rosanicus

* I was at Indie Capstone this weekend, a local writer's conference with a focus on commercial fiction.

table with with cloth and wrapped chocolates; outside the window, it's dawn and there's a gazebo covered in fairy lights

The table setup made me feel fancy.

It's a bit 101 for my level of career, but it was remarkable to discover how much you can get done when you're planted in a room with a laptop and forced to pay attention to career/work things for 8 hours a day two days in a row. I came away with a lot of progress on my latest WIP novel as well as a lengthy to-do list of marketing things I should be working on.

* After much dithering, I decided not to sign up for Festivids, even though it's tempting. I can always treat.

* And the main reason for that is because I've been really struggling with the fandom assignments I do have. I still haven't written Trick or Treat, even though it's only 300 words. It's mostly an issue of being in the wrong headspace for it, I guess. I also don't plan to do Yuletide.

* The Biggles exchange will run again, at least I plan to do it, although I had the unnerving realization that if I do signups in early November again, that's less than a month away. This year has gone so fast.

* Fall/spooky season is perhaps my favorite time of year (with Christmas coming in second place), but then I was sick for half of September (and still coughing, come ON, immune system!) and October feels like a whirlwind so far. On the one hand, I do want to get a big chunk of the current novel done this month. But it felt _so nice_ to write fanfic again a couple of days ago (first time in almost a month) and I want to do some seasonal writing, perhaps for spook_me's old prompts or more of Whumptober.

rachelmanija

A Better World has a great concept: folk horror in a near-future dystopian company town. The setting is unpleasantly plausible in a “20 minutes into the future” manner. Everything is miserable, but some giant corporations have company towns where people can get health care, housing, etc. They don’t get salaries, working only for benefits, and can get fired at any time and for any reason. But it’s so much better than everywhere else that spots in town are very competitive.

The book starts promisingly, with the main character and her family getting hired, moving in, and discovering that the town has some very strange traditions (instantly recognizable to anyone who reads folk horror), and also a lot of strange genetically engineered birds wandering around.

Folk horror often works more by anticipation than surprise. Readers know the town has weird cults and the new people are probably marked to be sacrificed. The enjoyment is in following their slow realization, learning the creepy details, and finding out whether or not they’ll escape their fate. But A Better World is too predictable. It’s obvious what the town’s dark secrets are, to the point where the heroine seems slow. There’s also an odd thread where she and her family are hazed to the point where they consider leaving, only for Sarah to be randomly befriended by a powerful woman. It’s a pointless plotline with a random resolution.

The birds do play into the ending, but nowhere near as satisfyingly as I had hoped. ( Read more... )

Generally, the book felt underwhelming. It does have very fun interstitial bits of town propaganda.

osprey_archer

What I’ve Just Finished Reading

After I finished Maryrose Wood’s Bad Badger: A Love Story,

asakiyume casually asked if I planned to read the sequel, Bad Badger: A Family Story. I had not in fact been aware there was a sequel, but of course the knowledge sealed my fate.

In the first book, Septimus the badger befriended a seagull named Gully. In this second book, Gully’s eggs have hatched, and Septimus is now acting as co-parent to Gully’s seagull chicks, which honestly seems like a big leap in commitment from sitting on the porch enjoying sunsets together. Possibly the book one subtitle A Love Story should have clued me in that Septimus and Gully were going to become queerplatonic cross-species life partners.

I enjoyed the book, while simultaneously struggling with this aspect. Seagulls are monogamous colonial breeders! They stick with the same mate and the same colony for life! Why is Gully bringing up her chicks in a cottage with a badger rather than down on the beach with her mate and her flock?

I recognize that the answer is that I’m being too literal and there’s a metaphor about cross-cultural relationships here, but also when we got to the part where the raised-by-badger seagull chicks are not interested in flying I was like, okay, listen, I get there’s a metaphor. But the species gap is also simply much wider than a mere cross-cultural gap within the human species could ever be.

…I would read a sequel, though, if another one appears. I just really like the voice. And I am curious why Septimus not only lives in a cottage by the sea rather than a burrow, but in fact fears going underground at all.

I also finally read Susan Fletcher’s The Stuttgart Nanny Mafia, which I’ve vaguely intended to check out for years because it was always listed as “more by this author” on Dragon’s Milk. There is some danger as an adult in reading a book about a bratty kid plotting to get rid of her actually very nice German au pair, but in fact I was totally on Aurora’s side (against her parents rather than against the unoffending au pair). How did they expect Aurora would react when they made her give up her bedroom to some rando who would be “just like a big sister!”, except for how she would also be an authority figure in charge of Aurora, so really not like a big sister at all?

What I’m Reading Now

Daniel Hahn’s If This Be Magic: The Unlikely Art of Shakespeare in Translation. The man loves wordplay. At one point he mentions that he spelled “Shakespeare” with the first letter in each paragraph in the previous chapter. (Of course I had to go back to check, and yes he did.) In his chapter about grammatical gender, he mentions that he underlined every word in a translation passage that shows the gender of the speaker, and then puckishly adds that he did the same when he quoted the original English - the joke of course being that nothing in the English is underlined.

This has suggested to me the thesis that some translators find translation (among other things!) an irresistible word game, like a really high stakes crossword puzzle.

What I Plan to Read Next

I had intended to read Anne Rice’s The Vampire Lestat for Halloween this month, but will I make it? I may have checked out too many books this month…

sholio

I wrote a thing! The Whumptober prompts are in the form of four prompts per day - you can use one or more. And the Day 5 prompt set was just so extremely These Guys that I couldn't resist it.

No. 5: Enemy to Caretaker | Imposter Syndrome | Haircut
"I always make things worse."

Posted on AO3 (gen or at least gennish, post-canon fixit 'verse, 1600 wds) or under the cut.

( A Finger's Length of Hair )

yuletidemods posting in

yuletide_admin

The 2026 tag set is available here on AO3! Please browse and enjoy! We're excited to bring this to you! You can also browse it in a browser app.

Fixes and Polishing

We, your mod and tagmod team, are ready to work on corrections. Please tell us what we need to fix! We may make posts with further queries, depending on the issues you raise. Please keep an eye out for those! Sign-ups are projected to start October 13. If nothing's wrong in your fandoms - or if you can multitask - take part in activity at

yuletide or the discord!

If your fandom is the wrong category... (such as Books when it should be Celebrities & RPF - etc.)...

first, please check if it is also in the right category. If it is also in the right category, we can't help.
If it's only in the wrong category, please tell us what it is and what category it should be in.

(Please note that if it's a canonical fandom on AO3, we can't change it in the Yuletide tagset - however, we can notify the wranglers of the issue.)

Tell us about…

if you nominated something, but you can't find it at all

if you nominated characters in a particular fandom, but you can't find them there

if the fandom or characters you nominated were changed to something incorrect

if you see the precise, exact same character tag (including its disambiguation information in brackets) in multiple fandoms

if a character or fandom name is mis-spelled (we don't care as much about disambiguations, so if the words in brackets entered after your fandom name are wrong (mis-spelled, misleading), feel free to tell us, but this may not be corrected.)

if you see something that doesn't belong

if you see two fandoms that are duplicates of each other

if you see the same character twice under one fandom

if your new fandom has been categorized in the wrong media category (and that is its only category).

For missing nominations and corrections to your nominations, please provide your nominations link.

DO NOT tell us:

if your fandom is in the wrong media category (a book under movies, etc), unless that is the only category that it is in. Please check ALL the categories before you report a problem.

if your fandom is in Uncategorized Fandoms. This is a work in progress, please be patient as we work through these fandoms.

if the characters in your fandom all belong, but the disambiguation tags entered in brackets after their names aren't all the same. Sometimes we have to enter really long strings after a character name to keep the character where they're supposed to be. We only care if the information in brackets is wrong.

Suggested template for corrections requests:
Fandom tag (current):
Problem:
If correcting a tag or tags:
The correct fandom:
The current tag(s):
The correct tag(s):

Some Stats

This year, we approved 4490 fandoms containing 17029 characters! That's Yuletide's largest-yet tagset on AO3.

The most nominated fandoms this year were:
- Slow Horses (TV) 15
- Coyote vs. Acme (Movie) 14
- Widow's Bay (TV 2026) 13
- Dungeon Crawler Carl Series - Matt Dinniman 13
- Super Supportive - Sleyca 12
- Ride or Die (TV 2026) 12
- Lord Peter Wimsey - Dorothy L. Sayers 12
- The Lost Boys - Hoch/Hornsby/The Rescues 11
- The Saint of Steel - T. Kingfisher 11 [some extras from nominations in other formats]
- The Goblin Emperor Series - Katherine Addison 10 [some extras from nominations in other formats]
- Shadow of the Leviathan | Ana and Din Mysteries Robert Jackson Bennett 10

Super Supportive - Sleyca, Nine Worlds Series - Victoria Goddard, and Chronicles of Osreth Series - Katherine Addison have the most approved characters (44, 32, and 31 respectively). Worldbuilding was approved in 374 fandoms this year.

What's Next

The letters post will go up on

yuletide - but only once the tag set has been revised a bit.

It's also time to get ready for pinch hits (assignment hero squad)! You can set yourself up for pinch hit alerts by:

subscribing to yuletide_pinch_hits on Dreamwidth or adding it to a feed

giving yourself the "@ yulephs" role in the Discord

subscribing to the Google group for pinch hit alerts!

Schedule, Rules, & Collection | Contact Mods | Tag Set | Community DW | Discord | Pinch hits on Dreamwidth
Please either sign in to comment, or include a name with your anonymous comments, including replies to others' comments. Unsigned comments will stay screened.

Please give us your nominations page if telling us how to handle your own nomination.

denise posting in

dw_maintenance

It's only been... okay, I don't want to think how long.

We are preparing to take the beta update page and the beta inbox out of beta with the next code release. We don't have an exact date yet, but this is your last chance to tell us about problems!

To enable the beta versions: go to Beta Features and enable the "new Create Entries" beta test for the new update page and the "New Inbox Page" for the, well, new inbox page.

If this is your first time using the beta update page: nearly everything on it can be adjusted, moved, or removed to some degree. The upper right side of the update form has a " ⚙️ Rearrange Panels" link.

Not every panel is enabled by default! If you don't see something you're used to finding, look in the disabled panels. While in Rearrange mode, you can enable or disable panels, drag them to whatever position you want, and generally customize it to your heart's content.

Once we push the button and switch to the new update and inbox pages for everyone, we cannot keep the old ones available. We are so close to finishing the decade-long "get rid of the undocumented custom templating language from 1996 that no one else uses" modernization project that's been sapping our collective will to live that we can taste it, and we can't convert the old update page and the updated inbox page is the converted version. This is your last chance to alert us of problems. If you let us know after the switch goes live, we'll still fix it, but we can't guarantee how fast. Prevent future problems and test drive them now!

yuletidemods posting in

yuletide_admin

Last query post! Answer our questions and we'll give you the glorious tagset you've stuffed with exciting ideas! (More or less. We're still working on internal corrections.)

New queries

Batman vs Robin (2015) - nominator, we’re having difficulty finding Talia al Ghul’s appearances in this movie and it seems as though she is just briefly mentioned. We’d like to avoid a situation where someone would need to consume other canon to write her as a character in this movie. Could you please clarify, especially as we may have misread this? Another possible solution is treating this movie as half of a duology with Son of Batman (2014), as the prequel movie seems to give context to the events and relationship dynamics in Batman vs Robin, especially for Talia.

If we don’t hear from you we will approve the 2015 movie without Talia.

Unapproved RPF fandom - We have one podcast RPF nomination still unapproved. We foresee some difficulties with this nomination and would like to discuss it privately. Please email yuletideadmin@gmail.com if this is you!

Earlier queries

Book of Travels (Video Game) - the Malka Su appear to be an entire culture with distinct individuals; if so, we would not approve Malka Su as a single character here. Would you like to replace them with an individual Malka Su or perhaps Worldbuilding to prompt for their cultural impact on the world?

Die My Love - nominator, we’re not sure what was intended by the worldbuilding character nomination; can you let us know more about what you are looking for? If we don’t hear from you we will reject Worldbuilding.

Leningrad Cowboys (Movies) - The character nomination “Leningrad Cowboys (Characters)” appears to refer to a group of individuals. As we don’t allow group nominations when it's possible to pick an individual, can the nominator please pick a cowboy?

В Стране невыученных уроков - Лиа Гераскина | In the Land of Unlearned Lessons - Lia Geraskina - nominator, as some of your character nominations are in Cyrillic/Russian, we’d like to verify you’re nominating Vitya Perestukin, Katya - we believe this is Katya Pyatyorikina, can you confirm? - Liucya Karandashkina, and “textbooks”. While we’re fine with nominating textbooks as characters here since they come to life, at least three textbooks are specified - geography, grammar, and arithmetic - so could you please choose one?

The Last Guardian (Video Game) - Nominator, we cannot accept Other Trico Character(s) - would you like to choose another character nomination? If we don’t hear from you we will reject Other Trico Character(s).

Lord Huron (Band) - this is nominated without characters. Nominator, could you clarify what you had in mind, please? RPF, something related to the band's songs, something else? If we don’t hear back, we will reject the fandom.

The Moment (Movie 2026) - we’re not sure what was intended by the worldbuilding character nomination, as there doesn’t seem to be a clear speculative element to worldbuild around. Nominator, please let us know what you’re looking for. If we don’t hear from you we will reject Worldbuilding.

Neverwinter Nights (Video Games) nominator, we have heard from the Neverwinter Nights 2 nominator, who suggests you may want to keep your canons separate. So we are currently planning to update your nomination to Neverwinter Nights: Hordes of the Underdark. If you would rather combine fandoms, let us know.

Oxygen Not Included (Video Game) - we have a character nomination for Duplicant(s), however, there are multiple named and specific Duplicants in this game as per https://oxygennotincluded.fandom.com/wiki/Duplicant#Established_Duplicants. Nominator, would you like to choose 3 of these to add to your Worldbuilding character nomination? Please include your nominations link. If we don’t hear from you we will only accept Worldbuilding.

Re-Education (Through Labor) -- Rise Against nominator, did you want the song or the music video?

The Scarlet Pimpernel Series - Baroness Orczy - this nomination includes The League of the Scarlet Pimpernel as a character; we will not accept this as the group contains distinct characters. Nominator, please pick a League member. Ffoulkes and Dewhurst are already nominated.

その時、ハ—トは盗まれた | Sono toki Heartwa Nusumareta - nominator, we can’t find a Shiina Hiroko in this - did you mean Shiina Yuko? If we don’t hear from you, we’ll approve Shiina Yuko.

Sweet Valley High - Francine Pascal - we have approved the character of Jacob Ferrel as Jake Ferrel.

天地剑心 | Sword and Beloved (TV) - we're having trouble finding the name Li associated with Qingtong. Could we get more information about this character please?

Tennis RPF - this fandom is too large. Nominator, can you suggest a more specific fandom name for these people? One suggestion from our tagmods would be "2026 Top 10 Men's Tennis RPF". Characters are: Ben Shelton, Flavio Cobolli, Frances Tiafoe, Taylor Fritz.

Terminator (Movies) - we have a separate nomination for Terminator Genisys, so would prefer not to approve the (Movies) umbrella label. Nominator of Terminator (Movies), is there a specific movie or series of movies that would work for your nominations of John Connor, Sarah Connor, Kyle Reese, and Marcus Wright (T1-3 & Salvation, possibly?)

ふつつかな悪女ではございますが ~雛宮蝶鼠とりかえ伝~ | Though I Am an Inept Villainess - we also have a nomination specifically for the Anime version and won’t approve both the general and the specific fandom. Nominator, which version are you interested in?

Tokyo Mew Mew - nominator, we won’t approve Tokyo Mew Mew Ensemble as that’s a group of named characters. Would you like to select another character?

月鳞绮纪 | Veil of Shadows (TV) - nominators, as per one suggestion, we plan to send through the various “Li Jie | Yuan Wuhuo” nominations as the following three characters: Li Jie, Original Yuan Wuhuo, and Butterfly Demon Yuan Wuhuo. Please let us know if you nominated Li Jie | Yuan Wuhuo and this does not cover the identity you nominated.

Viticulture World (Board Game) - we see you have nominated four colors representing the board game materials, but are unsure how they would function as characters; please let us know what you intended. We could also approve without characters.

Witch Detective - Can you please confirm the character of Lilo?

W.I.T.C.H. - as this query has been outstanding for some time, we have merged this nomination into W.I.T.C.H. (Comics) with characters Cornelia Hale, Hay Lin, Irma Lair, and Will Vandom. Nominator, if you wanted Cartoons instead, please share your nominations page.

花開時節 - Yang Shuang-zi - we're having trouble finding the personal name Kouzou for Kurota. Could we get more information about this character please? We also propose to approve this as 花開時節 | Seasons of Bloom - Yang Shuang-zi, but if someone thinks that is incorrect we'd be glad to improve it.

We are also still looking for corrections: If you notice a spelling or other error, please let us know:
-What the fandom is
-(If different) What the fandom should be
-What the characters are
-(If different) What the characters should be.

Schedule, Rules, & Collection | Contact Mods | Tag Set | Community DW | Discord | Pinch hits on Dreamwidth
Please either sign in to comment, or include a name with your anonymous comments, including replies to others' comments. Unsigned comments will stay screened.

Please give us your nominations page if telling us how to handle your own nomination.

rachelmanija

You may know Killjoy from their podcasts, “Live Like the World Is Dying” (prepping for anarchists and other community-minded folk) and “Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff” (cool historical figures, mostly leftist.) They also write fiction, sometimes as Danielle Cain. I’d read a couple of their novellas and didn’t much like them, but I love their podcasts and other nonfiction work.

In a world close to our own in the early 20th century, a young journalist on assignment to cover a hero of an imperialist army falls in with the anarchists fighting them, and discovers a different and better way of life.

Hrun is a loose collective of towns and villages, most of which have been anarchist for hundreds of years, plus a new city founded by new anarchists who fled other countries. So it has both a new and purposeful society, and many others that have been doing their thing for ages and know it works.

Killjoy excels at sketching characters convincingly in not too many words, and the group of guerilla fighters that the journalist Dimas falls in with are very sympathetic and easy to care about. There’s enough quirky details to charm and convince, like the widespread use of ostriches as farm animals, a mourning custom involving teeth, and a very good use of characters speaking different languages.

A Country of Ghosts is a good, solid novel about solidarity, war, and freedom, as well as a nice exploration of what an anarchist society might be like, answering many questions an outsider might have. The answers are not always completely convincing, but it makes an extremely good case that even if it’s flawed or wouldn’t work quite as well as depicted, it sounds a hell of a lot better than our current way of organizing society.

A Country of Ghosts is very much in conversation with The Dispossessed, though it’s Ruritanian rather than science fiction and the POV character is the one coming to an anarchist society as a stranger. They’re very different takes both on what an anarchist society would be like and what exterior and interior forces might threaten it. In The Dispossessed, the exterior force is mostly that their moon is barren and generally hostile to human life, while the interior force is a falling away from ideals.

In A Country of Ghosts, the exterior force is an invading imperialist army with better weapons and greater numbers, while the interior force… well, there isn’t really one. The answer to “But who cleans the toilets without money” is that people don’t need to be paid to clean their own toilets, so if they feel that the whole town is their own, someone will step up to clean the public ones. People who believe in freedom without responsibility to the community can go (or be booted to) a neighboring community which is basically Libertarian.

The aspect of society that I found least convincing is that there's no organization around public toilet cleaning and other unpleasant tasks that need doing and aren't clearly the responsibility of any one person. I can absolutely believe that a society can exist where those tasks are shared by, say, a rota. I find it hard to believe that a society can exist where there is always someone who volunteers to do that stuff, and it getting done relies entirely on that. If nothing else that seems likely to breed an incredible amount of resentment on the part of the person who always does the shit jobs so they'll get done.

(The other society that makes an interesting comparison, is Graydon Saunders’ Commonweal. That one isn’t anarchist but it has enough similarities to bring up the comparison, with the philosophy of “everyone or no one,” a commitment to making sure that everyone eats and no one is forced into labor, and with norms largely enforced by social approval/disapproval. It also has a major external threat (invaders AND an inimical landscape); the internal threat is complicated.

In both the Commonweal and Anarres, rotas for tasks figure heavily. I can more easily believe in a society without laws than one without rotas.)

When thinking about those books and their utopian/dystopian societies, a few things struck me. One is the use of violence. In Killjoy's books, a huge theme is when and how it’s necessary to defend their societies by violence, and when and how it’s acceptable to inflict violence on its own people. In Le Guin’s book, almost all of the overt violence is committed by the capitalist society, Urras. On Anarres, there's subtler levels of coercion and force at play, but the effects are oppressive and against their ideals. Le Guin isn't concerned about the necessary uses of violence, and in fact implicitly questions whether it's ever truly necessary by writing a story about a society in which it isn't.

Another theme is the meaning of freedom. Killjoy’s Hrun has complete individual freedom for people to do whatever they want so long as it doesn’t significantly harm others. Beyond that, there’s no laws and no rules. Anarres has a lot of rules but they’re collectively approved and enforced by social pressure rather than violence. Its freedom is conceived of more communally than individually.

A Country of Ghosts is a good, thought-provoking book whether you're anarchist-curious or not. I recommend it to anyone who likes scrappy guerilla fighters or fiction exploring invented societies.

osprey_archer

I’ve put off reading C. S. Lewis’s The Abolition of Man: or, Reflections on education with special reference to the teaching of English in the upper forms of schools, because I found the mismatch between the title and the subtitle hilariously vast. We’re teaching English so wrong that it’s going to lead to the abolition of man? REALLY?

However, I ended up finding it an interesting (if also interestingly flawed) book, and a good reminder that when Lewis starts inveighing against those wicked progressives, you have to remember that political movements are always tossing positions back and forth, like a centuries-long game of hot potato. Things that were progressive at mid-century may not be progressive now.

For instance, Lewis is arguing against the then-popular vision of Man’s Conquest of Nature. (See for instance the Stalinist theory that the only limit on the speed of industrialization was the strength of socialist enthusiasm, not those pesky “physical laws governing the strength of steel” that those disloyal engineers kept whining about. Saboteurs, all of them!) At the time this had what you might call bipartisan support, but it’s become far more identified with the right wing.

He’s not arguing that all science is wicked, although he recognizes wearily that some people will take any critique of science to mean that the speaker thinks we should all be living in caves. He’s arguing, instead, that the then-triumphant reductionist steamroller “Progress at all costs!” approach to science is ultimately destructive. “When [regenerate science] spoke of the parts it would remember the whole,” Lewis exhorts, and any ecology-minded person can only nod along.

I also found some of his thoughts eerily prescient re: AI. “Once our souls, that is, ourselves, have been given up, the power thus conferred will not belong to us. We shall in fact be the slaves and puppets of that to which we have given our souls.”

However, it has to be said that sometimes Lewis’s desire to inveigh overpowers all other considerations. I can see why, in the midst of World War II, it was important that the English curriculum should not undermine the willingness of young people to go out and die fighting Nazism. I don’t agree that it necessarily follows that dulce et decorum est has to remain a cornerstone of the curriculum or else the entire edifice of human morality will crumble from within. I believe that at very least the dulce et decorum ethos needs to be amended so that it’s sweet and fitting to die defending your country, but not to die invading other countries, and no, invading other countries is not in fact defense no matter how many times you insist it’s a preemptive strike, so simmer down already.

But to be honest, I’ve lost faith that it’s possible to find a discourse that can’t be twisted by greed and corruption into letting us do whatever we want. If we can start with “Love thy neighbor as thyself” and somehow arrive at “If I were my neighbor and my soul was in a state of mortal sin, I would definitely want to be forcibly converted in a torture dungeon,” we can do anything.

rachelmanija

150,000 refugees from New York in another timeline arrive in our New York, right before their Earth is destroyed in a nuclear holocaust. They bring nothing but one bag packed with whatever they thought was most precious or useful to them, but without having any idea where they were going. The timelines diverged in 1909, but the cause of the divergence is unclear. Pre-nuclear holocaust, their world wasn’t clearly better or worse than ours, just different - they have different slang, they didn't have Nazis or the Holocaust but they did have a different group that were pretty similar to Nazis, etc.

Among the differences, Ezra Sleight died in our world at age 10, but in theirs, he became a cult classic science fiction writer. Since refugees could bring very little, only one of his novels made it into our world. Hel (short for Helen), a surgeon in her own timeline who’s now not doing much but being depressed, finds Sleight’s childhood home and wonders if he might have been the point of divergence. She also thinks it would make a good site for a museum about the refugees' timeline and culture. No one else seems interested, but while pursuing it, the only copy in the world of one of Sleight's books is lost or stolen.

I was really excited to read this, but found the book pretty dull. Very little happens in it. We don’t learn that much about the other timeline beyond some tantalizing tidbits. The refugees are oppressed and discriminated against, and are mostly miserable. Despite their timeline apparently having quite a few inventions that don’t exist in ours, nobody on Earth seems interested in replicating them. No one cares about the books or music or culture of their timeline except the refugees. A refugee musician attempts to get famous by trying to pass off their equivalent of the Beatles as his own songs, but only the refugees listen to them.

The book is mostly a metaphor about how lonely and depressing it is to be a refugee. We get a big chunk of the plot of Sleight’s one surviving book, but it was also dull. The point of divergence question ends up being a red herring. Hel never gets farther in creating the museum than trying to raise money for it. It’s essentially a mainstream novel of the kind I don’t like with some science fiction trappings rather than a science fiction novel about two timelines. Why it's famous MEN specifically is never addressed.

Famous Men Who Never Lived has a problem common to metaphorical takes on being a minority, which is that the fantasy elements make it not actually map very well. If some people really do have a tendency to, say, accidentally vaporize people, then it makes sense for other people to be afraid of them in a way that it does not make sense for, say, white people to be afraid that black people will randomly murder them; turning a baseless fear based purely on prejudice into a completely reasonable fear based on facts is a big change! (I say this with all love for the X-Men and their ilk.)

Americans not caring about the contributions and culture of refugees is a real thing, but if a specific group of refugees could provide a peek into a literal different timeline with different valuable inventions and a completely alternate version of American arts and culture, I’m sure many people would randomly hate them but at least as many would be all over that. You can’t tell me science fiction fans would have zero interest in reading books by alternate Ray Bradbury! (In the webnovel Worm, which has limited access to other timelines, bootleg other timeline movies and books are a hot commodity.)

Even if we postulate that the American government would be too stupid to be interested in alternate science and technology (not implausible TBH), lots of other countries would be recruiting those refugees to tell them everything they know about flying cars or whatever. They apparently do get interviewed but nothing seems to have come of it. I'd expect timeline refugees to be in more danger of being locked up and interrogated for potentially valuable information than of being ignored and discriminated against.

And also, if there is literally only one copy of a novel in the entire world, and it's a book that a character personally cherishes, you'd think in two and a half years of having it they'd have bothered to make a copy of it, even if they had to type it out by hand. The only books from their timeline are the ones they happened to bring with them, and they're in enough communication with other reading refugees to know no one else brought a Sleight book. So why wouldn't the refugees who brought books have already created copies of all their books so they can create a library, even an informal one, so they can read all the ones that exist?

sweetsorcery

Current Mood: nervous

( You're about to view content that the journal owner has marked as possibly inappropriate for anyone under the age of 18. )

mark posting in

dw_maintenance

Hi all,

I had to push some code live today to fix something, and that brought with it a couple of new things like if you have two-factor authentication (2FA/MFA) enabled, you got automatically logged out and it is now required to log in. If you don't, you can set it up if you want (you don't have to.)

This also means that if you have 2FA enabled, you will not be able to use 3P clients using your username and password anymore. You should be able to use API keys in most cases, but there's some nuance to that (and tbh, I just am not precisely sure what clients anybody even uses.)

Please do comment if you're seeing anything weird, as per usual, and we'll work on it. Thank you!

yuletidemods posting in

yuletide_admin

We are 196 hours into tag approving! We began with 4563 nominated fandoms (though two different spellings of the same fandom are treated as two different fandoms for that total). We have 63 fandom nominations still to sort.

SORTED: The Beating Heartland (Audio Drama)

- we’ve been unable to confirm the last name of Tucker Reese. Can the nominator please confirm that character for us?

Book of Travels (Video Game) - the Malka Su appear to be an entire culture with distinct individuals; if so, we would not approve them as a single character here. Would you like to replace them with an individual Malka Su or perhaps Worldbuilding to prompt for their cultural impact on the world?

SORTED: Cicero (Big Finish Audio)

- we're having a little difficulty finding the character Marcus Pupius Piso in this audio drama. Could we get more information about his appearance please?

SORTED: Dancing☆Starプリキュア The Stage | Dancing☆Star Precure The Stage

- this includes nominations for characters who only appear in the second musical. Nominators, do you want the second musical, both of the first two musicals, or something else?

SORTED: Every Day Except Christmas

- for the character “Cravat-wearing Man in Late-Night Cafe”, does the nominator mean the man in the cafe called Albert's who comes in at 17:40 and speaks to the four seated men?

SORTED: Galaxy Princess Zorana (Video Game)

- Tsirkony | Zolot are nominated as a single character, but as far as we can tell, they're separate characters. Could we get more information about this please?

Glaucomflecken Hospital (Web Series) - nominator, did you mean the animated web series Glaucomflecken General, or Dr. Glaucomflecken’s live-action YouTube videos? The characters you’ve nominated seem to come from the Jimothy Meets Rural Medicine short video - did you want that specifically, or a larger scope?

SORTED: Imperial Earth - Arthur C. Clarke

- perhaps predictably, we are puzzled by the nomination of 'mathematics puzzles' as a character. Could we get a bit more information about this please?

SORTED: Islander - Anderson/Melton

- we can identify two whales in this play: a whale calf called Arna and Arna’s mother, the whale cow. Nominator, please pick a whale.

SORTED: Kids In the Hall

- we see this is an anthology nomination for several sketches, and Worldbuilding is nominated for just one of the sketches. Could we check what you had in mind? We generally approve worldbuilding on the level of a whole canon.

Leningrad Cowboys (Movies) - the character nomination “Leningrad Cowboys (Characters)” appears to refer to a group of individuals. As we don’t allow group nominations when it's possible to pick an individual, can the nominator please pick a cowboy?

SORTED: Marathon (Video Games)

- from the characters nominated, it seems nominators are interested in both the classic games and the reboot from earlier this year. Could we please double-check you're happy with having them combined, or would you prefer the classic and reboot games are split out?

SORTED: Mickey 17 (2025)

- for the character of the Creeper, could we check please which particular creeper is meant?

SORTED: モノノ怪 | Mononoke (Anime & Manga)

- especially as a wide set of disambiguations have been chosen here, could we please check which version(s) of canon you are particularly interested in, nominator?

SORTED: 猫と竜 | Neko to Ryuu | The Cat and the Dragon (Anime)

- did you mean Mosha-mosha I or Mosha-mosha IV, please?

Neverwinter Nights (Video Games) and Neverwinter Nights 2 (Video Games) - nominators, we won’t approve both in this format as Neverwinter Nights (Video Games) encompasses both games, however, the characters nominated for the former are The Seer (Neverwinter Nights) and Valen Shadowbreath who are both from the DLC Neverwinter Nights: Hordes of the Underdark. We can either update Neverwinter Nights (Video Games) to the DLC name, or combine both under Neverwinter Nights (Video Games) - nominators, do you have a preference?

SORTED: Ogre Battle (Video Games)

- we have one nomination for the character Alphonse Loeher and another for Lanselot Tartaros. As far as we can tell, these are the same person–if that’s the case, we plan to combine the characters as Alphonse Loeher | Lanselot Tartaros. Please let us know if there is a difference between the two!

SORTED: Pact - Wildbow

- for the character nomination “Revenant (Pact)”, our understanding is that there are two different revenants with different nicknames and characterization. Could we please clarify which one you are looking for?

SORTED: Real InfoWars

- nominator, we can’t find where Bryan P Tetraheder or Nick Lutsko appear on-screen in the web series. Can you (or someone else) help, please?

SORTED: Sefer Yeshayahu | Book of Isaiah

- we also have a nomination for the Tanakh. We would like to include the Isaiah nominations within the Tanakh; please let us know if you have a problem with this. Could we also please clarify what you were looking for with Worldbuilding?

Slo-Pitch (TV 2026)

- nominator, based on what you entered, we think you are interested in the characters Leanne McCain, Boris Jagensdorf, Ashley Natasha, and Joanne (Arnolds or Pico depending on source; we can just send her through with a first name but if you have an ironclad source we're all ears). Please confirm this.

その時、ハ—トは盗まれた | Sono toki Heartwa Nusumareta - nominator, we can’t find a Shiina Hiroko in this - did you mean Shiina Yuko?

天地剑心 | Sword and Beloved (TV) - we're having trouble finding the name Li associated with Qingtong. Could we get more information about this character please?

SORTED: Tales of the Five Hundred Kingdoms - Mercedes Lackey

- we have nominations for Original Godmother Characters and The Tradition. We won’t approve Original Godmother Characters; meanwhile, we understand that The Tradition is a force that acts on peoples’ lives to make them live out fairy-tale narratives; we are not sure it works as a character for our purposes. Would Worldbuilding (Five Hundred Kingdoms), which could encompass prompts for both of these ideas, work for you instead?

SORTED: Todo Va a Estar Bien

- nominator, we can’t find any source for the last names for the characters you’ve nominated as Fausto Colmenares, Julia Perez Laborde, and Ruy Villegas. Can you or anyone else point us to something that verifies them? If not, we’re happy to approve with just their first names and a disambiguation.

SORTED: The Unmagical Life of Briar Jones - Lex Croucher

- we’re unable to find the character Richard Parker. Does the nominator mean Robert Parker, or can you help us identify this character?

SORTED: Valerius Mysteries - Jennifer Burke

- could we please get more information on Lucius Julius Atreus? We're having trouble confirming the first part of this name.

Viticulture World (Board Game) we see you have nominated four colors representing the board game materials, but are unsure how they would function as characters, please let us know what you intended. We could also approve without characters.

SORTED: 雨霖铃 | Zhan Zhao Adventures (TV)

- we can't find the character Hong Changbi, but we can find a Chang Hongbi. Nominator, could you confirm who you meant please?

花開時節 - Yang Shuang-zi - we're having trouble finding the personal name Kouzou for Kurota. Could we get more information about this character please? We also propose to approve this as 花開時節 | Seasons of Bloom - Yang Shuang-zi but if someone thinks that is incorrect we'd be glad to improve it.

Corrections

As we have now approved a large number of nominations, it's inevitable we may have introduced errors - sorry about that! If you notice a spelling or other error, please let us know:
-What the fandom is
-(If different) What the fandom should be
-What the characters are
-(If different) What the characters should be.

Ongoing queries

Please also see lingering queries on:

Query Post 1

Query Post 2

Query Post 3

smilebackwards

Lieutenant Hornblower by C. S. Forester. I feel like this second novel did a better job at feeling like a coherent story and not just a bunch of vignettes. Enjoyable outside POV of Hornblower and his cleverness.

Hornblower and the "Hotspur" by C. S. Forester. Enjoyable for the continued naval adventure stuff but wow this was bad regarding Hornblower's wife. Like, my dude, why did you marry a woman you don't like or respect and why is she written like some kind of 1800s Stepford wife?

-

In TV, I finished:

Star Trek: Strange New Worlds (season 4). This felt like a bunch of random one off episodes which generally I don't mind and some of them were fun but it just didn't really hit the mark for me for some reason. Also I wish they would stop bringing up Sybok if they're not going to do anything with that storyline.

Sirens (limited series). YES, crunchy drama about messy women! I could not remember the name of the Michaela actress the whole time but it was Julianne Moore and she was great. Killing me that I cannot find a good gif set on tumblr of the "you didn't serve me" scene. I need a sticker for my blog!

sholio

Hi world, it's October! I'd like to post more this month. I kinda fell off posting much in Aug-Sept; I was busy, and then sick, and also I've been trying to get some of my unhealthier habits under control - and it turns out that staying up late was when I did most of my fun fandom activities, such as drafting DW posts and writing fic. I am still figuring out what to do about that.

But I do have things to post about! Such as Babylon 5 things. I really enjoyed this three-part interview on Youtube with JMS and Bruce Boxleitner - one, two, three. It's new (from late September).

A few random reactions to various parts of it under the cut ... I watched this over a few days in bits and pieces, so I'm kinda going off memory here.

( Cut for nattering and general show spoilers )

muccamukk

Lil Nas X - "World's Greatest!"

Watch on YouTube

He's back!

osprey_archer

The Booksellers is a 2019 American documentary about the rare and used book trade in New York City, part lament for the changes that the internet wrought in the business (mostly from older booksellers, who pine for the romance of treasure hunt for books pre-internet), part excitement for the new avenues for collection opening up (mostly from younger booksellers).

(One of the younger booksellers interviewed was my girl Rebecca Romney, author of the excellent Jane Austen’s Bookshelf: A Rare Book Collector’s Quest to Find the Women Writers Who Shaped a Legend, which chronicles Romney’s own quest to collect and read 18th century English women authors who were hitherto ignored.)

In recent years, there seems to have been a widening of the range of things that people collect: not just the kind of books, but also a big surge in interest in ephemera, old programs and playing cards and postcards etc. etc. - things that might have been almost impossible to find pre-internet, and also things that are now rare because they were considered throwaway items and thus were indeed thrown away.

Now, I did feel a certain sympathy with the older booksellers: “I found this book for a steal at an estate sale after searching for years” is a much better story than “I bought it from eBay ten seconds after I decided I wanted it.” But I also felt a certain exasperation with their dolorous, po-faced certainty that we are on the cusp of the book’s demise, simply because the book has supposedly been on the cusp of demise not only for my entire life, but in fact since the launch of the radio. It’s been a hundred years, and books are still chugging along.

Surely other people remember tech bros trumpeting the book’s imminent murder by the internet in the 90s? Also the death of magazines, newspapers, brick-and-mortar bookstores, and libraries? The Big Tech message: “We’ve come to murder everything you love!”

But the only thing they were right about is local newspapers, which they have managed to put on life support. The local newspaper problem is that their most important public service is local news, but people actually bought them for the funnies and the sports news and the movie and TV listings, all of which can be conveniently accessed for free online. The local news stories? Well, by and large those are just gone.

But not only are books still chugging, paper books are still chugging. Independent bookstores have made a bit of a comeback. There’s a freaking book stall at the university farmer’s market on Thursdays, and it does hopping business with the students. Magazines are no longer the force they once were, but they keep on trucking too, if largely digitally rather than on paper.

Now, of course I can’t promise that books will never die. And perhaps bewailing the imminent death of books helps keep them alive, by rallying booklovers to the cause. But nonetheless, reports of the book’s imminent demise have been greatly exaggerated, time after time after time.

yuletidemods posting in

yuletide_admin

We are 143 hours into tag approving! We began with 4563 nominated fandoms (though two different spellings of the same fandom are treated as two different fandoms for that total). We have 567 fandom nominations still to sort.

SORTED: 15th Century CE Hungarian RPF

- nominator, as well as this nomination for Szapolyai Imre, we have a number of characters (Henry VII of England, Richard III of England, Ulrich von Jungingen, Margrete Valdemarsdatter | Margaret I of Denmark, Jeanne d'Arc | Joan of Arc, Anne Neville Queen of England, Isabel Neville, Richard III of England) nominated under 15th Century CE RPF. As we prefer not to approve both the general century and a more specific version, we propose approving Szapolyai Imre under the overall 15th Century CE – please let us know if that’s a problem! Alternately, 15th Century CE nominators, is there a narrower label you think might suit?

SORTED: 28 Days Later (Movies)

- we have one nomination for this fandom label, including Jim, Kellie | Jimmy Ink, Selena, Spike; from this character set, it looks as though you were interested in all four movies (Days, Weeks, Years, Bone Temple). We also have a nomination for 28 Years Later (Movies), for Cathy, Ian Kelson, Jimmy Ink | Kellie, Samson, Sir Jimmy Crystal, and Worldbuilding. Should we combine these movies into a set of four, or keep the first pair and second pair separate? It seems as though the majority of nominators are interested in 28 Years Later and Temple and Bone, but we're interested in hearing how splitting or merging would affect your plans to offer and request.

SORTED: British Writer RPF

- this is a relatively broad category. As the nominated characters are all in the right time period, we would like to merge it with 19th Century CE RPF (also quite broad) to create 19th Century CE Writer RPF. Please let us know if there are concerns! Characters are: Anne Brontë, Branwell Brontë, Charlotte Brontë, Emily Brontë, Walt Whitman, Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir, Simone Weil, Herman Melville, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Percy Shelley, Mary Shelley, John Keats, Lord Byron.

SORTED:Bronze Age RPF

- We also have nominations for the more specific Mesopotamian RPF, and all the Bronze Age characters (Hammurabi, Kiru daughter of Zimri-Lim, Šibtu, Zimri-Lim) seem to fit that description too. We plan to approve the Bronze Age people under Mesopotamian RPF, which currently contains Ea-Nasir, Hammurabi, Nanni, and Enheduanna.

SORTED: Champignon Witch

- Nominator, were you hoping to write or request the Anime or the Manga, or are they similar enough that it won’t make a difference? Please link your nominations page.

SORTED: The Chronicles of Chrestomanci - Diana Wynne Jones

has been approved with Conrad, Christopher, and Millie - apologies that we hadn't noticed Witch Week - Diana Wynne Jones is also nominated with Charles, Nirupam, Nan, and Estelle. We propose to merge Witch Week into Chrestomanci.

SORTED: Cycling RPF

- this fandom is too large for Yuletide. Nominator of Alex Baudin, Enric Mas, Felix Gall, and Paul Seixas, can you suggest an appropriate fandom label that contains some or all of these people? Please note we separately have a nomination for Bahrain Merida Pro Cycling Team 2018 so would prefer not to approve another Cycling label that is an umbrella label for that one.

SORTED: A Day in the Life of an Enshittificator — YouTube Video and The life of death and the enshittificator by Forbrukerrådet

- the second of these commercials appears to be a direct continuation of the first. Nominators, do you have any concerns with combining them, perhaps as something like Enshittificator Commercials - Forbrukerrådet?

Die My Love nominator, we’re not sure what was intended by the worldbuilding character nomination, can you let us know more about what you are looking for?

SORTED: Edge of Tomorrow (2014)

- we understand that J-squad includes named individuals such as Griff and Nance, so we will not accept this group tag. Could you please pick a J-squad member?

SORTED: Embassytown - China Miéville

- could we get more information about the character ez/ra please? This potentially seems like two characters together.

SORTED: GMMTV Actor RPF & GMMTV RPF

- we've approved this fandom in earlier years, but it is now difficult to establish clearly that it is a rare fandom. We would like to discuss whether there are smaller subsets of these actors that would work for you. Nominated: Hong Pichetpong Chiradatesakunvong, Keen Suvijak Piyanopharoj, Nut Thanat Danjesda, Sea Dechchart Tasilp,
Film Rachanun Mahawan, Gun Atthaphan Phunsawat, Namtan Tipnaree Weerawatnodom, Off Jumpol Adulkittiporn. We note that Project Alpha (Thai TV) RPF and Burnout Syndrome RPF would combine some of these actors; or perhaps you could suggest an awards or similar event that might allow a different grouping. Phuwin Tangsakyuen and Pond Naravit Lertratkosum were also nominated, but are too popular on AO3 for any Yuletide RPF fandom. See also a query below for Thai Actor RPF.

SORTED: Golden Age Hollywood RPF and Mid-20th Century Celebrity RPF

- Due to the overlap in theme here, we think it would make sense to approve all characters under Mid-20th Century Celebrity RPF. We’re also open to another name suggestion, though we’d like to choose something that gives sufficient weight to Ella Fitzgerald’s sphere of influence. Character slates are Golden Age Hollywood RPF: Cary Grant, Katharine Hepburn, Randolph Scott; Mid-20th Century Celebrity RPF: Ella Fitzgerald, Marilyn Monroe

SORTED: Heineken "Pride and Prejudice" Commercial

- If this is the advertisement in question, we’re not sure who the character “Maid (PAP Heineken Commercial)” is. There is a woman offering tea who may also be intended to be Mrs. Bennet - was that the character you had in mind?

SORTED: Hot or Cold? (De'Longhi Commercial 2026)

- Some dogs are named (there are Lawrence and Kyle) so please, nominator, choose a dog?

В Стране невыученных уроков - Лиа Гераскина | In the Land of Unlearned Lessons - Lia Geraskina - nominator, as some of your character nominations are in Cyrillic/Russian, we’d like to verify you’re nominating Vitya Perestukin, Katya - we believe this is Katya Pyatyorikina, can you confirm? - Liucya Karandashkina, and “textbooks”. While we’re fine with nominating textbooks as characters here since they come to life, at least three textbooks are specified - geography, grammar, and arithmetic - so could you please choose one?

The Last Guardian (Video Game) - Nominator, we won’t accept Other Trico Character(s) - would you like to choose another character nomination?

Lord Huron (Band) - this is nominated without characters. Nominator, could you clarify what you had in mind, please? RPF, something related to the band's songs, something else?

SORTED: MacArthur Park - Richard Harris (Song)

- nominated characters are Girl, Narrator, and the Cake, but we're dubious about the cake as a character. If you were concerned that nominating only the humans might give a request the wrong focus, we think it would make the most sense to send this through without characters - please let us know, otherwise we will approve the Narrator and the Girl and leave the cake out ~~in the rain~~.

SORTED: Men’s Basketball RPF

- This fandom label is too large. We need a smaller fandom for these nominations. We propose renaming this fandom to 2026-2027 Men's Basketball Eastern Conference/Atlantic Division RPF. The nominated players under this fandom would be: Jalen Brunson, Jaylen Brown, Jayson Tatum, Jose Alvarado, Josh Hart, Karl-Anthony Towns, and LeBron James. If either nominator wishes to split these nominations into two smaller groups, please propose a fandom name for each.

The Moment (Movie 2026) - we’re not sure what was intended by the worldbuilding character nomination, as there doesn’t seem to be a clear speculative element to worldbuild around. Nominator, please let us know what you’re looking for.

SORTED: Outward Bound (1925)

- it looks like Outward Bound may refer to a 1923 play, a 1929 novel, or the 1930 movie. Nominator, which of these are you looking for?

Oxygen Not Included (Video Game) - we have a character nomination for Duplicant(s), however, there are multiple named and specific Duplicants in this game as per https://oxygennotincluded.fandom.com/wiki/Duplicant#Established_Duplicants. Nominator, would you like to choose 3 of these to add to your Worldbuilding character nomination? Please include your nominations link.

SORTED: The Prisoner (1967)

- we have character nominations for Number Two (Leo McKern), Number Two (Rachel Herbert), and Number Two (The Prisoner). Nominator of the generic Number Two, could you let us know if you had a specific portrayal in mind, since other nominators are looking for individual versions of the character?

SORTED: Record Player - Daisy the Great and AJR

- nominator, did you want the song or the music video? The only character nomination is Worldbuilding, however nominating without characters might also suit your purposes here.

Re-Education (Through Labor) -- Rise Against nominator, did you want the song or the music video?

SORTED: Scanner Cop (1994)

- our understanding is that the nominated character Rachel Staziak doesn’t appear until the sequel. With this in mind, we plan to approve the fandom as Scanner Cop (Movies).

The Scarlet Pimpernel Series - Baroness Orczy - this nomination includes The League of the Scarlet Pimpernel as a character; we will not accept this as the group contains distinct characters. Nominator, please pick a League member. Ffoulkes and Dewhurst are already nominated.

Tennis RPF - this fandom is too large. Nominator, can you suggest a more specific fandom name for these people? One suggestion from our tagmods would be "2026 Top 10 Men's Tennis RPF". Characters are: Ben Shelton, Flavio Cobolli, Frances Tiafoe, Taylor Fritz.

Terminator (Movies) - we have a separate nomination for Terminator Genisys, so would prefer not to approve the (Movies) umbrella label. Nominator of Terminator (Movies), is there a specific movie or series of movies that would work for your nominations of John Connor, Sarah Connor, Kyle Reese, and Marcus Wright (T1-3 & Salvation, possibly?)

SORTED: Thai Actor RPF

- This fandom is too large. Nominator, can you suggest a more specific fandom name for these people? Characters are: Gawin Caskey, Jimmy Jitaraphol Potiwihok, Joss Way-Ar Sangngern, Sea Tawinan Anukoolprasert. See also query above for GMMTV.

ふつつかな悪女ではございますが ~雛宮蝶鼠とりかえ伝~ | Though I Am an Inept Villainess - we also have a nomination specifically for the Anime version and won’t approve both the general and the specific fandom. Nominator, which version are you interested in?

Tokyo Mew Mew - nominator, we won’t approve Tokyo Mew Mew Ensemble as that’s a group of named characters. Would you like to select another character?

月鳞绮纪 | Veil of Shadows (TV) - we have nominations for Li Jie, Li Jie | Yuan Wuhuo, and Yuan Wuhuo. Could we check please: are all three of these tags meant as nominations for the same character? Or are nominators variously interested in the original Yuan Wuhao, the human part of Yuan Wuhao who splinters off, and/or the Yuan Wuhao who is part butterfly demon? Possibly all of the above, or perhaps something else entirely? In addition to these tags Bai Ze, Lu Wuyi, and Wu Wangyan were also nominated.

SORTED: The White North Has Thy Bones - Dorian Ravenscroft

- we haven’t been able to access a copy or many details of this book, so we’re having trouble confirming the character Lawrence Hutchings. We did see a Lieutenant Hutchings at one place in the text we were able to find, and other information suggested Harry has a childhood friend named Lawrence but we are unsure these were both the same character. Can the nominator please confirm?

Witch Detectives - we will approve this fandom as Witch Detectives (Cartoon) to distinguish it from other media by that name. However, we’re having some trouble finding the character Lilo. Can the nominator help us confirm?

SORTED: 雨穴シリーズ

Nominator, we want to confirm we have found the right canon for your nomination. Your nominated characters Kurihara Fuminobu, Uketsu seem to belong to 変なシリーズ | Strange Series - Uketsu, a series of novels written by Uketsu where he also appears as a character. Can you confirm if we have the right canon, and if not can you point us to what you intended to nominate?

Corrections

Ongoing queries

Please also see lingering queries on:

Query Post 1

Query Post 2

osprey_archer

What I’ve Just Finished Reading

Shaun Tan’s The Arrival. A gorgeous book. A wordless picture book (but much thicker than your average picture book) about a man immigrating to a new country, with sepia-toned illustrations reminiscent of photos of immigrants to early 20th century New York… if early 20th century New York featured fox-cat creatures with spiky dragon tails, weird panoramas full of cones and circles and strange flying creatures, and giants stalking the city sucking people up with gigantic vacuum cleaners.

The giants are actually not in not!New York, but in a flashback from one of the people our hero meets. There are a few such flashback scenes, where we jump away from the main story for a few pages to witness the past of an incidental character we’ve just met - the difficulties that drove them to not!New York in the first place. An unusual mixture of whimsy and seriousness, but it works.

I also finished Helene Hanff’s Underfoot in Show Business, a delightful memoir about her years scraping by while trying to get her plays produced on Broadway. Fascinating look at the world of the theater in the 1930s, 40s, and 50s, as well as the dawn of the television era.

At one point Hanff muses that the main problem with her plays was always the plots, which she thinks she struggled with because she never liked fiction. She was going to the theater all the time (usually sneaking in at intermission with her friend the struggling actress Maxine), so did she like fiction in play form but not in books, or was she somehow in love with the world of the theater but not with actual plays? Truly the human mind is mysterious.

Also loved the bit where she gets a fellowship to an artists’ colony for six weeks in the summer. And the summer theater chapter. And honestly just the whole book, super interesting if you have any interest in the theater/movies/TV/art world in the mid-twentieth century, and Hanff writes like a 1940s heroine who may be down but is never out.

What I’m Reading Now

I’ve finally started Daniel Hahn’s If This Be Magic: The Unlikely Art of Shakespeare in Translation. Just finished the intro, which includes a playful note to possible future translators (feel free to localize this reference to Brighton Pavilion in your translation!). Gosh, though, imagine translating a book about the translation of Shakespeare. That’s so many layers of translation!

What I Plan to Read Next

I’ve decided it’s time to read more Jill Paton Walsh. Previously I’ve read Fireweed. Any other recs?

sholio

Thank you for all the comments on my last entry and supportive health well-wishes! My cold still lingers in the form of intermittent coughing, which is annoying, but I'm mostly over it.

One more fall picture from a recent drive up the highway.

leaves floating on the reflective surface of a pond surrounded by slim white trunks of birch trees

My September ficlet-writing project (Whumptember and No True Pair) went off the rails even more epically than these things normally do for me. This was partly because of being sick, but I think what I learned this time very definitively is not to try to do more than one of these prompt sets at once, because then choice paralysis sets in.

That being said, it is almost Whumptober season, so there's always hope of that!

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September 2026

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Reading

A roundup of recent things

A Better World, Sarah Langan

Wednesday Reading Meme

Babylon 5 fic: A Finger's Length of Hair

Yuletide 2026 Tag Set Open! Corrections Welcome!

Fixes and Polishing

Tell us about…

Some Stats

What's Next

LAST CALL for beta update and inbox page

Nominations Queries Post 5

A Country of Ghosts, by Margaret Killjoy

Book Review: The Abolition of Man

Famous Men Who Never Lived, by K Chess

What (New) Devilry is This?

Code pushed -- FYI

Nominations Queries Post 4

Corrections

Ongoing queries

that's what must have happened

October and Babylon 5 interview

Music Thursday

The Booksellers

Nominations Queries Post 3

Corrections

Ongoing queries

Wednesday Reading Meme

Nearly the end of September

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September 2026

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