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)

I LOVED this book. It has so many things I want out of romance in it, while managing to avoid many of the tropes I often stumble over in the genre. And it was super hot and really sweet.

Three people--a straight woman, a bisexual man, and a gay man--fall in love in a steampunk city. The woman is a debutante trapped by her life, the bi man is a rich but base-born adventurer who made his money "in the sky" (I'm not sure what this is, but the author has more books in that setting), and the gay man is an titled noble fallen on hard times. It's a classic tale of finding yourself and telling society to fuck off, but I really liked how it was done.

Rosamond's conflicts are not specifically with the man she's supposed to marry (he does not even get a name, that's how tangential to the story he is) but with her own internalized sense of who she's supposed to be and how she's meant to act. And she's very, very good at the role society has placed her in. She has many skills that go into keeping up the mask and I like that the story shows that being a high-born socialite is a job that takes effort (and some of those skills are transferable). She's not the sort of rebellious heroine who knows all along that she wants a different life and chafes against her chains: part of her character development is even realizing that she's unhappy. And she's not always a very nice person, partly because she is so unhappy, and has learned to be unkind to others in order to survive. And yet Jones, the uncouth commoner, meets her and honestly likes her, and treats her better than all the proper, "decent" people around her. All without a single word of the "he claims her, she submits" thing that usually drives me nuts. Though Jones is certainly the strong, masculine "unsuitable" lover whose frank sexuality sparks her self-actualization.

Arkady is gay as hell and deeply conflicted about it. So his plotline is about him allowing himself to love Jones, to give in to his true feelings, and to stop hating himself. Jones adores both of them and is more of a gentleman--in his honest, socially unpolished way--than any lord or lady they know. My favourite thing about him is how well he draws boundaries: he says what he means and means what he says, and when he's asked to do something he's uncomfortable with, he says no. Even if it would get him what he wants in the short term. On one level he's a catalyst for both Rosamond and Arkady discovering themselves, but the book makes me believe in him as a real character with his own needs, too.

The ending was lovely and my only regret was that I didn't have another 200 pages of their adventures together. (I thought the story was longer than it was, because the back half of the ebook is taken up with previews for other books by the same author.) All in all, I really love Alexis Hall's view of the world. It's a very kind, sexy, and funny one, and I may have to chase down more of the gaslight/steampunk romances.

A+ would read again.

There Will Be Phlogiston can be found for free at the author's website.

Ran across these gorgeous icons while fiddling with Dreamwidth layouts tonight.

Diasporic African Art icons by arobynsung from art by two artists (listed as Muti and Keith Mallet) in two very different styles.

Gorgeous stuff.

(Meanwhile, I am ignoring the things I want to tweak about this current layout (Calling Card by bakesale) because my eyes are crossing. It's a really lovely layout, though very different from the previous one by rosecarmine that I've had for a year and a half, so I'm not sure if it's the change or the sleepiness that's making it look a bit wonky to me. I adore the purple, though. Mucca's faves are growing on me. (I like things because they are blue; Mucca likes them because they are purple.)

Off to watch some ridiculous TV instead.)

Apparently this week is "Watch all the pilot episodes while feeling meh-ish" (my back and hormones seem to both hate me). Upshot: yay good new shows!

Agent Carter: OMG this show makes me so happy. I went into it without any strong feelings about Peggy Carter one way or another (though my wife loves her) but from the first scene onwards it grabbed me and made me grin. It could do with more characters of colour (especially women), especially since NYC has pretty much always been multiethnic, and its feminist narrative is pretty much the basic "girl power" thing. But what it does do it does well. Which is Agent Peggy Carter kicking bad guys inna head for great justice, going undercover, having human feelings, and having female AND male friends.

And Jarvis is brilliant--I don't ship-ship it because domestic!married!Jarvis is the cutest thing ever and I don't want him to cheat on his wife (also, Peggy + femslash options), but I want them to be hero/sidekick BFFs forever. Angie and Agent Sousa also make me happy (don't let him be evil, please).

Verdict: HAPPY, will watch as long as it's on!


Gotham: I really enjoyed the pilot. It's probably too dark a show for me to enjoy watching over the long term, but there were a lot of really great character performances. Also rather pretty cast including Jada Pinkett Smith as a rather terrifying (but hot, goddamn) up-and-comer in the criminal underground, Sean Pertwee as Alfred (unexpected, but I liked), and whoever's playing Renee Montoya. Who totally has a gay backstory with Barbara soon-to-be-Gordon, right?

Jim Gordon is fairly bland but also earnest, so that's okay, and wee Bruce Wayne is understatedly heartbreaking. As much as I am annoyed with Batman's general angst forever, nobody loves me, let's go be a giant bat in the rain, thing, this show is really selling me on the tragedy of his parents' death. And mini!Catwoman is THE CUTEST.

Verdict: SAD ;__; and GRIM but good; might pick up an episode or two but probably won't follow religiously


Forever: I just really find Ioan Gruffudd's face calming, okay? Also, I mean, it doesn't hurt that he turns up shirtless on occasion after coming back to life. But after watching several episodes in a row last night I've just come to the conclusion that I find his face very satisfying and calming to watch. (Also occasionally he will do this little Midshipman Hornblower twist to his face and I just want to cuddle him.)

I like that he's a doctor/scientist and does a lot of detection ("Sherlock Holmes as an Immortal!" isn't entirely wrong) and I love his relationship with his son Abe, the baby he adopted during WWII who is now old enough to play the grandfatherly mentor role except that he actually still is Henry's kid. It's just lovely. Female cop Jo Martinez is pretty great too--they have good working chemistry and her grief over her husband's death parallels Henry's losses without being too anvillicious (same with any possible romance there). But mostly I am just here to be calmed by Ioan Gruffudd's face.

Verdict: CALMING. Moar please.

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This entry was originally posted at Dreamwidth where there are comments.

Or, Lying Around Doing Nothing In Pajamas, which is how my professional-singer brother plans to spend his post-Christmas holidays.

Did a fair bit of it myself yesterday, aided by my three main presents of Doctor Who pajamas, a Questionable Content "Baking is science for hungry people" apron, and a book from Mucca about the Mars Curiosity rover. Which I am now about a third of the way through. It is really, really fascinating, especially how the author (chief engineer for the Mars Program Office at JPL) keeps tying in what they invented and discovered and designed for Curiosity both with the previous Mars missions (Pathfinder, Spirit, Opportunity) and with future plans for human exploration of Mars. Which they are seriously thinking about in concrete terms, and he goes into that.

I'd just finished a biography of Sally Ride (Sally Ride: America's First Woman In Space by Lynn Sherr) so it's really cool seeing an engineering perspective on the whole thing after reading about astronauts. The Ride book was fantastic as well. I continue to be torn between being jealous of Ride for getting to be an astrophysicist, being jealous of her later college students (she sounds like such a good teacher! aaahhhh), and being sad that she didn't feel safe coming out as bi/lesbian in her lifetime. (Though her friends knew.) And besides the obvious big things like being the first woman in space (SPAAAACE!), I love so much that Ride was openly a feminist and spent the last decade or so of her life supporting STEM education for girls in practical, workable ways with Sally Ride Science. I'm just a little sad that I'm one of the girls who fell through the cracks. But, you know: bi feminist astrophysicist in space. \o/

Other reading list:

* Mars Rover Curiosity: An Inside Account from Curiosity's Chief Engineer (Rob Manning & William L. Simon)
* The Siren Depths: Book 3 of the Books of the Raksura (Martha Wells)
* Parallel 59 (Eighth Doctor Adventure #30) (Natalie Dallaire & Stephen Cole) [also about space, and interrogations of naked!Eight, oh how I appreciate this canon's dedication to my kinks]
* Sister Mine (Nalo Hopkinson)
* Triptych (J. M. Frey)
* Three Parts Dead (Max Gladstone)
Recently read:
* Stranger (Rachel Manija Brown & Sherwood Smith)
* Hostage (eARC) (Rachel Manija Brown & Sherwood Smith)
* The Prosekiller Chronicles: Rise of the Spider Goddess (An Annotated Novel) (Jim C. Hines)

Also Yuletide, including ten (:D!) Imperial Radch fics, a goodly proportion of them Breq/Mercy of Kalr (♥), and half a dozen Raksura fics (which I am forbidden to read until after I finish Siren Depths, because spoilers). But did I read any of those late last night? No, no I did not; instead I fell into the Doctor Who tag on AO3, aiming for Twelve/Gomez!Master fic but falling into some Gomez!Master femslash, some Eight/male companions, some Ace/Seven (I've not even seen Seven), and various assorted other things.

Recs:
Minimum Viable Population by yonderdarling -- Twelve and the Mistress negotiate the annoying, raging attraction they have for each other. Bloody hilarious. (6169 words)

Companionship by Turn_of_the_Sonic_Screw -- When Rusty met Oswin, or, a few good Daleks. (373 words)

And now I shall go see about turkey leftovers.

At least according to this Questionable Content apron which I want for Christmas. Mucca has an extremely cute Captain America apron, but sometimes we are in the kitchen at the same time doing floury things. (It also comes as a t-shirt.)

Monday was our first half-anniversary, and she baked (half) a cake and I made dinner. The first time in a while I've attempted Real Food For Several People As A Meal. I tried a really easy but extremely tasty recipe from the Ottolenghi cookbook, involving fennel baked in a dish with crumble and cheese and cherry tomatoes on top. It turned out super well and I would totally make it again. The crumble is actually a sweet topping--the cookbook warns that if you mix it too long it turns into cookie dough, lol--and the combination of sweet and savoury was a kitchen accident that they decided to keep. I think next time I might do it with less sugar and more cheese, but it was really delicious.

Then we both lost at Settlers of Catan to Mucca's mother. (Damn you, Longest Road!)

Have finally gotten into Martha Wells's Raksura books, which Mucca has been trying to hook me on for a year or two. The first one (The Cloud Roads) started out a bit slow but then I devoured the last two-thirds of it and now ship Jade/Moon and Moon/Chime and Indigo Cloud/stability. I'm partway through the second (The Serpent Sea) right now, but have taken a break to go read Zero Sum Game by SL Huang. Which is all about a girl with superpowers in the criminal underworld--but her superpower is math, and there's someone out to get her whose power is mind control! Dun dun dunnnn.

Oh and I finally got around to reading Isabel Kunkle's Hickey of the Beast, a YA novel where the boarding school head's daughter fights vampires (or possibly incubuses). I know the author from Slacktivist in days of yore, and could hear some passages in her patented snark. Highly entertaining.

To-read list includes:
*The Best of Both Worlds by Karen Lord
*a biography of Sally Ride
*A Free Man of Color by Barbara Hambly (first Benjamin January book)
*ever so many Eighth Doctor Adventures novels (still working my way through that long, long list)
*August Moon by Diana Thung, a super cute graphic novel I bought this summer and forgot I had
*the last Bunnicula! book from the library

Oh, and Ancillary Sword! I tore through Ancillary Sword in about 48 hours, and then passed it on to Mucca's dad, who of course had to borrow Ancillary Justice as well to read first. I have a lot of feelings about this one (especially about Lieutenant Tisarwat, and Breq/Mercy of Kalr) and am looking forward to it as a Yuletide fandom.

Classic Who watch is currently up to the first episode of The Curse of Peladon serial. Oh, Jo Grant, you can be queen of Earth any time. <3

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This entry was originally posted at Dreamwidth where there are comments.

My very kind and speedy translator has also translated "Security Blanket", my little Kira/Odo fic from that same kiss/cuddle/sex meme. I'm feeling all flattered and squeeful. :D

Original Fic: Security Blanket
Fandom: Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
Pairing: Odo/Lwaxana, Odo/Kira
Rating: G
Summary: Kira goes looking for Odo at the end of a long day-and finds him in Ambassador Troi's quarters.


Translation: Security Blanket*
Автор: Nenya Kanadka
Переводчик: Эклер-кун
Фэндом: Звездный путь
Основные персонажи: Кира Нерис, Одо, Луаксанна Трой
Пэйринг или персонажи: Одо/Луаксана, Одо/Кира
Рейтинг: G
Жанры: Гет, Романтика, Юмор
Описание: Кира слегка переутомилась.


*The translator notes that "security blanket" is not an idiom in Russian, so the pun doesn't translate. Alas!

I'm half-trying to read the Russian versions, and picking up parts of sentences. (And then I give up and let Google translate it. :P) And there's a sweet comment on the Garak/Bashir fic already! :3 Russian fandom let me love you.

This is actually the second time someone has offered to do this for one of my fics, but the first time I know of that it's been completed.

A couple of days ago someone on Fanfiction.net PM'd me to ask if they could translate my Garak/Bashir story "A Hard Landing" into Russian. I was extremely flattered, not only because wow yay yes, someone liked my fic enough to want to translate it! but because I've studied a little Russian myself and have fond associations with that language.

They worked pretty fast, and today they sent me a link to the completed fic. For posterity, and in case any Russian speakers on my flist would like to see it, I link below. (Squee!)

Original Fic: A Hard Landing
Fandom: Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
Pairing: Garak/Bashir
Rating: PG-13, 683 words
Summary: Julian has his suspicions about the Cardassian tailor; Garak tests his ability to read between the lines.


Translation: Жёсткая посадка
Автор: Nenya Kanadka
Переводчик: Эклер-кун
Фэндом: Звездный путь
Основные персонажи: Элим Гарак, Джулиан Башир
Пэйринг или персонажи: Гарак/Башир
Рейтинг: PG-13
Жанры: Слэш (яой), Романтика, Юмор
Описание: У Джулиана есть свои подозрения насчет кардассианского портного. Гарак проверяет способности доктора читать между строк.

:D :D :D!

The Watch All The Paul McGann project has moved on to the Read All The Fanfic stage, I see.

The first two are pretty angsty, and the last one (with the Master, of all things) is actually happy.

Title: The Man in the Seine
Author: binz, shiplizard
Fandom: Hornblower/Doctor Who fusion
Pairing/Characters: Eighth Doctor, Horatio Hornblower/William Bush, Horatio Hornblower/Eighth Doctor
Rating: Teen
Word Count: 4600 words
Summary: ‘Make me a warrior,’ he said. ‘Watch me,’ said the TARDIS. Prequel fic for the imaginary Big Finish audio dreamed up by the same authors.
Notes: The one where Lt. William Bush is actually the Eighth Doctor. I usually feel foolish about most characters-played-by-same-actor-are-same-person fic, but if you're a Time Lord who can canonically appear to be entirely human, well...there are unexplored possibilities there. And this fic is just bloody brilliant. Heartwrenching, like a kick in the chest, but ugh so good. I especially love the treatment of what it actually means to be a warrior, and the parallels between Horatio/Bush and Doctor/TARDIS (or Doctor/companion).


Title: Winter Garden of Our Crumbled Hearts
Author: Isagel
Fandom: Luther
Pairing/Characters: John Luther/Mark North/Alice Morgan
Rating: Explicit
Word Count: 4400
Summary: It's Mark – soft-spoken, reasonable, academic Mark North with his tweed sports coats and his bohemian scarves – who slips the handcuffs on him.
Notes: I'm not hugely fannish about Luther in general, mostly because the main character is uncomfortably fucked up. But I did wonder if there was Luther/Mark North slash, and yes, yes there is; this is probably the hottest piece of it on AO3, despite actually being a threesome with Alice. The mutual grief between Luther and Mark over Zoe is well-drawn here, but tbh I'm in this one for the scorchingly hot mental images. Who doesn't want Paul McGann tying Idris Elba to a chair? :D


Title: Cafestrovalva
Author: x_los
Fandom: Doctor Who
Pairing/Characters: Eighth Doctor/Jacobi!Master
Rating: R
Word Count: 13,500 words in two parts
Summary: "You could very easily be poisoning these people. You might be attempting to weaken this time line by feeding it a steady diet of anachronisms—softening it up in preparation for a larger plan. You might, Master, be capable of anything. Or at least of anything but running a tea shop."
Notes: In which the Master seems to have retired, the Doctor doesn't believe a word of it, and they slowly come to an accommodation. In a tea shop. I love the skittishness of Eight in this, and the humour, and the way the tension is slowly tightened over the course of the fic simply because the Doctor wants to be able to trust the Master, but that has never ever ended well for him. My problem with Doctor/Master fic has always been that either it's written as fluff (which I can't believe in) or tragedy (and I like happy endings). This managed what I thought impossible: an AU for them that doesn't end in disaster. Also, tea, and someone who may or may not be Uncle Iroh.


*wanders back to watching Three ride up to space in an improbably-spacious manned capsule employed by the British space program in 1971--oh, Doctor Who, how I do love your give-no-fucks attitude sometimes*

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This entry was originally posted at Dreamwidth where there are comments.

Some very excellent things these last few weeks.

Title: For you are with me
Author: Lizardbeth
Fandom: Babylon 5
Characters: Alisa Beldon, Jeffrey Sinclair
Rating/Length: G, 5700 words
Summary:
On Minbar telepaths are trained to serve, but for trainee Alisa Beldon her closeness with Jeff Sinclair sets her path.
Utterly gorgeous mentor/protégé story with Jeffrey Sinclair and Alisa Beldon on Minbar during the events of To Dream In The City of Sorrows (so, season 2/3). Makes me want to cling to Jeff and go "Come baaaack!" which admittedly is my default setting for him. Also makes me want all the grownup!Alisa fic.

Title: rocket queens
Author: openended
Fandom: Babylon 5 (Pacific Rim fusion AU)
Pairing: Susan/Talia, 3400 words
Rating: G
Summary:
Telepaths rose the same year as the kaiju, and the Pan Pacific Defense Corps provided a convenient way to keep both away from the general population.
In which Susan and Talia get their happy ending, in a universe where punching Godzilla with giant robots is a valid life choice. Susan still manages to toss an telepath out a window.

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This entry was originally posted at Dreamwidth where there are comments.