#like I think it's telling that sophia reject francis also because she rejects being a polar wife and that she had such an example

[antiqua-lugar]

reading about stuff, I think this passage about eleanor anne porden, sir john's first wife (the real person) definitely informs my idea of sophia cracroft's characterisation (from the terror amc):

Spufford argued that in this letter, Porden effectively refused the role of a “conventional polar wife,” which he understood to consist of patient waiting and resignation. But her letter can best be understood as defining, rather than rejecting, that role—after all, she had no role model apart from Mary Richardson. She expected she would help produce narratives for the sake of her husband’s career—as did other wives of naturalists, botanists, astronomers, geologists, and practitioners of gentlemanly science. She also expected, like other maritime wives, to be repeatedly abandoned, perhaps for years. In that context, she argued, she had a right to knowledge - particularly about Franklin’s relationships, traumas, and how those were likely to impact their shared life. Clayton, Annaliese Jacobs. Arctic circles and imperial knowledge: the Franklin family, Indigenous intermediaries, and the politics of truth.

[heyktula]

Fic Breakdown for Closer, Chapter One (aka, the DVD Extras)

So, chapter one of Closer, the first installment in Somewhere in Canada (the Terror kink AU)... went up today! And let me tell you what, I am hype because this is my very first longfic in the Terror fandom, and it's centered around a subject very near and dear to my heart—BDSM. It's a love letter to power exchange, the sheer joy of kink, conventions, and sex education.

Like other fic breakdowns I've done, this'll be in three parts—technical notes (like POV and stylistic choices), story notes (like characterization and kink info), and then, instead of the editing section I usually include, I'm going to talk about specific lines at the end.

I blame Edward for the line notes, tbh. I love him, but he's a himbo, and many things went unobserved in the course of this story.

(Okay, fine, it's not entirely his fault. Some of it is that he's just so steeped in kink that he doesn't think twice about a bunch of the stuff going on.)

Technical Considerations

Inspiration: So this fic is a love letter to kink, and kink education, and conventions, which in my experience can be life-changing opportunities to meet people with similar interests, and also to be able to do some exploration of your own and figure out what makes you tick. I'm pretty sure there's an AU version of me that makes their living off kink education and the convention circuit, but (un)fortunately, in this particular universe, I am a fic writer (and, occasionally, a paid one as well).

Closer is also a love letter to rough physical play. I remember sitting in my very first workshop on the topic, and just being wide-eyed that a) this is a thing, b) it looks fun. (It is, actually, fun.) There's a ton of reasons I love it—and hopefully, after Closer concludes, you'll be able to see some of the reasons why—but I also love that physical play doesn't have any financial barriers to entry. (The irony of Edward "rich boy" Little being heavily into it has not escaped me.)

Timeline:  Hilariously, I actually started this verse for a Fitzier fic—it takes place six months from Closer, at the winter version of the conference—but while I was working my way through the Fitzier setup, I was like 'fuck it, I should write a quick one-off joplittle to establish the verse', and lo and behold, my "quick one-off" turned out to be sixty k, and it runs parallel to a Tozer/Irving that I  have yet to write, but which is visible in Closer if you squint. So, uh, oops.

So this story fits into a very specific space in the timeline—that is, it's prior to Fitzjames and Crozier having met, but it's after the (second) Cracroft/Crozier breakup. (If you were wondering if that's why Francis isn't running his own damn booth, yes, that's why. He's very likely depression drinking in London at this very moment.)

Setting: I wanted to stay true to the spirit of the whole, you know, boatload of white men going to Canada and being confused, but I wanted them to go for better reasons. It's so rare that we get shows set in Canada, you know? And I feel very passionately about our winters here, in that I complain about them while they're happening, but I do also kind of enjoy the challenge, in a really fucked-up sort of a way. So I set the fic in Canada too, and then, because I was explicitly setting it here, I also got to lean into a bunch of Canadian stereotypes (like Goodsir living his best life in plaid and denim and the inevitable Tim Horton's jokes) and I actually had a lot of fun doing it, so I guess that was something I learned about myself.

Story Considerations:

Primary Kinks: So most people involved in BDSM have a "thing"—you know, the thing that they care about more than they care about any other things. And one of the most fun things for me about creating an AU like this is going through the characters and figuring out what everybody's niche is. Like, it makes sense to me that Hickey would be that edgeplay asshole that's in the kink scene specifically so he can fuck with people. Tozer having a military fetish (and also being a bit of a kink snob) totally fits with his whole "now what the bloody hell do people think that means?" speech.

If you've ever been to a fetish convention, you've seen guys like Blanky, who have been in the scene forever, and made their name handcrafting BDSM gear. They're easy to talk to, and will totally tell you about that time they ran an entire scene using only items found in their kitchen. You've seen women like Sophia Cracroft, who have a cluster of people surrounding her at all times, and who is never short of someone who will bring her tea if it looks like she's thirsty. And you've also seen guys like Ross, who are reasonably famous in their areas of expertise—the kind of guy that you see across the hall, and you're like "shit, is that James Clark Ross?" (And it is! Holy shit!)

Canadian Kink: So! I live in the prairies, and it's as conservative as hell out here. That means there's some specifics to kink culture that I'm not sure translate to other parts of Canada—and they definitely don't translate back to England. For example, every public event I've ever been to (by which I mean every event that wasn't being held in someone's house) has mandated that penetration cannot occur during the event. No toys in orifices, no bits in other bits, no mucous membranes touching, no oral, no fingering, no handjobs, no intercourse, all that kind of stuff. I'm not convinced that you couldn't have sex in a dungeon in, say, Vancouver, or Toronto, or any of the other bigger centers—but that hasn't been my experience in the prairies, and I kept those restrictions for plot purposes in Closer. (Sorry, Jopson. I promise I still love you.)

Canadian weapons laws being what they are also means that some of the gear that's totally okay in other places (like butterfly knives) is totally illegal in Canada (sorry, Tozer. No apologies for you, Hickey.). The sap gloves that Edward is mourning are, unfortunately, one of the items that get lost in the shuffle. Sap gloves are pretty neat—they're leather gloves which are weighted with lead on the knuckles/backs of the hands. They make your punches harder, but they also protect your hands—and, for somebody like Edward, who does a lot of punching when he plays, that protection is definitely beneficial. Plus, they're a bit of a signalling thing—having a set of sap gloves hanging off your belt makes it very clear what kind of things you're into, and I think Edward is a bit bereft not having that this weekend, because he's not used to having to make those introductions cold.

Edgeplay: There's sort of a, er. Spectrum of what is and isn't considered to be "acceptable" kink, even within the kink community. Some kinds of kink are seen as more publicly acceptable, and some kinds are relegated back to the fringes and the dark corners. In the context of Closer, that means Tozer, Hickey, and Little are our resident edgeplayers. This isn't a judgement on the type of play they do (well, it is a judgement on Hickey, but we don't have time to go into *gestures* all that), but it is a statement about the way that type of play is perceived. Sophia Cracroft can, with very little finessing, put photographs of her in rope suspension onto her various social media accounts, and as long as she's clothed, it's perfectly acceptable content to just have out there, and people are going to call it artistic and Instagram-worthy. Tozer, on the other hand, ain't getting any recordings of interrogation scenes he's run posted anywhere except to Pornhub.  (The less we say about Hickey's knife-play, the better.)

Similarly, because the rough physical play that Edward does looks fairly intense from the outside (and is pretty intense from the inside), he gets to live in the not-that-publicly-acceptable area of kink. The area of kink where they usually put the crash mats at the far end of the dungeon, because that way, if you don't want to watch two people whaling on each other with their fists, you don't need to see it. This "stigma" is important in Edward's conception of himself, because on one hand, we see in his conversation with Goodsir that Edward absolutely knows his shit and, hero-worship of Crozier aside, has the knowledge base to be a fantastic educator in his own right—but we also see the subtle kinkshaming coming from both Hickey and Tozer about where Edward's place is in all this. That is to say—Edward's place is with them, in the dark shadowy spots, and not in the "socially acceptable" circles that Crozier's circle of people (Jopson included) are perceived to be running in. (There's a sense, coming from Tozer, that there's no point in Edward pursuing getting onto the org committee for the conference itself, because they won't want someone like Edward there—but, again, that's some pretty insidious kinkshaming coming from Tozer, and we could all just let that go and be better for it. Goodsir clearly doesn't feel like Edward's presence would be a detriment.)

So, yeah. I'll excuse Tozer's kinkshaming bullshit temporarily, as he needs to sort himself out. I don't think he's trying to drag Edward down so much as he just thinks Edward's being a bit delusional, and wants to save him the disappointment when Jopson invariably rejects him for being way too kinky and intense. (If Edward is moping around all weekend, he'll be in the hotel room, and how's Tozer supposed to get his dick sucked by random hookups then? "Yeah, come on back to mine, don't mind my roommate, he's a moody bastard and won't participate even if we ask." Not winning any prizes there, lads.)

I won't excuse Hickey's kinkshaming; he's definitely trying to make Edward feel like shit on purpose. I could speculate as to the reasons, but they're probably gross. (I mean, I know the reasons. Hickey's gonna Hickey.)

(There's a whole entire essay I could write about incorrect assumptions that literally everyone is making about the type of play Thomas Jopson must be into, based on his nice hair and nice eyes and nice smile, but I'll just let Jopson handle those corrections on his own, as he's very capable of doing so.)

Concerning the Chapter Title: If you were gonna take a risk, Neddo, the social was the time to do it—and you done fucked that up, sweetheart.

Tomorrow is another day. Give it another shot then, yeah?

Line Notes:

Edward looks across the hall again, cringes. “No, fuck, that’s—no, I think that’s Sophia Cracroft, Sol, I’m not—Christ. Sophia Cracroft, Jesus.”

I will never not find this introduction to Edward Little fucking hilarious, because he comes off as so competent from Jopson's POV when he's arguing with Hickey in the parking lot, and yet the moment we see Edward in his own POV, he's just a mess. I love him very much, but he's a mess. This was one of the deciding factors in the dual POV as well—I knew going in that the brunt of the story was going to be from Edward's POV, but weaving in those occasional Jopson bits lets us see how Edward looks from the other side.

(Also, Tozer three hundred percent knows exactly who Sophia Cracroft is, because he demonstrates that, like, two sentences later, meaning that he’s literally just winding Edward up here, and it goes right over Edward’s head. God.)

It’s the older guy across the hall that’s laughing his ass off, but the cutie is standing right next to him, looking down at his phone, his ears charmingly pink. 

As a reminder, Edward is wearing a white tank, and just stretched his arms out behind his back. The nipple piercings are very obvious, Jopson was three hundred percent staring, and Blanky definitely caught him and is laughing his ass off about it.

“…I know what this is about,” Tozer says, tying an orange bandana around his left bicep.

The orange bandana is a hanky code thing—which, yes, it's dated, and it's not really in use anymore, but Tozer seems like the kind of guy that would tattoo his kinks on his forehead just so everybody could see them if they would all fit. Failing to find any way to gracefully do that, we instead have the orange hanky ("anything goes") on the left arm ("top").

(Older guy, thankfully, is wearing a ring on the fourth finger of his left hand. Cutie isn’t. So there’s no obvious problems there.)

Jopson not wearing a ring indicates literally nothing about whether or not he's available, but I guess whatever makes Edward feel better about himself is fine. He's right with his assumption about Jopson, in this case, but it's literally nothing more than a wild guess, and the mental hoops he's jumping through only exist to make him feel better about himself.

(Esther usually attends these events with Blanky—but somebody needed to hold down the fort in London this time, and so she's in London at present. It's for the best, she can check on Francis every so often.)

[Hickey] sticks his hand in the pocket of his latex cargo shorts...

I won't take criticism on this fashion statement, constructive or otherwise.



So, that's it for this week! Chapter two, Aware, goes up next Friday! See you then! And if you have questions or anything in the meantime, you can always drop me an ask on tumblr or Curious Cat!

[subsequentibis]

under a cut bc these are WIPs both in the sense that the art is not complete and the thoughts are not complete but if i don’t at least say Something in a semi-public space i will spontaneously combust. combining some of my current Favorite Things, the crane wives, the terror, and Character Parallels

thinking! about! crozier / goodsir parallels! specifically because there’s a song by the crane wives called “high horse” that i was originally like, ah yes, this is a crozier song! and then i started thinking oh... but it’s also a little bit a goodsir song, possibly? so! lyrics that make me think about both of them and cry a little bit! and that i will eventually make into a mirrored comic!

I’m done thinking about it / You’re never gonna get what you want / So why feel guilty about it?

this feels very much like what they both think about hickey, towards the end - both understand that they’re going to have to do something extremely unpleasant to solve their hickey-related problems. goodsir is going to have throw aside the hippocratic oath entirely and poison the men he pledged to protect, and not only that, he’s going to have to take his own life.* crozier has to give up on hickey. he refuses to forgive him. he’ll try to save the other men but he has made the conscious decision to abandon hickey. does that mean killing him? does that mean leaving him behind to die in the arctic? unclear! but it means that if the rest of them are going to get back to england, hickey is not. he makes that decision back in ep 8 when he decides to hang hickey, but he holds onto it all the way through to the end. they are both done thinking about it - done second guessing, done trying to save a man they now believe is beyond saving. he’s never going to get what he wants,** at least as long as goodsir and crozier’s plans work out he won’t, so why feel guilty about it? that last bit sticks - i don’t think it’s justifying why the singer doesn’t feel guilty, i think it’s the singer questioning themselves - why do i still feel guilty, even after all of that? i think goodsir recognizes his own guilt. even though it wasn’t intentional, he’s the cause of a lot of awful things on the expedition. loads of other people have pointed this out better than i could, so i won’t go into that. but i think that guilt sticks to him and we can tell - he carries the photographs, the broken glass, these reminders of his failures. whether or not he can be held responsible he still feels responsible. crozier knows he fucked up with hickey. he was too familiar and then too harsh - brought him too close then threw him aside for the crime of anticipating his own orders. i don’t think there’s any reconciliation they could have that would smooth that over. crozier refuses to forgive hickey, but hickey asks if crozier includes himself in his forgiveness. i don’t think he can.

We get what we deserve / We never really learn

and later:

We get what we deserve (don’t we?) / We never really learn (or do we?)

oh god this is where my thinking really falls apart, unfortunately. there’s something here about like... Respect, right? crozier demands respect. he thinks he deserves respect, or at least that he ought to get it.*** goodsir wants an entirely different kind of respect - crozier tells fitzjames never to call him francis again. goodsir tells macdonald he wishes macdonald would call him harry. neither get what they ask for, what they (arguably) deserve. and with their endings - goodsir Did Not Deserve That. goodsir deserved someone to drive him to the hospital and hold his hand in the waiting room.**** crozier deserved... hm. i dunno what he deserved. maybe he deserved to go back home and retire and sit by a fireplace with a mug of tea for a while. ‘deserve’ no longer looks like a word to me so i’m going to drop this line of thought. but anyway, these lines and how they’re changed later in the song echo this feeling i have of the show of people thinking of the world a certain way and learning that they are Very Wrong by the end. they ring especially true for crozier and goodsir, at least to me, and i’m trying to find the right words to articulate it but they’re alluding me. which is very frustrating! this is why i draw silly comics instead of writing meta.

You are never going to change her mind / So don’t try (x2)

oh man! oh boy! aw, fuck!!! okay so this one is probably pretty obvious. crozier proposes to sophia twice, and both times she rejects him. she makes it clear why she won’t marry him. they are Not Compatible, crozier can’t stop being a captain and sophia can’t attach herself to a captain. goodsir pleads with silna to stay. she can’t stay, she isn’t safe with him as long as he’s with the other men, and he has a duty to stay with them. did i want him to go “actually, fuck this” and go off with her? yes. dear god did i ever want that. could he have? i don’t think so. very striking to me that there are like, three named female characters and crozier and goodsir are tied to two of them!

* does he have to? not really. but he decides to. i think that counts.

** what hickey wants is really unclear to everyone except possibly hickey himself. but i think goodsir and crozier think hickey wants to get back to england, because at the end of the day, all of them do. they can’t stay here.

***  are those different? i think they are in a way i can’t quite articulate. possibly it’s related to his position as irish and middle class - sir john deserved respect because of his station, crozier ought to get it despite his, something to that effect.

**** you know who you are.

[lucyreviewcy]

Made in Chelsea - S04 E06

This week, Proudlock reveals himself to be a next level snake in the grass, and yet it is Lucy who ends up with everyone up in her grill. 

There are some fascinating double standards for men and women in this programme and I know I do tend to harp on about gender, but guess what: 

IT’S HARPING TIME. 

See, what’s fascinating about this episode is that there are two “crimes” committed. The first is that Proudlock and Sophia got it on even though it was clear that Francis, who basically introduced them was interested in Sophia. The second is that Lucy Watson didn’t want to go on a date with Whiny Baby Jamie, and turned up with Creepy Smug Andy instead at the same dinner party Jamie invited her to. 

I will consent that Lucy is deliberately causing drama for these guys. But the amount of aggression she gets in response from everyone is as far off the charts as Anakin Skywalker’s Midi-chlorian count (google it.) Everybody, men and women, is furious with Lucy for a) telling Jamie that their “date” wasn’t a date at all and b) having the gumption to reject him. 

Meanwhile, what I consider to be a much bigger betrayal is unfolding quietly at the other end of the table. The wail inducing sadness displayed by Francis Boolay Boulle (aha) this week, provoked by Sophia and Proudlock’s sordid liaison (they’re both single consenting adults so maybe it’s not that sordid but they hurt Francis bad and everything Proudlock does carries with it a thin veneer of sorditiy (not a word, don’t care).). Francis confronts Sophia, and forgives her, within about five minutes they’re buddy buddies again and there is literally no fallout for Proudlock. None. Because he’s one of the bois. A trusted friend. Who just accidentally slept with the girl Francis was mooning over for weeks.

The thing is, neither Lucy nor Snakey Proudlock nor Sophia are in the right here. They’ve all made bad choices that caused drama or pain to somebody, but Proudlock has betrayed a close friend that he lives in the same house as, while Lucy has rejected a date with an acquaintance. 

But what Lucy did is framed as so much worse, and everybody ends up screaming at her for it. Lucy shakes up the show because she has real, tangible agency, but the narrative sets her up as a villain: Jamie and Spencer look genuinely afraid of her at various points during Rosie’s dinner party. Nothing that Lucy’s done is any worse than things that Spencer, Jamie, Proudlock and Hugo have done, but it’s considered so shocking simply because she’s a woman. Louise, Lucy’s polar opposite, is just batted around by Spencer and Jamie until they decide who’s won, while Lucy takes charge and talks back. 

The thing to note here is that Lucy’s version of empowerment is rooted in adopting “masculine” attitudes towards sex and relationships (in the context of the show: her behaviour is far more similar to Spencer or Jamie than to Millie or Rosie.) Her vocabulary, with phrases like “I’m a player myself” and “up in my grill” is also closer to the words used by the male characters in the show. This was an era where progress for women focussed on becoming more “like” men. Can’t get your voice heard at work? Become more assertive! Sick of men treating you badly in relationships? Treat some men badly! Overall, though, this isn’t the path to progress for men or women. It’s just the path to everyone being aggressive. 

Perhaps, call me crazy, men can learn something from women and women can learn something from men. Men can stop and ask for directions once in a while, and women can stop flooding their CV’s with “I think”s and “I would like to”s. No behaviours are exclusive to either gender, but there are “tropes”, if you will, of the way that men and women behave that could always always benefit from some quiet reflection. Why do I apologise for everything I do? Why is it always women who make notes in meetings? Why are many men so bad at wrapping gifts? In one way, Made in Chelsea is a positive tool for reflecting on your own experience of your gender because the attitudes demonstrated here are so polarised and broadly negative.

Made in Chelsea is a battle of the sexes narrative, and I suspect (oop, woman writer, qualifying everything I say) that won’t change in later seasons because there is something implicitly fascinating about watching posh men and posh women get into fights because neither party is listening to the other. Why else do you think period dramas are so popular?