#nancy blackett

[captainsvscaptains]

Prelims

Poll J

[randomowlscreeching]

the fact that Nancy is the only swallows and amazons character to have her own Wikipedia page is honestly so in character

[theyre-gay-because-i-say-so]

Today's LGBT+ Headcanon is;

Nancy Blackett from Swallows and Amazons by Arthur Ransome-Lesbian

Requested by @absolutelynotclassicusernam-blog

Status: Alive

[cstiktok]

[piratesandexplorers]

Well, some time last year I said I was going to watch the not-so-new-anymore Swallows and Amazons film on Netflix, but apparently it's taken a dose of Covid to lay me up in bed and actually get me to do it.

I have lots of thoughts, as I promised I would...

(Spoilers ahead I guess, but nothing big that's not fairly obvious from trailers etc., I don't think.)

There were a lot of little nitpicky things that annoyed me, but I could probably have got past those (actually, no I couldn't, but never mind) if the whole thing had been good enough to carry me through. I'm obviously biased, and it did have its good points, probably fun enough as a kids' film, but I genuinely just think it was poor storytelling, which is extra disappointing as it was based on such a good story. Some of the bigger things that I had problems with:

The Spy Plot. I don't really have that much to say on this one because it's obvious that the second they decided to go with this idea, it stopped being Swallows and Amazons. The modern thing is to believe everything needs Super High Stakes and Lots Of Action or kids will be bored. I think they're wrong, but there we go. (Sorry, Andrew Scott, I'd watch you in anything, but you didn't belong here.) But even accepting that for what it is, I just don't think they did what they were trying to do particularly well, so on that note...

Character development and relationships. So much went wrong here, I don't know where to start. Obviously they butchered both John and Susan (presumably because they lazily read them as boring and, rather than read any deeper, just changed them entirely), as well as Mrs Walker and her relationship with the children. Genuinely, what's wrong with writing families who like and trust each other? Captain Flint was already ruined by the spy plot, but his eventual switch to being the nice fun uncle didn't work well even in the context they gave him - it felt like they just went "and actually he turned out to be nice, which you should just accept and not question because it's just a kids' story so it's not that deep". Which does such an injustice to the original writing. Then there are the Blacketts, who need a third point all to themselves:

The Blacketts. I was so disappointed with Nancy and Peggy. I feel bad criticising children, but I didn't think the actors playing them were good at all (compared to the Walkers, who could all act). But the real issue I had with them was their lack of screentime?? They barely appeared, we had no time to get to know them, to care about them, or to see any sign of genuine friendship between them and the Swallows. There was no spark to them at all, no sign of Nancy's charisma, or sense of them as the wild rule-breakers. Mrs Blackett was a non-character too, which is forgivable as she was sort of a non-character in the first book, but given that they did give her extra screentime, they could at least have given her some characterisation?

The Pacing. I feel like this point wraps the previous ones together, because the cause is the spy plot and the result (or one of them) is the bad/non-existent character-dev. There's no time for the characters to unfold, no time for them to sit and talk to each other, no time for extra scenes that show relationships, no time for fireworks on the cabin roof or parleys around the campfire or Vicky/Bridget's birthday or fishing trips or Octopus Lagoons or Nancy bullying policemen on John's behalf. Even the Black Spot gets delivered in a moment at the dining table, with no explanation of what it means. And it's mainly because most of the time is taken up by the Big Plot, but it's not only that - those small but important scenes are also replaced by things like losing the food hamper, and John shouting at Roger, and Roger falling in the lake. Things they obviously decided were more Dramatic and Exciting, but actually do nothing meaningful at all. It all just feels completely rushed, which is the opposite of Ransome's vibes. And not only that, but the piling on of difficulties, and problems, and fights, and things going wrong, just makes the whole island camping expedition seem entirely depressing, rather than a taste of joyful freedom.

The Aesthetic. Related to the last point, but I did think that the one thing we would get from this film, since they filmed on location, would be the feel of the Lakelands and the scenery and rural Northern England in the 20s. I got almost none of that. Again, probably because the only things they cared about were spies with guns and ramping up the sense of danger and difficulty at every turn.

It sounds like I hated the film, and I didn't hate it. It was fun to watch, I thought the kids playing Tatty (whose name change I do get) and Roger were particularly good, and I liked the Billies (although less so the fact that Susan and Roger didn't even meet them, and Tatty screaming the place down over the adder).

I just didn't think it was particularly good as a film, let alone an adaptation of Swallows and Amazons. Which, as a Swallows and Amazons fan, is just really sad.

What's funny to me is that the Netflix synopsis says: "When four siblings camp on an island in the middle of a lake during their vacation, they fall into a whimsical turf war with two boisterous rivals." Which is... far more of a description of the original plot than of the plot of the film.

[writingordinaryrealities]

20 Questions

I got tagged by @dogstarblues !

How many works do you have on ao3?

... Let me just open my cheat sheet... 86 works

2. What's your total ao3 word count?

576,230 words

3. What fandoms do you write for?

Right now it's pretty much just Greenwing and Dart, though I do have a pair of Good Omens works coming for an event. I've also written for Yuri on Ice, Harry Potter, MDZS, The Untamed, the Chantiverse, Little Women, and Lays of the Hearthfire.

4. What are your top five fics by kudos?

The Sun Sets like a Whispered Regret

Facing the Dust and Wind

Rosie Lea (Have a Cup of Tea)

To Break Free from the Night

To Teach a Sorrow to Speak

5. Do you respond to comments? Why or why not?

I do. Almost always. When I was just getting brave enough to leave comments (and a trace of what I was reading on ao3!) @ili-here responded to a couple of comments I had left and had a whole little conversation with me, and it made me feel so much braver about leaving comments that I try to pass that forward, even though I don't think my responses are always as thoughtful and interested

6. What's the fic you wrote with the angstiest ending?

I... I don't write much angsty fic. I think maybe the Little Women one? In that nothing was really resolved in it

7. What's the fic you wrote with the happiest ending?

See, this is an issue for the opposite reason. They're all happy endings. I think maybe merging our lives here in their established frame?

8. Do you get hate on fics?

LOL no. I'm not a big enough author for that

9. Do you write smut? If so, what kind?

I do sometimes. What kind? What does that mean? I... kinky? Sometimes? Idk, sometimes they're laughing and sometimes they're crying and sometimes it's just foreplay to the cuddling.

10. Do you write crossovers? If so, what's the craziest one you've ever written?

I've written a couple. I think the one that sticks out most in my head is actually the MDZS/Untamed thing, which was not a true crossover but a "MDZS watches the Untamed" thing.

11. Have you ever had a fic stolen?

Not that I know of. Again, I think there are advantages to being a small out-of-the-way author in a small out-of-the-way fandom.

12. Have you ever had a fic translated?

Not yet! Maybe someday

13. Have you ever co-written a fic before?

Yes! It's lots of fun. I live in hope of another

14. What's your all-time favorite ship?

Whichever one I'm writing currently. At the moment that's Jullanar Ragnor/Jullanar Maebh.

15. What's a WIP you want to finish but doubt you ever will?

This moment, worth keeping. I hate to leave it unfinished, because I know how I wanted it to end, but I no longer have netflix and I'm mostly out of the fandom, and I'm busier than I used to be too. I really hate leaving it though

16. What are your writing strengths?

Humor and emotion

17. What are your writing weaknesses?

Description and depth

18. Thoughts on writing dialogue in another language for a fic?

I love reading it when it's done well--there are some absolutely fantastic Yuri on Ice fics that do it really well--but I could not do it well

19. First fandom you wrote for?

The first one I posted for was YoI, but the first one I wrote for was Swallows and Amazons. I did not know what fanfiction was, but I did believe that Nancy Blackett should have horses.

20. Favorite fic you've ever written?

Just Rainbows Dreaming We're Human. I'm honestly extremely proud of it

I'm tagging anyone else who wants to play, and also @arafinwes @alullabytoleaveby @lindsayraindrops and @marezelle

[denimbex1986]

'...Swallows and Amazons (PG, 2016) BBC2, 2.35pm The 2016 take from the director Philippa Lowthorpe has grafted a Russian spy plot into Arthur Ransome’s classic 1930s children’s book. Kelly Macdonald’s Mrs Walker briefly wonders if it is sensible to launch her children into the deepest water in the Lake District and let them camp alone for days. But piratical holiday fun must be had, and the Walker children sail the Swallow off to an island in the lake. There they meet the feisty local Amazons, Nancy and Peggy Blackett, and jolly japes are had battling over territory and racing boats. The ante is upped when Agent Lazlow (Andrew Scott) turns up. (97min)...'

[gailyinthedark]

I just found out this is a thing and it's making me so happy

[femmehysteria]

Hi ! I'd like to suggest a few names and submissions for those names:

Scarlet variations :

Scarlett Amber Perkins (The Graveyard Book)

Skarlet (Mortal Kombat)

Scarlet Benoit (The Lunar Chronicles)

Juliet :

Juliet Butler (Artemis Fowl)

Juliet Capulet (Romeo and Juliet)

Duncan :

Duncan McGuire (Once and Future)

Duncan Locke (Locke and Key)

Duncan Quagmire (A Series of Unfortunate Events)

Duncan Idaho (Dune)

Nancy :

Nancy Drew (Nancy Drew)

Nancy Whitman (Wayward Children)

Nancy Wheeler (Stranger Things)

Nancy Blackett (Swallows and Amazons)

Hazel :

Hazel (Saga comic)

Hazel Levesque (Heroes of Olympus)

Hazel (The Umbrella Academy)

Hazel (Infinity Train)

Thank you for the suggestions!!

[elennare]

Nancy Blackett or Legolas

[captainsvscaptains]

Round 1 Part 3 Poll 2

Propaganda

Nancy is the capable and adventurous captain of the dinghy Amazon, which she crews along with her sister and ship's mate Peggy under a pirate flag.

Queen. Kelly accidentally started a religion

[oidheadh-con-culainn]

nancy blackett definitely gives off queer vibes but her reaction to being referred to as "female" in Secret Water is really clinching it. she's so mad about it. this teenage pirate has nonbinary energies

[kvjohansen]

Another reposting from my newsletter: Arthur Ransome

This time, I’m going to introduce you to Arthur Ransome and the Swallows and Amazons, who should really need no introduction but sadly, these days they sometimes do. Swallows and Amazons was the first in a series of great -- and by great I mean not merely good, but classic, undying, influential, read over and over again -- children’s books, which came out in the thirties and through the war, beginning with Swallows and Amazons itself in 1932 and ending with Great Northern? in 1947. Pigeon Post (1936) won the Carnegie Medal. They’re about several families of children sailing, hiking, and exploring, while being explorers and pirates, scientists and prospectors, mostly in the Lake District but, with the D’s, Dick and Dorothea, who become friends with the Walkers and Blacketts (the Swallows and Amazons respectively, named after their boats), expanding their range to the Norfolk Broads. (There was also an unfinished book, Coots in the North, which is about the Death and Glories and the Amazons meeting; it was published in its unfinished form, edited by Hugh Brogan, in 1988.)

These are highly realistic books, if you allow for the children all being very responsible, sensible types, and their assorted grown-ups being the sort to take the famous telegram from Commander Walker to his wife, BETTER DROWNED THAN DUFFERS IF NOT DUFFERS WONT DROWN, as reasonable parenting within the plausibility of the books. These are not Enid Blyton; the Walkers, Blacketts, and Callums, with Tom Dudgeon and the three Death and Glories, the latter boatbuilders’ sons on the Broads, are out there not foiling spies and kidnappers, but being imaginative, active, thoughtful kids, doing real stuff. They cast Nancy and Peggy’s Uncle Jim, a world-wanderer grumpily trying to be left alone to get on with writing his memoirs, as an enemy pirate in order to harass him back to more proper favourite-uncle-like behaviour, they explore and map their own little new worlds, sail dinghies, build a sailing-sledge, find copper while prospecting for gold, protect nesting birds, and, in Dorothea’s case, work away at writing a novel in a manner that leaves you certain she’s going to be one of the notable mystery-thriller writers of the fifties. The children are a mix of girls and boys and, once the Death and Glories come into it, middle and working class. Nobody, ever, says, “You girls stay here where it’s safe.” Ever. If some smug Blyton-boy ever tried that with Nancy, or even Susan, who as first mate of the Swallow is responsible for seeing that cooking and washing up and proper bedtimes for the able-seamen under her happen (because she’s second-eldest among her siblings and therefore first mate and that’s the first mate’s job, looking after crew, not because she’s a girl) . . . well, they just couldn’t. They don’t exist in the same reality. The Swallows and Amazons are real as very few literary characters ever come to be. They could just walk out into the world and be. And they also say something about the reality of gender expectations in the thirties, rather than our presumptions about the past. (Think of how Una in the Edwardian Puck of Pook’s Hill and Rewards and Fairies is climbing trees and shooting at cows with a slingshot, pretending they’re marauding Picts, and that’s just normal, or in the original Nancy Drew of the thirties, Nancy sassing a policeman while competently fixing her broken-down car herself.) Susan, Titty, and Dorothea may do all their adventuring wearing skirts, but it doesn’t slow them down in the least, and Nancy and Peggy wear knickerbockers without it being remarkable, except when the dreaded Great-Aunt shows up and the Blacketts are briefly forced into frocks and hair-ribbons.

The Swallows and Amazons also taught me everything I know about sailing. One of my favourites is We Didn’t Mean To Go To Sea, about the Swallows alone accidentally crossing the North Sea to Holland in a yacht during a storm. That was a big influence on Moth’s voyage west in The Last Road, the fifth and final book of Gods of the Caravan Road.

As a footnote, if you plunge into these, and I hope you will, there are two books in the series that are not “true” within the world of the Swallows and Amazons. These are Peter Duck and Missee Lee, both of which are about voyages with Uncle Jim which end up, in Missee Lee, in an adventure with a Cambridge-educated Chinese woman pirate inspired in part by Soong Ch'ing-ling, whom Ransome had met. Both are stories the children and Uncle Jim make up together, but within that framework, they remain very realistic, though I’ve always felt they’re the weakest books in the series. I think that’s because the “this could really have happened” realism was such an important part of the appeal to me -- realistic stories that, unlike every North American kid-in-school book of the seventies I was ever forced to read, actively included rather than actively excluded the type of kid I was. If I ever met them, I knew that like the D’s, I’d watch them shyly and a bit enviously, and then be invited in. (Ransome, incidentally, is someone worth reading about for his own sake; he was in Russia during the Revolution, played chess with Lenin, and eloped with and later married Trotsky’s secretary, Evgenia Petrovna Shelepina. He was probably involved to some degree in espionage during his Russian adventures, as well.)

[stillsmybeatingheart]

[elennare]

Summary: Years later, John and Nancy set off to climb Kanchenjunga again, and sleep on the mountainside once more. 

960 words, rated G. Married Nancy/John future-fic, post-WWII.

[theoriginalsimonb]

Arthur Ransome’s Nancy Blackett, seen in Harwich harbour when I took a trip on the Waverley back in 2017