Aww, thanks, random number generator, giving me this one in the Days of Awe. (I come to the story from a mostly Christian background, but I feel like one thing about Scripture that Jews and Christians can both agree on is David/Jonathan OTP.)

If you don't know the story: There was a king named Saul who lost the mandate of Heaven. Since he was fighting several existential wars at the time, and barely had a grip on his army's loyalty already, this caused some anxiety. So he ordered out for somebody to come play him music to help calm him down, and they brought him this hot twink shepherd named David, who could play the lyre really soothingly. (Presumably in the 2020 AU version of this he was an ASMR youtuber.)

Anyway what you have to know about David, other than him being really hot, really a twink and good at playing Rest, was that he went out to a battle Saul's men were losing and defeated the enemy champion using nothing but his shepherd's slingshot. Also he had charisma like nobody's business? (And he had been secretly anointed king by God to replace Saul, but that comes up in conversation less often then you think.) The troops really liked him, so Saul didn't really have a better option than to give him a command, and he turned out to be really good at soldiering, too. Good enough at soldiering that Saul started to get extremely paranoid that the people were going to overthrow him and set David up as king, so he started trying to kill him in various ways.

Which is all well and good, but meanwhile, Saul's eldest son Jonathan had fallen in love with David, and in between arranging liaisons he's helping thwart Saul's assassination attempts. Eventually David ends up hiding out in the wilderness with a band of men, and then taking sanctuary in one of the countries they're fighting. The politics all get very complicated, Saul hires a necromancer for some reason, David keeps getting chances to kill Saul and not taking them because he's still loyal. But one thing that isn't complicated is that Jonathan and David still love each other a lot, even as wars and betrayals happen all around them.

Finally Saul and Jonathan are killed together in the same battle, and David sweeps in with his loyal rebels as reinforcements too late to do anything but clean-up and mourn. But he does give a eulogy where he's careful to point out that that what he felt with Jonathan was better than he ever felt with a woman, thereby setting a precedent for every slash ship for the next three thousand years.

(There is a theory that Jonathan faked his death to run off and be with David but tbf this one is a very shaky theory.)

David/Jonathan fanfic currently accessible is disproportionately based on the TV show Kings, which is a secondary-world modern AU of the story, featuring Sebastian Stan in his classic role of tragically gay politician's son. The show does take some liberties with the plot but I don't really know what they are because I have only read the fanfic? I think the TV show was afraid to be quite as gay as the original, so David and Jonathan's relationship is somewhat more explicitly adversarial. (This does not seem to have worked at making it less gay.) So here's some fic of each kind.

(Also I should note that the original canon has a lot of genocide and baby-killing? Like a lot. Kings the show seems to have replaced a lot of it with torture and sexual abuse. But these are war criminals either way. So be warned. #problematic)

• Wonderful (1375 words) by WishingStar
  Fandom: Christian Bible (Old Testament), תנ"ך | Tanakh
  Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
  Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
  Relationships: David | Dāūd/Yehonatan | Jonathan
  Additional Tags: Fluff, Jonathan has no chill
  
  David comes home in triumph, and he shouldn't have.



• Single Use Weapon (67407 words) by Fahye
  Chapters: 3/3
  Fandom: Kings (TV 2009)
  Rating: Explicit
  Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
  Relationships: Jack Benjamin/David Shepherd, Michelle Benjamin/David Shepherd
  Additional Tags: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Loyalty, Politics
  
  Prince Jonathan is working for the terrorists opposing King David's new reign. Maybe. Depends on who you ask.



• The Book of Nathan (7776 words) by Dani
  Fandom: Kings (TV 2009)
  Rating: Not Rated
  Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
  Characters: Jack Benjamin, Lucinda Wolfson, Ephram Samuels, Joseph Lasile, David Shepherd, Silas Benjamin
  
  Jack fakes his death, runs off with David.



• no rebel, no renegade (10315 words) by indigostohelit
  Chapters: 1/1
  Fandom: תנ"ך | Tanakh
  Rating: Mature
  Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
  Relationships: David | Dāūd/Yehonatan | Jonathan
  Additional Tags: Alternate Universe - Space, Flashbacks, Tragic Romance, Father-Son Relationship, Royalty, Space Battles, Monsters, Religious Content, Jews In Space, Religious Imagery & Symbolism
  
  Space AU!

I have this Good Omens Easter fic that has been living in my head for so long that when I go back to GO I legitimately forget that not only is "the first time Crowley ever slept was that morning in the first century when he was pretending to be a guard at the latest guy-who-clamied-he-was-the-Messiah's tomb" not canon, it's also not even fanon, because I've never mentioned it to anybody.

And every Lent I think to myself "this should be the year I actually write the fic", and every Palm Sunday I sit down after church and re-write the first scene and then go "aaaauggh I need to do more research."

You might be surprised to find how little there is out there in terms of resources for "how to read the Easter accounts in the gospels in context with archaeological evidence and non-Christian historical accounts of c. 30 BCE Jerusalem". I mean, most of the information exists, I have been trying to gather it together since before I read Good Omens the first time, but seems likeit's in pieces here and there, each with a different slant, because all of the people who have the different pieces have different ideological reasons to not want to be the resource that connects it all. Because they have no compassion for fanfic writers, clearly.

And, of course, the same fraught reasons the easy research resources don't exist is the reason I don't want to write the thing without having access to them.

So this year I finally finished my Republic of Two Systems Independence Day story instead. :P

Just Born (2166 words) by melannen
Fandom: Imperial Radch Series - Ann Leckie
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Characters: Justice of Toren One Esk Nineteen | Breq, Gem of Sphene, Translator Zeiat, Lieutenant Tisarwat, Piat, Seivarden Vendaai
Additional Tags: Republic of Two Systems Independence Day, Food, vengeance
Summary:

Seivarden and Sphene bond over their shared Notai heritage.

***

Also! staranise is working on a guide to DW for Tumblr users who want to move, and she's asking for people to subscribe/add some mock accounts that she can use for tutorial purposes - if you have some accounts laying around, and you want people to move from Tumblr to DW, check it out. There's also a community, fictional_fans, that she'd like a variety of fandom-related posts and conversations in to use as a demo - if you would like to help, you can go post either a real fandom-related post or a fake one, either is fine!

(however I would kind of like to see it become a real community. Part of the reason fandom communities have never taken off on DW, I think, is that we're a small enough pool of users that it's hard to get critical mass on any specific topic - they tend to either die of malnourishment or get dominated by one or two members to the extent they can't really grow. But I bet we could get critical mass for "fandom in general"! And I bet DW, as it exists in 2018, could actually support a comm that was just "anything fandom related for any fandom" without it getting out of control the way it would on a larger platform. And if it was a living community it would be a great place to send new users to welcome them! Anybody want to help me try to make it real?)

So those of you who aren't fans of Homestuck but have carried on reading this journal regardless may not have picked up on this yet, but one of the reasons I love Homestuck fandom so much is that it has a completely different concept of romantic relationships than any other fandom I've been in. In Homestuck canon, "romance" does not mean "two people of the same (or opposite, if not slash) gender fall in love, have sex, and commit to be in a relationship only with each other." While there are some other SF fandoms where the canon has an opening for this kind of thing, Homestuck is the first one I've encountered where the majority of the active fandom seems to have really embraced the possibilities instead of falling back on standard monogamy.

And I don't just mean the fact that at least two-thirds of the main characters come from cultures where homosexuality "isn't even a thing" - where a few of them have an expressed preference for partners of one gender, a few of them have an expressed preference for partners of another, but it isn't the most important thing about them, and the vast majority of the characters simply don't care.

It's the fact that in Homestuck fandom, "romance" can mean a lot of different things. There is sexual romance and non-sexual romance, romance based on hate, and romance based on compassion, and romance based on necessity, and romance based on lust; romances of two people and romances of three people; romances that fit the normal human ideas and romances that are compromises between people who have different needs and preconceptions; and romances that transcend all definition. And it is ordinary and expected that everybody will be in several romantic relationships of different types, with different people, at the same time. And if you start having romantic tension with somebody, the first step is flailing around about exactly what kind of romantic attraction you have for them and if it matches the kind they're feeling. And all of these forms of relationships have 'romantic' and 'platonic' versions, and people actually remember to specify which one it is.

And Homestuck accepts this as how you do romance. It understands that romance is not a simple concept that only means one thing. And in Homestuck fandom, a 'ship in which the partners have sex and stare dreamily into each other's eyes is given exactly the same status and consideration as a 'ship in which the partners gag at the idea of sexual contact with each other, but make sure they get enough to eat and sleep and cry on each other's shoulders and die at each other's side. And it is perfectly okay to 'ship a character the first way with one person and the second way with another person, and it doesn't mean either 'ship is 'less important'. (And in fact the two most-beloved canon ships in all Homestuck are the non-sexual kind.)

And Homestuck fandom has a whole, vibrant, functional vocabulary for talking about all these things; and forget about / vs. & - Homestuck fic hearders regularly use six different pairing delimiters. People write black flirting and pale porn and ashen infidelity and flushed cuddling and everybody knows exactly what all of those things mean. And the terms work, and people accept them instead of arguing about them, and talk about all of this stuff (and write it in fic) in a nuanced way, and none of the terms make me cringe and want to page away. (okay people's attempts at spelling them yes, the terms themselves no.) Basically, Homestuck fandom on romance is what the asexual community wishes it was. And they do most of this on Tumblr.

(Or possibly it's just what I wish the asexual community was. Can we please appropriate 'moirail' and stop using the terms 'zucchini' and 'queerplatonic' and so on? Please?)

Anyway, all of the above is to say that I've written ashen pwp. Or possibly "have been writing it", since I put up the first one on bucketlist a few weeks ago and then just finished the second one last night. They're up on AO3 now, so here are the links:

Intercession (1702 words) by melannen
Fandom: Homestuck
Rating: General Audiences
Relationships: The Handmaid ♣ The Grand Highblood ♣ The Sufferer
Summary:

The Sufferer is the Auspistice of the World, for his cloak is Ashen, and he standeth amon9st us, and sayeth, Peace. 6y which he meaneth, shut the fuck up, for I am Sick of dealin9 with your Shit.

--2nd Testament of the Disciple, 4:13

(for a kinkmeme prompt wanting anything involving the Grand Highblood and another (or more) of the ancestors that's either ashen or black. Given the choice, I obviously had to figure out who I shipped him ashen with! And now this is my favorite ancestor ship of all.)


Passion (4089 words) by melannen
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Homestuck
Rating: General Audiences
Relationships: The Handmaid ♣ The Grand Highblood ♣ The Sufferer, Darkleer/The Handmaid, Darkleer ♦ The Disciple
Summary:

You cock your head, pretending to think this over. And then you lean over the table, your face bare inches from hers. "Nah," you say. "I DECLINE THE HONOR. Bright fuck-off scarlet DON'T ALL UP AND MATCH MY DECORATING SCHEME."

(Or, the Ancestors do Easter.)

Because once I had the Sufferer and the Grand Highblood and the Handmaid in a quadrant together, I couldn't not do the Sufferer's version of the Passion story. (Which, uh, it's an Easter fic, it's not spoilers to warn that the Sufferer dies, right? No graphic torture or death scenes though. Also I think despite writing a fic based around the Passion story, I only made one bingo on all those cards I wrote up last entry, and that one uses a free space. This story pokes at entirely different kinks than the version with Human Sufferer in it.)

And now that that's written and posted, maybe I can actually concentrate on some other creative project now. Any other creative project! That wasn't even the Easter fic I was supposed to be writing.

---also, while I am here, I want to whine about the fact that various male relations are allowed to get online during the family Easter dinner, so that they can check on their fantasy baseball teams, and not only that they put the game on, and nobody says anything about it, but I'm can't check to see if the new fic I posted to AO3 has any new comments, because it's a family dinner. It's not that I want to be able to check AO3 instead of playing with younger cousins, it's just, dude, if fantasy baseball is more important than your kids' Easter, why are you even here? And why do they let you get away with that?

kink_bingo is running, for the second year in a row, an April mini-challenge based around themed gift baskets. Of kink.

I was kind of surprised to find that in two years, they hadn't done the obvious and made an Easter basket! So I asked if they'd avoided that on purpose because religion, and the mods replied, no, they just honestly hadn't thought of the possibility as they don't celebrate Easter, and I was welcome to do one if I wanted.

....this is one of the cases where my cultural blinkers become readily apparent and I am suddenly smacked in the face by the fact there are lots of people in this world, even who grew up in a culture superficially like mine, who don't realize that the Passion story is made of kink. Basically, all the cultural influence that would later become Christianity looked into its id and pulled out all the most powerful bits, and then 2000 years of repressed clergy and sacrilegious laity embellished it into something with twisted unplumbable depths, and as a result millions and millions of people over history have first discovered that they really liked thinking about certain things while being encouraged to adore an image of a naked man with fresh whip-marks and piercings and dripping blood and an expression of exalted serenity.

Lalala.

None of the above is me having a dirty mind, by the way, that's just Christianity.

The below is me having a dirty mind. Because I set out to make an Easter themed mini-bingo card and realized I couldn't do just one because I'd have to leave too much out. So here is the Passion story in five kink bingo minicards, complete with Biblical references. (The references are heavy on Matthew and John because that's where most of the kinkiest wording is, and also because I'm too lazy to properly cross-reference. Also I was trying not to repeat any kinks, so sometimes I ended up using one that wasn't quite the ideal - several of them recur over and over in the story.)

(Um, do I need to still warn that this isn't a very nice story, and a lot of the kink in it is very not safe or consensual? Although a surprising amount of it is.)

( The lead-up to the Crucifixion )

( In the Garden of Gethsemane )

( The Trial )

( The Crucifixion )

( The Resurrection )

...and finally, because I admit that was kind of overkill, here's the Best of the Passion Kink Basket:

	BI	N	GO
	Suspension	Whipping/Flogging	Bloodplay
	Humiliation	Obedience	Begging
	Painplay	Piercings/Needleplay	Penance/Punishment

This does, of course, use the kink_bingo + fandom definition of kink which doesn't necessarily involve active sexuality, it just involves things that grip on a level below conscious control, viscerally, cathartically. Serious discussion of the theology involved strongly encouraged. ^_^

Things I said to Mom's Sunday school class while last-minute substituting as teacher today:

1. So Jesus got, like, really pissed, and he totally trashed the whole place, dude. It was radical.

2. Why can't God be a girl if He wants to be? He can do anything; who says She's never a girl? (this got a cheer from the girls in the class, p.s.)

3. A fast overview of every Judas-apologia fanfic ever written for the Easter story, from the Acts of Pilate to the Gospel of Pilate, with a long digression about how by Easter the disciples were spending most of their time bickering like siblings who had been trapped in a car for too long.

Things I almost said, but stopped myself at the last minute:

1. Jesus hates teabaggers! (I didn't actually say that but I laid the groundwork. And I want a bumpers sticker now that says "God Hates Teabaggers: Matthew 22:21") I felt unexpectedly justified when Pastor decided to preach his sermon about how the Democrats in Congress are like Christ Triumphant riding into Jerusalem (let us strew roses at their feet) and the Republicans are just like the Pharisees and Sadduccees. :P

2. The reason they didn't listen was because it was women who saw them, because nobody ever listens to women, but remember that Christ spoke to girls first, before he spoke to the men; he believes we're the ones worth talking to first. (I almost said this but we were running out of time and I figured "God's a chick" was enough Christian radical feminism to start them with.)

3. Aslan is a fraud and Narnia sucks. (Didn't actually mention Lewis, but talked about *why* Aslan is a fraud. Also, didn't say "Jesus is more like a Time Lord than a Highlander," or compare "He will knock four times" to "before the cock crows thrice." Be proud of me.)


Let that stand as your warning: as today was Palm Sunday, and it's my very favorite Christian holiday, I plan to talk about Christianity, and specifically Holy Week and Easter, a lot for the next week. It will be in rather the same sort of tone as the above. If you'd rather not be exposed, filter or unsubscribe me; I won't be offended. It will be back to business-as-random-usual come Monday after next.