Anghraine

It's always a bit surreal to read a fic and become increasingly convinced that the author has been influenced by a post or fic of mine even though they never mention it, or me.

This has happened to me in a couple of fandoms. It's one thing when the author freely acknowledges influence, but sometimes it's a weird déja vu where they never mention me, and at first I don't want to assume I'm ground zero for [whatever], but it just becomes increasingly obvious that either they've read my thing or read fic by other people who were strongly influenced by something I said or did.

I've personally run into this the most with Rogue One and The Borgias fic. It's interesting because RO fandom (not SW broadly, just RO) and Borgias fandom are absolutely the nicest and most generally pleasant fandoms I've probably ever been in. They're both fairly low on discourse and high on actually making things and promoting other fans, so although my experiences of them aren't 100% positive, the overall feeling is one of broad good will and friendly exchange. So it's not that I mind seeing ideas and emphases that I'm pretty sure I came up with spreading beyond my own fic/meta/headcanons. It's just a slightly odd feeling when a formulation is so close to mine and so specific that it feels somewhat implausible that it wasn't influenced by me, personally, in some way, even though these fandoms are pretty big.

In Rogue One fandom it's actually fairly easy to trace influence for various reasons (one of them is a tendency for my stuff to spread through specific mutuals). It's harder with The Borgias, but now and then I'll read something and be like "okay, maybe this is egocentric goggles or something, but this really feels like you read we get dark, only to shine."

Like I said, I don't mind this "oh, they definitely read [fic]" experience, it's just a little odd when it's my own fic and it's not acknowledged at all, yet is so specific and obvious that it seems kind of undeniable. Sometimes people do acknowledge the fic that inspired some element (AO3 has a mechanism specifically for this purpose) and that's really sweet and gratifying, but not nearly as surreal—maybe because that's a more old school approach and so more familiar to me personally, but also because the explicit acknowledgment ensures that it's not a gradually dawning realization but known from the first. The "huh, I also used that idea, cool to see it again..." -> "wow, that is actually really close to how I think about it, even in phrasing, interesting..." -> "okay, did this person read my specific fic?" -> "uh, yeah, they definitely read it" thing is a kind of different experience from an AO3 alert, you know?

Until I posted about the resuscitation of Voyager 1, my activity bar over on Tumblr was split pretty evenly between responses to a P&P post that had been reblogged by a BNF and various people who are extremely into The Borgias discovering my back catalogue. Before the P&P post reblog, the activity bar was ... like, 90% Borgias reblogs and likes. And good for them, it's still my favorite TV show ever!

In any case, this is probably why I included my brief quasi-epistolary modern US American politics Borgias AU from 2016 in my random list of fics in this post. I did re-read it before finishing that post and had fun immersing myself in all the little details that went into the AU. I'd originally hoped to write more of it, but writing a US politics AU was ... a more difficult prospect after Trump's election and I never did. Still, there's quite a bit that I'd already nailed down and forgotten later.

I did remember that one element of the basic premise is that this version of the Borgia family is not (recently) from Valencia or Italy. Rodrigo is the son of immigrants to the US from Ecuador and rose against adversity to wealth and political power. After serving as a capable Speaker of the House, Rodrigo beats the Republican presidential nominee "Julius Rove" (Giuliano della Rovere) and in the same election cycle, Rodrigo's seat in the House is won by his young nephew César (Cesare, of course). And I remembered that the story was primarily told via excerpts from news headlines and clippings (in fact it's entirely told that way because I never wrote the rest).

Other details I didn't remember:

• These Borgias are Californians! West Coast, best coast. :D
• Rodrigo's first VP is Katharine Powers (Caterina Sforza). In the fic, this relationship had yet to go horribly awry, but I had plans for a later disaster.
• I had a brief aside about Rove delaying a formal concession to Rodrigo. Although the fic was posted in July of 2016, you didn't need foresight to imagine that being a RL concern later, though I certainly didn't anticipate the form it would take in 2021.
• Vanozza is Rodrigo's ex-wife, Vanessa Gautier, a Canadian actress from Montréal who raised not only their children but the orphaned César as well. I seem to vaguely recall that she was a fairly minor public figure at the time of their divorce, years before the election, known mainly for a well-regarded performance as Empress Theodora in Byzantium, a made-up film that is very different from the actual Byzantium film directed by Neil Jordan (creator of The Borgias; I am pretty sure this was a convoluted shout-out that amused me at the time). Vanessa's very PR-savvy daughter Lucrecia jokes that her first public appearance was in Byzantium (Vanessa was pregnant with her at the time; I'm sure this was a reference to Carrie Fisher's jokes about her "performance" in Tammy, when Debbie Reynolds was pregnant with her).
• Since then, Vanessa has worked her way into more consistently prominent roles and is now a very well-known movie star in her own right, especially following her role in a massively successful HBO epic fantasy TV series that is this universe's version of Game of Thrones, but based instead on David and Leigh Eddings' Elenium and Tamuli novels (Vanessa plays Sephrenia but brings a bit of Lena Headey-as-Cersei energy to the role).
• I still kind of love this element (with a very major reservation discussed below) of a bizarro world hit fantasy series based on a completely different book series being embedded into an AU about the Borgias navigating US politics as a Democratic political dynasty along the lines of the Kennedys, but obviously dealing with a very different world and other pressures like, uh, racism.
• There's also a reference to Lucrezia's rivalry with Sancia d'Aragona in the show; Lucrecia's first actual public appearance was not political but rather, at a big entertainment event with Vanessa. Lucrecia managed to upstage the new superstar Sasha Darby.
• There's a reference to a photograph of Lucrecia with César at a political event, in which she is of course wearing Valentino (this still amuses me).

So just after that, I was visiting my parents and saw that my dad is re-reading The Belgariad, the most popular of David and Leigh Eddings's fantasy series (but The Elenium is better, fight me). We talked a little about it and of course, I also thought of my random The Elenium adaptation subplot in the Borgias politics AU I'd just been re-reading, and remembered that I'd actually once had an idea inspired by the fic subplot for an Elenium fancast that draws entirely from the actual cast of Game of Thrones. I don't remember the specifics since I never did it, except (of course) Lena Headey as Sephrenia and I think Peter Dinklage as Stragen. Charles Dance as Dolmant??? I kind of like the idea of Nathalie Emmanuel as Ehlana, but there are multiple options.

I should add that David and Leigh Eddings are high-octane problematic figures in SF/F. The Belgariad especially includes a lot of misogyny and racism, and is, let's say, politically ambiguous in general. Moreover, it became well-known after David and Leigh Eddings's deaths that decades earlier, he and Leigh had adopted two children, abused the son, and the children were taken away by the state. The Eddingses separately served a year in prison for the abuse at a time when this was rarely punished at all. The knowledge of this makes all subsequent re-reads feel very surreal, given the prominence in the novels of weird yet idealized kids who turn out to be literal gods. (The linked post also discusses reading the Eddings books, especially the Belgariad-centered ones, in light of this.)

I had personally been very invested in the Eddingses' novels as a teenager/young adult; they were formative experiences for me as a fantasy fan and I have strong feelings about basically every aspect of all of them up to and including The Redemption of Althalus. I kept my collection of Eddings books after finding out what they'd done, since they were dead anyway at that point, but it feels weird to talk about them without mentioning the level of baggage around them. Apparently David was an alcoholic (extremely unsurprising), Leigh was generally violent, and he considered divorce, but never went through with it. Eventually several strokes left her unable to write or speak, though David continued to credit her as co-author, and he himself had increasingly severe dementia and required constant care in his last years while still writing. They had become extremely wealthy and left their millions to medical research and need-based scholarships at Reed College, his alma mater. So the legacy is a LOT and, as I said, it feels odd to talk about their work without acknowledging it.

I talked on Tumblr awhile ago about how important my Internet friendships have been to me, especially the long-standing ones. I met a lot of my closest online friends either on LiveJournal, Dreamwidth, or Tumblr, and quite a few at least have Dreamwidth accounts + Dreamwidth has played some role in our friendship. And I was trying to remember who I met when, in what context, and was like ... I could just skim my archive page and look, and figured it'd be fun to shout-out a few people! The list is not exhaustive, just a list of when I first met some people as clearly as I could tell.

For context: I was an early Dreamwidth adopter. Before Dreamwidth, I had been deeply entrenched in LJ fandom, and definitely preferred (and still prefer!) a LJ-like platform to things like Tumblr or Twitter. But, like many people, I had a lot of gripes with LJ itself. The idea of "LJ but with ethics, no Strikethrough threat, and no ads ever" sounded really appealing. A number of my LJ friends felt the same way, and I received my invite for the beta version of DW from my friendhl. So I've been here for a long time. According to Wikipedia, Dreamwidth went into beta on April 30, 2009, and left it in 2011. Meanwhile, I made my account on July 7th, 2009, and my first post here was on July 19th of that year.

So!

When I first made my blog in 2009, I mainly talked withhl andtree, whom I already knew from LJ and general Austen fandom circles, and withtulina, whom I met through our ff.net mutual admiration society.

I met a brand new Austen friend here on Dreamwidth, though:sixbeforelunch! For some reason, I thought we'd originally encountered each other later, but no, six has been here for the long haul.

The next year, I made two more friends primarily (as I recall) through Dreamwidth: catie56 andbiichan!

I was burning out on the forum-based Austen fandom circles around this time and very consciously selected a fandom that a) I could really sink my teeth into and b) was at least largely upfront about their drama: Star Wars. I originally crossposted a lot of SW fandom stuff from LJ but my activity was increasingly rooted in DW.

Meanwhile, 2011 was a truly hellish year for ace discourse on Tumblr. I was starting to dip my toes into Tumblr at the time, so I was angry and upset about a lot over there. But it was an incredibly good year on Dreamwidth! I stumbled over lotesse's SW fic early in the year and we ended up talking about both SW and other common fandoms and became longtime friends. In September, sathari joined the ongoing Star Wars party and really got what I was trying to do with my fic at the time, and we became friends too. And in November of 2011, I stumbled over sqbr's Austen art, got really excited about it, and as a result, we became good friends across a pretty wide variety of fandoms + fandom as a whole [ETA: actually, sqbr has reminded me that we first encountered each other prior to DW through common fandom friends, and re-reading the 2011 post, I clearly knew who they were, though we didn't directly interact over here until then; 2011 marked a really positive change in a number of my fandom relationships and that was one of the most significant].

I don't recall the exact context, but primeideal and beatrice_otter seem to have found me about 2012, and we're still having intriguing conversations now about different fandoms and original fiction! I already knew wyncatastrophe from LJ, and while we mostly talked via email and FB, some of our conversations started happening via Dreamwidth discussions and communities this year. This indirectly led to me writing a paper on Tolkien for a conference she was involved in (it wasn't a paper that already existed but actually written for that specific conference, and she helped guide me in the ins and outs of the submission process etc), which is the same paper that got me into grad school.

Speaking of ace discourse, I banded together with kaz later in that year, and found that we had even more in common than nuclear rage and sharing a birthday.

My DW social circle doesn't seem to have changed much for a few years after that, in part because I was mainly active on Tumblr and most of my friends were there as well. But I've always personally preferred DW and got somewhat back into the swing of things over here around 2015. I was super into The Borgias at the time (this would, in turn, get me into my PhD program!), which is what led to elperian following me on Tumblr and sticking around for Austen stuff and our very important Rogue One bonding (a tragic but blessed event!!!). I encountered sally_maria in a context I no longer recall, but it was definitely 2015, and was always glad for it. This also seems to be when I started chatting with lizbee on Tumblr and DW—first over Avatar, then SW, then basically anything we had in common.

Another fortuitous DW year was 2016 (otherwise not a great year for obvious US politics reasons, though I did get my MA). I think that brightlady_lise, slashmarks, and zero_pixel_count were all people I knew first from Tumblr, but ultimately talked more with over here.

2017 was pretty quiet in some ways, but elperian and I really started talking frequently over here around then! Then Tumblr made one of their patented terrible decisions in 2018 (the porn ban, maybe?) and I connected with a whole bunch of friends from Tumblr: meneltarma, rosaxx50, kungfunurse, chestnut_pod, stultiloquentia, shadaras, mosylu, incognitajones, and ncfan. All fantastic people from a fairly wide array of fandoms!

And in 2019, my friend rhodanum from Tumblr—we'd been on the same side of both ace discourse and villain discourse—relocated over here! A better place for both of us, to be sure.

Thanks to you all <3

I reblogged this gifset of one of my favorite scenes in all three seasons of The Borgias, Cesare's literally fiery defeat of Savonarola in full cardinal's regalia (somehow it only has 200 notes as of 3/18/2024???)

Tagged: #this was so so SO good #i was just thinking about it earlier today and hunted down gifsets just because #SO GOOD #i think it's still my favorite episode of anything #even more than the s2 finale! which is also really great! #anyway #enter my fave who has *cough* done nothing wrong in his entire life #2x09 #i think! my memory of the numbering system isn't so clear as it once was #but that does not diminish my love for this scene!

For context, there was a delightful Tumblr thread in which an anon said to the user tariqah:

Thots on the Pope

tariqah responded:

So the pope has thots now

fussybees added:

They're called cardinals I think

alice-exe then said:

crawling all over him like weevils

Then iphiesque superimposed this thread onto publicity shots of Alexander VI (Rodrigo Borgia), Giulia Farnese, Vanozza, and Cesare and Lucrezia in Showtime's The Borgias and said:

good evening borgias fandom

I reblogged it and added:

#SUMMONED LIKE THE KRAKEN #best fandom ever tbh

A moodboard for Showtime’s The Borgias, our beloved problematic fave, for elperian!

I reblogged my earlier post from 2 July 2015:



Lucrezia in 1x02, “The Assassin” + Saint Catherine in Pinturicchio’s The Disputation of Saint Catherine, often believed to be modeled by a young Lucrezia Borgia.

Cesare in 2x03, “The Beautiful Deception + Cesare in profile, Caesar Borgia Valentino (~1500-1510).

2020 addition:

elperian got me thinking about them again, and ... *sigh*

(Am I listening to my Borgia playlist right now? I might be.)

I reblogged a post about how getting degrees in ostensibly impractical fields can help you ... write highly accurate fanfic in specific fields. flame-cat on Tumblr reblogged it with:

tolkien ghostwrote this

I tagged it:

#lkadsfjkla #laughing at both but #can't lie a significant part of getting into early modern studies was... not caused by wgdots but def tied up in it #and i can never tell ANYone irl about it lol #THANK U FOR MY ACADEMIC CAREER NEIL JORDAN #actually it was a paper on the borgias that got me into my phd program too #DOUBLE THANKS

I reblogged a photoset of various shots of Lucrezia Borgia and Giulia Farnese from The Borgias, showing their camaraderie, and added:

#yesgood