[Meme] Turn Left

[edenfalling]

Found via askerian over on Tumblr.

Inspired by Doctor Who's "Turn Left": Pick one of my stories and tell me a point in the tale that you'd change. Something tiny (e.g. "and then Fay chose silver glitter instead of gold") or big (e.g. "and then Rose was arrested instead of Jack") and I'll tell you how that one difference would have altered the course of the entire story.

I am bored. Play with me?

Comments

[hungrytiger11.livejournal.com]

I'll choose a shorter piece- "That darkened over coming years" Ilgmuth chooses a different gift other than perfume.

[edenfalling]

Not much changes! He'd probably have picked jewelry or bells or a silk scarf/sash -- those being other traditional first move courting gifts among the upper classes. (Lower classes tend to go for cheaper and/or more practical things; a pouch of seeds is popular and symbolic, as is a decorative hair fastening of some sort.) And Shezan would have rejected the gift on some other pretext, because people generally want the time provided by a couple back-and-forth steps to get to know their suitors in a marriage-oriented context, even if they've been otherwise acquainted for years.

Now, if Ilgamuth had offered Shezan a poem or something living like a hawk (which is what the bell gift is derived from, incidentally), Zardis would have been much more worried, because those are serious gifts and generally not attempted until after at least one small gift has been accepted and the two people are thus effectively engaged. A person who moves that quickly -- who is rash, like Rabadash -- would not be an acceptable son-in-law. (And to be honest, Shezan would also be pretty discomfited by that scenario, to the point where she might reject the next gift as well, quit teasing Ilgamuth, and call the whole courtship off.)

[hungrytiger11.livejournal.com]

See- this is so utterly, utterly fascinating to me. Even though it may not change the story much, I feel like I have a deeper understanding of the cultural practice. It makes me wonder more about Cor's choice of gifts then. Though they were more the same sort of small things, was his understanding of the nuances as good (due both to the fact that he was a commoner in a household of only men and because of the years that have passed since being in Calormene).

[edenfalling]

Cor and Aravis are different from Shezan and Ilgamuth in that they already know that they're both sexually attracted to each other and capable of living in a functional partnership for the long haul. They don't need the testing/dating period of the dance, which is why Cor jumped to offering two gifts right off the bat and left jesses along with the bells, and also why Aravis didn't bother rejecting that first gift. But yeah, he was uncertain that she really was doing what he thought she was doing when she started insulting his manhood and otherwise flirting Calormene-style, because he only knows courting secondhand from folktales and gossip he heard on the infrequent occasions Arsheesh took him into the nearby village. That's why it took him a while to respond. Well, and he also had to acquire the right perfume without asking her for help, which was a little complicated.

I think Cor did half-expect Aravis to reject his first gift, just because that's the pattern in stories -- it usually goes by the rule of threes, so there are two rejections before an acceptance. (That's not a requirement, btw, nor even necessarily the most common pattern in real life; it's just tidy on a literary level.) But he's not stupid enough to look a gift horse in the mouth when she comes to find him wearing the perfume and the bells. *grin*