compersion & limerence

ANYWAY SO EPISODE 43 OF CQLIS REALLY A HEAVY HITTER, HUH. REALLY. A LOT. THERE. GOING ON.

Putting a cut in for reading pages & brief black sails references; mostly FEELING things. ( Read more... )

:) good night i love them :) if you feel so inclined to drop me fic that is safe up to ep 43 i will kneel at your feet in gratitude for ten thousand years (literally...anything? anything.)

I know we all know about Wild Nights with Emily, right? Here is the trailer in case you missed it.

I saw it a bit ago but JEEZ YOU GUYS, I LOVED IT SO MUCH I RECOMMEND IT SO STRONGLY, and now I am going to gush about it!

It feels like the movie version of a fanfiction that caters to aaallll of my buttons: the business of artmaking, girls (ok, yes, women, but also girls!) in love, excellent jokes about the Brontë sisters, effective meta-narrative on history's pliability and who-tells-your-story, caretaking of the body. It also has a super tight running time (1h24m!), and some serious belly laughs. The only important characters are women. And they are killer.

In addition to catering to the "jokes about English lit" crowd, it features a truly astounding ending—devastatingly dignified. I went from giggling to silent crying in the span of about 30 seconds, and it didn't...feel weird? It felt marvelously paced and sincere and powerful.

Not only is it girls! in love!, but Molly Shannon's Emiy worked unexpectedly wonderfully for me—her Emily feels fun and quirky and, you know, a touch melodramatic. All thatr eturned a measure of joy to her poems that I'm not sure I ever had before. (I have not, historically, been a major E.D. fan but I am doing a real 180° on that). That's also why it feels a bit like fanfiction; fic has rescued or illuminated a number of canons for me, and Wild Nights, in it's bawdiness, counterweights the traditional E.D. narrative.

It was SO GOOD and so worthwhile; absolutely adding to my ad-hoc lesbian film collection. Again, the ending was just....stunning.

( Iwhisperspace?: I'm also losing my mind; have ANY of you seen Wild Nights **and** Black Sails? [spoilers ish] )

This was also illuminated by a tweet from Joseph Fink about the ending of GoT, which I think highlights why Nights and Black Sails are SO satisfying, in the end:

"So the anger [at the ending] comes not because the story ended badly but because we were reminded at the end that it was only a story, nothing more, and that feels like a loss.

— Joseph Fink 🐞 (planetoffinks) May 20, 2019

grapes on the autumn table (5187 words) by sternerstuff
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: The Traitor Baru Cormorant - Seth Dickinson
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Baru Cormorant/Tain Hu
Characters: Baru Cormorant, Tain Hu, Duke Lyxaxu, Duke Oathsfire, Duke Unexekome
Additional Tags: Alternate Universe - Farm/Ranch, Background M/M, growing up under empire is no fun!, canon flirtation, found dukes, references to budgets, dubious references to grape cultivation and harvesting, Misses Clause Challenge, Drinking to Cope
Summary:

“Hello yourself, imuira.”

(Or, Aurdwynn's Imperial Accountant escapes the city for the country)

Spend some time with "Baru being happy for two goddamn seconds!" (It is such a tall order, y'all.) It was a delightful challenge to modify the political frame and their particular personal-political orientations to be remain in character and give Baru the chance to maaaaybe let down some walls. I am very pleased with my dukes-into-common-grape-pickers -- it was very very fun to re-read for bantering dynamics, particularly between Lyxaxu and Oathsfire, who are just a delightful comedy duo even in the midst of revolution.

If you want to give it a shot from out of canon, the background: Baru's home (where the family structure has multiple fathers) is colonized via economics & plague & violent homophobia; she is a numbers/knowledge savant and decides that logically, her best bet to regain control of Taranoke is to rise up in the ranks of the Falcresti empire and destroy it from within.

( author stream of consciousness on what worked and what didn't )

( author stream of consciousness about writing race )

(uncutting this text so it can serve as additional Traitor Baru Cormorant rec)
For some wild reason, I thought that writing for Baru would make me less obsessed (I was wrong)—I fucking love her so much. I love her. I have never in my life empathized with a character more: she is logical to a horrible fault, she is canonically gay, she shoves her feelings under numbers and books and goals, she is fascinated by all technology regardless of lethality, she has massively stunted empathy, she fuckin' follows through. It's kind of rare to see a character do that, I think—explicitly say "well...but isn't the [horrible plague] maybe worth it for all the knowledge in the libraries?" I have big gender feelings about her, as well—"the accountant waking inside the woman." Point: it was SO COOL to delve into really deeply into this character who is so, so, horribly fucked up in ways that I, too, am horribly fucked up. Also, lord, I cried so much.

Anyway, this might be a better rec for what it does:

The first words of Traitor were “This is the truth. You will know because it hurts.” The first words of Monster are “If something hurts, does that make it true?”