Meta, Hijacking, Give the Pevensies A Friend

[rthstewart]

Some rambling meta, over here rather than clogging up animus_wyrmis's LJ on Give the Pevensie A Friend.  Given the number of OCs who run around in my stories, the creating of friends (or even more of them) wasn't a problem.  It was shutting up about them. 

•  Peter and the cool Tril -- I think that one is self explanatory and no real surprise.  The Oxford swifts do indeed roost in the Museum towers.  Once Animus moved them to a pub, I gave Peter a whole crew of chums and he's helping little old ladies whose husbands and sons are dead and whose daughter has a baby left behind by a Yank from the D Day buildup.  Rather typical slice o' life, I should think.

• Susan and Agnes was an old idea and I loved the idea of the two of them bonding over North American-oriented girls' books.  I really wanted Susan to help Agnes write a Little Women fan fiction where the March girls are all of African descent and Jo married Laurie.  And lurking beneath, maybe Susan doesn't think that a romance with and marriage to a young, dashing, handsome, passionate, intelligent man is such a good thing.



• Lucy-  I really wanted to do a sort of reconciliation with Marjorie Preston to show Lucy not being the unfaithful friend.  I also wanted Lucy to have more friends but I started Marjorie and Jane out as weak and I'm glad that commentors fixed them and they are all more fun.  Alice is, of course, a thinly disguised insert -- some combination of metonomia , l_a_r_m , lady_songsmith , and ilysia_039 .  More to the point, in this you see a lot of the Lucy that is to come in Part 3, if I ever make it out of Part 2.  Lucy in this vision is the true revolutionary.  It's already laid out in Parts 1 and 2 and this gives a good flavor for where I see her going in Part 3 (assuming I ever get there, see above).



• Polly and Richard go way back.  I had wanted to do this one as a part of a Valentine's Day series  It is during this trip that he tells her that Mary has been asking him to marry her and Richard gets all seductive manipulative and Polly will have none of it.  I think, Richard always longs for Polly and never gets what he wants. Back a chapter or two ago, when Polly goes to Russell House, the implication is that Mary wants to get Polly drunk and seduce her and Kwong Lee enables it.  I'm not sure what's in it for Polly, but Mary clings to those who are closest to Richard.  Richard loves Polly, so Mary will love Polly.  I wrote before that I was getting mad at Richard and this little story was part of why.



• Susan and George.  There were some questions about this one.  This one, of all of them, is the least compliant with the overall vision.  The Soviet moles were recruited in the 30s and burrowed into the British SIS and were in place by the War and stayed there for decades.  Burgess and Maclean defect in 1951.  Kim Philby, however, remains in the West until 1963.  "Stanley" was Philby's code name.  What I wrote more closely follows the events that lead George Smiley, the old fat spy of  le Carre's Tinker Tailor story, out of retirement and on to the trail of Gerald the mole.  le Carre's story is the fictionalization of the chase for Philby. 
• I don't know how much of this I will or could use.  The Colonel is too old in 1942 to be called out retirement in 1962.  The timing for Susan isn't quite right either.  The bullets in Tebbitt's back and winding up in the girls' school are taken straight out of Tinker Tailor and the story of the super spy Jim Prideaux (working name Ellis) who is betrayed by the mole, Gerald, in order to deflect the hunt for him being brought by the head of the intelligence service. 
• The idea that Susan and Tebbitt are galloping across the globe recruiting agents in South American, Asia, and Europe sounds fun in concept but could be very dull to read and write.  I did come up with an idea last night along these lines, however, so (again, assuming I ever make it out of part 2) I now have an idea for Part 3 (or, in truth if 3 is too long, Part 4 GRRRRRR).  Yes, it is post-train wreck -- it must be.  Once I committed to Susan's story for Part 3, it was always going to involve spies, though I won't be using the Narnia/Tashbaan conceit.  As I said to LARM the other night, this bit about the Cambridge 5 has been in the story since Part 1.  Once you introduce British intelligence in this time period you have to deal with it as it overshadows everything.  It's a terrible tale. 
  

I felt badly I hijacked another person's thread, so thought it better to move it over here.