I have been putting some Vorkosigan trope meme fic from a month or so ago on the AO3, like so:
the last winter (Miles and Ekaterin, apocalypse)
something in the autumn that is native to your blood (Aral and Simon, telepathy)
gendha phool (Simon and Alys, pretending to be married)
A brief note on these. I put "something in the autumn that is native to your blood" on the AO3 pretty soon after I wrote it for![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
philomytha, and "the last winter" I hadn't time to put up until about a week ago. But I had no intention of putting the other one up. When hedda62 and the trope meme yielded "Simon and Alys pretend to be married", I gave Shim a joyful grin and said, "LET ME SING YOU THE SONG OF MY PEOPLE."
We were pottering around making lunch and putting the washing out at the time, and we talked it over while we did that and plotted it with me grinning delightedly most of the time; and later I said toforthwritten, "So.... what do you think the Planet of the Indians would look like?" and they started getting gleeful and we decided instantly that there would be no police force, of course it would be a network of aunties and chachis doing their thing with gusto, of course.
And I wrote it and put it in the comment box and didn't post it anywhere else, because of course it is self-indulgent idfic. Isn't it?
But, then, saat phere, Alys says in this story: she's talking about the seven times you walk around the flames in a Hindu marriage ceremony. A little more than a year from now I will do that: I'll stand up in front of a hundred people and walk around those flames, and when I sit down again I'll be married in the eyes of my people. The folk-etymological derivation for the ceremony is that the seven times symbolise the seven lifetimes you'll go through together, and while this is logistically complicated (what if you're not on the same reincarnation cycle as your partner? and believe me this is the sort of thing Hindus and their religious leaders worry about) I believe in the spirit of that idea: that you walk around those flames in place of walking through them, you come through irrevocably changed. That's not self-indulgent. It's not for whimsy that Shim and I will become part of one another. And I was raised as a daughter of the oldest continuous religious tradition on earth, and of one of its oldest, richest, most flamboyant cultures.
So I have been promising myself in this tentative adulthood that I will keep track of this, the slow decolonisation of the mind, and my little story is silly and light but not because of its content, so it goes on the AO3 as a "real" story, with thanks tohedda62 and everyone else: gendha phool, with some amendments from when it was written first.
For those wondering about the title, I recommend Google image search. Those people later down the page are the cast of my mother's favourite soap opera, Sasuraal Genda Phool! The nice-looking chap in the glasses has amnesia, it is the BEST.
the last winter (Miles and Ekaterin, apocalypse)
something in the autumn that is native to your blood (Aral and Simon, telepathy)
gendha phool (Simon and Alys, pretending to be married)
A brief note on these. I put "something in the autumn that is native to your blood" on the AO3 pretty soon after I wrote it for
philomytha, and "the last winter" I hadn't time to put up until about a week ago. But I had no intention of putting the other one up. When hedda62 and the trope meme yielded "Simon and Alys pretend to be married", I gave Shim a joyful grin and said, "LET ME SING YOU THE SONG OF MY PEOPLE."We were pottering around making lunch and putting the washing out at the time, and we talked it over while we did that and plotted it with me grinning delightedly most of the time; and later I said to
forthwritten, "So.... what do you think the Planet of the Indians would look like?" and they started getting gleeful and we decided instantly that there would be no police force, of course it would be a network of aunties and chachis doing their thing with gusto, of course.And I wrote it and put it in the comment box and didn't post it anywhere else, because of course it is self-indulgent idfic. Isn't it?
But, then, saat phere, Alys says in this story: she's talking about the seven times you walk around the flames in a Hindu marriage ceremony. A little more than a year from now I will do that: I'll stand up in front of a hundred people and walk around those flames, and when I sit down again I'll be married in the eyes of my people. The folk-etymological derivation for the ceremony is that the seven times symbolise the seven lifetimes you'll go through together, and while this is logistically complicated (what if you're not on the same reincarnation cycle as your partner? and believe me this is the sort of thing Hindus and their religious leaders worry about) I believe in the spirit of that idea: that you walk around those flames in place of walking through them, you come through irrevocably changed. That's not self-indulgent. It's not for whimsy that Shim and I will become part of one another. And I was raised as a daughter of the oldest continuous religious tradition on earth, and of one of its oldest, richest, most flamboyant cultures.
So I have been promising myself in this tentative adulthood that I will keep track of this, the slow decolonisation of the mind, and my little story is silly and light but not because of its content, so it goes on the AO3 as a "real" story, with thanks to
hedda62 and everyone else: gendha phool, with some amendments from when it was written first. For those wondering about the title, I recommend Google image search. Those people later down the page are the cast of my mother's favourite soap opera, Sasuraal Genda Phool! The nice-looking chap in the glasses has amnesia, it is the BEST.