dept of fabulous things

[kindkit]

I am glad that there exists in the world a cartoon diagram of the relationships within the Bloomsbury group, including marriages, sex, crushes, unrequited love, etc. Though I wish it were bigger and included such tangles as the fact that Lytton Strachey had a crush on George Mallory (the mountaineer), who was hopelessly in love with Lytton's brother James Strachey, who was hopelessly in love with Rupert Brooke.

In other news, queer_fest has opened for prompts. I am a bit of a Queer Fest skeptic (awesome idea, so-so execution of the fics most of the time), but I did find myself leaving some prompts.

Comments

[halotolerant]

This was meant to go into LJ comments, but LJ was being slow and wouldn't let me post, so (only somewhat confusingly) here it is instead! (and yes, I do save my long comments before posting, because having them eaten is so frustrating!):

Nigel, Ralph, Bim (and other Charioteer characters who aren't Laurie or Andrew), Dick Player and Triggers have all been in the same room as each other if not all actually simultaneously then progressively over time. And as you say, there's only a few degrees of seperation between some of them in terms of actual romantic/sexual interaction. The men who enter the queer scene as fixed partners such as George Brent don't get on the 'contact' part of it, but soon there's so many overlaps that some people aren't sure whether someone is connected via queerness or via being a POW or both (Simon Carter Does Not Appreciate this). Then there's the fact that Harry publishes Peter Howard and Ralph, and that whilst Ralph and 'Page' don't know each other at all, they share a connection to British Intelligence that Page at least knows is increasingly risky as the 50s arrive and gay men come under increased scrutiny.

In fact I think because of the confusion of 'where' people are known from, Tim Downing actually comes to a party and spends the whole night being chatted up by someone who thinks he's part of the 'queer' circle, not realising he's there as an ex-Colditz connection. Tim is flattered that this (very agreeable) man took so much interest in his anecdotes about his favourite dog's latest litter of puppies, and his thoughts on the upcoming racing season, and thoroughly enjoys his evening, thanking Pat afterwards. Pat (who has been restrained by Dick from intervening in the flirtation, as Dick pointed out [between fits of giggles] that Tim was clearly happy and quite capable of taking care of himself if not) is amused, relieved and fonder of Tim, then, than at any other time. Tim's a bit of an idiot, but he's so essentially keen to be friendly.

There's also Peter Marlowe from 'King Rat' to account for, and Steven too...