“The old magic persists thanks to it’s unfathomable power.”
No, the old magic persists because the new magic can’t run the legacy spells I need to do my job, and keeps trying to install spirits I don’t want or need onto my orb.
Look, if the new magic didn't have a personality construct that kept trying to tell me which spells to use, maybe I wouldn't still be using the old magic.
You try to get guidance for the new magic and the king's sorcerers maybe will answer you in a few days with an unhelpful suggestion to buy the newest orb.
You need guidance for the old magic and a dozen retired middle-aged wizards will pop up to explain it to you rune by rune if necessary.
Now obviously the hard part of launching a land invasion of Heaven will figuring out where they hid the hole. Finding the miniscule aperture, the hole in physical reality to which all souls are translocated at the moment of death, and then jamming something sturdy in there, getting it in reallll good and working it around until it's big enough to fit some guys with guns through. But the nice part is that the nature of Heaven means that, one, not many people get in in the first place, and two, none of them are good at fighting, because people who're good at fighting mostly don't go to heaven. Except us, when we find the hole. The point is that once we're in there's not much they're gonna be able to do. Pretty much we'll have free run of the place
I threw together a little rec list for fans of Murderbot :)
This is aimed at fans of the novellas and the TV show and I tried to capture various different elements of the story and characters.
Text of slides below the cut
The Tea Master and the Detective by Aliette de Bodard
Adult science fiction novella
Imagine Sherlock and Watson if Watson was a sentient, traumatized spaceship and Sherlock was a human detective investigating a murder
Faster-than-light travel, deep space unreality, mind-altering herbal teas
Spaceship POV
The spaceship really enjoys reading/watching period dramas
Vietnamese-inspired sci fi setting
No romance
One Day All This Will Be Yours by Adrian Tchaikovsky
Adult science fiction novella
The grumpy last survivor of a catastrophic time war lives a solitary life…until other time travellers try to disrupt his carefully curated retirement
The main character has a pet dinosaur
Darkly funny, misanthropic narrator
If you liked Murderbot’s first-person POV in the books, you’ll probably enjoy the narrative voice of this novella
The Butterfly Assassin by Finn Longman
Young adult dystopian thriller set in a walled city ruled by assassin guilds
Isabel Ryans is a former child assassin and the daughter of a notorious scientist
Wanting nothing more than to live a normal life, she escapes and assumes a civilian identity…but finds her past and her assassin training harder to leave behind than she’d hoped
“Raised as weapon” character grappling with violence, morality, and friendship
Aromantic asexual main character with PTSD and severe hand scarring
No romance
The Wolf Among the Wild Hunt by Merc Fenn Wolfmooor
Adult dark fantasy novella
Scythulf, a wolf shapeshifter, was raised to be nothing more than a pit fighter until he’s rescued by Brennus, a knight who offers him a new life
When Scythulf accidentally kills a corrupted nun, his only chance at redemption is to run with the Wild Hunt, a trial of blood and courage
“Raised to be a weapon” protagonist; aspec rep; strong platonic bonds
Aroace protagonist; aroace nonbinary queerplatonic partner, queernorm fantasy world
No romance
The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet by Becky Chambers
Adult science fiction novel
A motley spaceship crew finds adventure and friendship on their voyages through the universe
Episodic storytelling and found family dynamics
Interesting alien characters and cultures
Queer characters + F/F relationship
Cursebreakers by Madeleine Nakamura
Adult fantasy novel
Adrien Desfourneax, a disgraced physician turned professor of magic, finds himself investigating a dangerous curse while grappling with his own mental health and a dangerous ally
Gay main character with bipolar disorder; autistic-coded side character
If you love rotating TV!Gurathin in your mind, you will probably find Adrien a very interesting character
Archivist Wasp by Nicole Kornher-Stace
Young adult fantasy/dystopia
A young ghost hunter joins forces with the ghost of a supersoldier to traverse the underworld in search of the lost ghost of his partner and answers about their post-apocalyptic world
Characters shaped by ruthless dystopian worlds learning to claim their autonomy and identity
Strong M/F friendships that don’t turn into romance
Aroace-coded main character + no romance
Hullmetal Girls by Emily Skrutskie
YA science fiction novel
Hundreds of years in the future, the last survivors of the human race travel through space in a fleet of ships, searching for a new habitable planet to settle
When two girls join the order of cyborg soldiers who keep order in the fleet, they find themselves questioning their loyalties as violence brews
Explores bodily autonomy and privacy through sci fi elements
Main characters of color + ace main character
No romance
The Outside by Ada Hoffman
Adult science fiction novel
Cosmic horror x space opera
In a galaxy ruled by AI gods and their ruthless cyborg-angels, young prodigy scientist Yasira develops new technology that could change the trajectory of humanity–until her work backfires and is declared heretical
Offered her life in exchange for hunting down her vanished heretical mentor, Yasira must decide who to trust as her world’s fate hangs in the balance
Autistic lesbian main character of color
Redshirts by John Scalzi
Adult satirical science fiction novel
Ensign Andrew Dahl is excited for his new position on board the the starship Intrepid…until he begins to realize there’s a mysterious pattern of low-level ensigns like himself dramatically dying on missions…and the reason why might reshape his very understanding of reality
For the enjoyers of the TV’s take on Sanctuary Moon being a Star Trek parody
The Stardust Grail by Yume Kitasei
Adult science fiction novel
Anti-colonial space heist
Maya Hoshimoto, an art thief turned grad student, finds herself pulled into one last job to retrieve an artifact that could save an alien species–and possibly doom humanity
Alien-human friendships, explorations of sentience and consciousness
Japanese diaspora main character with chronic migraines
Of Monsters and Mainframes by Barbara Truelove
Adult science fiction inspired by classic horror stories
Demeter is a spaceship that transports humans across galaxies–except her passengers keep dying in mysterious paranormal murders
To prevent herself from being decommissioned, Demeter must track down the ultimate evil behind her passengers’ deaths: Dracula
In a near-future dystopian America, salvager Valentine runs odd jobs in the wastelands of Utah in hopes of earning enough for the gender-affirming care he desperately needs
When he encounters Osric, an AI forced into an android body, he’s offered a job that could pay him everything he needs–but at the cost of his own morals
Explores sentience and autonomy through a science fiction lense
Android/human romance
Gay, trans man main character with ADHD; gay main character
Bluebird by Ciel Pierlot
Adult science fiction novel
In a galaxy ruled by three warring rival factions, gunslinging inventor-turned-thief Rig has abandoned her former faction and is happy as a rebel–until her former faction ransoms her twin sister for what she stole from them
Alongside her librarian girlfriend, a mysterious bounty hunter, and a network of resistance contacts, Rig embarks on a journey across the galaxy to save her sister–and maybe tear down the factions for good
Rip-roaring romp of a sci fi story full of action
Alien protagonists
Lesbian main character; amputee representation
Emergent Properties by Aimee Ogden
Adult science fiction novella
Scorn is a state-of-the-art AI investigator who becomes entangled in brewing corporate warfare
When Scorn wakes up one day day on the moon with no memory of zir past ten days, ze begins a hunt into zir own past that leads them to uncover far more explosive truths than ze could have expected
A quick little update to my Fandom Permission Statements post, which asks authors to put a permission statement in their ao3 bio!
It makes sense that podficcers aren't allowed to post works without being given permission onto ao3, but DID YOU KNOW that this counts for Anonymous and orphaned works as well?
So here's my new plea to authors: if you anonymize or orphan your work, and you're okay with it being podficced:
Please put blanket permission for podfic in the author's notes before orphaning or anonymizing!
i LOVE the idea of "i can't win, but you can lose" in fictional confrontations it is SO fucking tasty. the human nature to self destruct and the human nature to survive by any means necessary combined at its finest.
kai and bashasa interacting in the chapter where kai reallllly wants to kill the doyen is truly the epitome of cat threatening to knock something off the bench vs tired human with a spray bottle.
kai, nodding along wisely to a plan: and then i kill the--
bashasa: [spritzing him] kai. you cannot kill the doyen.
Essek betrayed his country for his family and Caleb betrayed his family for his country and both were nearly destroyed by the weight of their actions name a better narrative foil duo
I just would like to thank everyone who ever reblogs this so that it somehow ends up back on my dash because I usually need the reminder (especially the drinking water one)
The bimbo feminism girls who love Legally Blonde really missed like the whole point of the movie. The point is that she's not a brainless bimbo. She saves the day with her knowledge of haircare, sure, but she got in the room by going to law school. You cannot reduce that movie down to "Girl knowledge saves the day!" because the perm wouldn't have mattered if she hadn't spent the entire rest of the movie working her ass off in an unrelated field. The feminist angle is that she can have girly interests and also be smart, not that having girly interests is feminist in itself
I think it's also worth adding that the main reason Elle is so effective is because she's sweet to everyone and finds ways to connect with people. She's not sitting around judging other women for knowing less about beauty than she does. So if you're making tiktoks about being That Girl or snarking at other girls, you did NOT learn your lesson from Elle Woods.
Pretty sure that would mean the fellas drink tree sap or something. Imagine running from a vampire thru the woods and passing her husband who’s biting a tree real hard
The wife has the classic Villain Of The Night aesthetic, all black, flowing cape, everything, and her husband is wearing red flannel, overalls, a beard, and is welding a log-splitting axe
This is the best representation of something I have been trying to explain to people for years!!!! Saving this to my phone so I can routinely pull it out when I need.
