Spoiler filtering just got a lot smarter

One of the most common frustrations with character encyclopedias and wiki-style references is that they're essentially unusable if you're not fully caught up. Look up a character you've just met and you'll likely see exactly how their story ends. OpenFiction was built to fix that - and today's update takes it significantly further.

Chapter-level spoiler filtering is now live

Previously, OpenFiction filtered character data based on which books you'd marked as read. That was useful, but it had an obvious gap: if you were halfway through a book, the whole thing was either in or out. Now, if you're currently reading a book that has segment data, you can set your exact position within it. Character data will only show information up to that point. Deaths, betrayals, reveals - none of it bleeds through from chapters you haven't reached yet.

The position picker appears automatically on your reading profile for any book you're currently reading that has segment data. Books without a position set behave exactly as before, so nothing changes for series you're already tracking.

Story arcs now follow your reading order

If you've set a reading order preference for a series, character timelines now display in that order rather than publication order. A small indicator shows which order you're following. This matters more than it might sound - publication order and recommended reading order diverge significantly in universes like The Cosmere, and seeing a character's arc scrambled because the timeline ignored your reading order was a real friction point.

Reading order tracking and your reading profile now sync automatically.

Advance your position in a reading order and earlier books are marked as read, the current one as reading. No more updating both separately.

Multiple origins per character - characters are no longer limited to a single nationality or origin. The Expanse cast in particular benefits from this, given how many characters have complicated backgrounds across Earth, Mars and the Belt.

The Expanse now has 501 POV appearances mapped across all nine books. Every chapter in The Expanse is titled with its POV character's name, so we were able to populate this with high confidence. Twenty-one new characters were added alongside group memberships and relationships.

The Dark Tower segment data is now complete across all eight books, including The Wind Through the Keyhole. Character descriptions for the core ka-tet have been rewritten to be spoiler-safe throughout.

OpenFiction is currently in beta and we're actively looking for readers to help test, find edge cases, and suggest series to add. If any of this sounds useful, come and have a look at openfiction.org.

We now track 663 characters across 15 universes.