Upcoming BL Stuff 2026

[grailkeeper]

I find BL depictions of sisters of battle fairly one note. They seem to be fiery and religious and .... not much else.

 

Space marines are indoctrinated supersoldier monks but have very differing personalities.

 

The sister characters in the Cain books are an exception to this, but those are the Cain books.

[wecanhaveallthree]

Is it a character issue, or an author issue or a publisher issue? 

 

Or is it a READER issue? Dun dun dunnn?

 

Swallow's Sisters (take a deep breath) don't have that problem for me. But is that a 'men writing women' issue? The same reason I find all the 'breasted boobily' in Ravenor to be quite effective (because Ravenor is a pervert), but there's quite a lot of pushback, and the same reason I find the deconstruction of the manic pixie mean girls in Fulgrim (and the artist troupe in general) to be very good. Hell, I'll even shout out Redemption Corps here for having fantastic Sororitas antagonists - the awesome torture/trophy room is what people remember, for good reason. In contrast, Harrison's excellent Honourbound is a markedly different style of story and Raine is a markedly different character to Cain or Gaunt or Yarrick. Raine is explored in a way that those characters never were. Is Harrison simply that good (she is), or is there some other aspect at play here (there is)? 

 

That's saying nothing of Fehervari's Sororitas, because bringing Fehervari into any quality discussion is unfair. 

 

My takeaway at large is that it's an author issue but not for the 'obvious' reasons. Everyone ragged on Kyme for writing the Salamanders in the same way over and over again: he had a particular vision, and he got all the books, so if you didn't like that vision you weren't going to resonate with the books (Kelly and Thorpe get this to a somewhat lesser extent). If you've got, say, two authors writing the same books - Reid and Ware - you're going to find them a bit lacking if you're not resonating with those authors.

[grailkeeper]

 

Saw this on facebook. Pretty short notice. He'll be judging a mini painting competition as well.



100% free to attend, no ticket needed.

Will your painted miniature entry wow Dan Abnett, doors open at 10am this Sunday, no need to book, free to attend. Bring along your painted miniature to enter the competition, and of course chill and chat with Dan and the team.

We are proud to announce our Dan Abnett Open Day! Sunday 8th February 2026 from 10am to 2pm. 100% free to attend. Bring along your single miniature and enter the painting competition, judged by Dan Abnett. Win an exclusive Monster Merchants trophy signed by Dan Abnett. Two categories, under 16 & 16 and over.

Bring your merch for Dan to sign.

The Monster Merchants
Unit 13 Tavis House Business Centre
3 Hall Avenue
Sevington
Ashford
Kent

Edited 8 hours ago by grailkeeper

[darkhorse0607]

Death of Integrity is up on Audible early for all my audio amigos