beatrice_otter: Me in red--face not shown (Default)
One of the things I find interesting about the Rivers of London fandom is how some people take Peter's initial thoughts and responses to people as The Gospel Truth, and cling to that in a way that ignores when Peter's opinions and relationships change over the course of the series.

Peter Grant is a very perceptive, thoughtful person, and he's really good at picking up the vibes people give off. But nobody is ever 100% accurate in their perceptions of other people, especially when they first meet them, and Aaronovitch does a great job of portraying that. With the recurring characters, we regularly find Peter's relationship to them, and his understanding of them, changing over the course of the series. Sometimes, it turns out that his initial impression was wrong or was missing key information, or was based on things that have changed. Aaronovitch never has Peter think "oh, by the way, I was wrong about X! I used to think this way, but now I've realized it's this other way." Instead, we see that Peter's relationships with the people in question change, and his internal monologue about them changes. But a lot of people don't recognize that. They keep trying to fit things that happen in later books into the initial perception Peter has.

Seawoll is the one I've noticed this with most often. When Peter meets Seawoll, he doesn't know any of the context, but he does know that Seawoll is a) really incredibly competent, b) doesn't like magic, c) doesn't like Nightingale, and d) is really scary, partly because he will ferociously defend his protégés (and Peter isn't one of them). Seawoll and Nightingale have an antagonistic relationship at that point, and Peter is Nightingale's apprentice, so his experiences of Seawoll are filtered through that lens. I've repeatedly run up against people who think that the problem is that Seawoll just generally doesn't like Nightingale, and that that continues throughout the course of the series, and that he's hostile to Peter too.

That's ... not what the series shows. Seawoll is (and remains) a gruff, blunt person, but over the series he comes to like and respect Nightingale, and clearly comes to think of Peter as one of his protégés, whom he cares about like he cares about Stephanopoulos or Guleed.

Seawoll is, above all else, a professional, a good cop who wants to do things right and bring guilty people to justice through the criminal justice system. Seawoll may look, on the surface, like the old sort of copper who was easily corrupted and just wanted to bully criminals, but in fact he cares about justice and getting the right person, not the convenient person. He is, at heart, what we want a modern police officer to be, and the sort of copper that Peter wants to be. Moreover, he wants to train the next generation of coppers up right so that they, too, will be trustworthy custodians of the public good, and will care more about achieving justice than getting the easy (but wrong) arrest.

Seawoll doesn't like Nightingale at the beginning of the series because very few of those things are true of Nightingale. Nightingale is very competent at magic, but not at any of the investigative or bureaucratic things that make up the rest of the Metropolitan Police or the rest of the criminal justice system. There is little to no accountability, for Nightingale; he can break any rule or law he wants, and if he has a good enough excuse and there's enough magic involved, the Commissioner and the other powers will simply shrug and look the other way. When there is magic involved in a crime, there is no justice system, there's just The Nightingale's judgment. He is judge, jury, and executioner. The UK eliminated the death penalty in 1969, but Nightingale still executes people when he thinks it right ... and when the series starts, he doesn't have any provisions for any other response to a serious crime. There are no checks and balances before Peter, no second opinions, no other options. By Seawoll's standards, that's murder, not justice. And if Nightingale gets things wrong, well, that sucks for his victims. One of the many reasons to eliminate the death penalty is that if you execute someone and then realize you were wrong, there's nothing to be done. And Nightingale, like all people, is sometimes wrong. Consider the jazz vampires in Moon Over Soho. There was plenty of evidence that they were nothing like what Nightingale thought they were, and yet Nightingale's response was to conclude that they still had done things worthy of death and not consider any other options.

The other thing about Nightingale-as-a-police-officer is that policing requires you to know the community you police. Nightingale is utterly ignorant of about 99% of the demi-monde, and it regularly bites the Folly in the ass. Quiet People? Jazz vampires? Multiple other branches of Newtonian practitioners? Nightingale spent decades sitting in the Folly and waiting for other people to tell him there was a problem, and missed a hell of a lot. Which makes for compelling stories, from Peter's perspective, as he's discovering all sorts of interesting things. But also, a lot of the things Peter discovers are things Nightingale should already know if he'd been doing a decent job of policing the demi-monde all those years. Nightingale is very good at magic ... and very bad at being an officer of the law.

We see Nightingale through Peter's eyes, and Peter has a fair amount of hero-worship for him, especially at the beginning. But Seawoll has very good reasons to dislike Nightingale and be suspicious of him. It's not a clash of personalities, it's not irrational, their conflict at the start of the series flows directly from the attitudes and actions of the two men as we see them.

But we also see how things develop through the books. Over the series, Nightingale changes. He regularly bows to Peter's ethics and procedures. Nightingale allows Peter to get the Folly looped back into the rest of the Met, with oversight similar to other departments. Nightingale, at Peter's prodding, comes up with things to do with magical criminals besides "kill the really bad ones and then fudge the reports." Instead of Peter being trained into Nightingale's high-handed belief that he is above the law, Nightingale gets brought into line with the best of modern criminal justice ideals (or at least, the best ones that you can have inside a carceral system--remember that RoL is copaganda). As Nightingale's attitudes and actions change, so does Seawoll's opinion of him. By the time of Amongst Our Weapons, Seawoll and Nightingale respect each other and work well together with minimal friction. They're not bosom buddies, but there's no hostility on either side. Seawoll is gruff and blunt, but no more so than he is with people he genuinely likes. Aaronovitch never tells us explicitly their relationship has changed, but he shows us that it is different.

As for Seawoll and Peter, Peter started out a bit afraid of Seawoll because Seawoll is powerful and doesn't like Nightingale (Peter's mentor) and is therefore suspicious of Peter. But by Amongst Our Weapons, not only is Peter not afraid of Seawoll, but we see Seawoll treating Peter with the same sort of care and paternal protectiveness that he gives to, say, Guleed. Again, Aaronovitch never tells us explicitly their relationship has changed, but he shows us that it is different.

In both cases, there are people in fandom who have not noticed the changes. They assume that the hostility and fear of the first couple of books is still the dominant paradigm for the Seawoll & Nightingale and Seawoll & Peter relationships in the later books, and read every interaction through that lens.
beatrice_otter: All true wealth is biological (Wealth)
I had a lovely time with my Heart Attack fic this year. The challenge was that my recip really wanted a Nightingale fic, with Nightingale and Peter together as a secondary option, whereas for me, Peter is what I really wanted to write, with Peter and Nightingale a secondary option. Which meant I had to make sure both men really had a chance to shine, which meant coming up with a case that a) had connections both in the 1940s with Nightingale working on it, and b) in the current day, with Peter working on it ... but without Nightingale able to just say "well, this is what happened in the 1940s and it's obviously connected."

Obvious answer: put Nightingale in a coma in the present day, caused by the case in the 1940s. Once I had that bit, coming up with the case was fun.

The other thing they suggested was a crossover with a period-appropriate canon. Well! My favorite period-appropriate canon for the 1940s is currently the Lord Peter Wimsey mysteries, so obviously Lord Peter had to show up. Problem was, I realized halfway in that it meant I would need to pull in appropriate quotes ... and I do not have anywhere near the encyclopedic knowledge of classic English literature that would require, and also, with only two weeks to write, not much time to troll through poetry websites looking for the right options. But I think it worked out okay even so.

Title:
Wachet Auf
Author: Beatrice_Otter
Fandom: Rivers of London
Characters: Thomas Nightingale, Peter Grant
Written For: Quasar in Heart Attack Exchange 2024

Author's note: Wachet auf, ruft uns die Stimme is a 16th Century German hymn, later turned into a chorale cantata by Bach. It can be literally translated "Awake, the voice is calling us," but the cantata is usually called "Sleepers Awake" in English, and the most common English translation of the hymn in current use has the first line as "Wake, Awake, for Night Is Flying"

Thank you to walldecor for britpicking and Lavender Threads for betaing

Lord Peter quotes "The Thorn" by William Wordsworth and "The Prisoner" by Emily Brontë

The hospital near Limburg where the German practitioner works is, of course, the Hadamar Clinic (aka "Hadamar Killing Center"), main site of the Nazi eugenics program Aktion T4.

At AO3. At Squidgeworld. Rebloggable on tumblr. Pillowfort.

2016.


I learned something was wrong when I got a call from the Folly, and there was silence on the other end.

"I'll be there quick as I can," I told the expectant stillness, and swigged the rest of my coffee in one gulp.

Read more... )
beatrice_otter: Me in red--face not shown (Default)
I love [community profile] highadrenalineexchange! The trick is to only offer to write stuff you're sure you could come up with a 10k-worthy story for. This year, as always, a lot of great fic got written. Here are my faves!

I received a great Reva-and-Ahsoka fic that I can't recommend highly enough.

Dandelion Seeds (15364 words) by Anonymous
Fandom: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars: Obi-Wan Kenobi (TV), Star Wars: Rebels
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Reva Sevander & Ahsoka Tano
Characters: Reva Sevander | Third Sister, Ahsoka Tano
Additional Tags: Set Between Kenobi and Rebels, Canon-Typical Violence, Force Philosophy (Star Wars), Pre-Relationship, Planet Dantooine (Star Wars), Late Night Conversations, Crimson Dawn Crime Syndicate (Star Wars), Imperial Inquisitors (Star Wars), Jedi Philosophy (Star Wars), Lightsaber Construction (Star Wars), Jedi Holocrons (Star Wars)
Summary:

A Mirialian collector has a Jedi Holocron stored safely in her vault, and rumours of its existence have reached multiple organizations. Crimson Dawn orders Reva to retrieve this holocron through any means necessary, while the Rebellion asks Ahsoka to acquire it through the most legal means possible.

When Reva and Ahsoka encounter each other at the vault door, they choose not to bring the holocron to either organization, but instead to listen to the Force and work together to learn what the holocron can teach them—and discover what they can learn from each other.


Other fics I enjoyed:

DCEU, Sherlock Holmes, Bridgerton, Rivers of London, Kingsman, Poirot, A League of Their Own )
beatrice_otter: I always have been what I chose (Choice)
Title: Five Times Abigail Met People From the Demi-Monde, and One Time She Didn't
Author: Beatrice_Otter
Fandom: Rivers of London
Characters: Abigail Kamara, Nicky, Brent
Wordcount: 9,157 words
Rating: General audiences
Written For: opalmatrix in Worldbuilding 2023

AN: This story takes place in spring of 2014, a bit under a year after "What Abigail Did That Summer" and a few months before "The Furthest Station." Abigail is 14, Nicky and Brent are about 8.

The Golden Chip of Hanwell does indeed exist, but the Fisher family are fictional.

Birdylion was a great help with canon details

Lavender_threads went above and beyond the call of duty as a beta and helped me brainstorm things that really brought it all together. Thank you both.

At AO3. On tumblr. On Pillowfort.


Abigail stared at Peter. "So, what you're saying is, you want me to babysit your girlfriend's baby sisters."

It wasn't an offer she got often. She wasn't exactly the girl the mums round the estate thought of when they were trying to find someone to watch their kids. At least, not the ones who only knew her by reputation. And the ones who knew her family, who knew how much help she was with Paul, they didn't want to bother her. Or hire her on a night her mum might need her, which was just about any night.

"Not babysitting," Peter protested. "Bev'll be around, and available if anything happens."

"Then what does she need me for?" Abigail asked.

Peter sighed. "It's hard socializing goddesses, okay. They can glamour almost anyone they want outside their family. And if they're ever going to have friends—instead of minions—they need to know how to get along with ordinary people without putting the whammy on them."

Read more... )
beatrice_otter: Poirot: Little Grey Cells (Little Grey Cells)
Title: Goodfellow
Author: Beatrice Otter
Fandom: Rivers of London
Characters: Peter Grant & Thomas Nightingale
Additional tags: casefic, organized crime
Written for: [archiveofourown.org profile] Galadriel1010  in Five Figure Fanwork Exchange 2022 ([community profile] fffx )
Betaed by: mysteryfail
Length: 13,211 words

Summary: There had been thefts at three successive Goblin Markets, and one incident of serious vandalism, before Robin Goodfellow had deigned to call in the munificent arm of the law.

Authors Note: Yes, the title of the fic is a play on Goodfellas. No, this story has nothing to do with that movie, but I couldn't resist.

On AO3. On tumblr. On Pillowfort.


There had been thefts at three successive Goblin Markets, and one incident of serious vandalism, before Robin Goodfellow had deigned to call in the munificent arm of the law—in this case, the Special Assessment Unit, colloquially known as the Folly, and disparagingly called the Isaacs by the demi-monde. Which just goes to show that after over a century of alternating condescension, neglect, and active persecution, it takes more than a few years of community-focused policing to change community perception. Even when that policing is being done by a handsome and charismatic DC such as myself.

When Goodfellow had called us in, I took Constable Danni Wickford with me. She'd been a great help to Nightingale and Sahra when I'd been out on paternity leave but was quite happy to be demoted back to Falcon Four.

Read more... )
beatrice_otter: OMGWTFBBQ!  Hector dies in book 22!  Spoilers! (Spoilers)
So, I have just finished my second read of AOW, and I really enjoyed it. If you're looking for "end of the world, more drama than the previous book, lots of multi-book-spanning-plot-threads extravaganza!" you will be disappointed. If you want "a good casefic with interesting worldbuilding details and lots of great character moments," you'll be delighted. I always love seeing a wider world beyond the formal bounds of English Newtonian practice, and we get that in spades in this one!

Spoilers ahoy!
All the things I loved about the book )

In conclusion, the book was a lot of fun and well worth reading twice in three weeks.

beatrice_otter: Me in red--face not shown (Default)
The newest Rivers of London book came out this week, and as soon as I finished it, I was eager to go online and discuss it with people who love Rivers of London. The discord and dreamwidth communities being fairly quiet, I went on tumblr. And was surprised by what I found.

The strongest and most common reaction so far seems to be distress about Nightingale Cut for spoilers )
And, you know, I love Nightingale too! Nightingale is a great character. He's powerful, he's got an air of mystery about him, he's charming and posh, he's got a tragic backstory, I love him too. But Peter is great, too. Peter is funny and determined and caring and deeply principled and is aware of the evil and injustice in the world and very realistic about it, but never allows that to drag him down or let the ends justify the means.
beatrice_otter: When you choose an action, you choose the consequences of that action. (Action and Consequences)
Title: The Heart's Desire
Author: [personal profile] beatrice_otter 
Fandom: Rivers of London
Characters: Abigail Kamara, Thomas Nightingale
Rating: General audiences
Length: 11k words
Written For: [personal profile] pendrecarc in the Five Figure Fanwork Exchange ([community profile] fffx )
Summary: Abigail has earned her right to become a practitioner of magic. Now, the training begins.

At AO3. On tumblr. On Pillowfort.



Peter Grant, apprentice member of the Society of the Wise, Constable of the Metropolitan Police, had the unfortunate propensity to act (and speak) before thinking. In a crisis, this quickness was a decided virtue. If only he could learn to consider his actions more carefully in ordinary moments, Thomas reflected, he would be an exemplary wizard.

But such meticulousness was (for the moment) beyond him. Fortunately for all concerned, Peter had a certain amount of serendipitous luck to balance out the possible consequences of his thoughtlessness, and none of his rash actions (or words) had resulted in truly dire consequences so far. Indeed, several of them had turned out remarkably well, all things considered. Such was the case with his promise, two years earlier, that he would begin teaching magic to his cousin Abigail Kamara, should she pass her Latin A-levels.

The young Miss Kamara was, if anything, even more promising than her cousin. Quite intelligent, staunchly firm in her ethical thought (albeit occasionally in unorthodox ways), ferociously dedicated to pursuing her goals and—unlike Peter—not prone to distractions or leaping before she looked. All in all, Thomas Nightingale, Master of the Society of the Wise, Detective Chief Inspector of the Metropolitan Police, was quite looking forward to teaching her.
That is, should her parents give consent. Which Peter had not considered when he so rashly promised that she should learn magic upon proving her proficiency in Latin. )


At AO3. On tumblr. On Pillowfort.
beatrice_otter: General Okoye in her red uniform (Okoye)
[community profile] crossworks has been revealed! I received a lovely fic, a Sorcery & Cecelia/Young Wizards fic by sinkauli, The Unexpected Guest. The character voices are excellent, if you enjoy either fandom go check it out, you shouldn't need knowledge of both fandoms to get the story.

Here's what I wrote:

Title: The Princess and the Folly
Fandom: Rivers of London/Marvel Cinematic Universe
Characters: Peter Grant, Shuri
Written for: Vaznetti in Crossworks 2021
Betaed by: Gemini Demimonde
Length: 5271 words
Rating: General Audiences
Summary: Princess Shuri wants to see if there are any differences between Wakandan magic and Newtonian. The Folly is happy to oblige her.

On AO3. On Tumblr. On Pillowfort.


The call came in on the Folly's landline, not my mobile. Which was fortunate since my mobile was turned off, as it often was in the Folly, even if I wasn't planning on doing magic. I was up a ladder in the far corner of the reference library, and I had to hustle to get to a phone before whoever it was gave up. (Molly was taking the afternoon off to do … something with Foxglove.) I grabbed the bakelite handset and held it up to my ear. "Hello, Special Assessment Unit, Peter Grant speaking."

"This is the Wakandan Embassy," said a deep voice in a melodious accent I had spent a lot of time in the last year listening to in the news and on youtube. "Please hold for Princess Shuri."

I froze. It had to be a practical joke, right? )
beatrice_otter: OMGWTFBBQ!  Hector dies in book 22!  Spoilers! (Spoilers)
I use the same name everywhere so I am [personal profile] beatrice_otter on AO3.

Lovely author, here is my theory about letters: how much detail people want in a letter is HIGHLY variable. Some people (such as myself) prefer if their recip gives LOTS of guidance on their wishes. Some prefer as little as possible so they can be free as a bird. Most are somewhere in between. So! Here's everything including the kitchen sink if you find it helpful, but feel free to ignore it if it is not helpful. I would rather get a story you were happy with than "well, she said she liked x, so I guess I have to do x even though I don't like x and/or am just not inspired that way." I'm fairly easy to please; I've been doing ficathons for over a decade and am very rarely disappointed with my gifts.

The most important thing for me in a fic is that the characters are well-written and recognizably themselves. Even when I don't like a character, I don't go in for character-bashing. If nothing else, if the rest of this letter is too much or my kinks just don't fit yours, just concentrate on writing a story with everyone in character and good spelling and grammar and I will almost certainly love what you come up with.

I have an embarrassment squick, which makes humor kind of hit-or-miss sometimes. The kind of humor where someone does something embarrassing and the audience is laughing at them makes me uncomfortable. On the other hand, the kind of humor where the audience is laughing with the characters I really enjoy.

Please no incest or darkfic. I define "darkfic" as stuff where there's a lot of suffering and no hope even at the end and all the characters are terrible. Angst with a happy ending is fine, I enjoy it, but there's gotta be a payoff. Even an ambiguous ending is fine! But there has to be some note of grace or redemption or hope somewhere, it can't just be "people are awful and the world sucks, the end."

General likes and dislikes )

Fandom Specific Likes and Prompts


Star Wars Prequel Trilogy )

Star Wars Original Trilogy )

Star Trek Reboot )

Star Trek: The Next Generation )

Star Trek Voyager )

Star Trek The Original Series )

Sense8 )

Rivers of London )
beatrice_otter: WWII soldier holding a mug with the caption "How about a nice cup of RESEARCH?" (Research)
Lovely author, here is my theory about letters: how much detail people want in a letter is HIGHLY variable. Some people (such as myself) prefer if their recip gives LOTS of guidance on their wishes. Some prefer as little as possible so they can be free as a bird. Most are somewhere in between. So! Here's everything including the kitchen sink if you find it helpful, but feel free to ignore it if it is not helpful. I would rather get a story you were happy with than "well, she said she liked x, so I guess I have to do x even though I don't like x and/or am just not inspired that way."

I'm fairly easy to please; I've been doing ficathons for over a decade and am very rarely disappointed with my gifts. I write long and detailed Dear Author letters because I find such things helpful when I'm writing for other people; if you are like me, here you go! If your style is different and a detailed letter makes you feel hemmed-in, feel free to do what works for you.

The most important thing for me in a fic is that the characters are well-written and recognizably themselves. Even when I don't like a character, I don't go in for character-bashing. If nothing else, if the rest of this letter is too much or my kinks just don't fit yours, just concentrate on writing a story with everyone in character and good spelling and grammar and I will almost certainly love what you come up with.

One thing: I do have an embarrassment squick, which makes humor kind of hit-or-miss sometimes. The kind of humor where someone does something embarrassing and the audience is laughing at them makes me uncomfortable. On the other hand, the kind of humor where the audience is laughing with the characters I really enjoy.

Please no incest.

Other likes and dislikes )


Fandoms:

The Goblin Emperor - Katherine Addison )

Imperial Radch Series )

Lord of the Rings )

Rivers of London )

Star Trek: TOS )

Babylon 5 )

Doctor Who )

TNG )

Deep Space 9 )

Star Wars: Movies & Animated )
beatrice_otter: Drawing of a hippo in a red leotard and tutu, holding a rose in its teeth.  At the top it says "Yuletide! Featuring Beatrice_Otter as Rose Hippo" (Yuletide)
Happy Yuletide, everyone!

First, I got a delightful little fic written for me:
promenade.  My Fair Lady, Eliza Doolittle and Mrs. Higgins.  Wonderful story.  Mrs. Higgins was superb, and Eliza's reactions to the English upper class abroad are perfect.

Here are some other fics I have enjoyed:

4'33"--John Cage
The Sound Of A Yuletide Fic Not Being Written. There sure are a lot of cars going by.  Great meta look at writing, and 4'33"

The Addams Family (movies)
An Addams Family Contract (Written in Secret, Signed in Blood).  “I’m an Addams,” Debbie protests indignantly. Immediately after making this statement, Debbie realized that it was true.  (Or, Wednesday wants to exorcise Debbie. Debbie wants to kill Wednesday. A negotiation begins.)  This is AMAZING and hysterically funny, and the thought of Debbie and Wednesday working together is TERRIFYING.

Don't I Deserve Love (and Jewelry).  The plan to win Wednesday’s friendship did not start well. She shared her admiration for the girl’s blowtorch, then hinted about her own childhood affinity for matchsticks and fire accelerants, but Wednesday was unimpressed.  Do better,” she said before lowering her hockey mask and stalking after Pubert.

Honeymoon in Transylvania.  Ahahahaha, this is wonderful.  Gomez and Morticia vs. the TSA!

Alien Series
A Room with a Crappy View. 17k of Ripley and Hicks awesomeness post-Aliens. This is an absolutely AMAZEBALLS fic, and I LOVE it. I love that they deal with their trauma. I love how they wrote the Colonel, doing the best she could on the evidence she had and how frustrating that was and yet, when you look at it from her POV, what better way could she have handled it? The action is great, the relationships between Ripley and Hicks and Bishop were awesome, this is an absolute treat.

All About Eve
Getting Back to Being a Woman.  Karen knew enough not to go to New Haven.  Never let it be said that Margo Channing doesn't know how to take care of her friends.  I love this. I could just hear Bette Davis and the others saying their lines, and the ending is perfect--I think Karen and Lloyd will be able to have a much better relationship after this, if he's willing to accept and live into the changed relationship.

Till I have the possession of everything she touches.  Addison DeWitt/Eve Harrington and their daughter.  VERY well done Addison perspective.

Aubrey-Maturin series.
Vent de Boulet.  Jack & Aubrey, Teen.  The aftermath of Stephen's escape from the French interrogators at Port Mahon.  Wonderful portrayal of the relationship between them and natural consequences of their trauma-filled lives.

Babette's Feast
Body and Soul.  After the French dinner, a new normal established itself among the faithful.

Ballet Shoes
A Long Way from the Cromwell Road.  Petrova visits Pauline in Hollywood after the war ends.

Bletchley Circle
Logical Recovery.  After the showdown with Marta Magro at the warehouses, Jean, Millie, and Lucy embark for Glasgow to find Eliška. Archival research, an extended stay with Jean's cousin, undercover rescue missions, and much emotional processing of past events ensue.

Cabaret
Infinite Variety.  London, 1950. Clifford has coming looking for Sally. Instead he finds a girl who may or may not be her – or their – daughter, the reclusive former Master of Ceremonies, and an annoying parrot. He becomes part of their strange household, full of love and bickering; sorrow, pain and music. No-one will tell him where Sally is, or even whether she’s alive. No-one will tell him anything. Except the parrot, who tells him that life is a Cabaret.  Oh, wow, this is painful but SO GOOD and the ending is perfect.

DC
Teen Titans
From Cold to Fire.  "Do you want to go out with me?" "What?"

Young Justice
Getting Stupid in your area.  Hang-time includes considerations of evil clones and taking down a newly raised lich lord.  Love the banter.

Die Hard
Your Answers Please.  “Come on, kid,” McClane said gruffly. “This place is fucking depressing. You’re coming to stay with me.”

Enchanted Forrest Chronicles
Best Served Cold.  In which Antorell causes trouble in the Enchanted Forest, and Cimorene and Alianora make an amphibious new friend.  Hilarious, I love Ribbita!

Ghostbusters
Better Than Roses. Janine dates. It's...something.

The Goblin Emperor
Imperial (non) Immunity.  Csevet doesn't get sick. Maia's not so confident.

Light a Mourner's Candle.  The Archprelate finds a chaplain for Maia.

Against a Sure Winter.  When the opportunity arose to become one of the four ceremonial bodyguards for the new Emperor, Cala Athmaza volunteered. He didn't fully realize what he was letting himself in for, but he knew in his heart he had made the right choice.

Sugar Lumps.  Maia spends some time with his horse.

Greek Mythology
beauty, her artificers.  Shortly after their wedding, Aphrodite sustains a small wound.  Really great Aphrodite/Hephaestus dynamic.

a thing of beauty, golden.  Olympus’ one-century wonder appears in Hephaestus’ workshop between one strike on his anvil and the next..  Another really great Aphrodite/Hephaestus fic.

Hancock
yeah I know the shortcut, rather take the long way. Ray daydreams a New York that looks a lot like something out of an old Daredevil comic - towers looming over the city like cragged, jaded sentries, impartial to the neon kaleidoscope of chaos churning along below them. Hancock roosts on the tallest, craggiest one of course, brooding as he watches the slow pulsing heartbeat of the city below him. Ready to dive off his perch and into action with the first cry of distress, and there’s probably lots of those in a city like New York. Lots of zooming around, saving people, saving the world. Hopefully with slightly less metaphorical middle fingers to the world. And less alcohol. Ray’s not an idiot though, and one sparkly life-changing month doesn’t just fix people.

History RPF
15th Century.
these late eclipses.  Anne Neville, like others of her line, is born with a gift.  I LOVE the way magic is brought into this, it melds so well with the history.

19th Century/German folklore
The Bargain.  Bettina finds a secret door at her grandmother's house, one that leads to something very unexpected. The things she learns as a result change her life in small but important ways.

Imperial Radch
Still Left in Want of Mercy.  The Republic of Two Systems is about a month old. Seivarden is having yet another crisis - can Mercy of Kalr get her through it? Maybe, with the crew's and Fleet Captain's help.  Interesting Ship perspective.

high above the trees.  An unexpected embassy. Really excellent, probably the best way I've ever seen "Awn Lives" done.

The Incredibles
Life of a Superhero, Junior Grade.  Fortunately, this was Tuesday night training, not a real villain-chasing experience.

Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell
The Magicians of Starecross Hall.  Being a series of interludes in the life of John Segundus, newly practical magician, in the year following the disappearances of Messrs. Strange and Norrell. Including: a new school for young magicians, explorations of the King’s Roads, Lady Pole’s alarming needle-work, unanticipated trips to Faerie, and John Childermass.  I love this story!  How the school got started, and 'Miss Wintertowne' (although I do think she would style herself 'Mrs' Wintertowne, because she is married and up through the 18th Century 'Mistress/Mrs' vs. 'Miss' had as much to do with age and experience and such as it did with marital status) and how she uses embroidery as a kind of art therapy.  I love the slow burn, and I love the stuff about exploring the King's Roads and Faerie.  It is excellent and awesome.

Lilo & Stitch
The Dance.  Lilo peeked out from behind the curtains and looked over the stage.

A Little Princess
Discipulae.  "I just realized," Sara said. "Becky, I could have a tutor now. I could hire someone to teach me anything I wanted. All the things that are hard to learn alone from books — Greek and Latin, Sanskrit, algebra, anything I wanted. What would you learn, Becky, if you could?"  Really great look at what their lives could be like post-canon.

Marvel
Captain Marvel
Take my hand (and we'll march to the front lines). There's a dream Vers has sometimes.

this youthful heart can love you. Carol waited a week before she left with the Skrulls.

Space Cases.  Monica tried many other times to win her mother over to a pet. A rabbit, a pony, a parakeet. This is not any of those stories. This is the story of Monica Rambeau and a Flerken named Goose.  Or: Why Nick Fury is never allowed to babysit ever again.

The Tesseract's WifeA straight line is not the shortest distance between two points: non-linear snapshots of a love story.

Fly Me To The Moon.  "It's a vacation. Like spring break," Carol says. Monica's eyes widen. "Really? So we can hang out? What are we going to do?" "Well," Carol says, leaning back in her chair and flashing that old, familiar smirk. "I thought we could go to the moon."

Into the Spiderverse
i got you.  Miles thinks he's hiding the truth about Spider-Man, but one unfortunate night, it comes to light.

one last leap.  Telling his parents he's Spider-Man is a leap of faith Miles can't bring himself to take.

My Life to Liv.  Liv survived her encounters with her interdimensional Spider-nemeses, of course. So what's next for her?

Interdimensional Phone Pals.  Gwen Stacy is many things, but open to friendships isn’t really one of them.  Or,  Five rules Gwen makes for herself, and how Peter B. makes her question them.

Into the Spiderverse/Murder, She Wrote
Spider, She Wrote.  Miles and May visit her old friend Jessica in Cabot Cove.

Mulan (1998)
the proper order of things. Great outsider perspective.

The Mummy
After the Mummy.  London was becoming Rick's least favourite place, and not just because of all the rain. Loving Evy was one thing: figuring out whether she loved him back after the Egyptian heat faded away was something else. Where's a good rising of the undead when you need one? Don't worry, Jonathan found one.  Lovely fun adventure.

Course Correction.  Jonathan really is serious about staying away from tombs and mummies this time (except trouble always seems to find him). Good thing Ardeth is there to help him stay on-track.

Travelers by Night.  Very quickly, Jonathan weighed the odds. On one hand, potential death, whether by armed bandits, a mummy’s curse, or people who looked like bandits and who were very angry about someone unleashing a mummy’s curse. On the other hand, potential riches, home ground, and topics of conversation other than what happened at school fifteen years ago and who got it in the neck where.

Murderbot
How I Spent My Vacation Between Survey Missions. What happens when ART reunites with Murderbot during another break between research survey missions? Media gets viewed, of course, but there might also be some bad news for more shady corporations.

Situation NormalHi, I said, along with amusement sigil 159 = wave. It seemed a little inadequate, but what do you say to the ship that radically altered your appearance, helped you figure out your past, and also threatened you with terrifying weapons? Amusement sigils seemed like my best bet.

My Fair Lady
Here We Are Together.  Eliza and Freddy are working together. Henry isn't happy, and makes sure everyone knows it.

One Day at a Time
what they say about the young. Without the kids around, it feels like everything has changed, except for all the other things about Penelope's life that could change, too.

a return to normal.  Penelope and Schneider's Friday night plans fall through, so they have a movie night instead.  Very sweet.

Persuasion.
The Pen in Their Hands. Five letters that were written, but were never sent, aboard H.M.S. Laconia. (And one that was.)

Smooth Water. “If I wanted easy comfort, I should not have become a captain’s wife.” Wonderful Austen voice.

A Step Not Taken.  What if that day at Lyme had gone just a little differently?

Peter Wimsey
The Duke's Parlormaid.  A story in correspondence, with detective interruptions.  Really captured the feel of the books and all the character voices.

Poirot
The Mice Will Play.  When Poirot returns unexpectedly from a case, he finds out something new about Miss Lemon.

RED
The One Bathtub.  “I did have dinner plans,” Han said, grudgingly, and so Victoria kicked the door in and graciously allowed Han to be the first into the bathroom. She understood the pain of missed reservations.

Rivers of London
Through All the Years, This Is My Home.  At night, when the rest of the staff and most, if not all, of the masters were asleep, Molly would wander the moonlit halls and remember what fresh air felt like on her skin. Of Molly, of Thomas, and of the years they've spent together - and of the Folly, strong and everlasting.  Lovely Molly perspective.

Peelian Principles.  "You're very calm about this," Seawoll said on the fifth day.  Nightingale's perspective on Peter's time as a hostage, and REALLY AWESOME.

UXB.  When one the deadliest weapons of the Blitz threatens London once again, Peter finds himself on the front line.  Wonderful casefic, just perfect.

Saved!
Conversation Starters. Cassandra and Roland have five important conversations.

Sense and Sensibility
Realization and Renewal.  As Marianne recovers, Elinor and Colonel Brandon find themselves drawn to one another.

Sense8
Blue and Gold.  Wolfgang comes home with Kala and Rajan after Paris. Finding a place with them.

Star Trek: Rihannsu
Day Comes Up New.  "I have done something spectacularly stupid," Arrhae said.  This is a wonderful extension and meditation on what might happen past canon.  Ever since I first read The Romulan Way as a teen, I've wondered what happened to Arrhae in the end, and the subsequent books were great but didn't answer the ultimate question.  This doesn't either, but it suggests something further, which I appreciate.

Terminator Movies
A Fistful of Sarahs.  The sky cracks open, and Sarah watches herself tumble out of a rift in the space time continuum. She’s older than she is now, and she’s got a lot more scars, and she’s carrying the biggest and weirdest looking gun Sarah’s ever seen.

with all the hope in my heart (and doubt in my mind). Sarah Connor has done this before. Dani has not. Post-Terminator: Dark Fate.

Fate, the Future, and Other Sons of Bitches.  Sarah and Dani hit the road.

Winnie the Pooh
In Which Pooh Hunts for the Meaning of Christmas.  Pooh finds a mysterious envelope pinned to the door of his house.

In Which Eeyore Loses His Tail Again, Or At Least Plans To.  It's a bright, sunny day, and Eeyore has a plan to make it tolerable. Now if only his friends will cooperate.
beatrice_otter: Drawing of a hippo in a red leotard and tutu, holding a rose in its teeth.  At the top it says "Yuletide! Featuring Beatrice_Otter as Rose Hippo" (Yuletide)
Lovely author, here is my theory about letters: how much detail people want in a letter is HIGHLY variable. Some people (such as myself) prefer if their recip gives LOTS of guidance on their wishes. Some prefer as little as possible so they can be free as a bird. Most are somewhere in between. So! Here's everything including the kitchen sink if you find it helpful, but feel free to ignore it if it is not helpful. I would rather get a story you were happy with than "well, she said she liked x, so I guess I have to do x even though I don't like x and/or am just not inspired that way."

I'm fairly easy to please; I've been doing ficathons for over a decade and am very rarely disappointed with my gifts. I write long and detailed Dear Author letters because I find such things helpful when I'm writing for other people; if you are like me, here you go! If your style is different and a detailed letter makes you feel hemmed-in, feel free to do what works for you.

The most important thing for me in a fic is that the characters are well-written and recognizably themselves. Even when I don't like a character, I don't go in for character-bashing. If nothing else, if the rest of this letter is too much or my kinks just don't fit yours, just concentrate on writing a story with everyone in character and good spelling and grammar and I will almost certainly love what you come up with.

One thing: I do have an embarrassment squick, which makes humor kind of hit-or-miss sometimes. The kind of humor where someone does something embarrassing and the audience is laughing at them makes me uncomfortable. On the other hand, the kind of humor where the audience is laughing with the characters I really enjoy.

Please no incest.

Other likes and dislikes )

Formats I'm open to: Traditional prose, narrative poetry, in-universe texts.

Fandoms:

Caprica )

Random Harvest )

Dirty Computer )

Black Lightning )

Rivers of London )

My Fair Lady )
beatrice_otter: Sometimes you just have to say screw canon (Screw Canon)
I have had a plot bunny for Rivers of London, and for various reasons I will never write it, but I wanted to release it into the wild as it were.  CN: canon-typical sexual assault a la Moon Over Soho

It started with a premise.  I had been thinking up possible AUs, and one of them was "Peter Grant was raised in the Folly" and then I realized that you could actually make it work with a minimum of canon alterations.  All you really have to fudge is when, exactly, Simone tried to seduce Richard Grant, and whether or not she succeeded )

Also, I know I posted about this years ago, but I'm still bummed nobody has ever written the epic Downton Abbey AU where Mary got pregnant when she slept with Mr. Pamouk in season one )
Anyway, those are plot bunnies I'm never going to write for various reasons, but I thought others might enjoy them, too.
beatrice_otter: General Okoye in her red uniform (Okoye)
First of all, it is AWESOME.  Totally awesome, well worth the two hours in the car (there and back) it took to get to the movie theater.
Spoilers and plot bunnies ahoy! )In conclusion, WAKANDA FOREVER.
beatrice_otter: Me in red--face not shown (Default)
This was my original [community profile] yuletide assignment, but it was sort of intimidating to me because [personal profile] sixthlight is one of the more prolific and beloved authors in the fandom, and her work has given me such joy over the years I wanted to return some, so I felt a bit more internal pressure for it to be good than normal.  (I mean, I always want it to be good, but you know what I mean.  When you sort the RoL fic on AO3 by hits, [personal profile] sixthlight wrote 9 out of 20 on the first page.)  Anyway, my original idea was to write the vaguely alluded-to adventure of Mamusu and Elsie back in Freetown, but I suck at writing adventure.  So this is what happened instead, and I really enjoy it.

I started by re-reading all of the books closely for any details about Peter's family that I could find, and updating the Follypedia.  I did have some qualms about doing so, because if someone read my story and then went to Follypedia someone might make the connection between "the person who just updated Mamusu and Abigail's pages" and "the person who just wrote a story about them" and wonder if they were the same.  (Also, I find it extremely annoying that Mamusu's page is titled "Rose Grant" and not "Mamusu 'Rose' Grant."  I corrected the page header, but the link is still "Rose Grant" even though we are explicitly told that's the name White people use (and by implication probably not her real name).

Title: Right from the Source
Fandom: Rivers of London
Characters: Abigail Kamara, Mamusu "Rose" Grant, Elsie Winstanley, Alfred Kamara
Written For: sixthlight in Yuletide 2017
Word Count: 3993
Betaed By: Burning_Nightingale
Summary: Abigail thinks she knows what the world is like. Then Aunt Mamusu shows up with the news of Cousin Peter's new job.

On AO3.

Author's Note: I have only read the comics that have been published as graphic novels, so this fic takes no notice of any details about Abigail revealed in "Cry Fox."

Abigail was supposed to be doing her homework )

Canon note: While canon-reviewing and researching Sierra Leone, I found that the details of Mamusu's backstory as given by canon don't really ... add up.  When Peter first meets Mama Thames, she identifies his mother as a Fula, which is a Sierra Leonean ethnic group.  Except the Fula are 99% Muslim, according to multiple sources, and Mamusu is Christian.  Also, when she's speaking to Peter in a non-English language, she uses Krio.  According to various sources, most Sierra Leoneans do speak Krio as a lingua franca, but the only people for whom it is their native language are the Krio people.  (Who are, by the way, pretty much all Christian.)   Then there's the fact that Mamusu seems to have grown up or spent significant time in Freetown, and went away to school, whereas her half-brother Alfred is identified as having been a poor subsistence farmer in a backwater village before becoming a refugee.  So my headcanon is that Mamusu's dad was a Fula guy who travelled a lot on business and so his wives didn't all live in the same town.  Mamusu's mum was a Krio woman who lived in Freetown and had some money of her own (maybe owned a business), while Alfred's mum was a Fula woman who lived in a small village and did subsistence farming, and that's where all the discrepancies come from.  So while Mamusu speaks Fula, her native tongue is Krio, and while Alfred speaks Krio, his native tongue is Fula, and so Peter knows Krio while Abigail knows Fula.  And then, after figuring all that out, I realized that there wasn't much place for it in the story.
beatrice_otter: Talia Winters asks, what am I, a mind-reader? (mindreader)
I'm re-reading the Rivers of London series by Ben Aaronovitch (as one does, they're a marvelous socially-conscious police procedural featuring a mixed-race protagonist and magic, if you haven't read them you should).  And one of the things that strikes me, as I re-read, is how clearly Peter and Lesley is an example of the common mistake of believing that your friends think like you do and have similar values.  That because they're nice to you, they're a nice person in general.  That because you do stuff together, they have the same morals and values and outlook as you do.  (This is going to have spoilers for Broken Homes, by the way, but since it's four years old I'm not cutting for spoilers.)

This is an incredibly common thing, and it's why people don't believe that their friend could be a racist/rapist/homophobe/whatever.  If you believe that a good person couldn't possibly believe/do X, and you believe your friend is a good person, then they couldn't possibly believe/do X.  (Without ever considering that maybe they have a different opinion on whether X is good or bad.)  And so any evidence to the contrary is laughed off as a joke or they don't really mean it or they're not that bad.  Because you like them, so they must be a good person, and you think good people can't believe/do X, so therefore they can't believe/do X, no matter how much evidence you get to the contrary.

Until something happens that is so big that it can't possibly be explained away as anything but "yeah, they really have seriously been believing/doing X this whole time."

Peter is very, very conscious of the possibility of police brutality, of abuse of power.  He knows exactly how necessary it is that police do the right thing, because he knows how much death, destruction, and injustice can result when they don't.  Sure, caring about peoples' rights may make the job harder, but Peter would never accept that as an excuse to trample over them.  He jokes about police brutality all the time--but it's a razor-sharp edge of irony, a this is what we must never be, a reminder of what the right way to be a copper is.  It's not a "oh, well, in the good old days ..." wish to go back to that.  Maybe it's because he's mixed race, the child of an immigrant who grew up working class and always has to factor racism into everything he does.  Maybe it's because he's a genuinely good and honest person.  It doesn't really matter why, but the point is, this understanding of justice, the law, and the absolute need for police integrity is fundamental to his ideas of what it means to be a good person, much less a good copper.  And therefore he assumes that other people around him that he likes shares those ideals.  Nightingale doesn't, not really, but he's willing to be persuaded; he can see the inherent justice and goodness of Peter's position and is willing to be persuaded.  Left to his own devices, he would choose expediency; but not because he thinks it's good or right, just because it's habit.  So Peter can assume they share this fundamental understanding because Nightingale will act as if they do, and possibly even internalize Peter's morals on this issue.

Lesley is a whole different ball of wax.  She always argues for expediency.  She believes that might makes right.  She always argues against the rights and protections of ordinary people.  She always, consistently, takes the more violent, more aggressive, more invasive option, and if someone gets hurt because she chose to do so, it is fundamentally their fault for getting in her way.  If you can do something, in her belief system, you should do it.  If you have power it is right to use it.  More than that, she calls Peter stupid or thick when he doesn't.  And Peter just goes along with it, assuming that things are jokes or just little or whatever, and yeah, of course she calls him thick because she's smarter than him and a better copper, right?  So of course she must really agree with him deep down.  He doesn't get that when she calls him thick when they're arguing about how to go forward, it's not because he's distracted or less smart than she is, it's because she genuinely believes that his morals are stupid.  Lesley believes from the get-go that you have to be stupid to seriously believe Peter's ideals.

And, eventually, she betrays Peter and Nightingale and the Metropolitan Police because she found someone stronger, who could get her what she wanted: her face back.  It requires her to betray her friends and colleagues, and throw in with a guy she knows for a fact is a serial killer.  But he's the one who has the power to do what she wants, and he is the one who is truly living out her philosophy of life, and so she does it.

And Peter gets blindsided by it, not because Lesley is a particularly good liar, but because it never occurred to him that someone he liked and respected might have such a totally different view of the world, and so he ignored every hint to the contrary.

(Also.  Re-reading Broken Homes, I am struck by how hard Lesley works to avoid being in the room with Peter while they're undercover at Skygarden.  She's already made her decision by that point, I think.)

Oluweia?

Oct. 5th, 2017 10:26 pm
beatrice_otter: WWII soldier holding a mug with the caption "How about a nice cup of RESEARCH?" (Research)
In the Rivers of London audible short story "A Rare Book of Cunning Device," Elsie "Hatbox" Winstanley refers to having seen books used to hide hand grenades in some place that sounds like "Oluwayo" or "Boluweia" in 1975.  Is she referring to Boluwayo, the city in Zimbabwe?
beatrice_otter: Cover of Janelle Monae's Archandroid album (Archandroid)
Abigail, you are AWESOME. Don't ever change.

Abigail and the CCTV )


I love her resourcefulness--and the fact that she's double-checking stuff from the records by getting an old film camera and learning to develop film.

Also, Peter, word DOES get around. How many landmarks have been demolished or seriously damaged with you involved?

The Thames Valley Police: I don't think they were joking ... )


And Nightingale, hee!

Greek, Abigail, and operational priorities )


And Peter has good taste in music if he likes Janelle Monae.

Spoilers for the end )
beatrice_otter: WWII soldier holding a mug with the caption "How about a nice cup of RESEARCH?" (Research)
Re-reading Whispers Underground, on page 3 Peter thinks " ... including me and Abigail.  Or, as Nightingale insists it should be, Abigail and I."

Except "me and Abigail" is actually correct.  Boo, Nightingale, for not explaining the rule.  The easiest way of figuring it out is, if you strip out the other people, should it be "me" or "I"?  So, since "including I" would be wrong, it should be "including me."

Now, the reason that Nightingale really should have explained this (and why I suspect this shows he is a terrible language teacher) is that he's teaching Peter Latin, right?  Whenever one is teaching a foreign language, it REALLY REALLY HELPS to learn a big more ENGLISH grammar at the same time--not just "what's right" but "why is it right" because if you can figure out the grammar patterns and structure in your own language, it's a lot easier to figure out the grammar patterns and structure in a different language.  I don't think it matters to everyday usage whether Peter uses the right or wrong pronoun in situations like this--everybody's going to know what he means, which is the main point of communicating, after all.  But it might matter to how easy it is for him to figure out the Latin he's getting his head stuffed with.  So insisting on the "correct" form is just snobbishness, not genuine language teaching.

I mean, I'm not blaming him for being a bad teacher!  He never got any training, and languages are hard to teach as well as to learn!  But while nobody but him could teach the magic stuff, they might have been better off hiring a language tutor or something for the Latin.

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