nineveh_uk

A far too belated rec for a birthday fic from naraht: Marginal Gains. It’s the Yuri on Ice doping fic the fandom needed: fun, well-characterised, and tackling a subject inexplicably absent from the fandom. I see that it has now turned from one chapter to 1/3, and await the next with much excitement. It was particularly well-timed in view of Friday’s McLaren Report II on state-sponsoring doping in Russian sport. As a cross-country ski fan I await with interest the revelations of any names…

I am still failing to find time for fic, but hopefully might manage more of it from the end of the week when I have a fortnight off work.

In other news, I shall be going to a work ‘winter school’ in Barcelona in March for a week. Most exciting! I have never been to mainland Spain and can’t speak a word of Spanish beyond ‘gracias’, which I probably pronounce incorrectly. It is a joint European universities initiative thing, and the theme of this one turns out to be ‘internationalism’, which might explain why I got in since my application leaned heavily on the subject of ‘you should give me a place because post-Brexit, British universities need all the European connections they can get.’ On the downside, I believe it involves networking.

It's the Nineveh inquisition (with apologies to Eddie Izzard and the Church of England). Though cake is one of those things that is oft on my To Do lists, but doesn't get done, so mostly it would just be recs. But not today, because I managed to make this yoghurt, fig, pine nut and rosewater cake from the Guardian because it looked nice and I had all the ingredients, though I didn't actually use them because I decided to eat the figs as figs and use greengages instead. It is very quick and very nice and I shall make it again.

As for recs, I have a few, but then again too few... Ahem.

A couple of short Strong Poison fics:

After the End 2 by sonetka focusing on a couple of minor characters.

The Unnatural Case of the 1925 Property Act , in which people die in a different order, was a gift to me and I ought to have recced long before. I can only hope that Peter and Harriet meet over a charitable cause.

A rare toe in the water of Tolkien fic, Mechlin-Lace, an angsty Arwen and mortality vignette. I have a considerable quantity of angsty Arwen thoughts, and regret that there isn't more fic on the subject (or if there is I haven't read it, possibly because I worry about reading bad angsty Arwen and mortality fic).

Neither cake nor a rec, well, unless you're in London soon, I took myself to a cinema broadcast of the ROH's Le Nozze di Figaro on Monday. I've actually seen the production live some years ago, but this was a very enjoyable way to spend a work night without having to go to London or spend more money, and it was great fun (if long, even with the usual fourth act cuts thank God). There's a DVD of the cast I saw, but I can't buy it because it has a Wrong Cherubino, because the singer is short. Whereas Monday's involved a Perfect Cherubino, by which, I realise, I mean someone who is tall, dark, and slender and reminds me of Frederica von Stade in person, voice, and interpretation. Though I was slightly distracted at times by the extent to which baritone Erwin Schrott physically resembles Matt LeBlanc as Joey Tribbiani.

Also, I still really, really want an OTT brocade smoking jacket. I'm just going to have to make one.

(1) This is a rather charming little Wimseyfic vignette, a missing scene set directly after the end of Strong Poison: Aftershock, Mary and Peter (there should be more fic with Mary in).

(2) Every morning at the mine you could see him arrive... My father is prone to sing the first verse of this. If only he could remember more of it - or the internet had existed in my younger years.


(3) Not so random, a short and lovely extract from The Merry Widow.

I am very much enjoying el_staplador's Ruritania fanfic The Blood of the Henztaus.

To give the summary:

1891. It is sixteen years since Mr Rassendyll first set foot in Ruritania, and thirteen since the events described in Rupert of Hentzau. It is twelve years since Queen Flavia was crowned monarch of Ruritania in her own right. Elisabeth, beloved only daughter of Fritz and Helga von Tarlenheim, is growing up in a peaceful and prosperous country. In Ruritania, however, one can only be sure of two things: that the Hentzaus fear nothing, and that, if there is a plot, the Tarlenheims are in it up to the neck.

It's a WIP, but updated weekly, gen, with a femslash element. It's a thoroughly entertaining, a good pastiche of Hope's style (the fun of the The Prisoner of Zenda, rather than the sadly plodding Rupert of Hentzau), and involves Ruritanian romance, politics and intrigue, a girls' boarding school, occasional references to silver age operetta, devotion to duty, a certain Conan-Doyle connection, and generally just what the darkening evenings ordered.

To give you a taste of the opening...

"My father was often heard to remark to my mother and brothers, though not, as he thought, to me, that he was bound to thank a merciful heaven that that young rogue Rupert of Hentzau had departed this world before he – my father, that is, the Count Fritz von Tarlenheim – had been so foolish as to bring a daughter into it.

I wonder occasionally what Papa made of Maria Adler. He never, I think, trusted her, from our schooldays onwards, though whether he tumbled to the secret of her parenthood I cannot say.

I wonder, too, what Maria Adler made of me. A challenge, or a comrade? A tool, or a friend? Or, perhaps, simply a diversion. Still, the question presses to the front of my mind: why me? What to her was the appeal of Elisabeth Flavia Luise Hedwig von Tarlenheim? I would almost swear that she loved me at one time, or perhaps always.

Then I laugh.

And what I made of her? My friend (though whether you will still call me 'friend' when you have reached the end I do not know), this is what I shall endeavour to tell in these pages, but until I have laid this history fully before you, let it suffice that you know that the years I spent in her company are, for good or ill, the years that rise most vividly to my memory now."

executrix* has posted Wimseyfic. Long Wimseyfic, 16,000 words of it! It's an AU Gaudy Night, or as she puts it, "“The Zeppo” meets “Gaudy Night”: Slash Edition". Go and read.

*Can't get tag to work in DW.

executrix has written Maiden Overs, a Lord Peter Wimsey/Downton Abbey crossover, in which a visit from a certain Mr Pamuk conincides with one by Lord Peter, and everything is sorted out quite nicely.

Also whilst I am about it, I completely failed to point out two excellent and contrasting bits of commentfic in the post-one-night-stand-Harriet-is-pregnant Attenbury Emeraldsresponse, this one on LJ by lopezuna_writes and this one on DW by antisoppist.

In the comments to my last post, ankaret said, "Also, now I think about it, I can totally see Miles Vorkosigan thinking that raising an orphan to be his bride would be a good idea."

And then she wrote disturbingly plausible Nikki-Vorsoisson-is-a-girl commentfic. Read it and cower.

antisoppist raises Three questions that were not asked in Busman's Honeymoon.

“Peter,” said Harriet, folding the note up again. “Why exactly has your uncle taken it upon himself to give us marital advice? I mean he seems pleasant enough and I thought we got on fairly well but I haven’t met him all that often.”

azdak has been committing "Bunter's Worst Nightmare" Wimseyfic in the comments to the lost German naturists post. Is nothing sacred?

antisoppist confronts the AU in which Peter and Harriet end up spending their wedding night in a haystack after all: Cold Open Field.

Waking, Lady Peter Wimsey attempted to prop herself on one elbow, forgetting that haystacks offered little in the way of firm support.