Jack Twist x Ennis del Mar (Brokeback Mountain)

[rhye.livejournal.com]

Title: A Force of Nature
Author: Jessica (planetgal471)
Fandom: Brokeback Mountain
Pairing: Jack Twist x Ennis del Mar
Spoilers: movie and short story
Email: spacegal471 @ juno.com




Brokeback Mountain is a love story: boy meets boy, boy falls in love with boy, end of story, right? Wrong. Beginning. Because isn’t that the way life is? The story doesn’t end at “It’s alright”, or “I do”, or even “I swear.” Love is a story that rewrites your entire life, from day one until death. Jack Twist and Ennis del Mar shared exactly that brand of love: a love so strong it can’t really be blissful, because it overruns everything.

Humans are drunk on power. We control, we domesticate, we sow. We have power over each other, power over land and beast, power to shape our destinies. Yet there are still those things we cannot control—hailstorms, hurricanes, blizzards, love. As long as such forces exist, our destiny is not solely ours to conquer.

Let me tell you a story of love—love sprung from wild mountain weeds—a reckless, uncontrollable, tumbling love that could never be, could never grow like a lodgepole pine, tall and proud, living as it was in the shadow of fear and not the sunlight of the world. And yet regardless, it must be, it must exist, because love, too, is a force of nature.

Ennis del Mar



Ennis del Mar inherited the hard life from his Methodist rancher parents. Raised in poverty, he never had a reason to expect anything as his lot in life other than more of the same. He aspired only to become what was meant for him-- a rancher, a husband, and a father.

Seeing no hope in his world, Ennis learned not to hope, to keep quiet, to work hard at what he was asked to do without complaining. He was domesticated, controlled by the world of man. His life’s roadmap clearly labeled, at the age of nineteen he took a summer job herding sheep on Brokeback Mountain, hoping it would give him a financial edge to support his fiancé, Alma.

Ennis del Mar means Island of the Sea in a mixture of Irish and Spanish. Ennis was an island, alone, touching no one and nothing, and completely isolated.

Formative Childhood Experience- When he was nine years old, Ennis witnessed the aftermath of a brutal beating death of a gay rancher, Earl. The event left him with a strong belief that two men cannot make a life together without inviting the same. Ennis admits that his father might “have done the job” on Earl.

Jack Twist



Jack Twist inherited the hard life from his Pentecostal mother and rodeo-turned-rancher father. Raised in poverty, he never had a reason to expect anything to be his lot in life other than more of the same-- but that didn‘t keep him from hoping. He aspired to become anything other than what was meant for him.

Seeing no hope in his world, Jack learned to be his own hope and to keep his own counsel. He was wild, unbroken and not fit for harness. He was full of self-fueled vibrancy, with no plan other than a vague idea of being his own boss. Rodeoing offered an easy escape from Lightening Flat. Jack also took other jobs, working summers herding sheep on Brokeback Mountain.

The “twist” are the muscles a bull rider uses to hold onto the bull—strong inner thigh muscles built for determination and the holding on. Jack was built for determination and the holding on.

Formative Childhood Experience- When he was three years old and had trouble peeing into the toilet, Jack‘s father peed on him in the bathroom in the middle of the night, and forced Jack to clean it all up. The significance of that experience seems to be that Jack noticed that his father was not circumcised and he was, and it made him wonder why they were so different. This open curiosity about penises might have made Jack more amenable to later events, less restrictive in his thoughts.

Two In One
Jack Twist and Ennis del Mar met in the summer of 1963 herding sheep on Brokeback Mountain. The relationship started as professional, moved on to a platonic love that was already too deep to stop there, and eventually grew to shared a romantic love of unusual depth and breadth. Their love started on the mountain, but it was incapable of stopping there. Forced back into the real world, they both attempted to discard the feelings they had for each other, but nothing doing. Their feelings were gale-force, barreling into and across their lives. What ensued was nearly twenty years of “fishing trips” in which a line never touched water. Jack and Ennis shared something truly special with each other. Their bond clearly brings both men more fulfillment than they experience in the whole rest of their lives, but not without cost. Their love, planted as it was in the unfertile soil of fear, survived twenty years of poisoning, of life only half lived, and ended in tragedy, both physically and emotionally.

Jack Twist came into the world like the winged wind, free and fast flowing. Ennis del Mar was the mountain, strong and unmovable. Yet Jack laid his wings down under the mountain, and Ennis let the wind tear him to pieces, because though it hurt, though they lost pieces of themselves to each other, they felt they gained more by being a part of someone else than they would ever stand to gain alone. In truth, they had no choice, because you cannot unlive life, or rebreak a heart unbroken by affection. That is the power of this pairing—to portray love as a force that overpowers the other forces of this world.

The Soil of Fear: The Beginning



A first time moviegoer will not see anything extraordinary about the two ranch hands that end up working together herding sheep on Brokeback Mountain. In the first segment of the movie, their potential as something more than coworkers is already being introduced, though it is subtle. The short story neglects many of these first budding moments of their relationship, but an astute moviegoer will notice:

• Ennis and Jack eyeing each other in the parking lot (Jack, as always, is far more obvious about it, but he certainly is not alone in the activity)
  
• Ennis and Jack checking each other out in Aguirre’s trailer
  
• Ennis asking Jack for a light at the bar, complete with a touch on the arm, even though we already know he has his own lighter, because he was smoking alone at Aguirre’s trailer

This is just a small smattering of cues given from the very beginning that something was passing between the two men. But Jack and Ennis were not settling for subtleties.

Once they began to set up camp, their relationship quickly became something more. Though Jack has to sleep at night with the sheep, sometimes miles from Ennis, their thoughts are on each other, the two of them alone now in a world of their own creating.

“During the day Ennis looked across a great gulf and sometimes saw Jack.”

“Jack, in his dark camp, saw Ennis as night fire.”

Beans
While on the mountain, Jack and Ennis subsist on a simple staple food: beans. Jack isn’t used to settling, and he doesn’t want more beans. When Ennis asks for soup instead of beans from his grocery supplier, the man makes fun of him for being tired of beans. Even though Jack was the one that wanted soup instead of beans, and Ennis has already declared that he doesn’t like soup, he takes responsibility.

This may be overlooked, but it’s important. The Jack-no-beans story stretches out as an allegory for the entire story of Brokeback Mountain. Only on the mountain is Ennis able to stand up for what Jack wants in front of a critical audience. In the real world, he won’t be able to.

Returning to camp, Ennis encounters a bear, their food is scattered, and Ennis gets injured and returns late. “Jack is more worried than angry.” He attempts to tend to Ennis, but “hesitates… awkward… hands the bandanna to Ennis.” There is clearly some physical chemistry and emotional concern already developed between the men. When Ennis reveals that the food was scattered and there’s nothing left but beans (another allegory—as a child Ennis is emotionally injured by seeing Earl dead, and as a result he can only offer a ‘beans’ life to Jack), Jack will not stand for it and talks Ennis into shooting a deer in the story and screenplay, an elk in the filmed movie, at Jack’s insistence. Jack can’t shoot the elk himself; he’s a poor shot. Shooting an elk is against the Fish and Game rules, but Ennis does it anyway, and he seems happy enough to eat elk instead of beans. Unfortunately for Ennis, once off the mountain, even Jack’s insistence is not enough to make Ennis shoot an elk against the rules for a ‘no beans’ life.

More Words
Affection between the men is growing. Jack complains that Ennis and Jack aren’t sharing the camp. Ennis volunteers to take over the distasteful work up with the sheep at night. One night around the fire, both partaking of alcohol, and already sneaking subtle looks at each other (Jack while Ennis bathes, Ennis while Jack pees), the two men make a real emotional connection. They converse free and easily like neither has before. That night, Jack draws from Ennis “more words” than he’s “spoke in a year.” They both enjoy each other’s company so much they are “tossing sticks on the fire to keep the talk going.” Jack pretends to be rodeoing, falls over, “both laugh so hard, they almost cry.” “They were respectful of each other's opinions, each glad to have a companion where none had been expected. Ennis, riding against the wind back to the sheep in the treacherous, drunken light, thought he'd never had such a good time, felt he could paw the white out of the moon.” From here on out, “the hours [Ennis] was away from the sheep stretched out and out” as he spent more time with Jack. Neither yet knows that they will be developing this bond further, but at this point both men are feeling a deep-seated yearning for something they know the other has. Without reservation, I claim that this joshing night around the fire, Jack Twist and Ennis del Mar fell in love.

First Tent Scene
The first night Jack and Ennis “deepened their intimacy considerable” has become known simply as “the first tent scene.” One night they both drink too much too late into the night, having fun singing and sharing stories. Too drunk to go up to the sheep, Ennis tries to sleep outside in the cold, but Jack calls him into the tent to share the bedroll. Jack makes no effort to make room for Ennis. After the camera cuts away and cuts back some time later, we pan first over the wide empty floor of tent not being occupied, as the men hover closer together than necessary.

Jack, ever the ‘no beans’ type, makes the first move, and after only initial hesitation, Ennis spills over, and he takes Jack fast and rough, “nothing he'd done before but no instruction manual needed.” The realism of this scene has been heavily debated both in and outside of the fandom. Movie co-star Jake Gyllenhaal (Jack Twist), in an interview, stated that he knew everyone seeing the movie would either believe it or not believe it at this scene. It was the make-or-break scene of the movie for many people. In my view of this scene, the two men are already in love, isolated from society’s rules on the mountain, and already attracted to each other. Sex seems like (though it’s not) the last remaining barrier of isolation, and Ennis and Jack break through that dam with force and urgency.

Ennis later insists that he’s not queer, Jack agrees, and they decide their relationship is a “one-shot” thing. It seems the only casualty is one poor sheep, mauled in the night it was abandoned by its shepherd. Neither man realizes they, too, have become victims. One of them, too, will be mauled, abandoned by his shepherd. Already events have unfolded that cannot be undone. Consequences are the only steps left for Jack and Ennis. They have discovered love amidst the mountainous crags, planted it in fearful soil, and it’s too late to do anything about that now, ’cause it’s done.

Second Tent Scene
As I mentioned, to Jack and Ennis, the sexual barrier seemed like their last barrier of isolation, their last path to oneness, but they were mistaken. There was something missing that first night in the tent, which did not go missing long. In what has been dubbed “the second tent scene,” Jack and Ennis don’t just have sex like the night before. Instead, they share deep and romantic kisses, tender and premature apologies, and soulful and hungering caresses, letting themselves understand that they hold pieces of each other.

“Both knew how it would go for the rest of the summer, sheep be damned.” “As it did go. They never talked about the sex, let it happen, at first only in the tent at night, then in the full daylight with the hot sun striking down, and at evening in the fire glow, quick, rough, laughing and snorting, no lack of noises, but saying not a goddamn word… only the two of them on the mountain flying in the euphoric.” They work together, side by side, and share that ‘flying in the euphoric’ until the real world catches up with them, and Aguirre tells them they have to bring down the sheep.

Irreversible Fall
Ennis is visibly distraught about coming down off the mountain. He has a fiancé and a life waiting for him, and that life doesn’t have any room for Jack. He broods, scuffles with Jack, has a nosebleed that Jack tries to wipe away (earning him a punch). They come down in silence. “As they descended the slope Ennis felt he was in a slow-motion, but headlong, irreversible fall.” They drive away from each other in near silence, before Ennis collapses in an alleyway, “felt like someone was pulling his guts out hand over hand a yard at a time.” Flying in the face of Ennis del Mar’s nice, comfortable plan, his domesticated ideals, thriving even where it has been planted in a heart laced with deadly fear of tire irons, Ennis’s emotions for Jack are too powerful to be named, and too inevitable to escape. His headlong, irreversible fall was only just beginning. And to add insult to injury, Ennis can’t find his shirt.

The Poison of Disappointment: The Middle



Life went as planned but unwanted for both men after they came down off the mountain. Ennis marries Alma and has two little girls. Jack moves to Texas to rodeo, marries, and has a little boy. Ennis wanted a son, and Jack never wanted kids; life isn’t always what you want it to be.

It’s Jack who gets fed up with his ‘beans’ life. Four years after parting with Ennis, Jack sends a post-card:

“Friend this letter is a long time over due. Hope you get it. Heard you was in Riverton. Im coming thru on the 24th, thought Id stop and buy you a beer Drop me a line if you can, say if your there.”

Reunion Kiss
Proulx described the postcard as “the first sign of life in all that time.” On the appointed day, Ennis takes the day off work, put on his best shirt, and proceeds to pace, drink, and smoke, as nervous as can be. The look on his face when Jack pulls up is worth a thousand words alone. “Easily as the right key turns the lock tumblers, their mouths came together, and hard.” Hissing “sonofabitch” between breaths, both men awaken, body, heart, and soul, from a four-years’ coma. “Pressing chest and groin and thigh and leg together, treading on each other's toes until they pulled apart to breathe” The portrayal of this kiss, termed the “reunion kiss” in the fandom, won the MTV Movie Awards Best Kiss for 2006. The passion spilling from both the short story text and the movie images cannot be denied. As if the sheer passion were not enough, “Ennis, not big on endearments, said what he said to his horses and daughters, little darlin.” It’s love if anything ever was, and both men know it, too.

If You Can’t Fix It
The couple jounces a bed at the Motel Siesta and, in movie canon, heads up into the mountains for the first of many “fishing trips.” Ennis, “send[s] up a prayer of thanks” that Jack is back in his life. Jack, ever the dreamer, suggests that life could be “just like this, always.” They could leave their wives, start a “ranch together somewhere, little cow-and-calf operation… some sweet life.” Ennis tells Jack the story of seeing Earl sexually abused with tire irons and dead in a ditch for being queer. Jack backs off, sympathetic, as Ennis insists, “if you can't fix it you got a stand it.”

Ennis does admit the power of their feeling for each other, “There's no reins on this one. It scares the piss out a me.” He lays down the law, though: “all I can see is we get together once in a while way the hell out in the back a nowhere.” Thus begins a life of Ennis-rules lived in weeks in the back of beyond.

This disappointment is hard for Jack to stomach, but he does, because he doesn’t have a choice. He goes to Wyoming two or three times a year to camp with Ennis (who intentionally takes only jobs he can quit if he needs to go camping, even though he can’t support his family on such jobs). They spend a week here and there, always in the mountains, but never at that mountain.

Can Hardly Stand It & Whipping Babies
Life goes on. Alma divorces Ennis. In movie canon, Ennis lets Jack know about his divorce. Jack drives from Texas to Wyoming, but Ennis sends Jack packing back along the road. Despite this snub, the tender (albeit paranoid) way Ennis breaks this news, with “I’m sure as hell sorry. You know I am,” is clearly heartfelt.

But the damage is done. Jack thought “mistakenly, that Ennis has come around, that this is their chance, finally, to be together.” This dose of a slow-dripping poison of disappointment proves too much for even Jack’s hopeful constitution, and he heads straight to Juarez, Mexico, and a male hooker. He later takes up a relationship with a male ranch neighbor of his. Ennis starts dating a local waitress. But all the while there is still Jack and Ennis, in the mountains, several weeks a year.

One could suppose their relationship has devolved into some sort of habit, but Jack’s not totally done hoping yet. He still slips suggestions to Ennis about that sweet life. Once, over a campfire, he confesses, “truth is, sometimes I miss you so bad I can hardly stand it” (movie canon), or “he was doing all right but he missed Ennis bad enough sometimes to make him whip babies” (story canon). Either way, the way the couple interacts, the tender glances and familiar joshing and aching soul-deep physical and emotional needs—none of it has paled with time. It’s aged, weathered, but never paled.

Despite the strength of love they feel, it remains poisoned by disappointment. As Jack states, “fuck-all has worked the way I wanted. Nothin never come to my hand the right way.” He might have got elk up on Brokeback, but down in the real world, Ennis is only willing to make beans. They both build up nearly twenty years of resentment, but that resentment is not in any way as powerful as the thing they first shared—love—and it endures.

Cut Down: The End



How to Quit You
One early spring in 1981, their time together about to end, Ennis breaks bad news about some meeting plans falling through, and it’s too much for Jack to contain his disappointment, after 18 years of trying to stand it. Truths come flying out of both men’s mouths, hard truths about guilt, blame, Mexico, money, time, jobs, eighteen years of life unlived and looking, both of them, for someone to blame.

“Tell you what, we could a had a good life together, a fuckin real good life. You wouldn't do it, Ennis, so what we got now is Brokeback Mountain. Everthing built on that. It's all we got, boy, fuckin all, so I hope you know that if you don't never know the rest. Count the damn few times we been together in twenty years. Measure the fuckin short leash you keep me on, then ask me about Mexico and then tell me you'll kill me for needin it and not hardly never gettin it. You got no fuckin idea how bad it gets. I'm not you. I can't make it on a couple a high-altitude fucks once or twice a year. You're too much for me, Ennis, you son of a whoreson bitch. I wish I knew how to quit you."

Like vast clouds of steam from thermal springs in winter the years of things unsaid and now unsayable -- admissions, declarations, shames, guilts, fears -- rose around them. Ennis stood as if heart-shot, face grey and deep-lined, grimacing, eyes screwed shut, fists clenched, legs caving, hit the ground on his knees.

“…they torqued things almost to where they had been, for what they'd said was no news. Nothing ended, nothing begun, nothing resolved.”

In movie canon, this scene ends with Jack hugging Ennis close and murmuring, “come here… it’s all right. It’s all right” in an echo of the “it’s alright” Jack likewise murmers twice to Ennis during the second tent scene. In the movie, Ennis, crying, grips Jack’s jacket like a drowning man. We are left with a feeling that there two men are drowning, clinging to the only thing they know to cling to—each other.

The Dozy Embrace
Ennis drives away, and in that moment Jack remembers a time up on Brokeback Mountain, when Ennis was similarly leaving him for the sheep one night.

What Jack remembered and craved in a way he could neither help nor understand was the time that distant summer on Brokeback when Ennis had come up behind him and pulled him close, the silent embrace satisfying some shared and sexless hunger.

They had stood that way for a long time in front of the fire, its burning tossing ruddy chunks of light, the shadow of their bodies a single column against the rock. The minutes ticked by from the round watch in Ennis's pocket, from the sticks in the fire settling into coals. Stars bit through the wavy heat layers above the fire. Ennis's breath came slow and quiet, he hummed, rocked a little in the sparklight and Jack leaned against the steady heartbeat, the vibrations of the humming like faint electricity and, standing, he fell into sleep that was not sleep but something else drowsy and tranced.

The hope is gone from Jack’s eyes, and the maybe the phrase “nothing ended” is a premature verdict. Maybe Ennis’s eight seconds (an allusion to bull riding—Jack is a bull rider, and in bull riding, a rider has to stay on for eight seconds) are up, and Jack can’t stand it any more.

Something is ending, but Jack and Ennis’s love being what it is, as powerful as it is, is not the victim this time. It’s Jack.

Deceased
For Jack, when he does drown, Ennis is not around to defend him or turn him over. Jack dies, beaten for being queer, on the side of a road in Texas, drowning on his own blood. Ennis doesn’t find out until his November postcard is returned to him stamped “DECEASED.” He has no friend to turn to when his reason for living is gone.

Jack’s widow tells Ennis that Jack wanted his ashes scattered someplace called Brokeback Mountain. Ennis manages to visit Jack’s parents' house to pick up half of Jack’s ashes. He finds that Jack’s parents know exactly who he is, and who he was to Jack. Jack’s father offers only anger, and certainly no ashes. His mother is more sympathetic, and suggests Ennis visit Jack’s bedroom.

The Shirts
While in Jack’s bedroom, tearful, Ennis makes a discovery. In Jack’s closet, safe there for almost twenty years, is Jack’s bloody shirt from Ennis’s bloody nose, from the day they began their irreversible fall down Brokeback Mountain. Inside Jack’s shirt is Ennis’s own bloody shirt, “the pair like two skins, one inside the other, two in one.” Jack and Ennis, one whole soul trapped in two bodies, had never managed to make that final journey and come together, but the shirts had.

Recalling that scuffle, Jack trying to staunch Ennis’s nosebleed, Ennis recalls “the staunching hadn't held because Ennis had suddenly swung from the deck and laid the ministering angel out in the wild columbine, wings folded.” Ennis stole the wings from Jack, and Jack even helped him, because he simply had no choice. Helpless in the face of what they had together, they’d torn each other’s lives apart piece by piece, loved and lost, but loved all the same.

Ennis takes the shirts home, braving Mr. Twist’s accusing glares, and hangs them in his own closet, but this time his is on the outside, protecting Jack the way Jack tried to protect him for nearly twenty years. Next to the shirts he hangs a postcard of Brokeback Mountain.

He stepped back and looked at the ensemble through a few stinging tears.

"Jack, I swear -- " he said, though Jack had never asked him to swear anything and was himself not the swearing kind.

Ennis finally did learn about love, finally was able to make a commitment to Jack, to swear something to Jack, which was more than Jack had ever asked of Ennis.

That’s when the dreams started, and Ennis would wake up sometimes with his pillow wet, and sometimes his sheets, but he never does get over Jack’s death. He lived half a life while Jack was alive, he goes on the same, tossed by that love that he never did have control over. “If you can't fix it you've got to stand it.”


Fandom Feelings
“I feel like I can understand and relate to them... They look and sound like they could be my neighbors.” –samtyr

“I can really relate to Jack and Ennis and there forbidden love for each other and the pain they go through for having this love. They are real and not some fake or unreal parading parody of human beings. No other story or movie has ever hit the core of my being like this one. Jack and Ennis represent an entire population of gay men out there that most of the world does not know. They seem to me to be the first icons of homosexuality that are real. Jack and Ennis, well they represent every emotion I have ever felt, and they represent men—real men.” – joetheone

"These two are so deseperately and passionately in love with each other, that you constantly yearn for them to forever be together and work it out forever. They are the first and only true loves of each other. They are so funny and at ease together -- they just click as friends and people as well as lovers." - Lynn

"Jack and Ennis are archetypes of men who love each other. Achilles and Patroclus were like that in ancient Greece, David and Jonathan in the Bible. The love they share is unique, as is every deep, life changing relationship. Any or all of us may meet them along our life's journey." - pastorfred

"Their relationship is so raw, so completely real and powerful and I think everyone can relate to that love that is so strong you almost wish you could live without it. But then again the thought of being without it hurts even worse. thats why I love Jack/Ennis. Because it hurts, just like reality." - jack_fing_twist

Fandom Recommendations
General BBM Communities
wranglers
Dave Cullen Brokeback Mountain: The Ultimate Brokeback Mountain Guide, home of the Brokeback Mountain Forum
Guide to BBM on Livejournal

Fanfic
Happy-Ending Fic:
"Somebody New" by Jenna Sinclair (jennasts), the "gold standard" in Brokeback Mountain fiction.
"Human Interest" and its sequel, "Two Crows Joy" by madlori.
"Beans and Crazies" by montana_crows.
"For a Little While" and its sequel "Some Silver Lining" by maidenofthesea
"Dreaming" by cathalin.
"The Words Do Not Come" by trascedenza.
"Lost" by pairofdeuces.
"If I Asked" by midwest_girl.
"Big Boots of Pain", "When the Snow Didn't Come", and "Not Taking No" by Jenny.

Canon Fic:
"The Greatest Love" by cynical21 - complete, Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, a truly heartbreaking and unsettling piece about what happens to an undying love when one half of its whole has died. After reading this piece, every other fanfic will seem like a happy ending.
"Departed" by planetgal471.
"Her Daddy Was" by moony.

True AU:
"Lead Me To Your Door" by marakeshsparrow
"The Wolf and the Thunderbird" by debutante9 One, Two.

Fanart
Brokeback Art by nassima.

Comments

[tipsytoe.livejournal.com]

Wow, this is well-thought and cleverly done. You did a great job at this, and thank you. This sure will lead everyone to the right places they need in this fandom. You're amazing. :)

[rhye.livejournal.com]

XD Thanks. I feel sort of like I just climbed a mountain.

[lionessdiva.livejournal.com]

Wow, you've analyzed the movie and story very well. Makes me wish I was back in school so I could write something like it. Well done!

[rhye.livejournal.com]

Thank you!

[teddyschewtoy.livejournal.com]

Extremely well done! Thanks so much for this - and for the links... I'm already missing "Somebody New" and need to do some more reading. And I've been keeping my fingers crossed about that fanmix too... but I see you have been very busy!

[rhye.livejournal.com]

It's raining Christmas! (http://community.livejournal.com/wranglers/1034377.html)

[marakeshsparrow.livejournal.com]

How Sweet is this??? What a great thing you've done here, planetgal! Wonderful! I love it!

[rhye.livejournal.com]

&hugs;! Thank you!

[(Anonymous)]

Ennis divorces Alma.

This was great! Very nice. I did notice this one 'error'.
Alma divorces Ennis.

[rhye.livejournal.com]

You are, indeed, right. That was careless of me. It's a subtle difference, but obviously it does matter. Thank you and fixed :)

[la-petite-singe.livejournal.com]

Aw, that is just lovely. I shall recommend this to many friends. :D Great work.

[rhye.livejournal.com]

Thank you for reading and recommending. I'm also recommending it to friends who meant to see the movie but haven't got the chance, hoping it'll motivate them to :) But it took a lot of time and work, and it'd be worthless if people didn't pass on word that it exists. So thanks.

[(Anonymous)]

Wow, what a wonderful job you did with this. Awesome, really. Congratulations! And I loved the links to stories at the end. You selected some excellent examples representative of the best BBM fanfic out there.

[rhye.livejournal.com]

Thanks for reading!

[trans-elysiance.livejournal.com]

Daaaaaaaaym, girl, you have been busy. Nice work, you are just amazing.

You interweave the movie/novella so seamlessly. God, this is just perfection. And the graphics, the subtitles... it all works so well. I'm getting a little teary-eyed reading it, but I'll have to come back to it soon :)

I don't even know what to say to the fact that you rec'd me, except.... guuuuuh. You are quite the sneaky one, m'dear. I'm so humbled to be next to all those amazing fics.

I do have a wee little favor to ask, if you are ever editing this. Would it be possible to change my link from FF.net to this?

http://www.livejournal.com/tools/memories.bml?user=trascedenza&keyword=BBM+Fanfiction:+TWDNC&filter=all

But, seriously, it's not big deal at all, I'm just an anal-retentive freak who holds a grudge against FF.net, so you don't have to mind me ;)

You are a motherfucking rock star!

*kisses your feet*

[rhye.livejournal.com]

Changed the link. You need to stop being surprised, 'cause I'm just going to keep rec'ing you.

*passes out ded* I think I need to take a tendonitis-induced break before writing any more fanfic *sigh*

[alterfano.livejournal.com]

ok. i WILL see the movie dammit! but i skipped the end of your manifesto because i'm told it's a powerful ending and i want to experience it for myself. what i read at the beginning was very well done. congrats. bet you had fun doing this!

[rhye.livejournal.com]

Well, I think the whole movie is powerful. Actually I feel the beginning more in a lot of ways, but maybe that also is a reflection of where I am in my life. Still, nothing irks me more than hearing someone say "it started out slowly." No, it started out subtle, not slowly, and those are two very different things. I've watched just the beginning of this movie now about 18 times, but I can't make it to the middle very often. Still, there is so much to see in the beginning in terms fo subtle looks and subtle actions it's anything but slow. Mellow, yes. Not slow. What was I talking about?

Oh yes, see it!

Well Done

[moonshadow01.livejournal.com]

Nice blending of cannon and movie. If I never read the story or seen the movie this would be the perfect bait to tempt me with. You must know how to fish? :) You could hook, line and catch alot of new people. It sums up both movie and story without losing any of the emotional pull and grasp they had.

Thank you for the links too.

Cathy

Re: Well Done

[rhye.livejournal.com]

Thank you for reading & commenting! I'm glad you liked the blend. I must admit I'm guilty of chosing my favorite versions of events between the two, but I tries to show a little bit of the difference between story and movie as well. Lucky for us the differences are so small. Diana Osanna and Larry McMurtry are amazing.

[under-wyo-skies.livejournal.com]

Wonderful analysis of the story :) Thanks for that.

[rhye.livejournal.com]

Thanks for reading!

[mijmeraar.livejournal.com]

Just, thank you. Really.

I love that you have re-illustrated everything that has been built for us - true to Jack and Ennis and true to their love - but also uncovered subtleties and metaphors that I hadn't stopped to think about before.

I'm not entirely sure why but I think I loved this - And to add insult to injury, Ennis can’t find his shirt. - so, so much because it as if it is a fleeting thing [especially when you have written it there with great nochalance], you know. Something that you don't stop to think about and then you remember oh god the shirts, and then you start to think about that and what that means.

It put me into Ennis' head, all the shock that must have shot through him at seeing that shirt, all the memories that would have returned to him. I just really, really enjoyed this for it's endless depth but also it's simplicity because they were such simple men who only wanted the simple things in life but this great love made everything so profound so, impossible.

Thank you.

[rhye.livejournal.com]

Thank you for this comment. You got me feeling emotional on the shirts! Your insight on juxtaposing the simple and the profound-- wow, I never really thought of it like that, but that's a major motif, really, the interplay of simple and profound in BBM.

[jack-fing-twist.livejournal.com]

Of course I know you're expecting something smart and insightful from me but after that I have nothing. In one sense, It hit on everything, in antoher sense there is SO much more you could have said, but if you did it would have taken months to read. thats the intensity of the ship. and you captured it perfectly.

I would like to say more, but you've said everything for me, and as I was after I saw BBM for the first time, I am speechless.

Thank you for this.

[rhye.livejournal.com]

lol there's a 5000 word limit, and I topped out at 4998. Don't I know I could have said more. It was at 7000 words at one point and I had to aggressively cut.

[amdaz.livejournal.com]

Hey Planetgal ... great recommendation list you have, love them all.
But one fic is missing from there ... Widower for One Year by 271horses/AJ. :)
One of the BEST BBM fic, comparable in quality with Jenna and Jenny's.
AJ's Ennis is the truest of any author I have ever read.

Link: 271horses (http://271horses.livejournal.com/)

[rhye.livejournal.com]

I've read Widower, but I am up against the word limit. Though it appears that's not enforced, I spent too long getting under it to disregard it now (or else the manifesto will soon grow out of control) :P Regardless, thanks for the link. Anyone reading the comments will get an Easter Egg. I think there are actually a lot of fics left off. There are 3-4 other excellent ones I had to take out of my list :( Plus, I wanted to focus on fic that focuses on Jack/Ennis, since this is their manifesto and I was trying not to be too Ennis-biased. While everything Brokeback focuses on Jack/Ennis on some level by its nature, Widower is less Jack/Ennis-focused than most, which is really why it was cut.

Thanks for reading!

[koyuki]

Please excuse me for not leaving your a proper comment before and only that short snippet yesterday. It was really late and I had work the next morning, but I saw your post about the word limit so I had to interject. XD;

This is quite a lovely manifesto, very stylesque to the way that Brokeback Mountain itself is written. You've pointed out so many things I've never noticed before or at least never drew attention to, but you did it in such a believable, realistic way that is exactly the way they are.

One thing I have to thank you for is not making them a "message" couple, which a lot of people seem to label BBM as. They are normal people who just happened to fall in love, and for all its worth, that's what makes them so beautiful. And that is what your essay is.

[rhye.livejournal.com]

Thanks, it means a lot to me. I guess I stopped thinking of Jack and Ennis as a message couple as soon as they became real people to me, about four minutes into my first viewing of the movie. I do think it's a movie/novella about love and to say it's bout men in love does us all a disservice. If it has any message about men in love it's simply that love is love regardless of body parts involved. I certainly don't 'ship this couple because they are both men, and since I wanted the essay to reflect why I 'ship this pairing, I did just that. And that reason was simply the force of what it was they felt, and the tragedy that was inevitable under the power of that force.

I babble more. Anyway, thank you for commenting on that. I think it is important, especially for who haven't read the novella or seen the movie, to understand them as real people in love and not as a paradigm of gay love. Thank you!

[nova-bright.livejournal.com]

Just re-reading this, and it's still amazing. A beautiful, thoughtful consideration of their relationship. And thank you very much for the links to some awesome fanfic.

[rhye.livejournal.com]

♥ Wow, a re-reader, that rocks!

[royda.livejournal.com]

I don't even know if I can write anything right now. See, everytime I read anything about Brokeback Mountain, whether it be in printed form or video, I always end up crying. I've loved this story for years and to see it be embraced by so many people makes you almost forget every other stupid issue out there.

You really did capture all the nuances of the short story as well as the movie and I wouldn't hold it against you if you chose to showcase your favorite scenes from both since they happened to be mine as well. There haven't been many things on the net that I've read that have touched me as this has. I would just like to say thank you. It was a beautiful movie and an even more beautiful story.

[rhye.livejournal.com]

♥ Thank you! It was the hope of getting comments just like yours that made writing this worthwhile to me. I wanted to try and define and harness something that seemed so powerful for me it was beyond definition. I worried for a time that trying to put it into words would break the magic, but the exact opposite happened-- themagic grew out of every line of the essay, and I realized thai I would write and write, but there would always be more to be said on the subject. It's powerful almost to the point of overwhelming, and I'm so glad to be able to share it with others. Living in a post-Brokeback world without so many people I can share my thoughts with would be torture to me.

[the-summoning-d.livejournal.com]

Ennis del Mar means Island of the Sea in a mixture of Gaelic and Spanish. I can't argue with the Spanish bit, but no part of "Ennis Del Mar" is Gaelic. "Island of the Sea" in Gaelic would be "Eileann Na Mara". Other than that, it's a pretty damn kick-ass essay. I salute you.

[rhye.livejournal.com]

;) Thanks for trying to help me clarify. Ennis is actually my surname, and in researching geneology I foudn it came from the work Inis, meaning "island" or "water meadow" (I'm thinking that might be a swamp?). Maybe it's incorrect to say Gaelic, and maybe I mean Irish? I'm not up on European languages, I must admit, and I assumed they were the same, but I'm probably wrong. I'll change that.

[ariss-tenoh.livejournal.com]

Hi there,
I was reading your essay and tried to read "Somebody New" but the link is dead. Do you know where I could find it? Thank you.

[rhye.livejournal.com]

Thank you for reading! SN is still the gold standard of BBM fanfic :) But unfortunately it was subjected to an C&D after being published in 'zine form. I can't stand the idea that there are people who cannot read this, though. Some people have it in word doc form, but I am not one of them (being a proud 'zine owner). Sorry...

[buffymonmon.livejournal.com]

Thanks for this, it gave me a lot of things to think about. Things I hadn´t thought of myself and that will deepen my understanding of the story.

[rhye.livejournal.com]

You're very welcome!

[severus-falter.livejournal.com]

When I saw the end of the movie, I basically had the feeling of, "If I knew it would be like this, I wouldn't have watched it." It's SO depressing and heart-breaking. I know that situations like this were and are still real for some people, but I hadn't known what to expect. With Jack, seriously, oh my god. I would say I hate the movie, but I know it's amazing, so I can't.

Ennis and Jack were meant to be together, but weren't. No fairy tale there. I like fairy tales I guess.

In any case, their love is literally all there, and I'm grateful for it.

You did a wonderful job by the way.

[rhye.livejournal.com]

Thanks so much! I know what you mean, the movie is an experience that I don't really like to relive, but I am grateful for it all the same.

[ifyoucantfixit2.livejournal.com]

You covered so many of the bases that were in the Movie,..the
short story... and the fanfiction stories. You told the full
adventure of the happy times, (so few} The subleties, and the
sad and painful times. You definitely show the true heart of the tale. It is with great hope that a lot of folks will read
this and be inspired to see the movie, read the story, and to
even read some of the happier ending fanfics. It is such a
true and heart wrenching truth, that I doubt that its equal will ever be put on film again. Mr Lee was the perfect person to place all the secret details in the story. He didnt hit you over the head with the alegories or the metaphores, but he placed them in there just the same. What an absolute perfect cast and crew that was put together to frame this thing of beauty. We are so lucky to have this fine piece of film. That we may go back, as the spirit strikes and rewatch it. Thank you very much for reminding us and telling so many who have not seen it, to have a look. I know I shall do so for the entire rest of my life. Janice, Ifyoucantfixit.

[rhye.livejournal.com]

Thanks so much for reading Janice! Unfortunately I think I am preaching to the choir with this manifesto, but it certainly can't hurt.

[ingu_x.livejournal.com]

This is an amazing piece you wrote, extraordinary amount of insight into the movie and the characters <3

I am so very late to this fandom... I've only just discovered the amazingness of Brokeback and I have no idea what to do with myself, half of the authors of those fics you recced have purged their accounts. I don't know what to read... D=

[rhye.livejournal.com]

Sorry I'm so late in responding. If you have a specific story you're looking for, I might have it! It's true the fandom had very heady and exuberant early days, though, and I'm sorry you missed it.

[sarahsoflyassky.livejournal.com]

Well it has been quite a few years since you wrote this but one of the reasons I like this couple is because they will transcend time and forever be an example of tragic star crossed lovers. People will read this in twenty years time and the tale will be just as relevant and heartbreaking!
You encapsulated every little raw emotion I feel for these two, so thank you for putting into words what I have been thinking for years! As it has been said before, this couple hurts to watch, their love story breaks me as few have ever done. This was a pleasure to read and it brought back all of my feelings for this story as though I had just watched the movie for the first time.

[rhye.livejournal.com]

Thank you so much for reading this and for taking the time to leave feedback ♥

[changeineed.livejournal.com]

I had the chance to read this wonderful piece after Donna posted the link on DCF. One of the best explorations of the movie-short story as a whole i have ever read, written with emotion and coolness at the same time, amazing if someone thinks about the time proximity with the release of the movie and the rawness of the unripe feelings.

The following is my favourite:
"Something is ending, but Jack and Ennis’s love being what it is, as powerful as it is, is not the victim this time. It’s Jack."

I always felt that Jack did quit.Not Ennis but he quitted hope for life. I truly believe that his stance towards life changed after this meeting and that led directly to his death.

[rhye.livejournal.com]

Thanks so much for reading and leaving feedback! It's nice to know that people are still finding & reading this.