ship so good, a future where theyāre safe and retired is called an au
Game of Thrones Daily
let's talk about Bridgerton tea, my ask is open
Keni

Andulka
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Jules of Nature
will byers stan first human second
šŖ¼
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DEAR READER
dirt enthusiast
cherry valley forever
Cosimo Galluzzi
Three Goblin Art

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we're not kids anymore.
One Nice Bug Per Day

⣠Chile in a Photography ā£
RMH
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seen from Armenia

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@motleystitches
ship so good, a future where theyāre safe and retired is called an au
What is your Hogwarts house?
Actually I've already processed all five stages of grief in regards to a beloved author from my childhood very publicly making the jump from "milquetoast liberal with unexamined biases" to "actively dangerous bigot who will double down into perpetuity" and will no longer be basing any part of my identity on her intellectual property! Thanks for asking!
Sometimes you find a draft of a WIP that only needed two paragraphs to be complete.
And the WIP is 10 years old.
And it's finally done! But you no longer know if the intended recipient of the fic gift (second part of a Yuletide exchange) is still in the fandom.... Well, whereever you are, I wish you the best and I hope you still enjoy Julius Caesar/Mark Antony.
Warrior Emperor(Zhao KuangYin)/Captive Poet Prince(LiYu) circa late-10th century - welcome to Chinese history RPF
Tai-Ping-Nian (Aka From Swords to Plowshares aka The Year for Peace) due to clear bias against Southern Tang featured them having about 10 minutes of screentime together. However, their OTPness comes through shining like a strange and slashy beacon so I went digging through the canon (history) which described a 15 year long relationship (almost Liyu's entire adult life) with all plot elements of an unrequited tragic story romance.
The pairing:
Warrior Emperor (Zhao Kuangyin), known for being first Emperor of Song Dynasty (unified the Chinese parts) and martial prowess. He grew up in an era in the Central Plains where decency and rule of law had been abandoned in favor of brutality and violence (cannibalism was economic reality). Distinguished for having ambition with a mind toward a civilized legacy, he was the first emperor in a long line of emperors who did not indulge in massacres (though they still happened), but was probably killed by his favorite younger brother.
Poet Prince (Li Yu), known for his beautiful devastating verses which are required text in Chinese language textbooks (for comparison: this is essentially Beowulf in terms of timeline). He was a gentle artistic ruler of the Southern Tang (Lord of Jiangnan) who wrote of music, wine, and dancing prior to his captivity. He also secretly trained a navy and actually held out for a year against the Song armies before surrendering. When he was taken North to the Song capital, his people wept.
They were penpals for 14+ years (Poet Prince is about 10 years younger than Warrior Emperor and keep refusing invite to head north for an actual meetup); some of these letters have survived
Though the army's already heading south Emperor actually retreated briefly because Poet Prince wrote a sad letter comparing himself to a small bird needing pity
Otherwise extremely frugal and caring of laborers, Emperor ordered icebreaking a lake so Prince and his household can journey safely North as soon as possible (he also ordered not to harm anyone from the royal family in the war)
Emperor also went against tradition of a formal surrender where the Enemy Ruler would be kneeling in public while wearing equivalent of underwear/naked; every OTHER ruler Emperor conquered by had to do it, but not Liyu (they put it in the show because apparently showrunners want Southern Tang as ..villains?)
Built Poet Prince a manor next to the palace in the Southern Style for his captivity where he can meet whomever he likes, just not leave the capitol
Emperor blamed Prince's Southern Tang courtiers for ...everything(resisting him and refusing to meetup)....many were banished to remote offices. Poet Prince get titles and and incomes.
Emperor BURIED with a calligraphy collection (rare personal item) that LiYu collected/edited
After Warrior Emperor died after mysterious circumstances within a year of Prince surrendering, Poet Prince wrote his most famous verses about his own homeland and wanting to go home.. (then he died within a year, age 40)
The later literati of the Song Dynasty compared LiYu to a flower forcefully plucked by the Emperor.
However you interpret the relationship, Kuangyin had a special place in his heart for Liyu. As for LiYu, we know that was comfortable enough to ask for wine and that none of his most famous works, if any, about missing home survived from the period when Emperor was alive. There have been some dubious TV shows on them since the 1980s, some more..telling..than others.
In short, after a long hiatus on historical RPFs (alas my ancient Romans), I'm finally writing again, even if I will be the only English ficcer for this pairing.
While this all very true, I do think this show is an actual *satire* because while it has romantic elements, the structure of the plot and the character development within the setting of the story is DEVASTATINGLY IRONIC. The natural ending (not the AU ending) kind of cement this.
SPOILERS BELOW
what a fucking relief to be the one kid in this family without a blue name
Musing on the Rome AU where Octavian never becomes Augustus and Caesarion Lives
The messenger from Fulvia insisted on his place in history. The message got delivered. Mark Antony came to his wife and his brother's aid during the Perusine War and defeated Octavian, ten years before the Battle of Actium.
Octavian fled. Antony became the de factor ruler of Rome. Secure in the knowledge that Egypt would remain an ally, Antony turned his eye to Parthia. And during one of engagements, Antony was killed.
Rest in peace ā Rest in pieces ā
I like the implication that Caesar gets re-murdered each time
traditionalist: the knight saves the princess and slays the dragon
feminist: the princess saves herself and slays the dragon, who is a metaphor for toxic masculinity
del toroist: the princess and the dragon fall in love and slay the knight, who is a metaphor for war, bigotry and/or toxic masculinity
the fanfic: the dragon elopes with the knight and the princess becomes queen after the knight and the dragon kills rival for her
The author's poorly disguised fetish
The author's proudly displayed fetish
The author's fetish you're pretty sure they don't realise they have
The author's fetish which they're firmly convinced everyone has and is just pretending otherwise
The author's non-sexual special interest which just sounds like a fetish because of their habitually unfortunate phrasing
The fetish the author is making a well-meaning effort to cater to in spite of clearly not understanding it themselves
The author's fetish that never quite makes it into the text because they keep getting sidetracked by the requisite worldbuilding
The author's utterly pedestrian sexual preference which the text treats like a bizarre fetish because they've got shit to work through
The author's seemingly innocuous recurring trope they're going to have a personal revelation about ten years down the road
The author's fetish you missed on a first reading because it's so far out of pocket, it never occurred to you that you could sexualise that
I resisted Hockey AUs for over two decades.
And then, I still end up watching Heated Rivalry. (Yes, when Ao3 was down).
Not as much hockey in there as I thought XD
Does anyone have fic recs?
X-Men: First Class at 15 - 15 years of fanworks to celebrate!
I saw X-Men: First Class in the theatre in 2011. It, and the movies that followed it, became my only fandom for the next 15 years (and counting). That's a lot of fandom history--a lot of love and creative labor that developed in stages after each subsequent movie added more canon elements to the starter. Every era seemed to have a distinct flavor--new themes, updated relationships, fresh grievances and obsessions for the fandom to elaborate on. Looking back, especially for anyone just arriving in the post-FOX-movie era, it's all pretty compressed, collapsed into a pile where only the works that are extremely popular, or extremely new, are immediately apparent.
So, having been here a while (and having never done much formal reccing), I'm excited to say that @x-populuxe and I are starting a rec series that highlights the history and breadth of the FOX X-Men movie fandom starting with 2011's X-Men: First Class using the tag 'XMFC at 15'. Feel free to add your own recs in that tag, and do not think these works are too old to comment on or give kudos to. Fandom is a community, and these works were (and are) gifts meant to foster conversation and connection. So let's keep it going!
I feel like I've been in this fandom forever (somehow it's been 8 years???) but it's very funny that arc has been in it TWICE AS LONG. We'd been chatting about wanting to do some kind of proper rec thing for a while, so I'm really excited to kick this off!
Our personal approaches are going to vary a bit here, and hopefully that encourages other folks to join in and take their own approaches, too. I'm not a huge fan of DOFP (and extremely not a fan of the latter two films lol) so a lot of my faves are either First Class-adjacent or AUs. Arc and I do feel similarly about the kind of stuff we often see recced today: it either needs to have been published like three seconds ago, or be one of same handful of super-popular stories that get circulated over and over again. That's not to say I won't be reccing some popular stuff! But some of the stories I'm rereading are things I never see on rec lists; it's really nice to revisit them and I'm excited to share them with folks.
More to come... ššš
So I'm reading Lord of the Rings again, and this time, a thing I'm particularly noticing is how time is insistently layered from the beginning. Once, Elves walked in these forests (they still do.) These are the histories hobbits remember. These are the new songs we invent to old tunes. This is how the past helps us prepare for the future.
ib: crepuscularqueens
this is what queer infighting leads to
Iāve read that Agatha said she loved being married to an archaeologist because the older she got, the more interesting he found her. And I think that is one of the best quotes about love that I have ever heard.
Going with the idea that the Silmarillion is a flawed recounting of First Age history, what is the *funniest* thing it could be wrong about?
Celegorm tried to kidnap and marry *Beren,* not Luthien
Maeglin didn't actually exist
Thingol didn't die, he and Melian just got lost in the woods for 200 more years
Fingon and Galadriel are the same person, somehow
"Maedhros" is actually three different people
Findis is also Miriel's child but everyone forgets her :(
Finarfin was married to Eonwe, not Earwen
Beren, Barahir, and Beor have all had their names and roles mixed up
Most of the stated genders in the Silmarillion are wrong
I can elaborate on these if people want, but here are my short explanations for how I think these could've happened:
Celegorm and Beren: Celegorm is not even a little interested in Luthien's ethereal, perfect beauty. On the other hand, Beren is rocking the scruffy, unwashed look that Aragorn would later make a trend in Fourth-Age Gondor. He's vaguely feral, he looks a fair bit like some of Orome's favorite incarnate forms, and Celegorm is smitten the instant he lays eyes on him (somewhere, Finrod is laughing at him). While Celegorm does spend a few days trying to convince Beren to marry him, he eventually relents and willingly gives Beren Huan to aid on his quest. Later rewritten because the Sindar were offended that anyone could consider *anyone* more marriageable than Luthien, and because anything that portrayed Celegorm even vaguely positively was a no-go after the Second Kinslaying.
Maeglin: Gondolin was often haunted by the howling of wargs and the chanting of orcs searching the mountains for the city, as well as the screams of those they captured, starting at sundown. Because of this, "children of twilight" became a common euphemism for "dark things" that people didn't want to name. The (somewhat) poetic retelling of Aredhel's return to Gondolin that talks about "Lomion" being the result of her and Eol's (unwilling) Union isn't talking about a literal child, it's just a less disturbing way of referring to what she suffered at Eol's hands. Likewise, when they say that "Lomion" felled Gondolin, they're talking about Morgoth's armies, not an actual elf named Lomion. For translation-error related reasons, the name "Lomion" got connected to the Lord of the Mole, who was completely unrelated to Turgon or the fall of Gondolin, and whose title was mistranlated as "Maeglin."
Thingol and Melian: Look, sometimes you just really need to get away from the stresses of being a king and accidentally wreck your entire kingdom by leaving your teenage grandson in charge instead, alright? They showed back up years after Doriath's fall and had no idea what had happened. Rewritten for obvious reasons; because it makes Thingol and Melian look really, really bad.
Fingon and Galadriel: This happened because of incomplete records and because Noldor family geneologies are sometimes very unclear (Fingon is listed under the name given to him by Fingolfin, Galadriel is listed under the name given to her by Finarfin). In actuality, when Galadriel realized they wanted a male named as well as a female one, they asked their uncle to name them, and Fingolfin named them Fingon. They also worked under him as an apprentice for years and Fingolfin and Finarfin's children spent lots of time together to begin with, so Fingolfin basically viewed them as another child and often said so, resulting in the mix up.
"Maedhros:" This happened for standard shoddy-record-keeping reasons; the fall of places like Himring and Gondolin destroyed a *lot* of First Age records. The "Maedhros" we know in the Silm is an amalgamation of three elves. Nailfin, the oldest son of Feanor and infamous military leader and kinslayer. "Maidros," a close friend of Fingon who went to Beleriand with the Feanorians, who Fingon rescued from the cliff, and who would later be Fingon's standard bearerāĀ smote at his side in the Nirnaeth. The third elf is Maglorā this is why he often seems strangely passive in the Silm, because some of his actions are being attributed to Maedhros instead.
Findis: Poor Findis! She went out to the countryside to weave quietly in honor of her mother (and Vaire) and because of that, no one really remembers her. Despite this, she does actually have a lot of Feelings about her mother (who named Findis for Indis, who was, at the time, her BEST FRIEND) and Finwe's remarriage. She's very close with Feanor, and plays the fun aunt (and third parental figure) to all of his kids. During the Second Age, she is the one who goes to the Valar to argue that Feanor and his sons should be released.
Finarfin and Eonwe: This would explain why the Finarfions seem mostly unfazed by the Third Kinslaying. Also why Finrod and Galadriel are so cool, how Galadriel was able to learn from Melian, and why Aegnor's hair defies the laws of gravity. The mistake in the historical record happened because Earwen and Eonwe have similar sounding names and are both often referred to with bird-related titles. Earwen is the "swan" or "gosling" princess, and while Eonwe is technically "heald of Manwe, the king's falcon, etc, etc." Finarfin is very fond of calling him "silly goose." :)
Beren/Barahir/Beor: It's easy to see how three people with similar names from the same family could get mixed up. There are a lot of ways you could slice it, and all I can think about is that most of them are really tragic for Finrod. If you meld Barahir and Beor, you have someone who Finrod met on a beautiful night under the stars, who would go on to save his life in battle, to live with him for years, and then to die; probably before Finrod was even really able to comprehend mortality. Any mashup of Beor and Beren or Barahir and Beren opens up the distinct possibility that Finrod was in love when he went on the quest which is just... poor guy.
Genders: Look, elves have a complicated gender system, okay? There's gender-indicating braids, a dozen different ways to alter your gender presentation, and a complex pronoun system that, to this day, hasn't been properly translated into any human language. The poor guy in charge of translating the Silmarillion from elvish slapped a bunch of "he" pronouns on anyone who seemed male-ish and "she" pronouns on the rest. They were frequently wrong, and often completely ignored elves who had identities more complicated than "cis man" and "cis woman." This is also why there's such a gender imbalance in the Silmarillion.
Also immortality means changing names/identities (gender or otherwise) over time.