Singing the Body Electric

Post and Jam: Crossing a Canyon by 54-40 [1996]

Thu, 09 Jul 2026 00:11:27 GMT

Fandom 50 #20

For 1996, a little roots rock from a band named for some 19th century colonial sloganeering.

Crossing a Canyon by 54-40

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Six Sentence Sunday

Sun, 05 Jul 2026 19:37:25 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.

Most of my writing this month has been for my OFMD Big Bang fic, and that will probably be the case from now until October. I can't share anything from that publicly, since it needs to be anonymous for artist claims, but I'm dipping in and out of some smaller projects in the meantime to keep from getting highway hypnosis.

From a fic with the working title of "Coffee Run" (Our Flag Means Death, OC + All Deck on Hands, Modern AU):

Obviously the café was a money laundering thing. She had done the napkin math on one of the many slow days the job offered, and the numbers just didn't add up otherwise.

On the one hand, sure, this part of the industrial district still had more actual warehouses than luxury lofts, so the rent was probably cheap. The café didn't open until most of the day shift had already clocked in, but it got its share of regulars and one-offs from the delivery driver set and the residents of a couple of nearby walk-ups.

On the other hand, those sales barely added up to her own rent some months. Instead, all the real money came from the standing lunchtime catering orders—carafes of coffee and tea, sandwich platters, tureens of soup—that were allegedly prepared after she closed each afternoon and were just as allegedly picked up before she reopened in the morning.

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Post and Jam: Sleepy Maggie by Ashley MacIsaac ft. Mary Jane Lamond [1995]

Tue, 30 Jun 2026 20:16:13 GMT

Fandom 50 #19

The mid-'90s Celtic music craze is more of a temporal quirk than a geographic one. I know the US had its own moment, with this also only being one part of a larger "world music" trend that I'm assuming had a lot to do with how CDs were changing the game, and I have younger Canadian friends who don't even remember that this was ever a thing. But the fact that a large area of Canada has heavily Scottish- and Irish-influenced regional identities where Celtic music already dominated meant that a substantial portion of mainstream Canadian hits and the general CBC soundtrack ended up falling into this category in the '90s, making household names of artists like Great Big Sea, The Rankin Family, Loreena McKennitt, Spirit of the West, Natalie MacMaster, Leahy, The Barra MacNeils, Lennie Gallant, Bruce Guthro, The Irish Descendants, and whoever else was going to be on Rita and Friends that week.

And of course there was Ashley MacIsaac, whose rendition of "Sleepy Maggie" with Mary Jane Lamond on vocals lurked just shy of the top 100 south of the border but was a top 20 hit for the better part of a year at home, resulting in a lot of decidedly non-Gaelic-speaking Canadian schoolchildren memorizing the lyrics phonetically and swapping urban legends about what secret and scandalous things they might mean.

Sleepy Maggie by Ashley MacIsaac

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What's Making Me Happy Today: It Was Love by samson

Mon, 29 Jun 2026 23:40:57 GMT

I'm still full of Armand/Daniel feelings, and failing to follow up yesterday's "Is This Love?" with "It Was Love" would just be a missed opportunity.

This one's a lovely edit that perfectly captures the intensity of Daniel and Armand's interactions in San Francisco and Dubai and weaves them deftly into their reunion (spoilers for all of s3 to date).

It Was Love by samson
Fandom: The Vampire Lestat (Interview with the Vampire s3)
Relationships: Armand/Daniel Molloy
Medium: Vid
Length: 1:47
Rating: SFW
My Bookmark Tags: drama, ambiguous ending, unrequited/ust, fights & breakups, then and now, reluctant feelings, soulbonds & mates
Song: Fortanach (Visualiser) by Sebastian Plano

Excerpt:

"I feel him."

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What's Making Me Happy Today: Is This Love? by xthatsecret

Mon, 29 Jun 2026 04:21:45 GMT

I could have also just gone with The Vampire Lestat as a whole, because the show has been absolutely knocking it out of the park for me so far.

Going in, I wasn't sure I'd like this season as much as the last two of Interview with the Vampire. The show excels at using vampirism as a way to play out very human flaws at an elevated level, and Lestat's brand of being terrible just didn't hit for me the way Louis, Claudia, Daniel, and Armand's did. But oh man, that really changed this season, and on top of that we're also getting excellent stories for the supporting cast.

Speaking of which, this vid beautifully puts together some choice scenes from this season (spoilers up to the most recent episode of The Vampire Lestat) with some of my favourite shots from seasons 1 and 2. I have my serious worries about how things will play out in the future, but for now, I'm happily eating up the melodrama and gothic romance with a spoon.

Is This Love? by xthatsecret
Fandom: The Vampire Lestat (Interview with the Vampire s3)
Relationships: Armand/Daniel Molloy
Medium: Vid
Length: 2:29
Rating: SFW (but contains brief scenes of blood-drinking)
My Bookmark Tags: drama, romance, ambiguous ending, unrequited/ust, fights & breakups, then and now, pining, reluctant feelings, soulbonds & mates
Song: Is This Love by Governors

Excerpt:

Did you think this was love?
Did you think this was love?
Is love a feature of your kind?
Don't you think I would mind
If I had wasted all my time?
I can't love if you lie

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Six Sentence Sunday

Sun, 28 Jun 2026 18:41:59 GMT

"You ever think about it?" Frenchie asked, inclining his head toward the happy couple. Pete had tried to dip Lucius, and Lucius was now frozen halfway down, clearly trying to stay calm as he clung to Pete's shoulders and delivered hissed instructions for straightening up without triggering his bad back.

"Dancing? No. But go ask Jim if they'll take you for a whirl."

"I'm not much of a dancer either," he said, laying his cheek back on Izzy's knee. "I meant...you know, getting a matelot. Being married."

He felt Izzy's leg tense.

"Nah," Izzy said with a showy scoff, which only made him sound like he'd swallowed wrong.

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Six Sentence Sunday

Sun, 21 Jun 2026 17:51:30 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 fic with the working title of "Imagine Me and You" (Mother Panic x The Batman crossover, Dominic/Mackenzie Bock, past Dominic/Fred Hemsley):

Dom had once met a girl who'd gone on a blind date with the Penguin. It was a funny story, the way she told it. Around here, there were probably at least a dozen other people dining out on ones just like it. But it wasn't funny when the guy you were seeing wasn't just knocking over banks or taking the mayor hostage, but doing whatever the fuck that had been—with kids.

When you were with him for three years. When he thought you'd be cool with it.

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Where's the Joke in Queer Comedy? (Meandering Thoughts on an OFMD BTS Detail)

Sun, 21 Jun 2026 06:45:43 GMT

This is just me poking at my own (negative) reaction to something that was shared about a joke in the Our Flag Means Death finale that didn't fully make it onscreen. I know it goes without saying around here, but this isn't a slam on the person who shared it—I just have continuing thoughts I keep chewing on about the show and about some of the production details that I think speak to larger trends.

( Queer as in [insert punchline here] )

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2026 Our Flag Means Death Big Bang

Tue, 16 Jun 2026 21:39:11 GMT

(Also plugged this over at ourflagmeansgay.)

The 2026 OFMD Big Bang is underway!

The OFMD Big Bang is an annual writing challenge for the Our Flag Means Death fandom.

Authors will complete stories of 10,000 words or more over the course of four months, and these stories are claimed by artists who create works to go along with the story.

Final stories and their accompanying artwork will be posted over the course of several weeks (depending on the number of works). At the end of the bang, all story links will be compiled into a masterpost.

The OFMD Big Bang event is about collaboration and shared delight - taking joy in our shared love of Our Flag Means Death and its celebration of the value of loving, kind community and found family! We welcome you whether you are an author, an artist, or simply a lover of beauty who fancies fine fics and art.

Author sign-ups are open until June 30th, artist sign-ups are open until August 22nd, and beta sign-ups will remain open throughout the challenge. More information is available on the challenge's FAQ and schedule.

I am writing a thing for this, which I can't talk about publicly (because it has to be anonymous when artists are choosing stories to create something for), but I am having a lot of fun with it so far. I really struggle with longer works, by which I mean anything above 500 words, but I am full of ideas and determination. I hope anyone else interested considers joining in.

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Post and Jam: Push by Moist [1994]

Mon, 15 Jun 2026 22:34:08 GMT

Fandom 50 #18

Look, sometimes all there is to say is "This was extremely formative to me in my early adolescence, and I think you can all tell why."

I also distinctly remember that when I bought this album, my older sister—then in high school, very attached to her identity as a prep—informed me that if I kept listening to this kind of stuff, people would think I was a skid. By the time I was her age, I had a shaved head and a face full of metal, and my wardrobe was 95% black and 5% safety pins, so she wasn't wrong. Happily, by that point, no one I knew said "skid" anymore. Or "prep" for that matter.

Push by Moist

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Six Sentence Sunday

Sun, 14 Jun 2026 21:49:50 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):

There was an unsettling sense of permanence—of resignation—in relocating to higher ground.

He was, however, practical enough to cede the point. The tide came in too strong to make the beach a going proposition if they didn't want to be relighting their fire every night, and having a signal fire was half the purpose of being on the beach.

So they packed up their water, their coconuts, and their stupid collection of promising rocks, and in three trips under the rising sun hauled everything up to the west side of the hill that sloped inland from the limestone cliffs.

"There now, isn't this cozy?" Fang asked, laying out a fresh carpet of palm fronds and neem branches at their new site with far too much precious care.

"It's a cave," Izzy said flatly.

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Post and Jam: Afternoons & Coffeespoons by Crash Test Dummies [1993]

Wed, 10 Jun 2026 03:23:44 GMT

Fandom 50 #17

It's not an exaggeration to say that my entire fifty-song list hinged on my choice for 1993. This was the year that had the greatest number of favourite songs by favourite bands vying for a single space, and whatever I slotted in had a domino effect spanning almost forty years as I prioritized finding other spots for the bands that didn't win out.

Was 1993 just a stellar year for Canadian music? Possibly. I think in general there was a maturing alternative sound in the air, not just in the mainstream breakthrough of grunge but people doing interesting things with folk, country, adult contemporary, and what used to be called college rock. There was a lot of accessibly different stuff out there getting radio play.

But I think it's mostly just that I was nine years old in 1993, had my first job (delivering the Pennysaver), and had the money to buy cassettes for myself for the first time. I had a hand-me-down Walkman too, and even though I'd got it because the tape player part had stopped working, it still functioned as a portable FM radio. My sister was old enough to have a proper after-school job, and she brought even more new music into the house that I was eager to borrow. Totally with permission, every time.

In short, 1993 was the year I started discovering my own music, and nothing hits like that.

Settling on Crash Test Dummies was partly a practical choice based on the logic puzzle I inadvertently created for myself and partly because God Shuffled His Feet just still thoroughly delights me as an album. And this song in particular seemed a fitting one to share thirty-some years later in my life.

Afternoons & Coffeespoons by Crash Test Dummies

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Six Sentence Sunday

Sun, 07 Jun 2026 17:45:52 GMT

Six Sentence Sunday

Sun, 31 May 2026 20:15:57 GMT

Maybe [Frenchie] was luckier than most. He'd had a mother for a while, and a grandmother, and women in the house who he'd called his aunties. He remembered what it was like to have a place to go when you were sick, or sad, or sleepy. Somewhere the shape of you was held waiting at their hip, where you could lean while they worked or rested. Somewhere you'd be warm and safe for a bit, maybe even with something to eat if they had anything to spare.

No one could say that wasn't love.

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Post and Jam: What a Good Boy [1992]

Sun, 31 May 2026 06:07:05 GMT

Fandom 50 #16

For 1992, a song whose music video I wish had gotten more play when I was a kid—because while this isn't officially the t4t song I've fanmixed it as for years, it's really not that far off.

What a Good Boy by Barenaked Ladies

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Post and Jam: Into the Fire by Sarah McLachlan [1991]

Wed, 27 May 2026 05:09:57 GMT

Fandom 50 #15

1991 was one of the years with several contenders, but I knew I had to get some early Sarah McLachlan in here.

Into the Fire by Sarah McLachlan

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Six Sentence Sunday

Sun, 24 May 2026 17:52:47 GMT

He bundled up his boots and trousers inside his coat and left them in easy reach in case he had to beat a hasty retreat in the dark. Izzy had settled on his side, back to the wall, leaving a conveniently Frenchie-sized sliver of the bunk for him to slot himself into. He climbed in, taking care with his elbows and knees. Taking care with his hands too, in a different sort of way. They lay just so, the backs of his fingers barely making contact with Izzy's warm, hairy belly when Izzy breathed in. Then, after maybe half a minute, they shifted half an inch so that they were making contact on the breath out too.

It was the sort of question everyone could pretend hadn't been asked and wasn't being answered: 'Are we doing something?'

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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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