schneefink

January was very busy so I ran out of time to make the long Hermitcraft fic rec list I wanted to make. (Season 10 starts soon! Very exciting.) So instead you get a random assortment of fic I read recently, plus one vid.
That was harder than I thought because it turns out the majority of what I read are WIPs, and I don't like to rec those just in case I don't like the ending later on. But I like the idea, I hope I will remember to log fics to rec as I'm reading more regularly and then just sort them by month instead of of waiting until I find some that fit together somehow. (Unless I have many of a specific fandom or something obvious like that.)

This also fulfils snowflake_challenge #13, "Make a rec list." I haven't really had the time to go through other people's snowflake entries yet, much less do more of the challenges myself, I will just have to catch up later.

( Misc. recs: Goncharov, Flash/Legends of Tomorrow, and Vorkosigan Saga fic + Life series vid )

Sometimes I find a song I like and listen to it twenty times on repeat. Today: an a capella version of "Defying Gravity", found on Tumblr. I'd sing along, but I tend not to pay attention to how loud I get and LB doesn't like it, so I'm just moving my head to the rhythm and occasionally humming.

A new Vorkosigan book is coming out next year! "Gentleman Jole and the Red Queen." Great side-effect, dira is writing more The World That You Need fic. But overall I was less enthusiastic about the announcement than I would have been a few months ago. Part of the reason is that I didn't enjoy the last two books that much, and I really hope the new book doesn't continue that trend.

But another reason is that last December I read From the Old to the New by avanti_90. It's a 9k gen AU epistolary fic about the Komarran independence movement, and it's fantastic: One man can alter the course of history. A random encounter leads Duv Galeni to change his mind and return to Komarr.

As I wrote in my comment: "I never fully realized how imperialistic Barrayar was towards Komarr, somehow I didn't pay attention to that, and now I feel like I'm looking at canon in a different way. This is a great future! It's a better future than I can see in canon, and as much as I love Aral and Gregor and Miles and everyone else, now I wish this had happened instead." Afterwards I browsed DW, read a few more posts mentioning the ways in which Barrayaran society is fucked up (and some less good parts of the books) - most of it things that I was vaguely aware of, but never really paid attention to. As I saw someone say somewhere, I enjoyed deliberately believing in the books' fictions: Barrayarans are generally the good guys, Gregor is the rightful ruler and Emperor, things like that. And that's become much harder since reading about an independent Komarr. I can still usually do it, and it's not that hard for fic that doesn't mention politics - but politics was one of the things I really enjoyed about the Vorkosigan series :/

Another big reason why I'm less invested in the Vorkosigan saga by now is of course also that I found other things, like Bab5, that are fantastic and fascinating and that I love a lot right now. And I'm still in the middle of it! Season 3 was amazing; I'm not convinced by the beginning of season 4 yet, but I'm optimistic. I watch the political developments on Bab5 closely, and some of them I'm worried about... I've been too busy in March, but I hope we'll find time for more episodes soon.

Hi! Thank you very much for writing a story for me!

Some things I like:
* I love friendship/team fic. Characters who grow to like each other, trust each other, and eventually would do many things for each other, yes please. Especially when in the beginning they're in slightly different positions/places/etc. and their friendship is rather unexpected.
* Related to that, navigating relationships. Could be platonic or romantic partners: how do they deal with daily life, how do they solve conflicts, how do they support and comfort each other at the end of the day?
* Worldbuilding! How do things work? Both on a large scale and the mundane details. I love to learn about a world's politics, economics, cultural details, even administration and bureaucracy.
* Plot is great. Stories where they stay at home and play boardgames are also great. 5-things/times-fic is fun. I like stories that span an hour and stories that span years.

Things I don't like for Yuletide:
* Stories with an unhappy ending. Some unhappy elements are fine if the general outlook is optimistic, but nothing extremely dark, please (torture, rape, abuse…)
* Stories focused on explicit sex
* Complete AUs, i.e. coffeeshop AU etc. I love the canon worlds of all these fandoms so I'd prefer to read fic taking place there. Canon-divergent AUs are fine, or canon-with-small-details-changed.

Have fun! The prompts below are just guidelines, I hope they help you think of ideas.

1) The Young Protectors (webcomic)
( Read more... )

2) Galaxy Quest (1999)
( Read more... )


3) Vorkosigan Saga – Lois McMaster Bujold
( Read more... )

About two weeks ago frith_in_thorns recommended I read the Vorkosigan Saga books, and then I did little else for a week or so and enjoyed myself immensely.

What I love about them:
- I love the worldbuilding so much. The wormholes, the Time of Isolation, the roles of the different planets; how it all has a history and everything has reasons and develops and there's so much politics and economics and pure chance involved, tech develops and society develops and different planets have different cultures but they all influence each other, but in different ways - it's extremely well done.
--Spaceships! Space pirates mercenaries, -battles, -politics!
- All of the books have great plots, things develop from point A to point B and C in ways you can follow but not predict, there are always multiple things going on and you always know as much as you need to; some of the books reminded me of the best kind of detective stories the way it all fit together.
- Politics are important and messy and influence everything, when you have a fleet you need to think about accounting and political ramifications, it's always there in the back- or foreground and it's beautifully done.
- Everything that happens has consequences, good or bad, there's no reset button but it doesn't just stay there, things develop further.
- The duty and loyalty themes, yum, I love it.
- Character development, character relationship development and building, characters growing up and into and out of roles, drifting together or apart, being changed by what happens and changing what happens, characters generally being alive.
- The Crowning Moments of Awesome are often great.

I started with Miles' books and have now read all of them except Dreamweavers's Dilemma, the framing story of Borders of Infinity, and I still haven't finished Barrayar because I know how many unpleasant things are going to happen and I'm not in the mood.

Some of my favorite books: ( Vor Game, Memory, ... )

Favorite characters:( Gregor, Mark, Miles, Cordelia, Ivan, Alys... )

Of course the first thing I did after reading the books was look for fic. Good news: there are a lot of very good stories! (And it's still Yuletide-eligible this year. This year I'll finally sign up for Yuletide, I swear.) Not a lot of complete AUs (unsurprisingly), not a lot of porn (also doesn't surprise me very much), very good tie-in and background fic. I have a list of stories I want to rec, but not today otherwise I'll never finish this.
(Originally I thought I'd wait to post this until I finished Barrayar, but I don't know when that'll be and I'm procrastinating on finances.)

In conclusion: great series, will definitely recommend it :)