luzula | Past and present fannishness

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Past and present fannishness

Various people are writing about their fannish history. I thought I'd done a more recent such post, but the last I can find is from 2011, back when I was in a stable long-term relationship with due South. I won't rehash that previous post, but I wanted to talk a little about what's happened since then and where I am right now. Obviously also fueled by thoughts of my recent new obsession with Flight of the Heron.

I fell out of due South fandom in late 2013/early 2014, because I fell (unrequitedly) in love with someone in RL, which left no room for fannish feelings. Or more specifically for shippy feelings: it turned out that despite writing all sorts of things in the fandom (gen, m/f, f/f, m/m), the strongest driver of my fannishness was my Fraser/Kowalski feelings (and Fraser feelings in general).

Since then I have been unrequitedly in love for six years (well, not as intensely all the time, obviously). My fannishess went into reading a lot of books, and I did write a little fic, but there have only been two pairings I wrote with the clear motivation "ooh, I want to get these characters into bed together". The first was William Laurence/Napoleon Bonaparte from Temeraire (late 2016). I had fun with that, but it didn't stick because seriously...Napoleon Bonaparte...*facepalm*. The second was Cassian Andor/Bodhi Rook from Star Wars (late 2017 and sporadically ongoing). That could've stuck; I think the reason it didn't was that I didn't connect with the rest of the existing fic (fluffy coffeeshop AU:s for that pairing, really?).

So now Ewen Cameron/Keith Windham in Flight of the Heron: an out-of-print book from 1925 set in the 18th century with a tiiiny fandom. I have not felt like this for many years, though: this completely besotted feeling which lowers your work productivity and makes people look at you weirdly on the bus because you're sitting there with a foolish smile on your face writing fic in your head. Also, despite the fandom being tiiiny I have already had more meaningful fandom interaction for this than I had in the huge fandom Star Wars (thank you

Hyarrowen for being so welcoming and giving great beta feedback!). I am really enjoying the writing, too: the style is obviously old-fashioned, but I like it a lot. The writing process feels different; I have to do a lot more tinkering on the sentence level than I'm used to. Looking forward to writing sex scenes in that style, too. : )

I've been thinking about pairings I have shipped, and there are some pretty clear patterns here:
Benton Fraser/Ray Kowalkski (cop partners)
Nate Fick/Brad Colbert (modern military officers)
William Laurence/Napoleon Bonaparte (19th century military, also enemies)
Cassian Andor/Bodhi Rook (military in space)
Ewen Cameron/Keith Windham (18th century military, also enemies to start with)

Okay, I'm being a bit selective here--I have also shipped Aziraphale/Crowley, for example, before I got into due South. They are technically enemies, but otherwise don't fit the pattern. And of course there's also a part of my fannishness which is not about this kind of shippiness--some of my best writing is about other things entirely.

But still. Of course, it's not exactly news that that slashiness turns up so reliably in stories of police or military: that homosocial environment combined with danger, loyalty, honor, duty, and repression of emotion. It's catnip to a lot of fangirls, including me. I guess I'm...a little bit conflicted about it? Add in historical settings and you get other things to feel conflicted about, such as Ewen Cameron in Flight of the Heron who is a Scottish Highlands laird. I mean, I'm not conflicted about Ewen as a character, he is lovely and so is Keith. ♥ ♥ But the Scottish Highlands is obviously a historical society which has been heavily romanticized--in reality it appears to have been feudal and elitist (they were allied with the French Bourbon kings, after all...). But it's a novel, not actual history, and I guess I am sticking with the depiction in the book (where actually Keith Windham is Not Impressed about the Highlands, so there's a counterweight there).

If I were going to fall for a wartime ship, why not characters in the Spanish Civil War or something where it could actually intersect in a meaningful way with my political interests?? Oh well. I guess I will just go on doing union organizing while simultaneously writing starry-eyed fic about enemy military officers, and accept that humans don't always have to be consistent. Also, it will be interesting to see if my newly shippy state edges out my feelings about my RL crush.

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this completely besotted feeling which lowers your work productivity and makes people look at you weirdly on the bus because you're sitting there with a foolish smile on your face writing fic in your head. Oh, same! What is it about this book... I can vividly remember when I was first reading it walking along the corridor at work grinning foolishly to myself and thinking, okay, this is silly, I need to calm down (and then not calming down, at all). Great stuff.

I know what you mean about historical military type settings being great shipping material, too. Besides all the loyalty and hurt/comfort and emotional repression etc., I love exploring what happens to relationships caught up in conflict and war: characters who love each other but have to be enemies, characters who are enemies but end up loving each other. It's what I find so compelling in Rosemary Sutcliff's stories about Roman soldiers, too.

I find I can ignore the often-present issues with settings like that as long as they're not directly relevant to these characters and their stories—I mean, Flight of the Heron is pretty much, we're all gentlemen here, honour and the decent thing and all that, and I don't have to think about what was happening to the peasants as long as they're not actually there in the story. But YMMV, of course.

I like Sutcliff a lot too, though I've only written for one of her books (Sword at Sunset). There's a lot of similarites there--she also has lovely nature description and intense male friendships. : )

I really wonder about D K Broster and how much she intended the homoeroticism in this book. It's so hard to imagine that it wasn't intended, especially given that this kind of thing seems to have been a theme of hers--then again, it doesn't seem to have been interpreted that way at the time. I feel kind of sorry for her that she didn't live in a time when she could have been happily publishing explicit m/m romance! (Also, it seems like she never married and lived her whole life happily cohabiting with her female best friend...)

I find I can ignore the often-present issues with settings like that as long as they're not directly relevant to these characters and their stories—I mean, Flight of the Heron is pretty much, we're all gentlemen here, honour and the decent thing and all that, and I don't have to think about what was happening to the peasants as long as they're not actually there in the story. But YMMV, of course.

Oh, I didn't feel conflicted about it while reading the book. It was more when I started to do research and came across things like this on Wikipedia: "Those [Cameron tenants who did not wish to join the uprising] were whipped or threatened with eviction, a process supervised by Archibald Cameron..."

But yeah, I will go with book canon...

On a more frivolous note: I was reading about ancient Highland dress and pondering whether Ewen would be wearing a belted plaid/great plaid or a kilt and separate plaid (answer: would have to wait for my reread to be sure, but I'm pretty sure it's the latter; he's probably wearing trews when he's mounted though, like in the scene when he first appears). The belted plaid looks so cool though!

Anyway, so it appears that for kilts in military use in the 18th century they did not actually have any underwear on, but furthermore, Keith arguably also has no underwear on. You're welcome. : D

(Of course, you wouldn't want to overdo it with the historical accuracy. *ignores historical hygiene standards*)

Wow, the belted plaid does look very cool—thanks for the links! But I think Ewen does wear a kilt (because I fondly remember how Keith is complaining to himself about these awful Highlanders with their kilts and then he sees Ewen in one and immediately goes, hmm, maybe kilts aren't such a bad idea after all. I love him).

And the Cameron tartan does seem to be a particularly good one, although I realise the whole clan tartans thing is a bit of an anachronism for this period. I have just found this one which is described as 'ancient', however, so perhaps Ewen would have been wearing something like that.

*nods seriously* Oh yes, very important to get a historically accurate lack of pants in there.

Oh, Ewen totally wears a kilt. But I was wondering whether he's wearing a belted plaid which of course also has a "kilt", but the kilt is attached to the top part. Or if he's wearing a kilt with a separate plaid (which seems to be attested from the 1730's on). I seem to remember he sometimes takes the plaid off without taking off the kilt, which would not be possible with a belted plaid. But I'll have to pay attention to this on reread...

Yeah, the clan tartan thing does seem to be from the 19th century. But since the book has it, I'll go with it. Yes, that one is nice. It seems to me that if you're creeping around in the heather trying to be inconspicuous, you wouldn't want to be in red, though? It looks like they also have more drab tartan patterns for hunting (although deer don't have good color vision, so it's not like it would matter to them...but birds do, though).

I'm glad you appreciate my dedication to research. *g*

Yes, he is wearing a separate kilt—I've just gone and re-read the passage at the end of Part 1 where Keith dresses up in Ewen's clothes to escape from Fassefern House, which makes it clear that the kilt and plaid are indeed separate garments!

Hmm, maybe not (although wearing red doesn't seem to have been a problem for the British army, I suppose, but then they weren't trying to be inconspicuous so much).

*rereads scene*

Yes, you're right. Oh Keith, so affronted by having to put on a kilt. *g* I forgot he left his officer's coat there, I wonder did he have to get a new one?

I tried out the belted plaid thing with a thin blanket. I can quite see why it needs to be four or five meters long, because 2.7 meters definitely wasn't enough.

I admire your dedication to this research—that sounds like a fun experiment! (By the way, thanks very much for linking that video about the plaid—I've gone and watched a few of the other Highland historical/outdoorsy videos on the same channel and they're all great fun and very interesting :D)

(Best random thing I've come across so far is this line from a history book I was reading today: That gentle Jacobite, Robert Kirk, minister of Balquhidder and Aberfoyle, Gaelic scholar and an authority on the fairies (on whom he wrote an admirable book), was allowed simply to fade away, though whether into a grave or into a fairy hill is still a matter of some controversy.)

Glad you liked the video! I watched a couple of the others as well--I love hiking and camping and generally being outdoors, and it's interesting to see what equipment people might have had in the past.

Are you in Britain, by the way, or somewhere else? *curious* I somehow got the impression that you were British.

Hee, that's a lovely sentence.

Yeah, and stuff like that is really good for getting into the little details of what life in the past was like, which is one of my favourite things about history (and potentially very useful for writing descriptions in fic, of course...)

I'm in Britain, yes! (A long way from the Highlands, sadly, although I am idly planning a holiday up there so I can do lots of birdwatching and visit all the locations from Flight of the Heron).

I've not read Sword at Sunset yet, but it's definitely on the list! (and oh, her nature descriptions are absolutely the best thing ever... <3)

I certainly think it must have been at least a little intentional (and it seems like every time I think that sort of thing about a book I later find out the author was either definitely queer or in the 'never married, lived with their same-gender best friend' situation. Deliberate subtext was A Thing! :P).

Oof, yeah, that is not what you want to have in your mind when reading such a good book, no.

Oh well. I guess I will just go on doing union organizing while simultaneously writing starry-eyed fic about enemy military officers, and accept that humans don't always have to be consistent.

Hooray for consistent inconsistency and self-acceptance.

Thanks for the details on a British gentleman's lack of pants. I wonder how they spun and wove the linen, though, that people wore it next to their skin. All the linen fabric I've touched has been quite coarse (tho I did recently find a linen/silk scarf which I could imagine wearing as a nightshirt).

Hooray for consistent inconsistency and self-acceptance.

Thanks. : )

I have linen clothes that I wear next to the skin, and I wouldn't mind using something made from that fabric as underwear, actually. So not necessarily a problem, especially if you were wealthy? But I just read that common soldiers also tucked in the ends of their shirts as underwear, and I'd imagine they couldn't afford the same fine fabric.

Eeep. I clicked on that link to your 2011 entry and got reminded of my 2011 entry when I was such an incautiously overenthused baby fangirl. (BTW though, it's still true this many years later that you are one of my fave fic writers and podficcers.)

Moving along...on your rec I hunted down and bought D.K. Broster's The Jacobite Trilogy, which includes The Flight of the Heron. Wow, that is a lot of pages and in a very small type-face. Hope to be joining you et al in that fandom, but it's gonna take me a hella long time to read the canon.

it's still true this many years later that you are one of my fave fic writers and podficcers

Awww, thank you!

And fear not! You don't actually have to read all three books, just the first one. : ) The other two sadly don't contain both of the characters in the pairing. I actually plan to record Flight of the Heron for Librivox next year when the copyright runs out--a pity I haven't done so already or you could have listened to it instead.

And hey, you have a fitting icon...

Well, that will make the reading-time about two-thirds shorter (because slashy pairing ).

And yeah, I do try to match my icons to the content of my posts.

Ooh, if the copyright is running out next year do you think maybe someone will get it on Gutenberg? I'm many times more likely to read it if I can get my hands on an electronic copy...

Eventually it will end up on Gutenberg, no doubt. But I have no idea how long that will take--I mean, now that the public domain has started rolling forward in the US, I'm sure Gutenberg has its hands full with the new works, and I don't know how they choose what to work on, either.

This is why I just ordered myself a first edition of Flight of the Heron (for only $6.98!) so that I can read from that when I record it for Librivox. For newer editions, there's a complicated process to make sure the new edition doesn't have a newer copyright.

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Past and present fannishness

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