The Culture Channel

Technically, d'Artagnan's name starts with a lowercase letter.

There follows a long explanation of why this is so under the cut, but the important thing to take away here is that unless it's at the beginning of a sentence, it supposed to be spelled d'Artagnan, not D'Artagnan.

(I'm sure that if you scoured my old book-based fics, you'd find at least one place where I slipped up and capitalized it, because the first law of pointing out spelling mistakes is that you'll make the same mistake or a similar one yourself while you're in the process of pointing that other person's error out, but trust me on this, the "d" is lowercase)

( Let me explain at tl;dr length )

So, Porthos is basically this show’s Iron Woobie, y/y?

Also, how much do I love that they use his canon last name? (We’re not even going to talk about the shooting-the-melon-of-gay-off-Aramis’s-head scene ♥ except to say that Athos’s total lack of reaction to it while d’Artagnan boggles was somehow the best part)

Was a beautiful thing of shippy glory. Oh my God, Aramis, why don't you just stitch your initials into Porthos's shoulder and have done with it? (I'm not sure whether Aramis is reminding me more of Turk and JD from Scrubs, or Franken Stein from Soul Eater with the needlework thing, honestly)

Also, Capaldi's Cardinal is pretty close to my platonic ideal of Richelieu.

Because Richard White’s The Middle Ground: Indians, Empires, and Republics in the Great Lakes Region plotbunnied me viciously. Viciously enough that I read my halting way through the official “Bibliothèque et Archives Canada” sight in French to provide supplementary details. And then said “fuck it” and went to wikipedia.

Disclaimer: The characters portrayed in this story were originally created by Alexandre Dumas, and are being used without permission but with complete legality. Because they're public domain. Ha! Take that, 20th century copyright law.

( Canadian Shack! )

Go here for a 17th century account of Jesuit missionaries in Canada (in English). There is an entire chapter devoted to the guy who had his fingers cut off.

This was supposed to have gone up in February, but I suck, so… behold my nod to Alexandre Dumas, probably the most prolific and successful writer of African descent ever, as well as one of the most entertaining (You didn’t know? His grandmother, Marie-Césette Dumas, was born a slave on a Caribbean sugar plantation. Who says somebody has to be American to be honoured during/around Black history month?).

Bits of this have been posted before, but now I’m putting up the complete piece. (Part of my Lent promise to write 500-1000 words a day until I finish all my WIPs).

Set during the second half of the book, between the musketeers' discovery of the Cardinalist plot to murder to Duke of Buckingham, and Milady de Winter's return to France. Some conflict with book continuity, but I maintain that continuity flaws are canon in Dumas’ novels:

( Wherein dArtagnan and his fellows encounter ambushes and assassination attempts, but, ultimately, triumph—or at least, survive )

Ideally, this is/was intended to be a pastiche rather than “straight” fanfic, hence the more distant than usual pov and my (probably painful) attempts at sounding like a 19th century novelist. If I screwed up at either, don’t hesitate to call me on it. It was also supposed to be considerably shorter—once I started, I couldn’t make myself stop, even after I reached the appropriate ending point.