Okay, so, I finished @ameliahcrowley 's THE VICAR MAN. I promised to leave an Amazon review but Amazon won't let me. So in the spirit of our agreement, I'm leaving a review somewhere and figuring out Amazon later.
TLDR: The Vicar Man is good! I liked it! If you like funny historical fantasy you will probably like it!
So as you could probably guess from the title, The Vicar Man is a spoof of The Wicker Man, the classic folk horror movie. (It's mostly drawing from the Christopher Lee one, not the Nic Cage one, and thank goodness for that.) Dora's village worships a dark, eldritch god and sacrifices virgins to it for the good of the harvest. When a stranger comes to town- a nice young vicar who genuinely seems oblivious to the horrors at hand-
Dora can't just let him get thrown on the sacrificial pyre. She has to save this guy. And the easiest way to keep someone from being a virgin sacrifice is to make sure they're not a virgin anymore. Problem is, Dora's aro/ace, and moderately sex-repulsed. But a man's life's at stake. She sets off on a quest to seduce the Vicar, poking fun of many historical romance tropes along the way.
It might be more accurate to call this story an unromance novel than a fantasy novel- it follows all the conventions of a romance novel, down to the plot beats, but none of them quite wind up where you'd expect. This isn't a traditional love story- but it's not not a love story. This isn't a traditional horror story- but it's not not a horror story. If you're aro and/or ace, you like the idea of historical romance, but you're not here for the Love At First Sight Based Solely On Pantsfeelings? This book was made for you, specifically.
What it is is a comedy, and it's fast-paced and funny the whole way through. Dora's incredibly likeable- especially if you're a snarky, nerdy bluestocking, or if you've left a high-control religious group- and her inner monologue never fails to please. Norman, the titular vicar, is a sad, wet cat of a man, a poor little meow meow, adorable and kind and So Very Doomed. The relationship between the two of them - well, I shan't spoil things, but I thought it was delightful.
This book has one quality that didn't always gel with me- the language sits a bit wrong for a historical, even one that's set in the year "uh. well. there's probably a king? named George?". There's a fair bit of Tumblr dialect sprinkled through here- in particular there's a handful of jokes that revolve around 21st century feminist terms, sometimes deliberately using them for a jarring and inappropriate effect. And sometimes it hit right, but sometimes it didn't do it for me. I'm oversensitive to language, though- heck, I invented an entire goddess for one setting so I wouldn't have to use 'modern' trans language in a setting where it doesn't belong!- and it probably won't bug most people.
Overall, I really enjoyed the time I spent with THE VICAR MAN- I'd recommend it if you like funny historical fantasy, if you'd enjoy reading a sendup of Gothic romances and folk horror, or if you like the idea of an aro/ace unromance novel. I'd especially recommend it if you like The Misadventures of Sawbones and Its Menagerie- the narrator, Dora, has a very similar narrative voice. They share that 'outwardly quiet and polite, but with a constant snarky inner monologue' energy.
Strong recommend, and thanks to the author for the review copy!
@ameliahcrowley: How about a reverse "Woke up together with amnesia" fic. Instead of waking up with no idea how they got there, they know (or believe) that their memories are about to be wiped and are frantically trying to leave hidden messages for their future selves (to help them solve whatever's going on). Of course, if you're going to forget it all anyway, you don't have to watch what you're saying…
I started this about three times, but the first two versions were just - I could not fit the amount of slow burn I needed, so this is version 3, which turned out okay, I think. Not sure it's my best Bucky characterisation ever, but this one wanted to be from his POV.
Also, I assumed you wanted Winterhawk...
*
Bucky closes the door to his hotel room behind them and just… stands there. The mission is over, this is supposed to be the part where he feels relief. Where he finally gets to relax.
In front of him, Clint is pacing across the room, long legs eating up the carpet as he moves faster and faster.
“What the fuck!” Clint exclaims, throwing his arms out, almost hitting Bucky in the chest. “What the actual fuck?”
“We should be packing,” Bucky says. That’s why they’re here, to clear up their things ready for extraction. Medical had tried to keep them in, but neither of them wanted to be cooped up in one of those clinical rooms filled with the smell of antiseptic and pain just… waiting.
Clint had put forward a very effective argument about how that might prove a difficult environment for the Winter Soldier if he wakes up without knowing how he got there and the medics hadn’t been happy about it, but they hadn’t been ready to die either. So they are free to…
“How can you pack at a time like this?” Clint demands, spinning towards him and stalking over. He looks almost frantic and Bucky wants to calm him somehow, but he’s barely holding onto his own calm as it is and he… he’s not good at that anymore.
He remembers, roughly, slinging an arm around Steve’s neck and talking him down. He doesn’t remember how.
“What else am I going to do?” Bucky says. “Shouting about it isn’t exactly going to help.”
“It makes me feel better,” Clint tells him.
“Does it?”
“Yes! No? I don’t fucking know, Buck. But this situation sucks and I can’t just… Do you even care?”
Bucky steps very deliberately into Clint’s space and leans up, holding Clint’s gaze.
“Of course I care,” he says. “I don’t want to lose a week of my life anymore than you do.” Especially not this week. It feels like the universe is taking particular relish in this. Of all the weeks to lose, of all the missions to fade from his memory, it has to be this one. He doesn’t want to forget any of them, but…
“Then get angry,” Clint says. “Why are you always so controlled. I thought - I thought this week that I understood you, maybe. We were getting to know each other, but now this is happening and you’re just... “ Clint sighs and flops down onto the huge king-sized bed that takes up most of the room, all the long lines of him stretched out and his t-shirt riding up to expose a strip of pale skin, decorated with scars and golden hair. Bucky does not stare at it.
Clint’s right, this week he has gotten to know Clint better. He’d been dreading this whole thing - pretending to be a couple. Pretending to be normal. Pretending to be in love. But it hadn’t been what he thought.
“There’s nothing SHIELD can do,” Bucky says. “You heard them. By the time the drugs they gave us flush the parasite out of our system, the memories will already be gone.” It’s like he can feel it inside him already - eating at his brain. He hates it. He hates knowing that there’s nothing he can do. He hates that someone else is taking something from him and he can’t do anything to stop it. He’s already got the people who did this to him - who did it to so many people to stop them from remembering what happened at this quaint little couple’s retreat in the middle of nowhere. But knowing that they are going to rot in jail isn’t helping.
“Tomorrow we won’t even know what we’re missing,” Bucky says. He tries to make it sound like a blessing. It just sounds like more of a curse. Because they’re going to be right back where they were. He’s going to think Clint is just the annoying, immature guy who can’t sit still and messes around. Clint is going to think he’s the emotionless killing machine with greasy hair. He’s not going to remember the flood of fond exasperation he felt that morning when Clint almost tripped over his own feet shuffling towards the coffee maker in the corner of the room and Bucky had to catch him. He’s not going to remember how Clint’s skin felt soft and sleep-warm under his hand. He’s not going to remember the stupid bets they made while playing darts in the resort rec centre. He’s not going to remember Clint pressing dumb sloppy kisses to his cheek or linking their fingers together ‘for realism’. He’s not going to remember how he-
There is a dent in the wall, cracks radiating outwards, and Bucky can feel the swell of pain in his knuckles.
“Holy shit,” Clint says from somewhere behind him. “I said get angry, not demolish the building. Holy shit, dude.”
Clint’s hand lands, heavy on his shoulder and Bucky shakes it off. It’s too much - feeling that strange fizz in his belly at the contact and knowing that tomorrow he’s not even going to care.
“Sorry,” Clint holds up his hands. “Hey. Look at it this way - at least you won’t have to remember my snoring.”
Clint doesn’t snore - he talks in his sleep. Nonsense about vampire rabbits and spirals of light. Bucky has woken up to it every night this week, and fallen back to sleep to it, too.
“We should write stuff down,” Clint says. “Or make, like, recordings for ourselves. Of the things we don’t want to forget.”
“Like when I beat you at darts,” Bucky says.
“What? No. Don’t you dare.” Clint says, waving a finger in Bucky’s direction. Bucky wouldn’t. He’s not going to lie about any of this. He knows the value of memory and trusting that memory better than anyone.
“I won’t,” he says, and it’s as solemn a vow as he’s ever made. “You’re right, we should…” He reaches for the pad of hotel notepaper.
“You’re going old school, huh?” Clint says. Bucky nods once, and then sits down at the desk. “Cool. I’ll go… in the bathroom?” Clint looks around. Bucky doesn’t dare to look at him, just stares at the blank page. He doesn’t start writing until he hears the door to the bathroom lock, and even then he hesitates.
He’s written down memories before, but always as he remembers them, never the other way around. He doesn’t know where to start with this.
‘I think I’m in love with Clint Barton,’ he writes. But that’s… it’s not wrong, but it doesn’t mean anything, like that. They’re just words. He tears out the sheet and tosses it into the wastepaper basket by the desk. And he starts again, just describing things, the way Clint had looked at him across the room when they were trying to interview suspects at the party two nights ago. The way they had fought alongside each other. The way he’d felt last night when Clint turned over in bed and his arm flopped over Bucky’s chest. The time Clint had stepped out of the shower on their second day in this room, and had walked out with just a hand towel clutched around his waist, looking for his underwear.
He can hear the mutter of Clint talking in the background, and he knows he’s making a recording in the other room, but he doesn’t listen too hard. He doesn’t want to hear what Clint is saying. He knows what this week has meant to him and it’s not going to stop meaning that, no matter what Clint is saying.
He fills up seven pages with all the insignificant moments that he can remember, that were only significant inside his head. The mission details, he’ll get from the report. They’ll tell him the whos, the whats, the hows. He doesn’t need to write down any of that. He needs to write down all the rest of it. The things he’s come to realise about himself, about Clint, about what he wants.
He’ll have forgotten all of this tomorrow, and the words he’s writing will be as flat as the paper they are written on. But he’s got to try. He doesn’t want to forget the good stuff when there’s so much bad already in there. It doesn’t matter that Clint doesn’t see things the same, at this point it’s enough that he knows he can feel like this.
He turns onto the eighth page and pauses, then nods to himself as he writes, not a memory, but a note, for his future self to trust or not. He can’t tell. Tomorrow morning he’ll be a different person again.
‘I don’t know whether you’ll understand any of this, or whether you’ll believe me. I don’t think I would, and I will be you - or I was you. But even if you don’t, try to do one thing. Just… Clint’s a good guy, when you get to know him. So get to know him.’ He signs it and tears the pages out to stuff them in his pocket.
Clint must be recording Gone With the Wind, because by the time he comes out, looking strangely serious for someone who spent at least one night of the last week doing one-handed handstands while balancing progressively dumber things on his feet, Bucky has finished checking his weapons and packing everything away.
Clint just shoves his clothes into a bag and shoulders it.
“Guess we should get going,” he says. “After you honeybunch.”
Bucky winces at the pet name. Clint’s been calling him progressively worse nicknames all week, always claiming it’s to sell their cover story when they both know it’s been an attempt to get a rise out of Bucky. Bucky has hated every one of them. But he ‘s going to miss it.
Except he won’t.
He’s going to wake up tomorrow without even remembering that happened. And he didn’t even think to note it down, so… that’s going to be erased from history.
At the beginning of this week, he wouldn’t have stepped through that door first, leaving Clint at his back. He would have felt too vulnerable exposing his back to someone like that. But now he does it without even pausing, which is more than he can say to Clint, because when he turns back, the man’s ducked out of sight, hurrying back out of the door a second later. He looks a bit too innocent for Bucky’s peace of mind - but he was probably just taking a picture of the dent in the wall to post online or something like that.
He must be really far gone, because he doesn’t even mind that much.
Clint talks as they head for the cars, but Bucky knows it’s more to make himself feel better than to be heard. He fills the silence to avoid it, and Bucky can’t be mad at that. Luckily, he isn’t expected to reply, so he just lets the words spill over him. It’s almost comforting in a way. Even as he knows tomorrow Clint’s going to go back to leaving him at a safe distance. They won’t walk side-by-side, arms brushing against each other. Clint will nod and make jokes at Bucky’s expense. He won’t just talk like this.
*
Back at the tower, Bucky heads straight for his room, avoiding the well meaning gazes of Steve and Natasha. He doesn’t want them to tell him it will be alright. He knows that nothing is going to physically happen to him. He’s lost memories before.
He puts his things away, one by one, and he sticks his scribbled notes on the bedside table where he’ll be sure to see them tomorrow morning.
The evening seems to stretch out ahead of him. It’s not even dark outside, yet. It feels like there is nothing left but empty time to fill before the inevitable happens. He wants to just get it over with, but at the same time he wants to stay awake as long as he can, just to see if he can stop it from happening.
He pulls out his phone, intending to go on the dumb mobile game Clint had downloaded onto it the other day, with the bright colours and the inanely addictive music, but instead he opens the Gallery app and stares at the pictures he’d taken - ostensibly of Clint, but really as part of their surveillance.
The background is the focus of most of them, cataloguing suspects and suspicious behaviour, but Clint is in every one. There are a couple where someone had offered to take a picture of the two of them and Clint had accepted immediately. Bucky looks at them. It’s a little awkward. He never knows how to stand in these things, or what to do with his hands. One of them ends up resting around Clint’s waist, hand just over the curve of his hip. Clint had put it there, he remembers.
“You’ve got to at least look like you like me,” Clint had whispered in his ear. And Bucky had let Clint guide his hand to his waist as he leant in. They are smiling for the camera and Bucky looks - young again, almost. He looks like a normal man, having his photo taken with his boyfriend.
“Sergeant Barnes,” Jarvis says and Bucky closes the app guiltily, looking up. “Agent Barton is pacing outside the door to your apartment. I believe he is uncertain whether he should enter.”
Bucky is uncertain whether he should open the door. But he does.
Clint is caught mid turn and freezes, a guilty look on his face.
“Uh.”
“You wear a hole in the floor, Stark’s never going to let you hear the end of it,” Bucky comments, crossing his arms over his chest. Clint takes a deep breath and he looks - scared almost. “You coming in?”
“Uh,” Clint repeats.
“I’m going to take that as a yes,” Bucky comments and steps aside. Clint walks in, clearly nervous, like he’s entering a lion’s den. Bucky watches him for a second, then closes the door.
“I’m a spy,” Clint says. Bucky blinks at him.
“I… know?” he says. “Did you… Did you lose your memory already?”
“No,” Clint says. “No, still… I’ve still got all of it. For the moment. I just. I’m a spy, and sometimes that means I look at things I’m not supposed to look at because - that’s my job.”
“Right,” Bucky says slowly.
Clint pulls his hand out of his pocket and opens it to reveal a crumpled piece of paper. Bucky stares at it for a moment before realising it has the hotel’s logo stamped on it, just visible in little triangular shards.
“You-”
“I pulled it out of the bin,” Clint says, holding it out in front of him, palm flat, like he wants Bucky to take it. “I shouldn’t have read it, but it says-”
“I know what it says,” Bucky growls. He remembers writing it - that first attempt at summing up what he wanted to remember, only for it to be too little and too much all at once. I think I’m in love with Clint Barton.
“And you threw it away,” Clint says. “So I guess… I mean. I wanted to know if it was true, but you clearly don’t want to remember it even if it is. So-”
Bucky breaks. His hand flashes out and he grabs Clint by the wrist. He can see the moment Clint decides not to fight back or try to slip away and his shoulders relax just slightly.
“That’s not why I threw it away,” Bucky says. He reminds himself that nothing he says now is even going to matter tomorrow. He hates that, but right now, it feels almost freeing. He can say anything and Clint won’t remember. He won’t remember. The only person who will know is Jarvis, and he won’t tell them if Bucky asks him not to.
“Are you going to kill me?” Clint asks. “Because I should remind you that neither of us is even going to remember this tomorrow, so there’s no point.”
“I’m not going to kill you,” Bucky tells him. “I’m… I…” He grits his teeth and sighs looking off to one side for a second, to get a grasp on himself. “I threw it away because I knew it wouldn’t work. You can’t just read something like that and understand it.”
“What?”
“That’s a consequence,” he says. “That’s the ending. I didn’t need to remember that. I needed to remember why.”
Clint blinks at him.
“So… you do?” he asks. Bucky nods once. Then Clint’s grabbing his wrist where they are already joined together and yanking him forwards. He doesn’t have to go, he knows that if he refused, Clint couldn’t move him, but Bucky lets himself fall forwards and Clint’s right there.
It feels different from the kisses Clint’s been giving him all week. It’s more than just a quick press of lips, less flagrant than the smacking kisses to his cheek. This isn’t fake. This is determined and unrepentant and just a little bit desperate. And when Clint pulls back, Bucky chases him down for another. Tonight, they can have this. He won’t remember in the morning. He’ll look at Clint and see nothing more than Barton - annoying, immature and barely tolerable. But for now.
“Me too,” Clint says as they pull back again. “Just… I mean, I always thought you were hot, but then we were together and you were… I’m really mad I’m going to forget how sweet you are.”
“Is that what you were talking about in the bathroom all that time?” Bucky asks, his hands finding the hem of Clint’s t-shirt and slipping underneath it to stroke over warm skin covering hard muscle.
“Hell no, I was listing all the dogs I saw last week.”
“Liar,” Bucky tells him, biting lightly at Clint’s bottom lip. Clint grins at him and laughs. He looks brighter than Bucky’s ever seen him.
“Are we going to do this?” Clint asks. “No consequences. No regrets.”
“Yeah.” Bucky says. “Yeah…”
“Kind of wish there were consequences, though,” Clint tells him, hands sliding down Bucky’s back to squeeze his ass through his jeans. “Can’t believe I’m going to forget the best sex of my life.”
Bucky shuts him up pretty fast. He doesn’t want to think about what happens next. It’s got to be enough that it’s happening now. And he’s got to hope that the him that wakes up tomorrow morning reads what he wrote and pays attention.
“We’ll be here again,” he says.
“Yeah, maybe,” Clint tells him. “I mean, honestly, I don’t know how I managed to get here this time - getting you to fall for my sheer animal magnetism a second time is-”
Bucky crashes their lips together again and Clint’s words are lost as he kisses back, hands teasing at the skin of Bucky’s back, long leg curling around Bucky’s, pulling them closer together.
“One night only,” Clint manages to gasp out as Bucky moves his attention from Clint’s lips to the side of his neck, hoping to leave a mark that will last longer than their memories. “No repeats, no encores.”
“Shut up,” Bucky tells him in pants across Clint’s neck.
“Make me.”
*
Bucky wakes in his room at the tower. His body feels heavy, like his workout yesterday was maybe a bit heavier than usual, although he doesn’t know why. All he did yesterday was go to the mission briefing.
He pulls himself up and turns. There’s a stack of papers on the bedside table with… with the header of the hotel he’s supposed to be staying at during the mission. That’s… odd.
I always tell people that taking on a pet like sourdough starter is a lifetime commitment
I mean, I have no problem feeding and caring for a starter, and even waking one up to get it into the dough isn’t a huge deal, but three days to make a loaf of bread just seems excessive, especially when it’s such a deeply inferior method of leavening.
jmathieson-fic
Sam if you haven't read it, I highly recommend "Big Magic" by Elizabeth Gilbert, on where ideas come from (spoiler: Magic).
Oh, see, I feel like that thesis would probably enrage me, because a central reason I get so mad with authors being flip about it is that there is a quantifiable idea-having process and people don’t like to acknowledge that. Ideas don’t come from magic, they come from you, from your interactions with the world and the way you feel and think about it, and the real kicker is that that’s better than magic. An idea isn’t a gift the universe deigned to give you, it’s something you made. Which is amazing! And yet there is a huge subset of writers who absolutely refuse to acknowledge that their creativity is their own.
I feel like this is probably a personal failing of mine and an intolerance I really should work on, but when I say “they’re afraid the magic will go away” I’m being intensely derisive of some creators’ weird belief that they have no control over their creative process.
Sorry, I’m not yelling at you, and I’m sure it’s a perfectly fine book and maybe even this isn’t relevant to the book’s thesis at all. I’m just yelling near you and it, about other stuff :D
ameliahcrowley
Would it help if people told you random nonsense from their lives? As sort of virtual static.
Oh, thank you! I mean, I have enough socialization on the internet, it’s just I’m really starting to need the reality check of going outside in the morning and catching a bus to work. :D
ameliahcrowley replied to your post “Do you think you will write a second part or a follow up for Two Point...”
I *didn't* have feelings, but now I have horrible, no-birth-control-is-100-percent-reliable-in-all-circumstances, accidental pregnancy and (obviously) they're both pro-choice, but Steve secretly *wants* the baby and knows the risk is too great feelings. (And then maybe they end up adopting later on).
Ooo I like this though. Maybe Steve even loses the baby like Tony does in CN (his unwell body makes the decision for him) and then is surprised by how devastated he is since having kids wasn’t something they’d at all planned. And Tony’s trying to figure out if it’s understandably upsetting because it was a real life they were growing, even if it was scary and unintentional, or if this goes beyond that, and Steve is realizing that he actually really wants kids. But he’s also so terrified of what could happen to Steve if he carried to term that he isn’t sure if he’d agree even if Steve wanted it more than anything else.
annechen-melo replied to your post “Do you think you will write a second part or a follow up for Two Point...”
Tony being reluctant to have kids (both because it could hurt Steve and he's afraid of being a poor father) might be enough to keep them childless until they find the orphaned (or kicked out) kid living in the library?
Aaaand then they find a kid in the library. Lmao. Or something... I do love writing babies soooo much, though, so an older kid means I don’t get to write my fav bits 🤔
ameliahcrowley replied to your photo: Endless List of Favourite Queer Characters: Daken...
Didn’t he (according to the writer) sleep with Johnny Storm, too?
It was certainly heavily implied that he did, and I seem to remember that you’re right and the writer confirmed it in an interview, and he seemed to like Jonny more than he does most people. But he was still trying to get something out of the exchange, which is a recurring theme in Daken’s relationships. Even when he has a one night stand in Dark Avengers, he specifically says that he could use an endorphin boost before seducing the woman. Even this kiss is in large part a way to put Bullseye in his place, but at least putting Bullseye in his something Daken wants rather than just a means to an end.
It’s hard to decode whether Daken’s actually ace or not, mostly because Marvel refuses to address the heavily implied sexual abuse he suffered from Romulus. They don’t want to deal with the subject matter (and have been trying to pretend Romulus doesn’t exist because he’s a really stupid character) which means that it’s hard to analyse whether that relationship gave Daken a transactional view of sex, or whether he would have been largely uninterested regardless of his upbringing.
