#and in Books of the Raksura

[aplpaca]

every martha wells book is like we are going to explore these abandoned/mysterious structures or so help me god

[coquelicoq]

martha wells loves to do this thing where she takes a character who has to hide and pretend to be something they're not so that they aren't shunned and hated by everyone around them, and then introduces a new character who is also whatever the main character is hiding being but who is not a damaged broken liar about it because they have people in their life who know about it and love them. and then she makes the second character and the people who love them experience trauma. and she makes the first character observe this and fear that love at the same time they long for it. and above all she makes me have emotions about it. she's constantly doing this. thanks a lot for that.

[spockandawe]

Double edit: actually, that's enough of that.

Edit: I was expecting maybe thirty notes tops. This is a surprise, and one that doesn't delight me. If I hear about any harassment stemming from this post, I'll be more pissed at the harasser than the person this is about.

God. Dammit.

I hate this, let's just out that out there! I'm unhappy that I'm talking about any of this, I'm unhappy there's an issue that's come up at the intersection of media preservation, respecting authors, and one of my favorite book series. And I'm unhappy that I've censored the names in the screenshots I'm about ti post! I'm not happy that I'm helping to slide consequences away from someone who thought this was an acceptable thing to do to a modern working author. But I'm even less happy this is something that happened in the first place, and I'm VERY unhappy the original post has been deleted without a whisper of accountability or apology.

And here's a partial screenshot of the IA page, which has since been removed. I get the excitement to share something you love with a new audience. This isn't the right way to go about it.

First, if Martha Wells' patreon is still in place, I encourage everyone in the strongest possible terms to go sign up for it. It'll charge you one dollar. I've been a member since probably 2018, and I mistakenly believed it was locked to new members (it's labeled 'Currently Closed To New Patrons') until I had reason to look it up last night, when I tripped across this reddit post from earlier this year.

Now. I was looking it up because of this sudden patreon message:

Even if the patreon goes away, I still recommend that people sign up. Explore the stories! They're very fun! Even though the patreon has been dormant for years, I've loved having that repository in place.

In fact, in the interest of full disclosure, what kept me from immediately reblogging last night is that I've felt the same archival urges! I bound a hard copy of these stories earlier this year, and let me quote my own words from that post:

I live in a state of perpetual low key stress over the impermanence of digital media and that goes extra for sites that aren’t designed to work well as archives. I hope, desperately, that someday Martha Wells publishes more raksura, maybe even including these stories! I will buy it immediately. No thoughts, wallet empty. I own all her other raksura books in literally three formats, fingers crossed that by printing this, I can actualize a formal official printing of these stories by the author 😂

So. Archiving, yes. But especially with a living, working author, I would never DREAM of posting a public free-for-all with IA and mediafire links. My most charitable interpretation is that OP thought it was fine since the stories were "free," even though the writeups acknowledge that access costs a dollar. Ao3 is also free. Reposting someone else's fic is still understood to be a dick move.

Last night i was left kind of stunned, and I was hoping to see some kind of response from op this morning taking responsibility, and was... disappointed to see that the post was just deleted. The IA listing was deleted too, and I hadn't actually looked up the mediafire post yet but I'm guessing it's also been nuked. Out of curiosity, I wanted to see if there was anything more in the comments, so I found a surviving reblog. And there was!

So I'm writing this post because I'm... frustrated. Taking down the files is a good step. Posting them publicly was a worse step, but hey. I still more than understand if Martha Wells still deletes her patreon. I don't understand what sending her files of her own stories is meant to accomplish, but whatever. Ascribing a profit-driven motive is driving me up a wall, though. She's financially stable. I read her email, and what i see is frustration that even though it only cost a dollar to access 62k of her work through her own chosen location, control of her writing is being forcibly removed from her. I'm sure that seeing copies sold by third parties wouldn't help, but I don't think that's the root issue.

This is a fandom-heavy website, I'm sure most of us have seen posts about not reposting art when you can share directly from the artist's blog. I've seen posts about stop copying your ao3 faves over to wattpad just because you like reading there better. At a fundamental level, I read the message from Martha Wells as a deep frustration at having no way to share her creative work without someone removing control of it from her hands. And I don't know if there's any way to really take back that damage.

[chimaerakitten]

I’ve been thinking today about off ramps in long running stories, especially book series.

By that I mean like, places where a person could stop reading and have a satisfying ending even if they’re not yet at the actual ending. (Someone tell me if there’s an established Tvtropes name for this I’m missing.)

Now, a lot of book series will have an off ramp at the end of book 1, because many first books are written without promise of a sequel. Like sure, there might be a sequel hook, but the actual second book is still up to publisher whims in most cases. So you can read All Systems Red or The Thief or A Madness of Angels and have a perfectly satisfying ambiguous-end sci-fi story or middle grade fantasy romp or inverted murder mystery revenge quest without ever picking up book 2. This is definitely an off ramp but it’s not necessarily the interesting or revealing kind because again. Whims of the publisher.

There’s also stories that have an off ramp after every installment. Leverage is famous for this—they had a philosophy of having every season be a satisfying ending, which says a lot both about the writers and about the story they were trying to tell.

But I think the most interesting ramps are the ones where by design or by circumstance, there’s a single off-ramp somewhere in the middle. One spot where unless someone tells you there’s more, you’d never be unsatisfied with leaving halfway through.

Sometimes these will be signaled in some way, where there’s a big timeskip after the off-ramp, or the series changes names or has a spin-off, or the POV changes, or after book 3 the author publishes a short story collection before hopping back in to novels, or the series suddenly jumps from being only novellas to a chunky 120k novel. (The Raksura books, Percy Jackson/HoE, Matthew Swift/Magicals Anonymous, and Murderbot all do one or more of these)

But sometimes off ramps aren’t visible in series order or marketing. Sometimes they’re organic to where a story happens to leave off at the end of an installment.

The queen’s thief has one of these after King Of Attolia. I know this was a satisfying ending because for seven years I thought it was the end. My local library didn’t have A Conspiracy of Kings, so I thought it was a trilogy. And you really can leave it there! KoA ends with Gen back in his element and recognized as king, the main internal threat to Irene neutralized, and peace on the peninsula. The Mede aren’t yet the immediate threat they are in the back half of the series, since up through KoA they’re mainly represented by the magus’s vague warnings and Nahuseresh, whom Irene thinks circles around. There’s no real reason to assume the Mede are a threat within the scope of the series. Now I absolutely prefer getting the whole story, but KoA is a damn solid off-ramp for anyone who feels like exiting there.

And that’s one kind of off ramp where the end you get is pretty similar in tone (mostly happy) to the one you get if you go on to the rest of the series. I’ve also read books where you can off ramp successfully right at the lowest point in the series and get a tragedy out of a series that ultimately ends happy, or leave at a high point and get a happier end than the main one, or exit at an ambiguous point and continue on with ambiguity. The Giver sequels make it pretty clear what happened to Jonas and Gabe at the end of the book. but you don’t have to read them or have that question answered if you want to.

I don’t have a really solid conclusion to draw here except that I think the positioning of off ramps says a lot about authors and stories, and choosing whether or not to take an off ramp says a lot about readers.

[sixth-light]

I have been re-reading Martha Wells' Books of the Raksura for comfort reasons and with the perspective of another half-decade since I first read them, may I present a proposition: these books are to Stargate Atlantis as Shards of Honor in the Vorkosigan series is to Star Trek, to wit, it's nothing like as simple or boring as "filed off serial number fanfic" but the underlying vibes are very, very real

[haveyoureadthisfantasybook]

vote yes if you have finished the entire book.

vote no if you have not finished the entire book.

(faq · submit a book)

[obsob]

ive been reading books of the raksura recently and all i can think about is Moon...baby...baby boy

[sunderedstar]

if you ever want to rethread your ribcage (101061 words)

Chapters: 4/?

Fandoms: Final Fantasy VII, The Books of the Raksura

Rating: M

Pairings: Zack Fair/Angeal Hewley/Genesis Rhapsodos/Sephiroth/Cloud Strife

Tags: The One Where They Banora, Return of the Domestic Polyamorous Dragon Bee People, Cloud and His Obligatory PTSD Dissociation/Flashbacks

-

"Genesis will love it," Mint informs Angeal firmly. "You three were all so precocious, but I'll always remember the day he re-invented apple juice from first principles."

"What about Sephiroth? Any fun fledgling stories about him?" Zack asks. He tugs on one of Cloud's frill ends almost lazily.

"Sephiroth –" Mint's throat works for a moment. "– was precocious. As I said." After another, clearly frantic pause – "One time when he was…six, I think. After visiting the old abandoned Nibelheim libraries, he, er. He said that he was 'riding through the cosmos with this planet as his vessel.'" Her eyes glaze over, distant and staring. "I – I think he was talking about gravity. I hope."

[queer-book-character-tournament]

Characters, book, and author names under the cut

Leo Merritt/Tristan Drake - The Buried and the Bound by Rochelle Hassan

Lestat de Lioncourt/Louis de Pointe du Lac - The Vampire Chronicles by Anne Rice 

Jade/Moon/Chime - Books of the Raksura by Martha Wells

Seregil í Korit Solun Meringil Bôkthersa/Alec í Amasa of Kerry - Nightrunner series by Lynn Flewelling

[elexuscal]

trying to get other MBD fans read the Raksura novels be like

"what if Murderbot was an orphaned long lost princess, a shapeshifting weredragonbee, and also FUCKED"

[coquelicoq]

was trying to think of possible names for river's consort brothers who died in childhood and whose names are never given in the narrative and of course they have to fit with the river theme so i was like okay we got river, branch, drift, how about current...stream...float...bob...wait, bob?! <-legit possible name for a raksura but can u imagine. Bob of Indigo Cloud. these are my children Branch, Drift, River, Current, and Bob. bob my son the raksuran consort bob. bob the consort (can he fix it (intercourt diplomacy problem)) bob the consort (yes he can!)

[avomakiart]

So in love with the Raksura books lately. The world and characters are so creative and good. Just AAAAGGHH more of them pls. I'm on the last volume and don't want to be done ;_;

[aposematic-jessica]

okay it’s been a hot second since I’ve read the books last (probably like six months) but ive been thinking about Frost of Indigo Cloud like. oh my god. like i know we all talk about how traumatized she and the rest of the clutch are but also she’s such a good girl?? she’s such a responsible and protective young woman? and that one scene where she’s like “fuck this we need more queens for this diplomatic discussion (read: fight)” and just shows up and sits down and is just so responsible and ready to do her part for the court? I’m fully projecting onto her btw but i just. I mean her socialization has to be shit just like:

the rest of Sky Copper fucking kicked it + being briefly kidnapped by Fell + no other children in Indigo Cloud + fleeing their new decaying home + entire court in panic about the NEW new decaying home + their adoptive father and his wife have to go on numerous perilous journeys

like yeah Frost is probably going to be a more prickly queen than anyone really wants. but like what is her other option?? it’s not like she has any great role models. moon: most feral consort ever. stone: truly ancient like grandfather. pearl: Like That. jade: actually probably the most normal. Like child psychology and development is a pet interest of mine, right? And looking at Frost and her (remarkably well adjusted) brothers i simply cannot stop myself from musing about how they would be as adults!! What kind of daughter queen would Frost be? How would she handle Thorn and Bitter growing up as consorts and being claimed by various queens? Also like her adoptive father is Moon her understanding of consort behavior is gonna be FUCKED.

but god I just really love rolling around Frost in my head. Her and all the other queens are so fascinating!! i wanna see her with the new clutches and new kids and see her really become a queen!! got 2 know everything about that girl. may be worth rereading & writing shorts about it. I fucking love these dragon bee people they’re soooo insane in my brain.

[chimaerakitten]

I know for a fact that there’s a nonzero number of people out there who read Omegaverse fic for the worldbuilding, and dear reader if that person is you then I’m here to tell you that you absolutely must read The Books of the Raksura by Martha Wells.

[rjalker]

Now applying to everything it applies to instead of just The Books of the Raksura or The Murderbot Diaries.

The most ~mainstream~ example is probably Zootopia. Or, more infamously, Bright.

[ID: Two images, each showing a panel from a two-panel comic. Panel 1 is titled, "What white authors think bigotry looks like", and shows a snake wearing a bib that says, "I [heart] mice with a fork, looking down at a mouse that is trembling in fear, saying "U R a bigot if you're afraid I'll eat you when you first meet me even though I am literally an obligate carnivore who evolved 2 eat u. And ur cousin got eaten by my cousin last week." Panel 2 is titled, "What bigotry actually looks like", and shows one mouse sweating nervously, surrounded by five other angry mice with swords, who are shouting, "Terrorist!" "Thug!" "You're threatening me!" "You are dangerous!" "You are violent!" Larger text to the side explains, "People with power pretending that the minority is inherently dangerous and violent to justify violently oppressing them.". End ID.]

Pro tip: Real oppressed people are not and have never been scary Evil monsters trying to end the world. Nor are oppressed people obligate carnivores that literally evolved to hunt and eat the people oppressing them.

Disney wants you to think that anyone who wants people to stop being oppressed is gonna turn around 2 seconds later and murder a baby. And so many fucking white authors (Including Martha Wells!) think that oppressed people are all super powered unstoppable killing machine apex predators who literally evolved to eat other people and you're being mean :( for being reasonably wary when you first meet them, because your cousin literally just got eaten alive by their cousin last week and you don't want to go the same way. This is what white people think bigotry is.

[direquail]

so Murderbot is great and I love it, however I would like to bring to tumblr's attention another series by Martha Wells, the Books of the Raksura. I recently finished "The Cloud Roads" and honestly I think it's the perfect book for tumblr because it's for people who want to fuck dragons and love pretty men who are also wet cats