As the "reblogging" culture of Tumblr becomes more pervasive, I thought I'd better make it clear what I'm okay with you doing with my public posts. Everything listed here is in addition to commenting on my journal, which is always welcome.

All of these permissions extend only to noncommercial use of my content. You may not use any of my content for commercial purposes.


My Fanfiction

YOU MAY: Write remixes, sequels, prequels, responses, or whatever. Make art or illustrations. Review, recommend, discuss, and link to fics. Translate a story or record a podcast of it so long as you let me know and give me appropriate credit as the author. Print or save copies (please make sure my name is attached as author).

YOU MAY NOT: Add my story to any archive without my permission. Repost any story in its entirely on your own journal, blog, or Tumblr even if you credit me.


My Nonfiction Public Posts

YOU MAY: Link, discuss, write response or follow-up posts on your own journal, blog, or Tumblr. Quote portions of my post(s) as needed.

YOU MAY NOT: Repost any post in its entirety on your own journal, blog, or Tumblr even if you credit me.



If you have any questions, just drop me a line here or PM me.



Crossposted at Dreamwidth ( comments); you can comment here or there.

This list includes all of my posted fanfiction, except for unfinished things and a few short pieces that I never even gave titles to. All my stories on LJ are also tagged; see the "fic" tags on my sidebar.

Within each category, stories are listed in reverse chronological order with the most recent at the top. I've included only the title and main characters here; see the header of each story for rating, any warnings, etc. Generally speaking, the first character listed is the POV character.

Please let me know if there are any problems with these links.


( Blake's 7 )

( Buffy the Vampire Slayer )

( Discworld )

( Doctor Who )

( due South )

( Harry Potter )

( Simon Pegg and/or Nick Frost fandoms )

( Tintin )

I just realized that I haven't posted in over a week. My work and my life both got unexpectedly busy. I've been around and reading, but I haven't had the time/mental energy to compose a coherent post.

So, here, have a semi-coherent one about things I've been reading, watching, and thinking about.

( click here to read more )



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I have not actually watched Downton Abbey and have no intention to, but yesterday I learned, through other sources, that (sort of spoilery I guess):(skip) the only queer character is a selfish, amoral villain.

Has anyone perchance critiqued this approach? I feel like what I've mostly seen all over the internets is either "OMG Downton Abbey is so great, yay!" or "Downton Abbey is a silly soap opera," but no "Let's talk about problematic and stereotypical representation." Admittedly, though, I haven't been looking for it.



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This is relevant to all my interests:



I got it from Deviates Inc., a marvellous Tumblr of queer images (there's an RSS feed for it on DreamWidth created by yours truly; note that some images are NSFW). I traced the photo back through the intarwebs as far as BuzzFeed, but there doesn't seem to be any identifying information anywhere. Adding to my frustration, I can't see enough of the uniform to be sure of nationality, although the stand collar has me thinking Soviet dress uniform. Anyone have any ideas about nationality or date? (If it is Soviet, the kiss isn't necessarily an indication that the men are a couple--my understanding it was, perhaps still is, not unusual in Russia for men to kiss on the lips as an expression of friendship--but, hey, that also doesn't prove they're not a couple, right?)


( While I'm posting images, have a couple of beautiful 1930s menswear advertisements )



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Why is there no catchall verb for that thing we do with stories? As in, "I X'd a book, a film, and a radio drama last week." I don't like "consumed," which suggests I scoffed all the goodies and there are none left for you.

Anyway, here's a bit about a book and a film I recently X'd. Both war-related, naturally.

The One That Got Away is a 1957 British POW film, with a twist: the POW is German, the captors he's trying to escape from are British. It's more or less a true story, based on the adventures of Franz von Werra, the only British-held POW to escape during the Second World War. A good part of the film's interest, for me, was seeing the standard POW narrative tropes (the devious interrogators, the solemn warnings from the camp commandant that escape is out of the question, the noise to hide the sounds of tunnelling, the bluffs that could be exposed at any moment, the escapees' struggle against the elements, and so on) with the perspective reversed. It's far from the greatest film ever--there is basically no characterization and very little attempt to explore any narrative possibility beyond the adventure story--but may be worth a look if you like this kind of thing. One big point in its favor is casting an actual German actor, Hardy Kruger, as Werra.

Pat Barker's 2007 novel Life Class is a much more complex kind of story. It follows two art students at the Slade School, Paul Tarrant and Elinor Brooke, through the summer of 1914 and into the early days of the First World War. Paul and Elinor have a sort-of love affair but are divided by their war experiences (he joins the ambulance corps, she stays at the Slade School), their different attitudes towards the war (he finds it necessary to represent the war in art, she resists doing so), and ultimately by their own personalities more than any external factor. I was trying to think of a way to explain the book in a single sentence, and decided on: It's the story of two people who think they ought to be in love with each other but keep finding they aren't.

Pat Barker became famous for her First World War novels, and I was a bit surprised that I found the early sections of the novel nearly as engaging as the ones set during the war. The war appears here as a tremendously disruptive force, one that changes people's lives even if, like Elinor, they want nothing to do with it. Barker doesn't make the summer before the war idyllic by any means, but there's still a sense of possibility cut off, of lives foreclosed.

As much as I admire Barker as a writer, many of her novels apart from Regeneration--and I mean the novel, not the whole trilogy--feel underdeveloped to me, and this is true of Life Class even though I liked it. Barker specializes in spare prose, glancing moments, fragments, almost shaping the story out of the negative space where the narration doesn't go, and I often found myself wanting more. In particular I wanted to know more about some of the minor characters (though not the antagonist figure, who is a bit too oilily unfeeling and careerist to be plausible), and the events of the last few chapters would, I think, have benefitted from a more leisurely pace.

One reason I like Barker's books is that she doesn't shy away from homoeroticism nor from queer characters. In Life Class, ( spoilers for details and one significant plot development, although this isn't really a book that can be spoiled )



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Sometimes simple food is so damn good. My grocery store had pork sirloin roast (not as tender as the loin but more flavorful) on sale, so I bought a little one and roasted it up in a simple rub of olive oil and minced sage; I also cut some slits in the roast and stuck in slivers of garlic, which from now on I will always do because it makes an amazing difference in the flavor. In the pan around the pork I roasted a cut-up potato with a bit more olive oil and sage, and in a separate pan I roasted some asparagus spears with olive oil and a bit of salt.

This produced a very satisfying dinner for very little effort, plus a nice chunk of leftover pork roast for sandwiches and things.



Crossposted at Dreamwidth ( comments); you can comment here or there.

The advancing Allied front lines have almost reached Colditz--the only remaining questions are whether the Americans or Russians will get there first, and what the SS might do in a last-ditch defense of the Reich.

( Click here to read more )



Crossposted at Dreamwidth ( comments); you can comment here or there.

I got my copies of The Wooden Horse and its companion volume The Tunnel today. I've been dying to read The Wooden Horse in its proper edition for grown-ups, and I've already noticed one change (when Peter daydreams about bathtubs he pictures one big enough for two, a detail inexpicably left out of my other "for young people" edition).

But you can imagine my dismay when my new copy of The Tunnel turned out to be, yes you guessed it, an edition "specially revised and edited by the author for young people." *headdesk* I've e-mailed the bookseller gently chiding them for not including this damned important information in their description and asking if they have a copy of the real book I can buy (in addition to the one I already have, as I don't want to go through the hassle of trying to return a book internationally).

But in the mean time, the bowdlerized version is probably still plenty homoerotic, if TWH is anything to go by.



Crossposted at Dreamwidth ( comments); you can comment here or there.

Both American and Soviet troops are advancing rapidly into Germany, as the British officers learn by listening to the BBC on their illicit radio. Throughout the episode there are repeated air raid alarms.

Major Mohn, listening to the German news, is distressed and argues to Sergeant Winter that the Germans will inevitably win in the end. ( Click here to read more. )



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One of the many interesting things about the show Callan is that its hero, the eponymous spy, assassin, and man of troubled conscience, is also what we'd now call a geek. He makes and collects model soldiers and plays war games with them. His war gaming figures heavily in the 1970 episode "Act of Kindness," part of which takes place at a war games convention. There are several scenes of game play (including rolling dice to determine casualties, morale, etc.), and although I'm not a war gamer, I find this look at early geekery fascinating.

It will come as no surprise that Callan's hobby is mocked by his boss and colleagues, no matter how strongly he insists that his models are not "toys." I certainly wouldn't call the show geek-positive (Callan's hobby is meant to show, in part, that his life is lonely and empty), but it also demonstrates the pleasure and friendship people find in their geekery.

/umpteenth Callan promo post



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I'm going to summarize this episode pretty briefly, since I don't think it deserves more.

Three high-ranking American officers (Colonel Dodd, Captain Nugent, and Phil Carrington, now a major in the US army) arrive in Colditz from Gestapo custody. The Gestapo having failed to get the information it wanted from them, Major Mohn puts in place an elaborate scheme with the cooperation of both the Kommandant and Ulmann. ( click here to read more )



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1) Still deep in what I've taken to calling the World Wars Megafandom. Today in a secondhand bookstore I picked up a copy of The Enemy Below (stop giggling!) by Commander D. A. Rayner. Not mere D. A. Rayner, oh no, but Commander D. A. Rayner. It's a 1957 novel about a destroyer-vs-U-boat "duel," and so far it's not what anyone would call good, but it is very interesting for details of shipboard life and has its moments of charm, such as the friendship between the British captain and the ship's doctor (the doctor, at 29, is "four years older than any other officer in the ship," except the captain, who is 32; I continue to be amazed at how very young officers typically were during the world wars). It also contains this priceless moment as the captain drinks a cup of "kai" (navy cocoa, apparently): ". . . it tasted like a hot chocolate mousse. He licked his lips appreciatively. The Americans, he had heard, drank coffee on the bridge at sea. He thanked heaven he was in the British Navy."

2) I've been obsessively listening to Old Old Fashioned, by Frightened Rabbit. If I were a vidder, I would make an awesome vid to this about the wonder that is historical fandoms.

3) Still wishing you would all watch Colditz and Wings (the 1977-78 BBC show about First World War pilots, not the later and completely unrelated American show; 'ware MASSIVE spoilers in the comments of the post I linked to) so that their fandoms could consist of more people than me and halotolerant. Though I cannot think of a better person with whom to share a fandom of two. I just get the evangelizing urge sometimes, ( click here to read more )

4) I'm also still watching Callan, although series 3 feels lacking compared to the first two. Specifically, it lacks Toby Meres (played, in case you missed it in the first three posts I've raved about Callan, by Anthony Valentine). I'm eagerly awaiting ( click here to read more )

5) I've started reading John Keegan's The Second World War trying to get a better handle on the general history. It's a readable and thoughtful book on the whole, but I do think that a serious historian writing in 1989 ought to know better than the use the term "Red Indian." Really.

6) Today I learned that sometimes the secret to making progress on a story is to throw out everything you're already written and start over.

7) And in conclusion, Trader Joe's Lemon and Triple Ginger Snap ice cream is delicious. *looks sadly at empty bowl*



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The episode opens with the British officers having dinner in the dorm. The news is read to them by Lt. Michael Brown, who every night listens to the news with the French contingent on their wireless, translates it, and reports back (the French have two wireless sets, the British have none). Ulmann comes in during the news reading and Simon goads him by admitting exactly what they were doing, which Ulmann reports to the Kommandant. Mohn, angry that "propaganda" is being spread around the camp, demands a crackdown to find the wireless, but is taken aback to learn that the news about German defeats in north Africa is true.

( Click here to read more. )



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. . . but war stories are awesome.

Not inevitably awesome--Sturgeon's Law applies here as everywhere--but the good ones are.

At the moment I feel like I'm having a second childhood, reading and watching all the things I absolutely craved as a tween and adolescent but had no access to. And although it's a second childhood, it's also in a sense a first boyhood, because the last time around I was somewhat ashamed of my interest in this kind of thing and eventually suppressed it, aware that it was seen as inappropriate for a girl and not aware that it was possible I might not be a girl. (Those sorts of gendered distinctions are stupid bullshit anyway, it's just that in my case the gender wasn't even correct.)

Anyway, I'm enjoying the uniforms and airplanes and comradeship and amazing feats of survival and love in the face of death. (And because I'm mostly not watching/reading utter crap, there's also grief and fear, trauma, emotional damage, pain and disability, class distinctions, moral grey areas, and precious little glory or honor. None of which is properly speaking fun, but it makes for damn good stories.)

Still taking recs for homoerotic war stories if anyone has any. I can now recommend the 1977-78 BBC series Wings (with two caveats: first that besides the usually good war stuff, there's a deadly dull soap-operaish home front storyline [the better writers play it down, but unfortunately the series creator and main writer is not among them], and second that I haven't seen the last few episodes yet).

I'm still trying to lure more people into watching the POW drama Colditz, which is extremely well-written and well-acted, is not in any way jingoistic, pro-war, or morally simple, and also for most of its run features a beautiful often-shirtless young man. Beautiful young man has a deeply intimate friendship with another man, which is not a plot point and seldom even a matter of dialogue, but which is omnipresent in the performances once you start to look for it. (And I'm not just talking about "OMG they're standing next to each other!" tinhattery, although I'm more than capable of that, but about things like them discreetly holding each other's hands in one scene.) Let me give you an extra incentive: if you watch the show, you can read the two wonderful stories halotolerant has written in the fandom. (I suppose you could read them anyway, but you'll like them better if you know the characters.)

The first series of Secret Army is also good, although bleak as hell; I found the second series less interesting (plus it starts a long slide into tedious anti-communist propaganda) and have for the moment given up watching about 5 episodes into S2.

*hopes for more recs*

It occurred to me recently to wonder why, given that male/male romance is a thriving subgenre now, its typology is so very narrow. It's all either about vampires/werewolves/elves, or about rich New York executives or Hollywood actors, or cowboys or pirates or private detectives, or occasionally it's about Regency or Victorian aristos who fall for their stable boys. War--any war--provides ample opportunity to write about love between men with all the angst anyone could ever want, and yet there don't seem to be a lot of male/male love stories set in wartime.

(NB: It is possible that I'm wrong about this. I don't actually care for romance as a genre, even when it is about two men, and I've only ever read a few male/male romances. But the impression that I get from seeing other people's posts about m/m romances, and also from a quick glance at the Torquere Press website just now, is that war stories are surprisingly few and far between. Go figure. If there were decently written, properly researched m/m love stories--I hesitate to say "romances" because of generic implications I don't care for--like that, I might well read them.)



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Dick and another officer, Captain Walsh, are making observations of Colditz's (closed) theater at night and during the day. They discover that it's possible to get out through a window behind the stage into a corridor and then down into a light well, which when the guard is changed has a two-minute period without a sentry.

( Click here to read more )



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The Wooden Horse is a 1949 novel by Eric Williams which I read as part of my current obsession with POW stories and WWI/WWII stories in general. It's a very lightly fictionalized revision of Williams's earlier memoir about his escape from Stalag Luft III (where the mass breakout known as "the great escape" later took place).

As is often the case with POW narratives, truth is a good deal stranger than pure fiction would ever dare to be. Williams and two companions escaped by tunnelling, but in order to make faster progress and lessen the chances of being caught, they wanted to start the tunnel as close as possible to the wire. So they came up with the Trojan Horse-inspired idea of building a vaulting horse, hollow inside, in which a man could hide and work on the tunnel while other prisoners vaulted. The tunnel opening was disguised with boards and a layer of dirt.

Astonishingly, it worked, and the three men escaped in October 1943. They split up, with Williams and his friend Michael Codner taking one route and Oliver Philpot taking another, but they all managed to get to Sweden and were reunited there before returning to England.

As far as I know, the novel fictionalizes very little but the names: Eric Williams becomes "Peter," Michael Codner is "John," and Oliver Philpot is "Phil." The first half describes coming up with the plan and digging the tunnel, the second half focuses on Peter and John's escape to the German port of Stettin, where they find passage to Denmark and then to Sweden.

I got my copy of the book from Paperback Swap, and unfortunately I didn't realize that I was getting the "special edition for teen-agers." I assume there's some bowdlerization, perhaps some simplification of language and so on, but what's left is still really interesting and I wanted to talk about it. I'm hoping to get a copy of the real book soon and compare the two.

( Click here to read more about the book )



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Callan has just startled me by having an actual canonical gay character. On television. In 1969. And he's sympathetic, neither a villain nor a joke.

The storyline wasn't handled all that well by 2012 standards, but for its time (only two years after homosexuality was decriminalized in Britain) I'd say it gets at least 8/10. Way to go, show.



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This is sadly the last episode written by the brilliant Arden Winch, who wrote S1's two Dick Player-centric episodes ("Name, Rank, and Number" and "Lord, Didn't It Rain") and who himself served in British Intelligence.

Via a recaptured French escaper, Simon learns about the escape lines in existence throughout Europe to help escaped POWs get out of German-held territory. He decides that Colditz escapees need to be able to use the lines, but doing so involves getting a contact name from British intelligence. With the help of a former intelligence officer (who I think is Palmer, although I don't recall ever hearing his name in the actual episode), Simon sends a coded postcard to his wife Cathy, putting in hints that he hopes will alert her that the message is unusual and should be brought to someone's attention.

( Click here to read more. )



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Title: Evening Up the Score
Fandom: Callan
Characters: Toby Meres/Simon Gould, David Callan
Rating: Teen
Warnings: Violent imagery
Word count: 200
Summary: Callan oughtn't to be smug. No one is normal in their job.
Notes: Set during "Let's Kill Everybody" and spoilery for that episode. It also won't make sense if you haven't seen the ep.


( Click here to read )



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