#sweary vicar

[lensman-arms-race]

A collection of my Skibidi fanfics

These links all point to my own website - if you prefer reading on AO3, all pages have links to their versions on AO3 and anywhere else they might get hosted.

Unless indicated otherwise, these are all SFW, barring a few swear words.

Reader helps to perform maintenance on Titan TV and then enjoys a cuddle-pile with the engineers inside the Titan's core chamber. (~3.4k words)

This was the first fic I wrote for this fandom and the first fic I'd written in nearly 20 years, so it's less polished and considerably shorter than what came after it. I still think it's kinda cute! I first posted it to Tumblr and was surprised and delighted by how people said I should put it on AO3.

Reader gets to watch Titan TV's upgrade installation + testing (at some point before the events of episode 67), and hang out with a few TV-units they've not met before. (~7.5k words)

This was the first time I included Polycephaly in a fic (and the TV Matriarch, come to think of it). They were only meant to be a cameo, but oops, a giant sweary TV is super fun to write!

Some fluff/angst/comfort. Sickening. Mostly Reader and robots hugging each other and crying. Also the human acquires a nickname. (~8.9k words)

Possibly borderline not work safe: there's no lewd activity in the fic itself, but the characters talk about explicit stuff that's happened in the past. Maybe don't show this one to your granny or the vicar.

This is the one in which my human character acquires their current name (Phaeton) instead of going by 'human'. Reader/Phaeton catches Feelings about being the last human and needs cuddles. Cygnus (TV unit) has a close encounter with a skibidi and needs cuddles also. (This one was basically @cosmica-galaxy 's fault - she wanted to see angst, so I had a go and was surprised by how satisfying it is to write!) Title came from a Talking Heads lyric; that's why the title is slightly sillier.

Angst o'clock! Reader and your TV-headed friend have an encounter with a skibidi. It does not go well, and both of you have to deal with the consequences. (~10k words)

Continuing the angst theme - I suddenly got the idea for this one and had to hammer it out. You know how it is.

Phaeton and Cygnus have a bad time but of course there's plenty of cuddling to make up for it.

Some big fluff! Reader and Polycephaly hang out as friends and have quite a nice time together. (~6.4k words)

Relatively short one. I just wanted to write something cute with Polycephaly because I've become fond of the foul-mouthed machine! Phaeton and Polycephaly hang out, some skibidis get decked.

We haven't seen what happened to the Brown Coated Cameraman after the events of episode 57. Who, if anyone, rescued them? Turns out it was you, Reader. You're a feral human survivor with no reason to trust the hardware-heads, but you feel compelled to help this one for some reason… (~4.4k words)

Because I wanted closure on what happened to Browncoat!

--

I have written several more fics but they're considerably spicier than the above. If you want to see them, it shouldn't be hard for you to find them.

[saints-who-never-existed]

Rereading The Terror

Chapter Twenty: Blanky 

Hickey’s background machinations continue and Blanky has absolutely no time for them: “He knew that some of the less educated men - centred around the caulker’s mate, Cornelius Hickey, whom Blanky has never liked nor respected - were spreading the word that the Thing on the Ice was some sort of demon or devil... some around Hickey were already making sacrifices to the monster, setting them outside the forward cable locker in the hold where everyone now knew Lady Silence, obviously an Esquimaux witch, was hiding. Hickey and his giant idiot friend, Magnus Manson, seemed to be the high priests of this cult - or rather, Hickey was the priest and Manson the acolyte...”

Not too much else jumps out at me in this chapter, to be honest. It’s mainly Blanky ruminating on recent events but it finishes with him dwelling on his own part in things and on his own guilt which is always interesting to me. 

Chapter Twenty-One: Blanky 

This chapter covers Tuunbaq’s attack which is much the same as the show for the most part. Blanky is out on deck with different men in this case and Tuunbaq chases him not only up the mast but then out onto the ice. 

He is, of course, a consummate and sweary badass throughout - here’s a little quote that really made me laugh:  “God-damn your eyes!” roared Thomas Blanky. “If you don’t retrieve that weapon this gob-fucking minute, a flogging of fifty from the cat will be the least bugger-fucking thing you have to worry about, John Handford. Now, move!”  Just scolds the poor guy like a big angry mother hen, full name and everything! Outstanding! And he carries on doing it!  “Just stay where you are,” snapped Blanky... “Don’t shoot me when I come back with Leys or I swear to God my ghost will haunt you ‘til you die, John Handford.”

He is wrong about one thing though - he fully believes that Tuunbaq won’t be able to climb the mast which makes the moment it does start clambering up after him all the more gut-wrenching. Interestingly, Blanky himself also ends up doing various heroic things and climbing up various ropes that he admits himself shouldn’t be possible to do which is a great and sneaky little parallel between him and Tuunbaq. 

Ooh actually, there is one more thing he’s wrong about:  “At that instant Thomas Blanky realized that the seaman whom he’d silently cursed as being superstitious fools had been right; this thing from the ice was as much demon or god as it was animal flesh and white fur. It was a force to be appeased or worshipped or simply fled.”

That being said, by the time it chases him out onto the ice he’s not all that bothered after all about appeasing it:  “Blanky’s last prayer was that one of his bones would lodge in the thing’s throat.”

Interesting, it’s Hickey to the rescue again though he’s not bashing caulk off a door this time, he’s slipping through the tiny gap into the ice-cave Blanky’s found himself in because he’s the only man small enough to fit. Blanky thinks it’s “like watching a gimlet-faced gnome being born.”

Two last little minor things, one that feels very out of place and anachronistic - Mr Reid cajoling Blanky saying “Your grandkids will love them scars”- and one that punched me right in the gut - mention of Blanky reading ‘The Vicar of Wakefield’ which we may remember was later found torn, exposed, and windblown out on King William Island IRL. 

[the-revisionist]

I love that Happy Valley and LTiH fic writers like you have adopted Jane Oliver into the repertoire of fandom characters. From the little bit she was in Collateral I thought she was so interesting and very different from Nicola.

Agreed! Nicola did so much with so little (par for the course), and as a result the character is so intriguing that she left some of us wanting more. You can thank @allmykindsofthings for bringing our vicar into the fold—she wrote the first Catherine/Jane story, and brought this awesome you-got-your-chocolate-in-my-peanut-butter idea to life. 😁

[swearyshera]

You should drop a top 10 sweary-SheRa moments that decimated the fandom

Here’s my votes for Bow’s first swear and Scorpia saying “fuck” and not apologizing immediately to go somewhere in the top 5

~ @sammys-magical-au

Sure! Listicles are the backbone of our society now, so I present to you all, in no particular order (and naturally with spoilers for everything I've made...up to now, anyway):

6 Times Sweary She-Ra Made You Want to Yell At Me

When Catra and Adora got 'married': People had been wondering exactly how Catra and Adora seemed to have been married for a long time - did the Horde sanction child marriages? Did Shadow Weaver don a vicar's outfit? The reality was both cuter and darker, as we saw the two of them as young children use Adora's half-knowledge of marriage to make a promise to each other that they'd always stick side by side in their little corner of Hell.

2. When Frosta really was a demon: Frosta's little ongoing make-believe about being a demon from another world was cute... and then we found out she wasn't playing at all. Trapped in our realm and cut off from the fiery depths of home, Frosta found herself stuck in the body of a small child, but managed to partially transform just long enough to show Glimmer who she really was.

3. When Bow came out to his dads and got the most Dad response: This was one of those lines that could never have been anything else. Bow was so sure his Dads would be disappointed that he was bi and not gay, that he went to some great lengths to cover it up. But ultimately, he told them the truth, and they supported him in the only way they know how - awful jokes.

4. When Scorpia said 'I love you' to Catra: The Crimson Waste was quite an experience for all of them. But no-one more so than Scorpia, whose infatuation with Catra finally seemed to be returned. And so, she summoned up the courage to tell Catra how she really felt - but didn't quite get the answer she wanted.

5. Angella's final words: Since the earliest episodes, Adora has reflexively called most older women 'Mom', but no-one was more deserving of that title than Angella. She took Adora in and looked after her in the first months at Bright Moon, but generally tended to ignore Adora's name for her. That was, until she sacrificed herself to close the portal - as well as telling Adora to make sure they all looked after each other, she left her with one final instruction: Call me Mom.

6. Scorpia tells Emily her secret: Scorpia believing, beyond all logic, that her family were just 'on holiday' was a funny, if sad, running joke. But it became a whole lot sadder when Scorpia revealed that she knew what had happened to them all along, and the lines about them being on holiday were simply her lying to herself as a way of not having to think about the truth. It put a lot of lines in a much darker context.

7. Bow swears: I'd mentioned a lot that Bow would swear exactly once in the series, and it's during his argument with Glimmer that it finally happens. There's F-bombs and then there's F-bombs, and Bow dropped one with the power to destroy planets.

And I know I'm going to be able to add to this list again multiple times this season and next! Because let's not forget we soon have:

the 'depression vines' of Beast Island

Double Trouble's mic drop with Catra and her lowest point

Heheheheeee

[aion-rsa]

Sarah Phelps interview: Agatha Christie is Always Asking ‘Are You Paying Attention?’

https://ift.tt/2AFepOB

‘You ordinary bitch!’ snarls Sarah Phelps, ‘put your cheap knickers on and get out of my house!’ The interview hasn’t taken a strange turn; she’s laughing down the phone, quoting along with memorable lines from her BBC One Agatha Christie adaptations. 

‘Oh, it brings me so much joy. It’s like The Witness for the Prosecution’s Romaine screaming in court ‘You fucking men! You fucking men!’ and then hissing at Mayhew like a cat!’ One of Phelps’ friends downloaded Andrea Riseborough’s hiss in that scene to use as her text message alert. ‘I get such a thrill out of it.’ 

Phelps’ screenwriting is built on thrill. There’s the all-out thrill of the story she’s telling plus the tiny power-jolts of thrill she injects into dialogue. It’s for us, but also, for her. ‘I’m the audience, me.’ If she’s laughing or crying while writing, she feels she’s getting it right. 

Obsessed, joy, buzz and pleasure are words she repeats again and again talking about television, hers and other people’s. Her current TV obsession is Michaela Coel’s I May Destroy You. ‘It’s outstanding. Outstanding. I love the layers and the complexity. It’s not didactic, it’s dynamic. It’s about friendship and how the fuck we live.’

Phelps is an exhilarating interviewee. She doesn’t answer in sentences or paragraphs but detonates her thoughts – a locomotive gathering speed. Lists of questions and synonyms spill out, culminating in unarguable conclusions. She finds Agatha Christie clever, sly, cloaked, watchful, veiled, secretive. Christie’s books are brutal, violent, horrible, subversive, seditious. ‘She is not dicking around.’

Reviews of Phelps’ Christie adaptations, both from critics and viewers, fixate on her language. One described the dialogue in 2019 two-parter The Pale Horse as ‘so Phelpsian it stuck out like a sore thumb.’ What does Phelps think that adjective means? 

‘Probably that someone’s done a swear,’ she laughs. In that review’s case, she’s spot-on. The quote cited is Rita Tushingham calling the devil ‘old hairy bollocks with his goat hooves’ – a treat, surely, to any ear. More seriously, she hopes that Phelpsian means ‘robust’. 

‘I don’t like to think that it’s just because it’s sweary or somebody says ‘bollocks’, but there’s a twist in it somewhere. It’s kind of really ugly but elegant at the same time.’ In The Pale Horse, there’s a line describing Rufus Sewell’s character as ‘a broken, sweaty ape’ and that gave her a buzz. It’s now her Twitter bio, preceded by the legend ‘Screenwriter. Pervert. BBC Monster’, the last two inspired by choice online criticism received when her Christie adaptations aired. 

In the last five years, Phelps has adapted five Agatha Christie stories for BBC One – And Then There Were None, The Witness For The Prosecution, Ordeal By Innocence, The ABC Murders and The Pale Horse. Before And Then There Were None, she’d never read Christie, having been put off by the popular take that her world was all toffs and whist-playing vicars – tea party murder mysteries wrapped cosily in a twinset and pearls. 

Instead, what Phelps found in Christie was brutal, flinty-eyed judgment. She sees Christie as an observer, a recorder of pre- and post-war Englishness. ‘In The ABC Murders, she is very, very aware that there is something really unpleasant going on in England in the 1930s. She actively references the talk about foreigners and the hostility. She doesn’t make that her leading thing, she’s just absorbing it and always saying ‘Are you paying attention? I am writing about this, are you paying attention?’ 

Paying attention to Christie has been Phelps’ mission since And Then There Were None left her reeling. It’s the story of a group of seemingly unconnected characters summoned to a remote island where, one by one, they’re killed off according to the lines of a children’s poem. When Phelps read it, she felt existential menace. ‘This was what it was like to be standing on the edge of the world with a catastrophe rushing towards you. Here’s this unblinking, remorseless God who’s going to end your life because of the things that you’ve done.’

That’s what underpins Christie’s portrait of the English national character, she says, ‘the things that we’ve done and how we try desperately hard not to be caught.’ She describes it a preoccupation of Christie’s, and the connecting theme of her adaptations. 

‘How do we hide the things we’ve done so nobody calls us to account? How do I keep my nice life and not get caught for the terrible things that I’ve done? How do I carry on being this civilised English person? How do I carry on enjoying my life? How do I carry on with my power and my wealth? How do I avoid accountability? What will we do to retain our power?’

Read more

TV

The ABC Murders: what to expect from John Malkovich’s Poirot

By Gem Wheeler

TV

Ordeal By Innocence episode 3 review

By Louisa Mellor

Phelps has a theory, based on Christie’s experience as a dispensing chemist in the Voluntary Aid Detachment during the First World War, that ‘she saw the world in a really quantum way – a grain here, a grain there, you can barely see it but it makes what was known entirely unknown.’ The bounds forward in medicine that Christie witnessed would have revealed how tiny, invisible specks of dirt under a fingernail could mean the difference between life and death, and, thinks Phelps, her imagination would have been duly nurtured by that understanding.

‘I always imagine her measuring out the infinitesimal grains of pharmaceuticals, and beyond that lies the whole smashed landscape of what we thought we knew.’ Phelps takes a rare pause and, less rare, laughs at herself. ‘Of course, I could be totally talking out of my arse.’

She has another theory, based on the 1944 Broadway production of And Then There Were None. Christie was asked by a producer to make the bloodbath ending cheerier for a war-stricken audience, says Phelps. Christie did as asked, allowing two of the characters who die in the novel – Vera Claythorne and Philip Lombard – to survive and swan off together into the sunset. 

‘She went ‘you want a happy ending? Okay, a child murderer who shows absolutely no remorse and a mass murderer. You want them to have a romantic, happy ending? That’s what you want? That’s what you want out of my book. Okay, you can have it. After that, her books change.’

‘I always feel that there’s a judgment from Christie about what people want, that they will forget the sin really easily to pander to their own sense of contentment. She feels like she’s scrutinising the reader. There’s always a tussle between the book that Agatha Christie wants to write and the book she knows that people want to read.’

Some see Phelps as a Christie revisionist, adding darkness, sexing up the stories and dimming down the lights, kicking in social commentary with a stiletto heeled boot. To a certain viewer, she’s a sweary witch hell-bent on destroying the thoroughgoing loveliness of good old-fashioned British stories. About murder. And serial killers. And hangings and poisonings and child death and adulterers and bludgeonings. Stories about the hell of motherhood and, to quote Phelps, ‘the quotidian savagery of marriage.’ 

Her adaptations are less revisionist than archaeological, I suggest. Over the decades, Christie’s writing has been built over with layers of fame and opinion and industry, and Phelps has been scraping that away to reach the bones. She likes the image. From the novels and short stories, those bones have called out to her, drawing attention to themselves through ‘absences, little things that don’t quite make sense, little misdirections, odd little details.’ 

Such as? ‘In Ordeal by Innocence. You’re reading it and you suddenly come across something really, really strange and wonder what the hell it’s doing there.’ Among all the bumbling policemen failing to notice things, a character fantasises about seeing his mother after a car crash with her hair lying in a puddle of oil on the Great North Road. The violence of the image exploded into Phelps’ head.

‘That’s why I had no problem with changing the killer in Ordeal By Innocence.’ It’s the story of a murdered philanthropist who’d adopted a number of children to raise in her stately home. The book’s original killer, says Phelps, made no sense. ‘By the time I’d got to where [spoiler] walked in and brained her, it makes so much sense I didn’t think anything of it. It just felt like that was what the book was telling me to do.’

‘What really killed this woman? What killed this mother? Why is this woman trying to be the perfect mother? Why is this story being told in the 1950s, where everything is supposed to be about bunting and celebration?’ Phelps took all the violence of the time and used it to tell the story she thought Christie really wanted to tell. 

To do that, Phelps first had to get Christie’s characters talking to her. And when they started talking, she was often surprised – and thrilled – by what they said. Mayhew’s wife, a character she invented for The Witness for the Prosecution, screaming ‘you don’t want to be loved, you want to be forgiven!’ was one surprise. Another was Monica Dolan’s character in that adaptation being marched off to her death with the gentle protest ‘Not today, thank you, it’s not convenient.’ There was Jack, one of the grown-up adopted children in Ordeal By Innocence telling his father ‘I am your plague and I’m coming for you.’ All surprises, says Phelps. All thrills. 

She imagines every detail of her characters, inside and out. Costume, posture, fears…

‘What is somebody doing when you can’t see them? What do they dream about? What wakes them up in 4 o clock in the morning absolutely cold with sweat? What is the thing that they don’t want anyone to ever find out about? What is the sole burning flame in their life, what would happen if it got extinguished? Do they expect a blow to fall and where do they expect that blow? Do they think they’re going to make old bones? A character like Bill Sykes [Phelps wrote the 2007 BBC adaptation of Oliver Twist], does he think he’s going to live much past the age of 30? Does he know that it’s coming for him? How does he hold himself, is he braced at every single moment for the charge that’s going to take him out? Has he got eyes in the back of his head? This woman, where does she think her danger is? How long did it take her to put on that smile to face the world so no-one knows that she’s about to go stark staring mad? All the time you’re thinking about that, all the time. And it’s only then that they can talk to me.’

She stops momentarily, laughing at her outpouring. ‘That sounds nuts! That sounds nuts!’ Then she keeps going.

‘You want these people to talk to you, you want to unpeel them from preconception and see their humanity and understand why they’ve done what they’ve done. Because if they’re just doing it because they’ve always done it since the book was published, then you’re not really adapting the book are you?’ 

‘We all think we know who Hercule Poirot is’, she says of her 2018 version of The ABC Murders starring John Malkovich as the Belgian detective, ‘but his character has got to be a mystery. Otherwise, it’s just another Poirot isn’t it? And what’s the bloody point in doing that?’ 

Agatha Christie’s The ABC Murders is streaming now in the UK on Acorn TV

The post Sarah Phelps interview: Agatha Christie is Always Asking ‘Are You Paying Attention?’ appeared first on Den of Geek.

from Den of Geek https://ift.tt/2O1Y8Gy

[darkbloomiana]

I LOVE YOU HOT SWEARY VICAR. 

[the-revisionist]

[the-revisionist]

Chapters: 6/? Fandom: Happy Valley (TV), Collateral (TV 2018) Rating: Mature Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings Characters: Catherine Cawood, Jane Oliver (Collateral) Additional Tags: Crossover Summary:

A cold winter, a few pints here and there, smoking, swearing, tea, a disgraced priest on the run, a lonely woman questioning everything she believes in, and one hell of a gloriously screwed-up police sergeant. Hijinks, and probably sex, ensue. Jesus, take the wheel.

[the-revisionist]

Chapters: 3 and 4 Fandom: Happy Valley (TV), Collateral (TV 2018) Rating: Mature Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings Characters: Catherine Cawood, Jane Oliver (Collateral) Additional Tags: Crossover Summary:

A cold winter, a few pints here and there, smoking, swearing, tea, a disgraced priest on the run, a lonely woman questioning everything she believes in, and one hell of a gloriously screwed-up police sergeant. Hijinks, and probably sex, ensue. Jesus, take the wheel.

[the-revisionist]

4, 11 + 18 for the asks!

4. what fic of your own do you read for comfort?

I read my own fics more for typo-hunting and to see what works, what doesn't! I suppose seeing what works does offer some comfort, so there's that, but I can't single out any as a comfort fic for me.

11. Has a fic you’ve written ever caused issues/controversy?

In recent times, no. The nice thing about the teeny-tiny LTiH/HV/Sweary Vicar fandom is that there is little in the way of drama. Going back though, I'm sure that if anyone reading this is familiar with my XWP stories, they might well see this as an opportunity to once again give me hell for killing off a certain character...and it's OK, I own it. ;)

18. Do you only write when you’re inspired, or do you try and sit down at specific times and write no matter what?

I used to be more disciplined about putting aside time, at least on weekends, to write. But the past year has been a shit-show for me, what with increased work dissatisfaction, the stress of having to move, the obvious pandemic stresses, the world falling apart, etc. etc. that I've found it hard to get back into a groove except in those rare instances where I have an extended chunk of time away from the grind. I'm hoping (always hoping) that this summer I might get on a more disciplined track with writing again. I miss it, and the satisfaction that it brings me.

[the-revisionist]

Relevant to our queer sweary vicar-y interests.