#melbourne house publishers

[holmesoldfellow]

"Sherlock" video game by Philip Mitchell and Beam Software for the Commodore 64 and ZX Spectrum (Melbourne House, 1984)

[arc-hus]

Chenier House, Rye, Australia - Eastop Architects

[fozmeadows]

I'm going to a writer's conference later this week and will be meeting with an editor at Angry Robot. Checking out their website, I saw you'd published An Accident of Stars through them, but I know your more recent books have come through Tor. I was wondering what your experiences were like with an independent publisher, and if publishing that way is something you'd recommend to currently unpublished writers or not (feel free to disregard this ask if that's something you'd rather not get into, of course. I was just hoping to hear a little more from someone more knowledgeable than me about these things).

Thanks for asking! While not wanting to speak for anyone other than myself, my experience with Angry Robot has been positive. I did have some trouble with an outside editor while publishing with AR, but that wasn't on them, and when they were made aware of the issue, they responded very professionally. Though AR is now largely under new management - meaning, the people I worked with directly for the Manifold Worlds series have since moved on - I'm in occasional contact with some of their current employees (for promotional and new cover purposes) and have no complaints to levy.

There's no one definitive experience of indie publishing; like most things, it can vary wildly depending on who you're dealing with. While indie publishers generally have less money to work with than the big houses - meaning, smaller advances and less paid publicity - they can make up for this in other ways. My very first publisher was Ford Street, a small kids' and YA indie based in Melbourne, and the owner was - and is - extremely adept at booking his authors for in-person events like school visits and bookshop signings. Precisely because they're competing against trad houses, successful indies tend to be very invested in helping their authors earn out, as they often don't have - or don't yet have - the type of high-earning back catalogues and/or big name authors that the big houses can rely on for a base level of income. They might not be able to pay as much up front, but a good indie publisher will help a new author establish themselves through things like signings, in-person and online events, and convention appearances, which benefits you both.

That being said, aside from checking whether a given publisher is good at supporting/endorsing its authors, the two main things you want to know with indies are their distribution and financial track record. In the former case, and especially if you're looking at a hybrid publisher or aren't sure of the difference between an indie, a hybrid and a vanity press, you need to have an idea of how your work will be distributed: if the publisher can get you into bookshops, if there's any international distribution, and whether, if the publisher asks for ebook, graphic novel and/or audiobook rights, they actually have the ability to produce your work in those formats. In the latter case, there's been several instances of ambitious indies collapsing and leaving authors in a limbo re: both money and rights, as happened with Night Shade Books before they were finally taken over by Skyhorse - but if you've done your due diligence and everything looks fine, then go ahead!

[mostlysignssomeportents]

This day in history

On OCTOBER 23 at 7PM, I'll be in DECATUR, presenting my novel THE BEZZLE at EAGLE EYE BOOKS.

#20yrsago HOWTO censor the net with a Hotmail account https://web.archive.org/web/20041023150004/http://www.bof.nl/docs/researchpaperSANE.pdf

#20yrsago Pratchett’s “Going Postal”: Graft, hackers, and a semaphore Internet https://memex.craphound.com/2004/10/09/pratchetts-going-postal-graft-hackers-and-a-semaphore-internet/

#20yrsago Both Presidential candidates arrested while serving papers on CPD https://web.archive.org/web/20041009213011/https://badnarik.org/supporters/blog/2004/10/08/michael-badnarik-arrested/

#15yrsago Marc Laidlaw’s “Sleepy Joe” — sf story comic podcast about war, cable access and human bombs https://escapepod.org/2009/10/08/ep219-sleepy-joe/

#15yrsago Junky Styling: a manual for thrift-shop clothes-remixers https://memex.craphound.com/2009/10/09/junky-styling-a-manual-for-thrift-shop-clothes-remixers/

#10yrsago Kids who sext more likely to be comfortable with their sexuality https://publications.aap.org/pediatrics/article-abstract/47/Supplement_1/229/78000/The-Relationships-Between-Adrenal-Cortical?redirectedFrom=PDF

#10yrsago SWAT team murders burglary victim because burglar claimed he found meth https://www.techdirt.com/2014/10/08/swat-team-raids-house-kills-homeowner-because-criminal-who-burglarized-house-told-them-to/

#10yrsago Malware needs to know if it’s in the Matrix https://web.archive.org/web/20141009164227/http://thestack.com/mimicry-in-malware-giovanni-vigna-081014

#5yrsago After banning working cryptography and raiding whistleblowers, Australia’s spies ban speakers from national infosec conference https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/oct/09/melbourne-cyber-conference-organisers-pressured-speaker-to-edit-biased-talk

#5yrsago SQL Murder Mystery: teaching SQL concepts with a mystery game https://github.com/NUKnightLab/sql-mysteries

#5yrsago Washington establishment freaks out as Modern Monetary Theory gains currency https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-10-07/economists-worry-that-mmt-is-winning-the-argument-in-washington

#5yrsago Hunter Biden’s Ukraine gig was corrupt, just not in the way Republican conspiracists claim it was https://theintercept.com/2019/10/09/joe-hunter-biden-family-money/

#5yrsago Gamers propose punishing Blizzard for its anti-Hong Kong partisanship by flooding it with GDPR requests https://www.reddit.com/r/hearthstone/comments/df0zx5/upset_about_blizzards_hk_ruling_heres_what_to_do/

#1yrago How Google's trial secrecy lets it control the coverage https://pluralistic.net/2023/10/09/working-the-refs/#but-id-have-to-kill-you

Tor Books as just published two new, free LITTLE BROTHER stories: VIGILANT, about creepy surveillance in distance education; and SPILL, about oil pipelines and indigenous landback.

[archoneddzs15]

Sega Dreamcast - Le Mans 24 Hours

Title: Le Mans 24 Hours / ル･マン 24 アワーズ

Developer: Infogrames Melbourne House

Publisher: Sega

Release date: 15 March 2001

Catalogue No.: HDR-0149

Genre: Racing

Released in Japan by Sega, Le Mans 24 Hours is possibly the best racing game on the Dreamcast out of Ferrari F355 and M.S.R. Take part in the world-famous Le Mans on your Dreamcast. The visuals are outstanding as you can see from the screenshots on the back of the case. There's a variety of lengths you can race for starting off at 10 minutes all the way up to a real 24 hours!! Now I wonder how many people have actually done the full 24 hours. Not only is the actual Le Mans course featured but also 9 others from around the world. One of the highlights I really loved is the day-to-night transformation as you're racing. Truly impressive stuff.

Le Mans 24 Hours looks great, plays great, and sounds great. A must-buy for all racing fans.

[opera-ghosts]

In 1978 the ABC made a film about Amy Sherwin.

Frances Amy Sherwin  (1855-1935) was one of five children, born and raised  in Tasmania’s Huon Valley. Even as a child she had a lovely voice, and dreamed of becoming a famous singer. This seemed highly unlikely, as the family struggled to make a living on a remote farm. Amy, as she was known,  would wander down to the paddock closest to  the road and sing her heart out.  She later confessed that she hoped a passerby  would hear,  and carry her off to stardom. In an autobiographical piece she wrote;

‘It was not until my tenth year that I had any lessons, except in the way of home teaching. Then a great treat came into my life in the person of Mr Russell, a dear old music teacher……..In order to take these lessons I had to get up at four in the morning and ride or drive along a difficult bush track for eight miles.’

However, the Sherwins did possess a treasured piano;

‘The care we lavished on our piano was  in the eyes of our neighbours in the bush, only another  instance of the quips and cracks of the ‘Mad Sherwins’.  I well remember one scorching summer day, when our homestead and all the country round was suddenly enveloped in a fierce bush fire. It was washing-day, and I have heard my mother say that the tubs were charred to a cinder and crumbled at a touch, but that the damp clothes inside remained in intact, white heaps. But it was to the piano we devoted all our energies at this domestic crisis. It was covered with wet blankets and dragged to an island of shingle in the middle of the Huon River, that ran near our house. Even in that position it did not escape, and the charred old instrument is still treasured in my Tasmanian home…’

As she grew up, Amy performed locally in concerts and musicals.  Amazingly, in 1878 her childhood dream came true.  The story went that  members of  the  Pompei  and Cagli  Italian Opera Company  were picnicking near her home and were impressed when they  heard her singing.  Now the picnicking part sounds a little unlikely to me , but never mind.  She accepted an invitation to join the company, and made her professional  debut  at Hobart’s Theatre Royal.  That same year  she married Hugh Gorlitz, a German businessman with interests in Australia.

Her voice inspired these verses of effusive praise, published in June, 1878;

Before long Amy  was thrilling audiences  in Melbourne,  Ballarat and Sydney. She was dubbed The Tasmanian Nightingale.  It was not all glamour, as touring could be hazardous in those days. On one occasion, when the singer and her entourage were  in the middle of nowhere,  the leather on the  coach’s brake failed during  a steep descent.   When it was finally brought to a halt it was Amy who came up with a solution, which was to use her  boots  as replacement leather on the brake.

Amy Sherwin travelled the world, but made her home in England. The family settled in a lovely property at Hampstead, where Amy gave concerts in the vast  music room.  The property was once targeted by burglars, and judging  by a report in The Evening News (October 24 1895), they certainly made themselves at home;

Mme.  Amy Sherwin’s house has been burgled, everything of value taken, everything else broken. The family were at the seaside. The thieves cooked supper in the kitchen, and made a dark lantern of Mr. Gorlitz’s new silk hat. The candle  fell over, and the hat, as a hat, is a hat no more.

By 1907 Amy was living in Kent, but also kept a suite of rooms above her music  studio in London’s Bond Street. She became a singing teacher.  It was at this time that The Tasmanian Nightingale made her final  visit to her old home. A journalist with Launceston’s Daily Telegraph attended a concert in Launceston;

Amy Sherwin has worn remarkably well. Perhaps her temperament and continual change of scene has something to do with it. The voice of today is the same old sweet one, with intense culture added. There was no straining after effect, none of those difficult trills and excursions into the attics which vocalists of the De Mursca type are so fond of. One did not make oneself known to her. Musical stars as a rule have not much time to waste talking of days  that are gone. This is a moving-on age, and Amy Sherwin and the writer have to keep going.

During WWI Amy helped raise funds under the banner of the Women’s Auxiliary Force by arranging concerts.

Sadly, Amy was eventually forced to give up work completely. She spent her time caring for her actress daughter Bobbie, who was suffering from tuberculosis. Adding to her troubles, Amy and her husband separated,

Amy’s daughter Jeanette ‘Bobbie’.

Never wise at managing money,  Madame Sherwin eventually  fell  into poverty.  She moved to a  small cottage in Essex, but as she was ineligible for an aged pension she struggled to cover the rent. In 1934 she became ill herself, and was unable to pay for her care.

In a charity ward at London’s Charing Cross Hospital, doctors and nurses  were struck by the sound of a beautiful soprano  voice. It was the almost eighty year old Amy; down on her luck, but still singing like a nightingale.

Amy in later life.

When news of Amy’s sad  situation reached Tasmania a public fund was set up. Despite the difficult economic times of the 1930s, two hundred pounds was raised and forwarded  to London. The singer expressed her appreciation in a letter to the Mayor of Hobart;

‘I must crave your indulgence for not having acknowledged before the last generous help sent by you on behalf of the kind friends who have so warm-heartedly aided me in my desperate plight, caused by my darling daughter’s sad state of health. As it happened, the kind donation, final instalment, sent by you, arrived on the eve of my being admitted to hospital as above for treatment, and which was too costly for me  to obtain otherwise. 

I hope to be out of hospital in a week or 10 days, but I cannot wait till then to thank you all for your warm-hearted practical help in my disaster, and I send off this message from my sick bed- hoping you will pass round the fact that I am most deeply touched, and would write more fully but that circumstances prohibit a longer letter.’

Those ‘circumstances’ were that she was just too frail. Amy  died on September 20 the following year. A wreath was sent from the Tasmanian Government with the message; ‘A tribute to the memory of a famous Tasmanian, from the Government of Tasmania.’

Her daughter  Jeanette only survived a further twelve months. Son Louis died in America in 1978.

Madame  Sherwin  is remembered by a plaque on the wall of the former Del Sarte’s Rooms, on the corner of Hobart’s Harrington and Davey Streets.

[qnewsau]

Viral post calls Troye Sivan lookalike comp for Sydney concert

New Post has been published on https://qnews.com.au/viral-post-calls-troye-sivan-lookalike-comp-for-sydney-concert/

Viral post calls Troye Sivan lookalike comp for Sydney concert

A viral post has called Australia’s first Troye Sivan lookalike contest for Sydney this week… the night the pop star is on stage at the Sydney Opera House forecourt.

Progress Shark’s hilarious Instagram account posted the deeply unserious and shady flyer for the contest, calling it for 8pm on Thursday on the steps of the Sydney Opera House.

Of course, it’s the first night of Troye’s two Sydney concerts at the forecourt as part of his Something To Give Each Other Tour. Troye Sivan kicked off the the solo tour in Australia last week.

And if none of this means anything to you, the joke is pretty much ruined: in recent weeks, callouts for celebrity lookalike contests have became a major internet trend.

But what’s unique about this meme is that the contests have actually happened.

Last month, the Timothée Chalamet lookalike contest attracted thousands of people – including the actor himself – to a New York street.

Since then, there have been numerous contests calling for punters who look like Paul Mescal, Zayn Malik, Glen Powell, Jeremy Allen White and Harry Styles.

  View this post on Instagram

  A post shared by Progress Shark (@progress.shark)

In Australia, a Jacob Elordi lookalike contest in Melbourne only attracted a few people. But at the weekend, a Heath Ledger lookalike contest in Newtown drew a large crowd.

On Instagram, Progress Shark declared the Troye Sivan lookalike competition would have the traditional cash prize of $50.

But the flyer also offers a winner of the contest would also receive a bottle of Smirnoff vodka – Troye recently announced a sponsorship deal with the alcohol brand – and a bottle of Rush.

Twinks, you know what to do!

Troye Sivan performing in Brisbane and Sydney

Thursday night’s gig (November 28) is the first of Troye’s two Sydney concerts on his Something To Give Each Other Tour.

The Australian pop superstar launched his solo tour in Europe in May after the album of the same name dropped in 2023.

He recently wrapped up his joint Sweat tour with Charli XCX, selling out 22 dates in the US over a month before it wrapped on October 23.

Last week, Troye picked up multiple ARIA Awards, including Album of the Year.

“This album has completely changed my life,” Troye said in his acceptance speech.

“It was inspired by the moments between lockdowns in Melbourne. I was single and really depressed and lonely and I just started to go out and hook up with random people.

“I was going through a breakup, really, really depressed and I met this one guy and have this one night stand with him.

“We had this incredible, incredible connection… I started to realise how many people there are in the world and how incredible connections of all kinds you can feel and how it can present in all in these different ways.

“I wrote this album basically about this random stranger I never saw again. Until, I was sitting at a wine bar in Melbourne and I see him and he randomly came up.

“The crazy thing is, I said to him… ‘Just so you know the album’s about you. You sorta started me on this thing.’ And he looked really confused.”

Troye explained that the anonymous hook-up also told him the album was also helping him through a recent breakup.

“Music is really really cool,” Troye said.

“Go have a one-night stand with someone. You never know what could happen!”

For the latest LGBTIQA+ Sister Girl and Brother Boy news, entertainment, community stories in Australia, visit qnews.com.au. Check out our latest magazines or find us on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and YouTube.

[spacecaptsteve]

did you ever expected to end up as a game developer? what was your crowning achievement in that field throught the years in your view?

No back when I was starting out games didn't feel like a thing that was made locally (even though there was Melbourne House). I studied animation back in the late 80s hoping to get to make sci-fi anime. Swerved into comics for a bit but pre-internet the distance of Australia from anything really did make it hard to work from here.

It was in the early 90s that we just decided to pigheadedly give it a go and start up our own company. So I guess that's one. 😊

Here's some more that young me would have found nuts.

Had a game published and got to work with my favorite 16-bit devs - Bitmap Bros (they half-owned Renegade who published Flight of the Amazon Queen)

EA pushing TY (Before they were a giant they were the cool kids so for nostalgia that was nice)

Activision Distributing TY 3 - ALso cool kids once.

A career achievement award from the Australian Game Developers conference. Also a few for TY's shorts.

Making Blade Kitten and getting it published by Atari (OK not the "real" Atari but it was nice to have the classic name at the start of my game.

As I like to say "Buying an Atari" when we took over Melbourne House from them.

TY 4 with Microsoft. We really did manage to get our original; IP with some big names.

Still own the rights to TY and BK.

Making Star Wars: The Force Unleashed. Star Wars was a big driving force in my creative life. Also they made figures of my designs - so bonus points there.

Getting TY onto the Switch. I love being able to put the Switch logo at the start of TY videos :D

So yeah that's a big crown I guess.

If I had to pick just one, it would be that I even got to do any of this at all.

[mariacallous]

Though women were still occasionally accused of witchcraft, and persecuted, in Regency England and though the range of legal punishments for women still included whipping and burning at the stake, a gentler ethos had begun to prevail. Women, it was felt, required protection, both the physical protection of fathers, brothers and husbands and protection on the part of society from the defilements of worldliness. The older generation of aristocratic women notorious for their sophisticated amorality was dying out. Byron's confidante Lady Melbourne died in 1816, Lady Bessborough was aging. Women such as these, with their convenient but passionless marriages, their lovers and illegitimate children, their public roles as cultivated hostesses and political patronesses were gradually disappearing. In their place were women who, though they might not always adhere to it, subscribed to a far more confining moral code and had no public roles to speak of.

"Lady Holland once told me," Lady Bessborough wrote to Lord Granville, "all women of a certain age and in a situation to achieve it should take to politics - to leading and influencing." That advice had been offered decades earlier. By 1813, the number of prominent women exerting political influence was exceedingly small. Decorous patriotism was replacing partisan intrigue. A ladies' subscription was organized to pay for a monument to Wellington, "to be formed of the cannon taken by the duke in various engagements," the subscription to be sponsored by the Duchess of York. Raising funds to commission war memorials, to rescue soldiers' widows and children from destitution, or to aid the Waterloo wounded, were permissible activities for women. Yet even in undertaking charitable endeavors they ran into opposition. Wilberforce would not accept help from any women in his antislavery campaign, insisting that such work was "unsuited to the female characters as delineated in Scripture."

Opposition to slavery was scripturally sound; what was unsuitable was the appearance, in women active in the arena of the world, of immodesty. St. Paul had defined the female character in the New Testament, and anyone who might have forgotten what he wrote there had only to read Hannah More's study of his doctrine published in 1815. Women, St. Paul taught, ought to "adorn themselves in modest apparel, with shamefacedness and sobriety; not with braided hair, or gold, or pearls, or costly array." They ought to keep silence, "for it is not permitted unto them to speak," lest they usurp men's authority. "Let the women learn in silence with all subjection," he cautioned. Let them learn from men, their divinely ordained superiors, whose primacy had been established beyond question at the time of creation. Adam was virtuous, Eve sinful; women suffered from an inherent weakness and sinfulness, and so ought to try to redeem their deficiency through living modest, quiet, passive lives "in faith and charity and holiness with sobriety."

More herself, of course, breached St. Paul's precepts by usurping male authority and immodestly presuming to teach others. But at least she refused membership in the Royal Society of Literature, saying it would be inappropriate for a woman to belong, and her prefaces were full of shamefaced apologies for her presumption in writing.

Female morality went hand in hand with religious piety, and immoral women, the Evangelists taught, deserved punishments that were akin to penance. Among those Wilberforce condemned as immoral were divorcées, many of whom sought freedom from their husbands in order to marry their lovers. (Divorce was a relatively rare phenomenon, and limited to the aristocracy, since a special act of Parliament was necessary to institute it.) His Proclamation Society made strenuous efforts to pass a bill in the House of Lords making a divorced woman guilty of a crime if she married her co-respondent. The bill passed the Lords, but not the Commons. Still, divorced women bore a weightier stigma in the Regency than they had a generation earlier, and many Evangelicals thought that a divorcée ought to shut herself away from society and devote the rest of her life to repentance.

If divorcées were expected to immure themselves like anchoresses, women conspicuous for their virtue were all but deified. That a morally weak woman should triumph over her infirmities was thought to be a near miraculous achievement, especially in an age when wickedness was on the rise. Byron recorded with amusement how his friend Wedderburn Webster talked on and on about his wife's good qualities, ending his harangue by asserting that "in all moral and mortal qualities," she was "very like Christ." (The poet had reason to doubt Webster's judgment of his wife, for she had made an un-Christlike proposition to him.)

Webster was deceived, but in seeing his wife in beatific terms he was not unique. Men spoke of the women they respected as superhuman, angelic beings, pure and untainted, uncorrupted by any stain of vice. And once they became accustomed to seeing them that way, it was only natural for men to want to keep them pure by screening them off from contamination. Hence the bowdlerization of the classics, the sanitizing of fairy tales, the increasing segregation of women from worldly pastimes. Card playing, which had been the usual evening entertainment, was abandoned and piano playing and singing took its place. Women began to make a point of leaving the room when the men made jokes, even innocent ones. They toned down their dress; the more serious-minded of them put aside their jewels and wore diamond or amethyst crosses. More and more the lives of women were becoming closed in by a narrowing circle of propriety. They were defined as either well-bred or ill-bred, pious or impious, pure or impure. There was no middle ground, at least in theory, and only by strenuous efforts at self-improvement could they attain the propriety, purity and piety that mad them truly worthy.

Carolly Erickson, Our Tempestuous Day: A History of Regency England

[midnight-els]

For @tiltedsyllogism 🥰

Inherited Sins is a Lenara POV one shot about her and Sergei's relationship. I put it aside in the run up to S4 but with the Star City news I am so excited to revisit it soon! Sergei is living openly in the US and Lenara is tasked with telling him Margo is alive for Mind Game Reasons. Cue angst about their different relationships to the state, their own relationship, and Lenara's feelings about her role at Roscosmos/as a senior official in the Soviet regime.

Pool Table Case Fic - basic premise is that Phryne investigates a murder with another detective who's Jack's academy best friend. The victim was found on a pool table. Standard post s3/established Phrack shenanigans happen.

I was reflecting recently that I have never published any of my many proper MFMM case fics because I run out of steam on the case bits. This is by far the most developed of those but it's probably only 60-70% done, with the interesting personal bits being finished and the tricky case bits outstanding. It was a really developmental fic for me, taking a lot of the brunt of practice at getting back into fic writing after a few years away, and I do like a lot of the bits in it so I'd love to revisit it when I have time. This time last year I was literally in the middle of doing a big clean up and trimming the case bits back so it could be published when I decided to take a quick break and check out this show called 'For All Mankind' on AppleTV which could surely have no effect on me 🙃

Extracts under the cut

Inherited Sins

“Why, Lenara?” he called from behind her. She stopped, forcing herself back around to face him. “Why what?” “Why this?” “It’s my job.” For the first time in years, Lenara saw Sergei smile. It was barely perceptible, sad and pitying, but she instantly recognised the seeds of that same look he’d always given her when she was being particularly impetuous.  She wanted to smack it from his face. “Do not think I don’t understand,” he said gently. She couldn’t tell whether it was her training or her warring exhaustion and disbelief that stop the instinctive scoff breaking through the surface. Eyes boring into his face, she swallowed harder than she intended to. “On the contrary, you’ve made it quite clear that you don’t.”

Pool Table Case Fic

Snatching her drink back up, Phryne darted in the direction of the back of the house, sensing more than hearing Jack’s sigh as he followed. “No, no Dottie it’s really fine, really. Please don’t -” Hugh was fretting, trying to calm his agitated wife, Mr Butler watching unconvinced, when they entered the room. His left eye was mostly hidden by a rather impressive bruise, with not a little swelling and a cut on his cheekbone to accent it. Poor man, Phryne thought: even as a Senior Constable he still seemed to be suffering the under whims of Melbourne’s crims. “Inspector!” Dot rounded on Jack instantly. Phryne suppressed a smile at his fleeting passing resemblance to a rabbit caught in a headlight. Jack schooled his features into a professional mask and, using an equally official voice, tried to mollify her. “I do apologise for the condition of your husband this evening, Mrs Collins. I’m afraid there was a disturbance at the station, it really couldn’t be helped. I assure you, the situation is in hand now.” “It couldn’t be helped?! Hugh said you had Jenkins arresting a bunch of good-for-nothings. The only thing that boy is capable of arresting is a couple of children who’ve escaped from Catechism!” Phryne again pressed her lips into a thin line, struggling to hold her amusement in. Really, Dot could cow their constabulary counterparts so well they might both as well have been as green as the unfortunate Jenkins.

[blurredblonde]

BUCKET LIST, including the strange, the wild, the weird, and the borderline undoable

Go to a nude beach

spread eagle naked towards the sun

use Pinterest business to do brand links and get any amount of $$ from that alone

go to a pole dancing class

try hot yoga

do a burlesque show in Melbourne

post an animation to youtube

start a webtoon

learn to sew

get an apartment by myself

get an apartment with friends

post a shitty homemade music video in a lana del rey way with the help of friends

get a perm

visit coney island

be 125 pounds

get a the dachshund tattoo

post a vlog like im famous

be a extra in a movie

act in a gay indie movie like norman reedus

go to a gorillaz concert

get a snake

get a record player

meet a sugar mommy

go to a jazz bar alone

get a dressed up like a old hollywood star and go have a night on the town

get my license

own a mustang

ride a motorcycle

go to a mosh pit

go to a rave

get black out drunk

go skinny dipping

publish a art book

own a beach house

get a red gingham bikini

take a slutty picture in a american flag bikini and post it to instagram

go diving with whale sharks

be a art director on a project

do a mural on a wall

complete a painting on an obnoxiously large canvas

make a pop song with no knowledge of music or mixing

work on a big animated film

Do a boudoir photoshoot

party in paris

do a full cosplay

pet a pigeon

get a scuba diving license

explore an abandoned building

kiss a stranger

get in a fist fight

flash my boobs at something

attend a figure drawing class

be the nude model at a figure drawing class

receive fanart of my own characters

create a reel showing school doodles

be the cinematographer for a project

take a history class

be a dive instructor

post a animation meme to a jack stauber song

go on vacation all by myself

have sex

be in a youtube video

go on the video side of omegle

visit japan

go to a film festival

jump off a pier

do a pin-up photoshoot

go to an acting interview

heh

open an online store

do artist alley at a convention

cross country roadtrip with friends

stargaze on top of a car

invest in stocks and real estate

go on a cruise to thailand and thrift there

go to the new york library

visit bora bora

learn to play guitar

draw on the sidewalk with chalk

nurture and take care of a plant

grow my own food

get chickens

join a club in uni

take a pottery class

work out in a gym

surf a barrel

buy a surfboard

meditate for 50 days in a row

travel in a van

fly first class

go on a blind date

buy and fill a photo album book

kiss in the rain

do a thirty-day photography challenge and post the whole thing

explore the woods by my house

go to a ball/masquerade party

host a dinner party

say yes to everything for a day

grow my hair past my ass

become mildly fluent in french

attend golbeins animation workshop

buy an obnoxiously large rug

smell the tomford cherry perfume

get a Brazilian wax

get henna done

go to Brisbane museum by myself

get my i.d

go wine tasting

visit Miami

Meet my online best friend

dine at the ritz

go on a gameshow

do tent camping

win a sweepstake

create a artist porfolio/website

be featured in a gallery

go to okinawa

learn to ballroom dance

ride a horse on a beach/ and or backwards

go to a country club

bake a pie

buy a tourist t-shirt

do a escape room

live in Santa Barbara

stay in cape cod

belly dancing class

get my art viral on tiktok

do a commision

buy a fancy wardrobe

have a room with a slanted roof

sleep in a pool in an inflatable pool

snuggle with nurse sharks

bayonetta mui mui glasses.

go out in a pair of high heels

do a show at a convention

stay at the madonna inn

do lesbian handkerchief flagging in public

do a 'nude' photoshoot

own every sims 4 pack

complete a sims4 generations challenge

play subnautica

swim a motel pool at night

pick a girl from a bar

get a drinks bought for me

smoke a ciggrette

try mixology

get a hickey

have a friend or myself sew vintage patterns

wear a tailored suit

buy real cowgirl boots

bathe in a heart shaped tub

take a rose petal bath

stick a polaroid of myself somewhere public

use spray paint

do a vintage glamour competition

own a house with stain glass windows

go to a cathedral

get pink lace curtains

paint a room

milk a cow

replay Detriot become human

do a live stream

do a lesbian event like a cruise or smth

go to a pride parade

participate on a float in a parade

be a scare actor

act in a play

see a broadway show

shoot a gun

drive a convertible

see lana del rey in concert

do modelling work

do a commercial

buy a sewing machine

drive the road without directions

write a screenplay

submit a film for a competition

pitch an animated show

take a opportunity that scares me

do public karaoke

buy a shitty 2000s camera

get a boat license

buy a boat

go to a random diner

sell clothes on depop

play a drinking game with mates

stay in a hotel with mates

do a draw my life

do a drawing for each section of my Pinterest board

get my fortune told/ future read

buy some mega flare jeans

post a picture of myself to Pinterest/ start a 'me' board

buy some colorful tights

get blue streaks through my blonde hair like aquamarine

drop in on a skateboard

buy a castle

party at Hearst castle

post another fanfic to ao3

dress up in a slutty Halloween costume,its a rite of passage

bake and decorate a fancy cake for someone

[afrohouseking]

Nina Kraviz ❤️ Queen of Tech House. Nina Kraviz, also known as Нина Кравиц in Russian, is a renowned DJ, music producer, and singer. She hails from Irkutsk, Siberia, Russia, where she was born and raised. After completing her education in dentistry, she relocated to Moscow, where she pursued her residency. However, before embarking on her music career, Kraviz held various roles, including working on dental issues for cosmonauts, hosting a radio show in Irkutsk, writing for a fanzine, and holding a club residency on Friday nights. In 2005, Kraviz was accepted into the prestigious Red Bull Music Academy in Seattle. Unfortunately, she couldn't attend due to visa complications. Nevertheless, she had the opportunity to participate in the following year's academy held in Melbourne. By 2008, she had established herself as a regular performer at the Propaganda Club in Moscow. Kraviz gained recognition with the release of her self-titled debut album in February 2012, which was published under the Rekids record label. The album received a mix of positive and mixed reviews. In 2014, she ventured into the realm of record labels and founded her own called трип (Trip) in English. Additionally, she curated and mixed the forty-eighth DJ-Kicks mix album, which hit the shelves in January 2015. Beyond her music career, Kraviz has also made contributions to the gaming industry. She played a part in composing music for the highly anticipated game Cyberpunk 2077 and even lent her voice to the Russian and English versions of the game. In 2021, Kraviz joined forces with artists like Ben Sims, Oscar Mulero, and Marcel Dettmann to participate in PX099: 100 Years Of Colombia, a techno compilation aimed at raising awareness about Colombia's social unrest. Looking ahead, in 2023, Nina Kraviz collaborated with Jean-Michel Jarre on the remake of his track "Sex in the Machine Take 2." This collaboration showcases her continued growth and influence in the music industry.

[scotianostra]

On September 19th 1778, Henry, Lord Brougham, the Scottish Whig statesman and jurist was born in Edinburgh.

Henry Brougham, the eldest son of Henry Brougham and Eleanora Syme Brougham, was born at the top of the West Bow, aged 14 he was enrolled at the University of Edinburgh, Henry Brougham displayed a remarkable talent for learning in a city steeped in the cosmopolitanism of the Scottish Enlightenment

He made his way to London, where he began a long career as a Whig politician and reformer. Trained as a lawyer and called to both the Scottish and English bars, Brougham made a name, as well as a substantial income, in this profession. The legal victory for which he acquired the most recognition was his 1820 defense of Queen Caroline in the House of Lords. Brougham had served as her legal advisor since 1812 and became her attorney general when George IV insisted on a divorce soon after inheriting the throne. After Brougham delivered a speech that lasted for two days, the bill to dissolve the royal marriage passed the Lords with only a handful of votes, which convinced the government to drop the matter and avoid what promised to be a crushing defeat in the Commons. As the public demonstrations celebrating the queen's victory demonstrated, popular opinion was firmly with the queen, and thus also with Brougham.

Commentators at the time recognized that Brougham's rhetorical skills far surpassed his understanding of complex legal issues. His particular talents were perfectly suited for politics. He began his political career in journalism, when in 1802 he helped Sydney Smith, Francis Horner, and Francis Jeffrey establish The Edinburgh Review, a quarterly periodical with a strong Whig bias that soon became a leading platform for political debate. I have posted about The Review and it's founders inprevious posts. Brougham frequently contributed articles, which in the first eight years of the Review's run numbered over one hundred. Brougham entered Parliament for the first time in 1810 as MP for Camelford. Though he lost and regained seats in Parliament over the years, he nevertheless managed to attain high political office by serving as lord chancellor from 1830 to 1834 in the administrations of the prime ministers Charles Grey and Lord Melbourne.

Brougham was routinely associated with the radical wing of the Whig Party, since his positions reflected those of many nineteenth-century reform movements. He was an early supporter of the abolitionists and promoted their efforts to end the slave trade.

Brougham encouraged one of the most significant political shifts of the century by making parliamentary reform a main tenet of his election campaign in Yorkshire in 1830 and then by helping to secure passage of the 1832 Reform Act.

is interest in educational policy took him in several directions. First, in 1820 he proposed a bill promoting publicly funded education; the bill failed, but Brougham remained committed to the cause. Second, in 1826 he founded the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge, which published cheaply priced works aimed at the working classes. And third, he was among the active supporters of England's first nonsectarian university, the Unversity of London.

Brougham became Parliament's most consistent champion of law reform, in part because in 1828 he delivered a brilliant six-hour speech that turned law reform into a popular cause. He established the judicial committee of the Privy Council, a central criminal court, and bankruptcy courts, and he also laid the foundation for a county court system.

Brougham had an interest in science as well as politics. He was a fellow of the Royal Society and was credited with designing the brougham, a four-wheeled carriage. He died and was buried at Cannes, where his frequent residence during the last three decades of his life helped make the French Mediterreanean town a destination for British tourists.

[btranwrites]

Rolling dice, writing games

So it's been a while since I last posted. Sorry for ignoring your tag games and asks!!! I will get back to them eventually, but there has been a few life changes in the past few months.

Basically my citizenship journey in Australia is finally coming to an end, and I will become Australian very soon! Also the housing crisis caught me and Sydney got too fucking expensive to stay in anymore, so I've moved interstate and am now in Melbourne!

But I have been writing! Well, kind of. I've been playing more TTRPG games these days, and two of them are Play By Post (PBP): instead of playing instantaneous in-person or online, you do it asynchronously: you write down what your character does, as do other players, and as do the gamemaster doing their narration and rule adjudication.

And yes, there is writing involved. So I did. PBP TTRPGs are yet more writing opportunities for me. And I'm playing two PBP games at the moment:

Set in medieval French around the time of the black death, using Cthulhu Eternal, a Lovecraftian ruleset. I play a goody two-shoes herbalist.

Set in the near future, using Chronicles of Darkness and explicitly about the God-Machine (omg yass). I play a grumpy, aggressive mechanic.

Obviously, this is not the first time TTRPG and writing have intersected here in the house of BT. There has been Han Vu, and there is (at least the start of) Liam An (I'll get into him later).

With Han Vu, the most glaring flaw is the lack of context. No one has read all Han Vu pieces end to end that I know of, but as an author, I am not quite happy with the experience the reader would have. It is understandable from its origin: these stories were written as a story bit before a game session, and there's a lot that happens in these sessions. But I don't think a reader who was not a participant in those game sessions will have all the story context to appreciate these pieces.

With these PBP games, there is a potential similar pitfall. There are my posts, and there are others' posts. Sure, these are text, and I can just copy and paste them and publish them here, but I don't feel comfortable doing that seeing I don't own the content produced by others.

I have written a few pieces that I am actually quite proud of for my characters in these PBP games, so I do want to post them here. But what I will be doing differently this time is that I will summarise what happened in-between these posts, and clearly mark that they are not produced by me, nor do I claim ownership of them. This is the best solution I can come up with so far to address the context issue.

So yes, two new TTRPG PBP series will be posted here, soon™️.

Liam, oh Liam

Liam, my dearest fuckboi. The thing with Liam is that the game he was created for has already finished months ago; yes, I am that late, I know. What is different from Han Vu, though, is that this time, I did not manage to produce more shorts over the course of the game.

That is not necessarily a bad thing. I do want to write and finish a series of shorts for Liam; I have published Executive Intervention, and I… don't like the idea of putting something out there unfinished. The game is done and dusted, so…

Instead of a setup like Han Vu and the two new TTRPG PBP series, Liam An will be a standalone series: there will no summary narration between posts. The reader can read the shorts as the complete story text, with no external source material.

Indeed, I have already outlined the story arc for Liam! I have ideas for the midpoint of the arc and the ending that I am really excited to tackle! And I have also outlined the second story, sequel to Executive Intervention. Once this post is done, I will start writing it!

Liam on AO3?

And… with Liam becoming a standalone series instead of basically PBP Actual Play crossposting, I'm considering posting Liam on the AO3 Original Work tag, hoping to maybe build an audience from there… Maybe I need a backlog first, and only start posting when I start on, say story 4 or something.

And I need a series name… Hmm. Maybe Executive Intervention can be the series name. We'll see.

Impossible Wreck, my neglected child

Impossible Wreck.

I am very sad to report that I have not been able to make progress on this beloved beast of mine.

Impossible Wreck's setting originated as a remix of Chronicles of Darkness' God-Machine setting, but got majorly overhauled into its own original setting. I have ~24k words of worldbuilding materials recorded (wow. I just realised that's close to the wordcount of the draft as it is.)

Worldbuilding is my jam; I crank it out easily. Thing is, IW is the very first project where I managed to break out from that worldbuilding background into the two other pillars of storytelling: plot and character. After last year's NaNoWriMo, I gathered a LOT of questions I had for myself about the characters and the world. And… almost one year later, I am still working through those questions.

God, it is close to NaNoWriMo this year already, and the prospects of NOT improving the word count on this draft after literally one year is… very demoralising.

My DREAM achievement is that I will be able to finish the first draft for IW by my 30th birthday. I would feel so, SO accomplished if I manage to pull that off.

My goal for IW this month is to have a project plan, with milestones and deadlines. From my experience with the interstate move, having such a plan helped give method to madness, and I'm hoping it will do something similar for IW, instead of me just thinking about it and getting overwhelmed, then end up doing nothing and yet another month goes by.

And that's the update! Hopefully I'll finish the Liam story and get it up this month!

[justforbooks]

The prolific historian and biographer Philip Ziegler, who has died of cancer aged 93, was never less than scrupulously fair – but also honest – about the shortcomings of his subjects, who included some of the most prominent men and, occasionally, women of modern British history.

Lord Mountbatten’s personal vanity, deviousness and ambition, Edward VIII’s meanness and superficiality, even Edward Heath’s charmlessness were all remorselessly revealed, even though they amounted to official biographies and are books that have shaped the men’s reputations for posterity.

“The biographer’s first responsibility is to the truth and to the reader. If he is not prepared in the last resort to hurt and offend people for whom he feels nothing except goodwill then he should not be writing a biography,” Ziegler said in 2011.

The foibles of Mountbatten, the last viceroy of India before independence, were such that Ziegler wrote a note on his desk while writing the biography in the mid-1980s stating: “Remember, in spite of everything, he was a great man.” That is not necessarily the view any longer of many British and Indian historians, though it is hard to overlook Mountbatten’s significance to the modern subcontinent and his relatives in the Royal family.

If Ziegler’s patrician, establishment status and urbane charm helped to smooth his path to selection for such monumental biographies, his industry and the punctiliousness of his research meant that they come close to definitive. He said: “Ideally the biographer should know everything about his subject and then discard 99% of his information, keeping only the essential. Of course one can never hope to discover anything approaching everything, but one can find out a great deal.”

Ziegler was born in Ringwood, in the New Forest, to Dora (nee Barnwell) and Louis Ziegler, a retired army major. He was educated at Eton college and then studied law at New College, Oxford, graduating with a first. After national service with the Royal Artillery, he entered the Foreign Office, serving as a diplomat in Laos, Paris and Pretoria.

In 1966, with his wife Sarah (nee Collins), whom he had married in 1960, and two small children, he was posted to Bogotá, Colombia, as head of chancery at the British embassy. It was there the following year that, returning home from an embassy reception, he and his wife found armed robbers rifling the house. Sarah was killed in the melee and he was badly wounded.

The tragedy persuaded him to leave the diplomatic service and take a job with Sarah’s publisher father, William Collins, then the head of one of the largest publishing houses in the country. Ziegler became editorial director in 1972 and editor-in-chief of the company seven years later. He had already published two books, a biography of the Duchess of Dino, mistress of the wily French diplomat Talleyrand, in 1962, and one of the Georgian prime minister Henry Addington (later the reactionary home secretary Viscount Sidmouth) in 1965. A book about the Black Death followed in 1969, though that was to be his only venture into pre-modern history, and one on the battle of Omdurman (1973), as well as biographies of William IV (1971) and the Victorian prime minister Lord Melbourne (1976).

In 1980, Ziegler became a full-time writer, and a regular and eclectic stream of books followed: biographies of the 1920s’ society beauty Lady Diana Cooper (1981), Harold Wilson (1993), the minor poet Osbert Sitwell (1998), the publisher Rupert Hart-Davis (2005) and the actor Laurence Olivier (2013), as well as Heath (2010), Mountbatten (1985) and Edward VIII (1990), and a short biography of George VI (2014). There were also histories of Barings Bank (1988), London during the second world war (1995), the Rhodes Trust in Oxford (2008) and Brooks’s gentlemen’s club (1991). Not forgetting, Elizabeth’s Britain 1926 to 1986 and a book of photographic portraits of the Queen (2010).

All were assiduously researched. Given access to the royal archives, Ziegler ploughed through 25,000 letters of Edward VIII, revealing the shallowness of the king who abdicated and, allegedly to her displeasure, the Queen Mother’s relentless hostility towards him. His verdict that Edward was well meaning and that no monarch could have been more anxious to relieve the sufferings of his subjects though “few can have done less to achieve their aim”, was suitably waspish.

The biography of Mountbatten, for which he was chosen by the Broadlands trustees, custodians of his legacy, was followed by three volumes of the admiral’s diaries. The biography of Heath was also both official and comprehensive, but struggled to find the man’s elusive charm.

Of the Olivier biography, he told an interviewer at the Cheltenham literary festival in 2013: “In the course of my alarmingly long biographical career I have written about an inordinate number of prime ministers, kings and the like and I suddenly decided in old age that I would indulge myself and do myself an actor.” What he found to his alarm that there was very little substance beneath the parts the great actor played.

Following the death of his first wife, Ziegler married Clare Charrington, a social worker and bereavement counsellor, in 1971. She died in 2017. He is survived by the two children of his first marriage, Sophie and Colin, and by the son of his second, Toby.

🔔 Philip Sandeman Ziegler, biographer and historian, born 24 December 1929; died 22 February 2023

Daily inspiration. Discover more photos at http://justforbooks.tumblr.com

[everygame]

Merry Christmas From Melbourne House (Commodore 64) Developed/Published by: Melbourne House Released: 1984 Completed: 11/12/2023 Completion: Beat it with a score of 100 out of 100.

It’s 1984 and the Christmas cash-in market is finally mature, with five whole games released for home computers (at the very least.) Alphabetically first in my list (because Icon Software chose to go with “Xmas” on their merry release) Merry Christmas From Melbourne House is a slight cheat because it’s really just a tiny tech demo/bit of marketing, but it was sold, costing 95p (the price of tape duplication and postage?) for readers of Commodore User (it was actually in the December issue and the deadline was December 17th to get your money to them, which makes me wonder how many people played this long after things stopped being festive.)

It is though, honestly, what I was kind of expecting from A Christmas Adventure. It’s a short, very easy little adventure game that… passes about half an hour and actually manages to feel Christmassy. 

Like A Christmas Adventure, you’re tasked with making sure Santa can get away from the north pole to deliver presents, but in a shocking twist… YOU are Santa. The game’s blurb claims he’s “attempting to stop an industrial dispute” that “is threatening the delivery of toys to children of the world” and it sounds like jolly old saint nick is a fat cat like the rest of ‘em, and out of solidarity with the elves and workers everywhere I spent quite a bit of time typing things like “GIVE ELVES RAISE” and “PROVIDE TIME OFF” but the parser never understood it, so I almost didn’t finish this.

The plot is a bit oversold anyway, considering the solution is pretty much “Get off your fat arse and pack your sack of toys yourself, Santa.”

As you’re not doing all that much, the parser is adequate, and the graphics are… genuinely quite evocative. They are important too–the toys you have to pack are all on one screen. I don’t generally like this design in graphic text adventures–where you don’t get told everything in text (I’m a VERBOSE man in Infocom games)–and having to work out directions here was not my favourite, But it worked well enough, and I was even charmed by the full screen advert for Melbourne House games.

Anyway, lemme see how much 95p is in today’s money. £3.77. I can’t really say people got their money’s worth here, but they could do a lot worse.

Will I ever play it again? I’m good.

Final Thought: Joe Pranevich over at The Adventurer’s Guild played through this as well if you’d like to read something more in-depth about it, with the bonus that one of the developers, Dave Johnston, shows up in the comments, revealing that it was developed “in a matter on weeks using an in-house text engine and a tweaked sprite engine based on Way of the Exploding Fist code” and that he didn’t even have a copy. They paid people at Melbourne House so poorly that they couldn’t raise 95p???

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