#but i keep thinking about the tam lin ballad

[valeroyeaux]

oh idk if i ever posted this shitty ps5 pic but! miss janet ingellvar!!!

[zoloftsexdeath]

Thinking about the origin songs of all the surviving covey members. I can’t speak to color theory, and I haven’t read the books, but I do know some folk songs and recognized some names. Now I don’t stick to Childes ballads strictly when listening to these songs, but I will be listing the number for reference on all the names that have a childe’s ballad corresponding, just for ease of research.

Lucy Grey Baird

Lucy Grey is her own creature and her song is plain in the books. I think the difference between the book ballad of Lucy Gray and the one in the movie (the song she herself wrote about Billy Taupe) is fascinating, as the first one is more of a story-song traditional like, and the Ballad per the movie is so. Im shoving it in my mouth and eating it. Smarter people with more context than me can write better about it though so I’ll leave it at this. I personally think Rachael Ziegler killed it though, and her voice is high and clear, would love to hear her live so I could lay in the grass and kick my feet as I listen.

Barbara Azure Baird

Barb Azure canonically came from Barbara Allen/Barb’ry Allen [CB # ]traditionally a round sung about a woman whose lover dies of wanting her, and she dies of sorrow, and their graves lie entertwined with plants of rose and briar on each respective grave to form a true lover’s knot. My favorite version comes from Joan Baez. This is the only of the covey songs I’ve ever heard before doing this research, and I love it dearly.

Tam Amber [last name unknown]

Tam Amber from Tam Lin! Also known as Tamlaine, Tamlin, or Tam Lyne [Child Ballad #39]. An epic Scottish ballad, and a lovely round. As the story went he was a mortal kidnapped by faeries and has become their unwilling servant, protecting a forest in which he finds a beautiful young woman (usually named Janet or Margaret) whom he confronts for plucking roses. They doink about it, she gets pregnant, her father asks who got her with child, and she rushes back to Tam Lin and begs him to either get rid of the child he begot or marry hee, which in his current state he cannot do. He then devises a plan for Janet/Margaret to performs several tasks that will allow him to return to the land of the mortals, angering the faery queen but assuaging her enough that she makes good on her promise and reluctantly frees Tam Lin to marry his now beloved Janet and legitimize their child. Perhaps not the most traditional version, the one by Anaïs Mitchell and Jefferson Hamer makes me think yes, I can see Tam Amber’s parents falling in love to this song, singing it to him and the other covey children to put them to sleep.

Clerk Carmine Clade

From the ballad Clerk Colven [Child Ballad #42] about a real piece of work who tries to run off on his wife and sleep with a mermaid. The mermaid knows this though, and curses him to suffer a horrific headache until I think his head actually explodes. I don’t think it necessarily has any bearing on Clerk Carmine’s actual personality, but the combination of this song with the color carmine (a brilliant red extracted from the cochinil bug) leads me to believe he was either conceived, born, or his parents married while traveling in district 5. I can see this one being a favorite in district, where they know the danger of baiting the sea and possibly the danger of being a jackass to your wife as well. The location of D5 down in the southwest also leads me to believe it was one of the few places the Covey could have encountered the color as well, as often red 40 or other synthetics are used in mass production of vibrant reds and the use of cochinil based carmine would likely be a very “district” thing, used by native residents for painting or decoration of small items. It’s a strong name, and dangerous when it comes to taking a stand against what the capital represents. I’m surprised he was able to keep it. I reccomend this cover, dunno the singer really but the accent is heavy and his voice is true. I would listen with lyrics alongside though.

Maude Ivory Baird

The book tells us that Maude comes from the poem “Maude Clare” by Christina Rosetti, and Ivory from piano keys. I also like to think that she was partially named after Maud Karpeles, a British folk song collector who helped write down a lot of folk music.

Billy Taupe Clade

Likely from Billy Boy, ironic and fitting for its being about a man after a wife who can feed and care for him despite her being “too young to leave her mother” something Lucy Gray says about him wanting in the books (and seemingly not wanting much more). I don’t care much for this song (sorry), but this is an alright cover.

[theladyofbloodshed]

So, I have a question. I am planning a new series with following a certain mythology. I know a lot of readers drag sjm through the mud about stealing names from mythologies (including myself), like the names of gods/goddess & places, and not coming up with none on her own.

How should I combat that?

Is it a tad bit better to come up with all new names and places but keep the mythology lore?

I am trying to avoid being like sjm. (Also, I am asking a bunch of other tumblrs this question so you might see it around).

Long post incoming...

I think the issue with some of sjm's mythology is that she rips it away from certain cultures and then does nothing with it or warps it to the point where she should have just invented her own name e.g. Morrigan is famous in Irish folklore as three sisters (who are also all the same goddess) who is associated with war, she can be seen washing the armour of soldiers who will die that day. She's also famous for trying to seduce/end Cuchulainn who was battling Queen Maeve. There is no way sjm just came up with the name, because there are some similarities with acotar mor... but then we've never actually seen her power in 5 books.

She just takes random bits from lots of different cultures. Acotar was supposedly inspired by Outlander which is set in Scotland. The Ballad of Tam Lin is also Scottish (but acotar really is not similar to it). We have Rhys/Amren/Nuala/Cerridwen which are all Welsh names. But then I've seen people interpret Nuala and Cerridwen as POC because sjm is so vague (not to say welsh people cannot be poc, but the clothing they - and feyre - first wear is more like Jasmine from aladdin). Morrigan is Irish. Azriel is Hebrew. Cassian is Latin. Nesta is Welsh. Elain is Welsh. Eris is Greek. Lucien is French. Puca are celtic. The bogge comes from old english for the bogeyman. The Weaver is based on strzyga which are slavic. Baba Yellowlegs is a rip off of baba yaga also from slavic folklore. Koschei is also a slavic legend along with the Firebird. Heck, just look at the Slovenian flag and you'll see three mountains with three stars above it. I've seen people theorise that Thurr is CC is like Thor and CC will be the norse ragnarok.

Calan Mai is a Welsh festival and the acotar version is a bastardisation of it. Fires are lit to ward off spirits and banish disease the night before. On the day, farmers traditionally took their animals out to pastures and singing/drinking happened to give thanks for a good season. A May Queen and King would be crowned and the village green opened. SJM took Calan Mai from welsh traditions and turned it into a giant orgy (of course). Thunderbirds are important to Native American mythology and sjm has just taken that yet again for a character. I've only read cc2 once but I feel like there was no description of Sofie whatsoever.

It's not wrong to borrow from mythologies and folklore. These stories have existed for thousands of years for a reason. My issue is the strange amalgamation of shoving so many together and snipping only the "nice" bits e.g. the Morrigan can transform into an eel and she loses an eye at one point and transforms into an old woman. Sjm cant have ugly main characters!

I think try and be consistent with the mythologies e.g. don't mix lots of different ones together if you're using "real" names because I don't think they gel well - this is my friend Thor, his brother Apollo, and their friend Anubis. There are sooooo many mythology/folklore books out there. I have a whole shelf because I love it. There are also so many websites. Delve into less commonly known mythologies/stories. Alternatively, be inspired by them and come up with your own creations. Or, come up with your own lore in general :-)

Ultimately, you are telling the story you want to write. Do what is best for you!

[the-savage-garden]

Feyre rant thing

I know I only have complained about Rhys but I also honestly dislike the majority of the characters from the ACOTAR series (I like Tarquin but there’s just not a lot to his character). I probably should’ve started with Feyre but there’s just not a lot to her character, she’s so... bland. From the 2 books I read I have no idea what even motivates her anymore, what makes her tick.

Before I even read ACOTAR I would sometimes glance at the wiki for it (I heard about it from a friend, who does like it which is why I decided I should have a side-blog about writing so she didn’t see this), I didn’t know anything about it. I actually assumed the series was like a fantasy dnd story and that there were a group of humans that went to the faerie lands and Feyre was the archer/ranger of the group or something. Yeah, I know that was a weird way of thinking but that’s the type of fantasy stories I’m familiar with. I had no idea that this was supposed to just be a retelling of Beauty and the Beast/Ballad of Tam Lin/whatever else. (I just want a fantasy story that’s like dnd but with romance, is that so much to ask?)

Now back to Feyre, I’m actually confused why people are so passionate about this character? What’s so interesting about her? She just reads more like a narrative tool than a character. She does things, sure, but another character could easily take her place. The one thing she has is her soulmate bond with Rhys and that’s sad, is her character worth just on a relationship?

I know Feyre has some accomplishments, breaking the curse and saving the Rainbow, but something about those bother me. Breaking the curse just went down to being in love with Tamlin (I know love is important but Feyre didn’t seem to think much about it until the end of ACOTAR). Saving the Rainbow... I don’t know it kind of came across as condescending to me with how the narrative keeps going on about how “powerful” Rhys and the IC are, like if they were less strong I’d believe in this accomplishment more.

Everything else that Feyre does feel more like she’s being coerced into doing by other characters. In ACOMAF I kept wanting Feyre to be out in the wild away from the courts so she could do her own thing, discover her own self-worth instead of going by what others say.

I know I’m judging Feyre on 2 books but I don’t know if I have the willpower to read ACOWAR. ACOMAF was such a step down for me, I had to fight myself to get through it and I don’t know if I can go through it again. The problem is that reading bad stories would help me become a better writer so I do have a benefit to this hell.

To me Feyre reads more like a self-insert than anything, I’ve come across them on fanfiction and automatically hate them, so that’s a problem for me. Like I should be able to relate to her, I have older siblings and I’m on the lower middle-class, but I can’t stand her. I don’t want to be her, I don’t even want to be in this world, so what am I supposed to get from this? Is this just one of those easy-reading romance books and I’m not supposed to think about it? If so, this is garbage, get behind better books.

I also will make a character rewrite thing with Feyre like I did with Celaena, I just need to gather my thoughts for it.

Sorry if this is a mess, that’s why I have this as a rant. Maybe I should make notes on this.

[no-where-new-hero]

Fire and Hemlock Readalong: Day 17 (Part 3, Ch. 5)

...in which Polly is beginning to understand.

To me this chapter really starts to signal a kind of sick sense of doom, of plunging headlong into Polly's fate as we are reminded that everything we are reading is, in fact, Polly's true memories. I remember the first time reading this being so lulled by the immersion of events that I forgot the framing narrative, and this was a bit of a jolt: oh yeah. We've only got a year left. Things are going bad, and they're going to go worse soon.

Right now, we get a little bit more background on Leslie, who has been absent from Polly's ordinary memories--very likely because he was more or less "invented" by her and Tom during hero business. I do think it's emblematic as well of the fact that Laurel has started getting her claws in him, seeing him during the Wilton College concert and preparing him as a new sacrifice. He's also protected by "the devil's own luck and cunning," which seems to keep him on the side of Nowhere. Even though it's never really stated (but then again DWJ never does), Polly seems to exhibit a certain attraction to him, and honestly, I find a bit of the original Tam Lin in the overt sexuality of Leslie's character. Polly also associated the young Tom with Leslie, which makes another link.

On the other hand, we have Seb, a sort of mini Morton Leroy, who tells Polly about Tom through vague insults, but even though his manner is condescending, Seb manages to give Polly a portrait of Tom as he was before she knew him: kind to Seb (avuncular even though they must not have had a huge age gap--maybe even Tom wanted to protect him) and determined to cling to any handhold possible in staying out of Laurel's grasp through music. Seb continues to remain enigmatic for me because on the one hand he's very much an agent of Hunsdon House--but on the other, he still drops clues to her about what's going on.

We also learn at last that the boy in the picture Polly took from the House is Tom Lynn as a boy. It always struck me as remarkable that Polly never recognized him, but I do think DWJ is saying something about sight here again: sometimes it's harder to truly see the people closest to you. But the picture makes her understand that the Leroys "got" Tom at this young age and she comes closer to realizing what the terms of the curse are.

She was left with a strong feeling about Mr Lynn that seemed to be foreboding. It was something she had known almost from the moment she had met him, but it seemed only now to have come up to the surface. Once it had, it would not go. It ran through everything, the way superstition ran through Granny.

The final bit where Polly tries on clothes is deeply significant: in the first place, Granny has to tell her what to wear and ends up being right. Jeans are "Hero's clothes" and have been since part 1, but Polly is getting too muddled up by pressures of femininity to realize this right away. She also rejects wearing the color green on "superstitious grounds," because it's bad luck, but green is also a color widely used in medieval texts to signify sexuality. It's even in the ballad (Janet wears green for her assignation with Tam Lin). Polly is twice rejecting sexually mature signifiers (feminine clothes and the color green) even though she considers them (she tries on earrings and weighs the possibility of wearing a green shirt before deciding against it).

[scribefindegil]

5, 8, and 10 from the writing meme, please!

5. Do you have any writing superstitions? What are they and why are they 100% true?

You know, I'm not sure that I have any! I'm trying to think, but I'm not a wildly superstitious person so I might just have a boring answer for you, sorry!

8. If you had to write an entire story without either action or dialogue, which would you choose and how would it go?

Oh, without dialogue definitely. That's *easy*. I can spiral around the inside of someone's head for *days*. Most of the important cathartic turning points of my stories are internal anyway. I admire people who can write chatfic and other dialogue-only story forms, but if I can't go off on a 500-word introspective tangent at the slightest provocation I will break out in hives.

(I'm actually sitting here going "Have I ever written something entirely without dialogue?" and I don't thiiiink so, but there are a bunch of shorter pieces where there are just a few very deliberate lines of dialogue as anchor points.)

10. Has a piece of writing ever “haunted” you? Has your own writing haunted you? What does that mean to you?

Mary, to write is to be haunted. They're practically synonymous. To read is to be haunted, too, but in a different way. One of them is about pawing around in the dark trying to piece together the fragments of a vision so you can show it to someone else and say, "This is what I saw. Do you understand? Do you believe me?" and the other is about catching a glimpse of someone else's ghost and feeling it settle into your soul and knowing that if you try to look at it in daylight it'll just be words and sounds and pictures but that won't make the ghost go away.

I'm very easily haunted, for good or ill. Sometimes a haunting is a guardian angel (that's why I make talismans, to keep these stories close) and sometimes it's a terror (words that sprout long wicked claws that rake across your heart) and sometimes it's both (especially the stories that are doubly haunted by the ghosts of who you used to be) and sometimes it's something more complicated and piercing than that.

I write two kinds of stories; the ones that I want to and the ones that I need to, and any story that I need to write will haunt me until the day I get it posted. "Fisherman's Knot" haunted me for years. I knew the last scene and it wouldn't let me go until I got to it. "Mabel Pines Vs. The Laws Of Narrative Causality," "The Real World," and "First And Final Orders" are all fics that are essentially thesis statements about their source material that wouldn't let me rest until I'd written them.

It's this way with songs, too. I'll often get a verse or a line or a concept, and rather than being something I can toss in a notebook until I need it it will feel like it's trying to claw its way out of my head, and however long it takes it won't lie quiet until I finish it. "Apocalypse Ballade," "Make This Timeline Brighter," and the "It Takes Such Courage Not To Turn To Stone" poem are the worst offenders.

Other people's writings that have haunted me either recently or long-term: The Last Unicorn. Pamela Dean's Tam Lin retelling. This one Mob fic that looked like it was going to be about gardening but turned out to be about grief. Mary Oliver's "When I Am Among The Trees." the concept of "Every Heart A Doorway" haunts me forever even though I hated the actual book (which ironically makes the haunting worse).

[pantherlover]

An Artificial Nigh Re-Read: Part 6

Hello again! Onto the next part:

Chapter Twenty-Four:

I think Toby's gotten better at keeping hold of her weapons during a fight; here she lost her knife in like two seconds.

Is it couples bonding if Tybalt and Toby both frequently end up with bloody clothing? I feel like it's couples bonding.

'"The Luidaeg called me," [Tybalt] said.' How did Luidaeg call him? I'm pretty sure the Court of Cats doesn't have a phone. Did she call Marcia and get her to find Tybalt like Toby did in the last book? Did Luidaeg insist that she needed to get in contact with Tybalt and something in his vicinity started working as a phone?

Moving Day reference! As far as I remember, this is the first of three times that Moving Day has come up in the books: here, in The Unkindest Tides when Luidaeg calls in Toby's debt, and now Sleep No More (and presumably The Innocent Sleep) are set around it. Given that (I'm pretty sure?) it represents the changing of the Queen's Courts, I bet that there are certain types of magics/rituals associated with it. We'll have to see how relevant the Day is!

The way the Shadow Roads work is fascinating to me. So in this book, I'm guessing that some combination of the distance and the fact that the Roads are pretty hostile to Toby is enough to kill Tybalt. Fast forward to Be the Serpent, and Toby is able to handle the Shadow Roads *by herself*, both while Tybalt's unconscious and when he's not on the Roads with her at all. Partly this is because Toby's gotten stronger, and partly it's because she's learned to trust Tybalt to keep her safe. I wonder if it's also a form of, like, spousal privileges? Like Tybalt choosing Toby as a partner means that the Shadow Roads aren't as harsh to her?

Chapter Twenty-Five:

Tybalt's been a King of Cats multiple times. Does the amount of lives he has resets every time he becomes a King of Cats again, or is he still working with the same amount of lives he had the first time he was a King?

Luna said that this is the second time that Blind Michael has ridden since she escaped, so Amandine must've refused to do anything the last time. I wonder if August was alive then? Maybe she'd was already missing by then?

Chapter Twenty-Six:

"You let me take your skin. I found... I know how the Selkies did it. Let me be Kitsune. Let me go free." First: I don't think I fully understood the implications of what Luna did when she took Hoshibara's skin until we learned more about what happened to the Roane. Eira had the mortals skin them so that the night-haunts wouldn't be able to find them. So Hoshibara's not just dead, she's *gone* - no peace, no living on through the night-haunts, nothing. I understand why Luna did it, but that's a lot to just sweep under the rug and pretend never happened. Second: how did she find out what happened to the Selkies? Who did she find it out from? My first thought was Eira, but why would she do it?

"Because your existence offends me, daughter of Amandine." I just realized that this is probably a reference to Janet. Toby's actually pretty likely that Luidaeg likes her so much, isn't she?

"Our word has always been our bond, and [BlindMichael's] blood was older than mine. His word would be more binding." I don't know, Toby, Titania and Eira seem like they're really good at going against their word.

Chapter Twenty-Seven:

"Once, when I sang a song about a woman named Janet and the white horse her lover rode, He started hitting me and almost didn't stop." I think this is the first overt reference to Tam Lin and Janet we got in the series.

It ended up being a good thing that Acacia didn't escape with Toby, but it's still a little sad that she did such a brave thing and came out with nothing.

Chapter Twenty-Eight:

Has Seanan McGuire ever mentioned which version of the Ballad of Tam Lin she used? I have a version that I really love, but it doesn't have a Ride or Maeve in it.

Luidaeg went from wanting to keep Toby from May for as long as possible to letting May not only have a claim on Toby when they broke the Ride, but also let her be the one to hold onto her. What *happened* in the two months Toby was gone?

'Someone screamed, and I heard Cassandra chanting, "I am not afraid of snakes I am not afraid of - oh God, I think she's poisonous - snakes -" Cassandra might be my favourite Brown kid. I love her so muuuuuuuuch

'May removed her cloak and threw it over me, pulling me further into the circle as she stood.' May was definitely the most useful one for remembering to actually bring some clothes with them.

I don't have a lot of love for Luna anymore, but I love Acacia and I hope they've managed to repair their relationship now.

That's it for now! I will hopefully have the last five chapters up either later today or tomorrow. Just in time for the new book! As always, please come and discuss things with me. Until next time!

[ae-neon]

I get it (and not trying to be contrary to what you said, honestly I think your rewrite will be fabulous whichever way you decide to go) but both in ancient AND in modern times, new money families and non titled families HAVE been known to have high connections and get close to royalty! It was always kind of a mix between “how did they do that?” and “what’s their endgame?” but it happened regularly enough. Mostly, it showed favorably on the new money peeps because there had to be something exceptional about you if you could do something that titled old money people couldn’t. Made for lots of jealousy, which could also tie in with other families turning their backs on the Archerons when they lost it all. They were popular and rising through the ranks and getting good connections and all that, lots of people would’ve DELIGHTED in their downfall.

Also, I really have to say again that although I trust your artistic vision with this rewrite, as far as the story as a whole goes, I really see zero reason for Feyre to have gone through all of that. If she’s based off the Ballad of Tam Lin and all those other things, her being a huntress from the get go was always a thing I was meh about. Janet was a regular woman, Psyche was a gentlewoman, Belle was either a gentlewoman or at the very least not a hardworking hunter. They all managed to get their man back. I would’ve rathered her start off as a noblewoman maybe with dyslexia if we HAD to keep the whole not being able to read thing and her learning to find herself with training while in the Spring Court, which she could’ve then used during the trials.

I see, I see, yea that totally makes sense - I think it would tie in so well if Papa A as new money merchant extraordinare were the one to reach the queens but the canon really makes it seem like a Nesta feat.

The Feyre bit is so real 😭 that's probably why I'm excited to see the story from Nesta's pov of this gentlewoman who goes into the unknown for her sister

I've been struggling with Feyre's pov especially her motivations and goals.

The problem I've created for myself is trying to stick close to sjm's canon while adding elements but any sort of logical thinking unravels the story and creates 5 more problems

[cature]

🏹 ) NARNIA. an ongoing collection of snippets that drive me absolutely bonkers. i think susan pevensie should be allowed to skin that lion-who-is-god. i think lewis had nothing worth listening to to say about her, about how she mourned and packed up and lived without the loss of her country and people a second time over, about her rejection of the innocence of youth and the wisdom of age, and about what that means for the kingdom of heaven. loadbearing “i was raised catholic and repressed 99% of it” elaborate mind palace. all i ever do is listen to lion’s teeth by the mountain goats and spiral psychologically. when being the final girl is a condemnation, and being the first girl is an anointment to lead the rapture. spits.

🧭 ) COMPELS ME, THOUGH. speaking of delusions, psychosis, visions from oracles and beggars alike, prophecy, reincarnation, and soulmate theory. a collection of lines and images that were designed atomically to have me pacing the house for days murmuring “the kingdom of god is within you because you ate it” like a maniac. the closest i will get to talking about when the line is crossed from a normal interaction with a story to a flicker of a moment stood before the throne of the jewel of all-desiring. something something nausicaa of the valley of the wind something something the ballad of tam lin something something the tempest. a homesickness.

🗡️ ) MARTYRDOM. being alone in being chosen, being too pure or too bright or too unyielding to ever suffer the ignomity of touch. it’s about the enforced inhumanity that can turn you into an angel or an animal depending on the day. how isolation changes the way you view yourself and your existence. the oracle writing on the floor predicts that winter will come again in its turn and everyone holds their breath. that quote about joan of arc not being shocked that the arrow hit her as predicted, but shocked that it should hurt. burning alive feels like nothing else ever will again.

🦇 ) BURY ME SHALLOW. being cast aside, and devoting your heart forever after to clawing down the walls that were built to keep you out. it’s about making eye contact with your own death after the fact and refusing to lie down and rot obediently, about making everyone who would avert their eyes see every worm and every piece of bone. a resentful collection of the obvious vampire aesthetic that i never see elsewhere: fabric in strips, slick from the too-dark earth of your own grave, hair growing after burial not as an urban myth but as a small warning.

🫀 ) WAR OF THE ROSES. being bitter at your miserable fate and choosing it whole-heartedly anyway, walking to the gallows with your face clean. it’s about outclassing everyone around you and being stoned in the street for it. it’s about pathetic jealousy having more weight in the world than any work to establish a future worth living in ever will. it’s about a years long parasocial relationship with a dead woman formed as i was studying to become an investigative journalist so my “inevitable” death would be one with weight that retroactively justified my existence in the world.

🍞 ) TAM LIN. people focus a lot on the comedy aspects of janet falling pregnant and returning home, and not enough on her desperate lonely mission to pick a rose that could kill her quickly. it’s a story that starts alone and afraid and resigned and asks her to do a thousand impossibilities both magical and personal in her effort to carve out a real lived life. and yeah, okay, it is also about me losing my mind at the idea of keeping what you hold onto. “you are forever responsible for what you have tamed,” and so forth. i like when fairie tests are easy enough to win if you mean what you promised and cannot be put off from it by temporary pain or risk.

🦪 ) RUSALKA. this one is right on the middling line of wisher (theurgist, fatalist) thoughts and identifying an alarming amount with being a selkie. what are those swans of myth without their feathered cloaks? what would you do, forced to be human without flinch or reprieve? why not the reverse? why not walk into the river and see what it can make of your mutton fat heart? the catacombs of paris are dry, the tower of london airy, carterhaugh beautiful. the river is none of those things. the bolton strid runs deep and dark but ends in pondscum all the same.

🧵 ) CRANE WIFE. and then, on the other hand. there is the tower. in shalott, in myth, in fairytale sung. girls weave straw into gold in the tower. girls weave hair into rope in the tower. girls weave nettles into shirts for swans, their hands blistered and burning. girls creep down beneath the bough of the earth, giggling, and dance their shoes to bloody ribbons. girls glide across the river beneath the moon with beautiful wings. girls glide across the river beneath the opera house in beautiful boats. the girlhood in these myths is required, for the opal shine, and removable at any time.

🪦 ) PENULTIMATE GIRL. girl dead before the story starts, girl dead in the final act, girl helping the killer who needs to be disposed of (by him or by his prey), girl who lives to the end of the film and remembers it next time, girl trapped in a web, girl trapped on a stage, girl trapped in your memories, girl trapped in the vcr player as you rewind her, girl who knows what will happen as if it came to her in a nightmare, girl who exists as a polaroid in evidence, girl in the freezer in the attic in the walls in the garden in the well in the basement, girl whose spirit must be helping us to escape, girl whose spirit must be cursing us to her same fate, girl next door, girl from school, girl who lives down the street, girl you know, boring girl, dead girl, forgotten already.

🌙 ) STILL LEFT WITH THE RIVER. god ok this is a doctor who tag. bang gavel death penalty etc. i made it so long and so far without cracking. you have to give me credit for that. cmon. that has to could for something. eugh. anyway! soulmate theory gone wrong! soulmate theory gone completely right if you look at the facts of what it means and not the propaganda! soulmate theory gone, just gone, connection knotted up and rotting and tugged on again and again without mercy, connection red-raw from over-use, connection unhealing and unhealed in equal parts. when every part of your heart has been cut up and used and cooked and eaten in turn, when you have been every and each thing you can be to another to just one person, when it is unwordable and unthinkable but utterly humiliatingly knowable.

🦷 ) FREEZER BRIDAL. depression untreatable , future unobservable, high risk low reward pussy. drawing stained glass effigies of myself being hanged in my attic or burned at the stake or discovered in the crawlspace. flies all over everything in the corners of my vision. blame my distractions for the rotting milk in my sink and ignore the boundless lonely years before i had them when i would sit in silence and dream up a life where i was somehow still hated and alone and isolated from the places i desperately wanted to belong. maladaptive daydreaming so unexpectedly onset and severe that it nearly killed me still echoing down my bones convincing me to try again, to just lie down a little longer, to nap instead of eating, to eat until i’m sick and then sleep again, to drink, to give up.

🪞 ) TOWNHOUSE HEART. kind of a shattering. a thousand ways of being one person that feel so bisected and distinct in the moment - but which will, hopefully, come together into a cohesive whole. east and south may feel like strangers on a compass, may feel seperate, or estranged. but they have more in common with one another than they lack. dissociative trauma responses are similar, to me. i expect i will find out what this reflection means years after i begin to assemble the pieces. six blind men inspect an elephant.

📻 ) TAKE OFF YOUR COLOURS. homesickness that doesn’t exist. a deliberately dug-out garden pond to fill with tears. a home shrine to the concept of grief, made up with intent and abandoned by chance. what does it mean to spend almost all your life grieving, not in a metaphorical or allegorical sense, a man who is still alive? what does it do to a person to be without solid ground or a safe place to confide anything in for upwards of two unbroken decades? nothing good, i bet! unrelatedly, here’s a tag for when you make yourself cry just to access the hormonal balancing that comes after the main event. for always being able to pack it all up and quietly leave, and never truly belonging where you are as a result of that. for being lonely.

🎻 ) I WASHED MY HANDS OF THAT FOR THIS? okay fine you win it’s an angel tag. there are no bright points of light in the sky and the blood on the floor never dries. jeanne d'arc is stained glass and fire. this is dante and odessyus and alexandria. this is the lion pits of rome. this is every dead myth in the classics registry being corrupted in their retelling by catholic motifs. the lamb, the lamb, always the lamb, the lamb slain and sacrificed and the wool stained with blood from it. the holy in the viscera, salvation as a type of surgery. your soul a necrotic limb with the still living veins being pulled from it. divine visions become indistinguishable from the reddit rabies post.

🕯️ ) WHICH IS MOST FAINT. juliet in the wings my beloved. polished pearls and silvers all alike. cosette, and miranda, and johanna barker. it’s the light reflecting off the water, and lace gathered up like seafoam, and aching in such sweet bright ways, and a thousand songbirds, and rich fabrics that purr to the touch, and silks in colours that rival any jewel, and glass bells all ringing. turkish delight. the very first flute. maypole ribbons. snowdrops. in many ways you will always be odile, and she will always be dreaming of a life she could have had if it were truly her white feathers in the moonlight.

☀️ ) LOVE ME, BECAUSE LOVE DOESN’T EXIST. a love that is too much. too intolerable, too unbearable, too much. a piece of hot glass in your chest that threads through your veins and is an agony to breathe around. a yet-untapped capacity the kind of loss that myths are made on. a thousand secrets. a thing that makes you more than you were without it. every song written just for this. every bird hatched just to fly across your sky. salt flats when the stars come back out. nobody could live like this. nobody could want this, or be comfortable within it. these feelings exist for the stage, and for books, and for anywhere else they can be quarantined away. comfort me with apples. tell me the fire would hurt if i touched it. let me ignore the ache.

🩸 ) SWORD DANCE. i don’t need a prince, i need a huntsman. and what then? what does that promise eats you alive? what do you do when your teeth are too sharp and your jaw too easy to snap and your eyes too sharp? what do you do when someone smells the blood in your mouth and does not look away? the vampire rips into you and you stay anyway. can that love exist here? can the animal instincts that led you out of your childhood like a guiding light truly be tamed, or at least kept? adored, but not enshrined or forgiven? what a thing you are, when alone in the dark of the moors.

💧 ) THIS IS THE KINGDOM. wouldn’t it be beautiful, though? wouldn’t it taste like the first clear breath of spring? wouldn’t the blood refuse to stick to your clothes? wouldn’t every step of the dance be a perfect bell ring of clarity? like a dream unblurred. “the unicorns gazed back, and knew themselves in her eyes. she understood why they demanded the pure in heart: because, being creatures that did not know choice, they could only recognize someone for whom need and desire had fused into absolute certainty.”

[swiftsnowmane]

Totally agree about the Pentangle soundtrack, it was so delightful and fitting to the tone of the film and helped to ground the movie very firmly in the folk ballad.

if Ava Gardner wanted to make me one of her brainwashed socialite hangers-on, I'm not sure I could say no.

Ha, same! The movie really emphasised just how alluring and seductive the Faerie Queen is and what a powerful hold she has over her 'court'. It helps to sell the fact she has such power over life and death later on towards the end, and even makes the murderous hunt feel believeable in the more modern setting. I even appreciated how it ends with her wrathful wish she could have 'plucked out' Tam-Lin's 'two fine eyes', just as the ballad does. The addition of Tam-Lin's 'replacement' was an interesting one, as you got the feeling he was almost a bit more 'aware' of his fate than the others preceeding him, and even perhaps welcomed it ?? (Or was arrogant enough to think he could eventually escape it. Unsure how to interpret him, but he was an intriguing side-character.)

But ultimately it is the journey of Tam-Lin and Janet that is at the heart of the story, and I think the film conveys this, even in its somewhat stylised manner. There are many, many retellings of this story out there, but I personally am drawn to the ones that not only emphasize the fact that does Janet have to 'hold on' to her man against the Faerie Queen's wrath and desire, but also that depict Tam-Lin himself actively wanting to 'become a man'. Sometimes his actual transformation is symbolic and metaphorical, and this version kind of towed the line between the two, with Tam-Lin's psychedelic drink-induced trippy visions of himself transforming intersperse with Janet holding him and keeping him from drowning in the stream. But the key is that he first must come to a place where he accepts responsibility for his actions — he wants to escape the Faerie Queen and he wants to become a father to his and Janet's child. It's a metaphorical transformation into becoming a man (aka 'manning up'). And a journey of accepting mortality and thus also 'becoming human'.

The words of Janet's father's church sermon beautifully convey this theme:

"Through love, in ways we cannot turn aside from, we learn what a heavy thing it is to be human, and that's the start of growing wise. A poet said, we must love one another or die. Now, this is very true. But a second truth cuts deeper: we must love one another and die. If we have the courage and patience to accept both these truths together, and try and live by them as best we can, then we are human-hearted."

Both Tam-Lin and Janet come to truly love one another, but they are also willing to die for one another, and that's what breaks the spell and brings Tam-Lin more fully back into the human world of love — real love, with all its attendent anxieties, sorrows, and responsibilties.

While reading up as much about Tam Lin as I could find (as one does) I found out that Pentangle had recorded a version specifically for the movie Tam Lin, made in 1970. Turns out it's on YouTube, so I went ahead and watched it.

I enjoyed it a lot. It felt like they tried to tell a new story of their own that would sync up with the song from time to time. I was grinning ear to ear every time I noticed it sync up, it was really delightful. They also made great use of the Pentangle song inserting it into scenes where the parallels were more metaphorical.

I was most curious to see how they handled Tam Lin's transformations, and I think they did it in a really spectacular way.

[goforth-ladymidnight]

Hi again! 💜

I read your feylin onefic and it was wonderful, I really love the way you depict the characters. 💜

The onefic made me curious: Do you have any thoughts, theories or headcanons on how the story of ACOTAR would have continued had SJM stuck to her original plan and kept feylin as the endgame?

I really hope you are feeling better btw, please take care and stay safe! 💜

Hello! And thank you! That story was a joy to write, and I’m so glad you enjoyed it. ❤️ I appreciate your patience in waiting for an answer this question while I was in the hospital. I’m home now, and feeling much better. After giving your question a lot of thought, here’s what I’ve come up with. (Settle in! It’s a long one.)

First things first. Whatever SJM may say about Feysand, she started off adapting the Ballad of Tam Lin/Beauty and the Beast, indicating that she did want Feylin as endgame at one point. I must admit that I do find SJM’s choice to adapt Hades and Persephone for the sequel to be unique and creative, even though I don’t care for the execution. (Or Tamlin’s character assassination.)

So, assuming that nothing changes about ACOTAR (bargain tattoo included), that means that Feyre is still Rhysand’s mate, and she must visit him in the Night Court for one week every month. I want to keep that in this story. Since she has a human heart inside a High Fae body, this gives us room to explore the dynamic between her head and her heart, and lets us wonder if she’ll choose her mate or her own fate (with Tamlin). Of course, since this is my version, she’ll choose Tamlin in the end, but I would prefer that the story actually makes us wonder.

I still like the idea of Hybern being the next big enemy, but the focus of this story would be on Prythian itself. There is a tentative peace after Amarantha’s reign; the courts are trying to rebuild, and Feyre is trying to adjust to her new life.

I’m not against the idea that Feyre and Tamlin both have nightmares after their experiences Under the Mountain. However, I would tie that into the fact that Rhysand hasn’t called in his bargain yet. Give Feyre a physical reaction to the magical bond she shares with him, so that they both bear the consequences of an unfulfilled bargain. Hence we see the nightmares and the vomiting. Perhaps over the week of the full moon? But of course, Feyre and Tamlin don’t realize what’s really going on, since she was once human, and she might think it’s her new body reacting to her “time of the month”.

As for the smaller details, I want to see moments of comfort and calm between Feyre and Tamlin. I want to see them press their foreheads together and breathe in unison when they’re feeling anxious. Love scenes are good, but I also want the intimacy of what comes after. She presses her cheek to his chest so that she can hear his heart beating, and he rests his chin on her head and falls asleep with her cocooned safely in his arms.

Since half of his face was covered by a mask, Feyre takes every opportunity to brush his hair back from his forehead. Tamlin’s claws haven’t made an appearance for months. I want to see them in his study together as he slowly teaches her how to read. I want to see their engagement. I imagine that the square-cut emerald ring is an old Spring Court heirloom (it may or may not have belonged to his mother), and though Feyre is initially thrilled with it, she begins to feel the weight of her future role as Lady of the Spring Court. (That’s not too different from what happens in canon, but this time the engagement isn’t mentioned as an afterthought.)

Enter Ianthe. She’s not there just as a wedding planner, though she certainly wants to be involved. It would be quite the career-boost, so to speak, to officiate a High Lord’s wedding. However, I don’t want her to seem like a shallow villain who just wants power. I like the kind of villain who has goals we can understand, even if we don’t agree with them. So I imagine that Ianthe wants to re-open The Mountain so that the priestesses can reclaim it, and it just so happens that the ruins are rumored to be the final resting place of the Cauldron itself, which is a sacred artifact to the priestesses.

Side note: I know in canon that the Cauldron was once on the continent, but I would prefer to keep the action to Prythian and Hybern in this book. Therefore my headcanon is that everything related to the Cauldron is in Prythian, from the pot itself to the three feet to the two halves of the Book of Breathings. The whole debacle with the mortal queens wasn’t my favorite part of Book 2, so I’m ignoring that for now.

I’m going to leave the timeline more or less intact, as I don’t want to gloss over the importance of Calanmai. In fact, I might make that a more important feature in Book 3, but for now we have the wedding to look forward to. And Feyre is looking forward to it, especially since it means seeing her sisters again, even if it is just for a short while. I imagine it is Ianthe who makes her doubt whether her human family should come, since Amarantha’s beasts still roam the forests, and there are many faeries--High and Low alike--who do not care for humans. Little comments like that make Feyre begin to doubt herself and her human heart. She’s High Fae now, and she should act like it.

Regardless, not long after, the invitations are sent out across Prythian. This isn’t going to be some small Spring Court affair, after all. This is the wedding of the century! Not only is this a High Lord’s wedding, but Tamlin is marrying Feyre Cursebreaker, the Savior of Spring and Defender of the Seven Courts. This is a chance to celebrate, and to make peace. However, one person in particular is not thrilled to receive an invitation. Rhysand decides that if he’s going to have any kind of chance to win over his mate, he has to act before the wedding.

In this story, it’s OK that Rhys is selfish. He’s not rescuing Feyre from a panic attack. He just spent half a century Under the Mountain, and he’s not willing to give up his mate so easily, especially to his enemy. Feyre has to go with him, of course, and throughout the course of the book, we learn more about what happened between those two High Lords, and she realizes that the Night Court is not as villainous as she had been led to believe. Still somewhat villainous, though, because drama. (Also, I want Tamlin’s side of the story about what happened to Rhys’s mother and sister. Feyre was too quick to accept that Rhys’s story was the absolute truth.)

I have seen some fan theories that suggest that Rhys used his daemati powers to influence Feyre’s thoughts, aka brainwashing, but I don’t know if I would go that far. There would be accusations of his influence, certainly, but I don’t know how far I’d push Rhys to be an outright villain. 

Tamlin is a nervous wreck when Feyre comes back, and he is desperate to find a way to break the bargain between them (but not the mating bond, because his parents were mates, and he knows how sacred that kind of bond is). He pushes for a smaller, faster wedding, thinking that his marriage to Feyre will get Rhys to back off. Then they can have a larger party with all of the High Lords and her human family later on. Feyre is understandably hurt by this, as she doesn’t like to think of herself as anyone’s possession. After all, Amarantha thought of Tamlin as hers, which is why Feyre went Under the Mountain in the first place. So there’s a small wedge growing between our lovebirds. (I did say I wanted Feyre’s choice to feel like a choice, after all.)

I haven’t even mentioned how Feyre’s burgeoning powers play into this. I do know that there needs to be a limit to how powerful she is, and limits are not something that are well-defined in canon. I would still like to see her develop her gifts, but I don’t know how involved Tamlin should be. I just know I don’t want him to forbid training her, because that aspect of his character really bothered me. Make him protective, sure, but not to the point of stifling her. In fact, I think he would be all right with Lucien training her physically, with a sword and on horseback. Tamlin was trained as a warrior, after all, and he learned to suppress his magic gifts to avoid detection by his brothers, so why wouldn’t he think to encourage the same for Feyre?

Feyre goes along with this at first, until Rhys points out that stifling her magic now will only make her a bigger target later. Of course, he offers to train her magically while she’s with him. And how convenient that her magic will help them as they search for the magical artifacts scattered across Prythian? Now we have this push and pull between Rhys pushing her mentally (for his own selfish ends, let’s admit it), and Tamlin pushing her physically. Meanwhile she’s just trying to find the right balance between the two, since she feels torn between what she was and who she has become.

And speaking of training, I liked visiting the Summer Court in canon. Rhys takes her there to get the other half of the Book, but she insists that they ask for it first. Rhys is used to acting alone, so he is reluctant, but Feyre wants to do things right. They still end up stealing it, but only because she has been led to believe that it is for the greater good. (She will have learned about the looming threat of Hybern by now, so she is more easily convinced.) This becomes one of the first big secrets between her and Tamlin, and it eats away at her. On the one hand, she can feel herself becoming stronger under Rhys’s tutelage, but on the other, she betrayed the trust of one of the Seasonal Courts who was an ally Under the Mountain.

The Mountain has always been a natural barrier between the Solar and Seasonal Courts, and though there is a kind of peace between them now after Amarantha, all is not well between them. For fun, let’s say that both halves of the Book of Breathings are in Prythian: one in the Seasonal Courts, and the other in the Solar Courts. We know the first is in Summer, so let’s put the other half in one of the libraries of the Day Court (since I consider those courts as mirrors of the other). Let’s make Lucien’s heritage a bigger part of this story, while we’re at it.

And speaking of heritage, I also want to learn more about existing characters, specifically their names. The Lady of Autumn is one, and Papa Archeron and the King of Hybern are the others, though I’m sure there are more.

I could make this response twice as long, and there is still more I could think to add to this story. For now, I think this is a good start, especially since it’s been a while since I read ACOMAF all the way through. If I sat down and thought about it, I could come up with a whole outline to change that book into a Feylin-friendly version, but I hope you’re content with what I’ve come up with. I have other projects that take precedence, unfortunately.

I don’t want to leave you hanging, though, so I will tell you the conclusion of the story (as it would be in Book 3). I would try to find another fairy tale I could adapt for the final story in the trilogy--and it would have to be a trilogy--but at this point I don’t know which one I’d choose. I just know that Feyre wouldn’t be a spy hellbent on taking the Spring Court down from the inside. That was my least favorite part of ACOWAR.

Anyway, at the very end of the story, Feyre would have to make the difficult decision between siding with her mate or choosing Tamlin. Spoiler: she chooses Tamlin with her whole heart, echoing the concept from Book 1 and tying everything together in a neat little bow. Although the soulmate concept is a romantic one, this story is about taking your fate in your own hands instead of letting it be decided for you.

This question was a challenge, but I enjoyed it! I didn’t expect my answer to take so long or to be so long, so thank you for sticking with me. And thanks again for visiting my inbox!

[bookishfeylin]

In all seriousness though, in a way this actually makes me appreciate acotar 1 even less? I think there's a really fine line between inspiration and laziness that sarah janet constantly trips over and writing a barest bones idea with shoddy world building, characterization, and consistency based on THREE different established stories (plus all the claims of plagiarism) is...not a good look for me. And the first book is the only book in the entire series I enjoyed, so that's saying something. It makes it look like she had an idea, and rather than doing the creative work and expanding it on her own, just plugged in bits and pieces of others' works to make a story, which sucks because I have zero issues with a good fairy tale reinvention...as long as it doesn't feel like someone just took a barest bones idea and plugged in bits and pieces of the original work to make a story.

Hmm. While I have criticized many things about Sarah's writing, I think I'm going to have to disagree with you here, anon. I thought Sarah actually did a really good job of weaving The Ballad of Tam Lin, Beauty and the Beast, and Eros and Psyche into a new story in ACOTAR. YA is incredibly tropey, but as a retelling of these three stories, ACOTAR managed to keep the tropes to a minimum. Feyre wasn't a super special chosen one mary sue, she was a normal human girl who made a deal with the devil to save her love and could only hope to preserve her soul in the process. Tamlin wasn't a dark-haired bad boy with shadow powers who hurts the protagonist and then later claims it was done out of love, he was a genuinely nice guy who refused to even romance her for the first third of the book lol. And unlike most fantasy, the point of the book isn't that Feyre's on a world-ending, soul-breaking mission try to save the world, either--she's just trying to save Tamlin, saving everyone else by default lol. Although a retelling, ACOTAR is actually refreshingly original in the scene of YA. Not that it's without it's flaws, and I do agree with your point to some degree--Sarah combining the "barest bones" as you put it of so many stories came at the expense of developing any thorough, consistent worldbuilding, or a concrete magic system.

[kaijudyke]

hello my friends! as you may or may not be aware i have a healthy obsession with the ballad of tam lin, and today i would like to talk to you about the abundance of parallels between tam lin and star trek deep space nine s02e22 the wire! i will be summarizing the ballad for you so you do not need to be familiar with it! strap in for a long analysis and join me under the cut 💖

1. a summary of the ballad in broad strokes

(all excerpts in this section from child 39A)

tam lin is a scottish folktale about a young woman named janet who goes to the forest of carterhaugh, which is known to be guarded by a fairy called tam lin.

O I forbid you, maidens a', That wear gowd on your hair, To come or gae by Carterhaugh, For young Tam Lin is there.

(janet is aware of this, and goes anyway. one of my favorite running themes in the ballad is janet being incredibly headstrong and cocky.) she picks a few roses, he appears and tells her to stop, she stands up to him, and they end up sleeping together (and, ostensibly, falling in love). she returns home to her father's castle pregnant. her father and the other men at the castle are very concerned about her pregnancy, but she defies them and tells her father that this is her own responsibility and that she'd rather be with tam lin than any human nobleman:

If that I gae wi child, father, Mysel maun bear the blame, There's neer a laird about your ha, Shall get the bairn's name. If my love were an earthly knight, As he's an elfin grey, I wad na gie my ain true-love For nae lord that ye hae.

janet goes back to carterhaugh to pick abortifacient herbs and terminate the pregnancy, since she believes she and tam lin will never be able to be together. tam lin reappears and asks her to stop, and she asks him to tell her more about himself (in many versions she asks him if he's a christian), looking for any reason not to give up on him:

"Why pu's thou the rose, Janet, Amang the groves sae green, And a' to kill the bonny babe That we gat us between?" "O tell me, tell me, Tam Lin," she says, "For's sake that died on tree, If eer ye was in holy chapel, Or christendom did see?"

he tells her that he's human like her, but was taken by the fairy queen as a child. he also says that the fairies pay a tithe to hell every seven years, and he's worried this time they're going to sacrifice him. he tells her how to save him: she must be at miles cross at midnight on all hallow's eve, when the fairies ride by, and she must pull him down from his horse and hold on to him as the fairies change his shape several times.

"They'll turn me in your arms, lady, Into an esk and adder, But hold me fast, and fear me not, I am your bairn's father. "They'll turn me to a bear sae grim, And then a lion bold, But hold me fast, and fear me not, And ye shall love your child. "Again they'll turn me in your arms To a red het gand of airn, But hold me fast, and fear me not, I'll do you nae harm. "And last they'll turn me in your arms Into the burning gleed, Then throw me into well water, O throw me in with speed. "And then I'll be your ain true-love, I'll turn a naked knight, Then cover me wi your green mantle, And hide me out o sight."

(the exact details of the transformations vary between versions, but some of the most common shapes he has to go through are adder, newt, lion, hot coal, and burning iron. if you're interested in the variations, i highly recommend this page!) once the transformations are done, he instructs her to wrap him in her green cloak, after which the fairies won't have a claim to him anymore. janet follows his instructions and successfully saves him, much to the dismay of the fairy queen.

2. janet, julian, and their relationships

whichever version of tam lin you are reading, janet is a character with a ton of agency. she has no qualms about encroaching on tam lin's territory (in fact she tells him in no uncertain terms that the forest is hers), and there is some indication that she might have gone to carterhaugh specifically because she wanted to sleep with tam lin; she's said to be wearing a green dress, and since the color green was associated with the fae, wearing green to a fairy wood is pretty clearly inviting their attention. (in medieval literature, green was also sometimes associated with love and sex.)

it's not hard to draw a parallel between janet's decision to pursue tam lin despite the danger he represents and julian's immediate fascination with garak in past prologue even though (or rather because) he suspects him to be a spy. also of note is that janet and tam lin's relationship begins with an argument, where her willingness to challenge him seems to be what draws him to her. one of my favorite retellings, by james p. spence, emphasizes this:

‘I'm here tae guard these woods, tae see that naebodie nor nothing disturbs their peace.’ ‘An was it ma father that gave ye such a job?’ ‘Naw it wasnae.’ ‘Weel, there ye are then. It should be you that's asking ma permission tae set foot in these woods, because it is ma father that owns them.’ Then the young man's face rose up intae a smile that seemed many a long year since it was last there. (scottish borders folk tales, james p. spence, p. 114-115)

i'm sure i don't need to tell you that this is reminiscent not only of garak and julian's fondness for debate but of the way cardassians show romantic interest. more than that, though, i think there's something to be said for the way these relationships are treated by other people in the characters' lives. janet's father and his knights are troubled by her pregnancy, and they clearly think she should be with a normal, respectable man, preferably one of said knights, given that she feels the need to remark "There's neer a knight about your ha / Shall hae the bairnie's name." (child 39I) in the wire, when julian tells jadzia he wishes garak would trust him, she replies "why should he? it's not like the two of you are really friends." julian's friends do not understand why he spends so much time with garak—a cardassian, a spy, an outcast, someone who can't be trusted.

in both cases it's easy enough to see where they're coming from; being pregnant out of wedlock with a fairy's child is certainly not an ideal situation for a young noblewoman to find herself in, and it's remarkably foolish for a starfleet officer to have regular lunch dates with someone he believes to be an enemy spy. but janet and julian are both stubborn, and more interested in what's adventurous and exciting than what's good for them. (remember that, like janet knowingly going to pick roses in a forest guarded by fairies, julian wanted the position on ds9 because he wanted to try his hand at "frontier medicine"; misguided as he may have been, his thirst for adventure is the reason he's even on the station to begin with.)

3. fairyland, the obsidian order, and enabran tain

in the ballad, tam lin is abducted by the fairy queen when he's a child. she takes him to a magical realm where he feels no pain and is far removed from human worries.

And we that live in faeryland, No sickness know, nor pain, I quit my body when I will, And take to it again. (j. holm, verse 32)

garak has been enabran tain's protégé since he was very young. as an operative of the obsidian order, he's been trained to be cool under pressure, to play his cards close to his chest, and to avoid sentimentality and attachment. the plot of the episode hinges entirely on a device implanted in his brain that keeps him from feeling pain. to save his life, julian has to remove the implant, metaphorically rescuing him from fairyland and the influence of the queen who stole him away from the human world. the fairy queen is very possessive of tam lin and very disdainful of his feelings for janet; in many versions of the ballad, after janet successfully rescues him, the fairy queen remarks that if she'd known this would happen, she would have plucked out his eyes and replaced them with wood, or taken his heart and replaced it with stone.

"But had I kend, Tam Lin," said she, "What now this night I see, I wad hae taen out thy twa grey een, And put in twa een o tree." (child 39A, verse 42) 'Had I but kend, Thomas,' she says, 'Before I came frae hame, I had taen out that heart o flesh, Put in a heart o stane.' (child 39B, verse 41)

much like tain tried and failed to mold garak into the perfect emotionless spy, the fairy queen very literally wants to remove tam lin's ability to feel love, because his emotions make him harder for her to control, and in the end are what lead him to escape her clutches entirely. garak and tam lin are both saved by the same thing: their transgressive love for their rescuer, and the fierce, unconditional love they receive in return.

4. hold me fast and fear me not

the central event of the tam lin ballad, of course, is the transformation scene. i'm sure it's what makes the ballad stick in people's minds; it certainly is for me. there's something so deeply romantic about the phrase "hold me fast and fear me not," and about the idea of loving someone so much that you'll hold on to them even as they turn into a beast in your arms. the wire doesn't have as literal a transformation scene as tam lin, but i would argue that it certainly has one.

after julian removes garak's implant (which we can equate to pulling tam lin down from his horse), garak goes through withdrawal. he becomes, by turns, depressed, and angry, and spiteful, and violent. throughout the episode, we see him try to drive julian away. he refuses his help; he insults him; he tells him contradictory stories about his past, all designed to shock him; when none of this succeeds at discouraging him, he physically lashes out.

julian, however, doesn't budge. he isn't fooled by the shapes garak contorts himself into. he takes every change in stride, never wavering in his determination to save him. every person garak claims to be, julian accepts. like janet defying the fairy queen for love of tam lin, he goes as far as to enter cardassian territory and seek out enabran tain in order to save garak's life. when he believes he's about to die, garak tells julian he needs to know that someone forgives him; "i forgive you," julian says, "for whatever it is you did." whatever kind of beast garak is—whatever kind of beast tain has turned him into—julian will not let go of his hand. he will hold him fast.

He grew into her arms two Like iron in hot fire; She held him fast, let him not go, He was her heart's desire. (child 39D, verse 31)

the basic structure of these stories is the same: the main character finds out that the person they love is in immediate danger due to something they went through when they were younger, which fundamentally changed them as a person and is also keeping the two from being together. unwilling to lose their love, they brave the wrath of a powerful villain who's controlled this person's life for a long time. there are undeterred by the frightening changes the person goes through. in the end, they are victorious, and their beloved is free.

5. my dear doctor, they're all true

a closing statement: tam lin is a folktale. like any folktale, there are many, many versions of it, often contradicting each other. there is no definitive version of tam lin (though child 39A may be the most famous). you're free to read every available version of the story, finding meaning not only in the most commonly reoccurring themes, but also in which parts of the text speak to you. like garak's contradictory stories about his life, while it's hard to say whether any one element is true, every element tells you something—about the story, or about the person who tells it. my view of these story parallels is heavily influenced by my own personal interpretation of, and feelings about, the ballad. as it should be.

[displayheartcode]

2021 in review: fanfic writer edition

BY THE NUMBERS:

words written: 25652

words published (AO3): 25652

# of published one-shots: 42?

# of completed multi-chaps: 0

# of fics in progress: 0

# of ongoing multi-chaps: 0

# of fic ideas waiting their turn: too many 

longest work: along the churchyard green 

shortest work: the care and keeping of your alien skin

most chapters in a fic: none

highest # of kudos: when the dust turns back to life

highest # of hits: when the dust turns back to life

top 3 fics by kudos: when the dust turns back to life, out the window, thorns in her heart

top 3 fics by hits: when the dust turns back to life, rearranging the spaces in my mind, out the window

i was tagged by @theroomofreq. 

open to anyone!

BEHIND THE NUMBERS:

most challenging fic to write: 

prophecy boy because there’s so much backstory and exposition i had to cut out. if i had continued, it would have been more original than fic. like, oh, the concept of the au has a lot of fun potential but it leaned too closely into some of my orig projects. 

that being said, i do love the simplicity of the dialogue. 

fic that came easiest to write: 

into beasts and flames and hateful things! you can tell that i’ve been wanting to write a tam lin au for ages. i have a whole childe ballad soundtracks for reasons like this. 

most true-to-the-outline fic: 

i started along the churchyard green with a simple outline full of links to urban legends and folklore. this one i am very proud about. never doubt my ability when it comes to niche research topics. 

most unlike-its-outline fic: 

throw silver and gold onto me was originally going to be a cinderella au (in the grimm version, she asks for the tree to throw silver and gold onto her) but things spiraled because i love fairytales. now i have shelved some of them for original writing instead. 

favorite reader freak-out: 

you all had me laughing with the reactions for you're all I think about that I had to write a follow up. it was inspired by the song i used in the title and from one of my favorite scenes in superstore

most controversial scene: 

none!

hottest ask box topic of the year: 

uhh... i think it was the kissing prompts 

most loved OC: 

i guess...well, I haven’t had any except for harry and ginny’s neighbors in along the churchyard green. i love me some meddling neighbors who know more than they let on. 

also, all of the references i had for narnia and the dark is rising sequence

most hated OC: 

none!

favorite villain to write: 

uh... 

favorite character to write: 

sam wilson in when the dust turns back to life. not only is his immediate reaction to bucky is to roast him endlessly, but i love all of the layers the show gave him as a brother, partner, and a hero. 

most i've cried while writing a scene: 

nothing in my fanfic made me teary-eyed. My original work, however... 

most i've laughed while writing a scene: 

it was more what caused experience the wonders, see the sights to be written because of the reactions to this post 

carl’s ripped

smuttiest smut scene: 

no smut was posted that year 🤷🏻‍♀️

favorite kiss i wrote: 

There was no denying it. Even now, Harry had his arm around Gideon’s shoulders. His green eyes were wide behind his glasses; his black hair was in adoring disarray, just begging for Gideon to sink his fingers…

“We were two threstals in the night,” Gideon said at last. His face felt like it was on fire, half hope, half embarrassment. “Probably missed a number of chances back at school.”

Harry’s hand moved from his shoulder to his jaw, gently tracing the edge with surprising tenderness. “Have we?” Sunlight glinted off his glasses. He looked too beautiful at the moment. The light over his collarbone with the first few buttons of his shirt undone, his shoulders fully relaxed. “We could’ve had months…years…”

There was a new hum of awareness between them.

Their foreheads touched. Gideon whispered Harry’s name. The hand on his jaw moved to the back of his neck, guiding him in a gentle, open-mouthed kiss. Harry tasted like champagne. The touch of him went straight to Gideon’s head, filling him with desire. Oh, some part of him went. Oh, oh…

“Or now,” he mumbled between kisses. His heart had never felt so light. “We can have now.”

hardest trope/thing to write: 

ugggggghhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

it’s not that i hate them, but you can tell in birds of a feather  that i haven’t written a proper action sequence in a while. 

easiest trope/thing to write: 

when characters are in a weird liminal space! you guys have no idea how much i super love this trope. all is now in place, katabasis, along the churchyard green... When you’re neither alive nor dead is the best kind of sandbox. 

proudest fic moment: 

being able to to merge the old guard with this is how you lose the time war in all the night-tide. i remember waking up on my day off, my brain on fire with the idea as i procrastinated working on my thesis edits. there is something deeply satisfying about writing a story that hits you in an instant. 

also – be gay, break time. 

any fic regrets? 

i wish awake, arise had been written better... 

2021 fic habits to break:

uh. your self-worth isn’t tied with your productivity. 

2022 fic habits to make: 

be happy?

[sometimes-love-is-enough]

Hi so uh I was rereading Eucatastrophe today and I remembered how much I love literally ANYTHING you write!! (💙💙💙💙💙💙💙) And I wanted to ask uh if there are any lifestyle changes that T and the sides make after the story ends? Like use the old fae barricades like iron horseshoes at the door, keeping seeds (or something else that takes a lot of time to count) to drop and run and keep a piece of iron (like a nail) as something like a pendant on at all times in order to keep away the fae? (1/2

and do some of those precautions weird people out (like those who know stuff about folklore AND family and friends) and how does Thomas explain? Sorry for the long asks I have too many feelings this fine day

!!! never apologize for asks, guys, never. this answer’s going to be shortish because i’m really not feeling so good this week, but god do i love hearing from you about my dumb writing.

basically, yeah. like the boys discuss in chapter eight while walking to the TFK’s cabin, they absolutely do end up researching and putting into place a lot of the old fae precautions. not like, a ridiculous amount, because, you know. thomas is tentative friends(?) with three entire fairy kings now, but enough so that if another weird guy with a fun sacrifice-related proposition comes to the door, they will be kept the fuck out. 

iron horseshoe over the door, most definitely. they invest in a sword, although that’s mainly for the aesthetic at first. i like to think that some residual Tam Lin knightly stuff means that Thomas gets genuinely interested in swordplay/fencing as a side hobby, post-Eucat. 

people do notice that Thomas is a bit jumpier around jokes about Lovecraft and a bit more cautious when it comes to eating food and singing unconventional music, but mostly they just wave it off as Thomas being Thomas. he’s always been kind of quirky, you know? who cares if he occasionally swears in gaelic or yeets a slice of berry pie instinctively across a room upon it being presented to him

everybody does think that it’s very very weird that he broke his usual brand and style and posted what essentially amounts to a full-on ballad to his main youtube channel about... about something. but also it’s kind of a bop. 

there are many fan theories about what happened between sanders sides episodes to make everybody’s relationships suddenly flip to being weirdly friendly all-around. also why remus keeps making comments about thomas and giant... snakes...? is that supposed to be a euphemism? 

Joan knows the truth, but they find it kind of far-fetched, even having been there for a small amount of it. they believe him, but in that sort of way where it’s like ‘i’m not sure if i actually believe you, and if i was presented with concrete evidence i’d be legitimately blown away because DUDE HOLY FUCK’. 

anyway i think it would kind of detract from the written eucatastrophe ending but i do kind of distantly love the idea of the mirror folks crashing a family gathering or something for whatever reason, and thomas et al being like oh... oh god....... there’s something about the whole Worlds Colliding thing that makes me happy 

about seeds/counting stuff: you know, i’ve never actually seen a source for that, or actually any other fairy-related media (apart from Love And Other Fairy Tales) that has that as a thing? which is not to say that I don’t love it in LAOFT, because I doooo but to my knowledge, it’s traditionally more of a vampire thing. although i guess there’s some overlap with fairies/vampires regarding the whole permission-to-enter thing..... this is a sidetrack. i’d be curious to know if anyone’s got another source for it.

[the-resurrection-3d]

so what was ever good about acotar anyway?

For some reason, I’ve been very tempted to reread ACOTAR lately, and so I’m going to just make a quick list of what I remember specifically endearing the book to me back when I first read it in 2016 so we can compare notes later. This will, however, also include some retroactive criticisms now that we’re four years on from ACOWAR ruining everything forever. 

Twigger warnings for discussions of abuse, csa and neglect, as well as me using my complimentary R Slur Pass.

For some context: 

>Be 18yr me in 2016. 

>Be in your first semester at college. 

>Be so fed up with YA romance that you avoid books just for hinting at them in the summary. 

>Be also brainstorming a series with your roommate called The Cuckmaster Saga. 

This is probably going to sound embarrassing, but I’m being completely sincere when I say that part of why this book excited me was simply the novelty of finding a YA romance book that I liked. 

I’d fallen out hard with YA in general by this point in my life, partially because of a string of fairy tale “retellings” that clearly gave zero fucks about the source material beyond using the iconography in its marketing. Folklore had been my special interest for a while, and my excitement for the series and all its little extra niche references coincided with finally getting to study folklore in a true academic setting.

Which leads me to point one:

I love the idea of combining BatB and the Tam Lin ballad. I know some people have complained about this, but honestly, I enjoyed finding a retelling that mimicked the mix-and-match structuring of a lot of folktales. ACOTAR isn’t even the messiest or least coherent mash-up by a huge margin. Unfortunately, this aspect of the series severely lessened as it went along — remember when we all thought ACOWAR was going to be a Snow White retelling and then there was just one scene with poisoned apples? Lmao.

[If anyone wants an author who does YA mash-ups that are actually YA, I’d recommend Rosamund Hodge, whose books are always interesting in their sheer weirdness even when the story itself slightly falters. I mean, I wrote a whole 20-page thesis on her Red Riding Hood/Maiden Without Hands retelling and still didn’t cover everything I had thoughts on. (Tragically, however, I must inform you all that she is a Catholic Reylo. Rest in pepperoni.)]

It is fucking hilarious in retrospect that SJM clearly knows a bunch of different folktales and folkloric creatures but thinks it’s believable for shadowsinger powers to have no theorized origin “even [in] the rich lore of the warrior-people” (ACOFAS 65). Bro fuck outta here. 

But this leads into point two — Feyre and her family. It’s very obvious that SJM based Nesta and Elain’s dynamic with Feyre off the common folktale trope of having the youngest sibling be the only competent person in the room (and Katniss Everdeen). I thought it was honestly a lot of fun to see this trope done with some interiority; you can practically hear Feyre seethe about what useless hoes her sisters are between every line. I genuinely giggled through these parts on my initial readthrough. 

I’ve seen some people complain that Nesta and Elain’s behaviors aren’t realistic in this situation, but au contraire! Nesta and Elain’s actions in book one are (...almost) perfectly realistic. Without revealing too much, my grandmother grew up in poverty with a few older sisters, and yet my great-grandmother would make her do all the work and constantly force her to give up her possessions (like her car) to the older sisters whenever they wanted them. Even to this day, when they’re all in their 70s and 80s, one of these sisters still relies on my grandma to do basic shit like balancing her checkbooks. I’ve also observed similar dynamics play out plenty of times between an adult child and an overindulgent parent, with people literally ruining their lives and bodies all for the sake of sitting at home all day buying furry porn off the internet. 

Nesta and Elain are basically the psychology of this type of person split in two — Elain the soft, delicate, perpetually victimized front they put on for the world, and Nesta the ice-cold, bitter, and aggressive bitch they truly are. 

Honestly, the only thing I would change about this set-up is either keep Ma Archeron alive or give Papa Archeron more personality than a plank of damp wood. What’s truly missing here is a parental figure enforcing this fucked up dynamic — I don’t remember it being clear that Feyre’s always had this role, just that she took it on after her mom’s death. Making it clear that Feyre’s always been forced to be this way — alongside giving the mom more characterization — would have gone a long way towards making this dynamic feel more realized and less like the narrative using trauma and pity as a shortcut towards reader engagement. 

Then again, that would require SJM to have a female villain in this series who isn’t a rapist, and quotes I’ve seen floating around from ACOSF make it pretty clear SJM doesn’t know same-gender sexual abuse even exists. 

Anyway. 

Point Three (or rather 2B): Feyre realizing she doesn’t have to hang around her family just because she feels obligated to love them was a fucking banger. I loved it so much; having a story, especially a YA story, that showed you aren’t obligated to love a family that treats you like shit was so special to me. Especially since I was also leaving my family for the first time, and going home to visit them every other weekend felt like being hit point-blank with a Psyduck blast. 

Thankfully, my relationship with my family has gotten a lot better, but I’m still really disappointed that Nesta and Elain were forced back into the story, rather than them reaching out to Feyre and making amends because they wanted to do better.  The closest we got to this was the revelation that Nesta almost made it to the Border by herself after Feyre was taken, which was definitely badass, but also unfortunately the only Nesta scene I’ve liked in this entire fucking series. If SJM was going to force Feyre to regress into being Nesta and Elain’s tardwrangler again, then she should have followed up on Amren’s line in ACOWAR that Feyre treats Nesta and Elain the way Tamlin treated her. 

“I asked them to help once—and look what happened. I won’t risk them again.”

Amren snorted. “You sound exactly like Tamlin.”

[. . .] and I said, “She’s right.”  (169-170). 

But I’m sure everyone who’s read ACOSF knows how well that’s going. 

Point Four: the femindhjdfhfdh I can’t even write that with a straight face. I mean let’s be real, I too enjoy seeing female characters I like become queens and all that other stuff, but it was clear to me even on my initial reading of ACOMAF that it was all shallow and designed to help delineate good guys from bad guys without much in the way of nuance. It certainly took me out of the experience a little, but at least it ties into the books’ themes of recovering from abuse and shacking up with a Certified Women Respecter. 

My actual point four: Truthfully I only bought this series for the meme of having the first shitty love interest getting cucked in the second book. ACOWAR gave me some complicated feelings on Tamlin, and I honestly think he should have just stopped appearing in the series after that — BUT, having him be dragged back in once per book just to call him a cuck and cockslap him around a little bit is fucking hilarious. Pointless! But hilarious.

I also think that this kind of arc is a great critique of the standard “happily ever after,” acknowledging that in real life, you’re much more likely to just pass from one abusive household to another because you don’t know what healthy love, communication, and boundaries are. (Arguably many folktales are the fantasies of women who are well aware of this reality but want to imagine a world that’s otherwise). I definitely have a lot of problems with SJM’s claims of “sex positivity,” but acknowledging that Feylin used sex as a means of avoiding communication was another great touch.

I wish that this whole King of Hybern shit was completely cut just to focus on these themes more; it’s very clear SJM only included it because fantasy series = BIG EPIC WORLD-ENDING STAKES!! I've read maybe ten pages of Throne of Glass, so I can't speak for how she handles epic fantasy there, but I know for me and a lot of other stans, the Hybern plot had licherally nothing to do with what we liked and connected to in these books. 

But I must soften here, because I totally empathize with feeling like big stakes are “necessary” for a fantasy story and that no one would want to read your books without them. YA fantasy is the reason why TV Tropes coined the term “romantic plot tumor,” after all. (Source: I’m making shit up.) 

What else… what else… uhhhhh. I think that might be it, at least for substantial things I don’t have to qualify too much. I of course have plenty of little things I used to like but have now been tainted because ACOWAR ruined everything forever and ACOFAS danced on the graves (such as how I liked Lucien but everyone in the books shits on him now to the point it’s stopped being funny). But this post is too long anyway.