#and put in paperback

[heyyesimtrash-whatofit]

Dear members of the Mairimashita! Iruma Kun/Welcome to Demon School, Iruma Kun! Fandom:

Where are y’all reading the manga because I NEED to know.

[raedas]

where in the locked tomb universe are we?

or: a tentative guide to the solar system in the locked tomb and which houses go where :)

[id: a diagram of the solar system, including pluto, with additional white text overlaid over each body. the sun is labeled dominicus, mercury is labeled the sixth, venus is the seventh, earth is the first, mars is the second, jupiter is the third, saturn is the fifth, uranus is the fourth, neptune is the eight, and pluto is the ninth. /end id]

note: i'm pretty sure people have put together similar analyses before, but i wanted to try my own hand at it! and please feel free to share if you disagree with me on anything & your own evidence and thoughts <3

evidence & analysis under the cut!

THE NINTH HOUSE:

okay, this one is pretty much just a freebie. if you didn't know that the ninth house was on pluto, then, uh... sorry! i'm not going to exhaustively go through all the evidence for this one, but some things that stick out are the cold, gideon's awe at how close the first house is to the sun, and the fact that it's the "ninth" to begin with—the house that wasn't really meant to exist, perfectly in line with the planet that isn't really a planet THE FIRST HOUSE:

this one is given to us just as much, if not moreso, than the ninth. with that in mind, i'm just going to do a quick run through of the evidence that the first house is earth: it's very blue and covered in water, there are ruins of civilization, it's "the first", so on and so forth. home, sweet home :)

THE SIXTH HOUSE:

Then he said, "The sun has stabilized. Hope the Sixth House didn't get cooked in the flare." (Harrow the Ninth, 490)

this line is pretty much the entire selling point for the sixth being on mercury, the closest planet to the sun! (until they run away to the other side of the universe, that is)

THE SEVENTH HOUSE:

There were other planets that made their homelands closer to the burning star of Dominicus--the Seventh and Sixth, for instance--but to Gideon they could not imaginably be anything else than 100 percent on fire. (Gideon the Ninth, 67)

the implication here is fairly obvious: the seventh and sixth are on venus and mercury, or vice versa. thankfully, since we have the sixth squared away as mercury, it's pretty obvious that the seventh is located on venus

BONUS MYTHOLOGY FACT: venus is the roman goddess of beauty! (also known by her greek name, aphrodite). "seven for beauty that blossoms and dies", huh?

THE EIGHTH HOUSE:

"I squeal so long and so loud that they hear me from the Eighth." (Gideon the Ninth, 26)

while this line is obvious hyperbole, to me it implies one of two things: either the eighth is the farthest planet from the ninth, or it's right next to them. and since we know that mercury already has its hands full with sixth house, i think it's safe to assume that the eighth is on neptune, the ninth's next door neighbor :)

THE SECOND HOUSE:

"We went through the same shitty questions of what to do. What about the Mars installation, what about the fusion batteries?" (Nona the Ninth, 74)

john helpfully offers this tidbit to us when he's recounting everything that happened leading up to the apocalypse to harrow. i think it says a lot that there was a mars installation even before the apocalypse properly hit, and it makes sense that said installation would eventually become a proper House, with a capital H

BONUS MYTHOLOGY FACT: mars is the roman god of warfare (known in greek as ares)! looks at the second house and how closely they're associated the cohort... yeah, i think that speaks for itself

THE THIRD & FIFTH HOUSES:

"I thought we'd end up on the Third or the Fifth, or a sweet space station, or something." (Gideon the Ninth, 56)

"We are not becoming an appendix of the Third or Fifth Houses," continued the necromancer opposite." (Gideon the Ninth, 58)

okay, here's this bit where things begin to get a bit hairy. repeatedly throughout the books, we're told about how the third and fifth are the two "big" houses. harrow's scared of them and worried they'll make the ninth one of their appendixes, gideon originally thinks the entire lyctoral meeting will be on one of their planets, so on and so forth. with that in mind, it really isn't that much of a stretch to think they'd be situated on the two giants in our solar system: jupiter and saturn. we'll come back in a moment to sort out which is which!

THE FOURTH HOUSE:

aaaand uranus is the only planet left! congrats, fourth!

THE THIRD & FIFTH HOUSES (again):

"Naturally [Isaac] is Pent's protégé. I hear the Fifth takes special pains with the Fourth... hegemonic pains, some may say." (Gideon the Ninth, 170)

from this quote, as well as the whole of jeannemary & isaac's relationship with magnus & abigail, we can surmise that the fourth house is very close to the fifth house (hegemonic though it may be). it's reasonable that that metaphorical proximity is reflecting (or caused by) something else: physical proximity. with that, i think it's fairly safe to assume that the fifth is on saturn, putting the third on jupiter

DOMINICUS:

aaand finally, the center of the solar system itself! i really, really don't think it needs sharing that dominicus is the sun, as long as you accept that the locked tomb takes place in our own solar system. however, i do think the meaning of dominicus is worth sharing. coming from latin, it translates roughly to "lordly", "belonging to god", or "of the master." very subtle, john, very subtle.

[tomthefanboy]

I'm sure I'm not the only one making this joke, I'm not gonna let that stand between me and a good Dune meme.

[britishchick09]

the ultimate ag historicals lineup! (as it should be!) :D

(shoutout to @bohemian-rhapsody-in-blue, whose tags reminded me to make an updated version with courtney, claudie and isabel & nicki! and here's how the lineup looks in modern ag books)

[lavenderfairiez]

happy pride month

[invisible-goats]

Ynys Môn is now on kindle!

Monsters and mythical figures return to the land of King Arthur, centuries after his death. The spirits of Arthur and his Knights are brought back to keep darkness at bay and conquer evil. Unfortunately, their vessels are three aimless sixth formers from Anglesey.

If you like arthuriana, the Mabinogi, Wales, nonbinary characters, urban fantasy, you will like it!

[wolfgang1097]

Is it just me or does Black Spy have a hearty appetite?

Here is a compilation of Black Spy basically having a healthy appetite (usually to the point of fault):

And this last one, of course, is probably the most disturbing food related prank/trap, which I had exposed in a previous post:

We all knew exactly where this was gonna go...

Anyhow, this makes me wonder why Black has quite a bit of a healthy appetite. I mean, we all know he has fallen for food related pranks on multiple occasions, especially in a few of the strips from one of the paperbacks (specifically "The MAD Fifth Reports of Spy vs. Spy," which was later reprinted for the first portion of "Spy vs. Spy Casebook of Craziness," except for the "Spy jr vs. Spy jr" strip from right at the beginning of that same paperback book). Apparently, some say that Black may not be getting paid enough (considering that it has been shown that his boss has put him through hell on at least a few occasions; *cough*Doggie Bagged*cough*). A few might say that the dude probably just likes food, plain and simple. Both of those assumptions could be possible, especially the first one. Either way, this makes me think that there might be a possibility Black Spy could probably be a potential candidate for the Big Eater trope (at least during Prohias's era, of course), to the point of fault that is. I wouldn't really be surprised as the images I provided basically say it all, or at least most of it.

Bonus:

(Taken from "Danger! Intrigue! Stupidity!" which is, of course, a reprint of "The All New Secret Files of Spy vs. Spy.")

The images of the Electric Spaghetti were screenshots taken from MADtv. That short was originally a one panel opening gag a little over three decades prior during the strips' early years.

I do not claim ownership of any content. Spy vs. Spy belongs to the defunct MAD magazine and Antonio Prohias.

[bigcats-birds-and-books]

Book Haul: Preorder Edition!

Apparently 1.) I preordered quite a few books and 2.) a BUNCH of them came out in early June. Very excited for these! Now catch me not reading them for months.

[etirabys]

IT'S STEPHEN KING SHAMING HOUR

[see-arcane]

Cover Art Query

Well, while I'm still waiting on the glossy author copy edition to arrive, I have an open question to everyone regarding the book's graphics and text.

This is what I put in the template for my POD service:

While I love this slightly rosy bright red, this didn't do wonders with the matte version (my beloved finish/texture) and I don't know how much better the glossy will come out. So, in the interest of making that red extra searing (and the text more legible) I have two options.

Option A: Candy Apple Coloration

Brighter red on the graphics and the little bits of text.

Option B: Candy Apple Graphics, All White Text

[ybbag777]

[starswallowingsea]

Every time I think about how the Colleen Hoover fangirlies get mad when people even suggest that they should try and diversify their portfolios I get really, really sad. Like I don't think you have to read classics or anything and be an elite snob but if you limit yourself to just Colleen Hoover and maybe Sarah J Maas and a few other popular booktok authors, you're missing out on so so much. Even if you just want to find good new releases, keeping up with the book of the month club will give you plenty of options (even if you can't subscribe to them and have to get them from the library). Diversify your portfolio. Read older mass market paperback romances or literally anything else.

[funkle420]

i may be stupid,

[jennablackmorebooks]

book-sized coat pockets >>>>>>

[queenlucythevaliant]

This seems kind of unlikely, but since a few of you have bookbinding experience I thought I'd toss it out there:

I'd like my next practice bind to be a favorite novel, but most of the novels whose full text is easily available are also easy to find as beautiful clothbounds, and thus I already own them. If I bound a favorite classic, my efforts would be redundant. This leaves me with (a) binding a B-tier favorite or (b) attempting to bind something outside the public domain. I'm trying to figure out how feasible (b) would be for me now.

Does anyone know of a method that could be used to harvest text from ebooks into Word or similar? Or can anyone even recommend some less legitimate resources for getting ahold of these texts with the formatting intact?

[pendraegon]

genuine question. did anyone else have to like. pay to submit their thesis. like. with actual money.