If anyone has noticed a particularly smashing trend, it is that I like to target -er- help people from our lovely discord book club. I give them priority for a couple reasons including but not limited to friendship points, discord benefits, and the joy of seeing their reactions semi-live following up to our torment session and after its impact has been felt. I have built up an interesting and seemingly contradictory reputation as trollish, serious, caring, and tormenting all at the same time just to keep everyone on their toes and it is all to your benefit.

The following is no exception. The story is also a bit interesting to smash for me because early on when she started she came to me for help. And I helped her through... a sizable portion and to brainstorm with her on how to make her start solid. It resulted in early rewrites and I stepped away to keep from being spoiled until she was done.

Now, because I like to go down random rabbit holes for the hell of it. I found one interesting thing to chase down. Both of the MCs are Armenian and Persian-Armenian (also known as Iranian-Armenian) respectively. Not just of ancestral descent, no no, but actually from there. And I like to know the odds of this and to keep from spoiling and challenging myself, ill just use the internet and chapter 1.

Now originally I detailed my mathematical and research journey that took about 3000 words. I went through so many wiki pages, looked into multiple census' in the united states, California, and LA on the subcultures and where people were living mostly as different races. I found Iranians-Armenians make up 0.05% of Iranians, how many Armenian and and Iranian-Armenians live in the united states, what percent of them live in the Los Angeles county, and then the city. I used maps and diagrams and websites and math in relevance to time and vague descriptions she made and shit to figure out what university Mia goes to in LA.

I'll save you the majority of it and just say that the odds of any Armenian meeting an Iranian-Armenian in the city of LA is 1:1000 per day. The odds of a single particular Armenian meeting a single particular Iranian-Armenian is 1:360,000,000 per day and the university Mia teaches is most likely American University Preparatory School, which is, conveniently about 40-ish minutes from Hollywood if you include a bit of time for Mia to get ready in chapter 1, find the nightclub, and park.

That should teach you about how easy it is to stalk actual people if you give information that is relevant. :)

TLDR; The story is a romantic comedy/drama between a psychologist teacher and her rich boy toy student. Oh yeah, and there is also a mixture of straight smut and them being erotic.

Also she wanted memes. So I spent like 30 minutes seeing how many I could make. Enjoy!

Main Characters: Semi-Smashing! - The two main characters are Teacher and BoyToy. Being a romance its all about chemistry and this is done beautifully. One is snappy and an emotional mess while the latter is self-confident, at peace, and soft spoken. You spend the entire story in first person perspective through Teacher's eyes and all of her glorious thoughts. I truly love this as this methodology leads to being more firmly entrenched in her thought process and with her being a semi-messed up person, it is hilarious and dramatic to be inside the rollercoaster one might call a brain. There is even clear inspiration from the various werewolf writers in the book club as she has moments of talking to herself in... multiple ways. Right off the bat the character is shown as flawed, hypocritical, highly judgmental, and quite frankly not dating material for any man with an ounce of self-respect in the wave of femenazi. Reading the comments, Teacher was a very divisive character either pissing half off for being extremely toxic or being adored by half because I guess they see toxicity and putting everyone down to raise herself up is seen as positive? This terrifies me in so far as how people think because the writer purposefully made her out to be a horrible person early on. Teacher pissed me off. But it was the good kind where it was obvious that it was on purpose. Then as the story goes on where she helps people, whether she really should or shouldn't, you begin to peel away the layers to see this is a troubled person for many reasons that is ripped right out of a psychology textbook. Almost literally as she also teaches lessons on the various elements at play in the story. She is still hypocritical and messed up by the end, and she makes mistakes that bite her in the ass because of these negative traits, but she still works her way through to being a better person, somewhat. She learns that love is more about just loving others, but loving herself.

BoyToy is the romantic interest. He doesn't have these mental issues except just being a selfish person while being a super-extra nice and selfless person. Somehow he is both selfish and selfless in different areas and this comes out well. Teacher spends forever lashing out and he just laughs because he finds it cute. He can almost be considered too good to be true, but thankfully the background of being an Eagle Scout and being from a large family where respect and self-confidence is key helps a lot. These traits lead to both negative and positive events.

Now, unfortunately, there is a flaw in them. To put it simply the lessons they learn dont really seem learned in so far as their flaws. Naturally it is too easy to go "im a hypocritical shit, maybe i just shouldn't" but rather tackle the thing that makes one hypocritical. Which the story does. But then it falls one step short because I don't really get the sense that either MC has stopped being these negative traits. If anything BoyToy, rather than learning from his selfish mistakes, solves them with... more selfishness? What kind of lesson is that? I haven't seen Teacher be hypocritical and toxic towards the end, but nor have I seen it recognized in her following her journey to being a better person. No 'im sorry' or anything. Her double standards put them both through things almost chapter by chapter and.... then nothing. The idea of recognizing that one deserves love and to get through mental issues is great, but following that the very mistakes that got them to this place still need to be recognized and learned from properly. There is drama in that those mistakes bite them in the ass, but when they use the mistakes to also reverse the punishment it removes a massive element from the story. There is also a lot of lessons learned, beautiful and powerful lessons, but the ones most important are the ones that affect the story in its ups and downs and those negative flaws are ignored at the last minute for lessons that are less relevant to the story events and more relevant to life. Which, I can't begrudge, but from a neutral standpoint the flaws that lead to the mistakes still need to be handled.

Side Characters: Smashing! - The SCs are pretty damn good, mostly. There are a fair number of them. Mother is excellent and makes me think the author ripped it straight from actual life experience. Sister is excellent. Mini-Teacher is excellent. Mini-Teacher's-Mother is excellent. Mini-Teacher's-Father is excellent. Teacher's friends can be a little bit confusing on which is which because they both fulfill the same role. And so can the rest of BoyToy's family (sister aside) because, as a collective, they all fulfill the same role and purpose. But at the end of the day it doesn't matter how many faceless minions you have in a group, but rather if that group fulfills its purpose. Which they all do. They give the MCs plenty of things to work from. There are lots of different relationships that would take far too long to get into individually, but I cant say there isn't a single one I dislike. Even as much as I distaste the character, it is because the character is meant to be seen that way, and this is done to perfection.

World Building: Sacrificed / Not important - The story is, from beginning to end, meant to be a romantic comedy/drama centralized on the internal conflict between the characters. The only world build given is pretty much just the situations the MCs are in. Which isn't much world building, nor is it meant to be. Rather, when you have stories like this, the world building is made obsolete and replaced by the side characters. The people in their lives IS THEIR WORLD. there is no political bullshit, no news or drama to pull us away from the tightknit bubble that is their lives. The story is focused on purpose and since the Side Characters are so good, then consider this also Smashing!

Plot: Smashing! - Every story has some kind of structure. Naturally, you do not have to follow the structure, but it is generally what people aim for. It is usually the larger stories that take the time to break away from the accepted structures. This is no exception. A romantic structure generally is 1.1) introduction 1.2) First Impression (The couple either fall in love or despise each other at first sight) 1.3) Stuck Together. (They are stuck together by forces beyond their control. based on 1.2, If they hate each other than this forces them together, if they like each other than the same forces that force them in the same room also keep them from being more than that.) 2.1) Second Impression (They come to see each other in a new light, whether for better or worse, but must be different, or at least more human and real, from first impression.) 2.2) First Drama (usually based on the conflict between the two impressions.) 2.3) Peaking Conflict (Their personal issues and conflicts.) 2.4) Second Drama (both the 2.3 and 1.3 parts keep them apart even though they really want to be in some way.) 3.1) Resolution (they find a way to resolve their personal issues with themselves, as a couple, and how to be together, all at the same time.) 3.2) Epilogue (technically we are over already but people like sappy shit.)

This story follows this structure to a damn T, but at the same time pulls off a very sit-com and slice-of-life feel so you dont even KNOW it follows the structure, which is very impressive. And this is pulled off by a number of things that are both good and... unfortunately bad... yet somehow works itself out to not be bad? Its weird. See, when you reveal the ending and foreshadow things so early as the author did, then it leaves things wide open to do things, not necessarily differently, but at a different pace and put 'filler' in. Filler can be good or bad depending on the quality and how the characters play with it, and in this case all these little sit-com episodic moments are absolutely glorious because of the chemistry and tension. And you know what? I love that. I almost prefer episodic stories at times because it focuses on the little things. The more human ones.

The tension is both existant and non-existant at the same time, which is an odd thing. Teacher is a psychologist and a teacher, and flat out says what will happen early on. She also teaches lessons on mental issues that are extremely relevant to everything through the rest of the story. This isn't so much world building as foreshadowing. It removes tension and surprise in that its kinda obvious how things will play out, but it also frees the story up to do whatever the hell it wants and play with you because its no longer about "what will happen" but now "when will it happen" and "how will it happen"? Its like a spoiler that frees itself to focus more on the little things. It teases you and screws with ya. Almost too much, actually, as the very event she feared occurs multiple times in increasingly stronger proportions before it peaks and so becomes a "boy who cried wolf" situation that finally catches you off guard because it wasnt the big things that result in drama, but the random small, unexpected one. This story element is also interestingly meta and self-aware because, normally, when you reveal the way things will play out and how to resolve them so early, it kinda breaks the story because then it turns into "well if you knew how, why didnt you just do it?" And the journey to learn is removed. But this story focuses on how it is not so much a journey of doing what they know they need to do, but of the emotional and internal strength behind finally doing it, which they give each other because thats just how humans are as social creatures, which is orchestrated by the very things laid out like a roadmap right from the start with the Teacher's psychology lessons. It is also just a very interesting reading because I'm pretty sure its grounded in actual facts, research, and studies and not just pulled out of the author's ass. Which then also adds a whole NEW element in that it becomes an almost documentary study on how these psychology lessons play out when applied to actual circumstances. Kinda like that bullshit "which rail would you send the train down, either kill your child or 100 people" thing, but in this case actually takes that idea, applies it with actual things for the characters to decide and choose without it being complete bullshit that has no answer.

Overall I'd rate it 4/5. The only real flaw I can see to the story is that the many of the mistakes and character flaws that lead to drama and mistakes aren't the character elements tackled or resolved by the story. There are a lot of things that work together to bring drama, and the biggest ones are handled, but then it doesn't follow up in handling the smaller ones that are born of the largest. Understandably one can be a hypocrite and selfish and other things when one doesn't love themselves or whatever, but then when you resolve that big underlying one, there needs to be a follow up on the smaller ones that were born of it. It doesn't go after the smaller diseases born of the toxic lifestyle, instead using the very diseases to cure them? This was screwy.

I'm out with a smashing!

If you are interested in learning to write, mastering the craft, want some really good reads, or just to chat and hang out with a mature group of adults, feel free to hit me up for a smashing discord book club that has lasted years.