shut up and let me see your jazz hands

Whoops. Been so busy with Irene here that I haven't had much time on the internet and didn't manage to get my reading post done on Wednesday or even on Thursday! Still, I had a lot to talk about this week and by next week will surely have forgotten, so I'd better do it now while I have a chance. :D

What are you currently reading?
Currently back to reading manga only, I guess? I'm about halfway through two different volumes, 7 Seeds 24 and Aozora Yell 11. Aozora Yell is one that I bought several months ago and it's just been sitting on my desk because I always go for my iphone instead of physical books. But since I'm not doing a book club book this round, I thought I would try and read some physical books (both prose and manga) that I have sitting around, as I really like the idea of using the book club to read non-ebooks.

I forgot how much I love Aozora Yell. How could I have forgotten? It's just so, so, so cute. (If you're not familiar with the series, you may be familiar with the author from her other series, High School Debut, which actually did get an official English release. All her stuff is the same sweet/heartwarming kind of thing.) This volume starts Tsubasa's second year, so there are a bunch of new characters introduced as new first-years join the brass band.

Meanwhile in 7 Seeds, things continue to get more and more exciting. Really, I am just absolutely blown away by the most recent turn of events. How does Tamura-sensei manage to keep coming up with these awesome ideas?

What did you recently finish reading?
Well, on Sunday I finished Go by Kaneshiro Kazuki, exactly on the last day of that book club round, so perfect timing. :) Here's my book club questions for the end of the round:

1. Are you glad you've finally read this book? Would you read more books in this genre or by this author as a result? Would you recommend this book to others?

Very glad I finally read it! Like I said in my initial post, I watched the movie over ten years ago and bought the book soon after and it's just been sitting here ever since. XD Plus it's very good timing since I'm heading to Book Off next week and taking some stuff to sell and I can include this with my manga and CDs.

I don't think the author has really written a whole lot else, and the genre is just...modern fiction/literary fiction, I guess. Which is what I mostly read in Japanese anyway. I would recommend it to anyone who can read Japanese! It's both an interesting story and a good look at what it's like to be an ethnic minority in Japan.

2. What's your favourite quote or scene from the book? Alternatively, which is your least favourite, or the one that made you think the most, or the one that made you lose all patience with the book?
I don't really tend to think of books in terms of favorite scenes and least favorite scenes.

3. How did you enjoy reading to a deadline? Were you strict with yourself? Did you have a schedule? Was the book too long or too short for the time frame of the challenge?

This book was really the perfect length (a bit under 250 pages). If I were reading an ebook, I could do with something longer, but since this was a physical book, it meant that my two main reading times (in bed before going to sleep and on my lunch breaks at work) were times I was reading something other than the book club book. (I don't want to lug a physical book to work and I don't have a bedside lamp, so the only reading I can do is with something that has its own light like my phone.) By reading about twenty pages a day, I was able to keep on track while still being able to miss a day or two if I didn't have time to get to my reading. I didn't really have a set schedule, just tried to keep to about that number of pages each time.

In addition to my book club book, I also finally finished the fic I was reading for what felt like forever!

How the mouth changes its shape (132531 words) by breathedout
Chapters: 20/20
Fandom: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Underage
Relationships: Sherlock Holmes/John(nie) Watson, Sherlock Holmes/Victor(ia) Trevor, John(nie) Watson/OFC
Characters: Sherlock Holmes, John(nie) Watson, Victor(ia) Trevor, Sally Donovan, Original Characters, lots of them
Additional Tags: Genderswap, Alternate Universe - 1950s, Butch/Femme, Gender Issues, Gender Roles, Case Fic, bildungsroman, World War II
Summary: 1955. Under the placid veneer of suburban playparks and middle-class conformity churns a hidden London: femmes and butches dancing close in basement bars; clandestine love between women. To Sherlock Holmes, struggling private detective and mistress of disguise, it’s a realm she renounced years before. To Johnnie Watson, daredevil ambulance driver turned auto mechanic, it’s become a little too familiar. But when someone is murdered in the washroom of the city’s most notorious lesbian club, the investigation will lead both women to reconsider their assumptions about themselves, each other, and the world in which they live.

This was really good! I've not read anything this long in years and the length was definitely daunting, but I'm glad I gave it a chance. I definitely found Sherlock more likable as a woman (I'm sure that male!Sherlock is often written in a more likable way in fic than he is on the show, but here it was more that I didn't find the arrogance as off-putting in a female character vs a male character).

What do you think you'll read next?
I just realised I hadn't downloaded this week's Jump, so that for sure! But also in addition to Aozora Yell, I'd like to read at least one other volume of physical manga that I have here on my desk, maybe either Tegami Bachi 15 or Tera Girl 2. Also I would like to read one of the non-manga books on my shelf, something short that I can finish in the two weeks of the book club round, so that I'm ready to start fresh with a new book when the round I'm sitting out ends. A likely candidate is All I Asking for Is My Body by Milton Murayama, since it's only about a hundred pages long.

Last night I couldn't write up my post when I wanted to because AO3 was down and I needed to link a bunch of fic, and then when it was back up I was tired and didn't feel like it, so here we are.

What are you currently reading?
I'm currently reading Find a Temple, Build a Temple by eggjam, which is a pretty famous Homestuck Dirk/Jake fic that I gather people either love or hate. So far I am enjoying it.

The criticism I've seen has mainly been about how you can't really have good characterisation in an AU like this because Dirk and Jake have such unique circumstances and the events of Homestuck are so out there that just being two guys in a high school AU could never capture their personalities. Or that their relationship in canon is so tied up in being the only two guys in the world that again, just being two guys in high school isn't going to cut it.

But I tend to be pretty forgiving of characterisation, I guess? They don't not feel like Dirk and Jake to me, so idk.

What did you recently finish reading?
Mostly a lot of fanfic. I finished up reading the Kindaichi case I was in the middle of last week and then rather than reading more manga, I decided to check out some of the fic I had loaded up on my ipod. I think I read over ten fics this past week, many of which were in the "long for me" range.

( Five recs in Harry Potter, SGA, and Sherlock Holmes )

What do you think you'll read next?
More fic, almost certainly. I've loaded up all the rest of the fic I had in itunes onto my phone (I don't keep all my books on my phone because ibooks is not good for sorting, so I try to keep just twenty or thirty things that I think I might want to read in the near future), which includes a lot more busaikko (mainly SGA, I think), as well as some random other fics I've downloaded along the way. I should also go back and poke at Yuletide, I suppose, now that I'm in a fic-reading mood.

What are you currently reading?
Kindaichi again, of course. :) I'm currently on vol. 19, so I'm getting close to the end of the original series. (I plan on reading the second series, too, though probably not any of the newer ones after that, since it's only been a few years since I read them.)

I'm also reading a book! I mentioned this book either last week or the week before as something I'd checked out from the library, and then I just let it sit there and suddenly realised a couple days ago that, oops, I'd better actually read it or it was going to expire.

It's a young adult fantasy novel called The Twelve-Fingered Boy by John Hornor Jacobs. It's the first book in a trilogy, natch, since no one can ever write a stand-alone book anymore, and apparently just came out last month (which I guess was why it was on the first page of the library's ebooks list when I was browsing), so if I end up wanting to read the rest, there will be a wait, boo.

I've only read the first few chapters so far, but it's okay? I'm not in love with it, but I didn't really expect to be.

What did you recently finish reading?
Aside from the Kindaichi case I was reading last week, I also read volume one of a new manga series called Kono Oto Tomare, which is an adorable series about a high school koto club.

I also read this week's Jump, which was only Bleach and World Trigger, since Naruto and One Piece were off. Iiinteresting developments in Bleach. I'm enjoying this flashback a lot.

I also read a fic!

hey there bright-eyed mister melancholy (2338 words) by attentionmerrymakers
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Homestuck
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Author Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Relationships: Dave Strider/Karkat Vantas
Characters: Dave Strider, Karkat Vantas, Rose Lalonde, Terezi Pyrope
Summary: This is why you are sitting in Can Town making your fifty-sixth scale replica of a sheep.

This was super adorkable! I never gave much thought to Dave/Karkat before, but their interaction in recent updates has just been too cute. Speakercrab!

What do you think you'll read next?
Well, I have six days left on that library book, so hopefully I will finish that up. I also have a few more Dave/Karkat fics I want to check out, and of course there's always more Kindaichi.

What are you currently reading?
Oh dear. It's Kindaichi again. So much for reading something else so I had something else to talk about when I did the meme next. :p I can't help it, though! It seems to be what I'm in the mood for, since this time I didn't even have the excuse of the volume ending in the middle of a mystery. Volume 7 wrapped up a mystery and yet I still went right on to vol. 8. ^_^;;

What did you recently finish reading?
I did actually take a break for a while to read some fic, though, so I do have something a little different to talk about! As I mentioned last week, I had loaded a bunch of Adventure Time Yuletide fics on my ipod and was hoping to get to those. Well, I read four of them and I'm not sure if Adventure Time fic is just not for me or if these fics aren't for me. (It's one of those fandoms where I really want the tone of the original and I don't think that's always easy to capture.)

This was my favorite of the ones I read, though, and while I don't really have anything to say about it, you should definitely consider this a rec.

Princesses All The Way Down (1914 words) by Wilde_Shade
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Adventure Time
Rating: General Audiences
Warning: Author Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Relationships: Marceline/Princess Bubblegum
Characters: Marceline (Adventure Time), Princess Bubblegum, Ice King
Summary: Living forever changes some things more than it does others.

What do you think you'll read next?
Realistically, more Kindaichi. :p

First off, here's a couple non-Yuletide fics in these two fandoms that I read a while back and never got around to posting:

( 1 each for Gravity Falls and ParaNorman )

And now for Yuletide. I really had high hopes for these fandoms, especially Gravity Falls, since a lot of people requested it, but there were only a handful of fics. :(

( 4 Gravity Falls and 2 ParaNorman )

Wow, I totally assumed the two Sky Captain fics of mine that were remixed were by the same person, but apparently two totally different people were interested in remixing Sky Captain! Anyway, I haven't read any other remixes than the ones written for me, but I do have a bunch of other reviews piling up, so I figured I'd post them all.

( Remix reviews: Sky Captain, Harry Potter, Supernatural )

( Non-Remix reviews: Korra, Homestuck, LotRiPS, New Girl, SGA )

Elementary Murder Mystery Analysis (3618 words) by jibrailis Rec
Fandom: Community
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warning: No Archive Warnings Apply
Characters: Abed Nadir, Troy Barnes, Britta Perry, Jeff Winger, Shirley Bennett, Pierce Hawthorne, Annie Edison
Summary: "It's come to my attention," says Pierce, "that Jeff is dead." (But Sherlock Abed is born).

Good character voices. I enjoyed this.

Clocks Are Dumb Anyway (1183 words) by gertie_flirty Rec
Fandom: Hark! A Vagrant
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warning: No Archive Warnings Apply
Characters: Nancy Drew, Ned Nickerson, Bess Marvin, George Fayne, Frank Hardy
Summary: Nancy Drew reflects on her old cases. And also fails to fix a clock, but nobody cares about that part.

This was really funny. I love how the lack of punctuation in dialogue makes it read more like the comics. I was head-scratchy about George randomly being a dude. Someone in comments assumed that it was the author deliberately adding a bizarre twist, which could be the case, but my first reaction was "wtf have you never actually read Nancy Drew?" So idk. XD Regardless, the story is hilarious and I love Beaton's Nancy so much.

Mystery Solving Teens Confirm the Obvious (1304 words) by Bow
Fandom: Hark! A Vagrant
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warning: No Archive Warnings Apply
Characters: Mystery Solving Teens, Nancy Drew, Vanessa (Hark! A Vagrant), St. Francis, Birds (Hark! A Vagrant), Foul-mouthed Duck
Summary: The Mystery Solving Teens land their highest-profile assignment yet. Will they crack the case...or fail to care entirely? The Shit Talker--the high school's most illustrious student newspaper--reports from the scene.

I loved the addition of the "aw yiss" duck and St. Francis (I never read headers, so I didn't even know they'd be in it until they appeared, so it was a fun surprise). I'm not too interested in Mystery Solving Teens at the moment and was mainly reading this for Nancy, who was funny when she appeared (especially her confession! XD) but was not as big a part of it as I'd hoped.

Tool Time with Ron Swanson (1185 words) by katsumeragi
Fandom: Parks and Recreation
Rating: General Audiences
Warning: Author Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Relationships: Ron Swanson/Chris Traeger
Characters: Ron Swanson, Chris Traeger
Summary: Chris finds a way to break his coffee table and Ron takes it upon himself to teach him lessons of craftsmanship, Swanson family traditions, and to stop buying things from the Swedes.

Good Chris and Ron voices, but apparently it doesn't really feel like Parks & Rec to me without reaction shots and people talking to the camera. :-/ Still cute and funny, though.

Red Letter Day (7678 words) by shinealightonme
Fandom: Parks and Recreation
Rating: General Audiences
Warning: No Archive Warnings Apply
Characters: Ann Perkins, Leslie Knope, April Ludgate, Andy Dwyer, Ron Swanson, Ben Wyatt, Tom Haverford
Summary: Eight holidays Ann Perkins survived thanks to (or in spite of) the Pawnee Parks and Recreation Department.

Cute, but uneven. It seems I'm very picky with this fandom. :-/

0.0109% of the Way to the Moon (2806 words) by myrifique
Fandom: Parks and Recreation
Rating: General Audiences
Warning: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Leslie Knope & Ann Perkins
Characters: Leslie Knope, Ann Perkins
Summary: How Leslie and Ann single-handedly made "being healthy in Pawnee" awesome. Or possible, at least.

Also cute. Leslie and Ann, yay. :)

I'm going to have some Yuletide reviews coming up soon, so I figured I'd get these old non-Yuletide ones off my harddrive (although one is actually from last year's Yuletide that I never got around to reading until a couple months ago).

20th Century Boys
21st Century Girls by springgreen
9400 words. Because girl groups, childhood games, henshin pens, secret passwords, and shoujo manga can save the world. "There was something about the pen encircled by the ring, something that reminded her of summer days trying to keep her red bean popsicle from dripping over the manga she was reading, of lurking in the air-conditioned apartment and spying on the adults for reasons she had long since forgotten."

I was expecting to like this more than I did. I did like it, but I think the fact that it mirrored canon (which is what many of the commenters loved about it) is what made it not work as well for me, because I kept comparing it to canon, and it was lacking all the things that made the original so awesome for me. springgreen focuses on the nostalgia and childhood friends grown apart part of 20th Century Boys, which I certainly enjoyed, but the thing that made me all zomgwowbestmangaevar! was all the other stuff, which this only uses as background. And if it were a different type of story (there are plenty of other stories I'd love to see in this universe), that would not be a problem, but I kept feeling like, well, if it's going to be a female version of 20th Century Boys, then I want all the other stuff, too, and of course that would be a massive project that I wouldn't expect anyone to actually undertake, so there's just no way it could be what I found myself wanting. Also I might have liked it better if I hadn't read it right after reading the manga and having that fresh in my mind, idk. Anyway, I did enjoy it, and I'd recommend it to people who aren't me! It's well written and I don't think you really need to know canon to read it. (Also probably helps if you yourself share the nostalgia for the type of childhood she's writing about, which I don't. It's both past my time and I didn't play the way same way.)

The Avengers
Semaphore by devildoll Rec
39,000. Steve/Tony. "I'm trying to like you, Tony. You're just making it very hard."

I'm not terribly interested in this pairing, but I have really loved some other stuff by this author, so when I saw it mentioned on my flist, I decided to give it a chance. I was dubious at first because it involved breaking up Tony and Pepper for Tony and Steve, and I ship Tony/Pepper so hard I'd honestly rather they were not together at all than to break them up, but it was done well and I ended up really enjoying the story a lot.

Kimi ni Todoke
Meeting Halfway by highboys Rec
7300 words. Chizuru has a lot of secrets of her own. Most of it is about Ayane.

This is really sweet, just like the manga. And also angsty, in a way the manga really isn't quite, but in a way that still felt right for these characters (and I love angst, so). I really enjoyed it a lot.

Mulan
The Revised Ballad by SaltwaterGarden Rec
2700 words. The legend says that there was a girl whose name was Mu Lan, who disguised herself as a man, but his name is Zhou, and he took off the last disguise he ever wore when he cut his hair and bound his chest.

I found this totally by chance when updating the transfic master list (I actually followed a link to another of this author's fics and then found this one as well), and decided to read it since it was short. I'm only familiar with Mulan through cultural osmosis, but you don't really need any knowledge of the canon to read this.

Glee

Blessed Not Lucky by gloss Rec
900 words. PG. Mercedes/Quinn + Lauren. "A time to mourn/A time to cast away stones, a time to gather stones together"

Neat post-apocalyptic fic. I'm really curious about this world.

Son of a Preacher Man

Sweet Caroline by mjules Rec+
2600 words. G. A stomach full of fireflies, a house full of secrets.

Oh wow. *_* I would never have found this if not for going through the trans tag to find stuff for my master list, aince while I'm vaguely familiar with the song, it's not something I'd have otherwise clicked on, but I'm so glad I did because it was amazing.

Stargate: Atlantis

Dreaming I'm Alive by cesare Rec
21,000 words. When John is exposed to the Iratus retrovirus from "Conversion" again, the team bands to help. But there are some things John has to face alone.

This was written for sgareversebang and based on this really cool drawing by chkc. This is John/Rodney, but the story itself is mostly gen. I loved the alien species and the details about John's transformation.

Ugly Betty

Ugly Betty Season Five: New York, New York by yahtzee63 Rec+
Series. Takes off from canon during the show's penultimate episode, "The Past Presents The Future." Betty is about to leave New York for an exciting new life in London ... but fate has other plans. To Daniel's surprise, so does he.

This is the first "virtual season" of a show I've ever read, though I know it's a fairly common thing. Mainly I don't read gen that much, so I'm not as interested in it for other shows, but for Ugly Betty it's perfect. I had already read and loved one post-canon UB fic by this author, so when I happened across this virtual season five, I knew I had to read it. It is everything I could hope for in an Ugly Betty fic and really feels like it could actually be canon. All the wacky soap opera plot twists are here and so well done. One thing I really like about this series is that the whole season is not "will they or won't they?" Instead, once they realise they have feelings for each other, the problem is finding time to actually be together (and even that doesn't last the whole "season"). I love that Alexis is brought back, and also YOGA. My favorite minor character. And Yoga/Claire is strongly hinted at here, hopefully it will be more than hinted at by the end of the series.

Yes, that's the one drawback. This is still a WiP. There are currently twelve fics, over 150,000 words total, but it's not done (I'm guessing the author means it to be a twenty-ish episode season, as the show was). While the fics were originally being posted on an almost weekly basis, the last one was posted June 8th and the author seems to have discovered X-Men: First Class in the meantime, so I hope that doesn't mean they'll drop this. D: *crosses fingers* Anyway, I highly recommend it as-is, even if it never does get finished. But I have used the AO3 subscribe function (first time using it!), so I'll be notified when/if more is posted. (I hope eventually we'll be able to modify subscriptions so we can subscribe to just one fandom from an author, or one series/fic/tag/etc.)