Singing the Body Electric

Six Sentence Sunday

Sun, 17 May 2026 20:29:25 GMT

The candle had burned down to nearly nothing in its little house. Already he doubted that Izzy could make out anything useful on the maps, unless he had some magic trick to see in the dark. He knew he should leave before he wore out his welcome, but he held still and silent, like Izzy might forget he was even here. He knew how to do that—be like a piece of furniture.

It worked. After a long moment, Izzy tucked the magnifying glass away in its pouch, snuffed out the light, and began to undress for bed.

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Post and Jam: Crime Against Love by Barney Bentall & The Legendary Hearts [1990]

Sat, 16 May 2026 04:02:07 GMT

Fandom 50 #14

Just a little western soft rock for 1990, and the first song so far that—despite having been a hit in Canada—is apparently too obscure to have lyrics up on Genius.com.

Crime Against Love by Barney Bentall & The Legendary Hearts

ETA: Okay, I actually went and made it an entry on Genius.com and updated the link.

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Six Sentence Sunday

Sun, 10 May 2026 17:34:36 GMT

Six Sentence Sunday: Post six sentences from whatever you're working on, if you're game! Folks who don't want to make their own posts are very welcome to share their snippets here.

From "A Wishbone Compass" (Our Flag Means Death, Fang/Izzy, a canon divergence AU where Fang and Izzy wash up on a desert island together a year before s1):

Once, sick with fever, he'd been seized by a fantasy that Edward might sail back to England to bury him. He didn't even fucking care about the place—couldn't say with a gun to his head where any of his people were laid to rest, beyond whatever pauper's pit had been dug the week they died. But it had felt like the sweetest relief in his misery, imagining the cool and damp hold, the cool and damp earth, and the idea that it would matter.

Fang finally stirred sometime in the middle of the night, disturbed either by the sound of high tide or by Izzy frequently looking over his shoulder to gauge whether they needed to retreat inland.

"I can take the next one, Iz," he said, brushing sand out of his beard.

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Post and Jam: All the Things I Wasn't by The Grapes of Wrath [1989]

Fri, 08 May 2026 23:45:23 GMT

Fandom 50 #13

While never reaching the ubiquity of Oasis's Wonderwall, there was a time and place where this would be in the repertoire of every young person who brought an acoustic guitar to a house party or camping trip.

All The Things I Wasn't by The Grapes of Wrath

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FANMIX: All Deck on Hands - The Mix (Our Flag Means Death, Izzy Hands/Crew of the Revenge)

Wed, 06 May 2026 19:19:06 GMT

xposted from polyamships for the prompt to make a 3-5 song fanmix for a favourite poly ship.

Continuing from my ship manifesto, I went with All Deck on Hands!

( The Mix )

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META: All Deck on Hands - A Ship Manifesto (Our Flag Means Death, Izzy Hands/Crew of the Revenge)

Tue, 05 May 2026 16:44:47 GMT

xposted from polyamships for the prompt to write a ship manifesto for a favourite poly ship.

Izzy Hands (right): a man who needs a multi-party introduction to hugging.

I talked about the Feral Five (Archie/Fang/Frenchie/Izzy/Jim) in the previous post about favourite poly ships, but for this manifesto I'd like to expand that further to All Deck on Hands—the inarguably perfect ship name for Izzy Hands and the entire crew of the Revenge.

(And how much do I love being in a fandom where a polycule straying into the double digits has a name and a fanbase?) Exact numbers on this polycule vary based on who's aboard the Revenge when the story's set, but for me, I'm most often adding Lucius Spriggs, Black Pete, Roach, Wee John Feeney, and Oluwande Boodhari to the previous fivesome in a post-canon setting.

But let's rewind.

( The Whats and Whys and Hows of All Deck on Hands )

Visuals

A gifset sampler of Izzy with the crew by userarmand: https://userarmand.tumblr.com/post/736265400421056512/izzy-the-crew

The crew make a new prosthesis for Izzy:

Izzy's drag debut at the crew's celebration for Calypso's Birthday:

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Post and Jam: Everybody Knows by Leonard Cohen [1988]

Tue, 05 May 2026 00:05:41 GMT

Fandom 50 #12

There were a lot of Leonard Cohen songs in the running, but his 1988 I'm Your Man album fit tidily into the lineup, and this is one of the tracks on it that I'm always in the mood to listen to. (That said, I might also be sneaking in a cover of a Cohen song later on in the series.)

Everybody Knows by Leonard Cohen

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Six Sentence Sunday

Mon, 04 May 2026 00:33:54 GMT

Six Sentence Sunday: Post six sentences from whatever you're working on, if you're game! Folks who don't want to make their own posts are very welcome to share their snippets here.

From "Carrot and Stick" (Our Flag Means Death, Izzy Hands/Benjamin Hornigold/OMC, backstory from Izzy's youth aboard the Ranger as his captain takes a special interest in him):

( Cut for implied past non-con, upcoming dub-con, and implied underage )

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FIC: Here We Are (Chance [2015], Amir Abbas/Trevor Bunting)

Sat, 02 May 2026 05:07:20 GMT

Title: Here We Are
Fandom: Chance (2015)
Relationships: Amir Abbas/Trevor Bunting
Rating: General
Word Count: ~850
Content Info: n/a
Summary: An early morning during the first Ramadan of Trevor and Amir's marriage.
Notes: Written for the 2026 round of bethefirst. This story is also available on AO3.

The short film this fic is based on was made available for free online by its director, and I really recommend it if you're in the mood for a very sweet later in life romance between a socially isolated widower and a refugee fleeing state violence with his own loss who meet in a London park one day and offer each other a new lease on life.

( Here We Are )

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Post and Jam: Broken Arrow by Robbie Robertson [1987]

Thu, 30 Apr 2026 18:52:53 GMT

Fandom 50 #11

For 1987, we have a track off Robbie Robertson's first solo album after leaving The Band and following a decade of largely producing, collaborating, and doing soundtrack work. It's also one of my "two nickels" in terms of all-time favourite songs that ended up being covered by Rod Stewart exactly four years after they were released.

Broken Arrow by Robbie Robertson

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What's Making Me Happy Today: Be The First!

Thu, 30 Apr 2026 04:38:13 GMT

I won't have a chance to tuck in until tomorrow, but this year's bethefirst collection is open!

This challenge involves writing the first fic for a fandom, and this time out there are 37 fics with 37 newly minted fandom tags, ranging from early 20th century contemporary novels to fantasy webcomics, horror podcasts, and art films.

The Collection on AO3

The Fic List on DW (since most fandoms aren't wrangled on AO3 yet)

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WiP Meme

Tue, 28 Apr 2026 20:39:51 GMT

Borrowed from dr_zook:

Make a post with the names of all the files in your WIPs folder. People comment with the title that most intrigues them, then tell them something about it/post a snippet!

I already talk your ears off about my WiPs through my Six Sentence Sunday posts and annual WiP Post of Doooooom, but I thought this was a fun meme to share. I'm putting my own shortlist of files I've done something with this year below in case there are any takers.

D&D
By the Horns

DCU
Imagine Me and You

IT (1990)
Nice Boys Do

Our Flag Means Death
Blessing the Bed
Carrot and Stick
Catfish and Hush Puppies
Cleave
FtaGH 0 - Prologue
FtaGH 1 - Like Someone You Know
FtaGH 2 - Girl Talk
FtaGH 3 - Boy Troubles
The In-and-In
Izzysitting
LVeO 3 - Communion
LVeO 4 - Orchard
Licorice Drops and Jelly Roll
Like You Love Him
Made to Order
Matching Set
The Merry Widow
Paint and Pie
A Wishbone Compass

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Six Sentence Sunday

Sun, 26 Apr 2026 23:36:54 GMT

Fang's clothes were dry by the time the sun set, and it felt nice to wiggle back into his fire-warmed trousers as the breeze off the water turned cooler. With a storm still circling out there, he thought it might be cozier to camp on the other side of the hill, but who knew what kind of beasties might be out in the forest at night. Besides, they'd be easier to spot out here, for better or for worse—and hopefully for the better.

Izzy seemed to be thinking along the same path, drawing lines in the sand with a stick and squinting at them in the falling light, muttering occasionally as he tried to work out how long it would take the Queen Anne to get back here if the crew refitted at sea, how long it would take if the ship had to put in at Antigua, how long if they had to limp down to Dominica.

"A week at the outside," he finally proclaimed, nodding at the evidence of his figuring. "More likely as soon as tomorrow, knowing him."

It was as warming as the fire, in its own funny way, to sit in the glow of Izzy's absolute faith that the captain would come looking for them.

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What I'm Reading: Spent by Alison Bechdel (2025)

Sun, 26 Apr 2026 06:56:55 GMT

✓ kingstoken's 2026 Book Bingo: Main Character Over the Age of 30

Spent by Alison Bechdel is a 2025 fictionalized memoir about a cartoonist (coincidentally named Alison Bechdel) who lives on a farm in Vermont with her partner, running a goat sanctuary while trying to write a graphic novel (or maybe it'll be a television show?) about capitalism (or maybe it's about her group of middle-aged queer friends).

The real Alison Bechdel is the creator of the long-running and groundbreaking comic strip Dykes to Watch Out For (1983-2008) and the award-winning graphic novel memoir Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic (2007), and that knowledge is something I think Spent depends on. It's not just that Sparrow, Stuart, Ginger, and Lois—and a grown-up Jiao Raizel—from Dykes to Watch Out For are fictional!Alison's neighbours in this, or that fictional!Alison is grappling with having an autobiographical success publicly leave her creative control through adaptation. The heart of this work exists in a very specific instant, where a queer leftist artist in middle age and the middle class is sitting at a career crossroads in the global car crash of late-stage capitalism, finding herself in an uncertain position between privileged and marginalized, mainstream and fringe, consumer and creator, progressive and out of touch.

My favourite parts of this book were the subplots with the characters from Dykes to Watch Out For—particularly storylines like Stuart and Sparrow expanding their relationship to a throuple, only for their poly kid to nonetheless jump to the conclusion they're both having affairs—and I found myself wishing I were reading it as a serial strip that could add up to more time with them. But that might be saying something about where and when I'd rather be.

This is a book that got me thinking about a lot of its topics, but more through its general timeliness and the role of Bechdel's work in the culture than through a connection with the characters or something in the writing hitting particularly hard. Still, while even the lighter stories didn't quite land in the right place for me to see myself revisiting them on rainy days, I do want to imagine a better future where I get to go back to this book someday and see it as a snapshot of a weird moment in time where we were all trying to figure some stuff out. I wouldn't necessarily recommend it as anyone's first Bechdel, but I'm glad I read it.

( An Excerpt )

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Six Sentence Sunday

Sun, 19 Apr 2026 21:04:17 GMT

They stood there together for a long moment, a rain-speckled wind blowing at their backs and rippling the palm fronds below.

There was a clear way of things on the Queen Anne: Blackbeard came up with the plans, Izzy took charge of making them happen, and Fang did what needed doing. Only, the captain wasn't here to make a plan.

A deepening frown creased Izzy's brow, and Fang pretended not to notice that he opened his mouth to speak at least three times before eventually settling on their direction.

"We head back to the beach. There's nothing else out there, so...this is where they'll come looking when they're fit to sail again." The practicalities came more readily. "Water first, then a fire if anything on this piss-soaked rock is dry enough to catch."

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Post and Jam: Patio Lanterns by Kim Mitchell [1986]

Fri, 17 Apr 2026 23:41:19 GMT

Fandom 50 #10

When I was putting together this list of Canadian songs I love from the last fifty years, some years had a clear favourite jump out at me while others had too many bangers to choose between. (Seriously, 1993 turned out to be the keystone year whose ultimate selection affected everything from 1987 to 2001.) But 1986 was the first stumper.

I don't think it's the case that 1986 was a mid year for Canadian music. It's more likely that it's just the first year I was properly conscious of music, with the releases getting replayed throughout my early childhood until they became background noise. These are third-favourite albums from artists whose later eras hit stronger for me, songs I slept through during my first concert as a toddler, and snippets from radio bumpers that earworm me to this day.

So, without a stronger personal preference, the clear choice was the Canadian song of 1986. The one that everyone loved and then became so inescapable that everyone hated it, and which is probably on schedule for a revival soon if it gets used in the right commercial or CBC show. However you feel about it, it's hard to find something more Canadian than this.

Patio Lanterns by Kim Mitchell

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Post and Jam: Map of the World, Pt. II by Jane Siberry [1985]

Tue, 14 Apr 2026 01:58:02 GMT

Fandom 50 #9

For my 1985 pick, it feels like a good day for five minutes of surreal geography-themed art pop.

Map of the World, Pt. II by Jane Siberry

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Six Sentence Sunday

Sun, 12 Apr 2026 17:20:07 GMT

Fang was having a nice dream. It was today, sort of, but it was also years and years ago, back when they were still sailing on the Fortune. The ship had made land at one of the Berry Islands for refitting and shore leave, and the weather and the mood was fine. That was the first and only time he and Izzy got up to something outside—really outside, not just out back of a tavern or under a pier, but down in the cool grass under the stars.

It was a nervy, hot-blooded sort of thing, dressed up in the excuse of squaring away a dice game. Awake, Fang could probably pin it to a year by that alone: back before getting off with Izzy became a habit, and well before the habit petered out.

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What's Making Me Happy Today: Dimension 20 City Council of Darkness

Sun, 12 Apr 2026 05:44:52 GMT

The first episode of the newest Dimension 20 campaign premiered on Wednesday, and I am so on board for this one.

City Council of Darkness is in the world of Vampire: The Masquerade, the tabletop roleplaying game most commonly set in the modern day, where vampires belonging to various clans and bloodlines engage politically in their home cities while trying to manage their own bestial urges, avoid the vampire hunters of the Second Inquisition, and above all keep the existence of vampires secret from humanity at large. City Council of Darkness is about what happens when a group of ambitious San Francisco vampires' bid for attention from the vampiric elite goes comically wrong, resulting in them being banished to the town of Purpee, Oregon, and forbidden to leave until they establish vampiric dominion there.

So far, it's been supremely silly in the best of ways, well-paced and plotted, full of mayhem, with characters and relationships that I'm looking forward to learning more about and an important reminder that the real monsters of San Francisco are Silicon Valley billionaires. I especially can't wait to see more of the friendship between Ventrue finance hustlers LaVonte Worthy and H.J. Wingstreet (joining Kingston Brown & Pete Conlan and Montgomery LaMontgommery & Olethra MacLeod as characters played by Lou Wilson and Ally Beardsley whose dynamic immediately grabbed me) and whatever the deal is between chaotic '80s(?) Brujah childe Zaeth Bondana and his respectable sire Koschei Severov.

The series as a whole is exclusive to Dropout.tv or through Youtube membership, but I'm pretty sure that in the tradition of Dimension 20, the first episode of the campaign will go up for free on the Youtube channel's Season Premieres playlist.

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Post and Jam: Let It Go by Luba [1984]

Mon, 06 Apr 2026 23:16:27 GMT

Fandom 50 #8

For 1984, it's a song that was baby's first trans/gnc anthem and remains a classic of the Canadian drag scene.

Let It Go by Luba

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Six Sentence Sunday

Mon, 06 Apr 2026 03:44:11 GMT

Izzy lunged for it, slowed by the water but managing to get his hand around the rope. It nearly yanked his arm from the socket as it dragged him headlong down the deck. His weight could only slow its run, not stop it, and there was just enough time before he hit the guardrail to convince himself that the other end of the line was tied off, that someone was grabbing hold behind him, that Ed—

Then his body experienced a hard, sudden stop followed by a sickening weightlessness. Lightning flashed again, bright as noon. The last thing he saw before the hangman's drop into the sea was a bleary glimpse of Ed turning from his self-appointed post at the prow, eyes widening, mouth shaping around a word he had no chance of hearing.

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What I'm Watching: Good (2022) and The Estate (2025)

Sun, 05 Apr 2026 06:27:04 GMT

A bit of a catch-up on two things I watched recently through National Theatre at Home:

Good (directed by Dominic Cooke) is a 2022 production of the 1981 play by Cecil Philip Taylor, about a professor in pre-war Germany whose decisions take him from a life as a progressive academic and family man whose closest friend is Jewish to an active contributor to the Final Solution.

The production stars David Tennant as protagonist John Halder, with Sharon Small and Elliot Levey playing virtually all other characters. I don't know if that's the norm for this play, but having the people around Halder share faces was extremely effective in bringing home the self-centeredness that guides his actions and the way he conceives of people in his life by the role they play in his conception of himself. Tennant, Small, and Levey all turn in fantastic performances, but Levey in particular just knocked it out of the park, especially in a scene near the end that differs slightly from the original play in a way that hit even harder for me. This was really something special.

The Estate (directed by Daniel Raggett) is the debut play from Shaan Sahota, starring Adeel Akhtar as MP Angad Singh—the unexpected frontrunner for party leadership on a platform of change—whose image of himself as the underdog progressive son of a working class father is put to the test when his father dies, leaving a significant estate to him with nothing going to his older sisters on the basis of sex.

There was some unevenness across the performances, a key moment at the climax kind of wobbled for me, and I personally think the political elements would have worked a lot better if this had maybe been set in the 2010s (because specifically name-checking it as 2025 just drove home the ways it doesn't resemble the political climate of the moment), but it was firing on all cylinders when it came to the family drama, the poison of unexamined privilege and unspoken trauma, and the pressure to keep conflicts in marginalized communities out of the public eye even if it means demanding more sacrifices from the more vulnerable members of that community. Adeel Akhtar's performance was incredibly impressive given all of the ugly and painful things that come out of Angad over the course of the play, and Thusitha Jayasundera (playing Angad's eldest sister, Gyan) was an immediate "Oh, I need to see more of what she's been in." Also, the staging and music were great and made me really wish I'd been able to see this one in person.

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Post and Jam: I'll Find Another (Who Can Do it Right) by The Payola$ [1983]

Thu, 02 Apr 2026 23:43:54 GMT

Fandom 50 #7

This pick from 1983 isn't necessarily the most representative of the sound the Payola$ are known for, but it's a certified bop with a hook that still gets stuck in my head on a regular basis.

I'll Find Another (Who Can Do It Right) by The Payola$

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What's Making Me Happy Today: Dimension 20 on a Bus

Thu, 02 Apr 2026 04:10:13 GMT

Last year, as an interstitial segment on Game Changer, the folks over at Dropout.tv filmed an improv skit called Dimension 20: On a Bus, where the concept was four professional GMs sitting down to play D&D with a GM who had a limited understanding of how the game was played.

It was a funny bit, but I don't think anyone expected the calls for more to actually result in anything. Until now, when for April Fool's Day, Dropout released a full one-hour episode of it. It's only up on their streaming service, but here's the teaser trailer that dropped without warning:

And man, the actual episode did not disappoint. It was a hilarious mess that hit just the right balance of winding up a bunch of professional storytellers, but also letting them do what they best as they tried to salvage things. I laughed to the point of tears, but I also legitimately picked up pointers about character-building and how to move a plot along (to get to LAX to fly out to an M&M wedding in Lisbon when everything keeps blowing up).

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Six Sentence Sunday

Mon, 30 Mar 2026 04:51:51 GMT

"Captain on deck!" Izzy called out, his back straightening and his feet finding firm purchase despite the wild tilt of another wave.

Relief took the edge off the sickening drop and the bite out of the rain. In the pause while the wind drew breath again, Izzy caught a splinter of someone's smart-arse comment about spewing, but he would not be stopped from snapping his spyglass from his belt and scanning the thrashing horizon for a renewed glimpse of white sail on the edge of the storm.

"East Indiaman's still in sight, sir, three miles on the starboard bow."

No answer or acknowledgement came. Izzy stepped aside, expecting Ed to mount to the quarterdeck and take the wheel, but instead—moving as though the deck were level beneath his feet, calm and heedless as a sleepwalker—he drifted through the tangle of lines and crew toward the forecastle.

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