Love In The Asylum

Happy New Year, all! Time for Yuletide reveals!

This year I wrote:

Title: The Knight Who Trespasses
Fandom: Arthurian Mythology
Rating: M
Pairings: Guinevere/Arthur Pendragon, Lancelot du Lac/Arthur Pendragon, Guinevere/Lancelot du Lac, Guinevere/Lancelot du Lac/Arthur Pendragon
Wordcount: 3614
Summary: “They made me see that the world was beautiful if you were beautiful, and that you couldn't get unless you gave. And you had to give without wanting to get.” T.H. White - The Once and Future King. In which Lancelot wears a token, wins a tournament, and receives a prize.

I can't remember the last time I did this much research for a fic, but it was so much fun. I mean, it helps that I am a huge Arthurian romance and general medieval lit nerd, and that I had my own copy of Malory and Gawain and the Green Knight already sitting out on my bookcase, but, yeah. Research.

This is one fic where I was almost tempted to make footnotes, just to keep track of where everything was coming from. The basic characterization/background/timeline is from Malory's Morte D'Arthur (since that's the most exhaustive, and also since I couldn't find a copy of the Vulgate/Post-Vulgate Cycles anywhere online, woe). In my head, this takes place somewhere in the early part of Book V - Mordred has been born but isn't at the court, Galahad is a baby (and Lancelot doesn't know about him), and the conflict between Tristan and Mark over Iseult is in the early stages. I also played around with some other sources as well - most of the non-Malory bits, as well as the verses at the beginning, are from the Stanzaic Mort D'Arthure (which is similar enough that you can see where Malory lifted it for source-text), but there are also a few bits of scene-setting from the very much different Alliterative Mort D'Arthur (where Lancelot is a useless dork and everything is all the time swords). Gawain and the Green Knight has definitely happened in this story, but Gawain and Dame Ragnell not so much. And some half-remembered Marie de France and a very little bit of Once and Future King may have snuck in unawares (but not that bit in Lanval where Guinevere calls a knight a fag because he doesn't want to sleep with her. Because that was silly.) No Tennyson, though, and absolutely no Mists of Avalon.

Mostly I just really, really enjoyed a chance to write Arthur/Guinevere/Lancelot, which is one of those pairings that is just baseline to reading the canon to me - I cannot make sense of their story except as three people who are all knotted up in love and duty and obligation, with too many feelings to disentangle themselves and no way out that they can see. The tragedy wouldn't be half so wrenching if Lancelot hadn't been so devoted to his king, if Guinevere's choice hadn't been so impossible, and if Arthur hadn't trusted them both with everything in him. (and this isn't just the fangirl in me - there are a few places in Malory where Arthur's reactions are...odd, and very hard to reconcile with him not already knowing what Guinevere and Lancelot were getting up to. Not at all convinced there weren't a few medieval shippers on board there.) Trying to make a story about the relationship between the three of them, and the delicate balance of rumor and public perception around them, was pretty interesting. Hopefully I didn't bore everyone around me by blathering about this constantly all month.

It's International Book Week. The rules: Grab the closest book to you, turn to page 52, post the 5th sentence as your status. Don't mention the title. Copy the rules as part of your post.

"Nothing like that existed for a seventeen-year-old azi with an X on his number, and all the political sense a boy could gain, living in Reseune and in the House, advised him that Justin had done something for his sake desperate beyond all reason --"

Signed the lease on my apartment today, hurrah! I am really locked into being an actual grown-up now - I have a ten-month lease, a two-year cable contract, and a 401k plan. I am shopping for coffee tables guys, that is how bad this is. To be fair, I mostly need a coffee table so I have somewhere to put my pizza while I'm watching cartoons, but still, the specter of responsible maturity is looming. There is something deeply alarming in the idea that I'm being trusted to pay my water bill and have real furniture that doesn't look like it was made out of industrial scraps - and somehow something more alarming in knowing that I had the sense to set up online billpay weeks ago, make a budget spreadsheet, and buy a vacuum cleaner.

Minor adulthood and furniture related freakouts aside though, I'm getting very excited about moving. I love my dad, and he's about as easy to cohabit with as anyone could be, but gods above will it be wonderful to have my own space. No more having to listen to his sports while I'm in the kitchen, no more feeling self-conscious about singing sea chanties in the shower, no more leaving for work two hours early. I can walk around in my bra whenever I want and blast opera while I'm baking! I don't know, possibly it's being an only child but I'm terrible at sharing my space - I try to be accommodating but deep-down I really want to be nit-picky and territorial and passive-aggressive over not being able to do things exactly the way I like them. I want the freedom to be unjudged and unobserved and private. This NYTimes article sums it up very well, I think(even if it makes us weirdo singletons sound a bit like an exotic alien species).

Other things I'm up to...I've been meaning to do a media recs post when I have a few minutes to spare (work is demonically awful this month, fuck earnings, don't even ask), but the short version is that I'm on a bit of a historical bent at the moment. Still working on my Templar project - the sourcebook I bought is proving more interesting than I expected (for a collection of clerical and legal records, seriously, why is this so fun) and has a decent biblio so my reading list is getting longer, along with the books I already need to buy about monasticism and that bio of Philip the Fair (he's a massive douchenozzle but he is pretty central to the whole affair, I don't really have a choice). I have pages of notes I've made on my lunch break, although they aren't very academic - mostly things like FUCK WILLIAM OF NOGARET and GOD SAYS NONE OF YOU SHALL WEAR POINTY SHOES. Because that's the most important thing to take away from the Latin Rule, obviously.

I've found myself in the mood for historical dramas, too, rather than modern rom coms. I have a pretty long list of series that other people have recommended to me - The Princess' Man, Sungkyunkwan Scandal, Queen Seon-Deok, etc, really anything where there will be period costumes and court intrigue and hopefully people sword-fighting on horseback. My current series is Warrior Baek Dong Soo, about which I have so many many feelings. But they mostly boil down to 1) wanting to hug Gwang-Taek, who has the saddest eyes in the world, 2) wanting to get Yeo Woon all the therapy ever, because that boy is pretty but so so fucked up and 3) wanting to smack Dong Soo in the head. At least the last one actually happens in the show with some regularity.

To end with, here is a link to a ridiculously catchy song about D&D I found the other day and have had stuck in my head since. Enjoy.

So, today was super boring. My manager was out sick (and thus not there to give me anything to do or find me anyone to shadow), the other new hire and I ran through all of our training packet material before lunch time, and you can only read so many product indexes on the company wiki before your brain starts to leak out your ears. I did my best to find useful ways to occupy myself, but I still ended up spending a lot of the afternoon texting back and forth with colourofsaying while trying to look like I was watching webinars about sales strategy.

Somehow during the course of this conversation we ended up plotting out an entire HBO series about the trial of the Templars. Not really sure how we got started on it, but seriously, it would FUCKING AMAZING.

The main character would be a French Templar of about 30 who had served at Acre/Outremer/Cyprus during the conflicts of the 1290s but was at the chapterhouse in Paris for the arrests in 1307. Sometime between 1307 and 1310 he confesses after being tortured, and after the executions in 1310 he's sent off to another order for his penitence - the framing device of the story would be his deathbed confession. There's plenty of focus on him and his crisis of faith in the order/the church and his survivor's guilt after confessing to heresy, but also major stories about the political conflict between Philip the Fair and Clement V, what James of Molay and the other Templar masters were up to, Hugh of Chalons and a few of the other knights that escaped the initial arrests, and some of the baby Templars.

William of Nogaret is the villain, because fuck William of Nogaret. (He's currently at the top of my list of Medieval Figures I Would Most Like to Punch in the Face. AND YES I HAVE A LIST.)

It would mostly be a political/historical drama, but it's HBO, of course it's also going to be full of sex. I desperately want a scene with Philip reading out his accusations of sodomy and indecent kissing by the Templars while he fucks a stable boy (I'm taking some historical license here, but not that much!). William of Nogaret is perving on everyone like a creepy fucker, including spying on a serving girl while jerking off and being ickily obsessed with hearing about all the torture the Templars suffered. Main Character Guy is...probably in love with someone. And the tiny bb!Templar he is mentoring will have a gay romance that starts in the flashbacks and continues while they are all in prison. (BB!Templar is going to die, but so is James of Molay and Philip and Clement and...basically everyone who isn't Main Character Guy. Fucking history, what can you do?)

The whole thing would be full of back-stabbing and political machinations and tragic sacrifices and secret arrests and wild denunciations in the middle of the papal court and paranoid conspiracies and torture and moral compromises in the face of horrible suffering and all the historical references a couple of medieval nerds can cram into a show. Tell me you wouldn't watch the fuck out of that.

Pick up the nearest book to you.
Turn to page 45.
The first sentence describes your sex life in 2012.

"I found that many addicts of the occult pursued that path in their search for enlightenment."*

...well, that sounds promising. Or possibly terrifying, hard to say.




*Umberto Eco - Foucault's Pendulum

Three Things (The Post-Holiday Edition)

1. Christmas was, with a few exceptions, entirely lovely. Family dinner at my granddad's went off without a hitch, my feuding cousins and their girlfriends were able to stagger their arrival so they never had to be in the same room, and my obnoxious racist uncle managed to not pick any screaming fights with the rest of us until the 26th. All the food was tasty, I got to see some monks carol-ing, and my mom really liked the ice cream maker I got her. Also, I got presents! Mostly cooking implements from the family (I HAVE SO MANY SPRINGFORM PANS OMG), which is awesome. And a book on Victorian erotic literature from colourofsaying, who perhaps knows me too well.

Also also, someone wrote me an amazing Niels & Gang fic for Yuletide where 300 and 250 get married, with attendant Niels-related obstacles. I...kind of want this to be canon now, it is so precious and ridiculous and perfectly them.

2. Just once, I would like to have our water go out on a day that isn't hair-washing day. Not being able to take a shower really just throws the whole day off. Along with all the other myriad inconveniences that really require running water, of course. Stupid fucking pipes.

3. I have been bingeing this week on the Vorkosigan saga. I don't know who recommended it to me - maybe it was just general geekish osmosis? - but ahaha I love this series so much you guys. It manages to hit three of my major id-buttons - Russian characters (or, well, post-earth space-Russians, but whatever, I just want the names and the face structure), a hyper-manic strategy-brilliant protagonist, and buckets and buckets of hurt/comfort. Please, break Miles' legs a couple more times, Bujold, tie him up and drug him, let's throw in a couple traumatic nightmares, I cannot get enough of this. Watching Miles suffer is almost more fun than watching him careen around accidentally stopping civil wars through his sheer inability to shut his mouth.

For two days in a row we've been having major internet outages - going out around 1 or 2 in the afternoon and not coming back until after 8pm. Really massively tedious, and there isn't anything we can do about it. My dad's already called the cable company, and it's not our house specifically, they are having service problems all over our area. Just one of the hazards of living out here in Nowheresville, I guess. I'm hoping it won't recur again tomorrow in the middle of the football match, but I'm not holding my breath.

At least it's given me plenty of time and motivation to read real books. I'm halfway through a collection of Lovecraft shorts, started a Neil Gaiman collection, finished vol 3 of the Justice League International trades, and finished Unseen Academicals. For the third time. I know it's not everyone's favorite, and I can admit that it has serious structural and pacing problems, but I am just completely incapable of being objective about that book. I read it for the first time last year just as I was getting seriously into football, and I have so many emotions tied up messily into it that I cry big soppy tears all over the ending every time. Also, Glenda/Nutt=OTP forever.

I have also been using all of this unanticipated free time to think about Oscar Wilde. It's interesting - out of all the characters in the Poetsverse AU, I think he has the most character growth built into his story arc. Aside from a little will they-won't they, Mary and Percy Shelley are on a pretty straightforward romantic trajectory. Tennyson and Hallam get together, break up, and get back together again, and hopefully get a little less co-dependent, but their relationship is essentially the same at the end. Wilfred Owen made most of his mistakes before the story starts, and his arc is about following through on the character growth that he's had already. Byron...is always Byron. By we're starting Oscar Wilde out as a dilettante playboy, throwing him into a disastrous affair with Bosie that almost ruins his career and his life, and then, once he gets out of prison, giving him a long and arduous redemption arc in the form of courting Robert Ross. This is the storyline that colourofsaying and I have been talking about nonstop this week, because the idea of Oscar Wilde struggling through a serious romantic relationship for the first time is really fascinating. He really wants it to work! But for Ross to trust him enough to even start a relationship, Wilde has to be a completely different person that he was at the start of the Poetsverse. It's a good thing we love him and want him to be happy, or this could end really really badly.

The Gay Hamlet Ficathon I've seen mentioned a few places this weekend is making me lol, since just a few days ago colourofsaying and I were having this conversation:


masterofmidgets: we may have just reached critical nerd mass btw
colourofsaying: I thought we were doing that earlier when we were talking about the psychological reasons why Horatio would hook up in a self-flagellating relationship with Fortinbras
masterofmidgets: I would also love to see the fic where Fortinbras is super awkward and miserable taking over Denmark because a) EVERYONE BEFORE HIM DIED HORRIBLY and b) everyone still left and especially Horatio is constantly sighing over what a better king Hamlet would have made if he hadn't been bugfuck crazy
colourofsaying: And he's like "I thought this would be fun!"
masterofmidgets: it's a very challenging political state for a young king at the best of times
masterofmidgets: let alone when most of your support people are traumatized from Claudius or used to dealing with Hamlet and his crazy
masterofmidgets: and Horatio should be helping him
colourofsaying: and he sort of is!
colourofsaying: but he's also spending a lot of time crying on battlements.
masterofmidgets: but he has a tendency to sigh pointedly and start talking about how /Hamlet/ would have done it that way
colourofsaying: ...Fortinbras has a completely unrequited crush, doesn't he?
colourofsaying: he writes these long letters to his uncle about how smart and mature and solid and dependable Horatio is, and how he's also an amaaaazing fighter, he moves so gracefully, and his hair flutters...
colourofsaying: and his uncle is all '...riiiiight.'
masterofmidgets: it is a tragic and doomed love
colourofsaying: since Horatio will... never really get over Hamlet.
masterofmidgets: and you know what that means
masterofmidgets: time for tragic porn!
colourofsaying: I would also like Horatio to more or less offer to have hatesex, and Fortinbras to be all '...no. I am sort of in love with you, and that would not be healthy for your brain, and I love you too much to allow you to fuck with yourself.'
masterofmidgets: although I would settle for Horatio going in for masochistic hatesex and Fortinbas being all 'wait, what? *sadface*' but going along with it because it's the only way to get close to Horatio. So both of them would get what they want, in a way that makes them both miserable. I AM A TERRIBLE PERSON.

Completely unrelated to our terminal nerdery, but my mom has a new bunny. Which is awesome! The apartment has been sadly rabbit-less since the Toby bunny died in the spring (of old age, bless his tough little fuzzy butt), and the last month or so, she's put out the word that she was interested in getting another. Well, she turned up to a job this week and her client answered the door with a rabbit in her arms, so problem solved. New bunny is named Lily (or possibly Izzy) and is absolutely precious - and only about 20% the size of the previous bunny. I have pictures!

I need to stop buying so many books.

Okay, now that everyone's done laughing, let me try that again. I need to get rid of some of my books. The situation now is just impossible - the bookcase in my room was already double and triple stacked before I brought 250-odd books home with me from college, and I have proved myself completely incapable of walking past the used bookstore without spending money. Just this week I've bought two manwha, a yaoi manga, 3 comics, a Terry Pratchett book, and a collection of Li-Young Lee poems. And they will just have to sit stacked up on my dresser until places have been cleared for them. But at least my dad promised to trade me some of his bookshelves when I move out?

It makes me a little sad how much I don't care about the new episodes of Torchwood coming out. I'm trying not to be one of the bitter, crazy, boycott-the-show-and-write-nasty-letters kind of fans, and I'm not even really angry anymore. I just can't seem to muster any enthusiasm for this show. It's clearly not my show. My show had a pterodactyl on it. (You know, I have Strong Feelings about Ianto Jones, and Owen, and Tosh, but when RTD said that Myfanwy died that is when I gave up on Torchwood for real.) And it's odd, but I think this is really the first fandom I actually broke up with. I'm not mono-fannish by nature - I'm usually into three or four fandoms at once, with varying degrees of enthusiasm, and I drift in and out at will - but I've never before hit a point where I had to say 'no, I cannot do this anymore.' At some point, Torchwood the show, and Torchwood the fic, and Torchwood the fandom all stopped making me happy.

On the other hand, k-dramas are currently a fandom that is making me very, very happy, in a squishy, uncomplicated, let's have piggyback rides and make-outs and cross-dressing kind of way. Everyone who insisted I had had had to watch Coffee Prince: fine. You were right. I give up, it's adorable. I'm also in the process of rewatching Life Is Beautiful, which is just plain charming. I love that you can tell that Tae-Sub is the Serious Dramatic Arc character because he gets Serious Sad Background Music every time he appears on screen.

I hope everyone is watching the Women's World Cup? Because seriously, it has been amazing. I am so proud of my badass American ladies right now, they have been fighting so hard the whole series. I've even been getting my dad to watch the matches this week, and he's been pretty impressed. I'll be at my mom's during the final, but luckily they have ESPN, and double-luckily, they have a job to work so they are leaving me in the house by myself until hanjuuluver picks me up in the afternoon. So I will be glued to the match for sure!

Possibly even more entertaining than seeing representations of the internet on television from the mid-nineties: reading art/film theory about the internet from the mid-nineties. Fascinating stuff, but it is really weird to see a vision of the future projected forward from AOL and geocities, and the changes they talk about never happened, or happened in completely different ways. Web 2.0 and the social networking boom must have blown their minds. And I don't know if I'll ever quite be able to grasp what it was like, because this technology grew up with me and I've never entirely lived without it. I don't always like new developments (still not sold on Twitter, even if Jack_Wilshere and Cesc are adorable on it), but it all makes sense to me.

Apologies for muddled extemporizing, it's been that kind of weekend.

Last night I went to see Sweeney Todd - quite a good show, even if several of the actors mistook "faking a British accent" for "mumbling all their lines" and several others mistook "acting" for "shouting." But while I couldn't understand any of the lines in the slower songs, when the leads got to let loose and really chew the scenery they were delightful. "Epiphany" gave me shivers down my spine, it was so well-staged/lit and the actor was so intense. And then on the way home I got Freshman Guy to spill the details about an incident earlier in the week he had hinted about on facebook where he tried to hook up with a guy for anonymous bathroom sex in the history building, but instead ended up sitting on the floor of the bathroom stall hugging this semi-undressed guy and talking him through a sexual identity crisis. Just for the record, I am never touching anything in the history building again.

Today I was reminded why I don't read more literary fiction than I do. Out of the six stories we have to read for tomorrow's class, we had: a woman whose abusive husband murdered their three children, a woman trying to keep her nursing client's daughter from stealing his ashes after he dies of dementia, a man who is literally crucified while his pregnant teenage daughter watches, an old man reliving his divorce and his neighbor's death, and a man who is murdered and dismembered by his coworker so he can't turn him in for killing several other people. Isn't that cheerful and upbeat? Last week's book was all rape, stalking, and child abuse, but at least it had a tiger. I suspect my professors of being in a conspiracy with my uterus to make me overly introspective and melancholy. That seems like a good word for it, melancholy, because it's not an active sadness. Just the vague, misanthropic unhappiness that comes from reading a lot of sad stories at once, some of them uncomfortably personal.

At least Arsenal finally won a match today. And I will watch some cartoons and go to bed and tomorrow there will be entirely less moping, I swear.