#melmont

[werewolfsmile]

Until The Levee - Cornelia Locke + Whipplocke

[watch it on youtube}

Finally, this video I've had in the works for ages is done!! Massive shout out to my besties on discord who helped with some editing choices! You guys are the best!

Song: Until The Levee by Joy Williams

[wine4thewin]

The English

"I know the horror was not mine by design. But it was I, alone, who made the choice to come to this place. I, who looked to rescue my fortunes with such wayward risk...and it was upon my trail the Devil followed."

[theimprobable1]

The English “Murder on the Orient Express” AU that came to me last night when I couldn’t sleep:

Detective Marshall is investigating the murder of David Melmont. Suspects include Cornelia Locke, Thomas Trafford, Kills on Water, Martha Myers, Jed Myers, the list goes on. The evidence is contradictory and it seems like they all could have done it but at the same time like none of them could have done it.

Eventually, Marshall discovers that they all did it, and in fact Melmont deserved to be murdered more or less by everyone he’d ever met, but not before the investigation is severely disrupted by Marshall’s assistant Eli Whipp, who realised that Cornelia was guilty and has been tampering with evidence and concealing vital information to protect her.

Why did Eli deduce that Cornelia was guilty but not that the others were, too? Can’t say. Pure coincidence, probably. Maybe the others were simply better liars. It definitely wasn’t because he was in any way more focused on her than on any of the others. Unlike some men, he never even looked at her face, nope, not at all.

[eachlittlebird]

Also, congratulations to Rafe Spall for making me loathe and detest a character even more than I loathed and detested Cornelius Hickey. Never thought it would happen, well done sir.

[laiqualaurelote]

2023 Fic Round-up

This year I wrote seven fics and 108,512 words, which is more than I thought! Here's a round-up

maybe everything that dies someday comes back (The English | Cornelia/Eli | M | 14k)

The post-apocalyptic Mad Max Fury Road zombie AU where David Melmont hires bounty hunter Eli Whipp to track down and retrieve a fugitive called Cornelia Locke.

wins this year's award for: Fic That Fulfils My Childhood Dream (writing a zombie apocalypse)

ain't practical, a world you can't touch (The English | Cornelia/Eli | G | 5k)

The Pushing Daisies AU in which Eli can bring people back to life with his touch, but has tried his best not to until Cornelia.

wins this year's award for: Deepest Cut, Zagged

The Lady With The Recorder Asks The Questions (Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries | Phryne/Jack | T | 6k | WIP)

Modern-day newsroom!AU - Phryne is a star investigative journalist who breaks news as easily as she breaks hearts; Jack is just trying to do his best in the war on error.

wins this year's award for: Fic I Most Regret Not Finishing (I'm sorry!)

constant as a northern star (constantly in the dark) (Ted Lasso | Ted/Trent, past Trent/OFC | T | 10.5k)

The saga of Trent Crimm and his independent ex-wife.

wins this year's award for: Most Surprisingly Popular Fic

all the men and women merely players (Ted Lasso | Ted/Trent, Roy/Keeley/Jamie | T | 50k)

The Station Eleven!AU where the Richmond Players are a travelling Shakespearean company performing in the ruins of a post-pandemic England, and Trent is, despite the apocalypse, still a journalist.

wins this year's awards for: Longest Fic, Fic That Survived The Most Hiatuses, Fic I Am Proudest Of

well-versed in etiquette, extraordinarily nice (Good Omens, Historical RPF | Aziraphale/Crowley | G | 3k)

The Regency heist fic in which Jane Austen, criminal mastermind and aspiring novelist, pulls off the 1810 Clerkenwell Diamond Robbery with the help of a certain demon.

wins this year's award for: Quickest Fic (I wrote it in four days)

speak easy, swing hard (Marvel Cinematic Universe | Steve/Tony | T | 13k)

The 1920s Prohibition era!AU in which Tony runs a nightclub empire, Steve is an aspiring artist and/or questionably undercover agent, Sam and Bucky are bootlegging their way through America and nobody knows what Natasha is up to.

wins this year's award for: Most Historical Research (I watched two seasons of Boardwalk Empire and had to figure out multiple characters' speech patterns, then transpose these to the 1920s. Also I listened to so much vaudeville)

I don't think I will be around as much in 2024, barring unexpected hyperfixations, but I wish you all a glorious year anyway! May your WIPs be finished, your ships prolific and your fandoms full of joy.

[sagradofemenin0]

Our Lady of The Blind Fate, Emil Melmont. (2022)

[princessniitza]

Badly summarized WIPS

I was tagged by @rifle-yes

RULES: Summarize your WIPs badly and let people vote on what they'd most like to read!

*note that 1) this is my first time making a poll! yay! and 2) I'm using a very broad definition of WIP, as in 'fic ideas I haven't completely given up on writing yet'

**also note that:

RO = Rogue One

RO/A = Rogue One, but including Andor canon

TE = The English

Tagging @wrenaspun and anyone else who wants to do the thing!

[eternalegoist]

the English: some thoughts (sorry I need to think aloud)

Did Melmont have people track Eli and engineer him and Cornelia to be at the Hotel at the same time, to get rid of both the last witness to the massacre and the last person who knew of his infection at the same time?

Why was Eli going home both on the day of the massacre and on the day Cornelia arrived?

[tough-n-dumb]

babbling below

in greek mythology, Orion is a prideful hunter whose vanity and boastfulness are his ultimate downfall. he claims he's the best hunter in the world and intends to prove this by saying he'll kill every animal on earth

the greek gods intervene before he can do so and send a scorpion after him. they battle, and the scorpion eventually triumphs, killing Orion. after the battle, Zeus puts both in the sky to commemorate the battle, and they are now the constellations Orion (The Hunter) and Scorpius. however, they are never in the sky at the same time, constantly chasing each other, one setting as the other is rising

all of this is to say... Cornelia is the scorpion, condemning Orion (Melmont) to death for all of the death and destruction he himself has caused—including her own. and although Lupus (The Wolf) doesn't factor into this myth, the constellation is beside Scorpius, always chasing Orion together. they are Cornelia and Eli. and over/next to them both is Libra, the scale of justice which is self-explanatory. "ain't never gonna change," Eli says. the two of them will always be together, revenge and justice intertwined

so anyway. that's all i got. and they already say some of it in the show but just had more thoughts ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[undisclosed-serendipity]

the english

did i watch The English recently? yes did i watch it again? yes will i stop watching it? maybe no. will i stop reblogging the english? no am i going to stop thinking about it? hell no.

am i going to recommend this show to everyone i know? actually no. I like this to be my little treasure. watch it if you want to feel your heart all the time.

there are so many things to talk about the show - obviously there's the topic of love, found family and true meaning of home but also there's colonisation and its effects and also like morality, destiny and fate. honestly i think this show has changed my perspective of colonisation? I mean I get that this is not the first time colonising is being used as a topic in a movie/series but I think this is the first time I'm watching a show that has an Indian American as a lead character and we get to learn quite a bit of the background and motivations and their feelings about colonisation.

and I think after watching the show I am thinking long and hard about all the effects of colonisation (amongst other aspects about the show) I'm wondering about the motivations of all the (white) people that went to start colony in US and how they are somewhat of a destitute state to begin with? Thomas Trafford didn't do anything harmful per se, but the reason why he came to America was because he kind of ran his own business to the ground in England and needed like a start over. He said he needed to see the business through which was why he stayed in America.

there's the aspect of land being taken, and given and taken again from the native americans. They have their own internal wars amongst themselves like what Eli said with the Pawnee in wars with the Sioux, Cheyenne and many others. How would their life have turned out if the colonisers never reached their shores? With the colonisers, nothing much good came to them - brought them diseases, over plundering /over-killing all the animals that brought them famine and starvation, taking over their land and not to mention all the mass-killing and destruction the whites has caused to their home, their family and their villages.

maybe i don't watch enough movies/series about this topic but i don't think i had seen any that portrayed the kind of terror white people has put on the native americans, like the scene where the army people and melmont went on a massacre at the cheyenne village. (and we also see the effects it had on the survivors - Kills on Water) A lot of the reason given for such killings were just because they had different skin color. It's just terribly tragic and horrible all in all.

i'm going to end this long-ish essay and probably would write a lot more about the other themes of the series. it is hauntingly beautiful and a series that I'm going to think about for months on end.

[suosopuli-blog]

I don’t know how to make gifs so here’s a prompt for anyone capable: you know the monologue Cornelia holds about why she cherished her son it all can apply to Eli as well and I have not been normal since I’ve made the realization.

Please make a gifset of Eli and splice in Cornelia’s words. Extra points for using the footage of episode 2 when Eli reveals what happened to his family to “Because he suffered.”

Cornelia: I cherished him.

Melmont: Why?

Cornelia: Because he drew breath. Because he never gave up. Because he knew pain and pleasure and boredom. And because he suffered, he taught me to do the same.

[sagiow]

For the fic ask game: 🦈

🦈 Which character is the toughest to write?

For all that I love them dearly and would fight a dozen Melmonts for them, both Cornelia and Eli are tough! As much as their dialogue tends to come fairly naturally (and how fun it is to play with their respective rhythms), it's the thoughts and emotions behind their words that can be tough to discern (because there are so many and they are often conflicting), and I'm always afraid to mischaracterize them by tapping into the wrong one for that particular conversation / scene. And they also say so much without using actual words, and I find that difficult to convey in "show, don't tell" mode.

[wine4thewin]

Latest thing crawling through my mind on The English.

When Cornelia tells Eli 'there's a man trying to forget my son up on Powder River and I'm going there to remind him'. Um, so does this mean Cornelia and David corresponded at some point, because how else would he know they had a son at all or know to hire men to detain/kill her?

If so, I can only imagine Cornelia sending David some eccentric flowery-ass letter, telling him in polite fashion that she's sailing over to end him once and for all, it's all she dreams of, avenging the life he stole from her, the stars are aligning, she’s a Scorpio and revenge is her creed, and her voice is going to be the last thing he hears-

And David would write back: "That sounds absolutely thrilling, I'm a mad fan of that, it's the wildest thing you've ever said, fuckin’ arousing, that is, please do try, you bloody trollop, you know my address. I'm positively gagging for it. Cheers, luv. Yours truly, the Biggest D in the West.”

[theimprobable1]

The English leaves a lot of questions unanswered, such as how did Melmont know Cornelia was coming, what was the name of her son, or did Thomas know what had happened to her. But what I really want to know is this: who is Deborah Crawford???

[murphycooper]

if she dies from an infection and melmont doesn't die idk what the fuck i'm gonna do honestly

[laiqualaurelote]

whipplocke time travel AU

After the events of 1890, Cornelia is given the chance to travel back in time. (How, you ask? Maybe it's magic. Maybe it's just a whole lot of aiming.) She travels back to 1875, Powder River, where David Melmont is about to shoot a wolf. She kills him. Thomas, after fits and starts, gets his cattle business off the ground. He leaves Thin Kelly in charge and returns to England to marry a Cornelia who will never know anything but promise. McClintock searches the landscape but never finds the Cheyenne encampment. Kills On Water's people live. Hoxem will never exist. Cornelia's son will never exist. The only place he exists now is in her memory. She too expects not to exist after she changes the timeline, but somehow she's still here in America, fifteen years too early, dying but not dead. She doesn't know what to do with herself. For years she wanders the badlands of Wyoming, making her own way based on what Eli taught her. The illness leaves her body but the memories don't. Eventually she fetches up in Kansas, on an empty lot of land where a hotel will now never be built. She buys the land, builds the hotel. Makes it nice. She tends the bar and waits for the day a man in a cavalry jacket will come in and ask her for a drink.

Leave an AU and a pairing in my ask and I’ll give you the plot of the fic I won’t write for it.