alias_sqbr: Fakir from Pricness Tutu holding his injured hand, in a blue rose Utena frame (fakir)
alias_sqbr ([personal profile] alias_sqbr) wrote2025-06-09 11:05 am
Entry tags:

Steering the Craft Chapter 3: sentence length and complex syntax

Masterlist

I feel kinda bad about how badly I'm butchering LeGuin's flowing prose for these posts. But I learn by summarising and sometimes even a clunky summary is easier on the brain. And maybe I'll inspire some of youse to go read the original!
Read more... )
igenlode: The pirate sloop 'Horizon' from "Treasures of the Indies" (Default)
Igenlode Wordsmith ([personal profile] igenlode) wrote2025-06-08 07:39 pm
Entry tags:

One hour becomes six or eight

I finally dedicated myself to doing a thorough re-watch of the 55-minute chunk of "Twenty Years After" that I had viewed 'blind' and unsubtitled as it was originally intended -- which took about six or eight hours of study spread over two days. Next time I'm going to have to try to force myself to stop watching sooner... although in fact there are only about 30 minutes left of the story, including end-credits :-(

subtitles )

One of the non-subtitled lines, when I listened to it more carefully, turned out to be Porthos randomly observing that d'Artagnan looked good in a beard, which amused me mightily given my original comments on the scene ("for someone whose moustache has more or less been a permanent trademark since the start of his career, Mikhail Boyarsky actually looks pretty good in a 'full set' :-D)
Boyarsky in a beard

In fact as usual I did get pretty much all of it plot-wise on the first viewing, while the 'crib' filled in most of the longer/more rapid dialogues where I could only catch a few words (but generally sufficient to identify those sections in the novel, e.g. Milo of Croton, who unsurprisingly defeated me entirely when encountered as an unexpected subject of prison conversation :-p) The big changes from the novel are, I think, actually active *improvements*: Read more... )

Madame de Chevreuse )
alias_sqbr: Fakir from Pricness Tutu holding his injured hand, in a blue rose Utena frame (fakir)
alias_sqbr ([personal profile] alias_sqbr) wrote2025-06-08 09:57 pm

Steering the Craft Masterlist

Steering the craft by Ursula K LeGuin is "A revised and updated guide to the essentials of a writer’s craft", and includes writing exercises in each chapter.
Read more... )
pedanther: (Default)
pedanther ([personal profile] pedanther) wrote2025-06-08 06:10 pm

Week in review: Week to 7 June

I've been experimenting with my journal entries in the last week or two, Read more... )

We had a family get-together for the public holiday, Read more... )

The board game club had another of their long public holiday sessions Read more... )

I had a doctor's appointment this week: a routine thing, not because anything was wrong with me. The next bit involves injections )

I don't think I've mentioned in one of these posts that I've started reading Solzhenitsyn: Read more... )

Movies current - Ocean - and upcoming - including ) Guillermo del Toro's Frankenstein. The latter had the tagline "Only monsters play god", which is staking out a position in the "'Frankenstein' is not the name of the monster" discourse that I respect.


I finished playing through The Beekeeper's Picnic. Read more... )

I got to Parkrun only slightly late this week: Read more... )

I've had several experiences this week where I was reading someone's description of their experiences with ADHD and thinking that it sounded worryingly familiar. Read more... )

I was yesterday years old when I learned that "Womble" is an actual real surname that actual people really have. (Apparently, it's derived from the Yorkshire town of Wombwell.) The context was somebody mentioning a law firm called Womble Bond Dickinson; the relevant founding partner was apparently called B. S. Womble, which is one of the most made-up-sounding real names I've encountered in recent memory. (His full name was "Bunyan Snipes Womble", which sounds like a law firm all by itself.)
pedanther: (Default)
pedanther ([personal profile] pedanther) wrote2025-06-08 04:21 pm

Book Chain, weeks 12 & 13

#17: Read a book with a title that starts with the same letter as the last name of the previous book's author.

First attempt: Jirel of Joiry by C.L. Moore, a collection of sword & sorcery stories that were first published in Weird Tales in the 1930s alongside the likes of Conan the Barbarian, but have the historical distinction of being written by a woman and having a female protagonist. (The first story has one of those openings where it spends a couple of pages describing a heroic armoured figure before the helmet comes off and everyone, presumably including the original readers, is surprised she's a woman.)Read more... )

Second attempt: John Brown: Queen Victoria's Highland Servant by Raymond Lamont-Brown. Read more... )

Third attempt, for the sake of moving things along, was Chris Van Allsburg's Jumanji, which is a lot shorter and less complicated than the movie it inspired, but still fun. I appreciated the turn it took at the end.

#18: Read a book in the same genre as the previous book.

Taking the genre as "short, plentifully illustrated children's book featuring animals", I opted for The Animals Noah Forgot by the Australian poet Banjo Paterson, which also counts for the June prompt in the Buzzword challenge (a word in the title related to remembering or forgetting). Read more... )
sakuramod: (Default)
sakuramod ([personal profile] sakuramod) wrote in [community profile] pinchhits2025-06-07 08:24 pm

Post-Deadline Pinch Hits for Sakura Exchange (Due June 13)

Event: [community profile] sakuraexchange, a spring exchange for relationships in Japanese media. Minimums are 1000 words or clean lineart on unlined paper.

Event link: AO3 Page

Pinch hit link: https://sakuraexchange.dreamwidth.org/14063.html

Due date: June 13 at 11:59 PM UTC (7:59 PM EDT)

To claim, please comment on the pinch hit post linked above.

PH 1 - ワンパンマン | One-Punch Man, Gundam Wing, Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood & Manga, 乙女ゲームの破滅フラグしかない悪役令嬢に転生してしまった… - 山口悟 | My Next Life as a Villainess - Yamaguchi Satoru (Light Novels)

PH 2 - Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses, 殺し愛 | Koroshi Ai (Manga), 2.5次元の誘惑 | 2.5-jigen no Ririsa | 2.5 Dimensional Seduction (Anime)

PH 4 - 爆上戦隊ブンブンジャー | Bakuage Sentai Boonboomger (TV), 魔法つかいプリキュア! | Mahou Tsukai Pretty Cure! | Mahou Girls PreCure!, 仮面ライダーギーツ | Kamen Rider Geats, Kamikaze Kaitou Jeanne | Phantom-Thief Jeanne (manga), Kamikaze Kaitou Jeanne | Phantom-Thief Jeanne (Anime)

PH 10 - わんだふるぷりきゅあ! | Wonderful PreCure! (Anime), Crossover Fandom, Show By Rock!! (Video Games), 美男高校地球防衛部HAPPY KISS! | Binan Koukou Chikyuu Bouei-bu Happy Kiss!, Tokyo Mew Mew Olé (Manga), Fairy蘭丸~あなたの心お助けします~ | Fairy Ranmaru: Anata no Kokoro Otasuke Shimasu (Anime)

PH 12 - Naruto (Anime & Manga), Air Gear (Anime), Chainsaw Man (Manga)

PH 13 - Naruto (Anime & Manga), Natsume Yuujinchou | Natsume's Book of Friends, ダイヤのA | Daiya no A | Ace of Diamond, メダリスト | Medalist (Manga), 妖怪学校の先生はじめました | Youkai Gakkou no Sensei Hajimemashita | A Terrified Teacher at Ghoul School! (Manga)

PH 14 - Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses, Shoujo Kakumei Utena | Revolutionary Girl Utena, Bishoujo Senshi Sailor Moon | Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon (Anime), Senjou no Merry Christmas | Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence | Furyo (1983), Ginga Eiyuu Densetsu | Legend of the Galactic Heroes

PH 15 - きのう何食べた? | Kinou Nani Tabeta? | What Did You Eat Yesterday? (TV), 僕のヒーローアカデミア | Boku no Hero Academia | My Hero Academia (Anime & Manga), 鴨乃橋ロンの禁断推理 | Kamonohashi Ron no Kindan Suiri | Ron Kamonohashi: Deranged Detective (Manga), 気になってる人が男じゃなかった | Ki ni Natteru Hito ga Otoko ja Nakatta (Manga)
eratoschild ([personal profile] eratoschild) wrote in [community profile] fancake2025-06-07 05:45 pm

Trails of Cold Steel: Moon Door IV: Beyond

Fandom: Trails of Cold Steel
Pairings/Characters:
Laura S. Arseid/Duvalie, Ines/Ennea, Victor S. Arseid/McBurn
appearances by other assorted Cold Steel characters and hints of other ships Rating: M
Length: 22442 words
Creator Links: Rosie_Rues
Theme:
Grief/Mourning, Dreamsharing, Recovery, Enemies to Lovers, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, changing roles in life, loss of limb
Summary: With the Great Twilight over, Duvalie follows Laura home to Legram. She's not entirely sure why she's here, or when she's going to leave, but she can't bring herself to regret her choice.

Meanwhile, Victor's dreaming of the only man in the universe still willing to offer him a challenge...

Reccer's Notes: While I have read this fic several times, the most recent was some time ago, I always remember it as being roughly half of one ship and half of another- I note this here because one of those ships is M/M. In my rereading, I see the balance is more 2/3 to 1/3, with the bulk of it being the theme-compliant Laura/Duvalie, who begins as something of a lost and reluctant guest in Laura's home in the wake of the loss of the woman who saved her. The emotional metamorphosis of Duvalie's canonical hostility towards Laura- already very much blunted as the story opens, turn to friendship and later towards attraction is an absolute treasure. There are many smaller moments of many relationships of varying sorts between her and otter female characters throughout the story, some of which absolutely beg for stories of their own.

The M/M ships is Victor/McBurn, and they are a prominent part of the story- really a story occurring in parallel, but separately- until it suddenly isn't. While I don't want to dwell on them in this post as they are not germane to the theme, it bears mentioning that they are there in case they would turn anyone off from reading. But I will say that their development is quite astounding, a sword master who has lost an arm, a god who has lost his world and any connection to it and what they become to each other.

This fic deals with grief in many forms, over many different kinds of loss, from loss of friends, comrades in arms, loss of a limb, loss of connection to oneself and an entire world. It's all very sensitively written, and even the absolutely fantastical loss of a god from another dimension with his entire world somehow becomes much less fantastical than one might expect.

There are also themes of many different changes in life that come with time passing and with dealing with these griefs. Oh, and the very cracky-sounding, but utterly sincerely dealt with coping with the shock of learning that your father is banging the demon god from another dimension. (that needs to be a tag, ok)

This is just one of my favorite ever fics, by one of my favorite authors.
Fanwork Links: https://archiveofourown.org/works/45897169
moon_custafer: neon cat mask (Default)
moon_custafer ([personal profile] moon_custafer) wrote2025-06-07 01:20 pm
Entry tags:

Saturday, Part I

Got up early and met a_t_rain downtown to watch the York Plays, or at least as many as them as I could see before ten a.m. when I headed home to get ready for this afternoon/evening’s 20th wedding anniversary at the Dog & Bear (which is where I’m currently typing this—we got here early, our guests are supposed to arrive around two o’clock).

I saw the York Plays from the Fall of Lucifer up through the Nativity, and it all gets way for serious after that point so I was happy enough to stop there. The Flood was a highlight, as usual—loved Noah’s obviously fake beard that he removes, after having spent a century constructing the Ark, and replaces with an even longer fake beard. The construction was staged as Noah unrolling the plans and then folding them into a paper boat—God comes and helps him with the final little tug at the corners that turns it into a boat shape.

Later, Abraham was played by someone who reminded me irresistibly of Matt Berry in voice and general appearance; but he made it work. Also this one was originally produced by the parchment-makers’ guild, so the bunch currently staging it not only made the mountain look like a collage of written texts, but handed out stickers to the audience that read “Abraham and Isaac were grete” and “wende, wende parchment makeres!”

ETA— Just remembered the guy who played post-Eden Adam. He was good, but the text for that play hadn’t been modernized as much as most of the others, and contained several instances of the word “mon,” which iirc, and from the dialogue, seemed to mean either “must” or “may”—“where I mon run,” etc. But this actor seemed to think it was more like the modern Jamaican word “mon.” At least, he would phrase it like “Where I, mon, run.”
fred_mouse: Doctor Who: close up of a smiling seventh doctor showing off iconic question mark umbrella handle (seventh doctor)
fred_mouse ([personal profile] fred_mouse) wrote2025-06-04 10:46 pm

[backdated] daily notes

  • working on Eldest's 21st quilt (yes, it is very overdue). Worked out what is needed, what I have, how the colours are going to be picked for the sections that I'm adding (because the original had a large square of white in the top left corner, so I've started the pattern at the third row, and have to add two rows at the bottom).
  • today's goal was to identify pieces for four blocks (of the remaining 24), stretch goal to sew them, extra stretch goal to finish assembling that strip (combining rows 5/6 into a single piece). I stalled out at identifying what fabric was suitable for the current set of blocks -- there are so many pieces!
  • Old Shanghai for the traditional post-con Wednesday gathering. There was some lamentation at the lack of pancakes, and conclusion that the last Pancake place had closed a decade ago.
fred_mouse: A hazard sign that says "WARNING! The Floor is Lava" in a pool of lava with the text "The Floor Is Lava!" (beware)
fred_mouse ([personal profile] fred_mouse) wrote2025-06-07 08:44 pm

Habitica

With the dramatic change in how I spend my weeks upon me, I'm revisiting Habitica to see what needs doing. I did a bit of a tweak last week, working through my habits list and deciding what was good. I haven't posted that here, because it needed editing, and at this point it is unlikely that I will. However, what do I have in dailies, and how am I going to change it?

  • Daily journal - this is going just fine, and it is important to my daily process for getting things done; keep
  • progress at least one to-do - I haven't been making good use of the to-do list, so this has been an issue. Making it optional, possibly to delete.
  • Tuesdays: weekly update on annual goals - I miss this as often as I achieve it, but it is a useful reminder; keep
  • read things 'today' list - I haven't been doing this consistently, but it is useful when I do; keep
  • update the 100 days document with today's small tasks - useful reminder; making it optional
  • Minimum progress on current project; list of craft projects - delete; make a habit* for 'craft'. I want to keep it, I have a 67 day streak, but I just can't guarantee that I'll be doing it daily, and having it as an intermittent habit is better than beating myself up.
  • read a book (physical, ebook, doesn't matter) - another one with a good streak, although only 36 days, but can't continue to commit, so moving it to habits.
  • check notes files for anything I can progress - this is a valuable reminder; I don't want to move it to a habit, making it optional. This is because I have a long term goal of getting everything out of notes and into more sensible locations -- I use the notes app for whatever I need to record Right Now.
  • Delete anything out of DW inboxes -- useful reminder, but I now at least look at the inbox every day, so deleting
  • read three emails - useful reminder, does help a little. 53 day streak. Keeping for now, might make optional or delete if it is still too much
  • update email and safari tabs spreadsheet - the spreadsheet was working as a motivation for while, but now it isn't. I still have it open, and maybe I'll update, but this isn't important. Delete
  • read at least one page of a drawing book (optional) - I've kind of abandoned this at the moment. I might take the drawing journal to uni with me, and take it places on my lunch break, but I want that to be more relaxed. Delete.
  • blog post (optional) -- I don't think that aiming to post daily is a good idea going forward. While I wasn't working/studying, it kept me focused on what I was doing, but I'll have other things for that. Delete.

That leaves 7 daily activities, of which journal, reading the to do list and checking emails are required. My notes suggested adding a zotero related task, but I think I'm going to put that in habits instead.

* The advantage of moving things to habits is that on days that I do a lot of whatever, I can tick them off multiple times.

mific: (TV (old))
mific ([personal profile] mific) wrote in [community profile] fancake2025-06-07 11:22 pm

Taskmaster: Team of Sue by thingswithwings

Fandom: Taskmaster (series 16)
Characters/Pairings: Sue Perkins/Susan Wokoma
Rating: Gen
Length: 00:02:06
Content Notes: no archive warnings apply, and there are no video-specific warnings.
Creator Links: thingswithwings on AO3
Themes: Female relationships, Friendship, Team, Humor

Summary: If you're lost, you can look, and you will find me.

Reccer's Notes: This is gorgeous and hilarious as the Sues stumble about carrying out the endless ridiculous tasks, laughing, triumphant, and always there for each other.

Fanwork Links: Team of Sue

fred_mouse: text icon reading '100 day project' (100-day-project)
fred_mouse ([personal profile] fred_mouse) wrote2025-06-07 02:55 pm

[100 days] Craft project update

I really haven't been putting much effort into tracking things here; my last post about it was 10th of May. At that point I had finished 2 projects of the 10 I'm hoping for, and made good progress on three. I've not finished anything else since, but I have made good progress on some

Previous good progress

  1. towel rail - has not been progressed. I need a day a) without rain and b) that I have multiple hours available and c) (most importantly) that I remember this needs doing
  2. door mat(s) - I've used up all the existing 'yarn' and I have half a rag rug. Every time I am surprised by how much 'yarn' it takes. I need to work out where I stashed the rest of the strips while we had a houseguest, and assemble more.
  3. Teach myself to draw - this has stalled. I keep misplacing my drawing book or the sketch book I'm using, or the pencil. I need to get a better process.

Progressed since

  1. pink / white / brown crochet blanket -- crochet finished, sewing in the ends. I think I'm half done on the ends?
  2. brown / green knit -- this gets 4-6 rows roughly every second Thursday (when we game online) plus I've sat and worked on it while listening to podcasts.
  3. T's jumper - a handful of rows. I need to make sure to do this every second day at least
  4. blue / white virus blanket - I've finished the first of the two balls I had left, now on to the last one. It is just shy of 70cm square, and I'm on the 13th repeat of the pattern. I suspect this is the last repeat, based on available yarn. Hopefully I have enough to finish.
  5. Eldest's quilt - I have laid it out, I have worked out what is needed to finish it. I have made and joined four blocks and worked out that I was doing something different from the book, and now those are going to be the front of a cushion, just as soon as they aren't attached to the quilt any more (basically, I'm adding 1/2" to each so the finished size is 9.5" rather than 9", but hadn't noted that down anywhere).
  6. Knitting for Kitties - using up a couple of balls of yarn; the green one is done, and we have handed three squares over to [personal profile] purrdence

I'm reasonably happy with this progress. It is possible that either the knitting for kitties or the virus blanket will be finished next, because those are relatively portable. The former lives in my handbag; the latter is going to go in my uni bag (it is possible I will mostly stop carrying the handbag, because it doesn't fit a lunch or a laptop)

skygiants: Autor from Princess Tutu gesturing smugly (let me splain)
skygiants ([personal profile] skygiants) wrote2025-06-06 08:18 pm

(no subject)

A while back, [personal profile] lirazel posted about a bad book about an interesting topic -- Conspiracy Theories About Lemuria -- which apparently got most of its information from a scholarly text called The Lost Land of Lemuria: Fabulous Geographies, Catastrophic Histories by Sumathi Ramaswamy.

Great! I said. I bet the library has that book, I'll read it instead of the bad one! which now I have done.

For those unfamiliar, for a while the idea of sunken land-bridges joining various existing landmasses was very popular in 19th century geology; Lemuria got its name because it was supposed to explain why there are lemurs in Madagascar and India but not anywhere else. Various other land-bridges were also theorized but Lemuria's the only one that got famous thanks to the catchy name getting picked up by various weird occultists (most notably Helena Blavatasky) and incorporated into their variably incomprehensible Theories of Human Origins, Past Paradises, Etc.

As is not unexpected, this book is a much more dense, scholarly, and theory-driven tome than the bad pop history that [personal profile] lirazel read. What was unexpected for me is that the author's scholarly interests focus on a.) cartography and b.) Tamil language and cultural politics, and so what she's most interested in doing is tracing how the concept of a Lemurian continent went from being an outdated geographic supposition to a weird Western occult fringe belief to an extremely mainstream, government-supported historical narrative in Tamil-speaking polities, where Lost Lemuria has become associated with the legendary drowned Tamil homeland of Tamilnāṭu and thus the premise for a claim that not only is the Lemurian continent the source of human origins but that specifically the Tamil language is the source language for humanity.

Not the book I expected to be reading! but I'm not at all mad about how things turned out! the prose is so dry that it was definite work to wade through but the rewards were real; the author has another whole book about Tamil language politics and part of me knows I am not really theory-brained enough for it at this time but the other part is tempted.

Also I did as well come out with a few snippets of the Weird Nonsense that I thought I was going in for! My favorite anecdote involves a woman named Gertrude Norris Meeker who wrote to the U.S. government in the 1950s claiming to be the Governor-General of Atlantis and Lemuria, ascertaining her sovereign right to this nonexistent territory, to which the State Department's Special Advisor on Geography had to write back like "we do not think that is true; this place does not exist." Eventually Gertrude Meeker got a congressman involved who also nobly wrote to the government on behalf of his constituent: "Mrs. Meeker understands that by renouncing her citizenship she could become Queen of these islands, but as a citizen she can rule as governor-general. [...] She states that she is getting ready to do some leasing for development work on some of these islands." And again the State Department was patiently like "we do not think that is true, as this place does not exist." Subsequently they seem to have developed a "Lemuria and Atlantis are not real" form letter which I hope and trust is still being used today.
craftyhobbit: (Default)
craftyhobbit ([personal profile] craftyhobbit) wrote in [community profile] smallweb2025-06-06 06:32 pm

Free Hosting Suggestions

Hi, I am a neocities user, but recently I've found that the social media-like follow function, profile commenting and recent activity page has started making me feel uncomfortable using the site. I would like to find a free host like neocities that allows me to create a website using old fashioned coding techiques that is free of the social media aspect. I'm not interested in followers, and getting comments for the things that I'm working on - I just want to create a small site to hold the stuff I'm working/researching, but I keep finding free hosts that rely on premade templates and AI content generation. Does anyone have any suggestions?
moon_custafer: neon cat mask (Default)
moon_custafer ([personal profile] moon_custafer) wrote2025-06-05 09:31 am

Currently At Liberty

i.e. I got let go from my workplace this morning. The less-bad news is that they made it clear it’s not in any way my fault, and they’ve offered me a pretty decent severance package. Sort of half-expected this ever since the tariffs went up. Anyway, since it’s currently June I figure I may as well consider this my summer vacation. Now if only the rain would let up so I can enjoy it.
fred_mouse: Western Australian state emblem - black swan silhouette on yellow circle (home state)
fred_mouse ([personal profile] fred_mouse) wrote2025-06-05 01:08 pm

Perspectives

This anonymous comment over on [community profile] fandomsecrets made me laugh:

"But we didn't have cable growing up, just 4 or 5 channels on the TV and kids shows were only on at certain times, plus we just didn't watch much."

I grew up in the city. There were three channels (ABC, 7, 9), until 1986, when SBS launched here. The addition of channel 10 in 1988 brought us to 5. Cable television wasn't a thing for most of that time. I believe that the regional areas had two channels. I presume that most of the remote areas had none.

I have no idea how old that commenter was, but the idea of 4 or 5 channels still feels like luxury. Even though I've (yet again) been reminded about just how long ago 1988 actually was.

ETA: also, the part of the city I grew up in was really close to the transmitters for at least two of those stations. Because of physics, some of my school friends couldn't get at least one of those stations at home, because they lived too close to the transmitters (and sometimes because there was terrain in the way)

skygiants: Jane Eyre from Paula Rego's illustrations, facing out into darkness (more than courage)
skygiants ([personal profile] skygiants) wrote2025-06-04 08:47 pm
Entry tags:

(no subject)

Over Memorial Day weekend [personal profile] genarti and I were on a mini-vacation at her family's cabin in the Finger Lakes, which features a fantastic bookshelf of yellowing midcentury mysteries stocked by [personal profile] genarti's grandmother. Often when I'm there I just avail myself of the existing material, but this time -- in increasing awareness of the way our own books are threatening to spill over our shelves again -- I seized this as an opportunity to check my bookshelves for the books that looked most like they belonged in a cabin in the Finger Lakes to read while I was there and then leave among their brethren.

As a result, I have now finally read the second-to-last of the stock of Weird Joan Aikens that [personal profile] coffeeandink gave me many years ago now, and boy was it extremely weird!

My favorite Aiken books are often the ones where I straight up can't tell if she's attempting to sincerely Write in the Genre or if she is writing full deadpan parody. I think The Embroidered Sunset is at least half parody, in a deadpan and melancholy way. I actually have a hypothesis that someone asked Joan Aiken to write a Gothic, meaning the sort of romantic suspense girl-flees-from-house form of the genre popular in the 1970s, and she was like "great! I love the Gothic tradition! I will give you a plucky 1970s career girl and a mystery and a complex family history and several big creepy houses! would you also like a haunted seaside landscape, the creeping inevitability of loss and death, some barely-dodged incest and a tragic ending?" and Gollancz, weary of Joan Aiken and her antics, was just like "sure, Joan. Fine. Do whatever."

Our heroine, Lucy, is a talented, sensible, cross and rather ugly girl with notably weird front teeth, is frequently jokingly referred to as Lucy Snowe by one of her love interests; the big creepy old age home in which much of the novel takes place is called Wildfell Hall; at one point Lucy knocks on the front door of Old Colonel Linton and he's like 'oh my god! you look just like my great-grandmother Cathy Linton, nee Earnshaw! it's the notably weird front teeth!" Joan Will Have Her Little Jokes.

The plot? The plot. Lucy, an orphan being raised in New England by her evil uncle and his hapless wife and mean daughter, wants to go study music in England with the brilliant-but-tragically-dying refugee pianist Max Benovek. Her uncle pays her fare across the Atlantic, on the condition that she go and investigate a great-aunt who has been pulling a pension out of the family coffers for many years; the great-aunt was Living Long Term with Another Old Lady (the L word is not said but it is really felt) and one of them has now died, but no one is really clear which.

The evil uncle suspects that the surviving old lady may not be the great-aunt and may instead be Doing Fraud, so Lucy's main task is to locate the old lady and determine whether or not she is in fact her great-aunt. Additionally, the great aunt was a brilliant folk artist unrecognized in her own time and so the evil uncle has assigned Lucy a side quest of finding as many of her paintings as possible and bringing them back to be sold for many dollars.

However, before setting out on any of these quests, Lucy stops in on the dying refugee pianist to see if he will agree to teach her. They have an immediate meeting of the minds and souls! Not only does Max agree to take her on as His Last Pupil, he also immediately furnishes her with cash and a car, because her plan of hitchhiking down to Aunt Fennel's part of the UK could endanger her beautiful pianist's hands!! Now Lucy has a brilliant future ahead of her with someone who really cares about her, but also a ticking clock: she has to sort out this whole great-aunt business before Max progresses from 'tragically dying' to 'tragically dead.'

The rest of the book follows several threads:
- Lucy bopping around the World's Most Depressing Seaside Towns, which, it is ominously and repeatedly hinted, could flood catastraphically at any moment, grimly attempting to convince a series of incredibly weird and variably depressed locals to give her any information or paintings, which they are deeply disinclined to do
- Max, in his sickroom, reading Lucy's letters and going 'gosh I hope I get to teach that girl ... it would be my last and most important life's work .... BEFORE I DIE'
- Sinister Goings On At The Old Age Home! Escaped Convicts!! Secret Identities!!! What Could This All Have To Do With Lucy's Evil Uncle? Who Could Say! Is Their Doctor Faking Being Turkish? Who Could Say!! Why Does That One Old Woman Keep Holding Up An Electric Mixer And Remarking How Easy It Would Be To Murder Someone With It? Who Could Say That Either!!!
- an elderly woman who may or may not be Aunt Fennel, in terrible fear of Something, stacked into dingy and constrained settings packed with other old and fading strangers, trying not to think too hard about her dead partner and their beloved cat and the life that she used to have in her own home where she was happy and loved .... all of these sections genuinely gave me big emotions :(((

Eventually all these plotlines converge with increasingly chaotic drama! Lucy and the old lady meet and have a really interesting, affectionate but complicated relationship colored by deep loneliness and suspicion on both sides; again, I really genuinely cared about this! Lucy, who sometimes exhibits random psychic tendencies, visits the lesbian cottage and finds it is so powerfully and miserably haunted by the happiness that it once held and doesn't anymore that she nearly passes out about it! Then whole thing culminates in huge spoilers )

Anyway. A wild time. Some parts I liked very much! I hit the end and shrieked and then forced Beth to read it immediately because I needed to scream about it, and now it lives among its other yellowing paperback friends on the Midcentury Mysteries shelf for some other unsuspecting person to find and scream about.

NB: in addition to everything else a cat dies in this book .... Joan Aiken hates this cat in particular and I do not know why. She likes all the other cats! But for some reason she really wants us to understand that this cat has bad vibes and we should not be sad when it gets got. But me, I was sad.
silversea: Cat reading a red book (Reading Cat)
silversea ([personal profile] silversea) wrote in [community profile] booknook2025-06-04 04:39 pm
Entry tags:

RIP (Read In Progress) Wednesday

Happy June!

What are you reading?
nuh_s: Photo of the Toy Soldier looking up at a blue sky. It is pale with a drawn-on mustache and red lapels on its black jacket. (Default)
nuh_s ([personal profile] nuh_s) wrote in [community profile] fancake2025-06-03 05:56 pm

King Falls AM: the gallery of our bones by ryyves

Fandom: King Falls AM (Podcast)
Pairings/Characters: Lily Wright & Pippa James, Jack Wright & Lily Wright
Rating: Teen and Up
Length: 8,492
Content Notes: Alcoholism, Missing Persons, Grief/Mourning
Creator Links: ryyves' Ao3
Theme: Female Relationships, Character Study, Angst

Summary:

Spoilers for King Falls AM episode 68, set before the first King Falls Chronicles (ep 56-57).

It’s far from the last email Lily gets about King Falls. Sometimes the name is hidden in postscripts, sometimes bright as highways at midnight, and every time it catches in Lily’s heart like a frightened canary, yellow and waning.

Lily doesn’t delete them, not one. She files them away in a quiet folder of her work email, so she doesn’t have to see them in her inbox. There are things that can be said with distance, and this is one of them: that if she deleted every mention of King Falls, she would delete every rope thrown to Jack. Every hope, or something that runs even deeper.

Some fear, perhaps, that she is not where she is supposed to be.

Or: Pippa puts up with way more of Lily's shit than she should have to.


Reccer's Notes: This is such a wonderful character study that explores Lily's character and gives her and Pippa's friendship a spotlight. The writing style is beautiful as well.

Fanwork Links: the gallery of our bones