Motetus

( Obviously my new year resolution should be something to do with getting things done on time )

And another Yuletide rec for The Borgias!

Slow Match (25,582 words) by paperiuni
Fandom: The Borgias
Rating: Teen and up
Warnings: None
Relationships: Micheletto & Lucrezia Borgia, Cesare Borgia/Micheletto
Characters: Micheletto, Lucrezia Borgia, Cesare Borgia, Various Characters
Additional Tags: Drama, Angst, Romance, Action, Male-Female Friendship, Canon-Typical Violence, Historical Divergence, Post-Canon, Historical References
Summary: Micheletto wanders, Cesare conquers, and Lucrezia offers a timely intervention. Some ties are not easily severed, but neither can they stay unchanged. Set right after season 3 (and from there on out).

This is the post-S3 fic OF MY HEART that I never knew I wanted. I'd thought that what interested me about Cesare/Micheletto was how one-sided it was and how poor Micheletto never gets anything nice, and I was perfectly happy with nothing but angst for him, but this really sold a more equal relationship to me. That's not the real only I adore this story, though; aside from being beautifully, beautifully written, there are so many things in it that made me happy, like Micheletto and Lucrezia (brought together by how they were both forced by Cesare to kill someone they loved, which I had not put together myself until reading this) working together, fighting assassins and disguising themselves to sneak into the Vatican and cure Cesare, and Micheletto leading a daring raid to rescue an imprisoned Cesare, a fantastic battle scene, appearances by Machiavelli and Micheletto's mama, and the most satisfying ending that was everything I could have wished for.

I think I shall start this off with some small fandoms - well, some small, some absolutely miniscule. Please do forgive how lame my explanations for why these are awesome are; I'd forgotten how rubbish I am at articulating why I like something, and I THINK THE WORDS AND THEIR ORDER IS CLEVER is the most eloquent I get. But trust me, these are all fantastic. Because I say so.

( Fic recs for 21 Jump Street, Jurassic Park, Private Eye, Looper and The Borgias )

Blah. Today is a day of scoffing ibuprofen and struggling to stay awake while I attempt to put together a small website/blog thing for our lab group (I really should have kept my mouth shut when my supervisor discussed setting up a Facebook group page instead of ranting on about how awful Facebook is and inadvertently volunteering to come up with an alternative...). So here is some wittering about the last few episodes of The Borgias, because oh my god you guys, this show. ♥♥♥

The only thing about Season 3 I've been grumbling about up until now was how Micheletto hasn't been given anything to do apart from stab a few people and do a spot of babysitting on the side, though I do like how the creepy assassin who has cheerfully admitted to killing children when paid to do so is actually the safest person to hand your baby to... provided your surname is Borgia.


But hell, not any more, not after his affair and betrayal by Pascal (who totally looks a bit similar to Cesere, I see what you're doing there, Micheletto). Oh god, it broke my heart and made me snivel pathetically for days, and it was BRILLIANT. The way Micheletto's hugs look like he's about to slit your neck instead, but is a cuddler and quite a gentle lover at times (which, considering the amount of people he's strangled, stabbed, drowned, garroted and shoved into lamprey-infested ponds, sounds like it would be terribly OOC, but somehow it works!). How he has no problem standing stark naked (cheers for all those full frontal scenes, Sean Harris, I appreciated them greatly!) threatening Pascal with terrible things if Pascal even dares to ask how his day went, but struggles to awkwardly tell him that he'd like Pascal to stay with him. And Pascal reading Catullus to Micheletto! ♥ Bloody hell, you learned more about Micheletto from the rawness of his "I have known this feeling all my life. All my life" response to Odi et Amo than in the last two and a half seasons put together.

And then seeing his heart break (show, how did you guess that betrayal is my favourite thing ever in tragic romances... ah wait, this is The Borgias, that's the theme of every episode ever), particularly after a few episodes earlier with Lucrezia it was shown he does actually possess one, and his painful coming out scene to Cesare where he begs Cesare to kill him for inadvertently betraying the family... yes, my loyalty kink got a lot of satisfaction from that. And then as if I wasn't an inconsolable blubbering wreck already, that scene where he confronts Pascal and rages and weeps and asks him how he wants to die, and that heart rending look of pain on his face when Pascal answers with "in your arms" because despite betraying and being betrayed there's still love there between the two of them... BRB NEED TO GO FIND MORE TISSUES. :( :( :(


Fuck me, I love this show and everyone should watch it. I never thought I'd find a TV series that rivaled Rome, but after this and how awesome Caterina Sforza has been, fuck yes, I have. If it really is cancelled after this season and there's no big satisfying conclusion for all the characters, I will be attempting the greatest sulk the world has ever seen, I swear.

And now I want to do nothing more than draw Micheletto, or Caterina's perfect face, or maybe Cesare's obscenely tight leather trousers, but nooo, someone had to go sign up for i_reversebang and embark on stupidly complicated drawings with a billion fiddly background details that will take me months to finish...