The Tyranny of Socks

1. Wooo! It is multifandomdrabble time again. Round 1 for 2021 is now open for signups! I love this exchange, because I like writing drabbles, and it's a good excuse to write a lot of them. This is my note to myself to remember to sign up -- I have a busy week and don't want to forget!

2. Every now and then I take a dive into the boards over at alternatehistory.com; I usually only read in the pre-1900 board, and avoid anything involving the American Civil War (I have a blanket "no Confederates and no Nazis in my pleasure reading" rule). But I really enjoy the site, especially the sort of deep dives into the marriages of minor and not-so-minor European nobility; one day I will actually make an account there, or even write something. In the meantime I found something I thought was really interesting, and it's the sort of thing a number of people on my access list here might like:

A Horn of Bronze: The Shaping of Fusania and Beyond: this is an alternate history of the western part of the North American continent based on the idea that caribou were domesticated in the Yukon in the early 1st millennium, and that this leads to plant domestication and the domestication of other animal species. From that point it's a survey of the complex cultures which develop in the arctic, subarctic and Pacific northwest and the effect that they have in the rest of North America and beyond -- the writing is very anthropological in a somewhat old fashioned way but the worldbuilding is extremely impressive. At some point (which I have not reached in my reading) there is contact via the coast with Japan & China, and the ethnographies reflect that, since in-universe some of them are ethnographies by people from Asia, or by people from North America residing in Asia. If what you really want in your worldbuilding is a survey of the most common domesticated plants in this version of the Pacific Northwest, and their spread beyond that region, this might be for you. It is really deep and engaging.

3. I've also recently read a very very long ASOIAF (book, not show) AU, involving Rob marrying a genderbent version of Domeric Bolton at the start of the events of the series. It carried through the whole of the foreshadopwed plot, building in a reasonable way from what we know is likely to happen. The author insists that it isn't a fixit, and enough bad things happen to make that true, but it does come to a satisfying conclusion. It's also a version of the ASOIAF story which is very much focused on the female characters and their view of the world they live in. It's called I lack the patience to haunt / Instead, I hunt by dwellingondreams. Be warned, it's over 700,000 words. But they're 700,000 really good words.

I'm still watching! ( a random collection of observations, with spoilers for all aired episodes and for the books too, even though the show and the books are very much each their own thing at this point )

...and am procrastinating about mowing the lawn.

I am still going back-and-forth on the idea of signing up for crossovering; some of my fallback crossover fandoms did not make the list and I'm just not sure I could pull together enough requests and offers to make it worthwhile. There is also the fact that I have not written anything since Yuletide, although I have signed up for the History Exchange, so I will have to write something soon.

Meanwhile we are reaching the end of a television cycle here -- Game of Thrones is over, and Penny Dreadful and Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell will be wrapping up soon. ( On the subject of the Game of Thrones finale... )

On the "needs more cannibalism" front, Hannibal is back, but I still don't like it very much. I am enjoying Strike Back: Project WNGWJLEO. I am the only person in fandom who has only seen the non-Richard Armitrage seasons of this show, but I absolutely love it. They have reached the "everyone assumes the two protagonists are married" stage of things.

And finally, Nashville has come back to my TV -- we are now up to episode 6. How I love the increasingly poor decisions of every single character on this show! It is the evening soap of my heart. ( let me babble about it under the cut )

Damn it, I am going to have to put on shoes and socks and go mow that lawn.

If it's Wednesday, it must be time for books.

Just finished: Bernard deVoto, The Year of Decision: 1846. I really liked this: it is an entirely and shamelessly biased account of the main events of that year: the war between the US and Mexico (and as part of that, the annexation of most of the West), the exodus of the Mormons from Nauvoo to Salt Lake, and the movement of settlers to Oregon and California (including the Donner party). It’s a lively and well-written book; I feel that if a history book is described as “novelistic” by reviewers in the 40s, the reader should be ready to accept that there won’t be many footnotes but there will be a lot of imaginative reconstruction. DeVoto spends a lot of time explaining which of the characters he describes were actively malevolent, and which just stupid, which is very entertaining if, like me, you like your history writing to have a moral dimension. I particularly enjoyed the stuff about California, and the declaration of the California republic, because most of it was the work of idiots with a taste for amateur dramatics, and it all seems like such a comedy of errors. I also now know who a lot of the people San Francisco streets were named for were.


Currently reading: Sharon Penman, While Christ and His Saints Slept. Apparently, the war between Stephen and Matilda (or Maude) was really long. So is this book. I’m only about 60% through it and I’m pretty tired of their shenanigans; I can only imagine that the English people felt likewise.

In fact I’m enjoying this in a slow, laid-back way, especially because it isn’t heading toward some kind of tragic catastrophe like her books about Wales or The Sunne in Splendour, which is about Richard III. (I decided to stop reading that because I discovered that the problem with aking Richard III a nice guy rather than an evil genius is that at a certain point he starts looking like a real idiot. (It interests me that people who are into both ASOIAF and Richard III generally do not seem to be Ned Stark fans, because Ned Stark is what happens if Richard III hesitates.)

It looks like I will be reading this book for the foreseeable future, so I have no idea what I will read next.

Title: Enter Heaven in Muddy Shoes
Author/Artist: vaznetti
For: netgirl_y2k
Pairings/Characters: Brienne of Tarth, Arya Stark, Podrick Payne
Rating: PG
Words: c. 11,000
Warnings: Spoilers through ADWD; violence and language as in canon.
Prompt: Brienne & Arya - Sansa isn't the Stark daughter that Brienne eventually discovers. I'd love some protective Brienne, and Arya being reluctant to trust anyone.
Disclaimer: I am not GRRM, which has allowed me to play fast and loose with his chronology and timing (mostly fast). I have, however, borrowed or only slightly altered a line or two of his, particularly when presenting a moment he had already written from another point of view. Title from Theodore Roethke, The Return.
Thanks: to Maidenjedi for a very quick and very helpful beta-read (and a wonderful suggestion for the title!), and to Linndechir for organizing such a great exchange.

( Brienne went from ship to ship, each time with the same questions... )

To Part II

Back from a wonderful weekend away -- we saw the sun! amazing! And then returned to nearly-unremitting gloom of Oxford. Woe!

But here are some more ASOIAF stories I liked. Many of them are also full of woe.

Goodbye Means Going Away (And Going Away Means Forgetting) (2368 words) by lit_chick08
Relationships: Jon Snow/Sansa Stark
Characters: Rickon Stark, Sansa Stark, Jon Snow, Osha (ASoIaF), Wyman Manderly, Davos Seaworth
Summary: Memory is unreliable. No one understands this better than Rickon Stark.
This story ripped my heart out and then jumped up and down on it a lot. It's really, really good.

this house no longer feels like home by juno_chan
Ned/Catelyn, for the prompt "'Take no wife...' AU where Ned is allowed to take the black, leading to angsty Ned/Cat." Or as the author puts it, angst, angst and more angst.
Who knew Ned not dying could be so tragic?

Crossing the River (8001 words) by smirnoffmule
Relationships: Catelyn Stark/Walder Frey
Summary: Catelyn makes a different deal with the Lord of the Crossing.
This is a very interesting AU -- and ends on a very interesting note.

A Circle in a Spiral (3727 words) by SomeEnchantedEve
Summary: An examination of Lysa Tully Arryn within the constructs of the five stages of grief/loss. "By the time the war is over, and her husband returns home (how glad she is, she must be, she tells herself), Lysa scarcely recognizes the woman in the mirror. Her eyes are granite, her mouth is steel, and she scarcely remembers the girl who drank and laughed and danced with a boy that she loved. Surely, she decides, that must have been someone else, and not myself. Surely, she wonders, she was never that happy."
This is really beautiful and sad. Poor Lysa. She's usually so easy to discard, you know?

And finally, something totally not angsty at all!
Allies in the Game (1689 words) by SecondStarOnTheLeft
Relationships: Sansa Stark/Willas Tyrell
Summary: There's much to be said for having an ally worthy of one's trust in the game of thrones.
Hot! and sweet, and fun.

...each somewhat different.

The Warmth of the Fire (AU, Stannis/Stansa, Shireen)
( seventy-seven, seventy-eight, seventy-nine... )

It's only castles burning (Daenerys, Jon; post-series?)
( What do you know about home, anyway? )

Thank you everyone for the birthday wishes -- it was quiet but actually very nice. I was going to have a hobbit birthday present story done, but obviously that did not happen. But at least I think I know where the story is going! (And I'm writing something) But instead, television!

Being Human: ( palinode goes here )

We are now watching the second series of Scott & Bailey, a police procedural known affectionately in our household as "All Men Are Crap"; this season seems even better than the last, probably because they've given Gill Murray (the boss) an even bigger role. She does walk away with pretty much every scene she's in. ( small spoilers )

Now that it's out of DVD I have seen all of A Game of Thrones. ( Yay. Well, mostly yay. )

We are also watching Homeland -- it's just started here. Has everyone else given up on it? Was it cancelled in the US? I like it a lot.