Lost Prince newsletter! Tell me if you've posted something about The Lost Prince, because I am not exactly being scientific about this newsletter. >.>

- osprey_archer has written a ficlet about Marco and the Rat in a dungeon together! And posted Chapter 1 of The Unlikely Traitor, a fic in which Rat goes into the dungeon alone. :(

- I wrote a ficlet about the Rat and Marco in old age and a ficlet about Lazarus and Stefan having a thing.

- The fandom began a collaborative story! (Okay, no, what happened is that I wrote a ficlet about Marco accidentally making a double entendre, and then halotolerant wrote another. But if three more people write them, WE HAVE A FIVE THINGS STORY. :)?)

- A discussion was had about crossing The Lost Prince over with Monstrous Regiment. I am mainly linking to this because I am desperate for someone not-me to write it.

Also posted on Dreamwidth at http://surexit.dreamwidth.org/84337.html with comments. Comment wherever you like.

Title: Psmith Learns
Word count: 1400
Pairing: Mike/Psmith
Summary: Psmith jolted. “So forward,” he said, a slight crack in his voice. “I begin to suspect your intentions. Comrade Jackson, Casanova of the Home Counties.”

Notes: somebraveapollo held my hand at the final hurdle. ♥ I am working my way up to writing actual Psmith porn, so here is Step One: The Kissing.

At the AO3.

Also posted on Dreamwidth at http://surexit.dreamwidth.org/84068.html with comments. Comment wherever you like.

( In angry news:Collapse )

In other news:

- Still rewatching Psych, and cannot get over how in love with Gus Shawn is. I'm about halfway through Season 3, and my mountain of evidence is getting higher by the episode. He looooves him, but he doesn't think he's good enough for Burton Guster, and he's completely unable to handle genuine emotion, and it's just sad. And I think what the show's been doing wrong recently is forgetting how completely central Shawn and Gus are to each other. And Gus' face is flawless in every possible way, oh my God.

Also posted on Dreamwidth at http://surexit.dreamwidth.org/83917.html with comments. Comment wherever you like.

I am so tired that I actually forgot to wash in the shower this morning. Like, I washed my hair, and I stood under the spray! I just forgot the part with the squooshy thing and the shower gel. Mmph.

Decisions have been made about my future. Big ones, even. And have survived rigorous devil's-advocating by my mother.

's 'citin'.

So there was a period of time last month when I was capable of doing not much of anything except wheezing on my sickbed and reading library e-copies of historical romance novels on my Kindle.

Over those two days or so, I read:

1. The entirety of the Brothers Sinister series by Courtney Milan as published so far, which currently consists of ( two novellas and a novelCollapse )

2. What Happens in London, by Julia Quinn, which is probably ( the most hilariously plotless romance novel everCollapse )

3. His at Night, by Sherry Thomas, which ( did not have as many hijinks as I wantedCollapse )

As a sidenote, I am sure this is something that the romance novel-reading community has come to terms with well before I did, but it never fails to be hilarious to me how little the titles of romance novels have to do with their actual content. What Happens in London is my new favorite, though, because, as I have explained, NOTHING HAPPENS IN LONDON. NOTHING.

This entry is cross-posted at Livejournal from http://skygiants.dreamwidth.org/332280.html. Please feel free to comment here or there! There are currently comments on Dreamwidth.

Remember this project? It might be slow going, but I have not given up on it! Book 2 on the revolution syllabus I have set myself is Ten Days That Shook the World, John Reed's half-accurate account of the Bolshevik takeover in Petrograd in 1917.

Please note: I have no better idea about any of the actual politics involved than I did before I read this book. This is because there are approximately five million political parties involved, most of them claiming to be Socialist and all of them in a constant process of sitting in on meetings and then storming out on each other in a huff.

(Half the time the storming out in a huff is followed by someone else shouting "YOU ALREADY STORMED OUT LAST NIGHT! WHY ARE YOU STILL HERE?")

Anyway, John Reed's version is pretty partisan and only sort of accurate, so everything he says about actual facts has to be taken with a bit of a grain of salt anyway.

What his account does do is give a very good idea of the inevitable confusion that occurs when a country tries to remake all of its social and political structures overnight. Nobody has any idea what's going on in the rest of the country; social structures are in a constant state of flux; half the time half of the national infrastructure is on strike in protest against the other half; people are constantly putting up posters all around the city saying "WORKERS! DON'T LISTEN TO [OTHER POLITICAL PARTY]! WE HATE THEM AND THEIR STUPID FACES." One entire major party decides to boycott all the meetings because they're annoyed that the Bolsheviks have stolen their land reform program and THEY THOUGHT OF IT FIRST, JEEZ. John Reed, the American Socialist journalist who is narrating the whole story, almost gets accidentally executed at least three times by the Bolshevik party, which he supports and has a safe-conduct from; another three times he is blithely able to wander into government areas where he really should not have been without anybody stopping him.

History is chaos, man. Any time, any place -- it's basically amazing that anything ever gets done.

This entry is cross-posted at Livejournal from http://skygiants.dreamwidth.org/331820.html. Please feel free to comment here or there! There are currently comments on Dreamwidth.

Okay, I'm going to be at WisCon for the next five days (!!!) which means if I don't make this television post now, it's never going to get made. And so! TV I have watched & have feelings about!

( Community, spoilers through the finale, shruggy but positiveCollapse )

( Doctor Who, spoilers through the finale, kind of ambivalentCollapse )

( Elementary!! spoilers through the finale, unmitigated joyCollapse )

In addition to these, Polaris and I have also been watching Person of Interest, Polaris because a friend highly recommended it, me because now that astolat has moved on from Thor/Loki porn to Finch/Reese porn my life has been a barren wasteland and I wanted to be able to read her porn again. (I do things for good serious intellectual reasons.) We love it a whole lot?? We're only at the beginning of season two, and the beginning of season two hit me in the face with MACHINE FEELS, which will now live with my Fiiinch feels, and my John-Reese's-stupid-face feels, and my Caaaarter feels, and my ongoing dedication to Amy Acker and Enrico Colantoni. So uh that's been great? And I'd totally write the dystopia-with-robots AU, or the Batman AU, except I don't even need to.

All of this actually fails to be a rundown about what I'll be yelling about at WisCon, because what I'll be yelling about at WisCon is Avengers, as always. I don't think I need to do a Care & Feeding post, if only because I haven't done one in years past but have managed just fine, but: Amiel and I will be arriving tomorrow noon! If any of y'all are already in the area, hit us up and we'd be happy to do pre-con hangouts. :DDD

This entry was originally posted at http://aria.dreamwidth.org/204638.html. If you'd prefer, please comment there using OpenID. comments.

You know how sometimes you all of a sudden remember the existence of an author from your childhood, and you go, "really? Was the heroine's love interest actually a pig that that turned into a dragon? Did the fairies seriously turn out to be aliens that made them do it? Did the villainness have sex with an evil broom? Did that really happen?"

So when I went home this weekend I did my best to see if I could locate my old copies of Mary Brown's novels. The only one I have so far found is Strange Deliverance, which I remembered as "the fairies are aliens who make them do it," but I FULLY BELIEVE THE OTHERS EXISTED AND I WILL LOCATE THEM. (Though if anyone else has read any of Mary Brown's books, corroborative evidence is also welcomed.)

Anyway, my memory is not quite accurate about Strange Deliverance; the climax turns out to involve fairies vs. aliens who make the local kids do it, or at least turn up with some experimented-upon fetuses in HIGHLY SUSPICIOUS CIRCUMSTANCES after entrancing the local prom queen and her hapless boyfriend into going up to the fairy circle (where the aliens are currently hanging out) and playing "Sleeping Beauty" every couple of months.

Oh, also, everything takes place in a post-apocalyptic town with a eugenicidal dictator. Aforementioned dictator helpfully reveals his fascist eugenicidal ambitions in the prologue.

Then we have a timeskip; midway through the book, our protagonists are SHOCKED when someone points out that in a town where no disabled infants survive a day past their birth, the only gay couple disappeared in mysterious circumstances a few days after making their sexuality public, and the only people of color who were in the town's original population never married or had children despite marriage and children being compulsory for everyone else, this MIGHT be part of the all-powerful town dictator's sinister design!

(There is black character in the book. She is the Magical Herb-Woman who lives just outside the town and provides helpful, sage, unselfish mystical wisdom to all of the white kids who are our protagonists.

There are also disabled characters in the book. They are mentally disabled twins, innocent and completely indistinguishable souls who are so naively devoted to Prom Queen that they follow her around, carry her stuff, and trot nobly and self-sacrificingly with her into ill-advised fairy circle alien experimentation shenanigans. The narrative is very eager tell you about all the times they comically mess up their words.)

Anyway our actual protagonist doesn't really do much except go to mandatory sexy summer camp with her boyfriend and think half-worried and half-judgmental thoughts about Prom Queen. Eventually she gets a magical unicorn ring, but that's not really . . . important . . .? GIVEN THAT THE MAIN PLOT INVOLVES ALIENS AND POST-APOCALYPTIC DICTATORSHIP. ( Spoilers I guess.Collapse )

MARY BROWN, you guys.

This entry is cross-posted at Livejournal from http://skygiants.dreamwidth.org/331647.html. Please feel free to comment here or there! There are currently comments on Dreamwidth.

GUYS LET ME WRITE THINGS FOR YOU, I'M ITCHING TO WRITE AGAIN NOW MY DAD HAS LEFT.

Tell me a little about a story I haven't written, and I'll give you several sentences from that story.

Fandoms: are many. MCU, Gen Kill, Narnia (but only Rilian/Puddleglum right now, I haven't done a full reread for ages), Psmith, Psych, Lost Prince, Secret Garden, Monstrous Regiment (and possibly other Discworld but again haven't done a reread for ages), The Charioteer, The Eagle (film only), Young Justice, Justified (I haven't written any fic for this show, but I am KEEN TO TRY), Bletchley Circle, Bomb Girls, obv Dan&Lewis, most Disney, Sinbad, possibly Person of Interest, Some Girls, Call the Midwife, due South but only with RayV, Laxdaela saga... um. You could just throw stuff at me and see if it sticks. (And I always offer this because I think it could be awesome: could def try this with any kind of original stuff as well.)

Also, to appease my weird brain, if you want to prompt more than one thing could you do it in separate comments? I can explain the reasoning behind this but I'll just sound a bit weird. :D?

Also posted on Dreamwidth at http://surexit.dreamwidth.org/83696.html with comments. Comment wherever you like.

osprey_archer IS WRITING A LOST PRINCE MINI-EPIC.

The Unlikely Traitor.

CHAPTER ONE IS FULL OF DELICIOUS FEELINGS. *_______* RUN, DON'T WALK.

Also posted on Dreamwidth at http://surexit.dreamwidth.org/83397.html with comments. Comment wherever you like.

I am loving the Les Mis fandom, but it seems to be mostly on tumblr, and tumblr is not and will probably never be my natural home. (Threaded comments! Easily searchable archives! A user interface that doesn't change at random!) At least some folks seem to agree, because every so often, the "Man, why don't we have an active LJ/DW home?" cry goes up.

Well. Now there is one! This post is to officially unveil http://les-miserables.dreamwidth.org.

It doesn't have an interesting layout or anything yet, but it exists, and is open to anyone and everyone who wants to talk about Les Misérables. Any version, any character, any subject -- the idea here is to be inclusive! The profile says the same thing in a slightly more longwinded way. All you need to do is join it to post, at least at this point. I'm the moderator because I made the comm, but I'm hoping I can be very hands-off and lazy about it.

Feel more than free to signal boost this wherever it seems appropriate!

This entry is also posted at http://genarti.dreamwidth.org/154203.html. You can comment on LJ or DW, whichever you like. comments at DW.

I'm leaving my current country in less than two weeks. This means I am :(. This is my fourth time leaving a country, so I am getting a bit old-hand at it, and I expected the melancholia spiral (I'm leaving this country --> this time is ending --> all things must end --> life is transient --> we're all going to die --> OH GOD THE ETERNAL FUTILITY OF EXISTENCE), but it still makes me sad as fuck. GDI.

On the other hand, THERE IS GOING TO BE ANOTHER SERIES OF BLETCHLEY CIRCLE FUCK YES. LET'S TALK ABOUT THIS.

Also, mediaeval female manuscript illustrators.

Also meme: I have 49 works archived at AO3. Pick a number from 1 (the most recent) to 49 (the first thing I posted there), and I'll tell you three things I currently like about it.

[ETA: forgot to ask, anyone else's AO3 kudos emails going astray recently?]

Also posted on Dreamwidth at http://surexit.dreamwidth.org/83146.html with comments. Comment wherever you like.

Graham Robb won me over with his biography of Victor Hugo from the introduction, in which he explains that he's basically writing the biography in order to spend four years reading everything ever written by Victor Hugo. YES GOOD. A+ DECISION. When the book later hits the writing of Les Mis, Robb takes a break to tell everyone that, yes, the biography is fine and all, but really they should just put his book down and go pick up Les Miserables instead, because it's THAT GOOD.

I mean, it helps that Victor Hugo is an unfairly interesting person; also, unfairly hilarious. Not, I hasten to add, someone you would probably want to spend time with on a regular basis, despite the massive cult of contemporary worshippers who disagreed. Young Hugo, after all -- well, it's probably enough to just remind everyone that Marius Pontmercy was a self-insert.

(You know who has passionate nostrils, besides Marius Pontmercy? VICTOR HUGO DOES. You know who freaks out when his girlfriend has to lift her skirts a little in order to get through the mud? YEP, YOU GUESSED IT. Better muddy petticoats than immodest ankles, he advises her!)

And then there's Old Hugo, Chief Priest of the thriving Cult of Hugo, with an ego the size of the continent of Europe, who did his level best to seduce anything that moved and subsumed the lives of his entire family into the upkeep of the aforementioned Cult -- and, perhaps even more annoyingly, was the greatest mansplainer EVER TO LIVE, prone to interrupting people's conversations and announcing things like, "I have read neither Goethe nor Schiller, but I know them better than those who have learnt their works by heart!"

SURE, HUGO.

It's also important to note that over the course of his career, Hugo: passionately supported royalty; passionately supported Napoleon; passionately supported Republicanism; passionately led the Romantics; passionately supported the bourgeoisie; passionately charged against a barricade on the side of a repressive government; then, guilt-stricken, spent the next revolution after that wandering around behind the barricades hoping someone would let him pull an Enjolras and jump around being the leader and waving a flag.

(Sadly, by the time he got to the barricade, it was all over and they were just hauling the corpse of the ACTUAL leader away. OOPS.)

I mean, I actually think all these inherent contradictions are awesome, and so does Robb; without them, Les Miserables, among others, would be a much more didactic and less inherently fascinating book. But one can imagine it made being a Victor Hugo fan sort of confusing at the time.

There are dozens of LolHugo stories worth relating, but I think my favorite is the year that Hugo spent really, really into Spiritualism. During this period of time, Hugo received supernatural visits from such luminaries as Cain, Moses, Jesus, Mozart, Sir Walter Scott, The Spirit of the Ocean, and The Shadow of the Tomb. Mostly they were coming to tell Hugo that they'd read his books and thought they were AWESOME. A standard night in the Hugo household over that year might look something ( like thisCollapse )


OH VICTOR HUGO.

This entry is cross-posted at Livejournal from http://skygiants.dreamwidth.org/331414.html. Please feel free to comment here or there! There are currently comments on Dreamwidth.

Just a PSA: kittens are FUCKING RIDICULOUS. Trigger for this: kitten likes biting things. When he gets very excited about this sweet biting game, he starts to forget to close his mouth between finding things to bite. This combines AMAZINGLY with his tendency to launch himself through the air, legs akimbo (dude can jump, it's pretty impressive), so you've just got this ginger thing coming at you, mouth first, front legs flailing, looking like he's lucky if two braincells ever rub together in his tiny, tiny head.

The Riddle Ages is all about Old English riddles. ♥ Texts, translations, and commentary, they're up to Riddle 6 so far. RIDDLES ARE GREAT.

Also posted on Dreamwidth at http://surexit.dreamwidth.org/82933.html with comments. Comment wherever you like.

There's a meme that's been going around:

1) Give me a pairing character or two.

2) Give me an AU setting.

3) I will write you a three-sentence fic.

You can also give me a non-AU setting or scenario!

I pretty much just write genfic, which is why I changed the wording of this. You can still give me a pairing if you really want, but be warned that what you’re likely to get is UST, domesticity, and/or maaaybe a kiss.

You guys know my fandoms, I think, but I'll tell you if I don't think I can manage something.

This entry is also posted at http://genarti.dreamwidth.org/153861.html. You can comment on LJ or DW, whichever you like. comments at DW.

I like to imagine there is one really dedicated Azelma Thenardier fan out there who spends her time sadly browsing through the Les Mis tag on the AO3 and wondering where all the Azelma-centric fic is. Lone Azelma Thenardier fan: this one's for you.

Title: And Yet Are Orphans
Fandom: Les Miserables
Characters: Azelma, Gavroche, and a couple of Ami cameos
Summary: For lack of anything better to do, Azelma pays a visit to her brother.
Notes: The standard set of Thenardier family warnings apply -- implied child abuse, canon character death, you know the drill. Up at the AO3 over here. Thanks to genarti for the beta!

( “My other sister's prettier,” remarked Gavroche. “This one would be a red-faced bourgeois if she could.”Collapse )

This entry is cross-posted at Livejournal from http://skygiants.dreamwidth.org/331167.html. Please feel free to comment here or there! There are currently comments on Dreamwidth.

Previous post now locked, and can I just say that this little corner of the internet is fucking amazing. ♥ Looks like Kitten will definitely be reunited with me in six or seven months time, and I can't really tell you how much better I feel about life. Thank you guys, really a lot. (This also means that I officially get to name him. So now the fact that his name is the Sudanese word for 'fridge' (i.e. what he was hiding under when he was found) is completely official. Trollolol.)

I SAID (to some people) THAT I WAS GOING TO DO THIS AND I AM. I AM GOING TO START A LOST PRINCE FANDOM NEWSLETTER. Only I'm not going to start an actual comm, that would be ridiculous. I'm just going to post links here. (ALSO RIDICULOUS, I KNOW.)

In the past month no fewer than three (three!) people posted about The Lost Prince. sophia_sol found it charming and ridiculous (CORRECT), muccamukk found it standard FHB, i.e. there's a lot of shit to wade through (ALSO CORRECT), and sineala has FULLY EMBRACED the spirit of things, posting about the book three times: the book is not subtle, objectively it's kind of mediocre BUT, and MOST IMPORTANTLY why you should read this. Additionally, there was some fic produced! osprey_archer wrote a lovely ficlet. ♥

By Her Very Nature by muccamukk
Sinbad, Sinbad/Rina, Tiger/Rina, gen, 6608 words.
This is a completely gorgeous, beautifully characterised study of Rina and the way she relates to and thinks about and looks after and is looked after by her crew. It's completely perfect, and made me see Rina through a new lens.

Everything is a Stall by demon_rum
The Eagle AU, Marcus/Esca, 32,879 words.
Fascinating, emotional fic, written with the kind of authenticity that makes me suspect that the writer knows exactly what they are talking about - I would be very surprised if this wasn't written by a medical person of some stripe. It's also an intriguing slant on the characters, and a slant on relationships in general that is not seen in fandom quite so often.

Also posted on Dreamwidth at http://surexit.dreamwidth.org/82613.html with comments. Comment wherever you like.

The rain seems cleaner when the edges of the sky are clear, setting sun glittering the windows.