Lemony Snicket's Calendar Of Unfortunate Events

For more information and to support the WGA please:

Follow their official social media on all platforms and only trust statements from the union itself, and articles they promote (be wary of other articles).

Read up on the issues being fought for (there are articles supported by the union in their linktree)

Be vocal in your support and inform others in your communities.

Stop using ChatGPT and other AI tools, even for fun.

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Fantasy Book Rec Masterpost

Here is every fantasy book I’ve ever enjoyed (plus some short stories thrown in). List will be updated regularly as I read. There are books repeated as some fit into more than one category; I designed it this way so that if you’re looking for one specific sub-genre you can look at just that list and not miss out. Enjoy!

*last edited November 27, 2017*

High Fantasy

Ella Enchanted by Gail Carson Levine

The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien

The Prophecy of the Stones by Flavia Bujor

The Seven Realms series by Cinda Williams Chima

Uprooted by Naomi Novik

The Shades of Magic Series by V.E. Schwab (sort of)

The Inheritance Cycle by Christopher Paolini

Six of Crows and Crooked Kingdom by Leigh Bardugo

The Land of Elyon Series by Patrick Carman

The Goose Girl by Shannon Hale

Redwall by Brian Jacques

Deerskin by Robin McKinley

The Hero and the Crown by Robin McKinley

The Blue Sword by Robin McKinley

Flamecaster by Cinda Williams Chima

Down-the-Rabbit-Hole

Coraline by Neil Gaiman

Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman

Stardust by Neil Gaiman

The Spindlers by Lauren Oliver

UnLunDun by China Miéville

The Inkheart series by Cornelia Funke

Gregor the Overlander series by Suzanne Collins

The May Bird series by Jodi Lynn Anderson

The Chronicles of Narnia by C.S. Lewis

Magic in the Real World (sometimes called fabulism)

The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman

American Gods by Neil Gaiman

Anansi Boys by Neil Gaiman

The Ocean at the End of the Lane by Neil Gaiman

The Scorpio Races by Maggie Stiefvater

The Darkest Part of the Forest by Holly Black

The Raven Cycle by Maggie Stiefvater

A Monster Calls by Patrick Ness

The Spiderwick Chronicles by Holly Black and Tony DiTerlizzi

The Magician Trilogy by Jenny Nimmo

The Thief Lord by Cornelia Funke

Half Magic by Edward Eager

Urban Fantasy

Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman

UnLunDun by China Miéville

Fairy Tale Retellings

Snow, Glass, Apples by Neil Gaiman (short story)

Through the Woods by Emily Carroll

Rags and Bones edited by Melissa Marr and Tim Pratt

My Mother She Killed Me, My Father He Ate Me edited by Kate Bernheimer (this one is a very mixed bag but i really enjoyed some of the stories

The Bloody Chamber and Other Stories by Angela Carter

The Goose Girl by Shannon Hale

Deerskin by Robin McKinley

The White Road by Neil Gaiman (short story)

Dragons

The Hero and the Crown by Robin McKinley

The Inheritance Cycle by Christopher Paolini

The Girl Who Drank The Moon by Kelly Barnhill

Flamecaster by Cinda Williams Chima

Fairies

The Darkest Part of the Forest by Holly Black

The Spiderwick Chronicles by Holly Black and Tony DiTerlizzi

The Artemis Fowl series by Eoin Colfer

Ghosts

Ghostly edited by Audrey Niffenegger

The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman

Her Fearful Symmetry by Audrey Niffenegger

The May Bird series by Jodi Lynn Anderson

Witches and Wizards

The Harry Potter Series by J.K. Rowling

Carry On by Rainbow Rowell

The Thickety series by J.A. White

The Girl Who Drank the Moon by Kelly Barnhill

Vampires

Fifteen Painted Cards from a Vampire Tarot by Neil Gaiman (short story)

Other Magical Creatures

Unnatural Creatures edited by Neil Gaiman

The Scorpio Races by Maggie Stiefvater

A Monster Calls by Patrick Ness

The Spiderwick Chronicles by Holly Black and Tony DiTerlizzi

Pretty Monsters by Kelly Link

The Smile on the Face by Nalo Hopkinson (short story)

Intelligent Animal Characters (may not be fantasy exactly but close enough)

Watership Down by Richard Adams

The Plague Dogs by Richard Adams

Redwall by Brian Jacques

The Tale of Despereaux by Kate DiCamillo

Enchanted Forests

Uprooted by Naomi Novik

The Thickety series by J.A. White

The Darkest Part of the Forest by Holly Black

Graphic Novels/Illustrated

The Truth is a Cave in the Black Mountains by Neil Gaiman (also short story and audio versions available)

Instructions by Neil Gaiman

Through the Woods by Emily Carroll

A Monster Calls by Patrick Ness

Short Story Collections

Ghostly edited by Audrey Niffenegger

Stories edited by Neil Gaiman and Al Sarrantonio

Smoke and Mirrors by Neil Gaiman

Trigger Warning by Neil Gaiman

Unnatural Creatures edited by Neil Gaiman

Fragile Things by Neil Gaiman

Pretty Monsters by Kelly Link

Rags and Bones edited by Melissa Marr and Tim Pratt

My Mother She Killed Me, My Father He Ate Me edited by Kate Bernheimer

The Bloody Chamber and Other Stories by Angela Carter

The Language of Thorns by Leigh Bardugo

YA

The Scorpio Races by Maggie Stiefvater

The Prophecy of the Stones by Flavia Bujor

The Seven Realms series by Cinda Williams Chima

The Darkest Part of the Forest by Holly Black

The Shades of Magic Series by V.E. Schwab

The Raven Cycle by Maggie Stiefvater

Six of Crows and Crooked Kingdom by Leigh Bardugo

Flamecaster by Cinda Williams Chima

Middle Grade

Coraline by Neil Gaiman

The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman

The Spindlers by Lauren Oliver

A Monster Calls by Patrick Ness

UnLunDun by China Miéville

The Land of Elyon Series by Patrick Carman

The Spiderwick Chronicles by Holly Black and Tony DiTerlizzi

The Magician Trilogy by Jenny Nimmo

Pretty Monsters by Kelly Link

The Inkheart series by Cornelia Funke (sort of in between middle and YA)

The Thief Lord by Cornelia Funke

The Goose Girl by Shannon Hale (again, could be considered YA)

Gregor the Overlander series by Suzanne Collins

The May Bird series by Jodi Lynn Anderson

The Thickety series by J.A. White

The Artemis Fowl series by Eoin Colfer

Redwall by Brian Jacques

Half Magic by Edward Eager

The Tale of Despereaux by Kate DiCamillo

The Girl Who Drank the Moon by Kelly Barnhill

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I think it's an unrecognized practice to allow yourself to outgrow and shed versions of yourself that were more socially successful than who you want or need to be now. Not every new chapter is bigger and bolder and hotter, I think that's a very modern social media "glow up" mindset and doesn't actually have any room for what real transformation looks like. Sometimes we change exactly as we need to and it's not what anyone else was hoping for and that's part of it being important and true.

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An NYPD detective is forced into an early retirement after a case gone awry. He moves into a small idyllic town in Canada. But the town holds a dark secret.

Except the secret in all his head. The town is actually as wholesome and idyllic as it seems to be.

The townsfolk are all just playing along with his investigation to make him feel better about losing his job.

please reblog for sample size uwu

Index of Frightful Friday Posts 101–200

Young Goodman Brown | Nathaniel Hawthorne

The Devil and Daniel Webster | Washington Irving

The Cigarette Case | Oliver Onions

The Readjustment | Mary Austin

No. 5 Branch Line: The Engineer | Amelia Edwards

The Easter Egg | Saki

The Lottery | Shirley Jackson

The Secret of Kralitz | Henry Knutter

Mother of Toads | Clark Ashton Smith

Old Garfield’s Heart | Robert E. Howard

The Outsider | H.P. Lovecraft

The Ghosts | Lord Dunsany

The Man-Eating Tree | Phil Robinson

The Reckoning | Lafcadio Hearn

Wild Swimming | Elodie Harper

Neighbourhood Watch | Greg Egan

The Bus-Conductor | E.F. Benson

The Nightmare Room | Arthur Conan Doyle

The Devil of the Marsh | H.B. Marriott-Watson

Weeds | Stephen King

Djinn and Bitters | Harold Lawlor

A Night of Horror | Dick Donovan (aka James Edward Preston Muddock)

Leiningen Versus the Ants | Carl Stephenson

The Vampire of Croglin Grange | Augustus Hare

Lost Hearts | M.R. James

Round the Fire | Catherine Crowe

The Music of Erich Zann | H.P. Lovecraft

Sir Dominick’s Bargain | J. Sheridan Le Fanu

Pigeons from Hell | Robert E. Howard

The Medici Boots | Pearl Norton Swet

The Toll-House | W.W. Jacobs

Pride & Prometheus | John Kessel

The Shadowy Third | Ellen Glasgow

Was It a Dream? | Guy de Maupassant

The Open Door | Margaret Oliphant

Three Skeleton Key | George G. Toudouze

Man-Size in Marble | Edith Nesbit

Silent Snow, Secret Snow | Conrad Aiken

A Sound of Thunder | Ray Bradbury

The Gateway of the Monster | William Hope Hodgson

Ofodile | Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Repossession | Lionel Shriver

Light and Space | Ned Beauman

Stairs | Penelope Lively

Dark Christmas | Jeanette Winterson

How Fear Departed the Long Gallery | E.F. Benson

Thurnley Abbey | Perceval Landon

To Be Read at Dusk | Charles Dickens

The Tractate Middoth | M.R. James

The Truth, The Whole Truth, And Nothing But The Truth | Rhoda Broughton

Lost in a Pyramid, or the Mummy’s Curse | Louisa May Alcott

The Sumach | Ulrich Dabney

The Pavilion | Edith Nesbit

The Flowering of the Strange Orchid | H.G. Wells

At the Dip of the Road | Mary Louisa Molesworth

At Chrighton Abbey | Mary Elizabeth Braddon

Banshees and Warnings | Lady Gregory

At the End of the Corridor | Evangeline Walton

The Tree’s Wife | Mary Elizabeth Counselman

Pickman’s Model | H.P. Lovecraft

The Dead Man | Fritz Leiber

The Canal | Everil Worrell

The Return of the Sorcerer | Clark Ashton Smith

The Child That Went with the Fairies | J. Sheridan Le Fanu

The Piano Next Door | Elia W. Peattie

The Miniature | J.Y. Akerman

The American’s Tale | Arthur Conan Doyle

The Death’s Head | Friedrich Laun

The Spectre-Barber | Johann Karl August Musäus

The Family Portraits | Johann August Apel

The Storm | Sarah Elizabeth Utterson

The Invisible Girl | Mary Shelley

The Botathen Ghost | R.S. Hawker

The Whisperers | Algernon Blackwood

The Curse of Vasartas | Eva Henry

The Lost Door | Dorothy Quick

Canon Alberic’s Scrapbook | M.R. James

The Mysterious Mummy | Sax Rohmer

Dagon | H.P. Lovecraft

Strange Event in the Life of Schalken the Painter | J. Sheridan Le Fanu

The Poor Ghost | Christina Rossetti

The Night Wire | H.F. Arnold

Old Aeson | Arthur Quiller-Couch

The Feather Pillow | Horacio Quiroga

Fingers of a Hand | H.D. Everett

The Tale of Satampra Zeiros | Clark Ashton Smith

The Story of Baelbrow | Kate & Hesketh Prichard

The Jelly-Fish | David H. Keller

The Ebony Frame | Edith Nesbit

The Man of Science | Jerome K. Jerome

The Open Window | Saki

The Hall Bedroom | Mary Wilkins Freeman

No. 252 Rue M. le Prince | Ralph Adams Cram

The Weird Violin | Anonymous

The Ghost’s Summons | Ada Buisson

The Doll’s Ghost | F. Marion Crawford

The Canterville Ghost | Oscar Wilde

The Tapestried Chamber | Sir Walter Scott

The Gorgon’s Head | Edith Bacon

The Empty House | Algernon Blackwood

For the first one hundred stories, please visit: Index of Frightful Friday Posts 1–100

So You've Finally Switched to Firefox: a Brief Guide to a Some Very Useful Add-Ons.

This post is inspired by two things, the first being the announcement by Google that the long delayed Manifest V3 which will kill robust adblocking will finally roll out in June 2024, and the second, a post written by @sexhaver in response to a question as to what adblockers and extensions they use. It's a very good post with some A+ information, worth checking out.

I love Firefox, I love the degree of customization it offers me as a user. I love how it just works. I love the built in security features like DNS over HTTPS, and I love just how many excellent add-ons are available. It is a better browser than Chrome in every respect, and of the many Chromium based browsers out there, only Vivaldi comes close.

There are probably many people out there who are considering switching over to Firefox but are maybe putting it off because they've got Chrome set up the way they like it with the extensions they want, and doing all that again for Firefox seems like a chore. The Firefox Add-on directory is less expansive than the Chrome Web Store (which in recent years has become overrun with garbage extensions that range from useless to active malware), but there is still a lot of stuff to sift through. That's where this short guide comes in.

I'm presently running 33 add-ons for Firefox and have a number of others installed but disabled. I've used many others. These are my picks, the ones that I consider essential, useful, or in some cases just fun.

Adblocking/Privacy/Security:

uBlock Origin: The single best adblocker available. If you're a power user there are custom lists and scripts you can find to augment it.

Privacy Badger: Not strictly necessary if you're also running uBlock, but it does catch a few trackers uBlock doesn't and replaces potentially useful trackers like comment boxes with click-to-activate placeholders.

Decentraleyes: A supplementary tool meant to run alongside uBlock, prevents certain sites from breaking when tracker requests are denied by serving local bundled files as replacement.

NoScript: The nuclear option for blocking trackers, ads, and even individual elements. Operates from a "trust no one" standpoint, you will need to manually enable elements yourself. Not recommended for casual users, but a fantastic tool for the power user.

Webmail Ad Blocker: The first of many webmail related add-ons from Jason Saward I will be recommending. Removes all advertising from webmail services like Gmail or Yahoo Mail.

Popup Blocker (Strict): Strictly blocks ALL pop up/new tab/new window requests from all website by default unless you manually allow it.

SponsorBlock: Not a fan of listening to your favourite YouTuber read advertisements for shitty products like Raycons or BetterHelp? This skips them automatically.

AdNauseam: I don't use this one but some people prefer it. Rather than straight up blocking ads and trackers, it obfuscates data by injecting noise into the tracker surveillance infrastructure. It clicks EVERY ad, making your data profile incomprehensible.

User-Agent Switcher: Allows you to spoof websites attempting to gather information by altering your browser profile. Want to browse mobile sites on desktop? This allows you to do it.

Bitwarden: Bitwarden has been my choice of password manager since LastPass sold out and made their free tier useless. If you're not using a password manager, why not? All of my passwords look like this: $NHhaduC*q3VhuhD&scICLKjvM4rZK5^c7ID%q5HVJ3@gny I don't know a single one of them and I use a passphrase as a master password supplemented by two-factor-authentication. Everything is filled in automatically. It is the only way to live.

Proton Pass: An open source free password manager from the creators of Proton Mail. I've been considering moving over to it from Bitwarden myself.

Webmail/Google Drive:

Checker Plus for Gmail: Provides desktop notifications for Gmail accounts, supports managing multiple accounts, allows you to check your mail, read, mark as read or delete e-mails at a glance in a pop-up window. An absolutely fabulous add-on from Jason Saward.

Checker Plus for Google Drive: Does for your Google Drive what Checker Plus for Gmail does for your Gmail.

Checker Plus for Google Calendar: The same as the above two only this time for your Google Calendar.

Firefox Relay: An add-on that allows you to generate aliases that forward to your real e-mail address.

Accessibility:

Dark Reader: Gives every page on the internet a customizable Dark Mode for easier reading and eye protection.

Read Aloud: A text to speech add-on that reads pages with the press of a button.

Zoom Page WE: Provides the ability to zoom in on pages in multiple ways: text zoom, full page zoom, auto-fit etc.

Mobile Dyslexic: Not one I use, but I know people who swear by it. Replaces all fonts with a dyslexia friendly type face.

Utility:

ClearURLs: Automatically removes tracking data from URLs.

History Cleaner: Automatically deletes browser history older than a set number of days.

Feedbro RSS Feed Reader: A full standalone reader in your browser, take control of your feed and start using RSS feeds again.

Video Download Helper: A great tool for downloading video files from websites.

Snap Link Plus: Fan of Wikipedia binge holes? Snap Link allows to drag select multiple hyperlink and automatically open all of them in new tabs.

Copy PlainText: Copy any text without formatting.

EPUBReader: Read .epub files from within a browser window.

Tab Stash: A no mess, no fuss way to organize groups of tabs as bookmarks. I use it as a temporary bookmark tool, saving sessions or groups of tabs into "to read" folders.

Tampermonkey/Violentmonkey: Managers for installing and running custom user scripts. Find user scripts on OpenUserJS or Greasy Fork, there's an entire galaxy out there of ingenious and weird custom user scripts out there, go discover it.

Browsing & Searching:

Speed Dial 2: A new tab add-on that gives you easy access to your favourite sites.

Unpaywall: Whenever you come across a scholarly article behind a paywall, this add-on will search through all the free databases for an accessible and non-paywalled version of the text.

Web Archives: Come across a dead page? This add-on gives you a quick way to search for cached versions of the page on the Wayback Machine, Google Cache, Archive.is and others.

Bypass Paywalls: Automatically bypasses the paywalls of major websites like those for the New York Times, New Yorker, the Financial Times, Wired, etc.

Simple Translate: Simple one-click translation of web pages powered by Google Translate.

Search by Image: Reverse search any image via several different search engines: Google Image, TinEye, Yandex, Bing, etc.

Website Specific:

PocketTube: Do you subscribe to too many YouTube channels? Would you like a way to organize them? This is your answer.

Enhancer for Youtube: Provides a suite of options that make using YouTube more pleasant: volume boost, theatre mode, forced quality settings, playback speed and mouse wheel volume control.

Augmented Steam: Improves the experience of using Steam in a browser, see price histories of games, take notes on your wishlist, make wish listed games and new DLC for games you own appear more visible, etc.

Return YouTube Dislikes: Does exactly what it says on the package.

BlueBlocker: Hate seeing the absolute dimmest individuals on the planet have their replies catapulted to the top of the feed because they're desperate to suck off daddy Elon sloppy style? This is for you, it automatically blocks all Blue Checks on Twitter. I've used it to block a cumulative 34,000 Blue Checks.

Batchcamp: Allows for batch downloading on Bandcamp.

XKit Rewritten: If you're on Tumblr and you're not using whichever version of XKit is currently available, I honestly don't know what to say to you. This newest version isn't as fully featured as the old XKit of the golden age, but it's been rewritten from the ground up for speed and utility.

Social Fixer for Facebook: I once accidentally visited Facebook without this add-on enabled and was immediately greeted by the worst, mind annihilating content slop I had ever had the misfortune to come across. Videos titled "he wanted her to get lip fillers and she said no so he had bees sting her lips", and AI photos of broccoli Jesus with 6000 comments all saying "wow". Once I turned it on it was just stuff my dad had posted and updates from the Radio War Nerd group.

BetterTTV: Makes Twitch slightly more bearable.

Well I think that's everything. You don't have to install everything here, or even half of it, but there you go, it's a start.

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Writing Tips

Punctuating Dialogue

✧

➸ “This is a sentence.”

➸ “This is a sentence with a dialogue tag at the end,” she said.

➸ “This,” he said, “is a sentence split by a dialogue tag.”

➸ “This is a sentence,” she said. “This is a new sentence. New sentences are capitalized.”

➸ “This is a sentence followed by an action.” He stood. “They are separate sentences because he did not speak by standing.”

➸ She said, “Use a comma to introduce dialogue. The quote is capitalized when the dialogue tag is at the beginning.”

➸ “Use a comma when a dialogue tag follows a quote,” he said.

“Unless there is a question mark?” she asked.

“Or an exclamation point!” he answered. “The dialogue tag still remains uncapitalized because it’s not truly the end of the sentence.”

➸ “Periods and commas should be inside closing quotations.”

➸ “Hey!” she shouted, “Sometimes exclamation points are inside quotations.”

However, if it’s not dialogue exclamation points can ask be “outside”!

➸ “Does this apply to question marks too?” he asked.

If it’s not dialogue, can question marks be “outside”? (Yes, they can.)

➸ “This applies to dashes too. Inside quotations, dashes typically express—“

“Interruption” — but there are situations dashes may be outside.

➸ “You’ll notice that exclamation marks, question marks, and dashes do not have a comma after them. Ellipses don’t have a comma after them either…” she said.

➸ “My teacher said, ‘Use single quotation marks when quoting within dialogue.’”

➸ “Use paragraph breaks to indicate a new speaker,” he said.

“The readers will know it’s someone else speaking.”

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Sorry if this is a stupid question but... What's LSUA? I see that you tag things with it but I can't figure out what it stands for. Maybe it's because it's 2am... These late-night browsing sessions do get a little out of hand.

A snicketophile reader, confused by mysterious initials? O, poetic justice.

LSUA stands for: “Lemony Snicket’s Unauthorized Autobiography”.

TBL stands for “The Beatrice Letters”.

FU:13SI stands for “Filer Under: 13 suspicious incidents”.

TBB:RE stands for “The Bad Beginning: Rare Edition”.

These are all the supplementary materials acknowledged as 100% canonical. The jury is still out on “The Dismal Dinner”, “A calendar of Unfortunate Events”, “The Puzzling Puzzles”… Because we don’t really know if these were actually written/approved by Daniel Handler. I sometimes refer to their contents in my theories but extreme caution is advised.