Talk:Lay Your Sleeping Head Human on My Faithless Arm

Yuletide Comments

The following are the comments that were made to the original Yuletide post in 2008/9:

From: Madam Mim Date: 01/06/2009 Wonderful--I love the second paragraph especially. You have a knack for beautiful turns of phrase. And of course great characterisation. <3

From: Lorie Date: 01/05/2009 I really like your take on Alec's reasoning for being with Sandy, and how true this is to what we see in the book about just what being in a relationship means to Alec, too. Very nice atmosphere you set up in the artificial night of the blackout curtains.

From: minnow Date: 12/27/2008 Ouch. The melancholy of this was very well done. I liked this line especially:

>Bunny's loyalties were never in question, because they were unwaveringly centered on himself alone.<

From: KindKit Date: 12/26/2008 I always liked the complicated friendship of Alec and Ralph in the novel, and this is a lovely view of it. Poor things, they're both (at the time this is set) involved with men who don't deserve them. I do hope Alec eventually managed to dump Sandy and find someone better.

Anyway, the deep affection between Alec and Ralph, which is *close* to romantic love but not quite it, really shines in this story.

From: wildestranger Date: 12/26/2008 I had not thought of it before, but I find that I really like the idea of Ralph and Alec sleeping together like this. A lovely moment of non-intimacy between them, and yet, a moment of vulnerability as well. A very satisfying read.

From: True River Date: 12/26/2008 I love this - beautifully written, poignant and poetic, thank you! :)

From: mrsronweasley Date: 12/26/2008 Wow, this was incredibly, amazingly good. Your language was pitch-perfect, and the atmosphere...wow. Wow, wow, wow. You handled them both with such care, and Ralph, as soon through Alec's eyes, was *perfect*. As was Alec - I always really liked him as a character, and you truly did him justice here. This is poignant, and so smart, and wow, I just really, really love it.

I think my favorite bits are:

- Alec thinking about how war and the "anything can happen" mentality causes things to actually happen, and - realizing that this is a "calm before the storm" prologue to the book itself, and it truly gave me chills.

Thank you so much - this was *wonderful*.

From: Nos4a2no9 Date: 12/25/2008 Your use of language was incredible - this story emerges as a fully-formed scene, brilliant and complex, and I loved the way you built up to such a solid characterization of this moment between Ralph and Alec. Wonderful fic!

From: fawatson Date: 12/25/2008 Fleshes out the characterisation of both of them beautifully. Well done!

From: Aussie54 Date: 12/25/2008 It's always a little sad for me to read about a couple that's no longer together, but these characters seem to think differently; they just get on with life.

We don't get to see a lot of Alec in canon, so it's nice to catch your glimpse of him here.

From: Assimbya Date: 12/25/2008 Oh, this is sad and beautiful.

From: Oshun Date: 12/25/2008 I loved this story. How clever and interesting of you to choose Alec and Ralph together after they split up. I could easily imagine that happening, their strong, enduring affection for one another is palpable in the book despite the fact that they were too much alike in some way to ever stay together and too different in others. (I actually liked seeing them together in this situation, faithless or whatever. Because it just felt so real to me.) I particularly enjoyed the tiny details--Alec "swatting Ralph playfully" moved me greatly. I also liked their discussion of why they were with the people they were with, great insight into Alec with "he himself would take Sandy's predictable histrionics over Bunny's unpredictable subtlety; a face-full of scalding despair was more palatable to him than a cold knife in the back." I don't think Ralph would have taken on Sandy for fear of hurting him. Beautifully written and I completely bought the characterization.

From: queen_ypolita Date: 12/25/2008 Oh wow. I really really like this - it gets the friends-but-no-longer-together between Alec and Ralph just right.

From: Fantine Date: 12/25/2008 I think the title is from an Auden poem, one that he wrote with his lover Chester Somebody in mind, correct?

Very nice piece.

From: tetsubinatu Date: 12/25/2008 Wow! For me?

And it's a melancholy moment of Alec/Ralph - oh perfect joy is mine! I didn't expect anything, really... so - thankyou, thankyou, thankyou! (Just loved the small love-bite, and the insincere promises...)

Gosh! *wanders off dazed to boast of my present to my beloved*