#Best Pub

[foodnbeverage]

If you are looking for some happening places for a New Year party in Bangalore- Big Pitcher is just for you. Big Pitcher is one of the best pubs in Bangalore for party, grub and brew. 

[ingravinoveritas]

David and Michael at Pub in the Park in Chiswick today!

[midnitecafe]

her friends

[tangledbea]

Okay, off the top of my head, here are the instances of a song being in the background of a scene in the movie:

When Will My Life Begin during the Kingdom Dance when Rapunzel looks at the Lost Princess mural-

A really slow/somber I See the Light when Eugene "betrays" Raps-

I See the Light twice during the climax, once when Eugene dies (I swear I can hear the "now that I see you" notes right before Rapunzel sings the incantation 😭) and the other when he's revived-

When Will My Life Begin while Rapunzel reunites with her parents-

And I've Got A Dream in the epilogue when the thugs achieve their dreams-

Are there any I'm missing? I feel like Mother Knows Best is somewhere in there but I haven't found it. Thanks so much! 😊

Okay, friend, this took me a few days to get around to answering because I needed to sit and listen to the full score (which I have) without distractions (not an easy feat for me).

"When Will My Life Begin" and "I See the Light" are the primary song callback themes (with "When Will My Life Begin" being the absolute most prevalent), and if you know what to listen for, you can hear them everywhere. The thing with these themes is that they aren't always an identical tune. There maybe be cadence differences or key shifts, or any number of little alterations that makes it not identical to the song music, but similar enough that you can hear it there. I hesitate to call them leitmotifs, because I don't know enough about music to be sure I'm being 100% accurate in calling them that, because the musical themes aren't always associated with a specific character/situation, but often are. (For example "When Will My Life Begin" is clearly Rapunzel's theme, and the use of it in score is often when she's talking about the lanterns or her dreams or being free. In that respect, I would mostly confidently call it a leitmotif for her, and in listening carefully to the full score, I've found a few more that are not associate with the songs, so thank you for that!)

So here's what I've clocked (I'm using the official track titles, I hope they're self-explanatory):

Prologue: "When Will My Life Begin" (more than once), "Healing Incantation" (not just when it's being sung, it's used as segue music, as well)

Let Down Your Hair: "When Will My Life Begin" (right as Gothel is reaching the top of the tower and stepping inside)

Mother's Back: "Mother Knows Best" (used multiple times in a major key)

Gothel Leaves Again: "I See the Light" (you get a hint of the phrase "now that I see you" just as Gothel is leaving)

The Lantern Thing: "When Will My Life Begin" (when Rapunzel is describing the lights to Eugene) (Special note "The Smolder" is in this track XD)

A New Life: "When Will My Life Begin" (This is the whole scene with Rapunzel swinging wildly between joy and depression/fear. It's very obvious in this track.)

Break Her Heart: "When Will My Life Begin"

Scary Bunny: "Mother Knows Best" ("We'd best stay clear of ruffians and thugs then, huh?")

Water Rising: "I See the Light" ("My real name is Eugene Fitzherbert...") "Healing Incantation" (obvious when, but again, I'm talking about the score, not when she's actively singing it, and it's one of those cases of it having the proper cadence of the song without sounding exactly like the tune)

Campfire: "When Will My Life Begin" (when she's talking about never leaving the tower)

Kingdom Dance: "When Will My Life Begin"

Kiss Interrupted: "I See the Light" (throughout the whole track)

Realization and Escape: "When Will My Life Begin" (when Rapunzel is realizing that she's the Lost Princess), "I See the Light" ("Where will you go? He won't be there for you!")

Let Me Save Him (Note: On the commercial soundtrack, this track is combined with "The Tear Heals"): "When Will My Life Begin (when Eugene is climbing the tower), "Healing Incantation" (when Rapunzel is pleading with Gothel to let her heal Eugene), "I See the Light" ("I can't let you do this." "And I can't let you die."), "Healing Incantation" (as Gothel de-ages and plummets to her death)

The Tear Heals: "I See the Light" (right as he dies and right before she sings), "Healing Incantation" (right after she sings), "I See the Light" (as he's healed, and right after), "When Will My Life Begin" and "Healing Incantation" (at the hug/"Did I ever tell you I have a thing for brunettes?"/kiss), "Healing Incantation" and "When Will My Life Begin" when she meets her parents.

Kingdom Celebration: "When Will My Life Begin" (at the very beginning of the epilogue) "I've Got a Dream" (for about half of it).

I probably missed some, as I said, I'm not trained in the field of music, I just have an ear for it. But thank you for this ask! Listening to the full score is like watching the movie without dialogue! This was a fun project, and it was a good way to spend a hour and a half.

[cattons]

jacob catching strays for being bafta nominated for his performance in saltburn .. people who have never suffered the misfortune of 15 minutes with a posh boy could never understand the intricacies and layers and with what accuracy he portrays them

[sarah-sandwich-writes]

Finally sent out my autumn newsletter and if you think December is not autumn you're wrong and I'm right

[lilybarthes]

*

[not-poignant]

Hi Pia

Feel free to ignore if this is unwelcome, but have you ever thought about publishing traditionally to sublimate your income and draw in new readers? I know you've self published two books already and that you didn't feel like they did very well, but maybe the experience would be different if someone else was in charge of marketing and all the other business stuff?

Obviously everyone's experience is different but as an author myself who's published both trad and self, traditional publishing has been a completely different experience and has allowed me to focus more on writing because I'm not the one responsible for advertising/marketing/financing anymore.

There are a ton of literary agents nowadays that want to represent diverse and lgbtqia+ fiction, some of them even in Australia.

Websites like Reedsy, AgentQuery and Jerichowriters have extensive directories to find literary agents.

(This is lengthy folks so I'm putting the other two parts (and my response) under a read more! Also putting it under a read more so the anon can skip my response since it's very 'here's all the reasons I can't do this' and they just might not want to read that, lmao)

(continued -> )

Trad publishing houses have better resources for marketing and helping authors get more attention than any self publishing website could.

Obviously most authors, unless they're really prolific, don't get a huge advance (the average is between $1000 - $5000) but getting your foot in the door or on the traditional publishing "ladder' so to speak can have a huge benefit for your serials. Because it gives you more exposure. Plus it's in the agent's best interest to find a publishing house that accepts stories that contain darker themes and negotiate the best deal for you.

For some reason places like Amazon and the like accept and keep up more "dark" books that are traditionally published than they do with self pub ones. Maybe because they have more respect or leniency for publishing houses? I have no idea. But you could use this to your advantage. I think I remember you mentioning that writing novels felt quite isolating to you? But you already have 2 completed novels (3 if you count the fae one) that you could potentially revisit or rewrite to your liking and get them represented by agents.

You already have a loyal readership and that's very attractive to trad pub houses and agents.

As well as trad publishing, you could also make s simple website that doesn't require much maintenance. It could be just a landing page that says something about you and then has links to your tumblr and patreon where you're more active. That way you increase the chances of getting your serials found by additional readers and also come across looking more "professional". Not that you're not professional now. You are and I admire you greatly, but the unfortunate reality is a lot of people still judge by appearances and some will be more drawn to an author's website than a tumblr page, at least at first. So I think having a simple landing page would open up another door for you to benefit from.

Trad publishing is work but definitely not as much as self publishing, and you can continue on with your serials. Getting an agent can be time consuming but I personally believe the pros outweigh the cons and I also believe that your stories would be a huge treasure to the growing lgbtqia+ market. Seriously there needs to be more!

These are just suggestions and thoughts and like I said before, feel free to ignore. But I know you've mentioned wanting to grow your career in the past and I genuinely believe you can do so with some of these pathways.

~

Okay, my response. Posting this because firstly I think the suggestions could work very well for other authors reading this! And I hope they take the advice to note, and secondly because I haven't talked about this for a hot minute so let's talk about it again.

So the TL;DR is yes I have considered traditional publishing. I have actually been traditionally published in short stories, poetry, and also had my art published on covers and re: interior illustrations. But my Fae Tales works got soundly rejected when I sent them to publishing houses that were doing open calls for that sort of material. I've never heard back from an agent and I never expect to, heh.

~

Now for a bit more detail

I have been traditionally published before (it's how I got my writing out there long before I ever wrote serials), and yes, I have approached publishers with my writing since then. In fact Tradewinds was written for the traditional publishing market, and it got soundly rejected, and then shelved. The reasons it was rejected ran the gamut from 'I don't like that these fae eat humans no one is going to relate to these people' (while the editor then went on to publish vampire books idk) to 'There's too much worldbuilding you can't expect readers to keep up with this' to 'Your stories are too long, no one wants to read characters talking all the time.'

Meanwhile in my online serials I was getting feedback like 'my favourite chapters are the ones where the characters just sit in a room and talk' lol.

The traditional publishing world is also not quite as utopian for most authors as you make it seem. I'm friends with a lot of authors who are traditionally published because that's the world I came from, and unless they're solely in KU and doing generic rapid release formula romances, none of them are making that much money. Certainly not enough to live off. It may have been that you were very fortunate, anon, but I know hundreds more traditionally published authors that left trad pub to make money, and I know about 5 in trad pub personally who are making enough to live off of.

Only one of those is really writing what she truly loves to write, and even then, publishing houses have refused to commit to her entire fantasy series (and she's regularly in 'Top 10/20 Women Fantasy Authors in the World' lists) and forced her to finish the series prematurely. Something I never ever have to worry about in self pub.

The reality is that in trad pub these days, you're still in charge of most of your marketing unless you're one of the big earners for the publishing house. In fact I'd be expected to keep even more of a social media and marketing presence than I do now. I don't do almost any of the things you're supposed to do as an author in marketing to be appealing. I don't have a Facebook author account. I don't have an Instagram author account. I don't maintain or regularly send out newsletters (which automatically puts me in the like 0.05% of authors who make money doing this lmao).

I don't know if you ever have looked that closely into what m/m publishing houses expect from most of their authors, but the newsletter swaps, cover releases, review circuits, interview circuits and more are fucking grueling. We're expected to be responsible for our advertising and our marketing to a fairly massive degree. Some traditionally published in m/m still have to pay for their release blitzes out of pocket. These publishing houses, by and large, do not offer advances. You say most authors don't get large advances. I don't think most authors in this arena get offered advances at all unless they're somehow miraculously acquired by a Big 4.

We're expected to have an already established social media presence because of that (that's why it's so appealing to publishers that we have social media presences already, anon, so we can market, they can save money, and we still see only a minimal cut from the royalties).

And you still have to focus on your finances, because publishing houses like Dreamspinner straight up didn't pay a whole bunch of authors for so long they destroyed careers. They still haven't paid some of their authors. And they're still running a business and people still buy their books.

Trad publishing houses have better resources for marketing and helping authors get more attention than any self publishing website could.

This is true if a) they're a big publishing house and not an indie publisher of which most LGBTQIA+ publishing houses are and b) they're willing to use them on you.

The authors that make the most money get the most resources. If they believe you're going to earn back your advance and move thousands or tens of thousands of units per book, then yes, you will get those resources.

I have been told so many times now - even from friends who run publishing houses, including one who works at HarperCollins - that my work will never be mainstream enough to have broad appeal. They literally told me not to keep trying re: trad pub, because that was my dream for a long time. These folks have given me rock solid advice in the past, it's one of the reasons I'm doing so well now via Patreon + Ream. But they were like (paraphrasing) 'you don't write 60-80k romances and you don't want to and that's not your strength anyway, you're multi-genre which makes you hard to market, you write psychological and literary trauma recovery which is hard to market, you write character studies which are hard to market, publishing houses often don't commit to series anymore if the first two don't move units and if they pulled the plug you'd be contractually obliged to never finish that series until your contract was up.' I could go on, but it was like yeah...actually. Fair.

For some reason places like Amazon and the like accept and keep up more "dark" books that are traditionally published than they do with self pub ones. Maybe because they have more respect or leniency for publishing houses?

They do, but most publishing houses want very formulaic dark romance which is not what I write.

I have a 300k omegaverse slowburn that still hasn't had any penetrative sex in it, anon. Publishing houses don't want that. They don't expect anyone will wait 4 full length novels to get to literally a single penetrative sex scene.

But you already have 2 completed novels (3 if you count the fae one) that you could potentially revisit or rewrite to your liking and get them represented by agents.

If I rewrote them to my liking, trad pub wouldn't want them. They'd be too long! I think agents etc. take one look at me and go 'oh god, no thank you!' I'm not an easy sell, by any means.

Plus I'm very e.e about all of that with the knowledge that they then give me only about 10-15% of the royalties on the sales, vs. self-pub where I get around 70%, or subscription where I around 80% of it. When someone subscribes to me, they don't have to worry about 85-90% of their subscription fee going to a publishing house. I don't have to think about how many thousands and thousands of books I'd have to sell to make the same amount that I do now via subscription.

As well as trad publishing, you could also make s simple website that doesn't require much maintenance.

If it was that simple, I'd be doing it. I don't mean this in a facetious way, I mean it in a: I've made a lot of websites, in fact I run one at the moment not connected to my writing (I've been running it for so long it's now in its 20s and can probably has a driver's license). I find it so tedious that I barely remember to check in on it. But forgetting about it means there's always maintenance to keep up with when I get back to it.

Running websites is simpler than it used to be, but it's still not simple. There's hosting and hosting costs, there's server changes, there's back-end maintenance etc. I'm considering it for down the track, but there's a reason I decided to go the route of Patreon over my own site. There are authors (like Christopher Hopper) who actually do subscription through their own domain, but it's a lot of work.

Even placeholder sites are still work. They need updating, details change, story titles changing etc. Maintaining my Patreon + Ream About pages is enough, they're always both a little out of date, lol.

Not that you're not professional now.

Oh no, I mean from a 'traditional publisher looking at me to see what kind of candidate I am' I'm really not though. Like I said, I don't have the newsletter (100 subscribers who get one newsletter a year is not really a newsletter), I don't have the Facebook/Tiktok/Insta/Twitter/Bluesky/Threads accounts, etc. I write multi-genre across multiple steam levels, and I'm allergic to writing serials shorter than 150k. One of my best performing original serials was an 800k contemporary story with no sex in it but a lot of BDSM. It can't be marketed as clean or sweet, it's not high steam, an entire chapter is 'boy saves snail from rain.' Also he was cruel to animals, so not exactly what I'd call a sympathetic main.

And yet that story did so well for me via Patreon + Ream, because people want the kinds of stories that publishing houses generally don't want and I happen to be writing them.

Trad publishing is work but definitely not as much as self publishing, and you can continue on with your serials. Getting an agent can be time consuming but I personally believe the pros outweigh the cons and I also believe that your stories would be a huge treasure to the growing lgbtqia+ market. Seriously there needs to be more!

Anon I just literally do not believe an agent would want to represent me. I have 0% belief in that. Not from a self-deprecating angle but from a 'I am not a good bet for the trad market' perspective. From a 'I have so many friends who are trad pubbed authors who stare at me like I'm insane for writing serials as long as I do' perspective. From a 'professionals in the industry have told me it's amazing I'm doing so well in serials because there's no way they'd take a risk on what I'm doing' perspective. From a 'just because it's queer and diverse doesn't mean it hits literally any other thing a trad pub is looking for' perspective. I've been doing this for 10 years. There are agents who represent work similar to mine who know what I'm doing and wouldn't touch me with a ten foot pole. They're not missing out on a trick, they know I'm not broad appeal, and they're right.

Also the only way I'd have the energy to manage trad pub is by quitting serials. And honestly, I never found trad pub all that much fun while I was doing it for non-novel stuff. It was fine, and it is nice to have my stuff out there, but it was a ton of admin and a lot of going back and forth between people who really only care about marketing a product, and that's great and what they excel at! But I'm too disabled to turn this job into something crushing just to potentially make more money, I'd rather just quit and go back onto a full Disability Pension. I can't see any way I still get to write the stories I want to write, in the way that I write them, and be remotely appealing to a single reputable trad pub or agent.

Also *gestures to everything in this article*

[cabeswaterdrowned]

There’s more I could add but some of those things aren’t set in stone / could change and these I’m 100% committed to (I’m unsure of Who the lavender marriage drama happens between but there is definitely lavender marriage drama in the fic)

[ask-otoya-eita]

I don’t always do this but can we head out? I’m bein’ serious, Eita. Don’t.

Callin’ @kenyusee-yukimiya and @hiori-yo too.

~ @ask-karasu-tabito

Damn dawg what happened to u

U never initiate hang outs

Anw, u kno ill be there 🤙🏻

[nyaaamato]

idk it’s hard to think of team minato as separate characters when i really think about it.. to me they all represent aspects of a single experience, different angles of a reaction to to the traumas of war… kakashi is the guilt-ridden survivor, obito the burning, vengeful sense of justice (“that should never have happened”), rin is simultaneously the mourner and the mourned. it makes sense when you think about kishimoto’s original vision for the series, which was a war story exploring the generational trauma he was exposed to via his grandfather’s experiences and how the effects of that trauma touch everyone differently even if the root cause is the same. rin and obito manifest as martyrs to kakashi because he’s still a part of the machine and can’t see the shinobi world on a larger scale, as a place that will never not fail the people it was built to protect, and that’s why he can’t protect his “precious people”. that’s why he fails sasuke and why he struggles at first to understand obito’s motivations as bigger than an interpersonal failing (not being able to protect rin). to me, it reads directly like an internal conflict of someone who has to contend with years and years of working for the very knife that first wounded them and only realising when in many ways, it’s too late to take back your mistakes, but still having to try.

i think that’s why team minato is so compelling to me, even past the frustrating misogyny. it’s like the perfect encompassing story about failed people being failed, but still not giving up. obito changes, kakashi changes, in some ways the ghost of minato changes (although my feelings about him in the war arc are.. HAHAHA i think that was such a mistake in writing and it almost ruined Naruto’s character for me) and eventually rin and obito can finally be laid to rest properly. it’s such a short, closed soft of story but i can’t stop going nuts about it LMAO

[sarah-sandwich]

lmao spotify wrapped told me that the day that i listened to music the most was august 24th, at 14 hours, and i was like, what on earth happened??

then i realised that that was the day i'd spent almost every waking hour beta reading blue, with movie scores playing in the background hahahha i'd promised to be done by the end of august and i was determined! i only really took a break during chapter 7 (iykyk) so 14 hours makes total sense hahah

this is the second year in a row that you've affected my wrapped - last year, you introduced me to dream machine, and now this. your influence ! <3

MY INFLUENCE!!! I honestly am stupidly proud of afflicting you with my favorite song bad enough for it to make your wrapped lmao

14 HOURS?!?? I am honored and so so so so appreciative of your efforts 💞♥️⭐🧸✨ You caught a slip up that slipped by me and everyone else (a little missed line from a previous version where Nash overheard a conversation and that's how he learned about REDACTED instead of by talking to Henry). Also these two comments live rent free in my head at all times:

A chapter 7 break (chapter 5 in the published version bc I consolidated the first few chapters) is so so valid. Everybody had to take a break there 😭

[ingravinoveritas]

Absolutely loving that this is a selfie and that Michael and David are so naturally close together...

[midnitecafe]

enjoying some adult beverages with some friends after a long day at sea

[nice-bright-colors]

Today’s Phrase That Pays =

“My work here is done, so now I’m going to fuck off down to the pub.”

[alethiometry]

physical 100 is soooooo funny like they take the 100 swolest mfs in south korea and make them do the most insane shit and after half of them have been eliminated the remaining contestants are rewarded by getting sent to a rec room that's stocked with wall to wall protein powders and gym machines and they all react like they're literally in the garden of eden

in their downtime, when they are ostensibly supposed to be relaxing and recovering from the challenges they just overcame, the contestants just come up with more feats of physical prowess like box-jumping their own height in stacked-up gym mats and thigh-wrestling

and then the disembodied voice of the host is like your next task is to physically drag this 2-ton ancient greek trieme across some sand and moor it to the dock and everyone is like yeah this is a normal thing i have trained to do

and THEN the final task when it's just down to the last 2 contestants it's iike. pull on this insanely heavy rope until your entire upper body goes numb and you have an existential crisis. congratulations here's 300 million won. take this sledgehammer and smash the plaster bust of your opponent's physique to demonstrate that they have experienced total ego death