Code Name Verity!
Oct. 28th, 2012 08:17 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
osprey_archerI had splendid weekend! I have spent it being gloriously unproductive (unless reading Code Name Verity counts - more about that later). For lo! I have seen a cornucopia of friends.
1. Emma and Ryan were in town! We had pides and fried rice and chocolate brioche, and I got Emma to watch Phoebe in Wonderland, which she liked, which relieved me greatly, because it's one of my favorite movies. I also lent her a stack of books, including Code Name Verity, which I did not own until last Friday.
2. I think I convinced my friend Becky to do Yuletide! I am a Yuletide pusher; people mention they write fanfic and I get a manic gleam in my eye and cry "YOU MUST DO YULETIDE YOU MUST YOU MUST!" Crossing my fingers that she actually signs up.
3. My parents just got back from New Zealand! And also it is my mother's birthday, so I drove up and we had dinner, and it was delightful.
And they brought me a copy of the newest Obernewtyn book, The Sending! Which is apparently not the last Obernewtyn book. I think this is the third or fourth Obernewtyn book that was supposed to be the last book, only to unexpectedly mutate into two books in the writing. It is frustrating.
Anyway, I exercised superhuman restraint and did not bring it back with me, because otherwise I would have done nothing all next week but read it, and I already went on my fiction-reading spree with Code Name Verity.
CODE NAME VERITY, you guys. I want to write an actual review of it, except I'm not really coherent about it yet, because the last third pretty much gutted me.
I read about half of it on Thursday evening, and said "Well, this is good, and it is grim, but everyone promised me harrowing and I don't feel harrowed yet, and also I'm exhausted, so I'm going to sleep."
And then the next day I finished it, and by God was I harrowed. By the last bit I was putting the book down every few pages and hopping around the apartment, because I had too many feelings and couldn't sit still, and when I finished I hied myself to the library, through the rain, because I simply could not have the book in the house any longer.
Half an hour later I bundled Emma into the car, spent forty minutes detouring three times around construction, to buy a copy at Barnes and Nobles, which I promptly lent to her.
(This burst of generosity may get in the way of my epic Code Name Verity/I Capture the Castle post-war crossover fic. Epic, you guys. I have so many FEELINGS and they MUST BE CHANNELED.)
I both want and really do not want fix-it fic for Julie's death. On the one hand, as aforementioned, it gutted me; but it's so central to the story that it would be, in a sense, doing violence to the book to "fix" it.
So I don't want to fix it in that sense, but I want desperately future fic about Maddie, to see that she's - healed is not quite the right word, because I don't think it's the kind of thing you get all better from, or come to terms with. But I want her to get to a place where she can move forward, and where moving forward is something more than telling herself to "Fly the plane, Maddie."
1. Emma and Ryan were in town! We had pides and fried rice and chocolate brioche, and I got Emma to watch Phoebe in Wonderland, which she liked, which relieved me greatly, because it's one of my favorite movies. I also lent her a stack of books, including Code Name Verity, which I did not own until last Friday.
2. I think I convinced my friend Becky to do Yuletide! I am a Yuletide pusher; people mention they write fanfic and I get a manic gleam in my eye and cry "YOU MUST DO YULETIDE YOU MUST YOU MUST!" Crossing my fingers that she actually signs up.
3. My parents just got back from New Zealand! And also it is my mother's birthday, so I drove up and we had dinner, and it was delightful.
And they brought me a copy of the newest Obernewtyn book, The Sending! Which is apparently not the last Obernewtyn book. I think this is the third or fourth Obernewtyn book that was supposed to be the last book, only to unexpectedly mutate into two books in the writing. It is frustrating.
Anyway, I exercised superhuman restraint and did not bring it back with me, because otherwise I would have done nothing all next week but read it, and I already went on my fiction-reading spree with Code Name Verity.
CODE NAME VERITY, you guys. I want to write an actual review of it, except I'm not really coherent about it yet, because the last third pretty much gutted me.
I read about half of it on Thursday evening, and said "Well, this is good, and it is grim, but everyone promised me harrowing and I don't feel harrowed yet, and also I'm exhausted, so I'm going to sleep."
And then the next day I finished it, and by God was I harrowed. By the last bit I was putting the book down every few pages and hopping around the apartment, because I had too many feelings and couldn't sit still, and when I finished I hied myself to the library, through the rain, because I simply could not have the book in the house any longer.
Half an hour later I bundled Emma into the car, spent forty minutes detouring three times around construction, to buy a copy at Barnes and Nobles, which I promptly lent to her.
(This burst of generosity may get in the way of my epic Code Name Verity/I Capture the Castle post-war crossover fic. Epic, you guys. I have so many FEELINGS and they MUST BE CHANNELED.)
I both want and really do not want fix-it fic for Julie's death. On the one hand, as aforementioned, it gutted me; but it's so central to the story that it would be, in a sense, doing violence to the book to "fix" it.
So I don't want to fix it in that sense, but I want desperately future fic about Maddie, to see that she's - healed is not quite the right word, because I don't think it's the kind of thing you get all better from, or come to terms with. But I want her to get to a place where she can move forward, and where moving forward is something more than telling herself to "Fly the plane, Maddie."
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no subject
Date: 2012-10-29 12:41 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-10-29 01:10 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-10-29 03:25 am (UTC)But I wonder. I don't think Engel is entirely sympathetic, but I do find her really interesting (in part because Julie's description of her is clearly unreliable, but I'm not sure her own presentation of herself to Maddie is more reliable). Someone requested Engel fic for YT this year, and I am crossing my fingers.
no subject
Date: 2012-10-29 03:24 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-10-29 03:33 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-10-29 01:08 am (UTC)I know what you mean about fix-it fic. On one hand, I want to see what someone would do with that? But on the other, how do you fix-it? How is that possible?
Ugh that last 1/3 of the book, I just - seriously, I was reading through coursing tears as I tried to tell myself it'd be okay someday.
no subject
Date: 2012-10-29 03:22 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-10-29 02:15 am (UTC)I requested CNV for Yuletide and aaah I want it so much. I also want and don't-want fixit, and I want more Maddie. I know a lot of people are really intrigued by Anna, but... I don't know, maybe because of where I'm at in my life, I can't find it in me to be deeply interested in people who do awful stuff for a living.
no subject
Date: 2012-10-29 03:30 am (UTC)I can understand intellectually the interest in Anna fic, because she is a puzzling character; but I don't feel anything like the need for it that I do for more fic about Maddie, or Julie & Maddie fic from the early days of the war.
no subject
Date: 2012-10-29 03:35 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-10-31 01:37 am (UTC)I'm slightly terrified of the idea of Code Name Verity fanfiction set after the story - because if healing comes too easily, it undermines everything which has gone before, and the other extreme would be for it to be grim and harrowing (especially as the book ends before the war does) and I don't know that I could cope with more of that.
But crossover fic with I Capture the Castle I would read!
no subject
Date: 2012-10-31 01:41 pm (UTC)Yes, I think that's a difficulty with any CNV fanfic. My thinking is that I'll set the story a couple years after the war - Cassandra is getting flying lessons - because that will have given Maddie enough time for the pain to be less insistently awful.