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sovay) wrote2025-11-05 12:42 pmThere's always somebody downstairs
james_davis_nicoll) wrote2025-11-05 09:14 amThis Monster Wants to Eat Me, volume 1 by Sai Naekawa
Hinako Yaotose is saved by certain doom... by a monster who wants to let Hinaka ripen a bit before eating her.
This Monster Wants to Eat Me, volume 1 by Sai Naekawa
sovay) wrote2025-11-04 08:13 pmA lie you told to the maze I'm in
spatch and I have performed our civic duties and received stickers in exchange for the exercise of democracy. It's been at least a year since we had to prove our residence in this ward and precinct, but the original experience was so scarifying that we still show up carrying utility bills just in case. The moon was brilliantly full and some of the leaves streetlight-orange in it. Earlier in the afternoon, I walked some distance by the side of a road where the afternoon sun had tinted the conservation meadows like ambrotypes. I have seen the news of the death of Dick Cheney. Twenty-five years sooner would have been better, but I had begun to wonder if he was even in the machine. Since Halloween, WERS has been playing a lot of the Last Dinner Party's "This Is the Killer Speaking" (2025). I am completely unsurprised that the band has covered Sparks.P.S. w00t, Mamdani!
james_davis_nicoll) wrote2025-11-04 11:14 amMy terrible confession
james_davis_nicoll) wrote2025-11-04 08:43 amVoyager in Night by C J Cherryh
A trading voyage leads to first contact and a delightful process of mutual discovery.
Voyager in Night by C J Cherryh
james_davis_nicoll) wrote2025-11-03 09:54 pmAnnoyed
(It's not diabetes. It's just that I am incredibly intolerant to eating late)
sovay) wrote2025-11-03 03:50 pmBut somehow the vital connection is made
james_davis_nicoll) wrote2025-11-03 02:03 pm
james_davis_nicoll) wrote2025-11-03 12:48 pmFive Ways Science Fiction Can Expand Beyond Homo sapiens
Modern humans are fine, but what if we had a bit more variety in our stories?
Five Ways Science Fiction Can Expand Beyond Homo sapiens
james_davis_nicoll) wrote2025-11-03 09:06 am
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otw_news_feed) wrote2025-11-03 12:23 pmFive Things Julie Bozza Said
Every month or so the OTW will be doing a Q&A with one of its volunteers about their experiences in the organization. The posts express each volunteer’s personal views and do not necessarily reflect the views of the OTW or constitute OTW policy. Today’s post is with Julie Bozza, who volunteers as a Senior FSHP Volunteer and project manager for the Open Doors AO3 Fanzine Scan Hosting Project (FSHP) for Open Doors.
How does what you do as a volunteer fit into what the OTW does?
I first did a Five Things in March 2022, for my role as an Open Doors Administrative Volunteer. Back then, Open Doors’ main focus was on preserving fanworks from digital archives that were at risk of being lost. We had also established the Fan Culture Preservation Project (FCPP) which helps fans looking for a new home for their physical fannish artifacts to get in touch with interested collecting institutions, such as the University of Iowa Libraries.
Since then, I’m delighted to say that Open Doors partnered up with the fan-run preservation project Zinedom to create the AO3 Fanzine Scan Hosting Project (FSHP), which runs as part of FCPP.
The OTW is keenly interested in preserving and engaging with our shared fannish history, and making fanworks available to our community. I love the thought that someone might be browsing through Fanlore, or reading an issue of Transformative Works and Cultures, and get curious about a particular fanwork – maybe dating back to a zine published 50 years ago —and then be able to find the text and related artwork preserved on AO3.
What is a typical week like for you as a volunteer?
We have a number of fanzine publishers and individual creators who are already working with FSHP to import their fanworks to AO3. The import process can be quite lengthy, and has numerous steps, so a typical week might involve anything from exchanging emails with publishers or creators, to setting up a formal agreement with them, scanning fanzines and using OCR to convert the PDFs into editable text, proofreading the text, creating AO3 archivist accounts and collections, and so on… At some point we start the actual importing of works as well!
The Open Doors team has a few informal working meetings during the week, so I do my work then and keep an eye out for any FSHP-related questions. We have a large team of volunteers who help with the various tasks, along with their other OTW work, so all sorts of queries can arise.
What made you decide to volunteer?
I used to publish fanzines myself, starting in the late 1980s, and I wrote for and read other zines. As the decades-old badge on Fanlore’s Zine page announces, “FANZINES ARE FANDOM”. That was certainly the case for me, especially here in Australia, which can seem a long way from anywhere! There were wonderful events and conventions, and a group of Australian Buckaroo Banzai fans who would meet up for film screenings and Mongolian meals, but for me the heart of fandom was not only in the people but also in the creativity to be found in zines.
When the task came up of developing the idea of FSHP, writing up the necessary policies and processes, and getting the project underway, it made perfect sense to me that I would volunteer to help drive that.
What has been your biggest challenge doing work for the OTW?
We love spreadsheets in Open Doors, and couldn’t organise our imports of digital archives so well without them. But we knew that FSHP was going to be more complicated still, and we needed a database in order to manage a creator’s fanworks across a range of fanzines – and a publisher’s fanzine content across a range of creators – while dealing with different processes for word-based works and visual-based works.
It was a challenge—but an enjoyable one—to design and map a useful database, with helpful hints and tips from other OTW volunteers. And then to build it. And then to transfer across a whole lot of data from a number of spreadsheets that varied in content and organisation.
What can I say? I loved it! We’ve started using the FSHP Database for real now, and so far (luckily) the complaints have been minimal.
What fannish things do you like to do?
What I love most is writing, but alas I don’t do so much of that anymore. I love The Murderbot Diaries by Martha Wells, and the related tv show, so re-reading and re-watching those is entertaining. Otherwise, Fandom is my fandom – and, now that I’m retired from the day job, I’m devoting many of my hours to supporting OTW’s work in the world. The only thing that could possibly be nicer than that would be for me to be writing again as well!
Meanwhile, if you are a reader, creator, or publisher of fanzines – and there is zine fic or art that you’d like to see preserved on AO3 – please do get in touch with Open Doors. We’d love to help!
Now that our volunteer’s said five things about what they do, it’s your turn to ask one more thing! Feel free to ask about their work in the comments. Or if you’d like, you can check out previous Five Things posts.
sovay) wrote2025-11-02 11:10 pmWrote a scholar from the island that they kept from me
On the other hand, tonight I watched Hestia trot over to
spatch's new computer on which was still stuck the silver-paper bow of its early holiday present and pluck it in passing, after which she hunted it up and down the front hall with much batting and biting and singing the high, clear song to her prey which is usually reserved for socks. Decades after bouncing off all the George Eliot I tried after Silas Marner (1861), I seem to be embedded in Middlemarch (1872). It washed out my plans for the day which I then did little with, but I slept a generally assessed normal number of hours.james_davis_nicoll) wrote2025-11-02 09:54 pmAchtung! Cthulhu
james_davis_nicoll) wrote2025-11-02 03:58 pmThis went over well
In case the image does not load or someone cannot read it: it is a Bluesky post reading "I firmly believe the Jays would have won had Diefenbaker not cancelled the Avro Arrow."
There are 7 reposts, 2 quotes, and 48 likes.
james_davis_nicoll) wrote2025-11-02 07:52 amMoon of Mutiny (Jim Stanley, volume 3) by Lester del Rey
Was Fred Halpern the boy space hero the papers believed him or the headstrong fool his teachers saw?
Moon of Mutiny (Jim Stanley, volume 3) by Lester del Rey
sovay) wrote2025-11-01 10:27 pmMany arms around the mast as your ship starts cracking
Having run the car over for errands, I ended up spending the trick-or-treating hours of Halloween at my mother's house, which was inundated with a range of ages from toddlers to teenagers and the occasional adult who could be coaxed to take some candy for themselves. I am guessing a percentage of the colorfully wigged people were KPop Demon Hunters. I have no idea about the WWI Tommy in the company of a classical figure in gold laurels, but they looked like an entire short story in themselves. The Minuteman looked parentally hand-sewn, full marks for waistcoat and hat. The most extensive was the full-body tyrannosaur I came down the steps to hold the bowl of candy out for, explaining it was no trouble because I could see their short little arms. When the twins came by, one of them dashed into the house to hug me and all of her friends shouted at her for going across the threshold, which I understood was some kind of ground rule but sounded in the moment like the start of a fairy tale. The South Asian older relatives chaperoning their set of small children wore marigold garlands, perfectly Halloween-colored. There are a lot more kids in that neighborhood than there used to be and it's wonderful.
I remain underslept, but I really appreciate being introduced to Florence + The Machine's "Kraken" (2025).
rydra_wong) wrote2025-11-01 07:46 pmIt's very important to me that you understand that Dark Souls is a deeply eccentric game
[Image description: my character seen from the back in a giant bird's nest perched on a ruined stone building. She is wearing a pointed crimson hat and a greyish-brown shawl over her shoulders, and holding a halberd in one hand. An option on the screen says "A: Curl up like a ball."]
(The reason you curl up like a ball is to pretend to be an egg so that a giant crow will transport you to another location. Obviously.)