Three things on a Sunday afternoon

[dolorosa_12]

This is one of those posts about unrelated things, none of which I feel really warrants a post of its own.

I stumbled across this excellent post by Ada Palmer on her blog. On the surface of things, it's about the two recent TV series about the Borgias, but what it's really about is being a professional historian (or someone who has deep historical knowledge about specific time periods), and learning to switch off that part of the brain when engaging with historical fiction. I really love the way Palmer writes — I haven't seen either series, but this doesn't matter, as her writing draws you in, no matter what the subject.

I've hit a bit of a reading slump, and it hasn't helped that the book I was reading, The Library of the Unwritten by AJ Hackwith, sounded cool in terms of concept (a librarian who spends the afterlife preserving and collecting all unwritten books, for the library of Hell), but really didn't work for me in terms of execution. It's the sort of book about books, stories, authors and bookishness that I think I would have adored fifteen years ago, but with which I am swiftly losing patience — the literary equivalent of Oscar-baity films about Hollywood. (Other recent examples of this subgenre of fantasy novel which I also found tooth-gratingly irritating include The Ten Thousand Doors of January by Alix E Harrow, and The Starless Sea by Erin Morgenstern (both of which were, indeed, pushed at me by Goodreads when I marked The Library of the Unwritten as 'read'.) I think it doesn't help that these types of stories have a tendency to be extremely twee — this wasn't as bad in that regard as Harrow's writing, but it was still too treacly for my tastes. I wanted more celestial and infernal politics, and less pontificating about the power of stories.

Talk to me about Yuletide! Who is planning to participate this year? What fandoms are you thinking of nominating? Nominations coordination in the comments is most welcome!

Comments

[dhampyresa]

On a Sunbeam (webcomic)

Tell me more? I am always looking for more webcomics.

[shadaras]

On a Sunbeam is a queer space fantasy webcomic about a girl who joins a spaceship crew doing restoration jobs on weird old ruins. She's doing this because she wants to find the mysterious girl she dated once during high school (I think?), and the story is a lovely combination of found family, queer romance, and beautiful art and worldbuilding.

I love it because it's completely unapologetic about being space fantasy (all the spaceships look like fish! there are weird spirit foxes!), has a lot of unexplored bits of mentioned worldbuilding (sci-fi school sports! VR tabletop games! those foxes!), and the characters are generally all positive and kind to each other.

Tillie Walden says, in the 'About', "My initial goal with Sunbeam was to create a version of outer space that I would want to live in. So of course that includes tons of queer people, no men (did you notice?), trees, old buildings, and endless constellations.", and honestly all of this is very fair and a lot of what I love about it myself. (Walden also makes an effort to have characters who are clearly diverse as far as racial background goes, which also makes me like it.)

[dhampyresa]

That sounds absolutely very rtmi! thank you!

[shadaras]

I hope you enjoy it! :)