Panel 2: Geeking Out over KPop Demon Hunters

Quite a few of my best friends still refuse to watch this movie.

Sometimes this makes me feel like I turned to the wrong choose-your-own-story page. Surrounding myself with people who are like me demographically, but not emotionally, or intellectually, or – most importantly – equally suffused with trendiness.

Because I am one trendy creature, let me tell you. Not every trend, I’m rather selective, but I really do enjoy a good bandwagon. Bandwagons are fun. You can make friends, find decent conversations, score that rare fan trinket you’ve been trying to find. They are a nice existential distraction from the pointless cruelty of existence, and I cherish them. 

I was one of the early converts to the KDH cult. Which happened because I’m into K-Pop.

Which came about because my music computer died two months into the pandemic. I have a stonehenge of former hard drives that I’ve used since the ‘90s and all of them are recoverable except this one in particular. It contained all my CDs, which currently live in a storage box just in case I have to re-upload them a third time. 

Faced with a choice between re-uploading and just throwing up my hands and embracing a new style of music for a while, I chose the latter. The last good concert I saw before the pandemic had been SuperM, a KPop supergroup. I had just started getting paychecks again after a long gap, and I splurged on a good seat, because I was writing a science fiction book with a boy band in it, and I wanted to check out the latest trends in boy bands. 

At that show I fell in love with a performer named Taemin, and his group SHINee, and his bandmates’ groups EXO and NCT, as well as other groups from the same country such as BTS and MonstaX, but it all started with Taemin. He’s just that good, and you should go watch one of his videos right now, because he’s the best dancer in the world. I came out of that show with the immediate desire to own all his albums, so I ordered them – on CD – and the last one arrived the day before lockdown began. When my music computer died, they were on top of the stack. 

I briefly tried to replace my music computer with Spotify and then I discovered another harsh truth: I was now accustomed to high definition sound. This was a side effect of a prior addiction to World of Warcraft. I started listening to everything in HD surround and after a while regular stereo (i.e. most of my existing music collection) sounded way too skinny.

But not K-Pop! These folks were doing awesome things with their endless array of tracks and multilayered sounds. I later learned that the guy who had a major hand in developing the SuperM bands, Lee Soo Min, was holed up in Southern California during the eighties, avoiding a military coup in Korea, and all he did was study computer science and watch MTV. 

As someone who also spent a lot of the ‘80s watching MTV, I recognized a kindred soul. If you took all the best ‘80s MTV videos and shot a package of them into space, you might receive back something resembling K-Pop. And that was sort of the linchpin of the science fiction story I was writing at the time, a delirious adventure featuring a boy band trapped on a dinosaur planet, and a brave girl trying to rescue them. (Rhonda Wray: Raptor Wrangler – the buy link’s right here on this blog.)

So I developed a massive addiction to K-Pop while patiently re-installing my old classic rock and jazz and blues and industrial and Hawaiian guitar and all the other stuff I like to listen to. I’m still quite happily addicted. I’ve seen BTS live three times this year and I’m tempted to go see them again because they’re playing in LA right after Worldcon and it’s an amazing show. I actually followed Taemin’s tour last year, saw him in New York, LA, Oakland and Honolulu. Speaking of amazing shows.

And because of this addiction I am  in a bunch of fan groups, and we were talking about KDH on day one. Someone mentioned the boy dancers were based on SHINee, as well as BigBang, MonstaX, and BTS, and that’s all it took – I found it on Netflix and clicked play.

I spent most of the last year repeating that action.

Bad Bunny did a skit on Saturday Night Live where all he wants to talk about is KDH despite his dinner companions bringing up interesting conversations, and finally the Huntrix girls burst right out of his imagination and sing Golden. 

Which is still on the iTunes charts today. It’s number two under K-Pop. Soda Pop, Takedown, and How It’s Done are beneath it. The album is also number two, right above Arirang by BTS. 

When I was early in my Kpop addiction I briefly tried to style myself as a KPop blogger – mostly as part of the research for my character, but also because I felt like I wanted to join this mission to help Asian music break into the American market. 

As I’ve written about elsewhere, I grew up in Hawai’i, listening to excellent Asian musicians, and then moving to the mainland and wondering why they had so much antipathy toward Asian/Pacific Islander music given that American popular music was largely kickstarted by Hawaiians following the overthrow and occupation of their kingdom. You can still see the “blackface” version in some movies, like Baby’s sister’s performance in Dirty Dancing, and here’s a documentary if you want to dive deeper.

My career as a K-Pop blogger folded after the initial burst of energy and I moved on to my next trend, but I’ve kept up on my stated goal with that: to help Asian music be more visible. Promote it to people like my classic rock friends whose knowledge of Asian music begins and ends with Yoko Ono jokes. 

So I do things like share videos on Facebook, and show up at concerts, and fan meetups. I wear my coat that’s covered with rock patches as well as K-Pop patches, and be a big old example of someone who can move between both worlds. I participate in fan groups, and since I write mostly under handles these days, I spread lots of positive reviews. My courtroom-novel-in-progress has a character who is a K-Pop star trying to launch a solo career, he’s based on both Taemin and Mark Lee. 

When I saw the jaw-dropping magnificence that is KDH I immediately wanted to share it with the world. I wrote a long breathless review for File 770 pitching it hard. Solid storytelling! Amazing songwriting! Girl characters who fight, pig out, burp, have moral conflicts, spew popcorn out of their eyeballs, and do all manner of amazing things one hardly ever sees girls do in cartoon movies! 

I watched it over and over. I found Rumi absolutely compelling, and I was fully absorbed in the love story between a mostly-good girl and a mostly-bad boy, as well as the story of a half-demon who hunts full-demons using music. I loved the Saja Boys too, with their astute parody of boy band archetypes and their weaponized seductiveness.

Dear Reader, my enthusiasm for watching movies had been dormant so long I feared it was dead. I continued to dutifully watch the Oscar nominees every year for a long time but after Anora I stoped bothering. Clearly the American media industry was aiming their product in a direction that wasn’t mine. 

Meanwhile, I’ve enjoyed a few Korean shows, like Extraordinary Attorney Woo and Squid Games. My impression of South Korea is that it is a country where intelligence is valued. I’m not sure I could live there because I have a few antisocial American habits that wouldn’t blend well, but their media makes me feel seen and accepted where American media … hasn’t for a while. Despite its best efforts at focusing on inclusion. 

I think an Americanized version of Rumi would fall flat. She’d be more of a people-pleasing role model. Probably she’d describe herself as “punk” and claim to be on the rockist side of the rockism versus poptimism debate, and in fact Huntrix would probably get retconned as a feminist punk band, since that might be a lot more plausible here than the idea of (gasp) men being fans of a girlpop group. Although American men probably wouldn’t line up to see a feminist punk band either, so maybe they’d get changed to plaster casters or something.

In fact, that was one of the reasons K-Pop Demon Hunters got rejected from larger platforms: it was thought boys would hate it. In some countries, it’s normal and acceptable for boys to listen to groups made of cute girls, and even crush on them, but here that’s totally unmanly and potentially gay. American men are supposed to listen to groups made of young men screaming about aggression instead. 

Which brings us right to the elephant in the room: KDH is a female gaze movie. Sure, men can watch it. Women can watch spaghetti westerns and Marvel Universe films if they want, and lots do. It’s from a woman’s perspective though, and a straight one. Huntrix is never sexually objectified the way the Saja Boys are. Women are allowed to be gross, gluttonous, lazy, lustful, foolish – a whole range of things they don’t typically do in male gaze entertainment where they’re basically decoration. 

I think KDH belongs in lots of sections at Blockbuster, so probably it’s a good thing Blockbuster isn’t around anymore. It’s a musical, and it’s animated, and it has nothing inappropriate for children, so those are three potential shelves for it, but it’s also a women’s movie. A tragic love story. An opera. A fairy tale. A comedy. A spiritual allegory. Whatever you need it to be at any given moment. It’s there for you.

Above all, it’s deep. There’s a reason people are still compulsively watching it. 

And avoiding it too. For whatever reasons. Maybe they are devout rockists who could never sully their pure authenticity with pop, or maybe they think it’s going to be sexist, or childish, or they have a deep and secret vein of anti-Asian racism they usually keep to themselves. There’s a lot of weird resistance to this utterly charming film, even among people I know well and like. I’ve moved beyond my evangelical phase where I was going to peoples’ houses and logging into my personal Netflix account to try and get them to engage with Huntrix and Derpy the tiger. This movie fits into some peoples “uggggh not for me” category just the same way I approach mysteries, Star Trek, superheroes, genderswapped reboots and similar. 

The Grammys are trying to introduce a “best Asian” category for the new BTS album, to keep it out of the regular Best Album competition. Similar to what a country western award did when they invented a “traditional” category in response to Beyonce invading their genre. BTS fans have thrown down the gauntlet over this and are embarking on a campaign to give BTS Best Album, for Arirang, which it damn well deserves in my opinion.

Similar things have been happening to KDH, which has been studiously ignored by lots of people that consider themselves too serious for its colorful charms. Still, it made it up there to Best Long Form in the Hugos. I am specifically avoiding the award ceremony because I don’t want to see it lose, which I predict will happen, because of those mysterious avoiders, who are voting for Sinners or something about superheroes or anything but KDH. Too young, too girly, too foreign. My internal translator tends to render it all as “clashes with their sensibilities” (and makes me wonder sometimes if I need to recalibrate mine). 

Then I think about the fan merch. There was zero fan merch available when KDH became a huge hit, and people were actually making it themselves. Shirts, dolls, 3D printed figures, plushies, stickers. Anything you might find at the Disney store, but handmade, by people whose desire for a Derpy Tiger hoodie or a Saja Boys t-shirt was so unstoppable they took matters into their own hands. 

Usually it flows the other way. Target has a huge pile of figures for the new Moana movie, which are available pre-release. I predict they’ll be on clearance at some point. Maybe I’ll get the boat, but I have zero need for a The Rock As Maui doll when I have an animated Maui doll that resembles Israel Kamakawiwo’ole and is the only Maui doll this Maui girl needs. 

You can buy KDH stuff now, like the shirt I’m wearing to the show, as well as some really nice dolls and other merch. And there’s going to be a sequel happening, for all of us happy devotees who have been attending singalong showings in theaters and other fan activities. 

It’s really nice when the corporations go “wow, you want more of that one?” Instead of “our team has decided we can maximize profits by feeding you this one, so here, buy this weird-looking Moana doll instead of the homemade Rumi doll from Etsy that you are craving.” 

I’m going to close this with a video of real live K-Pop band Oneus, who impulsively threw a cover of My Idol into their live show when I saw them at the Masonic in San Francisco. They got a lot of screaming applause, and I hope you enjoy it as much as we did. 

Panel: Neurodiverse Approaches to the Art of Stories

 

I’m not sure whether any of my fellow panelists are as …uh, hypervigilant … about preparing as I am. Over the years I’ve learned that other people don’t necessarily do things like make spreadsheets of what they (and their Labubus) are planning to wear, let alone write essays about what they’re going to talk about on a panel. 

But I’m like that. So are my Labubus, and they outnumber me, so there it is. (Shrug)

I’m going to start with my second panel, which is about Neurodiversity and Storytelling. For that one I’m wearing a tie dye, as tribute to Steve Silberman, who was both a notable Deadhead and the man who coined the term “Neurodiverse.” 

I’m going to assume that we’re smart folks and it’s 2026, and we don’t need any kind of “what is autism?” or “what ADHD means” preamble before launching in, but I’m going to read the room on that. 

I might riff on Steeve Silberman a little, and re-read NeuroTribes to prepare. It’s a brilliant book that I recommend to everyone interested in neurodiversity. It made me think about all the cognitively unusual people I’ve encountered in life – schizophrenic lawyers, Mensa geniuses, musical savants who don’t talk very much, all those artists navigating the border between brilliance and madness. 

I’ve never been diagnosed with anything in the major mental health spectrum, just occasional flourishes of anxiety and depression. I grew up in a time when getting diagnosed with a mental illness was something everyone wanted to avoid, and I have friends my age who did get diagnosed, and then they dealt with issues like involuntary commitment and having it used against them in custody hearings. I’ve known people who have been diagnosed with things people consider extremely serious, like schizophrenia, and bipolar – but they’re walking around, having lives, functioning better than me in some areas. 

I was diagnosed with being gifted, because I was one of those early readers who latched onto books when I was about three, and I haven’t put them down yet, although occasionally I take breaks. Giftedness does count as neurodivergence, plus it’s probably the only desirable one, even though there’s considerable overlap with things like autism and ADHD. To the consternation of people who claim to be “sapiosexual” and then that genius they fell in love with turns into the parent of kids who have behavioral issues and independent education plans. 

I feel like a younger clone of me growing up these days would probably get a diagnosis. I have a lot of neurospicy features as well as things that were dismissed as affectations and eccentricities earlier in my life. And the more familiar I become with neurospiciness, the more I’ve learned to notice it in others. 

One thing I have definitely noticed over the last few years is that some stories – and some music, and some visual art, and so on – have a lot of neurospicy fans. Probably Star Trek is the classic example, although I’m one of those weird SF fans who never really liked Star Trek precisely because their neurodivergent-coded characters were all robots and aliens. Some neurospicy people really like identifying with Spock or Data or the Doctor. I felt more of an affinity for neurodivergent-coded characters like Radar on MASH, or the Professor on Gilligan’s Island – weird and nerdy, sure, but part of the team. Or the ones on shows like Bewitched and the Addams Family, where a family that’s a little bit different is constantly evading nosy neighbors with unwelcome comments. 

I had a flash of insight at a BTS concert recently, where I saw plenty of fans with things like headphones, and puzzle piece charms, and all the little things that tend to communicate "autism." Autism is a topic that comes up frequently in the fan groups for some bands. Given that the originator of the term “neurodiverse” was a Deadhead, it’s probably safe to say that lots of autistic people enjoy music that is accompanied by visually overwhelming elements like light shows and colorful outfits, and good rhythms, and a crowd that goes out of its way to be kind. 

Anyway my insight was “I wonder if artists who don’t appeal to neurodivergents have any future in this modern world?” Because neurodivergent fans will do free, volunteer-based PR out of sheer love once they find a type of art that greets them with open arms. Neurotypicals will buy tickets and show up, but the neurodivergents camp out in line overnight. They are the ones that go over and above, working on fan communities, making fan art, obsessively voting in polls, nagging their friends to check out this song, read this book, look at this video. 

You can usually tell whether an intellectual property appeals by neurodivergents by the fan art. Some fandoms will give you a blank look when you bring up fan art, because their fans are nice respectable neurotypicals who would never act like that.

Other fandoms are full of people drawing pictures, dressing up in costumes, making items to give or sell to the other fans. Science fiction conventions and all their derivatives are probably built on this idea. 

At this panel we’re probably going to be talking a lot about subjective things, like the kinds of stories the panelists and their children, friends, associates enjoy, but the main thing that intrigues me here is: “what is it that makes a particular piece of art popular with neurodivergents?” 

With maybe a little attention toward “what art is neurodivergent kryptonite that will make the typical neurodiverse story consumer take one glance and do a hard avoid?” Or even worse, an organized boycott, but we'll leave that alone for now.

From my wanderings, I can report that the following intellectual properties are neurodivergent magnets: 

Star Trek, Star Wars, the Grateful Dead (and other jam bands generally but especially Ween, Phish, and Billy Strings), K-Pop bands generally but especially BTS (member Suga does a lot of charitable work with autistics), Dungeon Crawler Carl, Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter, Pokemon, Kpop Demon Hunters.

And this is a science fiction convention so probably you’re already thinking of more. You could probably find some overriding themes there, such as “colorful visual overwhelm” whether done with lightsticks or a crowd dressed in tiedye, or worldbuilding so detailed that squatters move in and start writing fanfic. 

I think one of the most important parts is that neurodivergents can see themselves being an accepted part of the world described by the movie or music or literary work, rather than a disruptive distraction who needs to be gatekept. Jam band and K-Pop music are both types of music amenable to people who want to get up and move around, as opposed to sitting quietly like a chamber music audience. Certain IPs are friendlier than others with regard to self-insert fanfic. 

Neurodivergents like fandoms that are cool if they want to get up and dance, or if they want to draw pictures and write stories. They’re not as big on age-restriction, which sometimes happens in neurotypical art, like sometimes a band’s followers are entirely within five to ten years in age, or a movie might be completely unfamiliar to those outside a narrow demographic. Meanwhile at K-Pop and jam band shows there are teenagers, and old relics like me and older, and everyone in between.

From an authorial standpoint, neurodivergents seem to appreciate stories where different generations get together. Elderly mentors and smart-ass kids are equally welcome. Give them a world full of same-age people and they’ll probably associate it with stressful situations, like school. Which doesn’t make them averse to school stories in general, one of the few things the Potter franchise did really well was come up with a school setting that appeals to neurodivergents. Monster High is doing well too, and you probably know a lot more. 

What do neurodivergents dislike? Well as a matter of fact, there’s a controversial thing called “pathological demand avoidance” or “PDA” or “persistant desire for autonomy” – go look it up, many words have been laid down amounting to the idea that neurospicy people particularly hate being bossed around, scolded, demanded, ordered, compelled, et cetera. 

(I’m pretty sure I have a variant that has to do with scoldy political memes and authoritative signs, but it’s probably part of a constellation of reasons that make me well suited for a career in law where I get to frequently respond to scolds, demands, and orders with responses like “says who?” and “sorry, I can’t disclose that.”) 

The basic idea is that neurospicy individuals spend a lot of their childhood enduring lectures by scoldy adults trying to reason them out of being neurodivergent. The last thing they want to encounter in their recreational media is more scoldy adults, making demands. Go ahead, waste millions of dollars producing scoldy television shows telling them how to be nicer citizens – they’ll just sneak off and watch Skibidi Toilet on youtube instead. 

Another thing neurodivergents often dislike is something I’ll call “cool kids energy.” I could call it “mean kids energy” too. Cool aka mean kids are the neurotypical majority kids who tend to bully those who are different, and some stories center them while making the oddball kids the butt of the joke. Neurospicy kids are more likely to sympathize with outsiders and weirdos and greasers than jocks and cheerleaders and socs. 

(Not always! Some movies go out of their way to claim, for example, that a female character is a hideous bullied outcast by having her wear glasses and a dumb haircut despite being a gorgeous Hollywood actress with expensive-looking teeth. This kind of thing often leads to audience backlash, since nobody wants to be conned into sympathizing with a bullshit outsider who turns out to be some cheerleader in disguise.) 

One thing you might want to consider, as a writer or other type of content creator trying to appeal to the neurodivergent audience, is paying actual neurodivergent people a small sum to beta read your stuff. A lot of neurodivergents are under-employed yet still need shiny toys, cannabis edibles, soft t-shirts and other necessities. You’ll probably be surprised at the deficiencies they do spot, and they’ll appreciate being the one handing out demands for a change. You can find them online. Neurodivergents are online a lot.

I’ve been avoiding mentioning it, until the very end, but if you’re going to play with, or for, the neurodivergent audience, be aware that backlash can be a motherfucker.

Prime example: singer Sia, a woman with questionable judgment regarding working with minors, produced a movie about an autistic girl that included a ton of ugly stereotypes, “inspiring disability” glurge, and a depiction of the girl being held in a potentially dangerous chokehold. It was met with organized resistance by autistics and their supporters, and it died a miserable death at the box office. 

There are some high profile people in the science fiction community who have clashed with me, and others, regarding the subject of neurodiversity. They’ll say things like “we should resume using the term Asperger’s Syndrome” when Asperger was a Nazi who sorted neurodiverse kids into the employable and the euthanizable. Sometimes they give voice to ideas like autism is something confined to nonverbal boys, or ADHD is caused by trauma, or people with Tourette’s are expressing their subconscious in a Freudian way. Those are all opinions that would probably be met with backlash if said by someone with a lot of bandwidth. Bottom line: don’t trust old neurotypicals with regard to what is offensive to young neurodivergents.

Talk to the young neurodivergents instead. Get them to share their music with you too, or maybe they make fan art. Slip them a Ben Franklin under the table and ask them if your wizard story contains anything particularly triggering from a neurodiversity standpoint, or if it needs more dinosaurs. It could be the start of a beautiful friendship. 

If you're trying to attract a neurodivergent audience you'll get a lot farther with dinosaurs than you would with puzzle pieces and similar crap, just saying

Worldcon, KPop Demon Hunters, and Labubus

 Worldcon Panels!

I get to be part of four (4) Worldcon panels this year – two on Thursday afternoon, two on Friday afternoon:

A Long Time Ago: Oral Traditions 

Neurodiverse Approaches to the Art of Stories 

Geek Out About: K-Pop Demon Hunters 

Fandom Needs Its Brains: How do we Keep Them Healthy?

A Long Time Ago: Oral Traditions

I was born and raised around Polynesian people, who had no writing but did have an incredibly rich oral tradition, and ways of training their memories to store long recitations. In the Western world we have a tradition of building memory palaces, imaginary buildings in which we organize our thoughts. Text held sway for a long time but these days a lot of people are moving to a more spoken way of life, which is likely to lead to different ways of seeing the world. 

Neurodiverse Approaches to the Art of Stories

I’ve known lots of folks with interesting brains throughout my life, I’ve done some sensitivity reading, notably for File 770, on the subject of neurodivergence, and I’ve written quite a few neurodivergent characters – including an entire island of clones that are somewhere in the autistic spectrum. The only neurodivergence I’ve been actually diagnosed with is giftedness, and since I have the “compulsive reader of everything” variant I’ve managed to learn quite a bit about the latest findings with regard to neurodivergence. However, as a fandom tourist, I’ve noticed quite a few intellectual properties that seem especially beloved by the ND crowd. What is it about a story that makes it appeal to neurodivergent fans? 

Geek Out About: K-Pop Demon Hunters 

All four of my panels sort of tie together, since I spent most of last year watching KDH on repeat (like many neurodivergent fans have reported doing). KDH became a monster hit from fan word-of-mouth, despite Hollywood’s best efforts to get us to watch Zootopia Meets Chinatown or whatever. Is it the greatest film ever? Some feel so. 

Fandom Needs Its Brains: How do we Keep Them Healthy?

Currently I have a smart job doing brain stuff that I can’t talk about. Before that I was the Director of Technology for a prominent trial lawyer firm in San Francisco. I undergo a barrage of cybersecuirity and other e-streetwiseness training on a regular basis, and we are entering a brave new world featuring intricate mechanical bullshit artists. Everyone is going to need their brain cells functional and dust-free, so let’s all circle up and talk about our mental hygiene. Mine has lots of strategy games, some quirky video avoidance, and large doses of music. 

Disneyland (woohoo)

Going to Disneyland Sunday and Monday, unless some panel is good enough to lure me out of my fannish daze. The Haunted Mansion Labubus (see photo) will be accompanying me during at least some of that time, and I will have more festively-attired Labubus for display. 

Because Labubus are kind of my thing now. I post them on Instagram at @Lani.Monsters. I like to dress them in copies of album cover outfits and take them to concerts, and put them in fotonovelas. The unlikely combo of GLP-1 rewiring my brain and the realization I no longer have pets so I can do my miniature fashion design uninterrupted has resulted in my acquisition of an impressive Labubu collection. I've been making displays for them, like the Dive Bar. Keeps me out of trouble. 

I changed my mind about the legal stuff panels. I do not discuss those sorts of things, period, but I am up to page 120 in my courtroom drama, which is turning out to be pretty good. Maybe I’ll try LitRPG next but for now I’m having lots of fun writing about battling lawyers – and there’s even a K-Pop star involved (he rented the house where a fan was tragically electrocuted, leading to a wrongful death lawsuit). I’ve got this old hippie trial lawyer who is kind of like Barry Melton and kind of like Arnold Laub, and a noob trial lawyer who stumbled into this WD action, facing off against colorful defendants in realtime San Francisco (with no space aliens, AIs or robots involved). 

Foolish Mortalbubus

Dive Bar

My 2026 Hugo Ballot

 To paraphrase one of the short story entries, I’m only voting for the works I think are worthy of awards (positive compatibility score). 

For some of the categories, I’m voting “these are the only works in this subgroup that I believe deserve recognition” and I included No Award after them. 

For other categories, I’m voting “these are the works I liked, I do not care about the others.” Didn't bother to include No Award.

And I skipped categories where I’m too lazy to do enough research to inform my vote. 

Now I’m going back to re-reading Dungeon Crawler Carl a few more times and working on my courtroom novel, but I might blog some more about Worldcon and my adventures there (and leading up). 

Best Novel:

1. Death of the Author by Nnedi Okorafor (William Morrow; Gollancz)
2. Shroud by Adrian Tchaikovsky (Tor UK; Orbit US)
3. No Award

Best Novella

1. What Stalks the Deep by T. Kingfisher (Nightfire; Titan UK)
2. The River Has Roots by Amal El-Mohtar (Tordotcom; Arcadia UK)
3. Cinder House by Freya Marske (Tordotcom; Tor UK)
4. No Award

Best Novelette

1. “Never Eaten Vegetables” by H.H. Pak (Clarkesworld, Issue 220)
2. No Award

Best Short Story

1. “Wire Mother” by Isabel J. Kim (Clarkesworld, Issue 229)
2. “Laser Eyes Ain’t Everything” by Effie Seiberg (Diabolical Plots, May 16, 2025)
3. No Award

Best Related Work

1. Last War in Albion: “The Cuddled Little Vice (Sandman)” by Elizabeth Sandifer (Eruditorum Press)
2. Positive Obsession: The Life and Times of Octavia E. Butler by Susana M. Morris (Amistad)

Best Dramatic Presentation, Long Form

1. KPop Demon Hunters, screenplay by Danya Jimenez & Hannah McMechan, Maggie Kang and Chris Appelhans; directed by Maggie Kang and Chris Appelhans (Sony Pictures Animation for Netflix)

Best Poem 

I always love a good Sea Witch, but the customer support log witches made me smile bigger.

1. “Hex Supply Customer Support Log” by Elis Montgomery (Strange Horizons, Issue 25 August 2025)
2. “How to Become a Sea Witch” by Theodora Goss (The Orange & Bee, Issue 5)
3. “Care for Lightning” by Mari Ness (Uncanny Magazine, Issue 62)
4. “The World to Come” by Jennifer Hudak (Strange Horizons, Issue 22 December 2025)
5. “Landing: Seattle” by Brandon O’Brien (Seattle Worldcon 2025 Opening Ceremony)
6. “The Mourning Robot” by Angela Liu (Uncanny Magazine, Issue 66) 
7. No Award

Lodestar Award for Best YA Book

1. They Bloom at Night by Trang Thanh Tran (Bloomsbury US; Bloomsbury UK)
2. Coffeeshop in an Alternate Universe by C.B. Lee (Feiwel & Friends)

Astounding Award for Best New Writer:

1. H.H. Pak (2nd year of eligibility)
(Since I’m voting for their story I might as well)

NOT VOTING ON THE FOLLOWING CATEGORIES

Best Series

Best Dramatic Presentation, Short Form

Best Game or Interactive Work

Best Editor Short Form

Best Editor Long Form

Best Professional Artist

Best Semiprozine

Best Fanzine

Best Fancast

Best Fan Writer

Best Fan Artist

Review - Automatic Noodle, by Annalee Newitz

 I am coming off of a massive dopamine binge. Live music, chilling with friends, arts and crafts, guava sorbet, a four-digit windfall. Plus I have just earned every one of the rewards listed in my “things I’m buying myself if I finish slogging through these Hugo nominees” schedule. Tonight I’m going out for the bath bomb and the fried shrimp; the concert ticket is already in my queue; and Captain Labubu will soon be sailing west from my awesome pal Toy Dealer Kevin in Texas. 

The new onset of positive brain chemicals helped me deal with that other novella (The River Has Roots) from a positive headspace, and realize it was actually a very good story rehashing an old style that I initially mistook for a derivative story trying to cosplay a more interesting one.

That’s actually Automatic Noodle, a scatology-focused ripoff of classic film Tampopo littered with weeaboo cringe and touchy-feely robots by a former baitlord from the Gawker empire, a tiresome read that’s more about evaporating dopamine than generating it. 

The only positive thing I can say about this one is “I’m sure glad my chores are over so I can go back to reading for pleasure.” 

Re-Review -- The River Has Roots, by Amal El-Mohtar

 This one won the Nebula so I gave it a second look. Formerly I dismissed it as one of those Love In The Time of Cholera wannabes, written in an affected a magical realism style that I tend to find grating.

Second visit, it's actually more of a fairy tale, and a well-structured one if you can get past the style. Which I found annoying when I was in a grouchier mood, but now that I've got a head full of dopamine from listening to a couple of my favorite bands doing their thing, I'm inclined to be a little more tolerant. 

It's still a bit cozier than I like my stories to be, but my opinion of the foundational structure beneath that "once upon a timiness" has improved, and right now I'm inclined to put this under T. Kingfisher as number 2. 

Sorry, Music Performance Ain’t Happening

I made some idle gestures about maybe doing a short filk set at Worldcon but a few things got in the way. First, I’m flying there and back; I don’t want to subject my personal guitar to that risk. 

And also there’s my neck, which is variable these days. Maybe my shoulders will be nice and loose, so I can do some shredding. Or maybe they’ll be hard as cement and I’ll be propped against something with my teeth clenched, waiting for my ibuprofen time slot to open up. It all depends on the mercurial whim of the Cervical Deterioration Fairy, and she is rather unpredictable. As well as bitchy and unpleasant. Hope you never meet her.

I did have an awesome Carl filk going, set to the tune of Hotel California. The chorus goes like:

Good day crawlers, welcome to the next floor
Time to choose your class, hope you picked a good race
Get leveling up and you might survive to the stairwell
Time to grind some skill
Now get out there and kill kill kill!

I signed up for a few panels and intend to do Disney stuff in between them. 

I’m in the most excellent mood right now. This month I got to see BTS a total of three times, got to hang out with old and new friends, then when I came home my other favorite K-Pop group, SHINee, gave me two days of livestream concerts. The dopamine is flowing freely and I’m waiting for the bubble to pop before diving back into that last review. And rewarding myself, with my well-deserved rewards. 

I have wide-ranging musical tastes and I’ve never really given a rat’s ass for genre purists, most of them are more about the outfits than the music. A lot of people only relate to music as denoting which subculture you belonged to in high school. I didn’t go to high school, so I listen to everything. After my K-Pop holiday, my next show will be Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass. After that I’m seeing Widespread Panic. Other upcoming shows include Billy Strings, Monsta X, and Art Garfunkel. And I’m thinking about Patti Smith and/or Bruno Mars. 

I like harmonies. Multilayered production. Sheer musical-ness, like when Billy Strings goes into an extended solo, or when harmony groups blend together for chords. Rhythmic entrainment, with dancers and bass players and vocalists playing with the meter. I like live music for the way performers’ fashions and aesthetics supporting the audio, and also for the way they raise energy. Korean musicians know lots about raising energy but some western acts are good at it too. 

I like it when large groups of people get together while some of them decorate time, and the rest respond. Most of the time I go around being vaguely dissatisfied with humanity, but concerts remind me that people are awesome and lots of them have excellent musical taste.

Conventions … tend to make me feel the other way. BTS does a song called Whalien, about the whale that speaks in a frequency no other whales use, and there are lots of us whaliens responding to that. One of my favorite freebies I got at the concerts is a little bracelet with a whale charm honoring that song.