#tobermoriansass

[essayofthoughts]

7, 11, 13 & 17 for the writers asks!

7. What is your deepest joy about writing?

Hm so. Two parts. Part 1. When, when writing something, I manage to solve a tangle of problems in a way which feels satisfying and ties up enough loose threads without seeming unreasonable and unrealistic. And Part 2. When I manage to write something that people connect to? Some of the comments on Ripley's Assistant and That Balance May Return and that people have sent me privately give me strong emotions.

11. Do you believe in the old advice to “kill your darlings?” Are you a ruthless darling assassin? What happens to the darlings you murder? Do you have a darling graveyard? Do you grieve?

I hate killing my darlings, hate it, hate it, hate it. I've got better in recent years about deleting lines, but I still loathe it and prefer to rework things and rewrite it than just delete. And the problem is, my memory is terrible, so either 1. I delete it and forget it forever or 2. I remove it to a doc of notes and then forget I have a doc of notes. So generally, when I can, I try to move a line immediately to the relevant doc, or I rework it. I know sometimes it's necessary to delete things but I will never stop hating it and it's probably a good thing for me that I tend to get ideas of whole scenes. That way I can edit a great deal of it, but as long as the overarching scene is the same, I don't mind. (If I have to delete the scene... noooooooo 😰)

13. What is a subject matter that is incredibly difficult for you write about? What is easy?

There is a very solid answer to the first part of that question but it's also complicated so I'd rather give you that answer in private, Mike, if you want to hear it. For another answer of something that's difficult for me to write - torture. I usually get around this by writing indirectly, letting the reader's mind fill in the gaps, because rather as with horror that's often the more effective way, but yeah. Not for me.

I also struggle to write the POV of outright malicious bastards just because I don't see the point of that kind of perspective? I don't see what is gained by being like that. I see it as deeply self-defeating and struggle to write it when I can't make out the goals of it or how it connects to other people.

As for easy - I mean, you've seen my fics. Manipulation, trauma, healing from violation. Angst and Hurt/Comfort in general, tbh. I struggle to write pure fluff, it feels deeply substanceless to me, but angst and hut/comfort have texture and I can always write those.

17. Talk to me about the minutiae of your current WIP. Tell me about the lore, the history, the detail, the things that won’t make it in the text.

Mrrm. I don't know that there is much that won't make it in? Like, someone once commented about Ghost Cass something along the lines of how it can be kind of slow paced and... yeah. It's my self-indulgent "Take as much time as you like" fic in some respects, and while I do want to keep the plot moving it's also that... it took me ages to get from writing ficlets and oneshots to writing big fics! I am relishing it now. But also, because of this, a lot of the ideas for lore and history and details and stuff going on off-camera... we'll get bits of it anyway? Characters will inform others of lore, details of what happened elsewhere can be backfilled with other POVs, and for example with the Briarwood Arc part of Ghost Cass there's gonna be a downtime fic, and that's gonna cover Vox Machina, sure, but also some NPCs that are relevant, both within Whitestone and elsewhere, and help to provide some of that additional detail.

Idk. I don't like it going to waste? This is why I used to have such an issue of infodumping worldbuilding into a story. It's the whole reason I made monsterblog way back when, so I could infodump things in one place and redirect to it instead of infodump again in a fic. Instead I kind of work in background worldbuilding as information which a character has due to their background and it provides both worldbuilding and character information.

But I guess like, if I had to pick one piece of random background worldbuilding, lets go with my fave:

In my headcanon (shared with @blorbologist) - it starts with how Whitestone keeps bees. Snow Mead is a locally made Whitestone alcohol, and for mead you need honey. However, if you're making it in reasonable quantities you're probably taking quite a bit of honey, (not to mention honey just to sell as honey, and beeswax) and this is Whitestone, where it's cold and there's a shorter summer, so there's fewer flowers, so there's less for the bees to feed on. Mead was valued by the Norse because it used honey and honey wasn't cheap! It was a rarity, a treat.

But Whitestone makes Snow Mead enough that not all that long after the Briarwoods' occupation is ended Percy is able to obtain some Snow Mead amongst other local alcohols, which means the business has likely been continuing even during this occupation - an occupation which prevented trade between Whitestone and the rest of Tal'Dorei, I would note.

So the beekeepers need a way to sustain their hives, right? And IRL the way that's done is with sugar water. But sugar hasn't been cheap, historically, because it's kind of a pain to grow and refine and it was usually imported and made from sugar cane. We know trade was cut off for five years, so how are these beekeepers getting sugar for their bees? Given Whitestone climate, it can't be sugar cane imported or home grown, so most likely it's sugar beet, as grown in some of the fields near where I live.

And, if they've got hardy sugar beet growing, then they might well even have a surplus of sugar. Which would explain how, even as Tal'Dorei was rebuilding after the dragons, Vox Machina were able to set up a very prolific and successful bakery/pastry shop in Whitestone. Importing sugar, even with their money and connections would be tricky, and Vex doesn't like to waste money - if there's sugar locally they can get and use that at reduced cost.

And, further, it would be a source of income for the whole city even aside from the whitestone and refined residuum from the mountain quarries, which would help to explain why, despite it's small size, it hasn't just been subsumed into Tal'Dorei. Between it's isolated location and it's local sources of wealth, it's able to stay independent where other areas might find benefits in joining Tal'Dorei.

And... yes, that's a headcanon I came up with purely from Whitestone's climate and the fact they make mead.

[brotheralyosha]

@tobermoriansass

[essayofthoughts]

NO WAIT IGNORE THE OTHER ONE

🍄 ⇢ share a head canon for one of your favourite ships or pairings

🔪 ⇢ what's the weirdest topic you researched for a writing project?

❄️ ⇢ what's your dream theme/plot for a fic, and who would write it best?

🍄 ⇢ share a head canon for one of your favourite ships or pairings

Lets go with Kashra, because that's been eating my brain lately.

My go-to headcanon for Kashra is that when she falls asleep, Zahra loops her tail around Kash's arm or leg or waist - it's a habit from when she was quite young, first wrapping her tail around herself as a self-soothing method, and later using it to hold tight to things that mattered to her (her bag, her staff). It always makes Kash go all Squishle because it means that he matters to her.

🔪 ⇢ what's the weirdest topic you researched for a writing project?

Hm, there's a few but I can't recall all of them. A random selection:

The time I was researching the pH of salt water to try to see if would slowly wear away at limestone like acid rain can.

History of horse domestication and use in Iron Age Europe.

Animals which can change sex due to social or hormonal factors for when I wanted to figure out ingredients for a Trans Ur Gender Potion for a fic.

Why some woods burl.

Human evolution and the mix of non-sapiens DNA found in modern humans so I could headcanon Berserkers.

NOT fic, but for my dissertation I found a completely whacked out guy from the Victorian Era who thought that Europe's megalithic sites were built by Appalachian Native Americans and that the zodiac matched to the Greco-Roman gods and also Atlantis was involved somewhere. That one really threw me, if I'm honest.

There are probably more, and this does not include the things I researched when helping you with fic things.

❄️ ⇢ what's your dream theme/plot for a fic, and who would write it best?

I.... don't know. Because a lot of the plots I really want to see I've kind of resolved to rolling up my sleeves and doing it myself? At least within fandom spaces. And when it comes to original fiction, it's more that I'd like to see more gothic horror-romance stuff, and more stuff that's willing to meaningfully dig into trauma within the bounds of an overarching storyline, and I'm kind of still discovering the authors I specifically like for those things? There's authors I know are good at it - Martha Wells, for example - but who's writing style I don't always gel 100% with, while, like, I gel with S.T. Gibson's writing style better, but in how they nail the gothic writing style occasionally it feels a smidge to urple for me to take quite seriously because I'm picky.

So... I don't know what my dream theme/plot for a fic is, really, but I do know that unless it ended up being spyfic, I'd probably do it myself.

If it was spyfic, of course, I'd want you to do it, Mike.

Writers Truth & Dare Ask Game

[metamatar]

i genuinely owe my life to every white kid on tv who was demanding their parents respect them. fuck familial respect in south asia!

[brotheralyosha]

@tobermoriansass

Melkor

[welcomingdisaster]

Ssssnippet Ssssmonday

tagged by @tobermoriansass @sallysavestheday @melestasflight @aredhels to share a WIP snippet! :) here is something

“Craven,” Celegorm cries, his sword drawn, “craven, and a liar too, ready to doom our brother for the crown upon your empty head, ready to—” 

“Oh, say it again!” Maglor cries. He is not Fingolfin, and this is not Aman; he has already taken up his own blade. “Say what you mean, you coward—tell me how you would take the crown in turn.” 

In a painting, Ellind thinks, the contrast between their silhouettes would be pleasant. There is Maglor, tall and thin, his dark hair half-up and half-loose about him, giving him the slightly disheveled air of a ghost. There is Celegorm, wide-shouldered and squat, his silver hair bound into tight hunting braids, his form technically perfect. 

“I shall!” he cries, and swings his sword through the air in a great arch. 

Had Maglor stayed standing it would have beheaded him; but he spins out of the way, light and graceful as song itself, and his short sword glints in the light. Ellind rears back where he did not, startled by the force of the blow. Her own neck tingles in an odd sympathy. 

There is a clank, steel against steel; Celegorm has a tighter grip, a stronger stance, and forces Maglor back two stumbling steps. Then Maglor abandons his position; leaps to the side, it seems, but no— 

No, he has moved forward. 

Celegorm too is startled by the feint. He lashes out, messily, losing his form—blood stains the delicate blue of Maglor’s over-shirt, and a gasp rises through the crowd—but he has lost advantage, has stumbled, and Maglor does not. The short sword flashes through the air, and Celegorm cries in startled pain, his right hand pierced with the blade. 

His own sword falls, and Maglor kicks it away. 

They stumble away from each other, breathing heavily, Celegorm clutching his wounded hand to his chest. The crowd is silent. The dark lake is still. 

“Are you quite done, little brother?” Maglor asks, his voice cold and venomous and patronizing. 

“Damn you,” Celegorm howls, and leaps at him. 

i'm gonna tag!! @eilinelsghost @thelordofgifs @that-angry-noldo @leucisticpuffin @searchingforserendipity25 & anyone else that hasn't been tagged yet!

[polutrope]

Snippet Sunday

Tagged by @aredhels and @luthnethril to share a snippet, thank you!

Around where I last left off in And Love Grew:

"These are Elrond and Elros—” “Their names they have told me.” “Yes, of course. They are Princes of Doriath.” “That realm is no more.” “No, it is not,” Maglor conceded. “But even so, they are the heirs of Elu Thingol.” “What of the Queen at the river mouth? It is told she is Elu’s heir.” “Yes,” said Maglor. “She was.” “You killed her!” Elros shouted. Instinctively, Maglor shushed him, then winced.

@tobermoriansass @melestasflight @leucisticpuffin @sallysavestheday, I would love to read a snippet if you have one to share.

[sallysavestheday]

Snippet Day

Tagged by @polutrope and @tobermoriansass to share a little bite of something I'm working on. Thank you!

I've been wrestling with Elves and Time and Trauma recently. Have a little Fingon in the process of coming to terms with Beleriand's urgencies. He's not enjoying it much. Sucks to be immortal AND in the middle of a crisis.

He had never considered time, in Aman. Each pearl of a day had merged with the next, when he was young. Things longed for made their way to him, eventually; things that pained him passed. Even the sour moments of their family’s slow collapse were as stones in a bottomless well: descending, disappearing. It was how they were made, his mother had said: to swim in the totality of being, endless and eternal, and only rarely sense the ripples in that long, long stream.

Coming soon if I can iron out the ending.

@eilinelsghost @queerofthedagger @welcomingdisaster @zealouswerewolfcollector got any tidbits you'd like to share?

[ravencromwell]

So all you fellow Florence and the Machine fans may know this already--I'll freely admit I come late to every! party. But just in case you don't: in early September, she did a rendition of Lungs with one of the most astonishing symphonies in the UK backing her. It's breathtakingly beautiful, and free to listen to through Sunday afternoon--it says it expires at 11:59 P.M., but I'm guessing that's British time, so I'd figure out what the equivalent was in your time zone.

Don't know for how many of my mutuals this will be of interest, though I think I remember both @pinkcupboardwitch and @muffinworry mentioning they were fans? As well as, I think, the brilliant @avelera And honestly this also seems, just from genre, like it'd be both @bodysnatch3r and @tobermoriansass jam.

[gardensofthemoon]

WIP Whateverday

was tagged by the incomparable @queerofthedagger about two weeks ago and as i got back into writing silm fic here's a snippet from yours truly! (brushing the dust off my year-old curufinrod wip... ugh. but here be some kissing!)

Curufinwë smiles down at him, gentle as a slash. Time stretches, infinite; nothing feels real outside this room, nothing exists bar the rising pleasure, the incredible heat, the curve of Curufinwë’s smile.  Thump, goes Findaráto’s heart. Thump.  “Please,” Findaráto whispers. “Anything. Anything you want,” Curufinwë breathes, and dips down to taste the crescent of Findaráto’s mouth.

one of my 2024 goals was to finish the curufinrod in valinor fic and now it's mid november and i haven't even posted one chapter, welp

zero pressure tagging @elevenelvenswords, @sauron-kraut, @thescrapwitch, @tobermoriansass (slowly re-engaging with the silm fandom--i have not forgotten my roots)

[tanoraqui]

#finrod's mean girl act here has been permanently imprinted into my brain i hope you know that op #he's so mean but so kind#he is going to kill them with kindness :) #absolutely the definitive finrod and c&c post re-embodiment take

@tobermoriansass re: you tags on this post: I'm SO glad it stuck with you, because, non-humbly, it IS so good. Finrod has all of public opinion on his side; he is the hero that history remembers, and Celegorm and Curufin are the villains. People who see him being kind and welcoming to them will think him even better for it, and them so much worse if they still respond with bitter anger or betrayal. People who realize he's rubbing their noses in it will think they deserve the punishment and Finrod, tbh, deserves the fun, and if the Fëanorions can't accept some mild public submission and humiliation, that just shows they're still as terribly prideful as ever. If they can prove themselves humble to the latter and equally amiable to the former, it genuinely WILL help them enormously - so now they're also obliged to be grateful to Finrod, adding debt of gratitude to their preexisting debt of repentance (several times over, what with the multiple kinslayings of his kind and dear allies). Win win win for Finrod, lose lose lose for Curufin and Celegorm, except also win for them, which makes the losing even more bitter. They’re not supposed to be bitter about it because they’re supposed to be Reformed(TM).

[robespapier]

Based on this post and @tobermoriansass's very cursed tags, may I present a very cursed poll ?

And here's the link to the naked sketch of David's Tennis Court Oath.

[metamatar]

top 10 books in 2023, tagged by @thelittlebirdthatkeptsomanywarm

[ID: covers of the following books:

The Traitor Baru Cormorant by Seth Dickinson, Harrow the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions by Thomas Kuhn, Reinventing Revolution by Gail Omvedt, In Theory: Nations, Classes, Literatures by Aijaz Ahmad, The Final Question by Saratchandra Chattopadhyay , Giovanni's Room by James Baldwin, Abolish the Family by Sophie Lewis, Network Effect by Martha Wells, Tipping the Velvet by Sarah Waters

end ID]

i feel like everyone who wants to do this already has because im doing this on the 31st... no pressure at all and tag me if i missed you posting yours already @st-just @huayno @gothhabiba @sivavakkiyar @determinate-negation @tobermoriansass @saamdaamdandaurbhed @wherestoriescomefrom

[brotheralyosha]

@tobermoriansass

God the like Generic High Fantasy Elf frustrates me so much as a fan of Tolkiens elves who are like. Both balls to the wall insane and canonically fun at parties

[zealouswerewolfcollector]

Tolkien Fanfic Reading Month - Days 5 and 6

Just one fic for two days but what a fic.

vivat patria by @tobermoriansass

35884 words, M, Feanor/Curufin, Curufin & his brothers & his cousins & his uncle

This is a pretty dark fic, so make sure to read the tags, but it is SO good. Gripping from the very first sentence. Stellar characterization and dynamics. I just keep thinking back to random scenes and marveling again at how great it is.

[polutrope]

Heads Up Seven Up

RULES: Post the last 7 lines you wrote. Thank you for the tag @dreamingthroughthenoise!

“How many of them children?” “Twelve, my lord,” she answered. Maglor hid his pained expression behind his hands. “And Elwing’s son? What of Elros?” “His nurse would not administer the medicines.” What did it matter? They would do nothing but postpone the end, if Elros’ spirit could not save him.

Please feel welcome to share your last(ish) seven lines, if you like @ettelene @melestasflight @zealouswerewolfcollector @sallysavestheday @littlewhitemouseagain @gwaedhannen @tobermoriansass