:D thank you for commenting! i'm excited to hear from someone who's been reading this stuff for longer, since this was just a total whim i stumbled into and i had no idea if anyone else had even read her stuff, haha
being bummed about Tuuri's death is totally legitimate. while i knew it was coming, i was pretty surprised it happened so *early*, narratively-speaking—i liked what effect it had on Lalli, but it could've have had even greater impact if it had happened much later, after we'd gotten to know her better. she really could've had a lot more happening in her own right! (except for the part where, it couldn't have happened too much later, since there only ended up being 2 adventures instead of the initial plan that sounded like maybe ~8 adventures?)
i actually just went to ao3, sorted SSSS by # of bookmarks, and skimmed the top few there! (this is my usual trick for diving into a new fandom—i think it gets a little better results than sorting by kudos—though it will still be a bit skewed. still, totally good for quick sampling) the one with sigrun i liked is this one :) (i'm definitely planning to dig in more over the next few weeks; let me know if you find anything yourself!)
Dark Lord of Derkholm is an odd one because (1) i read it in my young teens, (2) i had NO IDEA who this dianna wynne jones person was, and (3) i don’t think it’d entirely clicked for me yet that books could be… funny? (i know that sounds weird but i mostly read edgelord stuff in my early teens, lol)
so it’s been a while, but from what i remember, it took me a while to pick up “oh this is supposed to be kind of goofy/parody,” and even once that part clicked for me i was still kind of confused because it seemed to be taking its premise really seriously at times, so i couldn’t quite tell what level of seriousness i was supposed to be treating things with (and that all could just be teen-me being bad at reading comprehension or whatever)… but then there’s this one scene that’s blink-and-you’ll-miss-it, but there's a scene where one of the female protags is definitely implied to have been gang raped (or some kind of group sexual assault?), and she's super-traumatized in the aftermath, and then a dragon sort of does a mind-magic thing to make her feel less traumatized, and then… that's it! new chapter, and it’s back to D&D shenanigans on the next page (???)
so yeah, everything before that was merely "meh" but that one part really threw me. not because i’m generally triggered by that sort of thing, but because it was so weird to switch so quickly from “oh shit what the fuck” back to hijinks that i was like, ok i can’t figure out what this is doing, i’m gonna finish this book because i’m a completionist but i’m not a fan lol
then an entire decade later i FINALLY read Howl’s Moving Castle and was like, ok, Derkholm just clearly was her having an off day, this person DOES know how to write, lol. but i actually haven’t ventured very far past that! i really should read more of her stuff someday, just so many books and so little time, ALAS
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Re: Tuuri, SSSS fanfic, Dark Lord of Derkholm etc
Date: 2022-12-13 09:37 am (UTC)being bummed about Tuuri's death is totally legitimate. while i knew it was coming, i was pretty surprised it happened so *early*, narratively-speaking—i liked what effect it had on Lalli, but it could've have had even greater impact if it had happened much later, after we'd gotten to know her better. she really could've had a lot more happening in her own right! (except for the part where, it couldn't have happened too much later, since there only ended up being 2 adventures instead of the initial plan that sounded like maybe ~8 adventures?)
i actually just went to ao3, sorted SSSS by # of bookmarks, and skimmed the top few there! (this is my usual trick for diving into a new fandom—i think it gets a little better results than sorting by kudos—though it will still be a bit skewed. still, totally good for quick sampling) the one with sigrun i liked is this one :) (i'm definitely planning to dig in more over the next few weeks; let me know if you find anything yourself!)
Dark Lord of Derkholm is an odd one because (1) i read it in my young teens, (2) i had NO IDEA who this dianna wynne jones person was, and (3) i don’t think it’d entirely clicked for me yet that books could be… funny? (i know that sounds weird but i mostly read edgelord stuff in my early teens, lol)
so it’s been a while, but from what i remember, it took me a while to pick up “oh this is supposed to be kind of goofy/parody,” and even once that part clicked for me i was still kind of confused because it seemed to be taking its premise really seriously at times, so i couldn’t quite tell what level of seriousness i was supposed to be treating things with (and that all could just be teen-me being bad at reading comprehension or whatever)… but then there’s this one scene that’s blink-and-you’ll-miss-it, but there's a scene where one of the female protags is definitely implied to have been gang raped (or some kind of group sexual assault?), and she's super-traumatized in the aftermath, and then a dragon sort of does a mind-magic thing to make her feel less traumatized, and then… that's it! new chapter, and it’s back to D&D shenanigans on the next page (???)
so yeah, everything before that was merely "meh" but that one part really threw me. not because i’m generally triggered by that sort of thing, but because it was so weird to switch so quickly from “oh shit what the fuck” back to hijinks that i was like, ok i can’t figure out what this is doing, i’m gonna finish this book because i’m a completionist but i’m not a fan lol
then an entire decade later i FINALLY read Howl’s Moving Castle and was like, ok, Derkholm just clearly was her having an off day, this person DOES know how to write, lol. but i actually haven’t ventured very far past that! i really should read more of her stuff someday, just so many books and so little time, ALAS