Meme

[toujours_nigel]

via lilliburlero

I currently have 194 works archived at AO3.

Pick a number from 1 (the most recent) to 194 (the first thing I posted there), and I’ll tell you three things I like about it.

Comments

[lilliburlero]

21, please?

[toujours_nigel]

er. counting is hard. Do you mean the Maurice one or Ralph getting a tat?

[lilliburlero]

The Maurice one (counting is unexpectedly hard on AO3...)

[toujours_nigel]

Honestly I don't know why, since it even obligingly puts fic in twenties. *sigh*

Right.

Thing #1: I still cannot believe they never did anything. When I was younger I sort of assumed that they had in the unexpurgated manuscript, and Foster's estate took it upon themselves to clean it up, or something. But Clive strikes me now as not so much uninterested in sex as vaguely repulsed by the fleshliness of it all, so I think their first year or so must have been very full of this sort of start-and-stop encounter, with Clive initiating and abruptly ending things and Maurice fucking off to self-abuse and self-loathe afterwards. (I am so glad he met Alec.)

Thing #2: I love the way I wrote the action. It feels very right to me, even at a distance of some years (it's actually quite an old story, and was then dashed off in the comments), all the stuff about Maurice being the unstoppable force to Clive's immovable object. I do like the handstuff very much, and the whole impetuous momentum of it, which feels very uni-love to me. They're not doing much more than hug and dot kisses, but to Maurice, who in many ways is very young for his years, it must feel like so much, the great doors opening up. Then Clive slams them shut, because Clive. Clive could do with some more sweeping off his feet, though I'm glad Maurice is spared the inevitable consequences. Clive would be worse than Laurie in this, forsure, and Maurice isn't fortified against that sort of thing.

Thing #3: I am glad I read the book before I watched the film. James Wilby might be many things including a fine actor, but a burly dark-haired bullish man he is not, and this fic at least depends rather a lot on the physicality of Maurice, the strength to him. And of course on Cline's canonical tendency towards fetishising it. Clive seems to fancy himself as the aristo picking up a bit of rough, doesn't he? Of course so does Maurice with Alec.

Additional Thing #4: Somewhere just beyond this fic is Maddox looking down his nose at Clive.

[lilliburlero]

Thank you!

Me too! I remember being very baffled when I first read it as a teenager, because things I assumed were fades-to-black then revealed themselves to be actual non-happenings.

The film is weirdly miscast, isn't it, as if Merchant Ivory took one look at the novel's many descriptions of Maurice as dark and heavy-set and decided this cannot be for we are Merchant Ivory, purveyors of jam and crumpet fey Edwardiana to the general and we will cast a slim blond willy-nilly! And then Clive, who actually is fey and fair, becomes Hugh Grant.

[toujours_nigel]

I knew when it had been written, see, so I just nodded along assuming fade-to-black, mostly because of Maurice, but also because of that lovely scene where he comes in through the window and they embrace. But clearly we were being set up for Alec coming through the window, lo these many years later. Y'know, it's a good thing Maurice is only published in the 70s, or Ralph would have ragged Alec Deacon skinless.

The only good casting in that film is Scudder.

[lilliburlero]

It...seems to have pupped a fic.

Sharing (1133 words) by Lilliburlero
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: The Charioteer - Mary Renault
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Relationships: Alec Deacon/Ralph Lanyon
Characters: Alec Deacon, Ralph Lanyon
Additional Tags: Literary References & Allusions, Alternative Literary History, Queer Culture
Summary:

Alec brings back a queer book from France.

*

Advisory: period-typical language to describe sexuality, sustained and gratuitous ragging on E.M. Forster.