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juliaswickcrs · 2 years

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BOOK COVERS :: THE PLIGHT OF STARS rings of power ( s1 - ? )

ELYIA was queen of nothing.

According to Tar Miriel and Ar-Pharazon of Numenor anyway. Her only claim to anything lay far beneath the waves with her family’s ships and her father’s corpse. Cast out and usurped because of their continuing alliances with Elves, Elyia’s family lost any sort of nobility the moment Pharazon began to whisper in Miriel’s ear.

Her punishment is to one day be wed to Isildur, a boy who feels just as trapped and lonely as she does, but she knows it’s not what either of them want.

But what they want rarely mattered these days.

Isildur was destined to follow in his father’s footsteps, a Sea Captain of Numenor, and Elyia...well she was destined for a life at her husband’s side, bearing him children and carrying on the great legacy of the Numenoreans.

Until fate intervenes in a way no one expects.

For the arrival of Galadriel, commander of the King’s armies, and her male companion from the Southlands draws the ire of the Queen away from Elyia and toward their new arrivals.

And while Elendil is tasked to watch over the golden-haired elf, Elyia cannot help but be intrigued by the man from the Southlands--Halbrand--he says his name is, and the sigil he bears around his neck.

But the stars are changing, warping, moving from one end of the skies to the other, and what waits for Elyia beyond the white shores of Numenor may be too much for a mere lady.

She’ll have to become something else entirely.

A Shieldmaiden. A Commander. A Queen.

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rachelillustrates · 2 years

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Orctober 2022, four

(Art above featuring an Orc OC in the nature of “Lord of the Rings,” named Runav – more on her later this month – and Ka’thagg, of my comic “Tock the Gnome.”)

Okay, officially soapbox time.

I recently finished (what’s available of) Helena Markos’ “Splint.” Which – full disclosure – I needed partly as a balm over the fact that I finally got to the creation of the Orcs in “The Silmarillion.” Knowing that was coming, having that book-knowledge of what was done, was NOTHING like reading the way it was described. My heart.

(Again, for context, here’s my post from yesterday.)

As I mentioned already, it disgusts me that even people who are aware of and acknowledge that horror, that tragedy, come to a full stop there.

They acknowledge the pain of what happened, that according to that account the Orcs themselves hate Melkor for what was done to them in their creation, but then they still write the Orcs off as a lost cause. They don’t stop and think about the trauma, the history, the building of a life and culture in spite of a) what was done to them, and b) the kind of life they were forced to live under Melkor and then under Sauron.

They are still beings.

They are still souls.

They still became a people and still exist as a people after the Eye fell.

That deserves a look. That deserves compassion.

Not to mention the Great-God of the world, Eru’s, reaction to ALL the Evils done by Melkor (and every other villain in the story) – “…no theme may be played that hath not its uttermost source in me, nor can any alter the music in my despite. For he that attempteth thus shall prove but my instrument in the devising of things more wonderful, which he himself hath not imagined.” (From The Silmarillion, page 17, “Ainulindalë – The Music of the Ainur.”)

From what harm and control Melkor sought in all he did, the Spirit of the Universe brought forth new and unexpected beauty.** Why can’t that include the Orcs, as they might become, in wholeness growing through that pain and trauma, in whoever they are after the fall of Sauron?

Especially, if we take them out of the context of Tolkien’s works and look at where they’ve been included and adapted in other Story, other media, with what Orc enthusiasts are doing with them, now?

…..that said, go read “Splint,” whydontcha? And I must recommend my comic “Tock the Gnome,” as well as Ami Mercury’s “Orc Girl,” and of course Christine Larsen’s “Orcs!” and the Orcs of “World of Warcraft” for a fuller look on what Orcs are, and the respect they freaking deserve, thank you very much. Not to mention, once again, how well they’re being handled in “Rings of Power!”

(And that, by no means, is any kind of comprehensive list of Orc-positive works. If you have any other recommendations, please drop a comment!)

** I am borrowing that phrasing from the guys at the Prancing Pony Podcast, who would certainly disagree with me on a LOT of things, but that’s neither here nor there. It’s perfect phrasing and I’m gonna use it.

Bonus art and stories ~ Shop and Commissions 💚

#orctober #orctober2022 #orc #orcs #lord of the rings #tolkien #rings of power #tock the gnome #indie comics #bonus art #drawing challenge #ooh shiny

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absynthe--minded · 4 years

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opinions on the recent russingon meta? tbh i love russingon, i love black fingon headcanons, but i do agree that it's a little weird when fingon gets totally sidelined in fics as just Maedhros' Emotional Growth or the Black Nanny. i mean, russingon really lends itself to hurt/comfort, which is fine, but i think ppl sometimes neglect fingon's arc. thoughts as a russingon writer? (no accusations, love your work, but wanted your perspective on other ppls russingon works)

(Wow this got long, lol.

Full disclosure - I haven’t read the recent Russingon meta, or offered any substantial response to it. Quite a lot of people I know have, but I’ve not had the time and my brain hasn’t been cooperating with me to read large chunks of text over the last couple of days. I have opinions on your ask as I’m seeing it now, and that’s what I’ll be responding to. I’m also not black, though I’m not white either - my ethnic group is one that has troubling stereotypes associated with it of caring for white people/acting as sage dispensers of advice/etc, but I can’t speak to the breadth and depth of the black experience when it comes to being a ‘black nanny’ in fiction, and I’m not going to try to.)

So, Fingon being a cardboard cutout/emotional support animal for Maedhros and Fingon being perceived as black by large portions of the fandom are two things that arose completely independently of one another. Fingon being Maedhros’s support animal is a trope as old as Russingon itself, and possibly is as old as the published Silm itself. I’ve read Russingon fics that were almost as old as I am, Russingon fics published last week, Russingon fics that vilified the Nolofinwëans, and Russingon fics from the turn of the 21st century when the Fëanorians were seen as uncomplicated villains. Fingon being a cardboard cutout is ubiquitous through all of them. It doesn’t matter how old the fic is, it’s basically guaranteed.

The reason for this is that Maedhros is far and away the most popular character in the Silmarillion, and his pain and angst and mental strife and trauma are front and center in many writers’ lists of priorities. If it’s not Fingon propping him up, it’s Maglor, or another brother, or an OC - this is a very common genre of Silm fic and it’s not limited to Russingon.

But.

This is my least favorite Russingon trope and it’s the entire reason I’m writing Blessed Hands and why all my Russingon fics are at least majority-Fingon POV. I can’t fucking stand it, and it completely kills my interest in a story. I’m super picky with my Russingon fics because of this trope, and because of its ubiquity, and I’ve talked about it on my blog many times before. For me to love a Russingon fic, it has to be about how they anchor and support one another, and how their mutual and equal investment in their relationship is the foundation of their lives. This trope’s not nearly as common as it used to be, thank Eru, but it’s still around, and I cannot talk enough about how I Hate It, lol. It’s also old enough and omnipresent enough that the majority of fics feature it, and - interestingly - the majority of fics also feature white Fingon.

Alongside this, Black Fingon arose out of a non-Russingon intracommunity discussion among the artists of the Silm fandom, in about 2013. I saw this play out in real time on my dash, and so while I can’t source posts reliably, I can promise this is as accurate as I can make it.

The paradigm shift came as a result of content creators realizing that several of their number weren’t white, and quite a few people in the fandom weren’t white, and yet 100% of art and fics featured white elves with zero real diversity (and a number of very troubling, somewhat stereotypical older illustrations of Men as the only significant examples of people of color in Middle-Earth). There was concern as to why this was being accepted as the norm when there was ample opportunity for representing both one’s own ethnicity and other people of color (and a lot of concern about unexamined racism in white artists who found themselves unable, for various reasons, to picture heroic elves as anything but fair-skinned) and the general consensus was that we had more consistent information from HoME draft to HoME draft about hair color than skin tone, so why were we all picturing our heroes as white?

Fingon in particular was headcanoned as black due to a discovery by a fan (whose URL escapes me, sadly) who I’m certain was black themself. There’s a passage in The Peoples of Middle-Earth describing Fingon as wearing his hair in plaits braided through with gold, and this fan made the comparison to hairstyles worn by IRL black people. The idea was that he was the most uncomplicatedly brave, heroic, and noble person in the Silm, and look, he could be a man of color! There was also a sort of gentleman’s agreement to refrain from making explicit connections beyond that to real human ethnic groups/cultures/races. The logic behind this was that if the generic Eurofantasy aesthetic was kept, white artists would be encouraged to draw diverse elves without concern for cultural appropriation, as well as steering racists away from caricature and the ability to twist a well-meaning effort into a stereotypical attack.

When these ideas first emerged, there was a lot of resistance. Arguments were made that those of us who advocated for diverse elves and specifically black Fingon were discreetly accusing other artists of being racist, or were acting purposefully holier-than-thou, or just wanted to start drama. There were some people who claimed we’d attack anyone who didn’t agree with us that elves were brown. This was an exhausting mess to deal with and it was a major part of my disillusionment with discussing racism in the Tolkien fandom - the majority of voices were reasonable people but the minority was loud and obnoxious. I bring this up to say that diverse elves were genuinely progressive and forward-looking in 2013, even when it was more or less explicitly stated that they had no real ties to existing human races and they had no change to their characters.

Black Fingon, agreed upon outside the Russingon fandom, and Fingon the cardboard cutout, the most reliably present version of Fingon in Russingon fic, sort of ran into one another. No real change was ever made to Finno’s character upon making him black - this would have been seen at the time as unnecessary because his character was just fine as-is, and the whole point was that he could be exactly as he’d been before and be black or brown, that men of color had the exact same range of emotion and depth of character that he did when he was perceived as white.

The problem is that there hasn’t been much examination of the idea that Fingon being a black man who exists to prop up a white man is uh. Really racist and kind of fraught.

All I have to say really is that this wasn’t a conscious decision by anyone to be racist - the opposite, actually. As I mentioned above I can’t speak for black people, or for other BIPOC, but my opinion is that it’s an unfortunate and unconscious choice that has nothing to do with Fingon’s race and everything to do with the fact that his character has been seriously neglected for decades now. It opens the door to a lot of really frustrating tropes and plotlines that smack fans of color in the face with how bigoted they are, and it’s something that I’m glad is being discussed, if only because I’ve been trying to push for a reevaluation of Fingon’s personality and general role for a long time now (though of course I’m also glad that this is actually getting acknowledged as a harmful thing real people now are at risk of doing).

My solution? Same as ever - “write Fingon like a real person with interests and desires and goals of his own, and treat his family like they matter, and flesh out the world he lives in. Listen to people of color if you’re white, educate yourself regardless, and learn to avoid harmful tropes.” If that becomes the fandom norm? I’ll be a happy Absynthe.

#replies #anon replies #RUSSINGON #absynthe's meta

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