Forbannelsen (2022) for @ghostcat3000
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Forbannelsen (2022) for @ghostcat3000
Happy Birthday Ghostcat3000!
At the Fishhouses
Although it is a cold evening,
down by one of the fishhouses
an old man sits netting,
his net, in the gloaming almost invisible,
a dark purple-brown,
and his shuttle worn and polished.
The air smells so strong of codfish
it makes one’s nose run and one’s eyes water.
The five fishhouses have steeply peaked roofs
and narrow, cleated gangplanks slant up
to storerooms in the gables
for the wheelbarrows to be pushed up and down on.
All is silver: the heavy surface of the sea,
swelling slowly as if considering spilling over,
is opaque, but the silver of the benches,
the lobster pots, and masts, scattered
among the wild jagged rocks,
is of an apparent translucence
like the small old buildings with an emerald moss
growing on their shoreward walls.
The big fish tubs are completely lined
with layers of beautiful herring scales
and the wheelbarrows are similarly plastered
with creamy iridescent coats of mail,
with small iridescent flies crawling on them.
Up on the little slope behind the houses,
set in the sparse bright sprinkle of grass,
is an ancient wooden capstan,
cracked, with two long bleached handles
and some melancholy stains, like dried blood,
where the ironwork has rusted.
The old man accepts a Lucky Strike.
He was a friend of my grandfather.
We talk of the decline in the population
and of codfish and herring
while he waits for a herring boat to come in.
There are sequins on his vest and on his thumb.
He has scraped the scales, the principal beauty,
from unnumbered fish with that black old knife,
the blade of which is almost worn away.
Down at the water’s edge, at the place
where they haul up the boats, up the long ramp
descending into the water, thin silver
tree trunks are laid horizontally
across the gray stones, down and down
at intervals of four or five feet.
Cold dark deep and absolutely clear,
element bearable to no mortal,
to fish and to seals . . . One seal particularly
I have seen here evening after evening.
He was curious about me. He was interested in music;
like me a believer in total immersion,
so I used to sing him Baptist hymns.
I also sang “A Mighty Fortress Is Our God.”
He stood up in the water and regarded me
steadily, moving his head a little.
Then he would disappear, then suddenly emerge
almost in the same spot, with a sort of shrug
as if it were against his better judgment.
Cold dark deep and absolutely clear,
the clear gray icy water . . . Back, behind us,
the dignified tall firs begin.
Bluish, associating with their shadows,
a million Christmas trees stand
waiting for Christmas. The water seems suspended
above the rounded gray and blue-gray stones.
I have seen it over and over, the same sea, the same,
slightly, indifferently swinging above the stones,
icily free above the stones,
above the stones and then the world.
If you should dip your hand in,
your wrist would ache immediately,
your bones would begin to ache and your hand would burn
as if the water were a transmutation of fire
that feeds on stones and burns with a dark gray flame.
If you tasted it, it would first taste bitter,
then briny, then surely burn your tongue.
It is like what we imagine knowledge to be:
dark, salt, clear, moving, utterly free,
drawn from the cold hard mouth
of the world, derived from the rocky breasts
forever, flowing and drawn, and since
our knowledge is historical, flowing, and flown.
by Elizabeth Bishop
for the writing meme: 10, 11, 18
10. Has a piece of writing ever “haunted” you? Has your own writing haunted you? What does that mean to you?
Same question, different answer: in the late 1900s, lol, there was a site that linked to "THE WORST FICS EVER WRITTEN" and one of them was a Scully/Skinner but Skinner was an alien and she had to suck his dick and then discovered there were an endless parade of Skinner aliens that she now had to suck off. HAUNTED ME EVER SINCE.
11. Do you believe in the old advice to “kill your darlings?” Are you a ruthless darling assassin? What happens to the darlings you murder? Do you have a darling graveyard? Do you grieve?
Same question, different answer. I'm actually mad that Steve didn't die in Endgame after writing his death in so many fics leading up to it. KEVIN IS A PUSSY. KILL HIM.
18. Choose a passage from your writing. Tell me about the backstory of this moment. How you came up with it, how it changed from start to end.
From But mine is as hungry as the sea (Saurondriel): He laughs, a peel of discordant sound. And she looks at him, her cheeks wet. Sauron opens his mouth. “I love you, Artanis,” he says to her in the black speech.
This entire sequence was important to me, I could write 1k words about it; but specific to this line: I knew early on that I needed him to say her birth name in black speech. I originally had a different plan for it, but this felt right. The declaration, honestly said, and absolutely too late and past the point of no return. I cried typing it.
so as you know, the very first SKAM fic I bookmarked was...On Call. (cue dramatic music) I re-read it recently and I remember how much I loved this: >>>Oh God. He can’t breathe. His heart is beating like crazy, and for a faint second the thought that he is going to die as well crosses his mind.<<< and the rest of this scene. Isak is so focused on his career, it feels both easy and hardwon somehow, as complicated as something real. His frustration at the ease which Even seems to navigate everything, his fury at his endless legs--I love how reading it, I'm just murmuring YOU STUPID MAN YOU ARE ATTRACTED LOOK PAY ATTENTION and then he does. It took a moment of helplessness, and Even being there to help him start to really see.
It is quite funny how you sent me an ask about On Call because I thought of that fic just the other day, and how I haven't reread it since I wrote it. It was the first actual fanfic I ever wrote and I've been afraid to find too many things I want to fix but don't have time for.
I do, however, remember a few scenes that I'm still happy that I wrote and that I think worked—including the above, with Isak having a panic attack in the hospital locker room, absolutely certain his well-built facade is about to fall to pieces because of one mistake that anyone could make, but to him seems like the whole world. He has no distance and that fact has him in a literal chokehold here.
That is, until Even comes in as the catalyst for Isak to find additional and different perspectives on himself, and on life in general. (As seen on NRK lol).
(I still can't believe this was the actual first SKAM fic you ever bookmarked. Amazing and hilarious)
Thanks for asking. 💗
Send me asks from this meme!
◄ HAPPY BIRTHDAY GHOSTCAT ►
Please tell me all about your “embarrassing” Logan/Rogue fics. *chin hands*
@ghostcat3000 you are absolutely the best. I’m very embarrassed. Not about the ship, which I still love. I just don’t love my writing for them. Or my internalized sexism.
Wait, but let’s talk about the ship! I was a fan of the 90s cartoon! Wolverine and Rogue were my favorite characters. I didn’t care about Jean Gray and hated the Cyclops/Wolverine/Jean love triangle. I didn’t care that much about Gambit. I wanted Wolverine and Rogue to hook up because they were my favorite characters, but I wasn’t really intense about it. I just wanted them to be happy.
Then the first X-men movie came out, and I did not want Wolverine/Rogue to become canon. I loved the older!brother/little!sister vibe. I loved that the relationship between Logan and Marie was the center of that movie. I was also suuuuuuuuper into the older!brother/little!sister vibe for lots of hot porn as well as fanfic that would see them hook up and grow into each other and offer each other things others couldn’t.
Okay, so, let’s see, 18 years ago I was on the Wolverine/Rogue Yahoo Group. This is where I first read an “all human” AU--before that, I just thought AUs were more like we think of canon divergence these days. There was one author there that still, to this day, is someone whose writing I remember and think about. (I just checked ff.n, which is NOT where their original stories were posted, but they ARE there, and they wrote Logan/Marie in 2016!!! I’m quite chuffed about this, even though some of the stories I remember best aren’t there.) There were some BNFs. There was one author who wrote long, involved, plotty stories that got finished, which I enjoyed reading.
I was super influenced by these authors and wrote some things that were very derivative of what they wrote. The author that I liked best wrote a lot of experimental prose--artistic sketches instead of stories, lots of playing around with a very strong, heavy-handed but recognizable Logan-voice. Inspired, I wrote a whole piece like that that was about a piece of pottery Marie had given him. I’m mortified by this, mostly because it’s sexist and overwrought.
The other main thing I wrote in that fandom was a remix of a fic written by the author who wrote long plotty stories. They had basically written this slave/torture AU about Logan and Rogue being imprisoned and experimented on by scientists (which included a breeding experiment. Natch). That was really entertaining, but I really wanted it to deal with the trauma and consequences of all this. So, I asked the author if I could do a fic inspired by theirs, and they graciously said yes. The first few chapters of the fic I wrote are medical horror/torture with some Scientists Made Them Do It, though honestly there is almost no physical action and all of it is focused on a psychological loss of self. I wrote this when I was 19, okay? Anyway, they escape the Evil Scientists and the rest is about their recovery. The main thing that embarrasses me is a) I was super into the controlling broody alpha male who is Too Dangerous and so denies himself The Reward, ie, the woman he is into. Meanwhile the heroine makes him see that he is worthy WITH HER BODY, and b) there is some super purple prose as well as POV hopping.
I did start writing another thing, and I honestly have no idea what it was about, but there is exactly one chapter still on ffn. I really wanted to deal with the complicated relationships between all the characters after the second X-Men movie, in particular Wolverine, Cyclops, Nightcrawler, Storm, and Rogue, but also some Xavier and Moira MacTaggart. Ew. I’m looking at the a/n now and it literally says this is about these dudes “and the women we all know belong to them.” THIS is why I’m embarrassed.
Honestly, when I look back on older fic I’m most embarrassed by the A/Ns. I really wanted to fit in and find friends and convince people that my fic was like other fic, when I was deeply aware it was very cerebral and navel-gazey in a way not everyone really likes. Eventually I stopped giving a fuck, which was nice.
In honor of @ghostcat3000 ‘s birthday, I present a tiny black cat I saw recently (because Fandom Bizness is a black cat appreciation tumblr)
PSA: asking for a moment of your time to celebrate the miracle that is @ghostcat3000 who says she hates it when people say nice things but that’s all a façade on her birthday 🐱🖤
I feel like I’ve known you for ages and we hang out all the time. You’re so funny and caring, you make me snort at least once a day and you make sure I don’t do too much stupid shit (or when I do, I at least keep you updated as it unfolds).
Wishing you a great birthday, a lovely year, and MANY more after this one because I put Cannes 2023 in my calendar and ordered you a beekeeper suit already.
I love you LOTS ♥️♥️♥️
xoxo maudie