9am saturday morning: “i’ve got the whole day, i’m gonna get so much done”
1pm saturday afternoon: still in my pajamas, on my 4th cup of coffee, deep in thought about generic subversion, censorship, and post-colonialism in 2000 animated gay romance “the road to el dorado”
Oh, but what about the utter joy of being master/ mistress of your time, of taking a nap, and looking out of the window and sucking your pencil and woolgathering? (A glass of something that contains alcohol is also welcome. Also a yellow peach).
Another fic writer in my other fandom wrote a “guide to their own fic” where she sass-described all the different works and their purposes. I thought that would be a fun thing to do with my pasta fic 🙂 other fic writers encouraged to do the same with theirs.
The first fic I wrote for the fandom was Devil’s pupil gonna teach you to sight. If The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly is your starter spaghetti Western and what you wanted from it was some grimy cowboy hatesex, you’ve come to the right place. If you get into this fic, scroll down past the cut for the Coles notes on my Blondeyes fic.
Just saw For a Few Dollars More and want shippy Mantimer content? I have two fics, A Name’s Witness, which is a series of shippy canon annotations, and Sight, Blank, and Shot which is a post canon fix it fic with a rollicking adventure and some soft bondage.
For some less mainstream offerings, A Companion to Trees and a Song for a Friend is a post canon daemon au to Beyond the Law. I think this is one of the sweetest fics I have ever written, which suits the good ship Cudvac.
The total tonal opposite is my fic cheap dynamite for A Bullet for the General (which is only on tumblr since I still don’t feel I’m very good at writing abuse ships). Nino/Chuncho, and definitely heed the content warnings on this fic.
I also have like a coin that won’t get tossed, which explores a post canon Ryan and Bill from Death Rides a Horse. My characterization there is in broad strokes based on @mcicioni-blog’s writings so I would highly encourage you to read her work first, since it’s closer to the canon timeline.
Alright, now let’s talk about the content I make rather obsessively: Blondeyes. Please for the love of God read the tags and chapter notes if you need trigger warnings.
If you want more canon-close content for GBU, the place to start is Three of Spades, Two of Clubs, but only the first three chapters. This fic is a series of short Blondie and Angel Eyes centric ficelets I wrote, but some of these will only be relevant to people who have read my entire Blondeyes canon. Be warned, the third chapter is sad, but I think of it as one of my best short works.
If you were into the kinky hatefuck dynamic of Devil’s Pupil, why not give solitudinum fecerunt, pacem appelunt a try? It’s mostly that but it has a great arc and some unusual narration.I’m oddly proud of the characterization I had for Angel Eyes in this. That fic sort of starts you down the rabbit hole of my Blondeyes verse.
If you read that and want more angst, but nothing too long, Chapter 4 of Three of Spades presents a divergence to solitudinem that is both sweet and angsty. (who built) the road is also a short and sweet drabble series, with angst in places. It’s meant to bridge solitudinem and the next fic, so it can be read before or after without a whole lot changed.
If you’re ready to jump down the rabbit hole, Sighted Crows in a Desert of Rime is probably one of my best works, and my love letter to Hannibal. Relentless angst, murder sideplot, extreme kinky bullshit, and a happy ending. Oh and if you’ve gotten this far please drop me a message – I love talking to people about the ship.
If you just want a little bit of goddamn fluff from this ship of all places….Chapter 5 of Three of Spades will do that for you.
If you’re sick of both of them by now and you want a total tone shift, also you’re interested in reading an epistolary with nods to House of Leaves and follows roughly the plot of The Blair Witch Project, well, The Grey Desert Mythos is the fic for you. Is it the most obscure bullshit I have ever written? Probably.
I have at least two other Blondeyes fics in the works right now, which I will append to this post later 🙂
Finally, if you want some silly ficlets the drabble tag on this blog has a few things that will probably never be revised into real fics.
a quick pride month PSA @ all my fellow gays who are still on the fence about watching black sails because they don’t want to be queerbaited for the 800th time:
listen. LISTEN. i know what you’re going through. i know tumblr (and fandom in general) loves to wax poetic about the secret queerness of fundamentally hetero stories. i know we’re all confused about a bunch of shows/films/ships because we can’t tell if the characters are ACTUALLY gay or only gay in the fandom’s imagination (or only after the thought to pay shitty lip service, like d*mbledore). i know it’s exhausting. i know it’s annoying. i know you’ve been hurt. i know you’re afraid to love again.
so let me say this once and for all–black sails is undeniably and inextricably gay, and it’s gay in all the ways that you want. it’s gay in ways you didn’t know you wanted. it’s gay in ways my lesbian ass didn’t even think to demand from the media that i consumed. it’s literally that gay.
here’s a quick list of how that plays out in the actual show: 1) many of the characters themselves are explicitly either gay, lesbian, or bisexual (and i don’t mean throwaway side characters who get one speaking line and die, i mean pivotal main characters whose actions dictate the course of the story and plot) 2) you can’t change or ignore their identities and end up with the same narrative, the same conflicts, the same resolutions. you won’t have the same characters if you erase their sexualities. you simply won’t have the same story. not even close. and 3) on a more meta level, the storytelling itself is gay, dude. it’s magnificent. it’s chock-full of the kind of hefty dramatic symbolism and imagery that we have been denied in mainstream media for so long, it’s complicated and life affirming and revolutionary and empowering, it makes you feel seen and heard and validated in more ways that i can fucking count. it makes you shed gay tears. it fills your heart with gay love until you feel like it’s going to fucking burst.
so, in the spirit of pride month, i would ask that you trust this lesbian. i would ask that you give black sails a chance. and honestly given the amount of trash that we all watch because we love that one (1) background vaguely queer-coded character, i don’t think there’s a chance in hell that black sails will disappoint you. anyway that’s it thank you for your time i love you all watch black sails
important edit: before watching be sure to ask about trigger warnings! s1 is pretty rough, and the show is kind of violent in general. but everything else still stands!
some tag testimonials:
as you can see we’re all pretty chill about how gay it is. we’re all fine we’re doing great
For my good friends on Tumblr with whom I share a passion for slashy Westerns. I have lost NONE of that passion, but believe me, Black Sails will satisfy many if not all the needs/ kinks / politics that fire your ?souls. Please find the time to watch it. A suggestion: watch all of S1 and start on S2 before you decide to give up. Once you get to S2, you’ll be hooked.
“You look honest, I’ll give you a try.” “Ramrod?” “Yeah, ramrod.”
Love this scene. Love it that the fight ends in a draw. Love it that R chooses a ramrod much like himself. Love it that Weed already has a partner, and goes on riding with him at the end. If only th at ep did not have that disappointing ending …
@kayley79 asked why I found the ending disappointing. Of course it was good for F and R to get back together (and we all knew they would, because of the show’s requirements), but under what circumstances did they? Neither of them addressed why R left. Neither of them admitted that he had missed the other. There were zero discussions about what to do in case of future conflicts. And R was the one who had to do all the crow eating (admitting that the rainstorm had been a fluke, asking to be taken back as a simple drover). It would be great to hear other people’s views.
P.s. Kayley, I gave fictional form to my views in a short story called “After the Race.” I think it’s on AO3. Hope you are over 18 if you want to read it.
Reddit user TheABrown describes “nice guy” in literary terms and nails it:
A
friend of mine who is big into English literature has described a big
chunk of them as “The Mr Collinses of the world who are bewildered and
angry that not even Charlotte Lucas will have them now that she has more
options.”
For those who haven’t read Pride and Prejudice, Mr Collins is a
character who has a decent income, isn’t vicious, but he’s annoying and
unpleasant. After being rejected by the heroine, he marries another
woman called Charlotte Lucas, who marries him because she’s getting
older, not likely to have another proposal, and is worried about living
the rest of her life as the maiden aunt in genteel poverty dependent on
her father or brother. [source]
I also like the second comment:
I mean, the feckless Wickhams of the world will always attract the silly Lydias; and the genuinely decent and honourable Bingleys and Darcys seem to find their Janes and Elizabeths – but the modern Charlottes – well, lots of them, now that it’s socially acceptable, and financially viable, to be single, would much prefer to spend the rest of their lives living in their own little one-bedroom flats, working their sensible, modestly renumerated jobs, and spending their evenings with friends, pizza, wine, and their pet cats if their options for marriage and partnership are Mr Collinses, regardless of whether Mr Collins has a respectable career or a nice house in the suburbs.
The Mr Collinses are (usually) not vicious or nasty or even objectively a terrible life decision (like a Wickham), but most Charlottes don’t want to spend their lives with them if there’s another option.
The other problem of course is that a lot of Mr Collinses are under some sort of delusion that they’re Mr Darcy/Mr Bingley/Mr Knightley etc.
I think the best definition of a “Nice Guy” is “Someone who’s convinced he’s Mr. Darcy but is really Mr. Collins.”
^ Yes this.
Mind you his travelling fifty miles to…er…commiserate on Lydia’s disgrace? Is maybe not vicious in the physical sense but at BEST it’s horribly tone deaf and at worse outright gloating.
Also worth pointing out:
Collins is turned down by Lizzie and disbelieves her. She says several times in the strongest terms that she doesn’t want him but NOPE, she can’t possibly be serious. It takes her leaving the room to get it through his head.
Darcy, by contrast, is turned down and is shocked, but he doesn’t NOT TAKE HER SERIOUSLY. He’s appalled that she would ever think of turning him down, he demands to know why (and by gum does she let him have it) but he takes her at her word. At which point he leaves.
AND THEN TRIES TO DO BETTER.
Mr Collins bumbles off and proposes to the first woman who doesn’t roll her eyes at him. Darcy goes off and attempts to amend his faults, not to win Lizzie over but Because She Is Right and He Was Being An Arse.
“The recollection of what I then said, of my conduct, my manners, my expressions during the whole of it, is now, and has been many months, inexpressibly painful to me. Your reproof, so well applied, I shall never forget: “had you behaved in a more gentleman-like manner.” Those were your words. You know not, you can scarcely conceive, how they have tortured me; – though it was some time, I confess, before I was reasonable enough to allow their justice.”
I love me some Pride and Prejudice. (points at videos)
So much Jane Austen reveals that there is nothing new under the damn sun.
As I said when the Google Memo hit: If there’s a story about gender out there, there’s probably an Austen quote for it.
From Persuasion:
Captain Harville:”I won’t allow it to be any more
man’s nature than women’s to be inconstant or to forget those they love
or have loved. I believe the reverse. I believe… Let me just observe
that all histories are against you, all stories, prose, and verse. I do
not think I ever opened a book in my life which did not have something
to say on women’s fickleness.”
mici's campfire 