Nenya Kanadka

I got the most lovely pile of presents in my stocking! (Jump to what I wrote.)

Fic: Hornblower (smutty) and Third Doctor (fluffy) and origfic lesbian SPACE pirates! <3 And the most adorable tiny Mrs. F- drabble for the_comfortable_courtesan! SQUEEE.

And art, and recs (Janeway, and Seven of Nine, and origfic f/f) and 2048 games! (More Janeway, more Seven! With the best picture choices evar.)

And icons!


Mockingbird (comics) by tarlanx


Firestorm (Jax) by falcon_horus and a matching Firestorm (Martin) one by me

If any of that looks fun, my stocking is over here and you're welcome to the icons or the fic recs or whatever. :D

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Fic what I wrote: I wrote two fics (and a recs list). muccamukk talked me into kittens. I said, "But I don't know what to write!" and she said (picture the world's most adorable grin), "KITTENS!"

So I wrote kittens.


Title: Artemis At Sea for aqwt101
Fandom/Characters: Hornblower (TV miniseries); Hornblower/Bush, Styles
Rating/Word Count: 2600 words, gen/pre-slash
Summary: The ship's cat has kittens. Bush has opinions; Hornblower exhausts himself; Styles is given a heady commission. Started out meaning to be Hornblower vs kittens but ended up as Bush vs kittens. (Bush 0, kittens 2, ftr.)

Title: Tubbs, In Repose for schneefink
Fandom/Characters: Steerswoman (Rosemary Kirstein)/Neko Atsume crossover (yes really); Rowan, Willam, hints of Rowan/Bel and Willam/Corvus
Rating/Word Count: 2600 words, gen
Summary: Rowan vs Willam's "wizard cats." Spoilers through the end of the currently-published series (The Language of Power). My recipient asked for Rowan and Willam mentoring each other. This may have ended up more tilted in the "Rowan discovers new weird shit" direction. :P


In theory, there were several other stockings I wanted to fill. Quite possibly someday I will write Cordelia Vorkosigan vs the Cetagandan Embassy's bioengineered gift kitten, or Breq vs...any kitten at all. (Mucca: "What the hell does Breq do with a kitten??" Me: "Exactly! :D :D")


I also put together a lesbian romance (origfic f/f) recs list, since I've been reading so many of those lately. (Sometimes I want romance, and specifically want lady-loving romance. Fandom usually fills my m/m needs, and while my het needs are specific I usually know where to go for those. But I've been on an f/f binge lately and have been delighted with many of the results.) I should probably copy & paste the whole recs list in here at some point--maybe after I've read the last couple on the list, and a few of the ones recced to me in my stocking. (Notably, there was exactly one book that appeared on both lists. Since I've been waiting for Romancing The Inventor to exist for a couple of years, I don't mind. :D)

So I uh haven't posted here in...mumblety mumble...way too long. But fandom_stocking is live. Hurray! I thought I'd post a link to my stocking here, partly so I can find it again and partly of course so anyone else who wants to put stuff in it can.

Nenya's Stocking 2016.

It's something of a tl;dr list this year because I went through all my old requests and updated them. But that just means more options for people who feel like stuffing it, I guess?

IRL we have a GIANT FUCKING TREE that Mucca found and cut down, and a bunch of small presents tucked under it for when her parents come out to visit next week. It looks like being a cozy lighthouse Christmas (interrupted by episodes of art class, for me). I'm looking forward to it.

Rewatching fanvids since the wifi's a bit fucked tonight, and I have to say that cosmic_llin's Star Trek vid to Long Live still makes me sob like a baby. Or at least sniffle a bit. <3

You know that meme that goes around sometimes where you post your five favourite kinks and then five favourite couples, and it's like a wish into the universe to see if anybody will write it for you? Let's make it a little more interactive.

Comment here if you want to play,and I will give you 3-6 couples or characters that I associate with you, and you make an entry in your journal talking about those couples/characters and fics that you wish the universe would write for you.

muccamukk gave me:

Delenn
Everybody knows about my Delenn/Lennier(/Sheridan) feels, and my Valen/Sakai/uber!Delenn feels. Somebody write me the novel about Delenn's reincarnated lives over the millenia someday--that would be awesome.

Also I want fic about Delenn before the show: Delenn and Mayan, Delenn choosing her career path, Delenn and Dukhat. (Delenn/Dukhat most definitely welcome. I want epic reams of mentor/protegee for them. Would also be interested in an everyone-lives kind of AU where Dukhat survived, and how that would change history.) I guess the overarching theme here is Delenn as Minbari: as much as I get the theme of human-Minbari fusion and the thing with the Chrysalis, my heart is really with Delenn's Minbari side and I hate when she gets made too human.


everyone else played by Mira
*snicker* Okay yes I did watch everything I could get my hands on. This one's a canon want list:

What I want for a character played by Mira Furlan is two things: a) IN SPACE again. I might get this with Space Command? Though I'm not sure how big her role is.

But b), if set on Earth in the modern day (mundane AU!), which seems to be most of what she does these days when she's not doing theatre in the Balkans (which is its own thing): Something where she's not playing a neglected, cheated on, or otherwise betrayed-by-a-shitty-dude wife. Can deal with motherhood but prefer if she gets to do something where it's not all about supporting other people. I just...can she and Paul McGann get cast in a movie together to be a loving, stable couple, but together they fight crime or something? That would be FUN.

Or a lesbian. She has chemistry with everything up to and including a brick wall, and that most definitely includes female costars. See also: Space Command, which has her as a married canon lesbian in space. But is taking for-fuckin-ever to air.


Bel from Steerswoman
Another one where I want Moar Canon. :D I am not sure if you mean Bel (the Outskirter warrior woman) or Rowan (the Steerswoman travelling scientist), but what I'd love for the two of them together is femslash, obviously. But like travelling around their world Finding Things Out, while having a grand h/c loyalty-infused romance. (Basically canon + snogging.)

For Bel in specific, I'd love to see more of her POV, since canon's from Rowan's viewpoint. Bel learning more about magic/science (the boundary between the two being such a huge point in this series), and bringing her own cultural viewpoint to it. Bel meeting more of Rowan's Steerswoman friends. Bel's youth in the Outskirts. Bel vs a demon...once they know what the demons really are.


Kira/Yates
So this is my "That time I was roleplaying Kasidy Yates and also coming out as bi, while crushing on Kira Nerys" ship. :P

I've always been fascinated by Kasidy's Maquis involvement, and I'd love to see something where that runs into Kira's Bajoran Resistance past. I strongly suspect they know some of the same people, in that complex tangled underworld sort of way. A thing I really love about DS9 in general is how domestic/interstellar politics affect interpersonal relationships, and vice versa.

I'd love something that just revelled in all the complexities of loyalty there: either earlier in the show where Kas is working for the Maquis and Kira's just barely coming to trust the Federation, and both of them are feeling out Ben Sisko, or after the finale where Ben's gone and the two of them are left picking up the pieces. (And Bajor's about to join the Federation--but that doesn't mean all the old issues are gone. Far from it.) An AU where Kas wasn't sleeping with Ben, or where they broke up, or something...probably not cheating, but I'd love some actual femslash for these two. Bonus if there's little to no angst about it being a queer relationship--but tons of feels about their loyalties as Federation citizen, spaceship captain, Bajoran officer, worshipper of the Prophets, and so on.


Phryne/Jack

Just lots of sex. And pining. But mostly sex.


Alex/Hank

All that staring into one another's eyes and gripping each other passionately about the shoulders while giving pep talks about surviving trauma--but in a shippy way rather than a supposedly-parental one. (Hank-Kara is pseudo-parental. Hank/Alex, not so much.) Hank thinking the world of her skills as an agent, Alex being curious about his alien nature (but not in a weird way). They fight alien crime, they get banged up or kidnapped and have to rescue one another, they huddle for warmth or deal with sex pollen, they have telepathic sex at inappropriate times, they go flying--basically they do all the buddy-cop stuff. Yes. <3


Maria Hill

Maria Hill saves the world through competence, planning, bureaucracy, and strong but carefully-contained emotions. Plus probably most of the stuff for Alex Danvers, really. A nice slow-burn ship with Sam or Fury or Melinda May or Bobbi Morse or idk Natasha, would also be great. Post-CA:TWS work-buddies with Pepper Potts. Keeping secrets. Having a cat to come home to. Or like--basically that current Mockingbird comic, with Maria Hill in. Okay I've now decided that Maria/Bobbi is my new ship. Which might be a great idea or might mean I'm too hungry to be updating DW. :D


Will give characters/ships to people who leave comments. :-)

One of those "which ones have you read" memes. Original list of 60 books from here.

Bold = read
italics = read another book by the same author
strikeout = didn't finish
* = own but haven't read

Grimspace by Ann Aguirre
Primary Inversion by Catherine Asaro
The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood
Range of Ghosts by Elizabeth Bear
Flesh and Spirit by Carol Berg
Chime by Franny Billingsley
Daughter of the Blood by Anne Bishop
Tithe by Holly Black
The Long Tomorrow by Leigh Brackett
Cordelia's Honor by Lois McMaster Bujold
War for the Oaks by Emma Bull
Parable of the Sower by Octavia Butler
Synners by Pat Cadigan
Foreigner by C.J. Cherryh
Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell by Susanna Clarke
Survival by Julie E. Czerneda
Tam Lin by Pamela Dean
King's Dragon by Kate Elliott
Black Sun Rising by C.S. Friedman
Slow River by Nicola Griffith
Dragonsbane by Barbara Hambly
Fly by Night by Frances Hardinge
Assassin's Apprentice by Robin Hobb
God Stalk by P.C. Hodgell
Brown Girl in the Ring by Nalo Hopkinson
Valor's Choice by Tanya Huff
God's War by Kameron Hurley
The Killing Moon by N.K. Jemisin
Howl's Moving Castle by Diana Wynne Jones
Daggerspell by Katharine Kerr
The Steerswoman by Rosemary Kirstein
Beggars in Spain by Nancy Kress
Deryni Rising by Katherine Kurtz
A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L'Engle
Tender Morsels by Margo Lanagan
The Dispossessed by Ursula K. Le Guin
Ancillary Justice by Ann Leckie
Ash by Malinda Lo
Warchild by Karin Lowachee
Legend by Marie Lu
Dragonsong by Anne McCaffrey
Rosemary and Rue by Seanan McGuire
Dreamsnake by Vonda N. McIntyre
The Thief's Gamble by Juliet E. McKenna
Sunshine by Robin McKinley
His Majesty's Dragon by Naomi Novik
Who Fears Death by Nnedi Okorafor
Diving into the Wreck by Kristine Kathryn Rusch
*The Female Man by Joanna Russ
Old Man's War by John Scalzi
A Door Into Ocean by Joan Slonczewski
*The Grass King's Concubine by Kari Sperring
The Raven Boys by Maggie Stiefvater
City of Pearl by Karen Traviss
Her Smoke Rose Up Forever by James Tiptree, Jr.
The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making by Catherynne M. Valente
The Snow Queen by Joan D. Vinge
Farthing by Jo Walton
The Cloud Roads by Martha Wells
To Say Nothing of the Dog by Connie Willis

11 specific books, 23 Authors, 3 DNF (skimmed Handmaid's Tale in bookstore; DNF Cold Magic by Kate Elliott & Old Man's War (but finished Redshirts) & To Say Nothing of the Dog (but finished Bellwether))

Looking up authors who I didn't think I'd read, it seems like a lot of them are more on the fantasy side of the SFF pool, so I guess not so surprising that I haven't read them as I seem to splash happily over in the SF side. Also, when I find an author I love I seem to read everything I can get my hands on by them (Cherryh, the entire Vorkosigan series, quite a lot of Martha Wells), which of course shows up as just one author/book on this list. And apparently I'm most familiar with Vonda N. McIntyre and Kristine Kathryn Rusch as Star Trek tie-in novels & short stories!

I really loved this book. :-) (madgastronomer, this review is for you. :D)

I wasn't quite sure what to expect going in, because I'd heard so many conflicting reviews of it. But it made me smile so much, and made me go "awww" so much, and made me so fiercely proud of Cordelia, and so fond of Oliver Jole (an accomplishment, since we only really meet him in this book), and made me actually care about Sergyar. It was gentle, it was sweet, it was funny. I really, really liked it.

My two-word summary of GJRQ:

Cordelia's free.

Of Barrayar, for the most part. As she says at one point, she's given forty-three years of her life to the Barryaran Imperium--which eats its children and stifles its women and emotionally stunts its men--and she damn well deserves another forty-three years on her own terms. Thankfully, she's Betan, which means that at 76 she's really only in early middle age. This book is the story of the beginning of the second half of her life. And I am so glad.

I also loved loved loved that Aral gets to be actively queer here. Of course, he would always have been bisexual whether or not he ever slept with a man again. And I've heard people dislike that he and Cordelia were in a poly marriage with Jole, on the grounds that bisexuality =/= polyamory. And, sure, not everyone bi is poly. But some of us are. And for myself, I am more annoyed these days with the trope that bisexuality = having a disastrous same-gender fling in your youth and then settling down with an opposite-sex partner, never to seriously consider m/m or f/f again. And given that Aral's disastrous youthful fling was with Ges Bloody Vorrutyer? Hell yes, I loved that he got to have a happy, healthy, loving, long-term marriage (de facto if not de jure) with a man. For me, Bujold finally came through on the promise of Aral's bisexuality that she'd given us way back in Shards of Honor and Barrayar. Hell, Aral was never my favourite, but getting to see his soft squishy insides...I kind of begin to see what Cordelia loved about him.

Oh, and the two surviving members of a poly triad trying to learn to love again after the death of the third...I might just have a bittersweet narrative button already primed for that, ready to be hit by the right story. <3 Or to put it in other words...I've written that fic.

I've also heard people (based, I think, on an excerpt from a book reading well before the novel was released) decide that this book relegates Cordelia to the role of the slashfic yenta, set aside so the boys can get together. Not at all what I got out of this book. For one thing, Aral and Cordelia have a rock-solid marriage that goes down deep to the bones of the earth; they were also married for twenty years on their own before Oliver showed up. That Aral is bi, and Cordelia is Betan (read: not shocked by polyamory or queerness or kink), and melodrama was never an option...does not mean that Cordelia has in any way been set aside. (They also, you know, talked about it before Aral up and kissed a boy. It's not a thing he did will-she or nil-she.) Being poly, or in Cordelia's case, poly-compatible monogam-ish, does not mean that the first couple that comes together isn't real and true, any more than it means that any other part of a poly family is a secondary add-on. And if anybody thinks Aral Vorkosigan could toss Cordelia aside, or indeed that Cordelia would ever allow herself to be sidelined like that...they haven't been reading the same series as I have, that's all I can say. And I say this as someone who doesn't OTP them as hard as many people. The strength of their relationship is just so clearly underlined throughout the series that it's impossible to miss.

This book is about grief and about choosing what to do with the second half of your life, after you've lost someone who was the world to you. It's about "grownup things", not because of the babies, but because of that.

(As for the babies: I am not, personally, all that invested in having children (okay, I don't actually want any of my own at all), but Cordelia absolutely always did want kids. And, y'know, I'm always going to be more interested in fictional babymaking when it's done with tech rather than pregnancy. Miles and Cordelia may be slightly mad for having/wanting six kids, but you know what, so did my mother. Without a uterine replicator. It's not necessarily a sign of thinking children are interchangeable widgets, thank you very much.)

The romance itself is very sweet. Oliver Jole was basically a non-entity to me at the start of the book, but by a few chapters in I liked him a lot and was cheering for him and Cordelia. The fact that half the book is written from her perspective and half from his meant that I got to both watch the inside of Cordelia's head and watch someone else admire her, which was pretty great. (Have I mentioned that Cordelia is my fave?)

And Sergyar! I had no real feelings about Sergyar before this. I pretty much figured giving Aral and Cordelia the job of administering it was Bujold's way of getting them out of the way so Miles could have plot. (Which it probably was.) But with this book she's sold me on the sheer weirdness of it on a xenobiology level. And you know, I always hated that Cordelia had to give up her career in scientific exploration, along with her Betan culture, to settle on Barrayar and marry Aral. So the fact that she can have SCIENCE! in her life again? Is pretty amazing. :D

Freddie Haines: fantastic teenager. :D I loved the line about the quandary involved in praising a kid for having done something well in the course of doing something they shouldn't have done at all. Kaya Vorinnis, also cool. Miles...well, he seems to be settling in to fatherhood and counthood all right, though I was far more invested in him when he was a Dendarii Mercenary. (My prejudices in this canon may make more sense if you realize that I never cared that much for Barrayar per se. Who needs yet another patriarchal empire?) Also loved the Cetas in this one, and am curious about how that's all going to go: Sergyar is a planet with a Barrayaran majority, sure, but also Betans, Komarrans, and a few Escobarans and Cetagandans as well. It's not going to be Barrayar in miniature...and not just because of the Vicereine.

So, yes: that soft spot I have for canon poly with queer elements and middle-aged folks, in a space-opera setting? A+ work, Bujold. A+. To quote Gandalf, I have no longer any fear at all for any of them.