Portraits, a rebuilt reading profile, and cascades that actually make sense

Today's update is a mix of visual and structural work - some of it immediately obvious, some of it quietly fixing things that have been a low-level annoyance since launch.

Character portraits are now live

Curators can now upload portrait images for characters. Once uploaded, portraits appear in the hero banner on character detail pages, as circular thumbnails in every character listing across the site, and as background slices on group and faction hero banners. The Company of the Ring page, for instance, now has a mosaic hero built from the Fellowship's individual portraits.

The portraits also feed into the This Day in Fiction social image generator, so daily character spotlights will use a portrait when one is available.

The reading profile has been completely rebuilt

The old two-tab layout is gone. In its place is a single unified view where each series you're tracking appears as a card with an expandable book list - cover images, reading order positions, and inline read controls all in one place. The spoiler filter toggle sits at the top of the page where it's always visible rather than buried in a tab.

Adding a series now uses a setup wizard

Four steps: choose a reading order if the series has more than one, mark how far you've read, say whether you're currently reading a book, and confirm. The confirmation step tells you exactly what spoiler filtering will cover before you commit. You can also start the wizard directly from a series' public reading order page.

Cascade logic now respects your reading order

When you mark a book as read, earlier books in your reading order are automatically marked too. Previously this used publication order, which caused real problems when your reading order differed - marking Wind and Truth as read in the Core Cosmere order would incorrectly cascade Dawnshard, for example. That's fixed.

Public pages are now read-only

Reading order pages and book detail pages no longer show interactive controls for changing your reading status. You'll see a simple label with a link to manage progress on your reading profile instead. Cleaner, and it prevents accidental changes when you're just browsing.

Follow and unfollow are now distinct actions on series cards. Stop following removes reading order tracking but keeps your read progress. Remove series deletes everything, with a confirmation step.

OpenFiction is in beta and free to use. If you read across multiple series and want a spoiler-safe way to track characters and progress, come and have a look: openfiction.org