#historical fic

[baudouinette]

Me in my bedchambers writing at 3:45 am

[materassassino]

Fandom: The Old Guard (Movie 2020) Rating: Explicit Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence Relationships: Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani/Nicky | Nicolò di Genova Characters: Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani, Nicky | Nicolò di Genova, Original Male Character(s), Original Female Character(s), Historical Character(s) Additional Tags: Angst, Historical, Period-Typical Homophobia, Canon-Typical Violence, Hopeful Ending, the renaissance, Attempted Sexual Assault, Mentions of Underage, please head trigger warnings in notes, based on real historical events, Oral Sex, Anal Sex, Marriage, Fake Marriage Summary:

The year is 1578. Having separated for a brief time from Andromache and Quynh, Yusuf and Nicolò are in Rome. There they find the basilica of San Giovanni a Porta Latina, and the community of Iberian men. Friendship, it turns out, can be found in the most unlikely of places.

---

Finally posting this! God, what an ordeal.

[peppershark]

WOLFER --- The real California history behind the Tomione Fic

Convict Lake Camp (OwensValleyHistory.com)

When I was a kid, my family frequently visited Bishop, California. I can still feel the light-headed enchantment of hopping out of the van at a relative's green, creek-watered ranch shadowed by towering granite faces of the High Sierras. The dusty road and sage-sharp aroma propelled my imagination two hundred years into the past.

Wolfer is set in 1890 Bishop Creek, and while some of the location names are changed to fit the story, the town really had ranching barons like the Sacred 28 families, churches which exerted certain levels of social power with the well-to-do folk, boarding houses for mill workers and on-farm worker housing for fruit pickers and cowboys--or perhaps the odd wolfer.

It's amazing what you can dig up when you're procrastinating working on your WIP, lol. I did a lot of initial research while writing a Gingerrose fic set in post Civil War Bishop Creek.

Here are some things I found.

Main Street, Bishop Creek 1880 (OwensValleyHistory.com)

In Chapter 1, Tom rides down Main Street to the marshal's office (played by a grudging Severus Snape) and runs into Hermione.

Way off into the upper right you can see the steeple of the First Baptist Church on Main Street.

East Line Street, Bishop Creek (OwensValleyHistory.com)

Tom chases Hermione to Line Street, where he pushes her up against the Brown's Machine Shed, which is of course re-named to fit Lavender Brown's family.

(OwensValleyHistory.com)

Check out that snow! Sitting at 4,000 feet of elevation in the foothills of the East Sierras, the snow can get quite voluminous.

W.D. Roberts Ranch, Round Valley (OwensValleyHistory.com)

The ranch near the dry saltbeds of Owens Lake where Draco visits Harry, (by way of Mad Eye Moody) might have looked like this.

Cerro Gordo photo taken some time between 1871 - 1879 (OwensValleyHistory.com

We get a brief glimpse of the Cerro Gordo silver mine when Draco and Harry ride off into the sunset together for a night of wild debauchery. The brothels and bawdy houses within these sprawling mining towns would have perhaps been some of the only public places for late 19th-century gays to be themselves. Miss Lola's was among the more famous, and I'm struggling to find the website where I originally learned this this but I believe she hosted queer sex workers and provided space for an early LGBTQ+ scene.

The silver mine itself brought together a richly diverse group of fortune seekers. I accessed California census documents and found that while Bishop Creek was mostly white, Cerro Gordo had a much more diverse population (interestingly all marked with 'I', even Latinx names).

I did a phone interview with the Inyo Historical Society and chatted for an hour with a local historian, telling him I was getting context for a novel. (He didn't need to know that my novel was also a fanfic, hahaha.) The historian told me the mine had Mexican, Black, Chinese, and Indigenous populations working as miners, teamsters (people who drive wagons), cooks, brick masons, farm laborers and all kinds of interesting jobs related to running the mine.

Main Street in Bishop Creek, 1878 (OwensValleyHistory.com

One thing that sticks out in my mind from the conversation with the historian is how the white and Mexican ranchers demolished the irrigation canals the Numuu Indigenous tribes had dug to create a green landscape in Owens Valley. Native Americans have been 'farming' America's landscape for thousands of years in a low-impact way. In Chapter 4, Tom muses on this detail as he's setting a wolf trap on Rosier's ranch.

Perhaps the most illuminating account of the region comes from Sarah Winnemucca, daughter of Chief Truckee (after whom the town is named). Sarah travelled as an advocate for Indigenous rights and cataloged her experience and the story of white settler colonization in her book, Life Among the Pauites: Their Wrongs and Claims which you can read for free here.

Thank you for diving into California history with me!

Read Wolfer here.

[pleasing-louis]

splash me across the silver screen (22.8k)

Harry shrugged. “Maybe you just need to get even more outside your comfort zone. Maybe we need to try something a bit more… adventurous?” Curiosity successfully piqued, Louis tilted his head and toyed with the fringe dangling from his lace shrug. “Like what?" “We, uhm—maybe we try filming you in more compromising positions,” Harry suggested carefully. He kept his tone low and even as he studied Louis’ expression, hands skating over his curves soothingly. If Louis didn’t know any better he might have thought that Harry was talking about filming him naked. But that couldn’t be right—could it? “Like porn?”

Or Louis is a struggling actor who gets nervous when he's being filmed and Harry comes up with a plan to help him relax when the cameras are rolling.

Written for the @bottomlouisficfest

[ludi-ling]

The Tailor & The Seamstress - A Reading Aid

So here's some stuff I'm just putting up here as a kind of glossary/reading aid/moodboard collection for The Tailor & The Seamstress.

It's not an easy read in some ways, because it's set in 1910 and deals with some fashion terminology that can be opaque, so yeah. Just dropping this here.

Accents

Firstly, Remy and Anna do not speak in their accents, and that was deliberate. Working where and in what they do (i.e. haute couture in 1910's New York), having a Southern accent would have been very uncouth. For professional reasons they would have got rid of their accents, or polished them off, fairly quickly. But both of them actually filed off their Southern accents earlier in life, for entirely different reasons (which will become clear later on in the story).

The closest you'd probably get to what they sound like is probably the Transatlantic accent, which developed in the late 19th century in the acting industry and among the American upper class. (Thanks to @narwhallove for pointing this out!).

You can hear what this accent sounded like in 1930's and 40's Hollywood movies:

Dress Forms

There are a lot of dress forms floating around in this story. A dress form is very much like a mannequin, where a garment can be mounted on it to make working on it easier. The difference between a dress form and a mannequin is that a form can be adjusted to different sizes. Here's an example:

Nowadays, dress forms usually conform to modern standards of sizing, but back in the day, all dressmakers/fashion houses would have dress forms made according to the sizing of their target clientele, and adjustments would be made to individual customers when a dress was purchased.

The dress forms at the House of Burford, of course, are made to Anna's measurements. 😉

Maison Maillot

The idea of Remy working at a waning fashion house was inspired by the historical House of Worth, which was probably the world's first modern atelier. Established in 1858 by Charles Frederick Worth, it came to dress empresses, queens, actresses and singers. The business was later taken over by his sons, but the house's fortunes waned in the early 20th century. IMHO, you begin to see the decline in design quality by the 1920's. Worth was bought out by the House of Paquin in 1950, and closed in 1956. In 1999, it was revived.

Early Worth designs were so powerfully beautiful, and always innovative and at the cutting edge. In the story, the House of Maillot's heyday would have been the same - a tale of an exciting and forward-thinking atelier that dressed the best and brightest.

By the early 20th century, at the time of the story, they are still putting out beautifully breath-taking clothes - but decades of newer competition means that their work no longer stands out. By the 1910's, the House of Worth had been eclipsed by designers like Callot Soeurs, Paul Poiret, and Lucile (of Titanic fame), who were becoming the innovators in women's dress, and Worth tended to follow where others led. This is where Maison Maillot is at in the story; and their rival, the House of Burford, is one of those new and exciting innovators in fashion.

By the 1920's, fortunes have fallen, and the House of Worth was putting out stuff like this:

The Peacock and the Phoenix Dresses

The rival dresses don't have any analogue in real life, but here are the dresses that roughly inspired them.

A 1909 evening dress by Callot Soeurs:

And a 1913-14 evening dress by an unknown artist:

I like to think of Remy always being slightly (maybe a lot) more ahead of his time with his clothes than Anna is with hers. Remy is designing tubular dresses a few years before they started to become a fashionable silhouette. Ironically Maillot rejects them, but I find it kind of funny that by the end of the decade, he'll have been wishing his house had set the trend Remy had conceived of years before.

At SOME POINT I will draw how I envision the dresses to be. I HOPE.

If you want to see my moodboard for this story, you can catch it on Pinterest here.

[aidaran-alha]

“When was the last time you groomed them?” Crawley’s voice suddenly broke the silence.

“My wings? Well before, er, my fall. I think. Can’t remember anymore,” Aziraphale whispered, self conscious. Embarrassed, full of shame. Wings didn’t really need that much tending to, but he’d been avoiding having to acknowledge how they’d look now. He wished he could just make them disappear forever, never have to see their blackness.

“Would you allow me to do it?”

“Why?”

“Just asking.”

There was no need to hide them from Crawley, was there? The demon’s wings were just as black as his. He’d seen them in the garden of Eden. Crawley hadn’t been ashamed of them then. And it was a perfectly innocent offering. Angels usually didn’t do that for one another, finding pride in not interacting, in tending to their own businesses, but the redhead seemed to always need the company, the physical contact.

Aziraphale finally opened his wings, letting them slowly come out of his back, black and messy, dirty. They looked burned and painfully broken, and suddenly he felt ashamed again, aware of how less majestic than before they were. He hid his face between his arms as he hugged his knees, whining softly. He was exposing the worst part of himself to Crowley, and couldn’t bear to look him in the eye.

“They’re horrible, aren’t they?”

“After the Fall, they always look like this,” Crawley simply said, voice sympathetic and without the pity and disgust the former angel was afraid would be there, “but we can get them back into shape.”

There wasn’t a guideline to how to groom wings, or beauty products, or a method to use. Usually, angels just combed them with their fingers, removing the broken feathers, making sure they all pointed in the same direction, but not really paying attention to the process. Getting their wings out was usually a way to show off, some form of display they’d put on to look imposing in front of the other angels.

Crawley though, as with everything, seemed to see things in a different way. He silently got up and came back with a clay pot filled with water and a clean rag, kneeling behind Aziraphale, between his broken wings.

@goodomensafterdark​

Continue reading: 

https://archiveofourown.org/works/54816064/chapters/141669442

[createserenity]

All The Pieces of You

Chapter 2 of part 2 is now up on AO3!

Rating: E

Excerpt:

Eternity meant there was always hope. Always time to hope that things would change. That he wouldn’t always be stuck in this dance of heaven and hell and good and evil and angels and demons. Always hope that one day things would be better. That one day he wouldn’t feel so torn in two.

Go straight to chapter 2, or click below to start at chapter 1.

[atlas-affogato]

Finn laced their fingers together, pushed his hand deeper into the bedding, and whispered against his skin, "I don't want a life out there if I cannot have you." Snapshots of Finn and Chow's time together in 1880s San Francisco.

Historical fic baby! The thing I've been rambling about for a year and a half is finally done! Topped out just around 20k, its a one-shot (second chapter is sources and possible meta) but it is finally done and posted!

Thank you @dlishpencils for giving me the motivation and the push I needed to finish it. You are a saint 😚💕

@quitealotofsodapop thank you so so much with your help with the Irish translation! 💕

And to everyone who ever expressed excitement for this fic or liked any of my rambles or excepts from this, I appreciate you, you mean the world to me 💕

[talktomeinclexa]

Ad Astra Per Aspera

By: TalktomeinClexa

Rating: Explicit

Warnings: Violence, Blood and Injury

Status: Complete (32/32)

Summary: Sent into unofficial exile by Emperor Thelonius, Centurion Clarke Griffus Flavius crossed the Roman Empire all the way to Hadrian's Wall to deliver orders to the garrison. Accompanied by her most loyal friends, she decided to go beyond the call of duty and traveled behind the wall to warn the Romans there of the upcoming dangers. How could she have known that her destiny was waiting for her there, in the middle of a strange land not half as beautiful as the Pict serving as their guide?

***

Chapter 1

The sound of a branch breaking under the hooves of her gelding shook Clarke out of her lethargy. Per reflex, the young centurion blinked a handful of times. She readjusted her body on the too-comfortable saddle and padded the inner pocket of the large coat that covered her iron cuirass. In it, the letter written by her mother weighed her down like a bar of lead and burned a hole inside her chest. Yet, with a streak of masochism she failed to justify, she couldn’t bear to throw it into the fire that warmed her and her men night after night and kept the wolves and other wild beasts at bay. She lifted her arms high above her head until her spine popped and glanced at her companions. The few friends foolish enough to volunteer to accompany her on an errand across the Roman Empire.

Octavia rode near her, quiet and surly as ever. Her hood protected her long dark brown hair from the rain that had not stopped in days. She hadn’t smiled since they left Italy and entered Gallia several weeks before.

Keep reading on Ao3

[baudouinette]

Lluna & Baudouin ❤️‍🩹⚜️👑👸🏽🤴🏼

from Heaven Can't Wait / AO3

[purrrhazza]

I wrote a fic for @1dhistoricalficfest​. Sadly that got cancelled, but here is my fic for you anyways :) 

[thewrecked-andthewriting]

Building their Camelot.

Summary: Prince Arthur and Princess Catherine had recovered from the sweat in 1502.

*

March 21, 1503.

Nearing ten in the evening.

“This is utter torture.” Catherine said, not taking her eyes off of her sewing. She knew that she ought be getting to sleep, knew that she ought be asleep already. But one tends to find it difficult to sleep when there are a million things running rampant in the brain all at once.

Once again, Henry had challenged Arthur to rough house on their last visit to Westminster. The sixteen year old humored his eleven year old brother and it had ended in a tear one another one of his shirts. Rather have one of her ladies in waiting do the task of mending his shirt, Catherine had taken the duty upon herself.

She had been in confinement on bed rest for the last month as she entered her third trimester. There was only so much that her ladies could do to keep the Princess of Wales occupied lest she go stir crazy. Too late for that.

Arthur chuckled from the doorway. He had come by, as he did every night to speak with his wife before he went back to his own chambers for the night. “It is doctor’s orders, my love.” he said, sitting on the edge of his wife’s bed. She lifted her head to glare at her husband but there was an overwhelming playfulness in her blue eyes that was overriding the irritation.

“This is your first pregnancy and no one wants to risk anything happen to you.”

“Or the heir. Mainly the heir.” the seventeen year old princess added, lowering her gaze to sewing once more.

“Both of you.” Arthur insisted, reaching over and pressing his hand to his wife’s knee. “Only a few months left and we will soon be holding our child. It will be in the midst of Spring. We will be able to take him outside, show him some of the lands he will eventually rule over.”

Catherine put the shirt, needle and thread aside onto the wooden bedside table and reached her arms out to her husband.  

The sixteen year old Tudor smiled gently and the two moved about on the bed until he was lying next to her, both of them under her blankets. Her arms wrapped around his midsection as her red curls rested upon his chest. “Stay with me for the night.” she asked, her voice ever so muffled as she nuzzled his chest through his nightshirt.

Arthur laughed softly as he pressed a kiss to his wife’s head. One arm resting behind his head, the other wrapped around Catherine, his hand placed upon her swollen stomach. “You know I-”

“I know. You also know that I am an early riser. I will be able to wake you up and shoo you off before my ladies arrive.”

He did know that. Knew it well. Before she was with child, there were many a mornings when he was jostled awake from his wife moving off of the bed before the sun had even fully rose above the horizon.

“You know I can not say no to my Guinevere and you use it against me.” he teased.

Catherine nodded, a triumphant smile spreading across her face. “Indeed. My Arthur.” she moved her head away from Arthur’s chest and leaned up to peck her lips against his. “I love you.”

“And I love you. So much.” he said, pressing their foreheads together. They had both prayed so much, alone and together, and thanked God for allowing them to overcome their sweat from the year prior. To give them a second chance to grow. To plant the seeds that would someday blossom into their Camelot.

[pleasing-louis]

Where I Burn to Be (143k)

There were very few people who managed to get under Louis’ skin as effortlessly as Harry had, and even fewer who had done it in only a day and a half. It was quite an accomplishment, really. They’d only interacted a handful of times and yet Louis had the insatiable desire to slam the locker into that frustratingly well-defined face that never seemed to hold any expressions other than contempt and arrogance.

“That’s right. I do own the skies. And you wanna know why?” he sneered. Without his boots on, Louis was a fair bit shorter than Harry, his eyes pretty much level with Harry’s chin and his socked toes bumping into the boots of the other man, close enough that Louis could make out the tiny scar on Harry’s brow and the individual shades of emerald in his irises. He was handsome, but that only made Louis hate him more. Heart thumping heavily against his sternum and his hands balled into fists, Louis lifted his chin defiantly and plastered a coldhearted smirk across his lips. “Because I’m the best goddamn pilot here.”

aka the Top Gun AU

[ukiyozora]

Stardust and Pixie

pairing: satosugu

synopsis: three times shoko does not empathize with lord satoru and lowborn suguru and the one time she does. or exploration of the romantic relationship between gojo satoru and geto suguru through the eyes of shoko, the pixie.

rating: m

status: complete

[aidaran-alha]

Chapters: 4/? Fandom: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett Rating: Explicit Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Relationships: Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens)

Summary:

God was watching when Aziraphale ate the ox rib. When he conspired against Her and tricked her angels. When he lied to Heaven.

And falling should be bad, the worst thing to ever happen to him. Except that it's not. Crawley seems to want nothing but to protect him from Hell, to keep him close as he learns the ropes of being a demon assigned to Earth.

Maybe a side of their own is not such a bad and lonely thing after all.

-----

“... yes, I know it’s highly irregular— Can we have this discussion face to face, Hastur? It hurts when you go directly into my brain— Yes, I know we’re supposed to enjoy pain, I’m just saying I— No, no, I know and it’s not —”

Crawley’s teeth were gritted, and he had his sunglasses on, even if his interlocutor wasn't there. His stance was tense, and it was clear he was about to have the headache of his life.

“Oh, I know it’s my best job yet! When they realise they’re down one ang— yes, they haven’t come for him yet. Wha—? Yes, just a bit of a temptation and— oh, no, I assure you, it wasn’t easy, but now we have one more demon than we did before, and he needs to learn how to—”

Aziraphale froze in place as his face drained of all colour. They were talking about him. And Crawley was bragging about it, a fake smile plastered on his face. As the redhead’s head turned to look at the house, their eyes met, and even through the sunglasses, Aziraphale saw the other demon’s eyes widen, pupils shrinking as he realised he was being spied on.

Crawley carried on with his conversation as if nothing had happened, even if his hands twitched and his eyes purposely avoided Aziraphale’s.

“... yes, I know, and I understand but— no, I’m not arguing, Hastur, I just— he’s not trained, you see. Won’t be useful down there. And humans are a lot of troub— no, I’m not saying I need a different assignment. I can deal with this fine. I’m just saying, he’ll be a good addition to— Yes, I can train him. He’s already well versed on humans and— Yes, he can tempt them, trust me. Already brought us some souls— No, they’re still alive, give them some years to hit it. Lots of souls ‘bout to come to us, I tell ya. And the angels are starting to come here for souls too, so I need— yes, there were lots of angels there and— just let me have him around, alright? I can train him for a few centuries, give him to you if this doesn’t work out and— yes, thank you Hastur. Yes, hail Satan, I’ll submit those reports I owe you and— yes, I know I said I would do it two hundred years ago and— yeah. Bye.”

Continue reading:

https://archiveofourown.org/works/54816064/chapters/140632675

@goodomensafterdark​

[retrobooks]

Distorted Perceptions Novel

PAULATHEWRITER.COM