#saint shit

[saintvoids]

Only thing Eru iluvatar and I will ever agree on lol

[trash-swan]

This is like 3 months late but here is the newest addition to my slowly growing leg sleeve. I got into and watched all of MASH during the pandemic and I figured I'd honor my man crush, and hero, Dr. Hawkeye Pierce. It was a rough year and I found a strange kinship with him. Being stuck in a place where you aren't happy but you just have to muddle through til the end. I added the saint concept because I always interpreted saints as people who you should aspire to emulate. (Also credit to Tumblr user luluxa for the reference image.)

[saintvoids]

Kinda sad about how regularly I’ll find an angbang shipping blog with zero evidence of ever seeing my art.

Considering it’s 99% of what I draw it’s like what am I doing wrong? Is it my style? Or is it just my late sense of timing (why 2015 me, what could you possibly have been doing that’s more important than the dark lords?!) Or that I’m entirely tumblr based (fuck other social sites tbh) or what?

[saintvoids]

This silly boy really said I’m going to lie on the warm fluffy thing instead of the nice cool floor

[saintvoids]

Daily autistic affirmations: I am a well regulated person. I can manage phone calls. I can listen to hold music without having a panic attack. My blood pressure is normal. I do not get adrenaline spikes from admin conversations.

[saintvoids]

if i get my shit together i can write fic today

i just have to get my shit together

[saintvoids]

I would now like to hear your thoughts on Thuringwethil please! I feel like you get her so so well!

oh haaaah i do not 'get her so well', she simply haunts me and is my blorbo, my mary sue, my silly rabbit......

What even are vampires in Tolkien? This is such a question because werewolves seem to just be large wolves. so should vampires just be large bats? Perhaps.

Personally, I enjoy taking everything about vampires in myth and just playing combo bombo: Thuri can shapeshift but only into people she's drank blood from; she can go invisible by blending with the shadows, she turns into a bat; she burns in the sunlight (which is also true of all of Melkor's followers); and she's a sexy little seductress but in a weird freak kind of way (i.e she's a creep, and monsterous, and a bit gross).

While i totally get making her a Maia and exploring which Vala she could have been servant to, there's something very fun about leaning into the thing set up via Ungoliant that evil women are 'other' and taking it further than a sex thing until they become a whole different race of creature. Listen, you can reclaim the sexism in Tolkien or you can push the boat further into the sexist waters and see what you haul up, i'm an explorer. So, i like Thuringwethil to be from the Void and run by eldritch, freaky, insect rules. Something i explore most in A Famished Kind of Love

The bat fell thing: Would love to ask Tollers how a dead vampire and a dead werewolf didn't decompose over several months while Beren was recovering from taking an arrow to the knee in the shoulder before they set off on the next part of the quest. And also who skinned their corpses? Why does Draugluin's skin disguise Beren fairly well but Thuringwethil's do nothing for Lúthien?

Personally, I've decided Thuringwethil doesn't die and that she simply sheds a leathery skin when she shapeshifts that has milder camo qualities. This is what Lúthien then picks up. It also allows for a version where Thuri willingly helps Luthien and crafts these disguises herself for them (we love her going good for gay). Or for her to be nowhere near the whole disaster and Lúthien.

I've referenced this in Our Antlers Tangled where she gives Mairon a cloak that hides his magical signature, in The Strangest Torment where she sheds her form and leaves Maglor holding a leathery skin, and fully explored it in Beast with Three Backs where Mairon questions her about it.

Loyalty: I've read versions of fanfic where Thuringwethil is loyal only to Mairon, since she was in his service in Tol-in-Gaurhoth and versions where she hates him and they catfight. Given that she's the one going back and forth between Melkor and Mairon i figure she has to be pretty loyal to them both, with enough of a preference for Mairon that she doesn't remain in Angband.

And the first thing that intriuged me about her was the bittersweet idea of her passing these lovenotes between Melkor and Mairon while being outside that relationship herself. I think that would be quite lonely and painful in a way that i like to explore. It's why i enjoy an angbangfang dynamic where she occasionally joins them for kinky times, but doesn't have a romantic place in their relationship. Perhaps some of my own aromanticism is transfered to her here, perhaps i just enjoy the dynamic of her and Mairon being sassy gay besties with benefits...

Sexuality: listen, i love lesbians as much as anyone, i do. but i cannot get my head around lesbian Thuringwethil for the same reason i can't do gay Mairon; i just think if you live long enough you end up trying everything. i've only lived thirty-odd years and i've identified as every part of the LGBTQA (not the intersex obvs, that requires medical tests). To me all immortals are bi/pan/whatever, especially the ones with strange relationships to their own gender. It just comes hand in hand. And i don't believe that has to exclude being on the aro/ace spectrum either.

Eventually, one day, i will write the dating Arien fic (Curse the Shadowed Sun) that gives me a reason to explore Thuringwethil's Void origins even further, makes for fun 'this is why vampires burn in the sun' lore (CAUSE THE SUN IS HER EX lol), and gives Thuri a reason to be pissed off with Melkor (for telling Arien she's a weird little Void critter and not a fellow Maia) while still letting him boss her around as her king (Manwë and co are not accepting of weird little Void critters).

And then there's the pre Númenor fic where she pops back into his life to console Mairon about Eregion and ends up following him to the island for fun cult of melkor times.

and then there's the Arwen/Eowyn fic where she could be a fun antagonist for them to overcome/seduce to their cause

Basically, I love her, and because of that I have massively overpowered her in my own headcanons and said this one lives forever, thanks. Which is hilarious cause the first time she's even mentioned in the Silmarillion she's already dead. Uno reverse, John.

[saintvoids]

I'm now very curious, what are your top five most epic dreams? Only if you feel like sharing of course

I don’t think you realised what a difficult question this is for me when you asked! I actually keep a notebook next to my bed for the really great dreams I have to write them down immediately so I can draw on them later for writing things. Essentially my brain is wired to string together all my dreams through the night, and sometimes return to them across nights so I get legit plot lines and things.

Anyway I had an absolutely wild ride last night so I remembered to go through them. In no order whatsoever:

1. Coulda been the Silmarillion but Tolkien was too basic/ Garden of Knowledge.

Saara, brilliantly black eyed and purple robed, is a guardian of a great library; an orchard of trees in an oasis in the desert open to all with a will to learn. But an evil man seeks out the knowledge for himself, raising an army to march on the oasis and uproot and cut down the trees, drying their knowledge into fragile, lifeless paper. The devout of the garden sew leaves and seeds into their clothing, attempting to save what they can and carry it away into exile. Saara knows the rules: eat more than 6 leaves from the trees of the dead (where magic has been preserved among the bones of previous guardians and devout) and you will burn from within, but she has no other choice to fend off the army and buy the others some time to escape. She eats and eats and eats and as she eats she burns brighter than the sun itself, her veins white beneath her bloody skin. And then she rises. And with her rises the entire oasis, up into the air itself, roots dangling from brown earth, green cloaking the blue sky. The invading army look up in awe, their evil leader stilled before such a display of power. And then Saara brings the whole thing crashing down upon them in flame and earth and growth, destroying the trees and the invaders and herself.

The entire land is scorched, ravines of harsh rock and desolate sand. But at its centre there is a small oasis budding; survivors of the garden, speaking their stories into seeds they plant and tending them as they grow into saplings, their leaves curling open with fresh green knowledge. But those roots reach down into soil soaked with the blood of the evil, and what stories might their decay speak up into the trees, too?

2. Last night: I survived a lot of shit and all I got was this annoying dog and a cursed blade.

I’m usually the baddie people fumble, but lemme tell you about the time I fumbled legit royalty. So I’m at the palace and all, in her bedroom, sweet talking her highness, all Gucci, when she tries to kiss me and my past Trauma (tm) from my best friend’s attempted SA rears up and I scramble for an excuse. It’s getting late, gotta head home, y’know, y’know. She’s sceptical but she lets me go. Thing is this palace is old and massive, right? Corridors here, rooms there, secret passages, servant passages, ballrooms. Funnily enough it’s all wheelchair accessible, sweet. I am not in my element though. I’m hearing things no outsider should hear about the royal family and the treasury and shit. I don’t even want to hear this, I’m just trying to dodge. And that’s when the housekeeper, we’ll call her Jaani, finds me. She’s all uptight and prissy but kinda cute in a bossy way y’know? So maybe I turn on the charm a little, rizz her up. She’s like you’re helpless (yeah boi you could fix me innit?) and agrees to escort me home. But she’s bringing her dog. And he’s mega; big black curly haired beast, course I gotta hold his lead and boy just loves hopping up on my lap and licking my face whenever I try to talk to Jaani and is this dog cock blogging me? I think this dog is cock blocking me?? Anyway, we’re on the train for this long ass journey (why tf do I live in the ass end of nowhere again?) and I’m taking doggy for walkies while scoping that first class carriage privilege for all it’s worth. And there’s a baby? In the drinks carriage? Now I’m no housewife but even I know you don’t leave a baby alone especially not with alcohol and shit. So now I’m carrying this baby around the train trying to find parentals. No dice. Jaani at least bonds with me over caring for the damn thing, but then we end up changing a diaper on New Year’s Eve (yeah idk about this bit, it’s random) when we could have been smooching. Anyway, a witch tells us baby’s haunted and we gotta go to this other witch who lives in my home town to fix it and then we can give it back to parents. Jaani’s locked in at this point, committed, I’m hoping I can still turn this sitch around into some hero knight type thing to impress her. We switch trains onto my local, steam powered, old as balls, Victorian ass train to go see this witch. But we try playing a card game and all the cards are coming up blank with this raven inkblot on them. I know this handle though, so I mosey down the train to the back carriage where my own brother is lounging with his minions like ‘you’re supposed to be infiltrating the royal family what you doing?’ (This is news to me but explains some things for sure. Also are we ALL witches round here? Is that why we live in a swamp in the ass end of nowhere?). And bro hands me a wicked blade and is like you gotta get the blood soaked hair of a royal asap to save our family from Doom, good thing you got the eldest princess heir to the throne with you (oh shit Jaani is in disguise!? That’s hot). So now I’m carrying around this cursed knife, haunted baby strapped to my chest, massive dog alongside my chair (big impractical for swamp living), and the actual heir to the throne is making eyes at me but I’m pretty sure betraying her for the fam is going to put a real damper on our whole thing.

3. That one time I fully lost track of reality/ Shattered Borders

Now, this dream, I had when I was 15 years old. Over half my life ago. But it stuck with me because I woke up fully convinced a whole year had passed in which I slept and had dreams within my dream and learnt things and changed as a person … and then I had to go to school and it was a real mindfuck.

I dreamt I could travel in my dreams. Through time and through space. Back to how the land lay long before humans walked upon it. Forward to when our time had passed again. Away to other worlds with beings of great power, impossible to perceive until my mind relaxed. I dreamt of a disabled girl, allergic to the magic that ran her world, of a trans boy, angry and sharply clever looking for an outlet. I dreamt of twin smiths, an old man without family, a woman slowly turning into a tree. They dreamt too, across worlds, across borders. Together we dreamt of better lives for everyone. At times we failed and our dreams brought destruction down on those we tried to help, setting the powerful on the powerless in their futile wrath. At times we trusted the wrong people and were used and misled as we tried to understand the power we could wield with our dreams. At last, we found the way to give the dreams to everyone; a branching network of dream travel and connection where enough people believing the same dream could affect reality and change it. Together, in community we made the best strides and dreamt the biggest dreams into reality.

4. Surviving Ourselves

Rain trapped us in the school. Not regular rain that washes away and leaves everything smelling fresh and green and growing. But biblical rain that rages down ceaselessly under an overcast sky until damp seeps into every corner and you forget the feel of sunlight on your skin. That wasn’t the only thing seeping in though. Like worms coming up for fresh rain, it dragged out our old ghosts and flushed out the ghouls, overflowed the graves. The dead stopped leaving for wherever they were destined, dragging their bloated bodies around hungry for the slightest taste of living. I became adept at creeping through the buildings without drawing their attention, just like I’d always been good at going unnoticed in the school hallways, letting the cliques and drama surge over and around me without touching. I began to swim, searching the deep pools that had once been neighbourhoods for supplies untouched or rotted away. I didn’t see other people but I knew they were there because they left alters behind with offerings begging the gods for mercy from the ceaseless rain. I took the offerings, we living needed it more than some fictional deities. Or so I thought. Until I met the Whale. It was the size of the school and football fields, both golden and silver and glowing and shadowed. It took no notice of my tiny little body floating high above it, but the sheer magnitude of its passing shook me to my core. That, if anything was, was a god. It. It’s have really shaken me because I did something I shouldn’t have: I talked to a ghost. He was a boy, haunting the industrial kitchens at school and he didn’t seem to realise he was dead. I wasn’t going to disabuse him of that notion so I just treated him like the other kids and gave him a job scouting for tinned food. It made him happy to be useful. He turned out to be really good at it, probably because he could go among the ghouls without getting chased. He was easy to talk to, and fun to swim with, and I started to rely on him. That was a mistake. See as he grew happier and stronger and seemly more corporeal, I felt worse. At first I thought it was a cold from being mildly damp all the time, or that I’d not gotten enough sleep bunched up with the other kids for warmth on that scratchy institutional carpeting. But then I found out he’d been syphoning my life force for himself. Which lead me to my quandary: how do you kill someone who’s already dead? Well, I figured gods deal in offering of any kind, so now I’m off to track down a Whale….

5. Carrying the Gods

The known world was mostly water, under the domain of the oceanic god, but here and there a great archipelago of islands sprouted up in defiance of the tempestuous waters. One day Mermet, a lesser goddess of her own well spring, was shaken from her comfortable island life by the news that her more powerful god husband had been found dead, apparently killed by his own mistress. Fearing the shift in power would lead to her death at the hands of the humans she had ruled, and that she would need to remarry to secure her position, Mermet took her baby daughter down the ragged cliffside and set her in a small boat she had carved herself, trusting her safety to the tides. Nine days later a human fisherwoman pulled the baby from her nets. Raised in the poverty of the human village Neris grew up an adept pearl diver who could tell the weather before any sign of it stained the sky. She also grew strong and brown and beautiful. Unfortunately this attracted the attention of the gods and many pursued her for their own. When she began to show signs of pregnancy this pursuit turned to jealousy and wrath for none of the gods could understand why she had not chosen him over the others. They hounded Neris to the very edge of the known land intent on killing her child and claiming her for themselves. Though she sought out enchantments and spells to protect herself and rallied other women to her cause, they were attacked right as she went into labour and in an effort to save herself and the baby she jumped from the land into the arms of the ocean. Nine days later a healthy Neris and her baby son were pulled onto a boat in a great armada of pirates, captained by none other than Mermet herself who was glad to be reunited with her daughter and grandson. Mertis, the boy, grew up in the rigging of the fleet of ships, as comfortable in the sky as he was in the rough ocean. He grew up lean and curious. One day, when he was still young, but no longer a child, the Sky vanished. So Mertis asked the Ocean, where did the Sky go? Ask the Land, said the Ocean. He did so. The Sky has gone beyond the world itself, the Land told him. How can I follow it? Mertis asked the Land. Ask the birds, the Land said. He did so. Follow the stars, the birds told him. So Mertis took a single feather from every bird and with them he wove the most magnificent sails for his ship, carved by his grandmother’s expert hand. And with it he set off beyond the known world to bring back the Sky.

…. I’m very rarely my own self in my dreams, sometimes jumping between characters, sometimes just watching, often in a perspective of someone who is very clearly not me, so I tried to capture The Vibe of the dreams with how I wrote these down. Yeah I have a lot of ‘this could be an ancient folktale’ type dreams. Hope you enjoyed this dip into my unconscious psyche.