Current mood:	yuletide!
Entry tags:	yay for yuletide

Yuletide celebrations!
Dear friend: I love you and look forward to Christmas Day already.

In more detail:

In general: I don't much care about explicit sex unless it's integral to plot or to characterisation. I am content if I get explicit or inexplicit slash. While on Christmas Day I tend to want a story that's generally upbeat, I would much rather a story that proceeded to an inevitable if unhappy conclusion than one that had a tacked-on happy ending.

There are some fairly lengthy ramblings below for each fandom. Don't let them worry you unless you feel like it. If you're inspired by them, that's grand: if you've got your own idea blazing in your head, that is likewise grand.


The Foreigner sequence

What I really would love is a Banichi/Bren story, anytime in the Foreigner sequence, but assuming that it's Banichi, not Jago, who became sexually attracted to Bren and Bren reciprocated. I love the intricacies of man'chi and how Bren navigates the culture without feeling man'chi, with such courtesy and courage. I love the "Banichi, my salad" jokes. The atevi fascinate me, and a story which focussed on them - even if it backgrounded B/B - would make me very happy. I've read all nine books, and anywhere in the sequence is good for me if it's good for you.

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Swallows and Amazons

Set after WWII. Nancy Blackett was an extraordinary character - large, tough, strong, brave, inspiring others to be the same. I want to gather her crew together after the war - those that survived - and take them on a journey by sailboat to somewhere that matters. (Bringing relief supplies? Rescuing people? Something *important*.) I especially want Susan Walker, as the most capable First Mate ever, to crew the boat with her. I *don't* want John Walker: I'm tired of stories where Nancy and John get married. I don't think Nancy ever married. Mostly I want Nancy, being an Amazon and a captain and maybe even a bit of a pirate but mostly an adventurer. I'm not even looking for femslash (unless your thoughts take you that way): gen is fine.

Here's what I wrote about Nancy some time ago when I first got the idea of asking for her at Yuletide:

Nancy Blackett: On an island in Windermere, called Wild Cat Island, that sort of almost doesn't quite exist, there are eight children from three families who camp and play there: Nancy Blackett is the oldest, then John Walker: Susan Walker and Peggy Blackett: and the four youngest, Titty and Roger Walker (and we will not snigger about Titty's nickname, ok?) and Dick and Dorothea Callum. (There is also a youngest Walker sister, Bridget, who is too young through most of the books to have an active part: she's listed as "Ship's Baby" in a late novel, Secret Water.) They sail and camp and make up stories together (two of Arthur Ransome's novels, Missee Lee and Peter Duck are supposed to be stories that the Walker and Blackett children, with the Blackett's uncle, made up in two winter holidays). Though it's never mentioned in the novels, we know that the Walker family was partly based on a family of Syrian-born Armenians - Roger Altounyan later became a distinguished scientist. Film and TV versions generally represent all of the children as Anglo-Saxon, though.

Nancy, John, and Susan are all noticably older than the rest: the novels begin in 1929 and the three of them were certainly conceived during WWI, while Titty, Dorothea and Dick, and Roger, were all certainly born afterwards. Nancy and Peggy's father is dead: the timing is about right for him to have been killed in WWI. Obviously, neither war is ever discussed.

Unlike most children's books set during the 1930s, the five girls are all as active and competent as the three boys (they are based on real children whom Arthur Ransome knew in the Lake District at that time). Of the Walker children, Susan is the one who knows how to cook and manages the camp: but this isn't presented as domestic goddess or domestic servant: Susan is (as Susans always seem to be) the competent, responsible one, the one who will remember to make sure they eat sensible meals and wash the dishes afterwards and keep the camp tidy. (And none of that "You and I will wash the dishes, I don't expect the boys to help" Enid Blyton stuff: Susan is boss.)

Nancy is a hero: she is protective of Peggy but expects her to keep up (as a result, I think, Peggy is always included with John and Susan): they have their own sailing-dinghy, and are as competent in the water as on it. John thinks, when managing their sailing-dinghy, that he doesn't want to make stupid mistakes in front of Nancy: he wants to impress her.

When I first read Swallows and Amazons I identified with Titty - a middle child who was always making up a story inside her head, "being" someone. And, like Titty, I had an absolute admiration for Nancy - a little fear, when Nancy seemed to be hostile, but mostly just admiration. Nancy is completely confident, independent but a good leader - she gets ideas and follows through on them, she is individually the best sailor of the eight, and she is - and is known to be - an inveterate rule-breaker who still manages to be generally liked. She would be a terrific Navy officer, if she were living in a time where women were allowed to be. (There were of course the WRENS - Women's Royal Naval Service - but they mostly never went to sea.) In any case by 1939 Nancy would be in her mid-20s - and, I fear, it probably never occurred to her to go to university.

I've read a bunch of fanfic stories about "what Nancy did next" - mostly, this tends to involve her marrying John. Sometimes she also joins the WRENS. This is understandable - in a way: however active and bold a girlhood Nancy Blackett got to have, once she became adult, she would have been expected to marry, to have children - to teach them, too, how to sail and light a fire and sleep under the stars: but not to have her own career, her own life, her own things to do. This annoys me and frustrates me, because it seems to me that the one thing fanfic could do is show us what else Nancy did. If she married John (presuming he was in the Navy, which looks to all of us readers like a damned sure thing) that would eliminate all possibility of her having an independent career: a Navy wife behaves in a way appropriate to do her husband credit. Nancy, no fool, would have seen that, and I don't think would have bought into it.

When WWII was over - and perhaps Nancy did join the WRENS - she would have been in her early thirties: and while I hope she did find someone to love, I hope it wasn't John: I hope she set out to sail round the world, or climb Mount Kilimanjaro. I hope she spent a lifetime being the kind of person Nancy could be, as much as possible. Maybe she went on foot through China: maybe she got killed: maybe she never married - but the last thing I want to think is that all that power and ability and fire and imagination and courage got tamed down into being the wife of Captain Walker.

*rueful smile* Yes, I've been a fan for quite a while. I hope this sparks ideas in you: if not, ignore - whatever you do (so long as it doesn't involve incest or John/Nancy!) will be fine.


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Blazing Saddles

There should be more Bart/Jim slash in the world. They are such an obvious and lovely couple. Aren't they? Either during the movie or after it is fine. What happens when they stop playing chess? What happens when they reach Nowhere Special...?

Favourite quotes:

Bart: Are we awake?
Jim: We're not sure. Are we... black?
Bart: Yes, we are.
Jim: Then we're awake... but we're very puzzled.

Bart: A man drink like that and he don't eat, he is going to die.
Jim: When?

Bart: You are my guest, and I am your host. What is your pleasure? What do you like to do?
Jim: I don't know... play chess... screw...
Bart: Let's play chess.

Jim: Another twenty-five years and you'll be able to shake their hands in broad daylight.

Bart: Don't just stand there clasping your hands in pain, looking stupid... How about a round of applause for The Waco Kid?

Jim: Where you headed, cowboy?
Bart: Nowhere special.
Jim: Nowhere special; I always wanted to go there.
Bart: Come on.

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M*A*S*H

I love Hawkeye/Mulcahy. Something angsty, as befitting a Catholic priest in love with another man when they are both in the army in the 1950s, but basically... I love Hawkeye/Mulcahy.