#Richard St. Vier

[slimemanagement]

My beloved Richard St. Vier from Swordspoint

[squeeneyart]

[Image description: Several digital colored drawings of Alec and Richard from Swordspoint. Alec is a tall skinny man with long brown hair and green eyes in a black robe. Richard is a shorter, more muscular man with dark curly hair.

First image, Top left: Sketch of Richard helping Alec out of his shirt. Alec looks tired, but looks down at Richard with a smile. Text pointing to him says "High off his ass". Alec is saying something, but the speech bubble is empty.

Top right: Alec with short hair, looking shocked and blushing. He holds a small ring in his hand. Someone offscreen says "He still wants you".

Bottom right: A small drawing of Richard holding up a sword while Alec flips off whoever is looking at them from behind. Text points to him reading "Started the fight".

Second image: Richard kisses Alec while grabbing his shoulder and touching his cheek. Alec's eyes are open, and he has one hand on Richard's waist and the other on his upper back. They're saying something, though the speech bubbles are empty. End id]

/waves hands/ mad bad lads

anyway. made a 2 hour playlist. i live here now. gonna punt alec into the sun

[luciantheemortalboyking]

SWORDSPOINT FANCAST

Okay so I have no idea who's supposed to play Alec but ever since I first read Swordspoint there was only one man for Richard in my head. And that's 30 year old Santiago Cabrera in BBC's Merlin.

LOOK

HIM IN TPOTS :

HELLO SAILORR

[impishtubist]

Okay but in all honesty, is there a Swordspoint fandom active anywhere???? It's pretty quiet here on Tumblr. Have you all moved to Discord? Are you still clinging to the LJ community? Dreamwidth? Do you not exist at all and I am shouting into the void????

[fengtianshi]

Oh come on, tell him! He won't care a single word of your angsty reasons!!!

Alec and Richard from "Swordspoint" by Ellen Kushner

[do-you-ship-it-polls]

Do you ship it?

reason: Guarded swordsman who's never learnt to read and expelled scholar with no survival instinct fall in love. The rest is history (read the fucking book)

[queer-book-character-tournament]

Character, book, and author names under the cut

Frances Janvier- Radio Silence by Alice Oseman

Jude St. Francis- A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara

Nick Nelson- Heartstopper by Alice Oseman

Richard St Vier- Swordspoint by Ellen Kushner

[badass-queer-couples-battle]

Sword gays showdown, round 1 of bracket one

Propaganda:

For Richard:

Context : Swordspoint was published in 1987. Several characters are explicitely gay/bisexual, including... the main character (well, Ellen Kushner is part of the community. I met her once at a signing and I was so awkward and she and her wife (who cowrote the third volume of the series) were so nice. She's also on tumblr. What a wonderful world)

So, let's go back to Richard, who lived in the country with his mother and learnt his trade for a weird guy who eventually died. Richard is a sword prodigy (he also started quite young and trains constantly - natural talent is a thing, hard training is another)

He lives in the "poor" part of the city, where prostitutes, thieves, innkeepers and seamstresses prolifer

Richard does learn the blade and eventually goes into the city. Where he becomes a swordman for hire. Famous, respected and feared, Richard isn't exactly the chatty signing-autographs type. People with good sense leave him alone because the ones stupid enough to challenge him didn't live to tell the tale

But one day... Alec happens. Alec's a penniless ex scholar with a feud with the University, a sharp tongue and absolutely not the means to defend it in ill famed places, which is the ones he prefers since he's always looking for trouble dur to his self-destructive tendencies. The first time they met, Alec tries to get on Richaed's ndrves so the other man would kill him. However, Richard finds this man unafraid of him quite amusing. Word's eventually gegs around ghat the gwo are lovers and people din't get on Alec's bad side if they can prevent it (not easy, Alec has Issues. Capital I.) to avoid having todeal with Richard's protectiveness. I mean, I wouldn't want to anger a professional swordman either

Alec teaches Richard how to read because he never knew how to m. He's the perfect damsel in distress until he isn't because his help is needed [mod note: end of propaganda- part one . Didn't leave it as a wall of text since it'd be harder to read]

The archetypal gay (bi) swordsman: he was one of the few queer characters in fantasy fiction back in the 70s when the first book was published, yet he's in an explicitly romantic and sexual relationship with a man, and he is The terrifying swordsman, infamous, terrifying, and frequently hired for his skills. Also the plot of the book revolves around him using his sword skills to rescue his lover and getting rescued back. So. Y'know.

For Dominique:

This traumatized mess of a vampire is So. She's SO. She's bi and fights with a sword and has a dead twin and a fwb relationship with her childhood friend and a badass girlfriend and a "bonding over their mutual feelings for her childhood friend" thing going on with another guy. 

she's gay she's a vampire she has a sword and I love her 

[do-you-know-this-queer-character]

Do you know this queer character?

Richard is MLM and uses He/Him pronouns!

[victor-frankensimp]

This is a PSA for everyone to read “Swordspoint” By Ellen Kushner

It’s so casually queer and everyone in it is a messy bitch.

[mlmshipbracket]

ROUND 1: POLL #31

Alec x Richard art by poontanam-blog on Tumblr

ROUND 1 POLLS [HERE]

PROPAGANDA BELOW

Richard St. Vier/Alec Campion:

A lone skilled swordfighter and the depressed provocative scholar with not an ounce of self-preservation 

Palm/Nuengdiao:

they're two incredibly lonely teenagers, one who is an heir to a big company and watched his father get murdered on his birthday (Nueng) and one who is uprooted by his absent father to come be the guy's bodyguard (Palm). They're both incredibly traumatized 18 year olds who are like so in love with each other it makes them crazy.

like this video shows it well imo

[squibkin]

hello swordspoint readers i forgot i drew this

[squeeneyart]

cw suicide mention

[Image description: Series of digital greyscale drawings of characters from Ellen Kushner's Riverside series, including Richard St. Vier, a slightly short man with curly black hair and some scarring and stubble in a plain cloak, Alec Campion, a tall skinny man with long hair tied back loosely with a ribbon in long student's robes, and Katherine Talbert, a young woman with wavy hair tied into a ponytail wearing a swordsman's jacket.

Top left text: Whoops I read Ellen Kishner's Swordboy Yaoi

Top left to right: Richard looks to the side as Alec talks to someone off-camera with a hand on his hip. Text by Richard: This gary stu bitch has purple eyes.

Katherine writing a letter determinedly. Text near with an arrow: Swearing to defend an innocent lady's honor while rp'ing her favorite book's leading man.

Bottom left to right: Alec looking over his shoulder in disgust. Alec and Katherine in t-shirts that say, respectively: "If you mention my ex I'll kill you and then myself" and "I tolerate my gay uncle but just barely".

End ID]

i say swordboy yaoi but dont worry katherine is working out her swordgirl yuri as well

anyway i read swordspoint and the privilege of the sword by ellen kushner. im just. im just gonna be like this for a minute dont mind me and please do not look at how much ive drawn alec specifically its fine im gonna punt him into the sky

[luciantheemortalboyking]

RICHARD AND ALEC FROM SWORDSPOINT AS LANA DEL REY LYRICS

They're soooo Ultraviolence and Born To Die (the albums, not only the songs) coded!!

I'm screaming crying ripping my hair out because Alec is a sad girl, and he puts his life out on the line, watch what you say to him, cause Richard's got the fire and he walks with it, and he likes his girls insane, and the world was built for two, cause they were born to die, but sometimes love is not enough and the road is tough, and Alec begs him to get high, but Richard tells him with tears in his eyes to stop making him sad and to stop making him cry, and Alec asks him if he would kill for him one day, and Richard tells him that of course he would, and Alec asks him why he tells him he needs him when he's always leaving, and that he's trying to catch happiness like a butterfly every night, and if Richard's as bad as they say, then he guesses he's cursed, and then Richard screams at him that it hurts to love him but he still loves him, and that all the times he spent with him meant shit compared to all of Alecs drugs, but Alec answered saying that if Richard held him without hurting him, he'd be the first who ever did, and then he tells Richard he's pretty when he cries, and he says that there's things he wants to say to Richard, but he'll just let him live, and that he's been dying for something real, and that he's got a burning desire for him, and he asks Richard if he'd still love him if he was no longer young and beautiful, and that he falls to pieces when he's with him, and Richard responds saying that when he's on his knees, Alec's how he prays, and that he's evil, ornery, scandalous and evil, most definitely, thus he used to call Alec DN (that stood for Deadly Nightshade, because he was filled with poison, but blessed with beauty and rage), and that Alec is no good for him but he wants him, that he's screwed up and brilliant, that he hit him and it felt like a kiss, and he told Alec that no matter what he did he'd be by his side, and Alec says that there was never a boy so pretty, and when Richard walked out that door a piece of him died, so he begs Richard to give him all of his ultraviolence, and that maybe he likes this rollercoaster and maybe it keeps him high, and Alec talks about how he can hear the violens, and that he could have died right there cause Richard was right beside him, and that heaven was a place on earth with him, but that loving him was never enough, and that nothing scares him anymore, and Alec says that he wants to tell him he misses him so much, but something keeps him really quiet, and he's tired of feeling like he's fucking crazy, cause he wants more, and Richard tells him to kiss him hard before he goes, and Alec just wants him to know that, baby, he's the best, and he asks himself how you get over someone as dangerous, tainted and flawed as Richard, and Alec's got that summertime sadness, cause he was crazy and he needed Richard to come here and save him since he was his one true love, and that loving him forever can't be wrong, and that even though he's not here, Alec won't move on, cause no-one compares to Richard and everytime he closes his eyes, it's like a dark paradise, and he tells his new lover that there's no remedy for memory, and he screams in his sleep that Richard's soul is haunting him and that he wishes he was dead, dead like him, and that he will never forget Richard like the tunnel under ocean blvd, he will miss him forever, like the stars miss the sun in the morning sky.

[nothwell]

Did you enjoy Jane Austen or Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell but wished for more murderhusbands?

Do you think any book could be improved with swords?

Do you prefer your characters queer until proven otherwise?

Some have called Swordspoint by Ellen Kushner a "cult classic," which is a fun way to say a book is criminally underappreciated. It's a perfect blend of fantasy, intrigue, romance, and edge-of-your-seat action. This forerunner of the mannerpunk (or fantasy-of-manners) subgenre is a marvelous balance of Austenesque social ritual with bloody consequences. A wealth of worldbuilding-through-implication is packed into this shockingly slender volume that leaves the reader ravenous for more.

While it contains far more grit and gore than your average romance, it is still at its core a romance, and a queer one at that - almost every twist of the ever-coiling plot is a direct result of romantic desire either thwarted or indulged. Our heroes, the low-born master swordsman Richard St. Vier and his mysterious academic lover Alec, form the core of this Gordian knot. Though I prefer a Happily-Ever-After over a Happy-For-Now, I concede that Swordspoint's conclusion puts the punk in mannerpunk and thus feels wholly appropriate for this one-of-a-kind story.

tl;dr - read Swordspoint and come scream with me, pls.

[fengtianshi]

#2 - Your fight indeed...

Richard St. Vier from "Swordspoint" by Ellen Kushner