Aw I understand what you mean, but idk it’s just really a lovely fic? : ’)
Yes, it’s not a fic I dislike or feel ashamed of- as evident there are plenty of lines from it that are among my favs, and it comes from an AU that I’ve held dear for about a decade now. I just get befuddled and bemused that this is the acclaimed one, especially because I can’t decide if it is an outlier among my works or fits in with my style and tone and all that jazz
I love this fic saubhgnjrem
I like Whatcha Gonna Call It?, no lie. But it’s also like that post about how you send days on a picture sketching, redrawing, inking, and coloring – and then the ten minute half-finished sketch for a joke is the one that gets all the notes and reblogs… That feeling? yeah. Because the fics I hash out in one sitting where I’m just pouring out words with little regard to paragraph and sentence structure, just trying to expunge a bit of this very, very old idea. And wow, okay, it’s popular. And maybe it’s more humorous than normal but not really? Is it an anomaly among my fic production or not? I can’t tell. And do readers want more of it or was this the only part that holds value and attention?
@squirrelwrangler : #this is a lovely sauron design too#though that the cats are the newer show style instead of old-fashioned apple-heads sort of amuse me
AHA! Little did you know that I was lying in wait, ready to pounce the second this topic was brought up!
The two kitties on the stools are meant to be more traditional Thai Cats (whether they came across that way in my not-especially-well-acquainted-with-cat-anatomy style is another question), but I couldn’t resist giving the one Sauron was holding the modern American Siamese long snooty snoot snoot, because they have matching aquiline profiles. :3
I’m so glad, and to be frank, we all know Sauron prefers the modern bat-eared long muzzle versions.
(There’s a debate anyway on if the original Thai cats were as round-faced as ‘appleheads’, though the modern show lines are definitely an exaggeration and have grown visibly more extreme even in the last twenty years)
OT: As a child/teen I had a Siamese and an Oriental Shorthair, both retired show cats. The Siamese was basically allergic to herself (well, it was a dandruff-related allergy) and in lieu of taking daily medicine that would make her fur fall out, she ran around the house perpetually sneezing and eyes half-shut. The sort of pathetic and pitiable existence I think oddly befitting when I think of Sauron.
(And I know Tolkien was obviously not a cat person, though personally I found my Siamese far more dog-like in personality than most sight-hounds I’ve owned, and such a chatty and affectionate breed surely should be the elven cat. And since Siamese have weaker night-vision than most cats, that means they are cats belonging in Valinor during the Light of the Two Years and objectively the worst pick of cat breed for a sun-hating dark lord. ;p )
I started watching and was on the fence about continuing, for similar reasons, but I couldn’t remember enough about the book plot to compare. So my main takeaway was “I ought to reread Anne of Green Gables”
That’s an excellent response 🙂
Very little of the dramatic plot events in the show happened in the book, aside from the getting drunk, Minnie May’s croup, and Gilbert being heart-eyes for Anne after she smashes a slate over his head- though she’s too busy trying to beat him academically to notice.
The 1985 movie is pretty good- takes some liberties, too. I was so excited with this new series because the casting was actual children and like the ‘85, it was filmed in PEI and showcased the period setting and beauty.
Ironically (not really if you know*), the most accurate retelling is ‘Akage no Anne’, a Japanese anime series from the 70s. It’s obviously dated animation, but made by the guys that would go on to found Studio Ghibli, which shows, and the backgrounds are gorgeous and it captures the slow-paced idyllic feeling.
*Anne of Green Gables is HUGE in Japan. In part because a translation was released right after WWII by a Japanese woman who worked to translate most 18th and 19th cen English classics, and promoted and encouraged by the Americans for young Japanese women to read; it’s taught in schools, then the 70s anime was played on repeat for at least ten years every morning, long-running touring musical, there’s a now-defunct theme park, and every time there’s a new Anne series (two years ago it was a series about the translator, Hanako to Anne, before that a animated movie ‘Before Green Gables’) tourism to PEI from Japan spikes, but every year there tends to be over 300,000. There were commemorative stamps for the anniversary of the book in Japan as well as Canada.
I’m glad your head’s better tho!! 😀
I am forced to pantomime everything but I made myself some hot tea and found the last bag of Bavarian hard candies to suck on so hopefully if I let my voice rest it’ll be back soon. But yes, I feel more like myself right now. 🙂
manymanytimesb4 replied to your post:
[[MOR] I hate that almost all Batfam centric…
Oh! I had no idea they were your nOTP! They’re my non-negotiableTP, as in, I will probably not read/watch if they aren’t together in some way (even if just flirting). I did watch BTAS+Sub0 when very young, must have been tipping point for me. Won’t bug you about it now that I know 🙂
They’re not my ‘non-negotiable’ notp (perfect adjective), in that as long as their romance is not the main focus I can read it with no problem, but if I had the choice between nearly identical fics and in one Dick and Barbara are good friends, can work together and hang out, and maybe a teasing reference to how teenage Dick had this precocious crush that has cooled into platonic or familial love – and the other fic they are romantically linked, actually flirting and dating, I’m picking the first fic and being very grateful for its existence. The second that they start seriously flirting, I start pulling away.
Part of it is how little media with Babs!Batgirl I have exposure to, and how her age fluctuated from much older than Dick to what she is now which is coded as younger than him. Neither choice appeals. And that older Babs it really does look like from the outside at least like Gravity Falls with Dipper Pines’ crush on Wendy. I can like the idea of the Robins having crushes on Batgirl, and Barbara admitting that Dick grew up to be an attractive young man, but Anakin/Padmé is I think the only OTP of mine with ‘younger boy entering puberty has crush on older girl and when he grows up she honestly returns his feelings’. Because usually that has me screaming for the hills.
I just don’t see their personalities meshing for me, or having them together as a couple give anything extra. Oracle Babs, at least, reads too close to Bruce’s personality type and flaws, which severely limits my suspension of disbelief of DickBabs as a long-term romantic couple, plus this uncomfortable gut feeling that Dick -or at least the authors through Dick- would be always comparing Babs to how she was pre-injury. Sure, bubbly personality!Dick bringing some light into Babs’ life as a plot thread, but I still can’t see why she would want him as a long-term romantic life parent. Sadly, fandom has yet to tell me what the good alternative ship for Babs is (aside from Dinah), but I’d prefer someone who met Babs as adults. The baggage of DickBabs’ history together is what makes me not ship them.
My first ‘ship for Robin was Starfire, and I loved that it stressed Dick as idk, the Batman-lite and learning how to be comfortable in opening up and expressing his emotions and that he was the steady stabilizing safety for Kori and that plot and setting-wise it meant he was strongly connected to the Titans and wider DC superhero universe and community. When he’s paired with Babs, that always signaled to me that his character was going to stay in Gotham and Bludhaven if lucky, narrowed him. Which, it is odd because not like Babs as Oracle doesn’t also have wider ties via BoP.
It’s been a long time since I watched any B:TAS and that series wasn’t a big part of my childhood – I actually haven’t watched many episodes. Batman media at that time for me was the movies, especially the second two, and I watched way more of the Superman Animated series and then Justice League cartoons and Teen Titans, (and much later Young Justice). So I have almost no exposure, nostalgia, or attachment to Barbara – as Batgirl or not. It does mean that I can take the Arkham games universe with its Tim/Babs without automatically disliking it, unlike I think the majority of fans. (It helps that Tim in those games really isn’t at all like comic canon Tim or look like him, even more so than B:TAS’s “Timmy Todd”. There’s a good case to be made that Arkham Tim Drake is at least a few years older than Arkham’verse Jason, for one thing).
crocordile replied to your post:
crocordile replied to your photo
He is so…
Hahahaha was there really such a gap? Isn’t Dick the Hot One in general? (though in the movie I watched teen Jason already looked ready 2 blossom into a heartthrob while Dick was really not that charming, but I get the feeling that’s not the way of things in general? Hehe)
Dick has always been pegged as the handsome one with the #1 best ass in the universe both outside in fandom and even in-universe – whereas Jason is known for his thighs (Jason’s thighs are very much A Thing), and when drawn pretty, is drawn really pretty. Dick is(was) the social heart of the superhero community, the one everyone liked and trusted; he’s supposed to be really charming. What the meta pointed out, in the Batman comic book, at the time Jason was brought back, you had Bruce at the height of his most asshole, and Bruce generally drawn as the standard American Superhero lantern jaw bodybuilder bear in his late 30s, and then Tim Drake, the eternal 16 sixteen-year-old Robin who wasn’t even in the Batman books for a bit at this point, and Dick who was that twenty-something athletic but not too muscled really good-looking guy- but he was in his own series and also going through some ..blah…writing. So here’s newly revamped Jason, filling that gap in-between Bruce and Tim, and sometimes the art in UtH he looked too old or not as pretty, but then panels where yeah, here he is, back from the dead and on the other side of puberty, thank you for the tight jeans and leather jackets. And he’s an anti-villain/anti-hero that DC didn’t realize they and made too sympathetic in comparison to Batman. (No seriously they were shocked at how popular he was and especially among female fans).
Of course, I will never not find it funny but also weird that Jason post-resurrection is as tall if not taller than Bruce (not as bulky, but also drawn more muscled than Dick, though), because back in the 80s he was drawn as very short (and his hair very curly) and he spent at least a few years homeless on the streets so realistically that childhood malnourishment would have stunted his height. Then again, like how old he looks when he came back (his UtRH does not look like nineteen year-old), the art made him look older than he was back since the arc he was killed, trying to visually distance from the fact that they were writing the murder of a fifteen year old boy.
There’s official art depending out which artist that makes any of them either ugly or hot, but it’s taken as a given that they are all eye candy, just (slight) variations on the theme.
crocordile said: Of course Jason’s the handsomest tho ♥
why yes i am happy that everyone so far i have introduced to the batfam has followed me in choosing Jason as their favorite/hottest Robin. No shame there.
He is so handsome
heckofabecca replied to your post : A stack of sigils from the Silmarillion; a sprig…
huh! i did not know you did manga! cool beans! 😛
Oh gods did the Rurouni Kenshin not make it obvious? Okay confession time, besides all the Omnibus RuroKen including the two Restoration AU volumes, and the series I read via scanlations but don’t yet physically own (Fullmetal Alchemist), you bet I was sending my high school watching anime and buying random volumes of manga and manwha. I still haven’t watched some of the big series that my age bracket means I should be familiar with, and stopped watching or never got into some that the later generation big ones are (for example I never watched Sailor Moon or Dragon Ball on one end and DeathNote or Attack on Titan on the other). But between my sisters and me we have the first twenty to thirty volumes of Bleach, I’ve read all of Naruto, watched a very little bit of One Piece, read the beginning of Fairy Tail (which my sister still collects, she’s the one that also continued on to read all of Rave Master), Yankee-kun no Megane-chan, CLAMP I read all of Tsubasa Chronicles and xxxHolic (again sister only read Tsubasa and collects it), Inuyasha, Claymore, Angel Densetsu (same mangaka as Claymore), Eyeshield 21, Vinland Saga, Ragnarok (which sort of annoyed it became a MMORPG and the manwha was left unfinished), Soul Eater, a couple more historical fantasy ones I can’t remember off the top of my head (More than one co-staring Nobunaga)… A couple of series I watched on Toonami or [adult swim] but never read – Trigun for instance, which is why I’ve promised one day I’m naming a pet Millie after Millie Thompson. The Twelve Kingdoms I watched and then found a fan translation for most of the night novels. Saiunkoku Monogatari I never read the light novels for, only watched.
RuroKen and Rangarok are the only two series I have on the bookshelf; the rest I either never bought, sold, or gave to my sister.
“
Give me that instead of white robes ” agsbhrenjws i also hate them
Do I have petty molehills I will turn into my mountain to die upon via transformation into a five-foot pillar of salt? You bet! Do I hate that detail of the Naismith painting of Cuiviénen with a passion that is a little ridiculous and thus rank that cover as just behind the ‘silver fëanor’ cover for worst Silmarillion book cover at my local bookstore? Yes, yes I do.
“Am I biased towards empire-waistline garments? Hell yes ” HELL YES
Is it because I’m a five-foot shrimp with a modest bust but slender hips and an even tinier waist and no ass and thus think empire bust are flattering and comfy on me? Yes.
“ Queen Melian showed them how to harvest the silk from silk worms.” oh this is lovely!
Byzantine Powerful Queen! Also, Melian was a renegade Maia of Yavanna and Vána as well as of Estë. Something about making fabric off of killing larvae is hilariously appropriate to me. And that means silkworms are a source of food. It’s a tradition Sindarin dish. Noldor are horrified.
“Some elven asshole probably invents neon bright dyes and the Noldor decide that is the fucking best and color-palette wise the sons of Fëanor look like the unholy manifestation of the 1980s.” avgabshdnjremsd I’M SO GLAD I ASKED…
His sigil has a rainbow in the center and he wore three spotlights on his forehead. He is so annoyingly extra. They are annoyingly extra. The accomplishment that gets pointed out in the text, the thing they are known for, is creating their own jewels. bravo, cubic zirconia. They are addicted to bling. Fake bling. I try to ignore the implication of how eye-searingly awful they must have looked, but yeah.
oooh i actually really like cranach-burgundian gown for nargothrond…
It doesn’t hurt that so many are gold and greens worn by blondes. Plus the amount of gold chains and rings and necklaces fits with a king who brought enough jewelry to actually finance his kingdom and war effort and would commission and wear the Nauglamir. Though, yeah, that was a piece that was like the Egyptian pectoral breastplate that wrapped around the neck and shoulders and down the chest, not just a chain of office seen in Tudor portraiture. But here’s another reason for Tudor!elves.
otorno replied to your post : �� fashion in arda!
Heyyy team Tudor Noldor 2k17!! I go for a way more subdued look than you describe here, but who wants to just stick every elf in a generic tunic? boring.
For some of them it’s a mocking out of love (they just get the short end of my love because everyone else so many neglected groups needing attention). And it’s a spectrum- some like tastefully refined palettes. They aren’t all Egalmoth. (let’s face it, he’s actually Exhibit A for excesses in Noldor taste). But yes, my biggest complaint was that the same tunic or tunic variation is so boring- boring to look at, boring to describe. A doublet and multi-patterned hose- that sounds more interesting to read, let alone see.
I feel hypocritical bitching about fanart, but there you go. Plus, the LotR movies put Arwen and Galadriel in the same scoop neck no belt bell-sleeved gown and I got sick of it with Silm fanart copying it.
crocordile replied to your post : �� fashion in arda!
Roman!elves was actually my original (waaay back) headcanon for valinor hahaha though at some point i had no idea what i was doing anymore
I have sunk too much time and effort into tudor!elves, but if I didn’t, the early Chinese hanfu or Roman tunica are my alternatives. When I remember the equatorial location for the Valinorean locales or when I think of what ‘simpler Vanayr fashion is what again’
“Women have curls piled high atop their heads. Lots of cute sunhats worn by everyone.” CUTE…
Ancient Roman + Bynzantine + Folklorico. Ribboned updos, fresh flowers or fake flowers in hair, but also hats. Hats and hats and straw hats and keeping out of the sun and Ancalimë with a big shepherdess hat. The status-thing again of having a hairdresser to sew you hair into a mess of artificially curled and oiled and perfumed hair. Oh- makeup to hide any sign of aging. That’s a later Númenorean thing but you bet your butt grey hairs were dyed and wrinkles or pox-marks hidden
heget's WordPress 