10. What is your favorite genre book to recommend to someone who doesn’t usually like that genre?
Usually when people ask me for a rec for a genre they don’t usually like, they are asking for sci-fi, and I start by trying to figure out different access points based on what they already like. I’m not much of a hard sci-fi person, tending more to the space opera and political thrillers, so here’s a few “if you like x, maybe try y”:
If you like romance, give Everina Maxwell’s Winter’s Orbit a try. It’s definitely sci-fi in setting and plot, but it also hits nicely in the formulaic patterns of a arranged-marriage, strangers-to-lovers story that will help you through it even if the sci-fi elements are throwing you off. The author has another similar book that increases the sci-fi elements and is enemies-to-lovers as well, so if you like Winter’s Orbit, Ocean’s Echo is a good next step.
If you like non-fiction, The Martian by Andy Weir is a great pick. I have multiple friends who got into reading again as adults via The Martian. It’s well-written, well-grounded, funny, and very sci-fi. If you’ve already read it, then maybe give To Be Taught if Fortunate by Becky Chambers a try. It can be described with all the same adjectives, plus it’s a short novella, so if you’re hesitant, it’s less intimidating.
If you like mysteries or political thrillers, boy is there a lot of great sci-fi out there for you. The crux of a lot of sci-fi is space or high-tech settings with a plot that asks questions about personhood, and that mixes really well with detectives and spies wandering around trying to solve problems and find truths. Try Fugitive Telemetry by Martha Wells (it’s partway through a series of great books and novellas, but that one’s the most traditional mystery plot) or A Desolation Called Peace by Arkady Martine (ambassador solving her predecessor’s mysterious death while trying to do his job)(I’d also recommend this one if you read a lot of classics) EDIT: just realized I mistyped - book 1 by Arkady Martine is A Memory Called Empire.
If YA/ Bildungsromanen/ New Adult figuring the world out through trial and error is often your jam, try Provenance by Ann Leckie (for the kid who really wants to do things right) or The Warrior’s Apprentice by Lois McMaster Bujold (for another kid who wants to do things right, but is also a high-energy chaos gremlin).
If you like fantasy, you probably already have read some sci-fi; it’s all under the speculative fiction umbrella and genres are vague anyway. All the same, I know this is the Locked Tomb Website, but give Gideon the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir a shot (it’s got magic and mayhem and an epic locked-room whodunnit mystery). The Best of All Possible Worlds by Karen Lord is also good - it has a team of people traveling together and thinking about morals and discovering new abilities, plus some romance.
I’m sure there’s lots of genres I’m forgetting right now, but feel free to send me another ask for any specific one!
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now having read both translation state and provenance I can firmly say that I LOVE when we see Radchaai thru non-radch narrators because they’re always like ‘the radchaai ambassador showed up. in the stereotypical villain voice she misgendered every non she/her in the room. then she was bad at her job. then she asked for tea. then she said something offensive. then she, still bad at her job, left.’ and it’s great every time.
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Dean Winchester every day -- 19/326
Supernatural 1x19//Provenance
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we should talk about the Geck ambassador more. reasons:
very big no idea what shape she really is
had one emotional reconnection with a child figure and was like i got this . i understand the human thing now. everyone hold up i am going to family therapy us out of this situation, "humans like when their parents do not kill them" nailed it
talks Like That (wonderful)
name is Agagag ????
she shares her lukewarm saltwater drink with everyone:)
comfortable at home thanks
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Hello Radchdom!
I have come very late to this fandom and have found it to be quiet but filled with a sense of delighted energy any time some new scrap of content passes into view. You might say it's like a lake with fish in it, peaceful on the surface until they all come bubbling up around a few breadcrumbs...
I am hungry for more breadcrumbs!! Let's harness that energy for the greater good with @fandomtrumpshate, an annual fanwork auction raising money for progressive nonprofits!
You can read all the details in the FAQ, but the tl;dr is this: if you're a fic writer, fanartist, beta reader, podficcer, fanvidder, or just have specialist expertise or can give someone's story a sensitivity read, YOU CAN OFFER YOUR WORK AND CREATIVITY FOR FELLOW FANS TO BID ON!
In last year's auction, just one enterprising person offered a fanwork for the Imperial Radch series. But a song is even better with more voices to sing! So I've volunteered as a Fandom Ambassador to spread the word and encourage more folks to get involved in my fandoms.
🍵CREATOR SIGNUPS OPEN ON FEBRUARY 5TH!🍵
You can see the rest of the calendar here, but the other key dates for creators are March 9th, when bidding closes, and December 31st, when fanwork is due. That's ten months to create, agonize, erase, celebrate Republic of Two Systems Independence Day, agonize more, procrastinate, get My Heart is a Fish stuck in your head again, and then finally finish up whatever kind of work you've offered, knowing all the while that you helped to raise money for your choice of these excellent nonprofit organizations.
🐟🥚🎶🚀🎶🥚🐟Check @fandomtrumpshate from Feb 5-19 to sign up as a creator! 🐟🥚🎶🚀🎶🥚🐟
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Did you ever do Alex top 5 moments? Or did I miss it?
Otherwise top 5 ice cream flavors!
....I really thought I had, especially since I apparently made the gifs lol, but I guess not!:
This moment when he first notices the icing on his glass at the wedding:
2. Vicky
(i swear i made this post already and cannot find it)
3. He grabbed my hair in a way that made me understand the difference between rugby and football.
4. Nervous fidgeting in the red room before Henry comes in.
5. Offering himself up for a dance to Henry at the V&A.
put “top 5” anything in my ask and i will answer ok go
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'cause then maybe you wouldn't be so cranky all the time. you know, seriously sam, this isn't about just hooking up, okay?
1.19 provenance
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Relationships:
Bruce Wayne & His Children Jason Todd & Roy Harper
Characters:
Jason Todd Bruce Wayne Roy Harper Alfred Pennyworth Oliver Queen Batfamily - Character Batkids - Character justice League - Character
Additional Tags:
Implied/Referenced Drug Use Drug Addiction Oliver Queen's A+ Parenting Skills Batdad on the warpath Protective Jason overdose Batdad Batfamily Revenge Justice
Summary:
"You lost all credibility when you laid hands on a teenager--not just any teenager, but your own ward," Bruce growled, "You threw him out when he needed you most. Unacceptable. Do you hear me? That is unforgivable."
Oliver pressed a hand to his gushing nose, staring at him in shock.
"If I ever," Bruce said, voice dropping an octave. "ever, see you near Roy again, I'll break every bone in your hands." He tilted his head, a dark smirk twisting his lips. "We'll see how well you shoot after that."
Oliver Queen drops the ball. Bruce Wayne takes in Roy Harper, and gives his colleague a little schooling on what it means to be a father.
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William Scully-Mulder walked so Grogu could run. Did they ever stop to think that maybe he is just imbued with the force? Have they checked his midi-chlorians?
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An Imperial Radch Fanzine Interest Form
Please click here to access the form to indicate your interest in submitting to the 10th anniversary Imperial Radch zine.
Due to Life, this form is releasing about one month late. Apologies for this, the brain has been quite uncooperative.
On the other hand, Translation State is out!! This is so exciting!!!!!!!!
On the third hand, please click below for the Google form to indicate your interest. The submission guidelines and general summary are in the form, and you can also read them below.
The year 2023 marks the 10th anniversary of the publication of Ann Leckie's debut novel, Ancillary Justice, as well as the publication of her new novel in the Radch universe, Translation State. In anticipation of this anniversary, we wish to release a fanmade zine to celebrate all of Leckie's work in this universe - the Imperial Radch trilogy, Provenance, and Translation State.
The zine is expecting to accept submissions until Aug. 15, barring unforeseen circumstances. This form is an interest check to determine logistics for zine publication. The zine Tumblr will post a submissions form shortly - currently planned around June 15.
Any zine-related questions should be directed to ancillaryzine@gmail[.]com or Ro2SID.tumblr.com for zine-related matters. If you have received no reply in about 48 hours, please contact me directly at sauronthegreat@gmail[.]com (yes, really), or tree#0597 on Discord. Please note that I am not in a North American time zone, which will affect response times.
As Discord is rolling out changes to its name system, the best way to get in touch with me on that platform is on the fan-run discord server for Ann Leckie's work, Radchdome 3.0, the link to which can be found here: https://discord.gg/WAF8uv9f3k. My display name on that server will be tree.
Submission Guidelines:
The 10th anniversary zine will be a celebration of the Imperial Radch trilogy and its standalone sequels. The key criteria for submissions are appreciation and affection for the original work. These do not need to be uncritical, and respectful critiques of the work are important and welcome.
This does not mean that the zine will not accept shitposts. It only means that the zine will not accept submissions that are apathetic to the original work. If you would like to submit a series of poems about how Breq is like a duck, we look forward to it.
The zine editor(s) are not currently equipped to handle certain topics due to their sensitive nature. These include sexual assault, child abuse, and suicide/suicidal ideation. Unfortunately this is not an extensive list of sensitive topics we will not be able to handle, but it is our best attempt based on our editor(s) boundaries.
The original work deals with sensitive themes, some of which appear in our list and we do not wish to discourage exploration of them. Submissions that deal with these topics will not be rejected out-of-hand, but instead will be dealt with care.
The zine welcomes NSFW work under the same guidelines.
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Sarah Blake/Bela Talbot. One of them's a catgirl. You're interested?? Read it!! Sarah's a really fun POV to write!
For the Suptober prompts Black Cat and Portrait. Below is the opening:
Sarah Blake looks at the paper-covered painting she'd spent the past three weeks searching for, a glass of wine half-drunk in her hand. The painting is propped against the fireplace, and it looms, as portraits tend to. B, the little black cat that had followed her home from the auction house - the same day as when she got the commission, now she comes to think of it - sits upright next to her legs on the couch, ears twitching away from her fingers whenever she tried to stroke her.
That's unusual, for this cat. Typically, she'd sprawl out over any available surface, mewl for attention until she got head scratches, and purr contentedly any time Sarah put her hands on her. Now she was stiff, tense.
The only time Sarah had seen her like that before was when she'd tried to put a collar on her¹, and she'd ended up scratched and bitten so badly she'd had to go to the ER. When she got back, B wouldn't look at her, but kept following her from room to room, hissing if Sarah turned her face to her. Sarah, feeling incredibly guilty, had apologised out loud and showed B that she put the collar in the garbage, only realising after she'd done it that of course a cat wouldn't know what any of that meant.
Strangely, though, it seemed to work. B had come back purring as soon as the lid closed over the trash. She even licked the bandage over Sarah's cuts, and pushed her head into her hand.
B's a pretty funny cat overall. She has this unimpressed stare she levels at Sarah for such uncouth behaviour as 'bouncing a toy near her' and 'putting out cat food'². She gave a token grumble whenever Sarah scooped her up like a baby, but would dig her claws in if Sarah tried to put her down again before she was ready. She hops onto the counter when Sarah brings her research home (which is more often than she probably should, but hell, what else has she got to do on a Friday night?) and stares at the papers like she's reading them. More than once, B had put her paw on just the information Sarah had been looking for just after Sarah remarked on how she needed it³.
"My good luck girl," Sarah had praised, and kissed B's furry little head. B's hackles had gone up from the smooch, but then she seemed to calm herself deliberately, and she flopped over the papers like she'd lost all her bones in a fit of lazy decadence.
In the present, Sarah swirls her wine and surveys the hidden painting.
"What do you think is wrong with it, B?"
She's supposed to burn it. That's what the note said, which she'd found in an envelope taped to the back of the Picasso she'd just purchased. The note had been written in wobbly scratches of biro, addressed directly to her. It was lucky she was adept at reading awful handwriting - in the archiving business, it's essential - because the script was only barely legible. There had been $32,000 dollars in the envelope too.
The flat out work of the last few weeks had been for the money and the chance at more, she wasn't going to deny that, but part of it was her overactive curiosity.
What's wrong with it? Ava's first thought had been haunting. She'd waved her EMF machine at it half heartedly after the delivery guy left, but the needles stayed dissatisfyingly still. She'd bought the thing on Amazon when a friend mentioned cold spots, but it turned out they'd just had a fault in their double glazing⁴. She hasn't heard from them in a while, not directly, but from her Facebook feed she knows that they haven't been murdered in their bed by a malevolent spirit so far. Which is good! Just, well, a little disappointing, is all...
Read more on ao3
¹ The collar was baby pink, and had a little bell on the end.
² Sarah's never seen her eat it, but it always disappears by morning.
³ So, she talks to her cat, so what? Before B, she'd talk through her process with her toaster.
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October Goals! Book of Koli is for book club, but otherwise I'm still going through the Yearly Goal Stack. Only three this month because Liar's Knot is a little chunky lol
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I love a good provenance in the morning! This manuscript is Codicillus (approx. 1470-1500), an early text from the Pseudo-Lullian alchemical corpus assembled before the 16th century. The work is signed by Carlo Maria Bonaparte on the first leaf shown above. The work was possibly owned by Carlo Maria Buonaparte (1746-1785), father of the Emperor, Napoleon, as is suggested by his signature located on the work's flyleaf.
The text is presented as a compendium of the secrets of nature. The opening chapters discuss the relationship between the micro and macrocosm, the bond of love uniting the world, and the need for reformatiomateriae (a reformation of matter that can be achieved by the true alchemist who receives illumination from God). A practical section begins in chapter twelve and includes a detailed discussion of the four stages of the alchemical opus, described in terms of the generation of the human body.
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POI 03x14: Provenance
An episode reaction with 10 gifs written the same night I watch?!? 😱
This one was fab.
Wowzer there was a lot of Rinchiness at the beginning! And did Shaw comment on the “mildly erotic moment”????
I am really loving Shaw. Including her eye roll before saving this dude.
Holy shit this moment in which we are all the admission lady.
AND HAROLD’S EXPRESSION HERE ARE YOU KIDDING ME?????
There were, of course, some pretty big suspension of disbelief moments. Including a woman in a balaclava walking out the of front of a museum with an art carrying case and no one stops her. And later that the super secure room has incredibly convenient bars on the ceiling.
I did enjoy the goofy mustache.
Also no gifs of him sadly, but Chris Jackson as a random security guard! Did he and Leslie Odom Jr. know each other when they were both season 3 side characters on this show??
Fusco is very good at fake arresting the team by now.
And I loved the nice happy post-mission drinks…
… until John had to go bring down the mood. We get it John. You can’t let yourself be happy.
All in all a very enjoyable episode.
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IT'S THAT TIME!!
@fandomtrumpshate CREATOR SIGNUPS ARE NOW OPEN!
find out what's different this year, get links to FAQs and past offering examples, and find more info as well as the link to the signup form HERE.
if you missed my previous post, the tl;dr is that Fandom Trumps Hate is an annual fandom auction benefitting progressive nonprofits! fan creators can sign up to offer a wide range of fanworks, as well as fan labor like beta reading and specialist expertise, for fellow fans to bid donations on.
so if you're feeling helpless about the state of the world: have some tea, keep moving forward, and SIGN UP between now and February 19th to offer your creativity and talent for good causes.
🥚🥚🥚🐣🐣🐣🐤🐤🐤
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