sneezeless in seattle

Ship Tournament, Round 1 — Match 1 / 30

Gale/Lae'zel

"Two people raised by gods who taught them love is obedience. like. Gale with Mystra, Lae’zel with Vlaakith. Both of them are incredibly competent and incredibly proud and also so deeply shaped by someone powerful deciding what they were worth. I think they would recognise that in each other before they had the words for it, and because neither of them is good at being normal about vulnerability it would come out as arguing about tactics and magic theory for three hours."

"lae’zel would bully gale into having better self esteem and i mean this lovingly. like gale starts monologuing about how he is a danger to everyone and maybe the best use of him is as a bomb and lae’zel is like. pathetic. you are a wizard of waterdeep. stand up. sharpen your mind. eat this protein. and somehow that is the most romantic thing anyone has said to him in ten years"

"I just think there is something VERY funny and sweet about Gale being the most verbose man alive and Lae’zel having negative patience for unnecessary words, but still clearly respecting skill and intelligence. He would infodump about the Weave and she would interrupt him every five seconds, except she is actually listening because she wants to know where the weak points are. He thinks she’s being rude. She thinks this is a perfectly normal conversation. And then Gale would ask about gith culture with genuine curiosity rather than fear or fetishizing it, which I think would get under her skin in a good way. He’d want to know the structure, the history, the logic of it. Lae’zel values competence and seriousness so much, and Gale has both when he gets past the flirting and theatrics."

vs. Gale/Rolan

"imagine the sheer density of smug little comments. the passive aggressive corrections. the “well, technically” from both sides. everyone else in camp begging them to shut up and they think they’re having foreplay. also Rolan is SO hungry for someone to actually take his magic seriously without treating him like a project or a servant, and Gale is exactly the kind of person who would be annoying as hell about it but also genuinely delighted by another talented wizard. he’d praise Rolan’s spellwork and Rolan would act like it’s nothing and then think about it for three weeks."

"i just think rolan deserves a wizard boyfriend who looks at him and goes oh you're brilliant actually. like genuinely brilliant. because so much of his story is him puffing himself up so nobody notices how scared and responsible and desperate he is. he wants to be impressive SO badly and then he gets stuck with lorroakan. gale would be irritating, yes. obviously. but gale also knows what it’s like to get tangled up with a powerful magical figure who makes you feel special and disposable at the same time. i think he’d clock the whole thing faster than rolan would like and be surprisingly gentle about it"

And I would be happy to give them to you! (Apologies for the slight delay!) These are all going to be sf/f because that's just how I roll...

I continue to stand by everything I said in this post a little while back in which I was asked a similar question, but here are a few others I’ve read more recently and have been thinking loads about:

Abstraction Is When I Design Giant Death Creatures And Attraction Is When I Do It For You by Claire Jia-Wen: Pacific Rim a little to the left, and by the left I do mean, the sinister side. A masterwork of toxic yuri. I am truly obsessed with this piece’s protagonist :) She’s so fucked-up. It’s awesome

Remember Me in the Meat by Sarah Pauling: Speaking of toxic yuri vibes and fucked-up relationships… This is one of those pieces it’s best not to say too much about ahead of time because loads of the impact depends on the rate and timing of the reveal on the crucial pieces of background information. It’s a little more plot-y than I tend to go for in short fiction, but it just pulls you right along the whole time. Lots of fun, will also hopefully leave you feeling slimy

A Wolf in Iceland Is the Child of a Lie by Sonya Taaffe: Really you can’t go wrong with Sonya Taaffe generally speaking, especially if you’re also into poetry. But this piece in particular compels me… the language is beautiful; the imagery is so stark and harsh, and the whole piece is gorgeously enigmatic. Lends itself very well to rereads/continued chewing-on

Human Voices by Isabel J. Kim: In the post I linked to up at the top I recced a bunch of other Isabel J. Kim already, but this is a newer one of hers I particularly enjoyed and want to call out as well. Messy families and responsibilities you never asked for and the siren song of abdication-damn-the-consequences… Again, you can’t go wrong with IJK either; I’d happily recommend any of her work (including also her debut novel Sublimation, out next month!)