The Fall of the Roman Empire (Ancient History challenge)

[rhymer23]

Title: The Fall of the Roman Empire
Author: Eildon Rhymer (rhymer23Rating: PG-13

Comments

[ladybug_rjc]

But silly is good. Don't be embarrassed by it. I like it!

[rhymer23]

Good. Thanks! I never learn. People always seem to like my silly fic, but I always worry....

[ladybug_rjc]

Except that you always package your silly up in such an interesting fashion. You take something everybody knows (or something they maybe kinda have enough of an idea about to appreciate it) and then turn it on its head. And add Rodney. And John. Because that makes every story better, right?

[jadesfire]

*awards you the internet* Which I know you will take good care of and index properly.

This is classics librarian heaven. Completely. Wonderfully inspired and utterly hilarious. I can't properly convey the handwaving going on at this end in words...just brilliant. *waves hands some more*

(Oh, crap. Italics, he thought. Habet… No, that's the present tense. Habuit? Verbum. No, plural. Verba. Agh. Accusative. Amo, amas, amat… No, that's verbs, no pun intended.
Oh dear...I wish I couldn't hear myself in this...absolutely spot on.

[rhymer23]

Ooh! Fellow librarian? Salve! (Though, actually, I'm a children's librarian, so I should probably say "hello!" with silly voices and silly expressions and much body language.)

[jadesfire]

*giggle* Salve! I work in a university library, and there are times when I'm tempted to do the 'silly voices and expressions' thing with the undergraduates - it's about at their level...

I bump into a suprising number of librarians in my various fandoms - we're all here! :D

[rhymer23]

There do seem to be a lot of us around. Oh, and thanks for sending several people in the direction of this fic.

I think my undergraduate days would have been much enlivened if the librarians had done silly voices and put on noisy storytimes in the hushed and hallowed halls. It's a hard habit to break, though. I often go into "children's librarian mode" in the most inappropriate places, speaking slowly and expressively, with much arm waving and sound effects. I've even written an SGA fic entirely in children's librarian storytelling mode...

[adafrog]

hee!

[rhymer23]

*laughs* Glad you liked!

[bironic]

*grinning hard enough to hurt my face*

Waffllei! Blackus markus! Rodney's rationalization for not saying salvete! Fortunately he could read Mysterious! Pastor! The struggle to form a simple sentence in Latin! (Veni Vidi) Vicipedia! All the fourth-wall-breaking jokes. And on and on -- etcetera, etcetera.

Thanks so much for this.

[rhymer23]

And thanks for commenting! This was fun to write, drawing on all my long-distant memories of Latin... I'm glad it was fun to read. :-)

[propinquitine]

Oh, this was great! I loved their Latin word versus emphatic comment conundrums, and the fandom meta comments on how to attract a readership. And this line:

Their journey was short and without incident.

had me snorting and imagining how much more readable the bulk of the epic fantasy genre would be if authors (ahem, Tolkien) just took this approach.

Please continue your habit of deeply silly flashfics!

[rhymer23]

*laughs* Wouldn't The Lord of the Rings be so short if Tolkien had adopted this approach...? Though I think a fantasy novel in which 95 percent of it was saying "hello" might be a little... unbalanced... ;-)