Locus Classicus

Because I am just that much of a fandom whore, I celebrate my return to active ljdom with fic in a new fandom. Why hello, Supernatural, how you doin'?

My recruitment into this fandom went something like this:

sinden: Spn is teh awesome.
arysteia: Whatever. Busy. Fandomly monogamous.
sinden: Boys are hot.
arysteia: Boys are nothing special. It's that guy from Smallville when Smallville started killing me. And a really tall guy with bad hair.
sinden: Look again.
arysteia: Huh. Was he that beautiful on SV? Did Lana just make my eyes hurt so much I didn't see?
erilyn: Yes. And yes.
arysteia: I'll watch it when it comes to NZ, but I won't download it.
arysteia: Give me the damn downloads.
arysteia: I'll watch it but I won't read it.
arysteia: *is bored and has read all the SGA and is still pissy with SV*
arysteia: I'll read but I won't write.
arysteia: *watches new eps in office to decompress*
my boys (yes, those boys): Miss! What are you watching? Who is that man? Can we watch? You can give us essay pointers later.
arysteia: Give me the damn essays. They'd better be good. Sit down.
my boys (yes, those boys): Do you have the new episode of Devil Boy and Hottest Man in the Universe?
arysteia: Huh?
my boys (yes, those boys): Can't remember what it's called, don't care.
arysteia: And thus a new codename is born.
arysteia: I still won't write.
arysteia: Ooh! A challenge! Shiny!

So here goes nothing. It's gen, so if wincest's not for you, you're safe. Brotherly love only. Written for the challenge at spn_outsidepov. My prompt was Sam's laptop.

( Read-Only Memory )

After the heart palpitations I suffered when one of my students told me, scandalised, about their attempt to research Hephaistion online, and the horrific discovery that women write *porn* about him I thought it might be wise to conceal how much time I spend on the net.

I still suffer conversations like this though [not in class I'd like to point out, I was checking out strange noises from the common room]:

Students: Blah, blah, Harry!Potter!cakes.

Boy 1: You know Ma'am, life in the boarding house here has completely destroyed the romance of Harry Potter.

Me: *snicker*

Boy 2: Well at least Mr X and Mr Y [the housemasters] are completely straight and normal. I bet there was some pretty dodgy stuff going down in the dormitory at Hogwarts.

Me: [aside] You have no idea. [Oh why?! Why did I open my mouth???]

Boy 1: Actually, yeah. If you want to know, just google it. It's on the net.

Me: *chokes and dies*

Boy 2: Huh?

Boy 1: It's like a cross between original Harry Potter, romance novels, and hard core pornography.

Me: [inspired] I don't think you should be reading that in the boarding house. You'll get into trouble.

Boy 1: Oh, no. It doesn't set off the filters. I've checked.

Ahem.

And it just went *on*.

Boy 3: It's amazing what's on the net, Ma'am. [Evidently I was pulling off the innocent act.] There's even *Simpsons* porn! [Okay, I did *not* know *that*.]

Boy 4: That's just those freaks that do the Japanese cartoon porn.

Boy 3: Damn manga dorks.

Boy 5: It's not manga, there's nothing wrong with that. It's hentai.

Me: [couldn't help it] What???

Boy 5: Hentai. Japanese cartoon porn.

Me: How the hell do you know this?

Chorus: Everyone knows this.

At that point I remembered a pressing engagement elsewhere. But I conducted research with my senior students as they trickled in later that afternoon.

Me: Do you know what hentai is?

Boy 6: Of course. Don't you?

Me: Of course. But I didn't know it had a name.

Repeat conversation verbatim for Boys 7-11.

Me: Do you know what hentai is?

Boy 12: It means pervert.

Me: Huh?

Boy 12 [smiling the smile that makes me weak in the knees]: But that's not what you wanted to know, right?

Me: Huh?

Boy 12: It's Japanese cartoon porn. But it *means* pervert.

Me: Huh. I forgot you speak Japanese.

Boy 13: Ah, pron. It's good for the soul.

Me: [goggles]

Boy 13: Do you not know that one?

Me: Of course I do. [aside: I just can't think of an appropriate way to say "I thought it was only women on lj talking about fanfic who use it."]

Boy 12: It's a sad, sick old world out there Ma'am. You'd better stay safely at home with Alexander.

Boy 13: *Hang* on!!! That sounds really dodgy.

Me: *flees*

I have survived the term! The move, the weary commute, the new bosses and colleagues, the insane students... And lived to tell the tale.

Highlights:

The sheer unceasing ridiculously cheerful obsession of 75% of my boys with eunuchs, who was doing who out of Alexander and Hephaistion, how the rules of the harem and the 365 concubines worked, and the competition to write essays in purple prose that would do fanfiction.net proud - quote: Hephaistion's love was a flower blooming in the dessert [sic] that helped the glorious sun that was Alexander's genius shine.

Lowlights:

Continuous earthquakes portending the end of the world. Or Wellington, anyway.

Staying with my best friend/flatmate's parents. Well as a whole it's fine, but there was that time they helpfully did my washing - which I hate anyway - and when I got home lying neatly on my bed with my unmentionables was a copy of the Joy of Sex which hadn't seen daylight in a decade but had been lying in wait in the bottom of my odd sock drawer for just such a humiliation.

Having to set up my computer out in the garage in sub-antarctic temperatures and sneak out to check my email at odd hours. Having no clue what was going on in ljland.


Yeah, on the whole, it's been good. And now, more importantly, I get to do nothing but sleep and surf the net for two weeks. Oh, and grade papers, but let's not let that harsh the buzz.

To celebrate, I hereby rashly? insanely? offer a one off chance to loyal readers to make requests. That's right, friends. First come best dressed as the saying goes, so hit me. Now's your chance to get in with rude polite reminders about which of my broken promises you're waiting on most breathlessly, or prompts for teeny snippets. Any of my universes or none, it's open slather. But for a limited time and while stocks last.

If anyone's noticed my absence - and if noone has, excuse me while I cry miserable tears of rejection, *vbg* - it's been an incredibly busy first fortnight in my new job. Maniacal. Add moving house and the recipe for net withdrawal is complete.

Also keeping me on my toes has been an alarming preponderance of references at work to things gay. In positive and negative lights, hysterically amusing and rather less so.

The highlights:

Day One: My boss announced that Alexander made him very uncomfortable. I naively (I still have moments, God knows why) assumed he meant the violence. "What in particular?" I asked. He snorted and just repeated, "Very uncomfortable. Grossly unpleasant film." Which made all plain.

Day Two: At a meeting for new staff, management announced that we were to refrain at all times from expressing opinions on controversial topics. As a little of my academic spirit died, I pondered how much I really needed the money. A colleague demanded to know what the proscribed topics were. Bless him. Indigenous land rights and Civil Unions, apparently. I summoned my will and insisted, "I can't teach Greek Society without mentioning homosexuality." My boss smiled sweetly, and said, "You're a scholar. That's research, not opinion." Then he shook his head and muttered, I kid you not, "Very uncomfortable, grossly unpleasant," under his breath.

Day Three: I handed out my course prescriptions, and asked my Alexander class why they thought he was great. A strangely jockish looking individual yelled out, "Never mind that, was he gay?" I'd pretty much been expecting it, though nowhere near so quickly, and gave what I thought was a really good answer about differing cultural norms and the impossibility of easy labels. "Never mind that," he yelled again, "was he gay?" The next hour was a free for all of eighteen year old boys asking ever more incredulous questions, all about the sexual predelictions of dead heroes, culminating in "You've ruined Achilles for me forever, Ma'am..."

Day Four: Exactly the same, repeated, as those who'd been absent the day before appeared.

Day Five: Took an extension group for debate. Nothing to do with classics. We were discussing the NZ flag, and whether we should boot the Union Jack off it, given we're independent and all. One student of Greek extraction felt strongly that we should. Jocko slung back with vicious glee, "Does the Greek flag have two guys bumming each other on it?" Chaos, as all those who *aren't* in my class demanded to know just what the hell was going on, and Jocko treated us all to a precis of the Homo!History of the Western World.

A few days then passed in peace, and the majority of my students revealed themselves to be intelligent and thoughtful young men, if a little preoccupied with the sexual habits of others. One surprised me with a critique about how Hephaistion [in Alexander] represented all that was/could be good in a close male friendship, while Bagoas represented animal lust and was in all ways absolutely deplorable.

Today: Discussion of the Granikos. Maps, diagrams, clever little models to represent cavalry and infantry. Awesome teaching, if I say so myself. All came a mighty cropper as somehow the presence of prostitutes reared its ugly head. Possibly in a reference to the baggage train. "Male prostitutes?" yelled my jocktastic friend. He seems incapable of speaking quietly. No, I sighed, ordinary camp followers. "How about eunuchs?" asked someone else. No, no eunuchs yet. "What's a eunuch?" yelled Jocko.

At this point I have to accept partial responsibility and admit that I froze like a deer in headlights. It was all just so incongruous when I was mid-sentence on the diamond formation of the Thessalian cavalry. The word "castrated" completely abandoned me, and I hesitated. And the boys were through, like Alexander through a gap in the Persian infantry. A thousand absurd definitions echoed off the walls, culminating in Jocko yelling louder than ever, "You mean they chop your penis off???".

"No," I snapped, trying to gather the shreds of my cool. "You need your penis to urinate. They remove your testicles." Cue mass squirm. Three seconds of calm. "What about your tongue? What about your fingers? Can't you use those?" I'm fairly sure I was burgundy by now. Wellington's continuing heatwave wasn't helping. "What's the point if you can't get it up?" Jocko of course. I'm ashamed to say I got the giggles at this point, just lost it completely. The subtleties of removing *desire* rather than ability to perform are evidently lost on teenage boys.

All told, it's an awesome class, and I'm enjoying every minute of it. My Homer class is just as good, though more focused. This is going to be a fantastic year, if an extraordinarily busy one. All I need now is an hour or two to get some fic updates done. Is that asking too much? Oh, and please, no mention of sex tomorrow. Let me get through *one* class with a straight face.

A key figure in the conspiracy to assassinate John F Kennedy was, and I quote, an impregnable chestnut. I was solemnly assured of this fact by several of my favourite students in an assessed presentation. Had it been anyone else, I would have assumed they were taking the mick, but racking my brain for ways to make the passage make sense, I finally figured it out. One of the boys in the group, presumably the one who typed up that section, is a native French speaker. And an impermeable marron, once you've transposed noun/adjective order, and picked the *right* meanings from the dictionary definitions, is, of course, a man in a brown raincoat.