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mundodefieras mrissaReview copy provided by the author, who's a convention/online buddy.
Sometime in your life, you've probably met a smartass who always has a joke for every occasion--and then gradually realized that this person was genuinely kind. That they were not punching down, and mostly they weren't punching at all, instead focusing their jokes on wry incongruity or situation rather than mocking individual people. That there was a core of tenderness behind the wisecracking. If you know the kind of person I mean (let's be real: several of you are the kind of person I mean), you will understand Sol, the narrator of Hornytown Chutzpah pretty much right away. He's not just called Solomon the Wise Guy for a wry historical reference. He's definitely a wiseacre--but not as dumb as he might joke that he is. He's coping using a very specific kind humor--in this case, the instantiation of it that shows up in a lot of American Jewish culture.
And boy, does Sol have a lot to cope with. I knew I was hooked all the way when the guy who is enough of a smartass to earn the nickname Solomon the Wise Guy can be brought to action with a reference to tikun olam. Look, friends, I'm not Jewish, but I know that one. A call to repair the world? those are lyrics everyone can enjoy. And having it be a touchstone, a point that rings our hero like a bell? I'm in, I'm all in.
The Hornytown of the title is an incursion of Hell into the Washington, DC, area, complete with hellfire around it and sin-eating demons within (and sometimes without). It's run by a figure that will look unfortunately familiar, but rest assured that our hero is all-in against him. I was frankly worried by the title, because my interest in "city of people who would like to have a lot of sex" is pretty minimal, but it's not that kind of Hornytown at all. Whew. Is there chutzpah, though? There is chutzpah to spare. Which is a good thing, because the literally hellish nature of the problems Sol faces will require it.
nineweaving
She and her husband, the author/illustrator Keith Miller, took me to the courtyard at Oleana, which is spectacular.
The conversation sang.
Nine
rocky41_7Solavellanizing Never Love an Anchor again b/c like. come on.
On some level I think I always understood
That these hands of mine were clumsy, not clever
And I tried to do the best that I could
But try as I might I couldn't bring myself to hold you
For now the best gift I can offer is the truth. In another world...I can't, I'm sorry. Thus I freed the elven people--and in so doing, destroyed their world. But you lied to me. I loved you. Ir abelas, vhenan.
It’s a secret I keep tucked inside my chest
With this heart of mine that's guilty not remorseful
There is love that doesn't have a place to rest
But it would have buried you if it had settled on your shoulders
What would you have had me say? That I was the great adversary of your people's mythology? I would have had you trust me. Regrets I cherish more than victories.
On some level I think I always understood
That a ship could never really love an anchor
So, I did the only thing that I could
And severed the rope to set you sailing from my harbor
I have distracted you from your duty. If he does not wish to be found, we will not find him. I wish it could, vhenan. It was selfish of me to grow close to her.
There are times when I still wonder about you
You are someone I have loved but never known
And you’ll never see the reasons I had
For keeping my claws away when they were close enough to hurt you
I will never forget you. Dreams in which her lover watched her sadly from across an endless distance. Perhaps when you read this the world will be as it once was, and you will see why all I did was necessary. But I lied to you. I betrayed you.
I am selfish, I am broken, I am cruel
I am all the things they might have said to you
Fen'harel giggling madly in the darkness. I never said I would save you. You're Fen'harel. He's the god of lies, inquisitor. What would you have had me say? Did you really think I wouldn't have understood? What is the old curse? May the Dread Wolf take you? And so he did.
Do you ever think of me and my two hands
And wonder why they never soothed your fevers
And wonder why they never tied your shoes
And wonder why they never held you gently
And wonder why they never had the chance to lose you?
Tel abelas. I know you were cruelly disappointed when Solas left. Alone on the balcony. Every time she reached for him, he vanished into nothing. Maybe I'm the prideful one. Imagining his broken heart so I never have to face my folly: that I loved someone who made such grave mistakes. It won't be terrible if I'm with you. Bellanaris.
ysabetwordsmith
sanguinityunsent_letters_exchange opened last week, and authors are due to reveal later today. But first, let me recommend two stories to you.Worth Waiting ForMy gift, which makes use of the epistolary format to tease out the peculiar joys and frustrations of a long-distance relationship. Even among the frustration and pining and doubt, there is the anticipation of coming together at last, an anticipation that is almost as sweet as its fruition. The gardening metaphor is beautifully apt, and I especially enjoy thinking of Keith as a prickly artichoke--except that it's not the prickliness or bitterness of an artichoke that his lovers associate with him, but the long cultivation and anticipation. (Have they ever tasted an artichoke, I wonder? Will the prickles be a surprise?) Just a lovely story all around.
The Flight of the Heron
Keith/Ewen/Alison
Epistolary, Long Distance Relationship, Established Relationship, Gardens and Gardening
(no summary provided)
Beta FeedbackClever, twisty, multi-layered work in which Cordelia's adventures have been multiply adapted into holovids, and critics tear into them. I love the layers of interpretation and re-interpretation here, and the unreliable-narratorness of both the explicit and implied accounts of Cordelia's life. (Which raises the question of whether we should be taking Shards of Honor as a wholly reliable account...?) Just a hair over a thousand words, and just like any good journalism, makes every one of those words count.
Vorkosigan Saga
Cordelia/Aral
POV Outsider, Documentation, In-Universe Film Criticism
Three columns, over five years, from the Betan paper of record.
ysabetwordsmithfuzzyred has sponsored "A Proper Community Is a Commonwealth," "Your Emotional Abilities," and "Aim a Little Above It" plus put $55 towards "Let's Go on This Journey Together" so that now needs $251 to be complete. ![[syndicated profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/feed.png){kind=small}
otw_news_feedManacles Press, publisher of various fanzines including Nudge Nudge Wink Wink (Professionals), McPikus Interruptus (Wiseguy), and Consupiscence (multifandom), is importing the zines’ fanworks to the Archive of Our Own (AO3).
In this post:
Manacles Press was run by Megan Kent and Charlotte C. Hill in the 1990’s, publishing both anthology and novel zines. Megan and Charlotte are happy to archive these works in an effort to preserve fannish history and to keep the fanworks available and free.
The fanzines to be imported are:
The purpose of the Open Doors Committee’s AO3 Fanzine Scan Hosting Project (FSHP) is to assist publishers of fanzines to incorporate the fanworks from those fanzines into the Archive of Our Own. It is extremely important to Open Doors that we work in collaboration with publishers who want to import their fanzines and that we fully credit creators, giving them as much control as possible over their fanworks. Open Doors will be working with Manacles Press to import the fanzines listed above into separate, searchable collections on the Archive of Our Own. As part of preserving the fanzines in their entirety, all art in the fanzines will be hosted on the OTW’s servers and embedded in their own AO3 work pages.
We will begin importing works from Manacles Press’s fanzines to the AO3 after June 2026. However, the import may not take place for several months or even years, depending on the size and complexity of the task. Creators are always welcome to import their own works and add them to the collections in the meantime.
We will send an import notification to the email address we have for each creator. We’ll do our best to check for an existing copy of any works before importing. If we find a copy already on the AO3, we will add it to the collection instead of importing it. All works archived on behalf of a creator will include their name in the byline or the summary of the work.
All imported works will be set to be viewable only by logged-in AO3 users. Once you claim your works, you can make them publicly-viewable if you choose. After 30 days, all unclaimed imported works will be made visible to all visitors.
Please contact Open Doors with your creator pseud(s) and email address(es), if:
Please include the name of the publisher or fanzine in the subject heading of your email. If you no longer have access to the email account the publisher has a record of, please contact Open Doors and we’ll help you out. (If you’ve posted the works elsewhere, or have an easy way to verify that they’re yours, that’s great; if not, we will work with Manacles Press to confirm your claims.)
Please see the Open Doors website for instructions on:
If you have further questions, visit the Open Doors FAQ, or contact the Open Doors committee.
We’d also love it if fans could help us preserve the story of Manacles Press and its fanzines on Fanlore. If you’re new to wiki editing, no worries! Check out the new visitor portal, or ask the Fanlore Gardeners for tips.
We’re excited to be able to help preserve Manacles Press’s fanzines!
– The Open Doors team, Megan and Charlotte
Commenting on this post will be disabled in 14 days. If you have any questions, concerns, or comments regarding this import after that date, please contact Open Doors.
oursinNot so much re-inventing the wheel, as having to point out something that is already known and has been for a long time (it was not really news when my primary-school teacher was making the point): Children’s reading should prioritise pleasure over learning, says laureate. Sigh.
***
Also on perhaps a similar theme that the obvious straight road is not actually the way there: science is not simply a sequence of tasks that can be optimized:
It advances through a process analogous to Darwinian evolution: variation across many independent efforts; selection through critique, replication, and competition; and retention of robust results. This distributed structure is what allows science to correct itself and to generate novelty. Independence is not incidental; it is the mechanism that produces both reliability and discovery.
....
The scientific system thrives on inefficiency: redundant efforts, failed attempts, and divergent paths. These are not costs to be eliminated but sources of discovery. By contrast, optimization pressures drive convergence—faster iteration within a constrained search space. The result may be more output but less exploration of the unexpected.
I stumbled across a remarkable collection of photographs:
There are several images in the collection of relevance to queer history, not least in those that record varieties of touch between men that would later become discouraged. In one, we see four young men sitting together on a bench in a garden: two of them hold hands. In another, a man takes another man on his lap, posing as lovers in a pose that mimics the popular visual culture of the day.
But the collection is arguably of most interest to LGBTQ+ history, specifically trans history, for the kinds of gender play it records. Several images in the collection illustrate traditions of gender crossing in British culture. Some show pantomime dames and another perhaps shows the role of a boy character taken up by a woman.
***
An extraordinary story of people who appear to be the 'good guys' (Liberal representing the anti-slavery interest in Lyme Regis) absolutely knee-deep in electoral corruption. Bonus appearance of Mary Anning!
What is most striking about Pinney’s career as an MP is not just the willingness of a fairly advanced Liberal to engage in wholesale electoral corruption, but his own attitude to slavery given his family background. As early as 1832 he had called on the hustings for its complete abolition and in 1838 he willingly voted for the Whig government’s apprenticeship reforms.
This is fascinating: The Plotland Houses of Britain: How a 20th century working-class housing movement was stifled, but I'd like to see some consideration of how the post-WWII prefab housing developments and attitudes thereto would fit onto what's described here.
(Also resonates with account in Houlbrook's Songs of Seven Dials about what well-intentioned progressive town-planners wanted to do to those traditional parts of inner London, but in the event, didn't.)
jesse_the_kchickenfeetprimsong posting in dw100brightknightie posting in fandom_on_dw| FK Fic Fest 2026 |
fkficfest | FKFicFest A03 Collection
We're playing our 17th annual Forever Knight (1992-1996) ficathon game!
Remember FK? Just discovered FK? Curious about the original and still greatest vampire homicide cop TV show? :-D We've got police procedurals, historical fiction, vampire horror, urban fantasy, psychological drama, and so much more. Come play!
asakiyume
james_davis_nicoll
Which of these look interesting?
A Dance of Burning Blades by M. H. Ayinde (April 2026)
2 (10.0%)
Crimson in Quietus by Eugen Bacon (September 2026)
5 (25.0%)
To Ride a Rising Storm by Moniquill Blackgoose (January 2026)
10 (50.0%)
Blade of Two Faces by Blake Blessing (November 2026)
1 (5.0%)
The Silver Hand by Shawn Carpenter (August 2026)
1 (5.0%)
Like the Moon We Rise by Annabelle Cormack (January 2027)
2 (10.0%)
Little Necromancers by Emma Devlin (March 2027)
4 (20.0%)
Eyes of Kings by Chloe Gong (August 2026)
0 (0.0%)
What Haunts the Ice by S. Hati (January 2027)
2 (10.0%)
The Curve of the World by Vonda N. McIntyre (March 2026)
14 (70.0%)
The Unfolding: Mairee by S. Nyland (April 2026)
3 (15.0%)
Project V by Park Seolyeon (April 2026)
4 (20.0%)
Some other option (see comments)
0 (0.0%)
Cats!
13 (65.0%)
wickedgame in icons - multifandom icons.mrissa - Hornytown Chutzpah, by Andrew Hillernineweaving - Table talkrocky41_7 - Guilty not Remorsefulysabetwordsmith - Birdfeedingsanguinity - Unsent Letters Recsysabetwordsmith - Poetry Fishbowl Updatemachinistm - Gay During That Goal, Too / Heated Rivalry fic recotw_news_feed - Manacles Press’s Fanzines are Moving to the AO3!oursin - Rather miscellaneousserrico - Qua qua qua quajesse_the_k - Poll: Rate My Glasseschickenfeet - Don Giovanni benefit performanceprimsong in dw100 - Challenge #1091: disusedbrightknightie in fandom_on_dw - FKFicFest: A Forever Knight challenge-style ficathonspiralsheep in endings - (no subject)polyamships_mod in fandomcalendar - [MULTIFANDOM] PolyamShippingDay - June 2026polyamships_mod in polyamships - PolyamShippingDay - June 2026asakiyume - little librariesjames_davis_nicoll - Books Received, May 16 — 22winterfish
