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TOP 10 WRITERS OF 2019′s REVIEWS

It is very hard to pick the best artists of the year, especially when you know in advance, they will not match anyone else’s list. And I say this because this list is based in all the reviews that scored a perfect 10 during 2019. And these reviews go from 1935 to 2020, so it is definitely not going to match anyone else’s.

There were other writers I would have loved to include in this list but they weren’t as prominent in my reviews as the one here. Those writers that are worth mentioning are: Bub Burden, Carl Potts, Denny O’Neil, Grant Morrison, Harlan Ellison, Jim Lawson, Jim Starlin, John Ostrander, Paul Dini, Peter Laird, Sam Humphries, Stan Sakai, Steve Darnall, Steve Murphy and Tom Taylor. To all of them, thank you for your work!

NUMBER TEN JAMES ROBINSON / JAMES TYNION IV

James Robinson (1963 - present) has been writing for three decades, with an early comics work, "Grendel: The Devil's Whisper", appearing in the 1989 series of the British anthology A1. The series for which he is arguably most renowned is the DC Comics series Starman, where he took the aging Golden Age character of the same name and revitalized both the character and all those who had used the name over the decades, weaving them into an interconnected whole. In 1997, Robinson's work on the title garnered him an Eisner Award for "Best Serialized Story".

He is also known for his The Golden Age limited series, which, despite being an Elseworlds story, established much of the backstory he would later use in Starman. He has written the Batman: Legends of the Dark Knight series, and served as a consultant and co-writer in the first year of JSA and its subsequent spin-off Hawkman.

James Tynion IV was born December 14, 1987, and grew up in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, where he attended Marquette University High School. While studying creative writing at Sarah Lawrence College, Tynion met and began studying under Scott Snyder, in the nascent years of his comic book writing career. Following school, he became an intern for the Vertigo imprint of DC Comics, working under Editor Shelly Bond, among others.

After a few years working in advertising, Scott Snyder asked Tynion to co-write the back-up features for the New 52 relaunch of Batman, in the midst of the acclaimed "Night of the Owls" comic book storyline, starting with Batman #8. In this comic, he tied the Court of Owls mythology to Alfred Pennyworth's father, Jarvis Pennyworth, working with noted American Vampire artist, Rafael Albuquerque.

James Tynion IV is openly bisexual.

These two writers are sharing the number ten spot because they have pretty much the same “rank” in the list of the year. Robinson made it in the list because of his work in “Starman”, and Tynion IV made it because of his work with the “Witching Hour” crossover.

NUMBER NINE SEAN MURPHY (1980 - PRESENT)

Sean Gordon Murphy is an American comic book creator known for work on books such as Joe the Barbarian with Grant Morrison, Chrononauts with Mark Millar, American Vampire: Survival of the Fittest and The Wake with Scott Snyder, and Tokyo Ghost with Rick Remender. He has also written and drawn the miniseries Punk Rock Jesus, as well as Batman: White Knight and its sequel Curse of the White Knight.

Sean Gordon Murphy was born in Nashua, New Hampshire in 1980. He showed an interest in comics during grade school. In Salem he apprenticed to local painter and cartoonist, Leslie Swank. He graduated from Pinkerton Academy high school in 1999, and attended Massachusetts College of Art in Boston, and then Savannah College of Art and Design.

Murphy lives in Portland, Maine with his wife Colleen, having moved there from Brooklyn in 2016. Murphy was raised a Catholic, but is now an atheist.

The reason Sean Murphy made it into the list was “Batman: White Knight”, which is an elseworld story loosely based in the Batman Animated Series.

NUMBER EIGHT FRANK MILLER (1957 - PRESENT)

Frank Miller (born January 27, 1957) is an American comic book writer, penciller and inker, novelist, screenwriter, film director, and producer best known for his comic book stories and graphic novels such as Ronin, Daredevil: Born Again, The Dark Knight Returns, Batman: Year One, Sin City, and 300.

He also directed the film version of The Spirit, shared directing duties with Robert Rodriguez on Sin City and Sin City: A Dame to Kill For, and produced the film 300. His film Sin City earned a Palme d'Or nomination, and he has received every major comic book industry award. In 2015, Miller was inducted into the Will Eisner Award Hall of Fame.

He created the comic book characters Elektra for Marvel Comics' Daredevil series, and a female version of the Robin character, Carrie Kelley, for DC Comics.

Miller is noted for combining film noir and manga influences in his comic art creations. "I realized when I started Sin City that I found American and English comics be too wordy, too constipated, and Japanese comics to be too empty. So I was attempting to do a hybrid".

Miller was raised in Montpelier, Vermont, the fifth of seven children of a nurse mother and a carpenter/electrician father. His family was Irish Catholic.

Miller was married to colorist Lynn Varley from 1986 to 2005; she colored many of his most acclaimed works (from Ronin in 1984 through 300 in 1998), and the backgrounds to the 2007 movie 300.

Miller has since been romantically linked to New York-based Shakespearean scholar Kimberly Halliburton Cox, who had a cameo in The Spirit (2008).

You can think many different things about Frank Miller, especially on his political views. But his work includes some pieces that really changed the industry. In this case, he made it into the list because of “Ronin” and “The Dark Knight Returns”, both have been influencing comics until our days (with “Ronin” being one of the many influences of the “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles”).

NUMBER SEVEN MIKE W. BARR (1952 - PRESENT)

Mike W. Barr (born May 30, 1952) is an American writer of comic books, mystery novels, and science fiction novels.

Barr's debut as a comics professional came in DC Comics' Detective Comics #444 (Dec. 1974-Jan. 1975), for which he wrote an eight-page back-up mystery feature starring the Elongated Man. Another Elongated Man story followed in Detective Comics #453 (Nov. 1975). He wrote text articles and editorial replies in letter columns for the next few years. By mid-1980 he was writing regularly for both DC and Marvel, including stories for Mystery in Space, Green Lantern, The Brave and the Bold, Marvel Team-Up, and a Spider-Man/Scarlet Witch team-up in Marvel Fanfare #6.

Legion of Super-Heroes #277 (July 1981) saw him take on editorial duties at DC, a position he would hold until 1987. In December 1982, he and artist Brian Bolland began Camelot 3000, a 12 issue limited series that was one of DC Comics' first direct market projects. Barr and artist Trevor Von Eeden produced the first Green Arrow limited series in 1983. When the long running The Brave and the Bold series came to its conclusion with issue #200 (July 1983), it featured a preview of a new Batman series, Batman and the Outsiders by Barr and artist Jim Aparo, which would be described by DC Comics writer and executive Paul Levitz as being "a team series more fashionable to 1980s audiences." The Masters of Disaster were among the supervillains created by Barr and Aparo for the series. Barr wrote every issue of the original series, and its Baxter paper spinoff, The Outsiders that did not include Batman and introduced Looker. After the series' cancellation in February 1988, it was revived in November 1993 by Barr and artist Paul Pelletier.

He was one of the contributors to the DC Challenge limited series in 1986 and wrote the "Batman: Year Two" storyline in Detective Comics #575-578 (June-Sept. 1987) which followed up on Frank Miller's "Batman: Year One". Barr introduced the Reaper in Detective Comics #575 (June 1987) and returned to the character in the Batman: Full Circle one-shot in 1991. Another project from 1987 was the Batman: Son of the Demon graphic novel which was drawn by Jerry Bingham, proceeds from which reputedly "restored DC Comics to first place in sales after fifteen years." This title, and Barr's work on Batman with artist Alan Davis have been cited by Grant Morrison as key inspirations for his own run on the Batman title. Barr's sequel, Batman: Bride of The Demon, was published in 1991.

Mike W. Barr has been only of the earliest comic-book writers I knew about, and he made it into this list because of his work in “Camelot 3000″ and “Batman and the Outsiders”.

NUMBER SIX CHRIS CLAREMONT, WITH JOHN BYRNE (1950 - PRESENT)

Christopher S. Claremont (born November 25, 1950) is a British-born American comic book writer and novelist, known for his 1975–1991 stint on Uncanny X-Men, far longer than that of any other writer, during which he is credited with developing strong female characters as well as introducing complex literary themes into superhero narratives, turning the once underachieving comic into one of Marvel's most popular series.

During his tenure at Marvel, Claremont co-created numerous X-Men characters, such as Rogue, Psylocke, Kitty Pryde/Shadowcat, Phoenix, The Brood, Lockheed, Shi'ar, Shi'ar Imperial Guard, Mystique, Destiny, Selene, Reverend William Stryker, Lady Mastermind, Emma Frost, Tessa, Siryn, Jubilee, Rachel Summers, Madelyne Pryor, Moira MacTaggert, Lilandra, Shadow King, Cannonball, Warpath, Mirage, Wolfsbane, Karma, Cypher, Sabretooth, Empath, Sebastian Shaw, Donald Pierce, Avalanche, Pyro, Legion, Nimrod, Gateway, Strong Guy, Proteus, Mister Sinister, Marauders, Purifiers, Captain Britain, Sunspot, Forge and Gambit. Claremont scripted many classic stories, including "The Dark Phoenix Saga" and "Days of Future Past", on which he collaborated with John Byrne. He developed the character of Wolverine into a fan favorite. X-Men #1, the 1991 spinoff series premiere that Claremont co-wrote with Jim Lee, remains the best-selling comic book of all time, according to Guinness World Records. In 2015, Claremont and his X-Men collaborator John Byrne were entered into the Will Eisner Award Hall of Fame.

Claremont was born in London, England. His father was an internist and his mother was a pilot and caterer. Claremont is Jewish on his mother's side, and lived in a kibbutz in Israel during his youth. His family moved to the United States when he was three, and he was raised primarily on Long Island. Alienated by the sports-oriented suburbs, his grandmother purchased for him a subscription to Eagle when he was a child, and he grew up reading Dan Dare, finding them more exciting than the Batman and Superman comics of the 1950s and early 1960s. He read works by science fiction writers such as Robert Heinlein, as well as writers of other genres such as Rudyard Kipling and C. S. Forester.

In the mid-1970s, Claremont was married to Bonnie Wilford. Following the dissolution of that marriage, he married Beth Fleisher, with whom Claremont co-authored Dragon Moon. Fleisher is the cousin (through marriage) of editor Dan Raspler, who was the editor on JLA during the six-issue "Tenth Circle" story arc Claremont and John Byrne wrote in 2004. Claremont and Fleisher have twin sons.

So why not John Byrne? Well, the reason Claremont made it into this list was mostly the Dark Phoenix Saga, but also the Wolverine mini-series. It is hard to separate them from their work in X-Men, but in the end, it is his dialogue that we read. I still think it is worth mentioning Byrne in this spot, as we wouldn’t have one without the other. Perhaps Wolverine solo mini-series wouldn’t be possible without the work of Byrne with the character, but there is more influence from Miller in that one. I am pretty sure Byrne will be in the top 10 next year anyway ;)

NUMBER FIVE NEIL GAIMAN (1960 - PRESENT)

Neil Richard MacKinnon Gaiman (born Neil Richard Gaiman, 10 November 1960) is an English author of short fiction, novels, comic books, graphic novels, nonfiction, audio theatre, and films. His works include the comic book series The Sandman and novels Stardust, American Gods, Coraline, and The Graveyard Book. He has won numerous awards, including the Hugo, Nebula, and Bram Stoker awards, as well as the Newbery and Carnegie medals. He is the first author to win both the Newbery and the Carnegie medals for the same work, The Graveyard Book (2008). In 2013, The Ocean at the End of the Lane was voted Book of the Year in the British National Book Awards.

Gaiman's family is of Polish Jewish and other Eastern European Jewish origins. His great-grandfather emigrated from Antwerp, Belgium, to the UK before 1914 and his grandfather eventually settled in the south of England in the Hampshire city of Portsmouth and established a chain of grocery stores. Gaiman's grandfather changed his original family name of Chaiman to Gaiman. His father, David Bernard Gaiman, worked in the same chain of stores; his mother, Sheila Gaiman (née Goldman), was a pharmacist. He has two younger sisters, Claire and Lizzy.

After living for a period in the nearby town of Portchester, Hampshire, where Neil was born in 1960, the Gaimans moved in 1965 to the West Sussex town of East Grinstead, where his parents studied Dianetics at the Scientology centre in the town; one of Gaiman's sisters works for the Church of Scientology in Los Angeles. His other sister, Lizzy Calcioli, has said, "Most of our social activities were involved with Scientology or our Jewish family. It would get very confusing when people would ask my religion as a kid. I'd say, 'I'm a Jewish Scientologist.'" Gaiman says that he is not a Scientologist, and that like Judaism, Scientology is his family's religion. About his personal views, Gaiman has stated, "I think we can say that God exists in the DC Universe. I would not stand up and beat the drum for the existence of God in this universe. I don't know, I think there's probably a 50/50 chance. It doesn't really matter to me."

Gaiman was able to read at the age of four. He said, "I was a reader. I loved reading. Reading things gave me pleasure. I was very good at most subjects in school, not because I had any particular aptitude in them, but because normally on the first day of school they'd hand out schoolbooks, and I'd read them—which would mean that I'd know what was coming up, because I'd read it." When he was about ten years old, he read his way through the works of Dennis Wheatley, where especially The Ka of Gifford Hillary and The Haunting of Toby Jugg made an impact on him. One work that made a particular impression on him was J. R. R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings from his school library, although it only had the first two volumes of the novel. He consistently took them out and read them. He would later win the school English prize and the school reading prize, enabling him to finally acquire the third volume.

For his seventh birthday, Gaiman received C. S. Lewis's The Chronicles of Narnia series. He later recalled that "I admired his use of parenthetical statements to the reader, where he would just talk to you ... I'd think, 'Oh, my gosh, that is so cool! I want to do that! When I become an author, I want to be able to do things in parentheses.' I liked the power of putting things in brackets." Narnia also introduced him to literary awards, specifically the 1956 Carnegie Medal won by the concluding volume. When Gaiman won the 2010 Medal himself, the press reported him recalling, "it had to be the most important literary award there ever was" and observing, "if you can make yourself aged seven happy, you're really doing well – it's like writing a letter to yourself aged seven."

Gaiman attended Ardingly College in Ardingly, West Sussex Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland was another childhood favourite, and "a favourite forever. Alice was default reading to the point where I knew it by heart." He also enjoyed Batman comics as a child.

Gaiman was educated at several Church of England schools, including Fonthill School in East Grinstead, Ardingly College (1970–74), and Whitgift School in Croydon (1974–77). His father's position as a public relations official of the Church of Scientology was the cause of the seven-year-old Gaiman being forced to withdraw from Fonthill School and remain at the school that he had previously been attending. He lived in East Grinstead for many years, from 1965 to 1980 and again from 1984 to 1987. He met his first wife, Mary McGrath, while she was studying Scientology and living in a house in East Grinstead that was owned by his father. The couple were married in 1985 after having their first child, Michael.

As a child and a teenager, Gaiman read the works of C. S. Lewis, J. R. R. Tolkien, Lewis Carroll, Mary Shelley, Rudyard Kipling, Edgar Allan Poe, Michael Moorcock, Alan Moore, Steve Ditko, Will Eisner, Ursula K. Le Guin, Harlan Ellison, Lord Dunsany and G. K. Chesterton. A lifetime fan of the Monty Python comedy troupe, as a teenager he owned a copy of Monty Python's Big Red Book. When he was 19–20 years old, he contacted his favourite science fiction writer, R. A. Lafferty, whom he discovered when he was nine, and asked for advice on becoming an author along with a Lafferty pastiche he had written. The writer sent Gaiman an encouraging and informative letter back, along with literary advice.

In the early 1980s, Gaiman pursued journalism, conducting interviews and writing book reviews, as a means to learn about the world and to make connections that he hoped would later assist him in getting published. He wrote and reviewed extensively for the British Fantasy Society. His first professional short story publication was "Featherquest", a fantasy story, in Imagine Magazine in May 1984.

When waiting for a train at London's Victoria Station in 1984, Gaiman noticed a copy of Swamp Thing written by Alan Moore, and carefully read it. Moore's fresh and vigorous approach to comics had such an impact on Gaiman that he would later write "that was the final straw, what was left of my resistance crumbled. I proceeded to make regular and frequent visits to London's Forbidden Planet shop to buy comics".

In 1984, he wrote his first book, a biography of the band Duran Duran, as well as Ghastly Beyond Belief, a book of quotations, with Kim Newman. Even though Gaiman thought he had done a terrible job, the book's first edition sold out very quickly. When he went to relinquish his rights to the book, he discovered the publisher had gone bankrupt. After this, he was offered a job by Penthouse. He refused the offer.

He also wrote interviews and articles for many British magazines, including Knave. During this he sometimes wrote under pseudonyms, including Gerry Musgrave, Richard Grey, and "a couple of house names". Gaiman has said he ended his journalism career in 1987 because British newspapers regularly publish untruths as fact. In the late 1980s, he wrote Don't Panic: The Official Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy Companion in what he calls a "classic English humour" style. Following this he wrote the opening of what would become his collaboration with fellow English author Terry Pratchett on the comic novel Good Omens, about the impending apocalypse.

After forming a friendship with comic-book writer Alan Moore, Gaiman started writing comic books, picking up Miracleman after Moore finished his run on the series. Gaiman and artist Mark Buckingham collaborated on several issues of the series before its publisher, Eclipse Comics, collapsed, leaving the series unfinished. His first published comic strips were four short Future Shocks for 2000 AD in 1986–87. He wrote three graphic novels with his favourite collaborator and long-time friend Dave McKean: Violent Cases, Signal to Noise, and The Tragical Comedy or Comical Tragedy of Mr. Punch. Impressed with his work, DC Comics hired him in February 1987, and he wrote the limited series Black Orchid. Karen Berger, who later became head of DC Comics's Vertigo, read Black Orchid and offered Gaiman a job: to re-write an old character, The Sandman, but to put his own spin on him.

The Sandman tells the tale of the ageless, anthropomorphic personification of Dream that is known by many names, including Morpheus. The series began in January 1989 and concluded in March 1996. In the eighth issue of The Sandman, Gaiman and artist Mike Dringenberg introduced Death, the older sister of Dream, who would become as popular as the series' title character. The limited series Death: The High Cost of Living launched DC's Vertigo line in 1993. The 75 issues of the regular series, along with an illustrated prose text and a special containing seven short stories, have been collected into 12 volumes that remain in print. The series became one of DC's top selling titles, eclipsing even Batman and Superman. Comics historian Les Daniels called Gaiman's work "astonishing" and noted that The Sandman was "a mixture of fantasy, horror, and ironic humor such as comic books had never seen before". DC Comics writer and executive Paul Levitz observed that "The Sandman became the first extraordinary success as a series of graphic novel collections, reaching out and converting new readers to the medium, particularly young women on college campuses, and making Gaiman himself into an iconic cultural figure."

Gaiman has lived near Menomonie, Wisconsin, since 1992. Gaiman moved there to be close to the family of his then-wife, Mary McGrath, with whom he has three children. As of 2013, Gaiman also resides in Cambridge, Massachusetts. In 2014, he took up a five-year appointment as professor in the arts at Bard College, in Annandale-on-Hudson, New York.

Gaiman is married to songwriter and performer Amanda Palmer, with whom he has an open marriage. The couple announced that they were dating in June 2009, and announced their engagement on Twitter on 1 January 2010. On 16 November 2010, Palmer hosted a non-legally binding flash mob wedding for Gaiman's birthday in New Orleans. They were legally married on 2 January 2011. The wedding took place in the parlour of writers Ayelet Waldman and Michael Chabon. On marrying Palmer, he took her middle name, MacKinnon, as one of his names. In September 2015 they had a son.

I am sure Gaiman will make it to next year’s list as well, but in this year in particular, the main reason he made it was “The Sandman”, which had so much quality, almost all the issues I reviewed scored a 10.

NUMBER FOUR MARK MILLAR (1969 - PRESENT)

Mark Millar MBE is a Scottish comic book writer, best known for his work on The Authority, The Ultimates, Marvel Knights Spider-Man, Ultimate Fantastic Four, Civil War, Kingsman: The Secret Service, Wanted, Chrononauts, Superior and Kick-Ass, the latter seven of which have been, or are planned to be, adapted into feature films.

Millar was born 24 December 1969 in Coatbridge, Scotland. His parents were also born in Coatbridge, and Millar spent the first half of his life in the town's Townhead area, attending St Ambrose High. He has four older brothers, and one older sister, who are 22, 20, 18, 16 and 14 years older than him, respectively. His brother Bobby, who today works at a special needs school, introduced him to comics at age 4 while attending university by taking him to shops and purchasing them for him. Still learning to read, Millar's first comic was the seminal The Amazing Spider-Man #121 (1973), which featured the death of Gwen Stacy. He purchased a Superman comic that day as well. Black and white reprinted comics purchased by his brothers for him would follow, cementing his interest in the medium so much that Millar drew a spider web across his face with indelible marker that his parents were unable to scrub off in time for his First Communion photo a week later. Millar has named Alan Moore and Frank Miller as the two biggest influences on his career, characterizing them as "my Mum and Dad." Other writers he names as influences include Grant Morrison, Peter Milligan, Warren Ellis and Garth Ennis. More recent writers that have impressed him include Jason Aaron and Scott Snyder.

Millar's mother died of a heart attack at age 64, when Millar was 14, and his father died four years later, aged 65. Although Millar enjoyed drawing comics, he was not permitted to go to art school because his family frowned upon such endeavours as a waste of time for the academic Millar, who studied subjects like chemistry, physics and advanced maths. He initially planned to be a doctor, and subsequently decided that becoming an economist would be a viable alternate plan, but later decided that he "couldn't quite hack it" in that occupation. He attended Glasgow University to study politics and economics, but dropped out after his father's death left him without the money to pay his living expenses.

When Millar was 18, he interviewed writer Grant Morrison, who was doing his first major American work on Animal Man, for a fanzine. When he told Morrison that he wanted to be both a writer and an artist, Morrison suggested that he focus on one of those career paths, as it was very hard to be successful at both, which Millar cites as the best advice he has received.

Millar's first job as a comic book writer came when he was still in high school, writing Trident's Saviour with Daniel Vallely providing art. Saviour combined elements of religion, satire and superhero action. During the 1990s, Millar worked on titles such as 2000 AD, Sonic the Comic and Crisis. In 1993, Millar, Grant Morrison and John Smith created a controversial eight-week run on 2000 AD called The Summer Offensive. It was during this run that Millar and Morrison wrote their first major story together, Big Dave.

Millar's British work brought him to the attention of DC Comics, and in 1994 he started working on his first American comic, Swamp Thing. The first four issues of Millar's run were co-written by Grant Morrison, allowing Millar to settle into the title. Although his work brought some critical acclaim to the ailing title, the book's sales were still low enough to warrant cancellation by the publisher. From there, Millar spent time working on various DC titles, often co-writing with or under the patronage of Morrison as in the cases of his work on JLA, The Flash and Aztek: The Ultimate Man, and working on unsuccessful pitches for the publisher.

In 2000, Millar replaced Warren Ellis on The Authority for DC's Wildstorm imprint. Millar announced his resignation from DC in 2001, though his miniseries Superman: Red Son was printed in 2003.

In 2001, Millar launched Ultimate X-Men for Marvel Comics' Ultimate Marvel imprint. The following year he collaborated with illustrator Bryan Hitch on The Ultimates, the Ultimate imprint's equivalent of The Avengers. Millar's work on The Ultimates was later adapted into two Marvel Animated Features and the subsequent 2012 Hollywood box office smash Marvel's The Avengers.

In 2006, Millar, joined by artist Steve McNiven, began writing the Marvel miniseries Civil War a seven-issue limited series revolving around the passing of Superhuman Registration Act as a result of the death and destruction unintentionally caused by superheroes and turned Captain America and Iron Man onto opposing sides, the book formed the basis for the film Captain America: Civil War. In 2009 Millar wrote the dystopian "Old Man Logan" storyline, which appeared in the Wolverine series, and was set in a possible future in which Wolverine, having been traumatized by his murder of the X-Men (an event prompted by Mysterio's illusions), became a recluse, after which the United States government collapsed, and the country fell under the control of various supervillain enclaves. Needing rent money for his family's farm, Wolverine comes out of retirement when called upon by Hawkeye.

Millar supports British withdrawal from the European Union.

While Millar is usually not my cup of tea, mostly because of his toxic depictions of masculinity in his stories (this may or may not be on purpose), he did write a lot of sophisticated comics in the reviews I did this year (”The Ultimates” and “Marvel Knights: Spider-man”).

NUMBER THREE GEOFF JOHNS (1973 - PRESENT)

Geoffrey Johns (born January 25, 1973) is an American comic book writer, screenwriter and film and television producer. He served as the President and Chief Creative Officer (CCO) of DC Entertainment from 2016 to 2018 after his initial appointment as CCO in 2010. Some of his most notable work has used the DC Comics characters Green Lantern, Aquaman, Flash and Superman.

In 2018, he stepped down from his executive role at DC Entertainment to open a production company, Mad Ghost Productions, to focus on writing and producing film, television and comic book titles based on DC properties. Some of his work in television includes the series Blade, Smallville, Arrow and The Flash. He was a co-producer on the film Green Lantern (2011) and a producer on Justice League (2017). He co-wrote the story for Aquaman (2018) and the screenplay for Wonder Woman 1984 (2020).

Geoff Johns was born in Detroit, Michigan, the son of Barbara and Fred Johns. He is of half Lebanese ancestry and grew up in the suburbs of Grosse Pointe and Clarkston. As a child, Johns and his brother first discovered comics through an old box of comics they found in their grandmother's attic, which included copies of The Flash, Superman, Green Lantern, and Batman from the 1960s and 1970s. Johns eventually began to patronize a comics shop in Traverse City, recalling that the first new comics he bought were Crisis on Infinite Earths #3 or 4 and The Flash #348 or 349, as the latter was his favorite character. As Johns continued collecting comics, he gravitated toward DC Comics and later Vertigo, and drew comics. After graduating from Clarkston High School in 1991, he studied media arts, screenwriting, film production and film theory at Michigan State University. He graduated from Michigan State in 1995, and then moved to Los Angeles, California.

In Los Angeles, Johns cold-called the office of director Richard Donner looking for an internship, and while Johns was being transferred to various people, Donner picked up the phone by accident, leading to a conversation and the internship. Johns started off copying scripts, and after about two months, was hired as a production assistant for Donner, whom Johns regards as his mentor.

While working on production of Donner's 1997 film Conspiracy Theory, Johns visited New York City, where he met DC Comics personnel such as Eddie Berganza, reigniting his childhood interest in comics.

Berganza invited Johns to tour the DC Comics offices, and offered Johns the opportunity to suggest ideas, which led to Johns pitching Stars and S.T.R.I.P.E., a series based on the second Star-Spangled Kid and her stepfather, to editor Chuck Kim a year later. Johns expected to write comics "on the side", until he met David Goyer and James Robinson, who were working on JSA. After looking at Stars and S.T.R.I.P.E., Robinson offered Johns co-writing duties on JSA in 2000, and Johns credits both him and Mike Carlin with shepherding him into the comics industry. That same year, Johns became the regular writer on The Flash ongoing series with issue 164. John's work on The Flash represents one example of his modeling of various elements in his stories after aspects of his birth town, explaining, "When I wrote The Flash, I turned Keystone City into Detroit, made it a car town. I make a lot of my characters from Detroit. I think self-made, blue-collar heroes represent Detroit. Wally West's Flash was like that. I took the inspiration of the city and the people there and used it in the books." John's Flash run concluded with #225.

His younger sister, Courtney, was a victim of the TWA Flight 800 crash. The DC Comics character Courtney Whitmore, whom Johns created, is based on her.

In a 2010 interview, Johns named Steve McNiven as an artist he would like to collaborate with, J. Michael Straczynski's run on Thor as his then-favorite ongoing comic book, and The Flash as his favorite of all time, stating that he owns every issue of it. He credits reading James Robinson's The Golden Age as the book responsible for his love of the characters featured in the book, and for his decision to accept writing duties on JSA. He is also a comic book retailer who co-owns Earth-2 Comics in Northridge, California, with Carr D'Angelo and Jud Meyers.

There are plenty of reasons for Geoff Johns to be in this list, this year. But the main ones are his Justice League and Shazam Origin. At the moment of this writing, Doomsday Clock is not included in these reviews, but his writing there is also very, very good.

NUMBER TWO MARV WOLFMAN, WITH GEORGE PEREZ (1946 - PRESENT)

Marvin Arthur Wolfman (born May 13, 1946) is an American comic book and novelization writer. He worked on Marvel Comics's The Tomb of Dracula, for which he and artist Gene Colan created the vampire-slayer Blade, and DC Comics's The New Teen Titans and the Crisis on Infinite Earths limited series with George Pérez.

Marv Wolfman was born in Brooklyn, New York City, the son of police officer Abe and housewife Fay. He has a sister, Harriet, 12 years older. When Wolfman was 13, his family moved to Flushing, Queens, in New York City, where he attended junior high school. He went on to New York's High School of Art and Design, in Manhattan, hoping to become a cartoonist. Wolfman is Jewish.

Marvin Wolfman was active in fandom before he began his professional comics career at DC Comics in 1968. Wolfman was one of the first to publish Stephen King, with "In A Half-World of Terror" in Wolfman's horror fanzine Stories of Suspense No. 2 (1965). This was a revised version of King's first published story, "I Was a Teenage Grave Robber", which had been serialized over four issues (three published and one unpublished) of the fanzine Comics Review that same year.

Wolfman's first published work for DC Comics appeared in Blackhawk No. 242 (Aug.–Sept. 1968). He and longtime friend Len Wein created the character Jonny Double in Showcase No. 78 (Nov. 1968) scripted by Wolfman. The two co-wrote "Eye of the Beholder" in Teen Titans No. 18 (Dec. 1968), which would be Wein's first professional comics credit. Neal Adams was called upon to rewrite and redraw a Teen Titans story which had been written by Wein and Wolfman. The story, titled "Titans Fit the Battle of Jericho!", would have introduced DC's first African American superhero, but was rejected by publisher Carmine Infantino. The revised story appeared in Teen Titans No. 20 (March–April 1969). Wolfman and Gil Kane created an origin for Wonder Girl in Teen Titans No. 22 (July–Aug. 1969) which introduced the character's new costume.

Wolfman is married to Noel Watkins. Wolfman was previously married to Michele Wolfman, for many years a colorist in the comics industry. They have a daughter, Jessica Morgan.

There are also many reasons for Wolfman to be in this list. Among them there is: “Man and Superman”, “New Teen Titans”, “Tales of the Teen Titans”, “The Judas Contract”, “Vigilante” and “Crisis on Infinite Earths”. Many of these, were collaborations with George Pérez and that is why he gets a mention in this space (don’t worry, he is in another TOP 10 this year). Not only he destroyed a multiverse and created one of the most stable runs of DC Continuity ever, he also “created” Nightwing and Vigilante and finally published “Man and Superman” this year.

NUMBER ONE ALAN MOORE (1953 - PRESENT)

Alan Moore (born 18 November 1953) is an English writer known primarily for his work in comic books including Watchmen, V for Vendetta, The Ballad of Halo Jones, Swamp Thing, Batman: The Killing Joke and From Hell. Regarded by some as the best comics writer in the English language, he is widely recognized among his peers and critics. He has occasionally used such pseudonyms as Curt Vile, Jill de Ray, and Translucia Baboon; also, reprints of some of his work have been credited to The Original Writer when Moore requested that his name be removed.

Moore started writing for British underground and alternative fanzines in the late 1970s before achieving success publishing comic strips in such magazines as 2000 AD and Warrior. He was subsequently picked up by the American DC Comics, and as "the first comics writer living in Britain to do prominent work in America", he worked on major characters such as Batman (Batman: The Killing Joke) and Superman (Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow?), substantially developed the character Swamp Thing, and penned original titles such as Watchmen. During that decade, Moore helped to bring about greater social respectability for comics in the United States and United Kingdom. He prefers the term "comic" to "graphic novel". In the late 1980s and early 1990s he left the comic industry mainstream and went independent for a while, working on experimental work such as the epic From Hell and the prose novel Voice of the Fire. He subsequently returned to the mainstream later in the 1990s, working for Image Comics, before developing America's Best Comics, an imprint through which he published works such as The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen and the occult-based Promethea. In 2016, he published Jerusalem: a 1266-page experimental novel set in his hometown of Northampton, UK.

Moore is an occultist, ceremonial magician, and anarchist, and has featured such themes in works including Promethea, From Hell, and V for Vendetta, as well as performing avant-garde spoken word occult "workings" with The Moon and Serpent Grand Egyptian Theatre of Marvels, some of which have been released on CD.

Despite his own personal objections, his works have provided the basis for a number of Hollywood films, including From Hell (2001), The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (2003), V for Vendetta (2005), and Watchmen (2009). Moore has also been referenced in popular culture, and has been recognized as an influence on a variety of literary and television figures including Neil Gaiman, Joss Whedon, and Damon Lindelof. He has lived a significant portion of his life in Northampton, England, and he has said in various interviews that his stories draw heavily from his experiences living there.

Abandoning his office job, he decided to instead take up both writing and illustrating his own comics. He had already produced a couple of strips for several alternative fanzines and magazines, such as Anon E. Mouse for the local paper Anon, and St. Pancras Panda, a parody of Paddington Bear, for the Oxford-based Back Street Bugle. His first paid work was for a few drawings that were printed in NME, and not long after he succeeded in getting a series about a private detective known as Roscoe Moscow published using the pseudonym of Curt Vile (a pun on the name of composer Kurt Weill) in the weekly music magazine Sounds, earning £35 a week. Alongside this, he and Phyllis, with their newborn daughter Leah, began claiming unemployment benefit to supplement this income. Not long after this, in 1979 he also began publishing a new comic strip known as Maxwell the Magic Cat in the Northants Post, under the pseudonym of Jill de Ray (a pun on the Medieval child murderer Gilles de Rais, something he found to be a "sardonic joke"). Earning a further £10 a week from this, he decided to sign off of social security, and would continue writing Maxwell the Magic Cat until 1986. Moore has stated that he would have been happy to continue Maxwell's adventures almost indefinitely, but ended the strip after the newspaper ran a negative editorial on the place of homosexuals in the community. Meanwhile, Moore decided to focus more fully on writing comics rather than both writing and drawing them, stating that "After I'd been doing [it] for a couple of years, I realised that I would never be able to draw well enough and/or quickly enough to actually make any kind of decent living as an artist."

To learn more about how to write a successful comic-book script, he asked advice from his friend, comic-book writer Steve Moore, whom he had known since he was fourteen. Interested in writing for 2000AD, one of Britain's most prominent comic magazines, Alan Moore then submitted a script for their long running and successful series Judge Dredd. While having no need for another writer on Judge Dredd, which was already being written by John Wagner, 2000AD's editor Alan Grant saw promise in Moore's work – later remarking that "this guy's a really fucking good writer" – and instead asked him to write some short stories for the publication's Future Shocks series. While the first few were rejected, Grant advised Moore on improvements, and eventually accepted the first of many. Meanwhile, Moore had also begun writing minor stories for Doctor Who Weekly, and later commented that "I really, really wanted a regular strip. I didn't want to do short stories ... But that wasn't what was being offered. I was being offered short four or five-page stories where everything had to be done in those five pages. And, looking back, it was the best possible education that I could have had in how to construct a story."

From 1980 through to 1984, Moore maintained his status as a freelance writer, and was offered a spate of work by a variety of comic book companies in Britain, namely Marvel UK, and the publishers of 2000AD and Warrior. He later remarked that "I remember that what was generally happening was that everybody wanted to give me work, for fear that I would just be given other work by their rivals. So everybody was offering me things." It was an era when comic books were increasing in popularity in Britain, and according to Lance Parkin, "the British comics scene was cohering as never before, and it was clear that the audience was sticking with the title as they grew up. Comics were no longer just for very small boys: teenagers – even A-level and university students – were reading them now."

During this three-year period, 2000AD would accept and publish over fifty of Moore's one-off stories for their Future Shocks and Time Twisters science fiction series. The editors at the magazine were impressed by Moore's work and decided to offer him a more permanent strip, starting with a story that they wanted to be vaguely based upon the hit film E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial. The result, Skizz, which was illustrated by Jim Baikie, told the story of the titular alien who crashes to Earth and is cared for by a teenager named Roxy, and Moore later noted that in his opinion, this work "owes far too much to Alan Bleasdale." Another series he produced for 2000AD was D.R. and Quinch, which was illustrated by Alan Davis. The story, which Moore described as "continuing the tradition of Dennis the Menace, but giving him a thermonuclear capacity", revolved around two delinquent aliens, and was a science-fiction take on National Lampoon's characters O.C. and Stiggs. The work widely considered to be the highlight of his 2000AD career, and that he himself described as "the one that worked best for me" was The Ballad of Halo Jones. Co-created with artist Ian Gibson, the series was set in the 50th century. The series was discontinued after three books due to a dispute between Moore and Fleetway, the magazine's publishers, over the intellectual property rights of the characters Moore and Gibson had co-created.

Another comic company to employ Moore was Marvel UK, who had formerly purchased a few of his one-off stories for Doctor Who Weekly and Star Wars Weekly. Aiming to get an older audience than 2000AD, their main rival, they employed Moore to write for the regular strip Captain Britain, "halfway through a storyline that he's neither inaugurated nor completely understood." He replaced the former writer Dave Thorpe, but maintained the original artist, Alan Davis, whom Moore described as "an artist whose love for the medium and whose sheer exultation upon finding himself gainfully employed within it shine from every line, every new costume design, each nuance of expression."

Guy Fawkes serves as physical and philosophical inspiration for the titular protagonist of V for Vendetta. The third comic company that Moore worked for in this period was Quality Communications, publishers of a new monthly magazine called Warrior. The magazine was founded by Dez Skinn, a former editor of both IPC (publishers of 2000 AD) and Marvel UK, and was designed to offer writers a greater degree of freedom over their artistic creations than was allowed by pre-existing companies. It was at Warrior that Moore "would start to reach his potential". Moore was initially given two ongoing strips in Warrior: Marvelman and V for Vendetta, both of which debuted in Warrior's first issue in March 1982. V for Vendetta was a dystopian thriller set in a future 1997 where a fascist government controlled Britain, opposed only by a lone anarchist dressed in a Guy Fawkes costume who turns to terrorism to topple the government. Illustrated by David Lloyd, Moore was influenced by his pessimistic feelings about the Thatcherite Conservative government, which he projected forward as a fascist state in which all ethnic and sexual minorities had been eliminated. It has been regarded as "among Moore's best work" and has maintained a cult following throughout subsequent decades.

Marvelman (later retitled Miracleman for legal reasons) was a series that originally had been published in Britain from 1954 through to 1963, based largely upon the American comic Captain Marvel. Upon resurrecting Marvelman, Moore "took a kitsch children's character and placed him within the real world of 1982". The work was drawn primarily by Garry Leach and Alan Davis. The third series that Moore produced for Warrior was The Bojeffries Saga, a comedy about a working-class English family of vampires and werewolves, drawn by Steve Parkhouse. Warrior closed before these stories were completed, but under new publishers both Miracleman and V for Vendetta were resumed by Moore, who finished both stories by 1989. Moore's biographer Lance Parkin remarked that "reading them through together throws up some interesting contrasts – in one the hero fights a fascist dictatorship based in London, in the other an Aryan superman imposes one."

Although Moore's work numbered amongst the most popular strips to appear in 2000 AD, Moore himself became increasingly concerned at the lack of creator's rights in British comics. In 1985, he talked to fanzine Arkensword, noting that he had stopped working for all British publishers bar IPC, "purely for the reason that IPC so far have avoided lying to me, cheating me or generally treating me like shit." He did join other creators in decrying the wholesale relinquishing of all rights, and in 1986 stopped writing for 2000 AD, leaving mooted future volumes of the Halo Jones story unstarted. Moore's outspoken opinions and principles, particularly on the subject of creator's rights and ownership, would see him burn bridges with a number of other publishers over the course of his career.

Meanwhile, during this same period, he – using the pseudonym of Translucia Baboon – became involved in the music scene, founding his own band, The Sinister Ducks, with David J (of goth band Bauhaus) and Alex Green, and in 1983 released a single, March of the Sinister Ducks, with sleeve art by illustrator Kevin O'Neill. In 1984, Moore and David J released a 12-inch single featuring a recording of "This Vicious Cabaret", a song featured in V for Vendetta, which was released on the Glass Records label. Moore would write the song "Leopardman at C&A" for David J, and it would be set to music by Mick Collins for the album We Have You Surrounded by Collins' group The Dirtbombs.

Moore's work in 2000 AD brought him to the attention of DC Comics editor Len Wein, who hired him in 1983 to write The Saga of the Swamp Thing, then a formulaic and poor-selling monster comic. Moore, with artists Stephen R. Bissette, Rick Veitch, and John Totleben, deconstructed and reimagined the character, writing a series of formally experimental stories that addressed environmental and social issues alongside the horror and fantasy, bolstered by research into the culture of Louisiana, where the series was set. For Swamp Thing he revived many of DC's neglected magical and supernatural characters, including the Spectre, the Demon, the Phantom Stranger, Deadman, and others, and introduced John Constantine, an English working-class magician based visually on the British musician Sting; Constantine later became the protagonist of the series Hellblazer, which became Vertigo's longest running series at 300 issues. Moore would continue writing Swamp Thing for almost four years, from issue No. 20 (January 1984) through to issue No. 64 (September 1987) with the exception of issues No. 59 and 62. Moore's run on Swamp Thing was successful both critically and commercially, and inspired DC to recruit British writers such as Grant Morrison, Jamie Delano, Peter Milligan, and Neil Gaiman to write comics in a similar vein, often involving radical revamps of obscure characters. These titles laid the foundation of what became the Vertigo line.

Moore began producing further stories for DC Comics, including a two-part story for Vigilante, which dealt with domestic abuse. He was eventually given the chance to write a story for one of DC's best-known superheroes, Superman, entitled "For the Man Who Has Everything", which was illustrated by Dave Gibbons and published in 1985. In this story, Wonder Woman, Batman, and Robin visit Superman on his birthday, only to find that he has been overcome by an alien organism and is hallucinating about his heart's desire. He followed this with another Superman story, "Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow?", which was published in 1986. Illustrated by Curt Swan, it was designed as the last Superman story in the pre-Crisis on Infinite Earths DC Universe.

The threat of Nuclear war during the Cold War influenced the setting and tone of Watchmen. The limited series Watchmen, begun in 1986 and collected as a trade paperback in 1987, cemented Moore's reputation. Imagining what the world would be like if costumed heroes had really existed since the 1940s, Moore and artist Dave Gibbons created a Cold War mystery in which the shadow of nuclear war threatens the world. The heroes who are caught up in this escalating crisis either work for the US government or are outlawed, and are motivated to heroism by their various psychological hang-ups. Watchmen is non-linear and told from multiple points of view, and includes highly sophisticated self-references, ironies, and formal experiments such as the symmetrical design of issue 5, "Fearful Symmetry", where the last page is a near mirror-image of the first, the second-last of the second, and so on, and in this manner is an early example of Moore's interest in the human perception of time and its implications for free will. It is the only comic to win the Hugo Award, in a one-time category ("Best Other Form"). It is widely seen as Moore's best work, and has been regularly described as the greatest comic book ever written. Alongside roughly contemporary works such as Frank Miller's Batman: The Dark Knight Returns, Art Spiegelman's Maus, and Jaime and Gilbert Hernandez's Love and Rockets, Watchmen was part of a late 1980s trend in American comics towards more adult sensibilities. Comics historian Les Daniels noted that Watchmen "called into question the basic assumptions on which the super hero genre is formulated". DC Comics writer and executive Paul Levitz observed in 2010 that "As with The Dark Knight Returns, Watchmen set off a chain reaction of rethinking the nature of super heroes and heroism itself, and pushed the genre darker for more than a decade. The series won acclaim ... and would continue to be regarded as one of the most important literary works the field ever produced." Moore briefly became a media celebrity, and the resulting attention led to him withdrawing from fandom and no longer attending comics conventions (at one UKCAC in London he is said to have been followed into the toilet by eager autograph hunters).

Since his teenage years Moore has had long hair, and since early adulthood has also had a beard. He has taken to wearing a number of large rings on his hands, leading him to be described as a "cross between Hagrid and Danny from Withnail and I" who could be easily mistaken for "the village eccentric". Born and raised in Northampton, he continues to live in the town, and used its history as a basis for his novels Voice of the Fire and Jerusalem. His "unassuming terraced" Northampton home was described by an interviewer in 2001 as "something like an occult bookshop under permanent renovation, with records, videos, magical artifacts and comic-book figurines strewn among shelves of mystical tomes and piles of paper. The bathroom, with blue-and-gold décor and a generous sunken tub, is palatial; the rest of the house has possibly never seen a vacuum cleaner. This is clearly a man who spends little time on the material plane." He likes to live in his home town, feeling that it affords him a level of obscurity that he enjoys, remarking that "I never signed up to be a celebrity." He has spoken in praise of the town's former Radical MP, Charles Bradlaugh at the annual commemoration. He is also a vegetarian.

With his first wife Phyllis, whom he married in the early 1970s, he has two daughters, Leah and Amber. The couple also had a mutual lover, Deborah, although the relationship between the three ended in the early 1990s as Phyllis and Deborah left Moore, taking his daughters with them. On 12 May 2007, he married Melinda Gebbie, with whom he has worked on several comics, most notably Lost Girls.

It was pretty clear that Alan Moore was going to end up being in the Top 10 this year. Mostly because I read a lot of his material from DC. The reason he made it into the top 10 is “V for Vendetta” with David Lloyd, “Swamp Thing”, “Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow?”, “Tom Strong”, Batman: The Killing Joke” and “Watchmen”.

Most of these writers have also done something good, not only for the comic-book industry, but also for the world. And this TOP 10 is a way of celebrating them, because their work really inspired most of the pop-culture we consume today.

#writers #comics #reviews #2019 #alan moore #marv wolfman #geoff johns #mark millar #neil gaiman #chris claremont #mike w barr #frank miller #sean murphy #james robinson #james tynion iv

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makistar2018 · 5 years

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Inside Taylor Swift's Personal Diary Entries: Read All of the Biggest Revelations

By Tomás Mier August 24, 2019

Photo: DIA DIPASUPIL/GETTY

Lover of Diaries

Fans got an inside look at some of Taylor Swift’s most personal thoughts when they bought the deluxe version of her new album, Lover.

Along with some behind-the-scenes recordings, each album featured a 30-page booklet with excerpts from her personal diaries — some even from she was just 13!

“I’ve written about pretty much everything that’s happened to me. I’ve written my original lyrics in those diaries, just feelings,” she said on an Instagram Live announcing the booklets. “It’s everything from pictures drawn, photos of that time in my life, I used to like tape stuff in my diaries.”

Here are the top 10 takeaways from her personal diary entries.

Photo: CHRISTOPHER POLK/GETTY

Swift the Lyricist

If the diary entries are filled with anything, it’s a deep dive into her song lyrics.

“Red” was born on a long flight — and everyone she played it for loved it.

“Its [sic] so different than anything we’ve done,” she wrote in 2011. “I can’t even tell you how alive and worthwhile I feel when I’m writing a new song and I finish it and people like it. It’s the most fulfilling feeling, like getting an A+ on your report card.”

The diaries also share early versions of “All Too Well” and songs like “Long Live,” “White Horse,” “Holy Ground” and “This Love.”

In a 2014 entry, she writes about the creation of her ultra-hit “Shake It Off.”

“The best way I know how to describe it is that the chorus just fell out of the sky,” she wrote in 2014.

“We all went home and I wrote the first and second verses and brought them in the next day. We wrote this chanty cheer leader bridge that I absolutely LOVE,” she continued.

As for the album cover that would accompany “Shake It Off,” she wrote that she “saw it within 10 seconds.”

“The craziest moment came when something caught my eye. The cover photo is photo 13. I kid you not,” she wrote about the polaroid cover to 1989, which she accompanied with a sketch.

Photo: HENRY LAMB/BEI/REX/SHUTTERSTOCK

A Glamorous Gala

In a diary entry, Swift writes about being invited to “this event called ‘The Met Gala.’”

To an 18-year-old Swift, that day was “THE party of the year.”

“The paps started SCREAMING for me. It was crazy,” she wrote in May 2008. “We made our way up the red carpet, posing for everyone. All of the women looked so glamorous in their gowns.”

Along with meeting Anna Wintour, George Clooney, Julia Roberts and Giorgio Armani at the event, she wrote that “models stood as decorations, standing still and wearing gorgeous gowns.”

Once inside, she lists “every celebrity ever created” at the event, including Scarlett Johansson, Tom Brady, Beyoncé, Victoria Beckham, Tom Cruise and Jon Bon Jovi “who called me over to talk to him.”

Photo: LARRY BUSACCA/GETTY

Borchetta's Beginnings

Weeks before the release of Lover, a public feud involving Swift and her old label Big Machine made headlines when the label’s founder Scott Borchetta sold the label (and ownership of her masters) to Scooter Braun.

But years before, Swift had nothing but kind things to say about the label founder who signed her.

After meeting with Capitol Records and not being offered “the deal I would want,” she met with Borchetta — and left with feelings of excitement.

“I really loved all the stuff he said in the meeting, and he stayed for the whole Bluebird show,” she wrote in November 2014. “And he’s SO passionate about this project. I think that’s the way we’re gonna go, I want to surround myself with passionate people.”

A meeting with Borchetta also made “Sparks Fly” as she came up with the name of her second album.

“We were talking about the record and I had this epiphany,” she wrote in April 2010. “I didn’t talk in interviews about how I felt about much of what has happened in the last two years. I’ve been silent about so much that I’m saying on this album. It’s time to Speak Now.”

“Scott freaked out. He loved it,” she wrote in April 2010. “We have a title, ladies and gentlemen!”

Photo: SPLASH

"The Hunters Will Always Outnumber Me"

Swift also opens up about the lack of privacy that comes with being a celebrity — and how she’ll never get used to seeing “a group of people staring, amassed outside my house, pointing, camera phones up…”

“They could never imagine how much that feels like being hunted,” she wrote.

Swift compares her “mostly perfect life” to “being a tiger in a wildlife enclosure.”

“It’s pretty in there, but you can’t get out,” she described in the August 2013 note.

“No matter how big my house is or how many albums I sell, I’m still going to be the rabbit,” she added. “Because the hunters will always outnumber me. The spectators will stand by, shaking their heads, going ‘that poor girl.’ But the point is, they’re still watching. Everyone loves a good hunt.”

But her feelings about being “hunted” also translated into worrying about her generation’s obsession with taking photos “so that they can spend all day checking the comments underneath.”

“They will never truly experience a moment without attempting to capture it and own it,” she wrote, comparing pulling a flower from the ground to take photos. “Nevermind that picking a flower kills it, the same way taking a picture of a moment can ruin it altogether.”

Swift has notably kept comments off of her post to improve her mental health.

“I’m training my brain to not need the validation of someone telling me that I look 🔥🔥🔥,” she wrote in Elle. “I’m also blocking out anyone who might feel the need to tell me to ‘go die in a hole ho’ while I’m having my coffee at nine in the morning.”

Photo: AL MESSERSCHMIDT/GETTY

From Fearful to "Fearless"

Though Swift is now known for her jaw-dropping stage presence, as a young singer she wrote that she would “get stage fright every time I walk onto a stage.”

“I wish it wasn’t so, but I can’t blame my mind for freaking out about performances,” she wrote in 2010, days before releasing Speak Now. “Criticism of my performances has been the biggest source of pain in my life.”

“I sometimes feel like my college degree is in acting like I’m ok when I’m not,” wrote a 20-year-old Swift.

But even as a burgeoning singer at just 13, she would get hate while on stage. During one performance, her guitar pick broke in half and fell while she was playing.

“There was this huge silence! It was awful! I had to bend over and pick it up in front of everyone!” she wrote next to the broken pick. “And while I was singing, this guy was shouting stuff like, ‘Go on, b*#@! Sing that country bulls#*%! Go on motherf—!.’ It was awful.”

Photo: SCOTT GRIES/GETTY IMAGES

Done with Dieting

In her diaries, she also candidly writes about sticking to a diet as a teen.

Soon after Thanksgiving 2006, she returned to Nashville to her “own comfy bed” and planned to go out to eat with her best friend Abigail Anderson during a day off.

“Oh and I’m dieting again,” she wrote right after.

“Over the holidays I didn’t watch what I ate and man its [sic] so weird how fast I can gain or lose weight… It’s crazy,” she ended the note. “So I’m going to lose some now.”

Earlier this year, she wrote about finally being okay with gaining weight.

“I learned to stop hating every ounce of fat on my body,” she wrote in Elle. “I worked hard to retrain my brain that a little extra weight means curves, shinier hair, and more energy.”

The “Daylight” singer also said that she’s constantly working on her body image.

“I think a lot of us push the boundaries of dieting, but taking it too far can be really dangerous. There is no quick fix,” she said. “I work on accepting my body every day.”

Photo: CHRISTOPHER POLK/GETTY IMAGES

"I'ma Let You Finish, But..."

“Ahh… the things that can change in a week…” wrote Swift in a Sept. 18, 2009 journal entry.

Five days had passed since Kanye West crashed Swift’s Video of the Year acceptance speech at the MTV Video Music Awards, but the whole ordeal was all she — and everyone else — could think about.

“If you had told me that one of the biggest stars in music was going to jump up onstage and announce that he thought I shouldn’t have won on live television, I would’ve said ‘That stuff doesn’t really happen in real life,’” she wrote.

“Well… apparently…. It does,” she ended the note.

Little did 19-year-old Swift know that West would cause more tumult in her life seven years later. In an August 2016 note, she simply wrote, “This summer is the apocalypse.”

The “apocalyptic” summer came when West referred to the singer as “that bitch”in his track “Famous” and featured a nude version of the “Shake It Off” singer in its accompanying video.

Then, Swift said she never approved of the lyric after his wife Kim Kardashianleaked a phone call conversation between the two singers.

“Being falsely painted as a liar when I was never given the full story or played any part of the song is character assassination,” she wrote then. That “Cruel Summer” ordeal would go on to inspire her sixth album, reputation.

Photo: SPLASH NEWS

A Joe Alwyn “Love Story”

Like in Lover’s lyrics, Swift doesn’t hold back about her deep feelings for boyfriend Joe Alwyn in her personal diary.

Clearly writing about Alwyn, the singer confessed about wanting to keep their relationship under wraps as much as possible.

“I’m essentially based in London, hiding out trying to protect us from the nasty world that just wants to ruin things,” she wrote in a January 2017 note. “We have been together and no one has found out for 3 months now. I want it to stay that way because I don’t want anything about this to change or become too complicated or intruded upon.”

“But it’s senseless to worry about someday not being happy when I am happy now,” she concluded. “OK. Breathe.”

But Swift wasn’t always so sure about love being real — especially when it came to Valentine’s Day.

“I somehow feel like it’s my destiny to roll my eyes at happy couples and resent Valentine’s Day. I also feel like I’m the girl before ‘the one.’ I’m not ‘the one,’” she wrote at 19. “I’m the girl you think is the one for you, and when it doesn’t work out with me, you meet the next girl and realize she IS the one.”

And as a mere 13 year old, she imagined the first time she’d have her first kiss — and about being “such a romantic.”

“I just dream about looking into someone’s eyes and feeling something I’ve never felt before, you know?” she wrote. “I just never was able to put a face to my fantacy [sic]. But something tells me that my first kiss is really far away from happening!”

Photo: LARRY BUSACCA/WIREIMAGE

The Night Before...

Before the 2014 Grammy Awards, Swift was confident her album Red would take home the biggest award of the night.

“It’s the middle of the night and I was at the Clive Davis party tonight which means… the Grammys are tomorrow,” she wrote. “Never have I felt so good about our chances. Never have I wanted something so badly as I want to hear them say ‘Red’ is the Album of the Year.”

Though she was up for four awards that year, Swift would head home empty handed.

Though she had won that award two years prior with Fearless, it wouldn’t be until her 2014 album 1989 that she’d take home the coveted prize again. In her 13-year career, Swift has won 10 Grammys from 32 nominations.

Photo: MICHAEL LOCCISANO/FILMMAGIC

“This Might Be Worth Money Someday”

Though her diary entries are filled with some insight into the more complicated times in her life, the entries also feature some cute memories of her youth — including her middle school class schedule, some song lyrics and memories about listening to Sugarland for the first time.

Accompanied by drawings and the number 13, in her first journal entry, she signs her name and writes “(That could be worth money someday!! Just kidding hehe).”

Under “Journal #1,” a 13-year-old Swift writes a poem: “The world is as big as you make it / Never be shameful to fly / When a chance comes you should take it / May you never be scared of goodbye…”

After performing at a school talent show, Swift wrote: “I ❤ SCHOOL!”

Reminiscing on the grand day, Swift wrote, “I got a standing ovation and everything.”

People

#taylor swift #lover #ts7 #diary #2019.08.24

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olliefishie · 5 years

Photo

A lot of these older designs are just one solid colour, bare with me

Originally drawn: Sept 29, 2016

#one-eye #thunderclan

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mizzmellos · 11 months

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learned how to shake my hips in the inner sanctum, satan gave me tips and then I thanked him xo

#Death Note #Mello #Mihael Keehl #originally drawn Sept 2016 #again. because i can't post links.#THE CREATURE FROM THE BLACK LEATHER LAGOON <- LISTEN TO IT NOWWWWWWW #most of the cramps' songs are pretty good #mizz art

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xtruss · 3 years

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A Fourth of July Symbol of Unity That May No Longer Unite

In a Long Island town, neighbors now make assumptions, true and sometimes false, about people who conspicuously display American flags.

Peter Treiber Jr., a farmer, said he was taken aback that a customer thought he was conservative because of the flag painted on his potato truck. Credit...Johnny Milano for The New York Times

By Sarah Maslin Nir

July 3, 2021

SOUTHOLD, N.Y. — The American flag flies in paint on the side of Peter Treiber Jr.’s potato truck, a local landmark parked permanently on County Route 48, doing little more, he thought, than drawing attention to his family’s farm.

Until he tried to sell his produce.

At a local greenmarket where he sells things like wild bergamot, honey and sunflowers, he had trouble striking a deal until, he said, he let his liberal leanings slip out in conversation with a customer.

“She said, ‘Oh, whew. You know, I wasn’t so sure about you, I thought you were some flag-waving something-or-other,’” Mr. Treiber, 32, recalled the woman saying and citing his potato truck display. “That’s why she was apprehensive of interacting with me.”

He paused: “It was a little sad to me. It shows the dichotomy of the country that a flag can mean that. That I had to think, ‘Do I need to reconsider having that out there?’”

Thirteen stripes, a dusting of stars, the American flag has had infinite meanings over the 244 years since the country began flying one. Raised at Iwo Jima, it was a symbol of victory. Lit on fire, it became a searing image of the protests against the Vietnam War. Ribboned around the twin towers on commemorative Sept. 11 lapel pins, it is a reminder of the threats against a delicate democracy.

Politicians of both parties have long sought to wrap themselves in the flag. But something may be changing: Today, flying the flag from the back of a pickup truck or over a lawn is increasingly seen as a clue, albeit an imperfect one, to a person’s political affiliation in a deeply divided nation.

Supporters of former President Donald J. Trump have embraced the flag so fervently — at his rallies, across conservative media and even during the Jan. 6 assault on the Capitol — that many liberals like Mr. Treiber worry that the left has all but ceded the national emblem to the right.

What was once a unifying symbol — there is a star on it for each state, after all — is now alienating to some, its stripes now fault lines between people who kneel while “The Star-Spangled Banner” plays and those for whom not pledging allegiance is an affront.

And it has made the celebration of the Fourth of July, of patriotic bunting and cakes with blueberries and strawberries arranged into Old Glory, into another cleft in a country that seems no longer quite so indivisible, under a flag threatening to fray.

Mr. Treiber’s farm is in the town of Southold, a string of hamlets and a village on the North Fork of Long Island’s Suffolk County. The county chose Mr. Trump for president in 2020 by just 232 votes out of more than 770,000 cast.

Southold is predominantly white, with a small, longstanding Black population — families who reside mostly in the village, Greenport, at the edge of the salty Peconic Bay. There is also a significant Latino population, many of them undocumented, their labor underpinning the vineyards, farms and landscaping businesses that line the peninsula.

The pressure to draw partisan lines is fierce.

David Surozenski, a Republican, refused to add Trump flags to his display. “That’s not the way I was brought up,” he said. “The American flag political? No.” Credit...Johnny Milano for The New York Times

Just across the street from Treiber Farms, David Surozenski, 66, was weeding around the flagpole in his front yard a few days before the Fourth of July. Bouquets of miniature American flags flapped among the marigolds at his feet. Above him flew the flags of the Marines and the Coast Guard — he has children in each service — and at the top, an American flag.

A Republican, Mr. Surozenski said friends constantly pressured him to add Trump banners to his flag-and-flower garden, to fly “Make America Great Again” signs between his red, white and blue pinwheels whirling in the grass. But Mr. Surozenski declined — some of his eight children are Democrats.

“They said, ‘Dave, you’ve got to put Trump’s flag up!’ and I said, ‘No, that’s not happening,’” Mr. Surozenski recalled. “That’s not the way I was brought up. The American flag political? No.”

About 70 percent of Americans say the flag makes them feel proud, according to a recent survey by YouGov, a global public opinion and data research firm, and NBCLX, a mobile information platform. The sentiment was shared by about 80 percent of white Americans, just under 70 percent of Hispanic Americans and slightly less than 60 percent of Black Americans.

The divisions were deeper when it came to politics. While 66 percent of Republicans surveyed said they associated the flag with their own party, only 34 percent of Democrats said the same.

At its 1777 inception, the flag’s very design signified unity, the joining of the 13 colonies, said John R. Vile, a professor of political science and a dean at Middle Tennessee State University.

Politicizing the American flag is thus a perversion of its original intent, according to Professor Vile, who is also the author of “The American Flag: An Encyclopedia of the Stars and Stripes In U.S. History, Culture and Law.” He added, “We can’t allow that to happen.”

“It’s E Pluribus Unum — from many, one,” he said, citing the Latin motto on the Great Seal of the United States. “If the pluribus overwhelms the unum, then what do we have left?”

The sentiment of some conservatives is that a line was drawn when Colin Kaepernick, the former National Football League quarterback, set off a national movement protesting the shootings of Black men by police by taking a knee during the anthem in 2016. His kneeling protest, Mr. Kaepernick has said, still demonstrated respect for the flag, but others saw him as hijacking the flag for political purposes.

Maryneily Rodriguez, 33, said she believed that Mr. Trump’s most fervent supporters had done the same. Ms. Rodriguez, who was visiting Greenport with her fiancé during the Fourth of July weekend, said that she once regularly flew the flag at her home in Freeport, about 80 miles west on Long Island, taking it down only in winter for safekeeping. But about three years ago when spring came, Ms. Rodriguez, who is Black and a Democrat, left the flag in storage. It hasn’t come out since.

“It felt like it didn’t belong to me anymore,” she said.

John Hocker, a Republican who said he sometimes votes Democratic, also said he felt the flag had lost its meaning of unity. Instead of saluting the same flag as one people, he said, too many Americans were modifying it to become emblems of their own identities or belief systems, for instance with rainbow stripes, a symbol of gay pride, or blue stripes to show solidarity with the police.

He flies the flag — the red, white and blue one — from a towering crane several stories above the gravel piles of Latham Sand & Gravel, where he is a co-owner.

“There is a lot of history with this country, some that maybe people don’t like today, and some that people are being judged for today for what they did 300 years ago,” he said.

“It’s still our country and every good and bad thing made it our country,” Mr. Hocker said, glancing upward. “And that’s what that represents.”

The culture war he was alluding to was on full display a few miles away, hanging from the eaves of an empty roadside stand: “SAVE AMERICA” was printed along the flag’s top border, and below: “FIGHT SOCIALISM.”

And on a notice tacked nearby: “If this offends you LEAVE.”

A flag, and a portion of the Pledge of Allegiance meant to convey unity, is displayed on the billboard for St. Peter’s Lutheran Church in Greenport. Credit...Johnny Milano for The New York Times

At Rinconcito Hispano in Greenport, Ana Perez, 33, served up pupusas, stuffed masa flour patties from her native El Salvador, to customers who ordered exclusively in Spanish. Many of them are the laborers who clean the pools at the beach houses and scare the crows off the grapes at the wineries.

In 2017, as Mr. Trump began his crackdown on illegal immigration, village trustees unanimously adopted a resolution to declare Greenport “a welcoming community.” One resident opposing the measure at the meeting urged the public to call and report anyone who employed undocumented immigrants. Wearing an American flag on his chest, he held up a sign with a phone number.

Ms. Perez said she has an American flag T-shirt, too, and she intended to wear it on the holiday. “This symbolizes this country, and I live in this country,” she said, speaking in Spanish because she is not fluent in English. “This flag is for all.”

Maryneily Rodriguez and Anthony Dipolito, who are engaged, walked through a forest of American flags in Greenport while on vacation. Credit...Johnny Milano for The New York Times

Strolling with her fiancé, Anthony Dipolito, Ms. Rodriguez took in the 1920 wooden carousel beside the marina in Greenport.

As she crossed through Mitchell Park, she was struck by the sight of a forest of American flags. It was not a prop for a political rally, but rather a peaceful “field of honor” installed by the Greenport Rotary Club.

Each flag represented not an ideological belief, according to the club, but a veteran or other citizen who had inspired or helped the community.

“I’ve always loved the American flag so much, and now seeing it by the carousel I felt happy again,” Ms. Rodriguez said, as all around her red, white, and blue cloth still waved. “And I haven’t felt that way about the flag in such a long time.”

Correction: July 3, 2021

Because of an editing error, an earlier version of this article referred incorrectly to an organization that had installed a flag display. It was the Greenport Rotary Club, not the Greenpoint Rotary Club.

— Sarah Maslin Nir covers breaking news for the Metro section. She was a Pulitzer Prize finalist for her series “Unvarnished,” an investigation into New York City’s nail salon industry that documented the exploitative labor practices and health issues manicurists face. @SarahMaslinNir

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pavspatch · 3 years

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Ewen Fields Timeline

1885

According to North Cheshire Herald reporter Austin Lloyd in the Hyde United programme of September 13, 1958 (v Stafford Rangers) “Hyde United was established in 1885 and played on Walker Lane, now a school playing field".

1897

The Rev John Bonafous Jelly Dudley, vicar of Old St George’s, Stalybridge, sells land containing Ewen Fields (originally Owen Field) to Thomas Brownson. Total area: 8 acres 3 roods 22 perches.

1900

Ewenfield farmhouse demolished around this time. Elm Grove built in 1910. The house stood across what is now the passageway leading to Grange Road North.

1906

Hyde FC moves to Ewen Fields from Townend Street after amalgamation with Hyde St George’s.

1908

Turnstiles installed.

1910

Ewen Fields football ground appears on an Ordnance Survey map for the first time. Elm Grove built.

1912

Damage caused by great storm. Small wooden stand on Leigh Street side badly damaged.

1919

Hyde United Supporters' Club founded.

1925

New Leigh Street stand opened on September 19. It provided cover for 500 people.

1928

Main stand opened by Cllr Edward Hibbert (Stockport) on August 28.

1931

Thomas Brownson of Bowlfield, Gee Cross, sells ground to John Bramall Snr of 112 Great Norbury Street; William Morton of Broadmeadow, Bowlacre Lane, Gee Cross; and Henry Firth (grocer) of 6 Union Street; for £2,100. 3½ acres.

1932

Walker Lane stand opened by the Mayor of Hyde, Amos Winterbotham, on October 9. It cost £270 and accommodated 1,500 spectators. On November 5, an extension to the main stand was opened.

1935

Ewen Fields hosts a season of baseball as home to the Hyde Grasshoppers.

1936

Failed attempt to float Hyde United as limited company.

1939

Hut measuring 60ft by 21ft bought from Edward Hibbert cotton spinning company, Manchester Road (Hibbert and Aspland?). Converted into Hyde United Social and Recreation Club. Extension quickly added for sale of refreshments.

1945

Hyde United AFC Ltd formed with £2,000 capital in 4,000 shares of ten shillings (50p) each. First board was: Joseph Rhodes (chairman), William Bradley, J Bramall Snr, J Bridgehouse, Harry Garside, Andrew Ollerenshaw, Owen Parrott, Cllr Sam Redfern, J Swinnerton (supporters representative), George H Wood.

1946

John Bramall and Henry Firth sell Ewen Fields to Hyde United AFC Ltd.

1950

Ewen Fields held by George Harry Wood as security for loan. Visit of Lancashire Combination champions Nelson in the fourth qualifying round of the FA Cup watched by crowd of 7,200.

1953

25,000 shilling appeal launched in November (£1,250).

1954

August: 25,000 shilling appeal realises 14,720 shillings — £736. Total comprised donations £64, outside efforts ��110, collections £205, supporters’ club £357. All money given to Hyde United AFC Ltd.

1955

February: Supporters’ club launches appeal to put rails around the pitch. Fans asked to contribute 13s 6d (67½p) per post. Posts were removed in 1987.

1956

North Cheshire Herald says crowd of 8,000 watched FA Cup third qualifying round tie with Macclesfield Town.

1957

Ground sold to George Harry Wood, Sunnyside, Pinfold Lane, Romiley; Harold White, 66 Corona Avenue, Hyde; George Roland Walkden, 18 Glossop Road, Marple Bridge; Eric Catlow, 1 Balmoral Avenue, Hyde; for £1,462. Trust document drawn up and ground put in ownership of the supporters’ club. Hyde United charged annual rent of one shilling (5p).

1958

Construction of Tinker’s Passage stand begins. In October a telephone and electric light were provided in a new press box.

1959

Plaque commemorating Jimmy Walker placed on side of main stand. Jimmy served the club for more than 50 years from its days as Hyde FC.

1961

Scrattin’ Shed built at a cost of £3,000. (Sept 16 programme says £6,000).

1966

Social Club opened on February 12 by former Lancashire cricket captain Ken Grieves.

1968

November 11: Manchester City manager Joe Mercer switches on floodlights before a friendly against a Manchester City XI.

1981

Walker Lane stand demolished. Replacement of wooden fencing with concrete panels begins.

1986

Supporters’ Club sells Ewen Fields to Tameside Council. Over the following two years a Baspograss pitch is laid and a new main stand built. Dug-outs moved to Leigh Street side. Changing rooms put in Leigh Street School. Old tea bar and secretary's office demolished. New turnstiles built. Ewen Fields renamed Tameside Leisure Park.

1988

Official opening of Tameside Leisure Park marked by a pre-season game between Hyde United and Preston North End. Plaque unveiled by Tom Pendry MP. Ewen Fields hosts Manchester Spartans’ American football matches.

1990

Leigh Street cover demolished.

1994

Ewen Fields hosts FA Cup first round tie against Darlington.

1995

Grass pitch reinstated. First game October 21 against Bamber Bridge. Name of ground officially reverts to Ewen Fields.

2000

Main stand extended. Includes dressing rooms and Peter O’Brien Lounge. In following years terracing and cover erected on Leigh Street side and at Walker Lane end.

2009

Club enters into agreement allowing Manchester City elite development squad to use Ewen Fields. Colour scheme of ground changed to blue.

2012

Promotion to National League National Division (Conference). New press accommodation opened at back of main stand.

2016

Grass pitch replaced with Fifa 2* 3G surface.

2017

Ewen Fields hosts FA Cup first round tie against Milton Keynes Dons. Match televised live by BBC.

2020

Colour scheme of ground reverts to red thanks to volunteers. Seats donated by Manchester United installed in main stand.

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bunnyadvocate · 6 years

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An Unauthorised History of /r/visualnovels

As communities age, a mythology tends to build up around their origins, with past eras vaguely alluded to as “golden ages.” I’ve seen this happen with reddit’s /r/visualnovels, a place I moderated during its most transformative stage, so I thought I’d offer my insider’s take on its history: what we’d hoped to achieve as moderators, the unintended side-effects of our policies, and why I think /r/visualnovels is stagnating these days. Given my acrimonious departure from the subreddit, you should take this with a grain of salt, but hopefully it’ll be interesting~

The Birth of /r/visualnovels

The very first posts on /r/visualnovels.

/r/visualnovels was founded in late 2009 by /u/Hpdarkman525 (the former account of /u/gambs), who made one post about the upcoming Umineko ep5 fan translation and then promptly forgot about the sub. At this time, the VN fandom consisted primarily of those who had learned Japanese to read VNs, and those who wished they had. Official localisations were almost non-existent, and the fandom hung off the words of the few fan translators. Knowing about VNs felt like knowing a secret, like a secret handshake to be acknowledged as a fellow western otaku.

This didn’t really change until early 2012 with the release of Katawa Shoujo. We now had a Western VN that was free, easy to install (no fiddling with system locale), pretty well written (no cliche cries of “baka” or “onii-chan”), and handled a delicate subject (disability and self-identity) with a sensitivity that really spoke to a lot of gamers. The optional nature of the adult content helped attract horny teenagers while still retaining an air of respectability. KS managed something no other VN had: attention from the mainstream gaming crowd. It drew a huge wave of new fans to the medium, among which were /u/coldacid and /u/Kuiper who became mods on /r/visualnovels and began to promote it.

While the influx of new members gave birth to the community, with newbies becoming veterans, the continued dominance of KS in the VN scene began to wear thin (it wasn’t until 2016 that the number of /r/visualnovels subscribers outnumbered /r/katawashoujo). Especially grating for veterans was the cry of KS as “the best VN ever written” from those who had only ever read that one VN. The constant stream of “what do I read after KS” and rudimentary technical questions on getting Japanese VNs working drowned out the rare news posts or broader discussion threads. The mod team had a hands-off attitude to it, they’d only remove spam or blatant trolling. This only changed in early 2014 when a relatively unknown user, /u/insanityissexy, requested a mod position...

The Rise of Insanity

Insanityy was a member of the old-guard, being drawn to the medium for Japanese VNs and caring little for what she saw as a pale-imitation in Western VNs. With no regard for the old mods, she singlehandedly brought order to a community that had been lawless. She began with a ban on posts for technical support questions and VN recommendation requests. Instead, they should be asked in the new weekly questions thread so as to clear up the front page for news posts and more substantial discussion threads.

While this move was broadly welcomed by most of the subreddit regulars, it caused some disruption as activity on the sub plummeted. With the western VN scene so small, news was rare and the number of daily posts dropped from 2-4 to just 1. While some grumbled, others were enthused in having an active moderator who cared about the sub. /u/kowzz started a discussion thread on what we could do to improve activity on the sub, and from that discussion he started the weekly Sunday discussion posts and I started the weekly “what are you reading” posts. Unlike the questions sticky, the intention wasn’t to curtail activity outside of these weekly posts, but to provide a supplement to the usual discussions and encourage users to comment more.

With such regular discussion posts, users started to bump into each other more often and a sense of community began to build. On a personal level, I also grew to know insanityy better as we exchanged dozens of increasingly lengthy PMs (so much so that each reply wouldn’t fit within the 10k character limit, we had to send our replies in 3 parts), with us quickly becoming close friends.

Later that year, I proposed an overhaul of the user flairs. The subreddit only offered a basic vndb icon. I wanted to expand that to hundreds of options with a larger profile picture offset to the side of a user’s post as a way to personalise each user. With enough options, I hoped it’d be easier to identify users at a glance and it’d add some character to the subreddit. I was admitted to the mod team to oversee the flair changes, but was soon upgraded to full mod status after a few months on insanityy’s urging.

The two of us fed off each other’s passion as we sought to build a more active, mature, and compassionate community. We never paid any heed to the old mods, mod policy was discussed between us on google hangouts and implemented immediately.

To foster a sense of community, we aimed to have a community event once a month: best X contests, census surveys, recommendation charts, fanart contests, halloween/april fool themes being among just some of the activities we organised. We even got Mangagamer to sponsor some contests with free VNs.

We downplayed the seedier parts of the medium, nukige news was banned and discussions on “fapping” were frowned upon. Neither of us were against porn, we’re both fans, but we feared it’d attract a more neckbeard-type audience.

We aggressively went after trolls, but not by banning them. We had automod automatically remove comments from users prone to cause drama, then we’d manually approve non-trollish comments. That way everyone was able to participate in our community, but bad behaviour wasn’t rewarded with lots of attention.

In the following year, insanityy asked the inactive older mods to resign. Kuiper recognised that he was no longer needed and respectfully stepped down. Coldacid said his inactivity was only temporary and he’d be back, but later left reddit for voat as part of an anti-censorship protest. Gambs asked us to drop the subject as he didn’t want to step down, so we carried on ignoring him.

We also added new members to the mod team: /u/FunwithGravity for his knowledge of Japanese, /u/Cornetto_Man because he got along with everyone, and /u/Avebone because he was active at times when the rest of us were asleep. They were added primarily to approve posts mistakenly removed by automod when me and insanityy were afk and had little input on mod policy.

Everything seemed to be going great, we had a growing community that we got along with, trolls were few and far between, and our moderation seemed popular. Then we got a modmail suggesting we try out a new chat program called Discord...

Discord on Discord

When /u/Kowzz and /u/Arcanus44 suggested creating a Discord server, we were initially skeptical. It sounded just like irc, and the /r/visualnovels irc channel had been comatose for years. However Kowz and Arc promised to take care of it for us, Kowz would create the server and Arc would drum up interest. So in Sept 2015, Arc hosted a “meet n’ greet” in voice chat on Discord. While it was by most accounts a success and quite popular, we got some complaints about inappropriate conduct by a couple of users and decided that if this Discord server was going to be linked with /r/visualnovels, we’d need to take an active hand in making sure it maintained our standards.

Kowz was happy to have us onboard, making us admins on Discord. It all seemed smooth, but underneath the surface, the seed of turmoil had been planted in our differing beliefs on who owned the server. Kowz and Arc considered themselves the owners and we were partners, while we considered them to have created the server on our behalf and that it’d run on our principles. Up until then, we’d not had any disagreements on mod policy. Me and insanityy would talk an issue out, if we agreed, we’d propose it to the rest of the mod team and vote on it. We’d picked mods who generally thought the same as us, so votes were normally unanimous. That wasn’t the case with Discord. Kowz and Arc had different ideals on how to run a community, and our usual resolution process of voting felt unfair to them as we outnumbered them 5 to 2.

The problem only got worse with time as insanityy hated arguments so she avoided the staff discussions on Discord and popped in only to vote. Arc and Kowz felt increasingly marginalised by this and that their opinion wasn’t being heard. This led to a standoff where Kowz and Arc demanded their 2 votes should count for as much as the rest of us combined, while we /r/visualnovels mods threatened to create a new server unless we kept one vote each. Discussions got heated until Kowz and Arc eventually backed down. In protest, they chose to stop participating as mods.

While Discord helped bring friends together, it also brought those that disliked each other together. It’s easy to ignore someone on reddit as its tree structure allows for parallel conversations, but the format of Discord makes that harder. This started to become a problem on the server, especially as Discord attracted a different type of user to the subreddit, those who had little patience for the more verbose and patient discussions of the subreddit. We got complaints from the subreddit veterans about some of the newbies but we weren’t sure what to do. Being disliked isn’t a bannable offense, but it was driving away some valued community members.

We didn’t want to create a separate server that split the community, so our misguided solution was the creation of a hidden channel: #sub_regs (a.k.a. the fanclub) that was invite only and accessed via the tableflipper role. The hope was that it’d serve as a backup channel for when #general was annoying and that it’d keep the community veterans on the server. However it ended up encouraging an elitist attitude that divided the community further.

The Fall of /r/visualnovels

With many of the friendly conversations and community atmosphere moving to Discord, the subreddit began to suffer. Inside jokes that were incomprehensible to those not on Discord were frequent, and the community split between those using Discord and those not.

There was also a degree of burnout among the mods. It’s inevitable for all mods, you spend long enough dealing with the worst of the community, the trolls and the spammers, and you begin to develop an us-vs-them mentality. You retreat from the community and draw closer to your fellow mods, looking down upon the normal users. We mods gradually stopped being members of the community and instead became overseers.

Then there was my messy departure from the sub in April 2016. Due to a range of factors: financial difficulties, gender dysphoria, and some toxic “friends,” I became deeply depressed and tried to commit suicide. My fellow subreddit mods (and best friend insanityy) decided the best response was to out me as transgender, block me on social media, and ban me from the subreddit I’d loved so deeply. Insanityy never spoke to me again.

The rest of this is speculation, I was no longer an insider, but from my perspective it looked like this event accelerated the emotional distance insanityy felt from the subreddit as she stopped caring about the community. She tried to carry on as normal at first, running a few contests, maintaining the animated banners I’d once made, but her heart wasn’t in it. She resigned later that year.

With her went the desire to innovate, to improve the community. The remaining mods were followers, not leaders. They could maintain some cosmetic updates and copy the old contests, but they were unable to do anything new. They enlarged the mod team with an additional four members, but it only increased the sense of inertia and made it even harder to get anything done. The subreddit began to feel stale.

The mod team had also become unbalanced, where once me and insanityy spoke up for minority tastes in EVNs and otomes, now the mod team was dominated by Japanese VN fans just as the VN scene was increasingly embracing EVNs. The subreddit felt more elitist than ever just as the medium had never been more diverse.

Unintended Side Effects

While our policies may have made sense at the time, some of the decisions me and insanityy had made began to have a detrimental impact on the subreddit:

We’d brought on Automod to help remove posts when only me and insanityy had to manage everything. We found having a bot leave the removal comment sparked fewer arguments with OP than if one of us did it, and it was more effective at catching spam. But while we strived to reapprove mistakenly removed posts promptly, sometimes OP deleted their post before we could. Psychologically, it also made it dangerously easy to leave some content removed. As we mods burnt out over the years, our standards for what counted as a worthy post kept getting higher with fewer and fewer posts being approved. The end result has been a severe drop in discussion posts on the sub.

When recruiting new moderators, we sought people who thought as we did so mod decisions would be consistent and there wouldn’t be arguments in the mod chat. Modding is stressful enough without the stress coming from within the mod team. However, as you add more mods who agree with you, you can start to have an inflated view of how widespread your opinion is. A circlejerk mentality builds and outside opinion is increasingly easy to dismiss. This can leave users feeling like their opinions don’t matter to the mods and builds resentment.

Insanityy was a kind soul and hated conflict, she avoided disagreements as much as possible. As a friend, this was fine, but as a mod it meant she avoided openly discussing mod policy on the subreddit as inevitably there would be some disagreement. This lack of discussion with the sub made it hard for users to object to the direction the sub took, allowing the mod team to grow out of touch with what the userbase wants.

Hopes for the Future

While I may have been quite critical of the current state of the subreddit, I think the community is a good one and there’s hope for improvement. A smaller, more motivated mod team would help, as well as scaling back some of the restrictions like the question and image-post ban. Let activity on the subreddit explode. Should low-quality content grow to become a problem, perhaps /r/visualnovels should split just as /r/gaming and /r/games have, or perhaps a split between Japanese and English VNs would help?

Not every idea will work out, but what’s important is to be trying new ideas and be responsive to change rather than clinging to an outdated format.

As I said at the start, please remember this isn’t an impartial view on the history of the sub and that this isn’t meant to downplay the hard work of the current mod team. Modding is exhausting, it’s a constant burden with little praise. Even if I consider them poor mods, it doesn’t make them bad people.

I know she won’t ever read this, nor will she care what I think, but I still believe insanityy was an inspirational mod and a wonderful friend. It’s incredibly hard to go it alone like she did when she first took over /r/visualnovels. She stood up for what she thought /r/visualnovels could be and put in so much effort, every day, rain or shine, she never shirked from her responsibilities. I miss her every day.

If anyone wants to know more or say hi, you can contact me here on tumblr, twitter, or Discord (Sunleaf_Willow ／(^ n ^=)＼#1616)

#visualnovel #visualnovels #visual novels #visual novel

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olliefishie · 5 years

Photo

not quite a half tail going on there past me ://

Originally drawn: Sept 29, 2016

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aion-rsa · 4 years

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Mafia Definitive Edition Review: Lost Heaven Has Never Looked Better

https://ift.tt/eA8V8J

Jumping into this revitalized take on 2002’s gangster classic I had one question: Can Hangar 13 actually make a good Mafia game? The 2K-owned developer was previously given full reign over the franchise with 2016’s Mafia III. And though the story was rightfully lauded for its themes and well-drawn ensemble cast, the repetitive open world and by-the-numbers mission design left a lot to be desired. How does one overcome this setback? Seemingly not by innovating per se, but rather by going back to the beginning and restoring the original game using a 2020 coat of paint.

Turns out this was a wise decision. While Mafia: Definitive Edition might not be the feature-packed, 40-hour thrill ride most players now likely expect from their modern open-world games, this fully remade version of Illusion Softworks’ cult classic doubles down on the two traits that every series entry released thus far has excelled at: story and characters. The result is a game that successfully trims the AAA fat to instead serve as a near-perfect cinematic period piece, delivering all the joys of a Netflix-style gangster drama that gladly never outstays its welcome.

For anyone who missed the game the first time around, Mafia casts you as humble taxi driver-turned-mobster Thomas “Tommy” Angelo, who after finding himself in the wrong place at the right time quickly falls in with the Salieri crime family, moving up the ranks and embracing a strict life of corruption. This being a remake means that anyone who’s played the original will be familiar with the story, yet even they will appreciate the massive visual overhaul to character models, cutscenes, and even the fictional city of Lost Heaven itself, which has been completely remade from the ground up.

The skeleton of what’s here might technically not be of Hangar 13’s design, but by providing this early attempt at a 1930s sandbox with the high-quality presentation a narrative like this deserves, you easily have one of the best open-world renditions of the interwar era yet. Towering Art Deco structures are visible from almost every street, period-accurate vehicles purposefully handle (for better and worse) like arse, and veering from the Lost Heaven’s Little Italy suburb into Chinatown, you can’t help but become engrossed with the age in which organized crime flourished.

This meticulous attention to detail even translates into cutscenes, where we’re afforded close-up shots of Salieri family members, the pores of their skin stretching with every jaw movement. I’m of the belief that graphics in a game aren’t everything, but visual presentation certainly works wonders when it comes to selling believability and immersion within the setting. Also contributing to this are the performances from the new vocal cast, which feel like they’ve been plucked directly from a Tarantino or Francis Ford Coppola gangster flick. It’d be so easy in this genre to deliver lines very hammily or as a stereotypical caricature, but with Angelo (Andrew Bongiorno), for example, there’s always nuance to the way he speaks depending on his emotional situation.

Release Date: Sept. 25, 2020 Platforms: PC (reviewed), PS4, XBO Developer: Hangar 13 Publisher: 2K Games Genre: Action-adventure

Despite sporting a shiny new skin, it’s in the gameplay that Mafia: Definitive Edition reveals itself to be very much an old soul. It boasts an open world despite the fact that there’s hardly anything to do in it, cover-based shooting and melee combat that is serviceable at best, and some incredibly linear level design at the start. Factors like this won’t be to every player’s liking, but most of it is done to help maintain a consistent pace in service of the story and characters. This remake really does come across as a binge-worthy Netflix drama.

Helping offset any potential repetition, however, is the mission variety. Whereas Mafia III dismally sent you on a goose chase around the city to complete an endless checklist, Mafia: Definitive Edition maintains the original’s starkly opposite approach and keeps Lost Heaven free of any optional objectives, instead transporting you from story point to story point, as you play through the typical gamut of cliché-but-cool crime drama set pieces. Bank robberies, hotel heists, car chases, and prison escapes — all the usual suspects are here to ensure there’s never a dull moment in the campaign.

If you’re seeking more reasons to explore Lost Heaven following Tommy Angelo’s roughly 10-hour adventure, there is a free roam mode accessible from the main menu. Unfortunately, outside of letting you traverse Lost Heaven free of the campaign’s restrictions, being able to wear Tommy’s catalog of suits, or hunting for comic book, cigarette card, and magazine collectibles you happened to miss, there’s not a lot to do in free roam outside of soaking up the city’s smoky atmosphere. Free roam was Hangar 13’s opportunity to experiment a bit more without fear of damaging the already-excellent campaign, so it’s a shame to not see much ambition in this area.

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Still, Mafia: Definitive Edition serves as a nice reminder of a time when open-world games didn’t need to be inundated with objectives and side activities in order to be considered great. 18 years later, this engrossing tale of deception, friendship, and redemption is still allows this modern remake to stand on its own, even if a few basic gameplay elements now seem a bit undercooked by today’s standards. It can be faithful to a fault as far as video game remakes go, but its classic genre traits make for a refreshing change of pace against its open-world peers and an interactive gangster epic well worth devouring.

The post Mafia Definitive Edition Review: Lost Heaven Has Never Looked Better appeared first on Den of Geek.

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hanamakimakoto · 7 years

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Seven minutes in heaven (Iwaizumi Hajime)

Originally posted on Sept. 7th, 2016 on DeviantArt

(Iwaizumi Hajime x Reader) ~°~°~°~°~ "You what?" Hanamaki stared at you, his water bottle half-way to his mouth. "Your disbelief hurts me, Makki" you said with a sulking voice. "No, wait. Can you repeat this, please. I don't think I got it right" he interjected your starting complaint putting his bottle down again. You sighed at your best friends behavior and you were sure that the situation was the most embarrassing you were ever in. "I said, I've a crush on your teams ace and vice-captain per trade, Iwaizumi Hajime." You were sitting on the rooftop of the third-years building and you were happy that Matsukawa was still occupied with the request of his Geography teacher to bring back the maps to the Geography preparation room. Otherwise you wouldn't have answer Hanamaki's question what was up with you honestly. Definitely not. As much as you liked Matsukawa, you really didn't want half of the third-years regulars to know about your crush. Especially, since mentioned third-years were like the most tight-knitted group you ever met. Hanamaki still stared at you in disbelief trying to comprehend what have told him but somehow he always failed to do so when he started to picture you and Iwaizumi together. It was somehow...impossible? No, not like that. More like a weird match up? He couldn't really decide what it was. Maybe also the fact that normally all girls would choose Oikawa instead of Iwaizumi? Nope, this also could't be the reason since you hung out frequently with the guys and knew Oikawa. If Hanamaki knew something for sure, than it was the fact that Oikawa didn't match your taste of boys at all.

"Makki" you called him and snapped him out of his thoughts. "Stop looking so incredulous. It's not like I told you something earth-shaking." "No, that's not it. I mean, it might be not earth-shaking but have a bit mercy with me. I've to comprehend that my best friend has a crush on a good friend of mine" he responded. You scowled at him. "Do you have to phrase it like that?" Hanamaki gave you something of a teasing smirk (which was rare like snow in August) and picked up his bottle again. "And you expect me to do what now?" he asked while taking a sip from it giving you a observing side-glance. "Nothing. You asked what I was up with me and I answered you. That's all. I mean, it's Iwaizumi we're talking about. I don't think that he's any interest in me at all. Or something like that." "Mhm" Hanamaki hummed. Wouldn't be it more likely the other way around? He was sure that your last words could come from Iwaizumi. The ace had a little inferior complex when it came to girls since his best friend and captain always was overrun by fangirls. Though, Hanamaki knew a few girls who would highly appreciate a date with the ace. Including you now, how it seemed. "Isn't it a bit of a rash decision to say he won't recognize you that way?" Hanamaki asked you with a slightly raised eyebrow. You huffed and rested your chin at your drawn up knees. "Don't know. Maybe. But he never seems to act different with me. He's just like, yeah, always? So, why should I get my hopes up?" It's Iwaizumi we're talking about. Hanamaki sighed. Sure, he also never had recognized something odd in the behavior of the dark haired ace towards you...wait. He interrupted his train of thoughts and thought again about what he was going to think. Really never? He began to recall some events where you accompanied the four friends and Iwaizumi were highly occupied with being indifferent towards you. Not different towards you? A sly grin appeared on Hanamaki's lips. Maybe not when he thought about Iwaizumi's behavior in your presence. A bit sounding the other guys out won't hurt, he decided. "Oi. What's with that damn grin on your face, Makki?" you asked alerted when you recognized it. "Nothing. Just thought about something" he answered trying hard to gain his indifferent and slightly bored expression again. "I warn you, don't you dare to do something stupid" you scowled. "Me? Never" he said and gave you his signature peace-sign. You scrutinized his face with a skeptical furrowed eyebrows not reassured at all. "Whatever" you murmured. Somehow you had a bad feeling about this. ~°~°~°~ "Don't you think that Iwaizumi has a thing for [Name]?" Hanamaki asked out of the blue while the third-years were stretching after practice and mentioned ace was still with the coaches. He could literally see how Oikawa's ears perked up at his question. Looked like he hit the spot. Or the cheerful setter was just too curious about something with that he could tease his best friend. "What makes you think that, Hanamaki?" Matsukawa asked slightly interested in what his best friend was hinting at. "Hmm" Hanamaki stretched his arms and looked up to the ceiling. "The way he tries to be as indifferent as possible around her?" "Heeh. Interesting" Matsukawa said and mimicked his best friends actions. "I thought he just has no interest at all in her." At this point, Oikawa chuckled which was his first reaction in this whole conversation. Strange enough that he didn't barge in sooner. "Wrong, Mattsun~ It's like Makki said" Oikawa uttered with a bright smile on his face. "So, why do you ask, Makki? Did [Name]-chan say something interesting?" Matsukawa and Hanamaki deadpanned at their captain. This guy was unbelievable. Oikawa looked confused at them. "Huh? What?" he asked, innocence written all over his face. "You do use it against your friends" Matsukawa said with a matter-of-fact-tone in his voice. "What!?" the brunet setter whined pouting because of his friends attitude. "Your observation talent" Hanamaki clarified leaning back to stretch his abdominal muscles. "No!" Oikawa denied in an instead gesticulating indignantly with his hands. "Or at least, just if I can help my friends with it" he added a bit more quietly, head turned away slightly, a pout on his lips while he crossed his arms in front of his chest. Both, Hanamaki and Matsukawa, gave him a strange look but didn't comment on his last sentence. "So, I was right about Iwaizumi?" Hanamaki ignored his captains antics and came back to his original question. "What did [Name]-chan say?" said captain countered. "That's not an answer, Oikawa." The fellow volleyball player sighed. "Yeah, but you know something, Makki. She's your best friend after all~" the setter pointed out. "Yes, that's why I'm not going to tell you everything she told me" the wingspiker responded unimpressed. Matsukawa followed the discussion of his two friends with increasing interest and the odd feeling that they were up to something really outrageous. Which seemingly included Hanamaki's best friend [Name] and Iwaizumi in a quite romantic way. "We can't work with that, Makki!" Oikawa complained. "Maybe she said something. So, what's with Iwaizumi?" Hanamaki gave in a bit and came back to his own question. Oikawa didn't seem to be satisfied with his answer but he took the hint and gave in. "Yes, you're right. He was like 'No way she'll see something different than a friend in me' and kept his distance" Oikawa finally answered the question in a tone which clearly showed that he didn't like his best friends decision at all. Heh, I was right. That sentence is totally lwaizumi. The light brown haired male thought. "And you two are going to do what now?" Matsukawa latched into the conversation. "Don't act like it hasn't to do anything with you, Mattsun! You're part of this!" Oikawa declared, index finger in front of Matsukawa's face who gave him a somewhat incredulous look. "Okay, and we're going to do what now?" The tall middleblocker rephrased his question after his captains complaint. The three males went quiet, each of them thinking about a method to set [Name] and Iwaizumi up. "Let them play seven minutes in heaven!" Oikawa suggested after a short silence with an excited voice and sparkling eyes. Hanamaki couldn't help it but he had to think of a puppy who got his favorite treat. A really excited puppy. All that was missing was that Oikawa would start bouncing up and down on the spot. "What?" he and Matsukawa asked unison. "Seven minutes in heaven! The funny party game where you lock up two people in a dark room, so - " Oikawa begun. "We know what 'seven minutes in heaven' is" Hanamaki cut him off in mid-sentence. "And how do you want to do this?" The pout which has appeared on Oikawa's lips because he got cut off by his friend disappeared and he started seriously thinking about it. Hanamaki had a point. It wouldn't be so easy to realize his idea. But he liked it, so he would definitely find a way... "Ah! I've got an idea!" Oikawa exclaimed suddenly getting Hanamaki and Matsukawa to look at him expectantly. "What's with the storeroom of the gym? I mean, we could -" "Oi, what are you talking about guys? Your conversation seems quite lively." Iwaizumi's approaching voice ended their discussion abruptly and Oikawa winced, a frightened expression appearing on his face. They turned to their teammate, obviously trying to hold a deadpan expression towards him. "Nothing, Iwa-chan~" Oikawa chirped and waved at his best friend. "Coming from you it means you're pretty sure up to something, Trashykawa!" the spikey-haired male responded with an irked expression appearing on his face. "No! That's mean, Iwa-chan! Ouch! Iwa-chan!" Oikawa whined while he tried to dodge his best friend. Hanamaki and Matsukawa watched their ace at his daily routine of beating up Oikawa with a sigh. It was funny, yes, but now they haven't been able to end their discussion with a satisfying solution. "I'm going to text you later, Oikawa!" Hanamaki shouted towards the setter who was still on the run from Iwaizumi. "Okay, Makki!" "Hopefully, he's still alive later" Matsukawa uttered when he left the gym with Hanamaki. ~°~°~°~ Two weeks have passed since you revealed your feelings for Iwaizumi to Hanamaki. And nothing happened. Really nothing. You have been dead sure that Hanamaki might have came up with something really awkward and embarrassing for you but nope. Nothing. Everything was normal. Somehow a bit too normal since you still expected to get set up. Or worse. Could there be something worse? You didn't know but you were lucky. You thought until the school day reached its end. Completely unaware of the fate which has been decided for you by three certain volleyball players, you slowly packed your bag and thought about what you were going to do after school. "Hey, [Name]" A familiar voice called you from the classroom door. "Oh, hey, Makki. What's up?" You turned towards your best friend who was accompanied by Matsukawa and slipped the strap of your bag over your shoulder. "Would you mind helping us at practice today?" You frowned. You and volleyball practice? What was up? Something was wrong here, right? "Why? I don't have any clue of volleyball." "We just need someone who notes down our improvement for today. And since we don't have a manager..." Hanamaki didn't finish his sentence since you perfectly knew this fact. The coaches have refused any contender (female contenders to be exactly) for the managers job since the only thing they would do was squealing because of Oikawa. And none of the male students wanted to be a manager. "Yup. And we're starting with a new practice menu for the spring tournament" Matsukawa added. You still weren't convinced. This was the first time in three years now that the boys asked you to help them at their practice. You scrutinized the tall males but you were faced with identically indifferent expressions which made it impossible to read them. You sighed and decided to trust your friends and not to turn their request down. Not mention that you would be able to see Iwaizumi at practice. You were sure it was worthy a look. "Okay, okay. I'll do it. But I promise you, Makki, if something weird happens, you'll pay for it." Hanamaki wasn't impressed at all by your threat and just made his peace-sign. "Got it." "What weird things should happen, [Name]?" Matsukawa asked while the three of you were heading to the gym. "Ah, nothing, Matsukawa. Nothing" you hurried up with your respond. The squeaking sound of sneakers on the gym's floor greeted you and the two male when you arrived. Some of the players seemed to have started already with practice while Hanamaki and Matsukawa went to pick you up. You still pondered over the sudden request of helping them in the back of your mind. It wasn't probably the worst idea to stay cautious around the third-years. Who knows maybe they had already planned everything? You shook your head at your own thoughts. Developing a paranoia was never a good thing, so you followed them inside pushing every suspicious thought aside. Hanamaki and Matsukawa greeted their teammates both with a "Wheeze" before leaving for the changing room. You looked around the gym hall seeing Oikawa and Iwaizumi standing near the bench with two of this (freaking) huge first-years. Kindaichi and Kunimi if you recalled it right. You strolled over to them watching out for any stray balls which could come flying your way. The last thing you wanted was getting hit by a volleyball. "Wheeze" You followed Hanamaki's and Matsukawa's example. Oikawa turned around when he heard your voice, a beaming smile on his pretty face. Maybe a bit to excited? "[Name]-chan! Glad to have you here!" You gave the setter a skeptical glance. "Why are you so excited about that fact, Oikawa?" "Why am I always suspicious?" he whined. You sighed deciding to ignore his thirst for attention and risked a sidelong glance to Iwaizumi. The wingspiker seemed to be surprised about your presence, staring at you before he gave you a greeting nod. You smiled at him thinking again that he looked damn cute. And sexy. Nothing you would say out loud. "Wheeze, [Name]-san" Kindaichi greeted you while Kunimi muttered something under his breath that could be count as a greeting. "Wheeze, Kindaichi-kun, Kunimi-kun!" you responded bending your head back so that you could look them into the face. "Stop ignoring me, [Name]-chan!" Oikawa complained with his whining voice. "Shut up, Trashykawa, and go practice!" Iwaizumi smacked the back of his best friends head and walked straight to the court. "Iwa-chan, you're mean!" Oikawa didn't get a response so he turned back to you to explain you for what you were here today. It wasn't as difficult as you thought. You didn't even need to be a pro at volleyball. You just had to note down failures and successes during their personal practice of jump serves, spikes and combination attacks. Though, you got confused more than once when the started to do a combination attack and ran all over the court. At least, that was your impression of a combination attack: chaotic and confusing. But hell, you couldn't get enough of seeing Iwaizumi spiking the ball. You would never even think about blocking his spikes. The force which were behind the hit ball was incredible. Not to mention these biceps...you instantly shook your head. Okay, stop that, [Name]. No fangirling in public, you called yourself to order. Easier said than done since the reason for your fangirling was right before your eyes. A shot glance to the clock told you that it was late afternoon and practice almost over. Looked like you survived it without any suspicious moves on the part of Hanamaki. The coaches seemed to have the same thought as you when you have looked up to the clock and told the team to gather. You let out a relieved sigh and stretched your arms and legs since your had been sitting on the bench for two hours straight. The boys began to clear up the gym and you watched the first-years picking up the balls which were scattered around. "[Name]!" Hanamaki called you and gained your attention. "Yes?" "Can put the net back into the storeroom?" You sighed. "Yeah, okay. Can I go home after this?" "Yes~ Sure" Oikawa said with a bright smile while you walked over to them to take the net. You took the net out of Hanamaki's hands and carried it towards the storeroom. First of all, there was no light switched on and the light coming from the gym wasn't enough to show you were you had to put the volleyball net. Second, there were a lots of nets in the storeroom. So, you put your net down and looked around the room. "And where exactly shall I put it?" you shouted back to the boys. Iwaizumi sighed and walked over to the storeroom. "I'm coming, [Name]. Just leave it there." "Just tell me where I've to put it" you responded still scrutinizing the room. Iwaizumi didn't listen and stepped inside the room, unaware of Oikawa and Hanamaki who tailed after him. The moment he was inside the storeroom with you, the door shut closed and Iwaizumi turned in an instead. "Oi! What the heck!?" he called out for your friends outside the gym's storeroom. "It's time for seven minutes in heaven~" you heard Oikawa's singsong voice. "Shut up, Trashykawa and OPEN THE DOOR!" Iwaizumi yelled while a serious blush dusted his cheeks at the flirty words of his best friend. You also stormed to the door and slammed against it but calling out for someone different. "Makki! Don't do this to me! C'mon!" You couldn't believe it that your best friend since, yeah, ever was abusing your trust in this way. He perfectly knew that you had a crush on Iwaizumi. "Makki!" you called him once again. "Nope. Seven minutes, [Name]" he responded and you could picture his damn smirk too well. "Noooo!" you whined because the situation was just too embarrassing. And you hated embarrassing situations. Why didn't you listen to your gut feeling when Hanamaki asked you to help them out at practice? You did wait for something like this to happen and still you fell into the trap. "We want a kiss at least~" Oikawa chirped outside the room. "What!?" you screeched, your voice noticeable a few octaves higher than usual. He couldn't be serious. You turned your head towards Iwaizumi who stood at the door obviously shocked about what his best friend said and froze in place. When he met your gaze his blush visible deepened and he turned his head away in embarrassment. He would get Oikawa for this. For sure. "Oi, Shittykawa, get your ass over here and open the door!" he growled still avoiding the gaze of your [e/c] eyes. "Nope~, Iwa-chan. Seven minutes. You should thank me~" was the only answer the setter gave. "Like hell I will!" the teased boy shouted. But there was no reaction coming from your friends outside the storeroom. At least, they didn't make a sound and you could perfectly well imagine why. Eavesdropping bastards. This situation was awkward. Like really, really awkward. You stared at the door, a deep frown on your face while thinking of a possibility to survive this without it getting even worse. Yeah, worse for your emotional health. This was the first time you were alone with Iwaizumi. Alone with him in a dark storeroom of the gym! Not good. You could feel your heart beating faster than usual. If it was out of excitement or embarrassment because of this situation, you couldn't tell. Probably both. The warmth which was flooding your body like crazy could fit both emotions. And you were sure that your face shone in a bright red. So much for that. You needed to do something to distract yourself from all the thoughts and pictures about Iwaizumi which began to creep around your head and definitely not helped you to calm down. You resisted the urge to slam your head against the door and turned around. Something. Just something to distract yourself. "Is here somewhere a light switch?" you asked suddenly and faced Iwaizumi again trying to sound as normal as possible. "I'm not sure. A bit more left from the door, I guess. Why? Are you afraid of darkness?" Iwaizumi gave you something of a curious glance and you were not sure but it seemed like still had a light blush on his cheeks. You would never admit it loud and certainly not in front of him but he looked too cute with a blush on his face. Your inner fangirl was running amok. "No, that's not it. This situation is awkward and missing lights don't make it better" you answered managing to keep your voice at an indifferent level while searching your way through the dark room with your hands hold in front of you. Where was this damn light switch? You felt a sudden obstacle and winced when you hit it and lost your balance. "Ouch!" Iwaizumi was at your side with few steps grabbing your arm firmly to keep you from falling over. "Are you alright?" he asked, worry laced into his voice. "No! This is awkward. I'll get Makki for this" you whined while trying to gain back your balance and to ignore the fact that Iwaizumi was touching you. "Ah, sorry. That's most likely Shittykawa's doing." Iwaizumi mumbled avoiding your gaze again. "Nope. That wasn't just him alone" you said with a scowl on your face. Iwaizumi gave you a questioning look but you ignored it since you didn't want to explain Hanamaki's presumed role in this and your undeniable feelings for the male in front of you. "Ehm, you can let go of me, Iwaizumi" you uttered softly feeling how your cheeks heated up. "Oh! Yeah, sorry" he let go of you, clearly embarrassed. "So, that means we have to wait these seven minutes until they'll let us out again, or what?" The wingspiker sighed and ran a hand through his hair. He couldn't believe his friends. "Nope. Probably not. I guess, they're serious about it." you said. "About what?" "The kiss" you specified and although your voice sounded steady, just the thought to kiss Iwaizumi made you shiver in excitement. Iwaizumi groaned running a hand down this face. "Can't they just stop sticking their noses in other people's business!?" "Huh?" "Never mind, [Name]." He started to pace up and down, seemingly fighting with himself about what to do. You could understand him somehow. After all he was forced by his friends to kiss a girl he just considered as a friend. At least, you thought that was his problem since you couldn't read his mind. Though, his behavior was kind of strange at the moment. Normally, he just lost his cool when Oikawa pissed him off. You tilted your had a bit to the side and crossed your arms while thinking of other scenarios. Or maybe he really had an interest in you? You instantly negated your own thought. Nope, impossible. Why now all of a sudden? "Would you mind it if I kiss you?" Iwaizumi's tight voice broke through your train of thoughts. "No" you answered absent-mindedly still pondering over why he could be so nervous when realization what you had said a second ago hit you like a brick. The silence on part of Iwaizumi was evidence enough. You stared at him, completely shocked before you buried your burning face in your and screeched: "Oh my god! I'm sorry, Iwaizumi! I haven't thou - !" "No?" Iwaizumi interrupted your apologize through repeating your answer with a calm voice. You stopped, glancing at him through your fingers. He seemed way more relaxed than before and the calmness in his voice cooled you down a bit. Though, you didn't dare to say anything further, so you only nodded. To your surprise, a relieved and big smile appeared on his face. "That makes it a lot easier, I guess." You slowly dropped your hands looking at him in confusion. "What?" "The kiss, idiot." "Oh, yes..." you said not very intelligently. "Except, your answer wasn't honest." "Oh, no, that's not - I, ehm, didn't think..." you stuttered blushing like mad again remembering the recent embarrassment. Iwaizumi smirked at you. "Let's do this and I'll make up for it with a proper date, okay?" "Wait, seriously?" you asked incredulous. "Yes" he simply said with a blush on his cheeks. You smiled at him brightly. "Okay." Iwaizumi smiled before he leaned in closing the small gap between you and gently pressing his lips on yours. You kissed him back and wrapped your arms around his neck leaning your body against his. You ignored the fact that he was sweaty from practice and enjoyed the close contact. It was something you had dreamed of since the last half of your second year. Iwaizumi wrapped his arms around your waist pulling you closer to him. Yes, this definitely something you could get used to. You ended the kiss due to the lack of oxygen and when you looked up to his face (which you couldn't see clearly because of the - still- missing light), you were sure that a huge, stupid grin was plastered over your face. "I still won't thank Trashykawa for this" Iwaizumi said. You chuckled at his words. Though, Iwaizumi wouldn't do it, you would thank Hanamaki later. After you gave him a piece of your mind about messing with other people's emotions.

#haikyuu #hq #fanfiction #haikyuufanfiction #hqfanfiction #Iwaizumi Hajime #IwaizumixReader #Iwaizumi Hajime x Reader #my writing #makotowrites #originally posted on DeviantArt

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