#tolkien was probably trying to be thematic with the names

[softlysilverfountainsfall]

Dior, who gave himself the name Eluchil, "Heir of Elu (Thingol)", who marries an elven woman and names his eldest son Elured ("means the same as Eluchil" i.e. heir of Elu Thingol) and the second son Elurin ("The name means 'Remembrance of Elu (Thingol)'"), and their daughter Elwing ("star-spray" but clearly continuing the El- theme).

I always look at the meaning of these names and think "Wow, someone feels like their claim to Doriath's throne is real secure."

[dr-demi-bee]

Writing Interview Tag Game!

Thanks for the tag @lastlight-inn! 🥰

When did you start writing?

TBH, that's hard to pin down! I was drawing clumsy comics with story lines as early as 4th grade (so like 9 or 10ish?) - and I've always had a thing for telling stories. I don't think I started earnestly writing until maybe 12. But I know for sure I was writing in middle school, and was well and truly into it in high school. There was a brief once-upon-a-time I thought about going that way for a career (but I also considered being an artist or musician ha).

Are there different themes or genres you enjoy reading than what you write?

So, I find I often write a lot darker than I read. Broadly speaking, I read a lot of fantasy, sci-fi, and some non-fiction. But I write predominantly fantasy. I've dabbled in sci-fi, but I find it a lot harder (perhaps because I'm quite picky about science accuracy).

But thematically, I much prefer to read romances and lighter hearted drama. I think my writing might lean a bit darker than I typically consume (more focus on harsh/traumatic topics).

Is there a writer you want to emulate or get compared to often?

Ahhh this is so hard to answer. I've not had anyone really compare my work to others (at least not by name). I don't try to copy anyone's style, but I definitely am influenced by many.

If I have to pick some - Oliver Sacks, Tolkien, and GRRM.

Can you tell me a bit about your writing space?

Well! I have several!

My main office is in an open loft in the second floor of my house - past the railings are large picture windows that look out into my woods and let in a lot of natural light. I've got an L shaped desk stocked with supplies/notebooks/snacks. It looks like the kind of organized chaos one expects with ADHD.

On the left hand is an easel for painting/drawing, and on the right hand is my dual monitor set up (slightly lofted). My space is covered in cute knickknacks and things my husband has made for me. He's a wood worker, so there's lots of cute little things - including a little ghost and a miniature zen garden. I also have an owl skull and spine. My keyboard/mouse/mat and wrist pads are all space themed, as is the desktop (not that you can ever see it.) Beside my desk is my behemoth, very colorful PC tower I built myself (named Eureka).

I also have a yoga laptop that doubles as my writing on the go platform and drawing tablet (named Epiphany). I'll take it downstairs to write on my armchair, or into one of the bedrooms for some more quiet and soft surfaces. And I also take it with me on trips. Had a nice period on vacation at the beach where I got to write in a rocking chair on the porch looking out at the ocean. Ahh... (take me back :sob:)

Very occasionally I will write on my phone. But this is mostly just for notes and short form RP sort of writing.

What's your most effective way to muster up a muse?

So aside from becoming obsessed with something (e.g. media or my own imagined world) usually I get my ideas via listening to music or taking a shower.

Or, inevitably, whenever I'm doing something else that doesn't give me time to write. I wrote several chapters of my novel while writing my dissertation... procrasti-writing.

Are there any recurring themes in your writing? Do they surprise you?

On the positive side: found family, loving through pain, helping each other to heal, platonic love.

On the less positive side: the effects of trauma, the way danger and stress hurts our bodies and our minds. Fighting through adversity and oppression. Chronic pain/conditions.

I'm not super surprised by either of these, really - they're all a big part my scientific life too. Before I left clinical practice I primarily helped individuals recover from trauma and addiction - and that involved a lot of working on finding self worth. My research was all devoted to studying stress and cognition - and I tried to pioneer new work on intrusive cognitions. I think this probably comes out heavily in my writing for fun, too.

What is your reason for writing?

Fun, mostly. Catharsis. And a bit of dissociating, I suppose. I've always just kind of had the urge to spew stories out into the world, even if it's just for me. I also write to connect with others.

Is there any specific comment or type of comment you find particularly motivating?

Ohhhh, any comment makes me incredibly happy. If someone says they like something specific I am over the moon. I'm especially thrilled to hear anyone connecting with or caring about my OC characters.

When another writer I really admire or respect gives me a comment or praise (like @alpydk or @sorceresssundries) my little heart feels ready to burst! Recently had the absolute delight of having friends read and react in real time to some of my work and gooood grief is that ever motivating. (@crimson-and-lavender and @lastlight-inn I'm looking at you lol)

How do you want to be thought about by your readers?

I want to be approachable and interesting as a person. I hope people want to read my work or even collab.

I want my writing to be novel, engaging, and exciting. I want to subvert their expectations, but also tell them a story that's approachable and will resonate with them.

Mostly I want my writing to make others feel (good).

What do you feel is your greatest strength as a writer?

The longer I've been writing things - honestly, I think it's patience. Being willing to change ideas, move them around, or even abandon them if need be. It took a long time to be okay with those things.

How do you feel about your own writing?

Oh, we have a love hate relationship. I know I can be a bit...verbose. But I also find my own writing pretty fun and interesting. I know I've done a pretty good job if I enjoy re-reading it.

Tagging some lovely mooots with affectionate no-pressure boops: @abysskeeper, @feedthepheasants, and an open tag for any other lovelies that want to!

[forerussake]

Fic Writer Interview

i was tagged by the lovely @phantomhydeoftheopera! thank you fairy, i had a lot of fun thinking about these questions and trying to answer them well, as you can see by how long this post has gotten!! love yaaaaa

name/nicknames: on the internet I go by Eru, bc names are hard and this is in my handle everywhere anyway and i like it :)

fandoms: i’m currently mostly active in Guardian, DMBJ and Tolkien fandoms (and the occasional foray into the associated RPF and crossover tags on AO3), but I have also written before for the QZGS/TKA, Yin Yang Master (QYJ) and MDZS/CQL fandoms :)

two shots?: i haven’t written anything that worked in two chapters yet, if that is the question. I try to contain myself to one chapter unless the story warrants more, and if it does it has so far always been more than two.

most popular multi-chapter fic: that would be the one i wrote this year, a hand within a hand (holding light). the engagement with this fic really surprised me, bc i expected the outsider pov format and the fact that the stories are driven by and centrered around OCs to be really niche and only interesting to very few people, but i got consistently positive responses to it :)

actual worst part of writing: i don’t think there is any one part of writing that i think is the worst. every fic calls for different things and has different struggles. sometimes it’s getting started, sometimes it’s getting stuck in the middle, sometimes it’s the editing, sometimes the tagging, etc. it really depends.

how do you choose your titles: i have a folder on my phone that has pictures of poetry i come across on the internet with lines that would be good titles. when looking for one i often go through that before the final editing phase, and then fit the story around it (by adding lines or returning metaphors to integrate the title into the story if it doesn’t already fit perfectly). 

otherwise i like to take my titles from returning themes in the story itself, which often develop as i write. for example when i wrote in tune i found myself constantly referencing shen wei’s power being in tune or in time or in sync with something else (his heartbeat, his breathing, the storm outside), so in tune became the title, because it also references Weilan’s love for each other, which is the core of the story. 

occasionally i like to choose titles that reflect the core of the story in a more abstract way, like with Kaleidoscope (a rush of snapshots of Queer stories), and Spirometer (about breathing and/as the quantification/conceptualization of love). 

do you outline?: when i do multi chapter (or 5+1 or another story format with different sections) i like to outline a little bit at least. just give myself some notes on what the chapter or section should cover for the whole to work. i do have stories that i have outlined extensively, but none of those have ever seen the light of day as of yet, i guess because it makes them too daunting.

ideas you probably won’t get around to, but wouldn’t it be nice?: hah, picking up where i left off at the last question. one of those extensively plotted stories fits this question as well. I call it the Yin Yang Master Metaphorical Serpent Modern!AU (MSM!AU for short), which is basically a modern day adaptation of that movie, but centred around Killing Stone and the other shishen, working off the basic premise that the Serpent isn’t a real entity but is instead a metaphor Qingming (who in this AU is their therapist) sometimes uses to conceptualize his patients’ various mental health conditions. ...it’s a rough one. but if i could actually write it someday..... it would be the best thing i’ve ever written.

other than that: the MDZS murder mystery fic :( it’s mostly plotted but yeah... different fandoms have drawn me in since 2020....

callouts @ me: dare to write short stories without derailing them into long ones. also: sometimes a fic doesn’t have to be perfect or be a fully coherent thematic whole. not all fics need your typical “onset, catalyst, climactic catharsic scene, and extensive thematic polishing ending”-structure. sometimes you can just write a little bit about trope bc it’s fun, and it doesn’t have to mean shit. 

best writing traits: i think i do really well at setting the mood for scenes, and developing themes and rounding them off. i’m very much a writer whose every choice of word and metaphor and descriptor tends to have a reason. if i mention a painting on a wall in scene 2, then you can be sure it will return somewhere, or i wouldn’t have mentioned it. i’m good at not leaving too many loose ends. 

spicy tangential opinion: is “there is nothing inherently (or, god forbid, morally) wrong with writing or reading RPF” a spicy opinion? bc then that. the problem with RPF fandoms is that alongside the normal people, there are too many people in them who have trouble differentiating the relationships they read and write about from the real actual people they are based on, and then try to carry the attitude they put into the writing of RPF on into their real life interactions with other people.

that is bad, but there is nothing wrong with writing RPF itself, as long as you keep it within fandom circles, in a closed-off and easily filtered space (such as AO3), and are able to acknowledge the fact that the people you write in your stories are merely characters you have created and are not a reflection of reality. we are authors, not omniscient creator-gods. also, these people’s actual private life is none of our fucking business and they owe us nothing. 

that became a bit of a rant, and this whole thing became quite long. sorry about that xD

tagging: @lucientelrunya @programmedradly @deathofsanity @shadaras @lunarriviera @sharkbeneaththelotus @omaenanimonoda @lynne-monstr @thedaughterofshadows @aredhel-of-doylkien @onmyo-jin  if you want to :)

[rosequartzstarswrites]

Fic Writer Interview

Thank you to @accio-broom for the tag!

Name: rosequartzstars

Fandoms I write for: Mostly Harry Potter, mainly Romione, though I indulge in the occasional Hinny and, more recently, superficial Drarry. I’m trying to start writing for Tolkien, and will probably have some Sam/Frodo underway before long!

Two-shot: I don’t know if this counts as a two-shot considering it’s part of a series, but I have written two vignettes under the series Of Interrupted Sleep, which is a canon universe series exploring how I imagine Ron, Hermione, Harry, and Ginny dealt with the post-war PTSD and comforted each other through it.

Most popular multichapter: Well, if going only by stats, it would have to be the Muggle AU In Another Universe, where Ron and Hermione (and the rest of the gang) are all college professors in a Cambridge University-like setting. This was my first longfic ever! However, I have been absolutely blown away by how much readers seem to enjoy Rosebury Grounds, a WIP Muggle Edwardian AU featuring two tales of forbidden love between Drarry and Romione. I’m having a lot of fun with this one and I’ve been wanting to write it for a year, so I’d be inclined to pick it.

Worst part of writing: Trying to shove it aside to get real-life things done. Sometimes I’ll want to write instead of doing my assignments or focusing on school, so the hardest part is definitely pushing my desire to write aside to pay attention to the more tangible, real-life activities that I should place first.

How you choose your titles: Either they pop into my head during the writing, based on a thematic phrase or one I like the sound of, or the title precedes the fic and I build the fic from there.

Do you outline: Religiously. I always have a good idea of where I want the story to go, and I make sure that I have a concrete plan for every chapter so I can make sure to add everything that needs to be added to get to the next chapter and so I can keep myself on track with the plot. 

Ideas I probably won’t get to but it would be nice: I've had a Wolfstar angsty Muggle AU floating around in my head since last year, but I’ve been putting it off ever since I became more active in fan communities and realized many of the tropes I had originally envisioned for it could fall into MLM fetishization or Bury Your Gays/Too Good For This Sinful Earth if I didn’t handle them with enough tact and empathy. I want to be careful with this story not to perpetrate stereotypes and harmful perceptions, but until I can fix the glaring issues central to the plot that I devised before I became more thoroughly educated on harmful queer-fiction tropes, this is not going to happen.

Callouts @ me: Not every sentence has to be overladen with clauses or overly complicated. This is not the SAT, not every word has to be a big word. And stay off the adjectives and adverbs!

Best writing habits: I see a story through before I start another one. I had the idea for Rosebury when I was 20 chapters into IAU, but I managed to place it on the back burner and give IAU the attention it deserved before I let myself delve into Rosebury. I never start a story I’m not sure I can finish, mostly because I as a reader would hate that, and I think that’s a good habit.

Spicy tangential opinion: Well-written dirty talk is just about the most sublime things a piece of writing can contain. If the dialogue is good enough to get you hot and bothered without a) being one of the 2+ people described as having sex and b) an excessive description, you’re doing it right. Some of my favorite fics I go back to not because of the actual smut, but because the preceding dirty talk never fails to get me going.

TAGGING: @unablearethelovedtodie @cheesyficwriter @be11atrixthestrange

[veliseraptor]

Top 5 'this line stabbed me in the soul' lines from books?

Oh man this is hard because I’m not always great at remembering quotes? But here’s a go at it, anyway. Some of these are less “ouch” than they are “oh fuck” which are often adjacent but not necessarily the same.

1. “What, anyway, was he to say? That intelligence could surpass and excel the blind force of evolution, with its emphasis on mutation, struggle, and death? That conscious cooperation was more efficient than feral competition? That Azad could be so much more than a mere battle, if it was used to articulate, to communicate, to define…? He’d done all that, said all that, and said it better than he ever could now.” -The Player of Games by Iain M. Banks

This is kind of a weird one, but this was a book that had been on my shelf for years that I finally read last December, and it promptly was like. a) shit do I know anyone who has read this so I can talk about it with them and b) I wonder if Ann Leckie has read this.

I don’t...really know how to explain my reaction to this quote, other than the ways that it is in the context of a man who has been invited to play this game, Azad, on which the structure of a fictional society/empire is based. It is a ruthlessly competitive game, and people are defined by their place in it. This bit is...about one of the central theses of this book, I think, which is the value of cooperation, of communication, of connection, over competition and subjugation. 

2. “Why? I made one mistake. Who doesn’t? But I despised men who accepted their fate. I shaped mine twenty times and had it broken twenty times in my hands. Of course it left me deformed and unserviceable, defective and dangerous to associate with…But what in God’s name has happened to charity?” -A Game of Kings by Dorothy Dunnett

I probably could’ve filled this whole list with Dorothy Dunnett lines because she is very good at punching me in the feelings on the regular, but I’m sticking to one and I chose this one from the first book in the Lymond Chronicles. It’s a defense and it isn’t. It comes at a profound low point; it comes, in fact, as part of a general plea for death and immediately before a suicide attempt. 

Just...god! I’ve talked a lot about how much I have feelings about characters who fight, fight, fight for their place in the world, no matter how many times they are broken, no matter how poorly they end up put back together, no matter what hideous thing it makes of them...

And at the same time: what in God’s name has happened to charity? That piece of this reminds me, a little, of the issue of the comic Animal Man that I still think about sometimes - the bit that includes maybe, for once, we could try to be kind.

3. “I don’t know at what point Jedao stopped regarding himself as a person, but once he decided he was a gun, everyone turned into a target.” -Raven Stratagem by Yoon Ha Lee

I’m so glad to have just seen you talk about Machineries of Empire because MACHINERIES OF EMPIRE and specifically Jedao and how much Jedao is designed to be My Type, and this line and...I mean, I was just talking about themes of agency and personhood and isn’t that just what this is.

And also just. A gorgeous turn/twist of phrase. Well done, Yoon Ha Lee, well done.

4. “That's how you get deathless, volchitsa. Walk the same tale over and over, until you wear a groove in the world, until even if you vanished, the tale would keep turning, keep playing, like a phonograph, and you'd have to get up again, even with a bullet through your eye, to play your part and say your lines.” -Deathless by Catherynne M. Valente

Narrative, the driving power of narrative, the way it shapes the figures in them, the way you become what you behave...in general I think Valente is one of my favorite prosaists and I think Deathless might be my favorite of her books that I’ve read so far, and I keep coming back to this quote.

5. “Thus it was that the great mariners among them would still search the empty seas, hoping to come upon the Isle of Meneltarma, and there to see a vision of things that were. But they found it not. And those that sailed far came only to the new lands, and found them like to the old lands, and subject to death. And those that sailed furthest set but a girdle about the Earth and returned weary at last to the place of their beginning, and they said: ‘All roads are now bent.’” -The Silmarillion by J.R.R. Tolkien

Going to find this quote made me feel the burning sudden need to reread the Silm, so, whoops. And there are a few different quotes I could choose from it! Thought about the Doom of the Noldor, thought about the description of Fingolfin’s last stand, though about the last line of the Silmarillion section of the book (”if it has passed from the high and the beautiful to darkness and ruin”), and as I write this - well, those are all thematically aligned, aren’t they? And specifically thematically aligned with the thing I wrote my goddamn thesis about.

I just...I very, very much vibe with the melancholy of The Silmarillion. I respect Tolkien’s desire for eucatastrophe, but I think what I always come back to with Tolkien is the sorrow, is the deep sense of loss that permeates so much of his work. Victories are partial and conditional; the world is in a state of decline. Such is the fate of Arda Marred. There’s just such a sadness, there, but it’s a beautiful kind of sadness. Melancholy.

And while on the whole the Akallabeth is not my favorite section, this bit of its closing is just - I find it so beautiful, and resonant in its longing and desire for things that were - not in the sense of concrete history but in the sense of wonder, and the sense of something better that was lost. The phrase all roads are now bent just - oof. It makes me feel things in a way that I don’t always know how to handle.

And I mean. Mary Oliver punches me in the soul on the regular, but I feel like if I used quotes from her here it would just be. All five. Or at least three of five. 

[fortuitousraven]

 Fic writer review, thank you to @undercat-overdog​ for the tag :)

how many works do you have on AO3? 

9, but 5 of those are meta.

what’s your total AO3 word count?

36 607, I’m a slow writer yes and unfortunately don’t have a lot of spare energy for writing either X)

how many fandoms have you written for and what are they? 

Almost entirely Tolkien, but one of them is also cross-over with Game of Thrones. Harry Potter also if unpublished fic counts ;)

what are your top 5 fics by kudos?

1) Course Correction (19 002 words, published 2020-03-22). Ar-Pharazôn conveniently dies, leaving Queen Tar-Míriel and Evil Chancellor Sauron in an awkward stand-off. Plotting ensues ;)

Which is funnily enough also exactly tied for both kudos and subscriptions with Everyone is finally working together (9 877 words, published  2019-12-09). Take the jokes that Westeros being Westeros means it would count as an actual improvement if Sauron conquered it, and make an actual fic playing that out slightly more seriously ;)

That my current (and best written if I do say so myself) fic has the exact same stats as my first fic (I still like the ideas but the execution is very rough in retrospect XD) really goes to show that tropes account for a lot when it comes to fic statistics ;)

3) A review of the history of the Akallabêth

Also throwing in a meta work because I only have 4 fics X). Basically discusses the Silm and HoME versions of the story and why I prefer the latter.

4) Finrod Saves the Day

In which Númenor gets a good influence instead of a bad one. Aka the Finrod/Pharazôn ficlets.

5) Wise Heart

My Tolkien Secret Santa fic from last year about Andreth’s experience in becoming a wise-woman ^_^

do you respond to comments, why or why not? 

I always try to, I like hearing people’s thoughts on the story/canon :)

what’s the fic you’ve written with the angstiest ending? 

I don’t really write angsty endings XD, but the closest is probably the Andreth fic?

do you write crossovers? if so what is the craziest one you’ve written? 

Yes, the Tolkien/GoT one, which is also the craziest one. Crossovers are hard to do well but they can also be a lot of fun.

have you ever received hate on a fic? 

Luckily, no.

do you write smut? if so what kind? 

I’ve written it exactly once as an experiment (m/f, unpublished for now), but I liked how that came out so we’ll see how it goes further XD

have you ever had a fic stolen? 

Not as far as I know.

have you ever had a fic translated? 

Not yet, but I’m working on translating some of mine myself. It’s just going slowly because writing new ideas is more fun X)

have you ever co-written a fic before? 

No, but it sounds fun to try sometime!

what’s your all time favorite ship?

Hard to say for an all time favourite.

I’ve been on a big 2nd Age kick for a while, and my favourites for that setting is Sauron/Tar-Miriel and Sauron/Celebrimbor. And when I was just into LoTR it was Faramir/Eowyn and Aragorn/Arwen.

what’s a WIP that you want to finish but don’t think you ever will?

I want to finish my first fic, but I’m not entirely sure that’ll be manageable X)

what are your writing strengths?

I think I’m good at coming up with interesting plot points. And background, a reason I write so much meta is because I’ll inevitably wind up pondering the implications and thematic connections while I write a fic XD

what are your writing weaknesses? 

Description is probably the biggest, I was slammed for beige prose in most every piece of school writing X). But I do think I’ve been improving at that in my fics.

Balancing dialogue, I go for too much or too little, and then have to try to stitch it better.

Most other writing things too? I write for fun, not because I think I’m good at it XD

what are your thoughts on writing dialogue in other languages in a fic?

It depends? In a Tolkien work people’s language choices are very significant ;), but you can definitively still go overboard too.

I stick to having the names be in specific languages, and some terms that don’t translate smoothly (e.g. osanwe). Apart from that, I think it’s better to be consistent and have dialogue lines be either fully translated or fully untranslated.

what was the first fandom you wrote for? 

I actually started out with original fiction, and then Harry Potter. And Tolkien was the first I published.

what’s your favorite fic you’ve written? 

Course Correction yay for being your own target audience and then liking the result ^_^

I tag @saurons-pr-department (if you like)

[atelierwriting]

How do you come up with titles? Yours are always so cool and i only ever refer to mine as "mountain wip" or "the one with xaira in it". Any tips?

omg i just changed the title of island of the sun to no hallowed suns (but i’ll keep referring to it as iots because lol i’ve already made edits). 

titles are always pretty difficult to do so what i typically have are placeholder titles until something rly hits me. but for iots, i looked at quotes from the two stories that inspired it (peter pan and the little mermaid) and found one from hans christian andersen’s that rly stuck out to me. i used it as a basis for my own title.

for my other titles, i try to think about thematic meanings. does someone actually drown in the drowned girl? who knows? is that the important part? nope. thematically, drowning could mean many things--the atmosphere of the small town, the mysteries, or anything that could have someone figuratively drowning. 

sometimes, you could go with a title that has an important object in it (see warcross by marie lu, which is a video game but also the novel’s title). you could also consider an important event (return of the king by j. r. r. tolkien), literally what the story is about (how to train your dragon (2010)), etc. i think it all boils down to the type of feeling you want to evoke when someone sees your title. if it’s going to be some mystery, you probably don’t want to call it how to train your dragon. but maybe you want to opt for naming it after a mysterious group in your wip. 

i hope this helps!

[longsightmyth]

What are some tips to come up with interesting book titles?

My favorite way is ‘title drops’ or finding your title in your text. That’s not always feasible for many reasons, and your mileage may vary on the cool factor, but I’m always excited to see it. My best tip is this: your title should influence how someone reads your book. I remember seeing a novel titled 'Sometimes I Lie’ and I still haven’t read it (contemporary fiction isn’t really where I hang out) but all I could think about was how awesome a title it was. Immediately when you read that book, you know that the narrator is going to be unreliable at best, because sometimes they lie. 

A few other examples: 

Heir of Fire. Yes, Yes, I know, I don’t like Throne of Glass, they are bad books, etc etc, but Heir of Fire is a solid, evocative title relevant to the book and tied in to the point that particular book is trying to drive home. Celaena is Mala’s Chosen and she’s learning how to use her firepowers, with a side helping of accepting that she is the heir to Terrasen. Kudos to Sarah Janet, she did a good thing. 

The Will of the Empress is discussed here . I maintain it is one of the best titles of all time on both the cool and relevant scales. 

Dealing with Dragons. Cimorene deals with dragons. 

Look Tamora Pierce book titles are great to a one, except possibly Tempests and Slaughter. 

Lord of the Rings, The Fellowship of the Ring, The Two Towers, The Return of the King. They are exactly what they say on the tin. I got 99 problems but the lotr titles aren’t any of them 

 Okay now I’m going to discuss how I title things, if you’ll excuse the tooting of my own horn. 

 Even Stars Can Die, as I have probably mentioned ninety-two times to various people, is one of my crowning achievements when it comes to titles. Not only does it reference the main character directly (she is named after a star), there is a title drop in-text (“Remember, elfling - even stars can die”), it is thematically appropriate from a lotr standpoint of which it is fanfic (Tolkien’s elves are OBSESSED with stars for many reasons), and it is thematically appropriate to the fic while adding a slight sense of possible dread - Morwinyon, the main character, literally has a star’s name. She is referred to in reference to stars multiple times. She could maybe die, y'all! …and then Morwinyon herself answers the title in-text by replying to the quote above (and metatextually all the hopes and dreams and shit piled on her shoulders), “I am not a star.” She's not going to die, and she’s not accepting your expectations, whatever they may be. She’s living up to her own. If I had named the fic anything else, it wouldn’t be the same fic or the same reading experience. (I was not as successful at naming the others in the series, unfortunately) 

 Likewise, Shatterglass wouldn’t be the same story if it was named Throne of Glass. Obviously. Also, by naming it after a piece of the story about Nehemia, I shifted the focus of the fic and told readers to pay attention to something else. You aren’t looking for a throne of glass. You’re looking for some of the broken stuff. Or that was the intention, anyway. All a writer can do is try.

Some further discussion here and here

(the last one is a treatise on ToG titles in specific)

[pepperpaprika]

Some Keitor

Snippet to a keitor fic I started around S4-- so now ITS ACCIDENTALLY THEMATIC. :D  Sometimes canon will break you-- and sometimes it is a gift.

“Who are you? Where is this?” The man demanded, accent vaguely foreign. His eyes glowed gold, with brilliant electric blue irises.

“I’m Keith.” And, because he was never one to dance around something staring him in the face, he added: “this is Earth.”

Keith unscrewed the thermos’ lid, taking a sip of hot tomato soup. He had a slightly soggy grilled cheese sandwich in his other hand, completing his solo picnic as he looked out at the spectacular night sky.

This far into the desert with no buildings around, it felt like he could see all the way out into other galaxies, spinning slowly away. The moon was a wisp of a smile on his left, climbing higher as the night wore on and Keith finished his packed dinner.

There was no particular reason to be out gazing at the stars every few days-- but Keith found it calming. Whenever he felt suffocated by tests, papers, or his own schoolmates, he always rode his bike out to calm himself, pretending he could keep going forever.

Some nights he’d track the miniscule blinking red light of a chartered plane. Others, he could count shooting stars.

Tonight, it seemed, was going to be a shooting star night.

Keith watched the white-hot flare of the head as it rocketed across the firmament, speeding through. Normally, he’d barely blink before the streak was out of sight, but this one was still visible, burning bright. Was that a comet? He hadn’t heard anything coming into visible orbit. Except, he realized faintly, the angle was entirely wrong. Instead of a haze streaking slowly across the sky, it looked like it was turning, almost, before dropping straight down. The bright crown of it swelled as it drew closer, a silhouette starting to form in its fiery center, then it crashed into the desert in an explosion of grit and sand.

Holy shit.

Keith scrambled towards the smoke, disregarding the spray of sand that now covered both him and his bike. The meteor had landed barely two dunes over. His heart thudded in his chest, rocking with the residual shock of impact.

He was expecting a meteorite- maybe a satellite that lost power.

What he found was a ship.

And there was someone inside.

“Hey-- hey, are you okay?!” Keith shouted as he ran up to what was probably the remains of a jet. It was a bit wider and shaped strangely, but what else could it be? Maybe it had lost its peripherals burning up in the stratosphere.

The aircraft’s hatch popped open as he climbed up one wing and the pilot lolled out limply, an unconscious ragdoll.

Keith hauled him out, surprised when he realized just how big the man was- easily bigger than any man he’d ever seen, though a couple of the university basketball stars came close in height.

He laid the man out on the sand, yanking his helmet free.

His first thought was that the man was suffocating, already blue and ashy from lack of oxygen. Training made him check the man’s pulse and anything obstructing his breathing, tugging at the strange suit to loosen it.

The second thing he noticed was that he had strange ears. Long and elfin, they jutted out from a fall of impossibly silky white hair. Like someone had ripped one of Tolkien’s elves from Mirkwood and put him under UV light.

He hesitated, then- gaze darting back to the strange ship. But while he had a pulse, the stranger didn’t seem to be breathing. Nothing he could see was obstructing his mouth or nose.  So he leaned down and breathed into his mouth, pumping  his closed fists down on his chest. He did it twice more before his patient woke--- and promptly pushed Keith down, flipping them over.

“Who are you? Where is this?” The man demanded, accent vaguely foreign. His eyes glowed gold, with brilliant electric blue irises.

“I’m Keith.” And, because he was never one to dance around something staring him in the face, he added: “this is Earth.”

The alien man’s eyes narrowed, finally seeming to register Keith’s human features. “...What are you?”

“I could ask the same about you,” Keith snorted. “I’m human. And you, I’m guessing, are alien.”

He frowned but didn’t deny it. His grip on Keith’s shoulders eased and Keith could almost hear his bones creak. “To you, perhaps. Does everyone here look like you?”

“Well, no, not really. We all look a little different from eachother. Mostly just hair and skin color and stuff like that. I guess they’re all humans like me, even if not all of them act like it.”

The man looked at him pensively, then his skin shifted, changing colors like a chameleon into something approaching Keith’s tone, but several shades darker. His eyes blinked and the sclera brightened into a human white. His pointed ears shrank, turning into respectable curled shells.

Satisfied, the shapeshifted alien got up, walking to his ship. He looked over it at first, taking in the dire condition of its engines before sighing. At a touch, it disappeared, blending into its surroundings.

“Very well, Keith. I need your help.”

“Do you want to see our leader?” Keith asked wanly.

“No, my presence must remain unknown. My ship will take a while to repair and I need a place to stay.”

“What are you running away from?” Keith asked, suspicious.

“My father,” he said simply. “He’s trying to kill me. Any more than that I’d appreciate telling you somewhere safer. You can’t be the only one who noticed my ship crash.”

No, he couldn’t. Keith hesitated a moment, then led the man back to his bike. “Do you have a name?”

“Lotor.”

“Well, Lotor, hop on and let’s ride.”

[promin-blog]

The New Shadow – Morgoth and Human Sacrifice?

Regarding Tolkien's unfinished story The New Shadow, Christopher Tolkien wrote: "it will never be known what Borlas found in his dark and silent house, nor what part Saelon was playing and what his intentions were."

I offer my (textually-backed up) speculations on the possible development of The New Shadow. Also, I discuss some of the philosophical implication of this story and its thematic connections with (or better said ‘fractalic reiterations’ of) other parts of Tolkien's opus, mainly the Ainulindalë.

The New Shadow was published for the first time in HoME 12. It is unfinished and has two fairly short fragments that don't differ greatly in content.

For those less familiar with this story, I will give a quick recap. It takes place during the Forth Age, in Gondor, during the reign of Aragon’s son, Eldarion. Borlas, an old man, is sitting in his garden with Saelon, a young man who is a friend of his son.

While sitting there they have a discussion on the nature of Evil in the world, or more precisely, on both the re-appearing nature of this Evil:

 ‘Deep indeed run the roots of Evil,' said Borlas, 'and the black sap is strong in them. That tree will never be slain. Let men hew it as often as they may, it will thrust up shoots again as soon as they turn aside. (HoME 12)

 and it's omnipresence:

 For a man may have a garden with strong walls, Saelon, and yet find no peace or content there. There are some enemies that such walls will not keep out; for his garden is only part of a guarded realm after all. It is to the walls of the realm that he must look for his real defence.

Both of those ‘characteristics’ can be traced back to the Music of the Ainur and Melkor’s discords, which the story actually insinuates by mentioning the Great Theme:

I do not doubt that many of those we spoke of would use words as solemn as yours, and speak reverently of the Great Theme and such things - in your presence.

as well as the discords of Melkor, and Eru creatively ‘overgrowing' them:

My judgement as one of them you know already. The evils of the world were not at first in the great Theme, but entered with the discords of Melkor. Men did not come with these discords; they entered afterwards as a new thing direct from Eru, the One, and therefore they are called His children

It seems that the new identifiable spurt from this ‘tree of Evil’, that is, Melkor’s discords which are both “nowhere absent” (HoME 10, p422, while talking about ‘the Melkor-ingredient’ in matter) and reiterating, is someone named Herumor:

'Why!' said Saelon. 'We have hardly begun. It was not of your orchard, nor your apples, nor of me, that you were thinking when you spoke of the re-arising of the dark tree. What you were thinking of, Master Borlas, I can guess nonetheless. I have eyes and ears, and other senses, Master.' (…) 'You have heard then the name?' With hardly more than breath he formed it. 'Of Herumor?'

 Borlas's and Saelon's discussion could be considered as a kind of an reenactment of the Music on the micro-level, with Borlas and Saelon offering their arguments 'one atop of the other', like in a singing duel. Saelon is even "humming softly” during their discussion.

Plotwise, Saelon insinuates that he is in some way in contact with Herumor and/or those dissatisfied with the way things are in Gondor after ‘the King’ (meaning Aragorn) has died. We are led to believe by Saelon that these men make Herumor's following. Saelon offers Borlas to come with him tonight if the wants to 'learn more'.

Let's now take a look at what Tolkien said about the plot of The New Shadow:

I did begin a story placed about 100 years after the Downfall [of Sauron], but it proved both sinister and depressing. Since we are dealing with Men it is inevitable that we should be concerned with the most regrettable feature of their nature: their quick satiety with good. So that the people of Gondor in times of peace, justice and prosperity, would become discontented and restless - while the dynasts descended from Aragorn would become just kings and governors - like Denethor or worse. I found that even so early there was an outcrop of revolutionary plots, about a centre of secret Satanistic religion; while Gondorian boys were playing at being Orcs and going round doing damage." (HoME 12)

My speculations:

1) Herumor and his 'cult' are practicing human sacrifice, which would make them ‘satanists’, by Tolkien’s definition. Morgoth accepting human sacrifice as the proper way of worship goes back to the Tale of Adanel:

Then in fear lest he (Morgoth) should hear them and punish us all, we slew them (those who spoke against worshiping Morgoth), if we could; and those that fled we hunted; and if any were caught, our masters, his friends, commanded that they should be taken to the House and there done to death by fire. That pleased him greatly, his friends said; and indeed for a while it seemed that our afflictions were lightened. (HoME 10)

2) Herumor would turn out to be a Sauron-type evil leader, but human, claiming to be Sauron reincarnated, like Sauron claimed to be Morgoth reincarnated, after the fall of his master:

"At least in the Elder Days, and before he was bereft of his lord and fell into the folly of imitating him, and endeavoring to become himself supreme Lord of Middle-earth." (HoME 10)

The connection with Sauron could also be deduced from the title of the story - The New Shadow. Throughout LOTR Sauron is referred to as ‘the Shadow’, and the chapter of Fellowship in which Sauron is for the first time mentioned in LOTR is titled ‘The Shadow of the Past’. Sauron is even mentioned as ‘the Shadow’ in-story, by Saelon:

I do not mean of wild men only, or those who grew "under the Shadow", as they say.

Why do I think Herumor is human, and not Sauron returned?

There are two reasons why. Firstly, if Sauron (or Morgoth) was to return in this story, Tolkien would not, according to C.Tolkien, talk in this way:

‘I could have written a "thriller" about the plot and its discovery and overthrow - but it would be just that. Not worth doing.' (HoME 12)

The second, stronger, reason is this:

Sauron was a problem that Men had to deal with finally: the first of the many concentrations of Evil into definite power-points that they would have to combat as it was also the last of those in "mythological" personalized (but non-human) form.' (HoME10)

Sauron was the last ‘non-human power-point of Evil’ Men would fight against. From that follows that Herumor must be a human Evil power-point.

In accordance with the Sauron-model, Herumor would probably be presiding over human sacrifices in a manner of an ‘evil priest’, like Sauron did in Númenor (therefore we definitely have here also some shades of the Akallabêth).

3) Borlas gets sacrificed, or more probably, almost gets sacrificed 

Why Borlas would not join Saelon, you ask? Perhaps Borlas would turn out to be a Morgoth worshiper, in the end. I don’t think so, and there are two reasons for that: the first one is that Borlas held fast to his arguments in his philosophical discussion with Saelon and the second one is that Saelon is described in very sinister tones, treats Borlas with almost open contempt and has a grudge against the old man because Borlas berated him when he and some other boys picked unripe fruit to play with.

Just look at Saelon talking about that presumably very humiliating event and how he wants Borlas to have a taste of the ‘Orc-work’:

It was a mistake, Master Borlas. For I had heard tales of the Orcs and their doings, but I had not been interested till then. You turned my mind to them. I grew out of petty thefts (my father was not too easy), but I did not forget the Orcs. I began to feel hatred and think of the sweetness of revenge. We played at Orcs, I and my friends, and sometimes I thought: "Shall I gather my band and go and cut down his trees? Then he will think that the Orcs have really returned.”

Saelon would not want to work together with Borlas. He still wants revenge for the perceived mistreatment. Even Borlas picks up on this one:

(...) there was something disquieting in the young man's tone, something that made him wonder whether deep down, as deep as the roots of the dark trees, the childish resentment did not still linger. Yes, even in the heart of Saelon, the friend of his own son, and the young man who had in the last few years shown him much kindness in his loneliness. At any rate he resolved to say no more of his own thoughts to him.

No, Saelon probably doesn’t want to convert Borlas to Morgoth worship. But an old man would surely make an easy victim for a human sacrifice. Moreover, Borlas would make a very appropriate victim, since he is an ‘orthodox’ believer, in a sense, like those first human sacrifices made to Morgoth in The Tale of Adanel had been. And like the Faithful of Numenor, who were also deemed by Sauron as 'appropriate' human sacrifices.

Even Borlas seems to think he might end up sacrificed because of his beliefs:

And yet - why invite me to go with him? Not to convert old Borlas! Useless. Useless to try: no one would hope to win over a man who remembered the Evil of old, however far off.

What is also interesting here is that we have some justification for Borlas tolerating Saelon’s insolent tone throughout their discussion - “the young man (...) in the last few years (has) shown him much kindness in his loneliness”, much like Melkor did in Valinor, for some fifty years (see Annals of Aman in HoME 10, p106), after his own humiliation ‘at the feet of Manwë ’:

But fair-seeming were all the words and deeds of Melkor in that time, and both the Valar and the Eldar had profit from his aid and counsel, if they sought it (...) it seemed to Manwë that the evil of Melkor was cured. (Silmarillion)

I dare say that we get a glimpse at Melkor’s ‘psychology’ through these Saelon’s words:

Even then you were not content to let ill alone: to deter me with a beating, or to strengthen your fences. No. You were grieved and wanted to improve me. You had me into your house and talked to me.

Well, Manwë certainly took Melkor into his house and wanted to improve him. And Melkor definitely saw this as a humiliation and wanted revenge for this ‘slight’.

So, that is why Saelon gives off a sinister vibe - he is Melkor under the magnifying glass - that is, some of the previous ‘mythological’ events (like ‘the song of the Ainur’ or ‘the unchaining of Melkor’) get reiterated on the smaller level in The New Shadow, also shedding some ‘new light’ onto those past mythological events, fleshing them out, so to say, furthering our understanding of them.

EDIT: @feanorus-rex : Yeah, I didn't really address the actual cliffhanger, lol, that is, I didn't try to identify the 'intruder' in Borlas's house. But I don't think anything really crucial was about to happen at that point of the story.

Remember, it is already established at that point that Borlas is really shaken by his conversation with Saelon:

For some while after Saelon had gone Borlas stood still, covering his eyes and resting his brow against the cool bark of a tree beside the path. As he stood he searched back in his mind to discover how this strange and alarming conversation had begun.

It even takes some time for him to recover and get back to the house. I think that his mind is somewhat susceptible to play tricks on him at that point, so that he, kind of, convinces himself that he actually smells that ‘old Evil’, the Orcs:

Suddenly he smelt it, or so it seemed, though it came as it were from within outwards to the sense: he smelt the old Evil and knew it for what it was.

He also becomes afraid that he might end up dead himself:

He was to be lured to some place where he could disappear, like the Shipmen?

However, he does find the doors of his house open. If the doors weren't forced open, it might be his son, Berelach, that came home. But I think that the real danger was supposed to come a little later, at full dark, when Saelon returns. I was more intrigued by where Saelon might take Borlas.

[tailchaser-fritti]

Thanks to That Imaginary Cat

TAILCHASER was my first book, in every possible way — first I ever wrote, first I had published — so it will always be close to my heart. I still marvel sometimes at all the places that imaginary cat has traveled — far more than I’ll ever get to, probably.

I wrote the book in part as therapy for the shock of living with cats for the first time. I had one particular cat, a splendid ginger (as they say in England — we just say ‘red’ in the US) male named Fever. I could never get over the incredible scam he and the other cats had going. Dogs WORK for their living, fetching, guarding, wagging, drooling, making it clear how much they love humans. Cats think you should feel lucky to be slaving at a horrible job so you can buy them food. So I started playing with the idea of a cat-o-centric universe. How would they see things? What kind of stories and folktales would they have? What part would humans play? (Answer: Meal Ticket.)

The story came a few years later, when I first decided to try writing a novel. I’d written only one other original thing before that, a rather awful science-fiction screenplay called THE SAD MACHINES that I’ve never shown to anyone outside my family, I don’t think. The only interesting thing about it now is that its main character, Ishmael Parks, was a definite precursor to Simon in the Osten Ard books.

Anyway, I wrote the cat book, sent it off to the first publisher on my list (who were at the time the best-known fantasy publishers in the US) and got it back promply with a rejection note that said “We don’t do works with non-human protagonists.” When I wrote back to have this curious sentence explained, they said: “We don’t do animal books. We’d make an exception if this were a potential best-seller, but it isn’t.”

Ha ha, I can proudly say today. And again, Ha. (Not that I’m bitter. In fact, when TAILCHASER made the best-seller lists, I wrote the publishers who rejected it a very gracious and generous note, which I tied to a big rock and chucked through their lobby window. Just kidding.)

Anyway, the second publishers on the list, DAW Books, liked it and bought it, and they are still my primary publishers (and friends) to this day.

I think there are a lot of themes that show up in TAILCHASER that are still strong in my work. The distrust of easy and or/dramatic solutions is one of them. The love for stories of the past, but also a certain skepticism about history, is another. And, most importantly, the need to learn about oneself, to find out who you are before you can expect to change things in this or any world, is something I still work with all the time, in my books and my life.

Last but not least, thematically-speaking, there are some little nods (and affectionate jabs) toward Tolkien. Like a lot of people my age, I was head-over-heels in love with THE LORD OF THE RINGS when I was younger, and still think it an amazing and wonderful book. But even something wonderful should still not be swallowed whole without critical examination, and eventually I wrote MEMORY, SORROW AND THORN in part to deal with some of my conflicts about Tolkien’s LOTR (which I’ll try to explain in more detail elsewhere). In TAILCHASER, I reserved my Tolkien commentary primarily to a few jokes, like the scene where Fritti meets the Queen of Cats (a fairly obvious Galadriel-parallel), the glorious and exalted Mirmirsor Sunback, and discovers her biting her butt. Which is, of course, a very catlike thing to do.

When I received the letter that DAW was going to publish TAILCHASER’S SONG back in January of 1985, it was one of the happiest and most exciting days of my life. I took my dog Gala (who was then a mere youngster) for a walk in the hills and imagined all the things that might happen now that I was officially a writer. And many — no, most of them — did. Thanks to that imaginary cat.

Tad Williams — February 2001

(https://www.tadwilliams.com/books/novels/tailchasers-song/thanks-to-that-imaginary-cat/)

[ciathyzareposts]

The Seventh Link: Summary and Rating

The game manual featured some fairly modest hand-drawn art.

            The Seventh Link

Canada

Oblique Triad (developer and publisher)

Released 1989 for Tandy Color Computer 3 Date Started: 16 December 2018

Date Ended: 16 March 2019

Total Hours: 22

Difficulty: Medium-Hard (3.5/5)

Final Rating: (to come later)

Ranking at Time of Posting: (to come later)

       Summary:

Inspired graphically and thematically by the Ultima series, The Seventh Link is probably the most extensive and full-featured RPG for the TRS-80 Color Computer. A single starting character ultimately enlists a group of allies of different races and classes on a quest to save their planet from a black hole at its core, about to break its containment. Solving the quest will take the party through dozens of towns across multiple planets and through multiple large, multi-leveled dungeons. Although the game gets off to a slow, grindy start, character development is rewarding and the tactical combat system (drawn from Ultima III) is most advanced seen on this platform. The problem is that the game’s content is not up to its size, and not enough interesting stuff happens while exploring the enormous world.           

****

        I never like giving up on games, and I particularly don’t like when I know the author is reading (I’m frankly not sure it’s ever happened before). But in several months of trying, I simply haven’t been able to make any decent progress in The Seventh Link. That doesn’t necessarily mean I don’t like it. If I was a Tandy Color Computer 3 owner, I’m sure I’d prize the game and play to the very end. The problem is that as a blogger, I have to be able to justify my playing time with material. If I spend four hours in a dungeon and all I can say is I killed a bunch of enemies (showing the same combat screens I’ve shown before) and gathered some gold, it’s hard to countenance that time.

In some ways, The Seventh Link is the quintessential 1980s RPG. It offers a framing story with more detail than appears in the game itself, sticks the player in a large world that the player has to map if he’s to make any progress, and features a lot of combat. In mechanics, it’s as good as any of the early Wizardries or Ultimas.

Unfortunately, Link was the last game I encountered before leaving the 1980s, and I’d just spent a decade mapping featureless dungeon corridors. It’s not its fault that it’s last; that’s just the way it happened. And by the time I got to Link, I just couldn’t do it anymore. I couldn’t–I can’t–play a game that’s just a few dozen 20 x 20 dungeon levels full of combats. The Bard’s Tale and its derivatives drained that battery.           

I never figured out anything to do with the pillars.

         This is the 90s, and gamers are demanding more interesting content in their game worlds. We want NPCs, special encounters, puzzles, and other features in those dungeons, at regular intervals. We’ve decimated forests in our consumption of graph paper; we’re ready for automaps. Ones that don’t require us to find a spell first. 

Despite investing a fair number of hours into the game, I really didn’t accomplish much. I explored the surface of Elira, visited each of its towns to assemble a party, and mapped 4 of 13 levels of one dungeon. There were at least 9 more dungeon entrances on Elira alone, some of which would have taken me to teleporters to three other planets and their own towns and dungeons. I would have found a final party member, a female ranger named Starwind, on the planet Dulfin. Others dungeons would have led me to power packs and the places where I needed to install them to save the planet. I still don’t know where I was to find the other spells. From hints in an old disk magazine, I learned that the maximum character level is 25 (my main character reached 8) and that one of the planets has a store where you can buy potions that increase attributes, serving in the role of Ambrosia from Ultima III.            

One of the few lines from an NPC. Alas, I will probably never explore Selenia.

        My GIMLET is naturally based on an incomplete picture of the game:          

4 points for the game world. The sci-fi origin story is fairly original, and well-told in epistolatory fashion, although it fails to explain a number of aspects of the world (e.g., why are there settlements on other planets). While the player’s role is somewhat clear, it’s less clear where he came from, how he got started on this path, and whether he understands his role.

3 points for character creation and development. The selection of races and classes is familiar but not entirely derivative. There’s nothing special about character creation or the development and leveling process, but they’re reasonably rewarding. I don’t know if the level cap would have caused any issues or if you finish the game well before reaching it.

3 points for NPC interaction. The game has a better system than it uses. You learn a few things from NPCs, but there are hardly any NPCs that say anything to you. Expanding that number would have resulted in a richer, more engaging world. I do like the Ultima IV approach to assembling your party by finding members in the towns.

2 points for encounters and foes. The monsters are mostly derivative of other games (though I like the explanations for their names here: the ship that populated the planet had Tolkien fans on it), and I didn’t really experience other types of encounters.

4 points for magic and combat. The tactical combat screen is about as good as Ultima III, but with fewer spells.

           On Level 3 of the dungeon, I met an enemy called “Floating Stars.”

        3 points for equipment. You can get melee weapons, missile weapons, armor, and adventuring equipment like torches and keys. Various sites hint at more advanced items like rods and gems of seeing. The selection of stuff is a little paltry in the traditional Ultima style.

5 points for the economy. It lacks a certain complexity, but money is certainly valuable. You almost never have enough keys, for one thing. Healing, torches, equipment, and leveling up consume gold fast, and it sounds like the shop on Dulfan would have served as an endless money sink for any extra you could accumulate.

2 points for a main quest with no side-quests or quest options.

4 points for graphics, sound, and interface. Almost all of that is for the interface. It adopts the Ultima standard of one key per action, which ought to have been mandatory as far as I’m concerned. Graphics are functional but sound sparse.

           I never quite got used to the perspective. That lava square is only one square in front of me.

          2 points for gameplay. It gets a bit for nonlinearity and a bit more for the moderate-to-challenging difficulty. But it’s not very replayable and it’s way, way, way, way too big and too long.

             That gives is a final score of 32, which is hardly awful for the era. It’s actually the highest score that I’ve given to the platform. The only things that stop me from finishing it are the number of hours it will take and the number of other games on my list.

The Georgetown, Ontario-based Oblique Triad was a mail-order developer and publisher, co-founded by Jeff Noyle and Dave Triggerson. The name referred to the decorative bars on the top of a Color Computer. Mr. Noyle used to host a page (available now only on the Internet Archive) with links to their games, which included a pair of graphical adventures called Caladuril: Flame of Light (1987) and Caladuril 2: Weatherstone’s End (1988); a strategy game called Overlord (1990); an arcade game called Those Darn Marbles! (1990); and a sound recording and editing package called Studio Works.           

Caladuril, the company’s first game, is a decent-looking graphical adventure.

          With the Color Computer in serious decline by 1990, Oblique Triad shifted its focus to specializing in sound programming, and both Noyle and Triggerson have associated credits on Wizardry VI: Bane of the Cosmic Forge (1990) and Wizardry: Crusaders of the Dark Savant (1992). I haven’t been able to trace Triggerson from there, but Noyle got a job at Microsoft in 1995 working on Direct3D, DirectX, and DirectDraw and remains (at least according to his LinkedIn profile) there today. He also has a voice credit for a Skyrim mod called Enderal: The Shards of Order (2016).

Mr. Noyle was kind enough to not only comment on one of my entries, but to take the time to create overworld maps to speed things along. I’m sorry that it wasn’t quite enough, but every game that I abandon stands a chance of coming back when circumstances are different, and I’ll consider trying this one again when I feel like I’m making better progress through the 1990s.

source http://reposts.ciathyza.com/the-seventh-link-summary-and-rating/