#we started lotr like. two years ago

[krystaldeath]

Me and My parents are destined to Never Finish a Movie Series

[tanoraqui]

In Which Space Orcs are Men

[AO3] A "what if humans are space orcs" take on Dagor Dagorath. (Aka the prophecied apocalypse of Middle Earth. Scifi story accessible to non-LotR nerds!)

Elves weren't really supposed to leave Earth. That's what they told us—the Elves, that is, told people thousands of years ago, when Elves could still be found here and there. When I was born, elves were nearly as much a fairy tale as they’d been on Ancient Earth.

Elves weren't supposed to leave Earth, the Elves said in the fairy tales, and in a few old scraps of records scattered around known space. They literally weren't made for it. They could only do it if they brought Earth with them—Arda they called it, leaves or dirt, water or a rare bubble of air, perfectly preserved in a white crystal. There are tons of tales about Elves losing their lifeline jewels—their hearts, their silimirs—and roping people into epic quests to get them back before they—the Elf—faded to nothingness. 

Even the jewels weren't enough, though. That's why there are also stories about Elves who fell in love with a person or a place and stayed there until they faded, or Elves who charmed someone into following them back to Fairyland on Earth...because whatever they said, Elves didn't really live on Earth. Humans have maintained their home planet as a monitored nature reserve since like the 40th century, open only to vetted research teams and serious Human religious pilgrimages. The most confirmed accounts of Elves that exist are of their ships appearing out of nowhere, with no trace of any tech that would enable it, at random, always-changing points within 100 miles or so of Earth.

Nobody ever came back from trying to follow Elves home. Mostly Elves tried to dissuade people from trying. But there are always crazy and curious people—and Elves usually attracted those, because any Elf who left the home they were "made" for was usually crazy and curious themselves. 

Those were the stories I grew up with. There was a cave near the orphans' creche which was supposed to be haunted by a faded Elf. I didn't really believe it—like I said, the last confirmed Elf was last seen like 5,000 years ago, and not even on my planet. People have met two dozen new sentient races since then. We've discovered that reincarnation is probably real (just functionally untrackable), prompting the Pan-Religious Reform Wars. The last person to see a live Elf was still traveling via natural wormholes—they literally didn't know that you could loop pi.

.

When the Human natal sun started to turn really red, it wasn’t that big a deal at first. It’s a very important, very sad event for any species, but it happens to everyone eventually. It happened to the Hectort just after we invented interstellar flight. There were some unusual gravatic waves around Earth’s Sol, but nothing worth noting to anyone who didn’t already care for personal reasons.

Then the Elves sent us a message.

The local Parks Service picked it up, of course. I bet the Humans meant to hush it up at first—though the Centaurian government still won’t admit anything—but someone leaked it immediately on the intergalactic net. It should’ve only been famous as a joke of a hoax, but…

It was basically just a metal box with rudimentary fire-thrusters soldered on the sides. It contained two things. The first was a recording/replaying device so antiquated that the only way they got it working is that it was already playing on loop, and didn’t stop until someone disconnected it from its power source.

The message was in Ancient Bouban, which some folklorist soon announced is the latest language an Elf could know, since the last known Elf went back to “Arda.” The voice somehow sounded melodic to every species with a concept of music, from the screeching Vesarians to the deep-sea sub-sonic Thinkers, even when translated through cheap, staticky speakers. And to most species, the speaker was audibly distraught.

They said,

This is the final message from the Firstborn of Eru to the Secondborn, and everyone else. The Battle of Battles has come, and we…are losing. If there are any who remember the ancient love and loyalty which bound our peoples, if there are any heirs remaining of Thargalax the Magnificent, of Nine-Fingered Frodo, of the noble Houses of Haleth, Hador and Beor—

The speaker drew a sharp breath, there.

—by great oaths and greater friendship I bid you now to raise your swords and ride to our aid. Ride as swiftly as you can!

We will hold for another year. We will, they said determinedly. After that, it is unlikely that…

Another, shakier breath. A smile forced into a voice which would rather weep.

Fëanáro and Nienna believe there is a way to destroy the Straight Road. If we must, if it comes to it, we will do so, and trap the First Enemy here in this dying world with us. Though I don’t know about—

Hair-aristocrat! a more distant, slightly less perfectly melodious voice called, in a language so dead that they needed computers to decode it. The walls are falling, we need to go!

If you never hear from us again, and no sudden discord arises among you, you will know we succeeded, the first speaker said quickly. If otherwise…I am sorry. Either way, I bid you all only, remember us! Oh beautiful flames, remember us, as we have ever remembered y— 

There was a sudden screech of tearing metal, a defiant, musical battle-cry, and a jarring silence. Then the message restarted.

And that wasn’t even the strangest thing in the box. The strangest thing was the recorder’s power source, which was powering the whole tiny rocket mechanism as well. It was an Elf-jewel right out of a fairy tale, a fist-sized, translucent not-quite-diamond—but instead of rock or water or a much-loved scrap of plant, the only thing it held was light.

...Kind of. It isn’t normal light. It arguably isn’t light at all, as we know it—scientists now think it’s technically some sort of plasmoid aether, except it only acts like a plasmoid aether about half the time. 

It has no detectable source within the jewel. It fully illuminates whatever space it’s in, no matter how big. Its visible radiation is a frequency, the scientists say, that matches a hyper-accelerated version of what the universe must’ve sounded like in the split second after the Big Bang.

It makes people remember things, when they see it in person or sometimes even across a holo. Some remember a similar light in a strange traveler’s eyes. Others, dreamily enchanted valleys where spring never faded, or tall castles, bright swords, and stern and glorious lords and ladies. And some of us got hit with a whole lifetime of memories in one go: an identical gem on the brow of a sober forest king, friends who slipped through trees like shadows save for their merry laughter, an impossibly beautiful gold-haired maiden dancing in a glittering cavern...

(And all the pain and loss that came with them.)

And some people just remember the sight of a distant star—in another world, in another lifetime.

Reincarnation was provable but untraceable…until now. 

The Thinker ambassador on Astrolax Station 5 was the first to kick up a fuss. Most Thinkers never leave their home planet, they're too huge and aquatic. But like I said, there's always crazy and curious people. The ambassador started bellowing the second che heard the message, without even seeing the light, because, "I know him! My Wisdom! We must send aid!" That made some news, and random other people shared their own, less dramatic revelations, and soon a compilation swept the net with timestamps showing that most of them were organically independent, not just jumping on the bandwagon….

Even that might've gotten written off intergalactically. The Thinkers are big in reincarnationist circles, on account of how they claim that deep in their planetary ocean they can hear echoes of their past lives. But being mostly planet-bound means they're not really influential on a big political level. Or it would've sparked another surge of the Reform Wars, and everybody would've remembered the rock, but not the recording. Or there would’ve been a fight over this potentially infinite energy source (though that is so last giga-annum)….

But first it was shown in person to the current Director of the Admiralty of the Astral Alliance, President of the X-ee Empire and Matron of the House of S,sh, Ch’ees/i’i S,sh. I was actually there—I was Captain of her ceremonial Alliance guards, in a last-ditch attempt to salvage my career after Zanzibus. Very ceremonial, considering the X-eee have laser-proof shells and pincers and I have, what, opposable thumbs? Vestigial tusks?

I wasn’t paying attention at first, too busy being suddenly assaulted by all my own memories. So I missed the President freezing mid-step and gasping (in X-eee), “Mother.” I also missed her rising alarm call of an attempt to speak Ancient Elvish without an Elvish tongue or lips.

I sure didn’t miss her snap back to X-eee for a sharp call to attention, and everything that followed: the call to arms! The rousing of the Alliance! A tour of the galaxy, to find anyone and everyone else in whom the Light could awaken ancient memories! And for the love of X'eeh, why had nobody figured out how to get back to Fairyland with this thing yet, and every warship in the quadrant?!

If I believed in the One Behind, or in any other creator god or gods—I'm not saying I do, but if I did, if there really is something out there all-powerful and all-kind—then it'd be because out of every soul in the entire universe, the probably one in the best position to act on the Elves' message turned out to have, from a past life, two parents and a much-loved twin still in Fairyland. Like, that's insane, right?

I stayed with the Director's ceremonial guards for the whole tour, actually more than ceremonial for once—it was the weirdest mission of my life, and I've been on a lot of weird missions. Or supposedly routine missions that got weird (and usually disastrous). My friends joke that I'm cursed. S,sh requisitioned an Inquiry-class ship, so the science boffins could study the Light and jewel along the way, and we started wormholing at weft speed, hitting a new planet every week. Sometimes every day. In each major spaceport and ground-city, S,sh stood with the jewel on the highest available point and gave a recruitment speech for going to save the Elves and fight the oldest enemy of all reality. 

Honestly, it seemed a little redundant? The Astral Alliance was made for this sort of rescue mission (and for escorting trade convoys). But I was...if not happy, then sure as hell more self-certain with my ancient memories restored, and most people who joined up seemed to agree. It was mostly people who remembered, when exposed to the Light, who joined—so before long, we had a whole tag-along trail of mostly civilian ships, trying to get up to Alliance Fleet standard on the road in less than a year.

Three different religious sects tried to kill S,sh for "profaning the mysteries." Five others tried to steal the jewel because we were apparently appropriating a holy object. The boffins announced that, bar the can't-prove-a-negative possibility, the evidently sourceless Light should be counted as an infinite energy source, and at least seven different groups, ruthless financiers and sustainability idealists, immediately tried to steal it for that. And I still don't know what the rival thief-queens of Likkiliani were about, except that I got tied up upside-down from a palmdar tree for two hours trying to stop one, the other paid me 700 cron then threw me off a cliff, and in the end they recognized each other from past lives and just made out on worldwide live-holo before joining our growing fleet. 

It turned out they were the Director's past life's great-grandparents, and a Canid pop princess was her niece. The Thinker ambassador was some sort of ancestor, too. Crazy extended family. 

Most people who remember just remember the sight of a star in the sky. A buddy of mine from Fleet Academy remembered looking up at it as a Human sailor. The historians—and you’d better bet we picked up some Earther historians on this mission as well!—say this jewel or one like it was probably astrologically conflated with the planet Venus by early Humans.

(The more time I spent around the jewel, the Silmaril, the more I remembered, of my first life and more. Lifetime after lifetime with bad luck dogging my steps, killing loved ones in my arms, destroying cities I was supposed to save… One restless, haunted night, I met a Rigilic in the cafeteria who’d been awake with some of the same nightmares, who’d been my dead older sister once.)

The tour was cut short when word came from the Earth system that there was a black hole growing in the center of their reddening sun. 

No, the sun wasn’t compressing into a black hole millennia ahead of schedule—one had just spontaneously manifested within it, like it’d teleported in. No, not literally—that was impossible. We were pretty sure. No, the sun wasn’t falling into it…somehow. Yet. The black hole was only 17 quectometers wide, but it was growing at an erratic but unceasing rate. If their best estimation of the pattern held, it would consume the sun 2 months before the Elves’ deadline, and the Earth 4 to 950 minutes later.

We pulled back to Earth—well, to the dwarf planet Eros, on the edges of Earth’s star system. That’s where the nearest shipyard of any note was, and we were gathering the whole Astral Alliance. This is exactly the sort of thing the Alliance is for. 

I was released back to ship duty. Zanzibus was still a black mark on my record, as was Jorab, and really everything on the AAS Endeavor…and that thing in third year of Fleet Academy… But no matter how bad my curse, I was an experienced captain and one of the best pilots in the Alliance. For this, we needed all the best.

The boffins had pretty quickly mastered limited manipulation of the Light, using modified aetheric resonators, and every day they came up with something new for us to test. They focused the Light into a laser cannon like no one has seen before. They laced it through plasma shields until a fully shielded ship glowed like a distant star. They managed to nearly replicate the Silmaril’s crystalline structure, so they could make “copies” that shone like the original for first a few hours; then, with refinement, a full week…

The one thing they couldn’t pin down with any real confidence was how to get to Fairyland. The frequency of the Light resonated with large bodies of Earther saltwater in a particular way, and models suggested that if the Light source moved horizontally along the water within a certain range of distance and velocity, the resonance would create a wormhole-like ripple in space—but wormhole-like, was the key word, and models suggested. The closest anyone had seen to that spatial distortion was in a logbook of dubious veracity from the Delta Quadrant, four hundred years ago. Alteia, my Academy buddy who’d been a Human sailor, took the Silmaril in an M-wing on a series of highly monitored test flights above the Atlantic Ocean, and space did repeatedly start to hollow in front of bom—so bo had to stop every time, rather than risk vanishing with our single, maybe-one-way ticket.

Then Earth’s moon stopped shining in the sky. Its albedo just dropped nearly to zero, from one night to the next. There was nothing wrong that anyone could figure out—nothing with the orbit, nothing with the surface rock, nothing with the artificial atmosphere. Inhabitants reported feeling colder by several degrees, but no measuring equipment recorded anything.

The black hole slightly off-center in the middle of Sol was now 844.9 zeptometers, and growing more steadily.

We didn’t have time to keep testing. We needed to raise our swords and make our ride, even if we only got one shot at it.

I was given command, for seniority, skill, and because I was the one who managed to talk S,sh out of leading the fleet herself. (If my lives had taught me anything, it was the importance of having someone, anyone, ready to be emergency backup.) Ironically, I was back on the Endeavor, with most of my old crew—though we got permission to rename the ship, in honor of the mission. A lot of people did. Alteia was now commanding the AAS Elendil on my right flank, star-friend in Ancient Elvish. That Canid pop princess had taken over a hospital ship and renamed it Rivendell. An Earth Park Ranger, of all things, remembered being my dad—briefly—and he was leading the Rangers plus my Rigilic drinking buddy on the EPSS Elfsheen. 

We weren’t sure if any ship but the one with the Silmaril would get through. The fleet numbered in the hundreds in battleships alone, not counting scouts and scuttlers. Twelve races had sent ships on top of their typical Alliance Fleet tithe, and S,sh had brought about half the full force of the X-ee Empire. We all just locked tractor beams and hoped. 

I was piloting as well as captaining, with the Silmaril between my forehorns. It was held in place by about a dozen wires and other connectors to the ship, like an old-timey pilot’s headset. We took off in orbit around Earth, as close as possible to the surface—not very close, in warships of Class S and higher, but within range of the oceanic resonance. A Likkilianian thief-queen stood at my shoulder, ready to advise if anything “Musical” started to happen.

Think about what you’re trying to get to, and why, the boffins had advised, so I did—bright-eyed kings and dancing maidens; lost friends, families, cities, planets and all. The jewel got warmer against my skin and shone brighter with every pulse of the engine, brighter than we should’ve been able to see through.

The silver-gold Light twisted and diffused as space did around us. But there was no familiar rippling wormhole boundary—instead, spacetime thinned to a curtain like driving rain, like Vesarian silver-glass.

A ghost appeared next to me. She looked like the oldest, grumpiest writing teacher at the crèche, though I knew that was only in my head.

“There you are,” she said, impatient and relieved like I’d been hiding in the sandbox again, rather than coming to class on time. Her sewing scissors went snip snip snip as she darted them around my body—and a chain on my soul faded into guiding threads.

Before she’d even disappeared again, I punched the engine and blasted through the silver-glass curtain.

Fairy tales said there’d be a peerlessly beautiful land on the other side, green with eternal spring, full of endless light and laughter. They said there’d be sunlit shores and shimmering waves, with welcoming docks for sea-ships, sky-ships and space-ships all…

We flew into the worst battlefield I’d ever seen, in any lifetime. It was more desperately vicious than Jerusalem V at the height of the Reform Wars, more ruined than Glaurung’s wake, more desolate than Zanzibus after the nuclears fell.

Either a massive supercontinent or a small moon had been shattered, leaving nothing but a roiling debris field. The brand-new meteoroids ranged from pebbles to rocks the size of a small space station, and included space-frozen corpses, forests, and what might have once been city blocks.

I gave the helm back to my Pilot Officer—zer had, I can admit, slightly better reflexes for dodging debris—and focused on captaining.

Most of the life signs were clinging to the larger rocks. There shouldn’t have been atmosphere for them, but walls of thunderstorm wrapped around every shard with even a single life sign—wind and water desperately hand in hand to safeguard the last of the Elves. The only thing visible through the impossible storms was the Light of a second Silmaril, on a meteoroid shaped like half a broken eggshell.

A corpse lay at the epicenter of the explosion—what might’ve been a corpse, if it wasn’t also shattered. The broken pieces of a massive stone humanoid, taller than my ship if it’d stood beside her, still bleeding lava so hot that it burned even in frozen space. Another titan knelt at the shards of its head, a figure of towering bark and leaves, wailing with grief even worse than the end of the world. 

A slimmer tree-woman stood with one hand on her shoulder, comforting, and the other wielding a skyscraper-sized club spiked with incandescent wildflowers. Guarding her sister’s heartbreak, she fended off a swarm of bat-sized monsters with wings of darkness and whips of flame. 

Bat-sized relative to the gods of Elves and ancient Humans. About the size of an M-wing, in flight.

Countless more of the bat-things flung themselves at the storm-bubbles, like carnivores chasing the prey hidden inside. They were fended off by an equal army of creatures with wings of light and swords of lightning, led by a towering figure who seemed to dance from one bloody battle to the next.

The biggest battle by far was the farthest away, over where the sun had been. In this dimension of stories over science, Sol was another woman-shape, smaller than the others but burning just as brightly as her star. Also just as blood-red. The light was centered on a fist she kept clenched at her chest, and instead of containing the black hole, the unseeable thing that it was here surrounded her, striking at her with a thousand hungry jaws and grasping legs, and she had only a one-handed whip of a solar flare to fend it off—

But she didn’t fight alone. A warrior tore at the Darkness’s spidery limbs with his fists, image on the cameras flickering impossibly between every hero I’d ever heard of. A snarling figure bit at it with jagged teeth, gored it with horns, shredded it with claws and talons, and generally made every ancient prey-instinct in me scream. And a queen with a crown of stars, a shield like the night sky and a sword like a streaking comet, stood dauntlessly at the sun-holder’s side. 

With all that, and with the speed of even her most exhausted strikes, I thought the sun-holder could probably have gotten away if she’d tried. But I knew how a person fought when they weren’t willing to leave a friend, and a smaller, silver figure lay at her feet, unmoving and drained of light.

But even the battle for the sun wasn’t what grabbed my eye. No—all my attention, all my guiding threads of fate and the quick temper that always used to get me in trouble, before (and sometimes after) I learned to leash it in an Alliance uniform— All of that took me straight to the fight happening orthogonal to the stone giant’s corpse.

It was another one-versus-many. Morgoth, the First Enemy of Elves and Men— Master of Lies, Maker of Chains, Sonofabitch Curser of Bloodlines—towered over even his fellow gods. His shape changed constantly, sickeningly, but it was always black-armored with eyes like dying stars that hated you personally. His maul dripped with lava and every other kind of blood.

He fought against three great gray figures who moved as one. The tallest wielded a star-studded scythe with swift, efficient strokes, and wore the dark gray of corpse-shrouds. The shortest shimmered with more colors than even a Stamotapadon could dream of, and his weapon shifted likewise. The third was the clear, clean gray of skies after rain or tears run dry, and fought with only a shield—and hit harder with it than either of her brothers.

Around their heads darted the only Elves on the battlefield, in small fliers more like sea-ships than aircraft. But they moved fluidly, pestering the Dark Lord like flies, pricking his skin and threatening his burning eyes.

Until Morgoth swung his maul with a roar of fury that traveled even though soundless space. My ship and heart both shuddered. The gray gods all staggered back, and the Elves fell from the no-longer-sky—all but their leader, more fire than flesh, who wore the third Silmaril. Morgoth caught him in one massive black hand and with sharp claws plucked the jewel away, as easily as a ripe berry from a tree—

“All power to fore-cannon and fire,” I ordered—and the jewel on my brow shone bright again as several stored months’ worth of infinite Silmaril-Light slammed into Morgoth’s chest with all the force that the best scientists in the Astral Alliance could engineer. 

He stumbled. He dropped both the jewel and the elf-king (who’d been trying to bite him). The Lady of Mercy tossed her shield to catch them, staying low and out of sight—though she needn’t have bothered. The so-called “Lord of All” had already found his next enemy.

“All ships, move forward and join shields,” I ordered, and met his burning stare though the viewscreen. “Then broadcast me on all external frequencies.”

The wires on my forehead shimmered as we shifted Light-flow to the shields—and to my right, so did the Elendil, and to my left, the Cosmian Blade, and all around us the Minas Tirith, the Elfsheen, the Muse, the Rivendell, the Heart of Zanzi, the Longbottom Leaf… They were still soaring out of the silvery distortion behind me, tractor- and Silmaril-towed: sleek Rigilic eels-of-prey and Centaurian cruisers full of Humans eager to fight for their homeworld, Betan mine-ships and Canid X-M-wings and my own Hectoan starlighters, a full third of the X-ee navy with their X-eee–shaped six-engine dreadnoughts, and hundreds more. 

“This is Captain Pel Cinia, once Túrin Turambar, of the Astral Alliance ship Gurthang,” I said. My words were broadcast from every ship on every frequency in every language that the people of Arda might know, as the Fleet assembled from forty-plus different worlds flew into position. Our Light-infused shields blazed and locked together, until we formed a seamless wall right in the Enemy’s face, with the Elves and their other allies safely behind us.

I’ve never felt more proud to recite the most cliché line in the Fleet:

“We got your distress call. We’re here to help.”

[the-girl-in-the-high-castle]

The absurdity and stupidity of all shitflix cancelations lies in one simple question: How many of those canceled shows have you actually heard of before they got canceled?

- Warrior Nun - never heard of it until the moment I started seeing its fans spamming every shitflix post. And that was its second season. It had two seasons, for fucks sake, and most of us have never heard of it. You wanna know whose fault that is? Let me give you a hint. No, it's not the viewing numbers.

- First Kill (or whatever its name is) - Never heard of it until, once again, I saw people complaining about the cancelation under shitflix posts. Once again, guess whose fault that is.

- Santa Clarita Diet - Never heard of it. Didn't even know it was canceled until it made it to the list of pissed of people counting how many of them they axed. Whose fault is that?

- Inside Job - Yeah, never heard of it until it got canceled. Also, canceled after they renewed it. Shitflix: guess we changed our minds.

- Archive 81 - Heard of it when the cancelation was announced.

- The OA - Remember just hearing about it through the fog, even though it came out years ago.

- Sense 8 - know about it only thanks to fans' videos and fanart. I don't remember shitflix ever mentioning it.

- Lockwood & Co - I know about it thanks to fans spamming posts asking for renewal news.

And the list goes on with, I assume, shows I have never heard of.

I've never seen any of these shows, but my open wound is 1899 that I believe got treated the dirtiest of them all.

I have heard of it two years before the premiere, thanks to a 50 seconds long teaser that got me patiently waiting for years because it was my cup of tea. It came from the people who proved themselves before by creating a critically acclaimed show that you can find on a top 10 list of greatest shows of all time. Those people have spent years developing a new filming technique for shitflix. What a way to say thank you.

8 out of 10 people around me have seen 1899. Those people haven't even seen GoT or LotR for fucks sake, the most famous show and movie ever, but they have seen 1899. But not because shitflix promoted it, but because people did.

There was zero promotion, zero cast interviews, zero mentions after the release. It was still watched and talked about by so many people. It has more viewing hours than their hit shows running for 3+ seasons put together. It's a show you can't just binge and forget, you have to actually turn your fucking brain on. It was released in the most busy time of the year, during the damn World Cup and winter holidays. It was still number one for weeks. It was given less than 30 days. They decided to cancel it before it even premiered. They deleted the trailer with 10+ million views from YT.

The same goes with other shows. I have seen zero cast interviews, zero promotion or mentions by their own platform and they still have loyal fan bases that didn't stop talking about them.

But then you have dogshit shows like the Night agent that is getting hyped by shtflix every single fucking day. Fake numbers, pumped up to get people to watch a generic, a hundred times seen before, piece of crap. It got more hype than fucking GoT, and yet I know zero people who have actually watched it. Yep, there is no one I know, in real life or online, that has actually watched this show. So you figure it out.

People who have watched the shows I've mentioned probably have the statistics for them, and have probably seen the viewing hours being blamed for it, which was bullshit.

The latest nail in the coffin was Lockwood & Co. They kept fans waiting for months, and then they announced the cancelation during Eurovision so that fans wouldn't be able to go viral about it because everyone talked about fucking Eurovision.

Shitflix has canceled 26 sci-fi/fantasy shows in the last 3 years. 26! Do you all remember when we couldn't even name 26 shows of all genres put together, let alone watch them?

What all these shows had in common is that they were original and more or less unique and creative, not something you can find at least 6 copies of in either streaming or network TV.

It's like they created all these shows just so they can cancel them, because they are doing their best to actually burn every trace they ever existed.

Shitflix is killing creativity in every form, but in the end, that will be their undoing.

[icecavesofilum]

i finally finished the silm after two years.

so i liked a girl once, a long time ago. she's the kind of lady that made tolkien write luthien. she also happened to be my best friend. we bonded over our mutual love of lotr/hobbit, and i started reading the silmarillion for her. everything we did always looped back to the silmarillion. she would bookmark passages and quotes she thought i would like. i called her varda, and she called me yavanna. she learned tengwar so that we could trade little notes in class, and she would doodle tengwar phrases in eyeliner all over my hands.

and we stopped being friends. now she hates my guts (somewhat rightfully so.)

it took me a whole year to get over this. not only had i lost my crush, i had lost my only friend in the whole wide world. because of this and other stuff in my life, my mental health got really, really bad.

at the time, the silmarillion only hurt. i put it down, and i couldn't bear to look at it on my bookshelf.

last month, i picked it back up again. my mental health is a lot better now, and this time i was ready to truly read and absorb it again. i just finished it. i loved it so much. every phrase and chapter took me deeper into beautiful lands with beautiful names. sometimes reading it felt hard- it reminded me of varda, of how i used to build hills and move mountains just to gaze at her stars.

all in all, reading the silmarillion made me feel like my journey has come full circle. i'm a completely different person than i was when i first picked up the book a year ago.

because a year ago, i started reading it for someone else. but today, i finished it for me, and only me. if that's not growth, i dunno what is.

[choicesficwriterscreations]

December Creator of the Month: Oh-So-Youre-a-Nerd

Each month, CFWC highlights one of our talented fanfic writers or artists, and this month’s creator of the month is @oh-so-youre-a-nerd . We're very excited because Ascindio is our very first artist to be highlighted! We hope you will enjoy learning more about them and their work below! The writer is selected at random. More info can be found on the navigation page.

Quick Links:

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How do you want to be known on Tumblr? 

Ascindio 

More below...

1- When did you start playing Choices? What was the first book you played? 

I started playing in 2016, I can't remember if I read Endless Summer or Rules of Engagement first, but I ended up deleting the app after like 2 weeks cause I couldn't stop buying diamonds 😅🤦

I re-downloaded it about, ohh idk 2 years ago?

2- When and why did you join Choices fandom?

I joined the Fandom specifically on Tumblr and specifically for It Lives Within, which happened to come out right after I read the first two books 

3- How did you pick your blog name? 

I always try to seem cool and mysterious when I meet people irl, and then as soon as I open my mouth, I ruin it with some niche trivia or something, and they say,  “Oh, so you're a nerd.” 😂 Can't tell you how many times this exact phrase has been uttered to me. 

4- Pull up the first post in your archive, and tell us about it!  

This is the first Choices related post I made 😂 I was just thinking about the concept of what if characters make terrible decisions cause they're controlled by a player who is out of diamonds lol I was going to do a whole series of them (next was going to be lotr “fly on eagles to mordor?” *30 diamonds* or “simply walk”) but got lazy lol

5- Do you write fanfiction, create fan art, or are you one of those really gifted people who do both? 

Only art. God, I  WISH  I wrote too. I've thought about trying cause I have so many ideas floating around in my head, but at the end of the day, I'd rather spend my free time drawing. 

6- How long have you been creating for Choices and for any other fandoms?

For Choices, since early 2022

For other fandoms, since well, forever, but I only started posting around 2017/18

7- What is your favorite Choices book, and what is your favorite Choices book to create for?

Favorite Choices book is probably It Lives in the Woods. All of the characters were so interesting, I never got bored reading it, and it had an incredible twist that made sense but I still didn't see coming. 

Favorite to create for is probably Blades of Light and Shadow though because I am such a sucker for the fantasy aesthetic.

8- Share your first Choices fanfic or fan art that you posted with us. Do you still like it, or would you change it if you were creating it today?.

This isn't the first Choices art I made, but it IS the first I actually shared

And honestly, I DO still like it because I still remember the way I felt absolutely POSSESSED while drawing it (I hadn't drawn anything for *months*). I would definitely change the background, though. Those trees look like shit, and they're not even the correct type for the kind of forest they're in. 

9- What is your favorite piece of fiction or art that you created? 

My favorite Choices art I've done is probably this piece. 

10- Do you have a fic/art that you didn’t expect to be well received, but it was? What about one you expected to do well but found it could use a little more love?

I definitely didn't expect this one to do well at all as it was so hastily drawn

And I was sad this piece didn't get more love, it was such a dope scene and I was so excited about how the sword turned out

11- If you could only draw one style or type of art for the rest of your life, what would it be and why? 

I'm not sure if I'm interpreting the question right, but if I had to pick like a specific type of art, it would be digital, and I would want to do fan art. I have a hard time painting anything that I don't already have a deep connection with (so original art with no story behind it is usually a chore for me), and digital art is just so incredibly convenient and not messy and so so versatile. 

12 - Do you ever recognize yourself in any of your MCs or in your writing?

Because I use fiction as a way to safely process trauma/ grief/ other big emotions, each MC I make has a small part of me, whichever part I feel the need to explore at the time.

There's an amazing quote by Patrick Rothfuss that I feel explains it perfectly. 

It's from Wise Man's Fear

“These folk knew all about death. They killed their own livestock. They died from fevers, falls, or broken bones gone sour. Death was like an unpleasant neighbor. You didn’t talk about him for fear he might hear you and decide to pay a visit.

Except for stories, of course. Tales of poisoned kings and duels and old wars were fine. They dressed death in foreign clothes and sent him far from your door. A chimney fire or the croup cough were terrifying. But Gibea’s trial or the siege of Enfast, those were different. They were like prayers, like charms muttered late at night when you were walking alone in the dark. Stories were like ha’penny amulets you bought from a peddler, just in case.”

13 - What element of writing/art do you struggle with most?

I have a very difficult time making the poses seem natural and flowing. My all time favorite art is Baroque/Renaissance style and how fluid the poses are, how soft the skin looks, how delicately it's all done. Obviously, I will always have my own style, but those are things that I so want to incorporate but never seem to get quite right, and it drives me crazy 😂

14 - Do you have any neglected work you really want to finish?

Not really. I mean, I have a ton of unfinished work, but as soon as the window of inspiration passes, I just can't get myself to care enough about it to finish it (insert Jake the Dog, “now it's gone, and I don't care about it anymore!” )

15 - If someone you know in real life (who isn’t involved in fandoms) asked to see your work, would you let them? If yes, what would you show them first? 

I would, and have.  I typically show them whatever most rendered recent picture from my Instagram because I don't post any nsfw there and usually try to post only my prettier work for this specific reason haha. (As opposed to here, I post everything here, ain't NO ONE from real life invited to see my tumblr 😂)

16 - Are there any writers (published authors and/or fanfic writers) who influenced your writing or art? Are there any artists that influence you?

Writers: Brandon Sanderson, for sure. He's the reason I got back into art back in 2017 ish. His stories are just so emotional they push me to create. Same with @saibug1022, there is always at least one scene from every story he shares that I desperately want to draw to try to capture the emotions. 

Artists: God, sooo many, here are just like my top 3 favorites and their instagrams.

Audra Auclair

Obsessed with her unique style, and specifically the way she draws eyelids and noses

f3lc4t

The way they draw those dripping, glowing wisps. I stare at their pieces for hours (no lie) trying to dissect them stroke by stroke to figure out how they do it.

Miho Hirano

Their art has a delicate whimsy-ness I would SELL MY SOUL to achieve 

17- Which one of your creations would you like to see a fiction written about? 

JC, this is the shit I DREAM of.

Definitely this one. 

So this is love.

This little comic means a lot to me. 

18- Do you write original fiction or create non-fandom art? 

Very rarely, but I do, every so often. This is my favorite original piece.

20-  What other hobbies do you have?

Gaming, singing, walking through the Cemetary with my wee daughter, reading, that's about it 🤷

21 - What’s your favorite emoji? 

🙇

22: BONUS - tell us anything you’d like (if you want to).

I really wanted to say that I don't believe in “good” art and “bad” art (just ethical vs non-ethical). That being said, I know what it's like to hate your art, like soooo intimately. If you ever are feeling shit about your art, you can ABSOLUTELY message me (I don't care if we're mutuals or not, I don't care if we've never interacted before) and just say, “I am feeling shit about my art” and I will go through your art and tell you every specific thing I love about it and why it's wonderful. I am not joking; I am so so serious rn. 💗💗💗💗 

[charlidos]

"With Mr. Mortensen, Bloom "lost" himself in the New Zealand wilderness. 14 hours later they both returned to the LotR set bruised and thirsty and with a photo that's reputed to be the best ever taken of Orlando. If Mortensen would only release it."

In the myth of Viggo and Orlando's adventures in New Zealand and Middle Earth, this is my favourite legendary tale; two men getting lost and spending a night in a New Zealand rainforest, a "moonless night" 24 years ago. The leader of the pack taking the eager young pup on an adventure, Viggo the romantic renaissance man and Orlando's I'll-follow-you-on-any-adventure adoration. It is indeed the stuff of legends. And like all legends, the story changes over time.

So here's all we know, all we can guess and all we can blissfully imagine.

To begin with, the video interview is from 2004, and the info that Orlando was the "friend" accompaning him is from 2005. However, when Viggo told the same story back in 2003, he was alone, no friend mentioned.

"One time, I was in the rainforest near the west coast of the South Island. It was on a shooting break, one of those incredibly rare weekends where I actually had a Saturday off. So I just went down there for a day and a night to a place that I'd been to before. I wanted to get to the coast, so I headed into the woods, but it was a bit of a hike and it suddenly got dark. I hadn't brought a flashlight with me, which was a bit stupid, because I thought I knew the trail really well. But then I got lost. There was no moon and it was overcast, so it was just completely pitch black, especially as the vegetation was really dense and thorny. But I did have a camera with me, which had a flash, and a couple of rolls of film. So I used the flash to try and find my way out. For a second you could see everything around, so I was using the flash to try and find the trail. I kept thinking, 'It must be around here somewhere', but I never did find it. And then I ran out of film. At some point I was just getting really tired and ended up in a marshy area. I was falling down all the time, getting cut by thorns and I thought, 'This is stupid'. So, I found a piece of relatively high ground and lay down for a little while, until the moon came up. Luckily, when the moon arrived I managed to get my bearings and eventually I was able to figure out how to get back to where I started from. It was a huge relief, but when I showed up back on the set, I really alarmed everyone because it looked like I'd been through a grinder."

How come Orlando joined him on this trip into the wild? I can only speculate (it's what I'm here for, making an epic mountain of a molehill), but Orlando is famously very keen on adventure, so I'm sure he was eager to join. Moreover, he obviously worshipped the ground Viggo walked on (his "guardian angel" who has the skills to basically manage anything. Orlando probably thought "what could possibly go wrong?") and took any opportunity to follow his king. In other words, I don't think Orlando was hard pressed about coming along.

Why did Viggo ask Orlando then? Because he knew Orlando would say yes? Because he knew Orlando would appreciate it, more than the others? Because Orlando was the only other actor having a day off? Because Viggo felt a strong urge to share this beautiful and amazing place with him? Because of the chance to spend quality time with his sweet elf boy?

In Viggo's excellent plan for the hike, they'd be back soon, "in time for dinner". But instead they got lost. Maybe the prescence of the pretty elf prince distracted him? Or maybe he was being overly confident in his abilities, and perhaps wanting to show off a little? Even Viggo will want to impress people he likes, I'm sure.

Viggo brought his camera, photographer that he is. But he also brought an extra roll of film, suggesting he was planning to take a lot of pics. Maybe he wanted to photograph Orlando out in the woods; a beautiful elf in his natural element. But then he seems to quite quickly spend all the film on finding the way, running out before they were even remotely near home. Maybe he panicked a bit? Or maybe he really just wanted to get cool, impromptu photos for a book.

"When I developed the film, which was black and white, there were some really interesting images. The flash had lit up the ground, the foliage and these ferns which are typical of New Zealand. Some of them are almost like negatives because there was this fog and the flash was bouncing off them creating a really strange effect. It's quite unusual because there are these delicate ferns with their little tendrils and all the whiteness around them which makes them look like Japanese prints. I printed off four of them, which I've called Lost 1, 2, 3 and 4. You can see them on the internet."

(This is the first rendering of the tale, in 2002.)

The fact that Viggo apparently also took one - at least - photo of Orlando, suggests that Viggo either took some photos before getting lost, or he took photos of Orlando, furtively (or mistakenly?), while he was supposed to flash their way home. (But who is it who claims this photo is the best ever taken of Orlando? Orlando himself? Does he have it framed at home, as a treasured memory?)

As it got dark out with no moonlight, they started bumping into things, falling over and getting scratched by thorns and bruised by trees. They obviously didn't get seriously hurt, but maybe Viggo did start to worry for their safety. Like he said, he felt responsible for bringing Orlando out there, if he also got injured, it would have been disastrous. (Not sure if this rainforest also has dangerous animals and insects. Trampling on a deadly snake, walking into a poisonous spiderweb, getting prowled upon by a wild animal.)

The way Viggo tells it, the whole thing has an air of romantic adventure. Just picture them finding a piece of dry land for them to stay for a while. waiting for the moon and the stars to come out. (Or until the sun came up?) Imagine them lying on soft grass in a glade, talking softly, just waiting and enjoying each other's company.

Orlando can't have been used to being out in the wilderness, particularly in a foreign country, so Viggo was likely feeling protective. And I imagine Orlando keeping close to Viggo at all times, feeling safe as long as he could feel Viggo's warm body near. Trusting Viggo to keep them safe. If it was "pitch dark", how did they keep track of each other? I imagine Orlando grabbing hold of Viggo's hand, clutching it hard, his only anchor in a foreign, scary place. When they laid down in that glade, maybe they snuggled in close to each other to keep warm (since any night will most likely be a little cool). Maybe holding each other, for comfort and safety. Dirty, bruised, thirsty, completely lost and sharing a beautiful night together.

I can also see them finally seeing the first light of day, and being able to find their way back, hiking back to civilisation. Returning dishevled, exhausted yet very happy. I can see them, two crazy and adventurous nutters laughing about that night in the rainforest of NZ. And living to tell the wild tale, for years to come.

It's such a beautiful, romantic image. No matter what, I feel sure such an experience is one you keep with you for a long time. Bonding to the two together, forever. And creating a mythical legend to boot.

[the-bogginses-are-gay]

Hello, lovely!! This is for the nosy ask game: 6, 16, 17, 21, 27, 41, and 43!!!

Ahhh, thank you so much for asking ily bby!!!!

6 - Age I get mistaken for: I often get told wildly varying things about my appearance, but most commonly people think I'm 16 or 17, as I still have a childlike face.

16 - I'll love you if: Hmmm, this is a tricky one! I will love and appreciate anyone who takes time out of their day to ask me how I'm doing, or pays special attention enough that they realise I'm having a bad day. I also love people who put up with my incessant fandom ramblings too lol

17 - Someone I miss - I had a friend a year or two ago who started acting really bitchy to me and our group before moving away to another country. She reached out to me a few weeks ago apologising for the way she treated me. I don't know if I want to rekindle the friendship, but I miss the friendship we had.

21 - What I love most about myself - This is really difficult, I tend to be negative about myself so I'll try my best ... I really like my intelligence (that feels Iike a weird thing to say), it gives me a confidence boost around other people. I can't really think of things about myself that I really like atm sorry!!

27 - A description of the girl/boy I like - Okay, I like this question!! The boy that I like is decently tall, with skinny, pale but really strong arms. He is overall a very skinny person (my friends call him a stick figure) with long legs, big cloudy blue eyes and short light brown hair. His ears are slightly sticking out, but in a cute way. He is really smart, but clowns around sometimes and is really funny.

41 - Where I want to be right now - Honestly, I just want to be in New Zealand. I've been there before, as the place where lotr was filmed, and it felt like my true home. If I could live or just exist anywhere, I would be in New Zealand, at home in Middle Earth.

43 - Sexiest person that comes to mind immediately - Oh god, this is embarrassing, but probably the guy I like, even though he isn't that sexy, he's more of a pretty boy.

[sulkybender]

20 questions for fic writers!

Thank you to @hot-flippin-mess and @spacecasehobbit for the tags!

1. How many works do you have on Ao3? 109

2. What’s your total Ao3 word count? …. afraid to look

3. What fandoms do you write for?

Only ATLA/LOK :)

4. What are your top five fics by kudos?

1. Every night my teeth are falling out

2. Black eyes always watch the clock

3. wasn’t my body rescued, wasn’t it safe

4. Candles and honey

5. Beloved of the sun

5. Do you respond to comments? Always, unless they’re mean 😂

6. What is the fic you wrote with the angstiest ending?

Uhhhh. It’s hard to say. I write a lot about disability and so I can see arguments for those stories being angsty in the way they end because no one gets “better”—that’s not how disability works—but I don’t find those endings angsty. It’s about being supported and affirmed and loved. I don’t know, life is really hard and all we can do in the face of that hardness is love each other.

I would say possibly “like petals on your skin” is the saddest but the ending is more bittersweet.

7. What’s the fic you wrote with the happiest ending? Oh gosh. Most of them? I think the ending of the “pretty burn” series is especially euphoric.

8. Do you get hate on fics?

I got a comment once on how my depiction of Azula losing her bending was not “psychologically accurate” or something, and two of my favorite commenters went off on them 😂

Apart from that, I got a comment once on one of my favorite stories saying I write “trauma porn,” which was very hurtful. That still hurts. That’s not what I do.

9. Do you write smut? If so, what kind? Yeah! Ummmm smutty smut, that’s the kind of smut I write 😂

10. Do you write crossovers? What’s the craziest one you’ve written? Nope!

12. Have you ever had a fic translated? Someone asked to translate one into German—I think that’s still a work in progress? But I was very honored, it’s a beautiful thing.

13. Have you ever co-written a fic before? I’ve brainstormed/shared brainworms that have led to fics! And I wrote a fic for my friend Cat which she recorded, so we’re listed as co-authors on the podfic.

14. What’s your all-time favorite ship? Zukkaaaaaaaaaa

15. What’s a WIP you want to finish but doubt you ever will? I’ve kind of learned to never say never. “I used to invent love when necessary,” one of my current multi chapters? I’d been trying to think of ways to write it for like a year. And then a couple weeks ago I started sharing ideas with friends and that gave me the boost to actually do it.

There’s an LOK-era Zukka fic I really want to write but I think it needs to sit longer. I’m tired!

16. What are your writing strengths?

Oh God. Um. I get anxious thinking about this lol. I asked a friend and they said “compassion,” compassion for the characters <3

17. What are your writing weaknesses? Action scenes are challenging.

18. Thoughts on writing dialogue in another language in fic? I haven’t really felt the need for it.

19. First fandom you wrote for? LOTR 🥲

20. Favourite fic you’ve written? Completely impossible to answer ahaha

I’ll tag: @anarchycox, @anodymalion, @queendollophead-ao3, and @lovelyelbowleech! Just if it’s fun for you :)

[alpaca-clouds]

High Fantasy Conundrums: It's Actually Not "Medieval Europe"

So I ramble on about High Fantasy and the issues with this subgenre in regards to depicting diversity of all sorts. I talked yesterday about the lack of non-white cultures within most of the big named High Fantasy settings (such as DnD, LotR, DA, Witcher and so on). Because while these days we will find non-white characters in those settings often, those are not allowed to exist within any other context than a white, supposedly "medieval European" culture. A white culture, at the very least.

This is an issue especially with those coorporate controlled worlds, such as DnD and DA. Those absolutely could afford to worldbuild their settings outside the "Fantasy Europe" continent, but they somehow never do.

And I am not even saying that there should not be PoC characters in those settings, that have absolutely completely absorbed the "white culture" and are very much part of it. I am just saying that this should not be ALL non-white characters - and that there should be a variety of non-white cultures. Also, ideally, that there should be more than THE dwarven culture, THE elven culture, and THE halfling culture.

However, there is of course another conundrum that comes up at this place. And ironically enough that conundrum is almost the reason why Lord of the Rings exists in the way it does. Because Tolkien named this as one of the reasons he created Middle Earth.

See, let's all be very honest with one another. Yes, we tend to act as if your average 0815 high fantasy world with swords, sorcery, elves and dragons is based on medieval Europe. Because it has like knights, with swords, and some architecture that is vaguely based on medieval Europe. And the people will usually eat food that is somewhat inspired by what people wrongly imagine food in medieval Europe looked like, and they cloth in that way too, but...

Yeah. No. It is not medieval Europe.

There are so many things about those settings, that are very much not very medieval European. And I will call it out now: A big part of that is the lack of the Church, as we know it, and at the same time also the lack of cultural conflicts within the human society.

It is not just that those worlds tend to have elves, and magic, and dragons, and whatever other fantastical elements that were not part of the real medieval Europe. It is more clearly, that those worlds will very much lack certain cultural aspects that were central to medieval European culture.

(And don't get me started on the fact that "medieval Europe" lasted for a good 1000 years in which things changed a lot. And one of the big issues with a lot of Fantasy Worldbuilding is, how resistant it is to change. Often fantasy worlds will stay the same over thousands of years, with no major technological or societal advancement happening.)

And here is an issue that a lot of writers run into. Some consciously, some unconsciously. An issue that become quite clear, whenever we actually start to think about the topic of "cultural appropriation".

I wrote about it two weeks ago in a way. How a lot of white writers aware of this issue will go and adapt Greek mythology, without realizing this one central part: Even that is appropriation, because of Greece's long history of being colonized - something that, yes, the Western European powers did play a role in as well. They still do. Exploiting Greece to this day.

The issue is, that... Well, there is no "European culture". Because that culture has been destroyed by colonialism and the Church. It has been thoroughly destroyed, leaving a lot of white people with a big issue in that regard. Because they are essentially cultureless outside of colonialism. Colonialism and exploitation is the only culture there really is for them. And that... is kinda an issue.

In a way, with all his faults, Tolkien was aware of this. He stated multiple times that part of his reason for creating Middle Earth had been, to create a "fake mythology" for especially the England he knew. After the orignal mythology of the land had basically been erased. Lord of the Rings and everything connected to it, for Tolkien, was a knowingly faked "culture origin". Which is why he also went to those length with: "Oh, this is actually based on a book that I found and translated." Yes, everyone knew that story was made up. But he tried to allow those stories to take that place.

But yes, this is the issue. White folks have mostly lost their connection to what was originally their culture. And technically it is not their fault. It was supplanted by the Church first, and then it was supplanted by colonialism.

People are often not aware how many parts of "white culture" are actually based in: "We need to come up with a different way to do this, because non-white people are doing this as well, and we know we are better than them." (This shows especially in food culture. Because yes, there is a reason British cuisine is an abomination that should be burned to the ground. And yes, that reason is colonialism - just not the way people think.)

A core issue is, how Christianity as a religion has merged with those colonial ideas and ideals. The main aspects of Christianity - no matter whether we are talking about evangelical Christianity or Catholicism - are too entangled in colonialism, to actually provide that meaningful cultural aspect that we would need it for. And yeah. That... is a problem.

It is a problem in the real world, because I do think that a lot of folks feel that lack of culture in some way. I also think it is an issue, because for many people it takes away a lense through which they can see the world. And in the fake world of fantasy, it also shows in the fact that we do lack a certain cultural language. And High Fantasy shows this so clearly.

Because, yes... Technically I would argue that everyone does know that the Church played a big role in medieval Europe. They know somewhat, too, that the hierarchies, and serfdom and what not were important. And that you cannot go in and be like "this is like medieval Europe" when none of those things are there.

But we also do simply not know how to deal with the church these days - and with the role it took back then.

There is a reason, why we have no issue writing fantasy settings, in which gods from all sorts of mythologies intermingle, while there are only few settings in which the Christian God shows, and the angels play a role. Sure, those exist. I mostly can think of Neil Gaiman adjacent works in this regard. But they exist.

But there is a reason why they are not common. And that reason is, that we really are in limbo in a way. We are in a cultural limbo - and strangely enough this shows nowhere as clearly as in high fantasy worldbuilding, and its weird relation to culture itself.

[phoenixcatch7]

Season of revival has started today! I've avoided spoilers for the most part, but I have kept up to date with the beta, so here's what I think so far:

The scenery and setting is phenomenal. I managed to avoid pretty much every spoiler for the new season area, the aviary, so I got to experience it first hand, and can I just say STUNNING??? The amount of clouds they've put everywhere is so atmospheric, in both senses of the word XD. It feels like a ghost town, with the dim fog in the streets and all the nooks and crannies. The light spilling from the windows of the barber and the mannequin shop look so cozy and inviting ^^.

The depiction of it all, too, is awesome! The steward is so well animated, with no face or fingers (or shoulders, really) they managed to convey a quiet and resigned devastation, seeing his once beautiful aviary now empty and desolate.

The rhythm guide was a delightful surprise! Now it seems they've decided to take up hair dressing??? I mean... Follow your dreams, but it's a bit of a weird choice of profession for a travelling troupe master. Maybe their parents were hair dressers? It'd certainly explain the styles the rhythm troupe has lol, especially the famous owl hair that remains one of the most coveted in the game XD!

I always love good depictions of the mountain, and the aviary frames it perfectly no matter which area you're in.

And the lore implications!! I know nor care nothing for the war, or elder names, or the king, but I love digging up tidbits all the same. It looks like the aviary was the original main gathering place of the kingdom of the sky, and yes, I know it was the pre release Home before we got the current one, but it just feels... Like a home? Like the Shire from lotr ^^. I can't wait to see what that huge tower is for!

In terms of emotes, or cosmetics, though...

They aren't very good. There's staggeringly few this season. Literally all the good items are behind the pay wall this time, which is a shame because usually tgc leave at least one really good item for in game currency! There's about two items per mannequin - and it is mannequins, not even actual spirits!!

The hair bow is so pretty, not quite to my personal liking but it's going to be so very wanted lol. There's one cape I really wanted, the orange one with tassels, but you bet its behind the season pass. And the long boots? Please, I love long boots, why must you do this T-T. The short boots just don't have the same energy. The purple cape, one that feels related to rhythm (?)... It looks flat to the point of feeling unfinished. It doesn't look fully rendered. We know tgc has been capable of much better fur for a long time now, heck the towels from days of sunlight are amazing, and the straight lines on the cape make it look like it's just made of polygons lol. There's no texture on any of it.

There's no new props or instruments to my knowledge. There's been no beta video, no youtuber showcase of either I could find. Could we not at least have some maracas or something?? I'd love a new instrument! A triangle? A rain maker? Cymbals?? A KAZOO???

It's very obvious where tgc spent their effort and time, but seriously, I can't be mad. This season seems to be, either on purpose or not, a response to a lot of players, especially older ones, getting so easily burnt out by the amount of back to back time limited yada yada get it while you can content. Seriously, I think the last season ended just last week, and only because it's a Monday today! And both during the second half of the last season and during the gap between the two, we've had two days events. TWO. there hasn't been a day where there's been a a chance for a breather for over a month. It's back to back to back! Heck, I got burned out a year ago, and it sucked!

This season might be the breather we need.

There's a beautiful and open area to explore, filled with interesting nooks and crannies and places to have pretty photo shoots or make silly or aesthetic videos or maybe even a picnic. There's what look to be secondary realm portals through a tunnel (oh, and there's a defunct map stone too, if you're looking), including an eden gate! That seems to be the only one still active, you can hear it if you get close enough. The implications....

Despite the decent cosmetics being behind the pass, there's nothing I want nearly enough to shell out for, not that I've done it before. But I'm at least usually very tempted! There's really... Very little this season brings to the table outside of the new area it gives us straight up, but I think this is good. I think this is a chance for people to catch their breath, to not have to allot time to candle running and quests, to make sure they maximise every day on sky to get all the cosmetics. I think it's okay if you don't want to get them all this time.

Though we don't know if it's even possible they'll come back as travelling spirits, it's likely the currency will change from seasonal to candles or hearts once it's over. Probable, even.

I can't wait to see the aviary once we've brought it back to life, but I do hope there's a way we can slip back in time to relax in the quiet, misty, still area we have now. It's just beautiful.

[elvenwhovian]

Thoughts on the criticisms for The Rings of Power

The negativity around ROP has been so disheartening and I need to rant/have my say. Below are the most common criticisms I've seen and my responses to them. 

1. "They butchered/desecrated Tolkien's story! They changed the story too much so I won't watch/ will only hate-watch." 

Some of you are too young to remember, but I was there 3000 20 years ago when PJ's films came out. He changed A LOT. And I was surrounded by homeschooler book purists who had a lot to say, both good and bad. Here's my thing ... if you don't like ROP because they changed things, fine. You do you.  But don't tell me that PJ's films are perfection if you say you can't handle major changes to Tolkien’s works. 

Arwen didn't rescue Frodo. The elves never came to Helms Deep. Faramir didn't take Frodo and Sam captive. And Frodo never sent Sam away before Cirith Ungol, just to name a few. These were SIGNIFICANT changes that PJ made. But they didn't ruin the story ... dare I say, they made things more interesting. 

2. "The story moves too slowly." 

Bro ... have you read LOTR? Its a slow burn at the start. And then half of TTT is just Frodo and Sam simply walking into Mordor. Just like Tolkien, I feel like the show runners are laying a foundation and then in season 2 things will pick up. Also they have 5 seasons planned. Also its television. Its meant to be in installments to keep you coming back. Honestly, compared to some modern TV, it is refreshing to have a show that is taking its time and not beating you over the head with info dumping and action set pieces every single week. We are back in Middle-earth. Enjoy the ride, my dudes. 

3. "The Harfoots are annoying/cheesy/unnecessary." 

I'll admit that I was leery about them including proto-hobbits in the show, but I think they are delightful. They have their flaws, but Hobbits always have. They are quirky; the refreshing contrast to the darkness of war just beyond their borders. Yeah, Nori royally screws up A LOT. Reminds me of another hobbit who Gandalf used to berate for his stupidity. 

I also saw one comment complaining about "Wandering Day" and that the montage/song was too much like a Disney movie. First of all, how dare you? Do you even Tolkien, good sir? His books were full of songs. The hobbits had walking songs in the book. Tolkien loved songs and poetry. It is very VERY in character for Hobbits to have a song with their storyline. And honestly, that song is perfection. I've been singing it as a lullaby to my 6 month old son and he loves it. 

4. "Galadriel is too manly/angry/vengeful ... Also the men are weak." 

Perfect people are not interesting. Flaws make characters realistic, engaging, and worth watching. Galadriel is a flawed character in ROP and I LOVE IT. She is prideful, ambitious, and strong-willed ... all stuff Tolkien wrote about her. She is also very athletic/physically skilled. Tolkien also wrote this ... I have references. And yeah ... if you believed the evil who killed your brother was out there and no one believed you, you would be miffed too. 

And as I predicted, she is undergoing character development that is helping to temper her vengeance. She literally gives up her sword. 

The symbolism is spot on. 

Also, those saying she is too manly... bro, what the heck? Her costumes and armor are so beautiful and well done! My two favorite looks are the dress she wears in Numenor and her armor design.

I think they did a fantastic job making her a strong yet flawed female character. 

And the men are weak? Elrond and Durin have a rock breaking contest. Arondir fights for his girl ... doesn't get more manly than that. Also, Elendil is just fantastically done and oozes that stable yet compassionate masculine energy Tolkien's male characters are known for. 

5."I don’t like that they cast people of color." 

Don't be racist. Its 2022.

6. "The elves aren't done right/have short hair/ aren't like PJ's elves." 

Ok first of all, while many of the elves in the legendarium are described with long hair, its never defined as a standard for elvish culture. Second, if you are going to expect any and all Tolkien adaptations to conform to PJ's films, then I guess we can toss out all the cartoons that are beloved by so many people. Also, I don't see anyone beating up the legendary painter and Tolkien illustrator Ted Nasmith for his depictions of elves with shorter hair. 

Also, let's be real ... Elrond was described as "kind as summer" in The Hobbit. I love Hugo Weaving's portrayal, but he's never seemed particularly warm or kind to me. I adore Elrond's portrayal in ROP! I even like his floppy hair. He's a young whipper-snapper of an elf and he seems like the kind of person who would create a place like Rivendell. I mean ... look at this precious cinnamon roll:

Also Celebrimbor has that wise old British dude energy that reminds me of Bilbo or even the professor himself. Tolkien's elves were complex people with varying personalities and passions. They weren't the stoic, almost vulcan-ish, people PJ made them out to be. I love the PJ films, but if we are going to make them the standard, then I guess the room for creativity is gone(?) 

7. "The writing sucks/ is fan fiction." 

I'll admit, the writing is rough in a few places. Galadriel jumping ship was kinda dumb. But its not Rise of Skywalker level dumb. And I'll fully admit that this is fan fiction. All television writing based on an IP is fan fiction. Its fiction written by fans/writers based on already established characters/worlds. 

And frankly, the term "its fan fiction" is not an insult to me, because I've read some darn good fan fiction.  Next argument please. 

8. "Its a cash grab from Amazon so we should hate it." 

It’s not. Read the article by The Hollywood Reporter. Also, let's remember that lots of passionate people worked on this series and it shows. Punishing them because Amazon's name is on it is unfair. I know, I know ... Amazon is not squeaky clean. But if we boycotted every company who had stains on their record, we would be living in cabins in the woods eating squirrels. 

7. “Galadriel couldn’t have survived the volcano/ she does dumb over the top stuff ... this show is not realistic.”

You guys do realize this is a fantasy series, right? Also the way she stood their was so bad@$$. 

And yeah, she did this:

You do know that horse acrobatics is a real thing right? 

Also, need I remind you this over the top elf:

He did dumber stuff and we loved it. It was cool. If we are going to take the time to pick apart the “unrealistic” story full of wizards, elves, and magic, then we are gonna be here awhile.

In conclusion, there is only one episode left and I can’t wait! Even if the finale is “just ok”, it’s been a blast to be back in Middle-earth and that means a lot to me. If you are not a fan of ROP, that’s fine. You don’t have to watch it. But some of us are really enjoying it and I can’t wait for the next 4 seasons. Be nice.

Rant over :P Thank you for listening.

[moonylantsovs]

RULES | 1.13: WE ARE GROUNDERS (2)

summary: the daughter of marcus kane gets sent down to the ground with ninety-nine other teenage criminals and a fake guard on her eighteenth birthday, deciding to take charge of the camp along with the two people she never thought she'd get along with after her previous experience with authority and the privileged

pairings: john murphy x fem!oc, bellamy blake x fem!oc ( slowburn )

taglist: @lotr-got

warnings: best friends to lovers, enemies to lovers, swearing, death, violence, cliffhanger

series masterlist

War has always been something that Gabriella Kane thought humanity would not encounter for another four hundred years. To her dislike, war has started since the second the hundred had landed on Earth.

It started with the dropship landing on grounder territory instead of Mount Weather and the only way it would end would cause more than half of them to die. Gabriella had to do everything in her power to keep her people alive and that started with keeping Raven alive by helping Clarke stop the bleeding on her and Wells' gunshot wounds.

Raven screamed in pain and gripped Gabriella's hand tighter as Clarke pressed the hot knife against her wound.

"That should stop the external bleeding." Clarke said, looking up at Finn before moving to do the same thing to Wells before his wound got infected.

As Clarke pressed the knife to Wells' shoulder, he gripped the edge of the makeshift table tightly and clenched his jaw to prevent himself from letting out anything other than pained grunts.

"I don't understand. How did Murphy get a gun?" Finn asked as he watched Clarke put a bandage around Wells' shoulder.

Gabriella shifted uncomfortably and stared at her feet, feeling a sudden rush of guilt. She was a hundred percent sure that it was her fault that Murphy got a gun to shoot Raven and Wells with and tried to kill Bellamy.

"Long story." Bellamy immediately dismissed the subject, seeing how Gabriella's expression became stoic at the bare mention of Murphy's name.

"We got lucky." Raven croaked out, sighing and shutting her eyes. "If Murphy hit the fuel tank instead of us, we'd all be dead."

"Wait, there's rocket fuel down there?" Clarke asked and Gabriella instantly wondered how she did not think of it sooner. It was a dropship and it needed rocket fuel to function.

They should have thought about checking beneath the dropship for it weeks ago.

"Is there enough to build a bomb?" The engineer wondered out loud, directing her question at Raven who's eyes flickered knowingly.

"Enough to build a hundred bombs. If we had any gunpowder left."

Gabriella sighed in frustration and rested her forehead in the palm of the hand that was not holding Raven's. She let the harsh reality settle in; not only did Murphy try to kill Bellamy and shoot two of their people, but he also ruined all of their gunpowder by creating a whole in the dropship so he could escape and save his own ass.

"Let's get back to the reapers." Bellamy said, gripping Lincoln's notebook in his hand and putting it in front of Gabriella so she could get a better look at the reaper drawn.

"Maybe they'll help us. The enemy of my enemy is my friend, right?" He added, making Gabriella scoff.

"Does that look like someone willing to help a hundred teenagers who invaded their home?"

"She's right." Clarke agreed. "We saw them. Trust me, it's not an option."

"There's no time for this." Finn exclaimed impatiently and turned to Clarke. "Can she walk or not?"

"No." The Griffin shook her head. "We have to carry her."

"The hell you will. I'm good to go." Raven snapped, trying to get up but groaned in pain, only to have Gabriella push her to lay back down.

"Like hell you are." She glared down at her. "You have a hole in your leg, Rae. You aren't going anywhere."

Clarke leaned down, looking at the mechanic sternly. "Listen to me. That bullet is still inside you. If by some miracle, there's no internal bleeding, it might hold until we get somewhere safe. But you are not walking there. Is that clear?"

Raven swallowed thickly, trying to keep the tears from forming in her arms, and nodded weakly. Finn nodded to himself. "I'll get a stretcher."

Bellamy glared at the back of Finn's head when he turned around and called after him with a taunting tone. "Can't run away fast enough, huh? Real brave."

Finn swiftly turned around to come chest-to-chest with Bellamy, his glare stone cold. "Dying in a fight you can't win isn't brave, Bellamy, it's stupid."

The male leader scoffed, "Spoken like every coward who's ever run from a fight."

There was a challenging look in Bellamy's eyes and Gabriella could see he was just waiting for another one of Finn's retorts so he could start a fight where he could get his anger out. And as much as Gabriella wanted to see Bellamy beat Finn half to death, they did not have time for that.

"Enough." She scolded, stepping between the two glaring men. "The amount of toxic masculinity in this dropship is making it really hard for me to breathe so I would really appreciate it if you boys would take your cat fight somewhere else and give Clarke and me room to help make sure Raven and Wells don't bleed out until we get somewhere safe." She set her glare on Finn "That was the plan you and your princess set your sights on since you walked back into camp. So I would suggest you shut up and help us deal with this." Bellamy looked down at his co-leader and opened his mouth to retort only to have her turn her glare back on him. "If I were you I would keep my mouth shut too. You might have almost been hanged less than an hour ago but you aren't helping anyone by trying to pick a fight."

"She's right." Wells chimed in, "If you don't stop fighting without any reason we'll never get this over with. We have to get going, now."

"But what happens if they do follow us?" Gabriella asked. "It's a hundred and twenty mile walk to the ocean and there's eighty of us which means we won't go past unnoticed for long--"

"Look, we're wasting time." Finn cut her off, "If you and Bellamy want to stay, you can stay."

With his final words, Finn walked out of the dropship to get a stretcher, ignoring Clarke who called after him, "No, they can't."

Wells was quick to notice the tension between the three leaders and looked down at Raven's half-conscious body before muttering awkwardly, "I'll uh- see if Finn needs any help..."

Once the Jaha left the dropship, Clarke looked between her two co-leaders pleadingly. "I can't do this without the two of you. None of us can."

"What do you want us to say, Clarke?" Bellamy sighed, furrowing his eyebrows in frustration.

"I want you to say that you're with us." Clarke said, looking at her best friend who still had not uttered a word and had her gaze locked on her dirty boots.

"Those kids out there, they listen to you." Clarke added, making Gabriella finally connect her gaze with her. "They listen to both of you."

Gabriella scoffed bitterly, "They're getting ready to go. They listen to you more."

"I gave them an easy choice. But five minutes ago, they were willing to fight and die for you." Clarke pointed out, keeping her gaze on both Gabriella and Bellamy before she added, "You inspire them. I'm afraid we're gonna need that again before this day is through."

And with those final words, Clarke exited the dropship and left the two remaining leaders standing in silence. After a few moments, Bellamy let out a sigh and nudged Gabriella's elbow with his own. "You doing okay, Bambi?"

"No. What happened is my fault and I can't get it out of my head." She admitted, feeling a strange feeling of relief after finally letting her actual feelings off her chest.

Bellamy's face flashed with realization and sympathy at her words and he turned around to face her "Hey, what Murphy did wasn't your fault."

"Yes, it is. If I hadn't begged you to let him stay he would not have killed all those people, Raven would be able to actually walk, we would have gunpowder so we could actually fight back and you wouldn't have almost died." Her voice slightly raised at the end of her rant and she was painfully aware of the tears that were slowly filling her eyes.

"You aren't responsible for the mistakes he makes." Bellamy told her firmly, resisting the sudden urge to comfort the girl in front of him by whipping her tears away and pulling her into his embrace. So instead of that, he opted to comfort her with his words. "If it's anyone's fault it's mine. I should have listened to you. I should have kept the camp in order better and not let them run around like rabid dogs."

Gabriella stared at him with tears in her eyes and with no warning, wrapped her arms around his neck to pull him into a hug. Bellamy stumbled backwards slightly from shock but wrapped one of his arms around her waist and used the other one to caress her hair while he listened to her soft sobs. He felt her hot tears hit the bare skin of his neck which only made him hold her tighter. In the middle of a war, these two broken leaders found comfort in each other's arms, trying to forget that everything around them was imploding and only focused on the few moments of peace they had for now. And that was all they needed.

-

Gabriella and Bellamy stood by the lit campfire in the middle of the camp, watching as the delinquents made their way outside, with Clarke and Wells walking right behind them.

Leaving the delinquents' camp made Gabriella feel bittersweet. It was a place filled with terrible loss in so many different ways but also a place where she was finally able to feel like her old self again...a place where she had almost full control of everything that was happening. A safe haven.

She knew Bellamy had the same thoughts once she saw him gazing into the fire thoughtfully. Hesitantly, she reached up to squeeze his shoulder. "We did good here, Freckles."

Bellamy's shoulders slumped and his face flashed with something similar to defeat. "Eighteen dead."

"Eighty-two alive." Gabriella corrected with a ghost of a smile on her face. "We did good."

The oldest Blake connected his eyes with hers and stared at her face before nodding, speaking the words he knew both of them needed to hear right now "Yeah . . . we did."

He bent down and picked up a bucket of water, spilling it on the fire, and making it dissolve into a small cloud of smoke.

Gabriella and Bellamy made their way to the gates of the camp, where Clarke was waiting for them without Wells this time. The Griffin looked between her two co-leaders and asked, "You two ready to go?"

"It's not like we have a choice, do we?" Gabriella's words were more bitter than intended but she was being honest. A part of her knew that staying in the camp would only end in slaughter. But the other part knew that if they were going to go down, it would not be without a fight.

-

"You know the first thing I'm gonna do when we get to the beach?" Miller spoke up after a few minutes of the delinquents walking in silence.

"No. What?" Jasper deadpanned with fake curiosity, fixing the gun in his grip from behind the three leaders.

Miller smiled that boyish grin of his. "I want to go surfing."

"Quite." Jasper hissed, "Keep your eyes open."

"No more damn trees, just pale, blue water." Miller continued, ignoring Jasper's words completely.

"Shut up, Miller." Gabriella snapped, giving him a warning glare over her shoulder. She was not going to deny that he had a point but his constant talking was giving her a headache.

Out of the blue, Octavia halted in her steps and held her hand up in front of Gabriella so she'd stop too. Once everyone saw the two girls stop, they did too.

"What is it?" Gabriella asked, eying the younger Blake curiously.

Jasper shrugged, holding his gun up high. "I don't see any-"

His words were cut off by a sharp object being thrown at a kid's head, making him drop dead on the forest floor. Panicked gasps could be heard from all around the group and Gabriella did not waste a second before lifting up her gun, getting ready for whatever was coming.

"Grounders!"

Gabriella, Bellamy, and Clarke started yelling at everyone to get back to camp, to the safety of the walls they built when they landed.

All gunners were on the wall, looking through their riffles and waiting for any sight of grounders. Gabriella swapped her small gun with Philip's rifle and rushed over to stand by Bellamy's side so she could get a better look at what was outside. She liked the rifle in her hands to her eye and looked through it, but saw nothing outside of the camp.

Clarke swiftly made her way by their side, looking around the woods with a scared expression on her face.

"Where are they? Why aren't they attacking?" Bellamy asked, obviously not seeing anything either.

"Because we're doing exactly what they wanted us to do." Clarke realized.

Bellamy narrowed his eyes, slight annoyance in them. "What are you talking about?"

Clarke ignored him and turned around to look at Wells, who was already looking up at her, equally confused by her words as the rest of them.

"Lincoln said the scouts would be the first to arrive." She said.

"If it's just scouts, we can fight our way out. That's what Lincoln would do." Octavia's words made Bellamy's body stiffen and he was quick to retort.

"We're done doing what that grounder would do." He hopped down from his place on the wall. "We tried it and now Drew is dead. You want to be next?"

"That grounder saved our lives. I agree with Octavia. For all we know, there's one scout out there." Finn exclaimed, making Gabriella roll her eyes and walk over to them.

"You really want to take that risk, Spacewalker?" Gabriella glared. "You're free to walk out and get yourself killed but it's your funeral."

"That scout has insanely good aim." Jasper called over his shoulder.

"Clarke, we can still do this." Octavia pleaded, looking up at the Griffin girl.

"Looking at you, girls." Bellamy sighed, looking between his fellow leaders, his pleading look matching his sister's almost perfectly. "What's it gonna be? Run and get picked off out in the open, or stand and fight back?"

Gabriella allowed a faint smirk to trace her lips as she shrugged, "Well you both know what I think. That means it's two against one either way." She looked at Clarke. "But you still get your vote, Princess."

After a moment of debating, Clarke got down from the wall only to have Finn grab her forearm. "Clarke. If we're still here when Tristan gets here--"

"Lincoln said 'scouts'. More than one." Clarke cut him off. "He said 'get home before the scouts arrive'. Finn, they're already here." She turned back around to give Gabriella and Bellamy a defeated look and sighed. "Looks like you've got your fight."

Bellamy smirked slightly and turned towards the delinquents who were awaiting their orders. "Okay, then. This is what we've been preparing for. Kill them before they kill us. Gunners, to your posts. Use the tunnels to get in and out."

"From now on, the gates stay closed!" Gabriella added, "And don't waste any unnecessary bullets!"

The delinquents scattered around to do what they needed to do and both Bellamy and Gabriella noticed Octavia was following them.

"Whoa, whoa, whoa." Bellamy exclaimed, blocking her path. "You're not gunner."

"No, I'm not. It's like you said...I'm a grounder." Octavia said confidently, brushing past them, barely giving Gabriella a chance to register the fact that she had a sword in her hand.

"When did you get a sword?!" The blonde called after her, but Octavia was already inside the foxhole. Gabriella's shoulders slumped down and confusion was written all over her face, while she asked, "Why is she carrying a sword?"

Bellamy let out a frustrated sigh and answered, "You don't wanna know."

-

"We got twenty-five rifles with twenty rounds each, give or take. Roughly five hundred rounds of ammo. While you two were gone we made some improvements. Thanks to Raven, the gully is mined."

Raven scoffed at Bellamy's words from her place on the dropship seat. "Partially mined. Thanks to Murphy."

"Still, it's the main route in." Bellamy said, ignoring the mechanic's pessimism. "If the grounders use it, we'll know. She and Wells also built grenades."

Clarke frowned at the sight of only two of them. "It's not many."

"Again, thank you, Murphy." Gabriella muttered bitterly, her sadness and disappointment for the boy being replaced by anger in the few hours she had to process what he did.

"We'll make them count." Bellamy reassured her. "If the grounders make it through the front gate, guns and grenades should force them back."

"And then?" Wells could not help but ask, raising his eyebrows.

His question was followed by a pregnant silence before Raven was the one to speak up, "Then we close the door and pray."

"And pray what?" Clarke asked, "That the ship keeps them out? Because it won't."

"Then let's not let them through the gate." Bellamy said with determination.

"Or we can just all go inside, close the doors, and beg for them to think we're not home. That sounds a hell of a lot easier." Gabriella spoke, a mix of sarcasm and venom dripping from her voice.

Bellamy huffed in amusement, still not understanding how the girl next to him could find the ability to joke around in the middle of war. He lifted the walkie in his hand and commanded "All foxholes, listen up. Keep your eyes and ears open. Inflict casualties, as many as possible. You can hold them off long enough to make them turn back. That's the plan."

"That's always your plan, just like the bomb at the bridge."

Gabriella turned to glare at Finn. "Do you ever stop talking? Unless you've got a better idea, keep your mouth shut and let the adults handle the situation."

"It can't be that simple." Clarke whispered, drawing attention to herself. She ignored the questioning looks and looked at Gabriella and Raven. "You said there's fuel in those rockets, right? Enough to build a hundred bombs."

"I also said we've got no gunpowder left." Raven reminded her, not understanding what she meant.

"I don't want to build a bomb." Clarke shook her head. "I want to blast off."

Gabriella and Raven grinned in understanding, the latter being the one to speak up, "Draw them in close. Fire the rockets. A ring of fire."

"Barbecued grounders." Bellamy nodded. "I like it."

"I'm in as long as it keeps us alive." Wells shrugged. "Besides, if anyone can do that it's Raven and Ella."

"Will it work?" Finn asked, looking down at his ex-girlfriend.

"The wiring is a mess down there, but yeah. You give me enough time, we'll cook them real good." Raven confirmed but Bellamy quickly chimed in.

"Yeah, Gabi isn't staying in. Clarke and Finn will help you here and Gabi and Wells will come with me. We need as many gunners as we can get."

"You think you will be fine with me leaving for a bit?" Gabriella asked, side-eying the ponytail-wearing mechanic.

"I'll be fine."

-

Gabriella stood in between Wells and Bellamy, her rifle tight in her grasp and her vision locked on the gates while Bellamy was desperately trying to catch sight of his little sister in the crowd of delinquents.

"Where's Octavia?" He finally asked Miller after not being able to find her.

"She left five minutes ago. Didn't say where to. She thinks she's a damn samurai."

Gabriella gaped at Miller. "And you let her leave?"

"She had a sword." Miller deadpanned. "What was I supposed to do? Threaten I'd call her brother and his girlfriend and tell on her?"

"You see anything?" Bellamy asked Wells, ignoring Gabriella and Miller's silent argument.

"No." Wells huffed impatiently. "What are they even waiting for?"

"The longer they wait, the better. This is about buying time with Raven."

"I see them. They're moving! I count two, three-- no, wait, there more. I don't know man. There's too many of them."

There was a loud gunshot echoing through the forest and Gabriella felt herself panicking. "Who fired the shot?"

"Probably Sterling." Philip told her.

Miller quickly added. "South foxhole."

Gabriella snatched the walkie from Bellamy's hands. "South foxhole, report now."

There were two more gunshots before Starling spoke."Yeah, yeah. We're okay. They didn't attack, it's like shooting at ghosts."

"There." Philip exclaimed just as Starling stopped talking. "I see them!"

Both Philip and Miller started shooting at the barely visible shadows of grounders in the trees, while Gabriella, Bellamy, and Wells yelled for them to stop.

"Hold your fire!" Bellamy finally snapped loudly. Once the two gunners did what he said, he said again, "Reload. Now."

"Those were our last clips." Miller said, almost sheepishly.

"We should-- we should fall back."

Gabriella instantly shook her head. "No way. If this position falls, they'd have straight access to the gates. Use the mines if they get closer, Bellamy, Wells, and I will cover for you."

"What if they don't work?" Philip asked, looking straight at Gabriella.

"They will."

"Ella, Jasper, we need you in the dropship right now."

Bellamy rolled his eyes at the sound of Clarke's voice and took the walkie from Gabriella's hands. "Negative. We can't give up the west woods and we barely have any ammo here so Gabi has to stay."

"The west woods are mined, Bellamy. The grounders just figured that out. Jasper, get in here."

"I swear to god, if we die it's because she can't get his priorities straight I'm gonna kill her." Gabriella scoffed and Bellamy made a small noise of agreement while Wells just rolled his eyes.

"All gunners listen up. The grounders are not attacking. They're making us waste bullets. Don't shoot when they're running laterally."

"That's my boy." Gabriella muttered proudly, realizing how true Jasper's words were.

"Jasper's right." Bellamy spoke into the walkie again, "Don't fire until you're sure it's an attack. Repeat, do not fire until you are sure."

"Let me use this for a second." Gabriella said, pulling the walkie out of Bellamy's hands and putting it to her mouth. "Are the mines working?"

"Yeah." Jasper spoke through the walkie-talkie. "Why? Is everything okay?"

Gabriella's mind flashed to the east foxhole, remembering they were out of ammo and one of the weakly guarded foxholes. She took a deep breath before turning to Bellamy. "I'm going to take the walkie and head to the east foxhole with Wells. If anyone needs backup it's them."

"I'll go with you."

The youngest Kane shook her head at his words. "No, you stay here and make sure everything here is going well. We will be fine. Wells will cover for me."

"I will?" Wells' eyebrows shoot up in surprise. Seeing Gabriella's almost threatening raised eyebrow, Wells pursed his lips and nodded. "Right...it's not like I have a choice."

"Just..." Bellamy sighed, looking down at Gabriella with a glint of worry in his brown eyes "be safe."

"Safe is my middle name." Gabriella grinned confidently, giving her male co-leader a two-finger salute before grabbing Wells' forearm and dragging him away.

-

"Stand your ground, if they take the gate, we're all dead."

Gabriella and Wells share a worried look before they quicken their pace back towards the now-empty west foxhole.

"They've broken through! There are hundreds of them! They're heading for the gate! Game over, man!"

"Yeah, no kidding." Gabriella muttered when a bunch of grounders with swords came barging toward her and Wells. Both of them raised their riffles and started shooting at them, trying to kill as many as they could.

Gabriella was surprised when one of the two last grounders pushed her onto the floor and raised his sword above his head. He was barely able to slice her shoulder when two loud shots rang through the air and the grounder dropped on the floor, along with the swords in his hand.

Wells stood above him, panting and staring down at Gabriella in concern. "Are you okay?"

"Yeah. I'm fine." Gabriella nodded, accepting his extended hand and getting to her feet before putting his chest lightly. "Thanks, Princey."

"See, I can be a badass." Wells said, a ghost of a smirk appearing on his face that made Gabriella snort and shake her head.

"You just ruined it."

Wells rolled his eyes and checked his gun. "I'm out of ammo."

Gabriella frowned. "Get to the dropship." She ordered, getting ready to head out and find Bellamy.

Wells shook his head stubbornly. "No, I'm not leaving you."

Gabriella eyed him momentarily before sighing. "You really are a pain in the ass, huh?"

"Well, you called me worse." Wells chuckled slightly, mirroring the blonde's small smile.

Gabriella was cut off by saying something when even more grounders started attacking and Miler yelled. "There are too many! Everybody to the dropship, now!"

"No!" Clarke yelled desperately from her place at the dropship door. "We need more time. Gunners, stay at your posts. The rest of you get inside. You too, Wells."

Clarke did not expect Wells to shake his head and say, "No, I'm going to help Ella look for Bellamy."

"Where is he?" Clarke asked, making Gabriella run her hand through her head in frustration. "Obviously not here. He has to be somewhere outside with Octavia, we'll go look for him."

Clarke did not even get a chance to try and keep them there because there was a loud bang heard in the sky, followed by a big blinding light, falling down.

"Is that from The Ark?" A girl named Fox asked and Clarke stared at the sky in disbelief.

"That is The Ark."

"We don't have time to talk about this now." Gabriella said, grabbing a hold of Wells' forearm. "We have to go now."

-

"Bellamy, where the hell are you?" Gabriella asked into the walkie-talkie as she and Wells got deeper and deeper into the forest and away from the dropship. The pain in her shoulder was getting worse but there was no turning back now, they needed to find Bellamy and he wasn't answering on the walkie.

"I don't know where I am." Frustration was clear in Bellamy's voice when he finally spoke up and Gabriella saw Wells pinch the bridge of his nose in frustration out of the corner of her eye.

"What do you mean you don't know where you are?" Gabriella hissed. "Wells and I are looking for you outside of the gate and you need to get to camp now."

"Why did you get out to look for me? Are you out of your damn mind?" Bellamy half-yelled on the other side of the walkie.

"Can you two stop flirting and get back to the dropship?" Clarke's voice cut off their argument.

Gabriella rolled her eyes and said, "We'll be there in a minute."

When Gabriella turned around to say something to Wells, she did not expect to see him unconscious on the floor. Suddenly, there was a sharp pain similar to the one on her shoulder and Gabriella felt her vision go black.

[hamartia-grander]

20 questions for fic authors!

I was tagged by the lovely @ugetelynx and @wisecrackingeric-2 <3 so sorry it took me so long to do this hfsgjhdj

1. How many works do you have? - currently posted on ao3 I have 57 works total. However I have almost twice as many wips it's bad

2. Ao3 word count? - 395,068 ..... I've got a wip that's almost over 100k but it's also been there for years so I doubt that'll change anytime soon

3. What fandoms do you write for? - of the fics I have on ao3, I have written for detroit become human, star wars, resident evil, assassin's creed, and the last kingdom. The fandoms I've written for that are not on my ao3 include lotr/the hobbit, bbc sherlock, bbc merlin, marvel, voltron legendary defender, percy jackson universe, and whatever the Carry On by rainbow rowell fandom is called. Most of those I will never ever write for again lmao

4. What are your top five fics by kudos? - In order:

Sapphire Moonlight (Tequila Sunrise) (Serennedy)

We Look So Good (Reed900)

Hold Fast, the Suns Will Rise (Stay) (Dincobb) (also, my first fic ever posted, and still the fic I hold most dearly in my heart to this day)

We Are Home (Hank and Connor family content)

Tomato Soup (Serennedy)

5. Do you respond to comments? - every single one. I'm obsessed with comments. I have them all saved and stored so I can reread them at any time. Thank you everyone who has ever commented I love you

6. What fic did you write the angstiest ending for? - I only write angst with a happy ending. But I did write You Should Have Killed Me for a friend's dbh x hunger games simulator result and it had an angsty ending by result of being a hunger games simulator.

7. What fic did you write the happiest ending for? - I write many fics w happy endings, but I personally think my fic series Din and Grogu | the Clan of Two Trilogy has the happiest ending because it happened against all odds. It's a fic about Din and Grogu's found family (before BoBF and Mando s3 came out, so it's not canon accurate) and it ends meaningfully to me.

8. Do you get hate on fics? - I have before, but it was all bullshit that showed me the person commenting didn't actually read what I wrote but chose to get mad at something that didn't exist. So it was discarded easily. Otherwise, I've had people try to tell me how to write things, but I ignore them all

9. Do you write smut? - yes. badly.

10. Crossovers? - I wrote a dincobb fic that was set in Assassin's Creed: Odyssey, with Din as Kassandra and Cobb as Anais. I also started a serennedy fic set in the detroit: become human universe but never got anywhere close to finishing it.

11. Ever had a fic stolen? - not that I know of lol.

12. Have you ever had a fic translated? - I had someone ask to translate one of my fics, and I said yes, but I don't think they've done so yet, which is fine. Other than that, no. But I'd be honoured!

13. Ever co-wrote a fic before? - I started a dincobb fic with a friend years ago but we never got around to finishing it. Someday I still hope to.

14. What's your all time favourite ship? - that's genuinely impossible to pick tbh I've had so many that rewired my brain. top three are probably bagginshield, simarkus, and shadowzel, not in any particular order.

15. What's a wip you want to finish but doubt you ever will? - ehhhhh probably the klance fic I started when I was like 15. I don't go to voltron anymore and literally couldn't care less about it. In fact I actively hate it.

16. What are your writing strengths? - I've been told that I'm good at characterisation and plot. I think I suck at plot severely. As for characterisation, I study characters really hard and take a long time to write fics so they remain in character so I'm glad people appreciate that. I also prefer writing dialogue to anything else.

17. What are your writing weaknesses? - Writing. haha I mean exposition.

18. Thoughts on writing dialogue in another language? I have before, I find it fun but also intimidating.

19. First fandom you wrote for? - The Hobbit :') my first ever fic was a bagginshield fic I started when I was 13. I still mean to finish it someday.

20. Favourite fic you've written? - *sighs* I guess I should say Another Time. It was the most fun to write, and everyone's responses have made all the difficulties of writing it endlessly worth it. It took me months but I'm so happy I finished it, and I'm working on p3 rn I PROMISE. But again the fic I hold most dearly in my heart is still Hold Fast, the Suns Will Rise (Stay)

[teitho]

Hello Teitho followers!

We wanted to touch base with you all. In our capacity as mods we have seen a slow but steady decline in engagement on the Teitho challenge site over recent months.

We had seen a bit of a resurgence in activity, when we transferred to the ProBoards website initially, but over the past few challenges we have seen few, if any, submissions.

Our last two challenges have had no submissions at all.

Teitho is one of a very few surviving independent sites of Tolkien fanfiction. The once robust community of such sites has—much like the Elves of Middle-earth—dwindled.

This puts us at a bit of a crossroads. We’ve worked hard to keep Teitho going, to put out interesting challenges for our readers/writers, to keep the fandom lights on for this archive. But with engagement tapering off and plateauing, the question arises: do we keep trying to revive it/reinvigorate it (and how?) or do we quietly turn the lights off?

Our preference, of course, would be to keep it going. But this is where we need some input from you.

We did a survey a few years ago, when Teitho had originally started to founder a bit, and utilized that feedback to expand the scope of the challenge: from being focused on LOTR/Legolas and Aragorn based fic to fic inclusive of the entire legendarium; making the time frame for challenges longer to allow for more writing time; expanding the time for voting if there were numerous fics submitted. Those changes resulted in a temporary period of increased engagement but it has not been sustained.

We are very happy to take any and all feedback you are willing to give us. We can create another survey and post a link for it or you can email us your thoughts directly at teitho.contest@gmail.com (or through Facebook messenger, twitter or tumblr DMs.)

Our greatest wish is for Teitho to thrive. But we also don’t want to keep something going that perhaps is past it’s prime and on a unsustainable downward trajectory. The demise of many fandom archives has saddened us. We had hoped Teitho would not meet a similar fate.

We value your thoughts. We are more than willing to keep going, but truth be told it is quite disheartening to have an empty submission box month after month.

(Should the consensus be that Teitho is not as relevant to the fandom as it once was, we would plan to continue to keep the ProBoards site live indefinitely so readers could continue to access the archive and would also attempt to partner with Archive of Our Own/Organization for Transformative Works to import the Teitho archives to their site on a permanent basis.)

With thanks

Your Teitho mods

Carawyn, Lotrfan, and Sian

[markantonys]

surprise bitch bet you thought you’d seen the last of my WOT recaps! turns out i have two more in me for my thoughts on rewatching s1 after having read the books! this one is episodes 1-4

episode 1

fuck me if the show isn’t still My Main WOT. i read all 14 books, yet as soon as i hit play on 1x01 i was like “ahhh, that was a nice 14-book AU but now we are back to the real versions of the characters and events” jkfjgh curious to see if it will always be this way since the show was my first ever experience of the characters, or if next season when we start to get to characters and events that i experienced in the books first, i’ll switch to the books being my primary version.

moiraine’s much-maligned opening monologue: while it’s telling rather than showing, as a WOT newbie i found it a very helpful quick intro to the lore surrounding rebirth and the dragon reborn and to moiraine’s mission, and i think it was good to lay out the basic facts here and tell us right off the bat what moiraine is trying to accomplish, so that someone unfamiliar with the story and lore can get oriented straightaway, and then these concepts are deepened and expanded upon later in the episode and the season. it also helps to lessen the “eotw is a lotr knockoff” vibes of the beginning of the first book by letting us know some of this unique lore straightaway rather than just starting us off in our little pastoral village with moiraine as the mysterious gandalf whose goals we don’t know. and it makes me laugh that people are mad that she criticizes LTT and doesn’t have the exactly correct version of what happened at the bore. that was 3,000 years ago, there was an apocalypse and a TON of knowledge and records were lost, and this guy caused the apocalypse, so it is no wonder that he doesn’t have the BEST reputation these days (also, it’s book canon that LTT was arrogant so). expecting moiraine to have perfect knowledge of LTT and the breaking would be like expecting us today to have perfect knowledge of something that happened in 1000 BCE!

i will also always defend the much-maligned liandrin chase opening scene. it was an incredibly effective and efficient way of introducing so many important concepts (the red ajah, gentling, madness for men who can channel, the difference between women channeling and men channeling, how terrible it is to be a man who can channel) in only a minute. when i first watched the show, i was hooked after that scene! i saw the guy talking to the other guy and then he vanished and liandrin was like “there’s no one there, the madness has taken him already” and i was like Whoa!

i think it was a good choice not to start with the eotw prologue of LTT and ishamael, for a few reasons. 1) starting with that and then hurtling us 3000 years into the future would’ve been confusing as fuck. it was confusing as fuck to me in the book even though i’d already seen s1 and knew who lews therin was and what his connection to our main characters is! and tv shows do not have as much freedom as books to be confusing as fuck in the opening minutes and potentially turn away audience members, particularly with wheel of time since the show aims to cater to a broad audience whereas the books are not something any but a hardcore fantasy nerd who expects to be and enjoys being confused as fuck would pick up. 2) holding off on showing anything from the AOL until the last episode made it a very fun surprise for non-readers when we find out that 3000 years ago was actually a futuristic society, and getting us settled in this medieval-esque society for 7 episodes and then revealing that pre-breaking was actually super futuristic really hammers home how catastrophic the breaking was and how much devastation the dragon wrought. 3) i’m SURE this scene will make it into the show eventually, whether as a cold open or in-show as maybe rand having an LTT memory or something, and i think that saving it until we know that rand is the dragon reborn and know more about what that means for him will increase the emotional impact on the audience of seeing LTT realizing he killed his whole family and then killing himself. rather than just being like “here is a random guy having a bad time. oh no! anyway” jkfjg

overall i think that among certain readers there’s a tendency to, on the one hand, instantly lambast something different from the books as a bad storytelling choice without stopping to consider how that choice may actually be helpful for people who aren’t yet familiar with anything about WOT or be necessary due to the different constraints of tv versus a book, and then, on the other hand, fret about non-readers not being able to notice or understand something that the show makes fairly clear to somebody with a modicum of critical thinking skills, which show-onlys DO have, despite some readers’ beliefs lmao

the first half of the above point is also why i shake my head at people who said the show would’ve been better if there had been an entire episode in emond’s field and the trolloc attack didn’t happen until episode 2. in a tv show, you CANNOT save your inciting incident until the second episode, it has to be in the first one. it just has to! books have more room for waffling about (even so, i was so bored by how long it took to get to the inciting incident in eotw that i probably would’ve put the book down if i hadn’t already been attached to the characters from the show) but television has to hook the audience quickly. call it consumerism or cookie cutter hollywood if you want, but it’s a simple fact that tv shows are a bajillion times more expensive to make than books are, so they need to earn a bajillion times more, which means getting as many people hooked on it as quickly as possible. and as someone who came to the show without being familiar with WOT already, i’m not sure i would’ve tuned in for episode 2 if the entirety of 1 had just been people waffling about in emond’s field. okay *i* probably would’ve because josha stradowski and zoe robbins are so pretty, but lots of other new viewers wouldn’t have jdkjfg

also, those complaints seem to be borne from people thinking that the ef5 and the Status Quo weren’t established enough in the limited time in episode 1, but i strongly disagree. this introductory portion was short, but very effective. as a show-only first-time viewer, a couple minutes of the boys hanging out together was enough for me to buy their friendship. a couple minutes of mat’s home life was enough to get me attached to him. one shot of rand smiling was enough to make me mark him out as a precious cinnamon roll too good for this world too pure. one shot of nynaeve sending off her lantern alone in the woods and hiding her tears from the village was enough to make me feel for her and get a sense of her Lonely At The Top place in the two rivers. etc! while i certainly would’ve enjoyed rafe’s envisioned 2-hour episode 1 bc i’m always a hoe for more WOT content, i don’t think it was actually necessary and i would imagine that many new and/or casual viewers would’ve been put off by 2 whole hours in emond’s field.

and my next bullet point has a huge book spoiler so i will put the read more here

explain to me why i cried when nynaeve was explaining the braid to egwene! egwene’s death was too fresh, i wasn’t ready to see her again as a little baby!

rand is so HOT god. “how come elayne falls in love with him after 5 minutes and stays in love with him for 14 books despite rarely spending time with him” have you seen him. Have You Seen Him. egwene is so strong for being able to turn him down in favor of her career, i would give up my whole life to be rand’s trophy wife. oh fuck am i min???? jdkfjg oh no

brief randlayne tangent: at the con this weekend ceara said that we first meet elayne at the white tower, so there go my hopes of her getting a meet-cute with rand before arriving at the tower and meeting egwene :( i’m very curious how their eventual meeting will go down because it would be a hugely different vibe if elayne meets him already knowing that he’s her best friend’s ex. i could see maybe elayne runs into him while she’s by herself and instantly vibes with him and thinks he’s cute but doesn’t realize that he’s egwene’s rand because he doesn’t give a name or gives a fake one, and egwene had told her rand had red hair but the cute stranger she just met has no hair djkfgh

i’m also preemptively fretting about how much time they’ll be able to have together in the show, because as we know they’re robbed enough in the books, but the show’s quickened pacing might crunch down their time together even more - what if this season ends with falme and then rand leaves for the waste and elayne for tanchico right away next season? and given the deepening of randgwene, it’d probably feel too soon for rand to already be making out with elayne in like 3x01 before they leave on their trips. maybe they will change the order around so that he and elayne have a Vibe when they first meet but nothing actually happens, and then he and avi hook up in the waste but she rejects him afterwards - this would eliminate the kinda icky feeling of betrayal of elayne on both avi and rand’s parts when they bang in the books, and avi’s very firm and in-character rejection of rand here would provide him a better excuse to go off and fuck other people than elayne’s impulsive ooc plot device letter. but maybe avi knows elayne has a crush on rand although nothing actually happened between them and so she still feels guilty for that reason, allowing her and elayne’s whole relationship arc to still happen. but then rand would have to be able to spend a longer chunk of time with elayne sometime post-waste in order to make their relationship happen. on the one hand, i’m fretting that they wouldn’t be able to do that since both characters are so busy doing hot girl shit in different locations for the whole series, but on the other, i have faith that the show would be able to change things around to allow them to spend more time together in the middle of the series.

basically i’m just terrified they might split the polycule into 2 monogamous pairings, rand/min and elayne/avi, since it WOULD be easier in pretty much all respects, but good GOD i can’t live like that, i’d kill myself if min was rand’s only love interest!! rafe’s comments about polyamory in the show have made me hopeful that this won’t happen though. and i don’t think they would’ve bothered introducing alanna’s polycule if not to pave the way for rand’s.

okay we got way off track, back to episode 1

me on the first watch when lan stepped into the inn, hood up, and stood there silently until every single person in the place stopped talking and looked at him: ooooooh mysterious

me on this watch: absolutely laughed my ass off over what a drama queen he is

i’ve cried over rand like 5 times in the first episode, it’s fine

when he talks about dreaming of his kids running through these woods just like he did 😭😭😭😭😭😭 the last scene in the show better be randlayne’s twins running through some woods while rand watches happily or i’ll riot. anyway, i’m literally in agony over how much rand wants to just stay here and have his peaceful little domestic life and how much he will never be able to do that. A+ writing choice to make rand much more family-oriented and attached to home than he was in the books (and having Plans for his future in emond’s field rather than being like “what does it mean that i get nervous when egwene is around?” lmao), it makes his having to give all that up extra gut-punching. this change, while smaller than laila and mat’s backstory, has the same effect of priming the 3 boys for the major series-long internal struggles they will face in a way that is more obvious and imo more effective than anything the books did.

in nynaeve’s defense, she is minding her business and moiraine suddenly appears and is like “you claim to be a community leader and yet here you are cleaning?” and then proceeds to alternate between being insulting and asking bizarro nosy questions, so I Too would not be the biggest fan of moiraine after that conversation lmao (especially since insecurity about her age and leadership status is one of nynaeve’s biggest pain points, and moiraine just swoops in and starts pushing right on it)

thinking about that post that was like “rand wheeloftime’s gay little jumper in episode 1″ that’s a world heritage post. i’m devastated that rand didn’t get to take his gay little jumper with him on the trip.

lan: we need to leave. now. do you know which one of them it is? moiraine: no lan: [silently resigning himself to the fact that he’s about to acquire 4 kids instead of just 1]

the way i was NOT PREPARED when trollocs showed up the first time i watched jdkfjg we’ve spent so long in a world where GOT is the genre-defining fantasy show despite barely having any magic or monsters or fantasy elements that my subconscious was not ready for monsters to show up in this show. when the arrow hit that guy i was like “oh it must be evil people attacking” and then it cut to the trolloc and i was like WHAT THE FUCK IS THAT!!!!!

mat charging into the battle to find his sisters is THE perfect way to establish who he is as a person, i can’t get over it

before i was thinking that moiraine might have announced to the whole village that one of the kids was TDR, but now i see she, lan, and the kids were actually talking fairly quietly and no one else was too close to them or seemed to be listening, so i don’t think the villagers know after all (tho they do leave in front of everyone rather than sneaking out like in the books)

“your life isn’t going to be what you thought” 😭😭😭

me on first watch when moiraine said the whole “there are neither beginnings nor endings” line: okay

me on this watch:

to continue my opening ramble, in my personal experience the complaints of the show not doing enough to get the audience attached to the ef5 were crazy false. i remember that the first time i watched, when i went in knowing 0 about these people, i came out of just the first episode frantically signing adoption papers for rand, egwene, mat, and perrin and a marriage license for nynaeve. and all along i was far more invested in them than in moiraine despite the show making her the main character. but i know a lot of show-onlys genuinely did feel the opposite way with caring a lot about moiraine and not much about the ef5 (or 4, most people did seem to care about nynaeve), so maybe i’m just Built Different, who knows!

one thing i will say is that i vividly remember feeling so At Home in this show just after the first few episodes. rather than 16-year-olds saving the world or middle-aged men politicking and scheming, here our main group of characters are people in their 20s trying to figure out what the hell their lives are gonna look like. and the show is more mature than a YA show/book but not as gritty and graphic as other adult fantasy shows/books. and i remember feeling that it just really hit my “i’m too old for YA but too young for/just don’t vibe with adult fantasy, but there’s no middle ground” sweet spot. not to mention the plethora of well-written female characters and lack of sexism, male gaze, etc in the writing and production. i straightaway felt like this show was For Me! even before it was revealed that queer people exist and are considered normal and treated with respect by the writing and other characters!

episode 2

when episode 6 first aired someone said about mat staying behind at the waygate “[perrin watching the ferryman voice] he’s gone” and now i think about that every time i watch or think about either scene. another world heritage post (although i think this was actually a reddit comment, over on r/wotshow which is the only sane and reasonable wot subreddit)

lan and rand staring each other down after the ferry incident jkjfg lan just immediately clocked that rand is about to become The Problem Child

lorne balfe release the version of ta’maral’ailen that plays 10 mins into episode 2 challenge!!!! it’s so pretty and ta’maral’ailen is one of my favorite themes!!! i’ve listened to the soundtrack so much that i instantly recognize when a snippet of music in the show is not included on the soundtrack and get very sad. oh i can’t wait for new Themes in s2 - i’m thinking full version of the seanchan theme, AIEL THEME, elayne/trakand/andor theme, maybe some sort of zany unhinged Mat’s Luck Theme

when rand says moiraine might kill them like the ferryman if they step out of line, to his face egwene disagrees, yet the second moiraine gets her alone that night she’s like “are you gonna kill us like you did that ferryman? 😤” awww! i love them your honor! i totally didn’t remember that egwene WAS suspicious of moiraine at first, and only softens to her when moiraine shows her some honesty in this one-on-one scene.

the introduction of the three oaths was definitely a curveball for me on first watch! i remember immediately trying to think back to every line moiraine had said to see if she really had told the truth every time haha

it will be interesting to see josha get into actual Darth Rand territory because in this season every time rand gets mad i’m just like “awww he needs a snack, he’s cranky” and i want to squish his cheeks. to be fair, my reaction to book rand getting mad was always either exactly that or “daddy? sorry. daddy?” and no middle ground

rand definitely got too much flak from the fandom for the tension with egwene in this episode. even if we set aside the fact that he’s undergone an enormous amount of stress and trauma in the past few days, it’s entirely valid for him to say “you broke up with me, so you can’t now pretend like nothing happened, i need space” and to feel hurt and confused by egwene seeming to change her mind and want him back. it’s also valid for egwene to want the comfort of him and their relationship back now that she’s also undergoing an enormous amount of stress and trauma! also, when she replies to rand’s above statement by saying that everything’s different now and she won’t ever be nynaeve’s apprentice after all, while egwene certainly didn’t mean it this way, i could easily imagine rand interpreting that (and her overall behavior) as her going “you’re my second choice but i’ll take you back now since my first choice fell through” which definitely wouldn’t be a nice feeling, and would feed right into one of his greatest fears that we later hear from machin shin: that egwene will never love him as much as he loves her. she’s always been his first choice, but he knows that he isn’t hers and that hurts! and yet at the end of the season, he chooses for her to have her first choice even though that isn’t him! oh my heart!! but we’re getting ahead of ourselves. i will also note that in episode 1 he was 100% accepting of her breaking off their near-engagement to become nynaeve’s apprentice (to an almost unrealistic degree lmao) and it’s only in this episode when she starts changing her mind and giving him mixed signals (and when he’s undergoing all his stress and trauma) that his little pufferfish spikes come out.

i’ve noticed several times now that moiraine says “she or he” “women and men” “a girl or a boy” rather than our society’s unconscious standard of putting the male term first (in english). it’s such a small thing but i love it!

the CAMERAWORK in the manetheren story - focusing on rand while we’re hearing about the king, on perrin while we’re hearing about normal people banding together to protect their home, on mat while we’re hearing about holding back a trolloc army for many days against impossible odds, and of course on egwene while we’re hearing about eldrene feeling her husband dying and then dying herself by using too much of the one power. AAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

bad news: this means egwene will definitely still die in the show good news: it also means we will definitely still get gawene in the show (given that everybody but me hates their romance and thinks it’s pointless and detracts from egwene’s character, i did worry they might cut it haha) bad news: it also means gawyn will also definitely still die in the show

shoutout to the hilarity of mat going “i’m going to cheer the gang up with a nice song!” and moiraine going “i love that song! [proceeds to tell the depressing as fuck true story it’s based on and put a damper right back on the mood]” she’s the kid on the playground telling everyone that ring around the rosie is about the plague

godddddd randgwene hits SO different after reading the books 😭😭 i think this is definitely the Show Thing that having read the books improved the most for me (aside from the ability to recognize foreshadowing and easter eggs, of course). before reading the books, i was like “okay here’s our bland heterosexual couple who obviously won’t last very long so why are you wasting my time trying to get me invested in their romance” and now i’m like “randgwene sweeties i’m so sorry, i’m so sorry an ugly ass bitch (past me) would say that oh my god.” when they were sitting on the mountain talking about the future and crying and holding each other, i broke. when rand turned to egwene in the middle of an argument and said he could never hate her, i broke. when they were standing in shadar logoth quietly holding hands and looking out at the city together, i broke. that last one especially, MAN the “‘you will never be lovelier than you are now. we will never be here again.’ -homer” -troy (2004) energy of that!!!! weeping on the floor. the development of their relationship in the show is going to be absolutely scrumptious.

maybe it’s also that the Heterosexual Nonsense of rand/min was so bad that it made the Heterosexual Nonsense of rand/egwene look wonderful in comparison dkfjg you never know you’re in the good old days until you’ve already left them.

that time when we all shipped mat and perrin for a hot minute! barney harris committed to the “mat is unrequitedly in love with perrin” angle with all his heart in that one scene, bless him. i remember thinking “oooh is this gonna be my ship?” but then they immediately got separated, rip, and instead cauthor came in to take center stage. i love how many “ships you never would’ve thought of in the books but are fire in the show” it served us (i was so onboard with ef4 polycule after watching s1 and then after reading the books i was like “wow i was crazy for that” but this rewatch is ensnaring me in it again!) and can’t wait to see that continue as we meet more characters. manifesting rand/gawyn finally getting recognized as the Messy Gay Angst goldmine it is.

time to talk about the depiction of male friendship in this show, which is very important to me! this was another one of the major things that struck me immediately when i started watching and contributed to that feeling of feeling At Home in this show. the open affection and tenderness between rand, mat, and perrin is so so wonderful to see!!! no toxic masculinity anywhere! they aren’t bros, they’re boy besties! i remember making a gifset of mat and perrin way back when and ALL the reblog tags were people being like “they felt more like friends in 5 minutes of the show than they ever did in 14 books” and i was like “what! how can that be! they are besties!” and now I Understand lmao. the deepening of relationships all around is one of the absolute standout aspects of the show (both in comparison to the books, and on its own merits - on my first watch, throughout the season the relationships were what kept getting me over and over again), and especially the relationships between the ef5. they all feel like close childhood friends, rather than the book vibe of “rand and mat are homoerotic besties, perrin is a third wheel who never thinks about either of them and vice versa, and egwene and nynaeve can’t be real friends with any of them because they are GIRLS”

moiraine waking up just to roast lan and then passing out again is simply iconic

the real reason mat didn’t get hoisted up is because he is a skinny twink who never would’ve been able to bust the door open from the other side. they needed beefcake rand for that one.

and then the episode ends with nynaeve threatening lan’s life, immediately into mashiara as the credits music, amazing showstopping spectacular

episode 3

i heard some whispering and what sounded to me like a magic-ish sound effect just before nynaeve grabbed the trolloc’s weapon in the pool, so i’m kinda wondering if she may have unknowingly channeled a bit there?

the string rhythm of the dragon reborn theme layered under the aes sedai theme when nynaeve emerges from the pool!!!! and i haven’t heard it in the show yet, but in the soundtrack version of the goldeneyes theme there’s also a portion with the dragon reborn string rhythm underneath! It Was About Them All!!!!!

crossing my fingers that mat will get some sort of Theme next season, and i wonder if the al’naito theme might eventually move from siuan to egwene. that would be neat!

can you tell that i have an obsession with soundtracks

this convo between mat and rand exemplifies beautifully the fact that they have 1 shared braincell, like:

rand: EGWEEEEEEEEEENE!!!!!!!!!!! mat: [current braincell possessor] stop hollering who knows what’s out there and can hear us. now, we need to find a way home- rand: [grabbing the braincell] but moiraine said the trollocs will come back if we do. we need to go to the white tower. mat: [grabbing the braincell back] how are we going to get there? just walk??? to the white tower???? rand: they say all roads lead there. mat: [wishing with all his heart that they had a second braincell at their disposal] that’s not how roads work.

perrin being frantic to light a fire and apologizing that he’s not doing it fast enough perfectly encapsulates his book vibe of trying to be the leader and feeling responsible for egwene’s safety, but without the weird condescending and patronizing dimension that his book attitude had.

love the visual contrast between strapping young lad rand strolling along with his preppy sheepskin coat and his massive sword (that’s what she said) and his massive bow (that’s also what she said) vs. weaponless coatless scrawny twink mat scrambling to keep up. rand knows he is on An Adventure, but mat just wants to be removed from the story.

“that’s not how roads work” / “the man who once walked while a little chilly” / “we’ll take turns” “if you think she’s up for it” / “if i wanted a man i could do better” it is just back to back to back iconic lines in rand and mat’s plotline this episode!

the closeup of rand during thom’s song about LTT and you can see tears in his eyes 😭😭

i like thom’s grittier silver fox blues singer show vibe. i feel like in eotw he was just a weird old man with weird vibes jkjfg

thom telling rand and mat to go up and perform if they think they could do a better job than him, don’t tease me with the loss of the cauthor gleeman era 😭 one of the things that definitely had to go, seeing as a) not enough time, b) it’s a symptom of eotw’s Sillier vibe that doesn’t fit tonally with the rest of the series, and for that reason i think i would’ve felt weird in the show, but i’ll always love it in the book.

baby rand’s surprised little distressed face when he realizes mat got robbed. he’s like “you really think someone would do that? go into a tavern and steal someone else’s wallet? :O”

dana trying to make mat get to his knees and beg her while rand watches, she was READY for that threesome. mat was also ready for that threesome. rand, get your head in the game!

what a scene. “isn’t she a bit young for you?” mat confirmed milf chaser “i make exceptions” bi mat rights “we’ll take turns” “if you think she’s up for it” mat unironically down for a threesome with rand, it’s just one thing after another!

mat immediately gets Mean because he’s embarrassed to have admitted he wanted to have a threesome with rand when it turns out that wasn’t what rand meant, that’s my interpretation

still blown away by “you don’t need to go there for her. she wouldn’t do it for you.” mat is IN LOVE with rand. the repressed years-long unrequited crush energy is OFF the charts.

mat when dana makes him serve drinks: i’m being forced to do work and i’m being SO brave about it

ahhhh this convo between mat and dana is so soooo good. obviously it sets up dana’s motivation for joining the shadow, but it also is a perfect little peek into/foreshadowing of mat’s character. his wistful expression when she talks about going someplace new where no one knows you to escape the dirt you were born in - his show backstory really deepens and grounds his yearning to get out of the two rivers and travel far away, by anchoring that in wanting to escape a painful home life rather than just thinking that life as a farmer is too boring and too much work, as is his reasoning in the books. but then he brushes the idea aside by saying he’s got people back home who need him - that is mat to a T, he seems like an irresponsible fool who only looks out for himself but when it comes down to it he always puts his loved ones first.

nynaeve being like “don’t be so sure i’ll stick around with moiraine if you ride away!” and lan just gives her a look like “uh-huh.” he’s already got her all figured out, he knows she can’t resist either a) healing someone who needs her help or b) doing anything for her kids, and he’s neatly snared her with both things.

re: perrin trying to be the leader and protect egwene, in addition to not feeling condescending like it does in eotw, it’s also explained by what happened to laila. the guilt of that is driving perrin to feel like he has to protect egwene and take risks in her stead, etc. as opposed to the book reason for it basically being “i must be the leader because i am the man here and thus it is my duty to protect the delicate flower accompanying me”

overall, the various backstory changes have been perfect for explaining character behavior/traits that in eotw are mostly just silly goose behavior.

i can’t find the post again for the life of me, but it is time to reference the world heritage post that was like “egwene and perrin’s roadtrip is like ‘do you want to talk about your trauma yet? no? okay’ and rand and mat’s is a bickering divorced couple where one got caught cheating”

haha i love egwene perfectly repeating aram’s whole spiel about the song and then perrin just quietly going “uh we don’t know the song” when it’s his turn, that is THEM

the camera cut to the MASSIVE pile of chopped wood next to rand djfkgj he really had to work out those feelings after mat was Mean to him

rand inviting a woman to drink alone with him in his bedroom at night and then being startled that she tries to kiss him, he’s a baby, please protect him! the eotw rand vibes coming through even though show!rand already fucks.

thom lists “asinine attitude” as a defining characteristic of people from the two rivers, bless

“he was murdered by cowards who feared something they didn’t understand” ahh the backstory of thom’s nephew really underscores why he’s so upset about the aiel here :( and since he’s saying this line to mat, dare i hope that show!mat may have a better initial reaction to learning rand can channel? tho i feel like it’s kinda central to his character arc that he does react badly. i will likely speak more on this when i get to episode 5 and The Promise.

the whole scene with the aiel is peak “feeling incredibly smug that i understand all these references now”

dana’s such a fantastic 1-episode character! great writing, great acting, great chemistry with both rand and mat. on first watch, the twist that she’s evil shook me to my core! super effective way to introduce the concept of darkfriends. whereas iirc our first darkfriends in eotw were people that had obvious shady vibes from the getgo, much more unsettling that dana starts off so friendly and likable and nonthreatening.

lmao i remember seeing someone who was mad that rand couldn’t get the better of dana in a fight when he’s much bigger and stronger than her (and a man, as was abundantly clear they Really meant), but rand is just a wee lad, he’s never had to fight anybody before, he doesn’t even know how to use that sword, it makes perfect sense that he would be scared and helpless in this situation. protect him!

rand’s little “we’re gonna leave now” after dana finishes her Villain Speech cracks me up every time jdkfjg he’s a BABY

episode 4

getting so pleased with myself every time they namedrop a location and i’m like “i know where that is!” djkfgj (so far, tear, caemlyn, and ghealdan - though ghealdan, when i watched the show the second time and they mentioned ghealdan in the 1x01 winespring gossip sesh i was like “i know ghealdan! that’s where logain is from!” and was also very pleased with myself then)

the corrupted weaves are THE SHIT they look soooooo cool!!!

i for one am apprehensive about the fact that they’re making changes to the look of weaves in s2 because i love how they are in s1, but we’ll see what it ends up looking like!

why did people get so up in arms about mistakenly thinking the show was trying to imply that logain saw nynaeve’s weaves when moiraine says IN THIS EPISODE that women can’t see men’s weaves, implying that the show intends to follow book lore and make the opposite true as well

“why did moiraine have a dog when dogs don’t like aes sedai!” is THE stupidest hill to die on jkfjg dogs hating women who can channel and cats hating men who can channel was one of the absolute stupidest and most unnecessary pieces of lore and i’m thrilled the show went out of its way to establish that it’s not the case in this version lmao

show!alanna is so pretty and so likable, aaaaaahhhhhhh

very glad that they’re actually using the battle ajah angle as the main characteristic of greens and the main reason people would choose to join, rather than the “greens love men and sex and sex with men” angle

super interesting that moiraine mentions women AND men have claimed to be false dragons

haha i don’t remember previously catching rand saying “wouldn’t it be easier to just ask?” when thom is making the plan to break into the farmhouse to sleep. rand doesn’t want to do crimes!

rand in the last episode making constant snarky comments about how mat always dips out of work vs. in this episode when mat dips out of work, rand’s just worried because he can tell mat’s unwell 🥺

mat with kids 😭😭 the birgitte doll 😭😭 man i’m so sad that the doll got left behind at the farm, imagine if mat had kept it the whole time, promising himself he would be able to give it to his sisters someday, and then he meets birgitte herself and is like “hey i have a doll of you” and she’s like “what the fuck” jkjfg

rand: mat’s not an idiot me: wow Romance..........

the full line is him saying that mat would tell him if he could channel because he’s not an idiot, so rand just roasted himself djkfg

rand’s face when thom’s reply to this is that owyn knew all the stories about how men who could channel will go mad “and still he lied to me” 😭😭😭

look at show!perrin being happy to see egwene have a good time dancing with the tuatha’an! book!perrin take notes. he is definitely the character that was most improved by the show so far. remind me to talk about this more in my post on the second half of the series when we get to min.

i tear up during the way of the leaf speech every time. so so well done!!! standout scene!!

egwene saying she’d know if rand was dead and it’s explicitly meant to be romantic, meanwhile in the books rand and mat BOTH say at various points that they would know if the other was dead, even BEFORE they start having their psychic ta’veren connection 👀👀

“the leaf doesn’t fight the wind. sometimes the wind blows away from the tree.” that’s such a perfect line for egwene and the journey she’s going to go on and how she ends up being the one of the ef5 who leaves home furthest behind, aaaaaHHHH

AND WE GET TO “i’m here. you know that, right? no matter what happens, i’m here.” MY CAUTHOR ORIGIN STORY!!! the moment my brain chemistry was altered forever! let us recall one of my earliest tags on a cauthor post (tho now that i’ve sifted through the archives to find it i see that the post was actually from the next episode):

joke’s on me, i never did end up shifting out of cauthor mode!

anyway, rand blows out the candle so that he can have privacy to cuddle with mat, we all know it

also, on my second watch i lost my mind at that shot of rand’s face behind the candle as he’s about to blow it out because!!!! it’s a candle before the raging sun!!!!

ooh mat’s dagger vs. the fade is a good way to set up the concept that the evil of mashadar and the evil of the shadow are enemies (oh and they did show that trollocs are afraid to enter shadar logoth, of course)

backstory change explaining character behavior strikes again: nynaeve losing her parents at a young age and being taken in by emond’s field despite not having been born there is likely why she feels so fiercely attached to her found family, exemplified by how determined she is to get the ef4 back.

love the battle against logain’s army! great choice to show what aes sedai/channelers in general can do in battle right in the first season.

not to harp on about the missing music snippets but dammit there’s a beautiful sad choral version of the aes sedai theme as the battle is going badly, i want it lorne 😭

nynaeve’s power blast is another thing that makes me tear up every time!!!! like a raging sun!!!!! (which, speaking of the soundtrack, is the best track out of the whole thing.) i remember my jaw was on the floor the first time i watched that, as soon as the episode was over i instantly went back to watch the scene again.

update to add: i’m so glad they made nynaeve way more powerful than logain and are seemingly going to do away with the whole “on average men are stronger than women in the power” which is so stupid and creates a needless male-advantage inequality (once saidin is cleansed). i think there’s supposed to be a flipside that women are more........dexterous with their weaves or something? but whatever the flipside is was so irrelevant in the books that i can’t even remember what it is. i hope they also make it so that either men and women can both sense each other channeling or that neither can, as it’s also a needless male-advantage inequality that they can sense women but women can’t sense them. and also that male channelers who are bonded as warders can’t be compelled by the bond, but female channelers can. these things worked to balance it out while saidin was tainted, but once it was cleansed, it tipped the channeling scales over towards favoring men (and contributed to my overall feeling of a progression from an equal society into a patriarchy during the second half of the series, kicked off by the aes sedai being forced to kneel to rand and the asha’man at dumai’s wells and exemplified by an increase in men in positions of power and previously-powerful women having to submit to men’s authority - the aes sedai with rand, the wise ones with perrin, etc.)

[conundrumoftime]

2023 fic round-up

Total works: 26 plus two old fics I uploaded from 2004 and 2008, across 6 fandoms

Fics I started writing on the power of irresistible vibes hoping a cohesive plot would turn up and it did:

Banquets have burned for you - Haladriel, M, written for eastwynds for the Haladriel fic exchange. The second time I have leaned heavily on Aeschylus for fanfic (first was years ago for Battlestar Galactica which lends itself very well to Greek myth and tragedy, but it worked for Numenor too). I am slowly coming round to writing a sequel for this one next year some time.

Say it like the sunrise when it’s talking to the fog - Celeborn/Glorfindel, Silm-LOTR, written for @yletylyf for the Trick or Treat exchange. Saw the pairing on a pinch hit list and the vision struck me like some sort of revelation. This was so much fun to write!

Things I wrote this year that I would not have seen myself writing:

Longfic: Shadow-Bride, Haladriel, now at 30 chapters and nearly 170k words. I have always been a shorter fic person and haven’t done epics and I am so pleased this one’s still going fine. It’s helped to have the basic plot already planned while the space around that structure has let me develop it as it’s gone along. This fic is my beloved precious baby.

Mpreg: technically (because it’s a shapeshifting Sauron taking the form of Galadriel), in To hold all the promise of blue-velvet dark, TROP, Celeborn/Sauron. I am pleased with how much this one stayed ambiguous w/r/t whether Sauron was indeed doing this to get to Galadriel or whether he started off with that intent but just got more into it than he'd planned, one thing led to another, etc etc. I think probably the second one.

Favourite AO3 tag used this year:

'Sapir-Whorf hypothesis as a metaphor for the pain at the heart of your marriage' on Softest of Tongues, Silm-LOTR, Galadriel/Celeborn.

Things I couldn’t get enough of writing this year:

Noldor-Sindar drama. I just. It’s so compelling, and I think all? of the elf/elf pairings I’ve written use it as background somehow.

Celeborn/Sauron - like @liminal-zone I have gone fully off the deep end with this one. It’s been a speed run from “haha what if THIS crackship?” to “please be seated for the 57-slide Powerpoint presentation on how It All Makes Sense.” Started when I wrote a Twitter Haladriel promptfill where Sauron referred in passing to “your pretty Sindar prince” and, well, here we are.

Galadriel and Celeborn’s marriage: I have many thoughts about established relationships as fandom ships which are for another post, but, this one’s got a lot of intriguing hints in the canon plus Noldor-Sindar drama plus more ways to write about Galadriel so I am very into it now.

Trying to fit Celeborn into Rings of Power canon, which led to the whole series offics with half-Maia Celebrían being raised by a Celeborn who knows that and is a good dad to her while working through some things himself.

Individual bits I was really pleased with:

Description of Annatar, the only time I’ve written him: [Celeborn] thinks of tiny, whirring cogs, all turning in perfect precision; of fine metal filigrees making up each fibre of Annatar’s hair, of his skin as some kind of silk stapled into place at the seams. Rarer gifts than gold, Celeborn/Sauron, Silm.

Maedhros in my Third Kinslaying Elwing/Maedhros fic knowing how to do a double hip carry for baby twins: It would make every nightingale sing, Silmarillion.

Modern-day Sauron in Blood Sugar (Haladriel) having a print of Caravaggio’s ‘David with the head of Goliath’ on his wall - the painting in which Caravaggio, in exile and facing a death sentence for murder, painted the severed head with his own face as a gift to the cardinal who could grant him a pardon.

Sauron in Tar-Mairon of the Shire (TROP fluff) as the Lord of Gifts giving away presents on his birthday, Hobbit-style.

Strangest anon hate comment:

Among all the “ugh kys freak” comments which do get a bit repetitive after a while, the one that accused me of ‘pretending to be a multishipper’ stands out. Wut.

Fandom resolutions for 2024:

I’m staying away from goals around fic completion or targets because that doesn’t work for me. Instead, I’m making more of a conscious effort to write and enjoy the things I like the way I like them. This is a pretty basic fandom tenet and I shouldn’t need reminding, really, but sometimes in polarised, fighty corners of fandoms or places where there’s a lot of fanon it can feel like anything outside fandom norms will come across as starting discourse, and there’s nothing more stifling to writing and generally having fun in fandom than wondering “what’s it going to sound like I’m saying here?” all the time.

The other fics:

The Stars My Destination, Babylon 5. Bester thinks about the nature of death.

Life After Death, Alias - wrote this in 2008. found it in my old LJ archives and uploaded it this year.

When all the leaves are gold, Silmarillion, Galadriel/Celeborn. Everything is fine in Doriath. Everyone is happy in Doriath. No you can't leave.

All that Glitters, TROP sequel to that - where Celeborn has been for the past several centuries.

Civil Twilight, TROP, Haladriel and Galadriel/Celeborn, continuity fits with the previous two fics, I love this one and am so pleased with how well it worked.

Changeling, Silmarillion, Fourth-age Maglor. Wrote most of this in 2004 (it's old enough to vote!) and never finished or posted it because the Tolkien fandom used to be terrifying to me; finished and uploaded this year.

A green thought in a green shade, TROP Galadriel/Celeborn, another 'where has Celeborn been?' angle.

Made of sterner stuff, TROP, Disa, motherhood, ambition, dwarf culture.

So Wide a Sea, TROP Haladriel and Galadriel/Celeborn. Wrote this near the beginning of the year and then said afterwards that it was kind of fun to write Celeborn but I probably wouldn't be doing it again. [comedy trombone noise]

All the kinds of alive you can be, TROP, and it's Celeborn/Sauron but Sauron in the guise of Galadriel so - pairings are messy. I was playing around with doing a longer 'what if Sauron took the form of Celeborn' thing which I'd done a bit in Shadow-Bride and then thought "wait..."

I have loved flowers that fade, TROP, Haladriel, went in a bit heavy on the Athrabeth.

Suo Gân and Arda Sahta, TROP, baby half-Maia Celebrían being raised by Galadriel and Celeborn. I got so yelled at for writing these and at one point I had multiple anon hate comments on AO3 and people self-righteously condemning Those Haladriels on Twitter, which given it's G-rated fic about a baby which was all correctly tagged and not compulsory reading was I feel a bit of an overreaction.

As little might be thought, a followup to those with Celeborn talking to Elrond about fatherhood.

Weighed against our future, TROP. Haladriel 'missing scene on the road to Eregion' fic.

The turn of the tide, TROP, 4th-age Haladriel angst.

Though I sang in my chains like the sea, TROP, Haladriel, gapfiller for ep2 and their time on the raft.

And white winter, on its knees, TROP, little Haladriel 'what if she accepted the raft proposal' fic.