A paranoid book nerd accompanied by his loyal assistant named John releases a phenomenon of great power into the world while trying to deal with his bright younger colleague whose love interest gets kidnapped by a white-haired villain?
imagine stephen black and emma pole ending up alone together after emma gets taken by the gentleman, and she’s just lying on a couch looking listless and he’s in the room to get something or do some chore and all of a sudden emma can’t stand it anymore, she’s tried to tell everyone else what’s wrong with her but nothing ever comes out of her mouth but nonsense, and she takes a deep breath and tells stephen everything and they just stare at each other for a few seconds before she bursts into tears, relieved that she’s finally able to say it out loud to another person and furious because she knows stephen is as trapped as she is and neither of them can do anything about it, and stephen tries to comfort her rather awkwardly without actually touching her
imagine stephen black and emma pole at one of their early parties at lost-hope, and the gentleman is dancing with emma but he’s called away to deal with some fairy matter so he beckons stephen over and tells him to keep lady pole company until he returns, and stephen hesitates and is about to protest that he cannot dance with his employer’s wife, it wouldn’t be proper, but the gentleman has already bustled away. stephen doesn’t really want to disobey him, and emma is there watching him with that awful haunted look that never leaves her face these days, and he holds out his hands and she grips them tightly like a woman on the verge of drowning who’s trying not to slip further below the waves. her hands are freezing, and she says in a quiet, desperate voice, “talk to me, stephen,” so stephen starts to speak as calmly as he can about sir walter’s financial affairs and the footmen’s latest misadventures and which shops he visited yesterday, and eventually the dance ends and they move to one side of the room but emma doesn’t let go of his hands until the gentleman returns to claim her again
“But when the fairy sang, the whole world listened to him. Stephen felt clouds pause in their passing; he felt sleeping hills shift and murmur; he felt cold mists dance. He understood for the first time that the world is not dumb at all, but merely waiting for someone to speak to it in a language it understands. In the fairy’s song the earth recognized the names by which it called itself.”
Here is my piece for the @jsamnfanart exchange, which once again has been a pleasure to participate in ♥ My match was @grrrenadine, who asked for Emma and/or Arabella at a Lost-Hope ball - hope you enjoy it!
Very excited to post my art for @profdrlachfinger as part of the @jsamnfanart exchange! Their prompt was Childermass and tarot, so I thought it would be interesting to portray him on his own card, I guess!
“This is certainly a most elegant assembly, madam. I do not know when I last saw so many handsome faces and graceful figures gathered together in one place. And every one of them in the utmost bloom of youth. I confess that I am surprized to see no older people in the room. Have these ladies and gentlemen no mothers and fathers? No aunts or uncles?”
“What an odd remark!” she replied, laughing. “Why should the Master of Lost-hope House invite aged and unsightly persons to his ball? Who would want to look at them? Besides we are not so young as you suppose. England was nothing but dreary wood and barren moor when last we saw our sires and dams…”
Costumes from Lost-hope ball requested by anonymous
OK, I am avoiding work by reading JSaMN fanfic and although I find it all highly agreeable I do want to kvetch unnecessarily about some personal pet peeves of mine, specifically about Fandom Bicycle John Childermass, so here we go:
1. Literally any description of Childermass as big or strong. Folks, have you seen Enzo Cilenti? He is a greyhound. He is a whippet. He is lean, mean, leaning machine. If I have to read one more reference to my beloved pipe cleaner’s “broad shoulders” or “muscular thighs” I am going to loseit
2. “But wait” you say, “you don’t get it, I’m writing book!Childermass not BBC!Childermass” Nice try. Is your Childermass a twisted-faced Sketchy McSketcherson in his 50s? Is he grinning like a Cheshire cat from every page of your fic? Does he look less like Heathcliff and more like the Child Catcher from Chitty Chitty Bang Bang? Major love and props to the fewwriters who commit to the glorious weirdness of Book!mass, but the rest of you are writing sexy Cilenti and you knowit
3. Okay, minor point, but why is Childermass always tramping around in boots? BBC!Childermass does not own boots. JonathanStrange owns riding boots, to be sure, because he is a country gentleman and a clotheshorse, but John Childermass wears what look like leather (or possibly canvas) gaiters (aka spatterdashes, aka spats) over his shoes when riding. My boy is a city boy. I will only accept allusions to John Childermass clomping his riding boots through the wild Yorkshire moors if it happens in the imagination of characters who are romantic and don’t know better (aka John Segundus).
4. Speaking of clothing, the fandom and I are basically in agreement that Childermass does not wear under-breeches, but where we differ is that the fandom thinks this is shocking, salacious information. Fam, no one expects Childermass to be wearing under-breeches. Under-breeches were only just becoming common for gentlemen in the Regency period and until then had been worn more for warmth than modesty. Childermass, who dresses like it’s 1763 and is impervious to all forms of weather would absolutely not wear under-breeches. He would wear a linen shirt long enough to tuck around his… bits just like any other 18th century dude and this would not be worthy of comment.
5.Also speaking of clothing, Childermass wears a cravat. Yes, you can call it a neckcloth, but “neckcloth” is an umbrella term that also includes stocks and jabots and various other fol-de-lols. Fashion historians, please feel free to correct me, but I’m pretty sure “he took off his neckcloth” is about as specific as “he took off his outerwear”. I am tired of the word neckcloth, y’all. I have read it so many times it has ceased to have meaning. You can say “cravat”. It’s fine.
6. Also ALSO speaking of clothing, we all know that Childermass’ clothes are out of fashion but I don’t think the fandom realizes just how out of fashion they are. Cilenti’s costume SCREAMS 18th century (the looooong waistcoat! the pocket flaps! the ponytail!) to a degree that can’t be explained by mere thriftiness or indifference to fashion. His clothes aren’t just old (if they were that old, they would be in much worse condition); they are intentionally old-fashioned because they evoke livery. Childermass is very clearly wearing the silhouette of a servant while also very clearly wearing his own clothes. It’s an eloquent costume choice that shows the in-betweenness of his character: not quite a servant, but not not a servant either.
All of this is to say that I desperately want a post-canon fic where somebody coaxes a reluctant Childermass into a symbolic haircut and possibly a shorter waistcoat to indicate that he has moved on from Norrell and is no longer a servant. Please give it to me. That is all.
A Jonathan Strange fountain pen sketch from weeks ago. I rewatched the series with my kids, they loved it. Drawing is not happening at the moment. I will draw again.
“Can a magician kill a man by magic?” Lord Wellington asked Strange. Strange frowned. He seemed to dislike the question. “I suppose a magician might,” he admitted, “but a gentleman never could.”
Marc Warren looking magnificent as the gentleman with thistledown hair!
‘Someone was standing in the middle of the room: a tall, handsome person with pale, perfect skin and an immense amount of hair, as pale and shining as thistle-down. His cold, blue eyes glittered and he had long dark eye-brows, which terminated in an upward flourish. He was dressed exactly like any other gentleman, except that his coat was of the brightest green imaginable - the colour of leaves in early summer.’
