azdak

I stumbled across this today, and am enamoured:

Kipling's Vermont

The summer like a rajah dies,
And every widowed tree
Kindles for Congregationalist eyes
An alien suttee.

Today I pimped Kidnapped to nineveh_uk so enthusiastically that she actually went out and bought it in her lunch break ::YES! Am pimping god!:: Just thinking about the delights in store for her made me rush off and find my copy to re-read all the good bits. I must say that while I had acquired a certain awareness that the David Balfour/Alan Breck Stewart relationship could be read as rather slashy, I had completely failed to realise just how extensively RLS anticipates fanfic tropes. For one thing, it's a WiP. Then the dedication has him defending his version of Alan (he even calls him an "avatar") and worrying about whether it's too AU ("you will likely ask yourself more questions than I should care to answer: as for instance how the Appin murder has come to fall in the year 1751") and the epilogue says "Give me feedback or I won't write the next installment" ("How Alan escaped, and what was done about the murder, with a variety of other delectable particulars may be some day set forth. That is a thing, however, that hinges on the public fancy.") As for the story itself, not only is Davy/Alan clearly RLS's OTP (he has trouble continuing the story once they split up), and not only is there lots of slashy sleeping under one coat and declarations of love, it has Hurt/Comfort in it! And an obsession with establishing who is the Smaller Man! ('"My poor man, will ye no be better on my back?" "Oh, Alan," says I, "and me a good twelve inches taller?"') And channeling one's inner twelve year old! ('"I never said you were," said I, which was exactly the rude, silly speech of a boy of ten.')

I'm not sure that I'm entirely thrilled to have acquired this set of fanfic goggles, but the story is still totally and utterly wonderful, and I note that I am still just as much in love with Alan Breck as I was at 12.