#mfmm fanfic tidbits

[whopooh]

Reading Miss Fisher – Index IV

I have been terribly slow at making indexes for “Reading Miss Fisher”. Now, finally – after more than a year! – here is a new one.  

“Reading Miss Fisher” is my project of fanfic appreciation and discussion about stories written in the world of Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries -- because I love the show, and because I love the fanfic it has spurred. Here are so many fantastic stories and ideas and “what ifs”!

I have done thematic posts and some posts on fanfic as a genre, and last year a big part of it was the MFMM Year of Tropes challenges, where I wrote a post about the fics in every monthly challenge. 

Hope you enjoy!

Earlier indexes:

Index I (1-20): https://whopooh.tumblr.com/post/142947540603/reading-miss-fisher-index

Index II (21-35): https://whopooh.tumblr.com/post/149998111873/reading-miss-fisher-index-ii

Index III (36-56): https://whopooh.tumblr.com/post/157734316923/reading-miss-fisher-index-iii

Index IV:

57. Miss Fisher and the plight of miscommunication – February’s trope challenge (2017-03-07)  https://whopooh.tumblr.com/post/158117735613/miss-fisher-and-the-plight-of-miscommunication 

58. Miss Fisher and the Close Quarters – March’s prompt (2017-04-05)  https://whopooh.tumblr.com/post/159233067383/miss-fisher-and-the-close-quarters-marchs 

59. Miss Fisher and the art of swapping bodies or roles – April’s fic prompt  (2017-05-06)    https://whopooh.tumblr.com/post/160367707883/miss-fisher-and-the-art-of-swapping-bodies-or 

60. Miss Fisher when Everybody Hurts: the May trope challenge (2017-06-10)   https://whopooh.tumblr.com/post/161659534643/miss-fisher-when-everybody-hurts-the-may-trope 

I asked the fandom for recommendation of fanfic with great tension in them, and this resulted in 3 collected posts:

61. Give me fanfic love  (2017-05-17) https://whopooh.tumblr.com/post/160763834998/give-me-moments-of-great-tension-in-the-miss 

62. Great tension in the Miss Fisher fanfic – for the 11th PFF  (2017-06-02)  https://whopooh.tumblr.com/post/161348699053/great-tension-in-the-miss-fisher-fanfic-for-the 

63. Great tension in the Miss Fisher fanfic – post number 2  (2017-06-26) https://whopooh.tumblr.com/post/162292285423/great-tension-in-the-miss-fisher-fanfic-post 

64. Great tension in the Miss Fisher fanfic – third and last post (2017-07-01) https://whopooh.tumblr.com/post/162475567393/great-tension-in-the-miss-fisher-fanfic-third 

65. Miss Fisher and the Year of Tropes, transferred to AO3  (2017-07-01) https://whopooh.tumblr.com/post/162490325653/miss-fisher-and-the-year-of-tropes-chapter-1 

(66-68 are not technically fanfic appreciation, but I include them here because they’re so nice! I asked the fandom write post about minor characters in the show they love!)

66. Spreading the MFMM minor character love (2017-07-23) https://whopooh.tumblr.com/post/163320568178/spreading-the-mfmm-minor-character-love-there-are 

67. MFMM minor character love – in spades ❤︎ (2017-07-27) https://whopooh.tumblr.com/post/163487459355/mfmm-minor-character-love-in-spades 

68. MFMM minor character love – the second part (2017-08-16) https://whopooh.tumblr.com/post/164260380838/mfmm-minor-character-love-the-second-part 

69. Miss Fisher going out of space and time – the July trope (2017-08-10) https://whopooh.tumblr.com/post/164032338923/miss-fisher-going-out-of-space-and-time-the-july 

Then I asked the fandom for recommendation of fics that the readers love to reread, and this resulted in four posts. The first is from one reader, @quiltingmom​, whose love letter to the fandom I felt needed to be published as a whole, and then three more posts with recs: 

70. Play it again, Jack: Fanfics you love to reread (2017-07-05) https://whopooh.tumblr.com/post/162639729228/play-it-again-jack-fanfics-you-love-to-reread  

71. Play it again, Jack I: A love letter to the mfmm fic writers  (2017-08-08) https://whopooh.tumblr.com/post/163945196763/play-it-again-jack-i-a-love-letter-to-the-mfmm 

72. Play it again, Jack II – Miss Fisher fics you love to reread (2017-08-17)   https://whopooh.tumblr.com/post/164299442178/play-it-again-jack-ii-miss-fisher-fics-you-love 

73. Play it again, Jack III – Miss Fisher fics you love to reread  (2017-08-27) https://whopooh.tumblr.com/post/164670681563/play-it-again-jack-iii-mfmm-fics-you-love-to 

74. Play it again, Jack – fourth and final post of MFMM fics you love to reread  (2017-08-30)   https://whopooh.tumblr.com/post/164802249603/play-it-again-jack-fourth-and-final-post-of 

75. August Bonus Fic Prompt (2017-07-28) http://olderbynow.tumblr.com/post/163533008992/august-bonus-fic-prompt  (I never managed to write an overview over these lovely fics, which I regret, but here is at least the collection on AO3: https://archiveofourown.org/collections/August_Bonus_MFMM )

76. Knights in shining armours – or shining dresses. The MFMM August trope challenge (2017-08-01) https://whopooh.tumblr.com/post/164864465843/knights-in-shining-armours-or-shining-dresses 

77. Miss Fisher and the Power of Rumours – the September trope (2017-10-01) https://whopooh.tumblr.com/post/165945507793/miss-fisher-and-the-power-of-rumours-the 

78. Miss Fisher Unleashed – walls breaking down in the October trope challenge (2017-11-01)   https://whopooh.tumblr.com/post/167026390803/miss-fisher-unleashed-walls-breaking-down-in-the 

79. “We need to get warm” – the fics of the MFMM Bonus Trope (2017-11-19) https://whopooh.tumblr.com/post/167667202783/we-need-to-get-warm-the-fics-of-the-mfmm-bonus 

I wrote a post with questions for the fic writers, instead of the fic readers that I usually do, and I got so many lovely answers. Here are the questions, and a masterpost with all the writers’ answers:

80. I have a few questions to all MFMM fic writers… (2017-10-19) https://whopooh.tumblr.com/post/166582308973/i-have-a-few-questions-to-all-mfmm-fic-writers 

81. Answers from the Miss Fisher fic writers – masterpost (2017-11-22)   https://whopooh.tumblr.com/post/167777050463/answers-from-the-miss-fisher-fic-writers 

82. Season greetings from Sarah’s Secret Santa! (2017-12-08) https://whopooh.tumblr.com/post/168337667933/season-greetings-from-sarahs-secret-santa 

83. Did someone say I do? The MFMM November challenge (2017-12-16)https://whopooh.tumblr.com/post/168602454373/did-someone-say-i-do-the-mfmm-november-challenge

84. Miss Fisher Year of Quotes: January challenge, e.e. cummings  (2017-02-01)  https://whopooh.tumblr.com/post/170381607878/miss-fisher-year-of-quotes-january-challenge 

85. Miss Fisher’s February Quotes: Love (2018-03-01) https://whopooh.tumblr.com/post/171416580643/miss-fishers-february-quote-challenge-love 

86. MFMM March quote – L.M. Montgomery (2018-04-04) https://whopooh.tumblr.com/post/172595167503/mfmm-march-quote-lm-montgomery 

87. Miss Fisher fic – written in a flash (Flashfic overview) (2018-04-02) https://whopooh.tumblr.com/post/172523983038/miss-fisher-fic-written-in-a-flash 

88. Now this is our kind of flashers! (Flashfic overview) (2018-04-22) https://whopooh.tumblr.com/post/173201890923/now-this-is-our-kind-of-flashers 

And a final post about an upcoming challenge:

89. Flashfic challenge June 2nd (2018-05-15)  https://whopooh.tumblr.com/post/173919908168/its-june-2nd-phryne-you-can-get-back-to

[whopooh]

Did someone say I do? The MFMM November challenge

Does this count as a wedding?

In November, there was time for wedding bells to ring—but also for plenty of twists about how to get there, or maybe not get there at all. The trope was “An (Un)Expected Marriage”, and this is really one of the tougher questions in the Miss Fisher world—in what circumstances could Phryne possibly be aligned with the idea of marriage? And how can Phryne and Jack find a joint view? This is a mystery just as much as the murder mysteries. The fandom, this month just as in others, decided to go all in to twist and turn the trope in different directions, except one, it seems: here are not really easy weddings without struggle or a special take. Just as the trope name suggests, as well as the collection teasingly called “Did I say I do?”, there’s room for all kinds of interpretations and surprises. 

Apologies for being late with this overview for November, I have had a bad case of RL—let’s just agree this fits with December as an amnesty month, okay?

First out are fics where the marriage happens to other people.

In 912luvejaxlean’s lovely “Something old”, the focus is on Dot and Mr Butler in the preparations for Dot’s wedding. Dot has for her Four Wishes something from Phryne and something from Mac, and then Mr Butler offers her something old. It’s perfectly sweet without being too sweet at all. There is the expected marriage coming up between Dot and Hugh, and there is the unexpected marriage in that we learn about Mr B’s backstory and marriage. There are so many lovely details, and the moment between Mr B and the young bride-to-be becomes a very meaningful one. “Mr. Butler looked down at the promise of Dot’s future arrayed upon Miss Fisher’s dining room table. He felt and remembered a past that was so long ago. Unable to meet the young woman’s eyes, he blinked back tears.”

Also @zannadubs23's “Altar’d State” is emotionally intense, although in a completely different setting. It plays a lot with the readers’ expectations, and unfortunately I’ll have to spoil it a little bit here. Reading the story, one might for quite some time think it is about Phryne and Jack marrying, and Jack being surprisingly tipsy on this occasion. That connection is definitely emphasized by a dialogue like this about Aunt P:

“It was very nice of her to throw this party,” Jack noted quietly, “even if it is awful. ‘Society’ can take a flying leap as far as I’m concerned,” he added as a quiet aside. “She adores you, Jack,” she said, “she knows how much this means to you, even if you won’t admit it.”

But @zannadubs23 has cleverly other options up her sleeve, and it turns out to be another couple marrying—and one of those two is very dear to Jack, and the cause for him drinking a little too much. It all makes sense in a lovely way.

Well, that was unexpected.

The next, and largest, section consists of fics that play with the idea of marriage in different ways, but dammit, many of us find it super hard to make them actually marry like normal people would! There are many different takes on this, and they are all delightful.

@longlineoftvdetectives, ”Well, that was unexpected…” plays with many things: the idea of the unexpected, the only one bed trope, and marriage as a ruse to get out of a difficult situation. It has a lovely set-up where Phryne and Jack have done that thing they often do in fic: take shelter in a cabin from an unrelenting weather. This time, though, the owner discovers them—and he has a gun. He doesn’t believe in Jack’s innocence, and there is a wonderful scene where Phryne steps in front of them, naked from the waist up, and stops the nonsense: ‘“He’s Detective Inspector Jack Robinson,” Phryne stated, her voice so loud and commanding that no man present could doubt the veracity of her statement. “I am his partner. And his wife.”’ It’s a great scene, and it’s even better as one of the (disputed but famous) stories of the original Phryne from ancient Greece is that she saved her own life by disrobing and baring her breasts in front of her judges.

Where @longlineoftvdetectives’ fic gives us marriage as a ruse, @221aubrina‘s delightful “Rules of Engagement” instead deals with the aftermath of such a ruse. Jack manages to flirt extensively with Phryne by reminding her she claimed they were engaged when they went to the RAAF base in “Murder and the Maiden”. He sends her a gift and writes in the letter “Imagine my surprise when driving onto RAAF Base 19 last month to find out that, not only was I engaged, but that I had no recollection of the proposal. I do pride myself in my ability of recall, but it seems that any and all memory of this particular incident has completely escaped me."

He also manages to suggest they meet up for dinner. Phryne is delighted with his letter—”Cheeky man! Who would have thought he’d grow so bold?”—and decides to answer in kind, although that chapter hasn’t been posted yet.

A fic that touches on the marriage trope is JustMyType, “Wrong Adventure”—her first fic in the fandom, welcome!—is a lovely fic that predominantly deals with the miscommunication trope, as Phryne has mistakenly managed to send a very harsh telegram to Jack from her travels with her father. In the end there is also a hint of the fake marriage trope, and to top it up there is a wonderful note where the writer laments the difficulty to get the characters to misbehave, and manages to cover an impressive amount of the tropes—fake marriage, metafiction, and finally also the Bonus October trope:

- Did she just mash another trope into the author notes? - Can we get that fourth wall back up now? It's getting cold in here. - Quickly! We need to warm up! * Well, at the South Pole they recommend skin to skin contact... - (eye rolls all round)

@firesign23, “A Multitude of Sins” is such a clever take on the trope, allowing Phryne and Jack to stay in a grey zone between marriage and non-marriage, and with both of them being completely in on it. It’s a lovely almost-marriage, dealing with the problems of both marrying and not marrying, and it’s told from the rather snarky perspective of Dot. Dotis meeting them at the port as they return to Australia, and wonders about the two of them: “Her miss had been rather vague about the specifics of who was travelling with her and how—Dot had enough sense to know that Inspector Robinson’s conveniently timed holiday was by no means a coincidence, but those two did have a remarkable knack for missed opportunities.” Dot is so in control of the situation, noticing everything and telling her husband off in an adorable way:

It was Hugh who spotted her first, raising a hand in acknowledgment before pausing. “That’s the inspector with her,” he said quietly. Dot smiled. “Hugh Collins, if you say one word to scare him off…” “Not certain we have to worry about that, Dottie. He’s just kissed her. In broad daylight.” Well, at least Doctor MacMillan wouldn’t have to get blindingly drunk before dinner as she’d threatened to do. It seemed Miss Fisher’s best friend was about as fed up with those two as Dot herself was.

Dot’s shock and disbelief when the two detectives relay that they’re married, and the way she manages to see through the unlikely marriage, are all lovely.

Also in @whopooh, “The Unintentional Eloper”, the marriage doesn’t come easy. The fic is written from the idea that Phryne and Jack are being outed as newly-weds and elopers—“Wedding bells ring for notorious flapper,” the newspaper states—although they never actually did it. But it’s all in the newspaper, so everyone is sure they’re married, including a fuming Aunt P. It’s a light-hearted start, but it quickly turns a bit problematic: how do you navigate an unorthodox and non-public relationship while outed as married? The consequences dawn on them and there are suddenly choices that aren’t so easy to make: “Phryne is shaken, realising she has changed identity for the world, but without her having any control of it herself. Are people thinking of her as a Mrs—a Mrs Robinson, even? Even as she knows she is deeply in love with the accompanying Mr Robinson, the unfamiliar identity still makes her shudder.”

I was definitely intent to make them choose what to do in this fic, but they insisted on leaving it up in the air; it seems I can’t make Phryne marry! 

Another take on this is the absolutely delightful trope is “they might not be married, but they’re still married af”. In @scruggzi's “In Perfect Balance”, they are not married but still sometimes behave in a rather conspicuous way, which dawns on Phryne when she realises they actually do have anniversaries. This combines a really rather romantic notion of the two of them relying on each other, while at the same time allowing the banter to be on a complete roll. Jack surprises Phryne every year on the anniversary of the kiss at the airfield, and for the 5th one, he has managed to take his flyer’s licence.

“Are you going to tell me where we’re going?” she asked, fully impressed by her partner’s efforts. “Don’t tell me your legendary powers of deduction have deserted you, Miss Fisher.” He exited the car and crossed over to open Phryne’s door, taking her hand as she stepped lightly down onto the grass. She spun in his arms, reaching up to kiss him swiftly on the lips. “I was attempting to employ my equally legendary powers of persuasion.” Jack, however was unmoved. “Clearly, I’ve acquired an immunity over the years, must have been a survival instinct.”

When Jack takes the wheel with a steady hand, he encourages Phryne to wing-walk, and that might be the sweetest metaphor for the balance in their relationship in existence; Phryne’s heart racing “in excitement and exhilaration as together they held their balance, risking everything in perfect safety.”

The conversation about why they never married is adorable, and I admit I squeed when I came to this dialogue and its way if being romantic in a very toned down way. Phryne has asked Jack if he regrets it:

“No, I don’t - I don’t think you were made to be any man’s wife, and, I think I’d rather be your partner than your husband in any case.” It was her turn to smile, tilting her head back to meet his eyes now the question was safely answered. “You would?” He nodded seriously, “Plausible deniability.”

@firesign23, “Le Pont des Amours” includes a similar idea of not-marrying, set in the most romantic place possible, a bridge of the name “The Lovers’ Bridge”. Above all the fic includes delicious banter between the two of them—as much as they have time to between the snogging. There’s even a small nod to the story of the ancient Phryne, as Phryne makes a suggestive remark to Jack and he answers: “Is that why we’re here? I’m not sure the French courts will admit bared breasts as evidence, and I doubt I could convince my colleagues of the necessity.”

Phryne feels the need to talk about why she could never marry, and Jack knows her well:

“I’m accustomed to living my life by my own rules—” “I hadn’t noticed.” She laughed again, eyes still focused on the lake. “There are very few things in my life that are non-negotiable. Life has thrown me enough surprises that I’ve learnt to bend with many of them. But the ability to…” she paused, her clearly rehearsed words failing her. “But the ability to walk away if a relationship becomes untenable… that is one place I cannot yield.” He studied her face for a moment. “It might surprise you, Miss Fisher, but having lived through years of estrangement and later court appointments… I understand that better than you might expect.”

But in the spirit of “we’re still married af”, she also tells a story about kissing on the middle of the bridge entailing you’ll stay together forever, and the banter turns deliciously nerdy and pedantic.

Of course, there are also stories where Phryne does tie the knots. Still, it’s rarely uncomplicated or completely “normal”. @hisreindeerjumper has in “people will say we’re in love” cleverly turned the problem around, still making Phryne a person not easily pegged. She and Jack are married, but secretly—their friends don’t know about it—so she’s still ducking the societal role of wife, and the bond they have forged has still nothing to do with society or expectations. @hisreindeerjumper has a real knack of making their relationship sweet, trusting, and very tight, and in this fic they stand on the side and contemplate their friends, who have come to their party but don’t know it’s an anniversary party.

“Here we are, married for ten years, and not a single one of them knows.” At this, Phryne turned towards Jack and grinned. “Isn’t it thrilling, to have kept it a secret for this long?” she said. Jack’s infamous half-smile told her that he agreed.

The fic also contains the brilliant line that kind of sums up the fic: “Only you would think of marriage as clandestine”.

In @longlineoftvdetectives second fic, “To Leopards Changing Their Spots” there is also a marriage, but it is not in the centre of the story or a pivotal part of it. She goes close to the events in the episode “Death Defying Feats” and gives the continuation from Jack’s perspective, also capturing the irrepressible side of Phryne’s father Henry.

She downed her drink in one gulp. “Father’s not staying for dinner,” she added. “Dinner,” Henry chimed. “Certainly, I have time to stay for dinner. I haven’t spent nearly enough time with Inspector Robinson. You’re staying, I hope, Inspector?” Jack looked to Phryne for guidance on the next answer. Of course, he was staying for dinner. He was the one invited to dinner.

I love that this fic continues on after what we see in the show, it feels like I’m allowed to peek into the things happening off-screen. This is completely credible as a continuation: ‘She moved in closer to him and placed a hand on his lapel, whispering, “Don’t you dare leave while I’m gone.”  / “I wouldn’t think of it, Miss Fisher,” he rumbled, holding her gaze, blissfully unaware that Henry was watching them intently.’ There is the ease between Phryne and Jack, the attentiveness of Henry, and the exact pinning of his character: “Conjuring bonhomie among men of all stripes was an instinctual skill that he had honed to a pinnacle before he ever attained the improbable heights of Baron.”

When the scene changes to the ballroom at the Grand, where Bert and Henry peek in as Phryne and Jack are waltzing, we’re allowed to witness Henry’s point-of-view and also a slight streak of sentiments: “Henry watched, rapt, as an expression of pride made its way unbidden across his face. Suddenly, it struck him that this might be the closest he’d ever come to seeing his daughter dance at her own wedding.” This theme of marriage comes back in the end with a wedding that is low-key and late, but beautiful.

luvjaxlean in “An Intelligent Woman” lets Phryne decide on marriage in the quickest and most en passant way possible. The main focus of the fic is other things: Jack’s work and possible promotion and the way they already live together, and the marriage part becomes more of an afterthought:

“And, societal norms demand that we marry. Now, you may speak.” She said as she removed her finger. “Uh, I…” “I thought you’d never ask. How does next month sound?”

It feels somehow befitting, that if Phryne would decide to marry, she could make a proper fuss about it, but she could also just decide on the course of action as the most natural thing, going with her spontaneous decision.

Did we just create the notion “romantic paperwork”, Miss Fisher?

A similar spontaneity or rashness we find in @ollyjayonline’s beautifully named “A Discourse on Marriage” . Also here, it is Phryne who takes the lead, and rather hastily, after being fed up with them having to be stealthy about their relationship—the scene of how their unorthodox relationship actually turns out to be limiting to her and what they can do is great. The fic makes this very credible, that she would just see how sensible it would be, and then she kind of forgets to actually check with Jack what he wants, which is an interesting part. Jack signs the paperwork and then asks what it is about. which beautifully echoes the time she signs paperwork for him in “Game, set and murder”, and it turns out he has made her a special constable. It speaks about their absolute trust in each other, at the same time that it pushes poor Jack rather too quickly. The last chapter is still not posted, and it’ll be very interesting to see where this leads.

The last section of this post is fics where either Phryne or Jack are involved in marying, more or less outright, but not each other.

@teaandbanjo in “Wilkommen Fräulein Robinson” takes the trope into a completely different setting. In a fic of small, beautiful moments and quirks, and dreams that nudge at the consciousness showing a possible alternate life, but still only being dreams, there is a husband and wife. The unexpected bit is who they are. The fic is both clever and sad, and it makes a convincing case of the question “what if…. Miss Fisher never happened?”

@geenee27​, ”Protest”, has such a clever premise—the idea that after Sanderson’s downfall, also other things he has touched would be questioned, including Jack’s and Rosie’s divorce granted by a man now implicated in the scandal. The realisation that Jack might still be married in the law’s eyes, and Phryne’s reaction to these news as Jack manages to blurt out “I got remarried today. Sort of”—it’s all lovely. The jolt of this possibility shakes them enough to come somewhat clear of what they feel about each other. The fic also has the lovely surprise of Jack hearing “a familiar sound of feminine heels” outside his office, but it turns out to be Rosie instead.

@tannie137-blog/Lady_Lola_Lu, “Scratches”—also a first MFMM fic, welcome!—is a thorough character study of Phryne and Jack, starting with Jack rather dismissively answering “Why would I want to do that?” when Phryne wonders if he’d want to marry. The conversation is about marriage, and it suggests how complicated this is for them even as none of them actually want to do it. The fic highlights insecurities, memories, and emotions from both sides, partly in relation to the half clandestine nature of their relationship, and partly from their different personalities and histories. In the very end, there is a cliff hanger that upends everything, but we know nothing of exactly how—until the possible continuation might come, that is.

@ollyjayonline, “French Appetites” is a delightful and teasing fic, set as a reunion fic that goes very wrong before it goes right. Jack comes after Phryne to England, but she is not meeting him at the port and when he seeks her out, she is gone. Henry Fisher gives him very low hopes—“I’m sorry, lad but she’s larking around Europe with some old friends, has been since we got here”—and when Jack retreats to his uncomfortable boarding room he’s almost giving up. Only through the delightful interference of Guy and Isabella (with a great perspective from Isabella, assessing “Phryne’s policeman” as sad, something that “added rather than detracted from his allure”) is Jack set on the right track, to seek Phryne out in Paris. When he comes there, he finds her in a wedding dress and with a husband, and there is some wonderful heartbreak, incredulity, fighting, and A Very Hurt Jack before the misunderstanding is cleared up—to give us the delicious scene of Phryne, dressed in an elaborate white wedding dress, kissing Jack on a busy footpath while the groom is standing awkwardly a few feet away (oh I would love to see fanart of this!). It all turns out to have been a case, but Phryne has married this young man for real, which allows Jack to actually have “a torrid affair with another man’s wife”.

“Come on Fannie Disher, what are you doing?”

I’ll end this overview with @flashofthefuse’s brilliant “Penny Dreadful”, that manages to bring in both the November trope and the October trope of metafiction (”there is fanfic in our universe”) in the same story. It is a both amusing and touching fic where Phryne finds a story that is suspiciously close to her life, about a Fannie Disher and an Inspector Jake Robertson. It turns out that Dot and her friend Alice take pleasure in writing this kind of fic. Phryne asks to read it, and what she reads is an over-dramatic and wonderfully caricatured version of fanfic—complete with a self-insert of Alice herself, under the telltale name Miss Winsome. It has metaphors like “The silence hung menacingly in the air above them like the blade of a guillotine”, but it also manages to be engaging and a good read.

There are several really interesting points in this fic. First, the way the fic is melodramatic in a fun way, where many fanfic writers likely can recognise herself a little. Second, that Phryne might laughs at it first (“It’s tragically romantic” says Dot, and Phryne thinks: ”A tragically romantic story featuring herself and Jack? She’d probably find it comical”), but as the story goes on she is truly affected by what she is reading, rooting for the characters.

Third, that Alice in the story can’t imagine a happy ending for the independent flapper and the steady policeman; instead giving Jake another woman to marry. Although Fannie and Jake declare their love for each other, and although Jake doesn’t want anything more than Fannie saying she wants him, both their hearts breaking at being separated, they cannot meet. Fannie goes on to live her free life, and they will forever both look back on each other with sadness and some longing. (This part is so poignant because it is also how many stories about ‘modern women’ historically were written. In the fic Fannie gets to say “I’d only make him unhappy in the end. He’d come to regret me. I can’t offer him what she can. I couldn’t be a proper companion to him. Not the way he’d want me to be.” I wrote a post about that two years ago, about how Phryne doesn’t have that sad turn when it comes to her love story.)

Fourth, the way the fictive story makes Phryne want reality to end differently, and the fic pushes her to do something about her own relationship with the inspector—this is set after “Murder and the Maiden” and then continues within “Murder and Mozzarella”. The whole set-up corresponds beautifully to the strain in their relationship because of Group Captain Compton, and makes Phryne’s feelings when she meets Concetta be even more appropriate.

So the unexpected wedding is the wedding in the fictive story, that forces Phryne to consider her own heart more thoroughly, affected by the story even as it annoys her. In the end, her love story doesn’t have to end like the fictive Fannie Disher’s, and the scene from the show where Phryne and Jack “make do” with each other is beautifully expanded,

This was all for the November trope—and this was also the last of my overviews of the monthly tropes of MFMM! December is trope amnesty month, where all the old tropes are open for addition, but no new trope has been proclaimed. It has been such a joy to follow the “MFMM year of tropes”, and to read all the amazing stories that have come out of these challenges. According to AO3 no less than 200 fics have been added into the collections by now! That is incredible.

It has been great fun to write these overviews, where I have tried to show how the tropes have been taken in different directions, and I hope that the overviews have been an encouragement for the writers, and perhaps have both led people to read some fics tey had otherwise missed and also see more clearly all these different choices that have been made in the fics. As well as fun it has also been a lot of work, so even as I’m sad it’s over, I’m also a bit relieved. My thought originally wasn’t to cover all the months, I just started to write about January because I found it so interesting, and then after a while it became a thing I decided to do. But now it’s done—the whole year is completed!

Thank you to @firesign23 for organising these challenges, and to every fic writer who has contributed to the trope collections—you are all wonderful!

[whopooh]

MFMM Year of Tropes – the collected trope overviews

The MFMM Year of Tropes isn’t completely over, since Amnesty Month is in full swing and bringing out the fics people didn’t manage to finish during the trope months. The overviews, however, are, and I’ve collected them here in one place, for people that are interested to check back and either read about fics or find their way to the actual fic.

The collections on AO3 now include 200 fics (!), and in my overviews below there are also some additional fics that I noticed were posted for the trope even if they weren’t put into the actual collection. (I’m sorry I won’t be able to add in the amnesty fics; I just don’t have the energy, apologies for that!) 

It seems that January, with the question of soulmates and how that would fit with MFMM, is still the one that managed to trigger most fics, but not by much. For a long time, March and it’s bottle episode-trope had the fewest, but that has changed during the amnesty month and it seems April's Body swap will end up as the trope with the fewest fics. The difference between the months is not huge, they range between 13 and 19.

I did a quick count, and not fewer than 43 writers have written for the monthly challenges! Every one has contributed between one and sixteen fics (the high number is possible because some have written more than one for a specific month). It’s so lovely both with writers digging into all the tropes, and writers jumping in for one or a couple that tickled their fancy especially.

Apart from the incredible numbers, the trope challenges have also for more than one writer been their first attempt at writing in the Miss Fisher universe, which is a wonderful effect. Well done all!

The overviews can also be found on AO3, although without images: http://archiveofourown.org/works/11371497/chapters/25458129  *

Is there a bond between us, Jack, or are you just using your footy scarf? January’s soulmate trope.

The MFMM Year of Tropes 2017:

January: The (Soul)mating Game  https://whopooh.tumblr.com/post/156686154208/when-the-soulmate-trope-meets-miss-fishers-world

February: Let’s Misunderstand https://whopooh.tumblr.com/post/158001774013/miss-fisher-and-the-plight-of-miscommunication

March: Close Quarters  https://whopooh.tumblr.com/post/159233067383/miss-fisher-and-the-close-quarters-marchs

April: Freaky Phryday (Body swap/Role reversal) https://whopooh.tumblr.com/post/160367707883/miss-fisher-and-the-art-of-swapping-bodies-or

Have you been drinking, Inspector? May’s Hurt/comfort trope.

May: Everybody Hurts https://whopooh.tumblr.com/post/161659534643/miss-fisher-when-everybody-hurts-the-may-trope

June: Undercover Detectives https://whopooh.tumblr.com/post/162986414318/undercover-or-under-the-covers-the-june-trope

July: Out of Space and Time https://whopooh.tumblr.com/post/164032338923/miss-fisher-going-out-of-space-and-time-the-july

August: The Dulcinea Effect ** https://whopooh.tumblr.com/post/164864465843/knights-in-shining-armours-or-shining-dresses

“Now, you know I’m not one to pry…”  September’s Gossip and rumours trope.

September: Don’t Believe the Rumours https://whopooh.tumblr.com/post/165945507793/miss-fisher-and-the-power-of-rumours-the

October: Breaking the Forth Wall https://whopooh.tumblr.com/post/167026390803/miss-fisher-unleashed-walls-breaking-down-in-the

(October Bonus: We Need To Get Warm https://whopooh.tumblr.com/post/167667202783/we-need-to-get-warm-the-fics-of-the-mfmm-bonus )

November: An (Un)expected Marriage https://whopooh.tumblr.com/post/168602454373/did-someone-say-i-do-the-mfmm-november-challenge

* Please note I haven’t gone back and edited away the fics that phrynesboudoir wrote and then deleted; they’re still there but the links won’t work. This is the case both on the tumblr posts and on AO3.

** I never came around to write an overview about the lovely Bonus August Trope “Squeezing it in” and its eleven fics, but these are also really worth checking out. Here is the collection:   http://archiveofourown.org/collections/August_Bonus_MFMM/works

Thank you all for making the MFMM Year of Tropes so much fun!

[whopooh]

Miss Fisher Unleashed – walls breaking down in the October trope challenge

Hey Jack, mind your leaning – you're breaking the fourth wall!

The October trope might have made one or two of the writers a little nervous. “Breaking the fourth wall” is a real challenge, and results in stories that are highly self-aware of their status as stories and constructions, and also often happily explore the lines between fantasy and reality. That sure does put some demands on the writer. Perhaps also on the reader, in order to get suck into a highly self-aware fictional world like that.

I am very fond of this kind of stories – they are often both amusing and food for thought. They make some kind of short-circuit between narrative levels in a story that usually are separated. There are different ways of doing this. The most elaborate one, where the story and our reality are either affecting each other or even becoming the same thing, can be a real jolt to the readers’ sensibilities, in a pleasurable way. The character may for example become aware that s/he is being written, or that things change in her/his surroundings because of words, or odd things may start to happen in the writer’s real world. Other possibilities keep more clearly within the story world, for example by allowing a story within the story to comment on it or interact with it. As we will see in this overview, many different techniques have been used this month. There is potential for both horror, sadness and existential crisis in this type of writing, but it’s very reasonable that the main strand is humour (here is the full collection).

Breaking the fourth wall has of course happened before in this fandom. One clever example is @221aubrina’s creation “The Library”, where specimens of Jack that have been damaged in fanfic are returned and fixed by the staff – a very fun comment on a tendency to put Jack through a lot in the stories. Another is QuailiTea’s crossover with the universe of Thursday Next, “The Next Adventure”, which to its very nature is super metafictive, commenting on the characters both as persons and as figures in a text at the same time. A third is @jackphryne4eva‘s “Cafe Blend”, the story of a reader sitting in a café reading Miss Fisher fic while perhaps meeting Jack. 

For this overview, I will start with fics that don’t break the wall so radically, but keep the break logically inside the fictional universe, and then move on to fics that are more typically meta fictive and aware of being literary constructions, to stories where the writers/readers’ world somehow gets blended with the character’s world.

Hold on, is this story about me? And is that Jack... naked?

First, stories that keep the fictional world intact. I’ll start with @omgimsarahtoo, “Art Imitates Life”, where Phryne is hired to search for a young woman, Ophelia Ogilvy. Ophelia turns out to be obsessed with the famous lady detective and her inspector, and has collected newspaper pictures of them and also writes stories about them. Basically, she’s a writer of Real Person Fanfiction in 1920s Melbourne, and her fanart has striking similarities to tumblr posts. This is incredibly fun and gives us this wonderful feeling of how, even if the technology has changed, human nature has not. Of course, Phryne is surprised by this, but she is also the kind of woman to not lash out against it but to more cautiously advice the young girl; Ophelia is of course very embarrassed that Phryne found out. There are many wonderful comments that are possible to extend to the fic writers, like when Phryne has read through the scrapbook and Jack arrives:

“Jack’s voice always sent a shiver down Phryne’s spine, but right now, it affected her even more. She’d spent the afternoon reading through Ophelia Ogilvy’s scrapbook, and she was feeling rather… stimulated.”

Ophelia has, for example, written about Phryne’s and Jack’s first meeting, even if she has embellished it with emotions they perhaps didn’t really have. “All I felt for you that first day was annoyance,” as Jack mutters. To top it all up, Phryne even seduces Jack with tales from the scrapbook.

“Is it different from what we usually do?” Jack’s hands unfastened the button at her hip and then slid inside the back of her pajama trousers’ waistband, pushing them down her thighs. Phryne kicked her feet carefully to help him remove them, then promptly wound her legs around his again.

“Not as imaginative as we tend to be,” she said on a gasp as he pushed up her pajama top and covered her breast with his mouth.

And Phryne, realizing Ophelia Ogilvy finds Jack attractive, thinks  -- rather cheekily directed to all the fans -- that “It was just too bad that Ophelia would never know just how weak her imaginings were compared to the real thing.”

In @whopooh, “The Lady in the Magazine”, the writer within the world is instead Dot, who is writing thinly veiled fanfiction about Phryne and Jack for a woman’s magazine. Phryne finds this out through one of their most enthusiastic readers, Aunt P, and subtly calls her out on it. Dot becomes more and more nervous, until she confesses she’s behind the stories. Dot is really “one of us”:

It had become her favourite thing to imagine what would finally make them break down and just kiss each other. Passionately and at length. She had imagined hundreds of scenarios, the one more fanciful than the other, and she loved them all. Dot might be innocent, but she had seen things and read things, and she had an excellent imagination to make up for the rest.

In @longlineoftvdetectives’s “Collingwood Noir” there is similarly an in-world writer, but here the relationship between the writer and the people he portrays is more hostile. Interestingly enough, this is also the only time the writer in all of the stories is a man. This is young Paddy, from “Blood and Money”, who has grown up, lived through the second world war and started writing stories that, Phryne notices on a reading event, seems to be about her. There will be a second chapter, so maybe not all will be what it seems, if I am understanding longline’s comments correctly – it will be very interesting to see where it goes.

EDIT: Okay, so a fic I forgot the first time around (because I didn’t think properly about the fic-in-fic making it part of this challenge too) is @scruggzi‘s & @whopooh‘s joint fic “Direct From the Source”, where Dot decides she needs to practice her teaching abilities, and manages to set up this with Phryne, Jack and Hugh. They all get as assignment to do “automatic writing” to a prompt, without thinking it throught too much. There is much banter and flirting around this, and it seems Phryne manages to cheat so the prompt is to her liking. The prompt consists of our October bonus prompt, the lines about the South Pole and skin to skin contact, and the three pupils start writing. We as readers are then given the opportunity to read their stories and see their reactions to each other -- and there is something to say here about writing as baring your soul. The stories within the story are all commenting on their characters and relationships. Phryne blatantly flirts in her story, and makes the thinly veiled Jack suggest the skin to skin contact; blushes arise around her (“That’s very good Miss, very… um… descriptive,” Dot says). Jack more or less capitulates to her in his rather cowboy inspired story, and makes the thinly veiled Phryne be the one to suggest the skin to skin contact. Hugh bumbles on and manages to make Dot very happy. Phryne keeps on flirting through the stories:

Phryne took up the sheet of paper on which she had written her story, folded it carefully and tucked it into the inside pocket of his jacket. “You know, I don’t think my story was quite finished. Perhaps you could provide me with a few suggestions as to how it should continue?” (...)  “I’m sure I could come up with one or two ideas, Miss Fisher.”

All in all, the exercise is a great success, but Dot decides that teaching might not really be something for her after all.

@zannadubs23, “Uplifting Experience” has a very clever literal “almost breaking” of the fourth wall – or as the tag says, “Not breaking the fourth wall, just slamming hard into it “. Here, Phryne and Jack, who are rather angry at each other, get stuck in an elevator during a case. After a while the anger and tension turn into love-making. Here is literal touching of all four walls as the tryst is rather passionate, as well as upstanding, and when the elevator starts to work again there is also an extra urgency added. In the end, as a little wink, is also a proper very small break of the fourth wall. The fic has been vague about what the fight was about, and in the end Jack asks "Why were we fighting again?": ‘"Literary device," she responded to his query. / "Ah, I see." he claimed, but didn't.

A last story that doesn’t make the wall-breaking explicit is @scruggzi, “DRU-14/10/17-KS-1”. This is part of the writer’s series where Phryne and Jack meet Doctor Who, and they go to a foreign planet to meet a friend of the Doctor, an artificial life form that administrates everything, and that Phryne manages to flirt with in spite of him being a robot. This is a lovely and only thinly veiled homage to the Kickstarter for the Miss Fisher movie, and a celebration of the people that work hard but aren’t always paid tribute to: the administrators. It also includes the bonus trope challenge in a lovely way. The wall-breaking is thus never explicit, but heavily implied through the similarities between the story and real life, and the administrators name that can be read as Drew and the date for the end of the Kickstarter.

The homage ends with a cheer:

“To the Administrators. Without whom none of us would exist at all.” And the four of them raised their glasses in celebration of a difficult job done spectacularly well.    

Is this moment gif worthy yet, Miss Fisher?

So, over to the fics that are very clearly aware of their status as fiction, and of being in a separate realm to reality.

First, @scruggzi, “Doing It On Purpose”, is a wonderfully tongue-in-cheek story where the characters are intensely aware of the fact that they are acting, and that they have an audience, and also what the audience wants. It’s extremely funny, make them be half in their world, and half seeing it as if from an outside perspective.

Jack thinks that it’s important he doesn’t smile, so a moment becomes more “gif worthy”, in one scene they check if they've been captioned yet, and there is absolutely golden commentary like: “She made sure to clip the k in a way which made bisexual women’s knees weak. She did enjoy the attention, and a little queering of characters never hurt anyone.” When he thinks about it, Jack is “fairly sure that he must do most of his job without her presence, but there was an important plot point coming up and she would never forgive him if he left her out”.

It turns out the characters are well aware of the fanfic and also rather likes to read the explicit ones. This is Jack’s take on them, complete with a perfectly placed “probably”: “They were a personal favourite, although he wasn’t sure he wanted Phryne to know just how many of them he’d read. He had, after all, been single and probably celibate for an ambiguous but undoubtedly lengthy period – and really, who could blame him?”

Also in @geenee27, “Rant”, the characters are aware of the fandom – they even get the news from the joint MFMM re-watches in the form of newspaper articles.

“But Jack, doesn't it bother you. They're casting aspersions on our work.” “I find them rather interesting, to tell you the truth. A little criticism never hurt anyone. And it keeps us on our toes.” “Well, I'd like to see your reaction to this one. It's @firesign23 again.” “Oh I like hers, there are quite articulate. I wish @foxspirit1928 would index them for future reference.”

Phryne then reads about new rants that have been made, particularly about the snog in “Murder in Montparnasse”, and teases Jack relentlessly about it, and his open-mindedness gets rather put to the test.

@earanie, “There’s a pink elephant in the cool pantry”, combines the two October challenges, placing Phryne and Jack – who haven’t managed to sort out their relationship – in a cool pantry so they finally need to talk to each other. Or rather, it’s Dot who does this. She has a very meta knowledgeable conversation with Hugh with a great punchline:

“I must say, I’m terribly glad we got this ‘extra scene’ between those two. Can you imagine going through the whole movie before they finally realised they indeed are in love with each other!”

“Oh God, Dot, you’re giving me terrible flashbacks of the last three seasons.”

@leafingthroughbooksandtea, “What the Hell Did I Drink?”, is another very fun take on this, set in “Death Defying Feats”. When Jack is hit on the head after having made his liberal man-speech, instead of waking up inside the story world he wakes up on the filmset. Everyone just assumes he is the actor, Nathan Page, but in reality he is a very confused Jack – who immediately realises that Essie Davis is not Phryne, but who is she?: “Despite the heavy makeup, she was as beautiful as his Miss Fisher, and dressed as Phryne would be, in a lovely green frock.”

Even though she doesn’t understand exactly what has happened, Essie takes care of him, and she has the most wonderful line when Jack calls her “Miss Fisher”: “I didn’t know you were so Method.” In the end, he comes back to the story world – that transition means he is at least as confused here, and that matches the episode’s Jack waking up in Phryne’s bed perfectly.

@rithebard, “Privateers” has a special take on the trope, as it creates a direct communication between the characters and the readers. In the first chapter, there is a set-up and then Mac turns to the reader:

Mac shook her head smiling then picked up her tea. She looked up and said, "So what do you think? Yes, you. I know you have many opinions. So I'll tell you what, what comes next will come from you. I will let Phryne and Jack know and we will follow your lead. You always wanted to write one of these didn't you?" She raised her tea cup and saluted. She is waiting for your response.

Here the wall break is for asking about reader suggestions – so far it has resulted in Phryne finding three kittens in her shower, which made her turn to the reader and say, “Really? Kittens?” There is only two chapters so far, so where this will go in the future, we’ll have to wait and see.

Are you talking to me, Disembodied Voice of a Writer?

Finally, we have the fics where the writer actually communicates directly with the characters – whether they meet in person (and the levels clash completely together) or the one is communicating directly into the other’s world.

It’s probably not a surprise that QuailiTea would do a very self-aware fic, considering she did the full Thursday Next-fic and is thus very well versed in everything metafictional. In “Having a Chat”, the writer starts to talk with Jack – like a disembodied voice in italics, not as a present person – and she’s changing his world by her words. It’s a wonderful story where the writer asks Jack if he’d be alright with one of those tropes we favour, in this case putting him in a closet with Miss Fisher. He is very reluctant. The way he talks back to the writer and at the same time understands what is happening and not is a complete delight, and then when Hugh is added in even more.

Would you mind terribly if she’s in the story as well?

Do I have a choice?

I’ll certainly take your opinions into account. I’d be a terrible writer otherwise. Nothing worse to my mind than watching two perfectly lovely characters contorted into ridiculous shapes just so somebody’s favorites can wind up kissing ad etc.

Kissing? What, you planning on following Miss Fisher around until she flirts me into kissing her? That might take a while.

Jack has his dry humour in droves, deadpanning things like “Readership, apparently", and questioning if the writer might actually be Miss Fisher: “So, incredibly powerful, ability to throw my entire life into chaos, and you really have no plan. Are you sure you’re not Miss Fisher?”

And in the end, Jack has taken a lesson from his encounter with the writer who has told him how the readers love him unbuttoned, and it is great fun: “Jack nodded, his mind slowly returning to work. But as he took the file folder from his constable, he spared a small smile towards the wall where the voice had been coming from, and loosened his tie just a hair.”

Miss Templeton in her “Playing Miss T”, gives us a scene where the writer and Phryne sit talking and having drinks. The writer is making her rather tipsy and they celebrate both tv-series, books, Kerry Greenwood and the Kickstarter in a short and sweet dialogue. @zannadubs23, “Out of Their Depths”, is tone-wise the opposite – this is a horror story, where Phryne is in a story of total domesticity and passivity, being pregnant with Jack and not being allowed to do practically anything. This state seems like what has become of her, but soon there are signs that something is very wrong, that this is a fake reality and she’s really held hostage. From a reality of...

“Why don’t you get some rest, darling?”

“Of course. You’re right. I am very tired,” Phryne’s brow bunched in concern for a moment, then she turned to Jack, “join me? Just for a little while?”

“I think it’s best given the excitement of today, that we not be too amorous yet,” Jack said carefully, but full of concern.

...Phryne instead wakes up in a cellar, being bound to a chair next to an unconscious Jack, needing to figure out what has happened. I don’t want to spoil the plot, but there are some sinister things going on and several fun plot twists. Phryne needs to get Jack to somehow understand that this is the real world and not be lulled into believing the domestic bliss – and to escape the repressive care of a new person in her life, her ever-present mother-in-law.

In @whopooh, “Stranger Than Fiction”, it is not the writer who seeks out Phryne, but the other way around. This fic is actually a direct result of me structuring this trope overview – I realized that no one had yet done that for this trope, starting in the writer’s world. In this story, a writer is sitting at home, starting a sad story where Jack is killed, when Phryne suddenly appears next to her on the sofa asking her not to do it. After Phryne has helped to re-write the story, the writer takes the opportunity to ask her about things, like her feeling of only having Jack as a lover in the fic and about her sexual preferences. Phryne reveals she now and then influences stories about herself to get happier endings.

When she talks about sex, she becomes a bit self-conscious:

The two women looked at each other, feeling a little embarrassed. “It does sound more peculiar when you say it out loud. And about yourself,” Phryne said.

“I agree,” Mia said. “I’m sure I have written those exact words, and more than once.”

“Apologies,” I said, realising I was forcing them to say things aloud while I could just sit quietly and write them.

“Don’t worry,” Phryne said and flashed a quick smile my way. “I’m sure it’s a great benefit for us all to say these things aloud. Especially when it comes to women’s sexuality.” She tried the words on. “Wetness. Glistening cunt. She was hot and wet from desiring him. Et cetera.”

There is quite some talking over the narrative levels, both with Jack on the page of the fic and the writer who is writing about the encounter between Phryne and her fic writer.

A second fic that takes the writer’s situation as departure is 912luvjaxlean, “Reading Henry James” (this is her first fic in this fandom – welcome!). This is a  fun story that captures many things: the fan’s “slight” obsession with Phryne and Jack, the characters’ reluctance to be spied upon, plus making a crack at traditional literature, in this case Henry James, for being rather highflown. The writer’s sister suggests she should read James, whereupon Phryne comments:

“Jack, you don't really enjoy reading Henry James, do you?” “Well, I admit his writing style suggests that he may have been paid by the word.” “Or, was it by prepositional phrase?” Miss Fisher asked wittily. “I believe it was by the comma,” added Jack with a light laugh. Really? I asked. “We weren't speaking to you, Miss Voyeur. We’re canoodling,” said Miss Fisher as she loosened Jack's tie.

The writer jokes extensively with everyone, and above all herself and her ability to postpone things: “I was now ready to read. But first I went online to post clever comments on fan sites, discover new fic, and search for pretty pics of Jack.” 

Yes, we’ve all been there. Let’s just say that reading doesn’t completely go to plan.

Fic in pics.

@ollyjayonline and @solitarycyclistadventures, “Now We’re Talking”, is the first fic in a trope challenge with zero in wordcount! This is all in pictures, kind of like comics, very beautiful. It also has several levels of commentary – if I understand it correctly it’s two viewer, who also become writers here. They are talking to each other and “to the tv screen”, but also Jack is talking to them – first saying he doesn’t think Phryne and he would work as a couple, and then, after some turning points, he instead takes over and does it “his way”, which is more romantic. The struggle between writers and Jack is delightful. 

In the last image, of Jack standing at the airfield watching Phryne fly away, one of the viewers says “What do we do now?” and Jack answers “Nothing. It’s the perfect ending”. That is a very interesting double view of the ending, calling into question if this is actually possible to solve. It is then followed by a protest and a “To be continued”, with an image of the coming movie – so it’s posing the question but not giving any answers. The format of this fic, and the slight uncertainty for me whom the speech bubbles belong to, kind of enhances the effect, I think.

As the final story of the trope challenge, to sum it all up, I had to put @firesign23, “Baby It’s Cold Outside”. This is like the ultimate fourth wall breaking and commenting on the Kickstarter teasers – this fic really does it all. The headlines are from all the different things the Kickstarter promised as rewards, for example, as one of them was the promise of an extra storyboard, the fic includes a storyboard. It is a very fun one too where Aunt P in an enormous bow manages to tease Bert. All six short parts of the fic also include the snippet that formed the bonus challenge, put in many of the characters mouth in different parts.

When Phryne and Jack use the dialogue a second time, it continues:

"Do you ever feel, Miss Fisher, like we have been here before?" She shrugged. "I'm quite certain I'd remember that, Jack. Alas, I am forever unfulfilled."

In the last snippet, the whole family is back together and there is wonderful teasing of their dofferent personalities – Dot telling off Hugh, Jane stating one thing and then disappearing – and “When no answer was forthcoming they quickly forgot her again”. Finally, it’s time for “hot cocoa and rejoicing, because the author gave up on plot several sections ago.” I would never have guessed that it was possible to have so many references and jokes in one short fic.

That’s all for this month. The October fic challenge seemed so hard in the beginning of the month, but it still resulted in a large amount of fics -- lovely, varied, and very self-aware. The November challenge has been pronounced, to quite some delight of the fans. It’s “An (Un)expected Marriage”, and I am looking forward to the coming month!

[whopooh]

I have a few questions to all MFMM fic writers...

So far, I have only asked questions of fanfic readers – but I would love to hear more from the fic writers!

I have asked the readers for fics they love to reread, and for passages in fics that are crackling with tension. Now I have questions for the fanfic writers instead – and by that I mean anyone who’s written at least one MFMM fanfic – I’d love to hear your answers. If you post them as a tumblr post on their own, or as a reblog of this post, I will create a master list – rather similar to what I did with the “MFMM Minor Character Love” some time ago. If someone is not on tumblr or doesn’t want to write it as a post, you can also DM me (here or on slack) and I’ll make the post for you.

It would be very interesting to hear more about what you as writers are thinking about your own fics! I bet there are many stories behind them.

Here are my questions:

Pick one fic that you’ve written and talk about what makes it important to you.

Pick one of your older fics and say what about it you like most, and what you would do differently now.

Pick a fic and say something about why you wrote it – if there was a specific inspiration, perhaps from RL, fandom life, or a theme or a trope you felt needed to be written in a new way.

Is there something you wrote in a fic that was read differently than you intended, and that made you see your own fic in another light?

Is there a fic by another writer that has inspired you?

As you have probably noticed, I am primarily into Miss Fisher fics, but I know many writers write for more than one fandom. So these are my simple rules: pick one, two, three, four or all five of the questions and answer them, and let at least one answer be about a Miss Fisher fic. *

Write your post at the latest November 15, 2017. Please tag other writers to tell them you would like to read answers from them too -- also tag me so I surely see it!

I hope the questions are inspiring -- I would love to read your answers ❤︎

* If anyone who only writes in other fandoms sees this: yes, feel free to take up these questions for thinking about your own fic if you want to -- they are free to use!

[whopooh]

Play it again, Jack III: MFMM fics you love to reread

“I just need to read it one more time, Dot.”

Finally I have cut-and-mixed a new installment of fics about the Miss Fisher world that you love to go back to and read! Again, thank you so much to all who sent me fic recommendations, and people that hasn’t -- yes, I have one more post to come, so there is still some room for more!

Earlier posts: 

Play it again, Jack I (letter from @quiltingmom) Play it again, Jack II (mixed recommendations) The original ask

mokuyoubi, “The Heart Grows Fonder". Reread by @rubycaspar

When I first discovered MFMM and felt the need to go through every T-rated and higher fic on AO3 to combat the ridiculous UST of the show, this fic was the one I went searching for again when I was done. There are so many things I love about it -- the tension, the playfulness, the dream-like quality of the setup (especially if you read the preceding story, “In-Between Days”, first). And it's everything that I personally was imagining for a smutty Phrack reunion -- quick, passionate, desperate, steamy and loving -- and so it was exactly what I wanted to read having just finished the series. I absolutely love it and re-read it all the time.

CollingwoodGirl/ @jeneenp,  “Sweltering”. Reread by @omgimsarahtoo

I love @jeneenp's stories in general, but this one sticks in my head. I love the pure sensory overload of it -- the descriptions of the summer heat wave, and Jack sitting at his desk in his shirtsleeves, and the wild heat that rises up between them... and that's just in the first chapter! Chapter 2 has sassy Jack and humor and seduction, and chapter 3... well, I'll just say the heat isn't only in the temperature. Have your fans ready! This was written before series 3 aired, so it picks up where “Unnatural Habits” and “Murder Under the Mistletoe” leave off, with the aborted kiss (thanks, Aunt P) and "If I lock my door, no one could get in" and all of the tension that has built up between our two detectives. This story takes that tension and ratchets it up even higher, deftly weaving in Phrack's care and cameraderie even as it brings them to a rather explosive peak. It's just, in my opinion, divine.

mardia, “a lack of pretense”. Reread by @rithebard

I really like how this ends. I won't say but Jack is drugged and Phryne finds him and takes him home. You have to read the story to understand.

“500 Words: 60. Caustic” by @firesign23. Reread by @kanste

This is another one that hurts soooo good. The whole fight feels so real and leaves me in tears every single time. If you need a pic up, there are also two fix fics for this one: “Balm” by @edeainfj/deedeeinfj and “Ask me again” by YouKnowMeAsJ.

The dress that needed to come back.

@omgimsarahtoo, “A More Lethal Dress". Reread by @kanste

I think we all remember that beautiful dress Phryne wears to her first dinner with Lin. Sarah did all Lin not-fans a favour to make her wear it for Jack instead. The result is gorgeous, smutty gold. Like always the Sarah's smut is wonderful. The seduction atmosphere is spot on and sets you in the mood perfectly. I also love the image of past weeks of their relationship, think dinner with kisses and cuddling.

@scruggzi, “The Long Road to Patagonia”. Reread by @zannadubs23

Crossover fic with Doctor Who. I’ve been a big Doctor Who fan for most of my life, so I probably enjoyed this more than is reasonable. Maybe not. It’s really well done with the two story bases perfectly merged. Scruggzi has a great feel for both universes and her Doctor felt genuine and perfectly suited to traveling with our favorite Lady Detective. 

@firesign23, “A Glass Splinter”. Reread by @bumblemama

A fic I reread semi-regularly is “A Glass Splinter”. Last night I read it again, straight through. It's such a gorgeous story arc, full of the characters we all know and love but with a different starting point. The AU is fully as compelling; but I think because we all know the cases, there is more scope to explore the relationship. It's a salient reminder of how much they each hold themselves back in the series. And while we are all wishing they hadn't, there could be truly sad outcomes if they weren't so reserved.

@edeainfj/ deedeeinfj , “The Fixed Foot”. Reread by @omgimsarahtoo

This story, when it came out, was controversial -- it might still be, but I don't even care. I love it with unrestrained madness, and I go back to it regularly. In it, Jack has agreed that he is willing to have an open relationship with Phryne, and it opens with her taking advantage of that for the first time. It's painful as he goes through the terror that she won't really come back to him, that he isn't enough for her, that the fact that she wants other men means that she doesn't love him -- but it's redeemed as he begins to understand what those others do for her and how they aren't a commentary on how he pleases her or how much she loves him. It's incredibly affirming of their differences and their relationship, and add to that it's gorgeously written.

Gingham, “Repentance”. Reread by @whopooh

This story envisions a version of their reunion that is in equal measure beautiful and sad. Phryne comes back to Melbourne, not understanding why Jack never came or wrote her while she was in England, just to find out he’s in a very bad spot after a case that went wrong. It is heartbreaking and hopeful, and in a way that makes me want to go back there now and then. One of my favourite scenes is when Phryne finds out that Jack had in fact bought a ticket to England, and that he still carries it around with him in his pocket.

Modern Phryne. Equally discombobulated Jack.

@aljwritesphryne, “The YACI-verse”. Reread by @kanste

The fic series YACI really made me love modern AU's and it is another feel good fic for me. I love that Phryne is not only a PI but also a social media personality. The use of Twitter/Facebook is fantastic as is the slow development of Phryne's and Jack's relationship. There are so many little add-ons to the main story from @aljwritesphryne that give us glimpses into the Phrack life. She did such a fantastic job with the characterisation! In my opinion this is exactly like those two would be if they would live today.

Xfphiles, “Devil in the Light”. Reread by @rithebard

Jack and Phryne are not talking after the death in the race car episode. Phryne is hunting for a missing heiress and finds a white slavery ring. She gets kidnapped and Jack has only one thought in mind. Find her. He almost loses himself doing it. This story really captured me for so many reasons. The loneliness of both of them missing the other. And what Jack went through and would do for Phryne, because he loved her so much. Beautiful. (I love this whole series.)

LemmingDancer, “Perchance to Dream”. Reread by @rithebard

Once again, Jack and Phryne are not talking after the death in the race car episode. This time Jack kidnapped and this time Phryne is desperately hunting for him and realizing just how much she loves him. This is a top favorite of mine. I go back to it again and again. It really gives you how both Jack and Phryne are feeling throughout the story. How they are both dealing with this situation and you feel like you are with them.

@mercurialbianca, “I Ask No Man Pardon”. Reread by @kanste

This one is not a Phrack story but Rosie's story with a little bit of Phrack. I love the way Bianca wrote Rosie. I have a soft spot for Rosie in the show and I love that EC didn't go the "nasty Ex" route. The friendship and later sexual attraction between Rosie and Phryne is very well written. I'm not a writer myself but I can imagine it is difficult to write a threesome and make it sexy and loving at the same time. I love the Phrack relationship Bianca wrote (as usual) but by the end Rosie is my star and I'm rooting for her and her new life. (The smut is very hot too).

Soupsouffle, “The Scent of a Lady (Detective)". Reread by @kanste

Phryne is out of town with Mac and leaves something for Jack to remember her. This is pure Phrack Porn. If you are cold this will make you hot. Soupsouffle manages to create so many wonderful images of our favourite couple and I never looked at tissues the same way again.

Man just having had an Art Experience.

CollingwoodGirl/ @jeneenp, “The Artist and The Muse”. Reread by @kanste

Phryne finds out that Jack sat down for a painting while she was in England. I love the visuals that CollingwoodGirl creates in this one. The trust they are giving each other is very hot for me.

CollingwoodGirl/ @jeneenp, “The Artist and The Muse”. Reread by @geenee27

The first time I read this story it left me stunned, it was that good. The prose is exquisite -- my words would just not do it justice. Suffice it to say, the writer paints (pun intended) such a beautiful, erotic and intimate portrait of every inch of Jack (effing) Robinson I am drawn to this work again and again. I love Phryne's initial reaction to the whole scenario, her curiosity, her doubt, her little jealousy about this other women. And her reaction when she finally finds out the truth:

“Oh Jack.” Her voice sounds faraway with her hand covering her mouth – like she’s caught up in a dream.

Drinking in the eloquence of the charcoal lines, the finesse of the chalk as it casts a glow over the lithe nude figure, her fingers dart forward. She wants to see him through the eyes of this artist, to trace that familiar landscape in a completely unfamiliar way, to imagine herself as the one who rendered the very essence of him.

And Jack's feelings concerning all that follows. 

He can’t possibly hope to do anything but grin. This is what he loves most about her, he thinks. That he can surprise her – even shock her – without fear of judgment or the reprisal of stony silence.

(...)

He fists his free hand into her hair and kisses her, making silent promises with his mouth. In her open-armed acceptance, he has found freedom.

And if the story wasn't fantastic enough, Collingwoodgirl gives us the gift of finding the actual picture and it is glorious. 

@missingmissfisher, “Never expected”. Reread by @rithebard

Once again I love so many of @missingmissfisher‘s tales but I chose this one. Phryne and Jack go undercover as a married couple, Fern and Archie Jones. They are in England, Jack is there to see Phryne but also to help a friend from Scotland Yard. This is just such a delightful story. Not only do they have fun of being undercover but they get to finally explore their relationship. Love!

Lenore, “New Mutiny”. Reread by @kanste

After an explosion Jack loses is memory and can't remember anything that happened after the War. I love how the writer manages to keep the characters and the UST of the series while doing a very believable amnesia.

Lenore, “New Mutiny”. Reread by @rithebard

Jack has amnesia he can't remember anything since the war. Not where he lives, or what he now does, not Hugh Collins and of course not Phryne Fisher. But because of all the horrors he saw in hospitals during the war he does nothing. Just uses his will to make everyone including Phryne think he is fine. Love this story. This is also a favorite. I go back to it over and over. Just to see how Jack's mind works, how he figures things out and what he really feels toward Phryne. Beautiful.

Lenore, “New Mutiny” (and the podfic of the same) and @rubycaspar, “And you yourself shall keep the key of it”. Reread by @whopooh

I too adore Lenore’s fic and have gone back to it several times. There is something utterly delicious in Jack trying to figure out his relatonship to this strange woman that seems to commandeer his life. Like here:

She leans in closer. "Jack."

Maybe this is what they are to each other. Maybe all he needs to do is—he reaches for her before the thought has a chance to fully form. He rests his hand against her cheek, just like in the dream, his thumb stroking along her jaw as he presses their mouths together. She comes easily with a soft pleased sound, her body swaying in toward his. But it's after just the slightest stutter of surprise. He might not even have noticed that if he weren't so attuned to her.

He draws back in confusion. "I—" It's clear now that this isn't how they are, and he has no notion of how to explain himself, apart from offering a confession he has no intention of making.

I also love @rubycaspar‘s take on the amnesia trope, “And you yourself shall keep the key of it”, and even though it isn’t finished yet, I have already found myself rereading it for the tension of Jack trying to figure things out. It has a much sadder lining, as Phryne is aware of what is happening, and it’s beautiful both in the fun and the sad parts.

That’s all for today. And anyone feeling the urge, I’m happy to receive more recommendations!

[elenalost]

And that's the reason why I will not sleeping tonight. THANK YOU 🤩😂

Great tension in the Miss Fisher fanfic – for the 11th PFF

What do you say, Jack, shall we go for URST or RST this time?

I asked for help from this lovely fandom to spread some fanfic love – asking for fics with great tension, either with Unresolved or Resolved Sexual Tension, or both.

I have gotten wonderful answers, and I will give them to you here as a contribution to PFF (Phrack Fucking Fridays) – the 11th since it was started by @firesign23 in August!

I didn’t get as many answers as last time – whether it was because the timing was bad, or the theme too difficult to choose fics for, I don’t know. But I hope to receive more during the coming week, when you see this and think “These are super wonderful fics, but where is X, Y and Z?” Just keep sending me ficrecs, and I will do a second post. And do not fear if you cannot fill both URST and RST – I didn’t mean that you should, one or both or just tension is equally fine! (check here for details and how you can contact me)

Here are nine recommendations that makes me immediately want to go and reread the fics. 

“Wake Me Up” by @edeainfj/deedeeinfj. Recommended by @omgimsarahtoo.

The whole thing, but especially this:

“Early shift tomorrow… today, that is?” she asked, smoothing back his hair. He nodded. “I didn’t mean to wake you.” He exhaled a laugh. “Wake me whenever you like. It’s surreal, still.” “What is?” “Being wanted. Like that.” He traced his fingers down her spine. “Especially by you.” “I wanted you long before you let me have you, cruel man,” she grinned.

I love the established Phrack-ness of this fic, and yet you can tell it’s still new because he’s not certain that her fantasy involves him. The sex is hot, but the feelings that are around it are what makes it memorable for me.

“Here be Dragons?” by @anne-louise-fortune. Recommended by @olderbynow.

aljohnson’s yaci is wonderful, and i adore it, but there are two scenes from the sequel that just always makes me all chinhands and hearteyes. first, the scene when phryne comes over after her burlesque performance, and jack is very focused on the practical side of things:

“And your thoughts on the remainder?” Phryne looked at him as if there had been nothing at all unusual about her ‘outfit’.

“My thoughts are mostly around the logistics of how the, erm….” Jack indicated towards Phryne’s breasts.

“Nipple tassels, Jack?”

“Indeed. How do they stay on?” Jack was genuinely intrigued as to how the small objects had remained perched on her breasts, covering her nipples. He had not actually been able to see anything that a gentleman should not have been able to see. He was coming to the realisation of exactly how unlike a gentleman he would like to be with her.

and then, you know what’s super high on my list of favourite things? jack losing control and being run away with by his passions. (and by ‘passions’ i mean 'wanting to bang phryne fisher’, obviously.) there’s just something completely fascinating and wonderful about this man, who is always so buttoned up and completely in control of himself - except for once in a while when he’s forced to look at a painting of a naked phryne very shortly after having stuck his tongue down her throat in the name of policework, or when he’s been imagining saving her from poisonous spiders only to have her clothes spontaneously fall off and then she perches herself a little too cleverly on his desk - just fucking LOSE it. which, yeah…

Phryne was trying to find her front door key in her handbag as Jack slid his hand across her waist, his lips pressing butterfly kisses to her neck. “Jack!” She implored, softly. His response was a low growl. Phryne could feel arousal spiking within her. As she finally got the door open she turned to Jack, “Would you like to… oh” she failed to complete the question as Jack swiftly moved over the threshold, closed the door behind them and spun Phryne so she was pushed back against the inside of the door. He was kissing her neck, nibbling on her earlobe and caressing her hips and waist with a keenness that Phryne found intriguing. What had come over him?

She tried to speak again, “Would you like to come upstairs?”

“No time” responded Jack, pulling her hips to his, allowing her to feel his very obvious erection.

and you should probably go read the rest for yourself if you haven’t already… and if you have, maybe read it again, idk?

Is this my last chance, Miss Fisher?

“Alleviate” (part of 500 words) by @firesign23. Recommended by @longlineoftvdetectives.

“You seem certain there will be another time.”

It was, perhaps, the first time she had given voice to her doubts about this endeavour. If she’d had time to plan it properly it would be another matter, but she had not; there was a fine line between adventurous and reckless, and she wasn’t entirely certain whether she had fallen on the right side. He just smiled and took another biscuit.

“There’s always another time, if you’re willing to take it.”

She moved closer, intending to make a quip about his sudden optimism, but caught his eyes, smouldering with all the things left unsaid, and exhaled loudly. She hadn’t thought it possible to want him more, but she’d been wrong.  

“Are you willing to take it?” she sighed.

I love the movement in this piece, from the long history of unresolved tension to the inevitable resolution, at what may be the last possible moment, the night before Phryne leaves to fly back to England. The passage is weighty and true but ultimately hopeful, and they decide together to take the risk of being together, despite all the uncertainties of the future. It’s hard even to pick one favorite @firesign23 fic, but this one had a huge impact on me creatively.

“Hope Springs Eternal” by LemmingDancer. Recommended by @lillbilly.

“Then you’ll look for him?” Hugh begged, meeting her eyes for the first time. The guilt in his guileless expression penetrated Phryne’s fog. He still blamed himself for the waiting so long to look for Jack, when he’d been abducted.

“Of course,” Phryne reassured him, even as a smile spread across her face. She began to sort through the pillows around her carefully, lifting the corners of each and peaking underneath. Hugh shot a mystified look at Dot, who was watching her mistress with an increasingly worried expression.

“Ah ha!” Phryne said, tossing aside a turquoise pillow.

“Uhngh,” Jack protested incoherently, scrunching up his face against the sudden light. Draping one long arm over his eyes, he snaked the other around Phryne’s waist. Hugh and Dot’s faces were mirror images of shock and mortification.

“Delight out of loosened soil” by @ladyroxie. Recommended by @ollyjayonline for the URST.

We see them working so well together as they chase a suspect, then the banter we all love but the mood changes quickly when Jack has to remove the protection of his clothing to locate the jewels in the mud pool.

First we see Phryne being affected by handling things that are so representative of him.

She hung his hat and coats on a couple of nails protruding from the post beside her, trying not to notice they were warm from his body and smelled like spice and leather and books.

The scene below is reminiscent of the ‘tie’ scene in the last episode S2, starting as just a practical action soon surprising them with the intimacy it evokes.

Pushing up her own sleeves, she stepped forward, balancing carefully so didn’t tip into the mud, and began uncoupling Jack’s cufflinks. Her elegant fingers nimbly slipped a post through the slot, and she withdrew first one and then the other from his cuffs. She tucked the studs into her coat pocket, and returned to Jack’s left wrist. As she leaned down again, she caught his eyes flicker from her lips to the shadow between her breasts and linger there. Her coat was open, the silk blouse she wore underneath gaping as she leaned forward.

Then Jack, already aroused, tries to calm himself: “Jack cleared his throat. Breathe, man. This is just a practicality. Nothing more. Completely chaste.”

And then his understanding of the power she has/he has given her over him: “But her skin, her hands, her fingers against his flesh… It was undoing him in a way that made him understand drowning men.”

And then his decision:

He could, he knew suddenly and with surprising clarity, stop this. He could stand, mud everywhere, words rough and wrong, and pull away. He saw that scene unfold in an instant in his mind and knew that she would play her part, if that’s what he wrote.

But the bigger surprise was that he saw another scene, even more sharp, in even more depth, and all he saw in it was her. Her body, her lips, her hair spread across his naked chest. He didn’t know precisely what happened in between this moment and that one, but all at once he believed it existed. And that fact made him realize he was not going to say no.

And her understanding that he is making a decision, about them.

Phryne stilled her fingers when they reached as far up Jack’s sleeve as they would reach. She swallowed, and brought her eyes up to meet his, an uncharacteristic uncertainty shaking her.

As her hand drew slowly down to rest once again on his wrist, their eyes met, and Phryne lost her breath. In the many worlds she saw in Jack’s blue-grey eyes, one word rose above everything else.

Yes.

I just adore this.  

The palpable tension of Angry Jack.

“Double the Pleasure, Double the Fun” by @phrynesboudoir/Sassasam. Recommended by @omgimsarahtoo.

In Double the Pleasure, Double the Fun two fictional characters played by Nathan Page meet, Jack from Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries and Henry Stokes from Underbelly: Squizzy. Jack and Phryne are together, but Jack is still angry (maybe not realizing how angry) because Phryne had slept with Henry Stokes in the previous fic. Jack’s impulse to make this menage happen – or rather, to watch Phryne with Stokes – comes from that anger, and the fic treads a very fine line when it comes to consent. it is cracktastically amazing smut, and a lot of it packed into a relatively short fic. The URST is very high before Jack joins in, and then the resolution is explosive.

“What exactly did you plan to do with my - with Miss Fisher,” Jack asked calmly.

Henry Stokes stared Jack down, “I planned on stripping her bare and fucking her senseless on her bear skin rug,” he answered unblinkingly.

Jack cocked the pistol. And Phryne looked between the two men in fear. Long moments passed.

“Go on then,” Jack said.

“Lost Together” by @gaslightgallows. Recommended by @adverbally.

“I want you, Phryne Fisher,” he said, forcing his voice into steadiness, even as her eyes made it plain that she was thinking about all the indecent things she wanted to do to him. “I want… to put you on that bed and strip you down to your skin, and know every part of you. I want to touch you, kiss you, devour you, be devoured by you—“

Her fingers on his lips stopped his litany. “Careful, Jack,” she murmured, dragging her forefinger down his bottom lip. “We’ve a long night ahead of us. You don’t want to spoil every surprise.”

As Jack and Phryne move to consummate their relationship, the nerves the two feel about the change in their relationship are expressed perfectly in character– Jack, of course, channels these feelings into a gallant declaration of his intentions, while Phryne tries to defuse the tension with her usual charm. It’s a lovely light-hearted moment in a sweet and poignant fic.

“Saudadee” by @kidnthehall​. Recommended by @ollyjayonline​ for the RST.

With this piece there is the inevitability: the knowing this is going to happen, we’ve been apart and we didn’t want to be and now we’re going to be together and this is happening. No talking, no thinking, just doing:

From the moment he opened his door everything was a blur of lust and months apart, love that none dared to address lingered like smoke. Lips were seized, limbs entangled. Clothes were tugged at, ripped off, discarded. Eyes locked on eyes, hands rushing to feel every expanse of skin at once. Intense kisses. Impossible to resist to kiss a neck, impatient to return to a longing mouth. Rewarded by thrilled moans.

And this I think is a wonderful contrast to Queenscliff where she thought ‘he was a policeman in her room’ and didn’t immediately pick up that Hilly was talking about him when she referred to ‘your handsome friend’: “The sight of him above her, letting go, looking so little like the Inspector and so much like her Jack, made her laugh from sheer joy.”

“A Modern Woman” by @omgimsarahtoo. Recommended by @olderbynow.

This whole fic is so wonderful, but there are a couple of paragraphs that stand out for their sexual tension-ness. like this one:

Jack blinked, his own thoughts shocking him a little. He’d known that he was horny—six months of divorce proceedings and a reluctance to start anything new was wearing on him—but he didn’t usually look at women as if they were meat. He was certain this woman had a personality and intellect that were just as stunning as the points of her nipples against the silk of her blouse and the crimson slash of her lips. He’d really love to find out for sure—though he’d also love to have just one night with that body of hers, much as it shamed him to admit it. Sipping at his whiskey, he shook his head at himself. He didn’t do one-night stands, as a general rule—he found them unsatisfying—but as he was not ready to jump into a new relationship at this point, he wondered whether he should reconsider.

obviously i’m a HUGE fan of the slow burn (the slower the better, tbh) but variety is the spice of life or whatever, and sometimes a bit of “let’s just jump right in there and have jack want to fuck her before he knows her name” is just what the fic stew needs. or it’s the chocolate with salt caramel filling after you’ve had six coconut ones. i don’t know.

oh, but also this:

Jack fought the urge to swallow, knowing that she’d intended him to feel this arousal. Absurdly, he wanted to hide his reaction from her as much as he could. This woman knew her own appeal, but he thought perhaps she would prefer someone who didn’t just lie down and let her walk on him. Oh god, would I love to lie down for her, though. For her. Under her. On top of her. He wrenched his thoughts back to the question she’d asked, letting his lips curve in a small smile.

and in between, there’s mac catching him ogling phryne… i’m not going to quote that, because it seems like an appropriate teaser for the two people in this fandom who haven’t already read this fic. which they should do. because it’s AWESOME. and funny. and hot. and awesome.

That was all for today. Thank you to all contributing, you are the best! ❤︎

[whopooh]

Play it again, Jack – fourth and final post of MFMM fics you love to reread

There is no thing as reading too many times, Dot. And of course I can read this on a public transportation if I want to! 

This post is the fourth and final of “Play it again, Jack” – posts that collect the fics we love to go back to and reread.

It has been so fun to hear about your thoughts and to put these posts together. Thank you to everyone contributing!

First I want to start with a comment from @bumblemama that fits perfectly to the spirit of this collection:

Aaaaand another thing... despite having read literally every story on ao3 with the mfmm tag, I realised I couldn't actually remember them all. So I've just gone back to the very start and am working my way through again. There are some lovely gems, and it's really cute to see requests for a season 3, or even a few 'wonder where s2 will go' comments. A good reminder of how perspectives change and stories evolve. There would be plenty that would fit into one or more of the year of tropes, but they somehow seem less consciously trope-ish, I guess because they hadn't been done in this fandom before. Anyway. No specific recommendations just the generalized advice to find page 82 (!!!!) of the fics and work forwards!

@chrismarieisme sent me several lovely recommendations I felt I couldn’t cut up and mix, so here they are all together:

This was difficult because I love so many of the fics, but here we go:

“Be still” by @flashofthefuse – very sweet glimpse of a moment between P&J the night before she leaves for England. It's exactly how I'd hope that moment would be.

“He Calls Her Beautiful” by @ladyroxie – simply exquisite.

“A Perpetual Feeling” by @missingmissfisher – so romantic! The intuitive connection between P&J.

“The Actor” by @ollyjayonline – Jack & Jane, Pride and Prejudice. What more does one need?

“Merciful Powers” by @scruggzi – Jack, tights, Shakespeare. Ngggh.

“The Wager” by @soupsouffle – fun, witty, deliciously, steamy URST.

@soupsouffle, “The Wager”. Reread by @kanste

A wager between Phryne and Jack about who gives into seduction first makes for great banter and flirting. I love how they both use every trick in the book to seduce the other. This fic has some of the best flirting/banter and some of the hottest smut scenes ever. Do I need to say more?

@omgimsarahtoo, “A Thief in the Night”. Reread by @rubycaspar

This story is just so much fun. I love the beginning, told from drunk!Phryne's POV, and then the lovely moment when Jack wakes up and finds her there in the morning. I love the characterisation of both of them in this fic, and the concept is so cute and so well-executed.

@ladyroxie, “The Sweetest Fruit”. Reread by @kanste

Can I just say I love Peach and this fic has a lot of it. It has no smut but it is sooooo sexy. I love to imagine Jack in the garden, especially on a hot day like today. The banter/feeding is just like them and turns up the heat some notches.

@jackphryne4eva, “Cafe Blend”. Reread by @omgimsarahtoo

I adore the meta nature of this fic – the story is of a female MFMM fanfic reader who needs to find a quiet place to read the latest chapter of a smutty fanfiction. Her anticipation is delicious, as is the small French cafe she finds! There's an element of all of us in how she is struggling against her impulse to hide her obsession with MFMM and its fic, and how she decides to read on, working to smother any shame she's been made to feel. It's got a million tiny moments that evoke the show, and so many spots that could be any one of the Phrack fangirls we know. I just love it!

@aljwritesphryne, “and stealing my heart...”. Reread by @rithebard

.... Sweet story. Jack takes Phryne home to escape her mean father and it is just such lovely touching story.

@evendale, “Finally”. Reread by @scruggzi

Set after “Unnatural Habits”, this was one of the first fics I read and I was fascinated by the exploration of phrack's developing relationship with a much more inexperienced depiction of Jack than in many other fics. Phryne in this is very much the teacher, ushering him into the modern world through their developing relationship. Their characters take on this nice point and counterpoint dynamic, with her representing the age of modernity and him a traditional approach that he's fairly eager to leave behind. It's mostly a very gentle story with some lovely banter and very sweet moments between the two of them and it's very much a comfort fic for me. Something I tend to re-read when I'm grumpy. Although I think I lean towards a more experienced version of Jack's character now, with its setting at the end of season two I think this one works as an interpretation and it fills me full of the happy feels whenever I go back to it.

@firesign23, “Grasping at Shadows”. Reread by @rithebard

Phryne and Jack go back to Paris after the war and are haunted by their past and have a hard time sharing it with each other. This is sweet and special because it touches on their vulnerabilities. And how their love bridges it. It is a lovely tale.

@aljwritesphryne, “A Collingwood girl for an Abbotsford Man”. Reread by @kanste

Phryne and Jack return to the footy field and it turns out very different then in the show. I love the flirting and how determined Phryne is to "win over" Jack.

There is desk sex too.......

@omgimsarahtoo, “The Power of the Feminine”. Reread by @kanste

Another series of fics. I love all the different aspects Sarah put into the fics. There is young Jack having sex for the first time and Sarah manages to make the life of the woman with whom it happens come alive. She also introduces us to all the different women who made Jack the man and lover he is today. Of course there is Phrack sexy time. She gives us a new family member whom I like very much and I hope makes a return sometimes.

What made me especially happy is the Happy End Concetta is getting after Jack. It is such a wonderful heart-warming story for a lovely minor character.

@phrynesboudoir/Sassasam, “Mirrors into Windows”. Reread by @scruggzi

This fic combines all my favourite elements of undercover phrackvestigation and resolved sexual tension. Phryne and Jack have been estranged since her return from London although Phryne doesn't know why Jack's not sought her out since she's been back. After being thrown together on a case involving slaughtered academics they renew their friendship and try to navigate a big change in Jack's life and what it means for their partnership. There are lots of lovely things I could say about this fic but basically Phryne as a professor was a kink I never knew I had and it made me spectacularly happy.

@promisesarepiecrust, “City that works” and "A Whole World in Here". Reread by @balticprincess

These are two of my special favourites. Unusual, but great!

There are three things that I love best in fics I like: Angst, Modern AU and a happy ending. And while the first two are not mandatory, I enjoy other fics as well, the last one is. As I watch only movies with happy endings, of course this goes for reading fic, too. "A Whole World in here" by @promisesarepiecrust is written as a play. Nevertheless you can suffer and rejoice with Phryne and Jack in this one. It is full of suspense and romantic. And angsty. So angsty. The epilogue is lovely AND it is M-rated, as I like it. So, an unusual one, but so good and well written.

"City that works" is a modern AU. Total AU: Jack is the free-spirited rich guy and Phryne the divorced policewoman with PTSD. It works so well, that one. Romance, suspense, will-they-won't-they, sex, love, misunderstandings, fun: all there. So, also unusual, but so worth reading!

lefaym, “Locked Rooms”. Reread by @whopooh​

I have probably read this fic more than ten times. It’s fun and lighthearted, and it captures awkwardness in such a wonderful way. Phryne is sure she is about to die in a cellar together with Jack, and she decides to kiss him, because she “had no intention of going to her grave without ravishing Jack Robinson at least once”. When they are saved by Dot and Hugh, they are found in the most compromising situation, and from this moment on the fic is all about delicious awkwardness, and Phryne not wanting to admit she feels awkward. She tries to push it away as not important but fails spectacularly. Here comes one of the funniest lines I’ve read: “Phryne was not going to be defeated by a small masturbatory lapse in judgment“. Finally, the people around her decides she needs a push in the right direction, and we meet the lovely concept of Aunt P ex machina. 

@omgimsarahtoo, “The Female Gaze”. Reread by @kanste

Why do I like that fic? Well, it has Jack in a shower (a lot). But that is not all. Every single reaction to Jack is spot on and lovely. Especially Elsie has a soft spot in my heart

YouknowmeasJ, “Before the World”. Reread by @scruggzi

I'm am absolute sucker for a fluffy reunion fic and this is one I especially like. Jack catches up with Phryne before she leaves Australia and they scheme together to get the Baron home without Phryne having to fly him because he's driving her up the wall. Some lovely funny banter, a little bit of smut and that nice 'you and me against all obstacles' aspect of their partnership really comes to the forefront.

@phrynesboudoir/Sassasam, “The Nearness of You”. Reread by @rithebard

I love pretty much everything Sassasam writes but I chose this one because it really touched my soul. Jack dies in 1929 on the way to meet Phryne and his ghost finds it attached to her home but no one can see him for years till her a new Phryne Stanley comes along. I love this story because you love Phryne's decedent and you feel so deeply for both Jack and Phryne Fisher's sadness and loneliness. Incredibly touching.

@gaslightgallows, “Creatures of Stillness”. Reread by @rithebard

Again I really love gaslightgallows's stories. But this one just really touches me. Jack becoming a merchant seaman to get to Phryne in a beard and dirty peacoat all he wanted to do was get to Phryne and she was delighted. She loves taking care of Jack and it is a very sexy story but it was what they discover about their feelings that really touches me.

@jeneenp/ CollingwoodGirl, "A Man in Need”. Reread by @kanste

This fic has so much going on. I love the PhrackAngst, how everyone works together to get our two idiots together, and the little glimpse in Jack's live. It has some of my favourite Phrack scenes in it. Phryne convincing Jack to let himself touch (in the train), Phryne being her goddess self and bathing in the forest lake and Phryne teaching Jack how to use his tongue. As a plus you have Dot in detective mode.

@olderbynow , ”Smoke and Fire”. Reread by @zannadubs23

According to my reading history it’s around five hits. I love this for a couple of reasons. It’s light and sweet, but still smoking hot. Phryne who is normally so wonderful at everything, just can’t handle the baking of the biscuits. I like that she wants to try, not because she’s goo-goo eyes for Jack (well, not only that—thought that’s clearly part of it) but because he challenges her. That’s it right there. It hits the essence of what makes them tick and lights our imaginations on fire with these idiots. He challenges her and she loves it. She challenges him and he loves it.

@ollyjayonline​, “For Fox’s Sake”. Reread by @whopooh​

This fic is such a happy place, it’s a fic that kind of sparkles with fun and companionship and teasing and love. Phryne and Jack are bailing out from a fox hunt to instead first save the fox and then ravish each other in a folly. The way they interact has such energy and at the same time lightness in it, Phryne’s teasing about Jack’s slightly higher levels of embarrassment is lovely, and it’s a delightful fic.

@omgimsarahtoo, “Romantic Overtures”. Reread by @kanste 

This is not a single fic but a whole series worth reading. I'm really, really fond of letters and Sarah writes some of the best letters out there. I love how Jack and Phryne get bolder with the letters and how in the later fics they keep up with the letters. I would love to have something like that in my relationship

Comeaftermejackrobinson, “Method in their madness” & Miss Templeton, Twelfth Night series (starting with “A Willow Cabin”). Reread by @rithebard

Reunion in England, "Method in their madness" is another favorite, so lyrical and poetic. It is really a story for romantics which I am and exploring the inner lives of our heroes. I also love Miss Templeton's Twelfth Night series on ff.net. She creates a fascinating arc in their romantic relationship while they professionally solve case after case. Also it is fun. And they both have their vulnerabilities with real understanding and though they don't say it out loud love.

DivineMissP,  "Impact" and "Pure Bliss". Reread by AnonM

Dark, well written hurt/comfort. Jack gets to be a reluctant hero without taking anything away from Phryne's strength.

@omgimsarahtoo, “The Breathings of Your Heart". Reread by @kanste

This is Sarathoo's take on the soulmate trope and one fic I've turned to many times. The concept of one soulmate is troubling but Sarah did it beautiful. I love that Phryne and Jack aren't really convinced of the concept (Jack marrying Rosie, Phryne is doing Europe) but when they need comfort turning to each other.  The picture of Phryne writing over her bruises without the ink gives me so many feelings. To balance it out, the conclusion and especially her last message made me laugh out loud.

@firesign23, “When I Sorrow Most”. Reread by @omgimsarahtoo

This is one of those stories that I go back to when I just need a moment to cry. It's short, but saturated with emotion, and just perfectly painful to read. It's like those movies you watch, knowing that they're going to tear your heart out and you're going to love every minute. It breaks my heart every single time.

@heavyheadedgal​, “Queen’s Gambit”. Reread by @whopooh​

This is only a ficlet, but I have found myself coming back to it agfain and again. Although Phryne and Jack are only playing chess in this fic, there is still so much happening and so much understanding flowing between them. I love the way they talk about themselves and their possibly developing relationship while they seem to be talking only about the game in front of them.

This was all.  Here are the earlier posts in the series: I ; II  ; III.

I hope I managed to include everything that has been sent to me -- if I missed something, please let me know and I’ll remedy it!

[whopooh]

Play it again, Jack I: A love letter to the mfmm fic writers

“Haven’t you read that story already, Miss Fisher?” “Once is nothing, Jack... and this one makes you come off especially well.”

A month ago, I asked you for recommendations of Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries fanfic -- more specifically stories that you reread, choosing to come back to them again and again, and also saying something of why you come back. I have gotten many wonderful answers, and I will give them back to you in posts over the coming weeks, where I mix the recommendations together. 

Also, please know that you can still send me recommendations. I will keep my inbox open for another couple of weeks -- I know there are many of you that have been meaning to send stuff but haven’t gotten to it yet! Being allowed to hear what people love so much that they reread it is such a wonderful gift, I hope you’ll indulge us! (for how to write me, see the original post.)

But -- there was one answer that was so eloquent and loving that I felt I couldn’t cut it up for the mix. Therefore, I will start this short series by posting that in its entirety. This is what @quiltingmom sent me, and I answered her that it’s like a love letter to the fanfic writers of this fandom, which she agreed it rather is. 

So, now I’ve given you my initial comment and reminder -- the rest of this post is @quiltingmom‘s answer to my question. 

Look at this, Dot. It’s a love letter!

Hi whopooh,

When you issued this request my first thought was oh my goodness, that's practically all of them, but then I started to think about the ones that I have read over and over again. Truly, there are just too many to list. One of my favorite things to do is to go into an author's portfolio and reread all of their works again. We have so many -- so many, truly gifted and talented writers in this fandom that it is an embarrassment of riches -- and makes it so hard to cite everyone. I've decided to limit myself to a few which believe me has been incredibly difficult. The fan fiction milieu of MFMM offers so much variety in storylines, character development, style of writing, and AUs that there is a story for everyone. While I love them all, I think my favorites are the ones that incorporate a beautiful or interesting setting, an intriguing casefic, witty and clever banter, gorgeous wardrobe (I know, I can't help it) and a romance between Jack and Phryne. So trying to follow my own criteria, here's my list: When I first discovered fanfic I don't think I really understood what I stumbled into. Reading “Creatures of Stillness” by @gaslightgallows was life changing for me. I had never read anything like it before and I was hooked and so began my hopeless journey down the rabbit hole of fanfic. This story has Jack showing up in London after a harrowing trip on board a ship to get to Phryne. He shows up disheveled and unshaven and the reunion with her is glorious. Then there's that shaving scene... “That Moment is Now” [only available for registred users of ao3] by @phrynesboudoir/Sassasam. Well anything by Sassasam really, but this is my favorite of hers. It has got everything. Everything. I can't even count how many times I've reread it. Jack and Phryne embark on a two week trip to the Blue Mountains in Sydney because even though she and Jack had been courting she has decided that the moment is now for their romantic coupling. The setting is positively gorgeous, those ice caves, wow, the murder mystery terrific, the banter between the two of them is perfect, clever, funny, witty, sweet -- sigh, the romance and steamy passion is off the charts, oh and yes, her wardrobe is stunning. I think I'm going to go read it again now. “Like the Deserts Miss the Rain” by @flashofthefuse. I love everything she writes, that's why I'm the president of her fan club. She is just so gifted in her storytelling. She's one of my go-tos, her portfolio is amazing and prolific. I could lose myself for a day or week or two in it (not that I'd fess up to it). In this story, Phryne is in London but as they are romancing each other through letters they decide to meet halfway in Columbo and a romantic and thrilling adventure ensues. Phyrne buys a plane and she and Jack travel back to Melbourne via several stops along the way. In Singapore they are pulled into defending a party guest against the charge of murder. This story has it all. I really think this should be made into a movie. Again it's another one that I have read countless times. “A Man in Need” by @jeneenp/Collingwoodgirl. As I told her, I was glad I arrived late to the party because I got to enjoy this story in one sitting. If I had to wait the entire year for her updates I would have pulled my hair out of my head. But I'd have gladly worn a wig for this story. It's delicious because it has all of our favorite co-conspirators working together to unite an estranged inspector and lady detective. The reunion, ensuing murder and investigation, and romance are stellar. That train scene though -- in the window... “Fear Not the Bugle” by @firesign23. I can't even begin to comment properly on the depth, variety, richness of her portfolio of stories. She kinda leaves me speechless -- well except her angsty ones, I can't remain speechless about those, lol. “Fear Not the Bugle” explores Phryne and Jack in an established relationship but when a brutal murder takes place orphaning a traumatized 2 year old named Anthony, their relationship goes into an entirely different direction. It's such a captivating look at the character development of Jack and Phryne given these circumstances.  @omgimsarahtoo, @omgimsarahtoo, sigh. Yet again another author who it is so hard to pick just one of her works that I've read over and over again. She writes steamy passion with such poetic beauty that I'm in awe of her. But sticking with my it's got it all theme, “Coded Expressions” is another one of my absolute favorites. Jack is called away into the Australian outback by one of his war buddies in a mystery surrounding another one of their war buddies just as he and Phryne are about to take their relationship to the next level. She decides she's missing him too much and goes after him. The story, the original characters, the art, and the reunion are to die for.  Taking a departure from the it's got it all theme, another one of my favorites is actually a two-fer by RakishAngle/@afterdinnerminx. “Truth or Dare” followed by “Messengers and Forfeits” starts with a still chaste Phrack and Phryne getting Jack to agree to a game of truth or dare. It is sexy times indeed and a great read. And as this is getting ridiculously long my last three are ones I absolutely adore because they are so fun to read. Light hearted and full of moments that just make you smile or outright laugh, they are the ones I go to when I need to giggle. The first is “Lost in Vegas” which is @ollyjayonline and @221aubrina's hilarious story of a broken Phrack and the cast of characters, based on real life characters, that they meet along the way to their reconciliation. It is a hoot. The next is “Breakfast with Jack and Jane” by @davidandbillie. I love fics with Jane in them and this one is terrific. Phryne is away on a case and this story follows breakfast each morning between Jack and Jane and her attempts to get him to drive her to school. It's funny, sweet, and just so adorable. My last reread recommendation is “Wardlow Whoopie” by @olderbynow. Every time I read this I start giggling uncontrollably. I love her work but this tongue and cheek fic is hysterical. She has another WIP that I absolutely adore but as I don't want to pressure her -- I'll just do it passive aggressively through here -- I'll wait patiently for her to update it.  There are so many, too many more works of a huge variety of authors that I haven't named in this post, but I'll have to stop to not make this too long. I cannot begin to express how many countless hours of joy I've had reading the stories of this amazing group of people dedicated to blessing us with their talent and creativity. I am eternally grateful for finding this fandom and falling into the rabbit hole of MFMM.

Thank you so much for this letter, @quiltingmom!

[whopooh]

Play it again, Jack II – Miss Fisher fics you love to reread

“Oh, that’s a good one, Inspector!”

In an earlier post I asked you – and by “you” I mean anyone who reads Miss Fisher fanfic – to give me fics that you love to go back to and reread, and so many great fic has been sent to me! I’ll split these recommendations up in a few posts and post them the coming weeks. I already posted @quiltingmom’s lovely letter to the fandom in one go. Here, I have cut and pasted recommendations together from your messages, in order to mix the writers and readers up a bit. 

I hope this post and these fics give you some enjoyment!

@olderbynow, “Tales of a Wayside Romance 1930″. Reread (or not) by @ollyjayonline

In true antipodean fashion I am going to blatantly ignore the rules of @whopooh’s review and talk about a fic that I have never actually read. In my defense I will say that I decided, in order to qualify for this review, to sit down and finally make myself read it… and that led to several weeks delay as I tried to find exactly right time to do so. That time never came. In the end, Whopooh’s posting of @quiltingmom‘s love letter forced my hand so -- on a cold, wet and windy winter’s morning I got up at 5.00 am to read.

There are 28 parts to this fic, this time I made it to these lines…

It happened, once, that he lost her. It happened, once, that he let himself believe. In them. In the possibility of them

Even as I quote these, the tears are welling in my ears and there is an empty feeling in my gut -- and they’re only the first two sentences of part 3 of the fic!

And so, even for the lovely Whopooh, I find I cannot read this fic -- in fact, it must be getting worse because I’m sure this is the least far I have ever gotten. I do know what happens in this fic -- people have told me not realising I have never finished it. I have even read the excellent "Toiling Upward" by @firesign23 that ‘fixes’ it.

But there is something about the vivid beauty of the Longfellow quotes...

“The inspiration, the delight, The gleam, the glory, the swift flight, Of thoughts so sudden, that they seem The revelations of a dream.”

… contrasting with the strange, distant tone of the fic, full as it is of yearning, regret and sadness...

“...left with the memories of her free of any restraints, he wonders if what he wants for himself is what he’d want for her as well.”

...that invokes such dread in me, of a relationship irretrievably lost before it even begins, that I physically cannot read "Tales of a Wayside Romance 1930" by @olderbynow. And I have been regularly not reading it since she published it in late 2016. And this not reading has inspired many of my fics -- smutty one shots (to prove that neither of them want nor need anyone else)... fluff (where there is no possibility of entertaining anything but a completely committed relationship of perfect harmony)... and more complicated stories where their character flaws result in angsty issues that eventually dissolve into never ending happiness.

So, thank you @olderbynow for writing a fic that I ‘hate’ so much that I am forever trying to prove it could never happen   ❤️❤️❤️

@promisesarepiecrust, “Counterfactual”. Reread by @kanste

This one hurts sooo good and has me in tears every time I read it. Phryne and Jack finally have a night together but Phryne pulls back in the worst way possible. @promisesarepiecrust manage to break my heart for Jack, especially in the café scene.

@221aubrina, “A Wink and a Prayer”. Reread by @bumblemama

A fic I love to reread is “A Wink and a Prayer”. It's short, sweet and funny. There are also more, but this was my first ever bookmark. I love to reread it because it without fail makes me smile. The contrast of the formal police officer with the playfulness of a confident lover. I think like Phryne the reader is both shocked and delighted....

@aljohnsonwrites, "Whump, whump”. Reread by @kanste

This is my go to place when I'm a little down. It is short and funny, and just imagining Hugh's face in that scene makes me smile all day.

@omgimsarahtoo, “Coded Expressions”. Reread by @zannadubs23

God, this is so good. This has a mystery. It has a slow seduction via letters. It has a steamy first time/reunion. It has wonderful original characters. Just delightful.

@fahye, “fighting vainly the old ennui”. Reread by @whopooh

I love this fic a ridiculous amount, it’s a brilliant retelling of the growing tension and understanding between Phryne and Jack, but in an AU where Phryne is a “gentlewoman thief” instead of a detective. This thief starts to flirt with Jack in writing, and the way things from the show is rearranged is delightful, and the way things are said via letters and quotes, and that Jack knows Phryne in person too but doesn't connect the dots -- it’s so good. I love to dive into it again and again; I have probably reead this fic at least ten times. Jack’s inner thoughts and Phryne’s teasing -- and then the end: I love that after all this time when Jack has worked himself up over the anonymous Bowerbird, when he finally realises her identity his dams burst completely open:

"You," said Jack, miles beyond coherency.

"Now, don't be angry--"

Jack didn't even register the effortful strides that took him through the water and across the room, he just knew that he had to get his free hand behind her head, so when he pressed her into the wall it was his own skin against the rough stone and not the thready black silk of her hair.

Miss Fisher laughed.

"I'm not going to apologise," she whispered, into the small space between their faces. "Haven't you ever done the wrong thing, just to see what it would be like?"

"No," said Jack. "Yes," and kissed her scarlet lips, hungry and unable to think, still riding the feeling that had overcome him in his office: the heady, infuriating rush of knowing that the thief he was entranced with was also the woman whose perfume and laugh he couldn't get out of his head.

She made a throaty noise and kissed back at once, without a hint of hesitation or surprise. Her lips were cold and he could taste her lipstick, and of course she put lipstick on before she went to rob a dangerous criminal, and Jack never wanted to stop. A dam months in the building had been knocked to splinters in his gut. He wanted to yell at her, and undress her, and pour poetry into her mouth with his own.

RakishAngle (@afterdinnerminx), “500 Words You Should Know: #200: Gargantuan”. Reread by @kanste 

Hugh's best intentions in delivering a letter from Jack to Phryne bring about an undesirable result, and a delightful angsty up and down for the reader. I so badly want to see this acted out by our dynamic duo. Just imagining Jack's panic and Phryne's anger makes me feel I'm watching a new episode of the show. 

@counterfog, “The God Abandons Antony”. Reread by @jasbeaux

“The God Abandons Antony” achieves a breaking point between seasons 2 and 3 where Phryne creates a situation where Jack finally abandons his “armor” and engages in a physical relationship with her. I love it for the very reasons that some do not -- it’s very much in their heads and some find it too “think-y.” The prose is lush and gorgeous and it is written by someone with a PhD in the history of the time period, so the details are perfect. (There is also an accompanying meta document explaining the references if you’re into geeking out about those things -- I am.) I return to it because of those details: the larger fic remains in my head, but the rediscovery of little pieces is a constant delight.

@ladyroxie, “Delight Out of Loosened Soil”. Reread by @omgimsarahtoo

This is a wonderful first-time Phracking story, that begins with Jack getting very literally dirty and ends with both of them getting dirty in a metaphorical sense. The theme of newness and nervousness circles around and around, each time coming up against Jack and Phryne's certainty that moving from their mostly platonic partnership into a sexual relationship is the right thing to do. I particularly love that they both begin knowing that the moment will be coming, and then realizing that the moment is now, and deciding that the choice is theirs to take hold of it or not... It's compelling and wonderfully written. I particularly love that our sexually confident Phryne finds herself a little unsure, because this matters in a way that her other lovers never have, and how Jack, who is nervous because he's been imagining this intimacy for so long, balances that nervousness with certainty. It's just... happy sigh

@firesign23, “Spectacle”. Reread by @zannadubs23

Sweet little “Established Phrack” piece. I love the comfortable interaction. It’s total fluff, but it’s not so treacly that it makes my teeth hurt. It’s warm and comfortable like a… well, like a well-traveled robe.

@phrynesboudoir, “I'll Come When You Call”. Reread by @kanste 

Jack gets Phryne off with his voice. This is a comedy take on smut, which is funny and hot at the same time. I love how scenes from the show turns out a little bit different than we all think they happened, and for one time Jack is two steps ahead of Phryne. I also love how secure Jack is in it.

Idolotrous, “Ulumbarra” & Gingham, “The Unexpected Visitor”. Reread by @firesign23

While I have an obscene number of reread fics, I'm choosing two from fanfiction.net because people are less likely to have read them. The first is “Ulumbarra” by Idolotrous, a post-”Unnatural Habits” story with mistletoe and poetry. When Phryne involves herself in a case that puts a target on her back, the only way Jack can convince her to leave Melbourne is to join him at an old family homestead called Ulumbarra, meaning "meeting place". They grow closer, until their solitude is destroyed by intrusions from their lives back in Melbourne. It's a wonderful story of hope and home, and things lost and found. The second is “The Unexpected Visitor" by Gingham, a story set after the tennis episode in season three, and features Jack's sister and niece. It’s a heartbreaking and realistic look at a dysfunctional and abusive relationship from the outside. I really adore all of Gingham's work, so choosing one fic was a struggle, but I love this one -- it has Phryne and Jack trying to navigate a relationship that's on the cusp of becoming romantic, but there's never any doubt of their loyalty and friendship. It is quite possibly the fic I most hope to see an eventual sequel for.

@gaslightgallows, “Familiar Acts". Reread by @kanste

I'm usually a ”Phrack all the way“ girl but I also like being taking out of my comfort zone and this fic does it very tenderly. It is Jack and Concetta with just the ghost of Phryne there. The dirty talk is extremely hot. Although I'm loving this, I'm still a bit cross with gaslightgallows for not giving us the continuation with Phryne there in person. (Just kidding.)

@flashofthefuse, “Real Estate Holdings”. Reread by @whopooh

I have reread this fic at least three times, and I find it such a gentle and careful exploration of how a relationship between Phryne and Jack could evolve without going all the way to holy matrimony. I love the way Phryne gradually gets more and more annoyed with Jack living away from her and the way they need to invite each other all the time, how this creates problems and disruptions, her clever solution of how to change that, and his reluctancy to follow her idea. @flashofthefuse explores these themes in such a sweet and lovely way, under this title that might not sound too romantic -- but it is, in its own practical way. I also adore that in the end, Phryne is “aunt” to Dot’s children, and they call her “Aunt P” -- the first time I read that I was equally stunned and delighted. 

These are all for now. If you haven’t yet, or if you want to give me more recs -- please send me fics and a short text about why you love to come back to them! Don’t be shy if we haven’t talked before -- it would be lovely to hear what you like and reread!

[whopooh]

Knights in shining armours – or shining dresses. The MFMM August trope challenge

“I’m not sure, Sir. How do we know if she actually wants to be rescued?”

The August trope for MFMM turned out -- just like the earlier ones -- to instigate a lot of really good fic, and also very different fic. August’s trope was “the Dulcinea effect”, which means “the compulsion many male heroes have to champion, quest for, or die for girls they met five minutes ago”; the name is taken from the woman Don Quixote in Cervantes’s novel strives to be a champion for (more here).

This is a fun trope, but it’s also very ironic – making fun of these self-appointed and not seldom selfish and self-aggrandizing male champions. This poses specific problems for a fictional universe like Miss Fisher’s, where most men aren’t depicted as stupid like that, and where the male lead is behaving in what could be said to be the opposite of the dulcinea effect: very rational, not seldom actually saving people, but also hardly ever managing to save the leading lady, because the lady is so good at saving herself -- which he accepts. 

This means that just like the soulmate trope of January, the idea and the fictional universe collide in interesting ways, asking for twists and tweaks and thorough considerations. The imagination of the fanfic writers of course found ways to use the trope, and it is turned around and peaked at from different angles (here is the full collection). 

I’m trying to follow some kind of logic in this post by following who is the dulcineaing person, and who is being dulcinead – not that these words exist, but I hope you catch my drift.

“She was not in distress – she had climbed up here for the view.” Art by @kidnthehall​.

First there are fics that use well-known story templates to completely subvert the idea of the dulcinea trope -- a subversion that fits perfectly with the fictional universe of Miss Fisher.

Here we find @ollyjayonline, @kidnthehall & @solitarycyclistadventures, “Love and Other Fairy Tales”. This is a short, beautifully crafted fic, with few words and with images, rather like a picture book – a picture book for adults. It explores who Phryne is and what she stands for, and shows this as a contrast to the common fairy tale idea of a woman needing a man to come to her rescue. The fic is very succinct, and has one-liners about Phryne like "She could do everything herself – but good company was always welcome" and "She was not in distress – she had climbed up here for the view." 

A second fairy tale to the trope is @loopyhoopyfrood, “The Prince Who Said No”, where Phryne tells a lovely bedtime story about a woman who dances with everyone except one prince, who all the time tells her no, and he’s the one she falls for. The prince is so far from dulcineaing that he doesn’t even pay her much attention, which triggers her curiosity. It’s a sweet and well narrated fairy tale, with lovely reactions from Dot and Hugh’s daughter, and in the end Jack peeks into the room and helps out with the telling at just the right time:

“Did they have a big wedding?” “They didn’t have any wedding.” “They didn’t get married?” “No.” “But why not?” “Because they didn’t need to.” A familiar voice spoke up from across the room, and both storyteller and audience turned to see Jack, leaning against the doorway with a soft smile on his face.

A third fic that also stays on this meta level is @longlineoftvdetectives, “A Hero’s Journey", an amusing scene where a man is pitching a movie to Phryne in the hopes of her financing it. Both Phryne and Dot find some fault in the story’s depiction of the hero, that after an absence of three days is coming to rescue a woman he doesn't even know:

“But three days,” Dot repeated, her voice lowered this time as she leaned closer to Phryne to speak to her directly. “I think the damsel may have saved herself by now.” “In that case, the hero will be quite disappointed,” Phryne answered wryly. (...) “I don’t think so, Miss,” Dot replied, her voice now barely above a whisper. “I've seen quite a lot of movies. I’m certain the hero will find a more agreeable damsel in the next town.” 

Another fic that is primarily resisting the dulcinea trope is @longlineoftvdetectives, “Of Mothers and Men and Rescues”. This fic gives us two scenes where Phryne doesn’t need to be rescued, and also isn’t, although the set up and the conversations touch on the possibility of it -- and rather like in the first fairy tale mentioned, she doesn’t need to be rescued, but she doesn't mind company either. It’s lovely done, with a lot of mirroring between the two scenes, and both of them including Phryne hiding away from her mother, one time right before and one time right after the show’s time frame. 

In some fics, the person going into dulcinea mode is Phryne herself. 

Quailitea, “Rain and Whiskey”, is a lovely and very poignant drabble of Phryne’s introspection about her need to save people, ever since Janey: “And all the rescuing she’d done since, proof that she had always tried, dammit, that it had only been because she was too small and too weak then, and now that she was strong, it would never happen again.” It is beautiful, and in all its shortness it captures a lot.

Also in @whopooh, “Separate Spheres”, it is Phryne that has an urge to be the saviour, in this case in a more light-hearted situation – she wants to save Jack from social embarrassment. But it turns out that Jack doesn’t need her knight in shiny dress-stint, since he already has a date to the event they’re invited to, which instead causes Phryne embarrassment. On a gala night for Raymond’s film, she has to navigate the insight that Jack has friends, friends she had no idea existed, and even female friends. Much as it rattles her, it also piques her interest and of course she befriends this unexpected woman. 

Finally, Phryne in the dulcinea role is also in @zannadubs23, “Axiom Tilt”, where Phryne wants to play saviour to a young nurse. The fic has only started so I can’t predict where it’s going, but it has several very interesting parts: Phryne trying to cope with a case she starts to feel very personal about, wanting very much to help out, and Phryne being unhappy about Jack’s too thorough adjustability. I know there will be plot twists coming, but I can’t predict in what way.

The next type of fic is where someone wants to save Phryne. 

In @rithebard, “Interference”, a random, stuck up man at a party wants to rescue Phryne – from the social disaster of being with Jack. This does not end well for the unsuspecting man, whom Phryne sets straight on the matter, and in quite a physical way. In @longlineoftvdetectives, “Locked Up”, we instead see an aftermath of a similar event: a random man did try to save (well, “save”), Phryne and the result of this is that Phryne has been arrested for assault. The way Jack gets to know about this, from Dot not really breaking any confidences but hinting very thoroughly, is much fun, as is the way Jack reacts to the fact that he gets news via Dot:

“But you’ve heard from her?” “Yes.” “Of course,” he stated, a slight edge of jealously joining his tone as he leaped to a certain conclusion from Dot’s evasiveness. “As long as she’s well.” Jack pivoted to duck back into his office before Dot’s voice stopped him again. “Did you have plans with Miss Fisher, Inspector?” “No,” he answered. “Not as such.”

Jack does not in his turn try to save Phryne per se, but he sure makes her arrest more comfortable and social.

In @ollyjayonline’s, “Evil in the Shadows”, the dulcinea trope is even more surprisingly developed, by the use of a crossover with another fictional universe. Here it is Spike, the vampire from Buffy the vampire slayer, who wants to get to Phryne – he wants to understand, threaten, in a way devour her. Phryne is holding her fort beautifully, and her strength here is her bravery and loyalty. The layers of the trope are several -- Phryne rejects the idea of a man coming for her rescue: “This statement made her angry. “There most assuredly is a Jack but I don’t need him to rescue me.” and finally, in the end, Spike turns around from threat to instead wanting to save her.

In @firesign23, “One Night In Berlin”, set during WWII, Jack seems to randomly want to save a woman, which means he seems to have become a dulcinea man. But it turns out that he knows what he’s doing, as the woman might not be a stranger after all, and might also count on him being there:

“I wasn’t aware you were in town,” he said conversationally. “Just arrived,” the woman replied. “I do hope I didn’t interrupt anything.”

And then, interestingly enough, finally a fic actually managed to turn Jack into a proper dulcinea knight! This happens in @firesign23's short fic “In An Instant”. We’re here not talking about the world-weary, experienced Jack we know, but about young Jack, wanting to save Rosie. This is a lovely fic about young constable Jack who is in love with Rosie, but socially below her, and so they will never be – until she is in need of help and he offers. It’s a tale about how life can change in an instant -- as the title says -- and this choice is followed up by another similar one, to go to war. Knowing how their marriage turned out later gives the fic an extra twinge of melancholy, and it’s a beautiful exploration of one way their relationship could have started.

Two fics that put the dulcinea reaction on other characters completely are Quailitea, “Hero in Love”, a very sweet short fic where Hugh wants to take on the whole world for his newborn daughter, and @flashofthefuse “About a Girl” that dives into Jane’s school life seen through one of her school mates, Fin, who has a crush on her. It’s a great exploration into both the boy’s mind and into how school could be for Jane, with mean classmates and a tendency to get swallowed up by reading. There are so many lovely details here, of Fin finding out a way to help Jane against bullies without her even noticing, of Fin seeing two grown up men assaulting Jane and trying to help her – but it turns out they are Bert and Cec and only joking with her. And there’s a lovely scene where Cec really sees and understands the boy, and also gives him some really good advice about how to treat a girl.

I’ll round up this overview with three fics that are leaning heavily towards the lighthearted and fun in their use of the trope.

In Sassasam/@phrynesboudoir, “Save Me”, there really is a rescue, Jack saving Phryne – although it turns out to be more of a sartorial rescue, and mostly being about her dignity:

“Oh come on Miss Fisher. Are you saying you need me to save you?” he chuckled. “I thought there was no problem you couldn’t overcome.” “Jack,” she said a little more forcefully. “I need your help.” “You could ask nicely,” he replied. “Do you want me to beg?” she asked sharply. “This may never happen again,” he replied.

Also in @geenee27, “In Over Her Head”, set at the beach, there is an amusing play with the trope. A girl very much wishing for Jack, who is out in the water swimming, to rescue her decides to feign distress in the water. But when she does get rescued it is from someone else’s strong arms instead -- and that is someone who completely sees through her act. Perhaps Phryne can also be said to be overly protective of Jack in relation to other women, which would be another version of the knightly persuasion, this time in a bathing suit.

Finally, @scruggzi, “Braving the Storm”, is a very fulfilling fluffy story about Jack, at City South on a Christmas eve in full storm, facing the realisation he needs to take care of two kittens. There is such powerful adorableness in Jack trying to keep up his dignity although the kittens totally melt his heart:

The assembled day shift was therefore treated to the sight of their DI handing out assignments and issuing orders with his usual taciturn efficiency, but with one fluffy kitten in hand -- which had rolled on his back in order to have his tummy tickled -- and another perched on the Inspector’s shoulder, staring the junior officers down with all the ferocity of a warrior queen. It was a sight no-one at City South who saw it would ever forget, and yet no-one could quite bring themselves to question it.

There are also lovely parallels to when he himself, one year earlier, was let in by Phryne from a similar storm. Jack decides to call them Cleopatra and Marc Antony and bring them back to Wardlow, to a surprised and sleepy Phryne. The next day, as the kittens meet the household, the poking at his dignity continues: "Apparently realising quite suddenly that he had in fact been talking out loud to a kitten in a room full of people, the Inspector’s ears turned a beautifully festive shade of red and he cleared his throat, glowering at Phryne in the futile hope that she would let his pre-caffeinated comment go unremarked.”

As we can see, the explorations of the trope has really gone in all directions, and I am extra pleased with that this month, as I thought it might perhaps be a bit of a difficult trope -- but it turned out to be just as good at generating fics as the others have been. 

That was all about the August trope. These overviews can also be found here on AO3. And I am very much looking forward to the September trope challenge -- “Rumours and Gossip”.

[whopooh]

Miss Fisher going out of space and time – the July trope

Hanging out in space...

July has passed – I know, some time ago, I’m getting slower and slower at this – and we’ve had another wonderful wave of fics emerging from one trope. This time the topic was “Out of Space and Time” – a trope that encourages writers to think outside the box and allow their favourite characters to meet things not usually in their own fictional universe.

This month proves there is no shortage of imagination in this fandom. It has been a joy to see how the trope has been interpreted. Much like earlier tropes like “soulmate AU” and “body swap,” it makes the writers take the story in surprising directions. And just as good tropes work, it not only allows for the surprising takes, but also for more ‘normal’ fics, using the prompt in a more literal way.

I’ll start with the ones closer to the Miss Fisher normalcy, then jump to a fic set in another time setting. After that I’ll discuss cases of the supernatural or stories where history can be changed, and finally turn to fics that are crossovers and incorporate other fictional universes that somehow challenge our concepts of time and space (the full collection can be found here).

Up in the air.

First, the fics that focus more on the “time and space” part than the “out of” part of the prompt.

Here we have @rositalg lovely “Presumptuous”, that gives us a great view of Phryne’s mother meddling in her daughter’s life. Phryne has no idea that Jack has gone after her until he’s suddenly there in London, and she reacts rather violently:

“I believe you know the Inspector?”

“I apologize for the delay, Miss Fisher.” He smiled at her stunned face. “But the only pilot I knew was already booked for England so I had to take the long way around.” He explained.

She stared at him, her hands shaking, before looking towards her mother for confirmation of what she was seeing. When she turned back to him, her shock gave way to incense at seeing his smile and before he could comment on the change, she reached out and slapped him across the cheek.

“Phryne!” Her mother cried out, scandalized.

Jack held up his hand to quiet the older Fisher. There’d been no heart in the weak attack; in fact, he’d barely felt it.

“Six weeks!?” She cried, jabbing the words at him like a dagger.

The fic gives us a Jack that presumes a little more than usual when he goes out of his own space, Australia, to go after Phryne, and then a Phryne perhaps presuming more than usual, and then a wonderful conversation where time is out of joint. Phryne has been sending Jack letters and telegrams that he didn’t receive because he was travelling, and once he comes home, he decides to answer every one of them, as detailed as they are delayed. This forms the basis of a delicious scene where a suggestive letter from Phryne receives a welcoming answer from Jack – and is then immediately acted out.  

@whopooh “Time and distance, time and closeness” is a take on an established relationship between the detectives in the longer run, where Phryne is committed, but also doesn’t cease to be an adventuress and a traveller. The story focuses on both the longing and the joy of reunion, and how this balance plays out in their life with small farewells and small reunions.

“You really are rather good at this, Inspector,” she said, looking at him curiously. Her voice had an edge, as if she was a tiny bit offended.

“Would you rather I rotted away here on my own?”

She sized him up for a moment and moved closer to touch his arm.

“Perhaps a tiny bit of decay, just on your outer edges?” she suggested.

He laughed as he dragged her into his lap.

@longlineoftvdetectives‘ “The Right Time” is an intimate, low-key fic where Phryne and Jack discuss their relationship after having been together for a year, with the theme of when the right time for something is. There is tension building from Phryne’s simple question of why he decided on her the specific night that he did, and the doubt from how Jack answers it. Here are beautiful lines like “There was a part of him that believed it was that simple. But the romantic Jack still warred with Jack-the-realist, Jack-the-experienced – the Jack that knew that even the simplest and most pure of loves couldn’t always withstand the buffeting winds.”

And in response to the night at Concetta’s, when Concetta said his heart was taken:

“And you didn’t want your heart to be taken,” Phryne said gently.

“No, that's not what I mean.” he responded. “There was a time it was true. An earlier time. A time when I thought my heart had run leaps and bounds ahead of me and I had no choice in the matter.” Jack’s smile grew boyish and joyful. Phryne laughed and matched his smile effortlessly.

“But by that night, I knew I loved you,” he said. “I wanted to love you. I chose to love you. But I still didn’t know how…” he gestured between them, to their position together on the chaise, and their joined hands. “I didn’t know how we were going to do this.”

And in @longlineoftvdetectives​’ second story, “Space”, the writer has made use of “space” as a prompt by writing snippets where she uses different meanings of the word. Phryne is going away and Jack isn’t that happy with it: “I can’t bear for you to leave me,” he said with a laugh, his voice teasing, but his eyes, his body, suggesting that his lightheartedness was flimsy cover for the depth of his real feeling.” The play on different kinds of spaces, and of Jack retreating and not being sure if he can handle a relationship with Phryne, is all delicately done, ending with his promise that he’ll get better at this, with time.

@rositalg​, “Time and space”, chapter 8 of “War Stories” is a lovely short take on Phryne being overwhelmed when she sees an abuse victim that takes her back to her own experiences from Paris. This is Phryne and Jack within canon, not (yet?) in a relationship, and Jack recognizes something of what she’s feeling:

“Melbourne, 1929.” He offered. 

“I’m sorry?” She gave him a quizzical look.

“When I forget where I am, I try to focus on the differences between then and now: sunny skies, clean air, thick grass underfoot, Inspector Jack Robinson,” he added with a smile as he touched his own chest. “You’re in Melbourne, 1929.”

Phryne searched him carefully.

You’re safe with me, his eyes told her, even when his mouth couldn’t.

And later, when Jack talks about how she’s inspiring because she’s been through a lot and is so alive:

"It inspired me." He confessed. "Do you remember when you told me that you hadn't taken anything seriously since 1918?" 

"Oh, I was flirting with you, Jack." She rolled her eyes, not taking her statement seriously either. 

"Even so," he smiled at her.

@geenee27 ��Two Roads Diverged” is a lovely take on how things could have been very different. It tells of Jack Robinson making his last day at City South, about to be transferred to Sydney, and the piece is filled with such melancholy about this change in his life, and gives a beautiful character study of Jack right before he meets Miss Fisher. He says good bye to the new, promising constable Collins:

Jack did not have many regrets, but he had looked forward to mentoring this young constable. He was very green to be sure, but he was intelligent, dedicated to the work and empathetic to the people who needed their help. He would make a good officer.

Jack extended his arm and they shook hands goodbye. Then Jack lifted the box and walked determinedly out of the door. He did not look back but walked to his motorcar, placed the cardboard carton in the back seat and slid into the driver’s seat.

Just as he is about to drive away from the station, he is called back to investigate at the Andrew’s house. As the title suggests, this is a real divergence of roads: either he goes to Sydney and never gets to know Phryne, or he stays in Melbourne. What he chooses here, you’ll have to read for yourselves.

The trope of space and time can also be interpreted as prompting and AU in another time, but this was not so much taken up on – maybe we already have a fair amount of AUs from other times and modern times, or maybe this just wasn’t the typical association to the trope. One fic that created another time for Phryne and Jack is @heavyheadedgal​, “The Heiress’ Tale”, set in the 12th century England, where Phryne is a Baron’s daughter setting out to escape from an arranged wedding. She’s aiming for protection from one side of the civil war, or “At the very least, her disobedience might put her betrothed off the idea of marrying her altogether.” She buys the help from a steadfast retired knight of the name Sir John Robinson: “If she can get to Bristol, her aunt, the Lady Prudence (no friend of the Baron’s), will give her refuge. The problem is getting there, quickly, without discovery.” The fic is written as a one-shot, but it really sets the scene for further fun, and since so many asked for a continuation in the comments, I wonder if it might get a continuation.

“I cannot touch you, Phryne.”

When the trope goes in the direction of the supernatural or of the possibility to change history it easily becomes a contemplation of love, loss, and what is important in life. It’s probably not surprising that several of the fics turned in rather sad directions.

@phrynesboudoir/Sassasam, “The Nearness of You” explores the idea that Jack died when travelling after Phryne, but he stayed as a ghost and when a young relative to Phryne moves into Wardlow, she’s the only one who can see him.

“How did you get in here?” she asked as tersely as she could manage.

“I’ve been here for quite some time,” he answered.

“Well that’s impossible. This is my house and you’re trespassing. If you don’t leave I’ll be forced to call the police.”

He chuckled ruefully. “In my day, I was the police,” he said, voice gruff and low. “Don’t you remember me.”

In this storyline, Phryne lived her whole life to an old age without Jack, and without having either had the chance to get together with him or say goodbye; and Jack, is haunting a house where no one can see him for 90 years. The young Phryne learns more and more about Phryne Fisher, reading her diaries and listening to the ghost, and she starts to dream about Phryne and Jack – or is she perhaps remembering? The fic explores this very sad ending to the love story of Phryne and Jack, an alternate ending that works to show the power of the two of them together. It makes the young Phryne, who like us is experiencing the story as an onlooker, the possible saviour of them by what she can read and learn, and also by how she can relive it.

Another interesting – and exceedingly sad – exploration of how history can be changed is @firesign23, “Like Juno’s Swans”. In this story, Phryne is allowed to travel back in time and decides to revisit her youth to try to save Janey. It’s not easy to find a way to make Murdoch Foyle be arrested before Janey is kidnapped, but Phryne is doing fairly well – until she meets the young constable Jack Robinson and he gets involved. Jack is both the same and not at all – still young, inexperienced and a newlywed, but with plenty of quirks the same, and Phryne comparing the young man to the older:

“How did you know I was married?” he asked, narrowing his eyes.

“I can always tell,” Phryne bluffed, then smirked. “And Samuels mentioned it in passing.”

Jack chuckled, more easily than her Jack did but the same tone. “I suppose I should get used to gossip,” he said.

Darling, you have no idea, she thought, but merely smiled.

The irony of the story is that Phryne doesn’t have very much idea herself about what messing with time means. She manages to save Janey, but at an enormous price – where she changes both her own and other’s lives so much we can’t even be sure how much of “our” Phryne is actually left. It is beautifully done but also heart breaking.

“You and me both, Miss Fisher.”

@zannadubs23, “Different Destinations” has an idea that is also at the same time clever and rather sad – that some people are reliving their lives, again and again, changing small things in it so there are different life courses, and that Phryne is one of them. Every time, things change: for example, the first time around, Phryne had a husband, Pascal, but in her later reruns, he was never even born. And in no lifetime did Phryne manage to save Janey. Again, there is much sadness and thoughts about life and how to live it here. The fic explores the whole idea via a lovely dialogue between Phryne and another man that turns out to know everything about this, the all-knowing Mr Butler -- there is a reason he is so all-knowing. He also encourages her to dare to love no matter this curse of repretition:

Phryne tried to process what she was hearing from the man. “This is my third time. I’m not sure what has been hardest, losing Janey each time or the wars.” She finally said softly.

Mr. Butler considered her, “It’s always the closer things that hurt the worst for me in the long run,” his eyes filled with moisture, then he smiled, “but they also make the journey worth bearing.”

Also @ollyjayonline “Au Revoir” explores the pain of time travel and repetition, in a slightly different – but equally clever and devastating – manner.

Here, Jack is about to be killed in a fire when Phryne – not his Phryne, but a Phryne from the future – pops in through the ceiling and throws him back in time so he can relive his last day, again and again. Every time, he and she has learned something from the last time, and he uses this knowledge to change things while she is trying to save him. There are so many clever things here: their conversations when Jack is almost suffocating and first not sure that he’s not hallucinating; the way Jack tries to make it difficult for Phryne to find him in order to save her, while she’s trying to save him; the way Phryne has worked so hard in the future to be able to save him. And above all – the exploration of what that means, that Phryne in the future is working to save Jack, but when he is saved, he meets not that Phryne, but his contemporary Phryne, and how that messes things up for him.

This is potentially heart breaking and beautifully handled – to layer in that last part is so interesting and Jack’s hesitation was a great surprise for me: 

And so he had got on the ship, determined to tell her in person that things had changed. He would explain that he had unexpectedly met someone from his past, not exactly an old friend, but someone he cared for very deeply. (...) it wouldn't be right for him to be with her, knowing he was in love with someone else.

But when he meets Phryne -- his contemporary Phryne -- the distinction breaks down: “He tried to reason with himself, this isn't the woman who searched for you for ninety years, who saved your life five times… but his arguments faltered in the face of the empirical evidence that she quite clearly was.”

Then, to just top it all up right over the top, the story ends with another, similar scene – Jack is going to die again so that others can live, this time in World War II:

Ex-Detective Inspector Jack Robinson, currently serving as a Captain in the British Expeditionary Forces, sat on the floor under the window holding a much worn photograph. He gazed up at the ceiling, wondering idly... death by smoke or rescue by the woman he loved.

Either way, he understood now, it was just a matter of time…

The beautiful thing with the fic is that it is left open-ended like this. We have no idea whether Jack is saved again; whether he then has to revisit this painful day more than once; or whether this is just where he dies, but still, future Phryne’s earlier time work did manage to give them a decade more together. What will happen is up to the reader, and this really makes the fic linger in the reader’s mind.

Last in this section, in Rithebard “The Painting” it is space travel rather than time travel – Phryne and Jack need to solve a disappearance, and it turns out at the house they are visiting there are paintings that people can walk into. The most dangerous one is a painting that makes the people just want to stay in a state of bliss and love, and it is a proof of their resilience that even though they do love each other and are seized by this feeling they can also, after having indulged in it shortly, break loose and walk out of this place of overwhelming harmony – in the process also finding and saving the man who had disappeared.

Finally, I’ll turn to the specific fics of “Out of Space and Time” that are actual crossovers – where the world of Miss Fisher is blended together with other fictional worlds or genres. This is a way of writing fic that is rather difficult, to manage to blend two worlds and still do both of them justice. The writers in this fandom surely knows what they’re doing, and the results are amazing. I am personally lucky in that some of the crossovers are made with fictional worlds I know and love, and the blends are working brilliantly.

BookPhryne ready to meet her TV alter ego.

In QuailiTea, “The Next Adventure”, Miss Fisher’s world is mixed with the Literary Detective Thursday Next, who is a novel character written by Jasper Fforde. Thursday’s world is rather complicated and I probably won’t manage to do it justice here, but she is working in the BookWorld, where all imaginable books exist, and where it’s possible to bookjump – walk in and out of books – and where characters can disappear and novels be suddenly rewritten. Thursday is working for Jurisfiction and in this case, she is finding a discombobulated Phryne Fisher who has troubles because the tv series has started to air and she has two different backstories and two different relationships to the people around her – is Mr Butler a widower or a happily married man? Is Lin her long-time lover or an old friend? Is Jack Robinson a policeman friend or someone she’s falling in love with? 

The story is very quick-footed and humourous and playing with Thursday Next's way of moving around inside novels -- here’s an example of that: 

“I’m not liking this. Bert, see if you can get a bead on where Inspector Robinson turns up next in the text. We might be able to jump ahead and beat whoever it is who’s after him to the punch. Phryne, if you can get a message to Dot, see if she can prolong her search for her sister a little, maybe a quarter-chapter. We can’t have the narrative bounce back to you before I figure out what’s going on. Once you’ve done that, meet me at the antiques store two chapters early.”

To write this story, you need to have a distinct grasp of the worlds of both BookPhryne, TVPhryne and Thursday Next, and that is no small feat. Added to this, QuailiTea has imagined a Phryne Fisher novel that doesn’t exist, where Jack Robinson is killed, and this book is the very scene where Thursday and Phryne have to solve the mystery of who is trying to mess up the books and Phryne’s backstory – and, perhaps, they can also save Jack from dying? The fic is still not finished, so I don’t know if this is where it’s going. In the first novel about Thursday Nex, “The Eyre Affair”, she manages to change the ending of Jane Eyre (to the ending we know), so there is the potential of irreversibly changing books. How will the mashup of the two different Phrynes work out? We still have to see the resolution.  

A fic that has some similarities with QuailiTea’s fic is @flashofthefuse “Of Two Worlds”. Here is no Thursday Next, but here is also a humourous play on the differences between BookPhryne and TVPhryne – so it is too a crossover with the Phryne Fisher books. In this fic, it takes a little while before the reader realises what is happening, but I have to spoil it a little to discuss it – apologies for this! Phryne is opening the door at Wardlow and meets a visitor – a handsome, well-dressed man who seems to know her and her house exceedingly well, although she’s never met him before. He has the gall to claim to be Jack Robinson, although she knows that her friend in the police force looks nothing like that: 

“You are not Jack Robinson!” She laughed incredulously. Jack Robinson was a wonderful man and a dear friend, but Jack was a plain looking man. He had what might be called a forgettable face. This man had a face she imagined would haunt her dreams. A chiseled jar and impossible sharp cheekbones. And eyes so blue they conjured endless sky or deep oceans. Eyes that were currently looking at her with a mix of concern and alarm.

Then to mess it up even further, a second Phryne – almost but not completely identical with herself – turns up, as well as her own Jack, BookJack. 

It turns out that both Wardlows exist at the same place, and that Mr Butler is a liminal person, inhabiting both worlds and serving both Miss Fishers, and he had forgotten to close the door between the realities properly. Mr B always seems magically knowledgeable, and here we get the perfect explanation. Also, in this story he has half a life where Mrs Butler is still alive, and he shares all his adventures in the other world with her, which is incredibly sweet and a brilliant take on the trope. 

Another fic that dares to make a crossover and makes it astonishingly well is @scruggzi, “The Long Road to Patagonia”, as well as a first oneshot of “The Spacephrack Drabbles”  – the latter is a short scene that is actually written for the trope challenge, the first is a more long-term fic that fitted the challenge. 

This is a wonderful exploration about what would happen if Miss Fisher met The Doctor. @scruggzi has delved into this question thoroughly, not keeping it only as a fun idea but writing it as something that truly affects Phryne and Jack. Phryne goes missing while flying her father home to England, and Jack finds discrepancies around her disappearance and refuses to believe that she actually is dead. The truth is that she has been caught in a timeloop, and once the Doctor has saved her, and reincarnated into a female doctor, she’s been thrown six months into her own future. 

On the one hand, the fic is about fun and meeting adventures and being allowed to travel to see the universe, on the other hand it’s about loss and grief, and about how that affects you. The combination of this is stunning. There are many beautiful scenes – of Phryne and the Doctor trying to understand each other; of Phryne grieving her father who dies; of Jack grieving and not accepting that Phryne is dead; of Mac trying to stop Jack from digging himself into a hole claiming that Phryne is not dead; of Dot breaking into the Adventuresses' Club; of Phryne’s and Jack’s different ways of believing or disbelieving the Doctor and the time travelling police box. The way it takes some time before they solve the oddities created by time travel, and the way also Mac and Dot are important parts in this plot, is great. And there is wonderful banter between the three of them:

The Doctor considered this. “You want to use the Oscillator to shield yourself, keeping you from damaging yourself and time, in order to meet Jack in the past for what I am assuming is a booty call?”

Actually, in terms of fixing the paradox, the idea was rather brilliant and the Doctor was a little disappointed not to have come up with it herself. The detectives were looking at her in confusion.

“A what?” asked Jack, although he could have made a fair guess.

“Netflix and chill?” She hazarded.

When this got nothing but blank faces, the Doctor mentally readjusted her lexicon of idioms by a few decades.

“A romantic liaison?”

Jack had the grace to look a little embarrassed, but Phryne Fisher had never known shame in her life and was unlikely to make its acquaintance now.

“Naturally. Does that matter?”

“As a plan, it’s all kinds of risky and every flavour of dangerous.” The Doctor grinned. “I love it. Let’s get going.”

and between the Doctor and Jack:

The Doctor scrutinised him for a long moment. “Well, you better work it out in your head somehow now that you’re joining us.”

He raised his eyebrows. “I am?”

She gave him a very patronising look which did not make him feel especially keen to take any of her advice, however sensible. “Please. You’d follow her anywhere.

In the short, more tounge-in-cheek drabble, there is a specific meeting with the Doctor’s enemies, where Phryne discovers the backside of wearing a time appropriate corset.

Image borrowed from  http://transgenderuniverse.com/2016/04/07/steampunk/  (I hope it’s okay to borrow!)

Finally, @omgimsarahtoo‘s “The Winds of the Heavens” is not a crossover with a specific story but with a whole genre, steampunk romance. There is no good way to illustrate this fic -- here we really would need fanart! -- but I wanted to give a feeling of the kind of universe we’re talking about with the above picture.  

Jack Robinson is going on an undercover mission, in a world where there is space travel in fin-de-siècle aesthetics, and the captain of the ship he will travel with is Phryne Fisher. Here, both Jack and Dot are much less modest and restrained than in the show, which fits the AU perfectly. Phryne and Dot are almost equally experienced and cool, and Jack is much more quickly on the boat with starting a sexual relationship with Phryne, but there is still tension between them, and also a question of what is truth, what is lies, and what is evasion. 

Apart from the characters meeting, the first chapters have given us Phryne singling out Jack in a scene that overflows with the female gaze; a meeting in a more intimate setting; several of the characters reimagined as other species or as cyborgs (Mac with technical enhancements! Jane as an alien girl Phryne has taken care of!) and a lot world-building and details about the world that this story is set in. It’s only been two chapters yet, and although Jack has made his way to Phryne’s bed in a rather steam(punk)y fashion, it’s still rather open how the plot will develop.

This was all from me for the July trope. I am looking forward to the August trope -- the Dulcinea effect!

[whopooh]

Great tension in the Miss Fisher fanfic – third and last post

“It seems it got all tense again, Miss Fisher.”

Some time ago, I asked for help from the fandom to spread some fanfic love – asking for fics with great tension, either with Unresolved or Resolved Sexual Tension, or both. This is the third and last post with these recommendations. 

Thank you to all recommenders and all writers!

I’ll start with @bluecityrose, who wrote a full, lovely list of fic recommendations, and I don’t want to split it up so I’ll just post her list here in one go:

I'm so sorry, this is the best I could do. There are soooo many to choose from, this was kind of impossible. Here is my too short list:

“A Man in Need” and “Sweltering,” both by Collingwoodgirl/ @jeneenp. These are the first works of fanfiction I had ever read (I didn't even know it was a genre before that!) and I was stunned by the beauty of the writing. There are a million incredible moments in “A Man in Need”, but one that stands out is when Phryne walks in on Jack and he is shirtless – It was the first time my imagination saw him shirtless as well, and well, I'll never forget that image. “Sweltering” builds the URST until it explodes into the hottest scene in the back of the Hispano Suiza. I'm still sweating from that one.

“The Pleasures of a Slow Dance” by Ollyjay/ @ollyjayonline consists of two chapters in which Phryne and Jack flirt and banter with delicious dialogue that seems so true to the show, I am convinced that I saw them as filmed episodes.

“The Journey Towards” by @ladyroxie is an exquisitely drawn portrait of Jack and Phryne's growing emotional closeness as they discuss their evolving relationship obliquely. I love URST but I'm a sucker for emotional tension also, and this story is just beautiful. Plus they end up holding hands.

I adored “Still Holding My Heart” by @flashofthefuse, and there was plenty of URST as Phryne and Jack worked towards repairing their relationship, plus it has Jack sitting on the grass in jeans repairing a bicycle with a grease smudge on his face, and I'm grateful for that.

@whopooh's “Sense and Sensibility” added to the "only one bed" URST trope, with a hilarious twist involving feet (trying to avoid spoilers here), and a lovely resolution.

Collingwoodgirl's/ @jeneenp “The Night Within” puts P & J into a very small space, only to then make Morse Code into the sexiest foreplay of all time.

Finally, “Varying States of Muscular Undress” by @gaslightgallows boils with so much URST that it fairly explodes off the page. It takes them on an emotional journey (and physical) that is both tender and hot, and I return to it over and over. In a series of beautiful scenes, J&P reveal their scars (both literal and figurative) to each other, and move slowly closer to a relationship as they build a strong sense of trust, respect and equality that makes their partnership so intriguing and satisfying.

“The Wager” by @soupsouffle. Recommended by @kanste 

Jack makes a wager with Phryne, about who will manage to resist the other’s innuendos for the longest time, and they both try to make the other break.

It’s so difficult to choose specific quote, this whole fic is full of wonderful tension, but here is one:

“Jack,” she half-whispered, shivering at the sensation of his hot breath gliding over her fevered skin. His eyes darted over her features like a bumblebee at a bouquet, looking panicked as her fingers reached to undo the knot of his tie and tug apart the buttons at the top of his collar. She dragged the pads of her fingers over the newly exposed skin, thumbing his Adam’s apple and whimpering softly as she felt his throat convulse beneath her touch. “Jack,” she repeated.

“Yes?” he rumbled. The sound of his deep, sure voice did evil things to her nether regions. Her index finger found a notch at the side of his knee and began to make little patterns with her nails upwards from the spot, mapping a fiery trail up the inside of his thigh. She wished his wool trousers were not quite so thick, but his breath came quicker all the same.

She touched the corner of his mouth, where a speck of jam lingered. “You’ve got a little spot here. No, I’ll get it for you,” she purred, leaning in before he could escape her and touching the spot ever so carefully with her tongue. She felt his large hands, which he had been keeping locked at his sides, fly to her body, one clamping around her upper arm while the other clutched upwards at her back, pressing desperately into her spine.

“Phryne,” he sighed. It was not a protest or a plea. It sounded more like pure appreciation. She pulled back and rubbed her thumb over the spot she had licked clean.

“There we are. Right as rain.”

His heavy-lidded eyes were fixed on her, his lips parted slightly, his breathing fast and shallow. Phryne snickered to herself. Who was putty now?

“This is an excellent spot for teasing, Jack.”

"In the Car," part 7 of “Down and Dirty” by @omgimsarahtoo. Recommended by @kanste .

The drabbles are all just wonderful, but I love the way Jack is teasing her in this chapter.

“The Size of Dreaming” by innie. Recommended by @firesign23.

The Size of Dreaming was one of the first fanfics I read for MFMM, and it's a lovely examination of the tension, desires, and intimacy in the slowly developing relationship between Jack and Phryne. From merely desiring the handsome detective inspector to wanting Jack for the man he is, it's a lovely glimpse of Phryne's journey, strewn with sensual images and thoughts. She desires his humour, his acceptance, his cheekbones; she thinks of his body unguarded in slumber or in the guise of Mark Antony. There are so many passages I could quote, and the way they build upon each other to slowly build the tension, but I will go with this moment during the investigation at the House of Fleuri.

Since becoming a Lady Detective, she'd often had cause to bewail the lack of pockets in most ladies' clothes, but had consoled herself with the thought that without pockets, her skirts swirled as prettily as they were meant to and her trousers clung sleekly to her hips. Phryne hadn't really considered the crowning virtue of her attire until she saw Jack taken aback but unmistakably aroused by her fishing the last aubergine pearl out of her blouse.

She was inured by now to his disapproving sternness, so the admonishing look he gave her was easily ignored in favour of thinking through what it would be like to lie back against the yielding softness of her bed with Jack on top of her and savour the sensation of pearls caught between their frantic bodies. She had ropes of champagne, milk, and rose pearls, all of which would lend their lustre to his skin when he inevitably got tangled in them. They would warm from the friction, their slipperiness adding a frisson where none was needed, sending her over the edge all the quicker. And Jack – he would wind a demanding hand in the strands to pull her up to his questing mouth even as she still shook, and he would not let her down until her eyes rolled back in her head, ruthless in the pursuit of his pleasure.

His lips would close around the beads as he sought her nipple, his hands would brush them aside in his fervour to get to her skin, and he would growl and tear them free; she would hear a thousand clicks as they scattered on her floor, but dimly, because Jack would still be moving over her, eager for more, for all she could give him.

She really needed to go to the bank in the morning and liberate her pearls from the safety-deposit box.

”A Night in Queenscliff” by @whopooh. Recommended by @quiltingmom.

Hi whopooh, I want to thank you again for the assignment. I'm doing exactly what I wanted to do, going back and rereading some works and getting reacquainted with some newer fics that I'd forgotten about (it really does stink getting older...) and you're not going to believe the first one I found that I wanted to tag. It's “A Night in Queenscliff” by the wonderful @whopooh. And I'm totally serious about this. When I reread it I was reminded of first, your first attempt at writing smut (which was utterly sensational by the way) but secondly, of the beautiful sexual tension you created in the beginning passages:

He was on fire. Every single nerve end seemed to be alive, sensing her closeness, screaming for him to do something, anything, that involved touching her. It was an odd sensation when you were completely drenched, standing on a beach in the warm night, trying to calm your breath after having swum and waded back to land.

(...)

"I cannot decide, Jack,” – her voice made that clicking sound she sometimes did when she pronounced his name – “if you are more soaked or more on fire right now.”

And then from there, well let's just say, it was a very satisfying and fulfilling RST, lol.

“I know what you’re thinking -- this dress is stunning.”

“The Scientific Method” by @omgimsarahtoo. Recommended by @olderbynow.

And if he were so close, he would have no choice but to see the contrast of his skin, with its underlying golden hue against hers with its pale pink alabaster. Would his calloused fingertips catch on the fabric of her gown as he passed them over her breast? Would she shiver at the sensation of his palm stroking her bare arm or the nape of her neck? Would her mouth taste of hot spice the way that he remembered it from the kiss he’d stolen at Café Replique? There really were too many unanswered questions. He would have to answer them, one by one. It was a scientific necessity.

science as an excuse for sexytimes? sign me up, please!

“Inappropriate” by @promisesarepiecrust. Recommended by @whopooh

I adore the way Phryne and Jack talk, holding back a little bit less because they are inebriated, but still rather restrained, and with very much tension: “Why haven’t you kissed me?” Phryne asks Jack, and he first deflects, only to come back to it again:

“Alright.” He sipped his drink. “Why haven’t I kissed you? Do you want a long and pitiful answer or a short and pitiful one?”

“Well, at least I can see that the whiskey has done its job on you. But I admit I had secret hopes that you would be a chatty drunk rather than a maudlin one.”

“There is nothing maudlin about honesty,” he said with clear, suddenly sharp eyes. “Also, I could just as truthfully have said ‘short and hurtful or long and hurtful,’ if you’re worried that I’m only hard on myself.”

(---)

Her moment of discomfiture touched him—she was usually so brassy, never more so than tonight. He allowed a long, quiet moment before he answered her previous question, his voice intimate.

“Because it might feel too important…I haven’t kissed you because it might feel too important. To me.”

She nodded slowly, absorbing his meaning. She turned back to the skillet.

“Are you sober?” he asked her.

“Somewhat.”

“Why haven’t you kissed me?”

She didn’t move.

“Are you drunk?” she countered.

“Somewhat.”

“Eat this,” she said as she slid the omelet onto a plate and placed it on the table.

Well, now she’d done it, she thought. She’d walked right into that one, hadn’t she. Her wit was not up to repartee, so she was only left with honesty…or leaving the room, which did occur to her.

“I haven’t kissed you because I haven’t taken anything seriously since 1918…because it might feel too important, that was a good way to put it.”

She looked at him, proud that she could meet his eyes despite feeling so vulnerable. He began to wonder what the worst was that could happen, and realised with a start that the worst already had. He loved her, without remedy. He focused more intently on his meal.

They allowed silence. A strong, cold breeze came in through the window, effectively clearing some of the melancholy that had settled in the room. He finished his dinner and declined another drink. She saw him to the door, handing him his hat. He gave a last look back, hat in hand, ready to step into the night, then reconsidered. He turned to face her, leaned forward and kissed her on the apple of her cheek, gently, in slow-motion, finishing the gesture with an affectionate rub of her cheek from the tip of his nose.

“Now I’ve kissed you, Miss Fisher,” he breathed. “Good night.”

Shipping it on ships now, are we?

“In Every Port” by @rubycaspar. Recommeded by @scruggzi.

“In Every Port” does such a lovely job balancing their public flirting and very satisfying RST, plus nice touches with the original characters.

She held Jack’s gaze for a long moment and gave him a slow smirk. “Inspector.”

Jack nodded. “Miss Fisher.”

And with a swish of blue and gold she was gone, disappearing quickly into the crowd moving towards the doors, leaving only a trace of French perfume in the air.

“Crossed paths my arse,” said Larry the moment she was gone. He was looking at Jack like he’d never seen him before. “She looked like she wanted to eat you alive,” he said accusingly, shaking his head. “ Lucky bastard .”

“Not All Treasure Is Silver And Gold” by @omgimsarahtoo. Recommended by @ollyjayonline.

The imagery of Phryne and Jack in this romp on the high seas is just simply breathtaking…

The sea air blew a welcome breeze across Jack’s brow as he stood, his gold-trimmed black hat held securely under one arm. Phryne stood before him, dressed not in her captain’s clothing, but in a gown of floral brocade in shades of gold on a base of deep green. The neckline was square-cut and showed the upper curves of her breasts, plumped--he imagined, given their slight size when unenhanced--by a corset. The gown’s color made her skin glow, and he wanted to run his fingers along the divide between living flesh and cloth.

And the clever way characters and plot points have been interwoven with this entirely different setting and are equally as moving…

He wanted to be the kind of man who would be happy if she was happy—that he’d celebrate with her a return to whatever variety of lovers she’d enjoyed before he’d come along—but he wasn’t.

And their reunion every bit as I have always wanted it to be except instead of some foggy, wet English dock they are in the warm sunshine of Angra do Heroísmo, a small ancient city situated on the southern side of the island of Terceira in the Azores…

With a shout of joy, he lifted her and spun, shouting her name to the sky. Her squeals of laughter as he twirled her around were the finest music, and the grip of her arms around his neck the sweetest pressure. Slowing, he let her feet down to the ground again, pressing his face into her shoulder as he held her close.

And finally, I will just mention that there is sex in this fic, it is beautifully written, and quite frankly in joyous abundance – as it should be : )

A waltz is slow, and close, and metaphorical.

“The Pleasures of a Slow Dance” by @ollyjayonline. Recommended by @firesign23.

OllyJay's “Pleasures of a Slow Dance” are two scenes of Phrack banter and attraction, and could so easily be missing scenes from the show. In the first, Phryne takes a chance to thank him for his kindness to a woman in need, which he dismisses, but they are soon distracted by matters of a biscuity nature. In the second, they have a discussion about the nature of distractions. It's slow and languid and delightful teasing, and ends with Phryne appreciating the unresolved nature of the ties between them.

“Oh, she knew this game now, though she had only recently learned all the rules. The rapture of not giving into instant gratification, the slow languid delight of thinking about all the things you wanted to do with someone, one day, when the time was absolutely perfect. She settled back comfortably in her chair, brushing her fingers against the tin badge on her lapel as the last of the sun warmed her body. Happy in the knowledge that, at some unspecified time in the future, she would have the incredible pleasure of learning exactly how it felt to have Jack Robinson make love to her. A shiver of anticipation ran through her, she couldn't... no, she corrected herself... she could wait.”

“Post Scrip Port Said” by @ladyroxie. Recommeded by @scruggzi.

The whole of “Post Scrip Port Said” is a big sexy pile, perhaps especially the bit at the tailor:

As it was, he'd had to flex his abdominal muscles to the point of aggravating his incision in order to keep his body under control. Whatever became of himself and Miss Fisher, Jack had decided then and there this was the first and last time she accompanied him to the tailor. It was awkward enough having a stranger measure his inseam without worrying he was about to offend the poor gentleman to the point of apoplexy.

"Smoke and Fire” by @olderbynow. Recommended by @whopooh.

I love this fic, and the fact that it takes something slightly silly -- Phryne taking up a challenge, that isn't even a real challenge but that has awoken her competitive streak, to bake for Jack, and it turns out she’s a disastrous baker -- and then turns this premsie into one of the longest super tense scenes of “will they finally kiss or not”:

“But still a very nice gesture,” he insisted.

‘Very nice gesture’ was not exactly what she’d been going for, but considering the biscuits were a pile of ashes on her garden path at this point perhaps she shouldn’t complain.

And really, ‘very nice gesture’ wasn’t so bad at all, she decided, when he reached out and carefully brushed her cheek with his thumb. “You had a bit of flour,” he explained, his hand still hovering somewhere near her hair.

She wanted desperately to shift, just take a small step to the left, and make him touch her more. She looked down herself and then back up at him, eyes wide and inviting. She did have rather more than a bit of flour, and she was not at all averse to the idea of him taking care of all of it.

His eyes mimicked the path hers had taken and seemed to darken slightly at the unspoken suggestion. Then his hand was on her face again, his thumb trailing the same gentle path it had already gone once, and she wondered briefly if he was just doing a very thorough job of it indeed, but then the hand moved to the back of her head, his fingers burying themselves in her hair.

She smiled, pushing herself out from the table slightly, to get her body closer to his, and somehow, miraculously, he seemed to take the hint, moving closer as well, until they were mere inches apart. She tilted her head up to be able to still look at him, and licked her lips.

The movement made his gaze shift from her eyes to her lips and he swallowed, tongue darting out to lick his own lips as well.

This really was entirely too much to have to withstand, she thought to herself, wanting desperately to just close the distance between them and crush her lips against his, but somehow she couldn’t bring herself to do it.

This was Jack, and his fingers might be tracing delicious circles on the back of her head just now, his pupils might be so dilated his eyes seemed practically black, his breath might be coming in short huffs, but there was still a very real possibility that if she moved at all he’d clear his throat and make some remark about playing draughts, and then she’d have to sit across that bloody table from him for an hour or two before he excused himself and went home, leaving her to take care of her frustrations on her own, as he had done so often in the past.

The disappointment would be too much to bear, so she remained frozen, watching him for any hint of… anything.

That’s all for this time. Hope you find something you want to read or reread!

Earlier posts about “Great tension in the Miss Fisher fanfic”: no 1; no 2.

The index for Reading Miss Fisher is here.

[whopooh]

Play it again, Jack: Fanfics you love to reread

“What, are you reading it again, Miss Fisher?” “There is nothing like too many times, Jack.”

Since I’ve been sent such great recommendations from y’all to my previous questions about MFMM fanfic you want to rec, I am going to try a new one! I adore seeing what others love about the MFMM fics -- this is one of my favourite things to do! I hope I’m not overindulging by asking you again already... 

So, I ask you to give me fanfics that you have read more than two times -- that is, fanfic that captured you so much, you needed to go back to savour them again. 

This is what you do:

1. Pick out a fanfic that you have read, and read again, and again. Give the full name of the fic and the writer (add the link if you have the opportunity, otherwise I’ll find it anyway). 

2. Write one to ten sentences about what it is that makes you go back to this fic, what you like about it, how it makes you feel -- and maybe if you see other things when you reread it. (Both old and new fics are really okay to choose.)

3. Repeat with more than one fic if you want to.

4. Send to me in either of the following ways: as a DM here on tumblr; as a message on slack if you’re there; by reblogging this post; by writing a tumblr post of your own (don’t forget to tag me, otherwise I might miss it); or as an ask -- I welcome also anonymous asks.

5. Send this to me at the latest on August 6th.

Like I have done before, I’ll combine the answers to longer posts about the fandom’s recommendations. This question is open to everyone who reads MFMM fanfic, no limitations!

I am really curious about what fics you come back to, and why. As always: don’t fret to find the absolute, perfect answer -- that usually means never managing to send anything. Just send one or a couple of fics that you have noticed you go back to for new readings.

[whopooh]

Undercover or under the covers? The June trope MFMM challenge

Undercover, but rather uncovered.

June was the month for undercover, and this trope opens up for a broad range of possibilities – all the way from creating a whole case to sketching a teasing undercover attempt mostly to make Phryne and Jack get together in a specific way. Often, the two layers of the roles and themselves comment on each other in meaningful ways, and within this, the undercover scenarios – worlds to immerse in, roles to play – are more or less limitless, and also really tickles the imagination.

Compared to the other months, this month’s fics ran away and got rather long, and also published late in the month -- so what first looked like an ‘easy’ month for me to write an overview for instead in the end became really fic heavy. This is also a trope that has already been extensively (under)covered in earlier fics – also there not seldom long ones. To just name a few, we have lovely longfics like @wah-pah’s “Undercover at the Elvsworth Club", @phrynesboudoir/sassasam’s: “The Model Murders”; PlayfulMay/ @mollidraws’s "Undercover Escort”; @firesign23‘s "The Uses of Adversity”; @missingmissfisher‘s series “Double o Phrack”; and two lovely and rather different undercover fics with a cycling theme: Miss_Lilian’s “Death at the Warrny” and hotelf’s “Murder at the Cycling Club” -- just to name some of the longer ones. Undercover truly is a popular trope.

But this post is about the trope challenge, so we’ll concentrate on the fics from June. In most stories, it’s either Phryne, Jack, or both of them going undercover, and the focus is on their relationship and the case. A few fics are broadening that focus, which is really lovely. I will start with them, to then go on to the lighthearted fics, the smuttier fics, and finally end with the longer cases.

In @flashofthefuse, “The Red Flame”, there are two different undercover operations that unbeknownst to each other are set in the same place, a club/brothel. When Jack is in need for a woman to go undercover and pose as a criminal, the title’s red flame, he asks Mac – although it takes a little while for the reader to realise this, and it’s deliciously done. At the same time, Phryne has a case and makes her undercover work with Bert.

The repartee between Mac and Jack is glorious, like here:

“... you definitely look the part, but just looking like her won’t be enough, you know. Are you as confident in her character? I hope you took the time to read the material I sent.”

“Are you always this condescending?”

“Probably,” he admitted, earning him a small smile. “May I come in? I’d like to fill you in on what we’ve learned this afternoon.”

The story isn’t finished yet, but it’s lovely in more than one way to see the interactions both within and between these two pairings – having their own very difficult mission, but also worrying about the other’s. We often say that we want more interaction between Mac and Jack, and here that is given in a brilliant way, with sincere care and respect as well as banter – and also with a Mac that is a genius in playing a tough, nonchalant role undercover, using her experience of being a woman in a man’s world in a way that helps the case enormously.

@rubycaspar’s “And after all the obstacles” gives us a fic all from Rosie’s point-of-view. Even if it is Phryne and Jack that are undercover, the person we follow here is Rosie, being at a garden party and suddenly encountering Jack, who turns out to be undercover together with Phryne. We see all the action and scenes from her point of view, and the case part of the fic is thus brilliantly shortened. @rubycaspar gives us Rosie’s view and her observations and conclusions of what she sees – conclusions she constantly needs to revise, as more and more is revealed to her about Phryne and Jack. This also gives her the chance to work through her feelings about her ex-husband. It is set almost a year after “Unnatural habits”, and gives a strong and determined Rosie – “Rosie thought about avoiding him, but she wasn't one to back down. If he didn't want to see her, he could leave. With that in mind, she straightened her shoulders and made her way over” – and a Rosie ready to change her preconceptions. It’s a very hopeful story.

In @longlineoftvdetectives‘s “Incognito”, finally, Jack is the one going “undercover”, but his undercover interplay is with Aunt Prudence. Aunt P is ill and needs to travel to England, and it turns out that she needs Jack to accompany her, thus forcing him to pretend to be her niece’s husband. With small gestures, the fic teases out many emotions, details and characterisations, in snippets covering many issues and building up a story about Phryne and Jack, about Phryne in relation to her family in England, and also about not hiding who you are (a second take on the theme ‘undercover’). Like this discussion about Oscar Wilde:

“Dragged out of his room by the police and sentenced to hard labor.”

“For…, um…” Jack stammered, unsure what euphemism was appropriate for the dining room of the establishment in question.

“For refusing to live his entire life undercover,” Phryne responded, her voice now clear and defiant. “For loving who he wanted to love. For not hiding or apologizing for who he was.”

Jack smiled and held her gaze. He loved her like this. He would have kissed her, soundly, if they weren’t in public.

“So the Wilde play, then,” he said matter-of-factly, after a long beat.

These undercover prospects are intriguing.

After these alternative perspectives, I’ll turn to the rather large section of fics that are fun and light hearted and sometimes also have a… shall we say more liberal view of what ”undercover” can mean.

The perfect transition between these two sections are of course @ollyjayonline‘s “The Inspector”, a fic that focuses on Isabella, the rather scandalous wife of Phryne’s cousin Guy, and has a delightful touch on the subject of both her and the theme of ‘undercover’. The two spouses have a conversation worthy of British toffs, discussing a news item about Phryne getting married, while simultaneously devoting themselves to both rather ‘dirty’ and casual carnal pleasures.

Isabella’s logic turns the tables on the “propriety issue” we often consider with respect to Phryne and her life style in contrast to Jack: “Really, it is quite wrong of your cousin. A divorced policeman? Why can’t she just keep sleeping with him? I mean, what will people say?"’ It’s a brilliant turnarounf. Reassured that this won’t affect her, she instead turns to daydream about the handsome and dour Inspector, something Guy doesn’t mind helping her out with through some roleplaying.

Isabella’s and Guy’s way of seeing everything as a game, of indulging in fantasies, and of having other people in bed with them – both physically and in role play – is all very in character, and an interesting contrast to Phryne.

The next lighthearted fic is @loopyhoopyfrood’s sweet modern AU “Love At First Swipe?”, where Jack Robinson is being set up for a date on an app as part of a case. He needs to find out how burglaries seem to have been conducted in relation to dates set up via this app; his only problem is that when he meets his date, it is not a suspicious stranger but a lady detective working on the same case.

Maybe it was her profile, as full as lies as every other user, but missing that hint of authenticity. Or maybe it was just Jack’s spidey senses tingling. Either way, something about Fern Roberts had him groaning in resignation and swiping right.

20 minutes later he had a date.

He tried not to think about how it was his first date since his divorce.

As a chapter 11 in her longer fic collection, “The Friday Phrack Series, @rositalg writes an intimate and atmospheric scene from Phryne and Jack in an established relationship. Phryne comes home to a Jack that sits and reads, and she simultaneously talks about her case and is seduced by him.

Her eyes closed blissfully, relishing in the attention.

“Perhaps you could help me.” She suggested, her thighs parting ever so subtly. “You’ve always been one to...dive deep into a case.”

He met her eyes, both of them knowing he was going to have her right here on this couch before the evening was done.

“Miss Fisher, are you asking me for assistance?”

In @omgimsarahtoo‘s “Under Cover of Darkness”, both the ‘undercover’ and the ‘under the cover’ theme is at play. Phryne and Jack has spent the evening undercover in a club, and the fic starts after this is over. Everything goes black, and when Phryne wakes up, he is in a strange room. After the first moments of fear, she deduces that she is not kidnapped but rather at Jack’s house, with a Detective Inspector sleeping in the chair next to her. The fic then turns to her instead indulging in pleasures under the covers with her crime solving partner, and it’s combined with really lovely banter:

“You, Jack Robinson,” she breathed, around sweeps of her tongue across his cheeks, “have a very talented mouth.”

“It’s entirely the subject, Miss Fisher,” he responded, his smile a smug tilt of the lips.

And in the end:

Catching her hand, he leaned up to kiss her, his smile tender. “You are an excellent partner, Miss Fisher. I enjoy working with you, undercover or not.”

“That’s because I’m exceptional.” Phryne grinned as she said it.

“And so modest, too!” Jack affected surprise. “A prize among women.”

Equally of the fun and teasing persuasion is @firesign23′s “Subterfuge at the Savoy” that establishes a gorgeous scene of Phryne in bed in a hotel in England – just to suddenly have her mother barge in without warning (of course Phryne Fisher’s mother is resourseful...). In the heat of the moment, Phryne decides to keep Jack hidden under the covers, but he is in a devilish mood and starts touching her and making her behave exceedingly oddly towards her mother.

“You aren’t still pouting over that policeman your father mentioned, are you? He said you told the poor man to come after you, which is utterly foolish.”

The policeman in question was drifting dangerously high up her thigh with his tongue, and Phryne really had no idea how much longer she could keep this charade up.

Among all the fun, there is also a partly serious question from Jack, after Phryne’s mother has left: ‘“Why was it, Miss Fisher, that we are two consenting, independent adults and I still found myself hiding from your mother?” he asked, eyes dancing. “You’re not ashamed of me, are you?”’

But Phryne has an answer to that question, too.

A last lighthearted undercover fic is leavephryneforme's “Undercover At The Great Australian Baking Show” – a fun romp told in small snippets about a modern Jack being undercover on a baking show. He decides to keep this a secret to Phryne, who starts wondering why he suddenly has so many cookbooks, and the fic addresses his far too alluring features – which the female judges appreciate – when baking.

Preparing Jack for undercover crossdressing. Art by @kidnthehall.

From lighthearted, we’ll turn to two fics that focus on putting Jack in costume.

@whopooh's “The Importance of Being at the Wilde Cats Club”, is a case fic where the focus is not so much on the case, but more on the characters. In order to help Phryne’s old friend Eleanore, who is also a transwoman, Jack, Hugh, Bert and Cec need to go undercover at a club as men impersonating women. The fic focuses on the transformation of them – how they will need to dress, and move, and wear make-up – and also in Phryne’s complete delight in dressing up and putting make-up on Jack, and the shenanigans that follow from this, where Jack uses his newly painted lips to tease Phryne. There is both trust and teasing all through, and a slight continuation of the role reversal theme of April. It all came from two things: the comment “We need more mfmm men in lingerie”, and the desire to have a transgender person who would not need to die in order to be important in a case story. This turned into seduction via lipstick:

She pressed her lips together and motioned how he should do the same and he followed her lead, pushing his lips together. She smiled, and he followed her lead in that too.

“Oh, hang on,” she said, and procured a piece of paper. “Bite the excess colour off on this one, like this.”

But instead of doing that, Jack captures her and kisses her deeply, smudging the lipstick: 

When they resurfaced, she looked at him and couldn’t stop a smile from spreading over her face. He looked ridiculous, with the lipstick smudged and forming a mad pattern around his mouth. 

“Well, you should see yourself,” was all he said as he gave her a small smile.

Also in @scruggzi's “Merciful Powers”, there is a focus on Jack in costume – this time in a luscious costume for going undercover as an understudy in a Macbeth production. Phryne takes great pleasure in the fact that he is dressed in tights, and that he also can be extricated from said tights, and there is a wonderful use of Shakespeare quotes as seduction throughout the fic. As the whole undercover trope shows, it is very fulfilling to put Jack in other clothes than his normal ones, while still keeping his restrained character, and here it is combined by a delicious push-and-pull between them: ‘“Mmm,” she purred, “much as I applaud your theatrical talent, Jack, that was definitely better than Shakespeare.”/ “Sacrilege!” he protested in mock horror, eyes twinkling at her.’

And heading into smut, there is a lovely self-awareness of the literary, and the way it comments on the two of them:

“Macbeth always knew he couldn’t resist temptation forever. All he really needed was an excuse.”

Phryne was fairly sure that analysis had very little to do with Shakespeare, but Jack’s hands had moved around to palm her breasts, and his lips had found the spot just under her ear that made her knees weak. Literary criticism could definitely wait.

The undercover work, and its implications of dressing differently than normal, and of perhaps partly trying out being someone else, is driving the sensual pleasure here.

A similar thing can be said about @phrynesboudoir /Sassasam’s, “The Captain’s In”. Here Phryne and jack are both working undercover on the same case, or rather, Jack is working undercover and a stubborn Phryne stumbles into his case. As they're thrown together, Phryne having to pretend to be a prostitute, the undercover turns into rather rough sexual roleplay (‘"Get below and get naked," he ordered. / Phryne realised with a rush of aroused surprise, that he meant it and she must obey in order to maintain their cover’), and also here there is the idea of heightening an experience through unfamiliar roles and costumes – in this case more ‘dirty’, and added to it a rather sinister on-looker.

Fancy meeting you in the US, Lin!

Over to the long, more elaborate case fics. First, @longlineoftvdetectives, “Welcome to San Francisco”, as the title gives away, set in the US where Phryne and Jack have taken a detour on their way home to Australia. In San Francisco they happen upon Lin Chung, who’s in need of their help. The stakes are high – Lin is threatened to his life – and it turns out that Jack will have to pretend to be Baron Fisher, while Phryne poses as Lin’s wife. In a lovely and similar way as the show, the storyline shows some of Phryne’s and Jack’s emotional journeys, but without settling anything too much, still leaving many questions unanswered. Their relation and the case is woven together, and there is a lovely relation between Jack and a young lad he takes in under his tutelage;, an interesting triangle between Phryne, Jack and Lin; an outsider view disapproving of the Chinese man that they handle brilliantly; and a very competent pair of detectives.

There are many poignant points, often made through dialogue, like here:

“Are you and Inspector Robinson in San Francisco on a case?” Lin asked.

“Not exactly,” Phryne replied. “You might say our relationship is no longer strictly business.”

“I see,” Lin answered. “Are you happy?”

“Very much so,” Phryne replied without hesitation.

“Should I still refer to you as Miss Fisher?”

“Yes.”

“Then there must be more to Inspector Robinson than I had originally perceived,” he concluded.

A fic that teases out an emotional side of Phryne and Jack’s partnership, and of Phryne’s backstory, is @omgimsarahtoo‘s ”Ungentle Reminders”. The undercover stint in this story awakens memories of René in Phryne, and it also higlights misogyny and abuse. Phryne is unsettled by the happenings, where she has to pretend to be a subdued woman among other subdued women, and after the women unexpectedly has made a bloody rebellion, she states:  

“I’ll be a character witness for them,” Phryne said, her eyes on his face as he swept the cloth gently across her skin, wiping up the residue he’d left behind. His eyes flashed up to hers, surprised.

“You only knew them for a couple of days,” he said.

“Maybe,” she agreed, “but Jack, I was them, once upon a time.”

And Jack agrees about the woman who’s now going to be charged for murder: “She made her own freedom.”

In @zannadubs23 /Inzannatea’s “Things Said”  (her first mfmm fic – welcome!) the theme is also rather sinister: Jack is, on his way to London and Phryne, kidnapped in Egypt and taken by slave traders. The theme is serious and the case is given plenty of focus, building up the world where Phryne can be in place to save him – but there is also plenty of focus on more carnal pleasures, once Jack is finally released and still in her tent, as well as luscious details, like here, before Jack has realised who is his saviour: 'The room had an amber glow to it. Jack couldn’t really tell where the lights were coming from, but the room decidedly glowed. The floor was covered with stacks of ornate rugs and large pillows in shades of orange and red and purple. “She would love this,” his traitorous brain informed him instead of working on an escape plan.' The fic grew out of the line "Shave him and bring him to my tent" -- and from that start an elaborate story was built.

A casefic that has both dinosaurs, archaeological sites, a friend of Phryne with interesting parallels to her and the inspired idea to let Phryne and Jack pose undercover as siblings, is @firesign23 “Poetry of Earth”. 

Phryne and Jack arrive at the scene of an archaeological dig on Isle of Wight, where a clever female archaeologist, Lucy, that is a friend of Phryne’s works. There seems to be sabotage and ill will, and Lucy is particularly putting her neck out as a female archaeologist. There is a young girl that tries to flirt with the handsome brother in the newly arrived sibling pair, and there is a lot of tension and fun scenes as Phryne and Jack must take care not to seem to close for siblings. 

“Hence travelling as Frances and John Sutherland, amateur Australian archaeologists without the financial resources to make a name for themselves,” Jack concluded. “How fortunate then that I’ve decided to bone up on my childhood interests while here.”

Phryne looked at him, noting the small hints of a smug smile on his face.

“You know, Jack, one would almost think the pun was deliberate.”

“Thankfully you know my tastes are far too refined for puns,” he replied and she laughed at the glint in his eyes.

And there is a wonderful passage that comments on their earlier case at the observatorium, and that reflects on Phryne being rather alike her friend Lucy, who once almost got stuck in a flood because she was so focused on her work:

“That was careless of Lucy.”

Jack quirked a small smile. “She was distracted by a nearly complete skeleton they were uncovering. I cannot imagine what it would be like, working with someone so easily deterred by bones or luminescent objects.”

“If this is about the plutonium vial, I stand by my choices.”

He didn’t reply, merely smirked at a point well made; she glanced down the empty beach and then leant up to kiss his cheek.

At the same time as Phryne is standing by her choices, she is also all the time noticing how close she’s come to Jack, and contemplating on that sense of familiarity, all while not allowed to show any feelings for him openly.

In one last finished casefic, @ollyjayonline & @solitarycyclistadventures have ganged up on a case fic with plenty of tension between Phryne and Jack, “Death Under the Arch”. 

Here, Jack is going to Sydney for an undercover stint and leaves City South to a very handsome and eligible Inspector – Phryne, however, decides to join him in Sydney. The story is set after Murder and Mozzarella, right after they have said they’ll “make do” with each other, but before they have figured out what that actually means, which opens up for insecurities and misinterpretations on both sides. The mystery is set around the bridge that is being built in Sydney, and Phryne decides to play Jack’s ex-lover as a way to be able to keep watching him:

She leaned towards him, face alight with mischief, “I was thinking it could be fun if we were old friends.”

Jack almost laughed, how typical, only he would manage to go from strictly business to old friend without any of the fun in-between.

There is also a very perceptive young woman who tries to figure the two of them out, which adds to the mix of tensions and uncertainties, and a murder mystery that turns rather sad.

Finally, the section of “To be continued”: two fics that are not finished so I’ll only write shortly about them. In @missingmissfisher​’s “Hold out your hand” Jack has come after Phryne to England and meets her mother that instinctively dislikes him. It seems Margaret wants to stop her daughter from repeating her own mistakes by marrying an unsuitable man, and Margaret is something of Phryne’s kryptonite, so much annoying her that Phryne has troubles thinking straight. Added to the mix are snobbish and boring neighbours and a small mystery that turns into a much bigger and more serious one -- and how that will unfold we’ll see rather soon. @221aubrina started “The Case of the Missing Moll”, which promises to cover both the tropes undercover and bodyswap, and has just taken its beginning – so far, we only now that Jack has been drugged and taken away somewhere… 

That’s all for June from me. I am very much looking forward to the July fics, on the trope “Through time and space”!

[whopooh]

Great tension in the Miss Fisher fanfic – post number 2

The tension is palpable.

Some weeks ago, I wrote a post on the theme of Unresolved and resolved sexual tension in the Miss Fisher fanfic, where I collected great quotes submitted by the fanfic readers. Here is post number two, and I apologise for the delay. A third will come soon! 

Thank you to everyone who took their time to send me recommendations – you are the sweetest! The text about every fic is from the recommender!

So, here goes:

“Kneel” by @edeainfj/deedeeinfj (chapter 1 of “Investigations”). Recommended by @firesign23:

In “Kneel” from deedeeinfj’s “Investigations”… well, there are times I am just going about my totally not Phrack-centred life and moments from this drabble cross my mind. (I could actually say the same about pretty much all of her work, to be honest, but this was one of the first ones I read so it’s getting the shout-out). But It’s a beautiful story about pleasure and control, and the unexpected depths of passion in our beloved inspector. And I can’t reduce it, every piece integral to the outcome, so you can get it in full:

Phryne judges her lovers on their first reaction when she kneels to pleasure them with her mouth. She doesn’t like being told that she doesn’t have to, as if she doesn’t know that damn well already. As if she, Phryne Fisher, would kneel and put a cock in her mouth if she didn’t want to. A man who is forthright about wanting his cock sucked is a man who truly understands the pleasure of giving pleasure. He is a man who will put himself at the mercy of his lover—even a woman. He is a man who isn’t afraid of losing control of his power or his body. He is a man who is willing to take, to submit to what is freely given. When she kneels and her partner begs her to continue, she aches with desire.

So, the first time she kneels before Jack, her heart sinks a little when he lays a hand on her head and says, “Wait.”

She should have known that he would fall into the gentlemanly, chivalrous category, but still she had hoped—

He continues, though. “Wait. Let me sit,” he says, out of breath, voice hoarse, fingers curling in her hair until it’s almost painful. “I can see you better this way. And I don’t think I’ll be able to keep standing while you do that.”

His smile is sheepish, but the one she flashes in return is devilish, happy, adoring. She doesn’t give him time to beg.

“Perhaps Another Time” by @mercurialbianca / TheHonorableMrsMcCarthy. Recommended by @geenee27:

The author writes a delightful epilogue to “THAT SCENE” containing a lethal dress and dangerous lingerie. What happens, after these two have thrown charged words and filthy looks each other, is superbly explored from Phryne’s point of view:

“Perhaps another time. At a less dangerous hour, in a less lethal dress.” Phryne Fisher knew “a tell” when she saw one and the flutter of his eyelids confirmed her suspicions. His lips may have said he was leaving for the evening, but his eyes had given her an I.O.U. And his voice had unmistakably lowered half a register. A little thrill ran through her. Flirting with Jack Robinson had become a favorite pastime, she was now thinking there was a very real chance it might become a contact sport.

I love how much Phryne recognizes a worthy opponent when she sees one.

Not always, Miss Fisher.

“Appropriate” by @whopooh. Recommended by @geenee27

Aunt P interrupts Phryne and Jack’s “Not Always, Miss Fisher” moment; however in this wonderful tale it happens later as she catches them in a scenario not particularly ‘appropriate’. There is lots of delicious reactions from Phrack, Mac and Aunt P, about the interruption, in the following days, but I particularly chose this passage relating to Jack’s thoughts as he beats a hasty, embarrassed retreat and is driving home:

He already knew something about kissing Phryne, but he hadn’t imagined the difference it would make that she was now fully aware of what was happening, and focusing on him. He took her in his arms, like he had wanted to do more times than he could count. He revelled in feeling her against him, sensing her through that thin robe she was wearing. As their kiss grew heated, he felt a bolt of lightning burn straight through him, almost incinerating him. This was how it felt to kiss Phryne Fisher – to press her to him, to hear her whisper against his lips. It was like containing electricity in his arms, like being scorched beyond recognition and not regretting it for a moment.

First real kiss – perfection. Is it getting warm in here?

For jeneep’s “Sweltering”, I received two recommendations:

“Sweltering” by @jeneenp/Collingwoodgirl. Recommended by @federalistdarling:

Can I quote the whole thing?

I love this piece because it seems such a realistic crescendo to the will they/wont they nature of their relationship. It seems typical Phryne to catch Jack off guard and even goad him a bit then to have her quote Shakespeare to him almost as an olive branch for her naughty behavior.

A frustrating beginning and a sweet and somewhat sweaty ending. Haha!!

God, she wanted him. Months of doing this little dance - this slow waltz with Jack - had left her feeling dizzy, almost desperate, with desire for him. The feeling was mutual, she knew, but whether out of propriety or fear, he had managed to parry each and every one of her advances. Well, not this time, she assured herself. (from chapter 1)

When Jack dared take his eyes off the road, he could see Miss Fisher attempting to nonchalantly observe his every move through her dark sunglasses. It was far too loud in the roaring motor car to talk and he could feel the expectation and anticipation building between them. (from chapter 2)

“Sweltering” by @jeneenp​/Collingwoodgirl. Recommended by @kanste:

A heatwave, a picnic and a hail storm – what more do you need? Ah, yes, Phryne seducing Jack with Shakespeare. Here is one great quote from this wonderful story:

The last of the ink residue long since vanquished, her fingers continued to caress his hand. He finally allowed himself to look up at Phryne’s face and found that his gaze was met instantly by darkened eyes. A sultry smile was bestowed on him, her lips twisted in a bright red bow that he ached to unwrap. Jack was so caught off guard by her unmasked attraction, he actually smiled back. He saw her eyes widen in surprise and triumph and he felt immediately wrong footed.

“Ah, thank you,” he murmured, half surprised that he could speak at all and reluctantly wrenched his hand and eyes away from her.

Phryne let his hand slip away but continued to smile, a wicked glint sparkling now in her eye. She had been watching him closely as he had given himself permission to take her in, indulge in her touch and proximity. She could practically feel the heat smoldering from him. All she needed to do was strike the match and pray that the fire would consume them both.

“You’ve got more,” she informed him, her voice as smooth as the whiskey.

She raised her hand to his face and skimmed a curled finger across the soft skin under his chin, her thumb braced against the small cleft.

“Just here,” she breathed, reveling in the feeling of his tender flesh, how his eyes fluttered shut at her touch, the tiny shudder that seized through him and electrified her fingers.

A tiny huff of breath escaped his lips, sharpening his features. But before he could protest, she brandished the whiskey-soaked handkerchief again and was blotting his throat, careful to let the backs of her fingers brush against as much of his exposed skin as possible.

Jack sat stock still, seemingly in utter anguish as his body rejoiced at her touch while his brain stuttered for a reason to stop her.

Phryne had lowered her face so close to his, she could feel his breath ghosting against her, count the green flecks in his aquamarine eyes. She felt his adam’s apple bob against her hand and knew his self-control was tenuous at best.

“Phryne,” he whispered. His nostrils flared as he spoke and it was the sound of her given name on his lips - the pleading tone in which it was uttered - that provoked her.

“Are you alright?” she asked - the very picture of innocence. “You seem a bit overheated, Inspector,” she challenged, looking him directly in the eye and refusing to give an inch.

Are we on stage or not, Miss Fisher?

“Nine Times Out Of Ten” by @ollyjayonline. Recommended by @whopooh:

There is such delicious tension in this story, in the way Phryne and Jack have one relationship in reality, and then plays up another version – where she needs to pretend to be interested in him, while he not in her – and @ollyjayonline explores the uncertainty about what is play and what is real in such a wonderful and very tense way.

Here is a lovely passage showing the two layers:

“I’m making things right, everyone here is now very clear that I have decided to put an end to your budding romance with Miss Bowen - oh and I’m about to seduce you.”

“Really?” his eyes flashed back to hers, “Am I going to enjoy it?”

“No. I need you to look uncomfortable and perhaps a little angry, remember we’re only professional colleagues and you know better than to get romantically involved with a woman like me.”

He nodded, this was a role he knew how to play.

And this is a wonderful example of how the two layers are starting to blend together for Phryne:

“I think that’s enough for tonight,” she had whispered, gazing up into his eyes, as she let her hand wander possessively over his upper arm, “I want you to look like you’re telling me how inappropriate my behaviour is and then leave.”

“This is me telling you Miss Fisher that I would appreciate it if, next time you decide to play match maker, you leave me out of it,” he spun on his heels and walked away.

She stood there for a moment, unsure exactly how much of that had been acting.

And then it gets even more tense, because their play also harks back to hurtful actions in their relationship, reminding them of their own pain – and then the fic gives us an incredible release of the tension, after the break in this quote:

“Can we start again Jack? As friends? Please?” She would never admit, not even to herself, how often she had dreaded having to say these words to him.

He shook his head, “I don’t think that would work, last night you reminded me of feelings that I thought I had conquered.”

“Sounds serious,” the words were out before she could stop them, damn him for unsettling her like this.

A flash of pain appeared in his eyes and it took a moment before he replied, “It is.”

Upset at having unintentionally brought up their previous estrangement she reached out, seeking the comfort of what they were to each other now, only to have him step away.

“Good night, Miss Fisher.”

For the second day in a row she was left behind, alone and off balance.

***

As soon as he stepped in her cabin she threw him up against the door, claiming his mouth with a wild hunger. “Don’t you ever walk away from me like that again Jack Robinson,” her voice was dark and threatening, “You don’t get to leave me behind. Never!” Her hands moved roughly around his body undoing buttons, ripping off his bow tie, pushing off clothes in a frenzy that left him groaning helplessly against her.

Dragging her dress up over her hips she ground herself hard against his thigh, leaving him in no doubt exactly how much she wanted him. Her frantic desire was intoxicating and he spun them round, her back against the door, lifting so she could spread her legs around him.

(…) Her kiss in response was savage. Her teeth hitting against his, her tongue so deep in his mouth he was almost choking, her finger nails digging into his scalp until it hurt. And he came so hard he almost collapsed.

Reluctantly letting go of her thighs so she could take her own weight, he did his best to keep them both upright.

When he had finally caught his breath, “Dare I ask?”

“Its what I should have done,” she confessed, “all those months ago when you told me you were giving me up.”

“I’m fairly sure if you’d done that then, it would have scared me to death.”

“Not quite the reaction I would have been aiming for,” she conceded.

“That Moment is Now” by @phrynesboudoir/Sassasam. Recommended by @quiltingmom:

“That Moment is Now” by Sassasam is one of my absolute favorites (top 3 but they change positions all the time, lol). This fic for me has it all, the setting, the romance, the banter, the casefic but the sexual tension (resolved and unresolved) is off the chart. I really consider it probably one of the dirtiest and yet… I love it so much. Shhh don’t tell anyone.

Here’s one part that references URST and the anticipation of the possibilities as well as feeling Jack’s mind churning is just one of many moments in this fic that gives me goose bumps:

“I can feel your eyes on me,” she said, reaching for her wine and taking a sip. 

“I like watching you, what can I say,” he replied.

He faltered a little under the intensity of her gaze. Her eyes darkened as she appraised him and he felt like a child blundering through asking out a girl he fancied. But broach the subject he must. He couldn’t resist the siren call that was Phryne.

“About earlier,” he began. “What exactly did you mean?”

She leaned into him and whispered something in his ear. His eyes widened.

“Do you mean to tell me,” he kept his voice low and quiet, “that some people actually enjoy that?”

“Some people, yes,” she affirmed. “It can be very liberating. Once you relinquish control to someone else.”

“I imagine it would take a great deal of trust,” Jack remarked.

“A very great deal. But I trust you Jack. I’d let you try some things, if you wanted to,” she answered.

“I’m not certain I could,” he leaned into her, whispered in her ear, “I mean could I? It wouldn’t be – gentlemanly. Some of the things I might want to try.”

She chuckled and batted her lashes at him. “But that’s the point, Jack. It’s like playing a role. We’re miles away from home. No one knows us here. To them we’re honeymooners wildly in love.”-

She smiled softly at him.

“What if I hurt you?” he asked.

“We could have a word. If things get uncomfortable for either of us, we could say- I don’t know- ‘Prudence’ and we’ll agree to stop,” she said.

Jack chuckled and ate a mouthful of chicken fricassee. “Well that would certainly put me off,” he admitted.

Phryne laughed and sipped her champagne. “You like the idea though, don’t you,” she said at last.

Jack took a deep breath, eyes downcast before looking her in the eye. “I do.”

She smiled. “It excites you.”

He nodded slightly. “It does.”

“The thought of what we might do.”

“Don’t,” he warned. “I’m not certain I’ll be able to control myself.”

"Something of a Miracle” by @heavyheadedgal. Recommended by @firesign23:

@heavyheadedgal’s “Something of a Miracle” is a fantastic first time fic, mingling expectations and reality in a way that’s both amusing and hot, and keeps the deep and abiding friendship between these two. It’s hard to choose an extract, but I suppose I’ll go with:

In some dim corner of his mind still capable of rational thought, Jack registered that Phryne liked it when he cursed. She liked it a lot. Years in the army and police force had earned him an extensive vocabulary of foul language, though he rarely used it. So much for romance, he thought, then put his mouth to her neck and murmured every filthy word he knew. She was sweating and scratching at his back and looked absolutely glorious.

It’s perfect for this challenge of restraint and tension: Jack letting go of what he thought he wanted to do what satisfies them both, and the image of Jack Robinson with filthy words is just too delightful for words.

“A Glass Splinter” by @firesign23, chapter 31. Recommended by @whopooh:

I completely adore this fic, and just reread it. I seem to especially love the “false RST,” where there seems to be a resolvedness to the sexual tension, but it’s not properly solved. Like in chapter 26 that I never seem to stop alluding to, where Jack and Phryne have excrutiatingly different views of what they’re doing – as well as here, in chapter 31, when they have a night of farewell. They are more sincere and open to each other than they have been previously in this fic, but it’s still tinged with sadness and parting, and the resolution of the sexual tension is only half:

“Miss Fisher.”

She reached up to cup his cheek.

“Say my name, Jack. Please. Just for tonight.”

He shuddered, the hastily erected walls between them crumbling once more.

“Phryne,” he breathed.

Nobody in the world said her name the way he did, like it was everything precious in the world, like it was a secret to be treasured, to be used sparingly in moments that mattered.

She kissed him, a light brush of her lips against his tampered with hesitance. His returning kiss was slow and shallow, his hand cradling her head. They pulled away at almost the same moment, sharing a small smile.

“One last gaudy night?” she said softly, hoping he would say yes. She couldn’t bear to end it already; there were hours before her ship left.

“No,” he said, and her heart fell. He gave her a sad, lopsided sort of smile. “A farewell, perhaps, but there is nothing gaudy about tonight.“

And then a bit further on:

“Do you love me?” He had been tracing circles across her skin when she’d asked; he’d shaken his head. “Would it change anything if I did?” “No,” she admitted; it was both freedom and duty that called her away. “Then spare me that one indignity,” he’d said, so quietly that she had almost missed it.

I hope this makes you want to go and reread some fics – it sure makes me want to do it! More recommendations will come very soon.