More TSG AU commentfic

[rthstewart]

Mary, Peter, Asim, Eustace, Alligator Snapping Turtles, and Alligators.  anastigmatfic is magnificent and awesome and really you have to go read this right now.

Also moonshine, the Florida swamp, and a missing camera bag.  Though I am wondering what a pair of leopard-spotted Y-fronts are and I'm too scared to google it.

“Macrochelys temminckii is one of the

Comments

[rthstewart]

Leaning against the cypress tree and waiting for the world to stop spinning was an excellent idea. Through eyes slitted against the sun, Peter saw a pair of beaten boots and pristine khakis.

"If you are going to mock me, just go away and poke something with a stick," he grumbled.

"No," Mary replied and squatted next to him. She pushed a canteen with something smelling faintly of mint. "Home remedy. Swish, spit, swish, swallow with two aspirin, followed by a banana."

"It sounds like one of Polly's natural cures."

"It is."

Peter complied, having the grace to not spit on to her boots. "Where's Eustace?" he asked, already feeling the benefits of the mint astringent and expecting (and finding) that both aspirin and banana were having a restorative effect. Mary would not waste time on quackery.

"Measuring dragonflies the size of birds and taking skin samples from a toad larger than a dinner plate."

He settled back against the tree and flicked away a mouse-sized crawling beetle. "In about 15 minutes, I'll be able to handle the truck as long as Asim drives, and 30 minutes until the boat."

Probably.

"Take as much time as you need." Mary shifted in her crouch, capped the canteen and stuffed the peel into a trash sack.

"So how does 130 proof moonshine compare?" she asked. Mary was always trying to quantify the incalculable.

"Far beyond Faun wine," Peter replied. "Worse than tequila or Dwarf Lightning."

"But not as bad as the Centaur liquor laced with hallucinogens?"

"No, thank God. I would still be at the motel."

Mary jotted the observation in her notebook. "You know, the effects you described do sound remarkably like mescaline, which naturally occurs in some cacti. I imagine we could find some when we head on to New Mexico to investigate those cannibal dinosaurs at Ghost Ranch."

"You and Eustace are free to conduct your own self-experimentation, Mary. I decline to volunteer as the control group and will go across the border and find a tequila distillery."

[autumnia]

I think at some point, all of this comment fic needs to grouped together to make reading it a lot easier.

That said, has Mary learned the Secret then, if Peter is comparing moonshine to Faun wine, Lightning and Centaur liquor? Or has she just attributed these mentions to Peter being rather ill at this point?

[rthstewart]

I think at some point, all of this comment fic needs to grouped together to make reading it a lot easier.

Yes, alas, the nature of comment fic is that it ends up all over the place. Anastigmatfic and I can pool the combo entries and then start a whole new round of galloping into the sunset speculative comment fic. Though, we now have part A, the camels and the trip home here, Part B, the swamp in Ana's LJ, and with H. and my own contributions, the aftermath, here in Part D. So we now will have to see what lady_songsmith does. I'm terrified those leopard spotted thingys Min found (and no, I did not click on the link) are going to end up in there, thereby triggering my full no visuals filter.

That said, has Mary learned the Secret then, if Peter is comparing moonshine to Faun wine, Lightning and Centaur liquor? Or has she just attributed these mentions to Peter being rather ill at this point?

The idea came to me in the middle of the night after reading H.'s entry and I almost got up and added it. In short, I have no idea. Does Mary know? Who told her? Is it something private between the two of them? Or does everyone know that she knows? What do you think? And, you all fine up there? All dried out?

[rthstewart]

Have already established that Peter is in desperate need of a visit to a laundry, so...

[rthstewart]

"How was the peyote ceremony?" Peter sipped on a fantastic pure blue agave tequila. He now understood why the Mexicans disdained the "mixo" popular in the States, and resolved to lobby for a visit to Jalisco.

"Fascinating yet ghastly." Mary slumped into her chair, looking very tired. "There was a great deal of chanting, cathartic personal revelations, and far to much sitting attentively for hours on end. And I don't think we took as much of the mescaline as your Centuar liquor contained."

Eustace seemed subdued. "I don't think the mescaline was really the point. More of a facilitator."

"I suppose not, but I would have liked to have seen something spectacular".

Peter thought back to the Centaur-sized wine skin he'd shared with several of their astrologers, and considered that perhaps he had not thought to adjust the dosage for body size. And further considered that the Centaurs had no doubt anticipated that. Sometimes diplomatic relations involved overlooking what might otherwise be considered pranks.

"Spectacular is often confusing. I'll not forget being absolutely certain that Edmund was standing next to me after my third drink. But he would only talk in Rat and Crow, and demanded that I do the same." He took another sip of the tequila. "The Centaurs understood why I thought the tree was Edmund, but they found it especially funny that i insisted on speaking absolute gibberish at it." The tequila was almost gone now, and he savored the last sip. "Apparently, speaking in tongues is usually induced by a *different* liquor."

-H

[rthstewart]

I decided to go with the notion that Mary has found out something, although Peter's reminiscing could be obscured easily enough. I wanted to come up with something involving Eustace and Dragons, but the actual peyote ceremonies, to the extent that I could read up on them in the last hour, did not sound like they would work for that. So this has less silly visual punch line. Perhaps Mary locates some peyote on her own later and she and Eustace try a larger dose? Bah. I have to go to work and be responsible.
-H

[rthstewart]

I thought you said you couldn't/didn't write? this is awesome!!! I just love the affinity with the tequila... blue agave... yummmm and the aside about diplomatic relations! Also, I want you to remember that fortuitous comment about Centaur-sized wine skin.

I'll leave off a response about finding more peyote and Eustace dreaming he is flying for if you want to take a stab at it. I have it on good authority that two others are working on different pieces of this hydra. See above, Autumnia wanted to know how much Mary knew? Or was Mary just chalking it up to drunken stupor? I leave that to your imagination as I have not a clue. But, Ghost Ranch was one of the few active dinosaur sites in the US during that time that I know of, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghost_Ranch and the cannibal claim of the Coelophysis found there, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coelophysis and, errr, stopping now... So there are hundreds of little dinosaur skeletons there and I think that could be very disconcerting Dr. Scrubb, the oblivious yet alluring man of science

bowing to the inevitable

[h_dash_h]

Hello, "H" here. I figure if I'm going to be wrting comment-fic drabbles I'm well past the point at which I should just open an account specifically for fic-related activities. "h" and "dash_h" (since I normally signed "-H") were taken, so "h_dash_h" it is.

So... to date I have not written fic. However, once I read snitchnipped's comment

Peter/Mary? Yep, count me in. She's a character who is attracted to the most magnificent of any species, after all.

immediately after reading the reference to the moonshine, the "Magnificent!" drabble hit me over the head and absolutely demanded to be written down. That almost never happens to me, and I have usually squelched it on the rare times that it does. However, this whole community is far too much fun, and I've been trying not to squelch that sort of impulse these days. And anyway, the proximity of Peter, a hangover (with the likelihood of vomit) and Mary simply required it. Not owl vomit, but really, there's no way she could resist.

The peyote response was a much more difficult affair (in part because I wanted to get it posted before I lost my nerve). And my initial impulses and hurried research (on tequila varieties, about which I know a bit from a friend who is a connoisseur, on which tribes in that part of New Mexico might actually use peyote, and on what a peyote ritual is like and how likely a tribe would be to allow outsiders at that time, and on the meaning of Mexican names for a bit part character who supplied the quality tequila but got cut from the final version) did not quite line up, causing me to discard two other attempts.

Also, it's just long enough that it needed more detail than the quick punch of the first one, which had me going back and forth to your and other folks' entries trying to figure out how to work it in. Anyway, I'll have to see about the Further Adventures of Eustace and Mary in the Desert, as observed by Peter and Asim. I'll post it in my journal if I do, and will try to keep up with what everyone else is adding :-)

Anyway, I have long had an interest in fiction writing, but simply lacked anything to say. Tossing about snippets is apparently the motivation I was lacking.

-H

Re: bowing to the inevitable

[rthstewart]

And he researches!!! Oh it is a madness and a disease. I'll never tell a soul. Truly, this is just delightful. Comment fic can get a bit disjointed, but it's such fun. And oh gosh, I'm going to start gushing about fandom goodness. On a more serious note, when I was going through some fannish angst, one reader, Miniver, had said that if nothing else, writing is obviously a pleasure and an outlet for my creativity that I needed. And this is it, precisely. Apart from the communities that develop, there is, inherently, the joy of creating and that ability to muzzle the censor and put it out there for fun. So, I hope you enjoy that process. And if you are writing 100,000 word epics on A03 in a year, I won't say "I was there at the beginning."

Re: bowing to the inevitable

[snitchnipped]

Oh, and I was there, too. And I stumbled into the NFE, writing the first piece of fiction in over ten years.

And just this week, I found myself stumbling into an unintentional sequel to the NFE I wrote. Eeeeeps. The bug, the bug, I has it!! And I've no one to talk to about it until the reveals are posted!

Re: bowing to the inevitable

[anastigmatfic]

I am delighted to hear this and cannot wait to see what you come up with!

ONE OF US. ONE OF US. ONE OF US.