#Noble Markets review

[moviesandmania]

THE MAD DOCTOR OF MARKET STREET Reviews and overview

  ‘Genius – or fiend?’ The Mad Doctor of Market Street is a 1942 sci-fi horror film about a scientist who flees after his bizarre experiments are revealed and becomes shipwrecked on a tropical island… The movie was directed by Joseph H. Lewis (So Dark the Night; Invisible Ghost) from a screenplay written by Al Martin (Invasion of the Saucer Men; Invisible Ghost). The Universal Pictures…

[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.

[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.

[astrology-bf]

The Pathos of Things

Chapter 1: In Spring Sunlight

General | WoL/Hancock | ~4.2k words | CW: Stormblood Spoilers

AO3 | Index | Next Chapter

“In these spring days when tranquil light encompasses the four directions, Why do the blossoms yet scatter with uneasy hearts?” Ki no Tomonori, ひさかたの Hisakata no

In the employ of the richest man in all Eorzea (and possibly all Hydaelyn) there was among the many gentlefolk a man who, though he was not of any noble birth, was favored beyond all the rest.

So great was the confidence invested in him by his master that the man was given charge of his affairs in the far lands beyond the eastern seas. They had their methods of communication, naturally, but the vast distance between Ul’dah and Hingashi meant the gentleman often had broad discretion when it came to executing his employer’s star-spanning plans.

If Lolorito Nanarito was something of a merchant-king, then young Hancock Fitzgerald was no less than a prince. And the prince of the East Aldenard Trading Company was ever-dutiful when it came to securing the advantage of its chairman.

Such was the reason for his present heading: to the Shiokaze Hostelry, down by the docks of Kugane. It was a fair day, and though the last remnants of winter had faded into memory under a warm spring sun, the air still carried a light chill brought by a southwesterly over the Ruby Sea. Some of the city-goers found it pleasant, others muttered that it had no right to be so cold given the season... but all thankful that it kept the clouds over the Ruby Price from staining an otherwise pristine blue sky.

Ordinarily, Hancock liked to take his time on days like this. It was perfect for a stroll down to the markets, or through the gardens, or even simply taking in the salty air from the great bridge spanning the city’s center. But the direction of the wind ensured that those he had been tasked to greet on their arrival in Hingashi would almost certainly make port in timely fashion, and it was critical that Hancock be the first to greet them when they made landfall in the Far East. Haste was necessary.

Even so, the merchant chose to make his way on foot; taking a brisk but steady walk down through the market of Kogane Dori, rather than traveling by aetheryte to the Tenkonto Plaza. He’d left sufficient time for it, being easily able to calculate the time it took to disembark down to the minute (and the gil); and even if it was a bit of stolen pleasure, Hancock could justify the walk as giving him the chance to think.

It was an opportunity to run over the many facts that his nearly eidetic memory had gleaned from his employer’s dossiers regarding the Scions of the Seventh Dawn; facts with which he’d need to arm himself, if he had even the remotest chance of making his master’s hospitality more attractive than holding on to grudges - which were admittedly quite justified, if everything he'd read was true.

Hancock’s pace was even and his hands hung loosely at his sides as he passed by the clustering of people at the city's market boards. His eyes were hidden by his red-tinted spectacles, as always, masking his habit of frequently glancing to the sides with the occasional lingering of his gaze on passing folk of possible interest. To onlookers he merely had a calm and thoughtful look, though a few faint furrows could be seen etching his brow as he reviewed what might be useful.

Names, dates, places… even banal facts like preferred foods and what entertainment might be pleasing to them. They were certainly a curiously diverse group, based on the files: two Elezen prodigies from Sharlayan and grandchildren of Louisoix Leveilleur himself, an Ala Mhigan woman who had until recently been masquerading as her departed sister, a Lalafellin woman from Ul’dah who Hancock had been warned not to underestimate, and…

No less than the Warrior of Light, himself.

Hancock’s chin rose slightly as he crested the red-painted arch which bridged the two halves of the city. To his right, the graceful spire of the Tenkonto gleamed in cyan crystal as it acted as a beacon for those traveling by magic, while to his left the statue of Lord Zuiko shone with burnished verdigris under Azeyma’s radiant face. It was a sight he’d seen more than a hundred times before, but now it seemed a little fresher to him. Less a familiar vista, and more a sunlit prelude to an uncertain but exciting meeting with a myth made out of flesh, rather than carved in crystal or sculpted in bronze. A myth... but also a man.

The merchant’s mind began to loop upon the dossier of Ifan Kaleid as he descended from the bridge’s peak, lingering upon the details of his early life in Thanalan. An early life which coincided with his own, in terms of years, and though Ifan was raised outside the city proper he was for all intents and purposes Ul’dahn… just like Hancock. And, much like the prince of the East Aldenard Trading Company, the Warrior of Light had within his calling obtained favor beyond all the rest - despite having no blood family to gift him rank or fortune. What he’d earned, it seemed, were the dividends of his own virtues, hard work, and a willingness to take a risk when the rewards were worth it. In short, Ifan’s life read like that of a man who Hancock Fitzgerald was more than a little keen to meet in person.

So keen, in fact, that his eyes began to drift away from where he was going.

Not far, but enough that his attention slipped and he failed to take notice of a man leaving the hostelry who paying even less attention to his heading than the gold-haired merchant. Hancock caught himself at the last moment, but he couldn't prevent his right shoulder from lightly colliding with the man's bicep.

The stranger let out a rough grunt, then turned an irate gaze towards Hancock.

“Watch it!” he snapped, issuing an irritated scoff. He was a local, by his garb, and one a little far into his cups if the color in his cheeks was anything to go by.

Hancock straightened up immediately as his expression shifted to a calm, respectful smile. He gave the man a polite bow at the waist, choosing not to point out that neither of them had been paying attention.

“Apologies, my good sir,” he said.

The man merely returned a sneer. He leaned towards Hancock with his lips parted, an insult clearly ready on his tongue… then paused as caught sight of the pair of sword-wielding men standing near the hostelry’s entrance. The blood-red cloth of their haori, made all the more vivid by their white hakama, was enough of a reminder.

Instead he gave a simple huff, and let his cursing go unvoiced as he eyed Hancock up and down contemptuously.

“…Ijin.” The word was dripping with barely concealed derision, made even more obvious by the curt nod the Hingan gave him before turning and departing.

Hancock bowed again, but both it and the brief frown which twitched its way across his face both went unnoticed. He didn’t dwell on it too long, however; he took in a slow breath, spared another moment to make sure his irritation wasn’t showing on his features, and then turned to make his way into the large, open entrance of his destination.

Shiokaze Hostelry was as busy as could be expected given the season and the time of day. The air was filled with both the smells and sounds of folk from nearly every corner of the Three Great Continents taking their ease, set against the salty breeze and distant cries of gulls wafting in from the establishment’s harbor-side entrance. Though most patrons went about their business on the hostelry’s ground floor, the upper floors were still busy with folk seated or standing… watching, too, from the high vantage point - as if the inn were in truth a disguised theater in the round.

But it was the group of foreigners who stood by the harbor-side entrance who immediately caught Hancock’s eye. Five of them, speaking among themselves as they gaze up in wonder at the hostelry: a pair of adolescent Elezen twins with pale hair and a preference for red and blue respectively, a Lalafellin woman wearing a red cap, a blonde Highlander with strong arms and scarlet attire, and a bearded, brown-haired Midlander arrayed in white.

Hancock let out a quiet sigh of relief and indulged a faintly smug cast to his smile at his good timing, before he descended to the ground floor of the hostelry and made his way towards the Scions of the Seventh Dawn.

The Lalafellin woman - Tataru Taru, Hancock assumed - had her back turned towards him as she was speaking to one of the twins with an airy, teasingly dismissive tone.

“-and a tavern is a tavern, Alphinaud, here or anywhere else!” she said. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, it’s time to do what I do best.” Then she turned and, without looking, began to run at a brisk pace that almost took her directly into Hancock’s shins before she skidded to a halt.

Hancock’s smile vanished for a moment as he blinked behind his spectacles. His lips pursed, but then smoothly slid back into a polite expression as he once again chose not to dwell on nearly being run into for a second time that morning.

“A thousand pardons, my lady,” he apologized, offering Tataru a short bow at the waist before he straightened up. “The Scions of the Seventh Dawn, I presume? I hope your voyage was not too trying.”

He followed his greeting with a light smile as he cast his eyes over each of the Scions, observing them in greater detail. It was simple enough to put names to faces, even if only by written description: besides Tataru, the Scions’ “receptionist”, the Highlander was certainly Lyse Hext, while the twins were obviously Alphinaud and Alisaie Leveilleur.

Hancock was about to speak again, but the air escaped him silently as he laid eyes on the man in white standing beside Alisaie.

The Midlander - who could be none other than Ifan Kaleid, the Warrior of Light - stood with his arms crossed and one eyebrow raised as he wordlessly stared back at Hancock. His bearded face was set in a faintly distant expression despite the obvious signs of curiosity at the merchant’s unexpected appearance. The other details went largely unnoticed, however, as Hancock found himself unable to avert his eyes from the dark blue of Ifan’s irises.

Yet ‘dark blue’ seemed insufficient to describe them. The color edged on grey in the same way as the vast expanse of the Ruby Sea directly behind Ifan; like indigo desaturated in white mulberry paper, or glazed cobalt overlaying porcelain. It had a mournful quality, however, seeming more likely to run into a stain of tears than remain coldly affixed upon ceramic or a page.

The grin on Hancock’s face widened by a fraction of an ilm as he watched Ifan’s eyes drift over him. That sodden well within his gaze was briefly stirred into a bright eddy of interest, and the prince of the East Aldenard Trading company felt a slight tightness in his chest at the way the Warrior of Light tilted his head… as if he indeed liked what his wine-dark eyes beheld.

It was Alisaie, however, who broke the awkward silence.

“…And you are?” she asked, cocking her head inquisitively.

Hancock nearly jolted as he blinked behind his spectacles, and sharply shook his head. “Ah, yes, of course! Forgive me,” he said, clearing his throat. “Hancock Fitzgerald, of the East Aldenard Trading Company, at your service. On behalf of Chairman Lolorito, I bid you welcome to Kugane and invite you to take refreshment at our local offices.”

He followed his greeting with another deep bow at the waist before he stood upright, and gave the Scions of the Seventh Dawn a rather fox-like grin; one made all the wider by the slightly horrified confusion on all of their faces.

“Lolorito?" Alphinaud said, nearly exclaiming. "I was aware his interests extended beyond the borders of Eorzea, but not so far as Kugane." The disbelief in his expression soon receded, however, and he frowned sternly back at Hancock as he crossed his arms. “Regardless, I am disinclined to accept the hospitality of grinning merchants,” he said, crisply. “Especially those who serve a master with whom we have such a difficult relationship.”

There was a pause as Hancock’s grinning eased into a teasing smile. He lightly threaded his fingers together in front of him, and gave the Elezen a respectful half-nod. “My my, such naked suspicion! I do hope that business with the Crystal Braves did not rob you of all faith in your fellow man," he said, airily. Then he tilted his head, and wiggled his chin faintly. "Or do you really think the chairman is plotting to drag you into another one of his grand schemes?”

Alphinaud blinked rapidly as his breath caught in his throat. He began sputtering, but Hancock’s attention was instead caught by the smirk Ifan was doing a poor job of hiding - much like Alisaie, who was whispering to him with equal amusement.

“I daresay Alphinaud has met his match…” Alisaie muttered, earning a barely audibly snicker from the Warrior of Light.

“I… beg your pardon?!” Alphinaud uncrossed his arms and glared up at Hancock indignantly. “If you are trying to win my trust, you are failing quite spectacularly.”

Hancock’s eyes returned to the young Elezen, and he was unable to conceal the chuckle in his voice. “Oh dear, have I offended you? Once again, I must apologize. Too much time in the Far East, you see. One is compelled to talk in circles around everything here, and one finds oneself longing for the invigoratingly candid speech of the Ul’dahn markets… though I see now that this is neither the time nor the place to indulge said longing.”

His words carried an air of affected wistfulness, though one which became genuine as his eyes went again to the magician. He saw now that Ifan wore a ring on his right finger, bearing the sigil of the tipping scales of Ul’dah. Hancock was sorely tempted to spend precious moments trying to recall if it had been recorded where the ring had come from, but the crest of Nald’thal’s city was itself a sufficient reminder of his task. So he straightened up, and gave Alphinaud a much more conciliatory nod.

 “…Might I suggest that we continue this conversation at the company offices?” he suggested. “Too many eyes and ears here, you understand. ‘Twould be decidedly reckless to say any more.”

He followed this with a quick canting of his head towards the upper levels of the hostelry, but the gesture and the warning seemed a touch too subtle.

Alphinaud answered with an imperious sniff. “If I may favor you with the invigorating candor you apparently crave,” he said, curtly, “it would be decidedly reckless to follow a man I neither know nor trust. Give me one good reason why we should accept Lord Lolorito’s invitation.” He crossed his arms again, and tilted his head while looking at Hancock expectantly.

Hancock grinned again. “Now there’s the young diplomat I was told to expect!" he laughed. "Very well, then, I shall explain.”

His grin settled, and he took in a slow breath as he stepped forward towards the Scions. When he spoke again, the coy amiability had been replaced by casual seriousness.

“You understand that you are come to a most reclusive and secretive nation, yes?” he asked, lowering his voice just a hair. “One whose borders are closed to foreign trade save at this single port?”

“Only the one?” Lyse asked, lowering her voice in turn.

Hancock nodded sagely. “Indeed,” he said. “So it should come as small surprise that a great many parties have vested interests here. Merchants like myself are a given, of course, but for every one of us you may be certain there is also an agent of a foreign government.”

He paused to let his words sink in. The indignation in young Master Alphinaud’s expression receded under realization, mirrored by the sudden shift to wariness in both Lyse and Alisaie’s faces. But Tataru seemed less surprised, and more sternly resolved; as did Ifan, who had closed his eyes in a look of weary frustration.

For whatever reason, Hancock felt his chest tighten again… though unpleasantly, rather than the headiness of when Ifan seemed interested in something. Nonetheless, he took in another breath before finishing his explanation.

“Many notable nations and empires have embassies here, you know. Including a certain Empire with whom you have such a…” Hancock paused again, searching for suitably diplomatic phrasing, then hummed mirthfully before mirroring Alphinaud’s earlier words. “…difficult relationship.”

After another long and awkward pause, it was Alisaie who again broke the silence: this time, with an irritated clicking of her tongue against her teeth.

“To paraphrase,” she said, as delicately as she could. “Kugane is teeming with Imperial spies, one or several of whom could now be listening to our every word.”

Hancock chuckled once and nodded gracefully at Alisaie. “Something to that effect, yes. Beneath this veneer of bustling trade a war for supremacy is being waged between world powers. One might say we are standing on the front lines… just not in public.”

Alisaie inhaled quietly through her teeth as she began glancing around, mirroring the wary looks that Alphinaud was trying not to be too obvious about.

“Imperial spies everywhere,” Lyse said, letting out an aggrieved sigh. “Great. Just… great.”

Though the ambiance inside the hostelry had barely changed since they’d begun their conversation, there was a distinct frostiness tainting the otherwise pleasant air. The Scions had their faces set in varying looks of watchfulness; all save Ifan, who had his gaze cast thoughtfully off to the side.

After a brief silence, he gave a nod before looking back at Hancock with a polite half-smile. “Would you give us a moment to talk it over, Master Fitzgerald?” he asked.

The smile Hancock returned was just as polite, but he couldn’t stop a slightly boyish tilting of his head at the look Ifan was giving him. “But of course.”

With that, he took a few steps back and turned to idly look around… but not quite far enough that his excellent hearing couldn’t pick up the Scions’ whispered conversation.

Ifan was the first to speak. “What do you think, Tataru?” he asked. “You deal with merchants the most out of all of us.”

“I don’t trust him one bit, and neither should you.” Tataru’s voice was nearly a hiss, making her displeasure evident.

A concurring hum left Ifan’s chest. “Not saying we should,” he agreed, “but we may not have a choice when it comes to accepting help. We’re at a disadvantage.”

“Indeed,” Alisaie said, voicing her agreement in turn. “I still have my doubts, but he may have a point. I say we accept his invitation… for now.”

There was a lapse in conversation, and Hancock spared a glance towards the Scions to see Ifan was looking at Alphinaud with a concerned frown. The young Elezen had his arms crossed again, and was looking at the floor with a pinched grimace on his face.

“…You all right, Alphinaud?” Ifan asked.

Alphinaud blinked as he was stirred from the mire of his thoughts, and looked up towards Ifan sheepishly. “…Forgive me. The mere mention of the East Aldenard Trading Company is enough to-“ The next few words came out as a mumble before he uncrossed his arms, took a breath, and then nodded up at the magician slowly. “I am fine, truly. You need not worry,” he said, offering a strained smile.

Ifan smiled back, though Hancock noted it was similarly strained. “Nothing to forgive. What do you think?” he asked.

The Elezen gave a quiet hum, mulling it over before issuing a resigned sigh. “At the very least, I cannot see the harm in at least hearing him plead his case. Alisaie has the correct idea,” he answered, nodding at his sister.

“Right, then. Seems we’re in agreement.” Ifan took in a deep breath and straightened up before looking at Alphinaud fondly, and reaching over to give his shoulder a light pat. “I’ll take the lead for now,” he said. “Just take a break.”

Alphinaud blinked, seeming to hesitate, but he voiced no protest. Instead, he gave Ifan an equally as fond and very grateful smile as he reached up to squeeze the back of the magician's hand and nodding back at him.

Ifan’s smile widened, and expression remained warm as he glanced at Lyse, Tataru, and Alisaie in turn before it settled back into that casual yet slightly distant look Hancock had first seen him with. He turned to face the merchant, casting his eyes over him once more, and then approached before giving Hancock a polite bow at the waist.

It was a far from perfect gesture, by Hingan standards, but Hancock nonetheless felt an irrepressible grin begin to creep across his features.

“Hancock, was it?” Ifan asked. His gaze settled on Hancock’s grin, and his cheeks rose in a soft look of mirth as another interested gleam danced through his eyes.

Hancock’s grin grew even further, and he indulged another moment of staring at Ifan from behind his spectacles before he returned an equally deep bow.

“At your service,” he greeted, his voice surging with enthusiasm. “And you must be Ifan Kaleid! Slayer of Gods, Rider of Dragons, Savior of Ishgard…”

The thrill within his voice started to fade somewhat as that unpleasant tightness pinched within his chest again. Every title seemed to cause the mirth in Ifan’s eyes and face to ebb away, so on a whim the merchant took in a light breath and gave the Warrior of Light a coy, teasing smile.

“… Stealer of Pants, if some of the more puzzling rumors are to be believed,” he finished.

Ifan blinked. There was a pause, and just as Hancock felt the urge to swallow nervously… Ifan snorted, and chuckled as he tried to hide a grin.

Hancock inhaled audibly as the pressure in his chest released. A giddy warmth began to prickle on his cheeks as he took in the sight of the magician’s face when it was lit up with humor, matching the light tingling in his ears at the musical but rough-edged sound of Ifan’s laughter.

The magician took in a slow breath to compose himself. He was still grinning slightly as he eyed Hancock up and down again, and his expression took on a teasing edge as he returned a sagely nod. “When they have pants to steal,” he replied.

Hancock blinked behind his spectacles as he tilted his head curiously. “Oh?”

“Mm.” Ifan returned a noncommittal hum before his face settled again. “You’ve the right of it, but just ‘Ifan’ is fine,” he said, inclining his head in a more casual greeting.

The merchant’s grin eased back into a polite smile as he nodded in turn. “Of course, Ifan. May I say what an honor and a pleasure it is to make your acquaintance. I just know you and I are going to get along famously,” he said.

Ifan gave another chuckle. “Likely so,” he said. “You do seem fairly interesting, Hancock.”

Much as earlier, Hancock’s lips twitched briefly as he fought back an expression: but rather than a scowl, he struggled to hold down a dizzy half-grin at the way his name sounded with that rough edge to Ifan’s voice accentuating it. To say nothing of being called interesting by such a man.

But unlike earlier, it didn’t go unnoticed. Ifan’s eyes flicked downwards to Hancock’s lips, and the grin began forming anyway.

And it kept on growing, as the Warrior of Light began to smile at him in turn. That distant look, which had been weighing down his handsome face, now seemed itself far distant. The lightness in his eyes was as bracing to Hancock as seeing the expanse of the Ruby Sea from atop Kugane’s airship landing, and he felt ten thousand questions about Ifan’s life and thoughts start running through his head.

But his excitement soon found itself tempered. A light breeze from the hostelry’s port-side entrance drew his attention, and the sight of the four other Scions in his peripheral vision served to remind him that he had a task of utmost importance. Though it was difficult, the prince of the East Aldenard Trading Company managed to pull his gaze away from the Warrior of Light's

Hancock composed himself with a light clearing of his throat, before casting his eyes at each of the Scions from behind his red-shaded spectacles.

“Now, then…” he said, gesturing towards the hostelry's city-side entrance. “Without further ado, allow me to escort you to the company offices. This being your first visit to our fair city, I shall make an effort to point out various landmarks along the way. If you would be so good as to follow me.”

[literaticat]

How does Barnes & Noble allocate shelf space and choose books to put on display? Do publishers pay to have their books in Barnes & Noble stores? Do they pay to have their books displayed in prominent spots? What about independent bookstores? How do bookstores and libraries find out about upcoming books to order? Thanks!

Oy. This could be the topic of like, a nonfiction book (for a very niche audience), or a college seminar, rather than a TUMBLR POST, but hey.

First, a caveat: Please do bear in mind that, while I have 35 years of bookstore experience, I don't work for B&N or have any insider access to B&N; all my knowledge about B&N comes from easily available, non-paywalled reportage that can be found by anyone online. I have never worked for a library except as a board member, so I have zero insider library collections knowledge. I also was a bookstore buyer a decade ago at this point, so some things might have changed -- and I worked for an independent bookstore (key word is INDEPENDENT -- ie, different indies may have totally different ways of doing things!) -- So this is quite broad strokes info.

I'm going to take your questions out of order because it will make more sense.

How do bookstores and libraries find out about upcoming books to order?

The first and most obvious way bookstores and libraries find out about upcoming books to order is via the Publisher's Frontlist Catalogue. "Frontlist" is the term for BRAND NEW / FORTHCOMING BOOKS. Catalogue is exactly what it sounds like -- literally a big ol' catalogue that describes the books, has early reviews and blurbs and whatnot, is full of praise for the books, yadda yadda. Catalogues are divided into multiple "seasons" throughout the year. (Nowadays, catalogues are mostly digital via Edelweiss -- but the same concept applies!)

Generally speaking, publishers have Regional Sales Reps across the country. Those reps physically go to the bookstores in their region every season and present the future season's frontlist offerings (ie, the stuff in the catalogue!) to the buyer. (Very small or far-away stores might have a phone rep -- and nowadays some rep meetings are done via Zoom -- but you get the idea!) The reps have marketing material like ARCs or samples of the books to share, and be able to give more intel than the catalogue alone can do.

It's the sales rep's job to know the bookstore buyer well, know the audience who shops there, and make great recommendations to the buyer. The buyer makes decisions about what to stock based in part on the sales rep's recommendation, but also on whether or not they liked the book or think that their patrons will like it, and based on historical data, like how that author or genre usually does in their store, etc etc.

Sales reps visit about 6 months prior to the season being discussed -- so the Fall 2024 books that are in stock at stores now and in time for Christmas were certainly already ordered before Easter.

Independent Bookstores have their own sales reps; B&N and Target and Amazon and places like that have their own sales reps just for them. (I don't really know how it works for libraries -- very big library systems might also have their own sales reps, but I don't think very small systems would, but idk!)

Other ways they find out about books to order: Booksellers and librarians (and publishers) attend library conferences and trade shows every year, sometimes multiple per year both regional and national; the publisher's sales and marketing teams do presentations about books, have booths with all their upcoming books on display, etc etc.

Booksellers and librarians also are regular people in society, so sometimes they find out about new books sometimes the same way anyone does - through the media and social media! They read reviews, listen to the radio, watch Colbert, go on Instagram, or whatever -- so if they skipped it or only bought two copies when they saw it in the catalogue months and months ago, but then there's a huge media blitz about it, or some amazing reviews come through, the publisher will probably send them a note like "heyyyy just so you know, this is getting HUGE BUZZ, you should probably order extra!"

Basically: Publishers Sales, Marketing and Publicity departments are all doing things behind the scenes for months before a book ever hits a bookstore shelf. That's how books get on the shelf.

How does Barnes & Noble allocate shelf space and choose books to put on display? (What about indie bookstores?)

B&N now chooses books to be on display at the store level. (More on that in the next question). So I'll answer the Indie Bookstore part, and we can assume that a very similar calculus is going on at individual B&N locations!

As explained above, buyers order most of the frontlist books for any bookstore from their sales rep many months before they come out. For a chain bookstore like B&N or a very large independent with multiple locations, that frontlist buyer may be located in some central location -- for smaller stores, buyers are on-site at the bookstore. (A store might also have a "backlist" or "restock" buyer, either the same person or, for a bigger store, a totally different person, who places smaller orders from wholesalers during the week to fill special orders for books customers request and to replenish stock of books they are selling well).

On the backend, bookstores use "turn" to allocate how much shelf space a given section will have -- but that's a much more technical / granular answer that you can read more about here. But as for what comes in and what gets displayed, the new books get into the store in the first place because the buyers have ordered them months in advance, usually via the sales rep (as described above), and when they come in, booksellers use their brains and taste to display them.

Most bookstores have several tables or displays that are always the same (with rotating stock) -- something like New and Noteworthy in every section. So New Hardcover Fiction, New Paperback Fiction, New SF/F, New Nonfiction, etc. When large piles of new books come in every tuesday, the booksellers on the floor will put the piles of books on the New table appropriate for that book. If a pile is getting low, they will swap those ones out so that they table looks full. You get the picture!

Most bookstores also have temporary displays -- seasonal, for a holiday, or themed in some way. For example, it's late October as I type this, and my local bookstore currently has a Kids Halloween display, an adult "Spooky Season" display, a display about democracy/voting (because election day is around the corner), a display about autumn/cozy vibes, a display about fiber arts (because the town hosts a massive craft show), etc. The manager or the owner or one of the booksellers might decide "oh, isn't it funny that all these books have OWLS on them this season, let's make an OWL display" -- and they put whatever they want on it.

(Again, for B&N, many decisions probably also are made at Headquarters -- BUT, individual stores have leeway about how they display their books based on their location, etc etc.)

Do publishers pay to have their books in Barnes & Noble stores? Do they pay to have their books displayed in prominent spots? What about independent bookstores?

Yes and no? Kindaaa, but not really in the way you are thinking?

ETA: THIS IS INSANELY COMPLICATED AND THE EXPLAINER BELOW IS JUST BARELY SCRATCHING THE SURFACE. It's just the best I can do, in this forum, right now.

OK. There's something called "Co-Op" -- that stands for like, "co-operative marketing" or something like that. There's a world in which you could consider Co-Op "publishers paying to have books in stores" -- that's how it kind of was historically, anyway.

Basically, IN THE PAST (I really can't stress that enough), publishers and major bookstores like B&N would come to some sort of agreement about certain titles that would "get co-op" -- like, OK, we have a Spooky Season table in the front of the store, it will cost you X-hundreds/thousands (??) of dollars to have a pile of your new upcoming book SPOOKY GHOST STORY on the front table of every B&N store. Publishers paid it, the bookstore ordered all those books and put them on display. Here's an article about that from 2010 that gives the basics and some links.

This straight-up "paying for a display slot" MIGHT still be the case at stores like Target, I have no idea. But for B&N, it's not the case anymore. This article from 2022 explains how the revamp of B&N includes getting rid of "pay to play" displays:

"Although the chain’s stores carry similar titles, in a shift away from centralized buying, individual managers determine where the books are placed and order quantities. The focus better aligns assortments with local tastes. Mr. Daunt told Publishers Weekly last year his goal is to provide managers with tools and then “get out of the way.”

Co-op title placement practices have also been ended because unpopular titles were receiving prominent placement and driving excessive return rates."

FWIW, Indie bookstores didn't / don't usually do "co-op" in quite the same way -- a single independent bookstore simply doesn't have the money or clout for it to be worth it for a publisher to pay them for title placement. Like, if Grandma Sassy's Olde Bookery orders five copies of a new book, that's huge for them, the publisher doesn't care what Grandma does with her displays, it's not making a dent for Penguin Random House, you know? Much different deal than a chain.

HOWEVER, co-op isn't ONLY about "pay to play" title placement. For example, let's say the publisher has a huge new book they want to promote because it is hotly anticipated and they have nine bajillion copies. They might create a special display out of cardboard (called a "dump") that fits 15 copies of the book -- any bookstore who orders 15+ copies of the book gets this special cool display, and a special discount.

OR, maybe the publisher decides to do a "Summer Reading Special" where they create special paperbacks of 20 different titles that have "buy two get one free" stickers on them -- if a bookstore wants to participate, they will order however-many copies of those books, but they will get a much better discount, both as an incentive to participate and put these titles on display and push them, and to make up for the money they would be losing by giving some of them away.

OR, a bookstore is doing a special event for an author, and they pay for a bunch of special posters to be made -- they might be able to get reimbursed from the publisher for some or all of the money they spent.

Those things are (kinda) the publisher "paying" the bookstore, so they are also technically co-op marketing! But as you can see, it's not quite the same as publishers directly paying a bookstore for a certain title's placement.

Sorry for the length, but hey -- that was a lot of questions!

[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!

[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.

[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!

[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!