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The Small Bachelor, by P. G. Wodehouse
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Updates to "No Fandom" Additional Tags, July 2025
AO3 Tag Wranglers continue to test processes for wrangling canonical additional tags (tags that appear in the auto-complete) which don't belong to any particular fandom (also known as "No Fandom" tags). This post will provide an overview of some of these upcoming changes.
Previous Tag Wrangling updates can generally be found on the @ao3org Tumblr and, for No Fandom tags, AO3 News. While No Fandom tag updates are generally announced on AO3 News as well as the @ao3org Tumblr, this may not be true of all wrangling updates. Some updates may remain solely distributed via Tumblr, especially those that only affect one or two fandoms. The way we distribute updates is subject to change as we work through new processes.
During this round of updates, we began a method which streamlines creation of new canonical tags, prioritizing more straightforward updates which would have less discussion compared to renaming current canonical tags or creating new canonical tags which touch on more complex topics. This method also reviews new tags on a regular basis, so check back on AO3 News for periodic "No Fandom" tag announcements.
None of these updates change the tags users have added to works. If a user-created tag is considered to have the same meaning as a new canonical, it will be made a synonym of one of these newly created canonical tags, and works with that user-created tag will appear when the canonical tag is selected.
In short, these changes only affect which tags appear in AO3's auto-complete and filters. You can and should continue to tag your works however you prefer.
New Canonicals
The following concepts have been made new canonical tags:
- Breeding Kink
- Conlangs | Constructed Languages
- DILFs | Dads I'd Like to Fuck
- English Is Not The Author's First Language
- Fast Burn
- Mind Break
- Monsterfucking | Teratophilia
- Rivals to Lovers
- Wholesome
In Conclusion
While all these new tags have already been made canonical, we are still working on implementing changes and connecting relevant tags, so it’ll be some time before these updates are complete. We thank you in advance for your patience!
While we won't be announcing every change we make to No Fandom canonical tags, you can expect similar updates in the future on the tags we believe will most affect users. If you're interested in the changes we'll be making, you can check AO3 News, follow us on Bluesky @wranglers.archiveofourown.org, Twitter/X @ao3_wranglers, or Tumblr @ao3org for future announcements.
You can also read previous updates on "No Fandom" tags, linked below:
- Update on "No Fandom" tags
- Another Update Regarding "No Fandom" tags
- Updates to "No Fandom" Additional Tags, posted to AO3 News
For more information about AO3's tag system, check out our Tags FAQ.
In addition to providing technical help, Support also handles requests related to how tags are sorted and connected. If you have questions about specific tags, which were first used over a month ago and are unrelated to any of the new canonical tags listed above, please contact Support instead of leaving a comment on this post.
Lastly, as mentioned above, we are still working on connecting relevant user-created tags to these new canonicals. If you have questions about specific tags which should be connected to these new canonicals, please refrain from contacting Support about them until at least two months from now.
The Organization for Transformative Works is the non-profit parent organization of multiple projects including Archive of Our Own, Fanlore, Open Doors, Transformative Works and Cultures, and OTW Legal Advocacy. We are a fan-run, entirely donor-supported organization staffed by volunteers. Find out more about us on our website.
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3rd Voice: 112th Scene
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the world's greatest tied-for-first detectives
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← previous | July 14th, 2025 | next |
July 14th, 2025: Thanks to everyone who came out to the signings - it's always great to meet readers and ESPECIALLY great to meet readers in a city I've never been to before!! I had a fantastic time and I hope you did too! – Ryan |
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Chapter 99: Page 36
---------------------------
Guess what! We finally have some copies of the second Gunnerkirgg Court Omnibus from Dark Horse in our Topatoco store! We have both the softcover and hardcover in limited supply, so be sure to take a look and get one before they are all gone! Each of the hardcovers has a page signed by me in the front!
The books came out really great, and it's a great way to read books 3 and 4 in one complete package!
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More Murderbot Articles
https://countercurrents.org/2025/07/even-if-they-are-my-favourite-human-murderbot-just-explained-boundaries/
“I Don’t Know What I Want”: The Line That Changed Everything
In the final moments of the season, Murderbot says: “I don’t know what I want. But I know I don’t want anyone to tell me what I want or to make decisions for me. Even if they are my favourite human.”
This is not a dramatic declaration. It is confusion wrapped in clarity. A sentence that holds discomfort and self-awareness in equal measure. It reflects a truth often ignored in stories about intelligence and emotion: that it is okay to not know, as long as that unknowing belongs to the self. In a world that constantly demands certainty, this line opens up space for uncertainty without shame.
* And a great interview with Alexander Skarsgård!
https://collider.com/murderbot-finale-alexander-skarsgard/
So, it just wants to start fresh and get away, and figure out who it is and what it wants. It doesn't really know that. I quite enjoyed that Murderbot didn't end up having answers to all the questions or knowing exactly what it wants. It's more messy and complicated than that. But it definitely knows that it needs to find its own path and make its own decisions, to make its own mistakes, and not have the Corporation or anyone tell it who it is or what it wants.
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Just Create - Shishi (guardian lions) Edition
Are there any cool events or challenges happening that you want to hype?
What do you just want to talk about?
What have you been watching or reading?
Chores and other not-fun things count!
Remember to encourage other commenters and we have a discord where we can do work-alongs and chat, linked in the sticky
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Murderbot Interview
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/07/11/arts/television/murderbot-season-finale-chris-paul-weitz.html?unlocked_article_code=1.V08.exvw.M_qE37ROOT58&smid=url-share
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(no subject)
This is another one that's been on my list for years -- specifically, since I read Between Silk and Cyanide, as cryptography wunderkind Leo Marks chronicling the desperate heroism and impossible failures of the SOE is of course the son of the owner of Marks & Co., the bookstore featuring in 84, Charing Cross Road, because the whole of England contains approximately fifteen people tops.
84, Charing Cross Road collects the correspondence between jobbing writer Helene Hanff -- who started ordering various idiosyncratic books at Marks & Co. in 1949 -- and the various bookstore employees, primarily but not exclusively chief buyer Frank Doel. Not only does Hanff has strong and funny opinions about the books she wants to read and the editions she's being sent, she also spends much of the late forties and early fifties expressing her appreciation by sending parcels of rationed items to the store employees. A friendship develops, and the store employees enthusiastically invite Hanff to visit them in England, but there always seems to be something that comes up to prevent it. Hanff gets and loses jobs, and some of the staff move on. Rationing ends, and Hanff doesn't send so many parcels, but keeps buying books. Twenty years go by like this.
Since 84, Charing Cross Road was a bestseller in 1970 and subsequently multiply adapted to stage and screen, and Between Silk and Cyanide did not receive publication permission until 1998, I think most people familiar with these two books have read them in the reverse order that I did. I think it did make sort of a difference to feel the shadow of Between Silk and Cyanide hanging over this charming correspondence -- not for the worse, as an experience, just certain elements emphasized. Something about the strength and fragility of a letter or a telegram as a thread to connect people, and how much of a story it does and doesn't tell.
As a sidenote, in looking up specific publication dates I have also learned by way of Wikipedia that there is apparently a Chinese romcom about two people who both independently read 84, Charing Cross Road, decide that the book has ruined their lives for reasons that are obscure to me in the Wikipedia summary, write angry letters to the address 84 Charing Cross Road, and then get matchmade by the man who lives there now. Extremely funny and I kind of do want to watch it.
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focaccia with zucchini and potatoes

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Two new interviews
https://psychopomp.com/fantasy/issue97/interview-with-world-fantasy-finalists-part-one/
And in Scientific American:
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/were-light-years-away-from-true-artificial-intelligence-says-murderbot/
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dinosaur comics predicting supersonic hovercraft by the time this century is out. i stand by this p
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← previous | July 11th, 2025 | next |
July 11th, 2025: TOMORROW (Saturday!) at Emerald City Comics in Clearwater Florida: it's a FANTASTIC FOUR #1 signing! I'll be there from 11-2 and hopefully I will see YOU there too! – Ryan |
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Chapter 99: Page 35
-------------------------------------
Guess what! We finally have some copies of the second Gunnerkirgg Court Omnibus from Dark Horse in our Topatoco store! We have both the softcover and hardcover in limited supply, so be sure to take a look and get one before they are all gone! Each of the hardcovers has a page signed by me in the front!
The books came out really great, and it's a great way to read books 3 and 4 in one complete package!
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(no subject)
I somehow have spent most of my life under the impression that I had already read The Pushcart War, until the plot was actually described to me, at which point it became clear that I'd either read some other Pushcart or some other War but these actual valiant war heroes were actually brand new to me.
The book is science fiction, of a sort, originally published in 1964 and set in 1976 -- Wikipedia tells me that every reprint has moved the date forward to make sure it stays in the future, which I think is very charming -- and purporting to be a work of history for young readers explaining the conflict between Large Truck Corporations and Pugnacious Pushcart Peddlers over the course of one New York City summer. It's a punchy, defiant little book about corporate interest, collective action, and civil disobedience; there's one chapter in particular in which the leaders of the truck companies meet to discuss their master plan of getting everything but trucks off the streets of New York entirely where the metaphor is Quite Dark and Usefully Unsubtle. Also contains charming illustrations! A good read at any time and I'm glad to have finally experienced it.
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New Murderbot Short Story
Rapport: Friendship, Solidarity, Communion, Empathy
https://reactormag.com/rapport-martha-wells/
Edited by Lee Harris, art by Jaime Jones.
And Murderbot was renewed for a second season!
https://deadline.com/2025/07/murderbot-renewed-season-2-apple-tv-1236453764/
“We’re so grateful for the response that Murderbot has received, and delighted that we’re getting to go back to Martha Wells’ world to work with Alexander, Apple, CBS Studios and the rest of the team,” Chris and Paul Weitz, said in a statement Thursday.
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(no subject)
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Freedom and Necessity kicks off in 1849, with British gentleman James Cobham politely writing to his favorite cousin Richard to explain he has just learned that everybody thinks he is dead, he does not remember the last two months or indeed anything since the last party the two of them attended together, he is pretending to be a groom at the stables that found him, and would Richard mind telling him whether he thinks he ought to go on pretending to be dead and doing a little light investigation on his behalf into wtf is going on?
We soon learn that a.) James has been involved in something mysterious and political; b.) Richard thinks that James ought to be more worried about something differently mysterious and supernatural; c.) both Richard and James have a lot of extremely verbose opinions about the exciting new topic of Hegelian logic; and d.) James and Richard are both in respective Its Complicateds with two more cousins, Susan and Kitty, and at this point Susan and Kitty kick in with a correspondence of their own as Susan decides to exorcise her grief about the [fake] death of the cousin she Definitely Was Not In Love With by investigating why James kept disappearing for months at a time before he died.
By a few chapters in, I was describing it to
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Then I got a few more chapters in and learned more about WTF indeed was up with James and texted Kate like 'WAIT IS THIS A LYMONDALIKE?' to which she responded 'I thought it was obvious!' And I was still having a wonderful time, and continued doing so all through, but could not stop myself from bursting into laughter every time the narrative lovingly described James' pale and delicate-looking yet surprisingly athletic figure or his venomous light voice etc. etc. ( mid-book spoilers )
Anyway, if you've read a Lymond, you know that there's often One Worthy Man in a Lymond book who is genuinely wise and can penetrate Lymond's self-loathing to gently explain to him that he should use his many poisoned gifts for the better. Freedom and Necessity dares to ask the question: what if that man? were Dreamy Friedrich Engels. Which is, frankly, an amazing choice.
Now even as I write this, I know that
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And what about the radical politics, anyway? Brust and Bull have absolutely done their reading and research, and I very much enjoy and appreciate the point of view that they're writing from. I do think it's quite funny when Engels is like "James, your first duty is to your class," and James is like "well, I am a British aristocrat, so that's depressing," and Engels is like "you don't have to be! you can just decide to be of the proletariat! any day you can decide that! and then your first duty will be to the proletariat!" which like .... not that you can't decide to be in solidarity with the working class ..... but this is sort of a telling stance in an epistolary novel that does not actually center a single working-class POV. How pleasant to keep writing exclusively about verbose and erudite members of the British gentry who have conveniently chosen to be of the proletariat! James does of course have working-class comrades, and he respects them very much, and is tremendously angsty about their off-page deaths. So it goes.
On the other hand, at this present moment, I honestly found it quite comforting to be reading a political adventure novel set in 1849, in the crashing reactionary aftermath to the various revolutions of 1848. One of the major political themes of the book is concerned with how to keep on going through the low point -- how to keep on working and believing for the better future in the long term, even while knowing that unfortunately it hasn't come yet and given the givens probably won't for some time. Acknowledging the low point and the long game is a challenging thing for fiction to do, and I appreciate it a lot when I see it. I'd like to see more of it.