(sound of howling husky)

I read more than one book in April, but I think I only have a full review in me of Francis Spufford's Nonesuch, the first half of an urban fantasy duology set in WWII England during the Blitz. I like and admire Spufford's prose a great deal and am always hoping that his next book will be the book that I find fully realized in its invariably complex project; unfortunately, if I were to graph the trajectory of my reactions to his writing across time-of-publication, it would look like... um, honestly, a steadily downward trend for "percentage of thematic and dramatic intention actually executed on," although a more seasick up and down for "how much my personal shit X title was," with spikes for Golden Hill and Cahokia Jazz and a mighty trough on Light Perpetual.

( cut for premise/rising action spoilers + much reluctantly compelled griping )

Thank you very much for writing for me! It's been a few years since I did Yuletide and I'm really delighted to be back to it--I can say in advance that your gift will be one of the highlights of my holiday season, and I'm honored by your effort and time. Take my prompts and commentary as suggestions only, with the exception of my DNWs below and those included in the requests; I would love to read any story you feel passionate about telling.

General likes: character-driven writing and character study, humor, casefic, missing scenes, intrigue, worldbuilding exploration, tone-matching with canon, bittersweetness and conflicting or contradictory emotions of all kinds

DNWs: setting AUs, fluff

( Ginga Eiyuu Densetsu - Legend of the Galactic Heroes )

( Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon )

( La Passe-Miroir - The Mirror Visitor )

Hello, and thank you so much for writing for me! I'm really looking forward to whatever you come up with; the fact that we have one of these fandoms in common is enough to tell me that I'll adore your gift. I'm on tumblr at gurguliare, where I spend most of my time talking about the Silmarillion--but I have tags for all my requests this year. ODAO: you're welcome to adopt these prompts or ignore them, whatever suits.

General likes: Interesting setting details/flavor text, plot, porn, nonsexual intimacy, humor, violent and dramatic happenstance, moments of conscious introspection, moments of total obliviousness, character dialogue that touches on weird friction in the relationship (or surprising affinities!), intense or difficult friendships, sustained action sequences, interactive fiction, pastiche

Dislikes: setting AUs (at least for these canons), fluff

( 7 Seeds )

( Friends at the Table )

( 80 Days )

Hi. Anyway.

1. (WORKING DOCUMENT TITLE: the stupidest crossover in the world. dot odt.)

“Do you like Los Angeles?” Utena asks her, one morning when they're both kicking their heels outside a pentagon of police tape.

Anthy says, “Let me see.” She licks a finger and raises it to the nonexistent breeze. Utena doesn't seem to notice. “It's like this: there's an old story about a man named Pliny, who wanted to help rescue the survivors of a volcanic eruption. He sailed across the windy bay to an ash-shrouded far shore, where the same wind that had carried him there barred him from a swift return. Gazing upon the destruction, he fell over and died. His companions say that he was poisoned by the fumes—but if that was really so, how did his companions survive?”

Utena, young as ever, taps her chin. “Gas masks?”

2. The day Ned and Lord Baratheon arrived was almost wholly golden. This was 277, the end of summer, and the leaves of the trees showed a growing flush at time's impertinence. The same high color every fall, like a whore paid well for modesty. Lyanna had known that winter was coming since almost before she could speak, but she found little evidence of it in the indifferent, gambolling world, which bred and putrefied without regard for its peril, and accepted the rigid order of frost like a cat submitting to a collar. Lyanna had lived through just one winter then.

She remembered: three years of storms, the wolfswood a white Kingsguard, not seven but seven thousand strong—her mother, dying—but the town outside the castle had been, throughout, alert and jolly; the hot springs bubbled, the roses grew, and at the end of it all her father strode out to receive Oldtown's blind ravens. Already, tougher flowers were nudging through the snow. Lyanna was a spirited child, her loyalties pledged to frenetic life; but she bore a tenderness for the cold's black hand, which was beaten back by fire. She sympathized with anything paid courtesies and then overruled.

and the last one is just me dumping this entire fic-stump here because I'm never going to finish it ever, yayyyy. actually I might have posted it somewhere before but oh well

( 3. Mikasa noticed Annie for the first time when Annie asked if Mikasa could snuff out the lantern. )

So today I went with my mother to the town of Fiesole, which overlooks Florence from the north side and is generally a cool place to drop things off of, if you're in the mood for that. It was lovely! My favorite part of the visit was the local monastery, apparently the one-time haunt of Saint Bernardino of Siena--looking him up now, he preached against "gambling, witchcraft, sodomy, and usury," so I'm not sure how many interests we have in common, but his cell was interesting. My mom and I went in and took a picture of ourselves standing in front of the horrible plank bed and I called it a CELLfie. And she said she would lock me in there, which was very cruel.

...okay, I'm severely out of practice with macroblogging, but let me try on a transition. The other thing about Fiesole is that, because it is very high up and you can see all the way down to the city, it reminded me of a favorite book I had not read in a very long time--Dr. Seuss's esteemed The 500 Hats of Bartholomew Cubbins. Which as you literati will know begins with a description of a view from a considerable summit. Not the point! The point is, after being reminded of that, I began to reflect on the mystery that is my enormous affection for Hilary Mantel's Wolf Hall, not only as a feat of revisionism and prose styling, but as an object to drag around rereading constantly. I mean, I don't exactly have high standards for that category! I will reread anything. I have made countless treks through David Clement-Davies' masterwork of Christian wolf iconography, The Sight. But still, Wolf Hall is probably the one I've come back to most of recent reads, and it's definite comfort food at this point, I just find it soothing to nestle down into its luxurious descriptions of taxes and death. And today I also realized that it is basically a retelling of The 500 Hats of Bartholomew Cubbins! Where the hats are "skillsets mastered in Italy," or "feelings of despair and a desire for vengeance against the cardinal's murderers," or "possible women for Henry to speed-date." You know?

I kind of like the last one because it captures the end-game love interest swap that occurs between Cromwell and Henry and Jane. The mental images, though, are a little precarious. (Bring Up The Bodies, subtitled: Bartholomew and the Adultery.)

WAIT. DON'T LEAVE. I have so many more absurd comparisons to get through. No, actually, the last thing I told myself I would talk about in this embarrassingly premeditated blog post, as I strolled down the Tuscan mountainside... well, it is a set of absurd comparisons. Specifically, I've been thinking about this issue in fiction of Tradition Vs. Progress, or ( fate and free will. )

Let's see if I can remember how to do the DW bit, haha. Um, things I've finished recently: the Revolutionary Girl Utena anime, the Hilary Tamar books, and season one of Elementary. My plan is to talk about all of them at once and then be quiet for another three months.

Spoilers ahead, especially for the Elementary finale.

( Revolutionary Girl Utena )

( Hilary Tamar, the Laziest Sleuth )

( Elementary S1 )

I celebrated reaching the halfway point in my readthrough of the Aubrey-Maturin novels by watching the movie--okay, no, that's a lie, I loaded up the movie two weeks ago and then forced myself to wait until I'd actually gotten to the book it was based on before playing it. Scruples were pretty much unnecessary; the plot bore only a family resemblance, and there certainly weren't any spoilers as such. But at least I'm proceeding symmetrically.

It was a fun movie. Not what I was expecting, at all, despite having been told about the Discovery channel documentary interlude in advance: it's interested in a lot of the same territory as the books, but it really distributes its weight differently. ( cut for detail and longwindedness )

On the other hand, O'Brian definitely flirts with similar questions about patriotism and violence without ever committing himself too hard on a material critique, and gets away with it just because he has so much other stuff going on that he can, for example, bring up Stephen's mutinous heart again and again without it putting unreasonable strain on his and Jack's friendship or the reader's patience. Because they're busy adults, with lots of representational pudding on their plates, and an enemy whose flaws are much more evident when conveyed through thousands of pages of intricate historical fiction than through a title card about Napoleon, Master of Europe. Maybe… what I'm really saying here… is that I wish there were more movies. :( Maybe I just want every series I like to go on for way too long and then end with a terrible lack of resolution, more adventures implied to come. Is that so much to ask?? Yes. Yes, it is.

Through careful experimentation, I've determined that my levels of Vorkosigan fannishness are primarily founded on "how long has it been since I read the part of Brothers in Arms where Miles and Galeni are held prisoner", despite the fact that there are a number of other characters that I'm sincerely attached to, and it's not even my favorite in the series.

.../rereads Brothers in Arms

It's just so delightful. What a great book about secret clones. What a satisfying execution of like four of my favorite tropes--let's see, that's "previously wary characters open up to each other because they have nothing to do all day but sit around and wait to get interrogated/killed", "characters get hit with the best inhibition-lowering type truth drug in literature", "character expresses non-pointless but hilarious defiance towards their former loved one and present torturer", and "character resists said truth drug through sheer manic overresponse." Like hitting cans on a fence. The only depressing thing is that in my memory it's always longer. Oh, and I could do with more Mark in the mix. But otherwise: perfect idfic, go directly to Komarran secret-terrorist-cell jail, do not pass Go.

I spent my Thanksgiving break tearing through the Temeraire books, which I dabbled in a few years ago but never really fell in love with. This time I had no such luck-- I have been scouring the internet for fic ever since. 

Anyway, since they happen to be set in proximity with the Napoleonic wars, also the backdrop for one of my favorite fantasy novels, I… wrote a badly thought-out crossover, with a footnote taken straight from the Discworld series for good measure. It's a good thing I signed up for like three different holiday exchanges this year, none of which I have started the fics for yet, or I might feel like I was procrastinating!

( Childermass did not at once hit upon the idea that dragons could be relevant to his translation of the Book. )