December Meme Post 4
My fourth prompt was from ![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
seerofbread: "smoke". Somehow that resulted in a sonnet for Vlad Taltos.
Grey As Smoke
Great Adrilankha, gleaming capitol
Of an immortal Empire on the shore;
My home, yet not my home: my mother bore
Me in its Eastern ghetto, stained and dull.
A cloak of grey I donned when grown in full:
Admittance to the House of thug and whore,
The grey of death, and black of sorceror
Sans scruple, were the colours of their rule.
A little while I prospered, in the face
Of all the prejudice that stood against me;
Or so I thought. My heart proved me a fool,
And my successes turned into disgrace.
Now no more of that old life can I see;
My Jhereg cloak conceals my hunted face.
smoke, n.
1. the visible vapor and gases given off by a burning or smoldering substance, especially the gray, brown, or blackish mixture of gases and suspended carbon particles resulting from the combustion of wood, peat, coal, or other organic matter.
2. something resembling this, as vapor or mist, flying particles, etc.
3. something unsubstantial, evanescent, or without result.
4. an obscuring condition.
seerofbread: "smoke". Somehow that resulted in a sonnet for Vlad Taltos.Grey As Smoke
Great Adrilankha, gleaming capitol
Of an immortal Empire on the shore;
My home, yet not my home: my mother bore
Me in its Eastern ghetto, stained and dull.
A cloak of grey I donned when grown in full:
Admittance to the House of thug and whore,
The grey of death, and black of sorceror
Sans scruple, were the colours of their rule.
A little while I prospered, in the face
Of all the prejudice that stood against me;
Or so I thought. My heart proved me a fool,
And my successes turned into disgrace.
Now no more of that old life can I see;
My Jhereg cloak conceals my hunted face.
smoke, n.
1. the visible vapor and gases given off by a burning or smoldering substance, especially the gray, brown, or blackish mixture of gases and suspended carbon particles resulting from the combustion of wood, peat, coal, or other organic matter.
2. something resembling this, as vapor or mist, flying particles, etc.
3. something unsubstantial, evanescent, or without result.
4. an obscuring condition.
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I think this is my first Petrarchan sonnet, which tied my brain in knots -- but that means it was a worthy challenge!
Too bad about it being a fandom you don't know, though.
Hey, wanna read an awesome series of books?A basic rundown: Vlad Taltos is a human in the Dragaeran Empire, which is peopled by tall, near-immortal 'elves' who belong to one of seventeen Houses; humans are Houseless second-class citizens. Each House has particular personality characterics, heraldic colours, and membership is something you're born into, with two exceptions: one of which is the Jhereg, who will cheerfully sell a title to anyone with money, even a human. Vlad's father bought a Jhereg title, which Vlad inherits upon his father's death.
The House of the Jhereg is notable for being in charge of the Empire's organised crime; illegal gambling, unlicensed brothels, hired muscle/enforcer, loan sharking, and no-questions-asked sorcery are their province. Vlad starts off as an assassin and builds himself into a middling-level boss, but eventually crosses the wrong person and has to flee the city; he's currently a fugitive whom a lot of highly-placed people want to see dead.
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I can have a pretty hard time with structured poetry in the first place, so I'm pretty impressed that it happened at all.
I'll try to put that on my list! Right now I'm catching up on a different fantasy series (I'm not sure why I haven't fandomed more with this one) so this particular instant is fairly inconvenient, but I'll probably make some sort of "read more books" resolution for the new year, so I could use the rec.
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I'm pretty impressed that it happened at all
Thank you! (Like the tag says, sonnets are my OTP; but generally I go for the Elizabethan form.)
I'll try to put that on my list!
YAY!! Seriously, Dragaera needs more fans! I don't know why, but there seems to be a serious lack of fandom for it. There is not one single Vlad/Kragar fic in existence, for example, and that's pretty much criminal. Who doesn't want cross-species height-difference slash between a wisecracking human mob boss and his suspiciously obedient elf secretary?!