regshoe

I would like to write something properly long and plotty for Tobias/Gabin, but that'll have to wait until I've thought of a plot and got more of a handle on characterisation. In the meantime:

It’s not just where you lay your head (719 words) by regshoe
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Étoile (TV)
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Tobias Bell/Gabin Roux
Characters: Gabin Roux, Tobias Bell
Additional Tags: Fluff, Pillow Talk
Summary:

Tobias finally finds a satisfactory Parisian pillow.

I've been enjoying reading through the tag, so have some fic recs:

( Some fic recs )

I've also been listening to the soundtrack via the very helpful official Spotify playlist. It's a great variety and lots of fun! Here are some of my favourites of the songs:

( And some music )

I haven't posted any music recs for a while, so have my latest Jacobite fave!



Folk music can be so beautifully direct sometimes—ye're but a pack o' traitor louns, ye'll dae nae guid at a'—and James Malcolm sings this with a great contemptuous straightforwardness.

This is another of the after-the-fact Jacobite songs, written years after the '45. Robert Burns wrote at least some of it—the lyrics in the Jacobite Relics of Scotland include several more verses than the words given on this Burns website and also used in this recording, so perhaps those came from elsewhere.

Also, another small cool Scots-Swedish link—you'll notice the word 'descrive' (not 'describe') used in the third verse, which is more obviously than the standard English related to Swedish 'skriva' (which means 'write'; 'describe' would be 'beskriva', the prefixes evidently still being different).

Here's a seasonal song from my faves Folk & rackare—this song is about Valborgsnatt/Walpurgis Night, 30 April, the traditional beginning of spring and—according to this song—an occasion for much celebration, dancing and eating of eggs.



I love how joyful the whole thing sounds—it makes me feel just like dancing to a fiddle in the long April evening in a forest with the new green of spring all upon it—and the lyrics, which are a funny mixture of spring-related and folk-music-typical stuff. I especially like the image 'skogen den bär gröner hatt' (the forest is wearing a green hat). Here are the lyrics with an English translation, if you would like to see the rest. Anyway, the weather here is very nice today, everything is pleasingly green and the birds are singing; I think that maj är definitivt välkommen här. :)

And now that reveals have happened, here's what I wrote...

But Give Me Wings Like Noah's Dove (8892 words) by regshoe
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Cargill - King Creosote (Song)
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Cargill/Singer (Cargill - King Creosote)
Characters: Singer (Cargill - King Creosote), Cargill (Cargill - King Creosote)
Additional Tags: Fishing, Scotland, World War I, Injury
Summary:

The fortunes of a sailor.

Historical Scottish m/m with war, hurt/comfort and romantic fluff, but not Jacobites this time :D The song Cargill by King Creosote has been my happiest new thing this Yuletide—I picked it up from a fandom rec and then ended up being assigned to write for it. It's a lovely song and I recommend it! And I really enjoyed writing this story, which involved a lot of interesting historical research. :)


The Education of a Magician (2191 words) by regshoe
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell - Susanna Clarke
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Characters: Original Characters
Additional Tags: Worldbuilding, 1990s, Yuletide Treat
Summary:

York, 1997. A schoolteacher reads a peculiar essay on the history of Faerie.

Some JSMN worldbuilding! I don't usually write much modern anything, so it was an interesting and enjoyable experiment taking the world of JSMN through into the 1990s.


On That One Spot of Earth (2072 words) by regshoe
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Flight of the Heron - D. K. Broster
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Ewen Cameron/Keith Windham
Characters: Keith Windham, Ewen Cameron
Additional Tags: Growing Old Together, Botany, Yuletide Treat
Summary:

Keith Windham reflects on the surroundings and occupations of a peaceful retirement.

The least anonymous exchange fic I've posted, I think :) My FotH fic had been getting steadily more angsty over time, so it was great fun writing something uncomplicatedly happy and fluffy for my favourite OT3, Ewen/Keith/Ardroy. And some fun historical stuff as well!


Concerning the Language of Birds (1286 words) by regshoe
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Piranesi - Susanna Clarke
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Characters: Sixteen | Sarah Raphael, Piranesi | Matthew Rose Sorensen
Additional Tags: Birds, Post-Canon, Yuletide Treat
Summary:

Sarah Raphael gets to know the inhabitants of the House.

Finally, this little experiment inspired by the bird life of Piranesi and a certain ornithological passage from Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell.

Kate Rusby's newest release—what an utter treasure :D

I'm still enjoying the Malory Towers TV series—I don't think it's perfectly faithful to the books, but it's such good fun that I don't have anything to complain about. Enid Blyton's boarding school stories were my favourite thing ever when I was ten or so, and this is a great reminder of why I loved them so much. Having had to cancel my original plans for next week's holiday from work, I'm now intending to spend the time re-reading the books—we'll see how quickly I can get through all six of them...

I have another JSMN fic coming together in my head. So far I have a perfect setting, some ideas about characters and some brilliant historical details that I really want to include, but no plot. Why do I have to have things happen??? I shall do some more historical research and see what falls out...

I realised earlier that I'd managed to get to the chapter in The '45 on the battle of Culloden today, on the anniversary of the battle of Culloden, completely by chance.

Also in 'things to do in lockdown': I've found this seven and a half hour-long recorded folk music festival featuring musicians (including some of my faves) playing from their front rooms. So I know how I'll be spending the rest of my time on holiday :D

I have had a good day today! Yesterday I did too many things (good things, but too many of them) and overloaded my brain, so I've been recovering by staying in all day and keeping to quiet things. I've made lots of progress on the jumper I'm knitting (I'm making a gansey in the traditional style, using a pattern from Staithes on the Yorkshire coast—I've now finished the 'miles of stocking stitch' bit and got to the more interesting patterned section, which is great fun and going well) and written over 1,000 words of delicious hurt/comfort for The Flight of the Heron—my usual pace when I'm working steadily on a fic is about 500 words a day, so I'm very pleased with this.

Anyway: I was going to post this rec yesterday, but sensory overload makes listening to music impossible, so here it is now. Folk music, ambivalent moods and nature imagery are three of my favourite things, so of course I like this song a lot, and I'm always reminded of it at this time of year—the weather for the last couple of days has been both mild and very windy, which feels appropriate.



I think my favourite thing about it is the contrast between the lyrics and the music. One of the comments quoted on the Mainly Norfolk page about the song describes it as 'Male Chauvinist Pig Song of the Year', which is understandable if you're just looking at the words (although, in fairness, there are plenty of recordings by women which address it to a 'young man' rather than a 'woman'—arrogance is a common folk song trait :P). But that seems to become much less obvious when set against that lovely, haunting tune, which was apparently collected from a street singer in Newcastle in the 1820s.

If I had to pick an existing folk tune to set the Raven King ballad from Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell to, this one would be my top choice if it wasn't for the metre being twice as long as it needs to be. It has just that sort of slightly eerie, unsettled, ambivalent sound (it even has that perfect little falling-back twist in the final line in just the right place to sing 'the Raven King...' to if you arranged the lyrics right), which undercuts the arrogant certainty of the lyrics beautifully. You get the feeling, listening to that tune, that the narrator's confidence that his former lover will return to him is decidedly misplaced—and, perhaps, that he knows this, that he realises that the human heart and will are not as constant and predictable as the seasons.

It's time for some folk Christmas carols.



I love the Steeleye Span version of this song, of course, but I was doing my 'listening to lots of different versions of the same folk song' thing and found this one, which is in a very different but equally good style and has some really lovely harmonies.

Mainly Norfolk has a page on this song with lots of fascinating background. Much as I love the classic church choir-type carols, I really think folk Christmas carols are the best sort—all this density of mythic context gives an odd but somehow appropriate sort of depth to the lyrics about the Nativity story, and the weird, kind of gothic nature imagery feels very fitting for the darkest time of year.

Or, before we get into the time of year when I only listen to Christmas carols...



I know it's part of the point of this song that it speaks to 'every night and all', but I always associate it most with the lengthening nights of autumn, and this recording in particular even more so. Lots of versions arrange it quite neatly in choral style with intricate layered harmonies, and while they sound very nice, Alasdair Roberts's recording always feels more appropriate to the mood of the lyrics. The instrumentals are weird and haunting; the singers sound like a crowd of mourners gathered around in the candlelight, rather than a polished choir. This sounds like the sort of world where the souls of the dead pass over to Whinny Moor and brave the fires of Purgatory, and the sort of night (every night and all) when the living remember just how close those other places are.

It's been too long since I've taken the time to listen to some proper quality folk music, and I really need to get back into it. Here's an old favourite!