Through babel of nations and waste of water

Cat | multishipper, YKINMKATO, too old for ship wars | I like Tolkien (including Rings of Power), Babylon 5, spaceships and crosswords

[conundrumoftime]

Hello, welcome! I’m Cat, I’ve been in and out of fandom since we had archives on GeoCities, and I write as eye_of_a_cat on AO3. I like elves and spaceships.

I am very much a multishipper and this is a multishipping-friendly, ship-and-let-ship, YKNIMKATO kind of space.

Tags:

'#eyeofacat fic' is mostly my completed fic or completed chapters; bits of works in progress are under ‘wips’

‘#my gifs’ is gifsets I made

‘diary etc’ is personal posts

‘grumble’ is for fandom or IRL venting

‘shipping discourse i guess’ is anything to do with fandom discourse.

Assorted fandom things:

Andor s2 wedding, things happening in the background: one, two, three

Tolkien and Rings of Power meta posts

Rings of Power 'Celeborn in Rhûn' meta/fic roundup post

Some of my fic rounded up:

Andor fics

Haladriel fics

Celeborn fics (Rings of Power and other Tolkien)

Sauron x Celeborn, and Sauron x Galadriel x Celeborn fics (Rings of Power and other Tolkien)

Silmarillion and LOTR fics

[2productive]

[sirenofthegreenbanks]

this is from "research as a leisure activity" by celine nguyen, publs. on stubstack in 2024. it's a very good read

[trigona-necrophaga]

my devoted but dangerously unstable knight will be hearing about this

[laylainalaska]

I've been thinking about Neroon off and on ever since that post I reblogged earlier. I get why he had to die, narratively speaking, and I like that ending for him, but one of the reasons why I wish he'd lived - besides just really liking his grudging development of mutual friendship/respect with Delenn - is that we really know next to nothing about the culture of the two other Minbari castes.

They are effectively three different cultures under one umbrella, and although they do have some things in common (most of them imposed by Valen; thank u for your service Jeff) I think it's reasonable to assume that nearly every cultural thing we see Delenn doing on the show, ranging from the marriage ceremony in season one to all of the various courtship rituals and religious stuff, is religious caste Minbari culture. We really have no idea what the warrior caste does. I think it's safe to say that watching their prospective spouse sleep for three days is not really their kind of thing; they probably have to defeat them in staff combat three days running or something like that. IIRC, it's even canon (extracanonical canon, perhaps) that the language we hear spoken in the series is religious Minbari, and the other two castes have their own languages or at least dialects.

The way that Delenn spends the entire series using the religious Minbari culture as a synecdoche for Minbari culture as a whole is very her and very typical of the Minbari in general - the fact that each caste thinks of themselves as the "true" Minbari seems very them. (And tbf, the humans are doing the same thing, since despite B5's various nods to decent-for-its-period diversity, Babylon 5 in general is an extremely narrow slice of the human cultural experience ...)

But since we really don't know much about the warrior caste, and Delenn presumably doesn't either, it would have been such a delight to see her and Neroon actually dealing with that once in a while. In canon, they only get to the point where they even would have dinner together, socialize voluntarily, play a game, whatever, in those two episodes in season four, at the end of which he dies. But it would have been just so ... idk, cute, and very much in keeping with B5's themes, to watch them both running up against their own cultural chauvinism and lack of understanding of the other's caste culture - but in the same gentle way as late-season Londo and G'Kar, where it's more an opportunity for "oh, we do things this way, do you want to try it?" than a reason for an actual fight. And I would have liked to see a little of that onscreen.

[foone]

[adibkhorram]

portrait of the author (2024)

[unamccormack]

At last the real reason for exile

[intactics]

[pushing my glasses up with an air of unwarranted superiority and gesturing toward a painting without a minotaur] the Minotaur is implied.

[lypsys]

"Write character relationships that are normal" WRONG ☝ CODEPENDENCY BEAM 💥💥💥💥💥💥💥💥💥💥💥

[oleanderunderground]

Ok. This shrimp was too well done not to share. LOOK AT THIS SHRIMP!!!! you can never replace the charm and joy of human doodles!!!! Whoever you are... Thank you for the shrimp ❤️

[mangoeater1000-deactivated20201]

please support this interracial french gay couple and their 20 kids

[captain-acab]

“le couple homosexuel interracial français milieu a vingt enfants” en fait c’est une erreur statistique. georgs d'enfants, qui habite dans une cave et adopte dix mille enfants chaque jour, est une donnée aberrante et il faudrait pas l’avoir compté

[kosmogrl]

[riding-with-the-wild-hunt]

maglor circa end of the first age who hates maedhros for having stood aside at the burning of the ships both because it was what he himself wasn’t brave enough to do and because it undermines his self-spun mythology that all the terrible things he ever did were under duress from maedhros. if cruel hard-hearted brother maedhros was able to refuse participation in atrocity, even just once, what does it mean about maglor? he cannot be a free agent because it would mean he freely made all those choices, and that would mean he’s responsible for them. number one guy allergic to culpability!

[noknowshame]

resurrected dead wife watching her own montage: wow I looked so hot in that

[theorangepdf]

getting fixated on something is funny because the first like week i have an insatiable need to tell everyone i know about it and spread the good word but by weeks 2 and 3 it becomes so intense and personal that even hearing it mentioned in public makes me sweat as if a dark secret was alluded to

[dryadrobot]

o hell yeah, they're turning the trees gay:

[obscuredurins]

Its tiiiiime♡

Starting July 1st ObscureDurins will be hosting

TOLKIEN DISABILITY PRIDE

This event focuses on ALL creative works focusing on disability in Tolkien's universe.

You can do worldbuilding, fan fic, fan art, share a favorite character, your favorite headcanons, write a song, poem, show us your LOTRO Oc!ANYTHING providing-

Absolutely NO USE OF AI IN ANY PART OF THE PROCESS

Ableism and violence against Disabled character should be done with nuance and plot in mind. Remember this is a pride event we are more than willing to have dead dove- provided it is done justly and tactfully.

Tag all your works appropriately and place under a read more.

Tag: "tolkien disability pride" AND "obscuredurins" to get your work featured.

We have an AO3 collection!

This is a spoonie friendly event!We accept past works, WIPS, and encourage this as our time to display PRIDE in our community.

[ilynpilled]

shipping has a deserved reputation of being able to nuke ppl’s understanding of the source material but i would argue that ppl with intense hate boners for certain ships are very capable of matching them in this regard