Talk:And Many Fates Fulfill

Yuletide Comments

The following are the comments that were made to the original Yuletide post in 2007/8:

From: Londonbard Date: 03/02/2008 Superb. Perfectly in the tone of the book.

From: Lorie Date: 01/02/2008 This is just an amazing story, so perfect for Renault and the character. You've really captured how he thinks and what's important/memorible to him. Excellent job, thank you so much for this.

From: Londonbard Date: 12/31/2007 This story is really excellent - I love that book and this is very much in the tone and spirit of the canon.

From: Dorinda Date: 12/29/2007 Wonderful! This grasps and weaves so many threads from the novel, so deftly: Niko's character, his past and his romantic dallying and his dedication to his art; his devotion to Apollo, with signs and portents guiding him; his bond with Thettalos, as well as Thettalos's awareness of a new age of the theater. And poor Dion, breaking before his fall (if ever there were a time Niko would have hated to be right, it's then!); and, of course, Alexander, the answer to a prayer who may have come too late. I was swept right up, as if in missing scenes right out of the book.

From: Daegaer Date: 12/29/2007 Absolutely lovely, and captures the tone of the book extremely well!

From: yunitsa Date: 12/28/2007 This is amazing. I can't imagine anything more true to the tone and style of the novel, and the setting, and it was wonderful to get immersed in that world once again. Bravo!

From: ilyena Date: 12/26/2007 This is flatly _excellent_, and by excellent I mean amazing.

It flows gorgeously, it sounds perfectly lyrical, and it _feels_ like Renault's work.

I love the flickering in the mask and how that was enough for them to change their conversation topic, and I love the skill and detail you worked into the world. Excellently done.

From: Inner Voice Date: 12/26/2007 <3 <3 <3 When I first saw the title of this fic, I just stared and stared at it, going “I…I…I GOT A MARY RENAULT FIC!” And then my brain blanked out on a long SQUEEEEEEEEEE—

It took me a while to shake myself out of the squee and actually start reading, but when I did, I was NOT disappointed. In fact, I am enchanted, impressed, tickled, amazed, and above all downright overjoyed! <3

I asked for "anything, really," and in return you gave me something that pretty much contains ALL my favorite aspects of the book! A wonderful writing style that reads like something straight out of a Renault book. A play, and musings on how it treats goodness and justice in its portrayal of the world. A persistent focus on Nikeratos' faith in his god. ("Keeping his faith," as you say, is one of the things I find most wonderful about Nikeratos.) A Nikeratos-chooses-Apollo-over-Dion moment. (For a Niko/Dion shipper, I have the most incredible love for Nikeratos for doing that.) In conclusion, this fic feels to me like canon, like...a microcosm of the book, if that makes any sense at all. It's a hundred times shorter than MoA, but still contains the ESSENCE of it, the characters and the philosophy and the interaction and everything. <3

The Niko/Thettalos interaction was a wonderful bonus. "I went home and raged to Thettalos, who nobly forbore to remind me that he'd yet to play a protagonist's role." --Ah, it really MUST be love! XD And Thettalos' rebuttals of Niko's arguments against Orestes really ties in with and expands on the canon, in which it's mentioned that he's an actor of a younger generation than Niko, with different sensibilities.

And the Niko/Dion interaction, the reason I requested this fic in the first place...it was awkward and poignant in a way that is just PERFECT for the way that they ended up, and your disillusioned Dion actually got a heartbroken whimper out of me. And the one line that really, really caught me: "Good masks get their best effects with distance, but with great men, it seems, the opposite is true." For me, it's a powerful portrayal of Niko's feelings for Dion. Dion affects him deeply and always will, but there are just too many things between them, so he simply deals with it with wry acceptance.

Okay, this comment is beginning to look almost as long as the fic itself, so I'll stop my babbling now. XD

I would like to apologize for how long it took me to comment, and my only excuse is--silly as it is--I honestly spent the last day-and-a-half trying to write a comment that did justice to how much I enjoyed this fic. ^_^;;; I hope I succeeded, because I really enjoyed getting it as a Christmas present, and so I wanted to thank you properly, whoever you are.

<3 Inner Voice

From: Rubynye Date: 12/26/2007 Nikeratos is one of my favorite fictional characters, full stop, and this story feels like sharing a cup of wine with him late in the evening, soaking in everything he says.

(And the scene where Niko throws down the cup is one of my favorites ever. At the mention thereof, I squeed.)

From: Baranduin Date: 12/25/2007 How wonderful this is! I just read it out loud and it took it very well.

Beautiful story.