crack_van | Fandom Overview: Brokeback Mountain

Hi there. My name’s Sheera, and I’ll be your friendly Brokeback Mountain ~~sheepherder~~ driver for the month of December. Together, we’ll be delving the finer points of a relationship between two men who don’t have the education to name what’s going on between them or the tools to cope with all the troubles it presents for two rural ranchhands who dream about being cowboys but, in the end, find out their best dream was one another. This is an OTP-driven fandom so everything I’m reccing will be Jack/Ennis, mostly one shots, a good deal of angst, and some smut thrown in for good measure. Also, this is an ideal time to be checking this fandom out, as the Special Edition DVD is going to be released in January.

So let’s buckle up and get started, shall we?

The Brokeback Mountain fandom is an interesting one. Over a year after the original release date of the movie, it is still going strong with new fanfiction being posted every day, debates still raging strong in the meta discussion, and with the release of the Special Edition DVD, I suspect this trend will only continue. This amazing fanbase and continuous stream of fanfiction is most likely due to the fact that this story resonates strongly with most who view it: the story is an eternal one, told in different manifestations through time, the most recent being a pair of “high school dropout country boys with no prospects, brought up to hard work and privation, both rough-mannered, rough-spoken, inured to the stoic life.”

It 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.

These two men, beautiful in their imperfection and transcendent in the inexorable pull of their tragedy, captivate and haunt millions. Their story inspires us, inspires us not only to write, but to remember what it is that we’re living for, and why, ultimately, we must respect love as the most powerful force in nature.

THE CHARACTERS

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 fiancée, Alma.

From the novella: “Ennis, high-arched nose and narrow face, was scruffy and a little cave-chested, balanced a small torso on long, caliper legs, possessed a muscular and supple body made for the horse and for fighting. His reflexes were uncommonly quick and he was farsighted enough to dislike reading anything except Hamley’s saddle catalog.”

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.

From the novella: “At first glance Jack seemed fair enough with his curly hair and quick laugh, but for a small man he carried some weight in the haunch ... He was infatuated with the rodeo life and fastened his belt with a minor bull-riding buckle, but his boots were worn to the quick, holed beyond repair and he was crazy to be somewhere, anywhere else than Lightning Flat.”

*Alma Beers del Mar*
	Alma is a sweet countrygirl, who prefers “urban” country life. She works in a grocery store and gives herself tirelessly for her husband and children. She’s clever and has a lot of common sense, but bottles up her negative emotions. She’s emotionally fragile and can’t confront the reality of the situation she’s found herself in until years later when she’s distanced from it.

Lureen Newsome Twist

Lureen is a young Texan barrel-racing star from a rich Texan family. She marries Jack. She’s used to having her way and has no problems getting what she wants, as she does with Jack. She is spunky, energetic, intelligent, and materialistic. She has a good mind for business and for management, but not much room for romance in her life. She’s great at her job, but somewhat less attentive with her family.

*Jenny/Francine del Mar*
	Ennis’ youngest daughter, Francine (Jenny) is described as a “live wire.” She likes hearing stories from her father, she is generally cheerful although she was sickly as a child. She is not as close to her father as Junior is.

*Alma Junior del Mar*
	Junior is quiet, blunt, sensible, and loves her father a lot. She worries about his well-being, but lives a cheerful life on her own. She doesn’t approve of Cassie and wishes she could live with her father. At the end of the film, she offers one of the few spots of hope left in Ennis’s post-Jack life.

Mrs. Twist

Often goes by the name “Evelyn” in fanfiction because there is no canon first name for her. She’s a quiet rural wife. She genuinely loves her son Jack; there is also strong reason to believe she has suspicion about his homosexual tendencies. When Ennis comes to visit, she shows him hospitality, sympathy, tenderness, and understanding. She’s observant, helpful, and tactful, and recognizes the strength and power of true love—in any form.

John Twist

John Twist, in my opinion, is the closest that Brokeback Mountain has to a villain. He is a hard, unsymapthetic man. In the novella, it is revealed that he abused Jack at a young age. Later on in life, he gave Jack no encouragement in his pursuit of rodeo, keeping all his secrets to himself. In his final scene with Ennis he makes no mistake about the fact that he could care less about Jack’s wishes. John Twist is frequently portrayed as a villain in fanfiction, for good reason, although there is the rare piece that tries to delve in the whys of what he did to Jack.

*L.D. Newsome*
	Lureen’s father, who made a fortune in selling large farm equipment. His universe revolves around his wife and daughter, and football. He’s a Texan good-ole-boy who doesn’t like his son-in-law Jack one bit. He pushes Jack around and runs all over him, and has even offered him money to divorce Lureen.

*Fayette Newsome*
	Fayette’s main purpose in the film is to offer Lureen formula and looked shocked when Jack decides to stand up for himself against L.D. (pictured above), but for fanfiction that delves into Lureen’s character and life, she sometimes comes up.

Randall Mallone

Randall has the unfortunate distinction of being Jack’s semi-ambiguous love interest. Though he only has two lines in the film, from the fact that he’s married to LaShawn, one can at the very least probably assume that he is patient and tolerant. But other than that, little is known about his character, and how he is painted in fanfiction can vary from very understandable and sympathetic to demonic and the anti-Ennis.

*LaShawn Mallone*
	LaShawn is essentially the one point of comic relief in the film, a woman who talks a “blue streak”; she is used as a cover story by Jack who “said he’d had a thing going with the wife of a rancher down the road in Childress and for the last few months he’d slank around expecting to get shot by Lureen or the husband, one.”

*Joe Aguirre*
	Joe is a no-nonsense businessman who is willing to bend the rules to protect his bottom line. He expects others to bend to his will, and to be hard workers. He doesn’t like conversation or slackers. A bit passive-aggressive, and has a tendency to misuse binoculars.

THE PLOT

This plot summary contains a lot of quotes from Close Range: Wyoming Stories by Annie Proulx, the collection of short stories that contains the novella Brokeback Mountain.

Our story starts with Ennis del Mar making his way to Signal looking for a job. He is quiet, minding his own business, huddled in against the wind that features so prominently throughout the film when what does it blow in other than our very own Jack Twist. Jack enters loudly, cursing and kicking his truck, establishing from the very start how things will go between them. It’s 1963, and they take a job sheepherding up on Brokeback Mountain, “they came together on paper as herder and camp tender.”

Once on the mountain, a slow friendship with a deeper undertone builds between them. “During the day Ennis looked across a great gulf and sometimes saw Jack, a small dot moving across a high meadow as an insect moves across a tablecloth; Jack, in his dark camp, saw Ennis as night fire, a red spark on the huge black mass of mountain.” As they get to know each other, Ennis begins to open up to Jack, speaking more than he has in a year and they take their whiskey on shares. “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.”

They approach sex with the same no-nonsense attitude that they bring to everything else: “he hauled Jack onto all fours and, with the help of the clear slick and a little spit, entered him, nothing he’d done before but no instruction manual needed. They went at it in silence except for a few sharp intakes of breath and Jack’s choked ‘gun’s goin off,’ then out, down, and asleep.”

What is intended to be a one-shot deal leaves Ennis trying to puke at the side of the road when they part in Signal after a storm cuts their stint on the mountain short. He marries Alma, they have two children, and move into town because Alma worries about young Jenny’s asthma problem.

Four years later, he receives a postcard from Jack with the seemingly innocuous message: 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. The reunion that ensues shows that the passion which ignited on the mountain was as strong as ever despite the distance of space and time. They go to a motel to “catch-up,” “and within twenty minutes were in the Motel Siesta jouncing a bed.” This is the last real happiness they share.

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. On their first “fishing trip,” Jack tries to propose something more, that 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.

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. 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. One early spring, 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.

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.

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 until Ennis, dredging up a rusty but still useable phrase from the childhood time before his mother died, said, “Time to hit the hay, cowboy. I got a go. Come on, you’re sleepin on your feet like a horse,” and gave Jack a shake, a push, and went off in the darkness. Jack heard his spurs tremble as he mounted, the words “see you tomorrow,” and the horse’s shuddering snort, grind of hoof on stone.

Later, that dozy embrace solidified in his memory as the single moment of artless, charmed happiness in their separate and difficult lives. Nothing marred it, even the knowledge that Ennis would not then embrace him face to face because he did not want to see nor feel that it was Jack he held. And maybe, he thought, they’d never got much farther than that. Let be, let be.

After parting for this last time, Ennis goes back to Riverton and breaks it off with Cassie; he cuts off contact with her and makes no efforts to re-establish it when she tracks him down. One day, getting his mail from the post office, he turns over a postcard he sent to Jack about a fishing trip in November and finds it stamped DECEASED in large red letters. Calling Lureen, he finds out that half of Jack’s ashes are in Childress, half are in Lightning Flat, and that Jack always said he wanted them scattered on Brokeback.

Ennis goes to Lightning Flat in an attempt to fulfill these wishes, but John Twist has nothing to offer up but angry condemnation. Mrs. Twist understands, her loss resonating very strongly with Ennis’s, and she tells him that he is welcome to see Jack’s room if he’d like.

Ennis accepts the offer, goes into Jack’s room, looks out the window that Jack probably spent most of his childhood dreaming in front of, and when in the closet, he makes a discovery.

He lifted it off the nail. Jack’s old shirt from Brokeback days. The dried blood on the sleeve was his own blood, a gushing nosebleed on the last afternoon on the mountain when Jack, in their contortionistic grappling and wrestling, had slammed Ennis’s nose hard with his knee. He had staunched the blood which was everywhere, all over both of them, with his shirtsleeve, but 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.

The shirt seemed heavy until he saw there was another shirt inside it, the sleeves carefully worked down inside Jack’s sleeves. It was his own plaid shirt, lost, he’d thought, long ago in some damn laundry, his dirty shirt, the pocket ripped, buttons missing, stolen by Jack and hidden here inside Jack’s own shirt, the pair like two skins, one inside the other, two in one. He pressed his face into the fabric and breathed in slowly through his mouth and nose, hoping for the faintest smoke and mountain sage and salty sweet stink of Jack but there was no real scent, only the memory of it, the imagined power of Brokeback Mountain of which nothing was left but what he held in his hands.

In the film, Alma Junior comes to visit, inviting him to her wedding. Ennis notes that she is nineteen, guesses that means she should be able to do whatever she wants. His main concern is that Kurt loves Alma, and when she answers that he does, Ennis opens up a bottle of wine left over from Cassie and pours them two glasses, declaring that they can find themselves another cowboy, because he’s got a wedding to attend.

Ennis doesn’t leave the Twist residence with Jack’s ashes, but he left with something far more important:

When [the postcard] came — thirty cents — he pinned it up in his trailer, brass-headed tack in each corner. Below it he drove a nail and on the nail he hung the wire hanger and the two old shirts suspended from it. 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.

Around that time Jack began to appear in his dreams [...] And he would wake sometimes in grief, sometimes with the old sense of joy and release; the pillow sometimes wet, sometimes the sheets.

There was some open space between what he knew and what he tried to believe, but nothing could be done about it, and if you can’t fix it you’ve got to stand it.

FANDOM RESOURCES

Brokeback Mountain novella: full text, excerpt from Close Range: Wyoming Stories by Annie Proulx
The ’Ship Manifesto (I’d also like to note that I owe a HUGE ETERNAL THANKS to

planetgal471 who let me use excerpts of her manifesto to write up a lot of this overview)
Guide to Brokeback Mountain on LiveJournal - a good place to start navigating the many communities
The Ultimate Brokeback Mountain Guide
The Ultimate Brokeback Mountain Forum
--> The Ultimate BBM Forum Slash Discussion Thread (only available to registered members)
Bettermost Brokeback Mountain Forum

flowrs4ophelia’s BBM recs.

polyfandomrecs’s BBM recs list.

Fanfiction communities:

wranglers - this is the largest community out there, most of what's posted is x-posted between this one and bbslash.

brokebackslash

bbm_phoenix

Online databases:
BBM on Fanfiction.net - between FF.net, LJ, and the Dave Cullen website, I think someone could find any kind of BBM story they were looking for: all three places have vast archives of fiction.

Fandom Overview: Brokeback Mountain

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