#'a bit dated' = 1920s-1960s

[oidheadh-con-culainn]

it does make me laugh when general purpose academic advice is like "all citations must be RECENT, if it's over ten years old it's probably been superseded" and it's like. maybe in sciences bro but over here i still regularly have to cite stuff from the 19th century because nobody has written on the topic since

[knighthoracely]

Um..... Guys????? All the other 3 fans who are invested in E&H lore???? Why aren't we talking about this vid???

My wonderful @prawnprank sent me this and we had a discussion concerning what it might mean. This is going to be long, so the rest is under the cut!

Warning: this is NOT a fact that Poki or Daedalic Entertainment (or any of the creators) stated! We just want to share our silly idea with you guys!!!

It seems that the OP has the game on a disk, and it has this interesting little puzzle which needs to be solved before starting the game. Unfortunately, we are not exactly fluent in German, but we had a friend translate it, so we think this idea of ours might be true or at least has a place to be.

So the idea is that the second game took place on the exact date stated in the video — 18.05.2002.

Why, you might ask? Because after choosing all the parts of this date, the OP ends up... in the main menu. Which can pretty much mean that this is when the game took place.

Thus, the first game might have happened a bit earlier — September 2001. Why? Well, we know for a fact that it was September, and Edna's disappearance is still relevant in Harvey's New Eyes — the asylum workers are looking for her, which means it couldn't have been long since she pushed Dr. Marcel down the stairs, and it would be realistic for people to look for her (or her remains) in the spring.

This theory also doesn't clash with the things we see in both games: the tech looks like something from the 2000s (like telephones, TVs, surveillance cameras, TV antennas, etc.), also real songs and movies that are referenced in the game also were released before the 2000s ("Don't Cry for Me Argentina" by Madonna, 1996; "Waterworld" with Kevin Costner, 1995).

Furthermore, it means that we can deduce when the characters with confirmed ages were born.

In alphabetical order:

- Adrian — 1965

- Alfred — circa 1982 I guess?? (idk if we get told whether he & Edna are the same age, correct me if his age is known & is different from Edna's)

- Almo — 1969

- Aluman — 1937

- Barman — 1956

- Beeman — 1952

- Blase — 1962

- Bruce Broker (Juppi) — 1961

- Chauffeur — 1943

- Dr. Marcel — 1933

- Droggelbecher (I'm NOT calling him Droggeljug.) — March 1971 (he's exactly 30,5 y.o. as his dossier states)

- Edna — 1982

- Front Door Officer — 1940

- Herr Mantel — 1926

- Hornbusch — 1932

- Hoti & Moti — 1966

- Hulgor — 1960

- Keymaster — 1974

- Mattis — 1950

- Neurotic — 1972

- Newbie (Tall Asylum Worker) — 1974

- Pastor — 1969

- Peter — September 1961

- Petra — 1967

- Prof. Nock — 1920

- Stiesel (I'M NOT CALLING HIM BABBIT.) — 1968

- Ticket Inspector — 1954

- Tobi (the watchman at the gate) — 1969

Also, we can say Alfred died on 03.08.1991, with Mattis being executed after that date.

So, in conclusion, I must say that it is not confirmed that it is the exact date but it sure seems plausible to us (we also genuinely hope that this wasn't debunked or something, but if it was, please let us know). So, if you like, you can adopt this little headcanon we came up with!

[haveyoureadthisscifibook]

Are there stats for publication date? What's the predominant decade for submissions and how do the Sci-fi and fantasy blogs compare? Is there a period that a higher percentage of poll responders seem to have read? It looks like there's more submission of YA/children in fantasy and those have been more likely to get 50+% read. Is there just less sci-fi being written targeted towards younger readers?

hello! great questions. putting this under a read more because it’s a lot of numbers.

publication date

there are some marked differences between the two blogs on this point, although also some overall similarities.

most of the differences are I think pretty straightforwardly explicable by the fact that science fiction as a cohesive genre and marketing category is simply older than fantasy, having more or less fully coalesced by the 1920s, whereas fantasy wasn’t really established until the late ’60s. obviously there’s also older stuff that’s now considered to belong to each genre (Verne, Wells, Lovecraft, Plunkett/Dunsany, ...), but people who habitually read Fantasy and people who habitually read Science Fiction are, I think, most likely to have read books that were conceived, written, published, and marketed specifically as part of those genres, meaning that the fantasy submissions and results skew more recent than the sci-fi ones. the sci-fi results are also a bit more evenly distributed (though still skewed towards post-2010), reflecting, I think, the cultural prominence of certain classics — of which there are also simply more, because, again, older as a marketing category.

for starters, the mean publication dates of submissions:

fantasy: ~2002

sci-fi: ~1996

I haven’t been keeping stats by decade for submissions, but I can give you stats by decade for the results. for the fantasy polls:

1830s: 1 book (0.2% of the total)

1880s: 1 book (0.2% of the total)

1890s: 2 books (0.3%)

1900s: 2 books (0.3%)

1910s: 3 books (0.5%)

1920s: 2 books (0.3%)

1930s: 5 books (0.8%)

1940s: 4 books (0.6%)

1950s: 9 books (1.4%)

1960s: 8 books (1.3%)

1970s: 31 books (5.0%)

1980s: 59 books (9.5%)

1990s: 70 books (11.2%)

2000s: 146 books (23.4%)

2010s: 194 books (31.1%)

2020s: 86 books (13.8%)

you can really see the beginning of the fantasy genre as such here in the dramatic jump from the 1960s to the ’70s, and you can also see the age of tumblr users in the jump from the 1990s to the 2000s. the average yes percentages for the decades where there are enough books to give a meaningful average are a bell curve from 13.4% yes for the ’70s, peaking at 21.1% yes in the ’90s, and falling back down to 10.5% yes for the 2020s.

the medians also dramatically peak in the ’90s: median 7.6% yes for the ’70s, 6.2% yes for the ’80s, 14.8% yes for the ’90s, 11.8% yes for the 2000s, 6.1% yes for the 2010s, and 5.6% yes for the 2020s.

for the sci-fi polls:

1810s: 1 book (0.2% of the total)

1860s: 3 books (0.6%)

1880s: 2 books (0.4%)

1890s: 3 books (0.6%)

1900s: 2 books (0.4%)

1910s: 1 book (0.2%)

1920s: 1 book (0.2%)

1930s: 7 books (1.5%)

1940s: 7 books (1.5%)

1950s: 19 books (4.0%)

1960s: 31 books (6.5%)

1970s: 39 books (8.2%)

1980s: 54 books (11.4%)

1990s: 63 books (13.3%)

2000s: 49 books (10.3%)

2010s: 123 (25.9%)

2020s: 70 (14.7%)

I suspect the jump from the ’40s to the ’50s and ’60s reflects the relatively rapid post-WWII shift away from magazines as the primary venue for sci-fi publishing (which therefore leaned towards short fiction and away from novels) to pulp books (expanding the market for novels, and so for books eligible for this blog). I have no idea what’s going on with the 2000s.

the averages for the sci-fi polls are quite even across the decades with enough results to give meaningful averages, and, significantly, the decade with the highest mean yes is actually the ’60s (16.8%), followed by the ’50s (13.3%), and then ironically the 2000s (12.6%). the lowest is the ’70s, at only 8.9% mean yes. the medians are all over the place, but the highest is the ’60s (10.3%), followed by the ’80s (7.6%) and the 2000s again (6.6%). the lowest is the ’70s again (3.3%), followed by the 2020s (4.0%).

(it’s also worth noting again that children’s books are skewing the fantasy poll results higher overall than the sci-fi ones.)

age demographic

is there just less sci-fi being written targeted at younger readers? I don’t have numbers, so I can only answer this anecdotally: I think so. first off, I think there’s maybe less sci-fi being written period at this point, but even looking back, I’m thinking about my own reading as a child (and looking at my library spreadsheet) —

fantasy: The Hobbit; Narnia; most of Diana Wynne Jones’s books; Garth Nix’s Seventh Tower and Abhorsen series; Susan Cooper’s The Dark Is Rising sequence; Tamora Pierce’s Song of the Lioness, The Immortals, Protector of the Small, Circle of Magic, and The Circle Opens; Diane Duane’s Young Wizards series; Unicorns of Balinor; Harry Potter; Wizard’s Hall; the Chronicles of Prydain; Earthsea; The Gammage Cup; Redwall; Wayside School; Magic Tree House; His Dark Materials; Tales of the Nine Charms; the Warriors cat books; Eva Ibboston’s books; Children of the Red King; Meredith Ann Pierce’s Firebringer trilogy; the Bartimaeus Trilogy; the Enchanted Forest Chronicles; Edward Eager’s Tales of Magic; The Paper Bag Princess; ...

sci-fi: the ’90s Star Trek children’s books; Young Jedi Knights; Junior Jedi Knights; Animorphs; Bruce Coville’s My Teacher Is an Alien books; Space Brat; Alistair and the Alien Invasion; Commander Toad; the first two Harper Hall Pern books; Jedi Apprentice; the silly Jedi Prince books; the Tripods books; Monica Hughes’s Isis books; uh...

and granted, I loved the children’s sci-fi series — if you’d asked me in ca. 2000 I probably would have been more enthusiastic about Animorphs than any of the fantasy series I’d read at that point except maybe Circle of Magic. nonetheless, while this is very unscientific, you can see the disproportion.

it also becomes something of a self-fulfilling prophecy from a publishing perspective: there’s been one wild blockbuster sci-fi series for young readers in my lifetime (The Hunger Game), vs. three(-ish) for fantasy (Harry Potter, Twilight, and to a lesser extent Percy Jackson and the Olympians). fantasy for young readers looks safer for publishers —> more of it gets published —> more people read it —> more people decide eventually to write it.

[ryebecca]

Hello there! 📚

Here you’ll find all of my moodboards (the ones with an asterisk have a fic attached!) broken down by series/character.

DAGGER DECADES

Bradley ‘Rooster’ Bradshaw 1940s: true to me (WWII AU) 1980s: i want to know what love is (POV: it’s 1986 and, like, you’re feeling totally rad and in love with your husband, Lt. Bradley Bradshaw.)

Robert ‘Bob’ Floyd 1510s: no sooner looked, but they loved (Tudor dynasty AU) 1890s: there is a flower within my heart (Gilded Age AU) 1920s: the cooling twilight (speakeasy AU) 1940s: there’s just one place for me, near you (POV: It’s 1943 and you’re sending your boyfriend, Bobby, off to fight in the war.) 1960s: god only knows what i’d be without you (POV: it’s 1966 and you’re feeling groovy and totally in love with your husband, Bobby Floyd.)

Mickey ‘Fanboy’ Garcia 1540s: that which we call a rose (Tudor dynasty AU) 1950s: i only have eyes for you (POV: sock hops, diner milkshakes, and kisses with your boyfriend, Mickey.)

Jake ‘Hangman’ Seresin 1510s: the course of true love (Tudor dynasty AU) 1770s: we hold these truths (revolutionary war-era AU) 1920s: smoke and mirrors (speakeasy AU) 1940s: life ain’t always beautiful (noir AU) 1970s: you sexy thing (POV: You’re wearing your bell-bottoms and your best huckapoo shirt as you disco dance the night away with your boyfriend, Jake.)

DAGGERS @ DISNEY

Bradley ‘Rooster’ Bradshaw when you wish upon a star (POV: you’re spending the day at the Happiest Place on Earth with your boyfriend, Bradley.)

Robert ‘Bob’ Floyd once upon a dream (POV: Disney, Dumbo, and Dole whips with your boyfriend, Bob Floyd.)

Mickey ‘Fanboy’ Garcia you’ll be in my heart (POV: you’re on your annual Disney vacation with your husband, Mickey - the biggest fanboy there is! And if you spend more time in Galaxy’s Edge than anywhere else, well, you’re not in the least bit surprised.)

Jake ‘Hangman’ Seresin a dream is a wish your heart makes (POV: You’re on a Disneyland date with your boyfriend, Jake Seresin - a not-so-secret Disney adult.)

DAGGER WEDDINGS

Bradley ‘Rooster’ Bradshaw the best thing that you’ll ever have (POV: embracing all the beachy vibes on your wedding day to Bradley Bradshaw.)

Robert ‘Bob’ Floyd i’ve always been yours (POV: you’re getting married to your childhood sweetheart, Bob Floyd.)

Jake ‘Hangman’ Seresin my everything and beyond (POV: You’re getting married to the love of your life, Lt. Jake Seresin.)

DAGGER HONEYMOONS

Jake ‘Hangman’ Seresin life is a road (POV: you’re on a whirlwind European honeymoon with your new husband, Jake Seresin.)

LADY MAVERICK’S SOCIETY PAPERS

His Grace, Jacob Seresin, Duke of Hereford Captain Robert Floyd, Viscount Welles

MEET THE DAGGERS PROFESSORS

THE DAGGER CREW (pirate AU)

ETC., ETC., ETC.

Rhett Abbott (Outer Range) wild for you (POV: you, Rhett, and fields of wildflowers. Does he propose in one of those fields once he sees how much joy they bring you? Yes. Yes, he does.) the wedding date (POV: you need a plus one for a wedding, but your friend cancels on you and you’re having trouble finding a date. Rhett offers to go with you - just as a friend helping out a friend…right?)

Bradley ‘Rooster’ Bradshaw baby of mine (POV: you’re married to Bradley Bradshaw, but now he’s leveled up to the one, the only, #dad!brad.) thankful for you (POV: you’re celebrating Thanksgiving with your husband, Bradley.) still falling for you (POV: you’re embracing all of the autumn vibes with your husband, Bradley.)

Robert ‘Bob’ Floyd fall into me (Leaf peeping, apple cider donuts, and walking hand in hand with Bob.) i pick you (POV: You’re feeling all of the autumn feels picking pumpkins with your boyfriend, Bob!) the story of us (POV: You’re on a cozy bookstore date with your boyfriend, Bob Floyd.) hail to the chief (President Bob Floyd AU) fun, fun, fun (POV: snacks, drinks, and kisses at the drive-in movies with your boyfriend, Bob.)

Mickey ‘Fanboy’ Garcia melting for you (POV: you’re spending the day snowboarding with your boyfriend, Mickey.)

Harrison Knott (Press Play) take along my love with you (POV: It’s a beautiful day at the beach with your boyfriend, Harrison.)

Jake ‘Hangman’ Seresin cabin fever* (Cozy cabin time with Jake.) falling in love (POV: Soaking up all the Fall feels with your boyfriend, Jake.) into the great wide open (POV: a camping trip with the one, the only, Jake Seresin.) rebel, rebel* (TGM x Star Wars) plus one (POV: you’re a bridesmaid at your best friend’s wedding and you need to bring a date. You ask your friend, Jake, to tag along…who may or may not be feeling like more than just a friend these days. But does he feel the same way?) love her like i do* (Summary: You overhear Jake talking to your newborn daughter. Fluff ensues.)

Beau ‘Cyclone’ Simpson you send me (POV: You’re spending a cozy day at home with your husband, Beau.) take me out (POV: Your husband, Beau Simpson, is a pitcher in the MLB. His fast ball was was so notorious in college that his team nicknamed him “Cyclone” - and the name just stuck.)

Ryan (Yellowstone) when you give a cowboy a kiss (POV: life on the ranch with your husband, Ryan.)

[deke-rivers-1957]

Kung Fu Elvis Part 3

If you're new to this series, the point of this is to find out which Elvis character is the best fighter given an uninterrupted hand to hand combat styled fight. The goal is to rank each individual Elvis character and then within each tier determine who would win against who.

How I plan on determining this will be by finding each character's age, size and general background. How well a character does in on screen fights will also be considered but analyzed on a case by case basis. Sometimes an Elvis character loses a fight simply because it's a comedy, or due to the low quality stage fighting wins because his opponents are laughably weak.

At the end of the day this is all headcanon as these are all fictional characters. If you disagree with how I rank a character I would love to hear your thoughts on where you would put them.

Wild in the Country is a movie that doesn't have a particular year. You would have to use the cars seen in the movie to determine when it takes place. Despite the presence of cars from the 40s, you also see a 1961 Chrysler New Yorker. Culturally speaking, you can also tell this is the early 1960s as you have Glenn going to therapy instead of immediately being institutionalized, a black man working with a white attorney showing the progression away from segregation, and college being a somewhat viable option with attendance steadily increasing since 1957. Given that Glenn doesn't have much of a job and has a rough and tumble backstory, it's likely that he isn't getting a full three square meals a day.

Even though I said on some sources, Glenn is stated to be 25, I could see someone make the argument that he's younger. Since no one claimed that he was a bit "too old" to be a college student, I'd say he's about 20/21 years old. Glenn being drunk is a non-issue because I don't see this town as being the type to care about enforcing drinking laws. In fact, Glenn's dad is an alcoholic and his uncle has it readily available which would make it more likely for Glenn to have drank before he turned 21.

Kissin Cousins relies heavily on the US military wanting land to build an airbase for the sake of national defense. Given that the Cuban Missile Crisis would serve as a big motivator to have a solidified air defense, we can assume this movie takes place a little after October 1962. Josh is an Air Force pilot and since he doesn't have anything on his uniform to suggest he was involved in a war or military intervention, it's fair to say that he's been living comfortably yet still has to be at least somewhat fit. Jodie meanwhile has been living up in the mountains his whole life where everyone lives off the land, so there isn't a lot of room to take in an excessive amount of calories. That also means, given his lifestyle and his work as a wrestler, Jodie by necessity has to stay in shape.

Going off of Josh's rank as a 2nd LT. I would say that he's anywhere between 25-30 years old. He never mentions being involved in Korea so that would make him under 30 in 1963. Given that there's no war, it takes a little longer to be promoted so even if Josh went to the academy and graduated, he'd still need a couple more years to be a commissioned officer. If you're in the Air Force, please correct me on how this worked during the 60s. As for Jodie, I have nothing to go off of. We don't have anything in mountain life that's age based. We can only assume that since Jodie is played by Elvis, he's at least an adult. For simplicity's sake, I'd say he's about the same age as Josh.

Despite having a somewhat specific timeline, Kid Galahad doesn't have a specific date. What we can assume is that it's after the 1920s since a poster of the real Jack Dempsey fight from 1921 is shown to be really old. Since the movie was filmed in 1961, I wouldn't be surprised if it was thrown in to a be 40th anniversary nod to it. Given that we see a contemporary Lincoln Continental, I would think this takes place throughout 1961. Mushy Callahan exists in this movie's universe is shown to be an older man, indicating that this takes place well after his prime since he retired in the 1930s. Walter being stationed in Okinawa for the army doesn't really give you a specific clue of when it takes place since the US had a persistent military presence in Japan after their surrender in WWII. Walter never mentions a war though, so we can assume that this takes place after Korea yet before the US sent group troops to Vietnam in 1965. We can assume that him being a soldier and a mechanic meant that he's relatively strong and fit.

Walter only has a canonical baptism date of August 14th 1939 in Cream Valley, New York. Given the context clue of his parents dying when he was 14 months old and that he lived with his family in Kentucky since then, we would assume he was baptized before they died. He was baptized by an Irish Catholic priest if he was allowed to marry Rose, an Irish Catholic so that means his parents likely abided by Catholic guidelines that a healthy baby is baptized within a few weeks or months of birth. Therefore, I would assume he was born in 1939 which in 1961 would make him about 22 years old.

This movie is about as specific as you can get with the time period. The Seattle World's Fair only lasts 6 months from April to October, 1962. We also know that Mike and Danny fly over a potato field. Potatoes can have a variety of planting and harvesting times, but it's common for them to be harvested in August or September. Since the fair isn't overflowing with kids, we can assume most schools have already opened. Sue-Lin's 7 years old so she's old enough to go to school, yet she's able to attend. If we assume that Mr. Ling was saving up money to take Sue-Lin to the fair, he would've had to have been saving money throughout the summer so he can take Sue-Lin right before her schooling starts, so we can assume that this takes place in either August or September, 1962. Mike being a recently destitute crop duster, likely had enough money to eat properly. He would also have to be fit enough to have any chance at becoming a test pilot or an astronaut.

We don't Mike's exact age, but we can make a guess based on certain elements of his life. If he wants to apply to NASA he has to be below the age of 35, have a degree in most commonly engineering, etc. Mike doesn't feel concerned about the age requirement so we assume that he has a few years to wait. We know Mike was in the Army for 3 years and that it takes about 4 years to get a degree in engineering. If we assume Mike did meet that requirement, he likely did it right after he left the Army using his VA benefits. Since the youngest you can be to join the Army is 18, Mike at his youngest finished his degree when he was 25. Since he worked with Danny as a crop duster for 3 years that would make him at least 28. So for simplicity's sake we'll stick with him being 28 years old.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

Glenn might have an age advantage, but he's not at all in a good position to be the best fighter. He's a hot-headed character when he fights and only fought people who were impaired to some degree. He seems to win because of adrenaline and luck. He's similar to Deke from part 1 in that his ability to get proper nutrition is questionable at the very least. Given that he's the young, scrappy and hungry character I don't see him being able to have a long fight. If fact, I can see him being completely unable to win a planned fight. With no motivation to fight as his life isn't on the line, he just wouldn't do that well.

Therefore, Glenn is the worst fighter of this group but that's not an insult. With the exception of Jodie, everyone else has military training. Glenn is still in B tier simply because for the average person, he could beat them in a fight. He just wouldn't stand a chance against the other fighters in this group.

Josh and Jodie only fight each other. No one won because Azalea and Selena interrupted their fight. If you look at this realistically though, I don't see this as an even match. Josh having military training doesn't really help him if he was in a fight. He's an Air Force pilot so he's very unlikely to face someone one on one. Also he would have a gun which doesn't reflect your physical abilities. Jodie is essentially the strongest man in the whole mountain village. You can't live in the mountains your whole life, with no contact to the outside world, and not develop any type of muscle. The only gun they have is a hunting rifle, so must confrontations likely are settled through physical force. That gives Jodie a lot more experience with physical combat.

Therefore, Josh would be in B tier but above Glenn. Josh in general is more physically fit than Glenn. Simply having better nutrition by being in the Air Force would give Josh more energy. Glenn having the age advantage doesn't help him since he wouldn't have the stamina from lack of nourishment. Jodie on the other hand would be in A tier. Brute strength would be enough to win against the average person which Josh basically is. If you take him being a champion wrestler seriously, I don't see how Jodie could realistically lose against someone like Josh in a purely physical fight. I can't rank him higher because even this is based purely on what I think should happen. The movie just doesn't give us enough to know for sure.

Walter won every single fight, won against professional opponents, and won against opponents despite being unarmed. Even in the beginning when he had no technique, he still won his practice match against Joey with one punch. As a professional boxer, he's nothing but physically fit. You know that his camp is going to give him nothing but the best. We see him train and even when he's not training he's working with a heavy duty Model T.

Walter is easily the best fighter of this group. A character like Walter is the reason why this project exists. He is what this project is about: finding the best fighter in the ECU in a hand to hand combat, alone, and uninterrupted. Definitely an S tier fighter as he has direct boxing training, has an age advantage, and has never gotten out of shape. The only thing I question is how realistic it is for him to not get knocked out after being punched. The movie is making it sound as if this is some bizarre ability that I simply don't know if it could even exist in real life. I would still put him ahead of Jodie because if we do believe that Walter's ability to not get knocked out is a legit thing that can happen, then Jodie's brute strength is useless. It would be an insanely entertaining match since you just know that Jodie would be fueled by his hatred for losing.

Mike has only won fights that don't fit my proper criteria. I really think he can win on his own but the movie simply doesn't depict the fights like that. Then again, these are more akin to street fights where things aren't always fair. Adrenaline might play a big role in his fight against Vince, but again Mike being able to maintain a certain level of technique is a sign of skill.

Mike. E is in A tier and I can see him winning some good fights. Despite being a crop duster pilot, Mike being in the Army does give him an advantage. He has to have a bunch of stamina and it shows with him being able to run all over Seattle and still manage to fight Vince. However, without any official solo fights, I can't give him the edge over Jodie. If Jodie being the champion wrestler is a fact, then he would have more canonical solo wins than Mike.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

To summarize for this part:

Walter is in S tier.

Jodie is in A tier.

Mike E. is in A tier but below Jodie.

Josh is in B tier.

Glenn is in B tier but below Josh.

Tagging: @karel-in-wonderland, @crash-and-cure, @lynettethemadscientist, @leighpc, @alienelvisobsession,

@seredelgi, @southcarolinawoman, @arrolyn1114, @ash-omalley, @snicks-12,

@freudianslumber, @be-my-ally, @xanatenshi @vintagepresley, @peaceloveelvis,

@tupelomiss, @peskybedtime, @squaggleson, @idk583838, @mercsandmonsters,

@smokeymountainboy and @lookingforrainbows.

[safyresky]

So we've been doing this really cool project at work that I HAVE to gush about for you all because it's really, really, really cool!

I work at a Rare Books and Special Collections library, and we have a LOT of very cool collections! One of the COOLEST ones has to be the Gothic Fantasy collection. Gothic Fantasy is, I believe, 60-80 boxes of pulp sci-fi/fantasy magazines that range from the 1920s all the way through to the 1960s/70s. Titles like Weird Tales and Amazing Sci-Fi Stories (which has changed it's title like, 20 times over the last century, I have learnt) are contained in this collection, in near full runs! We have had this collection for 50-60 years, and it is not catalogued.

(^Some of my favourite covers that I've seen so far while doing this project! I really, really, really love that string bean tin can man from Mercury lmao).

Sure, we have a finding aid for it; but given the nature of the storage (in a spare room that's not even a proper VAULT SPACE, in a set of banker's boxes), the finding aid is not the most reliable. It does the trick! but every time we have a class using the GF collection, we always end up being either A) unable to locate a few titles or, B) we find them in the wrong box.

There are, of course, many reasons for it not being catalogued yet: lack of manpower/staff, lack of space, time (hearkening back to the staff issue), and, of course, the BIG ONE: the condition of the magazines.

They're made with pulp paper, and that shit does NOT slap. It basically collapses in on itself bc of the high acid, and makes the magazines very brittle and delicate. We technicians fear having to grab titles from Gothic Fantasy because the titles LITERALLY crumble in your hands. See for yourselves:

That's just one of the boxes. They all look like that, with the edges of the magazines brittle and frayed, and, as you can see in the bottom of the box, pieces falling off and pooling underneath it all.

I don't know how long the department has been in talks about rehousing the GF Collection in a way that helps preserve it better, but in the two years and a bit that I've been there, it's been on the front burner. The conservation staff, along with our curator, worked together to get this project ready to go, after a TON of meetings and conservation reassessing each box and marking some as higher priority than others. FINALLY, for our FIRST EVER two week closure for projects like this, we were able to start rehousing GF and that's what I've been doing ALL WEEK! And it's been so fucking cool, guys.

We've been sliding most of them into magazine sleeves (approved by the con. staff) with appropriate backings. As we go along, we've numbered each box (in which we will be storing them flat, on top of one another) and given each item in the box an item number. A very simple numbering system that will make finding the specific titles SO MUCH EASIER.

There's a set outside of the box. We've been trying to order them by date (if possible lmao. we ran into an issue (pun intended) with the British editions: they don't actually have volume and issue numbers, nor do they have dates! They have copyright dates and that's what we've been going off lmao), that way when we rehouse them they're all close to if not in the same run (so the 40s together to the best of our abilities, then the 50s, and so on). We're also going title by title! We've started with Amazing Stories, as it's one of the larger ones in bad enough condition it's up there in priority, and it has taken us ALL WEEK to (nearly) finish them up!

Anyway, once we organize them we grab a group (we fit roughly 6-8 of the large, long ones in one box; 12-14 of the slightly smaller ones in one box, and nearly 30 of the tiniest ones in one box), and we find them in our spreadsheet, update info.make sure the info provided is correct, number them on the backboard, slide them into the pouch with the backboard, and then voila! Into the fancy new box they go! I don't have a decent picture of the box, but the bottom portion, one of the edges slides out which will make things SO MUCH EASIER to find. It also will keep the magazines from deteriorating even FASTER because now, when we search for an issue, we won't be touching them directly; they'll be safely enclosed, and should we need to slide them out for a class, the board will offer extra support for movement purposes :)

Look at how happy they look in their new magazine houses! 🤩🤩🤩

And there they are resting together in their new homes!!

Tomorrow we should be finishing the last boxes of Amazing Stories! The final two are these HUGE quarterly editions, were they mushed a bunch of issues together in one, and they are in VERY BAD SHAPE (see: big ass tealish greenish aquaish one in the photo above on the left). They don't fit in any of our bag sizes, so Conservation may have to make custom enclosures for them. However, the Conservator actually thought of a potential workaround that I'm gonna experiment with tomorrow to see if we can use our colibri stuff in tandem with the backings to perhaps give them a bit more support/happy homes :)

Long post is long, but this is really cool and I've been DYING to gush about it, and I know a couple of mutuals will really appreciate stuff like this!

You can follow the library on Instagram, as an aside! I don't run the insta, lmao, but the person who does is HELLA active and always sharing really cool stuff! We even have a spotlight on the Gothic Fantasy collection!

[denimbex1986]

'Made for an estimated, fairly astronomical, $180 million, the high-impact biopic has grossed almost one billion dollars globally, at least partially propelled by its unlikely provenance as one-half of the Barbenheimer theatrical dynamic duo. But now that the dust has cleared, discerning spectators are better able to detect creeping critical fallout amid all the ticker-tape praise. How much of Oppenheimer’s figures is a factual biography of legendary U.S. physicist Julius Robert Oppenheimer, and how much is sneaky, bio-hazardous radioactive waste dropped on an unsuspecting public?

Oppenheimer: From Book to Screen

To opine that Oppenheimer takes liberties with the massive (800-plus pages) 2005 Pulitzer Prize-winning American Prometheus biography by Kai Bird and Martin Sherwin is a little like saying Nolan’s dark, ponderous Batman reboots toe the same line as TV’s spoofy, goofy 1960s Batman series. To start with, Nolan’s non-fiction source is a meticulous, sometimes laborious, molecular-level chronicle of the titanic rise and fall of Oppenheimer, whose brilliant leadership of the U.S. Manhattan Project from 1943 to 1945 led to the development of the first atomic bomb—and with it, the quick, horrific end to the Allied campaign against Japan in World War II.

Nolan, however, characteristically declares war on any and all logical timelines from the opening shot. It’s a film that not only plays fast with the facts but shakes and splinters Oppenheimer’s uber-complicated life and times into thousands of jigsaw-puzzle pieces, jerking the spectator to and fro and across time and place from the 1920s to the 1950s. Postulate last year’s Oscar-winning Everything Everywhere All at Once, but set in a physics lab, not a laundromat.

If Oppenheimer was the main man who smashed and weaponized the atom, Nolan mashes Oppenheimer the movie into a galaxy of fissile bits; however kinetic, together their staying power is less than the sum of the parts. He seems to take Mark Zuckerberg’s infamous managerial mantra (Move fast and break things) literally, and like the Facebook mastermind, never stops long enough to pick up—or add up—the pieces.

Given the barrage of kaleidoscopic images, including nebulous visual fireworks, audiences haven’t time to do much figuring either. What might have been presented as a weighty, deliberate three-hour dramatization of a pivotal scientific, military, and political chapter in 20th-century history (and prelude to the U.S.-USSR Cold War arms race) instead takes flight as a slick, tricked-up, even sensationalized Hollywood biopic. It’s a perpetual motion movie machine, but one that might have been powered by magic mushrooms, not enriched uranium.

Barbenheimer

Nevertheless, Oppenheimer is a triumph of sorts, though chiefly in the areas of hype, hoopla, and amazingly lucky timing. First in the equation is the name recognition and box-office draw of Nolan, probably the most bankable director of his generation, whose hits have ranged from serious non-fiction like Dunkirk to sci-fi fantasy like Inception. Then there’s the coincidental, but heaven-sent summer 2023 theatrical run in a post-Covid world where a long-suffering public was feverishly desperate to get off the couch. Lastly was its love-at-first-sight, blind-date pairing with the Barbie blockbuster, an X-factor opening weekend alchemy that got multiplied countless times into box-office gold.

Surprisingly, the lack of a major marquee star (like Leonardo DiCaprio or even Christian Bale) in the title role didn’t abort Oppenheimer’s blast-off. To play Oppie, Nolan opted for the Irish actor Cillian Murphy. Emily Blunt plays Oppenheimer’s volatile wife Kitty, Gary Oldman stars as all-American (to a fault) President Harry Truman, and Ken Branaugh plays the pioneering Danish physicist Niels Bohr.

Skeptical critics may well question Nolan’s top-heavy U.K. roster, particularly Murphy, whose main acting modus operandi as Oppie is either a) wide-eyed focus and astonishment, or b) wide-eyed shock and regret. He’s abetted in his impersonation by Nolan’s hyperactive camera, which is nearly a constant close-up, in-your-face companion to the leads, so much so it chews up more scenery than does Robert Downey Jr. Jettisoning his Iron Man superhero armor, Downey dons a tie and goes gray to play Lewis Strauss, a petty, two-faced Wall Street political insider who is a catalyst in blowing up Oppenheimer’s postwar standing as America’s leading scientist-hero.

Fission and Frisson

While Nolan whiplashes the audience back and forth through the years, he’s loathe to label the times or places, treating them as if they were state secrets. The result is a dizzying centrifugal swirl of shots and scenes, some in color, some black-and-white, drawing on Oppenheimer’s heady college days in Europe and his first faculty job at the University of California-Berkeley and on to his date with destiny as director, founder, and philosopher-king of the WWII Los Alamos laboratory in New Mexico. Why the black-and-white? It likely has something to do with Nolan’s film noir framing of the tale, which contrasts Oppie’s bright early decades leading up to the development of the bomb with the shadowy post-war era of the McCarthyist anti-communist witch hunts.

By the late 1940s and early 1950s, much had changed in U.S. foreign and domestic politics, and many on the left were persecuted, prosecuted, or simply silenced. Oppenheimer, once the celebrated scientist and renaissance man who helped win the war (while still subject to debate, the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs dropped in August 1945 did likely save millions of lives by averting the Allied land invasion of Japan), is stripped of his cherished top-secret security clearance. For many observers and colleagues, Oppenheimer was never the same afterward. He wasn’t exactly a beaten man, but he was effectively muted, defused, and disarmed. He became head of the Institute of Advanced Study in Princeton, N.J., where he would spend the rest of his days in a near-monastic retreat.

Down in Flames

American Prometheus paints a portrait of Oppenheimer as a complicated, contradictory intellectual giant, both ambitious and genteel, shrewd and childishly reckless. Nolan, however, thinks, almost literally, in black and white. Ultimately a neo-Hollywood genre director, he’s always on the hunt for villains, and if he can’t find one or two to blame he will invent them. History reveals that Strauss indeed smuggled in loads of ammunition in the right-wing scheme to take down Oppenheimer, but it’s simplistic and plain wrong to let the other bad actors walk. Among them is the FBI’s autocratic director J. Edgar Hoover, whose G-men began illegally bugging Oppenheimer’s homes and phones in the early 1940s.

There’s also the back-stabbing, malicious physicist Edward Teller, who got cold revenge on his former Los Alamos padrone by testifying Oppie was an unstable security risk—all because he nixed Teller’s pet project to create the “super,” aka H-bomb. There’s even the feckless President Dwight Eisenhower, who did nothing to save Oppenheimer from the humiliating Atomic Energy Commission’s 1954 inquisition ordeal or its damning verdict.

However spotty with the facts, Nolan’s filmic inquiry into the shameful case of J. Robert Oppenheimer really misses the mark when it comes to Oppie’s star-crossed romance with Jean Tatlock who is played by Florence Pugh. Evidently seeing the need to add the sizzle of sex to his film equation, Nolan treats the audience to not one but three gratuitous (and weird) nude scenes.

Hit and Miss Delivery

Historical films necessarily condense, crop, and simplify, but Nolan cuts corners so many times he should be awarded the Ignoble Prize for Ignoring History. It’s not nitpicking to criticize how he turns Albert Einstein into a fatherly Yoda figure for Oppenheimer when in fact the two men weren’t particularly close even though Einstein was in residence at the prestigious New Jersey think tank during Oppenheimer’s tenure.

Their differences stemmed from Einstein’s unbending disbelief in the basic, uncanny tenets of modern quantum mechanics, e.g., that light can be both particle and wave. Nolan dreams up key scenes involving the two of them, one that expands to critical mass in Strauss’ mind as the rationale for his vendetta against Oppenheimer.

If the movie leans on a blitzkrieg of commercial formulaics to lighten up its heavy-duty subject matter, ironically its best moments are when Nolan falls back on old-school textbook filmmaking. While several of the leads fall under Nolan’s command to emote in a blustery, “Look at me, I’m Oscar-positive!” way (Blame Blunt here, with Downey Jr.), Matt Damon has the courage to act admirably at ease instead of acting out. As the brusque Army general who drafts Oppenheimer to assemble and lead the A-bomb dream team, Damon doesn’t quite nail the steely, hard-ass gravitas the role demands, but he deserves a medal for conspicuously cool reserve under fire.

Another exception to Nolan’s showy melodramatics is Oscar winner (Churchill) Gary Oldman. Never known to be camera-shy, Oldman refreshingly underplays his cameo as the folksy, small-minded President Truman, whose victorious handshake welcome to Oppenheimer slowly turns into a virtual slap in the face.

The Trinity Test Scene in Oppenheimer

Audiences may also want to see Oppenheimer for the chilling bravura sequence that culminates in the July 1945 Trinity A-bomb test in the New Mexico desert. Nolan marshals his cast, preps the sets and pyrotechnics, cues the unearthly sights and sounds, and counts down to the blinding mini-apocalypse that changed human history forever. Pondering only the science, theory, and engineering, the product of $2 billion then (around $25 billion today) yet only a few years of round-the-clock work by a team of the best and brightest young Western scientists, the entire endeavor was a magnificent, manifestly diabolical achievement. To date, in nearly 80 years since the Hiroshima and Nagasaki cataclysms, humanity and the planet have been spared the doomsday death and destruction such weapons were born and made to deliver. But for how long?'

[elusivemellifluence]

Read 2023

Like I do every year, I've made a bunch of graphs analysing my reading habits. I read 101 books/30,778 pages in 2023, much much more detail under the cut.

A bar graph of the total number of books I've read over each of the last ten years. This year it was 101, which is the lowest so far (one less than last year). It's because reading's not my only hobby anymore, I also spent a lot of time writing fanfiction (77,798 words) and studying Mandarin Chinese (I'm speaking actual sentences now 😎). Plus embroidery, but I mostly do that while listening to audiobooks so it probably doesn't make a difference.

A line graph of my total pagecounts over the last ten years. It follows a similar trajectory to the books graph. The 2023 total (30,778 pages) is very slightly higher than the 2022 total (30,760 pages).

A line graph showing my average book length over the last ten years. There's not a lot of variation: the maximum is 356 in 2015 and the minimum is 301 in 2022. This year's average was 305.

The Books

A pie chart showing that I read mostly ebooks (65) followed by audiobooks (25) and paperbacks (11). The proportions are looking a bit different this year, with significantly more audiobooks (I got a scribd subscription) and for once I didn't read a single hardback.

A pie chart showing where the books I read were sourced from. 40 were my own, 36 were borrowed from the library, 24 were from scribd and 1 was borrowed (an audiobook my sister played in the car while we were roadtripping together). I only got scribd in October so I suspect that proportion will be a lot higher next year.

A bar graph showing the length of the books I read. The biggest chunk were in the range of 300-399 pages. There's just one under 99 pages (The Fox's Tower and Other Stories by Yoon Ha Lee at 77 pages) and just one over 600 (A Day of Fallen Night by Samantha Shannon at 880 pages). The average length was 305 pages.

A pie chart showing the original language of the books I read. 96 were English, 1 was translated from Korean and 4 were translated from Chinese. I'm glad I read at least a little literature in translation, but I'd like a wider variety of source languages next year.

A bar graph showing the publication dates of my books. The vast, vast majority were from the 2020s (66), distantly followed by the 2010s (26). Then the 2000s had 5 and the 1980s, 1960s, 1930s and 1920s each had one. The oldest book I read was Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf, from 1925, and the newest was A Power Unbound by Freya Marske, published November 7 2023. Every year I see these stats and go "So much recency bias, I should fix that! Or should I? Is it snobbery to value new books less than old ones? I like diverse books and there are obviously far more of those getting published nowadays, and engaging with books as they come out is important to authors. But am I getting caught up in the capitalism machine by focusing so much on what's shiny and new?". In the end I'll probably keep reading mostly new books but maybe aim for a bit of a wider spread, and at least something from before the 20th century.

A horizontal bar graph showing how I rated the books on a scale of 1-5 stars (including half stars). My most common rating was 4 stars and the average was 3.75. The lowest rating was a single 2. I had only 9 five star reads this year, and 2 of those were rereads. That's by far the lowest number of five star books since I started keeping track, no wonder it felt like a bit of a bummer year. Hopefully in 2024 I'll find some more books that knock my socks off.

Since the number of five star books was so low, I can just list them here: A Restless Truth and A Power Unbound by Freya Marske (historical fantasy/mystery/queer romance), Warrior Girl Unearthed by Angeline Boulley (YA contemporary thriller about the repatriation of stolen indigenous artefacts), Into the Riverlands by Nghi Vo (from a series of cosy fantasy novellas about the power of stories), Burning Roses by S.L. Huang (fantasy novella about Red Riding Hood and Hou Yi the archer from Chinese mythology as middle-aged sapphics with a lot of regrets), Vagina Obscura: An Anatomical Voyage by Rachel E. Gross (nonfiction dive into the medical and cultural history surrounding the vagina, clitoris and ovaries, the title sounds like it could be some t*rf shit but it's not, there's a whole chapter about the development of vaginoplasty surgery) and He Who Drowned the World by Shelley Parker-Chan (historical fantasy about fucked up, terrible, deeply compelling queer people fighting for the throne in medieval China).

A pie chart showing the target age of my books. 75 were adult, 23 were young adult and 3 were children's books. I also read some baby/toddler books for babies/toddlers I know but didn't record them in my stats. I loved An A-Z of Australian Bush Creatures by Myke Mollard and so did my almost 3 year old cousin, the illustrations are gorgeous.

A pie chart showing that 96 of the books were new reads and 5 were rereads. Similar proportions to last year.

A pie chart showing the genres of books I read. The most common was fantasy, as usual, with 48 books. It was followed by science fiction (18), romance (17), historical fiction (15), contemporary (12), nonfiction (11), mystery (7), memoir (4), literary fiction (3), magic realism (3) and thriller (2). I usually have a couple of horror, but not this year.

This one is new this year: a pie chart showing the books' status in a series. 53 were standalones, 13 were series starters, 34 were sequels and 1 was an omnibus.

The Authors

A pie chart showing the authors' gender. 64 were by cis women, 21 by cis men, 9 by nonbinary people, 4 by trans men, 3 by trans women and 1 by an author of unknown gender. I'd like to read more trans authors next year.

A pie chart showing the authors' nationality. As per usual, the USA was the most common with 51 books (it's only barely a majority). It's followed by the UK and Ireland (19), Australia (10), China (5), Canada (4), Singapore (3), France (2) and Japan, South Korea, Pakistan, Mexico, Zimbabwe, Germany and the Dominican Republic with 1 each. Next year I'd like to read more Australian books, since I am Australian - my own country should be at least in second place.

A pie chart showing the authors' race. As usual, I was aiming to read two authors of colour for each white author. This year was the first time white authors weren't the largest single group - there were 32, and 42 Asian authors.

The Characters

A pie chart showing the protagonists' genders. There were 50 cis women, 30 cis men, 6 nonbinary people, 3 trans women and 2 trans men. It's similar proportions to the authors, and I'd also like to read more trans characters next year.

A pie chart about how many protagonists were people of colour. 59 were, 25 were not, 4 characters were impossible to meaningfully classify in these terms (a dragon, an orc, a koala and a cyborg) and 1 character's race was unclear.

A pie chart showing the protagonists' orientations. Straight characters were the most common but not the majority - there were 40 of them, and a total of 56 queer or indeterminate characters. 29 were gay/lesbian, 12 were bi/pan, 8 were unclear, 5 were ace/aro and 2 were queer/questioning. I'm always pleased when the straight characters are outnumbered.

That's all for this year ... on to 2024!

[ryanfrogz]

From time to time I like to browse the Hennepin County Library's collection of old aerial photos just to see what once was. Every time I do, I learn something new. Here's a pretty interesting image from the late 1920s, maybe '27, with some points of interest marked.

The big factory in the center of the photo is the Minneapolis Gas Light Co. The city's last gas light was switched to electric in 1924, but the gasworks provided gas for heating until the 1960s when it was demolished to make way for I-35W. An extensive cleanup of the gasworks was undertaken in the 1980s, but the contamination was so thorough that it's still being removed today. Contaminated groundwater is pumped out and processed before getting discharged into the city's sewer system for further treatment. Coal gasification is a very nasty process and living in the area would've been truly terrible. I don't even want to think about the smell.

Mark #1 is the remnants of the Northern Pacific's "A-Line" bridge. The A-line formed the southern boundary of the U of M's campus, running parallel to Arlington Ave. A good bit of the original grade is still around today, occupied by the U's bus transitway. The bridge was demolished after Bridge #9 (seen below) was built in 1924. The bit seen here was turned into a coal unloader in the 1930s.

Mentioned above, mark #2 is the Northern Pacific's Bridge #9. As the university grew, train traffic and pollution became increasingly problematic, so the line was rerouted to the north and a new bridge was built. Bridge #9 saw rail traffic up to 1981 and is now a pedestrian/bike path.

Mark #3 (in the top left) is the Milwaukee Road's former coach yard. Passenger trains would get prepared here before making the short trip north to the Milwaukee's depot downtown. This site is now home to Metro Transit's main light rail maintenance facility.

Mark #4 is the 10th Avenue Bridge, a vehicle bridge whose construction began in 1926 and what I used to date the photo. Rather confusingly, there was another 10th Avenue Bridge at the time, located a bit to the west (the new one connects to the north bank's 10th Ave, the old one connects to 10th Ave on the south bank). Not quite as trainy as the others but something fun worth pointing out.

Mark #5 was a small engine house, possibly owned by the Minnesota Transfer RR. Steam engines needed a lot of attention & maintenance, and as such small engine houses popped up all over the place. A 1912 Sanborn map shows it being used as an oil warehouse, with oil tanks occupying the former turntable pit, which would've been in the empty lot left of the number.

Mark #6 is an even smaller engine house, owned by the Minnesota Transfer RR and built in the late 1800s. It didn't last nearly as long, disappearing before a 1945 aerial. That's about all the info I have on it.

Lastly, mark #7 is the north approach to the Minneapolis Western Railway's bridge into the Mill District. MWR was formed in 1884 to provide switching services for the mills, and was acquired as a subsidiary of the Great Northern in 1890. The bridge was built shortly after this in 1891, serving as an important link between the riverside mills and the massive grain elevators of St. Anthony and GN's Union yard.

With milling on the decline and NP's bridge just to the east, this bridge was considered obsolete by WW2 and was demolished in 1952. Unlike most things in this photograph, part of the north abutment still remains, hidden beneath I-35W's river crossing. Special care was taken to not damage it during demolition & rebuilding following the 2007 collapse.

And here's another picture from a few years later. The 10th Ave bridge is complete, the A-Line bridge remnant has been converted to a coal unloader, and the Bohemian Flats are still intact.

Bohemian Flats (also called Little Bohemia) was a riverside shanty town inhabited mostly by immigrants from central Europe. Many of its residents worked at nearby breweries and Minneapolis's famous flour mills. Over time, the community was slowly demolished to make way for a municipal port, which imported things like coal and oil. Grain was also loaded into barges at the site and shipped down river. This area was also quite polluted and received an extensive cleanup. It's now home to Bohemian Flats park. Mark 5* is the oil refinery which used the former engine house. Another reason to live anywhere but this area.

[allthemusic]

Week ending: 15th January

I surprised myself by knowing not just one but both of these songs. That's still pretty uncommon, enough to warrant a mention in the intro, for sure. Though both do look like they've become standards, of a sort, so perhaps it shouldn't be too surprising that I knew them? I feel like a lot of the songs from this era were covers of standards, which does give them a sort of sticking power that I suspect a lot of modern chart hits maybe lack. Still, bodes well.

Baby Face - Little Richard (peaked at Number 2)

I know this song, though not from any particular version - rather, my memories of this is linked to a choir even that I was part of in maybe Year 7. It was mostly this choral event themed around the Titanic, and there was a local songwriter who had written a whole long choral work retelling the story of the Titanic (cheery stuff), but then in the second half of the event we just sang a bunch of old-timey songs. One of which was this, I'm pretty sure - though a much more 1920s sounding version of the song that I still remember, but not hugely fondly. In my memory, it was an old-fashioned bit of vaguely mushy cheese. Hence why I was actually kind of surprised when I saw Little Richard doing a version!

But yes, it's the same song. Turns out Baby Face is a standard dating back to 1926 (so not exactly the 1910s, which I'd kind of assumed, given that we sang it at a Titanic-themed event?). A bunch of recordings were made throughout the 1920s and 1930s, it seems to have gone quiet through the 1940s and earlier 1950s, and then this recording kickstarted what looks like a wave of slightly more R&B-styled versions, and it's been a fixture since then, with versions recorded all the way through the 1960s and 1970s and even a few from the 1980s and 1990s. Not bad for a song that I'd firmly associate with a generation a little older than my grandparents.

I have to say, it's almost sickeningly saccharine stuff. Lots of lines about how you've got the cutest little baby face and about how I'm up in heaven when I'm in your firm embrace. There's just about enough edge to Little Richard's voice that he gets away with it, but even so, he can't quite avoid sounding a bit smarmy. That said, the gusto with which he rips into the mnm-baby after the sax solo almost justifies the whole thing. I think it's the tiny little "mmm" that does it, it's almost enough to distract you from the cheese-fest that are the lyrics. Almost.

The sax solo that I mentioned is also pretty great. It sounds like whoever's playing is having a whale of a time. As is the drummer, actually, just thumping along through the whole thing, having fun with it - there's an attack and a drive to it, combined with a bit of piano, that creates this wonderfully full, thick background to the whole song. I think rock and roll is pretty good at that, at just blasting you with a block of thumpy, continuous sound - which is probably what you needed, on 1950s radios and gramophones and TV speakers, come to think of it.

To Know Him Is to Love Him - The Teddy Bears (2)

Another song I know, though this time I just know it as a song, not because I've sung it. Which is a shame, because I think I'd have enjoyed singing this a lot more than I enjoyed Baby Face. It's a stately, melancholy sort of torch song, played in 12/8 time, which gives the whole thing this lilting, elegant feel that's very appealing.

It was by the Teddy Bears, a vocal group best known for originating this song, and also for being including as a vocalist one Phil Spector, a man I we'll be hearing quite a bit more from. He's the songwriter here, and the song was apparently inspired by the inscription on his father's gravestone, of all things, which said that "To Know Him Was to Love Him". Phil apparently saw romantic potential in this, and made it into an honestly kind of beautiful song about being in love with somebody: To know, know, know him / Is to love, love, love him / Just to see him smile / Makes my life worthwhile / To know, know, know him / Is to love, love, love him / And I do, oooh, I do.

I really love the simplicity of all that, the feeling that it's almost impossible not to love this mysterious person, and that even just seeing him smile has this sort of transformative effect on the singer. And kudos to the singer, Carol Connors, because you can 100% hear the affection and love in that and I do lyric, which almost certainly is meant to mimic wedding vows a bit. It's a warmth and a fondness that carries through into the initially promising lines about how I'd be good to him, and about how everyone says there'll come a day / When I'll walk alongside of him. In this initial part of the song, everything seems to be coming up roses, and this is the part of the song that I think I knew before listening.

And then the second half of the song comes and just blows me away. Because at some point, without ever feeling jarring, the song turns on a dime, with this huge soaring note from Carol as she asks why can't he see me? / How blind can he be? / Some day he will see / That he was meant for me. Which immediately changes the tenor of the song. Suddenly, there's something a bit pitiful about how Carol's hanging on for a single smile, desperately trying to reassure herself that everyone can see them together, that someday he's got to notice her. There's so much yearning and longing in it, and setting it off, just these absolutely beautiful harmonies from the two male members of the band. I don't have quite enough music theory to explain why the particular chord progression chosen work so well for me, but they're absolutely gorgeous throughout the second half, soft and understated but still somehow stirring. I like it a lot.

Somehow, this feels like a recording that could have been made (and been a hit) in the 1960s. Or maybe I'm just projecting onto it, given that Phil Spector, 1960s pop auteur extraordinaire, had a hand in it. But I also do think there's something almost a bit Mamas and Papas about the mixed vocal group, especially in the middle bit, once the song turns all angsty. I don't know. Either way, it's a forward-facing sound.

Both of these songs were great, and both have rightly been recorded many, many times. Still, of the two of them, one sounds considerably more forward-facing, and it's not the one that originated in 1926. It's also cool to see Phil Spector actually singing - I didn't realise he made his start in a band. It kind of makes sense that he would, he's just a lot better known as a producer. Which is fair enough, because despite this record's success, the Teddy Bears didn't have many other hits, and disbanded later in 1959, leaving Phil free to apprentice to the legendary Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller in New York - which is where he really hits his stride. So yeah, watch this space, I guess?

Favourite song of the bunch: To Know Him Is to Love Him

[buzzdixonwriter]

Riders Of Death Valley (1941 serial)

Caveat:  For wholly irrational / nostalgic reasons, I love this serial so while I will try to analyze its strengths and weaknesses fairly, don’t expect me to be objective.

Riders Of Death Valley is one of the first serials I remember seeing -- indeed, one of the first things I ever saw on television.  I know my parents purchased our first TV set no later than October 4, 1957 because I remember watching news about Sputnik on it.  We lived in Rocky Mount, NC at the time and I watched afternoon cartoons and cowboy shows on Channel 5 out of Raleigh (the afternoon kid show host called himself Captain Five and used a submarine backdrop for his set).  We moved to Barnardsville, NC (near Asheville) prior to my going to first grade in 1960, so my exposure to Riders Of Death Valley occurred sometime in that three year period.

It made quite an impression on young little Buzzy boy.  Decades later I found myself surprised at how many scenes and set pieces I remembered accurately (not to mention my first exposure to Felix Mendelssohn's “Fingal’s Cave” movement from The Hebrides, which helped cement my lifelong love of classical music).

Called “the million dollar serial” at the time of its release (it wasn’t; the final budget was $460,000 which represented a hefty chunk o’change back in the day), Riders arguably has the most stellar -- and expensive --- cast of any serial if we go by B-movie standards.*

I’ll go on about the ecology of B-movies in a bit, but right now let’s just focus on Riders’ cast.  These were major names in the B-Western genre and the B-Western genre is nothing to sneeze at; several times stars like Gene Autry and Roy Rogers made the top box office draw list even though appearing only in B-Westerns.

And man, if you’re familiar with the world of B-Westerns, you’ll recognize what a stellar cast this was for the day:

Dick Foran (Jim Benton) appeared in 163 movies and TV episodes, often as a supporting character in A-films but better known as a hero of B-movies including horror flicks and Abbott & Costello movies but most famously as one of several singing cowboys in the wake of Gene Autry and Roy Rogers. 

Leo Carrillo (Pancho Lopez) is best known today for his role as Pancho on The Cisco Kid TV series but appeared in literally hundreds of films and TV episodes.

Buck Jones (Tombstone) found stardom in the silent era, being one of the most popular cowboy stars in the 1920s.  When he balked at becoming a singing cowboy, his career stalled out in the early 1930s though he soon made a comeback with a series of successful B-Westerns.  After completing Riders he went on to make nine (!) B-Westerns in the next twelve months, dying tragically in the infamous Coconut Grove fire while reportedly saving the lives of others.

Charles Bickford (Wolf Reade) played small parts in big pictures and big parts in small pictures, and was nominated three times for a best supporting actor Oscar.

Guinn "Big Boy" Williams (Borax Bill) appeared in over 220 movies and TV episodes in a career dating back to the silent era, starring in Westerns in the 1920s and early 30s but moving into amicable sidekick roles by the 1940s.

Lon Chaney, Jr. (Butch) is most famous for his roles in The Wolfman and other horror films, but he made Riders just two years after being nominated for a supporting Oscar in Of Mice And Men as well as appearing in numerous Westerns of the era.

Noah Beery, Jr. (Smokey) is best known today as TV’s Rockford Files dad, but he appeared in hundreds of films and TV episodes as well as starring in a few B-Westerns as an unconventional low key cowpoke.  (By astonishing coincidence, he was recently married to Buck Jones’ daughter at the time of Riders filming.)

The rest of the cast includes such recognizable names as Glenn Strange (Frankenstein’s monster and Matt Dillion’s bartender), Roy Barcroft (Republic studio’s go-to guy for screen villainy, freelancing for Universal this time), Monte Blue (silent matinee idol now playing supporting roles), and in an early role, Rod Cameron (who in addition to playing an unnamed bad guy also doubled for Buck Jones…but more on that below).

Lest one think the testosterone levels are off the scale, there are two females in the serial:  Jean Brooks played Mary Morgan, heir to a lost gold mine, and Ruth Rickaby as Kate, wife of one of the outlaws.

Of Rickaby, there is no biographical information; she made 21 movies between 1939 and 1961 but nothing else is known about her.   

Of Brooks, a sad tale to tell.  Though she made 41 films and serials, she’s best known as the suicidal devil worshipper in Val Lewton’s The Seventh Victim.  Her early film career saw her using the names Jeanne Kelly (as in Riders) and Robina Duarte in Spanish language films (she was bilingual).  Changing her name after marrying screenwriter Richard Brooks, she continued working until 1948 when alcoholism rendered her unemployable.  She and Brooks divorced, she married twice after that (and apparently was married before Brooks but no information on that can be found), and eventually died of cirrhosis at age 47.

There’s a point to be gleaned in all that, but I’ll leave it to others to do so.

Riders Of Death Valley was directed by Ford Beebe and Ray Taylor, two old hands at this sort of thing.  Screenplay is by Basil Dickey, Sherman L. Lowe, Jack O'Donnell (as Jack Connell), and George H. Plympton off an original story by Oliver Drake.  Of O’Donnell little can be gleaned; he apparently enjoyed a career in the 1920s as a successful playwright, did a few stories and screenplays for Hollywood, then ended his professional writing career with Riders, dying in 1965 at age 75.

The other four have screenplay and story credits in B-movies and serials -- particularly Westerns -- stretching into the hundreds.  Dickey even wrote the great-grandma of them all, The Perils Of Pauline in 1914!

That being said -- and loving this serial as much as I do -- I gotta say, “It took five of you to come up with this?”

Because to be frightfully honest, this is a paper thin story, on par with comic book writing of the era.  Everybody tends to speak in declarative sentences, the writing and characterization is too on the nose.

And ya know what?  Who gives a rat’s patoot?  The onscreen chemistry of Foran / Jones / Carillo / Williams is what makes this a delight.  It’s not a Western, it’s four grown men playing cowboys & outlaws and they know they’re playing cowboys & outlaws and they know the kids in the audience know they know they’re just playing cowboys & outlaws but they’re telling the kids, “We want you to play along, too!”

Now do you understand why I love this serial?

I gotta say, for the most purportedly expensive serial Universal ever made, they sure spent their money in the right place with their casting.  Yeah, you can pick this story to shreds easily, but why would you want to do that?  It’s four guys and their friends having a good time playing cowboys & outlaws and they want you to have a good time watching them.

The serial was shot in Death Valley and the Alabama Hills in California, familiar territory to B-Western and B-sci-fi fans.

  © Buzz Dixon

  *  There are actors who became famous and successful after making serials (John Wayne, Boris Karloff, and Lloyd Bridges to name three), there were actors who once topped box office popularity polls who sank to serial hack work (alas, poor Bela, we hardly knew ye), there were several regularly working character actors who appeared in everything from bit parts in A-pictures to staring rolls in serials (Lionel Atwill falls in this category), but the bulk of serial performers never rose higher than small parts in B-movies.  They can’t all be winners, folks…

[haveyoureadthisfantasybook]

fourth round of stats

based on the first 612 polls. as with the previous round, any time I give two percentages with a slash between them (e.g., “18.5% / 11.3%”), the first percentage is the mean and the second is the median.

general observations

we’ve had 42 majority-yes results so far (6.9% of the total). 28 of these have been children’s books, vs. only 4 majority-yes teen/YA books and 10 majority-yes adult books. the rate of yes results is going down with time, which makes sense, although I think there are some untapped possibilities to come.

the highest individual yes result on either this or the sci-fi blog is still C.S. Lewis’s The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe at 85.3% yes.

the fundamental truth that everyone thinks their taste is universal and everyone is wrong remains.

few overall changes at this point; most averages are going down slightly (see the fewer majority-yes results)

the mean yes result for all books is 15.9%, and the median yes result is 8.3%.

publisher

the gap between big 5 imprints and other publishers has slightly narrowed again: big 5 imprints are now at 19.8% / 12.5% yes and other publishers at 7.1% / 2.9% yes.

age demographic

children’s books continue to be much more likely to get a yes result; the averages across all categories have fallen slightly (or more than slightly — a 2-point drop for the teen mean), except for the children’s median, which is slightly up (we’ve had a bunch of results that are just under the mean).

adult

there have been 327 adult books, of which 10 have gotten majority-yes results (3.1%). the average is 11.4% / 5.3% yes — note the very low median. an adult book that gets a more than 5.3% yes result is in the top 50% of most-read books in these polls!

teen/YA

there have been 110 teen/YA books, of which 4 have gotten majority-yes results (3.6%). the average is 15.0% / 10.3% yes.

children’s

there have been 173 children’s books, of which 28 have gotten majority-yes results (16.2%). the average is 24.9% / 20.7% yes.

publication date

the decades that have enough books to provide (somewhat) meaningful data are still in a pretty clear bell curve peaking in the 1990s and 2000s:

1830s: 1 book

1880s: 1 book

1890s: 2 books

1900s: 2 books

1910s: 3 books

1920s: 2 books

1930s: 4 books

1940s: 4 books

1950s: 9 books (once there are enough of these to hit an average they’ll be heavily skewed by Tolkien and Lewis)

1960s: 8 books

1970s: 30 books (average 13.3% / 6.5%)

1980s: 58 books (average 16.3% / 6.2%)

1990s: 68 books (average 21.3% / 15.3%)

2000s: 145 books (average 19.2% / 11.8%)

2010s: 193 books (average 11.9% / 6.0%)

2020s: 82 books (average 10.9% / 6.6%)

race

the gap between white authors and authors of color has broadened slightly, despite both averages falling: books by white authors average 17.5% / 10.3% yes, and books by authors of color average 7.0% / 3.4% yes.

gender

books by women now have a lower mean yes rate than books by men but a higher median yes rate. also, we’ve now had enough books by nonbinary authors (and authors who are otherwise neither men nor women) to get an average.

women: 14.9% / 9.4%

men: 18.6% / 8.0%

nonbinary/other/none: 8.2% / 6.7%

geography

a little bit of shuffling here:

North America: 15.2% / 8.8%

Europe: 19.3% / 8.8% (note the drop below North America)

every other continent composite: 10.3% / 3.6%

Asia: 4.3% / 2.8%

Oceania: 17.8% / 11.4%

language

the average for books originally published in English remains markedly higher (16.4% / 8.8% yes) than the average for books not originally published in English (10.2% / 2.9% yes). we’ve had no new French or Japanese books since last time, but for good measure here are their (unchanged) averages:

French: 8.3% / 3.0%

Japanese: 3.0% / 2.9%

we’ve had 8 results each for Swedish and 7 for German, and I expect those will be the next two that break my arbitrary 10-result threshold for a somewhat-meaningful average. after that it’s Chinese at 4 and Danish and Spanish at 3 each.

some preliminary statistics

(based on the first 102 polls)

general

we’ve had 10 majority-YES results so far

the highest result by far is J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit (76.5% YES), followed by Maggie Stiefvater’s The Raven Boys (60.4% YES) and Terry Pratchett’s Going Postal (59.5% YES). this mirrors the pattern of overall results by age demographic.

publisher

there is a clear and dramatic divide between books published in English by Big 5 imprints, which have an average YES rate of 21.3%, and books published by independent publishers, academic publishers, self-published books, or books not published in English (average YES rate 3.1%). this is unsurprising, considering the market dominance of Big 5 publishers, especially in fantasy and science fiction.

age demographic

adult books

there have been 70 adult book polls so far, of which 4 have had YES results (5.7%). the average YES rate for adult books is 13.6%, the lowest for any age demographic — unsurprising, I think, for a number of reasons.

teen/YA

there have been 14 teen/YA book polls so far, of which 2 have had YES results (14.3%). the average YES rate for teen/YA books is 20.4%, ahead of adult and behind children’s. this makes sense to me, since tumblr users mainly came of age during the YA boom of the 2010s.

children’s

there have been 17 children’s book polls so far, of which 4 have had YES results (23.5%). the average YES rate for children’s books is 24.5%, and it’s being dragged down by a) Frances Hardinge’s books, which were mostly published a little late for the tumblr userbase, and b) a bunch of non-anglophone children’s books that either haven’t been published in English or were published in English a little late for the tumblr userbase. if we exclude non-anglophone children’s books the average jumps up to 31.4% (even with the loss of Tintenherz / Inkheart), and if we exclude Hardinge it jumps to 41%. I expect this trend will continue at least for anglophone children’s books published before ~2010.

publication date

average YES percentages are on something of a bell curve centered on the 2000s (’m excluding everything before the ’70s because there’s only 1 book for each of the earlier decades):

1970s: 8.5%

1980s: 12.2%

1990s: 18.5%

2000s: 21.2%

2010s: 15.4%

2020s: 10.7%

this also makes conceptual sense to me but I can’t explain why.

race

sadly but unsurprisingly, books by white authors have an average YES rate of 19.7%, versus 4.8% for non-white authors. I expect this trend will continue — if N.K. Jemisin’s The Fifth Season, one of the most highly acclaimed books of the last decade, can’t get a majority YES result (which it’s currently not on track to), I doubt anything else will be able to. the one other thing that seems possible to me might be Mo Xiang Tong Xiu’s webnovels, which have been submitted but aren’t yet queued. we’ll find out eventually!

gender

books by men (17.9% YES average) are slightly more likely to have been read than books by women (15.9% YES average). there are two few data points for nonbinary writers for that average to be meaningful as yet.

geography

books from the Europe (read: almost exclusively the UK) are slightly more likely to be read than books from North America (read: almost exclusively the US) — average YES percentage 20.5% for Europe vs. 16.1% for North America. the average for the rest of the world is 5.6% — no other single continent has enough data yet to really be meaningful.

this attests perhaps to the relative prestige of British fantasy — the percentages are being skewed upwards by Terry Pratchett, Neil Gaiman, J.R.R. Tolkien, and Diana Wynne Jones.

language

books originally published in English have an average YES percentage of 17.9%; books originally published in other languages average 6.5% (2.2% excluding Tintenherz / Inkheart)

[black-paraphernalia]

I am posting this next bit of information under Little Known Black History Fact because the WS in American are very good in  whitewashing the real truth of  history that really happen when it involves blacks in this country; which is always the case. They lie and deny that is what they do they do not want to admit Black History is American History, for this will put the spot light on the evilness of WS in America and how everyone from the White house to the Out  house is complicit. 

On the cusp of the 100th year anniversary or the Black Wall Street Massacre as horrible and sad it was the little know fact is this was not the first nor will it be the last. 

This history of Jim Crow enforced by the Klan provides context for a hard truth: In America, race riots are used to settle social discontent. The origin of race rioting begins with southern whites, resenting black advancement, attacked them to disenfranchise them of both the vote and economic prosperity.

Race riots were not born in the 1960s; they were born in the 1870s. The Meridian, Mississippi race riot of 1871, the Colfax Massacre in Louisiana in April 1873, the New Orleans riot of July 1866, the Memphis, Tennessee riot of May 1866, the Charleston, South Carolina riot of September 1876 and the Wilmington, South Carolina race riot of 1898, to name a few, occurred under the passive and sometimes direct hand of the local police.

The result: The ability of the former slaves to create intergenerational wealth — the key to all success in a capitalist nation — was systematically destroyed for generations.

From the late 1890s through the 1920s, white race riots continued. In the 1921 Greenwood Riot, the entire black neighborhood of Greenwood in Tulsa, Oklahoma, which was known as the black Wall Street, was burned to the ground. And in the Rosewood massacre of 1923, the entire neighborhood of Rosewood, Levy County, Florida was similarly destroyed.

These and other white race riots (Red Summer of 1919) not only took black lives and wiped whole black neighborhoods off the face of the earth, they ended black economic wealth that could be passed to subsequent generations. It also caused displacement of black expertise and talent, thwarting its concentration and increase.

This economic decimation of black wealth and social stability was made worse by the Great Depression and blacks being denied full access to the various New Deal programs of the 1930s and the benefits of the GI Bill in the 1940s. Thus, during the first four decades of the American Century, blacks were subjected to white race riots and social policies that destroyed their wealth.

The point is that while whites were allowed to create intergenerational wealth and form wealthy communities both before and after the world wars, blacks were, as a matter of policy, prevented from doing the same. The policy outcome of a century of Jim Crow is systemic racism. 

Source: Morningcall.com  Your View: A history of white race riots in America By ARTHUR H. GARRISONTHE MORNING CALL-JUN 12, 2020

Here is a list of some of the countless massacres in the history of the United States. Look at the dates it was not something that happen way back the,. It happen in the past and the present and if we do not do anything to change it it will happen now and the future. STOP THE MADNESS!!!

Click on the below link for a extensive collection of information about each massacre

Zinn Education Project what you will not learn in the texts books

Most of these massacres were designed to suppress voting rights, land ownership, economic advancement, education, freedom of the press, religion, LGBTQ rights, and/or labor rights of African Americans, Latinos, Native Americans, Asians, and immigrants. While often referred to as “race riots,” they were massacres to maintain white supremacy.

One of the best explanations about why it is important for students to learn this history is included in the article (and related lesson) by Linda Christensen, Burning Tulsa: The Legacy of Black Dispossession.

A tweet thread by historian Stephen West shows how politicians fueled hate crimes during the Reconstruction era, with parallels today. Ursula Wolfe-Rocca writes about Red Summer of 1919, Remembering Red Summer — Which Textbooks Seem Eager to Forget

This list is not complete and definitive.

Black Paraphernalia Disclaimer- images from Google images

[haveyoureadthisscifibook]

fourth round of stats

as usual, any time I give two percentages with a slash between them (e.g., “18.5% / 11.3%”), the first percentage is the mean and the second is the median. these are based on the first 706 polls — it’s been almost 400 polls since I last did stats for the sci-fi polls, oops.

general observations

we’ve had 22 majority-yes results so far (3.1% of the total)), meaning only 6 new majority-yes books out of the last 396 polls. ouch.

Suzanne Collins’s The Hunger Games, at 84.7% yes, is still the highest yes rate on this blog.

the mean yes result for all books is 10.2% (down from 14.1%), and the median yes result is only 4.8% (down from 7.8%).

publisher

everything has dropped dramatically: big 5 imprints are at 11.9% / 6.5% (down from 16.5% / 10.0%) and other publishers are at 5.1% / 2.1% (down from 9.2% / 3.1%).

age demographic

we’ve still had basically no children’s books. the yes rates by age are in a similar distribution to the fantasy blog, but lower:

adult books: 9.6% / 4.4% (based on 594 polls)

children’s books: 16.0% / 8.8% (based on 82 polls)

teen/YA books: 12.5% / 7.6% (based on only 30 polls)

publication date

these are still a bit randomly distributed, but all have dropped (the medians rather precipitously). the ’70s are still weirdly low for some reason.

1810s: 1 book

1860s: 3 books

1880s: 2 books

1890s: 3 books

1900s: 2 books

1910s: 1 book

1920s: 2 books

1930s: 7 books

1940s: 7 books

1950s: 23 books (average 11.7% / 5.1%)

1960s: 38 books (average 14.3% / 8.3%)

1970s: 59 books (average 7.2% / 2.4%)

1980s: 68 books (average 12.4% / 8.2%)

1990s: 101 books (average 8.5% / 4.7%)

2000s: 83 books (average 9.6% / 4.1%)

2010s: 197 books (average 9.9% / 4.9%)

2020s: 109 books (average 8.6% / 3.8%)

for reference, the average publication date for submissions to this blog is between 1997 and 1998.

race

white authors still have a higher average yes than authors of color, but the gap between means has narrowed slightly (due to the average for white authors dropping faster than the average for authors of color; both averages have fallen); the gap between medians has widened slightly. books by white authors average 10.7% / 4.8% yes, and books by authors of color average 7.6% / 4.4% yes.

gender

books by women have slightly higher average yes rates than books by men. books by nonbinary authors (and authors who are otherwise neither men nor women) have a lower mean but actually a markedly higher median.

women: 11.4% / 4.8%

men: 9.6% / 4.7%

nonbinary/other/none: 8.0% / 6.9%

geography

The Locked Tomb is still skewing the composite for “every continent other than North America and Europe”, but as I expected it’s still dropped below North America and Europe. also, there are now enough books from Oceania and Asia to have their own averages.

North America: 10.5% / 5.3%

Europe: 9.6% (actually 9.62%) / 3.7%

every other continent: 9.6% (actually 9.57%) / 2.1% (note that the median has dropped slightly from the previous round)

Oceania: 18.6% / 2.1% (the mean is obviously skewed by The Locked Tomb)

Asia: 4.8% / 2.6%

language

the average for books originally published in English remains higher (11.0% / 5.6% yes) than the average for books not originally published in English (4.1% / 1.5% yes). also, we’ve had enough French and (just) Spanish books for averages:

French: 7.3% / 1.5%

Spanish: 1.2% / 0.8%

RIP Spanish. next closest to averages are German at 7, Japanese and Swedish at 6 each, and Chinese and Polish at 5 each. there are only a few more non-English books waiting, so please do submit more!

[ryebecca]

Hello, and welcome! 

Here you’ll find all of my moodboards (ones with an asterisk have a fic attached!) broken down by series/character. 

As of now, I’m really just working with Top Gun: Maverick characters or Rhett Abbott because, let’s be real, that man has a chokehold on me at the moment. Have a request? Drop into my asks and let me know!

Banners by the one, the only, @writercole​.

Dagger Decades - coming soon!

Bradley ‘Rooster’ Bradshaw 1920s: the cooling twilight (speakeasy AU) 1940s: true to me (WWII AU) 1980s: i want to know what love is (POV: it’s 1986 and, like, you’re feeling totally rad and in love with your husband, Lt. Bradley Bradshaw.)

Robert ‘Bob’ Floyd 1890s: there is a flower within my heart (Gilded Age AU) 1940s: there’s just one place for me, near you (POV: It’s 1943 and you’re sending your boyfriend, Bobby, off to fight in the war.) 1960s: god only knows what i’d be without you (POV: it’s 1966 and you’re feeling groovy and totally in love with your husband, Bobby Floyd.)

Mickey ‘Fanboy’ Garcia 1540s: that which we call a rose (Tudor dynasty AU) 1950s: i only have eyes for you (POV: sock hops, diner milkshakes, and kisses with your boyfriend, Mickey.)

Jake ‘Hangman’ Seresin 1770s: we hold these truths (revolutionary war-era AU) 1920s: smoke and mirrors (speakeasy AU) 1940s: life ain’t always beautiful (noir AU) 1970s: you sexy thing (POV: You’re wearing your bell-bottoms and your best huckapoo shirt as you disco dance the night away with your boyfriend, Jake.)

Daggers @ Disney

Bradley ‘Rooster’ Bradshaw when you wish upon a star (POV: you’re spending the day at the Happiest Place on Earth with your boyfriend, Bradley.)

Robert ‘Bob’ Floyd once upon a dream (POV: Disney, Dumbo, and Dole whips with your boyfriend, Bob Floyd.)

Mickey ‘Fanboy’ Garcia you’ll be in my heart (POV: you’re on your annual Disney vacation with your husband, Mickey - the biggest fanboy there is! And if you spend more time in Galaxy’s Edge than anywhere else, well, you’re not in the least bit surprised.)

Jake ‘Hangman’ Seresin a dream is a wish your heart makes (POV: You’re on a Disneyland date with your boyfriend, Jake Seresin - a not-so-secret Disney adult.)

Dagger Weddings

Bradley ‘Rooster’ Bradshaw the best thing that you’ll ever have (POV: embracing all the beachy vibes on your wedding day to Bradley Bradshaw.)

Robert ‘Bob’ Floyd i’ve always been yours (POV: you’re getting married to your childhood sweetheart, Bob Floyd.)

Jake ‘Hangman’ Seresin my everything and beyond (POV: You’re getting married to the love of your life, Lt. Jake Seresin.)

Dagger Honeymoons

Jake ‘Hangman’ Seresin life is a road (POV: you’re on a whirlwind European honeymoon with your new husband, Jake Seresin.)

Lady Maverick’s Society Papers

His Grace, Jacob Seresin, Duke of Hereford

Etc etc etc (for all the misc. boards!)

Rhett Abbott (Outer Range) wild for you (POV: you, Rhett, and fields of wildflowers. Does he propose in one of those fields once he sees how much joy they bring you? Yes. Yes, he does.) the wedding date (POV: you need a plus one for a wedding, but your friend cancels on you and you’re having trouble finding a date. Rhett offers to go with you - just as a friend helping out a friend…right?)

Bradley ‘Rooster’ Bradshaw baby of mine (POV: you’re married to Bradley Bradshaw, but now he’s leveled up to the one, the only, #dad!brad.) thankful for you (POV: you’re celebrating Thanksgiving with your husband, Bradley.) still falling for you (POV: you’re embracing all of the autumn vibes with your husband, Bradley.)

Robert ‘Bob’ Floyd fall into me (Leaf peeping, apple cider donuts, and walking hand in hand with Bob.) i pick you (POV: You’re feeling all of the autumn feels picking pumpkins with your boyfriend, Bob!) the story of us (POV: You’re on a cozy bookstore date with your boyfriend, Bob Floyd.)

Mickey ‘Fanboy’ Garcia melting for you (POV: you’re spending the day snowboarding with your boyfriend, Mickey.)

Harrison Knott (Press Play) take along my love with you (POV: It’s a beautiful day at the beach with your boyfriend, Harrison.)

Jake ‘Hangman’ Seresin cabin fever* (Cozy cabin time with Jake.) falling in love (POV: Soaking up all the Fall feels with your boyfriend, Jake.) into the great wide open (POV: a camping trip with the one, the only, Jake Seresin.) rebel, rebel* (TGM x Star Wars) plus one (POV: you’re a bridesmaid at your best friend’s wedding and you need to bring a date. You ask your friend, Jake, to tag along…who may or may not be feeling like more than just a friend these days. But does he feel the same way?) love her like i do* (Summary: You overhear Jake talking to your newborn daughter. Fluff ensues.)

Beau ‘Cyclone’ Simpson you send me (POV: You’re spending a cozy day at home with your husband, Beau.) take me out (POV: Your husband, Beau Simpson, is a pitcher in the MLB. His fast ball was was so notorious in college that his team nicknamed him “Cyclone” - and the name just stuck.)

Ryan (Yellowstone) when you give a cowboy a kiss (POV: life on the ranch with your husband, Ryan.)

[elysian-drops]

Sorry to ask, but this has been bugging me. In Chapter 46, Tom mentions Dorea went to Hogwarts with him, but she was a 7th year when he entered. My question is how could this be? Assuming that Dorea would have been born in 1920, the earliest she could have had a kid (Henry) was 1937. Since James Potter was born in 1960, that makes the existence of Fleamont Potter impossible since the earliest he could have been born was 1954. So shouldn't it have been Henry who Tom went to Hogwarts with?

Hi there!

No worries, I can understand the confusion if you’re looking at the canon timeline! However, Appetence operates under a slightly different one than the canon does since it’s an AU. I’ve intentionally never assigned concrete dates to anyone’s birth-year (apart from Tom’s but that was to keep the World Wars/Depression intact); not even Harri’s birth-year is explicitly stated nor do any of the newspaper articles indicate the current date. This was mostly done because the canon has some conflicting events in its timeline that would have been a headache to iron out.

As for who went to school with whom in the Appetence universe, Tom would have gone to school with Dorea for a short amount of time! She was in her last year when he entered into his first (so about a 6 year age gap between them) which means he would have graduated long before Henry turned 11 (though, in my headcanon, Henry was home-schooled in an attempt to keep his existence further hidden). From this, we can roughly approximate when characters who were Tom's peers were born but anything after that generation has no assigned birthdate.

In terms of Fleamont, again there’s no mention of a specific birth-year in Appetence but I like to imagine Henry married young.

Hopefully, that helps a bit! The bottom line is that there are no firm “this is the year when so and so was born” in the Appetence universe to keep the timeline from becoming too murky or from bogging down the story.

Thanks for the ask! 💕