hail mary
Monday, 18 May 2026 09:05 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
melannenI went to see Project Hail Mary over the weekend, because I was already pretty deep in the fanfic, and space pretty so it seemed worth catching on the big screen. (I can't remember the last time I went to see a new release on the big screen, but it's been A While.)
It was very pretty! It was very good! I love all the characters! It was exactly the movie I (and based on the reception) a lot of the world needed right now. What if our big problems were things that weren't our fault. But what if we could fix them anyway, just by taking a leap of faith. What if we were strong enough to do what we need to do. What if it was okay that we aren't usually very strong. What if we were so so so so loved loved loved and the power of friendship saved the galaxyand romance never came into it.
I have written a ficlet:
Not All Earth Humans Dumb (just this one) (632 words) by melannen
Fandom: Project Hail Mary (2026)
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Ryland Grace & Rocky
Characters: Ryland Grace, Rocky (Project Hail Mary)
Additional Tags: Missing Scene, Fix-It of Sorts, First Contact, The Hail Mary (ship), Humor
Summary:
I want to write more fanfiction but I am currently getting tripped up on the fact that - other than the characters and space being pretty - what I like most about it is the space travel stuff, the hard SF that I was so ready for, the centrifugal gravity and exobiology based on real known planets and all that stuff - but the plot does not. Sustain that. The plot is pure full-on fairy tale logic that falls apart the moment you try to put any pressure on it from another direction. (...so is a lot of the "hard SF" science.) And this is not necessarily a weak point! The fairy tale plot is why it was the movie I needed right now. And it's not like "nothing hangs together if you think too hard" is that rare in classic hard SF either tbh. But augh. What I want to do about this movie right now is think too hard about it constantly :P
Possibly the book fills in some of the gaps in the movie, though I have a vague recollection that part of why I didn't read it before now is reviews talking about how it doesn't hold together real well either, so I am not counting on it. Also I currently have fifteen library books checked out, including one about the importance of sunlight, one about how animals perceive sound and communicate with it, one about the inner lives of octopi, one about the ecologies of viruses and one about life in the deep sea, and I should probably read at least some of them first. Instead of more PHM fic. :P
But this does feel like the first time in a while a fandom has grabbed me hard enough to be one that really sticks, and also has enough fic already to sustain that, and it *is* about time for that - it's been four years since MCYT. I am trying to be Smart this time and keep track of fics I like while I read them instead of assuming I will come back around and remember, but, uh, we'll see how that goes.
It was very pretty! It was very good! I love all the characters! It was exactly the movie I (and based on the reception) a lot of the world needed right now. What if our big problems were things that weren't our fault. But what if we could fix them anyway, just by taking a leap of faith. What if we were strong enough to do what we need to do. What if it was okay that we aren't usually very strong. What if we were so so so so loved loved loved and the power of friendship saved the galaxy
I have written a ficlet:
Not All Earth Humans Dumb (just this one) (632 words) by melannen
Fandom: Project Hail Mary (2026)
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Ryland Grace & Rocky
Characters: Ryland Grace, Rocky (Project Hail Mary)
Additional Tags: Missing Scene, Fix-It of Sorts, First Contact, The Hail Mary (ship), Humor
Summary:
Rocky's second, slightly calmer tour of the Hail Mary paused for a moment, and for only a bare moment longer Grace was thankful for the chance to catch up. Then the regret started.
I want to write more fanfiction but I am currently getting tripped up on the fact that - other than the characters and space being pretty - what I like most about it is the space travel stuff, the hard SF that I was so ready for, the centrifugal gravity and exobiology based on real known planets and all that stuff - but the plot does not. Sustain that. The plot is pure full-on fairy tale logic that falls apart the moment you try to put any pressure on it from another direction. (...so is a lot of the "hard SF" science.) And this is not necessarily a weak point! The fairy tale plot is why it was the movie I needed right now. And it's not like "nothing hangs together if you think too hard" is that rare in classic hard SF either tbh. But augh. What I want to do about this movie right now is think too hard about it constantly :P
Possibly the book fills in some of the gaps in the movie, though I have a vague recollection that part of why I didn't read it before now is reviews talking about how it doesn't hold together real well either, so I am not counting on it. Also I currently have fifteen library books checked out, including one about the importance of sunlight, one about how animals perceive sound and communicate with it, one about the inner lives of octopi, one about the ecologies of viruses and one about life in the deep sea, and I should probably read at least some of them first. Instead of more PHM fic. :P
But this does feel like the first time in a while a fandom has grabbed me hard enough to be one that really sticks, and also has enough fic already to sustain that, and it *is* about time for that - it's been four years since MCYT. I am trying to be Smart this time and keep track of fics I like while I read them instead of assuming I will come back around and remember, but, uh, we'll see how that goes.
(no subject)
Saturday, 16 May 2026 07:53 amskygiantsI do think there is a particular charm, a particular interest, in a biographer who is really visibly in love with their subject. Like, you probably wouldn't want it in every biography. But it's nice to know that the author really extremely wants to be there. It gives an enjoyable sort of tension to the reading experience: at what point is the book going to go off-the-rails because the author has spontaneously transmigrated back to 1931 in a doomed attempt to alter the course of history and fix Buster Keaton's Hollywood career with the power of her passion alone? It could happen! It feels like everything has been foreshadowing it!
Obviously Camera Man: Buster Keaton, the Dawn of Cinema, and the Invention of the of the Twentieth Century does not in fact go off the rails in this way, it does actually remain an interesting and readable biography that uses Keaton's life and career as a jumping-off point to explore the times in which he lived. In the book's introduction, Stevens explains that her fascination with Keaton is such that whenever I heard about something that took place between 1895 and 1966, I found myself trying to fit that event or phenomenon into the puzzle of his life and work. (She also uses the introduction to share a poem she wrote about Keaton. It's not bad!) Anyway, this is a pretty fruitful methodology that leads her to down various side paths to explore not just the history of early cinema but other twentieth-century touchstones such as changing child labor laws, vaudeville and minstrel shows, the rise of Alcoholics' Anonymous, and the career of F. Scott Fitzgerald.*
Often these aren't things that directly impacted Keaton -- Keaton never participated in AA, for example; by the time the program started to gain popularity, Keaton had already hit his rock bottom and come out the other side -- but they run along parallel tracks, such that Keaton's life casts a mirror on the phenomenon or vice versa, or there's an interesting alternate pathway to be imagined where they did indeed intersect. Keaton and Chaplin only worked together once, but you can't help but compare/contrast their trajectories; Keaton and Fitzgerald may never even have met at all, but the downward arcs of their careers were both intertwined with MGM executive Irving Thalberg, on whom Fitzgerald based his last novel.
(Also, it can't have helped with Fitzgerald's fascination, says Stevens, that Thalberg was also extraordinarily good-looking, slight-framed and serious-faced, with large, liquid brown eyes and wavy black hair -- an appearance not unlike that of a certain slapstick comedian whose contract his company had just acquired. We DON'T know they met but we DO know that if they did, Fitzgerald would CERTAINLY have thought Keaton was hot!)
It feels, in other words, like exactly what it is -- a book written by a person whose obsession with one individual has led them down a number of other interesting rabbitholes, to fruitful if not entirely cohesive results. If Keaton had been a fictional character, this might have been a 120K fanfic with a number of beautifully researched, oddly specific chapters. Because Keaton is a real person, we got this book. I had a great time!
Obviously Camera Man: Buster Keaton, the Dawn of Cinema, and the Invention of the of the Twentieth Century does not in fact go off the rails in this way, it does actually remain an interesting and readable biography that uses Keaton's life and career as a jumping-off point to explore the times in which he lived. In the book's introduction, Stevens explains that her fascination with Keaton is such that whenever I heard about something that took place between 1895 and 1966, I found myself trying to fit that event or phenomenon into the puzzle of his life and work. (She also uses the introduction to share a poem she wrote about Keaton. It's not bad!) Anyway, this is a pretty fruitful methodology that leads her to down various side paths to explore not just the history of early cinema but other twentieth-century touchstones such as changing child labor laws, vaudeville and minstrel shows, the rise of Alcoholics' Anonymous, and the career of F. Scott Fitzgerald.*
Often these aren't things that directly impacted Keaton -- Keaton never participated in AA, for example; by the time the program started to gain popularity, Keaton had already hit his rock bottom and come out the other side -- but they run along parallel tracks, such that Keaton's life casts a mirror on the phenomenon or vice versa, or there's an interesting alternate pathway to be imagined where they did indeed intersect. Keaton and Chaplin only worked together once, but you can't help but compare/contrast their trajectories; Keaton and Fitzgerald may never even have met at all, but the downward arcs of their careers were both intertwined with MGM executive Irving Thalberg, on whom Fitzgerald based his last novel.
(Also, it can't have helped with Fitzgerald's fascination, says Stevens, that Thalberg was also extraordinarily good-looking, slight-framed and serious-faced, with large, liquid brown eyes and wavy black hair -- an appearance not unlike that of a certain slapstick comedian whose contract his company had just acquired. We DON'T know they met but we DO know that if they did, Fitzgerald would CERTAINLY have thought Keaton was hot!)
It feels, in other words, like exactly what it is -- a book written by a person whose obsession with one individual has led them down a number of other interesting rabbitholes, to fruitful if not entirely cohesive results. If Keaton had been a fictional character, this might have been a 120K fanfic with a number of beautifully researched, oddly specific chapters. Because Keaton is a real person, we got this book. I had a great time!
"Drabble: Ned Stark's Firstborn." (ASOIAF) G
Thursday, 14 May 2026 06:57 pmlannamichaelsTitle: Drabble: Ned Stark's Firstborn.
Author:
lannamichaelsFandom: A Song Of Ice & Fire/Game Of Thrones
Rating: G
A/N: As threatened, the one where Jon Snow is Ned Stark's bastard.
Archives: Archive Of Our Own, SquidgeWorld
Summary: Her name was Jeyne Ley.
( Drabble! )
(no subject)
Monday, 11 May 2026 08:36 pmskygiantsI don't know that Angela Thirlwell's Rosalind: A Biography of Shakespeare's Immortal Heroine was particularly mind-blowing for me as a text in terms of new knowledge or insights on As You Like It. However, it certainly was satisfying for me to read, in the way it is always satisfying to read a book with someone who passionately agrees with you about a mildly contrarian fannish opinion, like:
Angela Thirlwell: I simply think Rosalind is the absolute top-tier Shakespeare heroine
Me [nodding vigorously]: How true!
Angela Thirlwell: she is so witty and clever and in absolute total narrative control of her text and also doing gender like nobody else in Shakespeare
Me [nodding vigorously]: I think everyone who puts on an As You Like It should read your book!
Angela Thirwell: and As You Like It is a brilliant work that hangs together brilliantly in its entirety
Me [nodding en--pausing]: well I'm not sure I agree entirely with that
Angela Thirlwell: and here's my chapter on Rosalind's Daughters which includes every literary heroine I've ever loved. Elizabeth Bennet is kind of a Rosalind when you think about it.
Me [nodding politely]: I see, I see. Do you have any evidence for that?
Angela Thirlwell: Well, no. But! I believe it in my heart. Because Rosalind is the best!
Me [nodding vigorously]: She's the best!
The part that was probably most interesting for me in terms of actual new thoughts about Rosalind and As You Like It was the contextualization of the play in in terms of when, exactly, it was written, and what other plays it sits alongside in its canonical period, including some that are relatively unfamiliar to me -- I don't actually have a great constant sense in my head of Shakespeare's timeline (other than the obvious TEMPEST IS THE LAST) and the Great Chronological DWJ Project has made me much more interested in tracing the way a train of thought evolves over the course of somebody's work. It's interesting to see Rosalind and Viola as different ways of working out a concept that begins all the way back in Two Gentlemen of Verona; Thirlwell makes much of the fact that Viola is stressed and and serious and poetic whereas Rosalind is almost always speaking in comic prose, and takes charge of her own epilogue. Indeed she never forgets to remind us that Rosalind has the epilogue. You can tell what Thirlwell's favorite bits of the play are because she will quote them at least times in the text in order to prove five different points, blissfully unconcerned with repetition. I personally did not need to return quite so many times to the Bay of Portugal but I guess even the fact that Rosalind speaks the greatest percentage of her play of any Shakespeare heroine [good for her!] does not provide that many Rosalind lines to quote from.
Anyway. Do I think you ought to read this book if not for the pleasure of nodding vigorously along with various enthusiastic statements about Rosalind? Like, do I think it will transform you into a person who nods vigorously along with enthusiastic statements about Rosalind, if you were not one previously? Who could say! Report back if you find out!
Angela Thirlwell: I simply think Rosalind is the absolute top-tier Shakespeare heroine
Me [nodding vigorously]: How true!
Angela Thirlwell: she is so witty and clever and in absolute total narrative control of her text and also doing gender like nobody else in Shakespeare
Me [nodding vigorously]: I think everyone who puts on an As You Like It should read your book!
Angela Thirwell: and As You Like It is a brilliant work that hangs together brilliantly in its entirety
Me [nodding en--pausing]: well I'm not sure I agree entirely with that
Angela Thirlwell: and here's my chapter on Rosalind's Daughters which includes every literary heroine I've ever loved. Elizabeth Bennet is kind of a Rosalind when you think about it.
Me [nodding politely]: I see, I see. Do you have any evidence for that?
Angela Thirlwell: Well, no. But! I believe it in my heart. Because Rosalind is the best!
Me [nodding vigorously]: She's the best!
The part that was probably most interesting for me in terms of actual new thoughts about Rosalind and As You Like It was the contextualization of the play in in terms of when, exactly, it was written, and what other plays it sits alongside in its canonical period, including some that are relatively unfamiliar to me -- I don't actually have a great constant sense in my head of Shakespeare's timeline (other than the obvious TEMPEST IS THE LAST) and the Great Chronological DWJ Project has made me much more interested in tracing the way a train of thought evolves over the course of somebody's work. It's interesting to see Rosalind and Viola as different ways of working out a concept that begins all the way back in Two Gentlemen of Verona; Thirlwell makes much of the fact that Viola is stressed and and serious and poetic whereas Rosalind is almost always speaking in comic prose, and takes charge of her own epilogue. Indeed she never forgets to remind us that Rosalind has the epilogue. You can tell what Thirlwell's favorite bits of the play are because she will quote them at least times in the text in order to prove five different points, blissfully unconcerned with repetition. I personally did not need to return quite so many times to the Bay of Portugal but I guess even the fact that Rosalind speaks the greatest percentage of her play of any Shakespeare heroine [good for her!] does not provide that many Rosalind lines to quote from.
Anyway. Do I think you ought to read this book if not for the pleasure of nodding vigorously along with various enthusiastic statements about Rosalind? Like, do I think it will transform you into a person who nods vigorously along with enthusiastic statements about Rosalind, if you were not one previously? Who could say! Report back if you find out!
Game of Thrones of Ice And Fire
Monday, 11 May 2026 03:29 pmlannamichaelsI have been reading Game of Thrones fic (and
Apparently I've been pronouncing Baratheon wrong all these years?
This is just like the whole Patreon thing all over again, isn't it. I always thought it was "pa-TRAY-on", and apparnetly everyone else in the world calls it "pay-tree-on".
And now we've got "bear-ah-they-on", which is actually (????) "ba-rath-ee-on". Oh. All rightie then.
So on that note, here are three GOT WIP recs:
- The Songs and the Stories, the Lies and the Glories by
leupagus. Baelor "Breakspear" Targaryen/Duncan the Tall. Come for the loyalty kink, stay for the loyalty kink. Just truly an incredible amount of loyalty kink. Baelor lives and becomes king and is doing his best not to fall into bed with Duncan, and when they do get in bed, not have sex. Because it would be such a bad idea to do it. Even though they both want it. A lot.
Can be read without knowing a single bit of canon for this spin-off or which Targayren is which. - Life and Honor by
- Scarlet Woman by
This in contrast to other GOT fics where the characters are like "I need to get rid of Tywin, I don't care how many people need to die or suffer for me to do it, my one single enemy, the only problem in the world, is Tywin, and the only way I can kill him is by killing a lot of people who aren't the problem in order to get to him" and that's treated as understandable, a good thing to do. Oh, you have to go to war in order to protect Jon Snow from Tywin? It's morally justifiable to kill uncounted numbers of people, just because you need to get rid of The Big Bad, when The Big Bad does not have magical powers, is not super powered, he's just very very rich and well connected? You decide to create a war to get rid of this guy, a war that you could easily lose, just for Tywin Lannister? In a universe where there are magical assassins???? Two kinds of magical assassins, actually, I think????
And so then you have this fic, where Lysa decides to get rid of Tywin in revenge for him raping her (yeah, I didn't copy the pairing tag because I don't really consider it the pairing of the fic), but she has to do it in a way that 1) Tywin will die knowing she's the instrument of his downfall but, 2) no one else knows that she had anything to do with it. And she goes about it in a horrifying horrible way. But. At no point is this decision justified as being moral or the right thing to do. Because Lysa isn't moral and she's doing the right thing for herself as she'd decided it, to protect her own power.
[Vorkosigan] Six Sentence Sunday
Sunday, 10 May 2026 02:47 pmlannamichaelsYou know how it is, when you start with a vague idea and a summary and then you write 4K in a day and you have written yourself out of that summary being suitable? Yeah. That.
The summary it should have fitted itself to: "Keep your friends close, your enemies closer, and your feckless cousin closest of all." Wherein there would be porn and Gregor deciding that Ivan couldn't actually be mediocre and/or learned that trying to do well just got him unwanted attention. No, Ivan must be faking it on purpose.
Unfortunately then I dropped too heavily into Gregor's depression, so, uh, if this gets to the porn, it's going to take some doing. Also I have to do some serious tense editings because I started it in past tense but of course ever since I made the mistake of ever writoing in present tense, I must needs deal with tense shifting problems forevermore.
Point of diversion is that Gregor assigns Ivan to Residence Security right out of the Academy to keep an eye on him, and kicks Miles out after the mutiny.
Why couldn't Miles have ever learned to fake obedience as well as Ivan had? Ivan's flawless at his disguise. Why must Miles be so frustrating? Gregor feels even more hollow than usual as Aral nods his acknowledgment and mumbles a perfunctory, "your will, my liege."
It's the first time Gregor's tried exercising Imperial muscles in years and it's still all because Miles Vorkosigan is uncontrollable.
Gregor can't meet his gaze in the mirror as his armsman shaves him that night, and he accepts the sleeping pill with resignation.
(no subject)
Saturday, 9 May 2026 09:47 amskygiantsI have succumbed to peer pressure and started rereading Robin Hobb's Farseer trilogy -- well that's not true, I have reread the first book, Assassin's Apprentice, and told myself [lying] I PROBABLY won't go on from here, I just want to remember what's what! But it seems I will in fact be going on from here because to my surprise I thought Assassin's Apprentice was better than I expected or indeed remembered it being and now I want to get to the Liveship Traders trilogy, which is the one I actually actively remember as being good [citation: fourteen-year-old Becca, a notoriously unreliable narrator as we have many times established.]
The thing is I essentially remembered nothing about Assassin's Apprentice because at the time I read it I didn't really know the narrative value of the fraught emotional bond between a protagonist and their mediocre-to-bad mentor and Assassin's Apprentice is NOTHING but mediocre-to-bad mentors. This book is chockablock full of problematic adults intensely projecting their various personal traumas and failures on our young protagonist and attempting to extend him care and guidance through these various highly distorted lenses, and unfortunately their best at its best is never very good but you can't say they're not trying: not really appealing to me at fourteen but delicious to me at forty.
Assassin's Apprentice begins with the arrival of our protagonist on a royal doorstep, age sixish: this kid is the illegitimate son of the famously upright, faithful, virtuous, happily married, non-slutty heir to the throne, Prince Chivalry, and his unknown relatives have decided that it's time for the child to be Chivalry's problem. This immediately and publicly blows up the entire political situation in the country, as Chivalry and his wife subsequently remove themselves from the line of succession and retire to a remote country estate without ever interacting with the child in question.
So that's Fitz, a kid with no official status who's a walking Weird Situation For Everyone. As for his various mediocre mentors, we've got:
Burrich, who was Chivalry's overwhelmingly devoted right-hand man, and due to a one-two-three punch of inconveniently timed injury/Fitz's arrival/Chivalry's retirement has found himself demoted from Heroic Hand of the Heir to the Throne to local stablemaster and accidental foster parent to the kid who blew up his life and his boss'
Chade, the king's assassin, who started from a similar position to Fitz and has been tasked by the king with molding Fitz into just as useful a tool for the royal dynasty as Chade has been for all these years
Verity, Fitz's uncle and the new responsible-but-overwhelmed heir to the throne, a pleasant and dutiful man with minimal emotional intelligence, who is always sort of absently nice to Fitz until the Kingdom's Problems start Eating Him Alive and suddenly things become enjoyably fraught as the potential increasingly arises that perhaps the Kingdom's Problems would eat Verity alive a little less if he let them eat Fitz alive a little more, but he is not going to do that! because he has ethics! but they both know that the possibility is there!!
Lady Patience, Chivalry's wife, who shows up midway through the book when Fitz is a teenager like 'oops possibly this child should have been parented by us? who says you can't fix the failures of the past! I'm doing it right now!'
What I find charming about Lady Patience in particular is that it's really obvious that to Chivalry she was his beautiful carefree manic pixie dream girl and to everyone else she is a nightmare. In fact all these people are sort of nightmares, and they all do care deeply about Fitz, and are also all failing him in important ways that have to do with their own deeply personal blind spots. The book's strength is in the evenhanded way it looks at these people and their strengths and their failures, and lets both the love and the mistakes matter equally.
The book's weakness is in that Robin Hobb apparently decided that since she had all these deeply flawed sympathetic characters, she also needed some actual villains that no one could possibly feel sympathetic about. There's an evil prince who wants to usurp the throne, and there are also some evil pirates who are kidnapping people from the kingdom and turning them into Soulless Monsters, or rather whatblotthis accurately describes as video game NPCs that you don't need to feel bad about killing. The fact that Hobb goes to great lengths to explain how everyone is very distraught about the situation and does some failed experiments to ensure that there's no way to turn these people back from being soulless monsters and you really truly don't need to feel bad about killing them really just makes it worse.
Also, I think it's important to note that Robin Hobb really is better than most of her peers at thinking about the practical requirements of domestic animals in a Nineties Eurofantasy environment; the proper care of horses and dogs forms a significant underlying element of the book and occasionally becomes a major plot point, especially since Fitz's Special Secret Skill is dog telepathy [Burrich thinks From Personal Experience this is an evil perversion that will ruin Fitz's life and that he must train out of Fitz as much as possible] [this is definitely not a metaphor for anything] [Robin Hobb wants to know how you could you possibly ask that]. Anyway the flip side of this is that Robin Hobb will Not hesitate to kill a puppy. Never think she won't do it. She has a knife to another puppy's throat right now. ( spoilers )
The thing is I essentially remembered nothing about Assassin's Apprentice because at the time I read it I didn't really know the narrative value of the fraught emotional bond between a protagonist and their mediocre-to-bad mentor and Assassin's Apprentice is NOTHING but mediocre-to-bad mentors. This book is chockablock full of problematic adults intensely projecting their various personal traumas and failures on our young protagonist and attempting to extend him care and guidance through these various highly distorted lenses, and unfortunately their best at its best is never very good but you can't say they're not trying: not really appealing to me at fourteen but delicious to me at forty.
Assassin's Apprentice begins with the arrival of our protagonist on a royal doorstep, age sixish: this kid is the illegitimate son of the famously upright, faithful, virtuous, happily married, non-slutty heir to the throne, Prince Chivalry, and his unknown relatives have decided that it's time for the child to be Chivalry's problem. This immediately and publicly blows up the entire political situation in the country, as Chivalry and his wife subsequently remove themselves from the line of succession and retire to a remote country estate without ever interacting with the child in question.
So that's Fitz, a kid with no official status who's a walking Weird Situation For Everyone. As for his various mediocre mentors, we've got:
Burrich, who was Chivalry's overwhelmingly devoted right-hand man, and due to a one-two-three punch of inconveniently timed injury/Fitz's arrival/Chivalry's retirement has found himself demoted from Heroic Hand of the Heir to the Throne to local stablemaster and accidental foster parent to the kid who blew up his life and his boss'
Chade, the king's assassin, who started from a similar position to Fitz and has been tasked by the king with molding Fitz into just as useful a tool for the royal dynasty as Chade has been for all these years
Verity, Fitz's uncle and the new responsible-but-overwhelmed heir to the throne, a pleasant and dutiful man with minimal emotional intelligence, who is always sort of absently nice to Fitz until the Kingdom's Problems start Eating Him Alive and suddenly things become enjoyably fraught as the potential increasingly arises that perhaps the Kingdom's Problems would eat Verity alive a little less if he let them eat Fitz alive a little more, but he is not going to do that! because he has ethics! but they both know that the possibility is there!!
Lady Patience, Chivalry's wife, who shows up midway through the book when Fitz is a teenager like 'oops possibly this child should have been parented by us? who says you can't fix the failures of the past! I'm doing it right now!'
What I find charming about Lady Patience in particular is that it's really obvious that to Chivalry she was his beautiful carefree manic pixie dream girl and to everyone else she is a nightmare. In fact all these people are sort of nightmares, and they all do care deeply about Fitz, and are also all failing him in important ways that have to do with their own deeply personal blind spots. The book's strength is in the evenhanded way it looks at these people and their strengths and their failures, and lets both the love and the mistakes matter equally.
The book's weakness is in that Robin Hobb apparently decided that since she had all these deeply flawed sympathetic characters, she also needed some actual villains that no one could possibly feel sympathetic about. There's an evil prince who wants to usurp the throne, and there are also some evil pirates who are kidnapping people from the kingdom and turning them into Soulless Monsters, or rather what
blotthis accurately describes as video game NPCs that you don't need to feel bad about killing. The fact that Hobb goes to great lengths to explain how everyone is very distraught about the situation and does some failed experiments to ensure that there's no way to turn these people back from being soulless monsters and you really truly don't need to feel bad about killing them really just makes it worse. Also, I think it's important to note that Robin Hobb really is better than most of her peers at thinking about the practical requirements of domestic animals in a Nineties Eurofantasy environment; the proper care of horses and dogs forms a significant underlying element of the book and occasionally becomes a major plot point, especially since Fitz's Special Secret Skill is dog telepathy [Burrich thinks From Personal Experience this is an evil perversion that will ruin Fitz's life and that he must train out of Fitz as much as possible] [this is definitely not a metaphor for anything] [Robin Hobb wants to know how you could you possibly ask that]. Anyway the flip side of this is that Robin Hobb will Not hesitate to kill a puppy. Never think she won't do it. She has a knife to another puppy's throat right now. ( spoilers )
recent watching
Saturday, 9 May 2026 08:36 amphilomythaCallan
A 1960s-70s TV series about David Callan, government assassin. It seems not all of this survives, but some of it is available on DVD and we've been watching the black and white episodes. Some of them were evidently recovered in a slightly weird way and you get odd ghostly images and moments when the picture jumps slightly, but it didn't matter because it's very watchable. It's a tightly written, dark series about an unmentionable branch of the British government that does assassinations and other black ops. Callan is our expert, miserable, lonely assassin and general purpose operative, assigned to jobs like helping the Israelis abduct a Nazi war criminal for trial, or figuring out whether or not a young woman is about to leak nuclear secrets to the Soviets, or investigating the mysterious death of a French intelligence agent, or retrieving his new boss from East Germany through a minefield. Sometimes he's clearly doing something important, other times it's all a disaster, and when he can Callan makes his own decisions about who lives and who doesn't. The government department is extremely cold: they routinely torture people or question them under drugs, the commanding officer - always named Charley Hunter regardless of his actual name - has little regard for his men's safety or how many innocent people get hurt in the process of saving the nation, and Callan's fellow assassin is a very posh sadist. It's only by contrast with them that Callan is a nice guy. Callan's only friend is a shabby little petty thief known as Lonely who Callan bullies, insults and protects in equal degree and who can be relied upon to follow people, burgle houses, keep watch or know a fellow petty criminal who can do anything Callan wants done. In return Callan will fight anyone up to and including his fellow assassins and his boss to protect Lonely from harm, and also makes sure he eats and bathes occasionally. We've watched maybe a dozen of the episodes and they've all been very well done.
The Baader-Meinhof Complex (2008)
A German-language film about the Red Army Faction far-left terrorists of the 1970s and 80s. I didn't really know what to expect going into this, it's 18-rated which I tend to be a bit wary of, and there was a lot of very graphic violence. But it was absolutely fascinating, it's not a documentary or a biopic but it is attempting to stay very close to the historical events, showing very clearly both the understandable and even virtuous motives of the RAF and their reasoning behind their actions and the extent to which they had public support - and also the devastation they caused and the destruction of lives eventually including their own. A really good unflinching look at terrorism, and at a segment of history that I have read a little of lately but not in depth.
Design For Living (1933)
A film I have heard about for years and never watched, the classic OT3 of all OT3s. Based - loosely - on the Noel Coward play of the same title, this is about Gilda and the two young men, George and Tom, she meets in a train compartment. George is a painter, Tom a playwright, Gilda a commercial artist, and after Gilda goes out with both men simultaneously, they end up living in a platonic menage a trois. However, this falls apart when Gilda sleeps with one of the two, and after that the narrative tries out all the dyads possible: Gilda and George, Gilda and Tom, then Gilda decides to try being respectable and marries Mr Impeccable Virtue and Three Square Meals Plunkett leaving George and Tom alone together - but none of the dyads work and eventually the three of them drive off into the sunset together. The film is hilarious and adorable and tremendous fun to watch, I highly recommend it. I found it on Youtube here if anyone else wants to enjoy a hilarious and sincerely OT3 romp. And I shall have to try to track down the play to see what the differences are.
In other film-related news, Cub spent his Christmas money on a small projector and screen and has created a mini beanbag cinema, and therefore has suddenly taken an interest in watching films - he always refused to watch films before and said he didn't like them at all. Now, watching films on your own is boring, but watching films with Mum is a lot more fun especially if Mum can be persuaded to provide snacks too. Anyway, Cub is quite cautious with films and doesn't want anything with too much in the way of gore, emotional distress or kissing, and he does like war stories, so older war films of the more sanitised but still exciting kind are right up his street. He had a wonderful time with The Great Escape and We Dive At Dawn and Angels One Five and The Colditz Story and The Guns of Navarone, he liked Ice Cold In Alex too though it had a bit more kissing than he really wanted, but when I tried him on Master & Commander for a change of pace (and no kissing!) he found the whole children having their arms amputated aspect, plus a suicide, a bit too upsetting and didn't sleep well afterwards, and also while I tried to persuade him that it represented the pinnacle of technology at the time he wasn't having it; he wanted engines! The Imitation Game got points for being a true story and about computers, though he found the multiple threads confusing. He thoroughly enjoyed Top Gun: Maverick which has just about an acceptable kissing:aircraft ratio and we've just started Mission Impossible though this also has slightly more kissing than he really wants but also superb action sequences. I'd like to try him on Star Trek but so far he has been very resistant to aliens and spaceships as far too unrealistic, he likes stories about things that relate to the real world or to history best - he asked me suspiciously if Mission Impossible was superheroes when I suggested it, and he is very anti anything that involves fantasy. Obviously at some point I will have to introduce him to Bond. And I'll happily take suggestions for other things, especially if they're available on BBC iPlayer or one of the other UK streaming TV services.
A 1960s-70s TV series about David Callan, government assassin. It seems not all of this survives, but some of it is available on DVD and we've been watching the black and white episodes. Some of them were evidently recovered in a slightly weird way and you get odd ghostly images and moments when the picture jumps slightly, but it didn't matter because it's very watchable. It's a tightly written, dark series about an unmentionable branch of the British government that does assassinations and other black ops. Callan is our expert, miserable, lonely assassin and general purpose operative, assigned to jobs like helping the Israelis abduct a Nazi war criminal for trial, or figuring out whether or not a young woman is about to leak nuclear secrets to the Soviets, or investigating the mysterious death of a French intelligence agent, or retrieving his new boss from East Germany through a minefield. Sometimes he's clearly doing something important, other times it's all a disaster, and when he can Callan makes his own decisions about who lives and who doesn't. The government department is extremely cold: they routinely torture people or question them under drugs, the commanding officer - always named Charley Hunter regardless of his actual name - has little regard for his men's safety or how many innocent people get hurt in the process of saving the nation, and Callan's fellow assassin is a very posh sadist. It's only by contrast with them that Callan is a nice guy. Callan's only friend is a shabby little petty thief known as Lonely who Callan bullies, insults and protects in equal degree and who can be relied upon to follow people, burgle houses, keep watch or know a fellow petty criminal who can do anything Callan wants done. In return Callan will fight anyone up to and including his fellow assassins and his boss to protect Lonely from harm, and also makes sure he eats and bathes occasionally. We've watched maybe a dozen of the episodes and they've all been very well done.
The Baader-Meinhof Complex (2008)
A German-language film about the Red Army Faction far-left terrorists of the 1970s and 80s. I didn't really know what to expect going into this, it's 18-rated which I tend to be a bit wary of, and there was a lot of very graphic violence. But it was absolutely fascinating, it's not a documentary or a biopic but it is attempting to stay very close to the historical events, showing very clearly both the understandable and even virtuous motives of the RAF and their reasoning behind their actions and the extent to which they had public support - and also the devastation they caused and the destruction of lives eventually including their own. A really good unflinching look at terrorism, and at a segment of history that I have read a little of lately but not in depth.
Design For Living (1933)
A film I have heard about for years and never watched, the classic OT3 of all OT3s. Based - loosely - on the Noel Coward play of the same title, this is about Gilda and the two young men, George and Tom, she meets in a train compartment. George is a painter, Tom a playwright, Gilda a commercial artist, and after Gilda goes out with both men simultaneously, they end up living in a platonic menage a trois. However, this falls apart when Gilda sleeps with one of the two, and after that the narrative tries out all the dyads possible: Gilda and George, Gilda and Tom, then Gilda decides to try being respectable and marries Mr Impeccable Virtue and Three Square Meals Plunkett leaving George and Tom alone together - but none of the dyads work and eventually the three of them drive off into the sunset together. The film is hilarious and adorable and tremendous fun to watch, I highly recommend it. I found it on Youtube here if anyone else wants to enjoy a hilarious and sincerely OT3 romp. And I shall have to try to track down the play to see what the differences are.
In other film-related news, Cub spent his Christmas money on a small projector and screen and has created a mini beanbag cinema, and therefore has suddenly taken an interest in watching films - he always refused to watch films before and said he didn't like them at all. Now, watching films on your own is boring, but watching films with Mum is a lot more fun especially if Mum can be persuaded to provide snacks too. Anyway, Cub is quite cautious with films and doesn't want anything with too much in the way of gore, emotional distress or kissing, and he does like war stories, so older war films of the more sanitised but still exciting kind are right up his street. He had a wonderful time with The Great Escape and We Dive At Dawn and Angels One Five and The Colditz Story and The Guns of Navarone, he liked Ice Cold In Alex too though it had a bit more kissing than he really wanted, but when I tried him on Master & Commander for a change of pace (and no kissing!) he found the whole children having their arms amputated aspect, plus a suicide, a bit too upsetting and didn't sleep well afterwards, and also while I tried to persuade him that it represented the pinnacle of technology at the time he wasn't having it; he wanted engines! The Imitation Game got points for being a true story and about computers, though he found the multiple threads confusing. He thoroughly enjoyed Top Gun: Maverick which has just about an acceptable kissing:aircraft ratio and we've just started Mission Impossible though this also has slightly more kissing than he really wants but also superb action sequences. I'd like to try him on Star Trek but so far he has been very resistant to aliens and spaceships as far too unrealistic, he likes stories about things that relate to the real world or to history best - he asked me suspiciously if Mission Impossible was superheroes when I suggested it, and he is very anti anything that involves fantasy. Obviously at some point I will have to introduce him to Bond. And I'll happily take suggestions for other things, especially if they're available on BBC iPlayer or one of the other UK streaming TV services.
(no subject)
Friday, 8 May 2026 11:15 pmmarinaOn the personal front, I've been low-grade sick for a while. ( health stuff )
*
So, I watched S2 of The Pitt and I have thoughts. A lot of them are thinky thoughts about meta narratives and, because I enjoy the show so much, where I think it does poorly, so you know. FYI this is the content below the cut.
( spoilers for The Pitt S2 )
*
So, I watched S2 of The Pitt and I have thoughts. A lot of them are thinky thoughts about meta narratives and, because I enjoy the show so much, where I think it does poorly, so you know. FYI this is the content below the cut.
( spoilers for The Pitt S2 )
(no subject)
Friday, 8 May 2026 05:24 pmlannamichaelsCan the person who keeps putting in AO3 password reset requests for me please knock it off?
They did this last year too but at least that was only a bunch in one day, these keep happening.
Ughhhh.
A cat sonnet
Friday, 8 May 2026 04:13 pmpetraThere are a thousand spots to sit at home:
Upon the couch, on laundry, not just laps.
But just as all the old roads lead to Rome,
The cat returns to sit on me. Perhaps
She smells the cortisol of stress, and knows
That I'm inclined to stroke her velvet fur --
Once void-black, now specked galaxy, it flows
Softer than kitten fluff. And so she purrs,
Then settles with her head upon my wrist
And tush on laptop keys, immune to shame.
Despite spring air, my little cat finds bliss
In cuddling up and acting nearly tame.
Nine pounds of feline is enough to pin
Me to the couch, and so her reign begins.
Upon the couch, on laundry, not just laps.
But just as all the old roads lead to Rome,
The cat returns to sit on me. Perhaps
She smells the cortisol of stress, and knows
That I'm inclined to stroke her velvet fur --
Once void-black, now specked galaxy, it flows
Softer than kitten fluff. And so she purrs,
Then settles with her head upon my wrist
And tush on laptop keys, immune to shame.
Despite spring air, my little cat finds bliss
In cuddling up and acting nearly tame.
Nine pounds of feline is enough to pin
Me to the couch, and so her reign begins.
Familect word: Cat-like reflexes / Cat-like timing
Friday, 8 May 2026 10:53 ampetraI recently got a new TENS device intended to stop migraines. The zap cycle lasts 45 minutes and makes it extremely uncomfortable to move one arm. I will report back when I know more.
This morning, the cat jumped on my lap at minute 46, just as I was going to peel off the electrodes. I could've been petting her with the other arm, but nooooo.
She is generally the entity in the house accused of cat-like reflexes, but humans can do it too.
This morning, the cat jumped on my lap at minute 46, just as I was going to peel off the electrodes. I could've been petting her with the other arm, but nooooo.
She is generally the entity in the house accused of cat-like reflexes, but humans can do it too.
May Challenge 2026: Theater
Thursday, 7 May 2026 10:18 pmpodfic_bingo_mod posting in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
podfic_bingo
The theme challenge for this month is Theater (Please include the tag challenge: theater when you post.) Theme challenges have to do with fic choice. Since this month's challenge is 'theater' your story has to be related to that theme one way or another.
The shape challenge is ‘u shape' (tag challenge: u shape). This should be at minimum 5 squares, ie:
OOOOO
OOOOO
OOOOO
OXOXO
OXXXO
Shape challenges require that you complete a specific shape of squares on your card. If you complete a shape challenge by the deadline, you’ll win a cheat. If your card already has the shape formation before the challenge starts, you can only count that challenge as completed if you fill at least one square on your card within the challenge time period.
You can pick the challenge you prefer or do both if you're feeling ambitious. Once you’ve posted the podfic required to fulfill the monthly challenge, please comment here to let us know you’ve completed the challenge.
If you complete a challenge, you earn a cheat. If none of the challenges appeal to you, you can also earn cheats by commenting on other people's podfics.
What are Cheats?
Cheats are rewards that allow participants to manipulate their cards so that they can be finished more easily. There are 2 kinds of cheats: shifting squares and swapping out squares. Shifting squares allows participants to swap locations of two squares on their card. Swapping out cheats allow you to discard one of your prompts entirely from your card and replace it with a prompt of your choosing from the Prompt List.
Happy World Password Day!
Thursday, 7 May 2026 08:23 pmpetraTime to update your AO3 password. It can now be 72 characters long.
Here, have a website that counts characters.
So far my favorite possible maximal password I won't use is:
Little pig little pig let me in! Not by the hair on my chinny-chin-chin!
(Sorry about the lack of vocative commas, but 72 is a harsh mistress.)
If you like poetry, there's always:
Whose woods these are I think I know. His house is in the village though
Bring me your favorite 72-character phrase that you Won't use as an AO3 password!
Here, have a website that counts characters.
So far my favorite possible maximal password I won't use is:
Little pig little pig let me in! Not by the hair on my chinny-chin-chin!
(Sorry about the lack of vocative commas, but 72 is a harsh mistress.)
If you like poetry, there's always:
Whose woods these are I think I know. His house is in the village though
Bring me your favorite 72-character phrase that you Won't use as an AO3 password!