Saturday 14th July, 2012

Current avatar: A sketchy doodle of mine I coloured - Caporal Louis LeBeau, (one of?) my favourite character(s) from Hogan's Heroes. He's plucky, proud, stubborn, he's a great chef and he's got a big heart - and he's French ;o)

(Pour ceux qui se sont décarcassés à écrire des reviews pour les Chroniques des Maraudeurs, merci énormément. Je n'ai pas abandonné l'écriture de cette histoire (malgé les apparences) mais elle est en hiatus jusqu'à ce que l'inspiration me revienne.

So, in English: thanks for those who've left reviews or asked whether I'd abandonned HOPFFY. It is on hiatus, but I haven't given up hope to finish it someday. Bonne lecture/Good reading everyone :o)

And because this profile needs a proper "bio": I'm Belphegor, I'm French, I'm 30, and I have a life in the RW that keeps me very busy and very happy most of the time. Which means I write slowly. But I love to read, as long as it's fun, thrilling, full of adventure (and a little bit of romance at times doesn't hurt) but especially well-written and -characterised. So maybe you've found my name in a review of one of your stories. That means I really, really liked it.

I have a page on DeviantArt (the-french-belphegor) where I post most of my drawings. If you have five minutes to kill you can go have a look :o)

J'ai une page sur FictionPress, sous le même nom de plume - il y a deux petits trucs dessus pour l'instant, un poème et un début (?) d'histoire. Jetez-y un coup d'œil! :o]

Those are mine, though - I mean, I don't own the canon characters and... bet you can figure out the rest :)

Hogan's Heroes

Mademoiselle Marlene: proof that I never seem to be able to not include food in my HH stories, particularly where LeBeau is concerned. As long as you (and he) don't mind, though, I guess it's all right.

The Mystery of the Exploding Bridges: Hochstetter running around trying to figure out the absurdity that is the bombing of the bridges in Into the Woods combined with the actual results of Hogan's schemes seemed too good to pass. Plus Hochstetter is one fun guy to mentally torture :o)

Woman, Wife, Mother, Friend: finally got around to imagine Tony', Tom', Bobby', Pauline' and the others' mums. So far, the Mary Sue pitfall seems to have been avoided.

If: quite possibly the darkest, bleakest thing I've written so far. Entirely devoid of humour and happy ending; thankfully AU. At least writing this snapshot confirmed what I previously thought: character death is not something I could ever consider writing lightly.

Agony of the Leaves: a snapshot that grew. The friendship between Newkirk and LeBeau is one of my very favourite things about HH; they complement each other so well that looking at it through the coffee and tea aspect seemed like a good idea.

L'éléphant de Carter/Carter's Elephant: ma première histoire écrite en français depuis dix ans! Elle se situe quelques jours après l'arrivée de Carter au Stalag 13, et on peut la relier au "chapitre" (pas vraiment un chapitre, plutôt une mini-nouvelle) 5 de Stalag By Starlight, "Misfits". My first story written in French in ten years, set a few days after Carter arrives at Stalag 13.

Merlu Pané et Pommes de Terre Frites: originally a birthday present fic for a fellow HH author, dedicated to Richard Dawson after I heard about his passing on the day I finished it. Because fish and chips and a smile seemed a nice tribute.

Of the Benefits of Being Overlooked: my entry to the 2012 Short-Story Speed-Writing Contest over at the Stalag XIIIC forum. Funny how a character can be born from just one sentence (in this case, the opening line of Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man) and gradually develop as you pull the thread of characterisation and development.

An Unfortunate Victim of Circumstances: misunderstandings and conversations without enough context information are fun to play for both drama and for laughs. This (my 31st story - can't believe how much Hogan's Heroes made my story count go up this quick!) is (hopefully) a decent example.

Into the Woods: took my "inspiration" for this one from a catchphrase of a 1970s French WW2 comedy (set during the 1940 Debacle) called Mais où est donc passée la Septième Compagnie? (Where has the 7th Company got to?, more commonly called La Septième Compagnie) - namely, "If I knew the bloody idiot who blew up the bridge". Mixed with (what should have been) a simple enough mission and a healthy dose of Murphy's Law, and you get the very first "real" chaptered story (if I don't count Soul Food, which was a collection of interrelated one-shots) I ever finished. Still can't believe it.

Stalag by Starlight: a collection of snippets, drabbles and vignettes, mostly experiments in characters exploration and the odd all-dialogue ficlet.

Bobby, Robert, Pauline & Co: an experiment that turned out all right. It began as a self-imposed challenge (to see if I could come up with kids for our Heroes) and I ended up with these nine kids, whom I've grown rather fond of. I'll try to use them again in another story, because they're fun to write around - but then, I'll have to think up the mums, too, and for now I'm not sure I'm talented enough to avoid the Mary Sue pitfall. We'll see...

Soul Food: somehow this fandom not only got me writing again after more than a year of not completing one single chapter or one-shot, but I owe it my first ever finished chaptered story; even if I didn't already love it to pieces I would be very, very grateful. Watching the series I got the impression that LeBeau was very much a miracle worker in terms of guerilla cooking (so to speak) and I wanted to delve into some of the possible dishes the guys of Barracks 2 could have shared. It gave me the opportunity to try and see things through Schultz's PoV (who naturally hears and sees NOTHING), but mostly to play with endearing and interesting characters from a comedy with great potential for drama. Incidentally, I love pub grub.

White Collar

Twenty-Five Moments: a half-successful attempt at getting back to writing. I took one of those prompt word tables, picked words at random and let my mind wander. Originally it was going to be 50 moments, but my muse crashed again right after that - shame, I'd have liked playing with these great characters a bit more.

Discworld

Wake: this fic has a weird history. I wrote three quarters of it more than one year ago, and put it on hold because the itch to write had shifted to other fandoms - as it happens sometimes. After my grandfather's death late in June, I re-read it, and suddenly had the urge to finish it. It's about death (not DEATH, though), it's about loved ones going away when we don't expect it at all, and it's about life going on whether we want it or not. I killed one of my very favourite characters for this story, and it's not something I see happening again soon. Crivens, but it's hard.

Justice League

Blood Brothers: an older story I had written as a twin prompt challenge with a fellow Rogues fan (and great author) on LJ. I wanted to explore the impact of Alive! and Destroyer (the former in particular, because so many villains die during this episode) on a team that had more or less split by that point, and locking up two guys in an out-of-order freezer with slowly decreasing oxygen seemed the best way for it.

Everybody Comes To Harry's: quite simply, I wanted to do something more with the pub the Rogues hang in in Flash and Substance and that I'd used in Villains. Each chapter of Harry's can be read as a one-shot, from one particular Rogue's point of view, and the timeline is about ten or twelve years - from the beginning of the Flash's career (and his villains') to the episode Destroyer. Oh, and each chapter has a reference to Casablanca, because Rick's "Café Américain" is perhaps the coolest bar ever, and the title of the play the film comes from is called Everybody Comes To Rick's. Yeah.

Wife: funny how the simplest ideas sometimes turn out exactly as planned. In Flash and Substance, Captain Cold mentions two things his comics counterpart doesn't have: a wife and an ulcer. I just wondered what kind of woman would marry (and stay married to) a villain; it turned out to be Janet Snart, whom I've grown rather fond of, considering.

Villains: the idea for this one-shot just popped into my head after I watched the JLU episode Flash and Substance; the whole episode was great, but I must admit I particularly loved the idea of the Central City Rogues (Gallery) actually being a team, helping each other out and looking out for each other; that, and their hanging out in the same pub - they're creatures of habits :o) I just combined the feeling of excitement, dread and/or elation that you feel while watching a (generally rugby) game in your local with your mates with the sheer awesomeness of the Divided We Fall episode, and there you go.

Snapshot Collection: another try at a new fandom (got two other stories in progress, but this one's actually seen the light of day). It's a series of short stories - length varying from drabbles to ficlets - starring the Justice League characters. For the moment, most of them are set in the first series timeline, but there's a few set after the Thanagarian invasion. Most have Flash in them, because he always seems to sneak in somehow and do something really stupid/endearing...

Watchmen

Foreigners: The character of Sarah Hollis popped into my head one day, and Dan's head is so full of ghosts anyway that it was relatively easy to write the rest; I don't think I'll write more about his family, but the idea that Sarah would be dimly aware that the hat's former owner's "ghost" would haunt her dad and her deciding to share is a good way to end/begin a fic. Ah well.

The Man That Got Away: man, this was a tricky one. Having re-read the book after seeing the film, and after a little browsing over the fictions, I noticed that, while a certain number of fics featuring Nite Owl II and Rorschach as partners before the Keene Act had Rorschach getting injured and Dan taking care of him, the opposite was kind of rare - haven't seen one so far. And since stuff had been popping into my head recently about those two, all it took was a plot bunny to nibble at my ankles and voilà. It's a partner story, first and foremost, that delves into one of the most unique partnerships I've read/seen. It's also a bit of a character study. And I tried my hand at parallels. And the Ella Fitzgerald and Billie Holiday songs helped a lot, just by being incredible.

Kung Fu Panda

Weak Spot: a one-shot that delves into Po's main weakness, which is lack of self-confidence, as he discovers a weak spot he didn't know he had. Plus, Tigress not being your average gal when it comes to trust and actually treating someone as a friend, I just had to dig into that.

Pirates of the Caribbean

Sensations: the sequel to First Time for Everything, that I actually started to write before Alive. Because I wanted to explore/explain why Pintel and Ragetti are on a dinghy off the coast of the Pelegosto right before DMC, with the Prison Dog and a Bible. And hint at future DMC/AWE (darker) happenings. Tortuga seemed a good place for that, and I got to bring my favourite Tortuga prostitute back.

Alive: a 400-word drabble to answer a challenge at the Broken Compass. I usually don't do challenges (too difficult for me to come up with an idea on the spot :D) but this one inspired me a little glimpse at a dehydrated and possibly sunstroke Ragetti before we find him and Pintel off the Pelegosto coast. Takes place just before Sensations.

Mind the Brat: inspired by a conversation over on the Broken Compass forum about the "Jack Sparrow has a daughter" fics out there. I figured, well, what if he had? And what if this "daughter" is a smelly, ugly, screaming bundle of rags that nobody really wants anything to do with?

First Time for Everything: my first PotC story, set ten years before Curse of the Black Pearl, where Pintel finally has enough of Ragetti's shyness around girls and gets him a treat - a moment with one of the most-sought after prostitutes in Tortuga.

Do you know A Magnificent Garden Party? Well, I'm a part of it! I wrote Chapter 4 of Mothers of the Caribbean, "Capitaine Chevalle's mum", a.k.a. La Marseillaise. Check it out and tell us what you think :o)

The Mummy

Fairy Tales and Hokum: my Big Epic Mummy Project - a story about stories and hearsay, espionage, the means and the end, and friendship.

A Break From Normality: little angsty one-shot, my first try at one, essentially to give words to a very strong mental image.

Harry Potter (all written before OotP!):

Miroir Aux Alouettes: a very short, very old snippet - my first, actually. Pre-PoA, Remus Lupin reflects on the sometimes treacherous nature of friendship.

Did You Say "Kids"?: a short piece of dialogue, theatre-style, where James, Sirius, Remus and Lily discuss/quarrel over children names - where Lily is a little bit of a prat, Remus is a gentleman, and James and Sirius are, well... boys.

Hogwarts' Original Pranskters' Fantastic First Year: a long title for a long story,on hiatus. The first year is probably the most important in a Hogwarts student's life... How will James Potter, Sirius Black, Remus Lupin, Peter Pettigrew and Lily Evans' turn out to be? First-year nerves, dangerous pranks, Hagrid's big drooling yellowish dog... Add in mysterious black and white gem and you've got the perfect ingredients for an interesting first year. Oh, and there's a vampire, too.

The All Allows Inn: no, it's not a typo. A Hallowe'en fic I wrote for the Hallowe'en Challenge up at the Sugar Quill. The Fat Lady deplores the fact that no kid nowadays keep up with the Hallowe'en spirit, so she asks Nearly-Headless Nick totell MWPP and Lily a story. A ghost story, of course... :o)

Something: a challenge I gave myself - a short piece that'd be pure romance. "Something" is one of my favourite love songs in the world, I tried to write the snippet with it in my mind. Pure L/J fluff. At what point in a relationship do you know you're in love?

Et en français:

Les Chroniques des Maraudeurs: Première Année: un titre que je changerai sans doute un jour. La première année est peut-être la plus importante dans la vie d'un élève à Poudlard... Comment va être celle de James Potter, Sirius Black, Remus Lupin, Peter Pettigrow, et Lily Evans? Le trac de première année, des blagues qui tournent mal, l'énorme chien jaune baveux de Hagrid... ajoutez une mystérieuse agate noire et blanche, faites-la disparaître, et vous avez tous les ingrédients pour une première année intéressante. Oh, et puis il y a le vampire.

Two of a Kind: une première - la première fois que j'écris une histoire où il y a Harry, Ron, et Hermione. C'est le dernier voyage à bord du Poudlard Express, et Harry voit deux gosses entrer dans son compartiment... Réels, pas réels? (écrit avant la parution de L'Ordre du Phénix.)

Basil, Détective Privé/Great Mouse Detective

Le Jeu du Chat et de la Souris: au départ, je voulais faire de cette histoire une vraie enquête, avec un côté limite épique vers la fin - mais là je bloque depuis plusieurs années. J'y reviendrai, un de ces jours :) Donc, pendant qu'une habile cambrioleuse échappe constamment à Scotland Yard, Basil et Dawson sont invités dans le Devon pour enquêter sur la disparition d'un... chat de compagnie.

En attendant, vous pouvez toujours revenir lire ce que vous avez manqué la première fois, cette page est là pour ça. Et merci à tous ceux qui ont laissé un petit mot - ça m'a fait énormément plaisir, sachez-le.Vraiment.

Peace, love, and bananas,

Belphegor :o)