The Fate You've Carved On Me [Inglourious Basterds, Landa/OMC, explicit]
Fandom : Inglourious Basterds
Title : The Fate You've Carved On Me
Author : lonelywalker
Rating : NC-17
Characters & Pairings : Hans Landa/OMC
Length : ~8300
Warnings : descriptions of violence similar to what happened in the movie
Summary : Villains never get happy endings, but Nantucket's only gay Nazi is damn well going to try.
My Rave Review :
when i rented inglourious basterds i expected to be wowed, but i didn't expect to love it. besides making me cry like a baby, i adored it, and while i haven't read much fic in the fandom, i'm always on the lookout for fic that continues exploring the characters that tarantino created which are, for me at least, the reason the movie tore my insides to confetti. i'm often prone to liking well-constructed and three-dimensional villains, but hans landa was more than even my black little heart could handle. i wanted to know all about how he became so deliciously evil, and what he did with all of it after the movie ended. this fic answers that question while also showing that there was so much more to landa than we got to see in the movie.He feels a little like a victim, standing naked with the water beginning to chill. Looking in the eyes of someone who sees him, who sees him, this scarred old man, hardly the pinnacle of physical perfection even without the wounds or the weight of the years… He misses the uniform in that instant, the stiff leather of his boots, the coat that had felt as though it could stop bullets. They'd all looked at him and seen the Reich, seen blond hair and blue eyes though his had tended to grey and green. In the days when he'd not only been uninterested in love, but actively hiding from any hint of affection, it had served him well. And now he's lost without it.
lonelywalker's writing style is perfect for the story she's telling here-- a military man who's masquerading as an academic, a former SS officer pretending he ran to america from persecution by the nazis, she gives landa's personal background and paints the picture of germany during hitler's rise to power with a clear informative voice that, while it's not in first person, sounds to me like the way landa might tell the story to a listener if he had one. austere but beautiful, the story takes the reader through snippets of landa's life before, during and after the movie, and manages to humanize him without forgiving him for anything he's done....and, oh, the European war and what had followed had been quite a distraction. Blood and death and the loss of a generation of idealistic young men. And for what? For a humiliating defeat and the economic destruction that had followed. It had been easy to lose himself in grief and fury from a hospital bed, returning to his home town in a torn and bloody uniform to count off the names of his friends and lovers in hurried dispatches from the front: the dead and dying, those lost in action who would never be found, buried still beneath French farmland. And to think that he had once been eager to fight... Had he ever been as young, as innocent, as wide-eyed and naïve as Caleb Cooper? On reflection, he'd been even younger.
the chance for redemption and a fresh start for someone with a dark past is a theme that's easy to do wrong in both literature and fic, easy to make trite or predictable. this fic is neither predictable nor easy. landa and his companion (who, by the way, is a great OC i can actually picture having been in the movie) share something that changes both of them, i suspect irrevocably, and yet it's not simple and certainly not tied up at the end. there's a sense of inevitability-- one commenter described it as "it can't end like this warring with it has to end like this", and that's exactly how it does feel. landa doesn't deserve redemption-- but doesn't he? doesn't everyone who learns to regret their mistakes? but has he really learned to regret them? and what will happen to caleb now? you're left with a lot of questions at the end, but it's still a completely satisfying read, and i actually sighed out loud at the last line. i will reread this again and again, and i dare you to read it and not feel the same.
Title : The Fate You've Carved On Me
Author : lonelywalker
Rating : NC-17
Characters & Pairings : Hans Landa/OMC
Length : ~8300
Warnings : descriptions of violence similar to what happened in the movie
Summary : Villains never get happy endings, but Nantucket's only gay Nazi is damn well going to try.
My Rave Review :
when i rented inglourious basterds i expected to be wowed, but i didn't expect to love it. besides making me cry like a baby, i adored it, and while i haven't read much fic in the fandom, i'm always on the lookout for fic that continues exploring the characters that tarantino created which are, for me at least, the reason the movie tore my insides to confetti. i'm often prone to liking well-constructed and three-dimensional villains, but hans landa was more than even my black little heart could handle. i wanted to know all about how he became so deliciously evil, and what he did with all of it after the movie ended. this fic answers that question while also showing that there was so much more to landa than we got to see in the movie.He feels a little like a victim, standing naked with the water beginning to chill. Looking in the eyes of someone who sees him, who sees him, this scarred old man, hardly the pinnacle of physical perfection even without the wounds or the weight of the years… He misses the uniform in that instant, the stiff leather of his boots, the coat that had felt as though it could stop bullets. They'd all looked at him and seen the Reich, seen blond hair and blue eyes though his had tended to grey and green. In the days when he'd not only been uninterested in love, but actively hiding from any hint of affection, it had served him well. And now he's lost without it.
lonelywalker's writing style is perfect for the story she's telling here-- a military man who's masquerading as an academic, a former SS officer pretending he ran to america from persecution by the nazis, she gives landa's personal background and paints the picture of germany during hitler's rise to power with a clear informative voice that, while it's not in first person, sounds to me like the way landa might tell the story to a listener if he had one. austere but beautiful, the story takes the reader through snippets of landa's life before, during and after the movie, and manages to humanize him without forgiving him for anything he's done....and, oh, the European war and what had followed had been quite a distraction. Blood and death and the loss of a generation of idealistic young men. And for what? For a humiliating defeat and the economic destruction that had followed. It had been easy to lose himself in grief and fury from a hospital bed, returning to his home town in a torn and bloody uniform to count off the names of his friends and lovers in hurried dispatches from the front: the dead and dying, those lost in action who would never be found, buried still beneath French farmland. And to think that he had once been eager to fight... Had he ever been as young, as innocent, as wide-eyed and naïve as Caleb Cooper? On reflection, he'd been even younger.
the chance for redemption and a fresh start for someone with a dark past is a theme that's easy to do wrong in both literature and fic, easy to make trite or predictable. this fic is neither predictable nor easy. landa and his companion (who, by the way, is a great OC i can actually picture having been in the movie) share something that changes both of them, i suspect irrevocably, and yet it's not simple and certainly not tied up at the end. there's a sense of inevitability-- one commenter described it as "it can't end like this warring with it has to end like this", and that's exactly how it does feel. landa doesn't deserve redemption-- but doesn't he? doesn't everyone who learns to regret their mistakes? but has he really learned to regret them? and what will happen to caleb now? you're left with a lot of questions at the end, but it's still a completely satisfying read, and i actually sighed out loud at the last line. i will reread this again and again, and i dare you to read it and not feel the same.