2026 Nomination Queries #3

Thu, Mar. 26th, 2026 08:45 am
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[personal profile] firebatvillain posting in [community profile] bitesizedfandomsex

2026 Nom Queries #3

We're partway through approving nominations and have a few questions! Lots of nominations this year and we're very excited to approve all these bite-sized fandoms, and would love some clarifications on a couple we've encountered.

New: Birds of Prey (And the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn) (2020) , Doctor Who (TV Movie 1996), Doctor Who: Scream of the Shalka , Sherlock Holmes: The Awakened (Video Game) , Star Wars: Ahsoka (TV) , The Marvels (Movie 2023) , Where the Flood Couldn't Reach | SCP-6634, Baccano!, 月刊少女野崎くん | Gekkan Shoujo Nozaki-kun, Anodyne 2, Changing Planes - Ursula K. Le Guin, Even the Ocean, OneShot (Video Game)


Carry-overs: Black Mirror (TV), Bunny - Mona Awad, LOVE DEATH + ROBOTS (Cartoon)


Stand-alone fandoms?

The following Fandoms appear to be part of a larger media franchise, or are sequels or prequels. Please let us know if these can be experienced and understood by someone with no background in the relevant franchise/superfandom, and you would be happy receiving a gift from someone who only experienced this bite-sized segment. If no response, these nominations will be rejected.

Birds of Prey (And the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn) (2020)
Doctor Who (TV Movie 1996)
Doctor Who: Scream of the Shalka
Sherlock Holmes: The Awakened (Video Game)
Star Wars: Ahsoka (TV)
The Marvels (Movie 2023)
Where the Flood Couldn't Reach | SCP-6634


Scoped to anime-only?

These anime fandoms have LN or Manga versions that exceed length limits for this exchange. Can you scope these tags to be anime-only? If no response, we will modify and accept these fandoms as anime-only.
Baccano!
月刊少女野崎くん | Gekkan Shoujo Nozaki-kun

Needs Rel tags

These fandoms have been nominated without rel tags - please add rel tags. If no response, these nominations will be rejected.
Anodyne 2
Changing Planes - Ursula K. Le Guin

Even the Ocean
OneShot (Video Game)


Carry-Overs:

Black Mirror (TV)
Anthology disambig?

Please nominate this anthology fandom using a more specific fandom tag, such as San Junipero (Black Mirror Episode) or Black Mirror S3E4. If no response, this nomination will be accepted and renamed at the end of noms period.


Bunny - Mona Awad

Scope to exclude metanarrative sequel?

This originally standalone novel recently got a sequel which seems not to continue the plot. Is this sequel a continuation of the main story or some kind of metanarrative that’s not part of the core work? Can you clarify scope for this nomination as being just the original novel? If no response, this nomination will be accepted at the end of noms period, with the expectation that offers in this fandom will be scoped for just the original novel.

LOVE DEATH + ROBOTS (Cartoon)

One more anthology disambig?

Thank you to nominators for handling one of these - one more to go. Please nominate this anthology fandom using a more specific fandom tag, such as LOVE DEATH + ROBOTS S1E1. If no response, the remaining nomination will be accepted and renamed at the end of noms period.


duckprintspress: (Default)
[personal profile] duckprintspress
The cover of a book entitled Duxxx in a Row: A Curated Collection of Explicit Stories. Artwork shows a line of five people sunning themselves on a beach, their sunburns/tan line patterns showing where hands have touched them, mouths have kissed them, and clothes have been. All are reading, lying atop a beach towel with colorful umbrellas overhead and blue waves lap at the bottom of the image.The front cover of a book entitled Ducks in a Row: A Curated Collection of Short Stories. It shows a pillowfort in rich, warm shades of red, with a group of people of different skin tones, hair colors, and gender presentations gathered beneath as a central person with short pink hair, white skin, and black ear gauges reads aloud from a book. In the foreground, a cat, iguana, and cat cuddle with a duck plushie.

A few days ago, we shared the cover reveals for our next two anthologies, Ducks in a Row: A Curated Collection of Short Stories and Duxxx in a Row: A Curated Collection of Explicit Stories. As explained, each anthology contains stories previously published to our website and/or Patreon between 2021 and 2023. This understandably lead people to wonder: what are the stories?

Wonder no longer!

Ducks in a Row Authors and Stories:

Duxxx in a Row Authors and Stories:

You can read all these authors’ biographies on our webpage!

Follow our pre-launch page on Kickstarter to be notified when we launch our campaign on March 30th!


duckprintspress: (Default)
[personal profile] duckprintspress
www.youtube.com/watch

(Video ID: a white person with short reddish hair and gold-rimmed glasses sits before a bookshelf and talks. /end ID)

Transcript: This is a long question so bear with me.

I’d like to hear about some of the structural challenges that make it hard for indie presses to compete with trad pub. For example, I know distribution is a huge challenge and that the big five have the advantages of ordering bigger numbers and they can eat losses more easily because they usually have a handful of massive hits that help them absorb risk. I feel like there are a lot of invisible barriers that readers and authors don’t get to see.

Uh, yeah. I would say the ones already mentioned are big one. Getting a distribution deal is very very challenging for an indie press alone. I haven’t even tried yet. Of all of the indie press people I know, exactly one has managed it. He was trying for years. He finally did it last year. He was this close to giving up because it was that hard.

I think that, in some ways it almost ends up comparing and apples and oranges. It’s very easy to look at a small press like mine, and look at a big press like, you know, Harper Collins or Penguin or whatever, and go, “You’re in the same business.” But it’s actually kind of not. What I do is extremely different because I don’t have access to the advertising budget. I don’t have access to bookstores. I have to expect to bring in customers, readers, people who like merch, all of that, you know those people are getting brought in by completely different channels. I’ve only paid for advertising, I don’t know, maybe a dozen times, and it’s pretty much never helped. Whereas, you know, the new big release from the big five gets billboards in New York City and movie deals and all of that.

I would say that it’s apples and oranges to some extent because we’re really almost not doing even close to the same thing. Sorry, I’m just checking what else it said.

Obviously, the risk, obviously ordering higher numbers. I’m a little alarmed by how popular, like, the really fancy hardcovers with the sprayed edges are getting, because in order to even attempt to get into that market, you have to be looking at minimums of 500 lots, usually coming from China. And most of our books don’t sell 500 copies, at least not initially. Like, I can’t afford that upfront, and even if we sell 200 in a Kickstarter, what would I even do with the other 300? I run this business out of my home. Our books are stored in my basement. Like, I can’t afford a storage unit to keep this stuff. I can’t afford to front huge amounts of money for a larger print run with fancier features. So I’m really hoping that stuff like that doesn’t become the norm because it’s gonna make it a lot more challenging.

There’s also a lot of gatekeeping from multiple ctors. I run into traditionally published authors who won’t even consider indie press as, like, their equals because we didn’t jump through all of the hoops of abuse that one has to be prepared to endure in order to be traditionally published. That must mean we aren’t as good writers, or something. I know I’m perpetually annoyed with Publishers Weekly, who when we tried to get them to do a deal announcement for us, which is a service that they offer, and I believe it costs money for an announcement, it wasn’t like we were asking something for nothing, they said that they couldn’t do that because we are a vanity press.

We’re not a vanity press. That’s complete bull– I’m not supposed to curse, bleep that out. We’re not a vanity press. We don’t take money from our creators. I’ve never taken money from a creator and I never would. We just crowdfund because we don’t have the capital and the investors to cover getting everything done ahead of done and hope that it sells. It’s really frustrating how a lot of sort of traditional publishing streams, even when they’re not tradpub themselves, like someplace like Publishers Weekly, are really not interested in recognizing and supporting new ways of doing these models, given – by which I mean publishing models – given the tools and resources available.

It’s much like everything else, they’re really trying to make it a rich person’s game instead of an industry that, you know, an average middle-class person could potentially break into as a small business.

Anyway, this is already getting long. I could probably keep going. But yes, there are a lot of barriers. But I think we get around that because of the apples to oranges thing. I’m not trying to do what they’re doing. I don’t want to do what they do. I want to do what we’re doing. And that’s part of why I opened a small press – to do things differently.

Ask me anything. I own an independent publisher. Bye!



Community Recs Post!

Thu, Mar. 26th, 2026 10:05 am
glitteryv: (Default)
[personal profile] glitteryv posting in [community profile] recthething
Every Thursday, we have a community post, just like this one, where you can drop a rec or five in the comments.

This works great if you only have one rec and don't want to make a whole post for it, or if you don't have a DW account, or if you're shy. ;)

(But don't forget: you can deffo make posts of your own seven days a week. ;D!)

So what cool fanvids/other kinds of fanworks/fancrafts/fanart/fics/podfics have we discovered this week? Drop it in the comments below. Anon comment is enabled.

BTW, AI fanworks are not eligible for reccing at recthething. If you aware that a fanwork is AI-generated, please do not rec it here.
james_davis_nicoll: (Default)
[personal profile] james_davis_nicoll


Strategies range from paraterraforming to radical cybernetic transformation...

Five Stories About Surviving and Adapting on Mars

The Silicon Man by Charles Platt

Thu, Mar. 26th, 2026 08:53 am
james_davis_nicoll: (Default)
[personal profile] james_davis_nicoll


An all-too diligent FBI agent must be silenced... but there's no reason he cannot serve SCIENCE! as well.

The Silicon Man by Charles Platt

Book Review: New Grub Street

Thu, Mar. 26th, 2026 08:01 am
osprey_archer: (books)
[personal profile] osprey_archer
When I posted about George Gissing’s The Odd Women, I commented that it was indeed an odd book, but I think I undersold or perhaps did not yet understand the sheer oddness of Gissing’s work, not only in a 19th century English context but just in terms of English literature in general.

This is even more obvious in New Grub Street, which takes as its cast a motley crew of struggling writers in 1880s London, and as its themes money and love. More specifically, its themes are:

1. Poverty is horrible and degrading and undermines every other facet of life; and

2. Money is a necessary but not sufficient condition for love. That is to say, you can have money but not love, but love without money cannot last.

Of course these themes are implied in other books (think of Jane Austen’s characters breathlessly discussing the marriage prospects of so-and-so who has thus-and-such pounds a year), but I don’t think I’ve ever seen them expounded with Gissing’s brutal clarity. It’s bracing, stimulating not always to total agreement but certainly to deeper thought, for instance about the fact that people marry not only because they fall in love with an individual but because they love the image of the lifestyle and status they think they’ll have with that person.

Gissing has the Zola-like gift of creating an ensemble cast of characters who illustrate different facets of his theme while also being interesting and individual people in their own right. Gissing is trying to give them all a fair shake, to portray them all so clearly that we can see why they act the way they do. Readers may or may not find it in our hearts to sympathize, but that will be our own decision, not a result of Gissing putting his finger on the scale.

--Sensitive Edwin Reardon, who married upper-middle-class Amy on the strength of one well-received novel and now suffering immense writer’s block. Amy fell in love with both Edwin and the idea of being a successful novelist’s wife, and is appalled to see this dream crumbling under what appears to her to be his refusal to work.

As I’ve struggled with writer’s block for the past couple of years, I feel a great sympathy for Edwin: he quite literally cannot write anything good right now! It’s not his fault! But I can also see why it doesn’t look that way to Amy and her family, especially because the social rules of 1880s London mean there is no graceful road of retreat. Not only is it impossible for Amy to get a job (this is literally unthinkable: not one character ever even imagines it), but now that Edwin has set up as a full-time writer, the whole family would lose caste if he took a job for wages.

--Jasper Milvain, debonair man about town who approaches writing as a business and forthrightly says his goal is to earn a thousand pounds a year. A character type who in many books would be a villain, and I won’t say that he’s not just a bit villainous at times, but he’s also a complex character who definitely has a point. In the tradition of an Austen baddie, he ends up perfectly happy with himself and his choices.

--Alfred Yule, a cranky aging writer of moderate abilities who was never very financially successful, and married a working class woman because he never made enough to support a wife of his own class. There’s a section where Gissing lists a whole bunch of similarly positioned writers who made a similar decision and makes it clear that he thinks this is pretty much always a mistake that will lead to marital disharmony.

--Marian Yule, Alfred Yule’s daughter and assistant, who is to an ever-greater extent perhaps simply writing his articles for him. (We also get a glimpse of two other women writers in Jasper’s sisters, who at Jasper’s suggestion take to writing Sunday school stories to support themselves.)

--Whelpdale, an unsuccessful writer who makes a success of it telling other writers how to write to market. A jolly young man despite all his setbacks.

--Harold Biffen, an extremely poor though talented writer of the realist school who sticks fast to his principles and loves discussing Greek and Latin literature with Edwin Reardon. Would be the tragically romantic starving artist in a garret in another book. Unfortunately wound up in a Gissing book instead.

Having set these and various other figures going, Gissing simply observes them, like a naturalist watching a particularly interesting species of cockatoos. The result is absorbing, as [personal profile] skygiants and [personal profile] genarti can attest, having been subjected to various rants and wails as I tore through the back half of the book. Highly recommended on account of quality, recommended cautiously on account of emotional intensity.

weight and sleep and health

Thu, Mar. 26th, 2026 07:52 am
hudebnik: (Default)
[personal profile] hudebnik
162.4 163.3 lbs.
breakfast yesterday: grapefruit, yogurt, cereal, buttered toast
exercise yesterday: 3x8@25 lats, triceps, BP, biceps, flies; 3x8@15 deltoids
lunch: grilled cheese sandwich, apple slices
snacks: miscellaneous chocolates
dinner: steak, potatoes, creamed spinach
dessert: milk & cookie

In bed 12:45 (yuck!), with D.
Up 7:15.

I had an EEG yesterday: the lab-tech put leads on my chest (for heart monitoring) and all over my head, then flashed bright lights in my eyes while exhorting me not to move or make any facial expressions (such as, you know, squinting against the bright lights). It was over in about 45 minutes, including applying and removing contact goop.

This afternoon I have a meeting with the neurologist to discuss the results of this and various other tests over the past month. I'll try to also mention that my father's been diagnosed with Lewy body dementia.

Just One Thing (26 March 2026)

Thu, Mar. 26th, 2026 08:35 am
nanila: me (Default)
[personal profile] nanila posting in [community profile] awesomeers
It's challenge time!

Comment with Just One Thing you've accomplished in the last 24 hours or so. It doesn't have to be a hard thing, or even a thing that you think is particularly awesome. Just a thing that you did.

Feel free to share more than one thing if you're feeling particularly accomplished! Extra credit: find someone in the comments and give them props for what they achieved!

Nothing is too big, too small, too strange or too cryptic. And in case you'd rather do this in private, anonymous comments are screened. I will only unscreen if you ask me to.

Go!

Reviewing is My Job!

Thu, Mar. 26th, 2026 02:05 am
recognito: (penguin)
[personal profile] recognito

This review took forever to write because, in the process of writing it, I decided I needed to rewatch/review all of Maria-sama ga Miteru… and that in itself was so much fun that I kept rereading my favorite bits and then when I did that too much, I went back to the beginning and started rereading from there. I read a short paper that got a bit deeper into the current state of girls' novels in Japan, and it seems like Cobalt magazine, which published Marimite and other works of girls' fiction, stopped print publication and now only releases series online. The news does make me a bit sad... in any case, reading Marimite is really fun, while reading this series here was lmao less so... as such, I have not bothered to write beautifully... I can only ask for your forgiveness after the fact. 

Yuri is My Job!, ongoing - I had pretty conflicting feelings towards this one—like, there's something inherently absurd about the idea of a themed cafe where all the workers pretend they're lesbian high school students in order to sell you hot chocolate and sausages, but in a world where season four of Maria-sama ga Miteru had a Pizza Hut sponsorship, it's a surprisingly apt piece of commentary. Yuri sells. Would you like tea with your pizza?

 

a polite review of yuri is my job! )
Tags:

my 2026 Hugo short fiction nominations

Thu, Mar. 26th, 2026 12:13 am
psocoptera: ink drawing of celtic knot (Default)
[personal profile] psocoptera
Short stories:

Wire Mother, Isabel J. Kim, Clarkesworld.

Tell Them a Story to Teach Them Kindness, B Pladek, Lightspeed.

The Repairers of Reality, Shaenon K. Garrity, Drabblecast.

10 Visions of the Future; or, Self-Care for the End of Days, Samantha Mills, Uncanny.

Six People to Revise You, J.R. Dawson, Uncanny.

Novelettes:

The Girl That My Mother Is Leaving Me For, Cameron Reed, Reactor.

Phantom View, John Wiswell, Reactor.

The Twenty-One Second God, Peter Watts, Lightspeed.

Barnacle, Kate Elliott, Reactor.

We ate at: Norman's Japanese Grill

Wed, Mar. 25th, 2026 11:49 pm
gentlyepigrams: (food)
[personal profile] gentlyepigrams
Apparently it's really hard to get a reservation but I just stumbled into one because we wanted to eat late with our friend Ian. Norman's Japanese Grill is the new "it restaurant" by one of our local Dallas restaurant empires, featuring a combination of Texas and Japanese foods. It's mostly small plates with the exception of their nigiri and hand rolls.

We had to wait for our table so we got a free edamame hummus, which was delicious, and then we went into some bluefish crudo and some skewers of duck meatballs and some octopus. Also some of the hand rolls, including the snow crab that was an off-menu special Then we tried the udon carbonara, which most reviews had raved about, and I would eat a bowl of on its own. After that we had a sushi course, with a variety of their nigiri, which was nice quality but they put too many additional flavors (sauces etc.) for it to be really great. Last, but not least, we tried out the ravioli and the dumplings, which were also yummy and I'm glad I made room in my stomach for them.

Things we did not try: the salmon and the steak, which are not cheap, but which looked good and in the case of the salmon, also got excellent reviews. They're on the list for the next time we visit.

Read-in-Progress Wednesday

Thu, Mar. 26th, 2026 04:30 am
geraineon: (Default)
[personal profile] geraineon posting in [community profile] cnovels
This is your weekly read-in-progress post!

For spoilers:

<details><summary>insert summary</summary>Your spoilers goes here</details>

<b>Highlight for spoilers!*</b><span style="background-color: #FFFFFF; color: #FFFFFF">Your spoilers goes here.</span>*

2025 Online Short SFF Fiction - Post Two

Wed, Mar. 25th, 2026 11:46 pm
psocoptera: ink drawing of celtic knot (Default)
[personal profile] psocoptera
A few more recommendations. I have not done as much reading this year as I would have liked to but I'm running out of time, so, here's what I have.

Short stories:

Unbeaten, Grace Seybold, Beneath Ceaseless Skies. Nice riff on "swords into plowshares" and "pen is mightier".

Last Meal Aboard the Awassa, Kev Coleman, Lightspeed. A doomed ship has a party. (This one from the Locus list.)

The Tawlish Island Songbook of the Dead, E.M. Linden, PodCastle. Migration and memory. (Nebula nominee.)

Six People to Revise You, J.R. Dawson, Uncanny. Letting other people fix you. (Nebula nominee.)

ETA: The Fate You Choose, Nadia Radovich, Apex. Atalanta choose-your-own-adventure.

Looped, Nadia Radovich, Heartlines Spec. A time loop, with knitting.

Five Things You Can See, Nadia Radovich, Strange Horizons. Future selves.

Novelette:

Barnacle, Kate Elliott, Reactor. NOVELETTE. Life in a company town.

ETA: The Life and Times of Alavira the Great as Written by Titos Pavlou and Reviewed by Two Lifelong Friends, Eugenia Triantafyllou, Uncanny. NOVELETTE. A meta story about fantasy books and what they mean to people. (Nebula nominee.)


Novellas:

The Chronolithographer's Assistant, Suzanne Palmer, Asimov's. NOVELLA. A young man avoiding the sea becomes a printmaker. Palmer is always a good time.

Murder on the Eris Express, Beth Goder, Asimov's. NOVELLA. A spaceship AI and a mystery.

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