#elric white wolf

[sonlikesleep]

Night’s regrets

[angbands-last-hero]

[curtvilescomic]

White Wolf by Michael Whelan

[haaaaaaaaaaaave-you-met-ted]

The Weird of the White Wolf Cover Art by Michael Whelan

[ewniversal-art]

[artypurrs]

Howdy! I'm in need of some help, am thinking of getting a cross stitch pattern made for the elric of melnibone books & plan is for the books to be on the shelf with items or things from the books around it or on the wall by the shelf. If you can help me with figuring out what to pick or have that would mean a lot to me 🫂 the person making the pattern is @TaylorandCromwell on etsy if you want to see examples of what she makes https://www.etsy.com/shop/TaylorandCromwell

Elric of melnibone ideas so far:

The sword Stormbringer, ruby throne, dragon, horn of fate (though I need help with remembering what exactly it looks like/any certain features it should have)

Any ideas would be amazing

[holy-shit-comics]

[r-rook-studio]

August Roseville Beach Reads

So I felt pretty unproductive in August. I went into a second bout with Elric hoping I'd like him better than I did the first time I tried to read him, but that wasn't really the case. I certainly appreciate him better than I did, but getting through those books was a fucking slog, and I'm happy to be done. Technically, the Fortress of the Pearl isn't a Roseville Beach Read since it came out in 1989, and technically I strongly prefer to read series in publication order, but I was stuck with an omnibus edition so I ground my teeth and got through it. (Some would say the same thing for Weird of the White Wolf, but it's all reprints/rewrites of shorter fiction that was published in the 60s.)

I'd been meaning to pick up both The Exorcist and The Bull from the Sea for years decades and kept not getting around to it. If I'm ever stuck in a 70s paperback exchange, I'd happily read either one again.

The Dispossessed, which I hadn't read before, is probably the best, most rewarding book I've read this summer. Getting through it while dealing with some of my own inner demons was rough, but I can't recommend it highly enough.

[retroscifiart]

Guillaume Sorel - The Weird of the White Wolf (1990. The Elric Saga 3, Michael Moorcock)

[ponchaka]

Elric of Melniboné, the emperor of ruins, the dragon prince, the white wolf, the eternal champion, sorcerer, servant of chaos, linked to the cursed sword Stormbringer, albinos, mass murderer, sexy goth, crackhead, probably racist and kind of a jerk.

[sonlikesleep]

Elric of Melnibonè

[nitewrighter]

Reading the Elric Saga on your recommendation. Just got done with Sailor on the Seas of Fate and, uh, I’m not complaining but Elric really just seems to be going a la John Mulaney: ‘I guess this might as well happen, my life is already so goddamn weird’ through the whole story. Stuff just keeps happening and he’s doing a decent job of just rolling with the punches.

Sailor on the Seas of Fate is literally the "This might as well happen" book of the whole series. You can tell it's kind of an episodic hodgepodge of a lot of semi-formed ideas that couldn't all be expanded into really more fully-fledged short stories/novellas. You kind of get whiplash heading into Weird of the White Wolf because like, that one opens up with The Dreaming City, which incidentally is the first Elric story I ever read and the first Elric story ever written, and it's actually like... honestly if you're going to read any Elric stories just for the sake of getting one off and calling it quits immediately after, I do recommend The Dreaming City because even if it's not that polished, it does a good job of immediately hooking you into the world and it's just WHAM WHAM WHAM of all the melodrama and spooky worldbuilding. But since you've also already read it, the first book, "Elric of Melnibone" is also very worth a read because it's a more polished Moorcock coming back to basically set everything up for The Dreaming City before sending Elric to fuck around in Sailor on the Seas of Fate, haha.

Elric basically has two reactions to anything:

[neil-gaiman]

Hi again, i asked about your foreword/opener for michael moorcock.

I'm wonder how they came about. Did he ask, did you, or was it a publisher thing?

If you are talking about "One Life, Furnished in Early Moorcock," I wrote it about 30 years ago, for an anthology of Elric stories by other people, published by White Wolf.

(I ran into Mike Moorcock after it came out. "I liked your story and Tad Williams's best," he told me. "And I liked his better than yours because it had Jimi Hendrix in it.")

It's gone on to have a life of its own. I hope it persuades people to pick up the Elric stories, but I'm never sure what any of the people who already love Elric would make of it.

[adarkrainbow]

Do you think the way people talk and discuss Walt's "Classic Three" (Snow White, Cinderella and Aurora) is accurate or close to what happens in the movies? I mean, they are always referred as excessively passive, weak, only interested on their looks (vain? superficial?), useless, beauty being their only good quality... And I ask myself, when was the last time these people watched the movies? Snow White negotiated her stay in the house, Cinderella survived a life of pure abuse & orchestrated her own escape from the tower, and, while not very much is shown about Aurora, she was about to sacrifice her personal happiness for the kingdom's sake (something Philip didn't have in mind)that takes courage! They don't wield swords but they are much stronger that they appear, and while I get some of the critique, I hate the "strong only means kicking butt" idea, like, it's incomplete, and superficial, and it can be reductive & dangerous (for the girls, and for the boys too!)

I have talked about this before in many posts, and others have talked about this way better than me, so I'll try to break down my opinion in a quite short and concise way. And as usual, you probably won't be surprised to find me again, neutral on those topic.

On one side: people are unfairly criticizing and judging too harshly the "original trio" of Disney movies. This has been explained by many people on this website, so I won't expand on this too much, but indeed, there is a mixture of superficial viewing of these movies, of not-contextualizing them, of projecting modern-day values and expectations over nearly century old pieces, and of a general need to criticize and rant about everything (especially big corporations and the "classics" of culture - whenever something becomes a classic, a backlash awaits). Cinderella is a much more surprising and strong character than you'd expect. These movies do teach the idea that being strong doesn't mean simply kicking everybody and proving yourself to be a lone wolf (especially since there's a strong focus on friendship in those stories). The whole "the prince kissing Sleeping Beauty in her sleep is rape culture" is ridiculous ; especially since in the Disney version it was made to be a true love kiss, between people who were in love, and the whole context was the breaking of a curse ; AND the actual rapist-origins of the story are from a 16th century Italian fairytale nobody knew about until the Internet dug it up in the 2010s. Even today many people who invoke the rapist-story are unable to tell you who wrote it or where it comes from, because they just latch onto the idea "Oh yes there's a rape story." and that's it, no more research for them.

Heck, Sleeping Beauty is even surprising for its time AND for the Disney criteria by having elderly, non-attractive female leads who do more than the actual male hero and ultimately are the true focus of the tale - the fairy godmothers. Same things with Snow-White - to make the dwarfs the equal of the titular Snow-White, even more to focus more character development and screen time on them rather than the princess, and to give them unique characterisation and treat them as people rather than plot-props... This was BIG, this was not something usual, and this was a game-changer. Overall - I say the same thing for fantasy literature - a lot of the "new" or "modern" twists people expect from today's fictions are awaiting you in the past. Everybody complains about traditional fantasy not having POC main characters or not having strong female lead that is not sexualized - Earthsea had all those by the 60s and 70s, and it was just as influential on fantasy as Lord of the Rings or Elric.

However... Recognizing that a lot of the criticism is unfair and overblown, and that the backlash is ignorant and caricatural does NOT mean we should just blindly worship and naively accept those movies as untouchable, sacred relics that cannot be criticize. If there is a backlash, it means there is a reason for such criticism to arise in the first place, and we must identify why - to give back the problem in its proper proportions, and not in the exaggerated state we are offered today.

So... The other side - why is this Disney trio not fitting our modern world?

And the answer is very simple. They are heroines of 17th and 19th centuries tales, that were adapted for an early 20th century American mindset. They are bound to age or be unfit for the 21st century. Placing them back into context allows us to understand how great, good or groundbreaking they were in their time - but it does not mean they hold up to modern-day characters. Some elements of the Disney movies aged better than ever, some are still resonating today, and this is what gives them an "out-of-time" feeling. Yet... yet there is a reason why the "Disney princess" had to evolve and had to change herself to fit a new audience. Why did the characters of Rapunzel and Elsa of Disney had such huge success and were beloved by the masses? Because they were answering early 21st century needs, society and expectations, the same way the original trio did for their time.

A character like Aurora of Sleeping Beauty couldn't work today because she literaly is a paper-thin character that does nothing throughout the story and is truly more of a MacGuffin than anything. Oh yes she speaks, has a song, has feelings and emotions - and there is this very progressive idea of having Aurora be unhappy and traumatized by discovering her princess heritage, which aged very well! But the rest? She is a baby ; then she sings about being in love ; then she cries about not wanting to be a princess ; then she sleeps ; then she is married. The story is done and moved by the interesting characters about her, but not by her - Maleficent wants to destroy Aurora, Philip wants to save Aurora, the fairy godmothers wants to protect Aurora... I do not recall which feminist created this theory, but there is the test of the lamp. If you can replace a female character by a beautiful lamp, this is bad for you. And unfortunately Disney's Sleeping Beauty "succeeeds" at the test of the lamp, since Aurora's massively passive involvment in the story makes her a perfect fit. The king and queen create the most beautiful lamp you ever saw ; Maleficent angry curses the lamp to be destroyed ; the fairy godmothers are tasked with keeping the lamp safe ; later the prince discovers the lamp in the woods and wants to have it for his living room, so he plans to return later ; meanwhile the fairy godmothers return the lamp to their rightful owners the king and queen, while Maleficent captures the prince who returned in hope of taking the lamp ; etc etc... It does not change the story one bit.

Another, even more obvious example, of the "age" of those characters - Snow-White. Disney's Snow-White is the very embodiment of the "50s housewife" cliche, and thus was a perfect fit for this first-half-of-the-20th-century American society. In the Grimm story, the little girl enters the house, takes the food, goes to sleep, and upon meeting the dwarfs they make a bargain of chores in exchange of protection. In the Disney movie? She cleans the house all by herself, without asking anybody, just in hope it will please people. Which is a very "fairytale" move... But still is perceived badly as just the typical idea that "A good girl cleans up the house, that we ask her or not". The fact Snow-White also acts as a mother figure for the dwarfs despite being a teenage girl is... yeah it is questionable and there's a whole baggage of the girl existing as solely a future mother and a housekeeper-in-training. Let's not even talk of the infantilization of the dwarfs just because of their small size despite being clearly much older than her...

So yeah, I always take a neutral stance on things (except for a few stuff), and this is no exception. There is an unfair treatment of the original Disney princesses, definitively, and people are misreading the original movies... But when we take a critical look we also have to recognize that these characters were designed for a given society and a given time, and that now they made their time, we do not need them anymore and we can move on to other characters while fondly remembering them or taking inspiration from them. Erasing these characters would be stupid and absurd - but it is just as stupid and absurd to try to cling onto them constantly and to try to make them fit everywhere and anywhere (yes I am taking a jab at Disney and their perpetual recycling and their favoritism of remakes over new movies...).

.

[retrocatastrophy]

Elric appearence reranked: Julien Blondel series ranked from my fav to least fav (this one was a little harder since they all have a definitive design they stick to)

#1 Valentin Secher (The Necromancer)

#2 Julien Telo (Stormbringer, White Wolf, Dreaming City)

#3 Didier Poli/Robin Recht (Ruby Throne)

[retroillustrates]

Elric by Julien Telo but in my style