#vefanyar

[usuallysublimepenguin]

Finduilas, Niënor and Glórinnel, this illustrates the first meeting of Finduilas and Niënor in @vefanyar 's lovely sapphic story A near-perfect mirror, written for this year's @tolkienrsb event. Go read it and give it some love!

Lots of progress shots under the cut!

Mixed media, pencil for lineart (first attempt at Finduilas' face had to be scrapped and redrawn), digital coloring and extra details.

The process also included lots of selfies in my fanciest dress to figure out how fabric folds 💙

[silmarillionwritersguild]

We've all been there. One of our fannish pet peeves is enjoying a moment and the urge is there like an itch that won't stop until it's scratched: to complain, to lash out, to rain on the parade with monsoon force.

Elleth (@vefanyar) experienced one of those moments. I interviewed her this month about her role in promoting women-centric and femslash fanworks, and she recalls "a promotion week that was hosted on Tumblr for a group of male characters who were and still are fandom favourites and didn't strictly need promoting." But instead of ruining others' fun, Elleth collaborated with Frilly to create Legendarium Ladies' April, an event to promote fanworks about Tolkien's female characters.

Using the philosophy (learned from another SWG member, Independence1776) of "Promote what you love instead of bashing what you hate," Elleth ran many women-centric events and projects over the years. In the past few months on Cultus Dispatches, we've focused on what it is and was like to create fanworks about women in the Tolkien fandom. We've described a fandom that was openly hostile to fanworks about women and where creators feared sharing their women-centric work. But we've also detailed a change, and while the fandom is still far from perfect, creators no longer avoid creating women-centric works (even *gasp* femslash!!) because they dread the reaction. Elleth, her collaborators, and the events they used to encourage and celebrate women-centric and femslash fanworks were part of bringing about that change.

Elleth was kind enough to sit down with me to tell me about her various events, how she became interested in writing about women (spoiler alert: she wasn't always), and how she's seen the fandom change over the years. As we discuss fan history that is discouraging—even sometimes shameful—where women-focused fanworks are concerned, Elleth's work offers a bright point, and a hopeful one. You can read the interview with Elleth here.

[justalittlebluetiefling]

I love the M9 naming charts, and I'm sorry if you mentioned this somewhere and I managed to miss it, but does this include nicknames like Jessie or Deuces, or just the M9's proper first names?

Yep! It includes things like “Mr. Clay” or “Captain Tusktooth” or “Fiona” etc. Basically, if they were being addressed or referred to by “name” in conversation, it was counted. 

Edit: Can’t believe I forgot to say THANK YOU. I shouldn’t be allowed to talk to people for the first hour I’m awake.

[worldsentwined]

Tfw you and your girlfriend send each other the SAME post with the SAME comment at the EXACT SAME TIME...one day apart because Tumblr messages are a nightmare about notifying people. 😂

Anyway @vefanyar is amazing and I love her.

[crocordile]

commission for @vefanyar, her character and  @worldsentwined, Ivrun and Jazz  💖💖💖💖💖💖

[nenuials]

mithrellas & nimrodel // for @vefanyar (inspired by @jediknightrey‘s work)

“The Elven-lady Mithrellas was one of the companions of Nimrodel, among many of the Elves that fled to the coast in the year 1980 of the Third Age, when evil arose in Moria. Nimrodel and her maidens stayed in the wooded hills of Gondor, and were lost.”

- Of Amroth and Nimrodel / The Unfinished Tales

[stillsyns]

Ghosting Hour

Sigrun/Tuuri - What is a ghost? Something dead that seems to be / alive. Something dead that doesn’t know it’s dead. 

Tuuri doesn’t know she’s dead, Sigrun is sure of that.

She can’t not not know, when Tuuri shimmers into existence in her bed at night, lying there as if she’d been sleeping there all along - and maybe she has, invisible, intangible, unknown? How long has she been there?

Sigrun tries to imagine what it must be like - being there but having no one to talk to if they can’t see you, feeling cut off from the world and wondering how the hell that happened; why everyone is ignoring you, wondering what’s going on in their heads to be so mean. So when Tuuri fades in on the stroke of midnight - and she’ll fade out again when the red glare of the ship’s clock in the quarantine section switches from 00:59 to 01:00, Sigrun doesn’t lose any time.

She makes Tuuri feel alive. They talk, in hushed voices. They laugh, faces pressed into Sigrun’s thin pillow. Tuuri reads to her, sometimes. Rarely.

They kiss, even if the dead cold doesn’t ever leave Tuuri’s lips, and she never flushes with life or warmth. Her body stays translucent, an outline, shimmering, like a sheet of paper held up against the sunlight. But even so Tuuri is solid to the touch, and her body the familiar one that Sigrun came to know and love on their trip, even if it is cold now. Maybe Tuuri feels the warmth of it all.

She muffles curses in Tuuri’s hair when those icy fingers slip between her legs, and not even that particular warmth can drive away the goosebumps racing over Sigrun’s skin. She comes hard, bucking and clenching around Tuuri nonetheless, and returns the favour until Tuuri lies pliant in her arms, eyes half-lidded as if she needed rest and shouldn’t be resting forever instead.

Sigrun doesn’t tell the others. It’s too wild, too weird. She assumes that none of the others can see her, except maybe Twig, whom she caught sitting up on his bed in the dark a couple of times, but Lalli is nothing if not discreet. She’s not worried on that count, especially if he can see his cousin, mage that he is.

During daylight Sigrun sometimes wonders if she should tell Tuuri, to see if telling her that she’s dead will send her to rest for good. But that would mean - another plunge face-first into the snow, even if it’s figurative this time. If Tuuri left her - Sigrun would have blood on her hands twice over.

Other times she thinks that maybe the meds the ship’s medics are pumping into her when they come in in full hazmat suits to take care of the infected arm are what makes her hallucinate Tuuri. Maybe she’s on a drug high and has wish-fulfillment dreams, or something like that. Her mind playing tricks on her.

Or maybe Tuuri is really there, haunting her in the best possible way.

Sigrun wants to believe that. Nothing else will do. And nothing else will do for Tuuri, who appears like clockwork at ghosting hour, almost as alive as ever.

It’s almost enough.

[nelyafinwe]

@vefanyar hooked me to ssss. it’s all her fault. blame her