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mostlysignssomeportents · 4 months

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How a billionaire’s mediocre pump-and-dump “book” became a “bestseller”

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/02/15/your-new-first-name/#that-dagger-tho

I was on a book tour the day my editor called me and told me, "From now on, your middle name is 'Cory.'"

"That's weird. Why?"

"Because from now on, your first name is 'New York Times Bestselling Author.'"

That was how I found out I'd hit the NYT list for the first time. It was a huge moment – just as it has been each subsequent time it's happened. First, because of how it warmed my little ego, but second, and more importantly, because of how it affected my book and all the books afterwards.

Once your book is a Times bestseller, every bookseller in America orders enough copies to fill a front-facing display on a new release shelf or a stack on a bestseller table. They order more copies of your backlist. Foreign rights buyers at Frankfurt crowd around your international agents to bid on your book. Movie studios come calling. It's a huge deal.

My books became Times bestsellers the old-fashioned way: people bought and read them and told their friends, who bought and read them. Booksellers who enjoyed them wrote "shelf-talkers" – short reviews – and displayed them alongside the book.

That "From now on your first name is 'New York Times Bestselling Author' gag is a tradition. When @wilwheaton's memoir Still Just A Geek hit the Times list, I texted the joke to him and he texted back to say @jscalzi had already sent him the same joke (and of course, Scalzi and I have the same editor, Patrick Nielsen Hayden):

https://www.harpercollins.com/products/still-just-a-geek-wil-wheaton

But not everyone earns that first name the same way. Some people cheat.

Famously, the Church of Scientology was caught buying truckloads of L Ron Hubbard books (published by Scientology's own publishing arm) from booksellers, returning them to their warehouse, then shipping them back to the booksellers when they re-ordered the sold out titles. The tip-off came when booksellers opened cases of books and found that they already bore the store's own price-stickers:

https://www.latimes.com/local/la-scientology062890-story.html

The reason Scientology was willing to go to such great lengths wasn't merely that readers used "NYT Bestseller* to choose which books to buy. Far more important was the signal that this sent to the entire book trade, from reviewers to librarians to booksellers, who made important decisions about how many copies of the books to stock, whether to display them spine- or face out, and whether to return unsold stock or leave it on the shelf.

Publishers go to great lengths to send these messages to the trade: sending out fancy advance review copies in elaborate packaging, taking out ads in the trade magazines, featuring titles in their catalogs and sending their sales-force out to impress the publisher's enthusiasm on their accounts.

Even the advance can be a way to signal the trade: when a publisher announces that it just acquired a book for an eyebrow-raising sum, it's not trumpeting the size of its capital reserves – it's telling the trade that this book is a Big Deal that they should pay attention to.

(Of all the signals, this one may be the weakest, even if it's the most expensive for publishers to send. Take the $1.25m advance that Rupert Murdoch's Harpercollins paid to Sarah Palin for her unreadable memoir, Going Rogue. As with so many of the outsized sums Murdoch's press and papers pay to right wing politicians, the figure didn't represent a bet on the commercial prospects of the book – which tanked – but rather, a legal way to launder massive cash transfers from the far-right billionaire to a generation of politicians who now owe him some rather expensive favors.)

All of which brings me to the New York Times bestselling book Read Write Own by the billionaire VC New York Times Bestselling Author Chris Dixon. Dixon is a partner at A16Z, the venture capitalists who pumped billions into failed, scammy, cryptocurrency companies that tricked normies into converting their perfectly cromulent "fiat" money into shitcoins, allowing the investors to turn a massive profit and exit before the companies collapsed or imploded.

Read Write Own (subtitle: "Building the Next Era of the Internet") is a monumentally unconvincing hymn to the blockchain. As Molly White writes in her scathing review, the book is full of undisclosed conflicts of interest, with Dixon touting companies he has a direct personal stake in:

https://www.citationneeded.news/review-read-write-own-by-chris-dixon/

But this book's defects go beyond this kind of sleazy pump-and-dump behavior. It's also just bad. The arguments it makes for the blockchain as a way of escaping the problems of an enshittified, monopolized internet are bad arguments. White dissects each of these arguments very skillfully, and I urge you to read her review for a full list, but I'll reproduce one here to give you a taste:

After three chapters in which Dixon provides a (rather revisionistd) history of the web to date, explains the mechanics of blockchains, and goes over the types of things one might theoretically be able to do with a blockchain, we are left with "Part Four: Here and Now", then the final "Part Five: What's Next". The name of Part Four suggests that he will perhaps lay out a list of blockchain projects that are currently successfully solving real problems.

This may be why Part Four is precisely four and a half pages long. And rather than name any successful projects, Dixon instead spends his few pages excoriating the "casino" projects that he says have given crypto a bad rap,e prompting regulatory scrutiny that is making "ethical entrepreneurs … afraid to build products" in the United States.f

As White says, this is just not a good book. It doesn't contain anything to excite people who are already blockchain-poisoned crypto cultists – and it also lacks anything that will convince normies who never let Matt Damon or Spike Lee convince them to trade dollars for magic beans. It's one of those books that manages to be both paper and a paperweight.

And yet…it's a New York Times Bestseller. How did this come to pass? Here's a hint: remember how the Scientologists got L Ron Hubbard 20 consecutive #1 Bestsellers?

As Jordan Pearson writes for Motherboard, Read Write Own earned its place on the Times list because of a series of massive bulk orders from firms linked to A16Z and Dixon, which ordered between dozens and thousands of copies and gave them away to employees or just randos on Twitter:

https://www.vice.com/en/article/n7emkx/chris-dixon-a16z-read-write-own-nyt-bestseller

The Times recognizes this in a backhanded way, by marking Read Write Own on the list with a "dagger" (†) that indicates the shenanigans (the same dagger appeared alongside the listing for Donald Trump Jr's Triggered after the RNC spent a metric scientologyload of money – $100k – buying up cases of it):

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/21/books/donald-trump-jr-triggered-sales.html

There's a case for the Times not automatically ignoring bulk orders. Since 2020, I've run Kickstarters where I've pre-sold my books on behalf of my publisher, working with bookstores like Book Soup and wholesalers like Porchlight Books to backers when they go on sale. I signed and personalized 500+ books at Vroman's yesterday for backers who pre-ordered my next novel, The Bezzle:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/doctorow/53531243480/

But there's a world of difference between pre-orders that hundreds or thousands of readers place that are aggregated into a single bulk order, and books that are bought by CEOs to give away to people who may not have any interest in them. For the book trade – librarians, reviewers, booksellers – the former indicates broad interest that justifies their attention. The latter just tells you that a handful of deep-pocketed manipulators want you to think there's broad interest.

I'm certain that Dixon – like me – feels a bit of pride at having "earned" a new first name. But Dixon – like me – gets something far more tangible than a bit of egoboo out of making the Times list. For me, a place on the Times list is a way to get booksellers and librarians excited about sharing my book with readers.

For Dixon, the stakes are much higher. Remember that cryptocurrency is a faith-based initiative whose mechanism is: "convince normies that shitcoins will be worth more tomorrow than they are today, and then trade them the shitcoins that cost you nothing to create for dollars that they worked hard to earn."

In other words, crypto is a bezzle, defined by John Kenneth Galbraith as "The magic interval when a confidence trickster knows he has the money he has appropriated but the victim does not yet understand that he has lost it."

So long as shitcoins haven't fallen to zero, the bag-holders who've traded their "fiat" for funny money can live in the bezzle, convinced that their "investments" will recover and turn a profit. More importantly, keeping the bezzle alive preserves the possibility of luring in more normies who can infuse the system with fresh dollars to use as convincers that keep the bag-holders to keep holding that bag, rather than bailing and precipitating the zeroing out of the whole scam.

The relatively small sums that Dixon and his affiliated plutocrats spent to flood your podcasts with ads for this pointless 300-page Ponzi ad are a bargain, as are the sums they spent buying up cases of the book to give away or just stash in a storeroom. If only a few hundred retirees are convinced to convert their savings to crypto, the resulting flush of cash will make the line go up, allowing whales like Dixon and A16Z to cash out, or make more leveraged bets, or both. Crypto is a system with very few good trades, but spending chump change to earn a spot on the Times list (dagger or no) is a no-brainer.

After all, the kinds of people who buy crypto are, famously, the kinds of people who think books are stupid ("I would never read a book" -S Bankman-Fried):

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/11/29/sam-bankman-fried-reading-effective-altruism/

There's precious little likelihood that anyone will be convinced to go long on crypto thanks to the words in this book. But the Times list has enough prestige to lure more suckers into the casino: "I'm not going to read this thing, but if it's on the list, that means other people must have read it and think it's convincing."

We are living through a golden age of scams, and crypto, which has elevated caveat emptor to a moral virtue ("not your wallet, not your coins"), is a scammer's paradise. Stein's Law tells us that "anything that can't go on forever will eventually stop," but the purpose of a bezzle isn't to keep the scam going forever – just until the scammer can cash out and blow town. The longer the bezzle goes on for, the richer the scammer gets.

Not for nothing, my next novel – which comes out on Feb 20 – is called The Bezzle. It stars Marty Hench, my hard-driving, two-fisted, high-tech forensic accountant, who finds himself unwinding a whole menagerie of scams, from a hamburger-based Ponzi scheme to rampant music royalty theft to a vast prison-tech scam that uses prisoners as the ultimate captive audience:

https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250865878/thebezzle

Patrick Nielsen Hayden – the same editor who gave me my new first name – once told me that "publishing is the act of connecting a text with an audience." Everything a publisher does – editing, printing, warehousing, distributing – can be separated from publishing. The thing a publisher does that makes them a publisher – not a printer or a warehouser or an editing shop – is connecting books and audiences.

Seen in this light, publishing is a subset of the hard problem of advertising, religion, politics and every other endeavor that consists in part of convincing people to try out a new idea:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/07/04/self-publishing/

This may be the golden age of scams, but it's the dark age of publishing. Consolidation in distribution has gutted the power of the sales force to convince booksellers to stock books that the publisher believes in. Consolidation in publishing – especially Amazon, which is both a publisher and the largest retailer in the country – has stacked the deck against books looking for readers and vice-versa (Goodreads, a service founded for that purpose, is now just another tentacle on the Amazon shoggoth). The rapid enshittification of social media has clobbered the one semi-reliable channel publicists and authors had to reach readers directly.

I wrote nine books during lockdown (I write as displacement activity for anxiety) which has given me a chance to see publishing in the way that few authors can: through a sequence of rapid engagements with the system as a whole, as I publish between one and three books per year for multiple, consecutive years. From that vantagepoint, I can tell you that it's grim and getting grimmer. The slots that books that connected with readers once occupied are now increasingly occupied by the equivalent of the botshit that fills the first eight screens of your Google search results: book-shaped objects that have gamed their way to the top of the list.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/jan/03/botshit-generative-ai-imminent-threat-democracy

I don't know what to do about this, but I have one piece of advice: if you read a book you love, tell other people about it. Tell them face-to-face. In your groupchat. On social media. Even on Goodreads. Every book is a lottery ticket, but the bezzlers are buying their tickets by the case: every time you tell someone about a book you loved (and even better, why you loved it), you buy a writer another ticket.

Meanwhile, I've got to go get ready for my book tour. I'm coming to LA, San Francisco, Seattle, Vancouver, Calgary, Phoenix, Portland, Providence, Boston, New York City, Toronto, San Diego, Salt Lake City, Tucson, Chicago, Buffalo, as well as Torino and Tartu (details soon!).

If you want to get a taste of The Bezzle, here's an excerpt:

https://www.torforgeblog.com/2023/11/20/excerpt-reveal-the-bezzle-by-cory-doctorow/

And here's the audiobook, read by New York Times Bestselling Author Wil Wheaton:

https://archive.org/download/Cory_Doctorow_Podcast_459/Cory_Doctorow_Podcast_459_-_The_Bezzle_Read_By_Wil_Wheaton.mp3

#pluralistic #molly white #books #publishing #dunning kruggerands #crypto #cryptocurrency #a16z #venture capitalism #guillotine watch #this is why we can't have nice things #bookselling #the bezzle #bezzles #web3 #blockchain

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satoshi-mochida · 6 months

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Revue Starlight: El Dorado launches August 8

Gematsu Source

(Possible spoilers for Revue Starlight below)

Visual novel Revue Starlight: El Dorado will launch for Switch and PC via Steam on August 8, publisher Bushiroad Games and developer Frontwing announced. It will support English, Japanese, Simplified Chinese, and Traditional Chinese language options.

In Japan, it will be priced at 3,980 yen for the physical standard edition, 14,980 yen for the Starlight Edition, and 39,800 yen for the Super Starlight Edition. The digital standard edition will cost 3,300 yen on Switch, with the PC price still to be determined.

The contents of each edition are as follows:

Standard Edition

A copy of the game

Weiβ Schwarz PR card

Raffle ticket for the stage to be performed in November 2024

Starlight Edition

A copy of the game

Blu-ray disc of Revue Starlight Re LIVE Reading Theatre Part 4 El Dorado – Includes performances of the reading stage performed on December 16 and 17

Weiβ Schwarz PR card

Raffle ticket for the stage to be performed in November 2024

Super Starlight Edition (limited to 999 copies, sold via Bushiroad Online Store raffles)

A copy of the game

Copy of original drawings with serial numbers

Blu-ray disc of Revue Starlight Re LIVE Reading Theatre Part 4 El Dorado – Includes performances of the reading stage performed on December 16 and 17

Weiβ Schwarz PR card

Raffle ticket for the stage to be performed in November 2024

And here is an overview of the game, via its official website:

About

The vast ocean sings to me. I must go and conquer it! Our last summer at Seisho Music Academy… With the 101st Seisho Festival “Starlight” coming up, we the students of the 99th class take up the challenge to perform “El Dorado,” an oceanic epic that Japan is proud of, for our summer performance. The exiled admiral, Salvatore Guglie. The heir to a royal Spanish family, Alejandro Javier Cavallero Cruz. Who will “we” choose… between the “two protagonists” of this story?

Characters

Karen Aijo – “No matter what waters I have to cross, I will… definitely reach you!” A Stage Girl who traded fates with her childhood friend Hikari to “stand on that stage together someday,” after being entranced by the stage play “Starlight” she watched as a child. She gave her all in performing “Starlight” with Hikari, and now begins to walk towards the “next stage” by herself.

Hikari Kagura – “I don’t need destiny or oaths anymore!” A Stage Girl who has loved stage plays since she was a child, and was led into the world of stage plays after watching “Starlight” with Karen. After performing the “fated stage play” with Karen, she has currently returned to studying at London’s Royal Institute of Dramatic Arts. She is striving towards becoming a stage actress while dreaming of the day she reunites with Karen on the stage.

Maya Tendo – “May my revenge shine beautifully as my fuel.” She is the top student at Seisho Music Academy. A thoroughbred, with both parents being prominent figures in the world of theater. Despite overflowing talent in acting, singing, and dancing, she is a proudly independent Stage Girl who has never become conceited and continues to aim to be the best. Aiming to join the New National First Theater Troupe, she imposes strict lessons on herself even today. Maya-sama continues to be Maya-sama even in her third year.

Junna Hoshimi – “I myself emit glimmering lights… A lighthouse star on the Evening Star!” A Stage Girl who keeps taking on stage plays with her vast amount of reading and solid knowledge, she is the most talented girl since the inception of Seisho Music Academy. She was once desperate to catch up with the frontrunners of the scene, but now aims to be a “dazzling protagonist” and sets her eyes far ahead in her own future. She is the former 99th Student Council President of Seisho Music Academy.

Mahiru Tsuyuzaki – “I will decide my own drama… burning myself like the Sun!” Karen and Hikari’s roommate. She is a cheerful Stage Girl with a vast range of expressiveness, and is looked up to by her juniors, but can get extraordinarily scary when angered. She gave Hikari a push of motivation and sent her on her way to share the fated stage play with Karen. She aims to join the New National First Theater Troupe, in order to become a Star who brings smiles to everyone.

Nana Daiba – “I’ll… go slicing for a bit.” She is Junna’s roommate, and at the same time, a Stage Girl with extraordinary talent in both performing and stage creation. She often has the chance to bake together with Mahiru, and she is affectionately nicknamed “Banana.” She loves everyone who helps to create the stage together, and that is the reason why she sometimes shows a ruthless side.

Claudine Saijo – “Thanks to you and my unjustified resentment!” She is a former child actress who has starred in numerous stage plays and movies from a young age. A pure-hearted and highly experienced Stage Girl who knows the ropes of a stage play. Although she honed her skills against Maya as her greatest rival, she returned to her roots in France after graduation and is slated to join a revue in Paris.

Futaba Isurugi – “I don’t want to see a version of you who’s good-mannered and runs neatly!” Unmatched when it comes to sword fights and action. She is a Stage Girl with great expressive power hidden in her small frame. She and Kaoruko have been stuck together since young. They both enrolled in the same school, and she drives them both to and from school on her motorbike. However, she has decided to walk her own path by accepting the challenge of the New National First Theater Troupe, and has entrusted her beloved bike to Kaoruko.

Kaoruko Hanayagi – “A competitive performance between the top stars of the Senka-ryu School and New National… I’d like such a stage play, someday.” The granddaughter of the head of the family that runs the Senka-ryu School of Japanese Dance. After graduation, she returned to Kyoto. She is a Stage Girl who lives a life of history and traditions, and will succeed the name of the 12th Head of Family, “Suisen Hanayagi.” After a huge quarrel, she accepts Futaba’s chosen path and sends her on her way. She is currently considering what to do with the motorbike that Futaba left behind with her, while grumbling that it is “a bother.”

Kiriko Masai and Shion Amemiya – “We are from the Stage Play Creation Program, in 99th Class Group B!” “In order to create an even stronger, even better Position Zero, become even greedier!” From the 99th Class Group B Stage Play Creation Program. Amemiya writes scripts with all her body and soul, while Masai flutters around controlling the stage. The two are also roommates. They stand at the forefront of Group B, having worked on many of the 99th Class’s stage plays, taking on hardships even while clashing and arguing. Before their final summer in the exchange program, they challenge making a stage play with a certain resolve in their hearts.

Judy Knightley – “If you seek a new universe… tear apart your wailing, and overcome the sea of blood!” A Stage Girl who boasts having top grades at London’s Royal Institute of Dramatic Arts, a school that is renowned for being the hardest in the world to get into. With outstanding acting skills and expressiveness that has been lauded even in the British theater world, she is a professional stage actress with a promising future. She has arrived at Seisho Music Academy for an exchange program, and stands in the way of the students in the 99th Class with her overwhelming brilliance.

[Update: Added the opening movie.]

youtube

#Revue Starlight: El Dorado #Revue Starlight #Shoujo Kageki Revue Starlight #Bushiroad Games #Bushiroad #Frontwing #visual novel #Gematsu #Hoping for a localization announcement #Since it has an English option maybe it will come to the overseas eShops digitally?#Youtube

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jjongscardigan · 4 months

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ENHYPEN and matching couple items!

𐙚 ‧₊˚ ⋅

- cw: none!

- note: My first post! Sorry if this kind of sucks, I only had Jungwon in my mind and had to squeeze out the other members. 😅

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JUNGWON; Matching sweaters

I noticed that Jungwon likes oversized tops. From t-shirts to sweaters it's all oversized. That's why I see sweaters as his matching couple item. He'd be one of those people who wear "my bf ->" "<-my gf" sweaters proudly. He'd smile with stars in his eyes when you guys go out holding hands while wearing the sweaters.

HEESEUNG; Matching switches

NINTENDO SWITCH. You guys would trade the joy-cons after decorating them personally. You'd put on cute stickers and sign it and he'd do whatever the heck he does and sign it as well. You'd get all giddy when you guys are playing while snuggling together because he drew a heart near the joystick.

JAY; Matching guitar picks

Even though you don't play guitar he's the type to gift you a guitar pick anyway because it just means that he cares so much about you he shares a piece of his passion with you. It's just jewelry for you at this point, though he uses it occasionally to serenade you.

JAKE; Matching rings

Pinky ring till I get a wedding ring? Anyone? Jake is definitely loyal. I see him as someone who'd gift you a promise ring. He's carefully pick a pair that describes both of you and give it randomly while you guys are watching a movie. You guys would purposely show it off in random ways because you're just THAT couple. Ofcourse they're pinky rings. :)

SUNGHOON; Matching outfits

Sunghoon is, in my opinion, the second best fashion icon in Enha after Jay (maybe I'm biased, who knows...). Remember that one episode where he matched with Jake, that's what I mean. You guys don't always match outfits but when you do, you go all out. The exact same outfit. Honestly, it's adorable how happy you guys look when walking down the street looking like some alternative version of Team Rocket, ha!

SUNOO; Matching phonecases

My selfie king. I personally love his phonecases. Sunoo would spot a phone case stand while you guys are strolling through the outdoor market and drag you towards it. He'd excitedly look through all options and spot a pair that he likes. He'd let his hands wander over it to see your reaction. You'd play along and go "Oh, these look nice." and he'd go: "Ah, yes indeed. Do you want to match?"

NI-KI; Matching art supplies

If you're not out in the dance studio or shopping for new matching sets, you guys are at home painting. Ni-ki loves artistic stay-at-home dates. You're not as good as he is but that's the fun. He'd buy you guys pencils and paintbrushes with y'alls names engraved in it. You guys would do those challenges where you switch the canvas every ten minutes. Cuties!

___________________________________________

Masterlist!

Do NOT copy my work, thank you!

©jjongscardigan 2024

#enhypen #enhypen x reader #enhypen jay #enha x reader #enhypen sunoo #enhypen jake #enhypen jungwon #enhypen sunghoon #enhypen niki #enhypen heeseung #first time writing aah

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adobe-outdesign · 7 days

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Earning NP in 2024: A Quick-Start Guide for New and Old Users

I feel like there’s a lot of people that struggle with making NP nowadays, both due to shifts in what is/isn’t profitable and a lack of clear direction for new players, so I thought I’d put this together to see if it helps anyone. (This was originally written for Reddit, but I figured people over here might find it useful as well.)

IMPORTANT: This guide just tells you what to do, not how things work. I’d recommend looking up more in-depth resources if you would like to understand the specific mechanics.

Also, please note that this guide is just what I’ve found most effective. Feel free to sound off in the comments if you want to add something you think is useful.

Part 1: The Big 8

The Big 8 are the dailies that I’ve found to be incredibly profitable; just doing these each day will earn you tens of millions of NP over a few months, and they’re pretty fast to complete. If you don’t do anything else, do these.

Bank Interest

Click the “collect interest” button.

Always collect your interest before you do anything else—remember, you can’t collect after depositing or withdrawing NP.

Note: Upgrade your account type (at the bottom of the bank page) as you save. This permanently increases your interest rate.

The interest rate does NOT go back down if you dip below the required amount after upgrading.

Shop Till

Technically this is just collecting the money from items you’ve sold, but if you follow this guide you’ll likely have a tidy sum to collect each day :)

The one is listed second because you can jump straight from here to Trudy’s, as the till’s old layout will make the Trudy’s notification appear if it hasn’t already.

Trudy’s Surprise

Click the “play” button.

Do this each day for 25 days to collect a 100K prize.

Note: Trudy’s also gives out Basic Gift Boxes, which are useful for NC trading.

Quest Log

First, check your weekly prize. To do this, click on the slider button to switch from your daily prize to your weekly one. Check the price of the prize.

If you like your weekly prize:

Complete all of your daily quests.

When all daily quests are complete, click on the NP bag to collect your 20K reward.

HIT REFRESH WHEN DONE. The clock at the top-right corner will disappear. This has to be done or the completion may not take.

Repeat for the week, then click on your prize at the end of the week to claim it.

If you do not like your weekly prize and want to change it:

Complete 4/5 of your daily quests (whichever ones are most profitable)

For the last quest, click the red “skip quest” button and confirm.

REFRESH THE PAGE. Once again, this is important.

The next day you should have a new prize. Continue skipping a quest per day until you get an item you like.

If you want to reset your weekly prize but already completed some days:

Follow the steps above. When you return the next day, your progress will be reset but your weekly prize will be the same.

Follow the steps above one more time. When you return the next day, you should have a new weekly prize.

Stock Market

To buy shares:

Go to the bargains page above.

Look in the right-hand column titled “curr” and find a stock with the number 15 (the cheapest you can buy shares at).

Copy the four-letter ticker symbol in the left-hand column labeled “ticker”.

Click on the “buy” link above and enter paste the ticker symbol into the first box, then enter “1000” into the second box (this is the max amount of shares you can buy per day). This will cost you 15K NP.

Repeat daily. Remember to diversify your portfolio (which is a fancy way of saying buy shares for different companies to increase your odds of getting a payout).

After you have bought a stock, go to the “my portfolio” page and look in the “current price” column.

If the number there is greater than 15, you have made a profit.

It is up to you to decide when to sell the stock. Waiting until 40–60 is average, but you can decide your own preferences here.

DO NOT ever sell a stock under 15. The stock market no longer crashes, so a stock that drops down has no choice but to eventually bounce back up.

Note: The stock market is a long-term investment. You may need to wait long periods of time before seeing a profit depending on how often you sell.

Food Club

Unlike other dailies, Food Club rolls over at 2:15 p.m. NST.

At 5:00 p.m. NST, a few Food Club board will automatically go up on this subreddit.

Click on the board and pick a betting table you like from the comments. I highly recommend u/nsheng’s standard or aggressive sets.

Once you have your table, submit your bets. To do this:

Click on “place a bet”.

Start with row 1 of your chosen betting table. On the “place a bet” page, select one pirate from each drop-down menu, then click the far-left checkbox for each.

Enter your betting amount. Your max bet is listed on the “place a bet” page, or you can enter a different amount. MAKE SURE THE AMOUNT IS THE SAME FOR EACH BET.

Hit “place this bet!”. Repeat this process ten times for all ten rows of your chosen betting table.

At 2:15 the next day, click “collect your winnings”, then go back to the “place a bet” page and enter that day’s 10 bets once the betting tables are posted on Reddit.

Note 1: How much you can bet (and by extension, make) depends on your account age, so this may be less useful to new players. It’s free passive NP either way however.

Note 2: There will be days you experience losses with Food Club. On average you will make back much more than what you invest as long as you stick with it, but with that said, make sure you’re only betting amounts you feel comfortable losing.

Battledome

The Battledome is unique in that you have to put some time and money into it to get something out of it, but the rewards are usually pretty high (making 100K+ a day isn’t uncommon).

To get started, you will need to train your pet and get them some weapons.

For training, follow the steps at the bottom of Battlepedia’s “Beginners’ Guide to Training” here.

For weapons, pick a beginner’s set from Battlepedia’s “Beginners’ Weapon Recommendations” here.

Once you have a basic weapon set and some beginner training, you’ll need to pick an opponent. Not all opponents are worth fighting!

/~SeasonalAttackP breaks down the stats, but the shortened version is that you’ll want to fight these opponents in this order, working your way up as you go (for difficulty, chose the hardest level you can manage for each opponent).

For premium users:

For regular users:

The end goal is to get to the point where your pet can 1-shot your chosen opponent with a single weapon without taking damage (this allows for the fastest dailies run possible). To do this:

Train your pet up to level 50 and give them the lens flare ability. This prevents opponents from attacking.

Give your pet a powerful bomb-type weapon. I recommend Varia is the Bomb, which currently goes for 3–5 mil and does 25 icons.

Train up your pet’s strength. How high your strength needs to be for a one-shot depends on what opponent you’re focusing on and if you’re using one or two weapons; you can use Battlepedia’s damage calculator here to get an idea.

You can earn up to 15 items a day; how many items you get per battle is random. DO NOT stop battling until the “You have reached the item limit for today! You can continue to fight, but no more items can be earned” message pops up.

(Note: You can continue to earn items after the “You have reached the NP limit for today” message pops up. It’s only when the item message appears that you can’t earn anything more.)

Stock Your Shop

Do this last so you can price any items you obtained from the previous 7 dailies.

Try to do this once per day, which will prevent massive backlogs of unpriced items taking up space in your shop.

Note: If you already have a backlog, you can use Jellyneo’s shop price checker to get an idea of how to price things—but use caution and double-check prices when appropriate, as the checker may not always be accurate.

Part 2: Optional Dailies

These won’t make you nearly as many NPs as the above, but if you’re in a hurry to earn NP these are useful additions. All of these have been vetted as low/no risk with either a decent daily reward or a slim chance at a very large reward.

Daily Puzzle (Note: Answers are posted on Jellyneo)

Rich Slorg

Anchor Management

Forgotten Shore (Note: You need all 9 map pieces for access; just buy them on the SW, as they’re dirt cheap)

Coltzan's Shrine

Deserted Tomb

Grave Danger (Note: Need a petpet attached to one of your pets for this one)

Fruit Machine

The Discarded Magical Blue Grundo Plushie of Prosperity

Tombola

Mysterious Negg Cave (Note: This one has a little puzzle to solve)

Faerie Caverns

Wishing Well (Note: Place 7 wishes @ 22 NP every 12 hours; you can use the recent winner’s list to get an idea of expensive items you can wish for)

Buried Treasure

Ye Olde Fishing Vortex

Part 3: Assorted Tips

Make sure to place any large amounts of NP into the bank immediately to protect yourself from random events. (I recommend keeping around 30K–50K on hand.)

Likewise, put any expensive items in your SDB or shop immediately.

It’s easier to make NP if you have NP. Try to save past your goals before making a large purchase so you have a “cushion” left over—it will save you a lot of time in the future.

Restocking used to be a good way to make NP, but currently bots snatch up all the valuable items. You can do it on the side and make a small profit by focusing on less profitable items, but it’s generally a time-intensive low-profit option.

Likewise, (traditional) games are a huge time sink with almost no profits (only 3K/game). Don’t bother unless you just want to play for fun.

For older players: You can use Jellyneo’s SDB Price Checker to find expensive items in your SDB to sell. Remember to double-check the prices on the SW/TP before selling!

Also for older players: Don’t forgot to check for unneeded Battledome weapons, old TCG cards, Neohome items, NeoDeck cards, and unused plot points.

It’s generally a good idea to sit on items from plots/events for a little while before selling—the price usually goes up over time (don’t wait too long though or it might be re-released!).

Always participate in plots and events when possible. Not only are they engaging, but the prizes are usually worth a decent amount.

And most importantly, remember to have fun!

#neopets #neotag #outdesign posts things #apparently copy/pasting bullets from reddit allows you to keep the indents on tumblr?? okay

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ohmightydevviepuu · 4 months

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fanbinding: a bookbinding archive, of sorts

i'm learning a new style of bookbinding and struggling with it and decided to play with an obsession of mine, which is finding pulled-to-publish fics. my goal is eventually to re-bind the trade paperback versions to match.

here are my first three:

decided to start with some big names in publishing--the office eventually became Beautiful Bastard by Christina Lauren; head over feet became The Love Hypothesis by Ali Hazelwood; knives & seasoning was recently published as Knives, Seasoning & A Dash of Love by Katrina Kwan.

these books were completed as part of BINDERARY 2024 hosted by the renegade publishing guild. these are flat-back casebindings covered in homemade bookcloth. the covers are printed vinyl and are taken from the original fanart(s) that accompanied the fics in their heyday(s). you can see that in the case of TLH and KS&D that the authors stayed with their favored fanartists in the published works:

i'm not sure if the office reflects the published cover version or vice versa, since i am not 100% sure who created the cover art that was part of the copy i found.

#fanbinding #ficbinding #door of time books #binderary 2024 #renegade bindery

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literary-illuminati · 3 months

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2024 Book Review #14 – And Put Away Childish Things by Adrian Tchaikovsky

This book I basically came across by chance. Or, well, not exactly chance, but I’d never even heard of it before until I checked what Tchaikovsky books my local library system had copies of and saw it. Which in a sense is a terrible way to come into this – it’s an incredibly dramatic swerve from any of Tchaikovsky’s other stuff that I’ve read – but coming in totally blind pretty much worked, I think. Genuinely very fun read.

The story follows Harry Bodie, a children’s TV presenter facing down middle age with a career that’s never really lived up to expectations. Somewhat desperately, he signs on to a tabloid-ish program about digging into the family tree, hoping to use the residual fame of his grandmother and her fairly famous and successful series of postwar children’s fantasy novels as a career boost. Instead he gets his face rubbed in the fact that his great-grandmother is only recorded as an indigent madwoman, and the famous author was born in a sanitarium. That the famous Underhill stories were, in fact, based in large part on delusions told as childhood fables and family histories.

Somewhat unsurprisingly, the stories turn out to be less delusional than previously reported. Bodie is in quick succession accosted by a faun, approached by a suspicious PI, and kidnapped by a surprisingly moneyed fan-club-cum-occult-coven. Soon enough he’s getting his first taste of Underhill first hand – or, at least, what’s left of it after a century and change of economizing and entropy.

I’m on record as being fairly dismissive about the whole category of ‘stories about stories’, and I guess I need to eat my words a bit because I actually really enjoyed this. To an extent that’s probably just because it doesn’t get too meta – storyland is a work of deliberate artifice, the stories themselves don’t shape the world or do magic, it just generally never tries to get too cute or didactic about it – but still. This is a book where the hero at one point describes his situation as ‘Five Nights at Aslan’s’ so there’s no real principled distinction for me to cut here. One of the main characters is literally a folklorist.

Though, it’s less about stories than one specific story in particular. The unremarkable schlub plucked out of their mundane life and told that they’re special, that they’re the hero or the true heir and possess some inherent numinous essence that makes them the most important person in the world. This is a terribly appealing story, and one Harry feels the lure of very keenly – he’s self-aware enough to say quite clearly that he goes back to the frozen, decaying world full of half-dead monsters less out of morality or rationality than simply because it was a place where he mattered, for good or ill.

It’s probably not reading too deeply into the book’s themes to note that the story is a lure in a fairly literal sense, or that the true heir is destined to ‘save’ the world by being hollowed out and possessed by those who came before them.

Of course as much as this is in conversation with Narnia et al, it owes at least as much to whole genre of ‘what is nostalgic children’s property, but fucked up?’ creepypasta. Fairyland is choked with fungal growths and creepy, staticy not-snow. The scampering, troublemaking faun is miserable and worn out with bad knees. The Best Of All Dogs is a rotting, terrifying hellhound. There’s even a titanic evil scary clown. Aesthetically the book owes far more to r/nosleep than Lewis Carroll.

Harry himself is an absolute delight as a main character. By which I mean he just sucks so bad, but in very mundane and endearing ways. Who among us can not relate on some level to a failing middle-aged actor who always made a point of not trading on his family name but is secretly pretty resentful it hasn’t helped him more? He refuses the call to adventure then decides his life’s kind of shit and he’d rather get stabbed to death by goblins, so he comes crawling back and begs for a second chance. He’s left a glowing magic sword that will defeat all enemies, but it’s stuck in the body of one of his kidnappers so he just runs screaming and it spends the rest of the book in an evidence locker somewhere. I love him.

I really have no idea to what degree it was intentional, but it also does rather muse me that – okay, you know the standard bit of feminist media analysis where male characters are the actors, while female characters are generally walking set decoration and plot devices? It really deeply amuses me that Harry spends the better part of the story as a magical blood bank getting led around or terrified and awaiting rescue, whereas Seitchman (our counterfeit PI/folklorist) repeatedly forces herself into things through obsessive research skills and a complete disregard for her own safety (and at one point an enthusiastic if unpracticed willingness to sword people). Though to be clear this was mostly amusing to me because it was absolutely never highlighted or commented upon.

This is probably the first book I’ve read that’s recent enough to be set during lockdown without really being a COVID novel, if that makes sense? You could set this the year before or the year after without really losing much, and it lacks the ‘this was written in quarantine’ vibe of a lot of books I read last year. But it definitely adds a sense of specificity and timeliness to it that I rather enjoyed.

So yeah, do not open it expecting anything like Children of Time, but good book!

#book review #and put away childish things #adrian tchaikovsky #sff #urban fantasy #novella

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gingerofsuburbia · 5 months

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BDS Consumer Boycott Targets

Everything here is copied over from the BDS website.

Hewlett Packard Inc (HP Inc)

HP Inc (US) provides services to the offices of genocide leaders, Israeli PM Netanyahu and Financial Minister Smotrich. HPE, which shares the same brand, provides technology for Israel’s Population and Immigration Authority, a pillar of its apartheid regime.

Chevron (including Caltex and Texaco)

US fossil fuel multinational Chevron is the main corporation extracting gas claimed by apartheid Israel in the East Mediterranean. Chevron generates billions in revenues, strengthening Israel’s war chest and apartheid system, exacerbating the climate crisis and Gaza siege, and is complicit in depriving the Palestinian people of their right to sovereignty over their natural resources. Chevron has thousands of retail gas stations around the world under the Chevron, Caltex, and Texaco brand names.

Siemens

Siemens (Germany) is the main contractor for the Euro-Asia Interconnector, an Israel-EU submarine electricity cable that is planned to connect Israel’s illegal settlements in the occupied Palestinian territory to Europe. Siemens-branded electrical appliances are sold globally.

PUMA

Since 2018, we have called for a boycott of PUMA (Germany) due to its sponsorship of the Israel Football Association (IFA), which governs teams in Israel’s illegal settlements on occupied Palestinian land. In a major BDS win in December 2023, PUMA leaked news to the media that it will not be renewing its IFA contract when it expires in December 2024. Until then, it is still complicit, so we continue to #BoycottPUMA until it finally ends its complicity in apartheid.

Carrefour

Carrefour (France) is a genocide enabler. Carrefour-Israel has supported Israeli soldiers partaking in the unfolding genocide of Palestinians in Gaza with gifts of personal packages. In 2022, it entered a partnership with the Israeli company Electra Consumer Products and its subsidiary Yenot Bitan, both of which are involved in grave violations against the Palestinian people.

AXA

Insurance giant AXA (France) invests in Israeli banks financing war crimes and the theft of Palestinian land and natural resources. When Russia invaded Ukraine, AXA took targeted measures against it. Yet, Axa has taken no action against Israel, a 75-year-old regime of settler-colonialism and apartheid, despite its ongoing genocidal war on Gaza.

SodaStream

SodaStream is an Israeli company that is actively complicit in Israel's policy of displacing the indigenous Bedouin-Palestinian citizens of present-day Israel in the Naqab (Negev) and has a long history of racial discrimination against Palestinian workers.

Ahava

Ahava cosmetics is an Israeli company that has its production site, visitor center, and main store in an illegal Israeli settlement in the occupied Palestinian territory.

RE/MAX

RE/MAX (US) markets and sells property in illegal Israeli settlements built on stolen Palestinian land, thus enabling Israel’s colonization of the occupied West Bank.

Israeli produce in your supermarkets

Boycott produce from Israel in your supermarket and demand their removal from shelves. Beyond being part of a trade that fuels Israel’s apartheid economy, Israeli fruits, vegetables, and wines misleadingly labeled as “Product of Israel” often include products of illegal settlements on stolen Palestinian land. Israeli companies do not distinguish between the two, and neither should consumers.

Non-BDS Grassroots Boycotts:

McDonald’s (US), Burger King (US), Papa John’s (US), Pizza Hut (US), WIX (Israel), etc. are now being targeted in some countries by grassroots organic boycott campaigns, not initiated by the BDS movement. BDS supports these boycott campaigns because these companies, or their branches or franchisees in Israel, have openly supported apartheid Israel and/or provided generous in-kind donations to the Israeli military amid the current genocide. If these grassroots campaigns are not already organically active in your area, we suggest focusing your energies on our strategic campaigns above.

Recently, McDonald’s franchisee in Malaysia has filed a SLAPP lawsuit against solidarity activists, claiming defamation. Instead of holding the Israel franchisee to account for supporting genocide, we are now witnessing corporate bullying against activists. For both these reasons, we are calling to escalate the boycott of McDonald’s until the parent company takes action and ends the complicity of the brand.

Remember, all Israeli banks and virtually all Israeli companies are complicit to some degree in Israel’s system of occupation and apartheid, and hundreds of international corporations and banks are also deeply complicit. We focus our boycotts on a small number of companies and products for maximum impact.

#palestine #gaza strip #bds #global strike week #free palestine

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numerologica · 2 months

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● In astrology, there are 10 celestial bodies commonly considered "planets": Sun, Moon, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Saturn, Jupiter, Uranus, Neptune & Pluto

● Planets act like the roles a character [see the 12 zodiac signs] interpret in a movie, and each of them represents specific characteristics, that will eventually adapt to the zodiac sign they occupy

⎯ The Sun & Moon are called "LUMINARIES", as they're the brightest ones, they define the fundamental traits of a chart/personality and all the chart moves around them.

● Planets are divided in 3 categories: PERSONAL, SOCIAL & GENERATIONAL

⎯ Sun, Moon, Mercury, Venus, & Mars are called PERSONAL/INNER PLANETS and they are the most important in a chart as they are the fastest moving ones in the sky and can change more rapidly than Generational/Outer ones. They are the roots of one's personality, the core of each individual.

⎯ Saturn & Jupiter are the SOCIAL PLANETS as their orbit is neither slow or fast and are intermediaries between personal and generational, they represent both individual and social themes, such as morals, values ethics and ideals, as well as society structure and boundaries.

⎯ Uranus, Neptune & Pluto are the GENERATIONAL/OUTER/SPIRITUAL PLANETS and can be considered as secondary to the Personal Planets due to being way slower and can take years to change from sign to sign, indicating characteristics of entire generations/that apply on a larger scale.

⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯

Most of the following descriptions are based on "The Contemporary Astrologer's Handbook" by Sue Tompkins and "Hellenistic Astrology" by Chris Brennan

☉ SUN (I am) - ego, one's identity, the self, our perception of ourselves, creativity, the person we think we are, how we want to be seen and recognized, our vitality, goals, what makes us "spark", bodily vigour and how healthy/unhealthy the body looks, your talents, your life purpose/mission, your attitude towards leadership, our general and fundamental temperament, our confidence, our self esteem, our inner hero, the father and the relationship with masculine figures or authorities, what is important to us, the heart, our sense of generosity, leadership and attitude to command (along with Mars), attention we seek/or whetere we seek attention, gold.

☾ MOON (I feel) - emotions, how people face their emotions, one's habits, emotional needs, the mother, the caretaker, feminine figures in general (along with Venus), our experience with our own mother/caretakers, one's sources of nourishment, vulnerability, the inner child, the comfort zone, our natural/instinctual/immediate reactions and behaviours to things, what makes people feel safe, our mood, our attachment style, how we express emotions, our roots, our past/memories, our home (both literally and materially), what feels like home, the public/the masses, food and eating habits, water and bodily fluids, menstruations, silver.

☿ MERCURY (I think) - communication, the way of expressing opinions and ideas, the intellect and its related characteristics, short term travel, thoughts, how we talk and dialogue with others, what we tend to think about the most, swiftness, our voice and how it can be described, language(s), kind of intelligence people have, siblings, negotiation, deals and making them, selling, transportation means except airplanes (cars, bus, metro, bycicle, motorcycles...), theft, trachery, lying, misleading, youth, light-heartedness, fun, always active and moving, commerce, postal and telephone services, smartphones, trading, social media to some extent.

♀ VENUS (I love) - charm, enjoyment, pleasure, happiness, beauty, attraction, seduction, what we find beautiful, what's beautiful about us, what we find pleasurable to do, our charm/what we find charming, what we enjoy doing, pleasing, feminine energy (but not motherly as the moon), desire, desire to give, affection, money, luxury, what feels like luxury, flowers, jewelry, how we give and receive affection/love, diplomatic behaviour, peacemaker, envy, good manners, courtesy, jealousy, insecurity that leads to rivalry, self evaluation/how we see ourselves/self-worth, how we attract others, physical magnetism, taste, how we dress, fashion, vanity, the arts, music, venous blood and female genitalia, copper, sex.

♂ MARS (I act) - action, competitiveness, independence, aggression, boldness, he's the defender, the protector, the god of spring, agriculture and war, easily provoked, vengeful, passion, one's passions, drive, ambition, how we act on a day to day basis, sports, strength, courage, assertiveness, our goals and how we reach them, defense, how we defend ourselves and others, iron (and iron deficiency), defensive behaviour, fighting, crimes, the uncivilised part of a human, hunting, survival instinct, go-getting, forcefulness, sex (not romantic/sexual as Venus), the penetration, what we like sexually, physical raw eroticism (along with Venus), male genitalia, muscles, the army, military.

Venus: "I make love" vs. Mars: "I f*ck"

⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯

MASTERLIST

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callsignspark · 6 months

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Mar[r]y Me - part 8.5.2

pairing: Bradley “Rooster” Bradshaw x Mariella “M&M” Vertucci (fem!OC)

summary: A love story told through friendship, laughter, and food.

series warnings: 18+ minors DNI, discussion of insecurities, difficult family relationships, discussions of food and alcohol use, discussions of body image, conversations on what it’s like to be a fat woman trying to date in today’s society, extreme fluff, like soooo much flirting, warnings to be added as needed

word count: 3.6k

previous part | series masterlist | main masterlist

note: happy Friday! I hope everyone had lovely holidays and 2024 is going well for you so far! I did have some issues tagging people so apologizes if you didn't notified! I really loved writing this chapter, especially since it's going to help set the stage for the rest of the story! (only 4 more parts to go! isn't that crazy??) please be safe if you have snow coming towards you this weekend, and enjoy these two pining and yearning for each other more than ever.

part 8.5.2 - rambling and rings

Friday, April 16, 2021

Mary waves at the obnoxiously large SUV as Slider honks and drives away. Leaning against the entryway table, she slips her heels off and wiggles her painted toes at the feeling of the soft runner beneath her feet. Shuffling over to the entertainment console, she hums as she connects her phone, choosing the song that was on in the car.

The dreamy guitar intro floats through the air, making her smile. And the last beams of golden sunshine disappear as she dances through the living room, enjoying the peaceful feeling that’s settled in her chest and closing the blinds in between twirls.

Good things are happening at work, rumbles that there’s a promotion coming on the horizon. The monthly call back home to her parents hadn’t ended in tears for the first time in months. Most of her evenings are spent in the company of at least one Dagger family member, helping Kris and Dani with their kids or enjoying the adult-only life with Aaron and Flora. Bradley is messaging her as often as he can, every email making her heart flutter, increasing her joy with every sentence he types.

Everything is coming together in ways she had never even dared to dream about.

An early dinner with Ron, Mav, and Penny was the cherry on top of a great week. The four of them laughing and telling stories the entire time, taking advantage of the warm spring weather at the patio table Pete had reserved for Slider’s birthday. As stories and photos were traded across the table, Mary felt like her heart could burst learning about baby Bradley. The only quiet moment of the evening was when their waiter brought an unordered round of drinks to the table, prompting the men to venture inside and thank the old Navy buddy that had spotted them through the window.

“Thank you, Matt; it was getting just a tiny bit too windy for us.”

“No problem, ma’am.” The young man smiles over his shoulder as he finishes turning the outdoor heater on. “Can I get you ladies anything else?”

“I think we’re good for now, thank you,” Penny answers, glancing at Mary, softening at the sight of the younger woman lost in thought as she stares out at the ocean with a content smile.

She watches as brown eyes drift from the water to the table, gentle fingers tracing over a copy of a photo that’s older than the girl studying it. Penny stays quiet, letting the sound of waves crashing on the sand accompany the slight furrow that creases Mary’s brow as she brings the photo closer to her face.

“He looks just like his dad, doesn’t he?”

“He does; he acts a lot like him, too, more than he realizes.”

“You knew him?” It’s not a surprised reaction, just curious.

Penny hums, “We weren’t close, but I knew him enough to see how much Bradley has turned out like him. He’s a good blend of both his parents.”

“Did you know Carole very well?”

“More than Nick, by default, but for the most part, we were at different stages in life. She was older than me by a few years. I was in college and she was a widow raising a toddler. But, as you know, the aviator community is pretty small, so we were friendly. I would even babysit Bradley sometimes when the guys were deployed.”

“He was a cute baby,” Mary says softly, eyes back on the last photo taken of the whole Bradshaw family.

“He was… turned out to be a handsome man, didn’t he?” Penny asks, taking advantage of the moment.

She smirks as the younger woman looks up at her through her lashes, a shy smile stretching her pink cheeks. “He did.”

“Can I ask you something while they’re still inside?”

“We’re not together. But we are going on a date the week after he gets back.” Now it’s Mary’s turn to smirk at how Penny’s eyebrows rocket up to her hairline. “That is what you were going to ask me, right?”

“It’s close enough. Are you excited?”

“I am. I really like him.”

It’s the first time she admitted it out loud to anyone other than her best friend. She revels in the encouraging energy and words Penny gives back, both of them still giggling like school girls when Pete and Ron return.

“What are you two laughing about?” Slider asks as he slips Mary’s wrap over her shoulders.

“Oh, nothing.” When Penny winks, she has the overwhelming urge to cry. The knowing look accompanying those two words is more affectionate and maternal than anything her mother has done in years.

Their hug goodbye lasts a few seconds longer than expected, and the gentle hands that smooth some stray hairs back make her throat tighten. Slider is quiet on the ride home; familiar with the many moods of Mary, he lets her work through her thoughts with the radio on low.

“Y’okay, kid?” He doesn’t speak until he pulls into her neighborhood, giving himself a five-block buffer to determine if a pit stop to the closest ice cream shop is required.

“Yeah. Just-” Mary pauses, trying to figure out how to best explain. “Just still getting used to it.”

“To what?”

“To how easy it is to just be me out here. Surrounded by people who have just folded me into their lives with zero hesitation, like I’ve always been here.”

“Mary, were you happy in Florida?”

“I was content. Getting to know you helped with that a lot, but let’s face it; if I was happy, I wouldn’t have been so excited to leave.”

“And you’re happy now?”

“I am. I can’t remember the last time I was this happy.”

It's a cheesy line, but true. She knew that when she said it, accepting the light teasing that followed with a smile. One that hadn’t left her face as she said goodbye to her mentor, one that grows as the song starts again. She can’t help how big her grin gets. This song always reminds her of Bradley.

“I'm in love, I'm alive. I belong to the stars and sky.”

Letting the song stay on repeat, Mary stops in the kitchen for some water on her way to the bedroom. It’s still early - not even eight yet - but a full night’s sleep is calling her name, eyelids feeling heavy.

She slips her clothes off, folding the jeans for tomorrow and tossing her shirt in the laundry. A small groan of relief accompanies the unclasping of her bra before she slings it into the hamper. Turning the bedroom speakers down slightly as she enters the bathroom, a grimace instantly creases her face when she catches sight of herself in the mirror.

“Jesus…” Her disbelief echoes in the room as gentle fingers rub over the harsh red lines where her clothes dug into her skin. It’s evident where the waistband of her jeans sat all day. And the tender spots under her arms lets her know it’s time to look for better-fitting bras, again. Mary tugs the leg of her panties up, relieved to see at least one piece of clothing hasn’t left its mark.

She’s massaging the sore spots on her chest, letting her warm hands diminish the pain, when her phone rings. Her eyebrows furrow deeper at the unknown number flashing across the screen.

Usually, at this time of night, she’d ignore an unknown number and let the other person leave a voicemail, but something in her gut tells her to pick up before it’s too late.

“Hello?” There’s a muffled response, and she scrambles to disconnect her phone from the speakers. “Hello? Can you hear me?”

“Hello, ma’am. Can I speak to Mariella Vertucci?”

“May I ask who’s calling?”

“This is Lieutenant Corso in the communications bay on the USS Roosevelt. Can you confirm your identity with your full name, birthday, and the eight-digit code given to you by Lieutenant Commander Bradshaw?”

Mary’s heart stops for a second. This is it. Bradley is calling. She’s going to get to talk to him after forty-eight days. Hear his voice. See his face.

“Ma’am?”

“Sorry. Mariella Theresa Vertucci, born March 14, 1987. The code is 0125-2020.”

“Thank you, ma’am. One minute, please.” The soft clacking of a keyboard filters through the phone, the Lieutenant's tongue clicking as he types. “You’ve been verified. Does the phone you’re using have video chat capabilities.”

“It does, Lieutenant.”

“Excellent. Stay on the line, and in a few minutes, a video chat will come through with Lieutenant Commander Bradshaw. You have been allotted 30 minutes today. I am required to remind you that communication is not secure. This means, for security purposes, you cannot ask what time of day it is, what location, or how any missions have gone. Please confirm that you understand.”

“I understand.”

“Thank you. I am also required to let you know that this video chat is conducted in a private area and will not be monitored. However, the audio will be recorded, so any lewd acts are discouraged but not forbidden.”

Mary can’t help the snort that escapes. “But not forbidden?”

“Uh- the uh-” She smothers a chuckle at how the kid trips over his words. “The Navy understands that loved ones are apart for long periods of time and can’t forbid any uh- urges that couples may wish to act upon during their chats. But we are legally required to inform everyone of the recording.”

“Ah, I see. Thank you, Lieutenant.”

“No problem, ma’am. Please stay on the line, and your loved one will be joining shortly.” She giggles at how quickly the hold music starts, humming along to Anchors Aweigh as she clips her hair up, ready to take her makeup off. She’s about to wet a washcloth when the music cuts, and the video call comes through.

Taking a second to look herself over, Mary admires the tendrils that have escaped, perfectly framing her cheeks that are still flushed from the wine she had with dinner. The slightest bit still tipsy and a little frazzled about Bradley, she realizes just in time that she’s still only in her underwear, hitting the accept button and dropping the phone on the counter.

“One second! Just- oh, come on! Fuck!” She curses under her breath as she struggles to slip into her bathrobe. “Hang on, Bradley!”

Finally getting both arms in, she ties the robe, eyebrows raising in surprise at how it cinches her waist, before eagerly grabbing her phone.

“Hi, Mary.”

“Hi, Bradley.”

She greedily drinks him in. It’s been 48 days since she’s seen his handsome face or heard his warm voice - the longest since they met - and she’s missed him. Her heart clenches at how tired he looks, the bags under his eyes more pronounced than ever.

“Hi, honey.” The sweet name hits something deep inside, and she can’t help the tears that immediately form or the way her bottom lip wobbles. “Oh, shit, Mary. Please don’t cry, honey.”

The emotional reaction surprises even her; she was expecting to be a bit overwhelmed, but nothing like this. It makes her feel a little ridiculous, crying about a man she’s barely even kissed. But you love him, her brain chimes in, sending more heat to her face.

“This is your uncle’s fault!” She laughs, swiping tears away and propping her phone against the mirror.

“Mav?”

She can’t help but giggle at his disbelieving tone as she reaches for a tissue. “No, Slider. He’s in town this week, and he may or may not - but definitely did - get me tipsy at dinner, like he always does!”

She trills on about dinner, telling him about the childhood stories that were shared and the baby photos that now live on her phone, not noticing the look on his face until he interrupts.

“You getting in the shower, Mary?”

The husky tone immediately grabs all of her attention, a shiver running down her spine at the smoldering look on Bradley’s face. She follows his eyes down, surprised to see how much her robe has come undone. The valley between her breasts is completely visible, and the fabric is threatening to expose her belly button - and more - if it’s not fixed.

“Oops…” She mumbles to herself, tightening the robe so much it pushes her cleavage together.

Normally, this is where her insecurities would ruin the moment - flooding her brain with terrible things. Make her spend the rest of the call analyzing how she looks in the tiny corner box, agonizing how prominent her double chin is from this angle. But the soft fuck that crackles through the phone squashes the anxieties before they can take root, shifting her attention to admire the man looking back at her.

And god, he is a man.

Bradley Bradshaw has always been gorgeous: tall, strong, and deliciously tan. But mid-deployment Bradley Bradshaw is a vicious attack to the senses. And the hormones.

His broad shoulders have gotten broader, filling the little privacy cubicle in the communications room so much that he’s brushing both sides of the walls. His curls are more golden than usual, clear evidence of time spent flying in the Pacific tropics. His tan is deeper, too, glowing even in the harsh florescent lighting, the bridge of his nose slightly sunburnt. His neatly trimmed mustache moves with his lush pink lips, warmth building in her core as her thoughts drift to the memory of how they felt pressed against hers.

“Mary?” She hums, eyes focusing back into the present and away from her favorite post-deployment reunion fantasy. “Whatcha thinking about?”

“You.”

It's clear he wasn’t expecting that answer from the way he drags a hand over his mouth to muffle a cruse, his eyes scrunching shut.

She wasn’t expecting it either; the effects of the wine have mostly worn off, leaving her with flushed cheeks and apparently a slightly looser tongue. She can’t bring herself to be embarrassed about the overly honest answer. Communicating exclusively via email for the last month and a half has allowed Mary to gain confidence in Bradley’s feelings. It’s hard to wonder about his intentions when every email ends with him telling her how many days are left until he’s home.

“Your lips…” She continues, emboldened as the last remnants of wine soften the sharp edges of her insecurities and the pink working its way up his neck. She loves how easily Bradley blushes for her. Their few kisses have always ended with his cheeks a lovely, rosy shade. “How soft your hair is. Your mustache. How strong you are. How much I miss you…”

The words make them both pause. It’s not an uncommon phrase, every email containing some variation of the sentiment, but hearing the words out loud makes it real. Cementing the longing in their chests.

“I miss you, too.” The words are quiet, echoing against the tiled walls. She chuckles, throat thick with emotion, and Bradley can’t look away from her soft smile. His heart pounding at the emotion on her face, something he can’t quite place. He can’t stop staring as she picks the phone up and flicks the light off, “Where are we going?”

“Couch.”

He smiles as the familiar walls of her living room appear, grin going slack when she props him up on the side table, and the slit of her robe reveals a thigh that he’s dreamt about as she shuffles pillows. Bradley manages to pull his mind out of his post-deployment fantasy as she plops on her couch - that damn pink couch - and smiles at him over the arm, her eyes almost closing she grins so hard.

“I’m sorry I missed our call.”

“It’s okay, Bradley. I knew it was a possibility, and Mav let me know what was going on. I understand.”

“I want to hear about your birthday.”

“I told you about my birthday! We’ve discussed it extensively.”

“I still want to hear about it. I want to hear your voice.” He revels as she softly whines and smooshes her face into a pillow, thrilled to cause that reaction. “C’mon, please, Mary?”

“You’re not fighting fair.” The muffled complaint comes back, making him laugh, but she does as asked.

Bradley listens, humming along as she recounts her birthday for him and insisting for the hundredth time that it was his pleasure to give her presents. He lets her lead the conversation as it shifts to what’s happening in San Diego, content to watch her as she shares stories of what he’s missing at home. Happy to just admire her and occasionally ask questions.

It’s so easy to get lost looking at her. Dark hair swishing around her shoulders, just slightly shorter than it was in February. Her brown eyes look darker than usual, the low light in the room making them almost black instead of the warm brown he’s used to staring into. And despite resecuring the robe, it’s coming loose again, enough that the top curve of her breasts are visible; freckles dotted all over, disappearing beneath the baby blue fabric. Bradley thinks about what it would be like to connect the dots on her soft skin, tracing invisible lines with his fingers or lips. He imagines there’s more hiding behind the waffle material. He wonders if she’d let him find out.

The fantasy of how wonderful it would be to memorize every mark on her body is interrupted as red nail polish grabs his attention. He loves her hands, smaller than his but so strong when she’s working on a jet. Steady as she calls out instructions to her team, grease smeared up to her elbows and her nail color of the week shining through the black sludge. Mary insists that she doesn’t talk with her hands, that she managed to avoid that stereotypical Italian-American trait, but Bradley smirks as her hands swirl through the air. He’s about to interrupt the story she’s giggling through - something about the latest swear word that Danielle accidentally taught Annie - when something sparkly on her finger distracts him.

A ring.

A diamond ring.

A simple silver band lined with tiny diamonds.

On her ring finger.

On her left ring finger.

His eyebrows furrow as he tries to study the never-before-seen piece of jewelry. Mary must notice his confusion because she cuts her story off and flashes her hand at the camera. “I bought this for myself when I got promoted for the first time. I went from EI to EII, which is entry-level engineer to associate engineer. It was $50 from this little shop that was on the same block as my first solo apartment in St. Louis.”

Relief sweeps through his body, thrilled that Mary hadn’t gotten engaged with him.

“That’s awesome. Have you done that every time you’ve moved up?”

“Kinda? I always buy myself some sort of gift - last time, I splurged and got that big blender we used at the Christmas party. But I’ve only done jewelry a few times. I think I’m going to get a necklace next time, something to match this.” She explains, wiggling her fingers so the gems shimmer in the camera.

“It’s very pretty.” Bradley compliments, feeling bold enough to go further. “You look good with a ring on that finger.”

“Jesus, Brad-”

She’s cut off by the two-minute alert popping up. They had been so distracted they weren’t paying attention to the countdown timer.

“Already?” Mary pouts, forehead crinkling as she frowns. “But I didn’t get to ask you about carrier food.

“It’s bad, honey. Yours is so much better.”

“Or how you’re sleeping.”

“Reuben’s snoring has somehow gotten even louder since last time we shared a bunkroom; Bob, Mickey, and I owe you for the extra earplugs you sent.”

“You’re sunburnt.”

“I’m wearing the sunscreen you gave me; the sun is just strong.”

“I knew I should have sent the SPF 75!” Bradley smiles as Mary throws her head back in faux despair. “Oh well, now I know for next time, I guess.”

“Next time?”

“Yeah. You didn’t think I’d only send you a care package one time, did you? I gotta make sure you have everything you need. I know I missed some stuff this time, but I’ll get better in the future! I promise.”

I love you.

He just barely holds the words in.

“God, I fucking miss you.” He stares at the screen, watching the prettiest brown eyes in the world fill with tears at his words. “Oh, honey, please don’t cry. I’ll be home so soon.”

“But twenty-four days is such a long time, and I miss you so much.”

“I know, but we’ve already done 48 days. Twenty-four will be a breeze to get through.” The timer starts blinking, the last 60 seconds counting down. “I gotta get going, Mary. But you keep sending me flirty emails so I have something to read and think about.”

He chuckles at the little surprised noise she makes. “You noticed that?”

“Did I notice that? Mariella, in the kindest way, you are not subtle.”

“Well- I-” She splutters. “Neither are you!”

“I’m not trying to be, baby doll,” Bradley revels in her reaction to the pet name - mouth dropping open as she blinks at him, cheeks pinker than he’s ever seen - one he didn’t even mean to use.

The flustered hand she waves at the camera while yelling at him makes him laugh. “Bradley!”

“I would say I’m sorry, but I’m not. I’ll talk to you later.”

“Be safe. Only 24 days.”

“Only 24 days.”

“I miss you, handsome.”

Bradley's face feels hot, choked up at the look in her eyes, the softness of her words. “I miss you, too, baby doll.”

They don’t say goodbye, choosing to admire each other as the final seconds tick away.

5…

I can’t wait to see you in person.

4…

God, you’re so gorgeous.

3…