Wednesday Reading Meme 11-9-2022

2022-11-09T15:41:23Z

What I’ve Read
So, I have finished nothing that was traditionally published in the last week, but I have read a non-trival amount of fic, and worked thru a lot of books that I hadn’t actually had a chance to finish yet.
For the finished things, I’m trying to pull back into the format I used for recc’ing works, because if I preserve more info, then it’s easier to find things if they are later taken down

Title: The Legend Of Liob by Killbothtwins
Fandom: Star Wars Clone Wars
Link: https://archiveofourown.org/works/38656698
Length:19K
Summary: The Republic sends a combat photographer to be attached to the 212th until further notice, citing the need for a morale boost. The clones make up a fake clone, citing the absolute fact that it is very funny. Somehow, these two things save the galaxy.
Why I love it: I love Cody’s point of view on this fic, as he tries desperately to reign in the nonsense that several thousand bored soldiers get into while playing a joke on their newly assigned war correspondent. I love the original character’s general willingness to do what she can to help the clones out and use public opinion to help them. The troopers of the 212th are having some fun in the middle of some of the worst possible things that could happen to a person, and it is truly hilarious. This is just a very fun fix it fic!

Title: Triumvirate by celinamarniss
Fandom: Star Wars ex-canonical pre-disney works by Timothy Zahn
Link: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1494842
Length: 77K
Summary: (Mine) Mara Jade and Prince Luke Skywalker of Naboo are given as concubines to Admiral Thrawn. Surprisingly, this works out well.
Why I love it: Welp, I did not expect a threesome where Thrawn the meat in a Luke and Mara sandwich, but, hello, we are here. It’s a bit kinky, a bit dark, a bit sweet, a bit of an AU

Title: Seeking Shelter By sphagnum
Fandom: Original work
Link: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15648981
Length: 7k
Summary: Guns down, gentlemen. Oscar protocol. The betas lowered their rifles instantly, pointing them at the ground in front of Max instead of his chest. Max took a deeper breath in, his tension easing a bit as he moved past the part of the plan where he might just get shot dead before he had a chance to try to bargain. It had always been a risk; it had just seemed like a better death than slow starvation.
Why I love it: I unrepentantly adore writing where characters are operating thru a hard language barrier. In this case, one character has a form of fictional virus-induced aphasia and it’s really well written and interesting to see the world thru his eyes while also getting the dialogue of the people around him.

What I’m Reading:
2312 by Kim Stanley Robinson - book club, descriptive heavy but interesting. Someone I love who typically has deeply different reading tastes than me truly hated this book, and I took that as the recommendation that it usually is.

Westerns: Making the Man in Fiction and Film by Lee Clark Mitchell - Reading for the Great Queer Supernatural Rewatch - we’re thinking about westerns and masculinity! And how that genre of work says things about The American West as a setting and what it means for the kind of masculinity that the characters of Supernatural are dealing with. Related to the third chapter, we also watched Stagecoach (1938) which had some fascinating elements to it in terms of writing and an ensemble cast. (It was the first movie in which I found John Wayne to be charming and a good actor - I normally get deeply grossed out by him!) The racism in Stagecoach felt generic, by which I mean, it’s an inherent part of the genre and cannot be removed, but was also not pointed or with a lot of motivation behind it. Racism as wallpaper. Had a nice long discussion with a friend of how that compared to the John Carter of Mars novels that they’re currently reading, which really wants to pound into your head that the Martians cannot actually feel love and are terrible people who deserve to be conquered. Compared to Stagecoach, where Geronimo is a boogeyman and the Apaches are portrayed with all the inhumane violence of a twister, the John Carter novels are far less palatable to us. But I have a sneaking sense that Stagecoach’s racism has a longer tail because as a viewer of the film, you have to accept The Bargain that a Western movie is making in order to get any pleasure from it.

Darth Maul: Son of Dathomir by Jeremy Barlow - a bit spare. I recall that this was a means to publish plots that had been cut short by the end of the Clone Wars cartoon, and it’s a got a little bit of that feeling - I keep thinking that this would be better with performances behind the characters.

Ocean’s Echo by Everina Maxwell - continues great! I'm about halfway thru and the main couple, who started the novel by trying to pull off scam to fake a mental bond that would put one of them permanently in control of the other, are now in a situation where the power dynamic has swapped! The whole thing is running on a basis of trust, admiration for each other's deeply different skill sets, and a solid basis of unacknowledged lust, so it's pretty much catnip.

What I’ll Read Next

Library books in the house
Maul: Lockdown - Joe Schreiber
The Whale Rider -Witi Ihimaera
Tiger's Daughter - K Arsenault Rivera
Riot Baby - Rochi Onyeuchi
The Silence of the Wilting Skin - Tlotlo Tsamaase
An Unkindness of Ghosts - Rivers Solomon

Recently purchased and need to read: NK Jemisin's The World We Make, Frey Marske's A Restless Truth, California Bones

Newly purchased: Even Though I Know the End by CL Polk - this apparently started life as a Destiel fic and I didn’t know that and I have Polk $11 for the good of the fandom collective even before I got into the book

Also newly purchased - To Seek and to Find by Tamryn Eradani - I found this on a list of books that had started their lives as Supernatural fanfic and I bought it almost as an act of solidarity - I’m hopeful that it’s good, but if it’s not, it’s still only $5.

Own but reminding myself - Penric's Demon! Get on that! Fansplaining podcast just described it as Venom but in the middle ages, good god, ride that like you stole it.

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Kitewithfish

Wednesday Reading Meme 11-9-2022