[Dec 5] I've loved you like a clinging fist above the clawing sea

December 5th (totally) // Masterlist

From frayadjacent: Talk about some character types and/or story tropes that you love.

It's actually much harder than I thought it would be to generalise character types! But I think some things which generally hold true in the chars I love: competence, including in very specific areas; common sense; nice to people, and especially not making jokes at others' expense (this is why I can't stand Tony DiNozzo and am not very keen on John Sheppard); willing to do difficult stuff. Also I like male characters who have vulnerability to them and are generally more towards the femme-coded end — Spencer Reid, Neal Caffrey. But generally I have to like characters, and I don't enjoy canons where I can't like/root for the leads. Like Breaking Bad or ASoIaF. And I'm more inclined to really really love characters who are women and/or queer.

Story tropes I love very much link up with the character ones. I really enjoy characters bonding under outside adversity, and being braver and stronger and more competent than they thought they could be. Also this leads to hurt/comfort and I assume everyone reading this journal knows about my extremely positive feelings on hurt/comfort. (Although I have some new friends now! Hi new friends, I'm a h/c junkie.) I am sad when my favourites are upset with each other, although I do like grey morality. This was something which Battlestar Galactica did exceptionally well — having characters I loved on opposite sides of an issue and allowing the viewer to sympathise and agree with everyone and understand how they had all arrived at their different and valid points of view when only one could ultimately be acted on. (I think BSG is the closest I will ever get to a show where main characters make very unsympathetic choices sometimes but I still ultimately love them and love the show — I think because it also emphasised all their connections and closeness to each other even while awful stuff was going on.)

If I had to distill down to my favourite trope used in canon, I would have to point at the SGA episode Grace Under Pressure. It was a whole episode of my favourite scientist bb in an increasingly flooded submarine with a concussion trying to save himself while his friends also tried to save him. Many shows can learn from this.

(I'm definitely going to think of a million more tropes I should have added to this post as soon as I upload it, but I'm already SO LATE with it. Massive apologies!)

[Dec 7] from the air that we are breathing to the lights and solar sail

December 7th // Masterlist

From veleda_k: Favourite science fiction books (right now)

Bouncing around happily at the top are Ancillary Justice and Ancillary Sword, by Ann Leckie, and if you haven't read them by now then seriously you should do it now :P The main character is a spaceship! They're about identity and building your own families and colonialism and space politics and race and class issues and loyalty and friendship and they are just so great.

The Vorkosigan series, by Lois McMaster Bujold. Which are about space politics (I really really love SFF politics okay) and disability and friends and family expectations and they are also a sheer delight. Bujold is just so good at characters in all the books she writes — I just love everyone.

The Newsflesh series, by Mira Grant (pseud of Seanan McGuire). These are zombie books, except that the zombie apolcalypse happened twenty years ago and all the main characters have grown up in a world which is adapted to the fact that zombies are just there. These books are about how fear is used as a tool of manipulation (vote for us! ONLY WE can protect you from the zombies! — no seriously there's a whole lot about the US's massive media-stirred Ebola hysteria which is so familiar in here), and also about journalistic integrity and zombie-proofing logistics and a load of really interesting stuff. After the three main books there's a load of e-novellas which Grant has written to keep filling in corners of her world.