#( never forget that donna was 100% into being a part of a murder mystery )

[etraytin]

Directors cut for “Ourselves and Immortality” (I sobbed, btw, the whole way through it. SOBBED. Especially when Donna has to ID people. But I loved it.)

Ourselves and Immortality is by far the most depressing fic I have ever written, but thinking about it makes me happy because I FINALLY got it finished, woo-hoo! It started out as a one-shot (just like Such A Winter’s Day, in fact), at the beginning of my 100-Day-Fic-A-Day back in 2016. I was in a very creative mood back then and taking pretty much any prompt anybody threw at me. My husband, who is only a very casual TWW fan but gives good prompts, tossed me “Roger Tribbey’s first hour as President.” 

“Wow,” I mused, “Everybody’s going to hate that.” 

But the idea was too tantalizing to pass up; it was so completely unlike anything I had written so far. Even just doing the one-shot involved a fair amount of research, figuring out where Secretary of Agriculture falls in the order of succession and such. Turns out, basically everybody else has to die in order for Roger to land in the hot seat. And if President Bartlet, Vice President Hoynes, and the Cabinet were going down, it seemed obvious that most of the staff would be gone as well. This fic prompt came along just as Designated Survivor was getting started, so I didn't want to go the "terrorists blow up the State of the Union" route, because that felt too done. Unfortunately (or fortunately for real life) there's really not that many ways to take out the government that don't also take out Washington DC and that don't involve targeted building destruction. 

(This got kind of long and involved, so I’m tucking it behind a cut.)

I wound up reaching back into my sci-fi reading childhood, to an original series Star Trek novel called The Pandora Principle. In that novel, the crew discovers an alien artifact and takes it to Starfleet Headquarters for research, only for the artifact, secretly a weapon, to shatter when it is scanned and release a bioagent that eradicates all the oxygen in the air like a self-replicating virus. Everyone in the building dies except for Captain Kirk, who for shenanigan-related reasons is in a self-sealing bunker under the building, and the rest of the novel is devoted to trying to nullify the agent before it manages to escape the hermetically sealed building. It's a great book, evocative and claustrophobic, and I definitely recommend it, but for the purposes of what I thought was a quickie one-shot, I stole the idea of a weapon that could asphyxiate everyone in a building nearly faster than they could realize they were doomed. As the story developed I had to cobble together a little modern-Earth science to flesh it out, but I hoped that the story would hold without much in the way of explanation of how everything had happened. 

One thing that helped was that OaI was not, at its heart, an action adventure story. It was barely a mystery, really. Our main characters were not the ones charged with solving the mystery or catching the bad guy. For the most part, they were not even in direct danger (except for Syl's brief action turn at the end). We spent one chapter with Mike Casper as he investigated and one chapter with the bad guy to get some important creepy exposition, but by far the character we spend the most time with is Roger. It's not Roger's job to know what the Asphyxiant is made of or its exact biological effect, and it's not Roger's job to hunt the bad guys down like dogs in the street. Like pretty much every West Wing story, it's Roger's job to keep the country running, and it's the job of the people around him to help him. The story had to be about what was happening in The White House, with the action-adventure plot clicking along offscreen and occasionally cropping up in a phone call or Sit Room briefing. I had to avoid a lot of temptation, but in a way it made the job easier. West Wing stories are stories about relationships. 

Writing the canon characters was very hard, especially in the beginning. The thing that never caught for me about Designated Survivor was how quickly the survivors moved on after the disaster. Their friends and colleagues were murdered, and there was little indication that anybody even cared. But Margaret, Carol, Mrs. Landingham, Danny and especially Donna, these people were gutted. Every single one of them was utterly devastated, but from Roger's perspective it was hard to see because all of them are so good at their jobs and so dedicated, they'd keep carrying on as best they could until they collapsed. I decided pretty early on that I would start spreading the point of view around so we could see what the characters were going through in their own voices, but that only Roger would get more than one chapter. (I did break this rule right at the end; Donna gets the first and last non-Roger chapters in the story.) Roger's narrative ties the story together but being the President requires one to stay largely in one place while being told things, so spreading out the POV also gave the story a little more momentum.

Donna's first chapter was probably the hardest part of the story to write, both because I am a hardcore J/D shipper and I'd just shut the pairing down in the cruelest of ways, and also because it was through her eyes that I had to bring the scope of the horror home without fully traumatizing the readers. My first draft of the chapter included considerably more time in the refrigerated warehouse with the FBI team, and a lot more detail about the last minutes of the lives of the senior staffers. I ended up going through and cutting a lot of it out, leaving the audience to understand how terrible it was by the way it affected Donna, rather than by my descriptions of it. And yes, it is one of several chapters I cried while writing. There's a reason (several reasons, but my own feels especially) that I had to let Zoey and Charlie live!  And yes, Margaret was speaking for me when she admitted to temporarily forgetting about Annie and Gus, but we got around to them eventually. 

OaI wound up containing most of the material I wrote for it, but it has one deleted scene and one crackadelic alternate ending. The deleted scene occurs shortly before the state funeral and is from Bonnie's perspective; she and Ginger are trying to pack up Sam and Toby's offices to allow the new senior staffers to move in. I got it half-written, then thought I lost it in a computer-related accident. It was so damn sad to write the first time, and it was all character work and only smidgens of plot, and I was really mad about losing the work, so I decided to skip over it and go straight on to the next thing, which I believe may have been Zoey's chapter. It turned out that I did recover most of what I'd written for the chapter, but by the time I found it, the plot had moved on. I tried to make it up to Bonnie by giving her a nice little character bit and a job promotion at the end of the story. 

The crackadelic ending is sort of a long story. Most of the reason that OaI got finished despite all my life changes and busy years and general creative slump is that my parents both fell in love with it. You may ask, "Doesn't having your parents reading your fanfiction make things awkward sometimes?" and in answer I will point you to the number of real sex scenes in my published fanworks, which is zero. And then I will nod enthusiastically. But my dad, especially, loved this story and decided that he ought to be in it. And that he ought to be the Chief Justice. My dad is a retired judge, so he felt this should not be too much of a stretch for him, career-wise. I tried to explain the concept of self-insert to him, but then caved and created a thinly-veiled expy of him to be Chief Justice, then gave him a little ceremony in-story and a few extra mentions here and there. I gave him that chapter as a Christmas present, and he was happy! For awhile. Then he decided that he ought to be the President. I tried to explain to him that this is not how governmenting works, which he of course already knew, but he was firm. His Chief Justice character was great, and he ought to be President. He is nothing if not persistent, and also nothing if not hard to buy gifts for, so for Christmas the next year, I presented him with Chapter 28: The Surprise Noncanonical Epilogue, which has never before been published to the internet. It is very silly. 

This has gotten very long and I still need to write today's Quarantine Journal, so I guess I'll wrap it up there. If you have any specific questions about the story or any other stories, feel free to toss them my way! 

[reading-with-nixie]

Top 11(ish) Books of 2017

This was a weird year for me reading-wise in a lot of ways. For one - I didn’t just fail my 100 book challenge, I basically turbo-failed it: I only read about 44 books (I’m on 45 now). Like last year, this year was not conducive to reading for many reasons. As most of you know, this year was pretty shit for me until about late September, and then in early October I switched to full-time employment and needed to chop my long commute into three much shorter parts - meaning that reading on my commute became harder.

All that said, I actually read more books that I actually liked this year than I have previously, because I started being less strict about my rules for putting down books. I used to only stop reading books if I had a major ideological difference with the text (not the story, the text - if this confuses you, talk to me). But this year I also stopped reading books if I noticed that I wasn’t inclined to read them. I finally settled into the fact that there are enough books out there that I’d love to waste my time on ones I don’t. So instead of 10 or 9 favorites this year - I have 11 or 12 (I lumped two books together; I’ll explain why when I get there).

So here we go, in no particular order:

1) Elizabeth is Missing by Emma Healey

You’ll probably notice a trend for this year, which is that I read a lot of horror/thriller novels - Elizabeth is Missing falls into the thriller category, but only because of the point of the view in which it is written. Namely, the protagonist is an elderly woman named Maud who struggles with dementia. 

She is convinced that her friend Elizabeth has gone missing and that her older sister Sukey (who disappeared herself after World War II) was murdered by her husband. But no one is listening to her about Elizabeth, nor did anyone listen to her about Sukey - so Maud decides to solve both mysteries by herself. 

This book was memorable for me, again, because of the POV. The book portrays exactly how terrifying it is to feel with all your might that something is true, only to have everyone around you be dismissive. The reader also gets a glimpse into Maud forgetting things that her daughter, caretaker, and other people surrounding her say. So what happened to Sukey? What happened to Elizabeth? Is Elizabeth even missing in the first place?

All in all a very interesting read, but if you’re already terrified of aging, I’d maybe pass. 

2) The Geek Feminist Revolution by Kameron Hurley

Kameron Hurley is a Hugo award winner and a woman...which means she’s needed to deal with a lot of shitty nerd boys. This (pretty inclusive) book discusses feminist sff, misogyny in nerd culture, and (most prominently) what it’s like trying to thrive in sff as a woman. Especially a woman who writes diverse books. 

This book is great for feminists and nerds - but above all I recommend it for my woman writerly friends. I really enjoyed her snark, but the main thing I got out of this book was an extreme increase in my desire to create.

3) The Girl with All the Gifts by MR Carey

This was definitely one of the more inventive books I’ve read this year or possibly ever. I’ve described it to people as being a zombie book that reads (at least in part) like a fairy tale; it’s been compared to Matilda a lot -- which I think makes sense. 

The narrator for much (though not all) of the novel is Melanie, who is a child zombie who “grew up” in an army base/school for child zombies. Then one day the school is attacked and Melanie, her favorite teacher (their relationship is really fucking touching), and some military folks escape and must try to survive out in the world. 

The book switches narrators, which allows for some interesting shifts in perspective. Some parts feel more like a typical horror novel than others, but all in all I would highly recommend this to someone who is interested in seeing a unique approach to zombies or horror. Or just people who like horror novels and also like Matilda. 

4) All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr

Another really unique one -- but very, very different from the last. This one won the Pulitzer Prize and pretty much all the awards in 2014 and goddamn if there isn’t a reason. 

This one is less unique for the way it tells its story (it’s very lyrical, but not particularly groundbreaking in that regard as far as I remember), but for the content of the story itself. It’s a story set during WWII in Europe...but not the sort of story you’d expect. The main characters of the story are a young blind girl living in Nazi-occupied France and a German kid who ends up (obviously) working with Nazis. Neither of them ends up in a concentration camp or anything like that. Rather, Marie-Laure must deal with the social and economic everyday consequences of the occupation and Werner sees terrible shit happening around him all the time and doesn’t interfere despite having an increasingly bad feeling about what the German army is doing. 

Obviously, the novel is heavy as fuck, so definitely proceed with tissues. 

5) Every Heart a Doorway by Seanan McGuire and The Diviners by Libba Bray

These two go together in my head, so I’m also putting them together here. They have completely different premises, but I read them at the same time and there are some weird similarities. Most notably, both books have serial killer antagonists who remove body parts from their victims - and the same body parts at that. 

Every Heart a Doorway is a really interesting novella which explores the idea what happens to children once they return from magical worlds (a la Alice in Wonderland and The Chronicles of Narnia). Nancy is a newcomer to a boarding school for these kids who makes fast friends with a couple of her classmates. When someone starts killing them, Nancy and her new pals come under suspicion and need to prove their innocence, and in so doing save the school from being shut down. It’s actually a novella, so it’s fairly easy to read in a short period of time. And gets a TON of brownie points for having a CANONICALLY ASEXUAL MAIN CHARACTER. 

The Diviners is set in the Roaring 20s and features a cast of teens with various and sundry magical powers that have to deal with shutting down a ghost that some dumbass rich kids unleash with a luigi board in the first scene. I was kind of pissed that there’s a scene early on in which sexual assault occurs and the narrative never addresses it as such - but aside from that major qualm I have with it, it’s solid. Also, totally spooky.

I recommend both of these books - just maybe not the same time? Don’t repeat my mistakes. 

6) The Secret History by Donna Tartt

If you know me more than just in passing, you know that I love me some Dark Shit™ in my literature. The Secret History more than satisfied that craving. The story, set in a rural Vermont college (apparently a Bennington expy...which I’m gonna go ahead and say is NOT a complement to Bennington), is one of pretentious classics students who are basically a cult. A new kid comes to the school, gets indoctrinated into said basically-cult’s bullshit, and gets fully entrenched into their bullshit when they semi-accidentally kill a guy and THEN kill one of the basically-cult-members (this is not a spoiler - the book literally opens with them killing the dude).  

It’s definitely not for everybody, but if you are also Team Dark Shit™ and like gorgeous writing - it’s probably for you. You’ll probably get even more out of it if you A) went to college in rural New England or B) were a classics student.

7) The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas

The Hate U Give is another book that got a LOT of hype and 100% deserves every amount of praise it received. 

Sixteen year old Staff is one of few Black kids at a private school and still lives in a poor neighborhood, thus she divides herself up into two versions of herself to fit who those two communities expect her to be. One night, she’s being driven home from a party by an old friend (Khalil) they get pulled over and Khalil is fatally shot by an officer.

Both the media at large, at least one of Starr’s white friends, and a local drug lord try to paint Khalil as a thug. Thus Starr has to decide whether to stay quiet and keep her life in tact or to speak up and upend everything about her life.

Highly recommend, especially for other White folks.

8) Illuminae by Amie Kaufman and Jay Kristoff

Another thing to know about my reading habits: I really love mixed media and weird layout/typographical decisions.

Give me maps, photographs, whole pages with only one word, transcripts, just ALL the variety of ways of telling -- and I’m a happy camper. Like, go to a bookstore and flip through a copy of Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close. There is a reason its my favorite. 

Illuminae has an interesting story and all of these things. 

It’s sci-fi YA told from multiple POVs - the main characters are two halves of a couple that breaks up on the day that their home planet is destroyed, but there’s also an AI who becomes progressively more and more of an interesting character as it goes along. 

On top of a conspiracy, there’s a lot of action, potentially evil tech, and a scary af plague. It’s a little much for some readers, but I think it works - and it’s interesting to see several genres intersect. 

I highly recommend this for other mixed media loving folks and people who want to see how many tropes can interact with each other at once. 

9) Bird Box by Josh Malerman

Unlike most of the books I have on this list - I would actually recommend this to VERY FEW PEOPLE. It has aspects that could be triggering (namely, there’s a lot of suicide and some child abuse), it has multiple dog deaths (one of which is probably the saddest I’ve ever read; it had me crying on the bus), and is fucking TERRIFYING...but I loved it, so here it is.

In the world of Bird Box, something weird started happening - people started seeing something which launched them into a violent frenzy, causing them to sometimes kill those around them and always kill themselves. The book follows two stories - one is set five years after people started seeing whatever it is that’s driving them to madness, when Malorie and her two children need to leave their safe haven and travel down a river to a safe location that may or may not exist any longer; the other is set when Malorie is pregnant, people are just starting to see the thing, and Malorie finds (and loses) a chosen family in a sort of “how we got here” situation. 

I love this one for two main reasons: 1) It addresses things in a really interesting, vaguely Lovecraftian way because, by the very nature of the crisis, NO ONE has seen the thing (or even spoken to someone who has seen the thing) and lived to talk about it - so the characters spend the whole time wearing blindfolds, covering their eyes, or inside with things to block any windows and the readers spend the entire book having NO IDEA what the thing is. And that makes pretty much everything more terrifying. One of the most nerve-wracking moments in the novel is when a LEAF falls on someone’s shoulder and there’s the question of “OH SHIT WHAT IF IT WASN’T A LEAF” but the person obviously can’t just check. There are also several times when whatever the heck this thing is is in the same space as Malorie (in one of them it actually plays around with her goddamn blindfold) and obviously she wants to see what it is, but she can’t or she and her kids will die. Both Malorie and the reader also need to trust that her kids won’t look. 2) It addresses the sorts of questions that would occur in that situation. What if you view whatever the thing is indirectly? Are animals immune to the insanity? Couldn’t blind people just go about their lives more or less normally, provided they don’t end up around someone who saw the thing?

You can judge for yourself (or ask more questions), to figure out if this would be a good or safe read for you. 

10) Uprooted by Naomi Novik

To say that I enjoyed the experience of reading Uprooted would be completely incorrect. Anyone who was around me when I read it can tell you about the pained noises I was making most of the time. Most of the book was a conga of backfiring plans, terrifying bullshit, and the protagonist being thrown into generally unpleasant and/or bleak-looking situations. At one point I actually told Lauren “I...I don’t think I would ever say this...but it might be too depressing for me?” 

That being said, it’s actually really good - which is why I kept reading through the pain. All of the characters were really engaging, even the ones I didn’t like; I wanted to know what happened plot-wise; there’s a really interesting magic system; and so much fae nonsense. 

Agnieszka lives in a small village located near malevolent woods,a wizard takes her away from the village....and basically the entire rest of the plot is spoilers. But you should read it if you’re into fae nonsense. 

11) The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet by Becky Chambers

I haven’t finished this book yet, but I’m close enough to the end that I feel comfortable recommending it.

This is another ensemble cast book featuring a spaceship full of compelling characters (one of whom is basically an alien cultural anthropologist - which is neat) that form an amazing little chosen family. 

It has a cool plot, too, but let’s be real - this book is about the characters and their relationships. Insofar as it’s possible to have representation in a book with mostly alien characters, this book pulls it off pretty well. There’s at least one lesbian couple, an essentially chronically ill character, an alien/AI relationship, and an alien who’s basically autistic. A fabulous people who like the ideas inherent in science fiction but are bored of pew-pew action crap. 

I also have one anti-recommendation to close this out, because I feel the need to warn people away from this book.

DO NOT READ BOY, SNOW, BIRD by Helen Oyeyemi. It’s a transphobic piece of shit. 

It starts off gorgeous, has some nice magical realism, involves some really good discussion of racism and what it means to be biracial...and then gets WILDLY transphobic very suddenly in the last twenty pages or so. I’ve heard people say “OH, but it’s actually a METAPHOR, you see!” but here’s the thing, you can’t use real marginalized groups as your goddamn metaphors. NOPE. Stay away from this piece of garbage, or at least don’t give Oyeyemi your money and everything except the last two chapters out of a library copy.