whynot | Merlin fucks up the booze run

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Merlin fucks up the booze run

An AIM Haiku

Forgetting passwords
Leads to new screen-names:
'i prefer citrus'
Say hi sometime. ETA: I just realized I have the wrong number of syllables. :(

5000+ words on the college roommates AU and I have no idea where I'm going with it. I don't want one ship to triumph over the other, and it feels anticlimactic for everyone to say "oh let's just be frenz". It's just that I've mostly been writing this thing as cathartic brain-vomit. I don't get into the fic-constructing frame of mind for it. I go with the flow and don't wonder as much if Arthur would really do that. I worry less about allusions and phrasing, more about taking advantage of momentum. It is sort of like my vacation from my usual style? That said, who wants to take a look at it and bounce ideas with me about where it could go. I'm looking for maybe a few people. To entice you: more excerpt, this time from the very beginning--

And so Lancelot ponced off on study-abroad to the Philippines to study environmental sustainability, and Merlin and Arthur had one more bedroom in their three-bedroom apartment to fill. (“Not cool, mate,” Arthur had grumbled. “We’ve already paid the deposit. You’ve already paid the deposit!”

But someone had dropped out of the Philippines program last-minute and Lancelot was bumped up from the wait-list. He celebrated by going out to the mall and buying a Lonely Planet guide and an English-Tagalog dictionary.

“You’re already studying abroad!” Arthur pointed out peevishly. “Last I checked, America isn’t actually British territory anymore.”

Lancelot went through the books highlighting useful words and tourist sites of particular interest. They would have spring break in late March, and he reckoned he would either go to Boracay or Sagada. What did Arthur and Merlin think? Beaches or mountains?

“Beaches,” Merlin said. “Definitely.”

“Who will be our third roommate?” Arthur demanded.

Boracay it was. Hey, didn’t Arthur own a pair of flippers? Would he mind if Lancelot borrowed them for the semester?

“Yes!” Arthur said. “I fucking mind!”)

And this was how Will became their roommate.

I wonder if this is what writing original characters would feel like. Relying more on your instinct rather than nitpicking their motives, that is. I haven't written originals in such a while, I have forgotten. So let's try something: prompt me for original fiction?

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Cool, I'll send it to you sometime soonish. It's weird, this kind of feels like the first real slash fic I've written in a while, I've been so caught up in the whirlwind of multishipping and crack. Even 'Doing It Wrong' was written more for the dialogue than the slash.

Aha, so Tauren IS derived from Arthuriana! I never knew that.

You mean I'll get to find out what kind of a writer you were before Merlin turned your grey matter fluorescent orange?

Is he? Wait, what? He's in the series, but I swear 'Tauren' is something I remember my brother talking about on World of Warcraft. Which doesn't preclude his being Arthurianan, I suppose, but still.

Haha, sort of. It was Narnia and Merlin that pushed me to write characters that were a little more graceful and self-possessed, and to have a cohesive theme beyond youthful angst, so this AU is kind of regression and progress at the same time. Progress because I am trying to write something different, but regression because that means I'm reverting to things like the pettiness of youth who are kind of self-absorbed and don't have the responsibilities of ruling/saving kingdoms to inspire selflessness in them. They're kids in college, and they want to party and get laid.

I dunno, didn't you say up there he is a character from The Once And Future King?

Well, but on the other hand -- deep in a fic about woe about responsibility and killing that progresses 300 words at a time and feels like it'll never be finished -- I do kind of feel like those things are just cheating. Insert terrible responsibility, instant angst.

Fuck, I'm now obsessing over what kind of alcohol they'd all drink. I have this awful feeling Merlin and Will would be like these guys I new who built a WALL OF EMPTY TENNANTS CANS in their kitchen.

I did? If I did, I didn't mean to. I don't have any familiarity with TOAFK, my only exposure to Arthuriana is through Sutcliff.

As opposed to youth + hormones = instant wangst! There's a lot of pouting, sulking, and petty grudges in this fic. But I'm having fun ~~vicariously reliving~~ writing about shitty triple-deckers and the college student's love/hate relationship with PBR, woo!

HAHAHA THEY WOULD BE. I also had friends who made pyramids out of beer cans, and we were the apartment that had a bunch of empty liquor bottles full of cigarette butts on the balcony because no one wanted to deal with them.

Ahhh, the memories. That whole year of will-we-won't-we. That time I walked seven miles out of town and ended up in a field in the middle of nowhere, and had to walk a further mile or two to find a pub where I could call a taxi. The falling asleep in lectures. The falling asleep in bars. The falling asleep in coffee shops. The falling asleep on other people's beds at three in the afternoon.

...my experiences may have been atypical.

What is PBR? (I googled, and it came up with Professional Bull Riders.)

It was so horrible! Tennents is just so foul, and they blocked out a huge window! I mean, looking back, it was the perfect symbol of much of the undergrad experience, but that's probably half the reason it hurt me.

The skipping of lectures! The "naw, I can smoke, my next class is music anyway"! I want to squeeze in something in the fic about the bureaucracy surrounding the F1 visa status of international students, but the occasion hasn't come up yet. What did you walk seven miles out of town for??

PBR is Pabst Blue Ribbon and it is shitty shitty beer. But very very cheap! A staple of the American student experience.

Well, I tend to go on long-ish brisk walks for exercise, to try to keep my stamina up and stuff, but sometimes I get lost in thought and stop keeping track of where I'm going. And, er, yeah. One minute I was walking down this same old pretty path, and not-actually-the-next, I was in a field that looked exactly the same as all the other fields around, and I couldn't see any identifying landmarks in any direction. I did actually find a farmhouse fairly quickly, but no one answered the doorbell. So I just kept going until I got into a village.

I did the same once on a holiday, managed to find a tourist information place, and they gave me free tea and biscuits and drove me back to the youth hostel. My superpower is looking very fragile, so people want to take care of me.

Which reminds me that lecturers used to email me to ask if I was okay when I skipped. And worry about me if I fell asleep while they were talking. And one of them told me I was breaking his heart. :/

Ah, so PBR = American equivalent of Tennents. Which should probably have been obvious.

SUTCLIFF. <3

Sorry, carry on...

I love her so much! I adored her books as a kid, and I've just been rediscovering recently. <3 <3 <3

She is made of SO. MUCH. WIN. *squees* I found her a couple years ago and periodically reread them because eeeee! So good!

*nod* I know.

Heyyy, I don't suppose you could rec your favourites to me, could you? It's been such a long time, I really only just started rereading, here and there, and I can barely remember what I liked best first time around aside from The Eagle of the Ninth.

AHA that's why her name sounds familiar! We had to read Eagle of the Ninth in seventh grade! But all I remember is that the soldier gives his cloak to the girl he likes and she says something to the effect of "I like your coat, it's so warm and snuggly." And at the time, we were like, "...Isn't she kind of young?"

No no, you should go read her stuff again. It's really, really good. REALLY GOOD. *squees*

Mmm. Let's see - I really really liked Mark of the Horse Lord (EPIC WIN), and honestly, anything to do with the Aquila family makes me squee in delight. This includes (the ones I've read) Eagle of the Ninth, The Silver Branch, The Lantern Bearers (which is also the prequel to Sword at Sunset, one of the best serious interpretations of King Arthur I've ever read), and then his very far distant descendants in Sword Song and The Shield Ring. The two I haven't read are Frontier Wolf and Dawn Wind, which I would imagine are just as good as her other stuff.

And if only my library had Song For A Dark Queen. Just the title makes shivers run up and down my back - I really want to read it. D:

(Also, pretty icon!)

*makes notes* Thank you! Eee! Hey, I read Sword Song recently, I had no idea Bjarni was descended from the Aquila family. *wikis* Ah, the seal ring. I did wonder whether that had some kind of significance. I wish publishers would mark this kind of thing.

Yeah, my library has very few, but I was thinking of getting hold of some second hand next time I have money.

(Thanks!)

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