Goat Notes

In a recent post, I made a throwaway joke about an Arthurian fanficcer, whose handle implied that he/she was into shipping Nimue/Balin in a big way.  I pulled this particular combination completely out of my ear, and promptly forgot about it.

Last night, pleasantly torpid with butter chicken and saag, I drifted into a dream in which the Doctor, Romana, and I were desperately attempting to stop the quantum cats destroying the universe.  We failed, they did this thing, and I was pitched into a new dream in a darkling faerie underworld.

As Sir Balin le Savage.  This is seldom a good sign.  And the lovely Nimue was riding at my side...

The reason you are hearing about this is because the shipper turns out to have got it so totally wrong.

I was forty-six - which is slightly more seasoned and experienced than I actually am.  Nim was precisely half my age.  Romance completely failed to strike me as a possibility.

And anyway, it later emerged that Nim was gay - not through her actually meeting a nice girl, but through her batshit super-controlling sorceress mother's pressing her to settle down and marry, and then throwing us both into the dungeons with much cursing and lightning-chucking when she found out why this was not happening.

Luckily, Launcelot du Lake came by and helped us to bust out.  In this reality, he had Lake magic to throw around too: could have taken down a tank in fifteen seconds.  I'm not sure he didn't.

Unluckily, the Lady of the Lake weighed in for the rematch - I think she was batshit mother's big sister.  And the Lady of the Lake did not like me, because I was Balin.  And she was a much, much more powerful enchantress than both my friendly magicians together.  Jail again!

Separate cells, this time.  But I was Balin, so I was super tough, and busted out of my dungeon and went creeping through the underwater catacombs to find her, or my friends, or someone.

But I was Balin, so a blood-guilt was on my head; and presently I found the mangled corpse in the crypt, and I shivered with guilt and grief and knew that my sins had found me out, and I was cut off from all good-hearted folk like Nim and Lance forever.  That left killing the Lady.  But it was the Lady whose head I'd cut off in the first place - which, in retrospect, is no doubt why she didn't like me much.  On a rocky shelf of dream-logic I sat down and wept.

Behind me came a noise like a gurgling, hungry bandsaw.  I leapt up, my sword hopelessly in my hand.  The Lady had invoked the Furies, and one had found me!

I defy anybody to stay asleep in the shadow of a Kindly One.  I woke like hell.  I was not sorry to do so.

Deep in the pre-dawn dungeons, my downstairs neighbour was snoring like Fury.

This doesn't score very high on my "Best Dreams Ever" list.  I didn't get the girl.  There wasn't another girl for Nim to get.  The cats got my first universe.  I was just about to get dead and damned in my second.  Also, I turned out to be a murdering shit.  By any objective measure, all of these must certainly rank as downers.

All things considered, I feel remarkably refreshed and tranquil.

But that is what I got, for inventing the idea of Nimue/Balin fanfic!