#tanoraqui

[ragesharkbritain]

I’m very 👀 about the version of King Arthur that lives in your head which you mentioned in the tags of that post about living weapons. Would you mind elaborating on that take on the legend?

i mostly think this about the "and future" part of king arthur, and specifically in an urban fantasy setting where people Know the king will/has returned. How many leaders claim they are the reincarnated king arthur? how many actually think theyre arthur vs how many are just using the myth to further themselves? and the living weapon thought comes into play with the question "how are they treating their children?"

An Arthur claimant has two children, a son and a daughter. "Its alright," he thinks to himself, "as long as I know where Modred is I will be fine, and I can always kill him young." A slightly more progressive claimant thinks "Okay, but which one is Mordred?" And he raises his children in that state of blind arrogance. How isolating would it be to be raised with the assumption one day you will kill your father? and if you excel at fighting, if you intuit older languages, if you show signs of being slightly better, if people start to whisper that you are Arthur and not your father...

And what about the child that gets sent away from [insert modern city here], or is entered into the foster system, or was simply raised by a single parent? They go back to modern!Camelot with the expectation of a family, of a place for them, and good work to do, only to return to the assumption they are here to kill their father? To return to a good king, who they do not want to kill, or to return to a bad king, who they must kill?

and if the actual arthur remembers they are King Arthur, what kind of resentment would grow in their heart as they watch men, who are poor men and worse kings, claim to be arthur? As they walk through the slums and ruins of modernity, they think to themselves "None of the claimants are trying to stop this or fix this. What do they think I did? What legacy of mine are they trying to emulate?" And the burden of the myth itself, of the tellings and retellings of it, the expectation of King Arthur of Camelot-- and for Christianity to have changed as well!

So Arthur in my head exists solely as a weapon. They have no family that loves them and no place to turn to once their father finally fears them enough to kill them, they emerge into a different world. Its the same city-- but no one knows who they are. People still flinch when Arthur come near, but everyone flinches these days. Arthur start to make connections. Other people on the street help them find soup kitchens and food pantries. Arthur starts to make friends. Other people help them realize what their father did to them wasn't right. Arthur start to look at the city. Other people talk about the old days and the new days and how the City should be run. About lifting people up and bringing back the city council. About homes and clean water and food on the table. Arthur starts to think about being King.

#realizing how much i love italics for emphasis through this post #this is genuinely the first time ive tried to write this down #before its been 100% rotating arthur in my mind #tanoraqui #arthuriana

[thelordofgifs]

I actually argue pretty firmly that Nerdanel is more obscure than Tar-Ancalimë.

1. Nerdanel is a Silmarillion-ONLY character whereas Tar-Ancalimë is in the LotR Annals and thus knowable to anyone with those popular books.

2. Nerdanel is a much more significant character in Silm than Tar-Ancalimë is in LotR or even just the Timeline of Númenor. But if I had to explain either to a Tolkien layperson, say, someone who’d only seen the movies, I feel confident that “Aragorn’s great-great-etc grandmother, the first ruling queen of Númenor, the empire that fell into being just Gondor” would seem a clearer connection to the plot and characters than, “the wife of the elf who invented the Palantirs and whose star symbol can be seen on the magic door into Moria.”

(Admittedly, I personally haven’t been factoring obscurity into my votes so much is “how much is this person my blorbo”, but that’s also because almost every single person in this contest has been completely unknown to my Tolkien layperson roommate, and thus fine.)

Some very well-reasoned propaganda, thank you!

#asks #tanoraqui #obscure tolkien blorbo #otb propaganda #nerdanel

[professorsparklepants]

have you ever contemplated and/or discussed Anevka knocking up KB? the mad science technology is RIGHT THERE if they invent it!

honestly i think they would be terrible parents and i don't think they should be allowed to breed. unfortunately.

#kbnevka #ask #tanoraqui

[brawltogethernow]

Scissors and heart for the fic ask meme for the one where J Jonah Jameson Goes Off about mutant rights

^^

drop the title of a fic i wrote + a symbol in my ask and i’ll tell you…

✄: something i deleted before the final draft

I am SO dedicated to mulching and reusing absolutely everything I possibly can from my first drafts I wasn't sure I had anything for this, but I did cut like 25 words and I will now write 500 about why. I cut an extension of the joke where Betty's asked why she's happy their boss is screaming with rage because Jonah would have to kick the assholes out offscreen for it to work, and they'd skip straight to article planning without a confrontation. Like:

“…Why is that a good thing, Miss Brant.” Betty smiled up at him so her eyes squinched. “He isn’t mad at us!” "WHERE ARE MY CRACK TEAM OF PROFESSIONALS?" Betty beamed. "See?"

That's much weaker scene arrangement obviously so I wasn't able to work the whole of the planned gag in.

Also culled in favor of the bit where Jonah remixes his memetic line and demands PICTURES! PICTURES OF X-MEN! was a variant that goes like "PARKER / Yessir / GET ME YOUR BEST MUTANT PHOTOS / Yessir- What, sir?" which is kind of Vimesian in a way I enjoy, but the core point of "it's weird to hear Jonah demanding a different thing in this specific way" isn't really clear unless you do the full iconic line, which is too long to have a yes sir-what sir joke around it. Like it has to be something short enough you can zone out through it and then replay it in your head an instant later, and the PICTURES line has a big pause in the middle. ...You can put the first yes sir in the pause, but then the whole thing still has to go early enough that it's plausible to have not guessed what Jonah is going to ask for.... So instead it got a lampshade where the Bugle staff get to lean on the fourth wall slightly harder.

There's also a bit, assassinated for being too implausible, where someone asks Peter "Isn't that Cyclops' name?" when he's texting contact name Scotty Boy and he goes "NO." I hate him.

Also not making it out of the starter notes was I'm pretty sure the first words I jotted down when I got the ask - I thought the snip at the end where MJ makes fun of Peter might be like, a more ongoing montage of post-publishing reactions? So on autopilot I hypothesized a fragment of spideytorch banter wherein Peter shows Johnny the article, Johnny goes "What is this?" and Peter says "It's a newspaper. They're very useful once you learn how to read." And then Johnny throws the paper at his face. This was written because it's closer to my wheelhouse than the actual premise and deleted because it contributes absolutely nothing. There is no reason for more people that many degrees of separation away from the core concept of the prompt to be there.

Generally if I have come up with a tangent with any redeeming value that isn't actively contradicted by something more important I will add it in, but this fic came with a point it actually mattered to lose track of, which directly contributed to it being, in my opinion, noticeably higher quality than my average output - less meandering and simultaneously longer. A lot of the writing process on the Jonah fic was me going "can I stop now?", mentally substituting in some real world minority in place of mutants, and then if the result made me want to go lean over the washing machine and slam the door repeatedly on my own head, that meant it wasn't done. Who Knew Being Forced (at prompt point) To Stand For Something Improves Your Work.

♡: my favorite part

I think I nailed keeping the pacing up by cutting between interconnected scenes, if that counts. I really like how the flow of the first bit reads, and it was really satisfying to put together. It was also just a lot of fun to juggle a modern-flavored conflict and my preferred vintage comic aesthetic and cast, and to sneak in a bunch of continuity nods and cameos and tidbits of concepts. I just had a blast writing and publishing the whole thing, honestly. It was a great ask, and I'm really glad people like it.

The fic.

#asks answered #askbox meme #tanoraqui #marvel #writing #horrified to pull this up and discover the fake twitter sequence is now pinging someone fifteen times? #that did NOT used to be like that ksjdlfkjdlfk uh #the formatting is being soooo fucky please publish normally

[rattyjol]

👀

From an abandoned WIP where Elli comes to visit Athos:

The air was chilly, a light dusting of snow had fallen to freshen the grubby layers pushed to the sides of the pavement, and in her borrowed hat, scarf, and padded coat, Elli stood out not a whit. Elliot, similarly bundled, she'd hoisted up onto her shoulders, and was giving lessons in spycraft. "The trick," she said, holding up a didactic finger, "is to look like you know where you're going. If you're skulking about all hunched up, looking over your shoulder—" this she imitated, to demonstrate, and Elliot giggled "—then you'll stick out like a sore thumb. But if you look confident, no one will look twice. Works like a charm." "I'm not certain I should be letting you teach him this," Ethan said, a few paces back where he and Terrence were strolling after them, but there was a smile tugging at the corner of his mouth. Elli hadn't adjusted to the beard yet, but really it wasn't bad. "Nonsense, these are important life skills. What if he wants to skip class?" "Now I'm certain."

#tanoraqui #anita writes

[black-cat-showdown]

As the end of the entry poll draws near, I feel a little like I should apologize for all but crashing your competition like an uninvited wedding guest…but I love my cat and I’m very competitive, so I’m not honestly very sorry? This is hands-down the funnest thing for which I’ve ever used my online friends and “influence.”

I am, however VERY GRATEFUL for the graciously granted chance to compete! I completely would’ve understood if you just had Penny represent Blorbos From My Floor everywhere—not only is she a lovely-looking cat, but she did win that initial poll about it! So thank you so much for this opportunity!

I’ll see you at the close of the poll…

You're very welcome!! I was honestly down to make a preliminary bracket for all the other cats either way but also yours got 4 submissions and a movie that is totally 100% real so i couldn't just not include her lmao

And she won by a huge margin too!! So she deserves her place all the more :]

We'll see her on the battlefield in a few days o7

#mod speak #asks #tanoraqui #im keeping penny as my pfp but man i found such a good pic to replace her with

[screechfoxes]

F!NHS, Ruzhui marriage?

this is the working title of a WIP where, with some timeline fudging and canon divergence, Nie Huaisang ends up in an arranged marriage with Jin Guangyao relatively shortly after Nie Mingjue's death - before she figures out the whole murder thing. Jin Guangshan makes the offer as a way to gain a leash on the Nie, as well as to humiliate his bastard son and get him out of Koi Tower

unfortunately, I only have it plotted up to just after the discovery of the murder and what Nie Huaisang does initially. I'm at a loose end on where to take it from there, and what ending I want for SangYao in this fic - whether to end it in tragedy, something bittersweet, or to have them somehow end up on the same side due to some intrusion of *gasp* other characters and their interests

there are also a few things i'm still chewing over that I haven't figured out how to resolve (e.g. if Nie Huaisang is a woman, she probably wouldn't have been in a position to have the relationship with Meng Yao that I like to infer from CQL, that kind of thing)

(the idea actually started as the same base concept, but with Mo Xuanyu instead of Jin Guangyao; still conceptually juicy, but in a very different way that would be harder for me to put into a fic)

#for every sangyao fic i write there is an equal and opposite sangyu fic ig #this is far more information than the conceit of the tag game asked for but c'est la vie! #replies #tanoraqui #the untamed #the writing process

[sindar-princeling]

Question about the LotR newsletter: are you going to include lines from the timeline in the Annals about things we don’t see happen in the book but do have dates for (from said timeline)? Eg, the assaults on Lothlórien and other northern lands? I for one would much appreciate the full picture!

I’m very excited for Shit to Get Real tomorrow!

I was considering it, but eventually I decided to include just the book fragments - that's what I've been doing from the start and I wanted to keep it consistent (with one exception, but I'll keep it secret for now 😌)

#no questions except on party business #tanoraqui #lotr newsletter spoilers #lotr newsletter

[tanoraqui]

of course, the alternate way for Eärendil to get a crew for company in sailing the eternal night skies is what I like to think of as Eärendil’s Anti-Recidivist Sailing Camp for Astrally Projected Oathtakers. Did you or your father permanently invest part of your soul in one or more very shiny rocks? Did you then invoke Eru in permanently binding your fate to said rocks, leading to some VERY dubious decision-making, and also rampant murder? As a consequence of all that murder and bound fate, are you now trapped in Mandos until the end of Arda itself, and going slowly mad(der) from boredom? Then Eärendil’s Anti-Recidivist Sailing Camp for Astrally Projected Oathtakers may be the right place for you!

Activities include:

Knot-tying

Sailcraft lessons

Steering (a special treat for well-behaved campers!)

Saying nice things about the Houses of Fingolfin and Elwë, and Finarfin for thoroughness’ sake, under threat of being sent back through the jewel to molder forever in Mandos (at the captain’s discretion)

Saying nice things about the captain’s descendants and in-laws, as the ship circles Númenor/Lindon/Rivendell/Gondor and Arnor for the nth time tonight

Fighting the giant darkness spiders and other nightmares which sometimes creep through the edges of reality

Sad Elf Seashore Radio Hour (with discussion: How Our Decisions can Reduce Loved Ones to Shattered Wrecks)

Singing classic sea and sky shanties, and writing your own!

To register for Eärendil’s Anti-Recidivist Sailing Camp for Astrally Projected Oathtakers, reach out your spirit to the nearest Silmaril. If you can’t, you probably don’t qualify for this camp. Living incarnates interested in taking a ride on Vingilotë may contact Elwing at her white tower at the edge of the world. Oath-cursed kinslayers imprisoned in Mandos should not do that, because she doesn’t begrudge her husband the company, nor the cheerful passive-aggression, but she has no interest in sharing it.

#earendil #elwing #feanor #the silmarillion #‘why does tanoraqui keep producing mid-day short fic ideas?’ well bc she’s back in the office #but everyone ELSE is on vacation #so she’s bored and avoiding work #and has no supervision #my fic #ficlet

[sesamenom]

day 1 of @tolkiengenweek: fingon & maeglin in mandos.

a little while ago i did this piece and @tanoraqui mentioned maeglin in the tags. anyways i was thinking about which nolofinwion would be best at dealing w maeglin's trauma.

turgon means well, but maeglin probably doesn't want to talk to him. aredhel is a) his mom and b) part of the traumatic backstory so that would also be difficult. argon never even made it past the grinding ice (and frankly i havent figured out his personality enough to do one of these). fingon, however, kept nicely to the theme of eldest son & youngest grandson and made sense trauma-wise.

so anyways here's fingon helping maeglin deal with the aftermath of his time in morgoth's captivity and the trauma of losing aredhel.

#silm #silmarillion #tolkiengenweek #fingon #maeglin #while fingon himself hasn't been captured #he remembers maedhros' nightmares after his rescue #so he has experience dealing with that trauma #he also remembers hearing then news of aredhel's death #at a time where he hasnt seen his only surviving brother off the battlefield for centuries #and his father died years ago #his best friend is halfway across the continent dealing with his own army and battlefront #he knows what it feels like being alone like that #and can help maeglin work through his other problems #i wonder if fingon calls him by his father-name and apparent chosen name #or lomion #the secret name aredhel gave him

[shmreduplication]

if you want "boop" to show up in other people's activities, you can reblog anything from them and add "boop" in the tags. or you can write a post that just says "boop" and @ any other user

you do not have to let april fools being over stop you from booping people on tumblr like watch this:

boop @tanoraqui

[mask131]

A continuation of my Medusa post here.

Since people have been asking for links and sources about Medusa, I'll provide a little bibliography of various sources you can compare and debate about. Note that the bibliography about Medusa is even wider and bigger than the little samples I provide below, but I think they form a good "basic set" or "starting kit". (And I might have forgotten things, since I originally wrote my post unplanned and wasn't ready for it to blow up so much. I am just a tiny little blog that didn't get as much as seven likes on my biggest things you know Xp)

First of all, a resource that is fully available for free on Google Books: here, or here. It is called "Dangerous Beauties: Medusa in Classical Art", a Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin, published in the winter of 2017. Very beautiful and informative with lot of nice art. There's also more about the exposition tied to this publication here. There was another publication by the Metropolitan Museum that can be of some interest, Majorie Milne's "Perseus and Medusa on an Attic Vase".

When it comes to English-speaking books analysing and dissecting the Medusa myth, two works keep popping up everywhere. 2003's "The Medusa Reader", and Stephen Wilk's "Medusa: Solving the Mystery of the Gorgon". They do form references when it comes to the overview, analysis and evolution of the Gorgon figure. Other works of note include David Leeming's "Medusa in the Mirror of Time", and Thalia Feldman's "Gorgo and the Origins of Fear" (published within "Arion", I don't know if it had been published elsewhere). The Internet Archive has a free copy, right here, of Frederick Thomas Elworthy's "The Evil Eye: The Classical Account of an Ancient Superstition".

If you can read French, go read Jean-Pierre Vernant's works that tackled the Gorgon: "La mort dans les yeux: Figures de l'Autre en Grèce Ancienne", (Death in the eyes: Figures of the Other in Ancient Greece - explores the legends of the Gorgon and of Artemis) ; and his co-work with Pierre-Vidal Naquet "Mythe et tragédie en Grèce Ancienne" (Vernant did wrote in English a part of The Medusa Reader, the article "In the mirror of Medusa"). Jean Clair also wrote an interesting document: "Méduse. Contribution à une anthropologie des arts du visuel."

And finally, the cherry at the top, the Internet Archive even has a copy of the scholia (well, one of them), in which the old Pherecyde tales are described - the ones that make proof the idea of Medusa having been turned into a monster by Athena due to a crime of vanity and boasting is as old as the 5th century BC. It is right here. If you like to read Latin, go have fun.

(Shoutout to the people who asked for links and sources - which is absolutely normal and indeed much needed in this time of widespread misinformation and websites that can literaly invent Greek goddesses of torture out of nowhere

@60sec400 @fishlord-main @nouzillard @bigsnorp @gendermeh and probably others I forgot about

EDIT: adding @tanoraqui and @beanshery to the list)

#medusa #gorgon #greek mythology #sources #bibliography

[thelordofgifs]

In response to your earlier answered ask re: scars on the re-incarnated: I just want to point out that people with prosthetic limbs or other body parts are 100% still disabled! You have to keep that stuff clean in a way people with real flesh don’t need to worry about, both the prosthetic itself and the stump! Even with Elvish magic crafting, the prosthetic won’t necessarily work as well, or in the same ways, as the original, and you’ll have to deal with that! And of course there’s still opportunity for phantom pains, societal mores of artificial limbs, etc… And if you lose it, or it’s way for repairs, you’re back to square one!

Also, needless to say, different disability narratives hit or miss for different people. I’m never a fan of undoing a character’s disability, but I do like Maedhros spending 600 years in Beleriand refusing any prosthetic better than a hook he rarely wears, for practical reasons of prioritizing resources for war but really because of self-recrimination and lingering despair, then after re-incarnation finally agreeing to a beautiful gilded hand with articulated joints which, thanks to a fëa connection perfected in the Second Age, he can use for a range simple actions like waving, carrying and lifting, and Fëanorian lamp-powered laser blasts slightly messy handwriting. It becomes a narrative of healing, you see?

But mostly: prosthetics do not nullify disability! They just make it different!

Signed: proud owner of a prosthetic eye

(This post, for reference)

This is a very important point, thank you! And I am very sorry for implying that people with prosthetics aren’t really disabled – that was badly worded and although I meant no offence at all I should definitely have phrased it differently ❤️ (the Sicknesses have got me today and I am not thinking very clearly, which doesn’t help.)

With Maedhros in particular, my objection more than anything else is to a Luke Skywalker sort of plot point where he gets a shiny new prosthetic and then his very real disability is literally never mentioned again in the story; and that’s what I tend to be wary of when I see Maedhros getting a prosthetic hand in fic, especially if he has one in Beleriand – but that’s definitely a knee-jerk response on my part, and there are certainly interesting and sensitive ways to give him a prosthetic without negating that very important part of his character. A healing narrative in Valinor where he gets a nice magic well-crafted prosthetic is definitely something I can get behind – as is one where he actually is re-embodied with his right hand, even though that very much contradicts my earlier point lol. For me it’s more about acknowledging that he did lose a hand, it was important, it symbolises both some of the worst things he ever went through and also Fingon’s boundless love for him – and that matters! But you’re absolutely right that you can thread that needle with a variety of different headcanons.

(For the record, I am technically disabled myself – although fairly minorly – and, coincidentally, part of that means I can’t always use my right hand very well; which is probably part of why I like seeing Maedhros doing things one-handed in fic and art! But as you say, different narratives work for different people, and my chronic-pain-influenced perspective is very much not the only valid one.)

Thank you for this ask; it made me think, and revise some of my assumptions! I hope this was a coherent answer, and again I am genuinely very sorry for my insensitive phrasing in the previous post.

#asks #tanoraqui #silmarillion #maedhros

[professorsparklepants]

I stumbled upon this post in my drafts and then was immediately filled with the urge to copy it. so here's my friend @tanoraqui's first corpse Jiang Yanli fic, What Does Kill You Can Make You Stronger, Too. Image Source 1. Image Source 2.

#mdzs #modao zushi #cql #the untamed #jiang yanli #fanfic #tanoraqui

[tanoraquisloviebracket]

Tanoraqui’s Lovie Bracket: FINAL ROUND

As the prophecy foretold, it has come down to Tolkien vs Pratchett…but reminder to please not just vote by fandom names! I have a lot of lovies; I name them a lot of things! This is a tournament of lovies—and while I do, we all do, love Lord of the Rings and Discworld with nigh-equal fervor, it is also, nay, MORE important to judge these wonderful animals on qualities like:

cuddliness!

cuteness!

traditionalness OR novelty of animal!

realism OR exaggerated fakeness!

elaborate characterization and backstory which you’ve made up in your head over the course of this tournament! (if so, please share!!)

aesthetics!

pure vibes!

which would YOU want on your bed?

…or any other metric which seems suitable to you for judgement!

#round 6 #final round #lovies #stuffies #polls #bracket #stuffed animals

[imakemywings]

HI 🥺 I just found out that you like Fingolfin and I want to ask if you have any recs about him (and Finwe?). Like we already have the popular Finwe-Feanor father-son relationship, but what about my blue middle-child baby.

I LOVE Fingolfin, he was actually my first Silm fav <3 I had to stop reading the book for several days after he died to recover /_ \

I looked through my fanfic lists and I don't actually seem to have any that focus on Finwe and Fingolfin's relationship ono I picked out some other ones that focus generally on Fingolfin's relationship with his family, I hope that helps.

Do You Remember Me? by @sweetteaanddragons - Relationship with Feanor after Feanor is de-aged.

From the Heights, Such Light and Air by @sallysavestheday - Relationship with Turgon.

I Loved You Once in a Dream (mine) - Reunion smut with Anaire.

If Bitter it Must Be by @ettelene - Relationship with Feanor immediately after Alqualonde.

I'll Hold the Pieces Together with My Hands by Dialux and zuo_zuo - Relationship with Maedhros.

A King Uncrowned, A King Enthroned by @zealouswerewolfcollector - Relationship with Maedhros, particularly regarding Maedhros' abdication.

A Kiss Interrupted by @arofili - Relationship with Anaire.

Lament Before the Vast Sea by Tyeplerintal - Fingon's relationship with his father and others.

Over the Unclear Eyes of Memory by @maglors-anion-gap - Relationship with his wife and children after rebirth.

Spring in the Land, Light in the Day by Loriand_Lost - General focus on the relationships in the house of Finwe.

United We Stand (mine) - Relationship with the house of Feanor.

Untitled by @tanoraqui - Children of Finwe post-rebirth.

Untitled by @outofangband - Relationship with Maedhros after Maedhros' escape from Thangorodrim.

Water on a Stone by LadyBrooke - Relationship with Maeglin.

Wet Boots by @amethysttribble - Relationship with Maedhros when Maedhros was a child.

#asks #anonymous