i saw someone once point out that drawing batman extremely buff isn’t particularly good visual storytelling, considering most of what bruce does seems to imply a need for speed and grace and sneakiness, and i was like, yeah, you’re right. you totally have a point, you articulated yourself well, you provided graphics to prove your point, you’ve got a solid thing going here, and i’m going to totally ignore everything you just said. i’m gonna ignore it. i’m gonna pretend i didn’t hear it.
and the reason i disagreed so vehemently with something that makes perfect sense? i asked myself, hey, is it really batman if his chest can’t hold three babies at once? is it….. is it really batman, if he can’t pluck robin up by the scruff. is it batman if he can’t drag a bleeding superman to safety? i mean, consider the fact that those aren’t vengeance biceps, but support biceps. that’s a whole different order of thing.
Category: Uncategorized
Think when I get home I’m going to finally rewatch Rogue One. Was watching a cinematography compilation and was reminded that it is a really beautifully shot film. I know, I know, I’m the odd one out in my mutual that was not really taken by the film when it came out; the characters fell flat for me and I saw one or two parts of the story where it felt underdeveloped or banal – not nearly as bad as Force Awakens, and unlike TFA the idea of actually rewatching it does sounds appealing. Plus I recently caught the end of Revenge of the Sith on tv. Just because I’m not looking forward to The Last Jedi doesn’t mean I should leave Star Wars completely. Plus I need a distraction from the maddening wait for Justice League.
The Ninth Of The Twelve
…if you are at all familiar with a very popular twenty-year-old JRPG that is getting a remake soon, this should trigger some memories.
Expanding once more on This list
- The Ninth: Don’t Forget Me/Promise You Won’t Forget Me*
He won’t remember the dungeons of Tol-in-Gaurhoth.
He wouldn’t remember his mother-name, Costawë, for his mother foresaw he would live a life surrounded by strife, though she could never have imagined the fighting he would do against monsters out of half-told nightmares in a strange and distant land. Nor would she have approved, a devout Vanyar who passed down her bright yellow hair to her half-Noldor son. He won’t remember how rare that yellow hair is for elves in this land, a color naturally possessed -with only a few exceptions- by the sons and daughters of the line of Finarfin, the third branch of royalty of the House of Finwë. The cruel lord that captured Costawë and imprisoned him in the dungeon of Tol-in-Gaurhoth was confused by that yellow hair, uncertain if this lowly soldier was a prince or not. The other blonde, the one that dueled songs of power against the lord of Tol-in-Gaurhoth, Sauron was almost certain was one of the remaining sons of Finarfin, though the devious mind of the dark Maia could not comprehend why a king would be here with such a small company disguised as orcs trying to bypass this island to go north. Sauron remembered the elven lord he had stolen the isle of Tol Sirion from, the one he overthrew to make this white tower into the den of werewolves. Neither of the blond elves now imprisoned in Sauron’s dungeons matched that glimpse of the fleeing Lord Orodreth. The mystery troubled Sauron.
In the dungeons of Tol-in-Gaurhoth Sauron demanded that his prisoners reveal their names and purposes. None would, least of all the one who found his memory slipping away in fever and pain.
…. you’re on a mission to destroy me
I PROMISE YOU – all reading this series and Release from Bondage– that I have plans to write the sequel series of “What Everyone Is Doing After They’re Reborn”, just as this series is who they were before and during their imprisonment in Tol Sirion. And it will be self-indulgent fluff and comedy.
But yes, these particular stories are hunting for readers’ tears and heartbreak
Say what now about Luthien??
I think the bullet-point you point to is the one that is basically about all this: Hinnies and Mules (aka I started writing a sequel/interquel that was almost all humorous/horrible dialogue to Hold Fast Err Night Comes, and a stealth prologue for Whatcha Gonna Call It?)
The Seventh of the Twelve
Expanding once more on This list
- The Seventh: Pins
Tacholdir used to manufacture pins in Tirion. Tacholdir’s family made pins in Tirion, hundreds and thousands of the tiny metal pins for hats, dresses, and those starched and folded linen collars. Tacholdir – Tancildo in his first tongue – was named after those pins. Tacholdir hated those pins, hated to make them, to feed the thin wire through grooved slots in a carved cow bone so the points could be filed sharp after cutting them to the precise lengths, to solder or cold forge the pinheads after wrapping those ends in another piece of wire. Dull work, needing skilled fingers but requiring almost nothing in skill and artistry, and time-consuming, for Tacholdir and his family could only make four or five dozen an hour, which sold together would only yield a few of the smallest coins. Most of his days had been spent making enough pins to sell for money to afford the basics and the little left over his parents used to send him to the local tutor up the street. Tacholdir had preferred pens to pins. His original aspirations centered around books, but falling asleep his thoughts and dreams were full of pins, of making them and feeling them prickling his skin. His family had been poor, their shop one of many situated beside the butcher shops in the narrower alleys on the western side of the city, away from the Tree-light and far from the king’s palaces, a hot and cramped and unpleasantly smelling neighborhood. Closer to the wind coming down the Pass of Calacirya, not that any of that breeze came through his father’s cramped shop to cool the forehead or remove the odors, but the idea of the scent of the Hinder Shore had inflamed his heart.
No, Tacholdir was honest to himself. His overwhelming desire had been to escape the banality of pins. Hours he had wasted on the fiddly yet repetitively boring task of making hundred of plain brass and copper pins, a thing to shrivel the soul of an artist and intellect of a scholar. Pins were necessary, countered his father, who knew that everyone in Tirion bought handfuls each week to hold the shapes of their garments – but Tacholdir gladly abandoned all of it for a sword and a crusade to the unknown lands of the far shore. Fighting against Morgoth’s monsters was infinitely more exciting than pins. Tacholdir chose to gamble on the chance of death to fulfill these new aspirations. Even the misery of the ice crossing had not matched the horror he imagined if he had remained home in that little shop, facing an eternity of making nothing but pins.
Oh, life as a soldier in Beleriand had plenty of boredom and tasks requiring that combination of mindless repetition yet constant alertness to fine detail that had made pin-making so loathsome. Inventory maintenance and record keeping for the regiments stationed in Nargothrond required long hours staring at and counting stacks of food, armor, clothing, and bedding, and then writing everything down in the captain and steward’s books. Tacholdir had a steady and legible hand unencumbered by flourishes, and his tengwar shapes were always uniform, never cramped and almost never marred by blotched ink. Edrahil, the head steward, was enamored with his penmanship, exactly the hand needed for soldiers’ records. Not the penmanship to write inspiring accounts of feats of valor and bravery, but after a few centuries and having faced the Helcaraxë and Morgoth’s hordes, Tacholdir’s enthusiasm for martial glory had muted with some needed maturity.
Tacholdir still patrolled with the other rangers and soldiers, and his woodcraft was respectable for a boy who grew up in the stone streets of Tirion. The native Sindar thought he was hopelessly clumsy, but then they were glad that Tacholdir was the one patient enough to count arrows so everyone was issued enough for patrols. Tacholdir’s patience and penmanship also meant that he was the natural pick to teach the new arrivals how to read and write tengwar, which both sides accepted with good humor. The rangers unanimously agreed Tacholdir was an excellent tutor. His students were not only Sindar, for several of the mortals served for years in Nargothrond, and Tacholdir was as close to them as the king. He even translated some of the books into Taliska, for he had time, and others had already translated the Quenya to Sindarin or the other way around, or the bits of Khuzdul that King Finrod Felagund spoke. The mortals did not always find the topics interesting, for the botany of plants that only grew in Valinor or the mechanics of aqueducts meant little to them, and the metallurgy texts grew too complex and in-depth. The Bëorians that came to Nargothrond for learning were rarely smiths or needed to know the precise chemical proportions for certain steel alloys. Nowhere in those text mentioned pin-making.
Loyalty to his king, captain, and steward played a role in Tacholdir’s decision, but also his love of those mortals and the memories of many hours spent teaching young men and women of the People of Bëor how to shape letters and read well-worn books. And maybe a little of that old folly wishing for an escape to adventure and danger and glory. So Tacholdir stood with King Finrod and rode with Beren and was captured by Sauron.
Weeks shackled to the lowest dungeon in Tol-in-Gaurhoth, Tacholdir tested the iron manacles chaining him to the wall. Naked and cold, covered in filth and reeking with the odors of waste and dirt and butchery, Tacholdir’s eyes tried to avoid the remains of his companions. It was hard not to stare at them. Half of the company had already be killed and devoured by the werewolves, leaving only bits of decomposing gore and bones grooved deeply by fangs. A mindless yet tedious terror it was to wait, but death the only hope of escape. Made of fresh iron bolted to the stones, no mere elven strength would pull the chains free of the wall, nor even would dislocating joints and slicking wrists wet with blood pull limbs free. That had been tried.
Worst of all to Tacholdir, staring at the iron manacles that trapped him, was he could deduce clearly how to pick the lock.
All he needed was a pin.
…
The Sixth of the Twelve
It’s done, this monster of a fic (it’s thrice the length of the others in this series). So, just like the ninth, our characters come from a JRPG. Same one, technically. Look, if you recognize Final Fantasy: Crisis Core, you will recognize several lines, scenes, and concepts. In fact, watch this. Also I indulge in various head-canons about Menegroth, its silk production, domesticated pets, paper manufacture (including a canon tangent about tengwar tehta use), go back to my roots about complaining about Exilic Noldor military “noob”-ness, and fashion.
Expanding once more on This list
- The Sixth: Soldier
They called the third major battle the Dagor Aglareb, glorious victory. Songs of praise for Prince Fingon the Valiant and his horse archers were composed and sung throughout the north, and there was much feasting and joy. But a victory did not mean no losses. In the grey ruins of a snowy outpost east of the great plains that the dragon had defiled, an elf dying of a poisoned barb begged his protege to kill him before the degradation did, handing over the great sword that symbolized his honor and dreams.
Weeping, the younger elf accepted. His fingers curled around the hilt. The dying sunlight painted slivers of silver across the broad edge, and the dull tip of the blade dragged through the snow. Strangled sounds of pain and labored breathing rose from the dying elf’s throat. He called for the young soldier to hurry. The sword lifted from the snow. Clouds of breath dissipated into the whiteness. The young elf knew any pressing heaviness of the sword was not the weight of steel but the burden of his friend’s pride demanding from him a cruel mercy. Cheek bleeding and arms tired, the young soldier adjusted his grip on the hilt and swung the great sword down.
Arms encircled him when the soldier began to weep again, months later when he returned to Menegroth to visit the garden and the one who tended to it. Steady golden light from hanging lanterns illuminated this corner of the giant underground city that saw few visitors. No wind or cold reached this place, no darkness with its constant lights. The gardener did not ask why the soldier wept. She did not ask why a new scar marred his cheek right above his jaw or why the sword resting against the potted seedlings was not the same blade that the soldier had carried before. Usually the gardener asked many questions of the soldier. She was eager for stories of outside the Girdle. Their day together would be spent with the soldier entertaining the gardener with his stories, then assisting her in the tending of the seedlings. Not today. Today, the gardener who tended to young flowers now tended to the heart of this young soldier. Slender arms encircled the man’s torso, creating a light bond against the heavy muscles and dark mail, yet restraining them all the same. No dragon could have removed the man from her embrace. Her arms smelled of flowers and moist soil. They were such soft scents to combat the lingering stench of smoke and blood, scents that could not overcome the evidence of foul battle. Yet with time the smell of peace could erode the harshness. The gardener held the soldier in her arms while he wept for a mentor and himself.
The soldier’s name in these lands untouched by the light of the Two Trees was Bân, his long Quenya name translated and winnowed down to a simple syllable: fair. Terrible name for a soldier. A hero could carry such a name, though, and Bân wanted to be a hero. All he wanted was to have been a hero.
The Fifth of the Twelve
…So the smile on my face as I go to post this might be best described as cat-like. As in Tevildo, Prince of Cats. Also, the one most indebted to The Leithian Script for the character, though the name is mine.
Expanding on This list
- The Fifth: Kingfisher in a Cage
A kingfisher dove in and out of the water, turquoise and amber feathers scintillating like a jewel-smith’s creation. Light sparkled against water and bird. Another kingfisher swooped in a shallow dive against the surface of the lake, following the other in turn. With each small splash the birds emerged with heavy beak holding a fish, which they proceeded to whack against the branch they were perched on, then eat. Those beaks were like small knives, but the birds used them as vises to hold their prey and clean off the scales and spines. The only sounds were the birds entering and exiting the water with small splashes, and the thunk of fish against branch. The feathers had blue spots which seemed to glow in the daylight like the most impressive output of the Noldor jewel-smifts’ craft. The pupils of Aulë could never outdo the works of Yavanna, or so thought the elf who shared a name with the birds above the lake.
A vision, a memory to blind him and distract from the pain of the chains around his naked limbs, that was all it was.
His mother named him after a vision she had while pregnant, saying she saw him full-grown and garbed in brown and green, lying on a riverbank and watching a blue and amber kingfisher skim the water. She had thought the bird strange, for it did not have the ring of white around its neck like the kingfishers she knew and recognized, and in that harsher light of her vision the feathers had shone more blue instead of green. His mother named him for the bird instead of the personal traits the vision had shown her, that he would grow into a handsome man that loved the outdoors and to patiently and silently observe the world around him. And that he did not mind the mud of the riverbank.
He was covered in filth, but it was not river mud. He was in an island in the center of a river, and he could not hear the water.
The Fourth Of The Twelve
This did not start as “Elf OC and his man-crush on Beren”. I have no regrets that it is.
Expanding on This list
- The Fourth: Eyes Bright with Honor
Consael did not have to be here. There was no life debt obliging him by oath and honor to be a part of this quest. His imprisonment in this foul dungeon came from freely taken choices. His soon-to-be death was not the fulfillment of an event postponed by the timely intervention of Barahir’s men in the Fens of Serech.
Of the twelve elves in this dungeon cell, Consael was the only one not a veteran of that battle. Before the Bragollach he had never seen Nargothrond or its golden-haired king, and his exposure to mortal men had been limited. Aglar, his sister’s new husband, had embodied the only tie of kinship or fealty beyond that of guest-right linking Consael to any of his compatriots. His younger sister’s husband had been an admirable man, but there were thousands in Nargothrond who by right of honor and obligation of fealty should have hung in chains beside Finrod and the other soldiers, far more than Consael himself. Finrod had not been his lord. Before the speeches in the throne room, Consael’s oath-pledge had been to Celegorm and Curufin. A great irony, for the two had ousted King Finrod from the city he had hand-designed and built – and by that act had removed any loyalty towards them in his heart. By all rights, Consael should have stayed in Nargothrond. His mother would have preferred he advance himself in the wake of the power grasp. Opportunities undoubtedly had arisen when the two sons of Fëanor overthrew the city. If Consael was honest with himself, spite towards his covetous mother influenced his motivation in equal part with his disgust at his former lords.
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