Tales of a Meh Girl

Haven't done this one in a while. Following AO3, not the drabbles/ficlets only posted to DW. Also haven't written in a while, so most of these are a few years old.


Share the first and last lines of the last five stories you have posted to AO3.

The Fire and the Ember, Masters of the Air, Marge/Peggy

First: They didn't really need to climb in through Marge's bedroom window, it wasn't like her parents didn't know that Peggy was spending the weekend, but it was tradition at this point.

Last: She pressed her nose against the back of Marge's neck, and did just that.


A Fire in Arkansas, Band of Brothers, Johnny/Bull

First: Johnny figured that the old saw "smooth runs the water where the brook is deep" had been invented by someone who'd known Bull Randleman, but even he didn't expect what his corporal said as they sat in a meagre pool of shade half a mile out of Helena, Arkansas.

Last: He clapped Bull on the arm, Bull shoved him back, and they jogged forward towards the rising sun.


Natasha's Christmas Plans, Top Gun: Maverick, Natasha/Callie

First: "So here's the plan," Natasha said as she closed the hatch to the stateroom she shared with Callie.

Last: First chance she got, she was going to find some plastic mistletoe to tape to the bottom of her bunk, but for now they didn't need it.


Across the Waves, Across the Heather, Kidnapped! by RLS, Davie/Alan

First: Alan landed on the deck of the Covenant breathless and reeling, all those good men dead, and nearly himself as well.

Last: "Oh, I could kiss you!" Alan cried, and then did.


Every Time He Hears Their Voices (An End of the Affair Remix), Band of Brothers, Don/Skip/Alex

First: This is the moment Don has lived in since the tenth of January 1945: He's tucked back away from the line, catching a few minutes rest as he tries to choke down beans that half froze the instant Joe Domingo ladled them onto his plate.

Last: This is what does: all of the days after.

Content notes for suicide, self harm and grooming, on this one. I'd seen reference to this story, but hadn't realised how bad it was.

(The first of which I read in May, but it wasn't Hugo homework, so we're putting it here.)

Maybe this is a Story about Water by Jessica Wiebe Schafer
I posted one of these poems. Lovely collection reflecting on God, womanhood, family connections and connections to nature, and how they might all be the same. Local author I stumbled on in the library, which suggests I should randomly grab books from the library's poetry section more often. (Have I since done so? No, I have not!)


A Default World by Naomi Kanakia
Read this for queer book club, which I've been very bad at actually attending. Contemporary satire, I guess would be the easiest genre description.

A South-Asian trans woman ends up joining a San Francisco share house, which is full of bright young things, tech money, and hedonism. Our heroine is trying to figure out how to get someone to pay for the gender-affirming surgeries she desperately wants, but keeps getting sucked into whatever bullshit her housemates are on, namely planning a big kink party that's somehow for great justice.

Most of the book is about skewering the hypocrisies and double think embedded in the mostly white, mostly straight, mostly upper class twenty-somethings who want to think that their sex parties are going to bring about the liberation, but aren't really that interested in the day to day lives of actual real marginalised people. I would say this discordance is played up for effect, and that the space I've seen aren't quite that bad, but also SF is kind of its own beast, so I'd also believe it's not exaggerating reality. The core points certainly hit, though maybe got a little repetitive.

I had complicated feelings about the heroine, who loathes almost every other character almost as much as she loathes herself. It was admittedly difficult to spend that many pages with someone who's that crushed by dysphoria that much of the time. I did like how the book handled her getting sucked into the social scene, and how the tension kept ratcheting up in regards to whether she would make the moral choice or the self-interested one. I was very much rooting for her by the end, even if everyone in the book was kind of terrible.

Will keep an eye on this author.


The Ladies Road Guide to Utter Ruin by Alison Goodman
Grabbed this off the library's seven-day read shelf, not realising it was the second book in a series. I would, if possible, read them in order, as this is very much a serial adventure situation, with the action of the second book directly following on the first. However, it did explain the events of the first well enough to follow along with what was happening, and it was fun on its own.

A pair of spinster sisters in Regency London deal with a variety of crises events, including someone trying to kidnap their house guest, a gentleman's society maybe murdering women, one of their would-be lovers being a highwayman while the other's a Bow Street Runner, and various knock on effects of the previous book. It was fun! I wouldn't say there's a lot more to it than hijinks, though it seemed to be trying to take on serious topics, but I enjoyed the hijinks. There's a scene later on in the book where five or six groups with competing interests are chasing each other around the countryside in the dark, which I always love.

It ends on a slight cliffhanger setting up the next book, which I'm not that invested in, but might read on a rainy day.


Red Boar's Baby by Lauren Esker
This stands alone, more or less, but if you enjoyed the lore from the previous books, you'll see it again here! We get the return of the highly-motivated koala, which made me very happy.

This outing, we get a road runner who's a SAR pilot for the National Parks Service fake dating a wild boar who's running the local shifter police department. (If you're new to this genre, they're shape shifters who can turn into animals, but primarily have human forms. This is not Zootopia.) Together, they have to deal with a probably-kidnapped baby, the probable kidnappers, mad science, and there only being one bed. This series pretty much always hits for me, and as usual it balances the action adventure/mystery plot with the romantic tension, and doesn't base either on silly misunderstandings or anyone carrying the idiot ball. I really liked the backstory to how the fake dating started out, and the barriers to the main couple getting together felt real. They were very sweet together, which helped. Also, there's a fantastic action scene towards the end of the book, that really played with most of the characters involved being shape shifters, and we got a bunch of new lore.

Really enjoyed this, looking forward to the next one.

JUSTICE FOR MATEO! (Who was not mentioned in this book, which is why he needs justice.)