graculus | Reading

elrhiarhodan

Title: From All The Spaces Between Times
Chapter: Chapter 77 — I Am Invited Back To Life
Author:

elrhiarhodan /

elrhiarhodan
Fandom: Star Wars, Star Wars Prequel Trilogy, Star Wars — Obi Wan Kenobi (TV), Star Wars — Jedi Apprentice Books
Characters Obi-Wan Kenobi, Qui-Gon Jinn, Shmi Skywalker, Anakin Skywalker, The Force as a Sentient Character, Watto, Quinlan Vos, Padmé Amidala, Sabé, Darth Maul, Yoda, Mace Windu, Adi Gallia, Quinlan Vos, Professor Huyang, The Force, Plo Koon, Vokara Che, Siri Tachi, Aayla Secura, Bant Eerin, Bruck Chun, Xanatos du Crion, Sheev Palpatine | Darth Sidious, Hego Damask II | Darth Plagueis, Komari Vosa, Bail Prestor Organa, Breha Organa, Bail Antilles Prestor, Rael Averross, Nim Piana, Ahsoka Tano, Sifo-Dyas, Reva Sevander, Lene Kostana (mentioned), Savage Opress, Pong Krell, The Traitor, Original Characters, Other Characters To Be Added
Pairings: Obi-Wan Kenobi & Shmi Skywalker, Obi-Wan Kenobi & Qui-Gon Jinn, Padmé Amidala/Anakin Skywalker, Obi-Wan/Qui-Gon Jinn (yes, we’re arrived). Bail Prestor Organa/Breha Organa
Word Count: ~ 7700 this chapter
Spoilers: None
Warnings/Enticements/Triggers: None

Summary: Obi-Wan Kenobi has never known it, but he has always been the Force’s Champion, destined to suffer infinite sadness in defense of the Light. On his last turn on the wheel, responsibility for The Chosen One, the false child of prophecy, had been thrust upon him with no warning, and Darkness held the upper hand.

But this time, the Force has marshaled its power and will protect its Champion until the time is right, no matter how long Obi-Wan has to wait and how much he has to suffer.

Or,

Obi-Wan is reborn as a twelve-year old.

He wakes up on a slavers’ ship, with all of his prior life’s memories intact, and he’s bound for Tatooine with a Force-inhibitor collar around his neck, a bomb implanted in his spine, and no way of knowing what state of the Galaxy is in.

Just another day in the life of the Force’s Champion.

Chapter Summary: The Force gives Obi-Wan a choice. It isn’t much of a choice at all.

From All The Spaces Between Times: Chapter 77 — I Am Invited Back To Life (On AO3)

( Meta — I Am Invited Back To Life )

feurioo posting in

tv_talk

Watch on YouTube

Now on Netflix.

Two directionless siblings are blackmailed into the world of organized crime. Starring Dan Levy, Taylor Ortega, Laurie Metcalf.

nomelon

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isis

What I've recently finished reading:

In eyeball, The Everlasting by Alix E. Harrow. Time-loop novel about a medieval historian and the lady knight he's obsessed with, in an alternate world that is not quite our England; one of you called it "sort of Arthuriana" and I guess it is, though that sort of is important. In a way it reminded me of The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August as much of the novel is the characters gradually figuring out that these same things are happening again, and then trying to take advantage of this knowledge to make the next loop better. Unfortunately, in this case the source of the time loop has very clear, firm aims, and does not want to be thwarted by the mere pawns acting out the story that is destined to be enshrined in the country's lore. I liked it a lot, especially as the layers unfolded, though actually I was most interested in the villain of the piece and would like to have had more of that story!

In audio, All These Worlds by Dennis E. Taylor, the third Bobiverse book. I'm really liking these, although they could use some closer editing to avoid repetition of things we already know. It's an interesting inversion of Adrian Tchaikovsky's "How can we see the other as a person?" in that the viewpoint characters, the Bobs, are cloned brain patterns from a now-dead engineer which run on computers installed in spaceships; though within the narrative they are unquestionably people, other humans don't necessarily see them that way. And yet as they are enabling and directing the expansion of humanity into space, they're the segment of humanity making first contact with the other sentient species of the galaxy, and they're the ones who have to handle the related decisions. The structure of these books, with the multiplicity of Bobs and their storylines, means that all the different cases can be handled: the Stone Age civilization, the early-industrial civilization, the possibly advanced civilization that no longer exists, the advanced civilization that presents a terrifying threat. And as some humans fight against the idea that the Bobs are human, some Bobs work to reclaim as much of their humanity as possible. There are some deep philosophical questions one can tease out of these books - but I don't think that's the author's intent, and they are enjoyable reads just as fun science fiction.

What I've recently finished watching:

We enjoyed the Netflix "nature documentary" miniseries The Dinosaurs; quotes are because I think it's basically all CGI. Narrated by Morgan Freeman, it's a dramatic tour of prehistory, from the first proto-dinos to the asteroid that ended it all. It does a good job of telling individual "stories" of the various dinosaurs looking for mates, protecting their young, and doing their best to eat and not be eaten.

sasheneskywalker posting in

fancake

Fandom: Naruto
Pairings/Characters: Senju Tobirama/Uchiha Madara
Rating: Mature
Length: 6,014 words
Creator Links:

Askerian
Theme: forced marriage, arranged marriage, asexual & demisexual characters

Summary: "Oh," Izuna said -- delicately, while studiously reading his folder, "I'm afraid we need someone with a ... strong personality for Naohime."

"Why's that?" Hashirama replied, just as painfully polite.

The daimyo's mediator kept watching them and scratching little pointy words in his notebook.

"Because if your man doesn't prove that he's dangerous and has the personality to use it on her if she pushes him, it's going to turn abusive," Madara drawled.

Hashirama stared at him for a blank second. The daimyo's envoy stopped writing; even his stone-faced Aburame bodyguard arched her eyebrows over her darkened spectacles.

Tobirama stretched out across the table without another word to take back one of the folders Izuna had spread around him.

--

The daimyo is over the whole Uchiha/Senju war. They're going to become one people if they know what's good for them.

Madara hates it enough without having to marry a woman too.

Reccer's Notes: Fun oneshot! Hot, with a really interesting relationship dynamic, and I also love how it touches on gray asexuality <3

Fanwork Links: What Brings Us Together

xkcd_feed

https://xkcd.com/3230/

I think I accidentally installed an Overton window in my bedroom. A few months ago, the sun wasn't in my face in the morning, but now it is.

https://xkcd.com/3230/

sineala

What I Just Finished Reading

KD Casey, Breakout Year: A m/m baseball romance that the author apparently wrote in response to feedback saying her books had too many Jewish characters, so now everyone in this book is Jewish, which is clearly the best way to respond to bigoted criticism. A+. Loved that. I wish I could say the same about the rest of the book, which is a fake-dating second-chance romance where only one of the main characters currently plays baseball, which means there's way less baseball than in her other books, which made it kind of meh for me because the author is really amazing at putting baseball as an integral part of her baseball romances (sometimes it's hard to find sports romances where the author seems like they actually care about the sport) so unfortunately I spent most of the book hoping for more baseball in the baseball book and not getting it.

What I'm Reading Now

Comics Wednesday!

( Iron Man #4 )

What I'm Reading Next

No idea. But, hey, maybe I can read books now? Here's hoping, anyway.

Current Mood: full

beatrice_otter posting in

fancake

Fandom: Bridgerton
Pairings/Characters: Anthony/Kate
Rating: teen
Length: 46k
Creator Links:

ronandhermy
Theme: Arranged marriage, AU, fork in the road, marriage of convenience, happy endings, marriage

Summary: At the age of eighteen Kate Sharma, after sending a desperate letter to her father's homeland, receives aid in the form of a letter from Lady Danbury who has arranged a match for the young woman. With only a letter, a promise and hope, Kate takes her mother and sister and sails to England where she is to marry Lord Anthony Bridgerton.

Reccer's Notes: I really enjoyed this take on how Kate and Anthony might have met when they were younger, and all the changes it would have brought.

Fanwork Links: A Red Thread of Convenience

sineala

Today in Fandom Complaints, I wish to preface my complaint by saying that since, obviously, I am enjoying watching the entire back catalog of Dimension 20 and also Campaign 4 of Critical Role, that clearly I enjoy watching Brennan Lee Mulligan's DMing.

However, I think it's really, deeply weird, that for a guy who clearly defines himself by being a big nerd who knows a lot of stuff about stuff (and, I mean, sure, that's great, I am also a big nerd) -- anyway, that basically everything I have ever seen him say about Latin is totally wrong. If there's Latin, it's wrong. (If there's Greek, it's also often wrong, but there's less Greek, at least. Still bewildered at CR C4 featuring him defining "dithyramb" essentially as "amphitheater" and then telling the audience to "look it up." I... did? It doesn't mean that.)

Yes, I was annoyed while watching D20 Fantasy High that he consistently stresses "Avernus" wrong -- the Latin stress rule is not hard, I promise -- but I told myself that, okay, maybe it's a D&D thing and D&D decided to pronounce the name of their thing differently from the real thing. Sure. Fine. Okay. I was annoyed that D20 Unsleeping City S2 decided to make the cornerstone of its season the quotation "Nulla dies umquam memori vos eximet aevo" because then that meant I had to listen to it be mispronounced and mistranslated and taken out of context a lot -- and because it's one of

lysimache's favorite bits of the Aeneid it's also one of my favorite bits of the Aeneid. But everyone takes this one out of context a lot now (it's part of the 9/11 memorial, for some weird reason) and I guess I can accept that people don't know it's about Being Gay and Doing War Crimes and that's just how it is.

But, okay, so, I am coming up on the end of the season Mice & Murder, which is basically "The Wind in the Willows but what if we just murdered a bunch of animals at Toad Hall and then a fox version of Sherlock Holmes had to solve the mystery" which I assume is not what the book is actually about although I haven't read it. Anyway, here in the penultimate episode, the characters are given a clue to a passcode, and the clue is in Latin, and they are asked if any of their characters know Latin.

The clue is "mors est in gloria." He repeats this, like, two or three times, and he's clearly reading it off something -- it is definitely the thing he intended to say. (The closed captions spell it wrong, but that is absolutely the thing he is saying. He pronounces it very carefully.)

Because I have clearly put several points into Knowing Latin while building my real life human character my first thought is "well, that's a weird clue." Like, what the hell? "Death is in glory?" Okay, sure. Whatever. It didn't occur to me that it could have been meant to say something else. I just thought it was weird on purpose.

Then he tells the player whose character would definitely know Latin (the character is a vicar) what this is supposed to mean, privately, and they excitedly report to the rest of the group that it means "glory in death."

No. No, it does not.

It's four words. Come on. How do you get this wrong? How do you get this exactly backwards? How do you look at the phrase "in gloria" that you have constructed and decide that you nailed it and that that for sure means "in death?"

I don't expect most pop culture to get Latin right, but, like... I expect better of Pop Culture For Total Nerds, I guess. I would really like D20 to do better. Please. For me. Get someone to check your Latin.

(I also did not buy the two Game Changer pins with Latin mottos from the episode where they gave them Latin mottos because both of them had bad Latin to varying degrees. One of them was bad to a degree where it was like "okay, this contains words that obviously are Not Actual Words and therefore makes very little sense, what the fuck" and the other one was only bad to the degree of "if you know what it is trying to say, you can see how they got there, but this really only means that in Medieval and not Classical Latin." Which, eh. I guess clearly it could be worse.)

Current Mood: exhausted

lightreads

Truthwitch and Windwitch

3/5. First two books of five in this upper YA epic fantasy about two chosen sisters separated by circumstance trying to find their way back to each other as war brews and there’s an underlying magical plot happening, and obviously there’s a prophecy.

These are definitely a cut above the norm. They have that frenetic YA pacing and some POV bloat even by book two, neither of which are my favorite. But they also have a density to the worldbuilding and a thoughtfulness about character that you don’t usually get. As well as a commitment to super slow burning the romances. Also, there is a sort of chosen one character (though that gets complicated as we go) and she is refreshingly, wonderfully a hot mess. If there’s an arc towards heroism here, it’s a long, slow complicated one full of lots of impulsivity and bad decisions.

So yeah, I get why this one floats to the top of everyone’s lists of YA fantasy. It does really have something. Two books worth, which is saying a lot for me, since I’m lucky to make it a quarter into anything YA these days. So when I say I’m good after two books, that’s actually a compliment. If you want chewy plotty long YA that prioritizes platonic sister relationships and lets all the character arcs breathe, here you go.

yourlibrarian posting in

tv_talk

Laptop-TV combo with DVDs on top and smartphone on the desk

Vince Gilligan was recently quoted as saying “[Slow storytelling] is a plus in a world of very fast-paced editing and TikTok videos that are only a minute long. If the whole world were to move at that pace...that would be very sad to me. I think there is a certain percentage of the viewership… is ready for a slower pace. It’s fast food versus home cooking.”

Have you found that the pace of TV storytelling has increased? Have you seen patterns in different time periods? And how slow is slow enough for your viewing taste?

delphi

Fandom 50 #8

For 1984, it's a song that was baby's first trans/gnc anthem and remains a classic of the Canadian drag scene.

Let It Go by Luba

Watch on YouTube

xkcd_feed

https://xkcd.com/3229/

Communication is one of the most popular ways to transmit information, ahead of rivals such as

https://xkcd.com/3229/

nomelon

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delphi

( You're about to view content that the journal owner has advised should be viewed with discretion. )

delphi

A bit of a catch-up on two things I watched recently through National Theatre at Home:

Good (directed by Dominic Cooke) is a 2022 production of the 1981 play by Cecil Philip Taylor, about a professor in pre-war Germany whose decisions take him from a life as a progressive academic and family man whose closest friend is Jewish to an active contributor to the Final Solution.

The production stars David Tennant as protagonist John Halder, with Sharon Small and Elliot Levey playing virtually all other characters. I don't know if that's the norm for this play, but having the people around Halder share faces was extremely effective in bringing home the self-centeredness that guides his actions and the way he conceives of people in his life by the role they play in his conception of himself. Tennant, Small, and Levey all turn in fantastic performances, but Levey in particular just knocked it out of the park, especially in a scene near the end that differs slightly from the original play in a way that hit even harder for me. This was really something special.

Watch on YouTube

The Estate (directed by Daniel Raggett) is the debut play from Shaan Sahota, starring Adeel Akhtar as MP Angad Singh—the unexpected frontrunner for party leadership on a platform of change—whose image of himself as the underdog progressive son of a working class father is put to the test when his father dies, leaving a significant estate to him with nothing going to his older sisters on the basis of sex.

There was some unevenness across the performances, a key moment at the climax kind of wobbled for me, and I personally think the political elements would have worked a lot better if this had maybe been set in the 2010s (because specifically name-checking it as 2025 just drove home the ways it doesn't resemble the political climate of the moment), but it was firing on all cylinders when it came to the family drama, the poison of unexamined privilege and unspoken trauma, and the pressure to keep conflicts in marginalized communities out of the public eye even if it means demanding more sacrifices from the more vulnerable members of that community. Adeel Akhtar's performance was incredibly impressive given all of the ugly and painful things that come out of Angad over the course of the play, and Thusitha Jayasundera (playing Angad's eldest sister, Gyan) was an immediate "Oh, I need to see more of what she's been in." Also, the staging and music were great and made me really wish I'd been able to see this one in person.

Watch on YouTube

przed

I'm slowly proceeding with getting all of my vids online. Next up are two vids for a couple of early 2000s TV shows, Life on Mars (the UK one) and Spooks/MI5.

Television, Television

First up is the Life on Mars vid, to an OK Go song. Mostly it's a showcase for Sam & Gene and the scary TV girl.

Real Great Britain

Second one is for Spooks (MI5 in North America), a spy show with a pre-Severance Matthew Macfadyen. The vid focuses on an episode guest starring Alexander Siddig as an asset infiltrating a Muslim extremist group. As with so many Spooks episodes, it does not end well for anyone.

lightreads

Testimony of Mute Things

3/5. I picked this up because A meal of Thorns had a great episode on Paladin of Souls, and I was like ‘oh yeah, damn, that book did slap.’ And then like a fool I picked up this recent novella instead of rereading PoS.

This is fine. It’s a capsule story set much earlier in the timeline, which means a much younger and less seasoned Pen is solving a murder. A perfectly serviceable hour of entertainment, well-observed and characterized, but not much more than that. Kind of made me sad, actually. You could get an interesting podcast episode out of the Penric stories as a whole. There is some theology stuff to chew on there, and some gender stuff and some parenting stuff. But most of the entries on their own? No.

feurioo posting in

tv_talk

Assortment of black and white speech bubbles

Welcome to the weekly roundup post! What are you watching this week? What are you excited about?

beatrice_otter posting in

fancake

Fandom: Star Wars
Pairings/Characters: Jaster Mereel/Jon Antilles
Rating: mature
Length: 126k
Creator Links:

blackkat
Theme: arranged marriage, novel-length, epic works, worldbuilding, psychic powers, never met in canon, marriage of convenience, cultural differences, AU, fork in the road.

Summary: A week after an attack that nearly killed him and his son, Jaster Mereel finds Mostross dead on a battlefield. His killer is a Jedi, grievously wounded, who Jaster takes into his care. By Mandalorian tradition, Jon Antilles owes him a life-debt, and Jaster is cunning enough not to let such a thing slip away.

It's meant to be an entirely political arrangement. It doesn't stay that way for long.

Reccer's Notes: Blackkat is a very prolific author who does an excellent job of taking medium-obscure Star Wars characters and doing really interesting things with them. Jaster Mereel is Jango Fett's adoptive father, and the Mandalore. (In canon, he was killed by Montross.) Jon Antilles is a Jedi who was abused by his Master growing up, but also learned some really obscure and difficult Force tricks from her, and spends his life wandering the galaxy alone as the Force wills. You don't have to know much more than that, as blackkat weaves a really interesting story about them, fleshing them both out deeply from what canon gives us.

Fanwork Links: trade your heart for bones to know