#fantastic beasts and where to find them background

[kulapti]

Bookbinding of A Wizard's Devotional by @polymathema, March-July 2023.

A Wizard’s Devotional (Fantastic Beasts, Percival Graves x Credence Barebone) is about recovery from depression, some magic politics drama, and the complex experience of navigating whether and how to practice Christianity as a queer person especially if your religion was weaponized against you. Fics about Credence often touch on this, but most of the time religion is either mentioned extremely briefly or the character immediately and aggressively rejects his religious background. Those choices are good interpretive options that have their place. However, AWD leans in to a space where many queer Christians find themselves as young adults. I appreciate polymathema's compassion for this character and the many contradictions between his upbringing and experiences. I also recommend this work for gay yearning and nuanced approach to characters dealing with depression.

— About this project under the cut

I’m very excited to show off this binding now that I have mailed a copy to the author! Huge shoutout to polymathema for answering my questions, he was very nice when I (a random internet stranger) asked him stuff about a fic from years ago.

This binding one of a nearly identical pair I made, and part of my ongoing project where I plan to make four matching bindings of my favorite fics from the Fantastic Beasts fandom. My personal copy is pretty much the same except for the spine decorations. I’ll post more photos when the set of four is done! To be clear this is the copy I mailed to polymathema; whenever I make a ficbinding, I try to contact the author and offer to make them a copy as well.

Can you even imagine my delight when I found obscurus lookin fabric!! The resale store had a lot of colors but for this particular piece I wanted the codex (physical book; the actual “book” is the text) to look somewhat like a religious text considering its themes, so I went for the subtler, not quite subdued navy as opposed to a brighter blue or purple option.

Materials: Textblock is archival paper, laser printed text, scrapbooking cardstock endpapers, with linen and beeswax stitching, reinforced with cotton cheesecloth as mull. Sewn endbands are cotton embroidery floss. Covers are Italian rayon bookcloth (spine) and hand-dyed cotton batik backed with handmade wood pulp paper (ink-like cover pattern). Cover lettering is machine-cut metallic heat transfer vinyl. The case is constructed of archival bookboard, handmade wood-paper, cotton rag paper, and PVA craft glue.

[solarmorrigan]

Hello! I was tagged for this by the marvelous @paperbackribs about... *checks watch* four months ago! I'm so late, I'm sorry, time is meaningless and slippery!

How many works do you have on AO3? 300 (!)

What’s your total AO3 word count? 976,101

What fandoms do you write for?

At the moment, I'm only writing for Stranger Things, but I've written things for about 40ish fandoms over the years.

What are your top 5 fics by kudos?

In Phony Matrimony [Fantastic Beasts]

Shared Space [Homestuck]

Simple Association [James Bond - Craig movies]

Made with Love (and Yarn) [Stranger Things]

These Days I'm Fine (These Days I Tend to Lie) [Stranger Things]

Do you respond to comments? Why or why not?

I try to! I used to get fewer comments, and it was easier to respond to each of them. Having recently been in some much larger fandoms, though, I've kind of been getting overwhelmed and have fallen behind. I'm so grateful that people take the time to even just send a little heart--to tell me that they read this thing and enjoyed it--and I'd love to respond to everyone, but at this rate I'm not quite sure I'll manage to catch up D:

What is the fic you wrote with the angstiest ending?

Probably either For the Love of You (James Bond, established 00Q, in which Bond is forced to go after Q when he turns out to be a traitor) or either of the fics in the Forever and Ever, Amen series (also James Bond, 00Q, in which Q is a necromancer and won't let Bond die). I've written other dark things, but I tend towards hopeful endings even with those

What’s the fic you wrote with the happiest ending?

Most things I've written! I'm a big fan of happily ever after and I write a lot of short fluff pieces. But as far as fics where the happy ending is sort of earned, I'd say maybe He Dreams, Until Such Time (Hades game, gen, in which Hypnos is the Elysium boss fight after having been banished from the House, and Zagreus finds a way to get him back in) or We Have Surplus If We Need It (Pacific Rim, established Newmann, in which Newt tries to figure out who he is in a post-kaiju world and cooks a lot about it)

Do you get hate on fics?

Not particularly. I've gotten a few randos trying to tell me off for writing slash, and one or two people who were clearly just mad at a specific trope and happened to land on my fic, but I've been very fortunate to get largely positive feedback

Do you write smut? If so, what kind?

I do! I'm not sure it's exactly my strongest suit (and, in fact, often worry that it's not very good at all), but I guess I keep at it?? I've written PWP and plotularly significant smut before; whatever serves my purposes at the time

Do you write crossovers? What’s the craziest one you’ve written?

Not often, but I have! The first fic I ever tried writing on my own was a Buffy/Scooby-Doo crossover, and I've written a fair bit for Gravity Falls/Over the Garden Wall. Not sure how wild either of those are, though?

Have you ever had a fic stolen?

Not that I've been alerted to, but I've been posting fic for something like 20 years now, so it wouldn't surprise me if at least one of them has cropped up elsewhere under someone else's name

Have you ever had a fic translated?

Yyyyyes...? Pretty sure I remember that happening! I think it was over on ff dot net, so I don't remember which one it was. Good odds it was one of my Criminal Minds fics, though

Have you ever co-written a fic before?

A few times! I've done RP-style co-writing, round robins, half-and-half, and just plain collaborating. Most of them never reached the point of being able to publish, but they were still fun

What’s your all time favorite ship?

Gotta confess: I don't think I have one. My favorite is usually whatever I'm focusing on at the time; I don't dislike ones I've shipped previously, but they tend to settle fondly into the background once I've left a fandom

What’s a WIP you want to finish but doubt you ever will?

I had a whole Stranger Things fic planned out exploring the potential relationship between Steve and his mom, and I'd love to get at least the bare bones of that done, but there's something about it that just kind of refuses to come

What are your writing strengths?

Characterization and emotion. Emotion is something I feel like I don't identify particularly well in real life, but I think I'm pretty good at getting the intended response from people in my writing. (Also maybe dialogue, but that's just so fun to write)

What are your writing weaknesses?

I! Am! Impatient! I tend to rush through things sometimes and screw the pacing up or skip over important details because I worry writing it out in full will take too long and I'll lose interest. I can also get a little too rigid in trying to achieve a particular outcome, instead of letting the story flow

Thoughts on writing dialogue in another language in fic?

I don't tend to do it, but that's because I'm only fluent in English and don't want to jar anyone with a bad auto-translate job. If someone is speaking another language, I usually try to find a way to signify that based on whether or not the POV character also knows that language

First fandom you wrote for?

It was either HP (forgive me, this was over 20 years ago) or Buffy the Vampire Slayer/Scooby-Doo (crossover fic I wrote when I was, like, nine?)

Favorite fic you’ve written?

Ever?? In my life?? My dude, I could pick a favorite per fandom maybe, but just straight up favorite?? I cannot. Of things written more recently, I'm very fond of Under My Skin (Steddie, exploring the possibility of Steve with physical scars). Of things written slightly less recently, I still have a complicated soft spot for We Have Surplus If We Need It

Gently tagging (if you've already done this, I'm sorry, just ignore me): @spiritofcamelot @ato-the-bean @puppy-steve @emchant3d @lexirosewrites

[trashcanwithsprinkles]

Hello. I just wanted to ask- do you have any worldbuilding on the volchiy or the zvezdochoty that never made it into cyanide narwhal? I absolutely love doing worldbuilding- and I’ve been going absolutely feral over these guys- but sometimes it’s hard to fit in the information without it being an exposition dump, so it usually ends up being just. Background information for whatever sort of story I’m trying to work on. I was curious if you had any worldbuilding you’d like to share on them- I absolutely adore your fic, it’s been a fantastic read.

oh god you're opening the floodgates here-

actually, i don't know. i know that i had info on them, but i can't remember atm what actually made it in and what didn't (if there was even any info that got left out). so uh- i'll just leave an infodump of all i had thought up of them down here,,

thank you!!! <3

on the zvezdochoty

basically i thought it would be interesting if they were some sort of Adepti-like group of non-humans from long, long ago. so like- normal animals that attained higher thought, except these ones didn't do it via cultivating spiritual energy, so they don't have the type of powers that Illuminated Beasts in Liyue do. i think i had Guizhong or Morax ask in the fic if it was a collaboration, but Pavel said it was a sum of efforts – basically illuminaiton via collective knowledge gathered as a united group as opposed to the Adepti's method of going about it on their own.

my idea was that, around the time of the Primordial One's unified civilization, a large pack of foxes somewhere near what would later become Inazuma became really close with the humans there. almost like dogs becoming smarter as we domesticated them, the foxes started picking up on human knowledge as a group. they loved their human companions so much that they started unknowingly tapping into the flow of the leylines and how it bent and moved around the humans (which were different from the humans that Celestia later took dominion over, as the Primordial One's direct presence in the land sort of... altered the way humans worked). in much the same way Illuminated Beasts in Liyue can create a human form after acquiring enough energy, the foxes gathered enough energy together that they managed to create, as a collective, a different form for themselves, one that looked more like their human companions. since their method of gathering energy wasn't as intensive as the Adepti's, though, they were unable to become completely like humans (keeping their ears and tails), and they had to, at some point, decide whether to stay in their new forms or forever revert back to foxes. basically they didn't have enough power to transform back and forth at will.

unluckily for them, it was around that time that Celestia showed up and the war began. they had made the decision to remain human-like, and so now they couldn't just hide among the foxes, so they had no choice but to run. they went far far away, eventually finding a quiet spot in Snezhnaya, where they ended up settling.

this was still the first generation of them btw, the ones Pavel refers to as the First Ones. they migrated from the Inazuman area up northwest, and settled in Snezhnaya while the war happened in the background. as they hid, they had no choice but to start a little civilization of their own, divorced from their human companions. so since they were in the frigid north, the sky back then did produce auroras. the Primordial One's humans had always looked up at the sky (since that's where their god had come from) and had loved the moons, and so the foxes turned up to the sky for inspiration as well. the auroras fascinated them, which is why they were all the more shocked and devastated when, upon the ending of the war, they stopped appearing. instead, two of their former human companions' beloved moons vanished, and the stars appeared out of nowhere. in some sort of... ode to their human companions, they dedicated themselves to observing and studying this new phenomenon, which is where they got their name from.

from then on, the Zvezdochoty more or less kept a low profile. even when Celestia eventually realized they had survived the war – since they weren't powerful beasts like Liyue's Illuminated Beasts, and couldn't control the elements on their own, Celestia saw them as no immediate threat. the First Ones even threatened Celestia with spreading the word of what had actually happened, and so they were left alone under the condition that they would tell nobody, and that they wouldn't stick their noses into their affairs.

i'm pretty sure the rest did get explained in the fic. the Zvezdochoty kept their word on not snitching, but they insisted in studying the stars. they managed to get as far as basically discovering astrology before the Morepesok massacre took place, so.

i never mentioned the Inazuma bit because i figured it was irrelevant, but i did remember thinking about it. it would explain in-universe why Inazuma later held reverence for the kitsune, out of all the Yokai (beyond their own historical figures) – some ancient murals must've remained from the original civilization of the humans that lived there and their fox friends.

as for why they're known as Snezhnayan Fox Spirits outside of Snezhnaya, it's because they're such a recluse group that most of the region is low-key convinced they're not real. like- outside of Driver's Stop, Snezhnayan settlements speak of them as though they're legends. as for whether the rest of Teyvat thinks they're real or not, i think it depends on who you ask. those areas that have an abundance of non-humans likely think they're probably real, but can't confirm. like- the Adepti of Guili Assembly probably assume they're real, while the humans would likely be like 'that sounds like Adepti behavior' abt them. in somewhere like Mondstadt, tho, where non-human activity is.... low??? they might be more on the 'legends' camp of the rumor.

on the volchiy

i think most of the stuff about the Volchiy got into the fic, thanks to Depth Claws and Nadezhda. the biggest problem here was that i started writing them pre-chasm, so all we had to go on about Bonanus was those two shots of her from the Yakshas trailer. i thought, since i was already going off limited information, that it would be hilarious if they were a mountain chicken case – their species' name as it's known outside of Snezhnaya would confuse more than it would clarify. the wolf part of the name came from how they would look to a normal human if they caught sight of them trying to hunt a land animal with nothing but their giant claws (like some sort of massive horned werewolf). the crab part, well, because of the shell.

other than that, i think i did mention how they used to be far, far more of them; but as they branched off and the lands started to shift, the only remaining group became Depth Claws', so. the reason why they didn't get along with Lord Yuriy's humans was because long ago, when they were a much larger population, they used to dominate the reefs and coastal areas, thus depriving the humans off fish. as their numbers dwindled and the humans advanced towards the coast, the feud became mutual, and the original reasons vanished into the tides of time as the Volchiy started to settle farther and farther away from land. by the time it was only Depth Claws' group, going anywhere closer to the shores would just be asking for trouble with the resentful humans, so.

anyway- i think that's mostly all i had on them. if i ever thought of something else, i never included it, and it was therefore likely not all that interesting or relevant.

so, uh-

thank you! i hope the infodump was somewhat what you were looking for,,,

[doingproblematicmedia]

Jewish Kids Fantasy

Today at work, I found a book on the counter.

Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children. I have no idea why it was on the counter, but it’s my boss’s kid’s favorite book and he’s been telling me for years that I need to read it, so I took the opportunity. And I was blown away! Can’t wait to discuss it with him.

But if you want an amazing example of Jewishness and antisemitism worked into a YA fantasy story, this is your book.

The novel opens with our protagonist, Jacob, talking about his grandfather Abraham’s stories. Abraham tells fantastical stories about his childhood, when his parents sent him away from Poland to escape the Nazis. He wound up in a children’s home in Wales. His stories of this children’s home are populated by children with magical abilities, a wise bird who looks after them, and the man-eating monsters that he fled from.

As Jacob grows older, he dismisses these stories as fantasies made up to cope with being a refugee. Which makes a ton of sense. The severe trauma of losing your family and being sent to a strange country--then to grow up, fight in the war, and learn that your family didn’t survive--why wouldn’t a survivor turn it into a faery story for a young grandchild?

The novel doesn’t shy away from addressing the generational trauma caused by the Holocaust. Abraham starts a family after the war, yet is constantly travelling and rarely sees his children, who later find love letters from a mysterious woman. Jacob’s father is obviously burdened by this emotional neglect, and his cynicism about his father vs Jacob’s starry-eyed love for Abraham provides a background character conflict. 

After Jacob witnesses Abraham’s death by the hands of a monster right out of one of those childhood tales, he decides to track down the truth about the children’s home. He and his father travel to Wales, where he finds the fantastical home and the magical children, protected forever in a pocket of time. Miss Peregrine, the guardian of the home, tells Jacob about people with strange abilities - “Peculiars” - of whom he and Abraham belong to. Jacob and Abraham both have the unique power to see the monsters (Hallowghast) that hunt and devour Peculiars, and Jacob learns that Abraham spent his life after the war tracking those monsters down and killing them.

The Peculiars and the Hallowghast are used as an allegory for Jewish persecution and antisemitism. Peculiars all over the world have retreated into loops of time to protect against persecution from humanity. Meanwhile, the invisible Hallowghast hunt them down. Hallowghast are mere beasts, but if a Hallowghast kills and devours enough Peculiars, it transforms into a Wight - an intelligent creature that can blend into society and organizes the Hallows to track down and destroy more Peculiars.

And it’s no mistake that the only two characters in the book that have the power to see the monsters for what they are - are the Jewish ones.

Antisemitism is a pervasive thing. There are the antisemitic tropes and stereotypes. There’s been a lot of talk on tumblr about learning to recognize these in both media and everyday life, and I’m hearted to see people discussing what everyday antisemitism looks like. But unless you’re Jewish, you likely didn’t grow up learning to recognize them. They’re everywhere - invisible but present in media, in the news, on social media, and in institutions. Like the Hallowghast, they are invisible monsters that can hurt and kill - and it takes someone who is looking for them to spot them. 

The Wights, on the other hand, are far more insidious. They blend into society, looking like a normal person, organizing the everyday monsters. This is our systemic antisemitism. Universities putting quotas on Jewish students. Employers who don’t want to hire Jews. Pogroms. Exile. Inquisition. Ghettos. Genocide.

Abraham is heavily implied to be the only Jewish child at the house. He leaves the safety of the loop - and forfeits his place there forever - because he wants to fight against the ones hurting his people. In WWII, the Nazis. After - the Hallowghasts. Because he belongs to two marginalized peoples, he feels that he cannot sit back and let either be terrorized. The other children - for whom the Hallowghast are invisible - do not make this choice, probably because they do not see the consequences of ignoring it.

This is a particularly interesting point to me, because often when Jewish characters are in fantasy stories, they do not have to deal with how their Jewishness does - or does not - fit into the fantasy world they’re given access to. Whereas Abraham grapples with how he fits as a Jew into the world of the Peculiars. He decides that he cannot sit idly by while his people are killed, and this decision sets up the one that Jacob will have to make. Does he abandon the Peculiars to the Hallowghasts, or will he fight for his newly-found family?

In the end, perhaps inspired by Abraham’s example, Jacob does. He leaves his father, leaves his time period, and sets off with the other Peculiar children to confront this threat.

“Do not be daunted by the enormity of the world’s grief. Do justly, now. Love mercy, now. Walk humbly, now. You are not obligated to complete the work, but neither are you free to abandon it.”

-Rabbi Tarfon, Pirkei Avot 2.16

It is this Jewish value that guides the text. Abraham and Jacob both fight for their people, fight for freedom from persecution. Freedom from the monsters in human form.

And that, my friends, is how you successfully integrate Jewishness into a YA Fantasy novel. 

[magicalhideoutengineer]

It all started in December of 2018, with a sneak peek on social media from the author and screenwriter of the Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them franchise, J.K. Rowling, who, after announcing the completion of her newest screenplay, posted the following phrase on her Twitter: “Rio de Janeiro had better brace itself.”

A month earlier, Rowling had already made a mention about 1930’s Rio de Janeiro in a tweet that led to curious speculation from Brazilian fans of the franchise: what did old Rio have to do with the creator of Harry Potter? 

In the following weeks, it was discovered that the author had set her newest film creation in the marvelous city of Rio. The project’s production team, following her lead, began to plan trips to Brazil in order to film certain older areas of downtown Rio and use them as backgrounds for the 3rd episode film of the film series. And Brazil Production Services was the Brazilian production company chosen to head the production unit in Brazil of this international mega-blockbuster. 

When Warner Brothers contacted BPS, the job at hand involved the mapping and scanning of dozens of buildings and areas in downtown Rio de Janeiro, where several buildings from the city’s colonial, imperial, and turn-of-the-century periods are located.  This material would then be used by the film’s visual effects team to digitally reconstruct the city circa 1930 by way of computer graphics. The idea was to do something big, exploring the city’s beautiful backdrop that could transport the fans to a magical version of Rio de Janeiro of that time.

However, the coronavirus arrived in Brazil in March of 2020, causing the production plan and the script to undergo dramatic changes. 

Actor Eddie Redmayne, in an interview, spoke about the final version of the film that was released worldwide in April 2022: “The whole section that is set in Bhutan was meant to be set in Brazil … we were meant to travel and go and shoot there. Then COVID hit.” The actor lamented the cancellation of Rio as a main location – and so did we at BPS…

And so, what was supposed to be an intricate shoot in Rio showcasing some of its most interesting architecture turned out to be a production with only one of these locations.  This location was a quick shot at an iconic location in Rio, in which the magical community of the city celebrates the victory of Vicência, a character played by the Brazilian actress Maria Fernanda Cândido. 

The location in question was none other than the big house at Parque Lage in Rio de Janeiro, a world-renowned location with that also features Rio’s famous statue of Christ the Redeemer in the background. 

The beautiful house was scanned by the BPS team using LIDAR technology, which, according to the company’s Executive Manager Valéria Costa, is a tool widely used for building digital environments nowadays. The technology captures and measures properties of reflected light falling upon structures and, from that data, accurately documents a building’s 3D characteristics, providing the post-production team with high quality raw material to work on for the creation of digital backgrounds. 

Anyone who blinks might miss the lightning-fast appearance of Rio in the final version of the film, but at least it gave a taste, however small, of Rio’s beautiful scenery.  In short, after months of doubt as to whether or not Rio would be the setting for the film, the image below was what was left of the author’s original conception in the final form of the film.

Although disappointed with the shrinking of Brazil’s participation in the project, we look back on the experience philosophically affirming that one scene is better than no scene at all, right? 

[scotianostra]

Happy Birthday Scottish actress Ellie Haddington born February 17th 1955 in Aberdeen the daughter of a poetry-reciting paper mill worker from Perthshire.

While Ellie Haddington mightn’t be a well known name, I am confident that looking at her pics you will agree she is what we Scot’s call a weel-kent face.

There’s not a great deal online about her background, Ellie Haddington was born in Aberdeen, the daughter of a poetry-reciting paper mill worker from Perthshire who had five daughters,she was offered a place to study at Glasgow’s Royal Scottish Academy of music and Drama (now the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland) but decided against it, intead she studied at the Bristol Old Vic in the mid 70’s she has however been in more than a few well know TV series and films.

Here credits include Muck and Brass, Cracker and Wycliffe before a decent stint in Coronation in the 90’s she appeared in over 40 episodes as doctors receptionist Josie Clarke who had an affair and relationship with Don Brennan and lived at number 5 the street, I must admit I have no recollection of the character.

The first time I recognised Ellie is playing May McCann in the brilliant Edinburgh drama Looking after JoJo with Bobby Carlyle, Kevin McKidd and Ewan Stewart amongst others.

Most of her movie roles have been of the TV, apart from Mrs. Esposito in Fantastic Beasts and where to find Them.

Other TV roles include a major part as Governor Joy Masterton in Bad Girls, Taggart, The Bill, New Tricks are other major dramas Ellie has been seen in as well as a regular in both Foyles War, Years And Years and Ripper Street. More recently she was in the London drama Motherhood and the excellent comedy mini series Guilt set in Edinburgh and also starring Mark Bonnar.

Ellie was on our screens last year in the comedy series The Following Events Are Based on a Pack of Lies, which had it's moments and just last week in Death in Paradise.

[uefb]

Why do you think there’s a pattern of Theseus being abusive/overly aggressive in Fantastic Beasts fanfic? It’s been driving me up the wall trying to find Newt and Theseus fanfic that doesn’t make them OOC especially Theseus, and idk, in the context of Newt being Autistic I find it disturbing. Like sure, Theseus is hot-headed and loses his temper, he doesn’t always understand Newt, but those traits seem overtly exaggerated in a lot of fandom content.

Obsessed with this ask. I have been thinking about it all day, and am just now getting to write it up! Thinking about it in the background of my statistics class almost singularly got me through its sensory and anxiety hell. /sweat-laugh emoji/ So thank you!

Please remember, all of this is based on my own perspectives, knowledge, and headcanons, as well as canon clues. Nothing here is definitive and is open for respectful conversation! (Not directed specifically at you, salamander, just since this is a public blog I like to cover my bases. ^_^)

Buckle up: major autistic info dump incoming

Alright, so, my initial thoughts are that...

Obviously, there was a decent chunk of Newt fic written between 2016 and 2018 before CoG came out, that first film where we really got to see Theseus as a character, for who he really is (especially since they cut that letter from him to Newt at beginning of FBWTFT, that starts with "little brother," which is just pretty endearing). IMHO, this two-year gap means people had a wide open playing field to build the character themselves. Here's a few thoughts on that:

The framework for the entire Wizarding World, narratively, is the Harry Potter series. Boy wizard, shunned by family, isolated from socialization -- Outcasts have always been the backbone of She-who-must-not-be-named's stories. It's compelling. We love it, we lap it up. With only one FB film out before 2018 and Newt being such a unique protagonist, I think it's likely people fell back on the more typical Harry-Dudley trope to create a compelling backstory for Newt, using that tried-and-true fantasy Cinderella-type trope.

Second, from what I can tell, there was a lot less serious consideration of Newt actually being autistic in the early years of the fandom. (I only "joined" relatively recently myself, despite going to the first 2 movies on opening day, but I'm nothing if not fastidious in consuming every scrap of historical content when I develop a new interest, lol.) I've read pages of threads and plenty of "think pieces" attributing Newt's behavior to trauma-related social anxiety and/or his profession as a magizoologist. I absolutely buy the latter (adjusting body language for one's profession), but not entirely the former. (Personally, Newt doesn't strike me as an inherently anxious person--he strikes me as an inherently autistic one who also sometimes experiences anxiety. Discomfort and anxiety aren't the same thing, but people often conflate them, imho.) Anyway, THAT BEING SAID, I've noticed in quite a few fics that people write Theseus as being part of that implied social trauma, via sibling bullying that rises beyond typical sibling harassment. People perhaps tried to explain Newt's behavior by making him, at the very least, overshadowed by Theseus (and ashamed of it) or, at the very worst, abused and/or neglected by his family.

Also, quite simply: people process their own family trauma via fic. I think it's highly likely Theseus just served a sibling or parental role for some people in stories. (The abundance of abusive!Thranduil fic in the LotR fandom in the early 00s is another example of this.) Nothing wrong with using fic to process feelings and life experiences (god knows I do, it's horrifically obvious and always has been lmao), but this bulletpoint is still one explanation for the pre-CoG "Theseus being a dick in fic" phenomenon.

Plus, fanfic doesn't occur in a vacuum. Even when new canon info comes out, existing fic and whatever the going/contemporary fanon is often impact how new writers write their characters, even post-CoG. (And how those characterizations are received by the larger fandom--that reception may subsequently impact how writers maintain or change their characters in the future, imho.)

As for the current reasons Theseus is often OOC in post-CoG fic...

Well, I have my theories, but I am also not entirely sure. However, I feel pretty confident it has to do, primarily, with points 1 and 4.

Leta Lestrange and the Scamander Brothers - Honestly, I think people likely are pretty offended on Newt's behalf for the Leta/Theseus marriage. In mainstream media, we're kind of trained to think that dating your friend's ex is ultimate betrayal--it's difficult for people to imagine a world in which a person who marries their brother's ex is a good person. (...I was once in a friend group where we had all dated the same girl at some point, but we were all either ridiculously honest or autistic so we just--wait for it--talked about it and moved on.) That being said, I never read Leta & Newt as overtly romantic (then again, I also didn't know Bunty liked Newt until the 4th time I watched CoG), so I don't entirely get this one to the degree that I think some people viscerally feel this. But I expect some people see that and assume it says something much larger about Theseus' character than it does. (I do think it says a lot about Theseus that he loves Leta, but I don't think it says the same things about him that some other people do -- I think it speaks more to his similarities to Newt [compassion and positive outlook] than it does to stealing Newt's Hogwarts sweetheart. But I digress.)

Something Did Happen at Some Point - Now, there is undeniably a distance between the brothers that we, as viewers, don't necessarily know the origin of. (So I think I may have mentioned in my letters that [my brother & I] have quite a complicated relationship. // Does he want to kill you? // Frequently.) Have they always been like that? Is it new? Is it because of the age difference? Because they have different personalities? (Though I will argue until I'm blue in the face that they're actually extraordinarily similar people, at their cores.) Is it because Newt got expelled, or because Theseus scooped up Leta, or because Theseus expresses emotion through touch & Newt jerks away from touch he doesn't initiate himself, or because because because because because? I don't know. But there is something there and, based on the "complicated relationship" comment, it sounds like it is something that likely developed over time. So imho - I think some people see that and just lean in way too hard. Like, pedal to the medal, 0 to 60 too hard.

Theseus is Snarky to Newt on Multiple Occasions - Mostly based around how Newt directs his life, carries himself, etc etc. For example, it would be easy to take that whole scene before and after Newt's travel hearing in CoG and assume Theseus is an overprotective, condescending, and ableist prick. But if we look below the surface (and the stage directions in the screenplay help, too. When he says "maybe a little less... / like me. / well, it can't hurt" the instructions say 'not without fondness', or something like that), it's pretty glaringly obvious he doesn't mean to be that way. Even condescending behaviors usually have causal correlates, even if we can't see them on the surface. (Believe me -- and this is something we both touched on in DMs, salamander, I'm just repeating for the sake of the ask -- well-meaning pep talks and encouragement can still drip with condescension when loved ones think you need guidance because they "love you and know better " and you're just too autistic or too idealistic or too naive or whatever.) Ultimately, whether due to a failure to approach these snarky exchanges with grace and nuance, or because it can make a good fic to put brothers at odds, IDK -- but I expect this particular point plays into some people's decisions to interpret Theseus in a way I view as OOC.

Ease of Narrative ~ Nuance is hard - I mean, this one explains itself. Writing characters in a nuanced manner that allows digging into the messy horrible confusion of relationships--embedded as they are within families and societies and personal & general history--is not easy. It takes not only patience and significant effort as a writer, but it also takes a degree of self-awareness and maturity that we all reach at different points. I'm not there yet myself (there's no real arrival -- life's not a perfect graph), but still: My fic writing is very different now at 32 (with 14 years of 'adulthood' and 12 years of therapy under my belt) than it was when I was writing about adults when I was 15. (And, yes, I still have my first posted HP fic up on MuggleNet and FFnet, so you don't just have to take my word for it lmao.) To be very clear, this isn't me being ageist or whatever: I'm just saying that I often get the sense while reading fic where Theseus is reallllly overly aggressive that the writer is sometimes either very new to creative writing (and good for them! we love new writers! keep writing, lovelies!), or else quite young, and thus still acquiring life experience that is going to improve their work as they age, every single day.**

Sibling Experience - Not having personal or narrative experience with an age gap like Newt and Theseus have. I'm an older sibling by 7.5 years, which is close to Theseus & Newt's age difference. I basically half-raised my younger brother, so I have a real soft spot for that kind of sibling relationship, which comes across in most of my fics (LotR & FB). It's hard to imagine the sort of borderline sibling-parental love, responsibility, and anxiety that can permeate those kind of relationships if you haven't experienced or seen it represented in media yourself. This is just a theory, of course---I have no actual data on this being actually related to his OOCness.

What else? What do you or others think?

Final very random thought

I also think a lot of people forget that autism runs in families. So yes, Theseus doesn't always "get" Newt (god, no, lol) and he doesn't have guidance on what to do when he doesn't, but it is highly unlikely he hasn't seen behavior similar to Newt's before, whether in a parent or cousins, an aunt/uncle or something else. People *also* tend to forget, IMHO, that subclinical traits are often present in direct family members of an autistic person--Theseus' rigid thinking, for example, isn't necessarily "autistic", but he may get Newt better than people think for certain reasons we never have an opportunity to see in the script. (Not that the movies are paying *that* much attention to the actual research or autism presentations lmao, but I'm just saying it is a possibility). Being able to relate to a smaller version of someone's struggles can simultaneously make one both a better support and a worse one in a lot of ways. (And certain autistic traits can even rub up against each other poorly in different people--I have a few acquaintances that rub me the wrong way because our "symptoms" manifest in very different ways and their natural behavior triggers some of my own sensory issues or overdeveloped sense of justice or whatever. Conversely, my ADHD tendency to be 20 minutes late to every hang gives one of my autistic friends a panic attack every time -- I feel terrible, but all we can both do is try to adjust the behavior around our symptoms. And sometimes the same traits--firmly held beliefs, for example--bump into each other explosively, which I have experienced in fandom myself: two autistic people w diametrically opposing views interacting, but because we process information in similar ways even with very different perspectives, no progress can be made before someone shuts down.) BUT I BRING THIS UP BECAUSE, I do think it's possible to headcanon that some of Newt and Theseus' conflict (which does exist) could even be rooted in differing forms of neurodivergence or presentation of subclinical symptoms.

The world is a big place and there's so many possibilities. These are just some of my thoughts on why Theseus is often portrayed in a way I find to be OOC!

Asterisked footnote under cut -

**I'm trying to convey what Sandra Cisneros does much better in her short story "Eleven." That we, all of us, carry our entire lives and what we have seen inside of us at all times, and I think that's what we bring to our writing.

What they don’t understand about birthdays and what they never tell you is that when you’re eleven, you’re also ten, and nine, and eight, and seven, and six, and five, and four, and three, and two, and one. And when you wake up on your eleventh birthday you expect to feel eleven, but you don’t. You open your eyes and everything’s just like yesterday, only it’s today. And you don’t feel eleven at all. You feel like you’re still ten. And you are—underneath the year that makes you eleven. Like some days you might say something stupid, and that’s the part of you that’s still ten. Or maybe some days you might need to sit on your mama’s lap because you’re scared, and that’s the part of you that’s five. And maybe one day when you’re all grown up maybe you will need to cry like if you’re three, and that’s okay. That’s what I tell Mama when she’s sad and needs to cry. Maybe she’s feeling three. Because the way you grow old is kind of like an onion or like the rings inside a tree trunk or like my little wooden dolls that fit one inside the other, each year inside the next one. That’s how being eleven years old is.

[illogicalconclusions]

I’m having thoughts about Harry Potter that have been swirling around in my mind not necessarily nostalgic but just. Thoughts. Mostly about how she treated the Marauders (Harry’s dad, Sirius, Remus, and Peter pettigrew). No this isn’t a reminiscing on the books.

Obligatory disclaimer fuck JKR, she’s a transphobe and antisemite and I do not support her, don’t buy her books or merch, etc. I just want to put all my thoughts somewhere. If you haven’t already you should watch “The Consumerist Dystopia of Harry Potter” by verilybitchie and “Harry Potter” by Sean on youtube.

I was a Harry Potter fan, and I remember going to the final HP and later the first Fantastic Beasts movies in the theatre. When Fantastic Beasts was announced I was mostly confused because, having been given internet access way too young, I remembered livejournal, fanfiction.net, and ao3 all having a very large interest in the marauders. I remember people practically begging for her to release some sort of prequel about the marauders, and instead we got fantastic beasts and that one play who’s title I can’t remember and don’t really care to look up.

I have no idea why she didn’t make a prequel. It seems like a great opportunity to sell even more merchandise if nothing else, but those books probably would have been a veritable cash cow considering how many people were interested.

It’s probably for the best that she didn’t make these books. For one, we don’t need her receiving any more financial support, and for another there are multiple fanfics out there spanning 100k+ (in some cases more than a million) words doing that job for her. Realistically as much as people would buy the books they would probably also be very unhappy, considering you can read about these characters for free and, because there are at least 100 fics that span their entire 7 years at hogwarts and on meaning you can pick whichever variation of characterization for these characters you like. Would you like Peter to be sympathetic, or a pathetic and whiny straggler the entire time? Do you have strong feelings about how tall or short Remus should be? These fics have you covered. When I was younger I used to follow a YouTube channel where a group of friends role-played the characters, but specifically did scenes from a very famous fic originally posted to fanfiction.net

Plus, there’s really no way to work around the fact that two of the main characters are destined to die no matter what. It would be hard for JKR to make any sort of satisfying ending.

I occasionally check ao3 when I’m bored just to see what’s going on in the fandom, and every so often Reddit recommends the Harry Potter fanfiction subreddit specifically (which by the way, are there other fandoms that have specific fanfic subreddits? Does Star Trek have its own subreddit dedicated entirely to fanfiction along with its normal subreddit?) I feel very conflicted as a trans person seeing how lively these communities are. JKR has stated that she views anyone engaging with her stuff as support even if she’s not financially compensated for it. At the same time, I look at say the ao3, where among the top 10 ships Sirius/Remus, Regulus/James Potter, and Marlene McKinnon/Dorcas Meadows are listed. I’m not even entirely sure if Marlene and Dorcas are real characters or OCs for the marauders timeline.

All of these characters might as well be OCs, because people mostly seem to treat them as blank canvases where the only familiarity is the background setting of hogwarts (and sometimes even that is removed). I truly believe these characters have reached outside of the fandom and become their own sort of monster. They should be put somewhere else, genuinely, because they’re basically their own thing at this point.

I don’t have a nice way to end this or any particular point. I just find it fascinating how there seems to be a bubble that is the marauders, which only have one real interaction between all of them on screen (and it’s one where they’re being bullies), but have managed to amass such a large audience that is almost completely separated from the rest of the HP franchise. What do you even do about that? I don’t think a majority of the people engaging with these characters are malicious people, far from it. It’s just such a strange phenomenon I haven’t seen in any other fandom.

[amalgamgooze]

A Look At Battle Poses in the MOTHER, Paper Mario, and Mario and Luigi series

I've run into a small problem with my game regarding the battle scene--specifically regarding the art for it. I haven't really done many "in combat" sketches, so I'm lacking familiarity of what sorts of poses characters have. In my mind, the battle takes place looking down from the side, similar to the Mario and Luigi series of games. We'll get to that later, though--I find that when looking at stuff like this, it's best to look at several sources, no matter what your target is.

I've decided that it's time to multitask and write a post at the same time as my research. So, here we go!

=======================

the MOTHER series

In all three MOTHER games, the battles take place facing the enemy, often without art for your own party. The enemies have no animation, but that doesn't detract from their quality--even a still image conveys a ton of personality, as seen below:

MOTHER combat (from Wikipedia)

Earthbound/MOTHER 2 combat (from Earthbound Fandom wiki)

MOTHER 3 combat (from The Cutting Room Floor wiki)

Throughout the MOTHER series, enemies in battles are posed in a way that just somehow "feels right". Often times, enemies aren't drawn in the middle of an attack--instead, they're drawn almost as if you're in a face-off with them. (One notable exception to this is the Cop from Earthbound--he's drawn mid-karate chop.)

Enemies flash briefly when they're acting, and most enemies in MOTHER 3 have different sprites based on which direction they're facing, but other than that, the battle graphics for the enemies in these games are pretty simplistic. (The background of the latter two games are a whole other beast to tackle, though...)

This sort of approach works best in a traditional turn-based RPG like MOTHER. Not much needs to be conveyed other than what you're fighting, and the enemy designs only make battles more intriguing.

=======================

the Paper Mario series

In this post, I'll just be looking at the first two games--Paper Mario, and Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door (specifically the GameCube version--the remake looks cool, but I'm trying to avoid much media on it until I get around to playing it!).

Paper Mario Combat (image from RPGFan)

Paper Mario: TTYD Combat (image from Super Mario Files blog)

(pssst! That last image comes from a really cool post that goes into depth on TTYD's audience mechanic--it's a fantastic read, especially for anyone interested in workshopping their own unique battle mechanics!)

These battles also have animation--characters shift around when idling, and have unique animations for each move they perform. That sort of animation is crucial to the "Action Command" mechanics of these games--where timed button presses during attacks can increase the amount of damage you deal or reduce damage taken. Without animations, it'd be pretty difficult--if not impossible--to determine the timing for those action commands.

Stance-wise, the games approach combat from the side--though the characters do face out toward the camera more than if they were looking at each other. For instance, we can see both eyes of all the characters in the above screenshots. If they were truly facing each other, we'd likely only see one eye--which would probably look awkward with the designs of enemies.

That suspension of disbelief is necessary for the game's artstyle to work as it does--at least in my opinion. After all, we don't really ever see a Goomba directly from the side in Mario often, at least in the non-3D titles. Even though the anatomy and movement don't quite make sense through an analytical lens, they still move in such a fashion that doesn't look bizarre. (I'd wager it'd look more bizarre if they were animated without keeping those in mind!)

I'm no animation expert, but I'd also guess that achieving that sort of still-canny effect with unrealistic movements comes from studying cartoonish animation--as opposed to wholly realistic.

=======================

the Mario and Luigi series

The camera angle and poses are incredibly similar to the Paper Mario examples from above--except the camera is slightly higher and looks down on the battle a little. This ends up revealing the floor that the battle takes place on top of.

Mario and Luigi: Bowser's Inside Story (from GameSpot)

Mario and Luigi: Dream Team (from GameStop)

The posing's a bit more interesting in these games. Whereas Paper Mario's characters tend to face the same general direction the entire time (because of the game's artstyle), Mario and Luigi's characters, especially our protagonists, change the direction they're facing a lot.

Here's a good example. I've annotated the spritesheets for Mario's hammer attack (from Dream Team)--note how Mario's stance shifts from when he pulls out the hammer to when he swings it.

This spritesheet is from Spriter's Resource--I highly recommend checking out the rest of the sheets for this game (and other games too) for how they ended up animating their characters.

Skimming through the rest of the spritesheets shows that the brothers tend to have side-view sprites when countering or preparing for an attack. On the other hand, their idle sprites are bouncy, fluid dances that shift between side-on and skewed stances.

Again, heavy utilization of basic animation concepts (like anticipation and follow-through) makes these sprites as pretty as they are. As for the stances themselves, my takeaway is that skewed stances are best for the spaces between action, and side-on stances seem to work well when in action.

=======================

conclusions

Yes, there's a million other games I could look at too. I've just chosen the three above series because they're the games I've played the most--and I'm also somewhat trying to imitate the styles of them.

Regardless, one big takeaway was that I need to stop stressing over realistic movement so much--especially since I'm aiming toward a more cartoonish artstyle. Also, forcing my characters to face the same direction throughout the battle just isn't going to work--it just doesn't make sense for a game with dynamic "action command"-heavy turn-based battles like the one I'm making.

Here's hoping that this study of games will help me the next time I sit down with my graphics tablet!

[rtnortherly]

Tierney, and Where the Story Began

Recently did a series of polls to decide on my Baldur's Gate 3 Early access character. What we landed on was this:

Tiefling, Trickery Cleric (Tymora), with an Entertainer background.

This is them, as decided by popular vote:

And this is their story, as I have decided. Some of the details might not apply so well once I get into the game, but I have had so much fun coming up with this story all the same. I am already very attached.

(TW: Depression, abandonment, grief)

~ I was born Tierney, in a small hamlet southeast of Loudwater to a solitary trapper who spent more time in the foothills of the Greypeak Mountains than amongst other folk. I grew up understanding the quiet solitude of the vast world around me, and the few times we ventured into towns to sell leather and furs and meat I always found to be bizarre and almost fantastical. The rhythm and closeness of it all seemed almost supernatural to me.

For the most part though, my mother and I kept to ourselves. She raised me alone, but I never felt the absence of other people. The land was too full of life for that, and mother was too good at telling stories for me to grow bored or dwell upon loneliness. Some of the things she would tell me she’d declare were history, sometimes heart breaking and cruel, sometimes powerful and undeniable.

“The bones of our world,” she call them.

Other times the tales she wove were strange and silly, impossible things full of wonder and humour. I would laugh and laugh and insist that I did not believe a word of it and that she could not fool me.

“Why, my little rabbit’s foot,” she would say, winking at me over the fire, or as she set traps, “anything is possible. Don’t you know the world is vast?”

That was before she got sick.

I’d thought I had know solitude before, that it was a comforting friend. Without her I realized what it was to truly be alone. I tried to be like her, I did. I tried to be content under the open sky and among the trees. I looked for serenity in the dirt under my feet, and the nip of the wind across my face. I told myself stories by the fire and as I set traps, sang songs she used to sing. But with no one to rely on except for my own self, the world began to feel a little too big and a little too indifferent and cold.

The twilight caw of the carrion birds began to contort into eery and eldritch scream. The barking of foxes and coyotes began to sound a little mocking and hungry. It was odd to find the shadows of the forest haunting, twisted and dark when once they had been cool and welcoming shade.

And then came my thirteenth winter, not even a year after my mother’s passing. It was a cruel and terrible long freeze. Prey grew ever more scarce, and what I did manage to catch in my traps often got scavenged by other creatures and I found myself more and more often trying to fend off the starving forest creatures, patrolling my trap line in the bitter cold, exhausted and with a constant cough and sniffle.

And then, when spring should have already been easing back the thick snowfall, but was continuing to hide its face, the large cats began to come down from the mountains, ravening with hunger.

I remember going out to check my traps, mind foggy with a fever I couldn’t shake, and stomach hollow with hunger that my dwindling stores of grain could not sate. I remember the blood, the torn carcass, and the low, yowling growl that drifted somewhere between warning and hunger.

I remember thinking that my luck surely had run out that day.

The rest is a blur of snow and fear and branches clawing at my face. The cold burned in my throat and lungs, and my ribs ached with the beat of my heart.

There is no outrunning wild beasts. Especially not as a sickly child, half starved and near delirious from fever. It didn’t matter how well I knew the woods, not with the snow hungrily devouring my awkward, gangly stride. I wasn’t so foolish as to think that climbing a tree would help keep me away from a mountain cat, that I could out last its patience in the cold.

But I ran all the same, and I prayed to whoever might have been listening.

I’m sure it was the luck of the devil that sent my tumbling head over heels down the steep embankment that overlooked a cold mountain creek, frozen over for months. It left me with cracked ribs, a dislocated hip, and a concussion that did nothing for the fever. I was told later that I bounced off of no less than three rocks and four trees, and rolled off a drop of at least eight feet, and I was lucky the snow that had built up over the frozen stream cushioned my fall somewhat. And most of all, I was lucky for Crusoe.

He never would tell me what he was doing out in those woods, all on his own. He’d just wink and tell me how very fortunate I was that he had been. He’d tell me that I was lucky he had been born with a knack for little tricks and magic, and that the mountain cat was too clever to risk a fight with a person who could apparently hurl fire at it. Wild animals are like that. They won’t risk the damage of a fight for a morsel of prey when they’ll have better, surer chances elsewhere.

And then he carried me, a strange and unconscious child who’d all but fallen from the sky back to the nearest town to be healed. It wasn’t an easy process. It took more than a couple weeks to clear the fluid off my lungs, and to keep the fever from coming back. Never mind that I was malnourished and had bones that needed mending. Out in some small hamlet that was still locked in by the long winter there was no magic healing for me. I had to do it the hard, long way. To this day my hip aches in the cold.

As for Crusoe, I don’t know why he stuck around, not really. He was as much a stranger as I was to the little hamlet, supposedly a traveler by trade. He could have left me there, a problem for the townsfolk to solve. Maybe he pitied me, maybe he took one look at the horns crowning my skull, and the dull embers of my eyes, and knew I would not have an easy time fitting in. Maybe it was some noble sense of responsibility that made him want to see me well and looked after with his own eyes. Maybe it was something else, some other thing he wanted to cling on to.

He never spoke of his family in all the years that I knew him after all, and there were times I saw a weariness in his face that made my chest hurt. For all the connections he made, for all the people he spoke to, I wasn’t even sure if he had much in the way of friends. He was always happy to listen, to share a drink and a laugh, but with the exception of the months it took me to heal he never stayed bound to one place for very long.

When the spring finally came, we left together. We’d not discussed it. I just woke up one morning to find that he had packed our things and was told that we could eat on the road. He had seemed to be in a rush, but when I asked about it, he told me that he’d gotten an itch in his feet and if he stayed any longer he thought he would go mad.

Over the course of the next six years we travelled up and down the Sword Coast, drifting from one place to the next. I learned a lot from Crusoe in that time. He was a thespian by nature, and used his talents for storytelling to make his living. He was impressed by my own repertoire of tales, and taught me to expand on that. I learned to change my tone, how to pace my words and adjust the tempo of my speech. I learned to act, to give life to my characters. I learned to breathe from deep in my chest, to project my voice far and wide—something we found my devilish heritage gave me quite the advantage at. I learned how to shift my expressions on a coin. I learned to improvise, and I learned how to listen and remember.

Most of all, I learned to never forget that all the world was stage (that seemed to mean different things to Crusoe, at different times, and I’m not sure I’ve uncovered them all yet).

But then, just as I was about to turn twenty, something changed. I couldn’t quite put my thumb on what gave it away, the moment I truly noticed, but one day it was as if suddenly Crusoe’s stage was a little different than mine. As if he was reading from a script that I did not know, and looking out at an audience I could not see.

Perhaps I’m simply imagining things in retrospect, trying to find some through line, some explanation for the change, but I look back on those times and I wonder if maybe his smile was a little strained, if I caught him staring blankly into the distance, some half formed and frozen expression on his face that I couldn’t understand. When I woke up in the night, on the side of the road, why had he still been awake staring up at the stars, or maybe into the deep darkness between them, so very still that I’d wonder if he’d turned to stone.

I may never know, because I woke up one morning, in a backwater town with an inn that had little more than three rooms to rent, to find Crusoe and all his things gone.

For a while I thought that he might come back so I stuck around, doubtful and confused. After several weeks of telling stories for meagre coin that grew more meagre by the day, I decided that maybe if I hit the road I would cross paths with him. Maybe I’d find him standing in a town square, his eyes alight with mischief and merriment, a hoard of small children gathered around him with faces contorted in awe. Maybe I would find him sitting on a stump by the side of the road, the end of his pen caught between his teeth and ink on his fingertips. He would look up in surprise, flush with embarrassment for being caught. We’d fight. He’d make excuses, and I would sulk and stew in bitterness. Things wouldn’t quite be the same, but we would make it work and maybe I would finally learn about some of his stories. The ones he never told.

Four months later I found him in a small seaside town, emaciated and stuck in a coma in a small church that was little more than a shack with a shrine and a loft. He was being tended to by the young priest and herbalist who tended to the church, and she told me that he had washed up on the shore one morning, covered in strange injuries. The fishermen had brought him to her for healing, but she had not been able to do anything for him, because he was cursed and it was far beyond her abilities to undo whatever fell magic had bound itself to him.

I stayed for a time, fearing he would simply slip away the minute I wasn’t looking. Lorelei, the priest, said that his condition was very unstable, and that he was clinging onto life by only a thread. All I could think of was that look in his eyes as he stared into the space between the stars, and whether maybe that hadn’t been the case for a very long time.

I tried to find answers for where he had been, and what had made him this way, but all of his things were gone, lost to the sea no doubt. The only thing that was left was a a strange metal amulet that Lorelei warned me not to remove, as trying had stopped his heart and forced her to resuscitate him—something she wasn’t sure would work a second time. Other than that, he had a two faced coin in his pocket, which both Lorelei and I determined was utterly mundane as far as our limited abilities could discern.

I sat by his sick bed (I tried so hard not to think of it as his death bed, but it grew harder as time passed and he wasted away more and more), flipping that two faced coin over and over in my fingers, and I talked. I told stories we had told together a hundred times or more. I asked questions that I had always been to afraid to ask. I whispered accusations, and I begged, and I bargained, and I almost gave up hope.

I think I almost would have gone mad sitting there in that chair, if not for Lorelei, who dragged me outside one day to help her with her rounds in the town delivering medicines and checking in on the people.

Maybe it was because it was all I knew how to do, but on one such venture I found myself telling a story to a child who sat by the fountain and stared with sad little eyes at the other kids and fiddled with the pinned up legs of his empty trousers. And then I told another one, and another, and at some point I might have cried.

It was nightfall when I stopped, the parents coming out and urging the crowd of tiny faces that had collected around me to return home breaking me out of my daze. Across the way, Lorelei looked on. She came and sat next to me and we spoke for a time, late into the night, far away from Crusoe’s sick bed with the stars shining down on us both. We spoke of many things, and many of them were very embarrassing for me, fears that had snaked along my thoughts since my mother had left me, but had bared their fangs since Crusoe had left.

And so Lorelei told me about faith, and she talked to me about chance, and she talked to me about fate. And then she slipped the coin from my fingers with a tiny little grin, and tossed it into the fountain and told me that at the end of the day, it was all a gamble. It was just up to us to rig the odds.

I can’t say when my path found me. It simply happened gradually over the the following years, as I helped Lorelei with her duties during the day, and local legends and all many of accounts regarding vile magics during the day, hunting for a solution. It happened gradually, with every coin I’d toss into the fountain, and every late night by Crusoe’s sick bed pouring over books and texts I’d uncover from the church’s lacklustre library, or buy from travelling merchants. It happened on my short forays to nearby towns as I chased rumours and hunted for scholars and arcane practitioners. It happened with every bruised knee and rattling cough I watched Lorelei tend to.

It happened with ever fragile bit of faith I cultivated in myself.

It happened with every time I held on to Crusoe’s hand and thought of all the things I would say when I got him to wake up.

It’s been more than six months since I have seen him last. I found a lead, and I will chase it down, come hell or high water. Lorelei will keep him alive until I return, and when I do, I’ll wake him up, and we will tell each other our stories.~

[eyebright-iris]

Review: The Priory of the Orange Tree by Samantha Shannon

Where to begin. I think I’d forgotten how it feels to be breathless in the wake of a truly incredible book, heart racing and hands shaking against the back cover. Shoutout to Samantha Shannon for reminding me of that feeling.

The Priory of the Orange Tree is a beautiful flame-coloured hardback that has haunted my shelves since 2019 when it first came out and I grabbed it because it sounded dope, looked gorgeous and there were dragons on it (your first special interest never quite leaves you). After about three and a half years, and after resolving to read every day of 2023, I decided enough was enough; time to tackle this beast.

While other works of Shannon’s have been on my TBR before, Priory is the first of hers I’ve read. It’s my return to epic high fantasy after a long absence, and I can’t say I’m disappointed. Far from it, in fact. This book rattles with its own intensity, the stakes for each character, the rising romance and drama and the freefall towards devastation that builds all the way until about book five of six (for context, the huge 800-page novel is split into six smaller “books”).

I adored Priory. This review will likely be tragically short in an effort to avoid spoiling some of the fantastic reveals and brilliant storytelling, but for now I’ll discuss the things I loved so much about it without revealing too much.

Our four narrator characters are brilliant. They are flawed, messy, human and devoted. Ead is a secret mage tasked with protecting the Queen of a foreign nation; Loth is a kind and devout young man with much responsibility and too sweet and authentic a heart for the puppeteering courts he finds himself in; Niclays Roos is a bitter and jaded old alchemist with a deep core of darkness and a fierce hunger in him; and Tané is a 19-year-old striving to prove herself and take up the mantle of an honoured dragonrider. All four of them work to bring the rich world of the novel to life, each from a different background, with different goals, all eventually clashing and - perhaps, if the greatest evil is to be overcome - aligning.

I’ll briefly touch on the diversity in Priory. Of our four narrators, two (Ead and Tané) are female; both are also women of colour (Ead is black, and while Priory does not take place in our own world, Tané’s home of Seikii shows clear parallels with Japan). Niclays is the only white narrator, and he is gay; Loth is black. Ead and Queen Sabran are both lesbians, and for those who, like me, fall on the aro/ace spectrum, Tané’s arc has no hint of romance, and there is a strong case for aroace Tané. Not only do we have diversity, but well-written diversity too (I know that you can have all the representation you want, it’s not really worthwhile if it’s all terrible). Shannon draws on both Western and Eastern mythology for this fantasy epic, split between two great worlds of the East and West, divided by a vast sea known as the Abyss. Yet within the hemispheres there is conflict and diversity, Seiiki and the Empire of Twelve Lakes in the East, and the various states of the West - Inys, Mentendon, Yscalin, Lasia, Hróth…

One of the greatest aspects of Priory is the way it interrogates history and genre. A story of a queendom ruled only by women, passed down from mother to daughter for a thousand years, sounds feminist until you realise there is more below the surface. When a queendom is passed unfailingly from mother to daughter, everything suddenly hinges on a woman’s ability to give birth - and how feminist does that sound now? There is also the brilliant weaving of conflicting histories, and how those histories have shaped the world as it exists. Institutions that are founded on a single principle, says Priory, will invariably corrupt everything around themselves to maintain that course, even when new evidence says otherwise. When those who claim to know the truth still operate with only half the story, even they can see the real truth as a threat to the status quo.

Priory sings with vibrancy, it clamours with depth. Not a single character comes out unscathed, but that of course begs the question that the novel, on some level, is asking: what is the price we pay for tomorrow? What is it worth to us, what will we lose, to see the sun rise on a better world?

[ala-baguette]

Hi! For the end of the year fic ask game, what about 13, 19 and 25 ?

Thanks! ❤️

Ooo, lovely questions, thank you. (See the end of year ask game here)

13. favorite writing song/artist/album of this year Shameful admission: I write mostly in silence. I am told this is weird. Sorry. Occasionally, I'll put on something instrumental (most commonly a movie soundtrack) softly in the background. But anything with lyrics and I start singing along; anything upbeat and I start silly dancing; anything loud and it interferes with my ability to talk to myself (which I do A LOT while writing). All-in-all, I don't generally find music conducive to writing.

19. any new fics to start next year I made myself promise not to start any big new projects until I've finished Knowing Where to Look, but........ I do have long-fic waiting quite impatiently on the sidelines. I've been having to actively stop myself from writing it to this point, but I have lots of poorly organised notes written in something I like to call an outline but which is in no way outlined. It's an epistolary story about Newt Scamander's journey around the world as he studies magical creatures all set against the backdrop of a planet fixing to blow into World War I. None of the Dumbledore-Grindelwald chaotic and rather nonsensical storyline. Just Newt being cute and awkward and loving his creatures. Basically what I wanted the Fantastic Beasts films to be rather than... well... you know.

25. a fic you read this year you would recommend everyone read I'm not convinced there's such a thing as a fic for everyone! We all have different tastes, different moods, different things we are looking to get out of the stories we read. One of the most wonderful things about being a fic writer is knowing there is an audience somewhere out there looking for what you bring to the table. Sometimes finding them can be hard and lonely and discouraging in this giant worldwide web overflowing with information. So I wish all the readers the best of luck finding the fics you are looking for and all the writers the best of luck finding the readers you deserve.

[book-and-music-lover]

I posted 10,531 times in 2022

13 posts created (0%)

10,518 posts reblogged (100%)

Blogs I reblogged the most:

@lesbxdyke

@surviving-andor-thriving

@vilesbian

@go-catch-a-chickn

@dontbeanassbutt

I tagged 3,152 of my posts in 2022

#a league of their own - 446 posts

#writing tag - 188 posts

#stranger things - 150 posts

#downton abbey - 136 posts

#star trek - 77 posts

#the maze runner - 77 posts

#fave posts - 65 posts

#young royals - 65 posts

#warrior nun - 61 posts

#mentally ill tag - 41 posts

Longest Tag: 138 characters

#she also was very much in the mindset of ‘no one’s even going to bother to look for me except maybe carson’ so she really didn’t think she

My Top Posts in 2022:

#5

I am out with lanterns, looking for myself Chapters: 1/1 Fandom: Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them Rating: Gen Relationships: Credence & Aberforth, Credence & Albus, Credence/Newt Summary: [spoilers for Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore] In the aftermath of Grindelwald’s attempts to start a war, Credence begins to heal and learns what it means to have people to rely on, to trust, and to love. He learns that family is not only those with whom you share blood, but those with whom you want to share your life. And suddenly, he has a life to live - something he never thought he would get in his wildest dreams. Set post Secrets of Dumbledore, a look at how Credence fares after he goes home with Aberforth.

16 notes - Posted May 16, 2022

#4

Bolder Than Before (Bluer Than the Sky) Chapters: 1/1 Word Count: ~1.5k Fandom: A League of Their Own (TV 2022) Rating: General Audiences Relationships: Greta Gill/Carson Shaw, Carson Shaw & Charlie Shaw Additional Tags: idk how to tag this really, not entirely sure where Carson and Charlie's relationship stands, but they're friends before anything else so, no beta we die like Carson's heterosexuality, Introspection, Character Study, Fluff and Angst, Carson gains some perspective, POV Carson Shaw, Hopeful Ending, Post-Season/Series 01

Summary: The realization of what she’s done hits Carson anew two weeks after getting home from the championship, and it takes everything in her not to just run away from everything.

OR: Carson has a dream, and wakes up knowing she needs to go after what she wants, even if it means a little bit of hurt along the way.

Read on AO3 here

19 notes - Posted September 11, 2022

#3

Linger on, Dear Chapters: 1/1, Word Count: ~4.5k Fandom: Downton Abbey Rating: Teen And Up Audiences Relationships: Thomas Barrow/Richard Ellis, Thomas Barrow & Chris Webster, Richard Ellis & Chris Webster Characters: Thomas Barrow, Richard Ellis (Downton Abbey), Chris Webster Summary:

Thomas gets the surprise of his life when Richard takes him to a club that opens his eyes to a world previously unknown. He learns just how beautiful life can be when he puts a little trust in people.

Read on AO3 here

19 notes - Posted July 18, 2022

#2

Must Have Been the Wind  Chapters: 14/14  Fandom: Downton Abbey Rating: Mature Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings Relationships: Thomas Barrow/Richard Ellis, Thomas Barrow & Anna Bates, and more in the background (see tags) Summary:

Thomas settles into his new flat and new business as a clocksmith in Manchester; and learns the man in the flat above is in a bad way with his partner. Determined to get Richard out of a bad relationship, Thomas finds himself befriending him. What he doesn’t expect is that along the way he may have fallen a little bit in love with the man he’s focused on saving. What starts as a simple attempt at helping someone out of a situation he himself has been in, turns into a balancing act of keeping himself afloat whilst simultaneously attempting to help someone desperately in need of a saving grace. 

Read from beginning | Most recent chapter 

35 notes - Posted January 1, 2022

My #1 post of 2022

No Better Version of Me Than When I’m With You Chapters: 16/16  Fandom: The Maze Runner Warnings: No Archive Warnings Relationships: Newt/Thomas (Maze Runner), Minho & Newt & Thomas (Maze Runner), Frypan & Gally & Minho & Newt & Thomas (Maze Runner), Brenda & Newt (Maze Runner) Summary: “Crazy idea. . .” Thomas said slowly, gaze focusing on Newt. Newt narrowed his eyes suspiciously, “I can see your wheels spinnin’ Tommy, what’re you thinking?” “What if – and hear me out here – what if we get married?” OR: In an effort to help Newt with his visa problem after they’ve graduated college, Thomas proposes a solution to his best friend - what if they get married? But he never expects marriage to come with all of the complicated emotions that come with being tied to his best friend in a way he never imagined would happen - and what it entails they do to convince the government they’re in love. Read chapter 1 on AO3 || most recent chapter 

38 notes - Posted June 5, 2022

Get your Tumblr 2022 Year in Review →

[aesthetic-background]

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/ / Background / Lockscreen / /

[newthea-art]

On a cold winter night they spent  a cozy time together in the Room of Requirements...

(Thea is wearing Newts Hufflepuff Quidditch sweater <3)

[scotianostra]

Happy Birthday Scottish actress Ellie Haddington born February 17th 1955 in Aberdeen.

While Ellie Haddington mightn’t be a well known name, I am confident that looking at her pics you will agree she is what we Scot’s call a weel-kent face. There’s not a great deal online about her background, Ellie Haddington was born in Aberdeen, the daughter of a poetry-reciting paper mill worker from Perthshire who had five daughters,she was offered a place to study at Glasgow’s Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama (now the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland) but decided against instead she studied at the Bristol Old vic in the mid 70’s she has however been in more than a few well know TV series and films.

Here credits include Muck and Brass, Cracker and Wycliffe before a decent stint in Coronation in the 90’s she appeared in over 40 episodes as doctors receptionist Josie Clarke who had an affair and relationship with Don Brennan and lived at number 5 the street, I must admit I have no recollection of the character.

The first time I recognised Ellie is playing May McCann in the brilliant Edinburgh drama Looking aftr JoJo with Bobby Carlyle, Kevin McKidd and Ewan Stewart amongst others.

Most of her older movie roles have been of the TV sort, apart from Mrs. Esposito in Fantastic Beasts and where to find Them.

Other TV roles include a major part as Governor Joy Masterton in Bad Girls, Taggart, The Bill, New Tricks are other major dramas Ellie has been seen in as well as a regular in  both Foyles War and Ripper Street. More recently she was in the London drama Motherhood and the excellent comedy mini series Guilt set in Edinburgh and also starring Mark Bonnar

The last few years has seen Ellie in a few of movies, Enola Holmes in 2020 Operation Mincemeat  in 2021, then Plebs: Soldiers of Rome last year. Ellie also returned in the BBC 2 sitcom Motherland for a Christmas special last December. Next up for our birthday girl is a BBC thriller series The Following Events are Based on a Pack of Lies.