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A bit of Simm!Master fanart.

Predictably, it's all Hemingway's fault. And Arthur C. Clarke doesn't play by the rules.

Here are some I wrote:

• Again, demon armies marched on Hell.
• The mast rose from the sea.
• Nope, crypt's been abandoned since... well...
• Ignoring advice, he opened the door.
• Crested the hill. Raised sword. Prayed.

Title: A Million Shadows [10/?]
Author: Knudbrox
Characters: Ensemble
Rating: PG
Wordcount: 2,063 words
Disclaimer: Torchwood belongs to the BBC and I really hope they don't threaten to dump me in the Welsh countryside.
Spoilers: Yeah, expect to be spoiled for everything I can get my hands on.

( 'We've got a few handguns, some ammunition, and--' Gwen plopped back in her seat with a concerned frown. 'Grenades.' 'We've got grenades?' Owen asked, a spark of delight in his voice. )

Title: A Million Shadows [9/?]
Author: Knudbrox
Characters: Ensemble
Rating: PG
Wordcount: 1,942 words
Disclaimer: Torchwood belongs to the BBC and I really hope they don't threaten to dump me in the Welsh countryside.
Spoilers: Yeah, expect to be spoiled for everything I can get my hands on.

( 'I'm sick to death of hearing all about the bloody epidemic. Black fucking Death my arse,' Owen declared vehemently. 'They're just asleep.' 'Comatose,' Ianto corrected him. )

Title: A Million Shadows [8/?]
Author: Knudbrox
Characters: Ensemble
Rating: PG
Wordcount: 2,770 words
Disclaimer: Torchwood belongs to the BBC and I really hope they don't threaten to dump me in the Welsh countryside.
Spoilers: Yeah, expect to be spoiled for everything I can get my hands on.

( 'Right, so I've got this in one,' Owen announced, leaning back in his chair. 'It's sleeping sickness. African trypanosomiasis. Call the W.H.O., let them sort it out.' )

Title: A Million Shadows [7/?]
Author: Knudbrox
Characters: Ensemble
Rating: PG-13
Wordcount: 2,285 words
Disclaimer: Torchwood belongs to the BBC and I really hope they don't threaten to dump me in the Welsh countryside.
Spoilers: Yeah, expect to be spoiled for everything I can get my hands on.

( 'Alright, alright, here's one,' Gwen said, laughing. 'My mates and I -- we were all in my best friend's dorm at university -- got really drunk after exams one year, and we -- I don't remember who suggested it, probably either Becky or Dominic -- had the brilliant idea of playing strip Snap.' )

Title: A Million Shadows [6/?]
Author: Knudbrox
Characters: Ensemble
Rating: PG-13
Wordcount: 2,945 words
Disclaimer: Torchwood belongs to the BBC and I really hope they don't threaten to dump me in the Welsh countryside.
Spoilers: Yeah, expect to be spoiled for everything I can get my hands on.

( 'No truth serum, then? No bright lights in my eyes? No demanding to know where I was on some random date?' Mary teased. 'No bondage?' )

Title: A Million Shadows [5/?]
Author: Knudbrox
Characters: Ensemble
Rating: PG
Wordcount: 1,618 words
Disclaimer: Torchwood belongs to the BBC and I really hope they don't threaten to dump me in the Welsh countryside.
Spoilers: Yeah, expect to be spoiled for everything I can get my hands on.

( 'I don't know, Owen,' Gwen replied. 'You seem like you could use a little girl power in your life.' )

Title: A Million Shadows [4/?]
Author: Knudbrox
Characters: Ensemble
Rating: PG
Wordcount: 1,543 words
Disclaimer: Torchwood belongs to the BBC and I really hope they don't threaten to dump me in the Welsh countryside.
Spoilers: Yeah, expect to be spoiled for everything I can get my hands on.

( More than dreams ceasing or the sun rising through the mist over Cardiff Bay, Ianto's nearly pre-dawn appearance and a hot cup of coffee signalled 'good morning' to Jack's brain. )

Title: A Million Shadows [3/?]
Author: Knudbrox
Characters: Owen, Toshiko/Mary
Rating: R
Wordcount: 1,601 words
Disclaimer: Torchwood belongs to the BBC and I really hope they don't threaten to dump me in the Welsh countryside.
Spoilers: Yeah, expect to be spoiled for everything I can get my hands on.

( With his luck, though, if Owen were ever to get a whole week off, all seven days in a row, that would be the week that Torchwood suddenly had to investigate a strange nymphomanical alien invasion. )

Title: A Million Shadows [2/?]
Author: Knudbrox
Characters: Gwen/Rhys, Owen
Rating: PG
Wordcount: 1,259 words
Disclaimer: Torchwood belongs to the BBC and I really hope they don't threaten to dump me in the Welsh countryside.
Spoilers: Yeah, expect to be spoiled for everything I can get my hands on.

( But what she felt most guilty about -- and Torchwood seemed to be number one at skewing your priorities -- was after she'd had a tumbler of scotch and scrubbed the blood off her arms and finally stopped shaking, she had ended up leaning on Jack's shoulder in the dim early-morning twilight. )

Title: A Million Shadows [1/?]
Author: Knudbrox
Characters: Ianto Jones
Rating: PG
Wordcount: 1,142 words
Disclaimer: Torchwood belongs to the BBC and I really hope they don't threaten to dump me in the Welsh countryside.
Spoilers: Yeah, expect to be spoiled for everything I can get my hands on.
A/N: Starts at the end of 1.03 ("Ghost Machine"). Mildly AU.

( The entire world ran backwards, Ianto reflected... completely backwards from the way a reasonable world should work. )

Have you ever had a really stunningly dumb idea that you couldn't shake until you'd followed it through? Something you -- at its conception -- went, "This is the obvious product of too little sleep/wicked drugs/a deranged mind," but it still sounded kind of alright?

Enough with hypotheticals. Somehow, late this night, my brain went, "Heyyyyy, you know what would be cool? The eighth Doctor, but in kind of a Byzantine religious icon style! With a blank clock face instead of a halo! 'Cos he's a Tiiiime Loooord jesus christ it's late."

For your viewing pleasure:

LT. GILLETTE IS NOT FRENCH.

"Doesn't anyone know we hate the French? We fight wars against them! Did all those men die in vain on the field at Agincourt? Was the man who burned Joan of Arc simply wasting good matches?"¹

France and Spain were England's main enemies at the time, which would have held true even in England's Caribbean colonies. England was Protestant, tumultuous and at war (predictably) with one or both of them, off and on, through most of the very sketchy period Pirates of the Caribbean is set in. Lt. Gillette is in His Majesty's navy, and therefore is both mostly likely Anglican (not Catholic, that's France and Spain) and his family has been living in England probably for nearly seven hundred years.

Yes, that's right. Gillette's family probably hasn't been French since the Norman invasion² in 1066, when a whole lot of other French names came swarming into England. He would not self-identify as French, the Crown and government would not recognize him as French, and having enlisted in the English navy, they would not recognize him as French. He may or may not even be able to speak French. He would probably take offence at being lumped with those bloody Continental papists. You know, England's long-time ENEMY.

And based on what I can find, the Gillettes are from Norfolk specifically, "where they were seated from very early times and were granted lands by Duke William of Normandy, their liege Lord, for their distinguished assistance at the Battle of Hastings in 1066 A.D."³ Perhaps one would like to debate whether he's 'really' English since his family is Norman, but I think that is ridiculous.

Writing him as French since you think the French are hot is one thing, but let's not pretend it's anything other than fantasy-fulfillment.

1. BlackAdder III, "Nob and Nobility". Thanks, lechatnomade.
2. http://www.houseofnames.com/xq/asp.fc/qx/gillette-family-crest.htm
3. Ibid.

I'll cite more as I find it.

Incidentally, their coat of arms is 'Counter-ermine, on a bend sable, three fish heads couped argent.'

M and I went to see Beowulf and Grendel this evening. I had a long and stressful day at work, and surely a Butler-led film adaptation of one of my favorite epic poems would save the day!

Oh how wrong I was.

It was amusing enough, because we couldn't stop laughing. It was spectacularly bad. Seriously. The editing, the script, the plot (rather, lack thereof), the idea of making Grendel a retarded Cro Magnon... And that doesn't even count the fact that Wealtheow looked more like a Roman patrician's wife, that Hrothgar wouldn't change out of his nightie and was drunk off his face most of the time (M: "We were jealous of him"), and that there was truly inappropriate sex SPOILER ALERT SPOILER ALERT SPOILER ALERT you lucky bastards between Grendel and a witch-whore that was written into the movie. I SAW IT COMING. I DIDN'T WANT TO, BUT I KNEW IT WAS GOING THERE, HORRIBLY. THE HORROR! THE HORROR!

What was also jarring is that they swore like moderners. "Fucking trolls," this and "fucking trolls," that. "Stop fucking sheep, Beowulf. Fuck." At least it's Anglo-Saxon.

I love Beowulf. I have read it entirely through several times. (M: "You own an irrational number of copies.") What baffles me is how they got from Beowulf to this travesty. How did they get a retarded rock-throwing barbarian from Grendel? Where did they find the iconoclast hippie witch-whore ("see, it is an unbroken line of witches from the Burning Times!") in the poem? When did Hrothgar become a slobbering drunk? Why is there a disturbingly-enthusiastic Irish priest trying to convert everyone?* Why does Beowulf only swim in ringmail shirts?

(* I know why they did this; it was a heavy-handed attempt to explain the Christian influence in the poem. BAD CHOICE.)

So, to save you, we present the...

THE BEOWULF AND GRENDEL DRINKING GAME!

Take a drink every time...

- there is an instance of urination
- Beowulf declares, "I am BEOWULF!"
- someone references "TROLLS!"
- there is a reference to beastiality
- the Geats burst out of the meadhall to find absolutely nothing (double drinks if you think it's an homage to Robin Hood: Men in Tights)
- the Irish priest baptizes someone
- there is an instance of decapitation (double drinks when someone lovingly cradles the disembodied head)
- there is bizarre sex or sexual tension between one of Grendel's brood and any Dane or Geat
- you see pasty white Dane flesh
- you see a creepy feral child (double drinks if bearded)
- there is a funeral
- there is a full moon
- Wealtheow smacks down Hrothgar (double drinks if literally)
- there is an excessively-long pensive scene with Danes/Geats posing on rocks
- Beowulf swims in chainmail
- Grendel's mom gets grabby (double drinks if they don't say anything about it to anyone else)

For the alcoholics or the truly desperate, every time...

- you fail to understand Gerard Butler's incomprehensibly thick Scottish brogue (double drinks every time you think, "What the fuck is a Scot doing as a 'Geat'?")
- Grendel skips/frolics
- Grendel says, "DOOM"
- Grendel gibbers, "Nananana"
- Beowulf broods or has an existential crisis
- someone says, "fuck"
- you think, "Where the fuck did the witch come from?"
- the witch talks about whoring
- Beowulf goes to see/hit upon the witch
- Hrothgar acts like a drunken wuss (double drinks if you wish you were as shit-faced as him)
- you wonder about the logistics of armour
- someone gets hit (in the head) with a rock

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Love is terrible and glorious and exhilarating and bewildering.

I had not thought it would ever be love that would lead me away from the Brotherhood. After all, Cassiel followed, served and protected Elua out of love. I hear tell that there are Houses of the Night Court which claim Cassiel followed Elua out of eros rather than filias, but that is beyond my knowledge; and I can hear the Cassiline Prefect, in his booming voice, declaring such ideas heresy.

Love as thou wilt, though. Perhaps it is true.

But out of love was the Cassiline Brotherhood born, to faithfully and tirelessly protect and serve. I swore my vows out of honor, but I now follow, serve and protect my lady, Phèdre nó Delaunay, out of love. The Prefect would have released me from my oath; but I stood at the crossroads, as I would time and time again, and chose as Cassiel to stay by her side.




I think it sometimes ironic that those who love as they wilt and make Cassiel's Choice become anathema, and those who do not become Prefects.

Ah, well. Love old sanctuary stones or anguissettes, as thou wilt.

You can never go home again. It's an appallingly trite sentiment, but one with an ounce of truth to it: after you have travelled to somewhere so foreign it makes your head reel with the brilliant riot of colours and the babble of an awkward tongue, once your lips have burned with spiced meats and been soothed with cool tea, once you've finally learned how to tie that goddamned long sash into a turban--

Then you're called home, back to Terre d'Ange, ripped from the Akkadian casbah where you finally developed a taste for the spice and learned the tongue, back to court and sober doublets and subtlety. Poets sing their songs of the lands that all D'Angelines love, but there's no space for a D'Angeline that has learned to love other lands; for one that sometimes treads emerald-green fields and grey stone halls and longs for sun-baked dust and vivid white plaster. Saffron is too precious here to use as liberally as they do in Khebbel im-Akkad.

Some morning Barquiel L'Envers wakes early and forgets that he lies on a feather bed in the City of Elua; he expects to hear the calls of the faithful to prayer, to look out an ornate window and see the soaring minarets gleaming gold in the rising sun. He is greeted by a subdued pastoral landscape, the verdant fields and wide river Elua and his Companions claimed. It is not enough. He ties his turban around his close-cropped blond hair and ignores those others who claim it is pretentious affectation; they reveal their ignorance with every syllable.

The oddest gift I ever received was for a pittance, straight from the hands of the Dowayne of Cereus House. Phèdre, an anguissette, and the record-keepers of the Night Court negligent enough that I had to tell them of what a treasure they held. A beautiful girl 'flawed' by the red mote in her eye, rare and precious beyond reckoning, and the ignorant heads of the Night-Blooming Flowers reckoned her unworthy.

Their loss, my gain. Such is the way these things go and thus it was that I taught Phèdre alongside my first pupil, Alcuin, and told them both: all knowledge is worth having. It was knowledge alone that transformed the dark-haired girl from a whore's unwanted get, too imperfect to stay in the courtesans' Houses, to Kushiel's chosen, who would be sought after the world over and whose actions would affect the rise and fall of entire nations, win wars and secure thrones.

Mighty Kushiel, of rod and weal
Late of the brazen portals
With blood-tipp'd dart a wound unhealed
Pricks the eyen of chosen mortals.

Phèdre proved a bright, curious and apt pupil. My ducats were well-spent.

"Cordial Negotiations"
Snape (HP) / Peter Wiggin (Ender's Game) crossover
PG - gen
1680 words
#458 on The Pairing List That Ate Fandom -- for thewlisian_afer, who insisted I write it

( The boy was young, sixteen or maybe seventeen, and carried himself with the natural assumption of power that was as familiar and still faintly distasteful to Severus as sulphur. )

5 things Jack Sparrow would love to tell Will Turner about Elizabeth for eirena

1. "You needn't put her on such a pedestal, y'know. That lass wants a man what ain't afraid of her bein' flesh an' blood. Trust me."

2. "What happened on Rumrunners' Island? Why, I wouldn't be a gent if I were intendin' to say too much 'bout that, now would I?"

3. "She loves bein' bitten. Aye, I swear it."

4. "No, she loves being called 'Miss Swann.' Makes her feel ladylike. Don't think again about it."

5. "I'm not sure how you did it -- not being wholly equipped -- but Lizzy's got an excellent hand for... swordsmanship."

Title: Five Ways to Keep From Drowning
Author: Knudbrox
Characters: James Norrington/Jack Sparrow
Rating: R - NC-17
Wordcount: 920 words.
Disclaimer: Not mine. Don't sue, I'm already poor.
Spoilers: Through DMC.
A/N: For andrealyn, for the James Norrington Ficathon. She asked for: Norrington drunk, Sparrow/Norrington, Groves or Gillette finding Norrington in Tortuga. I did my best, though it's been a long damn time since I really wrote explicit smut and even longer since I've written slash, but I hope it satisfies. Additionally, she asked for Norrington not being emo, which I couldn't wholly avoid. Blasted muse.

( ... )