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fancyfeathers · 5 months

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Society of Protection (Yandere Bungo Stray Dogs x reader x original characters) (normalized yandere au)

Chapter Ten

A Composer’s Kiss

Prologue and oc intro

Chapter one

Chapter two

Chapter three

Chapter four

Chapter five

Chapter six

Chapter seven, part one

Chapter seven, part two

Chapter eight

Chapter nine

In his office there sat a young man, in one arm he held a pen as he scribbled something down on loose paper, in the other he he,d a baby girl, fast asleep, and cuddled in a pink blanket. It was after dinner but not late still, the sun had just set. Next to the desk he sat at where two hard back suitcases, which made sense since in how much of rush he appeared in. His tie was undone, hair messy, bags under his eyes, but he still cared for his daughter, rocking her back and forth, kissing her of the forehead, letting her grab on his hair or fingers when she needed something to hold. The door opened and another young man with brown hair entered, the man at the desk stood up, still holding his baby. “Tolkien, about damn time, you’re here.”

“I came as soon I could.” The professor said, walking over to his detective friend. “I understand you can’t tell me everything but what do you need?”

The detective looked down at the baby in his arms and the professor quickly got the idea. “She’s my daughter, and you’re like my brother, I would trust her with no one else. I need you to get her out of here, out of the country, far away from here, the other side of the world for all I care.”

“Arthur, you need to give up this detective shit, you need to leave behind Sherlock Holmes, for her-“

“This isn’t about that, it’s… he knows about her ability.” The detective said, handing one of the suitcases to the professor whose face wore an expression of horror.

“No, I thought he died. I was there, we were there, Arthur.” The professor spoke as the detective walked back to the desk, taking what he was writing and handing it to his friend.

“This is letter to her, give it to her when it’s time. It’ll explain everything but until then you can’t let her know about any of this, not even her ability. The only other people who have any idea about this are the Austen, I gave little Zelda the key to my house in Yokohama in Japan.” The professor looked the letter over before tucking it away. The detective looked down at the baby he held in his arms, he pressed his forehead against his daughter’s, tears falling down his face. “I love you, I’m so sorry. You deserve so much more than I could give you. Hopefully your…” He looks up at his friend, watching the sad scene. “…uncle can give you that world. I love you, (Name).”

The detective handed you off to his friend who also had tears in his eyes. “I’ll take care of her, Arthur. I’ll protect her with my life.”

“I know you will, John. I know you will.”

…and he did… that man was your uncle, the same man who raised you far away from where your father lived. He raised you, like a normal child with his wife, a normal relationship you grew up witnessing. They raised you with no clue about any of this, far away in Yokohama…

—————————

The driver took you to the safe house of the society, it was a very nice manor about an hour drive from Yokohama. Everyone else was there except for Alexandre and Gaston who were said to be staking out at the Guild hideout where Q was being kept. When you entered the main entry, everyone swarmed to greet you, everyone but William, the only other person to know that was here. Everyone was wondering what took you so long and what did you do with Miss Jane and then silence as they realized Miss Jane wasn’t there and you were shaking like a leaf. The doctor stepped forward. “(Name), where is Jane?”

You didn’t say a word, you only reached into your pocket and handed her the letter. As she was opening it, William gently grabbed you and escorted you out of the room to the lounge saying. “I’ll get some tea started for you.”

You started sobbing yourself once more that you didn’t even hear the cry of agony from the doctor in the front entry as she read the letter.

—————————

For the next few hours no one said a thing, just silent crying and touches of comfort, but not you. You sat alone on a lounge chair, legs curled up to your chest, you sat in complete and stunned silence. That is until you heard the front doors open again and you see from your spot in the lounge Gaston and Alexandre walk in, accompanied by a figure walking alongside your friends, Osamu Dazai.

“Sorry for being late everyone, turned out things escalated a tad and we had to pitc-“ Alexandre cut himself off as he looked around the room to see Miss Jane not there. He closed his eyes and blinked a few tears back. “I guess what Gaston told me was true, she really did give herself up.”

“It is.” Dr. Stevenson nodded as she approached them, tear stains still stuck to her face. She glanced at Dazai with no emotion “There are a few extra rooms upstairs that you can stay in… I’m sorry please excuse me.”

You watched as the doctor ran off upstairs to her own room, presumably to cry. Dazai watched as well, his head tilted in curiosity. “So that file on Miss Austen was true? She was Fitzgerald’s wife”

You looked over your shoulder at them and called out in response. “And now she went back to him as a last resort.”

Dazai hummed in thought as he walked over to where you sat and knelt down next to you. “You know the Guild, or Fitzgerald at least cause I don’t know about those guys we just fought, but he won’t stop until he gets what he ultimately wants, and that may just be Miss Austen but I doubt it.” His voice was serious as his eyes made contact with your own. “This is going to get a lot more dangerous, so unless you’re prepared for it I suggest you go back to that flower shop.”

You paused for a second as you thought, were you ready? “Dazai, can I ask you a favor?”

“For you, darling? Anything.” Something about his tone gave you shivers but you continued on.

“I want to go visit my uncle tomorrow, he… he has some things to explain, I want someone with an unbiased view to come with me. I would bring another society members but I don’t think I want them dragged into this mess.” You said, breaking eye contact with him and your eyes drifted to the corner your eyes where you saw Gaston watching this himself. “I just want to have cool mind with whatever I’m about to get myself into.”

“I would be happy to, my dear.” Dazai said standing up and patting your head, but he looked at you with a twinkle in his eyes and a smile across his face. “Buuut, I want a favor in return.”

“What is it?” You questioned and out of the corner of your eye you saw Gaston step forward slightly, almost defensively after hearing this. Dazai noticed to and looked over at the composer with a smile, the same one he gives you.

“It’s rude to ease drop, Leroux. You can come over here if you are so persistent on listening.” At Dazai’s words Gaston sneered but stepped forward to stand next to the two of you. Dazai looked back at you, still smiling. “But anyway it’s nothing you need to worry about right now, but call it the ace in my back pocket.”

Gaston’s eyes narrowed at Dazai when he said this and Gaston tapped you on the shoulder, getting your attention. “(Name), may I have a word...” His eyes looked to Dazai’s smiling face as he spoke and then back to you. “…privately.”

“Oh, um… sure. One moment, Dazai.” You got up and followed Gaston to a room towards the back of the manor, an old style ballroom. You watched as he closed the door behind the two of you, but forgetting to lock it in his rush, and closed all the windows and curtains, you watched him with worry. “Gaston, is everything alright?”

“No, I fear that we are only playing into his game.” Gaston said as he sat down at the piano bench, taking off his glasses and pinching the bridge of his nose. “None of this feels right, like we’re only chess pieces on a board.”

“Him? Gaston who are you talking about? You’re scaring me.” You spoke as you sat next to him, placing your hand on his shoulder.

“I wish I could say you don’t need to be scared, but even I’m terrified.” He replied as he took out a white cloth to wipe off his glasses that he held in his hand. “I’m sure Miss Jane or Alexandre told you about my work for the European Union a few years ago. I was sent to track down a dangerous man, his mind was like mine they said. (Name)… they overestimated my abilities, he was a mad genius it felt like I was only running in circles.”

“You’re talking about Fyodor Dostoevsky, right?”

He nodded and slipped on his glasses once more and looked you in the eye, a dead serious expression on his face. “I am, but (Name), from here on out you need to be careful of everything outside the society, trust no one, especially Dazai because he is playing this game with Fyodor Dostoevsky. Fyodor is in Yokohama.”

Your eyes widened in shock as he spoke these words. “S-so what? Why should I worry? He doesn’t know I exist, right?”

Gaston shook his head and you felt your heart sink at his words. “No, he knows exactly who you are. That break in that was framed to look like the mafioso, that was him. (Name) you can’t trust anyone, outside this society. Whatever you do, you cannot let him get you, do whatever you need to do, but if he gets you it will be all over.”

“Gaston, you mean he is after me?” Your words felt heavy and your stomach felt uneasy like you were about to be sick. Gaston nodded and you collapsed, shaking, in his arms, you were too afraid to even cry. “Gaston, please no. This can’t be true, please.”

“I-I…” For once the composer didn’t know what to say, he only held you. You could hear his heartbeat and it was like yours, fast in his panic. He was your first friend in years, first person outside your family who held you while you lived in fear, first person to show you the hope of tomorrow, and the first person who was willing to go through the struggles with you. “No more talk of darkness. I'm here, nothing can harm you. I'm here, with you, beside you, to guard you and to guide you.”

You looked up as he spoke to you in gentle and almost charming words. He placed his hand on your cheek, half expecting you to be crying after all of this, scared for your life but you only smiled at him in your fear. “Promise me that all you say is true, that's all I ask of you.”

“I promise you.” Then at his words something came over you, your hand drifted up to his scar. He jumped at first when you touched it but then he quickly relaxed in your touch as you brought your lips up to his. His lips were soft, not chapped at at, and you could taste the chapstick on them, sweet, strawberry perhaps. You two broke away after a moment that felt forever and he drifted his fingers to touch his lips in a bit of surprise. He laughed to himself. “This really shouldn’t be a romantic moment. After all I just told you that you should be scared for your life.”

“Hm… I think I would rather it be romantic than not being able to sleep tonight in fear.” You giggled in reply. Your eyes drifted to the grandfather clock in the corner of the ballroom, it was well past midnight now. You stood up and offered a hand to Gaston. “It’s late, we should be off to bed.”

“Well agreed.” He cleared his throat and took your hand. You to walked out of the ballroom, but as soon as Gaston went to close the door someone who was standing outside the door closed it. You both looked and saw Dazai. Gaston narrowed his eyes at him. “You were ease dropping.”

“Hm, maybe I was. I just have one question for you, darling.” Dazai spoke using that nickname but he didn’t look at you, he was looking at Gaston. “Say Fyodor is after lovely (Name), here. Do you think she’s the only one he’s after?”

You didn’t understand what Dazai was referencing but Gaston certainly did by his widened eyes and the sudden shake in his body. He quickly turned away from the two of you and began walking to his room. “Good night, (Name), Dazai.”

You looked at Dazai with a curious expression on your face and asked. “What were you talking about, Dazai?”

“Oh nothing you need to worry about right now. Just go get some sleep, Snow White. We have a big day tomorrow.” He gave you a light push to get you walking down the hall and then after a few steps you looked over your shoulder at him, he tilted his head and questioned. “What? Something wrong.”

“You said Snow White, she’s the one who was poisoned by the apple. Most people would say Sleeping Beauty. Why would you call me Snow White?”

He smiles and closes his eyes as he walks past you. “I dunno, just the first thing that came to mind.”

For some reason you didn’t believe him but you had no real suspicion to be had here. “I see… well then good night, Dazai.”

—————————

The next morning you awoke and got ready, you were able to convince Dr. Stevenson to take one of the cars alone without a driver. You drove yourself with Dazai in the passenger seat. Like most drives these days it was mostly silent, except half way through the drive you spoke up. “You should probably read those papers in the glove box… those are important.”

He shrugged and opened the glove box, expecting to see driving papers or something, but instead finding the adoption papers and will. He read over them and got a shocked look on his face. “You’re Sherlock Holmes’ daughter?”

“Arthur Conan Doyle, but yes, I guess I am.” You said as you pulled up to your uncle’s neighborhood.

“You guess?”

“I never really knew him, he disappeared when I was a little girl, a baby.”

“I see.” He smiled slightly and looked back down at the papers. “If it helps, my coworker Ranpo is a pretty big fan of your father.”

“Not really, I mean that’s nice… my mind is just elsewhere…”

“Hm… food for thought?”

“Why did you ask Gaston that question last night?” You said as you stopped the car in front of your uncle’s house. “Why did you ask him that question about Fyodor?”

“You know how this world is.” He said, glancing out the window at the house and then back to you. “Lines of morality blur between love and lust to the point where right and wrong doesn’t matter anymore.”

“You mean Fyodor is also after Gaston?”

Dazai nodded. “As for why I couldn’t say but I can say that you and your composer friend are not the safest now, not just from Fyodor but others as well.”

You turned the car off as you lost yourself in thought before you rolled your eyes. “Whatever, look I just have to talk to my uncle, just let everything be with this for now.”

You two walked up the door of you uncle and aunt’s house and you knocked on the door and not a few moments later you saw your Aunt Edith open the door. She smiles and hugged you. “What a surprise, it is so lovely to see you (Name).”

“Hi auntie.” You gave her a squeeze back and let go as you entered inside. “This is my… friend from work, Dazai.”

You gestured to the detective as your aunt shook his hand. “It’s nice to meet you ma’am.”

“It’s lovely to meet you as well young man.” She said leading you to the living room where on the couch you saw your Uncle John, John Tolkien. When he heard footsteps he looked up from his book to look at you. He smiled and set his book aside.

“It’s lovely to see you, (Name).” He glanced over your shoulder at Dazai. “Who’s your friend?”

“Oh Uncle John, this is my friend Dazai, we met via work?”

“At that flower shop?”

Fuck, you forgot to tell them about that. You shook your head and you sat down next to him. “No uncle, I…I quit. You see I got a new job with another organization from Europe the-“

“Society of Protection.” He sighed and smiled. “I assumed one day you would join. I’m then guessing that little Austen told you about your father?”

You nodded and took the papers from Dazai and gave them to your uncle. He looked them over again, with a sad expression. “Your father was a wonder man, a bit odd but wonderful. He loved you very much but some things happened.” He reached to the side table where there was a small chest, he opened it and took out a folded piece of paper. “He gave this to me to give to you when you were ready.”

With an unsteady hand you took the paper and before your eyes you saw the scene of when this was written, your father holding you, giving you to your uncle, the final goodbye. Then your mind snapped back to reality when Dazai touched your shoulder. You gasped for breath as you tried to process what just happened. “-what… what was that?”

“It seems you have discovered your gift… best if your father explains it than I.” Your uncle said pointing to the paper you held in your hands… you had a gift? Why were you only discovering this now? How is this possible? You were normal not even a month ago. With shaky hands you opened the piece of paper and it read…

My dearest (Name),

How much you must have grown when you are reading this. I am so sorry I will have to miss so much of your life, but I know Tolkien will raise you like his own and hopefully far, far away from here. I know you must hate me for not being there and I do not blame you, but I want you to understand I do not have a choice if I want to keep you safe. I am about to set out on a case that will take years and that may cost me my life, but it is to stop a very bad man. Like me I only know him by an alias, Professor James Moriarty. If I leave him alone and use your gift to cause so much harm and I don’t want that for you. Which brings me to my next point, yes you are gifted, you have a special gift that may take time to control but when you touch a person, place, or thing you can see it’s past, call it The Final Problem. I trust you will use this information for the greater good. I love you so much, and I’m so sorry I will not be there.

Your loving father,

Arthur Conan Doyle, Sherlock Holmes

“So my father went off to go face this professor?” You asked, your eyes still glued to the paper.

“Yes he did, we both thought him dead until this evening where he gave me this letter… and you.” Your uncle stood up and looked over the photos that rested on the fireplace. “I brought you here, it was far away from Europe and also an important place to your father, he handled quite a few cases here in Yokohama before the days of your little agency.” He laughed looking over at Dazai who had a smile, when he knew who he was.

“You’re quite smart Mr. Tolkien, how did you know?”

“I read the papers, young man. Not to mention I am the headmaster of the school your friend, Kunikida used to teach at.”

“You know Kunikida?”

“Quite well, hard to think he went from teaching mathematics to being a detective.” Your uncle laughs.

—————————

After the meeting you drove Dazai back to the Armed Detective Agency and has he was stepping out of the car two individuals were coming out of the doors from the office, Dr. Yosano and Ranpo. They waved to Dazai as he got out tops the car. Dr. Yosano laughed to herself as she saw you in the drivers seat. “Spent the night with the society, huh? Kunikida is not gonna be happy with that.”

Dazai shrugs. “Eh, whatever, let him after all I just met (Name)’s uncle, his old boss when he was a teacher.” This earned chuckles from both the doctor and the young detective. “Anyway where are you off to?”

“Ranpo got an invitation for a challenge for a detective game from the Guild.” Dr. Yosano answered, holding out the invitation to Dazai. Dazai’s eyes looked over to you with a little smile on his face and before you could even say anything…

“You should take (Name) with you, after all her dad was one of the best detectives to ever walk the earth.”

Ranpo’s eyes lit up and he looked over to Dazai with a wide smile. “Who? Who was it?”

“Dazai no-“

“Sherlock Holmes.”

The next thing you know you’re driving in the car with Dr. Yosano in your passenger’s seat and Ranpo in your backseat talking your ear off with questions about your father.

#yandere bungo stray dogs x reader #yandere bungou stray dogs #yandere bsd #original character x reader #bungou stray dogs oc #bungou stray dogs #bungou stray dogs x reader #yandere dazai #yandere chuuya #yandere mark twain #yandere mori ougai #yandere Fukuzawa #Yandere Edgar Allan Poe #Yandere John Steinbeck #yandere fyodor

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buffyfan145 · 10 months

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I finally got to read Tolkien's "The Fall of Arthur", his unfinished poem of his take on the King Arthur stories, and it was really good!!! :D I've always liked these stories/movies/shows about Arthur, Guinevere & Lancelot, and Camelot and knew it was one of the major inspirations for LOTR too, but now being a Haladriel shipper this also took on a different meaning like how I see their relationship now in the other LOTR books. I've broken down some of the similarities I noticed and how this also fits them, and this is again another example of how Tolkien actually did write similar Haladriel like stories as some of these also fit our fics we've written.

Mordred and Guinevere were a couple first in the original stories. Both fell in love and decided to marry and rule the kingdom together. Similar to "Tristian and Isolde" where a young woman marries an older king but falls in love with his nephew that's closer to her age (and in that story Tristan hid his identity at first because they were enemies with Isolde being an Irish princess and he and his uncle from Cornwall). They had children together too in some stories, and before he was killed Arthur cut off Mordred's hand.

Obviously their names when you use Sauron's original name: Mairon/Mordred & Galadriel/Guinevere.

Tolkien wrote Guinevere as having golden hair similar to Galadriel and blue eyes that captivated the 3 men who loved her and looking like a beautiful fairy-woman (aka elf) likely because she was a Welsh princess (and Morfydd being Welsh). Mordred and Lancelot both are described by him too as being dark haired, tall, and handsome. Using this gif here of the 2011 series "Camelot" as Guinevere was like how Tolkien wrote and there's even a scene where she holds up a dagger to Arthur's throat (though couldn't find a gif of that moment LOL).

Lancelot only got added to stories later when the French started writing them and took the role of being Guinevere's lover away from Mordred as most there thought he was too evil to be with Guinevere (LOL), but Mordred still lusted after her and wanted her to be his queen/wife but she turned him down in these stories.

Lancelot and Guinevere were given matching, magical rings in some stories that warded off evil. In some stories too she has magical powers of her own and might be part fairy. He also saved her when she was held captive.

Lancelot and Guinevere were separated by the sea and would only meet again after death/end of the world. Tolkien even wrote it that it "sundered" them, similar to the Sundering Seas.

Tolkien reused names of places like Mirkwood and Avalon. Christopher even included outlines of how his dad was going to end his version and that Arthur being taken to Avalon was going to connect to LOTR with it being Avallonë and that Eärendil's Way was going to take them there.

Tolkien kept referring to Mordred taking over Camelot as a shadow taking over it, similar to how he described both Morgoth and Sauron doing the same in Middle Earth.

Also was the only time Tolkien ever wrote a character lusting after a married woman (Mordred) and having fantasies about her. He also wrote about how Guinevere and Lancelot were truly in love, even with her being married. The guilt though over all of this, the destruction of Camelot, and the deaths of Arthur and Mordred also, normally led her to becoming a nun and staying away from Lancelot even though they could've been together, and Lancelot became a priest. However, Christopher said Tolkien was going to end it with Lancelot going after Arthur to Avalon and he never came back to England (possibly if he found Avalon he couldn't leave as like in all the LOTR books if a mortal finds the straight road they can't go back to Middle Earth/our world) while Guinevere went back to her family in Wales. It also makes you wonder what Tolkien considered Arthur's sister/Mordred's mother Morgan as she could travel between the island and England and Christopher never addressed this. Would also mean Mordred is part what his mother was too.

There's now been books that have included Guinevere and Mordred being lovers again too, and even some where she does fall in love with Lancelot as well, but he's still exiled and then her relationship with Mordred happens. Kiersten White's YA book series "Camelot Rising" even has the two of them form a friendship first and she's torn between all 3. The reviews I saw also sounded like us with Haladriel as Mordred is more sympathetic and it's easier to understand his motivations, he alone truly sees Guinevere for who she is and the power she could have, and their feelings for each other are real.

Then "The Book of Mordred" by Vivian Van Velde's cover image of Mordred weirdly even looks like Halbrand/Sauron/Charlie Vickers but it was released in 2005!!! LOL :D

#the lord of the rings #the rings of power #haladriel #galadriel x halbrand #galadriel #halbrand #sauron #mairon #jrr tolkien #king arthur #mordred #guinevere #lancelot #books #morfydd clark #charlie vickers

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bingsoo-jung · 11 months

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an rating of every piece of arthurian media i have consumed

Hi. So I really like Arthurian mythology. To an deeply concerning and obsessive point. This has led me to consume a lot of Arthurian media, and thus I figured I would give you this. Ratings of all the Arthurian media (up until now) that I’ve consumed.

This is going to be a doozy.

Books!

The Mabinogion. 9/10. It’s less Arthurian mythology and more proto-arthurian. But it’s welsh as shit and goes hard.

Historia Regum Britanniae. 6/10. 10/10 for iconicness. 2/10 because it’s geoffrey of fucking monmouth. This mother fucker cannot write and basically is responsible for the englishfication of arthurian mythology and eventually the frenchification of arthurian mythology. So I rightfully hate his ass.

Knight of the Cart. 6.5/10. 10/10 for iconicness. 3/10 because if I could accuse a man of cultural appropriation who’s dead and didn’t really commit cultural appropriation, I would pick Chretien de Troyes. You’re too french and too annoying and can’t even do chivalric romance well because the french are actually terrible at it. Like go read avicenna you illiterate french peasant.

The Vulgate Cycle. 5/10. It’s good. It’s iconic. It’s french.

Bulfinch’s Mythology. 4/10. It gets what the basics of arthurian mythology is, but fails to understand the actual point of Arthurian mythology and what it’s trying to do and it’s function.

The High King. 8/10. Such a good reference book on Arthurian mythology and the history behind the name and the title and how he came to be.

The Mists of Avalon. 5/10 it’s a solid retelling, and I like the arguably feminist stance it takes. I’m knocking 3 points because of quality, and 2 points because it isn’t gay, and I think the author got a little confused about what Celtic is. Like they clearly know it’s wales, but they seem to have gone for the bad folk etymology that Morgan le Fay/Morgana is somehow related to the Morrigain historically. Which she’s not. Also because the author should’ve gone full ass in on the anti-colonialist messaging. And neither of them did.

Grailquest. 3/10. It’s just… not good enough. Also for some odd reason it’s in Ancient Greece because a spell went wrong? So I think the author was just trying to make it enjoyable for youn boys.

Avalon High (the book). 4/10. It’s just not good enough.

Merlin’s Blade. 1/10. Literally the worst. Merlin is Christain and weird as shit in this. I would give it a 0/10, but I’ll give it kudos for having a blind MC. Even though he keeps talking to God about it and it sucks.

Le Morte d’Arthur. 8/10. One of the og’s. Honestly of the better cycles in the Arthurian canon. You can, and will, read worse than this one.

Legendborn Cycle. 10/10. Perfect. Should literally be added to the actual Arthurian canon. I don’t care if this is an unfinished YA book series that started coming out in 2019. Y’all are fools if you haven’t read this and I fucking laugh at for calling yourself an Arthurian Mythology fan if you haven’t. Literally laugh.

The Once and Future King. 8/10. So I love this book. That being said, this was written in the 40s by a british white man. Like… it fails me. And that’s where those two points have gone. A fun fact is that this book wasn’t published during WW2 because the author really hated war.

Magic Tree House. 6/10. Good. Could be better. I deeply appreciate that the entire series is Morgana and Merlin fighting for a fucking tardis treehouse. That alone makes this worth reading.

Idylls of the King. 0/10. Literal colonial propaganda. Fuck you Tennyson.

The Fall of Arthur. Like a 5/10. Unfinished. Not Tolkien’s better work.

The Green Knight (Tolkien Translation). 5/10. LISTEN I LOVE TOLKIEN BUT THSI ISN’T A GOOD TRANSLATION. He uses such estoric language sometimes that it shouldn’t be counted! As a fucking! Translation!

Camelot Rising. 4/10. Idc what you say and if it’s feminist. It’s not good enough for a higher rating. It also should’ve been gay and thus has been docked points

Once and Future. 4/10. I really really really wanted to love this book. It’s a queer arthurian retelling where arthur is sapphic and arabic. But it so deeply reeks of white queer people who make being queer a central part of their identity to avoid talking about queerness. On top of which, for some odd reason, the like… five thousand year old sorcerer seems to struggle with the concept of genderfluid people to me. Which makes no sense. It’s not good. It’s really bad. I’m giving it 4 stars for at least being gay and not outright offensive. It’s also a decent adaptation

Sword Stone Table. 10/10. IT’S AN DIVERSE ARTHURIAN SHORT STORY ANTHOLOGY. IF YOU DON’T LIKE ONE YOU CAN READ THE NEXT ONE. EXCEPT THEY’RE ALL EXCELLENT.

Once and Future (2019 comic). 7/10. YEAHHHH FUCK BREXIT. It’s just a good comic by my favourite comic book writer. Mr kieron gillen (not to be mistaken with karen gillan).

Gails: Quests of the Dawn. 5/10. I love Neil Gaiman but this short story collection reads like a roster of the white men of SFF. Which makes it mediocre compared to Sword Stone Table. Also OSC.

Plays + Operas + Music

Spamalot. 7/10. Not as good as the movie. Two extra points were given for Tim Curry as King Arthur. Yes. Local queer icon Tim Curry gets two points by his lonesome.

Camelot (Philippa Soo Broadway). 5/10. I love Philippa Soo. She does a really good job in this role. But she looses all the camp of the original versions.

Tristain und Isolde (Wagner). 3/10. I’m not a fan of wagner.

High Noon Over Camelot. 1/10. This is a bad retelling and I dislike the Mechanisms music. It’s also obnoxiously white.

Movies + TV Shows

Camelot (the movie). 7/10. It’s camp as fuck and there’s a song called the lusty month of may. Which is just about fucking. And i think that’s actually perfect.

Avalon High (the movie). 7/10. When I tell you that this movie rewired my brain and truly ignited my passion for Arthurian mythology? I mean it. This set me down a hole for years. Sure, is it gay? No. Is Arthur a girl in this though? Yes. And that makes it better than the book

King Arthur: Legend of the Sword. 2/10. I fucking hate this movie so fucking much oh my god. I DON’T CARE WHAT PEOPLE SAY IT’S NOT GOOD. THIS IS A BAD ADAPTATION.

The Green Knight. 9/10. I loved this movie! Weird as shit. But I did really love this movie. And Dev Patel is hot.

The Last Legion. 3/10. It’s a fine movie. But it’s a 3/10 as an arthurian adaptation because while I appreciate the attempt at historicity. It’s actually just bad at that.

The Sword in the Stone. 8/10. It’s less racist than the book which gets it points. It’s also not as *good* as the book.

Shrek 3. Both a 9/10 and a 2/10. Terrible Arthurian adaptation. But Shrek movies are so fun anyways.

Monty Python and the Holy Grail. 9/10. Unironically one of the best Arthurian adaptations ever. It’s so funny and ads and discuss the canon in a fantastic way.

Knightriders. 8/10. It’s a Romero film, who lowkey *invented* the zombie film. But it’s also… anti-capitalist? And gay? Also trying to not be racist? (Trying. It’s the 80s. But p successful). They are also REN FAIRE ACTORS ON MOTORCYCLES.

The Sorcerer’s Apprentice (2010). 4/10. I like this movie, but it’s, say it with me, a terrible Arthurian adaptation.

Transformers: the Last Knight. 2/10. I will not speak further on this.

The Kid Who Would Be King. 6/10. Bad movie. Decent adaptation with fun characters who understand their point in this story.

Merlin. 9/10. Honestly a really good Arthurian adaptation that understands it doesn’t need to be source accurate. Also while it doesn’t commit to the gay. It’s still gay-tinged.

Camelot. 3/10. I hate the lighting and everyone in this is weirdly angsty and incestual.

Cursed. 5/10. It’s not good enough to be more. It’s just not good enough. But I do appreciate the diversity and Nimue as the MC.

Stargate SG-1. 0/10. Racism. I hate stargate because it’s just so obnoxiously racist.

The Librarians. 3/10. It’s not a great arthurian adaptation and it drops all the arthurian bits after a while. But it is a 9/10 tv show.

Trollhunters: Tales of Arcadia. 6/10. Solid Arthurian adaptation. I just think it was a bit weak and put them in there to give credence to it’s magic things and system without having to justify them further to the watchers. Which makes this not really arthurian.

Fate/stay night. 8/10. I haven’t watched any of this. But Arthur is a woman who was called a man in this version because of sexism. And she’s kinda fruity. So that gives this an 8/10 in my book.

Hellboy. 4/10. I like Hellboy a lot. It’s just their Arthurian deal is just a single lone sad merlin.

Quest for Camelot. 2/10. It’s really just not worth watching.

A Kid in King Arthur’s Court. 1/10. I don’t even hate this one. It’s just so painfully mediocre it’s amazing.

Legends of Tomorrow. 7/10. It’s a really really good show and I like that it’s implied that King Arthur is Sara Lance who is just here to fuck.

TTRPGs + Video Games

Pendragon. 3/10. I appreciate it’s structure having read this entire game. It’s just… not got a great structure.

Runescape. 5/10. It’s fine. It’s just fine. It’s iconic. And it’s fine.

Sonic and the Black Knight. 1/10. Because I do actually have something against this. I hate the fact that Sonic is King Arthur and thus will be cuckooed. It causes me physical pain to think of this.

And that is literally every Arthurian adaptation I have consumed to date. I plan on reading Spear after I read this indigenous anti-colonial dragon fantasy book. I’m wary of Spear because although it’s gay, the author set it in ireland. And arthurian mythology isn’t fucking irish. Have respect and do what the rest of us do and set your arthurian adaptation on a different fucking continent.

#unintelligible rants #mythology #arthur #king arthur #arthurian #myth #mythblr #writingblr #bookblr #arthuriana #merlin #camelot #guenivere #legendborn

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adamnedmartyr · 2 years

Text

♡ MUNDAY MEME ♡

6, 7, 14

@thuganomxcs

6. OTP FOR YOUR MUSE?

[ A note: Shipping has never ever really been a super high priority with me on any of my blogs. It’s just not something I put a lot of thought into until I start seeing chemistry between muses that my characters interact with and I’m given a reason to think about it. If you look at the NPCs and OCs I come up with, they’re usually either platonic or familial ties to any of my other characters they have history with––i.e. Kurama and Shibuya, Kurama and Kiri, both of which are meant to be either familial or platonic. That’s what I tend to really enjoy building best, platonic and familial relationships. ]

In terms of romance, I ship Kurama with getting his shit together. It is unlikely that he will ever manage to maintain a healthy and fulfilling relationship––y’know, like he so desperately craves but doesn’t think he deserves––until he gets his life straightened out and learns to accept himself: mistakes, flaws and all.

One ship that I do like from plotting with another writer here––provided that the above-mentioned manages to happen first––is Kurama and Maya. There are definitely some things he needs to straighten out there [ like, oh, I don’t know, acknowledging the fact that he erased her memories of him with a plant and apologizing to her for it ] but he did have feelings for her before it all went to hell, though he would never have admitted as much, to her or to himself, at the time.

Getting him to admit it at all will be a trial in patience, even still.

Summary: Kurama x “getting his life together and learning to love himself”; potentially, provided the previously mentioned qualification is met, Kurama x Maya.

7. NOTP FOR YOUR MUSE?

Personally? I don’t romantically ship Kurama with any of the main Urameshi crew. I can see where others would say otherwise––and more power to you! write what you love!––but I really just like all of them as this weird, functionally dysfunctional family of misfits. They’re always there for each other and try their best to support each other, and, hell, we all know that Kurama would die for any of them. Sometimes blood families suck, and all but maybe one of them have issues with the ones they ended up with by birth––or can’t even remember them in Kurama’s case––but at the end of the day, they got to choose the family they wanted and build it into what it is.

I will say that while I do see Hiei and Kurama as soulmates, I don’t really see it in a romantic sense. They did seem to just fall into place together almost immediately after they met, and they do see and understand each other better than likely anyone else does. They’re very close and trust each other pretty much completely, even when they’re fighting with each other, but, at least, for my Kurama, I don’t see that venturing into a romantic turn. It’s… comfortable and comforting and, at least in the case of @xkokuryuhax‘s Hiei––based on our conversations––he is absolutely determined to make sure that, even if he can’t manage to ever find the total sense of belonging and acceptance for exactly who he is [ and he hasn’t even managed to do that for himself, so he certainly can’t expect it of anyone else ], he fully intends to provide that for Hiei, and to help him find it with others as well, even if he [ like Kurama ] does everything he can to sabotage himself. This dynamic can be seen in quite a few of the headcanon posts I’ve made, both serious and crack.

So, summary here also for anyone who doesn’t want to read my rambling: My (romantic) NOTP is Kurama with literally any of the main Urameshi crew because I see them as a family.

8. WHO IS AN AUTHOR THAT INSPIRES YOU?

I… apologize in advance because I almost exclusively read Old, Old Literature and also because I can’t choose just one.

Speaking strictly from the standpoint of writing style and ability…

I love JRR Tolkien [ The Silmarillion, the Hobbit, Lord of the Rings trilogy, etc ], Sir Arthur Conan Doyle [ Sherlock Holmes stories & the White Company ], Gaston Leroux [ The Phantom of the Opera ], Baroness Orczy [ The Scarlet Pimpernel ], Victor Hugo [ the Hunchback of Notre Dame & Les Miserables ], Jules Verne [ 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea & Around the World in 80 Days ], Charles Dickens [ A Tale of Two Cities ], and, of course, Jane Austen [ Pride & Prejudice ].

#|| out of cleverness || { ooc }#|| a fox is a wolf who sends flowers || { about kurama }#|| 'this is hiei and he means well' || { xkokuryuhax // hiei }

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chocolate-parfait · 3 years

Note

I see the askbox is open 🙂 You don’t know the speed at which I raced here.

But I was really hoping that you could do headcanons for Arthur (vamp), Masamune (Sen), and Mitsuhide (Sen) with a s/o who is an author? Like Tolkien almost, she writes high fantasy and is super well known? (bonus points if she goes back in time with one of her novels on her to show them exactly).

I hope it’s not confusing^^

I adore your writing so I hope to see whatever you publish in the future!

Thank you so much!!

Waa thank you sm for your support!! It really means a lot, thank you ❤ ❤ I hope you enjoy!

Author!MC who writes high fantasy novels - (Arthur, Masamune & Mitsuhide)

Arthur

Arthur is extremely amused and intrigued when he hears about your occupation, and even more so when he discovers that you’re a pretty big shot, too. For once, he completely discards appearances (although he still thinks you’re very pretty) and is genuinely interested in your job, frequently asking details about your writing process, your stories and such.

Your books come from two completely different universes, as we have realism and crime against fantasy and supernatural. Yet, when you offer your book for him to read, he falls absolutely in love with it. Although it may not seem like it, Arthur is quite the superstitious man, and has always had a certain interest in the occult and paranormal. Long story short, he becomes your number one fan.

He asks Comte to bring back your books from the future so that he can read them all (if you find out he’ll admit it with a sheepish smile and a blush on his face), and even then he feels like he doesn’t know enough about the different worlds described in your books and about their writer, you. If the topic pops up during conversations he'll take his chance and curiously ask you more and more questions about your job; if not, he'll pick up hints along the way whenever he can.

Your writing schedule will easily adapt to the domesticity of your relationship. You both write together in the same room (sometimes his, sometimes yours, or even in the dining room) as it can be very motivational, and you’re both ready to comfort the other whenever a lack of inspiration puts a stop to your writing. Furthermore, it’s very practical when it comes to taking breaks! He’ll cuddle with you while asking how everything’s coming along and if you need him to help you get some ideas. (this man will def sneak kisses whenever you're absorbed in your own little world because he adores the pout that magically appears on your lips whenever you're concentrated)

Overall, he’s very supportive of what you do. He understands the struggles of being a writer, but he also adores how much of a professional you are. Would probably be a fanboy even if you two didn’t know each other (he’d buy your books in secret so that Theo doesn’t tease him; the great mystery writer who adores realism, falls in love with high fantasy books. The man would never let him see the end of it)

Masamune

Even before knowing that you actually come from the future, Masamune is extremely curious to see some of your works once he hears that you’re a writer. As someone who writes poetry, knowing that you have the same passion makes him like you even more; although your occupations are as different as they can be, he still enjoys finding a common ground with you. Sometime later, after he has already discovered about your particular situation, he’ll also come to learn about the differences between what he thought you did and what your job really is. Fundamentally the job is always the same, but the whole process and the final products are almost completely different than what he had expected.

He doesn’t know what high fantasy is, but when you do tell him about all the various genres and such, he finds himself not too weirded out by the idea; it’s very similar to popular folklore, after all.

When he asks you to tell him one of your stories, you find the perfect situation to show him a physical copy of one of your best-sellers. He’s amazed by the weird-looking book. It’s experiencedly crafted and perfectly written (that’s printing for you<3), and he curiously fidgets with it as he asks endless questions about it. Unfortunately, he can’t read anything (even if it was written in modern Japanese he’d probably be able to grasp 3 words in a whole page or smth, lol), so you find yourself narrating your stories to him. (you receive great in-depth feedback for each chapter in return!! Masamune will be 100% honest with you and takes it v seriously). It becomes a daily occurrence that neither of you wants to miss. Each night, just before bed, you read out loud part of your book as Masamune quietly listens to your every word, wholly enraptured by the story.

He’s the most supportive partner one could wish for, and he’s always ready to show your works off to everyone he knows. He’ll help you get in touch with local printers and see what he can find amongst all the imported goods to make your job easier. If you ever find yourself stuck, he’ll gladly take you on a stroll to help you get your mind off writing for a bit to come back more refreshed and inspired.

Mitsuhide

Mitsuhide is a man who mostly communicates through lies, vague descriptions or distorted realities just to confuse others. As such, he finds your writing skills and wide imagination to be quite useful and admirable. He can be a capable storyteller if needed, so you often wonder why he doesn’t try writing every once in a while.

This said, he never expected for his kitsune story to strike up a chord in you to the point you’d write a story with a character heavily based on him as the protagonist. He’s quite flattered to say the least. When you hand the finished manuscript to him as a gift, he reads it all in one night. (let's pretend he'd be able to understand ahahah...) He’s amazed by your skill and the world you managed to describe through such vivid wording, but you'll have to read between his teasing words to grasp his real feelings about the gift, although he sincerely thanks you profusely.

The novel is the first work of yours he has ever had the chance to read, so he stores it away very carefully in a corner of his room, but curiosity makes him wonder about your previous works though he doesn't directly ask you anything about them. Sure, he'll probably drop some hints here and there concerning this hidden wish of his, but that's totally up to you to understand. Sooner or later he finds two copies of some of your books in the bag in your room (it was totally accidental, he wouldn't just barge in your room and look through your things like that), and he feels like he's fallen in love all over again. There's this particular level of mastery with which you handle your words that leave him spellbound and amazed. Who would have ever thought that his little clumsy mouse was such an expert writer?

In general, Mitsuhide is the closet fanboy. He won't be as open about his love for your stories as Masamune, but he's not afraid to be direct about his feelings every once in a while, especially if you really need to hear supporting words from him. If anyone ever brings up your skills during a conversation, he'll hum in affirmation with a rare, genuine smile gracing his lips.

#answered #ikemen sengoku #ikemen vampire #ikevamp arthur #ikesen masamune #ikesen mitsuhide #tplosh #date masamune #akechi mitsuhide #my writing #ikevamp imagines #ikesen headcanons #ikesen imagines #ikesen scenarios #ikevamp scenarios #ikevamp headcanons

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transsexualhamlet · 2 years

Note

omg please talk more about your lewis and tolkien bsd ocs

kaksdfhgf;shdagih;as the thing is i never really used them for anything so they're not super developed however I just. I really wanted to make author ocs because I love so many authors and since the order of the clock tower exists its imperative i get my say in the awful british men

this is going to turn into a session of my advanced made up bsd lore so uhhh hope you enjoy

(on that note, I kind of wanna make like. a terry prachett oc too. i love that man. he did so much good in the world)

Oh and I can't stand lewis btw. He sucks but I just thought it would be fucking hilarious to make both tolkien and lewis cause they had so much Beef and idk how i could have a tolkien oc without a cs lewis too :pensive:

Also they're both OLD and CRUSTY and natsume's age because that's just necessary. I watched the movie about Tolkien when it came out and I thought it was amazing as well as just. Yknow. Lord of the rings my beloved but yknow.

His inspiration comes from the movie about him, his actual history, and yknow, his writing, but also it's just yknow. I need to fit him into the bsd universe so it is absolutely imperative that he be a queer elder

So I never actually got around to drawing Tolkien, but I imagine him as being around 5'6'' with brownish/goldish eyes and greying blond hair with a green/blue/gold color palate. He basically dresses like your classic hobbit. Comfy cozy cloak time.

He's also autistic with a special interest in languages (clearly) and a widowed old bi ace

He's affiliated with the order of the clock tower, although he generally doesn't agree with their methods and mostly stays around because without him it would be impossible to keep the peace and the world would probably fall to pieces. His main job is a Latin professor at Oxford. He also stays in the order because Arthur Conan Doyle needs to be kept in fucking check (yeah. I made an acd oc as well) and without Tolkien his adoptive dad Doyle would get reckless and die of death after meeting the Detectivecule (mushitarou, ranpo, and poe) or something.

Tolkien mostly stays out of the whole war business because he was also in The War TM as a young whippersnapper and was super overconfident and then all his friends fucking died so he's trying to not do that anymore and to just make sure that. Yknow. No one else dies

CS Lewis is not nearly as much of a developed character as tolkien is, I really just created him so that Tolkien could have Beef lmao. But CS Lewis is also someone in the order of the clock tower and he continues to this day to be high in the order along with Agatha Christie. His ability makes him able to go into any closet and come out of any other closet after going through a space similar to that of Nikolai's cloak. But like. Only if he's thinking Good Thoughts which everyone constantly makes fun of

CS Lewis has ties with Hawthorne in the guild and constant beef with Tolkien, because they were exes back in The Day TM. Yes I said it.

Tolkien's wife was one of those people that died in the war- she was a very strong blacksmith and her ability was to be able to imbue the metal she worked with with supernatural powers to the wearer/wielder. She no longer is alive, but Tolkien still has two of the things she made- the One Ring and Sting, obviously a ring and a sword. The downside to this is yknow. The one ring gives you invisibility but also depression and the sword gives you more strength but it also takes your strength away once you finish using it. Tolkien ideally would not want to use either of those, but the world just keeps getting more and more fucked, and he keeps having to bring those out to fight to protect the people in the order that he loves. So he's terminally ill and dying because of that. He's not gonna be around much longer.

He obviously still has that incredible proficiency in languages and that he can basically read/understand any language and infer a good amount about the culture of the people that used the language, and he is registered in the order of the clock tower as that being his ability. However like Ranpo he is lying and he's just really talented and autistic. However, he does have a real ability- The Book of Arda! (tolkien's 'earth') Yes! The Book! His ability is the book that creates the infinite universes of anything written in it! He obviously doesn't tell people this for security reasons.

How did this book come to be in Yokohama then, you ask, considering Tolkien is British? Well, Tolkien and Natsume are old friends, yknow, from The War. (Tolkien and Fukuzawa also often got tea together in the old days, though Tolkien is too ill for that now.) And after the war that all their friends died in, they came to the conclusion that it needed to be hidden so that Certain People (read: fukuchi and other shitty world leaders) didn't get their hands on it. Natsume was told to seek out someone who had characteristics similar to Tolkien's to entrust the book to before Tolkien dies.

And in comes Oda! Natsume sees Oda as like a younger version of Tolkien, one who went through the same revelation of 'maybe war and killing is not actually a good thing' as him and has the same love for storytelling and for the children of the world. He somehow managed to get his hands on Tolkien's writing, and Natsume knew then he was the guy!

Oda is entrusted to write the end of the original story of the book, since Tolkien is yknow, occupied with dying and all that, and basically, his soul is tied to the book itself. He gets some of that funky ability feedback with the book since (although not as great of a singularity towards the book as dazai's) his ability interacts with the book in an Interesting way. He got some knowledge of the futures of various timelines, including Beast. So yeah, um. He feels that pain too. He doesn't ever see his own death, but he does feel that he probably will die, and he does see everyone else's. He knows he can't actually write the ending of the book even though he wants to, because yknow... things happen, as we all know. He does create Sigma though, to carry on for him in the future shortly before his death. No one knows Oda was the one who like. Did that. He didn't tell anyone, because Natsume told him to be quiet about it for good reason. But he certainly did!

So, um, yeah. I love these guys. I'm going to insert them into my bsd fics for no good reason

#rowan gets yelled at #anon #i should really do more with these guys

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snarktheater · 3 years

Note

Hey, d'you have any French book recs? I'm trying to work on my French, and rn I have downloaded one of my favourite book series' French translations, but I figured maybe books already written in French might work better? Also have you read the Ranger's Apprentice series? 1/2

RA's def flawed - the books' narration does like to point bright arrows at the protagonists' intelligence, and the last few books def have the tone of 'old white man trying to write feminism', although at least he's trying? - and it's aimed more to the younger side of YA, but it is still a very fun series, and I can ignore the flaws fairly easily, at least partly due to nostalgia? This rather long lol but I'm wordy.

I'll start with the second question: no, although every time the series is brought up I have to check the French title and go "oh, right, I've seen these books in stores". But I've never purchased or read them. It sounds like something I probably would have enjoyed as a teen but I just missed the mark, and these days I'm trying to drown myself in queer books, so that probably isn't happening.

As for your first question, geez, I haven’t read a French book in years, so this is gonna skew middle grade/YA, though that may not be so bad if the point is to learn the language. I will also say that as a result, these may read a little outdated.

I'll put it under a cut, even if Tumblr has become really bad with correctly displaying read mores. Sorry, mobile crowd.

It's also likely that old readers of the blog will have seen me talk about most of these. I don't feel like going through old posts.

One last thing: while I was curating this list I took the time to make a Goodreads shelf to keep track of those.

The Ewilan books by Pierre Bottero

(It's a testament to how long ago I read these books that these are not the covers of the edition I own, and I can't even find those on Google. I'm settling for a more recent cover anyway since it'll make it easier to find them, presumably)

There are at least three trilogies (that I know of) set in the same world.

The first trilogy is essentially an isekai (so, French girl lands in parallel fantasy world by accident) with elements of chosen one trope, though I find the execution makes it worth the while anyway.

The second trilogy is a direct sequel, so same protagonist but new threat, and the world gets expanded.

The third one is centered around a supporting characters from the previous books, and the first couple of books in it are more her backstory than a continuation, though the third one concludes both that trilogy and advances the story of the other books as well.

Notably these books have a really fun magic system where the characters "draw" things into existence. It's just stuck with me for some reason.

A bunch of stuff by Erik L'Homme

I have read a lot of this man's books, starting with Le Livre des Etoiles.

They also skew towards the young end of YA, arguably middle grade, I never bothered to figure out where to draw the line. They're coincidentally also using the premise of a parallel world to our own (and yes, connected to France again, the French are just as susceptible of writing about their homeland), but interestingly are set from the point of view of characters native to the parallel world.

It also has a very unique magic system, this one based on a mix of a runic alphabet and sort-of poetry. I'll also say specifically for these books that the characters stuck with me way more than others on this list, which is worth mentioning.

This trilogy is my favorite by Erik L'Homme, but I'll also mention Les Maîtres des brisants, which is a fantasy space opera with a pirate steampunk(?) vibe. I think it's steampunk. I could be mistaken. But it's in that vein. It's also middle grade, in my opinion not as good, but it could just be that it came out when I was older.

Another one is Phaenomen, which was a deliberate attempt at skewing older (though still YA). This one is set in our (then-)modern world and centers a group of teens who happen to have supernatural powers. I guess the best way to describe it is a superhero thriller? If you take "superhero" in the sense of "people with individualized powers", since they don't really do a lot of heroing.

...I really need to brush up on genre terminology, don't I.

The Ji series by Pierre Grimbert

This one is actually adult fantasy, though it definitely falls under "probably outdated". It is very straight, for starters, and I'd have to give it another read to give a more critical reading of how it handles race (it attempts to do it, and is well meaning, but I'm not sure it survives the test of time & scrutiny, basically).

If I haven't lost you already, the premise is this: a few generations ago, a weird man named Nol gathered emissaries from each nation of the world and took them to a trip to the titular Ji island. Nobody knows what went down here, but now in the present day, someone is trying to kill off all descendants from those emissaries, who are as a result forced to team up and figure out what's going on.

I'm not going to spoil past that, though I will say it has (surprise) a really unique magic system! I guess you can start to piece together what my younger self was interested in. Which, admittedly, I still am.

Once again, this one also has a strong cast of characters, helped by rich world building and the premise forcing the characters to come from many different cultures (though, again, I can't vouch for the handling of race because it's been too long).

The first series is complete by itself, though it has two sequel series as well, each focusing on the next generation in these families. Because yes, of course they all pair up and have kids. Like I said: very straight.

A whole lot of books by Jean-Louis Fetjaine

OFetjaine is a historian, and I guess he's really interested in Arthurian mythos especially, because he loves it so much he's written two separate high fantasy retellings of them! I'm not criticizing, mind you, we all need a hobby.

The former, the Elves trilogy (pictures above) is very traditional high fantasy. Elves, dwarves, orcs, a world which is definitely fictionalized with a pan-Celtic vibe to it. The holy grail and excalibur are around, but they're relics possessed by the elves and dwarves with very different powers than usual. Et cetera.

Fetjaine also really loves his elves (as the titles might imply), and while they're not exactly Tolkien elves, there's a similar vibe to them. If you like Tolkien and his elf boner, you'll probably like this too. And conversely, if that turns you off, these books probably also won't work for you.

This series also has a prequel trilogy, centered around the backstory of one of the main characters. I...honestly don't remember too much about it, but I liked it, so, there you go, I guess.

I said Fetjaine did it twice. The other series is the Merlin duology, which, as the title implies, is a retelling of Merlin's story. Note that Merlin is also in the other trilogy, but it's a different Merlin; like I said, completely different continuities and stories.

This one is historical fantasy, so it's set in actual Great Britain, and Fetjaine attempts to connect Arthur to a "real" historical figure...but, you know, Merlin is also half-elf and elves totally exist in Brocéliande, so, you know. History.

Okay, that's probably enough fantasy, let me give some classics too.

L'Arbre des possibles et autres histoires - Bernard Werber

Bernard Werber is a pretty seminal author of French sci-fi and I should probably be embarrassed that the only book of his that I read was for school, but, it is a really good one, so I'll include it anyway.

It's a novella collection, and when I say "sci-fi" I want to make it clear that it's very old school science fiction. It's more Frankenstein or Black Mirror than Star Trek, what we in French call the anticipation genre of science fiction: you take one piece of technology or cultural norm and project it into the future.

It has a pretty wide range of topics and tones, so it's bound to have some better than others. My personal faves were Du pain et des jeux, where football (non-American) has evolved into basically a wargame, and Tel maître, tel lion, where any animal is considered acceptable as a pet, no matter how absurd it is to keep as a pet. They're both on a comedic end, but there's more heartfelt stuff too.

L'Ecume des Jours - Boris Vian

(no cover because I can't find the one I have, and the ones I find are ugly)

This book is surrealist. Like, literally a part of the surrealist movement. It features things such as a lilypad growing inside a woman's lungs (and, as you well know, lilypads double in size every day, wink wink), the protagonist's apartment becoming larger and smaller to go with his mood and current financial situation, and more that I can't even recall at the moment because remembering this book is like trying to remember having an aneurysm.

It is also really, really fun and touching. Oh, and it has a pretty solid movie adaptation, starring Audrey Tautou, who I think an international audience would probably recognize from Amelie or the Da Vinci Code movie.

I don't really know what else to say. It's a really cool read!

Le Roi se meurt - Eugène Ionesco

Ionesco is somewhat famous worldwide so I wasn't even sure to include him here. He's a playwright who wrote in the "Theater of the Absurd" movement, and this play is part of that.

The premise of this play is that the King (of an unnamed land) is dying, and the land is dying with him. I don't really know what else to say. It's theater of the absurd. It kind of has to be experienced (the published version works fine, btw, no need to track down an actual performance, in my humble opinion).

The Plague - Albert Camus

You've probably heard of this one, and if you haven't, let me tell you about a guy called Carlos Maza

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I'm honestly more including this book out of a sense of duty. The other three are books I genuinely liked and happen to be classics. This book was an awful read. But, um. It's kind of relevant now in a way it wasn't (or didn't feel, anyway) back in 2008 or 2009, when I read it. And I don't just mean because of our own plague, since Camus's plague is pretty famously an allegory for fascism, which my teenage self sneered at, and my adult self really regrets every feeling that way.

Okay, finally, some more lighthearted stuff, we gotta talk about the Belgian and French art of bande dessinée. How is it different from comic books or manga? Functionally, it isn't. It really comes down more to what gets published in the Belgian-French industry compared to the American comics industry, which is dominated by superheroes, or the Japanese manga industry, which, while I'm less familiar with it, I know has some big genre trends as well that are completely separate.

The Lanfeust series - Arleston and Tarquin

This is a YA mega-series, and I can't recommend all of it because I've lost track of the franchise's growth. Also note that I say "YA", but in this case it means something very different from an American understanding of YA. These books are pretty full of sex.

No, when I say YA I mean it has that level of maturity, for better or worse. The original series (Lanfeust de Troy) is high fantasy in a world where everyone has an individual magical ability but two characters find out they're gifted with an absolute power to make anything happen, and while it gets dark at times, it's still very lighthearted throughout, and the humor is...well, I think it's best described as teen boy humor. And it has a tendency to objectify its female characters, as you'll quickly parse out from the one cover I used here or if you browse more covers.

But still, it holds a special place in my heart, I guess. And on my shelves.

The sequel series, Lanfeust des Etoiles, turns it into a space opera, and goes a little overboard with the pop culture reference at times, though overall still maintains that balance of serious/at times dark story and lighthearted comedy.

After that the franchise is utter chaos to me, and I've lost track. I know there was another sequel series, which I dropped partway through, and a spinoff that retold part of the original series from the PoV of the main love interest (in the period of time she spent away from the main group). There was a comedy spin-off about the troll species unique to this world, a prequel series, probably more I don't even know exist.

Les Démons d'Alexia

Something I can probably be a little less ashamed of including here.

Some backstory here. The Editions Dupuis are a giant of the Belgian bande dessinée industry, and for many, many years I was subscribed to their weekly magazine. That magazine was (mostly) made up of excerpts from the various books that the éditions were publishing at the time; those that were made of comic strips would usually get a couple pages of individual scripts, while the ongoing narratives got cut into episodes that were a few pages long (out of a typical 48 page count for a single BD album). Among those were this series.

For the first few volumes, I wasn't super into this series, probably because I was a little too young and smack dab in the middle of my "trying to be one of the boys" phase. But around book 3 I got really invested, to the point where I own the second half of the series because I had canceled by subscription by then but still wanted to know more.

Alexia is an exorcist with unusual talents, but little control, who's introduced to a group that specializes in researching paranormal phenomena, solving cases that involve the paranormal, that kinda stuff.

As a result of the premise, the series has a pretty slow start since it has to build up mystery around the source of Alexia's powers, but once it gets going and we get to what is essentially the series' main conflict, it gets really interesting.

Plus, witches. I'm a simple gay who likes strong protagonists and witches.

Murena

There was a point where my mtyhology nerdery led me to look for more stuff about the historical cultures that created them, and so I'd be super into stuff set in ancient Rome (I'd say "or Greece or Egypt" but let's face it, it was almost always Rome).

Murena is a series set just before the start of Emperor Nero's rule. You know, the one who was emperor when Rome burned, and according to urban legend either caused the fire or played the fiddle while it did (note: "fiddle" is a very English saying, it's usually the lyre in other languages). He probably didn't, it probably was propaganda, but he was a) a Roman Emperor, none of whom were particularly stellar guys and b) mean to Christians, who eventually got to rewrite history. So he's got a bad rep.

The series goes for a very historical take on events, albeit fictionalized (the protagonist and main PoV, the titular Lucius Murena, is himself fictional) and attempts to humanize the people involved in those events. Each book also includes some of the sources used to justify how events and characters are depicted, which is a nice touch.

It's also divided in subseries called "cycles" (books 1-4, 5-8 and the ongoing one starts at 9). I stopped after 9, though I think it's mostly a case of not going to bookstores often anymore. Plus it took four years between 9 and 10, and again between 10 and 11. But the first eight books made for a pretty solid story that honestly felt somewhat concluded as is, so it's a good place to start.

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jimmythejiver · 3 years

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For the first time in a long time I went to the movies in forever and then to Target. At Target I see some Godiva bars on discount yellow tags and I was ecstatic until I read 70% Cacao, Dark, Salted Caramel and was deflated.

Anyway that's how I felt about seeing The Green Knight. What you thought this was about chocolate?

No see since the pandemic I've been back on my perennial King Arthur kick. I've for a long time since I was a young preteen thought, someday I too will write my own King Arthur epic and it'll be gay, magical, gangster and culty too, but for now I'll make up my own stories for practice and then with every story I got attached too, it got too involved and convoluted to the point that when it came down to actually writing a novel, I threw it all away and made a space opera I only planned in two weeks and wrote in a month. Anyway...so now I've been writing this very gay, magical, gangster and culty take on Final Fantasy XV with my boyfriend and just fell in love with Somnus Lucis Caelum who nobody has any insight about him than to make him the Mordred to Ardyn's Arthur, which is a strange flex, but okay, I thought about what if I wrote a Dark Age prequel about Ardyn and Somnus, but Ardyn becomes king and Somnus his shogun and they play games of seduction and power because I'm twisted like that. Anyway...I was like I'm never going to write this and I have to keep making up characters based on FFXV characters and King Arthur tropes because there's not a lot of stories that take place during the Dark Ages, it's always some Roman Empire story, or High Middle Ages and FFXV gave no room for either society to happen after the fall of Solheim and the rise of King Somnus...so we left with Dark Ages, y'all, the King Arthur comparisons are obvious, but Ardyn is no Arthur and Somnus is no Mordred, Aera is only Guenevere if you make up an affair with Somnus, Gilgamesh is no Bedwyr/Bedivere, but uh...they both amputees and the oldest companions to their respective kings so...I guess. Anyway making an ancestor of Cor Leonis and deciding well he's Owain/Yvain, or am Ignis type as idk Sir Cai/Kay I guess, they both cook, but Cai's more like Seifer Almasy than any FF character... Anyway I'm losing people.

My plan was to just scrap the FFXV prequel, leave my Somnus ideas into Overtime (a gangster and gods story) and just plan an actual King Arthur adaptation. I'd have King Arthur the treasure hunter, leader of a warband turned founder of Camelot who fights giants, giant cats and dogheads, but also fights King Claudas of the Franks and King Aelle of the Saxons and Cerdic a Briton who puts in his lot with the Saxons, etc. It'd been a a glorified turf war, meanwhile Arthur's gotta make alliances with King Pelles, The Fisher King and his strange cult he's founded because, why yes I find the ends justifies the means prophecy of the Holy Grail Quest very culty because Christianity then does not resemble it now. Meanwhile you got the secondary plots of Mordred, Gawain, Lancelot, Percival, Tristam and other's going on because they matter and too many modern King Arthur stories sideline the knights.

So many have always sidelined Mordred as a final boss eldritch abomination in mortal flesh conceived of sin and give him no personality, or complex motives, or even just a relationship with Arthur. I also have noticed the general sidelining of Lancelot, or give him a chad villain upgrade if you must include him at all, and the villainizing of Gawain to the point that you don't even have to have Mordred, or Agravain as a catalyst shit stirrer in court, just slap Gawain's name on Liam Neeson in a top knot and you're good. Mordred can just be a child offscreen until last act...fuck that, while Morgan Le Fay can either be a villainess plotting her cabal through men, or a well-intentioned, ineffectual idiot. Fuck that.

Now Hollywood just be doing King Arthur first acts that suck ass, only for said director to get rewarded failing upwards by giving this same jerk the Aladdin remake. The tonally shitty, crammed in blockbuster mess of a cliche heroe's journey that sucks.

With that background I was excited for The Green Knight. I read an illustrative version as a kid, I read Tolkien's translation as a teenager, I read Simon Armitage's superior, but with liberties taken translation. I was prepped to go knowing that indie, or not they were going to make changes to weave the disjointed poem together. I'm excited that because this movie exists Project Guternberg's finally thrown Jessie Weston's prose rendition up on their website. I'll be reading that at some point when this blows over.

The movie adaptation makes a lot of...choices, many I wouldn't love, but would forgive had their been a payoff. There was none.

The journey was fine, the cinematography was a breath of fresh air after crappy slo mo, glossy action scenes ruined another. Guys, I don't think I want to see a Zack Snyder Excalibur, it'll marginally be better than Guy Ritchie, but that ain't saying anything. Leave Excalibur to the post-Star Wars 80s where it is impeccable for it's time. I liked Green Knight's breathable pacing, it's color palette's in the forests and mountains made up for the muddy grey of every Ridley Scott send up in the castles and villages in every other Dark Ages/Medieval story in the last I don’t know since the shitty 00′s. For all the dark tones when there was blues, greens, yellows or reds, they were vibrant in this movie to contrast the gloom of Britain. The soundtrack was good. This isn't all what makes a movie, but it enhances it so let's get to the story and what I did and didn't like.

Things I Liked: Gawain is still a novice in his career The Costume Dressing Everyone pronounces Gawain's name different. I pronounce it like Gwayne, or Guh Wayne, but here you got Gowen (like Owen), Gowan (like Rowan), or even Garlon who I'm pretty sure is the Fisher King's heir in some versions of that Arthurian story, so uh... The reference to Arthur slaying 960 men with his bare hands (Nennius for the win!) The Waste Land that is implied to be a site of a battle (an important aspect of the Arthurian landscape) The Fox companion No long grisly, drawn out hunting scenes. The Fox lives! No misogynist speeches

Things I'm Mixed: This being a dream, is the magic real? Are the giants? Is the Green Knight a figment of Gawain's imagination from a spell Morgan casted in him to hallucinate? Is Lord and Lady also figments? It's...a way to interpret the poem, but lazy and I don't see why it's got to all fantasy, or all dream...this movie makes it too vague you're stuck picking one camp than to accept it's a fantasy with dream and hallucinatory sequences.

Things I'm Meh: Morgan Le Fay as Gawain's mom. Look I fucking hate Morgause as a character and these two get merged and steal each other's aspects so much at this point the difference is who did they marry, King Urien or King Lot? Both are attributed to being Mordred's mom, Mordred is Gawain's brother...both practice magic depending on certain incarnations, both love and hate Arthur their brother and are in conflict with him. Saint Winifred. I actually liked this sequence, but I don't appreciate her as the tacked on wife in the later dream sequence as like...a contrast between the wife you should marry than the whore next door you don't respect anyway? I don't even know what lesson I'm supposed to get out of the damn dream sequence, or any of it? That Gawain should've married his girlfriend and then he'd be a just ruler? That he shouldn't be king? That he'd never have to make the same heartless, impartial choices? I don't know, he seemed like a king doing king shit because guess what? It never gets easier. Wars will be waged. The world didn't become better because he married the right woman, respected her and lived in obscurity. The world didn't become better because he made her his queen. We certainly don't know the world would be better Gawain had his head chopped off and dead XP They never reveal the Lord and the Green Knight as one and the same because of this shit.

Things I Hated: Arthur withdraws from the challenge because he's old. In poem he takes it on and Gawain takes it so he don't have to and he finds himself more disposable than the king. Gawain only takes the challenge because of arrogance. Arthur and Gawain had no prior personal relationship. I'd not have hated this so much if it wasn't compounded by it cancelling out the first two things. Gawain is portrayed as having no respect for his woman, or any woman, maybe his mother? He has to be pushed by Winifred to regain her head. Gawain is portrayed as arrogant, covetous and ready to pass the buck, or the bare minimum than have any honor or decency. It didn't matter the kid in the wasteland was shithead bandit, the way Gawain acted towards him, when he gets robbed, it almost feels like he deserved it and Gawain doesn't learn a damn lesson. I'll admit him taking the sword to cut his ropes and cutting his hands was a neat sequence, it shows him go from stupid, to almost clever and having will to survive...you know traits he had in the poem, but he stops showing these traits or growing. Basically Gawain has to be dragged kicking and screaming to help people and shows no fortitude when facing temptation, or when showing respect towards others, it's exhausting. You don't make this kind of journey story without character growth. Why are you skipping this? Also is it just me, or is this like when you take Frank Miller Batman and transport him onto a Bill Finger story? This is at best Thomas Malory Gawain (and this is charitable) transported on the earlier Pearl Poet's story. Stop it. It's not tonally correct and goes at odds with the story and the set up characterization you'd need to tell it. Speaking of which, you know how I get through the oof... of Liam Neeson Gawain in Excalibur? By pretending he Agravain instead. Here...I don't even think Gawain could pass as Mordred in spite of his covetous nature, lust and entitlement. Why? because I don't think even Mordred is this dumb to warrant this hubris. Essel being invented as a tacked on love interest just to be shit on utterly and for what? I don't think I have much commentary here as there is no Essel I'm aware of to compare, or stack up. I just notice this trope of like...usually if you include a sex worker in Hollywood she often has a heart of gold, she often has her own sense of values that goes at odds with society, but is more true and less hypocritical than a privileged lady’s. I thought that's what they would've done with the added trope of back at home sweetheart to contrast and pit her against the despicable femme fatale of Lady Bertilak and her adultery and her ladyship...and I'm glad they didn't...but you did nothing with Essel than to shit on her for existing when you made her exist, you know. Lady Bertilak being portrayed as the seductress devil incarnate. Look I know adultery is a touchy taboo, but uh her and Gawain hit it off in the poem, dammit! Her values and his values come to clash, but here it's played off as Gawain is stupid and covetous and Lady Bertilak wants to prove something because...? If my brother's theory that she's a figment of Morgan Le Fay's magic, then I'll take this as a lesson of Gawain is impulsive and covetous and his mom knows it, but he don't want to fuck his mom, but he wants her power, and Morgan wants to teach him a lesson... I guess. Hey we don't have misogynist speeches in this movie, but we'll make sure to have the movie drip with it with no point, or commentary. Pass. Lord guilting, extracting and initiating the same sex kiss and only once. Poem automatically better that Gawain don't have to keep being reminded to keep his part of the bargain and he does it willingly more than once. What he doesn't do is give up his belt...gods how did we get more homophobic as a society that the homoeroticism here is worse? Catholics of the middle ages officially had no issue doing same sex, passionate kissing until it lead to sex. The Ending: The gods damn ending. In the movie as is, Gawain waits to uphold his end of the bargain and get his head chopped off. He imagines, even though we don't get any fuzzy or distortion to indicate this is a dream, but I already knew this was coming, he runs away and comes home, is regarded a hero, he sees his lady, takes her from behind and if you saw Brokeback Mountain (I didn't, but DJ has) you know this is a sign of disrespect to women. He gets her knocked up, pays her off for the kid she wants to keep, he is crowned king, marries the ghostly saint lady he helped retrieve her head earlier from a lake in the movie (this right here is the damn tip off). There's no more dialogue by this point and everything is montaging, so you know by now it's a dream, though nothing is out of focus. He rules as a heartless king, his whore son dies from war he waged, he has a daughter, his wife dies. Gawain then takes off the belt that would've saved his life and his head falls off. This would've been the one good twist, except... In this sequence of events he never had his head cut off so uh... now we back in present day. He decides not to bitch out, Green Knight in a sexy way is like "now off with your head," movie cuts to credits with no resolve...uh what the fuck? What the fuck? This is not good. You wasted the one twist in your dream when idk, you could've...

How I'd fix it: No dream sequence at all. No Incident At Owl Creek twist. Gawain comes home a hero and survivor of this game and ordeal. He wears this belt of shame. He becomes a well-renowned knight, but he bears a shame. One day he goes to take off his belt and his head falls off because he cheated to get this belt and to survive this encounter. There. Done. Improved your high concept movie that couldn't play any of the lessons straight from the damn poem without making everyone an asshole for no reason! Ugh! But nope you had to end it on we don’t know if Gawain lives or dies...because...it's dream magic made from his momma's witchcraft...?

Last Thoughts So then post-credits scene because Marvel because Pirates Of The Caribbean existed. A white girl who looks nothing like Gawain's daughter we see who didn’t pay off, or any child I can remember through this whole movie picks up King Arthur's crown that dream Gawain inherited and puts it on her head. Who is this girl? Are we gonna have an indie equivalent of of the Marvel Movie Universe/Universal Horror Monsters thing with ancient British legends? We gonna get a Life Of Saint Patrick next that crosses over? I don't know. What is this?

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jokerownsmysoul · 4 years

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♥️New random questions

thanks for tagging me @bloodsmile 🌺 also I love the tv serie Hannibal too and it was a pleasure read all your responses lmaoo

Name/nickname? Flavia/Flà

If you could bring any two fictional characters into the same world, who would they be, which world would you put them in, and what would their relationship to each other be?

Does it count if I say Arthur and myself? Lmaoo

If you could drop yourself into any fictional world, which would it be?

Joker 2019 to give Arthur all the love and happiness he deserves

What’s your spirit animal?

Honestly I don’t know, I’d say turtles because I always tend to hide myself from the world, or eagles because for me they represent the freedom I aspire to

What is the most unpopular opinion you have?

People are divided into two groups: those who love peach tea and those who love lemon tea. Well I love and drink both of them lmao

How do you like to style your hair?

I wear my hair loose usually, but I like to put it in a bun using pencils or brushes lmao

What three books would you want on a desert island?

The Lord of the Rings by Tolkien, Stoner by John Williams, The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafón

Something new you’ve learned in quarantine?

I’m so introvert that my life hasn’t changed so much during quarantine lmao, I’ve learned that If I had food, Wifi and my hobbies I’d be locked up in my house forever without problems, I mean it’s so beautiful having the time to devot yourself to what you love

Favorite alcoholic drink? (Or non if you don’t drink)

I don’t think I have a favorite one

Music you can’t stand? Music you love?

I don’t know, I mean if I like a song I don’t care what its genre is lol but I like very few rap music’s song, I’m not very into this genre. I love especially 80s/90s music

Have a favorite herb? Does it count lavender? Also mint, rosemary and basil

What kind of cups/glasses/bottles do you prefer to drink out of?

Cups, the half-litre ones, especially for tea

Preferred mode of communication: text, calls, email, letters?

Anything but calls omg I HATE calls with all my heart, they make me nervous lmao and I love letters, they’re so old-fashioned and poetic

What’s your favorite weather? Fall and Winter in general, and I love rain and thunderstorms so muchhh they’re my life

What kind of lighting do you like? The moonlight when it lights up my room at night, or candles

What is the best thing you cook? I’m the queen of cheesecake

Do you have a favorite font? I love the one of typewriter, it’s so romantic omg

What is something you’ve always wanted to write in a fic, but you’ve been to afraid to? Or what’s something you were afraid to write, but you did and it turned out awesome?

I think in general every fic I wanted to write when I was 12/14 but I never wrote. To be honest I’m very insecure and I’m always afraid to write anything every time I start to write a fic, and I don’t think this will ever change lmao. I’ve been afraid of creating my Joker blog and posting my fic on Tumblr for MONTHS I’m not kidding, I wanted to create it the day after I watched Joker at the movie teather lmao. I’m so, so happy I found the courage to do so, because this community is giving me so much and I love this fandom ♥️

If you were in your favorite fantasy world, what would be your weapon of choice? I just want to live with Arthur in his apartment and give him anything he wants living our best life together because he deserves to be happy and not to be alone anymore. I’d be just an ordinary person but my weapon would be to have someone by my side, you know?

Is there a commonly used expression/saying that you can’t stand?

I guess, but I can’t think any right know

What’s something you’d like people to know about you?

That if I’m very quiet and I don’t like going out so much or sometimes I act like a bitch is because I’m shy and I suffer from anxiety. I need my time to do certain things lol some people don’t understand that I didn’t decide to be so anxious, is not a game. It sucks enough as it is actually and I’m not enjoy being like this either, I just want people to understand it without any pressure or trying to change me.

I tag: @yharuhasaiko @clowndaddyfleck @stellargirlie @arthurflecksgirl @ridiculousnerd @daydreamhustler @downtoclown-around and anyone who wants to do it 🌺

#tag list #tag

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alydiarackham · 4 years

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(cover by me)

How to Be a Hero Like a Villain by Alydia Rackham

Introduction

I’m Basically a Geek

Hi. Yeah, so, it’s true. I’m a geek. Have been forever. I really had no shot at being otherwise. My mom raised my brother and I on musicals and Star Wars and Star Trek and Disney. Growing up, I read loads of YA sci-fi novels—again, lots of Star Wars—and then when Marvel started making movies, I got into X-Men and then Iron Man, Thor (my major crush on Loki still remains alive), Captain America, then Batman; all that jazz. I’m also a Disney fanatic and a theatre nerd.

I was an English major in college, am in love with Tolkien and Austen and Dickens and Doyle, and adore all things Victorian. My friend Jaicee introduced me to Vampire Diaries and Originals (which are both compelling studies in heroics and villainy, let me tell you). I’ve written tons of fanfiction, in addition to loads of original novels. I write in all genres, mostly because I get hooked on a good story, good characters, no matter the setting—though I do have a weakness for an epic story arc, flawed heroes and of course, powerful villains. Right now, I’m on the 5th book in my fairy tale retellings series. So far, I’ve retold “Beauty and the Beast,” “The Snow Queen,” “The Little Mermaid,”—and then I did a totally-original one about a Curse-Maker, from the POV of…yep, the villain! At the moment, I’m working on a retelling of the legend of King Arthur, called “Excalibor.” It’s a blast.

As you might imagine, I am intrigued most of all by character. I enjoy reading about the great ones, and inhabiting the interesting ones in my own writing. Flat romantic interests and motivation-less villains drive me nuts. I’m fascinated by a character’s inner workings, his history, his motivation, his mannerisms, his relationships, his skills, his style, the way he presents himself to the world. My brother and I love analyzing plot holes and devices and flaws and symbolism and insights. (Our after-movie discussions can get very animated, and last for hours.)

Often, we find ourselves yelling things at the Hero on the screen like “For crying out loud, don’t do that! Don’t go in there! Stop wasting your time! Watch out—don’t you know what’s in there?” We easily see the choices that the Hero makes that are flawed, impulsive, or just plain stupid.

But very rarely do we notice such things about the Villain. A good one, anyway.

The Villain takes us by surprise. He startles us. He’s two steps ahead. He already has the device, he’s laid the trap, he’s captured the girlfriend, he’s destroyed the evidence. (Cancer Man in X-Files makes me absolutely want to scream because of this stuff.)

Why is that? How did he know? How is he doing this?? It drives us crazy—and yet, we reluctantly have to admire the greats for being such awesome masterminds.

So…how are the Villains so successful? Sure, we could shrug it off and say, “Well, he’s a super-genius, what do you expect?” But that’s too easy, and frankly, it’s doing a great disservice to our Evil Neighborhood Menace. In fact, with everything we see, and with the Hero making such rash and stupid decisions, oftentimes it’s a wonder that the Hero even lives, let alone triumphs in the end.

And actually, in real life, that’s often true. The Hero does die or fail, and the Villain lives and prospers. Why?

What is it that the Villain is doing that the Hero is not doing, which makes him successful? Again, the easy and lazy answer is “He kills people to get what he wants, he lies, he steals.” Okay, sure. What you’re describing is a garden-variety thug. Somebody who gets caught in Spiderman’s webs every weekend.

You are not describing a Super-Villain.

There’s something about a Super-Villain—a really great one—that keeps him in the game, that makes him a serious threat to the Hero, even after being beaten over and over again. What is it about Lex Luthor—who has no powers—that keeps him alive, and makes him a continuous, serious threat against Superman, the most powerful being on the planet?

How is it that a Villain keeps coming back, when similar failures and losses would crush a Hero and send him home forever, never again to don the super suit?

Could it be that a Villain’s methods, his mindset, his approach, are vastly different from a Hero’s?

And, if a Hero could learn to take these qualities and mesh them with his own already-existing awesomeness, could he perhaps avoid a devastating loss, a crushing defeat?

Is that…in fact…what does make the Hero succeed in the end??

That’s what this book is about. Examining what truly is awesome about a great Villain, and showing YOU how you can put those qualities to use in your own life to do a great deal of good, instead of great evil.

Be a great Hero. Take a few tips from the Villains.

-Alydia Rackham

P.S. I’m going to refer to both the Hero and Villain in this book as “he.” I’m doing that because it’s waaay easier than saying “he or she” all the time. Not because I don’t believe that women can be awesome Heroes, or terribly wicked Villains.

Because I totally do.

Chapter One

What Makes A Hero or a Villain?

So, what is it that makes a person a Hero, instead of a Villain? We’re talking the foundation, here. What are the qualities he or she possesses deep down inside that distinguish, that draw the line, that clearly state to the world: “Nope, this is a good guy, this is a bad guy”? This can be confusing. Especially when we look at two characters, say Loki and Bucky Barnes. Both of them have been all over the map with both good and evil deeds. Both have been called Villains, and both could be Heroes.

What is it that makes us decide where someone stands?

I would say that it all comes down to one thing: CHOICES.

It can’t be anything else. You can’t say it’s kindness, or love, gentleness, trust, honesty, bravery, self-sacrifice, or self-respect. Many Heroes and Villains alike struggle with self-respect. Many Villains sacrifice themselves for a person, or a cause. Villains are almost always exceptionally brave. Villains probably are honest with at least one person, or have been in the past. They also have trusted someone, been gentle with someone or something. Most certainly, the best Villains have loved very, very deeply, and tried their best to be kind to that person or animal.

However, something went wrong. Very wrong. And with every Villain, it can be traced back to Choice.

Sometimes, it’s a single choice. Many times, it’s several choices in a row. And eventually, they all decide that “the ends justify the means.” They opt for self-preservation, for the removal of liberty for other people, for the arrogant assertion of their own will. Over and over again, until it poisons them.

A Hero is someone who does not do this. Who chooses, even if it is wrenchingly difficult, to stand by what is right, no matter the consequences. No matter if he loses everything. He will not betray his honor. Even if no one else would see or know—he would know. And he will not do it.

In the end, this is what makes the Hero stronger than a Villain. The climax, and the defeat of the Villain, comes when the Villain’s weaknesses are exposed, and the Hero takes all his own strengths, combines them with the strengths of the Villain, and declares victory.

A Hero guards his or her good conscience fiercely. It’s pretty well summed up in this quote from Captain America:

“Whatever happens tomorrow, you must promise me one thing. That you will stay who you are: not a perfect soldier, but a good man.”

Chapter Two

Good Guys Can Be Stupid

We all know it’s true. When we’re in the movie theatre, we mutter under our breath, shake our heads.

When we’re at home, we scream at the TV.

“Nooooo! What are you thinking? Don’t go that way, go the other way!”

“You moron, don’t go off by yourself! Never leave the group! Especially in the dark!”

“What, you jumped in there but you had no way of getting out?”

“Don’t ignore her calls, she’s trying to save your life!”

Yep, we’ve all been there. So what are some bad traits that Heroes tend to display that we ought to try to avoid ourselves?

Stupid Impulsiveness

Sure, impulsiveness can be good on a date, or at a restaurant trying some new dish.

It’s not good when you’re, I dunno, jumping off a ten story building. Following a noise into a dark forest. Or deciding to stop a bank robbery two days after you discovered your powers. Bad planning, or none at all. Not even thinking about what could happen in the next five minutes, let alone preparing for it.

For us regular folks, this can be translated into deciding to go for a drive in the snow with no 4-wheel drive, jumping off something that’s too high, going on a trip without enough money, walking down a dark alley in New York City…

Yeah, you get the idea.

Not Keeping Family and Friends in the Loop

We’ve seen it a lot: Heroes thinking they need to conquer alone—deal with all their problems, and protect their family members. However, all that ends up causing is major trouble. Sometimes life-threatening, sometimes not, but it’s never good. One that comes to mind is Elizabeth Bennet in Pride and Prejudice. If she had told her sisters about what was going on with Darcy, and especially the drama with Mr. Wickham, she might have saved her sister Lydia from being entrapped by the Villain. Pretty much every single story about a superhero contains this type of lament: “If I had only just told them the truth!”

Heroes fall into the trap of thinking that they’re protecting their loved ones by keeping secrets. By not trusting their friends or their family with what’s going on in their lives. When in fact, this only puts their loved ones in danger, and puts serious stress and pressure on the Hero, which can lead to exhaustion, panic, stretched resources, missed opportunities, and giving the loved ones the feeling that they’re being neglected and forgotten.

Discouragement

So many times, the Hero just doesn’t have the tools to do what he needs to do. He’s isolated himself, he’s gone without sleep, he’s fighting an uphill battle every day. And then, one major thing goes the wrong way, and he’s broken. He collapses, he throws things, he cries, he’s in despair. He thinks there’s no possible way for him to do this, to keep going.

He dwells on the failure. It almost swallows him. He loses all confidence, all belief in himself. He might even lose faith in the cause itself, in the people and things he’s been fighting so hard for. And if someone doesn’t come along and convince him otherwise, he’ll never put on that Hero cape again, or pick up that shield, or that sword.

Read this book: https://www.amazon.com/How-Hero-Like-Villain-Villainous-ebook/dp/B07NMVGCHP/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=how+to+be+a+hero+like+a+villain+alydia+rackham&qid=1572901986&s=digital-text&sr=1-1

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naryaflame · 4 years

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Fanfic Ask Meme - Response to Spiced Wine

@spiced-wine-fic asked for A, T and V.

A - What’s your favourite fandom to write in?

Tolkien, of course :) specifically the Middle-earth canon, though I can be tempted off piste by The Father Christmas Letters, The Lay of Aotrou and Itroun, Smith of Wootton Major and The Fall of Arthur from time to time!

T - When did you start reading fanfic?

After school, as a teenager. It was a free source of new things about worlds I loved!

I don’t think I would have called it a hobby until university though. That was when I started to read it seriously as opposed to just passing the time, and I haven’t climbed out of the rabbit hole since.

V - Post the last sentence you just wrote.

“His arms were folded; his smile was assured, if not downright smug.”

#ask meme #writing #fanfic

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dukeofriven · 5 years

Photo

[Note: this post originally appeared in this thread. Owning to Tumblr’s inability to update reblogs with edits because it is a hellsite programmed by a secretive cell of former Stasi operatives to avenge the fall of East Germany, it has thus been re-edited and reformatted here for your reading pleasure.] JK Rowling’s wizards are the most useless, lazy, incapable dumbfucks in the history of fiction. The average Muggle? You take away their technology and they would be able to complete the basic tasks of feeding and clothing themselves without shitting on the floor. If a wizard ever lost their magic in Harry Potter, though, they would die. They’d be dead in three days. They’re garbage and I hate that I’ve come to hate Harry Potter - a series I once loved - because an author inexplicably hailed for her world-building is daily revealed to be appallingly bad at it. I realize this is a really dumb thing to be this angry about but I’ve been told for years what a great world-builder J.K. Rowling is, and that was not even true when the books were coming out. The Time Turner ruined all of Harry Potter forever, not because it offers easy time travel you can hold in your hand (although it does), not because you ask ‘why don’t they just use the time turner’ with every subsequent scenario forever (although you do), but because it was an enormous, flashing red light warning everyone that the series was going to attempt to make the transition from Fairy Tale Logic to Serious Fiction logic and fail. Badly. Really, really badly. I still think Harry Potter & The Philosopher’s Stone is an almost perfect book: a distillation of decades of boarding school genre fiction combined with magic, friendship, and wonder. It is a book that owes as much to Enid Blyton and L.M. Boston as it does to C.S. Lewis or T.H. White and other authors with two first initials. Its sense of place is magisterial, from the frumpy, soul-crushing suburban sadness of Privet Drive to the ephemeral curio-shop wonderland of Diagon Alley to Hogwarts itself, a bastion of astonishment, homeliness, and delight. What it isn’t is the sort of framework on which you can support the horror that is the torture and murder of Charity Burbage in front of her colleague Severus Snape, who could not rescue her because he could not break his deep cover as a spy against Wizard Hitler 2. Long-running series can experience changes of tone and complexity. This is neither something laudable nor worth reviling; it’s a neutral phenomenon. Sometimes series do it well: Susan Cooper’s The Dark Is Rising and Terry Pratchett’s Discworld are both series that by-and-large end with books focused on far more complex issues than their earlier entries. TV series do this too: contrast the early episodes of Steven Universe or Adventure Time with episodes from later seasons. With Adventure Time, for example, trying jumping from the pilot to Remember You and see how hard you get tonal whiplash) Lois McMaster Bujold sublime space opera The Vorkosigan Saga doesn’t just change tones but also genre: space adventure, murder mystery, political thriller, goofy regency romance, comedy of errors, heist movie, schizoid identity crisis - on and on. The latest entry in the series has almost no plot to speak of, but is instead a musing on age, gender roles, grieving the loss of a lover, and the hope of new life. Some series, however, manage the transition poorly, largely because the initial tone cannot be harmonized with the later tone (Mass Effect jumps immediately to mind). But Harry Potter has more than just a problem of its tone getting darker: its trying to have darker events fit in the same world in which people can walk around with names like ‘Mundungus,’ the Hogwarts school song can be a nonsense poem, and the Philosopher’s Stone was defended with a series of video game puzzles. In a world in which the villain openly tortures somebody to death, the Philosopher’s Stone shouldn’t have any whimisical bullshit about its magical defences: it should have trip mines in the floor and an enchanted statue with a gun, because Voldermort isn’t a guy you confound with drinking potions and flying keys. You should just kill him. The charming fairy world of wonder of HP & The Philosopher’s Stone has room for a love potion. The later books, in which it is revealed that Voldemort was essentially born from rape, is not place where Ron Weasley can hand-out a book to Harry called Twelve Fail-Safe Ways to Charm Witches without seeming like a predator in the making. The cradle that is The Philosopher’s Stone cannot hold a beastly baby like Deathly Hallows any more than Grindlewald pontificating about the superiority of wizards can sit comfortably in a universe in which wizards took until the 18th century to accept the outhouse! Not that fascist ravings are inherently logical; but even non-fascists in Harry Potter never act like wizards are anything other than 100% better than muggles at all times. They can’t, because if the series were ever to do that it would have to acknowledge that the two worlds are different: neither better, just different. Instead - well, as Ron once bitched, magic makes coffee perfect every time, so it’s not clear how muggles stand being alive and don’t just roll-over and die from the hellacious half-life that is living with imperfect coffee. This has nothing to do with irony, a suggestion that ‘oh Grindewald talks a big game about wizardly superiority but wizards didn’t use toilets and cal themselves goofy names like Flumpus MacFludgeon: Rowling is using dramatic ironic to lampshade how wizard supremacy lacks self-awareness. No: this is about a world that is silly being asked to host a genocidal dictator and his crimes. It’s like those tedious ‘grimdark’ AUs that always show up in bad fanfiction by authors attempting to be serious: what if the Sesame Street gang had to deal with ICE, what if Po started haemoraging while hanging-out with Laa-Laa, what if Peppa Pig learned that she was adopted and her real parents were brutally murdered as part of gang war because they were heroin dealers and so on. (The best skewering of this edgelord comedy is still probably either Andrew Hussie’s Muppet Babies/Saw comic or any encounters the Shortpacked staff ever had with the Transformers: Buckets of Blood guy.) In Harry Potter, Rowling built a wonderful little fantasy world that ran happily on the logic of fairy tales and fairy stories, and then decided she was never going to be taken seriously as an author unless she introduced Hitler to the equation. And it never works for her. It’s not like it couldn’t have worked. The Lord of the Rings is famously a very different book from The Hobbit. It did, in fact, introduce Hitler into a little fantasy world but Tolkien made it work by abandoning huge portions of the Hobbit’s tone, style, and structure: he wrote a completely different book. Frodo isn’t scarfing-down Bertie Bott’s Every Flavoured Beans on the slopes of Mount Doom. The moment, say, Cedric Diggory lay dead in Harry’s arms, we needed to never meet Mundungus Fletcher ever again, or Weasley’s Gooftacular Prank Nonsense, or Ron getting Harry a book about love spells. All the very least that needed to go away, at least until the very end, because Rowling is not an author with the skill to keep the silly and the sublime on the same page. That’s fine in and of itself: all artistic people have strengths and weakness, nobody is skilled at every element of creation. J.M. Barrie was very good at writing a book about an eternal child, but a bit crap at writing a biography about his mother. Arthur Sullivan spent his life quietly seething no one wanted to listen to Ivanhoe instead of The Mikado. There’s a reason Jerry Lewis never released The Day the Clown Cried. Virginia Wolfe is a great writer, but that doesn’t mean she would have written a great run on She-Hulk. [Although now that I’ve said it I can’t think of anything I want to read more.] There’s a great bit in the Lord of Rings after the Shire has been scoured of Saruman where the Hobbits essentially open-up their larders and allow people to have fun again; there’s also a nice bit slightly earlier where Great King Aragorn puts on his old Strider clothes just so he can be his D&D character again: when series change tone, unless you’re really good at walking on a knife’s edge, the quieter, gentler, lighter world isn’t gone forever, but it does have to go away for a while: which means its time to tamp-down on the people with silly names and personalities - like Slughorn, who slips into book six like the second-coming of the vain and silly Lockhart, even though that’s the book where Dumbledore dies.

Rowling keeps trying to makes her old tone fit with her new world without having to pull a Tolkien and actually write differently, which produces moment after moment of tonal whiplash in which the latest Potter-related movie literally involves referencing the holocaust but she also drops some fun trivia about wizards shitting on the floor like animals. (You could describe the entirety of the first Fantastic Beasts film as Tonal Whiplash: The Motion Picture. I’d say that’s an essay for another day but I do not want to have to watch that movie again.)

It needs to be said that a primary reason these tone shifts ‘don’t work’ for Harry Potter is that the logic of a fairy tale is different than the logic of a mundane story. The logic of a fairy tale tends to be self contained: it doesn’t have a smart ass running around asking questions like ‘why’ because there is no why; a thing is the way it is because it is the way it is. Fairies steal babies on the third Sunday of every month, and nobody in the story asks ‘well what about in countries that use different calendars, and what about the shift from Julian to the Gregorian calendar that skipped eleven days?’ because such a pedantic question has no substance in a fairy-tale world. The Clever Child might question what the fairies need with babies, but she’s not about to break-down the week-to-week investment metrics on the Fairyland Infant Exchange. It’s not that one cannot critique or bring critical thinking to fairy stories; it’s that in a fairy story you don’t ask how the sewer system works because it’s not pertinent to what the story is trying to convey. It’s being the guy at the book club who is mad nobody wants to discuss his theories on the music of Rush: its not that the theories are bad, it’s that in this time and place they are of limited relevance. Harry Potter, however, does not belong to to the world of fairy stories, but to the legacy of Tolkienesque fantasy - the world of

In The Hobbit nobody would ever ask if Hobbiton had sewers - it’s not important, and if you ask those kind of questions expecting there to be a serious answer of grave import you’re being a twit. Lord of the Rings, though? Not only is it a valid question, but Tolkien probably wrote a paper explaining the etymology of the Westron word for ‘sewer’ and how sewers were first invented by Shítlívær the Noldor as a way of helping the Blessed Isles cope with all the crap that tumbled out of Fëanor’s mouth.

The world of The Hobbit is one you could enter and expect to quickly find yourself on an adventure. The world of The Lord of The Rings is one you could enter, walk-about, and study without anyone ever exepecting you to solve some sort of regionally-disturbing social problem: in short, it wants you to be invested in the existence of its world in a different way than The Hobbit. Even then, although The Lord of the Rings is more grounded than The Hobbit, it is not so grounded that it doesn’t leave room for mystery, and questions that refute Wittgenstein’s assertion that all questions must be answerable. Tolkien loved to create complex worlds, but there was stuff he knew wasn’t worth elaborating on. It’s really his fans and authorial heirs who developed the somewhat worrying belief that a good worldbuilder has to have an answer to literally every question or else didn’t think their world through. (This has killed more potentially good books than bad cover art ever has.)

The Lord of the Rings leaves room for The Undiscovered Country. Harry Potter wants too… but can’t. Firstly, Rowling obviously understands the need for what we might call poetic mystery - like the gateway in the somewhat unsubtly name Department of Mysteries - but she also wants you to know how wizards pooped three hundred years ago. You get the feeling she knows exactly how and why that gate works, and what it is, but she withheld the knowledge because she likes mystery’s aesthetic more than she ascribes to any idea that an author might have lacunæ in the knowledge of their own work. That is, she would never put something into her work that she didn’t have an answer for - for her there is no undiscovered country that exists beyond the knowledge of even the author; she is an omniscient deity. Not for her is C.S. Lewis’ insistence that for her characters: All their life in this world and all their adventures had only been the cover and the title page: now at last they were beginning Chapter One of the Great Story which no one on earth has read: which goes on for ever: in which every chapter is better than the one before. Rowling knows exactly what happens to every one of them from the moment they were born to the moment the rot in the ground and the day-to-day schedules of their lives in heaven. Secondly - and far more of an issue - is that Harry Potter becomes a world that invites you to pick up each part of its structure and think about it, because the author has - with loving care - built that entire world for you to interact with. A place for everything, and everything its place. Except JK Rowling is a lazy thinker who never, ever considers the consequences of anything she says. Nagini is actually an Asian woman cursed to live as a snake, wizards used to magically disappear their shit from wherever they just stood and shat it out, Hermione Granger can have a time travel device to attended a bunch of classes but Harry can’t grab one off a nearby shelf and go back fifteen minutes and save his godfather, and nor a few years later can the Minister for Magic’s protection detail keep them on hand to go back half an hour and tell their past selves ‘Hey Voldemort is about to walk in here and kill y’all thought you ought to know.’ No author can work-out every aspect of every element in their works - that’s impossible, and why ARGs are solved by the internet hivemind in half a day even though they took a far smaller group of minds months to devise. But Rowling is intellectually lazy - she adds the holocaust to her Magic Fun Land without sparing a single moment to think that idea through. She then gets defensive when confronted by the suggestion that her worldbuilding might have been shallow. Hey your American wizard houses seem a bit racist also America doesn’t really use the house system in its schools - and her response was to lash out and not listen. Rowling tried to move Potter from a fairy logic world with its own rules into our world with our rules and our history but she doesn’t know our history very well, or even our rules, so she tells us wizards shat on the floor until the 18th century while the rest of us sit around going ‘but humans have never done that as social groups - even in horrible slums and facility-free prison cells humans create a designated place for taking a shit even if it’s just ‘that corner over there.’ We don’t just drop pants and go whenever!” This is because, as a worldbuilder, J.K. Rowling is actually kind of rubbish.

#Tumblr #J.K. Rowling #Harry Potter #Harry Potter and the philosopher’s stone #wizards #muggles #the wizarding world #Charity Burbage #Severus Snape #Voldemort #shit #time turner #Enid Blyton #L.M. Boston #C.S. Lewis #Hogwarts #long post

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silmarillionwritersguild · 5 years

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Holiday Feast - The final round-up

Happy New Year! Our holiday feast challenge came to an end on January 10. We hope you all had a good start to 2019. Thank you for sticking with us through 2018! We′re looking forward to discussing, enjoying and sharing our excitement for the Legendarium and for Silmarillion fanfiction with you in this new year. In this final round-up, we′re going to give you the answers to the scavenger hunt for the Starter course and celebrate the participants who joined our little feast by reading, commenting, writing stories and meta, or producing fanart and playlists. Thanks for joining us – we hope you enjoyed your meal!

Reading

For the starter course, we gave you a couple of first lines to search. Participants didn′t have to find them all, but discover at least one and read the corresponding chapter (or work). For everyone who didn′t manage to hunt down all of them and is curious, here are the answers:

There was a cold wind blowing off the North Star when they got near the world’s edge, and the chilly spray of the waterfalls splashed over them. ~Roverandom, Chapter 4

In that time were made those things that afterwards were most renowned of all the works of the Elves. ~The Silmarillion, "Of the Silmarils and the Unrest of the Noldor"

’Well, master, we’re in a fix and no mistake,’ said Sam Gamgee. ~The Two Towers, "The Taming of Sméagol"

In the South from sleep | to swift fury / a storm was stirred, | striding northward / over leagues of water | loud with thunder / and roaring rain | it rushed onward. ~The Fall of Arthur, III

Ægidius de Hammo was a man who lived in the midmost parts of the Island of Britain. ~Farmer Giles of Ham

It is said that Beren and Lúthien returned to the northern lands of Middle-earth, and dwelt together for a time as living man and woman; and they took up again their mortal form in Doriath. ~The Silmarillion, "Of the Fifth Battle: Nirnaeth Arnoediad"

In the days of the Dark Kings, when a man could still walk dry-shod from the Rising of the Sun to the Sea of its setting, there lived in the fenced town of his people in the green hills of Agar an old man, by name Hazad Longbeard. ~The Peoples of Middle-earth, "Tal-Elmar"

Grundy, Zdenka, Independence1776, StarSpray and Nienna have let us know that they′ve completed the full Reading menu. Great job! Mysterious_jedi completed the cheese course. Well done!

Commenting

Of course, everybody who commented on at least one of the fanworks created for this challenge took a nibble of the cheese course for this aspect of the menu. Accordingly, Silver Trails, StarSpray, Kimaracretak, Himring, Gabriel, CeeCee, BaileyBoyBee, Dawn Felagund, Oshun and yours truly have already earned a Commenting stamp for this challenge.

Grundy, Zdenka, Independence1776 and Nienna have managed to complete the entire Commenting menu. Again, congratulations! If you, too, have completed one of the Reading or Commenting prompts – or even completed all five courses – and we′ve somehow missed it or you haven′t told us yet, please drop us a comment here or on LJ, send us an ask or mail us at [email protected].

***

We were hoping for a splendid array of responses for our Artwork, Meta and Writing prompts, and you did not disappoint. 38 pieces have been newly created for these aspects of the challenge – a spectacular holiday buffet that we present you now. If you enjoy an author's work, please consider dropping them a comment to let them know!

Artwork

Starter:

Gil-galad with Palantír by hennethgalad.

"They’re out there." - first line of ‘One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest". (digital art)

Arien/Ilmarë Playlist by Nienna324.

It is a little harder to fit the prompts with fanmixes, but it sort of fits in three ways. One, some of it takes place before or in the beginning of time. Two, it could be thought of as the start of a relationship or at least a few of the songs are. And three, my prompt for this course was "It was a pleasure to burn"-Ray Bradbury. This made me think of Fëanor, but also Arien.

Fish:

Tropical Waters Uinen by Hrymfaxe (watercolour)

Temperate Waters Uinen by Hrymfaxe (watercolour)

Númenor Playlist by Nienna324.

A Youtube playlist for the Art challenge of the Holiday Feast Fish Course.(fanmix)

Main:

Never Fade Away by Nienna324.

A Youtube playlist for the rebellion and exile of the Noldor. (fanmix)

Dessert:

And She Might Know Me Well by Kimaracretak.

This mix is dedicated to Elleth, the one who got me into the world of Tolkien-fandom-on-the-internet in the first place. She requested something with Goldberry femslash, because "eldritch river spirits are always good". A Goldberry/Lady of the Blue Brooch sad eldritch ex-girlfriends mix, set in my AU where the Lady becomes a Black Rider! (fanmix)

Maglor and the Twins Playlist by Nienna324.

A gift for independence1776. (fanmix)

Cheese:

Beren and Lúthien Playlist by Nienna324.

I know Beren and Lúthien were listed for the reading challenge, but as far as "scene that you think they would ham up the most" is concerned this would be it, so I think it fits either way. (fanmix)