Log Date
Give Sanity a Longer Leash, Some of Us Have Sharper Teeth.
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winksystem asked:
do you ever plan on writing more about Flora, Udo and Val? Just re-read the Flora books and I can't stop thinking about what is going to happen next for the characters..
She who lives will see, as Nini Mo said…I don’t think there will be another full length book, but one never knows! I am gratified that you are wondering what happens next–let your imagination run wild!
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revelsinmalevolence asked:
Hey, I've been a fan of your writing for a long time and was wondering how much of the unpublished Flora Redux was reworked into Prophecies, Libels & Dreams. I know you've said there won't be an actual Flora Segunda 4, but I remember those interviews from '08 and was wondering?
Sorry to take so long to respond! Flora doesn’t appear at all in “Prophecies, Libels and Dreams” which consists of short stories. Most of the stories do take place in Califa and might have familiar names in them, but there’s no reworking! Everything is all new (well, all old now, years later, but you know what I mean!)
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fallow land & bigger sky // 4832 words // mature
Spring is as much of a dying season than it is a living one. Ed had died in the spring.
This fic has got me by the short and curly feels.
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Stede’s flashbacks of love montage: bonding over clothes, going to parties, sword fighting together, drinking and laughing and having fun, every bit of it together together together together after a lifetime alone and dismissed for the things that he enjoys
Ed’s flashback of love montage: that one time someone made him feel like he was actually deserving of good things despite the entire world and all his life experience telling him otherwise
Stede’s flashback of love montage: Ed threatening to put a dagger through a Frenchman’s eye.
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This is so good I’m giggling, I’m wailing, I’m gnashing my teeth, I’m having a blast. Go read it now.
The part of my brain not occupado by Fallow Land and To Feel Anything at All is full of Up, Down, Turn-Around.
Come for the ADHD Ed, and stay for the gorgeous musings on art, and love at first sight, and British Library fu.
(One of the glorious things about this fandom IMHO is that the same source material can generate a gorgeously slow meditation on grief and loss (Fallow Land), a heart-wrenching coming out story (To Feel Anything At All) and a high concept modern romance. (Up, Down, Turn-Around.)
“Oh, Ed.” She propped her elbow on the table and her face on her hand. Her earrings were bright green, peridot maybe, and they looked incredible, glimmering like spring. Ed never had a sister. “What are we going to do with you?”
“Put me in a bag and shake me up? That’s what my mum used to say.” She’d never actually done it though. Maybe she should’ve, might’ve shook something loose. Done them both some good.
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was listening to the absolutely brilliant Betwix the Sheets podcast (full disclosure: i have a crush on kate lister)–Lady Chatterley’s Lover edition, interview with biographer Frances Wilson about Lawrence etc. Too lazy to go back and get actual citation, and couldn’t find a transcript but anyway, of course, they discussed how utter ridiculous the sex bits of Lady Chatterley’s Lover sound now, so comical and hilarious, could easily win that Bad Sex Writing Award, maybe even a special citation for Worst Sex Writing EVER–Dr Wilson was so sweet about Lawrence and his Porn With Plot trials, pointing out that (I paraphrase here) that he was really just trying to write about something we don’t really have the right words for–
And my first thought, of course, was: get thee to some fanfic, my friend…
By far the best writing I’ve ever read about sex, lust, longing, attraction, emotion, desire, fear, power and Porn With/Without Plot has been in fanfic. Is there Chatterley Level Awful smut in fanfic, oh yea. But there’s also truly amazing insightful incredible writing about sex, too.
Viz, out of many, these two:
Love Me by the Hour by getmean (On AO3)
To Feel Anything Anything At All by 2unfit2quit (On A03)
DUE DILIGENCE: both these fics are rated E for explicit. Read the tags before reading the fic.
There’s a lot of good stuff out there; I’m only singling these two because they are foremost on my mind, and they are both sublimely wonderful!
(And getmean has an awesome tumblr but I don’t know how to link to it, sorry! search hackerman and you’ll find it.)
i have a full Manifesto on Fanfic that i’ve been boring friends with for months, I was gonna unload it here tonight, but i can’t be arsed, so anyway, if you don’t wanna read some explicit fiction, go listen to Betwixt the Sheets, it’s an awesome podcast, and did I mention I have a crush on Kate Lister? She should do an episode about fanfic! That’s a great idea. Someone should suggest it to her…not me, I’m too shy.
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thinking how i adore the only one bed trope the forced intimacy the lying breathless so close so far thinking do i dare will they dare what will happen breathing in the same air the rustle of sheet an exterior effigy interior roiling i have to say its probably my all time favorite trope
which is why i find it so hilarious within the context of OFMD because mostly throughout history there truly only one fucking bed! (if there was a bed at all–lots of pallets on the floor back in the day). historical blackbeard and stede bonnet probably never slept alone in their entire lives, siblings, servants, spouses, slaves, parents, even rich people shared beds because beds (furniture and fixings) themselves such a scarce and fabulous commodity that people actually bequeathed them in their wills, as famously shakespeare did with his second best bed.
perhaps the most famous there’s only one bed in all of literature:
“‘But avast,” he added, tapping his forehead, “you haint no objections to sharing a harpooneer’s blanket, have ye? I s'pose you are a goin’ a whaling, so you’d better get used to that sort of thing.’”
No footnotes we die like Badmintons but of course that’s from Moby Dick (and yeah I’m aware that the next two pages are reasons why people don’t like to share beds but we’re talking the middle of the 19th century and separate beds were starting to be a thing)…(along with worries about sanitation sexual purity etc.)
I had it in mind to write a fic where Stede has never slept alone and isn’t about to start now (sort of like Lincoln forcing his secretary to sleep with him when Mary was away) so he makes Lucius sleep with him instead. When Ed finds out about *that* oh does a plan start form in his tactical genius brain.
But I didn’t write it because I’m lazy. Someone else should. It’s a great idea.
I give it to you.
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The sad fact is that in my heart of heart i think ed would have eventually gotten bored of stede. so in some ways stede did ed a favour by scarpering while they still had spark. now ed gets the high drama of big feelings and that should tide him through ennui for quite some time. in the end, that’s is probably worth more to ed’s long term mood than actual true love. do people fix their shit? maybe, but i have yet to see it. are blood-thirsty pirates without access to anxiety medications, adderall and talk therapy able to fix their shit? nope. not trying to shit in anyone’s oatmeal here, cause i’m enjoying this oatmeal very much its very tasty oatmeal indeed…but one can only eat oatmeal for so long, before one eye starts wandering to other starches. ed can’t possibly love stede in proportion to his actual heart-ache because he doesn’t know fuck-all about stede. his hurt is solely located in the fact that he wanted stede, and put himself out to stede, and stede rejected him. season two maybe they’ll learn more about each other and by extension themselves, enough to see beyond their own imaginations of who they project the other to be. lucky for ed and stede they live in a faery tale, not real life. and not the kind of faery tale where stede goes under the hill and ed has to hold onto him while he changes into a serpent, while the wild hunt all laugh, but the kind where they will live get to live happily ever. good for them! i’ll love to see it.
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kamiell88 asked: I loved the Flora Segunda trilogy! It was action packed and the character Flora was amazing! I love that she is strong and does what she feels is the right thing, I was just wondering if there was a chance for a Flora Segunda book 4? Everyone I know who has read the books loves them and is dying to know what happens to Flora! Sorry for rambling, Thank you for the great adventure!
I am so thrilled you enjoyed Flora’s adventures enough to want more! Alas, I have no current plans to directly continue Flora’s story, but who knows…someday she may decide that she has a lot more to say!
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dipping into the gorgeously thicc “quest for blackbeard: the true story of edward thache and his world” by baylus c. brooks. Brooks is a historian after my own heart never met a nuggety fact he didn’t kiss tenderly on the nose before placing its citation neatly in his footnotes, and he loves all nuggets equally so his citations are off the fucking hook, as they should be. no pesky editor here saying oh no i don’t think we need to put the Whetstone genealogy exactly here, how about in a nice appendix, but Brooks is his own editor and can do as he like, and so the Whetstone genealogy is staying right smack there, in between Stede Bonnet’s trial and the sinking of the Whydah.
Not my point, anyway. Or even the thought I was thinking…my thinky thought, as I read through all absolute mass of information in this chucky boi of a book is that sometimes history is just so fucking disappointing. Not New Thought! But case in point, the whole spark of OFMD was David Jenkins (and others) thinking “WHAT THE FOOKING FOOK was going on between Blackbeard and the Gentleman Pirate”? And then taking that thinky thought to a Super Fun Adventure (trademark Stede Bonnet) that has now consumed us all. Why did Blackbeard let Bonnet hang around in his nightgown? Why did he hang with Bonnet at all, fearsome pirate and foppety fop? The imagination boggled, and then raced to fill blank with BRAINROT that now consumes us all.
Of course the answer is quite simple, if Jenkins had done twenty minutes of homework, which thank doggess he did not. And has nothing to do alas with Unhinged Lunatic Love, and all with the family connections that oiled the clockwork of the early modern world.
Boring.
So yeah, this is exactly why I gave up professional historydom. ran away to sea to be a pyrate, so to speak. The stark truthiness of history can not compare with the glittering lies of my imagination.
“In my heart it is true.”
It’s an axiom (well if it wasn’t, it is now) that we get the history we deserve. But, what if, instead we got the fantastical lies we desire, we deserve?
Such fun.
Anyway, if you like trivia about the eighteenth century Caribbean definitely pick up a copy of The Quest for Blackbeard. Your abs will thank you, and Baylus C. Brooks looks so sweet in his author photo, and you’ll get all the foot-notes you can eat.
Also, fanficcers out there: Ed’s mother’s name was Elizabeth. Or maybe it was Rachel.
I’m gonna go get more coffee now.
