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Jenny von Westphalen/quick-witted barmaid OTP!
What is this, senioritis? Spring semester blues? I'm well on my way to being overeducated and dehumanized and it makes me feel spiritually bloated, but also empty. But then I'm like, if these are my problems, then I'm doing pretty good. Don't cry, emo Lass! :(
Writing what I know: I haven't been doing it. Which makes me think hey, what about a fanfic writer AU? Y'know, the one where Morgana is a university student, and she and Gwen have debates over lunch about the finer points of LJ comm posting etiquette ("Post it to a few, sure, but I don't need the damn thing popping up on my flist eight times!"), but they also worry about summer internships and absent-minded thesis advisers who never return your emails on time.
But what show would they fic?! What epic bromantic story can serve as an adequate parallel to 'Merlin', that most unparalleled wonder of ahistorical crack? I toyed with 'Harry Potter' because it's such a mainstay, and Achilles and Patroclus (in which they are not cousins), and Plato and Socrates (in which they are the same age). And then, LIGHTBULB: the show is about Karl Marx (played by Colin Morgan, heretofore known for his stagework) and Friedrich Engels (played by Bradley James, heretofore known for his abs), in the springtime days of youth. Before they were revolutionaries, before the Manifesto and Capital and those horrific beards, they were just Karl and Friedrich, engaging in bar brawls with Prussian loyalists and other such rakish things. They are also trying to win the heart of Jenny von Westphalen (played by Angel Coulby), a young woman of bourgeois lineage whose beauty and kindness ignites both their passions. So, Karl and Friedrich have jealous spats disguised as accusations of hypocrisy! Anthony Head stars as Friedrich's father, the textile tycoon who disapproves of all things non-capitalist and from whom Friedrich steals money to support his BFF Karl. Katie Morgan plays the quick-witted barmaid with a thirst for revolution, and Joe Dempsie plays one of Karl's many former BFFs whom he eventually dumped for being ideologically unsound. It is a show about LOVE and FRIENDSHIP and FOLLOWING YOUR DREAMS.
Okay, so that's the show. In the throes of fannish glee, Morgana tells her stepbrother Arthur about it, which doesn't end well because he is an economics student (to please his father) and he just scoffs all over her face. "There are so many things wrong with this, I don't even know where to begin," he says, but Morgana retorts, "You're missing the point!"
"Which is...?"
"Friedrich/Karl, the OTP that ate fandom!" she crows. "Gwen already had to reformat her laptop because she got adware going on sketchy websites trying to find the newest episode. Thank god she backed up her Friedrich/Karl porn fic. We spent ages hashing out the characterization for that one."
"Oh Christ." Arthur holds up a finger. "First of all, I never want to know. Second of all," he holds up a second finger, "why would you worry about characterization in porn?"
"Because--"
"Third of all: see 'first of all'. If you put half as much effort into your studies as you do into historical porn--"
"Stop it, you sound like Uther."
Another time, over drinks, Gwen says to Morgana, "If we were a TV show, who would people ship?" Her favorite game. "I think quite a lot would ship you/me."
Morgana shrugs. "Probably." And tries not to smile like an idiot when, later, on their way back to their apartment, Gwen slips her arm around Morgana's waist to steady herself, giggly and warm and affectionate.
"I can capslock about you until the comments collapse," Gwen declares, and Morgana kisses her cheek, replies likewise.
And I don't even know what these next set of drabbles are. They've been sitting on my hard-drive for an age. Again, I was feeling like I never write what I know, but that I can't write original characters anymore, so I guess these are sort of a stepping stone. I can perhaps call them the 'directionless 20-something living in New England' AU. Perhaps there will be more in this 'verse, who knows.
Weymouth and Tilton are on the same commuter line to Boston, so Merlin and Will made all the usual promises to stay in touch. They call each other, saying things like, "We should chill soon," and "Yeah, man, definitely": sincere but quickly forgotten. Will says he'll get a quarter next time Merlin comes down to Tilton for the weekend, and Merlin says if Will comes up to Weymouth, they can take the T into Boston and hit up the bars on Lansdowne Street. Sounds good, they agree. Then they don't do anything. They call each other less and less, and the last time Merlin had any contact with him was to comment on his Facebook wall telling him he looks like a douchebag in his profile photo.
+
Arthur, like many young men of his sort, feigns fastidiousness but is actually the laziest bastard Merlin has ever met. He grew up accustomed to tidy rooms and spotless surfaces, but never quite acclimated himself to a life without servants. His narration of their squalor have an air of orders to them -- "Those pots and dishes have been sitting there for a week" and "The living room floor is getting really sticky" -- like he expects Merlin to do something about it. Fuck him, Arthur's the one who buys the booze and invites all the people over to drink it (and spill it). Okay, so Merlin ends up drinking lots of the booze too, but it would do Arthur good to do some manual labor anyway.
+
Merlin stumbles off the train in a haze of smoke. Not literally, but that's what it feels like, in his head. His whole body is saying, "Hey, remember college?" and it makes him feel old. When you're a kid, you think high-schoolers can do anything, and when you're in high school, you think early 20s is already adult. Well, Merlin doesn't feel like an adult. He just feels like a high school freshman who happens to pay his own bills and do his own taxes.
Adults are just faking it. They don't know any better, they just have to pretend like they do. Arthur once compared it to learning to drive in Karachi: you may not know what you're doing on the road, but then you realize no one else does either, and it's liberating -- you can do whatever the hell you want. Well, maybe Arthur feels liberated, but mostly Merlin feels tired. He has outgrown his affections, and he's just waiting for something else to replace it.
Arthur meets him in the commuter parking lot. "How was Tilton?" he asks.
"Same old," Merlin replies, throwing his duffel in the backseat.
"And Will?"
Merlin shrugs. "He's doing okay."
"Did you get the quarter?" Arthur asks, checking the mirror before he backs out.
"Fucking christ, yes, I also got all the texts you sent me about it."
"Perfect."
They squabble over which radio station to listen to, even though it's only a fifteen minute drive back to their apartment.
+
"Naw, dudes, for real," Will says. "It was like we were a sandwich, and I was the bread, and she was the ham, and he was like the other bread."
"Did you use condiments?" Arthur says.
"Lots of mayonnaise?" Merlin says.
"You guys are lame," Will replies, as Merlin and Arthur high-five each other.
What has two thumbs and is off to the dining hall. That's right!
Writing what I know: I haven't been doing it. Which makes me think hey, what about a fanfic writer AU? Y'know, the one where Morgana is a university student, and she and Gwen have debates over lunch about the finer points of LJ comm posting etiquette ("Post it to a few, sure, but I don't need the damn thing popping up on my flist eight times!"), but they also worry about summer internships and absent-minded thesis advisers who never return your emails on time.
But what show would they fic?! What epic bromantic story can serve as an adequate parallel to 'Merlin', that most unparalleled wonder of ahistorical crack? I toyed with 'Harry Potter' because it's such a mainstay, and Achilles and Patroclus (in which they are not cousins), and Plato and Socrates (in which they are the same age). And then, LIGHTBULB: the show is about Karl Marx (played by Colin Morgan, heretofore known for his stagework) and Friedrich Engels (played by Bradley James, heretofore known for his abs), in the springtime days of youth. Before they were revolutionaries, before the Manifesto and Capital and those horrific beards, they were just Karl and Friedrich, engaging in bar brawls with Prussian loyalists and other such rakish things. They are also trying to win the heart of Jenny von Westphalen (played by Angel Coulby), a young woman of bourgeois lineage whose beauty and kindness ignites both their passions. So, Karl and Friedrich have jealous spats disguised as accusations of hypocrisy! Anthony Head stars as Friedrich's father, the textile tycoon who disapproves of all things non-capitalist and from whom Friedrich steals money to support his BFF Karl. Katie Morgan plays the quick-witted barmaid with a thirst for revolution, and Joe Dempsie plays one of Karl's many former BFFs whom he eventually dumped for being ideologically unsound. It is a show about LOVE and FRIENDSHIP and FOLLOWING YOUR DREAMS.
Okay, so that's the show. In the throes of fannish glee, Morgana tells her stepbrother Arthur about it, which doesn't end well because he is an economics student (to please his father) and he just scoffs all over her face. "There are so many things wrong with this, I don't even know where to begin," he says, but Morgana retorts, "You're missing the point!"
"Which is...?"
"Friedrich/Karl, the OTP that ate fandom!" she crows. "Gwen already had to reformat her laptop because she got adware going on sketchy websites trying to find the newest episode. Thank god she backed up her Friedrich/Karl porn fic. We spent ages hashing out the characterization for that one."
"Oh Christ." Arthur holds up a finger. "First of all, I never want to know. Second of all," he holds up a second finger, "why would you worry about characterization in porn?"
"Because--"
"Third of all: see 'first of all'. If you put half as much effort into your studies as you do into historical porn--"
"Stop it, you sound like Uther."
Another time, over drinks, Gwen says to Morgana, "If we were a TV show, who would people ship?" Her favorite game. "I think quite a lot would ship you/me."
Morgana shrugs. "Probably." And tries not to smile like an idiot when, later, on their way back to their apartment, Gwen slips her arm around Morgana's waist to steady herself, giggly and warm and affectionate.
"I can capslock about you until the comments collapse," Gwen declares, and Morgana kisses her cheek, replies likewise.
And I don't even know what these next set of drabbles are. They've been sitting on my hard-drive for an age. Again, I was feeling like I never write what I know, but that I can't write original characters anymore, so I guess these are sort of a stepping stone. I can perhaps call them the 'directionless 20-something living in New England' AU. Perhaps there will be more in this 'verse, who knows.
Weymouth and Tilton are on the same commuter line to Boston, so Merlin and Will made all the usual promises to stay in touch. They call each other, saying things like, "We should chill soon," and "Yeah, man, definitely": sincere but quickly forgotten. Will says he'll get a quarter next time Merlin comes down to Tilton for the weekend, and Merlin says if Will comes up to Weymouth, they can take the T into Boston and hit up the bars on Lansdowne Street. Sounds good, they agree. Then they don't do anything. They call each other less and less, and the last time Merlin had any contact with him was to comment on his Facebook wall telling him he looks like a douchebag in his profile photo.
+
Arthur, like many young men of his sort, feigns fastidiousness but is actually the laziest bastard Merlin has ever met. He grew up accustomed to tidy rooms and spotless surfaces, but never quite acclimated himself to a life without servants. His narration of their squalor have an air of orders to them -- "Those pots and dishes have been sitting there for a week" and "The living room floor is getting really sticky" -- like he expects Merlin to do something about it. Fuck him, Arthur's the one who buys the booze and invites all the people over to drink it (and spill it). Okay, so Merlin ends up drinking lots of the booze too, but it would do Arthur good to do some manual labor anyway.
+
Merlin stumbles off the train in a haze of smoke. Not literally, but that's what it feels like, in his head. His whole body is saying, "Hey, remember college?" and it makes him feel old. When you're a kid, you think high-schoolers can do anything, and when you're in high school, you think early 20s is already adult. Well, Merlin doesn't feel like an adult. He just feels like a high school freshman who happens to pay his own bills and do his own taxes.
Adults are just faking it. They don't know any better, they just have to pretend like they do. Arthur once compared it to learning to drive in Karachi: you may not know what you're doing on the road, but then you realize no one else does either, and it's liberating -- you can do whatever the hell you want. Well, maybe Arthur feels liberated, but mostly Merlin feels tired. He has outgrown his affections, and he's just waiting for something else to replace it.
Arthur meets him in the commuter parking lot. "How was Tilton?" he asks.
"Same old," Merlin replies, throwing his duffel in the backseat.
"And Will?"
Merlin shrugs. "He's doing okay."
"Did you get the quarter?" Arthur asks, checking the mirror before he backs out.
"Fucking christ, yes, I also got all the texts you sent me about it."
"Perfect."
They squabble over which radio station to listen to, even though it's only a fifteen minute drive back to their apartment.
+
"Naw, dudes, for real," Will says. "It was like we were a sandwich, and I was the bread, and she was the ham, and he was like the other bread."
"Did you use condiments?" Arthur says.
"Lots of mayonnaise?" Merlin says.
"You guys are lame," Will replies, as Merlin and Arthur high-five each other.
What has two thumbs and is off to the dining hall. That's right!
no subject
1) I FEEL THE SAME, I LOVE my classes but I am SO SICK of the work already, two weeks into the quarter, I just want to GET AWAY from academia so I can work on more important things like writing fic and writing nonfic and translating!
2) I am really intrigued by this - I've seen fandom writers reach a point where they're writing fic but they're not writing fic, where the characters are just cyphers for something you want to say that shapes itself through them, but you can't quite get away from the characters that weren't yours to begin with. I have wanted to have fic somehow take off into original stuff but it's not a thing that happens :/
3) this Gwen/Morgana makes my heart so happy and yearny! awwwwwwwwwwww
4) SANDWICH PUNS OMFG MADE OF WIN
no subject
The fic vs. original writing divide is strange and displeasing! I used to write loads of original short stories, even poetry, but now I'm so entrenched that when I don't have a pre-made POV to tweak, I'm sort of useless! I only tweak, I don't build from the ground up, not anymore. It's a more different way of thinking than I realized, and I'm out of practice. And it's also the gratification of being involved in the fannish community, the communal squee of reaction posts and immediate feedback on stories that are just so easy and fun to settle for. Push yourself, self!
I need original writing prompts or something. At least.
no subject
you know, you can write this fake tv show of historical fiction if you want to :D befuddle/enrage the scholars! you know you want to.
I used to write poetry, now meh. It's been a while since I wrote any original fiction, like I wrote two things in high school, so fanfic is awesome for me. (also yes I am SUCH a sucker for gratification and squee!) I think there is a saying though, about how good writers steal and get away with it. also I think the closest thing I came to writing original fiction was the first time I wrote a thing with a real self-contained plot, so I think complex plot-brainstorming even in a fic sense can lead to original things.
PS:
"I suppose when you can no longer steal your father's money for me," Karl replies, pouring them each a drink. "Come away from the window, Friedrich. Let us celebrate the purging of halfwits from our coterie."
Friedrich smiles as he takes the proffered glass. "Am I nothing more than a purse to you, Karl?"
"Don't ask questions to which you already know the answers." Karl raises his glass. "Cheers, moneybags."
"Cheers, you malcontent."
They drink.
Re: PS:
MONEYBAGS AND MALCONTENT, THEY ARE SO ADORABLE AHHH I LOVE THEM
your 1800s writing voices are awesome. I am jelus :DDD
seriously I would LOVE to see more of this if you feel so inclined :DDDDD
Re: PS:
(1. Bradley finds a biography of Marx -- "There are no good ones of Engels!" he complains -- and pesters the director to include certain anecdotes in the show. The director sighs, says, "I just don't think throwing Marx into the drunk tank and having you and Marie bring him alcohol and cigarettes to cheer him up is very family-friendly."
"What about when he hijacks a donkey when he's drunk and the Metropolitan police chase him through the town?" asks Bradley.
"Donkeys are not in our budget."
2. [Camera focuses. Bradley and Colin are looking very serious, wearing large fake beards. The camera wobbles a bit, and Angel's giggling is heard in the background.]
Bradley: Greetings, Revolutions fans. This is Friedrich Engels.
Colin: And I am Karl Marx.
Bradley: We're here to tell you why you, too, should help us overthrow the capitalist system.
Colin: Dictatorship of the proletariat!
Bradley: That's right, you bourgeois pissants. The lot of you, with your money, and your... your...
Colin: Your estates, and your inheritance.
Bradley: And your Yorkshire terriers that you carry around in your Gucci handbags. Your time will come!
Angel: [Off-camera.] What about the middle class?
Bradley: Fuck 'em, bunch of wankers.
Colin: Join us! We've got a manifesto!
Bradley: And beards! Look at these beards. How can you deny them? You can't, that's what.)
Re: PS:
SERIOUSLY HOW IS USING NONFICTION FOR BROMANCE REFERENCE PURPOSES ANYTHING LESS THAN THE BEST IDEA EVER
oh my goddddd i need to read this book, these anecdotes are the wackiest anecdotes I have seriously EVER heard of! donkey chase scene?!?!?
Colin: Join us! We've got a manifesto!
Bradley: And beards! Look at these beards. How can you deny them? You can't, that's what.
I would be (wait, more like am) so converted just with these two arguments. most legit reason to join a revolution ever.
There is this icon somewhere that says "serious science needs serious facial hair." I think this should be applied to revolutions too.
Re: PS:
"serious science needs serious facial hair." I think this should be applied to revolutions too.
omg page 37-39 will tell you ALL ABOUT THIS. okay on page 39 (two pages after the poem that ENGELS WROTE ABOUT MARX), engels organizes a "mustache jubilee". if that doesn't sound like something bradley would do, then i dunno! THIS BIOGRAPHER, i mean, he goes into the political theory too, but mostly he is just saying, "check out this marx guy. he is a doofus."
Re: PS:
mustache jubileeeeeeee
I love those historical doofuses. and their biographers. honestly biography can be the most fun thing to read ever, especially things about the Beat poets, and about Alexander Hamilton, and Frida Kahlo. and I guess Marx!
part of me wants the ability to grow facial hair. how fun would that be???
Re: PS:
And apparently they had a friendship honeymoon where they began their friendship with a week-long bender where they just holed themselves up in Marx's apartment and did nothing but drink, smoke, and talk theory
and have sex.I'm almost halfway through the book and so far his life has gone mostly like this: "Marx starts a socialist organization and makes awesome new friends. Hijinks ensue! He begins to hate his organization and disowns his new friends. He is kicked out of the country." So, right now Marx is like, "Screw this organizations bullshit, we're awesome enough on our own. If they want leaders, they know where to find us!"
So Engels says, "Word. You da man!"
And Marx is like, "No, YOU da man!"
And then they probably high-five or something.
I get a bit of a peach fuzz on my upper lip sometimes. I have to shave it before social gatherings.