So I don't inundate my mainblog (bojanus) with fandom stuff. 25+ years old. Currently obsessed with My Hero Academia, but honestly love a lot of anime and cartoons. My AO3 is the same name as this tumblr. I almost always use the queue. If I know you in real life and you saw this... no you didn't, click out now and warn me as to how u found me so I can make sure it doesn't happen again.
The key to writing good fanfiction is to harbor a deeply humiliating desire, and the trick there is that even pretty basic and societally-accepted desires like “being held” and “being wanted” CAN and WILL be humiliating if they’re intense enough. Become so estranged from human connection that the idea of someone playing with your hair fills you with yearning so deep you feel like you’re going to throw up and you will write some banger fanfiction. It might have some other consequences too but idrk about that.
Readercon is one of the biggest events we attend all year, and is the event that the single highest number of Duck Prints Press authors attend. This year, in addition to me (Claire/unforth/Nina Waters) vending and paneling, authors D. V. Morse, Adrian Harley, N. C. Farrell, Shea Sullivan, Puck Malamud, and Nova Mason were all in attendance.
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We thought it’d be fun to type up some of our impressions and share them with y’all. Here are reports from D. V. Morse, Adrian Harley, N. C. Farrell, Shea Sullivan, and yours truly!
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D. V. Morse Reports:
There were two main themes that emerged from the panels I attended at Readercon 35: a) the role and impact of speculative fiction vis a vis the world at large, and b) cozy and/or comfort reads. Often, this was evident in the names of the panels, other times they just sort of went there.
The second theme is a bit shorter than the first. There were two panels related to comfort and cozy reads, how we define them and what we look for in them. The answers were, unsurprisingly, both similar and varied. The general definitions of “low stakes” and “cozy vibes” looked different to different panelists. For example, one felt that something dealing with grief couldn’t be cozy, while another pointed out that someone healing from grief could actually be very cozy. One of the most intriguing things was learning that author Rachel Gutin has a rubric of coziness she uses for a blog post series looking at various works. I plan to try applying it to some reads I think of as cozy and see where that leads.
A number of works brought up in the panels dealing with the first theme were arguably cozy or were discussed in terms of whether that impacted their effectiveness positively or negatively. But to give you an idea of the range involved, here are some of the panel titles:
Beyond Treevenge: Environmental Justice Stories of Hope and Resistance
Writing Big Ideas Without Being Preachy
Fighting for the Freedom to Read
The Limits of Hope: A Meditation on Fiction as an Activist Force
The Heavy Issues and Light Touch of Discworld
As is always the case, I came away with an ever-growing TBR, including a determination to reread the Discworld books as well as Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass. I also came away with some great resources related to issues of censorship:
Authors Against Book Bans
Freedom to Read Foundation
Kids’ Right to Read Project
Little Free Library book ban map
Adrian Harley Reports:
I keep coming back to Readercon every year for the joy of being surrounded by fellow passionate sci-fi/fantasy nerds. Perhaps unsurprisingly, my two favorite panels this year were the most passionate.
I had the most fun in “Building a Seven Stories Mountain,” where panelists were given the following prompt: literary-minded aliens have come to Earth and demanded that we present them with seven sci-fi/fantasy books that give them a full picture of humanity, after which the aliens shall decide whether to spare us. What seven books do you give them? Panelists Graham Sleight, Kate Nepveu (editor’s note: Kate’s notes are in this blog post and include all the initial nominees), Katherine Karch, and Rich Horton presented their lists and arguments, and moderator R. W. W. Greene led the panelists and audience in a delightful, ruthless series of debates and cuts. I believe there were literal cries of “No!” as some beloved favorites got the axe. In the end, we were left with Kindred (Octavia Butler), The Dispossessed (Ursula K. LeGuin), Heaven Official’s Blessing (Mo Xiang Tong Xiu), Kalpa Imperial (Angélica Gorodischer), A Light In the Attic (Shel Silverstein), Her Smoke Rose Up Forever (James Tiptree, Jr.), and The Fifth Season (N. K. Jemisin). Kate Nepveu noted that we had probably saved ourselves; if nothing else, by the time the aliens finished reading Heaven Official’s Blessing, we would have had plenty of time to think of further compelling arguments in favor of humanity.
My other favorite panel this year was “The Saga of Blood Marmalade,” a solo presentation by Katherine Creighton about the importance of research and how to do it properly, as demonstrated through her own attempts to track down the real source of a medieval treatment dubbed “blood marmalade” in recent literature. She made source-scouring engaging! This is a gift! In the end, along with the truth about “blood marmalade,” we readers came away with some excellent resources on tracking down primary sources (Early English Books Online, via University of Michigan; Hathitrust; and The Wellcome Library).
Readercon was blessed with many excellent panels this year, and I can’t do justice to them all in a single post. I’d like to especially highlight the “SFF and Queer Cultural Memory” panel, where author David Gerrold shared his own lived experience of the overlap of the sci-fi community and the queer community from pre-Stonewall to today. As one author said on the panel—an author whose name I unfortunately did not write down, so I’m hoping someone else did—Cultural memory is “handing candles from one generation to the next.” I came away from Readercon full of new facts, shiny ideas and what-ifs prompted by panel discussions, and books for the eternal TBR list. I am happy to talk about any of those with anyone. There can never be enough sci-fi fantasy conversation in my life.
N. C. Farrell Reports:
I was only at Readercon on Saturday, but it’s always a good time and nice to see friends!
I think the panel I found most fascinating was “Games as Historical Arguments,” which turned out to be a conversation about player agency, the ability to create counterfactual history, how games/stories are supposed to have satisfying endings for players and replay value, and “what is the story being told here?”/societal assumptions baked into mechanics.
“What role is the player taking and what does that teach them about how they can look at the world?” was the thematic question that they kept circling, with examples that were often focused on the negative (people learning to enact colonialism and exercise military power). Which is understandable! There are fewer well-known examples of positive versions of this!
They brought up Sign at one point as an example of how games can place you into a specific role and historical context and allow you to embody experiences you might not otherwise encounter. (Sign is “Based on the history of Nicaraguan Sign Language. Nicaragua in the 1970s had no official form of sign language. In 1977, something happened. Fifty deaf children from across the country were brought together to a school in Managua. Without a shared language to express themselves, the children did something remarkable—they created one. In Sign, we follow a story inspired by that journey.”)
The conversation covered a lot of mediums. Video games came up a lot (especially Crusader Kings, though Papers Please! was discussed at length as well). Board games (Settlers of Catan and Spirit Island are the ones I recall most). Reenactment, including what I fondly call “larping for credit” (Reacting to the Past academic classes), was discussed as a way of engaging with history and thinking about vectors of change. But, honestly, one of my favorite comments during this panel was one panelist, in her introduction, saying that she doesn’t play many games but thinks of her historical research as a kind of archival exploration game. Which is totally fair! And made me think about the indie RPG scene and lyric games (a style of game that’s meant to be very contemplative and in some ways interrogate what a game even is).
I also really enjoyed the interview with P. Djeli Clark, who was very funny and insightful and talked a lot about his love for epic fantasy (Lord of the Rings and The Wheel of Time in particular) and how his academic life as a history professor feeds and inspires his writing.
The panel on “SFF and Queer Cultural Memory” was fascinating and wandered back and forth between people talking about “we have always been here”-style books and their own personal memories of the past, a way of proving how much has changed in a short period of time and also how by simply having a panel like this we’re helping create more shared cultural memory. Definitely interesting! Not sure I was expecting it from the description, but I’m glad I went.
“Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex Writing” was a very nice panel that I did not get much from, due to being a person who has been writing smutty fanfic for over a decade. xD But the friend I went with, who is less experienced and less comfortable with writing sex, thought it was great—especially the part where every panelist was clear that they were more interested in how sex was an expression of a character and their personality than the mechanics of it, even for erotica. Like, yes, it’s important that smut be sexy if that’s its role in the story, but sometimes it’s supposed to be un-sexy or otherwise fulfill a different narrative role/beat. And that’s good too, if that’s the point!
I caught part of “The Rise of Cozy Fiction,” wherein the panelists agreed that it was mostly a reaction to The Times being What They Are and spent a lot of time discussing personal definitions of what “cozy fiction” was and how in a Venn diagram it would be an overlapping circle with “cozy mysteries,” not exactly the same thing. A cozy mystery might not be cozy fiction, and obviously not all cozy sf/f is a mystery! (I believe Malka Older’s The Mimicking of Known Successes was cited as perhaps being both, though ymmv on that, since they also agreed that “cozy” was a very personal definition/vibe.)
I also picked up some anti-AI pins from the Clarkesworld booth, since they were handing them out for free, and gave one to my friend who was also there and managed to look at all the vendor tables except that one. xD It was very important to me that they have one because I sometimes feel like half of their job is trying to tell people why using AI in academic contexts is foolish.
Also fun: As I was leaving, being spotted by someone who recognised where my shirt was from (Friends at the Table, c/W mecha shirt) and chatted with me about FatT a bit in delight at seeing another fan.
Shea Sullivan Reports:
I have attended three Readercons, now, and it continues to be one of the best things I do for myself and my creative practice every year. I always come back infused with inspiration and hope.
P. Djèlí Clark and David Gerrold were the Guests of Honor this year, and seeing them on panels and in interviews was phenomenal.
Panels this year were dense and thought provoking, and I often had conflicts that challenged me (missing “Literary Cannibalism” for a chance to talk to Scott H. Andrews of Beneath Ceaseless Skies was difficult, but rewarding, and luckily I had friends who were able to take notes). I had a few opportunities to connect with new people, which is pretty rare at Readercon, since we’re all sprinting from panel to panel to restaurant to sleep, again and again! And I managed to pack in about 8 panels over three days, some amazing meals with friends, and a little time at the DPP table in the bookstore.
I enjoyed so many panels for so many reasons, I wish I could tell you about all of them! But, let me whet your appetite with “Defining the Monstrous,” a panel that was run twice with two sets of panelists. I went to the first one, with panelists Gillian Daniels, Catt Kingsgrave, Kit Sedia, and moderator Mike Allen. Each of the panelists, all of them speculative fiction writers, came from a different angle—Kit has a biology background, Catt works with abuse survivors, and Gillian spoke from her English folklore research and the lens she used in her upcoming novel. Mike Allen, the moderator, also spoke as a publisher and writer of horror.
The discussion ranged from the standard “external” monster, like Pennywise from Stephen King’s It, to “internal” monsters, where the ugliness of a character is externalized into a monster, to the outsider monster, representing a group such as queer or neurodiverse folk, to the romantic monster, often representing forbidden or dangerous urges, and many variations on those themes.
I have always been interested in delving into monstrosity as metaphor, but the group covered a lot that I hadn’t considered. There was discussion of the attraction of the monstrous, and the different lenses through which it can be examined. Catt talked about how common it is for people to seek safety in dangerous protectors. Kit explained that fear and arousal are very closely linked in the amygdala. Gillian brought up the inherent danger of being radically vulnerable and completely known in a relationship.
There was talk of monstrosity as an outcome of trauma and specifics around various depictions of monsters in fiction, classic and new. Overall, it touched on a lot of different ways monsters are used in fiction, and made me think more deeply about themes of consumption of people by society and the drive toward becoming more dangerous as a protective measure. These are the basis of a lot of our monster stories, and I think they are relevant in new ways that I hope to explore or see explored.
I can’t possible write about everything I attended or everyone I chatted with at Readercon, I can only encourage you to experience it for yourself! In the meantime, I always have a long list of books I’ve bought or added to my TBR list because of conversations, panels, or bookstore finds at the con. Here are just a few:
Jenny Will Eat You Now by Gillian Daniels
Daydreamer by Rob Cameron
Ring Shout by P. Djèlí Clark
The Little Red Fish by James Moffitt and illustrated by Bizhan Khodabandeh
The Bruising of Qilwa by Naseem Jamnia
The Mystery of the Bitten Peach by Cecilia Tan
Claire Houck Reports:
I’m writing my own report after reading and editing everyone else’s, and I find I haven’t the least idea where to begin. This is my third Readercon, and I’ve paneled at all three, which is a great honor that definitely does not in anyway both trigger and cure my imposter syndrome. This was the first time my wife, Nova Mason, came with me, which was a delight, as we so rarely get to travel just the two of us (without our kids) and we met at a (gaming) convention, so this is something we’ve shared our entire relationship.
The only panels I got to attend were the ones I was a panelist on: “Sports in Speculative Fiction,” “The Fine Art of Short Story Editing,” “Keeping Your Love Alive to the Nth Draft,” and “Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex Writing But Were Afraid to Ask.” All were phenomenal in their own ways.
“Sports and Speculative Fiction,” wonderfully modded by Marianna Martin, ended up a very positive and intriguing discussion of both made-up sports and modern-day sports in fictional settings (and some historical sports, too). I especially appreciated how little overlap there was in knowledge between the panelists: we’d all read very different works about sports, and so we all brought really different things to the table.
“The Fine Art of Short Story Editing” had me sat with Neil Clarke, Scott H. Andrews, Ellen Datlow, and T. J. Woolridge, and we had a fantastic discussion about what we look for as editors, what challenges we’ve faced, and more. I think my favorite moment was during the Q&A, when an audience member asked us what we are looking for as we look forward—as in, what we want to see next, and Neil Clarke was just like (heavily paraphrased) “nope, no way, not answering that, if I say an answer people will send me so many stories with that that I’m not even going to say.”
I was probably least fit for “Keeping Your Love Alive to the Nth Draft,” because it ended up being primarily a discussion of editing one’s own novels, and while I’ve done that, I have more experience editing other people’s novels, and we didn’t get into discussing that aspect much (like, keeping your passion engaged when it’s not your own work). Still, it was lovely to chat with everyone; Caitlin Rozakis introduced me to the term “reverse outlining,” which I’ve always done but didn’t know had a name, and even sitting at the same table as Delia Sherman left me a bit of a gawky teenager. I wish this one had more time, though, there were a lot of things I’d have liked to explore that we simply didn’t get to.
Speaking of wanting more time, at the end of “Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex Writing But Were Afraid to Ask,” we all agreed we could have kept talking for hours, and I think the audience would have listened. It was a standing-room-only crowd, and we had a great and wonderfully candid conversation about writing about sex. Marianna Martin, who moderated this one as well, mentioned afterward about maybe trying to organize an online day-long multi-panel… thing… to talk about this more, and I really hope she wasn’t joking because I’m there with bells on if she really does it.
Aside from my panels, I was mostly at the Duck Prints Press table in the Dealer’s Room. I had a lot of really great conversations with people there, as I always do, and a lot of people also circled by to remark on appreciating things I’d said during the panels, which does wonders for my self-esteem. I especially love how many queer folks stop by, and we can talk about what we’re reading, how we’re doing, etc. And, for the third year running, I had multiple wonderful conversations start because I was reading danmei at the table when things were slow (Twin Jades of Jiangdong by Fei Tian Ye Xiang was my read this year.)
I always leave Readercon feeling empowered, confident, inspired, motivated, and part of a wonderful wider community. I’m already looking forward to next year!
i’m coming to you like your inbox is a lesbian fujo confessional ⛪️🙏🏾 but my biggest lesbian fujo grief is when you (the royal you ofc) describe everything that is so harrowingly stupid about an aptly named spamtenna moment within a fandom, basically a situation where the fandom invents a nothingburger yaoi to have some otherwise deeply uninteresting men to salivate over and everyone’s like 👍🏽 yeah ok and then some smartass shows up and says YEAH just like (insert blueprint yaoi fujo heroin fujo crack cocaine here e.g narumitsu) and it’s like. well no. no obviously no why would you think i mean a story with two well developed characters with an incredibly interesting interpersonal dynamic that actually matters. why would u think that. now i look stupid and i look womenhating bc i’m defending a yaoi. just because i hate when people are wrong. youre making me defend men (🤮🤢) when women are fighting for scraps out here bc you can’t read i hope you’re happy!!!!!!
i will allow my inbox to be the lesbian fujo confessional, i think it's an appropriate location for the lesbian fujo confessional. i certainly have what could be described as catholic-style lesbian fujo guilt.
it really is frustrating to complain about the trends of migratory dudeslash and the way people will fabricate character dynamics between men before paying attention to actually existing ones between women, and to then have someone respond to that as if the entire concept of shipping two men together is somehow intellectually bankrupt. it's a kind of overcorrecting that gets close to or even passes into outright homophobia.
and then, like you said, this puts you into the spot where you have to start playing on the defensive!! like no i don't want to spend my time and energy explaining that relationships between men can be interesting if they're well written because everyone on the planet knows that already and the only reason to pretend otherwise is if you're being disingenuous...
obviously people are gonna have different ideas about what dynamics are actually interesting/a good foundation for romance and someone having different taste isn't the same thing as making false equivalencies. but like there's a real, objective difference between ships where the interpersonal relationship between two characters is a substantial proportion of the work and narratively loadbearing, and ships where that Isn't the case. and once again everyone knows this too and is just being disingenuous.
and the most annoying thing is these people usually aren't even big femslash fans either, they're not Actually motivated feminist misandrists they're just annoying contrarians.
thankfully the people who pull this move are like a microscopic minority of people on the planet but its still soooo annoyyyinnggg
Midnight/Inko smutty fic - "SushiLover69 left a comment..." is actively posting, but I've also designated it my "update whenever I want" fic so I don't feel pressure to push on it, but it would be nice to progress bc it's fun. If I built back up more buffer, it'd be easier to drop chapters whenever I felt like a lil posting dopamine boost
[Redacted] - Genuinely I am so embarrassed by this fic I'm probably going to post it anonymously, but it compels me so much I've written 13 out of the 16 outlined chapters... I hesitate to start posting until I've written chapter 15 for reasons of making sure the finale holds together with what I set up in the first chapters, so it's literally SCARY CLOSE to being done and postable, but I'm in a chonky ending section
TogaChako Mystery Fic - This was honestly more a writing exercise than anything, trying to create a somewhat mystery-shaped story in medium multichapter length (6 chapters, ~30k words). Even though it's TogaChako, they don't exactly interact in the traditional sense and it's more mystery(/slight horror) than shippy so I kinda worry when posting that ppl might be disappointed that it's an oddball, but I DO have a full draft written... I just gotta go through and edit before posting.
BRIDGERTON
Franchaela Vampire/Werewolf AU - These gals have entranced me, and I believe their story (at least so far as the show has set up and the book has laid out) would be EXTREMELY suited to a vampire/werewolf interpretation. I've written 4/12 chapters so far... so it's still a fair distance from the finish line, but I'd love to get it out before whenever the next season drops in 2027.
i think where i feel the most different in perspective from the average person who enjoys doing Fandom stuff is that i don't particularly care for media that Would Be Good If It Were Good and almost nothing i make is ever coming from the desire to "fix" a canon. the deciding factor of whether or not i'm gonna like something in a fandomy way or just a regular way is completely unrelated to any Missed Potential and entirely hinges on how much i feel like i want to or am capable of filling in the gaps in a narrative or a characters' life that just didn't warrant getting any screentime in the source material. like when i think something had a bunch of potential but completely missed the mark in execution that's normally disappointing more than it is any kind of inspiring. the stuff that makes me want to Create the most fervently is stuff i think is good for real.
tangentially related to this is i think sometimes people are unfair or just kind of incorrect about stuff they perceive to be "missed potential" in fiction. like they see elements of characters/a story that could easily handle being elaborated upon because the author has done a good job making something deep and textured, but these elements ultimately are not the point of the story and spending too much time on them would bog down the pacing or otherwise complicate/overstuff the narrative. and instead of realizing that sometimes being left wanting more is a sign of good writing, they'll view it as the author Dropping or Forgetting something. like it's usually not a mistake when side characters are less developed than the core cast and their circumstances do not get the plot's full attention.
a fictional world that clearly has more stories in it other than the one you're seeing now is not necessarily missed potential, that may just be regular potential.
timelapse slightly shorter cause i cut out a random doodle from the start teehee. also i changed togas arm in the end but i cant be bothered redoing this timelapse so ignore that
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