I was so drawn to her personality and humour that I couldn’t fathom a person could be so interesting. She might have read me like a chapter, but for me she was the whole damn book.
A literary correspondence
Some love stories
begin with a sentence.
Asterix is a literary correspondence platform built for readers, writers, and the slowly-spoken. Find the reader whose margins resemble yours. Words first. Photographs, later.
One reader a day · chosen by how they read
what is the sentence
that’s been
following you?
that’s been
following you?
Chapter I
On why this exists.
Modern dating asks one question, asked very fast: does this person look like someone you would want? It asks it of forty strangers in a coffee shop, before any of them has spoken. It asks it again tomorrow. It does not, at any point, ask what they keep on their bedside, or which sentence they have copied into the back of a notebook, or how they think when no one is watching.
We think this is the wrong question, asked too soon.
The thing that makes a person worth knowing the way they read a paragraph, the books they have re‑read, the lines they have lifted into the margin of another life is invisible in a photograph. It surfaces in writing. It surfaces slowly. And it can only be found by people who are willing to look for it.
Asterix is the place to look.
every Saturday.
a reader asks
but how do
they FIND
them?
they FIND
them?
Chapter II
On who this is for.
This is for the kind of person who would write back. Who would rather read a paragraph than send a sticker. Who has, this week, kept a sentence copied it into a notes app, a margin, a head‑loop because it described something they had felt but had not yet said.
It is for re‑readers. For the ones who circle a phrase before they finish the page. For the ones who write more in private than they post in public. For the ones whose ideal first date includes a bookshop and a long walk back.
It is also, more deeply, for the kind of person who is tired. Of the swipe. Of the photograph. Of the slow erosion that comes from being shown forty strangers a day, asked to choose, and offered no language with which to do so.
“And honestly you don’t absolutely have to be the most well read person out there. Asterix ain’t a competition, it’s very far from it. Every niche has a voice and they aren’t compared. They are beyond comparison. What works for you, works for u, others are none the wiser”
If any of that sounds like you, the rest of this letter is also.
(all of it.)
a reader asks
what if i’m
not ‘literary’
enough?
not ‘literary’
enough?
Vol. I · No. 1
We made Asterix because we were tired. Tired of the swipe, the photograph, the smile rehearsed on the way to a bar. Tired of being shown forty strangers in a coffee shop and asked, repeatedly, to choose one without speaking to any of them. Tired of an industry that solved a problem we did not have how do I see more people and left untouched the problem we did: how do I know any of them.
The premise here is not new. It is, in fact, very old. For most of human history, romance began in correspondence a letter, a poem passed between hands, a sentence written in a margin and slid across a table. People knew the shape of each other’s minds before the shape of each other’s faces. The result was occasionally clumsy and frequently slow. The people who made it through were rarely surprised by who they ended up with.
there is more scroll on to break the seal.
“Photographs are not what is most you. The way you read is.”
So we built an app where words come first. Each morning, you receive one reader chosen not for their photograph but for the way they think. An excerpt. A note in the margin. A book on their bedside. If something stays with you, you write back. If nothing stays with you, you close the page. There are no streaks to maintain, no fires to keep alive, no anxiety pinging through the day.
The photograph comes, eventually. It clarifies a little with each letter. By the fifth, you know what they look like. By then, you also know whether they re‑read books they have already finished, and whether they think Murakami is a draft of a feeling or the final one.
We have built every part of this slowly, in the hope that it will be used slowly. We trust the people who find it. We hope it finds you.
the editors
Reserve a card.
The beta opens in batches of fifty. We will write to you when your seat is ready no sooner, no louder.
(finally.)
a reader asks
← how often
will they
actually write?
will they
actually write?
By invitation · Silent until your seat opens
Your card is reserved.
A confirmation is on its way. When the next batch of fifty opens, you will hear from us once.