[The Hollow Crown] A Mouth-Filling Oath (Henry IV Part 1 '50s docklands/gangs AU)
Oh! Reveals for thisengland's Shakespeare Histories Ficathon are up! OH MY GOSH, 
likeadeuce, thank you so much for Spur of the Moment, a totally hilarious Hotspur-as-broadcast-journalist fic, and asldjkhlfajskhf,
shinobi93, hand in hand (is the only way to land), your always-a-girl Hotspur/Kate femslash hits. the. spot. PERCYS. Thank you!
This was my first year participating (thank you, The Hollow Crown, forever and ever, amen), and the story I wrote was also the first full-length, non-drabble story I've completed, full stop, since Yuletide. ALSO, IT WAS A DOOZY. So, if anyone is surprised…
…I wrote A Mouth-Filling Oath for
Gileonnen (which, HI, wow, hi!).Is it a stain, to work for such a man as Bolingbroke? He more than acquitted himself in the Merchant Navy during the war. What man was it, then, sat behind his desk and told the Percy men how Lancaster would never line Welsh pockets? And what man is it that will labor with such a fellow?
Dock workers. Tottenham gangs. Post-war London. Not everyone's meant to make it out alive.
I REALLY LIKE THIS STORY. If you liked it too, I am glad! The prompt was "Great Big Hotspur AU, please! A plot-based AU would be especially interesting here, 'What if Richard II hadn't been deposed' or 'What if Hotspur had been Henry IV's son rather than Northumberland's' or some such." What wound up sort of happening was three AUs (Harry learns to control himself; Hal writes off his dad before his dad can write off him; Hal and Harry work together) that are actually one, which is "Fuck you, Worcester."
I said I had no idea where this one came from, but that's kind of a lie. I've been dying to write the "Kate Percy leads a girl gang of bikers in 1960s London" ever since I saw this Michelle Dockery photoshoot, and as I was sitting at my computer, staring at your glorious prompt for weeks on end, wondering if I should just write Doll Tearsheet as a pirate queen (even if you hadn't… asked for it?), a greaser AU somehow became a stevedore AU and the first paragraph is actually remarkably unchanged from that to this.
And the whole thing was so fun to write, but then
Gileonnen's reaction was one of the most gratifying experiences I've had in my decade-plus in fandom. I'm so glad you liked it -- and I'm actually delighted that you found a bit of ambiguity in the ending that I didn't intend. Because I imagined who was responsible for that assassination quite clearly, but I super dig the idea that… maybe it was something else, or people think it's something else.
(Side note: your prompts for both a plotty Hotspur AU and for more Lady Mortimer actually worked perfectly for a story I've been planning to write anyway, and which I totally would have written if I hadn't been talking about it in public, so keep an eye out for that? I've been wanting to say that all summer! [There is also a sneak H6s reference in the fic, since I couldn't do your Queen Margaret prompt. Only a little Falstaff, though.])
I actually didn't see On the Waterfront until the first draft was off to my betas (THANK YOU AGAIN,
adiva_calandia,
skygiants,
genarti and
shadesofbrixton!). That part's true.
Okay, I am super rambling, but to conclude, thisengland, I really enjoyed participating, and you guys, read this archive (or past years at the LJ comm), because holy cats, there is some scary good writing going on here. ♥
This was originally posted on Dreamwidth, where it has
comments. I would love to hear from you at DW! If you can see this post, you can comment here using OpenID. Thanks!
likeadeuce, thank you so much for Spur of the Moment, a totally hilarious Hotspur-as-broadcast-journalist fic, and asldjkhlfajskhf,
shinobi93, hand in hand (is the only way to land), your always-a-girl Hotspur/Kate femslash hits. the. spot. PERCYS. Thank you!
This was my first year participating (thank you, The Hollow Crown, forever and ever, amen), and the story I wrote was also the first full-length, non-drabble story I've completed, full stop, since Yuletide. ALSO, IT WAS A DOOZY. So, if anyone is surprised…
…I wrote A Mouth-Filling Oath for
Gileonnen (which, HI, wow, hi!).Is it a stain, to work for such a man as Bolingbroke? He more than acquitted himself in the Merchant Navy during the war. What man was it, then, sat behind his desk and told the Percy men how Lancaster would never line Welsh pockets? And what man is it that will labor with such a fellow?
Dock workers. Tottenham gangs. Post-war London. Not everyone's meant to make it out alive.
I REALLY LIKE THIS STORY. If you liked it too, I am glad! The prompt was "Great Big Hotspur AU, please! A plot-based AU would be especially interesting here, 'What if Richard II hadn't been deposed' or 'What if Hotspur had been Henry IV's son rather than Northumberland's' or some such." What wound up sort of happening was three AUs (Harry learns to control himself; Hal writes off his dad before his dad can write off him; Hal and Harry work together) that are actually one, which is "Fuck you, Worcester."
I said I had no idea where this one came from, but that's kind of a lie. I've been dying to write the "Kate Percy leads a girl gang of bikers in 1960s London" ever since I saw this Michelle Dockery photoshoot, and as I was sitting at my computer, staring at your glorious prompt for weeks on end, wondering if I should just write Doll Tearsheet as a pirate queen (even if you hadn't… asked for it?), a greaser AU somehow became a stevedore AU and the first paragraph is actually remarkably unchanged from that to this.
And the whole thing was so fun to write, but then
Gileonnen's reaction was one of the most gratifying experiences I've had in my decade-plus in fandom. I'm so glad you liked it -- and I'm actually delighted that you found a bit of ambiguity in the ending that I didn't intend. Because I imagined who was responsible for that assassination quite clearly, but I super dig the idea that… maybe it was something else, or people think it's something else.
(Side note: your prompts for both a plotty Hotspur AU and for more Lady Mortimer actually worked perfectly for a story I've been planning to write anyway, and which I totally would have written if I hadn't been talking about it in public, so keep an eye out for that? I've been wanting to say that all summer! [There is also a sneak H6s reference in the fic, since I couldn't do your Queen Margaret prompt. Only a little Falstaff, though.])
I actually didn't see On the Waterfront until the first draft was off to my betas (THANK YOU AGAIN,
adiva_calandia,
skygiants,
genarti and
shadesofbrixton!). That part's true.
Okay, I am super rambling, but to conclude, thisengland, I really enjoyed participating, and you guys, read this archive (or past years at the LJ comm), because holy cats, there is some scary good writing going on here. ♥
This was originally posted on Dreamwidth, where it has
comments. I would love to hear from you at DW! If you can see this post, you can comment here using OpenID. Thanks!