I can't see why we aren't. Dividing fanfic from (what do we call the other?), instead of dividing good writing from bad, is an artifact of our copyright system (and probably of the cult of originality in the age of mechanical reproduction). Transformative works OK, even though they are a really terrifying sample of…

Maybe some history? Some of it combines thrillers and biography and drama and grit. I liked _Passionate Minds_, which is about a noble female scientist and her long-term lover Voltaire during the height of the Enlightenment and end of ancien regime. I mean, that sounds like a manga plot, but it was real! And…

I adored _The Gone-Away World_. At the plot level, it's exciting science fiction with an normal guy who gets caught up in wild technology and government plots and tragic love. Silly, but exciting; it's not like you have to drag yourself from page to page. The writing has pieces that have stayed with me for years,…

basketball shorts for me to sleep in

I'm kind of embarrassed by how much I like it. Young in the 80s, it warps a person.

!! Does Medieval Times include dresses for everyone, or did you rent them, or — oh, obviously — this is how you dress on Medieval Mondays at the office.

There should be more balls, is what. Any kind of dancing that goes well in fancy floofy dresses — EVERYONE gets to wear them. Waltzes and polkas are probably best, and you can do them to everything from country western through a little R&B to almost all nordic death metal, but anything that gets people all dressed up…

And if you live somewhere very rainy or sunny, make a sort of gazebo to keep the beer from being diluted or evaporated right away. I use buried tuna cans and gazebos of yogurt tubs, but there's probably a cuter way. (Etsy opportunity!)

Also Gillian Bradshaw's _Island of Ghosts_, which gets you some history from opposite extremes of the Roman Empire and is superbly happysad.

The wild mix of fibers in modern lingerie makes this *really* hard (and dying poly is hard enough). Pity, it would be such a nice answer.

Chemists! To the barricades!

Also, someone should be making men's undershirts in a range of skin-tones. A few of y'all will suddenly look so much more sleek. (Cotton can be custom-dyed, of course. Hmm.)

Following up on the contrast between bras and skin tone as the problem: very well-made linen, silk, or challis pants use a skin-tone material for the pockets and facings because that reduces contrast between the clothes and skin and the clothes look sleek. There's a lovely example in the magazine _Threads_ a while…

I'm getting a Grey Gardens/Miss Havisham vibe off it, but in a good way.

All you needed was a big red button...

No kidding. I was pretty annoyed at the first movie because they seem to be really bad rulers. (I thought the bad guy was possibly a better government, if we have to have Rule by Hereditary Pretty People. Flash freeze? Organize soup and blankets! Yes! Pity about the tiny wrinkled-up heart.)

Fitted sheets, pish tosh, face up to the extra pair of corners at the top (but do the bottom corners with both sheets together and they won't come loose; put a horizontal tuck in if you like room for your toes to poke up).

I discount movies because they had *costumers* (and were *movie stars* — Myrna Loy wears flowing pajamas but I wouldn't look like that...) but newsreels have women in neat suits. Of course, they were also wearing girdles and heels and gloves and weren't allowed to do much physical; I could probably look nice given the…

It's NYT-thinkpiece fashionable to complain about yoga pants, though, in a way that feels very like the complaints when women started wearing pants and jeans to work in the 1980s, and maybe even when non-ditchdiggers started wearing jeans in the, what, 1960s? Sometimes comfort wins and we get a new social norm.

also, I…

Does it work if you aren't thinking about the pants being yoga pants? Sports jacket, shell of the right length, black shoes? I would be fine with a work uniform for middle-aged women that was boring, comfortable, durable, and authoritative.

Isn't the point of a better dress that you can wear it more often? Photographed or not?