all fanfiction is funnier and sexier and vastly better-written when you read it at three in the morning, in the dark, lying on your side, tucked into bed, with screen rotate turned off. that’s just how it works. that’s just facts.
In unrelated news, Boromir is the only member of the fellowship of the ring that would have Valid Driver’s License in a Modern AU.
Sam has a Driver’s License but they drive on the other side of the road in Hobbiton so his isn’t valid in the rest of Middle Earth.
Frodo and Merry are Gays That Can Do Math, and therefore can’t Drive.
Pippin HAD a license but got it revoked due to Aggravated Shenanigans.
Gandalf CAN drive but is an insane paranoid hippie that hates both petrolum-based transportation and government paperwork. He does have a pilot’s license though. Don’t ask him to justify it unless you want a four-hour lecture on civil rights that sounds like it’s quoting law from another dimension.
Aragon can drive, quite well, but it never occured to him that he might need a license to do so on public roads. He doesn’t know about taxes either.
Gimli travels frequently but as a diplomet and royal, never was the one in the driver’s seat.
Legolas can’t be trusted to operate a blender, much less a motor vehicle. He will attempt to do so anyway.
I don’t know if you might’ve meant “taxis” in keeping with the driving theme but I am thoroughly and absolutely LOSING MY SHIT at the concept of Aragorn doesn’t know about taxes, Aragorn you’re gonna be king, Aragorn you’re supposed to know how to do these things, Aragorn this is THE MOST BASIC OF BASIC STATESMANSHIP.
And THE THING IS, I’m not certain it doesn’t also work canonically. Because like we can infer that Aragorn got most of his How To Be A King For Dummies lessons from the elves, and, well, do elves… have… taxes? It seems unlikely. (Do elves even have currency? There’s probably an answer to that one and I just don’t know it.) Somehow I can’t quite picture Galadriel going around Lothlorien like okay suckers pay up you’ve gotta pay a property tax on that tree you know.
So then he gets to Gondor and gets crowned and a few months later someone comes by and is like “how much are we taxing the peasants this year” and Aragorn panics and is just like “f…five? ……. too high? Too low?”
And I mean, who can blame the guy, he’s basically been wandering the wilderness for the majority of his life, it’s not like he’s ever really had personal property besides an improbable number of weapons, so he’s probably never, you know, paid taxes
Aragorn, son of Arathorn, Elessar, Isildur’s heir and rightful king of Gondor, is a tax dodger
Like this is a Modern AU where Aragon becomes Mayor of a medium-sized mountain town*, but tbh this still holds in canonverse too imho. the first like. 3 years of Aragon Having A Real Job For The First Time That Happens To Coincidentally Be A Political Position, is him listening to people making suggestions about “So what are we taxing the pesants?” and “What’s this years Budget?” and him Turning to Arwen, one of like 4 people in all of Middle-earth with any damn sense, and saying
“Hey Babe? What’s a Budget?”
*In this AU The Riders of Rohan are a Biker Gang and Edoras is a really nice mom-and-pop convience store/bar/mechanic/tourist trap that’s been run by “King” Teddy’s family for as long as anyone can remember.
**I think i might have come up with a “Great Westen American Roadtrip LotR AU”
Help.
***The Hobbits are Canadians. I know canadians drive on the same side of the road but the Idea of Sam having an invalid lisence is hysterical.
****They found the ring in the idyllic Waterton-Galcier International peace Park/The Shire, over the border where nobody thought to look for it, and end up on a quest to take it to the hellish land of raging Monsters and unlivable condiiotns known as Mount Doom/ Phoenix Arizona.
The Prancing Pony is the Pie Place in St. Mary, Montan- IT’STWO IN THE GODDMAN MORING I KNOW AO3 GOT NOMINATED FOR A HUGO BUT I DO NOT NEED TO BE WRITING THIS RIGHT NOW.
i totally am, later, but like. when the sun is out.
Elves basically invented feudalism in Middle Earth, but like. They’re so crazy long-lived it’d be easy for an elf to amass material wealth by just not being an utter dumbass, and plus they have magic so. Do the elf-kings actually NEED anything from their vassals other than the assurance that they’ll show up with a weapon when it’s time for the next attack on Literal Satan and his Black Castle of Evil?? Do elves need to levy taxes?
And even if they do, I bet Galadriel had to go through the exact same process Aragorn did in the post above, because SHE was born in the Undying Lands where life is beautiful all the time and the trees are somehow constantly both in flower AND bearing fruit at the same time, and nobody does any labor unless they like it.
And then just to make things even worse Galadriel learned rulership from Melian, who is a Literal Angel like Gandalf and ALSO pulled all kinds of magical bullshit on her elven husband’s kingdom. What I’m saying here is the first hundred years or so of Galadriel trying to rule on her own were A Very Rocky Time for Everybody.
Which is why she made sure her daughter and grandchildren got a firm grounding in stewardship and economic theory, so they’d never have to go through that embarrassment. And lucky she did too, or Gondor’s post-war recovery would’ve been completely FUCKED.
#aragorn: hey babe what’s a budget
#arwen (already dragging him off to the bedroom): god estel you’re so fucking stupid
DRAKE YOUR TAGS
well it’s 3 AM and I made coffee, and i think this Great Western Road trip AU has legs , so I did a bad overlay and discovered the Hobbits are NOT Canadians:
THEY’RE CALIFORNIANS. I like this map becuase it puts the trip in some really fun places if you fudge the route a bit:
The Shire is near Mendicino, CA
Tom Bombadil probably lives in Jackson State Forest which is a old-growth redwoods kind of place.
Bree is now Yuba City, CA
Weathertop is Smartsville, a “Historic” ghost town that seems like a place that would harbour Nazgul
Rivendell is about in Lake Tahoe, maybe Trukee.
I CAN HEAR YOU, PERSNICKETY TOLKIEN CARTOGRAPHY PEOPLE. WE’RE FUDgING THE ROUTE. WHAT? YOU WANT RIVENDELL IN FUCKING *squints at map* FALLON, NV?? IT’S WAY TO PICTURESQUE TO BE THAT FAR OUT OF THE SIERRA NEVADAS.
moving right along
Moria can literally be an abandoned uranium mine. it’s terrific.
Lothlorien is probably the Humboldt-Toiyabe National Forest, on account of that’s the one place in Nevada that I can verify has trees.
…I think othornac is in Bakersfield, CA, which puts Fangorn in Sequoia National Park. Appropriate.
Also Rohan is mostly in the Death Valley Area. Kickass.
Helms deep can be an abandonded nuclear missle silo, it’s awesome.
This does make most of Gondor the Los Angeles Basin tho.
Minas Tirith is now the bustling metropolis of… Palm Springs.
Hm.
eh, Gondor’s kind of a shit country as is.
DOES put the cave fulla ghosts in the middle of LA tho, so that’s fun.
Shelob lives in the Kofa Nat’l Wildlife refuge, which is IRL famous for it’s tarantulas.
Mt. Doom is still, of course. Phoenix, AZ.
goddamit i’m actually going to have to write this thing now.
Have been to both Fallon, NV, and Lake Tahoe, I agree that Tahoe is a MUCH more Rivendelly kind of place. Actually I went to high school in that part of Nevada (well, the first two years anyway) and it fucking sucked. That part of the southwest is, indeed, Nazgul Country.
Hey, does this mean the Easterlings Sauron imported for the final battle are, in fact, Mormons? :D
2. @gaslightgallows uhhhhh… Well, I have pre-orders for the Family Lore Nonfiction Book out right now, but I was wondering what I was gonna do after those ship so I think I’m gonna do this. So expect Pre-orders to open Late 2019/early 2020?
Other things from the Notes:
I want to thank the Arizonians for coming out and telling me about Sunset Crater, an actual active volcano in the right part of AZ to be Mount Doom. This means that Phoenix is actually Barad-dûr.
God bless the people in the notes trying to figure out if Canon!Aragorn would actually know anything about taxes, how or even IF taxes happen in Middle-earth, and what schooling Elrond could have foisted upon Estel during intermittent and extremely distracted visits to Arwen.
Apparently drivers lisences are intenrationally Valid no matter what side of the road you learned to drive on which given my family’s expirience driving in Ireland, seems like a terrible Idea.
Bless @rain-sleet-snow for the following tags:
eowyn meanwhile has a license for everything she might conceivably want to drive and knows how to hotwire a quad bikethe real moment where she falls out of love with aragorn is when she realises that he would never get a licenseeowyn appreciates the grim and faintly above the law aestheticjust not the fact that he does things like not signal. or wear his seatbelt.and the less said about the state of the motorbike they lent him the better.boromir probably spent rivendell > moria saying things like ‘this car DOES NOT START until you ALL have your seatbelts on.’‘THAT INCLUDES YOU GANDALF.’he taught faramir to drive and taught himself good habits as a consequence because god forbid his little brother get hurtbecause boromir did not teach him to check the mirrors constantly or somethinghe also taught him basic car maintenancebecause it comes with the package!really eowyn has no idea how much she has to thank her deceased brother-in-law for.
Thoughts for this AU:
I’m playing it extremely fast and lose with travel times, distances, what governments may or may not exist, what year it even is and when the apocalypse occured.
JRRT built so much world he built fantasy for the next fucking century and a half so I don’t have to. Thank you, Jonald.
There was at least one Apocalypse in this AU becuase the original Series is post-apocalyptic: fallen kingdoms, fading magic, long-forgotten statuary etc. but the details of which apocalypse and how it went down have been lost to time and the collapse of widespread governance. Maybe it was a nuclear event, maybe the Wyoming Supervolcano, Maybe the Second American Civil War, maybe all 3 at the same time. Who knows? Not the Fellowship, which can barely collectively remember to not leave Frodo at the gas station.
Aragorn is a Transguy and tried out like, a zillion names before settling on Aragorn, which is why everyone he meets calls him something different
Barkeep, gesturing to the mysterious dude in the corner wearing sunglasses at night and indoors: Nobody really knows who he is, but I’ve heard him called… Strider.
Pippin: what, like Homestuck?
Boromir has a VW bus that’s older than his crap father and has what he thinks are cool modifications to make it intoa camper van, but in reality he ripped out the seats and adhered coleman products to the walls with duct tape
Aragorn: “You fell!“
Gandalf: “Through fire. And water.”
Gandalf: “From the lowest dungeon to the highest peak, I fought him, the Balrog of Morgoth.”
Gimil: “For the LAST TIME-”
Legolas: “Dude, don’t interrupt!”
Gandalf: “Until at last, I threw down my enemy and smote his ruin upon the mountainside. Darkness took me. And I strayed out of thought and time. Stars wheeled overhead, and every day was as long as the life age of the earth.”
Everyone: “Oooooh!”
Gandalf: “But it was not the end. I felt light in me again. I’ve been sent back until my task is done.”
Aragorn: “Not to be a buzzkill, but I think you got high and went to a laundromat.”
Gandalf: “Well. I did that too. Wonderous things they do with Bleach these days, took 30 years of grime right out!”
Boromir re-appears at the coronation wearing a sombrero and explaining that “Yeah, OK, I got shot a lot and blacked out but I got Better! Also really lost for a while.”
As fun as the “we’re all Hugo nominees now” posts are, let us not forget that this nomination recognizes the founders and approximately 700 volunteers who work tirelessly to make Ao3 everything that it is. The folx doing the hard work of maintaining and running the site so we can all have a place to share and enjoy fic–that’s who’s nominated for a Hugo, and let’s not forget them.
5: Do you think stories can change lives? Is there a story that has changed yours?Yes, stories can definitely change lives, in big and small ways. I’m not sure I’ve *(yet?) run across any that have radically changed mine, but there have been plenty that have altered my perspective. Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston is the first one that comes to mind there. I admit, though, that I choose a lot of my reading more for emotional escape than for personal growth--which is its own sort of life-changing, I guess. It’s comforting to have somewhere else to go. A few years back, when I was very depressed, I read one particular chapter of a Chryse story over and over--every morning, practically. Drag myslf out of bed, read a chapter of something that seemed warmer and more full of life than I could possibly manage to be or feel, roll into the shower and trudge through my day. Rinse, repeat. It helped.13:Are there any tropes you’re embarrassed for enjoying?
Good question! My tastes are, like, super boring and vanilla: I like fake relationships and bed-sharing and friends to lovers and whatnot. So I guess I could get embarrassed at how ordinary my tastes are? But nah. On the other hand, I could probably argue that fanfic itself is something I’m embarrassed for enjoying. So that’s something to work on. I got there with romance novels; now it’s time to get there with “unpublished genre-bending pastiche.”
Hey! my wolfstar bender continues apace, to say the least, so here’s another round of (drumroll, please)
Sirius/Remus fics for people who are picky about writing & don’t want to get (too) sad & like to read smut but have a lot of NOPES (aka me and probably four other people). Part one is here. Part two is below the cut:
Pilgrimage by copperbadge (7169 words, M)
The Marauders take a road trip.
a history of sexuality, volume i by istajmaal (13026 words, E)
[Hogwarts and pre-Azkaban.] Sometimes just looking at Remus without kissing him makes Sirius feel like he's lying, and he wants to tell the truth.
Like Tinder for Ghosts by montparnasse (8767 words, T)
Cornwall, 1995. Misery loves company; company just wants a drink.
Domestic Creatures by veeagainst (53091 words, E)
Growing up is hard to do -- but the journey is better if you take someone with you.
A Creature Void of Form by ignipes (6497 words, T)
Christmas, 1994. Two men, a cave, a hippogriff, some blankets, a hot meal, a blizzard, a bottle of vino rosso, and a conversation.
The Truth in Potions by shaggydogstail (42780 words, M)
Sirius Black was dosed with several truth potions over the course of his life. Each of them changed him, and one changed everything.
All Roads Lead Me Back to You by victoria_p (musesfool) (3304 words, G)
Six ways it could have ended less tragically.
Elucidation Practice by montparnasse (21359 words, M)
Christmas, 1978. Remus, wrestling with the mighty problems of gift-giving on a budget, contemplates life, love, London in winter, and falling off the edge of the world with Sirius Black.
the summer you let your hair grow out by ladymemebeth (20010 words, M)
an AU story in which sirius decides to go to remus' house when he runs away, rather than james'. remus finds this situation to be trying in more ways than one. includes gratuitous references to twentieth-century cinema and music.
It’s Not the Years, Honey, It’s the Mileage by thistlerose (4577 words, M)
Sirius visits Remus on his thirty-fifth birthday. Things are a bit awkward at first.
Waluigi and Forgettable 18th Century American President William Henry Harrison blinked. "One room?!“ blustered Harrison. "Surely you can find another!” "Waugh,“ said Waluigi.
***
HOW TO INVENT EVERYTHING is the perfect gift this holiday season! SO I CLAIM
dededos
prguitarman
romaincrisis
gummygunk
discoholicmusic
stormborns
dailybridgerton
