Chelsea 0:09
Welcome back to Not Now, I’m Reading, your one-stop-shop for all things genre. My name is Chelsea.
Kay 0:14
And I’m Kay!
Chelsea 0:14
And we’re here to do our second round of reading catch up. We managed to do our last one in under an hour. Let’s see if we can do the same this time. Jury’s out, friends. Guys, my dogs very thirsty right now apparently very thirsty, right?
Kay 0:30
There’s like so much open space on the floor. But she like came under the table, crawled over the legs of the table and my feet, and then went to the bowl.
Chelsea 0:41
It’s very surprising to me that my dog is still alive.
Kay 0:43
It’s like a metaphor for like making your life harder than it needs to be for no good reason.
Chelsea 0:47
I feel like you’re just trying to make it super deep. And it’s actually just my dog is so very dumb.
Kay 0:51
She is that, but she’s very cute.
Chelsea 0:53
She’s very cute just like the rest. Oh, that we can all operate in life as Penny does. Alright friends, I will go ahead and kick us off this week since Kay kicked us off last week. we are doing 10 more recs – books, fics, may throw in a few other things that we’ve been consuming here and there. Which I will actually go ahead and start off with a non-book or fic rec and say that I watched all of the new season of Veronica Mars after bingeing all of the first three seasons, and the movie, which I had somehow never seen. But that was luckily available on – I think was Starz, maybe HBO, one of the two – they had it and I was able to watch it. The fourth season I really enjoyed, I will actually link to a piece that a friend of the pod Jenny wrote about the ending of the fourth season, that really wrapped up a lot of the feelings that I had about the ending. If you have not seen the new season of Veronica Mars yet, or if you’ve avoided spoilers thus far by being on the internet, go ahead and skip ahead, probably about a minute. But for those of you who are not skipping, as we all know, the newest season ended with Veronica Mars getting married and then Logan getting blowed up.
Kay 1:55
[Snorts]
Chelsea 1:56
Which, like, while it seems very in keeping with Veronica Mars like aesthetically, I had a lot of issues with not necessarily because of character death. Like obviously I was Team Veronica and Logan just like a lot. Almost all of the people who watch that show, but I’m not necessarily opposed to character death like as a thing and I think it could have been done in this like situation in a way that made it really interesting. The problem that I have is the reasons why the creators have talked about doing it, which very much so reeks of like ‘only teen girls like the romance elements and we’re tired of all that teen girl romance the stuffand we just want a hard hitting new our detective show’ which, like, is not really what Veronica Mars has ever been, and is a little bit insulting and kind of deeply cruel to your fan base. But like I said, I will link to Jenny’s article because she did a much more coherent job of expressing some of the larger issues surrounding it. But yeah, if you have seen Veronica Mars if you have been watching I do think it is worth watching the fourth season. Maybe it will help you, knowing that going in, knowing the spoiler, maybe that will help you temper some of your affections accordingly. I knew before got there what was going to happen and it helped me as a watcher, but not every viewer is the same. So yeah, that’s my first kind of recommendation or discussion point or whatever is that the new season of Veronica Mars dropped and it gave me mixed feelings mostly because it was deeply unhealthy but very hot when he punched a wall and then they fucked in the kitchen. I will – did I not just say it was deeply unhealthy? Did I not just practice it with the knowledge that I know – I know. And that’s the point is that like, it is hot but unhealthy. And the fact that Veronica also finds it hot is like part of their, like, that’s the thing it could have been so fascinating. Logan Echols has done so much work on himself and has gone through therapy and has reached such a happy place. And it just could have been so good. It could have been so much more than what it was. You can talk now.
Kay 3:53
Yeah, we’re going to take a sharp right turn here into “life skills outside the curriculum” by Endrina.
Chelsea 4:00
That is the sharpest of right turns!
Kay 4:02
I don’t know if you have read this? It’s a Draco/Harry fic. It is a no Hogwarts AU is sort of how this is tagged. And Harry is basically so fucking miserable with the Dursleys he runs away from home and becomes one of the many homeless youth in London. And that is sort of how it goes for most of the fic. At one point Draco also runs away from home and they meet because fate right. And there’s a lot of really interesting stuff about like world building and how magic works for someone as powerful as Harry when you’ve never been taught what magic is or that it’s real but you still have access to it. And he also learns how to like teach someone else how to use magic the way that he does. The summary on this is just: “It was Witch Weekly, of all people and organizations, the first to notice and comment on the boy who lives’ absence from the ranks of first years at Hogwarts. The magazine went on to – I don’t know what this word is elucubrat.
Chelsea 5:16
Elucidate maybe?
Kay 5:17
No, it’s elucubrate but maybe misspelled, because I don’t know what that word is, “that the young hero was standing in a foreign school possibly Beauxbatons or Holzschuhkäse.” It’s very good. It is novel length. It is I’m looking up elucubrate guys, it’s a real word. But it doesn’t sound real. It’s a transitive verb which means to produce by working long and diligently. So I even just learned a new word.
Chelsea 5:47
Every day friends,
Kay 5:49
“Notes canonical, bad things happen to Harry and really terrible things occur to other teenagers, the lessons are not shown explicitly, but they are discussed”. So think about like life off the street and what that might mean. This is just over 66,000 words. So it’s not a short one. But I really do highly recommend it. So that’s again, “life skills outside the curriculum” by Endrina.
Chelsea 6:15
Wonderful. My next rec is going to be a kind of like a an odd but enjoyable, like multimedia experience because I read the novelization of Dear Evan Hansen, which is a musical like stage show. It’s written by Val Emmich with Stephen Levinson, Ben Pasjack and Justin Paul,who are the creators of Evan Hansen the musical. If you are unfamiliar with Dear Evan Hansen, and you have not heard the musical or know anything about it, it is essentially the story of Evan Hansen, who through a series of events, kind of claims to be or is assumed to be best friends with a classmate of his who has recently died by suicide. And a simple lie to that boy’s parents kind of spirals out of control for Evan and puts him in the center of this like whole big movement and like cultural conversation that he’s very happy to be a part of, but also feels deeply anxious about his like origins in because it’s all based on this lie that he told. It’s a very interesting show. And I felt that the novel did a pretty good job of capturing like a lot of the internalization that we get via, like, song, I felt like there were some character free moments or like some plot events that felt differently paced in the book than they would have in the stage show. And I think that’s just a factor of timing and description and narrative quality in a novel versus in a visual medium, like being on stage. But I really, really enjoyed it. I think it’s a really, really great story. I think it’s a really great way to continue to spread the story because obviously, there are a lot of people who are never going to see Dear Evan Hansen on any stag e. I do want to give content warnings for like, some implied homophobia and for both death by suicide and suicide attempts and suicidal ideations. There’s some very heavy like mental illness stuff that I really like what the novel has to say and what the show has to say about grieving and the differences in grieving and what we owe to the people that we grieve and all of those things. So if you have a teen in your life, or if you’ve seen the show and want another way to like consume it, or to see it kind of like narratively put out there. I really enjoyed Dear Evan Hansen: The Novel. Let’s see, and it comes out. It came out on October 9 of last year, so it’s already out, you can go ahead and go pick it up now. It will make you want to listen to the soundtrack 1000 times which I did and was a very surreal, like meta consumption of things all happening at once. But yeah, so that’s my record. You’re enhancing the novel.
Kay 8:54
Delightful. This is a Good Omens outside POV fic because I live that life now, apparently. it’s a pre wedding meeting thick. Where Aziraphale and Crowley are meeting with Unitarian Universalist minister about their upcoming nuptials. It’ s called “Long-Term,” it’s by idiopathicsmile. It’s just under 2000 words. And I’m not going to read the summary because it’s just like a chunk of text from the fic and it’s really long. I’ll just read you the first paragraph instead: “Officiating weddings has got to be one of Dr. Blackwell’s favorite parts of ministry. And although she’s probably not supposed to have preferences, if she looks deep into her jaded, lesbian heart with any degree of honesty, queer weddings are by far the best.” Which is in fact, true. Queer weddings are the best. Sorry, straight friends. Not sorry.
Chelsea 9:44
Not sorry. Like, this is not a moral statement. This is an objective party evaluation: queers throw better parties. Yeah, just period like just whether it like also weddings, anniversaries,
Kay 9:58
Like there’s so much joy in like getting to participate in an institution which was not available to you for thousands of years. You know? Yes. Yeah.
Chelsea 10:06
Yeah. So yeah. great friends,
Kay 10:09
Yay queer weddings. Yay outsider POV fic. That’s “Long-Term” by idiopathicsmile.
Chelsea 10:16
Yay. All right, my next one is going to be another – it’s going to be another Red, White, & Royal Blue fic but this is a combination of things that I like deeply enjoy because it’s called “Red, White, and Navy Blue” by jedusaur, and it’s a hockey AU, basically, because I guess the official Washington Capitals are red white and navy blue. Those are like their team colors? I’m unfamiliar with this but that sounds right because they’re in the capital. Um, so it’s basically about Alex who plays for the capitals and his new teammate, Henry, who he has had some intra-league issues with in the past, and then they have to come to stop being enemies and learn that they really value each other on the ice and also in bed. And there’s like praise kink and sports team feelings and you guys know I love hockey AUs and you know I love this book. And when I saw that this was a fic that existed, I almost swallowed my tongue. So again, that’s “Red, White, and Navy Blue” by jedusaur. It’s about 4000 words and I thought it was a deeply enjoyable so go read it.Can you guys tell I’m unused to stopping myself talking? I fell out of the habit.
Kay 11:35
It’s great. All right, next up we’ve got an SVU fic, because it’s been a hot minute. I am going to go out on him limb and, like, not insulting you author but I think that the tags on this are just off. This is only been read – it’s has less than 500 hits and I’m like one of the only people who’s bookmarked it and I don’t understand why because it’s fantastic. It’s called “A Little (Less) Night Music” by leslielol. It’s tagged Rafael Barba and Sonny Carisi, not slash.
Chelsea 12:07
I think that’s probably why.
Kay 12:11
Which it’s definitely a slash fic. And also the tags on this – second hand embarrassment, crack treated seriously – I don’t think either of those really fit the fic.
Chelsea 12:24
I can see that. I guess I could see where you got that.
Kay 12:26
I can see you tagging that because someone told you like you should tag for the second hand embarrassment thing because like that’s a warning that some people ask for. I’m like – I get secondhand embarrassment really easily and I did not get it from this, so.
Chelsea 12:40
My guess for the reason it’s not trafficed as much as that it’s not popping up in people’s slash searches because it’s an ampersand fic and that’s why. Because it’s amazing.
Kay 12:50
But it’s definitely very shippy and it’s very good. Which like leslielol is like, always writes really great stuff. The summary is: “He’s really good, which is the saving grace because he’s also really drunk”. So this is a fic where Barba – someone gets video of Barba like singing drunk karaoke with some friends over the weekend and ends up on like a TMZ online feature and people find out and then it unrolls from there. This is also like a really interesting character piece, the way this unfolds for multiple characters. It actually opens sort of from Amanda’s point of view who we don’t like ever get to see fic stuff from because –
Chelsea 13:25
That’s fine. That’s fine with me.
Kay 13:39
Yeah, I don’t love her character. But like, it’s kind of gross, the way that everyone who writes fandom doesn’t like, right, any of the prominent women from the show, like at all. And it’s really interesting, like, look kind of into her perspective, and like how she loves gossip, and like how transitioning from living in the south to living in New York, like you can still partake of gossip, but it’s like a totally different cultural thing. Which I thought was a really interesting way to open this fic. So like, if don’t be put off if you start reading it, and you’re like, Is this just going to be about Amanda and gossip because it’s not. It’s just how they’re going to discover this video. And so again, that’s “A Little (Less) Night Music” by Leslie will and it’s totally precious and just over 17,000 words.
Chelsea 14:22
Wonderful. Alright, friends, I have started the Psy-Changeling books. Fanfare! Applause! Hooray! It has just been a very long time since I’ve had a like, long bingeable series where the books also aren’t 1000 pages each. I have some SF series I’m also behind on, but those are just too long right now for my consumption parameters. I just can’t. So I decided I was going to give the Psy-Changeling books another try. I’ve tried before. The first two books are rough. They are rough. They are getting older. The first book came out in 2006.
Kay 15:06
Which you wouldn’t think would age a thing that badly. But.
Chelsea 15:11
13 years, especially in romance has – like nothing about it was wholly offensive necessarily, so much as it’s just like, they use the word buttocks a lot. And that makes me giggle. And there’s just like particular turns of phrase and like way of characterizing things that just sticks out as it being an older book. But I am enjoying them. It is an interesting reading experience to me because I find the romances themselves to be like, fair to middling for the most part. I have a couple of favorites so far. But the romance elements are all just like a three star for me. The thing that is keeping me reading is the world building and is the actual like plot mechanics and twists and turns in the background non-romantic plots, which seems to be something that happens to me more when I’m reading like urban fantasy romance or paranormal romance, then it does when I’m reading more, like, contemporaries or things like that, which is an interesting thing. And something I’m still digging into. I’m doing a video series over on my YouTube channel where I’m actually breaking down these books into like five book chunks and doing a little bit more of a deep dive. So I’m not going to talk too much about them here. But I have already nine books in – I know right? Kay just like raised her eyebrows and give me a look. I’m already like nine books in of 15. In just under a month. And so far my two favorites are Caressed by Ice, which is where we meet Judd, who is an arrow – which in this world is basically like a super assassin. So he’s like the coldest of the cold and needs to learn to melt his fragile heart. And then also Bonds of Justice, which is about human and a J-Psy, which within this world are all different breakdowns of the Psy race, which is like the psychic race basically. She is a justice Psy, which means that she operates in the court system and can take and relay wholesale memory, and also feels like a deeply empathic pain for the people that she’s taking these memories from and these you know, crime committers and murderers. So there was a lot of stuff there going on that I thought was interesting in terms of like, empathy and justice and the justice system. It also has like a background serial killer hunter plot, which was really interesting to me. So yeah, those are my two favorites. I am in a group chat where we’re kind of all discussing them full of other people who’ve already read them and it’s my first time which is making it very fun. I highly enjoy you find yourself a group of people who’ve already done the thing if you’re starting on a new binge, but yeah. If you want to come talk to me about thePsy-Changeling books feel free to hop on over to my YouTube video series which will be in the notes or you can just come DM me but I’m not going to take up our airwaves time to talk about all nine of these books individually because that would just be a lot for sure. Yes. So like you did with Temeraire, I am just going to wholesale say as a chunk that I am reading the Psy-Changeling books and I am nine books and I will update you all when I have like officially gotten all caught up. I think it’s book 15 that just came out like this past June or something. So I’m almost there. I’m almost there and two thirds of the way down. I’m gonna get there. Your turn.
Kay 18:06
So I was like half listening because I’m never going to read those.
Chelsea 18:09
Yeah, shocked.
Kay 18:12
This is the series where like the first like five or six of them you can kind of skip because they sort of all stand alone that after that they like to have ongoing story arcs right
Chelsea 18:24
Uh, I mean I that’s not how I would recommend doing it. I would say-
Kay 18:29
-I thought that’s what Amanda said when we talked to her and she mentioned these.
Chelsea 18:31
It could very well be the case I feel like this is one of those things where it depends on how comfortable you are knowing versus not knowing things. Theres enough – like I would say maybe read like the first one and then you could probably skip to later books in the series, only because the first one does the work of laying out like the three different like races within this world and like the way that those are like broken down in the
Kay 18:54
Not just taking like stock supernatural characters.
Chelsea 18:57
No you know it’s not like – there are shifters but then are the side are the Psy, but then they also each have different powers like we’re getting to the point now where some of the psychic powers quote unquote feeling a little magically. We’re getting into some places where the sci fi is an urban fantasy and it’s it’s melding together in a way that’s really interesting. But I would say you read the first one and then you could probably go ahead and like skip around based on the things you like.
Kay 19:21
But its first world fantasy right? Yeah?
Chelsea 19:24
First world urban fantasy takes place largely like the San Francisco/Washington like Northwestern coastal areas. So yeah, those are the Psy-Changeling books guys, Nalini Singh. You’ve probably heard of them.
Chelsea & Kay 19:39
[Laughter]
Kay 19:44
If you’re new to a romance, any of these long established series or like some of the authors that have been around for a long time are not necessarily the people you’re seeing get recced to like new romance readers. Yeah, so there’s plenty of people I’m sure who have not read these.
Chelsea 19:57
Like I’ve said this before, I am wary to be a canon-ist just in general for any literature or genre. But if you’re going to ascribe to the idea of there being a quote cannon, or like a base group of texts-
Kay 20:09
-of like modern romance-
Chelsea 20:10
-this is one of them, especially for like paranormal stuff. And I’m not gonna lie – I got caught up in everybody that I know is excitement about the 15th book, I got really tired of not being able to have an intelligent opinion, to be able to add to the conversation. So I was like, Well, I guess I’m just gonna because I also can’t just read the 15th one, like I can’t as a reader, my brain will not do that.
Kay 20:31
I’m never reading these.
Chelsea 20:32
I know you’re never gonna, that’s fine. I don’t necessarily know that I would recommend anyone go back to the first one.
Kay 20:37
The first one is rough. And this is not me like shitting on paranormal romance or anything. No, they’re just not my cup of tea. This particular series I’ve tried to read a couple of the different earlier books and I just could not get into them.
Chelsea 20:52
And I’m enjoying the entire process, but like urban fantasy is not my favorite genre and I don’t know that it’s ever going to be.
Kay 20:59
I actually really like urban fantasy it’s just a lot of it is written by very straight white men and like, I just.
Chelsea 21:06
My thing with this one and I talked a little bit about this in my videos – like I have a lot of the same issues with this with I do with like some of the ABO fic I read in that like there’s some borderline like, consenty slash like we’re fated, we’re soulmates, we’re bonded-
Kay 21:20
-there’s a lot of dubious consent.
Chelsea 21:21
That Nalini, like, addresses, especially more so like as the books go on, and you can tell that like the cultural conversation around that became more expansive, but yeah, like, it is a little -it’s like a thing that I had to consciously choose to like kind of look past especially in those early books.
Kay 21:36
Which I’m just not really willing to do it at this point in my life.
Chelsea 21:40
It would be very different if I didn’t have the Audible romance package and these weren’t all a part of it and so I could listen to them at like almost three speed and like really be like hammering through.
Kay 21:51
You’re hardly paying for it.
Chelsea 21:52
Yeah, exactly like it would be – if I had to purchase them or if like I had to read them with my eyes and like that amount of time investment I don’t know if I would be this far into it. But froor you know, middle of the night baby feeding, listening reading, like they’re, they’re perfect for that. So that’s the Psy-Changeling books, guys. Boom.
Kay 22:10
All right, again, sharp right turn. This is “Time Share” by thingswithwings, who again, it’s just one of our perpetual faves. This is a post-Ragnarock fic that’s like set on the Asguardian like refugee spaceship. And it’s pretty much just Valkyrie and Hulk friendship. And then Bruce and Valkyrie are hooking up. And the summary is: ““I see his dreams. A cure for me.” Hulk blows out a breath. He hates Banner so fucking much. “That’s bullshit,” Angry Girl says. “I wouldn’t let that happen. Fuck that. I’d beat the shit out of him and bring you back.” Hulk looks over at her. He can feel the idea, just out of reach. She looks back, turning her head in a way that means a question. Hulk knows things like that now. She’s the one who taught him.” So there’s really interesting character we’re going on with like, all three of them. There aren’t a lot of fics that like really delve into the Hulk viewpoint and any kind of like, substantial or interesting way. And I really appreciated that in this, and I also really love this Valkyrie characterization in particular. I do want to note the tags: “what do you do with the Hulk on a spaceship?” “Asguardian snobs” “sparring” “Dom/sub” “pain play” “Asguardian epic poetry” “heroes are assholes” “under negotiated kink” “friendship” “probably not the healthiest way to approach kink or sex”. So like mind the tags. I don’t think there’s going to be anything you’re like super uncomfortable with, it’s more just like they don’t ever really negotiate. They basically like are not having any kind of verbal negotiations. Yeah, everyone is very satisfied. But there’s not like verbal communications happening that should probably be happening – but they all have like super powers like super healings. So it’s mostly fun. This is just over 12,000 words, again that’s “Time Share” by thingswithwings. And this is another big one I don’t understand why a ton of people haven’t read it again has less than 500 hits and it’s so good and by thingswithwings? I guess people just don’t care about Bruce and Valkyrie, which makes me sad. Especially because we’re getting another Valkyrie. We’re getting we’re getting King Valkyrie.
Chelsea 24:28
King Valkyrie!
Kay 24:29
Feelings!
Chelsea 24:29
It’s fine, it’s fine. Alright, friends, this next one is another Stranger Things rec. It’s called “breakup with your girlfriend (cause I’m bored) by thecopperkid. This is a Billy Hargrove/Steve Harrington fic. If you watched – he appears in the second season but becomes super narratively important i n the third season, Max’s older brother Billy Hargrove played by Dacre Montgomery. Um, I have a lot of mixed feelings about Billy Hargrove, I think obviously for good reason because he becomes kind of the villain in the third season but the reason he is left open to becoming the villain to this supernatural, demonic, otherworldly being are deeply rooted in like familial angst unworthiness issues. And you guys know what a weak spot I have for that. So the overlap between some of the family background stuff between Billy and Steve makes for some really interesting fic. This one is just really funny. The summary is: “‘@umissedconnections: Bambi eyes. m4m. i was rippin cigs in the sae p-lot. u made urself puke 2 make room 4 more beer. incredible? ur my hero PLS say ur into guys .’ Steve finds he has a secret admirer who’s continuously hitting on him via his university’s Missed Connections Twitter account. // Tommy and Billy are the worst roommates ever.” So it’s a modern AU, it’s set in college. It’s very funny, which like – Stranger Things obviously has its funny moments, but I would not necessarily call it like a comedy on the whole, obviously. But I just really appreciated the wit and the way that copperkid was able to modernize. I mean, it’s not like Stranger Things is like, ancient right? Like, I mean, it’s set in the mid to late 80s so it’s not like modernizing is like a huge thing.
Kay 24:48
But it is also almost 40 years ago yeah, so like.
Chelsea 26:31
I really really appreciate, it it’s very funny, so that’s “break up with your girlfriend (cause I’m bored) by thecopperkid. It’s aabout 15,000 words, just shy 16, and it’s a really funny modern AU and I think you guys might like it.
Kay 26:46
Very nice sorry guys I’m distracted by friend of the pod, Di. Hi Di! We were just talking about one of Ruby Lang’s books Hard Knocks go read it. That’s not an actual rec this episode but you know, I rec it in general. Um, did I talk about this last time? I feel like I did. Did I talk about “remember me love when I’m reborn”, that magneticwave Game of Thronesfic?
Chelsea 27:12
I think so.
Kay 27:13
Okay, I was pretty sure that I did.
Chelsea 27:15
I know you talked about a magnetic wave Game of Thron fic.
Kay 27:20
I’m trying to mix up the fandoms I’m recommending for you guys because I do have like a ton of Good Omens recs so I’m trying not to like drop them on you and once. This is a Star Wars original trilogy fic. It’s mostly like about how weird the Skywalkers are if you think about it at all. It’s called “wonderterror” by peradi. The summary is: “Anakin Skywalker is the son of the Force. He’s half human and half something monumental. What does that make his children? — The Skywalkers aren’t entirely human. Here’s what that means.”. The tags this – so it’s tagged for Leia/Han and also for Luke/Han. And also for Obi-Wan/Anakin and Padme/Anakin. And then the tags are: “a Tumblr thing that got out of control” “what if the skywalkers were Eldritch horrors” “I mean, they are the children of the force so they’re probably not that human really” “body horror” “Cthulhu mythos” “Han Solo is force sensitive” and “Skywalker family drama”. I love this fic so much, the characterizations are absolutely fascinating and it’s like such a cool and creepy like examination of like what the fuck they really are when one them, like, their parent is half the force. And there’s a lot of like Han sort of seeing one of them out of the corner of their eye or like other people in the rebellion like feeling deeply uncomfortable around one or the other of them for like hashtag reasons but hashtag reasons capital reasons guys and this is just over 6500 words so again, that’s “wonderterror” by peradi.
Chelsea 29:04
Wonderful.
Kay 29:05
So good.
Chelsea 29:06
That sounds awesome. All right, this next one lest you guys think that my love for Stranger Things is only confined to the any two white dudes fandom trope – not this season my friends! Alas, alack not this season! We have been given the roots of maybe my favorite recent ship ever. And it is the Max and El ship from the third season of Stranger Things. Max being our fiery curly-headed redhead and El, obviously Eleven, Millie Bobby Brown coming through killing it on the game. This one is called *cough* Oh, excuse me. It’s called “Chimerical” by the_northern_wolf. It’s also there’s also a lot of like other background ships happening as like the other characters continue to kind of like figure their shit out. I also want to go ahead and give you guys an alert to the tag that there’s some references for self harm, some implied homophobia, some implied child abuse this it gets a little dark. None of it is like out of step with the stuff we’ve already seen, like in the show, but if that’s something that’s going to bother you, please be forewarned with that. The summary is: “”The thing about movies? They’re sadistic.” or max is having trouble coming out and Eleven is oblivious to her pining”. It’s about 17,000 words but this is a very slow burn – a *very* slow burn. It’s the first part in the series and this first part already 17,000 words so it’s not quite some of the like 150k slow burns we’ve seen before but it is definitely in the category and I just really really love that the space that the characters are given in this fic. Obviously in Stranger Things they’re dealing with like monsters and Russian hackers and like government shit and like big big plot stuff so there’s not always the most room for like character breath and room to grow and so I really appreciated that here. So if you are also looking for something like that and you love the El/Max ship of dream, go ahead and check out “Chimerical” by the_northern_wolf.
Kay 31:35
Very nice. Okay, random as fuck we’re going to have a Downton Abbey fic rec. There’s not a lot of good Downton Abbey fic, there’s not.
Chelsea 31:45
There’s not.
Kay 31:46
There’s not. A lot of it is very like Thomas woobie fic, which I’m like not particularly into.
Chelsea 31:52
I’m making the grimmace emoji face.
Kay 31:53
This is actually a Thomas-centric fic, but it’s a really interesting AU. It’s called “Halo Effect” by Alex51324. It’s a Thomas original character fic, but it’s really just kind of a rewrite of the first season, with like, one change and like mostly from Thompson’s point of view. The tags on this are “season one AU canon divergence”, “Edwardian gays”, “historical accuracy”, “great war” and “period typical homophobia”. I do want to warn for structural and internalized homophobia. And one of the manifestations of this is like internalized homophobia is like a scornful attitude towards people who have like atypical gender presentation at the time. So like they have like one of their gay friends occasionally dresses in ladies garments and they’re kind of like dismissive about that. So just FYI. There’s also – it touches on like partner violence and exploitive sexual relationships and like war violence because Downton Abbey. The summary of this is: “The Halo Effect is the tendency for a positive impression in one area to produce a more generous or optimistic interpretation of ambiguous information in other areas. When Thomas rescues Lady Mary from the nefarious attentions of Turkish houseguest Kemal Pamuk, his employers and coworkers begin to see him differently…and Things Get Better. A Season One AU diverging from canon in Episode 3, The One Where The Turkish Gentleman Dies in Mary’s Bed”. And it’s like really interesting world building stuff, like they clearly did like a shit ton of research and this particular Downton Abbey author has written a bunch of other stuff we’re like you can really tell they’ve done like a lot of research on the time periods and that sort of thing, which I always really appreciate in like historical fandom. And I also think the characterizations of everyone in this are really fantastic. So it’s a really long read. It’s over 81,000 words. So this is just like a novel length rewrite of the first season. So again, that’s “Halo Effect” by Alex 51324.
Chelsea 33:56
Awesome!
Kay 33:57
I think you’d really like it.
Chelsea 33:58
It sounds like I’d really like.
Kay 33:59
Historical queers are our jam.
Chelsea 34:03
Un-bury your gays! This next one I got the email for and read immediately and then hopped over to DMs to talk about just how much I love perpetfic’s use of tags. This is “A True Partnership” by Perpetual Motion aka perpetfic. It is a Barisi Law & Order: SVU fic. The summary is: “Sonny’s freaking out about his first trial as an ADA. Rafael helps him relax.” It’s tagged for “blow jobs”, so I’m sure you guys can figure out how that relaxation happens. It is also tagged for “questionable but necessary use of a very nice pocket square”, which is exactly the thing that made me one-click it and read it immediately. It’s just not very long, it’s only 1500 words. But man, Perpetual Motion just knows how to kill the game. They’ve been coming up with some great stuff recently.
Kay 34:51
Hits you where you live.
Chelsea 34:53
Its – it is unfair sometimes guys. You know that picture that’s like ‘I’m in this photo and I don’t like it’. That’s how I feel basically every time I get an email about the thing that perpetfic wrote. So yeah, that is “A True Partnership”. It’s just over 1500 words, and it’s super hot. So go read it.
Kay 35:19
Okay, this is – I don’t know if I’ve ever talked about it on the podcast before there’s this really lovely subset of Marvel fandom that has a lot of like Jewish headcannons for various characters or also just like talks about the fact that there are not like a bunch of canon Jewish characters in the Marvel movies is truly ridiculous when there are in the comics and most of the original creators of these characters were Jewish. I’ll just throw that out there. This fic is called “Maqqaba”. It’s by domarzione, the summary is just: “Chanukah in the SSR”. It’s tagged: “Judaism”, “Jewish Howard Stark”, “World War Two” and “Chanukah”, and the characters that are tagged are just Peggy Howard and Erskine. Um, it’s really, really lovely. And one of the really interesting things about this fic in particular is that someone with a background like Peggy has would probably not have met many Jewish people before joining the SSR but anyone who knows their world war two history knows like basically all the scientists were Jewish. And it’s really, really just a very lovely little look at like-
Chelsea 36:27
I’m trying to think of the only other fandom piece I could think that really deals with Judaism within Marvel is that Erik Lehnsherr…
Kay 36:35
Yeah, there’s a lot of really great stuff about Erik Lehnsherr. There’s actually a fairly large subset of people who have like Jewish Bucky Barnes headcannon, which is really interesting and like has been done really well before.
Chelsea 36:48
I think that’s – I want to say like I am just unaware of and this is not to say they don’t exist. I unaware of them. But yeah, that’s given the Marvel history. I do know that’s always fascinating. Yeah.
Kay 36:58
This is just a lovely little just under two-thousand word fic, does a lot of really great character work. And I just would love to see more awesome Jewish fanfic. So if you all have recs, please hit me up. So again, that’s “Maqqaba” by domarzione.
Chelsea 37:14
All right, I think in keeping with my general theme of disaster bisexuals summer 2K19. I’m going to go ahead and talk about Autoboyography, which was a reread for me.
Kay 37:29
I was going to say you’ve definitely mentioned this on the pod before but it’s been a while.
Chelsea 37:32
It’s been it’s been a good long while – for as much as you tried to call me out on Twitter, deservedly, it has been a hot minute since I’ve actually listened to or read this book. For those of you who don’t know, this is Christina Lauren, romance writing duo. This is a young adult contemporary that they did about Tanner who lives, who is bisexual who was out to his family. But once his mom gets a job in Salt Lake City, or sorry, in Provo, they have to move back to Utah and he basically has to go back in the closet. So he’s bisexual, in the closet, and in love with the teacher of his writer, or the TA of his writing seminar, Sebastian Brother. Who is only a few years older than him who has just recently graduated. This is a seminar in which students are asked to write a novel over the course of the semester. And Sebastian was in the previous year seminar and had his novel published. This is a book that deals really, like really carefully amd lovingly with religion and with religious belief and religious tolerance and navigating the queer identity within religion, as well as navigating a queer identity in a religious community when you’re not religious. It got a little heavier in parts than I remembered, and I am unfamiliar but would be interested in knowing whether or not either Christina or Lauren have a background specifically with the Mormon community. Just because being set in Provo it deals largely with the Mormon Church and the Mormon faith in general. I don’t think it matters, and it’s completely their business. I’m not doing any further research. But it does make me wonder. I really, really enjoyed this book. This book is lovely, but there are parts and I want to tag for being aware of like, implied homophobia, religiously based homophobia, internalized homophobia, and all of those things. Sebastian is very much so reckoning with the fact that he cannot, at the beginning come to terms with the fact that he is somewhere on the queer spectrum, because he was raised in an environment that separated queer identity from queer acts, and the ramifications that has on his own personal well being. It’s just really beautiful guys. I really, really enjoyed it. There are several parts that will make me aww out loud. And I love the cover. I loved listening to the narration, the only thing that I knocked a star off it this time I was reading because this time, it really stuck out to me that the narrative feels kind of unbalanced. We don’t – we get both perspectives, but we don’t get to hear from Sebastian until probably like two thirds of the way through the book, which I think is an interesting narrative choice because once we start to hear from him, it really puts a lot of things in a different kind of lens of perspective. But for whatever reason, that’s how it was written. And so yeah, if you are also super into disaster bisexuals, or the intersections between like religion and queer identity, I think that Autoboyography might be one for you. It has its problematic elements but it’s seriously a feel good book I think so. I’ve talked about it before and now won’t talk about it again for a hot second. So that’s Autoboyography by Christina Lauren.
Kay 40:20
Very nice. I just – sorry guys, you’ll know what day we’re recording this now because I’m laughing really hard at the new James Bond movie announced, but it just looks bad.This No Time to Die. It’s just-
Chelsea 40:38
That is not a good graphic design, that is difficult to read.
Kay 40:41
“My passion is graphic design” feels right here. Okay, irrelevant. Irrelevant but harsh. Whoo, okay, let’s do – let’s do “Mittelkinder”. Okay, next up we have kind of old school here. This is a Pacific Rim fic. I don’t think it’s canon with the second movie which I’ve never bothered to see because everyone says that it was really bad. The ship on this is Newt and Hermann because obviously. The tags are: “epistolary format” “slow burn” “ableism” and “minor character death”, so mind your tags. The only three taged characters are just Hermann, Newt ,and then Hermann’s sister Carla – who if you are familiar with like any of the extra-canon materials, like all of Hermann’s family are actually like involved with various scientific fields and also most of them are involved like with the Jaeger program, and this is called “Mittelkinder” by GoldStarGrl. The summary is: “When San Francisco is destroyed, Hermann is sent to Lima and Karla is sent to Shanghai. The two Gottlieb middle children spend the next ten years emailing their lives to one another – the daily annoyances, the end of the world, and Hermann’s refusal to admit he’s in love with his lab partner”. “Mittelkinder” means middle children in German, although it literally means central children. So I love I do love that.
Chelsea 41:42
Oh, German.
Kay 42:18
And I am a fucking sucker for an epistolary fic. And this is like all sorts of sibling feels and it’s epistolary and I love it a lot. It is just under 23,000 words so it’s a nice little chunk of a fic right there. So again, that’s “Mittelkinder” by GoldStarGrl.
Chelsea 42:32
Wonderful! Friends, we are slowly approaching hockey season. Every time I look at my calendar are a couple of squares closer to when it auto-populates with the Pens games, so I’m very excited. DoublySo when this next one popped up in my inbox. It is “In the North” by sevenfists. You guys know sevenfists. Don’t! Stop! Stop laughing already. Did you even read it? [laughter] Of course you didn’t, why would you?!
Kay 43:02
[laughing] Of course I didn’t!
Chelsea 43:05
I love sevenfist. This is a Sidney Crosby/Evgeni Malkin Game of Thrones, like, AU fusion in which Geno is playing Malkin the Bear King in the North. And it’s just so good! I do want to warn you guys for this tag for mildly dubious consent which like, within the confines of the fic is mildly dubious but it’s not nearly as dubious as a lot of other consent issues in the Game of Thrones world and universe could be. But yeah guys, it’s just really good. Sevenfist just writes such like – it’s just hot sex even in contexts and situations where I am like finish reading and go qhat have I done, where have I gone? What was any of that? Just read it guys, just take my word for it. It’s “In the North” by sevenfist, it’s like 7K, it’s just- it’s just good. Good guys. It’s good stuff just, just read it. Just read it.
Kay 44:06
[Laughing]
Chelsea 44:06
Shut up!
I think this is – you have two more and I have one more.
How many more do we have left?
I’ll do another Harry Potter fic. This one is “A Store of Happiness” by coyotesuspect. The summary is just: “Harry spends the summer after his third year living with Sirius and Professor Lupin.” So this is an AU where Sirius gets cleared and Harry goes to live with him and it’s beautiful. It’s tagged “fluff” and “found family” and “raising Harry” and it is also a Sirius/Remus fic but it’s very much a Harry centric-
-Siriusly? [snorts] I’m sorry, how many times has it been since I’ve done that?
Kay 44:58
Why are you like this?! But the opening of this fic is: “A black dog, the size of a bear, sat on the curb outside 4 Privet Drive. In the gray dawn, its saucer-sized eyes seemed to glow, reflecting the orange light of a nearby street lamp. The casual observer, yawning and idly looking out their window to check the weather, would have been startled by the creature. But Harry, who had barely slept from excitement, was not a casual observer, and, from his second-floor bedroom window, he recognized the dog immediately as his godfather, Sirius Black.” It’s very very very sweet .
Chelsea 45:28
That sounds very very cute.
Kay 45:29
So it basically opens right after like his re-trial ends, and he’d only had to be at the Dursley’s for like two weeks and it’s beautiful. Everything is beautiful and n hurts and they’re like out in a cottage in the middle of nowhere and it’s very sweet. So it’s sort of like a different take on ‘lie low at Lupin’s’. In fact, it’s so much better than ‘lie low at Lupin’s’ because they don’t have to lie low because the trial over!
Awesome. So cool.
So again, that is “A Store of Happiness” by coyotesuspect.
Chelsea 46:01
There you go. All right, my last rec is going to be for Race to the Sun by Rebecca Roanhorse. This is her newest one for Rick Riordan’s middle grade imprint Rick Riordan Presents. You guys have heard us talk about this project before. If you’re unfamiliar, basically Rick Riordan killed it so much with his Percy Jackson et al other series that he got his own imprint line. And he’s using his imprint line to recruit writers of color to write middle grade fantasies based on their own cultural, like myths and legends and narratives. I’ve really enjoyed all of the ones that I’ve read so far, but this one it might be my favorite. Maybe it’s just because I’m obsessed with Rebecca Roanhorse and everything that she’s writing. But Race to the Sun is the story of Nizhoni Begay and her brother Mac, who at the beginning of the book are just kind of going through their junior high like life trials and then Nizhoni comes to realize that she is a monster hunter. And when her father is kidnapped by a monster named Mr. Charles, who’s there under the pretense of business to recruit Mac and Nizhoni’s dad come work for him, the two of them and their best friend Davery have to go on an adventure where they meet different mythological figures from Navajo folklore to get the weapons they need to defeat the monsters. It’s about an external, like, hero’s quest. It’s about an internal hero’s quest. It sounds like a thing that you’ve heard 1000 times. But I guarantee you you’ve not read it this way. Because there are not stories like this, really, that are being published until now. That’s not to say obviously, that there aren’t stories of indigenous peoples and for middle graders, but nothing that I’ve ever read that’s quite like what Rebecca is doing. So it is a middle grade book there’re, you know, the beats are familiar, the dialogue is can be familiar, some of the themes can hit a little hard because it’s not meant for an adult audience. But I was fascinated and thrilled and had so much fun following this familiar outline in a world and in a storyline and a mythology that was so new to me, so I can almost guarantee that you’ve never read anything quite like this and it is absolutely worth picking up. Unfortunately, it’s not out until January. So please follow the link in the show notes and get your pre-order in. I think it’s especially important to be pre-ordering books like this so that we can tell publishing how much more we want more books like this. So yeah, that’s Race to the Sun by Rebecca Roanhorse, which is a new middle grade out from the Rick Riordan Presents imprint and it’s fantastic.
Kay 48:29
Very nice. I’m super hyped for like that whole line, guys.
Chelsea 48:32
Me, too. I’ve read a couple other things that he’s done-
Kay 48:35
Not to hype up a white man’s stuff too much but-
Chelsea 48:40
-like, bar on the ground.
Kay 48:41
But Rick is like doing the ally work and has for a really long time and I super appreciate a white man getting successful and using his success to like lift up diverse voices because now the thing that happens a lot.
Chelsea 48:54
Because that’s what we want the ship to be, right? Like he does like it’s his name it’s his imprint it comes from him but he has done his absolute hardest to not center himself in any of this.
Kay 49:03
He’s just using his name to boost other people.
Chelsea 49:04
Yeah. Which is great and there have been because I think isn’t Aru Shah part of the Rick Riordan Presents imprint and there’s another one too I thought that just came out, but there are several, each one’s multicultural, different ways. We’re talking like – it’s very much of that feeling of when people say oh XYZ trope is done just in time for people of color to do it, so before you brush it off it’s just another you know, like, middle grade hero quest, you haven’t seen it like this before. And luckily like most good books do I finished this one and immediately went and picked up some books about the legends of the indigenous people who own this land and his land we’re currently sitting on which is the Kaw people specifically the Kaw Valley Kansa people so the Kansa.
Kay 49:31
Do you guys not learn about the indigenous history of like places you live in elementary school here
We do here. We did here.
Because I know a lot of people don’t. Like I grew up in Spokane, that’s named for the Spokane Indians? It’s like all fucking not our land up there.
Chelsea 50:06
I did, simply because I live at a the crossroads of the like several of the trails. Like, fun fact for you guys, I live literally like very close to the historical stage coach like thing like I worked as a reenactor and like because this land is like is named after the Kansa Indians and we live in the Kaw Valley, we learn about them, but it’s not as though we did a lot of time studying like the mythologies and the legends and in-depth folklore of those people we just learned about their existence in this area which even that is is more than a lot of people.
Kay 50:41
We did a full year of just straight up Spokane history like when I was growing up and like a good half of the year is spent on the indigenous history of the area and like Lewis and Clark came through and like they’re talking about like the negative impact that had on like the local populace instead of just talking about like the cool trappers and stuff which very very liberal distrcit, guys, that wouldn’t have happened in a lot of places but yeah.
Chelsea 51:05
A lot of the Kansas history we get first starts and picks up more so in like the civil war with the border skirmishes between like Kansas and Missouri and like the differences between the two in terms of like, abolition and slave ownership and stuff so like yeah, I mean Kansas City is rich in history and we have Kansas Day like we do learn about it but as I feel like always the case you can always learn more!
Kay 51:27
And not from the viewpoint of dead white guys, yeah.
Chelsea 51:31
which is why I’m so glad that books like Race to the Sun are getting published and starting younger and hitting even younger audiences. So alright friend, take us out on a high note, no pressure no pressure.
Kay 51:42
We’re getting the perfect one, we’re going to end with another Good Omes fic guys, this is one of my favorites. There’s just like a fire hose of like really good Good Omens fic happening right now. So even if you didn’t bother watching like the series, if you read the book or like passively familiar just like you’re fine. So this is “Least of All” by stereobone. The summary is just: “every so often Crowley talks to God”. It’s just over 16,000 words. It is an Aziraphale/Crowley fic, but it’s mostly just a Crowley fic and it literally goes all the way back to like 4004 BC and like goes through all of the times throughout history when something is terrible enough that like Crowley will talk to God. And almost every time it is on behalf of Aziraphale that he talks to God, and he’s mostly like hollering at and not like praying praying which is like a very very interesting way of like handling that. But it goes through a lot of like really interesting different parts in history, there’s an AIDS mentioned and stuff so that is tagged ,I know that’s very triggering for some people. But it’s just really beautiful look at their friendship and like their relationship throughout but like I find Crowley to be like such a fascinating character for like a lot of reasons and I’m not usually-
Chelsea 53:06
-I was going to say that is surprising to me. Just like general aura of feelings. I’m a little surprised that this show specifically has like…
I like David Tennant a lot.
No, I know, but like.
Kay 53:19
David Tennant’s one of those people who like can’t not be working so the quality of things he is in range is really varingly.
Chelsea 53:29
That’s what happens when you literally just don’t say no to things. Lisa Rhinna’s got some life advice about just not saying no to projects but yeah. He’s just always in something, in something always good or bad. He’s in something.
I don’t remember who is talking to on Twitter the other day, it might have been Norma Jean, but we’re talking about like, how great David Tennant is in some things and I was basically like it’s got the perfect mix of like his scene chewing Shakespearean and his inability to properly sit in a chair
It’s got that like it’s got that like – not Mad Eye Moody, that’s what he was going as, who did he play in the fourth Harry Potter movie? Barty Crouch Jr, right? It’s very much so that like, twitchy manic energy channeled through like Ian McShane doing like scene chewing like epic stuff.
Kay 54:19
You know a lot of scenes chewing and be like – he really just can’t sit properly like I don’t know guys.
Chelsea 54:27
I’ve seen like video clips of him in like giant stage interviews where he like takes off his shoes and tucks up like a true disaster bisexual always does. Like the man cannot sit in a chair straight. Yeah, as far as I know he’s he’s completely heterosexual but he’s adopted the queer and ability to just sit in a goddamn chair. Yeah, I love him so much. I love Michael Shane – there’s just some stuff around the way the show is handled comedy wise.
Kay 54:51
I wish the show was different than it is but there’s a lot of stuff that I like individually in the show.
Chelsea 54:56
The dynamic between them is very Hufflepuff and Slytherin.
Kay 54:58
Which they’ve been friends for roughly 1 million years so like of course they were going to do that well, but again, that’s “Least of All” by stereobone. It’s just under 16,000 words and I really highly recommend it.
Chelsea 55:09
Wonderful. I’m gonna have to get into this fandom, I know I watched the series I just haven’t made the fic jump yet.
Kay 55:14
There’s so much fic.
Chelsea 55:16
So much of that like Slytherpuff, tol/smoll, like sunshine and clouds combo duo-ness that we all love. Alright friends! We did it! We did it in under another hour, I’m very proud of us. Alright guys, that is 10 more recs of all varieties and fandoms and walks of life for you to go and feast upon. We will be back in a couple of weeks to give you guys our thoughts on The Write Escape by Charish Reid, which was a debut that we both loved that scratches a lot of like id stuff with like book lovers and they’re both writers and it’s just lots of stuff that’s all working super great. So come back in a couple of weeks and we’ll be talking about that. We do also have the next Adriana Herrera book coming up somewhere some the future.
Kay 55:59
It’s on the docket.
Chelsea 56:00
So if you have not caught up with that series yet please do because they’re great. Otherwise friends until next time, take care of yourselves take care of each other, and have happy reading! Bye guys.
Kay 56:08
Bye.
Chelsea 56:19
Not Now, I’m Reading is a bimonthly podcast hosted by best friends and consummate nerds Kay Taylor Rea and Chelsea Outlaw. Kay can be found on almost all social media @kaytaylorrea and Chelsea pretty much lives on Twitter @anoutlawlife. Transcripts and show notes can be found at nnirpodcast.wordpress.com, and our Patreon support feed is located at patreon.com/nnirpodcast. Show art is done by the lovely Ira, and music is “Funin’ and Sunin’” by Kevin McLeod. As with all your favorite podcasts, a quick review at Apple podcast or your favorite podcatcher never fails to give us the warm fuzzies.
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