Okay, y’all. Here’s how I do my patented heget fusion of the Batman family and mythos into The Silmarillion (no, you do not get actual OCs and a story series out of this).

The setting is the Isle of Balar during the last days of the First Age, and our narrator, Leber, is this older man -or elf, I don’t know- who had studied under Dírhavel, someone who tried to memorize the ballads and heroic epics but was better at creating silly new ones and illustrating pictures of the heroes and stories for his audience using pieces of chalk against the stone. He usually has an audience of children wherever he goes on the crowded island, because he can keep them entertained while their parents or guardians (so many are orphans) work. The majority are mortal children, but there are a few elven children. They ask him for stories about a hero, a new one, of a place that isn’t Arda, isn’t this war against Morgoth. He crafts whimsical stories for them, but sometimes they want ones with darkness and sadness, the tragic hero who fights evil anyways even if he will die in the end. So Leber describes this great city, one with many levels and layers and beautiful lamps and shrouded in a near perpetual twilight, because he has the stories of Menegroth memorized- but his great city has been ransacked by wars and time, occupied by cruel men, and isn’t as lovely anymore, because his audience are the refugee children of a destroyed and dying continent, and he places this city on an island instead of underground or nestled in the mountains because for most of his audience an island is the only location that they understand or know. And it is always rainy or overcast on this island city.

Now there are enemies in this city, because his audience cannot fathom a place that doesn’t have enemies, mean and cruel but not orcs, never Balrogs. Sometimes shape-shifting tricksters like Gorthaur the Cruel, but Leber has enough inspiration from Easterling overlords like Lorgan and the outlaw bands – something dangerous but mortal enough to defeat. Flocks of enemy crows and a werewolf or two, but no dragons. Our city is on an island and dragons can’t swim out to islands, he reassures his young audience of Balar.

Now who is his hero, who fights like our outlaw heroes Beren, Túrin, and Tuor against the bad men who have conquered and are despoiling this island metropolis? Leber describes his as a prince, of course, who whose parents were murdered when he was young, leaving him to be raised by a faithful family retainer. Leber’s stories don’t say if he was mortal or elven. But this prince has a sword and many treasures from his parents, is wise and clever and strong, but haunted by the survivor’s guilt. And this story and its hero needs more magic, something to entertain his audience, so Leber thinks back to his historical lays and remembers Lúthien’s bat-skin disguise and her hair-cloak of invisibly. He combines the two cloaks and adds Túrin’s habit of hiding his identity, and his hero is now the Bat-man, who can disappear into the night and fly on bat-wings with his true identity hidden. A lone hero for the first few story-times, pictures scribbled on the ground, but one day Leber adds a second warrior, a younger boy to be his hero’s fighting companion and adopted son. (If he thinks of Annael taking in Tuor- or especially Thingol taking in Túrin – and like Túrin and Tuor this younger hero will fight with his mentor and run way, only to fall into danger, so be it. Leber is copying the stories he knows.) So the cast grows- a Haladim warrior-maid, then several more, a love interest or two met in the night, more squires and young warrior companion-sons and like Beren one of them dies but is brought back from Mandos. He adds an Ent, more elves, more magic, but above all this the hero clad in black.

Wrestling with just what is my concept for Gadwar’s one-shot going to be (Eighth in the Red Band). The choice is to go with Gawar’s POV or to mix it up and incorporate some or all from Galuven’s perspective. And just how much of the backstory to include of these two brothers. Because without meaning to, (honest!) I created the sort of anti-Fëanor character I would have made on purpose. Sort of. Look, Aglar and all the baggage of his backstory is the Red-Hand-Band character to lambaste the village idiot and spawn. Galuven was a mild accident.

Let’s backtrack to explain.

When I started to formulate the idea behind this series, it was just as an addendum to the “Place Theon Greyjoy and Jeyne Poole into The Silmarillion”, needing a Robb Stark character with a point where I could say “here’s where that Robb Stark character dies and the Theon character wasn’t there”. Werewolf jokes about Finrod linked up with werewolf slander about the Starks, so that’s where Aglar and Consael came from. Edrahil, Heledir, and Ethirdor came from The Leithian Script. At that point I knew I had to complete the set of ten because I almost had a series. I cast my thoughts out to think of other characters with sad or unjust deaths that I could easily translate over to be elves. Bân and Fân from Final Fantasy VII, because I love Zack Fair and his tragedy (and the Silm allowed a new variation on the Reunited Together in the Lifestream Happy Ending). Now I just needed a few more.

I’d finished reading the last book of Wheel of Time some months before and was still bitter over the deaths of some of my favorite couples: Gareth/Siuan and Gawyn/Egwene. Gareth became Arodreth and thus two of my favorite character concepts: second-gen Cuiviénen and pre-Noldor Conquest Sindar. Which left Gawyn. And if you had Gawyn (and Egwene) you needed Galad and Elayne. And Galad as another older brother was a very useful character, especially for Faron (Theon).

But here’s the funny thing about basing a character on Galadedrid Damodred. His character has a couple lynch-pins that I would want to preserve if even roughly basing a new character off of him.

First of all, his big character trait is that he sees mortality in strict black and white, enough so that he annoys his younger siblings and most who meet him. He is Lawful Good, emphasis on Lawful. It’s why he joins the Whitecloaks, a ‘Knights Templar’-like organization of hypocritical murderous religious bigots and through force of will and being the third-best swordsman in the series ends up transforming them into a useful, heroic(-ish) group by the climax. He’s also the world’s most beautiful man, bar none, which works for an elf. It makes his position as one of the Noldor rebelling against the Valar inexplicable unless he, like for Idril and what is implied for Celebrimbor, was a young child taken along with his parents during the Exile. Then having this very devout, rule-abiding, lawful-good person finding himself a member of morally grey/dubious groups adds a nice, interesting flavor to one of the Exilic Noldor, and works perfectly for one of the citizens of Nargothrond under Orodreth.

But here’s the second thing about Galad. His younger siblings? They are his half-siblings. His father married the Queen of Andor. They had Galad, then that queen ran off (prophecies were involved; she had to go have the Chosen One, Rand al’Thor). Galad’s father then married the next queen of Andor, a distant cousin. Together, Galad’s father and his new step-mother, Morgase, had a son and daughter- Gawyd and Elayne- before Galad’s dad tried to overthrow the queen to become king instead of just the prince-consort. Morgase had him killed. Fun times. Here’s the thing, though. All this happened when the children were infants, and Galad thinks of Morgase as his mother. Not step-mother, just mother. He becomes leader of the Whitecloaks because he challenged the previous leader to a duel to the death because of how his step-mother had been treated- he nearly dies to avenge her ‘death’. This is not the only time Galad will do so. Gawyd adores and admires Galad more than he resents him. Galad always thinks of his half siblings as family and never tries to politically challenge them. Gawyn is the glory seeker. Galad isn’t.

And looking at that, I’m left with this antithesis to Fëanor, Indis, and Fingolfin. Galuven is the anti-Fëanor, and I find that hilarious.

Now just how overt do I make that?

WIP List, updated for 4/22

Now that the Bân of My Existence fic is finally finished and posted, aka #6 on the Tol-in-Gaurhoth kill list, time to see what’s left on the proverbial docket:

Beren’s Band of the Red Hand, #3 – Aglar
Beren’s Band of the Red Hand, #8 – Gadwar
Beren’s Band of the Red Hand, #10 – Edrahil
~~(#10 Finrod?)~~
Release from Bondage – only have Chapters 11 and 12 left.
Bân and Fân’s Excellent Adventure
The Hangover, featuring the Band of the Red Hand
Of Ingwë Ingweron – chapters 6+
The Vanyar and Teleri switch narratives AU, aka Queen Ravennë
Best AU EVAR aka Fëanor is never born
The Great Fever of Dorthonion
Andreth gets into a Song Duel with Hadorim Fuckboi
Meng Jiang-nu of Dorthonion
Galadhon asks Círdan about their relatives across the sea
The conclusion to the Baby Eöl, Your Parents are Orcs
Dwarf watches Thingol mourn Denethor
Thingol drunkenly reminisces with Huan about Hound-shaped Maia at Cuiviénen
Vagabond Gondor
Bortë of the War of Wrath and First Queen of Númenor

Trying to remember any others I’ve hinted, pondered, suggested, or have a start of a draft. Open to suggestions.

And of course the various bits of the original universe Rose Red stuff, especially Under the Rose Hood and the Sad Dog Squire Story.

Still thinking about that last post about Gotham and now I’m wondering what would Gotham’s equivalent be for a Batman that wasn’t in the US? Gotham is the imaginary setting as to place our detective-noir-inspired superhero, and the character of his urban setting is a huge component of his story – he needs a large city, (a port as to constantly bring in new plots organically and to explain the city’s size and age), one that is crime-ridden (especially organized crime) but could still evoke the idea that it had once been less ugly and dangerous, that it had a ‘golden age’. And the foil of Metropolis literally means a big city and it the archetypal large city of opportunities and advances and a tech (but also dangers and disappointments). Both cities, according to comic lore, were based of the concept of New York City- a bright side and the dark. Gotham comes from a nickname for NYC coined in the early 1800s by authors that disliked it. I ask because I know there’s the fic rec about the Batman mythos as re-imagined as taking place in Brazil (which sadly I read no Portuguese or there’d go my weekend), and I’m wondering then what city would the stand-in or inspiration for Gotham (Rio? Recife? Sao Paulo?) Of course the fabric of Batman himself would be quite different (and I read it suggested that Batman is as a superhero character very “American” in his appeal as compared to say Superman, which sounds right to me), so that wouldn’t change. But what region or place would be the one that readers could imagine “Gotham”?

Conversely, while Smallville wasn’t originally in Kansas, the Superman origin is that it’s the alien boy found and raised in Smallville, Kansas – literally ‘archetype of tiny rural farm community in the middle of the country, underscore rural and isolated and traditional or ‘old-fashioned’. (There’s a reason an AU/Elseworld replaced Clark Kent’s upbringing with the Amish and the character was less radically changed than “Red Son” – which again famous AU where the equivalent to Smallville, Kansas was a collective farm in the Ukraine). Also that Perry White can make a Wizard of Oz joke because of Kansas makes me smile months later. So what’s the Smallville, Kansas equivalent? (…Sadly I bet Gascony is too touristy instead of rural that the imaginary French versions of Clark Kent wouldn’t get D’artangan jokes, but then what region of France is considered ‘rural small town surrounded by only crop fields’ and is Gotham named after one of Paris’s nicknames or can another region or city of France claim Gotham? ~~Metropolis is def. a Paris~~)

nelayn replied to your post:nelayn replied to your post : Wha’cha Gonna Call…

I will be glad when that day comes 🙂 the world definitely needs more Andreth/Aegnor fic. The happier the better, but I live for angst too, so…

I have a feeling that fic’s popularity rests more than a little on being tagged Aegnor/Andreth and the plot for once not being “thinking about each other as dying” or “meet-fall in love-ditch the girl”. Which is why I really need to write the various Andreth-centric fics I have floating around in my head: the sing-off in Dor-lómin, the great spring plague, the searching for Aegnor’s bones in the ashes of the fifth battle…

yeah, oops, all off-screen A/A angst fics, unless I write one day that sequel to the “Andreth rejects her suitors in Dor-lómin” fic where Aegnor has to escort her back to Dothonion – which even though it’s the nebulous prequel to Whatcha Gonna Call It?, the plot of this proposed fic would be little more than a couple paragraphs of awkward trip on horseback as set up for some furtive smut. Which I’m not a writer of, but that’s pretty much what the fic scenario is whispering for. ……Yeah it’s one of those fics that I want to prompt someone else to write.

The (any) sequel starring Nómwen would have virtually no onscreen Aegnor/Andreth – the only two things I have toyed with are that Angrod would be her favorite (elven) uncle and she had a habit of jumping off tall trees and buildings to force him to catch her – and that she contracting an illness in her early childhood and this is unheard for elves and thus mass panic and more “omg is this an abomination against Eru goodbye to Aegnor’s mental fortitude” angst. The second option being a hypothetical in the vein of ‘hey so what if Andreth did give birth to the first peredhil but died in childbirth – how much more unlikely will that make any other elven-mortal unions?’ All the Nómwen stuff I have quasi-plots for center around her adulthood in Nargothrond – the overwhelming grief of her dead family in the Bragollach and guilt that she wasn’t there with them/can’t leave to join the resistance in Dorthonion (and question I’d have to answer on if she counts as the direct liegelord and/or leader of the House of Bëor), the absolute zero knowledge she has about her parents’ souls since they have both died – she doesn’t know if either of them are in Mandos, if they’re together, if she died would she join either of them, where would she go if she died… And that in the grand tradition B&L and A&A, the worst (plotwise best) person to romantically pursue her is Celebrimbor. So it’s the story of a grieving OC who distracts herself with her very traditional for human/non-traditional gender-wise for elves hobby of culinary creation, who feeds her experiments to her friend the other outsider. Who has a father and uncles who are scheming for power and despite overwhelming disdain for Nómwen’s family (which they try to hide and which extends not just to the mortal half) see a political advantage if Celebrimbor marries the heiress to Dorthonion/House of Bëor/World’s First Half-Elven. The thorny question of just how much this AU butterflies away Thingol’s ultimatum towards Beren is what really stops me from writing this fic. Because meta-wise, there needs to be the Silmaril freed from Morgoth so Eärendil can save the world. And I can’t see Thingol as opposed to Beren as in canon because Beren is tied to him via in-laws/counts vaguely as family and isn’t the first human to fall in love with and wish to marry and elf – and yet still this is his baby girl wanting to marry a vagabond mortal. What opposition would there be to L&B, what would Nómwen’s stance, coming off her grief and uncertainty but also love for her parents? (Also would the survivors of the House of Bëor go to Dor-lómin in this universe?) The big change I toy with, that butterfly wing flapping that I think would make a story and make sense, is that it’s Nómwen asking for a Silmaril as bride-price. Aside from the hilarity and way to off-rail canon, it does slam to the forefront issues with the Fëanorians – facing their own shortcoming in progress on reclaiming the Silmarils, is there a chance in hell any of them could do half of what Lúthien, beren, and Huan did, that their Oath is solely about pursuing hatred and vengeance towards any that hold a Silmaril from them so does that open a loophole on handing over a Silmaril to someone else if they possess one (and how would they hold onto one if they did wrestle them away from Morgoth) – would they realize as Fëanor did right as he was dying that they had no chance in hell of defeating Morgoth without divine assistance – which they had rejected.

at least the now predictable side effect of reading a Sanderson series (having recently finished all the Mistborn novels in May) is the desire to organize the magic system a little bit more in Rose Red. As that world is still in nebulae instead of star, and getting more and more stuff tossed in all the time – plus that desire to make the setting closer to a Western Hemisphere versus ‘Old World’, even if it’s original goal was ‘standard medieval fantasy AU setting for characters/tidbits’ (which includes the temptation to go paleolithic critters to justify horses and some other domesticated animal fore-bearers).

What I really should do is write out the plot summaries/skeletons before I forget and to give myself more concrete scaffolding – even if so much of the skeleton should be labeled ‘fossil’ for how long it’s been mentally marinading and how partial it is.

Need to draw a map…

playing around with various notes for the original story stuff that demanded a very AU Batman in the backstory – a most warped Under the Red Hood among other things. World-building is getting a little more defined and richer in the political structure – using the HRE as part of the starting point for inspiration so everything isn’t a fantasy Hundred Years/War of the Roses ripoff, though knowing me, the Shogun/Emperor situation of the Edo period is just begging to be remixed with the whole “Pope” versus “Emperor” – or Emperor versus ‘first among equals’ Head Elector/Hereditary Leader of Imperial

Bureaucracy and Secret Police. Need to figure out the balance of power between those three factions for the various time periods. Timeline will be easier, though no less fuzzy, than the map. Former farmboy suspiciously similar Clark Kent as reformist ‘Pope’ elected during a period of widespread revolt against ‘super-powered/tainted’ individuals and families. Vaguely Gnostic religious schism plus witch hunt plus cynical power and land-grab on the part of various characters, chief of which a certain bald bishop that loathes the farmboy. Made myself chuckle at how to bring in the Green Lanterns and Carol Ferris, though I admit having intergalactic space cops as Rhine League anti-river robber barons is a weird pick. But keeps the patrol sensibility without encroaching onto the Imperial agent that the Batfam has, and the mermaid/harpy gals already fill the position of messengers and troubleshooters for the Otherworld/higher authorities. Hal Jordan as a river pilot. Thurd-und-Taxis is too late period to bring in (though the cheap joke would be to make them the Flashes). Bad heget, stick to medieval, not Renaissance.

Though the greatest sin of this world-building is that I’m trying to work a universe that doesn’t have the Roman Empire (fallen) analogy that informs any fantasy (or non-fantasy) setting. No lost Numenor, no left-over ruins and roads, no Empire to be recreated, no Old Pagan gods.

Last day of World Dog Show – I took the Metro into central Milano along with other travel companion who was too tired and both knees and feet hurting to do much of anything, plus the rain. So I saw the Duomo, window-shopped a little, did not get my gelato, all and all I can say it was lovely but that’s about it. Saw and experienced far more of these two small towns north of Milano ( the B&B is in a town called Barzano, to any stalkers). Hopefully tomorrow a chance to spend the day in Como and the lake there. Then a very early morning for some very long plane rides.