#acitymadeofsong

do you like historical books? which time period?

Historical in when they were written, or where they're set?

To the former, I finally got around to reading Persuasion and Dracula this year, and they were both interesting reads. Something I should really do more of, honestly.

Historical Fiction - Not really, honestly? Well-researched/interesting fantasy more or less scratches that itch for me.

most disliked popular books?

That I've actually read? Cozy fantasy stuff, probably; like, Becky Chambers or T. J. Klune or similar, heavy on the heartwarming validation and found family, low on conflict or stakes. Clearly really extremely popular, since they keep getting recommended or on award lists, but just so very Not For Me.

what are things you look for in a book?

matryoshka brain is the longish anna-centric fic i planned out and barely wrote any of. I couldn’t find it for ages because i thought i had it under a different title, oops. snippet (ie. what i got so far):

“Who?”

“Kerr Avon,” the commander instructs her, which she could read in the file, that's not any useful information. “Computer programmer from the London dome. The key pressers have noticed him making a lot of suspicious intercessions on the data system not doing anything, not yet, just observing. They're convinced he's planning a major cyber attack, probably a politico. Could you look into it?”

Anna sighs deeply. She's never much liked this sort of work, the intimate, personal, one-on-one stuff – as much as her bosses say she was made for it. There isn't much room for guilt in her profession, but that sort of thing always leaves more mess to clean up after. But it's not really a request. “Of course.”

“Good.” The commander smiles at her. “Now let me get you another coffee.”

Major Stanax, fetching me coffee? Anna thinks ruefully. She must expect this one to get nasty.

*

Outside the elevators on her way home, someone is standing who she hasn't seen in awhile. Someone she did not miss. “Tarrant?”

Dev Tarrant turns to look at her the same way he always did – infuriatingly cold and impervious, and yet somehow sneering at her, knowing she wasn't meant to be there. One of those faces, she generously supposes. “Sula,” he says, reminding her who she is supposed to be right now. “I haven't seen you in awhile.”

I also take issue with the “i am so much more than you” line, it’s very un-Doctory and the context gives it a racist subtext. Im very uncomfortable with the subtext of like… “The villain, played by an Asian actor, envies the white blonde hero’s genetic superiority, and this (partially) motivates him to do villainous things.” even if you accept “oh, but it only counts as genetic superiority in the villain’s mind,” it’s still a thing that motivates him? and that’s very icky, especially because the Hero seems to kind of validate it w that “so much more than you” line. I dont think the writer deliberately set out to write those themes, not at all, but they’re still there. and in combination with the perception filter thing in Spyfall 2 it seems like the writers don’t think nearly enough about subtext. anyways this is a very long tangent and im sorry! that one line frustrates me to no end.

That line was where they really lost me. Maybe I’m overreacting, but everything about it just goes against what I look for in the show. The Doctor and the Master being equals with nearly identical backgrounds who each could’ve walked the other’s path if they’d made different choices? Nah, they were never truly alike and I guess were just naturally destined to become who they are. The Doctor not needing to be important or special to grow into a hero? Wrong, she was always special and “more” than those around her.

Just having the Doctor describe herself that way in a heroic context (not a Time Lord Victorious moment) really rubs me the wrong way. Twelve’s era beautifully deconstructed the Doctor’s mythic identity and showed he wasn’t inherently special (“I’m not a hero. I’m an idiot, just passing through, helping out.” “There's no such thing as the Doctor. I'm just a bloke in a box, telling stories. And sometimes, on a good day, if I try very hard, I'm not some old Time Lord who ran away. I'm the Doctor.” “You don't have to be real to be the Doctor, as long as you never give up.” “Perhaps there's just some bloke, wandering around, putting everything right when it goes wrong.”). It showed anyone could do what he did---Clara gets her own TARDIS and immortality, because she’s just as clever and compassionate and adventurous and reckless as he is, so why shouldn’t she get to do what he does? What made the Doctor who he is isn’t anything special about himself, it’s his choice to be kind and do what’s right. And to me, that’s so much more interesting and inspiring.

The difference between this hero speech to the Master and Twelve’s speeches is staggering. In Death in Heaven, the Doctor rejects Missy’s offer of power because he knows he shouldn’t have it, and instead affirms the value of love, which is more than a match for any army. In The Doctor Falls, he begs the Masters to stand with him and try to do a little good, because that’s what matters and what defines people (as he says in Oxygen, “The universe shows its true face when it asks for help. We show ours by how we respond.”). In Thirteen’s speech, she simply tells the Master she’s inherently better than him and then runs off and lets someone else die for her so she doesn’t have to get her hands dirty.

I don’t mind the Doctor not always being heroic---I’m all for dark!Thirteen---but despite her repeatedly doing sketchy things, the show consistently refuses to engage with her flaws. The Doctor self-aggrandising but then dashing off and letting someone else die in her place doing the thing that she didn’t have the guts to do could be the setup for a fascinating character arc, but I have no expectation that we will get that. I don’t think we’re meant to view her actions negatively.

hello, hello!! thank you for these asks :D

5. what’s a fic you wrote that you’re personally proud of, and why?

the naff answer is that i’m proud of most of them! 

most recently i guess i’m proud of Greener Grass - the wayward son bodyswap that repositions wayward son as a story with a happy ending (instead of no ending). i also think the thing i’m writing now is good! excited to show it to people.

11. what fan-related events did you participate in this year, if any? (i.e. big bangs, fan weeks, zines, etc.)

the year’s pretty young, but i’m in @carryon-anon-fest and i’m helping run @monsterunderthebedfest 

last year... i did remix, carry on through the ages, and two christmas exchanges.

13. what’s something you’ve accomplished that you didn’t know you could before?

this is very vague - but i’m going to say, i was surprised i could write a fairly convincing regency-style first person! this is for Tyrannus 

29. a fic that you wrote over a year ago that you still enjoy

again - i enjoy most of the things that i wrote in the past! and many of my best fics are more than a year old. i’ve been hanging out in the B7 discord a bit more since @super-duper-twelve has started watching it, so i’m thinking about B7 so - let’s go for Roj Blake, and Other Phobias which i wrote in - ugh - apparently in 2015. feels like only yesterday. 

this is just 20,000 words of avon lusting after blake and denying it to himself. in the first person. good times. sad ending, though. blake’s 7  ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I have answered H already (although I should have added overlong and run-on sentences.  Which doesn’t necessarily contradict the terse thing.  Both are true.  Heh.)

L: What's the weirdest AU you've ever come up with?

I’ve written quite a bit of what could be described as crack (always played straight, the only way to do it for me), but when I think about it, this is mainly because my canons are so beautifully weird themselves anyway, so most of those aren’t AU at all.  You don’t need to AU Doctor Who or Sapphire & Steel to get strange things going on, nor do you need an AU to visit any other time or place you like.  (The one where Sapphire and Steel are a totally normal couple living on a totally normal street is not an AU.  It’s a terrible trap because canon.)  Of the remainder, I’m not sure.  You, the reader, can decide!  Is it:

A. The modern organic farming epistolary AU of the Battle of Hastings.  (It was a Yuletide treat, these things happen.)

B. The one where I decided Enemy at the Door, a serious angsty wartime drama could be improved by an invasion of killer plants

C. The random Demelza/Ross Immortal AU?

I mean, I don’t know.  They all made perfect sense in my head at the time.  (I’d put the one where Jo Grant is an Assassin, but it was a prompt and not my idea, so I can’t take the credit for coming up with it, because I didn’t.)

S: Any fandom tropes you can't resist?

Crack-played-straight?  (I really love sensible people having to contend with improbable things and seeing how that goes.)  I love crossovers (I mean, I started out in Doctor Who, which begs for it, so much so that I’m always puzzled by people who don’t like them, until I remember that they’re harder to do in fandoms that actually have proper settings and not just a time and space machine that can pop up anywhere, including canonically, the Land of Fiction).  Hurt/Comfort, and I love fake/arranged/accidental marriage tropes (especially when they are also crack-played-straight.  Again, Doctor Who is great, because accidental marriage is just a regular Tuesday night for the Doctor). 

dude.

i read like 1/6 for free a while ago and was like hm. this first part was really really good. but is it going to get not good now? (i reached the point that Gideon went to sleep in Canaan House)

and i have read the rest this VERY night - and i can tell ya. I think it was incredibly good. I am so insanely impressed with the SKILL it must have taken to tell this story so clearly - yet so - so ambiguously - so cryptically - just to continuously whet the reader’s appetite for knowing more about the world, the characters, the mysteries, the magic.

i am so impressed by how it constantly kept me just slightly off-balance - because that means you have to submit to the story fully. you can’t grow bored of it in any way.

i personally thought i was going to be most interested in the relationship between Gideon and Harrow eventually - but in fact i wasn’t at all. it was good - but it was probably the worst thing in this book.

Harrow as a character - as a puzzle was so obscure for most of it - but somehow so SOLID in having to be More than we knew - just like ALL of it admittedly - was fascinating.

Gideon was an incredible protagonist. Deeply sympathetic - an amazing way to  genuinely do the creepy gruesome shit because she’s such a perfect humorous foil to Harrow’s serious played-straight dark necromancy - very meta - very tongue in cheek. And using her lack of curiosity and intellectualism as a way to carefully reveal bit by bit the many mysteries – brilliant.

But the relationship between them was meaty - and was mostly based in my intense curiosity about what had driven a double bladed knife into their sides. That is to say - it was good. It was good and the end brought me nearly to tears but - they were not exactly shippable - they were like a fact.

The worldbuilding is the true star though. It’s a masterpiece. The CONCEPTS. They’re delicious. Houses - Planets - Necromancy - Space faring science fiction. The author attempted complexity and succeeded in my opinion. SWORDFIGHTING. devotion in the form of an institution (necromancer-cavalier). The! Magic! System!

which gets not explained but UNSPOOLED and then turned inside out and you don’t even understand the intricacies but it doesn’t matter

but the most impressive thing is probably how all the characters were so clearly made distinctive and served an exact purpose and gained specific footholds in the character’s and my heart

Thank you for sending me asks!!! <3