Uh Oh

[przed]

So one thing that happened at MediaWest this year was a little conversation I had with m. butterfly, one of my best friends, fannish and otherwise. She'd been trying to pimp everyone we talked to into the Spartacus fandom, and was bemoaning the fact that while I'd managed to suck her into a few of my fandoms (Pros and TT chief among them), she'd never successfully managed to get me into any of hers.

As a joke, I said "Well, I could write you a Take That/Spartacus crossover."

Except apparently my muse didn't realize I was joking and immediately started pointing out how awesome Howard would be as a gladiator, and how great a Roman Jason would be, and wouldn't Markie make a cute little slave boy.

Then yesterday I wrote the first scene.

I now have 650 words of TT/Spartacus slash, and need to find time to watch all of Spartacus, and do extra research on Spartacus' rebellion and the era of Roman life in general so I can write the rest of what will no doubt turn out to be another fucking epic.

And if anyone has any brilliant ideas about how I can turn Howard into a Roman gladiator name, I'd appreciate it. (I don't think Howardus is going to cut it. *g*)

::headdesk::

Comments

[moonlightmead.livejournal.com]

Oh good, sineala is on the case already. She was the first person I thought of as likely to have ideas.

I have thought of another way to do it: look up the (putative) etymology of Howard and find roots that you can mangle use as a basis to come up with a new name. Helpfully for you, one website gives three possible etymologies: http://www.behindthename.com/name/howard - 'ewe-herder' isn't immediately pregnant with possibility (although you can probably get in a great insult about 'fit only to...') but the links to the Germanic and Norse versions are more hopeful for a gladiator - Latin nicknames for 'brave' (one of the Germanic elements) or 'guardian, defender' (Norse) must exist.

[przed.livejournal.com]

Sineala has given me a good start on the Roman end, but I do like some of the options on your etymology site. I'd only turned up that Howard was Middle English in my first search, but hadn't found the Scandinavian roots.

'ewe-herder' isn't immediately pregnant with possibility

Not for this story, but I've already started toying with a short modern story where someone gets hold of a name book on a TT tour bus and a sheep shagger joke is made. (My muse is clearly insane.)