possible – your pencil should make a lot of noise as it vigorously scribbles and scratches across the page, and the finished drawing should be noisy in the way in which it communicates. Then take a breath and make a very quiet drawing. Your pencil should hardly touch the paper (imagine it’s the tip of a feather). Hold your pencil far away from the drawing end so you cannot apply too much pressure. Hush your pencil as you draw, and let the end result be a very shy drawing. Enjoy the differences between the two drawings – let your ideas bounce off each other. Push yourself to extremes of noisy and quiet.

Words Choose 5 words randomly from the dictionary and either write them at the top of the page or begin with a drawing of the word itself. I use Design Language by Tim McCreight in my workshops because the words in it lend themselves to visual inspiration. Working on the same paper, spend one-2 minutes interpreting each word with marks. Let each word’s marks intertwine and overlap. Take this drawing a step further and add more marks, collage or stitch to make it a cohesive drawing.

Music This idea comes from one of my favorite artists, Wassily Kandinsky, who believed that colors and marks in paintings created visual ‘chords’ which resonated in the viewer. A must read for any artist is Concerning the Spiritual in Art by Kandinsky in which he writes in depth about the essence of expressionism in painting. Create a playlist of 30 seconds of 20 different songs ranging in tempo, style, genre, etc. Using a large piece of paper on the floor or taped to the wall (must be positioned so that you can use your body expressively) and gather 5 different drawing tools near you so you can switch if you’d like. Turn on your playlist so the songs play successively with only 3-5 seconds between each. Respond to each song with marks and allow the marks to overlap and intertwine. At the end of the playlist, the drawing will likely look like a bunch of scribbles, so what you want to do next is isolate certain areas to use for inspiration. Cut a rectangle out of a piece of paper and float this frame over the drawing. As you do this, you’ll find so many great ideas for marks that you can trace and use in paintings. Another variation is cut up your large drawing and scatter the cut outs onto another large piece of paper. Experiment with with creating new distances between the cut outs, turn them upside down or rip them in half. Begin drawing new elements and shapes in between the old ones to create a new drawing. Forget your original drawing and think about new meanings which might be created, think about how the new drawing might be interpreted.

Response This is my personal favorite method to begin a drawing and I have completed many series this way. ‘Response Drawing’ is a term I coined in one of my workshops and it just stuck. Response drawings are basically just as the words describe… it is a response to marks either you or someone else made intentionally, accidentally or found. Responding to marks that are not yours encourages you to expand your mark making vocabulary by making marks you aren’t normally inclined to make. There are many ways to begin a project like this but the basic premise is to begin with some kind of mark on a substrate-it could be a splash, a pour of paint, a burn, a footprint,  rust print, transfer print, a mistake. It could be something you found in the trash, a folded or cut piece of paper, crushed pencil shavings, anything! It could be a project between you and a friend in which one of you makes a mark and the other responds. This actually has a name -Exquisite Corpse- a term and game invented by surrealist creatives. I’ll be writing a more in depth post about Exquisite Corpse, but in the meantime you read about and see some examples of them here. However your first mark is generated, the next step is simply to respond to it in any way you want. The image at the top of this page is from a series of drawings from 2005 called ‘Flesh’ in which I started with tracing paper that had been burned and splashed with watercolor and I then responded with organic forms drawn in graphite and colored pencil. See more from this series in the images below.

If this post was helpful to you, please let me know, I invite your comments questions and suggestions in the comments section now located in the upper left sidebar of this post.

In my next post, I’ll share with you my acrylic/gouache series of layered drawings. I’ll discuss my approach and process for these drawings and how this whole series began by drawing only 15 minutes a day.

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Image Links (read left to right from top row)

Workshop student exquisite corpse.

Lorraine Glessner Flesh series response drawing.

Jeri Ledbetter, artist, see her work here and here.

Lorraine Glessner, found ledger sketchbook response drawing.

Workshop student exquisite corpse.

Emma McNally makes drawings responding to unlikely sounds like white noise and city sounds. See her work here.

James Watkinson responds to aged paper and stains of old book covers with detailed narrative drawings. See his work here.

Ayanna Jolivet Mccloud’s experiments with a china marker, making as many different marks as she can. See her work here.

Workshop student music response drawing.

Workshop student scattered elements response drawing.

Workshop student music response drawing.

Workshop student music response drawing. I love how the strong shadows and deep wrinkles of the paper contribute to the drama of this drawing.

Lorraine Glessner Flesh series response drawing.

Workshop student found object mark response drawing.

Workshop student music response drawing.

Workshop student architectural sketch response drawing.

Lorraine Glessner Flesh series response drawing.

Workshop student mixed media drawings collage.

Workshop student mixed media drawings collage.

Workshop student found object mark response drawing.

Workshop student mixed media drawings collage.

Workshop student scattered elements response drawing.

  Are you an artist who hates to draw? Making daily marks for 15-30 minutes a day will improve your creative work flow not only in the studio, but in all aspects of your life. These 5 easy exercises will help you get that pencil moving! In the first part of my 2018 Resolutions post I encouraged you to draw at least 15-30 minutes a day and as a result of this prompt, I received many requests for suggestions on how to get started.

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Hello Reader!

Hi mom! For the last three months I have been working on this post, which if you see the word count you’ll begin to understand why it took so long. With over 5,500 words this is my longest post ever. Sorry, not sorry. In this post I’m going to talk about a lot of my adventures in the month of December (I know its March, BUT I’ve been busy!). This post will talk about some of the dumber (more air-heady) things I have done in country, as well as discuss my first vacation in Europe! While there is a lot in these stories, there is also a lot omitted, so if you want to hear more about any of these things, you’ll have to ask me in person, or wait for an Angela-tells-all post (not coming soon). So just remember: this is going to be a looong post, make sure to see it as a marathon, not a sprint! See you at the finish line. :)

The first misadventure: Losing of the Phone. 

After celebrating a lovely (and honestly completely different from I’m used to) Thanksgiving, I headed back to site with my site mate (sort of site mate, we live in different places, but he’s in the raion, so if I want anything I either go to his city or Chisinau), and about a half hour into the trip back I realized that I didn’t have my phone. Instead, I had completely forgotten that I had knocked it off the sofa the night before and left without it in the morning.

Some pictures from our fantastic Thanksgiving meal. Great food, drinks, and even better company.

We contacted our friend in Riscani and asked for him to look for it when he had time. He thankfully found it that night and texted to guard for me that I made it back to site, right before the phone died. He told me that it was like defusing a bomb, having to beat the clock to send a message as the phone was dying. After that, I tried to figure out a time when I could either make it to Riscani to pick up my phone from him, or if he could send it via rutiere back to Edinet for me. Unfortunately due to our schedules as teachers, and the rutiere schedule, there was basically no way to get to Riscani and back (without either missing part of the school day, or spending the night in the other town, neither were really acceptable). So, he being a great human being, said he’d take it to Chisinau that weekend and leave it in my locker for me.

Now I just had to make it a week or more without a phone. Normally, I don’t think that this would be difficult. Annoying yes, difficult no. But my phone has my alarm on it, which led me to being late two days of the week for school. I set the alarms on both my computer and tablet to help me wake up, and on the first late morning realized that my tablet had set the alarm for 8 am back in the states (not very helpful), and the one on my computer didn’t go off (no idea why… and now it will randomly go off around 8 am). Along with the fun times of sleeping in, I also found that due to random power outages, I had very little internet access. Every time the house lost electricity for a few seconds would turn off he motem, and I would be without internet on my laptop and tablet until it was turned back on by one of the kids. The lack of internet also was annoying at school, where if I was ever unsure of a grammatical rule or wanted to come up with quick examples of said grammar, I would google it. Without the internet on my phone, I was left to either guess at meaning or try some out of the textbook (and these textbooks are far from my favorite sources of information).

The final weird thing about being without a phone, was the fact that my program director was planning a visit to see me teach, and I was trying to fill out my request for vacation. I informed my program manager that I didn’t have my phone for the week, so she was awesome and called me via my host family’s phone. A little awkward to first few times, but since she ended up calling at least four times I got used to using their phone and my host family understood.

At the end of the week I was happy to find myself going to the capital for a meeting and to grab my phone. Being reunited was absolutely fabulous.

Misadventure 2: Teaching in a ‘Winter Wonderland’

I have a theory that in the month of December all kids that live in a country that celebrates Christmas are the same. They are counting down the days until they have a break. During this month we had our first snows, and did the kids go crazy at that! Even the teachers asked if I went out and built a snow man (no, no I didn’t, it’s freaking cold outside). And so, as any teacher can tell you, teaching students in December is somewhat similar to herding cats. They only learn when they want to, and you end up bending over backwards trying to get their attention.

During the month I had a hard time concentrating myself, as I was counting down to my vacation, so for the most part the only people who were trying were my partners. Sorry guys, I was distracted. But we pushed through and continued to teach vocabulary and grammar points while everyone was bundled up in their winter coats. This is because while the school is heated, there are some rooms that are better heated than others, and I think the English room was just a step above freezer.

Our heaters were located below the windows and they lazily pushed out a little heat. Meaning that the seats closest to the windows were the most coveted, since they were the warmest. But, sitting next to the windows made it easy for the students to get distracted by any and everything that passed by. While my 12th graders were very studious and interested in learning, my 11th graders took to talking about everything and anything that passed by outside, and just generally hold full conversations in Romanian. And how do you deal with this? Well, you probably shouldn’t follow my example and just start being sarcastic and snarky right back at the student in English. It gets their attention, and for those that understand what I’m saying laugh, but the kid who was speaking in Romanian just continue by saying  N’am înțeles (which means, I didn’t understand). Which I would then reply (in English, and sometimes in Romanian) either, I know, or put a hand over my heart and dramatically go: no?! Not the most professional answer, and I don’t recommend acting that way in class, but it just came out naturally, and it had a moticom of success in stopping conversation. I would also go and sit right next to the talkers and just stare at them, that generally had them blushing and turning to the front of the class real fast.

In the middle school grades I just generally let my teachers work their magic to make them behave (less rather than more) and we pulled teeth with my middle grades for the month. Did they learn anything? Maybe. Maybe not. But I definitely taught them the American move of hitting your head against a table or the chalkboard when frustrated. So….culture exchange?

In my youngest grades (2-5th) the students were still generally good. They wanted to learn, so we kept to our work and even played some games, sang songs, learned our ABCs and all that. :) I even taught a couple of my classes some Christmas carols. I hadn’t been planning on it, but when one of my second graders just started repeating “jingle bell, jingle bell, jingle bell…” over and over again, I couldn’t help go over to him and start singing the actual song. Which got the attention of everyone else in the classroom, and we quickly switched gears and learned the chorus of Jingle bells, because why not?

Misadventure 3: What’s in a Holiday?

Winter break began on the 24th of December, so I packed my book-bag and went to Chisinau, which was completely decked out for the holiday. When I arrived, I hung out with some other M31s, including the two ladies I was going to Romania with, as well as another friend who we were going to celebrate her birthday! We walked around in the beautifully decorated area, took photos and then made it to our hostel.

I was so thankful to get to the hostel, because after an hour or two of carrying a 10 lbs (I’m guessing, I have no idea how much it really weighed) backpack and my purse with my laptop in it, I was getting a little tired…. If you ask the ladies I was hanging out with, they might even go as far to call me whiny or annoyed.  BUT I’m sticking with tired, and I just had a desire to put my stuff down. Either way, we finally made it to our hostel after looking around downtown Chisinau and going down a sketchy alleyway to find our hostel (IDK if it’s just Moldova, but I feel like all of their hostels are down sketchy alleys).

Once we sat our stuff down, we set out to celebrate Beth’s birthday in style. We went to a nice Italian restaurant, that I won’t be able to find again on my own. And whose name I don’t know (so sorry if you were hoping for me to give you a good restaurant in Chisinau, I have the attention span of a Labrador retriever and Dory’s memory). I can say that the food was delicious and the company superb. It was nicely decorated for Christmas, so we had to take a picture together. Unfortnately, I had not dressed for taking a picture, I had dressed for the 3.5 hour rutiera ride into the city, so I look like a hot mess.

That night, we stayed up late watching the movie Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them in our hostel. The movie was great, however the quality from my computer was lacking. :/

The next day was of course Christmas! And being in an orthodox country, December 25th didn’t necessarily mean a whole lot. But we decided to keep some traditions alive and went to see the new Star Wars movie in the theater (it was even in English :D ). Another really good movie, that I was happy that I got to watch, with Americans.

After the movie, we met other volunteers and had a little Christmas party together. We had food, nonalcoholic beverages, good company, ginger bread houses, and a piano! With the piano available, and a gentleman who plays the piano, we decided to sing some Christmas carols! Because, why not?

From the party, I left with my travel partners and we headed for the South Bus Station to catch our rutiera to Brasov, the first stop on my wonderful winter vacation! As we made it to the bus station it was already around 6 at night. So, we sat down to wait for our rutiera… and we waited….and we waited. During this wait, one of my friends reminded me that I still needed to turn on the roaming on my phone. With that thought in mind I looked around for an Orange store (our cell phone provider, not the fruit). However, all the little phone stores were already closed for the night (everything closes up when it gets dark, which at that time was around 4 pm). Cursing under my breath and heading back to my travel buddies, I began trying to turn roaming on from my phone. This, I thought would be an easy process, but NOOOOOO, it had to be difficult, and wouldn’t let me do it, without an added 200 lei (about 10 usd) to my account, something I couldn’t do from where I was. So I gave up and decided to turn it on the next day from Romania.

While I was messing around with my phone we were still waiting for our rutiera, and getting a little anxious that we hadn’t seen it yet. So we went to investigate, only to find that there had only been five tickets sold, so they were getting a car instead of a rutiera. No sense wasting the gas and the space when you could do it another way, right? So, we got to drive to Brasov in a minivan!  Not what I was expecting, but it was more comfortable than a rutiera, so absolutely no complaints…. Okay, my only complaint is about Bethany deciding to wake me up by hitting me. Thanks bro. I will get even.

We drove through the night and made it to our hostel around 2 am. Which, was earlier than we had anticipated… meaning that we had to wake up the employee to let us in and pay for another night, that we hadn’t been expecting. But that meant we did get to sleep in a bed that night.

Misadventure 4: Yes I’m American, yes I speak Romanian aka. Romania

We spent the next 2 days exploring Brasov and the surrounding areas. The first day we walked around Brasov, had some good food, walked up to the two observation towers (the white and black towers), threw some snow balls, checked out a grave yard (because…because!), checked out the black church, and generally just walked around the city.

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Each of these photos has a little story behind them, so if you want to know more, try to find me some day and ask, I’d be glad to share my experiences.

In the mean time, I will say that the pictures of us in the woods was in the middle of an impromptu snow ball fight, the big church in the early photos is the black church which was closed while we were there, and we joked that the tree looked like an old lady who had hair coming out of her hair net in every direction. :)

That evening (and the next one too), we came back to the hostel by 8 o’clock and played card games for a while. This led to us finding out that Susan is a card shark who spent a lot of time playing cards (successfully) in Vegas for years before she came to Moldova. Thankfully we were only playing Uno and go fish! However, Susan did wipe us out on first time around during one of the go fish games. She literally guessed all of my cards, then guessed all of Bethany’s. It was insane.  I can also say, that I never won a game of Uno, and I don’t think I won go fish either.

Our guardian at the hostel, she really liked my bed :)

On the second day in Brasov we went to Bran castle (Dracula’s castle) and to a fortress! It was a fun day trip away from Brasov, so we could walk up to the different castles (it was pretty dangerous getting up, and then down, the steep and snow covered slope to Bran Castle). However, I can now say I was at Dracula’s castle!

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One the 3rd day we traveled to Romania’s Capital, Bucharest! We decided to go via train and hang out in the city for a couple hours just seeing what they have. We decided that we would go to the Hard Rock Cafe in the city, which I was definitely cool with, since I knew I would be getting my Starbucks craving finally sated after 6 months without it.

Unfortunately, we didn’t know exactly how to get there, and ended up a little lost, and we walked for over an hour before we came to the restaurant. During the walk I had cut my heel (how? I have no idea), so I was kind of limping and trying not to be on my heel for the last kilometer that we walked. After our wonderful meal, we decided to ax the walking idea, and had the restaurant call us a cab back to a mall we had seen so that we could do some shopping. There, I finally had some Starbucks!!! (Twice <3)!

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We widdled away the afternoon and I left around 4:30 to make it to the airport for my flight to Budapest. This is where my luck changed, as the driver took me for a tourist and it took over an hour to get to the airport, and cost me 30 euros (nope, not how much it should have cost, at all!). There, I found out that I had missed the check in for my flight by 10 minutes. I could only reschedule the flight in the next twenty minutes for a flight in two days. Fml. I said no, and tried to not make a scene in the airport about how stupid this was, and decided that I officially hate airports.

I went back outside and flagged down another cab to take me to the train station. From the train station I was hoping I could get a late night train to Budapest. This second taxi ride took 20 minutes and cost me 30 Romanian lei (7 usd). I talked to three different tellers in the train station and was able to get an over night train to Budapest that was leaving in 2.5 hours. Thank god! After almost crying of happiness about being able to keep going with my vacation, I sat down and waited (in the cold) for my new train. It was not the way I wanted to spend my night, but I was able to make it onto my train and head for Budapest. I left Romania with a lot less money than I started out with, but I still left.

Misadventure 5: My Favorite City: Budapest

Before leaving the US, if you would have asked me what my favorite city was, I probably would have said Chicago. It’s close, it’s beautiful, and it’s a place where I could see myself living in the future. Now, I can say all of these things about Budapest, Hungary. The city was absolutely gorgeous, the people were nice, it has a cool night life, and I would give up a lot of stuff in my life to get the chance to live there (sorry Mom, I know that’s not something you want to hear, but it’s true!).

But back to my story!!!

When I left off, I had missed my flight to Budapest, and had to take a train. This train didn’t arrive in Budapest until noon or 1 the next day. Meaning, I had slept on the train, but I did get to meet two nice ladies traveling through Romania and Budapest and ending their trip for the New Year in Vienna. The ladies were from Denmark, and as soon as I spoke in Romanian they could tell I was American (American accents are ridiculously easy for people to pick out), so we were able to talk in English easily. They told me about their travels, and I told them about my time as a Peace Corps volunteer in Moldova. We spent the trip talking off and on about different topics, and we came away with me adding Denmark to the list of countries I would like to visit, and I talked them into visiting Moldova in the future (as well as talking up Chicago).

When I finally arrived in Budapest I got out some money, the Hungarian Forint. This monetary system was one of the only downsides (because why do I need a 10,000 forint note? Why can’t it be 100???? I asked myself this question my entire time in the captial).

So, after I had some cash, I followed the first directions to the hostel: get on the tram and take it to the next station. Got it, so far so good. Well, that’s when I got lost. I made it to the correct stop on the tram, then went the wrong way on the street. Then I backtracked, when the right direction, then turned the wrong way again! It took me over an hour to make the 15 minute walk to the hostel… not my finest moment.

I finally made it to the hostel (a very nice hostel too) and checked in. I messaged the volunteer I was staying with and decided to crash until I heard back from her. Being able to lay down on a bed was amazing, and I was almost asleep when I heard from my friend and headed out again to St. Basilica church.

Saint Basilica’s around Christmas time.

Afraid of getting lost again, I asked the receptionist to give me directions and a map (which she did). I made it to the Jewish Synagogue (about halfway there) and then got lost again, as I headed the wrong way. Again. This lasted a hour and a half (90 minutes of basically walking around looking at buildings, thinking that that  building looks like it could be a cathedral. Then realizing that I walked past it like 3 times) before I was finally able to meet and find my friend in front of the church, which we didn’t go inside of because we were starving.

Once we finally met each other, we decided to walk back towards the center of the city to find a restaurant. And guess what? We went the wrong way!!! We ended up walking a same way I had just come from and walked all the way around until we hit an overpass that seemed to be going out of the main city. Funnily enough, while we were walking, an English guy (probably our age) literally ran up to us, because he saw our map and asked us where we were drinking. Thankfully he kept going with his friends, so we didn’t actually talk to the guy, but it definitely made me more aware of how much of a tourist we looked.

I can’t remember where we ended up eating that night, but I think we ended up going to a ruin bar (which those are fantastic) and we drank Starbucks and talked while sitting outside listening to some random band playing in the background.

Day 2 of Budapest: Let’s be tourists

So on my second day in Budapest, we got all sorts of touristy with paying to have breakfast at the New York Cafe and do a hop-on hop-off tour. But when we left the restaurant, we lost more than we expected. My friend lost quite a bit of money (no idea where) and I lost my ticket for the bus. So  I had to buy a new one, spending more than I had planned on spending that day (oops).But I will say, the New York Cafe was really pretty.

From there, we tried to make things better and jumped on the bus touring the city and listening to the pretty insane stories of the city’s history (they threw a guy in a barrel and then rolled it down a hill into the Danube, not to mention all the floods, wars, and other disasters that have affected the area). We explored the city for a long while and split up for a little while exploring different areas. We met back up at the hostel and got ready for our big activity of our time in Budapest: a bath party. Budapest is known for their public baths, so we decided to go to the New Years Eve bath party (held on the 30th… no idea why).

While the idea was a really fun one, it was supposed to be like a huge night-time block/pool party. We didn’t consider the fact that the temperature outside at night was well below freezing. Not to mention what happens in pools when there is a lot of alcohol and drunk people. Also, I am not much of a party girl, as the DUF (if you don’t know this acronym, urban dictionary knows what it means) of every group of friends I’ve had since the age of 13 (probably), I was on babysitting duty, and my RBF (same as my earlier comment: urban dictionary) made me good at the job, but it made me cold and bored for most of the 4 hour party, not to mention that I was sober. So yay, gross water party where I wasn’t distracted by anything (person or anything).

With that said, I do think that the baths would be fun in the day time and when there aren’t so many people around, and I could actually relax, and not be annoyed. If asked to go to this party again, I’d laugh all the way to the nearest ruin bar, and tell you to go if you want, but I’ll be here having fun. Either way, I had a great day taking pictures then an okay night out.

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Day 3: Bye-bye Budapest!

On our last day in Budapest, my friend and I started the day out by going to the train station and buying tickets to Prague for that night (our way of saving money because a room in either city was more money than all the other nights combined, so no.). We then had some breakfast together and made a plan to meet back up together later. Then I went back out to explore the city by myself. To my mother, who very much might be hyperventilating reading about me going two days in a city by myself: I know you’re worried, but I made it without a scratch. And I honestly had a really good time, and if you’re afraid of me going it alone too much, you’ll just have to join me on my next adventures. :)

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This day, I got to try some local food, and had some mulled wine (delicious!), and took looots of pictures. It was a great day of traveling around and seeing different sites. I ended my time in Budapest by getting a local beer at a nice restaurant and then some waffles and a milkshake at a boutique cafe, that I will go to again when I visit again. Oh, and I of course had some Starbucks (the guy recognized me from the day before) before meeting my friend at the train station.

Misadventure 6: What’s your Prague-lem?

The final leg of vacation was to visit Prague, one of Europe’s top-rated cities. But, it is not on my top favorite lists. I went, I saw, I got the shot glass. I don’t have any strong desires to go again. That would be due to a lot of different things.

Our first day there started really early (like 6 am) and as I got off the train I was automatically cold and had to try and find my friend (she had sprung for the sleeper car, whereas I hadn’t). It took us a while to find each other, and then even longer to figure out where to go from there, since we couldn’t check into our hostel until that afternoon.

We went to the Old Town area and walked less than a block before we turned back around and headed for the subway, deciding that before we get any food we should find the hostel and drop off our bags. So, we were tired, and freaking freezing. Not a great start.

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Throughout the day my mood fluxuated from happy to annoyed and back again. We ended up lost at almost every turn, the guy at the hostel, while somewhat helpful flirted with my friend and ignored my existence so much that the next morning he didn’t even recognize me. But we had Starbucks and saw some of the sites. Unfortunately while we did have some fun, I think we were mostly tired, and just generally annoyed that we had gotten so lost and had to wait around in the cold for so long waiting on buses. If I had to give this day a rating from 1-10, it would have received a 4. It wasn’t terrible, but it wasn’t good either. Not every city can be Budapest.

Day 2: Do I look like D. Trump?!

Day two came early and I was annoyed to find myself ditched without a word. Not the best beginning of a day, but we were both annoyed from yesterday, so I don’t care about it now. But at the time, it had really pissed me off. That day, I missed out on everything I wanted to do because of getting lost (I had planned on doing a tour of a concentration camp a little ways outside of the city, then I wanted to do a walking tour of the city that talked about the history of the city from the time of WWII to communism, to the velvet revolution. However, I couldn’t find the place to save my life. So I walked around taking some pictures.

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I made my way back to the main area and decided to try some traditional food that I had heard about from a Youtuber from Prague. So I found the restaurant, which was more of a cafeteria. And sat down to eat. I was joined by a guy who began talking to me in (what I’m guessing) was Czech. But I quickly confessed to not speaking the language, and he happily switched to English, and we spent the rest of the meal talking about random things together.

After the huge meal that honestly I didn’t think was all that tasty. I walked to a nearby gift shop and bought my souvenir shot glass (I’m 22, I’m allowed to by tacky things as my souvenirs!). The clerk this time spoke to me in Russian (I can occasionally pick that language out now). And I replied, instinctively, in Romanian. When he just gave me a look I switch to English and he asked me where I was from. When I said Chicago (no one knows anything good about Indiana, so I almost always say I’m from Chicago), he told me he thought I looked German or Russian. Then he took that back and said that I look like Donald Trump. Which, if that isn’t the biggest insult I’d heard in months I don’t know what is. So, like a true lady, I had some choice words for him and left the shop with my shot glass (I’d already paid for it, otherwise I wouldn’t have given the guy my business).

After that, I settled down at a cafe and to make myself feel better about my frustrating day, I bought myself a ticket to a concert being held in the city. I left two hours early to make sure I would find it. And good thing I did, because I got lost again, had to ask for directions, finally find the the box office where my ticket was sold only to find out that it was closed. Basically crying in frustration, I quickly tried to find the theater and found (thankfully) with about 15 minutes to spare. I was surprised that they let me in, I got my ticket and even had a really nice seat in the first few rows (not that the show I went to see was heavily attended). The concert was amazing and it improved my mood tenfold. I finished the night going to a sandwich shop near the hostel and face-timed my brother, then went to the hostel and packed my things up for my early morning. And fell asleep before my friend made it back to the hostel.

Misadventure 7: Heading home

I hate airports. They are the bane of my existence. I hate, hate, hate, hate airports. My last day in Prague say me waking up at 4 am so that I could get around and leave for the airport. Which was an experience! consisting of a subway ride, then over crowded buses and having absolutely no idea where or when to get off. I arrived like an hour before I could even check-in and just hung out on the floor of the Prague airport next to a plug, as I charged my devices and tried to keep busy.

When I finally made it through check-in (not hard when you’re the 3rd person in line, and when the guy actually speaks English to you without looking like its a hassle). The only downside to going through security was they took my leave in conditioner (because I’m going to hold up a plane with the ability to have silky hair). Then my flight was delayed by a half hour (why? I have no idea, just because?).

From Prague I flew to Poland, Krakow. There I had a bit of an issue with my passport, since I had no stamps saying I left Hungary or ones that said I had ever been in the Czech Republic (great job, customs). So I had to stand there for a good 15 minutes while the guy checked on what to do. They eventually just let me through with a stamp saying I was leaving Poland (so according to my passport I entered Hungary, and then left Poland, not suspicious looking at all).

I then had something like 4 hours to kill. Which I did by first freaking out about not being able to find my flight anywhere on the list that would happen that day. Then found out that I was apparently looking at the wrong thing on my ticket. Then I freaked out about being at the wrong terminal and actually freaking out about thinking that I missed my flight, until I realized that Poland is an hour behind Moldova. So I had another hour of waiting and I was at the correct terminal. Talk about stress.

On the plane, my seat was taken by a mom and her kid, so I took her seat, and then listened to the baby cry and scream for the entire flight, plus the kid kicking my seat. Who says politeness doesn’t pay? Once back in Moldova, I was relieved to get to a hostel, but was over charged by a cabbie, only to find out that the hostel was booked full. So I called a friend and headed out of the city on the last rutiera to Balti of the night. And stood awkwardly close to people for a good 2 hours making my way to my friend’s house. I under shot where I should have gotten off, and ended up on the wrong side of her village and had to walk all the way through the village at like 10:30.

The next day, I made it back to my village. And that is the end of my adventures!

Final thoughts: aka the adventures of traveling alone

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Me and Czech Darth Vader, and my favorite picture from Budapest: sun setting over Hero Square.

Throughout my trips I spent some of my time traveling with friends, and some of the time traveling by myself. And I found myself meeting really nice people while I was alone. I met two women between Romania and Budapest, 3 gentleman between Budapest and Prague that I rang the New Year in with, David from Italy joined me at the cafeteria in Prague, and I ran into a couple different volunteers on their own vacations here and there too. All together, I had a really good time. Meeting new people, exploring new places, and just getting out of my comfort zone. The lesson here: go do something you weren’t planning on doing. Or travel! You never know what might happen.

  Thanks for reading! Until next time,

Angela :)

The Misadventures Part 2: Or how I got lost in 4 different countries Hello Reader! Hi mom! For the last three months I have been working on this post, which if you see the word count you'll begin to understand why it took so long.