Out on blue, back on white @beech27 - Tumblr Blog

Elizabeth Minkel is a writer, editor, and technologist with a focus on fan culture Uri Bram: For any of our readers whose lives have tragically not yet been touched by fanfiction, can you give us a very brief introduction? Elizabeth Minkel: Haha, sure! So at its most basic definition, fanfiction

#notes

bipirate

Last night i had a dream where legolas straight up shot someone with a gun

neenarchive

legolas what does your scoped .50 caliber barrett m82 rifle see

neenarchive

mapsburgh

Rethinking the Ents and Entwives

I wish to propose a radical re-thinking of the history and fate of the Ents, based on a re-interpretation of the Song of the Ents and Entwives sung by Treebeard to Merry and Pippin. I think our conventional understanding of the Ents falls short by taking the song at face value.

According to the song, the Ents are fading because the male Ents have lost contact with the female half of their race, the Entwives. The two genders had irreconcilable differences over the sorts of landscapes they loved best – sublime wilderness for the Ents, cultivated gardens for the Entwives. Going their separate ways, they now found themselves unable to reproduce, and thus the Entish race must inevitably die out. Most readers take this as a straightforward description of Entish history.

Keep reading

#I like this a lot #or #as the kids say #headcanon accepted

raisel-the-riveter

so I’ve been meaning to put this on tumblr and keep forgetting but, in the campaign I’m running my sister is playing an orc fighter, and one of the options you can pick for a fighter’s signature weapon is that it “glows in the presence of [fill in the blank].”

I was like, “oh, that’s funny because it’s a reference to that sword in The Hobbit that glows in the presence of orcs. Your weapon probably doesn’t glow in the presence of orcs.”

to which she responded, “FUCK YEAH it does.”

So now we have in the party an orc fighter with a club that glows in the presence of orcs. Or, as far as the character is concerned, a club that glows. It’s been in her family for generations since some ancestor won it in a battle, and it’s just always glowed. She has a sack to put it in when she’s trying to be stealthy.

batneko

#orcs in LotR don’t know that Sting doesn’t glow#that is crazy#they think elves and hobbits just carry glowing swords#for the Aesthetic#and if you know enough elves that probably makes sense to you!#sparkly drama queens would probably make their hair glow if they could

retrogamingblog

Legend of Zelda Concept Art by Katsuya Terada

romeneverfell

“It is the cabbage which surpasses all other vegetables.” - Cato the Elder

Proudly growing cabbages is such a Roman mood, even for emperors I guess

rhube

Guys, once you’ve grown your own veg, you’re gonna feel this so hard.

beech27

Yes hello I would like to second anon re: RCB. I think that will always be one of my favorite fanfics of all time. Oh, and you are a delight :) hope you've been doing well!!

I always did get uniquely nice anons, and thank you, fellow vanguard of the old (old) fanfic canon, lol. Contradiction in terms, but y’know...

beech27

i read RCB almost two years ago and it's still one of my favorite fanfics. i know this is sort of an open ended question, but can you explain your interpretation of the ending to me. not exactly what happened, but the meaning behind it. thanks.

I love this question. That it exists, first of all–so, thanks–but also your use of interpretation rather than, I dunno, something more emphatic. There are the famous Tolkien/Lewis arguments about applicability vs allegory, whether the reader takes things from fiction or the author puts things there. Of course it’s both, to varying degrees; but in any case I like that you’re asking what I got from it, rather than what I put in. (I’m definitely gonna say what I was trying to do also, however.)

Many people assumed a nasty ending was coming, because I tagged it Noir AU and applied many of the relevant tropes. The thing is, noir and its adjacent genres quite often ended with the guy and girl quite literally riding or driving into the sunset, not having fixed the wicked city but escaping it. Very nearly, Korra and Asami could have done that. There would have been consequences, though, because “violence begets violence” was a whole… thing. They had killed too much and had too much usefulness to powerful people to just leave.

“Ah, but couldn’t they just kill Lin, maybe a few other people, and leave?” Probably they could do that, but again, consequences. You can’t kill your way out of killing. It wasn’t intended to be a pacifist story, or suggest that that ought to be their future, however. Sometimes they had to commit violence–or at least, their choosing of it might be justified on some level–which inevitably led to more. It’s not fair, but it is very, very noir–and I hoped, almost mythic–that there is an almost malevolent angle to the city, the world; it demands things of you and then punishes you for them; you can’t escape violence with violence, but can you escape the fates at all, using any means?

Yet, they were not wholly defeated, as they had one another, and the promise of love. Perhaps it would have to bloom in shadows, but sturdy things often do. Maybe the best end for them is going down together, or maybe they can work together to find a real, genuine way out, but it’s that connection that is meant to stand against the omnipresence of killing, for all the Battle Couple aspects they may have.

So, what’s gonna happen? I’m a firm believer that only things you actually write get to be canon, so I don’t get to hand-wave a sequel into being and say see, here’s how it goes. The main plot threads I meant to leave, though, were: 1) Korra and her killing/bloodbending, as Lin/Noatak try to forge a weapon of her; 2) Asami and her identity, losing herself again and yet, still a tool; 3) Kuvira is alive, ambitious, and Very Mad, though thousands of miles away; 4) And yet, love.

Some people looked at this, and said yeah, they’re fucked. Others saw an easy escape. Most were in between. It will be hard, messy, and maybe, ultimately, ineffectual, but they will have eachother. It’s all valid, though.

All of that said, the shortest interpretation I have might go like this: Life is hard, pain and violence are a circle, and sometimes there are no good choices. Love can’t fix all that, but it can make it more bearable, and if you’re afloat long enough, no sea is endless, maybe you’ll find a shore.

#self reblog #because i wrote this super early #maybe youre curious too #all these years later #anyway