#hey it's a nice wwi fic! Mostly

[chaosfairy18]

Ok so little talk before this, this is based on events actually happening on the 25th (and the following days) of December 1914 and since it is only recorded that year and not any after I put this in an au of sorts where a lot of the boys didn't migrate to the USA (or at least came back to Europe in... unfortunate times)

A bit of talk of death but nothing happens

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Half-opening his eyes he saw his breath materialize in the cold air in front of him, temperatures having been freezing for days now. Since he had woken up once more, it meant it was the First day of Christmas now, the 25th of December. But Michael didn’t feel celebratory, not where he was.

“Hey, Skittery. Up you go.” Steffen tapped him on the shoulder, both having slept through the night, the others holding the fort through the night. There hadn’t even been one shot or grenade through it and he was glad for that. Even having bad luck, with being here at all, he could at least get one lucky night.

“Merry Christmas, Snitch.”, he murmured, heaving himself up and righting what was left of his uniform, looking at the medals with disdain.

He’d been drafted into the German Army, no matter if he had been living with his mother and brother in Britain for the last three years, and he didn’t even know where Benny was now, hopefully not sitting in a trench at the French border, hopefully just working in a lazarette or doing planning. But he wasn’t hoping for much, as he wouldn’t have started with a higher rank like Michael had – it was only because he was over 30 already, they needed far too many soldiers and had far too little professional ones so the older people getting drafted got a modicum of responsibility.

Skittery hated being stuck there, in the cold, in the dirt and smell, hoping every day it wouldn’t be another one of his friends dying, shooting at Brits and Frenchmen he didn’t even want to fight, just because Austria-Hungary and Germany had made enemies.

It seemed like the day was peaceful and quiet, for now at least, and he and Snitch met up with Dutchy who’d already been awake a while. The guy was even more unlucky then they’d been as he’d never even lived in Germany, only having had a German father and living in Holland. But the drafters got everyone if they really wanted that.

“Any plans for today, Skitts?”, asked Dutchy, peering over the edge into the no man’s land, not even the snow moving in the few meters between them and the other soldiers. Honestly, it was weird, being called Skittery again after so many years. He’d had the name as a newsboy in the bigger city he’d lived in as a kid, the place he’d met Snitch all these years ago actually, but he hadn’t used it in ten years, until getting here. But donning another name and character made the fight just a bit more bearable, pretending it was just the fight for food and against the rich, not a fight against poor freezing soldiers just like him, being thrust in a situation none of them asked for.

On Christmas of all things. “No plans. Maybe we can spend a peaceful day today. I wouldn’t shoot if they don’t, I’m tired of it and I don’t wanna bury someone on this day of all things.”

“You think they’d really wait it out just because we don’t do anything?”

Michael shrugged. “We could negotiate.” The other two just looked at him confusedly. He shrugged again. “We could go over and offer Christmas Peace.”

“Are you nuts? They’ll shoot on sight if we go up there.”

Skittery’s eyes glazed over slightly, not even fazed at the idea of dying. “If it happens it happens. Good a day as any to die, but I want to try it.”

Somehow, all three of them had climbed out of the trenches, walking without weapons into the no man’s land, snow crunching under their shoes, still fresh where no grenades had disrupted it. Nothing moved or shot until they were almost halfway through, when two men – one in a British and one in a French uniform – climbed out as well. At least that seemed like a good start.

The British man spoke first, when they were all standing across each other, seeing an opposing soldier up close without weapons for the first time. They didn’t look any different from them, even around the same age. “What do you want?”

Being the one who spoke the best English – even if Dutchy and Snitch weren’t too horrible – Skittery answered: “To discuss a ceasefire during Christmas. We don’t have any orders from above to start anything and it’s not really a day to fight a way.”

Both looked surprised he even spoke English well, none the less with a London accent. The blond Frenchman with an eyepatch was the next to talk: “We can agree to that. Everyone stays on their side.”

For a few moments, an awkward silence hung in the air. Skittery debated with himself if he should ask a favour, now that he was already on a talking basis. He turned to the brit with glasses. “Could you do me a favour and write my mother for me? She lives south of London and any letter I’d write wouldn’t go through, I just want her to know I’m at least still okay.”

“Not like she’d want anything to do with you anymore.”, interrupted the blond soldier, clearly joking.

Skittery rolled his eyes. “Bet your Ma never wanted anything to do with you, eyepatch.”

Laughing, he held out a hand with a cigarette. “It’s Blink actually. Cigarette?”

He took it while still saying: “Nah, I only smoke Turkish cigarettes.”

With everyone quietly laughing you almost forgot that they were soldiers in the middle of fought over land, from different sides. It might have just been the Christmas Spirit, or maybe they were already tired after just a few months of war.

Somewhere to the left he could hear a few of his men start a quiet rendition of “Alle Jahre Wieder”, breaking the quiet for a welcomed nostalgic feeling, as if they just stood on a field near a little town during Christmas time. He could see a few more soldiers of both sides daring to cross out of the trenches, some even getting close enough to talk, a little snowball fight even breaking out between some Frenchmen, quickly pulling more people in.

“Weird to hear songs in another language.”, commented the soldier with glasses, looking in the vague direction the singing was coming from, having switched to another song.

“If you want to hear three more languages you wouldn’t understand, just say the word.”, jabbed Dutchy, pulling the unsuspecting man away to probably talk his ear off about languages.

The officers broke their little discussion apart after that, going their merry way and at least Skittery himself was just taking a few deep breaths of cold December air, watching the smoke of his new cigarette travel into the sky, listening to the various Christmas songs sung behind him. Some spiced tea and he’d feel right at home.

Looking to the ground again he found a few younger soldiers with British uniforms, all notably younger than he was, the closest to him with dark hair and rubbing his red fingers, not wearing any gloves. He must have been about Benny’s age, 22. So young and already stuck out here, but still laughing with his friends and building little snow figures like they weren’t in a warzone.

Skittery walked back to his trench, getting a pair of gloves that was supposed to go to a soldier that had fallen two weeks ago, and brought them up to the freezing young man, so similar to his younger brother. “Don’t freeze your fingers off.”

The boy looked up in surprise, but took the cloth regardless. “At least they don’t got your ugly eagle on them. Wouldn’t want to be mistaken for a Kraut.”, he joked and Skittery rolled his eyes, just barely holding back from ruffling his hair like he’d do with Tumbler just in that moment.

“Yeah, yeah, so much thanks for a Christmas present.”

The peaceful day they’d had didn’t last, it never could, not with orders from above, or changing soldiers in the trenches, but it was different now, knowing the faces of your opponents, knowing their Christmas songs, knowing some were just like his brother.

And he thought of that day a lot when, finally, he found Benny again almost three years later, even if they both had scars and wounds they’d found each other alive again, in December of all times, almost making it home again for Christmas in time.

Duane Street December, Day 22: Bad Luck

[elsecrytt]

i lovelovelurrre your writing so very much. one day i'd like to compare favorite works of literature with you because pleaseohplease let me pick your brain, but until then i'm so happy to enjoy the products of your talent and know you're out there existing

awwhhh! that's so nice of you to say, i'm glad you like my work!!

dfkjlhghdf i used to read a LOT of novels back in the day - mostly checked out from libraries, so i don't remember that many specific stories,,, but let me see,,

i had a MASSIVE dragon/dragon rider phase so i read the eragon/inheritance cycle as it came out. i remember it being changed from a "trilogy" to a "cycle" and hey - it meant more books for me to enjoy!

paolini also wrote a sci-fi novel relatively recently - To Sleep in a Sea of Stars - relatively hard sf, too, but a perfectly digestible read to someone who doesn't get into much sci-fi. i actually prefer female protagonists heavily these days, and that was a great read.

i liked eon and eona - eona definitely had some maaajor hero/villain shipping, too, and the dynamics between eona and ido, plus eona and kygo? augh. top tier.

also foundational was shadow and bone - i only read the books, haven't seen the series yet. but anita and the darkling? augh. my thing my thing my thing hehe

oh! another series i remember REALLY getting into - when i was younger - was the Fablehaven chronicles. it did wonders for my young, fantasy-starved heart; so many fun fictional characters, a pair of ~special~ protagonists who i could relate to

OH MY GOD also speaking of things i read as a child and related to. molly moon hahaha. that might have been part of what got me started on my still-going-strong power trip idea, the delicious fantasy of wish-fulfillment and just Getting Everything You Want. of course there were also morals to the story, it was for kids, but it was my gateway drug for sure

Leviathan (I forget what the trilogy was called, but it was this steampunk AU thing set during an alternate WWI, by Scott Westerfeld) was another really neat sci-fi ish thing that had some very fun secret keeping between the main leads, some small but fun illustrations here and there and just.

There were some wonderfully fun, creative ideas about critters and scientific advancements and everything. Gateway to monsterfucking maybe? None of it was sexy but it got me past the initial hurdle of "ew, gross monster" and into "awh,,, monster is fwiend!!!"

gosh, i'm just certain i'll remember more novels and series that were wayyy bigger in my mind right after i post this, but that's absolutely just how it be skljdhfghdfg

but anyways, thank you anon~ i am very much of the opinion that my writing is an amalgamation of all the things (mostly fics) i've ever read and loved, and if i'm even a little bit like my faves then i know i'm doing something really right <3

thank you for your high praise!!! i got a few works in progress that i'm hoping to publish soonish, and so hopefully you'll have more to enjoy~ <3

[purgatoryandme]

Hey! I can't seem to find the post you made with all the books references in Illuminate Me and the reason behind it? Is it deleted?

I know that there is an incomplete one floating around in my reply tag, and it should be in the Illuminate Me tag, but tumblr’s search features are so bad that I went back to the original word doc of the complete list, so prepare for that particular storm lol.  Quoted/Referenced Reading List (In Order of Appearance) Shakespeare: Macbeth I opened on a Macbeth quote (‘When shall we three meet again? In thunder, lighting, or in rain’) because I wanted to start with something immediately relatable. Most readers were introduced to more ‘dramatic’ plays through Macbeth. Beyond that, they were introduced to the concept of pathetic fallacy, which I think plays nicely with Tony as a character (a man who is CONSTANTLY imparting emotion onto inanimate objects…and then actually giving them their own emotions) and with one of the core problems in IM, which is deciding the emotions of others for them. I was hoping to get the ‘feel’ of that without having to lean too far into the actual concept. 

Bonus: I picked this quote in particular because of the importance of threes in Tony’s life (his core group of friends, iterations of the reactor, number of times reborn, his bot children VS his AI children, the number of lovers or almost lovers he has in the fic, etc). Milton: Paradise Lost ‘What is dark within me, illuminate!’ is a modernization of the original Milton quote ‘what is dark within me, illumine’ for readability. I actually feel a bit bad about changing this considering how many people think this is the original quote now. This wound up being a central (and title) quote somewhat by accident. I’m fond of it because of how much I liked a different one that I had originally wanted for Tony’s thoughts of the reactor: ‘yet from those flames, no light, but rather darkness visible’. I had originally wanted to start off on a sadder note, one that showed how much Tony hated losing his humanity, and so the flames of Hell and their physics-bending concept seemed thematically appropriate. I had always intended to eventually invert the imagery – instead of Extremis being (to Tony) flames capable of extinguishing light, the reactor would become a water-like blue light that couldn’t be choked or recreated by any of the shadows that pursued Tony in his life. I picked Milton SPECIFICALLY for the imagery of light and shadows. 

But, man, listen. Darkness visible is a great concept, but it’s also tired. It has, as you’ve noted, been discussed to death. So as I was reading ‘Milton’s darkness visible and Aeneid 7’ to refamiliarize myself with some of the broader themes attached to that particular piece of imagery, I wound up thinking about how to invert the darkness itself instead of the overall concept. The flames of Hell extinguish light instead of having to exist away from it. It is a bad that cannot be penetrated by good. 

Instead of chasing away shadows, which would be implied by shining a light ON them, the request Tony makes here is to actually invert the darkness - to have it illuminate in and of itself. It’s becoming something better instead of being removed or forgotten. On the flip side of that, the darkness within isn’t growing as light weakens, but rather under its own force. Two forces equal in nature and origin in a person. It’s a different take on lighting than the one most critics hammer home. Long ramble is long, but this was the basis for using that quote. It grew from there to have many different meanings, however the core has always remained. All in all I’m pleased with it.

EM Forster: A Room with a View Very forgiving even in its satirical takes on human nature. A lot of passages are very therapy-quotable in their urging to accept the inevitability of causing some harm in life. It plays on a lot of the same concepts with light being obvious metaphor for good and evil that Paradise Lost does, but softens them into more realistic shades of human existence. Isaac Asimov: Foundation Continuing on with themes of rigid morality vs the flexibility and romanticism of humanity, we have Asimov, master of machines and the three rules of robotics! There are lots of quotable epigrams in this beast. The quote pulled from this has two readings depending on what you assume of the man who has said it. If you see him as manipulative, there’s an insidious underpinning of killing off your own morals. If you see him as a kind man, then you could read it as foregoing morals in place of empathy. Tony’s therapist loves a very specific brand of double speak that lets Tony work through the conversation purely through interpretation. Tolstoy: Anna Karenina Tolstoy’s prose is lengthy...so so lengthy, but Anna Karenina is worth the read as long as you relate to at least one of its major characters. Frankly, I think you can choose to read a single character’s plot arc and leave it at that. It’s mostly a novel that is interesting, not because of its plot, but because of its study of relationship dynamics. Tolstoy was really invested in picking apart the idea of what makes a ‘family’ and, beyond that, what makes a class. It’s refreshing to see so much of the critique occurring within the lived experience of the characters instead of through a narrator or outside punishing moral forces. Baudelaire: Windows and Benediction I cannot recommend enough reading multiple translations of Baudelaire poems (fleursdumal.org has a wonderful array available). Benediction is a personal favourite. I love me some malevolence wrapped up in religion. Dante: The Divine Comedy There’s a lot of bleak humor in Dante if you look for it. Several interpretations insist of making each piece excessively grim dark, but faithful translations tend to have a hint of humor in them. It works well for engraving War Machine’s spine - a benediction and a mockery of human limitations. I try to pick quotes that not only fit the scene, but would still fit into the context of the grander themes from whence they came...unless I hate the author. Tennyson: The Lady of Shallot “I am sick of shadows” vs “I am half-sick of shadows”. Tony’s expressing more frustration here with being alone and his passive involvement in that loneliness. Another quote I feel vaguely bad about changing, haha. The Lady of Shallot is a very nice classical piece that I’m sad isn’t taught in schools alongside Hamlet. There are some nice Ophelia parallels here. I wanted a feminine influence on Tony’s loneliness and one that is somewhat youthful despite his age. Yeats: Vacillation I fucking hate Yeats as a person. That said, the man can write. The man can REALLY write. His pieces are almost always layered to the point of absurdity and he’s perfect to swiping quotes with multiple meanings. Definitely Tony’s kind of author. Goethe: Faust Speaks for itself and in the author’s notes on its reference.  Dostoyevsky: The Brothers Karamasov IMO a book that deserves all the acclaim of Anna Karenina and then some. Very VERY Russian in its ethical debates of, as always, religious morality vs free will. Also dips into familial struggles and patricide, because it wouldn’t be a Russian classic if it didn’t contain some deeply buried bitter resentment towards paternalism. I’m going off-script here, but this is a fucking excellent book. I don’t really have words for how much I enjoy how Dostoyevsky explores the concepts that he does. Shakespeare: Julius Ceasar Shakespeare: Twelfth Night Twelfth Night deserves more credit for its development and maintenance of an enigma. Twelfth Night has charisma in spades both because of and in spite of the exceedingly petty actions of some of its characters. It is also a refreshingly simple take on love for the sake of it. Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland Stephen King: Lisey’s Story I consider Lisey’s Story to be the best of King’s work. The man has his obvious writing ticks and his even more obvious issues as an author. Lisey’s Story contains many of them, but navigates them far better than any of his other work. The monster here is all in the mind and is too vast to truly see or understand. It’s perfectly representative of a creeping sense of inescapable horror. It was fun to flip it on its head with a reference here – Tony isn’t terrified of dying, but he is terrified of his inescapable enjoyment of Bucky’s company. Maria’s family saying is inspired by Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass Armitage: The Death of King Arthur A genuinely fantastic classic tale of heroism, filled with all the drama, tragedy, and sacrifice that you’d expect with strongly feminine undertones. I’m a sucker for this kind of thing. TS Eliot: The Wasteland Excellent piece of poetry with many layered meanings and dual interpretations. I can’t really articulate my thoughts on The Wasteland, but I reference an essay at the end of this list that does that for me. Oedipus Rex Rupert Brooke: Safety Not directly quoted but obscurely referenced through Bucky and Tony’s war conversations + Bucky’s conversation about, you got it, being ‘safe’ with his therapist. His poetry is about WWI and is, largely, idealistic. Safety is…not quite an exception to that. His other poetry contains a certain sense of honour and duty, whereas safety, maintaining a seemingly light tone, has nothing of the sort. It is safety in the soul – something untouchable by the horrors of war or death. It treats that as a ‘house’, which leant itself to the article Tony send Bucky. Armine Wodehouse: Before Ginchy Not directly quoted but obscurely referenced through Bucky and Tony’s war conversations + Bucky’s conversations with his therapist. This is also WWI poetry, though far darker than Brooke’s work. It discusses the parts of the heart and soul soldiers lose. It is an extremely good piece AND references Dante’s Inferno. I had to work it in somewhere even if I didn’t want to directly quote it. Meyer and Brysac: Tournament of Shadows Referenced several times over in discussion of war, the great game, and British military history. Beautifully self-aware account of Britain’s insistence on rewriting history after the fact and the tiny hilariously embarrassing moving pieces that shaped what is often considered the heyday of espionage. Murakami: Kafka on the Shore I love Murakami’s response to questions about understanding the novel as a whole. There are no solutions, only riddles presented, and through their interaction the possibility of a solution takes place. It’s a great lens through which to view the book and individual passages taken out of it. Reminds me of The Wasteland having to be read in totality before you can begin picking it apart, after which each individual piece can be read of its own. Kafka on the Shore, with its musings on the uncertainty of fate and redemption, was the perfect book to outline Tony’s horrifying realization, which he is desperately suppressing, that he might be coming to accept Bucky’s feelings. This quote in particular, while I would’ve used it anyway, is also a great callback to the first chapter and its storms. Chapter 29 is a turning point. Beyond it there are some intentional quote contrasts that are probably more easter eggs than they are anything else. Yeats: A Dialogue of Self and Soul Great contrast with Vacillation. Some parts of self and soul are used in that poem and thematically they are connected and contrasted - self and heart vs self and soul. The symbolism and imagery in Vacillation is really on point and layered, but Self and Soul is peak Yeats for its reversal of the typical ‘the soul is pure and bluntly honest and the body is tainted and bad’ in Christian works. Also Self and Soul’s broader context is scrumptious considering the debate poems history of relying on divine forgiveness and lack thereof instead of on forgiveness of the self. 

It was fun to give this poem a double meaning in IM as both hugely ominous and ultimately pointing to the later forgiveness Tony receives from himself through the divine (if the soul stone can be called that) in the heavens (space!). There’s also another fun twist to ‘who can distinguish darkness from the soul’ in its contrast with ‘what is dark within me, illuminate’. To take that a step further, Vacillation was the beginning of the path of forgiveness for Bucky (understanding Tony’s heart…somewhat literally as he slowly gets closer and closer to the reactor itself), while Self and Soul is a final step (re: Bucky being presented the final hurdle of Tony deciding to move forward alone). Hermann Hesse: Siddhartha Hesse is wonderfully blunt at times. I gotta admit I love German takes on spiritual self-discovery because they always seem to tend towards much more straightforward answers than other countries. Hesse’s relationship with Buddhism in literature vs his lived experience is also really intriguing. Anyway, Siddhartha, in its humanizing of Gods, is wonderful contrast to the consistent imagery of the untouchable and unknowable forces of good and evil in previously quoted works. It has stopped bringing humanity to the divine and has started placing the divine within humanity. Emily Wilson’s translation of the Odyssey One of the ultimate poetic epics. Now that we are nearing the end, I’m going overtime with making the grander themes of this whole piece hit home. A lot of IM was built on a foundation of poetic epics, of heroism, and a bit of Greek tragedy. The Odyssey embodies all of those things beautifully. It also suited Thor too well to pass up. Yeats: An Irish Airman Forsees His Death Ah, Yeats. Very blatant foreshadowing here that is keeping with the foreshadowing from Self and Soul. Fate has, up till this point, been a bit of a question. It has been ‘when will it come to me’ and ‘how will I avoid or overcome it’. Now fate is a set point. It is knowable and present. ‘I know I shall meet my fate, somewhere among the clouds above’. This goes for the true onset of Infinity War and for Tony’s feelings towards Bucky – when he had no one, he allowed Bucky in after essentially promising himself he wouldn’t. If that’s not an accidental admittance of love, nothing is. Henley: Invictus Absolutely fantastic poem. Continuing with the heavy fate themes coming into this climax. Now that Tony knows his fate, truly knows it, he is choosing to take it on directly. Agamemnon (Anne Carson’s Traslation if you prefer a more modern language approach, Lattimore is you prefer a classic) Agamemnon is forgotten all too often in the world of poetic epics and it’s a damn shame. I cannot say enough good things about it. I always wanted to use lines from Agamemnon in a Tony fic because the Cassandra parallels were too perfect to resist. The chorus in this play was also a perfect narrative device for interacting with something of a hive mind. Yeats: The Wanderings of Oisin Another poetic epic. Nice contrast with The Odyssey, The Death of King Arthur, and Agamemnon. Here the dialogue is between an aged hero and a saint looking into the hero’s past. It has the kind of reflective and aged mood necessary for this stage of the story, but is actually a poem I sortof hate. The line ‘And a softness came from the starlight, and filled me full to the bone’ is absolutely gorgeous, though. Some final inspiration pieces:

The Penelopiad 

The Iliad 

House of Leaves (for surrealism in the final chapters) 

Dante at Verona (used in an author’s note as an intentional jab at the dull uninspired nature of the this particular take on Dante. Repurposed quote, essentially) 

a broke machine just blowin’ steam by themikeymonster (great character study of Bucky) 

Frank Kermode’s essay “Eliot and the Shudder” (inspiration behind Tony’s entire interaction with literature)