it's that time of year again! i wrote this in a bit of a fugue state way too late at night lol. anyway meet deor, my tlk oc - ironically my first considering how much i love this show. happy blind dates all and enjoy :))
(wc: 1k)
Deor has loved the sunlight since he was young.
Years have passed, but when he closes his eyes he can still remember it: sitting on the edge of the dock outside his family’s home in the marshes, face tilted to the light, eyes shut as he listened to the wind soughing through the reeds.
Perhaps if he hadn’t loved the light so much, the monks wouldn’t have come for him and he would never have left. But then he would not have met Sihtric. Strange that someone who favours black and grey more than any other man Deor has met should make his life so bright.
A hand grasps his. He would flinch from the coldness of the touch were he not so cold himself. Ingrith.
“Do not be afraid,” she says. He can see her breath faintly in the cold air. It has been hours since the king’s men left them here, shut them up in a cave away from Bebbanburh and Sihtric and home. Perhaps longer. Without the light, it is hard to tell.
“Sihtric will come,” he says with more bravery than he feels.
He feels rather than sees her smile. “Yes. And my Finan. And then we will have to ask them what took them so long.”
If they still live. The thought is a treacherous one, seeping into the corners of his mind and turning everything dark inside. Lord Uhtred is banished, perhaps dead. Who is to say Finan and Sihtric have not suffered the same fate?
Deor closes his eyes to pray. The words will not come. What good are they? All that is left of his former calling is the cross around his neck, a cross that now hangs there alongside the Thor’s hammer Sihtric had gifted him several Yuletides ago. Deor had given him a cross of his own, and Sihtric had smiled, a precious thing for how rarely it appeared. “Your God watches over me, as mine do for you.”
Please, Deor sends the thought into the cold, dank air. There is no sky, no sun. They are hidden from everyone. If God cannot find him, how will Sihtric?
He must have made a noise, because Ingrith holds his hand tighter. “Sihtric will come,” she says, soft but firm.
Deor lets out a shivering breath. The dark presses in. “Sihtric will come.”
~
More time passes. Hours, days… It is hard to breathe. The darkness seems to have taken on a life of its own. Right now it feels like it might swallow Deor whole.
Ingrith squeezes his hand. Weaker, now. Deor tries to turn his head, but his limbs refuse to move.
Don’t let me die in the dark, he thinks numbly. If I am to die, let it be in the light. And please let me see Sihtric again, if only for a moment.
Their faiths will separate them after death. Even if he shared Sihtric’s belief in the Danish gods, he is not a warrior and never has been. Yet perhaps, if there is mercy, there will be a moment, a pause…enough time for them to say goodbye before their paths diverge forever.
Don’t let me die in the dark.
~
Scraping noises. Voices.
Deor’s eyes flutter open briefly. Still dark. Ingrith's hand is lax in his. Her skin is so cold.
The voices make him frown. They seem oddly familiar, and yet he still cannot move. There is a heavy rock crushing his chest and all he wants to do is sleep.
His eyes close just as the first stone is removed.
~
“Deor.”
Someone is calling his name.
He is frozen.
“Deor.” Hands cup his face, calloused and familiar. “Please.”
Deor breathes in. It stabs right through his chest, but the air is clean.
Is he dead? Is this the moment?
His eyes open.
Light. Too much of it. He whimpers, flinches away. It is as if he is being run through.
“Breathe.” Sihtric’s hands, Sihtric’s voice. He is here. That soothes Deor somewhat. “Breathe. You are safe.”
And then, quieter: “Do not leave.”
Deor wants to reassure him, to ask him how it is he is here, but the dark pulls him under again, away from the light and the cold and the pain.
Away from Sihtric.
~
When Deor wakes again, he knows he is alive.
Everything hurts, from his fingers to his toes. Opening his eyes is a battle in itself; the light he has loved now more like an enemy than a friend. But it’s enough to show him where he is.
Bebbanburh. A bedchamber. Fire burning in the hearth. Furs piled around him. Outside he can hear the sounds of early morning: hens clucking, footsteps, quiet voices.
And next to the bed is Sihtric, head resting on his chest as he sleeps.
Deor watches him carefully. He knows he is alive, and yet a part of him still wonders if this is some kind of dream conjured up by his own longings.
Sihtric looks tired. Thinner. There is a new scar across his cheek that was not there before. His clothes are muddy and stained. But he is breathing. Alive.
They both are.
Relief floods Deor. Tears run down his cheeks. Those hurt too, but he does not mind.
Sihtric’s eyes open then. His gaze—one brown eye, one blue—goes toward the bed instantly. “Deor.” He crouches by the furs.
“Sihtric,” Deor says, and then he is crying, really crying. He sobs until the breath is all but choked from his lungs, and Sihtric holds him for all of it.
~
“Is anyone else here?”
Deor waits until he has finished crying to ask the question. His voice is a little hoarse, leftover tears still clogging the back of his throat.
Sihtric does not answer him immediately. “Lord Uhtred. Finan. The queen too.”
“And from the cave?”
Sihtric has never lied to him. He says nothing, and somehow that tells Deor all.
They are gone. Everyone else in the cave is gone. The dark stole them away.
He does not realise he is crying again until Sihtric sits down next to him. “I need to see Finan.”
“When you can walk,” Sihtric says. Quiet as ever, and yet Deor knows there is no moving him. “The blame lies with those who advised the king. Not you.”
It is the most distant term Sihtric has ever used to refer to Aethelstan. Truthfully Deor has no idea if he will be able to look the boy he’d once known in the eyes again without seeing Ingrid and everyone else who had died in that cave.
“Is he here?”
Sihtric nods. “There was a battle. King Aethelstan’s advisor Ingilmundr was working for the Danes. We pushed them back. I heard the king took Ingilmundr’s head himself.”
“Good,” Deor says, and despite vengeance being a sin he cannot bring himself to regret it.
He does not want to sleep. But the dark is coming for him again.
“Rest,” Sihtric says. “You will be better when you wake.”
“Can you stay?” Deor asks. He knows with the aftermath of a battle there will be a hundred things to do. But if he has to lie alone in this room, as spacious as it is, he fears the walls will close in and crush him, blocking out the light forever.
Sihtric runs a thumb over his forehead and then rests one hand over his heart, where the cross and hammer lie. “As long as you will have me.”
Perhaps Deor is imagining it, but the shadows seem to retreat a little at his words.
He settles back under the furs, Sihtric’s hand in his, warm and alive. There will be time to mourn, to pray, to perhaps…try to forgive, one day.
But for now he sleeps. And the light follows him down and keeps the dark at bay.
“So love, I thought, had turned Erik against his brother. Love would make him slash a blade through every oath he had ever sworn. Love has power over power itself.” - Uthred | Sword Song by Bernard Cornwell
This is a wonderful idea Merc! Shout out to @therealvikingstrash and the staff over at @vikingsevents for keeping the Vikings and Vikings: Valhalla fandom engaged with fandom everts. I know fandom events are a lot of work and I greatly appreciate all their hard work!
Fandom events are, indeed, a ton of work, and I know that @therealvikingstrash and all of her mods work really, really hard to make those as nice and approachable as they can be. I always appreciate that they follow a slightly different calendar (because of course) to spread that fun out throughout the year!
Aww, that's so sweet 😘💕 haha, you thanked me twice 😂😂 I'm part of vikingsevents. @tlkvikings is the other one 😅 now I feel a little bad for planning to stop doing the events come 2024. It's just a lot of work and my heart isn't in this fandom atm 😅 also the lack of participation makes it less fun to put so much effort in it. I love the people who have shared our fun in fandom, who interacted with all the creations or were creators, they are true heros to help keep the fandom alive ❤
I mean, if someone else makes a Vikings or Vikings: Valhalla related event they can still message @vikingsevents and we put it in the calendar and reblog for maximum exposure, but I'm pretty positive I won't be the one coming up with any in 2024. I won't leave the fandom entirely, I'm just too burned out to host anything and I think that step back is the best solution.
Thank you @windylizmt, so lovely of you to appreciate the work that @therealvikingstrash and I have put into the @vikingsbigbang and into @vikingsevents! It's always nice to be appreciated for something that is a lot of work.😊 And thank you too, @mercurygray, for your lovely positive vibe!
I'm echoing the sentiment of taking a step back, too, given my busy schedule and my shifting fandom focus right now. So 2024 will definitely be a break for us both in the events department here, but maybe/hopefully someone else will feel inspired to host an event for this fandom instead! I know there are plenty of folks still active, even when we're not around as much, and it'd be cool to see an event cooked up in a different kitchen than ours. 😂
We are happy to announce the prompt list to our last Winter Solstice. It is scheduled for December 17th to December 23rd. As always, you are free to post after the event as well, it's usually a month until we post the round up, which means you don't have to rush.
Our Rules:
Please create something new that hasn't been posted before.
Tag us @vikingsevents and use the hashtag #snowyvikings
Make it visible within your post which prompt you used, so we'll know how to tag your creation. i.e.:"Entry for day 3, Moonlight" above a readmore if you use one, or below an artpiece.
@vikingwarrioraragnarsson No, they are not from google. Those gifs you used are from a friend of mine and other gif makers. Stop being a stealing cunt.
How mature to block me instead of apologizing for STEALING other peoples works. I am so sick of this stupid fucking RPC. Fuck off. Seriously. Get lost. You have no place in the Vikings Fandom and NO right to use other peoples art, gifs or ANYTHING.
@not-that-syndrigast I know I already answered you, but maybe this will make it a little clearer on how much work goes into making gifs.
Killy (known as tlkvikings, formerly underragingwaves) got a really good tutorial for gif making, so even when you don't ever wanna create gifs, it is worth giving it a read just to understand the effort a little better.
First you need the source, which means you have to download the movie, show or specific episodes you want to gif. The higher the resolution, the better the gifs will turn out. Of course, you can also screencap it directly on your laptop or phone, but that will take away from the quality. I'm not shaming anyone who does it (I did it in the past), just saying you can expect it to be a bit pixel-y. You use a different program to gather the caps of the scene you want to gif in a file and then you delete all the caps you don't need, because otherwise the gif will be too long and take up too much space (mb). Which means you might not be able to post it on tumblr, since they got a restriction.
Then you follow the steps in the tutorial mentioned above (using another program again), which I won't elaborate here. Either way, when you don't do any work on gifs and just use them as they are then there is quite a huge difference (especially with Vikings, because Hirst thought it would be fun to layer the show with one abhorrent filter on another), for example, left is without any layer, right is the one I worked on:
same here:
and here:
and these are just the ones with the yellow filter being a nuisance. Vikings has a shitton of scenes where everything is cyan. But you catch my drift, right? It is really hard to give these actors their actual skintone back (sometimes I google them to see if I matched it alright, like with Pekitaulet). Hell, most of the awesome outfits get fucked over due to the filters stealing all the color and details.
Is the outrage a little easier to understand? We gifmakers don't just hit one button and the scene we picked is finished and ready to post. It's a long process and I think I can speak for all gifmakers that we're really tired of our work being stolen.
You can also find Killy's before and after photoshop gifs post here!
Thank you, @therealvikingstrash, for explaining exactly why stealing/reposting gifs is such an awful thing to do. For explaining why seeing your own hard work appear uncredited in someone else's posts and passed off as their own is so disheartening. For explaining why I block people from both my current and my past blog the second I see they have used my gifs in such a way.
I'm done asking people to credit me. I'm done asking people to remove my gif from their post. I'm done with the stealing and the glib "bUt I fOuNd iT oN gOoGLe"-excuses. If you don't know the source, don't use it. If you can't credit the gifmaker, don't use it. And if you're a part of the roleplaying community here on Tumblr, please consider making your own gifs instead of making your roleplaying my continuous problem when you keep reposting my gifs like they're yours.
They're not yours. They're mine. These gifs are my work. You need only look at the before-and-after to realize how much effort I put into making them look as good as they do. And I deserve credit for that just as much as your fave fic author deserves a fic rec and your fave fanartist deserves a shoutout. I'm not your content creator whose gifs are a free-for-all-zero-credit-needed situation. I'm not your content creator who gets slapped with a like (if at all) and is then okay with having their stuff stolen and passed off as someone else's work.
My work is not your content. I deserve to be credited when you use it. I deserve the reblogs (with tags that tell people this is from this show!) and I deserve to be seen as more than just your nifty gif slot machine.
Thank you for filling out our Interest Sheet! Unfortunately, the responses we got are currently too small to consider doing another Big Bang so soon. We appreciate all responses that we did get though!
Because we don't wanna leave you empty-handed, we came to the conclusion that we might do something else entirely... if enough people are up for it! We know a few of you would love to stay active in the Vikings fandom and connect through an event. Will you help us one more time to make it happen?
To the people interested in participating in a Fandom Event: Which one would you prefer to partake in?
Secret Santa*
Zero Comment Challenge**
Fic Bingo***
Voting ended onOct 25, 2023
Explanation for each option beneath the read more:
* Secret Santa: This means you will fill out a gift exchange on ao3. You'll have the option to say what you'd like to read, tell your squicks/triggers and what you love, as a guideline for the author. Our authors will tell us what they love to write, but also what they don't want to write. We will take all of this info into account as we pair readers with authors. You will be the reader of one fic created especially for you, and you'll also be the author of one fic you'll create for someone else! It's a lovely exchange between readers and authors for the holiday season.
** Zero Comment Challenge: This challenge has piqued our interest last year. We thought it would be a nice way of giving back to those who create for our fandom and may not have gotten a huge fandom response to their work. As one might instantly notice, the Vikings fandom is vast and there are lots of fics on AO3 that did not get any comments. Even those who've been there for years. We think it's a little sad that some authors never received a kind word for their work. It would be ideal to strike them off the list of "zero comment fic". It is important to note, that a proper comment for this challenge is one that is structured and longer than five sentences. This can be achieved by following a comment guideline we would post for you. A How To if you will. Also, the knowledge of making an author smile is such a reward! Spreading love is important.
*** Fic Bingo: This one's a bit like a collect 'em all. You will get a Bingo sheet with varying tropes and other fic characteristics listed. Every time you read a fic that fits an entry on the bingo sheet, you get to cross that entry out. You have to comment in some way for us to track it, i. e. reblogging with a comment in the tags also counts, or you comment on AO3. Obviously we will need to get the links to the fics you read (and where the comment will be visible to us) to check if you actually did read them. Hence why the comment or reblog is necessary.
To make both the Fic Bingo and the Zero Comment Challenge a little more interesting, there will be 3 prizes to be won. This is where artists and writers come in. For all three places you can get a reward of differing value.
3. Prize will be a art of any kind: edit, gif, moodboard, digital art of something the winner can prompt (i.e. specific theme or character it revolves around).
2. Prize is a ficlet of max. 1k words that the winner can prompt with explicit guidelines on what they want and/or not want
1. Prize will be a combination of a fic and art of any kind by two different creators that will come together and collaborate for the winner.
To make this happen, we will need artists and authors to sign up to be available- much like with the Big Bang. The prize doesn't have to be ready immediately and you will be given a generous time frame to finish. This also means that it's possible someone might not create in case the prompts given don't suit them.
We aren't totally sure if there will be another Vikings Big Bang. But we'd like to know who might be interested in one!
We made a little questionnaire about a future Big Bang that we'd love for you to fill out for us. You can talk to us about how you'd like to participate and which time frame would work for you! We really want to let as many of you join as possible. So if you've got exams, a lot of work, maybe even a house move or renovation coming up in 2024 and you do want to join our Big Bang? Now's the time to let us know what would work best for you!
With this questionnaire we can see when the majority of you will be able to create 🥰 Thanks in advance for filling it out!
We want to know how likely it is that people would participate in 2024 and when it would suit them best to create.
