#Mallorean

[ajaneofmanytalents]

Characters I wish I could introduce to each other:

Pheris Erondites and Eugenides, from Megan Whalen Turner's Queen's Thief series

Mags, from Mercedes Lackey's Valdemar series

Diana Hyde, from Theodora Goss' Extraordinary Adventures of the Athena Club series

Silk and Velvet, from David and Leigh Eddings' Belgariad and Mallorean pentologies

the goddess Aphrael, from David and Leigh Eddings' Elenium and Tamuli trilogies

Call it the Convention of the Sneaky Bastards (affectionate) :)

[deadchovsky]

not nearly enough discussion online about how homoerotic zakath and garion were in demon lord of karanda, and that's a shame honestly.

[gorgonstaringcontest]

Oh my God, it's fucking perfect.

I read and reread The Belgariad, The Mallorean, Belgarath and Polgara's standalones and the Rivan Codex over and over when I was younger.

I literally used to dream that Aunt Pol would show up and tell me that she was going to take me to my real family.

I don't think I'd even considered people would cosplay her.

You've done such a good job!!!

POLGARA COSPLAY TEST

she is my favourite character from anything ever man I need to reread the book

[utilitycaster]

all clear! I have stuff to do so I won't get to cooldown/reblogs/writing meta etc until later today but I will be opening the inbox, and most crucially my first thought is "lol Vox Machina, the only party with zero ties to any dunamancy, is going to have to rescue the luxon beacon"

[avemakuta]

Kal is such a silly title for Torak to use. "I'm not only a God, I'm also a king!" It's like saying "don't call me President Smith anymore, call me President Smith, 2001 Jonestown High Pie-Eating Champion!"

[givemethesleep]

So so sorry guys going into a minor obsession with a mediocre 80s fantasy series that I hold dearly because it was one of the series my dad raised me on. But also seriously I should not be allowed to consume media because there is ZERO reason to make ocs for an old book series no one knows.

[plotweasels]

This story is still pretty much stalled.

Ok I absolutely have to ask what inspired the mallorean crossover, I wasn't expecting that to pop up on my dash when it did (I won't lie, I'm loving the entire concept as you've got it, but I have to ask!)

My deep seated desire to have Signless go “Wait, how did your brother not know the Angaraks had divided themselves into castes?” (This is canon according to the Belgarath memoir. Torak apparently thought the Thulls/Murgos/Nadraks etc were separate tribes, not castes and divided them accordingly.)

Basically, I occasionally have Mallorean/Belgariad plot bunnies that I’ve never written down for various reasons. The first reason is because when I was a kid, I did not write fan fic for fear of plagiarism. (Reason 1.5 is because I had a vague  but persistent fear of “getting in trouble” because who knew how my parents would react to what I wrote. I didn’t actually start trying to write until my teens.) The second reason is because I am a liberal and the authors are conservative and have conservative worldbuilding/interpretations of human behavior. I was not as bothered by this as a kid as I am as an adult. The third reason is that I am actually shy about sharing any of my fic ideas or meta. (Do I have enough of an audience to blather about obvious monarchism and contempt for intellectualism apparent in the Edding’s works? Does anyone want Beldin/Vella curtain fic? Should I bitch about the unexamined privilege/racism inherent in both the Belgariad and the Mallorean?)

So, my fan speculation/dialog/meta/plots have been almost entirely in my head. And among all the other plot bunnies, I suddenly have Eriond and Signless talking about reforming the Angaraks. Signless is critical of both caste and class systems. Eriond is equally critical of his brothers’ various mistakes. Eriond is self aware enough to know he isn’t exempt from making similar or worse mistakes, and his First Disciple is not actually capable of being critical or offering analytical advice.

This further led to speculations about classpect. I decided that Eriond is a Rogue of Hope. Hope because that seems to be what he represents thematically in the series, Rogue because his first appearance is to steal the Orb of Aldur and eventually give it to Garion. (Torak is a Rage aspect, I’m tempted to have poor Mara being Doom. UL and The Universe are default Time/Space because in the Homestuck worldbuilding you need Time and Space to make a Universe. (UL’s Universe isn’t a Game constructed universe. It’s its own creation, a wild seedling as opposed to the greenhouse grown Game-universes.)

So the basic plot of Eriond: be the Rogue of Hope is going to be Eriond learning from Signless about how to have a religious revival/enlightenment. (There will probably also be the Demoness snarking on the sidelines and maybe doing Upsetting Things. )

[yarns-and-d20s]

Just finished watching a YouTube video about JKR and her whole "I'm never going to forgive those young people who disagree with me!" nonsense. The YouTuber made a bit of a throwaway comment about the adults who can't let go of HP because of what it meant to them in their youth, and I had too many thoughts for a YouTube comment, so, here I am.

My HP credentials: the first book came out when I was 15. I borrowed it from a younger person in my life, and ended up DNF'ing at the time because those opening chapters were so brutally mean-spirited and bleak I couldn't handle it. What can I say, I was a pretty fragile little thing. I ended up going back to the franchise in 2001 when my best friend wanted me to see the first movie with her. She'd already seen it, and just desperately wanted to share it with me, but would say no more. She bought my ticket and my popcorn, and, well, I ended up spending several years in the HP fandom, and was with it all through the release of the final film, and then slowly, it just sort of dwindled in my interest, though I did re-listen to the Fry-narrated audiobooks or watch the movies again from time to time, and had my various bits of merch hanging around my room.

But I gotta admit, I feel the same way that YouTuber does about the HP adults. The ones who won't let it go despite JKR, rather than, y'know, holding on because of her. The ones who wail, "But you don't understand what Harry Potter meant to me!"

Because the thing of it is: I do. My Harry Potter was David & Leigh Eddings' Belgariad and Mallorean, which was 10 entire books, that grew up alongside its main character, a very special orphan chosen one boy with magic powers and even a special mark on his body (Garion's was on his hand). Hell, he was also raised by his aunt, though I think Aunt Pol would kick Aunt Petunia's ass, and ends up marrying a redhead.

I started reading Pawn of Prophecy when I was 10 (I was a very precocious reader!). I re-read both series a lot up until 2010; I re-read them so much that all 10 books needed to be replaced because they were falling apart. Yeah, they got bought twice in my house. My best friend--the same one who took me to see Philosopher's Stone--also loved the Belgariad & Mallorean and we bonded over those books, talked about them constantly, the whole nine yards. Not only that, but my only other friend in the entire world as a teen also loved those books. They meant the world to me.

But as I progressed through my 20s, I started noticing the bioessentialism and the thing where people from the north and west were good but the people from the south and east were scary and evil or just plain old strange. The fact that very nearly all the female characters could be described as "beautiful and sassy" and were rewarded with marriage and babies if they were good women but if they were bad women who were too masculine in their appetites or behaviours, they got punished for it. On top of all that, news resurfaced several years ago about how the Eddings had been tried and found guilty of abusing their adopted children. They never adopted again after they served out their punishments, and the Belgariad was envisioned by the couple as, like, a love letter/apology letter to children or something like that.

So, yeah, I actually get it. A lot. And the Eddings are dead now, and can't hurt anybody, but I haven't touched those books in 14 years. They were so important to me, and I can still "hear" the influence of the Eddings' style in my own fiction writing. They'll always be special to me, but, you know, there's... there's other books.

I spent years rolling my eyes at people who would pull the "read other books" line. It was kind of ridiculous; I never knew anybody who was into HP and never read anything else. It was just that HP always inspired a particular fandom and devotion because so many people had it in common. I understand how important the community itself was; remember, I was in it.

But by the same token, because nuance is a thing, I don't fully understand not being able to let it go. Yes, I'm sure it was easier for me to let go of because I was an adult (19, closer to 20 than to 18) when I actually got into the franchise. And there was never really a huge, thriving Belgariad/Mallorean fandom. But if your HP fandom friends are only your friends because of HP, then... they're not really your friends, are they?

The Eddings are dead. They can't use their money to hurt anybody. There are living authors right now who are not raging sacks of shit who are struggling to put food on their plates. There are also lots of shows and games that you can love, and maybe there's a movie occasionally, sometimes (note to self: edit and post mini-essay about how the advent of the DVD was a huge stepping stone that led us to the current state of cinema).

I both do and don't know how hard it is to let go of something that meant so much to you as a kid. I know in so much as I've done it; but my autistic brain is struggling to not understand why if I can do it, other people can't. If it's about friends--guys, gals, non-binary pals, they ain't your friends if they don't want anything to do with you if you can't talk about Harry goddamn Potter. If they will talk to you without it, find that thing to talk about.

I know it'll hurt. I still ache sometimes to go back to [insert setting of Belgariad/Mallorean here], and see all my book friends, but, hey, I've sure read a lot of books since I stopped re-reading the same 10 books every 12-18 months for 13 years.

Sometimes, we outgrow things. That's okay. It's allowed. I gave myself permission to make 2010 the last time I read those 10 books. I give myself permission to miss them. I give myself permission to think fondly of what they meant to me. But it became time to move on, because my soul is bigger than racism, sexism, and two people who beat their children, and needed to be fed with new things.

[blackrigante]

This season I have a cold and got some cough medicine. I remember the slogan of Buckley's is 'It taste awful. And it works.'

It really is gross and it does work. But now all I can do is call this stuff is the Polgara treatment. After all if she saw this product she would approve of the message.

[princessmyriad]

Fuck it on the odd occasion someone votes ima start using polls for personal decision making reasons

The first three i have not read (i attempted to read one of the Lovecrafts and it was. So hard to get through.)

The Goosebumps i have read but found my collection when unpacking in my new house and have not read for since i was like 11, (books #8-#61 with a couple odd missing and a few newer series ones and choose your owns)

Unfortunate Events i have also read but my partner has never so I plan to watch the show with them soon

[themarydragon]

I was tagged by @queenofperv to

I am tagging @lesquatrechevrons and @kipaia and @kathsilver and @fierycavalier and literally anybody who can see this and wants to do it. Consider yourself tagged!

....and I couldn't choose just five so this one is PRINT CHARACTERS ONLY. Details on who they are and why they're included are under the cut. I hope there's characters you don't know here, and you can go find the books they come from! I promise they're all old AF

Aravan was never the protagonist. Aravan was ALWAYS the protagonist. Aravan's recurring role in the Mithgar series is probably the #1 influence on the way I look at characters. The series's earliest book (in-world timeline) is about When It All Went Wrong For Aravan, and the last book (in-world timeline) is How Aravan's Monumental Fuckups Saved The World. Aravan's story is How One Elf Spent Seven Thousand Years Heartbroken And Murdered His Way Across The World In Mourning and its the actual best.

I cut out the last 2 Sunday editions of Calvin & Hobbes and have them secreted away in my Memories box. Calvin is more and more of a shithead as I get older and Hobbes matches my vibes. And no it's not just because I have a tendency to bite. I quote Hobbes constantly and without thinking about it.

Artagel is the protagonists' love interests' brother and is perhaps the most perfect character every written. He's the Realm's Finest Swordsman and so of course he'll happily protect this weird stranger on his clumsy brother's behalf. And the man who comes to kill her beats Artagel, nearly kills him, and his entire life has to change. The Mirror of her Dreams is book 1, A Man Rides Through is book 2, and I re-read them annually because they're a tragedy of errors - from everyone, literally everyone makes massive fatal mistakes - that ultimately has a happy ending and I am ALWAYS here for that.

Belgarath. The Eternal Man. He's a drunk, a liar, a terrible father, a slouch, a thief, and unspeakably lazy. He's also the most powerful wizard in the world and a dude made his daughter cry. once. and what happened to that dude gave me literal nightmares for years. He's also World's Best Rascal Grampa and would be The Character Of All Time except for:

Silk. Prince Kheldar. Spy. Thief. Notorious weasel-faced man. In a situationship with what amounts to a viking warrior. Accidental half-brother to a king. Accidentally in love with his uncle's wife (and everyone should be, Porenn is a bad bitch). Quintessential rogue. The fact that he & Belgarath are from the same book series never ceases to amaze me. The first book, Pawn of Prophesy, was my introduction to fantasy when I was 8 or 9 and it set the stage for my literary preferences. Also shoutout to Leah Eddings, who in later years was given a byline although I don't know how involved she was in the first novels.

[utilitycaster]

If you're still answering these I don't have any rpg characters to share but I do love veth brenatto. Any spare thoughts about my girl?

Hey! so. technically the deadline was last night, which I'm saying to stave off further ones - thank you, truly, and I will be here in 2026 with the same game for the midterms. But I'll do this one as the last one, because I have been thinking about Veth a lot.

Some of it is something I said for the ask this morning, namely, I love the non-D&D rogueish archetype - Silk in the Belgariad/Mallorean, Vin in Mistborn, the general vibe of the Crows in what I know of Dragon Age (plus Nadia Carcossa, Thedas's most annoying woman and an inspiration, may we all be her except that bit at the end except not the bit at the end where she survives the impossible, we should do that, just don't get tricked by demons) but I think D&D mechanics stifle what I like - independence and ingenuity - in exchange for "well, because you can kill someone so fucking hard, you can only do it under the sort of circumstances one generally encounters in ancient Welsh folklore." Arcane tricksters are a really good way around those dumb mechanics. And through her backstory and relationship with Caleb, her story really coheres - I understand why she is a rogue and why she has the skills she does.

But I think what I like most about Veth, and there really is a lot to love about her, is that, like all the Mighty Nein, her story is about figuring out her place in the world and what she wants - how, when everything seemed lost to her, it forced her out of complacency. Veth is interesting because she's one of the few Nein characters who had actively built something of a life and was conscious of losing it. And I think that's why in some ways she struggles the most to find what her new one is. At times I felt it was a lack of direction, but with some space I really think it's a commentary on how she did have, in some ways, more to lose, and how in its own way her story is no less about grief than Caleb's is. For all Veth jokes about Yeza possibly being dead, and hitting on minotaurs, I do think, because her childhood wasn't exactly pleasant but it wasn't as obviously traumatic as Caleb or Fjord or Yasha's, she wonders what would have happened had this all happened a few years earlier. I don't think she regrets her marriage or her family, but I think she wonders, and that's a story people do not tell much, especially about women from their perspective, and it's a fascinating one. I don't like indecision in characters and Veth is the rare character who makes it compelling, and that is a testament to how good a concept she is.

[grimdarkfandango]

Fandom Peeps to Get to Know Better

got tagged in an ask meme by @saltedpin thank you!!! I love oversharing on the internet!!!

3 Ships you like: god. okay. be cruel then.

Winter/Kitten - yes we're leading with OCs deal with it SOMETIMES you take a beloved archetype pairing, reshape them like silly putty, put them in separate dnd games, and spend four years running continuous RP with a partner in multiple different au variations because they are perfect actually (shout out to @andromeda-reinvented for literally keeping me sane and fed :prayer emoji:)

Kitten is my husband and also my phone lockscreen and has never done anything wrong in his life (the murders are fine)

Songxue - this is the wizard behind the curtain of winter/kitten, but they are different for all that they're the same. otherwise, uh. see above for all other applicable details lmao

Endhawks - the DRAMA the DILFYNESS the LEGEND look all of my pairings need a certain level of unhealthy devotion and self-sacrifice and not to spoil the current manga chapters for anyone but [blood seeps from my mouth as I start screeching incoherently] anyway yeah big man hot little guy feral

Ganlink - hey riley why are you putting an unnecessary fourth pairing, did you think we weren't already very clearly aware of your type here. no. okay. sure. big man hot little guy feral!!!!!

First Ship Ever: oh god bro I don't know if I have the memory details for that. the first ships I remember going and reading fic for were bandom (*nsync, JC/Lance, yes you heard me) or probably good old gundam wing 1x2, despite having seen approximately none of the show lmao

Last song you heard: Nightmares by the sea - jeff buckley when I started / The life I was missing - flannel graph when I finished (all off my Winter playlist. it's 12hrs long)

Favourite childhood book: I was one of those advanced reader kids who turned up my nose at kids books and for many years almost exclusively read sf/f off dad's bookshelf, which is a long way of saying it was the full ten book run of the belgariad and the mallorean, which I would reread twice a year between the ages of 9-16

is it my favourite now? god no. but I cannot deny what shaped me

Currently Reading: I just started the first Dragonlance book so, I guess, some things don't change

Currently Watching: everything currently airing on Dropout, also The Expanse (finally)(slowly)(I like it too much to binge I think)

Currently Craving: D I N N E R

Tagging: HMMMM ok @andromeda-reinvented, @bigneonglitter, @oldcoyote, @prairie-grass, and anyone else who wants to just say I tagged u!!!

[christinaroseandrews]

I unironically love David & Leigh Eddings' books. I read those books so much growing up that I wore them out and had to buy new copies. I also appreciated that a David eddings knew how not to infodump and didn't feel the need to give me the entire world's history all at once. The world felt lived in. In much the same way that Star wars felt lived in. Yes the prologues of the books sort of provided that info up but it was done in a way that sort of felt like we were getting a sliver of those worlds books. Again he knew how to pass on world building without it becoming boring.

I also absolutely loved the fuck out of his characters. Especially his female characters. Growing up in the '80s and '90s finding solid female characters in fantasy and science fiction was tough. Especially coming from what I knew was a male author. It wasn't until the Seeress of Kell came out that it was acknowledged that his wife had been the co-author of these books. Because sexism was alive and well. (And still is...) And one of the things I really liked is that throughout his books he got better at the isms. The Murgos and the Malloreans became more well-rounded and less caricature and more character.

And there are scenes that live rent free in my head to this day. The whole Archprelate election from the Elenium. "Do you like X?", "Yes.", "I like him too." Then there's the section in the Mallorean where it describes how a plague spreads.

The Eddings books are also books I recommend for any author who wants to learn how to nail dialogue. Eddings dialogue is so spot on in each of his characters sound distinct from one another. Yes, he tends to repeat character archetypes across the different series but each archetype sounds different.

About a decade before the books were published, he did some horrible things to his kids. As did his wife. They served their time and returned to society. Some people can't forgive them for what they did and that's fine. But knowing people who went to jail for shitty things they did when they were younger, and how they have become much better human beings with a fuck load of therapy makes me more willing to give people a second chance. I have no idea if David and Leigh Eddings became better people afterward. It doesn't matter much anyway Both he and his wife are dead now, so boycotting his books because he was a problematic human for part of his life is not going to do him any harm. If you don't like the books that's fine. But this isn't a JK Rowling situation. I don't know who or what benefits from his royalties now think his estate was given to a university. But ultimately I kind of have the philosophy that if the author is dead, then my reading their books isn't going to benefit them and if I excise every single author who had done something problematic in their life then I wouldn't be able to read anything written ever. Because people are problematic, there is no one who is absolutely perfect and squeaky clean because the goal posts keep moving. And in the terms of society and progression it's important that these goal posts keep moving. (I am 100% here for people not being declared legal adults at the age of 12 for women and 14 for men, and that it's totally legal for a woman to have a credit card in her own name.) But because the goal posts do move and change, no one is ever going to be perfect; no one is ever going to get it perfectly right. So it's okay to read things that were messy or contain stuff that is not okay now--looks pointedly at Agatha Christie and her antisemitism, racism, xenophobia, and orientalism--just so long as you understand going in that those concepts are going to be present and understand that they are to some degree of products of their time.

So yeah love Eddings. They are some of the easiest to read fantasy novels that I've ever come across and they are to some degree the standard to which I hold a lot of other fantasy novels to. And I think anyone who puts down people for liking something that was written by a "problematic" author or contains "problematic material" needs to seriously take a hard look at their own faves and make sure that they're completely pristine and pure. And then look again in 40 years and see if they are still pure.

The Eddings books were good for their time. Buffy the vampire Slayer was great for its time. Star Trek was also good for its time. All of them have problematic creators and some pretty bad-isms. It still doesn't mean you can't enjoy them.

This rant brought to you by the purity police in the notes of this post.

Tell us about a childhood favorite you've never talked about on this blog?

Oh, that's a hard one, considering I've got zero filter, haha.

Hmm. Probably The Belgariad series by Leigh and David Eddings. It's dated now, in terms of racism and probably a few other isms, but it was one of the first fantasy series I read on my own after my dad finished reading LotR to me.

It's a classic hero's journey/coming-of-age story where an unlikely hero (a farmboy named Garion) winds up being the chosen one fated to restore goodness to the world. And he's going to kick and scream about it the entire way while surrounded by his very own D&D party of friends. (Understandable, if someone told me I needed to save the world, I would also do the very non-heroic equivalent of hitting the snooze button and asking for five more minutes before I need to get up and avert the apocalypse.)

It was easy to read, if a little waffly in places (as 80s fantasy often was), and I liked that it didn't shy away from being silly and humorous. Which was nice, for me, because all the fantasy/sci-fi was turning to grimdark when I was growing up. It was nice to have something that didn't take itself too seriously.

Also, the Rivan Codex is an excellent example of how to track your own world-building. It's by no means a "how to" (it's literally just a codex of everything in the world), but seeing it all mapped out like that makes you realize he had his world-building and lore locked in.

[book--brackets]

For the fantasy books: The Graceling series by Kristin Cashore, The Belgariad/Mallorean series by David Eddings, The Keys to the Kingdom series by Garth Nix, The Iron Butterfly Series by Chanda Hahn, The Goose Girl series by Shannon Cole, Joust series by Mercedes Lackey, Rangers Apprentice series by John Flanagan, Eragon series by Christopher Paolini, Hexwood by Diana Wynne Jones, Thirteenth Child series by Patricia C Wrede, Uglies series by Scott Westerfield, The Traveller's Gate series by Will Wight

I have a lot haha!

I added what wasn't already there except for Uglies. Uglies is technically a sci-fi, dystopian series, not fantasy, so it's ineligible for this competition. However, if we ever end up expanding into new genres again, hold onto it for that!

[lasenbyphoenix]

10 fandoms / 10 characters

rules: list ten favorite characters from separate fandoms/media, then tag (ten) people

Tagged by @sunriseverse thank you!

1. Ba Ye (DMBJ)

2. Jean Grey/Phoenix (X-men)

3. Clint Barton/Hawkeye (Marvel comics)

4. Morgan le fey (Arthuriana)

5. McGuyver (original McGuyver series)

6. Joan Wilder (Romancing The Stone)

7. Data (Star Trek)

8. George (Famous Five books)

9. Polgara (The Belgariad & Mallorean books)

10. Garfield (Garfield comics)

Tagging @gaiahenshin @uhhhhmanda @strandedchesspiece @rainvillage-trio and anyone else who wants to!