no light without darkness (fic recs)
Feb. 20th, 2022 12:27 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ironymaidenC may be sick or may have eaten something that his system hates. so out of caution this has become a very quiet weekend.
in some ways i've been in a reading drought for almost two years. In others i am reading mass quantities. in the Before Times the stories i thrived on were rife with conflict and unpredictability - nothing better than an unreliable narrator and danger at every turn. between the pandemic and living through a thwarted coup attempt and a dead parent, none of what i would normally read was at all okay. with some experimentation i discovered that rereads were fine, comics were often fine, and new things could be historical or sfnal romance (happy ending guaranteed, nothing close to real life) and fanfiction, especially fluff and fix-it (everyone who deserves to be happy is happy, none of the good guys die). i can now almost trace the quality of my mood by what i most want to read. i've gotten up to reading the Witcher books (currently rereading short stories, and then on to the novels, which are new to me) but i keep dipping in and out of them.
anyway, i feel like i should rec my recent fanfic obsession.
The Desert Storm, an epic Star Wars fic where Obi-wan Kenobi (at about four years after order 66) is thrown back in time twenty-some years. it is both warmly familiar and unexpectedly new; i especially recommend it to fans of The Clone Wars but i think it would work if you've only seen the first six films. there is a lot of space here where Jedi culture and life at the Temple is explored, and everyone who needs it gets some goddamn therapy.
i started it on a whim, because it is a genre i dislike on principle: a character travels back in time on their own timeline and attempts to use their foreknowledge to create a better outcome. but fuck it, i enjoyed the hell out of this thing and the author is writing from an insane level of knowledge (pulling out characters who appeared in one three-issue arc of Dark Horse comics in the late 90s, squeezing out every bit of Force lore that was in Clone Wars and Rebels, all kinds of shit from video games. there was a lot i knew and a lot to look up on Wookieepedia). if you've ever been upset at the idea of Anakin's mom being left behind a slave, if you like all the background Jedi characters, if you dig Mandalorian culture, if you want lightsaber battles but also younglings eating cookies, if you ship Obi-wan/happiness but also kind of like to wallow in how broken this guy is... it's all there. and it's complete.* there's enough going on that i'm considering a reread sooner than later. it's damn good.
for a short read that is canon-compliant, i recommend The Fragility of Noble Flaws, written as a missing scene from the Rako Hardeen arc of The Clone Wars; Anakin goes in person to tell Satine that the death was faked.
*there's a sequel series in progress but it ends in a perfectly fine spot.
in some ways i've been in a reading drought for almost two years. In others i am reading mass quantities. in the Before Times the stories i thrived on were rife with conflict and unpredictability - nothing better than an unreliable narrator and danger at every turn. between the pandemic and living through a thwarted coup attempt and a dead parent, none of what i would normally read was at all okay. with some experimentation i discovered that rereads were fine, comics were often fine, and new things could be historical or sfnal romance (happy ending guaranteed, nothing close to real life) and fanfiction, especially fluff and fix-it (everyone who deserves to be happy is happy, none of the good guys die). i can now almost trace the quality of my mood by what i most want to read. i've gotten up to reading the Witcher books (currently rereading short stories, and then on to the novels, which are new to me) but i keep dipping in and out of them.
anyway, i feel like i should rec my recent fanfic obsession.
The Desert Storm, an epic Star Wars fic where Obi-wan Kenobi (at about four years after order 66) is thrown back in time twenty-some years. it is both warmly familiar and unexpectedly new; i especially recommend it to fans of The Clone Wars but i think it would work if you've only seen the first six films. there is a lot of space here where Jedi culture and life at the Temple is explored, and everyone who needs it gets some goddamn therapy.
i started it on a whim, because it is a genre i dislike on principle: a character travels back in time on their own timeline and attempts to use their foreknowledge to create a better outcome. but fuck it, i enjoyed the hell out of this thing and the author is writing from an insane level of knowledge (pulling out characters who appeared in one three-issue arc of Dark Horse comics in the late 90s, squeezing out every bit of Force lore that was in Clone Wars and Rebels, all kinds of shit from video games. there was a lot i knew and a lot to look up on Wookieepedia). if you've ever been upset at the idea of Anakin's mom being left behind a slave, if you like all the background Jedi characters, if you dig Mandalorian culture, if you want lightsaber battles but also younglings eating cookies, if you ship Obi-wan/happiness but also kind of like to wallow in how broken this guy is... it's all there. and it's complete.* there's enough going on that i'm considering a reread sooner than later. it's damn good.
for a short read that is canon-compliant, i recommend The Fragility of Noble Flaws, written as a missing scene from the Rako Hardeen arc of The Clone Wars; Anakin goes in person to tell Satine that the death was faked.
*there's a sequel series in progress but it ends in a perfectly fine spot.
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Date: 2022-02-21 01:36 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-02-21 02:10 am (UTC)