Goldengrove Unleaving

A bit of story after a very long time. AU, and mostly self-indulgent crack. Someday, dammit, I will write Hephaistion/Bagoas. Some day. (not today)

Autumn, Fall (2817 words) by toujours_nigel
Chapters: 2/?
Fandom: Alexander Trilogy - Mary Renault
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Alexander the Great/Hephaistion, Alexander the Great/Bagoas
Characters: Hephaistion, Bagoas
Series: Part 2 of Sex and Cedarwood

ETA: Why is there so goddamn little Hephaistion/Bagoas fic out there? Fandom, fandom, I thought you were pervier than this. Three! Three is all, wtf? (Written once every five years, no less)

I would say I'm going to write some, but after defaulting out of two fests I'm unsure about that.

I had a rather busy Yuletide, as anyone reading this journal can wearily attest. *g*


I was assigned to write forfilia-noctis/bee_muse to much abject horror. Whining, wailing, ringing up marginally-fannish friends to do the same at them, and similar scenes of mourning ensued, because I'm shit at keeping secrets even when the same haven't got to be kept from my girlfriend who lives in the same room as me, dammit. Fairly certain she knows I was her gifter. Anyway. I wrote two stories for her:

the night the beloved body (12163 words) is a Hadestown pre-canon fic where Persephone finds out about Hades/Minthe and promptly goes up to Mum ahead of schedule, dragging Minthe unresisting in her wake. I had enormous fun writing this, though I'm not very sure about accuracy re: dialect, and will probably add another chapter sometime this month, to flesh out the Eurydice/Orpheus angle. bee_muse has promised in comments to liveblog this story, so if that happens it'll be fun.

Since the above was dragging, and also because I had the unfair advantage of knowing what she was writing as her assigned gift, I also wrote Between the Shadow & the Soul (5027 words) which is a Penny Dreadful fic set immediately post-canon, where the crew finds out that Ethan is a [REDACTED FOR SPOILERS] and in good tradition decide to chain him up, dose him with drugs, and see what happens. This is the approximate plot of both my fic and her Like a Clock during a Thunderstorm, and ideally they ought to be read in tandem, with the significant difference that she approaches it from Ethan's perspective and I from Vanessa's.


I also wrote three treats this year, all Renault.

For greerwatson/greerwatson  I wrote The Thousandth Man (6569 words) about an adult Hugh Treviss serving in the ICS and meeting Ralph quite by accident in slightly discomfiting circumstances. This was extremely interesting to write, since the British in India I have a lot of feelings about, none of them remotely positive, but otoh I do love The Charioteer and had been wanting to write a Treviss story roughly forever: in the end laziness won out and I stuck to familiar ground. *g*

For naraht/naraht I wrote A Vote of Thanks to Mr. Abse and Lord Arran (2529 words) a TC fic set in 1967, a couple of days after decriminalisation. I have any number of feelings about this story, since in India a similar decriminalisation occurred when I was nineteen and was rescinded again when I was twenty-four(ish)  and I cannot imagine, though I might just have to experience, living till you're in your fifties knowing that you are a criminal because of how you love, and then, when use and old age accept them, to be told that your love-life is no longer of legal interest. Especially for Ralph, who is so stern with himself and has disciplined himself into such unnatural shape, already in his mid-twenties.

For fawatson/fawatson I wrote Foster-child of Silence and Slow Time (1124 words), an Alexadriad fic about Pausanias' wife in the prelude to Olympias' overnight stay en-route to Epirus. When I can't supply sisters, I explore wives. That aside, Pausanias' wife, never awarded a name in canon, struck me very strongly when I read Fire from Heaven this time, simply because a woman whose reaction to being scared and mystified is to go over stores of food and weaponry is my kinda girl! *g* I also wanted her to have a good, if largely absent husband, and a place of her own in the world. Enough bad things will likely happen to her soon enough (given canon) that I also supplied her with a brother.


So that was my lot. I'll probably go round and squeal at all my gifters sometime soon.

So, I've done this a couple of times, and it's brilliant fun. So.

Tell me about a fic (any fic) that I've never written, and I'll either write a little snippet of it, or tell you a bit about it. Applicable fandoms are in the tags, but feel free to ask about something that isn't listed but you know I've some familiarity with.

OR

If you want, here are my fics on AO3, feel free to ask about any of them. Not everything I've written is up there. however.

on offer.

Harry Potter (grand-parents, Marauders, Harry, next-gen)
Bollywood (every SRK film ever, things you know I've watched)
Mythology (Hindu, Greek)
Renault

I wrote over a hundred fics last year, here and elsewhere. (elsewhere being maryrenaultfics, lgbtfest, yuletide, and fandomcommerce.) *happy*

Now to start off the count for 2010. Prompts, anyone? In a drabbling mood. Fandoms are anything in the tags. (Or, alternatively, anything I can read up on, or am likely to know.)

( Dear Yuletide Author, )

***

Feel free to write something entirely different if you’d rather, of course, these are just off the top of my head, (as is everything in the requests themselves) and do not in any way indicate that I must have a story along these lines. I’ll appreciate anything you write. Thank you.

and so I've been doing the thing where I laze around, forget to return my books on time (thereby accumulating a library fine it will be a bitch to pay off), and read my way through a ton of old books.

Have some observations:

1. In The King's General, is Dick Grenvile gay? ( Or am I succumbing to the then-prevalant ideas of presenting as masculine? )

IDK, but Dick does present as what we'd still rate as slightly left of straight, meh.

2. When does 'u' drop into English as spoken in England? I mean, "color", and "honor", etc are all older spellings, right? So, when does it change to "colour"?

3. One of the loveliest scenes regarding Hephaistion is, oddly, in Funeral Games. ( And is such a shock to the system, too. )

I love seeing Hephaistion through Ptolemy's eyes, especially after the Bagoas-coloured lenses that are all we got throughout The Persian Boy.

4. And then we go back to Arridaios, and the whole horrific scene, and I feel physically sick. I feel sick throughout Funeral Games, more or less, actually, it's such a nightmarish book. Not that FFH and TPB are bereft of horror, of course, but, well, bildungsroman, love story, deathdeathdeath. The elephants. The babies. Stateira and Drypetis. Kynna. Sisygambis. Eurydike. Olympias. Alexander IV. Kassandros, gah.

5. This isn't to do with a book, but has anyone written the creepy bad Maham Anga-baby!Jalal fic? Because I watched Jodhaa-Akbar today, and, boss, that vibe is so there.

6. My copy of Maurice (third re-read, just about done) takes issue in the preface with Maurice's appearance in the film. And, yeah, a large dark-haired man has a very different impression than a large, fair man, esp. when, as in the film, he is more than awkward. Clive is the one who is small and fair. Incidentally, what does Alec look like? Do we ever know, other than the bright brown eyes?

7. I was planning on reading Forster, anyway, but have got sucked into reading A Room with a View solely because of ( Helena Bonham Carter )

. Baby Bella! With that hair! awww.

ETA: 8. I was watching an old Friends episode, where Chandler says, "You're the one who kissed my mom!". The whole cafe turns around. Ross says, "We're rehearsing a Greek play." They all nod and look away. I found this funny for about two seconds. And since then, I've been wondering what play they're talking about. I embrace my geekery, yes, haha, but, is Ross simply misremembering Oedipus Rex? Or is it some other play?

I am on AOOO, here. Well, have been a while, but now I'm trying to upload stories. What fun.

What should I do with the stuff on scenes_of_lives? That's pretty huge, and complete, i.e., the main stories are done, I was padding out the universe, not something I'm likely to finish, but it's done, unlike, say, hermioneregis.

As of now, planning to post my Potter one-shots, the few Kaminey stories I've finished, and the ones on maryrenaultfics. And, I suppose, the various drabbles that are a bit fannishly scattered.

Procrastinating on yuletide? Who, me?

***

Also, this is what I've been waiting for, since I first stumbled upon The Iliad, lo, these many years ago.

So, I'm writing for yuletidethis year, first time ever. *deep breath*

Go nominate, I've put up the Alexandriad, the Arthurian legends, and *dhan-te-naan* Kaminey. I'd love writing fic for either the Alexandriad or Arthuriana, both being long-lasting loves, but, as you know if you peruse this lj at all, Kaminey is my newest infatuation, and, by gods I've fallen hard.

All of which means, applegnat, and 22by7, that you should please request a Kaminey story, yes? please?

ETA: yes, i know I don't have to write what I nominate, it's simply that the two overlap.

( after ages, some new Lysander )

other snippets can be found here.