Tweague

So I was having a particularly awful case of Blorbo Brain this morning, where I just wanted to write nonsense about My Fictional Guys; I'm already writing other stuff about them, but it's quite long and at present quite sad (stuck in the 'hurt' bit of the h/c dynamic for at least another 5000 words, I would guess) and I wanted something to satisfy the brain itch. So I went touting for prompts on the WEJverse Discord, and ysande was good enough to indulge me ^_^ She asked for 'basically every joyous coming of age summer story', and set off about three dozen different ficlet ideas; here's the first of them. It may eventually be the start of a longer story about this particular holiday, the first time Bertie goes to Lorrington, if other ideas spawn around the same time period; in my head it takes place the days before ysande's glorious prompt-fest fill where Gimlet gets sunburn because he's determined to do all the fun holiday things with Bertie, all at once, right now. Unbetaed and scruffy round the edges, but maybe it'll turn into something better later.

Bertie + Gimlet, school age, Gen, c.2k.

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( What We Did On Our Holidays I )

Some time I'll post something here that's not just a list of things I've already posted to AO3. (Possibly.) Early spring was a bit of a dry spell, writing-wise, mostly because I was tunnelling through a heap of research books for Trigonometry Part II (and still failing to actually write it.) And of course, because I was resolutely intending to write that, I actually ended up writing completely different, far more self-indulgent things, because writing is most fun when it feels faintly illicit.

It's really all Bertie (and mostly Gimlet) all the time here at the moment :S This is the effect of ten years of Very Particular Feelings about these characters and this pairing, and never having the chance to sit down and write it before. I'm sure it'll calm down soon when I've got the initial flurry out of my system. Probably. (Incidentally, I was vaguely intending to group my Bertie &/ Gimlet fics on AO3 into a series, just for chronological ease of reading. Does anyone have any feelings on whether I should just stick them all in one series, or perhaps do two versions - one Complete, one Expurgated, where I could just put the gen fics, rather than the ones that have a slightly more, ah, niche audience?? I don't know if there's anyone out there just reading the gen who would rather avoid the explicit content if possible. Or would that be confusing? They're all the same continuity in my head, but the relationship set-up means it actually makes just as much sense (or just as little) without the sex.)

ANYWAY. Since the last update here I've posted:
Negotiation - 11.5k, rated E, Bertie/Gimlet, with the usual selection of kink warnings (mild and badly-negotiated BDSM, basically) - please check the tags if concerned. Direct sequel to 'Correction'.
Alignment - 1k, rated G, Bertie + Gimlet school-age snippet about how public school is weird and kissing is weirder.
Hindsight - 11k, rated G, mostly Bertie with interjections by Gimlet and Lord Peter Wimsey. Five times Bertie should probably have had his eyes tested, and once he actually might have done. A present for ysande, who is a fabulous whump-enabler.
Floriography - 3.8k, rated G, Bertie grotty childhood backstory. A promptfic response to the lovely 1st May promptfest on sholio's DW.
rarer gifts than gold - 5.7k, rated G, Bertie and Gimlet on May Day just before and just after World War II. Another 1st May promptfic.

And under the goblin brain imprint, which allows me to post filth without feeling too fussy about the poor characterisation or repetitious adjectives, we have:
leave but ash - 5k, rated E, Bertie/Gimlet, as usual unsafe insane but luckily consensual.

While I don't think Gimlet is nearly as much in need of a continuity post as von Stalhein was (SO MUCH of this material comes straight from 'King of the Commandos'), I thought I'd sling one together so I didn't need to scrabble around for references so much. I'm afraid I haven't page-numbered this one yet though - I have been utterly spoiled by digital editions with a search function. This is also very much a work in progress, especially the very vague notes on the other Kittens - I do plan to go back and edit when I turn up more things.

( This way to everything you ever wanted to know about Captain Lorrington 'Gimlet' King but were too afraid to ask. )

Day 2 of the 12 Days of Christmas challenge, and it's a Variations special! Did you know that February 1929 was really, really, really, really, really cold across northern Europe? Algy now knows this.

Day/Prompt(s): ❄️ Little lie ❄️ Trapped together in a snowstorm ❄️ “I thought you knew where you were going?!” ❄️ “I don’t know what to say, but it’s Christmas, and we’re all in misery.” —National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation

Title: February, 1929: Icebound
Pairing: Algy Lacey/Erich von Stalhein (Variations 'verse.)
Rating: Teen and above (extremely mild and vague sex-mention.)
Words: c.2.3k

“Is it normally like this?” he asked von Stalhein on the first of the month, as they stood near the hangar at Tempelhof, waiting for the plane to be ready. He was wearing all the layers he normally needed to feel comfortable at ten thousand feet, and still he could feel the chill.

“No,” von Stalhein had replied. “It is not.”

(Posted here on AO3.)

Fic in a Box reveals are up, and my absolutely-not-a-surprise-to-anyone-I-suspect contributions were:

A Space Between for ysande - G rated, 4.3k of absolutely self-indulgent id product about Gimlet decompressing after 'Goes Again' with the help of some extremely tiny foxhound puppies (and also Bertie).

and
Trigonometry for philomytha - G rated, 27k (!!!), aka the fic which would not stop writing itself. I started out with ideas for ficcing the whole Biggles/Marie/vS arc up into post-Looks Back, assuming it'd wind up somewhere in the 12-15k range. I Have Seldom Been More Incorrect. I hope to be able to return to this in the new year to actually write, y'know, the majority of the actual plot of the series. Especially looking forward to Marie grilling vS after he returns mildly concussed for his debrief after &Co with Cronfelt's blood spatter still on his sleeve, and to vS's moderate nervous breakdown in the direction of Lotte after the Hungarian Revolution. I have so many plans.

I had so much fun with both of these, thank you for the fabulous prompts!! And there were so many lovely things posted, I just went and rolled around in the archive for a few days. Biggles fandom continuing to go above and beyond ^_^

Also, I've just realised that between these, the cursed!vS fic I wrote for Fall into Horror, Variations, oh god the ancient Heyer AU, and a few other oddments, I may have posted about 180k of fic ancient and modern in just over the last month??? My God, guys, I am so sorry, you must be absolutely sick of the sight of me :S well joke's on you now you get CHRISTMAS FIC and also KINKMEME RESPONSES it is okay to mute me though :S

Nah, let's post the chaos-bomb sex pollen AU chapter first, shall we.

So a while back I asked Gatty to prompt me for a fic, and somewhere at the bottom of a long and complex list of extremely interesting prompts there was ‘uhhhh idk sex pollen or something’ and I went BINGO THAT’S THE ONE. So here we are, I guess. You know things have got badly out of hand with an AU when you start writing AUs of it. So here we are: THE VARIATIONS-VERSE SEX POLLEN AU. It takes place somewhere around this point in continuity, after Algy has started getting a bit hot under the collar about von Stalhein but before he actually does anything about it. It is not canonical for the regular Variations-verse. Distinctly the Wrong Sort Of Trope for the main continuity.

This is an extremely classical sex pollen fic (so much so that it contains ACTUAL POLLEN, or at any rate spores: no plausibility handwaves, no wacky science, just pure botanical vibes). As such, of course, the consent is distinctly murky. However, under normal circumstances these two characters are very much attracted to one another and will shortly (in canon) get to the point of consenting very enthusiastically (though I guess the inherent set-up of this 'verse makes consent a bit ropey; damnit Erich); they just haven’t quite got themselves to that point yet in this story. As such, I personally don’t find the consent issue to be too problematic, but ymmv.

I uhhhhh went for a setting that is in keeping with canon but not in keeping with real life. It’s not worse than the average romance novel but it’s not better either. Beware mild period-typical orientalist troping related to Arabic desert peoples, a briefly-referenced made up ritual practice and one presumably dodgy Arabic phrase (thanks Google translate). My sincere apologies for all of this.

(Another time, another place): thirst, hunger, heat - Algy/von Stalhein, rated M/E (ymmv); dubcon because sex pollen. c.8.3k.

And another one! Don't worry, I will run out of material in a couple of days, then I can stop cluttering up your dashes with updates :D

July-December, 1927: Seven Entr'actes In Search Of A Finale - in which my titles and my tags both finally get completely out of hand. G, but with WE Johns-appropriate levels of hands appreciation, and we all know what that means. 8.3k words. Seven scenes over six months, as Algy becomes accustomed to Berlin and spending time with von Stalhein. With full supporting cast of Schubert quartets, Brecht-Weill commentary of dubious merit, references to the BBC Radio 4 comedy show 'Cabin Pressure', and gratuitous use of Welsh. Also Algy gets shot at, again, a bit.

Also, it has a playlist! Because my personal vice as a fic writer is my absolute compulsion to pretend that music which is of interest to me will also be of interest to the characters I'm writing about.

Okay. So here’s a tale from the Old Times. Back when I was last in Biggles fandom, in the old LJ days, there was an idea that a bunch of us liked to bat around. It was inspired, largely, by how much of a little sh*t Biggles can be to Algy. What if - we imagined - what if Biggles was *so* objectionable to Algy that von Stalhein saw his opportunity to break up the gang by seducing Algy away? Von Stalhein had, after all, mentioned how lucky Biggles was, in finding such a competent team; he even said that he’d tried putting such a team together himself. What if he’d taken the logical next step, and just - poached Biggles’ crew? One of our members, potatofiend, wrote a series of ficlets that were von Stalhein talking Algy into joining his team some time in the 1930s (there was a lot of tying Algy to chairs, iirc); others of us joined in. It was not a very serious notion. It was called the GPC scenario - the universe where Biggles acted like a Giant Psychotic Cock. (I still call it that in my file names, lol.)

It is possible that I might have got a *little* over-invested.

I jettisoned some of the elements that seemed harder to align with canon; substituted Algy and Biggles just having a truly wretched 1920s for the idea of Biggles being irrationally objectionable; and I idly prodded some ideas about the sort of tack von Stalhein might have taken if he really had wanted to bring Algy over to his side in the early canon. It ended up - like this.

This is where my tropiest tropes and most melodramatic instincts go to nest, I’m afraid. The grand sweeping Algy/von Stalhein epic no one asked for, complete with perilous missions, walks in the Tiergarten, Greek islands, and a sex-pollen AU, with a heady bouquet of ‘oh no this was a *terrible* mistake’ and a whiff of impending doom. At least, it will be Algy/von Stalhein eventually - some time around part 8, I think. Look forward to that.

For those of you who have read Gatty’s utterly delightful Polyphony, this is part of the background, or at least the start of it. I’ve so far written up to the start of 1929, so things haven’t fallen apart yet. But they will. NOTE: This will be heading, at least vaguely, into 1930s Berlin. Algy will be leaving in around 1933/34, and I’m not going to go into any great detail about - *gestures vaguely* - the general awfulness. I don’t think tropey Biggles AU fic is a great venue for that, surprisingly. But it will be hanging about in the background; inevitably. I will tag and warn appropriately if I get that far.

I’ve posted the first two sections on AO3 so far: I’ll probably post the next few over the next week or so. After that there’s no more until I write some more.

This is less me dropping a dead sparrow on the fandom's collective doormat, more of a whole dead swan. I’ve called the series ‘Variations’, which is dull, but probably better than The GPCverse, all things considered. SO. HERE WE GO.

November, 1923: Old Soldiers - c.3000 words, G rated. Algy chats with a ghost in the London mist.
August, 1926: Sanssouci - c.8000 words, G rated. They must stop meeting like this.

Here is me, logging in again, with the latest terrifying resurrections from the depths of my old LJ activity. I do write new fic sometimes, I promise. This one is. Even more ridiculous than the average. I can only apologise. I also recognise that 50K of heavy Georgette Heyer Regency romance pastiche with some hastily-constructed gender-swapping is not everyone's idea of a good time. I, at least, had a tremendously good time when writing this in about 2012, and I think it shows. A piece of total flummery, with a full cast of hussars, regency celebrities, shady Prussians, dubious street urchins, and Bertie's turmeric-coloured pantaloons. Towser also makes a brief guest appearance.

A Sudden Strange Fancy - rated G; Biggles/Algy with background/implied Algy/vS, Biggles/Marie, Marie/vS. c. 57k (oh my GOD is it really.)
The Hon. James Bigglesworth, a single man in possession of a good fortune, must surely be in want of a wife. But adrift in London at the end of the Peninsula War, smarting from rejection by the beautiful Countess Marie, and constantly distracted by the scrapes of his tearaway young cousin Algy Lacey, marriage is the last thing on his mind.

Probably.

And if you want to spoiler the gender-swap reveal (though I think from context it's going to be pretty obvious) - iiiiiiit's Algy! It's a very 'Polly Oliver' style 'girl who likes horses runs away to join the army, cross-dressing fun ensues' sort of gender-swap, I really was not trying to do anything significant, although possibly looking back I should have been :S