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Next up in the Hornblower movieverse: The Wrong War (originally The Frogs and the Lobsters), featuring Horatio Hornblower’s involvement in the ill-fated attack French royalist landing at Quiberon. (“Quiberon! There was a D. K. Broster book about that!” I crowed.)

Enjoyable as usual, although the slashiness quotient was low (very little Kennedy, Bush hasn’t appeared yet). Once again the film is telling pretty much the same story as the book but changing the thematic valence: in the book, the point of Quiberon seems to be that the strict discipline of the marines saves the day (for the British retreat, anyway, the undisciplined Royalists are screwed), whereas here, Captain Pellew saves the day by disobeying his orders to stay at one beach and instead heads to the other to pick up the possible survivors.

(Basically I think the Hornblower movies were made by people who are really more sympathetic to the liberte, egalite, fraternite of the French Revolution than the ideals of the Royal Navy circa 1800: obedience, order, discipline, respect for rank, etc. etc.)

Also, the filmmakers decided that it was time for Hornblower to have a romance (with a girl), and have therefore introduced the character of Mariette, a French peasant girl who became a schoolteacher following the Revolution. This led (I imagine) to some version of the following conversation:

FILMMAKER #1: But what will we do with Mariette in the later films?

FILMMAKER #2: Don’t worry about it! We’ll kill her at the end of this one.

I did not care for this ending, so I have taken the liberty of rewriting it, starting from the scene in Mariette’s house where Hornblower begs her to run away with him while the townsfolk outside riot.

HORNBLOWER: I won’t leave without you!

MARIETTE: Climb out ze window!

HORNBLOWER climbs out the window. MARIETTE leans out the window looking after him, but does not move to climb down.

HORNBLOWER: Jump!

MARIETTE: (with tears in her eyes) Nevaire can I leave la belle France! Vive la Republique! Adieu, ‘Ornblowaire!

MARIETTE shuts the shutters. HORNBLOWER looks like he wants to climb back up and argue, but suddenly the yelling is getting much closer, and he must flee.

HORNBLOWER makes it to the bridge literally seconds before the British blow it up. The British retreat to the beach, where they are rescued by the Indefatigable.

HORNBLOWER stands by the rail, staring out at the receding coast of France. KENNEDY comes to stand beside him.

HORNBLOWER: “I could not love her, dear, so well/loved she not la belle France more.”

KENNEDY clasps Hornblower’s shoulder in manly sympathy. They gaze together at their one true mistress, the sea.

FIN

yourlibrarian posting in

marchmetamatterschallenge

It's February 1, so that means the kickoff to this year's March Meta Matters Challenge is just 4 weeks away! As usual, the challenge involves locating and copying over meta you've created to a second site in order to ensure its preservation, plus there will be some prompts for creating new meta.

As recorded in our FAQ it's recommended to cross post meta to SquidgeWorld where all types of it are welcome. Additionally, Squidge offers image hosting for fandom content, so if your meta includes images and you need a host, the site will suit.

This does not mean that any challenge participant must use SquidgeWorld, however. If you would prefer to use AO3, to copy content from Tumblr to Dreamwidth, to ensure content is backed up at the Internet Archive, etc. you can choose whatever second destination you would like. The MMM Challenge is primarily concerned with preserving meta so that it doesn't disappear or get lost with site changes, and secondarily with ensuring meta can be easily found so that people can engage with it. Some sites do better at ensuring these things than others.

Feel free to ask questions here about the challenge, locations, etc. Otherwise look for our opening post on March 1!

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meta_warehouse

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trope_mod posting in

trope_of_the_month

Amnesty is over!

The theme for February is Aliens Made Them Do It. For the purposes of this theme "it" doesn't have to be sex; if you want to write about aliens (or other similar beings) forcing characters to cook or dance or play chess, go right ahead!

Posting guidelines are here, and if you have any recs or prompts you'd like to share, you can leave them in the comments using the templates below:

For recs:

For prompts:

This theme will last until 28th February.

vriddy

K-9 author posted super cute chibi art of Kagari earlier this year, which led to conversations about what his hair colour even is anyway. This is my answer!!

Suits like a charm | K-9 | Fujimaru/Kagari | <500 words | rated G

Summary: Fujimaru dyes Kagari's hair for him.

Read it on Dreamwidth or on AO3.

osprey_archer

Like many of Solzhenitsyn’s books, In the First Circle has a tortured publication history. It was first written in the 1950s, revised in vain hope of official Soviet publication in 1964, published in the West in 1968, and then republished for the first time in its full form in 2008, which is the version I read. So if you’ve read the book but this review sounds like it came out of an alternate universe, possibly you read the earlier version.

The biggest change was to the action that kicks off the novel. In the first published version, Volodin makes a telephone call to a doctor to warn him not to share information about an experimental drug with his Western colleagues, as the security apparatus would consider that a traitorous act. In the 2008 version, Volodin calls the US embassy to warn them that a Soviet spy is going to try to steal the secrets of the nuclear bomb.

In both versions, this telephone call kicks off a flurry of activity in a sharaksha - that is, a special secret prison where prisoners with scientific skills work on making inventions for the state. One of these inventions is a process for identifying the voice of a caller on an anonymous phone call, which has just jumped to number one priority for the security services.

In other hands, this premise might set off a suspenseful game of spy-vs-spy. In fact, the New York Times review quoted on the cover says the story is “filled with suspense,” which frankly makes me suspect that the reviewer read a synopsis rather than the book, which could not be less interested in suspense.

Instead, Solzhenitsyn uses this incident as a kaleidoscope to explore not only the world of the sharaksha, but all the many lives touched by the existence of this special prison: not just the prisoners themselves, but the guards, the guards’ supervisors, the entire security apparatus up to Stalin himself, not to mention the prisoner Nerzhin’s wife and her fellow grad students and the young man she’s been flirting with, even as Nerzhin flirts with one of the female state employees in the prison…

Ostensibly, the First Circle of the title is a reference to the sharaksha, Dante’s first circle of Hell where the virtuous pagans live: the nicest part of Hell, but still Hell. But in fact it seemed to me that this circle expanded to include the lives of everyone touched by the prison, perhaps everyone in the Soviet Union in 1950. A grad student struggling over whether to turn informer or risk having her thesis failed if she refuses. A minion of Stalin’s struggling to find a reply when Stalin puckishly suggests that if they bring the death penalty back, the minion might be the first to go! Stalin himself, miserable and alone, isolated by the terror he has created in everyone around him.

What will you do to make yourself comfortable? Who will you hurt to make your own life better? Solzhenitsyn is not an ascetic for asceticism’s sake - some of the most charming scenes in the book are little moments of comfort that the prisoners have managed to scrape out - but he is absolutely opposed to purchasing comfort, safety, or indeed even survival at the cost of someone else.

(Once Solzhenitsyn was exiled to America, Americans were apparently distressed by his disdain for American materialism, but we really should have seen it coming. We are after all a nation of people largely happy to treat “Well of course Amazon exploits its workers and undermines local businesses and is simply overall evil, but it’s so convenient” as a clinching moral argument in favor of shopping at Amazon.)

A note about how to read this book: I struggled for the first hundred pages or so because I was trying to keep track of all the characters. As Solzhenitsyn introduces a new batch of characters every five chapters or so, this swiftly becomes impossible, especially because he never stops doing this. You might expect that at some point he’d decide he’s assembled the whole cast, but no, right up till quite near the end he’s happy to hare off for two chapters to go on a digression (fascinating! Rich in psychological and philosophical detail!) about a character we’re never going to see again.

As you can imagine, trying to keep track of all these characters (each of whom has their own little cast of side characters) is very frustrating, and my reading experience became much more pleasant when I realized it was also unnecessary. Much better just to read the book like you’re floating down a river. The most important characters will bob up again and again, so you’ll come to know them quite well. Other characters may just be islands that you’ll float past, interesting in their own right of course, but it’s also fine if you can’t remember all the details about Yakonov and his ex-girlfriend who goes to church because the regime is anti-church, which all occurred decades ago so why are we having two chapters about it now? Well, because it’s another little chip of colored glass in our kaleidoscope, that’s why.

And if it turns out a character you thought was an island is actually a boat who keeps floating along, so you do need to know that name after all? Well, that’s why there’s a character index at the start of the book.

Solzhenitsyn is not the least interested in suspense, in plot. He’s interested in character, in exploring different viewpoints on how to live in the world, and in exploring different facets of that world until it feels like a real and breathing place. The book is nearly 750 pages, but in the end, I still wanted to keep on exploring.

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Posted by an

https://www.transformativeworks.org/updates-to-no-fandom-additional-tags-january-2026/

https://www.transformativeworks.org/?p=277388

AO3 Tag Wranglers continue to test processes for wrangling canonical additional tags (tags that appear in the auto-complete) which don’t belong to any particular fandom (also known as “No Fandom” tags). This post overviews some of these upcoming changes.

In this round of updates, we began adjusting existing canonical “No Fandom” tags to add or remove new subtag and metatag relationships. We also continued to streamline creating new canonical tags, prioritizing more straightforward updates which would have less discussion compared to renaming current canonical tags or creating new canonical tags which touch on more complex topics. This method also reviews new tags on a regular basis, so check back on AO3 News for periodic “No Fandom” tag announcements.

None of these updates change the tags users have added to works. If a user-created tag is considered to have the same meaning as a new canonical, it will be made a synonym of one of these newly created canonical tags, and works with that user-created tag will appear when the canonical tag is selected.

In short, these changes only affect which tags appear in AO3’s auto-complete and filters. You can and should continue to tag your works however you prefer.

New Canonicals

The following concepts have been made new canonical tags:

Brother’s Best Friend as Love Interest
Best Friend’s Brother as Love Interest
Cuddle Pollen
Dollification
Dragon Sex
Disordered Eating
Emotional Intimacy
Emotional Whump
Erotic Horror
Eroticism
Female Characters Masturbating
Happily Ever After
Matriarchy
Mobility Aids
Female Omegaverse Alpha Characters
Male Omegaverse Omega Characters
Political Marriages
Romantic Tension
Resolved Romantic Tension
Reverse Cowgirl Position
Standing Sex
Non-Consensual Sedation
Sedation
Small Penis Humiliation
Small Penis Appreciation
Tongue Fucking
Wrong Phone Number

Subtag/Metatag Revisions

Additionally, this month we began making adjustments to existing canonical tags to add or remove new subtag and metatag relationships, which help users find related content and filter in/out content as they browse works on AO3.

Alternate Universe – Time Travel is now a subtag of Time Travel
Alternate Universe – Zombies is now a subtag of Zombies
Cross-Posted on deviantArt is now a subtag of Cross-Post
Back Pain is now a subtag of Pain
Barely Legal has been removed as a subtag from Underage

In Conclusion

While some of these tags may be tags and concepts you’re intimately familiar with, others may be concepts you’ve never heard of before. Fortunately, our fellow OTW volunteers at Fanlore may be able to help! As you may have seen in the comments sections of previous posts, Fanlore is a fantastic resource for learning more about these common fandom concepts, and about the history and lore of fandom in general. For the curious, here’s a quick look at a few articles about concepts related to this month’s new canonical tags:

While we won’t be announcing every change we make to No Fandom canonical tags, you can expect similar updates in the future about tags we believe will most affect users. If you’re interested in the changes we’ll be making, you can continue to check AO3 News or follow us on Bluesky @wranglers.archiveofourown.org or Tumblr @ao3org for future announcements.

You can also read previous updates on “No Fandom” tags as well as other wrangling updates, linked below:

For more information about AO3’s tag system, check out our Tags FAQ.

In addition to providing technical help, AO3 Support also handles requests related to how tags are sorted and connected. If you have questions about specific tags, which were first used over a month ago and are unrelated to any of the new canonical tags listed above, please contact Support instead of leaving a comment on this post.

Please keep in mind that discussions about what tags to canonize and what format they should take are ongoing. As a result, not all related concepts will be canonized at the same time. This does not mean that related or similar concepts will not be canonized in the future or that we have chosen to canonize one specific concept in lieu of another, simply that we likely either haven’t gotten to that related concept yet or that it needs further discussion and will take a bit longer for us to canonize it as a result. We appreciate your patience and understanding.

Lastly, we’re still working on implementing changes and connecting relevant user-created tags to these new canonicals, so it’ll be some time before these updates are complete. If you have questions about specific tags which should be connected to these new canonicals, please refrain from contacting Support about them until at least three months from now to give us adequate time to do so.

https://www.transformativeworks.org/updates-to-no-fandom-additional-tags-january-2026/

https://www.transformativeworks.org/?p=277388

vriddy

Stuck about what to post about now that

snowflake_challenge is over? Have a look at the Stuff I Love: Top Ten Edition challenge for February that

dreamersdare cooked up! :D

Banner for Stuff I Love - Top Ten Edition, February challenge

garonne

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garonne

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Posted by Aditi Paul

https://www.transformativeworks.org/ivd-2025-volunteer-qa-communications-spotlight/

https://www.transformativeworks.org/?p=277309

Last November we asked the community to submit questions to our OTW volunteers in celebration of International Volunteer Day. In this series of posts we will spotlight some of our committees’ responses.

The Communications committee (Comms) disseminates information to the general public, media, and fans. We draft and beta news posts and social media posts, and are often the first point of contact for anyone interested in the OTW.

We asked Comms for replies to your questions, and received a lot of feedback! Below you can find a selection of their answers:

Communications Committee Specific Questions

Question: We’re so thankful for how fast you guys always respond when the ao3 website goes down. I was wondering what’s the circus like behind the scenes when it happens? xD Do you usually first notice when we start panicking, or does someone keep an eye on it 24/7, do emails start flying from social team to it, is it usually scary or is it very organised and calm since you’re so experienced, who makes the decision to pull the plug for a few hours if it’s really bad and looks hopeless, stuff like this. Thank you!
Committee answer:
Accessibility, Design, & Technology (AD&T) and Systems (our two main technical committees) have already given their own replies to this, but from Comms’ end, we often are the ones that handle posting and disseminating information for downtimes! We work hand in hand with AD&T and Systems to ensure that we’re distributing the most accurate and concise information to the public, and coordinate with our fellow volunteers to make sure that it’s sent out in time. We do our best to handle the public logistics so that our coders can focus on their own work!

General Questions

How many hours a week do you spend on your OTW volunteer work?

It truly depends on the week! Typically I would say ~4 hours, for just keeping on top of things and my weekly tasks. It can be upwards of 10 if there’s things outside of the norm or that require a bit of research. (Caitlynne)
For me, it depends on the time of year most of all! As an Event Coordinator, half of the year I’d say it’s ~2-6 hours a week. The bulk of our anniversaries and holidays converge into fall and winter, during that time it’s more ~6-8 hours. (Elin)

How do you manage your volunteer time, and do you do the same thing every day like with a day job?

I hop on my computer pretty frequently throughout the week, so I tailor my OTW time to when I’m on my PC. If there’s a day I’m busy and away from my PC, I know I’ll have to “catch up” the next day when I have time, so to speak. (Tiana)
I try to check our chat tool/the Comms email when I can throughout the day and give a dedicated half hour or so on my laptop in the evenings. It doesn’t always work out, but that’s the goal! (callmeri)

What’s your favorite part about volunteering at the OTW?

I like that tending the little OTW!Tumblr corner of the landscape helps the whole fandom ecosystem. (Remi)
The best part of volunteering at the OTW is the people, for sure! The social aspect is easily what motivates me the most to stay. I have made lots of friends and the Communications committee has been a really supportive environment! (stork)

What’s the aspect of volunteer work with the OTW that you most wish more people knew about?

We are fans just like you! There are so many different cultures and fandoms coming together every day to make the organisation run. (Tal)
We are really big on emojis! The custom emoji feature on our chat tool is definitely getting a lot of mileage with us XD. Also, you can put OTW work on your resume if you want to. (stork)

What does a typical day as an OTW volunteer looks like for you?

Check the Tumblr notes and ask box in the morning, before scrolling through my personal dash and then the tags the organisation follows looking for Things To Queue. Mosey through the #ao3 tag on occasion to reply or leave little notes to folks. Every day is similar, but none are The Same. (Remi)
I often start by checking and responding to messages from other volunteers, and then make a list of current tasks to work on. Sometimes that means brainstorming activities for a special milestone, other times it’s writing posts, or preparing for an event. (Elin)

What is your favorite animal? Alternatively, do you have a favorite breed of cat/dog?

I love bats and think they’re super cute, but identify with possums on an emotional level. (Caitlynne)
My favorite animal is a saiga antelope. Fave dog breed: Irish wolfhound. (Communications volunteer)

Do you enjoy reading fanfic? If so, what’s your favorite work on AO3?

For a dyslexic person I seem to read A LOT of fanfic… I actually tend to read more on AO3 than actual books?? Anyway, my favourite of all time would have to be unholyverse. I don’t think anything can beat that… (Gray)
I love reading fic so much it’s kind of concerning how many tabs I have open all the time. My favourite fic is locked but another fave is between the sheets by DasWarSchonKaputt. og. goat. mother. (choux)

Do you write any fanfic yourself? What do you enjoy about it?

I do write. I enjoy the creativity and the ability to explore characters. (Communications volunteer)
I do! It’s my favorite hobby and one I neglected a bit last year. I hope to get back into the swing of it in 2026. (Tiana)

What fandoms are you (currently) in?

I’m very active in the Dan and Phil fandom :3 (Gray)
Mostly MDZS and IWTV for the past few years, but Heated Rivalry took over my brain so it looks like I’m getting on that ride. (callmeri)

Do you feel glad or proud to see fanfiction in your mother tongue?

I’m also a tag wrangler, so I get to participate in tag translation (every tag wrangled needs to have a documented english translation). There aren’t as many German works, but we have loads of German volunteers – this means there’s often several of us running to translate whenever there’s a German tag. it’s really cool to see very specific cultural references in works! (Tal)
I read a TON of socmed AUs in Filipino along with the Filipino fics in general! I’m super happy to see fanwork in Filipino and when a creator is Filipino as well! especially when I see actual locations or cultural tidbits getting referenced. (choux)

Thanks so much to every volunteer who took the time to answer!

(For more answers, check out this work on AO3, where we collect additional replies to each question!)

The Organization for Transformative Works is the non-profit parent organization of multiple projects including Archive of Our Own, Fanlore, Open Doors, OTW Legal Advocacy, and Transformative Works and Cultures. We are a fan-run, donor-supported organization staffed by volunteers. Find out more about us on our website.

https://www.transformativeworks.org/ivd-2025-volunteer-qa-communications-spotlight/

https://www.transformativeworks.org/?p=277309

florianschild posting in

snowflake_challenge

We've reached the closing curtain of our beautiful Snowflake Challenge 2026. It's been a whirlwind month of fun, community, and lots of creativity! One of the best parts of this challenge is that it truly lives up to its name and its original inspiration: every single year that we come together to celebrate is a unique circumstance of participants, mods, prompts, graphics, challenges, and celebrations. Every year is a unique snowflake in and of itself, never again to be replicated in the exact same pattern. I hope everyone felt some enjoyment and appreciation during the past month, and of course please continue to post your responses and fills because there is no deadline to this challenge!

Thank you so much to all the participants. Thank you especially to those who took the time to interact with fellow participants and make the community feel so alive! And of course thank you to all the mods who went above and beyond and especially to

tjs_whatnot, our co-admin who has worked really hard this month to keep everything running smoothly.

We do have a poll below to get your feedback on the challenge, if that's something you're interested in doing. We really appreciate it and we take all your responses into consideration when planning for next year.

Peace and happy late winter season to all!

( Poll under the cut! )

vriddy

I went on a loooong walk and it felt SO NICE!! It quietened my mind a lot, too. It's possible I've been going a little bit stir-crazy because the weather has been so dreadful for weeks, and going for a stroll any longer than a short burst hasn't really been possible in too long.

Enjoy this picture of a walk I did.... last year, elsewhere, lol. We're really into the not so pleasant season at the moment. I guess I should have been on the lookout for nice naked branches to take a picture of, maybe?! But I was just soooo happy to stretch my legs properly for a few hours I forgot to look. Saw many happy puppies being walked, too!

Trees covered in ivy with sunlight by a narrow river

Reminder to self: long walks are probably part of your writing process, and also your process of being a human being.

Been reading a bunch of manga lately that truly embrace the Rule of Cool ("Why is this even happening in this way? Oh! Rule of Cool!") and was thinking maybe that's one of the things I don't let myself apply enough in my own writing. Everything must make sense and be fully justified by the worldbuilding, plot, etc! Meanwhile I translate the K-9 profiles and it's like, "yeah his jacket stays like that thanks to the power of magic" [ that world does not have magic ] and you know what, if it's not plot breaking and remains consistent once introduced, WHY NOT! WHY NOT APPLY THE RULE OF COOL!!? XD And I guess in fanfic you're playing in a sandbox that's probably already embraced that in some form.

Anyway, just peacefully reflecting!! And plotting to keep an eagle eye on the weather reports so I don't miss any wandering opportunities coming my way, haha.

Current Mood: peaceful

regshoe

Re-read The Talented Mr Ripley by Patricia Highsmith (1955), which I first read some years ago and remembered as an enjoyably twisted tale of murder and impersonation that's also pretty gay. Actually I failed to remember quite how gay it is: Tom Ripley's repressed homosexuality and terror of other people perceiving it are both pretty much textual and important parts of his character and motivation. Anyway, the whole murder-and-impersonation thing is very well-written and great fun in a nicely stressful way. The copy I read has a review-blurb on the front cover that describes Ripley as 'amoral, hedonistic and charming', and while that's true, I think it gives a mistaken impression, because he is also needy, deeply insecure and kind of pathetic and it's the combination that's really fascinating. I also enjoyed how the later part of the book plays out like a murder mystery from the reverse side, with the narrative following the murderer and his attempts to escape detection while the detectives and involved side characters try to figure things out in the background. Perhaps the degree to which they fail is a little bit overly lucky for Ripley, but I think it's a good ending. Highsmith wrote several more books about him; without having read them, and accounting for my general suspicion of sequels and series, I think this was a mistake. Ripley neither needs nor deserves any sequel, meaning 'deserves' both ways round.

Puck of Pook's Hill by Rudyard Kipling (1906). This is, what it had been vaguely in my awareness for years as, something to do with A Midsummer Night's Dream, but I became more interested in reading it when I learnt that it's also a series of stories about the history of England. Two children living near Pevensey in Sussex meet Puck by inadvertently acting bits from A Midsummer Night's Dream in a local fairy ring; Puck introduces them to various people from or connected to the area throughout its history, who tell the stories of their lives. It is a good bit of historical-folkloric dramatisation, but on the whole I was unconvinced: Kipling's thought is just too conventional, in the politically-conservative way and also in the 'Good Kings and dates and battles' view of history way (he wraps the book up by making the whole thing about the memorable Magna Charta by way of some strange antisemitism). Sutcliff, Mitchison and Clarke have all done it better.

The stories are interspersed with poems, and whatever else can be said about Kipling it's certainly true that he can write a good poem. My favourite thing about the book, actually, was the sidelong relationship between the poems and the stories: the poems are all connected to the subjects of the stories but are mostly not directly about them and not actually referred to in them or in the framing story, and so they act as a sort of outside-view commentary on or expansion of the stories' world. And some people have set them to music, so have a couple of recs:

Watch on YouTube

(This is my favourite of the poems; yes, when you think about it, eighteenth-century smugglers are just like fairies. Via Wikipedia I saw this pub wall in Dorset on which is displayed a verse of the poem, with—presumably to make things nice and clear for contextless pub-goers—the word 'Gentlemen' changed to 'Smugglers', and thought, well, you've missed the point, haven't you.)

tjs_whatnot posting in

snowflake_challenge

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The post-Snowflake Friending Meme has been such a rousing success that we’ve made it a permanent fixture here at the Fandom Snowflake Challenge, so come and make some new friends!

Just copy and paste the template into a comment; include as much or as little info about yourself as you want.

After you've done that, go through and read other people's comments and either strike up a conversation here, or take your mutual interests to each other's journals and new, shiny friends.

[We’re using an updated comment template, which was originally created by

rubytuesday5681 for the

the_neverenders community and adapted for use here.]

Spread the word by sharing the above banner:

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pauraque

In this game, billed as a "dystopian document thriller," you play as a customs official at the border of a fictional country. Each in-game day, you have to process as many entrants as possible, cross-checking their documents for any inconsistencies. Attention to detail is critical, as you're paid for correct checks and fined for violations. But as you continue to play, the number of required documents and the arbitrary rules around them multiply, suggesting the tightening grip of totalitarianism, and making it harder and harder to do well enough to provide for your family.

interface showing overlapping immigration documents, a conversation with a person trying to enter, and silhouettes of people standing in line and armed guards beyond

interface showing overlapping immigration documents, a conversation with a person trying to enter, and silhouettes of people standing in line and armed guards beyond

The story unfolds as a series of ethical quandaries. A woman just wants to visit her son, but she doesn't have the right papers—can you afford to take the financial hit if you look the other way? How would you pay for your son's medicine? An underground revolutionary group wants you to let their agent cross the border, but can you trust them, and what if you get caught? What would your family do then?

( cut for length )

Papers, Please is on Steam and GOG for $9.99 USD.

rocky41_7 posting in

booknook

Title: Affinity
Author: Sarah Waters
Genre: Fiction, romance, queer lit, historical

I finished my second Sarah Waters book this week after devouring most of it on my flight to Texas and she has surely done it again! This book was Affinity, a much less-talked about one of her novels, which concerns Victorian lady Margaret Prior, who in an effort to overcome her grief for her recently deceased father and a mysterious illness that gripped her around that time, decides to become a "Lady Visitor" to a women's prison: someone who comes to talk with them from time-to-time. She almost immediately becomes enraptured with a young medium, Selina Dawes, doing time for murder and assault.

I don't usually like to do extensive summaries in these reviews, but I want to highlight what USA Today called "thinly veiled erotica" in this book. This book is best approached, I think, with a measure of dream logic (or porn logic, if you prefer), where things can be deeply erotic in concept that in real life would certainly not be. Nothing illustrates this better than the opening chapter of the book.

In the opening chapter, Margaret makes her first visit to Millbank prison. Waters does an excellent job of making the prison itself a terror; a winding maze of whitewashed, identical hallways inside a cocoon of pentagonal buildings set unsteadily into the marshy bank of the Thames within which Margaret immediately becomes turned around. She is passed from the gentleman family friend who first suggested she become a Lady Visitor to the matrons of the women's side of the prison, a realm populated entirely by women. As Margaret passes into this self-contained place which feels entirely removed from the rest of the world (the prisoners are allowed to send correspondence four times a year) she becomes keenly aware of the strange blurring and even erasure of the boundaries, rules, and customs of the outside world. Furthermore, Margaret is reassured over and over again that she is, effectively, in a position of power over all these vulnerable women, trapped in their cells and subject to the harsh rules of Millbank. The prison fully intends for Margaret to be someone for them to idolize and look up to, someone whose attention can make them strive to better themselves. Margaret, a repressed Victorian lesbian, is dropped into this strange realm of only women in which she operates above the rules that strictly govern the rest of them.

It is in this state, after this long journey through Millbank, that Margaret first catches sight of Selina Dawes, and is taken from the start.

The book is not heavy on plot, and some reviewers have called it dull, but I was riveted. The plot is the development of Margaret and Selina's relationship, and the progress of Margaret's mindset on the question of whether Selina's powers or real, or if she's just a very talented con artist. These are by nature things which progress gradually. Practically, it's true that not much happens: Margaret visits the prison. Margaret goes to the library. Margaret has a disagreement with her mother. But her mental and emotional changes across the book are significant.

There are also the vibes. Waters does such a good job of capturing a very gloomy, gothic atmosphere where Margaret (and the reader!) are constantly sort of questioning what's real and to what degree and there's a powerful sense of unease that permeates the entire story. It ties in so well with Selina's role as a spiritual medium and the Victorian obsession with such things; it creates a very holistic theme and feel to the book that I just sank into.

On the flip side of the erotic view of the prison we see early in the book, Waters also uses it to terrifying effect to simulate the paranoia of a closeted gay person at this time in England. As Margaret's feelings for Selina develop and become more explicit, she lives in terror that the matrons of the prison will realize that her interest in Selina is not the polite interest of a Lady Visitor in her charges. She is always analyzing what the matrons can see in her interactions with Selina and what might go under the radar; she is constantly wondering if rude comments or looks from this matron or that is simple rudeness, or a veiled accusation of impropriety. The panopticon pulses around Margaret more and more but she can't keep away from Selina even to protect herself from the danger of being caught.

On the whole, I thought this book was fantastic. I enjoyed it even more than Fingersmith. Waters was really cooking here and I've added several more of her books to my TBR, because she obviously knows what she's doing.

osprey_archer

When we first began to discuss Year of Sail,

littlerhymes and I knew we wanted to give the Aubrey-Maturin series a try. But we approached it with some trepidation, as we have each separately attempted Aubrey-Maturin before and bombed out.

I don’t know the details of

littlerhymes’ first attempt, but I first tried it in the early 2000s, when I was a young teenager, after I read

sartorias’s post about the series. I struggled through chapter three, in which Stephen Maturin receives an incredibly technical tour of the ship’s* rigging, and then he and Jack Aubrey discuss the case of a seaman who is supposed to be court-martialed for committing sodomy on a goat (!). The combination defeated me utterly.

*The ship is not in fact a ship but actually a brig, another point that agonized my tiny teenage brain. “Aren’t they all boats?” I wailed, thus sending all seamen within hearing distance into a state of apoplexy.

I am happy to report that this time we made it past chapter three! Made it all the way to the end of the book, and indeed enjoyed it enough to plan to read the next one! I still have no idea what’s going on with the brig’s rigging or why there’s a type of boat called a snow, but as an older and wiser reader I simply drift past these technical details. Possibly over time it will all fall into place. By the end of Year of Sail I might be talking about topgallants with the best of them.

In the meantime, let me introduce our protagonists.

Jack Aubrey, master and commander of the brig Sophie, which is like being a captain but also, technically, not a captain. The anti-Hornblower. Where Hornblower is cool, logical, awkward, and good at math, Jack Aubrey is warm, loud, emotional, terrible at math, and actually also kind of awkward but in a way where he is almost always completely unaware of it. Witness the scene where he complains to Lieutenant Dillon that lots of new sailors of Irish Papists, remembers that Dillon is Irish and realizes with horror that Dillon might take this as an insult to the Irish, so tries to cover himself by doubling down on how much he hates Papists. JACK.

Stephen Maturin, who becomes the Sophie’s surgeon, even though technically he’s a physician which is WAY better than a surgeon. “We call this thing by a thing that is not its name” is a definite theme here. Part Irish, part Catalan, all naturalist. Loves birds, beasts, medicine, music, and Jack. “He’s so stupid (affectionate),” he explains to Lieutenant Dillon, whom he knew previously when they were both members of the United Irishmen, a non-revolutionary party that perhaps became revolutionary? I’m unclear about the details. Anyway, now quite a dangerous association to have in one’s past.

James Dillon, lieutenant of the Sophie. Not over Jack’s attempt to apologize for the Irish thing by emphasizing that it’s PAPISTS he has a problem with. All but accuses Jack of cowardice, which is almost as wrong-headed as accusing Stephen of not loving insects enough. Realizes Jack is not a coward, briefly likes Jack, then hates Jack again for reasons that are in fact unrelated to Jack.

( spoilers )

Queeney. A childhood friend of Jack’s who helps him get his appointment as captain of the Sophie. Not a protagonist, but I had to include her because I was so proud of recognizing her as a real life person: Hester Thrale’s eldest daughter! Evidence: Hester Thrale’s eldest daughter was called Queeney. Hester Thrale was a great friend of Samuel Johnson’s, and Queeney mentions the family friendship with Samuel Johnson. Jack goes on about how Queeney’s mom married a PAPIST, and indeed after Hester Thrale’s first husband died, she married an Italian Catholic music master named Piozzi, to the horror of Queeney and everyone else in England. (They were so horrified that she’s still usually referred to as Hester Thrale even though actually she should probably be called Hester Piozzi, since that’s the name she published under and the husband she actually loved.)

Both Queeney and the subplot about the United Irishmen are good examples of Patrick O’Brian’s total mastery of his period, as of course is literally everything he says about the rigging. Just casually tosses in Hester Thrale Piozzi’s daughter! A bit of tragic Irish backstory just for fun! Sometimes I do yearn for him to slow down just a bit and explain, but of course that would make the story far less immersive. We are perhaps getting a small taste of the landlubber’s experience of finding oneself at sea and having no idea what the heck is going on.

And so we sail onward. For now the plan is to bop back and forth between Hornblower and Aubrey-Maturin, but over time one series may win out. We shall see!

vriddy

The few notes I took during my not-really-pacing-check aren't taking as long as the previous chunky edits to integrate (THANK GOD), which means I'm also speed-running through my Having Feelings About The Manuscript cycle... *sigh* I was taking a few notes for a post as I went (seeing how much better it is than before! happy feelings!) but I've already moved on from happy to things to be sad/disappointed about.

Audience: "Wow, you're about 70% into the manuscript and thinking it's bad? Is this where we're supposed to act surprised???"

Like, it does help to know that I literally go through this cycle every time whether writing or editing, but the feelings are still being felt and kind of suck regardless T_T

Here's what the voice at the back of my mind says:

You're enjoying the story because you can see that it's better "than before" but that doesn't mean it's good. It'll probably still look like baby's crappy first draft to someone coming in fresh. You've also had over 2 years to get used to the worst flaws, the ones that can't be fixed because they are load-bearing in the story.

Anyway!

As always the first couple of days were a bit rough while I adjusted to a new way of doing things. I've landed on: I take the written down squiggled notes I made and add them as comments to my Scrivener file (unless they're super straightforward/require 0 thinking, then I just make the change). Then I go through these comments scene by scene, deleting them as I integrate the feedback. In my BuJo I have many many little boxes for every scene that I can tick when I'm done :D Each chapter is about 4-6 scenes so it helps with giving a sense of progress and make the process feel a bit less overwhelming. I do love my ticky boxes.

Vaguely considering adding chapter titles because a few chapters would really benefit, but some others are more awkward and I don't know that I really want to have to find 10+ more titles /o\

I'm still writing ficlets here and there as a pressure valve from editing :D However, there's a mindset thing I'm noticing that I don't like at all:

Me about to write fic: "This should be FUN! If it's not FUN, then you failed!! :D"
Me about to write origfic: "This should be GOOD! If it's not GOOD, then you failed!! D:"

I don't like that. It should all be fun, like, I should always slip into writing mode with a lighter spirit. I don't want my own worlds to feel like a chore, full of associated pressure. So, something I'll definitely want to address, though I'm not too sure how yet.

ysabetwordsmith posting in

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Hornblower, episode 4

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"Not really pacing check" continuing + mindset

Follow Friday 1-30-26