#cbk1000

I was wondering if you had recommendations for historical fiction set during the Plantagenet reign? I've tried Sharon Kay Penman and unfortunately didn't get on with her writing, which is a shame as I've heard good things about her series. I know Philippa Gregory has several novels set during that time period, but her books seem to be verging on bodice rippers, which isn't what I'm looking for. Was just curious if you had any suggestions for well-researched fiction set during the Plantagenet reign.

This ask has been sitting in my inbox for several days (my apologies) largely because I was trying to think of a more helpful answer for you. Medieval historical fiction is VERY hit and miss for me, not least because it is often written by people who, uh, are not historians and thus have Certain Ideas (TM) about what the medieval period is like. Or they want to use various aesthetics, or they want to make some (usually questionable) point about how women were treated in the past, or they just go whole-hog on total nonsense. As an example of all of these things at once, let us all stare in horror at this recently-released book description together:

(The book is called the Stone Witch of Florence, by the way. I took one look at this and ran screaming. WHY.)

A stone witch?? So she channels the power of gemstones like a modern-day Instagram healing crystals influencer??? BUT ZOMGZ WITCHCRAFT. In the middle of the Black Death. "Unorthodox cures" you say. But they also need holy relics for protection, and I totally trust the author to understand about medieval hagiography/cult of the saints. Totally. We definitely won't get some half-baked comparison between Sekrit Women Magical Gems Which Really Work and Dark Ages Church Superstition Holy Relics Which Are A Fraud, or.... something??? And our nobly mistreated protagonist will super definitely be a real physician if she gets these and never ever accused of witchcraft (which LET US ALL SAY IT TOGETHER IS AN EARLY MODERN THING!!!!) Because medieval medicine was just a bunch of gemstone vibes anyway! Makes total sense!

...my head hurts.

Anyway, while not all examples are this egregious, the point is: I love historical fiction, but I almost always can't read it when it's set in the medieval era. I read Sharon Kay Penman a while ago and enjoyed her stuff at the time, though I have assorted gripes with it on a stylistic/historical level. While Philippa Gregory does have real academic credentials, she likewise has gone totally down the bodice-ripper alternate-history crackpot theory Secret Women Magic version of things, which is... fine if that's your jam, but just like you, it is not mine. I thus have to read fiction which is set in other periods or which I know less about or where at least I am more capable of turning off my brain and accepting things for the sake of the story. So as you see, I unfortunately don't have many useful suggestions for you in this field, since the kind of medieval historical fiction that I like to recommend is, say, The Name of the Rose. Which is terrific and written for someone of a professional medievalist's level of knowledge, but is not exactly everyone's cup of tea when they just want something fun and easy to understand.

I am, of course, happy to give other book recommendations if you'd like to broaden your request, and I'll do my best to think -- but yes! As I said, I wish I could be more helpful here. I shall persist.

Rules: Share the first line of ten of your most recent fanfics. Tagged by @cbk1000 bless you friend, you know i certain have enough WIP to at least come close to ten. This ended up being like opening paragraph but whatever, sue me, i do not write opening sentences that you could frame in a museum, unlike some authors i could name. *coughJennifercough*

Working Title: Body Drop

He was taking too long. Caroline did her best not to fidget, a bad tell at the best of times, but he brought it out in her. His careful hands—hands that could have belonged to a musician or maybe a sculptor—kept touching things and despite the gloves he wore, she would have to take a Lysol wipe to the knives after he left.

Freaky Friday Time Travel fic

The package was sitting innocently enough on the porch swing when Caroline got home from school. After a weird day of fielding concerned questions from her peers about Elena’s whereabouts—Stefan and Damon locking her in the Boarding House all weekend after prom was a last-ditch effort that looked like it wasn’t working—Caroline wasn’t really in the mood for a surprise.

waffle house fic

Many people will tell you that a Waffle House diner at 1 a.m. is a liminal space. An in-between realm where anything can happen. The concept of liminal spaces mostly got lost on Caroline once she became a member of the walking, talking undead, although Bonnie still swore they were a thing, like the creepy old house where she had communed with the witch spirits.

Mechanic

“Hello, is anyone here?” Caroline calls from the open door of the garage. She can't see over the old Chevy pulled into the loading bay.

Antique Shop

The laptop was a cover. Well, the office work still needed to get done, and it’s true that she normally sat out on the patio with it for an hour after lunchtime ended at 3:00 PM, but Caroline was rarely there past 4:00 PM. She prided herself on having competent managers at the coffee shop and when her ‘shift’ was over, she went home.

the wind pours by like destiny part 2

It was with no little amount of force that Caroline flung the door to the inn chamber closed behind her. The wooden door slammed home into the frame and the latch clicked into place.

“Married?” She hissed at Klaus. “You had to compel the innkeeper into thinking we were married?"

Stellar Flare ch 2

Klaus’ communicator gave another faint buzz along the back of his arm, and he adjusted his grip on Caroline’s legs. It had run through a slew of notifications from the past several hours, gone quiet for a little, and then about five minutes ago, started back up again. Now that his communicator was no longer being blocked by Tyler's base, his message must have been sent through the relays.

Mafia AU part 3

The thing about Klaus was, he was currently late. Seven o'clock had come and gone, and Caroline was still sitting on her couch, in her dress, and the worst part was—the worst part was—that she was worried. He knew, he absolutely knew her opinions on tardiness, made it a point to show up on time or early for all their dates get-togethers

fake sexy lamp au

It was astonishing what a thousand years could do to a place. The last time he’d seen the village that would become Mystic Falls, it had been a half burned wreck, a testament to the sins of fathers coming to roost on the sons. Now?

Well, it was no longer on fire, Klaus thought blandly, looking around the town square from where he sat on an out-of-the-way park bench. One could term that an improvement. It was disgustingly picturesque in that true Southern Americana way.

Wales

Okay, so, maybe she jumped the gun. Maybe this wasn’t one of her more well-reasoned plans. It had seemed like a perfectly reasonable reaction to seeing Tyler and Hayley at the Mystic Falls Cook Off together three days ago, feeding each other bits of cake and being nauseatingly happy together.

♡☆♡☆♡☆♡☆♡☆

No wait i actually have ten, more than ten, fucking hell, who authorized this????

In the solid daylight of soberness, [Merlin] would have noticed he was endangering his friendship; but whilst the alcohol had dethroned his brain, and made of his penis a lively successor, he noticed only that he was hard, and Arthur was hard: and grabbed him by the tie to annihilate him. There was a blinding transition, from sharing space to impinging on space; in a moment they went from smiling stupidly at one another, to kissing stupidly at one another. Arthur cracked his shoulder against the wall; but having brought Merlin down with him by his grasp on his shirt, kept kissing incoherently on him. It was something like inhaling, instead of kissing; they were trying to subsist on the kissing, rather than breathing: and doing it not entirely shabbily, Merlin liked to think, since they were both still living, and snogging.

Next morning Merlin performed his morning ablutions of pissing, and puking. He had stumbled into the bathroom for the one, and realised he needed the other. Thus could he be found at 8.00 on a Sunday, bringing back the mimosas for curtain call; though fortunately he was doing it in solitude, whilst Arthur slumbered in bliss. He was throwing up his guts, and his feelings, of which he was having too many at once.  He was realising now, with his head over the toilet, what he had been too muddled to realise last night; or, at least what he had been too muddled to contextualise. In the stupor of wine he had put his fingers in Arthur’s bum; and never considered what the act would do to him, or to Arthur, or the friendship. He had been in that mad dreamland in which the drinking soul reels about amidst such improbable things as inconsequence; he had been running about in that grand fairyland where today is today and tomorrow mere fancy: and now in the cold light of puking what he had left were his grubby conscience, and pants. He felt as if his heart were coming up with his guts. It was one of those moments in which it feels as if the soul must be coming up; and in communion with the toilet he realised what no God or science has answered, of what petty stuff is man made. He was a creature of sick; the physical sort, and the soul sort; and letting out a bit of his philosophical discovery through his nose, he flushed the toilet, and lay down on the floor.  

— Though Love Like Light Can Flee

Therein was the rub: not that he had done what men had been doing since time immemorial, by putting his dick in a hole; but that he had done it with someone he loved. With a straight man he loved, with his whole moronic heart. All their friendship he had been killing without mercy those small and futile hopes which the ordinary friend raises by making the ordinary gestures of friendship; and now he was choking on them: rather like Arthur had choked on his cock. The irrational heart of him had sat up, and said, not entirely irrationally: he put our dick in him; a not tremendously heterosexual thing to do. Arthur, an ostensible straight, had got on his knees, in front of a definite bisexual, and licked him till he was coming. He had taken Merlin; and afterward stood to be taken by him. So after the initial sickness, the troubled night he had spent wondering if he had not a heterosexual mate, but any mate at all, he had a lift in him; that tremendous surging of longing which men kill or are killed for. The love was huge in him; the franticness of it was beyond the confines of his small and human body, so that he had to feel the unease of his own inadequate skin.

SO THIS IS MY FIRST EVER ASK ANSWER,

7. What’s the last thing you read that made you cry?

Honestly it wasn’t a fic or anything, it was actually, this blinding beam of sunshine’s-  ( @carolineforbae ) comment on my fic ‘It’s a Touch Regrettable’

 This queen left a whole rant underneath the fic, unadulterated emotions flowing and spilling,Just the memory of it makes me wanna curl up on a warm bed of grass and weave flower garlands, that comment’s screenshot is actually my phone’s lockscreen picture. I’m not kidding.

 I’m in a healthy happy married relationship with that comment and we were actually wondering about kids just yesterday, so yeah. 

15. Post the last line you wrote without context.

‘But then she catches sight of Klaus’ face and she knows whats displayed across her eyes, it’s awe, it’s wonder, it’s reverence and most of all it’s such incriminating disbelief, and he knows just as much as she, those emotions only come from an undeserving woman. A woman with her head screwed on right enough to pass sound judgement on herself and decisively assign herself unworthy, but that doesn't stop her from greedily taking what she’s been given so freely, that she will take with thanks but would never pay it back, because how could she?

She is unfit for having it in the first place.’

17. Describe a fic that is still in the ‘ideas’ stage.

I’ll do you one better, here’s the aesthetic for a fic that has like “I came, I saw, I conquered” my mind, (pun intended, you’ll understand in a moment).

It’s been burning out my braincells like it’s on fire. I mean the amount of story plot lines and random dialogues that are literally bursting out of my mind like confetti strings honestly it was just all over the place I needed to calm down and compartmentalise so I did this to give the ideas in my head an image, and I got a bit carried away, clearly.

It’s an Ancient Rome-meets-Roman Gladiator-meets-Enemies to Lovers-meets-Mikael you son of a bitch I require your head on this platter, so please do the needful-meets-Caroline giving sponge baths to a dirty bruised yet victorious gladiator!klaus-meets-SMUT.

20. Do you have a favourite fanfic or author? If so, tag them/post a link and share the love!

The list of authors is too long, too too long, but I can bring it down to one person for you,

FIRST AND FOREMOST, 

Like, 

Lend me your ears my fellow plebes, as we stand in the presence of divine erudition, seasoned and soft yet coarse as velvet rubbed the wrong way, A blazing gloriole burst upon her lovely visage, cut her open and you shall find sands from a thousand realms spill forth, every flutter of her eyelash a turn of a page, Kingdoms have not crumbled at the touch of her hands, but the spine of a hundred tomes of sentiment narrated with unfettered reach have, bent with atlas humility as if to say, ‘have me, all of me’ and she devours. 

Honestly I have no idea how to end this, but the ‘her’ I’m talking about is the one and only,

@cbk1000

DO YOU UNDERSTAND THE HONOUR AND PRIVILEGE I FEEL TO EVEN SAY HER NAME,

LIKE BRO, hold me for a second,

This writer is by far the one writer who has captured Caroline, Klaus, Rebekah and Kol, in the most REALEST way.

Like she knows these characters and presents them to us in their most tragically raw state of being, no dilutions, no misplaced underlining, no flower crowns on their head, they are given to you shrivelled, hurt, broken and aged and you bow your head in reverence.

In their most downtrodden days we will cherish them, in their ugliest cruelest days of such evil no love diminishes, in their most deific of moments your knees will buckle and you will submit.

She does not sugarcoat and downplay the most disgusting aspects of their character, presents it to us as they are and tells us,“Hold them, they burn your hands, but hold them still.” and we will do it, like GOD I’M NOT ARTICULATING THIS WELL, hold on, lemme collect my thoughts 

I MEAN SHE HAS KLAUS KILL A BABY, COOK yes, COOK SAID BABY AND THEN FEED THE ROASTED BABY TO ITS FATHER, ALL UNBEKNOWNST TO SAID FATHER AND I THINK ‘FINALLY, KLAUS AS KLAUS AND NOT KLAUS BUT CENSORED BLUR PLACED ON TOP OF EVERYTHING BUT HIS DICK.’

like does that make sense? I really hope that makes sense.

And OK her writing, like her WRITING itself, like remove Klaroline, remove the originals, remove vampires, werewolves, witches, etc etc, and give her a shoelace to right about and she will BLOW YOUR FCKING MIND AWAY. you will worship that piece of literary wonder, it’s poetry, it’s sacred scriptures, it’s imagery, its a fucking PAINTING.

that’s what it is,

IT’S A PAINTING and it’s A MOVING PICTURE.

She doesn’t create a world for you, no she’s nothing so boorish, she merely rules this universe of hers and she’s magnanimous enough to allow you entry, a visit, stay a few days, EXPERIENCE, LIVE, and then you leave a changed human, and this universe she rules will always have a special place in your heart and soul.

THE DEDICATION this writer shows to research, to historic accuracy, to  literally EVERYTHING that is not necessarily the plot itself, GOD, that deserves a separate spiel for itself, the way she makes everything so AUTHENTIC, her describing the fall of the Romonav dynasty as just another byproduct of Klaus’ recreational machinations, JESUS, LIKE THAT transcends storytelling and now is sitting in a place called shared reverie.

I MEAN GO AND READ,

Wherewith to Sate Its Malice

For the Pikes Must be Together

Five Times the Sinner

AND MOST OF ALL,

AU Original series

Damn, I'd read this.