#but her wikipedia page mentions him & it's the most famous he's gonna get..

[torahtot]

TIL one of my moms uncles is the leader of a tiny hasidic sect with ties to neturei karta and one of her cousins married a neturei karta

[spnfanficpond]

January 2020 Pond LiveChat Recap - Writing RPF

We had a great time chatting with Taylor,  @impalaimagining​! Thank you so much for joining us and sharing your thoughts and experience!

Our topic this month was Writing RPF, and we talked about the legal, moral, and emotional aspects of writing about real people.  A rundown of the chat, as well as general Pond news, is below the cut!

We started off the chat with the legal side of things, most of which was covered back when we talked about Monetizing Fan Works back in May. Here are the related links that were brought up:

Wikipedia: Legal issues with fan fiction (The section dealing with RPF is near the bottom under Right of Publicity.) Boiled down, RPF has to deal with a celebrity's Right of Publicity. Famous people have the right to control the commercial use of their name, image, and likeness, sometimes even their broader identity or persona. Most states’ laws on this only apply to uses for commercial gain. So, don't try to get paid directly for RPF, and you're safe.

From NPR: We Stan: Real Person Fan Fiction Comes To Life. This is a fascinating discussion about RPF, the legalities, and how it’s been changing in recent years. This argues that basically since “fiction” is right there in the name, RPF is inherently more legal than regular fan fiction based off of characters. No one is trying to say that the real people involved are actually doing these things, it’s just fiction.

Goodreads Genre: Fan Fiction - Real Person Fiction. When I was researching, this link came up, and I clicked it, not knowing what to expect. Finding that Fan fiction, much less RPF is on Goodreads was surprising to me. (I thought Goodreads was only about books that could be purchased and didn’t touch “unpublished” works, but I guess not?) What I found most interesting was exactly how many of the titles listed on that page are J2-related. There are more J2-related titles than all of the others COMBINED. As a fandom, we rock!

The discussion started with most folks saying they hadn’t considered the legalities of fan fiction, or RPF in particular, when they began writing. Their first concern was just getting the story out of their head and onto the paper. Also, since no one was getting paid for it and it’s so popular, no one questioned the legalities. Also, since it’s fiction, there’s no defamation of character.

@mrswhozeewhatsis​ (Michelle): Most people know that I generally don’t read RPF, unless it’s an AU. Way way way back, when I first started reading fan fiction, I used to read the occasional RPF. Honestly, before SPN, I never really liked an actor enough to want to know more about them. (I've been burned by some jerk actors in the past.) One of the first RPFs I ever read was from Jared's POV, and it contained a scene where he was on stage at a con, and detailed his thoughts. I forget what the inciting incident was, but suddenly he was thinking, "Great, now they're all thinking about how big my dick is," and it made him spiral. Something about that stuck with me, to the point that I cringe every time I see Jared on stage and anything remotely sexual comes up. That's pretty much what stopped me from reading RPF. I have no problem thinking about how big Sam's dick is, but I can't ponder too much about Jared's dick, or I can't look him in the eye when I see him at cons!!!

Taylor: I definitely think there is a very fine line to be walked when you write RPF, and I generally don't cross into the area of writing from an actor's POV.

Q: Is that how you keep it separate so you don’t stare into their faces at a con during a photo op and think about the smut you wrote about them?

Taylor: It can be hard to keep it separate sometimes but it's actually very easy in the moment of a split second photo op. They move so quickly, I don't genuinely think I have ever had the time to consider the things I've written about them while I was talking to and hugging them!

Q: Anyone else who doesn’t read/write RPF, do you think that the whole not being able to look them in the eye is an internal thing for anyone in your life, or just celebs? 

@manawhaat​ (Mana): For example, I have A. FUCKING. LOT. of sex dreams. With tons of people, celebs and people I know in my real life... and I don't want to say that it's jaded me as far as thinking sexual thoughts about people, but in a way it kind of has. I don't have that moral dilemma of not being able to look Jared in the eye after thinking about his dick.  Taylor: I completely agree. I think writing it has made me kind of impervious to it bleeding into my daily life. I see Jared and my heart goes ohmygodwelovehim first and in person, then later when he's not around is when the wowowowbutwhatabouthisdick comes in. Michelle: I don’t think I could write about anyone in a smutty way. Just characters.

Q: I wanted to talk about 'characterization' of rpf. Do other rpf writers out there think of the people as characters and treat them that way, or do you humanize them? Idk if that question makes sense but it's along the same lines of keeping them separate. 

@fogsrollingin​ (Alex): I cast them in other stories when it's rpf. I always write rpf AUs with only a couple exceptions. We know their onscreen mannerisms, so making them astronauts terraforming a new planet with evil aliens on it is like "oh easy". Taylor: Characterization is huge for me. If someone writes an actor outside of the way they portray themselves, it's impossible for me to read. While we don't know these people personally, we know how they act outwardly and in the public eye, and that's enough to get a good idea of the kind of person they would be.  Michelle: I have no trouble reading AUs, because it's just another character who happens to look like and have the name of one of my favorite actors. In AUs, they're characters. If they are actors on a show called Supernatural, then it's too humanizing for me. Taylor: See, Michelle, my mind can't separate it to that degree. If I'm reading about someone named Jared who looks like our Jared? It's Jared. AUs give me a lot of trouble, to be honest.  Both writing and reading. Alex: I feel like it's no different than if Jared did a scifi movie during his summer break from spn & it's so low budget they just kept his real name for his character name.

Q: Do you feel differently reading ship RPF than reader insert RPF?

Michelle: Most of the RPF stories I read are ships, but I do read some reader inserts, too. It’s not an intentional choice either way. Alex: I don't feel differently about it, rly. I know I prefer reading ships over reader insert but that's just my personal jam. Mana: I have a hard time reading ship rpf mainly because I like the versions of my ships that I've built in my head, so when someone deviates from that it is a little turn off for me. Like, your version of Cockles is not the same as my version, which is totally fine, you do you, but it isn't gonna tickle me the same way ya know. so when I get into like non-mainstream ships it's extra difficult to find writers who represent them in the 'right' ways. Taylor: I feel that way about pretty much everything I read, and I think that has a lot to do with the whole characterization piece of it. I know that my idea of and the way I portray Jared or Jensen is probably a million times different than the way other people, including my readers, think of them. I try really hard to make sure the way the actors come across is "right". Mana: I think the one big piece of characterization is kind of using the way they have presented themselves as a moral compass. Obviously they don't present their whole selves so there's always wiggle room and areas where you are free to project your ideas of them into the fic, but that's also the trickiest area and where so many people drop the ball.  Taylor: YES. So, so many people take that wiggle room and take it leaps and bounds beyond what is public (fandom) knowledge. 

Q: How do you feel about RPFs that support certain theories about the wives being beards and such?

Mana: I try to not write anything that would feel as if I'm slandering anyone, etc. I wouldn't want to write a Jensen x reader fic where Danneel cheats on him and that's how they get together. If I mention it at all I just say that they've peacefully and amicably parted ways. If I don't mention it then they simply don't exist in the timeline. But never anything negative about anyone, especially the wives.  @girl-with-a-fandom-fettish​ (Kaisha): I don't write smut (only read) so I have a very different interpretation on a lot of the things being discussed. I tend to stick with non-AU, sister/daughter!reader insert RPF fics because I don't feel creative enough branch out beyond that. I feel the same as Mana, and I actually won't read fics that are based on the premise that someone cheated for the storyline to work. Alex: I'm okay if ppl deviate far into fantasy realms tho. As long as it's not too support a real life conspiracy theory about the actors, if ppl wanna write it & others like it, all the more power to them. I mean as long as you're like "I killed the wives during the zombie apocalypse in my fic but I love them in real life please don't kill me" I'm like "cool". Taylor: I avoid bashing fics or beard fics. Admittedly I have one where Jensen and Danneel never got married, but they still had a daughter together and Danneel hid the kid from him until her 5th birthday. That doesn't feel like a bash/slander fic to me because I'm not painting anyone as a bad person - things just played out differently. 

Q: The person who suggested this topic mentioned “how to write your first RPF.” Any suggestions?

Michelle: Have Mana finish it for you! (The only one I’ve ever written, she had to finish for me!) Alex: My first rpf was a ballerina!Jared & yogi!Misha romcom. It was so goofy! Taylor: I don't know if I can even answer that question. It literally just poured out of me when I started. I took the tiny little idea I had in my head (my daydream, as it was previously and so aptly named), and put it into words and it ended up being a 10 part series. Mana: How to write your first rpf: READ RPF FROM A LOT OF DIFFERENT WRITERS. find what works for you and for the people you're writing about. do a couple of trial runs with shorter fics. you have room to play, but try not to stray too far from what they've presented themselves as in real life. Kaisha: For me, when I wrote my first RPF (which was also my first fic), I was in a mental place where I was watching a lot of con videos and reading a lot of sister/daughter fics. It was more "I need an outlet for how I am feeling right now and I don't have anyone to talk to"...so I talked to the image of the boys I had made in my head from what I saw of them online.

Q: Does character shipping affect the RPFs you read? Like, if your OTP is Destiel, do you mainly only read Cockles?

Kaisha: I will read almost anything that's related to one of the Js, either RPF or SPN. But I don't have strong ship feels one way or another that changes what I read/write for RPF. Taylor: I don't know if character ships have any kind of effect on RPF ships. Because there are a lot more people involved in cons than we see on the show, and cons are my primary source of RPF inspiration. Like, we see Henry, what, twice in the show? But Gil McKinney is a whole other story. He's all over the convention circuit (or at least he used to be) and also all over fandom twitter. It just feels easier for me to write RPF because I see these actors in my real life, interacting with other real people. I have interacted with them, which makes things feel a lot more real than writing about two hot fictional dudes from my TV screen. Alex: I'm definitely up for Sam/Dean as much as I'm up for J2. Oddly tho it's Mishalecki at real life con panels that's gotten me totally happy to write/read Mishalecki.

Q: (From Taylor) The piece of RPF I struggle with the most is bringing events from the actors' real lives into my stories. Writing about Jensen and the brewery, about their kids and stories they tell about them at cons, that's where my already grey area turns even more grey. 

Kaisha: I am right there with you Taylor! My fic started as mostly the reader and JJ interacting and then I remember the twins existed, too. And with my new fic I am trying to figure out if the San Jac and FBBC will work in or not. Mana: I'm interested in this, because I don't seem to have that issue or gray area. It just doesn't exist for me and I'd like to hear more about it from you guys. Taylor: It's so hard haha. I have something coming up that deals with Jared being arrested and of course I didn't post it before that whole event went down so now it looks like I'm taking that part of his life and twisting it for my personal fiction needs. Which feels kinda (adult word for "not good").  Kaisha: For me the gray area thing is because I want to write a believable story. A believable story has realistic details and if I am ignoring or overlooking things that my audience knows to be true, I feel it takes them out of the story. Mana: So it's a case of omit it entirely or commit to it entirely? I ask in regards to like FBBC and the kids. Do you feel differently about incorporating those aspects into your fics? would you be more comfortable writing about fbbc than you would the kids? Or does that gray area cover the same on both? Kaisha: The same thing goes for when I beta read something. A detail that I don't remember or agree with will take me out of the story and send me on a research rabbit trail to know if the author is correct with what they said. I want to stay in the story as much as possible and I want that for my readers too. That's probably a good way to differentiate it. If I state in the A/N that J1 only has 1 kid, then I don't have to consider what year the story is occurring in. But if I tell you it's non-AU, well then everything that is happening in our universe should be happening in my story (otherwise, it would be AU, even to the slightest degree). The kids vs. FBBC thing I think could be very personal on which someone feels more comfortable with. I say that because I know ABSOLUTLEY NOTHING about alcohol. Kids on the other hand I get. Taylor: For me it's the same. Just, actual concrete aspects of Jensen's life are harder for me to write about. Because then - again, just for me - that feels like writing from their point of view, which is something I try to avoid.

Q: Do any of you read/write RPF outside of SPN?

Taylor: SPN is my only fandom. Michelle: I tried to read fics from other fandoms, and just couldn’t get into it. I might be getting sucked into The Witcher fandom, though. Haven’t found any Geralt fics that really align with my image of him, though. Alex: There are CW network RPF AUs I read. Taylor: I feel like, as SPN fans, we have a wonderful privilege and incredible pool of writers to choose from when we want to read. I don't know, because like I said SPN is my only fandom, if any other fandom has this level of talent or dedication.

Q: Have you ever read an RPF fic that changed the way you viewed an actor? Or given you a sense of gained insight into their lives?

Michelle: That's actually why I don't read “canon-compliant” RPF, actually. Because then I might think that idea is real, and won't see that it's not, even when proven wrong. Like, maybe Jared actually loves it when we think about how big his dick is? But I can't stop thinking that it embarrasses him and makes him uncomfortable because I read it in that one fic. Kaisha: @crashdevlin​  has a Jensen x reader series that also heavily features Tom Hiddleston. My view of Tom has forever been changed because of her story!  Michelle: My brain is very malleable. Sometimes, I'm so open-minded, my brain falls right out. I have to be careful what I let influence me. Kaisha: It wasn't something that I intended to happen. Crash just wrote a very compelling character and I think my opinion would have been altered no matter who it was that she used as the face. Taylor: I've never read anything that has changed the way I view the actors. I've certainly read things that have given me new ideas about the things they enjoy (bitey and/or rough smut), but nothing that's changed the way they appear in my mind. I think the biggest part of all of this is just remembering that all of this is 100% FICTION and should never be taken as reality in any way, shape, or form.

To close out the chat, Mana requested fic recs! Here are the recs that were mentioned:

Michelle: If you're into serial killer AUs, There's a J2 AU in my AO3 bookmarks that's genius. Adoration. The other RPF bookmark I have is called Beholder. Jared runs an animal shelter, and Jensen is a homeless man with a TBI who gets dumped at the shelter one night.

Alex: My favorite rpf fic is Tails by keep_waking_up. Werefox!Jared & kitsune!Jensen law enforcement murder mystery AU.

Taylor: One of my favorites to read is by @thecleverdame​: Modern Technology. (Jared x reader) This is unfinished but it's quickly becoming one of my favorite Jensen-things I've ever written, AND IT'S AN AU!!! Rockabye. Also, there’s You Saved Me (Jared x Reader). And have a J2 x Reader for funsies! Something is Happening

Kaisha: This is my favorite RPF. Underneath verse (series) - J2 -  Jensen is the undercover FBI agent sent to take out Jared, the boss of Chicago. #Self-promo, but I am pretty proud of this one, too: Nanny, Sister, Daughter...Family (Jenneel with sorta daughter!reader)

Mana: Here’s the Cockles x Reader fic that Michelle and I wrote: Rumor Has It And, of course, (Jenneel x Reader) Fools In Love.

Feel free to reblog with your favorite RPF fics!!

Also, the February LiveChat info is still TBD. Feel free to send in your topic ideas and suggest guest speakers!!

General Pond Updates and Reminders

What we’ve got cooking up next: Not much, at the moment, since everyone is busy, so we’re just trying to keep up with the day-to-day at the moment! Our to do list is still long, though, and will not be neglected forever! Next up is organizing the tagging system on the blog to make it easier for readers to find the stories they’re interesting in and for writers to find the help they’re looking for!

Reminders:

Angel Fish Award nominations are accepted all month long! No need to wait to tell us how much you liked a fellow Fish’s work!  IF YOU HAVE SENT IN A NOMINATION, BUT HAVE NOT RECEIVED A PRIVATE MESSAGE CONFIRMING WE RECEIVED IT, WE DIDN’T GET IT. Be sure to use Submit instead of Ask!

Don’t forget to submit your stories to be posted to the blog! When your stories are on the blog, then they are easier to nominate for Angel Fish Awards!

Say hi to December’s New Members and January’s New Members! (If we missed someone, let us know!)

Check the Pond CALENDAR to see when Big Fish will be in the Skype chat room/discord general channel and other Pond and SPN events are happening! Know of something that’s not on the calendar, send us an ask or submission with the deets info details!  The calendar offers a lot of features, such as showing you when things are in your own timezone! Since we’re an international group, that’s a definite plus!!

We’re getting lots of requests for more Big Fish, lately, but so far, only one applicant! If you know someone you think would be a good Big Fish, tell them to apply!!

[onlyfools-fall-foryou]

Same thing, wrote for magazine but never got published. The Luhrmann article.

BAZ LUHRMANNNNNNNNN.

Just a lil background: I discovered /Romeo + Juliet (1996)/ when I was going through my Leonardo DiCaprio phase in 2012 or 2013. Wee little I, who had yet to discover how to t*rr*nt movies, would desperately look up clips from his movies on Youtube. The few actual clips that I found (most of the /R+J/ related videos on Youtube are edits with the central love theme or some other artsy love song playing in the background) were of the bathroom/elevator scene or the last scene in the chapel. (Unrelated: a couple days ago I saw something related to the chapel scene and had a dream of marrying Rose Byrne. It was wild. Moving on.) 12 year old me couldn’t stop watching the chapel scene over and over and over again. This may have something to do with Leonardo DiCaprio’s breathtakingly smoldering gaze and delicate jaw structure as he’s slowly walking up, but it also had to do with everything else. Anyone who’s seen the chapel scene knows what I’m talking about. The music that is desperate and calmy tragic but not forcefully building up, the warm yellow candlelight around them a contrast to the harsh blue neon lights, the moment we see Juliet’s eyes open and we’re like ‘Yes!! Now all you have to do is nudge him! Just!! One!! Nudge!!!’ (My heartbeat just sped up a little writing that. Whoo that scene gets my sympathetic nervous system going.) Of course, not to mention the brilliant acting but this isn’t the time or place to discuss that. We know Juliet isn’t going to stop Romeo in time, but the movie still makes us scream in frustration. (Just!!!! One!!!! Nudge!!!)

At the time, I didn’t know anything about directors and frankly, how they could ever considering putting their names in front of the actors’ names in the roll credits when clearly the actors were the ones who did all the work. (I was 12.) Later on, I realized there was so much a director does other than tell the actors when to start and end.

Just going to put this out there, Baz Luhrman’s life is art. His Wikipedia page makes me emotional. His parents were involved in dance and film and he performed theater in school. In college, he met his wife (Catherine Martin, who is also amazing. She has like five Oscars just from costume and set designing!!) whom he works together with on every single project. (They’re the ultimate power couple.) Everything he’s directed (and she’s costume-designed) has like at least 5 awards.

/But why haven’t I ever heard of him?/ The reasons for that are: He’s Australian. He does stage more than screen. He’s only made five movies in total (all of them very well-known), from 1992~2001, 2008, and 2013, which is why wee young millennials don’t really know about him. (I’m not making a generalization here, just that most of my millennial peers don’t really know about movies made prior to 2000 excluding Star Wars and Indiana Jones.) He doesn’t make movies to target the general mass. By general mass, I mean little kids and little kids’ parents. And by little kids I also mean teenagers. I need more peers to talk to about his brilliance, which is why I am roping all y’all in with me.

When Baz uses these well-known stories with famous, obvious endings, he has this amazing ability to make you forget what the whole story was about, like /Romeo + Juliet/ and /The Great Gatsby/. In movies that don’t have a highly publicized ending, like /Moulin Rouge!/, he gives you the ending. The opening scene is literally the main character typing away at his typewriter as he declares: ‘My lover, Satine, is dead.’ It’s not even a spoiler. That’s the opening scene. That leaves you sort of shocked and frankly, offended. What movie starts off by telling you one half of the two main characters are going to die? You scoff at the director for being so stupid and continue to watch. As you watch a narcoleptic Argentinian fall through the ceiling and the cast made up of said Argentinian, a dwarf dressed as a nun, a heavily made-up Faramir, two musicians dressed like pilgrims, and the main character perform a wildly disorganized version of “The Sound of Music,” your mind has shifted to ‘Hah, what was the director thinking’ to ‘This is the weirdest thing I’ve seen in my life. How did they even get the copyright?’ and when Satine, the goddess, is introduced in an also wild and ridiculous rendition of “Diamonds Are a Girl’s Best Friend,’ you have completely forgotten the fact that she will have to meet a tragic demise.

Got a little carried away there, /Moulin Rouge/ is one of my favorite movies and talking about the hectic opening scene gets me hyped up.

I could go on for days about Baz and his comical intros and his transitions and how all his films are similar to each other and how all the characters have archetypes and how he uses symbolism and foreshadowing and the parallels (the Parallels!) but I’ll keep that to myself and Tumblr. (I have a document on my laptop titled “Baz Luhrmann: The Ultimate Sadist.” Come talk to me if you wanna see it.) The second portion of this article will be about /The Get Down./

I was actually writing about /The Get Down/ and a couple Luhrmann movies on my summer to-do list article, but I accidentally wrote like a page’s worth of Luhrmann praise and decided to make it a separate article.

Baz Luhrmann and Pulitzer Award-winning Stephen Adly Guirgis (his twitter gives me life) teamed up with some rappers who were active during the creation of hip hop to create /The Get Down./

The first thought you may have is, what is the get down? What is a get down? It’s not properly explained until a couple episodes in, but apparently it’s the part of a song in between verses where there’s a good, strong beat. Think of a non-rap song with a good, strong beat. I’m gonna think of “Stayin’ Alive” by the Bee Gees, the one used in Sherlock, and around the 3 minute mark, there’s a short drum solo bit. DJs in the 70s would take two records of a song, find that spot, and play just that part alternating the records on a turntable. The beat would be infinite and an MC would rhyme over it. Grandmaster Flash coined the term ‘the get down’ and now there’s a show named after it.

In 1977, DJs, dancers, wordsmiths (rappers), and graffiti artists were putting together the urban subculture of hip hop. The show is placed right in the middle of all of it, in Bronx, NY. The story is centered around Zeke and his friends, his struggle to become someone in a white world, keep his music going, and get his girl. We also alternately get a present-day Zeke performing to a crowd, played by a Nas-dubbed Daveed Diggs, occasionally doing recaps and foreshadowings. There’s minimal death considering this is Baz Luhrmann-made. Ezekiel “Zeke” “Mr. Books” Figuero: The Wordsmith. Lil pouty fluffy boy with questionable sideburns and the world’s worst pencil grip, that boy’s gonna get carpal tunnel like yesterday. In love with the pastor’s daughter, Mylene. Is a genius with words. 1/5 of the Get Down Brothers. Mylene Cruz: the butterscotch princess with the big disco dream and the voice of an angel. Her father doesn’t let her sing the “devil’s music.” Has two great girlfriends, Yolanda and Regina, who sing backup. Shaolin Fantastic: Not Asian. Drug dealer/graffiti artist/DJ whose true passion is to DJ like his idol, Grandmaster Flash. Super extra. His red pumas are always spotless. Problematic. 1/5 of the Get Down Brothers. Marcus “Dizzee” Kipling: Graffiti artist who goes by the name of Rumi 411, who also happens to be Dizzee’s top hat wearing alien alter ego. The most artistic out of all of them, often misunderstood. Has a preference to people named “Thor.” Has the fluffiest hair of them all. 1/5 of the Get Down Brothers. Ronald “Ra-Ra” Kipling: The oracle, the guru, the all seeing eye. Has the most morality and voice of reason out of all of them. Constantly makes Star Wars references. Can rap really fast. Looks out for all his brothers, including Zeke and Shao. 1/5 of the Get Down Brothers. Miles “Boo-Boo” Kipling: Sings like the Jackson 5. Breaks out into dance whenever he can. Also problematic. Always sings that he gets all the ladies but can’t actually. Youngest but loudest. 1/5 of the Get Down Brothers. Francisco “Papa Fuerte” Cruz: Mylene’s uncle. Also sort of everyone’s uncle. Has all the power and genuinely cares about his people in the Bronx, trying to get them homes and opportunities.

Part 2 gets a little trippier with the introduction of angel dust, aka PCP. Kids, don’t ever do hard drugs. If you’re interested in hip hop, music, poetry, bromance, sweet teen romance, vibrant cinematography, and beautiful brown babies, (*whispers*) you should watch.

[sanguinarysanguinity]

1-15 (as many or few as you like, or as best fit the work(s)) for Persistence of Memory; Desperate Men and Fools; Strange Angels

(Questions; answers for Persistence of Memory; answers for Strange Angels.)

“Desperate Men and Fools” follows!

1. What inspired you to write the fic this way?

I talked about that a bit in the announcement post on DW/LJ, but I’ll add that @gardnerhill‘s talents are wildly different from my own: my initial attempts to mimic Mayor Strade’s storytelling style were… well. Let’s just say I can’t do what she does, and leave it at that.

3. What’s your favorite line of narration?

Lock pushed up the lantern’s chimney and lit a cigarette from the flame. For a few moments his face was clearly lit, his eyes slitted narrow against the light. Then he set the lantern aside and turned the wick down, extinguishing it. All I could see was the glow of his cigarette’s coal, and the stars beyond him.

Doc’s heart is breaking right there, and damn him if he’ll say it. When I wrote it, I didn’t explicitly put together that Doc was fixing in his mind what was like to be his last image of Lock, but that’s what he’s doing: looking while he can still look, and then the light goes out and there’s just a hole in the stars where Lock ought to be.

And that, he thinks, is the last he’ll ever see of him.

I shut my eyes, against him and the stars both, and hoped he’d have the civility to ride out before I woke.

4: What’s your favorite line of dialogue?

“I have never met a man with a gift for being silent as loudly as you, Doc.”

Which is, of course, playing with the famous line from “The Twisted Lip”:

“You have a grand gift of silence, Watson,” said he. “It makes you quite invaluable as a companion.”

5. What part was hardest to write?

omfg, the scene just after Doc and Lock recover their horses, when they’re supposedly talking out what happened with Dumont. Those two laconic bastards never talk, not like they mean it, so trying to get their issues out on the page for the reader… UGH. I thought I was gonna have to beat them both over the head with a tree limb to get either of them to say the thing.

6. What makes this fic special or different from all your other fics?

It’s a capital-W Western, which is a genre which I normally give wide berth. I talked about that a little bit in the DW/LJ announcement post.

8: Did any real people or events inspire any part of it?

Louis Riel and the Red River Uprising, of course, which is the backstory for Strange Empire. The surveyor getting killed was an invention of the show, but everything else in “Desperate Men and Fools” about the Uprising is reasonably accurate, at least in broad strokes. Further, most of the details about the Metis and the Red River Colony are historical, at least as I best understood them. Other random bits are factual, too, like the lynchings during the New York City draft riots, and the mayhem of the Nevada silver boom.

That said, there are details I fudged. I don’t have any concrete evidence for putting that particular card game in Red River, the one with the stripped down deck and extra jokers (although there were French card games that used that deck, and there was a ton of French influence in Red River). Also, there was a point where I got fed up with trying to sort out the on-again/off-again steamboat situation on the Red River. Also, anyone who makes a strict accounting of the dates might discover July-through-September has a few more weeks than those three months usually have. (I blame the steamboats that were probably not running that year.)

9: Were there any alternate versions of this fic?

The first draft had a different ending, jumping ahead to Bakerstown in 1885, the year of the Northwest Uprising / Second Riel Rebellion.

The original ending, starting just after finding Dumont’s bounty poster:

“Reckon there’s enough good left in the world to stop what’s coming to Red River?” I asked him later. It seemed that over the past year maybe Lock and I had become the same kind of fool Dumont was. Ever since she let us walk away that day, I’d been noticing the little bits of good still left in the world, and the people trying to grow them. Lock and I weren’t farmers, but sometimes we stepped in and tried to stop someone else from killing a thing. Sometimes we succeeded, but most times we couldn’t offer much more than vengeance.

Lock shook his head slow, turning the question over. “I reckon there never was enough good in the world to stop that.”

And maybe Lock was right – or maybe all the good in the world was looking the other way – but the army did finally come to Red River, and the surveyors got their stakes and string into the place proper after all. By the time they were done, a lot of those Métis lost their farms. I heard later a bunch of them settled up along the Batoche River, up in Saskatchewan. Maybe they thought that was far enough west to be safe from Ottawa’s surveyors, but then in 1885 it all happened again, this time with a lot more shooting. Some hangings, too, there at the end.

By then, Lock and I had washed up in a little Texas cow-town, where Lock was wearing a tin star, and I was taking the time to patch people up after I finished shooting ‘em. We still weren’t farmers, but Lock figured that he and that mayor there might make a place where other people could grow some good things if they cared to. I didn’t see much point in it, but didn’t mind letting him try.

“Think Dumont and her auntie got caught up in it?” I asked Lock, when I heard what had happened up in Batoche. I didn’t want to mention that baby, although it had to have been full-grown fighting age by then. I hoped its mother had taught it to shoot as well as she did.

“No telling,” Lock said. I knew he still had Dumont’s bounty poster, hid somewheres people couldn’t see it and get bright ideas about easy money. Whether he kept it hid for her sake or theirs, I couldn’t say, but I knew he still had it. Lock shook his head, looking like the world pained him sore, and I couldn’t say I disagreed. “Ain’t no telling at all.”

However, Saskatchewan isn’t Doc’s story to tell, and everyone who read that draft agreed. So that all went away, and I eventually settled on the ending it has now.

13. What music did you listen to, if any, to get in the mood for writing this story? Or if you didn’t listen to anything, what do you think readers should listen to to accompany us while reading?

For the scene in Red River, I recommend Metis fiddling.

For the Doc and Lock scenes, “Arms of My Love” was usually running around my brain, but Jay Ungar is much closer to Lock’s sound, especially some of that haunting fiddle-work. (Fiddler’s Elbow, Ashokan Farewell, Blue River Waltz, Prairie Waltz, Lover’s Waltz) I expect Southern Soldier Boy might make an appearance if Lock is in a particularly sentimental mood. 

However, while “Red River Valley” is (probably) period and topical, it is not on the playlist. From Wikipedia:

Edith Fowke offers anecdotal evidence that the song was known in at least five Canadian provinces before 1896. This finding led to speculation that the song was composed at the time of the 1870 Wolseley Expedition to Manitoba’s northern Red River Valley. It expresses the sorrow of a local woman (possibly a Métis) as her soldier lover prepares to return to the east.

Just… no.

15. What did you learn from writing this fic?

The Red River flows north. I checked that three times, then looked at some terrain maps, before deciding it was probably true.

Because of @bowiecadmium‘s generosity and diligence, I also learned: Horses are asses. Horses don’t travel faster than humans over long distances; they just carry more. Horses see better than humans in the dark. A dappled gray would have been super-distinctive in that decade and place, and thus shit for any kind of undercover work. Museum photos of Metis saddles typically show them stripped of all their hardware, which is not how they would have looked in actual use. Breaking trail on horseback is exactly as much of a pain-in-the-ass as breaking trail on foot. When camping with horses, you can hear the horses doing horse-things; if you like horses, you might even have warm feelings about that. One can turn a horse without using the reins, but one wouldn’t call that ‘kneeing’ a horse. Doc’s lack of emotional attachment to Betsy is likely an artifact of his war service, during which he probably had a disturbing number of horses die under him, and/or had to eat his.

And a horse fact that I picked up on my own after @bowiecadmium’s beta pass, so I might have fucked it up: roan horses sometimes have corn marks.

[isaacathom]

ok this is actually a fun bit of writing here, even if the preceding shit was kinda garbage

tl;dr this bitch has to rant about this stupid book because i naively want to learn something about my family’s history and this is the only fucken way to do it

‘When he discovered he had to work to help provide for this instant family of a large flock of children, ‘Mick’ showed his true self and devotion to the family.

Within a year of the marriage, he left the fold, leaving his wife to fend for herself in the daunting task of raising her children.’

like.aside from just being kinda awkwardly worded (he bangs On and On about how his mum was the 11th of 11 children like fuck i get it its a big family, holy shit) i think thats just. a good concept there. the space really sells the punch. wouldve been better if we hadnt been told beforehand that Mick was a cunt, yknow. but thats nice

also lets keep going. ‘6 step brothers and 4 step sisters’ theyre actually her Half Siblings. they all share the same mother. theyre related. she’d be step if she was adopted, which she was not, because if she were, surely we wouldve been told about those circumstances.

‘[his mother] easily met that high standard as she was a very pretty young lady’ please dont perv out over your fucking mother you pig of a man. also you would hope ‘jock’ (his name is fucking robert but ok, Jock) was interested in more than how pretty Nellie was when they got together, right......... like there had to be more to it. am i naive? perhaps

‘scottish clan gordon’ the what. but we arent gordons???? are you. are you hundred percent sure. are you positive about this. are you sure thats why your name is gordon. alright buddy

‘according to buzzy’s story’ please never refer to yourself in the third person

‘hotels rarely burn down’ ?? i dont buy that at all. my guess is this famous hotel (which.... you didnt name so ok)

ok so theres a picture in here of my dad standing at some random gate, and he says its the same gate as a picture of his dad..... where is THAT picture??? this picture means nothing without that historic context, and it feels hollow if the actual picture isnt there.

granddad you dont. you dont need to wikipedia article dump me information about glasgow??? i mean sure, cool, id rather just be reading the wikipedia article.

jesus christ. so hes talking about his dad, right. who he’d technically set up earlier by saying he came to melbourne at 19. before he launched into a whole thng about his mother and shit. and suddenly hes come back to his dad to explain that his dad (so gordons grandfather) used to beat him! and its like, wOAH, where the fuck did that come from??? shit dude. thats rough. but he just mentions it suddenly out of nowhere. oH JESUS actually. sorry. i misread (yknow, because its written like shit). he means.... his brother??? right, he means his Brother Robert, was beaten by his dad, also named Robert, who was the one who came to melbourne aged 19. ok. ok that makes slightly more structural sense but ooof. ouch. poor robert (the younger). in my uh, defence, this book is written awful and i've never met robert? (my.... understanding is that he probably died before i was born? like with mary, who i dont recall having met either)

ok uhhh ‘most of the gorbal’s tenemenets were eventually demolished by the wise founding fathers many decades later, in the 1980s’ the WHOM. this isnt fucking america, this is scotland, what in the actual fuck are you TALKING about????????????????????????????? ‘modern day replacement improvements and architecture designed to achieve, what?’ fucker they were trying to fix the mistake they made in crowding 90k people into the fucking gorbals. maybe they didnt succeed (they didnt) but they were trying, it was naivete rather than fucking malice, you bitter old fuck. like, you visited in the 1980s.... and published this book in 2007......... without thinking to check back......... like hey maybe theyve gotten better? (newsflash - they fucking have) sooo... fuck

‘could the [my family] be related? [to the mcdonalds]’ yes??? we literally are. theres no question of that. being a sept of clanranald, we are Literally related to the fucking macdonalds. you absolute buffoon. yea its distant, and maybe thats your point, but when combined with you launching into this giant diatribe about rhw Campbells for shit that happened long ago, it seems youre picking and choosing how close ‘related’ is. we are. literally. related to the macdonalds. also it wasnt thought up in glasgow, they were from fucking new hampshire. but sure. 

‘his sheila wife of his’ excuse me?

‘so the name was related to a buzzing bee i suppose’ ? i still dont get it. like, he then explains that apparently his twin sister had difficulty saying Brother, so she called him Buzzy. that makes sense to me. i can understand that. but the buzzing bee thing? not sure i follow, given the prior context he provided. i dont get it. this is written like garbage. theres no structure. we went from jumping forward in time to the birth of my uncle Dale (my dads older brother) and suddenly we’re talking about Mick’s running career and gordon’s childhood! what the fuck happened.

‘coupled with the bigoted attitudes that were rife during those periods’ says the man who got angry at a black (i THINK, mightve been a separate story)  frenchman who couldnt speak english in France because ‘we saved them’. fuck off. youre just like them, you old codger.

also hes decrying his grandfather mick for being ‘no true irishman’ even though micks dad was full irish? by that exact same metric i can call my grandfather no true scotsman, because his dad is full scottish and thats it!!! you fucking fool. no true irishman, holy shit, how little self awareness could this man have.

‘then excessive drinking liquor isnt for me’ but is Is for your wife, is it gordon??? drinking wine when shes on antibiotics??? fucking incredible. god theyre. theyre so stupid.

‘not proceeding as a scholar as i could have’ you literally admitted like 5 pages ago that your twin sister was Far smarter than you, but sure! ~scholar~. if you were meant to be a scholar surely you wouldve bounded back from missing days with a vengeance. youre talking complete tosh.

im confused why theyd be doing bombing drills in South Yarra.... in preparation from a japanese air raid.... like im sorry, if the people north are doing their jobs, theres no physical way they couldve gotten to south yarra....... but ok. thats not his fault i just think thats strange.

im 110 pages in and he hasnt actually gotten to the point where he meets eleanor??? aside from a few time jumps forward and a brief mention of ‘meeting her in a milk bar in south yarra’ so like. hoi vey? the fuck.

oh jesus thats. thats a heavy thing to just chuck in the middle of a sentence??? like ‘oh yea after Skete the next scout leader was a paedophile who abused me and the others’ wwwOooahhh there buddy back up. what???? holy shit. ouch. thats. thats rough.

‘absolutely belted this poofta bastard’ yknow what? fair. id also beat the fuck out of a pedo with my boot. thats Relatable. good going on that, i suppose.

ooh thats full third person, weird.

one thing that is definitely kinda interesting, and very telling about his relationship with his family, is that he only ever refers to Nellie as ‘mum’, but refers to Mick as, well, Mick! rather than ‘granddad’ or anything of the sort. like its just sorta interesting when you get this big family photo and Nellie is the only one not called by her first name.

‘returning to those earlier days’ NO! FUCKING MOVE FORWARD IN TIME YOU GIT!!!! holy shit i just want to read about new fucking shit.

......... so like, at some point while playing footy, an opposing player kicked him in the leg and caused a fractured tibia. so a few weeks later... one of gordons friends took a mark on that player and kneed him straight in the head, with that player never playing again. and he’s PROUD of that!!! he’s proud of his friend for ruining a guys footy career. like yea, the guy was a dick, he broke your leg and it was at least partially malicious, but like........... you fucked him up????? hardcore?????? a straight up ruination. but go off i guess.

its interesting that he doesnt go even remotely into eleanors history beyond the fact (so far) that her father Leo didnt say much but was a good dude. then again the books all about him soooo fuck it i suppose.

‘recognition of our scottish heritage’ eleanor isnt scottish tho. shes irish. shes an o'donoghue. what the fuck. like yea naming them dale and glen is a ‘clever’ nod back to scotland (i actually do think thats cute and clever, joking aside. its the exact sort of ‘clever’ shit i love pulling) but............. shes not scottish. unless we’re waiting for volume 2 all about eleanor.

hE USED TO LIVE OUT HERE??????? IN SPRINGVALE????? fuck me. no fucking wonder we live here, huh, jesus. that. certainly explains something, i suppose. like ‘if you were raised in holbrook and YOU were raised in thomastown, why do we live in knox?’

OHHHHH HERES THE FRENCH THING!!!! OHHHH HERES ONE OF THE FRENCH THINGS. OH BITCH behold

so granddads being a dick, as usual, and he’s on some tour in paris. and the tour guide launches into a long thing about the glory of france, like french history and the fighting record, etc. and granddad calls out and tells him to knock it off, because ‘our australians died by the thousands for your country’

i. eh... uhh............... is he. is he aware? of how many french people died???? for france?????? how many????? il tell you how many - apparently 1.44% of the total population of france. thats 600000 people. how many did we lose? around 35k. thats, uh, a smaller fucking number. than the amount of french people. who died. for fucking france. you fucking idiot.

it kills me. is he gonna include the french speaking one too???

oh hell that sure is a picture of my father. good heavens. holy shit my brother really does look like him. thats uncanny, man.

‘one son Scotty’ his name is Scott, actually. not scotty. but cool, i got a really small shout out, weirdly BEFORE my older cousins did???? oh dear is he gonna talk about my uncles divorce actually. oh god. thats. thats terrifying to consider. oh, cool, he didnt in that small section, hopefully it doesnt come up haha (i can only IMAGINE what sort of vile shit he’d say about cathy)

also, ooh, more nuggets on grandma’s family. her dad was a freemason! thats cool.

ooh! he was the president of holbrook shire council! thats kinda neat actually.

ooh! the glenndale motel actually still exists! thats cool as hell. not that granddad told me that i just googled it

OHHH ITS THE FUCKING FRENCH SPEAKING STORY OH MY GOD

Ok first off ‘i slammed my fist into the counter and said very calmly’ yea no fuck that, youre fucking lying. theres no way you slammed the counter and spoke calmly. you almost definitely abused this poor french metro worker who, being a French Man living in France, is not required to know english. you fucking babboonnnnnnnnnn

apparently he nearly fell off a mountain innnnnn geeermany? austria, austria. and as he mentions my dad pulling him back up, he words it as ‘stopping me from falling to my final destiny’ what fucking wording IS that. my god.

uh well ok thats. about it i suppose. there was a big hullabuloo about like, hotels and shit, and there was probably some racism about Islanders in there (like i find it hard to believe there wasnt but im not gonna go back and double check, because this book reads like absolute garbage). but eh. yea?

uuhhh so that was an Adventure, for sure