It’s Felix Friday!!!
Friends. It’s no secret that I adore the character of Felix Leiter. I adore him in canon, I have some deeply cherished headcanons about him that tend to pop up in my writing about him, and I absolutely love seeing what other writers do with his character in this fandom, both on his own and in relationship with Bond. I’m thinking especially of @patrice-bergerons, whose own 00leiter fic launched me so far into space this ship that I have never left.
If you’ve read my Felix fics (more on those later), you’ll have noticed that one of the themes I love exploring with his character is his relationship to his country and to patriotism: what does it mean to him to be a civil servant? How is this affected by his experience of being Black in America? How does his relationship to his country contrast to Bond’s relationship to England, and how does that play out in their relationship with each other? There’s so much richness there to explore.
As there is with his relationship to Bond more generally. I tend to write them as a ship, because of how much there is to work with. What is the value (and I deeply believe there is extraordinary value) in a love that by its nature can’t be monogamous or permanent? What does it mean to come into and out of someone’s life over a period of years, with all that entails? What do we learn by loving someone who is in some, but not all, ways a mirror of ourselves, with experiences few others have shared? What does that enable us to give, and receive?
Speaking of those fics, of, did you know I have written not one, but four (4) fics from Felix Leiter’s perspective? Those fics are:
all the flags we’ve hung
close to the sun in lonely lands
sometimes it takes the night to fall
and, most recently, left stranded on this Fourth of July!
What’s that you say? You prefer moodboards? You are in luck! I have one for you right here.
Happy Felix Friday, friends. 💜
