nerding + fangirling = super dork

I'm maybe 10 pages or so into the Mystery Potion Thing, which is further than I've gotten on anything in a while. What makes this super dorky is me pulling things out of Elements of Murder about the history of alchemy and poisoning, adding research, hitting them with the slash hammer, and then inserting them into my story. For example: There is a book called The Triumphal Chariot of Antimony that was supposedly written by a Benedictine monk named Basilus Valentinus from a monastery in Erfurt, born in 1395. It was also supposedly discovered inside a marble pillar at that monastery (which didn't exist, btw) when it was hit by lightning. There are 3 schools of thought on Basil - that he was a real guy, that he was Paracelsus under a pseudonym (they would have been contemporary, and their methods and philosophies were similar), and that he was entirely made up by Johann Thölde, who published the book in the 1600s and who had previously written Haliographia, which included methods for the extraction of metals from salts which are also mentioned in The Triumphal Chariot. The latter is most likely, as reference is also made in Chariot of the use of antimony in the manufacture of lead type and for treatment of syphillis, both of which would have been severely anachronistic to its supposed date of authorship.

Only, in my head, this has translated to the romance and partnership of Basil and Paracelsus, and the later extreme cross-gen love affair/mentorship between Basil and Thölde (Thölde was a pharmacist and the owner of a large stake in a silver mine - which would have been one of the better available sources of Antimony in Germany circa 1670). I would like all of this to somehow make it's way into my Mystery Potion Thing, which will probably get a title lifted from Chariot now that I have found a transcription online. Maybe with the Valentinus/Thölde I can make subtle allusions to Snapledore? 

OMG I am a dork. 

On a side note, before I run off to class, I recently found a short and reasonably coherent Orphen fanfic I had written some time ago (In which Majic crushes on his master and nearly gets himself killed by a horrible lake monster because of it, only to be rescued from a very embarrassing situation by said master). If anyone is interested, I will put it up - however, I don't think I've ever heard anyone on my flist mention being an Orphen fan, so I won't spam if nobody wants it. I would also like to state for the record that Orphen is one of the Great Neglected Potential Slash Fandoms of the World.

The Orphen fic

This does not have a title, and, as I've realized since my last post, is actually not quite finished. The action is all done, but there ought to be a bit of a wind down where Majic thinks about everything that happened and what the creature saw in him and doesn't have to cook the soup. Also, Orphen will at least tell him what the creature was and how it hunts. Anyone with any knowledge of European fairy-type lore ought to recognize it, if I did my job right. Also, yes, there can be sandy beaches on lakes in swamps. There is one on Lake Ponchartrain at the mouth of the Tchefuncte that I had in mind.

For

caerfree

The Untitled Long-Lost, Nearly Finished Orphen Thing 
Majic crushing on Orphen, some violence and magicky dub-con
Not Beta'd

 

( The story thing )

At the time that I found this, I also found bits of a RL/HP AU (possibly nonmagical) and the outline and first few pages of my intended Fanfic Of Fanfic for Rushlight's Pendulum of Choice in which Lily survives and Harry doesn't. I am deliberately ignoring them in favor of Mystery Potion Thing (which really needs a title).