I didn’t read much this month but What Did You Eat Yesterday is just delightful and I will happily wallow in it for days.

Copper script, KJ Charles
What did you eat yesterday, 5-21, Fumi Yoshinaga
Ordeal by innocence, Agatha Christie
The examiner, Janice Hallett
Artificial conditon, Martha Wells
Invisible boys, Holden Sheppard

Copper Script, KJ Charles. Post-WWI London, detective sergeant Aaron Fowler agrees to investigate someone who claims they can read people’s characters from their handwriting after his rather dodgy cousin is dumped by his fiancée on this evidence, and becomes hopelessly entangled with the graphologist, Wildsmith, as they fall in love and solve crimes. It’s perfectly competent but didn’t get me any deeper than superficial enjoyment at the progressive ticking off of plot and relationship beats. I wasn’t really in the mood for either a cop hero or graphology as for-real mindreading though.

What did you eat yesterday, 5-21. Fumi Yoshinaga. These have been stacking up on my shelves and I finally caught up with reading them all - I think 5-8 were re-reads and then it was all new. This slice-of-life domestic cooking manga follows closeted lawyer Shiro (who does most of the cooking and is obsessed with frugality with a side of fat-shaming, which didn’t bother me because it feels so internalised but other readers may differ) and his partner Kenji (cheerful gossipy hairdresser, gives great specific compliments on the food) and their social circle through in real time, so the characters start in their early forties and are now in their fifties. I just love the art and the observation and the food and the way Yoshinaga can do so much in just a few panels, and the fact that the time frame means that what conflicts and problems there are (such as Shiro’s parents allowing him to bring Kenji to one family New Year’s celebration but then telling him not to do it again) can play out over months or even years. It is definitely a different generation to She Loves to Cook and She Loves to Eat, in terms of expectations and identity, as well as broader cultural referents like social media, but I love them both. I have made a few recipes from this series and they’ve all turned out well, as well. I keep meaning to track down the TV series but I usually only watch about one TV series per year and unexpectedly this year it seems to be The Pitt, so that will have to wait.

Ordeal by Innocence, Agatha Christie. I’m not sure if I’ve read this one before. A man able to provide the person convicted of murder with an impeccable alibi finally shows up two years after the crime. The convicted suspect is dead, and the family and friends remaining are not at all grateful for this new information - not least because it means that one of them is the killer. The concept is great and as usual it's a well-handled mystery, although does stack up the bodies a bit (my parents used to watch this Scottish police drama called Taggart when I was small, and it usually became easier to work out who'd done it with each episode as more and more suspects turned up dead).

The Examiner, Janice Hallett. Another in her series of found document murder mysteries (a series in terms of format, not recurring characters), this one follows a group of students in their year at a multimedia art master’s program; as they await the approval of the final external examiner, it becomes apparent that one of them may have been murdered. This is very readable and it has some nice moments, plus I enjoyed the art masters concept, but it gets less likely as it progresses, one of the twists felt a little mean-spirited and the final revelations more contrived than inevitable.

Artificial Condition, Martha Wells. Will end up reviewing with the other Murderbots.

Invisible Boys, Holden Sheppard. Gay male teens struggling with their sexuality in small town western Australia; nothing goes particularly well. It’s well done for what it is but the female characters are short-changed and the three male narrators can be hard to distinguish at times. Reinforces my desire to stay in cities.

Favourite of the month was Runt, both book and film.

Looking glass sound, Catriona Ward.
Four thousand weeks, Oliver Burkeman
Old school, Gordon Korman
Game changer, Rachel Reid
Head of the lower school, Dorothea Moore
Bye forever I guess, Jodi Meadows
Traces of two pasts, Kazushige Nojima
Runt, Craig Silvey
Walking to Aldabaran, Adrian Tchaikovsky
The angel of the crows, Katherine Addison
Galatea, Madeleine Miller
Illegal contact, Santino Hassell
Women and children first: the fiction of two world wars, Mary Cadogan
How to draw a secret, Cindy Chang


Looking glass sound, Catriona Ward. Wilder goes back to the Maine coast he spent his childhood at to write the story of him and his friends and a serial killer, one teenage summer. The memoir he originally started writing at college was stolen by his mysterious roommate and published as a fictional success - this is his chance to finally set the record straight. But who is telling the truth? Evocative writing, great setting and effectively creepy but I am picky about twists and in the end this piled on one too many and I lost touch with the characters.

Four thousand weeks: time management for mortals, Oliver Burkeman. Friendly pep-talk by the Guardian column writer about not maximising productivity and instead doing more with your life by embracing finitude. My sister loves this; I liked it but did feel it went on a bit.

Old school, Gordon Korman. Dexter has lived in his grandmother’s retirement community since he was six, and been cheerfully homeschooled by her and the other residents; suddenly he has to attend school. Desperate to leave, he nevertheless can’t help intervening when he sees a few things that need fixing… Rotating pov, community-building; it’s fun, not a top-tier Korman but still enjoyable.

Game changer, Amy Aislin. I see I wrote “sappy, no tension, I have concerns about food safety” but not the author, who turned out to be a bit tricky to track down as there’s also a het sports romance with a baker called The Game Changer and if you search for m/m hockey it’s all Rachel Reid’s Game Changers series. This one has a hockey player in his last year with a chance at the NHL who employs a hot personal assistant who is trying to get a fledgling cake jar business going and is desperate for cash. See previous comments plus add a bit about lack of professionalism in employer/employee relationships.

Head of the lower school, Dorothea Moore. Girl from large poor family (father presumed dead in the war, am sure you can guess at least part of the ending) wins scholarship to prestigious school, whose pupils are largely appalled at the prospect of a scholarship girl from a council school. Moore is rather fond of action so this also involves a lot of hair-raising dashes through the fens, spies, floods etc, in addition to various japes at school. Joey makes a lot of mistakes, some of which ring truer than others (she overhears a cousin disdaining her presence and makes a rapid exit from her aunt’s house, intending to walk the six miles back to school and send a postcard later, rather than stay feeling unwanted) but her heart is obviously in the right place and she is also English (Joey starts the book in Scotland but this appears to be temporary), so she wastes no time in uncovering conspiracies, learning Morse, revealing spies etc. There is a cute Belgian refugée, an evil French-Swiss chemistry professor, and a bit where one of the teachers comes back to school after an illness and Joey remarks: “she might have died of that loathly ‘flu; lots of people have,” which actually struck me more than all the declarations of national pride.

Bye forever I guess, Jodi Meadows. RL and online identities collide - 13 year old Ingrid stands up to her dominating and exploitative “friend” Rachel, and is ostracised; at least she has her online BFF and fellow MMORPG player Lauren, and, following a wrong number text, a new online acquaintance, Traveler. But maybe Traveler is closer than she thinks… This is a solid portrayal of friendships and first crushes, on and off-line, and the tensions between them, and the fandom (Ingrid and Lauren have a favourite author, and get to meet her) and gaming bits are all well done.

Traces of two pasts, Kazushige Nojima. Backstory for Tifa and Aerith. I like the Midgar slums bits for Tifa more than the Nibelheim bits (Barrett with baby Marlene!), and the Aerith half is less compelling when it tries to expand on what’s already shown in the game (Aerith’s trial in the Temple of the Ancients in the game is about 50x more powerful than anything here.

Runt, Craig Silvey. I saw the movie first and it’s one of those rare cases where both are excellent. The movie is a very faithful adaption of this story in which Annie, a farm girl in an Australian town where drought and an evil water baron have jeopardised everyone’s livelihoods, adopts Runt, a stray dog who turns out to have a startling talent for competitive agility. It’s funny and touching and satisfying; has an older lesbian get-together (Annie’s widowed gran and the retired indigenous Australian champion agility trainer).

Walking to Aldabaran, Adrian Tchaikovsky. Astronaut lost inside a wormhole maze on an alien artefact survives - somehow. Nicely compact creepiness with a Beowulf homage that reminds me once again that I have never read the original.

The angel of the crows, Katherine Addison. “Sherlock Holmes wingfic meets Jack the Ripper,” I’ve written, and unfortunately the angel bits feel as stuck on as the wings. I know Addison’s read a lot about the Ripper but most of this is retelling Sherlock Holmes classics with the supernatural shoehorned in. I liked her Watson slightly more than her Holmes, but the more that got revealed the more I found holes in the background worldbuilding.

Galatea, Madeleine Miller. Short story, really, of the “men are bad, especially in Greek myth,” genus, but I liked it and it didn’t irk me the way her The Song of Achilles did.

Illegal contact, Santino Hassell. I was looking for non hockey sports m/m and the author’s name seemed vaguely familiar, so I tried this. Then I checked afterwards and discovered where I’d seen the name was the disclosure that Santino Hassell, supposed bisexual former addict single father with cancer, was actually a Texas housewife who exploited gay teens, using their stories/texts etc in her fiction, and now I’m not even going to bother to review this.

Women and children first: the fiction of two world wars, Mary Cadogan. Opinionated but reasonably thorough, although I think Cadogan loses patience more quickly when dealing with anything outside GO (girlsown) fiction. The book I most liked the sound of from this, Munition Mary (published 1918, girl joins WWI munition factory, I suspect she probably uncovers at least one German spy and saves someone heroically)

How to draw a secret, Cindy Chang. Middle grade autobiographical graphic novel (yup, I snitch these from my kids). Cindy, a keen artist, is not allowed to tell anyone her father has moved back to Taiwan from the US; then an unexpected trip back reveals why he left, and why her family is no longer perfect. Nicely done and good at managing emotions realistically (I was also relieved the secret wasn’t child abuse).

I really keep meaning to review more books. Here's January's. Standouts for this month were The Warm Hands of Ghosts, Safe Passage, and the latest volume of Dinosaur Sanctuary; for re-reads, Biggles Flies East and Strawberries for Dessert.

Dinosaur sanctuary 5, Itaru Kinoshita and Shin-ichi Fujiwara
The warm hands of ghosts, Katherine Arden
She loves to cook and she loves to eat 1, Sakaomi Yozaki
Goaltender interference, Ari Baran
Safe passage, Ida Cook
Winning his wings, Percy F Westerman
Biggles Flies East, W.E. Johns (re-read)
I survived the Nazi invasion of 1944 (graphic novel), Lauren Tarshis and Alvaro Sarraseca
Strawberries for dessert, Anne Sexton (re-read)
Fear, Hope and bread pudding, Anne Sexton (re-read)
The adventurous seven, Bessie Marchant
Migration, Steph Matuku
One perfect couple, Ruth Ware

The Warm Hands of Ghosts, Katherine Arden. I thought this WWI ghost story was fabulous and my only note is that it could really have used more lesbians. But it starts with a bang (literally - the Halifax explosion) and it's strong on grief and being haunted and the overlooking of women in war.

Goaltender Interference, Ari Baran. Second chance hockey romance. Baran is super weak on actually having characters fall in love, and this is no exception. Good on character interiority, minimal on plot. I’m going to need a strong reason to pick up another Baran but Home Ice Advantage would be my rec if you're looking.

Safe Passage, Ida Cook. Ida & her sister Louise were two middle-class English sisters just embarking on their working lives as civil service typists and clerks in the 1930s when they become obsessed with opera. They bought the cheapest tickets they could to see opera in London, queuing for hours outside Covent Garden, and then spent two years saving up to see one of their favourite singers in New York. Their dedication brought them into contact with the singers and musicians themselves, who became their friends - and who, as WWII crept closer, asked them to help get as many Jewish refugees as possible out of Germany and Austria. Which they did. They would fly out on Friday night, meet refugees and organise paperwork (there were very restrictive rules on who could come to the UK and what support/sponsors/funding they needed to get there) over the weekend, fly back from a different port on the Sunday (often smuggling jewellery, so the refugees could have funds when they arrived - there’s a great bit where Ida pins this incredibly ostentatious diamond brooch to her faded cardigan, trusting that it will look like paste jewellery to any guards), and be back at work on Monday morning.

In addition to being dangerous, this cost far more than the sisters earned from their admin jobs - but in 1936 Ida published her first romance novel for the new Mills and Boon imprint, as Mary Burchell, and it did extremely well. She ended up publishing 112 romances, and, until WWII actually started and she and Louise had to stop, spent almost all her money saving refugees.

The book does have rather a lot of opera, which I don’t like at all, but I do like Ida’s enthusiasm and her everyday morality approach to what she and her sister do, and it’s also very readable (it's also published as The Bravest Voices.

Strawberries for Dessert, Anne Sexton (re-read). I still love this m/m uptight semi-closeted/openly camp romance a lot and I still find the sequel so annoyingly off-key (why? why include the father of one character as a pov and shove in a het romance plot line) but I read it anyway.

Fear, Hope and Bread Pudding, Anne Sexton (re-read). See above.

The Adventurous Seven, Bessie Marchant. Seven children head out to Australia to meet their absent father and clear him of the wrongdoing that exiled him, but without any other plan for meeting him other than sending an optimistic letter to his last known address. What could possibly go wrong? Marchant wrote a number of enthusiastically international books without ever actually leaving England, and it does show.

Migration, Steph Matuku. Oh, I really wanted to like this more. Far future sf YA with Aotearoa/te reo/tikanga embedded throughout; privileged Farah escapes her domineering mother by enrolling at a military training wānanga which matches intuitives (who can see short distances into the future) with fighters, the stakes ramp up, her talents become unreliable etc. I never quite got behind Farah and I did feel that the story needed more space than it had; there’s a lot going on and the ending should have packed more of a punch. I liked her Flight of the Fantail better.

I survived the Nazi invasion of 1944 (graphic novel), Lauren Tarshis and Alvaro Sarraseca. In Poland, Max and Zena are forced into a ghetto; starving, they escape to the woods and end up in a safe camp with Jewish resistance fighters. Moderately nuanced.

Dinosaur Sanctuary 5, Itaru Kinoshita and Shin-ichi Fujiwara. I continue to love this obsessively detailed dinosaur theme park manga and would recommend it to anyone with even the vaguest interest in dinosaurs (or species conservation).

She Loves to Cook and She Loves to Eat, v1, Sakaomi Yozaki. Slowburn lesbian get together via food. The first volume is having to get through all the set up, which weakens it somewhat, but the characters are great from the beginning.

One Perfect Couple, Ruth Ware. Post-doc Lydia's employment woes means she takes her would-be actor boyfriend Nick up on his bid to be on a reality TV show that strands five couples on a tropical island - things, obviously, go wrong. I liked Nick's elimination but everything else about this was all too obvious, and I'm over abusive relationships as a twist reveal (not involving the MC).

The last two were for the WWI in children's books talk:

Winning his wings, Percy F Westerman. One of four boys' adventure books published by the astonishingly prolific Westerman in 1919 (he published 24(!) during the war itself). I read two Westermans for the talk and they both have cardboard honorable lean tanned handsome leads who tend towards clunky banter and unfunny japes while performing heroic deeds with no actual tension, plus a lot of undigested patriotism. What I found most interesting about this one was the description of special RAF tests Derek has to pass to be able to fly - he has to lift a wooden cube with a tuning fork balanced on it up and down three times blindfolded without dropping the fork, walk a narrow plank (blindfolded again) and then hold a brimming wine glass while someone unexpectly fires a pistol next to his ear without spilling a drop. I haven't seen any mention of this elsewhere and I do wonder how real these were (Westerman actually ended up as a Flying Corps instructor of navigation in the last few months of the war, so maybe? Westerman despite all his many flaws does actually do some research - the other one of his I read was about the NZ rifles and had a surprising amount of reasonably accurate NZ stuff, although I am not really convinced that our brave heroes yelled, "I'm from Timaru, but I'm not timorous!" while advancing on enemy lines).

Biggles Flies East, W.E. Johns (re-read). I read this in 2023 along with a bunch of other Biggles and failed to review it; it's fantastic and I love it a lot. Great hook, with an non - uniformed Biggles mistaken for a recently dishonorably discharged pilot at his club, and recruited as a spy, who takes on the job so he can be a double agent; also features the first appearance of Erich von Stalhein, Biggles' nemesis/life partner, who gets to be as equally capable and possibly even more devious than Biggles. Great action, great twists, a deeply enjoyable read. I do have more to say about WE Johns' books and how they portrayed WWI (unlike Westerman, he was writing after) but will post later.

Rilla of Ingleside
The Blythes are Quoted

The first Anne book I ever read was Anne of Ingleside (largely because it was the only one my mother had, although I did also possess an uncanny childish talent for starting at the wrong end of serieses, cf being handed a clutch of five Chalet books including School (#1) and starting instead with Redheads (#52), and although I did eventually go back and read the earlier ones in a more conventional fashion, I read Rilla relatively early and have always found it a favourite. At the beginning Rilla overhears a comment in the beginning about the years between 15 and 19 being the best in a girl’s life - which, as well as being a bit depressing in general, for Rilla, born with the century, means that these are the years of the Great War. Rilla goes through a lot during the book - adopting a war orphan, falling in love, losing a brother - and she does grow up, but Montgomery keeps her recognisable and believable to the last (lisp). But it's not just Rilla - Susan Baker, the Blythe family's housekeeper, has also resolved to be a heroine despite not being young and pretty, and she does achieve this (and gets a more satisfactory romance resolution into the bargain).

Montgomery started writing the book in 1919, and it does an excellent job of taking her established characters through the war, drawing on her own experience but always making it feel distinct to her fictional as well as the historical truths. It is fixed on the Canadian Home Front experience, rather than actually going to the Front (as Bruce and Turner do), and it is dense with detail. It is also dense with patriotism - the sole pacifist character is vilified - but I do think it is a more nuanced and examined treatment than in Bruce. Walter is genuinely reluctant to go to war, and it is not all jovial banter in the trenches (hence Susan needing to add a nit comb to her sewn-up package to Jem) or steadfast heroines at home - it is clear how much those at home cannot ever forget the dangers. Montgomery was a fervent supporter of the war effort in the early years, with her diaries showing how deeply she felt every piece of news, but this shifted - her husband, a Presbyterian minister, actually had a breakdown over having encouraged the young men of his congregation to sign up and die or be horribly scarred.

The Blythes are Quoted was only published in full in 2009, but it was delivered to Montgomery’s publishers on the day of her death (quite likely a suicide) in 1942. It reworks a clutch of short stories published elsewhere in order to add Blythe references, and strings them together with snippets of the family, as well as poems allegedly written by either Anne or Walter and read out lout to everyone. It is bitter and bleak about both wars, the past and the one it’s written during, and Anne ends up saying that she is thankful that Walter did not come back, and that his sacrifice was futile. It features Walter’s war poem, The Piper, (which in addition to being anodyne and simplistic, does not include the “break faith” bits quoted in Rilla), but concludes with a poem apparently written by Walter the night before he died, from the pov of a soldier who has just joyfully killed an enemy “boy”.

Montgomery herself was terrified that her younger son would be conscripted (the older was rejected for poor eyesight) and die in the war; he did serve, in the Navy, but survived. The Blythes are Quoted is an odd book, in both its structure and its preoccupations, but I think it’s interesting that Montgomery returned to her old characters to work though her concerns. She’d published Anne of Ingleside in 1939 - a domestic, cosy book, with a far more secure Anne (and an alive, if foreshadowed, Walter), but one of the things that’s always struck me about that book is an interchange between Anne and one of her young daughters with a new obsessive friendship, who demands whether Anne knows what it’s like to be hungry, really hungry. Anne replies that she was, often, in the orphanage before she came to Green Gables, and that she doesn’t like to think of those days now. But Montgomery hasn’t let Anne - or herself - forget them, and maybe that’s why she tried to use them as a shield or a warning for the war horrors closing around her.

I wrote two drabble treats for the Season of Drabbles Spring Round, both FFVII. I am working on at least three FFVII longer pieces and spinning my wheels a bit so it was helpful to actually finish something, omg - and I don't normally write this short! Also fun picking characters I haven't written before.

Gravity and Waggery (100 words) by Cyphomandra
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Final Fantasy VII Remake and Rebirth (Video Games 2020-2024), Compilation of Final Fantasy VII
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Reno/Rude (Compilation of FFVII)/Original Character(s)
Characters: Reno (Compilation of FFVII), Rude (Compilation of FFVII), Original Cat Character(s)
Additional Tags: Treat, Cats, cat hair is my favourite accessory
Summary:

Reno gets Rude a present.

Never Again (100 words) by Cyphomandra
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Compilation of Final Fantasy VII, Final Fantasy VII Remake and Rebirth (Video Games 2020-2024)
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Relationships: Jenova & Tifa Lockhart
Characters: Tifa Lockhart, Jenova (Compilation of FFVII), Sephiroth (Compilation of FFVII)
Additional Tags: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Girl Power, Drabble, Treat
Summary:

What if Tifa's attack in the Nibelheim reactor ended differently?

Finished Veilguard. Overall I enjoyed it but I don’t think I’ll play it again - there’s not enough grit there for me to want to try something different. I do think that having Solas as the main antagonist but then having you fight a completely different enemy for most of the game is a tricky set-up to pull off, and for me it felt more like stalling than a natural story development. I did however do all the sidequests etc and ended up platinuming the game as I only had to go back to unlock two altars and jump over a particular ledge.

Then I played The Outer Wilds, which I’d tried previously and given up on after dismally failing to pilot my spaceship. In some ways this is the total antithesis of Veilguard - in Veilguard you can do all the sidequests and pick the right dialogue options and unlock the secret ending and you save the world, yay!! In The Outer Wilds, you’re stuck in a 22 minute time loop, and the more you find out about what’s going on, the more you realise you can't "win". It is a fantastic game for evoking existential dread as well as having a lot of nerve-wracking game play - there was a bit where I was rapidly running out of oxygen while navigating a rapidly changing underground maze that was filling up with sand that managed to target a significant number of my personal terrifying scenarios - and haunting imagery. I am also now much better at piloting in zero gee but I still wouldn’t employ me to land anything expensive anytime soon. It was unnerving and frustrating and emotional, and I will go back to it (there’s a DLC but there are also other endings and things I didn’t find).

It is very much a puzzle game and it reminds me of playing Myst. However, I did use walkthroughs for bits of The Outer Wilds, because I am older and have less free time and also because the loop/gameplay mechanic meant it was often hard enough for me to get to the place where the puzzle was, whereas when I played Myst I was young and pre-children and I could leave my PC on an Age for months (in one case) before I finally solved the puzzle. I also ended up re-reading Ted Chiang’s The Story of Your Life while playing this for unrelated reasons, but actually it is very similar in feel.

I then played a tiny chunk of Stardew Valley because I haven’t seen all the new 1.6 update features (I play on mobile) and *then* I picked up Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, which is the new French turn-based RPG currently sweeping the internet, and it is indeed both very good and very French. You play as the members of Expedition 33, sent out to destroy a powerful malevolent being called the Paintress, who every year eradicates all people above a certain age, counting down from 100 (she has just killed off all the 34 year olds; you’re next). The combat has rhythm game elements and you can jump/dodge/parry during enemy attacks, but again timing is everything - successful dodges get you more actions and successful parries get a counter attack - and I’m enjoying it a lot. It looks great and it definitely feels French, from the city centre with all the memorial statues and the cafés with outside chairs and blackboards to the secret mini boss I have just defeated who is an evil mime (one of many!).

Joining the throng! I'm really enjoying what people have picked. My list is here.

For mine, I restricted it to novels (no manga, no fanfic, no comics, no picture books, no poetry, no short stories, no plays, no non fiction etc etc) and one book per author. Observant readers will notice that I've therefore decided My Family and Other Animals is fiction rather than memoir and I've also snuck in a 3 in 1 omnibus for Dragonlance Legends because that's how I read them. I had to add 8 books that weren't in the database and one of them is so obscure that I can't find an image of it on the internet, so I had to add my own photo (which isn't great; the dustjacket is long gone and the title is imprinted and not inked, so hard to read at the best of times).

Brazil published 11 books during the Great War, not all of which I was able to track down. The Girls of St Cyprians came out in 1914 and rather unfortunately not only has no war in it but ends with its musical heroine winning a three-year scholarship to the Berlin Conservatoire, which must have come as a bit of a clanger to its readers. The Jolliest Term on Record and The Luckiest Girl in the School have a few war references (patriotic societies and the need to save money, for example), but only two of the books I could find really felt like war books.

For the School Colours, 1918. This is a rather bitsy story (it wanders between protagonists and seems unsure whether it's mainly about school or a family action adventure). It starts with two schools being amalgamated, the Hawthorns (a day school) joining Silverside (boarders), and there’s a new girl, Avelyn, whose family property borders that of “a nauralised German”, the uncle by marriage of one of the other girls, Pamela, whose father died in the retreat from Mons. ( Fairly predictable spoilers. )

A Patriotic School Girl 1918. This is one of Brazil’s better books and I liked it a lot. As well as being more coherent, it has some fascinating character stuff and a lot of interesting ideas about war and individual loyalty. I am about to spoil it extensively though so feel free to read it here.

( Spoilers. )

I completely failed to do a recs post before reveals, partly because I read randomly through the collection on my phone without taking notes but mostly because I could not work out a way to gush about my gift and all my feelings about FFVII without making it look startlingly obvious that I was ignoring two of the three other FFVII fics in the collection, both of which I wrote :D There are many great non FFVII fics in there and I am still ploughing through.

My assignment - my recipient had all sorts of great prompts and pairings for FFVII, both OG and Remake/Rebirth. I dithered for a bit because Barret/Cloud is very appealing, but I really wanted to give Roche/Cloud a go, and I loved the idea of a bittersweet moment between them after Roche turns, so I went for that. I then dithered some more because I had the same block I had when writing for Dungeon Crawler Carl for Yuletide, namely a deep conviction that I could not get Roche’s distinctive voice right (likewise Donut), but eventually got over myself and had written most of the fic by deadline. I then dumped it all on the obliging but fandom-naive china_shop to fix all my unnecessary commas and convoluted sentences.

Running on Empty (3145 words) by Cyphomandra
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Final Fantasy VII Remake and Rebirth (Video Games 2020-2024)
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Roche & Cloud Strife, Roche/Cloud Strife
Characters: Roche (Compilation of FFVII), Cloud Strife, Sephiroth (Compilation of FFVII), Yuffie Kisaragi
Additional Tags: Missing Scene, Canon Compliant, Motorcycles, Angst
Summary:

Cloud and Roche, off-screen; from Junon to Nibelheim.

I’d been keeping an eye on the pinch hits, and an FFVII one that I’d liked the look of when signing up came back on the 11th of Feb as a post-deadline pinch hit. I had not quite finished my assignment but it was sooo tempting (Zack & Cloud! Recipient liked Cloud whump and dark fic and intense emotions) so I snaffled it. I had about 600 words written by the pinch hit deadline and then wrote another 9K in the next 2 & 1/2 days, omg. I finished it less than an hour before the collection opened. It got a very light beta from a friend but I will go back through it again once I have more distance.

Some Kind of Pain (9994 words) by Cyphomandra
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Final Fantasy VII Remake and Rebirth (Video Games 2020-2024)
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Cloud Strife & Zack Fair, Cloud Strife/Zack Fair
Characters: Cloud Strife, Zack Fair, Hojo (Compilation of FFVII)
Additional Tags: Hurt/Comfort, Angst, Medical Experimentation, Human Experimentation, Warning: Hojo (Compilation of FFVII), Cloud Strife Whump, Pre-Canon, Canon Compliant, pretty dark, Hurt No Comfort
Summary:

In the lab, after Nibelheim.

Well, my sense of humanity has gone down the drain
Behind every beautiful thing there's been some kind of pain
[..]
Sometimes my burden is more than I can bear
It's not dark yet, but it's gettin' there.

- Not Dark Yet, Bob Dylan

I did very little else over that weekend other than eat, sleep, and wrangle the children, but I did go and see A Complete Unknown, which is probably why I ended up with a Dylan song for the pinch-hit title (not, however, one that was in the film. Did I like the film? Yes - my mother is a massive Dylan fan so I grew up on a lot of the songs, and I thought the acting was great, but ultimately the title is all too appropriate and I don’t think I’d rewatch it). I have so much more to say about FFVII and have several thousand words already of Cloud & Zack escaping the lab but at least now I can do this in a slightly more relaxed manner. I am also tempted to do sequels for both gift fics.

And at reveals I discovered that my pinch hit recipient was also my gift fic author, which was just the cherry on top of a great exchange experience :D

Dear Confectioner,

Thanks so much for creating a bonbon for me! Really anything in these would be great, but here are some directions:

Writingwise: in general, I like humour, excitement, angst (if justified – not massive amounts of agonising over accidentally returning character X's library book before they finished it), food, moments of peace amongst activity, things that give me new thoughts about canon, and things that bring me back to feeling like I’m experiencing the canon again for the first time. I'm fine with ratings from G to Explicit. I like experimental formats - epistolary, IF,found documents etc.

Tropes: the classics, like sharing a bed, undercover as a couple, forced to seek refuge in a Canadian (equivalents accepted) shack etc, but also non-mundane AUs, like psychic wolf companions, daemons, or Sentinel-Guide. I don't usually like mundane AUs for canons with fantastic elements.

Artwise: I like a range of styles, from cartoon/chibi to black & white to photorealism. I tend to like art that focuses on the quieter moments in canon and gives characters a breathing space between dramatic events; I also like quirky interpretations that give me a new view on characters. I’m happy with explicit art as long as it’s tagged!

DNWs: child/animal death or child/animal sexual abuse. Omegaverse or trans headcanons. I have previously DNW’d earthquakes but am back to being okay with fictional natural disasters.

Compilation of Final Fantasy VII

Zack Fair/Cloud Strife
Sephiroth/Cloud Strife

My old fave, back again and still great. Pretty much anything goes with this; I love Cloud, I love how much he tries despite how messed up he is, and he deserves pretty much anything from fluff to angst to complete crack. I am always up for Zack & Cloud, pre-game or Nibelheim, sharing a moment or on a mission or trapped in the lab - Zack is such a great character. I am also up for Zack Lives AUs and I always like time travel.

With Sephiroth - really anything that leans into that obsessive relationship between the two of them, whether it's PWP or something more plotty. I am okay with dub con/non con for this pairing (it's hard to avoid!) and am certainly not requesting happy endings. Having said that, some of my favourite pre game fics have a stable, sane, Sephiroth, and I enjoy those even more because I know it's not going to last :D

For art - really I will just stare at all of them forever. Fight scenes! Uncomfortable meals together! Lost in the snow!

Final Fantasy VII Remake and Rebirth (Video Games 2020-2024)

Cloud Strife/Barret Wallace
Roche/Cloud Strife
Zack Fair/Cloud Strife
Zack Fair & Cloud Strife

Gosh I have no idea who my fave is :D Anyway, I love these games and their shiny, beautiful characters. Midgar looks amazing and the open world is gorgeous, and I just want more. I'd never really considered Barret/Cloud until Remake, but it's given him such heart and such depth of character, and I love how their initial anatagonism shifts over time. Roche is such a delightful goofball who ends up breaking my heart, and Zack - well, I've loved Zack for a long time and I cannot believe we get so much more of him, omg. Anything goes. Missing scenes, PWPs, goofy side quests, turning everyone into Moogles or toads, it's all great.

Miss Marple - Agatha Christie

Jane Marple & Lucy Eyelesbarrow (Marple - Christie)

The older I get the more I appreciate Miss Marple; both she and Lucy Eyelesbarrow are so firmly grounded in the domestic and feminine-coded side of life, and it's treated as such a strength rather than a limitation. Case fic would be fantastic but so would unexpected meetings and day-to-day activities - perhaps they meet at a theatre and critique the murder mystery they're being shown? Or an afternoon tea at a hotel, dissecting the lives of those around them? Or wildly AU, with robots or psychic companions? Enjoy!