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October 16th, 2024 09:34 pm - 2024 Yuletide Letter
Here is my 2024 yuletide letter, in its final form! Text below the cuts is the content of my signup.

I am one of those people who comes to Yuletide mostly just wanting any fic for my small fandoms, so I'm really wide open about what you write for me. I will never be upset with ODAO as long as you write me the story you really wanted to write and that comes through, so if you saw one of these fandoms or characters in the tagset and immediately knew the story you wish there was a prompt for, write me that one instead.

I put a couple of fandom-specific DNWs in the signup but I don't really have any general ones, and I really did think that through. If the characters and the canon and the story you're writing cry out for something, I opt in even if it's something that's a common DNW (just tag for it if I might need to brace myself).

I like crossovers (I didn't prompt many this year, but an Aubrey/Maturin - Mairelon crossover would be amazing, so would Mairelon - Goblins in the Castle, or Scipio and Hannibal meeting characters from other fandoms/elsewhere in history, or any universe overlapping with Maupin, or anything else that strikes your fancy), I like setting-swap AUs that are interested in what the canon and the new setting have to say about each other, I like unusual prose formats and POVs and I like non-text treats or mixed media stories. (I allow treats.) I have a lot of other likes too, and perhaps I will edit this letter to add some more? If I don't get to that before you see this, this tag has my yuletide posts going back to 2003 and feel free to mine those for old likes! Some of my likes also come through in my prompts, and if you see something in a prompt for one fandom that you'd rather apply to another, go for it.

This year's "completely unintentional theme" is historical settings, so here we are in vaguely chronological order:

Symposium - Plato, Punic Wars RPF, Mademoiselle de Maupin - Théophile Gautier, Goblins in the Castle - Bruce Coville, Aubrey-Maturin Series - Patrick O'Brian, Mairelon the Magician - Patricia Wrede

Fandom: Symposium - Plato, Any


Plato's Symposium is one of the Socratic Dialogues, possibly one of the most analyzed, discussed, and relitigated works in all of history. It's wildly important to queer/LGBT history as well, with some of the most detailed discussion of male/male relationships in the ancient world that echoed up through the next thousand+ years of European thought. But it's also basically an RPS story about a bunch of famous people Plato knew when he was younger hanging out, getting drunk, and talking about gay shipping, having a good time before all the tragedy that befell them later. If you've heard people talk about the ancient arguments over whether Achilles topped - that's in here. (There's a theory that this was published as an advertisement for Plato's later Academy, by showing it as a place where you get to hang out with your frat bros, meet famous people, have fun and talk philosophy, and it definitely makes sense as that.)

It's one of the shorter dialogues and one of the more accessible, and I would love to see fic that treats it for what it is as a stand-alone rps canon without having to drag along all that millennium of commentaries on top - you don't need that to understand most of what it's doing on a basic level. There's a bunch of English (and other) translations online, although the most common one is a mid-19th century one that's not the clearest (but most of the newer ones seem to be available as pdfs on professors' websites if you go looking.) That said, they are discussing sex from the POV of upper-class ancient Athenians where relationships with age gaps, power differentials, and young teens were more common; they don't all take the same moral position on it, but none of their positions line up with modern norms, so if you aren't interested in other cultural views on that, maybe skip this one.

( Fandom: Symposium - Plato )

Punic Wars RPF, Any


Hannibal Barca and Cornelius Publius Scipio Africanus were two opposing generals in the
2nd Punic War. Hannibal was famous as the world's greatest general and started inflicting defeat after defeat on Rome, but didn't have the backing to bring the war to a decisive end; and meanwhile Scipio showed up in the provinces and started making a serious attempt at earning the world's greatest general title from him. It all came to a head when Scipio led a Roman army on Carthage and won a decisive victory and then, against both common practice and the desires of Rome, let both Hannibal and Carthage survive their defeat, only for both the generals to attempt to retire, end up in politics, completely refuse to play the political corruption game, get exiled for it, fake their own deaths and run away together.

I love a pairing that's between two extremely competent people who know they're each other's closest chance at finding an equal but have no choice but to be opponents; add in the bit where the thing they're the best at is a terrible thing they both come to despise, and the equivocally tragic endings, and I'm there for all of it. I'm not completely unaware of Roman history generally but I am happy to admit I ship this because of [personal profile] dhampyresa's primers and I'm happy to get fic written pretty much entirely from them, if you don't know the history much either.

( Punic Wars RPF )

Mademoiselle de Maupin - Théophile Gautier, Any


This is a 19th century French novel that is some times considered a famous "dirty" book, about a man who sometimes wishes he was a woman, a woman who loves women, and a woman who is also a man, who all love each other dearly while all telling themselves they are incapable of love, and also have fursuit sex sometimes. Also it has all the Gender. All of it. It's one novel and it's set in a deliberately only sketched out "romantic past of France" which is fun to explore. It's on Project Gutenberg in two volumes in the standard translation (and French). It needs all the fanfic.

( Mademoiselle de Maupin - Théophile Gautier )

Goblins in the Castle - Bruce Coville, Karl


This is a mostly stand-alone kids' fantasy novel from the 90s, one of my favorites of childhood, and isn't free online that I know of but should be reasonably easy to get your hands on. It's about a cursed castle and a quest to free the world's wild joy again, and also about Granny Pinchbottom and an Igor with a teddy bear. The author used to have Igor himself visit his elementary school classrooms every year to read it out loud to them, complete with teddy bear. (It was also not a surprise to me at all when I learned that the author had recently come out as bi.)

When I was looking it up pre-Yuletide I learned that the author has since worked it into his wider fantasy universe; feel free to use that or not, if you want to. There is also a direct sequel, and I tried to read it before assignments went out but didn't quite make it. So far I'm not as enchanted with it as with the first, but that may change once I finish? If anything in my prompts is contradictory with the sequel, feel free to ignore, and don't worry about spoilers.
( Goblins in the Castle )

Aubrey-Maturin Series - Patrick O'Brian, James Dillon


This is a very long series about the British Navy in the Napoleon Wars featuring a ship's Captain Aubrey and his learned companion Dr. Maturin. I'm re-reading to it in audiobook on my commute because the radio news is scary, but it's a very short commute so I'm going very slow. I only just got through Book 1 and I'm enjoying it, but if you have ever wanted an excuse to start this series, Book 1 is all you will need to write my prompts. It's a classic enough series that it's always still in print, if you want to try. James Dillon is the ship's lieutenant who is secretly going through some personal and political crises and doesn't outlive the first book, and he's my only request.

( Aubrey/Maturin )

Mairelon the Magician - Patricia Wrede, Renee D'Auber


This is another kids' novel with a sequel, about a regency Britain with magic, and a gentlemanly wizard who picks up a street rat while working undercover for Runners. I'm sorry if the prompts here feel a little sparse in comparison to the others; it's not that I want this one less, just that I have re-read it far less recently. If that comes through in the prompts I apologize; please ignore any inaccuracies and write want you want!

If you want more detailed prompts the best I can offer is this old comment by me when I was nine years closer to the last time I'd read it through..
( Mairelon the Magician - Patricia Wrede )

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May 8th, 2023 09:06 pm - Come freely, go safely.
I did not go backpacking last weekend! The weather was so bad that I wasn't sure I would be able to drive to the trailhead safely, much less walk to the camp, so I chickened out. The next day the weather was beautiful so I did four miles around my neighborhood with my pack, which was a delight, so I am now less worried about next time, at least!

I am now in Alabama at my sister's house, we are leaving for Gulf Shores tomorrow. Her kitten is very, very cute and suffers from an excess of photogenicity (he also has a very soft white underbelly.)

a teenage Orange Cat sitting on a rocking chair being cute

It's also Dracula Daily time on Tumblr again, and since I've had time on vacation, I finished up a cross-stitch pattern I started a year ago, based on the words Dracula uses to greet Jonathan Harker when he comes to the castle: "Welcome to my house. Come freely, go safely, and leave some of the happiness you bring".

I wanted a sampler for my front hall, but all the patterns I could find were very Hot Topic Goth. Nothing wrong with that, but my goth aesthetic is more "creepy thing found behind the wall in an old attic". I was looking around for inspiration and stumbled on this 1871 sampler by 12-year-old Jemima Clements in the Victoria & Albert Museum in London. It's a little bit early for Dracula but the aesthetic was spot on, so I spent a long time squinting at a zoom of the best download of it they had to copy the wolves and the letters, and then left it for almost a year because I got frustrated trying to figure out how to get a good-formatted pattern out.

When we came up on a year I got frustrated and went with the good-old fashioned grandma method and used a spreadsheet. So on the off chance you want a creepy Dracula sampler for your front hall, I have it in .pdf and spreadsheet form. The .pdf is formatted to print on legal paper, but it will be a bit small that way; you are welcome to fiddle with the spreadsheets to get it the size you want.

a cross-stitch pattern showing a quote from Dracula and two howling wolves, bordered with a wreath of allium flowers

PDF of the pattern of the Dracula quote
^this will not work if your browser redirects to https because my webhost messed that up, but it should work if you force http

Google Drive link to a shareable/downloadable Sheets file

The pattern uses 7-10 different thread colors; I don't believe in locking in brand-name floss, so the pattern includes color description and it's up to you to find stuff in your stash that looks good together.

I could not come up with a decision on the border, so the options are:
1. Make all the flowers plain lavender
2. Use a variegated purple for the flowers
3. Pick 4-6 different shades of lavender/light purple and alternate them - this is most similar to Jemima's border
4. Use the "allium flower" pixel art pattern I coded into the pattern (recommended only if you recognized the allium flower pixel art pattern.)

Tumblr post if you prefer

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March 12th, 2023 06:32 pm - Five Things because it's been awhile
  • I've been reblogging fandom/geek/tumblr holidays to my tumblr this year (I have them queued until the end of the year) and this is the middle of the biggest week in holidays all year! The 7th was Purim, and then Mar 10 is MAR10 day for gamers; yesterday was the Eleventh of March for those who will always remember the Eleventh of March; March 12, today, is GNU Terry Pratchett day for SF/Fantasy fandom; 3-14 is of course Pi Day; and then it's the Ides of March, followed by Leprechaun Day on the 17th. And this year Ramadan then starts the 22nd. So happy holidays everyone who celebrates any of those! (If you celebrate none of those, happy March, I guess.)

  • I FINALLY read Nona the Ninth. My brain was doing the thing where I had to put off reading it because I'd staked to much on it and then I kept putting it off, but it was way beyond due to the library, so I finally did (by staying up till 2 AM) so now I am having all the feelings the rest of the fandom had six months ago. The flashbacks filled in *exactly* the story I wanted them to, which is always a weird feeling as you read something you're overinvested in, what do you *mean* this isn't disappointing me?? It was supposed to disappoint me!

    Anyway I wanted to post my Blood Of Eden name here just so I don't lose it again:
    Greetings And Defiance Fairest And Fallen ἄνδρα μοι ἔννεπε, μοῦσα, πολύτροπον It's Not Made Of Fire Forget What You've Been Told In The Past

    (what would your Blood of Eden name be, if you know what that is?)

  • I made a sort of low-key resolution to post fic to AO3 once a month this year whether I'd actually written any or not, so there may be a bunch of old unresolved fic showing up backdated there this year. I'm also going to try to actually keep up with comments on them, we'll see how *that* goes. This is February's (shhh. it's still February.)

    Lacunae (2234 words) by melannen
    Fandom: Highlander: The Series, The Murderbot Diaries - Martha Wells
    Rating: General Audiences
    Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
    Characters: Pin-Lee (Murderbot Diaries), Dr. Gurathin (Murderbot Diaries), Methos (Highlander)
    Additional Tags: Crossover, Community: intoabar, Post-Book 1: All Systems Red, image recognition software
    Summary: Pin-lee first noticed him because he wasn't there.

  • Still both playing and watching too much Minecraft! Got weirdly stuck in sand yesterday and thought I was going to die of suffocation, which would have been my first death in months, because I couldn't move and couldn't break blocks, but then I didn't die and didn't die and didn't die, didn't lose health even though I had the "taking damage" sound and animation, so I thought I might have lost the whole world, and then I got desperate and just walked out through the solid blocks. Dunno what was going on there but hey I didn't die! I might be almost ready to finally light a portal and go to the Nether soon. There's an island-based extra-large ruined portal really beautifully situated under a natural arch that's part of a giant dripstone cave system that's centrally located on the water route between my two main bases, hopefully the nether on the other side is just as cool!

  • I keep recently seeing people - fans and actual journalists - being extremely upset about shows coming down from streaming services that own them, which means they will be GONE FOREVER! And treating this like some horrible injustice and some new thing that is going to totally upset how the creative industry works.

    And. I mean, I get why people are upset, they won't be able to easily access favorite shows anymore! But your beloved shows won't be gone forever? As long as a single person has a pirated copy and either a torrent client or a CD burner and a mailbox, they won't be gone forever. It's especially weird from the POV that I'm still doing the in-period Star Trek watchalong, where it's 1968 and Star Trek has just been officially renewed for a third season after a massive fan campaign, which was extremely important not just for new canon, but because having less than three seasons would have meant it wouldn't go into syndication - which would mean, really truly, it would be gone forever and nobody would ever be able to see it again, only listen to fan-made audio recordings and look at photos and scripts.
    • Gideon Marcus, who runs the watchalong, attempts to also give us the 1968 shows that ran before and after Star Trek - and only about 50% of them still exist in any form at all, even in locked film and video archives. (And, tbh, this is generally not a great loss to culture the way Trek would have been.)

    So, on the one hand, if you really want it have it forever, save your own physical copy (on media you own!) And on the other hand, "make this available to everyone who wants to watch it, forever" has never been a goal of any media producer, even a little bit, and anyone who thought that, even in the age of streaming, hasn't been paying attention. Also: sometimes things are ephemeral, and all you have of them is your memories of the experience, and that's ok. I've been trying to write fic for the watchalong without cheating and using sources I wouldn't have had in 1968 (even the ones around in 1998) and it's such a different experience, and freeing in a lot of ways!

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July 20th, 2022 10:38 pm - A five things post to make myself post
  1. I have been seeing everybody's posts about the heat waves striking everywhere and I send you lots of sympathy. But also, I am tired of all the "you people from warm climates like the American South know how to handle the heat, it's different," comments. Americans do not know how to handle the heat, we just know how to throw more air conditioning at the problem until the entire world burns down.

    As someone who *is* acclimated to hot summers without relying on A/C, I have been sitting in my work, with me and all my coworkers in winter layers, wrapped in a fleece blanket, with my hands literally hurting from the cold as I type, reading the bit from our facilities people about don't worry, we're going to recirculate inside air instead of bringing new air from outside to save strain on the a/c (in the middle of an airborne pandemic) while being desperately jealous of those of you getting to spend time in nice old insulated brick 35 deg C buildings with ventilation and windows that open. (I go outside for lunch to enjoy the lovely 35 deg C weather and occasionally hide in the mechanical room to warm up.)

    I know that's not really a consolation when you're broiling. But please try not to be jealous of the large part of the US where everyone spends half their income trying to get cooler by burning fossil fuels and will immediately melt and die if their A/C ever fails (which it probably will because the ventilation systems are also badly designed) because their buildings aren't designed for their climate even before global warming and they don't know how to live in it. Save that for countries that actually do know how to handle heat.

    (I'm working on a post on ways to learn to happily live in 35 deg C summers without relying on A/C but it keeps getting longer so maybe it'll be up by next heat wave?)

    (For those of you hitting 40 deg C today though yeah sorry, *nobody's* jealous of that.)


  2. On that note I just started writing a modern Southern Gothic Locked Tomb AU based on that [community profile] agonyaunt post about the guy who married his daughter's bridesmaid but all either of them actually care about is the High Victorian house, because anything that will get me writing these days is worth a start and this is definitely the time of year for southern gothic, but then I realized I was basically writing "Rebecca but what if everybody except Mr. de Winter was a lesbian and Mrs. Danvers was actually Rebecca's ghost but only the protag could see her and also she was best frenemies with Mr. de Winter's illegitimate daughter who was living out her own separate Gothic plot in the background with her new wife's family".

    And there's absolutely nothing wrong with that but I feel like I oughta read (or at least watch) Rebecca first, so I'll be able to catch it when I reference it involuntarily, and I don't want to read and or watch Rebecca, so me and this fic are at a stalemate.


  3. Which got me thinking a lot about how I really like Gothic (and its subgenres) in *theory* but I actively dislike or avoid most of the classic Gothics and a lot of newer ones, as part of my ongoing attempts to try to figure out what I think about horror, and I think with Gothics maybe it comes down to:

    • I like the aesthetic
    • I like the claustrophobic, stifling, incestuous mood
    • I like the focus on small-scale, women's concerns, and the actual acknowledgement of class that often shows up
    • I like the focus on setting and personification of setting! Give me a love story about a house or a town any day!
    • I like the ambivalent way it tends to treat with the supernatural.

      • I don't like:
    • the misogyny (and parallel misandry, that often doesn't believe there are non-terrible men.)
    • the compulsory heterosexuality (or, well, I like it when it's part of the claustrophobia, but not when the story doesn't seem to realize any alternatives are even options)
    • the way the misogyny and misandry and compulsory heterosexuality often combine to put the heroine in a fucking awful happy ending
    • the frequent humorlessness
    • the horror elements when it leans on them


    So basically I want queer as hell gothics where people are terrible people but in ways completely delinked from their gender, and also who are willing to admit that sometimes you just have to laugh. Which I guess explains why I always want it in fic but am very chary about actual published ones…


  4. A huge amount of my fandom time lately has been with Minecraft streamers, and I haven't talked about it here because at first I felt like I didn't know enough about it and then I felt like it was *too much* to talk about, and then I figured I could at least do an enemy fic recs post about it even if it really doesn't do 'shipping' like most fandoms do. –and then Technoblade, one of the most popular content makers and also probably one of the best people in the fandom, died of cancer way, way too young, and I just didn't know what to say. It's the first time I've ever been this deep in a fandom when someone who was still actively part of telling the story died, much less an rpf-adjacent one when the real people are so centered, and since I haven't really been talking about the fandom I don't really even have people who are also in the fandom to talk about it with. I was still working through his back catalog from a year ago when he passed so even the people who are fans aren't really in the same story place I am.

    ( but here is some stuff )

    Anyway to vaguely tie this up to the earlier topics, here's a really good Southern Gothic AU MCYT fic that wouldn't fit in an enemy recs post:

    devil town (100526 words) by hoorayy
    Chapters: 18/18
    Fandom: Dream SMP
    Rating: Mature
    Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
    Additional Tags: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Eerie vibes, Angst, Toby Smith | Tubbo and Wilbur Soot and Technoblade and TommyInnit are Siblings, Mystery, Horror, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Implied/Referenced Character Death, small town horror, sbi family but they’re dysfunctional as hell, none of them are bad people though. they’re just all a bit fucked up, religious trauma, mind the tags! this is a dark story pls be aware of that when/if you read, Murder, Blood, Hallucinations, kinda. it’s complicated., Implied/Referenced Skeppy, for legal reasons that was a joke, Angst with a Happy Ending, i promise it will be okay. you’ll see, Alexis | Quackity and Toby Smith | Tubbo are Siblings
    Series: Part 1 of we’ll make it another night
    Summary: The night Tommy disappeared, it went like this: Tubbo screamed the words that became his goodbye. He can’t accept that Tommy is gone, because that would be accepting that the last words they exchanged were angry and intended to hurt. So he doesn’t accept it. He’ll search for years if he has to.


  5. Today is the quarterfinals of the fandom brackets on [community profile] fictional_fans! Down to eight fandoms, and it looks like the final four will probably be Star Wars, Star Trek, Doctor Who, and Yuletide. Not exactly a surprising result, and yet somehow I'm still surprised. But you still have just over an hour to vote! Anything could happen!

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February 1st, 2022 11:05 am - Snowflake #12
Well, "post every day" didn't go super well for January, but it did go better than the previous month?

[community profile] snowflake_challenge is over except for the wrap-up friending meme, but I guess I'm going to try to keep going on the ones I missed (I wasn't doing it right anyway.)

Challenge #12 was to do a recast. I would need to be less faceblind and a lot more visually oriented and interested in celebrities to do this well, but once in awhile I to stumble on a perfect casting for someone, and luckily I did that relatively recently!

So here's a cast list for Harrow the Ninth (I wanted to do Gideon, but you very quickly run into a severe lack of female options for the cast; Harrow is therefore slightly more doable.)


John Gaius, the Emperor Undying, Necrolord Prime: Kermit the Frog
The Body/Cytherea's corpse (dual role): Miss Piggy (Also playing Commander Wake if needed for flashbacks, in a red wig.)

Augustine the First, First Saint to Serve the King Undying: Rizzo the Rat
Mercymorn the First, Second Saint to Serve the King Undying: Uncle Deadly (or possibly an Uncle Deadly relation done all in peach fuzz, but I think Deadly could pull it off.)
�̸̨͔̙͍̃�̴̨̝̞̜̲̎̀͊̅̚͝�̴̢̭̲̘̖͈̈̌̒̀͐̂̉͠�̵̝͉͈̻̊͒̄�̴͓̤͓̈́̕̕ the First, Third Saint to Serve the King Undying: Scooter I forgot we had worked this out in the discord. Not Scooter. Played by Dr. Bunsen Honeydew, only occasionally he starts talking in MEEP MEEPs and everybody pretends not to notice.
(sorry)

Camilla the Fifth: Camilla
Palamedes Sextus: Gonzo the Great
Judith Deuteros: A female relative of Sam the American Eagle
Coronabeth Tridentarius: Janice

I think I would want to cast Harrow and Ianthe as young, relatively unknown actresses, preferably Maori and Pakeha, the only non-Muppets in the 'real world' scenes - having them be the only human characters would point up how isolating and dissociating their circumstances are (and I think it's important to cast Ianthe that way too, because Harrow/the camera sees her as way more together and on top of things than Harrow, but she is also thrown into a situation she isn't really ready to handle. Also neither of them can be classically Hollywood beautiful, which leaves out most star actresses who are young enough.)

All the characters in Harrow's dream bubble are also played by humans even if they were Muppets in the first movie, but I leave that casting up to the rest of you.

Current Mood:: [mood icon] mischievous
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November 13th, 2021 10:37 pm - 100 days of enemy recs: 87. Witcher, redux
So today I have to come back to you with an apology. A couple weeks ago I did Witcher fandom! And I rec'ed Yennifer/Jaskier and Geralt/Emhyr, and I do stand by that.

But then [personal profile] msilverstar and [personal profile] rmc28 had to show up in comments and point out that I had missed the real enemyship in Witcher fandom, and mea culpa. They were right. The real one true enemyship in Witcher fandom is Iorveth/Vernon Roche.

In my defense, I had missed it because after reading several of the books, and absorbing a lot of canon via show and video game fandom, I barely knew who Vernon Roche was (something to do with Temerian politics? Sounds complicated) and had no idea who Iorveth was, so I figured it was one of those really minor side character ships where you had to be there in the chatroom when they came up with it.

Turns out you just had to know the second video game, not just the third one. In the second one Iorveth and Roche seem to be pretty major characters. Iorveth is the leader of the Scoia'tael, a group of elven guerilla terrorists. Roche is the leader of the Blue Stripes, the Temerian Special Forces commando unit tasked with stopping them. Explaining what is at the root of the conflict would require much greater knowledge of Witcher canon than I, frankly, ever want, and also probably several dedicated years studying Polish history, so we'll leave it that both of them have done terrible, terrible things for their causes, both of them have really awful reputations that they have earned in full, and there are no good guys here, just two people who've spend a long time doing the wrong thing for what they thought was the right reasons. But the two of them have been fighting each other back and forth through the Temerian forests in an evenly matched dog-and-squirrel chase for years, and they have each had each other at their mercy at least once - and found themselves unwilling to kill their counterpart (but quite willing to monologue about how much they respect them!)

Meanwhile, post-Witcher 3, all the political reasons they had to oppose each other are gone in the wake of Nilfgaard's conquest of the North (and so are most of the people they knew from those days.) They find themselves both reluctant survivors, tasked with trying to patch some kind of life and home together from what's left of them, and for once with common enemies and common goals. So that's great set-up there for enemyslash!

  • Peace-Tied (54840 words) by bomberqueen17
    Chapters: 9/9
    Fandom: Wiedźmin | The Witcher - All Media Types
    Rating: Explicit
    Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
    Relationships: Iorveth/Vernon Roche
    Additional Tags: Enemies to Lovers, Canon-Typical Violence, poorly-negotiated kink, Past Sexual Assault, Alcoholism, Addiction recovery, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, just a lot of post-trauma, Politics, Discussions Of Fantasy Racism, War Crimes, both of these people are war criminals, and have to deal with that, Hair Pulling, Sexual Choking, Blow Jobs, Biting, The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings, Post-The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt
    Series: Part 25 of Meet Death Sitting

    Iorveth and Roche attend a diplomatic conference together.
    (Warning: This is part of an extremely long series that *will* eat your life for at least a week. But this one stands on its own, if you let it.)


  • Mending Fences (8799 words) by quills_at_dawn
    Fandom: Wiedźmin | The Witcher - All Media Types
    Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
    Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
    Relationships: Iorveth/Vernon Roche
    Additional Tags: Retirement, Post-Canon, Toussaint (The Witcher), Chaperon, Happy Ending
    Series: Part 7 of Witcher Shorts, Part 1 of Mending Fences

    Iorveth and Roche go on a road trip together.


  • Here’s to the Men We Were (15549 words) by dread_thehalfhanded
    Chapters: 7/7
    Fandom: Wiedźmin | The Witcher (Video Game)
    Rating: Mature
    Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
    Relationships: Iorveth/Vernon Roche
    Additional Tags: Set Post-W3, Mentions of Roche/Foltest, Vergen is happy and thriving under Saskia and I refuse to believe otherwise, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Grumpy Old Men, Drinking & Talking, Post-Canon, Canon-Typical Violence, Blood and Injury, Fantastic Racism, Needles, Masturbation, Pining, An unlearning, Enemies to Lovers

    Iorveth and Roche go flower-picking together.

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October 23rd, 2021 09:49 pm - 100 days of enemy recs: 71. Jaime/Brienne
My knowledge of Game of Thrones canon is... limited? I read the first three books, just before book four came out, in the course of a week, but then I heard that in book four, the *only* characters I cared about were going to be Jaime and Brienne, the others were all getting pushed to book five. And I had already started skipping around the the chapters I cared about (have I mentioned my lack of patience for POV-switching books where there are dozens of POVs and the different threads have nothing to do with each other?) so I said I was just going to wait to read any more until the whole series was out. Also it was becoming increasingly clear that it was *not* going to be Frontier Wolf fanfic like the first couple of chapters implied.

Fifteen years later I think I have been justified in waiting :P I never watched any of the show (not having access to HBO or caring enough to pirate) but I have kind of kept up with the Jaime/Brienne fanfic, because I to do enjoy them.

Jaime is a tarnished night: after too many years of royal politics, he's best known for murder and betrayal, and for brazenly sleeping with another man's wife (who is also his sister), and for blatantly playing off the way his family's money and power and his own talent mean nobody can do anything about it, and being an asshole about it into the bargain.

Brienne is Britomart, or more directly Bradamant of Orlando Furioso: the female knight, undefeated in battle and untouchable in honor. (I first met her in The Compleat Enchanter and have loved her since.) Except, since it's a George R. R. Martin book, instead of being known throughout the land for her uncontested beauty as well, she's spent her life being insulted and harassed and thinks she's ugly, because you've gotta cram the misogyny in there wherever it fits.

Anyway, Jaime and Brienne end up crossing a war-torn land with Jaime as Brienne's prisoner, but it goes wrong and they end up having to rescue each other, and by the end of it they have come to like each other despite themselves. And then presumably some other stuff happens, but that's where it was left at the end of the last book I read, and literally all the fic goes AU at some point after that, because seriously, this canon.

But they make such a good enemyship! The actual lines of enemy/ally are flickering back and forth across the gameboard like lightning at that point, because plot, but through the whole thing Jaime and Brienne trust each other, and they're the only ones who do: everybody knows Jaime as the Kingslayer, regicide, traitor; everybody knows Brienne as the laughingstock lady who thinks she's a knight; but they know each other somehow, and they trust each other even when the whole world says they shouldn't. Meanwhile, having the admiration and respect of a knight who - for all his tarnish - is one of the most handsome, strong, brave and skilled in all the land - does wonders for Brienne's self-esteem. And Brienne "pours out honor like a fountain", and give him enough time and Jaime will soak up enough to remember how to use his own again.

Also this is a very good pairing for arranged marriage and marriage of convenience fic so there's that too.


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October 2nd, 2021 07:22 pm - 100 days of enemy recs: 55. Murderbot
Look, ART is an overpowered unremitting asshole with no sense of proportion and no understanding of boundaries, and just because Murderbot may share some of those qualities, that doesn't mean it likes ART, okay? And they are definitely not in any kind of (urggh) relationship.

  • In Control (8039 words) by Mayasynth
    Fandom: The Murderbot Diaries - Martha Wells
    Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
    Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
    Relationships: Asshole Research Transport & Murderbot (Murderbot Diaries), Dr. Mensah & Murderbot (Murderbot Diaries)
    Additional Tags: Rated T for Torture. and also swears, let's just pretend they use UNIX terminal commands in the future shhhhhh, dealing with idiot transphobic clients, in which i project my hatred of gendered languages onto SecUnit, Dr Ratthi is a little confused but he got the spirit, Post-Network Effect

    ART oversteps a boundary, and they both learn things about caring about people.


  • Threat as Greeting (5373 words) by FlipSpring
    Fandom: The Murderbot Diaries - Martha Wells
    Rating: General Audiences
    Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
    Relationships: Asshole Research Transport & Murderbot (Murderbot Diaries)
    Additional Tags: Linked Footnotes, just thru the beginning of Artificial Condition, ART's POV, sometimes you are an Asshole Research Transport bored off ya shits, and you bump into something very interesting (a rogue SecUnit), and then you decide on behalf of all parties that this rogue SecUnit is gonna be your friend, because obviously it's an idiot and needs your help, POV Outsider, Podfic Available
    Series: Part 3 of Murderbot Outside POVs

    First meetings, from ART's POV.


  • privilege escalation (7980 words) by ariex09
    Fandom: The Murderbot Diaries - Martha Wells
    Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
    Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
    Relationships: Asshole Research Transport & Murderbot (Murderbot Diaries)
    Additional Tags: Future Fic, Post-Book 5: Network Effect, emotionally fraught pair programming, friends help friends patch security vulnerabilities

    Murderbot needs someone to hack it for security reasons, so it asks ART to do it. Because... just because.

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August 25th, 2021 08:51 pm - 100 days of enemy recs: 28. Imperial Radch
There are various pairings in IR fandom that you could read as enemyship, I guess, with the broad definition I've been using. Breq/Seivarden at least. But. The real enemyship in this fandom is Breq/Anaander. Breq spends one book deciding to kill her, and then next two books doing her best not to care what she thinks. Meanwhile Anaander spends the last two books - trying to be her mentor? Trying to be mentored by her? Trying to use her? Just treasuring the evidence that she has created someone who is willing to surpass her, finally? Difficult to say. Also obsessively trying to kill her and utterly destroy her and all that she loves, because she hates her very much, but that's the other Anaander. (One of the other Anaanders.)

There's exactly one Breq/Anaander fic tagged on the AO3. This is far too few, but I guess my recs set is easy today. There's also exactly one Anaander/Anaander fic, which is also an amazing enemyship but in a way that requires actually explaining how many Anaanders there are and aren't, so I guess I will link that one too!

  • Doubt (945 words) by venndaai
    Fandom: Imperial Radch Series - Ann Leckie
    Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
    Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
    Relationships: Anaander Mianaai/Justice of Toren One Esk Nineteen | Breq
    Additional Tags: Dubious Consent, Mind Games, nothing actually happens but there are Implications

    Breq and Anaander and a wall.


  • The Pathetic Fallacy (3203 words) by Gammarad
    Chapters: 1/1
    Fandom: Imperial Radch Series - Ann Leckie
    Rating: Mature
    Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
    Relationships: Anaander Mianaai/Anaander Mianaai
    Characters: Anaander Mianaai
    Additional Tags: Politics, Selfcest, Stream of Consciousness, The Lord of the Radch is a real piece of work, POV First Person

    One problem with using an important strategic technology as a masturbation aid.

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August 7th, 2021 09:47 pm - 100 days of enemy recs: 13. Machineries of Empire
Ah, another one where I just put down a character name: Jedao. Jedao is another one where it's harder to find someone who isn't an enemy to pair him with. Unlike Malcolm, though, he doesn't have a natural talent for it - he's likable and charming and generally kind; he has to work very, very hard to earn the hatred of literally everyone in an entire galaxy. Luckily, he's up to the task, even if it takes a few centuries to get there.

He spends much of that time trapped in a horrifically dysfunctional relationship with Nirai Kujen, where they are enemies pretending to be allies pretending to be enemies pretending to be allies; Jedao is canonically submissive, into pain, and full of self-hate even before Kujen gets his hands on him, and Kujen is all the triggers warnings wrapped up together in a giant bag of crazy. (Like many characters on this list, Jedao/Jedao is the ultimate hateship here; unlike many other characters, his canon identity is splintered enough he has a chance to achieve that, too.)

So I'm linking one fic for them, in which the worst that happens is repeated mutual murder/suicide and a little recreational mindbreak: if you want to go finding more of them, the fandom's small enough on AO3 to trawl through yourself, just, mind the warnings.

Five Times Kujen Murdered Jedao and One Time He Forgot (641 words) by SathInflection
Fandom: Machineries of Empire Series - Yoon Ha Lee
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Relationships: Garach Jedao Shkan/Kujen
Additional Tags: Offscreen green onion, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Crack, Geese, Horror, Mind Manipulation, At least 57 Jedaos, Humor

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August 4th, 2021 10:16 pm - 100 days of enemy recs: 10. The Locked Tomb
Some fandoms on the list I put a pairing. Some I put a character name, because really any pairing with that character would work.

Some I just put the fandom.

Tamsyn Muir's Locked Tomb books are basically a series of Gothic novels set in a decadent and moribund (and Goth) space empire. It's very canon queer. Also very goth. There are, in fact, lesbian necromancers, and also sword lesbians, and even a few heterosexual male necromancers (I think.)

There are some 'ships that aren't utterly redolent of enemyslash - Dulcinea/Palamedes comes to mind - but they aren't really the heart of the story - and of course it helps that our main character is a horrible little gremlin-child made entirely of trauma, sharp pointy bits, hauntings, and regenerating bone.

I had a lot of trouble coming up with recs for this, partly because this is one of the newest fandoms on the list and it's different rec'cing in something recent! And also, just, any fic that was reasonably accessible for people who don't know the fandom, is going to be very deceptive as to what the fandom's actually like, and any fic that gives a good impression of canon is going to be completely impenetrable if you don't know it. There's also, like, a canon barista AU, so what does and doesn't count as AU is complicated anyway? And trying to clearly explain the backstory of any of the pairings would require tomes.

So here are a few reasonable normal modern AUs about the main pairing.

  • ...and a partridge in a pear tree (19913 words) by strangehunger
    Fandom: Gideon the Ninth - Tamsyn Muir
    Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
    Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
    Relationships: Gideon Nav/Harrowhark Nonagesimus
    Additional Tags: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Retail, Christmas, Secret Santa, Friends to Lovers, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, Canon Typical Humor, Pining, Mutual Pining, Flirting, Bad Flirting, Found Family, Mall Goths, Literally everyone works in the same mall, and I am the God of that mall, Shitty Retail AU, Mentions of Underage Drinking for the Horrid Teens, Smoking, Bad Jokes, Slow Burn

    AU in which they all work at a mall, and life is hell.

  • blessed with a wilder mind (26807 words) by opinionhaver69
    Chapters: 1/1
    Fandom: The Locked Tomb Trilogy | Gideon the Ninth Series - Tamsyn Muir
    Rating: Mature
    Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
    Relationships: Gideon Nav/Harrowhark Nonagesimus
    Characters: Gideon Nav, Harrowhark Nonagesimus, Ianthe Tridentarius, Coronabeth Tridentarius, Jeannemary Chatur, Isaac Tettares, Palamedes Sextus, Camilla Hect, Dulcinea Septimus, Protesilaus Ebdoma, Naberius Tern, Magnus Quinn, Abigail Pent, Mercymorn the First (Locked Tomb Trilogy), Augustine the First (Locked Tomb Trilogy)
    Additional Tags: harrowhark comes to terms with the mortifying ordeal of being known, Alternate Universe - College/University, CW: deep dive into harrow's shitass mental health, CW: parent death (offscreen and in the past), CW: discussions of suicide and terminal illness (also occurring offscreen and in the past), lightly implied background camilla/palamedes

    AU where they're all academics. Life is still hell.

  • If Home Is Where the Heart Is (Then We're All Just Fucked) (17348 words) by JeanLuciferGohard
    Chapters: 1/1
    Fandom: The Locked Tomb Trilogy | Gideon the Ninth Series - Tamsyn Muir
    Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
    Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
    Relationships: Gideon Nav/Harrowhark Nonagesimus, Gideon Nav/Dulcinea Septimus
    Characters: Gideon Nav, Dulcinea Septimus, Harrowhark Nonagesimus, Palamedes Sextus, Camilla Hect
    Additional Tags: Exes, Getting Back Together, featuring a lot of extremely good extremely bad movies, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting

    AU where they are trying to succeed at life as independent adults. Life is shit.

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March 11th, 2021 08:42 pm - They call this day the 11th of March
Who wants to talk with me about interplanetary calendars?

I just finished the old book that's been on my to-finish for ages about the history of calendar reform, and it was surprisingly interesting for a book that consists in large part of quotations from Hansard and League of Nations committee reports (the one about cross-cultural perceptions of time is still on the to-finish for awhile yet, sorry.) They both ended up on that pile after the first time I read Machineries of Empire and was curious about how the calendar-based magic system in that might actually worked. (Mind you I don't think the MoE system can really be specifically calendar-based in its actual mechanics, also the farther I got in the calendar reform book, the less reasonable Cheris's quick-change reform seemed, and it didn't seem that reasonable even to start with.)

But! Calendars in worldbuilding are an interesting thing to think about, and I don't think I've ever seen a system used in a multi-planetary polity that really made sense. You have systems like stardates (that was a deliberate throwing up of hands at the idea of coming up with a workable one) and ones that just copy Gregorian time-words without really putting much thought into it, and not much else. (It's amazing how rare it is to see a SF story that doesn't have a very-nearly-24-hour day cycle, even. Where is the spacelag of shifting from a 30-hour day to a 20-hour day??)

So. ( Interplanetary calendars. )

Anyway, basically, this is my plea to work that kind of calendrical and timekeeping nonsense into more of your SF. It's fun! I swear!

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April 22nd, 2018 07:24 pm - FMK: Downbelow Station Pt. 1
HAH I bet you thought I'd given up on these!

Downbelow Station by C. J. Cherryh is very long, and also, frankly, not an enjoyable experience so far, so it's taking awhile. I'm only 2/5 of the way through but I want to write up my impressions at this point because it might take me another while to finish, and I think (hope?) I might have a very different impression once I'm done, and also I find myself with a lot to say already. (Also this is going to be at least half about Imperial Radch anyway, sorry-not-sorry.)

The main thing is that this book is GRIM. And DARK. I don't know that it's all the way to grimdark, but so far it's pretty much completely lacking in hope. Or happiness. Or fun. I know I have a lot of readers who really like Alliance-Union, and I can see why, because it's objectively a very good book, it's just... a grindingly awful experience for everyone involved, including me. It drops you in at the everything-is-lost low point of a three-act play, and then it just gets worse from there.

But I am glad I'm reading it, if only because it's so very very clear that this was an influence on later mil-SF, including parts of Imperial Radch, and particularly, I may have made a mistake starting it right after a re-read of Ancillary Sword, because the parallels in the setup are so blatantly obvious that way: the military ship arriving unannounced at the previously-theoretically-neutral Station, bringing unwanted tidings of war and disaster; the overcrowded station, the cut-off but inhabited section like a tourniquet around a necrotic limb; the system that is important because it has the capacity to be self-supporting with all the trade lines down, but is going to have to scramble to become so in time; even the leader adopting a powerless personage of complicated loyalties and a troubling history of hamhanded brainwashing.

( Read more... )

So yeah. Other than the hisa, I don't really have anything very bad to say for it. Except that it's just relentlessly, grindingly no fun.

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April 2nd, 2018 10:15 pm - i love to tell a story
I have this Good Omens Easter fic that has been living in my head for so long that when I go back to GO I legitimately forget that not only is "the first time Crowley ever slept was that morning in the first century when he was pretending to be a guard at the latest guy-who-clamied-he-was-the-Messiah's tomb" not canon, it's also not even fanon, because I've never mentioned it to anybody.

And every Lent I think to myself "this should be the year I actually write the fic", and every Palm Sunday I sit down after church and re-write the first scene and then go "aaaauggh I need to do more research."

You might be surprised to find how little there is out there in terms of resources for "how to read the Easter accounts in the gospels in context with archaeological evidence and non-Christian historical accounts of c. 30 BCE Jerusalem". I mean, most of the information exists, I have been trying to gather it together since before I read Good Omens the first time, but seems likeit's in pieces here and there, each with a different slant, because all of the people who have the different pieces have different ideological reasons to not want to be the resource that connects it all. Because they have no compassion for fanfic writers, clearly.

And, of course, the same fraught reasons the easy research resources don't exist is the reason I don't want to write the thing without having access to them.

So this year I finally finished my Republic of Two Systems Independence Day story instead. :P

Just Born (2166 words) by melannen
Fandom: Imperial Radch Series - Ann Leckie
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Characters: Justice of Toren One Esk Nineteen | Breq, Gem of Sphene, Translator Zeiat, Lieutenant Tisarwat, Piat, Seivarden Vendaai
Additional Tags: Republic of Two Systems Independence Day, Food, vengeance
Summary:

Seivarden and Sphene bond over their shared Notai heritage.



***

Also! [personal profile] staranise is working on a guide to DW for Tumblr users who want to move, and she's asking for people to subscribe/add some mock accounts that she can use for tutorial purposes - if you have some accounts laying around, and you want people to move from Tumblr to DW, check it out. There's also a community, [community profile] fictional_fans, that she'd like a variety of fandom-related posts and conversations in to use as a demo - if you would like to help, you can go post either a real fandom-related post or a fake one, either is fine!

(however I would kind of like to see it become a real community. Part of the reason fandom communities have never taken off on DW, I think, is that we're a small enough pool of users that it's hard to get critical mass on any specific topic - they tend to either die of malnourishment or get dominated by one or two members to the extent they can't really grow. But I bet we could get critical mass for "fandom in general"! And I bet DW, as it exists in 2018, could actually support a comm that was just "anything fandom related for any fandom" without it getting out of control the way it would on a larger platform. And if it was a living community it would be a great place to send new users to welcome them! Anybody want to help me try to make it real?)

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January 8th, 2018 03:00 pm - Purimgifts Letter
Hello, Purim gifter!

Sorry this is a little bit late; I made up my mind to sign up at the very last minute and didn't have a chance to write until now.

I would love anything about any female character, or Jewish character, or person being persecuted by evil viziers, in any of the fandoms I requested. I don't have any particular DNWs for any of these, and I love the kind of silly and/or fluffy fic that Purimgifts is good for, but I would also be okay with something that went dark (as long as it's appropriate for Purimgifts in general, of course - nothing along the lines of the bad fandom example in the faq.) I listed my top rating as mature because I didn't want you to feel pressured but anything at any rating is fine if that's what calls to you.

I'm okay with basically any ships in any of these fandoms, but please don't break up any ongoing canon ships to get there (turning canon ships poly is ok though.)

I requested a bunch of SF/Fantasy-ish fandoms that have very little canon Jewish content, but for any of them, I would love any AU or OC or worldbuilding-based stuff that looks at what it's like to be Jewish in that universe, and I also love everybody-is-Jewish AUS. (Or anything expanding on the Judaism canon there is, for the ones that have some.) I have some ideas (that I have been saving up every year I considered doing Purimgifts) below, but I am not Jewish, so some of them are probably Wrong, and feel free to ignore them and write me something else entirely.

I only requested fandoms where I could think of things I wanted for women OR evil viziers OR Jewish characters, so there's a lot under here, but feel free to ignore it all if that helps.

( Discworld )
( Good Omens )
( Highlander )
( Imperial Radch )
( Rivers of London )
( Star Trek:TOS )
( Star Wars )
( Thor movies )
( Wonder Woman )

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October 3rd, 2017 05:30 pm - FMK #25: Anthologies ... in SPAAACE
Last week's F winner was The Jungle Book! I am looking forward to it, even though I will probably have "The Bare Necessities" stuck in my head the whole time. Also, it is short! (Or at least my copy is. If it turns out to be abridged I'm just going to go with it anyway.

The K winner was Shardik. It's been a bad month for Richard Adams here in FMK land. Good month for freeing up space, though!

I'm still slowly working on Locke Lamora. I did start to get pretty invested during Part Two, and then... the fridging happened. UGH.

Between that and Hans of Iceland I have enough long books on my plate right now, and also I kind of don't want to live on this planet right now, so for number 25: Space Anthologies! (There will probably be more anthology weeks coming, because I've been trying to avoid mixing them with novels, but I have a LOT of anthologies. I think in the last cull I preferentially saved them with the idea that if I just wanted to get a taste of a genre or an author's work, and anthology made more sense than Book #4 of a series.)

How FMK works, short version: I am trying to clear out my unreads. So there is a poll, in which you get to pick F, M, or K. F means I should spend a night of wild passion with the book ASAP, and then decide whether to keep it or not. M means I should continue to commit to a long-term relationship of sharing my bedroom with it. K means it should go away immediately. Anyone can vote, you don't have to actually know anything about the books.

I pick a winner on Friday night (although won't actually close the poll, people can still vote,) and report results/ post the new poll on the following Tuesday, and write a response to the F winner sometime in the next week.

Link to long version of explanation (on first poll)

( Poll: Editors including Ackerman, Asimov, Dozois, Drake, Fan, Fawcett, Greenberg, Hartwell, Sakers, Scithers )

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September 27th, 2017 11:17 am - FMK #24: Talking Animals
So I am back from the trip! I did not post FMK yesterday because instead I hid in my room and re-read "All Systems Red," because sometimes after spending a week in very close company with your nearest and dearest (and in hundred-degree temperatures) you need to just hide in your room for a night and re-read "All Systems Red". Perhaps I will post more about the trip later (spoilers: I got to touch Chicago's Stadtkrone! SUCH a good place for an epic magical battle to happen omg. Especially with Trump Tower glowing evilly green next door, and the Tribune Building right past that.)

I didn't finish The Lies of Locke Lamora, which was the LONG BOOK F winner. I got about 1/3 of the way in. So far it's not gripping me, but I've found this year that the long tomes usually don't until I'm over halfway, even if I end up liking them a lot, so I guess we'll see. So far I'm mainly sticking with it so that I can continue imagining a pre-Angelic Visitation Moist von Lipwig coming to Camorr and effortlessly robbing them blind. (He's probably less technically skilled as a grifter than they are, but he's way, way better at actually doing it as a job.)

K was a tie between Quicksilver and Maia, also the two longest on the list! and the thought of never having to read EITHER of them just felt like a massive relief, so I think they will both go. Plus it's like a 3x bonus on freed-up shelf space for each one!

I did read Truckers right before I left, which it turned out I had read before, just twenty-five years ago. So review of that coming up.

Also, the book-on-cd that Mom and I agreed on to listen to while driving was The Tale of Castle Cottage, which was the last of a series of cozy/historical mysteries about TOTALLY NOT RPF FIC OR A FANTASY NOVEL Beatrix Potter and a bunch of helpful woodland creatures. It was okay, and certainly fine to doze off to in the car. But then Beatrix kept having to pause the detecting so that she could go draw yet more bunny illustrations for her editor, and I realized that in the general outline of their lives, she and Ursula Vernon had a lot in common (started in self/small press publishing, got a contract for endless illustrated kids' books about small animals, had a romantic disappointment in their 20s that they subordinated into hardcore gardening, followed by a ridic happy marriage w/ no kids in her 30s, investing all the book money in land conservation.)

So then I started imagining a hundred years from now when some nice lady authoress writes a series of cozy novels about Ursula solving gentle mysteries with the help of friendly woodland creatures (all named Bob, obviously), using KUEC as her main biographical source, the first one to be titled The Tale of Dogskull Patch. And then I felt good about the future for once. :P

So on that note, this week's theme is TALKING ANIMALS!

How FMK works, short version: I am trying to clear out my unreads. So there is a poll, in which you get to pick F, M, or K. F means I should spend a night of wild passion with the book ASAP, and then decide whether to keep it or not. M means I should continue to commit to a long-term relationship of sharing my bedroom with it. K means it should go away immediately. Anyone can vote, you don't have to actually know anything about the books.

I pick a winner on Friday night (although won't actually close the poll, people can still vote,) and report results/ post the new poll on the following Tuesday, and write a response to the F winner sometime in the next week.

Link to long version of explanation (on first poll)

( Poll: Adams, Bach, Brooks, Burgess, Burroughs, Cahill, Clarkson, Coville, Dickson, Gurney, Holm & Hamel, Kipling, Wolf )

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September 6th, 2017 08:01 pm - FMK: Enchantress from the Stars and Mirror Friend, Mirror Foe
Enchantress from the Stars by Sylvia Engdahl is, above all, a good book. And I don't mean in the sense of well-written or I liked it (although those are also true) but good the way a good person is good. Good like a video of a puppy rescuing a kitten. Goodness baked into it all the way through. It was exactly the sort of book I needed to read these last couple weeks.

When I started I honestly wasn't expecting to call it good in any of those senses. The main character, Elana, is just. Super-annoying in all of the best YA ways. The book starts with Elana, who we are told is a disciplined trainee with lifelong dedication to the most elite, dangerous, and important of careers, stowing away on her dad's dangerous and vital mission because she was bored.

Then we start getting right into love triangle territory.

But. ( Somehow, it all works. )

Anyway, I liked it, it reminded me that sometimes there are good things that are just good when I needed that, I'm glad I read it and it's definitely a keeper.


I also read Mirror Friend, Mirror Foe by Robert Asprin and George Takei. Imagine if someone had gone to George Takei in the 70s and said "if you could publish any book, what would it be about?" and he said "Japanese-American fencing ninja vs. corpocratic killer robots in space."

If your reaction was "yes, good, do that" you would probably find this book at least mildly entertaining.


I'm also trying to read Han of Iceland by Victor Hugo but, folks, it's... not good. Also I added it to the poll on the basis of I've had an ecopy on my phone for several years waiting to be read, and also it was short so it couldn't be too painful, but the OCR on all the online versions was terrible so I got a library copy, but then it became apparent that all of the online versions must just be Part 1 of 2 despite not being marked that way, because in fact it is not short. I dunno if I can do this.

My mom saw the library copy lying out and since she's also been reading books about Iceland she picked it up and said "the very first line of the introduction is about how terrible this book is, why are you reading it?" (I told her my internet friends dared me to. She has learned to just accept answers like that.)

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July 25th, 2017 07:25 pm - FMK: Discount Armageddon
Poll post coming soon! But first, I have finished Discount Armageddon by Seanan McGuire!

It was fun! I enjoyed it! The characters were great! Much like the other McGuire I have read, I felt like the more I thought about it, the less there there was there! (I can't think of a single piece of internal evidence other than Verity's word that it took place in Manhattan instead of, like, Columbus, Ohio. The Price-vs.-Covenant thing really doesn't work with the logistics that are set up in the book. Verity's main character note is that ballroom dance is the most important thing to her, she tells us this at least every fifth page, and yet at no point does she ballroom dance, even as practice. Etc.)

And I did really like the variety of cryptids and the cryptid community, but the "cryptozoologist" thing still bothers me, in that a cryptozoologist is a very specific thing situated in a very specific time and culture - it is not something like "witch" that has enough meanings with enough history you can basically go with whatever - and I would really really love to read an urban fantasy about cryptozoologists - and Verity Price is really really not one. (I mean, you could make a cool backstory about how the Prices and allies adopted the terminology ironically in the 60s to further distinguish themselves from the Covenant - or that Sanderson got himself in WAY over his head with a Price girl at some point and came out very confused, which is a fanfic I would definitely read - but she does not seem to be doing that.)

But! It is a urban fantasy in which ALL OF THE SEX IS UNAMBIGUOUSLY AND EXPLICITLY CONSENSUAL, and I didn't even know that was a thing that existed, so I will forgive it A LOT for being that. (I would also enjoy the fanfic about how Price family sex education includes a unit about how part of their mission is to introduce the urban fantasy community to the idea of "affirmative consent" which it had previously lacked entirely.)

I have Down Among The Sticks and Bones on its way from the library, but I have learned it is NOT about the Skeleton Girl (with that title how is it not about the Skeleton Girl?) so I find I am not that excited about it coming.

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June 13th, 2017 06:29 pm - FMK #14: SF in Translation
Hi all! I am back. I did not get my birthday candle wish of having a different president when I got back to the USA, but at least Theresa May is in deep hot water now, so I guess you all did what you could.

The FMK #13 winner is Discount Armageddon, pulling ahead at the last minute in a very close race! The loser was Pawn of Prophecy, in a not-very-close race, although Man-Kzin Wars put up a good fight.

I brought Rocket Ship Galileo and Tarnsman of Gor with me on the trip as two K winners that I couldn't bear dumping without Having Read. I... am about 30% through Tarnsman of Gor; so far it is not bad enough to make me hate-read it or throw it at the wall, but also not particularly compelling a read. I still want to Have Read it though, I think.

Rocket Ship Galileo is going to be K for Keep, I am afraid. I tried! But ( Jews vs. Moon Nazis! )

Anyway, in honor of my international travel, today's theme is SF In Translation.

How FMK works, short version: I am trying to clear out my unreads. So there is a poll, in which you get to pick F, M, or K. F means I should spend a night of wild passion with the book ASAP, and then decide whether to keep it or not. M means I should continue to commit to a long-term relationship of sharing my bedroom with it. K means it should go away immediately. Anyone can vote, you don't have to actually know anything about the books.

I pick a winner on Friday night (although won't actually close the poll, people can still vote,) and report results/ post the new poll on the following Tuesday, and write a response to the F winner sometime in the next week.

Link to long version of explanation (on first poll)

( Poll: Allende, Chang, Chessex, Enjoe, Gakov, Hugo, Lem, Merle, Nomura, Ogawa, Strugatsky, Verne )

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