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readingontheedge · 4 years

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Robin & Marian

(Adventurous Romantics #2)

By Stephanie Fowers

Adult Contemporary Romance

Paperback & ebook, 352 Pages

August 11th 2019

Robin King lives up to the legendary name of Robin Hood more than he should—a bigshot billionaire and successor of King enterprises, a Prince of Mischief and a rogue who steals hearts ... and maybe even a few kisses. He never thought he’d follow the storyline so closely, until the day he gets in trouble with the law and pays the price—all for protecting his younger sister Scarlett.

Taken in by an Outlaw

Marian is a hard-hitting reporter … or would be if the New England Chronicle would stop assigning her puff pieces. Now she has the chance to prove herself, but it could prove her undoing—since the story of a lifetime might just be Robin King, a ruthless scoundrel, who she swore would never break her heart again.

Making New England Olde again

Together, they must overcome their differences

to save their hometown from thieves and corruption. And they’d better do it before someone gets killed. As danger lurks closer, legend becomes life, and Robin’s feelings for Marian deepen as he struggles with sharing the secrets that could clear his name and ruin his sister.

Goodreads | Amazon

Excerpt

The door ripped open and she came face to face with Robin. Same laughing eyes, same devilish look under hawk-like brows. His dirty-brown hair had curled up in a stylish mess. He’d come straight from her memories—though older and more dashing, like he’d stepped through the glossy covers of those gossip magazines she despised. He was tall and strong, with broad shoulders and an athletic build—a modern day Robin Hood in black t-shirt and faded jeans. And she hated it!

His almond-shaped eyes turned appreciative when he saw her. “Are you new?”

Clearly he hadn’t recognized her. It wasn’t too surprising really—she’d hidden in the back room when the “infamous playboy” had come to visit his sister when they’d been roommates, but before she could explain, he was approaching her. “If it’s all the same to you, Mrs. Koch can’t know what we’re up to.” Marian recognized the name of their housekeeper. Clearly Robin was up to no good if he was hiding his latest mischief from her—never mind that he owned the place now. “I’m so sorry to mix you up in this,” he said, “but we need help cleaning this up.”

And then his hands were on hers. Was this how he treated his staff? Wait. The thought gave her pause. He thought she was the help? Scarlett had compared her to a little French maid. How galling. She was so caught up in her angry thoughts that she’d allowed him to pull her into the entertainment room where she saw the remains of a poker game. Smashed plates and glasses had tumbled from an immense—and broken—china cabinet.

“It’s not as bad as it looks…” Robin’s hand dropped from hers as he attempted to clean up the mess. He looked up at her under heavy lashes. “Honestly, if I’d known how pretty you were, I’d have smashed these sooner.”

She gasped as he winked at her. Robin! Was this really a case of mistaken identity or was he teasing her? “I have half a mind to get Mrs. Koch myself,” she threatened.

He smirked at that. “If you could find a broom first…”

So she could crack it over his head? Not knowing what to do, Marian caught sight of Scarlett’s fiancé. The ends of Alan’s auburn hair fell over a soulful eye as he stared down at a record he had saved from the mess. He’d recognize Marian if he saw her, but he was too caught up in reading the record label. It was a vintage Louis Armstrong vinyl. He turned it over in his sensitive hands.

“Robin, your stepmother is going to kill you,” a deeper voice boomed. “That’s her prized Russian collection.” Turning, Marian saw a giant of a man. She’d know John anywhere, even a decade later. His skin was rich brown, the color of the earth after a storm; his head was buzzed—his facial hair was different from when they were kids, of course—but he’d towered over them back then and now was no different. He was one of those who’d earned his nickname in Robin’s merry band, although no one could get away with calling him “Little John” to his face.

“My nephew is trying to teach me how to make a bull’s eye!” a young voice piped up.

Marian caught sight of a smaller boy of about five years of age. He had a bow in his hand. His small finger pointed to an ugly painting against the wall with several arrows shot through it. They’d been using this room for target practice? How little they thought of the furniture… or of money.

“This is my Uncle Midge,” Robin introduced the child. “Also my godchild.” Yes, Marian remembered hearing about him. The young boy clearly looked up to Robin; he was a miniature of him, actually, with freckles, almond-shaped eyes, and a pointed chin. Robin’s grandfather had remarried a much younger woman, and Midge was the result of their union… before she’d run off with an artist. Come to think of it, was this one of the man’s ugly paintings Scarlett had talked about? She peered at it, but the torn flaps obscured the signature.

Robin ruffled the boy’s hair. “He was not supposed to actually let the arrow go. So there’s that.”

“And who would be the one who gave him the arrow, pray tell?” The final member of Alan’s bachelor party drew forward with dark, sullen looks. He was clean-shaven with black, heavy brows, and his hair was tied up in a hipster topknot. He wore a suit jacket with matching pants and a casual knit shirt. It took Marian a little longer to name him, but then she felt a wave of recognition run through her at his British accent. “But sure,” he said in his haughty tone, “blame the child.”

Ah yes, this was Robin’s cousin, Guy. He’d grown up in England with his mother. She had refused to play along with what she dubbed Richard’s “childish obsession,” and in so doing, unknowingly named him after one of Robin Hood’s greatest villains. It was a source of great teasing amongst his cousins. Just like the others, Marian hadn’t seen him for years.

Yet when he saw her, he hurried to pick up her hand and kiss it. His brown eyes were full of meaning. “What are you doing here with us vile men, Marian? Isn’t Scarlett’s party interesting enough for you?”

Finally, someone hadn’t seen her as the servant. She felt a smile tug at her lips. Guy’s British charm had always been hard to resist. When they’d been younger, her parents had teased the two that they’d arrange their marriage. She was ashamed to admit that that kind of talk had ended after Guy’s parents had lost their fortunes in poor investments.

Looking over at Robin, she shrugged. “Robin always did try to get me into trouble.” She cast him what she hoped was a teasing glance. “Just like old times.” Robin’s shoulders stiffened as he turned to actually look at her. His beautiful hazel eyes took her all in. Marian felt too amused to be angry. His astonished expression made everything worth it.

“Marian?” Robin stretched to his feet to retrieve her hand from Guy. “Why didn’t you say anything?” His gaze swept over her again, including that hateful apron. “My own little Maid Marian?”

Other Books in the Series

In the Pursuit of Eden

(Adventurous Romantics #1)

By Stephanie Fowers

Adult Contemporary Romantic Suspense

Paperback & ebook, 390 Pages

April 1st 2019

Everyone wants to find Eden’s Paradise. Except Ivy.

Ivy is a city girl through and through. So when she follows her twin brother into the forests of the Uintas to make a documentary about looking for a treasure that’s plagued her family for generations, she’s a little out of her element. It's the same treasure that ended her father's life. Add to that her run-ins with the dashing, but infuriating Aiden Hunter. The Southern hottie has rescued her so many times that it’s getting embarrassing. Of course, she’d be more grateful if she didn’t suspect him of putting her in danger in the first place—a danger that keeps growing the closer they get to the truth.

Forced to be allies, the two are thrown into each other’s paths, and she realizes that she has more in common with him than she thought. While Ivy searches for clues in the journal of a wayward saloon girl, Eden, to discover a life that mirrors her own, Hunter fights the demons in a past that seems tangled up in hers. His secrets are hers. The only way to get at the truth is to find an uneasy truce… and maybe something more because Hunter may not be the enemy. In fact, he may be the one who needs rescuing. Now, Ivy has to figure out who she wants by her side, and what she’s willing to give up for love.

After all, Paradise was never meant to be found alone.

Goodreads | Amazon

About the Author

Stephanie Fowers loves bringing stories to life, and depending on her latest madcap ideas will do it through written word, song, and/ or film. She absolutely adores Bollywood and bonnet movies; i.e., Jane Austen. Presently, she lives in Salt Lake where she's living the life of the starving artist.

Tour Schedule

(Posts go live on the day they're scheduled.)

December 11th: Launch

December 12th: Julie Coulter Bellon - Truth or Dare

December 13th: Delaney Cameron - The Gift of Love

December 14th: Raneé S. Clark - Her Country Christmas Date

December 15th: Stephanie Fowers - Robin and Marian

December 16th: Aspen Hadley - Blind Dates, Bridesmaids & Other Disasters

December 17th: Maria Hoagland - Santa Cam

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December 19th: Sally Johnson - Dear Mr. Darcy

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Ends December 28, 2019

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aion-rsa · 5 years

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Stephen King: 16 Best Scary Stories to Read

https://ift.tt/2Q2IoqH

Here are 16 of the very best horror stories from Stephen King!

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Stephen King is a master of the short story, able to dish out horror tales to make your skin crawl, astounding sci-fi, and even literary reflections aimed at more "sophisticated" readers. He's done it all, with no sign of stopping.

Although I've had the tough task of picking 16 of my favorite King horror tales for this list, you should absolutely pick up ALL of his collections and give them a read through. You'll always find something to give you the chills.

Make a note: this is a list of short stories, not novellas. And on top of that, stories that are genuinely scary. I didn't forget "The Mist" or "N." or "Secret Window, Secret Garden" or any of those other goodies. Those deserve their own article, don't they?

So below: a list of stories and what collections you can find them in. "N." would have been my inclusion from Just After Sunset, but again, that's really a novella. "The Cat from Hell" ain't bad, either. But really, none of the stories from that collection made the cut for me. You can yell at me in the comments.

Enjoy!

Night Shift (1978)

Graveyard Shift

Night Shift, King's first short story collection, is really the crux of this article, as it features several of his best scary tales to date. They have a B-movie sensibility right at home in the late '60s and early '70s, and were influenced by campy cult films and plenty of EC comics. Hell, many of the stories have even become cult films themselves.

"Graveyard Shift," the second story in the book, is a great example of what King can do with seemingly ordinary situations turned bad...really, really bad. In one of his most campy stories to date, a group of men are tasked with cleaning up the abandoned basement of a textile mill that's been infested by rats for years. As they descend into the depths of the mill, the horrors they find are...well, you'll just have to find out, won't you?

Read more: Stephen King's 10 Best Horror Novels

I Am the Doorway

If you're a Constant Reader, you're probably used to King's use of body horror. This is one of his early ones and features a bit of science fiction as well. An astronaut returns from a mission to Venus after coming into contact with a strange alien mutagen. Upon his return, he discovers that eyeballs are growing out of his hands! This one is just too much fun to miss...

The Mangler

You've probably heard of this one: a series of very weird (and unfortunate) events causes an industrial laundry press to become possessed by a demon. No, I don't know where the hell this guy comes up with all this stuff. King has a way of turning ordinary blue-collar life into grisly death. This one was turned into a movie directed by Tobe Hooper a few years back, and it stars Robert Englund. Yes, it's as bad as you think.

Trucks

You've probably heard of this one, too. Because King tried to direct a movie based on this story. Motor vehicles have inexplicably come to life and decide to murder all humans who disobey them. The doomed characters in this story suffer a very tragic end that's almost poetic. By the way, the movie King directed is called Maximum Overdrive, and it's the only time anyone was crazy enough to let this guy behind a camera.

Sometimes They Come Back

Okay, you're probably wondering why I totally skipped "Children of the Corn." The answer is simple: that story has become so twisted in its movie form that a) you already know how the story goes, b) what you've seen in those god awful movies has tainted any good perspective on said story. That said, yes, read it or whatever.

read more: It Chapter Two Easter Eggs and Reference Guide

BUT, you do get this treat instead: "Sometimes They Come Back" is one of my favorite King stories to date. A teacher is haunted by three psychotic greasers from his childhood. After those around him begin to die, he realizes that he has to fight pure evil with pure evil. Truly creepy.

You can buy Night Shift right here!

Skeleton Crew (1985)

Here There Be Tygers

King loves tormenting little kids in his stories, and believe it or not, "Here There Be Tygers" is one of the lighter examples. And it has nothing to do with the Ray Bradbury story of the same name. In King's story, a little boy really needs to go to the bathroom but is too frightened to do so when he encounters a tiger in the school lavatory. Because of course there's a tiger waiting in a bathroom. King has said that this was one of his earliest stories, written when he was in high school.

The Monkey

This a weird one. A diabolical cymbal-banging monkey toy torments several characters through the years. How does a toy cause such dread in its owner? Well, every time it bangs its little cymbals, someone or something dies. Simple enough.

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artificialqueens · 7 years

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Boston Chelsea Hotel Prologue (Trixya) - Evelyn

Hey everybody, it’s Evelyn here. Thank you so much for sticking with me until I fully translated the prologue. I worked my ass off to put this thing out today so here you have it! The prologue. Finally. Oh God, I’m loving this story. And please keep in mind English is not my first language, even if the lovely VicThirteen helped me a lot. Tysm boo!

Plot: Brian Firkus is a young make-up artist who works for a theater company in Boston, and lives at the Boston Chelsea Hotel. Everything is fine, except for his weird neighbor Katya, a mysterious girl who infests Brian’s life like a ghost. Until one day…

Prologue – Brian Firkus

I saw Katya for the first time on the 13th of April. I’ve never been a lucky person but I can say that, maybe, the sequence of unfortunate events that brought me to that hallway in the Chelsea Hotel in Boston that night of the 13th of April wasn’t that bad. If every tear, in hindsight, if every drop of blood and sweat, brought me to my actual situation, suffering was truly worth it. I don’t know why destiny chose me to live the extraordinary facts that I’ve experienced. Katya would say it’s God’s work. I don’t believe in him, in God. But I believe in myself now, and in her, who was, is, and forever will be, my rock, my dream, my inspiration. And I’ll be hers. Whoever isn’t ready to take this path with us, closes the book right away. But I beg you to stay! Let me reassure your faith. Because, even if everything seems over, and you see no escape, the light at the end of the tunnel may be you and yourself only. And so, our story begins on that 13th of April.

•••

The sky of Boston is completely obscured by a blanket of dark clouds, blocking the view of the sunset I love so much. It’s freezing cold outside but I’m comfortably sitting on the cab seat, warm, and I’m scrolling down my Twitter timeline trying to kill time and send a clear message to the driver: no chatting. It’s useless. “What a shitty weather, eh?” I roll my eyes: nothing more basic to start a forced conversation. I nod distractedly: “Yeah”. “Ah, but it’s not always like this in Boston. You’ll be fine!” “I hope so. I’ll have to stay here for a while in fact…” I say, locking my phone screen and adjusting myself on the seat. “And you live in a hotel? Man, ain’t the best choice.” “It’s not my fault, my boss sent me here… It’s better than living in the streets anyway. Or at my mom’s house, thank you”. Maybe I hit too close to home, because he doesn’t talk to me for the rest of the way. I’m not that bothered to be honest, and I end up reading the articles my iPhone news section randomly recommends me. I like being informed and I often find myself reading pages and pages of online newspapers, starting with Trump and ending on cows’ digestive systems (not that big of a difference anyway). The cab slows down, entering a square and skirting around a pretty flowerbed currently whipped by the ice cold rain that started falling about ten minutes ago. The cabbie unloads the car and leaves me alone under the awning of the hotel with a pair of suitcases, an umbrella and the change in my hand. The building is not particularly big or fancy, but it gives me a nice vibe. I sigh, hopeful, and I make my way to the revolving doors, entering the Chelsea Hotel of Boston for the first time. The hall is huge, almost empty, and I feel instantly welcomed by a warm air jet coming from above my head. The floor is white and light blue tiled, getting darker and darker as I approach the center of the room. Drop-like lamps hang from the ceiling, spreading a warm light all over. I leave my luggage next to the white wall and go to the reception area, where a guy in uniform is leafing through some papers. I clear my throat, going through my pockets as I look for my wallet. “Good evening and welcome to the Chelsea, I’m Chad Michaels. How can I help you?” “‘Evening… yeah, hm, I’m Brian. Brian Firkus, there should be a reservation under my name on behalf of the Wadley Management…”. The man’s eyes scroll down on the computer monitor, and after a few seconds he nods. “We were waiting for you, Mr. Firkus. We’re glad to have you here as our guest” he says kindly, turning away from me to take the room keys from the wooden wall behind him. I notice that almost every hook is empty, and I feel even more relieved: a good hotel is often full booked. He gives me the keys, attached to a heavy metallic rectangle with the initials BCH and the number 1580 and smiles again: “First floor… to your left you can find the lifts and your room is at the end of the hallway. You only have breakfast included, and the restaurant is open from 6 to 10 am. The reception is open 24/7 so, if you have any concerns, you can call on the hotel line. I hope you’ll enjoy our beautiful city!”. I shake Chad’s hand (he’s super charming) and go get my stuff dragging them into the lift. I get in and a minute later the doors open, showing me a glimpse of the hallway, and I’m shrouded in total silence. It’s around 8 pm so there’s no one around. Everybody’s probably at dinner or in the clubs, despite the bad weather. I’m totally exhausted. I just wanna jump into my bed and sleep for twelve hours straight. There’s nothing creepier than an empty hotel hallway, especially when it’s poorly lighted like this one. But the soft light instilles an incredible peace in me, and my shoes sink in the fuzzy moquette that softens with every step I take. I’m walking to my room now, sighing as I dip into my shoulder bag looking for the keys. I’m about to insert it in the keyhole when I hear the lock of the door next to mine springing, and I turn around to look at my neighbor. And I see her. The first thing that catches my eye is her eyelashes, big and fluffy (maybe fake? I can’t see well with this poor light…). She has full and wavy hair that hangs over her shoulders, covered by a voluminous furry coat, and she doesn’t seem to notice me at all while she closes the door. I think so because she’s so fascinating and beautiful and I’m an anonymous guy, really. She turns around to face the lift and it’s only then that she looks at me, her deep red lips curling in a mischievous smile. She brushes a lock of hair behind her bejeweled ear, revealing a knife-sharp cheekbone. It’s then that I notice two icy blue eyes like I’ve never seen. I’d bet that, in the sunlight, they would be even lighter. She blinks at me and turns around, long toned legs making their way to the lift despite the high heels. She’s as tall as me like that, and 5'8" is really something for a woman. She disappears as soon as the sliding doors close, and the last thing I glimpse are her gloved hands waving in my direction. I feel a weird tingling in my stomach, I can’t quite get it. There’s something… something different. I need to see that woman again, to know her name, there’s this incredible force that pushes me towards her. But I can’t chase her, I’m not the type. Her room is next to mine, I’m sure I will satisfy my curiosity soon. I shrug, finally entering the room, and I’m welcomed by a nice and fresh scent. I close the door behind me and instinctively let myself fall on top of the king sized bed, landing on the soft mattress. I get up on my elbows to look around, and exploring the room with my eyes I find it of a perfect size. From the entrance, to the left, there’s the bathroom and on the wall in front of it are the tv (I guess it’s 30 inches and LED), the mini bar and a big dark wooden wardrobe that will surely contain everything I’ll need. On my left, next to the French window, there’s a fine desk with a big mirror hung on top. The overall impression is really good and I smile fondly. It seems that my boss has decided to treat me well… at least for now. It’s better not to delude myself and, instead, have a nice hot bath to get rid of my moist clothes as soon as I can. After a couple of minutes I’m completely soaked into the water filled with bubbles and I take my time to think and reflect. I should be thinking about work, about what’s expecting me tomorrow, but the only thing I can focus on is my neighbor and her icy blue eyes. A weird feeling runs down my spine: the eyes should reflect our soul, and in hers I saw something different, like a sour note. No, not sour. A note out of place. Different. Something that shouldn’t be there, but I can’t wrap my mind around it. An adrenaline rush. I’m electrified, and it’s all about her and her ice cold glaze that touched me almost an hour ago. My stay here in Boston has suddenly become more interesting.

•••

I’m zapping through the tv channels, still wrapped in my bathrobe, while outside the rain has stopped and the night of Boston has become silent. It’s 11 pm and I should be unpacking (although I haven’t brought that much with me here, I plan on buying everything I’ll need. New life, new clothes!) and finally going to bed, but my will to do anything is completely gone and I decide to enjoy these last minutes of vacation before getting to know my new colleagues tomorrow morning. I would pay to not meet anyone, but unfortunately that’s impossible. I basically ran away from Milwaukee, my hometown, because I was sick of that scene; I was completely done. And my mother couldn’t help me that much, money wise. Since she left that bastard of my stepfather, we aren’t very rich. He was an infamous person, the worst I’ve ever had the misfortune of knowing, but he supported us financially. Sometimes I still blame myself for what happened to us, it’s hard to accept someone else’s fault. I’ve always had the bad tendency to take responsibility for everything, and having an abusive, violent and intolerant stepfather around hasn’t helped that much. Even now, at 27, I can’t really be fair with my opinions or be respected as I would deserve to be. I often find myself wanting to do something and then ending up not doing it because of fear of others’ judgment. Letting go of years of insults and accusations grown in my brain like parasite plants is a real challenge that I know I can win, I just have to find the strength to fight. I get up sighing, turning the tv down and shuffling my feet as I approach my suitcases abandoned at the entrance, kneeling down to open them. I’m taking out the first pair of jeans when I hear quick steps out in the hallway, and the panting voices of two or three people. I hear them getting nearer and nearer, and then they stop right next to me. The door of the room 1582. The woman’s room. Why do these guys have the keys to her room? What do they want? Maybe she’s been robbed… but I shake my head a moment after: no, impossible. Chad, the receptionist, would have seen them. I’m sure he knows the face of every single client. And these people knew where they were going. It seems I won’t be getting the answers I crave, for now. I have to talk to that woman as soon as I can. Before her, no woman got my attention like that. No woman had shaken me like that. I smile bitterly while I think that maybe, if I had met my neighbor before, I wouldn’t have to get through everything I’ve lived. Maybe my stepfather would have stopped calling me names when I was a kid. I try to restrain those dark thoughts and I go back to the unpacking, because I suddenly wanna go to bed as soon as possible. In less than fifteen minutes I hear some strange noises coming from the 1582, as if there was a fight going on. I hear the bed squeaking when something heavy falls on top of the mattress. And then I’m blushing, suddenly aware of what’s about to happen, and I try to hear something more while my thoughts are absolutely confused. And, in the meanwhile, where the hell is that woman? The moaning I hear doesn’t seem feminine, but I could be wrong: I’m well aware that I’ve heard a woman’s moans like three times in my entire life and between me and the other room there’s always a concrete wall. Although the thick wall seems thin as paper and I lean on it lightly, as if I was scared to break through. I’m out of place. I’m superfluous. I shouldn’t be here. I depart from the wall, sitting on my bed, while my ears are full of the squeaking of the mattress and the heavy panting. What if every night is gonna be like this? I think, slightly worried. But no, it’s completely impossible, and I laugh nervously while I wear a comfy pair of sweatpants and a t-shirt. I won’t think about it anymore. I go under the blankets, looking at my phone one last time to distract myself from the noises that keep reaching me from the other room: hot, wet against my ear, as if they were right next to me. I look at the phone clock: a couple of minutes before midnight. Here I am, I think, crossing my fingers, finally in Boston, and for now everybody seems to have fun except me. You have to stay positive, Brian, at least now, to stop thinking that everything’s gonna fuck up. You have a job, you sleep in a bed three times more comfortable than yours, they pay you a decent amount of money. And it’s all because you’re talented. Because you have something that others don’t have. Okay, you don’t believe how lucky you are to be here, but everything’s real for fuck’s sake. You’re in Boston, you’re miles and miles away from home, he’s not gonna find you here. You’re never gonna see him again. It’s been twelve years, Brian. Twelve. Relax. I breathe deeply, relaxing as I learned to. It’s really quite simple: I tighten every muscle in my body for a couple of seconds and then I let go, inert, as if I was a puppet with no ropes. With this easy technique I can always let go of tension and I feel better right after. I lay on my side, sinking my head in the scented pillow, and I turn off the lights. I’m so tired I can barely think, but when I close my eyes I see a thin silhouette wrapped in a furry coat, a pair of long legs and red lips. I fall asleep with the passion of those two lovers echoing into my ears and I’m sure, to my regret, I’m dreaming of her.

#trixie mattel #katya zamolodchikova #trixya #hotel!au #smut #genderbend #angst #tw abusive relationship #evelyn #rpdr fanfiction #submission #boston chelsea hotel #m/f au

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recentanimenews · 4 years

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FEATURE: Celebrating Kiki's Delivery Service and the Art of Being a Girl Witch

On the 31st anniversary of Studio Ghibli’s Kiki’s Delivery Service debut, I revisited my old childhood classic. My love for Kiki well preceded my awareness of anime, much less any other depictions of witches in media. I was terrified of the evil witch The Wizard of Oz, but Kiki herself was ... different. The most compelling aspect of Kiki wasn’t her magic or eccentric talking cat — it was the way her fantastical life easily blended into casual, day-to-day life. If being a young witch meant anything, it meant being just as susceptible to being human as anyone else. No flying monkeys here.

In anime, everything is usually bigger than life. Try remembering all the times a character loudly announces their attacks or performs a snazzy transformation sequence. Especially when it comes to fantasy. The magical girl genre, like the long-running Pretty Cure franchise, emphasize young girls with sparkly attacks and transformation. This is typically what people think of when they think of magic girls and anime, where boldness is the point. On the other end of the spectrum, you have an entirely different kind of magical girl: characters like Kiki, diligently studying to become a witch while shopping at local supermarkets and working part-time. If her life is just like ours, then what place does magic really have in a witch’s life — and what does that say about how anime depicts young witches in general?

Kiki pleads with her mother to let her leave early for her training

What Makes A Witch?

Kiki’s Delivery Service begins with Kiki leaving home to begin her training, a family tradition for witches her age. However, it quickly becomes apparent that Kiki isn’t nearly as prepared as she thought she was: once she arrives in her city of choice, she begins running into hiccups familiar to any young person finally living independently. Finding work, a place to sleep, dealing with unruly cats, weird boys. But thankfully Kiki is passionate, and soon enough she starts a small business zooming around on her broom delivering packages door-to-door. It’s peaceful. But one day, Kiki’s magic doesn’t work. Full-stop. She’s unable to fly, much less to speak to her cat, Jiji. She’s stuck not just emotionally, but creatively.

As a kid, I wasn’t quite sure what this actually meant. Why did she “forget” her magic? My first exposure to the movie was the '90s English dub, which infamously changed part of the original ending. In the 1989 Japanese release, Kiki is still unable to speak to Jiji after rescuing Tombo from the blimp crash. This suggests even though she regains her flying magic, Kiki has also grown-up beyond needing Jiji’s support. Instead, Kiki learns a different way of supporting herself: maturing her view on life as a capriciously creative endeavor. Kiki’s artist friend, a woman named Ursula, informs her that she’s experiencing “artist block” and she simply needs to focus on something else before returning to deliveries. She never “forgot” her magic — this was part of the witch training process all along.

Kiki encounters another witch returning from training

If you want to learn magic, you might fail. Even a teenage witch isn’t immune to growing pains.

Recent series like Trigger’s 2017 Little Witch Academia and manga such as Kamome Shirahama’s 2016 Witch Hat Atelier share a similar message about witchdom. With all the excitement and discoveries to be made with magic, their young characters always end up returning to the same lessons about failure and growth. So, what makes stories about young witches so susceptible to this theme over and over again? Are flashy magical mistakes more fun to look at? Is the spectacle of blowing up a potion or flying on par with awkward adolescence? Do higher stakes make everything else seem quaint in comparison? Unsurprisingly, it’s a little bit of everything.

Akko is shown up by her peers ready on broomstick

Good Witch, Bad Witch

Shirahama’s Witch Hat Atelier is about a young girl named Coco, who becomes fascinated with magic after receiving a grimoire from a masked witch. After learning all it takes to perform magic is ink and paper, Coco accidentally completes a spell that petrifies her mother. Realizing he could've stopped this, a visiting young magician takes her under his wing as a student, promising her that if she continues her studies she will be able to reverse the malignant spell. In this world, magic is as easy as good penmanship — as long as you can write well, you can ascend the magical world hierarchy. Of course, this secret must be heavily guarded and only those trusted enough are given this knowledge. A witch is only as good as the artisan tools she uses.

Witch Hat Atelier by Kamome Shirahama, published by Kodansha Comics

Witch Hat Atelier provides an alternative witch-ness compared to Kiki’s more subtle approach. In this world, young apprentices wear stereotypical pointy hats and use wands. In comparison, Kiki establishes that magic is primarily a domestic affair, less "wizarding world" and more scrubbing floors. Other series like Little Witch Academia emphasize a witch’s schooling — one step beyond Witch Hat Atelier by using an academy setting and depicting classroom hijinks not unlike high school anime. Between these three, what makes these depictions unique is how they place a girl witch on a spectrum from daily doldrums to prim and proper academic affairs.

Akko attempts to earn her wings

What makes a “good” witch in these different settings depends on how well they fit in. Would Kiki excel at Luna Nova Magical Academy? Maybe not. Would Akko be able to run her own delivery service? Maybe if she got flying down pat. This tension of “fitting in” is exactly the central conflict of Akko and Coco’s characters. Unlike Kiki, whose witch-ness is a family tradition, Akko willingly enrolls as a student with a non-magical background, and Coco becomes one by tragic irony. But despite being placed in magical institutions of learning, neither of them are especially studious. In fact, it doesn’t really seem to matter if a witch is an A-student or a slacker — rather than book smarts, what drives these girls are their raw, creative energies. In other words, they are artists.

Kiki attempts to fly again in frustration

A Different Kind of Magic

When Kiki blunders a delivery and comes home to realize she can’t fly anymore, she’s devastated. There aren't any textbooks or grimoires to “teach” her how to fly again — Kiki’s Delivery Service heavily implies that magic is instinctual, never learned. Ursula, the painter, correctly diagnoses this as an artist's block, not because she only has her point of reference, but because she recognizes magic and painting as having the same goals: to bring something new into the world. Kiki, after all, only decides to move after learning she’s the only witch in town.

Ursula shows Kiki the painting she's been working on

Since Kiki’s debut, the depiction of witches in anime has dramatically evolved — doing magic isn’t simply a novelty, but a whole new way of accessing desire. Characters like Coco, who have no choice but to accept the witches’ hat, have a complicated relationship with magic. On one hand, learning magic is one of Coco’s dreams, but on the other, attempting to access it led to disastrous results. Popular series like Fullmetal Alchemist share the same warning that seeking certain knowledge may lead to dramatically different paths in life. Magic for an adolescent isn’t simply a practical tool, but a long process of inductions, trials, and major lifestyle changes. That magic being learned isn’t magic in itself — it’s learning to accept setbacks and make independent decisions.

Kiki and Ursula hitchhiking

Even series like Shaft’s 2011 Puella Magi Madoka Magica tease this idea of accessing magic as a means of accepting change. In cases like these, the “young witch girl” archetype and the “magical girl” flirt with each other to tell a far bigger story about responsibility and consequences. Madoka and Little Witch Academia respectively feature occult holidays like Walpurgisnacht and Samhain — and yet are incredibly different in how they channel witches. Wherever a witch falls on this spectrum, from fluffy slice of life to world-ending magical battles, she’s almost always guaranteed to have an incredibly personal, intense relationship to her powers. And if we’re lucky, that enchanting energy might rub off on our own creative lives, too.

Blake P. is a weekly columnist for Crunchyroll Features. He thinks Cats (the musical) deserves a proper anime adaptation. His twitter is @_dispossessed. His bylines include Fanbyte, VRV, Unwinnable, and more.

Do you love writing? Do you love anime? If you have an idea for a features story, pitch it to Crunchyroll Features!

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ramialkarmi · 6 years

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The Uber accident that killed a woman in Arizona is a tragic lesson about self regulation that companies and politicians can't ignore (GOOGL)

The fatal accident last week involving an Uber self-driving car shows the shortcomings of leaving it up to corporations to regulate themselves.

Arizona, where the accident happened, had few rules governing autonomous car testing, allowing Uber and other operators to make up their own rules.

That approach was problematic, particularly in the case of Uber, because the company has a long history of flouting rules, laws, and norms.

What's more, reports indicate that the company's self-driving car's main sensor had known blind spots and the company was pushing ahead with its program, despite reliability problems with its autonomous system.

Since at least the time of Ronald Reagan, it's been a popular thing to complain about the government's regulation of businesses.

With the mantra that regulations stymie business, innovation, and the broader economy, Republican politicians, but also, not infrequently, Democratic ones as well, have slashed away at older rules and vowed to oppose new ones.

It's an open question how much good all that regulation slashing has done. But here's something that is clear: When governments don't set rules, companies and powerful people are free to set their own. When they do, they almost inevitably set those rules for their benefit, not the broader public's.

The not-infrequent result is that everyday citizens can lose their money, their houses, their privacy, their jobs, or — as in the case of Arizona resident Elaine Herzberg — their lives.

As you may have read, Herzberg died last week when a self-driving Uber vehicle hit her while she was crossing the street at night.

In the immediate aftermath of the accident, defenders of Uber and self-driving technology in general asserted that there was nothing to be overly concerned about.

It was a chance accident. The Uber car didn't appear to be at fault. Herzberg was likely to blame for suddenly stepping off a median and jaywalking in front of the car on a dark street. Besides, some argued, we should expect that some people will be killed by autonomous vehicles, but their deaths will almost certainly be more than made up for by the many more lives that will be saved.

After all, 30,000 to 40,000 people die as a result of human-driven automobile accidents in the US ever year. And as was made clear when an Uber driver at the helm of standard car got stuck on a pedestrian stairway in San Francisco a few days later, humans drivers are very prone to mistakes.

It's beginning to look like Uber cut corners

But it turns out that the initial takes letting Uber's self-driving car off the hook were off-base. Dash-cam video made clear that the street was well lit and Herzberg, instead of making a sudden move, had been steadily making her way across the street. Velodyne, the provider of Uber's lidar system, the laser-based sensor used to detect objects around a self-driving car, said its device was more than capable of identifying her before the collision. Even so, according to police, the car didn't slow down at all until after it hit her.

Velodyne pointed fingers in Uber's direction when it came to assigning blame for the crash. That's probably not a bad place to look. A second video showed that immediately before the accident, the human safety driver, who theoretically is supposed to take over if the autonomous system fails, wasn't paying attention to the road and didn't appear to have his hands on the steering wheel.

Meanwhile, The New York Times reported that Uber's self-driving cars have struggled to go even 13 miles in autonomous mode without the human driver back-up having to take over. By contrast, The Times noted, Waymo's autonomous vehicles on average traveled 5,600 miles last year before a driver had to take control. Despite that, Uber has been pressing hard to advance its autonomous vehicle operation and move toward completely driverless vehicles, The Times reported.

What's more, according to a report in Reuters, Uber's latest self-driving cars only have one lidar system, down from seven in its previous vehicle. That singular Lidar array has a known blind spot, according to employees and others who worked on the system who were quoted by Reuters.

In other words, instead of being an inevitable, unavoidable accident, Herzberg's death is beginning to look more and more like it was the result of negligence and corner cutting on the part of Uber and its safety driver.

Other states have recognized the potential dangers

And, in turn, it's increasingly seeming to be the case that Arizona's essentially anything-goes approach to regulating self-driving cars enabled Uber's apparent negligence.

Self-driving cars have been touted as a potential boon for traffic safety because, at least in theory, they are immune from the No. 1 cause of most accidents — human error. Additionally, their numerous sensors can potentially detect dangers before human drivers could — if those drivers saw them at all.

Even so, the potential dangers and problems related to self-driving cars are numerous. Cars are massive objects that, thanks to the laws of physics, can do lots of damage, even when they are traveling at low speeds, regardless of whether the driver is a human or a poorly designed algorithm.

While most driving is routine, there are thousands of so-called edge cases involving things such as black ice, double parked cars and more that drivers encounter and have to negotiate on a daily basis. To work reliably in the real world, self-driving cars will have to be able to handle such edge cases as well or better than humans.

Beyond how they handle the roads, autonomous cars will have to be protected from potential cyberattacks that could allow hackers to take control of them. And there remain questions to be answered about how riders' privacy will be protected.

Recognizing such concerns, many states have put in place rules designed to monitor self-driving cars and ensure safety. Some have required companies to have a certain number of passengers in their autonomous cars at all times or mandated that they keep track and report to regulators on their cars' experiences on the road.

But Arizona took a much more lax approach to regulating self-driving cars

But Arizona took a much more relaxed approach. In the hopes of luring technology companies in general and self-driving car businesses in particular, Doug Ducey, the state's Republican governor, has been on a mission to slash and limit regulations since he took office in 2015. One key piece of that was an executive order he signed in August that year that allowed companies to test autonomous vehicles in the state.

The only requirement he made in his executive order was that operators needed to have insurance for their autonomous cars and needed to have a passenger inside that had a driver's license. Other than that, operators could pretty much figure out for themselves what rules they should go by. They didn't even have to report to the state on their cars' experience on the road.

Ducey made those lax rules part of his sales pitch to self-driving car companies, including Waymo and Uber. When Uber explored testing its autonomous vehicles in Arizona, the governor welcomed the company with open arms, according to The Times.

"We responded by saying we weren’t going to hassle them," Ducey told The Times. "I'd be remiss if I didn't thank my partner in growing the Arizona economy, Jerry Brown," he added, taking a swipe at California's Democratic governor and his infamously over-regulated state.

When it comes to corporations and industries, self-regulation doesn't have a great track record. But if you're going to trust a company to regulate its own behavior for the benefit of all, Uber is probably the last company you'd want to trust.

Uber didn't deserve Arizona's trust

The app-based taxi company has a long history of ignoring even well-established rules, laws, and norms. It flouted taxi regulations in numerous cities, spied on a customers, and used software to evade law enforcement officials.

Indeed, the reason it was looking to move its self-driving car tests to Arizona was because it got in trouble in California for testing its vehicles without the required permit. Unlike the dozens of other companies that had actually gotten such permission, Uber couldn't be bothered.

So, you'd think with that history, Arizona would have wanted to have more oversight over Uber, not less. But that's the opposite of the approach it took. It let Uber determine the rules to test its cars and figure out for itself what was safe.

In fact, in what is likely to be remembered as one of the most regrettable tweets ever, Ducey even crowed to his Twitter followers in 2016 that Uber's exit from California was an example of "what overregulation looks like."

This is what OVER-regulation looks like! #ditchcalifornia https://t.co/RMbUkQY9ek

— Doug Ducey (@dougducey) December 22, 2016

Ducey seems, belatedly, to have realized his mistake. Earlier this month, he updated his rules for self-driving cars with new, stricter requirements. Unfortunately, by the time of Herzberg's death, Uber didn't yet have to comply with them. Following her death, Ducey and the state demanded that the company suspend its self-driving car tests.

Government laws and regulations can often be ill-conceived and detrimental. They're no guarantee of safety or the common good. They can sometimes favor powerful, entrenched interests rather than innovative startups and entrepreneurs.

But they're also influenced by the democratic process. When you leave the rules up to corporations themselves, they'll favor their own interests. And when they do that, the public can lose out and sometimes people die.

SEE ALSO: The Facebook-Cambridge Analytica scandal is the textbook case for why we need new privacy protections

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