Elsane

Hey USian readers, call your representative in the House because this is some serious bullshit.

Do it ASAP this morning to get ahead of the House floor vote. If you don't know their number get it here: http://www.house.gov/representativ…

Call re: "Rep. Goodlatte's proposal to put the Office of Congressional Ethics under the authority of the Ethics Committee."

Crossposted from Dreamwidth where there are comment(s); comment here or there.

Another fun article, this time featuring a strong contender for best headline ever: Psychic Snail Sex Couldn't Replace the Telegraph But One Frenchman Sure Tried.

The only way I am reading books right now is in small chunks on my phone overnight, to help keep myself awake. Alas, the physical copy of Ancillary Justice that I checked out of the library has been sitting unopened on my desk; but on the other hand I have finally been reading a few of the books that have been collecting in my Kindle library.
(also I have been compulsively reading political blogs, a terrible habit I really should stop.)

The Vanished Child, by Sarah Smith, is the kind of book that could be classed as a mystery, historical fiction, or the genre-that-is-unmarked of just plain "fiction". The plot: an Austrian chemist reluctantly attends exactly the wrong conference; a 17-year-old blind pianist foolishly agrees to get married; and a very Catholic doctor dances a protracted tango with his conscience.

Less flippantly, Richard Knight, eight-year-old heir to an American Gilded Age fortune, vanishes from a New England vacation home in 1887, following the brutal murder of his grandfather. Twenty years later, the Catholic doctor, friend of the Knight family, happens to see Austrian chemist Alexander Reisden on a train platform in Switzerland, and in a dizzying moment thinks he recognizes Richard Knight. The plot turns around the dual mysteries of what happened in 1887 and whether Reisden is indeed the vanished Knight -- with the interesting twist that Reisden is the main POV character.

The realization of turn-of-the-century Boston and Boston society is stellar, the writing is lovely, and the characters are very well drawn. I got a little impatient with the style of the psychological introspection Smith's characters are prone to – due in part to the demands of the mystery plot, I think. I very much liked that two of the protagonists have a strong abstract calling – music and chemistry, variously – that, and the tensions that come up when that calling is balanced against interpersonal relationships, is something I love in fiction, and the depiction here was organic and rang entirely true. I liked this one enough I'm thinking of buying the sequel.

Crossposted from Dreamwidth where there are comment(s); comment here or there.

Back from insane amounts of travel, and I can't tell if I'm just jet lagged or if I have a cold. Properly, this means I ought to write stupid pun-laden fic, but I am feeling too guilty about my to-do list to do so, so instead I'm making extremely incremental progress and writing this.

Archive of our own has no Goblin Emperor fic, and I have already read the book through three times. (on my phone, on the road. I am forever and always grateful for ebooks.) Therefore you should all read it and discuss it with me so we can roll around in it together.

This is an obnoxious way of saying that this book is wonderful and I enjoyed it very much. The world-building is rich and layered, and the characterization is nuanced and delightful, fully inhabiting the world. The story is also deeply hopeful and compassionate, as it is in the voice of the main character, Maia, the despised and half-goblin son of the Emperor of the Elflands, unexpectedly elevated to the throne by the catastrophic death of his father and his full-elven brothers in an airship explosion. Raised in internal exile first by his mother and, after her death, by an abusive elven relation, Maia is unhappily aware of both the means by which people claim and exert power over others and the great gulf between himself and the court he inherits -- in the goblin culture his mother has taught him, and the social graces his father did not. Watching Maia build relationships, negotiate the court, and struggle not to lose himself in the process, is the story, and it's wonderful. Maia is a deeply good human being person, but always believable as a lonely eighteen year old in over his head.

This is a world that is industrializing, and the story knows about everything that comes with that: the economics, the politics, of this world, the injustices, are all there, and it feels bloodily, breathily, real. The supporting cast of characters is phenomenal, and fully reflective of the complexities of the world they live in. My single biggest complaint about this book is that there is not enough of the secondary characters; they feel so real, I want more about them.

I have been very lucky to find both this book and Martha Wells' Raksura books this year. They're very different, but they have in common beautiful prose, splendidly original world building, and fantastic characterization, and they are both about building, about hard right choices, and trust.

Crossposted from Dreamwidth where there are comment(s); comment here or there.

I spent spring break gibbering, sleeping in the name of great white blood cell justice, and mainlining Martha Wells' Raksura books.

I have so very much work to do it is not even funny, my friends, but that is situation normal for me so let's go on and talk about the Raksura, who are delightful, them and Our Hero Moon and the sheer unfolding inventiveness of the world they inhabit. I find myself in the awkward spot of wanting to roll around in all the meta but where I have nothing much concrete to contribute myself, necessarily. So I will say: ( Collapse )

Crossposted from Dreamwidth where there are comment(s); comment here or there.

The thing about Wagner's Ring is that it is horrifically addictive. I started writing this after I watched the HD broadcast of the Met's Ring operas a couple of years ago, and (true to form) it stalled. Recently I was rashly listening to the audio of that performance, and instead of following that up by playing every creditable performance of every opera in the cycle over and over and over again, I decided to shove this off my hard drive and out of my brain so I could get back to work. (Rose, if you're reading, I know it could have benefited from a beta! But I wanted to get it off my plate so I could be undistracted by it!)

So, fic! It is awfully febrile but it is Ring fic, so.

Title: Fimbulwinter
Characters: Sieglinde, mostly, with Freyja, Hel, and Siegmund
Summary: Things to do on Yggdrasil when you're dead; or, Sieglinde, too, has a chance to choose her afterlife.
Word Count: 3875

Bonus supporting material (also known as: canon): Some of the most well-sung Walsungs I have ever heard.

Because the Korean AU wasn't obscure enough the first time around, have some more.

Title: The veins of a leaf (1651 words)
Summary: Grantaire, having made a choice, has to keep making it. Set in Gwangju, South Korea, in 1978.

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Crossposted from Dreamwidth where there are comment(s); comment here or there.

Title: Not a tree, and not grass either

Summary: Variation on a theme by Hugo: Enjolras and Grantaire have a contentious conversation about the legwork that goes into a revolution. Set in the run up to the April Revolution (Seoul, 1960), and genderbent, because. 1725 words. Thanks to skygiants for the beta!


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I feel like it's especially important to say for this one: any and all comments, corrections, and criticism are welcomed.

Crossposted from Dreamwidth where there are comment(s); comment here or there.

Fun facts: (1) "Combeferre" apparently gets transliterated into Japanese as "konbu ferre", which in turn Google translates to English as "kelp fail" (h/t sclez) and (2) kelp was an important historical source of sodium carbonate. This explains everything, except why I somehow took this as a fic promt, for which you probably have to blame my extreme sleep deprivation at the time.

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Also here on AO3. Sorry for the Les Mis spam, everyone.

Crossposted from Dreamwidth where there are comment(s); comment here or there.

—and all this so that a peasant can say to-day to the traveller: Monsieur, give me three francs, and if you like, I will explain to you the affair of Waterloo!

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(I am tempted to post this one on AO3, actually, now that meta is apparently ok there, but I'm torn -- I'm not sure whether people actually want AO3 to be a meta archive.)

Crossposted from Dreamwidth where there are comment(s); comment here or there.

Ugh, I have fallen down on crossposting. (I suspect I really only have time to manage presence on one platform. This is...not optimal.)

Here are a collection of live!brick reaction posts, mostly for archival purposes, because (1) oh Tumblr, and (2) I suspect anyone reading me on Les Misérables over here has already read this on Tumblr anyway. (But if anyone is interested enough to want to respond, please do!)

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link to more discussion.

Crossposted from Dreamwidth where there are comment(s); comment here or there.