humantales | Reading

reeby10 posting in

Fandom: Midsommar
Characters: Dani Ardor, Hanna, Siv
Rating: T
Length: 4,212
Creator Links:

Selkit
Theme: female relationships

Summary: In her dreams, dark smudges crowd the edges of the world. One looms larger than the rest, twisting into impossible shapes, morphing into a figure with many faces, all of them howling with rage.

When she jolts awake, the dream-figure lingers. She tries to ignore it. She’s no stranger to nightmares. Her whole life has been one ever since her family’s deaths.

But things are different now. This is a new life. A new family.

Right?

Reccer's Notes: I love seeing what happens with Dani after the events of Midsommar, and this is such a good look at the continued ritual of being the May Queen! I am a known ho for ritual, but especially building off of the existing worldbuilding in such a believable way. I really enjoyed seeing more of Dani interacting with the other women of the Hårga as she learns to be part of her new family and culture. Plus the parts with Maja’s (and Christian’s) daughter were just perfect.

Fanwork Links: on AO3

mific posting in

fancake

Fandom: original work
Characters/Pairings: powerful mage/warrior bonded to her
Rating: G
Length: n/a
Creator Links: creators have been revealed but the artist chose to make the work anon.
Themes: Female relationships, Femslash, Female characters, Characters of color, Magic

Summary: none provided

Reccer's Notes: Another gorgeous work from the recent Everything is Femslash exchange. It's in a fantasy setting, featuring a mage and her warrior. I love the warm earthy colours, and how, the mage being a little shorter, their faces and bodies fit together perfectly, and the way they're linked by the swirl of the magical bond. Beautiful. (Note that the post is locked to AO3.)

Fanwork Links: Always with you

reeby10 posting in

dw_community_promo

Link: Round 15 Sign Ups | Round 15 Themes

Description:

celebrity20in20 is a 20in20 community dedicated to making icons of actors and actresses. You have 20 days to make 20 icons about a celebrity of your choice, based on a set of themes for the round.

Schedule: Round 15 sign ups are open NOW. Icons are due July 17, 2025.

sinesofinsanity posting in

fancake

Fandom: DC Comics
Pairings/Characters: Pamela Isely/Harleen Quinzel, Bruce Wayne
Rating: Teen
Length: 1,882 words
Creator Links: Unpretty on AO3
Theme: Female relationships, Canon lgbtq+ characters, humour, superpowers

Summary:
Bruce Wayne deals with supervillains almost as much as Batman does.

Reccer's Notes:
Harley Quinn and Poison Ivy break into Bruce Wayne's office to stop Wayne Enterprises from doing evil corporate stuff. Or kill him. Bruce plays dumb. It's glorious.
I love Harley and Ivy's relationship in this. They're so true in how they love and support each other but are definitely super-villains who will definitely kill and/or main whoever gets in their way. Also Bruce's line about how Pamela probably wants to kill him because Harley finds him hot :D Bruce being smart by playing dumb is one of my favourite things.

Fanwork Links: Office Meeting
Also has a podfic!

marthawells

For Murderbot Day, a great interview with DeWanda Wise, about playing NavigationBot in The Rise and Fall of Sanctuary Moon:

https://www.nexuspointnews.com/post/interview-dewanda-wise

I had worked with Paul on Fatherhood. He literally texted me and was like, "do you want to play a murderous robot?"

rocky41_7 posting in

books

The day after finishing The Traitor Baru Cormorant I had to rush over to the library to pick up book 2, The Monster Baru Cormorant, which I finished earlier today.

Spoilers for The Traitor Baru Cormorant below!

The second book of a fantasy series of any kind often bears a very difficult burden. It is most often the place where the scope of the story grows significantly. A conflict which before was local to the protagonist's home and surrounding area may expand, often to the extent of the known world. New players are often added to the cast, bigger and scarier problems and challenges arise. The protagonist may have gone up in the world, wielding new power and influence, with new responsibilities. As a result, this is where many series lose their footing; a tightly-woven book or season 1 may give way to a muddled, watered down part 2 as the writers struggle to juggle this expanded focus.

The Monster suffers from none of those things. It is the place where Baru's story expands—in The Traitor, her focus was almost entirely on Aurdwynn; it was the full field of play and outside players mattered only as they influenced events on Aurdwynn. In The Monster, Baru has become a true agent of the Imperial Throne of Falcrest, and with these new powers, the entire field of the empire is opened up for her play, and it is fascinating to watch.

In The Traitor, Baru was narrowly focused on managing the situation in Aurdwynn; everything she did was to that end. In The Monster, Baru can do whatever she wants, and we get to see her finally on the open field. Even where she flounders and flails, it's delightful to watch the machinations of her mind constantly at work. Her cleverness rows against her bursts of sentimentality to produce some impressively chaotic effects, but she is as slippery as an eel to pin down, even when her rivals think they've gotten the best of her.

( Read more... )

conuly

And don't even ask me about my email!

Also: Comicsrss got a cease and desist from Gocomics, so now all my gocomics feeds are borked. I should see if I can find those comics hosted somewhere else and get their RSS feeds, but ugh.

Also also: What to know about the COVID variant that may cause ‘razor blade’ sore throats

**********************

( Read more... )

conuly

I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree,
And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made;
Nine bean-rows will I have there, a hive for the honey-bee,
And live alone in the bee-loud glade.

And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow,
Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings;
There midnight’s all a glimmer, and noon a purple glow,
And evening full of the linnet’s wings.

I will arise and go now, for always night and day
I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore;
While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements grey,
I hear it in the deep heart’s core.

**********

Link

conuly

He's the patron saint of gardeners, and also taxi drivers (unofficially). See, an early and popular cab stand was at Hôtel de Saint Fiacre in Paris, and the carriages themselves began to be called fiacres, and it just spiraled from there.

What makes this even stranger is that he's an Irish saint.

*********************

( Read more... )

mific posting in

fancake

Fandom: Star Trek: Reboot
Characters/Pairings: James Kirk/Leonard 'Bones' McCoy
Rating: G
Length: n/a
Creator Links: storietellers on AO3
Themes: Female relationships, Domestic, Femslash

Summary: "Having fun, Bones?"
"Just working out the tension. You really keep it all in your wrists. Keep reading, darlin'. I wanna know what happens next."

Reccer's Notes:
The 'Everything is Femslash' exchange has just revealed creators, and this is a gorgeous artwork of Rule 63 (always a girl) Kirk and McCoy chilling out. The lighting is warm and their likenesses are really well done. It's relaxing just to look at.

Fanwork Links: Relaxing

rocky41_7 posting in

books

I don't actually remember where I saw Catriona Ward's Sundial recommended, but it was somewhere and convincing enough to get it on my TBR. I finished the audiobook this week so it's time to reflect.

Sundial is a domestic psychological thriller which focuses on the relationship between the protagonist Rob and her eldest daughter Callie. Or at least, that's what the novel summary posits. A good 50% or more of the book is actually about Rob's youth and her relationship with her childhood family, primarily her twin sister, Jack. I didn't get that at first, which led to me being slightly frustrated by the length of the "flashback" sections until I realized that they were at least half the true focus of the story.

Ward excels in capturing the petty toxicity of a domestic environment gone sour. Especially deftly handled are the ways in which a partner can wound in such seemingly mundane ways. Many of the exchanges between Rob and her husband, Irving, come off as completely innocuous to an outsider, but to the two people in the relationship, who have the context for these seemingly nothing interactions, the full cruelty of them is on display. This adds completely believably to the tension between Rob and Callie, who has long favored her father, and who sees her mother's responses as hysterical overreactions, because she doesn't have the context that Rob does. Ward also very neatly portrays a truly vicious marriage, where both parties have given up pretending they want to be together, at least to each other, and where the entire relationship has become an unending game of oneupsmanship, trying to get one over on your spouse.

Adding to this suffocating atmosphere is Callie, a very strange 12-year-old who is starting to exhibit some very troubling behavior, particularly in her interactions with her 9-year-old sister, Annie. Rob has always struggled to connect with Callie—in contrast with Irving, who happily spoils her to force Rob to be the bad guy enforcing boundaries—but when Callie is thought to have attempted to poison Annie with Irving's diabetes medication, Rob decides it's time she and Callie have a real heart-to-heart.

So she takes Callie on a mother/daughter trip to Rob's childhood home, Sundial, an isolated family property out in the Mojave desert.

( Read more... )

conuly

Ooof, I do not know how people do it who do this for early voting as well!

conuly

but I still wasn't prepared to pop into a pizza shop on my lunch break only to find that it was cooler in the pizzeria than the outside. If that's not terrifying I don't know what is.

marthawells

Great interview with Murderbot executive producer Andrew Miano:

https://www.nexuspointnews.com/post/interview-murderbot-ep-andrew-miano

First and foremost, my partner Paul Weitz read the book for pleasure, not with any eye towards adaptation, and came in with it and said, "this would make an amazing TV show." We all read it and really sparked to it and thought it was unique and special and funny, which is not something that you always get in a lot of sci-fi. [It is] also very meaningful and emotional. It was the whole package so it was very exciting and we went about it. We met Martha... One of the biggest things to focus on is how do you honor the book? How do you translate that to the screen? It's not easy, but I'm very fortunate to have Paul Weitz and Chris Weitz — two smart, talented partners — creating and running the show with their guidance and Martha's support and involvement to sort of capture and stay true to the books.

conuly

It's gonna be one long, long, long day. Also hot. Long, hot, hard - and miserable.

Happy Mayoral Primaries, I guess? At least the poll site is airconditioned. (At least... I assume it is? Oh god what if it isn't.)

Oh, and I nearly forgot - the Arab/Israeli dove and rose mural has been painted over. Saw that on my way to CVS today.

*******************

( Read more... )

conuly

Taken from

archersangel

conuly

Above me, the branches toss toward and away from each other
the way privacy does with what ends up
showing, despite ourselves, of
who we are, inside.

Then they’re branches again—hickory, I think.

—It’s not too late, then.

******

Link

conuly

Can't wait to hear the exaggerated anger at how dare they retaliate....

full_metal_ox posting in

fancake

Fandom: Neuromancer | Sprawl Trilogy - William Gibson
Pairings/Characters: Gen; Sally Shears | Molly Millions & Yanaka Kumiko
Rating: General Audiences
Length: 1,225
Content Notes: No Archive Warnings Apply (but a character’s dark backstory is hinted at.)
Creator Tags: Cyberpunk, razor girl, Friendship, Mentors, Mentor & Protégé, Yakuza, Missing Scene, Female Friendship, Backstory, Fanon
Creator Links: (AO3)

LizzyChrome; (BlueSky):

lizzychrome; (DeviantArt)

lizzychrome; (Facebook)

LizzyChrome; (Instagram)

lizzy_chrome
Theme: Female Relationships, Backstory, Book Fandoms, Female Friendship, Non-Sexual Intimacy, Older Characters, Worldbuilding

Summary: How do Molly's claws and lenses actually work? Kumiko pries. (Missing scene from "Mona Lisa Overdrive.")

Author’s Notes: If you havne't read MLO yet, I won't spoil anything. I'll just set the scene, without giving anyway any important story elements: Molly is now middle-aged, goes by "Sally Shears," and is working as a body guard for a Japanese girl named Kumiko.

I do not own "Mona Lisa Overdrive."

This oldie was written probably over ten years ago. I originally posted it to Fanfiction.net, then took it down, feeling it was pointless. But in light of the new "Neuromancer" show coming out, I want to preserve this little ficlet, to see how my fanon explanation for how Molly's claws work compares to what (if anything) the show gives us regarding that explanation. After a quick re-read, I decided that no edit was needed. What you see here is what I originally posted ten or eleven years ago.

Reccer's Notes: This vignette expands upon an exchange in Mona Lisa Overdrive between aging cyborg mercenary Sally Shears (AKA Molly Millions, Cat Mother, Steppin’ Razor, Rose Kolodny, and Misty Steele—this lady’s got more names than a Wuxia hero) and her charge Yanaka Kumiko; Sally confides measured bits of her backstory to the crushstruck Kumiko, including stripping to bare a torso-long scar (from a near-fatal cagefighting injury, kept “to remind her of being stupid.”)

It’s a precious moment of trust, an elusive commodity in both women’s lives; LizzyChrome elaborates upon this to let Sally hold forth on how her prosthetics work—a question that Gibson chose to bury under Rule of Cool, and that’s challenged two generations’ worth of illustrators and cosplayers.

With the upcoming Neuromancer series on Apple+TV, Molly finally leaves the roster of visually iconic SFF characters not yet defined in the popular imagination by a screen adaptation (1). The Molly in my head admittedly didn’t resemble Briana Middleton, but I look forward to seeing her interpretation of the role (as well as how faithful to the spirit of the book the script gets to be, now that Hollywood has gotten their hands on

(A) a Beloved Property™,

(B) whose cyberpunk dystopia is feeling uncomfortably real in a number of respects—thanks in no small part to megacorporations like Apple.)

(1) Gully Foyle from The Stars My Destination and Elric of Melniboné also come to mind.

Fanwork Links: Shears, by

LizzyChrome.

mific posting in

fancake

Fandom: Stargate Atlantis
Characters/Pairings: (attraction only) Teyla Emmagan/Sora, Teyla Emmagan/Elizabeth Weir, Laura Cadman/Teyla Emmagan, Teyla Emmagan/Kate Heightmeyer, Sam Carter/Teyla Emmagan
Rating: G
Length: 2928
Content Notes: no AO3 warnings apply
Creator Links: tielan on AO3
Themes: Female relationships, Female characters, Friendship, Ambiguous relationships

Summary: Desire is a fine line. Five women in Pegasus walk it with care.

Reccer's Notes: This is a well-written exploration of how five women on the Atlantis expedition or elsewhere in Pegasus feel about Teyla. As a twist on the title, they all do or did want Teyla, even if they can't pursue that attraction for a number of reasons. It's also unclear if Teyla reciprocates any of their feelings. Excellent character pieces that ring true.

Fanwork Links: Five Women Who Never Wanted Teyla Emmagan

Profile

humantales

July 2013

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Page Summary

reeby10 in fancake - Midsommar: a queen for all seasons by Selkit
mific in fancake - Original Work: Always with you by Anonymous
reeby10 in dw_community_promo - celebrity20in20 Round 15
sinesofinsanity in fancake - DCU: Office Meeting by Unpretty
marthawells - Interview with DeWanda Wise
rocky41_7 in books - "The Monster Baru Cormorant" by Seth Dickinson
conuly - Welp, I've got way more tabs open than I can handle
conuly - The Lake Isle of Innisfree by William Butler Yeats
conuly - My mother's favorite saint probably was St. Fiacre
mific in fancake - Star Trek Reboot: Relaxing by storietellers
rocky41_7 in books - "Sundial" by Catriona Ward
conuly - Came home and passed out
conuly - The air today went from "walking around in soup" to "walking around in an oven"
marthawells - New Interview
conuly - So not looking forward to tomorrow
conuly - Types of medications known to cause heat intolerance
conuly - Of the Shining Underlife by Carl Phillips
conuly - Well, at least Iran is limiting themselves to legitimate military targets
full_metal_ox in fancake - Neuromancer; Sprawl Trilogy (William Gibson): Shears, by LizzyChrome.
mific in fancake - SGA: Five Women Who Never Wanted Teyla Emmagan by tielan

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Style: Neutral Good for Practicality by timeasmymeasure

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Reading List

Reading

Midsommar: a queen for all seasons by Selkit

Original Work: Always with you by Anonymous

celebrity20in20 Round 15

DCU: Office Meeting by Unpretty

Interview with DeWanda Wise

"The Monster Baru Cormorant" by Seth Dickinson

Welp, I've got way more tabs open than I can handle

The Lake Isle of Innisfree by William Butler Yeats

My mother's favorite saint probably was St. Fiacre

Star Trek Reboot: Relaxing by storietellers

"Sundial" by Catriona Ward

Came home and passed out

The air today went from "walking around in soup" to "walking around in an oven"

New Interview

So not looking forward to tomorrow

Types of medications known to cause heat intolerance

Of the Shining Underlife by Carl Phillips

Well, at least Iran is limiting themselves to legitimate military targets

Neuromancer; Sprawl Trilogy (William Gibson): Shears, by LizzyChrome.

SGA: Five Women Who Never Wanted Teyla Emmagan by tielan

Profile

July 2013

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