I've read my Orwell, you can't get me that easily

what a story to go out on!! we are so grateful to all of you for reading for sending in your stories and poems and though we shall diminish now, and go into the west we send you all our hopes for joy and peace and good reading ✨💖🦄🌈

I get some weird ADHD earworms sometimes, but singing "Euripides, Euripides!" to the tune of O Christmas Tree is a bit odd even for me. No idea how it came about.

Hey hey! If you're not a subscriber then this one is now FREE FOR EVERYONE, costing you only 3-4 minutes of your time per average adult reading speeds! It has been a long year for all of us and you deserve to take those 240 seconds for yourself.

Oh I loved this. Tender and weird and just what I needed first thing this morning

Hey, would you look at that! I actually have some NEW ORIGINAL FICTION out for the first time in fucking ages! Weird af community action/self care/mycelial SF for a thousand brief words. It's better for your brain than 3 minutes of doomscrolling would be!

1/🧵 The good people of the Cabinet Office has found a copy of the Department for Education and Employment’s drafting instructions* for the Sex Discrimination (Gender Reassignment) Regulations 1999. * the Parly Counsel does vetting only in this case, so the instructions is to DfEE’s in-house lawyers

If you're not trans, please take a couple of minutes to skim through the linked blog post. It's an overview of (some of) the questions trans kids and their parents will have to through, just to participate in the NHS puberty blocker trial. I won't make any further comment here.

Really, deeply loved this one, and if I were going to do all the layers of it real justice in the outro I'd have had to take a year to write it. It resonated in so many ways for me, some of which I can't even name.

New story up at PodCastle! I can't describe "Waterways" better than @mattdovey.com: "like a dream, like something told to you on a too-hot-day where you’re not quite in focus". Thank you Matt for the gorgeous narration & kind words, and @podcastle.org for featuring it podcastle.org/2025/11/18/p...

Lovely wife got some fresh baked mince pies from the bakery and they're... just a lid? What am I meant to do, eat it in the fucking foil? Mind-blowing

People still constantly bring up my AI Statement page in the Scream zine. Some folks say it made them cry! I was going to be more eviscerating but instead felt the best way to make my point was just to be totally raw and vulnerable in a way AI can't be. sara-century.square.site

Currently sat with a pint at the back of the main hall, just off the bar area on upper ground, if anyone is about?

Ah, pre-con social anxiety, my least favourite part of the weekend. Knowing it will be fine in three hours is no use right now, alas. Stupid brain. Probably be registered for World Fantasy and inside around an hour from now, so maybe see some of you about?

Absolutely love this post. Another example why we need to study history from the bottom up, not necessarily top down.

"i dont want to eat a kebab, i want fish and chips" well sorry little buddy but we're at the kebab shop and you're twelve

I will never not repost this (Sound on for maximum effect)

Congratulations to @podcastle.org for winning an Ignyte Award! 👏 What a beautiful happenstance that my new narration is up there today - 'Vedritsa of the River' by @catchingwords.bsky.social is a sapphic Rusalka story with cli-fi elements, and I was deeply honoured to work on it. Give it a listen!

They're trying to sell us AI as the future, meanwhile I ask my phone out loud to "set an alarm for ten to four" and it goes ahead and puts one in for 16:50 💀 Did that fine for a decade on the old Google Assistant, so I guess congrats on burning the world up for the sake of a worse product, berks

Has just occurred to me that the Social Model of Disability is basically the Double Empathy Problem writ large on a societal scale. Just meet people halfway, in communication and in environments & opportunities.

Another day, another form rejection from Uncanny. 21 in a row! I'm on a streak! (c'est la vie, I suspect I don't write their kind of fiction, and that's fine, but doesn't mean I'm going to stop sending stuff in: it's their job to reject me, and not my place to do that job for them)

It's a small thing, but I really appreciate @theignyteawards.bsky.social's use of "Outstanding" in the awards names. Not "best", not an implied ranking that sets us all in competition with a false authority of objective worth, but instead a recognition of who is doing work that deserves recognition.

That's it! Congratulations winners and thank you for your contributions to such a beautiful SFFH landscape and community. #2025IgnyteAwards ignyteawards.fiyahlitmag.com/2025-results/

Aaaaahhhhhhh this is such an honour!! Thank you to everyone who voted for us! 😭🎉🎉🎉😭

Um. There’s a woman presenting this too.

Crying right now. This is my first ever award, and I am so honored. <3

OH SHIT YOU GUYS 😭😭😭

It’s a "crisis" when immigrants "take jobs away", but "innovation" when machines do. Funny.

Submissions are open until 15 October!

Gosh, what a coincidence that the car I was looking to buy has suddenly gone up £400 as soon as I booked a test drive for it 🤔🤔🤔

UK peeps! Someone You Can Build A Nest In is a UK Kindle Deal for just 99p! Dark cozy fantasy by @wiswell.bsky.social.

IMO every publication and every publisher should have a clear statement about their generative AI policy. To dictate what is acceptable writer usage, yes, but also to declare their own usage (or lack thereof). Do they use it for slushreading, editing, illustration, correspondence?

She who steals the leaves from the trees

New! Cassetteboy vs Keir Starmer. This took absolutely ages, so if you'd like to buy us a coffee at ko-fi.com/cassetteboy we'd really appreciate it. Thanks!

TIL CeX was co-founded by Charlie Brooker of Black Mirror fame, and he drew the logo they still use. Did not expect that. Also a co-founder: best/worst fake name, Hugh Man!

"[a majority of Britons] sometimes stopped themselves from expressing political or social views because of the fear of being judged or negative responses" Yes, you absolute codticklers, that's how "conversation" and "society" work. Someone says something reprehensible, others get to judge them

One of my favorite fun facts is why the TMNT are named after artists (it’s because the type of turtle they are is a “painted turtle”). I told my nephew about this and he immediately replied that there should be a Bob Ross turtle. So rather than explain the renaissance movement to him, I-

Can’t explain it but of course they want to take away one of the only painkillers that’s safe for pregnancy, a condition that causes weird and unusual pains. these people WANT pregnancy to be a punishment and handicap. they want to control.

This is entirely true on so many levels I don't think I could possibly detail it exhaustively, but you really can't oppose trans people's human rights and still have freedom of expression and bodily autonomy, the idea that people are entitled to self determination goes right out the window....

"what is their obsession with trans people even about" cuz trans people are the free-est motherfuckers on earth! they don't want the rest of y'all getting any ideas about having control over your own fucking destiny!!

It is so damn obvious the trans sports issue is a drummed up nonsense moral panic masquerading as “common sense” - but if you look deeper for two seconds you see how the whole point of sex segregated sports is to defund women athletics & to build and propagandize the western idea of women as weak.

The old colonial styling at Disney hotels is probably a great idea in board meetings, but gets kind of awkward when you're in the hotel and notice that all the cleaning staff dressed like this are, uh, still immigrants of colour. Plus ça change!

I do a lot of driving all round the country for Day Job, and this past week there is suddenly a rash of flags everywhere like never before. Something fundamental broke in this country this summer, and I'm not sure why now, but—along with the crowd in London today, and the polls—I'm scared

I love this so much I FEEL IT IN MY BONES 😆

I am very tired of consistently working the equivalent of seven working days in every five day working week*, but even more tired of the shocked response from people saying at least I'll have a good Christmas when I tell them I won't get paid for any of this

This is good; "Minister of Hypocrisy Wes Streeting" "So there we have it. One Irish person is charged with ‘terrorism’ in a UK court for speaking out against violence, while another Irish person is being held up as a victim of unfree speech for speaking out in favour of violence."

It turns out that protecting hate speech did not create the conditions to protect other kinds of speech; instead, it protected hate and allowed hate movements to take over all the institutions of that might have defended the rest of us.

SEEKING women with ADHD who are freelance professionals & have created systems to compensate for their ADHD in their careers to provide brief quotes for an article I'm working on Ideally, I'd like to highlight different women from the ones I spoke to for my last article & get 3-5 quotes

The extreme right appropriate this flag as an emblem for a small-minded tribal concept of a mythological Britain that has never, nor will ever exist... ...except in their dreams. This flag is special. It represents our land, our people, our history, our culture. ALL our culture. ALL our people.