community: canterbury tales fusion
Jan. 15th, 2013 10:40 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kasihyaIn the category of "nerdy pieces of fanfiction that I will never write": The Canterbury Tales, Community Edition. Medieval AUs make everything better. Everything. Fucking love ‘em. And the Canterbury Tales is the perfect material for a fusion! It’s a bunch of ill-matched people who all have a common destination but not much else, held together by the promise of food and a prize. Caveat being: I’ve taken a few courses in Medieval literature, including the Canterbury Tales, but it’s far from extensive, and I’m sure that I’ve made some errors in giving people’s backstories.
The Greendale Seven are, of course, the pilgrims. I put in parentheses the characters in the General Prologue to whom I thought they corresponded most closely.
Jeff (Chaucer): In the interest of him being the “lead-in” character in Community, Jeff gets to be the narrator, and not the Man of Law. He’s not going for anything like devotion, though. Jeff is a judge in a small town, only it’s discovered that the letter of reference he brought with him from the bishop was a forgery. He’s going on the pilgrimage as penance, so that he can return to his village and not be laughed out of town.
Abed (Host): The man who manipulates everyone into coming together and forming a group for his own reasons. I subscribe to the theory that Abed intentionally brought the study group together so that he could check “befriend a loveable band of misfits” off his list of classic college experiences. And even if you don’t, he’s the one who invited the rest of the study group to Jeff and Britta’s “date”. Abed is the hostel owner’s son who wants to get out and see the world, but his father won’t let him. So Abed concocts a plan. He knows that storytelling brings people closer together, that food motivates pilgrims, and money motivates his father. So he proposes the Host’s scheme, and says that he’ll go with them to judge. (And everyone gets into a fight over who’s going to judge, and Jeff makes a motivational speech which convinces everyone to let Abed come with them and judge.)
Pierce (Monk or Friar): Pierce is a friar. He’s got a very cushy position because he’s the son of a rich merchant, and he dresses himself well. He likes to hunt and he’s the Medieval equivalent of that guy who always talks about “the fish that got away”. He is also, like the Friar, a notorious womanizer, though *nudge nudge wink wink* he’s promised himself to the Lord. He’s going to Canterbury just because he can, because why shouldn’t he? He’s rich! He has nothing better to do. And hey, there are all sorts of ladies who go on these pilgrimages. Nuns are sexy, am I right?
Shirley (the Prioress): Shirley’s husband abandoned her, taking the children with him, and so she became a nun in order to save herself. She’s not a very good member of the cloth, though: lots of pent-up rage at her husband, which was converted into an enormous amount of self-righteous piety when she took her vows. She’s very proud of being the right sort of nun, not like those people who don’t keep the customs exactly the way they should. Shirley is going on this pilgrimage in order to demonstrate her piety and better herself in the eyes of God.
Troy (the Squire): Troy is a squire, as mentioned. He’s not particularly good at it, which is why he’s still a squire, and would probably make a much better clerk, but everyone else in his family has been a knight, and he wants to live up to their expectations. Troy is going on this pilgrimage because it’s the done thing for people of his rank, but he’s going right now in order to avoid a tournament in his region, which might be a chance for him to prove his mettle as a potential knight to his lord.
Britta: I really couldn’t find a suitable comparison for Britta, mainly because most of the vices of the hypocritical characters concern money or philandering, neither of which are what I’d call Britta’s biggest hypocrisy. Maybe a combination of the Prioress and the Parson. She’s a future nun - she has renounced all men as terrible people after a mysterious incident of which she does not speak, and joining the sisterhood is the only way to preserve herself from the hypocrisy and terrible people of the world. She’s going on pilgrimage to purify herself and prepare herself to take her vows, so she’s not a nun yet, but she’s part of a convent. It’s a different one from Shirley. The Protestant Reformation hasn’t happened yet, but the “focus” of her convent is a different one from Shirley’s: Britta’s is focused on good works, which sounds awesome even though Britta hasn’t quite got to that part yet, and Shirley’s nuns are cloistered.
Annie (Clerk): Annie is the only one who’s going on this pilgrimage for the “right” reasons. She’s a clerk, and she thinks that going on this pilgrimage, taking it very seriously (she’s the type of pilgrim who’d want to stop every third step to kneel, from which the other pilgrims quickly dissuade her) will help her to become a better person and closer to heaven. Annie is from the same town as Troy. She was persecuted for being a witch, escaped, and disguised herself as a eunuch in a different county.
Dean Pelton is the Archbishop of Canterbury, because why the hell not? He doesn’t stay in Canterbury, though. He really, honestly wants people to come to Canterbury and be changed by their pilgrimage, and because of this, he has a tendency to ride along the main roads that people take to the church. He’ll find groups of pilgrims, and then ride alongside them, offering encouragement and spiritual encouragement which is earnestly meant but definitely blasphemous.
The other students are people they meet as they journey to Canterbury; other groups they run into sporadically while on the road, etc.
This being Community, of course all sorts of hijinks ensue before they ever get there, and instead of taking a week and a half, it ends up taking them months and months to get there. There’s probably a hilariously out-of-context Black Plague episode, and a King Arthur episode because King Arthur stories were popular around that time, right? They can get captured by highwaymen, and then they somehow end up in France, performing plays for the King of Brittany and pursued by the king’s chief entertainer, Señor Chang, who is annoyed that they took his spot. They then have to plan an elaborate escape, end up in jail in Cornwall.
Oh! And Troy somehow acquires a small but persistent band of followers who, following his dramatic and entirely accidental exorcism of a local priest, have declared him to be a prophet of the Lord.
The Greendale Seven are, of course, the pilgrims. I put in parentheses the characters in the General Prologue to whom I thought they corresponded most closely.
Jeff (Chaucer): In the interest of him being the “lead-in” character in Community, Jeff gets to be the narrator, and not the Man of Law. He’s not going for anything like devotion, though. Jeff is a judge in a small town, only it’s discovered that the letter of reference he brought with him from the bishop was a forgery. He’s going on the pilgrimage as penance, so that he can return to his village and not be laughed out of town.
Abed (Host): The man who manipulates everyone into coming together and forming a group for his own reasons. I subscribe to the theory that Abed intentionally brought the study group together so that he could check “befriend a loveable band of misfits” off his list of classic college experiences. And even if you don’t, he’s the one who invited the rest of the study group to Jeff and Britta’s “date”. Abed is the hostel owner’s son who wants to get out and see the world, but his father won’t let him. So Abed concocts a plan. He knows that storytelling brings people closer together, that food motivates pilgrims, and money motivates his father. So he proposes the Host’s scheme, and says that he’ll go with them to judge. (And everyone gets into a fight over who’s going to judge, and Jeff makes a motivational speech which convinces everyone to let Abed come with them and judge.)
Pierce (Monk or Friar): Pierce is a friar. He’s got a very cushy position because he’s the son of a rich merchant, and he dresses himself well. He likes to hunt and he’s the Medieval equivalent of that guy who always talks about “the fish that got away”. He is also, like the Friar, a notorious womanizer, though *nudge nudge wink wink* he’s promised himself to the Lord. He’s going to Canterbury just because he can, because why shouldn’t he? He’s rich! He has nothing better to do. And hey, there are all sorts of ladies who go on these pilgrimages. Nuns are sexy, am I right?
Shirley (the Prioress): Shirley’s husband abandoned her, taking the children with him, and so she became a nun in order to save herself. She’s not a very good member of the cloth, though: lots of pent-up rage at her husband, which was converted into an enormous amount of self-righteous piety when she took her vows. She’s very proud of being the right sort of nun, not like those people who don’t keep the customs exactly the way they should. Shirley is going on this pilgrimage in order to demonstrate her piety and better herself in the eyes of God.
Troy (the Squire): Troy is a squire, as mentioned. He’s not particularly good at it, which is why he’s still a squire, and would probably make a much better clerk, but everyone else in his family has been a knight, and he wants to live up to their expectations. Troy is going on this pilgrimage because it’s the done thing for people of his rank, but he’s going right now in order to avoid a tournament in his region, which might be a chance for him to prove his mettle as a potential knight to his lord.
Britta: I really couldn’t find a suitable comparison for Britta, mainly because most of the vices of the hypocritical characters concern money or philandering, neither of which are what I’d call Britta’s biggest hypocrisy. Maybe a combination of the Prioress and the Parson. She’s a future nun - she has renounced all men as terrible people after a mysterious incident of which she does not speak, and joining the sisterhood is the only way to preserve herself from the hypocrisy and terrible people of the world. She’s going on pilgrimage to purify herself and prepare herself to take her vows, so she’s not a nun yet, but she’s part of a convent. It’s a different one from Shirley. The Protestant Reformation hasn’t happened yet, but the “focus” of her convent is a different one from Shirley’s: Britta’s is focused on good works, which sounds awesome even though Britta hasn’t quite got to that part yet, and Shirley’s nuns are cloistered.
Annie (Clerk): Annie is the only one who’s going on this pilgrimage for the “right” reasons. She’s a clerk, and she thinks that going on this pilgrimage, taking it very seriously (she’s the type of pilgrim who’d want to stop every third step to kneel, from which the other pilgrims quickly dissuade her) will help her to become a better person and closer to heaven. Annie is from the same town as Troy. She was persecuted for being a witch, escaped, and disguised herself as a eunuch in a different county.
Dean Pelton is the Archbishop of Canterbury, because why the hell not? He doesn’t stay in Canterbury, though. He really, honestly wants people to come to Canterbury and be changed by their pilgrimage, and because of this, he has a tendency to ride along the main roads that people take to the church. He’ll find groups of pilgrims, and then ride alongside them, offering encouragement and spiritual encouragement which is earnestly meant but definitely blasphemous.
The other students are people they meet as they journey to Canterbury; other groups they run into sporadically while on the road, etc.
This being Community, of course all sorts of hijinks ensue before they ever get there, and instead of taking a week and a half, it ends up taking them months and months to get there. There’s probably a hilariously out-of-context Black Plague episode, and a King Arthur episode because King Arthur stories were popular around that time, right? They can get captured by highwaymen, and then they somehow end up in France, performing plays for the King of Brittany and pursued by the king’s chief entertainer, Señor Chang, who is annoyed that they took his spot. They then have to plan an elaborate escape, end up in jail in Cornwall.
Oh! And Troy somehow acquires a small but persistent band of followers who, following his dramatic and entirely accidental exorcism of a local priest, have declared him to be a prophet of the Lord.
