Very small pages
14 May 2025 10:29 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
igenlodeCourtesy of Porthos, who reminded me of the Bastion Saint-Gervais, I have found, I think, a better ending for my new Athos-fic -- which, by the by, will have to find a filename, the first one having already been saved under the name of its protagonist as tends to be my habit (my first LND fic is still saved simply as "Raoul" ;-)
Due to having been started on a long coach journey it is written in what is probably my tiniest notebook yet: a little ring-bound pocket pad that is smaller even, I think, than the pocket diary that I took away with me on a Norfolk Broads holiday in July 2016 and in which I wrote "There is no Phantom of the Opera" and "If I were Vicomte" while variously propped up in the polished mahogany of my pre-war berth and writing by the light of the cabin oil-lamps, and wandering up and down the staithe! (With hindsight, that was probably one of my last ever summer holidays...)
I definitely did find that the very small page size made it harder to avoid inadvertent repetition of words and phrases that I'd only just used -- being only able to see one or two sentences back is more of a pain that I had realised, even with constant leafing backwards and forwards through the text, and I can't imagine how people manage on mobile phones. The limited page size may turn out to have had unexpected effects on my paragraph construction, as well, but we shall see once I get a better view of the whole thing. My very rough estimate is that this notepad runs about 100 words/page, which means that the whole story is around 2000-2500 words; neither too short nor too long for a one-shot, which means, I hope, that it's not quite so waffly as I was starting to fear at one point.
It is, however, extremely self-indulgent, to the point of being consciously non-canon-compliant; not far off the *spirit* of canon, I hope, but since the central inspiration for the fic turned out to be something that I had remembered distinctly wrong, I felt I had a choice between deciding not to write the story at all, or indulging myself for once! In fact, as things turned out, the rest of the fic took on a life of its own, and I might well have been able to keep it strictly canon-compliant and still had something to show at the end of it. As it is, it ended up with a more elegiac quality, because that was the logical conclusion of what I'd done... and I got to include a bit more angst as a result.
I might need to tweak Aramis' departure, because while it amused me to have him indignant at the unkempt state of Athos' hands (who, as Dumas puts it, déchirait ses belles mains si blanches et si fines in the course of their labours), it rather derails the original enthusiasm and admiration of their parting, in which he seizes la plus loyale main qui soit au monde. It does, however, seem to me that it would be more likely for Aramis to take the trouble to secrete a (presumably elegant) handkerchief about his person *after* changing into rough workman's clothes than for Athos to have for some reason done so! (And it seems pretty unlikely that their disguises came provided with handkerchiefs included -- so since Athos conveniently has one on hand in canon, I arranged for him to be seen to receive it :-p)
Probable title: "If I Should Die" (Brooke this time rather than Byron), although ironically it finishes by implying a rather happier ending than the canon outcome; at this point in the novel, and in fact up until much later on than any of the others, Athos has of course absolutely no idea that anything has gone wrong up above...
It's interesting to compare this to the Athos of fifteen years earlier as I'd written him for "A Sword Outwears Its Sheath"; for the former story I tried to keep him accurate to what we see in "The Three Musketeers", coupled to what he subsequently says of himself during this period in retrospect (rootless and with no reason to live). In this one I've tried to give a version recognisable as the mellowed-out Athos of "Twenty Years After", who still arguably has a masochistic streak, but one that manifests as a sometimes infuriating unselfishness --only Athos could go as far as regretting having failed to be murdered on the grounds that this might have avoided further infractions; it wouldn't have!-- rather than as bitterness and self-destruction (qu'elle me tue! Est-ce que par hasard vous croyez que je tiens à la vie? he retorts to d'Artagnan at one point in "The Three Musketeers", when the latter tries to warn him of danger from Milady...)
In those fifteen years, thanks to young Raoul de Bragelonne, he has, as he says here himself, learned tenderness and become happier than ever before, and the result is that the character turns out to have a very different 'feel' in terms of trying to get inside his head. He's a lot more openly affectionate, and vocal on the subject of friendship -- and canonically inconsistent when it comes to Mordaunt, where I've tried to provide at least some suggestion as to why. (Athos actually attempts to shoot Mordaunt in cold blood after the King's capture, having previously stopped Aramis from doing just that when they left France, and before going to ridiculous lengths to avoid taking any part in his death later on, until he is actively forced into a 'him or me' situation... at which point, according to Porthos's admiring verdict at least, he proceeds to dispatch a young man well over twenty years his junior with considerable efficiency!)
It very belatedly dawned upon me also what Athos means when in the Soviet musical he says to Milady --one of the memorable lines that get quoted, along with "You are so many, and I am so few" as he lists her false identities, but which are not present in Dumas because events there take place in a different order-- "d'Artagnan is an honourable gentleman and will yield precedence to a lady". This is *not* a response to her furious protest that the young man insulted her, but to her threat that he will die as a result; it is not his case that d'Artagnan is incapable of insulting a lady, or that (as in Dumas) she is no lady and cannot therefore be meaningfully said to have been insulted, but simply that her own life will be forfeit if she attempts any such thing: his next sentence is "You will die first" :-p
(To which she retorts that d'Artagnan is already a dead man, thus sending him pell-mell downstairs to the rescue and incidentally making her own escape possible...)
Due to having been started on a long coach journey it is written in what is probably my tiniest notebook yet: a little ring-bound pocket pad that is smaller even, I think, than the pocket diary that I took away with me on a Norfolk Broads holiday in July 2016 and in which I wrote "There is no Phantom of the Opera" and "If I were Vicomte" while variously propped up in the polished mahogany of my pre-war berth and writing by the light of the cabin oil-lamps, and wandering up and down the staithe! (With hindsight, that was probably one of my last ever summer holidays...)
I definitely did find that the very small page size made it harder to avoid inadvertent repetition of words and phrases that I'd only just used -- being only able to see one or two sentences back is more of a pain that I had realised, even with constant leafing backwards and forwards through the text, and I can't imagine how people manage on mobile phones. The limited page size may turn out to have had unexpected effects on my paragraph construction, as well, but we shall see once I get a better view of the whole thing. My very rough estimate is that this notepad runs about 100 words/page, which means that the whole story is around 2000-2500 words; neither too short nor too long for a one-shot, which means, I hope, that it's not quite so waffly as I was starting to fear at one point.
It is, however, extremely self-indulgent, to the point of being consciously non-canon-compliant; not far off the *spirit* of canon, I hope, but since the central inspiration for the fic turned out to be something that I had remembered distinctly wrong, I felt I had a choice between deciding not to write the story at all, or indulging myself for once! In fact, as things turned out, the rest of the fic took on a life of its own, and I might well have been able to keep it strictly canon-compliant and still had something to show at the end of it. As it is, it ended up with a more elegiac quality, because that was the logical conclusion of what I'd done... and I got to include a bit more angst as a result.
I might need to tweak Aramis' departure, because while it amused me to have him indignant at the unkempt state of Athos' hands (who, as Dumas puts it, déchirait ses belles mains si blanches et si fines in the course of their labours), it rather derails the original enthusiasm and admiration of their parting, in which he seizes la plus loyale main qui soit au monde. It does, however, seem to me that it would be more likely for Aramis to take the trouble to secrete a (presumably elegant) handkerchief about his person *after* changing into rough workman's clothes than for Athos to have for some reason done so! (And it seems pretty unlikely that their disguises came provided with handkerchiefs included -- so since Athos conveniently has one on hand in canon, I arranged for him to be seen to receive it :-p)
Probable title: "If I Should Die" (Brooke this time rather than Byron), although ironically it finishes by implying a rather happier ending than the canon outcome; at this point in the novel, and in fact up until much later on than any of the others, Athos has of course absolutely no idea that anything has gone wrong up above...
It's interesting to compare this to the Athos of fifteen years earlier as I'd written him for "A Sword Outwears Its Sheath"; for the former story I tried to keep him accurate to what we see in "The Three Musketeers", coupled to what he subsequently says of himself during this period in retrospect (rootless and with no reason to live). In this one I've tried to give a version recognisable as the mellowed-out Athos of "Twenty Years After", who still arguably has a masochistic streak, but one that manifests as a sometimes infuriating unselfishness --only Athos could go as far as regretting having failed to be murdered on the grounds that this might have avoided further infractions; it wouldn't have!-- rather than as bitterness and self-destruction (qu'elle me tue! Est-ce que par hasard vous croyez que je tiens à la vie? he retorts to d'Artagnan at one point in "The Three Musketeers", when the latter tries to warn him of danger from Milady...)
In those fifteen years, thanks to young Raoul de Bragelonne, he has, as he says here himself, learned tenderness and become happier than ever before, and the result is that the character turns out to have a very different 'feel' in terms of trying to get inside his head. He's a lot more openly affectionate, and vocal on the subject of friendship -- and canonically inconsistent when it comes to Mordaunt, where I've tried to provide at least some suggestion as to why. (Athos actually attempts to shoot Mordaunt in cold blood after the King's capture, having previously stopped Aramis from doing just that when they left France, and before going to ridiculous lengths to avoid taking any part in his death later on, until he is actively forced into a 'him or me' situation... at which point, according to Porthos's admiring verdict at least, he proceeds to dispatch a young man well over twenty years his junior with considerable efficiency!)
It very belatedly dawned upon me also what Athos means when in the Soviet musical he says to Milady --one of the memorable lines that get quoted, along with "You are so many, and I am so few" as he lists her false identities, but which are not present in Dumas because events there take place in a different order-- "d'Artagnan is an honourable gentleman and will yield precedence to a lady". This is *not* a response to her furious protest that the young man insulted her, but to her threat that he will die as a result; it is not his case that d'Artagnan is incapable of insulting a lady, or that (as in Dumas) she is no lady and cannot therefore be meaningfully said to have been insulted, but simply that her own life will be forfeit if she attempts any such thing: his next sentence is "You will die first" :-p
(To which she retorts that d'Artagnan is already a dead man, thus sending him pell-mell downstairs to the rescue and incidentally making her own escape possible...)