Inktober Day 29: United // I think this makes up for my last few low-effort/rushed Inktobers :p Sam and Lirael from Garth Nix’s Old Kingdom series. Love the books/characters/designs, even if they take forever to draw because of those goddamn surcoats.
Alas, I foolishly used ‘gil-galad’ as my tag for this character, thus using a dash and making said tag untraceable. Somewhere deep in my blog is my long response to the gil-galad parentage, but I’ll try my best to summarize the points, and basically it all comes down to Finduilas.
Gil-galad has two main contenders for parentage: Fingon and Orodreth. I’ll also entertain a dark horse candidate in claiming the throne via maternal line Lalwen, which does have some appeal in explaining the murkiness and silence on where Gil-galad came from. It also keeps the ‘sent from Hithlim down to Círdan’ journey and establishes a Lalwen and Círdan friendship (Lalwen as Fingolfin’s ambassador to Brithombar). I am especially warming up to this alternative because it adds a wonderful twist conclusion to Fingon ousting Lalwen from political power and influence after Fingolfin’s death in a combination of misogyny, pettiness, and desire to be independent (you will pry this headcanon from my dead fingers because it gives something actually interesting to bland beige wallpaper boy).
But Fingon was the version in the published Silm, and first, most widespread version wins. Plus it gives something for Fingon to do and means he marries a Sindarin lady -Meril of the original ruling family of Hithlum, distantly related via marriage to Thingol, and whose first cousin is the wife of Orodreth. I like the long-running rulers of Noldor-in-Exile to be Fingolfin’s line, and makes Gil-galad follow in the footsteps of his grandfather, complete with Pyrrhic death against a Dark Lord in a duel within his dark kingdom. Nice bookends. And Gil-galad’s sigil is a dark blue with silver stars, which is the colors for Fingolfin, not Finarfin or Finrod’s green.
Now Orodreth already has a canon wife and close allies with Thingol and a more logical and natural explanation for an alliance with Círdan, and the symbolism of the Kigns of the Noldor being both Arafinwë and his (great-)grandson on both sides of the sea are nice. But. Finduilas. I don’t like Finduilas staying while Gil-galad is sent for safety, that there would then be zero mention of him in Children of Húrin (which there is a parallel that should have been explored). And Gil-galad uses a spear as his signature weapon and the only other time a spear is mentioned instead of a sword, ax, or bow is the spear used to kill Finduilas. Making Finduilas and Gil-galad siblings thus unsettles me.
Now, I headcanon Finduilas and Gil-galad being second-cousins via their mothers because it gives an excellent reason in-universe for the conflicting stories and removes Orodreth’s wife/Finduilas’s mother from CoH without killing her off. When Gil-galad is sent to Círdan, he travels through Nargothrond first, and for the final leg of the journey is accompanied by his aunt. She -let’s call her Eregriel- stays with Gil-galad in Brithombar for a few years to get him settled/so he has family/her child is an adult or nearly so but his nephew is very young and thus needs her. But then events of the war happen, Ergriel is stuck unable to return home, then her home is destroyed, she stays in Gil-galad’s court, is treated and respected as if she was his birth mother, and the confusion in the historical records occur.
And not that it really matters. Biological headcanons be whatever. Gil-galad’s father is Círdan. He speaks Sindarin, his culture in more Falathrim than Noldor, and his history is the twilight days of the First Age Beleriand and the Second Age Middle-earth.
You’d think the Lords of Gondolin would have been easy for me to do, but I never got around to them before my old, old program stopped working. But there were plans for some of them (what does it say about me that Meleth the nursemaid does have a sigil?)
Huh, looking back through my blog, I don’t think I released the Glorfindel one in an official post. But here it is:
“So the bird boy’s all grown up! Left the nest. New plumage and everything. Nightwing now, is it? Well, you’ve stuck your beak in the wrong place once too many times! Prepare to get your feathers plucked!”
“Okay. I’m going to kick your ass in a minute, but I want to clear something up first. I appreciate the bird jokes, and I know I have a nighthawk symbol on my chest now, but Robin was never meant to be a bird thing. I know! It sounds crazy! Over the years I just kind of rolled with it, but my theme was supposed to be Robin Hood. You know those hot pants everyone likes to make fun of? In retrospect, they were a mistake, but my whole look with the tunic and the boots was based on medieval fashions. That’s why my costume had so much green in it! I thought I was cool in the 1940’s, before Green Arrow made Robin Hood his schtick. If I had intended for Robin to be a bird thing, I would have worn wings or a beak or something, not a Shakespearean-inspired leotard. Anyway, I just wanted to get that off my chest after seventy years. Thank you for coming to my Ted Talk! I’m going to break your face now.”
WHAT
WHAT
WHAT
MY EYES
THEY’VE BEEN OPENED
AND THEY CAN’T BE CLOSED
“Alright, thanks for making that easy. Don’t bother trying to pick those cuffs. Do you mind if I wait here until the police arrive? It’s a slow night, and now that I have a captive audience… well. Where was I? Right. Historical costumery. I know I’m supposed to be ‘the nice Robin’, not ‘the nerdy Robin’, but my original costume has been the source of derision for three quarters of a century of publication history. I brought photos. ‘Oh, but Nightwing, your costume doesn’t have a utility belt! Where do you keep a photo album?!’ Heh. That’s my secret.
Aaaanyway. Let’s start with Jules Leotard, inventor of the flying trapeze, AND of the garment that still bears his name.
Looking good, Jules! That mustache is very 1867. Notice anything familiar about his costume? The gloves, the leotard, the bare legs, the boots, the belted waist…? Aerialists also often wore capes to make a dramatic entrance, only to shed them before performing. Not that this is relevant to my secret identity and backstory in any way or anything, of course.
Back in the day, Robin Hood was usually depicted wearing red and green. Here’s the cover illustration of a book published in 1900…
‘The Adventures of Robin Hood’ starring Errol Flynn came out in 1938. Batman was created the following year, and I came along in 1940! Robin Hood was hot shit at the time, so it was probably more obvious that ‘Robin’ was a shout out to the hero of legend rather than the songbird. Check out the cut of their tunics:
And speaking of red and green! Did you know they weren’t always associated so strongly with Christmas? Coca Cola’s advertising campaign that began in 1931 may be responsible for that. Back in Ye Olde Days, folks were rocking the ‘red and green layered short tunics’ and ‘hose-as-pants’ look long before I was. Check out this illustration from the 15th century:
And also these fashionable dudes wearing poulaines:
Now, if I were meant to be a bird-themed hero right off the bat – don’t groan, that was a good one – it would not have been subtle. Batman has ears and a picture of a bat on his suit. Catwoman’s first costume was just a dress with a damn hyperrealistic cat mask over her head! Yeah, of course I’ve got a picture, but don’t tell her I showed you.
Another fun fact before the police get here: the bird silhouette on my Nightwing costume is that of a nighthawk, a nocturnal insectivore. Male nighthawks perform acrobatic mating dives that cause their feathers to vibrate in such a way that they create a sound called a ‘diving boom’. Here, I’ve got a video on my phone:
Pretty cool, huh? And there you go! Bet you didn’t think you’d be getting a history lesson AND an asskicking tonight, did you?”
i want to see batman content from the universe where robin/nightwing gives this lecture to every single person who makes a bird joke to him
Gotham‘s violent crime rate drops overnight.
Still haven’t seen Season 5 of VLD. Have to wait for sister because she’ll be pissed if I watch it before her- and she still needs to finish the last two episodes of last season.
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