The Dreamwidth Account

Still busy (new job, getting everything lined up to go with the new job etc) so not reading as much as I could be. But have some items from my reading list anyway.

One of the things I've been doing recently is working my way through the personakinkmeme, which introduced me to a few fics I hadn't read, and a couple of authors I hadn't run across. Not much of it stood out as particularly brilliant (I've apparently already found most of the good authors in the fandom, which is a bit of a nuisance).

One that stood out was Trust and Submission by BloodyJinxii. It's an interesting fic in the P5 universe, where Goro Akechi places an ad for a BDSM session, and is slightly surprised firstly by the domme he gets answering it, and secondly by which parts of what she does upset him the most. I found it an interesting exploration of the topic, and well worth it for the way it deals with a few assumptions about the "purpose" of BDSM in the first place. Let's just say Goro has some misplaced ideas about where the power is supposed to lie in a scene, and leave it at that, shall we?

In the works in progress I'm ambling through, there were new chapters in Once More With Feeling by beesandtoes, and Home For A Wayward Soul by TwilightKnight17 (each of the links goes to the latest chapter of each work). Once More With Feeling is the "Groundhog Day" AU, which is turning into an "Protagonist has a Palace" AU, and getting a bit more interesting as things go; Home For A Wayward Soul is a post-game fic with a twist - Akira volunteering at a new orphanage finds a young (approximately 3 years old) Goro Akechi, who he adopts to give the kid a second chance at life. I'd recommend both of these (OMWF is up to chapter 13, HFAWS is up to chapter 2) if you're interested in the fandom.

In Final Fantasy VII, Gotham's_Only_Wolf has picked up their May The Steel Never Dull universe again, and turned out another chapter, so if you're a fan of theirs, do take a look (link goes to the latest chapter).

Plus I've added a couple of new works in progress to my subscription list (I'm a sucker for a good work in progess). The first is A Farce at Playing House by cookietosser and literarytonguetied, which is a Persona 5 post-game college age AU, where Ryuji Sakamoto is studying physical therapy at a college in Iwatodai (and staying in a dorm building which will be familiar to fans of the Persona series) when he runs into an unexpected waiter at a diner. It has a counterpart fic from the perspective of the other party in the story (A Farce at Playing Dead) which adds to the interest of the whole story. I'll be interested in seeing where those two go. I've also picked up you will not take my heart alive by myotinae, which is an interesting twist on the game timeline (break occurs around November, for those who are interested) and stars a Goro Akechi whose heart has been changed by the Phantom Thieves, and who is not particularly happy about this.

So that's what I've been reading this week. What do other people have in their "To Be Read" piles?

It's been a non-teaching week, plus there were a bundle of public holidays, so I've been home a lot and doing a lot of reading this week. Here's five highlights.

To start with, I finished the book I was doing a farewell re-read of (and decided to keep it) and started another one: this time, it's Fyodor Dostoyevsky's Crime and Punishment. Just got started on it, and it's still in the set-up stages (I'm reading this one very slowly, since it's actually new to me - I bought the book back when I thought I should be acquiring a library of the classics, and I've not read it before now). Not sure what I think about it at this point. I'll let you all know a bit further on, when I've read more than the first chapter or so.

Most of what I've been reading this week has been fanfic, mostly Persona 5. However, there's a couple of bits of Final Fantasy VII in there: By Any Other Name by Ardwynna, a nice bit of Aeris/Sephiroth fake-ish dating; and From Cloud, With Love by Gotham's_Only_Wolf, where a mistaken number on a silly text to a friend makes Cloud a new friend, and eventually much more. Both nice fluffy pieces, without too much angst or despair, just what I need in the current climate (we're doing an election campaign here in Australia; if I want angst, despair, and existential dread, I can find plenty of it in the various policy platforms of the various parties).

On the Persona 5 side of things, I discovered a couple of new authors - firstly bubblebangbaby, whose The Body-Switching Episode is a gorgeous example of the sorts of smutty silliness that can be achieved by putting a couple of teenage boys in each other's bodies. Protagonist/Ryuji, masturbation, and Ryuji!feels galore, absolutely glorious to read. Let's put it this way: I grinned and laughed out loud reading it, so it's not just smut, there's some humour in there as well.

The other author in Persona 5 fandom I discovered (and went through their back history like a dose of salts last night) was ThirtySixSaveFiles. I'm going to recommend their lovely AU-ish fic where the lost get found as something for any interested readers, because I think this one captures their writing style (and the characters) best of all. It's an adult-aged (character age ranges would be from 22 - 24 years old) no Personas Detective/Thief AU, where Goro Akechi is a young and up-coming detective in the Tokyo police force, Akira Kurusu runs a coffee shop by day and leads the Phantom Thieves by night, and it's a glorious romp to read through.

Also, in other news: I have a new job, doing clerical work two days a week for a total of eleven and a half hours a week. I start on Thursday. So I expect my rate of reading to go down a bit. Let's see how things go.

Have another five from my reading list for this week.

First up, I've finished re-reading "Making Money", and moved on to "Feet of Clay. Since this one doesn't have chapters, I'm reading it out loud to myself, and stopping when I get through a couple of scenes. It's about five pages a night, or thereabouts.

Next, for uni, I've been required to read Lovecraft, for the first time. "The Call of Cthulhu" and "A Shadow Over Innsmouth". Which means I've now seen the origins of a great amount of the strangeness of the internet, and possibly due to being desensitised by long exposure to the internet itself, I haven't turned into a gibbering wreck. I do see where Bob Howard gets his comments about Lovecraft's purple prose from, though. All the shades, from aubergine through heliotrope to palest, palest lilac. Plus lots of focus on the "uncanny", as well as a lot of the racism and xenophobia for which Lovecraft is rather infamous. Seriously, if the guy hadn't been so absolutely and pathologically terrified of the idea of anyone who wasn't a white male upper-middle-class American from the North-Eastern US states having any access to anything by way of knowledge or power which he didn't have, he might have been a reasonable bloke to know. As it is, reading his stuff reminds me of a lot of reading memes from the alt-right bits of the internet - same sense of gibbering terror at the very notion of difference.

If H P Lovecraft were alive and writing today, he'd be a virulent blogger for the far right. If we were very lucky, he'd have been one of the Rabid Puppies and would currently be involved in a virulent argument with Vox Day about who was more hardcore and genuine, and therefore performing a service to mankind by keeping the two of them focussed on each other and out of everyone else's hair. I can admire the craft of his writing, while disliking a lot of the content.

I also had a look at one of the Hugo-nominated short-stories, mainly because it's a T Kingfisher story I hadn't seen before: The Rose MacGregor Drinking and Admiration Society. Like many of her stories, it takes a fairytale trope, and turns it on its head, in a rather humourous way. I think if I ever wind up with money, I'm going to see about buying as much of her stuff as I can lay hands on (or get delivered to Australia).

So, final item, and it's basically an author/series recommendation more than anything else. I got interested in TwilightKnight17's Hours-Verse series, which is a fusion largely of Persona 3, Persona 4 and Persona 5, where the central premise is that the end of Persona 3 changes in a particular fashion that I'm not going to share, because Spoilers. It's up to 13 parts so far, one of which is currently a work in progress, and I'd definitely recommend it if you're a fan of any of the Persona games, because even the original Persona and Persona 2 get a look in. Also look at any of their other stuff - they're well worth the read, I'm finding. Good characterisation, none of the more annoying fan-writer quirks (such as describing characters solely by epithets[1]) that can sometimes get in the way of enjoying a story, and they're very good at plotting and pacing.

So that's what I've been reading (along with a lot of Persona 5 fanfic). What's on everyone else's reading list?


[1] What is it with that one? Do neurotypical people generally think of their friends as 'the tall one', 'the short one', 'the one with blonde hair' and so on? Why not just use their names?

It's been a non-teaching week this week. So I did a bit more personal reading than usual.

First up, I finished reading "Going Postal", and switched over to "Making Money" (Terry Pratchett, ISBN 978-0-385-61101-5). I'm re-reading this one at one chapter a day as well, to try and spin it out over a longer time period, rather than just blitzing through it in an evening. It's one of my favourite Discworld books - although this time it's looking at what makes a finance system go round. It also looks at the cost of obsession, and the cost to other people of one person's obsession, as well as the problematic nature of the Assassin's Guild scholarship program and what it turns out.

On the fanfic side of things, I picked up a few new works in progress in the Persona 5 fandom (to replace the two which had finished, it seems). First of these is If My Voice Is Reaching You, by iamnotafraidofspiders, which is a time-travel "save the cutie" fix-it. It has an interesting-to-me premise, even if it isn't particularly original, and of course, as with all such fic, the attraction isn't so much in what the premise is, as in how the trick is going to be done this time - what does this magician/writer bring to this particular trick/plot which will make it interesting?

The second is Campout, by Mishiman, which is a polyamorous camp-out fic set during May, where the Phantom Thieves (a gang of five at this point) wind up trapped by rotten weather inside Madarame's palace. It's marked as "explicit", but they haven't exactly got up to the point where anything I'd mark as "explicit" is happening just yet. It's more about group dynamics, and the various frustrations of Panther's catsuit at present.

I've also started reading Shatter Me by NekoK96, a New Game + fic, which starts its New Game from one of the "bad ending" variants from the point of view of Goro Akechi. Which is a variation on the theme I haven't seen before, and it makes for an interesting story.

Finally, I've picked up Unexpected by Blackwings91, which is (predictably for this author) a Protagonist/Ann getting-them-together fic, but which picks up about six or seven years on from the events of the game, and carries on from there. So, adults in an adult world.

So that's what I've been reading this week (usually when I should have been working on my assessments). What have other people been reading?

Once again, a pick of five things from my reading list for the week, with a bit of reviewage.

First up, I've finally finished re-reading Frederica by Georgette Heyer, and have moved on to Going Postal by Terry Pratchett (Doubleday hardback edition, 2004, ISBN 0-385-60342-8). It's one of my favourite Discworld books, and I'm rationing it out by reading myself one chapter each night. I find this one of the best books ever, simply for the depth of analysis Pterry does of the ways that corporate robber barons can destroy enterprises, and indeed societies, simply by trying to extract every last penny out of a system, or a product, or a process, or an employee's labour. As Lord Vetinari points out, the post office failed when it stopped being treated as a public good for the betterment of everyone, and started being treated like a money box. There's a lot to be learned in this one - I feel like I'd want to be assigning it as reading to Commerce and Management students, just so they had a chance of seeing an alternative picture to the one being offered by their coursework.

There have been a couple of the fanfic WIPs I've been following which have finished this week. The first of these was Just Like New by Piano, which is a Final Fantasy VII fanfic, set in a world where Zack Fair is a mechanic, and Cloud Strife is a discarded android he's found on a scrapheap. If you're the type of person who isn't fond of WIPs, well, it's all finished now; do go have a look at it. I found it a bit schmoopy for my tastes, simply because I'm not that fond of chronically shy and retiring Cloud Strife, but overall, it's a reasonably well-thought-through idea, and the villain everyone in FF7 fandom loves to hate (Hojo) dies at the end, so it's all good.

The second completed WIP was in Persona 5 fandom: Phantom Stardust by TheWabbajackX. This one is essentially a retelling of the original game story, with a fully fleshed out heterosexual relationship between the Protagonist and Ann Takamaki. It's not bad... but I wouldn't be writing home about it either. There's a bit too much emphasis on the sexual side of things with the characters for my preference, and it does tend toward a certain degree of "stations of the canon" as well (which is great if you're the sort of person who's into that, or who can deal with the spoilers if you haven't already completed the game). Basically, given the P/Ann part of this fandom tends to be either excessively cutesy, or excessively pornographic (in best "plumbing manual" porn style - insert tab A into slot B, remove, reinsert, repeat with emphasis on dimensions, directions, actions and lubricant descriptions until completion), this story does make a nice change from the bulk of them.

I decided to re-read Equoid by Charles Stross, because after a few weeks of early Realist literature for Constructing the Real at uni, I was in the mood for something which manages to blend together H P Lovecraft (I have to read "Call of Cthulhu" for this course... if nothing else can be said for the course, at least the reading list is surprisingly cheap for university level study, since everything on it is out of copyright), Stella Gibbons, and the Laundryverse, with side references to Pterry and to Peter Shaeffer. Because if I'm going to be dealing with purple prose, I may as well have it with a good side order of weird biology, strange things from the depths of the subconscious, and enough geek references to sink a battleship.

mystiri_1 has published a couple of new bits of fic in the FFXV fandom, both of which were really good. I'm linking to Chef's Special because firstly, it's here on Dreamwidth, secondly, it's a piece which uses a couple of very minor characters in some rather interesting ways, and thirdly, it covers a period in the timeline which I haven't seen tackled before. I've always been a fan of mystiri_1's writing since I first ran into her stuff in the Final Fantasy VII fandom, so it's good to see it here in Final Fantasy XV.

In other news, the arc of the weather here in Western Australia is busy tending toward winter, and I'm starting to need to put on leggings in the early morning to keep warm in bed. Not quite cool enough yet to merit switching over to the winter-weight quilt, but certainly starting to get cooler in the mornings.

Farewell Re-Read:

Finished off The Body in the Bath House and put that in the bye-bye bag; started off Damned Whores and God's Police by Anne Summers (Penguin 2002 revised edition, ISBN 0-14-028876-7)

Novels:

Still plugging away at Frederica, but I'm having to put it on the side for Madame Bovary for my uni studies.

For Uni:

Dickens, Charles (1836). Sketches by Boz, London, (publisher unknown), "A Visit To Newgate".

Earnshaw, Stephen (2010). Beginning Realism, Manchester & New York, Manchester University Press, pp14 - 37 (Chapter 1)

Plus the first 166 pages of Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert (Penguin 2003 edition, ISBN 978-0-140-44912-9). I have to be at least halfway through the book by the beginning of the week after next (university week 3, this was week 1).

(I still have a chapter out of "North and South" by Elizabeth Gaskell to be reading as well, plus another chapter of the book for my creative writing course).

Fanfiction:

( Under the fold for politeness )

So that's what I've been reading this week... and I've also been trying to clean the house in time for a rental inspection on Thursday morning next week, and come up with ideas for a presentation about living independently while autistic and how this might differ from doing so while neurotypical (presentation happens in uni week 4, so I have a couple of weeks to pull things together). Everything happens at once around here...

Farewell Re-Read

Still working through A Body in the Bath House by Lindsey Davis.

Novels

Still working through Frederica by Georgette Heyer. My copy of this one has reached the point where it can almost be shuffled rather than read, which makes reading a tad awkward, but it's still do-able.

Fanfic

( Lots this week - under the fold )

So, that's what I've been reading this week. How about everyone else?

Farewell Re-Read:

Still on "A Dying Light in Corduba" by Lindsey Davis

Books:

Still re-reading "Frederica" by Georgette Heyer

Fanfic:

( Under the fold for people's reading lists )

So, that's what I've been reading. What about everyone else? Any recommendations?

Farewell Re-reads
A Dying Light in Corduba, by Lindsey Davis, ISBN 0 71 2659 41 2. One of her Marcus Didius Falco novels. (Yup, finished the Tim Flannery, and it's in the bye-bye bag, awaiting donation).

Fanfic

Five Times the Villain’s Weapon Didn’t Work on Thor and the One Time It Did by TheOther Odinson - MCU "Five Times" fic. My notes for this one basically quote Loki in Avengers: Assemble - "Are you ever not going to fall for that?". Made me grin.

A Kind of Magic by XpaperplaneX - Latest chapter of a WIP (Ch 4). Still fluffy, but with more smut in this chapter.

you&i’ll be safe and sound (epilogue) by Feather (lalaietha) - final part of the "your blue eyed boys" re-read.

[to see you there] by Feather (lalaietha) - The link leads to the main series page on AO3, because this week I re-read the whole series. All 28 parts of it. And rather than bloat out my list by referring to them all individually, I'm just going to point everyone to this list someone else (Feather!) prepared earlier, in best "Blue Peter"/cooking show style.

Online Articles

Four Days Trapped at Sea With Crypto’s Nouveau Riche by Laurie Penny - Confirming that spending the better part of a week around a bunch of crypto-currency enthusiasts is probably not anyone's idea of a good time. Not even the crypto-currency enthusiasts'.

This Transgender Woman Says a Message From Her Doctor’s Office Turned Into a Transphobic Tirade by Lucy Diavolo - despite the tabloidesque headline, it's an intelligent story, and I have a lot of respect for the person involved.

That's what I've been reading this week. What about everyone else? Any articles that catch people's eyes, or recommendations/dis-recommendations?

Farewell Re-Read:

Still working my way through The Weather Makers

Fanfic:
( Read more... )

Fanart/Comics:

(These are all from the Gaia Santa collection as well)

Holiday Shenanigans by chaoscheebs

Pushing the Limits by Kitsunebaba - This one is a comic, and it's supposed to be a longer work.

Fix a Heartbreak with Coffee and Cake by Sephykins

Anything anyone else wants to share or recommend?