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secretfanspace

A space to chat fandom! Anon!

Got a WIP you're excited about? Want to rave about your fave? Or is your fandom absolutely in love with a character who detracts from every scene they bumble into, and you need somewhere to vent? You're in the right place!

(start a comment thread by replying to this post)

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From: (Anonymous)

Lovecraft's At the Mountains of Madness. It was great! I'd held back on Lovecraft because everybody said his writing was ~dense, but whatevs, I thought it was pretty easy reading. I can't say it did much for me on a cosmic horror level, but luckily I love anything arctic/Antarctic.

From: (Anonymous)

Oh, cool! I've been meaning to read him at some point but had been putting it off for the same reason, so may bump him up the list a bit...

I read a nonfiction book a while ago about a guy who went to the arctic to trace the route of some rubber ducks that had escaped from a shipping crate. The book was a bit all over the place; the writing was rather smug; but it did talk a lot about the realities of the arctic in the chapters where he was there, so you might enjoy that side of it. T'was this thing: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moby-Duck

From: (Anonymous)

Interesting! I was obsessed about Antarctica as a kid for some reason (kids get the weirdest obsessions, LOL) and stories about frozen, isolated places are still like the coziest thing ever to me now. Jon Krakauer's Into Thin Air was so entertaining to me I felt legit bad about it, like...pretty sure I'm not supposed to be enjoying a book about a real life tragedy so much!

From: (Anonymous)

Ayrt

Haha, not read it, but just looked it up, does seem interesting, tbf!

(Trying to think of other frosty books I've read recently; if you like fantasy you might like Spinning Silver, by Naomi Novik (one of the Ao3 cofounders). It's fun and there is a LOT of snow and ice in it. :P Maybe not too isolated, though.)

From: (Anonymous)

Yup, I've read it! Good ol' astolat, long have I read her. xD Her pro writing is pretty good, though she regularly pisses me off with all the het romance. (I don't have anything against het, but when you make your fan name off of slash, I will side-eye you.)

From: (Anonymous)

ayrt

Haha, I didn't know she was selling books until recently! Looking forward to catching up. But then I like het, not slash (though by the same token, nothing against slash, just not my thing. And tbf I end up disliking most het bc I'm picky) I really enjoyed the structure of Spinning Silver; hall-of-mirrors fairytale-inversion... A lot of fun! :D

From: (Anonymous)

Well... based on Uprooted and Spinning Silver, her het romances are really creepy. Truly happy endings for her female protagonists would involve them never having contact with their male "love interests" again.

From: (Anonymous)

AYRT

LOL as someone who's read basically all of her fic, astolat has a specific kink for super-powerful, morally ambiguous men/tops. Loki/Thor, Merlin/Arthur, however you spell the Witcher dudes' names...xD I don't mind it in slash, but in het the gender dynamics are def a bit more squicky.

From: (Anonymous)

DA

This makes this anon want to read it more. :P

From: (Anonymous)

AYRT

I haven't read any of her fic, but I'm not against that relationship dynamic -- I read a ton of historical romance, which loves making the hero a duke or a criminal or both. But I specifically dislike how she writes it. Any controlling behavior or coldness towards the beginning should be balanced out by kindness or warmth towards the end. She really falls down on the job.

From: (Anonymous)

AYRT

Huh, interesting point and I agree. The odd thing is, she usually DOES balance out the controlling factor with warmth by the end of her fic. Maybe she misses that a bit in her books and that's why the romances don't work for me.

From: (Anonymous)

AYRT

Based on the three romances among those two books, she doesn't want the hero to have to "change" at the end, because she thinks that character type is hot. Fair enough. Howl's moving castle is a great prototype for that sort of thing. But if you've described in careful detail the emotional anguish the heroine endured at the beginning, and at the end the heroine has a pragmatic "oh, I understand him" reaction ... I don't believe that the heroine loves him, and I don't believe that he understands or appreciates her, because he wouldn't change to show it, and the heroine's change in affections seems totally unmotivated. Gah.

From: (Anonymous)

SA

I can believe a romance if I think the hero is a wanker. I can't believe a romance if the HEROINE thinks the hero is a wanker and then he doesn't improve.