#hans winter

[arliedraws]

Hello I am here with Warm Hands Of Ghosts art prompts: 1) Winter and Freddie holding each other up after they're reunited; 2) Winter working in the garden and Freddie sketching while they're in Halifax; 3) Winter and Freddie in their new home on Cape Breton; 4) literally anything with these two, I love them so much.

Sorry this is messy as hell, and I’ll draw more of them for sure, but to tide you over ‘til then… Here’s some Winter/Freddie snuggling because they need softness in their lives.

[captainfairygodmother]

The Warm Hands of Ghosts is literally just like the perfect book ever.

Like come on, The Lady of Shalott references? Freddie and Hans' meeting being based on Strange Meeting by Wilfred Owen (and by extent, Freddie being named in his image, too).

Violins? Ypres? A historical figure characterised? Obscure, mysterious, Bacchanalian villain whose fate is not truly revealed and the 'defeat' of him is just the escape? Queer characters with a happy ending? Disability representation? The impacts of PTSD/'shell shock' following battle? A tragic story arc that is so so so justifiable and she ends up in the worst fate possible, but willingly so?

This book is literally everything to me, and I fear I will be annoying all my mutuals about it for the next while.

Give me like, 20ish days, and I may end up writing a full analysis of it, because I NEED to analyse it based on poetical, historical, contemporary etc contexts.

Anyway, everyone go read this 10/10 masterpiece.

[legaltrashgoblin]

Everyone who is like me needs to read The Warm Hands Of Ghosts by Katherine Arden right now. It feels like reading a statement from The Magnus Archives, it's queer, it's really upsetting, it's based in World War I, it destroyed me so much, it's beautiful, it's gutwrenching, it's one of the best books I've ever read.

Wilfred Iven is stuck in a pillbox with a German soldier after an attack on Passchendaele. Despite their odds, they escape, and are met with an elusive battlefield legend known as The Fiddler.

Laura Iven is told by three crazy mediums that her brother isn't dead. So she makes her way to Poperinge, Belgium with her friend Penelope Shaw and boss Mary Borden, reinstated as a nurse in the war hospital under the eye of Stephen Jones, an American doctor.

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

[speaklikeink]

“I had a farm. In the mountains. Meadows. Cattle.” The deep voice dropped until Freddie could hardly hear. “Honey. Black pines, with the sun slanting in.”

Freddie said, “Well—Halifax doesn’t look like that. But we have the sea. I love the sea..."

- The Warm Hands of Ghosts, Katherine Arden

[gliklofhameln]

Rabbi Learning the Talmud — Hans Winter (1853-1944)

signed in Hebrew (lower right)

oil on panel

17.7 by 24.1 cm

[captainfairygodmother]

RIP Captain (James) and Lieutenant Anthony Havers, you would've loved to have visited Cape Breton and befriended Wilfred Iven and Hans Winter

[captainfairygodmother]

Cooking up the most indulgent BBC Ghosts × The Warm Hands of Ghosts fic ever which I imagine only I actually am able to fully understand because I feel like this is too niche of a crossover...

Still loving it anyway, there's Wilfred Owen references

[opalthequeen]

Just finish The Warm Hands of Ghosts by Katherine Arden. A very good book if you are into humanist war stories. The relationship are all very good and interesting and you can really feel their emotions. 4/5 stars

What continues to stick with me is that it is clearly well researched. Unfortunately, research can only take you so far (like taking language classes only to be hit by slang and accents in the real world). Being from Nova Scotia, where the main characters are from and part of the book happens, things are just subtly wrong--in a sort of uncanny way. None of it is immersion breaking but it just happens slightly different than it actually would here. Oatcakes would not have currants in them (95% of the time they are plain, every now and then there might be a chocolate dip but def not in ration time). People in Cape Breton 100% care about who you are (and that question is meant to be answered with you who're related to and maybe where you are from) (its a place where somebody could be named Donald Beaton called Donald John Archie bc his dad was John Archie and families could get generational nicknames). It still would accomplish what the characters wanted but the line was jarring