History That Never Was

Home of Dawn Vogel: Writer, Historian, Geek

The Non-Player Review of Video Games: Music from Brutal Legend

| October 29, 2025

I’ve mentioned before that I really love music in video games, and as someone who listens to a lot of musical genres, it pretty much doesn’t matter what game it is. That being said, I started listening to heavy metal in high school and never really stopped (yes, even now in my K-pop era). So […]

Review of Luminescent Machinations

| October 22, 2025

Luminescent Machinations: Queer Tales of Monumental Invention, edited by Rhiannon Rasmussen and dave ring (Neon Hemlock, 2023), is a fantastic anthology of speculative fiction stories (mainly sci-fi, but not entirely) featuring queer characters and filled with mecha and other technologies that are deeply integral to the stories. As usual with anthologies, I have a handful […]

K-Pop Demon Hunters and Song Recommendations: “What It Sounds Like”

| October 15, 2025

If you’ve watched the “K-Pop Demon Hunters” movie on Netflix recently, you might still have some of the songs from the movie stuck in your head. While the songs on the whole had a bit more English than the majority of K-pop songs do (though there are certainly K-pop artists who have done songs or […]

Review of Redundancies and Potentials by Dominque Dickey

| October 8, 2025

Redundancies and Potentials by Dominque Dickey (Neon Hemlock, 2025) is a fantastically weird and weirdly touching novella about time travel and sisters. Isadora and Aster are purpose-created sisters with the ability to travel through time. They’ve been told all their lives that they need to practice traveling so that someday they can fix a massive […]

K-Pop Demon Hunters and Song Recommendations: “Your Idol”

| October 1, 2025

If you’ve watched the “K-Pop Demon Hunters” movie on Netflix recently, you might still have some of the songs from the movie stuck in your head. While the songs on the whole had a bit more English than the majority of K-pop songs do (though there are certainly K-pop artists who have done songs or […]

Review of A Fae in Finance by Juliet Brooks

| September 24, 2025

I learned about Juliet Brooks’ book, A Fae in Finance (Orbit Works, 2025), while I was at Seattle’s Worldcon in August, when I chatted with another attendee who was a friend of the author. When said friend explained it as “human trapped in the realm of the fae but still has to work her day job,” […]

K-Pop Demon Hunters and Song Recommendations: “Free”

| September 17, 2025

If you’ve watched the “K-Pop Demon Hunters” movie on Netflix recently, you might still have some of the songs from the movie stuck in your head. While the songs on the whole had a bit more English than the majority of K-pop songs do (though there are certainly K-pop artists who have done songs or […]

Review of The Oblivion Bride by Caitlin Starling

| September 10, 2025

Caitlin Starling’s The Oblivion Bride (Neon Hemlock, 2025) is a gorgeous science-fantasy novella with some Gothic and surreal elements worked into an incredible world. Lorelei is one of a very small number of members of her family who hasn’t been killed by the family curse, which no one has been able to figure out. In order […]

K-Pop Demon Hunters and Song Recommendations: “Takedown”

| August 27, 2025

If you’ve watched the “K-Pop Demon Hunters” movie on Netflix recently, you might still have some of the songs from the movie stuck in your head. While the songs on the whole had a bit more English than the majority of K-pop songs do (though there are certainly K-pop artists who have done songs or […]

Review of The Map of Lost Places

| August 20, 2025

The Map of Lost Places, edited by Sheree Renée Thomas and Lesley Conner (Apex Book Company, 2024), is a wonderful anthology filled with the dark and strange recesses of our world and the stories that happen there. This anthology contains twenty-two stories, and it was difficult to narrow down those stories to just the ones […]