For Jen, who wisely reminds me, "fandom is something of a refuge" from our species behaving badly.________________
["Virgil and Dante in Hell," right, by William-Adolphe Bouguereau, (1850). Virgil's the one in laurels, Dante's in red.]
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"Everyone's so horrid today, Uncle Arthur. Let's go out to tea."
Little Minnie Beebe speaks these deathless lines to her uncle, the Reverend Mr. Beebe (Simon Callow), in the movie A Room with a View, and I am borrowing the sentiment, because indeed this evening everyone is being horrid. So much so I'm not even going to relate to you the intricacies of their horridness.
(I ascribe it to Scorpio lashing out its poisonous tail in spite as convivial Sagittarius hurries it on apace, out of its place in the Sun.)
In times like these, I am grateful that my passions--this year anyway--tend toward the utterly ridiculous, because I too could find it in myself to be perfectly horrid otherwise. After several unpleasantnesses tonight, however, instead I retreat in gratitude to my latest very silly thing: creating my own Rude Person Story.
(As I blogged a bit back, RPSs are Star Trek fan-fiction stories that send up fan-fiction stories, in dialect or in the style of a famous author.)
The central fanfic scenario that the RPSs mock--Kirk and Spock, after their shuttlecraft crashes on a lonely planet, shelter from a storm in a cave, Spock goes into heat, and intimate acts hitherto unknown between the friends ensue--reminded me right away of Queen Dido and Aeneas, the Trojan hero, in Book IV of Virgil's Aeneid, you'll recall, when the two are out hunting and a storm comes up and they take shelter in a cave and Dido is inflamed with lust and one thing leads to another.
I hear Virgil cry out to be transformed into Star Trek slash, and what better cause have I toward which to put my Classics degree than in answering that cry?
None! I tell you. I am barely gainfully employed otherwise. To spend fruitful hours searching the archives of Trekcore.com for screencaps fitting to illustrate such a story is my delight. As is the work of editing the verse of the master to fit the change in circumstances, gender, and technology the central characters find they have undergone.
It would not be so very difficult, except that I have made it so by pilfering several various translations for words that please me most, thus creating a pastiche that is not altogether flawless in its texture and will necessitate the work of further happy hours in endeavoring to smooth.
Be that as it may, here I present a portion of the tale, rendered into K/S:
"...But a storm plunges the craft downward, towards the shores of a planet,
in foggy vapors bound, and lashed by winds.
The Captain speaks, “The ship is wrecked, and skies are hostile.”
Thunder rouses the heavens, and dark rain pours down.
Lost in obscure night, the men take shelter in a cave.
"Pon Farr seized the Vulcan and fed his veins a hidden flame.
Wounded by all-pow’rful love, his anxious mind recalls his Captain’s courage,
and his noble Earthly face. Sick with desire, the Vulcan ponders ..."
Tea, vicar?