Casket Boy Author's notes and thanks
Masterpost | Return to part 10
I chose that silly idea for a story, thinking that it would be a short thing and that I would be done quickly and in time at last this year. And although I ended up with more than 85,000 words of J2 fic, I did manage to finish for the deadline.
This is the first story written in English that I share, but this is not the first one I wrote, probably more like the fifth one, after quite a few fusions and SPN AUs that proved easier to tackle. I felt confident enough this time to stop relying on someone else's story, using only a real life fact I expanded and embroidered. I enjoy writing in English, if only because it's a real challenge and I learn more about the language, but it still takes me an awful lot of time. I owe a huge thank you to my friend and beta honscot who made it possible with her help and support to share something readable. I can't tell how many Frenglish words she had to pluck up from my first draft ! not to mention all the other stupid mistakes she valiantly battled with. She's my very own lifesaver and she showed the patience of a true saint every time I asked "why ?!" or raged against the differences between our languages' grammars (and didn't always follow her sound advice). She also offered many invaluable suggestions. Thanks again, Anika. Your canonization is underway :)
Thanks also to my lovely artist bumerbmw who made such pretty artwork for my fic. I love the feels she gave to the story through her talent and vision. Please don't forget to tell her how beautiful her artwork is !
Thanks at last to wendy for organizing this year again this wonderful challenge. It all seems so smooth-sailing from my point of view, and her organization skills and calm are a big part of the pleasure of participating.
For those who like to know how the writer imagined their characters, here's again a small list of those I didn't describe, either because they were just discussed, never really seen, and/or because it's not that important in the end :
- Jensen's brothers are played respectively in my mind by Eric Christian Olsen (Marty Deeks in NCIS: Los Angeles) and Josh Dallas (Prince Charming / David Nolan in Once upon a Time).
- As for Jensen's parents : Matlin Ackles I see as Timothy V. Murphy (lots of parts, including Sidorov in NCIS: Los Angeles, Doyle in Criminal Minds and Galen in Sons of Anarchy) and Nappy is played by Titus Welliver (lots of parts too, including War in Supernatural episode #502 Good God, Y'All, and Jimmy O'Phelan in Sons of Anarchy).
- Jaime, Jeffrey Dean Morgan's true omega, I imagine as Jaime Ray Newman, who played the flight attendant Amanda Walker in the SPN episode #104, Phantom Traveler.
- The omega writer Pretana I see as Traci Dinwiddie (Pamela Barnes in SPN).
- Other minor and non-speaking roles include Demore Barnes (Raphael) as the beta ship's officer, Emily Perkins (Becky) as the maid at the Murray's inn, Rob Benedict (Chuck) as the beta doctor, Jake Abel (Adam) as the commandant's very personal assistant, Lindsey McKeon (Tessa) as Richings' beta.
- "Lanndee" is of course an anagram for Danneel Ackles (incognito but gorgeous as usual). I thought no one could play better the beautiful Visnian woman Jensen had been attracted to before he met Jared.
You might see more of them, and the other Casket Boy characters, if I ever finish the already outlined and partly written sequel.
What was and what's never been : as I said in the intro notes, some of the facts mentioned in the fic are true and others invented in the recesses of my mind. If you're curious... :
- The trips lasted approximately two to four months. I found an article (fr) talking about one of them. The ship's captain's nickname was Jambe de Bois (Wooden Leg), and that's of course where I found the idea for my character One-Leg. The trip was arduous, the living conditions disastrous in the armory (called sainte-barbe in French, don't ask me why !). Some women were sick, others didn't make it. The contingents were chaperoned by a woman, at least during their trip. I found mentions of the King's Daughters being placed upon arrival either in a special house for them or with local families before their marriage (that happened as quickly as possible) and not lodged in official places the way I used in my story, nor were they thrown out after two months.
- The naughty and somewhat evil Intendant Sheppard takes the place of the real Intendant Jean Talon (fr) who contributed in a major, positive way to the development of the colony. There was also a governor that I totally ignored in my story. Among many other things, the real Intendant asked Colbert, Louis XIV's minister, for some women to be sent to the Nouvelle-France. He clearly stated that he wished those women to not be ungraceful and ugly, or that they be at least sane and strong for the farm work. He also asked for a few well-born demoiselles to marry the officers and help them settle. Depending on the article, I read that men were six to fourteen times more numerous than women in the colony before the King's Daughters came. Even then, it still took some time to increase the population and make the genders more even.
- There was indeed a regiment (Carignan-Salières) of 1,200 soldiers sent to the Nouvelle-France to help and protect the settlers in the battles against the Iroquois. The King did want the soldiers to settle and marry there. I didn't feel this story was a good place to discuss in depth the way Europeans invaded a continent, killed its inhabitants or stole their lands, so I avoided the topic by moving the original dwellers of my fic to a nearby place to prevent a conflagration, and I only alluded to a sometime difficult understanding between the two people and the possibility of war in the future. Which is why the regiment in Casket Boy is more of a police force and spends so much time on field trips to eradicate the fake "chowli menace".
- French was far from being the only language spoken in France at that time (and this right until the end of the 19th century, beginning of the 20th). Every province had its dialects (like the many variations of Occitan in Southern France). French was spoken in Paris and its region, as well as a few provinces where the King's Daughters were recruited. Which explains why French became the common language in the Nouvelle-France a long time before it occurred in the mother country. Nowadays, dialects are sadly moribund in most French provinces, spoken only by a handful of people, though some schools try to teach the kids in order to keep the languages alive.
- Returning to the mainland was not mandatory as I make it in my story for dramatic effect, and there was no allotted "grace" after which the women were transported back to their point of departure. It is said that the King's Daughters were certainly under a real pressure to marry and settle, but they could get back to France if they wanted to.
- And if you know a little bit of French and wonder why I call the women Filles du Roy, that's because the current word roi (king) was spelled with a y in that time.
Other links to peruse :
France in America: King's Daughters, Casket Girls, Prostitutes (en & fr)
King's Daughters (en & link to fr)
Casquette girl (en & link to fr)
La société des Filles du roi et soldats du Carignan (fr & en)
Société d'histoire des Filles du Roy : nos toutes premières grands-mères (fr)
Les filles du Roi en Nouvelle-France : étude historique avec répertoire biographique, by Silvio Dumas (fr)
Musée canadien de l'histoire - Musée virtuel de la Nouvelle-France (fr & en)
I also warned from the beginning about anachronisms. It was not a real problem for me as this was supposed to happen in an alternate world where we can imagine many things appeared along a different chronology. Now for the people curious, like me, about the times the various themes and objects I mentioned in this story were invented in our very real world, here's another list detailing whether they were familiar at the time of the fic or not (Wikipedia links because of the multilingual entries).
- Fireworks : invented a very, very long time ago, more precisely in the 7th century in China, they came in use in Europe around the 17th. So, even if unlikely, because it probably was very expensive, it was technically possible for Jared to have watched fireworks for the new year's celebrations.
- Breeches were the usual piece of clothing worn below the waist for the men of that time in our world. In my universe, they're worn by everyone, the only difference being that omegas wear close-fitting ones that show off their bodies while the betas and alphas' are baggier.
- Espadrilles : made of jute rope sole and canvas fabric, they've been attested as far as the 14th century in Catalonia (Spain) but more primitive versions go even further in time.
- Clogs : I thought clogs were much older than that but they "only" appeared in the late 13th century for the oldest mentions I've found.
- Loans and funding : I could be wrong, but from the little I know about the countryside world in my own country, now and in the past, it seems to me that few farmers would have asked a bank for money in the 17th century (and probably few would have been granted their requests, anyway). It's only by the 20th century that farmers had to borrow money from banks to buy the modern hardware needed to run a farm the way we do it nowadays, and many became bankrupt in the process when prices went down and they couldn't pay it off. The Ackles clan was very much ahead of the time !
- Morganatic marriage : a marriage between two persons of different social status that led to any children born from this union barred from inheriting anything, it's been used by people like kings and other high nobles well before the time of this fic.
- Compulsory education : it appeared here and there before the time of the fic, sooner or later depending on the country. The age until someone was able to leave school and work also depended on the country, just like nowadays.
- Graphite pencil : the first ones close to the pencils we know, a graphite stick held into a wooden case, probably date back to the end of the 16th century.
- Candaulism : though the term didn't appear before the 19th century, the act itself is probably as old as the world and any other kink.
- Hide-and-seek and Blind man's buff are both very old games created in various versions in different countries and already played by the time of the fic.
- Cross-gender acting : as I was thinking about the theater scene, I remembered watching, years ago, the movie Stage Beauty with Billy Crudup and Clare Danes and, for some reason, my mind imagined Mitch Pileggi playing an omega. In reality, it seems that English Renaissance theatre, that went from 1562 to 1642, so before the time of the story, used male adolescents to play the female roles, making Mitch Pileggi a little bit old for the job. Edward Kynaston (the real actor fictionally depicted by Billy Crudup in Stage Beauty), the last male actor playing both male and female roles, worked during the Restoration, so contemporary to the fic.
- Bluebeard : Charles Perrault's Barbe-Bleue fairytale was published in 1697 but it is said to be a retelling of older folk tales gathered and modified by Perrault.
- Pulley : another very old invention, attested in documents long before our era, it was definitely in use at the time of the fic.
- Hand pump : it seems that the principle was invented as far back as the Antiquity by the Greeks and the Romans, and used from the beginning of the 17th century by firefighters (in French, a firefighter is called "pompier", a word coming from "pompe" (pump) and designating back then the technicians specialized in working the pumps).
- White bread : bread was the staple food in European countries, a huge part of the daily fare of that time, but the white flours were mostly reserved for rich people while the poor ones ate dark bread made of cheaper flours. The well-known baguette became famous during the 20th century, even if it wasn't the only long-shaped bread in use long before, but it seems that the usual shape in the 17th century and later tended to rounder loaves (at least in France).
- Primero and Piquet : primero is a 16th century gambling card game (related to modern poker) and piquet a trick-taking, two-players card game of the same time period. Both were played for a long time.
- Puzzles : in our world, jigsaw puzzles didn't appear before 1760, when a cartographer and engraver from London had the idea to cut wooden cards into small pieces to help learning geography in a playful way.
- Clavichord : in use by the time of my story, it was one of the ancestors of our modern piano. Take a look at the wonderful specimen shown on the Wikipedia page, the one with the beautiful painting of a sea battle ! You can also listen to a clavichord piece on the French Wikipedia page.
- Bass violin : I wanted to use the cello but it was not around yet in the 1660's so I went with the bass violin, which definitely was.
- Leeches : although I made up the ointment created by the Visnians and the fertilizer, leeches were already used for bloodletting 2,500 years ago. Most species live in freshwater.
- Pall-mall : stemming from the jeu de mail and ancestor of the croquet, it was played a lot during the 16th and 17th centuries.
- Toxin : the term wasn't used before the second half of the 19th century.
- Lollipop : as the Wikipedia article suggests, such a simple idea might have been "invented" numerous times along the centuries. But in recent history, they're believed to date back to the 19th century.
Finally a bit of statistics : 497 instances of "alpha(s)" and 484 ones of "omega(s)" were used for Casket Boy, while only 34 "beta(s)" contributed. None of them were harmed during the making of the fic.
Masterpost | Return to part 10
I chose that silly idea for a story, thinking that it would be a short thing and that I would be done quickly and in time at last this year. And although I ended up with more than 85,000 words of J2 fic, I did manage to finish for the deadline.
This is the first story written in English that I share, but this is not the first one I wrote, probably more like the fifth one, after quite a few fusions and SPN AUs that proved easier to tackle. I felt confident enough this time to stop relying on someone else's story, using only a real life fact I expanded and embroidered. I enjoy writing in English, if only because it's a real challenge and I learn more about the language, but it still takes me an awful lot of time. I owe a huge thank you to my friend and beta honscot who made it possible with her help and support to share something readable. I can't tell how many Frenglish words she had to pluck up from my first draft ! not to mention all the other stupid mistakes she valiantly battled with. She's my very own lifesaver and she showed the patience of a true saint every time I asked "why ?!" or raged against the differences between our languages' grammars (and didn't always follow her sound advice). She also offered many invaluable suggestions. Thanks again, Anika. Your canonization is underway :)
Thanks also to my lovely artist bumerbmw who made such pretty artwork for my fic. I love the feels she gave to the story through her talent and vision. Please don't forget to tell her how beautiful her artwork is !
Thanks at last to wendy for organizing this year again this wonderful challenge. It all seems so smooth-sailing from my point of view, and her organization skills and calm are a big part of the pleasure of participating.
For those who like to know how the writer imagined their characters, here's again a small list of those I didn't describe, either because they were just discussed, never really seen, and/or because it's not that important in the end :
- Jensen's brothers are played respectively in my mind by Eric Christian Olsen (Marty Deeks in NCIS: Los Angeles) and Josh Dallas (Prince Charming / David Nolan in Once upon a Time).
- As for Jensen's parents : Matlin Ackles I see as Timothy V. Murphy (lots of parts, including Sidorov in NCIS: Los Angeles, Doyle in Criminal Minds and Galen in Sons of Anarchy) and Nappy is played by Titus Welliver (lots of parts too, including War in Supernatural episode #502 Good God, Y'All, and Jimmy O'Phelan in Sons of Anarchy).
- Jaime, Jeffrey Dean Morgan's true omega, I imagine as Jaime Ray Newman, who played the flight attendant Amanda Walker in the SPN episode #104, Phantom Traveler.
- The omega writer Pretana I see as Traci Dinwiddie (Pamela Barnes in SPN).
- Other minor and non-speaking roles include Demore Barnes (Raphael) as the beta ship's officer, Emily Perkins (Becky) as the maid at the Murray's inn, Rob Benedict (Chuck) as the beta doctor, Jake Abel (Adam) as the commandant's very personal assistant, Lindsey McKeon (Tessa) as Richings' beta.
- "Lanndee" is of course an anagram for Danneel Ackles (incognito but gorgeous as usual). I thought no one could play better the beautiful Visnian woman Jensen had been attracted to before he met Jared.
You might see more of them, and the other Casket Boy characters, if I ever finish the already outlined and partly written sequel.
What was and what's never been : as I said in the intro notes, some of the facts mentioned in the fic are true and others invented in the recesses of my mind. If you're curious... :
- The trips lasted approximately two to four months. I found an article (fr) talking about one of them. The ship's captain's nickname was Jambe de Bois (Wooden Leg), and that's of course where I found the idea for my character One-Leg. The trip was arduous, the living conditions disastrous in the armory (called sainte-barbe in French, don't ask me why !). Some women were sick, others didn't make it. The contingents were chaperoned by a woman, at least during their trip. I found mentions of the King's Daughters being placed upon arrival either in a special house for them or with local families before their marriage (that happened as quickly as possible) and not lodged in official places the way I used in my story, nor were they thrown out after two months.
- The naughty and somewhat evil Intendant Sheppard takes the place of the real Intendant Jean Talon (fr) who contributed in a major, positive way to the development of the colony. There was also a governor that I totally ignored in my story. Among many other things, the real Intendant asked Colbert, Louis XIV's minister, for some women to be sent to the Nouvelle-France. He clearly stated that he wished those women to not be ungraceful and ugly, or that they be at least sane and strong for the farm work. He also asked for a few well-born demoiselles to marry the officers and help them settle. Depending on the article, I read that men were six to fourteen times more numerous than women in the colony before the King's Daughters came. Even then, it still took some time to increase the population and make the genders more even.
- There was indeed a regiment (Carignan-Salières) of 1,200 soldiers sent to the Nouvelle-France to help and protect the settlers in the battles against the Iroquois. The King did want the soldiers to settle and marry there. I didn't feel this story was a good place to discuss in depth the way Europeans invaded a continent, killed its inhabitants or stole their lands, so I avoided the topic by moving the original dwellers of my fic to a nearby place to prevent a conflagration, and I only alluded to a sometime difficult understanding between the two people and the possibility of war in the future. Which is why the regiment in Casket Boy is more of a police force and spends so much time on field trips to eradicate the fake "chowli menace".
- French was far from being the only language spoken in France at that time (and this right until the end of the 19th century, beginning of the 20th). Every province had its dialects (like the many variations of Occitan in Southern France). French was spoken in Paris and its region, as well as a few provinces where the King's Daughters were recruited. Which explains why French became the common language in the Nouvelle-France a long time before it occurred in the mother country. Nowadays, dialects are sadly moribund in most French provinces, spoken only by a handful of people, though some schools try to teach the kids in order to keep the languages alive.
- Returning to the mainland was not mandatory as I make it in my story for dramatic effect, and there was no allotted "grace" after which the women were transported back to their point of departure. It is said that the King's Daughters were certainly under a real pressure to marry and settle, but they could get back to France if they wanted to.
- And if you know a little bit of French and wonder why I call the women Filles du Roy, that's because the current word roi (king) was spelled with a y in that time.
Other links to peruse :
France in America: King's Daughters, Casket Girls, Prostitutes (en & fr)
King's Daughters (en & link to fr)
Casquette girl (en & link to fr)
La société des Filles du roi et soldats du Carignan (fr & en)
Société d'histoire des Filles du Roy : nos toutes premières grands-mères (fr)
Les filles du Roi en Nouvelle-France : étude historique avec répertoire biographique, by Silvio Dumas (fr)
Musée canadien de l'histoire - Musée virtuel de la Nouvelle-France (fr & en)
I also warned from the beginning about anachronisms. It was not a real problem for me as this was supposed to happen in an alternate world where we can imagine many things appeared along a different chronology. Now for the people curious, like me, about the times the various themes and objects I mentioned in this story were invented in our very real world, here's another list detailing whether they were familiar at the time of the fic or not (Wikipedia links because of the multilingual entries).
- Fireworks : invented a very, very long time ago, more precisely in the 7th century in China, they came in use in Europe around the 17th. So, even if unlikely, because it probably was very expensive, it was technically possible for Jared to have watched fireworks for the new year's celebrations.
- Breeches were the usual piece of clothing worn below the waist for the men of that time in our world. In my universe, they're worn by everyone, the only difference being that omegas wear close-fitting ones that show off their bodies while the betas and alphas' are baggier.
- Espadrilles : made of jute rope sole and canvas fabric, they've been attested as far as the 14th century in Catalonia (Spain) but more primitive versions go even further in time.
- Clogs : I thought clogs were much older than that but they "only" appeared in the late 13th century for the oldest mentions I've found.
- Loans and funding : I could be wrong, but from the little I know about the countryside world in my own country, now and in the past, it seems to me that few farmers would have asked a bank for money in the 17th century (and probably few would have been granted their requests, anyway). It's only by the 20th century that farmers had to borrow money from banks to buy the modern hardware needed to run a farm the way we do it nowadays, and many became bankrupt in the process when prices went down and they couldn't pay it off. The Ackles clan was very much ahead of the time !
- Morganatic marriage : a marriage between two persons of different social status that led to any children born from this union barred from inheriting anything, it's been used by people like kings and other high nobles well before the time of this fic.
- Compulsory education : it appeared here and there before the time of the fic, sooner or later depending on the country. The age until someone was able to leave school and work also depended on the country, just like nowadays.
- Graphite pencil : the first ones close to the pencils we know, a graphite stick held into a wooden case, probably date back to the end of the 16th century.
- Candaulism : though the term didn't appear before the 19th century, the act itself is probably as old as the world and any other kink.
- Hide-and-seek and Blind man's buff are both very old games created in various versions in different countries and already played by the time of the fic.
- Cross-gender acting : as I was thinking about the theater scene, I remembered watching, years ago, the movie Stage Beauty with Billy Crudup and Clare Danes and, for some reason, my mind imagined Mitch Pileggi playing an omega. In reality, it seems that English Renaissance theatre, that went from 1562 to 1642, so before the time of the story, used male adolescents to play the female roles, making Mitch Pileggi a little bit old for the job. Edward Kynaston (the real actor fictionally depicted by Billy Crudup in Stage Beauty), the last male actor playing both male and female roles, worked during the Restoration, so contemporary to the fic.
- Bluebeard : Charles Perrault's Barbe-Bleue fairytale was published in 1697 but it is said to be a retelling of older folk tales gathered and modified by Perrault.
- Pulley : another very old invention, attested in documents long before our era, it was definitely in use at the time of the fic.
- Hand pump : it seems that the principle was invented as far back as the Antiquity by the Greeks and the Romans, and used from the beginning of the 17th century by firefighters (in French, a firefighter is called "pompier", a word coming from "pompe" (pump) and designating back then the technicians specialized in working the pumps).
- White bread : bread was the staple food in European countries, a huge part of the daily fare of that time, but the white flours were mostly reserved for rich people while the poor ones ate dark bread made of cheaper flours. The well-known baguette became famous during the 20th century, even if it wasn't the only long-shaped bread in use long before, but it seems that the usual shape in the 17th century and later tended to rounder loaves (at least in France).
- Primero and Piquet : primero is a 16th century gambling card game (related to modern poker) and piquet a trick-taking, two-players card game of the same time period. Both were played for a long time.
- Puzzles : in our world, jigsaw puzzles didn't appear before 1760, when a cartographer and engraver from London had the idea to cut wooden cards into small pieces to help learning geography in a playful way.
- Clavichord : in use by the time of my story, it was one of the ancestors of our modern piano. Take a look at the wonderful specimen shown on the Wikipedia page, the one with the beautiful painting of a sea battle ! You can also listen to a clavichord piece on the French Wikipedia page.
- Bass violin : I wanted to use the cello but it was not around yet in the 1660's so I went with the bass violin, which definitely was.
- Leeches : although I made up the ointment created by the Visnians and the fertilizer, leeches were already used for bloodletting 2,500 years ago. Most species live in freshwater.
- Pall-mall : stemming from the jeu de mail and ancestor of the croquet, it was played a lot during the 16th and 17th centuries.
- Toxin : the term wasn't used before the second half of the 19th century.
- Lollipop : as the Wikipedia article suggests, such a simple idea might have been "invented" numerous times along the centuries. But in recent history, they're believed to date back to the 19th century.
Finally a bit of statistics : 497 instances of "alpha(s)" and 484 ones of "omega(s)" were used for Casket Boy, while only 34 "beta(s)" contributed. None of them were harmed during the making of the fic.
Masterpost | Return to part 10