#rijomu

[onenicebugperday]

This rosebush was hosting a real feast. Beetles all over. Mostly the green guys, who I think are Cetonia Aurata (wikipedia tells me that the common English name is rose chafer, which seems appropriate) but there were others. Can you tell who the spotted guy is? Took the photo mid June in Riga, Latvia.

Latvian bugs! What a treat. Yes, the green fella is a European rose chafer and the spotted friend is a Mediterranean spotted chafer :)

[utilitycaster]

Do you remember if there’s been any mention or implication that the existence of the bloodlines of the Sundered Houses has any significance in Araman cosmology? For example, if Aranessa dies and with her the Royce bloodline, what does that mean for Fearie, Golden Orchard and connections with them? Will it just remain as is, just without a noble family on top? Or if Julien kills off every Tachonis sibling and cousin, does that make a difference in the afterlife situation?

Aranessa surmises this in 4x13 about House Royce! At around 2 hours 42 minutes:

Golden Orchard was given to us, as a home for our family. And if our family was gone, I do not know that it would yet stand. I do not know-- When I think of Faerie, I think of our home. It is the last piece of it left at the very doorstep of this world. If me and my cousins died, maybe the last thread connecting Faerie to Aramán would vanish.

It has not been confirmed as true, but it is definitely a thing that's come up as a possibility. I personally think if the doors to Faerie are reopened, that might not be the case since it is true that Faerie existed before House Royce, but I think if Royce is destroyed while Faerie is also closed off it would sever the tie.

I wonder about the Tenebral Reaches because it's kind of unclear when they came into being, why, and how, and when House Tachonis developed their powers. I go back and forth on whether I think House Tachonis was raised to power by Tansul explicitly; or if they existed beforehand but willingly served. Given that of the houses of the Obridimian Empire, only the two priestly houses remain of those who aligned with Tansul, it's hard to tell - the vibe is that Halovar would not have retained power, and Tachonis does. Anyway, getting back to that I think the Tenebral Reaches are much more abstract a realm - it is not a door, but a veil, and it grows thin in many places, whereas Faerie has a specific entrance, it seems. And the bridges are designed to bypass the Reaches so there's alternate afterlife paths anyway. I think it might be unwise to kill all the sorcerers of Tachonis before the old afterlives are bridged since I think those only connect to the Tenebral Reaches and not Araman directly, but I also think the Tenebral Reaches is more firmly connected to the material plane and will probably stick around no matter who dies.

Either way - all speculation, but it's being asked about in-world too!

[bitimdrake]

I hope you get around to writing an actual post on Alfred. I’ve been writing one in my head for a while now. Will I ever actually write it? Probably not. I’d start with how the concept of the character is dated at best. Then a whole rant about how messed up it is that he’s supposed to be family, a parent and also a servant who’s attached to his role as a butler. The emphasis on the parent thing is mostly in fics and I wish more writers would actually look at weirdness of the situation. I love the sassy butler trope, it just doesn’t stretch very far. Somebody needs to write a modern origin story for Bruce/Batman where people realize that leaving a kid to get raised by the help is not healthy. (Sorry for ranting in your inbox. I love Alfred, really.)

I finished the post, although it is specifically about recognizing Alfred as a flawed person instead of a perfect paragon, which is just one of many angles to discuss.

The butler/family thing is so weird, because it gradually developed over new additions to canon, without ever getting a super great explanation.

Although Alfred-as-Bruce's-parent does get a lot of focus in fandom and fic, it is still absolutely something that is present and referenced in canon. They are Stoic Men Who Don't Talk About Their Feelings, so it's exceptionally rare to say outright, but they have said it.

But see--we started with Alfred Beagle being introduced in the golden age, meeting Bruce for the first time after Dick is Robin. By the silver age, he was replaced with Alfred Pennyworth, who had a different personality, but arrived at the same time. He's the butler--a beloved butler, blending into friend and family in a natural way, but still someone Bruce met as an adult.

And then, Post Crisis, it is declared that Alfred has been working for the Waynes since Bruce was a child, and everything shifts. And their relationship is given more closeness, except now there's this parent/child aspect to it. At that is pretty odd, but still in a way that imo can work for the oddness that is Bruce Wayne. Alfred is Bruce's butler, but Alfred is also an adult Bruce has known since he was a kid and they are pseudo-familial.

Only then we get the addition that Alfred actually did raise Bruce after his parents died and the whole thing just...falls apart.

Like, listen, I think the Alfred-Bruce relationship is very sweet for the most part, but it is also weird for kid!Bruce's guardian to be his old butler. And it is even weirder for Alfred to be his butler again as an adult. And it is weirdest of all for Alfred to have apparently SIMULTANEOUSLY been a butler and a guardian when Bruce was growing up???? how??

(okay: the how is that apparently bruce faked custodial paperwork or something, but that is still exceptionally weird, and also giving child Bruce a LOT of skill, despite him having no reason for those skills at the time.)

Inserting Leslie Thompson as Bruce's guardian can kind of repair some of that, but I don't think canon has ever made her more than a co-guardian to Alfred. And, more important tbh, she's not a character that gets enough focus to be seamlessly inserted as Bruce's major caretaker from ages 8-18.

I don't know. I guess if I were to try to explain it--in Bruce's youth, Alfred knew he wouldn't accept a new parent-figure and that his whole world was already thrown upside-down, so Alfred tried to preserve some small piece of the status quo in maintaining a butler act even when he was Bruce's guardian. And when Bruce returns from his years of traveling and training, Alfred is afraid he will refuse the implied emotional support of a parent (or maybe Bruce outright does), and so he falls back to the familiar pattern of "ah but I am just your butler" to trick Bruce into accepting his help and caretaking anyway.

...but it is still weird (and more weird that the people around them have little to no commentary on the dynamics of that relationship). And even with the best intentions, it still leads me to think Alfred probably could and should have done more to be open with Bruce instead of maintaining patterns. I would LOVE to see a writer try to tackle it from a modern perspective.

[kimabutch]

Unsolicited book recommendations ahead. Feel free to stop reading and delete. Neither of these authors is new so it’s possible or propable that you already know them. But the reclist of scifi you just reblogged didn’t have either of them on it so... Two queer (lesbian?) women authors who write sci-fi. Tanya Huff (Canadian, I’ve only read her fantasy but there’s also an sf series) and Melissa Scott.

Ooooo thank you!! Do you have any particular recommendations for either of them? I do really like scifi but I’m generally more pulled towards fantasy, to be honest.

(And I’m always happy to get queer book recs, regardless of the genre!)

[copperbadge]

ameliahcrowley replied to your photo “Last Monday was a little rough.  [Description: Three text messages...”

Eugh Huge sympathy. That happened to my thesis once. I hope you managed to get them all back.

Oh yeah, just a quick ctrl-z and they were fine, but it cracked me up like, “Oh, look, a portent.”

rijomu replied to your photo “A friend of mine 3-D printed me a hand in return for some COVID masks,...”

Have you sewed (sowed? sown? F the English language) buttons for the loops into your winter hats yet?

I hadn’t really thought about winter, but I figure I’ll just put the mask on first and pull the hat down over the loops. I wonder if they’ll start making hats with masks built in, although I suppose then you’d have to wash the hat after each wearing and IDK about anyone else but I wash my hats way less often than that...

suddenlywaffle replied to your photo “sufficientlytalentedfool: copperbadge: A friend of mine 3-D...”

As a fellow glasses wearer I recommend getting masks with ties, or getting ear savers so that there’s no loops around your ears. I find that the edjustable ties help the mask sit more flush to my face with no gaps to fog up my glasses, plus there’s less discomfort on my ears and my glasses stay where they’re supposed to.

It’s an option, but honestly I haven’t found head ties that work terribly well, and it’s kind of a solution to a problem I don’t have -- the glasses-swap works perfectly fine, and in some ways it’s kind of a good reminder not to go out without a mask. I’ve got the little headphones-mask-glasses ritual going at this point :D

[cdelphiki]

Have you read Justice League vs. Power Rangers? If not, you should. It’s by Tom Taylor and more fun than it has any right to be.

You lost me at power rangers but then won me again with Tom Taylor. 😂   I’ll have to check it out, thanks! 

[batfamficfind]

I read this on Ao3 in 2019, but it can be a lot older. It was longish and complete. I remember a lot of details but for some reason can’t find it again so it’s possibly undertagged. Anyway: Damian has pissed off a magician of some sort and all of Bruces children get cursed and de-aged. B and Superman have to go to HongKong to get Cass. Something happens to get their memories back and kid-Jason shoots the Joker, Tim was involved somehow. When they turn back, Babs helps Jason get away from Bruce.

You my dear Rijomu are lucky, because I have read this fic and I can tell you exactly where to find it:

The story is Frozen History from Aingeal98:

Bruce Wayne is used to one of his family or co-workers occasionally getting de-aged. What he doesn’t expect is all five of his children reverted to the age of ten. Keeping them all safe is difficult, but he’s Batman, so he’ll handle it.

(He lasts less than twenty-four hours before calling Barbara for help)

Which meets all of your given plot-points except that it isn’t finished yet. The last published chapter however, does feel a lot like an end. I really hope this is the one! :D

- Mod Aurora 

[luckthebard]

Speaking of magical healing. Do we know where Fjord’s scar comes from? In the opening he has when he wakes up on the beach with the sword. I can’t remember if he mentioned something about Uk’otoa healing any injuries? I might be forgetting something.

Listen, it is one of the FIRST THINGS Travis described about Fjord when introducing him back in episode one (“I’m a half-orc. Got a big scar across my face”) and I’ve been waiting for 73 episodes for someone to ask him about it.

It’s entirely possible that he got in the explosion and shipwreck, but he’s never said. And it’s clearly something Travis thought about and purposefully added to the character, because it’s so visible in the art and he mentioned it so specifically!

Join me in waiting for an answer to this mystery.