Annotations!

[intrikate88]

Annotated The Exhaustion of Dawn, my fic for NFE!

Originally, I thought I'd just do some reflective character-based 1000-word thing in about two hours, easy peasy. So what with the traveling to Canada and working like a one-armed paperhanger, I didn't even think about starting to write my NFE until about a week before deadline, whereupon I discovered that everything I could do had about a novels' worth of plot to it.

OOPS.

And that, my dear patient mods, in addition to a shitload of work and a handful of health problems, is why I blew right through the deadline, the extended deadline, and the no-really-we're-serious-this-time deadline, wrote about six thousand more words than I meant to, and would have written a novella if I hadn't run out of time and they would have given my prompt to andi_horton since she signed up for pinch-hitting, and she was in the middle of moving, and so that's why I have ideas to write all this as an original novel.

Through writing this I've become really kind of fascinated with the parallels between the ideas of the Lost Generation and the men who came back from the War with shell shock, absent in ways that no one quite knew how to understand (e.g.,  Peter Wimsey, or more tragically, Septimus Smith) and the old fairy tales of changelings and men who went into fairy hills and didn't emerge for a century. In an extended version, I'd love to write Digory and Polly's characters in a sort of Tam Lin story, and I hope that at least a little of that theme emerged, even if I wasn't aiming to display it explicitly.


There are references to events and people in the fic that I didn't really explain. Any Googling of the Cottingley Fairies will tell the story and show the pictures in question; while the  fairies are not Rackham illustrations as far as I know, as Digory suggested they be, Elsie and Frances did admit to cutting out traced illustrations to fake teh photographs; Frances did, however, insist that she had seen at least one fairy until the end of her life.

Polly's activities are a little less easy to find, but I did come across some interesting details of feminism at that time. I first came across Catherine E. Marshall in the National Archives, and she was a suffragist very involved in the anti-war movement. There was quite a few differing opinions in the suffragism movement at that time especially, and they are described in quite a lot of detail here. I think she's quite the sort of person Polly would be involved with, though I may have muddled some dates. The reference to going to the Hague that Polly makes in her letter is in regards to the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom and their conference of the International Congress of Women in April 1915 held in The Hague. As I recall, the UK did not/was not able to send a representative to the Congress, but Polly, being Polly, wouldn't have let that stop her. All things being as they are, I don't blame Polly for wanting to hide out and get work done in peace in deepest West Yorkshire.

As for Polly's previous work in Portuguese West Africa (Angola), I edited a book a few years ago about a missionary named Nellie Arnott and some of the political and social issues surrounding missionary work in the region and with the Umbundu tribes there.

The Incident With the Elephant was mentioned here.


Okay, now to the bit everyone cares about: ARE DIGORY AND POLLY HAVING TEH SECKS???

bedlamsbard requested no shipping, and I tend to go for awkward, not-quite-comfortably-right relationships, so it worked out. 

The short answer is that now, both Digory and Polly are a little bit gay, in my head..

Okay, not entirely. But I do think that Polly would go with Digory to beyond the ends of the earth, she just might have to come from the other end of the earth to get there first, and it wouldn't be because she's That Sort of being in love with him (because, in fact, she keeps having pretty satisfying sexytimes with suffragettes and Digory is a Different Kind Of Fun). Digory, on the other hand, would probably protest that he's a ladies' man, but let's face it, he's pretty much functionally asexual. I doubt he'd feel particularly gooey-eyed about any woman who wasn't found in a 600-year-old dusty book. The two of them had couples like Frank and Helen and Mr and Mabel Kirke as thier examples of marriage in their formative years, and I doubt that Polly and Digory would have any sort of relationship like that.

Which is why they went back to Polly's bed together at the end of the fic and promptly fell asleep and there was no sex ever, except that one time either years later or years before where they got really drunk, I mean really really drunk, and bumped around in all the awkward ways and never got anywhere except for Digory's elbow in Polly's eye and Polly's knee somewhere unmentionable. So now they just get kiss at train stations and there isn't enough alcohol in the world.

Sometimes people really love each other but just not quite in the way everybody else.


Well, I think that covers all the bases.

Comments

[rthstewart.livejournal.com]

I had completely forgotten about the elephant pic fic. OMG, so perfect! I completely see where you come out on their (lack of) sexual relationship -- as it is obviously where I ended up too. You just did a wonderful job with the relationship and the historical backstory. I like very much that you did not explain it -- I found both these characters lend themselves to the idea of there being these little asides and references to the historical period where we just assume they had some role, some exciting role, but really, that's part of what makes the characters so alive and three dimensional.

Thanks so much. A wonderful, wonderful story.

[intrikate88.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I just figured that emotionally speaking they are both in the wrong place at the wrong time but that's okay with them. They're just who they are. I am so happy you liked it. ♥

And I really wish that there was a Magician's Nephew movie already, because I need a proper icon of them.