#Jemy Flanders

[very-salty-popcorn]

"...Best of Luck"

[cynn-sketches]

Just putting this here for posteritys sake, ft @very-salty-popcorn 's character

[fresne999]

Finished Frenchie Fic and Thoughts on Same

I have finished posting "Gentle Man Frenchie: An English Frenchman and How He Became a Pyrate", a possible version of Frenchie's background story fanfic.

And now for some of the background on the background fic/thinking that went into it and by implication some meta about Frenchie.

One of the things I love about OFMD is how the diverse cast each give a sense of fully realized backstories and characterizations. Even if we don't know what those backstories are. There's no one character who is all one thing and that's really fun. I vacillate on which character I find the most interesting depending on what episode I'm rewatching, but given how often I revisit Ep5, TBRiDW, I decided to focus on Frenchie for a bit. 

To be honest I was, and wasn't, surprised at how little Frenchie centric fic is out there. Fandom being what it is and all. But, shrugs, I wanted to do my part in filling some of that gap. Aka, I've written a lot of stories for really obscure fandoms over the years.

We get all sorts of tantalizing (and sometimes contradictory) clues about our bard Frenchie's backstory. Aided in a lot of ways by Joel Fry's fantastic acting and expressions. Just consider the pained expression on his face when one of the naval officers calls him a slave in the pilot, which precipitates Jim taking violent action. This is something this man has been dealing with his entire life and he's just tired. The whole bodied joy he takes in blowing things up with Wee John. The world weariness with which he tells  Lucius that the world isn't all that. His whole hearted belief in some fairly sketchy "science".  The quick readiness with which he pulls together the pyramid scheme. He was in service for "a minute." 

Now as it happens because all that is a mess of who knows, I have several head cannons for Frenchie's backstory. The story above represents just one of them. 

The first thing I thought when I saw Frenchie go to pyramid scheme mode was about "Moll Flanders", which for those not familiar is a 1700s book by Daniel Dafoe that falls into the early novel genre of "found dairies" where Moll (not her actual name) recounts her life story. Going from being born in Newgate prison, raised by a nurse paid by town magistrates to raise children up until age 8, at which point they will go off and become servants. Moll (going by Miss Betty - a name for servants at first) is convinced that she is meant for better things and through charm, force of will, and luck gets what she wants.  

Sometimes she goes about this by sex/being a mistress. Sometimes through marriage. Sometimes con artistry. Sometimes theft. All with this very matter of fact manner for some increasingly hardened activities. When the repentance portion of the story comes, well, let's just say Moll avoids hanging with a lie and a bribe, and manages to save the only man she cares about.

But back to Frenchie, since Moll was both a servant and a con artist, I wanted to tie his life story in with hers. The timing doesn't quite work, but, shrug, OFMD. 

At first I was thinking of having him born in Newgate prison as Moll's son, but in that case Moll would already be deported to the colonies, though again bribery means she lands on her feet. Then it occurred to me that it worked much better to make Frenchie Moll's son by one of the few marks/men who she actually cares for, Jemy, her Lancaster husband/highwayman/final husband. 

Since we get two names for Moll, Moll Flanders (a reference to a low class woman + prostitutes from Flanders / fabric) and Miss Betty, I decided that (for this story at least) her actual name was Elizabeth, which made it natural to make Frenchie's given name (because he is so not French) Francis. Riffing off the Queen Elizabether & Francis Drake, privateer thing, and being similar to the name he ends up with. 

Having him blurt out the France as where he's from thing both riffs off all the, "But where are you from?" tropes and serves as his first example of the con artist lie leading to something else. It's also a bit of a riff of the play "The Foreigner" by Larry Shue in which an Englishman (though I think it's best when the casting makes the character a POC) pretends not to speak English while staying in the American South and racism shenanigans ensues. 

I went back and forth a bit on who would be the brown parent, but it worked best for Moll. i.e., I didn't want to play into a stereotype of the absent/abandoning black father. Also, in Moll's career as a thief she tends to blend into the crowd, so in a way she's the opposite of Susan. 

Oh, and this change also meant that like OFMD itself with Blackbeard (and the negative space where the source of Stede's wealth would be), err…I'm avoiding some of the more racist/acceptance of enslavement bits from the original books. It also meant that I could play the Moll finally meets Frenchie scene in a certain way that resolved that element of the character arc, but allows Frenchie to an emotional state that needs some slow piracy when the series begins.

Doesn't mean I couldn't fanon that at some point, post S1.10, Elizabeth/Moll goes, "Wait, that's what's going on? I am really too old for this. Hey, Spanish Jacquie, you owe me. Let's sail," shenanigans ensue. If I decided to write that. Seriously, I have a file with about 40 story ideas and every time I write something, two more stories takes its place. Why won't my job pay me to write fanfic instead of...what I actually write? 

But speaking of Susan, another book by Daniel Dafoe is "Roxana: A fortunate Mistress". Well, okay like all 1700s books, the actual title is much longer, but lets just go with it. About a woman named Roxana, but whose given name is Susan. She has a constant companion named Amy, her servant. Her career path is much more (as the title implies) as a kept woman, and occasional wife. Like Moll she has many children, the first five of which she has with her first husband. The book ends strangely with Young Susan confronting her mother, demanding to be recognized, which jeopardizes the life Susan has built and it's implied that Amy (or maybe Susan) killed her to keep her quiet. We're told that Roxana/Susan is taken down later, but aren't shown these events.

Which on one hand killing your own kid is a bit grim, but it set up a few things for me structurally. 

By introducing Susan (who in the books in a very white lady appropriative way wears turbans and does "turkish" dancing), I had a way to get Frenchie out of a life in service and into a sort of apprenticeship in con artistry. While allowing some of those experiences to match some of the world weariness we so often see from him. Making Susan a sweet on the surface but amoral cold blooded killer, in a very Cathy Ames from Steinbeck's "East of Eden" way,  sets up Frenchie's concern when he finally does meet his mother that she'll kill him. Because, well, he's seen a mother kill her daughter to keep her secrets.

It did take a little bit of jiggering to decide where Susan to Young Susan showdown would take place. In the novel, Susan has married and moved to the Netherlands (and is now a Countess). So she does have something to lose. A roving con artist has a bit less to lose if confronted by a daughter, given they could just pull up stakes and go elsewhere. I considered having everything go down at a house party at an estate, but there were just a few too many balls to juggle. So off to Brighton they went. Also it made it easier to have Frenchie be impressed into the navy. 

There was a brief period in plotting where I kept having Frenchie ping ponging back to one of the Brother's S, and actually going off to China with a missionary/cleric youngest Brother S, but decided to cut it for some sense of brevity. Though that's why Lord S #3 runs off with his male secretary. 

Speaking of the S family, it's very much a thing in Moll Flanders that you don't find out characters' names. There's the governess, the banker, the fill in the blank. Only a few people get names. I wanted to play into that by making all the upper class people have single letter names. They think of Frenchie as beneath them, so he / the narrator doesn't name them. 

It was also a bit of a choice to make this Third Person Omniscient, if limited in scope to Frenchie's POV/perspective. But since Frenchie doesn't write, it made a certain amount of sense. Though I also wanted to play with the narrator is only somewhat omniscient. i.e., bringing up things that Frenchie himself might know in hindsight (or for that matter Moll might suss if he told her what happened), but not necessarily going into things like, yes, Susan was planning on killing Frenchie when they went for the little walk, hiding the loot (at an easy to find spot in the middle of nowhere), and claiming he did all the theft. 

OFMD has this very defined style, where it's absurdist, which is how we can have so many violent things going on while being a comedy. Part of that is the almost magic-ness. 

Frenchie is afraid of witches. It might make sense for him to be raised by a woman who he thinks was a witch. A woman who, at certain points in history, would have been considered a witch. That he buys into the whole cats steal your breath legend. But would be a way to deal emotionally with the high rate of infant/child mortality. Particularly in a small house full of only sort of well fed children in close quarters. 

But, well, Buttons talks to seagulls and the tenders can cross vast stretches of ocean in short periods of time. It's a world where be careful what you ask your God, she might answer. The sea being in contrast to the land where God sets a fate in stone. The ocean is literally fluid. Frenchie's beliefs are absurd, but the world is absurd.

The naval academy house owes to a few things. One, I needed Frenchie to get a place in service in a household that was a bit loosey goosey. Not an ideal situation, but a job where there'd be a natural way to become a valet and go off into service for a decade so I could age the character up a bit. As the actor is in his late thirties. Also, I've been to Greenwich and the museum / observatory there. 

The academy also allowed me to introduce the concept that yes the British Navy allows for various levels of society to become officers, but the upper class was much more likely to rise to the higher ranks. Which if I ever write an Izzy backstory would tell a story of just that. Though, Izzy is hardly ill served when it comes to the number of stories written about him, so perhaps not. I'm more likely to write a Lucius backstory since he both knows how to read and was a pickpocket, which is a delightful contradiction. So, when / if I write that, he'll be part of Lottie's (now all grown up) gang.  

But back to the navy, having the academy section also meant I had those concepts in place for when Frenchie ends up impressed into the English navy, and in place for him to a) be at sea, b) not that great a sailor but then it's not really a choice for him, c) in position to become a pirate. 

He sings about loving the pirate life. Like the rest of the crew only seems to be sort of suited to it. Though, I agree his flag is bad ass.

As to Wee John, I ship Wee John and Frenchie. They are adorbs together.

The roommates. The blowing up things. Which sweet explosions I thought about going into gunpowder, making black powder and how to make larger purple explosions with turkey deworming crystals, but decided it was a bit much in the way of researching what people knew about pyrotechnics at the time.

Back to the relationship, they are so cute.

But I also like to think of Frenchie as ace. Sweet, adorkably, bard playing his lute (about loot) ace, but not aromantic. Since this is a Fenchie backstory and not an AU to OFMD, they couldn't really resolve any sort of romantic ness, but I decided to set up a series of meet cute moments at very awkward times (plus the month in the ruined fake castle) so they could establish a connection / blow something up, and a reason for Frenchie to want to settle down for some slow piracy and get to know Wee John better. 

Come to think of it, at some point I might write a Wee John background story, because wee giant man and son of a seamstress is ripe for fic-ing. Though a torture loving chef, our friend Roach, could use some love too. Argh, and I would like to go another round (modern this time) with some gentlebeard. Sigh, so many ideas. Not enough time. 

Anyway, there you go. Sorta meta by way of why did I write things a certain way for a Frenchie backstory, but meta these days is a very flexible term. 

To season 2 we go sailing. 

[saverichardcampbellganseyiii]

moll flanders instagram au rant part 2/2

rant pt (1)

abstract: in this second post I’ll conclude my rant.. enjoy

au series linked:

“series” 1 - older & younger brothers who both get it on with moll

“series” 2 - draper & moll’s half brother

“series” 3 - the affair w the guy who gets religious & jemy, lohl (love of her life of course)

“series” 4 - the banker & her makeup with jemy

the rant continues: 

ok so where we left off, I was pretty much just ranting about how i justified the idea of making an instagram au for moll flanders. now imma just rant about making it and about the little jokes & inside jokes i put in because i’m sorry i’m just super proud of it and i want to tell everyone about it and i mostly just think it’s funnier if the inside jokes are actually understood

 aight,

so first, i should probably extend an informal thank you to bridget satterlee for being gorgeous and for your selfies that i used in posts showing moll’s face. you saved my ass because i needed a singular face if it was gonna be blatantly shown.

ok now, moll’s story is years years long and I didn’t feel like it would be super practical to create an au that in depth–I decided to shorten the main events to take place between two years - or 104 weeks because this would be sooooo much easier (no aging moll having to be accounted for as well as the oldest post was 104 weeks old instead of 500 something). but this meant I ended up doing a lotttttt of math and I hate math but oh the things I’ll do for tumblr but also for a grade.

then once i had established a rough timeline for each of moll’s 7 men (8 instances though since jemy is with her twice), i gave each two individual posts & each chronological pair of guys would share 6 slots on the main profile page.

and then I got to make the templates for each post & profile. chose which captions I wanted. curate comments and likes. the best thing was choosing handles for each character, especially ones who weren’t necessarily named:

donjuan (older bro) - don juan is a womanizer, what better seemingly anonymous handle for the older brother who (in this au) has a hidden instagram in which he’s tagged in photos by moll that he desperately wants taken down so his family won’t see him in them

robin_ (younger bro) - well he’s called robin in the book, but i wanted him to be kind of an oblivious but well-meaning guy. I mean in moll’s 2nd post he doesn’t even recognize his brother but he’s extremely concerned about who this rando man winning moll’s heart might be and he’s just hopelessly in love with her as alll of his comments show

haber_dasher (draper) - and haberdasher is just a synonym for draper and is imo a more exciting handle

the captain (half brother) - also self explanatory as he’s a captain

the guy she has an affair with doesn’t have instagram but moll does acknowledge him by posting an ‘out to steal yo man’ pic so i mean

nathan.r (the banker) - not insinuating anything but i named him after nathan rothschild as he was an influential british-born banker and it just kinda worked so sorry nathan

j.b007 (jemy) - in the 1996 movie version of moll flanders, jemy is played by daniel craig who I coincidentally happen to be slightly obsessed with (not even ashamed of it) and of course he’s also bond, so the j.b007 handle was never not an option

mary.g (her governess) - i dunno, i feel like mary has been a notable governess/nanny name and the g just stands for governess... at this point I was getting tired

other things I just think are funny include the magnolia tattoo in the fourth series of posts. i once read that magnolias can represent a desire for riches, but more colloquially they also represent nobility, which is something moll definitely desires. also, when she posts about marrying jemy, he comments 'can’t wait to marry you' but “accidentally” posts the money face & a green heart and corrects his “#typo” to heart eyes & the red heart - all of which I find hilarious simply because he was marrying moll for her supposed money just as much as she was marrying him for his.

also, molll posts a ‘paris is always a good idea’ around the time the draper runs off to france so that’s just kind of funny for kind of obvious reasons? and my interpretation of him being bad with handling money was taking her on awesome hermès, chanel, louis vuitton, etc. shopping sprees because that’s honestly the dream and I thought that would be a fun modern rendition of the bad at managing money trait

and she also posts a lot of rather dramatic things like ‘no rain no flowers’ when the older brother breaks it off with her and a ‘goal digger’ one which i think is self-explanatorily funny and an ‘all great changes are preceded by c h a o s’ one which is probably what moll thinks of her whole life. and don’t forget moll posting ‘look who i ran into, we’re going on a vacay and to america’ and then the virginia sign like it’s a grand adventure and not like she’s basically on parole.

also, the thing that probably makes me chuckle the most is j.b007′s random comments on moll’s very first posts. you know when you make a new friend and of course you super stalk them and then once you’r closer you’re just tryna be obnoxious so you go back to like every single one of their posts and you comment on super old posts? or is that just me? I thought it would be hilarious for jemy to go back and comment things like ‘ew’ or ‘gagging’ or just have him generally acting offended because that’s the kinda dramatic Extra™ personality I assume he has

and overall, it was really fun exploring how I imagine moll utilizing instagram to share her story and her crazy adventures through a stereotypical bio & kinda Basic™ captions & hashtags, while also interpreting the unreliable narration that I believe moll presents her readers with & other than that I have no conclusive ending, I just thought I’d try to explain some of the seemingly random things and also have just been dying to get this out there so yeah dude thanks for reading if anyone has made it this far (which let’s face it, if you have you’re an amazing person wow)

[very-salty-popcorn]

When you steal a sword of a goddess of virtue from a random tiefling woman and it just stars glowing...

[very-salty-popcorn]

GDnD Doodles! Art style consistency? I dont know her. Honestly, I'm just happy I have been drawing as much as I have recently! Some of these are a bit older than others. Please enjoy!

[very-salty-popcorn]

How to explain my dnd character in just a few images? This. Jemy Flanders is a perfectly normal human guy. With some mild issues (including but not limited to: having been murdered and revived; losing all his memories of his previous life; acquiring a relic of a god of virtue, a sword that talks in his head; and finding out that he is not, in fact, human).

[very-salty-popcorn]

[very-salty-popcorn]

Expressions from player characters from campaign 1 and campaign 2 of the group I play with! Very fun to do all these lol!

[very-salty-popcorn]

Just a regular human guy! Now with two swords!

[very-salty-popcorn]

Flowers.

[very-salty-popcorn]

hey its that guy!

[very-salty-popcorn]

Jemy Flanders is a freak of a man. Let me explain to you why.:

He's an Amnesiac. He remembers nothing except the fact that someone slit his throat and now he'd undead.

Washed up on a beach and just. fucked around for 2 years as a petty thief.

Met his bestie, Florence, an orange dragonborn cleric.

Finally, after 2 years of petty theft, got CAUGHT but instead of rotting away as an undead man in prison for the rest of his life, was given an offer by the person he stole from.

That person was Peony Flanders, who offered him to work for her and pretend to be her father.

And the reason that Peony Flanders wanted this random ass guy to pretend to be her dad? Well, he kinda looks like him, and her real dad got drafted into the war before she was born. Plus having a 'fake dad' would allow her to get up to shenanigans while her dad handled the more 'social' aspects of her noble house.

So this guy, pretends to be some noble girl's father. Whose real father COULD still be out there.

And then on the night of Peony's 20th birthday, there's an assassination attempt on the whole house and so Jemy and Peony, along with others get teleported to the Fantasy version of the Wild West.

Then a few days later, Jemy finds out that he may not be human, that he may, in fact, be an aasimar. Like any reasonable person, he tests this by seeing what type of blood he bleeds (spoiler, his blood sparkles like an aasimar).

He then, after a few days of sorting that out, tries to see if he can access any of his aasimar traits, only to learn that there's some sort of infernal block on him preventing any transformation.

Subsequently, while trying to save the inhabitants of a town, finds out that in his previous life was a devout follower of Argenta.

He finds out the above fact, by stealing a magical talking sword from a baddie. A sword that only glows when devout followers of Argenta hold it.

That magical talking sword gives him therapy.

And that doesn't cover the little things like his habit of sniffing the air to try to locate people, his preference to sleep in a chair over a bed, or the fact that he went on a 10+ minute rant with a full murder board about his conspiracies on everything that's happening in the world at large.

He still doesn't even remember his own fucking name. He's a freak.