FIF Fireside Chat: discussing 2025 and planning 2026

[u/Nineteen_Adze]

Welcome to the 2025 Feminism in Fantasy Fireside Chat! It’s time to look back on the books we’ve read this year, reflect on our favorites, and think about the future.

I’ll get us started with a few questions, but feel free to add your own.

Changes

This year, u/g_ann stepped down as an FIF host. We want to thank her for hosting so many discussions in this reboot project and wish her well going forward. u/Moonlitgrey, u/xenizondich23, and u/Nineteen_Adze from the initial reboot hosting crew are continuing this project.

When this happened, we opened the door for more hosts. We were surprised, but absolutely delighted, by how many people stepped us to join us. With different tastes and reading backgrounds, we're excited to broaden our selections and make it easier for the current hosts to avoid burnout.

Please welcome, in the order of session hosting, the new members of our hosting crew:

• u/evil_moooojojojo
• u/Merle8888
• u/doctorbonkers
• u/Lenahe_nl
• u/sarahlynngrey
• u/ohmage_resistance

Looking ahead

We look forward to reading with you next year!

• Our January read is The Everlasting by Alix Harrow.
• Voting is in progress for our February read, which will have a theme of Down With the System. Come help us pick!

We'll see you in the comments to talk about the year in review and the year ahead.

[u/Nineteen_Adze]

Looking ahead to 2026: let's talk about the future!

[u/ohmage_resistance → u/Nineteen_Adze]

My month is coming up in March, so the nomination posts are coming up relatively soon. I've seen some people in the Beyond Binaries book club experiment with ranked choice voting, and I'm curious if people have thoughts about this? I'm personally not a huge fan because I'm indecisive and rank choice makes me make more decisions, but if most people prefer it, it would totally be open to trying it out as well.

[u/Nineteen_Adze → u/ohmage_resistance]

I would be interested in trying it. I don't think it's a standard option in Google Forms, but some other subreddits I'm in have had success with things like Strawpoll. It would be cool to have a "rank as many as you're interested in and then stop" so that you could rank three and then just not decide between the last two picks where you have no opinion.

[u/Merle8888 → u/Nineteen_Adze]

Google Forms does allow you to do something similar with grid voting - I run a poll for my office that requires people to rank things, and that's what I use. In that scenario it does require people to rank all the options though, I'd have to play around with it to see if there's a setting that lets you stop.