Tag wrangling diaries: This fandom-dropping process
Dec. 16th, 2025 04:02 am![[syndicated profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/feed.png){kind=small}
erinptah_feedAbout a month ago, TW chairs announced a new limit: each wrangler should have a maximum of 450 assigned fandoms. Of the 400+ wranglers in the committee, only 3 actually had more than 450 fandoms, so for most people this was going to make no difference in their lives at all.
So, hey, I’m one of the 3! Figured I’d write about it.
To be clear, the limit is for admin reasons. There hasn’t been any allegation of “you’re falling behind in wrangling because you have too many fandoms to keep up with.” Not to me, and I have no reason to believe it’s happened to either of the others, either.
The thing is, my habit for a while now has been “check the Unassigned Fandoms list for webcomic fandoms with less than 5 works, pick them up, tidy up whatever tags they have, and then just…keep them.”
I’ll take tiny fandoms in other areas of personal interest, too. For instance. at some point I picked up a bunch of Dracula spinoffs/adaptations. Webcomics are just the category I was regularly sweeping for.
So I ended up as the wrangler for hundreds of fandoms where they got one (1) fic, the fandom got canonized, and then nobody ever wrote another fic for them ever. Hundreds more where they’d be lucky to get 3 new fics in a year, so there’s a tiny irregular trickle of new tags that I have no trouble staying on top of. In the rare case where a tiny fandom takes off, and I can’t keep up with the tags anymore, I set it free to be scooped up by a new wrangler! Most of the time, that does not happen.
And that’s how I was wrangling 1527 fandoms as of November 15.
Chairs made it clear they weren’t saying “you need to cut that to 450 fandoms overnight.” Which is good, because I don’t even want to think about the effects of bulk-dumping 1000+ fandoms into in the “newly available, seeking a good wrangler” chat channel.
So far I’ve had a 3-pronged strategy:
1) Offer fandoms to wranglers of related series. Example: I had a bunch of Oz spinoffs/adaptations, so I reached out to the wrangler who had the Wizard of Oz movie, and asked if they’d be willing to take some off my hands. They were kind enough to take a combination of “spinoffs they were personally familiar with” and “spinoffs that get 0-3 new fics a year anyway.”
I do plan on circling back and doing this with those Dracula spinoffs, too. And there are plenty where I know they have related fandoms…but I need to get around to checking whether the others have any wrangler at all.
2) Put more fandoms on the “I’m wrangling this, but just to babysit, anyone who wants it is welcome to take it” list. Never sure if I’m hitting the right balance with this one — if there’s a fandom another wrangler would want, and I leave it off the list, they’ll never see it. But if I make the list too long, their eyes might glaze over before they get to it, so they still won’t see it.
I’ve been focusing this strategy on “English-language webcomics that are popular-enough I think there’s a decent chance they’ve been read by other wranglers.” And I’ve managed to hand off a few so far.
3) Just punting fandoms off my list, advertising that they’re available now, and hoping for the best. I’m trying to punt them in batches of 5-10 at a time, and aiming for “fandoms that are big enough another wrangler might have heard of them, but small enough that fans probably won’t suffer if they go completely unwrangled for a while.”
I’m also focusing this approach on the Korean/Chinese webtoons that I don’t personally keep up with. I can get pretty far with fan wikis and googling, but these would really be better off in the hands of a wrangler who (a) actively keeps up with the canon, (b) can read it in the original language, or (c) both. A handful of themhave been scooped by now, and I really hope that keeps up.
So far, so good!
As of today, my fandom count is down to 1400. Still got a long way to go before 450, but the progress is steady.
(It would be awfully satisfying if I managed to make regular status-report posts about this on the 15th of every month, huh? But no promises.)
Tag wrangling diaries: This fandom-dropping process
Dec. 15th, 2025 11:02 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
erinptahAbout a month ago, TW chairs announced a new limit: each wrangler should have a maximum of 450 assigned fandoms. Of the 400+ wranglers in the committee, only 3 actually had more than 450 fandoms, so for most people this was going to make no difference in their lives at all.
So, hey, I’m one of the 3! Figured I’d write about it.
To be clear, the limit is for admin reasons. There hasn’t been any allegation of “you’re falling behind in wrangling because you have too many fandoms to keep up with.” Not to me, and I have no reason to believe it’s happened to either of the others, either.
The thing is, my habit for a while now has been “check the Unassigned Fandoms list for webcomic fandoms with less than 5 works, pick them up, tidy up whatever tags they have, and then just…keep them.”
( I’ll take tiny fandoms in other areas of personal interest, too... )
Daily Happiness
Dec. 15th, 2025 07:44 pmtorachan2. I had a couple things to mail today and managed to get to the post office a few minutes before they opened so there were only like four people in front of me and I was out of there in like twenty minutes. I was braced for worse since it's the holiday season.
3. Cutie Chloe.
monday poem #335: Carrie Green, "Eating Apples"
Dec. 15th, 2025 08:03 pmheresluckEvery time I eat an apple, I think
of my Uncle Buck eating apples,
or rather I think of my mom
telling me how he ate them,
my quiet uncle who loved horses
and who cracked open
the fresh wounds of our hearts
when the cancer claimed him
so soon after it claimed his brother,
my father. I might have seen it—
Uncle Buck eating lunch
in the shop office, air conditioner hissing,
the smell of oil and gas
laced with sweet apple
as he ate skin and flesh,
his eyes closed as he pushed on,
down and around and down,
biting through the green crunch of core
and the hard black seeds
until all that remained
was a slim brown crook of stem,
a comma that once linked fruit to tree.
— Carrie Green
originally published in Salvation South
Bundle of Holding: Traveller Explorations (from 2022) & Traveller Ancients
Dec. 15th, 2025 02:02 pmjames_davis_nicoll
The TRAVELLER 2022 UPDATE corebook, ALIENS guides, sector sourcebooks, and more.
Bundle of Holding: Traveller Explorations (from 2022)
A high-power 800-page adventure for Mongoose Traveller that uncovers the greatest mysteries of Charted Space
Bundle of Holding: Traveller Ancients
Clarke Award Finalists 2025
Dec. 15th, 2025 09:33 amjames_davis_nicollWhich 2025 Clarke Award Finalists Have You Read?
Annie Bot by Sierra Greer
1 (4.8%)
Extremophile by Ian Green
0 (0.0%)
Private Rites by Julia Armfield
1 (4.8%)
Service Model by Adrian Tchaikovsky
14 (66.7%)
The Ministry of Time by Kaliane Bradley
13 (61.9%)
Thirteen Ways to Kill Lulabelle Rock by Maud Woolf
0 (0.0%)
Bold for have read, italic for intend to read, underline for never heard of it.
Which 2025 Clarke Award Finalists Have You Read?
Annie Bot by Sierra Greer
Extremophile by Ian Green
Private Rites by Julia Armfield
Service Model by Adrian Tchaikovsky
The Ministry of Time by Kaliane Bradley
Thirteen Ways to Kill Lulabelle Rock by Maud Woolf
Daily Happiness
Dec. 14th, 2025 05:25 pmtorachan2. I finally got all of Alex's books repacked into nice boxes and stacked on the new shelves I put in the shed. It's looking so much more organized. I ordered two more sets of shelves (one of the above-mentioned purchases) so then there will be three sets on each wall, which will mean plenty of space for long-term storage as well as things like toilet paper and paper towels, which we buy from Costco and they come in huge packages that are too big to store the whole thing in the house.
3. I love getting these shots of Gemma looking out the window.
200 Significant Science Fiction Books by Women, 1984–2001, by David G. Hartwell
Dec. 14th, 2025 09:05 amjames_davis_nicoll( Read more... )
Cold War in a Country Garden (Dilke, volume 1) by Lindsay Gutteridge
Dec. 14th, 2025 08:46 amjames_davis_nicoll
One very small step for a man, one giant leap for Her Majesty's Government.
Cold War in a Country Garden (Dilke, volume 1) by Lindsay Gutteridge
Daily Happiness
Dec. 13th, 2025 08:15 pmtorachan2. I've been waiting for the right size box to ship some stuff out and today I finally got one! Amusingly enough, what I want to ship out is puzzles and the perfect box had some new puzzles I ordered recently in it. (The actual size of the puzzles I'm sending is different from the ones that just came, but the box fits both and came with lots of packing paper.)
3. Tuxie is fattening up for the winter.
2025 Disneyland Trip #77 (12/13/25)
Dec. 13th, 2025 05:58 pmtorachan( Read more... )
After some digging
Dec. 13th, 2025 07:12 pmjames_davis_nicollSaturday mishmash--household stuff, dyed hair [and work stuff], and a few links
Dec. 13th, 2025 12:12 pmumadoshiOur new freezer arrived a week ago, and the plan is to finally get it in place today once
scruloose gets back from a market run. That hasn't happened yet due to a combination of factors and timing, the biggest of which is the fact that it'll require shifting some things out of the garage onto the driveway to make room for us to work with two upright freezers in play. (scruloose is going to take a stab at moving the old one out of its place without emptying it, via a hand cart, but we have no idea how likely that is to actually work. It'd sure be convenient, though.)My hair is dyed! It is. Um. Very dark. By which I mean it's not so much dark purple as "functionally black with some purple highlights that are probably some of my silver hair, but there's less of that than there is silver, so it's a little confusing". Oh, well. It looks fine, other than maybe making me look a bit washed out, and I don't much care about that.
(I might care more when I finally get
scruloose to take a headshot of me to send HR at Dayjob so they can update my long-expired work pass. [Part of why I decided to finally just go ahead and dye my hair was in the name of having it done for this photo.] These days, the process involves just filling out a form and emailing that and a photo that meets their technical requirements to the department handling passes and also to my boss, presumably so the boss can look at the photo and confirm "yes, that is the employee in question". But this means we can make potentially-endless attempts at getting a photo I don't hate, and honestly, if I can live with the horror of my provincial ID photo, I can probably live with just about anything.)A few links:
--
mrissa's annual lussekatter posts are always good for my heart.--Jenny Hamilton's "Anatomy of a Sex Scene: Heated Rivalry Edition" (covering ep. 1-2).
--"‘Pushing Daisies’ Season 3 In The Works, Says Creator Bryan Fuller".
Huh
Dec. 13th, 2025 09:39 amjames_davis_nicollAside from Larry Correia, are there any big name Baen authors who debuted at Baen, after Jim Baen's death?
(So, Tim Powers wouldn't count because he debuted not at Baen and also long before JB died)
I got three names: Chuck Gannon, Jason Cordova and Mike Kupari. Gannon actually debuted at Baen in 1994 but only two (I think) short pieces, after which there was a long delay until his novels began appearing. I don't know the other two but SF is huge and it's perfectly possible for me to overlook BNAs. Still, granting all three, with LC that makes four... and in 2028, Toni Weisskopf will have been running Baen for as long as Jim Baen did.
This could, of course, be the natural consequence of the Del Monte approach.
[added later]
Erin Reads: Pet Shop of Horrors, Collector’s Edition, post 2 (volume 1, chapters 4-6)
Dec. 13th, 2025 03:18 amerinptah_feedContinued liveblog as I read Seven Seas’ new print edition of PSOH, and make sporadic comparisons to the original Tokyopop translation.
Chapters 1-3 were covered here. You can pick up the books with my affiliate links here. The rest of this post is the notes I microblogged in a Mastodon thread and a Bluesky thread.
4) Dreizehn
The first issue where the customer doesn’t break any contract rules, and the pet doesn’t die a tragic death! I still remember getting here on the very first read of the series, and realizing “okay, this does have that much range.”
Dreizehn gets the nickname “Dora-chan”, which the TP translation just keeps as-is. If the owner was meant to be a Japanese-speaking character living in Japan, it would work fine. But since she’s an English-speaking character living in the US, I’m glad the SS translators anglicized it as “Dreizy”.
—
Karen is a returning customer, D asks about the guy who accompanied her in. There’s a panel with two speech bubbles, two separate tails, where the TP translation thinks the first bubble is Karen talking:
D: And you are?
Karen (bubble 1): He’s my late mother’s cousin. He works–worked–with my father.
Edward (bubble 2): I am Edward. Nice to meet you.
But the SS version switches the pronouns so it’s all being said by Edward:
D: And this is…?
Edward (bubble 1): Edward, sir! Her mother’s cousin.
Edward (bubble 2): I also worked at her father’s lab.
“Karen gives actual info, Edward just gives his name” and “Edward talks over Karen, not letting her get a word in” do both fit with the way the rest of the plot goes. But based on how the tails are drawn, I would’ve made the same guess as TP, that the first chunk of dialogue is meant to be Karen’s.
—
A clear win for the SS translation, where D gets to be an extra level of ominous:
TP: This is Chinatown. We have all manner of creatures for sale.
SS: This is Chinatown, sir. There’s nothing you can’t find here.
—
Dreizehn is called a “seeing-eye dog” by TP, and a “guide dog” by SS. Couldn’t find any indication that one of these terms is more modern, or preferred over the other. I guess it’s just an individual preference from the translator? (Wikipedia says “seeing-eye dog” is specifically American, but “guide dog” is also used and understood in the US.)
Karen’s first instruction for her new dog is “Shake” in TP, and “Paw” in SS. Another translator preference? (Couldn’t even find any regional differences for this one.)
Dreizehn’s ears are described as “cut” in TP, and “cropped” in SS. “Cropping” is the official term for the procedure, so points to SS here.
—
Another POV swap between translations at the end of the chapter!
There’s a “see, just a normal Doberman!” line from D, then some “voiceover” text about Karen and her dog having their happily-ever-after. TP phrases it as if D is narrating the whole thing. SS phrases the last chunk as Karen telling us the end of her own story.
No speech-balloon tails on this part, absolutely nothing I can see as a clue about which interpretation is right. Purely on personal preference, I like it better if it’s Karen.
—
5) Dragon
A Christmas special! Perfect for the season.
And the SS translation has D addressing Leon by his rank after all. Oh good. He’s “Detective” in SS already, still “Officer” in TP — I don’t know nearly enough about policing to tell if either of those is more correct/appropriate.
—
Leon offering to help D track down his misplaced dragon egg:
TP: “To serve and protect the people”–it’s kinda in the job description.
SS: As an officer of the law, protecting the people in this city is my job.
The meaning is exactly the same, but props to the TP translator for having Leon invoke a specific Police Catchphrase along the way.
—
D explaining Leon to his dentist (there’s context for this, but it doesn’t help):
TP: His name is Leon. I’m trying to tame him.
SS: «A lion I recently acquired. I’m giving him manners training.»
(Points to the SS translation for including angle brackets around the dialogue that’s supposed to be in Chinese. Points to TP for having D use the phrase “tame him.”)
…So obviously the name “Leon” means “lion”. And the pronunciation is close enough, I’m sure there are dialects where they come out the same. But going by Japanese Wikipedia, they’re still different enough to have different katakana: the English word “lion” is ライオン, and the name “Leon” is レオン or リオン.
Which one did you use here, D?!
(He can’t be using the Japanese/Chinese word for “lion”, 獅, because that’s so radically different, there’s no way TP would’ve mistranslated it as “Leon”.) (…Right?)
—
There’s a reference to Kowloon Walled City, which TP translates as “Kulong Castle.” I definitely had no idea that was a real place from the TP version. “It got torn down a few years back” — the demolition was in 1993-1994, which I think is the first PSOH reference to something with an identifiable date.
…apparently the place-name “Kowloon” means “Nine Dragons.” Dammit, Matsuri Akino.
—
—
After the dragon hatches, D explains to Leon that the dragon’s form is influenced by the people who take care of the egg:
TP: Thanks to you, it turned out to be a very fine dragon.
SS: Thanks to you, he was born with wings!
Aww, TP, how could you leave that out? I didn’t even register it was meaningful when she hatched with wings. That’s just Default Dragon in my head! But D has been picturing a classical snakey Eastern dragon all chapter, and Leon has been picturing a default Western dragon, and that’s why she has wings–? This whole time!
—
The dragon isn’t a “he”, btw. I’m guessing none of this text was gendered in the original Japanese, and the SS translators just picked a pronoun, without checking if the character would come back later with a different one.
D doesn’t seem likely to mis-identify an animal’s physical sex, though…so, hey, if you’ve ever wanted to make a trans headcanon for a dragon? Here’s the perfect setup.
When she comes back in TP, other characters refer to her as “Honlon”, which I always took as her name. Or, well, their collective name. They describe themselves as “three sisters who were born in the same body,” and each one has her own name individually — but it’s still convenient if they have a “system name” for addressing the whole group.
The current SS chapter finally clued me in that “Hónglóng” is just D saying her species, “red dragon,” in Chinese.
The name Gidora will also be invoked for them at some point…and, wait, that’s just her species again, it’s the Greek word that in English is pronounced “hydra.” Huh.
—
6) Dice
D showing up at the precinct to post a customer’s bail, Tokyopop translation:
D: Oh don’t worry, my friend, it’s nothing for you to be concerned about.
Leon: Who you calling “friend”?!
Seven Seas translation:
D: Now, now, darling, there’s nothing going on between us you need to worry about.
Leon: Who’re you calling “darling”?!
No prizes for guessing which version is my favorite :3
—
B-plot customer for this issue, demanding a cat:
TP: I want the same kind of cat as the one you sold to the King of Morocco…
SS: The exact same kind as the one you sold the president of the K Republic!!
Does the Japanese for “K Republic” sound like a pun on “Morocco”, or…?
In flashback scenes of this cat, the setting is broadly Middle Eastern, although I would not put money on it being accurate to Morocco. Poked at some history articles, the king at this point in the ’90s was Hassan II, and he doesn’t seem to have anything in common with the ruler here (“King Muhammad” in TP, “President Muhad” in SS).
—
Meanwhile, the A-plot customer when he gets a cat, and she looks like an adorable toddler girl in a frilly dress:
TP: Huh? Why do I feel like this? I don’t even like kids.
SS: Hold it! What’s with this feeling?! I don’t even like kids! And I swear on the devil’s name, I’m no lolicon!!
…I’m guessing SS is more literal, while TP is more culturally-accurate. A random deadbeat young guy in the US isn’t going to recognize “this girl looks like a loli-bait manga character.” And there’s no comparable American trope he could be picturing instead.
(In the 2020s, you could maybe make it believable that the character is such a big anime nerd, he would think of the Japanese trope in reaction to an IRL situation? In the 1990s, no way.)
—
Latest example of the “SS translation is better at incidental text” trend: D comes out of a casino wearing a sash, with Japanese that TP leaves untranslated, but SS replaces with “New Owner”.
(Yes, D uses magic-fueled gambling to win so much money that he buys a Vegas casino. No, neither the winnings nor the casino are ever mentioned again.)
—
To Be Continued Again
That’s it for Collector’s Edition Volume 1!
None of the characters made any new “ugh, Asians” comments in the back half of the book. Hope that trend keeps up.
Will do Volume 2 next, and order Volumes 3-4…at some point. Volumes 5 and 6 don’t come out until February and May, respectively, so clearly I have to pace myself.
Weekly Reading
Dec. 12th, 2025 08:06 pmtorachanThe Girls Who Disappeared
On the 20th anniversary of a car accident where three girls mysteriously disappeared, the MC is assigned to do a podcast on it and goes to the town to conduct interviews, but strange things start happening. I didn't love the reveal of what actually happened, but overall this was interesting.
Mirage City
Fourth in the Evander Mills mystery series. I had no idea a new book was out until I saw it pop up on my goodreads feed. Looking back it seems like every book has come out in October, so I guess I should try and remember to keep an eye out around that time next year. I enjoyed this one a lot.
Murder on Harley Street
Most recent Cleopatra Fox mystery. Still enjoying this series.
The Final Curtain
Final book in the English translated series of Detective Kaga mysteries (and I believe final book in the original, too). I can see why the four books that were translated into English were chosen, if they knew they weren't going to be able to do the whole series, those ones all tie into each other somewhat. I liked these a lot, so I'm definitely going to try and see if I can find some of the ones that didn't get translated when we take our next trip to Japan (sadly they are not available as ebooks).
Murder at Merry Beggars Hall
New-to-me mystery series. And fairly new in general as the second book is just coming out next month. I enjoyed this a lot and am looking forward to the next one.
The Ghostkeeper
Graphic novel about a man who almost died as a child and can see ghosts ever since. He uses his powers to help ghosts deal with their issues and move on to the next life, but one day a ghost girl steals the key to the door to the next life and all the ghosts start flooding the town because no one is able to move on. I liked it.
My Home Hero vol. 17
Erin Reads: Pet Shop of Horrors, Collector’s Edition, post 2 (volume 1, chapters 4-6)
Dec. 12th, 2025 10:18 pmerinptahContinued liveblog as I read Seven Seas’ new print edition of PSOH, and make sporadic comparisons to the original Tokyopop translation.
Chapters 1-3 were covered here. You can pick up the books with my affiliate links here. The rest of this post is the notes I microblogged in a Mastodon thread and a Bluesky thread.
( Dreizehn and Dragon and Dice, oh my... )
