Life seems but a quick succession of busy nothings

Look, I wrote fic! I'm very proud: I hadn't written anything in months, and in the next few weeks I've got two more fics coming up.

This one was written for the Snupin Santa Multimedia Holiday Fest over at lupin_snape, answering the following prompt:

NC-17. A challenge for you, dear writer! I would like what amounts to nearly a complete monologue. One is talking to the other - doesn't matter which - seducing him. Can be day or night, in bed or in the forest, (over the phone??) established relationship or no. Set the scene through the monologue, though bits of information are allowed. Little bits. Some speech by the other is allowed, but as little as possible. Noises are fine, however. ;) Perhaps he's gagged? You tell me. Can be kinky or not, but this is a consensual situation. Tone: HOT

Title: Knight in Sour Armour
Author: Donna Immaculata
Rating: R
Word count: 1894
Pairing: Snape/Lupin
Disclaimer: Not my characters, I just take them out to play
Summary: After rescuing him from the Department of Mysteries, Snape brings Lupin home and puts him to bed.
Notes: A writing experiment: monologue-only fic is tricky, but it was an interesting exercise.

Knight in Sour Armour

I'm currently reading The Three Musketeers. It's a re-read - I read it at some point as a child in my adventure-novel phase, and then re-read it every five-six years or so. I initially had a massive crush on Aramis, but then Athos became my favourite. He's so delightfully cynical, level-headed and drunk.

But. I'm reading it now through a completely different filter. I can't stand the four leads, they are awful human beings. Well, Aramis seems kinda okay, I think he's actually the only one who treats other people with respect, even his mistresses. Especially his mistresses.

And there's the upcoming BBC adaptation, which I am tentatively looking forward to. Tom Burke plays Athos, and I like Tom Burke, and there's Peter Capaldi, who is always excellent value. But at the same time, I can't help worrying that it's just another, slightly darker (they wear leather!) spin on the fannish interpretation of the source - i.e. three cheeky chappies who spout one-liners whilst beating up mooks, the bumbling village idiot d'Artagnan, the uber-evil Cardinal Richelieu, the star-crossed lovers King & Queen of France, and of course the evilest of all evil demons, Milady de Winter.

Whereas, in the novel, the musketeers are very much reprehensible human beings:

Athos has trained his valet not to talk, and if he does talk, he thrashes him mercilessly, albeit dispassionately. And, at the age of 25, he'd hanged his 16-year old (!) wife after discovering the fleur-de-lys brand on her shoulder, because obviously she must have been EVIL.

Porthos expects his mistress to finance his musketeering equipment and he feels absolutely justified to steal the money from her bed-ridden husband. When she's reluctant to do so, he goes off in a sulk.

d'Artagnan tricks a woman into sleeping with him by pretending to be someone else, and is justified in doing so, because the woman in question is Milady, and she's evil. Really, she is. Oh, and he "seduces" her maid (who is very reluctant, but unable to fight him) to get into Milady's knickers.

Aramis is kinda okay, I've got to admit. He seems to treat the various women he's involved with like human beings, he doesn't beat his valet and he's only moderately violent.

All four of them think nothing of taking human life, of course, and cheerfully kill people in duels as well as in battle.

The author stresses all throughout the novel that we mustn't judge men of that period by modern standards, which would be absolutely fine with me if Milady got the same treatment. But she is treated by the protagonists and the authorial voice as the hellish demon from hell who must be destroyed at all cost. I am actually totally rooting for Milady. She has done nothing on the pages of the book that is in any way worse than what the heroes have done. She lies, tricks and is ambitious and avaricious, but so are they. Plus, the men feel entitled to lie; in several instances, they cheat lower-class people such as inn hosts by claiming self-righteously that they are "gentlemen" and nobody must ever doubt the word of a gentleman.

I would be much less annoyed if the various adaptations did the source justice and presented the musketeers as morally ambivalent, as the liars, cheats and killers that they are, and did not make the Cardinal the big bad. His relationship with the musketeers is much more complex than that.

I would absolutely love it if there were an adaptation that treats Milady fairly in a way that the source did not. But seeing as there doesn't even seem to be any Milady-centric fanfic that does that, I will hope in vain.

There actually is a Russian adaptation that I watched as a child and that left a huge impression: the scene where Milady strangles Constance (who is married in the book and commits adultery) was pretty nightmarish.

Any thoughts, anyone? It's one of the stories that everyone in the Western world is familiar with, but I think the way we perceive the characters is very much influenced by the (Hollywood) adaptations, not so much by the novel itself.

Over at hp_halloween, the Harry Potter Halloween drabble exchange, posting has commenced. And I can't tell you how happy I am with my gift: kellychambliss wrote the perfect Bellatrix, a connoisseur of death, traversing the realms of life and death, familiar with the secrets of the Veil. It's a haunting horror masterpiece in only 200 words: To and Fro

Ever since the decline of the HP fandom, I have found it increasingly difficult to write fic in other fandoms - even if I happen to fall in love (or lust) with a source. This is partly due to the fact that I find it more difficult to write in TV fandoms than in book fandoms, and partly due to the fact that, compared with the HP fandom, other fandoms are so tame.

I have just quite accidentally wandered into the hd_tropes comm, which stipulates that "all entries must be rated R or NC-17".

I love it. I'm not remotely interested in the exchange as such, but I love the fact that it's a fest that requires you to write porn. Other fandoms don't do that sort of thing that much. Every time I dip my toe into a new fandom, I feel such a deviant, because, well, there aren't many explicit fics around. Which is sad.

Right now, for example, I would like to try my hand at writing Lord Peter Wimsey fic. But there isn't any porn there, and I feel inappropriate. I mean, Lord Peter has canonically slept with a lot of people - and he is great in bed, which is actually explicitely stated in the books (admittedly, it is he who does the stating). And yet, there is no porn. And hardly any slash, either - despite the incredible h/c potential of the Peter/Bunter pairing.

In conclusion: I wish there was more porn. That's what I joined fandom for. That, and fangirling.

The linden trees in front of my house are in full bloom, and all I can think of is this:



*I can't bring myself to spell it "cum". I wonder how Mitchell and Webb spell it?

The HP Beholder reveals are up. This year, I did Art.



I've never done art before. Whilst drawing for the Beholder, I did idly wonder why I never have done art before, and then it hit me: When I first joined fandom, my fannish tastes were very much slash-oriented. And while I enjoy writing slash, I don't particularly like drawing men. It's funny, I've never really realised it before: drawing women is so much more enjoyable than drawing men. And so I guess it never occurred to me to create fanart to begin with. As I was branching out in my fannish interests and started to focus on rare pairings, I somehow never thought of drawing them, because by that time I saw myself as a writer

And then I decided to create art for the HP Beholder, and I enjoyed it so much, I will have to take up drawing again.

For now, here are Merope Gaunt and Tom Riddle.

Title: "Triptych: Seduction - Vows - Conception"
Recipient: Albalark
Artist: Donna Immaculata
Rating: NC-17
Pairings: Merope Gaunt/Tom Riddle
Medium: Pencil, crayon, watercolours and charcoal on paper; collage
Warnings: None
Summary: Merope takes matters into her own hands.
Notes: Albalark had said she liked hopeful endings. This is as hopeful as it gets for Merope, I feel.

( Seduction Vows Conception )

I always knew that I would try to make it look period-appropriate. My initial idea was to create a surrealistic collage in the style of Max Ernst's Une Semaine de Bonté, but it was surprisingly difficult to find good backgrounds. Eventually I decided to use slightly kitschy art nouveau motifs as frames and create a collage against textured, coloured backgrounds. I was dead-set on collage to make the characters look disconnected - from each other and from the world around them. Also, I could try out different backgrounds and frames without having to draw the characters from scratch every time.

Merope in the Seduction piece was the first character I drew. I spent an insane amount of time on her and still have preliminary sketches lying around. Poor Tom, I fear, never got as much attention as she did. In the first picture, I still managed to put reasonable effort into creating some details, such as his posture and the cigarette, but you can see how I can't be bothered with male characters: in the second pic, he is a grey block, and in the third one, he his mostly hidden behind Merope.

Despite the fact that Tom looks stiff and unnatural in the Vows piece, I am reasonably pleased with it, because by that time he isn't himself anymore. He is an object that Merope uses. They never interact, not once, not even when they're physically close.

So. This, in short, is the rationale behind the pictures. Oh, I should probably add that drawing and water colours are the only techniques I am familiar with. I wouldn't know how to create art digitally if my life depended on it.

In fannish news, shiny new fandom is still shiny. I wrote six Hornblower fics since October. This makes it officially my second most proficient fandom after Harry Potter.

Apparently, all it took to get me hooked were pretty navyboys


exchanging soul-searching looks


and being angsty.

And so there's more navyboy porn:

TITLE: Fearless
AUTHOR: Donna Immaculata
RATING: NC-17
WORD COUNT: 3500
PAIRING: Horatio/Archie
DISCLAIMER: These are not my characters. I just take them out to play.
SUMMARY: The morning after; Archie angsts and Horatio is speechless.
NOTES: For eglantine_br, who asked for a “second-time” fic. Consider it a birthday present. I didn’t know it was your birthday today until I saw anteros_lmc’s post, but I have planned to post it today anyway and am now very pleased with my timing.




In other seafaring news: I watched Treasure Island with a couple of friends last week, and we had a blast. I can't say whether it's a good show, but it's got Eddie Izzard as a very charismatic Long John Silver - and that's all it takes to make me happy.



There's also some serious costume porn going on, Frodo goes mad and Gene Hunt is as masterful as ever.

( Treasure Island is costume porn. )

And after we had watched Treasure Island, one of my co-watchers outed herself as a fan of Age of Sail kind of movies. And so I told them about that one show I watched, with ships and battles and naval officers, and if all goes well, we'll be watching Hornblower together one of these days. They will totally pick up on the slash vibes. It will be brilliant.

This post has been brought to you by my period drama fetish that I discussed at length before.

To my great surprise, I've finally managed to write more fic. I'm sure all those of you who have written several pieces for Yuletide alone are very impressed.

TITLE: Breathless
AUTHOR: Donna Immaculata
RATING: R
WORD COUNT: 2200
PAIRING: Horatio/Archie
DISCLAIMER: These are not my characters. I just take them out to play.
SUMMARY: Horatio and Archie are back in their cell in El Ferrol and talk about girls. Touching ensues.
NOTES: One line is lifted straight from Lucy Maud Montgomery, because it's fitting and beautiful.

Breathless

And in other fandom news, I have managed to get myself an Archive of our Own account. So yay.

female love-juice which tasted like a raw egg

female love-juice which tasted like a raw egg

I'm reading Victorian Third Republic porn.

Here

Does Archive of our Own cencor explicit language? Because I've just tried to read two fics and was thrown out of the story* by the repeated and highly inappropriate use of the word "frak". I feel dirty and violated.

*uh, "story"