Fic conclusion

I *think* I've finished my Porthos-fic (which is of course going to need a title, although its filename is clearly going to be 'Porthos'!) I'm not sure that I've entirely captured Porthos' 'voice', either in speech or in thought-patterns, although there were intermittent bits that I was pleased with in that respect -- I may need to go through and try to simplify my convoluted syntax a *lot*...

I'm thinking of running this together with "If I Should Die" as an AO3 'series' under the name of "To Save the King", since they are basically both in the same continuity, although this one is much more obviously AU -- ironically enough, given the genesis of the fic, I'm afraid that in this situation Aramis probably *doesn't* ever carry out his commission to pass on Athos' farewells, because the story turned out to be very much about a rift between d'Artagnan and Aramis that hadn't even existed at the point when I set out to write it, and which would have made any such interaction feel impossible :-( I did know that Aramis was busy 'having a life-crisis moment', part of the idea for this fic being that maybe you could 'save' Aramis, in the same way that I did for Javert, by inflicting a canon trauma -- in Aramis' case, losing a friend -- on him at a much earlier point in his character arc, when he still has the moral and mental flexibility to change. But I didn't 'know' (until d'Artagnan unexpectedly threw it into conversation...) that this was because the Gascon was blaming him for not having prevented Athos' death :-(
( Aramis' faith )

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( Fic length )

As predicted, I found myself somewhat adrift after Porthos finishes his anecdote about how he and Athos first got to know one another, because I simply hadn't thought up any more to the sequel past that point; normally I only start to write down a fic when it comes to a good end, and with this one I had instead stopped short in the middle of the 'telling myself a story' stage. And I only had four pages left at that point, with no idea where the story was going to go :-(
But d'Artagnan then came out with something completely unexpected (for the second time), and I had a fresh development that tied satisfactorily into what had gone before, and could --on the very last page of the notebook! -- both be linked back into Porthos' previous memories of Athos in his very first days in the musketeers, and sort out some of the extra complications I'd set in the way of a happy ending. The main trouble is that it *is* a pretty random reaction, even if it was genuinely something that came up without planning as an in-character response, rather than the author desperately trying to perform a segue to an arbitrary plot point...

Plant progress

I sowed some more coriander (I did manage to use some, although of course most of it has just run to seed) and some more rocket a couple of days ago. To my astonishment, in this current heatwave the rocket has germinated already!

Encouraged by this, I have also sowed some of the seed I have been attempting to collect from the 'pink Linaria', which I didn't actually plant at all this year since the original flowers had continued all through the winter and on into the next spring. (The Gypsophila elegans and Gypsophila vaccaria that I did sow are now both in full bloom, and indeed setting their first seed!) The old Linaria is finally starting to go over, so I investigated the bottom of the envelope in which I had been accumulating dried seed-heads, and there did seem to be some little black dust-like specks collected there that clung to my sweaty palm when I tipped out the debris, so I have tried sowing some.

The sweet peas, successful as they are, are the one flower that I have actually been dead-heading; I seem to remember that the saved seed tends to revert to a boring grey unscented variety. Or maybe that was Nicotiana... Anyway, I shall probably let a few pods set at the end of the season, and/or a few will slip through in any case, but for the moment I am taking them off in the hopes of more flowers, rather than, as normal, encouraging the plant to set seed in order to have a fresh generation next year!

I have one more flower on the eating peas, but to be honest they have been a bit disappointing in terms of crop/yield, and I would probably have done better to have grown them all for peashoots. The few pods that I did get were undoubtedly very tasty, but, as has been my past experience with peas, it always seems like a lot of plant and a lot of effort for a very small annual crop.