violsva | Entries tagged with so is the steam-engine

I’ve been reading this off and on for about two months now, with speed depending on how comparatively gripping whatever I’ve got out from the library at the same time is. I haven’t read it before, but I do know some of the major spoilers.

For a while there it was going very slowly because it felt like an adventure novel crossed with a French farce, which actually would be a great idea if you did it on purpose. But now the title character is back on page and it’s going faster again.

It’s interesting, because of course The Prisoner of Zenda is a majorly influential work in Western literature (or at least Western pop culture) … which most people today haven’t actually heard of. And Rupert of Hentzau is unfortunately not a very satisfactory sequel. (Whereas the Scarlet Pimpernel series went on for over a dozen books.)

I want to blame it on Fritz being a weaker narrator than Rudolf, but that’s a cop-out, because of course Anthony Hope is writing both of them. And I can see how even just reordering the narrative in the middle would make everything way more suspenseful and remove the (perceived) need for Fritz’s defences of other characters acting on limited information.

Doesn’t pass the Bechdel test - lots of women, sometimes they even talk to each other, but there isn’t anything for them to talk about except men. But I am still disappointed that no one on AO3 has written Helga/Flavia fanfic, because Flavia deserves someone like that.

the-poly-armory did a very small Clint/Natasha/Bucky exchange, and I wanted to write more and looked at the huge patch of free time I had at the end of April and signed up for it.

And I had this college AU and it was half done and fully outlined and going to be about 5000 words ... but then local case rates skyrocketed and personal things happened and I got scheduled for two full weeks of work and then the new semester started.

Luckily I had planned for this, sort of, and I had decided that if I didn't have a rough draft by the first day of class I would write smut instead because after all my recipient had specifically asked for smut. Which is what I did. I wish I'd been able to think of a summary but people do seem to think it's hot.

Title: Tools of the Trade
Rating: E
Universe: Marvel
Characters: Clint Barton, Natasha Romanov, Bucky Barnes
Warnings/Enticements: Porn Without Plot, Threesome - F/M/M, Hand Kink, Pegging
Word Count: 1320

On AO3

And here is my gift, which is just so lovely, OMG.

An Unsealed Fate (6308 words) by Beckala
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes/Clint Barton/Natasha Romanov, James "Bucky" Barnes/Clint Barton, Clint Barton/Natasha Romanov, James "Bucky" Barnes/Natasha Romanov
Characters: James "Bucky" Barnes, Natasha Romanov (Marvel), Clint Barton
Additional Tags: Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Alternate Universe - Different First Meeting, Alternate Universe - Fae, Angst, Class Issues, physical affection, Cities, Magic, Just a touch of steampunk, Wings
Summary:

They’ve made their preparations and the dawn will bring a chance at a new life — but first, they have tonight and they’re going to make the most of it.

“We don’t say goodbye before we part,” Clint continues as his fingers finish the last button and he starts to tug Bucky’s trousers and pants over his hips, “we don’t seal a fate until all other paths are closed to us.”

“He’s right,” Nat says and when Bucky turns his head again she’s so close he can make out the gold stars around her irises, the only outward sign of the immense power hiding under her skin, “don’t tempt fate. What will come will come but we have now and we’re going to celebrate it with you.”

“Clint, I—”

“You don’t have to say it,” he said. She frowned at him. “Really.”

Nat looked down, and then she gave him a sardonic look. “I know you don’t believe anyone’s going to stay with you, but I’m not planning on leaving, Clint Barton,” she said, and there was almost, almost enough insolence for it to work, for him to stay calm.

Title: Sold for Endless Rue
Rating: PG-13
Pairing: John Watson/OMC
Summary: But youth, balancing itself upon hope, is for ever in extremes; its expectations are continually aroused only to be baffled; and disappointment, like a summer shower, is violent in proportion to its brevity.
-- Letitia Elizabeth Landon
Warnings/Enticements: Slash, Teenagers, Break Ups
Word Count: 1354
Author’s Notes: Written for WAdvent 2017. A sequel to A Moment's Meeting and Take Hold of Me.

On AO3

Due to the Hardwicke Marriage Law of 1753 and the New Poor Law of 1834′s Bastardy Clause, the legal status of women in England became significantly worse than it had been in the early 18th century. The Marriage Law meant that men could not be required to support their spouse if the marriage was not legal, and made engagements less legally binding, and the Poor Law removed the requirement that men support their illegitimate children as well.

(Previously, parish authorities had been all for men taking responsibility for their children, because that meant they didn’t have to.)

Consanguineous marriages were voidable, but not actually void unless challenged in court during the spouses’ lives. That is, although the marriage was illegal, the children were legitimate if their parents died without a court case declaring that they weren’t.

“Men and women had to write [wills] carefully; courts assumed that the word ‘children’ referred to legitimate ones only, with rare exceptions. In addition, the common law assumed that a contract given to support future illegitimate children was against public policy (encouraging the birth of illegitimates) and was therefore void. Only settlements written after the birth of children, and specifically mentioning those children, stood.” (23) That is, you could write a will leaving your property to “all of my children” and the courts would not actually give it to all of your children.

Also, one of the things men in not-technically-legal marriages objected to the most was that they had to use their wife’s maiden name on official paperwork. This really bothered them.

In Scotland it was easier to get a divorce than in England, but English courts did not recognize Scottish divorces; so a child of a subsequent marriage could be legitimate in Scotland but illegitimate in England (and therefore unable to inherit English property).

People assumed that a bigamy trial counted as a divorce. Prisoner: So I can get married again once I get out of prison, right? Judge: *facepalm*

Some couples (including working class couples) actually tried to draw up their own divorce contracts, where they agreed they were free to remarry; the courts did not accept these.

People, especially women, insisted on marriage ceremonies even knowing they were illegal; I wonder if (as well as the obvious desire for propriety) the women hoped that having gone through the ceremony meant their husbands would be more likely to support them, or more likely to be forced to support them if they were deserted. (Legally, it didn’t.)

Because a married woman’s property was actually the property of her husband (until 1882), if she left him she or her lover could be charged with the theft of whatever she took with her.

So you know Mary Elizabeth Braddon? Author of Lady Audley’s Secret, the novel about how bigamy is horrible and awful and probably leads to murder, even if your husband literally walked out on you and your child and moved to Australia? That Mary Elizabeth Braddon? Yeah, it turns out she lived for over a decade with her publisher John Maxwell while his wife was in an insane asylum. You’d think they’d have mentioned that in 19th Century Literature.

Weird case of Richard Carlile, who wrote a book on birth control (in 1826, btw) and then had five children with his wife and four children with his partner Eliza Sharples, even though he couldn’t afford to support them and he resented Sharples’s focusing on her children instead of radical philosophy.

It’s surprising the number of people who were very clear about the fact that their problem with, for example, Marian Evans (George Eliot) and George Henry Lewes wasn’t the cohabiting or the adultery, but specifically that they were open about it. (In many cases because it would ~*hurt the (free-thinking/feminist/etc) movement*~ if there was any scandal.)

“The Randolphs were ostracised for being too radical on the one side, and not progressive enough on the other.” (202) Now where have I seen that before?

Man, Françoise Lafitte sounds awesome. (Wikipedia only mentions her as Havelock Ellis’s “companion.” You can download an article by Frost about her here.)

Basically, the definition of marriage is about as fixed as for any other social construct. But the vast majority of the people in this book would not have said they were cohabiting. They called themselves married (many had in fact had weddings), and the fact that the government disagreed didn’t change that.

Title: Like Racing an Engine
Rating: E
Universe: Sherlock Holmes
Character(s): Sherlock Holmes, John Watson
Summary: Holmes gets bored on a long train ride.
Warnings/Enticements: Train Sex, Semi-Public Sex, Smoking, Orgasm Denial, Dirty Talk, Fellatio, Mild D/s
Word Count: 3751

A.N.: For

breathedout for the 2017 Fandom Trumps Hate auction, in exchange for a donation to the ACLU. Beta-read by the amazing oulfis.

On AO3

Title: The Burning Castle
Rating: T
Universe:

the_comfortable_courtesan
Character(s): Madame C-, Mr MacD-
Summary: For reasons we shall leave unspecified, Mr. MacD- and Lady B- are pretending to be both married and middle class at an extremely unpleasant house party.
Warnings/Enticements: Platonic Bed Sharing, Gothick Novels
Word Count: 775

A.N.: For song_of_staying for Yuletide NYR, who mentioned "platonic bedsharing, in a delightful nobody-knows-what-we're-doing-under-the-covers and-we're-discussing-gothic-horror kind of way" in their letter.

I hoped that at some point this scene would grow a plot, but it never did, and now that we're getting a similar situation in canon (!!) I thought I might as well post it.

On AO3

It is July, and therefore it is time for ficlets of misery. I'll put up a masterpost in a bit; other than that I'm not sure I'll blog all of them individually.

Title: Water Cure
Author: Violsva
Rating: G
Universe: ACD
Character(s): John Watson, Sherlock Holmes
Relationships: Watson/Mary
Summary: Mary Watson encourages her husband to join Holmes in Europe. There's nothing he can do in England, at the moment.
Content Warnings: Angst
Word Count: 490
A.N.: For Watson's Woes July Writing Prompt #1: 'Tis But a Scratch

On AO3

From this post. @sherlollymouse, your fault (also, hi! I’m Vi.)

Irene would do sex ed and advocate keeping sex work safe as well as legalizing it

“So.” Irene slaps her palm with a riding crop. “We normally don’t talk about politics on these shows. At least, most of us don’t.”

Cut to Mycroft rolling his eyes. Mycroft may be tied to a bed at the time. Cut back.

“But there’s a very important issue I need to bring to your attention. Many of you may believe certain stereotypes about sex workers.

“I am lucky. I have stability. An established position. Bargaining power. Most sex workers don’t.

“But all of us deserve safe working conditions. No matter who we are, where we’re from, or what we do.”

Putting this on Dreamwidth as well as Tumblr:

So I’ve been thinking about soulmate AUs. The kind where your soulmate’s name is written on your skin. How would that start? When would that start?

Not with the beginning of writing. For centuries, in China, in Sumer, in Egypt, in Mesoamerica, writing was used for accounting or religion, and nothing else. Most people would never be able write their names or recognize them if they were written. Only royalty, gods, and perhaps some property owners would.

Individual scribes might have had signatures. For that matter, for all we know individual Paleolithic artists might have had signatures. But most people wouldn’t. What would happen the first time someone was born with an unknown symbol on their hand?

Probably it would be an isolated mystery. Remember, in most of these scenarios there’s no actual guarantee that you’ll ever meet your soulmate (although most people seem to end up with one from the same general area. Which is statistically unlikely). No one would know what it meant. Maybe people with symbols would be seen as special, or divine, or demonic.

And then it might start happening more often - or stop happening, if writing stopped being used (like in Greece after 1200 BCE). But most of the time still no one would know what the symbol meant. And most people wouldn’t have symbols, because most people’s soulmates wouldn’t know how to write.

(Sometimes I think the theory is that people would have a thumbprint instead of a soulmate mark? But this would be basically useless for matching purposes - you would have no idea where to start. So from that point of view the first people with actual names would just have them instead of the thumbprints that everyone else had and didn’t know the meaning of.

Incidentally, using thumbprints for recognition isn’t universal in non-literate societies either. European society didn’t realize that fingerprints were unique until the late 19th century. In a lot of places, they weren’t used until people were already using signatures, and needed an option for illiterate people. Also, while they are an identifying mark, they really have no relation at all to your name. For most of human existence, having a physical marker of your identity really wasn’t that important.)

Only somewhere with at least moderately widespread literacy would someone be able to look at a mark and go “Oh, that’s my friend Imhotep’s name. What a coincidence!” And only somewhere with widespread literacy would Imhotep’s soulmate also be able to write their name. Most early languages were logographic, and in cuneiform names specifically were almost always logographic, so you wouldn’t even be able to sound it out.

Phoenician (starting 1050 BCE) was the first widespread writing system, and was simple enough and common enough that sailors could write in it. It was also the first phoenetic script which would allow you to easily approximate the pronounciation of the writing on your skin.

But still, most people wouldn’t have symbols. Most people would never meet anyone with their name on their skin.

This would be a problem in AUs where you never feel sexual attraction to anyone who isn’t your soulmate. Imagine religion and culture in a world where almost everyone is functionally asexual.

How long would it take, until someone realized that if people’s names matched up, they had some kind of bond? How long would it take before this was a generally accepted theory?

Also, how long before this was seen as at all important, given that most people with the status to know how to read would also have arranged marriages?

But once it was generally accepted, suddenly literacy would become a lot more important. People would demand to learn how to write. (Some people would learn that their soulmate’s name wasn’t in the local writing system. What happens then?) People would want to give their children more unique names (ancient Rome had about thirty given names for men total, and they named their daughters “first Julia” and “second Julia.”)

Anyway, around ancient Rome or so, when there would not only be a lot of literate people but also a lot of people able to recognize foreign alphabets, suddenly there would be a huge drive for 1) more literacy and 2) better long distance communication, so you could find the Caius or Ξανθίππη or שָׂרָה who had your name on their skin. And as this idea became more and more widespread, so would this desire. The same thing would be happening in China and Ethiopia and India.

This would revolutionize world history. There would be strong motivations both for exploration and for making peace with foreign cultures. Everyone in Rome with a Jewish soulmate would want to make sure they wouldn’t be killed before they could meet them. Everyone with a soulmate in a strange language would want to know at least what language it was.

Come to think of it, these are also all good reasons for why people wouldn’t believe in soulmates. Your soulmate can’t be one of the hated barbarians, so that symbol doesn’t mean anything!

And that’s leaving out the fact that lots of people still wouldn’t have a soulmate who could write, and completely ignoring the existence of polyamory.

So getting to a modern society with everyone just knowing that that was your soulmate’s name would involve a really complicated history, probably nothing at all like ours. And there would be huge pressure to ignore the existence of soulmates at all.

No conclusions here, just taking an illogical premise way too logically.

Mary Wortley Montagu

At length, by so much importunity press’d,
Take, C——, at once, the inside of my breast;
This stupid indiff’rence so often you blame,
Is not owing to nature, to fear, or to shame:
I am not as cold as a virgin in lead,
Nor is Sunday’s sermon so strong in my head:
I know but too well how time flies along,
That we live but few years, and yet fewer are young.

But I hate to be cheated, and never will buy
Long years of repentance for moments of joy,
Oh! was there a man (but where shall I find
Good sense and good nature so equally join’d?)
Would value his pleasure, contribute to mine;
Not meanly would boast, nor would lewdly design;
Not over severe, yet not stupidly vain,
For I would have the power, tho’ not give the pain.

No pedant, yet learned; no rake-helly gay,
Or laughing, because he has nothing to say;
To all my whole sex obliging and free,
Yet never be fond of any but me;
In public preserve the decorum that’s just,
And shew in his eyes he is true to his trust;
Then rarely approach, and respectfully bow,
But not fulsomely pert, nor yet foppishly low.

But when the long hours of public are past,
And we meet with champagne and a chicken at last,
May ev’ry fond pleasure that moment endear;
Be banish’d afar both discretion and fear!
Forgetting or scorning the airs of the crowd,
He may cease to be formal, and I to be proud.
Till lost in the joy, we confess that we live,
And he may be rude, and yet I may forgive.

And that my delight may be solidly fix’d,
Let the friend and the lover be handsomely mix’d;
In whose tender bosom my soul may confide,
Whose kindness can soothe me, whose counsel can guide.
From such a dear lover as here I describe,
No danger should fright me, no millions should bribe;
But till this astonishing creature I know,
As I long have liv’d chaste, I will keep myself so.

I never will share with the wanton coquette,
Or be caught by a vain affectation of wit.
The toasters and songsters may try all their art,
But never shall enter the pass of my heart.
I loath the lewd rake, the dress’d fopling despise:
Before such pursuers the nice virgin flies:
And as Ovid has sweetly in parable told,
We harden like trees, and like rivers grow cold.

A. E. Housman

When I was one-and-twenty
I heard a wise man say,
"Give crowns and pounds and guineas
But not your heart away;
Give pearls away and rubies
But keep your fancy free."
But I was one-and-twenty,
No use to talk to me.

When I was one-and-twenty
I heard him say again,
"The heart out of the bosom
Was never given in vain;
'Tis paid with sighs a plenty
And sold for endless rue."
And I am two-and-twenty
And oh, 'tis true, 'tis true.

I have discovered a way to make everyone on omegle disconnect in seconds without mentioning anything offensive.

Profile

Violsva

Fanfic on AO3

May 2025

S	M	T	W	T	F	S
				1	2	3
4	5	6	7	8	9	10
11	12	13	14	15	16	17
18	19	20	21	22	23	24
25	26	27	28	29	30	31

Syndicate

Page Summary

Comments halfway through Rupert of Hentzau
PolyArmory Exchange
Sunday Six (the other WIP this time)
WAdvent
Living in Sin: Cohabiting as Husband and Wife in Nineteenth-Century England by Ginger S. Frost
Train Fucking for Great Justice
(no subject)
Watson's Woes
(no subject)
(no subject)
The Lover: A Ballad
(no subject)
Emotions!

Active Entries

1: AO3 Meme
2: The Hell of the Ball
3: 3SF, briefly
4: September Reading
5: Jim Caughran (1940-2024)
6: July and August Reading
7: February Reading
8: (no subject)
9: *shows up six days late with Starbucks*
10: (no subject)

Style Credit

Style: Dreamer for Dusty Foot by timeasmymeasure

Expand Cut Tags

No cut tags

Page generated Jun. 30th, 2025 06:04 am

We Can't Rewind, We've Gone Too Far

Entries tagged with so is the steam-engine

Comments halfway through Rupert of Hentzau

PolyArmory Exchange

Sunday Six (the other WIP this time)

WAdvent

Living in Sin: Cohabiting as Husband and Wife in Nineteenth-Century England by Ginger S. Frost

Train Fucking for Great Justice

(no subject)

Watson's Woes

(no subject)

(no subject)

The Lover: A Ballad

(no subject)

Emotions!

Profile

May 2025

Links

Syndicate

Most Popular Tags

Page Summary

Active Entries

Style Credit

Expand Cut Tags