Comments | vaznetti: Fic: House of Shadows (Lymond Chronicles, Marthe)

vaznetti

Fic: House of Shadows (Lymond Chronicles, Marthe)

Oct 14, 2007 13:34

I wrote this for eid_fic, a community set up to celebrate Eid ul-Fitr, which occurs this weekend, by writing stories about Muslim characters. I am 100% behind the notion that writing is often the best response to a sense of exclusion in fandom, and the challenge gave me the opportunity to write about a character I've wanted to play with for a while. I ( Read more... )

fanfic:other, fanfic

Comments 13

bardsmaid October 14 2007, 20:35:35 UTC

I enjoyed this for the cultural glimpse, but also for the sentiments toward the end ("She will remain in this alien city, where the people look like her.") It captures so well the feeling you get from having lived in a foreign country, after which you're never quite who you were before. Your unique mix of experiences creates/recreates a new you who is both at home in multiple places but at the same time no longer fully at one with any of them.

vaznetti October 14 2007, 22:24:28 UTC

Thank you!

And yes, you're never the person you were before you left, but you're also not the person you became while you were gone.

fourteenlines October 14 2007, 22:46:56 UTC

This is a wonderful examination of Marthe, and the depths she made damn sure were kept hidden. The description of the heat and the food while Marthe is fasting is a visceral gut-punch. I like it.

vaznetti October 14 2007, 23:28:10 UTC

Thank you!

Marthe strikes me as a character who keeps a lot hidden -- she's like Francis, in that, but because the focus is so rarely on her, we don't see what's hidden there.

minnow1212 October 15 2007, 01:43:01 UTC

Oh this is lovely and vivid.

>She will remain in this alien city, where the people look like her. She will stay with the man who loves not her, but what she resembles.<

Wonderful bite to that.

vaznetti October 15 2007, 02:06:19 UTC

Yeah. Poor Marthe; she's very unhappy here.

And thank you! Writing Dunnett fic is scary.

lenadances October 15 2007, 15:58:59 UTC

Oh, Marthe. There's such a depth of anger in her, and I tend to feel angry on her behalf, too, every time I read the books. She has cobbled together such a unique life when we first meet her, and it feels like the more we see her, the more the "normal" European life touches her, the worse off she is.

Marthe keeps her eyes open.

Ah, doesn't she always.

I can't even imagine trying Dunnett fic, and you've done an awesome job here. ::marvels::

vaznetti October 15 2007, 16:23:32 UTC

Dunnett fic is scary! I regularly intend to sign up to write it at Yuletide and usually cut it from the submission at the last moment.

I feel angry when I read about Marthe as well, because of the way her life was twisted out of her hands, and for nothing to do with her, at all -- that she was caught up in this grand destiny that couldn't be hers, and she couldn't -- she wouldn't -- get away from it. And yes, exactly -- the more normal her life is, the worse it is for her.

So thank you so much for commenting!

lenadances October 16 2007, 02:12:24 UTC

(Off-topic: Is that Alma Garrett I see in your icon?)

I am now on my third (fourth?) re-read of the whole of the Lymond books, and I've come to the conclusion that Marthe desperately needs an AU. It just frustrates me unbearably that she had this plan-- this fantastic plan that involved a very clever Indiana Jones-style ransacking of ancient artifacts from under Constantinople. Well, minus the "they belong in a museum" part. And along comes Jerrott with his barely-disguised homo-erotic longings using her as an acceptable female substitute, and he ruins everything by yanking her back into Francis' orbit and smashing the plans to bits in the process. I would much prefer to see her continuing her adventures in the Middle East of that era, with her ill-gotten fortune at her back and her reputation (quietly) made, a woman answering to no man. I would read those adventures like mad. Put Philippa in the mix with her and I go insane with pure glee ( ... )

vaznetti October 16 2007, 16:40:30 UTC

I read the books when I was an adolescent and imprinted on Lymond something fierce, but you are right to say that he ruins almost everything he touches.

I had never thought of your AU with Marthe but that's awesome, and I would totally read it! Because she has a good plan, it's true, despite the fact that it's outright theft, but I also love that she gives the plan up because people's lives are more important, in the end ( ... )