sekiharatae | It's a fanfic, not a thesis! (Reply)

I've been working on an RK fanfic since the

help_japan auctions ended. Not constantly -- I've also been pondering my FFVII and HP stories, and spending a lot of time being under the weather -- but still, I've spent a large chunk of my time on it in the last month and a half.

Bizarrely, most of that time has been on research.

Yes, you read that right. Research. For a fanfic. In the last few days I've found myself stopping frequently to double check some fact or another. Admittedly, it's during the initial 'setup' of my AU, so it's more detail intensive, but still...

Along with all that research, I've been compiling a file of 'notes' -- things I might want to explain to the reader later -- and found myself writing the following:

Initially I’d thought to use Bendigeidfran (Bran the Blessed) as my Apollo analogue, but in trying to pin down what his ‘symbol’ might be (the raven), I grew dissatisfied with this choice. Largely due to the fact that I could find no reason for him to be associated with the sun, despite several lists of Celtic gods claiming the link exists. Instead, I decided that the two best possibilities were the pan-Celtic deities Lugus and Belenus. Lugus is a sort of jack-of-all-trades god – much like Apollo – whereas Belenus seems to be the most universally accepted Celtic sun deity. In fact, the ancient Romans associated Lugus with Mercury and Belenus with Apollo, so I could just go from there. They surely had better access to the source beliefs! However, provided Lugus’ association with light isn’t just an etymological mixup (as one source argues rather convincingly) he may be a better fit for my purposes.

And I thought: Tae, you are insane. You wouldn't need this much justification if you were writing a novel. Which you're not. Pick a name, make one up, but just go with it.

*head desk head desk head desk*