[FIC] Tea on Mount Ida (Doctor Who, Vastra/Jenny)
Another
rarewomen pinch I grabbed happily, because between the prompt - "Badass, swordfighting, interspecies lesbians fighting crime in Victorian London .. or just having tea" - and the bits in the Requester's Letter - mentioned were "characters on vacation, characters as they grew older, incorporating other Victorian personages, a love of all things shelled, a slasher at heart, and centaurs" - it all just wrote itself.
::|:: on Ao3 ::|:: on Teaspoon ::|::
Video podfic read by Mark Oshiro (of "Mark Reads" and "Mark Watches")
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Although there's some bitersweet, I took the comment that "I don't always like to fill up on the heavier stuff" to sneak in some humor and fluff. ~ I agonized a bit over when to set it, and how much reference to make to Wilde's imprisonment and sad end, but some good advice from my betas helped me keep the spotlight on the core of the story: the desire to see joy on the beloved's face.
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Title
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Initially called Love's Labors Won, when the title Tea on Mount Ida floated up -- and I rechecked my classical mythology -- I felt I had a winner. Tea? Classical allusions? Home of the Magna Mater? Just what i wanted.
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1899
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One of the stickier details -- and I do get snagged by the miniscule sometimes, it's silly -- was trying to find some way to determine what might have been on the front page of the Daily Mail on the 15th or 16 October 1899. (And yes, I guess the Mail is a rag now, but when it was founded -- Charles Dickens was one of the original Contributing Editors, how could I resist the DW tie-in? -- it was a passionate liberal paper that worked for social reform. ~ Anyhow, since I didn't want to pay £7 for a peek ( I would gladly pay if I needed to look up lots of stuff, or read articles, but all I need to know is a headline or three) I basically invented some headlines based on the fact that the Second Boer War had erupted a few days earlier (though I'm not even sure if papers in the UK would use the term 'uitlanders" - I suspect not.)
(BTW, if anyone more historically informed has suggestions, please let me know and I'll change the story immediately.)
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Twenty-five years
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Based on bits from the TARDIS.wikia.com, I sort of cobbled together a rough timeline for Vastra and Jenny.
Italics are source material: bold underline are "canon facts" ... all the rest is my own invention.
1860 - Jenny is born
1860-1863 - Vastra is awakened by workers digging the London Underground
In the 19th century, some time before 1888, a group of Silurians was awoken by the digging of the London Underground, leading to the death of several navvies. Though Vastra, a Silurian who had been awoken by their digging, wanted revenge, the Doctor was able to convince her to live with the humans in peace.
Tough to pinpoint an exact date for this: The Thames tunnel was dug in 1825-1843 as a pedestrian walkway, but wasn't used for the Underground til 1869. The actual Underground construction as a commuter railway began in 1860, with the first lines opening in 1863, so I chose that general timeframe.
I also like the symmetry of Jenny being born the same year Vastra was awakened.
1869 - Vastra meets and befriends Jenny
The Brilliant Book 2012 says "She [Vastra] made a home in London, at first making a living as the main act in Henry Gordon Jago's "Monstre Gathering" and then as a masked bank robber. After finding lodgings above a gin palace in Cheapside, she came across Jenny, a match girl who was being molested by a Chinese gang. She saved Jenny from the Tongs and subsequently began a relationship with her.
I pretty much picked a convenient date here, that allows Jenny to still be of "match girl" age - about 9. Let me stress that I don't see this as a sexual relationship at all at first! But it's plausible that if Jenny had "grown up" with Vastra as a protector/big sister figure, and come to trust and love her, that when Jenny reached sexual maturity Vastra might be a natural object of those feelings. Not to mention that being the recipient of the exuberant and innocent affection that children can express would probably have done a lot to soften Vastra's hard-edged warrior nature over time.
1881 -Vastra in Egypt, Jenny aids Doctor
This suggests to me that Vastra and Jenny already knew each other by 1881.
1888 - Vastra dispatches the Ripper, she and Jenny assist the Doctor at Demons Run.
I know she can easily be seen as in her early 20s or even younger, but for my own headcanon Jenny is about 28 in this episode.
1899 Jenny is 39
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"Penthesilea-2, in the Simmons Cluster of the Hugo-Locus Nebula "
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A not-very-well disguised nod to my favorite SF author, Dan Simmons, whose Hyperion is possibly my favorite book of all time. His world-building in those books (as well as Ilium and Olympos) is just astounding to me.
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Sebastian Melmoth
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This was my sneaky way of using tags that would send the right "secret code word" to Wilde fans without completely giving it all away too soon. ~ It's the alias Wilde used after he got out of prison in May of 1897.
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Jack
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For all his flaws, I'd say that Jack has the undeniable ability to make anyone he's focused on feel special and sexy and not only desirable, but completely desired. But it was a bit problematic using him - if, as I assume in order to avoid hot messes of crissy- crossy timestreams you'd want to pull two people out contemporaneously (I don't want to get into spoilers here) -- but I sort of went ahead anyhow, because without it too much of the story just falls away.
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AQUA?!!
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Yeah, I have NO idea where that came from, except that somehow it seemed entirely A Thing Eleven Would Do.
(Oddly, I can't imagine Nine or Ten dressing up for fun, but I CAN Imagine FOUR (and perhaps even Three) doing so.
Added 31 May: It wasn't until I re-watched "Vincent and the Doctor" last night that I realized how strongly the Sebastian bit ... paralleled it. All I can say in apology is that "Vincent" is a wonderful, wonderful episode and the echo wasn't deliberate (although I do now remember at the time thinking that ... (er, how to put this without spoilers?) ... giving someone such a gift and then sending them back to their drab existence wasn't 100% positive.
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This entry was originally posted at http://silverr.dreamwidth.org/29647.html