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hmpfThis story has been online a few weeks already, but things have been very busy since then, so I didn't get around to announcing it properly. Also, I went back and edited this thing several times since posting, and only as of the latest edit has it begun feeling "finished" to me.
So! This is still for the Fandom That Is Barely a Fandom, The Laundry Files.
CLICK HERE if you‘re interested in:
- monsters discussing ethics
- doing the right thing for the wrong reasons
- doing the wrong thing for the right reasons
- grossly inaccurate applications of the Trolley Problem
- awkward manipulation attempts
- dehumanised and instrumentalised people convincing others to be dehumanised and instrumentalised too
- decent people enabling authoritarianism
- anagnorisis. So much anagnorisis.
Some fandom background for the curious behind the cut. Spoilers, obviously.
The Laundry is a British secret intelligence organisation that deals with threats to Earth, and specifically the UK, from forces from beyond spacetime. Those threats are increasing exponentially, because the Laundry universe is experiencing the beginning of a magical singularity, with magic getting easier, and the walls between universes getting thinner. It's expected to get properly apocalyptic in the very near future.
This is an Urban Fantasy universe with Lovecraftian undertones, and spies. In one of the more recent installments the Laundry was maneuvred into a situation where it ended up helping a monstrous Lovecraftian entity (who poses as a human politician) gain control of the UK, to stop another, even worse entity from doing the same. The Laundry is now bound by magical oaths to do this new PM's bidding, and the new PM is happily remodeling the UK into a nice little dictatorship, pursuing his own version of Brexit, and installing legal and actual infrastructure for ritual human sacrifice.
Among lots of other creepy crawlies, the Laundry universe has vampires - but the mechanism behind them is a bit different: it's a trans-dimensional infection with parasites that prey *remotely* on the people whose blood the infected person consumes. I.e., in the Laundry universe, if you cut yourself while chopping onions, and a vampire licks your blood off the cutting board afterwards - you'll die a slow and horrible death, because the parasites will slowly eat your brain from a distance, in another universe, by magic.
Oh, and if a vampire opts out of consuming blood, the parasites will start eating the vampire's brain instead.
It has to be human blood, too. Of *living* humans. Of course.
Pete, the kinda sorta main character of the fic, is only a very secondary character in the books, an old friend of the main character's wife. Both the series' main character (Bob; he also appears in the fic, and is in fact sort of the second main character in it) and the wife (Mo; mentioned, but doesn't appear) are Laundry agents, and Pete got pulled in a couple of years ago, when Bob needed an opinion on a suspect biblical text in a hurry.
In his day job Pete is a vicar. He's married, middle-aged, and father to a toddler, Jess. His wife Sandy also appears in the fic. Not much is known about Sandy in canon; she's a teacher and that's it. I kinda made her up from whole cloth for the fic.
Recently Pete was sent on his first active mission, and promptly got infected with vampirism. This somewhat clashes with... pretty much everything that he cares about and believes in. Whoops.
Doesn't that sound like fun? It does to me, lol.
It's even more fun when you add Bob to it, because Bob is... a monster who hates being a monster, a deeply loyal soldier who hates the structure he's loyal to, a rebellious character consciously molding himself to a form of enslavement, a man with a conscience who sees himself forced to do evil "for the greater good" - and, last but certainly not least, he's more or less directly responsible for getting Pete into the same type of mess, now, too.
Bob is Not Happy, and he has been Very Badly Needing to Talk to Someone for years... and the conversation he ends up having with Pete here is really not at all the one that they *should* be having. Poor Bob. Poor Pete.
But man, was it fun to write. :D
So! This is still for the Fandom That Is Barely a Fandom, The Laundry Files.
CLICK HERE if you‘re interested in:
- monsters discussing ethics
- doing the right thing for the wrong reasons
- doing the wrong thing for the right reasons
- grossly inaccurate applications of the Trolley Problem
- awkward manipulation attempts
- dehumanised and instrumentalised people convincing others to be dehumanised and instrumentalised too
- decent people enabling authoritarianism
- anagnorisis. So much anagnorisis.
Some fandom background for the curious behind the cut. Spoilers, obviously.
The Laundry is a British secret intelligence organisation that deals with threats to Earth, and specifically the UK, from forces from beyond spacetime. Those threats are increasing exponentially, because the Laundry universe is experiencing the beginning of a magical singularity, with magic getting easier, and the walls between universes getting thinner. It's expected to get properly apocalyptic in the very near future.
This is an Urban Fantasy universe with Lovecraftian undertones, and spies. In one of the more recent installments the Laundry was maneuvred into a situation where it ended up helping a monstrous Lovecraftian entity (who poses as a human politician) gain control of the UK, to stop another, even worse entity from doing the same. The Laundry is now bound by magical oaths to do this new PM's bidding, and the new PM is happily remodeling the UK into a nice little dictatorship, pursuing his own version of Brexit, and installing legal and actual infrastructure for ritual human sacrifice.
Among lots of other creepy crawlies, the Laundry universe has vampires - but the mechanism behind them is a bit different: it's a trans-dimensional infection with parasites that prey *remotely* on the people whose blood the infected person consumes. I.e., in the Laundry universe, if you cut yourself while chopping onions, and a vampire licks your blood off the cutting board afterwards - you'll die a slow and horrible death, because the parasites will slowly eat your brain from a distance, in another universe, by magic.
Oh, and if a vampire opts out of consuming blood, the parasites will start eating the vampire's brain instead.
It has to be human blood, too. Of *living* humans. Of course.
Pete, the kinda sorta main character of the fic, is only a very secondary character in the books, an old friend of the main character's wife. Both the series' main character (Bob; he also appears in the fic, and is in fact sort of the second main character in it) and the wife (Mo; mentioned, but doesn't appear) are Laundry agents, and Pete got pulled in a couple of years ago, when Bob needed an opinion on a suspect biblical text in a hurry.
In his day job Pete is a vicar. He's married, middle-aged, and father to a toddler, Jess. His wife Sandy also appears in the fic. Not much is known about Sandy in canon; she's a teacher and that's it. I kinda made her up from whole cloth for the fic.
Recently Pete was sent on his first active mission, and promptly got infected with vampirism. This somewhat clashes with... pretty much everything that he cares about and believes in. Whoops.
Doesn't that sound like fun? It does to me, lol.
It's even more fun when you add Bob to it, because Bob is... a monster who hates being a monster, a deeply loyal soldier who hates the structure he's loyal to, a rebellious character consciously molding himself to a form of enslavement, a man with a conscience who sees himself forced to do evil "for the greater good" - and, last but certainly not least, he's more or less directly responsible for getting Pete into the same type of mess, now, too.
Bob is Not Happy, and he has been Very Badly Needing to Talk to Someone for years... and the conversation he ends up having with Pete here is really not at all the one that they *should* be having. Poor Bob. Poor Pete.
But man, was it fun to write. :D
no subject
Date: 2021-03-03 09:00 pm (UTC)I'm not in Laundry fandom, but this conversation about necessary evils versus becoming the thing you're fighting was so very up my alley that I thought I'd stop by and say hi. So, hi!
no subject
Date: 2021-03-05 10:33 pm (UTC)Heh, who is? This is barely a fandom. :D
Thanks for stopping by! Glad to hear that conversation worked for you. I always really appreciate hearing that a fic I wrote also works for people without the respective fandom background. It's something I try to aim for in my writing, though it's of course somewhat secondary to making the fic work for readers *of* the fandom in question (and what non-fandom readers get out of it will usually differ from what fandom readers get out of it).
no subject
Date: 2021-03-07 01:14 am (UTC)