i've been a miner for a heart of gold

I’m not to blame here. an evil podcast compelled me to do it

Author: sixpences Rating: Explicit Archive Warning: No Archive Warnings Apply Relationship: Martin Blackwood/Jonathan Sims Characters: Martin Blackwood, Jonathan Sims Additional Tags: post-159, Getting Together, Domesticity, Only One Bed, Unorthodox Use of Beholding Powers, Consensual Mind Control, Possessiveness, Oral Sex, Anal Sex, Slight Monster!Jon            

He wanted to know, wanted to pull everything that was Martin into his mind and savour it, wanted Martin open before him like a book, like the palm of his own hand.

He wanted Martin. He wanted to know Martin. If there was ever a difference he had no idea how to tease it apart.

Concerning the Archivist, and Jonathan Sims, and building a life with Martin Blackwood

Hi everyone- it’s been a while, but unfortunately I have a very busy and tiring job and haven’t had much time or inspiration for writing recently. However, I have something pretty important to talk about! This is an idea that I’ve been sitting on for a while, but after recent events in Pittsburgh I feel like it’s something meaningful that I can do to make a difference right now.

I am going to do a print run of Blackbird, with 100% of all profits going to support Jewish charities- the Community Security Trust here in the UK, and Yad Vashem, the World Holocaust Remembrance Centre, in Israel.

Yes, I do mean actual, physical, printed copies- I’ve had so many commenters say, ‘I wish I could have a copy of this fic like a real book’, so this is your chance! I am still researching the best options so I can’t confirm price right now, but it’ll be via an online self-publishing and sale platform which should be able to handle international delivery.

I’ll also be looking for an artist to commission to do the cover- nothing super fancy, but if you have commissions open right now and would be interested in working together on this, hit me up!

- A Colour Beyond the Sun. Alternate history. Space. Politics. Planets that have more than one country on them. The Expanse meets Coheed & Cambria, except with YOI characters because why the fuck not?

- At the Blood’s Perimeter. Was going to be my BBOI fic, got scuppered by the whole ‘changing career and moving across the country’ thing, but I hope to come back to it. In which Victor leaves Sochi with a hopeless crush, an impressive hickey, and another problem- one that doesn’t appear until the full moon rises in the middle of Russian nationals...

- The Long Way Round. Processing grief on the Trans-Siberian Railway. Honestly moving myself has kind of killed my desire to look at this one. Maybe I’ll get the mood back eventually.

- Be My Pair, Victor! Totally, utterly ridiculous and self-indulgent AU in which they’re not just programmers- nay, not even just web devs!- but Rubyists. Whether or not this ever goes beyond ‘thing I pull out and poke at occasionally’ depends on if I decide if it’s not actually too nerdy to allow into the daylight.

it’s been a minute, hasn’t it?

Author: sixpences Rating: Explicit Archive Warning: No Archive Warnings Apply Relationship: Katsuki Yuuri/Victor Nikiforov Characters: Katsuki Yuuri, Victor Nikiforov Additional Tags: 2018 Winter Olympics, Light Bondage, Medal Bondage, Cock Warming, Oral Sex, Anal Sex, Exhibitionism, Possessiveness, Top Katsuki Yuuri, Bottom Victor Nikiforov

There is, it turns out, more than one use for an Olympic medal.

Thank you- I am, uh, technically still active on AO3, but I am terrible at responding to comments at the best of times and the last few months have been ridiculously busy. Hopefully things will settle down a bit more in the new year and I might even *gasp* get some progress done on a WIP or two.

I think it’s perhaps a bit of a gloss to say that Germans are totally apologetic- while there are many excellent anti-Nazi laws in place in both Germany and Austria, they are dealing with the same resurgence of the far right as the rest of the western world, and there are more than enough people all over Europe willing to try and paper over what the Nazis and their collaborators did.

I think people in general, wherever we’re from, tend towards looking the other way and taking the most easy and comfortable path. It’s easier to not think about the atrocities in your country’s past (I say this as a citizen of the country that perpetuated possibly the most brutal and definitely the most widespread imperialist violence in human history). If you can’t avoid thinking about it, it’s easier to assume that it wasn’t that bad, or that it has nothing to do with you. It’s easier to think that if those times came again, you’d obviously behave differently. It’s easier, when they do come, to keep your head down and do as you’re told.

Something I consider to be one of Yuuri’s defining characteristics, in any setting, is that he’s extremely brave. It takes a lot of bravery to go through a total professional humiliation and still decide to come back. It takes a lot of bravery to feel the kind of anxiety he does about competitions and push through it to not only compete but to come out at the front of the field.

In a true festive miracle, I’m going to actually answer the stuff I’ve been neglecting in my inbox for, uh, too long. Hooray!

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Thank you! That’s honestly one of my very favourite scenes in the fic, I had that ‘let’s run away from the apocalypse together’ conversation in mind from very early on. I’ve always had a really deep-seated terror of nuclear war and the threat of The Bomb became such an important part of the second half of the fic; I wanted some way to turn even that omnipresent fear into something that bonded them together.

I take it you mean Miriam? She was fortunate amongst Jewish refugees in Switzerland in that she married a Swiss citizen who she met at the Zürich synagogue, in the late 1930s a few years after her arrival. She carried on supporting other refugees and people she met through her connection to Christophe’s spy ring. I think she also got a job once the war was over and things settled down a little, maybe a civil service job like she used to have in Germany and lost to the Nazi regime. I think of her as being a lot like many of the women I’ve met in government jobs- just quietly dedicated to Getting Shit Done.

Christophe got Yuuri to go and visit her, and she was delighted to meet Victor too; all three of them shared a lot of sad memories about Berlin. Towards the end of her life she finally managed to go back there, and got a day visa into East Berlin to visit the cemetery where her first husband and son were buried (they were both very ill at around the time the Nazis came to power, which is the main reason she didn’t leave the country sooner, as she was fortunate enough to have the economic means).

it’s been a long road getting here, so please indulge me in waffling a little bit (cw for mental health stuff including suicidal ideation)