osprey_archer: (Cottia)
osprey_archer ([personal profile] osprey_archer) wrote2012-08-26 02:12 am

Bookcase!

I have a bookcase! I drove down to my grandparents' house, which my aunt and uncle (brother and sister, not married) have been sorting out, and there was just a bookcase loafing around, waiting for a home.

Which I have given it! It's sitting across from my bed, gaping emptily. CLEARLY I MUST BUY BOOKS.

I am an academic. Book-buying therefore constitutes a virtuous furtherance to my career!

***

The long drive gave me a lovely time to think. I'm working on an Eagle of the Ninth book fic - OT3 fics are hard, you guys! So many people having so many feelings! But [livejournal.com profile] carmarthen kindly beta'ed it for me, and it's almost done.

As fic-writing often does, it's spurred other plot bunnies. I'm just burning to write a Cottia story, and I've got this splendid (and by splendid I mean probably grueling) idea for a fic about Cottia's arrival in her Aunt Valaria's house, and her reaction to Valaria's efforts to force her to be a proper Roman girl. Valaria clearly managed to enforce Cottia's surface conformity, which, given Cottia's spitfire personality, must have been difficult and painful for them both.

And another, about Esca's clipped ear. There's no reason in canon to think he has a complex about it, but it would make sense to me that he hates it: it's a visible encapsulation of everything that's been taken from him, and ugly to boot. He probably thinks it's hideous.
ext_1611: Isis statue (Default)

[identity profile] isiscolo.livejournal.com 2012-08-26 01:24 pm (UTC)(link)
Yay! On all of these!

[identity profile] osprey-archer.livejournal.com 2012-08-26 06:20 pm (UTC)(link)
Victory!
ext_189645: (Default)

[identity profile] bunn.livejournal.com 2012-08-26 02:02 pm (UTC)(link)
Free AND empty bookcase! YAY! Happy new books.

Totally makes sense that Esca hates his ear - in fact the way that he is always making a point of shaking back his hair to go 'HERE IS MY EAR, DAMN YOU!' would sort of imply that, I think. Hates it but won't hide it because he is Proud! and Warriorly :-D

[identity profile] osprey-archer.livejournal.com 2012-08-26 06:19 pm (UTC)(link)
Yes! Proud and warriorly. So warriorly that he doesn't even need to hide his clipped ear, because he is totally better than anyone who makes obnoxious comments about it.

[identity profile] carmarthen.livejournal.com 2012-08-28 07:32 pm (UTC)(link)
I think it's strongly implied in canon that Esca has a complex.

Also I long for a story about Cottia and Aunt Valaria SO MUCH.

[identity profile] osprey-archer.livejournal.com 2012-08-29 02:24 am (UTC)(link)
Now I'm going to have to reread every canonical reference to Esca's ears, aren't I?

And YES, there so needs to be a story about the epic power struggle between Cottia and Aunt Valaria! Aunt Valaria is presented as rather a weak figure in canon, but I don't think anything less than an adamantine will would have induced Cottia to answer to Camilla and otherwise conform to Aunt Valaria's Romanizing project.