#rawne

[blessyo4]

got a name, brown eyes?

[sixth-light]

I've been thinking a lot lately* about how artistic works are so intimately products of their moment and in conversation with it, and how easy this is to overlook both in terms of discussing a work and in terms of anticipating or considering new additions to an older work.

The first is important because so many judgements that can be made about a work are only meaningful when you know what their context was. What readers need or want to see, particularly in terms of representation, is hugely mediated by what else is available to them at the time. Yeah this is about stuff like "Rocky Horror was progressive when it was created" but also it's about stuff like "the John Carter movie bombed because it was regarded as derivative", when in fact the source material originated a bunch of the 'derivative' scenes and tropes that were then used by better-known movies before a John Carter movie ever got made.

The second is important because...even if you come back to a work, as a creator, you can only make new parts of it as the person you are now, in conversation with the world and genre as it is now, not as it was when you started. Taking a mildly-infamous-among-fantasy-fans example, Melanie Rawn's unfinished Ambrai trilogy; she's often said that she can't finish it because her life has moved on and...as sad as I am it was never finished, I think that's probably smart! She could write a third book one day, maybe, but it never could or would be the third book she would have written in the 1990s. And even if she did manage that somehow, the genre has moved on in such a way that it would feel weird and probably quite offputting to read a book doing with gender and feminism what the Ambrai books were doing in the '90s, because they are/were inherently in conversation with an era of fantasy that is now past.

All of which is to say that:

as a reader (or watcher) I think it's good to hold in mind, when engaging with a work from a time and/or place unfamiliar to you, the extent of what you don't know about the context of the work

as a creator, I think it's good to be very realistic about what you're going to actually achieve when you are making something over a long time period or coming back to something you left unfinished. You can totally do that! It can be incredibly rewarding! But the thing you make now is not the thing you would have made then, probably not even the thing you imagined you were going to make then, and that's just the nature of art.

*The reason I have been thinking about this is partly books I have been reading (Mara of the Acoma, you are my blorbo) and partly a very fun podcast I have been listening to which has re-read The Ruins of Ambrai and done a lot of discussion about its context, finishing up with a great interview with Kate Elliott about writing fantasy in the '90s (and writing it now, as she is still writing great but different books!). Anyway go listen to the Hot Nuance Book Club, it's a good time.

[bastardsunlight]

[kvalenagle]

I was searching the upstairs closet for a lightbulb and I came across what is basically the "lgbtqia+ Millennial who likes to read starter pack." Gotta say, I didn't realize I still had any Silver Gryphon t-shirts left. Takes me back to being a teenager =]

[chaoskid-deer]

Snippet Sunday

I was tagged by @cannibal-nightmares to post a snippet of my current WIP, which seems only fair given how much I've vagued about it to him. So here's the Gaunt's Ghosts fic im currently wrestling with that has the working title "gaunt and rawne fuck in a cave". What it says on the tin, guys

---

Each step was a struggle, the shifting snow hiding the bumps and gullies in the ice, the wind a physical wall he had to shoulder through. Three times he stumbled, his foot finding some hidden crack, and once he fell headlong, in a tangle of knees and elbows as he dragged Gaunt with him. The wound in his thigh screamed in agony, and a warm, wet gush against his skin let him know he’d torn the perfect stitches Gaunt had sewn into him. 

He lay there for a second, feeling the soft press of snow on his face. There was something strangely pleasant about it. The tender comforting wash of despair, pulling a blanket over him and massaging the strength from his limbs. He knew he had to get up. He’d wasted precious seconds falling, he couldn’t afford to waste any more lying there pathetically. He needed to get up. No one was going to help him. It was up to him, and him alone, to make sure they survived, to claw them both every inch of the way to shelter, and not complain when his fingernails got torn and bloody. 

He levered himself up onto his elbows, face contorted into a snarl. He made it to his hands and knees, injured leg spasming from the tension. 

An outstretched hand, bandaged with strips of camo cloak, came into his vision. 

Gaunt, already on his feet, swaying and shivering, offered Rawne his hand.

---

I can't believe I haven't published anything yet this year, but hopefully the second half of the year is more fruitful as I turn my current menagerie of first drafts in seconds.

I'm gonna tag @bluecatwriter since you always seem to have something interesting on the go :)

[roostercrowned]

I'm almost done with the first book of the Dragon Prince trilogy by Melanie Rawn (which I'd been curious about FOR DECADES because one of the covers features a favorite Michael Whelan painting that I had in tasseled bookmark form as a kid) and I'm having some Same Hat moments with RotE

WE GOT 1. magic that involves psychic communication over long distances 2. Fantasy Drugs 3. Evil Seduction Scene that ends in attempted throttling 4. out of control breeding kink stuff in the guise of royal succession plotting 5. enjoyable supporting characters (I really like Tobin and Chay) 6. stronger-than-expected sense of character interiority for the time and genre (Hobb is still the best but I've been pleasantly surprised here) I didn't care for the protagonists much at first but now that she's really put them through the blender I'm like yes! yes!! Sweet suffering! Writhe, children!!!!!

[aestheticallypleasinganimeboys]

Rawn - Dragalia Lost

[dragalialife]

#181: Aoi's Pigeons

[cav-core]

Mari is such a multipurpose OC, she's like a Swiss Army Knife. It's a shame I haven't let her go over to the Warhammer universe and hit on Colonel-Commissar Gaunt.

[evilhorse]

I’m assembling the old team.

(X-O Manowar #10)

[dustedmagazine]

Various Artists — Creiriau Y Delyn Rawn / Relics of the Horsehair Harp (Amgen)

Imagining new music is nothing new. Individually or collectively, spontaneously or through painstaking craft, research, and development, legions of music-makers have tried to come up with something sufficiently novel out of sounds and (sometimes) words that it hooks listeners’ attention. You can be sure that someone’s at it right now. But you probably won’t lose the farm if you bet it on the notion that the sequential imagining that went into the conception and execution of Creiriau Y Delyn Rawn is an unprecedented process that has yielded a remarkable outcome.

The Welsh language title translates into English as Relics Of The Horsehair Harp. It was produced by harpist Rhodri Davies as a companion to Telyn Rawn, a solo album that he released on his Amgen label. Telyn Rawn is named after the instrument that it introduced, a horsehair harp that Davies commissioned to be made by a couple harp makers and a leatherworker. Harps have a particular cultural resonance in Wales, since despite the instrument’s popularity, the art of making them nearly died out before making a comeback as part of a larger resurgence of Welsh culture. The original telyn rawn was made from wood and equine byproducts. After the sturdier Italian triple harp made it to the British Isles in the 1600s, it replaced the telyn rawn so thoroughly that for a couple centuries the triple harp was actually known as the Welsh harp (it was replaced by the pedal harp in the 20th century) while its predecessor was practically forgotten. When Davies, whose wide-ranging music encompasses free improvisation, modern composition, Konono-inspired junkyard noise, and rock and roll, got curious about those early harps, no one knew how to make one. The instrument on Telyn Rawn was designed using descriptions in early Welsh poetry and a couple pages addressing harp-tuning practices in a 17th century manuscript by Robert ap Huw.

When Davies finally set about playing the thing, he did not revive antique repertoire; he improvised short pieces equally informed both by his research and his own practice of playing freely, alone and with musicians like John Butcher, Andrew Leslie Hooker and the trio IST. Intricately plucked or vigorously bowed, some of the album’s eighteen tracks hinted at folkloric models, while others undid dense knots of sound that burst with harmonics and radiated overtones. Telyn Rawn came out during that first COVID summer, which was bad for many things, but was not so bad for spending some of that time that one wasn’t gigging cooking up new ideas. After its release, Davies reached out to friends and associates with this request: “I asked each contributor to imagine that the musical material improvised in 2020 was an ancient musical form that had fully existed in the medieval period, and that each of their responses were to have happened centuries after the imagined formation of the Telyn Rawn pieces.”

Such a brief can be taken in many directions, depending on the respondent’s experiences, equipment, and willingness to dig a new network out of someone else’s wormhole. Sixteen participants gave a response to one or two specific tracks from Telyn Rawn. Laura Cannell’s  opening piece, “The Tattered Skies Above,”  wastes little effort on interpreting Davies’ “Penriwh.” Instead, she constructs a fanfare from overdubbed recorders whose jolting sonorities and processional air establishes a through line linking a span of fantasized centuries. Next up, Orphy Robinson makes like a free-bopping jazz man. On “Nude, Lewd, Rude, Mood Food” he transfers bits of Davies’ intricate “Gorchan Sali” to a salaciously bulbous-sounding marimba, accelerates the tempo and lets it rip. Jem Finer plays “Y Geseg Fedi” pretty faithfully, simply transposing bowed harp to hurdy-gurdy; guitarist C. Joynes is similarly respectful to “”Dygan tro’r Ebill.” Credited as playing computer and mouse, “C. Spencer Yeh” visits a cut-and-splice surgical strike upon Davies’ recording of “Afon “Dewi Fawr;” Pat Thomas might do something similar on the turbulent electronic eruption, “Maddad.”

Not only does Davies have a strong musical personality that transcends the particular harp he plays and the century his head’s in; he has picked his emissaries wisely. Despite the disparity of instrumentation and approach exhibited by the sixteen contributing musicians, Creiriau Y Delyn Rawn feels pretty cohesive as it carves out an imaginary timeline of musical evolution.

Bill Meyer

[weepingcollectivedreamer]

Absolutely amazing how the one thing everyone fighting alongside the Tanith first and only agrees on is the fact that Major Rawne is very attractive but his vibes are also way off.

[jellybeanjackass]

I'll keep your secret if you keep mine.

[bastardsunlight]

Warp Gala

//I participated in the Warp Gala event a few months ago, but I wasn't on here. I'll just go ahead and post what I done did now.

[a-wayfairing-stranger]

Listening to the playlist I made for Rawne and taking physic damage with each song.

[sonofdorn-vii]

Major Elim Rawne, Tanith First and Only