#Noble Markets review

[elumish]

My Experience With Digital-First Royalty-Only Publishing (Part 2)

Disclaimer: just my experience, may not reflect other people's

Part 1 (What is this sort of publishing; how did I get published; what does the submission, contract, and editing process look like)

Book Release:

My [redacted] book came out in April 2024. It is available on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and the publisher's own website, where it is listed for a couple dollars less than on Amazon/B&N. It's available both digitally (in multiple different file formats) and for print (paperback).

I can't speak for whether this is standard across these sorts of publishers, but it probably isn't unusual. This does mean that the book can't be available on Kindle Unlimited, given how Kindle Unlimited's requirements work.

The timing for this sort of publishing is extremely fast compared to traditional or even small-press print publishing. I signed the contract in late August 2023 and sent in the final draft to my editor in late October 2023, and the book was released in late April 2024.

Book cover:

For designing my book cover, they pointed me towards where they pull stock images from and asked me to describe the sort of cover I would want, including possible stock images. They also asked for physical characteristics of my characters, which is when I realized that I had no clue what my characters look like.

The stock image website included AI art, as well as regular non-AI stock images. I specifically requested no AI art, including no AI-generated stock images. As far as I am aware, they respected that request.

Once they created one, they sent me a mock-up and asked about minor changes (typography, etc., from what I remember). I didn't have any changes. Overall, my cover looks like what I described to them, and I'm really happy with it.

Marketing:

My marketing experience with my publisher has been decidedly underwhelming. They seem to have started to revamp their marketing process right around when my book came out, so my book didn't receive/hasn't received a huge amount of marketing support from them.

What they gave me marketing-wise: a few marketing images for pre-release/post-release, including Twitter and FB header images, etc.; general marketing guidance for what I could/should be doing; a couple of mentions on their publisher Instagram post-release and a mention in their weekly newsletter

What they didn't give me marketing-wise: connection to reviewers, including sending an ARC or providing a list of reviewers that might be good to work with; marketing materials for sites like TikTok or Instragram; a meaningful amount of airtime/mention on their accounts; a large following of their own

Overall, the marketing is what is probably most like self-publishing--a huge amount of it is on me (and I am terrible at it). It will be interesting to see what their revamp brings, but they are starting from a minimal following and not a lot of previous activity on their accounts, and so they also need to build their reach to make their marketing on their accounts more effective.

Royalties/payment:

I get paid on a monthly basis through PayPal. I also receive a royalty statement that lists days, amount/type sold, etc. so I can reconcile with what they have paid me. From what I have seen this royalty statement is pretty standard.

So far, they've been prompt and haven't had issues with payments.

However, because of (among other things) their general lack of marketing, my royalty statements have been fairly low. So far (and, granted, the book came out less than 2 months ago) I have made very little money on this.

My Path Forward:

I've thought a lot about whether I will continue to do this sort of publishing. I am currently querying my "main" books, and I don't plan to publish them through this sort of publishing, even if the publisher would likely accept them.

My contract stipulates that my publisher has right of first refusal for the rest of the books in this series. I am currently writing book two, and I plan to also write a third, as I had initially discussed with them. Beyond that, I'm not sure. I don't mind working with them as a company, but I don't know if they have the processes in place for me to make money publishing with them.

One thing I will likely do is explore other romance publishers that accept unagented submissions. They have a much lower barrier of entry and they are often willing to accept books that trad publishers might not want to spend money/reputational risk on.

As such, I would likely submit to these publishers stories that I don't think traditional publishers/agents would likely to be willing to publish, including more niche subgenres and less standard lengths that are easier to publish digitally.

Why do I redact the name of my book?

Honestly because I'm a coward and because people are weird about romance, especially certain subgenres of romance. I also plan to use this account for my main agented publishing, if I ever reach that point, and I don't necessarily want those two pen names associated.

Any other questions about this sort of publishing?

[violettduchess]

A/N: This is my gift for the wonderful @claviscollections as part of the @flash-exchange💜

Clavis x Reader, my prompt was "Affection 101". Here are eight little ways I think Clavis would show his dearest one affection.

WC: exactly 700

You’re standing in front of the floor-length mirror, taking a moment to admire the amethyst necklace Clavis gave you for your first anniversary. It’s breathtaking. It’s delicate. It’s….a pain in the arse to get on. You fumble, brows knitting with ever-growing annoyance as you try to close the clasp at your neck. And then he’s there, gently admonishing you, dear one, for not calling him to help you with such a tricky task. His gaze holds yours in the mirror as he effortlessly closes it, his fingers trailing away from the thin chain to rest on your shoulders. A soft kiss at the base of your neck is his final touch before stepping away.

Yves has really outdone himself. The table is set with so many delicious confections, you hardly know where to look. Clavis is engaged in telling a story, entertaining the others, his words winding through the air like music notes. You carefully select a golden puff pastry filled with rich pink cream and……ahhh you sigh with pure delight as the taste of sweet strawberries hits your tongue. You’re contemplating taking another when Clavis, without missing a beat, reaches for one of the delightful cream puffs and places it on your plate.

You leave your meeting with the king, heading to your office while perusing the long list of books he has asked you to procure for the royal library. When you get to your desk, you stop. Waiting for you is a warm cup of rose tea and a decorative sprig of lavender. Setting down your notebook, you pick up the note that lays beside the tea cup, written in the loopy handwriting you’ve become fluent in: After a meeting with him, my dear wife deserves a treat from her devoted husband.

You’re heading down the staircase, pulling your cloak around your shoulders as you silently review your market shopping list. Clavis turns the corner, in conversation with Cyran. When your eyes meet, he breaks into a sunny smile, his eyes practically glowing at the unexpected encounter. “Just a moment, Cyran, I must greet my wife in the manner she deserves.” And instantly you’re in his arms and he’s kissing you in a way that leaves you utterly breathless. “And as this is also goodbye…” Another kiss as his arm supports your back, his hand tenderly cradles the back of your head. You’re released with a glowing smile before he continues up the stairs, motioning for a beleaguered Cyran to hurry up and follow him. 

The meeting is running oh so long as the visiting nobles make sure to use their audience with the king to the fullest. Your hand aches from writing, trying to capture all the essentials of what is said. When it’s finally over, Clavis instantly reaches for you, taking your hand in his and gently but firmly begins massaging your palm, the sore spaces between your fingers, his expert touch trailing down to your wrist. The pain ebbs away under his care and he smiles at your sigh of relief. 

You step out of the steaming rose-scented bath and into the oversized, fluffy towel Clavis is holding for you. He wraps it lovingly around your body and pulls you close, kissing the tip of your nose. “Mine,” he murmurs with a grin. “All mine.”

You stare down at the plate of food provided by your hosts. It’s fish. The kind you really, really can’t stomach eating. Politeness has you taking a small bite, forcing it down. A shudder rolls through you from your protesting stomach. And then in one fluid movement, your plate is now in front of Clavis and his plate, minus the fish but with all the salad, is now yours. 

The sun takes a bow, leaving the stage to evening. A long day has your head falling into your soft pillow, heavy with exhaustion. A moment later, you’re being pulled back against Clavis as he curls himself around you. His arm protectively encircles you, his lips press a kiss to the back of your neck. “Good night, beautiful wife of mine. May you sleep well and dream of me.” You smile softly because you always do.

Tagging: @alexxavicry @queengiuliettafirstlady @bellerose-arcana @thewitchofbooks @aria-chikage @redheadkittys @tele86 @dear-mrs-otome @olivermorningstar @writingwhimsey @mxrmaid-poet @silver-dahlia @wendolrea @nightfoxqueen @myonlyjknight @ikesimpleton @namine-somebodies-nobody @greatstarlightstarfish @cellophanediamond @whatever-fanfics @justpeachyteastea @chirp-a-chirp @got7igot7family @kookie-my-little-sunshine @mastering-procrastinating @portrait-ninja @queen-dahlia @themysticalbeing @nightghoul381 @whitelittlebunny @chi-the-idiot @bubblexly

[literary-illuminati]

2024 Book Review #47 – City of Last Chances by Adrian Tchaikovsky

This book was recommended to me by a few different people, and in any case I am generally a pretty big Tchaikovsky fan. So of course I’m only getting around to reading it now, however many months later. Having put it off so long for no good reason at all, I can say that the book is in fact very good. Not Tchaikovsky’s best work (that’s still Children of Time in a walk), but a good read and one that left me curious (if not exactly excited) about checking out the sequel.

The story takes place in Illmar, the eponymous City of Last Chances – scarred and oppressed, tyrannized by cursed dukes and conquering imperialists, built upon a dangerous and unreliable route to other worlds and forever attracting the sort of people with no better options available to them. While the book has any number of characters, it’s really the city itself that is the star of the story – a story of how the theft of an imperial magistrate’s ward before he makes an experimental voyage through the gateway in the woods leads to a whole series of byzantine intrigues and bloody misadventures, culminating in an abortive revolution against the Pallseen who occupy and rule them. Which in one sense is an absolutely massive spoiler and in another just feels like stating an inevitability that was obvious from the first chapter.

The book was apparently quite heavily marketed as harking back to the whole New Weird trend of a decade or two ago – marketing that is lived up to wholly and entirely. The whole book absolutely drips with Mieville and Vandermeer. The oblique worldbuilding, the mundane day-to-day life built around the opportunities and inconveniences of some intrusion of the sublime, the awkward intersection of ancient magic and industrial bureaucracy, and so on, and so forth. The Reproach in particular feels very Area X (or very Roadside Picnic, as you prefer), but in general the city feels like absolutely nothing so much as Bas-Lag with the weirdness dial turned down from an 11 to a 5 or 6.

It’s a real triumph of the book, I think, that the world genuinely feels vast and strange even beyond the points where it matters to the story - that all the little asides and the ways something affects a certain character feel like just small parts of something far grander and more uncanny than anyone can hope to understand. Maybe I’m just painfully tired of rpg-system worldbuilding, but it’s an effect I dearly love.

Much like Bas-Lag, Ilmar is very clearly a magical fantasy city going through a magical fantasy 19th century industrial revolution (instead of steam engines its demonic slave labor contracted and imported from the Kings Below). The meat of the book is playing into the whole tradition of the idealistic, virtuous but tragic liberal revolution – 1848 in Berlin or Vienna, the June Days and Commune in Paris, Warsaw a dozen different times, Les Mis. You know the type. Students singing patriotic old songs, workers rising up against class oppression, ‘revolutionaries’ who are mostly cowardly nobles pining after lost privileges and criminal syndicate putting on airs being caught flat-footed by events. You can probably tell the basic story in your sleep. But for such a venerable genre, this book's honestly probably the best rendition of ‘fantasy 1848’ I can recall. Something which won it my instant affection.

The other thing the book just overwhelming shares with the Mieville’s Bas-Lag books is a very keen sense of the necessity of revolution combined with an extreme cynicism towards anyone who might actually carry it out. The university students are sincere believers, and also naive sheep the narrative views with condescension (at best). The professional revolutionaries are all power-grabbing hypocrites who have wrapped themselves in the flag. The workers syndicates have a real sense of solidarity among themselves, and also none at all to the demon slaves that are used and broken powering the mills and factories. And so on. The overall thrust of the book is a tragedy not in the sense of railing against the inevitable, but in the sense that triumph and revolution were absolutely possible – indeed plausible – but for the flaws and frailities of the revolutionaries who might have accomplished it.

Not to say that it's misanthropic – the book is very humane towards the vast majority of its POVs. Of which there are enough for ‘vast majority’ to be a meaningful term. It was something like 130 pages in before any character got a second chapter through their eyes, a feat I had previously only seen in Malazan – and that’s not including the chorus chapters which just give a half-doze vignettes from across the city. But yes, most characters (even the ones who are really just viscerally repulsive) are shown through their own eyes as someone who is at least understandable, if not particularly sympathetic. The sheer size of the cast in a 500 page book mean that no one character or set gets that many chapters from their perspective (you could easily have written as long a book about roughly the same events with half or less of the cast), but some of the dynamics that are very lightly touched on are just incredibly compelling. Its enough to make you wish this was a series that would ever get any fanfiction written about it, really.

Given the way the book is so deeply concerned with oppression and violence on the basis of culture, class, and nation – imperial occupiers, native population, refugees and immigrants used and scapegoated by both – it is kind of fascinating that this is a world where misogyny and (possibly? Not very explored, the only example of a queer relationship we see is hardly going to be concerned by normative society) homophobia just flatly don’t exist. Which would be less interesting if it was unusual, really – the same could be said about very nearly every recent sci fi or fantasy book on the same lines I can recall. Interesting because it is very much not the case in Melville’s stuff – the cultural impact of Ancillary Justice continues to echo down the years, I guess. So yes the imperial police inspector will extort sex out of a brothel owner in exchange for not stringing up the entire workforce for peripheral involvement with the resistance, but also this is entirely gender-neutral. Something very modern about how oppression is imagined relative to the ‘90s or ‘00s (or just a different genre of self-consciously feminist novel a few book shelves to the left).

But yeah, great book, I am compelled. No idea where the sequel would be going, but will probably hunt it down sooner rather than later.

[gazeopard]

Some Long-awaited Beastars Rambling

I was thinking about this for a while, but upon rereading the Dropout arc a couple months back, and looking back on my earlier review on the Beastars finale from October 2020, I can’t believe it took me as long as December 2023 and January 2024 to realize Yahya refused the offer of trading fish meat onto the land.

“You land creatures have matured quite a bit”…? How is this a sign of maturity and growth?

Just, why...........? What was the point of destroying the Black Market and the stupid whale offering fish if it was just going to be denied anyway?? AND what is stopping another Black Market from being created after all of this?

What was the point of destroying the Black Market if now NONE of the carnivores have anything to satisfy their cravings for meat? Louis said not to turn a blind eye to the Black Market. I thought the Market was going to stay as a necessary evil since some mammals include fish in their diets and others can't. But now that the fish trade has been shot down and the market was destroyed, there are going to be MORE predation attacks than ever! How is this supposed to be a happy ending??

What was the point of Kyuu as a character? She did absolutely nothing, everything she introduced in the story (the Imaginary Chimeras, betraying Legoshi, her involvement with Melon, etc) amounted to nothing, and the story's pacing would have been so much better if she (and San) were never included. San literally disappeared a chapter after he was properly introduced, and we never saw him again ffs.

What was the point of building up Louis and Juno's romantic relationship and all their sexual tension together if they were never going to become a couple?

And worst of all, what was the point of building up Legoshi and Haru's relationship if Haru was just going to become a secondary-character in Vol.6/Season 2, while Legoshi kept ghosting AND avoiding her throughout the rest of the manga? Didn't he say he was going to get stronger for her at the end of the Meteor Festival arc? So why did he wait until after being attacked by Riz in the school grounds to start his meat-resistance training with Gouhin? Why was he suddenly back to hating himself for being a wolf and a carnivore all throughout the Riz Arc, the Dropout Arc, and the Melon Arc? While fighting the Chief Lion, he had appeared to come to terms with that side of himself when he realized he could take responsibility for his strength and use it to protect Haru and the herbivores from other carnivores. So why did he start avoiding that side of himself again? He has to have GOUHIN remind him to see his carnivore side as a good thing, when two arcs ago Legoshi swore to himself that the reason why he was born a wolf: to protect Haru and the other herbivores. Why does he suddenly start claiming he doesn't need his fangs to fight for herbivores, why does he rip out his own teeth to make a point to Yahya, never mind that he once told himself that his fangs and claws were for Haru? And what was even the POINT of him ripping out his own teeth if they were just going to grow back anyway by the magical power of Komodo Dragon genes, Protagonist Plot-Armor, and the narrative's post-Season 2 refusals to hold him or Louis accountable for their actions?

Speaking of Louis, WHY would Legoshi go back to putting Louis on the same pedestal after their fight in S01? By attacking him, Legoshi realized that Louis was not the noble person he thought he was and was a selfish social-climber who was going to let Haru die for the sake of securing his future as a Beastar. Even if Louis didn't want to do it, he still shook hands with the Mayor anyway. Why would Legoshi go back to idolizing Louis and forget about it like their fight never happened?? Speaking of which, why didn’t Haru EVER find out about it? Why didn't Legoshi EVER bring it up with Haru, ESPECIALLY when she was confessing her worries about Louis to him?? We could have gotten some serious character development for Louis right there!

Why was Louis' sudden liking for carnivores so rushed, and why didn't the narrative ever hold him accountable for the things he did? Making a deal with the Mayor to keep Haru's kidnap and potential death a secret? Allowing the Shishigumi to beat the tar out of Legoshi instead of ordering them to stop? Selling herbivore children in the market, which was literally what he went through as a child himself? I literally forgot that happened in the manga until someone else pointed it out.

Why couldn't he have saved the herbivore children while also making sure the carnivores didn't suffer in the market after Ibuki showed him his tattoos and after witnessing the alligator (or was it a crocodile?) get castrated? He was a racist (specist?) asshole to Legoshi and the others (he threatened to shoot Bill, he accused Zoe of eating the script without any evidence all while stereotyping goats and threatened to kill him after falling off the stage, etc.) all throughout the Seasons 1 and 2, until he suddenly realized he admired carnivores right before Ibuki's death. To me, there was not enough buildup and foreshadowing to lead to this transformation. If I recall correctly.

Also, somebody already mentioned this on the Subreddit forums, and I totally agree, but rather than having it be Louis, Haru should have been the one to offer her foot to Legoshi in his fight against Riz. It would have made more sense since Riz's relationship with Tem was the antithesis of Legoshi's relationship with Haru, so it would have been far stronger, and it would have shown just how much she trusts him not to completely eat her. It would have mirrored what had happened to Tem, but without the tragedy. It also would have lined up with what she told him in the Love Hotel in Season 1: That Legoshi could make love to her or eat her, and she would be fine with either choice. And slowly, Legoshi could have obliged, silently vowing to never eat a piece of her again.

Hell, Louis still could have been there after leaving the Shishigumi and could have helped bandage Haru up to prevent her from dying of bloodloss. Then to make up for what he did in Season 1, he could have had his company make a prosthetic foot for Haru. And hell, Legoshi informing him not only of his duel with Riz but also Riz's capture of Haru could have also been Louis's real moment of redemption. He could have told Ibuki that his two friends were going to die, and he made the mistake of nearly letting one of them get killed by their old boss. If Haru and Legoshi die tonight because he became a bystander again, he could never forgive himself.

Something I also thought about, but I think Paru wanted Louis to save Legoshi's life because he felt responsible for Ibuki's death, and he would feel like the weak helpless fawn in the cage that he was in the market. For some reason, upon reading it for the first time it initially came off that way to me, but looking back now it wasn't fully executed, because we never saw and/or heard Louis' inner thoughts feeling responsible for Ibuki getting shot and refusing to watch another carnivore die in front of him… if I recall correctly. Instead, it ended up becoming more about him wanting Legoshi to eat his foot because of the ties it had to his past, unintentionally coming off as more selfish than selfless.

And rather than convincing Legoshi to eat his foot, the closure to his arc could have been him coming to terms with his dark past so it couldn't hurt him anymore and move on. Maybe he could have started training to become the next Beastar, maybe he could have met Yahya, and Yahya could have been a sort of mentor-ish role like Gouhin had been for Legoshi? And if Paru really wanted Louis to lose his leg, he could have lost it in the final battle against Melon. He could have jumped in front of Haru or pushed her out of the way just as Melon lunged for her? Maybe Melon could have finally gotten his sense of taste?? And maybe he could have figured out Louis was the former boss of the Shishigumi somehow?

And speaking of the Shishigumi, it pisses me off that they, like Louis, were never held accountable for their actions towards Haru. Yeah, they were sent to prison, but I hate that their kidnapping of Haru AND their witness to the Chief Lion's sexual harassment of Haru, was NEVER brought up again. And Haru never found out that Louis became their boss either. Looking back now, it kind of reminds me of what Kique did to the Meteor Tribe after Ronja became leader.

When they were first introduced, they were known to have killed many herbivores, mostly white-furred herbivores for the Chief Lion to consume. In the manga, they hanged the decomposing bodies of those they killed up on display as warnings, they kidnapped Haru and were present (in the manga anyway) to her being stripped naked and humiliated in front of their boss, they fought Legoshi and Gouhin and nearly killed both of them. They also would have eaten Louis had Ibuki not suggested a vote for an herbivore leader.

Then when Louis was their boss, he sold herbivore children to the market with them (which, as mentioned, did not happen in the anime since it would have made him look like an irredeemable monster), they beat up Legoshi, and then tried to kill him again in the Melon arc (but Legoshi's Plot-Armor saved him), they kidnapped Kyuu (which ultimately ended up being pointless anyway because Melon never used her betrayal to get the upper-paw in his final fight with Legoshi), and then they got arrested while leading Louis to help Legoshi. If Paru had wanted them to be more misunderstood and redeemable, she could have shown some of them at least hesitating or exchanging looks of disgust or unease as the Chief Lion goes over Haru, or at least considering leaving the room. If I recall correctly, the anime didn't show them being present in the room when Haru was being "examined", which I can see why.

But even while the Chief Lion was their boss, none of them made any effort to overthrow him, challenge his cruelty and opinions, and/or appoint Ibuki as the new boss. They did not express any regret for their previous actions or what they did to Haru. And when Melon became their new boss, they made very little effort to overthrow him despite his weaker form. Agata (the dark-furred lion) attempted to overthrow him, but he still ultimately failed. They could have easily shot him when his back was turned and easily overpowered him as a pride, but they didn't do it because I guess making them act smart or logical would have ruined the Melon plot... 😑

I mean, if Paru really wanted to show off how dangerous Melon truly was to these guys, why couldn't we have a scene where Melon became the boss, instead of getting a hand-waved explanation from Free? Why couldn't we get a scene where the lions tried ganging up on Melon only to be overpowered by the hybrid due to the guy's enhanced speed and senses? We could have had a scene where he'd hear about their former deer boss, take it to his advantage, waltz right into the mansion in full gazelle-disguise, announce his presence to the lions, and declare himself as their new boss while promising that he'd bring them back to glory. Then he could have removed his mask and reveal himself to be a half-breed after they'd vote on it, only to scare the living shit out of them after killing or injuring somebody for disagreeing with his new set of rules, causing some of them to try to attack him... only for him to nearly shoot at them at an almost supernatural speed and accuracy, just for shits and giggles. Thus, establishing him as dangerous and a new kind of threat to the remaining lions and giving them a reason to fear conspiring against him.

I would have loved to have seen how Melon became their boss and how he managed to strike so much fear into them. Also, why didn't any of them try to poison him? We could have gotten a scene or two where Melon uses his cunning and hybridized instincts to avoid attempted assassination attempts, and these scenes, as well as his introduction, could have established the fear and the stranglehold of power he had over the Shishigumi.

Also, Legoshi never brought up Louis' affiliation with the Shishigumi with Haru, and neither did Louis. I don't remember if Louis told Legoshi how he became the boss (by blowing the chief's brains out, thus saving not only Legoshi's life but also Haru's), but we also could have gotten some accountability on Louis' part from Haru's discovery or realization, and his moment of redemption could have been him giving her a prosthetic leg from Legoshi's predation act. Maybe Louis could have told her and Legoshi the truth at some point. He could have told her what he did, that he was wrong to have made the deal with the Mayor, that he went to save her after his fight with Legoshi anyway, and how he had killed the boss and had temporarily taken over the Shishigumi for a while.

Perhaps during the Melon arc, while he, Legoshi and Haru could have been trying to stop Melon, he could have introduced Haru to the lions, and they could have realized that she was his friend, and they could have bowed and apologized for the things they did under the chief lion's rule. Maybe we could have had more humanizing moments between the Shishigumi, maybe they could have had some serious character growth and could have eventually viewed Haru as someone to protect as well? Maybe if Paru hadn't made them as bad in the first few chapters of their introduction, maybe it could have been pulled off well...?

But we didn’t get any of that. I get that Paru wanted to humanize the Shishigumi a bit when they made Louis their new boss, and I know they're supposed to be morally gray characters, but there's a line that needs to be drawn to distinguish them from very evil characters like Melon. These guys were present to what was essentially Haru being sexually-assaulted by their leader, and made no attempts to stop it...

Even if we got to know a couple of their backstories (particularly Ibuki's and Agata's), it didn't excuse any of their previous actions. It just felt like Paru was trying to make them seem not as bad once Louis became their leader. As if solely by association with Louis, it suddenly erased their horrible deeds or something. So, looking back now, the way she went about it feels more like Kique redeeming the Meteor Tribe. I just can't buy that ALL the male rapists were miraculously killed by Kargo and Ferah during the first and second rebellions.

But I digress.

The huge amount of screen-time Legoshi and Louis had gotten post-Arc 2 should have gone to Legoshi and Haru, instead of Legoshi ghosting her throughout most of the manga. And honestly, Legoshi suddenly saying stuff like how Louis was "his most precious scent" and his later line ("You were always there to keep me from becoming a monster") in the Riz Arc just felt more like things he'd say to Haru. And her giving up her leg to him would have felt more selfless, since Louis forcing Legoshi to eat it just so he could break free from his cursed past just felt more benefiting to HIM than to Legoshi, since the wolf got a predation record as a result. And yet he never apologized for it, and later had the audacity to joke about it and then say something like, "You ate my foot and dropped out of school without even telling me" after Legoshi told him it was not funny. Dude, you offered your foot to him, it was your idea to give him your leg in the first place, what the hell?

It sucks that Louis had more screen-time with Legoshi during the Dropout arc and especially the Melon arc, but not Haru. I don't know if Louis replacing Haru as the deuteragonist was Paru's intention all along after she decided to spare him, or if the publishers pressured her into toning down the romance and everything Haru-related, tone up the action for the target audience, and turn Louis into the Sasuke to Legoshi's Naruto in the process, because they assumed the target audience (teenage boys) wouldn't be interested watching multiple scenes of Haru or Legoshi and Haru together… :( Which is frankly misogynistic, but considering how women don't have the best representation in Shonen manga (though Bleach had very good strong female characters and plenty of diverse representation of ethnic groups), it doesn't sound too farfetched unfortunately.

Maybe if Paru had just gone with her original plan and killed off Louis from the beginning instead of sparing him solely because he became popular with fans (no different than what Tite Kubo apparently did when he spared Byakuya Kuchiki from dying like he should have at the hands of Äs Nodt). Or if the publishers had just given her a lot more time to plan out the rest of the manga instead of going with what seemed to be first-drafts, Legoshi and Haru's relationship would have gotten more development than it did. Hell, it BARELY got ANY development. And maybe Louis and Juno's relationship would have gotten significantly more development and more buildup to it in the earlier arcs. I thought they were going to be parallel to Legoshi and Haru's relationship, and they were going to be the secondary protagonist power-couple next to Legoshi and Haru's. And it bums me out that (much like Luke, Leia, and Han in the Disney Star Wars trilogy) we NEVER got a scene where all four of them were in the same room together!

Literally NOTHING was properly resolved, and because of the lack of proper development in their relationship, Legoshi and Haru getting together and FINALLY dating, which should have started happening several chapters ago, was unearned.

Also, why didn't we learn of Legoshi's reason for dropping out? He told Haru that he dropped out, if I recall correctly, and he told her about his fight with Riz, his predation record, and how he got it, but we never really found out why he had dropped out. I always thought it was because he got a predation record, but looking back it apparently wasn't? Someone suggested on the Subreddit already in the earlier link that Legoshi could have dropped out due to regret for consuming Haru's leg, and man, that would have made perfect sense. It also could have worked after eating Louis' foot too. He was already suffering from meat-withdrawal in the beginning of the Dropout arc, but after talking with Sebun, we were TOLD more about it and not SHOWN. Maybe that could have been the reason Legoshi dropped out of school in the first place? Because we never got a reason for why he even dropped out at all. Perhaps eating Haru's foot (or Louis' foot) could have reawakened his carnivorous urge to devour her, and Legoshi could have wanted to protect her by avoiding her again? His dropping out was just an excuse for the narrative to explore the world beyond Cherryton. It's because of Legoshi's neglect of Haru during the Melon arc that caused her to nearly offer herself to Melon, and she considered breaking up with Legoshi at a few points, but never went through with it. So why didn't she tell him about it? She told Louis of all people, but not Legoshi himself? It could have given Legoshi the slap of reality he needed to stop neglecting her! They could have realized that, for their relationship and their future together to work, they'd have to remain honest with each other. They could have promised it, too. That would have been great character growth for both of them!

And why didn't we ever see Legoshi lose control of his carnivore instincts again? After the water fountain accident, his wolf/carnivore instincts never come up again, not even in Season 1. Just like we're not even SHOWN them being discriminated against while he and Haru are out together in public.

And after the love-hotel scene, it bums me out that Haru never overcame HER instincts, and that we were TOLD rather than SHOWN that she stopped seeking validation through sex. We never saw her overcome her self-loathing and learning to love herself. After being rescued from the Shishigumi, her body's suicidal urge to climb into Legoshi's jaws was never shown again, so we never got to see her overcome that part of her instincts either. We never saw her overcome her herbivore instinct to flee from him or other carnivores, and after the Shishigumi kidnapped her, I'm surprised she didn't suffer from PTSD.

Haru suffering from not only PTSD but also her instincts and going through her own fight to get stronger for her future with Legoshi, would have been so empowering and it would have actually given her stuff to do, instead of making her character solely revolve around Legoshi. If we were given more scenes of him struggling with his carnivore instincts, showing us that he still has urges to eat Haru rather than telling us (since actions speak louder than words), giving him a valid reason for dropping out of school and if we were given more scenes of him and Haru suffering from discrimination as an interspecies couple in public, and if we were shown him AND Haru struggling to overcome their respective instincts and fighting against the society that keeps them apart all in an effort to be together… the ending of them finally getting together would have been well-earned.

Ugh... My head. I guess this is what happens when you make the rest of a story up as you go because you're under pressure and need to meet a deadline.

Here's to hoping against hope that Studio Orange somehow manages to salvage the final season/arc of Beastars... 🙏

[emeryleewho]

My post about the mess that is trad pub editorial is going around again, and a lot of people are asking "so should I go indie or go trad?" and the answer is *it depends on what you're looking for*.

[I'm referring to "indie" here meaning self-pub and "trad" meaning a publisher, though most small publishers will lean closer to self-pub in terms of distribution and whatnot]

This has always been the answer, but the reasons behind it have changed a lot. People used to say "go indie if you want full control, go trad if you want someone else to handle everything else for you". This is only partially true. Even if you go trad, unless you are part of a handful of heavily supported titles, you will be doing *a lot* yourself. From editorial (I know people who were advised to hire freelance editors or sensitivity readers on their own because the publisher wouldn't do enough) to cover art (I know people who had to walk their publisher through getting them a decent cover) to cover copy (*I* had to rewrite the jacket copy for both of my books because the first attempt was inaccurate) to marketing, odds are, even in trad, you will be doing A LOT of the work yourself, but with more barriers because you don't *own* the print rights and can't stop the publisher from doing things you highly disagree with.

So what's the benefit of trad? DISTRIBUTION. If you are trying to put out the best possible book, I stand by the fact that indie authors have the ability to make *a way better product* than trad can because they can set their own timelines, make sure things are accurate to the book because things aren't being subdivided into so many overworked departments that haven't even read it, and cater to what works best rather than what seems the most profitable. The only limit for an indie author is the time and money they're able to invest into it, but once those things are present [and you can decide how much of each are needed for your book], they have significantly more potential than the average Big 5.

But indies lack *distribution*. There is still a lot of stigma against indie books that prevent readers from picking them up or lead to readers deprioritizing them when reading or writing harsher reviews. Many libraries, bookstores, etc. can't or won't stock indie books, and a lot of professional events bar indie authors from attending. This means that even if an indie book is flawless, they will inherently be gatekept out of places like Barnes & Noble, won't be present on cataloguing websites the industry relies on like edelweiss, etc. etc. This doesn't mean that indie books have *no* distribution, but there are massive financial barriers to entry when doing it alone, and even when you are doing the same marketing/promotion/networking/etc., that work goes significantly further when booksellers/librarians/etc. will go out and stock your book vs. when most will have to turn you down for one reason or another.

So to make this simpler, I think going indie is better for *the book*. It gives you the ability to put more time and effort into it, to ensure it meets your vision, to sink your love into it without having to boil out its uniqueness in favor of mass market profits. It also gives you the room to make sure the quality is up to your standards from editorial to formatting to cover design to quality of the print run. You don't have to cross your fingers and hope your publisher doesn't fuck it all up with AI or by working your team to death. You also get more knowledge about what is happening with your book (big pubs often withhold important information or straight up lie), which means you can coordinate more effective marketing campaigns than you would if say, your publisher decided they no longer cared to market your book (which happens for most books). Finally, publishing likes to do a two-month book lifespan, meaning most books stop getting any sort of in-house support two-months after release or earlier. If you want your book to stand a chance of finding an audience slow and steady (as in, the organic way books spread), you won't get that with trad pub.

However, trad pub is better for *the audience*. If you're writing for kids or teens especially, it will be VERY difficult to reach them going indie because indie thrives mostly on ebook sales and eretailers, which minors have less access to. Getting an indie book into schools and libraries is hard if not borderline impossible, and that is how most books reach kids and teens. On top of that, you likely won't reach most indie bookstores, most libraries, and won't be allowed at many conventions and events (even if you pitch yourself), which will limit who you can reach to people who readily shop online and use social media. There are many access points in getting your book discovered that, even if you *had* a large sum of money, would be denied to you by virtue of being indie. This makes discovery harder (even beyond marketing) and means that even people who *actively want your book* may not be able to get it if it's not distributed to their country, a store they can access, their library, etc. If you're writing to reach a wide audience, something that you think is educational, or that really serves an under-served demographic, trad makes it much more likely you will actually reach those people.

Now, obviously this is just my two cents. You can choose to go trad or indie for literally any reason, even just because you like the idea of getting published by a Penguin. I don't care. People's experiences also vary, and you could be that super lucky 1% who gets doted on and everything is handled for you. This is just a big picture summation of what I tend to see for the average, midlist or quiet title. But trad is notoriously opaque and a lot of people don't realize the advances indie has made in the past 5 years and also don't realize how any of this stuff works behind the scenes, so here's some info from your local hybrid (I do both) author. And if you found this helpful, consider checking out my next book, which is now funding on Kickstarter until Oct 12th.

[bleachbleachbleach]

Hello, it's me again! I'm the one who sent you question about 'which captain are married'. Your answer was really genius, I read it thoroughly though it's just your headcanon 😂 Just adding some information, believe it or not in this damn Bleach Jet interview there's also one question frankly asking 'Do you have any details about Shinigami's income? Like their monthly salary, allowances, etc'. (Which I thought this as a very hilarious question because 'WHY SO RANDOM??' 😂). Then you know, Kubo gave a very detail information, including the nominals of the salary and how each captain had their own mansion as an allowance. Just like a normal company. I'm pretty sure they also manage anything regarding bereave or insurance lol. I'm just curious which Squad is responsible for accounting and finance. Or they probably have their own financial divisions outside of Gotei 13? Well never thought about it before 😂

THE SALARY THING IS ONE OF OUR FAVORITE PARATEXTS LOL. Who would want that information, you ask? The target audience is VERY much us. I legit think it's one of the first things I looked up when we were first returning to Bleach. Bleach fills the workplace drama space on my dance card; of course I wanna know what the payscale is!

Each division is probably responsible for tracking its own finances and submitting them to Central 46 as the Soul Society equivalent of the IRS (Internal Revenue Service, for non-USians). Yumichika, for example, definitely does the books for 11th. No one else in that division has even ever seen such a book. 

What I wanna know is how the budget proposal process works. Prior to the start of each fiscal term, does each Division submit their past and proposed budgets? Do they go straight to the 46 for closed-door deliberations/rulings, or does a version also need to be reviewed and passed at a captain's meeting before heading up to 46? I ask this because I think it would be absolutely torturous for them to sit through such a meeting, which naturally means I want them to have to.

I don't know what the citation is for this, but the Bleach Wiki mentions that captain's meeting decisions are made unanimously. I feel like that can't possibly be true, unless a unilateral "well, Yamamoto said so" counts as "unanimous" (though the AU where the Gotei is committed to an anarchist governance style is also appealing to me, LOL). But imagine a captain's meeting where they had 13 budgets to review and pass: There's a Q&A period. Each captain has a time-limited amount of time to suggest friendly or unfriendly amendments and/or to plead their case about whether the budget should pass or fail. You can yield time to other captains, or move to extend time (though this then also has to be voted on by all the captains in attendance). Speaking from personal experience, this process can take literal days. Just imagine. IT'S HORRIBLE I LOVE IT. 

Other things I wonder (under the cut):

-- What factors determine what the Gotei's overall operating budget is? Are they fully funded by the noble houses? Do they accrue wealth by any other means? How does the Soul Society macroeconomy even work. 

– What’s the deal with this mansion that each captain gets? Where are these mansions located? Is it like the White House, and there’s a bunch of historical rooms with names like The Sakura Sitting Room? Is there a hallway with portraits of all the past captains that you have to walk past every morning on your way out the door? Even better, what if they don’t each get a whole mansion, but only a wing of a mansion? Then they all have to live together, Big Brother style. Central 46 is always watching.

-- Does the Gotei have an endowment? Have they invested in the Tokyo Stock Exchange? What about the Rukongai Rice Futures Market?

-- Are there ever special funds/one-time line items that need to be voted on? Was post-TYBW reconstruction back-burnered until the next fiscal year because they Had to Do the Budget First because their extant emergency response funds got exhausted after the FIRST invasion?

-- Are the Divisions automatically funded equally, or if they write a really good budget proposal can they be awarded more money? Is the only way to get more money to officially declare and register a specialty with the Central 46 Office of Division Specialties, like the 9th and Seireitei Communications, and the 12th's lab budgets? Outside of the regular budget allocation periods, are there earmarked funds/grants to which divisions can apply separately? Are you only allowed to take state money, or can you apply for grant-type arrangements with noble houses or non-Gotei entities? What about gift funds? 

-- Why are damages from the captain's personal salary and not the division budget? Did someone just tell Komamura and Hitsugaya this, but it's not actually true and they're the only ones who think this? Or does this suggest that the budgeting within the Gotei actually has no procedure and nothing is actually funded at all, because none of the founding members considered that a military organization represents an operational scale that does not actually translate 1:1 with an individual's personal finances??

-- Regarding individual salaries: Do people get annual raises even if their position stays the same? Like, if you're an unseated shinigami for 500 years are you paid the same on Day 1 as on Day 182,625?

-- How do people pick up their salaries? Is there a physical paycheck? Cash monies? Credits? Is the currency the same in the Seireitei as in Rukongai (is it used EVERYWHERE in Rukongai, by every one)? Rukia using credits on her phone from Living World-side bounties, so some portion of their commerce is digital… but is that only in Living World lol.

[ajconstantine]

AJ Constantine's Fic Recommendations: Good Omens Alpha/Beta/Omega

There are some really fun themes that can be played with in an Alpha Beta Omega alternate universe. Experiencing, giving into, or resisting instincts/ animalistic urges, societal clashes... Even just the world building alone can be delightfully interesting to read as well as write.

There are particular ABO structures I tend to like more than others, and I've gathered a list of those that I particularly enjoy.

Click on the link below to see the list of recommendations.

Cinders Bound by Golden Crown by AJ Constantine. Rating: E Words:121,707 Chapters: 24. Cinderella Alpha Omega AU. 18th century setting. Alpha Aziraphale, Omega Crowley. Summary: From the far end of the ballroom Prince Aziraphale’s eyes locked on Crowley as he raised his hand beseechingly. Crowley couldn’t have looked away from the prince if his life depended on it, although he was keenly aware of the increasing number of eyes joining the Prince’s to stare at him standing frozen on the dais. He suddenly knew with a clarity that brought a calm wash soothing over the jagged edges of his seething emotions that he was incapable of not answering the silent call of the bright Alpha below him. As he descended the dais, the Prince mirrored his steps, the sea of nobles between them parting as if by magic in the spreading silence of the ballroom. When they came close, the Prince gazed at Crowley’s face searchingly. “May I have this dance?”

A Fine Taste by LCwrites. Rating: E Words: 7,010 Chapters: 2. Alpha Crowley, Omega Aziraphale. Summary: When a guest repeatedly asks for a declaration of the ingredients used in his dishes, Chef Crowley is stumped. Things might become a bit clearer once he learns that famous critic A. Z. Fell has written a review of his restaurant. AJ:s notes: A delightful little treat of a story. The ABO story elements were more a byline of the universe rather than the main focus.

Just Married by @tawnyontumblr TawnyOwl95. Rated E. Chapters: 7. Words: 23,838 Alpha Crowley, Omega Aziraphale. Regency setting, falling in love after getting hastily married. Summary: Aziraphale East does not wish to get married. His mother has other ideas. After all, what other choice does a gently bred omega have? When Aziraphale persists in rejecting suitors, Mrs East takes matters into her own hands. However she has thoroughly underestimated how stubborn her youngest child can be. As does his new husband.

A Little Adjustment by @entanglednow entanglednow. Rating: E Words: 10,099 Chapters: 2. Omega Aziraphale. Regency-style setting. Summary: It's a grand event put on twice a year by the Lucifer estate, where everyone can throw social convention and expectation aside and adopt whichever manner they like. Omegas reaching a hand out to a masked stranger and requesting a dance. Alphas playing coy and demanding to be chased for the thrill of it. Betas high on the idea of being wanted so much it felt like a madness. The physical masks stay on, of course, it would be terribly bad manners to break the rules. AJ’s notes: The masquerade setting and world building is divine, as are the intimacies. The ending is so sweet I smile just thinking about it.

An Oddly Mesmerizing Display by @zehwulf ZehWulf Rating: E Words: 28,888 Chapters: 6. Alpha Aziraphale, Omega Crowley. Summary: Crowley's a sex-indifferent/favorable asexual omega fresh off suppressants and in the market for someone to help him through what promises to be a trial of a heat. His friend gets him tickets to the Spring Fling Heat Date Auction, where he can win a date with an eligible alpha (or omega). Naturally, a certain alpha with a regrettably memorable stage magic show and intriguing scent catches his eye…

An Omega's Guide to Surrender by @tawnyontumblr TawnyOwl95. Rating: E Words: 11,478 Alpha Aziraphale Omega Crowley. Chapters: 2 Summary: Crowley has not had a heat since he was a teenager. Far too busy, far too cautious. He's never really liked alphas much anyway. Well, except one. And that alpha has just made Crowley an offer he finds it rather hard to refuse.

Seared into Skin by Vagabond. Rating: E Words: 100,816 Chapters: 21. Alpha Aziraphale, Omega Crowley. Regency style setting. Summary: Anthony Crowley has avoided courtship like the devil, refusing to give into high society's idea that an Omega needs to be married by a certain age until his parents decide to remove his choice. He soon finds himself married off to a gentle, soft-spoken Alpha. Lessons and love ensue and Crowley realizes there's absolutely more to life than what he had been taught.

Time to Prey by @tawnyontumblr TawnyOwl95. Rated E. Chapters: 3. Words 8,788 This one isn't quite ABO, but I'm including it because it has a very similar theme. Aziraphale has a rabbit-like form, Crowley has a wolf-like. Summary: Aziraphale is an offering being presented at Wolf Hall for the Solstice hunt. That doesn't mean he has no choices at all. Aziraphale has his eye on the future. He knows what and who he wants, and isn't afraid to flirt for it. AJ's notes: the world building here is so intriguing and well done, and the handling of the character's emotions, instincts, and intimacies are just off the hook delightful.

[thewhumpyprintingpress]

Hello!

I was really excited to find this blog. I was wondering if there's more information about WPP itself anywhere? Reading through, I have questions about the press itself, like how are works being published (through Amazon? do you guys have an actual physical printing press? something else?), do you guys do promotion or is the main audience just followers of this blog, things like that.

Sorry if it's written somewhere and I just couldn't find it!

Hi!

We just got our start in 2022, so we are still in the process of getting things rolling. We publish our books through Draft2Digital (unfortunately we don't have our own printing press yet), as this is the easiest way for us to distribute books at this point in time. D2D allows us to distribute ebooks and print books to most of the major sales venues (Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Apple Books, etc.). For books that are more art focused (ex. zines) we use either Mixam or PrintNinja to get those printed.

Since both of the books we've published so far have been for charity, promotion has focused on this blog. But for future books, we'll be expanding promotions to outside the tumblrverse. Our tentative marketing plan is that we'll be building up a review team of bookstagrammers, booktubers, and book bloggers, and scheduling promotions with various book promotion agencies.

In the new year we'll be focusing on building up WPP. Future plans include launching an email newsletter, commissioning a professional logo, and whump merch. It's going to be a busy year!

[chronotsr]

Pre-G1 Modules, part 4...A - The Judge's Guild Roundup

Part 4a? This is one of those projects that keeps ballooning in scope forever.

Again, keeping with the theme of "trying to not get too historical", Judge's Guild was a group formed by Bob Bledsaw and Bill Owen to release DM aids, in part because then-TSR didn't think it was a viable market. Note that this is Bob Bledsaw Sr., the guy responsible for the nazi incident at Judge's Guild a few years ago was Bob Bledsaw Jr. Anyway, JG was responsible for a lot of materials ranging from setting materials, adventure modules. A lot of luminaries ultimately come from JG, including recently passed legend Jennell Jacquays, so they're a very worthwhile topic to review. I will not talk everything they put out between 1976 and G1 because I'm already planning on touching on (edit: 3 of 6) items today, so we will focus only on their for-sale, non-serial modules.

City-State of the Invincible Overlord (1977)

This is stretching the definition of module -- it's more of a setting book. CSIO is a setting supplement for, yeah, a city state of an invincible overlord. I hope you like maaaaaaaaaaaaaps! Essentially, an overlord stays above and aloof to the factional struggles of the people beneath him, roman emperor-style, and details out a bunch of characters and places within a city. It's, actually pretty good, I think a modern revision of CSIO would probably be pretty fun to play in, especially if you omitted a lot of 1970s gunk (like the frequency of slavery). It has this nice quality where it's much more brief per-location than modern city sourcebooks, but has many many varieties of the same concept. You might want a tavern, and there are so many to choose from. Here's a random assortment of buildings you can find in this book:

A park of sexy statues with a pleasure cult hiding in the rush

A 'fear shop' where the owner will go to ridiculous lengths to scare you

A GILF brothel

The tavern that Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser always go to

A siege engineer you can bribe for promotions

The map is almost, too comprehensive. I'm not sure what % of buildings are described but it's gotta be close to 20%, which is REALLY HIGH by ttrpg city standards. I'd guess that Green Ronin's Freeport is maybe 1% described. The book also has the traditional regulars of a city book (laws, sewer maps, factions) as well as the admittedly novel idea of a full advertising system to acquire hirelings. It, probably didn't merit a full page, but the idea of caring this much about where precisely those hirelings is coming from is kinda novel.

Regardless, this is an adventure module review blog, not a city review blog, so we have done our due diligence and may now proceed.

Tegel Manor (1977)

Oh boy, it's a megadungeon. Here we go. So despite that ominous cover, it's only 30 pages, so it could be worse. The essential schtick of the adventure is that there's a destitute (by noble standards) paladin who owns the deed to an extremely haunted mansion and is desperately trying to pawn the problem off on someone else. You can bully him into helping, but he's a complete coward.

The house is magically fireproofed because adventurers are just like that. A good sign, I think? Surely this won't be a tedious monster closet festival? We have a pretty standard rundown of a town and,

That's one of the most unfortunate names I've ever seen. If I was a dwarf named Cretin Nodcock, I feel like I would also not give a damn about my appearance. Or maybe work on a name change. This adventure really lavishes in its old timey words, we have a paladin described as "poltroonerous" (cowardly), a passing mention of "white wassail" (a mulled white wine), et c. Relatively little is given about the surrounding town and countryside, just enough to get us into the manor asap.

The first floor is a greatest hits of a haunted house. Animated knives, disappearing ghosts, screaming, the walls ooze GREEN SLIME, et c. Here's the stuff (across this entire dungeon) that isn't rote:

A creaky floor that gets so loud that it stuns elves' sensitive hearing while a wall crusher goes off

An animated yellow mold that looks like a sleeping woman

An animated painting of a battle that shoots arrows outward randomly

An animated painting that paints the party, and if it succeeds the party is petrified

Rust monster on flying bed action

A room of opaque gas-filled tubes that contain a variety of people, monsters, objects in animation. I bet the elf lord would have some nice things for their rescuer.

The level of haunting really goes down and it just becomes an assemblage of roughly halloween monsters in increasingly ridiculous patterns. If I was running this, I'd probably shrink the manor down into a greatest hits version of these rooms, because this is a SPRAWLING manor and it's room after room of "there is a wolf, there is a wight, there is a moldering desk". When you think of Gygax going "why would anyone want to buy a module?", this is sticking in my mind. It's not "Dwarven Glory" bland but it IS a never-ending gauntlet of monsters punctuated by silly rooms.

A rare luxury after all the room-by-room shit. Just some good ol' fashioned silliness.

Inexplicably under the house is a further dungeon-dungeon, which is mostly rat tunnels. Happily some of these maps feature little blank lines to mark your revisions from the official map, which is a nice little conceit.

I am always, always, always happy to have a new riddle to throw at my party, although I'm not so good at riddling myself.

Curiously, lich is spelled with an e at the end here, I have no idea how normal this was at the time.

Like most GMs, I have a crippling addiction to random tables for miscellaneous crap. This is a really hard to parse table but I believe how it works is:

Roll a d12 to determine what the statue does from the first list of results

Follow that result vertically down to the array of concepts

Roll a d8 and pick from that vertical list of results So for example, I rolled d12=5; d8=8. I go to 5 in the first list (Advises), follow it down vertically to the third column of results (the one that starts with Location), and index down to 8 (Directions). My magic statue advises directions to the party. What a nice guy! This table bothers me so bad that I rejiggered it real quickly in excel, because with the benefit of widescreen monitors it's pretty easy to fix:

Tegal Manor wraps with some extra resurrection rules, in case you needed more realism in your magical revivification. I think I prefer it just working, thanks.

Modron (1977)

There's honestly a stunning lack of underwater content in RPGs, I think. Underwater is such a magical location, both experientially and in mythology. One of these days I will set an adventure in one of those sets from the old 1986 Journey to the West TV show, the underwater sea dragon palace ones? They're so fucking cool. Everything is better with underwater dragon palaces.

Right. Modron. Focus.

Modron is another one of those "straddling the line between module and setting book" situations, only much smaller than CSIO. The art all looks like Prince Valliant, which by that sentence alone either means you're going to love or hate it (I hate it). Our titular Modron is a goddess, but also a temple, but also a port town. We will deal with these in order.

Goddess Modron is a river goddess who was worshipped by the town and the temple. She is implied to be, kind of like wonder woman in a weird way? She has to exist underwater, or she dies in 6 rounds (so 6 minutes), which is pretty fucking lame but I too know the struggle of dry skin. She's a fertility goddess (who isn't) and she does d20 years of damage when she lovetaps you. Tragically, she is no longer worshipped in favor of Mitra. COWARDS! LOVE YOUR RIVER/SEA GODDESSES.

Modron's Temple is very, very briefly explained. Essentially, only the oldest people in town know how to find it, via the cellar of the tavern. It's completely underwater, and a lot of mermen hang out there. The head priestess can drain your water! Google says that one love tap would exhaust you, two would probably kill you, and three would definitely kill you. It's implied in this section that a JttW-style Triton Coral Kingdom is, in fact, hanging out off the shoreline somewhere.

Town Modron is your standard raided port town. There was once two gods worshiped here, then it got messed up by raiders and ECONOMICS and some light civil war. It's okay, ya boi Invincible Overlord is sending you a bailout, making him a better autocrat than most living politicians. Apparently they have a pet seamonster who serves the overlord directly? Awesome! We need more pet kaiju in the world.

The actual area-by-area is pretty blasé. The local rulers are varyingly competent (the king is competent but a huge sex pest), there's a guy who takes you on guided tours to, anywhere in the multiverse? Somehow the blacksmith has figured out how to rustproof armor, which will really piss off your rust monsters. The book makes a point to say that the jailor is a particular bastard, so Judge's Guild says ACAB? Unlikely but a very funny concept.

Tragically, we end our adventure without a map of the palace, the temple, the other temple, or anything. I don't believe this is the first supplement to contain Mitra as JG's most famous god (well, Mitra is a real-life god anyhow), but this is certainly the first adventure-ish module to feature him. Dark Tower is quite a ways away!

A poison coral table is, one of those things you would only ever see in early DND. That is so unbelievably specific. The book ends with many such cases, there's a pearl randomizer that doesn't include any fun magic effects or anything, merely linking to Supplement II. Boo!

So originally when writing this, I had intended that part 4 be a whole unit, but then I realized that I was going to have to include these semi-adventures in the roundup. So to my great shame, we will continue this later.

[disparition]

Why do you pick parts of California you do for In.A.Walled.City?

How do you come up with concepts like a mile wide highway nation that exists in the legacy of a Amazon delivery driver turned communist general?

There's so much imagination to extrapolate what these places should look like, does it just come from looking around and earnestly thinking about what comes next for the places we live in?

Thanks!

Yes, I spend a lot of time thinking about the future of the places I travel to. I've always been into speculative fiction of various kinds as well as more grounded theorizing about the future shapes of human societies, and when I started touring regularly I began thinking a lot about this in a more physical and direct sense.

I noticed for example that a lot of strip malls and outdoor shopping centers throughout the US - especially on the west coast - have a physical structure that can be easily converted into a small fortified community. Many of them even have decorative watchtowers and borrow the aesthetics of medieval and early modern fortifications, even if these are very superficial. This comes up in several places in the story and is part of the origin of the name, but the first one I thought about (briefly referenced in episodes 5 and 8, and it will come up again much later) was the Tejan outlet mall just north of the grapevine pass, which would be a strategically crucial area for a number of reasons.

One idea for the series came from reading a firsthand account of Napoleon's Russian campaign, written by his aide de camp Philippe Henri de Segur. It was a fascinating and very personal portrait of a huge humanmade disaster. So the first sketch I wrote, which will not appear in the series until episode 17 (Mia Marisol and the Last Governor of California) is a similarly personal account written by an aide to one of the most famous generals of the period. She was a UPS driver by the way, not Amazon. Marisol is not the same kind of figure as Napoleon and her career takes a different turn, but she is a similarly divisive and transformative figure of her time.

Another idea, for the setting, came in the form of trying to reconcile the history and present of Judaism and various Jewish communities, to address our cycle of being both victims and perpetrators of violence and oppression and nationalism. This is the core of episode 2, as well as the final section of episode 6, and is the reason that the story is set in the Hebrew year 6000 (or, the 23rd century according to the Gregorian calendar). It is a theme that will be interwoven throughout the work, and is the other part of the meaning of the name.

The first actual story I wrote in this world was what became episode 8. The first line of the episode, "first it was Borders, then it was Barnes&Noble, then it was nothing", came to me in the middle of the night and I had to get up and start writing, and The Historian was the eventual result. That episode is largely based on my own experiences in the world of publishing (I worked for Barnes&Noble.com managing their online community and customer reviews, then later for a book publishing house that was part of the Disney/ABC conglomerate) as well as my own predictions about future intersections of literature, fandom, and religion. Episode 4, The Marketer, is also part of that particular thread.

Starting in late 2020, due to a number of family crises, I had to drive between LA and SF every week or two. It was during these drives that I came up with the idea of a road as a nation in and of itself and a culture of constant travellers who maintain and regulate that road. The story of that nation is arguably the most "gimmicky" episode since it's about the future of interstate 5, it's episode 5, and musically speaking it's in 5/4. It was also the most fun to work on.

As you might guess, each episode takes a very long time to make. But I am still working on the next one. Thank you very much for listening!

[13docwriting]

So I'll start with the fact that I am, indeed, a fan of Chibnall's era. I am an even bigger fan of the 13th Doctor. I'll also start with the fact that I quite literally grew up with RTD's writing and loved Ten with all my heart. But now I am an adult and some of RTD's writing has left me a bit scared. Here's my "live streaming" review on The Star Beast. SPOILERS BELOW!

I'm going in order of how I processed things, so it's gonna be chaotic. My first essay is this: You know why this post is so long? It's because we're not livestreaming things anymore. I'm not immediately with other fans in real time, typing out our little posts. I'm quite literally doing this at my leisure. I'll miss watching DW live. Now then, in order! 1. The music? Ten out of ten. I have always loved Gold's compositions and he did not let us down. And this opinion is only being generated from the new(er) theme song. Which leads me to...

2. Look at the B U D G E T. Even the opening credits has a budget that you can just FEEL. Those stars/galaxies? Very nice... And then I have to chuckle over the low level lighting / 2000s era effects of David Tennant's full profile voiceover of Donna and his story.

3. Him taking the boxes, seeing Donna's face, and slowly putting the boxes back is an RTD special and I LOVE that kind of comedy. It just makes me chuckle. And then him having a full blown panic over hearing Donna shout "Rose!" which... 4. Having these little call back moments feels rather bitter since we're calling this a reboot of the show. UNLESS the reboot is when Nucti starts up? But the fact that I'm confused just shows how bitter I should be. Again, my Chibnall love is showing. I don't believe in yet another reboot for DW, but that's a marketing thing over anything else... I hope. 5. I'm glad the 2000s Rose/Doctor shipping era lives strong through the name Rose. I know those fans are going to be happy and they deserve it. 6. NOW... Donna having a family. Okay. I'll have a separate post but... Does anyone else think that Donna having a husband just doesn't fit for her? Especially with her memories erased? Idk, I just never envisioned Donna getting married after the whole Lance thing. BUT I'm glad she's happy and the husband seems so nice. 7. Donna giving up that lottery money? Also strange considering she lost her memories. The first time we meet Donna we get this feeling that she's a bit shallow, which makes sense because she has to develop as a character. That was her character development so here KEEPING the money would have made more sense here. Which...

8. Rose. That's all. She's great!

9. Hey, can't help but notice, but when did the 14th Doctor have time to make a new screwdriver, huh? What gives? AND - AND there's not a single hint of 13's sonic on there. HMM. What the heck!

10. FORGOT SOMETHING. Whatever the line was "that says mistress" "Oh, catch up, will you?" I don't know how to take in this scene quite yet, but it's making me pause. It felt... Off kilter. Maybe cause I love 13 so much, I don't know. There's always callbacks to other faces when the Doctor first regenerations, but this felt... Wrong? Also, TEE HEE my mind went to Missy IMMEDIATELY and I love that little connection my fic writing brain is going wild.

11. WHY DOES UNIT HAVE SO MUCH MONEY???? Look at this uniforms, holy cow! I almost don't like it? Like, they're an underground agency. WE JUST SAW THEM GET DESTROYED BY CYBERMEN IN THE POWER OF THE DOCTOR. Are we just ignore that entire episode or...?

12. Donna not being able to keep a job? Yeah, THAT one I believe haha.

13. "I will burn down the world for you, darling" says Donna Noble to her transgender kid. WHICH IS AMAZING, WHICH MADE ME SMILE SO WIDE I WAS HAVING A PARTY IN MY BRAIN. There's my Donna! 14. "Gramps used to talk about flying saucers" oh god my heart. I teared up a little, not going to lie. Wilf, I think about you every single day. You made the Doctor the person he is today.

15. MEEP IS SO CUTE. OH WOW. I know "evil" is coming but SO CUTE RIGHT NOW.

16. To go from some excellent animatronics from the Meep to whatever those alien, fly things are was HILARIOUS. What, we'd run out of money for those costume's? Were they meant to look like a typical RTD alien back in the 2000s? How does that work?

17. WHAT THE ACTUAL FLYING FUCK WAS THE SONIC DOING. Wait, did Disney give the sonic some magical powers? Why are we suddenly writing in the air? How are we getting readouts of the ship from the sonic like that? Could it do that before? Why would we not do that before? I'm dying that's so funny.

18. Shirley seems cool!!! I hope we get more of her! And I love the nod to PROPER representation. Chibs did a good job of that as well. Edit: REAL representation! Good on RTD. The scene with the stairs and she says "don't make me the problem"... I am not a wheelchair user but I do hope that was properly done. 19. "I absolutely love her [Donna]" LOOK AT 14 HAVING FEELINGS! Aww, I hope 15 follows through with the feelings! 11, 12, and 13 have been so locked up, so scared to love... Having a Doctor that's ready to loudly embrace their love for things would be such a good character development. (My fear would be RTD ripping that away in the most tragic way possible, but that's a future problem I suppose).

20. I'm at the scene where Rose is talking to the Meep in the shed, and just, again, THE MUSIC. We did have some good musical moments in 13's era but, even I have to admit, nothing as pretty as this. It really is something, round of applause once again.

21. LISTEN. L I S T E N. I don't condone slapping the Doctor. I don't. In fact, it's wrong. It's very wrong. And you can't slap 13, can you? So slapping 14 shouldn't make sense. It's the definition of sexist. It's just not something you should do. BUT. B U T. Jackie's "stitch this, mate" is always in my head and now THIS "here we go again" after Sylvia gives the Doctor a good slap... I laughed, okay? It was funny! But really, in the good year of 2023, there shouldn't be comedy like that. That joke should have died. BUT I LAUGHED. So I'm to blame as well.

22. "Never mind about the ferret from mars." I LOVE the mars callback from Donna, thank you very much.

23. Kate looking after Wilf damn near brought tears to my eyes. Kate, you are the real hero of the DW universe. Thank you.

24. This is... This is gonna be another post. But. Okay. So. The whole "you're assuming he as a pronoun". Right. Okay. I know groups of people that talk like that. Both online and in person. Personal life spoiler, I work(ed) in musical theater. I've seen it all. I, personally, do not like this whole... "Let's be really obvious about it" thing. And also highly believe in someone else first telling me, when it fits, what their pronouns are. Having someone pull the defensive "YOU ASSUMED" crap doesn't work because humans don't think like that. It's a whole other rant, but yeah. This felt forced and I hate when shows do that. Representation is important but FORCING that representation doesn't help.

25. what's the. what's the sonic doing. what. how'd it. we got lines in the air. we got unbelievable shield. we. he waved it like a wand and now. what the. how'd. (Yo, not me head cannoning that this is 13 banging around in 14's head demanding that they have a better way to protect their friends. Love it). I WILL HAVE A LOT MORE THOUGHTS ON THIS.

26. DW has money now. That will continue to blow my mind.

27. "This is a sonic screwdriver and if it's good at one thing, it's resonating concrete". Oh yeah, Doctor? I'd like to bring forth you, never once, being able to do it. Not once! (And now it's good at creating magical shields and complex, alien holograms, but that's point #25)

28. Where'd in hell's name did he get that wig and how soon can Donna throw it out a window?

29. MEEP YOU - YOU UTTER AHOLE. Man, it was SO CUTE

30. O k a y. I take back, holy crap what point am I on? I take back point #7. So there's some of the Doctor left in her, eh? That's why! I dig that. I really, really dig that. Sorry for being a downer, that was my mistake.

31. I too can come up with technobabble bullcrap that means nothing. I sometimes think that's RTD's biggest failing, his incessant need to over describe things. EDIT. JEEZ, a good five minutes later as we're STILL talking gibberish.

32. Hey, I see you "glass wall between Donna and the Doctor" and raise you "glass wall between Wilf and the Doctor". OW. I demand emotional compensation!

33. Listen, I just got over 13 keeping every. single. emotion inside of her. She never raised her voice, she never really cried, she never had a chance to just scream and yell and be angry at the universe. The fact that there's 14 RIGHT HERE, screaming, because to save Donna, he has to lose her YET AGAIN. Just angry and devastated and grieving... It's a stunning scene, it's a scene that makes sense, but my 13 loving little heart says that this is 13's moment to be angry and it was taken from her.

34. Also, ha, I know Disney bought DW, but did we just "Winter Soldier" Donna Noble. We gave her trigger words to keep her memories at bay? Really?

35. "Hold on a minute," said in Ten's/Fourteenth's voice... Was that.. Was that ELVEN'S theme music while Donna was being, well, Time Lady Donna? Because that was... That was GOLDEN. How amazing is that? What a great idea!

36. You MONSTER, RTD, making Fourteen hold Donna the same way he held the Master? What the hell is that about?

37. The.. The nonbinary, but binary. I... It's... Something! Okay, I'll get there. I'll have a post about it. Maybe. But. Yeah, it's something!

38. DOES UNIT HAVE AVENGERS *cough* sorry it's been a while for Marvel me *cough* STARK TOWER. WAS THAT STARK TOWER? Damn, Disney, you really did bring us back to superwholock Avenger's "Clint in the vents" era, huh?

39. "It's a shame you're not a woman anymore, because she would have understood... Something a male presenting Time Lord will never understand." You can't... You can't do the whole "nonbinary" thing and that just immediately point out gender like that. What. The defeats the entire purpose. The whole point you're trying to make is that gender DOESN'T matter, and yet... And the Doctor has always, always been nonbinary. I refer to the Doctor as "they" when speaking as a collective whole, and many of us have done that. I use pronouns when talking about specific Doctors because humans have always used pronouns. Again, 11 and 13 have made mention that gender has NEVER mattered to them. I just... You can't be poking a bear and then expecting the bear to not to come after you if you've changed the poking object from a stick to a teaser.

40. I gotta laugh that Rose and Donna had the most peaceful "regeneration" we've ever seen. Somewhere in there, a Doctor or two is screaming lol.

41. Oh... The TARDIS is ugly. DON'T HIT ME. STOP HITTING ME. I MEAN It. Not, for real though, Oh my god, what. Why. The colors. Or lack of colors, really. What the fuck. Where's the... Where's the personality? Where's the sass? I've loved every single TARDIS change but THIS... This is a hard one to swallow.

42. The TARDIS having an shit fit over Donna spilling coffee on her is WONDERFUL. That's so funny to me. With everything she's been through with 13, that was just the best way for her to get her revenge! All in all, strange episode, yeah? I mean, what WAS that plot? It was really more of setup for the next episode, and double really meant to reunite ten and Donna, which was well done, but also... Why? It just felt a bit all over the place but very much cushioned by nostalgia. I'm done now. My fingers HURT. As always, and as I say in all my fics, I'm here if you want to chat. Reblog this, PM me, tag me in stuff!

[literary-illuminati]

2024 Book Review #5 – The Tusks of Extinction by Ray Nayler

I read Nayler’s The Mountain in the Sea last year and, despite thinking it was ultimately kind of a noble failure, liked it more than enough to give his new novella a try. It didn’t hurt that the premise as described in the marketing copy sounded incredible. I can’t quite say it was worth it, but that’s really only because this novella barely cost less than the 500-page doorstopper I picked up at the same time and I need to consider economies here – it absolutely lived up to the promise of its premise.

The book is set a century and change into the future, when a de-extinction initiative has gotten funding from the Russian government to resurrect the Siberian mammoth – or, at least, splice together a chimera that’s close-enough and birth it from african elephant surrogate mothers – to begin the process of restoring the prehistoric taiga as a carbon sink. The problem: there’s no one on earth left who knows how wild mammoth are supposed to, like, live- the only surviving elephants have been living in captivity for generations. Plop the ressurectees in the wilderness and they’ll just be very confused and anxious until they starve. The solution: the technology to capture a perfect image of a human mind is quite old, and due to winning some prestigious international award our protagonist – an obsessive partisan of elephant conservation – was basically forced to have her mind copied and put in storage a few months before she was killed by poachers.

So the solution of who will raise and socialize these newly created mammoths is ‘the 100-year-old ghost of an elephant expert, after having her consciousness reincarnated in a mammoth’s body to lead the first herd as the most mature matriarch’. It works better than you’d expect, really, but as it turns out she has some rather strong opinions about poachers, and isn’t necessarily very understanding when the solution found to keep the project funded involves letting some oligarch spend a small country’s GDP on the chance to shoot a bull and take some trophies.

So this is a novella, and a fairly short one – it’s densely packed with ideas but the length and the constraints of narrative mean that they’re more evoked or presented than carefully considered. This mostly jumps out at me with how the book approaches wildlife conservation – a theme that was also one of the overriding concerns of Mountain where it was considered at much greater length. I actually think the shorter length might have done Nayler a service here, if only because it let him focus things on one specific episode and finish things with a more equivocal and ambiguous ending than the saccharine deux ex machina he felt compelled to resort to in Mountain.

The protection of wildlife is pretty clearly something he’s deeply invested in – even if he didn’t outright say so in the acknowledgements, it just about sings out from the pages of both books. Specifically, he’s pretty despairing about it – both books to a great extent turn around how you convince the world at large to allow these animals to live undisturbed when all the economic incentives point the other way, a question he seems quite acutely aware he lacks a good answer to.

Like everyone else whose parents had Jurassic Park on VHS growing up, I’ve always found the science of de-extinction intensely fascinating – especially as it becomes more and more plausible every day. This book wouldn’t have drawn my eye to nearly the degree it did if I don’t remember the exact feature article I’d bet real money inspired it about a group of scientists trying to do, well, exactly the same thing as the de-extinctionists do in the book (digital resurrection aside). The book actually examines the project with an eye to practicalities and logistics – and moreover, portrays it as at base a fundamentally heroic, noble undertaking as opposed to yet another morality tale about scientific hubris. So even disregarding everything else it had pretty much already won me over just with that.

The book’s portrayal of the future and technology more generally is broader and less carefully considered, but it still rang truer than the vast majority of sci fi does – which is, I suppose, another way of saying that it’s a weathered and weather-beaten world with new and better toys, but one still very fundamentally recognizable as our own, without any great revolutions or apocalyptic ruptures in the interim. Mosquito's got CRISPR’d into nonexistence and elephants were poached into extinction outside of captivity, children play with cybernetically controlled drones and the president of the Russian Federation may or may not be a digital ghost incarnated into a series of purpose-grown clones, but for all that it’s still the same shitty old earth. It’s rather charming, really.

[bubblesandgutz]

Every Record I Own - Day 807: The Rolling Stones Hackney Diamonds

This marks the end of my Stones posts. And given their age, this album may come to mark the end of The Stones as a recording entity. And as far as I'm concerned, we're going out on a high note.

Even the diehards will admit that The Rolling Stones peaked decades ago. And the diehards will also probably agree that by the time the '80s were in full swing, The Stones were a legacy act with little new to offer. No one is gonna canonize Undercover or Dirty Work. There were still hints of their magic sprinkled throughout their work through the '90s and into the first half of the '00s, but really, people held onto their love for The Stones based on their earlier classics and their continuing reputation for putting on a solid live show.

Maybe there was some sort of creative rut for the Stones. Some loss of purpose. Some struggle to hold onto their original sound while moving forward. I've been playing music long enough to know the tricky balance of pleasing the old fans while keeping things fresh and exciting. The Stones had become a nostalgia brand, and that brand generated a lot of money. Were they putting out new albums to keep the merchandising and ticket-selling machine in the public eye? Or was there some genuine creative joy embedded in those later records that just wasn't translating? Everyone knows Mick and Keith's friendship deteriorated over the years. Was that rift behind the waning quality of their albums?

And then there's the big question: did the world need a new Stones album in 2023? It'd been eighteen years since their last batch of new material. While there were defenders of A Bigger Bang (2005), it didn't convince anyone that the band was back in top form.

I was skeptical. But on a long solo drive across Eastern Oregon last fall, I decided to give Hackney Diamonds a listen. I'd already listened to Exile on the drive, followed it up with Tattoo You, and figured this might actually be my last chance to listen to a brand new Rolling Stones album while they were still active. I put on Hackney Diamonds as I drove across the high desert and, to my surprise, it sounded fucking great.

No Stones album has ever hit me on first listen until Hackney Diamonds. The band doesn't try to do anything new. The production is big and shiny, but it still sounds like a real band. Jagger doesn't address our tumultuous world like he might have back in the '60s, and maybe the album's odes to turbulent relationships are a little simplistic. But maybe there's actually more there than we hear on that first listen. Are "Angry" and "Bite My Head Off" just your typical songs about having a spat with a lover? Or is it about battling the public's expectations? Is "Depending On You" another forlorn love song? Or is it actually a plea to Richards?

Curiosity also drove me to read the Pitchfork review for Hackney Diamonds, who unsurprisingly shat on the band for "acting their image rather than their age." The remaining paragraphs go on to rail against a wealthy band wringing more money out of middle aged men. I'd counter that people as rich as Jagger and Richards don't really need to take the time to write another album and take another year off from their private lives to go on tour just to be a little bit richer in their eighties. And pandering to middle aged men seems no less noble than pandering to the twenty-something youth market that Pitchfork depends on for advertising revenue (and hate to break it to ya, Pitchfork, but your initial fanbase is middle aged now).

Is it shameful to grow old? Is it shameful for Mick and Keith to keep doing the thing they've done for 60 years? Is it shameful to love what you do and to try to hold onto it for as long as possible? Sure, maybe at some point the magic ebbed away, but the band always had their highs and lows. And if Mick and Keith drifted apart, perhaps the passing of Charlie Watts reminded them that their days were numbered, and they could either pack it in and become mired in the rusty stasis of old age, or they could go out in a blaze of glory.

I refuse to think art and music are creative pursuits that only belong to the young. Sure, I wanna hear music made by excited young people, but I also wanna hear music made by people my age. And I also want to hear music made by people with decades of experience who know exactly what they want, exactly how to do it, and how to have a fucking blast in process.

And that's exactly what Hackney Diamonds sounds like. If the story ends here, then it provides a satisfying narrative arc to the history of The Stones. Excellent work, Glimmer Twins.

[lightningboltreader]

Char, you know I love you, which is why I'm coming to you with this slightly cursed yet topical ask: rank the Twilight movies from favourite to least favourite and justify your answers 💜

Ok, let's rumble (affectionate) -

Twilight

I am a fool for pining and the first book delivers. There's a delicious build-up of snarling, huffing and angst before the will they/won't they collides with lust, infatuation and then danger. I was FED. My paperback barely survived the rereads before I clung to the movie. Then I quickly replaced my hc's with each actor as they were announced and loved nearly everyone. The Cullens are a dream vampire family, their house and cars a shiny bonus. Plus baseball outfits. Iykyk. And yes, the soundtrack still fucking slaps. Supermassive 10/10. We'll always agree there.

Breaking Dawn

I wish I could break this in two. Wait, it's my review. I shall! The first: Breaking, the steamy slayyyy! The literal bed-breaking passionate destruction and oceanfront honeymoon bliss were a satisfying payoff for the build-up in Twilight. This is the fantastical, happily ever after shit my teenage brain craved. The pregnancy experience was about as much as I knew about pregnancy, so perfect level of detail. Bella has to become a vampire to save her family? So relatable. And Dawn: The dawning of a new era, where mother and child learn to love, where mother makes the noble sacrifice, where racing through the woods and hopping off tall trees is suburban bliss, where your friend and former love interest falls in fucking love with your kid. I stg, this was a true testament to my own new relationship. The man who stayed, who listened, who loved me and poured wine for me while I literally SCREAMED and SHOUTED at my teen rated book proved a level of devotion that neither Edward nor Jacob will ever be capable of. Still, I place the whole book at #2 because it conjured far more emotions than "UGH," unlike three and four.

But first, an interlude.

Midnight Sun

Edwards POV, my beloved. While Twilight + Breaking Dawn holds all my teenage dreams, this origin story companion is a fanfic indulgence I imagine Stefanie wrote simply to clear her comment box. "Could a dead, frozen heart beat again? It felt as though mine were about to." It's satisfying because Edward made me swoon but not particularly insightful, unless you're in the market for a little Volvo coupe. The car and driver edition of the series, if you will.

New Moon

My boy drives away, sob! Edward peels out of snowy Forks in a cloud of angst, flinching jaw muscles and puppy-dog eyes in the best interest of his clumsy DANGER MAGNET. He's so dreamy! She's so dumb! I'm so sad! Sweet, furry Jacob lights up our world with his bronzed glow and motorcycle tricks, but the infatuation is short-lived (sweet, attractive boy who only wants your happiness? ew.) because hallucinations of a cute, fanged control freak are better. Until he's slapped around by the Volturi. Love the Volturi though - the name, the aesthetic, the evil popeness vibe - good stuff. If only there were more Volturi and less woe.

Eclipse

Danger, Danger! Victoria wants to kill Bella and destroy the Cullens. But worse than that, Bella has to decide between Jacob and Edward. Is she IN LOVE or does she just like-like supernatural dudes who want to make her their property? Who loves her more? Is it like, too embarrassing to get married at graduation? Do I like have any friends? Like, oh my god, what should I do????? Is there anyone on earth with harder decisions to make? CRINGE. She's insufferable and I lost centimeters on my molars in the repeated gnash. The worst.

The End!

[malicedafirenze]

I just finished re-reading Silver Under Nightfall by Rin Chupeco and I'm going to make it everyone's problem because this book is so good and so underrated

I wrote a more conventional review of this book after my first readthrough this April, so if you want more concrete info and slightly less incoherent gushing, head over here please.

What to love about it

SO many of the fantasy romance books I read end up being unsatisfying to me because they either have a main romance that feels cheap because it moves too fast, prose or writing style that grates on me, or because plot and action just take a total back seat because the MCs need to get their rocks off.

Not this one. I mainly gush about the romance (because hello it's a bisexual MMF throuple and the dynamic especially between MMC and the male love interest is deliciously hostile for much of the book) but a core reason for why the romance in this book works so fucking well for me is because there's so much quality going on all around it.

The plot is about a strange new species of vampiric creature that's attacking people and villages. In examining what's going on, main character Remy gets involved with two powerful vampire nobles and finds out disturbing things about himself and his family. (keeping that very vague for spoiler reasons)

The MC is a vampire hunter who's excellent at what he does but looked down upon by everyone for a variety of political and gossipy reasons, he's also traumatized by a shitty af father and the dangerous expectations/situations that shitty father has laid upon him.

Relationship dynamics

Remy meets the two love interests very quickly in the story, and realizes to his dismay that the two of them are engaged. He initially dislikes Malekh, king of the third court of vampires, but is infatuated with Xiaodan, his fiancee and heir to a vampire court herself. In travelling with them, his emotions grow more complicated.

Between Remy and Malekh, you have these enemies-to-lovers vibes, though they're mostly on the same side but pissed about it. There's an exchange between them later in the book that goes “It’s just that you’re always so hard to read, I never know if you want to fight me or fuck me” - “it’s both, Pendergast. It’s always been both.” and man if that's not a fucking mood, I love it.

The book isn't the spiciest thing I've ever read, but it has a handful of incredibly hot and detailed scenes, that includes some cruel teasing, some very desperate mutual blood drinking, some angry flirting while sparring and more. All in all you know what the three of them are getting up to but also I may need to write fanfic for a few 'missing' scenes.

Reach and readership

Silver Under Nightfall has a bit over 3000 ratings on goodreads. The only other bi poly vampire book I also know and love (A Dowry of Blood by S.T. Gibson) has over 40'000.

Some of the popular queer fantasy books of recent years like The Unbroken and The Jasmine Throne have 9k and 22k respectively. I am not sure why Silver Under Nightfall has not gotten anywhere near as much love or attention as these books - it'll be a complex combo of marketing reasons and mainstream appeal I assume - but I cannot help but want to shout from the rooftops that SUN deserves so much more love and attention than it's getting.

For me, SUN sits perfectly in that sweet spot where it is more "fantasy with a romance subplot" rather than "romance" but also doesn't skimp out on the sexy bits. And I personally absolutely fucking love it for that, but

So there you go: READ THIS BOOK IT IS SO GOOD PLEASE. Is it perfect? No probably not. On my reread I noticed a few stylistic hiccups and I find the pacing works much better in the first two thirds of the book, with everything happening a bit fast in the last third or so.

Is it for everyone? No probably also not. But if well written queer poly sexy vampire romance with a mostly serious tone but dry humor appeals to you as a concept, you absolutely should read this one.

Also if there's anything like it - as mentioned, A Dowry of Blood is the only thing I know of that comes remotely close imo in terms of being a queer poly sexy dark vampire story - then please do tell me about it.

If you've read this book and want to talk about it, my DMs are always open <3

[protoslacker]

Who's afraid of new ideas?

Last Monday after work I had a basket of laundry with me to take to the Laundromat. It was really hot and I thought to buy a book to read while doing the laundry. So I headed over to the Barnes & Noble bookstore.

To be honest it's been at least ten years since I've been in a bookstore. After browsing for a bit, I wondered with my tongue in cheek: "Where's the communist section?" At which point my phone started buzzing warning of an imminent thunderstorm and with that the sky opened up. I headed over to the cafe section and bought a $3.50 lemon soda and hooked up to the store WiFi. I opened this blog to look for books that I've mentioned here.

They did have a copy of Christina Sharpe's Ordinary Notes. I was happy to hold the book in my hands because it very beautiful. But at $35 it was more than I wanted to spend. I did pick up Mariame Kaba's We Do This 'Til We Free Us to buy. Otherwise I didn't find any of the titles that I gleaned from the blog. I was particularly disappointed not to find Hanif Abdurraqib's There's Always This Year: On Basketball and Ascension. I was pleased to see a good review of the book by Gene Seymour at Bookforun later in the week.

Part of what put it in my head to visit the store was seeing new articles about Barnes & Noble's turnaround from the brink of extinction. This Axios explainer lays out the CEO's strategy well. One of the key things was getting the number of returns to publishers way down. When James Daunt took the helm Barnes & Noble was accepting payments from publishers to promote book titles with the vast majority of the books returned. Now less than 10% of the book are returned to publishers and the goal is halve that.

I was surprised by the number of titles in the store which were written fifty or more years ago. A part of the MAGA resentment is a weird nostalgia which seems to serve to make their churlishness seem respectable. But it struck me that many of the titles I saw were ones which would be deemed liberal. Since 2008 most all of us are going along with the notion to "extend and pretend."

I've loved newsstands and bookshops since I was a kid. They were places where I discovered new ideas, There are still books wonderful new books . being published. Alas retail chains haven't found it profitable to market them.