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quasieli · 3 days

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[Image description: Eight pages from the comic Mighty Nein Origins: Caduceus Clay. The first six pages feature a young Caduceus and his mother, Constance, while the last two pages show an older Caduceus, as well as his father, Cornelius, and sister, Clarabelle.

Page 1: A wide shot of the Blooming Grove, with a beautiful stone and wood temple sat at the center of a verdant cemetery. From afar, Constance calls outs "Caduceus!"

Page 2: Constance is stood behind her son, with his head only partially in frame. The first panel shows her saying, "There you are, didn't you hear me calling?" In the second panel, she is leaning down to her son, a concerned look on her face as she says "Oh."

Page 3: A smaller panel shows Caduceus cupping a dead bird in his hands, holding it tenderly. The wider panel then shows his mother sitting down beside him, the pair sat next to a head stone. He leans his head into her shoulder as she asks, "Would you like some help?" The pair then proceed ro bury the bird.

Page 4: Constance and Caduceus are kneeling in the dirt, over the bird's burial spot. Constance asks, "Ready?, with Caduceus responding "Mh-hmm." The pair touch the ground where the bird was buried, and soon a bright orange flower magically blooms from the spot, causing Caduceus to startle.

Page 5: Constance sits beside her son, her hand gentle touching his face as she says, "Death and decay are a part of a circle, a wheel turning without a beginning or end. Death is how we nurture life, Caduceus." He looks down at the flower as he asks, "Then how comes it hurts?" Caduceus lays down in his mother's arms as she explains, "Because you loved them." A smaller panel shows a closer shot of their faces as she asks, "Do you regret that love?"

Page 6: A small panel shows a closeup shot of Caduceus, looking sad as he replies "No." Another wide shot of the Grove is shown, with the pair sat at the center, Constance continuing, "Part of love is knowing they will go, and cherishing them with your whole heart in the face of that hurt." Another small panel shows a closeup of the newly bloomed flower, with some of its loose petal blowing into the wind.

Page 7: An interior shot, a number of years in the future, showing an adult Caduceus asleep in his flower filled bedroom. He wakes upon hearing the voices of his father and sister, who are in another room, getting up to go investigate. His sister says "I just don't think it's fair that --", Cornelius interjects, "Clarabelle, please keep your voice down."

Page 8: Caduceus comes down the stairs tiredly rubbing his eyes while his father and sister continue to argue. Clarabelle says, "I will not until you--", cutting herself off as she sees her brother appear. Cornelius moves to ready some gear as Caduceus asks "You're leaving?" He responds "The corruption isn't going away on its own. Maybe... maybe your mother found something out there. I'll find her and your aunt, and find a cure." Clarabelle steps forward, declaring "It should be my turn! I'm old enough and faster than you, anyway!" To which Cornelius responds, as he begins to depart, "Clarabelle Clay, mind yourself. Stay home with your brother." End description.]

Sneak preview of Caduceus's origin comic from Polygon!

Generations of the Clay family have tended to the careful rituals in the Blooming Grove. But when corruption begins to creep in on their sacred space, the Clays depart one by one to seek answers. Soon young Caduceus and Clarabelle are the only ones left, and when a dangerous burial quest falls to Caduceus, he must leave the Grove to do the family’s work.

#Death #Animal Death #Grief #Ask To Tag #Critical Role #CR #Mighty Nein Origins #Caduceus Clay #Clay Family #Constance Clay #Clarabelle Clay #Cornelius Clay #ahhhhhhhhhh #my boyyyyyy #Im so fucking excited for this #and its so pretty 🥺#the blooming grove is so good!!!#i cant wait to see it in full

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tathrin · 6 months

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Writing Year Wrapped (2023)

Ooh, thank you for the tag @sallysavestheday!

3 Favorite Fics You've Written This Year:

Of course we have to go with my current obsession, And In The Darkness To Unmake Them, an as-canon-compliant-as-possible Fellowship-AU that asks, what would happen if Celebrimbor got himself re-embodied and came back to Middle-earth to try and make up for his mistakes by helping to destroy the One Ring (and brought all his unhealed trauma with him)? Plus a slow-burn romance for Legolas and Gimli, a whole lot of delicious world-building for Mirkwood, and a more active role for Arwen too!

Five Times Gimli Died (and One Time He Didn't) is, I think, despite the simplistic and trope-y title, one of the most elegant things I've ever written, and I am very much in love with it. It's the story of Gimli and Legolas's romance, from beginning to end (well...not really end, because the joy of them is that they're a story that doesn't end—Gimli Immortality Agenda, you can't stop me!—but the story ends with the beginning of their happily-ever-after, which is a sort of end, no?), told in a series of scenes that takes place from Moria to the Undying Lands, and could almost slip right in between the pages of canon if you squint enough to overlook a little bit of meddling from Mahal on behalf of his new favorite dwarf (don't tell Durin).

To Live In Undying Lands is a series of snippets set in Aman after Legolas and Gimli cross the Sea, focused on both their new life there and that of our beloved Hobbits who went over before. And I went back and forth several times deciding whether to swap the placement of this one and Last Temptation... below, but I ultimately think that was a bit more of a stretch than this one, despite the fact that I Never Write Hobbits and am writing quite a lot of Hobbits for this one, and also I Never Write Snippets Without An Overarching Plot—and because I'm such a sucker for Gimleaf that if I have to pick a favorite between any two comparable stories, it's always going to be the one with them in it! (Also: Gimli Immortality Agenda, always!)

3 Fics That Stretched You the Most:

Dead Faces In The Water; Dead Faces Everywhere - I don't write present tense, I don't write modern AUs, and I don't write zombie stories...but here I am, writing all three at once! (Thanks, @katajainen! This story is 1/3 your fault, 1/3 @roselightfairy and @deheerkonijn's fault, and 1/3 Mira Grant's lol. And you were the inciting incident, so you get first blame!) And somehow having a great time doing it! (So much world building! I'm in paradise!)

The Last Temptation of Narvi of Khazad-dûm - probably one of the most overtly ambitious stories I've ever done. It's likewise in present-tense, although that's considerably less daunting now after almost forty chapters of zombies; but there were a lot of other balls to juggle on this story, including my first time properly writing both of the main characters as well as anything set in Ost-in-Edhil; and of skirting right up against the line of how close it came to all ending differently and making that (hopefully) feel almost like it could have gone differently and avoided all that tragedy in a way that, hopefully, both satisfies and distresses the reader.

And (I suppose this is a bit of a give-away, but it's not like I tried very hard to hide anyway; the anonymity is mainly designed to make people feel more comfortable offering con-crit, which I have no idea if it actually helped or not but I did get some lovely and helpful feedback on it, so I'm going to say the tactic has been a success) definitely Cliffside Revelations, which has the honor of being my very first explicit smut fic...even if most of the smut is an excuse for world building, which I'm sure shocks all of you lmao!

(And sneaking in an honorable mention of On The Far Side of the Sundering Sea, because my name isn't on the previous one so it probably doesn't technically count...which means I can slip in an extra story as a technicality, right? Right. Shhh, it's fine!)

3 Favorite Lines You've Written (loosely interpreting "lines" as sallysavestheday has cleverly demonstrated):

Oh this is difficult. Most of my best lines are only their best because of the context around them; and it's hard to remember them as distinct lines after their sections have been finished and posted. But this does at least save favorite and not best, so that helps; let's give it a try, then.

First, from Five Times Gimli Died (and One He Didn't) we have a moment of a revelation on Gimli's part, as he discovers that his heart might not be as alien to his Maker as he feared it was:

He stood in silence, staring at the unseen form of he who had made all Dwarves; of the Maker of stone and rock and mighty mountain. Mahal, who had made the Dwarves…Mahal, who loved the green.

This is one that definitely needs the context to make it work, so we're including the whole preceding paragraph from Blows Uncounted, a little AU-take on Helm's Deep where either the uruks are stronger or Gandalf is slower, and the battle has a darker ending.

For Legolas was not simply any elf: he was an elf of Mirkwood. Taur-ne-Fuin, the forest under nightshade; Taur-e-Ndaedelos, the forest of great fear. These orcs and uruks of Isengard, used to preying on earnest horse-lords and forthright farmers, had never met an elf of his sort before. Their northern kin could have told them stories of what befell orcs beneath the black boughs of Mirkwood…but orcs did not often come alive from those dark woods, not at least without Nazgûl to guard their travels.

And there were no Nazgûl here.

And taking a complete one-eighty in tone from the previous, I am quite inexcusably delighted with this one from Honeysuckle and Cider, and still giggle to myself whenever I re-read it:

"Uh," says Aragorn, son of Arathorn, King of Gondor, first of the House Telcontar.

(The line after it definitely qualifies as a runner-up, but I do think this one beats it out. Sorry, Faramir!)

Actually there's one other line I really wanted to put in here, even more than the one about the Nazgûl, but I'm not going to, because it's the very last line of the story it appears in, and reading it before you read that story would suck all the wind out of its sails, I think; so if you want to know what that is, you'll have to go read The Last Temptation of Narvi of Khazad-dûm for yourself.

3 Characters You Enjoyed Writing (that surprised you):

Anntar (Sauron), actually! I got to play with him as more than just a Menacing Presence in The Last Temptation of Narvi of Khazad-dûm and oh, he was so much fun! This was Sauron in full-on seducing-the-Gwaith-i-Mírdain mode, with maybe just a hint of how he actually wanted to be stopped, so that he could let the schemes for world-domination go and just be happy here with his smith-lovers...or maybe that was all wishful thinking on Narvi's part. Regardless, it was great fun to play with both failed and successful manipulations here, as well as to actually write something with my new favorite OT3.

Boromir may have come as even more of a shock to me, actually. I very quickly went from "distant fondness but very little interest" in Boromir to taking great delight in him, thanks in largest part to Dead Faces in the Water, Dead Faces Everywhere (and a little bit to Two Fell Into Shadow, although most of that was written or at least sketched-out earlier; but I'm counting it, because I don't think I realized how much fun he was fifteen years ago or so when I was writing it initially). Also, of course, his part in And In The Darkness To Unmake Them, although I haven't gotten to the point of posting any of his Grey Company chapters yet (shhh). He's such a wonderful sort of "I did not sign up for any of this; I have no idea what's happening; but I Am Participating Anyway!" sort of character, dragged out of his element commanding Minas Tirith's armies (where he's an extremely competent and confident fellow) and tossed into this baffling world of weirdness full of elves and magic and nonsense, for which he is so ill-equipped and ill-prepared. And yet he gamely goes along with it, because it needs doing! Whatever the fuck it is! He has no idea!

And last but certainly not least: Gimli, although this one may be less of a surprise; but it was a surprise to me how often I ended up writing from his perspective. I did not expect that, because I'm much more interested in elves (especially Mirkwood elves) than I am dwarves in general, and I've done a lot less world-building (a lot less) for Erebor than I have Mirkwood; but it's so much fun using Gimli as "the sensible perspective" (as well as an excuse to get really flowery with my wording sometimes, shhh!), not to mention an extremely astute and observant one, that he makes for a very addictive viewpoint character. I actually ended up having to make a conscious effort to switch to Legolas's pov sometimes, in fact, because it was so easy and charming to fall into Gimli's head and stay there! That was definitely a surprise to me.

3 Unexpected Inspirations:

This fucking dream! I still don't know what the hell happened to me that night, but it sure was unique and extremely unexpected!

And quite startling was the time where seeing the Legolas-always-looks-back-for-Gimli gif-post from the LotR movies cross my tumblr dash right to an Orpheus-and-Eurydice poll basically popped this whole-ass story fully formed into my head in one big rush of inspiration. Although the same thing happened with this post and And His Hands Ran With Gold and Shadow, so maybe I should stop thinking "random post on tumblr" is unexpected inspiration...

And uhhh....this XD

3 WIPs You're Excited About in the Upcoming Year:

And His Hands Ran With Gold and Shadow which I swear I will get back into working-on as soon as I get some of my other ongoing stuff finished, because I absolutely adore it! and I definitely want to write more on it! very much so! but the vibes required for writing it are so different from the other stuff that it's hard to switch back-and-forth between it and them (same goes for the zombie-fic).

An As-Yet-Untitled story set many, many, many years after the end of the War of the Ring in the Undying Lands, where our three beloved Hobbits (and one Dwarf) living on those timeless shores discuss their mortal lives, and decide when and whether to let them end.

The sequel to The Dark Reborn, because I am at some point going to drag my brain back into the galaxy far, far away enough to start reading and writing Star Wars fic again, and I fucking will finish this fucking awesome sequel trilogy fic I started, kriff it!!!

3 People Tagged to Share Theirs:

Tagging with zero pressure: @babybat98 @bifuriouswaterbender @katajainen

#if you've already done this and i just tagged you again forgive and ignore me #i haven't had a chance to look at my dash yet today (i was at work and then reading the new murderbot ahhhhhhhhhh so good!!!!)#or! if you'd like to take the opportunity to talk about even MORE stories! feel free to make a second post with the runner-up fics lol #writing year wrapped #my writing #my stuff #ask meme #lotr fanfiction #gigolas #gimleaf #silvergifting #legolas #gimli #celebrimbor x narvi #silverdoorsgifting #that's right i'm MAKING UP MY OWN SHIP NAME for this ot3 and NOBODY CAN STOP ME

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