galadhir

Managed to actually do some fannish stuff yesterday and the result is that chapter fifteen of Oak and Willow is up on AO3.

In which Galadriel, exiled to Sirion once Thingol heard about the kinslaying, and sick of being treated like a traitor/dangerous political hot potato by her cousins, receives an unexpected - but very welcome - visitor.

Oak and Willow Chapter 15

Only one more chapter to go and this one will be done. After which I think I will edit all the individual chapters together so it can be listened to as an audiobook.

Minor characters, my beloveds!

I chose to do this one with icons:

Three from the Murderbot Diaries - probably my favourite character including SecUnit itself. James Norrington from Pirates of the Caribbean - he was a minor character in the movies themselves - who died half way through - but became a fandom favourite. Which meant that he became a bit too popular for me and I gravitated to his Lieutenant, Andrew Gillette instead, who died toward the end of the last movie.

It seems weird to me to think of Celeborn as a minor character, but he has 5 minutes in The Lord of the Rings, and is Sir Not Appearing in Amazon's Rings of Power, even if it is set during the time when he was Lord of Eregion where all this was canonically going on. So yeah, to me he's a major character, but not to the rest of the world.

Then we have One-Eye from the Elfquest comics, who I liked because he looked cool and died half way through. And Marcus Cole from Babylon 5, who was funny and quirky and also died half way through. Dying half way through is a common trait of all my blorbos.

And on a lighter note, I have begun podficcing my own Oak and Willow, which conveniently has shortish chapters that I can both record and edit in a day. Much easier than having to record for an hour at a time!

Oak and Willow being the story of Celeborn and Galadriel during the First Age of Middle-earth, told from the Sindarin point of view, with digressions to cover the invention of writing, the first rising of the sun and the moon, and so much elvish racism and politics.

First three chapters up at Ao3

So I have not been on DW recently because I've been trying to write and podfic and practice my signwriting all at the same time and I had no energy left over. However, I do really feel like I'm back in the swing of writing (God willing) because here is another chapter of my Jin bros fic.

the same last name and the same colour eyes, Chapter three

In which Jin Guangyao attempts to lure Wei Wuxian over to the Jin side by the nefarious means of offering him a pardon and paying for the Wens to make it through the winter. Meanwhile, of course Jin Zixuan has eyes for nobody but Jiang Yanli.

Chapter Three is up here

In which Yanli teaches her husband to make dumplings, learns that he can dance, and gets delightfully drunk.

Working my way through Disney+ or actually working my way through Marvel and Star Wars, because if D+ had never absorbed those franchises, I would never have a lot of use for Disney itself.

Anyway, have now watched

1. Obi-Wan Kenobi, the series - was okay but nothing special. Watched the whole series mainly to finally see Qui-Gon come back as a Force ghost. And Oh Boy, they really did make me watch the whole series for it, as it happened about three seconds from the end. Solidly entertaining, but never going to set the world alight. It was nice to see Ewan McGregor back though.

2. Thor, Blood and Thunder. I followed the Thor comics back in the 1980s and Journey Into Mystery (the Loki comics) in the early 2020s, and was a big fan of the first Thor movie (wrote a lot of Loki fic), but I didn't like this. Thor came across as a big self-absorbed jerk, and I personally don't really find Taika Waititi's humour very funny. So yeah, it was very colourful but would not watch again.

3. Dr. Strange and the Multiverse of Madness - honestly kind of boring, but then I don't really care about the Scarlet Witch, or the snap or any of that post Avengers stuff. Again, very colourful and pretty, but did not engage my emotions.

4. Ant Man - I really expected not to like this one, but surprisingly I enjoyed it a lot. The hero actually was likeable and his band of quirky sidekicks were lovable. I liked Hope very much and was glad that she will get her own suit in the next one. And the ants were like being continually in the middle of a herd of puppies. Will now go and watch Ant Man and the Wasp.

5. Wakanda Forever - I watched this first in the cinema, but it was nice to be able to see it again. It benefits from being on the big screen but it's still a fantastic movie even without that extra element of grandeur.

I'm enjoying catching up on all the Marvel movies I missed when I stopped going to see them at the cinema. I'm not really enjoying the Star Wars content all that much because it all feels very cookie-cutter and unimaginative, which is a great shame for a franchise that began by blowing the competition out of the water with its vision.

Any recommendations for what else I should watch while I still have my month's free subscription?

Thought I would make a list of all the things that bug me about RoP, because I need to vent to someone.

1. Male elves with short hair. Why is this really annoying? Because Tolkien went to the trouble of saying that their long hair is a sign of vigor and beauty for them. Finrod, Fingon, Fingolfin are all high Noldorin lords, and even their names revolve about how beautiful their hair is. In other words having long hair is very important in elvish culture. Why sacrifice that for no good reason?

2. Why do Celebrimbor and Gil-Galad look so much older than Galadriel, when in fact Celebrimbor is about the same age as her (?) and Gil-Galad is her nephew? And specifically, when canonically, elves do not show signs of age until they are absolutely ancient. Is this like 'oh no, how will they look properly authoritative if we don't make them middle aged?!' What about 'elves are immortal and beautiful' is so hard to understand? And why exactly are we not allowed to have beautiful elf lords but it's so vitally important to have beautiful elf ladies? (We know why, but I'm still rolling my eyes.)

3. How the f*#k does Gil-Galad have the authority to force Galadriel to go back to Valinor, when she is an Exile and her inability and the other Noldor's inability to go home is a huge, HUGE, important plot point throughout the Silm and LotR both. Way to completely miss one of the overarching tragedies of the entire Noldor people.

4. What is this nonsense about the elves all being about to die or forced to go back to Valinor without mithril? See above about how their Exile and their Oath is still making that completely impossible. Also, mithril is a precious metal that is more beautiful than silver and harder than steel - that's enough for it to be politically important and something that people covet. Way to turn it into yet another magical item and somehow absolve the elves and the dwarves both of the responsibility of their greed.

5. I mean there is a lot of stripping of the Silmarillion elves magnificent jerkishness. It's a different book from LotR and the Silmarillion elves are proud, ruthless, dangerous, sometimes murderous, but you would not know it from this series, where they all behave just like LotR elves.

6. There's no acknowledgement that there are different kingdoms and kinds of elves who are in strained diplomatic relations with each other. Where is there any awareness of the kind of politics that is going on in the Second Age?

7. Where is any awareness of what the beef between the elves and dwarves is actually about? Is it really better to present it as some kind of irrational prejudice, rather than the result of elves having hunted dwarves for sport in the past, and dwarves having sacked Doriath and killed King Thingol fairly recently? I know that introducing that would complicate the whole "elves and dwarves are all good people!" thing, but complication is what you get when you choose to tackle the Silmarillion, which is essentially Tolkien's Game of Thrones.

8. Argh! How is it that Celebrimbor, who is a master smith, doesn't know how ores work? For goodness sake, people, make some attempt to depict forging accurately in a story where smithcraft is also a huge plot point.

9. Galadriel was in effing Lorien when the three rings were made.

10. Forever sore that we did not get the story of Celebrimbor usurping the rule of Eregion from Celeborn and Galadriel that we should have got, which lead to Galadriel and Celebrian fleeing Eregion through Khazad-Dum to go and prepare a refuge in Lorenindorinan. While Celeborn stayed in Eregion and was on hand to fight Sauron when he revealed himself and came against Eregion with an army and the body of Celebrimbor impaled on a pole as his standard. Instead we get this wishy-washy crap where the entire army of Numenor decides to go and rescue a small village in (what will become) Mordor, despite the fact that nobody on the spot has even asked for aid.

Am I less annoyed now that I've got this all out? No, not really.

Here is a series of blogs by an actual historian talking about the many things that annoyed him

Fandom Wrap Challenge

Everyone seems to have jumped on the 'wrap' bandwagon after Spotify has been doing it for all these years. I got 'wraps' from Reddit, Duolingo, Tumblr, and more. We don't have any scientific algorithms here, but we can do what we do best - estimate and make stuff up to fill in the holes!

Presenting the snowflake_challenge's Fandom Wrap! Fill in your top 5 (or less. Or more, we're not picky) in each category. If you'd like to make up your own top 5 category, please do!

What were your top 5 fandoms for 2022 based on the amount of time you interacted with them?

1. I started the year still with General Hux (Star Wars: The Force Awakens, Kylux and Gingerpilot) where I was writing fanfic.
2. then I wandered off to read a lot of stuff in the Murderbot fandom, while mostly lurking
3. and a bit of stuff in The Goblin Emperor, where I also lurked
4. The Untamed came in hard at the end of the year, and I tried a bit of fanfic but have mostly contributed by podficcing 5.

What were your top 5 fandom spaces (Discord, Twitter, etc.) you experienced fandom in terms of time spent?

1. The year started on Tumblr, where I had a nice little community of people who discussed the First Order with me. But they all drifted off to other fandoms.
2. after which I tried to get into Mastodon (where I already had an account from three years ago when my fandom was permaculture.) But kept drifting back to Tumblr for the instant dopamine response and the fact that I didn't have to put much effort in.
3. Briefly tried to get into The Untamed fandom on Twitter, just before Twitter went nuclear
4. Eventually decided that if fandom places were all doomed to collapse, I would come back to DW, which had survived ever since LJ went down and looked like a good candidate for a social-media-of-our-own

What are the top 5 things you did to contribute to fandom in terms of time? Did you write? Comment? Send positive energy into the universe? Create art?

1. I'm in the grip of crippling writers' block and hadn't found another way of contributing until I discovered podficcing. Late in the year I did discover podficcing, and I've been doing that since September
2. I do comment when I have the spoons to do so
3. Occasionally I make icons, but as they are for really obscure fandoms I mostly end up using them myself

What were your top 5 most appreciated fandom contributions? (i.e. in terms of likes, kudos, reblogs, comments, etc.)

1. Definitely the podfic of Last of Our Kind by Shiome. She has been a huge support and cheerleader, and I've had a lot more comments than I ever imagined.

Have a Top 5 List you'd like to share?? By all means!

Media I can remember and enjoyed from 2022 (some of which was watched on Netflix)

1. Wakanda Forever (briefly thought about writing Namor/M'Baku, but see above re writer's block)
2. The Untamed (attempted to write for this too and managed a single short. Then gave up.)
3. Warrior Nun (fun enough)
4. Winx Club (also fun enough)
5. Amazon's Rings of Power - made me wish to start writing Celeborn again, out of spite, but did not actually manage to make me do so.

Cover reveal for the new Murderbot book, System Collapse!

Well that title doesn't sound ominous at all!

Now that I'm spending most of my social media time here instead of on Tumblr, I figured it was time to support DW with a paid subscription. As a result, I have lots more icon slots. Hurray!

So it was time to make more icons. And as your_favourites were running a competition with a theme of 'favourite hairstyles' I thought I would combine icon making with taking part in a community for a change. But I also thought I'd post them here for anyone who wasn't part of that community.

Two buzzcuts sported by Colonel Young and Lieutenant Scott of Stargate SGU. And two different ways to wear Nie braids, by Meng Yao and Nie Mingjue.