Snowflake Challenge #3

[potentiality_26]

Create a wish list of fandom things (podfic, graphics, playlists, canon recs translations, research help, vids, sky's the limit!) that you'd like to receive. Post your answer to today’s challenge in your own space and leave a comment in this post saying you did it. Include a link to your post if you feel comfortable doing so.

Awk. This kind of thing is so hard.

1) Comments are always loved, especially on my fics, but anywhere really.

2) I watched Black Adam recently and I'm all about Carter/Kent. I've read almost everything up on AO3 so far, so if anyone can point me to content for that ship elsewhere, I would appreciate it. I crave trope-y romance fics above all, but links to graphics, tumblr gif sets, icons etc. would also be cool.

3) Along those lines, recs from the other fandoms in my interests are always appreciated.

4) Book recs please! Obviously I read plenty of fanfic, but reading more books is on my to-do list for the year and this might be a good way to get started. I love fantasy/horror/sci-fi, especially in historical settings and/or with LGBT+ content. The last book I read and really loved was The Priory of the Orange Tree. 

5) More tangentially fandom-related, but I've been playing around with some D&D worldbuilding stuff, and I dream of a non-magical Artificer. Does anyone have any favorite homebrew along those lines? Engineers/inventors are great too; I just like the name Artificer but find the actual class a bit of a let down.  
  

Comments

[wendelah1]

I don't have recs off the top of my head but I did run a discussion group of x-files fanfic for quite a few years. It's archived here. xf_book_club. The links were good at the time of the import but I haven't checked them in years. Old fandoms, man.

I asked my son who plays D&D for help with your need but he said he'd never played that type of character. Sorry I couldn't help.

[potentiality_26]

Thank you!

[sidleypkhermit]

I know what you mean about the artificer. I haven't seen any builds along those lines that I like either, but I'm gonna ask the nerds in the Boise TTRPG server if they have anything, since I'd be interested in the answers too.

Wish Granted!

[ysabetwordsmith]

>>4) Book recs please! <<

I've found a few recently with quite good worldbuilding.

Hunter by Mercedes Lackey
Long ago, the barriers between our world and the Otherworld were ripped open, and it’s taken centuries to bring back civilization in the wake of the catastrophe. Now, the luckiest Cits live in enclosed communities, behind walls that keep them safe from the hideous creatures fighting to break through. Others are not so lucky.
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/24397041-hunter

A Terrible Fall of Angels by Laurell K Hamilton
Meet Detective Zaniel Havelock, a man with the special ability to communicate directly with angels. A former trained Angel speaker, he devoted his life to serving both the celestial beings and his fellow humans with his gift, but a terrible betrayal compelled him to leave that life behind. Now he’s a cop who is still working on the side of angels.
https://www.laurellkhamilton.com/book_series/a-terrible-fall-of-angels/

And this one is still in my to-be-read pile because I just got it, but you have to see this just for the description:

River of Teeth by Sarah Gailey
In the early 20th Century, the United States government concocted a plan to import hippopotamuses into the marshlands of Louisiana to be bred and slaughtered as an alternative meat source. This is true.
Other true things about hippos: they are savage, they are fast, and their jaws can snap a man in two.
This was a terrible plan.
https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/31445891


>> 5) More tangentially fandom-related, but I've been playing around with some D&D worldbuilding stuff, and I dream of a non-magical Artificer. Does anyone have any favorite homebrew along those lines? Engineers/inventors are great too; I just like the name Artificer but find the actual class a bit of a let down. <<

For gaming: search Games on Kickstarter. They have tons of awesome stuff including add-ons for D&D or similar.

From my own stuff, you might like:

The Steamsmith
During the November 1, 2011 Poetry Fishbowl, Marina Bonomi introduced me to the character of Maryam Smith. This steampunk engineer is black and British, with a sharp mind and a good sense of humor.
Steampunk ... it's not just for white blokes anymore!
http://penultimateproductions.weebly.com/the-steamsmith.html

"Build with the Mind" is about a worldbuilding class. Scroll to the bottom and browse its extensive notes on worldbuilding projects and tools.

[potentiality_26]

Thank you! Let me know what you find out <3

Re: Wish Granted!

[potentiality_26]

Thanks!

[kiki_eng]

Book Recs:

The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms by N. K. Jemisin

Empire of Sand by Tasha Suri

Elatsoe by Darcie Little Badger

They're all fantasy or have fantasy elements and are also all by authors of colour. Suri and Little Badger are both queer. The first two books have a kind of historical vibe to their fantasy setting and the last one has a kind of urban fantasy feel to it and a queer main character.

It's been a while since I've read some of these, so my memory is not perfectly solid for descriptors, and I also feel like sometimes the less you've been told about a thing before checking it out for yourself the better. (Please enjoy/forgive the minimal descriptions. I think these might have the right vibe for you, with the historical and the fantasy and the queer and the horror.)

[potentiality_26]

Thank you, I will look into these!

[tsuki_no_bara]

a couple of oooold fanfic recs for firefly:
sea of no cares by poisontaster
On a world without stars, he took to the sea.
wash, pre-series.

and sleepy hollow:
the finger trap by donutsweeper
Sometimes Abbie feels like she's dealing with a toddler, not a grown man.
crane gets his fingers stuck in a paper finger trap and abbie has to free him. which if i remember right is kind of the show in a nutshell. :D

i'm 99.44% sure i have at least one historical fantasy (possibly not that queer tho) to rec but i can't for the life of me think of what it is. so annoying.

[hamsterwoman]

I love fantasy/horror/sci-fi, especially in historical settings and/or with LGBT+ content.

I was going to mention Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell, but see you are already a fan :) So here are a few others that occurred to me (both LGBT and various degrees of historical). Hopefully some of these will be new to you and thus useful :)

- Natasha Pulley, Watchmaker of Filigree Street -- that's the cover in my icon (and sequel, plus there is another book set in the same world but with different characters that I have not read). Victorian setting (England for first book, Japan for sequel), m/m, the fantasy element is low key and I won't spoil it, but there's also some steampunk flavor. Really lovely prose and characters I liked and found interesting. There are things about this book (and the sequel) that I find frustrating, but overall really worth reading.

-Lynes and Mathey series by Melissa Scott and Amy Griswold (Death by Silver and Death at the Dionyssus Club). Victorian London setting, m/m, the fantasy element is codified, appropriately Victorian magic which I like a lot. These books are also mysteries, which from your interests it sounds like you might enjoy. Mathey is a "metaphysician" (~wizard) and Lynes is a private detective (who reminds me slightly of Sherlock Holmes, that kind of brilliant-but-odd vibe), together they fight crime (and establish a relationship).

- Jordan L. Hawk's Whyborne and Griffin books -- OK, these are definitely not high literature, and more on the paranormal romance/erotica side than the others, but they're fun. Victorian-era America setting with Lovecraftian elements, m/m (there's a secondary f/f relationship, but it shows up much later), fantasy element is mastering magic and assorted eldritch horrors. There are 11 books (I think? I got through 9 myself and never caught up on the last two when published) starting with Widdershins.

[potentiality_26]

These sound really cool, thank you!

[potentiality_26]

Thank you!

[alexseanchai]

Here's "Rat-Catcher" by Seanan McGuire; if you like that story, there is so much more in the series. The actual best first-read order for October Daye is publication order, except that the novella first published as part of the Rosemary and Rue tenth anniversary edition should be read immediately after the novel itself. But "Rat-Catcher" is a short story and free on the internet and contains no spoilers for anything else, thus much more immediately accessible. And linking the internal chronological order is much more helpful at illustrating how much of this faerie noir series has a historical setting; for instance, "Rat-Catcher" is set in Shakespeare's London and in the parts of Faerie that connect most directly to Shakespeare's London. (For the record, it's Jill, not Lenet. The magazine doing the "Rat-Catcher" reprint got the wrong file, and McGuire hasn't convinced them to fix it yet.) There's also free downloads on McGuire's site of "Forbid the Sea" and "In Sea-Salt Tears", which establish Tybalt from "Rat-Catcher" and another very-prominent-all-series character, respectively, as queer, and contain no spoilers for anything else; if you read these two before reading the fifth novel, reread them after. (I think Annie's endgame long-term relationship is Annie/vacation, and I won't say who Tybalt's is though the blurb for free download number three says it; point is neither of these stories has a happy ending to the romance, but that's because selkies and because these are early in the reading order for a long-ass series, not because tragic gays, even though I do have to admit it looks a lot like tragic gays.)

McGuire also writes queer horror and queer mad science under the name Mira Grant. I can't rec any of that as I haven't read them, but I'm assured they're stellar examples of the genres.

Or, free short stories in the much shorter Rook and Rose series by M. A. Carrick, set in an alternate Renaissance-ish Venice. I need to reread these, I'm fuzzy on who all is queer, but I do remember that the worldbuilding establishes 'sunwise' and 'earthwise' as meaning clockwise and counterclockwise, then the narrative offhandedly mentions that a couple of characters are an earthwise woman and a sunwise man, and if one doesn't clock these as trans characters before one gets to the glossary at the end of the book, the glossary says point blank that's what those phrases mean.

[potentiality_26]

Thank you! These sound fun <3

[hannah]

The Golem and the Jinni is fantasy in the long-lost world of New York City's lower East side.

[potentiality_26]

Oooh, I've actually read that one. An excellent book <3

[nonesensed]

More comments on your fics definitely incoming from me! (when I have more reading time 😅)

If you haven't read it yet, I highly recommend Freya Marske's The Last Binding trilogy (first book: A Marvelous Light)) and A Taste of Gold and Iron by Alexandra Rowland 😊

Also 100% seconding kiki_eng's rec of The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms by N. K. Jemisin and Empire of Sand by Tasha Suri!!!

[potentiality_26]

Thank you! Will add those to my list!

[sidleypkhermit]

Not many responses from the braintrust; someone linked these Inventor and Tinkerer classes, which at a glance still kinda just feel like the WotC Artificer to me but may have some of the things you're looking for.

For a more maximalist approach, someone recommended a very interesting-looking whole-ass science-fantasy 5E-compatible sourcebook from the highly regarded Monte Cook Games.

They also suggested what was actually my first thought on your question: You could take the Artificer as it exists on paper and flavor its abilities to be more science-y and less magic-y. The artificer character that Richie Gilder's playing right now in the 5E sci-fi campaign Stardust Rhapsody is a cool example of this.

[potentiality_26]

That sourcebook looks awesome!

I like that Tinkerer class a lot; I think maybe using it as inspiration to reflavor the artificer is what will get me closest to what I want. I really like the subclasses of the artificer as is, I just want the backbone of the class to be, as you say, more science-y than magic-y.

I'll check out Stardust Rhapsody when I can. It looks cool, but my TTRPG watchlist is already crazy long lol.