#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

[csinstagram]

[cstiktok]

[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

[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

[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

[stillsmybeatingheart]

[elennare]

Absolutely ok to reblog, and thanks for the lovely comments on the snippets!

"Nancy Blackett, Dragon Aviatrix" - I love this, I need this to be a thing ASAP, and also I'm gonna order myself the second Temeraire book now (read the first recently, loved it, have been away so hadn't ordered the second - but now I'm back!). And yes, I can absolutely see Dick and Titty in some Star Trek-like setting, Dick has the wide-eyed wonder for the universe and Titty the innate sense of idealism and justice.

I think you're right that some of them are easier than others to transport - but there again, they all connect so closely to each other that even then it's tricky. The most obvious example I think is Peggy and Nancy, even when Ransome tried to give Peggy more of the foreground by giving Nancy mumps, Peggy's just trying to *be* Nancy the whole time. But even looking at Roger, say, who's got a more independent streak - part of that does, I think, come from trying to distinguish himself as the 4th of five (and practically the youngest for most of the books); while Susan's equally bound to her role as eldest girl... Dot, of course, is writing them all into AUs herself half the time ;) (Imagine Dot with access to AO3, she would be all over that!)

I have a question for the “Would you ever write” ask game! I’m always interested by which fandoms have loads of AUs and people rarely write canon-compliant fic, and ones where almost everything is set in or around canon. Swallows and Amazons is definitely one of the latter - I think almost all the stories I’ve read in the fandom are canon-compliant or adjacent. So would you ever write a Swallows and Amazons AU of any kind?

Oooh, that's a good question! Technically, I have written some AU snippets as a meme on dreamwidth some years ago, but none of them developed into full-fledged fics or even ficlets... I wonder if it's because the setting feels so integral to the stories? The ships, the Lake, they're practically characters, which may be making it hard to AU it?

Thanks for asking! I shall be pondering this now...

[theoriginalsimonb]

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

[piratesandexplorers]

So at least some of you seemed vaguely interested in my headcanons. And I was going to write out all this stuff about where I like to imagine the kids’ futures going, but then I decided all my little stories deserve to be written as stories, so I’m going to save those.

Which just leaves some general sort of rambling on the personalities and relationships in the books themselves. More meta than headcanon really - if there are specific headcanons you’re interested in, though, always feel free to ask!

The rambling also got very long and I was still only on the first character, so I’ve decided to split them up into groups (I have a lot of strong feelings about Nancy Blackett, sorry :P). 

So I present to you first: The Amazon Pirates.

I’ve already written some stuff about Nancy and the Great Aunt here, including some general comments on the way I see Nancy’s character, so some of this is repetition, but I’m going to go into more detail here. 

Despite Nancy’s tendency to charge into things, she’s no bull in a china shop, nor is she thoughtless. Nancy’s always ten steps ahead of everyone, because she can see beneath the surface of people, she knows what makes them tick, she can predict what they’re going to think and do, and she’s ruthless (sorry, couldn’t resist it) enough at times to exploit that. But ultimately she’s also kind-hearted and affectionate, and we see her using her insights to be thoughtful and diplomatic as often as we see her using them to manipulate. 

Nancy’s not a leader because she bullies people, not really - she’s a leader because she sweeps people along with her. And what I see in Nancy is actually a carer (I say that as someone who’s worked closely with actual child carers). Her mother comes from a dysfunctional childhood - we don’t know what happened to Molly and Jim’s parents, but we know they were brought up by their aunt, who emotionally abused and neglected them to the point that Jim ran away as (it’s very much implied) not much more than a boy. Molly’s a wonderful person and a lovely mother who’s reacted to that childhood by being as caring and loving and understanding as she can, but she’s a very vulnerable person. And since Bob Blackett died, Nancy, with her big heart, her lack of fear, her natural quick empathy - Nancy’s stepped up and become the family carer and protector. It’s a mixture of natural instinct and stuff she learnt so young that it might as well be instinct now. (And part of Nancy’s frustration with her uncle (I think) lies in a sense that he ought to be some sort of family protector and really isn’t. Much as I love Captain Flint, and don’t think you can actually blame him, he continually runs off to do his own thing, or shuts himself away from everything, rather than being there for his family.)

But because of that experience, Nancy gets the things that really matter, she knows what they are and knows they’re worth fighting for, and because of that she also has a finely tuned bullshit detector. She has no tolerance for people fussing and fidgeting over things that are ultimately trivial - she’ll put up with it when it’s Susan, because she likes Susan and because she also has a strong streak of practicality, and she knows that what Susan says usually makes sense, even if it makes her impatient (and it often does). She’s honest enough to know and admit that she’s sometimes wrong, that she can be too intolerant and impatient. But her very intolerance comes from that place of honesty, because Nancy doesn’t care about all the frills and niceties and extra layers of the world she lives in - she only wants the real things.

But she also, like a lot of carers, tends to neglect herself. She’s very good at picking up on the emotions and thoughts of others, but (and now, okay, I’m straying out of the realm of observations based on canon fact and more into my own development of her character) she’s uncomfortable with getting too close to her own. She’s never really prioritised her own needs beyond her strong need to be in control of things (another sign of a kid who’s had a bit too much emotional responsibility a bit too young). She’ll stand up and take the emotional hits to protect other people from having to, but that leads to her brushing her own feelings aside too often. She believes that she’s strong, she can take whatever life throws at her, and she’s right, but to do that she’s had to close off some of the more vulnerable sides of herself. I think that part of her really growing up will involve her having to face that and deal with it.

I know this is already an essay and I’m only just coming to Peggy, but I’m going to keep her shorter. I feel a bit guilty about that because Peggy is always the more overlooked one, but I honestly find there’s less to say. She’s a much simpler person, and that’s partly the way she was written - she’s there to provide back-up for Nancy, and not really much else, until maybe Winter Holiday, but honestly even then all she does is try to imitate Nancy, rather than develop her own independent personality. I do find Peggy the least interesting of all of them, much less so than John and Susan even though they often seem to be seen as the boring ones. She’s cheerful, she’s friendly, she blows with the wind and goes along with whatever the prevailing opinion is, and she’s largely straightforward - what you see on the surface is what you get with Peggy. (Possibly controversial opinion: Peggy takes her after her mother in personality far more than Nancy does.)

But although I do think she’s underwritten, I don’t think what we see is too unrealistic, given her situation. She’s the younger sister of a very strong personality, and she’s always been pushed into the background. Compared to Nancy, Peggy’s the easy, well-behaved one - it’s Nancy who leads her astray. 

And yet in some ways, Peggy is the one with the least regard for rules. For the most part (accidental lateness due to shipwrecks or hound trails aside) Nancy misbehaves because she sees your rule, she assesses it, decides it’s unimportant in the grand scheme of things, and makes the choice to do her own thing. When it’s really important, Nancy keeps the rules (or at least she intends to). I’m not sure Peggy has the insight to tell the difference reliably between important and unimportant. She’s been half brought up by Nancy so she understands the idea that rules don’t really matter, but she’s always relied on Nancy to do the thinking for her - she doesn’t stop to asses the necessity or otherwise of a rule, she just shrugs and walks on by.

Some of the most interesting Peggy moments are when we see flashes of her disagreeing with Nancy. Then we realise that she’s not at all stupid or incapable of thought; she’s just got used to being somewhat passive and lazy in her thinking. She’s got a sense of humour, and she’s also extremely capable and competent at many things (nobody ever suggests that she’s anything but an excellent sailor, for example). Sometimes, Nancy’s too busy seeing the grand scheme and overlooks important details, and Peggy doesn’t hesitate to pick her up on them - she delivers some killer one-liners (none of Roger’s ‘secret cheekiness’ ever comes close to ‘when I pointed out she couldn’t drift against the wind’). 

Peggy’s stunted as a character by her need to be like Nancy. She’s not like Nancy - she’s scared of things, she doesn’t think quickly, she’s good at small practical stuff, not making big plans and taking charge. She’d probably be a lot happier and more confident if she could realise that it’s also okay to be like Peggy. I hope and believe that, as they got older and started to live less in each others’ pockets, she would blossom and find herself, and probably also start to recognise Nancy’s own limitations a bit more. I live for a Peggy who is just as exasperated by Nancy’s stubbornness and bravado as Nancy is by Peggy’s lack of analytical thought - in other words, sisters who can support each other and laugh at each other equally. 

[the-unofficial-force]

[OOC]

Shamelessly inspired by @noliight ‘s post (go reply and give her love);

So if I were to put up a (canon) pirate muse over at my other blog (waywardsonsanddaringdaughters), would anybody like to do anything with her? Or should I not do that as she’s really obscure?