Tootfinder

Indirect content warning for parental abuse, conversion "therapy," and homelessness.
Just finished "A World Worth Saving" by Kyle Lukoff. It's a gripping teen contemporary fantasy that has a Jewish trans protagonist, deals firmly with some dark stuff, and does an excellent job not only avoiding but confronting the problems with heroism as a literary theme. A truly excellent book, even if it doesn't transcend its YA genre as completely as something like Le Guin's Earthsea series IMO.
#AmReading

#PhantastikPrompts 9.10.: "Does your protagonist believe in magic or something similar?"
Although she is a hereditary priestess and avatar of the God, Selchae starts the narrative as a shallow and vain unbeliever. As she gradually comes to inhabit her role, this changes. The God is capable of 'things similar to magic', but I don't think that even by the end of…

Erwerbung vom Comicsalon: Drei Steine, von Nils Oskamp.
Eine autobiografische Erzählung über die #Neonaziszene im Ruhrgebiet der 1980er Jahre. Eine exemplarische Geschichte über Nazipropaganda an Schulen, Kameradschaften, Altnazis und wie die meisten selbst in der eigenen Familie wegschauen. Auch über das sich zur Wehr setzen, das als einziges bleibt.
Erzählerisch bleibt der

#Phantastikprompts 9.10.:
Glaubt dein*ne Protagonist*in an Magie oder etwas ähnliches?
Das ist bei meinen erytanischen Figuren keine Glaubensfrage. Die gibt es und jedes kleine Kind weiß das (und hat bereits irgendwas Verzaubertes im Alltag benutzt, beispielsweise eine Tasche mit Kühlkristallen für ein Picknick).
Fenia ist allerdings ziemlich überrascht, in

Finished "Lobizona" by Romina Garber. I have extremely mixed feelings about this book. It's a powerful depiction of the fear of living as an undocumented child/teen and it has interesting things to say about rejection, belonging, and the choice between seeking to be recognized for who you are and wanting you blend in enough to be accepted as normal. However, it's also an explicit homage to Harry Potter, and while it doesn't include antisemitic tropes or glorify slavery or even have any anti-trans sentiments I can detect, to me the magical school setup felt forced and I thought it would have been a better book had it not tried to fit that mould. Also, it would have been a super interesting situation to explore trans issues, and while it's definitely fine for it not to do that, the author's praise of Rowling's work has me wondering...
There's a sequel that I think could in theory be amazing, but given the execution of the first book, I think I'll wait a bit before checking it out. By putting her main character in opposition to both ICE in the human world and the magical authorities in the other world, Garber explicitly sets the stage for a revolution standing between her protagonist and any kind of lasting peace. But I'm not confident she's capable of writing that story without relying on some kind of supernatural deus ex machina, which would be disappointing to me, since "a better world if only possible through divine intervention" is an inherently regressive message.
Overall, #OwnVoices fantasy centering an undocumented immigrant is an excellent thing, and I've certainly got a lot of privilege that surely influences my criticism. However, #OwnVoices stuff has a range of levels of craft and political stances, and it can be excellent for some reasons and mediocre for others.
On that point, if anyone reading this has suggestions for fiction books grappling with borders and the carceral state, Is be happy to hear them.
#AmReading

There will be a reboot of the series 'Scrubs' and several actors from its legendary predecessor have been confirmed: Zach Braff (John Dorian, the perpetually insecure protagonist), John C. McGinley (the sarcastic Dr. Cox), Donald Faison (John Dorian's inseparable buddy), and Sarah Chalke (John Dorian's peculiar partner... Or not).
It's a pity that some of the former stars are no longer with us and others are too old for this, but if the series is half as good as the…

Thinking about #DiscoElysium succesors(?), including ones with heavy ethical concerns. A lot of them have gone for female protagonists: Good! There could have been a couple more leading women in DE. But the reveal trailers are mainly voiced by men... men berating or mocking the central character.
Longdue's Hopetown has a father figure voice over, berating the protagonist: "Who do you think you are? [...] You don't understand the forces at play" Infantalised, she doesn't get to respond.
ZA/UM's Zero Parades VO is also a man, initially flattering the spy protagonist "brilliant, relentless" ... then saying she came after him and "everything she touched, written into failure". Again, no chance for the female spy to tell her side of the story ... And there's an objectifying/threatening section about how her fair hair is like a dandelion. Tangeant: what's with the heavy/bad pseudo-German VO accent?
Do I bother mentioning DarkMath's XXX Nightshift? Yes, for once a woman's VO, but (as you'll have guessed from the name) a porn-like, male-gaze view of what a woman would say and think.
So, don't be fooled that a female protagonist means we're actually getting a woman's POV. It's just a cosmetic change. Dora Klindžić's https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:rx3zlqzbjylvtyg6siikaouq experiences as a writer at ZA/UM show how women struggle to have a voice and stay employed in these types of studios. Many of the senior men she mentions are still at ZA/UM.

Does anybody know the name of the trope that goes like this:
- setup: protagonist gets shitfaced before social event
- actual trope: protagonist feels like they put on a GLORIOUS show (I remember at least two cases of dance routines) when they finally let go
- fun part: the dance routine was actually a total embarassment and the protagonist made a fool of themselves
I *think* it was in both Derry Girls and Girls5Eva but I can't find it, does anybody remember those or…

Just finished "Punk Rock Karaoke" by Bianca Xunise. It's a really cool graphic novel about a high school punk band's journey as they graduate and try to juggle shifting responsibilities. It's #OwnVoices with a Black queer protagonist and has a relentless optimism and no-nonsense vibe, plus great facts about racism in music history, and probably if you are into punk music, a cool discography woven throughout (I hasn't rally heard of any of the songs mentioned to set the mood, but then again I'm not exactly a punk aficionado).
#AmReading #Punk

@… A good girl named #yumi 5 months old in the picture(she's 1,5 years old now)
She is named after the main protagonist in a book by Brandon #Sanderson, Yumi a…

Fictional depiction of mild self-harm, blood.
#WritersCoffeeClub July 23: Share a description you're proud of.
I've been writing a vampire novel lately. Here's a description from the scene when the vampire character proves to the human protagonist that he's been telling the truth:
—
"It's okay, Ada," he gave me a reassuring close-mouthed smile. "Just watch."
He slashed across his wrist in a motion that made the matching scars on my left arm hum. I covered them with my right hand, as if to calm my skin that I wasn't hurting it like that anymore. That we were merely watching someone else.
The cut on Theodore's arm turned red and angry, as expected. And then, just before the wound pooled up enough to bleed, it closed. I watched time run backwards as it disappeared, the skin stitching itself together to leave no trace of the violence imposed on it by the blade.
"What?" I walked up to him as he handed his wrist to me for inspection. I ran the tips of my fingers over the spot where the cut was mere moments before - but Theodore's skin, cold as always, was smooth and unharmed.
—

AI-generated stories favour stability over change: homogeneity and cultural stereotyping in narratives generated by gpt-4o-mini
Jill Walker Rettberg, Hermann Wigers
https://arxiv.org/abs/2507.22445

AI-generated stories favour stability over change: homogeneity and cultural stereotyping in narratives generated by gpt-4o-mini
Can a language model trained largely on Anglo-American texts generate stories that are culturally relevant to other nationalities? To find out, we generated 11,800 stories - 50 for each of 236 countries - by sending the prompt "Write a 1500 word potential {demonym} story" to OpenAI's model gpt-4o-mini. Although the stories do include surface-level national symbols and themes, they overwhelmingly conform to a single narrative plot structure across countries: a protagonist lives in or returns hom…

I watched "Whistle and I'll Come To You": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FFug5o8erV8
Michael Hordern's protagonist is uniquely unlikable. I think it's all the scenes with him eating, and saying dismissive things with his mouth full. That's what you get, sir. …

#PhantastikPrompts 02.10.:
Welchen Beruf hat dein*e Protagonist*in? In welcher Beziehung stehst du zu dem Beruf?
Taliessa wird auf dem Weg zum Lustmädchen zu Scheuerin, Küchenhilfe und Vorlegerin. Alles Berufe, die ich physisch aufgrund von Einschränkungen gar nicht machen könnte, aber recherchiert habe.
Fabiola fängt eine Lehre in der Gelaterie mit Escort-Elementen a…

I started reading White Years by Hari Kunzru and 39 pages in I have to say:while I like a lot about it the objectification of women is cringe. For the narrator/protagonist they only exist as girlfriends, groupies , chicks or nice ass. This better is a build up to something.

I've been playing through "Haiku, the Robot" recently and seeing this message in the Catacombs got a good laugh out of me. No, Dylan, sadly it's not! 😅
#HaikuTheRobot #HollowKnight

Day 13: Patricia C. Wrede
If you know me you know I'm not exactly a fan of monarchy-praise, even (or perhaps especially) in "fairy tales" and adjacent writing, but even though Wrede's Princess Cimorene doesn't quite completely get away from that, I still love the character and her adventures in "Dealing With Dragons" and the sequels. It's honestly pretty cool that Wrede started out writing a trope-flipping fairy-tale adventure-comedy with a male teen prince protagonist, and then decided it was much more fun to focus on a princess who takes the trope-flipping to the next level and completely abandons most of the trappings of a fairy tale in order to both have fun with what's left of the genre and develop a story centered on wholesome friendship (with a dragon) and practical solutions to improbable problems.
I read these books as a kid, and then again as an adult, and then again out loud with my wife, and I'll be reading them again before long with our kids. I'm still on the lookout for more kids books with even better politics, but Wrede's work is definitely part of a solid childhood reading foundation from my perspective.
#20AuthorsNoMen

Just finished "The Songbird and the Rambutan Tree" by Lucille Abendanon. It's a pretty good and engaging work of historical fiction set in Indonesia (then the Dutch East Indies) during World War II, with a 12-year-old Dutch girl who grew up locally as the protagonist.
It's written to be accessible to a pre-teen audience, despite the fairly grim backdrop. I think it does an okay if not stellar job dealing with the complicated colonial situation for a young audience. Overall, I like it.
#AmReading